Just to preface, we are both alive and well and back in Cusco, waiting for our bus to Arequipa. Well, we are "well-ish" both a little sore. As it happens, Ollantaytambo is slightly more than 15 miles from Aguas Calientes.
We started out, like good hikers, with lots of water, bananas, cookies, some stretching. Our friends in Cusco said it was an 8 hour walk, difficult but doable and very pretty. It was a nice walk through countryside with corn plantations (in every stage of development, Tom noted- no growing season here) fields of gladiolas, cows, snow capped mountains. We walked along the Urubamba river following the train tracks- easy enough, pretty flat and slightly downhill. We weren´t making terrible time, even though we got passed by an abuela or two. We stopped for a coke and another bottle of water at a shack along the tracks, where we met up with the peruvians who motored past us a few kilometers before. We kindly asked the shack owner how much further to Aguas Calientes, he responded "igual". At this point it was nearing 4 in the afternoon, meaning two more hours of daylight
ooops . . .
So with 4hours left to go, a few ibuprofens and some caffeine, we picked up our pace. The sun was lower, it was cooler and easier to walk, we turned a bend and entered really beautiful cloud forest. The kilometers were streaming behind us. But not fast enough. Darkness came slowly. Just a couple more kilometers, we kept thinking, even as we had to resort to the screen of the digital camera to guide us.
10 hours after leaving we stumble into Aguas Calientes- so exhausted and achy we can barely take off our boots- only to find out, nope its not 15 miles. Closer to 26, in fact.
TWENTY SIX MILES. I have never walked that far in my life. Actually, techinically I still haven´t- I got a piggy back ride part of the way (shhh). But 26 miles! i know marathon runners might think lightly of this, but you all should be congratulating us, especially for not getting eaten by jaguars in the jungle at night.
Oh, and Machu Picchu was beautiful. We have lots of pretty pictures, and it really is the most impressive thing we´ve seen. I don´t think there was ever a city with better views- stunning green mountains- improbably steep, swooping blue swallows, stone work whose joints you couldn´t fit a pin into. But we are almost as excited to sleep for a long long time on our luxury bus rides down to Arequipa, Arica and on to Jujuy. I just hope we are moving less like grannys and more akin to the spry young people we once were by the time we arrive at the farm.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Ollantaytambo
ha! say that five times fast. That is where we are, in oh yay tay tombo, which i think tom should be excited about because its like the whole little town is very happy to see him. But its really oh Yan tay tombo. Sad to say we haven´t found a computor that will read my camera´s memory chip, so, no pictures. you will just have to read my descriptions.
We´ve been in Cusco the past week. Cusco is really beautiful. Yes, there may be more gringos than peruvians, but it seems there is a reason for this. The streets are mostly narrow with walls and cobblestone streets built by the incas. We were staying at a wonderful little hostal up on a hill by the plaza de San Blas and I am continually fascinated by the gutters. There are gutters built in all over the hill with fishhead spouts and sometimes when they go downhill the gutters wind about and have big naturaly shaped rocks incorporated into them. sometimes stones are left sticking out of the side of the building, kinda of like the incas though ¨"this one sure is pretty, lets just leave it here" or conversely " this one sure is heavy, it would be a pain in the butt to move" Either way, they are aesthetically pleasing. As are these nubby bits that the incas left sticking off of otherwise perfectly carved fitted stone walls. My favorite wall is this one http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/61046/61046,1190750338,2/stock-photo-inca-stone-wall-cusco-5650960.jpg In real life it has a kind of greenish tint and there are images of a serpent, condor and puma built in. in the picture you can see the head of the puma with his trapezoidal ear (he is looking to the left).
Cusco is by far the most pleasant city we have visited. Going through cities has been unavoidable and the experience is usually less than thrilling. Cusco is however very pleasant to walk around, with its narrow streets it has less traffic and less pollution. Also all the tourists inspire lots of cafes and restaurants which aren´t exactly unwelcome. We´re also staying in a lovely hostal with lots of very nice people, and views, and a girl, Hannah who is starting a bannana bread baking enterprise . . . mmmmm.
But now we are in Ollantaytambo. The town is pretty fascinating. It was built by the Incas, or perhaps before them, and all of the waterways still run through town. Theres a babbling stream on practically every street. The town´s in the middle of incredible high mountains, most of them terraced. Yesterday we started wandering upstream and couldn´t stop. We ended up miles outside of town and both probly got a little sunstroke. But the scenery was beautiful, and oddly deserted. We also saw a GIGANTIC hummingbird. really it was enormous and a little scary. I thought it was a swallow at first.
