Train to Machu Picchu

I was in Cuzco again getting set to go to Machu Picchu. The plan was to take a train from Cuzco and then a bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu. I had met a young girl in Cuzco that was also going solo to Machu Picchu so we ended up traveling together. We were having a good time together. Cusco is at a higher elevation than Machu Picchu is. We would be going down about 3000 feet all together. We took a taxi that my guide had arranged for me to the train station and got on the train. The train is a slightly smaller version of a normal passenger train but it was comfortable. They served us some tea and pastries on the trip then they did a fashion show that was funny. I enjoyed watching the scenery go by as we headed down the mountains. We were mostly running next to a river that was flowing fast whitewater for most of the way. It looked like a good river to raft down. We stopped a few times to pick up or drop off passengers but we finally made it to the station for Machu Picchu. I had a hotel for the night so I checked into it. Then our guide met me at the hotel and we went to the bus stop to take the bus up the mountain to the entrance to Machu Picchu. The bus ride up was kind of sketchy since the road was too narrow for the bus and the hairpin turns were kind of scary but we made it up to the top safely. The sight of the old Inca ruins in the distance made some great scenery on the ride. My guide got us our tickets and we entered the sacred site.

We took pics at the mandatory first stop overlooking the entire area. I was happy to finally be here. For many years I had heard about all the power people feel when they get here and I was hoping for the same lift. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny with good visibility to see all the features from our lookout up high. We took pics and moved on to the entrance to the city. Our guide explained all the engineering and features of the walls made out of precisely carved stones as we went along. We saw the residential areas of the city and the main governing areas with space for games and assemblies as well as worship and such. Then we went up to see the main source of the energy. A large rock that was carved into an odd shape was the main spiritual source for Machu Picchu. Lots of tourists were standing around it with their hands outstretched trying to get as close as they could to the stone without actually touching it. The claim is that the stone exudes energy and the tourists were trying to absorb as much as they could. Some people standing around looked stoned but not from the energy of the stone. I am not sure what they were on but they looked ripped. They told me it was just from the energy they had been absorbing from the stone. I stood there with my hands outstretched but all I got was tired arms. I have always been more of a science based person and I am not very spiritual whether that is organized religion or energy from rocks and crystals. If you can energize yourself holding your hands near a rock more power to you.

My friend was enjoying herself and told me she was energized by the entire site not just the one stone. She seemed happy. We watched some llamas walking around the site feeding on the grass growing between the stones. I enjoyed that. I was trying to visualize this place before the stupid Spaniards came and destroyed the city. The llamas seemed to help me see the past better--sort of a visual aide for me. We spent hours walking around the large complex. I liked the engineering and all the planning that took water right to where they used it. I asked about human wastes but my guide did not seem to know the facts on that. They must have had some type of outhouse or something I figured but there was no mention of it anywhere.

I was starting to have some problems with my pain from all the hiking around at Machu Picchu and so I was happy when the long day was over and we climbed back on our bus. I looked at my young girlfriend and I told her she looked sunburned. She laughed it off but refused to put on more sunscreen. Big mistake! She got thoroughly cooked by the high elevation sunny day. I had been reapplying my sunscreen all day long and I had a good base tan from living on the beach in Costa Rica so I was ok. Later on in the night she paid dearly for her cute spaghetti strap top and skimpy skirt.

We rode the bus back down to town and we were dropped off at our hotel where we ate a great dinner of classic Peruvian cuisine. It was served family style and I was hungry so I kind of pigged out. My friend had a hard time eating because she was starting to hurt from the sunburn. After we ate I went looking for some sunburn medication. I found a pharmacy just up the road from my hotel and I bought her some. Then we went out to a bar for a few hours of listening to music and rehashing the long days events. It was fun but by the end of the night out she was in tears from pain. We went back to the hotel and I helped her apply the medication to try to relieve some of the pain. She had blisters on her shoulders already. I felt sorry for her but there was not much I or anyone else could do until the damage healed on its own in a few days time. She could not even lie down to sleep. She sat up whimpering all night in a chair. Such is life. Live and learn.

