Pisac adventure

August 31 2006
(by Andrew)

Instead of going to a restaurant we wandered into a local market and tested the limits of what Leigh felt comfortable eating. We had "Loma saltando" (Jumping hill? I think is the loose translation), some tasty rice, french fries, stewed meat with vegetables, topped with a fried egg, all for 2.25 Soles per each (Breakfast total for both of us $1.60) The state of the digestive tract (now 35 hours later) is still fine.

We wandered down towards the bus station and stopped by the Koricancha museum. Some interesting examples of the kinds of trepanation http://www.perou.net/ala/fr/MusArcTrepdouble.jpg (hole in head drilling), mummification http://www.photoseek.com/peru/03PER-41-26-Mummy.jpg and skull shaping http://www.anthroarcheart.org/grfx/i6bf.JPG that the Incas did. The museum was actually below ground and as we climbed up Leigh snapped a pretty cool stairwell shot in primary colors.

At the bus station we caught a collectivo to Pisac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisac). The Market was truly the most overwhleming collection of crafts that I have ever seen. More Alpaca than you could shake a stick at! http://www.andeantravelweb.com/peru/destinations/cusco/pisac.html The climb up to the ruins was INCREDIBLE! one of the most amazing valleys that I have ever seen. Certainly easily in league with Yosemite, Glacier, Zion or any of the other parks I have seen in the US. What really sets it apart are the truly unreal terraces that were built by the pre-Incan civilizations and Incas. See the pics of us on our climb and then at some of the ruins.

On the way up we ran into a couple coming down. They had taken a taxi up. Huh? say what? The last 1000 feet of stairmaster that I just did could have been avoided? Turns out there is a road up the backside. . . oh well. At the top we started briskly walking by the taxis and down the road back to town. The haggling (in spanish) went something like this.

Taxi guy #1: Hey mister you want a taxi?
Andrew: No, were going to walk down.
Taxi guy #2: But its only 15 Soles.
Andrew: no, were not in any rush
Taxi guy #1: But its almost 8 kilometers
Andrew: Then it should be 8 Soles.
Taxi guy #2: How about 10?
Andrew: No, we need the exercise, well walk. . . begin walking down the hill
Taxi guy #2: ok, ok . . . 8 soles.
Andrew and Leigh: ok.

Finally a successful haggling moment!

As we walked back through the market in Pisac ¿or Pisaq? we ran into the same couple (Katie and Tim). Turns out that she grew up in Allendale, NJ! Less than a mile from Leigh. He does some really pretty interesting music/video installation art that uses biological systems as its source of inspiration. We wound up splitting a cab with them back to Cusco and having a delightful dinner.

Hurrah!

Andrew

A Day in Cusco (aka The Day We Were Attacked By Natives)

30 August 2006 (Dylan Needleman´s 5th B-day!)

After somewhat acclimatizing to the altitude (11.5K feet), we decided to go for a hike to the Inkan ruins overlooking the city of Cusco. So huffing and puffing, we headed off uphill to the ruins of Sacsayhuaman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacsayhuaman From Sacsayhuaman, you can see a beautiful view of the 300,000 person city of Cusco below. From the ruins, we just sat back and listened to the noises of the city - a man on a megaphone shouting "papaya, plantanos...", dogs barking, cars honking... The rocks are unspeakably large - it´s quite a mystery exactly how they were brought to the sites and carved to fit together so elegantly.

Never accuse us of doing things the easy way... We hiked to two more sites, not nearly as impressive as the first. Driving ourselves almost to altitude sickness, we hoofed it back to town and crashed out by, yes, 7:30PM!

