So this is it. Today I´ll soak up what´s left of Lima, enjoy my last vistas on our neighbor continent, then bam, just like it started, it will end. I wish I could make it out to be some epic finale to this trip, but it´s just a flight. I´ll leave just like I came, just with less stuff and worlds of new knowledge and experience. I had so much fun the last few months I could throw up. From the center of the center of Mexico, to Rio´s carnaval, to my purgatory in Corrientes, my taxi in Buenos Aires and all the rich experiences that city imparted, to wine country, to Bolivia´s extraterrestrial landscapes, and Machu Picchu, and now, finally ending on the Pacific coast in this highrise suite. And like that, it´s over! I´ve seen so many unbelievable places and things, but the people I´ve met are the real story, and the inspiring affirmation that this was a worthy way to spend the past 4 months of my life. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn´t change a thing... well I would have brought more money, but other than that, nothing, haha. In fact, I want to do it all over again. I have a massive next-time list of things I didn´t have the time or money to see, and people I would love to see again. Can´t even begin to start digesting little life lessons I´ve learned along the way, but I think I definitely came out of this whole thing a hell of a lot more rounded and stable than I was when I left, with more of a thirst to just appreciate what is and not wish for what was or could be, and maybe with a lot more love in my heart for people in general. That last one´s a tough thing to say though, I´ll wait it out and see if the feeling lasts.
On Lima anyway, it´s really cool. We found us some trouble on Thursday night and consequentially spent most of Friday in bed, but it was a good time. I have to leave kinda early for my flight tomorrow, but it´s Saturday night and the diva inside of me can´t really be contained. That´s one thing that I still think is so cool about flying... tonight I party in Lima, tomorrow night I party in Atlanta, just like that. Continent-hopping. I´m really excited to get home and be with my family again, I missed them. I really miss New york too, and really can´t wait to get back into my life there, blazing some kind of trail leading to I don´t know where, but at least it´s my own. As soon as I get back... shit, already, I´m just thinking about how I´m getting to Brazil again. Too bad my entire family is gone right now, literally. I was hoping for some sort of red carpet to be rolled out, and going to a 20-person dinner at nani and papa´s but I guess no one really cares. Hahaha. Kidding kidding, they´ll be back but i´m still being a little biatch about it.
Alright, well that´s all, folks. Thank you South America, for showing me a great time and giving me some crazy shit I´ll never forget!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Pacification
So here we are, perched on a cliff hundreds of feet over the endless blue paradise brewing below us... we´re in Lima! Miraflores to be exact, the ritzy glamorous part of this massive metropolis, where bakeries and dog shit line every sidewalk. It´s gorgeous, actually, kind of reminiscent of a lot of places I´ve been this trip, so it´s a fitting spot to end it all. Like I said before, we´re staying in Kendra´s connection´s apartment, on the 14th floor. On the balcony side, you have a lighthouse a little ways to the left, then the cove wraps around, dotted with waterfront highrises, then ends at this massive rock covered with radio antennas. Straight ahead, the Pacific Ocean, in all its sea-foam-green glory. On the other side, the city´s skyscrapers extend seemingly as endlessly as the ocean, this place is huge! The coast line is all a big cliff, so you have to go down to get to the water, which is full of surfers and not much else, and the way the waves hit the rocky beach wants to put me to sleep... it´s really nice! I had heard a lot of nonsense about Lima before I came from other travelers, but its nice parts are no joke! It´s kind of expensive though.
Today I was walking around and ran into one of my college professors, how freaking random. I didn´t yell his name fast enough to actually get to talk to him, because it´s been a few years and wanted to make sure I wasn´t yelling at a stranger, but I realized it was definitely him. Small world, eh.
So it´s Wednesday, that´s a little ridiculous to think of, since I´m leaving Sunday. All of this is over! So we agreed that Thursday through Saturday night is strictly partying, no wimping out. I gotta make some Lima stories, and they have to count. I just talked to an old Atlanta friend who knows people who live here, so hopefully we can run with the locals again because that´s always how I seem to find the most trouble without actually getting into any trouble. Fingers crossed.
So I dunno what else, I´m going to try to snag some clothes here before I leave because I know it´s cheaper to rebuild a wardrobe here than it will be in Atlanta, then I´m going to dunk my head in the ocean the morning before i leave so I´ll smell like the beach when I get back...the water´s pretty cold though. And then, that´s about it! Living like a king and queen in this aparment man, it´s on the 14th floor, we have a doorman, it´s huge with a balcony, with bedrooms upstairs and cable, 2 bathrooms, laundry.... shiiiit. Makes me feel lik I´ve been living like a hog the past few months!
Today I was walking around and ran into one of my college professors, how freaking random. I didn´t yell his name fast enough to actually get to talk to him, because it´s been a few years and wanted to make sure I wasn´t yelling at a stranger, but I realized it was definitely him. Small world, eh.
So it´s Wednesday, that´s a little ridiculous to think of, since I´m leaving Sunday. All of this is over! So we agreed that Thursday through Saturday night is strictly partying, no wimping out. I gotta make some Lima stories, and they have to count. I just talked to an old Atlanta friend who knows people who live here, so hopefully we can run with the locals again because that´s always how I seem to find the most trouble without actually getting into any trouble. Fingers crossed.
So I dunno what else, I´m going to try to snag some clothes here before I leave because I know it´s cheaper to rebuild a wardrobe here than it will be in Atlanta, then I´m going to dunk my head in the ocean the morning before i leave so I´ll smell like the beach when I get back...the water´s pretty cold though. And then, that´s about it! Living like a king and queen in this aparment man, it´s on the 14th floor, we have a doorman, it´s huge with a balcony, with bedrooms upstairs and cable, 2 bathrooms, laundry.... shiiiit. Makes me feel lik I´ve been living like a hog the past few months!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Arequipa and trying to be Anthony Bourdain
Cuzco ended up awesome. We stayed Friday night so we would be able to travel relaxed after Machu Picchu, and I wanted to get some nightlife back in my life, and Cuzco turned out to be the perfect place for that. Kenj and I went out for dinner, she got tired and I was itching to do something, so I went to the bar we had previously visited and there were a few more people, so I sat down for a drink. Before I finished my beer, this guy came over and invited me out with his friends because they were going to a different bar. Just the kind of thing I was hoping for! So we went to this place off the Plaza de Armas, which is not only the main square of the city, framed by 2 cathedrals and colonial architecture, but becomes a zombie haven after dusk. Drunk tourists turn into zombies after a few drinks under a full moon, in case you weren´t aware. So we had a drink in this nice little place and chatted for a while, and his friends were really funny. One chick got pretty drunk and kept mentioning that she´s an attorney, and everyone kept making fun of her because she doesn´t really work, she sits in her house all day. Good company, good drinks, then we got up because the group had this collective antsy-ness that made us move on quick. We walked to the other side of the plaza which is full of dancing places, too small to be clubs, but playing music too loud for it to be considered a bar. Thennnnnn all of a sudden the streets exploded with madness, people kicking, screaming, pulling hair, punching... This one guy opened the passenger door to a police car, held on to the roof of the car and started kicking the cop in the face. Then a few more cops showed up, tried to calm everyone down, I waited for tear gas to start flying because it was like a scene from a zombie movie, like a real mob, but then the cops left and never came back. Eventually the people stopped fighting and the night continued, more or less. The thing is, it was other tourists fighting, what´s up with people on vacation fighting each other?? It´s vacation! Must have been the moon. Anyway, the crew I was with decided they´d had enough and went home, but it was still too early for me.
