Amazonia and the Land of the Peckish Peccaries

It is a bit of a wonder that there is even an airport in Puerto Maldonado. There really isn’t any “there” there. But there is an airport there and that is where we landed after our flight from Cusco. I suppose it is possible that the airport is simply far away from the main town, and we simply never drove to the main town. We did take a bus to our tour office and after a brief orientation and a bug juice bath, we reboarded the bus and headed out of “town”. The drive was long and bumpy and we were surrounded on either side by papaya tree orchards and then denser and denser bush. You got the feeling there wasn’t really any “there” at our destination either. And the feeling was right on. We finally got dropped off at a building that wasn’t much more than a few poles and a thatch roof. There were some not so healthy looking dogs and one or two locals sitting around playing cards but it would’ve felt like we had gone the wrong way if it weren’t for the couple of dozen other tourists all waiting around looking anxious. Then we were led down some rickety steps into the jungle only to find the river waiting for us, complete with caimans and sand flies that would bite your legs off if the caimans didn’t get there first. But there were multiple boats capable of handling about twenty peeps at a time, and we all piled in and starting scooting upstream into the great unknown.

The river was pretty wide. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to have to swim across, but I probably could have in a pinch. It reminded me of the River Kwai in Thailand because the same type of vegetation was growing on either bank and the heavy air was weighing us down with the same anticipation. In reality, we did see a few caiman right off the bat, but they were far away on the other side of the river and not really all that exciting as movement did not seem to be on their agenda. But the sand flies and the mosquitos were quite real. Even covered in DEET, all of us would finish our few days in the Amazon with more bug bites than freckles, and for some of us, no names or anything, JOSH, that is saying a lot.

I've forgotten the name, but it is a tributary of a tributary of the actual Amazon River.

About 45 minutes of boat ride later and we pulled up to another rickety staircase on the opposite bank as equally unassuming as the one we had gone down. A few hundred steps up the bank later and another quarter mile hike in, and we had arrived at our destination. And there was a “there” there. It was a raised platform lodge of sorts with maybe twenty rooms and a bar and a dining area and a behammocked meeting area. Lots of raised wooden floors and lots of bamboo walls. It was all quite charming. Of course there was no air conditioning, and it would remain around 100 degrees for the entire duration of our stay, but it wouldn’t have been an authentic Amazon experience if there were AC, right? We needed to embrace the humidity and the bugs and the incessant noise coming from the multiple bickering howler monkeys. So that’s what we did. Really, they ought to call them “growler” monkeys, as the sound they produced was much more akin to that generated by my peckish stomach than it was to a wolf communicating with the full moon. Only with the monkeys the volume was cranked “to eleven” at all times, whereas occasionally my tummy takes a hiatus.

Just hanging out at the lodge.

The lodge had as few walls as possible.

Each time I have been asked if I enjoyed my time in the Amazon, the answer has been an unwavering “yes”. But I can’t really put a finger on what it was that made the visit so enjoyable. We didn’t really see anything in the rainforest that we hadn’t already seen in Costa Rica or Southeast Asia. We didn’t really do anything more special than hike and play in the river and hang around in hammocks trying in vain to cool off. So why was it worth the trip? How can I make the Amazon sound appealing enough to recommend it to friends? Good questions, both. I will attempt to answer, but I can’t promise anything.

That's one tree's trunk, but not really one tree trunk.

Even the plants sweat here.

First off, we were assigned a guide, named Gilbert, who led us on hikes and adventures and even ate meals with just the thirteen of us for the duration of our stay. He was a really cool guy who understood our needs and molded the agenda to fit our desires. Without that, I think I might have called the last four days of our vacation a waste of time and money. But with that, with our new friend Gilbert, we really did get the most out of our time. The thirteen of us each got to pick and choose the hikes we would go on, some staying back to nap, others to partake in a massage. And Gilbert even gauged our level of energy well enough to know that some hikes just weren’t gonna fly at all. Had Gilbert been our guide in Machu Picchu, I probably would have loved the tour there as well. And if we had been given options to do different activities while in the Amazon, but each with its own guide and together with lots of other patrons, I probably would have enjoyed that less too. So I suppose we were lucky. We hadn't expected the VIP treatment, but we were very much glad to have it.

