5.12.2006

la mandarina

Last night was the best night of the trip, and a highlight of any of our travels. I´ve been wanting to hear music somewhere, not performed for tourists, just local musicians making music, as we usually do when we travel. We had a couple of tips from the guidebook, but none of them panned out. I was beginning to think it just couldn´t work for us in Peru, but now I realize we had to get out of the very heavily touristed areas. Last night, completely by accident, I got my wish, and then some.

After yesterday´s blog post, we hung out in town. We took off our socks and sneakers and walked on the beach (must put our feet in the Pacific, who knows when we´ll see it again!), ate a honey and cracker snack that is sold on the street here, and watched surfers, fisherman and men working trap lines.

While we were dusting off our feet, a dog approached us. She was emaciated - every rib showing, the knobs of her spine visible, tail bones protruding - and she was pregnant. Most street dogs are not so skinny. She wasn´t dirty, and wasn´t afraid of us, so we thought perhaps she had been a house dog, gotten lost, and didn´t know how to survive on her own. She clearly wasn´t getting enough to eat for her and her pups.

While she put her head on Allan´s leg and he pet her, I went to a restaurant across the street, hoping they could sell me some scraps or maybe a piece of chicken. A little girl, the daughter of the owner, took me around the corner to a little store, and helped me buy a bag of dry dog food for S/ 2.50.

The dog ate kibble out of my hand, crunching away happily. While Allan went off to get her some water, I was already trying to figure out how we could get her back to Canada with us. A pregnant dog with no shots or papers, from Peru, and we´re traveling by bus. I reluctantly had to agree with Allan that it was simply not in our means.

Fortunately for my heart, after she ate a lot, she drifted away from us. We left the rest of the dog food where we saw several young dogs scavenging, and, standing a distance away, saw that they got it and were eating.

This left me feeling very sad. We were also a little further down the strip, away from the main restaurants. I wanted to eat at a local place, but that´s hard to do for dinner. Peruvians eat lunch in restaurants near their schools or workplaces, but they eat dinner home with their families. However... the following day would be Mother´s Day, a big holiday here. So people were out celebrating, and staying out late before a day off.

Right across the street from where we left the dogs, I spotted a restaurant, all plastic tables and chairs, the front open to the street, directly across from the ocean, with maybe 10 or 12 local people inside. When a man waved us in, we figured it was a friendly place, although we had no idea what that would mean.

We ordered dinner specials, all including ceviche, obviously priced for locals and not tourists. Only then did we spot two men with guitars. A woman sitting on a wooden box began to thump on it, using it as a drum, and sing - the first female musician we´ve seen here. We had stumbled on a peña, an impromptu Latin music scene.

The musicians were sitting amongst the other customers, as they do in pubs in Ireland (and perhaps many places I`ve not yet been). There´s no separation between musician and audience, which creates an entirely different feeling. You´re not watching a show, you´re part of the music.

The other diners were an older couple, a younger couple and small group of men. The older woman had a rose and some Mother´s Day cards on her table. Her husband was playing drums on the table, obviously a percussionist, as he was using different parts of his hands and his elbows. Once in a while, he would get up to dance a few steps by himself, and shout his appreciation for the musicians.

At first we were just listening politely. One of the guitarists welcomed us to Huanchaco, and told us it was ok to dance. The music heated up - most of the other diners were singing along to many songs - and it was only a matter of time before one of the men asked me to dance (after asking Allan´s permission).

Here´s a bit that my mother, who is reading this, will love. In Spanish, a descriptive adjective is often applied to a person as a nickname. Morena, for a dark-haired woman, becomes La Morena, the dark-haired one (feminine). El Viejo is The Old One (masculine), viejo meaning old. The crazy one, the fat one, the limping one - anything. I was wearing a tangerine-coloured t-shirt. Tangerine en español is una mandarina; we see them sold on the street all the time. Soon I realized they were referring to me as La Mandarina.

Various men asked me to dance, then they insisted Allan get up and dance with me, then everyone changed partners several times. The two other women danced very demurely, while the men were flamboyant peacocks.

One man in particular, a very dark-skinned guy in a soccer jersey and shorts, barefoot, was playfully annoying, asking me to dance constantly, but seemingly just as content to strut around by himself.

We bought a round of beer for the musicians, and one guitarist came over to ask where we were from ("Canada Ingles o Canada Francese?"), and we chatted about Huanchaco.

The older man made several pronouncements, as far as I could make out, welcoming all people to his town and his country, declaring us all one human family, all brothers and sisters, no matter what we look like and what language we speak. He seemed so heartfelt, it was so sweet. He made toasts to La Mandarina and her hombre, ending with Viva Peru and Viva Canada.

They played all kinds of music, a few songs I recognized, but mostly not, and not a Condor Pasa in sight. Everyone except us sang along on many numbers. The woman had a deep, rich voice. The men were singing most of the songs, and when I requested one from the woman, they played "La Bamba". At the part that translates "I am not a sailor, I am the captain" (Yo no soy marinera, soy capitan, soy capitan), she sang, "I am not a secretary, I am the boss".

The older couple and the young couple eventually left - hugs and good wishes to us all around, and more pronouncements about peace and love, and I thought the party was breaking up. But our guitarist friend told us the night was young.

We moved in a little closer for a few more numbers, and the beer really started to flow. We were ordering large bottles of Cusqueño Negra, a dark beer that´s much better than the Trujillo Pilsen and - finally - very cold, pouring it into small glasses.

Eventually the female musician left. Again I thought it was quitting time, but Marco said, "Ahora es la mejor vez" - now´s the best time.

We all pulled our chairs into a rough circle, including two tables full of beer bottles and glasses, near the front of the empty restaurant, right near the sidewalk. At this point I´m the only woman there. They are substituing "Laura" (pronounced Low-rah) or "Laurita" ofr every woman´s name in every song, and insisting Allan and I kiss during all romantic numbers. Pele, as Allan called him, or Speedy, as I did, was hamming it up to the sky, dancing by himself, making "fake" passes at all the men, and in general playing the fool and keeping us all laughing.

Marco was pushing us to request songs, but what do we know that they also know? At one point, they insisted we sing in English. They said, there´s a song they love in Spanish, but in English it´s very difficult, would we please please help them. It turned out to be "My Way".

Now, that was one of my father´s favourite songs, and I grew up hearing it a zillion times. And if the radio was on, I could sing every word. But do you know how difficult it is to come up with lyrics, cold, after listening to Latin folk songs for hours, and drinking copious amounts of beer? (Answer: very!) We stumbled through and da-da-da´s the rest.

They ran through "Let It Be", "Hey Jude" and "Yesterday", a kind of unintentional medley, the beginning riff of "Satisfaction" (Allan and I were very entertaining for that one), "House of the Rising Sun" and a few lines of "Dust in the Wind". I thought they might know "Like A Rolling Stone" (great singalong chorus there!) or "Blowing in the Wind" but I got only polite smiles.

Too many English lyrics and we would lose the other guys, so it was back to Spanish. When they did a Peruvian number, everyone told us it was important and we should listen carefully to the lyrics.

Just so I remember... Marco, the young guitarist, had very short black hair, tanned skin and the big Peruano nose. He was very nice looking, with a lovely singing voice, great range. The older guitarist had an Asian cast to his face, as some Peruvians do. (Carmen said people will be called La China for this, not as an insult, as a description.) This guitarist didn´t say much, and played beautiful acoustic lead guitar. Speedy was very dark-skinned, with bushy dark hair and moustache, and reeked of beer and cigarettes. He and two other guys were barefoot - beach boys.

And one point, I left the group to try to pay for all the beer, for everyone, but our poor waiter was completely flummoxed by this request. He didn´t want to say no to me, but he couldn´t bring himself to comply. Speedy came over to see what we were whispering about, and the waiter pleaded, "She wants to pay for all of you!" Speedy took me by the hand and walked me away, bringing me to the center of the little circle to dance. Marco asked Allan what the problem was. When Allan told him we wanted to pick up the tab, Marco said with great seriousness, "No, that is not possible."

Beer and music and laughter and silliness flowed for several hours, until the two waiters cleaned up our tables and handed everyone their respective bills. Hugs and good wishes and thanks all around. It was just as well my Spanish is weak, because I would have told them how I felt, how happy I was.

Back at the hotel, our German Shepherd friend Nick was waiting up for us, prancing around, leading the way to our room, then dancing on our bed.

5.11.2006

more from huanchaco

First, many thanks to reader Fred_R, who says in a comment (which I am unable to link to right now):
If your looking for a great Canadian company selling quinoa, check out www.quinoa.com. 100% Canadian owned and operated and they buy all their product from Peru.
Very cool! I really appreciate it, and I´ll definitely look into it when I´m home.

Allan and I discovered quinoa when we found out that Allan has a gluten sensitivity, or celiac disease. This means he can´t (or at least shouldn't) eat wheat and many other grains. It's not an easy diet to follow, although not as restrictive as we first feared, since rice, corn and potatoes are acceptable.

We learned that the ancient grain of quinoa is gluten-free and also high in protein, although I never learned how to make it very tasty. Hence our search for Seeds Of Change brand quinoa mixes, sold in boxes like rice or couscous mixes, and apparently only in Whole Foods. Here in Peru, I´ve seen many other delicious uses and methods of making quinoa.

But here's the crazy thing. All of a sudden, in Peru, wheat products are no longer bothering Allan's GI system. He is also lactose intolerant, which often goes with celiac disease, and suddenly he is digesting dairy without problems, too. At home, we almost never eat pizza, the ulitmate double whammy to a gluten and lactose intolerant person. Yet here, we´ve eaten many delicious pizzas, with no ill effects.

It´s amazing, and we don´t understand it. My only theory is that food is much less processed here, much closer to its natural state, raised organically not for health purposes but because agriculture here is less "advanced" (ahem). My former doctor in NYC told me that many foods in North America are "gluten enhanced" in processing, causing many more people to develop celiac disease or at least a gluten sensitivity. Could it be that the Peruano natural growing and production methods alleviate the effects of dairy and wheat? If anyone has an idea, please feel free to weigh in.

