We arrived to Cusco feeling a little jaded with the constant movement of travelling, packing our backpacks and moving in every few days and decided to make Cusco home for 2 weeks while we explored Choquequirao, Machu Picchu and many other Incan sites. Cusco is gringo central, gringo being the fond name that Latin American have for us tourists, and so there is an abundance of Irish and English pubs and every type of food imaginable to cure the homesickness of travellers from any country. It also means that you cannot walk down the street in Cusco without being accosted by people trying to sell you finger puppets, tours, massages, manicures, you name it they´re selling it. In spite of this though Cusco is a very beautiful city with a gorgeous main square, again called Plaza de Armas (the Spanish weren´t very inventive it seems) and beautiful cobbled streets, plazas and alleyways.

And as so many tourists head straight for Cusco it wasn´t that surprising that we managed to meet some friends from home, Tomas (Cliona´s brother for those of you in Ireland), Joanna, Eoin and Kevin and of course we had to have a quick drink in Paddy´s the resident Irish pub. Well we all know what ´just one drink´ means to Irish people so after a few in Paddy´s we headed for Mama Africa´s and danced our little hearts out until the wee small hours resulting in some very sore heads and missed tours the next morning. But God was it fun to see a familiar face after 4 months! And it confirmed to me that Gareth and I are now lightweights when it comes to our ability to drink so please go easy on us when we get home

Cusco is set at the start of the Sacred Valley and was the capital of the Incan empire when it spread from Ecuador through Peru, Bolivia down to the top of Chile and Argentina. We visited two sites in the Sacred Valley on our journey to Machu Picchu.

Pisac is located at the start of the Sacred valley and its believed to have defended the valley from the south. Pisac also has many Incan agricultural terraces, which are still in use today, that the Incans used to create micro-climates in which they could grow all of the different products they required reducing their dependence on other tribes and regions for products like tobacco and of course coca leaves. Pisac also has the remains of religions buildings, military buildings and residences as well as some beautiful still working fountains which were thought to have a religious purpose and were located directly across from the place where the Incans created small caves to bury their dead high up in the rocky mountains.

Ollantaytambo was another Incan city which was still in the process of being built when the Incan culture fell. It´s an amazing city located on two mountains facing each other. The main ruins include Incan terraces and also two temples, a temple to the sun and a temple to water as well as terraces which were not used for agriculture but merely as ornamentation around the temples. What´s really interesting about Ollantaytambo is that as they were forced to abandon the city while it was still being built you can see how they built these amazing cities and the huge rocks they were transporting across from the opposite mountain have been abandoned where they lay. On the mountain opposite the religious centre an Incan face can be seen which was partially nature´s work and partially Incan craftsmanship and its exact location is where the sun first hits the mountain on the day of the winter solstice (21st June on this side of the globe). The town of Ollantaytambo now sits in the valley where the original town was also located and 20% of the town is the original Incan design and stonework. Ollantaytambo is also where the Incas fought and won a very important battle against the Spanish and managed to stop them ever discovering Machu Picchu and to me it was one of my favourite Incan sites, it has an amazing feel to it and its obvious that this would have been a very important place for the Incas when it was completed.

Cusco itself also has lots of original Incan architecture and we visited the Sun Temple, Coricancha; in the centre of Cusco which was destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors when they arrived and turned into a church and convent. Another site high above in the hills of Cusco is Sacsayhuaman (literally pronounced Sexy Woman) which is very similar to many of the Incan sites we visited with massive stones used to construct walls or fortications and with each of the stones cut to fit together perfectly without any need for concrete or mortar. It´s a really beautiful site with spectacular views over Cusco and apparently the 2nd most important Incan site in Peru after Machu Picchu. It´s also very impressive as this Incan structure managed to survive many earthquakes that have devastated modern buildings in Cusco due to the quality of its buildings.

The Incan Museum in Cusco was without a doubt the biggest and best museum about the Incan culture and life we have seen to date. One of the big attractions for us was an exhibition on Choquequirao, they had a number of photos depicting the discovery and restoration work - the ruins were still entirely covered by jungle as late as 1993 when work began. There was also a scale model showing the site with buildings that have been discovered but not yet cleared on the site itself. It was great to see especially having seen it first hand.

As you go about Cusco and the surrounding towns you notice there are lots of houses with red plastic bags hanging outside them on posts, these are houses where the locals go to drink Chicha, a local brew made out of corn and fermented with saliva. We tried it once of course and actually it was quite tasty but we won´t be rushing back for more!

I also celebrated my 29th birthday in Cusco and did it in style too. We decided to splash out and checked ourselves into a fancy hotel and Gareth treated me to a champagne breakfast in bed, followed by a lazy day and then a fabulous dinner in a fancy restaurant. Definitely a birthday I won´t forget and a wonderful way to kick off the last year of my twenties.