Apr 2008

Yay Machu Picchu!!!! This is what we were thinking as we groggily woke up at 4:45am this morning in order to catch the 5:30am bus to the ruins. We had heard that if we went early we'd miss the hoards of tourists and have the ruins mostly to ourselves. Not true! We stumbled to the bus station in the dark (the stars were beautiful) only to discover that 200 other tourists had the same idea as us. Local women knew it, too, and were prepared with baskets full of orange and banana cakes, sandwiches, mate de coca tea and candy (to help with altitude sickness), you name it. We couldn't refuse some good orange cake now, could we? We boarded one of the 8 buses that were there to shuttle us to the top of the mountain. The road passed along the rio, across a bridge, and then started zigzagging up the mountain... after about 20 minutes the sky had lightened a bit and we could make out juuuuust how high up we were (and just how narrow the dirt road was that we were on!). We arrived at the main entrance gate and had to wait a few minutes before the started letting the crowds in. It was a bit chilly up there at the top of the mountain, but surprisingly not as cold as I thought (and later I'd be really happy I'd dressed so lightly since it was already burning hot at about 8am).

We were good little girls and followed the ¨no food¨ policy... though we did bring a ton of food since it's ridiculously overpriced at the cafe up there, we checked it all at the storage room before we entered the ruins. However, later we realized that everyone else had brought food anyway and they got to have nice little picnics on top of Huayna Picchu and we didn't. Boo. So much for rule following. I really liked the other rule printed on the back of the entrance ticket, though, which specifically stated that walking sticks could only be used by ¨old people¨. Way to be blunt.

Experts aren't actually quite sure what the purpose of Machu Picchu was, and can only made educated guesses. Past theories have included the belief that it was a city of chosen women, since many female skeletons were discovered there, but later it was found that the city had close to a 50/50 ratio of males and females. Other theories are that it was built as a prison for people who had committed terrible crimes against the Inkans, that it was a defensive retreat, or that it was the original birthplace of the Inkan people. Today many people believe it was the estate of Inca Pachacuti. It was built around 1450 but was abandoned only 100 years later. It's believed that the Inkans there were wiped out by smallpox before the Spanish conquistadors even arrived. The Spanish never discovered the ruins, and so they remain very well preserved compared to other Inka sites. The jungle grew over the ruins and it was only in 1911 that they were ¨discovered¨again by Hiram Bingham (even though some local Quechuans were living amongst the ruins at the time) while he was on a quest to find the last refuge of the Inkans during the Spanish conquest. Because of the vast numbers of tourists who visit each day (sometimes up to 2,500 people), Machu Picchu has been placed on the most 100 Endangered Sites in the World watch list We're just some more tourists added to that giant mass... but at the very least we tried to respect the rules and minimize our physical impact on the ruins, as should every other visitor.

Anyway... once we got through the gates, we made our way up to The Hut of the Caretaker of Funerary Rock from where the classic Machu Picchu postcard picture was taken. Of course we had to take the same picture.

We also chanced upon some strategically placed photogenic llamas, who may or may not have been placed there on purpose for the tourists. They patiently held position as I photographed them gazing over the ruins in the background. There was a baby llama, too, which was super cute Llamas, alpacas, vicuñas... Peru has most of the camelid family and it makes me happy since they're all so funny looking. Down below us to our right we could see some of the cultivation terraces going down the hillside. The greens were so vivid. The terraces seemed to go down forever, and I later discovered that there are actually still some more terraces way down below, almost at the river, which are still being excavated. All around us were those beautiful, jagged mountains again, this time mostly covered in jungle growth... some far away mountains were snow-capped and since the sky was incredibly clear so early in the morning we could see for miles and miles.

Despite the fact that there were more tourists at 5:30am than we were expecting, I still think it was a great time to view the ruins and surrounding landscape just because the sky was sooo clear and the morning light striking the ruins was so amazing.

We then made our way down into the main ruins area through the prison, industrial, and residential areas. It was almost maze-like at some points. I couldn't quite tell where I was within the ruins since I was just surrounded by stone walls and there were a lot of twists and turns that just led to dead ends/empty rooms.

Again I somehow managed to lose Rachel again... at one point I discovered her a level below me while I was videotaping, but by the time I made it down to where she was, she had disappeared. We finally bumped into each other again and decided to head toward Huayna Picchu (the large, steep mountain the background of the ruins) before it reached the maximum of 400 hikers per day.