Every Spanish class I have ever taken uses Machu Picchu as a lesson in words for thieves and pickpockets and general crime problems. I found no such problems but maybe we were lucky. I asked around and nobody else seemed to have had any problems with crime either. Maybe the authorities have cleaned up the crime problem around the site, I don't know but we had no problems. I highly recommend Machu Picchu for a visit, but wear sunscreen or you may regret it.

Los Uros, Lake Titicaca

I enjoyed a big breakfast at my hotel in Puno then my guide picked me up and we headed down to the marina to go out to Los Uros which is the floating islands in Lake Titicaca where indigenous people live and work. The taxi to the marina was late but we still made it in plenty of time. My guide gave the taxi driver grief for being late. We boarded a boat and headed out onto the lake about ten in the morning. There were fishermen working nets in the lake. We watched them circle their boats and then drop the net while other boats tried to drive fish into the mouth of the net before they pulled it up.

The lake had reeds growing all along the shoreline. These are the reeds that the islands are made from. They cut the reeds, dry them and then bundle them into long tightly tied bundles which they then tie together on top of the previously placed bundles. The bundles at the bottom just rot away eventually. They also make their boats and houses out of the same bundles of reeds. I really liked the boats. They had either one or two hulls and some of them had fancy designs and faces on their bows. The boats were either poled along or paddled sometimes with a combination rudder paddle and sometimes with separate rudder and paddles. A few of them had small outboard motors on them either gas or battery powered.

We passed a few of their boats on the way to the islands. The people in the boats were always friendly and waved at us. Some of them were fishing and some of them were going to or coming from the market in town and some of them were water taxis moving people around the lake from island to island or shore. We had to stop at a controlled point to enter the area around the islands. I noticed a water tower on the first island I saw. The had plumbing for drinking water I guess. We drove up to the first island and the people came out to greet us. We docked the boat against the island and carefully climbed out onto the floating reed islands. The inhabitants were all dressed in very colorful clothes. I had to laugh at some of their hats perched on top of their heads. Real character showed through in their hats. We assembled in a circle and sat on some reed bundles while our guide gave us a history of the islands and the culture from early days to the present. Then some of the people showed us how they cook and what they eat. There were demonstrations of making clothing out of raw wool and a discussion about the fishing in the lake. They had a few trout in an enclosed lagoon on the island. The trout in the lagoon were up to almost two feet long and several pounds. I wanted to go fishing. After the show we broke up and people that came out with me on my boat started to shop for handicrafts the locals were selling. Since I don't buy anything I wandered around.

A fancy reed boat was coming in to land on the island and I reached out to have them throw me the line and when they did I pulled them in close to the dock. We started to talk and I told the owners of the boat I wanted to go for a ride on their boat. They immediately agreed to take me and some of my friends out for a ride on the boat. We piled on the boat and pushed off the island. The man was using a pole to push and paddle with and a woman dressed in hot pink with long black braids with tassles on the ends was at the rudder/paddle combo in the stern of the boat. Since I was sitting near her I started to chat with her in Spanish since she did not speak English. She had three kids from on to ten years old, but was single and according to her own comments, she was in the market for a husband. The man she was on the boat with was her uncle. She was laughing all the time and started to act all suggestive with me. She told me she wanted me to be her new husband. We all got a laugh out of that. But she persisted with flirting with me the rest of the day. We had a good time. She tried to talk me into staying the night that night and told me if I did I would never want to leave again after she was done with me. I did not doubt her for a second. She was serious I am sure. But we cruised around for a while and then the uncle wanted to take us back to the island for lunch. We went back. I climbed off the boat and she grabbed my ass as I tried to step off. I laughed at her but one look in her eyes and I knew she meant business. My friends and I thanked them for the ride and gave the uncle some cash for their time. Then we went to eat some lunch. My tour group had lunch included but I branched out and had some fresh fried trout that they pulled out of their lagoon and cooked up for me. My girlfriend or future ex wife, from the boat came over and sat down next to me. She was aggressively trying to get me to stay the night. I shared my trout with her and we talked some more. I tried to gently let her down by telling her I had to go back to town because I took medication that I needed which was back at my hotel. She offered to take me to go get it in her boat. I couldn't win at her game. I should have just taken her up on her offer. Finally the tour operator collected us to go to the next spot and I extricated myself in the group. She gave me a pouting look when I left.

