Eating our way around the world

After all the crazy things we’ve eaten in the past few months, we’re both really ready to get home and eat some “normal food”.  Top of the craving list: apples and cheese, and easy access to Starbucks.

But we also have really enjoyed the great variety and quality of foods we’ve had a chance to taste around the world.  Food can often be an important reflection of the places and cultures you visit and this trip has been no exception.  Plus, it’s yummy.  Well, sometimes yummy.

The foods we remember most:

• Antarctica: The chefs on the Orlova did quite an impressive job – and we’re still in wonder how we could still be eating quality produce up until the last day of our 19 days at sea.  The chefs would do multi-course meals with at least three different main course options each day and even the most finicky eater could reliably find something they liked.  The bartender served drinks with glacial ice (yes, really).  But the pastry chef was probably the most out of control.  Beautifully presented, delicious desserts were on hand after both lunch and dinner – and don’t forget the platefuls of dainties at teatime.  I’m surprised the ship could stay afloat with all the weight gain of the passengers.

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• Argentina: This place is famous for its steak of course, so we certainly had our share.  But probably the best thing we had in Argentina (well, apart from the gelato of course 🙂 ) was the empanadas they served at our hotel in Ushuaia.  If you ever find yourself in the southernmost city in the world, you’ve gotta stop by the Hotel Albatross and taste these… while you ponder how lucky you are to be in such a cool place. 
  
  
  

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• Peru: Before my mom asks, no we did not eat the guinea pigs Anthony Bordain talked about in Peru – but it was pretty easy to find, as was llama and alpaca.  What we did eat was a LOT of lomito saltado – sautéed steak and veggies over rice.  I’ve also eaten a lot of lomito saltado at the Copacabana restaurant at Pike Place Market in Seattle and I had been a bit worried whether the “real thing” would be as good.  It was – and even thinking of it now is making me drool.  If you aren’t able to make it to Peru anytime soon, you should hit the Copacabana so you know what I’m talking about.  But if you’re looking for some coca tea to go with it, you’re gonna have to catch a flight – ‘cause it ain’t legal in the States. 

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• Ecuador: Quito = McDonald’s (sadly), so all we have to report is that the names of the food might be a little different but it’s otherwise same same.  So, for Ecuador, really the only memorable food we had was in Galapagos and most of the good options were seafood.  But what stands out the most for us was a restaurant called Red Mangrove Inn in Puerto Ayora that had good sushi and a chicken teriyaki that would blow your mind.  Plus the place has a great view and vibe.  Highly recommend it.  You should also check out the soda they have in Ecuador – Fiori Vanti – tastes like a Shirley Temple.  Yum.

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• Brazil: Again, they like their steak here.  And it’s good – though I do notice that both Brazilians and Argentineans tend to overcook their steaks to my personal liking.  I’m more a medium rare kind of girl and everything I got there was very well done.  But I love steak about as much as they do, so I was happy no matter how I got it.  I also enjoyed plenty of caipirinhas and caipivodkas (vodka instead of cachaça) to wash it down.  When in Brazil, I always say… 
  

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• Cambodia and Thailand: Both countries serve pretty similar food (although only in Cambodia did we see snake, kangaroo and crocodile on one menu).  Great fresh fruit everywhere (also true in much of South America) has deepened my passion for mango along with crazy Asian fruits you don’t see anywhere else, like dragonfruit which has a very light but refreshing flavor and is the prettiest/most interesting looking fruit I’ve ever seen.  As for the rest of the food, for awhile I was mixing things up between Phad Thais, cashew chickens, and curries of every color of the rainbow… but now I’ve settled into nearly a curry-only existence.  And it’s a pretty happy existence I must say.

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Thailand:

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After all that variety, our stomachs are pretty much entirely confused.  And, thanks to a steady three (plus) meal a day schedule, about ten pounds heavier.  If just for that reason, it’ll be good to get back to Seattle… 

So we can go back out and eat Thai and South American food there in the cold and rainy comfort of home. 🙂

Wrap up from South America and Antarctica

We’ve had a few days at home to hang out at home and relax, I also got the chance to do an inventory of a couple of things that will be really boring to all of you, but really interesting to me when I read look back in 20 years. So here are some odds and ends, and I think the last post we’ll do from South America and Antarctica (although I may have promised that before).