Tomorrow we plan to walk about 15 miles along the river to aguas calientes, enjoy the hot springs, then go to Machu Pichu in the morning. Then back to Cusco before headint to Arequipa, through the northern part of Chile and east to Jujuy for a month with the gauchos working on a sheep farm and dairy. Clearly we´ve done a great job sticking to the wonderfully drawn itinerary i made.
hopefully we will get the chance to post pictures soon!
We´ve been in Cusco the past week. Cusco is really beautiful. Yes, there may be more gringos than peruvians, but it seems there is a reason for this. The streets are mostly narrow with walls and cobblestone streets built by the incas. We were staying at a wonderful little hostal up on a hill by the plaza de San Blas and I am continually fascinated by the gutters. There are gutters built in all over the hill with fishhead spouts and sometimes when they go downhill the gutters wind about and have big naturaly shaped rocks incorporated into them. sometimes stones are left sticking out of the side of the building, kinda of like the incas though ¨"this one sure is pretty, lets just leave it here" or conversely " this one sure is heavy, it would be a pain in the butt to move" Either way, they are aesthetically pleasing. As are these nubby bits that the incas left sticking off of otherwise perfectly carved fitted stone walls. My favorite wall is this one http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/61046/61046,1190750338,2/stock-photo-inca-stone-wall-cusco-5650960.jpg In real life it has a kind of greenish tint and there are images of a serpent, condor and puma built in. in the picture you can see the head of the puma with his trapezoidal ear (he is looking to the left).
Cusco is by far the most pleasant city we have visited. Going through cities has been unavoidable and the experience is usually less than thrilling. Cusco is however very pleasant to walk around, with its narrow streets it has less traffic and less pollution. Also all the tourists inspire lots of cafes and restaurants which aren´t exactly unwelcome. We´re also staying in a lovely hostal with lots of very nice people, and views, and a girl, Hannah who is starting a bannana bread baking enterprise . . . mmmmm.
But now we are in Ollantaytambo. The town is pretty fascinating. It was built by the Incas, or perhaps before them, and all of the waterways still run through town. Theres a babbling stream on practically every street. The town´s in the middle of incredible high mountains, most of them terraced. Yesterday we started wandering upstream and couldn´t stop. We ended up miles outside of town and both probly got a little sunstroke. But the scenery was beautiful, and oddly deserted. We also saw a GIGANTIC hummingbird. really it was enormous and a little scary. I thought it was a swallow at first.
Tomorrow we plan to walk about 15 miles along the river to aguas calientes, enjoy the hot springs, then go to Machu Pichu in the morning. Then back to Cusco before headint to Arequipa, through the northern part of Chile and east to Jujuy for a month with the gauchos working on a sheep farm and dairy. Clearly we´ve done a great job sticking to the wonderfully drawn itinerary i made.
hopefully we will get the chance to post pictures soon!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Update
From San Agustin, we traveled up to Popayan and down to Pasto on an adventurous ride that took us over unpaved mountain roads in an inconruously clean and svelt-interiored bus. The decor and cleanliness were unfortunately not representative of the engine condition. Somewhere on an uphill slope in a sparsely populated dry mountanous region, the engine puttered and kicked the bucket, right infront of some unlucky familys cinderblock house. Passengers held out hope while first the driver, then his assistent, then the rest of the males onboard gradually got out, examined, ofered advice and removed a liter of suspicious yellow liquid. The family´s mule looked on, expressing little confidence, from his post in the yard . Next the young children climbed out, looking lustfully after the family´s slices of watermelon. their mothers, and finally the rest of us followed suit after a final, fruitless attempt to start the engine. We ended up flagging down other passing buses and our company must have paid the rest of the way for all of the pasengers to get to Pasto. The bus is probably still there being eyed by an indignant mule.
The bus we caught was, not surprisingly full, so Tom sat shotgun, I perched on a padded stool , wedged between him and the engine box. We rode down the winding pan american, enjoying the practically floor to ceiling views of some of the most impressive mountains and deepest gorges I have seen, stained purple in the dusk. I had to hold on tightly everytime we went around a right-hand turn to keep from teetering over.
We arrived famished, filthy and exhaused in Pasto and commenced a huricane-like storm of face-stuffing,showering and collapsing into bed. Pasto must be the south american capital of puff pastry . the stuff was tasty and ubiquitous.
From Pasto we continued down to Ipiales and an impressive cathedral spanning a beautiful pine treed gorge. We were also the victims of some head-scraching petty theft. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, a broken hat, an old t shirt, and the bottom half of my long underwear. At least we are contributing to the oral hygene of dim witted colombian theives. Also unfortunate- gone is the beard-trimmer. I´m not sure how sincerely disapointed Tom is.
