(no subject)
Whoa.
Well, we're home -- sunburned and sniffly (stupid changing weather!), but overall safe and sound. I took one last day of vacation today to sleep late, catch up on my emails and things, and rest myself. Sweet Matthieu's been keeping me in hot toddies to soothe my sore throat, and we've been taking turns slathering each other with aloe. Our apartment was *not* broken into this year! Woo!
So, here's a cut for a ridiculously long-winded account of the trip, sprinkled with a few pictures!
Day 1, Sunday 19 Dec. Matthieu and I arrive at the airport at godawful-o'clock in the morning (around 5:30, I think), and are met by his sister Jaimie. We take the beach road back to where we're staying in Barranco, a neighborhood of Lima -- Jaimie's rented us a little apartment for the three days we'll spend here, and it's cute as can be. We sleep for a couple hours, get up, eat tropical fruit salad (fresh mangoes! papaya! pineapple! I'm introduced to the wonders of maracuyá!), and go on a walking tour of Miraflores, the most upscale neighborhood of Lima. The weather is beautiful; about 70 and partly cloudy. We walk for hours, and barely make it from one end of Miraflores to the other -- turns out Lima is a gargantuan beast of a city! Who knew? We stumble back to the apartment around sunset, and rest and recover for a bit before venturing back out to explore Barranco.
The main square of Barranco is mostly occupied by a tourist market selling everything from "handmade" jewelry and textiles to cheap, flashy t-shirts to coffee and bread. After crossing "puente de los suspiros" ("the bridge of sighs," which is supposed to bring you good luck if you can cross it while holding your breath), we have decidedly mediocre grilled meat at a tourist-trap restaurant for dinner. On the bright side, we're introduced to Pisco, the national drink, and to the Pisco Sour, the national cocktail. Pisco is a grape brandy (there are various types of various levels of sweetness, but mostly it tastes like fire), and the Pisco sour is made with Pisco, lime, sugar, and an egg white, shaken with ice until it's foamy. It goes down reeeeally easy, and hits you about 3 minutes after your last sip. We go back to the apartment, exhausted, and fall asleep with no problems despite the horrendous racket of the Peruvian traffic outside our window.
Day 2, Monday 20 Dec. In the morning, Jaimie needs to go to a book launch by one of her professors (about democracy in the Andes?), so Matthieu and I wander around a little park for an hour or so while she schmoozes with important political scientists. We grab a cab to the downtown area and wander around a bit playing tourists -- admiring the cathedral, government buildings, big fake Christmas tree next to the palms in the central plaza, etc. We have lunch (ceviche, potatoes with Huancaína sauce, lomo saltado, all the typical regional dishes) and decide it's too crowded downtown, and we want to go to a museum.
We get a cab to the National Museum, and find, to our horror, that everything in Peru is closed on Mondays. The Gold Museum does appear to be open, though, so we head there. It turns out to be two museums in one; one of historical weapons and armor, the other of Incan and pre-Incan gold, textiles, and pottery. It's very impressive, but I'm getting extremely tired (my leg is still sore from the previous day's excursions). We head back to Barranco after a couple of frustrating attempts to visit other tourist sites (the Incan ruins at Huaca Pucllana are also closed, dammit), and finally munch on some delicious empanadas from the corner store and wait for Matthieu and Jaimie's mom, Claudia, to arrive (her flight touches down around 9:30). We pick her up from the airport, and she's brimming with energy and enthusiasm, so Jaimie leads us to a fabulous bar in Barranco where we have amazing cocktails and delicious snacks. Again, we sleep like the dead, despite the constant racket outside.
Day 3, Tuesday 21 Dec. By the time Matthieu and I are awake, Jaimie and Claudia are already downstairs getting mani-pedis from the little salon next to the apartment entrance. I'm not crazy about them, so Matthieu and I wander down to the Barranco market. Their treatments take forever, but Matthieu and I at least have a good long time to observe the Barranco market. When they finish (it's nearly 2PM!), we hop in a cab and head to Chinatown for lunch. The Chinese food in Lima is supposed to be spectacular, since most of the Chinese immigrants came from the Szechuan province (and long enough ago that there has been substantial intermingling of the two culinary traditions). We wander around Lima a bit more, admiring the beauties of the city, and finally head back to Barranco for an afternoon siesta.
The plan was to hit the town that evening, going to a couple bars that Claudia had heard about, but not long after we left, Jaimie and Claudia with both struck with miserable stomach troubles. Turns out, the Chinese food was all delicious, but the "Bowl of Happiness" (the only thing I didn't eat, thanks to my not being a huge fan of shellfish) gave everybody horrible food poisoning. Matthieu and Jaimie and Claudia have a horrible night -- I'm totally unaffected, but can't sleep through the sounds of everyone else's misery.
Day 4, Wednesday 22 Dec. We fly to Cusco in the morning. Claudia and Jaimie are still having terrible stomach cramps, and Matthieu is white as a sheet and keeps having episodes of dizziness and faintness. He ends up lying on the airport floor for a while before we check in; our flight is delayed from 8AM until after 11, so we're certainly not pressed for time.
Once in Cusco, we're met by Jaimie's friend Nora, the travel agent who arranged our four days in the mountains for us. She brings us to Julio Castillo, who is our guide. A native speaker of Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish, Julio is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide. We pile into a minivan and head towards the Urubamba for lunch (the alpaca carpaccio was deliiiiicious), then to Ollantaytambo where we'll stay the night. Jaimie and Matthieu sleep in the van; I get Julio to teach me some Quechua. He happily obliges, amused by my enthusiasm for indigenous languages and incredulous when I tell him I'm interested in traditional fiber arts as well (but he's still happy to teach me the Quechua words for spinning, plying, etc).