-LN AF

PS. Cusco has many many staircased walkways in the city. It reminds me a little of San Francisco, but much more steep and many more staircases. I also like this picture because it shows the typical South American dogs just lying around.

from Lima to Cusco

August 29th, 2006 (by Andrew)

We woke up early in the AM and grabbed a cab to the airport. 15 Soles (or about US $4.50) Cabs here are generally very cheap when you remember to haggle. . . anyway, the flight from Lima to Cusco (or Cuzco) (or Cusqo) (or Qusqo) (or Qosqo) was absolutely gorgeous. There is a dense fog bank that permeates inland from the coast of Peru about 15 miles (think Seattle) for 9 months of the year. This is why Lima is such a foggy-smoggy place most of the time. Anyway, this fog bank makes for pretty incredible scenery once you climb up out of it in an airplane and start banking inland towards the mountains, some of which are snow-capped peaks. We flew through them (actually above them, but many of them were so big it felt as though we were down in among them). After some pretty tricky banking and swooping into an amazing mountain valley the plane came to rest safely on the tarmac in Cusco.

Leigh and I exited the plane, and were promptly winded from the climb up the exit ramp. Cusco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco is at the insane altitude of over 11,000 feet, and you feel it IMMEDIATELY! At least when you have been living in Rhode Island for the last 6 years. There are a variety of different remedies that are suggested to deal with the altitude. Altitude sickness is called soroche and you can walk into just about any little store and buy pills called soroche which claim to treat it. In fact there are incredible looking ads for the pills showing someone puking while his (smarter because they took soroche pills) friends look on with a combination of amusement and disgust. If you do choose to take the pills. . . you just can´t be entirely sure what is in them. . . Mate de Coca http://static.flickr.com/25/48920585_17e5aaa6a1_m.jpg or tea made with Coca leaves is ubiquitously served and drunk everywhere. As you wander around you see many "coca shops" and in most restaurants you can order mate de coca with whole leaves. http://i6.ebayimg.com/01/i/06/bb/7a/b4_10.JPG In addition people wander the streets selling small bags of coca leaves. It seems that it is all a matter of dosage, I avoid all stimulants anyway (especially caffeine) so I wasn´t too excited to see what cocaine would do to me. We haven´t seen anyone walk up to us and try to sell refined cocaine, but then that only happens in certain neighborhoods in the US as well. . .

Anyway, we spent most of the day walking v...e...r...y s...l...o...w...l...y becuase any quick movements resulted in a racign heart, gasping for breath, and spinning/headrush sensations. (good times!) However, in order to avoid the altitude sickness, we have employed a variety of tactics - hydration, tylenol/ibuprofren, gatorade, and walking slowly. It took a few days, but has gradually proven effective. Running up stairs, even a few steps, is certainly not yet a possibility but we were able slowly and steadily make progress and have done some pretty ambitious day hikes.

ok. so we made it to Cusco and arrived at our "hostal" basically a good sized bed and breakfast. For 50 soles (about $15) we get a prvate room with double bed, private bath, and access to the kitchen. Its about a 4 minute walk to the center of Cusco, not a bad deal.

We settled in and decided to eat the last of the food that we had bought in Lima. A couple different sized and shaped bananas and a "grenadilla" which we had no idea how to eat and probably ate well before it was ripe. . . still delicious if a bit sour.

After a nap/head-swirling lie down on the bed, we drifted out into Cusco and found a restaurant where we grabbed a lunch and then wandered down to the Plaza de Armas (the center of the city) where Leigh napped in between the unending approaches by people trying to sell postcards, watercolors, coca leaves, shoeshines, etc. Quite by accident we wandered by the famous 12 sided stone (nearly 6 feet tall) and part of the foundation of a building, original Inca stonework that is pretty damn amazing. We then went into La Catedral where you can see inordinate quantities of gold and silver and carved wood. Crazy stuff.

Anyway, there I blow,
Andrew

MAPS

I realize that we forgot to post a few maps... so here´s one of South America and another of Peru. . .

Day Trip to Pachacamac

August 28, 2006 (Monday)

After some careful planning, where I (Leigh) cleverly bought flights to Cusco Peru in the wrong month (September 29 instead of tomorrow August 29), Andrew and I headed out to test our skills at finding a bus to take us to some ancient ruins that predate the Incan era. It took a full hour and two local community policemen, but we found our bus to Pachacamac. The trip was almost more interesting than our visit to the ruins - it took us through parts of Lima that we would not ordinarily walk through for a variety of health and safety reasons. In addition, it allowed us to meet commuters and other people of Lima.