In any case, I do need to document exactly what it was we did, or I’ll quickly lose my readers, if I haven’t already. So here goes. We didn’t arrive at the “inn” until late in the afternoon, so all we had time for was a short hike. But we made it count. They had erected a vertical, rectangular open-air metal tower that was nothing more than a 168 step spiraling staircase to a fifty square foot platform 140 feet above the ground. All fourteen of us, including Gilbert, barely fit on the precarious platform at the top and we watched the sun set over the trees from just high enough above the canopy that we felt as if we were flying with the birds. You couldn’t see the ground at all, other than far off near the river, as the trees were too densely packed. It was a different vantage point than I’d ever been privy to in the past, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We watched vultures and parrots and only Gilbert knows what else soaring along, but the highlight was when the scarlet macaws did a fly-by that definitely buzzed the tower. I could have hung out up there for hours, but it was getting dark quickly and the hike back to the dining hall begged for our immediate attention.

We are climbing what?

Seems taller from up here.

When Gilbert did the rundown for us about the next day's activities, he got a bit of a rise out of us by suggesting that a four a.m. hike was the best way to see the wildlife. We went out at 8:00. The wee hours of the morning thing was getting a bit old for all us on this trip, and if we didn’t see any more caimans, well, we could live with that. But as I said, Gilbert was flexible. He took us down to the boat, which scooted us across the river. We then climbed the opposite bank and hiked beneath the monkeys until we came to a lake where he had another boat waiting. This was more of a floating platform for which the only means of locomotion was a single crazy shaped oar at the back, reminiscent of gondoliers in Venice. The “gondola” in this case was more of a barge. We never did see any caimans, but we spent almost an hour tracking a couple of river otters who gave us a good show. We also went piranha fishing with beef for bait. The kids caught quite a few and had fun holding them by the spine and watching them bite at the air or a leaf that we’d put between their jaws. Pretty sweet. We couldn’t eat them, even though they could probably eat us, so eventually each got thrown back into the lake before it suffocated. There would definitely be no swimming here!

The otters were doing a little fishing themselves.

First human to catch a piranha that morning!

Nasty little buggers.

The hike back was without incident; unless you call being targets for the little spider monkeys an incident. We did get a little swimming in on the river before heading back to camp. It was a much more pleasant wet than the ever-present layer of sweat that I bathed in as I hiked, especially when mixed with one part sunscreen and two parts bug-juice. But the dip in the river had its issues too, because even though the mosquitos were mostly uninterested in us due to the DEET, the sand flies were having a smorgasbord. Most of us came back with a few dozen bites each after just 15 minutes or so in the river.

Cooling down.

The afternoon activity was a trip to a local farm, but I opted out choosing a massage instead. That was fun. The woman spoke no English. She instructed me to strip naked and stood there with her hands on her hips staring at me, with this look on her face like I was keeping her from some other important appointment. I did as she asked for fear of physical repercussion and mounted the table face down. The table had no headrest, so I spent the whole massage turning my head back and forth from one side to the other managing an ever-growing crick in my neck as she worked my back and legs. No towel, just my bare bug-bitten butt, naked as the day I was born. Not the most relaxing massage I’ve ever had, but at least I found out that I hadn’t missed much on the farm visit.

Dinner was excellent. In fact, the food was pretty darned good at this place. It was buffet style, with few choices, but I tried everything and liked it all. It was nice not to have to deal with decisions about where and what to eat. We got what we got, and for the most part, we loved it. Really, how can you go wrong when your food is wrapped in banana leaves, anyhow?

The next day was all about a project that Gilbert dreamed up to keep the kids happy. We cruised across the river to where he had found some balsa wood logs that had been left over from a construction project. We stripped the bark off of them, and then used the strips to tie the logs together until we had a pretty serviceable makeshift raft. I think the plan was to have the kids help do the building, but they were having too much fun getting muddy in the river, so in the end Dan and I did most of the building. But the kids all boarded the raft and rowed themselves down river. It was pretty cute seeing them floating along, but poor Gilbert earned his pay that day. The “oar” they were using was really just a pole. And they weren’t getting much of anywhere along the river. Gilbert swam along with them, encouraging and instructing, but in the end, mostly pushing. The kids were getting hot in the sun, and most of them abandoned ship and starting swimming too. We adults were all scooting alongside in the engine-powered boat, letting Gilbert herd the cats. It was pretty amusing for us all except for Gilbert who was feeling responsible for the safety of all of our children and yet getting very little cooperation from any of them. I am sure that if there were really any danger we would have helped him out, but the absurdity of it all just had us laughing and cheering rather than being helpful. We did eventually make it to our destination and Gilbert sold the raft to another local for a tidy profit, or not.

Gathering the logs to build the raft.

Chloe was into the project for awhile.

How to tie balsa logs together with the bark from the same logs.

What to do when you are avoiding building a raft.

The raft worked great, the pole as an oar, not so much.

