Cusco is at 11,000 feet and was, frankly, a welcome change for me given that the jungle's humidity was getting to me. I was looking for 65 degrees and got it...but that difference came with more confrontation with poverty and destitution.
A grimy-faced little girl in traditional dress, dragging a ragged, leashed-up alpaca through the streets for pictures and what little change you would negotiate with her (and her side was backed by the roving police, at times).
On a small side note, Casa San Blas in Cusco was our absolute favorite hotel on the trip. Clean, bright, friendly staff, lovely facility...and very well located.
The altitude made us feel as though we were rocking gently on a boat, and the cobblestone streets took a couple of chunks out of one of our group who tripped pretty soon after we'd arrived.
We got the EARLY morning train to Aguas Calientes (now I'm calling it Vacation Boot Camp), but only one of the group went straight there, the rest of us jumped the train at kilometer 107 to begin our hike up the Inca Trail (I think it's actually Inka in Spanish).
What do you know, I'm on the Inca Trail!!!
And, it looks like it needs a little better repair...you can see the angry water between the planks that have some serious rotting going on...
This is the same river that the week of January 25th, blew its banks and flooding out the valley,
stranding 2000 tourists. We've got some video ourselves of this river, raging down the valley, but it wasn't nearly the volume we see in this amature news footage from someone stuck there. At the end of this post, I've attached a clip of us at the end of our time here. You can see the river's volume at that time, which - even so - is pretty impressive.
First, we use the amenities before heading forth on this timeless journey.
Hey! Does anyone have any toilet paper?
...and head up on what I called the Incan Death March (which later became the Peruvian Meat Grinder, or to quote
Karl Mueller, the Stairmaster from Hell).
We'd had our meager box lunches at the Winaywayna Lodge (which means "forever young" and we're not exactly feeling like that right now, but it's a lovely stop in the day) and had a quick 15 minute jaunt off to the side of the main trail to be rewarded by this smallish settlement of Winaywayna. You got the idea that the rich folk were up higher, with better views and more effective, gravity-driven plumbing. Membership has its privileges...
In order to preserve the agricultural terraces, the park rangers were using hand scythes to cut down the invading plantlife. Apparently, there is a very poisonous species of snake in this area, but our scientist had gone on without us today.
Between the sad box lunch and what seemed like hours of pouring rain, the trail was unrelenting with its torturous boulder staircases and slippery patches of muddy run-off. (Does it sound like I'm complaining? Oh no! I'm here in the Cloud Forest of Peru, so being soaked to the bone is one of the things that comes with the territory of the kind of traveling I like...but to cope through humor is a good thing, oui?)
I digress...
Before the rain hit in the afternoon (and magically ONLY for the time we were trekking this sacred journey...), I had stopped at a clearing where some very pink flowers were showing off for the sky. Since this is not where you'd hear airplanes, when I heard something similar, it caught my attention.
A hummingbird had come to check out the goods. Mr. Ed Gar said later that this was an
Angel of the Sun. (On later reflection, this may have been an omen that the Angel and the Sun were leaving the building).
This is the view looking back DOWN, my friends...(and our guide said that the last half of the day was FLAT, to which I should've replied something about pigs flying or the Incan gods sacrificing him for lying to us), but what did we know?
No matter, here it is...Machu Picchu...our reward was a magical clearing of the clouds and the unveiling of this amazing ruins just as we rounded the last corner at the Sun Gate.
Public television did a terrific job of outlining the history, the engineering and the circumstances under which Machu Picchu was built.
I can squawk about rain all I want, but man, what a site this was! And I'm not really squawking, but I was truly wet through everything I had on and getting pretty cold. But even at that, how can you stop pulling out your camera to take the next great shot?
This rock is the spiritual heart of the site. Everyone coming here would reach their hands out to capture the vibration and heat this carved stone gives. This is also the capstone of the solar and lunar alignments for the Emperor Pachacuti and his (more important) high priest or shaman. Given the shaman's ability to gauge the seasons, Pachacuti would guide his people through their yearly activities - and, in fact, figuring when they would have to have the queen look around for the prettiest young girls to sacrifice for one godly favor or another. (I think really it was just another way of eliminating the competition, but that's just my take...)
Working with the solar and lunar reflections, this rock is in the shape of a cougar(at the top of the stairs) and at a given time in the seasons, the shadow of the sun and/or the moon would go right down it, indicating a sacred change, a ceremony to take place and the universal mysteries of the Incan station between the sky (the Condor), the earth (the Cougar) and the underworld (the Snake). This is the Incan Stonehenge, if you will, and the reason most people journey here. We saw lots of alignments of pools of water or stones on the wall that created sun or moon dials.
Clearly, people still take their spiritual side very seriously. You see that Coco leaves have been left at this reflection pool as a token to those who watch over us all.
The views alone were ephemeral...and not for those afraid of heights.
...you gotta love an ancient bathroom that has a spot for shampoo! The water engineering through this site was just as effective as it was thousands of years ago. After we'd had such rain, it was evident that the system was as smart as the aquaducts in Europe, build far before and still very much working.
The views just kept me snapping pictures - turn the corner and you face another framing opportunity. My memory card filled quickly and Mike was nice enough to hand me his camera, so that my photo-fury could continue uninterrupted.
This carved slab was an alter to dedicate offerings to the spirit of the mountain in the distance.
At the end of the day, we enjoyed a riverside table with a cold beverage. As you can see,
the river is really energetic, but it hasn't crested its banks as it did this week.
The only way one can see these islands is by cruise ship (and by order of the Ecuadoran government, access is completely regulated in their attempts to maintain this fragile ecosystem. Read more about this here). I'm not at all a fan of cruises for a myriad of environmental reasons, but a compromise is needed in this case...so a'board, me maties!
We're at the Darwin Research Center in Puerto Ayora. This is where they are doing the breeding and repopulating of tortoises, plants and insects. This is also where they are spearheading the efforts to eliminate the invading populations of rats, dogs, cats, birds and other entities that have decided this is a pretty easy place to live, raise young and decimate the stuff that's supposed to be here. Being such a dog-lover, though, I wondered how good I would be at putting a gun to that effort.
Here's the first step to learning the rocks...
oh,oh - here it comes...
...the nose dive.
He says to Jose, the guide, "I'm sorry, it's a reflex!"
I'll admit that once I had my memory card back in action, my love affair with the shapes of lava began!
Okay, now before you start ripping on Brian for smiling with his mouth full, you have to remember that this guy has been in the jungle for 6 months, eating more sad box lunches than he cares to recount. So give the guy a break...but don't get between him and his coconut ice cream, either!
