el camino

Considering I spent a week on the road in northern Chile and southern Peru (plus the following easter weekend/semana santa in San Pedro de Atacama), it seems appropriate to include one more travel post.

Let's spend some time in Peru...

Cuzco schoolyard: i spy blue

As previously mentioned (no hay palabras post), I spent a lot of time cruising through southern Peru in various tour buses. While this means of "new country orientation" falls way short of the prefered

 backpacking/camping/hitch hiking option, it proved to be an excellent alternative on all levels...practicality, time-efficiency, cost, and cultural exposure. Plus, I enjoyed a healthy portion of the latter means of tranport the ensuing weekend in the desert.

So how about that Peruvian culture?

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Peruvian people offer the most diverse and particularly distinct

culture I've encountered in my short traveling career. Actually, the image of the buses above offers a pretty good projection of the culture. I'll settle with colorful and resolute. A motley sample of alpaca sweaters, scarves and hats, new foods and lots of coca leaf products greeted us at the border city of Arica (still Chilean soil)--where we met our first speed bump and "veered off" our charted course.  No wait, we were forced off by the Peruvian border officials.  *NOTE: Mexicans need a visa to enter Peru.  Quite inconvenient for myself and my two travel companions...particularly Galia who is in fact Mexicana.  "Denied...but not defeated."Unfortunately it was Sunday, which meant the consulate was closed. Therefore, we explored the city and found a small seaside mountain (el morro) to climb with a flat bald peak that offered a museum and war memorial of the historical battle of Arica between Chile and Peru, Cristo del Paz (a 

huge Rio de Janeiro-style Jesus statue overlooking the sea with arms wide open), as well as an incredible view of the whole city with snow- capped Andes on the far eastern horizon.  The sun soon fell into the sea and we descended back into the city and found some pizza (yup, same stuff you eat), then a cheap hostel.  Okay...I gotta start speeding things up, forget the details. After spending all day waiting outside the consulate (think DMV...but double the red tape), we finally crossed the border at 5ish monday afternoon.  Our unfortunate, yet enjoyable, setback meant dropping the 1 day and night stay we planned for Puno (to check out Lake Titicaca) and booking it straight through to Cuzco...but the 20ish hours at 99kph behind tinted glass gave me a great survey of southern Peru.  We started off in the northern rim of the Atacama Desert (same desert I live in in Antofagasta), we're talking sand...and rock and not much else of anything.  But most of it was really hilly and mountainous with occasional daunting cliffs and bulgy peaks--rugged/uniquely beautiful landscape.  After hours of lunar desolation I caught glimpses of vegetation here and there, between my intermittent REM, and before I knew it the sun was rising over lake Titicaca on the eastern horizon.  We were entering Puno.  I spent all of about 45 mintues there, in a bus terminal, too tired to barter with each bus agency and unaccustomedly acepted the offer of the first screaming man that found me, "Cusco...CUSCO!!!"...which was actually before I got my bags out from under the bus (they're pretty aggressive).

The 10 hour haul to Cuzco was almost as beautiful as the city itself.  Puno seems to be the dividing line between the harsh desertscape and lush mountain scenery.  We climbed for hours, through green fields with grazing sheep and bushy alpaca, taking in the enormous snow-capped peaks, reflected in still waters and dwarfing the foot-hill pueblos like stubble...hundreds of miles away from any familiar civilization.  But the Peruvians live out there.

We passes random women swinging hoes, in tandem with their thick swaying braids, dressed in long blue dresses

 and bowler hats. Others hunched over, trekking with enormous striped bundles of food and goods strapped to their back while children herded llamas.  All of this took place miles from any home or building...life in the planes 

and valleys.  I wondered if many of them had ever seen the city before and kept coming back to images of

Abraham, Ruth and prophets.  These folks were truly indigenous, and it seemed to me the closest thing I've encountered to the "Old Testement".  At any rate, this "inside the cover of National Geographic" exposure stirred my spirit and weighed heavy within me.  The simple life, as simple and basic as it gets--so peculiar and novel.  Maybe that's how it's supposed to be?  I mean honestly, in my mind the lives of folks like Abraham and Moses appear a lot more epic and exciting than mine.  Okay, I'll spare you.  But the experience left me with a pool of ambiguously spiritual and philisophical questions to ponder and talk

 over with God until I arrived in Cuzco.  *The only resolution I reached was that next time I won't just be "passing through" (YWAM???...you wanna come with me?)