Gilbert is the only one left of the raft, but he is cheating, as that is an actual oar from the boat.

The afternoon hike was to the largest tree on the preserve. I think it was a Kapok, but I could totally be making that up. I did pace around the base of the trunk and found that it was about 55 meters just to get around. That’s a big tree. From there, Gilbert pointed out the sounds of some white-lipped peccaries crunching on tree nuts in the distance, and we spent almost an hour stealthily approaching the sounds, only to eventually scare the animals away and never see anything but trampled vegetation. I think Gilbert was more excited about trying to see them than the rest of us were. But what are you going to do when your guide insists upon silence and then does the follow me hand signal deeper and deeper into the bush? You follow, that’s what you do.

There was a night hike designed mostly to scare the crap out of the kids. But the spiders were apparently out in force and were larger than an adult male’s hands, so really, I think the adult males were just as scared as the kids. But the nighttime was really about a different experience all together. The walls of the “inn” were made of two rows of parallel stalks of bamboo with a mesh screen in between. In places you could see through the walls, but everywhere you could hear through them. The wall rose up eight or ten feet, but the shared ceiling was at least fifteen above us. Which means, for much of the space, there was nothing at all in between rooms. We got to be neighbors with some twenty-something women on the first couple of nights, which wasn’t bad at all. They were pretty quiet. But on the last night, there was a gaggle of un-chaperoned American teenagers in the room next to ours. They were loud, they were obnoxious, they were vulgar and they were driving me crazy as I tried to sleep.

Finally, I lost patience and put on my teacher voice and under my breath I read them the riot act. I think the fact that they could all hear me, though I was speaking at barely above a whisper, really freaked them out. This faceless stranger reprimanding them probably scared them more than any jungle spider could. It was quiet for the rest of the night. Good to know all my years as a teacher were good for something. At breakfast you could see them all searching the faces in the dining room trying to surmise whom it was that told them off. Not sure if they settled on me or not. I couldn’t have been that hard to spot, considering the smirk on my face was wider than the river.

Before breakfast we went to a bird watch spot that they had set up, where you could watch scores of parrots licking the clay on the riverbank presumably to supplement their diet with minerals. Any time there was an unaccounted for sound, the flock would all dart off in different directions in a chaotic fever-pitched “run for your lives” kind of way. But then they would all come back to the wall and starting licking again when they realized the panic button had been touched by one of their own who thought that the best way to get to a tastier spot on the wall. We were only close enough to see detail using binoculars, but still it was pretty cool to see exotic birds somewhere other than in a zoo or a sanctuary.

I guess it was tasty clay.

They were way cooler in mid-flight, but hard to capture on film.

We really were quite sad to say goodbye to Gilbert. But I think most of us were ready to be done with the Amazon. The wet, heavy heat of day gave way only to the wet, heavy heat of the night. It was quite a contrast to the dry air in the super high altitudes in the Andes just a few days removed, but in neither place did you feel like you could get a good breath of air. In any case, that last morning was about eating breakfast, paying the tab, and starting the long trek home. A half-hour boat ride followed by an hour-long bus ride and we were back at the office to pick up the luggage we left behind. Then a quick trip to the airport and a flight to Lima, and the jungle was but a memory. We stayed the night in Lima, and got to see only a very small portion of the city. But it seemed like a pretty standard big city, so we don’t feel as though we missed much. Josh wasn’t feeling well in any case, so we tried to lay low, only traveling enough to check out the sea cliffs down to the Pacific and a seafood restaurant that was recommended to us by someone Carol met on a hike.

Then it was back to travel-issues-central. There was no avoiding it any longer. The return half of our defective round-trip tickets to South America was about to be tested. I am sure you recall the story of our miserable start to this vacation. Well, we handed them our passports at the gate and awaited the inevitable. Yup, troubles with our tickets. We arrived at the airport just before 5:00 a.m. for a 7:10 flight. The line was long. We got to the counter at 5:45 or so. We were the very last ones to be helped. The half-dozen or so groups behind us in line all went through other agents quickly, and our guy was still typing away on his terminal trying to get our boarding passes. Panic started to build, but before full-blown hysteria set in, he did eventually issue us boarding passes for the flight to Mexico City, but informed us that the flight from Mexico City to SFO was over-booked and we could only go “stand-by”. We had a five-hour layover in Mexico City and so we hoped we could take care of things then, so we boarded the original flight and made it out of Peru.

