"Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen..." (John Keats) (Entry 35, day 15)

Saturday, June 8, 2013; 3:33 PM; plane to Panama

Right, back to recapping.  First - there's a little girl sitting a row back and across the aisle playing a loud-ish game for kids her age (match the shapes!  Identify the colors!  Cross out the odd one out!).  Second - plane meals (especially the salads) should only be consumed when hungry.  They rarely taste above average.

Anyway, back to the recap.

The people we regularly interacted with were really cool - both the guides and the other people in the group.  Obviously, I was the youngest by a lot in most of the scenarios - I think there was a porter on the trek, but I hardly spoke to any of the porters; the closest person in age to me that I actually interacted with was Miguel, who's twelve years older than me.  It was sort of interesting at times to be the only teenager, but sometimes it was sort of frustrating, because I wasn't over thirty and I haven't had a career and my choice of vocabulary might have been different if I was with people my own age.  Well, everything would have been different if I had been with people my own age - the interactions with the other people in the group were a big part of what made the trip interesting.  If I had been with people my own age, I feel like we would have done a lot of things differently - for one thing, most people in my group of college friends probably would have been miserable during most of the hikes, or would have been too busy talking loudly in the Amazon to pay attention to the potential wildlife (though it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they were loud enough to irk the wild boars).

Also, this is one of the first trips where Mom hasn't been a Super Scout Mom (always tense, keeping tabs on everyone, and being rather bossy but extremely organized).  That was interesting within itself - partly that Mom wasn't trying to keep a constant tab on me, but partly that there wasn't a Scout Mom type person there at all.  That was probably because I was the only person below 30, and I've been out of the house for almost a year, so both Mom and I had the chance to realize that if I wasn't in her sightline there was a fair chance that I was still within shouting distance of someone we know (which was frequently the case), who could help if I broke something.

My favorite place to stay was the eco lodge in the Amazon - it was a really nice hotel because it was so open and removed from everything (you had to take a two-hour boat ride and spend an hour on the bus just to get to the airport).  Also, the coffee they had there was really good (which helped when I had to wake up at 5:30.  I never had to do that in high school).  I didn't really have a least favorite residence - I could say that my least favorite was the tents, but camping is not the same as staying in hotels, and, for camping standards, the trek was really good.

Right, with little else to say by way of recap, I declare this the end of the Peru entries.  Will write again in August for Turkey.

"Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen..." (John Keats) (Entry 34, Day 15)

Saturday, 8 June, 2013; Plane to Panama; 1:59 PM

We haven't actually left the airport yet - we haven't even moved from the gate yet.  We're all in our seats and the security video just played, so now I guess it's all just waiting for the signal to go.

Apparently, the signal to leave the gate happened as I was writing that sentence.

Anyway, not much happened this morning.  We woke up at around 8:00 (at least, I did - Mom was up earlier) and we moseyed around, finishing the packing and stuff and eating breakfast and all the regular morning activities.  I finished the bracelet I was working on, which turned out to be more of the length of an anklet, so that's where I'm putting it.  It's interesting - I started it on the plane down to Perú, and I finished it on the day we leave.  Interesting how these things work out.

I think I'm going to miss the scenery in Perú the most.  I know that the US has some pretty wicked views, but not where I live.  Unless you want a wicked view of suburbia.  Otherwise, don't bother.  (DC?  Go for it.  A-town?  Nope.)  In Perú, however, there's so much of everything - history, culture, nature, the whole shebang.  I see it that way probably because it's all so different from the US, or at least suburbia/ college town environments.  I'm fairly certain that if you put a Peruvian tourist in DC, they'd say something similar about he way stuff is done there.

The hardest part of the trip was probably either the language barrier or not being able to drink the water.  Or the stairs.  Yeah, it was definitely the stairs.  For real, though, I think the language thing was the biggest problem - I know a passably functional amount of Spanish, which is more than many of the people I was traveling with.  I can ask where we need to go if I have a map, but that's the most complicated I can reasonably do.  The hardest day in that regard was when we toured Pisaq, because the guide's English wasn't great, so we had to communicate in Spanglish, and there was probably a lot that was lost in translation.

My favorite day was either any given day in the Amazon or the day we hit the Sun Temple on the trail. The Amazon was just super cool in general, but reaching the Sun Temple gave this huge sense of accomplishment.  It's higher up than Machu Picchu, so you have this spectacular view of the city and Wayna Picchu and the mountains that surround them.  It wasn't necessarily the highest altitude on the trek, but it was definitely one of the best views in the whole trip.

The hardest day was the third day of the trek - the one where we hiked for basically the whole day, and with the hardest overall terrain and with the grossest weather.  On the other hand, the cloud forest is really cool, and towards the end of that day, the fog sort of added to the etherial nature of the place.  It was easy-ish to joke about the fog and the views, though - when we passed the second summit, I paused to put on a tour-guide sort of voice to say something like, "here, we have a lovely view of the fog," as if I was pointing out a feature of a mountain, and Maggie and Ellen jokingly tagged on with some "awestruck" type comments about the mist and the "view."

The best thing we ate is hard to choose, because all the food was really good.  I can't recall anything that was atrocious, either, but the first breakfast on the trail was a bit lacking (it was basically granola, yogurt, and your hot beverage of choice).  The most interesting drink is perhaps the only one that I can't recall the name of.  It's a Quechua drink that involves fermented black corn, and a bit of sugar.  There is an alcoholic version that I didn't try, but the regular kind is really good.  My least favorite drink was probably the few sips I had of Cusqueña, a really popular beer in Peru.  I don't know whether it's made differently from American beers, but I wasn't really a big fan of it.  I'm not a huge fan of Pisco sours, either (Pisco is a region in Peru, I think, but it's also a sort of alcohol here).  If you go to Peru, you definitely need to try a Pisco Sour, because it's one of those things you should try when in Peru (like in New York City, you have to go to Times Square and a pizza place and have a bagel somewhere), but I wasn't a huge fan of them (maybe because, in my highly limited alcohol experience here, I have discovered that I have a taste aversion to it, and that taste matters a lot for me).

In a way, it was fairly liberating to be mostly away from the Internet and cell phone reception fro two weeks.  We had connection sometimes in the Amazon, but only for a limited time, and it was slow enough to make me not want to go on.  In Cuzco and Lima, we had Internet and cell service, but by that point, Facebook was mundane, almost, and we had to conserve texts for the occasional message when Mom and I were apart for prolonged periods of time and needed to locate each other.  On the trail, we only got reception on the third night of camping, when we were busy taking photos of the llamas (which were really photogenic), taking photos of the view, and feeling tired, so it didn't much matter.  I also didn't take my phone on the trail, so it didn't affect me either way (when possible, I don't bring my phone on treks or vacations unless it's kind of important that I do).

One of the interesting things about the different environment's effects on us is that all of us had really trippy altitude/ exhaustion dreams (like the one with the baby and the elephant in the Amazon; I also had a really weird one on the trail where my boyfriend proposed by putting words in Oreos and hiding the ring in a dinner roll.  The next day, we got Oreos as a snack.  I'm never looking at them the same way again.)

Right, we're getting food now.  Will write later.  Maybe.

"O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is." (Walt Whitman, "The Lands") (Entry 33, Day 14)

Friday, 7 June, 2013; hotel, Lima; 9:33 PM

Back.

Anyway, after we got to Lima, we went to the hotel to set down our stuff and figure out what we wanted to do next.  We decided to take a taxi out to the edge of the city by the coast, which was kind of interesting.  (for those who are curious, we went to a neighborhood called Miraflores).

The most terrifying part, of course, was the traffic.  If you think New York traffic is bad, you haven't been to Lima on a Friday, especially when Lima is hosting a World Cup match against Ecuador.  It's the craziest traffic I've ever been in - made worse by the fact that everyone is super aggressive and decides that the time to merge is NOW, not in two seconds when they have a lot more space.  On the way back, I found myself leaning away from the door, because I was half-terrified that we were about to get hit.

At dinner, I got my first real view of the Pacific Ocean, which was cool.  We saw a lot of surfers and some hang gliders.

