Day 11 - Rapa Nui

Tukuturi, the kneeling tiki, looking down from Rano Raraku to Tonjariki

Two half-day tours, again with the studly yet knowledgeable Hugo.

Farthest out, Motu Nui, the island of the sooty tern

  The morning is the southernmost part of the island, beyond the airport.  We start with the dry-stone ceremonial village of Orongo, where the Birdmen and priests lived.  There were seven men in the annual Birdman competition, one from each clan.  For a week, they were kept off together in secluded preparation, each trying to size up the competition. Then in the morning of the contest, they would climb down the cliff with the totoro buoys they had picked and woven themselves, paddle a mile to the island, climb the cliff, find the first sooty tern egg, bind it to their forehead with a bandana, climb back down, paddle back, climb the cliff of Orongo and win the right to live alone for the year as Ultimate Ruler.  It was a tribal system that replaced the “my moai is bigger than yours” system, but it didn’t have long to live before the White Man sailed into view and changed things forever.

       At Orongo are also many petroglyphs, lots of birdman symbols, one stone that looks like a turtle, and a fresco with human hands.  It's an art gallery in stone, all anonymous works by skilled hands working with prehistoric tools.

  After that we slog up the volcano to the brim of Rano Kau and look out over the islands and down into the caldera with its totoro reeds.

       Then on to Vinapu and an ahu wall that looks for all the world like Cuzco.  It’s easy to see how Heyerdahl - and anyone else who had seen the Inca fortresses - would think perhaps the ancestors of these islanders had sailed west from Peru instead of east from Polynesia.
  At the end of the morning we pick our way down steep steps to Ana Kai Tangata cave, where rough waves crash in from the sea.  How you juxtapose those three words can mean “the cave of eating men” (where men eat) or “the cave of the man-eater”, which may partially explain the allegation that some Rapanui were cannibals.  The walls are decorated with colored shreds of pictograms... as well as a rock shape that looks very much like a polar bear to me.  In a prehistoric cave it would have become a painting with plant-colored dyes highlighting the snout and haunches.  Hugo sees it when I point it out to him.
  All this in a half-day.
  The van drops us off in town.  I attach myself to the Canadian professor, his son and friend for some tuna ceviche.  A short stop at the hotel for a change of clothes; it’s getting hot so I change into tropical gear:  white shorts and a white shirt.
 

Hanga Roa, the island's only town, as seen from Puna Pau

We start the afternoon with Puna Pau, the quarry where all the red topknots (pukao) came from.  There’s a great view of “Our Town” - Hanga Roa - spread out below.  It’s the only town on the island.

  After that, a short distance away is the ahu platform with the seven moai, one for each clan:  Ahu Akivi.  They had been toppled, breaking into pieces, but have been puzzled back together at great expense and effort.
  Then Hugo takes us off the grid:  to Ana Te Pahu Cave, which is actually not part of the predefined tour.  No pictograms, no moai... just a basalt cave with water dripping from the black rock ceiling.  I kid Hugo that he waited until I was bare-legged and in white for this.  There is no light and the stone is black and jagged.  And slippery.  For half an hour we make our way through this lava channel, guided by light from one or two flashlights and several cell phone screens.  The hands of Hugo and his driver Koi (from Les Iles Marquises, the Marquesas) are strong and welcome, and I’m not the only one who avails themselves of some assistance.  Jokes echo back and forth in the dark.  Then we literally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m somehow the first out, greeted by a spiny tree whose branches block the way.  I push them aside and scramble up the embankment, followed by the two Swiss nurses.
  Then Kent, the Canadian professor, appears, his head bleeding all over his clothing.  At the very end, he didn’t duck and has cut his scalp badly.  The cave gods have taken their sacrifice.

Tahai

  Everyone slogs through the marshes and piles into the van, to be deposited at Tahai on the coast on the town’s north side. One moai, complete with frightening, all-seeing eyes, stands alone; five more partial ones are aligned nearby.  I decide to accompany Kent and the boys to the hospital, in case an extra hand is needed, and to lend moral support to Hugo, who feels guilty.  My role ends up being limited to staying with the van, which has been left with motor running in the haste. The hospital does nothing but hand Hugo some bandages and disinfectant, so the Canadians are returned to the hotel.

