Lares Trek Day 1

      So, last night, we returned to Cusco from the rainforest and, before that, hiking in the Andes and visiting Machu Picchu.  This means that I have a couple hundred pictures to post, and will probably take several posts to talk about everything.
      Starting on November 19:  we woke up around 4.15 in the morning and packed our bags to go on the Lares trek--20.5 miles long, but feels like longer because you hike up and down and up and down and up and down, and the altitude makes it hard to breathe.  The car had a little trouble finding where we were staying, but at aroung 5.15 we were on our way.  Then it was three hours in the car in the mountains to a small field near a village called where we started our hiking.  (I apologize for any typos that remain after my proofreading--I am speed-typing this while being dictated to).

Day 1--Cusco to Quishuarani to Cuncani

     The first part of the drive was on a paved road to Calca, where we stopped at a market with chicken feet and freshly killed animal parts on display, and went upstairs to a counter to breakfast.  There was coffee with milk, tall glasses of boiled milk with small pitchers of coffee concentrate on the side.  I suppose that if you like coffee this would be very delicious, but...
      After Calca the road was rough dirt and rocks, and steeply harepinned for a while.  It's a little crazy to see flowering cactus, bougainvillea, and flowers that look kind of like trumpets at this altitude, but we did; even saw a huge palm tree.  We briefly had pavement, and I saw in the distance, clinging to the side of the mountain, what looked like a walking path.  Pretty soon we were driving on it as it curled its way the high point--4480 meters.  There was snow there, and a bunch of alpacas, and we stopped to take a couple of pictures.  The road was wide enough for our car anyways, and we only passed one car going in the opposite direction: some piece of equipment probably headed out to clear the rockslides.  Many many rockslides and forded rivers later, one where the waterfall hit the road only a few inches from where we crossed, the smooth dirt road changed to a rocky one.  We reached our destination soon afterwards.   It was a small field, near a village called Quishuarani where we geared up.  A woman from the village came up to sell us hats and scarves, and though it was freezing we figured that we would warm up once we began hiking.    

     So, we started to hike and after the first few feet we couldn't believe how difficult it was.  We were all gasping for air.  In the beginning we had to stop every five minutes or so to catch our breath.  Our guide, Hudson, told us that at least part of it was because we had driven up from Cusco and hadn't stopped to acclimate.  That made sense, because the walking got easier on the way.

    Most of the moring was a climb, first to a lake and then to our first pass.  After hiking just a little way from the village, we were enveloped on a cloud and couldn't see much more then a few shadowy llamas on every side.  It was a six hundred meter elevation gain to the pass (3500 where we started and 4100 at the pass).  We stopped at a large lake a couple hundred meters below the pass to wait for the horses carrying our stuff, and got coca leaves to chew on to try and prevent some of the lightheadedness we were feeling.  They must have helped, but still it was pretty tough getting up the pass.   

     Once on the other side, a string of lakes lay before us down in the valley and we only had to walk another two hours or so downhill to reach the tent where we had lunch.  The food was very good, and we were near a small waterfall and river so the setting was very beautiful.  We had intermittent rain that day, as well as the residual dampness of standing in clouds.  On the way down we saw seven wild chinchillas and two of the andean turkeys,  plus several of the andean flickers and a few caracaras. 

     After lunch a downhill walk to the night's camp.  We saw an andean eagle on that leg, and  yet more llamas and alpacas and sheep (for the entirety of our trek they were our near-constant companions).  We can now tell the difference between them (llamas do not have hair on their faces or necks).   

      The small village where we camped, called Cuncani, consisted of a few farms scattered near a river.   Our tents where on a hill next to a house, surrounded by a heckuva lot of sheep.  We had dinner inside a little stone house, and there was an hole-in-the-ground bathroom next to where we camped.  My mother and I slept in one small tent and my father slept in a second.  He was even colder than we were.  

  

Looking down on lakes from our first pass.  We ate lunch just past the last one

A picture from the highest point in our car-ride--4480 meters

A view of the place where we ate lunch, as seen descending towards it

A view of the Sacred Valley from a place we stopped during the ride

Another picture from the highest point in our car-ride--4480 meters

A new-born alpaca and its mother

Sitting in the sun after lunch

One of the wild chinchillas we saw

The sheep invading our camp

Some snowy peaks

A view of the market where we ate lunch

Thunderstorm!