Here are some stats that I find interesting:

• Photos taken: almost exactly 20,000, which is 434 per day on average. The max day was around 1300, and there were a few days we took none.
• Total miles travelled: 29,568 (25,891 on 15 separate plane flights, 3682 on boat, 64 on train). So basically, a little more than once around the world.
• Total flights: 15
• Books read: 22
• Total trip: 46 days

Overall, the book reader turned out to be a great investment. I took about 100 books with me, 40 classics (they give you 100 free classics when you buy the reader) and about 60 fiction – mostly sci fi since that’s my light reading. It was great to have the luxury of picking and choosing what I felt like reading, and it was great to have “all 100 books” be smaller than a paperback. Here are the books I read over the 46 days we were gone. I’m sure I’ll be interested to look at this list 20 years from now to see if my tastes have changed.

• The Mocking Program, by Alan Dean Foster
• Barrett’s Privateers, by Anderson Gentry
• The Crider Chronicles, by Anderson Gentry
• The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allen Poe
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Man Who Knew Too Much, by G. K. Chesterton
• 1984, by George Orwell
• The Battle of the Hammer Worlds, by Graham Sharp Paul
• Helfort’s War: Book 1, by Graham Sharp Paul
• At Grave’s End, by Jeaniene Frost
• Halfway to the Grave, by Jeaniene Frost
• One Foot in the Grave, by Jeaniene Frost
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
• Inferno, by Larry Niven
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain
• Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
• The Communist Manifesto
• Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
• Puck of Pook’s Hill, by Rudyard Kipling
• Geodesica Ascent, by Sean Williams and Shane Dix
• Earth Ascendant, by Sean Williams
• Saturn Returns, by Sean Williams

I do have 2 gripes with the book reader. The first is tough to fix – the one place we really didn’t take the readers is the beach. Taking a sensitive electronic device to a sandy, wet location just seemed like a bad idea. And yet, reading on the beach is divine. So, somebody needs to come up with a waterproof case for these suckers.

The second gripe was more annoying and is so easily fixable. The books don’t have abstracts. The problem with having 100 books on the reader is that I don’t recall exactly what each book is about. With real-world books, when I’m choosing the first thing I do is flip them over and read the abstract. It turns out this is an enormously useful feature. And yet, somehow in the digitization of the books, they didn’t copy the abstract. I don’t get it.

We also kept on thinking of random memories that we forgot to write about. So we started a list and here are a collection of random events in no particular order through the trip that gave us a chuckle.

• Rio: Having the locals speak louder and slower when we don’t understand Portuguese. I guess it doesn’t occur to them that we speak NO Portuguese. Turnabout is fair play I guess.
• Aguas Calientes: Having the power, to the whole town (!), go out for several hours because "it was raining." Delivered from the lady at the front desk as if that was a fine reason in an area where it rains all the time.
• Galapagos and Buzios: Asking how late the pool was open. The answer? 24 hours, and a stare like I’m a crazy person.
• Orlova: 24 hour tea and coffee in the lounge. Coffee so bad it was barely drinkable, so I only drank several cups a day.
• Magic Ball: Sam taking a photo of well-built, scantily clad men in costume, then turning to Eric and saying "I’m sorry honey, I was thinking of you the whole time." Eric replies, "I’m sorry, what? I was looking at girls."
• Galapagos: Sam wishing for a swift death in the 100 degree heat with no water at Darwin national park, where the concession stand closes from 12-3pm. We arrived at – you guessed it – 12:10pm.
• Galapagos: Sam cursing the God responsible for ensuring that every popsicle stand have change for $10, right outside of Darwin National Park. They even tortured her by letting her hold the popsicle, and then have to get it back.
• Galapagos: Walking back from Tortuga Bay joking about how we might see a bear-cat, and then seeing one on the side of the path.
• Cusco: Enjoying our meal (lomo saltado for Sam, something that tasted good but looked like vomit for me) at the Inka restaurant in the main square in Cusco.
• Galapagos: British traveler Martin, telling the tale of a bear-cat climbing into his sleeping bag while he slept somewhere jungle-y that I’ve forgotten.
• Cusco: The little girl who wanted to sell us gum. She was super cute. When we said no, she stuck her thumb on her nose and wiggled her fingers, smiling, and said “nice to meet you machu picchu" and ran away.
• Orlova: Day 2. Outbreak suspected to be the Nora virus. Luckily, the Doc and staff quarantined the sick and took extra measured and nobody else caught it. It was a great excuse to 1) not to touch other people and 2) learn how to walk in rolling seas without touching the handrail.