We settle for the night at the Munai Tika ("beautiful flower") in Ollantaytambo, and Claudia, Jaimie, Julio, and I decide to explore the ruins of the Incan temple of the sun. The altitude is getting Claudia, so she decides not to climb the whole thing, but Jaimie and I gamely follow Julio up to the top (I'm feeling the altitude as well -- by the time we get to the Sun Door, I'm gasping like a fish and my legs are trembling).
(Looking down over Ollantaytambo from the top of the ruins)
Back to the hotel, and sleep.
Day 5, Thursday 23 Dec. Everyone's feeling a bit better, which is excellent, since we're faced with a long, winding drive up into the mountains first thing after breakfast (which, by the by, included quinoa pancakes, which are delicious. Got to try to make those sometime!). We make for Patacancha, passing many of its inhabitants in their characteristic red ponchos and shawls walking the long road toward Ollantaytambo (it's a 3-hour walk from the main community at Patacancha to Ollantaytambo, and many of them are coming from much farther away -- we met a pair of girls who had already walking 4 hours and expected to walk 3 more before they got where they were going).
At the community at Patacancha, we're greeted by Cristobal and his shy wife Fanny (neither of whom could have been much older than 20) and their adorable toddler Rodrigo. Pretty much immediately, Julio and Cristobal whisk us off for a walking tour of the fields -- all hand-plowed, mostly containing potatoes. At every turn, Julio stops to explain the different uses of this plant or that berry, and Cristobal treats us to a demonstration of rope-making.
(Yes, he's wearing a sporty windbreaker under his traditional poncho -- but no, the poncho is not just for the tourists. Literally everyone was wearing them, from the schoolchildren to the farmers up on the mountainsides.)
We finally make it back to the cluster of houses, exhausted, have a delicious lunch of trout pulled out of the stream that morning, and huddle under the alpaca blankets for a few hours' rest. It's freezing, even in the middle of the afternoon. They wake us up for the fiber demonstration (which I don't think was put on exclusively for my benefit -- it did, after all, end in us buying a good bit of their wares -- but I think it was probably extended a bit because of my enthusiasm). There were three women doing demonstrations for us: Fanny, Cristobal's wife and Rodrigo's mother, who was plying some beautiful yellow wool yarn; Doña Asunta, the master craftsman, who was weaving a gorgeous piece of cloth on a little lap-sized loom; and Gabriela, whom I never quite managed to place in terms of her family (maybe Doña Asunta's daughter? But she looked very young, maybe 8-10, and I'd have guessed that Doña Asunta's children would have been older ...), who was spinning some alpaca. At some point, Jaimie asked me to bring out my knitting, and I showed it to Doña Asunta. She seemed intrigued by my "modern style" of knitting (knitters: I was knitting socks, cuff-down, 2-at-a-time, magic loop style on a pair of Addis), and knits a row of my socks, effortlessly following the pattern without needing to be told (knitters: it was a twisted-stitch rib, and she twisted the stitches with no hesitation; she didn't seem to know how to cable, so the cable pattern on the front was confusing as can be to her, and I did have to redo that part once we'd left) but she was tickled to see the chart I was reading (never seen a charted pattern before!), and was very curious about how much I knit, how fast I knit, how much of what I was wearing I made, and how I learned to knit the way I do.
When they've shown us all we can absorb and we've bought as much of their handiwork as we can afford (I'm kicking myself for not bringing more cash -- I can only buy a fraction of what I wanted, and this is precisely where I wanted to burn my cash), they dress Matthieu and Claudia up in traditional garb for a photo-op, and then we all have coca tea and chatter and sing (Matthieu and I sing in Gaelic and Breton in exchange for a couple Quechua songs from Cristobal and Julio) until dinner time. Doña Asunta's husband (whose name I never managed to catch, darn it) has made us a spectacular dinner, and we sit drinking tea until bedtime. I sleep in jeans, shirt, sweater, jacket, mittens, hat, and three pairs of socks, huddled against Matthieu, under 7 thick alpaca blankets, and still shiver for the first couple hours I lie there. It's hard to believe it was warm and sunny in Lima two days before.
Day 6, Friday 24 Dec. Thanks to a torrential downpour during the night, there's been a landslide on the long, winding road between Patacancha and Ollantaytambo, so the van that was going to pick us up has been delayed. We're treated to a parting gift from Cristobal -- he borrows a friend's harp and sings us a couple of hymns in Quechua -- then they grab our backs, hoist them on their backs in big slings, and we all start walking towards Ollanaytambo. Before we've been walking 20 minutes, though, a car comes through: the road's been cleared. The van isn't far behind, and we say our farewells to Cristobal and our kindly cook, and head down to Ollantaytambo, giving Fanny and little Rodrigo a lift down as well so Rodrigo can have a doctor's checkup.
(Fanny and Rodrigo)
We spend an hour or so wandering the market in Ollantaytambo (meet a very sweet dog who's busily eating corn on the cob, which probably looked a bit more ridiculous than it sounds), then catch the train to Machu Picchu.
We arrive in the town of Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu, and settle into a hostel. We go to the hot springs (hence the name of the town!) for a few hours; it's lovely to sit in a hot pool under the dripping canopy of the jungle, with the dramatic mountains rising up all around you! Alas, my "no bathing suit pictures" rule meant no pictures of the hot springs, but believe me -- it was gorgeous. We got a Christmas Eve dinner in a little restaurant called "Campo Viejo" or something like that -- delicious waldorf salad, turkey, pisco sours, hot chocolate, and cake. Not very Peruvian, but very festive! And a band comes in to serenade us halfway through, so there's a little Peruvian flavor thrown in. I find a little internet cafe with international telephones, and call home for Christmas Eve; Mom and Dad seem very surprised to hear from me! Everything feels a little surreal; Christmas in the jungle really doesn't feel like Christmas when you're raised with expectations of snowmen.
