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Once Tammy was ready, we left the Amaru Hostal

and hailed a taxi in the Plaza de San Blas.  We negotiated for a $10 taxi ride that would take us to all our destinations, including a final drop-off at Cusco airport.  Our first stop was Sacsayhuaman.  Known almost as much for its pronunciation (approximately, "sexy woman") as for its stonework, Sacsayhuaman is located just a kilometer outside of Cusco, which you can see in the background here:

Unfortunately, like so many Incan sites, nobody is quite sure why or how Sacsayhuaman was constructed.  If anything, its appearance generates more hypotheses than it debunks.  The ruins essentially consist of a series of formidable stone walls:

Climbing these walls gets you high enough for a good view of the plain these ruins overlook:

Atop the walls, the stonework itself merits a closer look:

Across the plain from the walls, another climb leads you to this vantage point:

Admittedly, less than 24 hours after witnessing the grandeur of Machu Picchu, it was hard to get fired up about Sacsayhuaman.  There wasn't time to linger, however; after about half an hour, we got back in the taxi, and the friendly cabby drove us up the road to Qenko.

Much smaller than Sacsayhuaman, Qenko is also quite different.  At first glance, it's quite threadbare:

Walking behind this stone face, however, reveals a rocky network of caves and crevices:

After emerging from these caves, I was back outside, walking atop these rocks

when an older Peruvian fellow walked up to me and started offering random (unsolicited) tidbits about the ruins.  He walked me over to this thing
and described it as an "Incan throne" (not terribly convincing);

this bird-shaped rock (definitely cooler than the throne);

and this rock, which I think he said was supposed to feature a serpent:

All in all, mildly interesting stuff, but certainly not captivating (after all, nobody really knows what any of these rock formations were supposed to represent).  As I started to walk back to the taxi, though, he made the reason for his intervention clear: he asked for a tip, apparently to recompense him for dispensing unwanted information.  To get him to stop bugging me, I obliged, but the dude definitely needs to step his tour-guide game up.

The taxi driver ushered us from Qenko to the last ruin of the day: Tambo Machay.  The main feature here is a little Incan fountain that continues to function to this day:

As was the case with virtually every Incan ruin we say, Tambo Machay was built into the surrounding hills, which provided good places for climbing and taking in a bird's-eye view:

In parts, curious rock formations lined the sides of the path:

And in another part, there were sheep.

With the completion of this whirlwind self-tour of Sacsayhuaman, Qenko, and Tambo Machay, it was time to get back in the taxi and head back to town.

Looking back at the trip, I find that Cusco's rolling hills and architectural style made it the most beautiful Peruvian city I saw.  While also the most obviously touristy of the places we visited (nowhere else in the country were we accosted so much by street vendors), there's something to be said for Cusqueñans' overall friendliness and hospitality.  The generous service of our taxi driver was a perfect example of this.  We rolled through the streets of Cusco..

..and on to our final tourist destination in the city: the Cusco tower.

The view from the top was quite beautiful:

With this, our time in Cusco was up.  We were supposed to get to the airport 1.5 hours ahead of our flight, and we were right on schedule to get there at 12:30.  We left the tower and got back in the cab one last time, and minutes later we were in the check-in line for LAN.  Just ahead of us in line, we saw the French guys from our Machu Picchu trek; as it turned out, they were on the same afternoon flight for Arequipa.  Once we got through security, though, we received some unwelcome news at the gate: our flight had been delayed from 2:05 PM to 3:40 PM, which meant a couple hours of sitting around at the airport.  I busted out the iPod, and the waiting began.

The flight from Cusco to Arequipa was fairly uneventful.  Our in-flight entertainment was the same oddly tourist-oriented Peru promotional video that we'd seen en route from Lima to Cusco a week earlier.  One of the cities it spotlighted was Arequipa, boasting of (and showed delicious pictures of) its excellent food.  After a week of trekking, I was definitely read for some good food.

We arrived on the tarmac of the smallest airport I had ever seen (a few days later, Iquitos' airport would take over this title).  Rollaway stairs were connected to the plane right out on the airstrip; we walked down these stairs with our bags and on to the airport itself.  A quick glimpse around drew my attention to the towering volcanoes, in the distance and within sight, that serve as Arequipa's neighbors. 

Inside the airport, we set out to buy our final group of airline tickets (from Arequipa to Iquitos on Wednesday, August 16th, and Iquitos to Lima on Sunday, August 20th).  Given the airport's smallness, and the fact there was only one person in front of us at the LAN counter, we figured this would be quick.  Wrong.  We waited five minutes.. then twenty minutes.. then 45.  I asked Tammy if she wanted to just buy the tickets in town, but she wanted us to get this squared away.  We continued waiting.  I don't know what it is -- maybe it's just bad luck -- but with just one person in front of us, we ended up waiting two hours to talk to the receptionist about our tickets.  And ultimately, even this proved fruitless; with our Arequipa to Lima to Iquitos (there's no direct flight between Arequipa and Iquitos) and Iquitos to Lima flights selected, our credit cards wouldn't even work on the LAN card swiper.  We got the tickets reserved, but not purchased; despite all that waiting, we were told to go into Arequipa and buy our tickets at the LAN office in town.  Blargh.

Tired and hungry from this absurd sequence, we found a cab driver and made our way into Arequipa.  At first, the environs looked very suburban -- much more so than anything we'd seen so far in the country.  Soon, though, it started looking like a bigger city.  As we were cruising down Avenue Ejercito, I realized that it looked just like a Peruvian version of Geary St., right down to the sorts of shops lining the road, and the mini-dip under the overpass.  We even passed by some Asian restaurants.  I liked Arequipa already. 