Cat Reunion

We’re back at home now for a few days before we head to Asia and the stunt doubles are very happy to be reunited with their doppelgangers. 

After a few minutes of sniffing each other, the doubles spent a good long while regaling Jake and Elwood with stories of their adventures.  As you can see from the pic on the right below, Jake in particular was interested in hearing about all the penguins… they sounded like they’d be a yummy snack, and he was disappointed that neither of the stunt doubles thought to bring him leftovers. 

 

While Jake and Elwood were enjoying their time with my mom at home these past six weeks, their stunt doubles really got to see a lot of the world in the past couple of months.  Here are some of the highlights of their time abroad…

First there was the three week Antarctica cruise, where they never once got seasick.

They had a great time in the Falklands, crawling on the cannons and boats outside of the Stanley museum and making some friends around town.

Then it was off to South Georgia.  Here they are hunting 200,000 penguins.  Outnumbered or no, I guess they figured they could get a few penguins before the colony could retaliate.  Poor penguins.

Finally, they hit Antarctica – the third continent they’ve visited.  They were there too when Eric and I got engaged, so they were the first to scope out the ring.

Then it was back to Ushuaia and time to say one final goodbye to the Orlova.

After all the penguin parties in Antarctica, the doubles were pretty tired, so once they made it to Buenos Aires they (and we) spent most of the time chillin’ in the room and resting up.  And, just like their twins at home, they hog the bed like you wouldn’t believe.

All that rest was needed though, because once they got to Peru, they were busy!  On the left below, the cats are hanging out on the deck of our Cusco hotel room looking down at the zillions of dogs going by and deciding they were outnumbered and glad they were only stuck overnight in “Dogtown”.  Once we got to Aguas Calientes though, they had a great time hiking Machu Picchu all the way to the Sun Gate (center) and dominating the sign at the top.  One day they got a little homesick apparently tho, so the maids made a little towel double of Solomon for them – with the puppy taking all the foot room and the cats bogarting the pillows just like at home(right). 

Then it was on to Galapagos and boy were they excited!  They’d heard all about Darwin’s finches and couldn’t wait to find out what other tasty treats might be on the menu.  First they just hung around the pool…

…but it didn’t take long.  Eventually we caught them hunting ducks and who knows what other trouble they got into when we weren’t around.  

 

Neither of them will fess up about what they ate, but they both looked pretty fat and happy at the airport when we were leaving for Brazil.  Bad kitties!

In Buzios we spent a lot of time just chilling out on secluded beaches and Jake and Elwood worked on their tans.  I’m not sure Elwood’s supposed to be drinking that beer though – he’s not exactly of age.  Unless they’re counting in cat years.

Then it was off to Rio for one last partyfest before going home. 

All in all, the stunt doubles – and we – had a great adventure.  But it’s time to get ready for the next one.  The real Jake and Elwood are staying home again – Jake because he’s got to get knee surgery (poor kitty) and Elwood because he’s looking forward to having the house to himself – so looks like their stunt doubles get to have more adventures on their behalf. 

The birds in Asia better get ready.  (Which reminds me… I hope stuffed animals can’t catch bird flu.)

Back to the land of the vampires

We’re in Miami now, with a 5 hour connection before catching our final flight home to Seattle. After 6 weeks travelling in South America, you translucent people in Seattle are likely to be scary. Seriously. Go get yourself a sunlamp or something.

We’ll be home for just over 7 days, we leave on Friday, March 6th for 2 days in the very exotic Kansas City to see my Swedish brother Peter, and then immediately on to Cambodia and Thailand for almost a month. So probably no posts for the next week or so, but we’ll likely pick up again from somewhere in Asia (between bowls of tom yum gai).

Sam and I are both suckers for our pets, and have missed Jake, Elwood and Solomon while we’ve been gone. It’s been 46 days since we left Seattle, and that’s a long time to be away from home and loved ones. And how could you resist with pets this cute?  So if you’re wondering what we’ll be up to while we’re home, it’s getting covered in pet fur and being completely happy about it…

 

On the left is little Jake, just a hair over 20 lbs. In the middle is Solomon, 80 lbs and all love. On the right is the boss of the house, Elwood, a svelte 17 or 18 lbs.

I think I’m almost as excited to drive my car (assuming it starts). And to actually feed myself. Being served in restaurants is nice… but gets really old after over 100 meals.

More after the break.

