25 Junio

To save time when I am online, I will sometimes copy and paste from singular emails, just to try to keep people somewhat informed. The first part of this I wrote to our German friend Thomas, with whom we have been traveling. He got back from the traditional Inca Trail, and we had dinner with him last night, went dancing, and then had breakfast this morning. Then parted ways.

—————————————————————————————- Tim and I laid fairly low today. We priced flights for next Thursday, but they are too expensive. I am looking online now too. We may have to hope for the strike to be over and otherwise rely on Juan´s help. I am a bit anxious to move on as we have dallied too long and need to move on badly. We may skip Puno. Well, the flights were to La Paz, which is only a nice 1.5 hour ride to Copacabana, which I really want to go to and which is also on Titicaca. But I don´t know that it is going to end up that way. While I support the strike, I think I might stop saying Viva la Paro.

We had our briefing for Salkantay tonight, and it was kinda lame. They weren´t able to tell us our guide´s name or who else was on the trail with us. I figure this is because, like last year, multiple agencies work together to form a group with up to 11 people and one shared guide. I think it will be ok, but more than that, I believe Tim and I can handle nearly anything at this point.

————————————————————————————– Some of you may have seen on Facebook, but our first night in Cuzco, I ended up throwing up from an allergic food reaction. It was pretty cruddy. This was ironic because last year I threw up my first night here. Though that was alcohol and altitude related. I am totally fine now. Unfortunately, then Tim got ill- throwing up and a fever. He is recovering but is not fully well yet. He has kept down dinner tonight though, has had no fever all day, and has had more energy. HOWEVER, we start our Salkantay hike tomorrow. Tim is tougher than most people, so I have little doubt he will make it, but a few prayers are good. All types of people go, and they will wait for us if for some reason we need to go slow.

It´s a 5 day hike and we will be primarily totally off line. We get picked up at 430 tomorrow morning, and I am up WAY too late. It´s been a low key day though, and we will sleep on the bus to Mollepata where the hike begins. It will be utterly gorgeous, but not entirely easy. Happy thoughts and prayers appreciated. We will share the beauty with you as well as we can when we return. Blessings!

21 Junio

It took 2.5 days to get to Cuzco. I will write more soon. The lines of protest stones across the roads lasted up to 50 km. We walked up to 25 miles with our packs on. It was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, as psycological as physical. Every time we came to another town we thought we might find real transportation or the end of the strike lines. But no. We took motorcylce cabs, regular motorcycles, bike carts, local trucks, and finally a bus. We were adopted by some Peruvians also trying to get to Cuzco that we met on one of the local buses. We never really felt in danger, other than by the darkness and unknown. We slept one night in an outside restaurant and awoke at 3 a.m. to keep walking. It is truly an experience we will never ever forget. Romantic in many ways, once you forget the complete pain and despair that happened throughout. We felt very lucky to travel with our German friend Thomas. We will stay in Cuzco for a while to let our feet heal before even considering walking for fun on the Inca Trail. There is no way out of Cuzco but to fly or walk again anyhow. Thomas left for the Inca trail today and we pray for his blisters.
Cuzco is overwhelmed with visitors for the largest festival of the year, Inti Raymi. It will be fascinating to see the indigenous event, but the crowds are really annoying.

More soon!

17 Junio

We are back from the Colca Canyon bus tour. It was very fun as we had a cool group of people. About half of the group of 18 or so really got along. Tim and I were the only Americans. Three Germans, including Thomas our travel buddy, two Danish girls, and a Peruvian Canadian. There were some Brazilians on the trip, as well as a French couple, more Peruvians, and two older Japanese women. Our guide was very good. He explained a lot and had good English. The roads were very bumpy so most the busing was rough, but the views were gorgeous.

They say the Colca is 2x deeper than the Grand, but it is such a different type of Canyon, I am not sure how to compare them. It’s much more like a deep canyon between two mountains, not the steep cliffs of the Grand. But all the hillsides were terraced, originally by a people who preceded the Inca. The Inca then made it more high tech by actually employing subtle micro-climates between the terraces. It might be a half degree warmer on one, so they would grow the corn there instead of the potatoes. Pretty amazing, and all extremely beautiful. We saw many small cute towns, and stopped today for an hour to watch condors. Our guide said there are only 105 wild condors in Peru, and only 270 maybe in South America. Many more in the zoos, but that is obviously not the same. It was somewhat annoying that the tour made us eat at nicer restaurants without cheaper choices, but the hostel we stayed in was very nice. We all stayed in different hostels based on whom we booked our tour. Altogether it was a very good time.

