Today would be our final day in Cusco before leaving for more bird-related destinations. We started the morning by visiting the Sacsayhuaman Archeological Park just to the north of the city, and this visit consumed most of the morning. The ruins were quite interesting, and there was interest on a birding front as well, with a very confiding pair of Andean Lapwing upon one of the old Inca Reservoirs. After this we had a final walk around the old city of Cusco before, taking a taxi to Sixt car rental and picking up our wheels for the next stage of the trip.
The first destination with the new car was
the Archeological park of Tipon, an old Inca water management system. The
system was pretty impressive but without any interpretation there was not much
that we could understand. An Andean Flicker was the best of the birds on offer
here. After this we drove Pikillacta Archeological Park, our final one of these
sites that we would visit. This was a larger site and was again very
interesting but lacking in interpretation. Being a pre-Inca site there was quite
some differences with the architecture of the ruins on display, but again, it
was difficult to understand what we were seeing.
It was only 15:00 once we had finished our
visits to the parks, and so we decided to have a look around the Huancay Lake
that was just across the road from Pikillacta. There were extensive reedbeds
all around the lake as well, and these were home to a few nice birds including
one of my favourites in the Many-coloured Rush-Tyrant and several quite showy Plumbeous
Rails. Over the reeds there was a nice male Cinereous Harrier, whilst on the
water were several Cinnamon Teals and a single Chilean Flamingo. It was an
enjoyable hour birding the site, before we drove the 90 minutes to the town of
Paucartambo, where we lodged before the real fun begins.
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