MachuPicchu - Part 2

Safely arrived at the entrance to MP, valid ticket for 10am entry to Huaynupicchu mountain in hand, I was left with an hour to spare before my guide turned up for my tour. I wasn´t sure how I was to find him, but had been told somewhat cryptically that "His name is Miguel and his jacket will match his flag." Further clarity was not possible due to the mutual lack of common language between me and my contact at 4 in the morning.
It was ineveitably raining hard, so I waited under cover close to the entrance.
At 45 minutes past when my guide was supposed to show up, I decided that South-American scheduling or no, I had to go hunt for him. After establishing that he had in fact somehow already started the tour and was somewhere within MP complex, another guide raced me round almost the whole mountain in an attempt to find my tour, which, breathlessly, we eventually did. He was wearing an orange poncho and carrying a rainbow coloured flag. Hmmm.
Anyway, the tour was all pretty informative, the usual stuff about rocks that look, sometimes quite dubiously, like either a condor, a snake or a puma - each of these representing a different aspect of the Inka world view. Lots of stuff to do with shadows in various shapes of llamas and such that only appear during summer or winter solstice. Windows that align with the sun during solstice. And so on....
All very interesting, but having seen a fair number of Inka sights by now I could probably reel off this stuff by heart. And sometimes,just sometimes, I think a person could be forgiven for saying that, on occasion, a rock doesn´t have to look like anything except, perhaps, a rock.
Tour done, I made my way to the entrance to Huanupicchu (I´ll call it HP now). I should explain; HP is a mountain that rises monument-like to 300m above MP, at the opposite end from the entrance. Intrepid people that have slung themselves out of bed at 4am and beat their way to the front of the bus queue are permitted the privilage of climbing up for an extraordinary view down into the MP complex.
At 10am I began my hike up. The climb was extremely steep, essentially 300 vertical metres of crazy, uneven, rain-slick, gigantic-stepped stairs. Standard sheer drops to one side or another. A clamber through a couple of caves. A last few steps up a perilous little ladder. And then I emerged at the glorious summit.
Into a cloud.
Everything around was solid white. An infinity of whiteness, as opaque as the blackest night but filled with blinding light. There was nothing else to do but sit around and wait. And at least the rain had stopped.

Gradually the light broke through the clouds, and they shifted, to reveal what has to be one of the most stunning views I´ll ever get to lay eyes on. Hundreds of metres below the whole complex of MachuPicchu is laid out like a miniature city shining golden in the morning sunlight, white clouds drifting over and constantly concealing and revealing different aspects of the scene. You can see all the way to the river far below, and all the neat horizontal lines of the Inka terraces cut into the hillsides. A few metres away from where I was sitting, little whirring birds chased through the shrubbery and astonishingly bright and metallic green hummingbirds were feeding from the fushia pink flowers. Incredibly beautiful. It wa svery easy to see why the Inkas considered the mountains to be holy and built their temples high up in the clouds.

Waiting in the rain at 4am for an hour and a half after an hours sleep in order to get my ticket for HP, it did cross my mind on not a few occasions that perhaps nothing was really going to be worth this much effort. Well, it really was.

Sadly, no sleep and chaotic planning don´t really do anything for my organisation. I forgot to but my fully charged battery in my camera. There are no photos to come of any of this. So, you´ll all just have to believe me when I say I´ve been to these incredible places. I don´t think I could forget them, so photos seem a little beside the point anyway. If you want to see what it was like, you´ll all just have to go!

xoxo

MachuPicchu finally!

I finally managed to book myself ont6o a 2 day tour to MachuPicchu and the sacred valley and set off for more rain-enhanced hiking. Day one was visiting Pisac (where I´d already been) and the sacred valley, which was pretty and interesting and rainy as usual. Inka ruins at Ollantaytambo done, I was left with an unholy 6 hours to kill in the little village, until my train at 11pm. I´d met a couple of people on the bus so we all had dinner together and I trouped off for my train, eventually arriving in Aguas Calientes (the town with hot springs, literally Hot Waters) at 2am where I was met by Betty, my connection person, and marched up soggy streets to my bed for the night.
Sleeo was incredibly brief, since I wanted to climb Huaynupicchu mountain the next day, a feat which requires a person to be within the first 400 people to the entrance gate of MachuPicchu in the morning. This means getting up at 4am, to be first in the queue for bus tickets up when the bus station opens at 5.30am. An hour and a half of standing in the cold, dark and rain later, followed by a bumpy bus ride over potholed, perilous roads and I finally got to the gate of MP. I was number 281! Amazing joy!
I spoke to some London girls who said they had hiked up, and the road was so badly flooded they were walking in a waterfall the whole way: "We just assumed we were going to die, but we might as well try and keep going anyway." Yes indeed. Glad I didn´t try that then!