We went to another island after the first one. It was mostly the same with a greeting and some handicraft sales but they did some more history and demonstrations too. They told us about how they make the islands and boats from the reeds. It was interesting. A boat takes about two months to make and lasts about a year before it gets too waterlogged to use anymore. I would have liked to have taken one back to the San Francisco bay area just for the curiosity factor. After this stop we drove around in the boat to see some sights along the shoreline and then we headed back to Puno.

I enjoyed my day. I was nearly raped by the one woman but all is good. She was fun to hang around with for a couple of hours. I might have taken her up on her offer if I had felt better but I was not feeling so good and I was on a tightly planned schedule. She will find her new husband I am sure. I kicked back at my hotel and rested. I was pretty tired. We were at 12,700 feet and I could feel it now. The next day I was going back to Cuzco then on to Machu Picchu and I was looking forward to that.

Puno, Peru near Lake Titicaca

The Inca Express from Cuzco to Puno took almost ten hours. I enjoyed the ride but it killed me to sit for so long. I was met at the bus depot by another guide and taken to my hotel. I checked in, ate a quick meal and went up to my room to try to recover. I had the next day off to rest. I did everything I could to try to feel better including a long shower and taking some anti-inflammatories along with morphine. Then I took a sleeping pill to knock me out. I made sure I drank a lot of water and coca tea too because at 12,400 feet it is easy to get dehydrated. I wondered how the sleeping pill would react with all the coca tea I was drinking but there did not seem to be any difference to other times I had taken it. I slept well and felt better in the morning.

My guide met me at my hotel right after breakfast and we walked around town for a personal city tour. You guessed it again, we went to the main square and the cathedral. I told my guide I wanted to see more local people and how they live instead of more cathedrals. So she took me to the market place. We walked around and she told me what everything was that I did not already recognize. There were some weird fruits and things that I did not know. She then took me to a little stall where we ate some very tasty tamales and tortas. She wanted to drive me around town but I told her I would rather have the day off to rest. The next morning I was scheduled to go to Lake Titicaca to see the floating islands. She understood and we split up.

I slowly wandered around town in the direction of my hotel. I stopped to watch some of the locals doing things like making up a huge pot of soup. The woman making it was entertained that I was watching her. I started to talk to her and she was very friendly. When she was finished loading up the pot and she let it start to simmer I told her thanks for letting me watch and went on my way. Then I watched an old lady selling some fruit on the street corner. She was trying very hard but was not selling anything. I stopped to talk to her. She was very poor and homeless. She had begged the fruits off a farmer to try to sell to make some money to eat with. I had no idea what it was she was selling but I bought some and then just gave it away later to someone else. It was a bag of greens of some type. I kept walking and found a man cleaning some fish. He was working very slowly but doing a good job filleting the small fish. I asked him where the fish came from and he told me from Lake Titicaca. They were nice sized rainbow trout. I told him that the fish he was cleaning were originally from my home town in California. Rainbow trout were first found in Strawberry Creek in Berkeley California and have been transplanted to almost fifty counties on all continents except Antarctica since then. He looked at me like I was crazy when I told him that. Then we talked about what fish were in the lake. The only problem was he kept using local names for the fish and I had no idea what those names referred to. He only had the trout to show me. I kept walking after we finished talking. I stopped in a little cafe near a busy corner and sat down to drink a beer or two while I watched the world walk by.

I met a woman sitting there and we started to talk. She was twenty five years old and still single, She told me that it was unusual to be single at 25 but she had gone to university and she was almost finished with her school. She was going to school to be a tour guide she told me. The program is seven years long and you must graduate from it to get a permit to be a tour guide. She spoke English well and wanted to practice speaking with me. Sure I will help a nice young woman learn how to speak English. We talked for almost two hours and I told her I had to get back to my hotel to eat dinner and get some rest. I told her she could come with me if she wanted to. To my surprise she took me up on my offer. We walked back to my hotel with her practicing her tour guide skills along the way. We had some dinner and went up to my room. I wanted to take a shower and I told her she could watch tv or something to entertain herself while I took my shower. She sat down and turned on the tube. I jumped into the shower and to my surprise a couple of minutes later she knocked on my shower door and joined me in the shower. We conserved some water by showering together and then hit the sack.

