Lima Lima Lima

Archbishop's Palace

Lima Lima Lima. The rapid fire calls you hear in the bus station of vendors trying to get you to buy a ticket on their bus to Lima. This entry is about the places we went in Lima. I'm going to leave the food for a separate entry because the food scene in Lima is absolute spectacular and deserves its own commentary. More pictures are in the Peru album.

On our first day in Lima, we had a very relaxed start since we needed to recover from the long bus ride the day before. We were staying in Miraflores, a neighbourhood a little ways outside of downtown. If you come to Lima, it's very important to stay in that area because there isn't much in the way of good transit and all the good restaurants and nightlife are in Miraflores. In particular, beyond taxis there are three approaches to getting around. First, there is a single rapid bus transit line that runs from Barranco through Miraflores, through downtown and out the other side. It's efficient, it works fantastically, but it only runs until 10pm. So it's great to get downtown to the sights from Miraflores, but wouldn't work well to get back to your hotel after a late dinner. The second transit option is a single light rail train line. It doesn't go to anywhere that tourists would want to go. Your last option is to take one of the gazillion local buses that prowl the streets. They're run by tons of different companies. Some are closer to normal municiple buses we'd see in North America, while others are glorified diesel spewing vans. They are are difficult to use if you don't know the city. On the side of the bus is the name of all the streets it is supposed to be traveling on along its route, but sometimes, they swap buses around, so you have to ask the conductor. You also need to carry a lot of change because each time you get on a bus, you have to pay again. Transfers are non-existent.

Her head was supposed to be topped
with a flame or "llama". Instead it's
the furry type of llama.

So, on our first day, we too the rapid transit bus downtown to see the historical sights. We roughly followed the walking tour from the Lonely Planet, which started us off at the plaza San Martin. There's a monument in the middle of the square to Jose San Martin. On one side is a statue of a woman and when it was built, the instructions from Spain said to place a flame on her head. Unfortunately, the word "flame" in Spanish is llama, so, when the Peruvian workers received the instructions, they dutifully sculpted a miniature camelid to sit on her head.

From the Plaza San Martin, we walked along the Jiron de la Union towards the Plaza del Armas. The road is a pedestrian road and used to be the place for promenading, but now, it's just full of discount stores in some very nice old buildings. In the Plaza del Armas, we took a tour of the Cathedral, which was interesting, but not as good as the one in Cuzco.

San Francisco Monestary

From there, we made our way to the San Francisco Monastery where a wedding was taking place. Of course, tours do not stop for measly weddings, so we took a tour. Our guide was frankly terrible. She only presented the minimum amount of information and couldn't answer any questions. That being said, the convent is actually quite interesting. I liked the ceilings, which are largely decorated in intricate carvings made of Nicaraguan cedar. The pieces of the carvings aren't fasted together with any nails, only pressed and hold together due to the friction. Though the ceilings were fantastic, the real highlight of the monastery is the catacombs which feature piles and piles of bones all sorted by types. Our guide claimed that the archaeologists are the ones who sorted the bones and arranged them to make a better display, but that's frankly very hard to believe. No serious archaeologists would significantly change the site. They gain a lot of information about know exactly how various objects are placed relative to each other in graves. It's more likely that the bones were sorted as the catacombs filled up with burials and they needed a more efficient packing system.

Part of the storage room in the
Larco museum

On our second day in Lima, we went to the Larco Museum, which was a challenge. It wasn't on the rapid bus route, so we tried to take the local buses using the advice from the guide book, which said take a bus that says "todo Bolivar". At this point, we hadn't figured out that the writing on the side of the bus says where it's going, so we were looking for something in the window. We tried one bus who was holding a sign that said "Cuba Boliva", but when we asked if they were going by the museum, they said no. So we got off and Catherine found a girl waiting for the bus that was able to guide us a little. She was heading roughly in the same direction and said that we could take the same bus as her and then at one point, she'd get us on another bus that would take us to the museum. So, we got a tour of the town. We ended up going almost all the way over the airport and the bus rides took an hour and a half, when they really could have been done in half that time, but oh well, it was an adventure.

The museum itself is absolute fantastic. It's a private museum, so it's a little more expensive, but it's worth it. The displays have good English signage and do a great job taking the user through many different ancient Peruvian cultures and their art/religious pieces. Their collection is immense, which means that in the main display, there are excellent examples of pieces. They even opened up their storage room for the public to see and it's filled with shelf after shelf of pottery and other pieces all grouped into similar works. There are easily thousands of pieces. They also have a unique exhibit on erotic pieces. They are mostly clay and portray everything from just naked people, all the way to fellatio and sex with the dead.