I walked away from the Plaza de Armas and stumbled upon a little street that I hadn´t noticed before, but I could hear music from around the corner, and found myself in another little hub of bars and clubs, no zombies here though, just my luck. So I was really just meandering, listening to everyone yelling at me to come into the club (they hire people just to do that at clubs, restaurants, massage parlors, everywhere) and one kid caught my attention, I don´t really know why. His name is Germán anyway. So I went over and talked to him for a second, wiped my dripping nose (it´s cold) and he thought I was asking for cocaine. He told me he didn´t have any but could help. It was funny because that´s not what I was doing, but I guess I was sort of giving that universal signal. He was a really nice guy anyway, we talked for a while and whatever. Next day we hung out, he took Kenj and I to this great restaurant and he showed us some awesome Cusco things. He´s an artist, so naturally has some hippie friends, one of which makes artesenal woven things and sells them in the street. This kid was hilarious and a hell of a nice guy who had too much love in his heart for his own good, and it was actually touching because he really meant it. Then we went and drank Chicha with them at this other awesome place. Chicha, the Cuzco variety, when stripped down to its essence, is a fermented corn drink. It´s foamy and a little bubbly thanks to the fermentation, tastes just like fermented corn, and is supposed to be really good for your system. They serve it in glasses that must hold a liter and a half and require two hands to drink from. Germán hung out with us the rest of the day, gave me one of his drawings for a keepsake, then we parted ways to catch our bus to Arequipa. I really love traveling and meeting new people all the time, but it´s starting to wear me out saying hello and goodbye in the same twenty-four hour time-span. I really hate saying goodbye!
We got into Arequipa this morning an hour and a half early, after almost missing the bus as it pulled out a while before it was supposed to, then they made us feel like assholes for holding everyone up. Things rarely happen early here, so it came as a shock. Anyway, got in to Arequipa, found a hostel by 6 so we dropped our stuff, found an Argentinian guy that was coming home from his Saturday night out, and hung out til breakfast was served. Another really nice hostel, with breakfast included in the price and HOT water. Met these characters at breakfast...well the one has enough character to outweigh the blah-ness of his friend, and sort of set off with them to sight see. The city´s beautiful, got a little taste of it, then went to see this museum that holds a mummy that was found on a volcano in 95, the last time it erupted. This mummy had been frozen since it was sacrificed by the Incas, so it was in nearly perfect condition when they found it as the eruption melted the ice at the peak. Fascinating. They speculate the Incas sacrificed around 500 bodies every major ceremony, and this was normally done on mountain peaks or volcanoes for spiritual reasons. As the earth is warming up, the ice on these peaks is melting, so they´re finding more stuff like this these days. Looking on the bright side of global warming, archeologists should have plenty of work in this continent.
So that was awesome, I have never learned so much from a museum, and it was thanks to a great guide. The guide then recomended us a place to eat, but told us it was where she brings all her tourists. Red flag, we didn´t really have to desire to over pay for shitty food. So we fell back to the usual MO, went to the central market, and I got ceviche again, along with this stuffed pepper, roasted with ground beef, spices, and cheese. We were just talking, the four of us, and this lady sitting with her daughter interjected as we brought up wanting to eat cuy, a regional specialty more associated with Ecuadorian cuisine, but familiar here as well. So this lady was like, you´re crazy to pay so much for it in a restaurant, why don´t we go buy some, you guys come over, and I´ll cook it. We raced around the market, buying fruits and vegetables, cuy, and crammed in a cab to her house. Overjoyed to have found someone local so quickly, Kenj and I were all smiles in the cab on the way there. So we got to the house, chopped, cleaned, and chatted for a few hours, then lunch/dinner was ready. I haven´t had a big Sunday meal in a while so it really hit the spot. Oh yeah, so maybe some of you had a little cuy as a pet as a kid, but I tore it apart tonight...it´s guinea pig. Prepared simply enough, with salt and lime juice, then fried, there´s not a ton of meat on the little guy, but the crispy skin makes it all worth it. Then we had a couple huge salads comprised of these massive, creamy avocados that were really different than what grows in Mexico or California, or the kind that Dominicans eat for that matter. So that was exciting. The other two guys left a little early because the one didn´t feel well. Turns out he went to the hospital and ends up having eaten something toxic that´s rotting his stomach... he´s gonna be fine though, he got some medicine. We stayed, washed dishes and shot the shit with Mari for a couple hours more and had a great time kicking it, practicing the Spanish a little more. Such a great time with such a warm, welcoming, open-minded Catholic middle-aged woman. Annnnnnnd, next time I eat Sunday dinner it´s gonna be with my own family! Pretty excited about that, actually. Like I said, as much as I love meeting new people all the time, I´m sick of goodbyes, and I actually miss some stuff back home! Guess I got summoned for Jury Duty in New York, which I´ll have to work out. Lucky for me, I´m out of the country, HA! Feel like it´s going to be complicated anyway though.
So tomorrow we go to Lima, to stay in Kendra´s Aunt´s neighbor´s husband´s aparment in Miraflores. How exciting. I hope we have some sunny weather that´s warm enough to hang out at the beach a little bit!
I walked away from the Plaza de Armas and stumbled upon a little street that I hadn´t noticed before, but I could hear music from around the corner, and found myself in another little hub of bars and clubs, no zombies here though, just my luck. So I was really just meandering, listening to everyone yelling at me to come into the club (they hire people just to do that at clubs, restaurants, massage parlors, everywhere) and one kid caught my attention, I don´t really know why. His name is Germán anyway. So I went over and talked to him for a second, wiped my dripping nose (it´s cold) and he thought I was asking for cocaine. He told me he didn´t have any but could help. It was funny because that´s not what I was doing, but I guess I was sort of giving that universal signal. He was a really nice guy anyway, we talked for a while and whatever. Next day we hung out, he took Kenj and I to this great restaurant and he showed us some awesome Cusco things. He´s an artist, so naturally has some hippie friends, one of which makes artesenal woven things and sells them in the street. This kid was hilarious and a hell of a nice guy who had too much love in his heart for his own good, and it was actually touching because he really meant it. Then we went and drank Chicha with them at this other awesome place. Chicha, the Cuzco variety, when stripped down to its essence, is a fermented corn drink. It´s foamy and a little bubbly thanks to the fermentation, tastes just like fermented corn, and is supposed to be really good for your system. They serve it in glasses that must hold a liter and a half and require two hands to drink from. Germán hung out with us the rest of the day, gave me one of his drawings for a keepsake, then we parted ways to catch our bus to Arequipa. I really love traveling and meeting new people all the time, but it´s starting to wear me out saying hello and goodbye in the same twenty-four hour time-span. I really hate saying goodbye!
