Getting Lost in South America

Hey hey alligators, I don´t know why I just called you alligators.

Puno is a quaint little town, a little grungy, a little dirty, with a few nice spots, a few cute shops, and the street vendors aren´t pushy. I wandered around today, went into a little church, looked at a Peruvian art museum, skipped a few others cuz you either had to pay or they were closed (Sunday).

I part walked, part took a taxi to this one museum, called Museo Yavari, which is an iron-hulled boat sitting in the water, undergoing renovations with the hopes that it will sail once again. All the many heavy parts of the ship were brought to Lake Titicaca over a 6 month period by train first, then by mule over the mountains. It was pretty neat actually, since I have a love for all things pirate or pirate related.

I booked my tour for tomorrow -- it´s a 2 day, 1 night tour of the islands around here and I´ll tell you all about it when I return.

I´m out of internet time so I gotta jet!

I´m almost in Bolivia!

Ok I´ll just start off again where I left off. I´m in Puno now and am just catching up on some internet time.

Journal continued:

´This morning my group and I got up at 3.30am, trekked up hundreds of ancient stone steps through a rainforest in the Andean mountains, reached the Sun Gate by 6.30am, a sort of pass in the mountains that looks down on the city, and continued down a shallow stone path through the mountains to the city entrance. We travelled here on foot, carrying what we needed for the day, through a forest of hummingbirds, butterflies, gnarled mossy trees, hanging vines, tiny colourful orchids,and nothing could be better. I know what the Andean cross means now, with its 3 levels of lowlands, mountains, heavens and their corresponding animals, snake, puma, condor, and as I have one (I bought it from that boy in the mountains) I will wear it proudly.

The only way to see Machu Picchu is to hike one of the roads of the Inca first, for only then can you appreciate and understand what it means. Without Jose and Alex, and without the shared experience of the group I travelled with, I would not be writing this now, and my experience would not have been so powerful.

The group is split up for a few hours as we do our own thing, but I´m meeting everyone for lunch at 2 in Aguas Calientes, the neighbouring town. It´s 12.57 now so I´m going to wander around a bit more. My muscles are sore, I haven´t slept enough, and I need a shower, but my mind and my soul are well and happy, and that´s what´s important on this journey. This is a magical place and I will be sorry to leave it.´

I actually wrote a lot more about the whole experience, but it´s just too much to write. I´ll just mention the legends Jose, our guide, told us about one night:

´1.12pm - Friday 06 October 2006
...
At the end of the third day while we were all sitting in the dining tent, Jose dimmed the light and told us a couple legends about the Incas and coca leaves... One was the legend of the Flying Head --

Apparently years ago the porters had to travel the trail alone sometimes to book campsites etc, but were afraid to because of this legend. Lone travellers, when crossing a pass in the mountains, would apparently sometimes see this head in the air above the pass. If it didn´t see you, you could run away with no trouble, but if it did you´d have to use certain tricks to try to escape it and the bad luck or accident it brought. You´d have to throw things behind you so they´d turn into hills or rivers, creating obstacles in the Flying Head´s way.

The other story was about the Green Woman. She was all green, very beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes, and whoever looked into her eyes immediately fell in love with her. Men killed themselves when she ignored their pleas of love. The Inca (king) fell in love with her, too, but his advisers convinced him that she was a danger to the population, so they killed her, quartered her, and buried her in the 4 corners of the kingdom. At those 4 corners the coca plants suddently grew, with leaves the colour and shape of the Green Woman´s eyes. The Inca, upon discovering this new plant, had an overwhelming desire to chew the leaves, and despite warnings from his people, did so. He discovered that the leaves made him feel like a new man, relieved his hunger, his pain, and they have been sacred to the Inca culture ever since...´

Again, there is more to write, but I´m just not up to it at the moment. I really enjoyed the trip and am so glad I had the group I did. There was only one girl I wasn´t so keen on, but the rest of us got along famously and I don´t remember the last time I laughed so hard.