On the way back, we got some gas and nearly got run over a few times.  The ride back took almost two hours because of the traffic, especially because it's World Cup night.  Soccer is really big here, like in many South American countries, so everyone was either going to the game or finding a friend/ bar with a TV to watch the game

Interestingly, a lot of cars in Lima run on natural gas, not gasoline - so now we know why the city of 28 million people smells a bit better than downtown Manhattan (point of reference - New York City has around 8.3 million residents.  The US needs to step up its game in environmentalism).  Lima also houses over half of the Peruvian population - there are 42 million Peruvian residents, and 28 million of them live in Lima (and 27 million of them are trying to watch the game tonight).

So far in the game, Peru is winning, 1 - 0.  I can't understand the commentary too well, since my understanding of Spanish is minimal, but it's fairly easy to know what's going on (I played soccer for a while, so I know the game).

Now it just passed an ad for what appears to be a soap opera called Avenida Perú.  It appears to involve shooting people in the head, illicit dealings, and some making out - in other words, the standard soap opera (though perhaps without the shooting people in the head bit).

One major difference I've noticed between Lima and Cusco is the type of shopping available.  Admittedly, tourism is the #1 industry in Cusco, but that would make one think that the latter is the more "modern" and "developed" city, but that's not really the case.  I think that's mostly because Lima is younger than Cusco - the structures in Cusco are mostly Inka or pre-Inka, so they're historic locations within themselves.  Both cities are sprawling, but Cusco has so many more people selling on the streets, or in open-front stores.  They all sell basically the same thing, as I mentioned earlier - "alpaca" goods or restaurants, and sometimes some will have laundry opportunities, too.

In Lima, however, everything (at least the bit we saw) is a lot more developed.  There are a lot more Western-type stores - I saw a Nine West and Adidas and Starbucks (though there was a Starbucks in Cusco as well), just to name a few.  The architecture is definitely more modern than Inka times, and there are pretty much no street vendors that looked like they were there regularly (there were some, obviously, that were taking advantage of the World Cup traffic to try to sell some team apparel type stuff).  We did see a lot more couples making out in Lima than we did in Cusco, though.  In all, I think Lima's population is younger and has a smaller percentage of tourists than Cusco's does.

Right, I'm done for now.  I'll write tomorrow on the plane, most likely.

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train." (Oscar Wilde) (Entry 32, day 14)

Friday, June 7, 2013; hotel, Lima; 9:06 PM

My apologies for not writing again yesterday - I've gotten to the point where my sleep schedule says that 10:00 PM is WAY too late to be up (it's also said that 5:30-6:00 AM is a reasonable time to wake up, so that's why).

Yesterday afternoon, after a train ride where we got snacks, we took a bus from Ollantetambo to Cuzco, where we bade farewell to Miguel and Mark and Maggie.  Lesley, Mom, and I had a late dinner at the cafe we ate at before the trek.  I did not have a milkshake.  (I forget if I wrote about this earlier, but I had a milkshake at the cafe and it gave me a stomachache because SUGAR AND SUGAR AND SUGAR AND MILK!).

This morning, I woke up feeling gross and low-blood-sugar-y, which persisted through the tour/ visit to the Alpaca factory (wool, not the animal).  There, I got a kilo of legit baby Alpaca wool (as opposed to the questionable content kilo I got in Pisac), so now I have enough wool to make at least 3 sweaters and a few hats.  (I got two skeins yesterday, too, so now I have a good 3-4 kilos of yarn that I may run out of ideas for).

After that, we went to the airport and flew to Lima.  I dozed off most of the time, because I still felt kind of gross, despite having had food and stuff.

Right, we're walking Lesley out to the airport.  Brb.

"I never travel without my diary. one should always have something sensational to read on the train." (Oscar Wilde) (Entry 31, Day 13)

Thursday, 6 June, 2013; 4:24 PM; train to Ollantatambo

The details I can remember from yesterday are as follows:

1. There were some killer stairs, but it didn't take too long to get up them.
2. we had fried rice for lunch (Peru has a really cool variety of food, because Italians, Chinese, and others emigrated there)
3. I am very done with stairs.
4. the view from the Sun Temple is amazing - both of Machu Picchu and the mountains in general.
5. I do not want to climb Wayna Picchu.  Like, ever.  (Well, maybe another time when I've psychologically prepared myself for a really steep climb).
6. Machu Picchu's main coolness factor is that it's super huge.  Otherwise, I wasn't hugely impressed (that changed today).
7. We had a group dinner in Aguas Calientes.  It was a lot of fun.  Except for the stairs.

Today, we actually went to Machu Picchu.  IT WAS SO COOL.  There were two main parts: the urban and the farmers.  Surprisingly, only around 600-1000 people lived there.  Also surprisingly, the farming area couldn't support that many people, so they had to build some more terracing elsewhere, because they didn't want the nobles to starve.

The annoying thing is that we don't actually know the actual name of the city - Hiram Bingham called it Machu Picchu, meaning Old Mountain, after a nearby mountain of the same name.  Wayna Picchu ("Young Mountain") is the name of a nearby lookout tower on the mountain of the same name.  They couldn't have picked a better place - it's easily 1000 feet above the city, and the cliffs are very steep.  If Machu Picchu ever needed a place to make a last stand, it would be Wayna Picchu, because they could confuse people for hours as they tried to find the trail up (of course, if their enemies did make it up, the residents of Machu Picchu would be pretty much stuck in Wayna Picchu, but I guess that wasn't the point).  Nowadays, only four hundred people are allowed up each day - 200 at 7:00 AM and 200 at 10:00 AM.  If I ever get to climb Wayna, I'm not doing it after I hike the Inka trail - there are a lot of stairs up to Wayna, and I will never look at stairs the same way again.  I also refuse to climb any stairs for as long as I possibly can.  I can do uphills.  I cannot do stairs.

Interestingly, the Spanish never made it to Machu Picchu - there are no writings on it (and the writings of the Conquistadors are a big part of the information that we have now); the other indicator is that the Spanish would have left a cross and probably more destruction than what the jungle did to the city (the Spanish were still on the tail end of the Inquisition).

Unsurprisingly, Hiram Bingham found the city completely overgrown by forests - it's a very fertile area (sun! rain! mild weather!) and the natives had come to accept that there were random rocks in the area.  That was also why Bingham had trouble finding guides up to the city - the Andeans were all like, "dude, it's just a bit of terracing and some rocks.  Who cares?"

Of course, it took about a hundred years to build, and is one of the engineering wonders of the world.  It was built by the Ninth Inka, Panchatutaq, whose only claim to fame is commissioning Machu Picchu (that we know of).  He was one of 14 Inkas, who reigned for around 300 years (that's counting the time they were all tribal and still forming the empire).

(distracted.  Will write later.)

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." (Henry Miller) (Entry 30, Day 13)

6/6/13

H. Bingham - history professor
   - looking for last refuge of Incas
Inkas built 100,000 km of trails
July 24, 1911 (scientific discovery)
Called it Machu Picchu - "Old Mountain" (after the mountain nearby)
Don't know the actual name of city
Wayna Picchu - "Young Mountain" (lookout place)

Machu Picchu - important for Jungle Conquering

   - close to river - natural defense

~ 1,000 people living there?

Built bottom up

wall - urban/ farming

water - soul purification, not irrigation

16 fountains

respect environment, adapt to existing environment

Sun + water together as much as possible

Under sun temple - earth

Sun + water + earth

astronomy - temple of sun

summer - December; winter - June

aligned windows for solstice

3 levels of world - gods (condor), humans (puma), mummy/ dead (serpent

graffiti

sacrificed animals and humans - women (fertility)

Andean priests - knew of solstices, etc

   - had own house

   - two floors

chose the most different girl in society (not necessarily prettiest)

   - drugs - purify

   - stone to head, cut stomach, put muña

   - buried in fetal position

walls built with incline for strength

coca - has a lot of nutrients

passionfruit - seeds = number of thorns in Christ's crown

Wiñawayna - "forever young"

Andean Cross - solstice

   - 3 levels - worlds

   - hole - one empire

Audio conducting in houses - very good

Certain girls could only go out in public in certain situations?

Happy mountain! - Machu Picchu surrounded by impot mountain

Pachacutaq - Inka who built Machu Picchu - 9th Inka

Inkas - 300 years total (small --> big)  12-15th centuries - earlier, were a mix; came from Bolivia + PUno, looking for farmland, found sacred valley.  REALLY ANDEAN SOCIETY.  16-18 century - colonial.  18th century - now - republic.

