Peru: Some Closing Thoughts

Now that our trip to Peru is winding down, here are some thoughts about our two weeks here, in the order in which they come to my head.

• Traveling on a trip like this, in a country without an easy-to-navigate tourism infrastructure, S and I both felt that we needed a travel agent to handle the details of our trip. We found Roberto at Peru Inside Out, and he and his support was exceptional! When we landed in Lima, the driver handed us a cellphone that we used on occasion to check in with him, but usually, things ran smoothly. Drivers met us at the hotels, airports, and train stations. We had knowledgeable guides on our trips (Nancy in Lima, Roberto himself in Arequipa, Omar in Colca/Chivay, Janet in Cusco/Sacred Valley, Augustine in Machu Picchu, Dino in the jungle), and the details of the trips (hotel reservations, train and plane tickets, etc.) were all taken care of. We definitely splurged on this trip, but if you want to go to Peru, check out Peru Inside Out (and I hear they're expanding into Ecuador too!).
• I'm very glad that most of our tours were private. The one time we spent stuck on a large bus (for Inti Raymi) was awful.
• Speaking of Inti Raymi, don't buy the ticket to the big show. It's not worth it. Just wander the town and go to the two free events in Cusco proper.
• Cities we liked: Lima, Arequipa, Cusco.
• Cities we didn't like: Puno
• Hotels we loved: Casa Andina in Arequipa, Colca Lodge, Tambo de Inka in Urubamba, Inkaterra in Machu Picchu Pueblo, Hacienda Concepcion near Puerto Maldonado.
• Hotels we didn't like: Tierra Viva in Puno (but the staff was great)
• The star-rating of hotels seem to be relative to what the city has to offer. Tierra Viva was a four-star, but it was by far the worst property we stayed at.  Colca Lodge was a four-star, but it was on par with the five-stars in the Sacred Valley. Do your research!
• In general, all of the staff at the hotels, airlines, etc., were all excellent. Most spoke English, and if not, they indulged my pigeon Spanish.
• We spent way too many days traveling. There was one time we spent three nights in one place. The rest of the time, we were in the same hotel for one or two nights. That was a mistake.
• Also, we planned too many things. We actually had very little time where we were able to laze about. The few times we did, it was often because we were on a train for 10 hours, or something like that.
• Do not discount the altitude issues when traveling in Peru. It's there, and it's real.
• S found some clothing made by Ex Officio that was specifically treated to ward off bugs. We both bought some, and I treated some of my other clothing with a spray to do the same thing. It worked fantastically. We both came back from the Amazon jungle with nary a bug bite.

If we were going to come to Peru again, I think this might be a smarter itinerary:

• Three nights in Lima
• Three or four nights in Cusco
• Four or five nights in the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu
• Three nights in the jungle

Peru: Day 7: Andean Explorer

This was the first morning in a few days where I didn't have to get up at a time starting with 5. Today my alarm was for 6am. Baby steps.

After a mildly dramatic morning getting to the train station, we boarded the high-falutin' Andean Explorer train for the ten-hour journey from Puno to Cusco. The interior of the train is beautiful, with armchairs for every passenger, white tablecloths, etc.

As we rode north out of Puno, we alternated beautiful vistas with industrial zones and small impoverished towns. We rode parallel with a highway for a while, and the trash alongside the road was thick.

We noticed a few days ago that many (most?) of the houses and other buildings in Peru, particularly outside Lima, have rebar sticking out of the top of them. I asked Omar about it a few days ago, and he replied that the poor in Peru don't have to pay taxes, and that a way to indicate that you are poor is to have an unfinished home. Because of this, many homes will look shabby on the outside to avoid taxes, but inside it's quite nice and fancy. The government is onto this scam, and they send out auditors to check up on unfinished homes to make sure that they're poor on the inside as well.

We passed through a town's market. Like, literally through the market. The market is built along the train tracks, and every time a train rolls through, the vendors have to pull their awnings back to make room for the train. Lots of kids waved as we traversed the market, but most of the adults just went about their business buying and selling fruit, animals, car parts, cement mixers, toys, and electric looms. Our Spanish seatmates took a video off the back of the train and saw the awnings being lowered and goods being replaced on the tracks just after the train passed. In some cases, books had been placed between the rails, and the booksellers had removed just enough books so the train could pass over without destroying their wares.

