Category: Peru 2010

Our train trip from Aguas Calientes back to Cusco was uneventful. It took a few stops and transfers to accommodate route changes as a result of the 2010 flooding, but we made it back to our tour hotel for one final night without incident. Unless you count my health. Everything came to a head that rest day back in Cusco, and I’m sure the return to an 11,000 foot altitude didn’t help. I basically laid in bed for the rest of the day. I do believe we emerged at some point to visit the bar and get some snacks there. I had a little pizza that was pretty tasty, but My Liege had an awesome spicy beef appetizer. Oh, yeah, sure, the first time he orders beef and I don’t it’s amazing. I wanted to eat all of his appetizer and let him have my pizza, but he didn’t go for it.

The next morning we changed hotels. I was a little nervous about the switch, because we’d been in 5-star hotels since first arriving in Cusco, and all through the Sacred Valley and Aguas Calientes, and because those hotels came with the tour we’d booked I could blame any dissatisfaction on the tour company. Not so easy to do when you’ve scoured the Internet and hotel review sites and booked the hotel yourself. And we were dropping down to three stars. Well, I tell you, it was a fantabulous change. We stayed at the Hotel Rumi Punku on an obscure street with a difficult-to-pronounce name. The street was nothing to write home about. Narrow, with construction or more probably renovations going on across the road. In Cusco, when they’re renovating or simply don’t want you to see what’s going on on the other side of the street, they cover the building in question with huge sheets of corrugated tin. So, a narrow street, and the door to our hotel was quite literally a hole in the wall. But! A hole in a wall that still had original Inca stonework. And, like most “a hole in the wall” places in Cusco, the entrance opened up into a beautiful little hotel with multiple courtyards, a very pleasant staff, and a decent breakfast.

Our room was very quiet, but we did have some noise. Like what sounded like very loud firecrackers going off early in the morning. It was nearing the end of May, and some festival or another was rapidly approaching. Wake up, wake up! We didn’t mind.

We had two free days in Cusco where we intended to just relax and do some touring on our own. The first thing we did was an Inca Stone Walking Tour. We had a map (without a listed route, we just flew by the seat of our pants) and our Frommer’s Peru (recommended), and off we went. We discovered this one amazing street filled with Inca walls. M.L got in trouble for nearly touching one of the stones! We realized a little policeman was stationed across the narrow street solely to blow his whistle at people like my dh.

Before heading out on our walking tour, we scoured laundries around the Hotel Rumi Punku and negotiated a fantastic rate from a pleasant young woman who delivered our laundry back to us exactly when she said she would (well, we had to pick it up from her). Laundry facilities abound in Cusco. You just have to do some exploring and decide if you want your stuff handwashed and hung to dry, or you prefer machines. We wanted machines. We liked our girl so much that we stopped her from negotiating her price down, down, down and I think we even gave her a sucker (we’d discovered these cherry suckers with gum in the middle called Globbopops, and we consumed them by the bagful. They really helped with the after-effects of my health issues, which were rapidly slowing, I’m pleased to report).

My camera card had filled up, so I went and sat on a park bench to change it while M.L. hung around the parade. I sat on a bench with room for three people, but an old woman working her worry beads was already there. I assumed when I sat it would just be her and me. Within minutes, an elderly gentleman showed up. I thought he was with her. But when he sat down, he began talking to me. In Spanish. We did pretty good, considering M.L. had the phrasebook and I was just getting by on the few words I’d learned our, so far, 2.5 weeks there. I learned the man’s name was Ernesto and that he lived in the mountains and had come to Cusco for whatever celebration was occurring or would occur soon. Later, I introduced him to M.L., who felt bereft that we didn’t get a picture of me with this friendly old guy. But I’d rather have the conversation than the picture. It was the highlight of my day.

