Home!

We have been home for about two weeks now, haven’t moved back into our house as of yet, and are still sort of travelling.  In fact I am in Boston right now visiting with my friend Tony.

Our flight back was long but uneventful, amazingly on time for all but the last leg and that arrived on time.  Congratulations to TACA for this, especially considering that we had no more than 30 minutes between flights in both Costa Rica and El Salvador on our trip from Quito (Ecuador) back to San Francisco.  Entering the US was a breeze,  no hard questions, no going through the luggage and so on.  A blessing since it was 2am.  TACA is a great airline to travel with, all new planes, always on time (in our experience with 6 flights), frequently the cheapest tickets, well-sorted web site…need I say more? Fly TACA.

We spent the rest of the night with Darcie’s family in Millbrae, got the car battery charged and went out for our first American meal, a GIANT (even by US standards) and delicious breakfast.  I had eggs and bacon (cooked soft not crispy as is the usual US way) with home fries.  Sounds reasonable until you find out it also comes with two normal size pancakes as well!!!  I couldn’t quite finish, lol.

The rest of the day was spent back in Oakland getting new phones (same old numbers), visiting our house and spending a few hours with friends, drinking lovely IPA’s (India Pale Ale) until it was time to meet up with our friend Miekle who had kindly offered to put us up in his lovely apartment right on the Bay in Alameda.

The following day we went to the bank to let them know we were back in the US and to put a hold on any new charges that might occur from places like Peru or Ecuador etc (although nothing of the sort had occurred during our travels) and to change the various financial arrangements we had made in our absence.  We also went to the gym and re-started our membership and immediately went for a spin-flogging with Jackie.  We have been going to the gym every day since which has been good after 7 or 8 months of absence.  Now all we have to do is get back into yoga although I think I need a job first since all this exercise costs money (damn!).

Overall we would say our favorite countries were Peru and Mexico with Peru edging out Mexico for top place for Darcie but she can’t say why.  Perhaps it is because our Spanish was better by the time we got to Peru or maybe because the food was more to her liking than in Mexico and then again it could have been that we spent more time traveling and doing things in Peru whereas in Mexico all we did mostly was study Spanish.  Probably it is some combination of the three.

Both Mexico and Peru offer so much, a wealth of archeology, lovely people, great food, amazing views…  They are places that can’t really be seen in a month or two, they really need a year dedicated to each otherwise you are scrambling from one place to the next and not really absorbing the local flavors.  It is possible, of course, to come as a tourist and have a great time and this is what we will have to do on our next visits since it is unlikely that we will be able to repeat this sabbatical trip any time soon (poverty being the main reason). 

We want to go back to Oaxaca and spend some time travelling around there since we really spent the whole month in our language school and didn’t get out much to see the local area.  Mexico in general is so huge and has so much that a lifetime of visits wouldn’t be enough (as with most countries when you get right down to it).  Peru is mostly unexplored for us, we only had the time to go to Lima, Arequipa and Cusco and the associated sites nearby.  Ecuador got short changed by us as we were at the end of our trip and eagerly anticipating both the Galapagos cruise and our return to California.  It is not high on our list of places to go although that has more to do with Quito being a pit I think.  We had so many people extol the virtues of Argentina, Chile and Brazil that we will be putting them on the list for places to visit next time we have a chunk of time and money. 

Our challenge for now is to keep practicing our Spanish.  And I need a job…lol

Ecuador: Galapagos

We left Lima on a high note after having hiked to Machu Picchu a few days earlier and eaten a wonderful, if enormous, final meal at Panchita which is not to be missed if you go to Lima (word of warning: all the dishes are huge and easily shared amongst two or three people!).  It was sad to say goodbye to Graham who was an excellent addition to our adventure and it was sad to say goodbye to Peru, a country we had barely even begun to explore really but which none-the-less offered so much.

We arrived in Quito, Ecuador after a short 2hr-ish flight which was quite bumpy in parts, not surprising with all the Andean mountains thrusting hither and thither and the randomly dense cloud layer: frightening.  Quito was overcast, gray and a little damp and, but as it is at 10,000ft or so and surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, actually very mild.