We had to wait in line to register to hike up Huayna Picchu. It felt a bit like Disneyland, like we were waiting in line for the Matterhorn, ¨jungle style¨... especially with the large group of Japanese tourists in front of us. While in line we met a 20 year old guy from Newport Beach who was touring around Peru with a group of photographers to build his portfolio... and as an added bonus, our new friend Philip introduced us to his hilarious guide, Marcos, who just happened to look like a Peruvian version of Donny Osmond and Richard Simmons. Philip told us how even though they'd traveled just about everywhere in Peru already, Marcos always seemed to know everyone... to illustrate this point, Marcos happened to disappear just as Philip was telling us this, and suddenly he reappeared in the registration booth and closed the gate on us, telling us he was terribly sorry but there were too many people on the mountain and we couldn't enter. Marcos ended up adopting us on our hike up Huayna Picchu, producing an Andean flute out of the blue and serenading us with some cheerful music as we hiked up and up and up the Inkan stone steps. I felt like I was on another planet... Richard Simmons prancing along the trail behind us, background music to our hike? Haha.

The hike to the top was steep. Our guidebook said it was steep, yet you did NOT have to be related to a mountain goat to climb it. I disagree slightly and I think Rachel does even moreso. I am smiling here, but my thighs were hurting and I was covered in sweat. Machu Picchu was getting smaller and smaller in the background the further up we hiked...

After an hour of climbing up and down (but mostly up) tiny Inkan stone steps, ducking under a rock, and climbing up a small ladder, we made it to the TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN! The view was absolutely amazing... you could see the tiny ruins of Machu Picchu below, the river even further down, as well as all the majestic mountains surrounding us. I couldn't stop taking pictures. Well, actually I could since my camera battery started to die very unexpectedly and I had almost filled up my SD memory card that I'd just bought the day before. But at least I'd already taken pictures of almost everything at that point. Once at the top, Richard Simmons directed a photo shoot of Rachel and I on a rock that had a prime viewpoint over the ruins of Machu Picchu.

He then hopped and skipped about the rocks a bit, mysteriously produced some bottles of water out of nowhere, before asking us if we were ready to go with him and Philip on a second hike to the Temple of the Moon on the backside of the mountain. We went along, not quite knowing what we were getting ourselves into. Richard assured us the hike was all downhill, even the return bit. He was true to his word, partially... it was all downhill to the ruins. Just not back up. As we hiked down, down, down I could feel the air get thicker as we trekked into the cloud forest. Here and there we came across some steep ladders and 30 or more tiny stone steps carved out of a single boulder that we had to walk down. Donny pointed out the tinest orchids in the world on a tree branch as we paused to take a breather... the flowers were about 1/4 the size of my pinky fingernail. We finally got to the ruins, which are really well preserved for how old they are. The temple is essentially a giant cave with ¨cleansing¨areas carved into the rock inside... we weren't clear if they were for spiritual or physical cleansing. Our floutist friend said that once he'd spent the night there (though I thought it was illegal to sleep over in the ruins) and watched the moon rise while hanging out in the cave. He also mentioned that he'd managed to run (not walk) the Inka Trail in 8 hours during a competition once. Normally it takes hikers 4 days to hike.

Our return journey turned out to be entirely uphill. From the lower backside of the mountain all the way back up and around to Machu Picchu again. Richard lied! He said the Peruvian tradition was to just enjoy the surroundings and not think about the actual hike itself, which makes sense, though I still couldn't help wondering when we'd ever get back to the registration gate. It had to be a good hour and a half hike up tiny stone steps... and up some more... and some more... neverending! I was soaking wet with sweat, and even though my thighs were screaming ¨help me!¨I was enjoying the hike just for the adventure of it and once we got up out of the cloud forest again and could see the views of the mountains it was just so gorgeous. I kept pushing myself to go further and faster because there were people on the trail who were older than I was... some in their late 50s or 60s... and I thought if they could do it, I should be able to, too! For some reason I only drank about half of my water bottle during the 3.5 hours of hiking... I'm not sure why I wasn't thirsty, but it seems to be a common thing for me on this trip. Rachel drinks about 2 bottles of water for my 2 sips. I hope that nothing is wrong with me, but I just don't feel thirsty very often and I don't seem to be feeling bad from it, so I'm guessing it's okay. Just to be safe, though, I drank a whole bunch after we finally finished the hike.