Infestations

I’ve been doing some reflections on all the various places we’ve visited on this trip, and after Eric’s remark on Machu Picchu being infested with llamas, it occurs to me that each place we’ve visited had its own unique infestations.  And each gives you a feel for the place, in its own way.

So, if you were ever thinking about going some of these places and were looking for the short version of what you’ll see, here you go:

• The Falklands: Penguins
• South Georgia: Penguins and fur seals
• Antarctica: Icebergs and whales
• Buenos Aires: Tango dancers
• Cusco: Dogs.  (I actually think I saw more dogs in Cusco than all the dogs added up that I’ve seen in my entire life.  In a given single line of sight, you could easily see eight dogs at once – all of varying breeds, from average mutts to dalmatians to mastiffs to those little English “kick me” dogs.  At first, I thought our hotel had been on some sort of dog highway until I realized the whole place was like that.)
• Aguas Calientes: Kids.  They run wild there.  Always at either top speed or full halt – never in between.
• Machu Picchu: Llamas (duh), negotiating their steps over ruins.
• Quito: McDonalds and KFC (sadly).
• Galapagos: Lizards.  Especially iguanas.
• Buzios: Beaches (over two dozen of them), buggies and itty-bitty Brazilian bikinis.
• Rio: People.  Beautiful people.  Crazy people.  People!!  And while it’s probably especially that way during Carnaval, I get the sense it’s pretty much always like this.  Check out these shots of Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches and you’ll get a sense… Sitting on the beach, we kept thinking that it must be how a penguin must feel in the middle of a South Georgian rookery.

Aguas Calientes a.k.a. Machu Picchu Pueblo

So we’ve talked a bunch about Machu Picchu, but neglected to talk about the town of Machu Picchu. Technically, it’s called Machu Picchu Pueblo, but it’s known colloquially as Aguas Calientes, for the natural hot springs that are found right outside town.

It is a small town of about 1600 people, and nearly 100% supported by tourism. What I didn’t expect was to be charmed by the town itself. It certainly wasn’t the architecture. Like most of Peru that we saw, architecture seems to be a cross between ramshackle and ghetto. Many buildings are unfinished, it’s quite common to see the top floor incomplete on an otherwise finished building. I thought this was just a “pay as you go” strategy for building, but our guide Ali said that you don’t have to pay tax on an unfinished building, so lots of people try to duck their tax bills with this strategy.

There is no road to the town, so *everything* has to come by train. Even the buses (medium size “greyhound” type buses) that take you up to Machu Picchu came on the train – although our guide said that they had to take the wheels off the buses to get them through the tunnels. You see this also in the architecture of the town. No building materials are wider than about 6 feet. So there are lots of 6 foot by 8 foot sections of corrugated metal.

The people and the landscape certainly help. The people are charming, extraordinarily polite (we found this in Cusco too) and even when they are bugging you to buy something, they are nice. The landscape is striking. The town is this little gem tucked away in a tiny valley with 4 striking peaks jutting out of the land. These aren’t like mountains at home, no foothills, no hesitation, just several thousand feet of rock rushing towards the sky. I have no good pictures that capture this, but here are a couple that try.

The market is extensive. Close to 100 little stalls. There is lots of overlap between what they sell, but a ton of variety still. This is the only place we’ve really felt tempted to buy souvenirs. We each bought a couple of beautiful hand-woven alpaca sweaters and a scarf. No souvenirs produced in china and shipped here (yet). Sam has developed the interesting habit of paying more than the asking price for everything she buys. It’s funny. To be fair, the stuff is cheap. A nice sweater is 25, and a beautiful scarf is 8. Next time you see Sam if you notice that one of her arms is much more muscular than the other, that’s just from carrying her bag stuffed full of souvenirs. Don’t tease her about it, she’s sensitive.

And finally, the kids. Little kids are everywhere. They hang out with their parents wherever their parents are – at the craft market, at small shops, at restaurants. (I guess it’s summer and school is out). The kids of the town seem to have 2 speeds. They are either stopped or they are running full speed (or riding little big wheel toys) down the slopes of the town (it is quite hilly). Nothing in between. And they are beautiful. Many of the Peruvian people we saw were quite striking, and the kids more so. We didn’t really get any great pictures of the kids, as that’s kind of creepy.

There were so many we thought about just taking a couple home, along with the baby fur seal, penguin chick, llama and bear cub that we are already smuggling in our luggage. If only we’d thought to bring an extra blank passport along…

Here are some more pictures of Aguas Calientes…

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Hector and Esmeralda

Machu Picchu was amazing, as Eric has already well described.  It’s also, as he mentioned (and to my utter joy) “infested” with llamas.  They were everywhere and practically unfazed by either the annoying tourists or crazy staircases and terraces they had to climb to get around.