We played around for a while and then she wanted me to roll on top so I did. I started to have some energetic fun and was going at it full bore when all of a sudden I felt like I was choking. I stopped moving and felt like I was going to die right there on top of her. I wasn't sure if I was having a heart attack or something like that. I started glupping huge breaths of the thin air but still felt like I was suffocating. I rolled over on my back and tried to catch my breath. We were at 12,700 feet in elevation and despite all my coca tea I just ran out of steam due to my physical exertion. I gasped for a couple of minutes and then slowly got my wind back. I looked over at my girlfriend and she started to laugh. I had to start laughing too. A few minutes later I was recovered and after laughing about it for a while, we continued at a much slower pace, I had learned my lesson. She told me she knew I was going at it too energetically. She could have warned me or something. It was a fun evening with her. She went home early and I went to bed alone to rest up for the morning trip out to Lake Titicaca. She was a pleasant surprise ending to my day so far.

Cuzco

The first thing I had to do in Cuzco was to buy a new camera. My other camera died in Lima. It just shorted out or something and would not work anymore. I looked all over town for a camera before I found an Olympus camera that would work for me. I bought a couple extra SD cards and I was off to the tour of Cuzco.

I know I am getting cynical about the city tours in Central and South America but come on they all go to the main square, look around at the ever present cathedral, then go to the government palaces before a lunch and the afternoon is all about taking you to their uncle's craft shops or something like that. This tour was a little better because we also went to see several old ruins around town. Yes we did start at the cathedral and the town square but then we went out to an area called Sacsahuamán that was a large area with huge stones cut and fitted into a gigantic series of walls over 400 meters long and 6 meters high. The largest stones were estimated to be almost 200 tons in size. It was my first real visit to see stone work like I was going to see at Machu Picchu in a few days time. We all got off the bus and wandered around the big stones taking pics and wondering what they were all about. Our guide speculated about the purpose of the big cut stone walls but the reality is that nobody really knows what they were all about or who built them or why they did. What we do know is that when the Spaniards came they destroyed most of the things built by the indigenous people. They used most of the stones from this site to build their big cathedral we went to earlier in the day. The Spaniards had some twisted ideas of how important their own lifestyle was over other peoples culture. I think they were mostly evil no matter how well intentioned they may have felt themselves. They just ruined everything they found and built churches on top of the ruins.

We went to another site when we were finished with the first one. The second site was a water reservoir and delivery system built of cut stones over five hundred years ago that still works perfectly today. It was pretty impressive engineering and building to make this system work so well for so long. There were indigenous people selling crafts near this site. The crafts were mostly knitted items or woven things made out of llama wool. They were dyed bright colors and the workmanship was very high. The next site we went to was a sacrificial altar carved out of a single huge stone. Again the guide speculated about the purpose and things of this altar but again it was just speculation, interesting but just speculation.

We had a great lunch during the day. Most of the same foods that I encountered in Lima were served with local Cuzco variations of course. They served roasted llama, alpaca, guinea pig and tons of potato and corn items from soup to salads and main dishes. I tasted many of the foods and the main thing I noticed was that most of it was pretty bland tasting. The creole fire and spice that I found in Lima was toned way down up here in the mountains. I was still eating and drinking lots of coca leaves to try to prevent altitude sickness. I was feeling fine. My chronic pain was even down. I think maybe all the coca leaves had something to do with my feeling better.

After the tour I hung out in downtown Cuzco. There were a lot of American students taking classes here and just like all the other centers of education the students were packed into the bars from mid afternoon until late at night. I hung out with them and we had a good time. Most of my time for the last few years has been spent hanging around twenty somethings. I was used to it by now. I made no attempt to keep up with their insane copious amounts of alcohol consumption but I still drank my fair share with them. I headed back to my hotel when they started to get real sloppy drunk because I am not a fan of that behavior anymore. I guess I am getting too old.