Two hours and 15 miles later, we arrived at the ruins, grabbed lunch, and payed a guide a whole 5 bucks for a two hour tour of the ruins. Marcelo seemed to know a ton about Peruvian history abnd he spoke English quite well, the only thing he was lacking was arms. He was a sweetheart and taught us some history of the Native Peruvians.

Pachacamac was the largest city and ceremonial center on the coast. They worshipped the sun god, ironically because on the coast there is no sun for 5 months as the fog is too thick. Only a few hundred yards downhill is the Pacific Ocean. As I usually find, temple ruins are somewhat anticlimactic where the archeologist came to the site, picked it to pieces, found things, took them away, reconstructed however they saw fit, and left the site without educational merit. There are certainly exceptions to this rule (Tikal for instance), but many Belize and Guatemala ruins are ruined by archeologists who mined them and reconstructed in probably incorrect ways. Oh well.

We headed back to the road to catch our bus, and suprisingly the same bus driver picked us up. As we headed back to Lima, Andrew spoke with two men about the US versus Cuba versus Peru. And amazingly the sun peaked through the fog for a half hour - there is a god!

For dinner, we happened to walk into a mall where there was one of the most incredible supermarkets I´ve ever experience. We bought provisions and returned to the hostal for a feast.

Hasta Pronto.

A Day in Lima

August 27th, 2006 (by Andrew)

Today was day two in Lima. We awoke early, finally recovered from the overnight flight. Leigh had crashed out early but I stayed up a bit watching a pretty fascinating doubles handball match that was on TV. I am not sure what country it was out of, perhaps Spain? But I would like to find out. . .

Anyway, this AM, after a light breakfast at the Mami Panchita Hostal Turistico (http://www.bed42.com/mamipanchita/) , where we are staying, we did a bunch of reading on different travel possibilities in the Lima area, found a way to get the blog going and then ventured out into the city. We grabbed a bite to eat at the same Italian-Peruvian bakery that we had found the night before. They make a empanada de pollo that can´t be beat! We also had a couple little quiche like things with zucchini, alcachofa (artichoke) and asparagus. Last night we had chirimoya (http://chicureo.com/cronica/editoriales/imagenes_editoriales/chirimoya.jpg) juice and pastry, also one with lucumba (http://www.corpoflondon.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/26E2AD22-7F9A-4720-BBB3-FDDFEC2BC968/0/Lucuma_Eggfruit1_small.jpg) that has a very strong flavor. The chirimoya was pretty incredible. . . sort of like a cross between a pear and a cantaloupe? Seriously delicious.

We took a cab into the center of Lima (about 15 minutes), I forgot to haggle so it cost about $3 (10 Soles). If I had remembered to haggle I could have had it for 5-6 soles, oh well. Anyway, we asked to go to the center of the city by La Catedral and the Plaza de Armas. When we arrived, there was some sort of parade going on with different folkloric dancers from all over Peru in a competition. A large banner announced that it was worldwide international folkloric celebration day? (so I am sure that you all had similar celebrations in your home towns.) See the pictures of the different dancers. The city feels very safe and up and coming? At least most of the areas that we have been in have a certain degree of new construction going on.

The Cathedral was closed but we made it into the Convento de San Fransisco y Catacumbas. An ornate church which had a nearly 2 ton chair of silver that gets paraded out once a year as a part of a festival. It takes more than 30 people to carry it through the streets. In addition we saw a painting of the Last Supper by a Spanish artist who included local Peruvian foods on the table. . . so yes, Jesus Christ and all of his disciples are gathered around a guinea pig. (Thanks Jill G for the heads-up on that.) Seems like the Spanish Christian Conquistador/Missionaries were willing to go pretty far to try to win converts.

On a similar theme our next stop was the Museo de la Inquisicion, where we had a tour through some of the rooms where tortures and imprisonment had happened and also learned about the strange spectacles that used to occur in the center of town. Think M. Night Shayamalan meets the KKK meets Easter Sunday Mass outside St. Peters Basilica in Rome/Vatican. Sort of a public torture/persecution/prayer celebration that the whole family can could enjoy.