We are baffled, but it is great! Since we can't drink the water here and have to be careful about food safety in general, it's wonderful for Allan to be able to eat whatever he wants without wondering about those problems, too.

* * * *

One food that Peru does well is soup. It is everywhere, and lots of it. There are cremas (cream soups), chaufes (chowders), sopa a la minuta (a noodle soup) and all types of whatever-we-had-handy soups, all delicious. The staples here are pollo a la brasa (rotisserie chicken), potatoes of all description, and soup.

* * * *

Lonely Planet is the standard guidebook for travel in Peru right now. And while it´s full of good tips about bringing sunscreen, earplugs (for bus and train travel with DVDs blasting) and toilet paper (paper products of all types are scarce here), here´s an important tip you won´t find in the guidebook.

Everything is paid in cash here, no credit cards, no traveler's cheques. But there is at least one ATM in every town, all on the international systems, so you can withdraw cash as you go. However, all the ATMs dispense only 50 and 100 soles bills - and no one will accept them. No one.

Even 20 sole bills are difficult to use if you need anything more than 2 soles in change. At lunch yesterday, our waiter ran to three different stores trying to get change for a 10 soles bill! (We finally waved him back and scrounged all our change and gave him a big tip to make up the difference.)

We learned this early on and developed a workaround routine. First, withdraw cash from an ATM, but only on a weekday during banking hours. Second, go into the bank, get a numbered ticket, then wait, sitting in chairs in a large waiting area, for your number to come up on a tote board. Then, change the 100 and 50 sole bills into 20s and 10s, and also try to get some moneda (change), 5, 2 and 1 sole coins, even 50-centimo coins.

It's the craziest thing. We have tried every combination of withdrawal, nothing works - even if you withdraw 100 soles, the machine will dispense one 100 bill. But no one will accept them. The only thing you can use a 100-sole bill for is your hotel bill, if it´s over 85 or 90 soles. You´re lucky if you can get anyone to take a 20 sole bill. You need a pocket or pouch full of coins all the time, but good luck getting them.

The ATMs also dispense US dollars. Eeeyuck.

huanchaco, day two

We are loving Huanchaco. The sun is blazing in a bright blue sky, but a cool breeze comes off the ocean. A few diehard Peruano surfers are still in the water, sharing the waves with little fishing boats. Palm trees line the road.

Our hotel is beautiful, full of lush tropical plants. Our little room and patio overlooks both pool and ocean. We have the place to ourselves, along with a few friendly staff people and not one but two beautiful German Shepherd dogs. One is a frisky, mischeivous youngster who we´ve fallen in love with. Our host is a Belgian-Peruano who speaks many languages. He took it upon himself to make our hotel reservations for our next stop, Chiclayo, getting us a discount.

After yesterday´s post, it was more ceviche for lunch, and for dinner I had a big bowl of chufe, or chowder, full of all kinds of seafood plus potatoes, corn and peas. The food in Peru is not universally exciting or wonderful, but I could live on this northern coastal fare. Wandering around after dinner, we found a tiny bakery and bought two slices of torta piña, pineapple cake, which is sold everywhere, all rich and gooey on top, like a sponge cake with pineapple baked in.

This morning we caught the local bus right in front of our hotel, and took it to Chan Chan. Buses run constantly here on the coastal road between Huanchaco and Trujillo. Some are large buses, some are colectivo vans. Each has a driver plus a kid who hangs out of the bus, shouting the destination and trying to corral passengers. This guy also collects fares and jumps on and off to have the driver´s ticket punched at check stops. He and many passengers jump off and on when the bus slows but doesn´t stop, but the driver does stop for children, women and the few tourists who ride. Buses pass us constantly, giving the taxis some serious competition, and they´ll stop anywhere you ask them to.

When the bus kid pointed to us, we got off and walked down a long dirt road, the ruined adobe walls of Chan Chan on both sides. Chan Chan was a city of the Chimu people, a pre-Incan culture who lived roughly between 850 and 1350 AD. They were absorbed by the Incas, who left the Chimu wealth and structures intact (as the Incas did). Chan Chan survived the Incas, but not the Spanish.

Also, although it almost never rains in the Peruvian coastal desert (decades will pass without a drop of rain), there are sometimes tsunamis or other weather phenomenon like El Niño, and adobe cannot withstand that. So, between tidal waves and the Conquistadors, only broken walls remain of this once massive city.

Lonely Planet says Chan Chan was the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas, but my own research says that was Teotihuacan, outside of what is now Mexico City. I don´t know which is correct, but Chan Chan was huge by ancient standards, home to as many as 60,000 people.

At the end of the long dirt road, we paid admission and entered a large ceremonial complex known as Tschudi (named for an archeologist), where many original carvings and reliefs have been preserved, along with some careful restoration. The carvings are repeated motifs of fish, pelicans and waves, along with a geometric design representing fishing nets. The Chimu, living on the coast, venerated the sea and worshipped the moon, in contrast to the Incas who venerated the Earth Mother and worshipped the sun.

As with most sites in this country, there is one fee for admission and another if you want to hire a guide, and very little printed information. This can be annoying when admission fees are high, but more importantly, it must be difficult for the guides, who work for tips. For Chan Chan, we decided to see the site ourselves, using our guide book, which seemed adequate.

There were dozens of rooms, all for ceremonial purposes such as festivals, assemblies, burials and other rituals. The most impressive thing about Chan Chan is its vast size, more so considering only a small portion of it remains.

Admission to Chan Chan also covers two other Chimu sites, and we rebuffed some annoying taxi drivers hawking their services to take us there. As a rule, we never engage with anyone who is pushy and insistent. I imagine there´s a big cultural misunderstanding going on, but Allan and I both can´t stand it.

We walked back down the dirt road to the main road - it´s completely flat here, so walking is very nice - and tried to find the next place, La Huaca Esmerelda (another archeologist, not a Chimu name). Picking our way down another dirt road, thinking we saw an adobe temple, we found instead a huge pile of sand on a construction site. It was pretty funny.

Back on the main road, we stopped for lunch at a local joint with a menu del dia, one lunch, no choices, 2 soles each. Again we encountered the cold shoulder from the server, but by the end of the meal, she had relaxed and we were rewarded with a smile. I wonder if there are negative expectations about foreigners and tourists (small wonder) and polite, appropriate behaviour dispels the stereotype. No way to know, really.

After lunch, we hop on another bus, but still can´t find this Esmerelda, overshooting it by quite a bit, then taking a taxi back in the direction we came. Transportation is so incredibly inexpensive and plentiful here, that this is negligible.

Esmerelda turns out to be one small temple, in the same ruined adobe style, in the middle of a town. (The town, Mensiche, is between Huanchaco and Trujillo.) It is less restored than Chan Chan, but has many beautiful detailed carvings intact, repeating geometric designs of fishes in nets, pelicans and ocean waves. It makes a good counterpoint to Chan Chan, because you can imagine more of what the whole complex looked like. Here, you walk on top of the four-metre-thick adobe walls and look down.

The sun is very strong and there´s no shade at these sites, so we fade early. It would be possible to do all the ancient sites in the Trujillo area in one day if you were riding on an air-conditioned tour bus directly from one site to the next. But on our own, it´s too much. We prefer to spend the afternoon relaxing, then see the rest of the sites tomorrow morning.

Some random Peru notes to follow.

Photos of Chan Chan and Huaca Esmerelda here.

Photos of Huanchaco, the view from our hotel room, and Nick and Rex, here.

5.10.2006

huanchaco, outside trujillo

temperature: 19 C / 66 F
elevation: sea level

We spent several hours at the Lima airport, then flew to Trujillo. On the flight, they showed a tourism video - once again with volume on, no headphones. What´s with this country that they think we want sound and entertainment at every moment of our day? How very Estados Unidos of them. Annoying.

We opted not to stay in Trujillo. It´s Peru´s third-largest city, the capital of this departmente (state or province) and we already know what large cities look like here. Huanchaco is a little seaside resort and fishing village, said to be Peru´s best beach, quiet in the off-season and even closer to the sites we want to see.

People come to the north coast of Peru for the beaches, especially surfing. The season ends in mid-April; this is the beginning of winter. That´s perfect for us. We´re not beach people but we love the ocean in autumn or winter. We´re staying a few days for R&R: ruins and relaxation.

Our cab from the airport was our first truly nasty experience with people in Peru. (I´m not counting Peru Rail or Peru Bus as a person.) Before we even left the airport, the driver became menacing, telling us we had to pay double the agreed-upon price "because you have money", and demanding we pay up-front. We grabbed our luggage and hustled out of the cab, over his protestations that no, amigos, it´s ok, the first price is enough.

In the long line of cabs waiting to leave the airport, we spotted one without passengers. The young driver warmly welcomed us to Trujillo and made funny conversation with me on the way to Huanchaco. He told us (en español), that some drivers will raise the price when they hear you speak English, but he does not, because he believes all people are the same. You know I´m happy now. Also, he says, the world will turn, and they will get theirs. Ah yes. If only.

The hotel we chose from the guidebook turned out to be great. It´s a 10-minute walk out of town, along the main street, which runs right along the beach. The hotel is across the road from the beach, with rooms built on terraces. Our room has a full ocean view, and a little front patio with a plastic table and chairs. Below, there´s a pool surrounded by a tropical garden, a big hutch where some parrots live, a welcoming staff (including a lavanderia, which we were desperate for), and a beautiful, blind German Shepherd. As it´s off-season and we´re staying several nights, we got a room with a view at the price of one without.

After arriving, we walked into town and had dinner at a good restaurant. Finally, ceviche! Ceviche (pronounced seh-vee-chay or seh-bee-chay) is the best-known Peruvian food: marinated seafood. It´s not quite sushi, as the acidic marinate "cooks" the fish, but it´s not cooked with heat.

I love seafood, and I was dying to eat this, but I was waiting until we were on the coast, and also waiting for a place that looked clean and healthy. Amazingly, we have seen ceviche sold from buckets - the kind that once held cement or gravel - in the hot sun. No gracias, I don´t need to report on the state of Peruvian hospitals, or come home with permanent liver damage. So finally, last night, a big plate of ceviche and a bottle of Chilean wine, then another bottle on our little patio. Ahhh.

