Nestled among the Andean mountain tops at 11,000 feet above sea level, Cuzco has everything except oxygen. Spanish architecture mixed with Incan ruins and traditional Peruvian dress, makes this city of 300,000 absolutely charming.
The oldest city in the America's, Cuzco was the capital of the Incan empire, which stretched from Ecuador down the western coast to the middle of Chile, until it fell to Pizarro's Conquistadors in 1532.
Though the Incan temples, forts and buildings were mostly destoyed by the Spanish, the city looks much as it did in the 16th & 17th centuries.
The red tiled roofs, wooden balconies, and cobblestone streets give one a sense of being back in time. In many ways the people's lives have not changed much over the past few hundred years, as tourism and farming are the major industies.
Many of the monasteries and Catholic churches from the 16th century are still intact and in use. And the local famer's market operates much as it did 300 hundred years ago.
Adjusting to the altitide is a challenge, although the delicious coca tea -- brewed from the leaves of the coca plant -- helped enormously, as did the pure oxygen pumped into my hermetically sealed room each nigh at the Monasterio.
Coca was the original "secret ingredient' in Coca-Cola, helping that company's early growth by literally addicitng its customers. The US governement banned its use in the cola in the 1920's.
The Monasterio Hotel is a 475 year old Catholic monastery converted to a 5 star hotel. One could feel the history, walking the halls where monks trod for hundreds of years, sleeping in the same rooms where they slept and eating from the same mini-bars.
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