Near the bridge of sighs in Barranco

On our third day, and Catherine's last day, we started by going to the national museum. This one is a little out of the way, in the ministry of culture building. Given our challenges using the bus the day before, we took a taxi this time. Most of the museum is very similar to what we've previously seen in Peru (namely pre-Hispanic stuff) and didn't add much new information. However, there is an intriguing photo exhibit about the Shining Path conflict in Peru from 1980-2000. This was the first museum we had seen in Peru that talked about any Peruvian history that wasn't either Incan, pre-Incan, or the church converting the Incans to Catholocism. I hadn't even heard of the Shining Path, or the conflict before. It appears that in the late 70's a military dictatorship was on its way out in Peru and there was some democratic reforms, but during the first election, there was accusations of corruption and vote rigging. One of the losing parties, the Shining Path, which was close to a Communist Party, decided that armed revolution was called for. So, they waged a guerrilla/terrorist war to try and take power in order to create a communist state. There was ginormous income inequality too, which was a large source of discontent. Anyway, over the next 20 years the Shining Path and their allies waged a war against the state, but unfortunately, they hid in the civilian population so many civilians were caught in the middle. Both sides committed atrocities. For example, the state would arrest people in the dead of night and they would disappear  or execute most of a town where they thought the terrorists were hiding.  The Shining Path on the other hand, enslaved or executed some tribes if they did support the rebellion. It was basically just a big, tragic mess.

The cliffs of Miraflores over the beach.

After the museum, we had a late lunch and headed down to the beach around sunset. It's gorgeous there. The city is on the top of gigantic cliffs, which paragliders take advantage of. Down below, we could see collections of surfers trying to catch the evening waves. From the beach, we went to the Cocoa museum, where we had a fun chocolate making workshop. During the workshop, we started by roasting cocoa beans, shelling them and then grinding them in order to make 3 different drinks: cocoa tea (with the shells), mexican hot chocolate (with water), and normal hot chocolate (with milk). You can't grind the beans fine enough to make good chocolate  so then, we used some melted chocolate that they had made in order to mold a number small bonbons.

Classical fountain at the water fountain park.

Our last stop of the day was the water fountain show. Lima is the second driest capital city in the world behind Cairo and yet, they have a gigantic water fountain park complete with light and laser show set to a varied musical score that includes Ode to Joy and some traditional altiplano songs. Beyond the light show, they also have a series of smaller, lit up fountains, like a water tunnel a 50ft classical fountain, and more. I really don't have a good adjective to describe how over the top this setup is.

After the late night watching the water show, we went back to the hotel and we packed. In the morning, Catherine went to the airport to head back to the US, while I had to wait another day for my flight to Canada. So, I transferred to a cheaper hostel a few blocks away. It's amazing what a few blocks will do. It was a much more working class area and there was a large market nearby.

Water fountain light show

We had missed some sights downtown which I wanted to see, so I hoped on the bus rapid transit. A few stops in, we're jammed like sardines and I'm standing in front of some seats. The lady in the seat gets up to head out and quickly, this big guy elbows his way towards the seat and pushed me back into the poor lady, who is now perfectly pinned. He gestures to a good looking girl to take the seat and she looks at him askance. Then, we hit a small bump and I feel a hand in my pocket and my cellphone slip out. The big guy was a distraction. Once I had check and realized that yes, I was pickpocketed, I turned to the guy beside me (because that's where the hand that had taken the phone had come from) and started angrily asking him in pidgen spanish/english to give me my phone back (e.g. "my telephono. Give me my fucking telephono back"). The poor guy was innocent of course and after some gestures,  I see a hand poking out of the crowd with my phone in it. I was making enough of a stink that the pickpocket wanted to give it back without making it obvious who he was so that he wouldn't be turned in. I turned around and sat down in the empty seat that had started all this. Then, a guy comes and tries to talk to me in English to find out what happened. I'm pretty sure this was the pickpocket and he was making sure that I didn't know who he was and/or wouldn't turn him in. It took me a few hours to calm down after that episode.

Fluorescent Minerals at the Museo Andes del Castillo

Downtown, I started with the Museo Andes del Castillo, which has a great selection of minerals pulled out of the Andes. For example, they have a perfect cube of Iron Pyrite the size of your fist. After that, I tried to find the museum that's part of the central reserve. It turns out it's not in the same building as the central reserve, but I managed to stumbled upon it. It's mostly an art collection and does have a small display showing how the painting styles in Peru had evolved from the early 19th century until today. After that museum, I went to the museum of the Inquisition. It's in the building that was designed explicitly for the Inquisition. There are some gruesome wax figures being tortured, but I found the story around the Inquisition the most interesting. In Peru, the inquisition came 50 years after it was started in Spain. Now, the Inquisition was primarily charged with finding those who committed heresy, which could be an issue in a country that's trying to convert a large native population to Catholicism. However, the Inquisition only had durisdiction over true blood Spaniards. Natives or Mestizos (mixed race) couldn't be prosecuted. Also, if you were charged by the Inquisition and you repented, they would let you go. It was only those who refused to repent that were killed. One amazing stat from the museum is that in Peru, about 3,000 people were charged with heresy over the time of the Inquisition. The Spanish population in the colony at the time: 15,000.