       Hugo and I go back to pick up the others, although his mind is elsewhere.  I tell him about my tourist in France having a seizure in the backseat as I drove, and hope it helps.  But I doubt he’ll tell me he got a good night’s sleep when we meet tomorrow.

Day 10 - Rapa Nui

Rano Raraku, the quarry where all the moai statues were born

Slept like a log.  As requested, at 8:00 there’s a gentle wake-up knock at my door (no phones or TV in the room) so I can be ready for the all-day tour.  Breakfast is served on the terrace - omelet, the Peruvian/Chilean breakfast of champions evidently - and on the dot Kim’s significant other Hugo appears.  We do the rounds of the hotels, gathering up our cosmopolitan crew:  Americans, Italians, all sorts of Spanish speakers... Hugo does it all in Spanish and fluent English.

     First stop to buy a park pass for the island:  $60 U.S.  But bills must be pristine or they’re rejected.  It seems there were counterfeit bills a while ago, so if they’re torn or raggedy or written on they’re refused.  (It was the same in Peru, but I didn’t know why.)

      Then it’s on to Rano Raraku, the quarry from whence all the moai came, regardless of how far away they eventually stood.  (The topknots came from elsewhere.)  Hugo explains how the stones were cut, extracted, and shaped. It’s much the same as how the Inca cut stone from their quarries for their walls. But even if the two cultures didn’t communicate with each other, I guess there really aren’t multiple ways to perform such a feat using primitive tools.  As to how they were moved, that’s one of the island’s mysteries, although legend has it that they “walked”.

 
    After that we climb up into the crater of one of the island’s extinct volcanos to admire the lake inside the caldera.  A place of calm.  The reeds are totoro, the same as in Lake Titicaca.  This is a place of considerable beauty but few shade trees.  Hugo explains to us about a race held every year.  It involves young men making flotation devices out of the reeds, swimming across the crater, carrying hands of bananas up and down the slopes... but I forget the exact order.

       Then it’s on to Tonjariki, the first platform - or ahu - of moai we see, and the closest to the source, being just down below on the promontory. How they ever got them down here without breaking them I can’t imagine.  This ahu has the largest number together of the island:  15 in all, of different heights and only one with a topknot.  All were knocked down at one time, and the words “tidal wave” are pronounced.  But some were probably knocked over in fighting between the different clans on the island.  There is much supposition about everything on this island.  Much mystery.
       Back to town for lunch, and then off again for the North Shore.  First Papa Vaka with its petroglyphs, then Ahu Te Pito Kura on La Perouse Bay and its strange large rock that sets compasses wild.  Hugo says may be a meteorite.  I can well see the natives seeing this thing fly in from the heavens, leaving a flame-like trail, and thinking it was something the gods were giving them.  It has obviously been smoothed into its round shape - too smooth otherwise - with another orb at each of the four cardinal points.  I imagine tribal meetings being held here to make grave decisions.  But that’s just my imagination talking.

       Finally, on the beach at Anakena, Hugo explains more about the moai and ahu platform.  One of them, the one standing all alone, was set upright by Thor Heyerdahl and his crew in 1956; it took them nine days.  

       Then Hugo sets us loose for an hour, which I spend - as in my childhood -  searching for seashells along the water’s edge.  (The Pacific is still roiled up from yesterday’s rain, but I won’t know that by comparison until tomorrow.)  Shoes and socks off, I get my rolled-up pants wet hopping over waves as the tide comes in.  I end up triumphantly finding three tiny white barnacles and a piece of a bigger, darker shell.
       The rendez-vous point for the trip back is the snack bar and as I don’t have a watch, I get there early.  The passion fruit juice I order from a bilingual behind the bar, who calls me “honey”, doesn’t come, so Hugo sees to it.  From that moment on, I’m Honey to him for the rest of the tour, and he becomes Sweetie.
       Drop-off back in town and a homemade empanada from the shop down the street, which Kim’s desk replacement Jordi (from Barcelona) heats up for me.  I’ve kept up with the young people all day.  Now to bed.

