We're now back home in the good 'ole USA! After a brief stay in Lima and then San Jose, Costa Rica, we got on a plane to head to Miami where the hurricane was. The plane landed fine, but they took way too long to get our luggage out, so we missed our flight. We finally got on another flight to Dallas and then another to San Diego and landed in San Diego after 3 attempts to land because of the low fog. But now we're home! Pretty soon we will be traveling again around the US to visit a few friends and family, but it is great to be home.
And now for the top 10 reasons we are happy to be back home: 10. We can carry on conversations with almost anyone we meet because they will speak the same language. 9. We no longer have to do currency conversions in our heads before making a purchase. 8. We no longer have to watch our pockets and bags with fear that someone might rob us. 7. Friends and family! We can pick up the phone and call anytime! 6. No more crappy hostels. 5. No more unpacking and repacking every day or so. 4. We don't have to be with each other 24/7. 3. We will have reliable hot showers every day. 2. Everywhere we go, local people will not see dollar signs on us. 1. We can throw toilet paper in the toilet instead of in the trash!
Our next stop was near the city of Ica to a little town called Huacachina. This is the place where you go sandboarding. Yep - you heard me right. Getting on a board and riding down huge sand dunes. Sounds just like snowboarding, right? Well yeah, sort of. But the boards aren't as good and the sand is a little rougher. But the boarding I didn't mind (of course I stayed on my stomach the whole time too, whereas Scott went down on his feet). I was howerver TERRIFIED of riding in the damn dune buggies. They were these huge things with 3 rows and Scott and I were in the back. The guy (that really evil looking on on the right) driving was insane. Everyone else in the buggy of course loved it. But not me. I was in full out panic mode. To the point where we had to yell at him to stop and let me out. Yep, I was the big dork that everyone else hated. The sand dunes were beautiful though and being out on them was cool - I woud have just preferred to walk along them. But enough of my panic mode - enjoy the pictures! We also went to a couple of nearby wineries to try their wine and famous Pisco. Pisco is a liquor made from grapes that is made in this region. It tastes a little like a combination between vodka and tequila. A little too strong for my tastes! The drink that everyone has in Peru is the Pisco Sour, which is much more yummy. We learned about how they make their wines and the Pisco here and did some tastings. They showed us the grounds where they stomp on the grapes, but it wasn't the right season so we just had to use our imaginations. These barrels were all full of some of their spirits. We even got to pour a taste for ourselves using bamboo. We stayed at a hostal in Huacachina that had the greatest assortment of birds living on their ground. Beautiful parrots that made lots of noises for us. These two were especially excited and came and jumped up on a chair right next to us. Enjoy the lovely and very loud songs.
We next went to the old city of Arequipa, which is a very different city compared to the rest of Peru. It is called the Ciudad Blanca (white city) because all of the white buildings made of a volcanic ash. They have even tried to gain their indepence from the country and have gone so far as to make their own passports. It is a beautiful city and seemed much more calm than Cusco or Lima. It is surrounded by beautiful volcanoes, the most obvious of which is Misti, shown here. We took a Colca Canyon tour, but did not get to see the deepaest part of this canyon. The deepest part is over 3000 m in depth and it is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. The first is actually pretty close to here, but is not as often visited. We actualy had a very bad tour and were not very happy wtih most. The transportation was very tight and uncomfortable, the hotel was not at all nice, our bus broke down on the 2nd day and we were not able to see all of our stops. Nonetheless, we did see some cool things. I would recommend going with Giardino tours if you are going to do this. It is more expensive, but we have only hear great things about that tour company. We rode in the bus for most of the day, but stopped at points to see lookouts. One point where we stopped was the highest elevation we have ever been, at 16,170 feet or 4,910 meters. I definitely felt a little dizzy and winded up there, but there were beautiful views of volcanoes all around. There were also the little rock statues that we had seen on the pass during our Lares Trek. Again, these are in reverence to the gods of the mountains. There was a little shopping from local vendors up there and Scott got the cutest picture of a little girl and a lamb.
That night, we went to a restaurant that had typical Peruvian music and dancing from this region. The dancing wasn't overly impressive, but the acting that they did during the dancing was very entertaining. This is all I got a video of though - enjoy!
The next day, we stopped in another small town where they had more dancers on the street performing. You can see the men are dressed very similary to the women. This is so they could spend time with the women, but in hiding. They were not allowed to talk to the women on the streets, so had to dress up. The men also have straps over their face to add to the hiding. There were also women with all sorts of animals that we could hold or get our pictures with. You can see Scott and and I with a hawk here. The canyon itself was definitely the coolest thing. Unfortunately, you could not get a good picture to show the depth of what we saw. We only saw it at a bit over 1000 meters deep, but it gets much deeper in other parts. Although it is deeper than the Grand Canyon, I did not find it as impressive because it was not nearly as wide. Just my opinion, though. It was quite beautiful. The most exciting thing that we saw were condors flying around the canyon. We took tons of pictures, but they really cannot start to describe the beauty of these birds. Or the size! They can be up to 3 meters wide with their wingspan! I did not realize how large they really were until one flew right over a crowd of people. It was so much bigger than the people - amazing! They were really a site to see.