Streets of Lima

After the Inquisition museum, I headed back to the bus, but I stumbled across a split museum dedicated to Pisco and Bernardo O'Higgins. O'Higgins was the first president of Chile, but he built a navy and used it to free the Peruvian colony from the Spanish crown. So, he is very well regarded in Peru. It seems like the guys who led rebellions in South America were involved all over the continent.

After that museum, I headed back to Miraflores, and after dinner etc.. turned in early for the night. In the morning, it was time to wave goodbye to South America. It was an incredibly memorable trip.

The Long Road to Lima

The Cessna for the ride to see the Nasca lines

For our last day in Cusco, we mostly just relaxed and handled logistics. At 4:30, our bus left for Nasca. The ride took 15 hours and it was a fairly comfortable bus. It wasn't as good as the one we too to Mendoza in Argentina because the food was worse and the seats didn't lie completely flat. Also, the route winds up through the mountains with a lot of switchbacks. At one point we had to take motion sickness pills. As the crow flies, it's only 350km, but it's slow going. In the end though, we managed to get a decent amount of sleep and arrived in Nasca around 7am.


More pictures are in the Peru album.

The spider Nasca lines figure.

In Nasca, we were greeted by the intense desert heat. A shock compared to the cool high Andes. We rendezvoused with the tour operator for our flight, which wasn't for a while, so we had a leisurely breakfast. The flight had four passengers, a pilot and a co-pilot. It was in a small Cessna and lasted about 30 min. Of course, we weren't going anywhere, we were simply seeing the Nasca lines. These geoglyphs were built by the Nasca people in the desert about 2000 years ago, probably for religious reasons. The desert in the area is pure desert with absolute no scrub or other vegetation, just rocks and sand. The lines are made by raking the rocks, which are darker, away from sand, which is lighter. Doing this, they made gigantic figures that can only been seen from the air. Some of the figure were of animals, like monkeys or spiders, while others were geometric figures. The flight allows you to see them very clearly, but it is a little stomach wrenching because the pilot with circle each figure from both sides with the wing pointing at the figure. It's a very incredible landscape.

The aqueduct access points in Nasca

The first bus we could get to Lima wasn't until 4pm, so after our morning flight, we took a lackluster tour that took us to see one of the lines up close, to an Incan mud ruin and to the aqueducts  The aqueducts were the highlight. The water in the area is all groundwater and river water, so to make the valley fertile for farming, people built this incredible aqueduct over 1000 years ago. It's an underground tunnel with a series of helical access points that are used to get water and to access the tunnel for cleaning. Amazingly, like all the ancient public works, it has survived very well through many major earthquakes.

Though we didn't visit it, I should mention the Cerro Blanco. It's a sand dune that can be seen from town. It's not just any sand dune. It's the biggest in the world at 1100m from its base to its tip. Sand buggies can't get up to the top, so if you want to, it's a 3hr trek. Then, you can sandboard down the hill. A little nuts.

At the end of the day, we hoped on the bus to Lima. It's a 7 hour ride that felt a lot longer because the bus attendant had a thing for dancing movies and it wasn't possible to turn the sound off. So, we were subjected to a marathon session of Spanish dubbed Step Up movies. In the end, we arrived in Lima late after 22 hours on the bus and crashed.

Mystical Machu Picchu

Take a guess what ruin that is

We started the day very early because we wanted to get to Machu Picchu before the large crowds and during the good light around sunrise. We got to the bus station around 6am and then took one of the constant stream of buses up the switchbacks for about a half hour. At the top, there was a throng of people waiting to get in. We hired a guide and headed into the site. From the entrance to the site, you walk through a jungle path and then, after about 100m, the canopy opens up and you get the first sight of Machu Picchu clinging on the clifftop. It's just a little mystical.

More pictures are in the Peru album.

Our guide hurried us up the side of the hill facing the main ruins because we wanted to get a good view of sunrise as the sun came up over the mountains. It was totally worth getting their early just to see the the dawn of the new day and the golden rays slowly creep across the ancient landscape.

Frankly, it's not only the ruins that are special, it's also the landscape. The river slices the mountains into ribbons of green that are thousands of feet high and near vertical. The vegetation is incredibly lush and tenacious  even growing on vertical granite cliffs. Most of the plants were what we think of in North America as house plants, only bigger that they were in their natural environment. Bromeliads were everywhere, in the nooks of trees or in crevices in the rock. Air plants and moss were hanging from every conceivable surface, nourished by the mist that often invades the ancient sanctuary.

We had a tour of the main ruins, where our guide showed us the sights. He was very incensed that Yale still had a lot of the Machu Picchu artifacts from Henry Bingham's excavations and Catherine had to bite her tongue  The ruins have a number of interesting points. There is a calendar stone that marks the time between the solstices like a sundial. There is a single round building with a single window, which on the winter solstice lights a special point. There is a temple of the condor where offerings were made to the gods. People had left money and coca candy, which our guide didn't like because it meant that people weren't understanding the culture. If you want to do it right, you need to leave coca leaves or chica. There was also a house for the king, which including a bathroom and gigantic pestles for grinding medicinal herbs that doubled as a star observatory by filling them with water and looking at the reflection. There are a number of other sites, but frankly, you should just go and see them for yourself.

