Two days later we said our goodbyes and got to our hostal in Cusco, the Pakcha Real, by noon. We met Daniel again, and learned that it might not be worth recommending the place to others. They play games with you when you tell them you expect to pay what's on the website. This is our second visit, so it has happened twice now. They make excuses for why online information hasn't been updated. Daniel quoted 8 soles for a taxi ride to the airport because he was trying to get us to pay for it ourselves; last time it was 12, and the "official airport taxi" rate (no different than any other taxis, except that they are a group that have formed a price-fixing cartel that no authority seems to have the ability or the will to bust up) wants 40 soles. This place is a minefield for travelers on a budget.
Before we left Ollantay, we bought a ten-day "boleta", a $100 ticket for two of us that allows entry into various archaeological sites, art galleries and museums, and a folkdance performance. We used it first for Ollantaytambo temple and Moray, and then for sites and museums in Cusco. We're pretty used to the altitude now; Cusco is higher than Ollantay, at 3300 metres, but this time we're able to scamper back up the hill or the stair-streets to our hostal at a pretty good clip.
We had a very good meal at "Jack's" in San Blas, toured a couple of museums which are fairly pathetic, mostly because of their inability to maintain good exhibits and to write decent explanations. Oddly, in a town which gets so many good English writers and fluently bilingual tourists, their English captions are worse than the worst Google translate you've ever seen.
In the contemporary art museum in Cusco we enjoyed viewing paintings by Amilcar Salomon Zorilla, a former Peruvian ambassador to the U.S. He used to have lots of fine Inca images in paintings on his website, including depictions of the fourteen Incas and a series of temple virgins, but his website has disappeared and it is difficult to find images of the paintings online.
In the evening we went to an arts cultural centre and watched an hour long show of folk dances from different provinces of Peru. It's amazing how many different traditional costumes there are. Photography was difficult - they move too fast, in low light - but I got a few cute shots.
We went to the Sun Temple site of Cusco, called Sacsayhuaman, and sometimes spelled Sacsaywaman. When Spanish speakers say it, it can sound like they're trying to say "sexy woman" in English, so even the guides call it that on purpose. We got there as a hop-off from a city tour in an open-topped bus, but it took some convincing for them to let us get down there and catch the same bus the next time it came around. It was worth it, though - we saw some other sights and saved cab fare to Sacsayhuaman, and while we were there we lucked into watching a crucifixion by a number of school kids. They crucified a high school kid, probably wished it was a teacher, but there you go...they got him popped up on the cross in the rain and cold just before our bus had to leave.
When we came back down to town we visited the regional museum which has fourteen galleries and slightly better captioning for the exhibits than we saw the day before. It was a much better museum, though, and no matter what, in English or in Spanish, every museum has something different to see and think about.
We also visited the Popular Art museum, which is small but really enjoyable. Then we watched The Name of the Rose in Spanish in the City Hall cinema for free - I was hoping for The Mission, but that came on next and we were ready to leave by then. We had supper in an East Indian Korma restaurant on Tandapata, our street: I had curried alpaca. Could have had tandoori guinea pig as an appetizer. This must be the only place in the world where you can have your choice of those two dishes.
Next diary entry: Good Friday in Lima
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