Day 9 - Lima - Santiago - Rapa Nui

The Andes lost in the clouds

Pretty much a day lost in travel.  And lost is an appropriate word.  After Amerigo drops us at the airport, I check my bag in, then we go check my daughter in for her flight home.  Her plane will leave half an hour late (minimum, I think) which makes her miss her connection in Dallas and will add five hours to her trip home.  Rightfully miffed, she still sees me off and I watch her disappear down the hall of Lima Airport.
       For my part, the airline misplaces my bag in Santiago and it takes so long to find it that I have no time to get Chilean pesos.  I leave for Easter Island with my clothes but only Peruvian soles and U.S. dollars, and that’s how I meet Kim.
       There is a huge difference between Peru and Chile.  Not only have we traded Andean flutes for guitars but everything in the Santiago airport feels and looks American or European.  I go from feeling very “blonde” among Incans - with their bronzed complexions, shiny black hair and long straight noses - to being just like everyone else... and far less tall respectively.
       After an omelet on the flight from Lima to Santiago and another on the one on to Easter Island, I’m all egged out.  But the customer service is excellent on these LAN South American flights, no matter how short.  It takes over three hours to reach Santiago and another six almost to Easter Island!  After the first half hour of this last leg, nothing below but the Pacific - or alternately cloud cover.

       We have quite a bit of turbulence on the final approach and I’m glad to see the black volcanic cliffs rise out of the clouds.  Once we touch down, the pilot brakes slowly and uses up the entire strip to stop our 767.  I chalk it up to rain on the tarmac (more on that later).  Out the windows there are no moai yet, but much vegetation, which surprises me after all I’ve heard about the island’s barrenness.

       No one waiting at the airport with my name but there is a  taxi available so...  One problem though:  only those dollars and soles to pay with, no Chilean pesos.  I explain to the driver and when we get to the Hotel Manavai, I run in to ask if the desk could bail me out.
       And that’s how I meet Kim the Whirlwind.  She pays the cab and explains that the owner had me down as supposedly arriving the previous Thursday, so to him I was a “no-show”.  Good thing I have a print-out of my reservation!

       No sooner have I reached the hotel but the skies literally open up.  It rains for hours and hours, as if some celestial tap were left running by a careless god, or his heavenly bathtub were overflowing.  I cringe at the possibility of having to visit the island in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin.  Not my idea of a tropical paradise.  So I say a silent prayer to whoever the local rain god is and hope for the best.
       The downpour does give me the opportunity to have a long and fun conversation with Kim though. Over a cup of tea she brews us, she tells me about her years on the island, and schedules me for two days worth of tours with Hugo.  The second wonderful thing she’s done for me already.
       Around dinner time, Kim hands me an umbrella and lends me her sweet tween son to show me where I can buy something to eat.  (No restaurant in this hotel; only breakfasts.)  A bottle of water and another of Chilean red wine from the small supermercado.  Next door to it a man is grilling over a big barbecue and it smells wonderful!  So I get a grilled kebab of cerdo (pork), sausage and onion to take back to the hotel.
       Then it’s bed after this past night spent in planes.  The moai will still be there tomorrow.

P.S.  I learn on the next morning’s tour that the airport was lengthened to almost 4 km by NASA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle, just in case.  Never had to be used for that, luckily, but the Concorde supersonic jet landed there twice.

No longer barren, Rapa Nui has come back from the edge of extinction

Day 8 - Lima

My daughter stayed up and watched a movie last night, so I’m on my own this morning.  After an omelette - which seems to be the breakfast of choice in Peru - and tea in the bar, I hop in a taxi for a far-distant museum the desk clerk told me about.  He promised me Inca artifacts made of gold.  Unfortunately, I get there only to find it won’t open until 10:30, so it’s back to the hotel.  Money for nothing, but the taxi driver gives me a discount because the museum was closed.  (He may also have realized he told me it was the wrong time of day and I actually would only have had 20 minutes to wait, but...)  So the highlight of the trip turns out to be getting a glimpse of the U.S. Embassy, a true bunker - as is now the norm - near the museum.  At least I see what Lima looks like outside of downtown.