We stood around at the tiny airport waiting for our taxista to show up from our hotel and crowd-watching (there was a futbol squad and some rockstar (minor I would guess) that the press had turned up for).  After 20 minutes or so we gave up and took our own taxi to what turned out to be a run down dump with hints of former glory.  Lonely Planet (LP) and South American Explorers (SAE) had recommended this place but we were quite dismayed.  We looked at three rooms until we found one we were willing to sleep in and even then we were stretching.  The price of the place was the same that we had paid in Cusco ($60 for the two of us with a great breakfast)  but whereas Rumi Punku had great rooms, comfy and warm beds, a strictly enforced no smoking rule and good breakfasts, the Sierra Madre was mostly the opposite:  the beds were lumpy (note I said beds!) there was clearly someone smoking in their room several floors below us but the smoke permeated all the rooms (as we found out from other unhappy guests) and breakfast was not included.  Needless to say we left the next day.  They refused to honor the discount they offered to members of SAE so the cost was even more, we were not amused.

Our new place, Vieja Cuba (Old Cuba), was lovely, about the same price, included breakfast and was staffed by lovely people (unlike Sierra Madre).  The first few days in Quito were marred by Darcie having a mild bout of stomach flu which I later got towards the end of the week.  In between we made efforts to wander around in Quito to see the churches and museums and such.  We were generally pretty disappointed:  Quito is a bit of a pit.  In general we just couldn’t wait for our trip to the Galapagos to start.

Fast forward to May 4 and it is Monday morning, 7am, and we are picked up at the hotel by the tour company and whisked off along with a bunch of other punters to the airport for our three hour flight to Baltra which is one of two airports in the Islands and was built by the US military during the early days of WW2 when there was a rabid fear that the Japanese were on their way.  Not sure how a base on the Equator miles from anywhere was a target but…

The trip was brief and boring, endless clouds, but it didn’t rain on us once we got there, at least not until everyone and the luggage were on board, then it rained cats and dogs.  Baltra is a mostly flat lump of old sea floor that has been lifted up over the millennia and is now being ground down down by the weather (and man).  Uninteresting, no animals particularly and little vegetation except for some scrubby plants and the occasional cactus (we have the US military to thank for this apparently).

Our home for the next week, the MV Santa Cruz, weighed anchor and motored out of the bay next to the airport and whisked us off to  nearby Santa Cruz island and some easy hiking, a raft of land iguanas, lizards and birds of the finchy sort all bookended by feasting.  This cruise was to be about eating, eating a bit more and maybe just a little more eating.  Occasionally there were to be casual walks to check out the aminals.

Ok, so I am being facetious, really it was about the animals, their habits and habitats and casual walks.  The casual walks are those designated and built by the government and are intended to provide tourist-access to some of the animals but without changing the landscape overly much thus even though it would be easy to walk 10k the trail system is only 1 or 2k and there is no opportunity for walking off trail.  You are not allowed to even be in/on the islands without a guide and they are tasked with keeping you on the path.  This is very important since the islands get very little rain and are not prone to being easily vegetated (or remaining thus) so human trampling has a pronounced negative effect.

The government/park service has gone to great lengths to schedule boat sailings such that there are never more than two or three boats in any one anchorage at the same time.  The boat we were on was one of the largest with a possible tourist complement of 90 (while we were there only 45 or so) but most of the boats are much smaller with guests numbering 10 to 20 or so.  That all said there were a lot of boats motoring around despite the fact that it was low season.

Each day I would wake up to watch the sunrise which some days was denied courtesy of the cloud cover.  There were usually only a few guests moving around so it was possible to spend the first half hour or so in solitude on-deck with a cup of coffee and the camera watching the colors come alive.  After that first day’s brief rain we had good weather, mostly mildly overcast and warm (75F-85F) and humid (although nothing like Costa Rica).

  

In general we went to two islands a day or at least two anchorages a day if the island was big (Santa Cruz and Isabella).  The morning stop was always a hike, really a gentle stroll across usually pretty flat land, and the afternoon stop was usually a combo walk/snorkel although some days it was just a snorkel or just a walk.

