Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Down Hill Soap Box Racing in PA and MD

A friend introduced me to the world of the M.I.S.F.I.T.S. before the sun even thought about rising over the quaint Poconos town that would be their unwilling race track for the day. Three run-ins with the police and four heats later, we were stopping at a small pub for an early Sunday brunch to celebrate the East Coast Illegal Soap Box Cup. All in all, it's a pretty nice way to look back on Fall of 2009.

OK, let me explain something about illegal down-hill soap box racing: it's daft. People spend their Saturdays building karts so they can spend their Sundays crashing karts, and from what I can tell the crashes happen pretty often. Of course, the fact that my friends find it fascinating and addicting has lured me out to try it on more than on occasion. So far I've been scolded by the police 3-4 times and actually raced 0 times. I plan to rectify that some day, but for now let me just give some highlights of the sport.

Crashes, gashes, and top-speeds around 50 MPH. Let's not forget the hair-pin turns, wet pavement, and frigid, early mornings. Yeah, that about sums it up. And even with all of that insanity, it's still one of the most enjoyable ways I can think of to spend a Sunday morning. I was home by 1 PM, so I can't really even complain that I missed out on part of my day. After all, doesn't a brush with near-death and assorted Poconos police departments sound better than sleeping in? These guys (and girls, if you want to get technical) are hardcore racers, gear-heads, and/or adrenaline junkies, but they will welcome new faces with open arms. So, if you find yourself seeking thrills on a sleepy weekend, look them up. It might be a race-day!

As always, apologies for how over-due this post is.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Corpus Christi & Huanchaco by Brice & Ray

Ray told me to write about surfing and maybe Huanchaco. We'll see. I'll stick with the cool stuff.

We got a beachfront room. There's not much that I'll spend the extra $ for, but beachfront bedrooms are amazing. We got in on a taxi after a night bus, needing a shower and a lazy morning. We walked the two blocks from the Plaza de Armas, and set off towards the less-built up section of beachfront. Pretty soon we found a nice hotel, with a nice restaurant on the patio, and a it seemed to be pretty empty, which suggest to us: They are desperate! Cheap Rooms.

The cleaner boy (the only one in) tells us s/50 = 17 bucks a night. More than we had been paying, but totally worth it. Fantastic view of the beach, huge window over an entire wall, private porch. I was half way through my shower when he came back to tell us it was $50. And we're cheap college students, so screw that. We found a place a block or two down for cheaper. It had a smaller window, and our porch wasn't technically private.... but it came with a kitty, and the porch was private whenever we had our private breakfast served to us. It was 3 floors, and had a roof that I could go up to at 4am when I couldn't sleep, and I could peruse the waves, and the walls of the surrounding buildings, and drink the last inch of another poor wine choice (I blame Ray [I'll actually take responsibility for that; I thought it was a dry rose and it turned out to be liquid sugar with a funky after taste. Damn Peruvian wines.]). It even had a shower to store surfboards in!

Why would I need that? Well because I rented a surfboard of course! They had beautiful 6' swells traveling at least 300 yards down the beach. I got [rented, $17 for two days] my suit and my board and went for it! And got destroyed. My arms are not like Huanchaco surfer bum arms. At a certain point I stopped making progress. So I went back in and went down to the easy beach, which Ray will now tell you about: knickknacks, boats, turtle rocks, how cool all the tourists thought i was, and they all wanted pictures w/ me.

Well, first of all, I had juice boxes, towels, sun block, and crackers waiting for Brice whenever he came out of the water. He called me annoying, but - really - I think he was glad for something other than salty water to drink. Then I taught him how to paddle his surf board properly, because I spent my day watching the other surfers and listening in on the beginners' lessons being taught just a little ways down the beach. He did much better after that!

The "easy beach" was really a cove in the middle of town, so there were lots of street vendors and restaurants all around us. I had one man approach me to buy a "totoritas," but he had a Quechuan accent and I thought he said "tortugitas," which means baby turtle. Well, naturally I wanted to see the baby turtles! Man was I bummed when he tried to sell me a banana-sized reed boat. Anyways, Mrs. Farrell gave us a fine point sharpie at the beginnig of our trip, so I wandered in the surf until I found two green rocks and used the marker to decorate them like baby turtles (a girl for me and a boy for Brice)! Now we actually do have tortugitas from Peru.



These waves [further down the beach] were much more survivable*. I caught a few, chatted with people from Europe/ the states/ Australia, even caught a couple in the perfect area just pre-cresting, but the break zone moved all over the place, and they tended to die out pretty quick. Either way, it was lots of fun, wetsuits are amazing [isn't he cute?], and I learned to a shorter board than my first time surfing (meaning harder and more maneuverable).

Now ray will share things that i doubtlessly forgot, like how the road on the other side of town just died out in sand, or how they forgot? about us in the top level of a restaurant for like two hours while we watched surfers.

They didn't forget about us so much as take a really long time getting our food. Looking back on Peru, it's been nearly a year since we started that crazy road trip. I've spent way too long getting this blog together, so this is going to be my last post (sans photos until I get a chance to pull some files from my online back-up). Corpus Christi was amazing. We had a brilliant time singing and enjoying the mass, then we stole flowers from the public decorations with a bunch of Peruvian kids and wandered back to our hotel. The remainder of our days were spent sunbathing, surfing, and killing time until we caught a bus back to Lima.

The highlight of Lima this time around was the souvenir shopping. Brice bought me a present! It's SOOOO cute, and I love my guinea baby. I'm sure all of you who stopped in to see me over the past year were forced to ooh and ahh over it with me for several minutes. We returned to the US exhausted but enriched, and I've had no shortage of interesting stories to tell.

