Month: December 2017

December 22-28

Well, we’re in Santiago, Chile for the week of Christmas. We reserved a room for seven days in a super fancy* hotel. Note: super fancy is relative after going 4 days without a shower and sandwiching that with a stay in a hostel. But seriously, this place is really nice. It’s the kind of hotel room that silently encourages you to never leave your room. So we’ve done a lot of that. A lot of sleeping, a lot of movie watching, a lot of eating and drinking wine. In short – it’s been a wonderful week.

A few things to note:

Thank you to Katie who called in our Christmas Eve reservations. This was harder than it looked. We technically had reservations for both Christmas and Christmas Eve, but both restaurants were closed and didn’t feel the need to let us know or block us from making those online reservations, so… Katie to the rescue!!

We had a late lunch/early dinner at Ox on Christmas Eve and it was incredible. The steak was amazing. The mushroom risotto was amazing. The free cotton candy that they ended dinner with was… amazing. All in all, super pleased with our meal. We spent the rest of the night facetiming with the fams and watching movies. It was not our standard Christmas by any means and we were missing family, but it was a very relaxing holiday.

On Christmas Day, we grabbed breakfast and then headed out to Christmas mass. Consistent with our holiday, we weren’t sure what the details were of Christmas morning mass, but we just headed to a close church to see what was going on. They have an 11am mass on a typical Sunday, so we just tried our luck. Sure enough, we walked in a minute or two late as they were starting their 11am mass. Perfect! No Christmas music that we recognized, but that was ok. Things got weird when there was no second reading. And then at the sign of peace everyone walked up to wish the front row peace. Then we walked up for communion and… uh oh. It’s a Christmas funeral. Definitely a casket at the altar. Language barrier. We got out of dodge fast and Michael scolded me as I took this picture on the way out:

So… after that… back to the hotel. Things were pretty quiet, so we took advantage and laid low. We sat at the pool for a few hours, had a few meals and watched a few more movies. Super relaxed Christmas, super strange Christmas.

The rest of the week has also been pretty laid back. We’ve both had a few runs, mostly in this cool park by the hotel. It has some flamingos and some beautiful flowers that remind me of my Grandma:

We also hung out at the main market for a bit. The bulk of what they’re selling is seafood.

We also spent some time at the pre Colombian art museum. It was cool, but… they highlighted a lot of artifacts from the Mayans in Mexico which surprised me. I was expecting it to be art associated with Chile and the surrounding areas. And we saw cooler stuff in Mexico City.

Also – here’s a picture of El Centro:

So that’s mostly it… we have not seen enough of what Santiago has to offer, but we have really enjoyed everything we’ve seen. The neighborhood that we’re staying in, Vitacura, is really a neat neighborhood with great restaurants and beautiful buildings and parks. Definitely a recovery week that we’re enjoying to its fullest.

December 20

I forgot to post this, but thought it was too awesome to leave out. This is our Inca Trail “passport”. This is the doc that was needed to pass each check point and finally was needed to enter Machu Picchu. We did it.

December 20

OK – this is it! The end of the line for us. Our porters woke us up early – a little after 3am – and we rushed to get our stuff put together. The porters are required to be on a train by 4:45am, so they have to break camp and walk an hour or so to get to the train. Despite this, by the time we were out of our tent, they had sandwiches, snacks, clean water prepared, and of course some tea so we can wake up properly. We had already said our goodbyes the night before, so we mostly tried to stay out of their way. Once we were ready to go, Ruban, Michael and I walked about 10 minutes to the next check point. We got there early enough that we got a seat on the bench. The check point didn’t open until 5:30am, so we sat and waited with the other hikers. Our early arrival paid off once it started pouring and the hikers at the end of the line tried to push in to stand under our cover. It was nice to have that seat for two hours.

Once the check point was opened we started on the last bit of our journey. Ruban told us to go ahead and he’d meet us at the sun gate.

The rain was a little tricky – we tried to keep our backpacks dry. I pulled out the poncho I had brought for the first time. But it was hot – so after awhile, we just gained comfort with the fact that we were going to be wet and started losing layers.

There was a lot of anticipation as we did that final hike. A handful of hikers pulled off to the side at some ruins for a few minutes, but one of the groups just kept hiking, so we kept moving as well. About 15 minutes after those ruins, we started seeing clean, put together people walking towards us. Some of the people who had taken the train to Machu Picchu were hiking this portion of the Inca trail. One woman stopped me and asked how much further it was to the Sun Gate…. umm…. So we blew through the Sun Gate. As the official entrance to Machu Picchu, it’s super important and we were supposed to meet Ruban there, but… oh well. It was cloudy and we couldn’t see anything there anyways.

