Machu Picchu

Two entries, two days in a row... a world record. But I have some time now that classes are over for 2007 and, although it's not OFFICIALLY summer yet, it sure feels like it around here. Anyway, this was the Machu Picchu, Peru experience... and what an (expensive) marathon it was to get out there.

There is no direct road out to Macchu Pichu -- you have to take a train out there that takes 4 hours each direction. A train that PeruRail has a monopoly on, so you can imagine how "reasonably priced" the tickets are. Also, there's an equally reasonably priced town called Aguas Calientes for accommodation, at the base of the mountain, that has no reason for being other than tourism. I opted to stay in Cusco and commute.

Oh yes, and you better have your train tickets reserved several days in advance because this is a destination that A LOT of people want to see. And now that Machu Picchu was officially voted in as one of the "new 7 wonders of the world" by the internet public (take a look at http://www.new7wonders.com/), the crowds will likely only get worse in the years to come.

Machu Pichhu is one of the "best preserved" Incan cities, mostly because the Spaniards didn't know it existed and therefore couldn't sack, pillage, and tear it down. It was rediscovered around 1910 or so, then restored, and has been Peruvian-tourism-ground-zero ever since. But it's also a place that feels VERY Indiana Jones-esque... I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the first movie was based on the guy that found this place since his day job was as a university professor.

The site itself is really spectacular; you have to take a 40 minute bus ride up a winding, snaking road on the side of a mountain to get to the entrance... with EXTREMELY "interesting" views down the ravine if you are on the right side of the bus. Although there are some masochists that walk it (3 1/2 hrs each way) too. Once on top, you can stair-master your way around the different mountains and see the site from on high, plus the twisting Urubamba river wayyyyyyyyy down below at the base.

It's also fascinating because you're way up in the clouds, assuming you're there during the rainy season... and I was, trust me. The rainy season basically means smaller crowds but lots more rain. In fact, I think we had about half an hour at the beginning of the day and half an hour at the end of the day without the rain coming down.

The rest of the time the clouds moved in and it rained fairly steadily. The last train to Cusco left at 5p so you had to pay attention to closing hours... otherwise you could get stuck in a $200 usd per night hotel, without your luggage, waiting for the next days' PeruRail train back to Cusco.

The rain and clouds created some fun atmospheric photos but also really made it hard to walk around anywhere, due to the slick rocks/steps, the complete white-out conditions at times (you couldn't see two steps down the hill below you), and a complete lack of navigation since without seeing where a given set of steps went, you would have no idea where on the mountain you might end up. Also, there was a massive invasion of French and Japonese tour groups for some annoying reason and it echoed all over the place. Mon dieu.

Although the llamas didn't seem to have much problem with the weather conditions. They looked quite at home in it, as if they were bred for these conditions in the Andes mountains or something. Anyhoo by the end of the day, after climbing endless stairs and walking through every imaginable building ruin while simultaneously dodging huge pools of collected rain water, I made one last charge to the top of the mountain to get a picture ("proof" that I've been to Machu Picchu!) before heading out of the park.

This is one of the few minutes that you could see a blue sky! But that's what you get when you go during the rainy season. Finally, I made the bus ride down the mountain followed by the 4 hour train trip back to Cusco, arriving just before 10pm, in time for dinner and to pack my bags... for a TEN hour train ride southeast from Cusco to Lake Titicaca the following day! But this time around I ponied up for first class tickets (well worth it) which I'll write about the next time.

Cusco Peru

Hola, I'm back from Peru and Bolivia... my stomach is still feeling the ill effects of extended time in the third world, but that's the way it goes. I took an 8 hour flight on LAN from Buenos Aires to Cusco (with a stopover in Lima), where we landed at about 11,500 feet of altitude. You could definitely feel the thin air while walking around the airport! Alas, Cusco was the "lowest" elevation place of the entire trip... more on that later.

I'll also have to say that Cusco is "the most South American looking" city that I've seen yet. The city gets annual payoffs from UNESCO to keep the roofs all spanish-tiled-up and otherwise appear traditional, so it's a nice looking place from up high. And the stairs... oh, the stairs. And the hills! Everywhere... what a pain after a day or two. You're somewhere in the Andes mountains so the hills, mountains, and valleys are unavoidable and flat land is nearly non-existent.

But besides looking the most South American, the place is also the most touristy that I've vistited as well... and shockingly expensive! In theory, the Peruvian sol is 3:1 to the US dollar, but things were definitely not priced to "local" expenses.