Here's the short version of our trip:



View South American Explorations in a larger map



* Survivable for me. We did watch a girl drift further and further in trying to catch smaller and smaller waves. When a big wave got to her... well, I wanted to scream, but it was too late. So I just said "RAY LOOK AT THIS" and pointed. She finally caught a wave! About 3' from the beach.... and got slammed down onto the hard sand. Luckily she came back up, laughing, so I didn't have to put into practice all those hours watching Baywatch reruns.

Cajamarca

If you go to Cajamarca, chances are you'll at least have a connecting bus through Trujillo. The people in Trujillo will tell you that it's only a further 4-6 hours to Cajamarca, but that will be a lie. Plan to spend at least 9 hours on that bus. On the bright side, it's a beautiful ride. It goes right through the lower ranges of Las Cordilleras Blancas, an area famed for its glacial snow caps and hot springs, and we saw some really pretty landscapes along the way. Cajamarca is best known for its festivals - especially Carnivale / Mardi Gras - and for its beautiful colonial streets. A lot of the Peruvians told us it's "like Cuzco was 20 years ago," and I think they're probably right. Unfortunately, it was a festival week (Corpus Christi started two days after we left) and that meant most of the tourist destinations were closed.

We spent our first night exploring the streets around the Plaza and watching fireworks in the church courtyard. We missed most of the festivities because we were eating dinner, but we caught the very end of it and had a decent time in the aftermath. When these people celebrate, they really celebrate! All of the streets had well-maintained cobblestones, and there weren't really any ugly buildings in the town center, so we just sort of wandered around until bedtime.

The next morning, we opted not to go on a 9 AM excursion to Cumbe Mayo, the nearby ruins we wanted to visit, and decided to take a later tour. We wandered through the town and found out that most of the good sites were still closed. We did have a chance to see the "Ransom Room," though, where the Incan Empire officially died. The Emperor Atahualpa was held captive by Pizzaro, and to buy his freedom he offered to fill his prison cell with gold. The Spaniards took him up on that offer, but executed him anyways. But back to the story: as it turns out, there are no later tours to Cumbe Mayo. We had to hire a car to drive us out there, which was a little more expensive, but not incredibly so. The cab kept overheating as we climbed the mountain, so we stopped to chat with a family of Quechuan farmers who gave us some water for the radiator and let us park our car to cool it down. They were grating the roads, so that was another fun obstacle, but we made it!

A man gave us a tour of the museum and offered to sell us a tour of the site, but we decided to do the self-guided thing. It was a very, very, very good decision. The sudden change in elevation started kicking my butt as soon as we started our hike, but I hobbled along as Brice did his usual billy goat routine. We explored a deep tunnel ascending through the rock, checked out the petroglyphs. They're ancient, Pre-Incan, and largely undeciphered, but it was pretty neat to just walk up and touch them. Most of them look like a series of scribbles, but there were some geometric patterns in a few of them. We kept looking for them as we hiked, spotting a few here and there, and then we found ourselves standing at the top of the valley looking down.


At that instant, we knew we had left Peru and entered Middle Earth. The valley at Cumbe Mayo must harbor goblins, Orcs, and Gollum. Maybe even some trolls. Any other explanations simply cannot account for the epic, fantastical setting left more or less unlauded in the normal tourist literature. I fully expected a giant Eagle to swoop down and pick me up, or a hobbit to come over and ask for elevensies. Brice explored all of the small caves and crevices, goblin hunting, while I wandered amongst the monoliths and let the walls of the canyon close in around me. I've only been this overwhelmed by natural beauty at Land's End or the Cliffs of Moher; Cumbe Mayo is absolutely stunning.

Towards the bottom of the valley, we saw some of the oldest aqueducts in South America and a rounded rock - shaped like a cheese wheel - where the Incas used to make human sacrifices. OK, so we don't KNOW that they made sacrifices, but that sounds cool so it's what they tell all the tourists. I listened in on a Spanish tour guide while Brice climbed around the near by rocks. I also petted another baby llama and gave money to the begging Quechuan women who were holding it, but shh! Don't tell Brice. We walked back up the valley along the aqueduct, pressing ourselves into the rock face at points. When we made it back to the car, I was winded, sore, and exhilarated all at once. Cumbe Mayo is totally worth the 9 hour bus ride from Trujillo.

We spent a second evening in Cajamarca, since our bus didn't leave until late that night, and it was a really good time. The churches with catacombs were still closed, but there were lots of bands playing in the streets to prepare for Corpus Christi. After eating the best pizza of my life (ham, chicken, pineapple, onion, and pepper with good sauce and fresh cheese on a thin crust cooked in a wood oven), we went to a peace rally for the riots in Bagua, a small jungle town not all that far from Cajamarca.

At around the same time we were walking to Cusco, Bagua underwent a similar agricultural riot. The government leased 70% of the indigenous land in the Bagua department (state) to oil drilling and coal mining, basically leaving the Quechuan farmers of the area high and dry. They made a road block that locked down the the department for nearly 60 days, so the police intervened. As far as official reports go, it looks like 50 people (from both sides) were killed and about 200 were injured.

Peru's government kept the violence under wraps for a while, but we started seeing headlines about the massacre by the time we made it to Trujillo. The activists in Cajamarca brought large pipe horns that let out a mournful bellow, candles, and a loudspeaker to the area outside of the Cathedral. They prayed for peace in Bagua, and led the whole plaza in chants. We didn't really join in, but we wandered through the people and chatted amongst ourselves. I bought a hot rice pudding from a street vendor, but there was a really bitter jam on it and I couldn't eat it. That was probably my worst encounter with street food in Peru.