Day 7, Saturday 25 Dec. We catch a 6AM bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu. It's very misty, but as the morning wears on, the mist lifts and we can see the mountains around us. The stonework is astonishing, especially in the religious section of the site. For this part, I would recommend that you take a look at the photos; I can't put it into words.
Claudia and Jaimie get really frustrated with Julio, who seems to be making up explanations for things in the hope of spicing up the tour (and/or hiding it when he didn't know the answers to our questions). Julio finally gives up on us, and Matthieu, Jaimie, and I all go climb Wayna Picchu, the higher of the two mountains immediately next to Machu Picchu. Friggin' steep is all I got to say, man -- it was brutal. Stone stairs carved into the side of the mountain. Steeeeeeep. Holy moly. But we made it! And I didn't even die.
After staggering down the side of the mountain, we rejoined Claudia, gulped down some ridiculously overpriced water, and got the bus back down to Aguas Calientes where we enjoyed roast guinea pig (warning: the photos are kinda gross, mostly because Jaimie and I were really amused by how squeamish Matthieu got about it) and the market. Most of the items were double what they'd cost in any other market, but since that's still a really good price, I ended up with a few little presents. We caught our 7:00 train to Ollantaytambo, met up with Exultacion, the driver from our first day in the Cusco area, and he drove us back to Cusco. We arrived at out beautiful, lavish hostel after 11, totally exhausted (and Matthieu's sick again), and collapse.
Day 8, Sunday 26 Dec. Up early for our flight back to Lima. Claudia's sick again, Matthieu's still shivery and faint-feeling, but they both wanted to see the Cusco handcraft market, so we see what we can see there. We get there very early -- our guess is that it probably opened at 10 or 11, and we were there around 9 -- but there are a few vendors open. I get Matthieu a hat for Christmas -- a leather cowboy-style hat, whose beauty of form is marred only by the pictures of llamas, cacti, and Machu Picchu embossed into it. He loves it anyway. We find more beautiful things for much better prices, and all wish we could stay longer -- but we have to get to the airport.
Our flight back to Lima is uneventful, but getting the rental car proves to be a gigantic pain in the butt. The man Jaimie made the arrangement with had gone on vacation leaving his mother in charge, and she proved unable to figure out anything about what was going on: even unlocking the car was a challenge. The car had no turn signal, no power steering, and some kind of trouble with its transmission, so we finally ditched them and went back to the airport to get a car from Budget; we got a brand-new, beautifully operational car with no further heartache, and headed south along the coast. Jaimie gamely braved the Lima traffic (I am still in awe of her nerve; those people are crazy), and got us safely to Pachacamac, where we finally managed to locate a securely hidden hotel, grab a pizza, and collapse into an exhausted heap. I appear to have taken not a single photo on day 8, since it was just about all airports and rental car offices (or dark), but here's Beny's in the light of the following morning, with its yard full of ducklings:
Day 9, Monday 27 Dec. We find that the Pachacamac ruins are closed on Mondays (argh!), so we head south along the coast, stopping occasionally to admire the beautiful beaches (and once to eat delicious calamari at a little seaside restaurant). We finally reach Pucusana, the fishing port that Claudia had wanted to see: it's a picturesque little place, with a port full of much-loved boats and hilly arms reaching out to encircle the bay. The roads are terrible, though, which causes some stress. We let Matthieu be the one to calm frazzled nerves and make peace, then we all go out for delicious ceviche, chupe de camarones (a traditional kind of shrimp stew), and arroz con mariscos (much like seafood paella). Our hotel is incongruously luxurious, with plasma TV, towels the size of sheets, and a spectacular view of the bay from the terrace; alas, I didn't manage to take pictures. Sorry! But here's the beach around sunset:
Day 10, Tuesday 28 Dec. We wander the fish market in the morning, wondering at the size of some of the monsters they succeeded in dragging out of those calm-looking waters, and then took off southwards towards Pisco, where the drink gets its name. We stopped for lunch at El Carmen, a fabulous little town where the inhabitants just seem to have a lot more fun than they do in most of the rest of Peru. As we walked from the parked car around the plaza, a woman started calling "Hey, handsome" to Matthieu, who was totally embarrassed and confused, not speaking any Spanish. She and Jaimie bantered back and forth a little (she called Jaimie "sister-in-law" when she learned that a) she was Matthieu's sister and b) Matthieu didn't speak any Spanish) -- it was hilarious. We had a strange - but tasty! - lunch of spicy bean and potato stew over pasta at a local restaurant (run by the woman's aunt?), and when we left, we found that a band had started playing in a corner of the plaza, and someone was setting off bottle rockets just for the fun of it. Matthieu refused to have his picture taken with his admirer (shame, too, she was gorgeous), though she probably would have been tickled by it. The whole town had a sense of fun and good humor about it that I hadn't seen anywhere else.
From there we continued south until we reached Pisco. There was a tourist agent waiting by the car as we got out, ready to offer us a hotel and a tour of the islands in the Paracas reserve (which was, actually, precisely why we were there). It took some time to find the right hotel, but we finally found one that suited, settled in, walked around town a bit, then hit up a pisco bar and tasted cocktails until we were all very giggly indeed. Small dinner at the hotel, then sleep for a very early start the next morning.
