Jason D. Barr

So, we caught our flights with a minimum of hassle and made it back to Seattle a little bit after 1pm on Sunday afternoon.  From there, we had to hop right into the car and drive home, stopping in Kennewick, WA on the way home to pick up Porter from my parent’s house.  We stopped there for a little while, but wanted to get back on the road so that we could make it back home to Boise that evening.  We didn’t quite make it, as we didn’t roll in to our driveway until just before 1am on Monday morning.  Fortunately, I had taken an Ambien on the flight from Lima to Miami, so I had gotten 6 solid hours of sleep the night before.  I didn’t really get tired driving until somewhere between Nampa and Boise, so I was pretty much home.

We had a lot of fun on this trip.  We missed Porter, of course, but enjoyed spending time together, hiking around a lot, and doing stuff we had never done before.  We were both somewhat disappointed with the touristy-ness of Cusco (we couldn’t even go into the cathedrals around town without having to pay), but the town grew on us by the end of the week and I think we’d both enjoy going back.  Definitely will not stay long in Aguas Calientes the next time we go to Machu Picchu; if we can swing it, the ideal would be to ride in on the morning train, catch the bus up for a couple of hours, and take the last train out of town that night.  From our perspective, there is nothing else to see there.  Peru is a great place, and we would need a lot more time there to check out some other places that we didn’t get a chance to see this time; exploring Lima, seeing Lake Titicaca, and going to the rainforest are all on the list still, I think.

Woke up pretty early this morning, as we had gone to bed early, as well. The checkout time here at our hotel is an outrageous 9am. I had no idea what we would do for the six hours we have to kill until getting on our train back to Cusco. This place needs some type of alternate amusement. I would think that if someone were to open an museum about Incan culture, or an actual coffee shop with books (not just about Machu Picchu) and comfy chairs and stuff, they’d make a killing. There have to be people like us around; who thought there’d be more to do in town than simply head up to the ruins. Fortunately, we could at least leave our bags at the hotel until it’s time for us to catch the train, so we didn’t have to haul them all over town and try to keep track of them.

We started hiking up Mt. Putucusi (after spending a little while finding the trailhead), but didn’t really get too far. We were still pretty worn out from the hike yesterday and we didn’t really have our heart in it, especially when we started getting eaten alive by bugs. We came back down and ate lunch at Indio Feliz again (man, it was good). We then went back to Gringo Bill’s and sat in the lobby reading books until it was time to catch the train back to Cusco.

We ended up with Vistadome tickets this time (the fancy train), instead of the Backpacker tickets we had had on the way up. Backpacker was sold out, so we had to spend a few extra bucks. It was totally worth it to have only two seats next to each other and no one facing us so we could stretch our legs out. And, they did little dancing shows and even a fashion show for us (they were trying to sell sweaters). One guy kept bugging me with his stuffed llama.

Anyway, we got back to the hotel around 8:00 or so, and just got ready to leave on Saturday. We Skyped with Porter a little again and then went to bed.

Okay, so the 1.75km hike is just to the base of the mountain that Machu Picchu is on. This kind of occurred to me as we were headed on the road out of town and it was sloping down, not up. It’s another one and a half to two hour hike straight up to get to the ruins themselves. Oh, my goodness, it was exhausting. I don’t think I’ve every been that tired in my whole life, and that includes Tuesday at Pisac. Most (smart) people catch a bus that takes them up to the entrance to the ruins, about a 20 minute ride. Then, the (smart) dumb people walk the road that switchbacks up the mountain, walking in the ditches so as not to be hit by buses on their way up and down. Finally, there’s a class of people like Susannah and I who decided it would be faster to use the steps that cut through the switchbacks and go straight up the mountain. Yes, it’s faster, but it’s exhausting beyond description. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the top. The feeling of satisfaction to be done (not to have “accomplished”, but simply to be finished) was great.

The weather, thankfully, cooperated. It was cool and overcast, with the mountaintops around us rising up into the clouds. Since I had sweated so much coming up the mountain, my sunscreen had run off, so I would have gotten scorched if the sun had been out. We had the opportunity to get a guide at the entrance to the ruins, but since we had a guidebook that told us most of the same information that a guide would have, we decided to go it ourselves. We could do what we wanted that way, anyway. We took our time going around, looking at everything at least once, and stopping to sit and rest a couple of times. Man, it was just awesome. An entire city built on top of this huge mountain, with 360 degree views all around of higher mountains, and river valleys below, was amazing. The pictures are on Flickr, of course, but I’m not sure they really do it justice.