After the rally, a concert band set up on the other end of the plaza, so enjoyed the free concert and watched some kids play on the grass. Then, all together too soon, it was time to go back to Trujillo. We got back on the bus, curled up in our seats, and slept until we smelled the ocean again.

Everyone read Brice's comment. He made some really good observations! Here are some photos to go with them:

1) El castillo rock formation.


2) The pizza oven.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Coastal Lowlands: Nazca to Trujillo

Brice and I had a hell of a time getting along in Nazca, so I'm just going to cut to the interesting stuff. We arrived at around 4 AM, so we decided to track down a hostel and sleep until 9 or 10. A man was kind enough to unlock for us, and we took a nice, long nap. There are plenty of cheap hostels around the Plaza de Armas, and there are tons of tour guides operating out of the town. If you walk around for 10 minutes in any direction, you'll probably find 3-4 of each.

We meant to take a bus out to the observation tower to view the Lines, but we couldn't figure out which bus we wanted. We ended up contracting with a taxi driver to take us out the tower and back into town. It wasn't too expensive, but it costs quite a bit more than the bus would have. I thought the Nazca lines were really cool, but Brice was less impressed. All in all, we were glad we didn't waste our money on one of the over-priced fly-overs. It would have been an interesting experience, but we had just as much fun climbing up the rickety observation tower and exploring the "ruins" around the area.


I really liked The Frog, one of the more famous, smaller geoglyphs at Nazca. It actually looks kind of like a frog, if you tilt your head a little bit. We saw a large mound of dirt from the top of the tower, and had our taxi driver take us to an access road. We climbed up the large hill of shale, and Brice did some more exploring on the top while I listened in on an English-speaking tour guide (guiding a lone British student at the remote location) explained that the large lines running out from our hill acted as a pre-Incan calendar.


After touring the lines, we hired a car to take us out to the aqueducts on the outskirts of the city. The Nazca culture built these underground aqueducts to pipe cool water from the Andes to their dry, dessert-like home. Roughly 2,000 years ago, they devised the spiral window system to keep the air flowing through the channel: this served to keep the water flowing smoothly and to regulate its temperature. All the Nazca people had to do was slow the flow once a year so that they could crawl through the short spaces between windows and remove the accumulated debris. In 2,000 years, the aqueducts never failed. They're still an integral part of this region's agriculture.

After the aqueducts, our guide took us to another geoglyph - the thread and needle, and then we saw the remains of an adobe Incan administrative center. There wasn't much to look at, really, but we walked all the way around it, despite the oppressive midday heat. As with Chan Chan (coming!), the adobe bricks had all but melted away from the seasonal rains.

We left Nazca on a mid-afternoon bus for a larger city a bit further north on the coast: Ica. Ica is like one big circle, and it's probably the most modern-looking city we visited. Their Plaza de Armas had a very "Modern Art" feel to it. As far as we could tell, the inhabitants spend most of their time driving around in circles honking at each other. Still, it wasn't as bad as La Paz, and we found a nice hotel with pretty cheap rates for a hot shower.

I put Ica on our itinerary because all of my reading and research told me it was the heart of Peru's grape-growing region. And it is. BUT (there's always a but) they are more famed for their Pisco (a white grape brandy that tastes like turpentine) and the wines generally tasted like over-ripened grape cough syrup. That didn't stop us from trying though, so we bought a bottle of a local Cabernet (that was a mistake) and booked a tasting tour for the surrounding vineyards for the next day (also a mistake).


They force-fed us several shots of turpentine-esque Pisco at each vineyard, got really offended if we didn't drink the whole glass, and then followed it up with a series of vaguely palatable dessert wines. I really didn't mind some of the sweeter ones, but they tasted more like fortified koolaid than viticulture. Worst heartburn of my life? Check. Basically, if you want to experience Ica, we can lock you in a garage with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and honk at you for a few hours. But you don't get to drink the Mad Dog; we just break the bottle on the floor to provide the proper atmosphere.

That evening, we hopped a bus to Pisco (the town, not the drink). We heard Pisco was a great starting point for excursions to Las Islas Ballestas and Las Paracas National Preserve, and it is, but that's pretty much the only reason we stopped there. The bus took us most of the way along the Pan-American Highway, and we took a taxi from the highway into the town. As soon as the taxi dropped us off in the center of the Plaza, an army of travel agents started swarming to sell us an excursion. We went with a couple of well-dressed men who had a small office in the Plaza, and they set us up with a good price for admission, travel, and accommodations in Pisco that night. It worked out really well.

An earthquake ravaged Pisco in 2007, so the church was mostly abandoned and boarded up. (along with half of the town). We explored some of the wreckage, found a rather exciting black market, and had some pretty decent food while watching a soccer game in a local cantina. Brice tried to explain it to me, but I still only understand the basics.


The following morning, we left our hostel and headed for the coast in a van full of tourists. The dock for Las Islas Ballestas hosted a flock of very angry pelicans and a flock of very eager boys trying to sell us fish to bait them with. It was kind of disgusting, but Brice fed them a bit so I could take some pictures. We boarded the boats in the middle of that gorgeous, sunny day and started our tour. Brice had the theme song from Gilligan's Island stuck in both our heads by the time we left the harbor.