     We went for a very long walk this morning in downtown Cusco. We were all pretty tired out by the end, but we were glad that we had gotten out. This morning we also got our passport photos taken care of, so now we can get into Bolivia.
     Tomorrow at 5 in the morning we are going to go begin the Lares trail to Machu Picchu. We will be hiking about two and a half days, and then will take a train the rest of the way up. I will be unable to blog at least until the evening of the 22nd, but if I can't do it then it will be another week before I can because we are leaving the day after we get back to trek into the rainforest.
     This evening we went out again, and got caught in a huge thunderstorm. Rain was bucketing down, and there were rivers in the streets. There are drains that the water can come our of in nearly every street, and white-water on the rivers. The rain coming off the roofs hit the ground so hard it sent up a splash of at least five feet, and there were brilliant and frequent flashes of lightning.
     Naturally, as soon as we got back home the rain let up.

Market and Saqsaywaman

     Yesterday we took a taxi up to Saqsaywaman after our spanish classes. It is a huge Incan complex overlooking Cusco. We forgot the camera, though, so only had the video camera and can't upload from that.  There were a couple, I guess you call them herds, of llamas grazing, with people and dogs watching them.  There was also a really big stone slide that had been polished to be very smooth.
     This morning my parents went to and early mass. Apparently it was pretty short--only one reading and no sermon, but it was pretty packed. They had a mass at 6, 7, and 8 in spanish and a 5 o'clock mass in Quechuan.
     We also skyped with my grandparents this afternoon,  and are going to have a pretty low-key weekend.
     Yesterday we also went to the San Pedro market. They sell lots of food and crafts, and it is very bustling and vivacious. We stocked up on fruit while we were there, and also got a root-vegetable called an olluco which we will eat this afternoon. Olluco are about as big as 1 to 2 thumbs, and yellow.  There were aisles that sold fish and caviar, and seaweed, many varieties of fruit, and a place to buy hot food.  We didn't eat any food there despite the fact that it looked very good, because even our spanish teacher (who has lived in Cusco her whole life) avoids food at the markets.
     Here are some pictures of the streets and squares of Cusco, as well as of one of the cathedrals and the market.

I feel obliged to put a title on this post, but nothing really comes to mind: hence this

     We are having network issues in Cusco, so I'm not sure how regularly I am going tol be able to post but I will try.
     Yesterday we had yet another spanish class, and are a little ready for a break but are most of the way done with the week.  The weather is being really unpredictable here--sunny then cloudy then thunderstormy.  Last night we say a few flashes of lightning, and it was raining pretty hard but this morning it looks sunny, if a little grey.
     Last night we also went to the Cusco Planetarium, which is something that a family does out of their house.  They talked about how the Incans viewed the sky, and also about the southern-hemisphere constellations (VERY different from the sky as we are used to it).  It was a little touristy, but it was interesting.  The highlight of the evening was probably their big white dog, Gandalf.  He seemed really calm and well-behaved around strangers for being only a year and a half old.  I can't imagine Lillie being that way, and she is five.
     Then this morning our spanish class started a half an hour later than usual, so we would hev been theoretically able to sleep in if not for the multitude of barking dogs.  Speaking of which, I am exercising an enormous amount of willpower not to go pet them all, but we haven't had our rabies vaccines.  On our street there are a couple of dogs that go onto the roofs of their houses and bark at people passing by.  It is always a little disconserting to have to look up to see the (small!) dog that is barking at you ferociously.
     After spanish my mother and I walked to a vegetarian restaurant to meet my dad.  The restaurant was called Giovanda's, and there I had the worst smoothie of my life and a distinctly odd potato-like-concoction.  It did not match the glowing description we heard about it.
      This afternoon we went to the Incan museum.  This was interesting, and there was some very beautiful modern weaving as well as some amazing few-thousand-year-old weavings and pottery, but we were all very tired and didn't stay to see all of it.  We came home and are spending the evening
in--making potato salad, practicing, and skyping with a friend.
    I will try to post a couple of the pictures from yesterday, but if you do not see them that is because I couldn't get them to load and if you also happen to see this message that is because the wi-fi is too awful to come back and edit it.