Llama bones found by sacred rock

Poo (llama, guinea pig, human) - fertilizer + fire.  Used Jungle Toilet.

Andeans - short (5'0" ish?)

Juanita - frozen mummy - found near Arequipa

Condor - messenger god

mountains - holy

"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." (Henry Miller) (Entry 29, Day 12)

Wednesday, 5 June, 2013; 10:06 PM; hotel room

Today confirmed in my mind one thing above all else: I am never going to look at stairs the same way again.  My quads will be aching for at least a week.

Other than that, today's trek was really cool.  We got to see Machu Picchu for the first time, which has, perhaps, the coolest view ever.  It's all jagged mountains around the city - though the trail we were on was fairly flat (especially for the Andes, where 'flat' means 'rather hilly.'), it was probably the only place in the general area (not counting the terraces/ Machu Picchu) that was like that.

I hate to be so atrocious about writing today, but I'm exhausted.  Will try to make up the page count tomorrow (I don't know how well that will work, but I'll try).

(P.S. Miguel tried to tell me that the other part of the meaning of life was sending James a sweet text, and buying him a t-shirt instead of gloves.  Or a bottle of Pisco.  Or something.)

(P.P.S. My second pair of sunglasses died on the trek.  It was very disheartening.  I'm going to have to get new ones anyway, but I've had really shoddy luck with sunglasses for the past three years.  I doubt it's going to let up at any point in the near future.)

(P.P.P.S.  Will include details of tomorrow.)

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." (Helen Keller) (Entry 28, Day 11)

Tuesday, June 4, 2013; our tent, same campsite; 8:21 PM

Today was very long.  The most difficult part, I think, aside from the length, was the fact that the weather wasn't too good.  It was foggy all day, and we had a regular drizzle - the kind that goes on and off but is always there in spirit, because the clouds never go away.  Ever.  I'm pretty sure that we could have had some super-nice views if it weren't for the giant cloud of fog in the way.

Other than the length and the rain, today's trek was actually pretty good.  Yes, it took forever, but we stopped by a temple/ fort place on the way ("we" meaning me, Ellen, Kimbob, Maggie, and Mark) to the campsite.  It turns out it was a place for spiritual cleansing before going on to Machu Picchu.  This place is interesting because of the levels it has: many of the ruins we've visited have had terracing, but the buildings were pretty much all on the same plane.  This structure has stairs and internal levels and stuff like that.  It was really cool.

On the way there, it was really easy to think you were in Middle Earth or something, hiking the Emyn Muil or something awesome like that (for those of you who don't speak Sindarin, "Emyn Muil" is the Elvish term for the Misty Mountains).  Between Dead Woman's Pass (which wasn't as bad as I feared) and the temple, there weren't too many trees.

After lunch (2:30 ish), we hit the cloud forest - aptly named for this cloudy day.  This part of the hike actually had trees, and they were all really cool.  The moss on the trees was really cool.  The orange lichen was super cool.  It was really interesting - one of those places that you could easily set fairy tales in, if the trees only went out a bit farther on either side to make the Enchanted Forests that always seem to occur in such stories.

The campsite is really nice because, once again, we have a spectacular view.  This time, we're on a level with some clouds, but you can look out easily over the mountains for a view that is normally only seen on postcards and calendars - where the sunlight hits just right and the clouds seem to glow and the mountains are lit perfectly.  Yes these sorts of places actually exist without the help of Photoshop.

Also, today at camp (we're sharing the fairly large site with a few other groups), we saw more llamas.  I got really close to one, and got a few photos of one that was really photogenic.  There was also a black llama, which is, supposedly, the purest one of the lot, according to the Inka belief system. I'm just really excited that I got really close to a llama.

My llama buddy

photogenic llama

llama poo

Also, tonight at dinner, I learned part of the meaning of life.  That part is that Miguel is always right, except in the times when he thinks he is wrong; in those cases, his impression is incorrect.

Apparently, I need to sort out the other parts of it myself.  That requires effort.  Philosophical effort.  Grr.

It's hard to believe that the trek is almost done.  Tomorrow, we hike to the Sun Gate.  Apparently, there are around fifty stairs which are nearly vertical, and we'll probably have to climb up with our hands and somehow pack away the poles at the same time.  About forty minutes from the Sun Gate is the classic view of Machu Picchu - the one you see in all the postcards and ads and such.  I'm excited, but I don't know how I'm going to take it - the fact that this part of the journey is over.  It's also the end of a journey in Peru - we'll have an actual tour on Thursday; we go back to Cuzco later that day.  Friday night (I think) we're in Lima, to fly out late on Saturday night (we flew out on noon, to get back at around midnight Saturday/ Sunday).

It's interesting, how easy it is to make your butt your home when you're on the road, and how quickly your companions become your family.  Of course, Mother is my family, but so is everyone else on the trek - even Miguel and even the Porters.  Miguel is like that awesome cousin you only see occasionally, and the porters are the characters of family legend that you con't really actually see or talk to all that much.

In all, I'm glad I came to Peru.  It's not been the easiest trek in the world - and I'm not even done yet - but it's been a lot of fun.  I just hope Machu Picchu isn't terribly anticlimactic, because it would really suck if we came all this way for nothing too interesting to see or learn or anything.

Anyway, I've hit the page count, and I need to go to bed.  Will write tomorrow.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." (Helen Keller) (Entry 27, Day 11)

Tuesday, 4 June, 2013; a bench, Phuyupatmarka campsite; 5:46 PM

Twelve hours ago, we woke up and, after eating, began the trek.  WE SAW LLAMAS NEAR THE CAMPSITE.  IT WAS GREAT.

Miguel let Mom and Lesley start 15 - 20 minutes early, because Lesley needed the head start.  We overtook them in about half an hour - 45 minutes, a little ways (about 30 - 60 mins) from Dead Woman Pass.  Now, Lesley and Miguel are running way late, but I think I see them coming.  I'm going to check it out.  Will write later.

"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is by missing the train before." (G. K. Chesterton) (Entry 26, Day 10)

Monday, 3 June, 2013; 7:49 PM; our tent, the campsite

Seriously, the Andes are amazing for stargazing - at least, the campsites are, because they all have spectacular views of the valleys and the mountains during the day, and panoramic views of the milky way at night.  At this altitude, with this little light pollution, it's almost like you can have depth perception when looking at the stars.  It's not a bunch of pecks that vary in brightness - at the right angle, you can almost believe that they're all hung from different lengths of string from the sky - the brightest are closer, the dimmer are farther.  Like last night, the clouds are visible by their outlines - lit from behind by the numberless stars.

Obviously, night falls early in the equator, and it's easier to see the stars here than anywhere else I've been.  That's probably just the campground and the fact that nothing grows too tall in the immediate area of the site.

Tomorrow, we go to the highest part of the trek, and the hardest.  We peak Dead Woman's Pass (after trekking since 6:30).  The summit is around 13,800 feet - 1200 feet shy of the minimum flying level.  I don't think we're going to be hit by anything flying, unless a condor's sense of a dying body is piqued by one of us.

There is going to be a lot of uphill tomorrow, but we won't be doing as many stairs as we did today, thank God.  I'm not sure I could keep up any forward movement if I had to repeat the number of stairs that we did today.

It's going to be way longer, though, and the first part will be higher.  We'll have a net loss in altitude, I think, but we start the day by climbing.  There's a second pass, too, but that one is lower and probably be as bad as the first - if only because we'll have started a pace and it won't be as high.

Right, I'mma be a little old lady and go to bed at 8:15 ish, because we wake up at 5:20 tomorrow.  Goodnight.

"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is by missing the train before." (G. K. Chesterton) (Entry 25, Day 10)

Monday, 3 June 2013; 5:18 PM; dining tent

Today was long and hard.  I got done early, as I mentioned, but it was still more uphill than I'd care to repeat.  Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do it again tomorrow, because tomorrow we'll be going over the two passes.

Miguel confirmed the theory about Dead Woman's Pass today: there is a certain spot where the rocks and mountains form the visage of a dead/ sleeping woman.  We saw Dead Woman's Boob today.  We're camping nearby it, too, I think. (I thought I took a picture of it, but I guess not.)

It was raining a bit as we came in, and it's been on and off since, and it's been cloudy since.  It's raining again, now.