We spent a little over an hour in the ruins. By this time, we found it more and more difficult to get up every time we sat down, so we figured we should head back down to our hotel. This time, we bought two tickets to ride the bus down. Once back to the hotel, we collapsed on the bed and took a nap before heading out for lunch.

I realize that I seem to be writing more about what we eat for meals that any other single subject. Today’s lunch will be no exception. We went to Indio Feliz, a French-owned restaurant in a back alley that totally knocked our socks off. You could get a whole meal (appetizer, main course, and dessert) for s/45, which is pretty good, compared to the other food around A.C. (once you take quality into account). It was great, and filled us right up after the hard effort we had put out in the morning.

Once lunch was done, we walked around to the shops and basically tried to kill time, as there was nothing left for us to do, either in town or back at our hotel. The rest of the day was alternately spent reading in our room, and once that got too boring, wandering the vendors’ stalls. Rinse and repeat. Finally went to bed a little after 9:00.

I didn’t sleep hardly at all on Tuesday night. I’d been taking sleeping medication ever since we got here because we’d read on the internet that it’s difficult to sleep if you’re new to high altitudes and haven’t acclimated yet. Well, the first few nights I’d slept like a log, and so I figured I’d try it without and see how it went. By the time I was frustrated enough to take a pill, it was too late (we had to be up pretty early to catch the train at 6:50 am), so I probably only got two or three hours sleep.

Thankfully, we had decided that today was going to be a slow day, so not too much on the agenda. Once we caught the train, it was a four hour ride up (or down, actually; it’s about 2 or 3,000 feet lower in elevation than is Cusco) to Machu Picchu. The train itself wasn’t bad, but it was kind of cramped. Four seats faced each other, then an aisle, then another four seats. I was relatively fortunate, in that a tiny Japanese girl was sitting across from me, so she didn’t try to invade my space. Still, by the time we got to Aguas Calientes (the city below Machu Picchu), my knees were screaming to be stretched out. The cramped quarters were balanced out by the amazing views on the ride. Pictures on Flickr, of course.

We went to check into our hotel (Gringo Bill’s, har har har), which was pretty nice. We had gotten lucky when Susannah tried to reserve a room here, in that the only room they had left was the suite for honeymoons and stuff. They gave us a 30% discount, which brought it down to pretty close to a normal room’s price. There was a fairly big sitting area in addition to a queen bed (we’d been sleeping on a double the past few nights), and a private balcony. However, the room was the only nice thing about the town.

I had mentioned (complained, really) to Susannah about how touristy Cusco was and wished that it wasn’t so. Well, it was nothing compared to Aguas Calientes, which exists solely to support excursions to Machu Picchu. When we were out eating lunch at a crummy little pizza place just like all other 20 pizza places we passed, we both said that being here really made us kind of sad. The natural beauty of the place juxtaposed with the squalor of the town was just a shame. I understand that Peru is a poor country, and one of its main sources of income comes from the tourist trade, but it seems to me that the expansion of said trade could have been handled better. Machu Picchu has been a World Heritage Site since 1983, but in the 1990’s, UNESCO threatened the Peruvian government that they were going to strip the designation if they didn’t start taking better care of the ruins and the surrounding area. If controls have been put in place, I would have hated to see the area back before the threats. It’s really just a shame.

Anyway, the majority of the day was spent in our room, just reading, relaxing and listening to the constant music outside our window. Thursday morning, bright and early, we planned to walk the 1.75 km from Aguas Calientes to the ruins at Machu Picchu and do some other hiking, as well.

On Tuesday morning, we wanted to go visit Pisac, another set of ruins a little further away from Cusco. We had planned on taking the bus, which only cost s/2 per person. We were walking from our hotel, and were almost to the bus stop, when we were confronted by a little man waving a map in our face saying that he’d take us to all the way to Pisac (the buses stop at the bottom of the hill and require you to walk up about two hours just to get to the ruins) and show us around on the way. All this for the bargain price of s/70 for the both of us. I figured this sounded like a decent deal, so we took Francisco up on his offer and away we went.

Francisco pulled out all the stops on this trip. Between my limited Spanish and his limited English, we talked about how long he had been living in Cusco (since he was seven, 53 years), what he did before becoming a taxi driver (worked in a bank), and how he loved dogs (he was the one that told us all the statistics about the number of dogs in Peru). He was a typical taxi driver, as well, but not as bad as Rocky. He proudly showed us his insurance card and stated that he was one of only a few taxi drivers that were nationally licensed to take tourists around to the ruins outside of Cusco. This trust that was placed in him by the federal government didn’t preclude him from flying by a group of school kids so closely that one girl shrieked at the top of her lungs when his side mirror came close to her. Oh, well. No one was hurt while we were with him.