While Cuzco bears a heavy touristic weight, I must say it's done very tastefully (if tourism can taste good). We thoroughly enjoyed our 24 hour stay there. Nearly all of the streets and a great number of the buildings in this very large city are stone, and this is not the smooth/well leveled cobblestone or brick you've met in Charleston or under your feet on N Main St. in downtown Aville.  This aspect alone adds a particular enchantment to the city.  El centro (or main plaza), oriented around the enormous catholic cathedral of course, was filled with overaggressive vendors, taxis, foot traffic, and an occasional alpaca at all times. Whether you're a shopper or not (I'm not), you can't help but enjoy spending at least a few hours jumping from tienda to street kiosk to random street people carrying a trunk load of blankets, sweaters or scarves, bartering for that perfect deal on whatever distinctly Peruvian article that fancys your liking.  And we're talking dirt cheap prices!  My bartering pride is wrapped up in an alpaca wool winter hat that I got down to 5 soles (that's $1.66 US).  We're talking a quality hat too.  You know the ones, black with white alpacas encircling it, with the styling ear flaps and tassely strings...same style as columbia and north face like to 

sell for  $30 a pop.  It kind of matches my long, wool, alpaca print socks that I bought for 8 soles (about $2.50 US).

Moving right along...we found a solid hostal (yay baño privado...but no hot water), Hospedaje Samani, for 15 soles a person (little less than $5 US).  After finally dropping our heavy packs and cleaning up a bit, we headed back out for the evening and sat down to our first formal Peruvian meal, bartered down from 25 to 15 soles--not half bad for a four course meal including a glass of Peru's famous pisco sour and dessert.  Turns out alpaca is quite tasty!

After exploring the city for half of the following day, we caught a $3 (US) taxi out of Cuzco and snaked up, down, and around more breathtaking mountains, through prairies and planes and finally into a deep valley where we met our last village between us and Machu Picchu's Aguas Calientes.

The name of this town is Ollantaytambo (it took me three days of asking taxi and bus drivers how to get there/how much it costs before I could say it without studdering).  Umm, because I'm running out of ways to

describe these enchantingly beautiful and mystic towns, I'm just gonna say it was great...and I wish we could have spent more than one night there. This town gave us a little teaser before Machu Picchu, as it has its own ruins nestled in the cliffs, which we ascended just in time to catch my first sunset atop Andean peaks.  In the evening we found a small market to buy food for the rest of our trip, and then another hostel, which turned out to be the best overnight deal of the trip, yes obviously after a little bartering (10 soles per person/ about $3 US). 

We had the lights out by midnight and the 3:30am cell phone alarm came all too soon to catch a 5am train about a mile down the road. The funny thing is that I planned on sleeping an extra two hours on the train ride, not really taking into account that it's the final two hours of 

travel before arriving at the foot of Machu Pichu. More mountains, cliffs, clouds, vegetation and now waterfalls falling into the Urubamba River, a partially navigable (class 5 rapids) waterhead of the Amazon river which our train ran alongside for the entirety of the trip. I sipped on matte de coca (tea made from coco leaves) as 

a substitute for the two hours of sleep and marveled at the verdant Andean scenery through train windows, trying to spot Mogley or Jaguar Paw in the foliage.

In Aguas Calientes we opted out of the $7 bus to arrive at the entrance of Machu Picchu and chose the stairs...45 minutes, staight up, and up...and up.  VVV For Machu Picchu, you can check the post below VVV

After a LONG (8-10 miles on foot/scrambling--4 of them extremely steep), life changing day, we found a hostal in Aguas Calientes (another $5 US) and slept, quite soundly.  And the next morning we began the return trip *reverse the transportation routes above and drop the hostals.

I love you all and wish that some of you could have shared this trip with me.  Give me a holler when you can afford it.