Anyway, after that hike we were pretty much pooped. It was only noon. We had originally planned to do another hike to the Sun Gate, but at that point Rachel's hip tendonitis was acting up and she was not in any shape to do another hike and hurt herself even more. We enjoyed our cheap lunch on the picnic benches outside the entrance gate while everyone else around us ate $10 sandwhiches and drank $7 drinks. I am so excited that we had the chance to visit Machu Picchu and do those insane hikes... the only things I regret are not bringing my Nikon camera (South America is not as dangerous as I thought it was) and not having another day to go back and explore the ruins some more. I feel accomplished that we managed to hike Huayna Picchu and see the Temple of the Moon, and I am really lucky to have had the chance to see the Inkan ruins of Machu Picchu. Even though they are a bit too touristy for my liking, the entire complex is incredibly fascinating and beautiful... because of its interesting Inkan history, complex stonework, and perfect location in the mountains. I need to go back... next time with a better camera and more time

The salt flats of Salinas and the giant, bowl-like Inkan terracing of Moray were next on our list of places to visit in the Sacred Valley after Pisaq. We caught a 65 cent, 1 hour bus ride to Urubamba, where our (not so) trusty guidebook assured us that we would be able to hire a taxi for $16 to take us to both Salinas and Moray and back. Wasn´t that easy, folks at Lonely Planet. We arrived at the bus station, got off the bus, and Rachel immediately dropped her fleece, prompting a bunch of men to start laughing at us. Then we walked inside the small station to use the bathroom... only to be laughed at again by fellow bathroom goers when the woman charging entry asked us what exactly we were planning on doing in the bathroom (apparently it costs 30 cents more if you are going to, well, be there for a while). Then we went to search out the taxi drivers, only to discover that there were no taxis in the vicinity, only tiny colectivo buses. We stood in the doorway looking throroughly confused, when all of the sudden we were bombarded by a bunch of men asking us where we wanted to go and throwing out random high prices at us. They were also laughing at us. They told us it was so expensive because the road was terrible and the places we wanted to go were far, far away. After we told them about 20 times that we couldn't afford their high price, and once they'd gotten the laughs out of their system, we finally got a guy to agree to take us for just a dollar or two more than the price we originally wanted. Our driver turned out to be our age and pretty nice, so it all worked out well in the end. During our drive he started chatting with us, at one point asking us if we had any children. Definitely not the first time we've heard that question, but still really odd to hear it asked so often. It's normal here for women here to have children by the time they're our age so we must seem a bit weird as two 20-something year-old females travleing alone... without kids or a husband!

Salinas is about 6km outside of Urubamba. It's essentially a few hundred rectangular salt pools in a small valley that are used to create salt for cow licks (guess they have a lot of cows here!). Salt laden water is diverted into the salt pools, and then the water eventually evaporates leaving giant pans of salt. Our taxi drove us down into the valley on a thin, windy road, and as we arrived we were treated to a really cool view of the entire salt pan valley from above. We were then able to walk down onto the actual salt pans themselves and see them up close. Some pools were still pretty watery, while others were already hard, white salt. There were a few local workers scattered throughout the salt pan area, occasionally whacking the ground with giant shovels (it seems like they were trying to keep the salt pools level). We walked along the irrigation channel, which was particularly interesting because a lot of salt had built up on the sides of the channel and all the salt crystals looked just like snow.

After we'd had enough salt for the day, we got back in the taxi and headed off to Moray. The countryside on the way there was gorgeous... high, jagged Andean mountain peaks surrounding us, some still covered in snow, and the rest was just rolling hills with cows, sheep, donkeys, and the occasional indigenous woman carrying large sacks trying to flag down a ride. We passed through a small town called Maras with most of its buildings built entirely out of clay and straw and soon we were at our destination. Moray is a series of three terraced, bowl-like holes in the ground that the Inkas created centuries ago. From above the terracing looks like a bunch of huge, concentric circles. Nobody is exactly sure what their function was, but the concensus seems to be that they were used to figure out the best growing conditions for different types of crops. Each terraced layer apparently has its own microclimate. At the very bottom, some traditional Inkan crops have been replanted to give an idea of what they might have looked like before. We climbed down to the very bottom, only to realize that we actually had to climb back up in the burning sun. We were drenched with sweat by the time we got back to the top where our taxi driver had fallen asleep waiting for us.

Once we got back to Urubamba we caught the next colectivo bus heading to Ollantaytambo, our next stop in El Valle Sagrado. I can't remember how pronounce the name of that town for the life of me and it's really embarrassing... especially when we had to ask at the bus station when the next bus to ¨Olly.... oya... ollytah.... uhh....¨was. Taking the colectivo bus meant squeezing into a minature bus/van with a bunch of school children drinking liquid chocolate from a bag. It looked weird, but they seemed to like it. Our bus was full as we departed, but halfway through 5 little schoolboys flagged us down and they somehow managed to squeeze on in! At least the ride was only about 30 minutes long.