He first took us to a market that was much cheaper than either the ones in Cusco or the one up at Pisac. We stopped and took advantage of the opportunity to buy gifts for the family that we had planned on getting in Cusco. Next, he took us to some kind of a zoo/preserve/research area for the camalid species that live in Peru (Alpacas, Llamas, Vicunas, etc.). It was free and we got to feed alfalfa to the llamas and alpacas that were there, so that was fun.

Once we got to Pisac, Francisco told us to take our time hiking the ruins, and that he would be down at the bottom of the hill waiting for us when we were done. Now, originally Susannah and I had planned on taking the bus, which would have dropped us two hours below where we were starting now. Once we began walking up the STEEP hills to the ruins (see our pics on Flickr for more detail), we couldn’t believe we had even thought of doing something so borderline suicidal. These hills were so steep that we could barely make it fifty feet before having to stop to catch our breath. There were steps carved into the hillside to allow easier passage, and we were still dying. I honestly had a time or two where I was seeing spots. Add that to the fact that the sunscreen we bought down here isn’t waterproof, so it was running into my eyes, and you have a recipe for tons of fun. We did take lots of great pictures, though. Really amazing.

Francisco took us back to Cusco and dropped us off at around lunchtime. We went to a restaurant called Granja Heidi, which served a whole bunch of different foods; traditional Peruvian, French, whatever. I had some interesting crepes, filled with tomatoes, green peppers, and curried chicken. Sounds pretty gross when I type it, but it was really pretty good. Of course, after all the hiking we had done, I was starving, so anything would have been good.

Next, it was time for the afternoon nap (I love the siesta) that we’ve become accustomed to. After that, we went to the office of PeruRail to pick up our tickets that we had reserved online to go to Machu Picchu on Wednesday. Once this had been accomplished, it was back to the Plaza de Armas to just hang out. The traffic around the square had been rerouted for a concert that was being put on by the city. From my limited translation abilities, it seemed that they were celebrating the return of Spring with a week of festivities, of which this concert was a part. The concert hadn’t started yet; they were just setting up the sound system and the stage in front of the Cathedral.

We went to a coffee shop on the square, ordered something to drink, and watched people just being out and about. It’s a different vibe from what you get in America; at least, the places I’ve been in America. Susannah said it reminded her of what it was like in Tunisia, and what I assume life is like in one of the older European cities.

By this time, it was getting cold, and I didn’t have my jacket with me. We went back to the hotel room for it, and then went out looking at stuff to buy for our house, since it was the only thing we hadn’t really done yet. Susannah ended up with a new belt and an alpaca sweater, and we found a painting that we both liked. I didn’t have enough soles on me to buy it, though, so we just made a mental note to remember where it was and we decided we’d go back for it when we came back to Cusco.

Dinner time was here, so we went to a different expat restaurant; Jack’s Café Bar. It appeared to be owned by the same folks as Paddy Flaherty’s, but the food was better here. Susannah and I both had a huge steak sandwich, made with grilled sourdough and covered with lettuce, grilled onions and roasted tomatoes. Once dinner was finished, we walked back up the street to our hotel and packed up our things to leave in the morning for Machu Picchu.

Since we had fallen asleep so early the previous night, I was, of course, wide awake at around 5:30 on Monday morning. I went downstairs to the lobby of the hotel, which also served as the dining room. I took the computer and was reading some articles I had saved for later and waited for Susannah to come down for breakfast. The hotel has a very nice continental breakfast; eggs and bacon, some local cereals, fruit, and lots of bread. We ate quite a bit, since we planned to do some hiking this day and attempt to further acclimate ourselves.

We set off up a hill heading north out of town toward some ruins called Sacsayhuaman. These are ruins of an Incan fortress , and were quite impressive. The massive stones used to put the walls in place were so perfectly cut and shaped that no mortar was used to hold them together. Scholars are puzzled as to how this was accomplished, since the Incas didn’t have steel tools. Pretty amazing.

