"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!