705. Peru Trip | More from Cusco + Horseback Riding Incident

Saqsaywaman is an archaeological complex of Inca ruins, a short walk away from the city. We arrived there pretty late in the day so we didn't have time to explore the ruins but we walked up to Cristo Blanco, which is located in the park.

There we encountered this very nice woman with her alpacas. She was just standing there allowing people to take photos with her and hold her baby alpaca. It was really nice because all the other ones you see in the city ask for money (the previous one I took photos with demanded S/30) but she didn't ask for anything. We did give her some cash though for her generosity. Her alpacas were also very calm and well-behaved.


To reach Saqsaywaman, we climbed up this hill with endless stairs. We were both so exhausted by the time we reached the top.




Drone photo overlooking the city and Plaza de Armas



Cristo Blanco statue











Something I noticed about Cusco (well it is a bit hard to not notice) is that there are a LOT of street dogs. There are actually more dogs than humans in the city. Most of them look like they have owners though and are healthy, with a collar, etc. There are still some strays though. They just wander the city sometimes alone and sometimes there's packs of them. They seem happy to just be free to wander around and do as they please during the day.

We had set aside a day to visit Rainbow Mountain but when we decided to cancel it, we booked a horseback riding tour instead. The scenery was quite nice but it ended up being a bad idea since I got thrown off my horse in the end. :(

We rode around the countrysides, up and down hills then got off our horses to hike to a place called Devil's Balcony. After that we started riding back to another place called Temple of the Moon. There was some flat land so my horse suddenly started running quite fast. I pulled back the reins in an attempt to get him to stop. I don't remember clearly what happened next but after that I just found myself on the ground. It was quite painful. I got all bruised and scratched up a bit. I am grateful for those injuries though because I know it could have been a lot worse (like if he stepped on me after I fell, or if I fell off the side of a cliff instead).


At Devil's Balcony. To be honest the view wasn't really impressive so I didn't take a photo of it.



The day after the horseback riding incident, we had a tour to visit Sacred Valley. It was something like a 6:30am departure and I woke up feeling extremely nauseous. I think it was due to the mixture of pills I had taken the night before (altitude pills, malaria pills since we were going to the Amazon the next day, then one more type of unknown pill which was supposed to help with my bruising) on top of having to wake up so early.

The ride to the Sacred Valley was the worst, due to my nausea. I threw up several times along the way, and due to my fall it was super painful to sit. Especially sitting in the van, through the super bumpy streets the entire way and all the twists and turns lol.

During the ride I was just thinking I wish we hadn't gone instead. But I ended up getting better throughout the day..and I'm really glad we didn't decide to cancel the tour! The photo above is from a town called Ollantaytambo. We walked up so many stairs to get to the top (which was also super painful for me because of the injury) but it was worth it in the end.

I will post all about the Sacred Valley tour in a future post!

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