Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu

My last post ended with us leaving the Galapagos Islands for Lima on Monday, October 15. We had a layover in Guayaquil where my dad and I got lunch at some little restaurant. The cool thing about this place was that they had buzzers on the table that you could push to receive service. It was awesome! The waiters didn't come by three times to ask if we were finally ready, and we got the check exactly when we wanted it. Nifty.

Our hotel in Lima was nice, but strange in some ways. There were two beds, just as we asked for, but there was about an inch between them. And in order for my dad to get out of bed, he basically had to step into the bathroom. It wasn't even a tiny room, it was just strangely organized.

Lovers Park

Tuesday we started with brunch at the hotel (a buffet with lots to choose from), and then we went on a 3-hour tour of the city. This was pretty much one of my favorite tours (besides the Galapagos). Our tour guide, Sheila, had the perfect balance of providing information without overwhelming us for 3 solid hours. Our tour covered the Plaza de Armas, City Hall, and the Cathedral, where we were able to go down into the catacombs and see where 25-30,000 people were buried. SO many bones. Some of these buildings did not allow pictures, so it's harder to remember what we saw in each place. After the tour we just wanted to relax, so we sat in our hotel room watching movies all afternoon/evening. It was so nice. We went downstairs for dinner at the hotel, and then packed our things (while watching more movies).

I think this is where Francisco Pizarro is buried.

Catacombs under the Cathedral! We couldn´t take pictures down there, but we could take them through the grates in the floor of the Cathedral.

Wednesday we had another buffet breakfast, and then we were taken to the airport for our flight to Cusco! It was a relatively quick flight, but we had to circle the Cusco airport once because the tailwind was too strong. This was also when I realized that I'm just more prone to altitude sickness than other people - we had been taking pills to help with the altitude for a couple days (and I spent 5 weeks in Ecuador for crying out loud), but after landing it felt like I was hyperventilating in my seat, and I was sweating like crazy because they turned off the air in the plane for the descent. That combination kind of makes you think you're dying. After getting our bags, we met up with our driver and guide who took us to our hotel. At this point I was having difficulty comprehending the things around me and I was incredibly tired, but at the hotel the guide wanted to go over our next 4 days in detail. FORTUNATELY she wrote everything down, either on a map or on our printed itinerary. I really appreciated that considering I had no idea what was going on at the time, haha.

So many sides, and the rocks all fit together so well!

After that we had a couple hours to rest before our 3-hour city tour. Here's a tip: DO NOT plan any kind of tour your first day in a high-altitude city (particularly over 10,000ft). The good thing was that our guide, Celio, was completely understanding that we were still adjusting to the altitude, so he took baby steps the whole time and didn't make us climb crazy hills or ruins. [As many of you know, I walk incredibly fast. Next time you want me to slow down, just take away half of my oxygen... that should do the trick.] I was also in full zombie mode by this point. Several times I realized that I was just standing there, staring at Celio or the scenery with my mouth hanging wide open. The really unfortunate bit is that Celio taught us SO MUCH about the Incas, Cusco, and other things, but I remember almost none of it. Darn. After seeing several sites of Incan ruins, he took us to the Cathedral in the Plaza de Armas. My one complaint about this tour was that we spent an hour in the Cathedral. My dad and I were used to popping into cathedrals, taking some pictures, wandering briefly, and leaving within 20 minutes, but Celio wanted to explain every aspect of the Cathedral to us. Given that I hadn't been absorbing any other information that afternoon, I could've gotten away with 10 minutes in there. After the tour we walked less than a block to a restaurant called Incanto and had quinoa soup (not as good as the one Daniel makes in Zuleta!) and some kind of quinoa main dish. Then we went another block or two to our hotel and crashed.

This is where the Incas would perform sacrifices.

The Cathedral in the Plaza de Armas.