Ollantaytambo is a really cute town in a beautiful valley surrounded by a ton of nearby Inkan ruins. Its also the starting point for the 4 day Inka Trail hike, but we ¨cheated¨ according to my mom and took the train and a bus to Machu Picchu instead. Ollantaytambo has tiny cobblestone streets that are so small that cars can't even pass through, and a lot of the buildings are actually made of stone as well. It was also the site of a major Inka battle fought against the Spanish conquistadors. The Inkan fortresses and temples were built high up the slopes of the mountains, and when the conquistadors entered into the valley below, Manco Inka flooded the valley with pre-made channels built for that purpose and was able to slow down the conquistadors and their horses. Unfortunately, the Spanish later returned with more men and defeated the Inkas anyway in the end.

We spent our first evening at our hostal watching Man on Fire, Ratatouille (HILARIOUS... seriously, a rat who dreams of being a chef? And who cooks by controlling a human by pulling on his hair from under a chef's hat? Who thought of that?), and playing with the hostal owner's two white cats... one wearing a knit sweater, and the other with a cast on its broken foot.

On our second day in town, we walked the two minute walk to the ruins and explored them for most of the morning. We got pretty winded walking up the never-ending steps to the top, but so did all of the other elderly tourists (why were we the only young ones?) so I didn't feel too bad. Even with our few days in Cusco and time spent in the Sacred Valley, I guess we still didn't quite become acclimatized. The view from the top was a beautiful panorama of Ollantaytambo at the bottom of the valley surrounded by insanely high, jagged mountains and a few more ruins scattered around some of the slopes. At one point I lost Rachel within the ruins and thought she might have climbed up the hillside a bit further. I started up a path, only to suddenly hear a loud whistle and discover that a guard was furiously whistling and waving at me to get down. I somehow managed to go into an off limits area on accident. Oops. Once I found Rachel, we discovered a path that hugged the mountain side... we followed it to another set of small ruins and then made our way down the terracing to what looked like residential housing and baths below. Amazingly the Inkan watering system was still working and water from the nearby river was flowing through tiny channels and out of water spouts all over the place. Those Inkans were some smart cookies.

(Really sad side note: right when we got to the top of the ruins, Rachel tried to change her photo settings to a higher quality picture, only to discover that by pressing ¨format memory card¨she had instead deleted ALL her pictures from southern Ecuador in Cuenca up until now!!! At least I took mostly the same pictures of everything, but she still felt terrible.)

In the afternoon, after our amazing find of lunch for just 4 soles ($1.60ish) in some random woman's house (everything else was ridiculously high tourist prices for the same exact food), we headed toward the train station to go to Aguas Calientes. Almost to Machu Picchu! We had to take the more expensive Vistadome train since ¨supposedly¨the backpacker train was booked. But I won't complain since we were treated like royalty, complete with airplane style meals (except delicious, rather than disgusting) and windows on the ceiling of the train so that we could appreciate the views of all the impressive mountain scenery just a bit better The train employees wore wore one professional-like uniform to serve us our snacks, but later changed into a hilarious tour guide type get-up, complete with a khaki vest and large khaki hat when they came back down the aisles to try to sell us Machu Picchu tourist shtuff. Did they think it made them seem more believable, hence we'd be more likely to buy overpriced picturebooks, baseball hats, and postcards from them? We followed the path of the Rio Urubamba and after about an hour and a half we arrived in Aguas Calientes, aka Machu Picchu Pueblo... the tiny, oh so touristy town that marks the start of everyone's Machu Picchu journey... well, those of us who are too poor and/or too lazy to arrive in Machu Picchu on the Inka Trail instead. Even though the town is almost microscopic, we somehow got lost after leaving the train station and ended up on the local's side of the river rather than on the crazy touristy side. Thanks again Lonely Planet, this time for your great mapping skills.

The town itself is in a great location, right at the base of the cloud forest, surrounded by beautiful green mountains and straddling the clear river that cascades down through the middle of the town. However, the town thrives on tourism since so many tourists pass through here to take the bus up the hill to Machu Picchu... so you really can't get away from all the people trying to get you to eat at their restaurant every step you take. ¨No thanks, no, no, no gracias, no, we already ate, thanks, no, no no NOOooooo!.¨Funny thing is, it seems that all the restaurants serve the exact same food and are all decorated similarly inside with slight variations. They all offer 4 for 1 happy hour drinks to entice you to come in. We allowed one of the waiters to convince us to eat at his restaurant for dinner (don't tell anyone)... well, he DID give us a 3 sole discount and threw in an offer to give us free wine the next night if we came back. Wouldn't you eat there, too? We shared one menu del dia for dinner (appetizer, soup, main dish, drink) since we had been fed so well on the train a few hours prior... the waiter thought we were a bit odd, especially when we started slurping soup from the same bowl, but that didn't stop him from talking to us and becoming our new buddy. We even taught him the word ¨clumpy¨in English, which he can now use to his heart's desire. After dinner we had to pass back and forth past his restaurant another 5 times or so since there is only one road up to our hostal, which was a bit awkward, but each time we passed by we received another compliment from the other waiter in training.... he started with just a simple ¨Hey ladies¨, but by the end he was saying ¨Son hermosas!¨(You´re beautiful!).