Our first stop was the Candelabra, an interesting geoglyph made by pirates to indicate safe harbor, and then we cruised out along the beautiful coast to the islands. This thing is massive; it's over 180 yards long! But getting back on track: Las Islas are one of Peru's greatest resources. Tourists love to look at the wildlife, and the wildlife -mostly birds - leaves a rich deposit of guano that is exported for fertilizer. The birds were so thick in places that you couldn't see the rock underneath them. We saw more pelicans, boobies, Inca Terns, and penguins. Yes, penguins. No one believes that part, but they were SO CUTE. You're looking at a photo of the candelabra right now because Brice thinks that's more exciting than penguins.


Las Islas also house dozens of sea lions and Pacific bottle nose dolphins, which we saw in abundance. I loved watching the sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks, especially the babies. When it was time to turn around and go home, we followed a pod of dolphins in to the harbor. They seemed to be playing with each other most of the time, and we saw some of them jump almost entirely out of the water. Absolutely breathtaking.

The boats returned us to shore, where we spent a bit of time doing touristy-things on the pier. Then we got back into the van and drove a bit further up the coast to Las Paracas National Reserve. Las Paracas had dozens of beautiful beaches and some interesting fossils, but our favorite part was the lunch break.


The sea food was fresh and... well, sea food. In the broadest sense. I think I ate a barnacle. But after lunch we went climbing on some of the rocks along the coast, and that was really fun! We saw sea urchins, crabs, and a wrecked boat. I only fell down once, and the scar's still there (she says bitterly, seven months later). Before we left the park, we stopped to see a flock of Chilean flamingos. I don't know why the Peruvian government is so worried about protecting Chilean flamingos, but we weren't allowed to get within half a mile of the stupid things. Decidedly not the highlight of my day.

One long, long bus ride (and a changeover in Lima) later, we found ourselves in Trujillo: a large city on the northern coast of Peru. I missed some of my meds that night and was in a complete daze, so I bought myself a bed in a small hostel to sleep it off while Brice killed time in the city. We met back up in the Plaza de Armas at noon, insulted each other a bit over lunch, and started looking for a minibus to Chan Chan.

Since I haven't yet, let me take this moment to tell you all something about combis and minibuses in Peru: if it's a busy time of the day, don't plan on having room to breathe. In fact, there is a very good chance you won't even be inside the vehicle -- they might just make you hang out the door and hold on. These rolling sardine cans provide cheap, reliable transportation, though and we really couldn't beat the price for one-way fare out to the ruins.

When they dropped us at Chan Chan, they really dropped us right in the middle of Chan Chan! The ruined city spans for nearly 8 square miles, and we had to walk about one mile, through an archaeological dig, to get to the tourist center. The portion of the ruins open to tourists is tiny, largely because it's an entirely adobe structure. That means that every time it rains or the wind blows, parts of the buildings erode away. For a city that old, it means that most of Chan Chan is nothing more than a series of low-walls and lumps.

But the place they show the tourists looks fairly well preserved. They managed to shelter some of the walls from the weather, and both their size and detailed carvings left a really huge impression on us. These things dwarfed any man-made structure we had seen so far, and I think Brice really enjoyed wandering around in the labyrinthine passage ways. We visited the remains of a royal tomb in the middle, and saw a man-made lake. The size was simply unbelievable.

We decided to go on to Cajamarca, in the northern mountains, after Trujillo, but couldn't get a bus until the following morning. We found a hostel, went out to a movie (Terminator: starring Batman), and crashed for the night.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Arequipa, The White City

Ripped from the pages of Tolkien and decorated in the bittersweet trappings of colonial splendor, Arequipa contains echoes of the Gondorian golden age beset by Smaug's ominous mountain. It stands in the shadow of El Misti, a conical volcano, and its name comes from the Quechuan (Dwarven?) phrase "Are, quepay" -- city under the mountain. The city's eponymous color comes from a stunningly white, volcanic stone called sillar; at any time of day or night, the stones stand out brilliantly against the black pavement and muddy cobblestones. Geographically, Arequipa lies very near Colca Canyon. Unlike the Grand Canyon, Colca Canyon has gently slanting, hilly sides. While we did not make it into Colca country this time, I'm led to believe that - in addition to the Canyon's most popular Andean Condor watching excursions - it hosts some of Peru's best white-water rafting, horseback riding, hiking trails, and some massive, remote ruins preserved better than those at Machu Picchu.

I can't even begin to consider the long, exhausting bus ride we took from La Paz into Arequipa, so I'll cut to the arrival. Arequipa's central bus terminal mirrors the rest of Peru; though smelly, chaotic, and crowded, a fleet of taxis is always waiting outside to shuttle you off to La Plaza de Armas. And what a plaza! We hadn't eaten much for a day or two, so we allowed ourselves to be hustled into on of the many open-air, second-floor eateries surrounding the square and enjoyed that delicious Peruvian cuisine we had missed so much in Bolivia. I honestly can't remember what we ate that first night, but the set menu at any of those restaurants offers a great value; we spent the whole meal observing the softly illuminated fountain, cathedral, and crisp, white buildings. Oh, and watching the Ghostbusters. Really, there was a car with a hodgepodge of extra gadgetry attached to its exterior with a similar shape and siren quality to the Ghostbusters car running through the center of town throughout the course of our meal.

Neither of us bothered to reserve a room in Arequipa, so we had to find a hostel on the fly (which isn't really that difficult in Peru). We can't remember the name of the place we finally settled, on, but it was located on the left side of the Cathedral, two or three blocks away from the plaza (as are most of the nice, affordable hostels in Arequipa). Once sheltered, we bathed, sorted our dirty -- wet and moldy, since that awful washer woman in Bolivia -- clothes, and went to bed completely exhausted.