The clouds did break long enough to give us this shot of MP as we were hiking that morning:

So not that impressive, yet. But it was our first glimpse and we were pumped! The difficulty of the past three days of hiking had knocked our excitement and anticipation up to an eleven.

Ruban caught up to us pretty quickly and we entered Machu Picchu.

It was remarkable.

Ruban spent about two hours with us at Machu Picchu before he had to head back to Cusco. He talked through the different sections of the ruins, where the school was located, what everyday life would have looked like. He also gave us a lot of information about the different temples.

Temple for Pacha Mama: notice how the entrance is shaped similar to a mountain. Also, entering the space was supposed to be like entering Pacha Mama’s womb. The Sun Temple was directly above.

Temple of the Condor: the huge rugged stones are the wings and the stone on the ground is the beak/head. The condor is believed to be the animal that can travel between the earth and the afterlife/the heavens, so the Incas would mummify their dead and put them on the back of the condor here. That way, the condor could transfer the dead to the gods.

Beyond the temples, there was a lot of random cool stuff. Like this:

But in general, we were mostly just pumped to be there and to see how extensive the city was.

There were a lot of people and it did feel a bit touristy after so many days without showers and real bathrooms. There were a lot of selfie sticks and posing, but we just felt really proud of ourselves. I did at least.

I felt less proud of this picture:

Here’s how the interaction went:

Ruban: if you sit right there, it is the best picture

Jane (seeing that it’s muddy): sit? You want us to sit?

Ruban: yes – sit right there. Best picture.

Jane: sit? You want us to sit? (Possibly a language barrier… although we haven’t really had any issues in 3 days)

Ruban: sit.

Jane: sit?

Ruban: SIT

Jane sits.

Michael (who has been standing there for the entire conversation without saying anything): Jane! Why would you sit in that that mud?!? What is wrong with you?!?

Jane: Ruban told me to sit. 😒

So I had mud soaked through my pants for the rest of the day. The picture did turn out pretty great!

After Ruban headed back to Cusco, we still had some time to explore. We hiked to the Inca Bridge.

This was supposed to be a 90 minute trek. It took about 25. Max. Definitely a little anticlimactic. It was a pretty steep drop on the hike.

After this, Michael was still looking for some more hikes, so he went off to try to hike Mount Machu Picchu. They wouldn’t let him do the hike because it was too late in the day and they didn’t realize he was in beast mode, ready to run up any mountain in record time. So he instead hiked back to the Sun Gate to see what we had missed that morning.

I, however, went to the bar. I got a beer and ate the sandwich and the apple that Alberto had packed for me that morning and relaxed! My legs were completely useless at this point (and for several days after). Once Michael got back from his extra hikes, we grabbed a bus and headed to Aguas Calientes, the town where we needed to pick up our extra bags and grab the train back to Cusco. The train ride was really beautiful and we had the chance to sit opposite some guys that had been on the trail with us from the Netherlands. Really interesting conversation comparing travel stories.

That night we had Indian from the place across the street from our hostel and we slept hard. The next day we flew out of Cusco around 7pm, so we packed up our things, checked out of our room and spent the day in town. We sent our laundry off, both got super cheap massages, had lunch and some more beers and got to spend more time with Patsy and Alexa before heading to the airport.

Our overnight flight took us to Santiago, Chile. We’re here for the next week and we’re planning on relaxing, getting a Brazil visa and celebrating Christmas before heading to wine country.

A big thank you to the people of Peru who welcomed us for these past 10 or so days. We’ve enjoyed your beautiful country and we’re super grateful that you’ve preserved it and shared it with us. Also a big shout out to Ruban… truly the most interesting man in the world.

December 19

OK – Day Three! We have Dead Woman’s Pass behind us and we’re ready to crank through another day of “Inca Flat” and some intense downhill hiking. Here’s a picture that shows how far we had come since Dead Woman’s Pass. In the center of the picture, at the top, you can see the pass. We then hiked all the way down and passed where this picture was taken to reach the second pass on day three.

We have two passes during today’s hike which is about 16 kilometers long. So it’s the longest day, technically, but should be significantly easier than the prior day.

Here is us at the second pass (I believe):

During the hike, we got to visit several locations of Inca ruins: Runkurakay, Sayaqmarca, and PhuyuPatamarca. Ruban gave us a lot of information about these sites – what they were used for, who lived there, etc. I don’t really remember any of it. Sorry.