Machu Picchu deserves two full days of pictures and anecdotes. I went skinny on the anecdotes on Monday because, really, the pictures say it all. But today I’ll introduce you to…Cindiana Jones! That’s what I felt like exploring the Inca sanctuary/citadel that was once considered the “Lost City of the Incas.” (Today, other less-accessible sites are more likely to claim the title). We had a full day at Machu Picchu, and we intended to make the most of it. Like I mentioned in a previous post, we had dreams of arriving at Machu Picchu early enough to make it into one of the two groups (200 people each at 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.) to climb Huayna Pichhu, the mountain in the background of the most famous of Machu Picchu photos (like mine—see back to this post). (Well, I guess I can’t claim my pictures are famous, but the view is!) We spoke to our guide about it the night before (which was torrential-downpourish). He pretty much talked us out of it, in that it became very evident very quickly that he did not want to meet us at 4 a.m. and get a taxi or whatever to the gates to wait in line and claim our spots to climb Huayna Picchu. He told us that the “sunrise” that everyone always wants to see at Machu Picchu didn’t occur until 7 a.m. anyway. The sun rose long before 7 a.m., but not in the specific area to which he referred. Oh, well, it was cloudy anyway. But not rainy. We couldn’t figure out why the GAP representative (the tour company we used) who met us in Lima before we flew to Cuzco told us to let our guide know we wanted to climb the mountain and he would make it happen told us that—and then he didn’t. Initially, we weren’t very impressed with him because of that. He made up for it by providing us with an excellent tour of Machu Picchu. And considering how exhausted I was (not being in the best health at this point) after eight hours of climbing all over the terraces, I can’t imagine how worn out I would have become climbing Huayna Picchu. But a part of me will always be a little disappointed that our guide did not present the opportunity to us, especially after we asked.

Yes, I’m whining. I couldn’t climb Huayna Picchu, so I snapped my zoom lens onto my camera and shot this close-up instead:

If you google Inca Bridge, you’ll find that there are two types of such structures, one being a rope bridge and the other, as shown above, being a trunk bridge. This bridge was another route into Machu Picchu. Why not just continue the path, you ask? Why leave a gap for a bridge? Because, if you have a trunk (as in tree trunks) bridge, you can easily destroy it. Comes in handy when your enemies are chasing you.

Before we could walk the path to the Inca Bridge look-out (there was a wimpy wood gate preventing you from going any further. IOW, no one actually gets to walk on the bridge anymore), we had to sign a guestbook of sorts. Why do you think that is? We were assured that “tourists never fall off the cliff.” Yet you need to sign the book before you continue on (unless the guy at the desk isn’t there; then you might not realize you need to sign the book). You sign when you enter the path and you sign when you successfully emerge again. If you don’t “sign out,” what does that mean? Are you camping on the narrow path? Have you Cindiana-Jonesed your way across the bridge? Or have you taken a tumble down a 1900-foot cliff? (I just googled the height). I’ll let YOU decide. 

So there I stood while other people passed me by. Moments passed. Moments and minutes and more moments passed. Finally, M.L. returned. “Cindy, you just gotta see this!” Something to that effect emerged from his mouth. Lucky for him, I had already decided that I had to conquer my fear. I finally conquered my fear of roller coasters that flip you upside-down while chaperoning Youngest Son’s band trip to Disneyland years ago. I could do this! So when M.L. returned, I agreed. I would do it. But no way could I have done it without his help.

He took my daypack from me, wearing his on his back and mine on his front. Then he went ahead of me and held my right hand with his left while I gripped the rope-cable thingy with my left hand and stared at the cliff the rope-cable thingy was stuck into with my left eye. My right eye was closed, because there was zero wall at that point and if I had ANY chance of seeing how far up I was, I knew I’d get vertigo and destroy myself.

But I made it! Cindiana Jones!

Someone else took the above picture. No way was I attempting self-portraiture with only that little fence to protect us from falling onto/entering the rest of the path to the bridge.

Can you see how skinny the path is beyond the look-out point? Those Incas were crazy!

On the way back, M.L. still carried both daypacks and went in front of me again. This time he held onto my left hand while I gripped the rope-cable thingy with my right. My LEFT eye was closed (the eye closest to the drop-off cliff) while my right eye was firmly glued to the rock the rope-cable thingy was sunk into.