Brice and I spent our first full day in the White City wandering the streets and taking in the sights. We started with the churches surrounding the plaza, and toured the Cathedral as well. The Cathedral in Arequipa, though its exterior architecture is beautiful, has a very protestant interior. All of the earthquakes and volcanic disruptions that plague Arequipa took their toll on the original structure's interior, so they settled on a minimalistic approach to cathedral artwork. Brice found some hatch-backs with (count them) two spoilers, so we stalked them through the streets hoping to get a photo for all of his gear-head friends back in the States. That was actually a pretty fun pass-time, looking back.

The greater part of our day took place within the walls of the Santa Catalina Convent, a labyrinthine compound in the middle of the city lacking both an Ariadne and -- we hoped -- a minotaur. Letting ourselves get lost in the winding passages and expansive court yards, we took the opportunity to learn about the lives of the nuns who inhabit it. Santa Catalina began as a sanctuary for upper-class women dedicated to the church; they brought all of their worldly luxuries into the convent, and generally employed female slaves in their daily service. But in 1871 a strict Dominican Mother Superior joined the convent, and the women were quickly reformed. Today, the nuns inhabit only the northern corner of the convent where they lock themselves away from the prying eyes of tourists.

Scores of wood ovens dotted the rooms and passages, and there was no absolute divide between where 'courtyard' ended and 'kitchen' or 'habitation' began. We climbed some stairs onto the roof of one of the cells, and took in the stunning view of Arequipa and El Misti from the best vantage point in the city.

Looking back on Arequipa now, I mostly remember floating from one interesting thing to the next. We viewed the Juanita Ice Maiden (she is NOT a mummy), sacrificed on the peak of El Misti at the peak of the Incan empire; we wandered into the suburbs of the city, and followed the winding streets; we journeyed out to a monastery with a remarkable library, and saw some school boys moving a statue of Jesus in the back of a pick-up.

At some point in there, we bought Brice some hard-hitting antibiotics (all drugs are over the counter in Peru, as far as we can tell) at a local pharmacy. Whatever form of gastrointestinal death he caught in Bolivia, we soon beat it into submission. We also did laundry and some other necessary chores - bought some severely understuffed Oreos, crackers, chokosodas, and more toilet paper. I remember feeding pigeons some roasted corn kernels they put out in the restaurants.. we tried to eat them ourselves, but since we were always dining al fresco we decided it just HAD to be pigeon food. Seriously, why would you feed that to people? Like I said, the details all blur together into one fuzzy, happy sensation.



But what really stands out to me, above all the rest, is the night we spent at El Viñedo. Located at 319 San Francisco street, this is -- bar none -- the best food in all of Peru. Viñedo means "vineyard," and they do have a respectable wine list, but this place really earns its keep with its steak. Maybe you could find a better piece of meat in Argentina. Maybe. Having never been, I couldn't say. But let me tell you this: you will NOT find a better steak in Peru. (Believe me, we tried. Even a hugely expensive restaurant in Lima that specialized in steak couldn't compare.) I ate a medium-rare cut of tenderloin with garlicky mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and light drizzling of red wine sauce; Brice had ostrich kabobs with fresh-cut pineapple and bell pepper, hand-cut steak fries, and mixed vegetables. Especially after the fried chicken horrors of Bolivia, we were seriously ready for an evening of self-indulgence and leisure. After dinner, we hit the town and let our hair down for the rest of the night; it felt great.

When we finally did leave Arequipa, it was on a bus for Nazca and the coastal lowlands. After spending so long in the mountains, I didn't really know what to expect on the coast. Brice and I had a couple of rough days in and around Nazca (animosity), but I'll try to be nice in the next post.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Puno & Lake Titicaca

We arrived in Puno on our frigid night bus from Cusco just in time to see (but not appreciate) the sunrise over the smooth surface of the sleeping lake. We took a motorized rickshaw into the center of town, found a hostel through sheer dumb luck, and hit the sack until a more civilized hour (like 9:30-ish).

Puno, located at an impressive 3,850 meters (2.3 miles) above sea level, doesn't have much in the way of entertainment. Its biggest draw is Lake Titicaca (pronounced Tethicalka by the locals). It is the world's highest navigable lake, and the view is stunning if the observer has woken up enough to enjoy it. Puno does serve as an important point of embarkation for many popular excursions, though. The cathedral was worth looking into, but it really only takes about 20 minutes to see the whole thing. If you find that you're spending a day or two in Puno, try to book a home stay on some of the more remote islands of the lake; missing that experience is one of my few real regrets about this trip. I've also heard rave reviews of La Isla del Sol and La Isla de la Luna, but we didn't get to see those either.

Brice and I took a short tour out to Las Islas Flotantes, and spent our day seeing the remnants of the Uros culture up close. The Uros are a pre-Incan civilization who were pushed off of their lands surrounding the Lake and forced to take refuge on the lake itself. To cope, they built islands out of the lake's thick reeds and peat. The islands floated freely for much of their history, but now all 42 are anchored and remain mostly stationary. Any tour company in Puno will sell you a voyage out to the Uros islands, so don't be afraid to haggle or ask them to include transportation to the docks in their fee.