We just had tea, and I spent some time talking to Miguel after, just me and him.  I told him a little bit about James, and he told me a bit about his girlfriend.  They've been together longer than we have (thats easy-ish, considering Miguel is older than me).

Now I'm just hanging out in the dining tent, because tea ended a while ago, but dinner starts at 6:30, so why move?  (unless I have to pee.  Then I'm going to go.  I might go to get my headlamp soon, though.)

Actually, I'm going to go now.  Will write later.

"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is by missing the train before." (G. K. Chesterton) (Entry 24, Day 10)

Monday, 3 June, 2013; 3:01 PM; a rock, campsite

Well, I arrived about half an hour early, which I was not expecting.  It's raining a little bit, and I keep getting the feeling I'm in the wrong campground.  But I recognize some of the porters and there are the right number of tents and that is our touring company's logo on their jackets.  There are other groups on the trail, which is why I was sort of nervous about it.  I also arrived alone, which is also why I was nervous.  Miguel is letting us take our own paces today, mostly, so that puts me on my own for the tail end of hikes.  Mark and Maggie are usually behind me at the beginning (I'm usually first), but they tend to overtake me by about a shouting distance by the end.  I try to stay within shouting distance, at any rate.  I think I was a bit behind that this afternoon.  Either way, we're still way ahead of the rest of the group - they're supposed to arrive at around 3:45.

There's a few history points that I may have missed yesterday.

First, black means purity to the Inkas - like white does in Western culture.  Llamas are the goats of the Inkas - some cultures sacrificed goats, the Inka sacrificed black llamas.

(few minutes later - had to move into tent/ get washing water/ pee) (they gave us warm water to wash our faces and stuff!  Again, LUXURY CAMPING!)

Sorry about the lapse - events involving warm water, tents, and urination just occurred.  Ellen and Kimbob just arrived.

Anyway, the Inka sacrificed the hearts to Inka.  Yeah.

Secondly, there are three different roads around the mountains from Machu Picchu to Cusco - the low road, by the river, was for traders and commoners and farmers and people like that.  It was mostly used by these sorts of people because they had livestock and it's easier to water them.  The middle road was kind of higher on the mountain.  It was for nobility and priests.  Since the Inka had a lot of weather divinities (and were just generally a religious sort of culture), they wanted to be close to the gods.  The third road was on the very top of the mountains, and it was used by the army to move really quickly and have a consistently good vantage point.  As I learned today, it's possible to see people in the valley from way up - they all look like vaguely colored specks of movement, but if you have an army in the valley you can't really miss it.

Also, we went up so far in altitude today that I popped my ears twice.

Right, other people are here, including (aka) the rest of our group.  Will write later.

"It is not down on any map; true places never are." (Herman Melville) (Entry 23, Day 9)

Sunday, 2 June, 2013; our tent, the campsite; 8:16 PM

This is weird - I'm rarely ready for bed this early.  The thing is, it was full dark (stargazing-worthy) by 6:00, so that makes it easy to throw off my schedule (Pat would freak out more here - there's so much starlight you can see the cloud cover).

By the way, this is LUXURY CAMPING.  The porters carry everything that a backpacker would, except we're the ones traveling.  They cook, set up tents, the whole shebang.  AND THE FOOD IS GREAT.

The other great things about the meals is the conversations.  I had to tell my mom to eat her vegetables, and later it came up when Miguel was working through the briefing for tomorrow at the end of the meal (the meal in question: dinner).

Miguel: you know where my tent is, right?  So if you have any problems, or need to have a late-night talk, let me know.
Mom: I have a problem!  My daughter is telling me to eat my veggies!

Later on in the conversation (not too much later), Miguel said, jokingly, that he would teach me the meaning of life.  I'm considering saying to him in the morning something along the lines of "thanks for the talk last night.  It was great."

I have a feeling there are going to be a few running jokes stemming from tonight's conversation.  There are a few already from Cusco, when we were hanging out with Kim and Ellen.  Kim mentioned, in Cusco, that he hadn't realized this was a 'girlfriend' sort of trip (this was before we met up with Maggie and Mark, the two others on our trip that we hadn't met yet).  Ever since then, we've joked about how he's such a good girlfriend.

The other Cusco jokes is what color is good for you - i.e. what color looks good on you.  It stemmed from hanging out in an Alpaca knitwear shop, shortly after Kimbob's girlfriend comment, when we were holding up various garments to see how they'd look.  Kimbob was, jokingly, the most vocal about it.

You know, the conversations make up for the dragging pace, somewhat.  I guess that's the hazard of being the youngest.

Also, there's a donkey across the valley (it's a low valley that amplifies sound well) that has been braying all afternoon as if it's been in pain or it's been dying or something.

For some reason, I initially thought a cow was dying.  I don't know why.  It's been a while since I heard a donkey, I guess.


A/N: I never made the comment to Miguel.
Also, Kim's nickname is Kimbob.

"It is not down on any map; true places never are." (Herman Melville) (Entry 22, Day 9)

Sunday, 2 June, 2013; ~3:00 PM; the campsite (Llactapata)

After a morning of hiking, a pause for lunch that was better than Philmont, and arrival at a campsite that is already prepared and has an amazing view, I have concluded that I am dreaming, and that I will wake up soon enough.  Or that the mountain across the valley with the ruins on it is actually a prop, and all the rest is just a painting.  Or that the Reality TV people are waiting in the shadows, trying to get footage of some dirty secret.

But the only dirty thing here is dirt.  There are no cameras, and I"m fully awake.  This is not a dream or a painting or a movie or a novel - this is a place that can only happen in certain circumstances, and it's hard to believe this is actually happening.  That this is actually for real.

Why?

The Andes are stunning - they're young, for mountains, so they're still rugged and very rocky.  We've been following the river all day, so it's easy to tell how high they are - not that the cloud-covered peaks need to be reminded of height.

We're camping in a cleared-out field across from an old Incan fort.  Its bottom is terraced, like so many of their fixed locations are, but it's still really cool.  The fort is built into the mountain, so the biggest change in the landscape is the terracing and the extra rocks that were used to build it.  We also passed several resting-houses on the way here.  They're exactly like they sound - places for travelers to rest and resupply before continuing on to either Machu Picchu or Cuzco.

Originally, Cuzco was called Qoscol or something like that - it meant "capital" or "center" in Quechua, (I originally misspelld it as Cetchwan).  When the spanish came, they couldn't pronounce it properly, so they called it Cuzco, meaning "little dog," as a way to demean the people living there.  Later (fairly recently), the 'z' was changed to an 's,' so there wouldn't be any definition stigma (I messed up this, too - I initially wrote it as 's' to 'z,' but the Peruvian spelling is with an 's.'  English doesn't differentiate).

It turns out tat calling the tribe the Incas is a bit of a misnomer - one of those Invader Errors that somehow sticks.  They're technically called the Quechua, the same as their language.  The sun god, Inka, was very big in their culture; they believed that the king was descended from Inka, and so they called him Inka [InsertNameHere].  When the Spanish came, they met the king, heard him called Inka, and called the entire population that.

It's true that the Inkas (we still refer to them as that) were only in real power for around 100 years, but there were other Andean tribes and civilizations prior to that, which the Inkas took over.  Some structures attributed to Inkas are actually pre-Inka - for example, the Inkatara (sun temple) in the fort nearby is probably pre-Inka.  Additionally, what's interesting is that a lot of the first levels of Cusco buildings are Inka-based.  They're probably not all original, but still.  On some of the streets of Cusco, there are little indents that used to be canals that brought water to the city.  It's crazy what the old populations did, yes?

If there's one thing I do not want to do while I'm here, it would be spending the night in a ruin.  They're pretty in the light, but it would be really creepy to spend the night there.  It's like the basis for a horrendous horror movie - Inkan ghosts and whatnot - but the fort, at least, seems like the sort of place that would cast eerie shadows and freak me out all night.  Also, it seems like a place that's easy to get lost in.  I'm excited to explore it in the morning.

Actually, I have a different Number One No-Go: sleeping in one of the tombs - one of the common ones, where you can fall and die if you don't tread carefully and there are dead people everywhere.  Again, I'd be willing to explore during the day, as long as I'm not spending the night there - I'd be too creeped out, and I'd probably desecrate someone's remains by walking all over them or something.

