La Rue Vibre !

After being disappointed by Nazca we went directly to Cuzco with a night bus. The trip was terrible. Because of the sinuous road, many people were bringing up (peruvian people often do not know what a trash is). Moreover we had not anticipated the coldness, we were going up (Cuzco is at 3,300 m !).

Thus we arrived very tired in the famous capitale of the sacred valley of Incas. The city is beautiful, many monuments are built on incas foundations. The Incas could build walls with join stones of several faces. They do not used any cement! And the Spanish kept those foundations which well resisted to the earthquakes.

Because of its beauty the city is extremly touristic (the high season is though from June to August!). Thus it was hard to find a cheap accomodation.

If you would like to visit the main museums and archelogical sites of the sacred valley (there are a lot!) you will have to buy a “touristic ticket”. This one is sold 130 soles (about 34 euros) and if you have a student card you will pay 70 soles. In Peru it makes a lot of money. A menu of three dishes costs about 6 soles! And without this ticket you won’t be able to visit those museums and sites…

We had no choice thus we bought it and decided to visit every site included. WE started with the “Museo de Arte Popular”. What a disappointment! We had never seen a worth museum (if we could call it a museum!). It was rather a room filled with sculptures and bad paintings, without any explication! And the three following museums were just only a bit better, a lack of information and interesting pieces…

Hopefully archeological sites of the sacred valley are worth it. See the dedicated article.

And of course the ticket did not allow to visit the best museums and the churches… We felt so defrauded by the municipality…

At least the city is charming and some parts have been saved from the touristic plague. It enabled us to eat as local, as the famous “pollo a la brasa”, chicken marinated in a sauce and roasted.