Once in Mexico City, Carol went immediately to find help with our tickets and was told that she could only get help an hour ahead of flight time when the gate opened for business. So we waited it out. We had a leisurely lunch of really bad Mexican food (we were in Mexico City!) and prepared ourselves for the worst. Good thing too, because the worst happened. We got to the gate; they told us the flight was full. We waited to see if there were any no-shows or volunteers to take another flight. There were not. We got bumped. There is nothing like spending a whole day in an airport only to find you aren’t going to fly anyway.

But this story ends well. Josh was really feeling quite sick at this point, and so a flight would have been rough for him in any case. AeroMexico was kind enough to book us on the early morning flight the next day in Business Class! They booked our hotel for the evening and gave us compensation tickets for dinner and breakfast. They even threw in a set of four round-trip tickets pretty much anywhere AeroMexico flies. Now that is how you treat a customer when you screw things up for them. Expedia needs to take some notes!

Other than a fiasco with getting our bags back in Mexico City so we could change clothes for the overnight stay, the whole getting bumped thing went well. I had to bust some heads to get those bags back, but eventually we did get them. Poor Carol had to work on Monday and now we weren’t getting home until Sunday late afternoon. But you really couldn’t ask the airline to do anything more than they did. I do find it odd though, that we were the last people to check-in for that flight, and therefore the first ones bumped. We checked in before 6:00 a.m. in Lima, and the flight was after 6:00 p.m. in Mexico City. Something was amiss. I think the guy in Lima never did get us checked in correctly and so we didn’t officially check-in until the hour before the flight in Mexico. But oh well, all is water under the metaphoric bridge. We made it home, luggage in tow, and our sick-boy a bit more rested than he would have been had we flown coach the night before.

Final thoughts? Well, we spent an awful lot of time in airports and on airplanes on this trip. We got up before 6:00 a.m. on more mornings than anyone should ever have to on a vacation. Mark lost an ATM card. I had multiple eye infections (never even mentioned that a recurrence happened on the trip home). Josh got sick. Expedia screwed us out of a day of vacation and a few hundred bucks at least. But even with all of that, it was a blast. I am still bouncing-off-the-walls-ecstatic when I think about finally getting to experience Machu Picchu. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city and Rio de Janeiro is in a gorgeous part of the world. Iguazu Falls was simply mind-blowing. We got to spend tons of quality time with our friends. And every time you can gain a little more perspective from the world, it makes everything seem that much more a reason to celebrate the life you have. Would I do that trip again? No. There are so many other places to see. Though I’d love to see the Salt Flats of Bolivia or the peaks of Patagonia, or the blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos, I may never make it back to South America. But I’m awfully glad I made it once.

The sun has set on our South American adventure. Where to next?

Thanks for reading! Adios!

Esteban.

Machu Picchu... "gezundheit!"... and a lesson in "Perspective"

Leaving Buenos Aires was a bit crazy. We had to set the alarm for 2:45 a.m. to get in the van at 3:00. A long van ride to the airport and a long wait in the airport, followed by a relatively short flight, and we were in Lima. The only problem was that we weren’t heading to Lima. A five hour layover in the airport followed by another short flight and we were in Cusco. One more van ride and we got to our hotel around 5:00 p.m., which was 7:00 p.m. back in Argentina. Sixteen hours is a lot of traveling for what looks like a pretty quick trip on the map. And most of us had different levels of elevation sickness to boot. But if you want to visit multiple places, you gotta bear the pain, I guess. And this wouldn't be the last day of the trip that was completely taken up by transportation.

We had just arrived in Cusco-town, travel weary but digging the scenery. 

So Cusco started off with a bang. But I won’t get into that for a couple of paragraphs so bear with me. Hopefully, you’ll appreciate the play on words when it becomes clear to you to what I was referring. Anyhow, despite our exhaustion, we walked along the main square of the old town and soaked in the atmosphere, pleasantly surprised by the old town architecture and the landscaping as well. We ate dinner in an authentic Peruvian restaurant recommended by the hotel and to say we weren’t disappointed would be a tremendous insult to the restaurant. That place was awesome. I had no idea food could taste so good. It was easily in the top ten list for meals I’ve ever eaten. Yes, it was that good from the appetizers to every main course that the 13 of us ordered. Carol will appreciate the mention of the chicha morada, a traditional purple corn drink that we all had, simply to remind her of the pleasure she derived from it.  

Pachacuti, king of the Incans, directing traffic in Cusco's main square.