Day 11, Wednesday 29 Dec. We grab our bags and stow them in the car, then the bus arrives at 7:15 to take us to Paracas. It's a tourist trap like no other we've seen, even worse than Aguas Calientes; there are lines and lines and lines of tourists waiting to get on the little boats that tour around the islands.
In some ways, the Ballestas are a bit of a letdown; we were told that they were "mini Galapagos," and were surprised to see a couple of guano-covered rocks jutting out of the sea, swarming with seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, and boobies. The sea lions were a treat to see up close, and we did get to see some Humboldt penguins (I know, right? penguins in Peru!), but overall it was ... stinky, and covered with birds. Peruvian boobies, as it turns out, are not very interesting to look at. But we did get to see El Candelabro, an awesome drawing etched deep into the rock under the sandy slope by a pre-Incan civilization.
We came back from the boat tour, had an hour or so to grab a drink (the juices in Peru are amazing, by the way -- you order pineapple juice, and then see your waitress grab a pinapple and take it over to the blender for you! It's pretty cool). Matthieu got me a really beautiful necklace, with Peruvian turquoise stones (much greener than American turquoise), in an intricate, handmade setting. It's base metal, so it probably won't wear well, but it's beautiful. Jaimie managed to get the shopkeeper to show it to us basically by insulting his work (it was outrageous that he was selling a much less accomplished piece -- the stone glued in place -- for twice the price he ended up asking for this, his own design that we'd never see anywhere else). I'm wearing it in this shot, if you're interested :)
When we'd had as much time as we needed with the tourist traps hawking their wares, we piled back into the minibus and made for the Paracas nature reserve. Again, it was a bit of a letdown; I'd though there would be exciting wildlife, when in fact there was a desert, and most of the cool rock formations had crumbled in the last big earthquake (along with most of Pisco, incidentally). Still, the views were pretty, and we got to see a red sand beach and a whole bunch of penguins, albeit at quit a distance.
Back at Pisco, we picked up the car and headed south toward Nasca. It was something of a harrowing drive for poor Jaimie; we veered away from the coast and across the desert, which was fine, but then we had to cross some very abrupt mountains with very windy roads, all in the dark, with no street lights, behind gigantic semis who insisted on passing each other and Jaimie at very dangerous times. But we did make it to Nasca, and found a place to stay and a place to eat, and explored a little before sleeping.
Day 12, Thursday 30 Dec. The plane we were planning to take in the morning to see the Nasca lines was out of fuel (baroo?), and so we ended up driving to the lookout point and looking at them from there. They would have been much, much better viewed from the air, but with all the reports of how unsafe the planes are (and with the only company whose safety had been vouched for out of commission because it ran out of fuel), it was probably just as well. Still, they're very impressive. We start heading north again, back towards Lima, this time taking out time. We stop at Ica to visit the Tacama vineyard, the largest vineyard in Peru. They have 20 varieties of grape, and produce a number of wines and piscos. We have a short, rather uninformative tour, then a tasting, then I get some souvenirs, and we head back north.
We stop for the night at the beach town of Asia, which is packed to the brim with people who've come to celebrate New Year's Eve on the beach. We have a hard time finding a place to stay, and the place we do finally find is decidedly sub-par -- noisy, with un-blockable windows onto bright lights, no hot water, impossibly uncomfortable beds, etc -- but it was all there was. We took a walk on the beach -- the sand was lovely and soft, more powdery than at any other beach we'd seen, and covered with crabs and sunstars and other interesting nightlife.
Day 13, Friday 31 Dec. We're within an easy drive to Lima, so we spend the morning walking around Asia (getting coffee, getting fruit and cheese and olives from the supermarket for later, etc), then spend a few hours at the beach before we head off. Matthieu spends the time letting 8-foot waves crash over him; Jaimie and Claudia and I spend most of the time on the sand, though Jaimie goes in for a dip a couple times. It's cloudy and not particularly hot, but I put on 70 SPF sunscreen just in case -- and still end up with a horrible burn. It's excruciatingly painful in the few spots I missed (tops of my feet, backs of shoulders by the armpit), and poor Matthieu looks like a lobster, and probably has mild sun poisoning.
(Yes, that lump in the spray there has a 6'4" Canadian in it)
Jaimie braves the Lima traffic again, and gets us safely to the airport without a hitch (though lots of terror and stress -- seriously, have I mentioned that Lima drivers are totally freaking bonkers??). We return the car and chill at the airport for a while -- Jaimie leaves around 8 or 8:30 to meet some friends, and Claudia and Matthieu and I check to find that our flights have been delayed. Claudia's has gone from an 11-something departure time to 12:50; ours has gone from 12:30 to 3AM. ARGH. So we sit in the airport; Claudia goes through security; New Year's comes and goes, and we celebrate it on opposite sides of a crowded room -- Matthieu's trying to get dinner from the airport MacDonalds while I stay with the bags; I'm exhausted and grouchy by the time we get to security, and the jerk takes my two pairs of Addis out of my carry-on (including the one in the socks I've been working on), waggling his finger at me and admoninshing, "No possible, no possible" in his most patronizing tone of voice. Exhausted and grumpy, and having just lost $50 worth of needles and probably a day of knitting, I start to cry, and make myself cry more by feeling stupid for the idiotic thing that set me off crying. But we finally get the plane, I sleep a bit on the flight to Miami, we go through endless customs, we get our connection (they moved us to a later flight, since there was no way we'd make our original connection), and are back in our own little apartment by 7 yesterday evening.
Also, the pictures are online! Linky. Warning: there are lots.
What a whirlwind. And now, having spent hour writing this up, I'm going to spend my last evening as a free woman doing something fun. Then tomorrow, the panic starts, and you will probably not hear from me until my generals are over. See you sometime after January 19th!