       I wake my daughter and we head off to find her a cup of coffee, back the same way as last night.  A zig to the left on a quieter street and a zag to the right and we stumble on a terrace (across from an - ugh! - Domino’s Pizza) where I enjoy a marvelous hot chocolate and she a mochaccino served by a waiter who speaks excellent English and French as well as his native Spanish.  And people-watching is fun in any city.  At one point an entire group of young people hefting huge drums walk past.  We’ll see them again later finishing up a street concert in front of a building in the restaurant district.

        Then it’s just around the corner to the Church of Santo Domingo (him again), which interests Andy because it houses the remains of St. Martin de Porres, the continent’s first black saint.  (I need to find out more about him.)  She seems to want to meditate or pray so I sit quietly and watch the people.  The old priest says mass and sometimes an old woman with henna hair sings a capella.  Her choice of repertoire is strange though for a Catholic church service.  As we step inside the church, she breaks into “Glory, glory, hallelujah” - but I don’t think it was meant for us.  Then later it was Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” with new Christian lyrics.  What a trip!

       The most fun is watching a three-year-old local girl escape her dad and go right up to the chancel area in front of the altar, which is one step raised from the rest of the stone floor.  She silently walks the entire width of the church, right foot up, left foot down, as if walking along a sidewalk curb.  Then she plops herself down on the prie-dieu on the far side of the altar.  When her mother appears beside the embarrassed father, whose frantic gestures the child has stoically ignored, the girl hops back diagonally from black marble square to black square, like the bishop on a chessboard.  I keep thinking of Christ saying, “Suffer the little children to come unto me” and I hope no one will chew her out.  No one does.

The Street of Restaurants

       After that, it’s lunch time and this time we do find The Street of Restaurants.  We look at them all, then settle on the first one, the historic one, El Cordano (1905), where all the presidents eat, living - as they do - right across the street.  Again servings are huge, and delicious. Neither of us can finish, but my breaded fried calamari are perfect. Flavorful and not heavy with oil.  No lemon required. 

St. Francis of Assisi

     We drop by the Monastery of St. Francis (of Assisi) to take a peek at the catacombs.  Unwittingly, we pay an entrance fee which turns out to involve a tour.  The guide does far better in English than I would in Spanish, but she keeps calling us “guys”.  “Guys, come!”  “Guys, look!” Her accent is thick and she hurries us along at a fast pace so the tour is pretty useless.  Still, the stucco decoration and woodwork are amazing, not to mention the library of 25,000 antique books rotting quietly away in Lima’s coastal humidity.  What a shame!

President's Palace

       The greyness of the Lima winter gets to my daughter so we head back to base camp where she sleeps it off and I pack.  Our separate flights are red-eyes (1:30 and 1:55 a.m.) and Amerigo is picking us up at 11 with his cab, so we opt for dinner in the noisy bar/restaurant of the hotel, noisy because it’s Friday night and this is the capital, but so delicious that we regret the previous night’s to-and-fro-ing on our quest for dinner.  My daughter chooses causas - a typical Peruvian starter of mashed potato and other ingredients, like little cakes - and a corn chowder; I have rice with shrimp.  And of course a pisco sour each - a small one this time - to toast the end of our week-long tour.

       We’ve seen so many beautiful landscapes and met so many kind, helpful, gentle Peruvians, especially those of the mountains.

Plaza de Armas, with Cathedral of Lima to left

Day 7 - Cuzco - Lima

Loreto Boutique Hotel shares an old colonial home with Starbucks and a hostal.

True to his word, Eugenio is at the hotel at 8 a.m.  Even before.  He carries our bags down to the cab for us - ever the gentleman - and talks us all the way to the airport for a third of the price we paid on the trip in. And then poses with me for a farewell photo.  I wish I knew how to send him a copy.
       The flight to Lima is short, but we are nonetheless served an esnaquey, as we will be on all flights taken, regardless of the hour. When we arrive, the hotel taxi I reserved is there - the first time I’ve ever done that - and the driver ends up being similar to Eugenio but minus the deep resonant voice.  Amerigo - a fitting name for tourists from the United States - also offers to drive us to our plane tomorrow, which is very convenient, given the extremely late hour of our flight!
       Lima is as grey as it was when we flew in from Miami... and like it is every winter for four months evidently. Neither my daughter nor I could live with that.  Amerigo explains during the ride that federal law requires that restored colonial buildings be painted in lively colors - turquoise, lime green, sunny yellow - to counteract the greyness. When federal law recognizes the problem, it must really be a problem!