We moved further north, and I killed some time watching movies. Out of the corner of my eye, the landscape changed from small dirty cement towns with a little bit of beautiful landscape to lots of beautiful landscape with small bits of dirty cement towns.

Lunch was served on the train: an amuse bouche (fruit and nuts with yogurt and granola), a salad or soup (both were delicious), a main course (chicken for me and manicotti for S), and then a passionfruit mousse. Very fancy!

Usually when I travel by train, I notice the train making sounds that fall in to a 4/4 rhythm: CHUG-chug-CHUG-chug. But this train is making a sound in five: CH-ch-ch-CH-rest-CH-ch-ch-CH.

In the middle of the lunch course, after we passed the southbound train, we made a short stop at La Raya, the highest point on the journey. At 4019m, there's not much here, but there is a small church and (bonus!) a small craft market. We stopped for ten minutes, long enough to get out, stretch your legs, take a few photos, and dodge the pushy craft-peddlers.

Back on the train for the second half of the ride. S and I spent part of the ride on the back car, half of which is a bar, and half of which is a observation car. We saw a demonstration of how to make a Pisco Sour, which included a double pour to get a foam layer.

Towards the end of the trip, the light dipped behind the mountains and the air got a little chilly. The staff came by with peach bellinis, pastries, and coca tea.

The music on the train, it should be noted, is about 40 minutes long and plays an almost constant loop. S and I can sing you most of the tunes. But we won't.

Arriving in Cusco was relatively painless, and we got out hotel in time to watch USA beat Ghana! Then, we met with our guide Janet, who explained a few unexpected details regarding baggage for the next few days. After that, we headed into the main plaza in Cusco in search of dinner.

Cusco is beautiful. Picturesque, cosmopolitan, with a nice balance of street hawkers and nice establishments. We wandered the plaza for a while, in search of guidebook-recommended restaurants that have since closed before finding a Thai place. My curry was good, but S's Pad Thai had a distinctly strong ketchup flavor. The restaurant had a strong English Pub vibe, and the music was a dance remix of Beatles classics. I was just glad it wasn't pan flute.

No photos of Cusco yet... we just grabbed a quick dinner before an evening of replacing before tomorrow's journey into the jungle. Short story (and I hope this remains true) is that Our first impressions of Cusco is that it's what we've been hoping Peru would be!

 

Peru: Day 6: Lake Titicaca (teehee)

S was feeling pretty awful this morning (altitude), so she stayed home while I went on a boat cruise on Lake Titicaca (which I can't say without giggling like an eighth-grader). The lake is the highest large freshwater lake (or something like that) in the world, at around 3900m. The driver picked me up at 7am, and soon we were at the harbor and on our way.

40 minutes later, the first stop was one of the Uros islands. These are floating islands, about 80 in quantity, on which a tribe of people live. They speak multiple languages, have multiple religions (Catholic, Mormon, 7th Day Adventist, all with a little healthy pagan traditions thrown in), and make regular trips to the mainland, so they more worldly and diverse than I expected. One of the islands is given over to showing off for tourists. There were colorfully-garbed people, demonstrations of how they built their islands (cross-hatched reeds layerd on a thick cork base), discussions of their diet (reeds, fish, birds, and today's special: an egg!), and talk of religion (some are catholic, some Mormon, some Adventists, all with a healthy dose of pagan traditions. After the demonstration, we got to ride on a reed boat, piloted by the president of the island. Once we were on the backside of the small island (no more than 150 feet across, and it was a medium-sized island), I got to see that much of what we were shown was specifically for our benefit. They do have some small modern conveniences: motorboats, solar power, tv. I mean, these people live very simply in severe isolation, but they are not living as simply as their presentation suggested.

After leaving the Uros island, we took about an hour or so to get to Taquile island. This one is actually a real island, with lots of inhabitants (but it appears no electricity). From the port, we hiked up a steep path to a small compound where we had a demonstration (again) of ancient (and current) traditions. We learned about how the position and color of a man's hat tells his marital status. We learned that the island's inhabitants pride themselves on being excellent weavers. We learned that La Bamba is a song that anyone can butcher. We also learned that a language barrier makes 'forgetting to give change' an easy thing to do.