Thursday we had an all-day tour of the Sacred Valley. First we ate breakfast at the hotel and heard the firecrackers that call people to church, and then we were picked up and put on a bus of Spanish-speaking people. We ended up switching buses at a little bus "terminal" to an English-speaking bus with Alfredo, quite possibly the worst guide I've ever had in my life (which should become evident a bit later). Before I get into the tour, here are a couple notes about the driving: double yellow lines (indicating that you can't pass) mean absolutely nothing, it's completely normal to shoot to the center lane in a roundabout and then swerve across the outer lanes when you want to exit, if there are two lanes of traffic moving in the same direction, apparently it's okay to cut inbetween them going the opposite direction, and if you're not constantly laying on the horn, you must not be from around here.

Back to the tour - we started by making a quick stop at a vista point overlooking the valley, and then a few minutes later we stopped again at a market. We paid to explore the Sacred Valley, and our second stop was to a market which had the same souvineers that every other market in South America seems to have. Good use of time. After that we drove up a very large hill to get to a big Incan terrace site. There were something like 11 of us tourists - some had gotten used to the altitude, but an older couple, a couple that had just flown in from Miami, and my dad and I were still trying to adjust. When we started the climb to the top, I asked Alfredo twice in less than 5 minutes if he could slow the pace. His response was to just keep climbing and leave the slow-pokes behind. When I FINALLY got to the little house at the top (where the others had been for 5-10 minutes already), Alfredo came over and said "you take your picture and then we go back down, okay?", to which I replied "no, I want to take LOTS of pictures, and I just got here so I'm not about to climb back down". Once again he left half of us behind while leading the other half down. With the pace he was keeping I was sure we had a lot of things to squeeze into one day. Unfortunately, half the places we went were markets where he likely earned some commission off of our purchases for bringing us to them. I wanted to punch Alfredo in the face when I realized he rushed me up and down a mountain at something like 12,000 ft of elevation so that we could get to his precious market that much faster. Jerk.

The little bump in the top center of the picture is the house we hiked to.

Pisac market! Very colorful (and cheap).

Where we ate lunch!

After the Pisac souvineer crafts market we headed off to eat lunch at a really nice hotel in the valley. It was a HUGE buffet lunch with a variety of meats, sauces, salad things, sushi, grains, and desserts. Our table was looking out on the nearby river and was right by some guys who were playing music on traditional instruments. It was such a nice and relaxing change from the rest of the morning. Despite all the wonderful food, none of us wanted to stuff ourselves because we knew we had to endure another long drive in our van. Fortunately the driver went a bit easier on us after lunch (as in making sure the front AND back sets of tires cleared a speed bump before accelerating again). Our next stop was the Ollantaytambo fortress which was huge and looked magnificent, especially at that time of day. Alfredo must have turned over a new leaf, because he kept the pace slow while we were climbing, and when we got to the bottom again, we were only missing one person! After the fortress we had one more stop at Chinchero, where we saw a demonstration of washing and dying wool. This was actually really cool because they use a plant called the "shampoo plant" to clean the wool - when you grind the leaves and mix with water, it makes soap! They also use anything from dirt to bugs to get the basic colors, and then mix with other types of powders or rock crystals to change the shade. I bought a shoulder bag here, and probably paid more for it than at another place, but the demonstration and explanations were really awesome. We finally made it back to Cusco around 7pm, and my dad and I grabbed a quick dinner before heading home. It was a LONG day.

Me with an alpaca in the morning...

... and again in the afternoon! (check the fork)

Ollantaytambo Fortress

Look at that fit! The knobs helped with transport.

Floating stairs

Note the perfect Incan parts and the not-so-perfect restored parts.

Wool-dying demonstration - you can even kind of see a stripe in the middle wool indicating where she added powder to change the shade.

Lunch on the train!

