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?