 

Out of everywhere we went in Peru, Machu Picchu is the one spot I would consider visiting again. Not because I didn’t enjoy the other places, like Nasca and Huancayo and Lake Titicaca, but because it’s a lot easier to get to than the 3 others. Well, I could be convinced to take the train to Huancayo again. However, other train rides occur in other parts of South America, like the Devil’s Nose in Ecuador, so I probably wouldn’t duplicate the train to Huancayo again. The only thing that would bother me about returning to Machu Picchu is that I don’t know if seeing the ruins a second time would have the same effect as the first. But if we were traveling with friends and they insisted we make that one stop again with them, I could be convinced. It was that beautiful and surreal.

I loved it!

Finally, I’m back to posting about Peru! My apologies to those who were following my anecdotes and pictures only to get left hanging as soon as My Liege and I reached Machu Picchu. If you need a refresher, here’s a link to my last post on the subject. If you’d like to follow our travels from the beginning, check out the sidebar and then scroll dowwwwwwn, way dowwwwwwwwwwn (and I’ll call Rusty—sorry, Canadian childhood reference) to “Categories” and then click on “Peru 2010.” That will take you to the Archives for all the Peru posts. Or be lazy and click this link to get to the first Peru post.

For a quick primer on Machu Picchu, check out Wikipedia. I have so many piccies, I’m concentrating on those.

Aguas Calientes, that is.

Ha ha, I’m so clever! (Not.)

Aguas Calientes is also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo, which basically means “town of Machu Picchu.” On Day 13 of our travels, we woke at our hotel in the Sacred Valley eager to get to the train that would take us to Machu Picchu. We had decided against hiking the Inca Trail. We’d actually decided this a year earlier while researching our trip. You can’t just decide to hike the Inca Trail on the spur of the moment, because it’s not something you can do on your own. You need to go on an organized tour, and only a certain number of people are allowed to begin the trek each day. Also, hiking the Inca Trail takes 3-5 days. That would have consumed a big chunk out of our 3 weeks. We most definitely would have been forced to chuck one of the four legs of our trip. I asked the DH during planning, and he didn’t seem to care about doing the trek. I cared. I didn’t want to do it! We were in a bad car accident 19 years ago this summer, and I’ve suffered neck and back and hip problems since. Honestly, I recovered from the car accident long ago. I didn’t have therapy of any kind for a solid year. But then I started writing consistently…and of course I aged (it’s a curse). I presently go to massage therapy every other week so I can do things like paint the deck and run with the dog and work at a computer. I couldn’t imagine hiking the Inca trail without my very own personal massage therapist!

Pre-car accident, I would have done it. However, I was younger than 30 pre-car accident, too. I like to think that pre-40 I would have wanted to hike the trail, too. But who am I kidding? I’m not an athlete! And I thought that people carried their own packs on the trail. They don’t. Peruvian porters carry the tents and food, etc. The porters set up camp and cook for you. The trekkers carry their cameras or whatever else they want in small day packs. Typicaly, in Canada, this is not one’s idea of “hiking” a trail. Or so we liked to tell ourselves whenever we overheard others congratulating themselves on making the trek. Oh, yeah, carry your own stuff instead of making some little Peruvian guy do it and THEN we’ll talk. (Yeah, I know, sour grapes, because I’m decrepit).

We met many people in Peru who had hiked the Inca Trail, including a couple in their 60s. Cusco is at about 11,000 feet elevation. However, Machu Picchu is at about 8000 feet elevation. The trek goes up and down, up and down, and then you finally emerge with (if you want) a dawn view of Machu Picchu. However, watching the sun rise over Machu Picchu can also be tricky…because there are so many clouds drifting around the sanctuary. More on that in a bit.

The train to Machu Picchu takes about 90 minutes. The train crawls! It crawls because the scenery is so spectacular. It’s hard to take good scenery pictures out a train window, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Because of the floods earlier this year, the train to Machu Picchu started further up the line than normal (they were still repairing the rails). At one time, it ran out of Cusco. In the mid-Seventies, my parents took the train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes. But now it’s faster to bus tourists to the train start point.

We were picked up at our hotel and driven to a shuttle bus in the new part 0f Ollantaytambo. The shuttle bus took us to the train station. From there, we caught the train.

