We decide to discover today's bounty of Inca ruins by horse, rather like the Spaniards did so many years ago, though we don't intend to rape, ransack or pillage them. Not today anyway.
Beth comes with us to see us off, she has arranged this trip for us, and is anxious to ensure all is well. Yesterday she had mentioned this possibility to us, and then shortly after the conversation a car had pulled up and a man wound down a window asking would we like horses. My hesitant Spanish and the fact that things just don't work this way in England left me assuming she knew this man and had expected we might encounter him.
When she greets the man today like old friends I assume this further - until she asks him what his name is and I realise they've only just met and his business model really is to drive around on the off chance he'll bump into some customers. In fact the Peruvian way of always saying good morning, afternoon or evening to every stranger is one of my favourite things about Cusco. I have seen Beth greet other strangers this way, and seen the same of other Peruvian people. You are never a stranger. You are an old friend temporarily forgotten.
The man tells us the horses are 'just coming' and we sit down to chat and gaze out over the beautiful hills and distant, snow covered mountains.
After about half an hour Mary asks our new friend in mock chagrin, "where are these horses?" and continues to infirm him that "these people are English"
"Ahhh," he responds knowledgeably, "English time."
Apparently, 'English time' is a well known concept in Peru, because the English are so very prompt. 'English time' differs from 'Peruvian time' by anything up to an hour. So we can expect our 9.30 trip to begin about 10.30.
We relax and enjoy the view. We may be English but we've been travelling long enough to discover that arriving at the time you say you will is a characteristic only displayed by English or English settlements, such as Australia and New Zealand. Everywhere else, time is relative to your personal sense of urgency, or what else you have to do, or whether you happen to have fallen asleep, bumped into your friend or stopped to buy pineapples along the way. If this sounds 'uncivilised', think again. Admittedly it makes it hard to arrange anything reliably, but isn't time always a little bit relative? Isn't it hard sometimes to hit that exact appointment if something unexpected happens? Maybe 'within the hour' as opposed to 'on the minute' is a rather more understanding arrangement, something a little more human. And is waiting a problem, if you expect you might have to?
Maybe, in England, because it's probably raining.
I don't see quite how we could go about our business this way, given the way English society is set up, but you have to see the charm of it.
The horses, when they arrive, are in no more of a rush than anyone else. It is the slowest, gentlest, and, for that matter, most enjoyable ride we have had. Our horses wear loose saddles and have a loose rope bridle. They amble along slowly, stopping now and then for a snack, utterly relaxed and unworried by anything around them. Our guide is a young boy I would guess at about thirteen, who walks alongside us, and coaxes rather than commands the horses with a combination of a 'shhhh shhhh shhh' noise and a 'puck puck puck' noise with his mouth. He carries a thin stick which he picks up from the hillside which he swishes about but never touches the horses with and if they really won't budge he simply leads them by their bridle. He is in no hurry so if they pause to munch he allows them, as long as they continue their leisurely amble reasonably quickly afterwards.
I love the quiet relationship between horses and their master, and it mirrors my own attitude, which is that the slower they go, the more of the scenery I can take in. When we stop a little way outside the Tambomachay and Pukapukara ruins, to continue on foot because horses are not allowed too close to the sites, we leave our guide tying the horses bridles to a flimsy bush from which they could pull themselves free any moment they wanted to.
But they don't.
When we return from the water ways of Tambomachay, which is believed to have been a water temple, and from more amazing walls of stone at Pukapukara, where, it is believed the Incas communicated from towers with the Saqsaywaman fortress, the horses are still there, and both they and our guide, who has abandoned his stick, are munching happily on grass.
We amble to 'X Zone', so named, Beth tells us, because no one knows what the Incas used it for. It's a network of tunnels, perhaps half man made, half natural, which we spend a fun twenty minutes exploring. My theory is that it was a kind of larder, for storing food and other goods.
Which is much less mysterious an explanation than the most popular historical theory in respect of the Qenqo site, which we visit after, finding our horses not tied up at all, and perfectly happily munching away.
Qenqo was believed to have been a place for human and animal sacrifice, with a clear drainage system for blood, Chicha or water. It is arranged like an auditorium, but with tunnel like caves with carved out 'tables', which might have been sacrificial beds, complete with sinister drainage channels. Possibly, it was also used for post death rituals, when the direction the blood took as it made its way into the drainage system, might determine whether the deceased had led a good life.
Qenqo is our last stop, and we bid goodbye to our relaxed horses and our relaxed guide, and wander down into town to join Beth for lunch in the Shaman Restaurant which has become one of our favourite, and cheapest, places to eat. Beth loves it, which is pleasing because it is a tiny way in which we have been able to give back a little in terms of information about this city.
We spend the remainder of the day rather quietly as I have a rather unshifting combination of blocked ears and stomach ache. We have been trying to combine rest with taking up the opportunities to see the city, especially as our ticket to the key Inca sites only lasts for ten days so everything must be seen before Sunday. Being ill in a foreign country is frustrating. Finding medicines etc is harder and just resting is harder still, when you don't have long enough.
Beth says perhaps Benedicto could make me a tincture and I say yes, I would love that but I think she is joking.
We go to a pharmacy and buy ear drops just in case a tincture doesn't materialise. But it's a lot less exciting.
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