We got into Arequipa this morning an hour and a half early, after almost missing the bus as it pulled out a while before it was supposed to, then they made us feel like assholes for holding everyone up. Things rarely happen early here, so it came as a shock. Anyway, got in to Arequipa, found a hostel by 6 so we dropped our stuff, found an Argentinian guy that was coming home from his Saturday night out, and hung out til breakfast was served. Another really nice hostel, with breakfast included in the price and HOT water. Met these characters at breakfast...well the one has enough character to outweigh the blah-ness of his friend, and sort of set off with them to sight see. The city´s beautiful, got a little taste of it, then went to see this museum that holds a mummy that was found on a volcano in 95, the last time it erupted. This mummy had been frozen since it was sacrificed by the Incas, so it was in nearly perfect condition when they found it as the eruption melted the ice at the peak. Fascinating. They speculate the Incas sacrificed around 500 bodies every major ceremony, and this was normally done on mountain peaks or volcanoes for spiritual reasons. As the earth is warming up, the ice on these peaks is melting, so they´re finding more stuff like this these days. Looking on the bright side of global warming, archeologists should have plenty of work in this continent.
So that was awesome, I have never learned so much from a museum, and it was thanks to a great guide. The guide then recomended us a place to eat, but told us it was where she brings all her tourists. Red flag, we didn´t really have to desire to over pay for shitty food. So we fell back to the usual MO, went to the central market, and I got ceviche again, along with this stuffed pepper, roasted with ground beef, spices, and cheese. We were just talking, the four of us, and this lady sitting with her daughter interjected as we brought up wanting to eat cuy, a regional specialty more associated with Ecuadorian cuisine, but familiar here as well. So this lady was like, you´re crazy to pay so much for it in a restaurant, why don´t we go buy some, you guys come over, and I´ll cook it. We raced around the market, buying fruits and vegetables, cuy, and crammed in a cab to her house. Overjoyed to have found someone local so quickly, Kenj and I were all smiles in the cab on the way there. So we got to the house, chopped, cleaned, and chatted for a few hours, then lunch/dinner was ready. I haven´t had a big Sunday meal in a while so it really hit the spot. Oh yeah, so maybe some of you had a little cuy as a pet as a kid, but I tore it apart tonight...it´s guinea pig. Prepared simply enough, with salt and lime juice, then fried, there´s not a ton of meat on the little guy, but the crispy skin makes it all worth it. Then we had a couple huge salads comprised of these massive, creamy avocados that were really different than what grows in Mexico or California, or the kind that Dominicans eat for that matter. So that was exciting. The other two guys left a little early because the one didn´t feel well. Turns out he went to the hospital and ends up having eaten something toxic that´s rotting his stomach... he´s gonna be fine though, he got some medicine. We stayed, washed dishes and shot the shit with Mari for a couple hours more and had a great time kicking it, practicing the Spanish a little more. Such a great time with such a warm, welcoming, open-minded Catholic middle-aged woman. Annnnnnnd, next time I eat Sunday dinner it´s gonna be with my own family! Pretty excited about that, actually. Like I said, as much as I love meeting new people all the time, I´m sick of goodbyes, and I actually miss some stuff back home! Guess I got summoned for Jury Duty in New York, which I´ll have to work out. Lucky for me, I´m out of the country, HA! Feel like it´s going to be complicated anyway though.
So tomorrow we go to Lima, to stay in Kendra´s Aunt´s neighbor´s husband´s aparment in Miraflores. How exciting. I hope we have some sunny weather that´s warm enough to hang out at the beach a little bit!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Cheap Transportation Alternative from Cuzco to Machu Picchu!!!
This is for the backpackers that are desperately searching for some way to get there without paying the outrageous PeruRail prices. Doesn´t help with the admission fees to the site itself, but hopefully someone will find this while they´re freaking out like I was.
You can get transportation from near Avenida de Sol in Cuzco. Start walking down, away from Plaza de Armas, and ask people because they know where these buses stop. It should cost 5 Soles but the drivers sometimes try to charge you up to 70. Don´t let them screw you! That takes you to Ollantaytambo. That´s where the train to MP stopped before the mudslides, but take another bus from the terminal there to KM82 which is another couple soles. Make sure you get there, it´s important. Then walk along the tracks to Aguas Calientes, which falls at around km 112. It´s quite a hike, and always along train tracks which get uncomfortable, but you can save about U$ 75! If you get nervous, just ask the guard at the station if you can walk along the tracks a little, he told me, ´of course!´ really nicely.
You can get transportation from near Avenida de Sol in Cuzco. Start walking down, away from Plaza de Armas, and ask people because they know where these buses stop. It should cost 5 Soles but the drivers sometimes try to charge you up to 70. Don´t let them screw you! That takes you to Ollantaytambo. That´s where the train to MP stopped before the mudslides, but take another bus from the terminal there to KM82 which is another couple soles. Make sure you get there, it´s important. Then walk along the tracks to Aguas Calientes, which falls at around km 112. It´s quite a hike, and always along train tracks which get uncomfortable, but you can save about U$ 75! If you get nervous, just ask the guard at the station if you can walk along the tracks a little, he told me, ´of course!´ really nicely.
Epic Feats and whatnot
Man oh man, where to start. I´ve been out of the reach of broadband for the past few days again, and for a good reason again. I´ll start at the beginning, I guess, as most stories tend to do.
Tuesday we took a bus about 8 km out from Cuzco and walked through a bunch of archeological sites on the way back. It was really cool, a nice day with perfect weather for walking. Along the way, we met a dog friend and named him Brahma. Brahma´s the beer I drank all through Brazil and Argentina, and the slogan is ´Brahma, Buena Onda´ which basically translates to good vibes, but not quite. I don´t know exactly how to say it but anyway. So this dog was a goofball and I shared my lunch with him, he led us along a horse path to some ruins, then we followed him along this other path trying to find another site. We ran into some mean dogs going that way, and Brahma was just really chill, and basically let us know it wasn´t worth it to pass because those dogs were nasty. He just turned and walked away. But he stayed with us all day until the last ruin, and he was dead tired. Every time we stopped, he would lay down and fall asleep. Every time we left though, he would come chasing after us, to the point that I was worried he´d lose his way home. Finally he realized he had to leave, and it was a sad goodbye, but he was a great companion for the day. Everyone else loved him too. He came and saw all the ruins with us, bounding around old Inca rocks and trying to get other people to feed him... too cute. He did try to bite me though, when I tried to pull some spikey things out of his leg, but I didn´t blame him, he didn´t know any better.
So then we went out on Tuesday night, had an awesome dinner and looked into how exactly we were to get to Machu Picchu. Turned out to be a LOT more complicated than I had thought. First of all, the prices to enter have doubled since whatever we read was researched. Then even getting there is a disaster. It´s insanely expensive to take the advertised transportation to the stupid town of Aguas Calientes, the place you have to go to get to MP. But when something sounds ridiculous, sometimes it is. We paid the equivalent of a couple dollars (rather than around $40) to get to the halfway point. After a little talking with locals, we were told that from there, you can walk along the train tracks no problem. So that´s what we did. That saved us about $75. We started walking from the town, Ollantaytambo, first through some farmland, past bulls, through grain, across irrigation ditches, etc. The scenery, first off, is stunning. The valley is really deep, and the mountains surrounding us were just... monumental, amazingly huge and beautiful. We eventually made our way to the tracks, snapped a few pictures to document our excitement, and carried on because we knew we had about 30 kilometers to walk, and didn´t want to be doing so in the dark. So we walked and walked, along the tracks, and after about an hour, my feet felt pretty hammered thanks to the pebbles that line train tracks. And to give you an idea of my hiking gear, I have one of those silly llama backpacks I bought in Bolivia for a couple bucks, shoes with the Adidas label, but they´re actually called Adalid because they´re knockoffs from Argentina, then jeans and a wool sweater... and it was raining. I´m a huge baby about the rain, then the fact that I was wearing wool made me even more of a baby. The walk was really easy anyway though, mostly flat, and the scenery, breathtaking to the point that it made me stop a few times just to stare. After a while, it looked like scenes from Jurassic Park-huge mountains covered with brilliantly green trees, cacti, sheer rock faces, and the rushing water of the Rio Urubamba hundreds of feet below us. At the start, we passed the KM 68 marker and were a little apprehensive considering Aguas Calientes was at KM 104 or something like that. No one gives you a real map because I think they want to keep it a secret how you get to the town in order to keep the ridiculously high prices. So we set off with a good idea of what we were getting ourselves into.
