After checking in to our hotel, the first order of business was to have some Cocoa tea, that the hotel has in the courtyard.

The second order or business was a city tour. I assumed this would be a walking tour, but we boarded a small bus instead. We drove through the city as a local guide -- a professor at Cusco University -- explained some of the sites. Strictly speaking, it was really a "city tour" but rather a tour of the Sacsayhuaman Inca site (pronounced by some as "sexy-woman") and related sites. Sacsayhuaman is several hundred metres above the heart of Cusco, which actually lies in a valley (the bottom of the valley is at 3400 m elevation).

Sacsayhuaman is a very cool site. The Inca stonework is amazing. The detail is striking, yet it curious that this civilization that lived here in the 1500s -- thousands of years after the pyramids of Egypt, never developed language, and their stonework is simply stones, no carvings, writings, or inscriptions. It was calming sitting on the grass, high in the Andes, looking the Inca stonework against the cool blue afternoon mountain sky. Hours later, we seemed to be a world way from the humid Amazon Jungle, yet the flight was less than an hour.