We reached Aguas Calientes without incident (no surprise floods!) and settled into our hotel, the very delightful Inkaterra Hotel. This place was like something out of Swiss Family Robinson. It was gorgeous. We had a very private room, the grounds were expansive, with a good restaurant (meals included, but not drinks), and birds and flora and fauna abounded. Honestly, we could not have afforded to stay at the Inkaterra if not for our tour, which included 5-star hotels (better price through a tour). Every other hotel we stayed in on this tour—in Lima, Cusco, and the Sacred Valley—was part of the Casa Andina Private Collection chain. That chain was…okay. The hotels themselves were very, very nice. But our rooms were the, um, bottom of the scale, shall we say, for 5-star hotels. I wouldn’t call the rooms themselves anything special. Except for at the Inkaterra. It was like a little piece of paradise to return to after a long day of walking around Machu Picchu (we did 8 hours of nearly solid walking).

We had no idea that meals were included in the hotel cost when we arrived, so that was a pleasant surprise. As I’ve mentioned, drinks aren’t included, and if you’re a big drinker, you gotta watch out. Because when you check out of the Inkaterra, they tack on a hefty “donation” for the upkeep of the birds (which, honestly, could fly away if they wanted) and flora and fauna. The “donation” is a percentage of whatever you spent on booze and wine. The “donation” is voluntary, but you don’t know that if you don’t ask. If you receive your bill and are the type to just pay it without reading the fine print, you might think there’s no way out of this rather hefty surcharge. There is. You can choose not to donate…and feel like a cheapskate. We chose not to donate, because we had been leaving very nice tips and didn’t realize tipping wasn’t expected. We donated to our waiters instead of the birds and flora and fauna. I know, we’re bad.

To be honest, we gave the hotel a little extra. But not the 25% or whatever it was they tacked onto your bar bill.

I’m sure you can find your own Trip Tip! in there somewhere. I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I? Oh, all right.

Trip Tip! Read the fine print. Ask for translation of the fine print if necessary. Go ahead and feel like a cheapskate if you’re not comfortable with the fine print. It’s okay!

After a very nice lunch, we rested and then walked into Aguas Calientes. It started to rain. It rained and rained. It rained like Oregon-coast rain. Yes, we were in the rain forest. It was pretty hard to miss. We were told that the rain was “unusual” for the time of year (3rd week of May). We did get a teensy depressed that our visit to Machu Picchu the following morning would be marred by rain. We borrowed umbrellas from the hotel and went to bed telling ourselves that at least we could check out the amazing Inca drainage systems (except we’d already checked them out at Ollantaytambo).

We had a meeting at around 7 in the evening with our guide. We told him we wanted to go to Machu Picchu early, so we could watch the sunrise. He assured us that the sun rise didn’t occur until 7 a.m., and besides, the first bus to Machu Picchu didn’t leave until 6 a.m. Truth be told, you can watch the sun rise earlier over Machu Picchu (just not in the specific location to which our guide was referring), but you had to be standing in line at the gates at something like 4 a.m. for the privilege. If you wanted to hike Huayna Picchu, the famous peak you’ll see in the photos below, you also had to line up at 4 a.m. When my parents visited Machu Picchu in the mid-Seventies, you didn’t have to get up at 4 a.m. and you didn’t have to stand in line. That’s because you were one of a handful of people there. Now, in high season (which was just coming up, luckily we missed it), there’s something like 3000 tourists a day. Peruvian Disneyland!

By the time we arrived at the gates to Machu Picchu (where you could show your passport and get a stamp, which made it feel even more like Peruvian Disneyland, but who cares?), the two groups had already been filled. We were a bit surprised to learn this…even though I’d been told by friends and had read about it. We’d hoped to be part of the 10 a.m. group allowed to hike Huayna Picchu and felt that our guide had fed us a bit of erroneous information, because his idea of “sunrise” and OUR idea of “sunrise” (i.e. it’s dark and then the sun rises) were two different things. HIS idea of sunrise was the sun had already arisen but hadn’t risen over a specific point at Machu Picchu. At first we figured the guy just didn’t want to get up at 4 a.m. to accompany us. In retrospect, he didn’t want to walk up that road that we traveled by bus! And I can’t say that I blame him.