Around KM 78 we got pretty hungry and stopped for lunch. At that point, we went over what we had been told the day before, and that was to make sure to take the bus to KM82, then walk. So we had added about 13 extra kilometers to the walk at that point. We got to the provisional train station at KM82, which was built recently since the mudslide of a few months ago literaly wiped the tracks into the river. We got to see that first hand on the first 13km of our walk. We were worried that the train people would tell us we weren´t allowed to walk along the tracks, so we tried to sneak around the train station, but the geographic setting sort of makes that impossible unless you can fly. We tried anyway, by scaling this massive mountain side, passing more bulls again, and barely stopping to appreciate how amazingly beautiful everything around us was. But in the end, we just walked back down, I asked the guard if we could walk along the tracks a little bit, and he said of course. So then we kept on trucking. After a certain point, my joints started hurting like crazy and every time we stopped for a rest, it got worse. So Kenj and I both agreed, without actually speaking it, to stop resting. Around KM 90 I think I had thoughts of death running through my mind. I don´t think it would have been quite so bad if we hadn´t been walking on slippery pebbles, but it was rough! Totally worth it though, we just kept thinking about how much money we were saving. Then around km99 we saw some guys with some 2x4s nailed on top of some train wheels, trying to get enough momentum to carry them down the slight descent in the same direction we were trying to go. They told us to hop on. They had a machete and a smaller knife because they appeared to have been cutting some weedy stuff in the jungle beyond the tracks. Despite the tools/weapons, I didn´t care if they killed me, I just wanted to get on some wheels and give my legs a rest, but they didn´t really build their little mobile thing well and we kept derailing. From them, we learned that we had about 2 hours more to Aguas Calientes, and it was already getting dark. When they couldn´t get us anywhere fast, we decided to just walk, FAST. The guys were really nice anyway though.
So then there we were, in the middle of the jungle, in the bottom of a valley, beneath thick clouds, with night tightening its grip on us. Anyone who knows me knows I haven´t really spent too much time in the great outdoors, as great as I think it all is. Not to say I was scared, just saying if something like a Puma or a snake or a nasty spider had jumped out at me, I wouldn´t be sitting here chronicling the story right now. At a point, I was waiting for the joints in my legs to just snap and leave me there stranded. I wondered if anyone ever died from walking at my age, and wondered if, at my age, this feeling was normal. Then it was basically pitch dark and all I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other. I stumbled, I heard Kendra stumble behind me, and no breath was wasted by talking. For a while we saw some lights illuminating the clouds, and assumed that it must be the town because there is literally nothing else in this valley. Once we actually saw the lights, we got really elated, picked up the pace a little, and came to a bridge! It was a dam. Bummer. Keep going, forget about the pain, forget about dying, hunger, thirst, all that. Just go!
There´s more to tell, but obviously we made it to the town, and suffering is only interesting when you´re in the middle of it, not writing about it. So yeah, we stumbled into the first hostel we found, Kendra sounded like she wanted to shop around for a price, and I wasn´t having it, so we put our bags down, I laid down in bed, and passed out. No dinner, no nothing. Laying down didn´t even feel good, my legs were throbbing! Oh yeah, I fell into an uncovered sewer ditch before that, but it wasn´t deep. Pissed me off a little bit though.
So the next morning, we woke up at 6 and went to the ticket office, which is where we realized they had doubled the price. I mean, damn Peru. They didn´t even build this thing, it was there before Peru was Peru, but they still charge us so much for it! So we paid for the ticket. Then went to buy bus tickets and for whatever godforsaken reason, the bus station lists prices in dollars instead of the local currency. This is the only place that does this. So we hand over the already expensive 14 soles to the lady, and she looks at us and says ´no, it´s 40 soles, 14 dollars´. Kendra gave her some sass and so did I. We then realized that if we had eaten dinner the night before we wouldn´t have had enough money to make it to Machu Picchu because neither of us could withdraw cash in that town. So I paid 40 soles in as many coins as I could, halfway to be a pain in the ass, but halfway to drop some weight. Got on the bus, then the lady chased me down and said, or yelled rather, to the bus that I short-changed her. Went back, taught her how to count really quick, gave her a really aggravated look with maybe a little too much attitude and threw my hands in the air like a little biatch, then got on the bus. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the attitude dropped and even though both of us had legs as stiff as a WASP-y dinner party, we enjoyed the hell out of Machu Picchu. How could you not.
First of all, the ruins really are fascinating. No one knows what exactly the purpose of the place was, so it´s all speculation. The town itself is really cool, but there are a ton of hikes around it that you can do, so we climbed around mountains a little bit for some better views. It´s amazing because the place is completely hidden..the way it´s situated on this mountain you would never find it if you were looking for it from below. Maybe that´s why it wasn´t rediscovered until 1911. The huge mountains and deep valley around it make it a truly amazing site to take in even if you aren´t into old archeological stuff, and the plants and animals all around are really incredible too. Big lizards, these things that look like rabbits but have raccoon tails, and llamas/alpacas are everywhere. There are massive orchids growing out of the side of the mountain, humming birds, cactus with fruits, tropical looking trees... amazing. Then the trails that link all the little sites to each other are amazing, and it´s impressive people don´t die following them because they´re narrow! Even from thousands of feet up, you can still hear the rushing water of the river below, and you´re not really restricted from too many areas within the site so even though there are a lot of other tourists around, you can still find a way to sneak off for some quiet spot to admire from. So that´swhat Kenj and I did after a while, and I took a little nap.
We got back down, decided that it was worth it to pay for a train ticket rather tahn walk again, and crossed or fingers that we could pay with a credit card. We could, so we booked it and were happy happy happy. Then we read about this restaurant in our lonely planet book, which has totally sucked so far, but was finally dead on about something. This place was sooo damn good! A great 3 course dinner, nice bottle of wine, and a few long hours later, we were fat and happy, had seen Machu Picchu, knew we had a train home the next day... it felt really good. We found out this morning, boarding the train, that all in all, we walked 50 km yesterday. That´s 30 miles.