Our excursion began with a bus that took us to the Puno port, thick with lime-green aglae. After a troubadour collected a few coins from us, we began our 30-minute boating trip out to the islands. In fact, I think this troubadour may have been our first and best encounter with the famed Peruvian panpipe flute. He really was the best performer we heard on our trip, even though they all play some variation of the same 2 songs (Guantanamera and Flight of the Condor). Along the way, our guide explained much of the area's history and lore. Traditionally, the people of the Uros islands eat the mallowy core of the lake reeds, fish, and water fowl. They speak a variant of the Aymara language, and - nowadays, at least - tourism is their main industry.

The Uros sustain their islands by constantly drying and adding new layers of totora reeds. Really, the totora is the life-blood of their culture. Without it, they would not have shelter, food, clothing, or transportation. I was amazed by the ingenuity displayed in their many uses for the reeds, even if the examples we saw were geared more towards souvenir shopping than survival. (But really, it's still one-and-the-same for these people; they could not continue to live as they do now without the tourists, but the tourists have warped them into a depressingly superficial facsimile of their former selves. For instance, we were sent away with a somewhat disturbing combination of Twingle Twigle Libble Star and hula dancing, topped off with a round of "hasta la vista baby!") They gave a really interesting demonstration of the peat-cutting and reed stacking process, even allowing us to try a bite of the reeds. It wasn't very flavorful, but I would go so far as to say the textures were quite enjoyable. It was kind of like eating soft sugar cane, minus the sweetness.



Our island hosts took us on a quick trip on one of their traditional reed canoes. They packed about 20 tourists onto that thing; it was actually pretty impressive.

After leaving the lake behind, we returned to Puno and found a decent, albeit impossibly cheap, lunch at the mercado central. The rest of our day passed in a blur, wandering aimlessly in the streets of Puno and wishing we had planned something - anything - interesting to do in the evening. We decided, after about 2 hours of lallygagging, to start making dinner plans. 'Pick the restaurant' was another of those games we could drag out for as long as needed, and we played it often. Since Puno was so much cheaper than Cuzco, we decided to try one of Peru's most iconic (but over-priced) foods: guinea pig, or cuy.


Cuy al horno (whole roast guinea pig) is traditionally served at feasts and carnivals, but the more remote villagers still cultivate them as a major dietary staple since they're both relatively simple maintain and a very cost-efficient protein source. We hoped to try cuy al horno in a small restaurant we found in our wandering, but after a very long wait it finally became clear that they didn't have any of the menu items we were interested it so we paid for our drinks and left. We opted to try for a nicer establishment the second time, and we actually had a pretty decent dinner. Brice ordered a pizza, I ordered an Andean nouveau cuisine take on the old classic, and we split the portions between us.

Instead of cuy al horno, I got deep-fried guinea pig legs, the head, and a salad of boiled potatoes. For the record, guinea pig has the texture of turkey and the flavor of limey sea food. If it hadn't been for the crispy skin, there wouldn't have been more than 2 or 3 mouthfuls apiece. As it was, we were hard-pressed to pick out the small bones, especially arond the rib cage. But still, it was definitely a learning experience for us. I mean, you can't go to Peru and not eat the food, right? Right.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for our Odyssey into Bolivia. I'm not going to get into it right now, but let me prepare you for that post with our motto about Bolivia: When it comes to Bolivia, things could be worse; after all, "a woman could cut off your penis while you're asleep and toss it out the window of a moving car" (Fight Club, 1999).

Machu Picchu by Brice

Brice was nice enough to volunteer his services for a blog post (or two?), because it really is high time I finished this thing. He'll be telling us all about Machu Picchu as soon as he gets around to it. In the mean time, I'm going to cut right to Puno and Lake Titicaca!




* 26 September 2009 - Brice thought about writing his post today.
* 2 October 2009 - Brice didn't write his post today.
* 12 October 2009 - Brice got his journal out of storage today!
* 15 October 2009 - PUBLISHED!

Macchu Picchu.

It was cool.

Have some pics.

THE END

[Cheeky]

We had to get up freaking early, but it was ok because our hotel which was a hostel kinda sucked. I mean, it was cool in that third-world-country walk through the restaurant and up the unfinished back stairs kinda way, but that's all. [On the bright side, it was cheap and close enough to everything. Also, reasonably clean room.]

Anyways, we were planning on catching a bus up before the trains started getting in, along with lots of other people. I just looked up the numbers. 6.30 am, and it was the 15th bus up. We passed the rest on our way up - plenty of switchbacks. Luckily MP is pretty huge up top, so no real worries.

We got up in time to watch the sun rise, which was cool, but not really as awe-inspiring as it coulda been. But since we cut across the front to get to where the best view would be, we ended up doing the entire thing in reverse. [No complaints here; I saved my feet until the worst of the climbing at the end.]



It was cool. They had alpaca's grazing in the middle (and people to yell at tourists who got to close to thier tourist attraction). At one point you could go up to the very top (ray elected to stay near the room showing the earthquake damage) to see the sundial. I met up with some of the people we'd met on the death march up there, and we all caught up some more.


It was finally beginning to get crowded, and we had to wait for people to move out of camera shots, tour groups to pass, or people to stop scaring the animals (scary looking bunny, lizards) away. We did see a cool door though, and then went up to the top. [The top of Machu Picchu (old mountain) was awesome, but I nearly killed myself trying to climb all the stairs and small outcroppings; it would have been more fun to climb the smaller Wayna Picchu (new mountain), but they only let the first few bus loads of tourists into that area of the park, and we didn't feel like wasting our morning at Machu Picchu waiting in line for something we MIGHT be allowed to do.]


The top had more steppes [I think this is the wrong word] [he means terraces / tiered farm land], one of which I convinced Ray to climb, and I wandered out the "back" side on some steppes to capture a few shots of the impressively steep drop off to the river on this side.