You know, it's interesting how many horrendous horror movies could start on this trek.  There's obviously the scenario of going-where-you-shouldn't-at-night, but there's also the one where people start dying because they're all over 50 (except for me, Miguel (our guide), and a lot of the porters).

Anyway, I have to pee.  Will write tonight.


A/N: I didn't finish this by the time it was supposed to go up, so if anyone is confused about that, my apologies!

"I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent." (Paul Simon) (Entry 21, Day 8)

Saturday, 1 June 2013; 9:58 PM; our room

Sorry about that last, super-brief entry.  I thought I had more time than I actually did.

We went to the Inca museum today, which was quite interesting (see earlier notes.  The only drawback I found with it was the lack of adequate translations.  Sometimes, there were just one or two letters messed up in any given panel, which is forgivable.  Other times there were letters, verb forms, and subjects of the sentences all jumbled, which made it kind of confusing.  Still, this isn't an English-dominant country; you can't expect them to use perfect English grammar all of the time.  The Smithsonian or some other museums probably do something similar sometimes.

After the Inca museum, where I finished twenty minutes before everyone else and was gawked at by some Peruvian girls who probably didn't expect a white girl to know how to make bracelets like they sell on the streets of Cuzco, we went to another artist-y market.  I realized last night that I had gotten two left-hand gloves for James; I got a new pair, and one for myself, and a hat there.  I am officially in love with Alpaca wool, yarn, and everything.

Speaking of Alpacas, I got some photos of them today.  Young girls will frequently dress up in traditional wear and lead their Alpacas around and tell you that you can get a photo for one soles (about 40 cents).  I got incognito photos, mostly because the closest I normally get to having a single soles when on the street was having 80 centavos or 10 soles.  I had a 2 soles coin at one point today, but I think I had to give it to Mom for a purchase.  We'll be in Cuzco after the trek - I have hereby put 'Get A Proper Photo With An Alpaca" on my Cuzco bucket list.

After the market and such, we went to get a snack at some cafe that had 'dragon' in the name.  It was quite good - I had a fruit bowl, but it was a good fruit bowl.  The one thing I learned from that fruit bowl is that I don't like papayas.

For dinner (after the briefing about the trek, which made me both excited and terrified), I had spaghetti and a milkshake that was so sugary and lactose-heavy that I felt sick.  The feeling has now passed; as I have to wake up at 5:00 tomorrow morning, I must now go to bed and sleep and stuff.

"I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent." (Paul Simon) (Entry 20, day 8)

Saturday, 1 June 2013; 7:40 PM; lobby of hotel

Today was fairly interesting.  We had a briefing - I'm the only person below 50 on the trek.  I don't know how I feel about this.  I'm not sure how much I like it.  Time to go now.

"I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent." (Paul Simon) (Entry 19, Day 8)

Inca Museum (6/1)

• Andean hunter-gatherers - 16,000 years
• carvings - 1500 BC
• 100 BC - pre-Inca - navigated Pacific - Modica culture
• lots of representative pottery
• clay pottery + buildings
• Chankay - 800 AD
• Manto Paracas - 900 BC
• Chimu - 1100 AD
• Conquered by Incas - ~ 1460
• 400 BC - Pukara - near Titicaca
• Tia wanako - 500 AD - Titicaca
• Bred camelids
• Expanded to Chile, Argentina, BOlivia
• Succeeded by Wari
• Qollado - 850 AD - Puno

dying (like of fabric):

- bichio (bug) + vinegar = dark purple

- bichio + ammonia = rose

- bichio + achimete = red

- bichio + lemon/ citric acid = orange

- fermented Anil = indigo

- flor (flower) = yellow

- hoja (leaf) = green

- black walnut (fruit + leaves) = brown

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Andes - more than 100 cultivated plants

Puna - highlands of the highlands

   - 13000 - 15700 feet above sea

   - dehydrated crops

   - livestock - important

5000 BC - llama + alpaca herders, grain farmers (corn, quinua (pronounced KEEN-wa), quañia (no idea how to pronounce that), tarwi), tuberous (potatoes, oqa, lisas, mashwa, hizaños)

Tureneni - archaeological site - pre-ceramic period (5000 BC).  Cave paintings!

Markavalle - first settlement in Cuzco reigon. 1000 BC.
   - family basis of social organization
Killkil - 800 AD - Cuzco
Chanapata - 800 BC - Cuzco

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CUZCO AREA PEOPLE/ GROUPS

PRECERAMIC (5000 BC - 1500 BC)
Chumbivilcas
Yauri
Virginniyoq
Torreni
Manto
Chanchis
Chawaytiri
Qorqa
Wayllabambas

FORMATIVE
Markavalle - 1000 BC
Chanapata - 800 BC

STATES AND (desarrollos) REGIONAL
Qotakalli - 600 AD
*Wari Invasion 750 AD*
Killki - 800 AD
Lucre - 1100 AD

INCA STATE
Classical period - 1200 AD
expansion - 1400 AD (the time that everyone hears about)
Colonial - 1536 AD (when the Spanish came)

Mythological origins - Manco Capac + Mama Occlo, children of the sun, sent to establish kingdoms because sun pitied humans
   - "Qechua" = "Place of Origin"
Llamas expanded the empire!
Historical origin - invasion of the Chanka nation to NW Cuzco
   - Inka Yupanqui Pacakuti - first historic Inca.  Fought Chankas out of Cuzco?
Machu Picchu - aka Piqcho, built as a royal palace for Inca Yupanqui - Pachacuti - during his reign (1438-71)
Diego Rodriquiez de Figueroa - first foreigner to pass through - 6 May 1565
Incas of 16-1700s - anticolonial art

"I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world." (George Bailey, "It's A Wonderful Life," 1946) (Entry 18, Day 7)

Friday, 31 May, 2013; 9:17 PM; our room, Cuzco

Today was quite interesting - it involved Incan ruins, a slightly awkward sunburn, cool stories, YARN, and alpaca wool.

After breakfast, we went to get tickets/ passes to some of the various ruins around Cuzco.  There was a lot of arguing and confusion over that, with the conclusion being that Mom and I nearly bought the wrong sort of ticket, and Lesley did buy the wrong sort of ticket (more expensive but lasts longer).

After sorting that out, we got a bus running out to Pisac, a village right by some Incan ruins.  The village also has a really good market, but I'll get to that later.

Being the intrepid explorers that we are, we went up to the ruins.  It was a 20-ish minute taxi ride each way.  When we got there, there was some confusion about where the taxi would pick us up, and whether we would at all.  It was all sorted out when one of the guide-type guys - an elderly, tiny man with a cool hat who spoke limited English - came to help translate.  I don't remember his name, but he's actually from a village that is similar to Incan traditions, so he's probably part Incan.  Anyway, his name in his native language translates to something like "sweet heart" or "good heart" or something.

The first thing he showed us was the bathrooms, because we all had to pee.  When we were done, he shoed us a plant that the Incas used to alleviate altitude effects.  He had some oils with him, and he put a few drops on each of our hands and told us to rub them together and smell it.  Apparently it clears out your airways and helps with the flow of oxygen.

(Later, we learned that the plant, Muña, was not as effective as we had been led to believe.  Also, that it was put in the guts of human sacrifices after they were dead.)

We walked a little way before he pointed out the tombs.  The ones for the nobility were actually built up out of the rocks, but the ones for everyone else were just carved into it, with holes as entryways dotting the cliff face.  If the spanglish translation is correct, the Incas could walk up there, something happened to make a lot if inaccessible by foot - a lot of the rock below had fallen away.

(photo cred to Lesley - this is our guide demonstrating how the people were buried)

Commoner tombs

Photo cred to Lesley - nobility tombs

Next we saw a lookout tower, which had a pretty damn good view of the valley - they needed it, because apparently the people there had some enemies that did not appreciate being conquered.

After the lookout tower, we saw the religious quarter.  Though the sun god was the main Incan deity, they also worshiped the moon, stars, mother earth, rain, thunder/ lighting, and rainbows.  Where some cultures sacrifice goats, the Incas sacrificed black llamas.  The roofs of the structures we saw no longer exist, but they were probably thatched and wound around posts to keep them from flying randomly off of the structure.  There were also little niches in the temple walls for the offerings and idols and such.  They also had a functioning aqueduct that ran to a pool for purification, and subsequently ran to irrigate some farms.

That was pretty much the end of the tour.

