{"id":86,"date":"2010-08-26T00:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T23:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/?p=86"},"modified":"2016-09-18T16:49:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:49:14","slug":"peru-trip-8-the-inka-express-from-puno-to-cuzco-stopping-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/peru-trip-8-the-inka-express-from-puno-to-cuzco-stopping-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Peru Trip #8 – The Inka Express from Puno to Cuzco, stopping at"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Statue<\/a>The Inka Express is an extremely long bus ride – usually a 6hr drive – which takes over 9hrs, due to all the stops along the way. But time goes quickly, and it doesn’t seem to drag, as a journey, at all. Leaving Puno, barely having slept, with an altitude headache only partly dulled by 10minutes attached to the oxygen bottle before getting up, jacked up on matte de coca (coca-leaf tea) I half expected the journey to be awful. But I managed to dose during the first part of the journey, awaking to be delighted by the Pukara museum, sporting a whole collection of statuary from the ‘mother culture’ of southern Peru, who lived here around 400BCE. The catfish and the frog turned out to be particularly important animals for these people, but the puma and the snake made early appearances – they both figure heavily in later cultures – and the quality of the carving is really quite special.
\n<\/p>\n

\"Statue<\/p>\n

\nReturning to the bus, I am exhausted just by this short tour around the
\nmuseum. Our next stop, at 4335m (14,200ft) above sea level, is at Abra
\nLa Raya where the two mountain ranges the girt the Altiplano, where Lake
\nTiticaca rests, meet and join, and the Sacred Valley down to Cusco
\nbegins. There are snow-capped peaks here, although my Puno guide says
\nthey were much whiter in his youth. The smoke clouds from the 25 fires
\nburning in Bolivia adds a haze to the sky. The Vilcanota River that
\nbeings in this valley eventually joins the Amazon, and flows out to the
\nAtlantic Ocean. By this point, my head is hurting, the ibuprofen I
\ntook at breakfast has worn off, and I am just glad that the descent has
\nat last begun. Over the next 40mins we descend more than 1000m to our
\nbuffet lunch, and the Sacred Valley proper. <\/p>\n

Here we find our first proper Inca archaeological complex – Raqchi,
\nwhich means ‘ceramic.’ Unusually for Inca architecture, the main temple
\nis built half in stone, their preferred building material, and half in
\nadobe – the mud brick of older cultures. The entire complex, moreover,
\nis completely surrounded by a huge wall. The thinking is that the
\nTihuanaco people who were being supplanted by the Inca here were
\nrebellious, and the complex had to be built quickly, and defended. In
\nthe Temple to Wiracocha, the most important Inca god, there are, also
\nunusual for Inca buildings, circular columns, which used to hold up the
\nroof.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Temple<\/p>\n

By the time we reach Cusco the air is just so much nearer what sea-level
\ndwelling folks like me are used to, and although a bit thin, (it is
\nstill 11000ft, after all) I can think, I can move around, I have no
\nheadache, and the constant fatigue of the last few days in Puno is
\nfinally wearing off. It’s like getting well again after a massive
\nhangover. Speaking of which… a glass of wine might now be in order!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Inka Express is an extremely long bus ride – usually a 6hr drive – which takes over 9hrs, due to all the stops along the way. But time goes quickly, and it doesn’t seem to drag, as a journey, at all. Leaving Puno, barely having slept, with an altitude headache only partly dulled by … Continue reading “Peru Trip #8 – The Inka Express from Puno to Cuzco, stopping at”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-journeyman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":916,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}