Author: Jane

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.

December 10-11

So we arrived in Cusco and after a taxi/Uber mixup, we headed to our hostel. That’s right. Hostel. I have never stayed in a hostel in my life and for the record, last week while planning, Michael called it a hotel. Now, here’s the important caveat: we have our own room. So it’s like a hotel after all. Plus the place is clean and close to the center of town, so I’m happy. The altitude hit us pretty hard on our first day here. We took naps almost immediately and then only left for a short walk around town and dinner before going back to bed. But in that short amount of time, we already were pumped for the city. The architecture is incredible with several town centers where people were congregating even late into the evening.

These pictures don’t do the city justice. I’ll have to take more.

Other than the beautiful architecture, there is also a huge Christ the Redeemer statue in the mountains that you can see at night (I know! Prove it! No pictures at this time), and several statues of Pachacuti who is believed to be the Inca who is responsible for much of the Incan architecture including Machu Picchu. During his reign, Cusco grew into an empire.

On our second day in town, we took a long walk to the Brazilian consulate to work on our Brazilian visas. Upon arriving, it was determined that the consulate doesn’t exist and we’ll have to try to get these visas in Santiago the week of Christmas. Who else is concerned about getting that accomplished with a holiday in the middle of the “week long process”?

We have seen a lot of the stuff you’d expect to see in Cusco, including a lot of indigenous women selling stuff. We also saw these women selling a picture of themselves with baby llamas. It worked and now Michael and (by default) I have a picture of these women in traditional garb and baby llamas.

Slightly out of order, but we also finally got to see a real market after a month and a half on the road. It was mostly normal as far as non-USA markets go. Spices, meat, cheese, grains and other random goods were sold. Plus there was an area that had women cooking and selling lunch, which we indulged in. A meal for both of us for 10 soles. That’s less than 4 bucks for a meal that included soup, chicken, rice and salad. Super pumped. But the random thing that required a picture was the chopped off heads (snouts?). Michael thinks they’re cows. I thought they were llamas. Super ick either way. The kind of thing you can’t help but stare at… and then choose to eat at the other side of the market as far away from that as possible.

So mostly in two days here we’ve slept, a ton, and tried to breathe. I think Michael wanted to be running by now, but I’m excited to be able to be able to lay down again without gasping for a breath. I think the worst of it is over and mostly I’m grateful we scheduled extra time here before hiking. I could not imagine hiking while feeling like this.

December 8-9

We had a 20 hour layover in Córdoba, Argentina. A few facts about Córdoba: It is the second largest city in Argentina, even though I had never heard of it before, with 1.4 million people as of 2010. Another fact I know is that it has an incredible park in the center of the city. We stayed in an AirBNB just three blocks from the park and took full advantage of it during our very short stay in the city.

I went for a run in the park when we arrived and Michael went for a run along the river. I definitely won that decision. My run was spent exploring a super cool park. There was a zoo and a slightly creepy small amusement park. Also there were a handful of restaurants and beer gardens throughout the park. Also, they were setting up a stage for some sort of Friday night show. Most importantly, there were a ton of people around. As any female knows, lots of people around equals safety in a huge park when running by yourself. And any person knows that lots of people in a huge park make it tons of fun and encourages more people to show up and have more fun.

After our runs, we showered and then headed right back to the park to hang out with the locals. We popped into a beer garden to hangout, drink beers and play cards for a few hours. This is the only picture I have. It’s not that cool and doesn’t do the park justice, but it does show green space and more importantly people hanging out. Lots of families and young people playing around, lounging, eating, drinking, running, rollerblading… tons of rollerbladers.

We then walked through the park a bit. It was probably 10 or 10:30pm but the park was still filled with people. We wandered down to that stage I had mentioned and found a really horrible 90’s rock cover band. Proof that you can get bad cover bands in every part of the world.

Here is some art in the park. Córdoba is considered the cultural capital of the Americas. We didn’t get to see any museums, but they did display art around the park and through the city center.

