July 12: Pisac

On my final day in Cuzco, I took the bus out again and made it to the market town of Pisac. And market town it was, indeed. The trading post covers the main square of town with the ruins a short hike up above. A line of manual taxis were lined up at the bus stop, ready to tote people (or their goods) to the square.I started on the steep uphill climb and ran into surprisingly few tourists. Notably, however, a Peruvian was following me up the mountain and steadily gaining as my lungs began to flag. After a while I gave up trying to outpace him and met Michelangelo (no kidding, that was his name) who was basically a big ol’ Peruvian mystic. He was young, with an acne scarred face and shiny black hair, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and carrying a panpipe. We chatted a bit about the town of Pisac. Michelangelo pointed out the farmers threshing quinoa down below and I asked how their agricultural commerce worked. Michelangelo said a ranchero owned most of the land and paid the townspeople’s wages but allowed the people several plots for communal work to feed themselves as well. He also pointed out a hillside riddled with holes and told me that the mountain had once been an Incan burial ground but huacaros had long since looted the artifacts.I asked him what he would do at the ruins and he said he would be a tour guide to the busloads of tourists arriving at the front side. (I apparently took the back way up. A long driveway also winds up the mountain for the bus tour hordes.)

Then he asked me if I wanted a tour. Now, I was all about spreading my comparative North American wealth to these enterprising young people on this trip, but I was flat broke this day. I had enough money for my bus ride home and my hostel back in town. And the closest ATM was miles away back in town. I apologized profusely and said I couldn’t pay him – I didn’t have enough. So Michelangelo took me on a tour for free. He said he had to go that way to get to the front entrance anyway, and why didn’t I just walk with him? So I did. He showed me the ruins of guinea pig storage rooms, grain storage rooms whose roofs were being rethatched, and another fountain that has worked for hundreds of years.He walked me up to a rock overlooking the ceremonial center of the site where we ate lunch together. His consisted of a banana and four tangerines. Mine consisted of bread, chocolate covered saltines (which are AWESOME. They’re called “Chokosoda” and they are muy tasty), and a pepito melon. He gave me a tangerine and I gave him my junk food and some bread. I thanked him for his kindness and then he asked me if he could let the mountain bless me. Um, excuse me? I hadn’t even sneezed. I asked him what he meant and he said his ancestors were Incas and he knew some Incan ceremony that would fill me with the mountain’s spirit (or maybe fill the mountain with my spirit – I never got very far with Spanish prepositions) and would make the walk back to town easy. How do you turn down the very surreal experience of being blessed by an Inca?

So Michelangelo touched my stomach and then did some fluttering motions with his hands, cupped them together and blew in the direction of the mountain. It was actually a bit more involved than that. He did the fluttering hand thing while walking around me in a circle, and sort of brushed me off a bit at the same time. Very strange. Nice kid but very strange. We air kissed cheeks like the French and then he proceeded to play his panpipe after me while I climbed out of sight. And he kept playing. I must have heard that music for a full five minutes while I made my way back toward town. I felt like that was a suitable way to end my stay in the heart of the Incan empire. Slightly odd with an air of theatrics in a setting older than time itself. Much like the Incan religion must have been. Tomorrow I fly to Lima.

Jully 11: Cuzco

Nothing particularly exciting today, other than a citywide demonstration by SUTEP in Cuzco. Carolyn and I toured all the little museums that are on the boleto turistico (the tourist ticket you have to buy to visit the Incan sites of the Sacred Valley). Seventy soles (about $25) allow access to the nine archaeological sites of the Sacred Valley and seven regional museums in town. We saw a lot of hellfire and brimstone at the Catholic church museums. I also finally tried chicha, the fruit juice like beverage made from purple corn. I had the non-alcoholic version, but apparently the Peruvians ferment the stuff into proper corn beer as well. I also got suckered into taking a picture of the people in their fancy dress. I wanted to take one just of the girl with her baby goat, but then her sister came over and then her mom, and they all demanded tips after I took the pictures. *Sigh* Well, I get to make a few rookie mistakes, right?