So now we´re back in Cuzco, taking it easy. We´ll chill out and eat tonight, and they have a lot of good happy hours here, so I think it´s time to treat ourselvesa little. Then we´ll go out and see what goes down in Cuzco on Friday night... hopefully I´ll get what I´m looking for. We tried this place that was up my alley on Monday but it was dead, and they told us to come back on a real night and there would be people there. Then we head to Arequipa tomorrow night on an overnight bus, hopefully see some canyons and stuff, then on to my final destination on this continent, Lima. Thanks Pops for helping me out and making it possible to enter my country again without any trouble. Sometimes I feel like an Easter Egg you find in October.... spoiled rotten.
Tuesday we took a bus about 8 km out from Cuzco and walked through a bunch of archeological sites on the way back. It was really cool, a nice day with perfect weather for walking. Along the way, we met a dog friend and named him Brahma. Brahma´s the beer I drank all through Brazil and Argentina, and the slogan is ´Brahma, Buena Onda´ which basically translates to good vibes, but not quite. I don´t know exactly how to say it but anyway. So this dog was a goofball and I shared my lunch with him, he led us along a horse path to some ruins, then we followed him along this other path trying to find another site. We ran into some mean dogs going that way, and Brahma was just really chill, and basically let us know it wasn´t worth it to pass because those dogs were nasty. He just turned and walked away. But he stayed with us all day until the last ruin, and he was dead tired. Every time we stopped, he would lay down and fall asleep. Every time we left though, he would come chasing after us, to the point that I was worried he´d lose his way home. Finally he realized he had to leave, and it was a sad goodbye, but he was a great companion for the day. Everyone else loved him too. He came and saw all the ruins with us, bounding around old Inca rocks and trying to get other people to feed him... too cute. He did try to bite me though, when I tried to pull some spikey things out of his leg, but I didn´t blame him, he didn´t know any better.
So then we went out on Tuesday night, had an awesome dinner and looked into how exactly we were to get to Machu Picchu. Turned out to be a LOT more complicated than I had thought. First of all, the prices to enter have doubled since whatever we read was researched. Then even getting there is a disaster. It´s insanely expensive to take the advertised transportation to the stupid town of Aguas Calientes, the place you have to go to get to MP. But when something sounds ridiculous, sometimes it is. We paid the equivalent of a couple dollars (rather than around $40) to get to the halfway point. After a little talking with locals, we were told that from there, you can walk along the train tracks no problem. So that´s what we did. That saved us about $75. We started walking from the town, Ollantaytambo, first through some farmland, past bulls, through grain, across irrigation ditches, etc. The scenery, first off, is stunning. The valley is really deep, and the mountains surrounding us were just... monumental, amazingly huge and beautiful. We eventually made our way to the tracks, snapped a few pictures to document our excitement, and carried on because we knew we had about 30 kilometers to walk, and didn´t want to be doing so in the dark. So we walked and walked, along the tracks, and after about an hour, my feet felt pretty hammered thanks to the pebbles that line train tracks. And to give you an idea of my hiking gear, I have one of those silly llama backpacks I bought in Bolivia for a couple bucks, shoes with the Adidas label, but they´re actually called Adalid because they´re knockoffs from Argentina, then jeans and a wool sweater... and it was raining. I´m a huge baby about the rain, then the fact that I was wearing wool made me even more of a baby. The walk was really easy anyway though, mostly flat, and the scenery, breathtaking to the point that it made me stop a few times just to stare. After a while, it looked like scenes from Jurassic Park-huge mountains covered with brilliantly green trees, cacti, sheer rock faces, and the rushing water of the Rio Urubamba hundreds of feet below us. At the start, we passed the KM 68 marker and were a little apprehensive considering Aguas Calientes was at KM 104 or something like that. No one gives you a real map because I think they want to keep it a secret how you get to the town in order to keep the ridiculously high prices. So we set off with a good idea of what we were getting ourselves into.
Around KM 78 we got pretty hungry and stopped for lunch. At that point, we went over what we had been told the day before, and that was to make sure to take the bus to KM82, then walk. So we had added about 13 extra kilometers to the walk at that point. We got to the provisional train station at KM82, which was built recently since the mudslide of a few months ago literaly wiped the tracks into the river. We got to see that first hand on the first 13km of our walk. We were worried that the train people would tell us we weren´t allowed to walk along the tracks, so we tried to sneak around the train station, but the geographic setting sort of makes that impossible unless you can fly. We tried anyway, by scaling this massive mountain side, passing more bulls again, and barely stopping to appreciate how amazingly beautiful everything around us was. But in the end, we just walked back down, I asked the guard if we could walk along the tracks a little bit, and he said of course. So then we kept on trucking. After a certain point, my joints started hurting like crazy and every time we stopped for a rest, it got worse. So Kenj and I both agreed, without actually speaking it, to stop resting. Around KM 90 I think I had thoughts of death running through my mind. I don´t think it would have been quite so bad if we hadn´t been walking on slippery pebbles, but it was rough! Totally worth it though, we just kept thinking about how much money we were saving. Then around km99 we saw some guys with some 2x4s nailed on top of some train wheels, trying to get enough momentum to carry them down the slight descent in the same direction we were trying to go. They told us to hop on. They had a machete and a smaller knife because they appeared to have been cutting some weedy stuff in the jungle beyond the tracks. Despite the tools/weapons, I didn´t care if they killed me, I just wanted to get on some wheels and give my legs a rest, but they didn´t really build their little mobile thing well and we kept derailing. From them, we learned that we had about 2 hours more to Aguas Calientes, and it was already getting dark. When they couldn´t get us anywhere fast, we decided to just walk, FAST. The guys were really nice anyway though.
So then there we were, in the middle of the jungle, in the bottom of a valley, beneath thick clouds, with night tightening its grip on us. Anyone who knows me knows I haven´t really spent too much time in the great outdoors, as great as I think it all is. Not to say I was scared, just saying if something like a Puma or a snake or a nasty spider had jumped out at me, I wouldn´t be sitting here chronicling the story right now. At a point, I was waiting for the joints in my legs to just snap and leave me there stranded. I wondered if anyone ever died from walking at my age, and wondered if, at my age, this feeling was normal. Then it was basically pitch dark and all I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other. I stumbled, I heard Kendra stumble behind me, and no breath was wasted by talking. For a while we saw some lights illuminating the clouds, and assumed that it must be the town because there is literally nothing else in this valley. Once we actually saw the lights, we got really elated, picked up the pace a little, and came to a bridge! It was a dam. Bummer. Keep going, forget about the pain, forget about dying, hunger, thirst, all that. Just go!
There´s more to tell, but obviously we made it to the town, and suffering is only interesting when you´re in the middle of it, not writing about it. So yeah, we stumbled into the first hostel we found, Kendra sounded like she wanted to shop around for a price, and I wasn´t having it, so we put our bags down, I laid down in bed, and passed out. No dinner, no nothing. Laying down didn´t even feel good, my legs were throbbing! Oh yeah, I fell into an uncovered sewer ditch before that, but it wasn´t deep. Pissed me off a little bit though.
