Peru Post #2

We kept going, then stopped at a scenic overlook whereupon I took many pictures. Here is one of said pictures:



We then drove down to a little port town on level with the river seen in the last picture.







We then took a boat ride, then a walk in the woods, to get to our next lodging which used to be a plantation house, and seemed to not have been upgraded at all since plantation days. It was very nice, with a gigantic front porch, just no fan or ac and bathrooms in a completely separate building, added on since. Also out front were many birds.



There's some sort of walking tree that grows there, sprouting new roots all the time in the direction it's recieving sunlight from, and the old roots on the other side dying off, so it actually will move in a direction as it ages. Strange!



We meandered around in the woods seeing, among other things, an R.O.U.S. aka a Capo Vera. It looked like a baby hippo. There were also large turkey type birds that hung out in groups and were exceptionally loud when they started screaming at each other. Also, oropendulas(sp?). a bird related to the oreole which made noises that sounded like computer noises and had nests that hung like pendulums in trees and also kept large harems. We went to an observatory tower which was around 20 meters up, and though we did not see any monkeys as hoped, the view was still nice.





Oh yeah, I failed in my efforts to find a long sleeved white shirt for some godawful reason (checked target, walmart, nothing), so I ended up just nabbing drew's button up shirt from him, which made me look like a stereotypical person meandering through the jungle. Thing is, there's apparently a reason for that, as this shirt kept the sun off and more or less kept bugs away when needed, and remained cool and comfortable.

Oh yeah, I totally took a picture of those turkey birds whose name I don't recall through the lens of a much better camera then mine!



So we also saw parrots from a far distance, and went floating around on this little raft thing in water that apparently had pirahna, fun!

At some point the van started having trouble, and we ended up staying the 3rd night in the little village we passed through earlier, Pilcopata.



Dirt roads, and downtown looked rather Old West, what with the wide roads and people meandering up and down the street. We ate in the same restaurant as before, except this time for dinner. Instead of a cat under our feet, this time it was dogs and kids. Bad Mexican soap opera played in the background. Outside there was another TV set up, with a bunch of people just gathered around watching it. There was definitely alot of poverty, but nonetheless the hostel we stayed at had an internet room. There was a kid in there playing Tarzan on the computer, it was very appropriate I suppose.

Our hostel was a bit less then hospitable, in that we could see through the cracks in the walls to the outside. Despite dousing our bodies in deet bug cream, I still discovered about 20-30 bites on my body in the next few days. I can still see the remnants of many of said bites on my body now. Those jungle mosquitos mean business!

It should be stated that, though our housing quality ranged, the food was always excellent and overabundant. Sometimes a little too much soup, though.

On the way back, we saw these cuties!



When we'd stopped at our first lodge and walked a bit, we kept encountering butterflies on the road that didn't seem to care too much that we were nearby. On the way back we encountered a giant patch of them that our driver could not bear to drive over, so we got out and attempted to shoo them away. That not working, I tried to scoop them away. Finally, blowing them away actually worked.







We soon departed from the jungle, and then from thr cloud forest.



We made a brief stop at some pre-incan tombs. Due to time constrictions and our guide being horribly sick, it was very brief, thus possibly why I remember little about the tombs other then the fact that they are, indeed, tombs.





So we return to Cusco and pass out for a bit. The next day is Inti Raymi, the Incan festival of the sun. Originally it took place on the 21st for solstice, but the Spanish Catholics decided it needed to be moved to the 24th. It started in some ruins we chose not to locate, desiring sleep. From there, the festival continued to the Plaza de Armas.



Note person in lower right who was apparently attempting to sell me a doll while I was taking this picture.



Many of the people who were selling things I was actually interested in purchasing (pastry, mostly) focused on the locals who were there, whereas people all wanted to sell us finger puppets and postcards and little urn things. I did end up procuring a rather tasty candy bar at some point. Oh yeah, Nabisco makes chocolate covered saltines that are all over Peru, and so good, too bad they're not in the US. Drinkable yogurt was also immensely popular there, taking up shelves upon shelves at the grocery store, in all sorts of flavors. Too bad it's overpriced and called a smoothie and marketed to upscale dieters here in the US. We fell victim to some rather tasty but apparently unpasturized coconut yogurt while there, and had some bathroom adventures that evening, needless to say. Not too bad, though.

Anyhow. The festival continued up to Sacsayhuamán (pronounced something like 'sexywoman', which greatly confused us for quite awhile when we heard other people speak of the ruins).



Apparently Incan historical sites tend to have llamas that just kind of live they're as they're an Incan sacred animal.





So the next several days were spent exploring Cusco while acclimating ourselves to the altitude.



This was the 2nd nicest restaurant we ate in. Was just a little over $30 for both of us. Eating out in peru was great, you can get a decent meal for $10 for 2 people, and it just gets better as the price goes up.



This is part of a mural of the history of Cusco, I've got the entire mural in pictures but for brevity's sake I'm just putting up the central image I took.



Here's the outside of a church that we toured (Santo Domingo?)



We started our Inca Trail adventure at a chipper 4:30 am when we caught our bus. This tour was a bit different - 16 people including us, all english speaking, from the US, Britain, Australia, and Holland. There was a massive number of porters, and 'team spirit' stuff whereupon our guide referred to us all as champions and they'd clap for us when we reached different points. They stuffed us even more then the jungle tour, and made us really sick of soup. The food was rather good, though. I started to hate people after awhile, not necessarily because of anyone in particular, just in that it's difficult to be in close confines with that many people for 4 days in a row. There was also of streak of overachiever running through our group. Albeit, I suppose it takes a certain person to want to hike the Inca Trail, but there were a fair number of people in the group that were accomplished in various areas and had no qualms about bragging about it.

The hike was pretty, though.





Were I to actually remember the name of these ruins, I'd mention it here. Apparently, though, I don't.



The Inca Trail seemed home to many semi-but-not-quite-wild llamas.



The first couple hours in, there were still some residences, which had people trying to sell us food and beverage as well as the expected farm animals.



Did I mention the llamas?



The first day of hiking was Death. Too many stairs. See, the Incas didn't believe in switchbacks, they were more for the 'lets run straight up the mountain' ideology. We walked for almost 12 hours (including lunch and breaks) and were incapable of eating dinner when we finally reached the campsite a little after 8 pm. So we went to sleep in the frigid cold. The next day we was the introduction period, where we officially met our porters. Andrew let it slip that it was his birthday, and for the rest of the day, when we arrived at a check point, rather then clapping for him they'd sing Happy Birthday. The first time this happened was at a checkpoint with about 2 other groups that were also hiking the trail, and they joined in as well, so Drew had about 100 people singing to him.

Here's the point where this happened, actually:



This paricular point was the top of Dead Woman's pass, called such due to the ridiculous amount of stairclimbing it took to get there. Oh, the pain. There were other points in the trip that were leg-killers, but nothing like that. In total, this walk was 45 km, so about 26 miles, more or less. A few too many km of that was in stairs.

Continue to Part 3!