I do remember, however, the story he told us about this flower. Finally, a really cool orchid!

The Quechua word for this orchid translates to “tear drop”. So apparently a military general wanted to marry the princess and went to the Inca to ask to marry her. They were super in love. The Inca said no, so the two ran away together along the Inca trail, heading for the jungle. The Inca sent his army after them to retrieve his daughter and the general was killed. The princess was so distraught and their love was so strong that when he was killed and she sat on the trail crying, her tears went into the ground and these orchids began to grow there.

We camped at Wiñay Wayna, Quechua for “forever young”. This is also the site of another Inca ruin that is considered the small Machu Picchu.

After exploring a little bit, we went back to the camp site for tea and dinner. Plus, Ruban taught us a dice game that was a bit confusing but a lot of fun. Our last night camping on the Inca Trail was still a bit wet, but not nearly as cold as the prior night. We got settled in, with a 3am wake up call to finish the trail the next morning and head to Machu Picchu!

December 18

OK – this is it! This is the day that we’ve done all our training for… oh yeah – we didn’t do any training. A lot of people who do this trek train for it. They do stair steppers and challenging hikes to prepare themselves for this day. We did none of that. I woke up in a near panic about it. Michael was not concerned. We were woken up with coca tea at 6am, had breakfast, packed up our bags and were on the trail a little before 7am. On the first day, Michael spent much of the hike forging ahead, setting our pace. It’s not my favorite way to hike, but it was ok. Typically, on our hikes, we stay right together. It’s good for me because when a portion of the hike is tough, Michael will often give me encouragement or just directly tell me to keep going or to pull it together. We were not 20 minutes into day two and I was melting down. I was completely overwhelmed by what was coming our way that day and every time I got to the top of an incline, I was greeted with more hills, but no Michael. He was putting too much space between us and I lost it. Quickly. Seriously, I’m not sure we were even out of the camp site and I was in tears. The next time I caught up to him, I yelled and felt much better. I think more than anything, I just needed to get some of that anxiety out.

Now that we had that out of the way… I spent a lot of time trying to forgot how hard it was. The scenery was beautiful, thankfully, and Michael documented it for your enjoyment:

There were two stopping points along the first uphill battle. Reminder that we started the day at 3000 meters (~9800 feet) and are heading up to 4200 meters (~13,800 feet) to Dead Woman’s Pass. In case those numbers mean nothing to you, as they had previously meant nothing to me, that’s a huge uphill hike and the altitude could make it much more difficult. Thankfully we’ve been acclimating for about a week, so the altitude wasn’t that much of an issue.

The first rest stop was suppose to be about 1.5 hours into our morning hike. The second rests stop was another 2 hours after that. Then finally we had the hardest stretch to the top which was suppose to be another 1.5 hours. So about five hours to hike to the first pass. We had a total of 11 kilometers to hike that day. I don’t remember how many were in that first uphill stretch. Maybe 5?

So Michael and I were trekking along. Ruban had been hanging back a bit, letting us take our own pace. He caught up to us after about 2 hours or so and I asked how much further to that first stop. I was swimming in some serious self doubt since we should have hit that first rest awhile ago. Ruban told us it’s as another 30 minutes to the rest. Now I was really panicking. How could it possibly be another 30 minutes. We were screwing up. We hit the rest stop about 15 minutes after that and were subsequently informed that it was the second stop. We had somehow missed that first rest stop. Despite my pessimism, we were dominating the hike and had cranked through about 3.5 hours of hiking in just over 2.5 hours. You cannot imagine my relief. Just a few more hours to the pass.

Dead Woman’s Pass. Here is a picture as we approached. It is called Dead Woman’s Pass because you can see the profile of a woman laying down. The pass is over her throat in the lowest point. Her face is just to the left (distinctive nose) and her chest is to the right.

As we hiked up the mountain each day, I spent some of the time saying a rosary… ish. Jane’s version of a rosary. I got the 10 Hail Marys per decade and the Our Father and the Glory Be. Now that I’m googling it, I did the prayers out of order and I can tell you what I missed: The Apostles’ Creed. Also, with the mysteries – I roughly know what the mysteries are (joyful, sorrowful, and glorious) but I don’t totally know which go in glorious and which go in joyful, so I just best guessed on my day 1 hike. By this second day instead of mysteries after each decade, I just sang Godspell and Christmas songs at the mysteries time. Apologies to my religious scholars.