Almost Two Weeks Out

     Today marked our second day of spanish classes.
      After class we met up at a vegetarian restaurant near the Plaza de Armas, and it ended up being very good.  It is really hard to find vegetarian food here, and even harder to find good vegetarian food.  Even in the grocery store there is a limited selection of food.  There are few varieties of cheese, no fresh lettuce, no unsweetened yogurt, no tortillas or tortilla chips, no decent vegetables in the supermarket (you need to go to the regular market), but a whole double-aisle of cookie.  
     This evening we went to the Qorikancha Musem in the basement of the Qorikancha temple.  IT was a musem of Incan and pre-Incan artifacts.  There were a couple of textiles preserved for hundreds of years, but the Incan pottery was in general more beat-up than the Mochican pottery, which predates it by several hundred years.
     There was also a room that spoke about the brain-surgery techinques of the time (65% rate), and a few skulls where you could see the places that had holes drilled in them.
     There were also skulls of important Incans that had been deformed by tying cloth bandages and boards around the head of a child from an early age, and a couple of mummies.  
     Incan mummies are preserved in a seated position, with the knees tucked into the chest.  This is so they could be stored and carried in urns.  On important festivals, people would take out the mummies and serve them food and drink, and also seat them near other mummies so that they could visit.
      After visiting the museum we went to a folk-dancing an music performance.  This was very interesting, but it seemed that there were a lot of colonial influences in it.  We only stayed for about half,because we had the time wrong and arrived early and so had been sitting for a long time.  I have some pictures, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.

In School Again

     Today was the first day of our spanish lessons.  My mother and I went the house of a woman named Luz for four hours this morning, while my father went to a school called Proyecto Peru for three hours.   We did a lot of review today, and hopefully tomorrow will learn something new.  We left around eight and it was about a fifteen-minute walk to Avenita El Sol, where we met our teacher. From there it was another ten blocks to her house, and we took a taxi home.
     On our way back we met my dad walking from his class, and it was very fortunate that we did because we had given the driver the wrong directions and were heading away from home.
     We had pasta for lunch, but the pasta shells were not like any pasta shells we have ever eaten.  They were more than a little nasty.
      Because we have a kitchen here we have been eating at home a lot.  However, that does mean that we eat a lot of cheap and easy-to-prepare food, such as a lot of potatoes, beans, eggs, and ramen.  This is really exciting, because of the complete lack of any nutritional value I never get to eat ramen at home and am enjoying the experience a LOT.
      The downside of being settled in one place is that instead of being able to do the five-minute-a-day practices that my violin teacher came up with to make sure that I don't lose all the skills I have been working on  I have to do a little over half my regular practice, alternating which half I do every day.  That doesn't sound too bad, but it takes me about 45 minutes to do it and requires a lot of concentration.  Also, I am using an electric violin because if it gets damaged or broken on the trip it's not a big deal, but it weighs a ton and sounds awful.

Tambomachay

     This morning we took a taxi up to the ruins of Tambomachay--from Quechua, tanpu macha'ay, meaning resting place. It is also known locally as El Baño del Inca. Tambomachay consists of a bunch of canals running through terraces, and may have served as a military fort guarding the approaches to Cusco or a spa for Incan elites, or both.
     From there we walked to Puka Pukara which was only a few hundred feet from Tambomachay. Puka Pukara, meaning 'Red Fortress' because of the impressive red color that it mus have been due to the iron in the rocks. Now it is more pinkish. It probably served as a checkpoint and administrative center, a military headquarter, and a warehouse for food.
     The Incan path we followed diverged away from the road at this point, and we walked past a town and a bunch of sheep. In Olympia springtime doesn't have the same connections with baby animals to me as it does here, but there were a lot of lambs that we saw.
      Because we took a taxi up to Tambomachay, the way back to Cusco was mostly downhill but we still felt the altitude after walking for a while. We set out around 7, but it got really hot really quickly.
It was only about 4 miles from Tambomachay to where we are staying in Cusco, but because of the hills and the heat and the backtracking and the not being sure which path leads where it felt--and probably was--a lot more.
     From the last ruins we saw we happened to come out onto the road directly above our street. We had taken a shortcut, and it was completely serendipitous. Taking the short route meant that we cut out visiting the huge Cristo Blanco statue on the hill, and the Saqsaywaman ruins, which we will probably visit tomorrow.
     This afternoon we skyped with my grandparents, and aunt and uncle and it was really fun to get to see them. We also got to see my aunt and uncle's dog, Gus, and would like to skype with Lillie soon.
     Then this evening we went to the Pre-Colombian art, which was very amazing. The Mochican pottery was particularly beautiful. The captions for the pictures were all very silly, though, and the people who wrote them obviously had no idea what the images were of or what the vessels were used for for the most part. Unfortunately we forgot the camera, but if you search "pre-colombian art museum cusco" the first link will be the museum and there are pictures of the pieces.
    After the museum we went to find a tienda, but somehow got turned around coming home and took a new, long way.
     Tomorrow we will begin taking spanish classes from a woman named Luz who we met briefly last night.
     Here are some pictures of the hike that we took this morning, and of the view of Cusco.