Anyway, fell alseep to the lovely sounds of something (animal? lost child?) pitter pattering across our tin roof and some loud Americans in the hallway trying to speak Spanish to each other in terrible accents. Great way to prepare for our early morning wake up the next morning at 4:45am and visit to Machu Picchu.

The Sacred Valley is in the southern Andes of Peru and was revered by the Inkas for its special geographic and climatic qualities. And I just think it's beautiful, is all! The towns along the Urubamba river from Pisaq to Ollantaytambo still have many Inka ruins around them and so not only is the Sacred Valley a great place to stop before Machu Picchu to get acclimatized to the high altitude, but it also has some great day hikes to the ruins.

We started off our visit to the Sacred Valley with a stop in the small market town of Pisaq. It's not much more than a few blocks of tiny crisscrossing streets... except on Sunday, which is market day. We happened to be there when everyone and their mother came to sell their alpaca slippers/hats/gloves/scarves/shawls/wall hangings, watercolor paints, corn, inka calendars, silver jewelry, woven belts, you name it in the central Plaza. Our hostal window looked right down over the plaza, too, which was awesome. I took a lot of stalker-ish pictures of the people below from my window. It was really fun walking around... I bought a few things here and there, but really enjoyed spending my time taking pictures of everyone in their traditional costumes in the food section of the market. Women sat around on giant piles of potatoes, or in the middle of every type of fruit imaginable, and children ran around screaming (there is an unnecessarily high proportion of screaming children in Peru I´ve noticed). In the middle of the madness, I managed to meet a student from SDSU! A woman tried to convince me to buy some watercolors from her, but I ended up buying some corn seeds (of about 25 different types). I told her that we don't have corn like this in the US, and she was so excited to tell me that I could actually plant them and grow a ton. Wahoo!

The best story of the day happened when I was stalking another indigenou woman. Well, I was really just taking a picture of a cute cobblestone street and she happened to walk into the frame. As I stood there with my camera pointed down the street, the woman paused, turned around to look in my direction, and then squatted. I thought she was just mad that I was photographing her and was sitting down in protest. It took me a moment to realize she was peeing in the street. She soon stood up, ruffled her skirt, and set back off down the street like nothing happened. I still can't figure out why she even bothered to look behind her to see if anyone was watching, since clearly I was standing there with a camera pointed in her direction and I know she saw me.

That evening the market winded down and people started dismantling all of the stalls around dinner time. We went out to eat at around 8:30pm and the plaza wasn't much more than a bunch of kids kicking a soccer ball around and some women and men sweeping up trash and wheelbarrowing some wooden stakes away to an unknown location. (Oddly enough, the next morning we awoke to discover that at some point in the middle of the night they had entirely rebuilt the stalls and another giant market was going on! Why they took everything down only to put it back up, I really have no clue.) We went to a really cute restaurant for dinner, which seemed to be the only place open at 8:30pm. It was called Ulrike's Cafe. Of course there would be a German cafe in the middle of a tiny Andean town.

That night we didn't sleep well because the air was so dry. It didn't help that at 6am the church bells started ringing non-stop. I believe it was a 10 minute affair, possibly even longer. We were PISSED. I don't think the town wanted anyone to sleep in. I mean, it was another market day, after all. We should be shopping at 6am, not sleeping.

We watched the men set up their stalls thorugh the window as we ate breakfast in our hostal. I also spent most of my breakfast staring lovingly at a cute, white mutt dog who was trying so hard to sleep under the stall closest to us. He kept changing his position every few seconds. I don't think the cobblestones were very comfortable. I told Rachel I wanted to take him home with me, along with all the other billion street dogs. I asked what kind of dog she thought he was. She said probably a mix of 100 different dogs. I'm confident that in time I can manage to mate enough dogs together that I'll end up with his type.

Speaking of street animals, I really can't stop my desire to want to pet them and give them some love... even when they look rabid. (Just kidding, none that I've cuddled with have actually been rabid.) The hostal we stayed at had a cute white cat that unfortunately had a dreadlock problem. I don't know if it ever learned how to groom itself. I had to urge to give it a bath, and I probably would have if I didn't think the hostal staff would think I was a complete psycho. The cat had one blue and one amber colored eye and was really sweet. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that one night in Lima I spent my entire walk home petting every street dog I saw. They were all curled up on the sidewalk, alone and shivering, and it was a really sad sight so I figured it wouldn't hurt to make them feel loved for once in their lives. My hands turned black afterwards (from their dirty coats), but... oh well! Haha.