I also mixed in some prayers to Pacha Mama in there… Mother Earth in Quechua.

You know that we made it eventually, because I’m blogging from a hotel room now. It was amazing:

This is definitely one of those moments where I felt a ton of accomplishment. Once at the top, we relaxed for a bit. Ruban played his traditional flute in honor of and thanksgiving to Pacha Mama.

We met a few people on this hike up today. We met an Aussie couple who we think may have broken up before the trip was over and we met a mother/daughter pair from New Zealand, Patsy and Alexa, who we ended up hanging out with a few more times before leaving Peru. Super cool women who dominated Dead Woman’s Pass and were a blast to spend time with. Hopefully we’ll get to meet back up with them either in New Zealand or when they come to visit New Orleans in 2019!

It as all downhill from this point for the day.

A few things we learned: the potato is the only plant that the Incas could grow over 4000 meters in altitude. Natural lupins grow out here but are toxic – they have to be washed for a week in the stream before they are ok to eat. There is a similar process required of natural quinoa that grows here.

We saw a bunch of plants along the way and Ruban pointed out which plants are used to cure colds, which are for flus and fevers, and which are used “for the lungs”, whatever that means.

I was promised 400 varieties of orchids on the second half of day two. So I’m not sure if this was an Inca story exaggerated or if we were just unlucky. We did see some beautiful sceneries and flowers despite the lack of orchids.

So all in all it was a really tough day. It was supposed to be. We knew it was going to be, but I definitely struggled today. We arrived at camp pretty early – maybe 2pm – and had the afternoon to explore the campsite and nap. We hiked a little further along the trail and took this picture of the campsite:

We came down that mountain to the camp site and as you can tell from this picture, our day three hike was going to start with an uphill battle as well.

The camp was at Pacaymayu which is still about 3600 meters in altitude. We arrived before the rain which was great, but it rained on and off for the rest of the afternoon and night. We got some water in the tent and I “slept” with wet feet. Not ideal. Despite the beauty and the wonderful food and cool people, I was ready to keep moving on this journey.

December 17

We were picked up from our hostel at 6am and drove through the Sacred Valley to Piscaycucho where we started the trail. 2700 meters elevation.

We crossed the Urubamba river by bridge and headed out on our way.

Then started our “easy” day. We walked about 12 kilometers. It took us about 4.5 hours as we walked on land that is called “Inca flat”. This does not mean flat. It means a series of ups and downs. It gave us some incredible views of Mount Veronica and some time to learn a little more about Ruban, our guide for the trek.

Things Ruban told us:

-Ruban’s father comes from a royal Inca family (although not in the line of rules) and his mother comes from a line of military Incas.

-Ruban’s grandmother is a shaman. The way that shamans are determined is if a person is hit by lightening and they live, they can now be a shaman. She, obviously, survived her lightening strike and continues to practice to this day. Part of her responsibilities: healing by using natural plants and reading coca leaves the way that women in New Orleans read tarot cards or palms.

-Ruban is the first person from his village to go to university. Since then, two of his brothers have also attended.

-To become a guide on the Inca Trail you have to attend university for either three or four years and pass multiple tests.

-Condor is originally a Quechua word, which is cool because it’s the word that the rest of the world uses for the bird. I don’t know of any other Quechua words that are used in English.

-There has been a recent Inca ruin discovery in the jungle that could potentially be larger than Machu Picchu.

-Ruban can run 12 kilometers in 30 minutes. Note: this feels untrue. If he’s really doing this, at altitude, then he should become a professional marathon runner. Mike offered to be his manager.

-Ruban plays futbol for the Cusco club team.

Here are some baby chickens from our lunch spot:

We arrived at Wayllabamba, our camp site (3000 meters), around 4 or 5pm with time to settle in as the porters and our cook, Alberto, got dinner ready. We were tired. They were not. They were full of energy despite walking the same hike with roughly 20kg of weight on their backs. Our campsite had my new favorite ballerina flowers, plus a few others – great omen for the start of our trip!

After a huge, delicious dinner that included tea time and Bananas Foster, we headed out to our tent for bed. As we walked out, there were a few stars in the sky poking through some clouds and Ruban started singing Coldplay. “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you”. So we laughed and he proceeded to sing multiple verses. Man of many talents, but not the best singer.

Day one is supposed to be the training day for day two. Michael thought day one was super easy… me a little less so. I was definitely nervous going into a more challenging day.

December 15

Happy birthday to GDM and Kissy.