Cusco, and Photos at Last

     To clarify, the photos I posted yesterday were from the internet because of the stupid computer being stupid, but I think I have figured out how to put photos I have taken on this. For better or for worse, that also means that I will include some pictures from before we even left Olympia.
This morning we took a 45 minute busride from Ollantaytambo to the weaving village of Patacancha. There are about 450 people in the village, but it is sprawling. Weaving is the main source of income for the village, and they have been weaving in the same ways since at least Incan times. They raise sheep and alpaca, shear them, wash and spin the wool, dye it with natural dies, and then weave it using a an Andean backstrap loom. They tie the yarn to their belt, and the other end of the strings is attached to a nail or piece of wood which they hammer into the ground. This is a unique type of weaving because it uses the warp to make the pattern, using the long strings to make the pattern instead of the weft. In western weaving, you don't have to pick through the strands to find each color that you want to pull through a strand at a time to create the pattern, and so requires much less presence..
     They also spin the yarn uniquely, using a wooden drop spindle which is hard to describe so I will use pictures.
     Andean weavers dress traditionally, if impractically for the weather. They wear sandals made of tires in all weather, because they say that having open-toed shoes make them feel connected to the earth. They wear black, synthetic skirts with weaving on the bottom half called polleras, and seven or eight colorful petticoats underneath. In souther Peru, they often stagger the petticoats so that you can see all the colors, but not in Patacancha. They generally wear three or for synthetic sweaters, because the synthetic dyes are more colorful. You see bright colors in clothing everywhere. The jackets that they wear called juyunas are generally bright red, and have individualized button patterns on them in any way that they like. Girls who are old enough to be married (17 or 18) weave a shoulder cloth, generally as fancy and complex as they can. It is a way of showing 'I am a really good weaver, I would make a good wife'. When they reach middle age, they weave a new one to show what they have learned in their lives.
     Everyone wheres a hat called a montera, which tilts to one side. They are red, with patterns in the middls and a place in the center that is hollow and used for storing money. The hats are purely traditional, and do nothing for un protection or carrying things. The hat is held on their heads by a beaded strap called a sonq'apa, which is also beaded according to whatever pattern the woman likes.
Until recently the sharing of labor was pretty evenly divided between men and women, but recently with the decrease of barter and trade and the increase of money the men have had to go find work as taxi drivers or porters in the city and are gone about 27 days a month. This leaves the crop tending, raising of children, house repairs, and animal care to the women, who also bring in most of the money with their weavings. It makes sense for them to have many children to help with the work, but the Patacancha population has been decreasing because of the cost of buying books and uniforms.
Children are now learning to weave in school. Generally they learn to spin around the age of 3, and begin to weave around 9 or 10.
     Families build first a kitchen, using sun-dried bricks. The roofs are thatched, often with corrugated tin under the thatching. Then they will build a living room, and if they have enough money a separate one for the adults and the children. Guest houses will also be built if they can, and these are often round.
     Guinea pigs live in the kitchen, and are eaten on special occasions.
     I'm not sure what order the pictures will be in, but there are a LOT and include Patacancha, Ollantaytambo ruins and streets, some pictures from Lima, and a couple pictures of sprayine permethrin on clothes to avoid bugs in the rainforest and of getting packed iup.