But our favorites will have to be from our last day on the mountain, where we met a mother and baby llama who we’ve since named Esmeralda and Hector (though, to be fair, it’s *possible* Hector could be a girl).  Hector was not the only baby llama we’d seen in Machu Picchu, but he was special…

He was one day old.

He was so unbelievably cute and wobbly, unsure of his steps and having to follow his mom’s lead through some daring steps and jumps. Perhaps the only thing better than getting to see this little guy was knowing that we were there in Machu Picchu when he was born. 

This means that in the years ahead, we’ll know there is a llama somewhere out there that is the exact age of our first trip to Machu Picchu.  Hope we get to meet him again one day.  🙂

Here are a couple pics of our friends Hector and Esmeralda…

 

 

Bears!

For all you Stephen Colbert fans out there, you probably know bears are the number one threat to America.  But someone should probably let Stephen know they’re here in South America too.  In fact, not only are there bears in South America, but they are actually here in our hotel in Aguas Calientes… though they seem to pose no notable threat to anyone, unless you are a watermelon.

The hotel we are staying at is called Inkaterra Machu Picchu, and it is very fancy.  So fancy that although it is right alongside town and the train station, it’s so well situated and designed it’s like living in a spa set in 12 acres of jungle for a few days. 

  

The grounds here are so extensive that they actually hold a variety of complimentary hour-or-more nature walks where you can see 372 species of orchids (including some that were new to science when found here), 377 butterfly species (as I write this, there is a beautiful purple butterfly flitting around outside the window), 180 bird species (with 18 different hummingbirds found here alone), a tea plantation (which furnishes all the tea served at the hotel), and…

…BEARS!!

South America has only one surviving bear species native to the continent.  The Spectacled Bear (also known as the Andean Bear) can be found mostly in the northwestern part of South America and is believed to have been able to survive mostly due to their ability to climb even the tallest trees of the Andes.  But the species is considered threatened.

As such, they have a Spectacled Bear conservation project here on the grounds of the hotel.  The Inka Terra Association (ITA) and the Peruvian National Institute of Natural Resources (INRENA) manage the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Spectacled Bear Project, an effort designed to recover bears that have been negatively affected by human impact and reintroduce them into their natural habitat. 

They essentially use a three step process for rehabilitation:

1. Captivity – to make sure the bears can recover, feel safe, get healthy, etc.  The bears are kept in cages but definitely good conditions and they begin to re-learn how, for lack of a better word, to be a bear.  For instance, their food is placed in ways intended to help them learn (or re-learn) where they might find food in the wild.
2. Semi-Captivity – If a bear is doing well and showing signs of progress in captivity, they will slowly and intermittently start introducing them into semi-captivity.  This means they’re in a big, wide space to roam around in but still fenced in so they can be observed for their performance.  If they struggle, they can go back to captivity for awhile and they will try again later.
3. Release to the wild – If the bear is showing good signs of success in semi-captivity, eventually they are given a tracking chip and then set free.

The program is on a small scale right now, but has already clearly made a big impact on the three bears that have been here.  One, a female named Paula who had been found in a town outside of Cusco called Abancay, has already been rehabilitated and successfully reintroduced to the wild.  (They set her free once they saw her in semi-captivity trying to dig her way out under the fence and figured she was probably ready. 🙂 )  They even believe she has been spotted since her release in the mountainsides near the hotel – with a cub of her own.

While Paula was here, they had tried to have her mate with the other male that was onsite at the time named Yogi, but apparently he wasn’t her type (probably too young).  Apparently she must have found some other stud somewhere in the wild, that little minx.

Yogi’s rehabilitation, however, continues.  He was found kept in a small cage by some Andean villagers in a small village outside of Machu Picchu – villagers who I was told may have been well intentioned, but were very poor themselves and had no way of knowing how to take care of the bear.  In the documentary, Paddington Bear: The Early Years, British actor Stephen Fry bartered with the villagers to have the bear released and it was taken to Machu Picchu.  Yogi was in pretty rough shape when he got to the place – very scared of just about everything, which is not good for a bear to be in the wild.  But, over time, he has been doing pretty well and they are quite optimistic that he will be able to be released. 