But it's definitely a highly recommended place to visit nonetheless. And if you're planning to go to Macchu Pichu, it's unavoidable. Cusco was founded back around 1200-1400 AD by the Incas (some say other indians before them but this is just general info and I don't care to debate it!).

It's also a VERY earthquake-prone place. The really interesting thing about the city is up close -- the Incan walls. These things were built to last. As you can see to the left, it was an EXTREMELY custom job when they built them... the block in the center has 12 angles cut into it. You couldn't wedge a knife blade in between them if you wanted to. Also, the women with the llamas below are standing in front of a building with the original Incan wall base and a Spanish building constructed on top of it.

When the Spanish arrived in Cusco in the mid 1500s, they tried to knock down a lot of it but eventually gave up and just kept the base and foundations and built their buildings and cathedrals on top of the remainder. And when they didn't follow that plan, their buildings were knocked down by earthquakes. So Cusco is fairly unique because it basically maintains an original Incan city layout overlayed by a Spanish city.

Anyway, I spent five days there, including several tours outside the town in the surrounding area. There are a ton of Incan ruins all over the area, the most interesting being what you can see all throughout "the sacred valley". Since most everything in Inca-land is at 11,000 - 13,000 feet of altitude, getting down to the 7500 ft elevation valley was nice. I don't usually get altitude sickness, but the 3rd day in Cusco I could feel a slight headache and nausea... all classic signs. Luckily it went away during the tour of the valley and never returned.

The sacred valley is also where the Inca Trail (aka "the Gringo Trail", due to the mob of tourists all over it) begins. The hike is available in 2-day and 4-day flavors -- pick your torture if you like steep climbs and camping with lotso rain throughout the day and night. But if you're going to tour the ruins, you'll also be doing a lot of stair-mastering as well, so at least you can splurge on desert when you get back to town.

There are also plenty of markets to sample, with most of them (in my cynical and correct opinion) being tourist trap driven... but some are fairly authentic. This is one in the town of Pisac, along the sacred valley. There were a lot of your standard "Inca Cola", "Cusqueña Beer", and "The coca leaf is not a drug" T-shirts in the market stalls. Howeverrrrr, it was also a large food market where people were wheeling and dealing for vegetables, grains, and as you can see down below on the right, MEAT!

Mmmmmm, mmmmm.... unfortunately my camera was not able to capture all the flies swarming about, but you can just imagine what a nightmarish infraction of every FDA regulation in the book that the market was! Fun to watch though.

So that was Cusco... next time I'll throw together some pictures of one of the main goals of this trip -- a visit to Macchu Pichu!

Temaikén

Before I head 2000+ miles up north to Peru, I'm posting these pictures of a wild animal park / reserve / zoo / whatever thing so that there's something new to look at for the next two weeks. If this were a TV sit-com, it would be the mid-season episode when I stitch together a bunch of previous episodes and somehow try to tie them altogether via a very thin plot line.



Anyhoo, this animal park is about 45 minutes outside of Buenos Aires (using the direct bus, or 2 hours using the EXTREMELY indirect bus) and is called "Temaikén", which is an old indian name that means something. What, exactly, I don't remember but I'm sure it's quite profound. Or at least marketable to the local Argentines...


There are quite a few exotic looking flowers and flamingos right when you walk in the place. The interesting thing about flamingos, as I have learned whilst aimlessly wandering the greater part of southern South America, is that they live in a variety of places that are extremely dissimilar. This includes the super-freezing-cold-windy-Andes-mountains of Patagonia as well as the lush, warm, and delightful tropics of the Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay border.

Also, they have white tigers but they don't let him near the flamingo cage for obvious reasons. I think it's somehow become mandatory for every zoo in the civilized world to have at least one white tiger. At least this guy moved around a lot... usually tigers are pretty lazy as I've observed during my extensive, multi-continent, zoo-attending experiences.

Moving right along, let's get to the weird stuff. This guy is called a "Tapir". They look exactly like something you would see in the "Pleistocene epoch" section of your prehistoric animal history books. From my distant vantage point, they appeared to be somewhere between the size of a big pig and a hippopotamus. Also, this guy looked a little bored or annoyed while he was pacing around looking for something to eat.