Anyway, more to come about our adventures in Salinas, Moray, and Ollantaytambo soon...

(Very) unfortunately, we had to be up at 2:30am in the morning so we could get to the airport 2 hours before our 5:40am flight to Cusco. (Cheapest flight, worst departure time, don't recommend.) We didn't get much sleep that night, of course. Our drive to the airport was interesting since it was pitch black outside and we were essentially the only ones on the street. Big contrast to the crazy, bustling city of Lima during the daytime! Once at the airport, we first felt highly pissed off that we had to sit on the ground for 2.5 hours waiting for our flight to depart... but our feelings soon turned to delirium since we were running on no sleep. I don't remember what was so funny, most likely nothing at all... but we sure laughed a lot. I then stuffed my face with a ham and cheese croissant and a giant strawberry donut. Mmm mmm good. The flight to Cusco was only a little over an hour, but it was the scariest flight I think I've ever been on. I'm not sure if it's always so turbulent over that area of Peru, but if so, I'm not sure I have the guts to get on a plane again and fly there when it comes time to spend my last month there!! It seemed like almost the entire way our plane was shaking from side to side. Not fun. But the flight attendants (young and attractive, of course. We're in Peru, remember?) didn't even have a hint of worry on their faces and somehow managed to still serve us all drinks as the plane bounced around... WITHOUT SPILLING. Where do they learn these skills?

Arrival in Cusco... also not fun. We'd been warned that the second we got there, people would be trying to sell us things. Well, they were right, multiplied by 1000. We got off the plane and before we even got to the baggage area, our poor ears were bombarded with loud Andean music from a live band. At seven in the morning. We were not happy, not happy at all. We kept asking ourselves, ¨What the hell?¨and declaring to everyone that ¨This should be illegal!¨. We were so tired we could barely even think. I felt like I'd been hit by a train. But somehow we managed to get our bags, rent a cell phone for 10 bucks (what a steal! Unless we lose it), and haggle in our sleep with some taxi drivers for a cheaper fare to the city center. They all tried to tell us it'd be at least 25 soles (too much) to the center, but after sleepy arguing, we somehow got it down to 10. Our taxi driver had a travel agent escort, which we thought was odd. I made a point to ask them squarely why there were two of them, so they'd know that we knew it was weird (you know?)... but in the end the travel agent turned out to be super friendly and made sure we got a room at our hostal of choice, Osiris in the cute, hilly San Blas neighborhood.

Even though it was only 7:45am and we had the whole day to explore the town, well... we didn't. We passed out and didn't wake up again until 3:30 in the afternoon. We walked around our neighborhood a bit and decided after only a few hours that Cusco was our new favorite town. The San Blas neighborhood is in the hills above the main square. It is very artsy and laid back, there are countless wonderful cafes with delicious food and baked goods, and it´s incredibly cute because all the streets are so tiny a car can barely fit through and the streets and walls are all cobblestone. It's a great mix of Spanish and Inkan architecture. A lot of the building walls still have their original Inka stone foundations and it was pretty amazing to see the stones up close... you can't even fit a credit card between them because the fit of the huge, interlocking stones is so perfect. Cusco was once the capital of the Inka's from which they spread out and conquered lands to the north and south (all the way up past Ecuador and as far south as parts of Chile and Argentina!). The town is apparently designed in the shape of a puma, too. Another great fact that I just discovered online... I guess in 2006 Cusco was found to be the point on Earth with the highest ultraviolet light level. Isn't that nice?

We spent our first evening at the South American Explorers Club, conveniently located just down the street from us. (It's an informational club for travellers that hosts weekly events, too.) They were having an unlimited cocktail night. We were still pretty tired but figured we'd try it out anyway. It ended up just being mostly the club staff and a few of their friends... and sleepy party pooper Rachel and Kerri in the corner on the couch. We drank our first pisco sour (the national drink, made with pisco [grape brandy], egg white, and some other odd ingredients). It's supposed to be smoother than a margarita, but I can't say I liked it that much. We also had some great baked potatoes with yucky South American chunky cheese along with our alcohol. They all kept trying to serve us more drinks (in miniature cups), thinking it would wake us up, but our eyelids just kept getting heavier and heavier. We were highly entertained, however, by a 41 year old British man who we can only describe as being similar to a young British fraternity boy. He was the most hyper person I think I have ever met, perhaps because of all the whiskey he had been drinking. He was the DJ for the evening and everytime a song came on, he jumped up and smiled and yelled like it was the first time he'd ever heard music in his life. TLC´s ¨I'm Pretty¨came on at one point and he deemed it his most favorite song ever. We realized there was a problem when we found ourselves reading a magazine in the middle of the party... at that point we knew we had to say goodbye and just go to bed.