Gran Hotel Bolivar

       The hotel is a grande dame of the 1920's, temporary home to visiting stars from Clark Gable to Mick Jagger.  We’ve been given a suite for some reason, so each of us will have a separate room, although we choose to congregate in mine, where the TV is.  It’s an old TV set, not a flat screen as it has been everywhere else, and that’s indicative of the hotel:  a grande dame but an aging one whose hall carpets are frayed and whose toilet seat has been painted to match the robin’s egg blue tiling, long out of date.

       But I get ahead of myself.  The room won’t be ready until 2 (sound familiar?), so we cross the marble foyer with the stained glass cupola overhead to the majestic bar.  Time for a pisco sour - to compare it with the others we’ve tasted.  When it comes, it’s a doozie!  The waiter seems a bit surprised the gringas would order a grande instead of a small, but hey, we’re on vacation, especially my daughter, who flies back to work in just 36 hours.  The result:  a lot of giggling after the bellboy shows us to our room... and then a two-hour nap, which sets things right.
       We change and go for a walk before night falls but fail to find the museum we’re looking for.  There are many commercial buildings and people waiting for buses, but we see no green lawns or museum-looking buildings, so we turn back.  Evidently we should have forayed on for one more long block and we would have found it.  That is part of the pattern of no-museuming that we seem to have fallen into, both in Lima and in Cuzco.  Besides, it’s getting late and we’re walking in or near a neighborhood Amerigo warned us las seňoritas shouldn’t venture into at night... and Lima does have a reputation for being rather dangerous.

     So back we go toward the hotel, then past, headed for the main Plaza de Armas.  But we’re soon stymied by closed iron gates manned by police with attack dogs.  No way through on streets to the left or the right, we find, so we go back to the hotel for a dinner suggestion, being hungry by then (no food since our esnaquey on the plane, just the pisco sour) and night is starting to darken the already gloomy sky.  The idea of bar food doesn’t appeal (more about that later) and the desk clerk’s suggestion nearby turns out to be a sports bar - at least in name - so back up the main pedestrian street we go - again!  

       This time the gates are open, the police and dogs gone.  Still, the elusive “street of restaurants” we were told about is unfindable.  Past 9 p.m. we finally settle on a small place of simple appearance (and a gynormous TV!).  My daughter gets her ceviche, me a huge plateful of rice with crayfish.  Delicious, and copious even by American standards.  It takes time to eat such a meal.  The other diners leave, table by table, the doors are locked and the lady behind the cash register comes out to sit and watch the program. Feeling bad about keeping her up, we soon pay and leave the woman to her life.
       One last walk down the pedestrian street which has become familiar, still bustling with people, to the grande dame hotel on the still-noisy Plaza San Martin.  And bed.

Plaza San Martin, with  Martin himself in the center, and the Llama Mama below him

P.S.  San Martin threw the Spanish colonists out of Peru.  A grateful nation built a large plaza in his honor, with an enormous likeness of him in the center.  But I like the smaller statue below him:  the Motherland.  Its Spanish sculptor was asked to give her a crown of flames (llamas) but somehow assumed the llama requested was the llama he knew as the emblematic animal of Peru.  So he dutifully put a small one, as requested, smack on the top of her head.  A comic misunderstanding for the translator in me, but an endearing one.

Day 6 - Aguas Calientes - Cuzco

Plaza de Armas, Aguas Calientes

During the night my brain made some unconscious executive decisions which were seconded by my cramped legs when I hobbled into the bathroom in the morning.

main street - Ave. Pachacutec

     The plan was to go back up to Machu Picchu and walk the “easy” trail up to the Sun Gate - Intipunku - the entrance to Machu Picchu from the Inca Trail.  But that takes 1½ hour up and 1 hour down.  After Ollantaytambo two days ago and then Machu Picchu yesterday I have thighs of steel - hard and rigid - and they wouldn’t make it without great discomfort to me.  Although Gloria might just have shortened our visit, given my feeling faint twice, we saw most of the site yesterday.  And the second day was always just in case of rain the first day.  Besides my daughter needs to phone her clinic at noon and I doubt if the Intipunku comes equipped with phones to call home.