We didn't buy our ticket in time to go up Wayna Picchu  the mountain behind the ruin, because they only let a couple of hundred people up each day. However, we did opt to climb the larger Machu Picchu mountain. It was a long 1.5 hour climb up continuous stone steps, but the view at the top was worth it. You can see Machu Picchu in its entirety and its place in context of the large hills that surround it. It's one of those sights, like the Grand Canyon, that pictures don't do justice.

The last thing we saw before heading back for the bus was the Inca bridge. This is a short walk from the main ruins. You follow a path until you reach a completely sheer face with a narrow path built up a little ways in stonework. There is a little gap and then more stonework. Between these two spots, is a bridge. It's a weird bridge. I don't know why they didn't just make a little causeway and fill in the whole thing. You can't go on the bridge because it is too narrow and unstable. In fact, on the other side, you can see the path continue in a ribbon of green that looked like it was only a foot or two wide.

Exhausted, we grabbed the bus to Aguas Calientes then picked up our gear from the hostel. Then we grabbed the train back to Ollantaytambo where we picked up the laundry that we had left at the hostel there. When I got there, even though they had almost two days to do it, it was in a pile all wrinkled, some of the stuff was still on the line, and our laundry bag was hidden under a bunch of sheets. After scrambling around trying to make sure I had everything, I reconnected with Catherine and we grabbed a combi to Cuzco.

After settling into the hotel, we went out for dinner at Pacha Pappa. It's an outdoor patio and on weekends, they have a harp player adding to the ambiance. I had a fantastic cocktail of pisco, maracuya (unripe passion fruit), ginger and amaretto, along with a pork stew cooked in a clay pot that was scrumptious  Catherine had pollo de gallina, which, it turns out, is a thick sauce made from cheese and stale bread. Ooops.

Ruining Ollantaytambo and Descending to Aguas Calientes

The main ruins of Ollantaytambo

Most of our day was spent in Ollantaytambo. We started by taking a tour of the main ruins. The ruins aren't as big as those at Pisac, but they are still impressive. They are composed of some terracing for support and a sun temple. There is also a granary off to the side and an impressive waterworks. The construction was in progress when the Spaniards showed up, so it was never finished, but the rock was quarried from a hill across the river, about 4km away. To get the stones to the site, they even had to divert the river!

More pictures are in the Peru album.

We then had lunch at a restaurant just across the street from the ruins called Puka Rumi. They make a fantastic "burrito". Really, it's closer to a fajita because there's no rice and they provide a mis en place with all the fillings to do with as you choose. They make homemade corn and wheat tortillas that are quite delicious.

The granary at Ollantaytambo

After that, we climbed up to the ruins on the oppose side of the valley. To get there, we walked through the old part of Olly, which has been continuously lived in since Incan times. The roads are only passable by foot because they are so narrowed and cobbled. There's also fast flow canals on the side of the road. The water was actually flowing enough to flood out of the ditch in a few places. The ruins on the other side are a short, steep climb. There are two structures. The first is a little fort that looks out over the sacred valley. It was a lookout post. The second is a storage house for good. It has a sequence of ducts built into the stones that take advantage of the cold, night winds to create a natural refrigerator  They could apparently store goods for years there, although it would have been a tricky chore to get stuff up and down!

After visiting those ruins, we gathered up our stuff and headed for the train station. Aguas Calientes, at the base of Machu Picchu  can only be reached by a train that takes 2 hours. It's a little bit of a racket, costing $50 each way per person, but talk about a captive audience. If you want to see Machu Picchu, that's your only choice. Well, except for the fancy train from Cuzco that takes 4 hours, includes white table dining and costs $700 round trip.

The train to get to Aguas Calientes

The train ride had very little legroom, but it was a fascinating descent. We slowly made our way down the river as the landscape morphed from Andean high desert to dense, lush jungle clinging to near vertical cliffs. By the time we arrived in Aguas Caliente, it was dark and we made our way to the hostel. We were expecting a terrible place, since the town has a captive audience and we had heard some horror stories. Also, we knew that the luxury hotels run over $1k a night, while we only paid $55. However, it was a clean, comfortable place with a good bed and a good shower.

For dinner, we made our way down the street, almost elbowing our way past maitre d's who were trying to woo us into their restaurant. There was a little bit of happy hour inflation going on too. Near the hotel, the happy hour special was 4 for 1 pisco sours. As we got closer to the main square, this increased to 5 and eventually to 7. That should tell you how overpriced the food and drink were. Now, that being said, the restaurant we went into, based on the recommendation from the guide book and tripadvisor, was a quirky gem. It's called El Indio Feliz. When you walk in the door, you see a restaurant where every wall and ceiling surface is covered with business cards of people who have eaten there. A good portion of our waiting time was spent reading the cards near us. The rest of the decoration was vaguely pirate themed, but really, it was just random. There was even a Quebec flag!