This morning we walked into the little town in search of an internet shop. It looks like an off-season seaside and fishing town anywhere. The beachside outdoor bars are closed for the season, but dozens of little shops and restaurants are open with discounted prices. There are some huge, gorgeous homes right on the main drag, overlooking the water, that appear to be locked up, undoubtedly beach homes. They are the first signs of wealth we´ve seen in Peru.

In the shallow water near the beach, women with nets are wading in the water, gathering shellfish; some gatherers wear wet suits and snorkels. The town is known for its totora, cigar-shaped reed boats which look a little like the ones we saw on Lake Titicaca. These, however, are hollow, and ridden high in the water, using a double-sided paddle, somewhat like a kayak. Because the fishermen ride on the boats rather than in them, the boats are called caballitos, little horses. People have been fishing from these boats for at least 2,500 years. We see them stacked up, vertically, on the beach. Men sit on the sea wall repairing their nets.

This is a quiet, easy-going town, just what we needed. Today we´re just hanging. Tomorrow we´ll visit the sites of Chan Chan, and El Huaca del Sol y la Luna.

* * * *

Back in our home and native land, Cody is having a grand time, going on hikes, having play dates and in general getting tons of attention and exercise. Hooray for Ellen the Dogsitter!

ica

temperature: 24 C / 74 F
elevation: 420 m / 1,378 f

Our hotel in Ica was a fairly long taxi ride from the bus station, out of the centre of town. On the way there, we passed an enormous, pyramidal-shaped sand dune. The driver told us the name of the dune, and said it´s the only one in the middle of town. The others are outside a posh neighbourhood called Las Dunas, where our hotel is located.

As we approach (through gates), these giant dunes loom behind the plantation-style homes. We can see the tiny silhouetttes of people climbing their steep slopes. The dunes are enormous sand mountains. Having climbed smaller (although still quite large) sand dunes in Oregon, I can´t imagine making it to the top of these. The way down is sand-boarding. Definitely not an Allan and Laura activity.

The hotel in Ica had a large courtyard pool, ringed with palm trees and tables, and a small, very basic room. Ica is always sunny and warm, and we should have been relaxing on the patio with Pisco Sours or Cuba Libres. Too bad it´s off-season. The bar is closed, the kitchen is only serving chicken, and our choices are cervezas or agua. (I´m not keen on Peruvian beer. Thin and tasteless, it would never cut it in Canada.) Plus we have to take a taxi into town and back to get money.

Ah, well. A hot shower, a decent meal and a bed that wasn´t moving went a long way. It wasn´t the evening we had hoped for, but it was enough.

We realized we´re getting overcharged for taxis all over the place, drivers asking 7 soles for a ride the hotel owner says costs 3, plus if they carry our bags (which they all insist on doing), I tip over the 7. However, these large differences to Peruanos are very little to us, where 3.3 soles is about US $1.00. I keep saying I´m going to scale back my tipping, but I never do. It means so much more to the driver than it does to me.

After breakfast at the hotel, we took a taxi to the bus, this time a regular local bus, to Lima, a four-hour trip. They show a movie, first at blasting volume, then after I begged, at a lower volume with subtitles. Spanish dubbing, Spanish subtitles, a soccer movie, so trite and predictable we understood it all.

On the way out of town, we pass more enormous dunes, like a mountain range made of sand. At every stop, women selling food and drink board the bus, and men selling newspapers.

It´s funny to think that a couple of days ago, we drove down a dirt road, where women in embroidered dresses and hats were herding goats with a stick, carrying their bundles tied in shawls on their backs, women who live in villages with little or no electricity. Here on the coast, everyone looks like people do in busy, working-class cities everywhere. The traffic is insane, most people carry cell phones, they wear jeans, carry backpacks. The highlands is a world where time has all but stood still. Yet tourists visit, and use the internet while they´re there.

From the bus, on the Panamericana, we see the coastal desert - flat sand, only occasionally punctuated by green fields where there is irrigation. There is almost no rainfall here, but the air is foggy and misty.

At the bus station, a driver is waiting with our names on a sign, and we struggle to make conversation on the 40-minute drive to the airport. I always sit in the front. My Spanish has improved since I´m here, but just enough to frustrate me that I can´t converse more fluently. This driver spoke slowly and clearly, and I did well, but it´s still very small talk.

nazca

First, a note I forgot, something great that Carmen (our Colca Canyon guide) told us.

We were hiking on that tiny trail, looking at remote villages on the opposite side of the canyon. The villages have no electricity or running water, but Carmen said all the people there vote. Traders travel to the villages and bring back newspapers, which they post on the walls of the town squares. People who can read announce the news for those who can´t. On election day, tables are set up in the one-room school house. Turnout is massive.

Peru has many incentives to encourage voting; it becomes difficult and expensive not to vote. Political graffiti for the recent election and the upcoming runoff is everywhere. I wish my Spanish was good enough to speak with people about this. Alas.

* * * *

temperature: 24 C / 74 F
elevation: 588 m / 1,929 f

This was the crunch part of thetrip, the long travel days we opted for (endured? nah, too strong) in order to see the Nazca Lines. Allan was somewhat disappointed in them, though still glad we went. I was thoroughly impressed, and thrilled to have seen them.

We easily could have flown from Arequipa in the south to Trujillo in the north, changing planes in Lima, and saved a lot of time. But when we planned this trip, we both agreed it was ridiculous to be so close to Nazca, an ancient phenomenon unique in all the world, and not see them on account of some travel inconvenience. And so: The Schlep.

Allan was sick on our last day in Arequipa, so that didn´t help. His illness (gone now) did give me the opportunity to spend some time alone in the town, where I learned two things. First, how women walking around without men are treated here, and second, how the pharmacies work. The former, disgusting, not unlike Italy, Mexico, or for that matter, certain neighbourhoods in New York City.

The latter, as in many countries, pharmacists can dispense drugs without a prescription from a doctor. We have gone into farmacias before, to buy aspirin or lip balm. But in this case, I described Allan´s symptoms, the druggist asked questions, and then dispensed what would be prescription drugs in the US or Canada - but only a small amount. He said if mi esposo was not better when those drugs were finished, we should see a doctor. He was kind and efficient, very professional. Hooray for Inka Farma.

Because Allan wasn´t feeling well, we spent our last day in Arequipa, after the monastery tour, mainly waiting in the open courtyard of our hotel. Arequipa´s thick stone walls (earthquake protection) and trees keep the courtyards cool even in the mid-day heat. It´s always hot and sunny in Arequipa.

The afternoon and evening dragged, but eventually we took a taxi to the Terrepuerta (cool name - there are aeropuertas for planes and terrepuertas for buses), for the overnight bus to Nazca.

This leg of our journey, including our flight over Nazca and our hotel in Ica, was arranged by the Arequipa travel agent. The logistics are somewhat complicated and their fees are miniscule, so I recommend it if you travel independently, i.e. without a group. It´s a 10-hour bus trip on the Panamericana, and best accomplished at night on a sleeper bus.

We paid quite a bit extra for this sleeper bus, but if you have to spend the night on a bus, at least you can put your feet up and recline, right? But once again, we find that paying for supposedly "first class" travel in this country is a complete waste. The bus company put everyone on the cheaper bus. We figure there weren´t enough passengers (off season) to fill a sleeper bus, so they pocketed our money and stuck us all on the cheap bus.

About 10 other passengers were similarly disappointed - and angry. We found empty seats, so at least we had two seats each and could stretch out a bit. It also took a passenger revolt - led by our Redsock - to get them to turn off the DVD player, showing a movie, with volume, no headphones, that no one wanted to see.

So, 10 hours on a bus, semi-sleeping, mostly just resting. We arrived in Nazca tired and annoyed, but also determined to set the experience aside, not dwell on it, and to enjoy the unique experience of the day.

At Nazca, agents were meeting their assigned tourists at the bus and ferrying people into town, where they check your luggage and tell you what time you fly. Then it´s back in the van to the airstrips, one after the next, each with cheesy souvenir shop and snack bar.

Everyone watched a video about "the mystery of the lines," as it´s always called, which was somewhat informative and somewhat unintentionally hilarious. Then they called us and one other woman for our flight.

We had paid for a longer flight that would cover the Palpa Geoglyphs in addition to the Nazca Lines. For the Nazca Lines alone, the flight is only 30 minutes; the Palpa figures give you another 30 minutes in the air. Too short either way, but more is better.

The plane was a four-seater - the pilot and the other tourist (an American woman with a Southern accent) in the front, us in the back. The pilot told us to watch the wingtip, that he would point it at the figure.

The ground below was desert - spare, brown, sand and rock - empty space. The pilot would say, "On the right, in 10, ´the condor,´ in 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1," and then bank sharply. And there in the middle of the desert, we would see the huge, unmistakable figure of a bird on the slope of a brown hill.

The figures are huge, some 180 or 130 metres long, and only visible from the sky. In fact, they were only discovered by the modern world in the 1920s, when aviators first flew over Peru´s coastal desert. This gave rise to the silly stories about their origins. If you´re around our age, you may remember the "Chariots of the Gods" nonsense. Hey, primitive peoples couldn´t have planned and built such wonders themselves, right? Bah.

After we saw a figure, the pilot would say, "And now, to the left," then circle and bank so the passenger on the left side, which happened to be me, would get a better view. When the plane flew straight and level, it was fine - lovely. But when it circled and tipped, our stomachs would rise and fall, sometimes alarmingly. (We were given barf bags when we got in the plane, and several people in Arequipa warned us not to eat breakfast before the flight. Good advice.)

After a while, it got so I dreaded the words "And now, to the left...", knowing my stomach was about to somersault. I felt like saying, That´s ok, I can see out of the right window... A few times I thought I would lose it, but all three passengers hung on, no bags needed.

In total, we saw about 20 shapes of the 70-plus that exist, plus many lines, angles and geometric shapes made by the same people. The figures are astonishing. Everytime one would appear, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I would gasp.