Ollantaytambo

     There is on-again off-again wifi in Ollantaytambo, but I am not complaining because it is pretty amazing that there is wifi at all.
    Yesterday we boarded the bus around 2.00.  It was an amazingly nice bus, a double-decker with seats that recline almost to a horizontal position and were very comfortable.  In the evening we drove by the desert coast.  There are villages here and there, but we don't know how they get water because of the miles and miles of empty sand that touch the shore.
     In the morning we were in the mountains, and we seemed to go up and up and up.  It doesn't seem that we are particularly high her, because of the mountains that are so mucher higher than we are, but we are about 9,160 feet and we are feeling the saroche so we are glad to have come down a bit from Cusco (11,200 feet) to acclimate.  We are drinking a lot of the coca tea, which is the natural remedy.
     There were many small villages and terraces on the mountains, and it was amazingly beautiful.  At points the mountains seemed almost mossy because of the vegetation on them, and other times they were more industrialized, or had crops and cows and sheep and pigs.  The one thing that we didn´t really see was forests, because they were deforested in the Incan times because they have been used for crops and grazing.
     Once we arrived in Cusco, we took a taxi to a place we could get a bus to a town to Huabamba, where we took another taxi to Ollantaytambo.  The trip from Cusco to here took about an hour and a half, so we were travelling about 25 hours in the entirety of the trip from Lima.
     The streets of Ollantaytambo and at least the bottom half of the houses date from Incan times.  There are canals running through the city, and ruins on the mountains on all sides of the village.  We have spent most of our time here exploring the town.  There are many small streets not wide enough for cars that we wander down, and the whole town is so ancient and beautiful that we cannot stop looking.
    Last evening we hiked up a part of a path to some Incan storage houses, but we left in the evening hoping to avoid the heat of the day (the sun is very intense this high in the mountains) but it got dark a lot quicker than we expected and though we made it to the nearer buildings we couldn´t see all of them.  The path was almost invisible in many places, and when there wasn´t a ledge beneath you there was a sheer drop to the town.
     This morning we went to ruins on the other side of the town.  These were mostly terraces, but there was a temple to the sun as well and a water temple.  The complex that we visited this morning were built in the shape of a llama, and the town is built in the shape of an ear of corn.
    The temples are built so in the winter solstice the sun shines and illuminates the temple of the sun, and rises at the precise point where a massive rock formation in the mountainside forms the shape of a head.  There is another part on the mountainside that takes the shape of a man carrying a bundle on his back, and a building was built on his head to look like a crown.
    The temple of the sun is built without mortar; the rocks are shaped to fit perfectly together.  Some of the rocks weigh thousands of pounds, and were carried without the help of pack animals from a nearby mountain.
   This afternoon we visited the Bio Museo, which is a museum full of native plants and herbs and vegetables.  The guide told us about the several thousands of varieties of potatoes, some of which are dying out because they can´t be sold commercially, and about some traditions and rituals.
     The Incans believed in three worlds.  The Kay Pacha is the world that you see; the world that you go to when you die is Uku Pacha; and the world of the spirits is Hanan Pacha.
     This is a picture of the face in the stone--you can sort of see the crown but not what he is carrying.  His bundle looks like a large semi-circular shape.

   

     These are the ruins that are built in the shape of a llama, but you cannot see that from this angle.  The stair-like things are terraces, and are very big--maybe 5 to 6 feet high and wide, and varying in length but some of them being quite long.

 Something not very important--this computer is one at the hotel we are staying at, and is set up in Spanish so it is telling me that I am spelling everything wrong, but a new tab is a ´Nueva Pestaña´ and ´pestaña´also means eyelash.  That is not related to anything.