The food itself was spectacular. I had some trout in a slightly spicy sauce, while Catherine had some beef in a pepper carob sauce. They served the dishes with these fantastic fried slices of potato tossed in a heavy dose of garlic. For dessert, Catherine had a flan, while I ordered an orange tart, which was amazing. It's a custard tart that's seasoned with a heavy dose of orange zest and then cooked to perfection. Yum!

Swooping Through the Sacred Valley

The sacred valley

We got up really early for our day through the Sacred Valley. We rented a taxi for the day and he picked us up at 7am. This was a good idea because it meant that we had the ruins of Pisac almost to ourselves. The ruins are huge and well spread out, but connected with an elaborate set of terraces. Near the center of the ruins is a barracks for the soldiers  It's perched on top of the hill and the stonework isn't as fine as the famous Incan stonework. That kind of stonework was only for temples, palaces and other very important buildings. Regular buildings used mortar. It was fun the clamber through all the buildings since it was somewhat like a maze.

More pictures are in the Peru album.

Temple at the Pisac ruins

Behind the barracks was a very large burial cliff with hundreds of spaces. When somebody important died, they would bury the person in the sky by placing him/her in a fetal position in an alcove. This would mummify the body.

The last major component of the ruin was the furthest away and most impressive. It is a temple and baths which included a stone pole for astronomical measurements. This stonework was much finer and integrated directly into the stone. The baths were even still working! They were built by channeling a flow of water around and under the temple, at times falling into small ponds that acted as baths.

After the ruins, we stopped at the Pisac market for a few hours. We heard that this was a good market in the area for handicrafts; it wasn't all just mass produced stuff at high prices (although it did have some of that). There were some unique items and prices were cheaper. So, we finished off our X-mas shopping.

Terracing at the Pisac ruins

It was early afternoon and we were getting hungry. Our taxi driver recommended going to Urabamba for lunch, so we drove north along the sacred valley. The valley is sacred because that's where the Incans grew a lot of their food. It is significantly lower than Cusco, so it has a longer growing season, and, in a land of mountains, had a large amount of flat land that is great for crops. That being said, they still farmed up the hillsides using terracing.

In Urabamaba, we wanted a place with a menu of the day and specifically not a buffet. Our driver wasn't sure exactly where to go, but we stopped first at a tourist place. The usher out front assured us that they had a menu of the day, but when we walked up to the restaurant, there was a buffet and that's all they had. Plus, it was expensive (40 soles). Catherine was very mad, so we left. We spent a little while wandering around town until we stumbled across a great little place in a courtyard with a menu of great quinoa soup, chicken and rice, and a jug of chica morada (a purple corn beverage made with spices including cinnamon). It was a fantastic meal and only cost 5 soles.

The Maras evaporation salt pans that
are used to harvest salt.

After lunch we went to the salt pans. They're a mind boggling human construction. The hills around them are heavy in salt and there is a stream that forms a valley. The water in the stream in salty. So, people have harvested the salt by construction a sequence of hundreds of shallow pools. They control the water into the pools using a series of narrow channels that can be plugged, or opened using rocks and cloth. The strong sun and dry Andean air then causes the water the evaporate, leaving the salt behind for gathering.

Finally, after a long day, we made our way to Ollantaytambo for the night, where we settled in and had a terrible dinner at one of the near-identical restaurants with a tourist menu that rings the central square.

Marching to the Tune of Sacsayhuaman (Sexy-woman)

Cleft in the Qenko temple.

In our second day in Cuzco  we wanted to see some of the ruins just outside the city. There's a set of four of them that you can see by taking a taxi to the farthest one and then walking back into town for a relatively short 8km trek. First stop was Tambomachay. There, we hired a guide, Walter to take us through all 4 ruins. Tambomachay is a small water temple with a couple of working fountains and offering niches. Nothing too complex.

More pictures are in the Peru album.

After that, we crossed the street to Pukapukara. It was a fort perched on top of a hill that had sat at the crossroads of a few Inca trails and had a great view of any possible approaches. In its time, it acted to collect tarrifs on goods passing through and to serve as a first line of defense and warning for any forcing heading to Cuzco from that direction.

Our next stop was Qenko. This site was interesting because it was not just built of perfectly hewn stones, it was integrated into the rock itself. The centerpiece was a ceremonial alter in a cleft in the rock where sacrifices were made. Oh and in case you get any ideas, the Incans very rarely did human sacrifices. It's the Mayans and Aztecs who were famous for human sacrifices and a few of the early Peruvian cultures, like the Chimu practiced it. The Incans mostly sacrificed llamas, chica (fermented corn) and coca leaves.

