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Cusco, Perú: Neighborhoods, Hills, and Reality
April 15, 2026
This is the second of a series of blogs written while visiting Cusco, Perú. The previous blog was all about the history of the city. This blog will have no history.
When I arrived, I immediately walked through the city center to the area midway between the Plaza de Armas, the main city center park/plaza, and a neighborhood called Santa Ana. I chose this location because I wanted to see this particular neighborhood. I'm writing a book, and the female protagonist comes from this neighborhood. And in the book, her family continues to live there. She has relocated to the US. Anyway, I wanted to see if what I wrote properly matched the actual neighborhood, and for the most part, it did. I did discover that the main road into Santa Ana is much steeper than I expected, but there was another road, which eventually turned into an ancient Inca passageway, which worked even better in the story. And in the story, I mention a marketplace in Santa Ana, but I discovered that there isn't one. But, I was told there is one on Tuesdays. That was another adjustment that I made in my story. In walking through the streets of the neighborhood, I looked at the houses and imagined which house my protagonist and her family might have lived in. And I found one that looked like a good possibility, so that gave me a bit more depth to add to the story.
Besides barrio Santa Ana, I also walked almost every street throughout the historic district of Cusco. This area is full of very old buildings and houses, ones that were built on top of Inca ruins. You can see the lower walls are Inca, and the upper walls are Spanish Colonial. When the Spanish conquered the Incas, they also pretty much wiped out everything the Incas built, and then the Spanish used the remaining walls and built their own buildings on top of them. And there are a lot of those types of mixed-age walls here. Loads of adobe homes date back to the 1800s and are still used.
Cusco is, of course, popular with tourists, and I've met people from many different countries. I walked up to the San Cristobal church and museum and met a woman from Macedonia, another from Brazil, and a man from Turkey. I had lunch with them, it was quite nice. I met quite a few from the States, and others from various European countries. One of the nice things about meeting people who speak English is that I get a chance to speak English. But when I do, I find myself dropping into Spanish quite often. I've been through several museums and toured inside a couple of the oldest cathedrals, and that included going up into the bell towers and walking on the roofs. The views are great from up there. There are pics in my photo album.
After three days in the historic district, I changed to a hostel in the newer part of the city, about a half-hour walk south of where I was. I've been walking all over this area, and it is all new shiny buildings, a big mall, modern parks, etc. Most tourists don't come into this part of the city, but I did meet some other gringos while eating breakfast. Cusco is very hilly, so if you visit, be prepared to do some hill-climbing. And remember the air is thinner here, so you will feel winded much more easily. Even the locals walk slowly and take it easy.
I plan to visit a bunch of archeological sites in the Sacred Valley, but not Machu Picchu. There are lots of other, much less crowded sites to see (and much less expensive, as well). So, my next blog will include those locations.