It was over too soon, anticlimatic in that sense, but still unique and exciting. It wasn´t the up-close experience of Machu Picchu, where you feel the presence of the builders, but it was something I´ll never forget nonetheless. My favourites were the monkey, the condor, and of course, the dog. For more information about the Nazca Lines, do Google, and Google Images should be good, too.

Back in the dusty village of Nazca, we had several hours before our bus left for Ica, two hours further up the coast. There are a few other things to see in the Nazca area, but I got the feeling it would be a long, dusty trip into the desert to see a pile of bones or a stone aqueduct, with no context and no explanation, then back in the van. (Strange that tourism is undeveloped around the Lines. I wonder what it will look like in 10 years.)

There´s one decent hotel in Nazca, with a courtyard pool and a bar, where many people hang out after their flight, but Nazca itself is a few blocks long, consisting mostly of shlocky souvenir stores and restaurants. Ica is supposed to be more pleasant. The idea was to eat and drink in a nice hotel in Ica, while cutting some travel time off the next day´s trek. It kind of worked and kind of didn´t.

* * * *

While waiting for our bus to Ica, we spoke to the local travel agent, trying to get some compensation for our non-sleeper-bus trip, for which we paid first class. Everything is cash only here (some businesses have Visa signs in the window, but won´t accept credit cards anyway), so there´s no way to get your money back. We were trying for a free bus trip later in our journey, and maybe a lift to the airport in Lima.

The Nazca travel agent couldn´t call Arequipa (imagine a travel agent who can´t make long-distance calls!) but he emailed and asked the Arequipa agent to call us. Both agents tried to suggest we got on the wrong bus, but when we explained the situation, they were sympathetic, especially to the idea of paying twice as much for nothing.

The Arequipa agent asked me to email her so she´d have something in writing, and said she´ll start using the competitor bus company, fully appreciating how bad this could be for her reputation.

Eventually I negotiated a free bus ticket from Ica to Lima, and a taxi waiting to take us to the Lima airport. The taxi was at our own expense, but with the mad crush of taxis at every stop, an arranged transport is very nice.

Aerial photos of the Nazca lines here.

5.07.2006

arequipa, day three

This morning we went to the biggest attraction in Arequipa, Monasterio de Santa Catalina. It´s a huge compound, a walled city within a city, with gorgeous colonial-style architecture, colours and plants inside. In some courtyards, the walls painted bright blue, bright red flowers in the center, there is a view of a snow-covered volcano in the distance.

This monastery has a bizarre history. Wealthy Europeans would send their daughters there for a high fee - the greater the donation, the posher the girl´s living quarters would be. These Dominican nuns were not allowed outside the convent, but each had her own lavishly appointed home, plus female slaves. The slaves had to follow all the convent rules, but were not allowed to become nuns.

This went on for about 300 years, until Rome sent a real Dominican nun to clean up their act. The slaves were freed, and given the option to remain as part of the order if they chose. The privileged nuns were put into dormitories and made to do their own cooking and cleaning, which, as you might imagine, was quite a shock. And the convent was ordered to help the poor people in the surrounding town, and in general, do what real Dominican nuns do.

The convent is still active today, the nuns living in the 30% of the compound not open to tourists.

Now we´re bumming around Arequipa until it´s time for our overnight bus for Nazca. It´s gorgeous weather here - warm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky - which we hear is the case every day, for 11 months. It would be perfect if it weren´t for those earthquakes.

See you from the other side of the Nazca lines.

A few photos of Arequipa and the monastery here.

colca canyon trip, day two

First, two notes. A commenter asked me to describe the local corn. I´m not completely sure what he´s thinking of, because we´ve seen so many varities of corn. There´s a very interesting black corn, the kernels are a purple-y black, and it´s used to make juice, chicha (a fermented drink, like beer) and many desserts. Mike in the Middle, please feel free to fill in with your own memories.

Peruvians also eat a lot of quinoa, the very healthy grain that´s only recently becoming known in North America, although any celiac reading will know it well. In the US and Canada, quinoa (pronounced keen-wa), where it´s used at all, is a side dish, like rice. Here, it´s made into soup, drinks, breakfast cereal (both hot and cold), and many other dishes. The ancient Peruvians were the first people to cultivate quinoa. I hope it catches on more in the north, as it would help the economy here.

By email, someone asked me to describe the folk dancing we saw in Chivay. I don´t know any technical dance terms, but the music was very fast, 2/4 time, and the dancers were bouncing on their toes and twirling a lot. There´s a lot of spinning, making colourful skirts flare out, lots of changing hands and directions - much like folk dancing everywhere.

* * * *

On Saturday, we woke up very early, had breakfast with our guide (the guides and drivers stay in the same hotels at no charge), and were in the truck by 6:00 a.m. Every tour does this, as we all have a date with some condors at 8:30.

As we drive out of Chivay on the dirt and gravel road, there are beautiful views of the Colca Valley farms. The farmland extends up the mountain slopes, using 900-year-old terraces. Because of the terraces, there are differences in elevation and temperature on the same farm, so farmers can grow varied crops.

However, the terraces can´t support machinery - the farms can only be worked by hand, with simple hand tools. As young people leave the area for larger towns and cities, there are fewer farmers to support the local economy. Tourism, relatively new to the area, helps pick up the slack, but it doesn´t literally put food on the table. One potential solution is local institutes that teach tourism, restaurant and hotel management, and agricultural engineering, so young people can get an education and still have the option to stay in the Valley.

On the way up the mountains, we see pre-Incan burial sites that have been exposed by landslides and tremors. These must have been well-hidden, because they were not destroyed by the Spanish priests who forbid the traditional death rituals.

We also see mapas de piedras, stone maps, which the Incas used to map out their irrigation and terracing systems. The maps are scale models of the systems cut into the valley. Modern engineers have studied them, compared them to what was built, and pronounced them perfect.

It´s a heavily seismic area, prone to tremors, landslides, rock slides and full-blown earthquakes. The area got electricity, running water, and high schools only in the 1970s. There are no paved roads. Fields are separated by stone walls, often with cacti growing on the tops of the walls, for extra protection against dogs and foxes.

We drive about two hours, stopping a few times for amazing views of the Colca Valley, then arrive at La Cruz del Condor, Condor´s Cross. Tourist buses and vans are filling a small parking lot, and everyone is lining up on a stone ledge, waiting for the birds. The ubiquitous selling women (present at every rest stop and scenic lookout) are out in full force, many of them selling film, batteries, water and bananas (food tourists can eat) alongside the sweaters, fabrics and hats.

The view of the Colca Canyon from here is absolutely amazing. At 3,269 metres (10,725 feet), Colca is the deepest canyon in the world. The second-deepest is just behind it, Catahausi. Both are about twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, but they are narrow, with sheer rock faces. It´s a stunning sight - and then the birds appear.

The Giant Andean Condors, protected in Peru, begin to soar daily around 8:30 a.m. They´re not searching for food, they´re simply flying. At any time, 5 or 6 or even 10 or 12 of these massive birds are soaring in the air just in front of us, sometimes directly over our heads. Their wingspans reach 3 metres. They never flap their wings, only soar on warm air currents, which the locals call termales, or thermals. They are a kind of vulture, so they look similar to vultures you may have seen, or seen pictures of.

They soar, and bank, and glide with seemingly no effort. The tips of their wings are spread, like fingers, and sometimes their feet hang down for a little extra drag. When a few perch on some nearby rocks, we get a really good view. They´re not particularly beautiful birds - until they fly.

The show lasts almost an hour. We stare into the sky, and then one suddenly appears, and then another and another, four or five of them diving, banking, gliding, then they disappear out of view, and we wait, and then more appear, the stark face of the opposite canyon wall always as a backdrop.

Whew. Awesome. Worth the trip, worth the tourist buses, worth the 4:45 a.m. wake-up call, and twice that.

A couple of Andean Condor facts. Riding air currents, they fly from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean, fill their gullets with carrion, and fly back in a single day. They are monogamous and mate for life - if a mate dies, the suriviving bird lives alone for the rest of its life. Their chicks stay in the nest and are fed by both parents for 8 months. More good Condor info here from Wikipedia.

When the birds leave, Carmen takes Allan and I on a little hike. We follow a narrow path that runs alongside a narrow canal. The canal is part of an aqueduct system that is still being built. The path and canal are themselves on a wide ledge or terrace. Below us are solitary farms and farmhouses, and across is the other side of the canyon. It´s quiet and so beautiful.

The path is full of flowers, which Carmen tells us about; they all have local uses, for medicine or food. Carmen is collecting an herb that her aunt likes to cook with, so the fragrance follows us as we walk. At one point, our path is blocked by some cows, which an old man drives off the path and onto the slope. He is brown and weather-beaten, and carries a bundle on his back in a brightly striped shawl. Carmen asks him if he speaks Spanish, but he answers in Quechua - then says in Spanish that he speaks all the languages - Quecha, Aymara, Spanish and English. He asks us where we are from and shakes our hands.

On the opposite side of the Canyon, there are tiny isolated villages. They have no electricity or running water. It is a two-day climb from the villages into a town below. One town has a phone, via satellite - when the dam and aqueduct were being built, the company wanted to install a phone in town. One enterprising store owner vied for the spot, and she now sells phone calls for 50 centimos each. Carmen points out each tiny village, far off on the other side of the canyon. Her grandparents live in one of them.

The path is very narrow - sometimes we have to straddle the canal and walk with a foot on each side, and once we crawl under a tunnel. But it´s flat, a treat in this country, and at the end of the trail, Javier is waiting for us in the truck. Now that´s a treat.

We drive back to Chivay for lunch, the dirt road by now very dusty from tourist traffic. The truck crawls down the road, but every so often Javier has to slow down even more, to share the road with a flock of goats, sheep or cows, tended to by women in dazzling tradition dress. Every shepherd and herd is accompanied by a dog, many of whom bark and chase the vehicle, causing Allan and I no end of fright, as it seems they´re about to get caught under a wheel.

After lunch in Chivay - more trout, more quinoa, more potatoes, and this time a bright green mousse made of the fruit of a local cactus - we hit the road. No narration this time, although Carmen assures us that we should ask her any questions that pop into our heads. Javier puts on some Spanish-langauge pop music, and they talk quietly in Spanish in the front as we chat or doze in the back.