Friday we took the Vistadome Train to Machu Picchu! It was a 3-hour ride that got us into Aguas Calientes (the town below Machu Picchu) around noon. [[Side note: the planes and trains here have MUCH better food than in the US - on this train we got roasted potatoes and cheese cubes in yummy seasoning, a quinoa dish, cookies, and a drink. Our plane rides have included things like scrambled eggs and ham, bread rolls that are relatively fresh, fruit, and other edible things that I've actually consumed and enjoyed.]] Anyways, a guy from our hotel was at the train station and took our bags ahead. Another guy was supposed to take us to Machu Picchu, but he told us we could stop by our hotel first to check-in and see the room. That sounded fine to us, so we wandered down to the hotel (the last one on the block before the road to the ruins) and took our time. Then he finally stuck us on a bus to go up to Machu Picchu. That drive was incredible! Okay, it was also switchbacks the entire way in a bus, so it was a little terrifying, but there were mountains completely surrounding us and it was just an incredible sight.

View from the train. Notice how brown everything is.

View from our hotel balcony. Notice how green everything is!

When we got up there, our guide surprised us by saying we were over an hour late... WHAT? Apparently the guy who picked us up at the station was supposed to send us DIRECTLY to Machu Picchu so we could get to our tour on time. He must not have been aware of that. (I definitely thought it was strange that a porter was taking our bags down the road when we were walking there ourselves.) So our guide said that we could either start our private tour with him right then and only get the abridged version (something like 1.5 hours), or we could wait that 1.5 hours and go on the 3pm tour he was leading for a larger group of people. We opted for the shorter tour, and honestly it was still fantastic. I would have been pissed if he had said things like "over there is this really cool thing, but we don't have time for it". He still covered a ton of information and we walked around a lot of the ruins. It was amazing!! The sun was shining right on the ruins when we caught our first glimpse, and it just made everything seem alive. Turns out the Incas were pretty smart in the way they built their city - the perfect fit of the stones, the location of doors and windows, the way they tapped into natural water sources... everything was so thoroughly planned. When the guide had to go meet his other group, he pointed out two locations that we should definitely check out on our own - I'm so glad we did, because one of them (up near the top by the guard house) is where my dad and I got some great pictures of the entire site. Seriously, I don't know how else to describe Machu Picchu other than amazing and breathtaking (literally and figuratively). You should probably go and see it for yourself...

This room is nifty because there are two main windows that let in direct sunlight at each solstice.

Three windows, one for each element (they only believed that fire, water, and earth were the basic elements).

I wish those Incas had thought of hand rails...

Toward the end of our visit it started sprinkling, so we figured it was best if we headed back to the hotel. (My dad booked this 2-week trip though a travel agent, and she had a free night at this 5-star hotel, which she threw in for free as a thank you for booking with her.) This hotel (SUMAQ) was basically the Ritz Carlton of Aguas Calientes. It was so nice I wanted to cry. We each got queen beds (as opposed to fulls at some of the other hotels) with about a dozen pillows each, the room was spacioius, the bathroom was HUGE, the tub had jets in it, and we had a balcony overlooking the river. The one problem was that there are not screens in the windows, and the bugs go crazy at night, so it got quite warm with the windows shut. Other than our room there was a bar on our floor where we got free pisco sours (Peru's national drink), there were guest computers as well as wifi, the floor below was where meals were served, there was always tea in the lobby and freshly baked things during tea time every afternoon... it was so nice. The meals... absolutely fantastic. At dinner there were waiters standing around the perimeter of the room ready to get you anything. For dinner I had a Sumaq salad (cannot remember what was on it, but my dad has a picture of it), spaghetti with yummy sauce, a variety of ice creams, and lemonade... and this was all included in that free night! No wonder the Incas settled here... it's right by the SUMAQ Hotel!!