Anyways, have to go now. Will relate more of the Epic adventure later.

xoxo

Beaurocracy and beautiful dresses

Urgh!
So I was supposed to be at MachuPicchu yesterday, having worked pretty hard to book my train tickets and the entrance to MachuPicchu. We got up around 4am to leave for the station, sat on a replacement bus service for 2 hours, sat in the train station at Ollantaytambo for 2.5 hours (where we should have made our connection for the town near MP), eventually realised the trains weren´t running, waited around for another hour or so while Rail Peru discussed their options and finally were herded back to Cusco on another bus (2.5 hours) where we could queue for another hour to collect our refunds.
This done, there was still the matter of changing the dates on our tickets for MachuPicchu at the Ministeria de Cultura. Let me say, they do know how to take lunch in Latin America.
All in all, a day involving epic amounts of queueing, stamping documents, herding, arguing and resignation.

Today I still had the MP ticket to sort out in the morning, despite the 2 hours in the Ministeria de Cultura the day before. Luckily today was relatively hassle free and all was well wihin 45 minutes! A huge South American success story!

This afternoon I went wandering down the pretty wonky little alleyways in Cusco and discovered a Dutch cafe where I bought byself a warm cinnamony slice of apple pie and a bitter hot chocolate for lunch. Just round the corner and up a couple of steep little staircases in the backstreets I was amazed to find a really beautiful little dress shop in which to shelter from the afternoon rain showers. It was a magical little discovery with lovely unique dresses hanging all around the studio and red-haired Irish Eibhlin was sat in the corner at her sewing machine quietly working on new pieces with the stero playing. We had a chat about Ireland and London, the weather and the Irish bar in Cusco and fashion, ceramics and illustration and then I fell for a wonderful dress in the corner, a simple black shift style dress with a big collar and a strip of silvery graphic patterned fabric down the middle.
Eibhlin said I could have some money off as it´s rainy season in Cusco and trade is slow, and she even pinned it and took it in for me so that it fits perfectly!
Such a delight to find a wonderful little boutique in touristy Cusco!
Here´s her website.

Pisac

Ah, all thes posts are getting gloriously mixed up and out of order, but it{s a rainy day in Cusco today, so heres a little update.

I headed up to Pisac a yesterday because it was Sunday and the artisan market was on, filling a huge square with silver and mother-of-pearl jewellery and colourful woven scarves, bags, rugs and all manner of things alpaca, but also to see the Inca ruins in the hills above Pisac.
My companions for the day decided that the one of them hated rain and the other hated walking and, both of those being fairly unavoidable to the exploration of Pisac ruins, I left them to peruse the endless opportunities of the market while I hired a cab for the 20 minute drive uphill from Pisac town centre. At the top, I got myself a guide who had plenty of interesting banter about the place and filled in breathless hikes up Inca stairways by playing little tunes on his homemade flute. It was a little bit of genius.
Anyway, I think I{ll just let the pictures speak for this one for the most part. Only to add a few fun facts of the day:
The Incas made great use of everything in their environment, ie.
They used a plant that lathers in water to wash their hair and the llama wool
Meteor rock was used to carve out tunnels through the rocks
Mint from the mountain was used to make tea to help with altitude sickness and also to scent their homes.
The Incas communicated by flute from their watchtowers, the sound travelling echoeing through the hillsides for large distances. Each tune would be a code.

At the end of the tour I returned to Pisac market for fried alpaca on a skewer with a potato stuck on the end. Nom. Pisac - done.

Colca Canyon - Edit

Ha. So I read back my last post, and I{m thinking that in my eagerness to convey the experience as truthfully as possible, I neglected to mention that the canyon is awesome. Literally the landscape inspires awe. It{s one of the most amazing places I have ever been, and one of the advantages of rainy season, treacherous paths aside, is that the canyon is incredibly lush and green now, much against expectations. There are lovely terraces overflowing with the purple, yellow and white flowers of a variety of potato plants and cacti growing on every possible surface.
Watching the cloud shadows move across the canyon in the golden morning sunshine, and a condor hunting in it{s natural environment was an incredible moment not to be missed. And last but not least, the inhabitants of the canyon are amazing. Being easily outhiked by a middle aged Peruvian lady in sandals towing a sheep, who made walking up steep staircase-like narrow tracks look like standing on an escalator - priceless.