The line

       Nonetheless, I head out to buy the bus tickets while my daughter sleeps.  (They only sell bus tickets on a day by day basis, not for several days in a row - don't ask me why!).  But when I come around the corner the line  is three times longer than yesterday, all the way up the river, around the corner and clean out of sight!  That becomes the determining factor, an obvious omen that I’ve made the right decision.   So instead I go over the bridge and down to the train station to see if I can change our tickets back to Cuzco on an earlier train.  When I get to the ticket window, I’m told there are just two seats left on the earliest train - another omen. That won’t get us into Cuzco early enough to visit anything, unfortunately, but we’ll get there two hours earlier, which is a good thing as we’re flying back to Lima the following day.

Aguas Calientes

       So we spend a restful morning in Aguas Calientes, whose steep streets are about all the up-and-down my thigh muscles can handle.  In one of the shops, my daughter buys me my birthday present: two pairs of silver earrings made locally, one with the Pachamama symbol and the other the Andean cross design.  Then we enjoy a lunch of sliced avocado and potato salad in the sun before rolling our bags across the bridge and through the crafts market to the station.

The "esnaque"

       Our train is the same Vistadome-type as the one from Ollantaytambo - complete with esnaque - during our reverse voyage back from near-jungle to Andean mountains and then through wild canyons.

Back along the Urubamba

       Once the sun has gone down behind the high mountains on either side and the food service is over, one of the staff puts on a multicolored costume with red scorpions embroidered on the front and dons what looks like a dog/jackal mask and starts to dance up and down the aisle to recorded Andean music, waving a red cane and teasing the ladies.
       That's followed by a fashion show by the other two employees - a man and woman obviously at least partially hired for their attractiveness.  All the articles they model can be bought.  Then dog/jackal man comes back and decides my daughter just must join in to model a poncho.  She does more than model it; she decides "in for a penny, in for a pound" and starts to dance around with him.  If he weren't wearing that mask, I'm pretty sure his face would have shown surprise and then delight.

Chachabamba

We arrive on time at the end of the line in Poroy, well outside of Cuzco.  Inside the station, taxi drivers hold up names of passengers.  None for us.  All of a sudden, a man with a burnished face asks us “Taxi?”  Tired, my daughter and I look at each other.  It’s a welcome offer. Eugenio turns out to be an ex-sociology professor who now makes more money driving cab.  Interesting conversation and adroit driving for the entire half-hour ride.
       At the hotel he offers to drive us to the airport tomorrow morning.  And then he gives me a strong birthday hug.
       We go inside and are given a choice between two rooms in two different buildings.  We choose the older, the one that shares quarters with both a Starbucks café downstairs and a youth hostel upstairs.  No wonder they want their own space, but the older rooms were cozier by far... so cozy that you could hear guests walking by and see their shadows through the curtains.
       Not that I notice for long.  Soon I'm fast asleep.

Plaza des Armas, Cuzco - Hotel Loreto on right, where it says Starbudks

P.S.  The rainbow flag - seen in the top photo - is the flag of the Andean peoples:  the Inca, Quechua and Aymara.  It's flown in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.  At the height of the 16th century, the Inca empire stretched from southern Colombia to southern Chile.  Historians say the Incas viewed the rainbow as a gift from the sun god.
       It is the official flag of Cuzco, once the Incan capital, but there is growing unhappiness at it's being mistaken for the gay pride flag, even though the Incan flag has an additional blue stripe.

Day 5 - Ollantaytambo - Aguas Calientes... and Machu Picchu!