Since I'm here in South America, right on the edge of the Andes mountains (well, a thousand miles away, but whatever) I would be remiss if I did not provide a picture of an Andean Condor. They're like the California Condors but not as big and with lesser publicity, I think. The wingspread measures somewhere around 10 to 12 feet wide though... we saw them all over the sky when I was down in Calafate, Torres del Paine, etc, last September. So... goooooooo Condors!

Next up, we have the "Ñandu", a distant cousin of the ostrich and rhea. They, too, are all over the place in Patagonia... running up and down the hills, mountains, and so forth. They don't seem to be the brightest amongst the bird family as our bus almost hit one, in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. You would think they could stay out of the road and stick to the nothingness all around.

These guys are called "Maras" and they're all over Patagonia as well. They're sort of a mix of a rabbit, kangaroo, and maybe a rat or something. They're about the size of a giant rabbit or a very small jackalope... if you're from New Mexico, you may have taken someone you don't like out to hunt jackalopes late at night. Anyway that concludes the tour of Temaikén.





In other news around here, my Spanish class was interviewed by a local Buenos Aires newspaper this week... naturally it will be published while I'm out of town. So I can't tell you if I made the cut, got edited out, or even what the story is about. But I bribed some of the students to get me a copy and hopefully something will be available online... assuming it's worth reading. And assuming you can read Spanish. When I return next time (end of November maybe?) I should hopefully have some good photos to post of Machu Picchu and the other Peruvian Inca ruins, plus Cusco, Lake Titikaka, La Paz Bolivia, and all points in between.

Random Buenos Aires Stuff

Well down here in Buenos Aires we're all still getting over the excitement of the Latin Grammy awards show from Las Vegas last Thursday. OK, I'm lying... it doesn't seem like anyone down here paid attention to them plus, when I watched PARTS of it, it mostly seemed to be a bunch of Tejano accordian-and-keyboard music. In other words, it was terrrrrrrrible. So I can see why a lot of the locals ignored it. Also, for being the LATIN grammy awards show, no one spoke Latin. Caveat emptor. E plurbus unum. Etcetera.

Anyhow the end of the year is coming soon, I can't believe how fast this year has flown by. In the USA the Thanksgiving holidays are not far away... around here there's no such thing. But the good news is that, as a consolation for missing the holidays in the US, I'll be spending them in Peru (Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca) and Bolivia (Copacabana and La Paz). Not sure where exactly, it'll just depend on when/where I catch the buses, trains, etc, etc. I can't believe how expensive it is there (Peru specifically, not Bolivia). In all my research, it looks like everything around Peru is priced in US dollars (at US cost of living). The trains are hideously expensive, unless you're a local in which case the train ride that costs foreigners $140 usd round trip only costs you $10 usd round trip! They're separate trains but to keep the foreigners (esp. backpackers) from exercising the more logical alternative, you have to have a national ID card to prove citizenship... not that I could pass for a local up there anyway.

That seems to be a common theme here in South America -- a lot of the tourist attractions are a cheap price for anyone from the same state/province, then it goes up a LITTLE for citizens of the country, and then it goes up a LOT for foreigners (including anyone from the surrounding Lat-Am countries). At least it's EXTREMELY common here in Argentina... anything from national park and museum entrance fees to plane tickets. Assuming the pilots, airline employees, customs agents, maintenance workers, baggage handlers, or airport facilities people are not on strike. Which is extremely rare in this country. It's amazing what a difference there is in the strikes in Argentina since three years ago. Back then it was mostly just a bunch of unemployed protesters on marches that blocked up the streets, wrecked traffic, and otherwise hindered people from getting to work. Now it's people with jobs refusing to work.

In the last month, we've "enjoyed" the following protests: taxi cab drivers, public (and long haul) bus drivers, airline employees, pilots, newspaper stand owners, bureaucrats (city workers basically), subway workers, hospital employees, petroleum production workers, and teachers (high school and college). And that's just ONE MONTH! The immediate response to go on strike and fear/refusal of competition (mostly domestic market protectionism) is a really interesting dynamic to watch up-close-n-personal. I have no idea how this country is going to be able to compete in the globalized marketplace... and it's not just Argentina but most of Lat-Am. OK, enough of all that Econ 101 stuff.

Sorry there are no pictures this time around. I just figured I should add something to this blog since it's been a while since I wrote anything. After the Peru & Bolivia trip I should have some interesting pictures to upload to the site. After that (in December), I'm planning a trip down in the Andes mountains in the lake district on the Argentina/Chile border. Then it's off to the fine beaches of Punta del Este, Uruguay before I finally have to return home... and find some work to pay for all of this!! Ah well, it's what I call "motivation".