July 10: Sacred Valley

After hauling my gear from city to city for weeks, I had a strangely calm day of laundry and souvenir shopping in Cusco. This should be welcome respite to normal people who cherish things like relaxation and tranquility. I, however, was lonely and miserable. Helen had departed for Lima by bus in an attempt to make it through the ubiquitous blockades in time for her flight to Germany two days later. I wasn’t scheduled to meet up with Carolyn until the next evening. I spent the day browsing about a hundred look-alike souvenir stalls and losing badly at haggling with a ten year old girl for an “antique bronze” puma, which I eventually caved for at $8.

On the 10th I decided to attempt the trip to Pisac to see the ruins where I met, yet again, crushing defeat. The only other tourists on the bus were a pair of Frenchmen. On the ride out one of the passengers stood up shortly after departure and made his way to the middle of the bus carrying a very square brown suitcase. Sadly inured by the scare tactics of our country’s government, my first thought was “Bomb in suitcase. He’s a terrorist.” Instead, he puts down the suitcase, turns it on, and pulls out a microphone. There was a tiny portable sound system in there! Complete with crappy microphone! The first two hours of the ride were given over to this man’s spiel about magical healing jungle plants, their effectiveness as an anti-parasitical, and their fabulous digestive aiding qualities. All this could be yours for just $1 per packet of unidentified powdered substance! But wait! Because you are on this bus right now, I’ll give you a free one for every three packets you buy! His arguments were made all the more convincing by his associated booklet of pictures showing parasitic worms crawling out of just about every orifice of the human body. Yeesh.

About three hours into the trip we ran into the blockade. The union members were throwing rocks in the road and ripping up bushes and pushing them into the road as well. The exasperated passengers urged the bus driver to go around the parked cars blocking the way, but the driver refused. Everyone got off the bus and stood around trying to figure out what to do. About ten minutes of dithering later, the Frenchmen decided to make a run for it. Water bottles in hand, they walked right through the line of angry Peruvians on their way to Pisac. I saw them start off and couldn’t get up the gumption to follow. I don’t know – following two strangers past an angry group of people throwing rocks just didn’t strike me as the safest thing to do.

Sadly disappointed, I reboarded the bus with the rest of the muttering Peruvians and started the return trip to town. But! A silver lining! The turn offs for the four closest Incan sites were along this road! I spoke to the bus driver and he promised to let me off at Tambomachay, a five mile walk from Cusco.

Tambomachay (also called El Baño de Inca) is a ceremonial fountain spilling crystalline spring water into a small channel. Like the Nazca aqueducts, my guide Alex (who I picked up within five seconds of reaching the site – tour guides are like vultures in Peru) encouraged me to take a drink. Giardia be damned, it was some fine tasting water. Alex, like every other young tour guide I had, was a student studying English and tourism in Cusco. He asked me what have become the standard questions: “Where are you from? (The US) Why are you here alone? (My boyfriend hurt his knee) What do you do? (I’m an electrician) Why do you work like a man? (What is it with the machismo?)” I asked Alex about the Incan animals carved into every souvenir in Cusco – the puma, the snake, and the condor. He told me that the three animals represent the three levels of the earth: the snake for the underworld, the puma for the earth, and the condor for the heavens. Each animal is associated with a gender as well. The snake represents the female (for intelligence and mystery), the puma is man (for strength and aggression), and the condor is a conveyor to the spirit world. All right. I’ll buy that.

Alex walked me across the road to Pukapukara, the Red Fort, named for the pinkish colored rocks used in its construction. This was once a lookout post, storage silo, and a tax collection area for goods-laden Incas heading to Cusco. He also suggested that perhaps this was a school of architecture because one area had several different examples of wall building (ceremonial cut stone vs regular) and a large stone carved into the shape of Machu Picchu. That story seemed suspect, but here’s the picture anyway. You can see Wayna Picchu on the right and some rectangular shaped stuff in the middle representing the ruins.I bid farewell to Alex and headed off down the road toward Q’enqo. A bunch of houses that I passed had little clay cows on the roof, which I think are supposed to be house spirits to keep thieves away. Back in Nazca, Jose was telling a story about how his sister’s house doesn’t have a cow and was robbed, while his house has a cow and neighbors think Jose is home even when he’s not. At the time, I thought he was referring to a real cow or maybe a cow skull, but I think he was talking about the little clay ones. Anyway, I found them charming.