We got bored though, and had a few hours before our train, so we went back down, played around on the rocks at the town (washed our blisters in the stream), and perused the market for a while. Ray bought.... a necklace? [Llama charm for my bracelet.] I think a necklace. I do know that is was s/20 [US $6.75-ish] though. I remember all the worst parts.

Ollantaytambo & Taking the Train

Situated in Ollantaytambo for the evening, we bounced around the cobbled, colonial streets, raced our boats, and went to bed. The following morning, our real exploration of the area began. The streets are inhabited by wrenchingly noisy motorized rickshaws and combis; one of the combis we saw had all of the seats removed and a live cow in it! We wandered down a smallish street along the river to the train station - Ollanta is best-known for its ruins, and secondly because it is one of the most popular places to catch the train to Machu Picchu - where we purchased tickets. Tickets for the train are impossibly expensive unless you buy the backpacker class seats; but, in reality, you have to buy whichever seats are available and fit your schedule, so they manage to clean house on the 'prime time' trains. I think Brice and I payed about $100 each for our tickets round trip (ouch). As a further consideration: the ticket office keeps strange hours and their payment options are limited. Plan on carrying a lot of ID, visiting one of the two ATMs in the small Plaza de Armas first, and getting there with plenty of time to track down the office cashiers.


After we figured out the train schedule, we visited the Ollantaytambo fortress. Though Pisac was more complete and much more grandly situated, Ollantaytambo's massive terraces absolutely dwarfed the ones we saw at other ruins. I spared my sore, blistered feet and remained on the lower levels, but Brice climbed up the whole structure, and visited the buildings at the top. People look like ants on the top of Ollantaytambo; when you look up from the bottom, it is absolutely mind boggling to think about how long this place must have taken to build into the mountain side. In fact, if you stand at the base of Ollantaytambo and clap, the echo will cause an effect like an entire concert hall breaking out into applause. It feels like standing in the middle of the world's largest amplitheatre.

Historically, Ollantaytambo's significance comes from yet another skirmish with the Spanish. After the battle for Cusco, the Incan nobility and remaining military retreated to Ollantaytambo. But, unlike the battle at Sachsaywamthe Incas actually managed to turn the Spaniards back at their new fortress. They re-appropriated Ollanta as their new capitol for a short time, but ultimately retreated further into the wilderness to find a more easily defended headquarters and Ollanta was firmly under Spanish control by 1540.


While the main ruins themselves are awe-inspiring, a smaller set of lesser-known storage houses located on the opposite hillside (trust me, if you get to Ollantaytambo and look at the set up, my generic 'opposite hillside' direction will make a lot of sense) are open for more adventurous exploration. After we failed to find a path or staircase towards the smaller ruins, Brice decided to hop a wall in someone's back yard and give it a try anyways. I opted not to join him for that adventure, but I really wish I had. It turned out that there was a path to the small ruins wedged into the back of an alley (Brice found it a few minutes after I left for an Internet cafe), no trespassing required.

We spent the rest of our day lounging about in the Plaza de Armas, visiting the small market stalls along entrance to the ruins, and looking for more delicious Andean pizza. Pizza in the Andes mountains is a treat not to be missed; the only economical way for them to prepare a pizza is with whole, fresh ingredients in a wood-fired brick oven. Depending on the quality of the pizza sauce, many of the pizzas we had in the Andes easily beat out those my father and I tried in the cafes of Rome. Pizza along the Peruvian coast, however, should be avoided at all costs. But eating in Ollanta was generally pleasureable, although we did have one funny moment. Brice and I asked a girl leaving a restaurant if it was any good, and she replied that they were great; the beers were way bigger there than down the street. We had a good laugh at that one.

Most of our time in the marketplace went towards finding Brice a marble sphere; he spent a few days thinking he wanted one as a souvenir, so we enjoyed picking each one up and weighing its pros and cons. Yes, that may sound silly, but if you know Brice and me (which if you're reading this, you probably do) then you know we managed to make it into an elaborate, somewhat offensive game. Luckily for me, I broke down and bought (or should I say that I broke Brice down and he bought me....) myself a dorky-looking, canvas hat at that market; it came in handy on the relatively unshaded tour of Machu Picchu we took the next day.

Once we grew bored with the toursit market, we wandered through some of the little shops along the Plaza. Most of them were horribly over-priced, but I needed bandaids for my feet and had to content myself with paying ten cents per bandage; that's probably a world record, or something. Since we heard that Aguas Calientes could be prohibitively expensive, we wandered back to a small store well away from the tourist areas and let an absolutely adorable little Quechuan girl sell us only marginally over-priced water, crackers, instant ramen, and cookies. She was just too cute to pass up. Brice would just point at things while she very proudly counted out how much they would cost, and then he would reach up and get what he wanted off the high shelves while she smiled the biggest grin I've ever seen and counted out the new total. Ah, nostalgia.

Finally, we wandered back to the train station and boarded our coach for the 2-hour journey to Aguas Calientes. We went from our relatively warm mountain top (at nearly 2,800 meters above sea level) through some frigid, snow-covered peaks, and descended into the sub-tropical jungle surrounding Machu Picchu. I remember thinking then how amazing it was that just several days prior we had been sleeping at a roadblock, looking up at the immaculate night sky, and trying to guess how long it would take us to walk to Cusco. Seeing so much in so few days is a really surreal feeling, akin to something like Rip van Winkle must have felt when he woke up.

Cusco & The Sacred Valley

From the journal of Ray Yaegle...