The next day was interesting. We didn't have a tour scheduled until the afternoon, so the morning was used for just walking around town and checking out the sights, or for shopping if that was your inclination. But that was easier said than done. Because it was almost Peruvian Independence Day and it seemed that every single school child from within 100 miles had come to the old part of the city of Cusco in his or her band uniform to march in an endless parade. All the dignitaries were there to watch. Everyone who was anyone was all dressed up and marching along with the bands on the square. There were thousands of tourists gawking, but there were ten times as many locals marching or hovering and waiting their turn to march. And the car traffic didn't ebb one bit, making for non-stop games of chicken between tour buses and trucks and marching bands and the occasional wandering llama. The bands were all playing, often simultaneously. It was cacophony. It was a zoo. It was madness. It was also pretty cool.

I thought the little girl was cuter than the llama.

One of dozens of school bands.

Afternoon came, and we got a tour of some of the highlights of Cusco from a cool dude named Fabrizio. The tour was a bit long going through the monastery that was once an Incan temple. But the ruins were pretty cool, and I was digging it so far. We learned that "Cusco" means navel, because the Incans thought that Cusco was the navel of the world. For them all roads led to Cusco, not Rome.

An artistic representation of the Incan Empire with Cusco in the middle and every black dot, one of the 300 or so "wakas", which are the sacred sites where we can still find ruins. Each color represents one of the four regions of the empire.

Another piece of art in the monastery showing the Incan sky dominated by the Milky Way. They didn't make constellations out of the individual stars. Instead, they saw pictures in the black spaces between the stars. A llama is pretty easily visible at top right.  

Next we went inside the enormous ancient Cathedral where we were told stories of Fabrizio’s childhood hiding amongst and daydreaming about all of the golden statues and Peruvian takes on typical Catholic paintings. Stories of the saints' demises and of crypt robbers and such were quite entertaining, but again things ran a bit long, and now I was getting almost as antsy as the kids were. Then we were taken just out of town to a place called Saqsaywaman (say it 10 times quickly and I dare you not to smile) where super cool ruins of Incan temples and burial grounds and such were abundant. Cusco was, after all, the Incan Capitol and a much more important location for the Incans than Machu Picchu ever was, so the architecture and therefore the ruins were that much more spectacular. What makes Machu Picchu so special is not the ruins themselves, which are very impressive in their own right, but its unbelievable location in the mountains. Location, location, location. But that comes later. Saqsaywaman was the setting for our first blog-worthy tale.

Outside the monastery, waiting for the party bus to pick us up and take us to the next stop on tour.

Huge rocks, some of which weighed over 100 tons apiece had been magically moved from quarries dozens of miles away and carefully grinded to size and placed just so, to build walls without mortar of any kind, but that fit together so perfectly that no water could seep through any of the non-existent cracks. The effect was mind-boggling. How the Incans did this without machines or even wheels with axles is unconscionable. Amongst the ruins, there was a rock, maybe thirty or forty feet long, that was super smooth and inclined at an angle such that it was a perfect natural slide upon which the kids could partake. Five hundred years ago it was part of a sophisticated water transportation system. Now it was all about the recreation. Keep in mind that the kids and I, and probably most of the other adults who would never admit to it, were all a bit stir-crazy from too much guided tour. That state of mind probably figured into the decision making process on display at this next moment, both by me and by mini-me, otherwise known as Josh.

Some of the huge rocks in the walls of Saqsaywaman.

All was fun and games until I decided to earn my parent-of-the-year badge by suggesting to Josh, in jest mind you, that he “Superman it” down the slide. Just picture how the Man-of-Steel flies and you can picture the orientation one would assume upon sliding in this manner, head first of course. Not being a literary type, I don’t know if it was officially sarcasm or irony or just some sort of morose reverse psychology that I was attempting to utilize. But I really didn’t think he’d take me up on it. I thought that it was evident that I was just “joshin”. Nobody of sound mind would attempt such a thing on a slide made of granite that ends at another granite rock at the bottom jutting out from the ground just enough to be a major stopping hazard. Where my Darwin-award-winning suggestion went wrong is that I neglected to take into account that twelve-year-old boys are rarely of sound mind. The kids were sliding along as usual having fun and the grown-ups were not paying much attention any more, listening to Fabrizio’s explanations of the ruins, when Josh decided to undertake the inevitable.

The now infamous slide. Note the ill-placed rock at the bottom of the path Josh has chosen.

We were all in such shock to see that he was actually attempting it, that nobody, including yours truly, registered what was happening with enough where-with-all to run to the bottom of the slide to catch him. It was one of those horror-movie moments where the audience is screaming at the characters to run, yet they do nothing but freeze and stare blankly at the obvious danger. Things were actually going fine when he was still only halfway down, but the problem is rarely in mid-flight and almost always upon landing. That was the case here as well. Josh’s arms were understandably not strong enough to catch him upon arrival at the rock at the base of the slide and he basically hit chest-first with a thud that shook Cusco. Like I said, “with a bang.” He had at least jerked his head up and out of the way.