The walks were incredibly easy, so much so that an 85 year old guest who had had both hips replaced in the past six months and had been wheeled around in a wheel chair at the airport and walked with canes was able to walk every trail much to her relief I gathered.

Each island is different from the next in several ways: age, level of volcanic activity, vegetation and wildlife populations.  As many television shows have said, the wildlife is pretty much chilled-out with respect to humans.  In other words you can walk right up to most animals (except for the little birds) and they don’t even flinch.  It is pretty cool!  We of course took an enormous quantity of photos which we are still paring down.  There are lots and lots of photos of lava lizards, iguanas and boobies of the blue-footed variety.  There are some photos of turtles (both land and sea), some of the endless sea lions (some being an understatement of course) and the of course there are a few of the penguins (whose current population is tiny thanks to several severe El Nino events some years ago).

In fact all the islands have been suffering population declines in recent years due to weather changes brought on by El Nino events.  These events, which Californian’s are familiar with, are a warming trend in the near-surface water brought on by warm, deep-ocean currents that for unexplained reasons linger beyond the more traditional time frame.  The net result being that fish/krill/plankton that various animals require are not in sufficient abundance and thus the animals starve to death.  On land the effects can be a more pronounced/longer wet season which also results in food shortages, surprisingly.  In recent years there have also been some droughts which have affected the populations of birds and land iguanas.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of fearless animals to watch but there are a lot less of some of them than when Darcie was last lucky enough to go (20 or so years ago).  Some of that just had to do with the time of year she was there relative to this trip (she went in late June/July with her family all those many years ago) and some of it is climate change (either random or man-made).

The snorkeling was excellent, the water clarity is wonderful, the water is at this time of year still quite warm (24C/75F ish) and fish, turtles and sea lions abound.  As mentioned there are a few penguins on some of the islands and these can be seen “flying” around under water if you are lucky.  On our final day I saw a Galapagos Cormorant (flightless cormorant on it’s way to becoming a new type of penguin) flying under water (no photo though).

All in all a great experience.

Peru: Cusco

After all my babbling about our trek I realized I hadn’t actually said anything about Cusco.  We arrived in Cusco by knight bus from Arequipa.  The bus ride was uneventful – it was night after all – and we arrived at 6:30am or so.  The bus station is located in a somewhat rough around the edges neighborhood, or at least so it seemed to our tired eyes, some way from the colonial heart of Cusco.  Our taxi was similarly rough around the edge: every time I leaned back or the driver accelerated con gusto my chair tipped back as the front bolts had pulled through the floor!

Shortly after leaving the bus station we arrived at the Plaza Mayor also known as the Plaza de Armas.  The night club on the corner was still pounding out the music and revelers were coming and going (7am!!!).  Our hostel, Suecia 1 was far enough up the street that this wasn’t going to be a problem.  Turned out that we were further up the street than we expected.  On presenting ourselves at the hostel and ringing the bell we were met by a sleepy-eyed woman who told us they were shut for renovations and we should go on up the street and round the corner to Suecia 2. 

Suecia 2 was a dump but we didn’t feel like lugging our packs around while we looked so we settled for one night, showered (cold water only, brrrr) and wandered off to find breakfast and a new place to stay.  We breakfasted at Inkafe and then walked up the street to Rumi Punku which was so light and airy and the people were so nice that even though we were paying about double what we had become used to we jumped at it.  The rest of the day was spent meeting with the folks at United Mice, our trek agency, paying them, going to the bank etc.  We also took a stroll around the upper part of the old town, enjoying the great views and the architecture.  The planning office was entertaining:  the entry door was so low that even the locals had to duck.

We had dinner and drinks at a club called Muse which had a live jazz band playing.  They were billed as Afro Andean but were more or less jazz.  The music was fun, the drinks were cold, the women were hot and we stayed up late.

We shifted ourselves early the next morning and spent the day wandering around.  First down to the Mercado San Pedro which is the local locals market which was mostly great except for the piles of hairy cow lips (en serio) and other unrecognizable bits and pieces, fly encrusted, festering to our eyes, and smelly.  After this we wandered down to a raft of artisan markets so we could shop, shop, shop.  We did want a few things and we were getting to the point where we would run out of time for such activities.