Here is what Lonely Planet has to say about Q’enqo: “The name of this small but fascinating ruin means ‘Zigzag.’ It’s a large limestone rock riddled with niches, steps, and extraordinary symbolic carvings, including the zigzagging channels that probably gave the site its name. These channels were likely used for the ritual sacrifice of chicha or, perhaps, blood. Scrambling up to the top, you’ll find a flat surface used for ceremonies and, if you look carefully, some laboriously etched representations of a puma, condor, and a llama. Back below you can explore a mysterious subterranean cave with altars hewn into the rock.” I surreptitiously followed two American girls and their tour guide, hearing stories about how the altars below were actually Incan surgical tables for trepanning (and supposedly they would fill the hole with gold, though none of the trepanned skulls in the museums had gold in them), and that a funny shaped rock on top casts the shadow of a giant puma on the equinox. I also paid a little kid a couple of soles to show me the “laboriously etched” animals. The llama definitely counts as etched. The condor and the puma seem like happy fortunes of rock erosion.LP also mentioned a “Temple of the Moon” out in the fields, so I made my way back to the tourist road and asked the first person I saw how far away it was, and how dangerous it was to go there. Surprise, surprise, the person was a tour guide. Juan, yet ANOTHER student, was armed with his textbook and good local knowledge of the area (he grew up in Pisac). He took me far afield, braving one snarling dog (which frightened me so much, he laughed at me after throwing rocks at it to make it go away), to show me the Temple of the Moon, the Devil’s Tower, and the Temple of the Serpent. The Temple of the Moon gets one line in LP, the other two aren’t mentioned at all.

The Temple of the Moon is a cave for women only. After entering a doorway “carved” with a serpent and a condor (which still look more accidental than human-planned), there is a small chamber, and then a second doorway with a vagina carved into the ceiling. An altar lies at the back of the second chamber with a small opening in the roof to let in light. On a full moon, women (still today) lay down on the altar and moonlight shines directly onto their uterus, enhancing fertilization.The Temple of the Serpent was quite cool. A large rock, snaked through with tunnels, and riddled with niches and altars, seemed like a playground more than a place of sacrifice or worship. Juan said that Incas used the area for learning about geology, testing the strength of different minerals and rocks for construction.

The Devil’s Tower is not much to look at anymore. Once a fortress standing on an impressively high bluff, nothing is left but the foundation. A small river runs underneath the bluff through a natural underground cavern, and Juan led me through it to the other side.

Through all of this, I had my most complicated Spanish discussion ever with Juan. He was so curious about everything. He asked if I believed in an afterlife, and told me that he thought the spirituality of the Incas was closer to the truth than the formalized Catholic religion of the country. He asked what I thought about the South America Free Trade Act, and what President Bush could do for Peru. (How on earth am I supposed to answer these questions when I can barely get a room for the night?!?) He told me that science and technology were the ways of the future, and that the presence of God could be detected in the intricacies of the mechanics of the world. It was one of the most enlightening moments I had on the trip. It also meant that by the time I got to Saqsaywamán, I was tired of deciphering Spanish.

Saqsaywamán was a huge fort with massive zigzagging walls. An Incan emperor made Cusco the shape of a puma, and the walls of its largest defensive structure were its teeth. The rocks used in its construction are enormous – far larger than even the largest ones at Machu Picchu.
After a quick wander around the ruins, I was happy to head back to Cusco for an alpaca burger meal at Sumaq Misky with Carolyn (home also to the most massive glass of jugo mixto I've ever seen.)