Here’s Yogi, going to town on some grapes and oranges…

 

Pepe, sadly, might be another story.  Pepe arrived here after Paula had been released already and had been sent here from a zoo in Cusco where he’d been kept in poor conditions, stuck in the same cage with a bunch of other male bears.  Male bears can’t be kept together like that – they will maul each other – and Pepe’s got a broken nose to prove it.  He’s clearly in better conditions now, but they haven’t had the success yet with him in semi-captivity that they were hoping for and while they will keep trying, they believe he may have to stay in captivity forever. 

It’s a sad thing to be sure, but that said, he seemed quite contented in his ‘captivity’ while we were there… The guide had told us that they often call these bears “English gentlemen” because of how gently and neatly they eat.  And if you look at the videos of Yogi eating his little grapes one by one, you can see why.  But apparently Pepe must have gotten his English gentleman training at an English pub, because he had his face PLANTED in a watermelon nearly the entire time.  I’m pretty sure in the second pic below, he was asking a waiter behind him for “uno mas, por favor!!”  He’s no dummy, he’s living the life of leisure!

 

Anyway, we had a good time with these guys.  If you’re interested in learning a little more about the project, go to: http://www.inkaterra.com/machu-picchu/excursions/bear.  If you just wanna look at more pics and videos from us of these guys and the rest of the Inkaterra hotel, here you go…

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Machu Picchu

On Feb 7th and 9th, we went up to the Machu Picchu citadel to check out the fantastic ruins. I already talked about our guide and the crazy hike in the Wayna Picchu post, so I’m going to focus this one on Machu Picchu proper, and two smaller hikes we did on the 9th, a hike to the Inca Bridge and a hike to the famous Sun Gate.

At this point we are fairly acclimatized to the altitude, so no further scares to report, although we still find ourselves more easily out of breath and take things more slowly than we would at home.

Intipunku (The Sun Gate)

On the 9th, we caught a 6am bus and walked up to the Sun Gate. The Sun Gate is the very end of the 104 km Inca Trail, and is special because you spend days climbing up the trail and then come to a pass in the mountains where there is a small stone building and through the door you get your first view of Machu Picchu. It is the same elevation as Wayna Picchu – but about 2-3 times as long in distance, so a much more modest climb coming from the Machu Picchu citadel. Ali said it would take us about an hour, so we were surprised when it took us only 40 minutes. I guess he padded the time because of our sissy performance a couple days before.

Check out the view in the picture on the left.

  

That’s right. The fabled Sun Gate. Turns out it works better with sun, not fog. But the climb was cool and there was nobody there (we were betting on the fog to break – it didn’t). If you just use your imagination, you can practically see the citadel. Still, a very nice walk, and a neat place.

In Incan times, this and the guard house on top of Wayna Picchu were the two spots where they guarded the citadel. Lonely spots, both. I really hope the poor guardsmen didn’t have to walk to work each day. It’s a hike.

Pte Inka (Inca Bridge)

The other hike we did was to the Inca Bridge. This and the path to the Sun Gate are the only two paths out of Machu Picchu and this one was a very narrow path along steep cliffs. There are a number of places where the path is 2-3 feet wide and a straight drop to the valley floor. The Inca left a 20 foot gap in one part of the trail which they bridged with a few tree trunks. In time of war, they could lift the trunks and be relatively immune to attack.

I have to say, we were expecting the bridge to be bigger. From descriptions, we got the idea the bridge was going to be more impressive (we got the sense that it was bridging a big ravine or something). Nope, just a gap in the trail. If you look closely in the picture on the right you can see the “bridge.”

But the walk was nice and the sign at the end was probably worth it alone. It’s funny to me that nearly all signs were in both Spanish and English in the area *except* the sign that says you will die if you go past it. Luckily the skull and crossbones is a universal sign for “please continue and make the species better.”

The Citadel at Machu Picchu

The Citadel itself is mind boggling. The Inca Engineers knew their stuff. As I mentioned in a previous post, the site is so well photographed that you will have seen all the normal pictures before (and on days with blue sky and just enough clouds to make a perfect photograph). We didn’t have that.

So instead, we’re going to focus the photos we post on non traditional views of the place and on interesting details of the construction. A couple quick facts. The Inca built this place about 600 years ago, and lived here less than 100 years. It was not the residence of “the” Inca (the emperor) as many people say (including Wikipedia, which I thought couldn’t be wrong), but was instead just a place that some nobles lived. There were about 400-500 people living here full-time, but the agricultural area was big enough to feed 2000 people. They had running water (16 water stations that might have also been showers) and the main palace even had an indoor toilet. Take that Bob Vila.