So the next morning, we woke up at 6 and went to the ticket office, which is where we realized they had doubled the price. I mean, damn Peru. They didn´t even build this thing, it was there before Peru was Peru, but they still charge us so much for it! So we paid for the ticket. Then went to buy bus tickets and for whatever godforsaken reason, the bus station lists prices in dollars instead of the local currency. This is the only place that does this. So we hand over the already expensive 14 soles to the lady, and she looks at us and says ´no, it´s 40 soles, 14 dollars´. Kendra gave her some sass and so did I. We then realized that if we had eaten dinner the night before we wouldn´t have had enough money to make it to Machu Picchu because neither of us could withdraw cash in that town. So I paid 40 soles in as many coins as I could, halfway to be a pain in the ass, but halfway to drop some weight. Got on the bus, then the lady chased me down and said, or yelled rather, to the bus that I short-changed her. Went back, taught her how to count really quick, gave her a really aggravated look with maybe a little too much attitude and threw my hands in the air like a little biatch, then got on the bus. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, the attitude dropped and even though both of us had legs as stiff as a WASP-y dinner party, we enjoyed the hell out of Machu Picchu. How could you not.
First of all, the ruins really are fascinating. No one knows what exactly the purpose of the place was, so it´s all speculation. The town itself is really cool, but there are a ton of hikes around it that you can do, so we climbed around mountains a little bit for some better views. It´s amazing because the place is completely hidden..the way it´s situated on this mountain you would never find it if you were looking for it from below. Maybe that´s why it wasn´t rediscovered until 1911. The huge mountains and deep valley around it make it a truly amazing site to take in even if you aren´t into old archeological stuff, and the plants and animals all around are really incredible too. Big lizards, these things that look like rabbits but have raccoon tails, and llamas/alpacas are everywhere. There are massive orchids growing out of the side of the mountain, humming birds, cactus with fruits, tropical looking trees... amazing. Then the trails that link all the little sites to each other are amazing, and it´s impressive people don´t die following them because they´re narrow! Even from thousands of feet up, you can still hear the rushing water of the river below, and you´re not really restricted from too many areas within the site so even though there are a lot of other tourists around, you can still find a way to sneak off for some quiet spot to admire from. So that´swhat Kenj and I did after a while, and I took a little nap.
We got back down, decided that it was worth it to pay for a train ticket rather tahn walk again, and crossed or fingers that we could pay with a credit card. We could, so we booked it and were happy happy happy. Then we read about this restaurant in our lonely planet book, which has totally sucked so far, but was finally dead on about something. This place was sooo damn good! A great 3 course dinner, nice bottle of wine, and a few long hours later, we were fat and happy, had seen Machu Picchu, knew we had a train home the next day... it felt really good. We found out this morning, boarding the train, that all in all, we walked 50 km yesterday. That´s 30 miles.
So now we´re back in Cuzco, taking it easy. We´ll chill out and eat tonight, and they have a lot of good happy hours here, so I think it´s time to treat ourselvesa little. Then we´ll go out and see what goes down in Cuzco on Friday night... hopefully I´ll get what I´m looking for. We tried this place that was up my alley on Monday but it was dead, and they told us to come back on a real night and there would be people there. Then we head to Arequipa tomorrow night on an overnight bus, hopefully see some canyons and stuff, then on to my final destination on this continent, Lima. Thanks Pops for helping me out and making it possible to enter my country again without any trouble. Sometimes I feel like an Easter Egg you find in October.... spoiled rotten.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Alrighty then
Finally I´m here, the place that books say myth and fact intertwine, where the history of one civilization is built atop the one that came before it...I´m in Peru! The guy at the border almost didn´t want to let me across because of my provisional passport, but I just stood there long enough for him to decide that it was legit. The last couple days in Bolivia were awesome, and beautiful of course. We went from La Paz to Copacabana, and spent a night there. Copacabana was a little bit reminiscent of the town in Puebla where I got haunted, no joke, and the central square near the cathedral totally spooked me out. Won´t dwell on it, but there was definitely something going on there, and I didn´t like it. So Kenj and I walked around the town for a while, got to the outskirts, and hopped along these pretty huge rocks along the water´s edge for a couple hours. We saw some really ugly hogs that sounded like they wanted to eat us, walked past some houses and felt weird, like we were walking through someone´s back yard, until everyone smiled and said hello. People in Bolivia were really something. So anyway, we had to chase the sunset because I was thinking we could loop all the way around on these rocks and make it back to the docks of the town, but instead there was a cliff face and we had to run back before darkness fell and who knows what kind of boogie men would have come out.
Next day we woke up early to do this hike we had read about. We brought all our bags because the hike would have us end up in this other town with docks, from which we could get to the islands in the middle of the lake. The hike was 17 km, so like 10 miles or something, and there were a lot of hills and rocks and gravel to walk over, eucalyptus groves, and cliffs, plus we both had our two bags. The scenery rocked, just like the book said, and we were both pretty obsessed with ourselves for making it with the luggage. We met a couple girls from Denver, and took a boat to the Isla del Sol, Island of the Sun, with them. First off, the island was a draw for both me and Kendra because, in Inca mythology, it is the site of creation, and the birthplace of the sun. There are some ruins there, which we didn´t see because we´re goofballs, but being there was cool. It´s a decent sized island with a population of around 5,000, no cars, only gravel or cobblestone paths. Donkeys do the heavy lifting because the island is basically the peak of a mountain poking out from the lake... it´s steep! All around the island were those awesome-looking terraces, made from rock walls with no mortar. Hope you know what I´m talking about, otherwise I´ll just have to show you the pictures. The real treat though, was just the lake surrounding us with amazingly blue water, the snowy mountain tops in the distance, and the sunset with a few beers, from the top of this mountainous, mythical island at the end of the day. Perfect! Then we slowly made our way to Puno, Peru the next day. Border crossing, like I said, was pretty uneventful, and from Puno, we took a quick little tour to the Islas Flotantes, Floating Islands. I guess people have lived on these man-made floating islands for centuries. It started out as a means of defense against the Incas and other agressors but now they still live there, and it´s become really touristy. It was interesting anyway, to be walking around on them and seeing all their reed houses and reed boats and reed handicrafts. Everything was made from reeds except for the people.
And now I´m in Cuzco. I woke up this morning a little grouchy. We got here on the bus last night at 4am, got a hostel through this guy making rounds at the bus station, and even though we sorted mostly everything out (money-wise) before we passed out, I was still ready to get ripped off, thanks to what I´ve heard about Peru. So far, so good. But anyway, the mood passed before I even showered, when I went outside to grab an OJ from the guy across the street and stood there a minute to take in the scenery from the street outside the hostel, and appreciate the fact that SHIT, I´m in Cuzco! The city´s awesome, I had the best shower in probably 2 weeks this morning, then we explored. It´s always fun exploring with Kendra because we do the touristy bit really quick, snap our pictures, and then instantly find that we´ve wandered to the place where no tourists are around. Here, that meant this massive maze of street markets that radiate out from the Central Market of the city, which is just as awesome but a little more touristy from what we gathered. There, we just wandered around, marveling at all the meat and vegetables and fish... cow heads, stomachs, intestines, balls, sheep heads, pig hooves and ears, and of course the pieces that are more familiar to us. Then we stopped off in this one section with all the tropical fruits to get some juice. We each had a juice of aloe vera with egg white. It´s supposed to be good for your digestive tract. I hope it´s good for that because it´s not really good. Then, sitting there, I spotted the ceviche counter. One of my favorite foods, which I rarely eat, was sitting right in front of me. So obviously, I had to get knee dip into that, and it was sooooo damn good. It was different than other ceviche peruano I´ve had before- there was lettuce and red onion, the cured fish, THEN some fried squid, seawead, rice, then these toasted beans... holy hell, I was in heaven again.