Wall at Sacsayhuaman

Our final stop was Sacsayhuaman (pronounced roughly "Sexy-woman") that is just over the ridge from Cuzco  This site is absolute jaw dropping. It was the main fort for Cuzco  the capital of the Incan empire and it shows. The only parts left are the bases of the walls. The Spaniards demolished the rest to demoralize the Indians and to find stones to build their houses. They didn't get the base, well, because those andesite stones are absolutely massive. The tallest one is 6m high and the heaviest is 200 tons. It's just a little tricky to move those things. It's incredible that the Incans did it, especially since they didn't have the wheel. They considered the circle to be a sacred shape and so did not make anything in that shape except for religious items. To move the stones, they would use a system of ramps, logs, and small, round stones as a base and then get thousands of people to pull. These people were citizens, not slaves, because taxes in the Incan empire were paid by performing some work for the community for a month or two each year. They also didn't have steel to cut the stones. They cracked off big pieces by drilling small holes using bronze tools and inserting dry wooden sticks. They then wet the sticks and the hydro-static pressure broke the rock. They then did a rough carving with the bronze tools and the fine work was done using chunks of hematite, an iron bearing natural rock.

The fort of Pukapukara

After Sacsayhuaman we headed into town. Walter asked if we had tried Cuy yet, which is roasted or fried guinea pig. It's an ancient Peruvian dish, originally for special occasions. They only became pets later once the English aristocracy got their hands on them. We hadn't, but he recommended a place called Kusikuy, so we went there. It takes an hour for them to get the animal, kill it and prepare it, so we had some time to kill.

We decided to see the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas a block away. The cathedral was actually very interesting. It wasn't just another church. For one, they had audioguides (the first we've seen in South America!), so we had some context. Second, it is gigantic, with incredible carvings and architecture. It also houses many of the significant artifacts that the Church has in Peru, so there was a lot of historical context from when they were trying to convert the Indians to Catholicism  For example, there is a statue of Jesus that appears black as night. It became famous in the earthquake of 1650 when, as soon as the priest starting preying to it, the earthquake stopped. That earthquake leveled most of Cuzco  This helped to convince the Indians of the power of the Christian god. Since then, it goes on parade every year during a festival and people throw flowers at it. Those flowers have a sticky, sappy residue that, when the statue is placed back in the church, collects the soot from the candles. Originally, the statue was ivory white and now it is pitch black.

Cuy (guinea pig) for linner

Once out of the citadel, our linner was ready. We had the cuy, along with some tamales and an avocado dressed in a vinaigrette  First, I should talk about the tamales. They were the best either of us has ever tasted. They were light and fluffy, just like cornbread and yet, don't contain any flour. We talked to the restaurant and they said that it's a very simple recipe. They use white corn meal and knead in a lot of lard. The trick is to knead it a lot. When you think you're done, knead some more. Then, insert filling, wrap in a corn husk and steam to perfection.

The cerpiece of the meal, was of course the cuy. It came houmously presented with a little tomato hat, nibbling on a pepper and sitting on some potatos. They slathered it in a local spice, which often gets called Andean mint, but it really only has an echo of mint, like how arugula tastes like pepper. It really has it's own unique flavour, which can be a little weird. It's an aquired taste I beleive. The meat itself like a very gamey duck and there is relatively little meat for the quantities of bones. It was an interesting experience.

After cuy, we explored the area near San Blas plaza and ran some errands before returning to our room to handle logistics for tomorrow.

Museuming in Cusco

During our first full day in Cusco, we started by getting our train tickets and admission tickets to Machu Picchu. This took a surprisingly long time, especially the train tickets because Inca Rail was very slow. We didn't have it sorted out until lunch time. Since the Machu Picchu tickets were a little off the beaten path, we figured that we would try to go to a Ceviche place that the guidebook recommended. Unfortunately, it was closed and so we ended up at a terrible fixed price place.

More pictures are in the Peru Album.

After lunch, we focused on the museums. We started with Qorikancha, which is a church built on top of an Incan temple, which itself was built on top of a Wari temple. The Incan stonework was absolutely jaw dropping. Some places, it was so tight that you couldn't tell that it was two different stones put together. After that, we went to the Incan Museum, which provided a great overview of Incan culture and history and houses many indicative artifacts. I felt that the most useful part is that it explained all the different pre-Incan cultures that the Icans absorbed and in general, slowly walked the user through time.

After the Incan museum, we sat down at a cafe to have a drink and check our e-mail. We had tried to reserve a spot that evening for the Cusco Planetarium, but we weren't sure if it worked because we didn't get an e-mail confirmation. So, we had a drink and used the wifi. We made the mistake of sitting outside first and were accosted by people trying to sell us stuff. This ranged from paintings, to sweaters, to carved gourds, to massages. They'd just come right up to our table at the cafe and try to get us to buy their crap. Before our drinks came, there must have been a dozen people try and this is the unfortunate part of Cusco. They're everywehre.