The next day, our last before the trek, was spent in part with a visit to QoriKancha which is a catholic church/monastery/convent built on the ruins of the main Inka temple in Cusco.  Cusco by the way was the seat of the Inka empire and was then known as Qosqo in the Quechua language.  The Spanish tore down most of the temple and/or integrated its bones into the foundations of the church.  There were bits left by the Spanish mostly intact and now restored to some extent.  It is impressive to see the Inka masonry for the temples, perfectly tight seams, no mortar, amazing angles and interlocking pieces and all without the use of metal tools to work the granite.  We hired a guide for 10 soles ($3) who was very good, really passionate about her history and full of knowledge about the site and many others in and around Cusco.  We gave her another 20 soles as a tip.  She had spent about an hour with us and $3 just seemed insulting.

Afterwards we took Graham to the pharmacy to get pills for his intestinal ails and finished the day with our pre-trek briefing, meeting both our guide, Edwin, and our fourth trek member, Sandy, who had just flown in from New York that afternoon!

Cusco itself, the old town part that we spent time in, is a rambling collection of colonial structures most of which have been converted into shops, restaurants and bars, at least around the Plaza Mayor.  This is also tout-central, any tourist wandering within about a one or two block radius of the Plaza is swarmed by vendors selling paintings (done by the vendors themselves they say), various woven items such as belts, intricately carved gourds (lovely but bulky), post cards, shoe-shine services (endless offers to shine my Keen Sandals!) and so on.  It is overwhelming to some extent, always saying “Gracias, no” becomes tedious, although I did have several good conversations with both a shoe-shine “boy” (he was in his mid-twenties) and a painter (similar age) regarding the local economy (it sucks), tourists (there aren’t many) and their lives (a struggle).

After our trek we introduced Sandy to the Mercado and then strolled of to Pampa del Castillo, a local street just off the Plaza a few blocks with an endless row of chicharronerias, restaurants that specialize in deep-fried pork (skin, fat, meat, the works) all fired up to a crispy golden deliciousness.  If you like pork this is the street to visit.  Find a restaurant around 12 o’clock heaving with locals and go on in.  We shared (between the 4 of us) a couple of plates of pork (includes a salady bit and potatoes and choclo) and a big bowl of pork adobo, washing it all down with cold beers.  Yum.

We visited three museums during our time in Cusco: the aforementioned Qorikancha (more of a place than a museum), El Museo de Arte Precomlumbiano and El Museo de Inka.  The latter is pretty worn out, was probably put together 15 or more years ago and then forgotten which is a shame since they have some nice things and by all report have a warehouse  full to the brim.  The museum could use a good going over (full closure and full reconstruction) to better present the information and such.  The pre-Columbian art museum was very good, mostly well lit, informative descriptions in Spanish and English (unfortunately tended to flowery arty descriptions in both Spanish and English so we eventually ignored them), packed with amazing pottery some textiles and some metalwork (jewelry etc).  I would skip the Inka museum but Qorikancha and the pre-Columbian are well worth it.

A couple of days before we left Cusco for Lima Graham and I stumbled on a great bar, Km 0 (Kilometer Zero) up behind the Iglesia San Blas.  It is a fun, chilled out place with great music (a mix of old rock and roll like the Stones, U2 and new Latin rhythms) and the bes pisco sours we had during our time in Peru.  One could easily spend the evening here, chatting with the locals and carousing till the wee hours.  Needless to say Graham and I restrained ourselves as we had dinner plans with friends both evenings.  Well worth it particularly at happy hour when the drinks are only 6 soles each.

We really enjoyed Cusco and really needed another full week there in order to explore the City more and get outside it to visit the outlying ruins and villages in the Sacred Valley.