Here’s the hard part we have hit. There is a strike in Peru, I think about eco land support; I don’t know all about it. Anyway, the strikers have set up a perimeter around Cusco so that no buses can get through. None. Only one airline flies from Arequipa to Cusco, and all the flights are booked, or we pay to fly through Lima, which is $380. So we are attempting another route. We are going to take a bus to a town about 85 km from Cusco, where the buses can no longer get through. We will see if we can walk through and take a collectivo (cheap local bus) the rest of the way (3 hours). Thomas is coming with us. It’s either that or we stay in Arequipa for another week or skip Cusco all together. But Cusco is a main place we want to go, of course, including hiking to Machu Picchu. The strikers are hurting the government by blocking tourism. The worst that can happen is that we get to this town (which won’t cost too much) and find out we can’t go further. Then we make a new plan. Tomorrow morning we will go to the bus station and see what we can find out. I will be in touch. Prayers are good, but don’t worry. Tim and I won’t do anything to jeopardize our health and safety. We are taking very good care of each other.

We are still having a wonderful time, and Tim is truly seeing the allure of travel. The more cool people you meet, the more stories you hear, and the more places you want to go. I am very tired, and we are attempting the bus station very early. Blessings!

16 Junio

It’s only just the 16th, but I feel lucky to know the day even. We haven’t been traveling all that long, but without any real schedule or connection to anything, it is easy to lose track.Especially after our half day in a bus station, followed by a 16-hour overnight bus ride. We chose not to pursue the Nazca Lines, which are outside of Nazca, not Ica as I said before. Ica is on the way to Nazca. Regardless, it was cloudy, and the only way to see the lines is by a plane ride. We figured there’d be nothing to see. We later found out they won’t even fly when it is cloudy. It was Tim’s decision, as he was the excited one. Similar to me deciding not to pursue Iquitos.

The bus from Lima to Arequipa was long. It was fairly high class though. The seats were semi-beds, and I slept quite well. Tim did not, and at times we were both a bit sick to our stomach. We were also on the second level of the bus, which may not have helped. Still, they provided blankets and pillows, fed us dinner and  breakfast, handed out headphones for the movies, and gave us single-use toothpaste with a little brush. We even played BINGO. Man it was hard to follow the numbers so quickly.

We met Tomas from Stuttgart, Germany, while waiting in line getting on the bus. When we got off, we said hello, found out he had a phone, and that he was interested in the same hostel as us, oh and that his Spanish was way better too. So he called and booked us all the hostel and then we shared a cab, He was eager to take advantage of his day in Arequipa; we’d arrived at 8:30 a.m. His excitement was infectious, and we went along with him. We came up with the game plan as we sat having tea looking over the main plaza from a balcony coffee shop. This was the way the Lonely Planet guide suggested starting the day. We enjoyed it enough to follow the next suggestions.

We went to the Museo Santury, where I learned I was dead wrong about the Incas not doing human sacrifice. Even after my three weeks in Cuzco last year, I had this wrong. They sacrificed unblemished children to the gods, to mollify natural disasters. They have found at least 18 burial sites at the tops of mountains, where children were killed in response to something like a volcano eruption. We say the frozen ice princess Jaunita today, One such child who was found in very good condition due to the way the temperatures worked.

Then we went to the Monasterio de Santa Cataliina, which was expensive but amazing. It was a whole endless city inside a city almost. A rich woman founded the cloistered community, but the vow of poverty was laughable because the cells were  huge and nice. Apparently later another nun came and stopped many of the crazy practices like saying no one nun could have more than one personal servant. Anyway, it was very impressive. I saw the cell of St. Ana, who was canonized in 1985 when JP2 came to Arequipa. There was a rooftop view where we could see the amazing snow-capped mountains on the side of the city.

After a siesta this evening, the three of us went out to take night pics around town, and to get a drink. In a bar I don’t know the name of, we met an Irishman from Tipperary named Simon. He is a secondary school science teacher. Tim and he got into quite an animated conversation about science and religion and certainty and uncertainty and faith and axioms and etc etc. Tomas and I participated from the periphery.