After we had wandered around for a little while at Sacsayhuaman, we went across the valley, up to the top of a small hill where there sits the Christo Blanco (the White Christ), a statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks the valley that Cusco sits in. It looks much the same as does O Cristo Redentor that overlooks Rio de Janerio, but smaller (I think), with His arms outstretched, looking like He’s hugging the valley. Just as we were getting to the top of the hill, a bus full of local tourists rolled up to view the statue, as well. A chain-link fence prohibited anyone from coming in contact with the statute itself, but many of them were taking pictures standing just outside the fence. There were the obligatory hawkers, as well, selling the typical touristy-type stuff and religious artifacts that you didn’t normally see.

We spent a couple of hours total up the hill at the ruins and the statue, and then decided to head back down the hill into town. We went to the Museo de Arte Precolombino (link in Spanish), which contains exhibits of art on loan from a collection in Lima of many examples of craftsmanship from the Incas and their precursors in Peru. I’m not usually a big fan of art museums, but this one was pretty interesting. We’ve posted a bunch more pictures on our Flickr site, if you’re interested.

By this time, lunch was calling us, so we went in search of a place to eat. We settled on a bakery called El Buen Pastor, which is supposed to be the best in town. We had some really good bread and a soda. Both Susannah and I have discovered that the altitude really reduces our appetite and we don’t feel like eating as much (which is good, for me at least). The bread was sufficient to hold us until dinner. We went back to the hotel to shower up, and, since we had hiked a lot, we ended up taking another nap.

By the time we woke up, it was dinner time, and even though we weren’t very hungry, we figured we should go eat something. Our trusty guidebook recommended Pacha Papa as the second best Peruvian food in the city, but much cheaper and less frequented than the number one place. We figured second-best was good enough in this case, so we went there. Boy, are we happy we did. Pacha Papa was great. When we arrived there was only one other party there; a group of four people who had been with a tour group and decided to stay in Cusco for a little bit longer before heading on to the Amazon. They were very friendly and we talked a little bit; one was from Wisconsin and the other three were from Hawaii. A large stone oven was outside in the courtyard where we were eating, and the chef was baking bread in it to go with the meals. Susannah and I both wanted to try the dish that Cusco is famous for, roast cuy (guinea pig). However, we found that because it’s famous for it, every restaurant in Cusco that serves cuy charges about twice as much for it as for anything else. Since we couldn’t really rationalize spending s/60 (the Peruvian monetary unit is the Sole, and is marked “s/”), the equivalent of about $20, on something we could buy at a pet store for less than that back home, we decided to do something different. Susannah ordered a dish that had roast alpaca and onions, with some type of plant that resembled a banana, but wasn’t as sweet. I got some roasted pork with onions and sweet potatoes. We shared. Even though we weren’t really feeling hungry when we sat down, we both got up feeling totally stuffed. This meal was easily the most expensive we had up to this point, at s/80, or $29. South America seems to be one of the few places left that the dollar can still go relatively far, even though we’ve noticed that the prices in our two year old guidebook seem to be about half of what things cost today.

After this, it was dark and we were supposed to head back to the hotel so we could Skype with Porter, who was staying with my dad. We didn’t want him to forget what we look like in this week that we’re gone, so we were very happy to get to see him and happier still that he was glad to see us.

When we deplaned in Cusco, I could immediately feel the altitude (around 11,000 feet above sea level). I was huffing and puffing on the walk up the jetway, and I know I’m not that out of shape. We went out front, as we hadn’t checked any baggage, and waited for our ride. There was the typical queue of taxi drivers offering rides, but our hotel had said that they would provide a driver to take us directly there. Our driver, however, was no where to be found. Rocky (our driver) finally arrived about 15 minutes after we had come outside, which isn’t too bad, considering the Latin American attitude toward time, which seems to be, “eh… whenever”. We had almost given up and taken one exceptionally persistent driver up on his offer, but Rocky showed up just in time. We hopped into the taxi and took off.

Oh, my, what an experience. My first time taking a taxi in Latin America. There’s nothing to say, really, other than every stereotype is true. White knuckles the whole way, very temperate use of the brake, horn blaring every two seconds (apparently, pedestrians don’t really have the right-of-way in Peru), and the passing of slower cars at the most inopportune times (around blind corners, in the face of oncoming traffic, etc.). It was pretty fun. I can’t imagine renting a car and trying to duplicate this style of driving.

Once we got to the Hotel Rumi Punku, we checked in to our room and promptly fell asleep for two or three hours. I know I could have slept longer if given the chance, but we didn’t want to mess up our sleep schedule too much (Cusco is on Central Time, so we were only an hour ahead of where we normally are, time-wise). We got up and took showers, then decided to head out to walk around the town a little to acclimate.

