Ayacucho – centre of the Wari Empire and Sendero Luminoso

The first stop in our way up to Cusco was Ayacucho where we arrived in style, in only 9 hours, in our luxurious bus-bed.
Ayacucho is an old colonial Andean city famous for its numerous churches and monasteries, its pre-Columbian past as the centre of the Wari Empire, its part in the independence wars and its more recent contribution to the history of Peru, thanks to Sendero Luminoso (Shinning Path). Until the clampdown of Sendero Luminoso at the beginning of the 90s, Ayacucho’s area was isolated from the rest of the country, a situation that, to a certain extent continues today.
According to our simple calculations, Ayacucho, with an altitude of 2750m, still below Cusco, would serve us not only as a natural stop in the middle of our journey but would also help us to adapt to the altitude. Ayacucho ended up being rather unhelpful in both fronts. Ayacucho ended up being full of old cars and lorries, which produced hellish black fumes difficult to escape. As a result, we could not determine if our difficulties breathing were due to altitude or pollution. As a strategic point in the middle of our way to Cusco, Ayacucho ended up being even less helpful as we soon discovered that the road to Cusco are non-paved paths and that the distance that we covered from Lima to Ayacucho in 9 hours would take us another 22 hours!
Anyway, despite the black fumes and the long trip awaiting us, we managed to enjoy two days in the city and the surrounding areas, visiting the Wari ruins, the town of Quinua and the white obelisk commemorating the heroes of Ayacucho.