Now I am up too late because we are leaving at 8 or so tomorrow to tour the Colca Canyon, which is said to  be two times deeper than the Grand, and simply an amazing site. The trip is two days with a stay out near the Canyon. We had quite a decision this afternoon since there are so many versions of the trip. We had decided to look with Tomas, so there was a third person involved. But I was also dealing with concerns for my foot, which I do not want to hurt so that i cannot hike to Machu Piccu, Anyway, we stuck to a bus tour instead of trekking down into the canyon and back up. Sounds like a nasty, easy way to hurt my foot.
I hope we will be happy with the decision.

So all continues to go well. Thank you for your thoughts and time here,

13 Junio

Greetings to all! I have been dropping some short messages on facebook and twitter statuses, but realize some of you do not check those pages. Therefore it was time to check in. I expect to fairly easily be online almost every day, unless we are going into some remote area, which won~t happen much. **please don~t mind odd punctuation marks. The computer is set up for another language, and I am typing as I know how regardless.

I am on a public computer in our hostel, but even in our cheaper room at The Point Lima (about $20), we have wifi. Tim is using the computer now. I think the world, especially western and european travellers insist on the technology.

 

Tim and I are having a FABULOUS time. We are enjoying each other~s company and learning how to communicate in new situations. We have been having a blast. The first two nights in Lima we stayed at the Torreblanco Hostel on the outskirts of Miraflores. Rather it was IN Miraflores, but on the edge. It was $52 a night, but very quiet, private, and comfy. Thursday night I sent e-mails to 4 hostels in Lima asking if they had availability the next night. One e-mailed me back and that is where we are. Tim and I have christened the Point, which contains a bar names Pointless, as PARTY TOWN! We have a private room here as well, 15 feet from the bar that is open til 1, with something like ply board walls (pressed wood). We have hammocks and a ping pong table right outside our door, though no one has played. I did, however, pull out ear plugs for a nap earlier. We stayed up until 4 a.m. last night. It had been our first opportunity to really meet people. This is the perfect type of hostel for that. This is where you meet people from all over the world by sitting down at the plastic table in the courtyard. (To top it off, they had a guitar by that table last night. You know what that means.) We sat there for hours, talking to a German couple, a Scottish and an English guy, and some random Americans. As you can imagine, Tim and I are talking up a storm - or rather, asking questions and listening. In addition to just AMAZING stories from different cultures, we have awesome information on cheap and safe travel. We are making it happen, and it~s fun! 

 

Things we have done around Lima- We took a lovely walk on the beach on Thursday and then walked around Miraflores. Friday we went to American airlines and learned that we can book one-way trips for 10,000 frequent flyer miles within the country. Great to know, but seats that can be used for that are rare and need to be booked earlier. We are thinking we might try to go south in Argentina that way… to Patagonia etc. We decided not to go to Iquitos, which I mainly wanted to go to just to see the Amazon river. We can go to the jungle elsewhere cheaper. We will see the Amazon someday in Brazil where it~s serious. It was way too expensive to fly up there, and it takes pressure off, so we can spend time in Cusco or doing the trail etc. And spend money doing something else. We are, of course, enjoying learning ways to do this cheaply. Doñ~t worry, we will always be safe and comfortable if we can at all help it! And we will splurge when we should. You should hear how some of these people travel. We are very lucky to have any money. But we have a great time finding deals, like today we bought a winter coat for Tim for $10 that is really nice. He needed something for the wintery cities like La Paz.

 

Boy I am distratced. The bar is right behind me. After learning about the flights, we went to our new hostel and checked in. Then took a taxi to Museo Larco, which was a little $$ but super cool. We had an amazing and cheap dinner nearby at Heladaria Fressca (north a couple blocks from the museum) and then went to Parque de la Reserva, which I read about online. It is too new to be in the 2009 Lonely Planet guide we have (publishing time and all). It¨s about a year old. A park with 13 huge beautiful lit-up fountains with music. Very cheap too. Today we went to the changing of the guard at the Palacio de Gobierno. Very fancy! Brits might be stoic, but these guys do some borderline dance marching that~s pretty fancy. I liked it when they threw their guns! Next we went to Museo y Monasterio de San Francisco, which was also cheap and had a 45-min guided tour included. Beautiful art, a fascinating library, and crypts with bones. Good times! Then we went shopping for some things Tim needed. Nappéd and now ready for PARTY TOWN. Tomorrow morning, we hope to get info and get to Ica, which is where the Nazca Lines are. We will find a bus, and have been advised on the good and bad ones to take.

 

This is hugely long. We are most excellent.