But guess what? It wasn’t raining! It had started raining two or three days before we arrived in Aguas Calientes. We didn’t have a hot day at Machu Picchu, but we didn’t have a rainy, either. Considering we thoroughly explored the place for 8 hours with a very short lunch break (we had the guide for 2 hours and the rest we did on our own), we had the perfect weather. And the clouds were covering the guide’s version of the “sunrise,” anyway. So there. Even if we’d hiked up to the gates at 4 a.m., there was no sun to watch rise!

Another way to ensure you’re at Machu Picchu early is to stay at the Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge. It’s right outside the gates. It’s VERY expensive, and, honestly, with the number of tourists hanging around outside the Lodge (at the gates) all day long, I’m not sure how pleasant your stay would be. I’ve since talked to another writer who did stay at the Sanctuary Lodge specifically so she and her husband could watch the sun rise over Machu Picchu. But! The clouds covered the sun.

I’d stay at the Inkaterra and take the bus up the winding road again in a Peruvian minute.

Tons of pictures! But this post is way too long. We’ll get back to it next week. Adios!

Following our tour of the Pisaq ruins, we stopped for lunch, then continued to Ollantaytambo, a spectacular display of Inca fortress ruins above the modern Ollantaytambo town, which is known as a “living museum” because of all the Inca roadways and foundations that still exist there (visit the link for lots of great info). At the fortress, we learned a bit about how the Incas were able to construct their amazing walls of rock. Well, a bit of the mystery was solved, anyway. Apparently, Peruvian granite is a little different than Canadian granite. The Peruvian granite fractures naturally. Of course these fractures don’t result in factory-perfect carvings (which is what they look like), so the Incas were indeed masters at their craft. But what they’d do is insert wood wedges between the natural fractures in the rock, then cause the wood to “swell” by saturating it with water. As the wood would swell, the fractures would become more deep, etc., etc. But the help of the wood doesn’t explain the perfection of Incan archictecture displayed in some of the walls. You’ll see what I mean when we get to Machu Picchu.

In the meantime, the Ollantaytambo ruins were breathtaking. Like many ruins we visited, including Machu Picchu, the fortress was never finished. It’s hard to finish a structure like this when it takes hundreds of years and thousands of men to build and the Spaniards from long ago were intent on taking over your world. I could talk and talk and not explain how amazing it is to climb all over these ruins. So let’s just look at some pictures.

Following Ollantaytambo, we were dropped off at our hotel and tried to enjoy a nice dinner in the dining room (I won’t expand on the “tried.” Let’s just the Peruvian idea of how to prepare beef tenderloin and mine are not at all the same). The DH had alpaca. I tried a mouthful. It wasn’t bad!

Days 10 and 11 of our trip flew by in a blur of recovering from the Huancayo train and searching out cold medication for moi. We stayed one night in Lima where basically we just slept and cleaned up and then enjoyed the most amazing lasagna at an obviously touristy restaurant that had signatures all over the walls and tables. I’ll say it again, Peruvian Italian food is very, very good.

Day 11 we enjoyed a short (less than one hour) plane trip from Lima to Cusco (also spelled Cuzco). Cusco used to be the capital city of Peru. When the Spaniards conquered the Incas, they decimated Cusco and transferred the capital to Lima of the white skies. Cusco is a beautiful city. It has a wonderful Plaza de Armas, in that there are two amazing churches/cathedrals/whatever-you-call-’ems and a beautiful water fountain where everyone wanted to get their picture taken. It was overcast for our first day in Cusco, so I didn’t take many pictures. And, really, I didn’t have much of a chance. We quickly discovered that you couldn’t sit on a park bench (of which there were many) in the Plaza de Armes without getting accosted—and I mean with capital letters—by people wanting to sell you everything from sunglasses to hats to blankets to tours to massages to art. It wasn’t until we returned to Cusco following a trip up the Sacred Valley and to Machu Picchu that we discovered telling the vendor, “Non, gracias,” wasn’t enough. They just took that as an invitation to try and convince you that you MUST buy from them and them alone. At one point, my dh got frustrated and held up a hand and said strongly, “No!” It wasn’t the “No!” that sent the vendor away, it was the hand signal.