We didn't get a confirmation about the planetarium, but we knew that they'd meet somewhere in a nearby square, so we decided to just go and try to get the show. It's a good thing we did because it was fastastically done. First, they bussed us out to the facility just up the hill and surrounded by eucalyptus trees to help block out some of the light. Then, we were taken inside for the planetarium part of the show. They provided an explanation of how some of the Incan sites acted as either calendars or weather predictors. For instance, there's a reflecting pond at one of the site and if, at the spring equinox, the southern cross is clear, it will be a good year, but if it's blurry, there will be floods and too much rain. It turns out that during an El Nino year, the warm pacific current throws high altitude clouds that will blur the stars. It also causes heavy rain in the area. Then, they showed us the European constellations, starting with the traditional zodiac and finishing with the southern hemisphere constellations that the exporers added once they started navigating in the south. Finally, we got an explanation of the Incan constellations, which are actually negative constellations. We normally think of constallations as patterns in the stars where the points of the drawing are made by a star. However, the Incans defined constellations in the dark part of the sky. In particular, the milky way, or celestial river. There are areas without stars and it is those black blobs that make up the Incan constellations. They have a llama, a hunter, a frog, a condor and more all chasing each other along the river. It's a fascinating, different way to look at things. For the last part of the show, they took us outside with some telescopes to look at the the stars. Frankly Cusco has a lot of light pollution, so it was impossible to see the Incan constellations, however, we did see Saturn, Jupiter, the Jewel box cluster and a few other clusters. It's always fun to see people's reactions the first time they see Saturn in a scope :-)

To cap off the night, we had dinner at the Pisco museum. They have a great format where you can order tapas, flights of pisco and cocktails. If you order a flight (or if you just want to know), they'll give you a presentation about pisco, the different kinds, how it's made etc. It was very well done. Definitely recommended.

On the Path to Cusco

For the ride from Puno to Cusco, we took a tour. We originally tried to reserve the Inka Express bus, but they never showed up with the tickets, so we ended up on an identical tour from a different company that our hotel helped us book. The ride takes a few extra hours, but along the way, we got to stop at a few historical sites and had a guide in English to explain things to us. Our guide was the short, energetic woman who was hilarious, which made the trip quite enjoyable.

More pictures are in the Peru album.

Our first stop was at Pukara, a site of some pre-incan ruins that contained some great carvings. The iconography of the carvings was predecessor to what the Incans used, so they figured that the Incans came from around that area. Today, the town is mostly known for producing these little ceramic bulls that people put on or in their homes to give them good fortune (and protect them from earthquakes).

The next stop was simply the highest point on the drive that provided a semi decent view of a glacier. After Patagonia, the glacier was underwhelming, but it was the first one many people on the bus had ever seen, so they enjoyed it. Also, the high point was the divide between the Amazon watershed and the Pacific one. I hadn't realized that water from that far west ended up in the Amazon.

After the pass, we stopped for lunch at a buffet place. For a buffet, it was decent. Our entertainment was watching people trying to get pictures of a very regal looking black alpaca  People were trying to tempt it to look into the camera, but for the most part, it just ignored them. There was also a white alpaca that just got annoyed. I saw him jump a guy who was being too annoying.

After lunch we stopped at Raqchi, an Incan ruin. There were two defining features. The first is a gigantic temple building of which mostly the lower walls are the only part still intact. The lower walls were built out of the famous Incan puzzle piece stonework, while the upper walls were adobe and thus mostly succumbed to erosion. The other major feature at the site is hundreds of round buildings. Most of these buildings were storage for crops or places for offerings. Our guide went on a rant about how most of the crops in the world were domesticated in the Andes and we need to save our heritage in the future because Monsanto and other GMO companies are making food that's killing us.

Our last stop before Cusco was at the church of San Pedro Apostol de Andahuaylillas. It was interesting because it incorporated some of the Inca ideas and iconography in order to make it more recognizable to the locals and thus make conversion easier. For example, there was a sun on the altar, which was a symbol for the most important Incan god. Also, mirrors were heavily used because the Incans had only seen their reflection in water before and were thus amazed to see themselves reflected in Gods glory.

When we got to Cusco, we tried to go to our hostel, but nobody answered the door! After waiting around for half an hour, one of the neighbours came by and said that the hostel had been closed and empty for the last couple of days. It turned out that he rented rooms in the adjacent building for short term tenants and he had a room free, so, given that it was dark, we just stayed there. It was a very weird building. Our room had a massage tub, but the only kitchen in the building was on the room and composed of a propane burner and a sink that drained into a bucket.

For dinner that night, we went out to Marcello Batata and had some of the best food we had tasted in a long time. They make fantastic cocktails, especially one with pisco, ginger, passion fruit and ground cherries. For an appetizer, we had a smoked octopus with olive tapenade and olive mayo. It tasted like if you made bacon out of octopus and cooked it perfectly so that it melted in your mouth. It was inspiring. Our mains were well executed traditional Peruvian dishes, but they couldn't live up to that octopus.

The Reeds of Lake Titicaca

 After our hair raising bus trip out of Bolivia, we arrived in Puno, Peru on the shore of Lake Titicaca. We arrived in the early afternoon and took a bike taxi to our hotel. This guy had quads of steel, peddling the two of us and all our gear through traffic and up the slight rise to our hotel. We checked into the hotel and had some time to check out the town. One thing that stuck us about Puno is how dirty the air is. The smell of diesel is strong from the cars to the point, where at night, you can see a diesel haze in the headlights of the cars. They obviously don't have emissions standards/filters in Peru and it's disgusting (not to mention cough inducing)!