Today we hiked Winicunca. Note – the entrance ticket spells it this way. Everything on the internet calls it Vinicunca. Now, we know that if it’s on the internet it must be true… but I’m going to go with what my ticket says this time. This mountain is also called Montana de Siete Colores, Rainbow mountain, and Mountain Colours. No matter what you call it, it is a very difficult hike and a very beautiful view.

Warning: none of these pictures look real. We had a 3am pick up, a 1 hour wait for other people to get their act together, followed by a 3 hour bus ride. Then we had breakfast – nothing fancy, including the bathroom situation which I won’t post online although I did take a photo. Look at this view from the breakfast spot instead:

Then another 20 minute drive to the starting point. We started the 6 kilometer hike at an altitude of 4400 meters. For reference since very few of us from the states knows how high that is: it is about 14,400 feet. Cusco, where we’ve been struggling with altitude is 3400 meters, or about 11,100 feet.

Editor’s note: this picture was taken at the end of the hike. I was pretty concerned about tackling this, so it was all business on the way up. Time for pictures at the top and on the way back down.

So we started the hike. 6km and an expected 2 hours to climb about 700 meters to the top. We had two goals: finish and as long as we finish, be towards the beginning of the group instead of the end. There were some annoying people on the bus that Michael felt we NEEDED to beat. I was cautiously optimistic. The hike was hard. At one point, we were taking only 4 or 5 steps before another break.

But – we did it! Not only did we finish, but we beat the two German dudes who were in their 20’s and talked about climbing the Alps. In fairness to them, I think they were having some major altitude issues and we were pretty unscathed until the top. A few others beat us, but we were really happy with our trek. It took us about an hour and 40 minutes or so.

This is it! Once we were at the top, it was cold! We were warned, but without hats and gloves, we weren’t prepared to stay up there too long. Plus at 5100 meters (~16,700 feet), I was feeling a bit nauseous. So we enjoyed it and then started our hike back down. It was super cloudy. Our few peaks of sun gave us beautiful view of the colors and also the Andes and a glacier in the distance (not pictured).

The colors, per google, are due to different minerals: iron oxide (red), iron sulphide (yellow), chlorite (green).

So on the walk down, I had Michael take a picture of the hike we had done. We are not at the starting point of the hike – only about a third of the way down, but you can see the dramatic incline in the back of the center hill and all the people along the trail.

After the fourish hours on the trail, we headed back to our breakfast spot for lunch and then the long ride home. It was three hours made an hour longer by an extra bathroom break and a busted tire.

Once we finally got back to town, we grabbed two empanadas, showered, and headed to the Last Jedi!!!! Michael found a showing that was in English with Spanish subtitles, so we went and it was awesome!!! Despite being up since 2:30 and having an aggressive hike, I was pumped and wide awake for the whole thing. No spoilers – but go see it. If you aren’t a Star Wars fan, rent them all (even 1-3, the bad ones, but watch 4-6 first) and then go see it. If you have daughters, make them watch all of them and then take them!! Super badass chicks in this movie.

As many of you can see from SO MANY blog posts, today, December 16th, is a relax day. I’m cranking through these blog posts and Michael is running some errands. We head out to the Inca Trail tomorrow for a four day hike to Machu Picchu, so we’ll be out of touch for a bit. Pray for us/send us good vibes – I’m very anxious about this hike. Some people train for it. We have not. Wish us luck and we’ll be back in touch soon!

December 14

Happy birthday, MVB!

I don’t have a single picture on my camera from this day which could explain exactly how I was feeling. After a month and a half on the road, my stomach finally gave up on me last night. So I woke up feeling horribly drained. But I wanted to get out of the room and get some food/water, so we had breakfast and headed the few blocks to the city center.

I had a brief burst of energy, so we went to the Museo Inka. It was not that cool. Lots of pottery and some info about pre-Colombian tribes. Some of it was in broken English, some of it was in Spanish and some was in both languages. No real rhyme or reason why a language was chosen for a certain exhibit.

Afterwards, we grabbed lunch and then Michael hung out in the square while I checked out Compañia de Jesús, aka the Temple of the Society of Jesus, Cusco (Michael had visited earlier this week solo). Super beautiful church – beautiful art and altars. No pictures allowed, once again, so you’re just going to have to believe me. A few things that came up while I was in there. First, there was both a painting and a statue of St. Stanislaus of Koska mixed in with all the art of Francis of Borja, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, etc. This seemed odd to me. Question to my religious scholars – what correlation is there between Stanislaus and the Jesuits?