There was a brief pause that felt like an eternity to all fifty people that were watching things unfold. The pause ended mercifully as he gasped a breath and then burst into silent tears, trying his darnedest to keep his manly cool but really needing the comfort of his mother’s arms. His chest was so banged up, however, that hugs were out of the question from his mother or anyone else. Not that he would have let me hug him anyway, as he was ready to put out a restraining order, remembering full well who had suggested the slide in the first place. And due to that little detail, needless to say, I will remain in the dog-house with Carol for the remainder of the vacation and undoubtedly until Josh has a twelve-year-old of his own. In the end, Josh was fine, if a little bruised. It took him close to an hour to fully catch his breath again. But we dodged a bullet on that one. He could easily have cracked his skull or at least a few ribs. My bad, truly. Lesson learned. Never suggest a crazy course of action to a tweener or even a teen for that manner. Let them come up with their own harebrained ideas. But kidding aside, it was a very scary moment and things could have been much worse. We may have been unlucky with our flight troubles, but we are darned lucky that such has been the worst of our troubles. It gives you perspective. And that is to be the theme of this post.

More ruins at Saqsaywaman

OK, moving on from that fiasco, we all got taken to the cleaners buying sweaters and hats and other llama-hair bits of coziness that we didn’t need but had to have. It reminded me of the thneeds in Dr. Suess' "The Lorax". Only the alpacas could regrow their hair, unlike the trufula trees. Then it was back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for another early day on tour through the Sacred Valley. This time our guide’s name was Maria. Fabrizio obviously wanted nothing to do with us again, in fear of bringing a lawsuit to his company via another dumb-ass American family. But Maria was ignorant of the previous day’s activities and gung-ho about our tour. First stop was a llama preserve where the kids actually got to hug a llama. Josh's chest was not hurting enough to let that kind of opportunity go. We learned the difference between llamas and alpacas and vicunyas. You can hug the former, you can eat the “middler” and you can’t afford the latter. (So what word would you have used instead of "middler", wise guy?) But they are all ridiculously fuzzy-soft and getting the kids to let go was not an easy task.

Nothing like a llama hug to make everything feel better.

After we left the llama sanctuary, we got another scare. Driving along in our new party bus, winding up the mountain on the narrow roads, we suddenly passed the scene of a horrible accident. A bus just like ours was standing on its nose, deep in a ditch off the side of the road, on the wrong side of a now destroyed barrier. Another car was pretty smashed up on the other side of the road. There were ambulances and fire trucks and we could see at least one local man lying in the riverbed below us with a nasty head wound, being tended to by half a dozen extremely concerned looking Samaritans. There were about a dozen tourists stumbling around on the road crying and bleeding and looking, well, as distraught as you would assume they’d look. It was not a pretty scene. And we thought we had travel problems. Again, perspective.

We continued on, and checked out ruins at the tops of mountains that just baffled the mind. These Incans will build anywhere. How many people died during construction is lost to history, but the number can’t be insignificant. The coolest spot thus far was Ollantaytambo, where you could climb five hundred steps up a terraced mountain, only to look across the valley at a mountain three times as high with building ruins and terraced cliffs and enormous carved faces all in the vertical rock. Apparently some of this handiwork was even done by indigenous peoples that preceded the Incans. Crazy!

There are actually at least eight visible carved faces in this thousand foot high rock cliff. Can you find them all?

We left Maria and drank happy hour “Pisco Sours” in our hotel bar until they either ran out of Pisco or Sour, not sure which. We ate some guinea pig and some alpaca and lots of trout ceviche. Then we went to bed early because yet another early morning travel day awaited. We boarded the Inka Train bound for Aguas Calientes, the makeshift tourist town with no purpose other than catering to the thousands of tourists that arrive each day with Machu Picchu in their crosshairs. We dropped off our luggage and caught a bus up the mountain to the promised land. Machu Picchu did not disappoint. I have been wanting to visit this place since I was Josh's age, learning about it in school. It had moved up to number one on my long list of "wanna-sees" in my world travels. So expectations were through the roof. Again, it did not disappoint. Wow. Just, wow.

Within five minutes of viewing Machu Picchu for the first time.