At the market in Pisac, we ate lunch, then went around for an hour.  I did some haggling for the first time, and got a pair of gloves for James and a kilo of baby Alpaca wool, both for way less than I could have gotten in the US.  (I later realized that the gloves were two left hands - and they're the fingerless-gloves-that-flip-into-mittens kind).

It was kind of a hassle to get back down across the river and back to Cuzco, but we finally found a taxi that would take us for a really good price.

We then spent the next 45 or so minutes getting ourselves a bit lost, but a lot of people in Cuzco are, thankfully, willing to point out where you are and how to get to the plaza you want to get to.  (there are a lot of plazas in Cuzco).

We decided to head back to the hotel rather than go to dinner right at six (we had an open invitation from Ellen and Kim (male), two of Lesley's friends), and we found those two in the hotel - they're staying here for a few nights before we leave for the trek on Sunday. (AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH).

They have a lot of cool stories - Ellen and Kim, I mean.  They travel a lot, since they're both retired, so they've been seriously all over the world.

We went to a Peruvian steakhouse for dinner.  I had shrimp and a mango milkshake and a minor nosebleed, but it all turned out to be fine.  Also, Ellen and Kim's friends from another trek, Charlotte and Owen, were there.

On the way back to the hotel, Ellen told us the way to tell legit Alpaca wool from Acrylic, or any blends therein.  (this was, I guess, one of their Facts of the Day).  What you do to tell the difference is touch the material - if it's cool to the touch it's Alpaca; if it's not, it's synthetic.  When I got back to the room, I double-checked my new wool to make sure it passed the test.  It did, thankfully.

Right, I'm falling asleep with the pen in my hand.  I feel like a granny, and I haven't hit my page count, but I'm going to bed.  I'll take notes in the Inca museum tomorrow.  Or something.  Night.

"My favorite thing is to go where I have never gone before." (Diane Arbus) (Entry 17, Day 6)

Thursday, 30 May, 2013; our room, Cuzco hotel; 9:39 PM

Today was an awesomely long day.

This morning we went to the Machu Picchu museum, which consisted of a lot of stuff that Hiram Bingham (the 'scientific' discoverer of the city) brought back from his first expedition in 1911-1912.  It was fairly interesting information.  One thing that was kind of cool was that they did astrology differently than a lot of other cultures.  While the Greeks and other people connected the dots among the stars and said, "Hey!  A stick-figure Hercules!" or whatever, the Incas said, "Hey, that dark blob in the milky way looks like a llama!"  As we learned later, that was the inspiration for the Nazca lines - the interpretations of the dark clusters. (they're so big and can only be seen from the sky because GODS AND COSMOS).

After the museum, we went out to lunch to a place allegedly (actually) run by nuns, which was very good.  There were empanadas (beef and chicken) and some other things, but the desserts were the best. I got (to split) a mango pastry, some dulce de leche pastry, and a chocolate thing that was brilliant.

After lunch (and saying farewell to Lesley's friends, Ellen and Kim, who we met up with this morning), we went wandering around the city to the various small shops (almost all of which have at least one (usually more) of the following: hats, gloves, socks, sweaters, ponchos, bags, bracelets, or earrings).  It's kind of like Arlington in that there are a lot of windy streets and there are a lot of hills.  On the other hand, Cuzco is in the mountains, 11000 feet above sea level, and has more cultural heritage than Arlington ever will.  Also, the architecture is completely different.

After much wandering (and the purchasing of a pair of earrings) we went to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina - Monastery of St. Catherine.  The monastery is still going - there are around 13 nuns who worship there.  We only went to the museum part, because it's a cloister convent, which means that the nuns are completely isolated and do a lot of praying.  They can't leave the monastery or have contact with males unaffiliated with the church.  Apparently, they do other things than pray - sewing for the church-related events and do a lot of script urestudy (I can't read that word...), especially of Saint Catherine's writings (and by 'writings,' I mean 'things that Catherine dictated to people because she couldn't write').

After the monastery, we went out and realized that a parade was about to start.  This week is Corpus Christi - 9 weeks (way off in that estimate... actually 60 days) after Easter, and probably something to do with Christ's physical ascent into Heaven.  It's a catholic festival, which thereby means that a parade is on, EVERY CATHOLIC PERSON IN CUZCO decides they want to celebrate by watching it.  The thing is, there are more Catholics in Cuzco than there is room to move in the Plaza where the parade is held, once you factor in the tourists, vendors, balcony space, and stray dogs roaming about.

We tried to work our way around the Plaza to the Inca History Museum, but we got there right as it was closing.  After hanging out in the shop across the street, the proprietor of the shop told us the name of a really good restaurant for dinner.  We decided to go there after taking some time to sit down and do nothing for a little while.  Upon our return to the Act of Doing Stuff, however, we spent an hour and a half looking for this restaurant.  It did not exist - if it does, we were in the wrong place.  After walking around for an hour and a half and multiple asks for directions, we decided to just go to the touristy place, which was decent.

After that, we went to meet someone Lesley knows as a friend of a friend.  HIs name is Christo, and he's super cool - if only because he looks sort of like a Peruvian Qui-Gon Jinn.  (It's the fact that he has the beard for it, and the hair for it, and his facial structure is right).  He has really kind eyes, and the sort of wrinkles about the eyes that form when a person is smiling ALL THE TIME.  It fit him, though - he's a cheerful guy in manner and a bit eclectic in dress - he had a rainbow scarf, a rasta sort of knit hat, and a blue coat that was a bit patched around the wrists.  He's eternally energetic, too, and he makes and keeps friends well.  Christo used to run a Coca Shop (I wrote 'chocolate stuff' here, but it's not that - it's a plant for altitude sickness), and he met the friend he shares with Lesley when she came in as a patron.  Ten years ago.  And they've kept in touch.

After that, Christo showed us a shortcut to the plaza, and now we're in the hotel.  I feel kind of like a grandma for feeling tired before 11, but my excuse is a pre-6:00 wakeup every day in the Amazon.

Wild Card's Note: The Corpus Christi festival, as it is held in Cusco, has been sort of 'made by Cusco' (for lack of a better term).  Many years ago, there was an earthquake in Cusco; when someone brought a saint out of the church to save the statue, the earthquake stopped.  That saint became super important, and they've brought statues around the plaza every year on the same day ever since.  Something like that, anyway.

Also, about Coca - it's not just a plant that has been used for altitude sickness since forever.  It's the plant that was the basis for the formula for Coca-Cola (very creative name... not), and is the reason that the formula had trace amounts of cocaine.

"My favorite thing is to go where I have never gone." (Diane Arbus) (Entry 16, Day 6)

Inca Museum (Hiram Bingham/ Machu Picchu) (Hiram Bingham was the guy who made the scientific discovery of Machu Picchu, and several other sites along the Inca Trail. He was also the guy who named the place Machu Picchu, and also named the other sites based on Quechua names (the language, still spoken by Andean people today), since the original names of the sites were lost)

• Incas looked to Milky Way as Cosmic River
• Sun God - Inti - rulers - descendants
• forecasted seasons, ceremonies, etc
• observatories
• Torreon - solar observatory for summer solstice
• Intimachay - solar observatory for winter solstice - marked new year/ celebration of masculine adulthood
• also watched moon - represented queen, Coya
• Pleiades - harvest
• saw pictures in the 'dark clusters,' gaps in sky, interpreted

----------

• Machu Picchu itself
• country palace/ retreat - royal
• Carried loads on head
• flattened heads as babies
• metallurgy
• animal life - llama family - meat, material, etc - took tools from pelvic bone of llama
• didn't work hard - those skeletons were caretakers
• made metal stuff there
• diet 65% maize

----------

• spinning tools found - drop spindle - all did it - cotton + bone
• cotton, alpaca, etc
• fault - how they got water
• canal - northern spring
• manchungas - bones - weaving

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Confucius) (Entry 15, day 5)

Wednesday, May 29, 2013; Suze/ Lesley's room; our Cuzco hotel; 6:53 PM

Well, Cuzco this afternoon was very interesting.  Right as I got off the plane, I noticed the difference in altitude - I stared feeling kind of light headed and short of breath.  We were met at the airport by Gloria, a lady from the touring company, who brought us to the bus that would take us to the hotel.  The streets in Cuzco are very narrow and crowded.  There's hardly any walking space, but people walk on the sides of the roads anyway.  The drivers can get fairly aggressive, too.