Well, we're home -- sunburned and sniffly (stupid changing weather!), but overall safe and sound. I took one last day of vacation today to sleep late, catch up on my emails and things, and rest myself. Sweet Matthieu's been keeping me in hot toddies to soothe my sore throat, and we've been taking turns slathering each other with aloe. Our apartment was *not* broken into this year! Woo!
So, here's a cut for a ridiculously long-winded account of the trip, sprinkled with a few pictures!
Day 1, Sunday 19 Dec. Matthieu and I arrive at the airport at godawful-o'clock in the morning (around 5:30, I think), and are met by his sister Jaimie. We take the beach road back to where we're staying in Barranco, a neighborhood of Lima -- Jaimie's rented us a little apartment for the three days we'll spend here, and it's cute as can be. We sleep for a couple hours, get up, eat tropical fruit salad (fresh mangoes! papaya! pineapple! I'm introduced to the wonders of maracuyá!), and go on a walking tour of Miraflores, the most upscale neighborhood of Lima. The weather is beautiful; about 70 and partly cloudy. We walk for hours, and barely make it from one end of Miraflores to the other -- turns out Lima is a gargantuan beast of a city! Who knew? We stumble back to the apartment around sunset, and rest and recover for a bit before venturing back out to explore Barranco.
The main square of Barranco is mostly occupied by a tourist market selling everything from "handmade" jewelry and textiles to cheap, flashy t-shirts to coffee and bread. After crossing "puente de los suspiros" ("the bridge of sighs," which is supposed to bring you good luck if you can cross it while holding your breath), we have decidedly mediocre grilled meat at a tourist-trap restaurant for dinner. On the bright side, we're introduced to Pisco, the national drink, and to the Pisco Sour, the national cocktail. Pisco is a grape brandy (there are various types of various levels of sweetness, but mostly it tastes like fire), and the Pisco sour is made with Pisco, lime, sugar, and an egg white, shaken with ice until it's foamy. It goes down reeeeally easy, and hits you about 3 minutes after your last sip. We go back to the apartment, exhausted, and fall asleep with no problems despite the horrendous racket of the Peruvian traffic outside our window.
Day 2, Monday 20 Dec. In the morning, Jaimie needs to go to a book launch by one of her professors (about democracy in the Andes?), so Matthieu and I wander around a little park for an hour or so while she schmoozes with important political scientists. We grab a cab to the downtown area and wander around a bit playing tourists -- admiring the cathedral, government buildings, big fake Christmas tree next to the palms in the central plaza, etc. We have lunch (ceviche, potatoes with Huancaína sauce, lomo saltado, all the typical regional dishes) and decide it's too crowded downtown, and we want to go to a museum.
We get a cab to the National Museum, and find, to our horror, that everything in Peru is closed on Mondays. The Gold Museum does appear to be open, though, so we head there. It turns out to be two museums in one; one of historical weapons and armor, the other of Incan and pre-Incan gold, textiles, and pottery. It's very impressive, but I'm getting extremely tired (my leg is still sore from the previous day's excursions). We head back to Barranco after a couple of frustrating attempts to visit other tourist sites (the Incan ruins at Huaca Pucllana are also closed, dammit), and finally munch on some delicious empanadas from the corner store and wait for Matthieu and Jaimie's mom, Claudia, to arrive (her flight touches down around 9:30). We pick her up from the airport, and she's brimming with energy and enthusiasm, so Jaimie leads us to a fabulous bar in Barranco where we have amazing cocktails and delicious snacks. Again, we sleep like the dead, despite the constant racket outside.
Day 3, Tuesday 21 Dec. By the time Matthieu and I are awake, Jaimie and Claudia are already downstairs getting mani-pedis from the little salon next to the apartment entrance. I'm not crazy about them, so Matthieu and I wander down to the Barranco market. Their treatments take forever, but Matthieu and I at least have a good long time to observe the Barranco market. When they finish (it's nearly 2PM!), we hop in a cab and head to Chinatown for lunch. The Chinese food in Lima is supposed to be spectacular, since most of the Chinese immigrants came from the Szechuan province (and long enough ago that there has been substantial intermingling of the two culinary traditions). We wander around Lima a bit more, admiring the beauties of the city, and finally head back to Barranco for an afternoon siesta.
The plan was to hit the town that evening, going to a couple bars that Claudia had heard about, but not long after we left, Jaimie and Claudia with both struck with miserable stomach troubles. Turns out, the Chinese food was all delicious, but the "Bowl of Happiness" (the only thing I didn't eat, thanks to my not being a huge fan of shellfish) gave everybody horrible food poisoning. Matthieu and Jaimie and Claudia have a horrible night -- I'm totally unaffected, but can't sleep through the sounds of everyone else's misery.
Day 4, Wednesday 22 Dec. We fly to Cusco in the morning. Claudia and Jaimie are still having terrible stomach cramps, and Matthieu is white as a sheet and keeps having episodes of dizziness and faintness. He ends up lying on the airport floor for a while before we check in; our flight is delayed from 8AM until after 11, so we're certainly not pressed for time.
Once in Cusco, we're met by Jaimie's friend Nora, the travel agent who arranged our four days in the mountains for us. She brings us to Julio Castillo, who is our guide. A native speaker of Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish, Julio is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide. We pile into a minivan and head towards the Urubamba for lunch (the alpaca carpaccio was deliiiiicious), then to Ollantaytambo where we'll stay the night. Jaimie and Matthieu sleep in the van; I get Julio to teach me some Quechua. He happily obliges, amused by my enthusiasm for indigenous languages and incredulous when I tell him I'm interested in traditional fiber arts as well (but he's still happy to teach me the Quechua words for spinning, plying, etc).
