CHAPTER 2. SO. AMERICA-ECUADOR & PERU, CONT.

There is much to see in and near Cusco. At the school auditorium we enjoy a folklore show with dances, music, and pageants in colorful costumes, and an audience almost entirely of local people, not tourists. The archaeological museum at the University of Cusco is very interesting with lovely mummies and big pottery.

The high point, tho, is an overnight excursion in ‘71 to Machu Picchu, starting early in the morning with the train going backward and forward as it climbs up the mountain behind Cusco. It continues on a 3 hour ride thru mountains, indian villages, and down the Urubamba River valley. At the site small busses take us zig zagging up hairpin turns on the road to the ruins on the top of the mountain, and to our hotel.

At the ruins we are lucky to have reservations in the small 12 room hotel , offering us a lot of time after and before the daily train load of tourists crowds the site. (We note a luxury hotel, built after our visit, now advertised for the site.) Our hotel is pretty basic, and the food is terrible, but the guests are interesting; we eat dinner with a Swiss diplomat and his wife from N.Y. and the UN. The weather is beautiful, and is much warmer than Cusco because of its lower elevation. Reading Hiram Bingham’s “Lost City of the Incas” beforehand is good preparation to enjoy Machu Picchu.

Terraced hillsides, fed by irrigation channels were used for crops. Fine Inca stone work windows overlook the Urubamba River far below. A carved stone high on a center hill was probably a sun dial (intihuatana). Early in the morning a camper sits playing an Inca flute. The ruins put one in a peaceful and serene mood before the tourist hordes arrived on the train from Cusco. It is a fascinating and exhausting place; the literature says there are 3,800 steps, and we climb up and down many of them while looking at the site.

At two PM of the second day it is time to take the small bus down to the river and the train station. Going down, a native young man runs straight down the steep mountain and greets us as we pass on each switch back of the road. The natives have spread their goods on the ground at the station and we buy a few things while waiting for the train to leave and take us back to Cusco.

We enjoyed everywhere we traveled, but Cusco and Machu Picchu are, in our opinion, the most interesting of the many places we have visited in South America, and should be seen if possible.