The final exhibit in one of the rooms attached to the museum was a room filled with anti-abortion related placards, slogans, propaganda, etc. It was strange and confusing. The Museum also housed the museum of the national congress. . . I had a conversation with the tour director who explained that a group of local Peruvian women whom he described/dismissed as “feministas” had petitioned the government to use the space. He said that it was a controversial topic, that there had been some counter-protesting, and that the current state of the law in Peru was that abortion was only legal in cases of rape, and that the rape had to be certified by a doctor. There are a lot of illegal abortions, and there is a split on the issue in the political parties, the right condemning abortion entirely, the left for making it more accessible.

Our day was rounded out by our first adventure on the Limeño (Lima) bus non-system. I say non-system because the bus “station” in downtown Lima is more like a slow drive-by center. A wide variety of micro-Buses, each individually decorated and painted roll by while an assistant to the driver leans out the door yelling where they are going and encouraging you to get on board. After watching this crazy spectacle for about 15 minutes we started to see how it might work. . . Look for the name of the streets/area that you want to go to, then ask the assistant how much, then jump on and pray that you actually are going in the right direction and have a clue when to jump off. Easy enough. Actually it was, particularly when I decided to ask a friendly looking family sitting next to us where we should get off, and the said here Here HERE NOW! So we casually disembarked and made a meandering bee-line back to where we are staying. . . It would have been surprisingly uneventful, however, about half-way through our journey as the bus was rounding a large traffic circle, there was a deafening BOOM! Directly beneath our feet and the back of the bus filled with smoke/dust. After making sure that neither of us was shot, Leigh spent some time swearing as the dust settled on us, then loudly interrogated the Peruvians next to us on the bus “What the HELL was that?” . . . la llanta (the tire) was the casual reply. The assistant jumped out, looked at the tire, and apparently satisfied that only one of the tires was blown (the bus had 5 more) and it must have self-inflated? Anyway, we made it home safe. Leigh is now out of the shower and it is my turn to go wash off the grit and blow the dirt out of my nose. Leigh can load the pictures and this entry (she´s good at computer troubleshooting)

Hasta pronto (until soon)

Andrew (and Leigh)

Ps. I do not intend most of our blogs to be this long and rambling, but right now we have free and fast internet access where we are staying right outside our room, too tempting not to ramble on.

We left NYC and arrived in Lima!

August 25-26, 2006

We had a great day yesterday considering we got no sleep on the plane the night before (due to, among other things, a loud snorer and his seat-kicking son!). the hotel we had booked arranged for airport pickup and that was quite delightful - a man was waiting for us at the airport with Leigh´s name on a placard. Got to the hotel (hostel) where we found two internet connected computers - a pleasant surprise. We tooka nap and then wandered around the city for about 5 hours.

Lima is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. There are 150ft cliffs right next to the water. In the miles that we walked of the coast-city, there were skate parks, terraces, basketball courts (with people playing soccer on them), and soccer fields - a good use of waterfront property. A road that led from a terrace down to the ocean was closed, so we walked on it and found that they were having a competition sponsored by RedBull...a land luge competition with skate-boarders flying down the mountain-cliff side listening to heavy metal (Iron Maiden!). AFter climbing back up the cliff, we watched many paragliders riding the steady winds coming off the Pacific. I forgot to mention the constant fog that exists over the city for 6 months at a time - the guide book mentions that the sun breaks through the fog in November. We watched another skate'boarding competition in a skate park - they were pretty good actually - there they blasted US hip hop.

For lunch and dinner, we found great bakeries that sold tomales and other yummies. . . I´ll attach a picture of Andrew unfurling his tomale...

Today we plan to walk around the old city of Lima - some 1500´s churches and a few museums await us. . . We plan on staying in this hostel another night or two and then maybe heading out to other parts of Peru. Stay tuned. . . as long as we have easy internet access, we´ll be in touch.

Love you all,
Leigh and Andrew