Hiram Bingham is credited with the main discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911, although there is some controversy and some data that suggests there were several earlier discoverers. But certainly, Hiram was the guy who made Machu Picchu famous – in large part thanks to the 1913 expedition he led sponsored by National Geographic and Yale (where he was a Professor) where they cleared much of the ruins and did a lot of the first true archeology.

Of course, Bingham is not a saint. Among other things he took hundreds of mummies and thousands of artifacts back to Yale on loan for a year, and yet to this day they are still at Yale (and the subject of many arguments and a lawsuit between Peru and Yale). Also, National Geographic dedicated an entire month’s issue in 1913 to Machu Picchu. I’m going to try to get my hands on a copy. I would love to see how much the thinking has changed since then.

Bingham also caused tremendous damage to the structure of Machu Picchu when he cleared away the jungle in 1913. When he found it in 1911, they think close to 80% of the structures were intact. But his crew cut down trees and let them fall across the ruins. By the time he left only 40% of the structures were intact. Since then, they’ve reconstructed and have about 60% rebuilt. But still there are large parts of the place that are in ruin, not because of the prowess of the Inca Engineers, but because of careless archeology.

One other note. Machu Picchu is *the* place to go in Peru, but the principal thing about it is that it is famous. There are many other ruins, but thanks to Hiram Bingham and National Geographic, Machu Picchu will probably always be THE city of the Incas.

On to the pictures…

I think this might be my favorite shot of the ruins. The mist was very mysterious and would come and go in a minute or two. And also – the postcards don’t look like this!

We also took quite a few panoramas of the ruins. Here are a few of the better ones.

This shot (above) allows you to get a bit of the perspective of the valley, that river is 2000 feet lower than the citadel. And you can start to see how extensive the terracing of Machu Picchu is.

More of the amazing terraces. The empty terraces straight ahead were the agricultural district, which could feed 2000 people!

Above is the residential district, taken from the agricultural terraces. Note the many houses in ruins in the foreground.

 

On the left, a non-traditional angle of the ruins (taken from the trail to the Inca Bridge). In the middle you can see how extreme the terracing was and on the right a more traditional shot of the ruins.

The other funny thing about Machu Picchu was that it is infested with llamas. Sam might argue with the word infested, since she tried to smuggle several of them into our hand luggage. They are everywhere around the ruins. They help keep the grass short, but that can’t be their only purpose. Their presence remains a mystery to science. Or at least to me.

On the right is a hilarious picture. They walk up stairs! They are actually quite elegant. We have video of this too that we will post later.

And finally, here is the obligatory tourist shot, proving that Sam and I were really there. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get the other jackass tourists to clear out for the 10 seconds it takes to take a picture here.

What an amazing place. What a cool people.

Lots of tourists take a train from Cusco (4 hours) arrive at Aguas Calientes around 11am, go up the mountain, walk around and then take the last train to Cusco (4 hours). This is an incredibly long day, and a real disservice to seeing the ruins. Sam and I spent 2 full days on the mountain, with a rest day in between. Both days we were on a bus by 6am (the buses start at 5:30am) and back off the mountain around 2:30 or 3pm (the mountain closes at 5:30pm).

We were beat after these days and although we feel that we got a good experience, we still didn’t see it all. There is a temple on the other side of Wayna Picchu that I would like to see, but it’s an additional 2 hour hike on more treacherous trails than the Wayna Picchu hike. You can hike the smaller hill to the left of Wayna Picchu and you can hike up Machu Picchu mountain itself. These three would probably take another full (and tiring day). I get that different people have different tolerances for tourism, but I just don’t understand the 1 day thing. It seems like a long way to travel for such a surface level experience.

Check out more pictures in the full Machu Picchu photo album.

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The hike of death, commonly known as Wayna Picchu (Feb 7th)

So we went up for the first of two days on top of the mountain. As I mentioned in a previous post, Aguas Calientes is the town nearest Machu Picchu and where we are staying. Machu Picchu is quite large, so we decided to do a guided tour for our first day to get our bearings, and then to figure it out ourselves from there. This turned out to be a wise decision, and we have Sam to thank for this one.