Just to put the record a little straighter.

xo

Between heaven and hell in Colca Canyon

So, from Lima I took the 16 hour bus down to Arequipa, a little ordeal all of its own, hung out for a day and then booked straight onto Colca Canyon 3 day tour with Land Adventures. Colca Canyon is supposed to be the second deepest canyon in the world after it´s neighbour Cotahuasi, and more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
I was whisked into a bus with a bunch of other trekkers at 3am and then driven for 5 hours in the dark on bendy swervy roads up into the mountains, eventually reaching the Cruz del Condor (condor lookout point) at around 9am. Sadly there was cloud, so no condors could be sighted...Me and my trek buddies, Jane and Minh from Washinton DC, and our guide, Roy, continued on to breakfast and the start of the trail.
At 3400m,the view into Colca Canyon is breathtaking. Literally. The oxygen at this height is something like two thirds of what you might get at sea level,so even inhaling until your lungs press against your ribcage can leave you with not enough air. I was glad to start the trek downhill into the canyon as fast as possible. My trekking buddies and I zig zagged our way down vertiginous paths for most of the morning in the sunshine. On the way down we did manage to spot a few condors gliding sharklike through the canyon, predatory and extremely fast. An adult condor has a wing span of 3m, so even at a considerable distance they´re a formidable looking creature in the wild. Although there was plenty along the trail to distract us, the largest amount of time was spent keeping our eyes on the ground as the trail was steep and often covered in a loose skree that occasionally slid right out from under foot. Near vertical drops of a couple of thousand metres to one side do wonders for concentration, and I had no desire to wind up as condor fodder or go for an unplanned swim in the rushing white river waters that carved down through the bottom of the canyon.
At any rate, we eventually reached the river, much to my personal relief, because there was far less slippage climbing back up the other side after crossing the river. By now it was raining and we climbed up the canyon again for around 2 hours to reach our destination for the night - a little village perched around a quarter of the way up into the canyon wall.

To get there we had to negotiate perilous little paths well off the tourist track (most tour companies make camp down in the canyon floor in an oasis but our tour company is trying to spread the benefits of tourism to more remote villages). Along the route there were many places where the rain softened ground was cracked and ready to drop away. Also, in many parts boulders the size of cows had ploughed a gully into the canyon wall from high above the path into the river below, leaving, in some places, a foothold barely 10cm wide with the cliffs dropping away sheer from the path to one side. Nerves were inevitably a little frayed upon reaching our hostel. The place itself was rustic as expected, however I hadn´t really accounted for the heavy rain which had soaked through a full length waterproof poncho and an outdoors weather tight jacket to boot to soak me and the contents of my backpack thoroughly.

We all went and changed into slightly less wet clothes, and, in the absence of electricity, took a pack of cards and a candle into a little room while we waited for dinner. Now, I don´t know about anyone else in this world, but tired, sweaty, soaked to the skin, cold and with nerves well stretched by the treacherous paths and sat in a dark room, one of the last things I wanted to hear our guide exclaim from a dimly lit corner was: "Oh look! A snake!" swiftly followed by "Aha! A bigger one!".
He then proceeded to materialise two large open topped jars into the amber glow of the candle before our noses, each containing a thickly coiled snake. Me: "Oh. Great. Yeah, um, I don´t really like it though." He was attempting to give us some explanation about snakes and alcohol which I didn´t listen to as I was busy shuffling along the bench away from the unfortunate creatures.
Miraculously, at this moment dinner was called across the courtyard and we all trooped out of the Miniature Museum of Horrors into the pouring rain in order to get to the kitchen, where, mercifully, the dinner was both hot and delicious, consisting of a vegetable soup and a large plate of stirfried alpaca meat and vegetables and rice.
Dinner done, we were all crashed out and it was out into the rain again in order to reach the bedrooms, which alough packed with blankets, were cold and a little damp, and with hair still wet all there was to do was pile on layers and hope for the best.