July 8: Chinchero, Moray, and Salinas

Helen and I slept in while the other four people in our dorm woke up early for their trip to the ruins. We had tickets on the PeruRail back to Ollanytambo. The train ride was surreal, in keeping with the über-tourist theme of Machu Picchu. First, the train actually left almost on time, which is nothing short of a miracle in Peru. Then the train started playing a pre-recorded message about the jungle we were passing through and the destination town. Railway attendants dressed up like stewardesses served coffee and soft drinks. And THEN a man dressed up in a white shirt and vest with a white balaclava danced up and down the narrow aisle of the two train cars. Helen and I looked at each other with complete disbelief. But the show wasn’t over yet. The stewardesses then put on a fashion show of alpaca goods! Complete with bad techno music! They modeled various sweaters and ponchos then offered them to the passengers for purchase. It was SO weird.

Eventually we reached Ollanytambo and I was never so grateful to be off a train. I mean, I don’t know if working for the railway is considered a good job or not. It must be. The prices they charge are far more than any other system of transportation in Peru. But I wonder if the employees feel humiliated when they have to dance up and down the aisle of the train, day in and day out. It smacks vaguely of a minstrel show in that self mocking way. It certainly made me feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, Helen and I walked into town to catch a bus to Urubamba and on to the town of Pisac to check out the market. The view from the bus was beautiful - snow capped mountains in the distance surrounded by fields of dry grass.On the way we met an Italian couple who told us that the market in Pisac is far more touristed than the one in Chinchero and would we like to accompany them? So we decided to follow the Italian couple for the day. It turned out that the Italians had actually seen Helen and I back in the hot springs at Aguas Calientes – one more coincidence in a trip full of them! In Urubamba we all caught a combi (yet another minibus) to Chinchero where we bought some sweets and popcorn at the market and watched the hustle and bustle of trade. Although I never made it to Pisac, the people hawking their wares in Chinchero seemed authentic. I don’t mean authentic in that other Peruvians are disingenuous, but there is a certain population who dress in traditional clothing solely for the benefit of the tourist and in the expectation of tips. These women all wore their hair in the traditional two braids down the back with the black thick woolen skirts as if they wore these clothes every day, much like the islanders back in Lake Titicaca.

From Chinchero we were interested in checking out Moray and Salinas, two outlying smaller tourist sites, so we hired a cab for 40 soles to take us around. Moray consisted of several deep bowls carved with concentric agricultural terracing. All of the steps in the terracing were the flagstone-sticking-out-of-wall type.
The guidebook explained that the depth of each layer mimics a microclimate of the mountainous terrain of Peru. Incas may have used the site to perform agricultural experiments in the various environments.

Salinas is a massive salt pan used in the creation of cow licks. A heavily salinated hot spring discharges water, which is diverted to the various salt pans below. The taxi dropped us off by the top of the pans and we walked to the edge of a cliff to look below. It would have been wonderful to wander around down there. The various colors ranged from muddy brown to sparkling white. However the weather was bad (drizzly and depressing) and everyone was exhausted from the excitement of Machu Picchu. After a long afternoon we asked the taxi driver if he could just take us back to Cuzco.

Finally back in town, I switched hostels to La Pakcha Real and had a much needed hot shower. I wandered around the square to check out the statues that had been put up in my absence then met up with Carolyn from the Colca Canyon trek to eat fondue with her and her Welsh friend who had been staying in Argentina. I had a fantastic triple sandwich, which consists of a fried egg with tomato and avocado on a roll - the perfect end to an exhausting couple of days.

July 6-7: Machu Picchu

The buses weren’t running to Quillabamba last night so Helen spent the night at my hostel and we both woke up early for the 8am bus. We weren’t actually going all the way to jungle-bound Quillabamba but planned instead to take the bus to Santa Maria, a small town along the way. The woman at the terminal said that although the road was open, there was a big pile of rocks and we would have to walk around. Or at least this is what I understood from the conversation. There was in fact a construction zone dividing the road into two parts and everyone had to get off the bus with their luggage and hike for half an hour through the jungle to meet up with a second set of buses on the other side. Entrepreneurial Peruvians had set up shop at the end of the hike and there were pots of rice and beans and chicken to greet folks emerging from the undergrowth.