Cordoba and further south

Wow another month has flown by and it's November already. Time really flies when you're out traipsing around the world and completely oblivious as to what's going on in the cubicle farms under the warm buzzing glow of the florescent office lighting. Anyway, I'm back from Córdoba, plus some other side trips to the towns of Villa General Belgrano (or "VGB" as I prefer to call it) and La Cumbrecita. It was a nice little one week break from Spanish classes and the big bad city of Buenos Aires.

Cordoba is Argentina's 2nd biggest city. About 1.2 - 2 million people live there, depending on who you ask and who's propaganda/literature you read. For me, it was nice to have a look around (like I said, I duped a friend-of-a-friend into being my part-time tour guide) but I definitely prefer living in BsAs. Cordoba is basically a college town, with over 120k students in all the universities, which consequently means if you want anything to eat that's not pizza or a hamburger, well... good luck.

There were two really big churches/cathedrals to tour plus a nice little "up and coming" neighborhood called Nueva Cordoba. The cathedral at the beginning of this blog dates back to around the 1700s somewhere. The dark stuff is pollution... it should be a light yellowish color. Then right nearby, you go to Nueva Cordoba and there are lots of restaurants, bars, a civic center with dancing water fountains, including music and lighting, plus a nice (big) park. So after 3 days I packed it in and found a bus down south.

And I have to say that I really enjoyed the towns that were about 1.5 - 3 hours south of Cordoba. They're all extremely German and/or Swiss looking, up in the mountains, and there are streams, cute little bunnies and birdies, plus a distinct lack of pollution. And people actually leave their doors unlocked... or so I was told. A lot of flowers too. Also we went through Che Guevarra's childhood town... I felt like fomenting a revolution or something.

The town of VGB was extremely touristy. The place is famous for it's annual Oktoberfest celebration the first half of every October. Yes, I missed it by one week. But the upside was that tourists were in short supply so everything was half the price and it was relatively cheap there (when normally it costs and arm and a leg). And when I say tourist, I mean mostly Argentines because it's off the beaten path and not a lot of foreigners know about it. Yet. But it was a little weird being in the middle of German everything and speaking Spanish.

The town also had a few hiking trails through it plus some that led to the outlying small mountains since the town is situated inside a valley. I went hiking on one of the trails that ran along an arroyo one evening and it was a really bizarre experience. At first it started out fine, a nice little path in the grass along the stream. Then halfway through, the path forked and I chose the longer one that the map showed, to get a better look around. After about 5 minutes, the trail became hard to discern and I came across a bunch of chickens and roosters along the riverbank. Then not much further, there was an old man near the water picking weeds right next to a small cow that was tied up and grazing (I assumed it was his). I then figured I needed to cross the water since the trail was almost gone but it looked fairly well worn on the other side.

I made my way down the embankment and saw a woman carrying a basket along with her kid plus an obnoxious dog. As I started up the embankment I could hear the sound of horses and then I saw one running full speed, cresting the hill I was going up. Then it stopped. It was unbridled, no bit, no rider, no nothing. I know absolutely nothing about horse behavior and that was it for me. I did a 180 and headed back to the main trail... but I DID find a good barbeque joint for dinner that night on the way back that I would have never have seen otherwise. So... happy ending.

The next day I did a day trip to a Swiss town called La Cumbrecita. It was probably my favorite place of the entire trip -- lots of "real" hiking, with waterfalls, natural springs, and other outdoor stuff. Plus horseback riding if you like that, although I already had enough horses the previous day. Lunch was at a restaurant on the top of a hill with a phenomenal view... German food, of course. Then I spent the day hiking around, it was typical mountain weather with the threat of storms or occasional sprinkles. The waterfalls were really nice... in retrospect I wish I had planned more time in that town. The entire area, actually.

Finally I had to reverse-engineer my entire trip to get back to Cordoba, then on to Buenos Aires. I was thankful the airline was only a half hour late... domestic flights in this country have really become a game of chance in the last 3-4 years. There was an article in today's paper that says Argentina's two main (only) airlines have pathetic on-time departure records. In fact, only Sudan, Nepal, and some country in Africa have worse records... IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! If the only airlines that have worse track records than you are in countries with a civil war, the poorest in the world, or somewhere with hideous weather conditions... you have serious issues. Anyway at least they land safely - sadly, that's about the only positive thing to say.