The road is dirt and gravel for hours, and even with the windows shut, we all cough from the dust. Again we pass the huge herds of alpacas and llamas, the dogs and the shepherds, the marshes and the birds, the high mountain pass, until finally we reach the paved road, and some hours later, the outskirts of Arequipa.

Condors and other Colca Canyon beauty here.

5.06.2006

colca canyon trip, day one

Our guide and driver picked us up at our hotel on Friday morning. Our guide is Carmen, who speaks beautiful English with a Latino lilt. Our driver is Javier, who speaks very little English and drives a comfy truck, somewhere between a van and an SUV.

As we head into the outskirts of Arequipa, I realize that Carmen´s job is more than just narrating the major sights. She gives us a capsule history of Arequipa - the people, the economy, recent changes. Throughout the trip, she´ll tell us about everything from flora and fauna, to ancient history, to current politics, to local legends. Any facts of note in these entries are attributed to Carmen - that will be easier than repeating "Carmen told us..." 50 times. She attended tourism school for three years, and since graduating has been a regional guide for another five years.

The outskirts of Arequipa were developed when farmers from the highlands fled the guerrilla war between Peruvian police and Peruvian terrorist groups, in which they were caught in the middle, and for which they paid a very high price. In this way, the children of Andean farmers became housekeepers and taxi drivers. It´s a sad story.

Past the outskirts, we drive up and up and up, leaving the paved road for dirt and gravel, climbing in altitude and watching the terrain around us change. In the distance there are snow-covered peaks (which are visible any clear day from Arequipa), which are volcanoes, and the road winds upward, approaching them. The land around is always rocky, scrubby and stark, but the plant life changes from yellowish to very dark green, different types of cacti appear, the mountains become more rugged and loom closer.

We entered a national preserve, the largest of three in Peru, home to Peru´s protected vicuñas. The vicuña is a relative of the llama and alpaca, another camelid, but with even softer and finer wool. It was hunted almost to extinction, and is now protected in Peru, Bolivia and some other countries - and not in others. The animals live on the preserve, and three times a year, local people round them up and shear them. Vicuña wool is so valuable that national police oversee the factories where women process the wool.

As the road climbs upwards, we see herds of alapcas, llamas and sheep, tended to by women or little boy shepherds. Every so often, in the midst of this desert, there is a cool blue lagoon and marshes, not with tall grasses, but full of moss and deep green shrubs. There are herons, ducks, gulls and many varieties of birds that are new to us. Carmen loves to point out all the baby animals, from ducklings to tiny lambs and alpacas.

Animals are everywhere, and we never get tired of looking at them. Some of the alpacas have red ribbons pierced into their ears, bells hanging from their fur, or the babies have red ribbons tied around their necks. These are males, and the red is associated with their fertility.

One time we stop for yet another photo, Carmen shows us a 3,000-year-old plant. It looks like moss, but it´s as hard as stone. It grows a milimetre a year.

As we approach the mountain pass that will begin our descent, the land is very rocky, like a vast rock farm, and vertical piles of rocks - the kind you see around Lake Ontario (and probably many other places in Canada and elsewhere) - are growing more and more abundant. Finally, there are just hundreds and hundreds of piles of rocks, as far as you can see, on both sides of the road. These are offerings to Pachamama, the Earth Mother, as we near a place of her power.

By this time the scenery is breathtaking: massive canyons, snow-capped mountains. We feel tiny and awed.

The pass is at 4,910 metres, or 16,300 feet. From the lookout (restaurant, souvenir shop), you are surrounded by the region´s 7 volcanoes, as well as the Andes. The Andes, of course, run north-south; the volcanoes form an east-west band across them. Some of the volcanoes are dormant, others extinct, and a few are active. We can see the mountain that is the origin of the mighty Amazon River.

At one rest stop, Carmen buys coca leaves and demonstrates how to prepare them for chewing, by removing the stems and wrapping a dozen or more leaves around a catalyzer. People have preferences for various catalyzers; the one Carmen buys is made of bananas.

The chew is a little bitter, Allan doesn´t like it, but it brings a really pleasant numb sensation to my mouth and throat. Carmen tells us about all the many properties local people use it for, but meanwhile I just want another chew. There are coca cookies here, coca candies, coca tea - everything to help the local farmers earn a living outside the drug dealers. It´s legal for us to bring home coca candy or cookies, but not the leaves, including in tea bags.

After the mountain pass, we wind downhill, down, down, down, to a town called Chivay, population 5,000. We have lunch in a tourist restaurant, full of groups, but the food is very good and everyone is so nice to us, it´s hard to care about that. I had more Ariqupeñan food, ocopo (the cold potato in sauce) and trucha, the rainbow trout that is very plentiful here.

Chivay has a little central plaza, a little market, an abundance of dogs on the dusty streets, and a few tourist restaurants and hotels. In other words, it looks like every town we see. The kids are sweet and shy and want their pictures taken, the men are weather-beaten and don´t speak to tourists.

The traditional dress of women in this region is unique: hat, blouse, vest, two skirts, plus sash, all white and covered with incredibly elaborate embroidery, including the hat. The outfits are dizzingly colourful and intricate. Almost all the women wear them, as do the little girls. Only the teenage girls don´t want to wear the traditional dress, but if they stay in the valley, they will probably don them again, eventually.

In the market, the women are selling everything under the sun, all bearing their trademark embroidery. As they sit in their stalls, they work on ancient Singer machines, the work no longer done by hand. Some machines are electric, others are run by a foot-pedal.

Next we head to the baños termales, the hot baths supplied by natural springs, just outside the main town. When it leaves its source, the water is 85 degrees Celsius, and the baths are between 30 and 45 degrees. They open daily at 4:30 a.m.; locals load into taxis for a soak before they start their day.

In the late afternoon, however, it´s all tourists. Allan and I didn´t pack swimsuits, since we never swim on vacation, so it´s shorts and wet t-shirt look for me. There are large groups of 20-something backpackers, and we run into a guy who was on our boat to the Islas Flotantes in Puno. (He actually appeared while I was writing this. We expect to see him again outside Nazca.)

I wasn´t overly excited about the baths, but two Cuba Libres later, I´ve relaxed into the spirit of the thing. That´s a rum and coke with lime, good rum down here, sin helado, of course. The view from the outdoor pool is all mountains, and while we´re melting in the hot water, the sun sets and the moon rises.

On the way back to town, Carmen - having overheard something I said - asks Javier to pull over and kill the headlights. We stand in the middle of the dirt road and stare at the sky.

A starry sky without the lights of a big city is a very rare treat in my life. An incredible moment in the jungle in Mexico (from the thoughtfulness of a driver) was one of the peak travel experiences of my life. So I very much wanted to see the Southern sky at night, and my chances have been decreasing as the trip continues. It is almost always misty on the coast, where we´ll be for the next week. So Carmen knew I wanted to see the stars, and made that possible.

What can I say? It was serene - serene and exciting at the same time. Now I´ve seen the Southern Cross, and another Orion´s belt, and an entirely different sky. I always wanted to do that. I feel really fortunate to be here.

A little later, we went to dinner at another tourist restaurant, this one with music and a dance show. Again, we were skeptical, as we´d much prefer to hear music with locals, but that doesn´t seem possible in this situation. But once again, it was really nice. The food was great - I tried something called cauche de quecho, a cheese, potato and onion soup, and sipped a hot, spiced Pisco drink called camarito. The music was the usual drill: four dark-haired men wearing ponchos, playing various stringed instruments, percussion and wooden pipes. They were good, although I don´t know why it´s necessary to hear El Condor Pasa more than once a day.

A young man and woman gave a demonstration of various regional dances in various regional costumes. They were fun and interesting, especially as it included cross-dressing, simulated sex, and S&M.

One dance re-enacts a young couple´s solution to the girl´s father decress that his daughter is too young to dance with a boy: the boy dresses as a girl. In another dance, the boy eats a poison fruit, and the girl must try everything to wake him - everything. This includes a not-so-gentle whipping, and covering his face with her skirts. Carmen told us the whipping is Andean love, but I didn´t feel I should press for an explanation.

The dancing couple are really good, and part of their act is to invite people from the audience to join the dance. Now you know me, I´m usually up for anything, and Allan is generally shy and reserved. So how is it he was more willing than me? I danced a little, but he was really into it, including a stint with the poison fruit, and he and Carmen wore themselves out on the finale, while Javier and I laughed ourselves silly. It was great - hilarious.

Day two will be much shorter, but more exciting. One word: Condors.

Photos from Colca Canyon, day one, here.

5.04.2006

arequipa, day two

We had a really nice day today, although we didn´t do that much, it was relaxing, enjoyable and enlightening.

First of all, at this altitude, I am sleeping and don´t wake up with a pounding headache, and that alone is cause for joy. In the morning we arranged the next few days of our trip with the help of a local travel agent. They are thick on the ground in every town we´ve been to, and the easiest way to arrange local transport and tours.

The prices for a small group trip to the nearby canyon country are downright cheap. A two-day tour, including hotel and breakfast, and an English-speaking guide, for US $25? How does anyone turn a profit at those prices? The price was so low, and our budget doing so well, that we asked about a private trip, and it turned out to be affordable. So we booked both a private trip to the canyons, as well as the next leg of our journey, to Nazca, to see the famous Nazca lines, then spend the night in Ica, on the coast.

Next, at a corner store, a woman sold us a used cardboard box and helped us tape it up, taking great care so the sweaters, fabric and other gifts might have a safe journey to Canada. At the post office, we proved we are not transporting anything illegal, then paid a large pile of soles to ship our package. But we´re very glad to free up room and lose any potential packing troubles.

We wandered over to the main square, yet another Plaza de Armas, as it has been called in every city or town we´ve visited. It´s strikingly beautiful, landscaped with flowers and palm trees, filled with pigeons (identical to the ones in New York and Toronto), and lined with an enormous Catedral in the sillar style, a white volcanic rock. The Catedral de Arequipa is the only one in Peru to take up an entire side of a plaza, and is one of a very few basilicas authorized to fly the Vatican flag. It´s almost monumental in size and appearance, with Corinthian columns and huge arches.

