Category: The Non-Writing Life

After our visit to the floating islands, our group motored toward Amantani Island, where we broke into smaller groups for an overnight stay in the village of Colquecachi. Our “smaller group” was my husband and me. We stayed with a woman named Aurelia and her teenage son, Evan. They were wonderful hosts. Aurelia didn’t speak any English, and neither did Evan. Aurelia spoke Quechua and a handful of Spanish words (like amigo), while Evan spoke Quechua and some Spanish. My Liege had his trusty Latin American Spanish phrasebook out all the time, and we also had a cheat sheet of Quechua words that our guide Tito had taught us during the motorboat ride. Without this cheat sheet, we would have been lost.

I was nervous going into the homestay. We didn’t know if we would be assigned to a family that had done this hundreds of times or a first-time family. Later, we learned that some families had several members, whereas ours had just the two (Aurelia’s husband works in Puno). Some families have mosaic stonework in their courtyards, and we even heard of a family with a guestbook for the guests to sign. Some might have a little propane stove in the kitchen, which is essentially housed in a separate building. Others just cook over a fire. Aurelia cooked over a fire.

We asked and were told that the room under our bedroom contained “nothing.” Which meant it might have been used for storage or was inhospitable. Our room had a steel door that separated it from Aurelia’s room, which was on the top floor of the little bit of blue you can see sticking out to the left of the rectangular building.

Evan lived on the ground floor underneath Aurelia’s room. He had roots and vegetables drying in his room. Vegetables were also drying in the courtyard.

The little building in the front, by the bush, was the kitchen. A gate contained the house and courtyard. Water came from a pump outside the courtyard. That was where we washed up. No showers, no hot water—unless you boil it.

You can see that at one time the adobe (mud) walls were covered with stucco. Most of the stucco and paint had chipped and worn off our host house. The courtyard had about 90% earth floor.

Aurelia’s “cupboards” were a pile of pots and dishes to the left of this picture. At one point, Steve examined the platter you can see on the floor beside Aurelia. But he didn’t put it back in the right place! He sure heard about that. Everything had its place. With such a confined space, it had to.

Our guide Tito had warned us that the doorways to the kitchens were very short and likely used the corrugated iron. Such was the case at Aurelia’s house. We were warned not to forget to duck! Well, Steve went outside with Evan at some point to try and figure out some point of language, forgot to duck, and gashed his head on the doorway. For some reason, Evan, Aurelia and myself all thought this was hilarious. Meanwhile, Steve had blood rolling down his head. That’s what you get, gringo! Listen to instructions!

When Steve and I were first assigned to Aurelia’s house and realized it was about level with the meeting spot, we considered ourselves lucky. We didn’t have to hike up to our house! But we had to hike up to the community center, and, let me tell you, it was exhausting. We stopped to catch our breath on Lake Titicaca more than at any other place in Peru. And we weren’t the only ones. We met a mid-sixties couple from New Zealand who had hiked the Inca Trail with less effort than they expended on Lake Titicaca. They hiked to the community center but opted out of hiking to the top of the island to watch the sunset.

It was a long hike! At this point, M.L. and I were easily the oldest people in our group hiking to the top. That was our excuse for all our rest stops.

The hosting families had a set menu to offer. Steve and I basically ate what everyone else in our group was eating. Which was, essentially, a rehash of what we had at lunch. Not much time had passed between lunch and dinner, so we weren’t very hungry. Our hosts wanted to make sure we were full, so Aurelia made way too much. We ate as much as we could, but our little North American stomachs weren’t used to the starch-heavy meals.

After dinner, we were allowed time to rest. Then Aurelia showed up with some of her clothes for me to put on and some of her husband’s clothes for Steve to wear. Dressed in traditional clothing, we hiked up to the community center again! This time for a party. Dancing and drinking ensued. The villagers really get into the dancing, and at some point if you’re not finding yourself dragged around the floor in a huge group that feels like a twisting, twining snake, you’re missing all the fun.

Between all the hiking and dancing, we were once more exhausted. I’m convinced it’s impossible to rest in Peru. At least not during a Lake Titicaca homestay. They kept us running.

Eventually we made our way back down to Aurelia’s house. We knew the community hall was a fair hike when she wanted to stop to catch her breath almost as often as we did.

We went to bed early and rose to watch the sunrise. It was very cold. Remember I said no electricity. We brushed our teeth by the water pump outside the courtyard and went to bed wearing clothes and topped with 4 or 5 blankets.

The next morning, Day 20, Aurelia made us thin, crepe-like pancakes, then Evan accompanied us (downhill this time) to the boat and stayed with us until Tito arrived. We were the first guests back to the boat!

Meeting Aurelia and Evan was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Evan and Steve hit it off, Steve, as you know by now, not being afraid to make a fool of himself trying to communicate.