Secondly, there were several mentions of Our Lady of the Earthquakes (or something similar). I couldn’t get close enough to the roped off art to see what it looks like and when I google it, it just gives me info about Pope Francis entrusting Mexico City to Our Lady of Guadalupe after the recent earthquake and a reference to Tori Amos.

The other cool thing is that you are able to climb the stairs to the choir loft which has a window that overlooks the square. Once again – no pic, so I can’t prove this one either.

Weird day – not that cool.

December 13

Today we did a day tour to the Sacred Valley which is the 60 or so kilometers of fertile farmland and colonial villages in the Andean highlands.

Our first stop was overlooking part of the valley:

We then headed to Pisac to see the market which was cool, but mostly very similar stuff to what we’ve seen in Cusco. We did linger in a few art shops – but nothing was that impressive compared to my Milky Way painting from yesterday. I’m going to be ruined on art for a little while I guess. Btw – that artist is Miguel Araoz Cartagena. I just found him on Facebook… too weird to friend request? Probably.

After the market, we headed to the Pisac ruins.

This was a nice hike up to the top. Of course after we went up and came back down, Michael wanted to do it again but had to basically run it since we were low on time. So here he is in blue, doing it again while I relaxed and watched.

Another cool thing about these ruins was the cemetery. The Incas would burrow holes in the mountain to bury their loved ones. You can see the holes in the below picture, but there are no longer any bodies. When the Spanish arrived, they pulled all of the nearly 3000 bodies out of this mountain, stole anything valuable and then set all of the remains on fire. Good work, guys. Jerk of the century award goes to…

After this, we had lunch and then headed off to Ollantaytambo which is a massive Inca fortress with large stone terraces on a hillside. This was 250 steps up to the top (we think). Any climb is tough in this altitude. Here’s us selfying the terraces. I think most people know, but the terraces were used for growing crops. It gave the Incas more mountain space to grow. Plus, in this area, the temperature can change quite radically depending on whether the sun is out or not. The stones would heat up in the sun and then would give off heat as the temp cooled to help maintain a more controlled temperature on the terraces throughout the day and nights.

In addition to the terraces, were buildings, of course. The Incas designed their empire to have resting points between all of their cities. Along the route between cities, you would find a half day hike to a small resting point. After that half day hike you’d find a full day hike to a large resting point, such as this fortress that would have lots of supplies and safety. So it may look like this: city, small resting point, large fortress, small resting point, city. That is how the Incas would keep their routes secure and their people safe. In this fortress, which I believe our guide said was mid build when the Spanish arrived, there was a lot of supplies, crops, buildings, etc. There also was a food storage facility across the valley in a different mountain. You can see it in the picture below. It is the rectangle that looks like it has three or four levels in the bottom third of the picture to the right of the middle. Something I thought was interesting – the Incas have a ton of different potato varieties and some of them can be dehydrated and saved for years. After the Incas dehydrate the potatoes, and they save them for years, they only have to rehydrate them in hot water for 3 days and then they taste similar to the regular potatoes and have all of the same nutritional value. The Incas build this storage away from their fortress so it would be higher in the mountain and cooler to help preserve the food.

OK – so if you can see the storage facility in the picture above, to the left of it, in the center of the mountain you can see what looks like a person’s angry face. This mountain formation was believed to be part of the reason that the the Incas built here. An omen or something. Now, if you look at the top third of the picture on the far left of the mountain, if you use your imagination, you can see a profile of a person. Every year, on the winter solstice, the sun peeks directly through the mouth area of that profile and projects perfectly on these altar stones. All things Inca are done on purpose.

After this fortress we headed to our final stop in Chinchero. Something sweet that they say about the town is that the Incas believe it to be birthplace of the rainbow. The town is believed to be the country resort for Inca Tupac Yupanqui who was the son of Pachacutec who I spoke about in my last blog who did all the empire building. And yes – Tupac Shakur was named after this Inca leader.

First we stopped in to get a demo on how the Quechuan people make their amazing textiles. Now, we know that the point of this is to convince us to spend money. And it worked. The woman who gave the demonstration was funny. Seriously funny. She walked through the steps of how they use all natural items to clean and color the wool. Plus it was stand up comedy the entire time.

She also showed women who spun the wool and were weaving.

It was great, so… we bought a table runner. It’s made of baby alpaca (she made us touch what adult alpaca feels like and what sheep wool feels like so we’d know how fancy it is) and has all of the sacred animals to the Incas – the Condor, Llama, Snake, Fox – and then some other stuff – man and woman and some animals that I can’t totally decipher. It’s beautiful and has deep red and blue colors even though the picture below looks grey and rust colored. We love it.