This really sums up our sentiments about Peru: we need another visit.  There is so much to see and do, I would like to do another trek or two, a longer trek in El Canon del Colca and another trek in the Andes around Cusco.  There are more places to visit, some of which like Nazca are only worth a one day trip, part of a day actually, and then on to Ica or Arequipa for the night. We would like to go to the Amazon basin, Titicaca, wander the northern coastal areas and so on.  Speaking Spanish is a real plus and we need to work on our Spanish to become more fluent and capable of holding a long, rambling discussion – this is mostly a matter of building the vocabulary and practicing of course.

To sum it all up: we really liked Peru.

Peru: Salkantay to Machu Picchu – Day 5

Part 5 of 5

We woke at 5am, well I should say Graham woke at 5am to the sound of the alarm in our room which I slept through courtesy of my ear plugs (the karaoke bar down the street was not quiet).  We puttered around in our room, dressing, eating our snack and getting ready to go.  The ladies were surprisingly quiet but since they had an alarm I thought nothing of it.  After 15 or 20 minutes though I thought I should check on their progress since we didn’t to be late to Machu Picchu.  Good thing I checked: they were still asleep.  Turns out that Sandy’s phone needs a signal in order for the alarm to work, presumably it does not have the ability to keep time by itself!

Despite this momentary bit of excitement we were at the bus by 6am and entering into Machu Picchu itself by 6:30.  The sun had yet to rise over the nearby mountains and the valleys were filled with mist turning the site into a ghostly open-air cathedral.

Edwin launched into his oration about MP, its discovery by Hiram Bingham, the efforts made to clean up and restore without over-restoring, the significance of the main buildings, the different type of stone masonry evident and so on.

While he did so we marveled at it all, enjoying watching the mists swirl until suddenly the sun squinted through a tight pass on the other side of the valley, lifting the mist and revealing first Waynu Picchu and then the village of Machu Picchu.  The word “Picchu” in Quechua means mountain by the way and Waynu and Machu translate to young and old respectively. 

We walked through the gathering crowds, each with their guide, with Edwin explaining this or that as we passed. In some places we stopped and waited for the current group to finish and move on.  For the most part this was very civilized.  The only time this broke down was with a couple of large French groups.  I guess we should consider ourselves lucky since there are a lot less tourists right now. 

There is a definite cycle or path through MP that all the guides tended to follow, generally leading one clockwise through the main village, starting and ending at the growing terraces adjacent to the main entrance.  The loop takes about 2 to 3 hours and takes you through or past the main temples, a boys school, a girls school (think Vestal Virgins) in tight proximity to the boys school (what were they thinking?) and a variety of plazas.

With his tour over, Edwin had to hurry back into Aguas Calientes to try again to get a train ticket back to Cusco, or to be more accurate Km 82 which is as far as the train currently goes.  Km 0 is Cusco and Aguas Calientes is Km 109 or so.  You take a bus or a taxi from Km 82 to Km 0. 

This brings up a sore point for us in our group.  According to Edwin, our friends in Lima who had recommended United Mice to us and witnessed by us there is a segregation rule in effect.  All Peruvians must travel in the Peruvian-only train cars and all foreign tourists must travel in the foreigners train cars.  There appears to be limited space for the locals and no mingling is allowed.  Partly this was explained away as a result of the HUGE disparity in ticket prices but in reality this is akin to African Americans being forced to sit at the back of the bus.  It was disgusting to see and to be forced to be a part of.  Edwin seemed resigned to it sad to say.

We agreed to meet back in AC at 2pm for lunch and then hied ourselves off to the guardhouse which overlooks the village of MP and is the final stop on the way down from the Sun Gate.  The view from here is quite stellar, just high enough to see the whole village and note that it is indeed laid out in the shape of a condor.  The important Inka towns/villages are laid out to represent one of the pantheon of important animals in Inka mythology/cosmology.

We then hiked up to the Sun Gate, the final point along what is now called the Classic Inka Trail which starts down at Km 82 and winds up and over the mountains until it ends at Machu Picchu.  The hike is a minor lung buster but many do it of all ages and fitness levels and reward of the view is worth it.