We had to walk the last block to the hotel because the street in question was blocked off for the Corpus Christi parades (super-important Catholic tradition here, involving floats and live music and parades that go on for hours).  A parade was getting ready to start as we were crossing the street; right as we were in the way, the trumpet music started playing, and nobody in the crowd was budging to let us through without us getting pushy.

The hotel is quite nice, but I like the one in the rainforest better (to be fair, that one was a lot nicer, period).  I guess what it boils down to is that I really like being outdoors and having a lot of space to move.  Also, I like nature.  A lot.

After we got settled in the hotel (and changed into jeans), we went to see if we could find a place for someone to do our laundry.  We found them easily enough, in the back of a shop that sells a whole manner of things - half of it is light gear for backpackers, the other is the standard sort of the thing in the shops, as we learned - bags, hats, bracelets, colourful trousers, dolls, and the like.  Mom got a day pack.  We took a couple of photos of the young girls there (with permission), and wound up becoming friends (ish) with the owners.  We got their email address to send them the photos.

The festival area is always loud, and the food vendors are always louder.  They all want you to buy the same thing (guinea pig, chicken, cheese, and this cool-looking bread), but they try to make you get it from THEM, not the guy across the way who will bump the price down by a single soles.

After the street of fried guinea pigs and stray dogs, we wandered into a more secluded selling area.  After asking several people who were yarning (knitting/ crocheting) if they had "materiales de tejer" (yarning materials), a proprietor of a beading shop showed me her wool.  I got two skeins of (reportedly) Alpaca wool for 20 soles - less than $10.  Alpaca wool, in the US, sells for $20, and you get less of it.

Speaking of Alpacas, I saw one being led down the street earlier today.  I got very excited.  It was jazzed up to be in a parade, I think.

After the quiet area, we ate chicken and fries, and Suze and I decided to come back to stay at the hotel while Lesley and Mom went out some more.

I'm tired.  Signing off now.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Confucius) (Entry 14, Day 5)

Wednesday, May 29, 2013; 1:03 PM; plane to Cuzco

This morning marked our last day in the Amazon.  It was quite fun, but I'm really excited for Cuzco (and MORE excited for Sunday, when we actually go on the trail).  I'm kind of nervous about the altitude - Cuzco is the highest altitude we'll be (higher than Machu Picchu), but everyone is making a big deal about how the altitude will affect the climb up to the city (despite the altitude difference, the only way to the city on foot is up).  Since the altitude here is higher than the Alps, it's going to be worse if I get altitude sickness (meaning, IF I GET SICK, it will be in Cuzco).  I'm going to see how I do when we land in Cuzco (altitude: 11,1152 feet, which is ~ 4,000 ft higher than the peak of the Alp we hiked, and ~ 1 km higher than the Incan city).

Actually, scratch what I said about Cuzco being the highest.  Cuzco is 3399 meters - the highest we'll be is 4198 meters (13,773 feet), at Dead Woman's Pass on the third day of the hike.  That's also the longest day of the four we'll be hiking, which makes it only slightly more terrifying.

There are several theories why it's called Dead Woman's Pass.  One is that, if you are hiking through and you look back, there is a feminine visage in the rock face.  Another is that there used to be female sacrifices (not just virginity) in that spot (I don't remember Yuri talking about that, so I'm not sure how much I believe Mom when she says it).  Anyway, the main reason I can remember is that when a female Incan ice mummy was found in the Andes (actually within the last few decades), she was found in that pass; it was probably covered by something if all the tourists missed a BIG HONKIN' MUMMY BODY.  Or maybe it was just not on the trail.  Maybe the guy who found it was the only one who could focus properly at 4200 meters, because everyone else was dying of oxygen deprivation, because there are veery few people crazy enough to put themselves within a few kilometers of flying altitude, and none of them take to it well when outside of a plane.


Author's note: in this entry (and probably a few more), I misspelled "Cusco" with a 'z.'  I learned the difference later (and write about it later), but technically I think it's supposed to be spelled with the 's.'  Spell Check isn't yelling at me for it, though, so maybe either works?

"A journal of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Confucius) (Entry 13, Day 5)

Wednesday, 29 May, 2013; 5:30 AM; our room, Refugio

I just had a weird dream.  I visited Chicago, and an enormous storm came.  I got off of the 53rd level of our hotel and down to the ground floor.  I saw my boyfriend there, and his twin sister.  The streets started flooding, and suddenly I found myself in one of the boats people were using to move places (who goes places during a storm when the streets flood?).  I realized that I had given birth and was breastfeeding a baby boy named Henry.  WHEN DID I EVER LIKE THE NAME HENRY?

I told my boyfriend, then I told my mom, then I left with her to go to the zoo.  My boyfriend went to get a tattoo (which is odd, because he's not the sort of person to get tattoos) (also, we haven't chosen baby names because WE DON'T NEED TO) (also, Henry looked like neither of us - black hair and black eyes and tan-ish, unlike us with our pale European looks).

At the zoo, we met an elephant.  i don't know if he had a name.  They said we could ride him.  Mom freaked out more about my enthusiasm for this than she did when she found out that I had a son (aka A LOT for the elephant and NOT AT ALL for the baby).

We went back to the elephant's tent - a red and yellow affair with sand as the floor - and met the elephant.  It was an eager young elephant who shook my hand with its trunk and gave me a confused look about my mom.  Not knowing what else to do, I introduced them to each other.

I was going to see more; then Mom woke me up with her headlamp on the mirror.

"I have been a wanderer among distant fields..." (Percy Bysshe Shelley) (Entry 12, Day 4)

Tuesday, 28 May, 2013; 8:55 PM; our room, Refugio

The afternoon was similar to the morning - we hiked to see the mammal version of the clay lick, which is exactly the same as the bird version except lower to the ground.  It's seriously just a bit of exposed clay that the animals come to lick at to get extra nutrients.

On the way there, Yuri pointed out a Brazil Nut Tree that was close to 1,000 years old, and another that's around 700-800.  Apparently they start producing nut pods (about half the size of a coconut and containing 15-20 nuts) when they are around 30 years old (15-20 in cultivation) and then produce every season for the next 1000 years.  It's crazy to think how much humanity has developed since then.  Genghis Khan was conquering China when the younger of the two had just started blooming.  Both of them saw the rise and fall of the Incas, as well as two world wars and so many changes of power that it's impossible to count.  But do they notice?  Do they care?  If the trees could speak, what would they say about the fall of the Incas?  They probably wouldn't say anything - the Incas are over by Cuzco, several hundred miles and a mountain range away.

It kind of makes affairs of state seem trivial - like we're all complicating everything.  Every political movement, every ruler, every name and face in politics in any century seems so important now, in the moment, but in the end, there's only one entity that's still physically alive.  Strange, though, how a single Brazil Nut Tree can be planted before Khan and die may centuries later - it's not even dead yet! - but the world remembers Khan, the one who did a bunch of conquering, and who seemed like a giant; they don't remember the trees trooping along, growing a thousand feet tall and living that long.

When we got to the clay lick, we didn't see much - I thought for a long time that I was looking at an incredibly still monkey; then I realized that it was a leaf.  In my defense, it was the right color and shape and it was a long way away.

Three things I've learned, if nothing else comes away from the Amazon with me, are that Nature is Amazing, Humans are Insignificant, and Rainforest Crickets are Incapable of Being Utterly Silent.  They must be really horny.

... that is their mating call, right?

Time for bed.

"I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers." (Percy Bysshe Shelley) (Entry 11, Day 4)

Tuesday, 28 May, 2013; 11:52 AM; sitting area, Refugio Amazonia

Today, we went to a clay lick, where macaws go to lick clay and get nutrients, or maybe lick clay and wash out toxins from eating pre-ripe fruits.  On the way there, I couldn't help but think, "I'm following a Peruvian with a machete through a dense forest on a narrow, rocky path covered in roots and mud.  Am I in the jungle yet?"  When we got there, we saw two macaws at the beginning, through the camera lens of a guy from a different group, who could easily have the lens double as his telescope or binoculars and use it to take photos for Extreme Birdwatching.