This morning I caught an 8am bus to Puno, so now I´m here by Lake Titicaca, trying to figure out when to go see the islands. I decided to take it easy tomorrow, see the sights, all that, then Monday and Tuesday I´ll be on the islands for a mini tour. I´ll get to stay the night with a local family in a reed house and eat their food and it will be wonderful I´m sure.

Now, however, I´m gonna get back to my hostel. I´m still lacking sleep and need to catch up. The hostel is much more basic than the one in Cuzco, but very clean, has hot water, and is all I need.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! It completely slipped my mind until someone emailed me about it.

Chao babes.

I survived the Inca trail! That`s what it says on a lot of t-shirts I see around here. And yeah, it something you have to survive, not so much because it`s across a super challenging mountain landscape, but because if you`re not properly acclimatized before hand, it doesn`t matter how tough you are or how fit you are. I had no problems; actually, our entire group was wonderful and did really well. Anyway, prepare for a long entry. On the Inca trail I sometimes wrote in the moment, sometimes wrote at night (much to the destruction of my flashlight batteries), and I finished up today, after the fact. Here are my thoughts:

¨The Inca Trail, Day 1 - 9.13pm Monday 02 October 2006

I don`t have much time to write cuz I don`t want to waste my flashlight batteries. I just finished Day 1 of the Inca trail! I didn`t sleep much last night cuz the water ran out in my hostel so I waited up late-ish till it came back on again to have a shower.

Llama Path picked me up this morning, bright and early, just after 6am, an everyone clapped when I got on the bus. A tradition, apparently.

The bus ride isn`t worth mentioning, but once we got to the first town, Ollantaytambo, we had breakfast (which we had to pay for), picked up coca leaves or walking sticks or whatever anyone wanted/needed, and I headed onward to the trail itself, about a 40 minute bus ride away.

Perú is so spectacular. The Inca trail today was great -- it was relatively easy so we could get used to the altitude etc. I really like my group, too. We`ve had a lot of laughs so far and we all get along well. Turns out the clingy couple are on their honeymoon, and there are 2 other guys who weren`t at the meeting, one of which is like the comic relief of the group.

The tour company is almost too good -- I knew they were environmentally conscious, which is why I chose them, but I didn`t think it would be quite as luxurious as it is. We had full, restaurant quality meals in our little dining tent! Dessert included! I`ll write more as I see more.

...

I look forward to tomorrow even though it`s supposed to be the hardest part of the climb. I`d feel worse about the challenge if we weren`t all in the same boat.

¨Inca Trail, Day 2 - 12.51pm Tuesday 03 October 2006

We made it to the top! We`renot all the way there, but Dead Woman`s Pass is, at 4200m, the highest point of our climb. It was tough, especially the last stretch, but we are all in good spirits and made it with few woes.

5.16pm
We took a group picture just then so I had to stop writing.

Today we journeyed from a campsite near Wallyabamba, where the second checkpoint is, up and up and up a very steep mountainside along stone footpaths, dirt, and old Inca steps, to reach the height of Dead Woman`s Pass (or, in the proper Spanish, Warmiwañusca). To get there we went through the cloud forest at one point, which is stunning -- there are microclimates in this region, high in the Andes, one being the cloud forest (or subtropical mountain forest), which is like a tropical rainforest way up at a high altitude and misted over with clouds.

We also travelled through the grasslands part of the mountainside, and the higher we went the grander the views got.

It was such tough work that most of us didn`t have the breath to talk much while actually climbing -- though we attempted a few jokes and a song or two. During out breaks though, and during our very posh (for camping) meals, we had a great time laughing and talking with each other. We are now at our second camp (in a valley after a very steep downhill), we got here are about 2.30pm, and the slower people arrived by 3.30pm ... Happy hour, gotta go --

¨Inca Trail, Day 3 - 9.34pm, 04 October 2006

No time to write cuz have to get up at 3.30am. Reminders:

- Quasimoto/pirate
- Green Woman, Flying Head
- subtropical mountain forest
- tipping
- Jose, our guide
- extra Inca site
- flutist

¨Inca Trail, Day 4 - 11.50pm Thursday 05 October 2006

I hardly know what to write. I`m sitting on the ground in a room that was, 500 years ago, the front room of the residential sector of Machu Picchu. How can I put into words how I feel about this lost city? Especially now after four days of trekking to get here, four days of pilgrimage, spiritual journey, of learning about how the Incas lived, how they grew, and how they finally were defeated. I can`t. I am in awe of this place, there is so much history, so much energy behind it and within it´s walls.