Our hotel, the Inkaterra Pueblo Hotel, was nice enough to organize the tour with a nice Peruvian guide named Ali. Of course, you wouldn’t think they were that nice if you knew what the tour cost! (I asked if Ali was a typical Peruvian name – it turns out that his dad was a big fan of Muhammad Ali and he’s a little embarrassed about it). Ali turned out to be awesome – he actually is a college trained guide (who knew?), was very knowledgeable about Machu Picchu (of course) and Peru and South America in general, and he was cute and nice (he is 26).

We did a full day tour but we started with a climb to Wayna Picchu. Wayna Picchu (“Young Peak”) is the mountain right next to Machu Picchu (“Old Peak”). Wayna Picchu is also about 1000 feet higher than the Machu Picchu citadel (the citadel is at 7972, Wayna Picchu is 8922 ft), and in Incan days was the site of a guard house where they kept watch looking for invaders. But what a guard house! Almost 9000 feet above sea level with a commanding view of the valley surrounding the citadel.

It was a foggy and rainy day, which is what we get for going in the rainy season. Here is a picture before our climb of Wayna Picchu looming in the fog from the Machu Picchu citadel.

The hike is crazy. Sam and I remarked several times that in the states we would never be allowed on something like this because of our ludicrously litigious society. You climb more than 1000 feet because the path goes down and then up, but the total length has to be less than a mile. There are parts of the climb where they have steel cables embedded in the walls because you basically need the assistance to scramble up the rocks. The rocks are uneven, they are often slippery, and there are places where the path is only several feet wide skirting cliffs literally thousands of feet high. Mom, you might not want to look too hard at these pictures.

The two left pictures are smiles (because we were actually on the way down). On the right is a picture of one of the sissy parts of the trail.

It was drizzling, foggy and misty. Which was actually probably a blessing as we got quite hot anyway, and could barely imagine what it would be like in the dry season when it is sunny all the time.

Although we’d become acclimatized to the altitude in the town (6,627 feet), we definitely could feel the difference when we got to the citadel, and when we started the climb. Our heart rate would climb fast and we would get easily out of breath.

About half way up we had a little scare. We had been resting occasionally, but setting a pretty mean pace, and suddenly I looked back and Sam had stopped and was wheezing and having trouble breathing. I immediately thought it must be an allergy and wondering how we were going to intubate halfway up a mountain (we’ve been too much House – a doctor show on TV :-)). Luckily, she was able to let me know that it was altitude, and so then I realized there was nothing I could really do. A few seconds rest and she stopped wheezing, and a few minutes rest and she felt fine. We took it a little easier the rest of the way up and are happy to report that both of us are present, accounted for, and still have all our limbs.

Finally, about an hour and ten minutes later, we got to the top. No speed records here. The record, by the way, is 12 minutes. And it was all worth it.

Even with a crappy day (it was still foggy and we never got a good view of the citadel which is the whole point of the climb) it was still awe inspiring. Here we are, perched at the top of a mountain, where the only access is a tiny, crappy trail. And the Incas built a relatively large set of structures on top. They built HUGE retaining walls to keep the land from eroding. They built platforms and outcroppings. The seams between their buildings, walls, and the bare rock face of the mountain are often so tight that you can’t stick a knife in the crack. And they did it all 600 years ago.

One short editorial note: It’s actually wrong to say that the Incans did this. There was no civilization called “Inca.” They were called Tawantinsuyu (which means 4 regions, because there were 4 areas that made up their empire). At any given time there was only 1 Inca – who was the emperor of the whole area. Apparently, the Spanish heard about this Inca, started calling them Incans, and it stuck. So it’s wrong, but everybody uses it incorrectly and I’m not pushing rope.

But back to the story. This outpost (and the citadel too but that’s for a later post) is an awesome feat of engineering. Pictures don’t do it justice, but here are a few.

      

What you can’t see (well) is that these outcroppings are on retaining walls, which are roughly 90 degrees and join bare rock faces that plummet hundreds or thousands of feet. How would you like to be on the construction crew that did this?

What an amazing people. What an accomplishment.

A place like Machu Picchu is so heavily photographed that you’ll have seen more picturesque views than we will post. We don’t have the luxury of waiting 3 months until the dry season :-), or going back every day for a week to get the perfect light (although we did catch the 6am bus to try today). But I think a lot of people shy away from places like Machu Picchu because they have seen the pictures and it sounds like work. I really think these people are missing out. Things like Machu Picchu make you feel both humble, and proud to be human. There aren’t enough things these days that make you feel that way. It’s worth seeking them out.

Click here for more pictures from Wayna Picchu.