We settle for the night at the Munai Tika ("beautiful flower") in Ollantaytambo, and Claudia, Jaimie, Julio, and I decide to explore the ruins of the Incan temple of the sun. The altitude is getting Claudia, so she decides not to climb the whole thing, but Jaimie and I gamely follow Julio up to the top (I'm feeling the altitude as well -- by the time we get to the Sun Door, I'm gasping like a fish and my legs are trembling).
(Looking down over Ollantaytambo from the top of the ruins)
Back to the hotel, and sleep.
Day 5, Thursday 23 Dec. Everyone's feeling a bit better, which is excellent, since we're faced with a long, winding drive up into the mountains first thing after breakfast (which, by the by, included quinoa pancakes, which are delicious. Got to try to make those sometime!). We make for Patacancha, passing many of its inhabitants in their characteristic red ponchos and shawls walking the long road toward Ollantaytambo (it's a 3-hour walk from the main community at Patacancha to Ollantaytambo, and many of them are coming from much farther away -- we met a pair of girls who had already walking 4 hours and expected to walk 3 more before they got where they were going).
At the community at Patacancha, we're greeted by Cristobal and his shy wife Fanny (neither of whom could have been much older than 20) and their adorable toddler Rodrigo. Pretty much immediately, Julio and Cristobal whisk us off for a walking tour of the fields -- all hand-plowed, mostly containing potatoes. At every turn, Julio stops to explain the different uses of this plant or that berry, and Cristobal treats us to a demonstration of rope-making.
(Yes, he's wearing a sporty windbreaker under his traditional poncho -- but no, the poncho is not just for the tourists. Literally everyone was wearing them, from the schoolchildren to the farmers up on the mountainsides.)
We finally make it back to the cluster of houses, exhausted, have a delicious lunch of trout pulled out of the stream that morning, and huddle under the alpaca blankets for a few hours' rest. It's freezing, even in the middle of the afternoon. They wake us up for the fiber demonstration (which I don't think was put on exclusively for my benefit -- it did, after all, end in us buying a good bit of their wares -- but I think it was probably extended a bit because of my enthusiasm). There were three women doing demonstrations for us: Fanny, Cristobal's wife and Rodrigo's mother, who was plying some beautiful yellow wool yarn; Doña Asunta, the master craftsman, who was weaving a gorgeous piece of cloth on a little lap-sized loom; and Gabriela, whom I never quite managed to place in terms of her family (maybe Doña Asunta's daughter? But she looked very young, maybe 8-10, and I'd have guessed that Doña Asunta's children would have been older ...), who was spinning some alpaca. At some point, Jaimie asked me to bring out my knitting, and I showed it to Doña Asunta. She seemed intrigued by my "modern style" of knitting (knitters: I was knitting socks, cuff-down, 2-at-a-time, magic loop style on a pair of Addis), and knits a row of my socks, effortlessly following the pattern without needing to be told (knitters: it was a twisted-stitch rib, and she twisted the stitches with no hesitation; she didn't seem to know how to cable, so the cable pattern on the front was confusing as can be to her, and I did have to redo that part once we'd left) but she was tickled to see the chart I was reading (never seen a charted pattern before!), and was very curious about how much I knit, how fast I knit, how much of what I was wearing I made, and how I learned to knit the way I do.
When they've shown us all we can absorb and we've bought as much of their handiwork as we can afford (I'm kicking myself for not bringing more cash -- I can only buy a fraction of what I wanted, and this is precisely where I wanted to burn my cash), they dress Matthieu and Claudia up in traditional garb for a photo-op, and then we all have coca tea and chatter and sing (Matthieu and I sing in Gaelic and Breton in exchange for a couple Quechua songs from Cristobal and Julio) until dinner time. Doña Asunta's husband (whose name I never managed to catch, darn it) has made us a spectacular dinner, and we sit drinking tea until bedtime. I sleep in jeans, shirt, sweater, jacket, mittens, hat, and three pairs of socks, huddled against Matthieu, under 7 thick alpaca blankets, and still shiver for the first couple hours I lie there. It's hard to believe it was warm and sunny in Lima two days before.
Day 6, Friday 24 Dec. Thanks to a torrential downpour during the night, there's been a landslide on the long, winding road between Patacancha and Ollantaytambo, so the van that was going to pick us up has been delayed. We're treated to a parting gift from Cristobal -- he borrows a friend's harp and sings us a couple of hymns in Quechua -- then they grab our backs, hoist them on their backs in big slings, and we all start walking towards Ollanaytambo. Before we've been walking 20 minutes, though, a car comes through: the road's been cleared. The van isn't far behind, and we say our farewells to Cristobal and our kindly cook, and head down to Ollantaytambo, giving Fanny and little Rodrigo a lift down as well so Rodrigo can have a doctor's checkup.
(Fanny and Rodrigo)
We spend an hour or so wandering the market in Ollantaytambo (meet a very sweet dog who's busily eating corn on the cob, which probably looked a bit more ridiculous than it sounds), then catch the train to Machu Picchu.
We arrive in the town of Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu, and settle into a hostel. We go to the hot springs (hence the name of the town!) for a few hours; it's lovely to sit in a hot pool under the dripping canopy of the jungle, with the dramatic mountains rising up all around you! Alas, my "no bathing suit pictures" rule meant no pictures of the hot springs, but believe me -- it was gorgeous. We got a Christmas Eve dinner in a little restaurant called "Campo Viejo" or something like that -- delicious waldorf salad, turkey, pisco sours, hot chocolate, and cake. Not very Peruvian, but very festive! And a band comes in to serenade us halfway through, so there's a little Peruvian flavor thrown in. I find a little internet cafe with international telephones, and call home for Christmas Eve; Mom and Dad seem very surprised to hear from me! Everything feels a little surreal; Christmas in the jungle really doesn't feel like Christmas when you're raised with expectations of snowmen.