We headed back down in the company of a group of sexagenarian Aussies who were very amusing, Darcie and Sandy trailing along with a couple of the slower ones of that group.  Graham and I took up post in the shade at the bottom to await the ladies.  It was taking an awful long time and they weren’t that far behind.  Turns out a couple of the tourist llamas had gotten amorous and had blocked the path for a midday quickie much to everyone’s amusement.

Our lunch with Edwin was stupid expensive just like everything in Aguas Calientes and while not bad was far from good.  It is a shame that AG has to be this way but the fleecing of tourists is a game played the world over, lessons the experience of MP.  We had to wait until 9:45pm for our train since that is the cheapest and thus the only train you are going to get with a tour company unless you pay extra (assuming they make even that option available).  This meant we had 5 hours to kill in money sucking AG.  We spent more than several hours at the hot springs which were crowded and murky but something to do that was actually cheap.  They also have a funky-cool bar which is not quite as over-priced as the in-town bars and restaurants.

The train ride when it happened was uneventful for the most part other than for one woman who got on drunk and got even drunker while on the train.  Drunk actually is an understatement, she was hammered.  We arrived at Km 82 at 11pm or so and hopped into our waiting taxi who took us post-haste back to Cusco.  We overtook any and every car that we came across, it was quite a performance.  We got back into Cusco at 1pm or so to the wonderful luxury of Rumi Punku (highly recommend this place if you are going to Cusco) and thus ended our five day, 70km of walking, trek to Machu Pichu.

We enjoyed it immensely, met a wonderful new friend (Sandy), saw amazing views, challenged ourselves both in climbing to new heights and in distance, lived with the chickens and ate way too many carbs and not enough protein, saw five fantastic sunrises and actually managed to get to Machu Picchu.

Peru: Salkantay to Machu Picchu – Day 4

Part 4 of 5

We all woke up at 4:30am ready to inhale breakfast and quick-march out of town.  Despite this it took an hour and a half before we were ready.  Mostly this was due to the fact that we woke at the same time as the cooks and they needed at least 30 or so minutes to get things going.  As usual there was a mountain of food but we were all so stuffed from the endless feasting that not much was eaten.  The pigs ate well that morning.

Leaving Jose behind to deal with the the sleeping bags and such and our luggage which were to be driven by car to Santa Teresa and then hand carried by porters to Hidro Electrica (our next meeting place), we headed down and out of the accursed La Playa with a spring in our step.  Graham in particular was in a big hurry – he needed to find a magic rock fairly badly it turned out.

Our path took us along the road for a couple of miles at one point crossing a stream that was still deep and wide enough that we had to take off our shoes and socks, roll up our pants and carefully across.  The water was chilly but very refreshing, our first footbath in four days and very welcome.

Shortly thereafter we struck a trail heading up and to our right which quickly led us to the foot of one of the many Inka Trails and the start of the nearly 1000m (3300ft) morning climb.  The day was cool and overcast but with good visibility and we were all so happy to be away from La Playa. 

Shortly after striking the stairs we noticed a person halfway up begin this odd performance:  sitting cross legged (sort of) this old, toothless woman shuffled herself out into the middle of her step using her hands in a skootching sort of way and took up this howl.  As soon as we drew even an empty hat was proffered up for any coins we might have spare.  Obviously she is there every day, it was pitiful and sad and we gave her what we had which was not much in the event having spent most of our change on sodas the day before.

After this the trail wound up, up, up, a long, winding path with lung-busting stairs from time to time, small waterfalls, loads of flowers (an incredible Peruvian iris being the star for me), views for days until eventually passing into the cloud level.  The trail was very beautiful and thanks to the clouds seemed to have no end.  Every now and again the clouds would thin and the mountains above would loom over us or the mountains on the other side of the valley from us would suddenly spring out. It was magic.

By 9:30am we had reached the summit having walked since 6:15am or so where we stopped for a snack and the obligatory photo moment.  As we were standing around congratulating ourselves a French couple showed up, full backpacks, walking poles, the works and no guide.  Turned out they were trekking solo from Choquequirao (the Machu Picchu alternative being developed) all the way to Machu Picchu, had been carrying all their food and fuel for the last 7 or 8 days and somehow, despite not having access to a shower etc, seemed cleaner and less sticky than us.  We were well impressed despite the obvious blow to the egos.