Eventually, the rest of our group arrived and we set off for our last stop on Lake Titicaca, Taquile Island. Our 25th anniversary journey to Peru was rapidly coming to an end, which filled us with joy in some aspsects (we couldn’t wait to taste American food again—and salad!!) and with sadness in others. Soon, we wouldn’t have experiences, only memories. But memories that will last us the rest of our lives. Which is the joy of travel.

Three weeks in Peru was perfect, considering this was the first major trip My Liege and I had taken without the kids in…ever. Two weeks would have been too short. Four weeks, and I fear I would have become too homesick. We might try four weeks next time, but three weeks for this trip was bang on the nose. Don’t tell my kids, but at this point I was worried more about the dog than them! I missed the dog more than them! I know that sounds awful. But the kids are 22 and 20 (19 for the youngest when we were in Peru), they have a great support network, and both have nice girlfriends. But were they looking after my baby dog’s needs? (well, she’s 8, but to me she’s a baby). And what about the channeling? Allie McBeagle, I discovered, couldn’t channel through me to express herself while I was in Peru. She tried once, and it came out sounding like a drunk Martian playing with a voice-changer. Allie was simply too far away for proper channeling to occur. If that doesn’t depress a channeler, no matter how amazing the spot she’s visiting, I don’t know what will.

Day 18 was a travel day. We spent the morning in the Cusco Plaza de Armas, practicing our “no, thanks” skills with the vendors. When who should we meet but the young woman named Nikki from Scotland who had done a Lima City Tour with us. My Liege recognized her accent when she tried enticing us to the restaurant run by the orphanage where she was volunteering. Yes, now people we actually knew were also hawking to us! We didn’t have time to visit the restaurant, or we would have. For Nikki, who had a funny fear of birds that endeared her to us. But we had to catch a shuttle to the airport and fly to Juliaca, the nearest town to Lake Titicaca with an airport.

I’m pretty sure the only reason anyone, or any tourist, I should say, goes to Juliaca is to get to Puno and therefore to Lake Titicaca. Large vans/small buses are waiting at the Juliaca airport to get you out of there as quickly as possible. Most guidebooks will tell you it’s not a place to hang around.

The bus dropped us off at The Balsa Inn. (By the way, I have no idea how old that picture is, but the Inn looked pretty dreary when we were there). We had booked our Lake Titicaca Homestay through GAP, the same company that put us in the 5-star hotels for Cusco, the Sacred Valley and Aguas Calientes, and the same company that booked us into a decent 3-star hotel in Nasca. Maybe it was just us (I’m pretty sure not), but The Balsa Inn sucked. I would not recommend it. My Liege and I ate that evening in a restaurant of another hotel just off the main square that would have done us much better. The Balsa Inn felt very 2-star to me. The next morning, we met another Canadian who had used the same tour company to book the place, and she felt the same way. We only had one night there before going onto Lake Titicaca, so we thought we’d just tough it out. After all, we’d stayed in worse places as students backpacking through Europe. But at this time of our lives, we expected more than to have 80% of the lightbulbs burned out in our room, that the toilet would have flushing problems, that there was zero hot water.

What the heck, we suffered through.

The next morning, we were picked up and taken to the harbor along with the Canadian girl from Toronto. The van picked up a lot of other people, and everyone but us and the Canadian girl had booked through various agencies. The commonality was a local company called Edgar Tours. Or maybe it was Edgar Adventures. Whoever it was, they did a good job. We had a great, knowledgeable guide named Tito Castro. And we quickly realized something.

Trip Tip! If you want to tour Lake Titicaca, don’t bother thinking you’re saving yourself time and aggravation by booking before you leave North America. The N.A. company will usually subcontract to a local firm like Edgar Adventures, and E.A. does such a decent job, why not hire them from the get-go? And for the nights you have to stay in Puno before and after Lake Titicaca? Do yourself a favor and avoid “three star” hotels. “Three stars,” in my experience, does not mean the same thing in Puno as it does in Cusco and Lima. See if you can find a four-star hotel instead. Or be prepared for more of a “hostel”-like stay.

The Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca are now a part of “Peruvian Disneyland.” Everyone I spoke to who visited Uros, either with our group or not, enjoyed visiting the Floating Islands but felt it was “too commercial.” Well, tourists caused the commercialization. The fact remains that people really still live on the floating islands, except now they depend on tourism for a large portion of their income.

The islands are “floating,” because they are constructed of huge pieces of sod and reeds that are anchored to the lake bottom. Wikipedia has a good write-up. There are about 42 islands. The small houses are constructed of reeds, and the boats are made of reeds, as well (although they now use motorized boats if they wish). Some residents might never leave the islands, while others go to make a living in Puno and return now and again.

When our tour boat stopped at one of the floating islands, gaily dressed women were there to show us how the islands were constructed, to entice us to buy their wares (I bought an embroidered pillowcase cover and a replica of a tiny reed boat), and to welcome us with open arms. They were extremely friendly.

