Inkaman is the new superman

I´ll try and keep this one shorter than last time, it´s hard though, so much happens every day!!
Monday and Tuesday were filled with visits to different Inka ruins! There are many ruins in the Cusco region and we took a bus to 7 different locations. I learned a lot about the Inkas by visiting these ruins. They were very ingenious and resourceful people. At the ruin called Saqsayhuaman (my dad and I like to call it Sexywoman) some of the stones weighed over 100 tons and were dragged by the Inkas over 5 km of harsh mountainous terrain. Sometimes even dragging the stone uphill for many km, in cases like this they would build ramps up the mountain to make dragging the stones easier. They did not use animals to help them, just man power. I can´t imagine how many Inka´s died in the construction of their cities. They were also known to use terraces, in order to maximize the agricultural potential of the mountain. Peruvians still use some of these terraces today and you can see fields almost reaching the peaks of the mountains. The Inka´s had two styles of building; one was with un-carved stone and mortar. The second style was with carved stone and no mortar, which is very spectacular! In order to get the stone to stay together the faces had to be perfect and fit perfectly against one another. They carved the stone with a harder stone, there isn´t space anywhere to stick a hairpin. All of the seams are perfect and many stones are more than just cubic or rectangular. There is a famous Inka stone in Cusco that has 12 different sides on one face and somehow the Inka´s managed to fit it together with the rest of the building perfectly. Ok enough about the Inka´s (I´m sure you´ll hear more after Machu Picchu too).
On Tuesday we also spent some time in the Sacred Valley a valley next to Cusco. It is very gorgeous and has a perfectly straight river running along it, the river isn´t naturally straight though. Guess who channeled it that way hundreds of years ago to maximize the amount of land they can use for agriculture! That’s right the Inka´s!!! In the Valley we had lunch and some of the ruins were there as well. The valley is at about 2000m which is quite a bit lower than Cusco (3400m) and I could really notice the difference. At one of the ruins we had to climb 200 stairs and despite the look on the red faces of some of the other people there, my lungs didn´t burn nearly as much as the one flight of stairs I have to climb in Cusco to get to my room.
Today we spent the day in town and didn´t have much planning. However since it is January 6th the epiphany (when the wise men arrived to Jesus) and since Peruvians are very Catholic there was much reason to celebrate (not that it takes much). We heard some type of small explosions happening over and over so finally my dad asked what it was to a local. He told us it was firecrackers at a fiesta and told us where to find one (there were many occurring at the same time). We arrived and were the only tourists in the entire fiesta, a few more arrived later, but it was definitely not a hot spot for tourists. Basically there were women cooking meals for everyone and lots and lots of beer. Some people would sit beside their crate of beer and drink all day. We arrived around noon and some people were already drunk. My dad and I sat down and decided to have a beer; however the smallest size they had was a 1L bottle, so we shared it. Meanwhile the guys beside us was knocking back a bottle to himself and I´m sure it wasn´t his first. We then bought a meal from one of the local women. It was definitely one of the greasiest meals I have had in a long time, but it was the safest in terms of risk of contamination. At one point a procession began in the little plaza and dancers and a band performed. After the performance my dad and I left but I can still hear them now celebrating.
Later in the afternoon we decided to go for a walk. They have a huge white statue of Jesus standing at the top of a hill, looking over the city. We decided to walk up to it which turned out to be an adventure of its own. First of all we couldn´t seem to get consistent directions from anyone. They would first point us to the bus stop and when we told them we wanted to walk they thought we were crazy. One local told us, ”it´s wayyyy too far, 1 or 2 km!!”. We were finally on our way and a sign directed to “El Cristo Blanco” up a long staircase going straight up the hill. So we took it (much more than the 200 stairs we did the previous day). At one point the staircase just ended, with nothing but shrubs,dirt and a steep hill ahead of us. So much for the sign telling us where to go. Just as we were trying to figure out where to go from there a kid came down the hill above of us. My dad asked him for directions and since they weren´t clear my dad offered to pay him to take us part way up the hill. Finally after having paid the little boy we made our way up the rest of the hill to the statue. It was a great workout and a warm-up for the Inka trail. The walk back down was much nicer and we took a different way to explore the city a little more.
Tomorrow we are heading to a market in the Sacred Valley and the next day we start our 4 day hike to Machu Picchu!