Yesterday Jose, our guide, told my group that every time he took a group on the Inca trail he had a challenge: to get us interested and involved in the Inca culture and history. As he said, Perú is Inca, and to come and go, looking at the sites like a tourist without knowing how it came to be and what it means, and how very important it all is, means nothing.

I`ve seen nothing like this before, and I have so much respect for these stones because of the last 4 days. Before I came here I wanted to sit on an old Inca rock and think about the state of the world, in the footsteps of young Ernesto Guevara, but now it is so much more. It means something to me outside of that revolutionary fantasy. Now I really know what Che meant when he asked to himself, how could the Spanish destroy the people who built something so beautiful like Machu Picchu city, and create a city like Lima, which is ugly and sprawling and unorganized, in its place.

The Incas had an incredible civilization. They were master stone workers, astromoners, healers, politicians. Their architecture and the layout of their cities and buildings is so perfect for the landscape and climate that they have, in a place that gets so much rain, lasted for hundreds of years without eroding. They were so powerful and so smart that they, with a lot of help from the Spanish, destroyed themselves.

The 2 most widely accepted theories for what Machu Picchu was used for are: (1) that it was a sacred religious place, a mausoleum which served as the central religious centre for the Incan empire; and (2) that is was the university for idolatry, where all the greatest sorcerers, healers, witches, religious people would come from all over the empire to study. There are ceremonial baths on the actual site, and sacrificial sites along the Inca trail just as you approach the city. These are for cleansing the mind, body, and soul, and for giving gifts to the gods, before entering the sacred site. Not just anyone could come here, not just because the mountains made travelling difficult, but because the Inca King only allowed certain people to use the roads: the king himself, the inspectors of the empire, the messengers, and whomever he gave special permission. So for a city which housed a floating (constantly moving, constantly changing) population of 500 people, the people there and the things that took place there were obviously of immense importance for this culture.

There is evidence, in the 4-cornered stone here and and on Intihuatana, and in the placement of the windows in the Temple of the Sun, for example, of knowledge of astronomy, the exact movements of the sun, moon, and stars. There is obvious evidence of religous ceremony, worship, sacrifice. The terracing along the sides of the mountain shows remarkable skill and foresight as they serve multiple functions: as retaining walls to prevent landslides, flat grounds for agriculture, reflectors of the sun to create the perfect microclimate, and sometimes for defense.

Machu Picchu may be one of the 7 wonders of the world, but for me, now, the wonder is how do we manage to destroy everything beautiful that we make? Why do we constantly not see a good for what it is and try to create something new that ends up oppressing and exploiting the people of the world)

This morning my group and I got up at 3.30am, trekked up...

--others need the internet so i´ll finish this later on

I`m writing this in the computer at the bar, and since no one else is here I have supreme control of the music! Moving on from Mr. Jones (Counting Crows) to Bowie. It`s wonderful.

I met this crazy Polish girl here, Agnieszka. She`s like a mix of Agnes from work and my good friend Shanti, but sort of an extreme version. So hyper and high energy all the time! She`s got this long matted-but-not-quite-dreaded blonde hair, a kind of trendy hippy style going on, and one mile-a-minute mouth. She talks so much and so fast and laughs all the time and it takes some effort to get a word in sometimes. Although she`s loud about some opinions that should probably be kept quiet in public, I´m enjoying her company immensely and almost don`t care that she annoys other peoople -- she certainly doesn`t. She`s a lot of fun to be around.

I`ve had more brief chats with other people, and though I haven`t made any other friends here, everyone is very friend-ly and actually says hi when you go by, so it`s a welcome change from the previous hostel.