The first time you see it you lose all ability to taste, you go deaf, and your fingertips go numb. Apparently your other senses have to shut down to allow what you are seeing to seep in. You are ridiculously high up in the mountains. But in front of you is Huayna Picchu, a single mountain that juts up from the valley below and looms over you like your's is an ant-hill.  And in the background behind it and behind you, and actually a full 360 degrees around you are mountains that dwarf even Huayna Picchu.  Behind those are other even taller snow-capped mountains.  One of them looks just like the Matterhorn in Switzerland.  But it is not just the height of the mountains.  The Rockies are high too.  It is the sudden difference in elevation from mountain to valley and back to mountain.  Everything is so STEEP here.  And miraculously, amongst all of this cliff face there are terraced farms and rocky trails and an entire freaking rock city that has absolutely no business being here. The elevation is not helping with the breathlessness that the simple act of seeing has brought on.  The cameras cannot help tell the tale.  You can't feel the vision through a picture. You need the 3D experience to grasp the awesomeness.

Just some of the snow caps in the distance

OK. Enough of that. Nobody wants to hear how wonderful it was, they want drama, right? So back to reality. There were literally thousands of other tourists trying to take it all in simultaneously. At times we felt like herded cattle, walking along the paths they would let you take. There were many rules about what you could touch and what you couldn't. You were allowed snacks on the tour, but no meals (Mark got reprimanded for trying to eat a sandwich). The tour was interesting at times, but way too slow and way too limiting in allowing for the pace you wanted to keep at any given vantage point. We'd go when I wanted to stay and soak it in, but we'd stop and stand and listen to prattle for seemingly ever when all I wanted was to move on to the next spot.  The tour was supposed to be two hours but it ended up being more like three and a half hours.  There are no bathrooms in the park. You have to leave the park (easier said than done, with only one way in or out along an often one-way winding trail) to use a restroom and then get back in line to enter again.  And you can only enter three times on any given ticket, so you better use those bathroom breaks wisely. Nobody used the restroom for the entire duration of the tour. Most of us needed to, however.

If it wasn't for the llamas, especially this one that was less than 24 hours old, the kids would have staged a revolt.

Our guide, Patrick, had a way of drawing out any point to be made.  He belabored the obvious and most of us, adults and kids alike, were dying in the heat wanting nothing but to be done with the tour. It almost ruined the whole experience for me. But finally, mercifully, the tour ended and we were free to explore on our own. Everybody except Mark and Carol and I took that to mean it was time to get in the half-hour long line for the bus-ride back down the mountain. They had had quite enough. But the three of us were determined to turn those frowns upside-down. So we stayed and hiked the mile or so up the Inca trail to the Sun Gate for a different view.  The more time put between myself and Patrick (who was a really nice guy, don't get me wrong - he just needs to work on his delivery) the more my original feelings of awe and wonder returned. By the time I reached the Sun Gate I was back to bliss. I was in my element. I'd found my Mecca.

The view at the beginning of the Sun Gate trail. That is Huayna Picchu behind the terracing.

But all good things must end. So we hiked back down to the park, and got into the now 45 minute long line for the bus to take us back down the mountain to lovely Aguas Calientes. More Pisco Sours and some unbelievably bad tacos later, we called it a night and prepared to do it all over again the next day. The twist was that this time there would be no tour. We could stop and smell the llamas for as long as we liked, which incidentally was quite some time, because just as we made it to the far end of the park, poor Remy had to use the restroom. So she and Mark hiked all the way back to the front entrance while the rest of us lied on the grass and watched the now one day old baby llama, mid-Machu Picchu, learn to walk.  If you have to sit and wait, the entertainment can't get a whole lot better than that! A full half-hour later and the two missing Allens were back and we were ready for our next adventure, the climb up the 1500 steps to the top of Huayna Picchu.

I had the brilliant idea to have the kids count the steps as we went so they could say with authority how much climbing they did. They were so into counting that they forgot to moan and bitch and whine about how hard the climb was.  Some of those steps were a foot and a half or even two feet high. Most were at least a foot. Up and up and up we went, relentlessly, into the ever-thinning air. Which brings us to another chilling moment. As we went up, down came four or five locals carrying a stretcher with a young woman in it, looking as if she had had a heart-attack or something. She was breathing but that is about all you could say for her.  Her friends were hiking back down alongside. None of them looked too worried, but I couldn't tell if that was because her condition wasn't serious, or more likely because whatever had happened, was so long ago (time for someone to go down and get the emergency crew, and then go back up and get the woman and then start the slow journey back down) that they were already accustomed to the notion that their friend was in stable condition and getting help, despite the emergency. Whatever the case, it made the journey up and then eventually back down that much scarier for us. And, sticking with our theme, it put into perspective our own minor troubles like long-winded tour guides and 3:00 a.m. wake-up calls.

