Cusco – restaurants, handicraft markets and traffic police women

From Puno we took a night bus (Transzela) to Cusco. It arrived around 5am to Cusco and we took ourselves directly to our hostel hoping to get maybe more sleep or at least leave our luggage there. We had booked one night at Hostal el Labrador. Unfortunately, the front of the hotel was under road construction and it was a bit challenging to get to the hostel with all the luggage. But we managed to come in and the hostel was kind enough to let us in a spare room to get more sleep until our own room would be ready. Much appreciated! But the room was a bit small and the shower was not very good – mainly cold water. The breakfast was not very inspiring either. Well, it was the same that almost every hostel has – same white bread, butter, jam and tea. We searched for other options and found one hotel for a good price on Hotels.com. We booked 7 nights at Waynapicchu hotel. It was not as close to the centrum, but not too far away either. The room was nice, staff helpful (got us a heater for example when we said that our room was very cold), and there were different fruits at breakfast too. 😊

Well, enough about the accommodation, let’s see what we did during our time in Cusco 😃 First of all, it is nice to just walk around. There are lot of handicraft shops and different markets all over and it is just nice to see all the colorful textiles and interesting food markets. We learned later on from some Dutch tourists that many of the handicraft products are actually made in China and not at all the material the sellers claim them to be 😩 Once we saw some real alpaca products and the price difference, we understood that most of the products that are sold as “alpaca” are actually just something synthetic. That’s a pity. But we did find some cotton products and other things that we believe are “real” materials 😃

Beautiful colors in different fabric shops

There were many handicraft/artisan markets around Cusco, most of them selling the same products

San Pedro Market with all different sellers, an interesting place to just walk around!

Pig head, anybody? 😮

Or fresh looking (?) frogs or horns...? 😮

Checking the food market at Mercado de Wanchaq, a bit out of the centrum with barely any tourists. We would have wanted to buy a lot of things!! Ah, the trouble of traveling for such a long time 😁

We went also into a store (Centro de Textiles Traditionales del Cusco) with organically colored alpaca products. The place had also a museum attached to it with information on the history of weaving in Peru and different traditions etc. That was quite interesting. It really is a hard work to manufacture the beautiful textiles from scratch! Edda saw a beautiful poncho in the display of the store and had the courage to look at the price tag. Well, it was 1550 USD… We hadn’t won in the lottery so the poncho stayed in the display, sigghhh…

Beautiful ponchos in the museum

How the fabrics are traditionally made

Edda would've wanted the white-blue poncho very badly, but 1550 USD... 😢

One very distinguishing part of the traffic in Cusco was the traffic police. All of them were women, btw. There was not one corner without a traffic police in the centrum of Cusco! They were there all day, every day. We didn’t really understand the function of them. There were traffic lights as well, but the police were anyhow in the crossings. What was confusing at times was that the police might have showed the drivers to drive, even if there was a red light. And then on the contrary – to stop when there was a green light. This then led to all cars honking constantly.

When walking around in Cusco, one crosses Plaza de Armas all the time. It’s a bigger park in the centrum with many restaurants, tourist shops, hiking shops, etc. around it. It was a nice-looking park, especially at night, when all the lights around light up. One night we walked to a viewing point in Cusco to see all the city lights. It was really beautiful!

 Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas by night

Cusco by night

Different types of furry friends kept company when walking on the streets of Cusco

Some of them stopped for a photoshoot too 😉

Typical street view in Cusco

Many stairs each day for school kids!

Few interesting statues in Cusco centrum 😂

Kids playing

There are different companies that organize “free” city walking tours. “Free” because there is no fixed cost, but everyone leaves a tip for the guide. Our tour had quite many people, but we could still hear the guide speaking. She took us to different parts of the centrum, told about the Inca culture, Quechua language (language of the Incas), the architecture of the Inca period and typical Peruvian cuisine. During the tour, we visited a yard where a man played traditional instruments and where we could take pictures with alpacas and a lama. The tour was interesting, but the names and histories of different important people in Cusco’s history might have disappeared from our memory already. :p

Typical Inca wall. It's amazing how they are constructed with only stones fitting together perfectly - no other materials are used to hold the stones together!

There are quite many women walking around with alpacas or baby sheep in Cusco. The women are dressed up and one can take pictures with them. One woman came to Edda and practically pushed the baby lamb to Edda so we took the picture :D The baby lamb was more interested in eating Edda’s hair than posing for the photo :p The outfits are lovely – so colorful!

During our one-week-stay in Cusco, we tried different cafés and restaurants. One nice café was ‘el café de Mamá Oli’, a bit up from Plaza de Armas. They had different salads, quiches, juices, etc. It was a nice, fresh change to the food in most places. We also found a great Japanese restaurant, Kintaro, where we ended up eating dinner three times during our stay. The food was good, service kind and really fast and they had the best chai tea we have ever tasted! When we switched to Waynapicchu hotel, we found a local vegetarian restaurant. We ate lunch there three times, for 6 soles each (about 1,8 €), including starter, main course and a small dessert. We never knew what we were getting, because we didn’t understand the menu, but since it was vegetarian, even Edda could order blind :D Most of the times the food was really good! We also tasted nice Pisco sours at Museo del Pisco. They were rather expensive (around 25 soles each, i.e. 7,5 €), but good. We were supposed to return later some day and taste their spiced piscos (e.g. cardamom, cinnamon, you name it), but we never made it. During our last day before doing the Inca trail (we will post separately about that), we found a cozy café, Aymura. They had delicious pies, wraps, cakes and they were specialized in artisan coffee. Markus bought a siphon coffee and it was really tasty!

el café de Mamá Oli

Kintaro

The local vegetarian restaurant

Tasty pisco sours

Markus happy with his delicious coffee at Aymura

One day we decided to walk up to one hill above Cusco where there are some Inca ruins and view points. The Inca walls made of stone are amazing. All stones are shaped so that they fit like a puzzle without any cement or other material in between. Some of the stones are extremely big and it has taken some man power and time to get the constructions done!

Our last night before Inca trail was at Milhouse hostel, a bigger hostel close to the centrum. The place was nice, filled with 20-year-olds (we felt old! :p ) and it had a hot shower, which is really something one needs to search for in Peru!

Inner garden/hang-around-area at Milhouse

The Wi-Fi was really slow everywhere and almost non-existent in the rooms so we sat in the window to get a better connection 😝

During our stay in Cusco, we did also a Sacred Valley tour, but we will write more about it in the next post!