Panama City-Lima 21 May 2011 Time: 0830 Flight time: 3hrs 20 minutes
Lima-Cuzco with LAN Airbus A319 Time: 1400 Flight time: 1hr 15mins
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| Cuzco |
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| Sunset |
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| Libertador Hotel lobby |
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| Hotel door |
We visit the Temple of the Sun which is the remains of an Inca palace inside a Dominican convent.
Long ago, Incas constructed a palace that was small, square-jawed, extremely strong and easy to clean. With good reason, they favoured the earthquake-proof trapeziod-shape and mortor-less masonry, fitting the blocks of stone together with jigsaw puzzle precision.
Along come the Spanish, who put the Incas in their place by using their palace as a foothold for their own building which was bigger, wider, bluntly colonial and over-decorated with architectural fripperies and pointy bits. The Inca palace was out of sight, crushed under baroque foundations until it re-emerged in 1953, when an earthquake shook things up.
Both buildings were restored, and now the Inca palace is enclosed - indeed swallowed - by the temple of its conquerer. Nevertheless, it is the clean lines and common sense of the Inca construction which seems to stick in the craw of the convent.
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| Dome over the cloisters of Santo Domingo Convent |
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| Courtyard |
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| The Convent's pointy bits |
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| Sunset on ceramic |
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| Sunset on the courtyard |
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| Tub in courtyard |
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| Can't leave this ceramic alone... |
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| Note the outward lean (creating a trapeziod shape) of the Inca wall. |
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| Gold plate depicting Mother Earth and the Incas |
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| It says: 'Long live glorious Peru', being on mountain slopes overlooking Cuzco. The lettering is achieved by mowing down the vegetation. |
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| Cuzco in the morning |
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| A llama keeping the grass down at Sacsayhuaman, the remains of an Inca fortress overlooking Cuzco |
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| Mortarless Sacsayhuaman wall and gum trees |
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| Cuzco's Christ the Redeemer (not a patch on Rio's) |
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| Zigzag Sacsayhuaman walls of granite monoliths |
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| Can't leave these monoliths alone |
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| View with souvenirs |
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| Mountainside farming |
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| A town mural snapped from the bus window |
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| A village squeezed up against a mountain |
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| Art in the restaurant where we had lunch |
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May I show you the menu?
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Your table is this way...
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| Dressage... |
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| Can I get you the bill? |
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