Quito, such a high city, though it was a bit too cloudy to enjoy any views. What we enjoyed most was Ana Cris´ home and hospitality and her mom´s blackberry juice! Ana Cris is working for the Ecuadorian branch of Nestle, for the time being until she becomes president and fixes everythin. Poor girl was subjected to countless interviews, no not Ecuadorian politics, but how Nestle processes chocolate . . . She also took us to the actual GPS calculated 0 0 0 longitude, where I balanced an egg on the head of a nail and was filled with delight to see water going down a drain in both directions ( counterclockwise n the northern hemisphere, no swirl on the line, and clockwise in the southern.. like our respective hurricanes) so the simpsons had it right.
Next came an afternoon of shatterng Melanies dreams where Tom had to relay the inconvenient facts to me about the Quilotoa loop we hoped to hike. It was 200 km long. camping in between towns was unadvisable, hostals more likely. our packs were heavy. we aren´t exactly in shape. It was quite cloudy. Crushing news. which i hadn´t quite been able to wrap my head arround in my flufly north american dreams. This inspired a frantic 4pm friday afternoon search for some guide company to get us nto the beautiful wildnerness. quickly! The pollution and litter and poverty of south american cities and the painfully slow, stopping every 5 km to pick up or drop off someone, progress of the bus was getting to us. me. we were, I guess, asking to be ripped off. silly gringos.
We ended up on a 2 day , one night trip up to , Cotopaxi national park, an impressive active volcano- probably more impressive outside the wintry cloudy season. We hiked up to a refuge at 4800 m- an odd head swimming experience, then went down, not to camp in the wilderness- actually they don´t really do that in Ecuador?, but to a fenced camping area with white table clothed restaurant. We had some very tasty trout and a nice experience, but couldn´t quite figure where we´d been misunderstood. The next morning we had a beautiful walk around the park, past semi wild horses and pre inca ruins and natural springs. Then were left uncerimoniously at a gas station to flag down the next bus. lesson learned.
We passed briefly through Riobamba and Cuenca, which while wreathed in the usual depressing pollution, half painted cinder block and corrugated steel houses (please excuse my insensitivity) both have beautifully preserved colonial centers that you stumble into with no small degree of surprise. the new cathedral in cuenca surely rivals or surpasses most european cathedrals. Its expansive interior is coated in carrera marble and boasts a towering massive gold columned thing around the altar.
Now we´re in Villcambamba, beautiful, idylic, lots of hikes and nature preserves, marvelling at the flowers, discussing the relative advantages of visiting cloud forests, cuzco, machu pichu. Are we crazy not to go to Machu Pichu? Is this really our quotidian conversation?
The bus we caught was, not surprisingly full, so Tom sat shotgun, I perched on a padded stool , wedged between him and the engine box. We rode down the winding pan american, enjoying the practically floor to ceiling views of some of the most impressive mountains and deepest gorges I have seen, stained purple in the dusk. I had to hold on tightly everytime we went around a right-hand turn to keep from teetering over.
We arrived famished, filthy and exhaused in Pasto and commenced a huricane-like storm of face-stuffing,showering and collapsing into bed. Pasto must be the south american capital of puff pastry . the stuff was tasty and ubiquitous.
From Pasto we continued down to Ipiales and an impressive cathedral spanning a beautiful pine treed gorge. We were also the victims of some head-scraching petty theft. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, a broken hat, an old t shirt, and the bottom half of my long underwear. At least we are contributing to the oral hygene of dim witted colombian theives. Also unfortunate- gone is the beard-trimmer. I´m not sure how sincerely disapointed Tom is.
Quito, such a high city, though it was a bit too cloudy to enjoy any views. What we enjoyed most was Ana Cris´ home and hospitality and her mom´s blackberry juice! Ana Cris is working for the Ecuadorian branch of Nestle, for the time being until she becomes president and fixes everythin. Poor girl was subjected to countless interviews, no not Ecuadorian politics, but how Nestle processes chocolate . . . She also took us to the actual GPS calculated 0 0 0 longitude, where I balanced an egg on the head of a nail and was filled with delight to see water going down a drain in both directions ( counterclockwise n the northern hemisphere, no swirl on the line, and clockwise in the southern.. like our respective hurricanes) so the simpsons had it right.
Next came an afternoon of shatterng Melanies dreams where Tom had to relay the inconvenient facts to me about the Quilotoa loop we hoped to hike. It was 200 km long. camping in between towns was unadvisable, hostals more likely. our packs were heavy. we aren´t exactly in shape. It was quite cloudy. Crushing news. which i hadn´t quite been able to wrap my head arround in my flufly north american dreams. This inspired a frantic 4pm friday afternoon search for some guide company to get us nto the beautiful wildnerness. quickly! The pollution and litter and poverty of south american cities and the painfully slow, stopping every 5 km to pick up or drop off someone, progress of the bus was getting to us. me. we were, I guess, asking to be ripped off. silly gringos.