At this point the altitude finally hits me. Having been fine all day, right from the top of the canyon, I suddenly find that everytime I close my eyes the bed, the room, the whole world is whirled away into the black void. I am unable to prevent this happening for the whole night, which, having gone to bed in the dark at 8pm, is a really long time to lie awake.

In the morning we get pancakes with caramel and bananas, a small comfort for a night of endless spinning, and soon enough we have to set off, unshowered or even washed at all because the heavy rains have ironically broken the villages water supply. I establish that the path leads straight on down to the oasis where we are headed for lunch and set off ahead of everyone because at this point I´m feeling really bad and just want to get to lower altitude and take a shower, but only 20 minutes in I come across another section of path that has been boulder ploughed, leaving only a steep loose skree slope to tread on at one point. I had handled these alright the day before but, today, with the world spinning and falling perpetually downwards around me, I just can´t cross it and have to sit low on the path and wait for the others to catch up with me 30 minutes later. On the trail down our guide distracts us by cutting off parts of cacti which turn out to be strange spiny fruits and giving them to us to eat. We eventually all make it down to the oasis together, where a cold shower, food and a swimming pool awaits.

It´s a brief respite, because we all know that after lunch we have to face the climb back out of the canyon, which is something like 3400 vertical metres of giant uneven stairs with little loose rocks to slide on. Jane opted to take a mule back to the top for an extra 60 Soles, and Minh purchased a back-up mule in case he needed it further on, but I was sure I didn´t want to perch on top of another four legged creature on those paths, no matter how sure footed and reliable they might be. Plus, I also wanted to be able to say I have walked out of one of the deepest canyons in the world.
Roy, Minh and I started up the trail well ahead of Jane, who was waiting for her mule in the sunny oasis. She passed us later, just after the halfway point, looking very happy and relaxed while we sweated and gasped the higher we climbed.
Then the rain set in and I was determined to get as far up the canyon as possible before it got very heavy so we set a fast pace for the first part. The last third or so of the climb became very difficult however, and I needed to break every couple of turns in the path because the higher we climbed the less oxygen there was, so cruelly we had to suffer the double pain of tired muscles and lack of air.
Now, if you´re climbing a mountain and the altituide starts to hurt you, you just turn around and go down without reaching the summit. But if you´re clambering out of a canyon and the only road out is at the top... you pretty much just have to make it.
Which we did. In 2 hours and 50 minutes. Not a bad time as the usual times are supposed to range between 3 and 4 hours to climb all the way out of the canyon.

So. That was it. I did it. I´m glad I did it. I´m really glad it´s over.
I had one more night´s sleep in damp clothes and damp hair in a freezing cold hostel at the top of the canyon and the next day we took pictures with llamas and alpacas and all the usual tourist stuff. Job done.

Sadly there are none of my own photographs to accompany this entry so I´m hoping to link to some of Jane and Minh´s phtographs when they upload them. They kindly took pics of me with the animals and at the top of the canyon too, so you should get to see a picture of me looking like I dragged myself out of hell in the drenching rain. Yay!

Little Lima update

Easter Island and Tapati Festival set 6

Alex joined the moai lineup.


Rano Raraku at dusk. Moody.

Mo' Moai.

We chased the sunrise at this Moai monument. It rises directly behind them.


Cast long shadows back towards Ranu Raruka too.

Monument at Anakena beach in the early morning sun.


Wild horses fight and play on Anakena beach in the morning.

Monument.

Sea cave.


Sunset from our camping ground.

Night time at the festival. Traditional dances and bands playing.

Easter Island and Tapati Festival set 5

Rocky roads.

At the quarry (known as The Nursery) on the sides or Ranu Raraku.




Large moai, abandoned in the process off carving it from the rocks.

Easter Island and Tapati Festival set 4

Moai at the foot of Maunga Teravaka, the highest mountain (volcano) on the island.

Hawk at the foot of the mountain.

Caves formed in lava flow at the foot of the mountain.


Climbing the mountain.

Wild horses at the summit of the mountain.

The summit. 360 degree views to the pacific and the horizon.

Easter Island and Tapati Festival set 3

Horses on the rim of the crater of Ranu Raruka, spectating at the triathlon.

View down into the crater where the traithlon took place (taken later, when the crowd were gone.)

Stage one: rowing across the lake.

Stage 2: Running around the lake with 20lbs of bananas.