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one whose hall carpets are frayed and whose toilet seat has been painted to match the robin’s egg blue tiling, long out of date.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.