Walking down from the summit (more of a saddle between two high points really) we quickly arrived at Llactapata which is the well-preserved remains of a former Inka lodge used by the Inka’s messengers.  These lodges were spaced about 12km apart and gave the messengers the ability to deliver a message from one part of the kingdom to another with amazing speed.  When we arrived the area was shrouded in cloud but Edwin suggested we chill for a few minutes and see what we would see.  Shortly thereafter the clouds tattered and drifted apart to reveal Waynu Picchu in the way distance and eventually cleared enough for us to see both the village and the mountain of Machu Picchu:

 

After this it was a long descent all the way down to next valley floor and the Rio Aobamba more than 1000m below us.  10 minutes after leaving Llactapata we came across this high mountain camp site with, praise the Apus, the cleanest, shiniest flush toilet I had ever seen on a hiking trip.  How this isolated place can have such a facility and the squalid town of La Playa cannot is beyond me.

Pushing on we were treated to views of Machu Picchu, the river, waterfalls, farmland clinging to the steep hills, slippery paths, a quick rain shower with big drops, increasing temperature and humidity and finally the bottom.

Another hour saw us at the train station but not before having come across some of the devastation left by the January rains that had caused such mayhem.  Just near Hidro Electrica the Urubamba river makes a big sweep, this sweep has gotten a lot wider, destroying a farm, roads and much of the beginnings of an expansion to the hydro electric plant itself (the outside bit anyway).

We lunched at the Babylon restaurant where we met up with Jose and our luggage, bought ice cold beers and generally chilled out.  Sandy even took a nap on one of the benches.  The hike up to Aguas Calientes is about 10km from there, a reasonably gentle uphill but we had elected the day before to take the train and we were feeling pretty happy with this decision.  I think Graham and I could have done it assuming we had skipped the beer fest and restrained ourselves a bit at lunch but as it was we were happy to take the train.  The people we saw walking did not look all that happy and they had only walked in from Santa Teresa that morning.

 

By 5pm we were in Aguas Calientes, a rough, tourist trap of a town built out on either side of the railway whose only reason for being is that it is the closest point to Machu Picchu.  We enjoyed our hot showers and flush toilets, ate yet again and went to bed in anticipation of our 5am rise to take the bus to Machu Picchu itself.

Peru: Salkantay to Machu Picchu – Day 3

Part 3 of 5

This was by far the easiest day consisting of mainly a downhill roll to the village of La Playa from our idyllic campsite of the night before in Winaypoco (note the “n” should have a tilde over it to give the nyuh sound). 

We got off to a late-ish start which was fine, gave the sun time to take the night chill off the valley.  After the disconcerting scrambles over landslides of the day before this day was to prove uneventful.  We saw yet more beautiful flowers, hordes of butterflies, vistas to die for and so on.  The day was bright and warm and other than the occasional muddy slippy bit was over very quickly.

 

We arrived around noon/one o’clock in the village of La Playa, the low point of our trip both literally and metaphorically.  The village has something like 1000 families living in it as opposed to the other villages we had seen along the way with anywhere from three to thirty.  A family seems to be about 4-8 people or so making for anywhere from 4000 to 8000 people living in this village. 

With this in mind you would think that a high level of cleanliness and sanitation would prevail to prevent epidemics and such.  Unfortunately this did seem to be the case and this was to mar what was otherwise a good trek.  There weren’t open sewers or such but there was a certain air hanging over the town of decay. 

According to our guide this village and more like it further down the valley produce an awful lot of fruits (bananas, oranges, limes…), coffee, corn, tomatoes and so on, most of which ends up in Cusco or farther afield in Arequipa and such.  Like all farmer’s everywhere they are at the bottom of the money pile with very little making it’s way to brighten their lives.

our campsite was down at the far end of the town so we walked through most of it.  There are some obvious signs of money being spent in the hope that trekking groups will stop in.  In general it would seem that most make a beeline for the bottom end of town.  We walked past the usual one room adobe houses with thatched or tin roofs, pigs, cats, dogs and chickens coming and going as they please.  Some places had invested in Huge speaker stacks and were pumping out the reggaeton and cumbia tunes.  It was all quite sad and desperate.