Final stop of the day: a beautiful church in Chinchero. Here is one picture of the entrance. No pictures were allowed inside.

Some cool things about the church:

1. This adobe style church was built around 1607 by the Spanish on top of the remains of an Incan palace, probably Tupac’s.

2. The incredibly ornate painted ceilings and walls combine Catholic and traditional images. The thought behind this is two-fold. As with much of the Catholic missionaries – when trying to evangelize it is easier to combine some indigenous traditions with Catholic traditions to make it easier to convert (think celebrating Christmas in December to coincide with pagan winter solstice festivities). Also, our guide mentioned that the missionaries brought three important European painters over to teach the indigenous people how to paint Catholic art and then let them do the majority of the work. As such, instead of depictions of a slender Mary, you have a more cone shaped Mary in this artwork. That was the indigenous attempt to work their own beliefs into the religion that was being forced on them. The cone shaped Mary represents the mountains which circles back to the Inca’s worship of Mama Pacha.

3. A point not so much about this church, but about much of the religious art we’ve seen in Peru: most depictions of Virgin with child has her breast feeding Jesus. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. If our religious scholars could step up with any insight into why this is frequent in Cusco, but we haven’t seen in other areas, that would be great.

4. They still have mass in this church and every Sunday, the first mass of the day is spoken entirely in Quechua and the people all wear their indigenous clothing. I thought that was cool.

This ends our visit to the Sacred Valley – all of it was beautiful and I was excited to get to know a little more about the people, even if it was sometimes in a super touristy way.

December 12

After a ton of sleep over the past two days, I woke up feeling… still tired! But I slept through the night, so it was time to just suck it up and get moving. We did spend some time in the hostel using up some wifi and trying to plan the future of our travels, but then we got moving and went into the town center.

After just a blocks, we took a seat on a shaded bench in the town center. Michael started reading while I did some people watching. But Michael got antsy pretty quickly, so he jumped up to take a walk and grab some waters, etc. Not a minute after he left a dude walked up and sat down next to me. Ugh.

Recently, I’ve been feeling very burnt out with other human beings. A reminder that before this trip, I would spend some 10 hours by myself in my office, speaking to almost nobody. Seriously. I would say a word or two to my favs is the office when grabbing another blueberry coffee, but mostly, I just got to work by myself in silence. So going from that to a situation where not only do I have to deal with people all day, but many of them in Spanish, and I’m exhausted. Since my Spanish is better than Michael’s, I take the majority of the work there and it leaves me drained. So for the past few days as I’ve also been so exhausted from the altitude sickness, I have been basically unwilling to speak to anyone unless it was a complete necessity. Michael has stepped up and deal with a lot of stuff that I could have possibly navigated easier.

So when Leond approached me, I was just not into it. But he asked to sit down and then asked me to fill out a cultural survey about Cusco. How could I refuse? Those five written survey questions, that were to help him with a presentation he is giving next week to pass his English class, led us to almost an hour of great discussion.

Going into the trip, Michael and I both claimed to want to learn as much about the cultures that we are visiting as possible. This was my reminder to talk to locals and see what’s going on. It helps that his English was pretty strong and so I only had to supplement slightly with my bad Spanish.

We talked about a lot of things – he seemed enamored with the US and how rich and important we are. We spoke about having kids for a bit. Since he’s 34 and hasn’t met a “special woman” yet, he seemed pretty set on the fact he was never going to get married. I told him that things are very different in the US where a lot of young people don’t get married until their late 30’s or 40’s and still have kids or adopt. This led to a long discussion on the ability of the US to adopt in any country in the world (his exaggeration) and how he feels about people from the US adopting Peruvians. For the record, he thinks it’s not his place to tell others what to do with their lives or their children’s lives.

Leond has an obsession with NASA, so we talked about that and the US putting a man on the moon for an obscenely long time, from my perspective. He also told me his (possibly borrowed) theory that the US colonized Cusco with tourism. He didn’t have the negative connotation of “colonize” that I would expect when explaining this thought. His opinion is that because the States has been sending tourist and explorers to visit Machu Picchu for over a hundred years, their needs/expectations/desires have been built into the tourism culture in Cusco.