Day 7, Saturday 25 Dec. We catch a 6AM bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu. It's very misty, but as the morning wears on, the mist lifts and we can see the mountains around us. The stonework is astonishing, especially in the religious section of the site. For this part, I would recommend that you take a look at the photos; I can't put it into words.
Claudia and Jaimie get really frustrated with Julio, who seems to be making up explanations for things in the hope of spicing up the tour (and/or hiding it when he didn't know the answers to our questions). Julio finally gives up on us, and Matthieu, Jaimie, and I all go climb Wayna Picchu, the higher of the two mountains immediately next to Machu Picchu. Friggin' steep is all I got to say, man -- it was brutal. Stone stairs carved into the side of the mountain. Steeeeeeep. Holy moly. But we made it! And I didn't even die.
After staggering down the side of the mountain, we rejoined Claudia, gulped down some ridiculously overpriced water, and got the bus back down to Aguas Calientes where we enjoyed roast guinea pig (warning: the photos are kinda gross, mostly because Jaimie and I were really amused by how squeamish Matthieu got about it) and the market. Most of the items were double what they'd cost in any other market, but since that's still a really good price, I ended up with a few little presents. We caught our 7:00 train to Ollantaytambo, met up with Exultacion, the driver from our first day in the Cusco area, and he drove us back to Cusco. We arrived at out beautiful, lavish hostel after 11, totally exhausted (and Matthieu's sick again), and collapse.
Day 8, Sunday 26 Dec. Up early for our flight back to Lima. Claudia's sick again, Matthieu's still shivery and faint-feeling, but they both wanted to see the Cusco handcraft market, so we see what we can see there. We get there very early -- our guess is that it probably opened at 10 or 11, and we were there around 9 -- but there are a few vendors open. I get Matthieu a hat for Christmas -- a leather cowboy-style hat, whose beauty of form is marred only by the pictures of llamas, cacti, and Machu Picchu embossed into it. He loves it anyway. We find more beautiful things for much better prices, and all wish we could stay longer -- but we have to get to the airport.
Our flight back to Lima is uneventful, but getting the rental car proves to be a gigantic pain in the butt. The man Jaimie made the arrangement with had gone on vacation leaving his mother in charge, and she proved unable to figure out anything about what was going on: even unlocking the car was a challenge. The car had no turn signal, no power steering, and some kind of trouble with its transmission, so we finally ditched them and went back to the airport to get a car from Budget; we got a brand-new, beautifully operational car with no further heartache, and headed south along the coast. Jaimie gamely braved the Lima traffic (I am still in awe of her nerve; those people are crazy), and got us safely to Pachacamac, where we finally managed to locate a securely hidden hotel, grab a pizza, and collapse into an exhausted heap. I appear to have taken not a single photo on day 8, since it was just about all airports and rental car offices (or dark), but here's Beny's in the light of the following morning, with its yard full of ducklings:
Day 9, Monday 27 Dec. We find that the Pachacamac ruins are closed on Mondays (argh!), so we head south along the coast, stopping occasionally to admire the beautiful beaches (and once to eat delicious calamari at a little seaside restaurant). We finally reach Pucusana, the fishing port that Claudia had wanted to see: it's a picturesque little place, with a port full of much-loved boats and hilly arms reaching out to encircle the bay. The roads are terrible, though, which causes some stress. We let Matthieu be the one to calm frazzled nerves and make peace, then we all go out for delicious ceviche, chupe de camarones (a traditional kind of shrimp stew), and arroz con mariscos (much like seafood paella). Our hotel is incongruously luxurious, with plasma TV, towels the size of sheets, and a spectacular view of the bay from the terrace; alas, I didn't manage to take pictures. Sorry! But here's the beach around sunset:
Day 10, Tuesday 28 Dec. We wander the fish market in the morning, wondering at the size of some of the monsters they succeeded in dragging out of those calm-looking waters, and then took off southwards towards Pisco, where the drink gets its name. We stopped for lunch at El Carmen, a fabulous little town where the inhabitants just seem to have a lot more fun than they do in most of the rest of Peru. As we walked from the parked car around the plaza, a woman started calling "Hey, handsome" to Matthieu, who was totally embarrassed and confused, not speaking any Spanish. She and Jaimie bantered back and forth a little (she called Jaimie "sister-in-law" when she learned that a) she was Matthieu's sister and b) Matthieu didn't speak any Spanish) -- it was hilarious. We had a strange - but tasty! - lunch of spicy bean and potato stew over pasta at a local restaurant (run by the woman's aunt?), and when we left, we found that a band had started playing in a corner of the plaza, and someone was setting off bottle rockets just for the fun of it. Matthieu refused to have his picture taken with his admirer (shame, too, she was gorgeous), though she probably would have been tickled by it. The whole town had a sense of fun and good humor about it that I hadn't seen anywhere else.
From there we continued south until we reached Pisco. There was a tourist agent waiting by the car as we got out, ready to offer us a hotel and a tour of the islands in the Paracas reserve (which was, actually, precisely why we were there). It took some time to find the right hotel, but we finally found one that suited, settled in, walked around town a bit, then hit up a pisco bar and tasted cocktails until we were all very giggly indeed. Small dinner at the hotel, then sleep for a very early start the next morning.