So anyway, we´re here. Nightlife seems to be a little more interesting and varied than in Bolivia, so I might have to take advantage of my last couple weeks of real, fun night life (shakin it til the sun comes up) before I go back to Atlanta. Tomorrow we´re planning a day trip to a few different Inca sights, then Wednesday we´ll probably go to a couple more ruins on the way to Aguas Calientes, the jump-off point to Macchu Pichu. We decided to sleep there one night, even though we heard stupid things about the town, so that we could catch the first bus up the mountain, watch the sun rise before the buses of tourists come to ruin the scene, then stay as long as we want. Doing a trek up a trail will have to be on my next-time-list for a lot of reasons, but we´ll see what we came to see!
Well, that´s that. I´m here, I´m elated, I´m seeing some awesome shit and having a great time.
Next day we woke up early to do this hike we had read about. We brought all our bags because the hike would have us end up in this other town with docks, from which we could get to the islands in the middle of the lake. The hike was 17 km, so like 10 miles or something, and there were a lot of hills and rocks and gravel to walk over, eucalyptus groves, and cliffs, plus we both had our two bags. The scenery rocked, just like the book said, and we were both pretty obsessed with ourselves for making it with the luggage. We met a couple girls from Denver, and took a boat to the Isla del Sol, Island of the Sun, with them. First off, the island was a draw for both me and Kendra because, in Inca mythology, it is the site of creation, and the birthplace of the sun. There are some ruins there, which we didn´t see because we´re goofballs, but being there was cool. It´s a decent sized island with a population of around 5,000, no cars, only gravel or cobblestone paths. Donkeys do the heavy lifting because the island is basically the peak of a mountain poking out from the lake... it´s steep! All around the island were those awesome-looking terraces, made from rock walls with no mortar. Hope you know what I´m talking about, otherwise I´ll just have to show you the pictures. The real treat though, was just the lake surrounding us with amazingly blue water, the snowy mountain tops in the distance, and the sunset with a few beers, from the top of this mountainous, mythical island at the end of the day. Perfect! Then we slowly made our way to Puno, Peru the next day. Border crossing, like I said, was pretty uneventful, and from Puno, we took a quick little tour to the Islas Flotantes, Floating Islands. I guess people have lived on these man-made floating islands for centuries. It started out as a means of defense against the Incas and other agressors but now they still live there, and it´s become really touristy. It was interesting anyway, to be walking around on them and seeing all their reed houses and reed boats and reed handicrafts. Everything was made from reeds except for the people.
And now I´m in Cuzco. I woke up this morning a little grouchy. We got here on the bus last night at 4am, got a hostel through this guy making rounds at the bus station, and even though we sorted mostly everything out (money-wise) before we passed out, I was still ready to get ripped off, thanks to what I´ve heard about Peru. So far, so good. But anyway, the mood passed before I even showered, when I went outside to grab an OJ from the guy across the street and stood there a minute to take in the scenery from the street outside the hostel, and appreciate the fact that SHIT, I´m in Cuzco! The city´s awesome, I had the best shower in probably 2 weeks this morning, then we explored. It´s always fun exploring with Kendra because we do the touristy bit really quick, snap our pictures, and then instantly find that we´ve wandered to the place where no tourists are around. Here, that meant this massive maze of street markets that radiate out from the Central Market of the city, which is just as awesome but a little more touristy from what we gathered. There, we just wandered around, marveling at all the meat and vegetables and fish... cow heads, stomachs, intestines, balls, sheep heads, pig hooves and ears, and of course the pieces that are more familiar to us. Then we stopped off in this one section with all the tropical fruits to get some juice. We each had a juice of aloe vera with egg white. It´s supposed to be good for your digestive tract. I hope it´s good for that because it´s not really good. Then, sitting there, I spotted the ceviche counter. One of my favorite foods, which I rarely eat, was sitting right in front of me. So obviously, I had to get knee dip into that, and it was sooooo damn good. It was different than other ceviche peruano I´ve had before- there was lettuce and red onion, the cured fish, THEN some fried squid, seawead, rice, then these toasted beans... holy hell, I was in heaven again.
So anyway, we´re here. Nightlife seems to be a little more interesting and varied than in Bolivia, so I might have to take advantage of my last couple weeks of real, fun night life (shakin it til the sun comes up) before I go back to Atlanta. Tomorrow we´re planning a day trip to a few different Inca sights, then Wednesday we´ll probably go to a couple more ruins on the way to Aguas Calientes, the jump-off point to Macchu Pichu. We decided to sleep there one night, even though we heard stupid things about the town, so that we could catch the first bus up the mountain, watch the sun rise before the buses of tourists come to ruin the scene, then stay as long as we want. Doing a trek up a trail will have to be on my next-time-list for a lot of reasons, but we´ll see what we came to see!
Well, that´s that. I´m here, I´m elated, I´m seeing some awesome shit and having a great time.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Stones and Bones
Writing from my last day in La Paz now. I really like this city! Kenj and I wandered basically to the polar opposite side of town today, and it´s really cool. No tourists, just straight up barrio. There´s this massive market (Fairway style for the NYers) with nothing but hanging carcasses of llama, cow, chicken, everything that is edible, then the next section is fish (I guess from lakes around because we´re landlocked) and then every vegetable ever invented. Upstairs is a cafeteria, so Kenj and I grabbed our first coffee in a while up there. It´s funny how damn good coffee is once you haven´t had it in a while. Habits like that will never die for me, scary. I´m kind of searching out whatever distribution center all the street vendors pick up their hand-crafted wares because I´m thinking how insanely profitable it would be to sell this stuff back home. Literally, stuff would go for 10 times the price on the street, and considering those guys get it from somewhere.... I could make a fortune and be back to Nyc in a second. Well, at least I could make some drinking money. Figure if I hang out in Little 5 Points (ATL) for a week, I can probably sell all of it and get a new tattoo. Anyway, I´m not in the position to be spending money on anything but a bed and food at this point (there´s too much to see) so all that speculation is on the back burner.
Yesterday I went to this old Inca site a couple hours outside La Paz, Tiahuanacu. The spelling varies, and that happens with a lot of words here, as they incorporate other languages with Spanish. Bolivia is really cool. I definitely want to come back here when I have more time and money to spend. A lot of things about Argentina came off as kind of goofy-the people, the attitudes sometimes, just in general. But Bolivia seems to just be. It is the way it is because that´s their way. The city, while being so crowded, is so subdued. People, for the most part, speak slowly and softly, and although we stick out like sore thumbs, we never really get stared at, even in non-touristy parts. It´s interesting because I guess Bolivia is, by numbers one of the poorest countries on the continent, and while things here are relatively basic compared to Argentina, you see a lot less poverty day-to-day. It´s hard to speculate on shit like that as a tourist, but from that perspective, that is how it looks. There aren´t the street children and families here like in Buenos Aires, and the city also lacks a lot of the silly things like pickpocketing and taxis robbing you that the Paris of the Americas was loaded with. The attitude of vendors in general is just amazingly nice, calm, never pushy, always saying nice things like ´joven´ or ´usted´ just being respectful.
