Checking out Cusco, the hub of the Sacred Valley

The first thing we noticed about Cusco is its role as the hub of this part of the Andes. Like Kathmandu in Nepal, Cusco is the airport, railroad and highway hub that serves the outlying areas like Urubamba, Pisac, and Machu Picchu. It’s where the trekkers and tourists start and end their adventures in the Sacred Valley of Peru.

The second thing we noticed was how completely the Spanish made this town their own after conquering the Incas. There are cathedrals and street after street of buildings built atop the Incan structures that the Spanish destroyed. Just as modern Rome was built on the remarkable engineering of the Romans, the Spanish Conquest-era buildings of Cusco are, at their foundations, Incan.

The Cathedral

As we toured the Basilica, we saw other signs that the Spanish made their dominance clear, as they forced the Incans to give up their gods and replaced the various idols with corresponding Catholic images (not unlike the early Catholics replacing Greek and Roman gods with their own idols). The church was fantastic and seemed outsized for its location, but it was likely a key part of subduing the locals after the arrival of the Conquistadors.

It was hard not to compare the grandeur and copious use of gold and silver of the Cathedral of Cusco with the poverty in evidence in the countryside.

The streets of Cusco

In and around the Plaza de Armas (the central square of Cusco) were narrow streets filled with small shops, mostly catering to tourists. The things they sold were identical to what we saw in Pisac and Machu Picchu (what we called the the ‘llamarama’). On nearly every street we saw medium to large buildings that had foundations similar to what we saw at Machu Picchu, large, irregular stones fit together perfectly in interlocking patterns. The buildings atop the Incan foundations were colonial-era buildings with distinctly Spanish architecture.

We had to wonder what levels the Incas would have reached if they hadn’t been destroyed by Western civilization (and more by smallpox than by any army).