After lunch, we hiked up to the main plaza, near the summit of the mountain. It hurt. Hiking uphill, at altitude, carrying a pack... Man, I was out of breath, worse than when I was fat. My only consolation was that everyone else on our group was also breathing heavy, from the kiwi backpackers to the 300+ lb Brit to the super-hip Argentinians. Anyway. The main plaza was a dusty sunny arid place, with a church, a city hall, a couple of quasi-museums, and a bunch of people trying to sell you stuff. From there, we hiked the slow grade back to a different harbor, where our boat had come to meet us. I was one of the first people down, so while we waited, I got some photographic proof of my visit.

90 minutes back to Puno, where I found S still feeling bad. Dizzy, headaches. I let her rest while I went to find a music shop I had read about. Since it's Sunday, they were closed. I came back and S was no better, so again I left for some coffee-and-chocolate. On the way through the lobby, I asked the clerk if he had oxygen he could bring up to her. He did, and when I got back, she was sucking down oxygen and feeling much better. Still, this altitude is a killer. I'm in good shape, and I'm out of breath after climbing two flights of steps. We went out for a quick early dinner, and now we're back in our room for an early night. Tomorrow is another early day.

 

Peru: Day 5: Colca Canyon, Chivay, and on to Puno

A terrible night's sleep. S got maybe two hours. I got four or five.

Today was a pretty awful day.

We got up at 5:00 am to shower, grab breakfast, and meet O and R for an early morning drive through the Colca Valley and into Colca Canyon. The last part of the drive was 70 minutes on an unkept gravelly road with switchbacks, ruts, steeps, and big potholes. We were both queasy when we reached the top of the canyon.

The Colca Canyon is one of the deepest canyons in the world, about three times deeper than the Grand Canyon. The road up is lined with small towns, merchants selling wares, old mining camps, tunnels, and shepherds with their flocks. At the top is a lookout where most mornings the gigantic Andean Condor flies. It's huge - over three meters in wingspan, and it glides around on thermal drafts. S didn't last long in the cold windy mountain air. She saw a condor and then went to the van to take a nap. I took some photos.

We retraced our drive down the canyon wall (doing down was no easier than going up, and we all cheered when we finally reached paved road). Once back down, we headed into Chivay, the small dusty town where we had lunch yesterday. O took us on a tour through the market, which is open daily and has all sorts of produce, domestic products, and clothing. O told us that the two main communities in the Colca Valley distinguish themselves by the style of hat they wear, which in turn is modeled by the way the tribes used to modify the shapes of their babies' heads in the pre-Columbian days.

We also stopped for a photo with O.

Lunch was another buffet like yesterday, with slightly different cuisine. Still tasty, and a great variety. O showed us photos of his daughter Maya (Maja?), who is two and has huge eyes.

Incidentally, there's a tune that Paul Simon made famous in the states called 'El Condor Pasa.' The lyrics Americans may know start out 'I'd rather be a hammer than a nail...). Well, not only is that a real Peruvian tune, but it's super-popular here. We've heard it five times today already, and as I write this, the day is only half over. Wait, make that six. I asked O, and he says it's not just a song for tourists. It's a real song that Peruvians identify with.

We left Chivay and headed back up onto the high plains. S and I almost immediately fell into a light sleep. Again, we passed the highest point in our journey, but this time we stopped for photos. This is Fozzie Bear's favorite volcano.

O took his leave from us at a rest area where three roads converge, so we said our goodbyes and continued east to Puno with just R at the wheel. He doesn't speak much English, so S and I were able to have a nap. Thankfully.

Puno is dirty and poor. Our hotel is freezing, and the heater only turns on when the temp gets below 64 F. S ran the hot water to warm up the room, and I read, wrote, and watched Italy beat England. Then, I went out to find some pizza to bring back to the room. Bad pizza. Then we watched Ivory Coast beat Japan and snuggled.

Today is one that we don't need to ever repeat. The condors were nice, but they weren't worth the two days of driving at altitude, sometimes along nasty dirt roads to see. Puno is definitely not a destination we'd return to. O was a great guide, but other than that (and the nice lodge we stayed in last night), this leg of the trip was not worth it. Peru has some beautiful things to see, but their infrastructure needs a lot of work.