Last post from Lima

     This is going to have to count for yesterday and today.  Also, I haven't been posting any pictures because it is really complicated and stupid but I will put some on tomorrow.
     Yesterday morning we took a taxi to downtown Lima.  We arrived in the Plaza de Armas and it was filled with people, with the Government Palace on one side, a cathedral on another, the Archiepiscopal Palace on a third, and the Town Hall.  When we got there the changing of the guard at the Government Palace had just begun, and there was a band playing to the guards marching and performing.  This happens every day at noon.
     We then went to the Franciscan Cathedral.  It was first built around 1560, but the last renovation was in the mid 17th century.  A large part of the cathedral was in disrepair, with light coming through large gaps in the ceiling.  This part was sealed off, however, so we didn't get to see it.  The moorish ceilings depicted only geometrical shapes and no plants or animals, and in several places were held up merely by the pressure of the other pieces of wood and not by glue or nails.
     The library had at least 10,000 volumes, but though some of them must be hundreds of years old they weren't being taken care of and were falling apart.  There were huge  books used for choral singing, and they would be placed on large turntables that would be spun so that a choir could sit on all sides and read the music.  These were written latin on sheepskin, because at the time they were made paper was to expensive to be practical.  
     The tour took us down to the catacoumbs, which was Lima's only graveyard for a time (I am going to describe all of what we saw, but this maybe be a little morbid).  Graves were dug five meters deep and bodies were stacked in them--about 25,000.  There were some rooms that had iron gates, but through them there were piles of bones.
    Somebody had gone through the graves and sorted out the bones that didn't decompose easily (such was femurs and the bones of the hand) and sorted them into bins.  There were three or four wells that were structural for the catacoumbs.  These wells were a couple hundred feet deep and filled with an almost geometric layout of bones.
     It is really interesting here that the conquistadors are honored so much even though they came for gold and killed so many people.  But there are many statues to Don Quixote and Francisco Pizarro around town.
     There are many ruins around Lima, parks and streets and buildings are built around them.  
     Looking across Lima there was a huge hill that was covered in shantytowns.  These for the most part sprang up because of the terrorist war in the countryside, so there was a huge influx of people to the rural areas.  The Sendero Luminosa, the Shining Path, was an orginization founded by a professor of philosophy from Ayacucho named Alberto Guzman.  They wanted to turn Peru into a Maoist society starting in the 1980s, and continuing for about a decade.  Guzman was caught some time in the mid 1990s, and the movement fell apart very quickly after that.
      After visiting the cathedral we went to Lima's Barriochino, which was supposed to have very good food because of the number of chinese people in the area--but it didn't.
     Today we are catching a bus to Cusco at two, and we will arrive around eleven tomorrow.   We will spend tomorrow night Ollantaytambo, about an hour and half by bus away from Cusco.  It is about 1500 feet lower than Cusco, and we will go to acclimate.  There are also some very beautiful ruins.

Barranco and Ruins

     This morning we walked to Barranco, a town just south of Lima and about an hour walk from where we are staying.  While we were there, we went to a small cafe.
     On the the menu there was a lùcuma milkshake.  This was brownish yellowish, and at first seemed to be cherry because, despite the color, it had a similar taste.  The lùcuma, known in English as the eggfruit because its texture is similar to the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, is a round fruit native to the Andean valleys of Peru.
    We also had a very good brownie and frozen lemonade before walking back.
     This evening we went to a restaurant that overlooked some Incan ruins.  Unfortunately, we could not see as much of them as we sould have liked, but it was amazing to see this ancient architecture in the middle of the city.

Dispatch from Hostal el Patio

     We're only fourteen degrees south of the equator, but the weather feels like an Olympian summer day--mid-sixties and overcast.
     We spent a lot of today walking around the city.  Surprisingly we didn't get lost, but we made quite a few unnecessary loops and detours.  First thing after we set out, we went to a bank and got out some soles.  We then wandered around the city for a while, looking for the South American Exploreres Club--they were fairly useless in directing us even to a place to eat, but we got to see a small portion of the city as we wandered. 
     This evening one of the nearby parks had a night-market, and there were vendors out and crowds of people and a surprising number of cats lounging in the flower beds.  Everybody seems to stay up and go out late in Lima.
     Crossing the street is an ordeal, because in the few places where there is a traffic light the crush of people weaving togther is bewildering, and when there isn't a crosslight the best thing to do is to find a small break in traffic and then walk briskly right behind the car that is at the front of the break.  Car horns honk with regularity, and seemingly at nothing.
     In an hour or two we are going to head out for dinner, and maybe to listen to some music. 
     Happy day of the dead!

Lima!

     We landed in Lima around 8.00 Oly time (10.00 here).
      It took while to get through customs, but once we got out in the city it was so different!  Walk signs glow green and show an animated figure in motion, people lean out of buses, pedestrians with small children in tow crowd the streets at 11.30 at night, dogs roam the streets, fire dancers perform in intersections while the light is red.
     Today was a really long day of travelling, so I will keep this short but post more tomorrow.