The next days we spent wandering around town, snapping photos of every cute cobblestone street we passed and saying ¨no thanks¨to all the women and children (dressed in their traditional clothes with their most photogenic llamas and baby goats) who asked us to pay to take a photo of them. We went to the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, and snapped a billion more photos of the two churches and the plaza itself because it was all just so beautiful. We visited the Inka Museum, which thankfully included artifacts and information from all the pre-Inkan societies (who the Inkans conquered) as well as the Inkas. We later walked down Avenue del Sol to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo/ruins of Qorikancha (Temple of the Sun). Qorikancha was once one of the most important Inkan temples, dedicated to the Inkan sun god Inti, with floors and walls covered in sheets of gold and with a garden of golden statues. But when Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro came in the 1500s and conquered the Inkas he and his men took most of the gold with them. (At that point they had one of the last incas held hostage. Pizarro told him that if he surrendered the gold of Qorikancha, his life would be spared... but even after allowing the Spanish conquistadors to steal and melt down all the gold, Pizarro decapitated the inca anyway.) Qorikancha was later turned into a monestary of the Dominican order. Some of the stone ruins of Qorikancha are preserved within the monestary walls, giving the whole compound a really interesting dual history. In the 1950s a large earthquake destroyed most of Santo Domingo, but the Inka walls of Qorikancha withstood it all.

Our favorite restaurant was called Cafe Ritual Cultural... it served up some great banana pancakes and 3 course lunches that stuffed us silly. I'm not so sure they liked us so much, though. Everytime we tried to pay, something was wrong... either they thought we were giving them counterfeit 5 soles coins, or we gave them too big of bills and they couldn't make change and had to run across the street with our money and buy rice or something. It's annoying how the banks give out 50 and 100 soles bills, but most of the time people don't even have change for a 5 sol coin and ask you over and over if you´re suuuuure that you don`t have anything smaller. Same thing with Ecuador. Bah!

Anyway, we were going to go visit the Inka ruins at Sacsayhuamán (remember how to pronounce it with the catchy phrase ¨sexy woman¨), just a few kilometers north of our hostal (up a billion flights of stairs), but we decided we'd try to see the ruins when we come back to Cusco after our visit to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Plus we were still a bit worn out from not sleeping well the previous nights and didn't feel like that much exercise. Instead, we spent our last day buying our train tickets to Machu Picchu before we caught a local bus to the nearby town of Pisaq in the Sacred Valley.

Oh, one last thing. As we were walking back to our hostal one last time after breakfast on our last morning, we saw a GIANT dog the size of a horse prancing down the street ahead of us... with a tiny plastic bag in his mouth filled with biscuits. It was the funniest/cutest thing. The dog kept glancing back every so often to make sure his master was following him, and then once he was satisfied he'd turn around and continue on. I want a dog that does that! That's the crazy thing about Ecuador and Peru... nobody has leashes here, their dogs just are so loyal that they follow their owners wherever they go. I'm not sure I want a dog the size of a horse, though.

Bye for now, Cusco! I´ll be back in a few weeks...

Lima is a giant city of 8 million people. It has everything from shanty towns to really nice business/tourist districts that look almost like La Jolla. My pen pal Garrett, who has lived in Lima on and off for 5 months, was nice enough to scout out a really cool hostal for Rachel and I in a great area of town called Barranco. It's very artsy and safe, plus its right on the cliffs by the beach. Our hostal was in an old mansion and even though we had to stay in a dorm with 6 other people, it turned out to be one of the best hostals we´ve stayed at. It was really social and we met some really fun people there. For some reason it was mostly Americans and Australians.

We were picked up from the airport by a friendly guy with a car named Herby (don't ask me the name of the driver, we only asked for the car's name). But there was a slight problem... Herby looked like he had been through a war. Maybe even two. And he was still somehow chugging along. For some unknown reason, there were slash marks all over the interior of the car (did someone have a knife fight in there? Silly Peruvian boys) and a lot of the metal was exposed. We were a bit worried Herby would die on the way to our hostal, but somehow he made it to our destination... though we did stop and start about 20 times during the drive and our 35 minute ride was accompanied with the nice smell of fresh gasoline. I casually asked our taxi driver how old Herby was, and he said he was born in 1993. That's as old as my Volvo and it does NOT look like that. Hmm. Something fishy was going on. Anyway, back at the hostal later that evening, two girls from Canada arrived at around midnight. They told us about how their taxi driver's car had broken down on a cliff (on a curve), and they had to wait and hour while the driver and another male passenger pushed the car around so that the gas tank would be facing downhill so the car could start again. We asked if their car had a name. You guessed it... it was good old Herby.