It took us about six hours all told to reach Santa Maria. From there Lonely Planet recommends finding Lorenzo’s Lodge, hiring a guide, and catching the 3am collectivo to Santa Teresa. Instead a group of about eight intrepid backpackers had convened on the tiny Plaza De Armas in Santa Maria. We waited for hours for the collectivo to show up. The women in the bodegas across the street kept telling us “Yes, it’s coming. Soon.” Helen and I ate cream crackers and bread (which had pretty much been our diet all day) and drank the ubiquitous San Luis water (bottled by Coca Cola, who else?) that we had brought from Cuzco.

When the collectivo finally showed up at Santa Maria, they didn’t want to take us on the two hour ride up the mountain. It was too late at night, the driver said, and he wouldn’t be able to find a fare who wanted to go back to town. Instead the two Argentines in our little group hired the car for 20 soles apiece and we found three other extremely drunk Peruvian men who were also heading up that way. As sunset descended over quiet little Santa Maria, our Toyota minibus went hurtling up the mountain in what was rapidly becoming pitch blackness.

Any kind of taxi ride in Peru is an adventure of the hair-raising type. Only the especially lucky (or adventurous… or stupid) get ones over unpaved roads along the edges of cliffs. We sped through banana trees and bushy shrubbery covered in road dust, we forged streams fed by cliff waterfalls, and we clung desperately to the backs of the chairs in front of us for fear of going straight over the edge.
By the time we got to Santa Teresa it was only 8:30pm but it felt like midnight. Everyone was dirty and exhausted and starving. The collectivo dropped us off on the main street and we accepted the housing of the first woman who offered up her hostel. It was as basic as basic gets. One cold water shower (no thank you), and dorm beds for three women in a cinderblock room. (Helen, me, and a Korean girl we met at the Cuzco bus station). But it was by far the cheapest accommodation I used in Peru at just 7 soles a night. We immediately went out for a good lomo saltado dinner (beef and potatoes served over rice) with a palta (avocado) salad and limonada. The meal tasted like heaven.

Mario and Valerie (the Argentines we met in Santa Maria) met us at the restaurant and we all hired a cab (who was actually making the rounds at the restaurants in town) for the next morning to pick us up at 5:30am. I crashed out in the hostel immediately and before I knew it, Helen’s alarm was beeping in the morning.

The cab took us to the hydroelectric station where we would begin our walk to Aguas Calientes. It is possible to walk from Santa Teresa to the power station but it seemed a bit dodgy and Helen wanted to get to Machu Picchu as early as possible. So the cab took us through more jungle and over more rivers and eventually dropped us off where the Peru Rail train tracks end and where the six of us headed down the tracks. The instructions aren’t that specific in Lonely Planet for this roundabout way to Machu Picchu. You actually have to exit the train tracks from the power plant. There were some yellow signs that said “Train Exit” and some Peruvians by the railway told us that we had to walk up to a second set of tracks to actually get to Aguas Calientes. After a bit of a climb, we found the right set and headed off.It was actually quite peaceful as we walked along. The jungle surrounded us on all sides and we kept running into small huts and stores set up along the train tracks, even though the train doesn’t stop between the power plant and Aguas Calientes. At some point a dog rushed at us from someone’s house and growled menacingly. That felt like the most dangerous thing that happened to me in Peru, other than wandering around Lima. Finally we saw a tiny ruin up in the mountains and knew we must be getting close.

A little yellow train car, probably for maintenance or for track switching or something, passed us on its way to the power plant and a few hours later, on its return trip, the engineer stopped and offered us a ride to Aguas Calientes. Although it would probably only have taken another half hour of walking, we all jumped at the chance to ride this weird little car into town. He dropped us off a few hundred feet from the train station so he wouldn’t get in trouble for giving illegal rides.

Aguas Calientes is quite a shock to folks who have been bussing it through South America for the last one, six, or nine months. The town is set up as a vehicle for the thousands of people who come to see Machu Picchu and is named after the unappetizingly brown hot springs at the northern end of town. The infamous ruins themselves are but a short bus ride up the mountain, much to the chagrin of folks who spend four days walking the Inca Trail. I somehow expected the ruins to be remote and difficult to reach, like an actual Lost City of the Incas. Instead a tourist bus complete with plush seats and air-conditioning drives up the mountain where it drops you off at a Disneyland entrance complete with overpriced food and drinks.