I can`t believe it`s October already! Now that I`m settled into this part of the traveller`s lifestyle the time is going by quickly.

Today my job is to get my bag together for the hike tomorrow. My group had our briefing last night and took home the duffel bags in which the porters will carry our stuff. I`m limited to 7 kilos, sleeping bag included, so I have to pack wisely. Most people in my group seem nice; it consists of 3 couples, a family with 2 pre-teens daughters, and me, so hopefully the dynamics of the group are alright. One couple seemed pretty clingy, but everyone else seemed pretty down-to-earth, so I should have a good time.

In the plaza I`ve learned to wear sandals to ward off shoe-shine boys. The kids here are pretty desperate and will ask for money even if they aren`t selling anything. Yesterday one kid responded rudely to my ¨no gracias¨. I`m sure it`s hard being turned down by tourists to frequently...but I don`t need sweets, or little finger puppets, or a shoe shine.

I´ve been writing down the last few dishes I`ve tried in order to whet Henry`s appetite for new food ideas. Here goes:

A couple nights ago I went to an Israeli restaurant with Jen on the recommendation of one of the Israeli guys at the last hostel. It was really good, though heavy and not something you`d want to eat everyday. We had -

Entrada (starter)
Crema de esparragos (asparagus soup) -- not too thick and very nice taste; I probably don`t need to describe it since I´m sure you can get it in Canada
(another choice: warmed flat buns with humus)

Segundo (main dish)
Fatut con queso (fatut with cheese) - this is a plate of little doughy bits mixed with cheese and egg; served warm, a little greasy and heavy, too much to eat but very delicious; dips on the side include some spicy green stuff (sorry I don`t know what was in it), a white garlicy sauce, or blended tomato and water with some spice

Postre (dessert)
Panqueques con chocolate (or honey or manjar, like drizzled condensed milk) - this was like a dessert crepe with chocolate on top, very light and so so tasty

A typical Peruvian dish that Jen only described to me cuz I refuse to eat it is this -

Cerviche - it`s fish of any kind (Jen preferred the squid) chopped up in small bits, served raw, soaked in lemon juice and with a kind of peppery taste; served with dried maize and salad

Last night I went to a cheap, typical Peruvian restaurant at which I was the only tourist -

Entrada (starter)
Papa ala huancayna - two slices of boiled potato covered in a yellowish sauce made from carrots and spices (sorry I`m not good with the spices), a bit spicy
with
Sopa cazuela de verduras (translates as vegetable casserole soup...) - soup with chicken broth, veggies like carrots, onions, peas, barley, some simple spices, and a bit of chicken which is really just bone and skin for flavour...I´ve ordered this twice and only once got a bit of meat

Segundo (main dish)
Seca de pollo (dry chicken) - with this dish they give you a piece of chicken (whether it be breast, leg, thigh is a surprise; it was leg this time) and a boiled potato served with a green, pesto-like sauce on top, mild flavour; the chicken is very tender, always served with rice

Ok I need to get organized now! I`ll be back online either Thursday night or Friday. ¡Adios!

Ah, so I´m in a new land yet again. Same city, different hostel. And it`s all good. Still chillin, listening to Nirvana and The Cure and THe Smashing Pumpkins in the bar where there`s a pool table, free tea and coffee and buns, free internet... It`s a good life and since I`m only paying the couple extra dollars for 2 nights I don`t feel bad for treating myself. Once Monday comes around I`ll be camping in the high Andes on the way to Machu Picchu, so it all balances out. I`m in a dorm room with bunk beds and 12 people, but I have yet to sleep in it so I can`t say what it`s like. So far everyone seems pretty friendly.

Anyway the one disadvantage to free internet and only 2 computers in the hostel is that other people in the bar I´m sure are waiting in line, so I should keep this brief. I`ll write one more entry tomorrow, but Monday morning (between 6.30 and 7am) I get picked up by the Llama Path crew, the sustainable tourism operator with whom I chose to do the Inca trail.

I hope all is well back home! I hear the leaves on the trees up north (in Canada) are gorgeous right about now.