We all did make it to the top. Josh was too busy spelunking to join us for the picture.

But despite our fears, we made it to the top, and the reward was fantastic.  The views of Machu Picchu far below were stunning.  The views of the surrounding mountains and valleys were unreal. And having to put in all the work to get there made it that much more rewarding. I ought to point out that the Hagawiesches had to hike up the mountain three hours before us, as they do it by reservation, only letting four hundred people up on any given day. Quincy chose to remain behind as the allure of spending time with Gaby was far more appealing to an eight-year-old than a death-march up a mountain.  So it was only the seven of us on top of that unlikely mountain peak.  The four Thieses and three Allens.  We scampered on the precarious rocks and felt like school kids playing king of the mountain.  There was even a super-tight-fit cave-like tunnel through the rock that we all had to navigate to stay on the trail. Fun was had by all. Few experiences in my lifetime have been more rewarding. And we weren't done yet. We still had to hike down. And for the top few hundred steps, the path was one-way to avoid traffic pile-ups. The way down was far steeper than the way up.  Steps were often only four inches deep while still being over a foot high. That sh$& was scary!

That cave was part of the hike near the top.

It's good to be the king.

From up here, Machu Picchu is shaped like a condor, one of the sacred animals that the Incans worshipped. Check out the switchback road that was built so all of us tourists could take a cushy bus up to the city. Oh, and at top right, that is the peak that I thought looked like the "Matterhorn", complete with snow at the top. And heading off and up from the top left of Machu Picchu is the small part of the original Inca trail that the three of us took to the Sun Gate.

A statue in Aguas Calientes showing the three sacred animals: the condor, the puma, and the snake.

Every one had a different technique for climbing down. Some would use the ladder strategy and climb down facing the mountain. Others would turn sideways so as to get more tread on each step. Some would sit on each step and sort of "hands and feet it" down one by one. Any slip and you were toast. No fall would be something you could live to write home about. There is no way this would fly in the U.S.  Machu Picchu would have railings and ramps. Huayna Picchu would be 100% inaccessible to your average tourist. And in this case, I'm not sure I would disagree with that safety policy. The Incans definitely did not believe in safety first building codes.

Remy is holding on for dear life as she descends the first of maybe ten equally treacherous staircases.

Once the steep part was mercifully over and we could all exhale, going down was actually fun.  Josh and I basically did the rest at a run.  Well, I guess it was more of a controlled fall.  We got down about fifteen minutes before the others and got to hang out with the llamas some more. Watching the infant llama still struggling to walk, I felt a little more empathetic after the struggles I just had to climb down the mountain. Then it was good-bye Machu Picchu and another hour long wait for the bus back to town. I ate an excellent authentic meal of stuffed peppers. I'm sure every one else's meal was excellent as well, I just can't remember what they had. And really, nobody cares anyway, right? We then wandered about town and the markets until we could board the train en route back to Cusco.

Safely back in Machu Picchu, watching the llamas, waiting for the rest of the group.

The train is a bit of a kick. They pipe in pan-flute music which seems to be all the rage in the Andes. Mark threatened to go postal if he heard the pan-flute version of "I'd Rather Be a Hammer than a Nail" by Simon and Garfunkel one more time. Just for the record, pan-flute Beatles and pan-flute Michael Jackson tunes aren't any better. The train puffs along at about seven miles an hour, making a really short trip quite long. But the cars are quaint and they serve you a meal (which I couldn't eat after just stuffing my face with stuffed pepper - does that make it a double-stuff?) and you are seated in pods of four facing two by two so you can have an easy conversation or play cards on the table between the seats.  And then, just when you think you've settled into the mellow vibe, they hit you with an over-the-top entertainment portion to the journey.  A man with a disturbing monster-like mask and a clown suit starts prancing about the cabin. Then they turn up the music and start a fashion show that is so crazy, it's fun. Carol was so smitten with the entertainment, that she actually bought one of the items on sale during the fashion show. More "thneeds". But she does look good in it.

Chillin' on the train.

All fashion shows should include a clown suited monster.

We made it back to Cusco and back to the same hotel we stayed in before our Sacred Valley tour. We had enough time to go out to dinner and then go to bed, because guess what?  Another super early wake-up call was on the menu the next morning for a ride back to the airport and off to the next part of our journey. But with all of that added perspective, really, nobody could complain. We were headed to the Amazon rainforest.  We would be leaving our knit skull-caps and sweaters behind for hundred degree days with hundred percent humidity.  But that story is for another post. So adios for now, amigos!

A 360 degree panorama shot just for the heck of it. Can't have the monster clown be the last image you see, can we?