21 May 2009

I walked 20 miles down a road paved with glass, boulders, tires, livestock, and mobs. I walked 20 miles through red-tiled mud huts, and stinking, sopping pasture inhabited by crazy women wearing Pilgrim hats. I walked 20 miles through feet full of blisters, sunburn, dehydration, and sore shoulders. And you know what? I made it to Cusco with relatively little issue. Sure, I'm essentially lame in both legs, but we still toured most of the churches and some of the ruins in the city today.

I'm getting ahead of myself. We made it to Sammay Wassai, our hostel, at around 4:30 yesterday afternoon, took a shower, ate some recently-remembered granola bars, and went to sleep. I didn't sleep well, but Brice was out like a light within 45 minutes of sleepy small talk.

This morning, after much complaining and lancing of blisters, we went down to La Plaza de Armas and found breakfast. But, on the way, I got to hold a BABY ALPACA. I love you, baby! We washed our eggs and sausage down with Peruvian Gatorade, and walked over to the Cathedral. The Cusco Cathedral is actually a three-church megacomplex, absolutely glorious to behold. The art and architecture blends the European and Andean aesthetic perfectly. From the image of the last supper showcasing Jesus and the apostles eating a guinea pig to the Roman soldiers portrayed in the garb of Spanish conquistadors, the cultural fusion is exquisite. "The Cusco School," they call it; brilliant.



We also toured El Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, which had a hugely elaborate high altar, and climbed the bell-tower for a birds-eye-view of the plaza. I hated myself for trying the stairs, but the view made the pain worthwhile. Unfortunately, the crypts beneath El Templo were closed for rennovation, so we weren't able to visit them. Later, we toured La Iglesia de San Blas (the neigborhood of our hostel) as well. San Blas has the most impressive pulpit of all the churches in Cusco, and there is a pale white skull sitting atop it. Legend says that it's the skull of the man who carved the magnificent, highly-detailed pulpit, and that he dedicated his entire career to finishing it.

As a side note, we scored free passes to El Museo de Don Quixote, which isn't actually about the man from La Mancha, but rather full of sculptures (the most iconic of the windmill warrior and his burro) composed entirely of small animal(?) bones and teeth.


We even made our way over to La Iglesia de San Domingo and the ruins of Qorikancha, which occupy the same space. The ruins and church are indistinguishable at certain junctures, at at others it is painfully obvious that the two are totally separate entities. When the Spaniards overthrew the Incas in Cusco, they robbed away the stones from Qorikancha to build their town, but some of the larger stones and structures were too big to remove, so they became the foundations, surroundings, and adornments of the church instead. A very cool site; I'm sorry I can't say more about it. It's only 7:10 and I'm already starting to nod off.

Stocked up on ChokoSodas in local supermarket.

22 May 2009


We retrieved (Brice did) our laundry from a local washer-woman and purchased our boletas turisticos (edit: you must purchase a tourism ticket to view the major sites in and around Cusco) this morning. We took a taxi out to Sachsaywamán and enjoyed a somewhat limited self-guided tour. The biggest rock at the site tops out at 200 tons; no wonder they say that aliens helped them build it. A man named Joséf sold us a two-hour guided horseback ride of the ruins surrounding Cusco. It wasn't the wisest use of our money, depending on who you're asking, but we had an excellent time seeing more of the terrain without (Very Important) walking. My feet and legs are doing much better today, though. Our ride took us through Pukapukan - a sort of ancient Incan truck stop - and Tambomachay - a site with fully functioning fountains probably used for religious ceremonies.


I'm a bit scatterbrained. I should probably add that Sachsaywamán was the dominant Incan fortress guarding Cusco (their capitol city and the center of the Incan world) from invaders. It didn't work out so well against the Spanish... It housed the valley's army, clergymen, and nobility. When Sachsaywamán fell, so did Cusco.

After viewing the ruins nearest Cusco, we boarded a minibus (not a combi) for Pisac. We ate lunch there - nothing spectacular, and priced for rich tourists - and then hired a car to take us out to the ruins for a couple of hours. Pisac is breathtaking in its enormity; it's an entire complex of ruins, tombs, and agricultural terraces (as opposed to all of the other 'one hit wonders' we saw this morning). It has an entire mountain side of terracing, a fortress (maybe two?), Incan toilets, a ferrous cliff-face full of grave-crannies, and a breathtaking view of the valley below.



1) The Ballsy Tour


2) The small holes are tombs with bodies inserted into them.



3) The valley of Pisac



4) Part of the ruins and a glimpse of the terraces.





Brice took the 'ballsy tour' and I took the 'pussy tour.' We still met at our designated finishing spot on time, but Brice had to do a good bit of free-climbing and hill-side scrambling, while I kept to the somewhat more visible trails in an attempt to save my feet for Machu Picchu. When we finished with Pisac, we took another minibus to Urubamba, travel hub of the Sacred Valley, and then caught a cheap collectivo to Ollantaytambo.



The town of Ollanta, as it is popularly called, consists primarily of a Plaza de Armas, a quaintly cobbled side street (where we were staying at Inca Wassai hostel), a train station, and the massive Inca fortress sitting right outside my front door (literally). Tomorrow we're going to tour the ruins here, and then board a train for Aguas Calientes - the starting point for excursions to Machu Picchu. Right now Brice is trimming his nails and licking his wounds; we made paper boats to race in an ancient-looking drain after dinner, and my half-crumpled boat trounced his sleek, properly folded one in the final stretch to the shock and awe of all involved. I am the paper boat champion! You will bow down before me!