After that we headed to the city center just to see what we could see and ended up in the Patagonia brewpub for a beer. This was when I was reminded how horrible the women’s shoes in Argentina are and that something needs to be said. The women are, in general, so cute every where we go, but their shoes are SO BAD. Now you can ask my sister who is the reason for any fashionable item in the wardrobe. Or you can ask my old roommate right out of college who use to mock me and refuse to let me leave the house on weekends until I changed out of corporate casual. I am not a terribly fashionable person. BUT something has to be said. The shoes. THE SHOES!!! Some of the women wore kicks, which were great. But mostly they wore these huge platform wedges that make me think of those platform flip flops that women work in the late 90s(?). Also a bunch of people wore crocs, out for the night, with otherwise trendy/fancy clothes. But I’m focusing on the platforms. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Sorry for my shallowness in this post. I just hate them. To try to make up for my shallowness, here is a picture of the super beautiful church in the center of town. We weren’t able to go inside the church, but I’m not sure it could be more beautiful than it looked all lit up at night.

The next morning, we had an 8am flight, so we were out of the apartment by 5:30. The streets were FILLED with people who hadn’t gone home yet. It was incredible. Some seemed drunk, but most of them were just hanging out, still enjoying their Friday night. It was amazing. Michael and I are not suited for this kind of “typical” Friday night. So, it’s off to Cusco!

December 6

Michael started day two of Patagonia wine country super optimistic. I was less so. But we packed up the car, checked out of our AirBNB and headed another hour out of the city to see what we could see. First stop was Bodega del Fin del Mundo – that translates to “end of the world winery”! We popped in, unannounced, and had a great, quick tasting. The wines were delicious and it was easy to communicate (albeit in Spanish). They also had an entire line of wines that were motorcycle themed a la Motorcycle Diaries. Plus they had one of the few Christmas trees we’ve seen so far this season:

After this winery, we headed a few miles down the road to Bodega Familia Schroeder for lunch. Here we found the dinosaurs!

Apparently when the Schroeder family started digging on their land to build the winery, they found dinosaur bones. The real bones have gone to a museum, but they put a small museum down in the basement showing the size of the bones and depicting where they were found. This is why they have an entire line of wines named “Saurus”.

After eating lunch with the dinos, we headed over to our last winery for the day, NQN. We struggled getting into this one all day. We actually went here first, and they were serving lunch (it was 12:30) but said they couldn’t do a tasting until 1pm. So we popped over to the other wineries first. We got back to NQN around 3:30 and they told us again they couldn’t do a tasting. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but they were still serving food, so we had dessert and a glass of wine – figuring that gets the job done for this winery. After we asked for the bill, the manager told us that we now could do a tasting. Too much language barrier to figure out what the situation was, but he passed us off to a woman who gave us a tour of the bodega and talked through the wines.

We had been a little confused about the entire winery all day. We had heard so many things about NQN, but that name was nowhere to be found in the winery. It turns out that a few years ago, Fin Del Mundo bought NQN and has been rebranding it as Malma. This explains two things: the name of the restaurant/wine and why Fin Del Mundo was pushing so aggressively for us to have lunch at Malma instead of Schroeder. I pressed the woman to see if the acquisition was welcome and it seems like it definitely was not. She stated there is still a strong competition between the two lines and there is no collaboration. She did still seem very proud of the NQN wine and also of the rebranded wine. The word Malta means “to be proud” in the Mapudungun language of the native Mapuche people. She also spent a lot of time explaining the symbolism on the wine labels.

After this, we drove the long trek back to Bariloche and had the good fortunate to see this along the route. Note the street light or the bushes to understand the size.

This ends our tour of Patagonia. Michael and I are on a 20 hour bus ride right now and after a layover in Santiago and a few flights, we’ll be in Cusco, Peru for the next adventure: Machu Picchu!

December 5

Ok – so no one has really heard of this. We hadn’t, at least, until we did a wine tasting in Buenos Aires. So since we’re here…. we might as well see what it’s all about. We drove 5 hours north of Bariloche (ok we weren’t as “here” as we originally thought we were) to Neuquen, Argentina which is home of the Patagonia Wine Trail. Michael had been trying to contact wineries via email for the past week as reservations are necessary without any luck. So as we headed out of town, I tried calling the wineries. I’m getting better at Spanish after our month here, but I’m still terrible and I’m especially bad on the phone. So I tried calling a few, finally got through to one and could not communicate a single thing with the person on the other line. In all fairness, I think it was a bad number, but still – no communication at all.