Being in Peru, we could not miss the popular destination of Lake Titicaca. We have all heard about it since we were kids in school - the highest navigable lake in the world at 12,507 feet. Puno, the city that most people stay in before going out onto the lake is a gross city with not much culture or things to see. However, the lake was fun to see. We did a 2 day tour and rode a boat out to the islands. We stopped first at the Uros islands, or the floating islands. The islands are home to the Uros tribe, who are people that pre-date the Incan civilization. These islands are floating because they are actually man made. They are made out of totora, which is a sort of weed that grows in the lake. They use this plant for just about everything here. They eat it and they use it to build the islands, their boats and their homes. My big question here was why would a civilization want to build their own islands when there is plenty of land to use without having to do that. Apparently, they were being chased and needed to protect themselves, so they went out into the lake on boats. For a long time, they lived on their boats, which were made of this totora plant. Then they started building the islands. It´s a cool story and they were cool to see, but most of the kids go into town for school and then don't seem to come back. Because of this, I kind of wonder how much longer they'll be around. The people here speak their native language of Aymara. We next went to the real island of Amantani. The people here speak a little Spanish, but even more Quechua. Each group was assigned to a family to take into their homes and feed us and give us a place to sleep for the night. Our family was nice enough, but we were always fed food in our room and not invited to eat with them. Other people did eat with their families, so this was a little weird. We were happy to have that place to stay, though and to see their culture. We walked up to a high point on the island to a Pachatata temple at 4200 meters above sea level. The island is divided out for land to the families and their lands are separated by rock walls. During the season when they gather the food, they will actually stay up here and sleep in these fields in a tiny room with a stone wall around them. They eat mostly carbs on this island, we discovered when every meal was potatoes, pasta or rice. The soups were wonderful, though. That night, the family brought us clothes to wear that are like the typical costumes of the locals (they wear these whenever they leave the house). It was fun to get to dress up in those clothes and go to a dance with typical music. The mother took us here and kept getting Scott and I to get up and dance with her. She was really cute. The next day we went to Taquile island. Here, they also have their typical dress, but it has more meaning. On Amantani, they wear them more as decoration, but on Taquile, all of the colors have a different meaning. For example, if you are married or single, you would wear different colors (skirts for women). The men have hats that are different color depending on their status and they even point the tip to one side or another if they are single and seeing someone or not.
Finally arriving at Macchu Picchu was very cool, but I think the trek to that point was really the best part. You see so many pictures of Macchu Picchu that the ruins really look the same when you finally arrive. However, the view of the mountains and valleys around cannot be described in photos. The views were absolutely amazing. The ruins were also nice to see because they are the most intact of Incan ruins. When the Spanish came, they did not ruin these temples and buildings like they did to so many others, but instead just took the jewels that were worth so much. I asked our guide why Macchu Picchu is considered such a spiritual place and he had many answers to go with that. One reason was because it is in such an amazing place as far as the land, scenery, difficulty to get there, etc. Another is because the city is still in such good shape. Most of the buildings have not had to have any work done to them. The Incas are an amazing people who only ruled for 100 years. However, they conquered all the way from Columbia down to Chile. They did not have a method of writing or other more advanced ways of living like the Mayans had, but their reign was so much shorter and they were able to conquer a much larger area. Macchu Picchu was a place for the higher class, mainly for theologians and intellectuals. Only about 300-500 people actually lived in this place, though it took many thousands of people to build it. You can see the two main temples here. The first is the Temple of the Sun and the second is the Temple of the Condor. The Temple of the Sun was built very carefully so that on the days of the equinoxes, the sun shone into the windows to tell the people what the day was. There was also another place set up where water was placed in round divets and the sun shone into the water to tell them the date as well. It was really quite advanced. We hiked up to Waynu Picchu, which is the peak that you see in that first picture. The views at the top of this were really quite incredible. Scott had much more guts than I did as far as jumping around on the rocks at the top. You can also see a great view of Macchu Picchu from up here. The pictures cannot even begin to describe the scenery up here, so if you really want to see it, you'll just have to go. We got a great group shot of us at the top, which really should be on the cover of an SAS brochure. Have you ever seen a happier, better looking group!? Go Pumas! I also wanted to include a little here about some of the symbols of the Incas. There is jewelry all over with many of these symbols. The most popular was the Chakana, or Inca Cross shown here. It is the three-stepped cross symbolising the three tiers of Inca life (the lower world, this world and the higher world). We could see this cross in many of the Inca ruins that we saw, including at Macchu Picchu. The hole in the center represents Cusco, which is considered 'the navel of the Inca empire'. There are many other symbols as well, but we will stick with this one for now.