The next day we spent in the historic old town, which was a surprisingly long drive from Barranco (I kept forgetting how huge Lima is). We checked out the catacombs in the Monestario San Francisco, which is still to this day a church of the Dominican order. The catacombs were the first public catacombs, intended for public burials and viewings. The benefactor, of course had a giant tomb all to himself, and everyone else had to pay as well to get the ¨good¨burial spots. Though they were buried 12 to a plot, stacked one on top of another, so I don't really know why they were so excited to be buried there in the first place. The rest of the monestary itself was really gorgeous... from the rooms with giant religious paintings in the Ruebens and Cusqeño styles to the beautiful tiled walls around the central garden (in the moorish style, from the Spanish influence), to the central garden itself. It was also really neat to see the different rooms used for washing and dressing, meetings, as well as the choir room. Their dressing room had drawers for everyone, carved very elaborately, and above each dresser was a saint or a martyr (with the way they were killed depicted graphically... stabbed, burned alive, hung, etc). One dresser was actually a secret door to the catacombs below. The library was the best of all... it had fun winding staircases going up to the second level, beautiful carvings on the walls and ceiling, and old books from the 16th century onwards. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures of anything

Lunchtime was next. We had a buffet lunch, served to us by French nuns! Supposedly for dinner they gather around and serenade guests with a rendition of Ave Maria, but we opted for the cheaper lunch menu, which was delicious. We even got to try chicha morada, a traditional Peruvian drink made from purple corn among a lot of other fruity ingredients. It was really good... and really purple.

We spent the rest of the day wandering a bit more around old town. A few boys catcalled us (they either hiss, whistle, or yell sweet nothings like ¨queen!¨ or ¨princess!¨) as we walked around, and we decided our new response was to make a really terrible, ugly face instead of just walking by and pretending we didn't notice. Or we laugh hysterically like hyenas. This either causes most guys to burst out laughing along with us, or they just shut up. It's fun.

Later we walked along the cliffs from Parque del Amor (Park of Love) in Miraflores and almost made it back to Barranco before we hit the end of the cliffs and had to take a taxi the rest of the way home. Parque del Amor has a giant statue of a couple making out in the middle of it and some neat tiled benches (kind of like in Gaudi park in Spain). Delfin, the famous Peruvian painter and sculptor, designed the park and its statue of love. I'm actually going to live at his house when I return to Lima (and maybe even meet him!) because my friend Garrett was nice enough to buy me two nights at Second Home (where Delfin lives) on the cliffs of Barranco (www.secondhomeperu.com).

That evening we sat around talking and drinking with all of our hostal mates. One girl named Jahan, from New York, told the most hilarious stories. She had us cracking up all evening. I particularly enjoyed her description of Cusco... ¨This was the first place I really felt like ´Wow, I´m in Peru, man!´ I mean, it was like New York City with all the great nightlife, but then I'd walk out of a club and there'd be a fucking llama standing outside the door!¨. (Now that we've been to Cusco, I can vouch for that odd sight, too!) The woman who worked at the hostal was also really young and fun and she organized a night out at a nearby club for all of us. A Peruvian guy started talking to me there, and even though it was a bit hard to understand his rapid Spanish in the loud club, I still managed to talk to him in half-Spanish for most of the evening, which was good practice.

One of our dorm mates was a guy who´s traveling the world for a year with the Watson scholarship... it's basically $25,000 of free money, and the only stipulation is that you don't come home until a year is up. He was using the money to study music in different South American countries and had some great stories to tell about his experiences so far. He even got to live with a Guatamalan pop star for a while... and had to look the other way when the singer would bring in his 25 different girlfriends. Our new friend was pretty hilarious, though I have to note that he had some, err... disgusting bathroom and eating habits, haha.

We wandered around the beach near Barranco later in the day. An chubby older man bicycling around a box of ice cream kept following us along the beach, thinking that if he waved to us just one more time we might cave in and decide we wanted ice cream. Then he changed tactics and started asking us where we were from. We ignored him and started walking back up the cliffs to our hostal... and waaay down below on the coastal highway we could still see him, just a tiny speck now, waving furiously at us. Haha. He just didn't know when to stop. We then went to Miraflores, a nice area of town just north of Barranco. We chatted with a man in the park (in Spanish!) about visiting Colca Canyon in the south (2x deeper than the Grand Canyon), got some ice cream and dinner (in that order, we really confused out waiter), went grocery shopping at an amazing grocery store (it had purple corn and biodegradeable bags, what more could one want?), and that was about the last of our adventures in Lima.