As we went in and out of service in middle of nowhere Argentina, I finally tried my next best option: Idania! I sent a note to Idania pleading with her to try to make reservations for us again (#2 – yes I’m keeping count). An hour or so later I had service again and got a response! She had trouble getting through too (whew – it’s not just me) but she was able to secure us a reservation at one place. So we headed off to La Falda. The winery was down an industrial gravel road and when we pulled up to the gate, someone opened it for us and we entered. No signage or people anywhere, so we drove around a bit and finally parked to investigate on foot. Finally a guy popped out of one of the huge wooden doors and welcomed us to the winery museum. Apparently La Falda was founded in 1910 by a German couple and continues to produce wine in some capacity today.

The entire tour was in Spanish and although I’m sure he dumbed it down for us – Michael and I totally nailed it! The place was cool – had a bunch of old stuff and George, the winemaker, was super nice (yes – he introduced himself as George even though his name was actually Jorge).

After seeing old winery stuff, George took us into their banquet room to do some tastings. At this point, his wife also came out to sit with us. She speaks Spanish and French, so no additional language help there for us, but we stumbled through it.

George was excited for us to taste both their normal wines (under the family name, Herzig) and some of his stuff that he makes just for his family and friends – something similar to grappa and something similar to a port. I took the brunt of this tasting since Michael was driving and George kept throwing new stuff at us.

Afterwards, we figured we’d just pop into another winery to see if they’d let us in without a reservation. The answer to that is no. One place just told us to go home and call. The other place told us we couldn’t do tastings, but we could but a bottle – so we did. Bodega Humberto.

After this, we went to our AirBNB feeling a little down that we were largely unsuccessful so far in tastings. Thankfully Idania got us in that one otherwise the day would have been a total bust. We relaxed for a bit before heading out to dinner. Our AirBNB host suggested a great restaurant, but when we got there – it was completely empty, so we kept walking down to one of the breweries she suggested. It ended up being a super long walk and we hadn’t eaten all day, so the hanger was in full force. But the wait was well worth it once we got there.

It was a great scene with a ton of young people hanging out. The food was good and the beers were really good. This picture and the brewery is very similar to the scene we found all over the town center. Neuquen was young with a lot of people sitting out in green space and exercising. It was a very modern town with a lot going on. The outskirts were pretty industrial, but everything in El Centro was very alive and young. Lots of 20 and 30 somethings hanging – and a lot of kids as well. It was a great little town and our walk/dinner was enough to make the day feel like a success.

There are two quick stories from the fly fishing trip that Juanito shared that have really resonated since leaving the river.

1. Juanito mentioned that the Argentinian government has been selling previously undeveloped land along the rivers to be developed and expressed a deep concern about it and how it has been affecting his community. I didn’t get a lot of details about this but I did get a true sense of how upset he was.

2. Juanito also told a story about when the gov wanted to put in a hydroelectric dam right where we were fishing. It obviously would have completely changed the river. Apparently, the people from Bariloche fought hard against it and won. Juanito stated a few times how proud he was of his community for banning together and actually winning in a fight against the gov.

We have heard some stories about possibly selling off portions of the National Parks in the US and we are really upset about it. I know visiting the National Parks out in Wyoming was some of my favorite travel memories from growing up. I hope we all try to protect our parks so just like my uncle took me out to visit when I was young, we can visit the National Parks with our nieces and nephews when Michael and I are back in the states. When the nieces and nephews saw pictures and videos of my big fish, I got four videos in return with all of the kids so excited about how big my fish was, but also hoping to see a bigger one. I want them to have the same access that I have had to do awesome outdoor stuff.

This is where I would post a picture of us horse back riding in the Tetons if I had access to my photos back home. Or me and Bill exploring the “stinky part” of Yellowstone while everyone else refused to get out of the car that was sitting on the sewage drain creating the smell. Instead you get this picture of me trying to do my part down here to not kill this little guy I had caught.

Special thanks to DeMars who called out my photo error earlier. Here’s a picture that is actually from our trip instead of his trip to the Sacred Valley.