When you walk onto the island, it feels a little like walking on a waterbed. Your foot sinks, and it takes a while to get the knack of it. Almost as soon as I stepped out of the area where the construction of the islands was explained to us, a Uros woman encouraged me to enter her “casa.” There, she dressed me in some of her clothes. My husband ducked in to find out what was going on, and he got dressed up like a little doll, too!

We met more Canadians on our overnight tour of Lake Titicaca than anywhere else in Peru we visited. There were several, most from the Toronto area, in our tour group. Also, Americans, a friendly Colombian fellow named Daniel, some New Zealanders, and a girl with an English accent (where in England I could not tell you). Some were traveling together, having hooked up as traveling partners along the way. They’d stay together for a few days and then go on their separate ways again.

After Uros, we settled back into our Edgar Adventures tour boat and motored to Amatani Island, where we would stay overnight. We enjoyed sitting on top of the boat visiting with our compadres, and also Tito taught us several words in Quechua, the native Peruvian language. We needed to learn some Quechua on top of what little Spanish we’d acquired, because our homestay hosts weren’t guaranteed to know ANY Spanish. They definitely weren’t guaranteed to know any English. Thus began one of the most interesting and event-filled days and nights of my life!

(Sorry, for some reason, I can’t get the Comments function to work for this post).

And two other sites along the way.

The day after our souvenir-buying spree, we decided to take a taxi to the furthest-from-Cusco of one of four ruins. It was only 9-11 kilometres away (depending who you ask). Surely we could walk back (one day of feeling good, and I get grand ideas).

Now, taxis in Peru can be irritating as all get-out, but when you want one, man, it’s there. Our first encounter with honking taxis was in Nasca, which doesn’t get anywhere as many tourists as Cusco. We couldn’t figure out WHY the taxis in Nasca were honking all the freaking time! Once we were in Cusco, we realized that every time a taxi sees a potential fare, they honk. The potential fare could be a person trying to flag them down (except I don’t think you ever have to flag down a taxi in Cusco, as they have such an eagle-eye on their surroundings), or a person walking down the street that may or may not look like a tourist. We learned to drown out the sound of the honking taxis. When we needed a taxi to drive us to Tambomachay, the honking suddenly didn’t seem so bad!

Puca Pucara (aka Pukapukara) is a small fortress that was probably used to store supplies or maybe as a guard post. No one really knows. It’s a nice spot to hang around awhile. However, then we had to walk (so our guidebook told us) 90 – 120 minutes to the next site closest to Cusco, Q’Enko. We tried to walk! We walked through a small village, but the altitude was wearing on us (and our wimpiness, I’m sure!). We made a pact that if a taxi drove by honking at us, we would stop him. And so we did! We hopped a taxi and caught a ride to what we thought was the entrance to the Q’Enko ruin. The sign said Q’Enko. But, basically, we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We walked and walked and walked. Asked some directions off some musicians that had just popped out of their own taxi. They thought we were looking for something else entirely, or possibly they were just having fun at our expense. Finally, we realized we were on a dirt road amidst fields with nothing vaguely resembling an Incan site, except, lo and behold, there was a guy lounging against the fence beside a dozen horses. With our limited Spanish, we managed to get out of him that we had basically walked in the wrong direction. So we returned the way we’d come (after tipping the horse guy for his directions), waved to the guy who’d given us the wrong directions, then eventually found the back way into the Q’Enko ruins.

The Q’Enko ruins are a bunch of huge rocks that might have been used for ritual ceremonies and/or sacrifices. The big huge rocks create an interior “cave.” You can climb around inside the caves and imagine where blood might have flowed if your throat was cut in sacrifice.

After Q’Enko, we walked to Sacsayhuamán, a positively HUGE set of ruins that is still being excavated near Cusco. It was quite amazing. Sacsayhuamán is pronounced sort of like “saxywoman,” so a few times you’ll hear the joke “sexy woman.”

You can catch great views of Cusco from the hills around these ruins. There’s also a giant white statue of Christ a fair hike away. I just could not handle another uphill hike at 11,000 – 12,000 feet above sea level, so we hired a pretty beat-up looking taxi with a young driver to take us to the Christo Blanco, then wait there while we had a look, then drive us back to Cusco.

If you’re old enough to have ever watched an epsiode of The Streets of San Francisco, that’s what our drive back to Cusco felt like, a car chase through those streets! Especially once we reached the city. Because we’d asked him to drive us to the Plaza de Armas. To do that, he had to drive down narrow, steep streets, dodging tourists and vendors. But we survived. This was the last night we spent in Cusco. A well-deserved “rest,” if you can call it that, after all our hiking at Machu Picchu.

We were finished the 3rd leg of our 4-leg trip. Next stop, Lake Titicaca near Puno! 

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.