More photos are in the Peru album.

We started with lunch, because we were both ravenous and ended up at a place with a menu del dia that was at least cheap and filling. After lunch, we went to the cathedral, which is deceptive. It looks very impressive from the outside, but the inside is spartan and grim. Across the street is the only original colonial house still in town. Now, it's home to a collection of tour agencies and tourist junk shops. It has a great, ancient cactus in the courtyard though.

We got lucky and arrived in Puno on May 2, which is right in the middle of the Feria de las Alasita. During this festival, you buy small versions of something you want in the next year. Then, you get a priest to bless the simulacrum and then, people believe  you are more likely to achieve your wish. There were a ton of typical, big life things like small houses, or baby dolls, or stacks of small fake money or even a diploma from Harvard. Sorry, that was the only non-South American university we saw. There were even some odd ball things, like itty bitty sacks of rice, or miniature wrestling rings. I don't know what you're preying for if you do those things.... Of course, it's a festival, so there were other things too. Like carny rides and games. Or food that was served in very small servings. It went on for blocks and blocks and was a blast.

The next morning, we woke up very early because a taxi was picking us up to take us to a boat. The boat took us out to the Uros islands, more specifially, Victor and Christina's island. The Uros islands are crazy. They're manmade, floating islands built out of reeds. The reeds cover the lake as far as the eye can see. People have been living on these islands for hundreds of years. Initially, they built gigantic reed boats and lived on them in order to hide from a conquoring tribe that was trying to take them over and turn them into slaves. Since then, they've learned how to build islands and just use smaller boats for getting around. The islands are built starting with a base of floating moss that shakes loose during the rainy season. These moss packs are lashed together and then reeds are thrown on top to a depth of about 3-5m. Then, they build houses and whatever other structures they need on top of that base. In the rainy season, the reeds rot and a new layer is needed every week, while in the dry season, it's every 3 weeks. These days, the rope they use is nylon and some of the structures have a wood or metal frame so that they don't need to be rebuilt all the time. Also, the reed boats are partially made of old plastic bottles, which last a lot longer and float better than the reeds.

We spent the rest of the day and the night being hosted by Victor, Christina and the rest of their family that live on one of the islands. They are set up to host up to 20 people, but that night it was only us two and two girls from Paris. The time was fairly laid back and consisted mostly of lounging around in hammocks, however, we were served some fantastic freshly pan fried trout. There's a lot of trout in Lake Titicaca, but it's not native. It's a number of different Canadian varieties, of which I could recognize rainbow and lake trout. The native fish are too small to be a significant industry, so at some point, they introduced the trout.

They also had us dress in traditional clothing, which was definitely for shorter, rounder women. Once properly attired, Victor took us out on his reed/plastic boat to show us how he fishes (using a small net) and harvests the reeds. Originally, they harvest the reeds by hand, but now they use a long stick with a sharp knife on the end to efficiently cut a swatch of reeds. They then dry them for a month before they can use them for construction. They have to harvest reeds and build constantly because their island is continuously rotting underneath them and so they've developed a number of techniques to replenish the island. For instance, every once in a while, everybody on the island gets together and they pick up a building and move it to the side. Then, they put new reeds down on the house's palate  Then, they pick up the building and put it back. It's pretty incredible. Victor et al. are also experimenting with new approaches. For instance, they have a little garden, whose soil came from an old island that rotted too much. For the moment, they're growing flowers and mint, but are thinking of growing veggies at some point. They also have two pet cats and a pet flamingo! They also have electricity from solar panels and batteries to provide some creature comforts to us tourists.

They next day, after breakfast, we took the slowest ferry in the world to Taquile island. It's a natural island and it took 3 hours to get there and that meant we only had a couple of hours on the island. The entire island is terraced because people have been farming and raising livestock on it for a very long time. It was a complete tourist madhouse, which was a little off-putting  but we found a restaurant for lunch that wasn't too busy and had a great view of the cliffs and the water. Catherine said it reminded her of the Amalphi coast in Italy. The islanders speak a different language than the Uros people and have been relatively isolated. They have an interesting textile tradition too. Men knit and women weave. In particular, men have to knit a hat that looks like the old fashioned Scrooge nightcaps. The color of the cap says whether they are married or not. For the wedding, the bride has to weave a belt for her husband, which she gives to him during the ceremony. We saw at least one of those belts, which was the most detailed weaving we had seen anywhere on this trip.

After another stupidly long ferry ride, we were back in Puno and checked back into our hotel. For dinner, we went to one of the better restaurants in Puno (according to the guidebook), that was right on the Plaza de Armas. It was definitely tourist focused, but we took advantage of that fact and I had some excellent lasagna, while Catherine had a more traditional dish.