Although we had woken up early and sped through Aguas Calientes as fast as we could, it was 10:30am by the time Helen and I reached Machu Picchu. The weather luckily was gorgeous. The sun beat down brutally on the mountaintop broken by puffy clouds in the blue sky. The guard at the gate told us that Wayna Picchu, a smaller mountain than Machu Picchu at the back end of the ruins with a good uphill hike and gorgeous panoramas, had already met its quota of 400 people for the day. But as we started wandering around the ruins we ran into a tour guide who told us that the gate guards always tell tourists that the mountain is closed, even if it’s not necessarily true. After a speed walk through the ruins, we reached the far end in about twenty minutes to discover that the guards actually let 430 people up in the high season. Unfotunately, they had already let 434 people up that day. It took a little bit of begging and pleading but Helen and I managed to be Number 435 and 436. It’s right there in the registry, under July 7, 2007. It was hot and sweaty work climbing up the mountain with its very steep stairs, but the views from the top were spectacular. We could see the Rio Urubamba and the train tracks we followed into town, along with the ruins themselves (supposedly in the shape of a condor, though I don’t see it at all).Speaking of 7/7/07, there was a worldwide internet vote for the New Seven Wonders of the World that day. While the voting practice itself might be a little suspect (think HotOrNot.com for the world traveler), Machu Picchu was officially voted in the day that I was on top of the mountain. We saw some newscast people at the ruins but the real party was down in Aguas Calientes, where we heard there was a big celebration in the Plaza with music and dancing. Back in Cuzco they put up giant paper mache statues and had newscasts declaring Peru’s great triumph.

The ruins themselves were lovely. Much of it was reconstruction, but there was plenty to explore. There was a large industrial/ residential sector, lots of agricultural terracing, and the more famous Sacred Plaza with several temples and an astronomical tower with an Intihuatana on top. The Intihuatana is a distinctive Incan stone carved a certain way with strange protrusions found in Incan temples. The Peruvians I met attributed a variety of magical powers to these odd stones, whose name translates to ‘Hitching Post of the Sun.’ One told me that on the equinoxes, the sun bounces off the stone is such a way that it casts three spots of light in the form of a triangle on the ground. When someone kneels in the triangle, a spot of light shines on his forehead and gives him great strength. Supposedly.

In the temple section the huge cut stones fit together with typically amazing masonry.There was also an Incan fountain, still running fresh water from an underground spring, and some rather frightening steps made of flagstones sticking straight out of a wall. Incans used this type of construction particularly in agricultural terracing to curtail erosion. When you use them you feel like you're stepping onto thin air.We also hiked out to the Incan Bridge (about twenty minutes away). Although you can’t actually cross the bridge because some tourist fell off it years ago, the walk was nice and took us through some agricultural terracing where llamas were grazing in the middle of the ruins. We tried to watch the sunset from the Intihuatana, but sunset happens too quickly in the mountains and doesn’t compare to the blaze of glory on Lake Titicaca.

We decided that after splurging on the bus ride up the mountain and the Peru Rail train ride to take us back to Ollanytambo, we should walk down to town. A steep and long set of stairs wends its way through the bus switchbacks from the entrance back to the museum at the base of the mountain. In the increasing darkness, we walked downhill until our feet ached and our knees shook while two Peruvian boys dressed as Incas raced down the steps to meet the tourist bus, letting out huge yells at each switchback and hoping for a few tourists to throw some soles out the window. By the time we limped to the line of buses sleeping at the bottom of the mountain, the boys had changed back into normal clothes and were waiting for someone with backpacks on their backs.

It was another twenty minute walk to town and when we got there, Helen and I were desperately ready for a dip in the thermal baths. Despite the unattractive brown stirred up from the gravel beds at the bottom of the pools, we found one with a bit of space to squeeze in between the locals and the other tourists fresh off the Inca Trail. Jesse from the Colca Canyon trek told us that they were pretty stingy with the alcohol in the drinks at the bar, so we left the hot springs for a proper dinner in town with Mario and Valerie and the two Koreans, who decided they were going to do Machu Picchu the next day. We split a big bottle of Cusqueña Negra and I slept incredibly well that night.