Saturday morning we had the largest breakfast buffet I've seen in a long time - there were cereals, chestnuts, about 8 types of bread, a variety of fruit (I tried Opuntia cactus), yogurts, juices, bacon, sausage, pancakes, crepes, eggs, rice, turkey, cheeses, etc. That day we had early morning tickets to Machu Picchu so we could see the sunrise if we wanted (we opted to sleep instead). Honestly, we had seen just about all of it the previous afternoon, and we were exhausted from all the travel in the last two weeks, so we just wanted to relax. It was also good that we slept in because it was overcast for most of the morning, and it rained periodically throughout the day. The "unfortunate" part was that our train ticket had been modified (for unforseen reasons, and at no cost to us), so instead of taking the Andean Explorer (one step above the Vistadome and second nicest on the route) at 4:30ish, we were scheduled to take the Hiram Bingham (the classiest and most expensive train, named after the American explorer who discovered Machu Picchu) at close to 6ish. So we had a lot of time to kill. My dad and I wandered around the crafts market right by the train station for an hour or so (and ran into a couple from our Sacred Valley tour), and then we returned to the hotel to get massages! This was pretty much the nicest massage I've ever gotten. It was 90 minutes of pure relaxation. My dad got a hot rock massage which I found hilarious, because just earlier we were talking about how we hate being too warm and stuffy (like in the hotel room with the window closed), and when he walked into his massage room he said it was something like 150 degrees in there, haha! Overall, the massages were fantastic and a great use of our time.

After that we sat in the lobby for a bit longer since we still had a while until our train left. We were even around until tea time, during which we ate quite a bit of banana bread and drank a bunch of tea. At this point I was considering what I could take to decorate my South American shrine room in my house (you know, the one I don't have). I had already contemplated sitting in our jacuzzi bathtub with my comforter wrapped around me, holding onto the little clay Inca people that decorated our walls, and screaming that they could never make me leave... but I figured being kicked out by security wouldn't be the most gracious way to end our free stay. Anyways, the most that I took were the extra shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and soap bottles in our room (so at least my shrine will smell the same), and like 20 coca tea packets from the lobby. By that point we realized we wouldn't be getting into Cusco until 9pm, and we hadn't actually eaten lunch, so we walked up the road to grab a quick bite before the train. We both got an order of fried cheese sticks with guacamole. They were delicious... and possibly our worst decision of the trip. We knew that we would get food on the train, but we figured it would be just a little snack basket like on the way down... we forgot that we were taking the Hiram Bingham back.

When we got to the station, there was a separate entrance for Hiram Bingham passengers to go to the luxury lounge. They didn't check our passports (rich people never lie...), they gave us cold towels to wipe our faces with, and there were musicians inside serenading people as they sat on comfy couches. As soon as we sat down, a guy walked over to take our tickets, and he worked some magic to get us better seats than we originally had. If we had sat there much longer, I'm convinced we would've gotten free champagne and appetizers (there were half-filled glasses around the room), but we were escorted to our seats on the train. We ended up at a table for four, but the other side was empty, so we put our bags there (and had so much leg room!). There were fresh roses on every tableclothed-table, wine glasses, window curtains... it was amazing (and should have cost over $300). We had so much wonderful food on that ride - it started with some kind of squash appetizer thing, then soup, a basket of different breads, a duck appetizer (first time eating duck), tenderloin beef, some kind of dessert, a second dessert of little bite-sized fancy cookie things on a silver platter, and unlimited wine. For free. I am horrified to say that I literally could not finish my tenderloin beef because I had filled up on fried cheese sticks. :-| It was a fantastic ride though. The bathroom was even amazing - there was a wooden toilet seat, a fresh rose next to the paper towels, and the window was frosted so people couldn't see in (unlike another train we passed). Before getting to the station, two guys even came into our car to play traditional music and welcome us to Cusco. By that time I was threatening to sit in one of the bag racks and hold onto the coat hangers for the rest of my life, forever riding from Cusco to Machu Picchu and back. I also wanted to take the curtains for my South American shrine. This was after my fourth glass of wine, but I don't think that had anything to do with it...

When we finally got to the train station in Cusco, our driver took us back to our hotel (and tried teaching me Quechua along the way). We spent the rest of the evening repacking everything since my dad was flying home the next day, and I had to switch hotels (to something more along the lines of MY budget). This was seriously a first-class day for us.

I think I'll stop here, as the next part of my adventure covers Lake Titicaca!