The restaurant hawkers, vendors and beggars aren´t quite as insistent and numerous here as they are in Cuzco, but they are still ominpresent. It amazes me how quickly my feelings towards them changed from pity to annoyance. There are just so many of them, and if you engage with any of them, others descend in a flock. No one takes no for an answer, they push papers and hands in your face, and it doesn´t feel particularly safe.

In a little snack lunch, we tried a local specialty that we´d read of: papas rellenos, or stuffed potatoes. The potatoes are soft, like mashed potatoes, with a crispy crust, and stuffed with various things, like cheese, spicy ground beef or bits of hard-boiled eggs. Yu-um.

In the afternoon we saw one of the most fascinating things we´ve seen on this trip so far.

In 1995, after a nearby volcano erupted, some mountain climbers discovered the wonderfully preserved remains of a 13-year-old girl. More than 500 years ago, this Incan girl, accompanied by priests, had trekked from Cuzco, and climbed a mountain, where she was offered to the gods.

She was surrounded with treasures, wrapped carefully in valuable clothing, and buried on the mountain, where the ice preserved her for centuries. The volcanic eruption melted the snow, and her grave and her body were suddenly exposed.

The museum that houses the mummy is very well done, and must be a highlight of a trip to southern Peru. We saw a National Geographic -produced film about the discovery, what the sacrifice probably meant to the Incas, and the amazing wealth of knowledge the mummy yielded. Volunteer guides who are part of the perservation work give tours in every conceivable language.

The artifacts found buried with the mummy were incredibly well preserved; there was a piece of fabric that could be sold in Arequipa tomorrow, it was that brightly coloured. The faces on the figurines look exactly like the people we saw all around Cuzco and Puno. The mountain the mummy was found on is as high as, for example, Denali (Mt. McKinley in Alaska). People first climbed Denali in the early part of the 20th Century. The Incas climbed these volcanos 600 years ago. Wearing sandals.

The mummy herself has a full set of teeth, long hair, long fingers that must have been very beautiful, and she is wrapped, in semi-fetal position, in a special shawl held together with a ceremonial pin. She is only on display from May to August, so we are very lucky indeed: this year´s display began only four days ago.

Three other mummies were found in the area, all children. The Incas didn´t practice human sacrifice on a regular basis, but in very difficult times of dangerous volcanic activity or drought, they tried to give their mountain gods something very special in exchange for their mercy and protection. There is evidence that these sacrificed children were raised from birth in special conditions, that they might possibly be sacrificed if needed. Some 50 mummies have been found in the region, in Argentina, Peru, Chil and Ecuador, which were all part of the Incan empire.

The exhibit was positively fascinating. It made the Incas real to me in a new way.

If you´re interested, the museum´s website is here. You can also google something like "Juanita mummy Arequipa Peru" and get a lot of good info. (The mummy was dubbed Juanita, in a female and Spanish version of the first name of the discoverer, Johann Reinhard.) There´s a Wiki entry about it here.

Tonight we´re having Argentinian steaks for dinner. Peruvian food is interesting, but so far the very best food has been thin-crust, wood-fired oven pizza. Go figure.

Our guide for the canyons picks us up at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. We´ll take just our backpacks, and leave our suitcases in the hotel (La Casa de Melgar) in Arequipa, then stay there again when we return on Saturday night. My next entry will either be Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Whoever is reading this, I thank you, and I hope I´m not boring you all to pieces. Even if there are only 2 or 3 people reading now, I´m so enjoying writing this travel diary, that it´s worth it for me alone.

5.03.2006

arequipa

internet shop near Plaza de Armas, Arequipa
temperature: 12 C / 54 F
elevation: 2,520 m / 8,268 f

Lets see if I can do this after two glasses of wine, with no notes, in an internet cafe where salsa is blasting, people are partying, and sirens and honking horns from the street are 2 metres away. I cant find an apostrophe on this keyboard, so... so therell be no apostrophes. My punctuation-happy self apologizes.

Today we hung around Puno in the morning, first taking a tri-clos pedaled cab to one market, then another cab to second market. These were not handicraft markets for tourists, they are the markets where everyone in the area shops.

The first was a rabbit-warren of stalls. Vendors were unlocking and setting up shop when we got there. It was organized in "districts," clusters of stalls selling similar items, everything from clothes and shoes, to clock repairs and electronics, CDs and baseball caps. A few older men were tailoring on old Singers that would sell as expensive antiques in NYC. In the traditional version of the food court, women were slicing meat off bones and boiling soup.

Indeed, it was really a tradition version of a mall, or (more accurately) the mall is the modern market. After this minor epiphany, I asked Allan, so why do I hate malls and love this place? He knew immediately: because its not a bunch of chain stores. Ah, right. Its not homogenized, its not uniform. Its individual people making their livings by supplying other people, people just like them, with what they need. No one is trying to get you to buy what you dont need, but everything you need is available, from your neighbour.

In the Supermercado Central, there were sections for meat and chicken - all sitting out in the open air (although the area seemed to be air conditioned a bit, which would seem to be a great innovation), fruits, produce, grains and, of course, potatoes as far as the eye could see. Weve learned that Peru produces 5,000 varieties of potatoes, with the area around Puno contributing 300 of their own. Our guide to Sillustani said what pasta is to Italy and beer is to Germany, the potato is to Peru. No wonder I like this country.

After two markets, we had had our fill, and thought we would just kill time until our ride to the airport. But wait, didnt we want to buy sweaters, as gifts...? Just a quick look. Oh yeah, a quick look.

How much would 100% alpaca sweaters made in Peru cost in Toronto? In New York? Factor in fine workmanship, beautiful designs. Meltingly soft wool. Buy in quantity, get a discount despite protestations. A sack of sweaters, which we will mail home tomorrow. US $10 each.

A man with a van picked us up at our hotel, then drove around town soliciting passengers. We were the only tourists in the van. One Punoista was going, like us, to the Juliaca airport, the rest were dropped off en route. Another drive though the
altiplano, a last look at the sheep and alpacas grazing, the women in hats and bright shawls selling bottled water and Inca Kola, then into the crazy town of Juliaca, which seems to be part maket and part garbage dump.

At the airport, we saw at least three groups we had seen in Cuzco or Machu Picchu, and an asshole (sorry, theres no other word for people like him) who harrassed us in the train station Puno. On line waiting to check in, Allan noticed the couple behind us were holding Canadian passports. I ventured, "You guys are Canadian?" They lit up. I explained our US passports, and they were even more interested. Theyre from Toronto, she grew up in Brampton and he in Mississauga... And just now, after dinner and on our way to the internet shop, we saw them having dinner on the balcony of a cafe. Small world, this tourist circuit.

The flight from Puno to Juliaca was only 30 minutes over the mountains. On the way, we chose a hotel to try, took a taxi there, and there were rooms available for way under our budget. We think that will be the case for the rest of the trip. Its a huge, rambling, colonial home; we have a large room with a private bathroom, including breakfast, for US $30.

Tomorrow well spend the day in Arequipa, and also arrange our two-day trip to the Canyon Country outside the city. The tours are so incredibly cheap, were thinking we might try to negotiate a private trip, rather than go with a small group in a van. Well see.

5.02.2006

puno, day two

Well, there´s always something that doesn´t work out when you´re traveling. In my experience, every trip has one disappointment, something you had been hoping to do that turns out to be closed, or off-season, or covered in tarp. For this trip, it´s Isla Taquile.

The island, an inhabitated island on Lake Titicaca, is 4-5 hours each way from Puno. Tourists leave first thing in the morning, run around the island for two hours (which includes a 30-minute climb just to enter), then return by the same boat. Sounds dreadful to us. The appealing thing is to take the boat out, but after most tourists leave, stay. The island is said to be quiet and peaceful, with scattered Inca ruins. You can spend the day exploring, then stay with a local family. It´s cold and heat is minimal, but you sleep under alpaca blankets. I was looking forward to seeing the southern sky from the Lake, where the alititude makes everything sharper and brighter.

We couldn´t do it. The limited boat departures don´t correspond with our flight to Arequipa. It would have required either massive rushing and stress or many more days in this area, neither a good option. If any of you ever get to spend the night on Isla Taquile, I would appreciate a report.

So, with this ruled out, we suddenly had a lot more time. This morning we took care of a few business-y things: the farmacia, dropping our dirty clothes at the lavanderia, going to the bank and the post office, and arranging transport to the airport tomorrow. It´s actually fun to do this stuff in another country and another language, when things are going smoothly, which today they were.

Next, we took a ride with a tri-clo, the three-wheeled pedaled taxis that are very common here. We see locals taking them all the time, especially uphill when they have packages. A very friendly young man rode us to the Lake, all downhill, kind of fun. At the dock, we were immediately approached by a man arranging trips to Las Islas Flotantes, the Floating Islands. People cover ground here trying to nab you before you reach the stalls where other people are selling the same thing.

We arranged the little trip, and boarded a boat with a few other Peruanos (that´s Spanish for Peruvian, eh?), and a young German couple who spoke Spanish well. The part of Lake Titicaca that you see from Puno, Puno Bay, is a tiny portion. The vast blue lake lies beyond the islands.

Soon after leaving, we started seeing the reeds that are the staple of life for the Uros people. That is, we saw them growing out of the lake. This did not lessen our astonishment when, about 30 minutes later, we reached the Floating Islands.

These islands are completely human-made. They are made entirely of reeds. On them, there are reed houses, where families of Uros people live. They build and use reed boats, shaped like canoes, which can hold up to 20 people and last about a year. They fish and trap birds (mostly to eat, only a tiny portion is sold), grow potatoes in the shallow dirt near the reeds´ roots, and make handicrafts to sell to tourists. There is also a small admission fee to enter the islands, which supports their cooperative life. They speak the Aymara language, which is only found in the Lake Titicaca region.

We were absolutely amazed. The reed ground has a little spring in it, a little give when you step down. A Spanish-speaking resident of the islands gave a very good talk, but he didn´t speak English. I asked him to speak slowly, and understood a good 80% of what he said, then translated for Allan - my first time as an interpreter! The young German man was able to translate a few questions of mine, and although we´d like more information (Googling and reading when we´re home, for sure), we got a decent background.

