Going Home

I was going to do this when I got home, but with our almost 12 hour layover in Lima, I had time to finish the story. We had a reasonable rising time today as we weren’t being picked up until 9:00 for the airport. So we packed and repacked and did it until we ended up with only two pieces of checked luggage - our carry ons were a bit heavy, but each big bag came in at grams under max. There was a nice last look at Cusco from the back window of our hotel, this time, a fifth floor room. We got to Lima shortly after 1:00 and after asking a helpful gentleman at the airport if there was a lounge since we didn’t fly again until midnight, he directed us to the Costa Del Sol Hotel (Ramada), a short walk with our loaded luggage cart, where he said they would store our bags until our flight and we could avail ourselves of their amenities. Great advice! We weren’t looking forward to carting around all of our bags for most of the day and presto, problem solved. We lunched at the hotel and then, because they had good wi-fi, I was able to collect photos from my telephone. As a result, I will insert some panoramic images from Machu Picchu, throughout this post. Hopefully they show up OK. So....I know everyone will ask what was the best part of our trip? This would be like comparing apples and kittens. We had such varied experiences. French Polynesia was paradise, but they have limited natural resources. Thank God for tourism! I loved the snorkeling and Dawn would say that she loved the tropical feel that made her hair curl even more. Easter Island was child’s dream come true. When we got to the moai quarry at Rano Rakuru, I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was stuff I only knew from National Geographic. Dawn was impressed with how people could live with such remoteness. Needless to say, Machu Picchu blew our minds!!!! It is indeed one of the seven wonders of the world! Walking on to the site for the first time is an experience that I will never forget. Dawn thought that the Incas sense of nature was impressive. In the end - sorry folks - you had to be there. So another adventure is two flights away from being complete and we feel very fortunate to be able to have visited such wonderful destinations. See you next time!

Machu Picchu

Where to start - I guess the beginning, which would be last evening. From yesterday’s photos of the Inkallpa Inn, it was easy to tell that this was a wonderful place and yet very remote. We had our now obligatory pisca sour in the bar while I worked on my blog, then had a lovely meal with a very passable Peruvian red wine. It was late when we called it a day and by 4:50 a.m. we were up this morning. From that moment, it was clear that today was going to be spectacular, with bright blue skies and pleasant temperatures. Breakfast at the hotel normally starts at 6:00, the time for our departure, but they actually opened up early to feed us. Our driver was early and twenty minutes later, he deposited us at the Ollantaytambo train station. The train ride on a narrow gauge vista train - that meant windows extended up into the ceiling for continued viewing of the towering Andes mountains - was approximately one and a half hours of fabulous scenery along the Urubamba gorge. We met our guide Fatima, in Machu Picchu Pueblo, the staging base town for Machu Picchu. It was a bustling, scenic resort-like town. The next leg of the trip was by bus on perilous, to put it mildly, switchbacking roads, four hundred metres up the mountain side to the main gates of Machu Picchu. Thank God for this bus, because it would have been a hell of a trek by foot - probably a couple of days. We had a small group today, with the two Aussie couples from yesterday joining us. From the moment that we finally caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu, we were in awe! It was so quiet among the group that one might have thought that we just walked into a religious sanctuary. Well, in a manner of speaking, we did! The first thing that strikes you is that Machu Picchu is much larger than you ever imagined. This site was never found by the Spaniards, so was spared mass demolition. There were about 500 inhabitants of this village with maybe an Inca and maybe not. With the demise of the last Inca and his people vanquished, the site very rapidly returned to the jungle. Although not considered part of the jungle, this micro climate nestled inside massive Andean peaks is definitely pre-jungle and it rapidly revegetated, until it was discovered in 1911 by American Hiram Bingham. The rest as they say is history, but what we know about Machu Picchu is largely speculative since the original inhabitants left no written record. Their communication was strictly oral, so once the Spaniards got their hands on the Inca’s followers, knowledge of Machu Picchu rapidly vanished. Given the Egyptian and Greek proclivity for graffiti, is amazing to think that none of the scholars under the Inca came up with some form of written language. Thousands of years ago, there was a massive earthquake that split the Machu Picchu site in two. The chasm created has filled in with erosion but still notably divides the city in half - the agricultural sector and the dwelling sector - residential lower down and religious up above. Every dwelling was built with a purpose and much of that purpose had to do with the sun, which we had in abundance today. Many of the structures focused on their location in relation to the winter and summer solstice, when the sun was at its extremes. The photo below shows the place through which the sun shines on summer solstice. We walked through the entire middle and lower site, with lots of information along the way. There were lots of stairs on our route, but they were broken up with stops for information and Dawn did fine. Some descents were steep and a little on the edge, but Dawn still did fine. One of our group actually had a cane and she did OK as well. The tour took two and a half hours, so it was reasonably paced. I don’t think anyone felt wasted at the end of it. One of the most startling sites on our tour involved this guard, who, at first, we thought was a statue. Although I know they limit the number of people visiting daily, this place was a cross between beehive and ant hill today. Their really crazy day is June 21 - winter solstice for them, when the sun does all the magic that the Inca intended. The tour ended and everyone went off to lunch at the only restaurant on the site, The Sanctuary. Before that, however, I really felt I needed to get up to the Gatehouse at the top of the village, where the penultimate photo was to be had. Our guide really wanted me to go after lunch, but I knew that we had a schedule regarding getting back to Cusco and I was afraid I’d miss the opportunity. I won and away I went. Bragging time! She figured you needed thirty minutes to get up and back. I did it in seventeen, with slightly less huffing and puffing than yesterday. And what a view! Lunch was buffet style again and was accompanied by Peruvian musicians. We bid farewell to our Aussie tour-mates at around 1:30 and hopped on the next bus back to Machu Picchu Pueblo. The bus drivers did an astounding job on the essentially single lane dirt path with the shear drop-offs and when they met other buses, as happened regularly, they figured out ways to get past each other, politely. The train ride back to Cusco involved a transfer to a bus in Poroy where the train ends. We also had onboard food and a fashion show designed to sell high-end Peruvian alpaca clothing. It was quite entertaining. Our bus ride to Cusco from Poroy was challenging for Dawn. The bus here has replaced the train, whose rails got lost in a landslide. So, they think like train engineers, which means any traffic in front of them should be obliterated. It’s night now and our driver passed on hills and curves and if he wasn’t passing he was honking and generally intimidating the traffic ahead. We finally rolled into the Cusco station - alive -which we discovered was a stone’s throw from our hotel - back at the Eco Inn. First order of business was out final Pisca Sour. They are delightful! We had dinner and retired where I finished this entry that I got almost complete on train and bus ride. We will be picked up tomorrow at 9:00 - civilized hour - and delivered to the airport where we fly to Lima, then Atlanta, then Toronto. I think that retrospective is necessary now, but I think I’ll do that, with a final blog for this journey, when we get home.