He also said that until 9/11, the majority of the tourists were from the US. Now, the majority are Europeans who he claimed to be “frio” or cold but he thinks people from the US are very friendly and kind. Now whether he was tailoring his comments to me to flatter me or not, who knows, but it was nice to hear such kind things about US tourists. Michael came back at some point and added some value to the NASA convo and threw in some futbol input to the discussion. Leond’s closing request was that we keep engaging in the people in Cusco. What a good reminder to us, even when I’m exhausted.

So after a ton of words with no pictures, I’ll make things a little more enjoyable. After our Leond convo and a quick lunch at the market we went to our first museum of the trip.

Qorikancha – the House of the Sun

Qorikancha is from the Quechua words quri for gold and kancha for enclosure and it was supposedly the most important temple in the Inca Empire. It is located in the heart of Cusco which use to be the Inca capital. This incredible painting, by Miguel Araoz Cartagena, from inside the museum gives insight into why Qorikancha was the most important temple. The Incas had these things called wakas which were important buildings, squares, sacred stones or fountains. All of them lined up directly with Qorikancha. So this painting depicts the different wakas with black dots and shows the imaginary lines from the House of the Sun. Everything the Incas did was on purpose. Everything lined up, everything had significance. Nothing was done without complete thoughtfulness.

In the mid 1400’s, Pachacuti was the ninth Incan leader who built Qorikancha (and probably Machu Picchu) and added oracles and vases of gold and silver to be used when praying to Mama Pacha, or Mother Earth. He also put the bodies of seven deceased Incan rulers in the temple (they would mummify the bodies and keep them readily available to worship) and decorated the bodies with head-dresses and masks and all kinds of gold jewelry, before putting them on a gold bench. Then Pachacuti covered the walls of the temple in sheets of gold and put gold statues in the courtyards. History sidenote: when the Spanish arrived, they threatened to kill the current Incan ruler, Atahualpa, unless the Incans filled a building with gold. Most of that gold came from Qorikancha. In case you’re wondering, the Incans followed through and Atahualpa was killed anyway. Don’t trust the Spanish conquistadors.

Qorikancha was mostly destroyed after the 16th century war with the Spanish conquistadors, but a lot of its stonework still forms the foundation of Santo Domingo Priory. Earthquakes throughout the years greatly damaged the Spanish construction, but the incredible Incan masonry was never damaged by the earthquakes.

Incan masonry:

Crappy Spanish masonry:

Another cool thing in the museum – this Inca Gold Plate

Sticking in line with the thought that everything the Incas did was on purpose – here is a golden plate that includes a ton of symbolism that was important to the Incas. Much of the symbols represent stars, the sun and moon, Mama Pacha, different animals, rivers, and trees.

Leading up to my favorite part of the visit, I’ll give you my second favorite. While basically running to the bathroom, Michael and I entered through a beautiful courtyard that had flowers, including these:

Don’t these flowers look like ballerinas!?! They have the long stems hanging down that look like their legs, one set of petals hangs down which looks like a skirt and the (more) upward facing petals look like their graceful arms. I stopped and was just loving these flowers and then got strongly criticized for “stopping to smell the roses” when I had been the one complaining about how bad I needed to go to the bathroom and had caused the rush in the first place.

OK – now the favorite, favorite part of the visit – this painting:

Ok – so what’s cool about this painting? Everything. Have you seen those pictures in the mall where they are paintings, but then someone stuck LED lights into the painting where the street lamp is, or something like that? This was the same except there was no LED lights. When you turned the corner, the painting just glowed. The stars illuminated the hallway. It was breathtaking. I mentioned before that the Incas have a thing for stars and the moon and the sun. This painting is in keeping with that idea. The Incas designated constellations just as we now see animals or people in the constellations. So the above is the Milky Way. Smack dab in the middle you can see a long creature with four legs and a bright white eye – that is a llama. To the right of the llama’s head is a partridge and a toad below that. To the right of that is the snake. Back to the llama – underneath the llama is a baby llama that is upside down. To the left of the llamas is the fox with its red eyes chasing the llamas. And finally to the left of the fox is the shepherd with outstretched arms. I feel like there should also be a puma since the Incas were really into pumas, but my notes don’t say anything about this, so we’ll just leave it as is. Note – this painting is also by Miguel Araoz Cartagena, who is quickly becoming my favorite artist.

I could have stared at this painting for hours.

I also mentioned that this is Saint Dominic’s Priory. That is true and there was a lot of info about the Dominicans and a lot of old Dominican stuff from their history in this space. To be honest, the longer we stay in Cusco the more distaste we have for what the conquistadors and the missionaries did to the people here. So we brushed through this stuff pretty quickly… and I spent a little more time staring at my favorite picture.