The hotel is located just a four or five minute walk from the Plaza de Armas, in the heart of the tourist district. The door to the hotel was gated and locked at all times. Once you got through the gate, you walked into an interior courtyard, and the rooms surrounded it. It kind of reminded me of the hutongs I saw in Beijing. Our room was on the second floor, just across from the office.

Anyway, we went looking for some food in the Plaza and settled on Café Trotamundos. The food was okay (we both had omelets), but the location was pretty excellent. The café was located on the second floor of some commercial buildings surrounding the Plaza, with a balcony opening onto the square. As it was the first day of spring, there were a lot of parties going on, with actors and a big llama made out of paper and wood (not sure what was up with that). We walked around looking at all the stuff to buy; sweaters and hats, and different kinds of art.

We were struck by all the dogs roaming the streets; they were everywhere. Some families were out walking dogs on leashes, but the vast majority of the ones we saw were homeless. They were extremely dirty, but looked fairly well-nourished, so there must be a lot of trash to scavenge. A few days later, we were told by a taxi driver that there were 26 million dogs in Peru, so Cusco apparently is not an isolated occurrence when it comes to homeless dogs. The dogs pretty much avoid human contact; they mostly laid down and napped. Didn’t see too many running in packs, either.

By this time, we were hungry again and it was getting kind of dark (being close to the equator, it gets dark much earlier here than we’re used to in Idaho), so we ran into Paddy Flaherty’s, which claims to be the highest Irish-owned pub in the world at 10,317 feet. It conformed pretty closely to what I would assume a typical expat bar would look like; Guinness posters on the wall, rugby on the television. Food was okay, again. We walked back to our hotel and promptly crashed out for the night around 8:30 or something.

The day started off like many do in Seattle; a light drizzle that you can’t hardly feel fall, but it makes everything wet around you. We checked in for our flight on American about three hours ahead of time. We hadn’t planned on breezing through security like we did, so we had a bunch of time on our hands. Susannah and I grabbed some breakfast and sat down to wait for the first leg of our trip (to Dallas). Susannah forgot her iPod in the car, so since we had so much time, I went out to get it for her. It sure was a lot easier to clear security the second time, without any carry-on luggage with me.

Once we got to Dallas, we were faced with another long layover, so we got some dinner and went to see if we could get our boarding passes for our flight from Miami to Lima. Because we were flying on a partner airline of American (LAN Peru), they couldn’t pull up the boarding passes in the system, so we were told we needed to wait until we got to Miami to take care of this. I hate having things like this be unresolved, and since there was only a scheduled 50 minute layover in Miami, it irritated me even more.

Fortunately, our flight to Miami got in a little bit early, so Susannah and I didn’t really need to hurry as much as we did getting to our gate. The international departures terminal in Miami is in the process of being updated; this is a good thing, since it’s horribly run down currently. As we dashed through to the gate where we were supposed to be leaving from, we noticed that all the other flights had left for the night. Our gate was at the very end of the terminal and downstairs. When we got to the bottom of the escalator, the entire waiting room was packed with the other passengers, probably somewhere close to 500 by my guess. What surprised Susannah and I most was the fact that there only appeared to be a total of 10 to 15 tourists on our flight. We had both figured the flight would be mostly non-tourists; people flying home from a visit or flying to see family. I know that Lima’s not the tourist destination that, say, Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo is, but it was pretty surprising.

The flight was full, and it was made even more crowded by what I called the “Chicken Bus” effect. You know how, in the movies you see buses in Latin America or Southeast Asia where it’s totally packed with people and animals and everyone has their luggage on their lap (or they’re sitting on it)? Our flight was kind of like that. People had all kinds of duty-free goods that they were cramming in the overhead bins and under the seats. I couldn’t believe how much people were able to fit in there. It was like a clown car at the circus; just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more room, someone crammed something else in there.

Adding to the discomfort was the fact that the air conditioning wasn’t fully operational. In fact, they had almost canceled the flight because of it, but got it working sufficiently to take off. However, I felt pretty hot the whole flight, and subsequently neither Susannah or I slept very well at all.

We finally made it to the Lima airport, which must be located right next to a cattle ranch or a slaughterhouse or something. The most amazing smells hit us as we were climbing onto the flight to Cusco. This didn’t stop us from promptly falling asleep once we made it on the LAN Peru flight, however. I barely remember the safety announcements, and I woke up on descent. The only downside to this was I totally missed our flying over the Andes; I would have gotten some great pictures.