Valle Sagrada

For the next two days, everything will pretty much be about the Incas and for today anyway, critters. Now as a point of clarification for people like myself, who thought that Incas were a nation of people, in actual fact, there were only 14-17 Incas in the whole of history. The only Inca was the King and history isn’t clear about the actual number. The people they ruled were called something else - can’t remember. Anyway, we left Cusco this morning and headed over the Andes and through the woods and towards the Valle Sagrada - Sacred Valley. On the way we made a stop to get up close and personal with Peru’s camels - alpacas, llamas and vicunas. We were given some greens to feed them and we had to guard against having hands interpreted as food. Vicuna are rare and a little shier so they stayed up in the hills. Alpacas are Peru’s favourites because they have soft hair and are tasty to boot. There were llamas on display as well, including a 7 day old. This site also offered a weaving demonstration, with little ladies in traditional garb and hats representing their villages. Some pieces take three months for completion, because not only do they hand spin the yarn, but they work with a classic loom, using a variety or Alpaca yarns died from natural products. There was also a display of potatoes and corn - Peru has around 2000 varieties of potato. Here our guide Johann was giving us the potato talk. No sooner do we leave this display and we get slowed down by alpacas on the road. Soon we were entering the Valle Sagrada. We stopped for a photo on the way down. Next stop was Pisaq(c) - spelled both ways. We noticed a good specimen of the bulls and cross that tops everyone’s roofs in this valley as a sign of good luck. Here, we got a demo in silver jewelry making and got up close and personal with guinea pigs. Yes, the guinea pig is indeed a delicacy, not yet sampled by this crew. So we saw them roasting, both in a restaurant and by the side of the road and we saw them in their cages praying that they weren’t big enough or tasty enough. From Pisaq, we continued down the valley along the Urubamba River which is actually the headwaters of the Amazon. We saw many typical homes and many fields full of corn drying after being picked last month. Our ultimate destination for the day was Ollantaytambo - try saying that rapidly five times in a row. This was the home to an unfinished Inca temple, unfinished because the Spanish and Pizarro arrived. They considered the Incas to be pagan and therefore their culture must be obliterated and they did their best, all in the name of the Catholic Church. Don’t get me started. Our first sight in Ollantaytambo was a man walking his pig down one of their narrow streets. The temple itself was pretty impressive and a hell of a climb. Dawn passed on that experience along with an Australian couple in our tour group. I thought I’d race a young fellow we met yesterday to the top. I beat him to the first stage, only to discover that racing 30 year olds in thin air was not particularly bright. Needless to say, I didn’t win the next stage and in fact took numerous huff and puff stops to make it to the next stage. Anyway, the views were fabulous and I’ll let the photos say the rest. While at the top of the temple we saw the train heading up the valley to tomorrow’s destination, Machu Picchu. Finally it was time for lunch and we had an excellent buffet at a fabulous restaurant in Urubamba that had lots of side attractions, like alpacas and colourful birds. Finally it was hotel drop off time. Everyone in our tour had a different hotel in a different location in the Valle Sagrada. Fortunately, we were the first drop off. We were a little interested in our entry to the hotel, down a cow path, literally - had to avoid the patties. But up the path came a porter from the hotel, Inkallpa Valle Sagrada. Any concern we might have had quickly dissolved when we caught our first sight of the hotel. Wow! The hotel was actually a series of divided 8 plexes surrounded by gorgeous gardens. The place was a little remote for the younger crowd, but had it’s own bar - encores of the Pisca Sour - and restaurant. Perfect for us! Enough for today. Got to save my strength for the big one tomorrow.