As I've mentioned before, we really did have a great group. Somehow, we name ourselves the Pumas and the name stuck for the 4 days and still now! You can see our great sign at the dinner table when we finally arrived at a hostal. But back to the trek.... on our 2nd night, Aldo stayed up with some of us in the dinner tent and told us Peruvian ghost stories. Many local people believe in these spirits that stay around on Earth and many people have even seen them. Most families have these things on top of their houses to ward away the bad spirits. I personally think that if lost soles are roaming around after they have died, then they are not bad spirits, but good. However, the locals think very differently. This is a house that we saw the next day with the topper to keep away the bad spirits. Almost every house had one - pretty incredible! We learned so much from Aldo! We saw more great views and this day went mostly downhill, so it was a nice day to bond with our group. We found out that Brett works for Pixar and worked on the new movie Cars! His stories about Pixar were super exciting. We passed more amazing views, as you can see here and even more animals. We found one baby donkey that Aldo sat on and since I didn't catch a picture of him quick enough, Scott took one of me. The poor little thing just wanted to get away, I think, but it was really cute. We stopped in a town, which was the first time we had seen other Gringos and other tourists since we had started the trek. It was a little weird, but nice to be able to get a beer. We then took the train up to Agua Calientes, which is the town you stay in before going to Macchu Picchu. We had a really fun train ride and Brett and Erica got some surprise pictures on their camera after they went to the bathroom. We all visited another hot springs, which was very relaxing after our trekking. I finally tried my first Inca Cola, which was very yummy! It was like a combination of cream soda and bubble gum. Completely unhealthy, but also completely perfect!
The next day we hiked over 700 meters up to an altitude of about 4450m. This is about 14,600 feet, which is the highest Scott and I have ever been! We didn't feel nearly as rough on this trip as when we hiked Whitney (about 14,500 ft) because we have been in cities at very high altitudes on an off for over a month now. Aldo also encouraged us to chew on coca leaves to help with the altitude. No worries - they don't have the drug effects in this form, though we do have to make sure to take them all out of our bags before returning to the US! The first time I put some of these leaves in my mouth, I gagged because the juice tasted so bad. However, I kept chewing and got used to the taste after a while. Aldo also set a very nice pace, which helped us a lot. Scott and Debarshi were up at the top before me and Scott decided to take terrible pictures of me huffing and puffing. There is a nice background, though! It was pretty chilly at the top with the wind, but we stayed anyway to do another ceremony to the mountain gods. We all brought a little stone with us to the top and after taking three coca leaves and blowing to pachamama and the mountain gods, we put the stones on top of all of the leaves (those that didn't blow away anyway!). Aldo then said a prayer in Quechua. This is what everyone does as they go over this Ibsacocha Pass. Another animal that we saw along the way up was the al paka. This was exciting because we had bought quite a few clothes made of alpaca in order to stay warm on this trek. It's so soft. After the top (oh, did I mention that our group broke the record for making it to the top fastest - go PUMAS!), we hiked down for about half an hour to a beautiful lake site to have our lunch. We had picked up a young boy from the family I showed before so that he could help and make some extra money. Aldo took him to the stream to go fishing. Aldo took my walking stick and would push the fish out of their holes and they swam down the stream right into this little boy's bag. Smart fishing! The rest of the trek was downhill and we camped out that night at around 3700 meters in the Patacancha community. The family that owned this campsite seemed much more well-to-do than the family at the last campsite. They had tons of guinea pigs running around and even had two stories to their house. It was a nice place to stay and we all got a little more sleep that night.
We all took off after our bath in the hot springs on our first trek with the bags. Because of the altitude, we were all huffing and puffing quite a bit, but we made it through because of the great company and scenery. We hiked up about 300 meters that first day to 3700 feet. We stopped along the way because a young girl had some chicha, a local corn beer. We all tried it, but not after pouring some to the Mother Earth (pachamama) and saluting to all of the different mountains around. The mountains were considered gods to the incas and so they saluted them a lot. The chicha was actually used for ceremonies in ancient times. Scott was not a big fan, but I quite liked it! We stopped for our first night right next to a local house. We had to carry our sleeping bags, but the horses carried the tents and they were even all set up for us by the time we arrived. We were so spoiled! It was really wonderful, though. There were many dogs barking in the night and it was quite cold, so none of us slept as well as we would have liked, but we trekked on the next day. These were a couple of cute kids that came up to our tents to greet us. Actually, I think they wanted gifts from us, so we gave them bread and candies. The next morning before we took off, we stopped into the house that we slept next to. It was a dirt floor in one big room. There was a big loft that held their food supplies. You can see the mother and some of her children here next to their stove. They don't use wood to keep it going, but grass and llama poo. Amazing that it didn't stink! They kept the grass and poo in one corner We saw little guinea pigs running around in there, too. They are eaten only on special occassions. This mother had been a widow for about a year and had 5 kids to take care of. It brought tears to my eyes to see them in this little house, knowing that they lay down animal skins at night to sleep all together. We gave them some food and went on our way, but we couldn't get them out of our minds. It is amazing to see how other people live. SAS travel, the tour ageny we used is very good to these people and pays them to use their land. They also recommend that the hikers bring rice and other food to the family, so this helps them out at least some. Here are some other kids that we met along the way. Aren't they handsome!?