Then we all boarded a reed boat for a trip to another Floating Island. The islands all have observation towers - the baskets made of reeds, but the ladder and legs made of wood - so you can climb up and get a really cool view.

The tour included three islands, and then we boarded the larger boat and returned to the dock. Great stuff.

At the dock, we were met by the same tour broker, who wanted to book our afternoon. There are some minor ruins outside of Puno, which we hadn´t planned to see, thinking we´d be on the Lake. But with more time, it seemed like a good idea.

After that, we took another tri-clos, this one uphill. The young driver asked us lots of questions, and knew a fair amount about Canada. He told us he is studying to be a tour guide - he goes to class in the morning then drives his cab in the afternoon. His first languages are Aymara and Quechua, the language of the Incas. He is also fluent in Spanish, speaks beautiful English, and is learning French and Italian. Plus he was driving us uphill, so we paid him double, and were glad for the experience. (And when I say paid him double, it´s still dirt cheap.)

Then we went for lunch and had kind of a bad experience.

Near our hotel are several small, simple restaurants that clearly cater almost exclusively to locals. They have a menu del dia, very simple, and are very low cost. We always enjoy eating where local people do, wherever we are, and naturally wanted to do the same here. We don´t do this to save money, we do it for the experience, and the authenticity, and to get away from hordes of tourists.

At the first restaurant, heads turned, and people stared - no, glared - at us. There were no free tables, but as I was looking around to see if we could sit, at least a dozen people were staring at us.

At the next restaurant, we saw a free table and sat down. The owner came over to the table, gruffly asked, "Dos menus?" and we were served. Lunch was tasty and simple - corn soup, fried chicken with potatoes and rice, and fruit juice. While we were eating, a woman at another table was staring daggers at me. She looked seriously angry. As we got up to leave - you pay at a cashier in the front - she also got up, and was clearly trying to meet me at the front desk.

Then an unfortunate thing happened, and through my own ignorance I made the situation worse. Prices in Peru are written like this: S/7.00. That is 7 soles - an upper-case S, then a slash, then the number. The menu on the wall said S/2.50. Allan thought the price for lunch might actually be 2.50 soles, which would be less than $1.00. The writing wasn´t completely clear, and, thinking 2.50 was impossible, I thought it must be 12.50. So, thinking our lunch came to 25 soles, I tried to give the owner 3 ten-sole bills. He was clearly annoyed, but was speaking quickly and I couldn´t get what he was saying.

The woman who had been staring at me said very pointedly, "Cinco soles". Then it dawned on us that our meals actually had been 2.50 each. The owner and the woman were both talking, both annoyed, but I didn´t understand them, and flustered, I paid, and we left.

Immediately afterwards, I wished I had asked the woman what the matter was. I could have made myself understood, and maybe learned something.

The whole thing really bothered me, perhaps more than it should have, but bothered me just the same. Did we overstep some unwritten rule? Were people annoyed because we were eating cheaply when tourists are thought to be rich and can afford more? Or were we simply invading private space? It bothered me more because I don´t know what happened, and also because of that old "what I should have said" feeling we´re all well-acquainted with.

Ah well.

After lunch, at the appointed time, a van picked us up at our hotel. We were in a group of about 10 people, all of whom spoke French and quite decent Spanish. The guide was another young Andean man, fluent in half a dozen languages, including Aymara and Quechua. We rode back into the altiplano, to a place called Sullistani (the double-L in this case is not pronounced as a y, as it usually is in Spanish, but as an L).

On the rocky hills of Sullistani, overlooking Lake Titicaca, are dozens of cylindrical funerary towers, some from the Collas, a pre-Incan people, and others of the Incas. They have been partially destroyed, either by lightning or the Conquistadors, but you can see good examples. Each includes a tiny door, where a body would be placed in the tower, lying in fetal position as the soul went back to Mother Earth. The Incan towers use the same perfect stone work, but in this case, the walls are round.

The site also has some remains of holy temples, oriented to winter solstice - June 21 here. The temples are part of a chain of holy sites that extends from an island on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, all the way to Cuzco.

Our guide was excellent, although he spoke in more detail in Spanish than in English, I think because he is more confident in that language. But he answered many questions, and I worked up some confidence to converse more in Spanish.

* * * *

Altitude sickness is gone for the most part. I didn´t sleep last night, and woke up with a pounding headache, but felt better by late morning. A few times during the day I was light-headed or short of breath, but nothing serious. Thank goodness we suffered through Cuzco and got somewhat acclimated before coming here. I´ve heard that coming from Lima to Puno can be brutal.

Tomorrow we´ll hang around Puno a bit more, then head to the airport for a short flight to Arequipa.

* * * *

Someone asked me about coming into towns without hotel reservations, how that works. Here´s what we did for Puno. On the train on the way down, we looked in our guide book, Lonely Planet Peru, at hotel descriptions in our price range, which Lonely Planet calls mid-range. We picked a few hotels that were nearby each other, then took a cab to our first choice.

That hotel turned out to be full, which surprised us. I asked the desk person if she knew of a hotel that might have vacancies, and she offered to call another place for us. On learning they had a room for us, she got all the information, showed us on a map how to walk there, and wished us a lovely stay in Puno. Is that nice or what. If she hadn´t done that, there were several nearby we would have walked to on our own.

On other trips, we´ve called ahead to the next town, booking a room a day or two in advance. In Ireland, for example, we were driving, and it was very easy to get a calling card, pull up to a phone booth and speak to bed-and-breakfast owners. Here, phone use is more difficult, and the language issue makes it even tougher. But there are taxis at every airport and train station, and always an area where several hotels are clustered, so this method should continue to work.

Did I say taxis at every station? Try a crush of taxis, and hawkers from hotels, people literally trying to take your bags out of your hands to force you to use their service. It´s very annoying. We barrel through the crush, shaking everyone off, get a little farther away where we can breathe, then hail a taxi who is not screaming in our face.

Photos of Puno, the Floating Islands and Sullistani here.

5.01.2006

cody, part two

The insanity continues.

time

You know how you lose track of time when you´re on vacation? I just realized that I missed the April 29 anti-war demo. If anyone marked the day (Granny? Crabbi? Dean G?), and you´d like to tell me a little something about it, or direct me to your posts about it, please do. I hope it was a great day.

puno

internet shop in Puno, on Lake Titicaca
temperature: 10 C / 50 F
elevation: 3,826 m / 12,552 f

After I left you last, we killed a little more time in Aguas Calientes, including my succumbing to having my boots cleaned by a teenage boy. He said, "Professional, no professional in Cuzco, professional only here." How could I resist? This kid was indeed a pro, and with a series of brushes and the requisite Kiwi, and with no small flair and panache, he transformed my filthy boots into shiny as new. Then I shocked him by giving him his asking price, making it quite possibly the most expensive shoe shine in Peru. Later, he spotted us looking for the train station with our luggage, and was quick to the mark, earning yet more soles. I cannot resist such an enterprising young man.

Our train trip back to Cuzco was highly stressful and uncomfortable. First we were bumped to a later train (despite having reservations and hard tickets), and had to kill two more hours at the train station. But that was the least of it. Remind me why I wanted to travel first class on this trip? First of all, it was dark, so the Vistadome was made moot. We were sharing a car with a loud, obnoxious group, and imagine our surprise when we learned they were Canadian! (Allan swears the ringleader had to be an American transplant.)

But the final indignity came when we learned that to Peru Rail, first class only means you are a better mark for sales. Blaring music, bright lights, and the next thing we know, the attendants are putting on a fashion show. I kid you not. They are modeling expensive alpaca clothing for purchase. Allan and I are both pretty sensitive to being trapped with noisy crowds. It was horrifying.

Next came the odors, then the switchbacks, and by the time we reached Cuzco, we were both nauseated and irritated.

But thank goodness for the Hotel Los Niños, who had our same room waiting, along with peace and quiet, and warm smiles. We had a good night´s sleep, a lovely breakfast, and the hotel packed us some sandwiches for the train. My new Spanish: para llevar. To take with us, to go, the idiom, not the verb.

The Vistadome to Aguas Caliente was only slightly more expensive than backpacker class, so we opted for the extra view. But the train south to Puno was a huge price difference: US $107 first class, $17 backpacker. At that price difference, we wouldn´t have considered first class, and when we saw the Peru Rail women applying makeup and cleaning jewelry for their fashion show, we were doubly vindicated. Backpacker class was quiet and comfortable.

Leaving Cuzco to the south, we didn´t see the grinding poverty we had seen to the north. The working-class homes quickly turned to farmland, complete with pigs, chickens, cows, sheep, and dogs, dogs, dogs. We saw dogs all over Cuzco, too, and the life of an urban street dog can´t be a very happy one, but the dogs on the farms look like they´re having a fine time. They don´t appear to be working farm dogs, but are clearly companions to the folks working in the fields. They come in every shape and size, many barking at the train.

We saw people working rocky soil with hoes, walking with bundles of sticks and grasses tied on their bags, or watching their herds in the fields. All the women were in traditional dress: skirts, multi-colored sweaters, the distinctive hat (something like a bowler - google it for a picture), with a long, black braid down their backs. They couldn´t possibly have been dressing up for anyone; this is what they wear to work their farms. The men are in modern clothing, as are the young women. So is this the last generation to wear this costume, or will today´s younger women dress like this when they reach a certain age?

There were also many kids working in the fields, which means they´re not in school - although I think many may have been too young for school, accompanying their mothers or grandmothers in the fields until they´re old enough. Everywhere, kids wave to the passing train with great enthusiasm. Allan takes this responsibility seriously and sticks his hand out the window to wave back.

Many adobe walls were adorned with political graffiti from the last election. We passed a few tiny towns, but they quickly dissolved back into farmland. On both sides of the train, the flat farmland ended sharply at the mountains, so the train was in the center of a valley. The mountains were very dramatic, sometimes bare, sometimes green, sometimes with snow-capped peaks behind them.