After Cuzco, for my next adventure I was heading down the Inca trail to go to Lake Titicaca. I was excited to be going there. So far my trip had been very entertaining for me. My constant attention from my personal guides was not how I was used to traveling over the years. Every hour of my day was preplanned by my travel agents before I left and they did a great job of it.

After my time in Cuzco I took a tour bus ride from Cuzco via the Inca Express to Puno near Lake Titicaca. I got up early and had my breakfast. The hotel I stayed at in Cuzco was small but they gave me great attention and helped me learn a lot about the area and its people. I enjoyed my stay there. I checked out of the hotel and a taxi took me to the bus depot where we were leaving from. The bus was a few minutes late leaving because some of the passengers were late getting there so they waited a few minutes. We finally pulled out of Cuzco and wound up through the narrow mountain roads to over 12400 feet. Then we were on a large plateau with mountains surrounding it on all sides.

Riding along in the bus we watched the farms going by one after another. They all seemed to have stone wall for fences and almost all the farmhouses were built out of stone too. The workmanship of the stonework was nothing like the old Inca workmanship but these buildings were functional. We rode along for hours before stopping for lunch. The lunch stop was very good. The food was varied and tasty and all you wanted to eat. They had a live group of musicians playing typical pipes of pan Andean style music. I bought a cd of the music from the group. When I was finished eating I wandered around the compound we were in. They had a guinea pig pen, several llamas and alpacas, some pigs, turkeys and chickens. Some older women were making handicrafts outside. I sat with them and we talked about their lives. They each had eight kids for some reason. They were carrying and nursing their youngest babies. I asked them to teach me how to knit like they were doing. They laughed and gave me a quick lesson in knitting. In about thirty seconds I picked up the knitting needles from them and tried to knit. I fumbled along and they laughed at me. Then I started to knit away while I was talking to them and they were shocked. I had been a professional knitter for almost ten years so I was only pretending that I needed lessons in knitting. They laughed at my joke about not knowing how to knit and told me that almost no men knew how to knit in Peru. I later found that that isn't totally true. I ran into several male knitters making good money knitting.

When everyone was done eating we climbed back in the bus and took off again. I expected another long stretch of riding along the good roads we were on but to my surprise we stopped again just up the road from our lunch stop. We climbed down from the bus to look at guess what...I know the tension is building...yep...another cathedral. I did enjoy this cathedral more than the others however because there was a strong indigenous influence on this one even though it was in a somewhat ratty condition. The typical paintings at the back of the church showing the path to salvation was all indigenous people and their lives portrayed. I enjoyed the change. We got back on the bus again and went a little further down the road and then stopped at Raqchi which is another Inca ruin. The stonework was much better quality then I had seen so far. The stones were very well cut and fitted tightly. The walls made of a combination of stone foundations with adobe above the stonework were almost 80 feet high! The temple these walls formed would have been huge with a roof on it. We wandered around the ruins and listened to the guide tell us their best guess as to what we were actually looking at. There were some botanical gardens there also with all the plants labeled. I learned the names of some plants I had been seeing but did not know what they were. There was a big Inca water reservoir there also with cut stone waterways to carry the water to the fields and homes and some Inca baths. I saw some fish in the water and wished that I had some fishing tackle to see what kind they were. I was guessing that they were tilapia or possibly trout but I never found out. Up on the hills above where we were we could see old stone fencing that marked off a huge area of the plateau we were on. The guide told us there was about 45 miles of this wall still standing. He claimed the Incas posted guards along this wall and defended their territory from invaders. I don't really believe that story because the wall was not high enough or strong enough to deter even slightly motivated invaders.

I stopped and talked to an elderly woman for a few minutes. She was resting from cleaning out the water canals. She was very friendly and talkative once I got her to start talking to me. She was an outcast because her spouse had died already and she was just waiting to die she told me. Kind of a sad story but she said it so matter of fact like her life and her pending death were pre-programed by fate already. I let it go and offered her some of my snacks I had with me. She turned me down at first, I think out of pride, but then she accepted my gifts and we parted ways. I could talk to these people because we all had poor Spanish since it was not the native language of any of us. Some of them butchered the language as badly as I did and we laughed about our mistakes together but we were able to communicate.

We piled back onto the bus and headed out to Puno near Lake Titicaca.