Arriving at our designated area we walked in to our dining area for the day, flung ourselves down and promptly bought some cold sodas from the lady of the establishment.  She had cold beers which we longingly looked at but knowing that the following day would bring a hefty ascent/descent we held strong and denied ourselves unlike the group in the space next door where again the tunes were pumping.

While waiting for our cooks to present us with the final meal that all three were to prepare (the back-up two cooks were also our muleteers) I looked around and asked Edwin where we would be staying that night as there were to be no tents which had to be taken back up the mountain to our starting point that afternoon in readiness for the next group two days hence.  He pointed to the shack that the cooks were using and emphatically said “there”:

 

and where is the shower and the toilet I asked, making an effort not to be taken aback.  Edwin duly pointed them out and I took a wander to inspect our digs. 

Now we had been told that there would be cabins on the last day and having done the Colca Canyon trek we had a vision of what a cabin was.  A cabin was an adobe hut, four walls, a door and possibly a window, inside of which were pallet beds, the walls were solid walls from ground to eaves and the door was indeed a door in the classic sense and the same with the window except that there wouldn’t be glass just a wood shutter. 

Our “cabins” were indeed four walls with a roof yet somehow our reality was far from Colca.  The walls were rough planks extending maybe 80% of the way to the eave, the roof was sheetmetal, there were no windows but then you didn’t need them thanks to the gaps in the walls.  There was no door, just a doorway, there were no pallets, just a muddy grassy floor that the chickens were pecking happily at.  Looking around a bit I realized that our cabins formed the low point of the lot so if it rained we would be getting wet.  There was a strong smell of rotting food, particularly meat, and occasionally a strong waft of sewage.

Ok, we are trekking in the impoverished Andean mountains, the mosquitoes aren’t that bad, it hasn’t rained since the first day and then really only at the higher elevations and I am sure that the pigs, chickens and dogs get shut up for the night somewhere.  We can deal with this, the villagers live like this all the time, no worries.

Right, off to check out the shower situation. By this time it had been three days of sweating, repellant and sunscreen and for the most part we are wearing the same clothes as on Day 1 since we had to limit what we brought because we had to carry everything the next day to Aguas Calientes, still 30+km away on the other side of a mountain.  The shower, which was cold water-only which we new in advance, was a pipe sticking out of a wall in a tiny grimy smelly box of a room.  No showers then.

Right, let’s check out the toilet next door. Opening up the plywood door (at least there was one) I was almost overcome by the stench of ammonia and waste, it was a standard concrete squat toilet of the sort you see in Asia and sometimes in France.  Unlike those in those countries which are usually clean, dry and not smelly particularly this was soaking wet, there was a 5 gallon bucket full to the brim with used toilet paper (bear in mind that all toilet paper in Central and South America goes in such a bin not in the toilet) and an empty bucket to be used to “flush” the toilet.  I staggered away wondering to myself how Darcie and Sandy were going to cope.  Graham and I could use the field next door like the dogs did (after dark of course, we don’t want to frighten the natives) but the ladies?  that wasn’t going to happen.  Can we say dysentery and weird foot disease anybody?

At this point the lunch bell rang and we all tucked in to the last supper so to speak, paid our muleteers their tip and settled in for a long afternoon and night of doing nothing but waiting for the 4am when we could head on off down the road to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu. 

The rest of the day was uneventful, Edwin and Jose did the best they could to make our chicken coop bedroom tolerable (they put tarps on the lumpy bumpy floor) and we did the best we could to ignore the deficiencies and find something, anything to do to distract ourselves until dinner and bed should claim us.  Sandy grabbed her camera and wandered back into the village to the delight of the children and Graham and I wandered off down the road towards Santa Teresa.  Darcie stayed behind to guard the gear, trooper that she is.

 

That night we all took sleeping pills, put in ear plugs (the place next door was still blasting the tunes), wore long sleeves despite the warmth and huddled in our coop praying for a quick passage of the night…