Trip tip! A police presence abounds in Cusco’s Plaza de Armes. A clever tourist (unlike us) will quickly realize that part of the police official’s job is to prevent the vendors from hassling visitors. But the police can’t tell if the tourist is getting hassled if the tourist and vendor are just talking. If the tourist holds up a hand, the vendor will skedaddle off, because then the police man or woman will SEE that the tourist means no and the vendor will get reprimanded. So, if you’re not interested in a vendor’s wares, hold up your hand in a stop sign position and say very firmly, “No!” Politeness does not work.

Yes, Cusco was our first exposure to “Peruvian Disneyland.” And it’s too bad, because, architecturally, Cusco is a beautiful city. You have to learn to take the constant hawking in stride. And remember that the North American tourist presence is partially responsible for the hawking. They hawk because we’re there. They WANT us there, because tourism is the 2nd or 3rd most important industry (agriculture and mining being the other two, but I can’t remember the order). But a lot of vendors in the most popular tourist areas of Peru have become a bit overzealous, by Canadian standards, anyway.

So we stayed overnight in Cusco, and the next morning our guide Gladys picked us up with a van and a driver. We were again on what is called an “Independent” tour, like the tour we took to Nasca. This meant that if only my husband and myself had signed up with this particular tour company for this particular tour for this particular day, then we had a guide all to ourselves.

That was a bit of a surprise. Our trip to Peru was an early celebration for our 25th anniversary, which occurs in August. When I was choosing between this “Independent” tour and a “Classic” one, my main concern was accommodation. This was the 3rd leg of our trip, and we expected Machu Picchu to be the highlight (which it was). I wanted to make sure we had good hotel rooms, with nice, fluffy beds and no end to hot water. If it was our 24th anniversary, I would have made my dh suffer. But I’ve stuck with him for 25 years. I deserved top-notch hotels!

Thus went the logic that resulted in our “Independent” tour.

Trip Tip! If you don’t want to travel around with 10-15 other people, choose an “Independent” tour. If you have a million questions for your guide and don’t want to share him/her, again, choose an “Independent” tour.  If you’re an extrovert and/or hate your spouse, choose a “Classic” type tour. Because an extrovert might expire from overexposure to a spouse on an Independent tour.

Thankfully, I am not an extrovert (although I can pretend quite nicely).

Okay, I can hear the complaints. Enough with the narrative, Cindy! We want pictures!

All right, all right! Sheesh! Give me a minute to format and upload them, will you?

We traveled by van up the Sacred Valley (El Valle Sagrado), also known as the Urubamba Valley, which is fed by many rivers, resulting in an abundance of greenery that we definitely did not see around Nasca (remember those lunar-like landscapes?). The Sacred Valley is home to many ruins on the way to Machu Picchu. The two primary ruins are Pisaq (also spelled Pisac, pronounced like “pea sack”) and Ollantaytambo (try saying that thirteen times in a row with a mouthful of Peruvian potatoes). (Oh-lawn-tay-tam-bow) (that is, a bow like the type on a Christmas present, not the bow you might do before the Queen).

As we traveled through the Sacred Valley, we saw a lot of evidence of the devastation of the floods in January that temporarily closed Machu Picchu. Broken roadways, tent cities, etc. It was sad to see, but if we learned one thing during our 3-week trip it’s that the Peruvians are very resilient. They might get pushed down, but they get back up again. They are not afraid of hard work, that’s for sure.

By the way, Cusco is at about 11,000 feet elevation above sea level. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially when you have a head cold. I was still on the cold medication I’d bought in Lima, plus I was taking soroche tablets (to help prevent altitude sickness). The thinner air meant we tired easily, especially walking uphill or hiking.

Next time, our next stop up the Sacred Valley, Ollantaytambo. Even more amazing Incan architecture. However, we went there after lunch and the big tour buses had caught up to us. Ollantaytambo was literally swarming with tourists. “Peruvian Disneyland” was in full swing!