Day 11, Wednesday 29 Dec. We grab our bags and stow them in the car, then the bus arrives at 7:15 to take us to Paracas. It's a tourist trap like no other we've seen, even worse than Aguas Calientes; there are lines and lines and lines of tourists waiting to get on the little boats that tour around the islands.
In some ways, the Ballestas are a bit of a letdown; we were told that they were "mini Galapagos," and were surprised to see a couple of guano-covered rocks jutting out of the sea, swarming with seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, and boobies. The sea lions were a treat to see up close, and we did get to see some Humboldt penguins (I know, right? penguins in Peru!), but overall it was ... stinky, and covered with birds. Peruvian boobies, as it turns out, are not very interesting to look at. But we did get to see El Candelabro, an awesome drawing etched deep into the rock under the sandy slope by a pre-Incan civilization.
We came back from the boat tour, had an hour or so to grab a drink (the juices in Peru are amazing, by the way -- you order pineapple juice, and then see your waitress grab a pinapple and take it over to the blender for you! It's pretty cool). Matthieu got me a really beautiful necklace, with Peruvian turquoise stones (much greener than American turquoise), in an intricate, handmade setting. It's base metal, so it probably won't wear well, but it's beautiful. Jaimie managed to get the shopkeeper to show it to us basically by insulting his work (it was outrageous that he was selling a much less accomplished piece -- the stone glued in place -- for twice the price he ended up asking for this, his own design that we'd never see anywhere else). I'm wearing it in this shot, if you're interested :)
When we'd had as much time as we needed with the tourist traps hawking their wares, we piled back into the minibus and made for the Paracas nature reserve. Again, it was a bit of a letdown; I'd though there would be exciting wildlife, when in fact there was a desert, and most of the cool rock formations had crumbled in the last big earthquake (along with most of Pisco, incidentally). Still, the views were pretty, and we got to see a red sand beach and a whole bunch of penguins, albeit at quit a distance.
Back at Pisco, we picked up the car and headed south toward Nasca. It was something of a harrowing drive for poor Jaimie; we veered away from the coast and across the desert, which was fine, but then we had to cross some very abrupt mountains with very windy roads, all in the dark, with no street lights, behind gigantic semis who insisted on passing each other and Jaimie at very dangerous times. But we did make it to Nasca, and found a place to stay and a place to eat, and explored a little before sleeping.
Day 12, Thursday 30 Dec. The plane we were planning to take in the morning to see the Nasca lines was out of fuel (baroo?), and so we ended up driving to the lookout point and looking at them from there. They would have been much, much better viewed from the air, but with all the reports of how unsafe the planes are (and with the only company whose safety had been vouched for out of commission because it ran out of fuel), it was probably just as well. Still, they're very impressive. We start heading north again, back towards Lima, this time taking out time. We stop at Ica to visit the Tacama vineyard, the largest vineyard in Peru. They have 20 varieties of grape, and produce a number of wines and piscos. We have a short, rather uninformative tour, then a tasting, then I get some souvenirs, and we head back north.
We stop for the night at the beach town of Asia, which is packed to the brim with people who've come to celebrate New Year's Eve on the beach. We have a hard time finding a place to stay, and the place we do finally find is decidedly sub-par -- noisy, with un-blockable windows onto bright lights, no hot water, impossibly uncomfortable beds, etc -- but it was all there was. We took a walk on the beach -- the sand was lovely and soft, more powdery than at any other beach we'd seen, and covered with crabs and sunstars and other interesting nightlife.
Day 13, Friday 31 Dec. We're within an easy drive to Lima, so we spend the morning walking around Asia (getting coffee, getting fruit and cheese and olives from the supermarket for later, etc), then spend a few hours at the beach before we head off. Matthieu spends the time letting 8-foot waves crash over him; Jaimie and Claudia and I spend most of the time on the sand, though Jaimie goes in for a dip a couple times. It's cloudy and not particularly hot, but I put on 70 SPF sunscreen just in case -- and still end up with a horrible burn. It's excruciatingly painful in the few spots I missed (tops of my feet, backs of shoulders by the armpit), and poor Matthieu looks like a lobster, and probably has mild sun poisoning.
(Yes, that lump in the spray there has a 6'4" Canadian in it)
Jaimie braves the Lima traffic again, and gets us safely to the airport without a hitch (though lots of terror and stress -- seriously, have I mentioned that Lima drivers are totally freaking bonkers??). We return the car and chill at the airport for a while -- Jaimie leaves around 8 or 8:30 to meet some friends, and Claudia and Matthieu and I check to find that our flights have been delayed. Claudia's has gone from an 11-something departure time to 12:50; ours has gone from 12:30 to 3AM. ARGH. So we sit in the airport; Claudia goes through security; New Year's comes and goes, and we celebrate it on opposite sides of a crowded room -- Matthieu's trying to get dinner from the airport MacDonalds while I stay with the bags; I'm exhausted and grouchy by the time we get to security, and the jerk takes my two pairs of Addis out of my carry-on (including the one in the socks I've been working on), waggling his finger at me and admoninshing, "No possible, no possible" in his most patronizing tone of voice. Exhausted and grumpy, and having just lost $50 worth of needles and probably a day of knitting, I start to cry, and make myself cry more by feeling stupid for the idiotic thing that set me off crying. But we finally get the plane, I sleep a bit on the flight to Miami, we go through endless customs, we get our connection (they moved us to a later flight, since there was no way we'd make our original connection), and are back in our own little apartment by 7 yesterday evening.
Also, the pictures are online! Linky. Warning: there are lots.
What a whirlwind. And now, having spent hour writing this up, I'm going to spend my last evening as a free woman doing something fun. Then tomorrow, the panic starts, and you will probably not hear from me until my generals are over. See you sometime after January 19th!