On the way back, we had barely stepped on the trail when we heard the sound of a distant Alpha-Male Red Howler Monkey.  Apparently, the Alpha Males have the biggest throat things (couldn't find a photo of that) and the biggest lung capacities.  They yell to to claim their territory - and it can be heard for a bout a mile around.  The territory is about two square miles.  Red howler monkeys have shouting matches over territory, apparently - whoever yells the loudest (accompanied by their numerous mates and kids) gets the territory.  The males also sort of act like ancient warlords - multiple mates (fifteen is the largest known), and if one kid is strong enough to take over, they kill all their siblings and take the territory and all their father's mates (I assume that includes their mom, too. INCEST!).  For some reason, that reminds me of Game of Thrones, but I'm not good enough in the Game of Thrones universe to say for sure.

As we went on, we also heard some wild boars.  Let me tell you - these wild boars do not seem as friendly as Pumbaa.  For starters, when Yuri stopped us to point out the fact that there were boars about, my first thought was, "what moron decided to take a shit without a cathole?"  My second thought was, "do they even make people do catholes here?  How do you do those in the jungle, anyway?"  (for those who don't go backpacking, catholes are holes a few inches deep that people poo in, so the animals don't get at it). That what it smelled like, though - like someone had taken a dump, peed on it, and let the growing heat make it gross for a few hours.  (for those who don't know, peeing on poop is what make the latter smell so bad - leave it alone, and it'll decompose naturally).  Anyway, the boars grunted a bit and chomped their tusks a bit - apparently, to try and get to the inside of nuts, like a bird might.  It sounded duly intimidating.  Apparently, they're not the sort of creatures who will think, "I WILL KILL AND EAT ALL OF YOU!"  Obviously, you shouldn't piss off a nesting mother or threaten a group of them (they've been known, as a group, to take on jaguars), but if you keep your distance and don't make any moves if one crosses your path, you should be fine.  If you do wind up getting chased by a hoard of angry boars, climb a tree and bang your machete against the wood (apparently it scares them off).

After crossing paths with a wild boar (I only saw its snout because I was turning off my flash when it was crossing), we didn't really encounter much else, except a different group who had people from Yorkshire at the back.

When we arrived at the river to cross back over, I saw a guy light up a cigarette on the beach.  WHO SMOKES IN THE FREAKING AMAZON?  First off, where are you going to put the butt?  Second off, WHY ARE YOU DEPRIVING YOURSELF OF THE NECESSARY LUNG AND RESPIRATORY CAPACITY?  YOU HAVE TO GO HIKE UP STEEP HILLS AND STUFF!

Tangent over.  Going to get a coffee or something.


Author's note: I don't know if I wrote about a guy we met in Cusco who was also smoking, but it still doesn't make sense to me.  If the altitude prevents you from starting your lighter, you need to rethink your habits (or your vacation).

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine." (Caskie Stinnett) (Entry 10, Day 3)

Monday, 27 May, 2013; 6:09 PM; the porch, Refugio Amazones

Today - this afternoon - was quite interesting.  The afternoon had less to do with the animals and more to do with the plants.  We hiked a bit, and wound up taking a boat across the river to a farm.  The farmer there, Miguel, mostly grows fruit - papayas, ladyfinger bananas, oranges that are green on the outside, these plants that are part of the cocoa family but taste like gooey, gelatinous crosses between mangos and bananas.  He also grows actual cocoa beans, coffee, and starfruit.  There are also these plants that I can't recall the name of, but the outside has the green base of a kiwi but with more fuzz, which is naturally red in colour and looks kind of spiky-looking.  On the inside, there's nothing really edible.  The innards just inside the skin are white - you can squeeze the sides and it pops open - and there are two halves in each half - quarters, I guess.  On each side are red seeds that crush if you poke them.  It turns into a red dye that safe to use on skin and in food.  I got tagged, basically, by Yuri, and now my face is painted.  I was able to get revenge - he gave me one of the plants as we were leaving - so now his face is painted, too.  HAHAHAAA!!!

While we were at the farm, we did see some animals - specifically, some monkeys in the avocado trees (Miguel grows avocados, too), as well as Miguel's Mighty Kittehs of teh Amazon.  Also, Mighty Chickens of teh Amazon.

(I didn't get photos of the chickens)

Before we went to the farm, though, we went to a replica of an Incan Shaman's place. They had plants that actually worked for healing - stuff for headaches, joint pain, one that helped fight kidney disease and certain cancers if you caught the condition early enough.  We also got to sample the key ingredient in Novocain (I think that's what it is - the painkiller that numbs your mouth?), which definitely works if you chew it a bit.  I started salivating on one side because I went so numb.  There was one that's touted as an all-natural version of Viagra, whose name (Puña Puña) translates to "stiff stiff" or "get up get up" or something, which proves that innuendos are multicultural and span as much time as the language has been around.

Of course, the hallucinogenic ones were there, too, which were for spiritual cleansing.  Yuri could explain how that particular one affected your brain, because he'd tried it for fun one time (as opposed to trying it to cleanse his soul or learn his ailments or something).  It kind of makes you wonder how many of the Incas asked the shaman for that tea so they could get the high, rather than for cleansing or removal of spirits or something - and how many went to help their mother and father and brother, too, but just for the high.

Right, I'm off for now.  I'll write tomorrow.

p.s. forgot to mention - on a clear night, Pat would geek out.  the stars are the brightest I've seen.

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine." (Caskie Stinnett) (Entry 9, Day 3)

"Did you see the red rump?  It was spectacular!"
"Mom, that's probably the only time I've heard you use 'spectacular' when talking about butts." - Mom and me, 27 May

Monday, May 27, 2013; 12:30 PM; lobby of Refugio Amazones (hotel)

This morning was very interesting, despite having to wake up at 5:00 AM and only sitting down a few minutes ago.

Breakfast was good - fruit, eggs, and really good (but really strong) coffee.  Then we headed out on the trail - it gets light enough to see in the forest by 6:00 AM; we were on the trail by 6:30.  The hike was not terribly long until we got to the tower, which is really just a bunch of wooden steps and metal supports with a wooden platform on the top.  There, we qualified for Extreme Birdwatchers, as we stood on the top for a good half-hour.  We saw some predatory birds, I think, and some toucans, and some tannagers (tannigers?  Not sure how to spell that).  Those were the ones that Mom was talking about the rump.  The predatory birds, as we found out on the lake a few hours later, are nicknamed "stinky birds," because they eat foul-smelling leaves, which go through their three stomachs and ferment while they're at it; when they poop, they're acting in self-defens.  We also saw a tarantula while we were heading to the tower.  On the way to the lake, we saw a poison dart frog.  Apparently, the fathers carry the tadpoles to moisture, not the mothers.

Stinky birds! (we didn't smell anything)

(photo cred to Lesley)

When we got to the lake, we took a boat across to the other side of the forest.  It's a moderately wide and fairly long body of water, not counting the floating grass that's located at each end.  The lake, apparently, is shrinking.  Slowly, but it'll be gone in 2000 years.

On the other side of the lake, we saw a parasite tree - a fig tree that commandeered another one and grew around it.  The tree inside eventually died, leaving the innards hollow.  It wasn't difficult to slip through one open part and go in - it fits four or five inside.  It was really cool - it was probably what being attacked by Old Man Willow would have been like.  Except it was a fig tree.  And not in Middle-Earth.  And consensual.  And it didn't hurt.

(the middle photo - cred to Lesley)

After the fig tree, our guide, Yuri, challenged us to try to climb this vine outside the tree.  It didn't work for me.  I tried, but it didn't work - I'm not a good climber, I guess.

A cool thing we saw on the way were roots.  Well, a single root in particular, which stretched nearly 200-ish feet, from a certain sort of tree, across a stream bed, and across the path.  It's very shallowly located within the soil - apparently, the lower layers of rainforest soil are not very nutritious, so the roots go out instead of down.  Since this particular tree is several hundred years old (and is at least as tall as it is old; which is to say that it's SUPER TALL), it's spread out a lot.  Manchika trees - the ones with the spreading roots - are also really good pee trees, because the roots go up the trunk.  It's proportionate to most trees (like, the roots stabilize the trunk like on most trees), but since the trees are super-tall, the roots go up to about my middle, probably higher.  The roots also form this nice sort of alcove-y thing that gives you a lot of privacy.

On the boat back, we fed the fish.  Including the piranhas.  I didn't actually personally see any.

Now, it's time for me to eat.  Will write tonight.