Several times on the trip, I could feel the change of altitude as the train climbed mas alta. This train wasn´t fast. That´s an understatement. The train was slow. It was actually saying clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

The one real town we passed through, Canchis, seemed to come to a halt waiting for the train to pass through. Peruvians are celebrating May Day - the international workers holiday - today (although farmers never have a day off) and people were gathering for soccer games. The town was packed with pollerias, little shops that sell only roasted chickens and fried potatoes, and tri-clos, three-wheeled pedaled taxis that have little canvas rooves for sun protection.

After the farms, we found ourselves riding through vast, flat prairies, called the antiplano - the high plains. Every so often a flock of sheep or llamas were grazing, with a solitary figure in a bright striped shawl sitting on a rock nearby. The train stopped at a roadside market at La Raya, the highest point on the trip: 4,319 metres or 14,172 feet. The sun was blazing and my head was spinning when we got out.

Little girls were posing with baby llamas for a sole, and women were selling unbelievably soft baby alpaca sweaters for a song. I had the strange experience of a kind of reverse bargaining. The woman gives her first price, 50 soles, about $17 US. I´m thinking, do I want to buy a sweater, which colour do I want, should I buy one here or later. She thinks I´m hesitating because of price, and asks for 45 soles. Allan comes by to see what I´m up to, and she offers two for 80 soles. This is getting ridiculous. I slipped it on, and the sleeves fit exactly, and when you´re 5´1", that seals the deal. I take the sweater and pay her original asking price.

The altiplano went on for hours. It was strikingly beautiful, the clouds forming shadows on the mountains. But it went on and on and on. And the train was so slow. It was beautiful, but even too much of the same beauty can get boring.

We drank a happy hour on the train, and some traditional folk musicians came on board, playing for donations, and finally we rode through the tough-looking, non-tourist town of Juliaca, so we knew we were almost there.

Puno is the jumping-off point for Lake Titicaca, the world´s highest freshwater lake, and it´s a little more packed with tourists than we expected for this time of year. But it´s also full of its own life, with a pedestrian-only main street, Calle Lima, a carnival, and a lively main square.

I won´t be able to post tomorrow, as we hope to be sleeping on an island on the lake, where families will put you up and feed you dinner. There are also reed islands - artificial islands constructed of reeds by the Uros Indians - which we hope to see via reed boat. We aren´t booking a tour, just trying to go on our own, so we´ll see how we do. Next time I check in, we´ll probably be in the colonial town of Arequipa.

One thing this trip has made me think about all the time is waste, and how much our culture wastes, and our place of privilege in the world to be able to waste. I´m not saying this in the sense that I plan to live a more frugal and austere life, or that people shouldn´t enjoy what they have. I don´t go in for self-denial - I don´t think it helps the world. I feel if we have privilege, we should realize it, and use it. But I´m putting all those judgements and opinions aside. What I mean is this trip is a constant reminder of our privilege, of the world divided into haves and have-nots, and how the haves can travel, travel in itself being the privilege of the haves.

You can travel in the US and Canada and never see poverty. Even though it´s there, as a tourist, you would have to seek poverty out to meet it. In South America, as in so many places on the planet, poverty is your unavoidable companion. We see people washing clothes against rocks and washboards in buckets. Every bag is reusable until it simply cannot be used anymore. Everything is sold and resold and reresold. And if we think we´re doing this with Freecycle or e-Bay, we´re playing a game, or making a choice that we have the privilege to make.

It´s not that I didn´t know that most of the world lives in poverty. It´s just seeing what poverty means, in the every day. It´s very sobering. It also infuriates me. I´m sitting in a train drinking bottled water, passing people who don´t have access to fresh drinking water. I got vaccinations to come to this country, for diseases that people here contract and die of. It´s a fucking crime.

Photos from the train trip from Cuzco to Puno here.

4.30.2006

aguas calientes, day three

We´re back from our second visit to Machu Picchu, killing time until we take the train back to Cuzco. We´ll be in Cuzco only overnight, then head south to Lake Titicaca.

After posting yesterday, we had something to eat (why is the best food in Aguas Caliente pizza?) and hung out a bit in this tiny town. It was Saturday night, and the residents had reclaimed their plaza from las turistas. El Gran Bingo was starting up - outdoors on the plaza - and the little church on the square had its doors open for Mass.

This is one area where traditional societies have it all over modern life. One time in southern Italy, we thought there was a parade, until we realized it was just the town taking its nightly walk after dinner, the passagimiento. In Oaxaca, Mexico, a band was playing in the plaza, not because it was a holiday, just because it was a beautiful evening. Adults were kibbitzing, teenagers were checking each other out, kids were running around, just because that´s what you do in the evening. It was the same last night in Aguas Calientes. So nice to see.

You know what else is nice? Sleep is nice. At this altitude, we are both sleeping soundly, and were doing just that by 9:00 p.m.

This morning we rose before dawn and caught the first bus to Machu Picchu, seeing day break over the mountains. Having seen all the major features of the site the day before, we wandered aimlessly, looking at details like the still-working aqueduct system, communing with the 12 llamas who live on the site and admiring the incredible view from every possible angle. In both days combined, we finished six rolls of film and probably shot about 100 photos with the digital.

Have I mentioned the Incas built Machu Picchu - and all their cities - without the benefit of metal tools? Never mind modern machinery, they were using stone tools. You may wonder how a wall could be a object of beauty or admiration, but these walls are positively awesome. Imagine a wall: perfectly level, perfectly straight, the stones separated by perfectly perpendicular and parallel lines. The stones blocks are enormous. It looks as though there had been a solid block of stone that someone drew lines on. The wall is about 550 years old. It was built by hand, and it´s the most perfect wall you´ve ever seen.

Machu Picchu is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and like most ancient places, it´s under pressure from tourism and encroaching development. UNESCO says that Machu Picchu cannot support more than 200-500 people per day without being damaged. In the high season, it is now drawing about 2,500 visitors a day.

There is talk of closing off the site altogether and building viewing platforms from which visitors could see it through binoculars. It´s unthinkable to me. I would much rather see the number of visitors per day limited, and a waiting list years long, than have traveled all this way to see it only from a distance, but not have walked within it.

I was fortunate to be at Stonehenge before it was roped off, and again after, and although I´m very grateful I saw it earlier, both times were wonderful. But you can walk around all of Stonehenge and see it very well. It´s small and contained. Whereas it would be impossible to appreciate Machu Picchu unless you could walk in and around it.

We leave in a few hours. I´m looking forward to the joys and beauty ahead, but I´m not looking forward to more altitude sickness. Here´s hoping we´re more acclimated now. The eight-hour train trip between Cuzco and Puno, and Lake Titcaca, are supposed to be magnificent.

cody: the interview

Wondering how Cody the Dog is doing without us? Check out the latest installment of they´ve gone to peru!

4.29.2006

more from aguas caliente

I´m writing the Peruvian portion of we move to canada exactly as if it were my travel journal: I´m writing it for myself, for the things I want to remember. So before I forget, I must immortalize the kind Peru Rail employee who tended to my injured finger.

As we were running around our hotel room in Cuzco, throwing clothes in our suitcases and dashing around like maniacs, I reached into our bathroom-toiletry organizer bag and, thinking I was grabbing my eyeglass cleaner, I grabbed Allan´s razor. Pinched it hard between two fingers. It wasn´t especially painful, but it was deep and bloody.

I then discovered we had neglected to bring Band-Aids. (We forgot several things on this trip. We usually pack much more carefully.) I wrapped my finger in toilet paper and consulted my phrase book for "Do you have a Band-Aid?" While we were hustling into the taxi - holding up traffic on the narrow one-way street - a hotel employee got me una curitas, which was soaked through with blood by the time we boarded the train.

I had to ask a Peru Rail person if she had a Band-Aid, thinking there might be a first-aid kit on the train. Band-aid? She turned into a nurse. This woman, in her official blue uniform, dabbed the cut with alcohol as tenderly as my mother might have, gently applied stypic powder, wrapped my finger in gauze, and told me to come back in a little while so she could change the bandage. It was so much more than I asked for or expected, and I was so touched by her kindness.

That´s all. I like to remember these moments that happen when you travel, either of great kindness or its opposite, wherever I find them.

* * * *

Some other random thoughts and observations.

How do the locals here feel about the tourists? Do they have mixed feelings, the way New Yorkers do (like N´Orleansians used to), liking the money they bring in but hating the crowds? Do they only appreciate the business - as tourism is the economy here? Do they secretly hate us? I´m just wondering. There´s no way to know.

The tourists here in Aguas Calientes (also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo) seem polite and well-behaved. We have seen no evidence of the Ugly American, or the Ugly Japanese or German, for that matter. We hear many languages spoken, but everyone seems to be treading lightly and politely. Is it because it´s not yet high season and the Uglies haven´t arrived yet? Is it the nature of the place itself? Is it just a coincidence, too small a sample size for a generalization?

The serious begging and street-selling that became so annoying (although understandable) in Cuzco is not present here. We don´t know if the town prohibits it, or if the local economy is so much better that begging isn´t necessary. I will say the children here look clean, well fed and happy, running around screaming like kids are supposed to do, and their mothers, rounding them up for the evening, look like working women everywhere.

These kids are so beautiful. It´s their hair - blacker-than-black, thick, perfectly straight, and as shiny as satin. The girls wear it in long braids down their backs, or pulled back in loose ponytails. I´m sure they don´t know how gorgeous they are, and many of them (the ones with TV, anyway) probably wish they were blonde.

On the walk to our hotel, we pass through a tiny alley, lined with women and big sacks of produce. They aren´t selling anything. They appear to be doing food prep, maybe for the many restaurants in town - peeling potatoes, husking corn, cleaning peppers. They sit on boxes or crates, shoehorned in this narrow lane. It doesn´t look easy, and they work all day long with chapped hands, but I think, at least they have this community, doing this work together, rather than standing in hot restaurant kitchens.

This makes me think of all the jobs tourism provides here, some of them obvious, like the men who drive buses to Machu Picchu, but many of them hidden, like the hotel cooks and laundries. A man like our guide, Armando, is more employable because he speaks English and has learned his history. In this town, old women are not begging to have their pictures taken. I hope it´s because no one needs to do that here. Maybe?