We drew closer to the Plaza de Armas, and the scattered pedestrians were gradually replaced with a full-on throng.  The city's anniversary is August 15th, and it's celebrated every year by a three-day fiesta leading up to the big day.  It was the night of August 13th, but we hadn't seen much in the way of celebration -- that is, until we drove past the plaza, where hundreds of people were crowded into and around the main area.

After we caught a passing glimpse of the huge crowd, the taxi sped off and onto one of the side streets adjoining the plaza.  Here, the scene was busy, but very unique: vendors in streetside stalls were cooking and selling various hot foodstuffs, and locals were not only buying, they were eating -- there were entire dinner tables set up on the sidewalk, and their benches were full of meal-enjoying customers. 
It was quite a scene, and entirely unlike anything else we'd seen in Peru.  Even from inside the cab, you got the marked feeling that this city was a lot less touristy -- and conversely, more representatively Peruvian -- than Cusco.

The taxi pulled up to the Casa La Reyna.  We paid the driver, hauled our bags, and stepped inside; in the small reception room, I greeted the one staff guy and asked if there were any two-bedrooms available.  He checked a little map and said there were no vacancies -- a pronouncement he quickly followed by volunteering to call and check if there were rooms in another hostel.  We already had a list of other hostels we'd wanted to check out, but we saw no harm in this guy making a call for us, so we rolled with it.  He made the call and responded there was a two-bedroom available in a nearby place called the Hotel Wilson, which we didn't find in either of our guidebooks.  We asked him to make another call, this time to a place on our list; he dialed, waited a few seconds, and told us they weren't picking up (no way to tell if this was actually the case or not).  All I know is that after a couple minutes of talking to this dude, a Peruvian dead-ringer for Raja Bell walked right into the reception room and asked who was looking for a room.  The Reyna receptionist directed Raja's attention to us (we were, after all, the only other people in the room), and Mr. Bell said he was an employee from the Hotel Wilson, and he'd come to take us over there.  Apparently, in calling Hotel Wilson, the Reyna guy had basically invited this dude to come retrieve us (clearly, the two of them were in cahoots).  Tammy and I were a little weirded out by all this shadiness, and I was definitely a little hesitant to let some random dude we didn't know take us to a hotel we knew nothing about in a city we'd just arrived in.  Nonetheless, we gave Raja the benefit of the doubt, and we agreed to let him show us the room at the Wilson, without making any commitment to take it.  Raja walked out the front door of the Reyna, and we followed suit.

We walked down a couple blocks and arrived at the Wilson, which was a darkish place with no one around (apparently, Raja was the only employee on duty, yet he'd left his post to go get us from the Reyna).  He led us around a corner and up a flight of stairs.  On the second floor, he cracked open the door to a three-bedroom with its own bathroom.  We asked the requisite questions (e.g., is there 24-hour hot water?) and got the usual answers ("sí, sí" - though we'd gotten the same affirmative answer at the Hospedaje Sanbleño and been greeted by a shower that was not only cold, but by a bathroom that didn't even have running water at all after midnight); he also assured us that no third person would be added to the room (something which had sounded like a possibility when this was all being discussed at the Reyna).  Finally, we asked Raja how much the room would cost; he said it would be 35 soles (under US$12) for the night, and 30 soles per night if we committed to staying longer than one day.  Maybe we were just tired from all the flying and waiting that day, but we decided to go ahead and take the room; we opted for the 35-sol choice, just in case we found a better hostel the next day.  Raja told us to go downstairs and pay him at the reception desk.

We dropped off our bags and headed back to the first floor.  To add to all the shadiness, Raja refused to accept a US$100 bill, even though it was more than clear that, with all the guests in the hotel, he had sufficient change.  So we used up pretty much our last few soles to pay him; we'd have to go change more dollars into soles the next day. 

After this business, we were definitely ready to eat; between the morning's tardiness and the subpar airport food, we hadn't had an actual meal the entire day.  We walked down toward the plaza, passing more streetside cooks/dinner tables along the way (the food smelled good, but not wanting to get sick, we steered clear of trying it).  While walking down the avenue, I noticed another striking difference from what we'd seen in Peru up to that point; walking around Cusco, we were almost constantly accosted by locals trying to sell us things, but in Arequipa, we were pretty much left alone (certainly a nice change of pace). 

At the plaza, the music was blaring and the crowd was going strong as ever.  Lining the plaza was a long balcony that was lined with restaurants;
while random vendors did not walk up to us and accost us, the menu-holding staffers manning the doors to these restaurants were in no way hesitant to call out to us and invite our business.  We figured that eating up on one of these balconies would be a nice way to take in the fiesta while at the same time getting some much-needed rest,

so we decided to check out one of these places: the Boveda San Augustin.  There, I had aji de camarones; chicharrones de pollo; and the three-for-10-soles (US$3) Arequipeña (Arequipan beer) special.  It was quite a tasty meal, headlined by the aji de camarones, which featured big shrimp and a delicious sauce.  The chicharrones de pollo tasted a little too similar to regular ol' fried chicken strips (not necessarily a bad thing, but not really my thing anymore either).  The beer, finally, was good, though I'm not sure if it measured up to the greatness attributed to it by Nir and company.  For the moment, though, all that mattered was that I was no longer starving.

Our view of the plaza proceedings wasn't so bad either, though there really wasn't much to see; the huge crowd was divided into a couple of groups, each watching one of the performances going on in the square.  On the side closest to our balcony, there was a stage and soundsystem set up, and singers and dancers went through song after song (none which I could understand, nor which sounded particularly catchy to my non-local ears).  On the far side of the plaza, it looked like there was a big group watching some sort of street performance, though the darkness and palm trees prevented us from discerning exactly what this performance was. 

After we had our fill of food and festivities, we headed back to the Hotel Wilson.  Next up: the first of two full days in Arequipa.

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