Cusco - Biking the surroundng area

A group of adventure junkies set off at 7am one morning for the Amazon jungle. I’d have gone too if the agenda wasn’t crammed with activities instead I opted to stay in Cusco to recharge the batteries, catch up with correspondence & mountain bike the surrounding area.

Cusco was quite in terms of the number of travellers passing through. In summer up to 20 overland trucks can pass thought the town as they make their way around the continent to hit Rio for carnival time. The lack of travellers allowed the town to celebrate it’s own festivals in relative peace as it prepared itself for the Inca festival Inti Raymi ( festival of the Sun) or the winter solstices at the Inca ruins Saqsaywaman (pronounces Sexy Woman)high above the city in the surrounding hills. There were colourful street parties & dancing everyday & night that we were there.

5 of us hired bikes from a local tour agent & set out early on the Saturday morning to ride the local area. Disappointingly our guide was 2 parts of useless. Not only was he not properly dressed for cycling but he also had the flu. We set off none the less & enjoyed the countryside without him, stopping to soak up the surroundings whilst he caught up. We first dropped down town to the local bus station & hoiked the biked up on to the roof. A 30 minute journey up in to the Sacred Valley had us half way back to Ollantaytambo (our Inca trail start point). We spent the day cycling through back country lanes & villages enjoying the scenery, being out of town & waving hello as we passed among the local communities.

We cycled to the village of Tarabamba to visit the Inca Moray, an experimental laboratory, where due the bowl shaped topography the Inca were able to re-enact staggered microclimates in one area, thus enabling them to see if they could grow new varieties of crop in different parts of their empire. There was no tourist information at the sight & our guide’s English wasn’t good enough to explain the archaeological sight either; I’d happened to have seen half a documentary on TV & only remembered what we’d cycled out to see, once we arrived!! We’d otherwise we’d have just been looking at circular terracing say – “oh isn’t that nice.”

We cycled all day, dropping down hill for an hour’s exciting rollercoaster ride into Urubamba. The extra few bucks we’d paid for full suspension mountain bikes was well worth the treat & all of our arses thanked us for the lack of punishment as we bounced over rocks & boulders en route to the return bus station. We arrived just in time to hop on the local bus back, on to which climbed an exotic array of locals carrying all sorts of wired & wonderful smelling packages. It felt good to be among the locals, rather than simply passing through the communities on tour buses.