At the Inca site, I had to buy a bajillion trinkets from the little artisan fair they have. Kendra was in a museum that I didn´t want to pay for, so I moseyed over there like a good little southern boy. All the stalls basically have the same things, so you really just choose who you want to buy from. There was this little old lady, napping in her chair, who snapped up as I walked past and started talking. She had a really nice face so I decided I´d buy from her. There are a ton of little animals and symbols carved out of stone, and I learned the significance of some the other day in Uyuni. So I asked her about the other ones, and figured they´d make nice souvenirs for my kid cousins and baby bro. There´s one to help you earn money, one to guard your path (maybe that´s my next tattoo, opposite the sphinx) one for a happy journey, health, love, to ward off bad things, all kinds of things. Then I bought a couple old Inca symbolic things, the same things that everyone who has been to Bolivia will undoubtedly have, because it´s all the same. Cool, nonetheless. Then I asked the lady about the hats that so many women wear and she explained that it´s just a hat, and their word for it is ______ which of course I don´t remember, but in Spanish it´s sombrero. I was hoping for some mystical significance, but I guess sometimes you just have to let your imagination go.
Then I ran to catch up with Kendra, who had passed me while I was shooting the shit with the lady. I caught up and realized that I was in a part of the site that you were supposed to pay for, but I was slick and walked past the guards. I mean, they were lazy and didn´t check my ticket. I really had no idea. Anyway, we saw an old pyramid, or what´s left of it, and some cool old statues of dieties and the puerta del sol, the door to the sun, which does something funny with the shadow on the day of the summer solstice. The symmetry on these sites is really cool-there´s a small opening in a wall made of solid rock, one stacked upon the other, perfectly straight, without mortar, and if you stand dead center in the opening, different figures line up perfectly. I´m obsessed with all this ancient stuff, and can´t get enough. I guess that was just a little teaser compared to Peru though.
Before we left the ruins, we wandered through a field. I don´t know why, but I´ve been picking up random bones that I find on the ground. They´re Llama bones or something, so I´m using them as souvenirs. Then we kept finding tiny random pieces of ceramic, like the pieces you see in museums of the Incas. The field was sort of a site that hadn´t been excavated yet, and it felt like we shouldn´t have been walking in it, but no one told us anything otherwise. So anyway, I grabbed a few pieces of ceramic, hoping that maybe they came from an old Inca relic. I mean, it´s totally possible, but I also saw a bunch of broken beer bottles too. Whatever, to me, it´s the ceramic of the Incas.
Alright, well tomorrow I go to Copacabana, which has a beach but should be nothing like the famous one. It´s our jump-off point into Lake Titicaca, this massive lake in the mountains. We´ll see the Isla del Sol (the Inca creation site) among other islands there, and this lake divides Bolivia and Peru. So it´s possible that I won´t be online again until I get to Cuzco. Oh, the street food here is decently good. Not overly greasy, there are some spicy salsas, and it´s delish. I´ve been eating these steak sandwiches with this onion-pepper-spice mix on top, with a spicy tomato salsa and fries. It´s pretty amazing, and costs about 80 cents if we´re talking US standards. Get outta town with that, Bolivia is a good place to be when the cash flow is waning.
Yesterday I went to this old Inca site a couple hours outside La Paz, Tiahuanacu. The spelling varies, and that happens with a lot of words here, as they incorporate other languages with Spanish. Bolivia is really cool. I definitely want to come back here when I have more time and money to spend. A lot of things about Argentina came off as kind of goofy-the people, the attitudes sometimes, just in general. But Bolivia seems to just be. It is the way it is because that´s their way. The city, while being so crowded, is so subdued. People, for the most part, speak slowly and softly, and although we stick out like sore thumbs, we never really get stared at, even in non-touristy parts. It´s interesting because I guess Bolivia is, by numbers one of the poorest countries on the continent, and while things here are relatively basic compared to Argentina, you see a lot less poverty day-to-day. It´s hard to speculate on shit like that as a tourist, but from that perspective, that is how it looks. There aren´t the street children and families here like in Buenos Aires, and the city also lacks a lot of the silly things like pickpocketing and taxis robbing you that the Paris of the Americas was loaded with. The attitude of vendors in general is just amazingly nice, calm, never pushy, always saying nice things like ´joven´ or ´usted´ just being respectful.
At the Inca site, I had to buy a bajillion trinkets from the little artisan fair they have. Kendra was in a museum that I didn´t want to pay for, so I moseyed over there like a good little southern boy. All the stalls basically have the same things, so you really just choose who you want to buy from. There was this little old lady, napping in her chair, who snapped up as I walked past and started talking. She had a really nice face so I decided I´d buy from her. There are a ton of little animals and symbols carved out of stone, and I learned the significance of some the other day in Uyuni. So I asked her about the other ones, and figured they´d make nice souvenirs for my kid cousins and baby bro. There´s one to help you earn money, one to guard your path (maybe that´s my next tattoo, opposite the sphinx) one for a happy journey, health, love, to ward off bad things, all kinds of things. Then I bought a couple old Inca symbolic things, the same things that everyone who has been to Bolivia will undoubtedly have, because it´s all the same. Cool, nonetheless. Then I asked the lady about the hats that so many women wear and she explained that it´s just a hat, and their word for it is ______ which of course I don´t remember, but in Spanish it´s sombrero. I was hoping for some mystical significance, but I guess sometimes you just have to let your imagination go.
Then I ran to catch up with Kendra, who had passed me while I was shooting the shit with the lady. I caught up and realized that I was in a part of the site that you were supposed to pay for, but I was slick and walked past the guards. I mean, they were lazy and didn´t check my ticket. I really had no idea. Anyway, we saw an old pyramid, or what´s left of it, and some cool old statues of dieties and the puerta del sol, the door to the sun, which does something funny with the shadow on the day of the summer solstice. The symmetry on these sites is really cool-there´s a small opening in a wall made of solid rock, one stacked upon the other, perfectly straight, without mortar, and if you stand dead center in the opening, different figures line up perfectly. I´m obsessed with all this ancient stuff, and can´t get enough. I guess that was just a little teaser compared to Peru though.
Before we left the ruins, we wandered through a field. I don´t know why, but I´ve been picking up random bones that I find on the ground. They´re Llama bones or something, so I´m using them as souvenirs. Then we kept finding tiny random pieces of ceramic, like the pieces you see in museums of the Incas. The field was sort of a site that hadn´t been excavated yet, and it felt like we shouldn´t have been walking in it, but no one told us anything otherwise. So anyway, I grabbed a few pieces of ceramic, hoping that maybe they came from an old Inca relic. I mean, it´s totally possible, but I also saw a bunch of broken beer bottles too. Whatever, to me, it´s the ceramic of the Incas.
Alright, well tomorrow I go to Copacabana, which has a beach but should be nothing like the famous one. It´s our jump-off point into Lake Titicaca, this massive lake in the mountains. We´ll see the Isla del Sol (the Inca creation site) among other islands there, and this lake divides Bolivia and Peru. So it´s possible that I won´t be online again until I get to Cuzco. Oh, the street food here is decently good. Not overly greasy, there are some spicy salsas, and it´s delish. I´ve been eating these steak sandwiches with this onion-pepper-spice mix on top, with a spicy tomato salsa and fries. It´s pretty amazing, and costs about 80 cents if we´re talking US standards. Get outta town with that, Bolivia is a good place to be when the cash flow is waning.
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