I wake up not able to remember where I put the Machu Picchu passes.  Panic!  After a quiet scramble in the dawn light so as not to awaken my daughter, I find them safely ensconced in my purse.  Whew!
     I was woken up at 5 a.m. by the elephants in the room upstairs.  (Bare wood floors.)  They also woke us last night when they rolled in.  Now I truly know what “waiting for the other shoe to drop” means.

      After a simple breakfast, we roll our suitcases down the only well-paved street in town to the train station - mercifully downhill.  To reach the platform you have to run the gauntlet of stands on one side and hawkers on the other.  One guy even shouts, “I have your train tickets”, which is a blatant lie.  Along the tracks walk women with 20 hats piled on their heads, both arms hung with woven bags, each more colorful than the last.
     They scatter as the train arrives.  We climb the steep steps and we’re off.  The last leg of our Machu Picchu approach includes an esnaquey (a snack) and a Vistadome view of our gradual slide from Andean mountains to almost-jungle on either side, not to mention the white water Urubamba River running alongside the tracks.

Bridge over the Urubamba for the start of the Inca Trail

Line for Machu Picchu!

     I’d been told not to expect much of Aguas Calientes but I find I like it... although I wouldn’t like to live there year-round.  The train station delivers you into the huge crafts market.  We have a hard time finding the way out of the labyrinth, with no exit visible in any direction, just stall after stall after stall.  Once we finally get outside, we find the town has a bit of a “far west” feel.  No cars.  Only the buses to Machu Picchu along the river.

Wash-out

   The hotel is nearby:  modern, organized and tastefully decorated with wood everywhere.  As their check-in time is only 1 pm, which is not yet, we leave them our bags and go directly to the buses.  I stand in the long line while Andy buys the bus tickets at the office.  Finally we’re on our bouncy way up the mountain.  This road is not for the faint of heart and crews are repairing places where the edge has washed away during the rainy season.  The buses are smallish - just 29 passengers - but still they can only pass each other at certain places.

     Even before we enter the gate, we’re assailed by guides.  Of the three, we choose Gloria - or more probably Gloria chooses us.  It’s a blessed match, at least for me.  She’s old enough - probably in her late 40's - to understand my limitations.  She’s from Cuzco, where she started as a guide, then did four years on the Inca Trail (!) and now has been at Machu Picchu for ten years.  She knows the place inside out and seems to have a bit of pecking rights over the younger guides.  She chats with the older ones and helps the whistle-bearing guards keep the tourists off the grass.  In one place, a young woman from Québec steps over the rope to photograph the baby llama.  He jumps up and skitters off to mama llama.  Only five days old, he’s all legs, like a foal.  Born on August 1st, the day of Pachamama - the Earth Mother - he’s black, the Inca color of luck so he’s seen as an omen of good things and everyone is very protective of him.  Gloria yells at the Canadian before the guard can even whip out his whistle.

House of the Guardians, at entrance from Inca Trail

     It’s all so beautiful, so amazing and impressive.  Having built all this way up here.  And supplying it by trade with Cuzco via the Inca Trail.  Finding spring water elsewhere and creating an aqueduct system to bring it all the way here.  Keeping the jungle vegetation at bay and the snakes away.  Too much upkeep for the women and children when the men finally went off to war.  And so it ended.  Or so Gloria explains, and it seems logical.
     Unfortunately for me, the altitude is getting to me a bit.  I feel faint.  Maybe it’s just my being old and out of shape.  Or the heat.  Or the fact that we have no water because we read that water bottles weren’t allowed... which isn’t true any more.  Or all of the above.  Tired and out of breath, I mention muna to Gloria.  She disappears, leaving us taking photos.  When she reappears just a few minutes later, she hands me a bouquet of muna, which helps with the shortness of breath.  As the llamas have grazed all that grows naturally, she’s gone into the botanical garden and, let’s say, pruned a bit.  She keeps pulling more and more out of her pocket as we continue the second half of the tour.  A very sweet, veteran guide.  I’m sure I worried her and probably also ruined her day.
      After almost an hour standing in the bus line, we bump our perilous way back to Aguas Calientes, which lives up to its name with a hot shower, unlike in Ollantaytambo.  Then a delicious dinner included in the price of the room (but not the Peruvian red wine).  And then it’s bed, which my legs are thankful for.