We ended up on a 2 day , one night trip up to , Cotopaxi national park, an impressive active volcano- probably more impressive outside the wintry cloudy season. We hiked up to a refuge at 4800 m- an odd head swimming experience, then went down, not to camp in the wilderness- actually they don´t really do that in Ecuador?, but to a fenced camping area with white table clothed restaurant. We had some very tasty trout and a nice experience, but couldn´t quite figure where we´d been misunderstood. The next morning we had a beautiful walk around the park, past semi wild horses and pre inca ruins and natural springs. Then were left uncerimoniously at a gas station to flag down the next bus. lesson learned.
We passed briefly through Riobamba and Cuenca, which while wreathed in the usual depressing pollution, half painted cinder block and corrugated steel houses (please excuse my insensitivity) both have beautifully preserved colonial centers that you stumble into with no small degree of surprise. the new cathedral in cuenca surely rivals or surpasses most european cathedrals. Its expansive interior is coated in carrera marble and boasts a towering massive gold columned thing around the altar.
Now we´re in Villcambamba, beautiful, idylic, lots of hikes and nature preserves, marvelling at the flowers, discussing the relative advantages of visiting cloud forests, cuzco, machu pichu. Are we crazy not to go to Machu Pichu? Is this really our quotidian conversation?
Monday, October 11, 2010
This is La Casa de Francois- highly reccomended to anyone going through San Agustin. Lots of Hammocks and friendly animals.
walking just outside of San agustin- bananas! and cows! There were also many chickens, several of which crossed the road.
Last Saturday we decided to to a hike down into this ravine, up the other side and along to a tourist attraction of precolumbian sculptures.
bridge accross the Rio Magdelena
This is around noon after we had come up the other side with only some bread and jam. After getting a little lost in some poor farmers coffee plants and redirected, we kept walking, and walking. It would be a lie to say there wasn´t some hunger-induced crankiness, so handy Tom cut me some sugar cane. mmmmmm . .. sugar . . .
Altos de los Idolos, the goal of our hike, is a spot on top of a very high mountain where hills, which turned out to be burial mounds, were excavated in the 20s and 70s. >Most of the sculptures are about 4 feet high and gard a small passageway to a burial chamber with a sarcophogus. They also found pottery and gold objects in there, but those are now mostly in Germany. These particular ones date from 2000 years ago to 500 a.d.
.
Fruits! Colombia has the most wonderful fruits! This is papaya, lulo a round orange fruit with greenish seeds, kinda sour, and the speckldy orange one witha long stem is a granadilla. Inside are slimy grey seeds that you have to slurp down like oysters. Luis said he used to get them in his lunch box and they called them king kong buggers. mmmm
San Agustin
This place is paradise. You watch the sun come up on green rolling mountans, roosters crowing and cows mooing from somewhere below in the lush vegetation, birds chirping and warbling from every direction. Two blue-green humming birds are chasing eachother among the bouganvilla. They like to rest on the bare branches of the carob tree between fits of jousting. A chesnut horse with a white blaze is happily munching. Yesterday morning was overcast, bringing out little crested sparrows, a bright red bird with black wings and a shy little pair gold-bellied birds. The male had a black back anbd head and the female was a softer brownish grey.Warblers of some sort?
So much grows here. Outside our room are coffee plants, apples, bananas, oranges and limes, little lettuces and improble pinapples resting on spikey bushes like jaunty little hats. Never knew they grew like that. Ruffly pink hibiscus, magenta and lavender bouganvilla, wild irises and orchids. I keep thinking how much my mom would like this place ("I'll be so happy when you're out of Colombia" she said).
So far, not a hint of a coke trafficker or FARC, only wonderfully friendly people, and plenty of other tourists in San agustine: french, dutch, italian, new zealanders- just no other americans!
So much grows here. Outside our room are coffee plants, apples, bananas, oranges and limes, little lettuces and improble pinapples resting on spikey bushes like jaunty little hats. Never knew they grew like that. Ruffly pink hibiscus, magenta and lavender bouganvilla, wild irises and orchids. I keep thinking how much my mom would like this place ("I'll be so happy when you're out of Colombia" she said).
So far, not a hint of a coke trafficker or FARC, only wonderfully friendly people, and plenty of other tourists in San agustine: french, dutch, italian, new zealanders- just no other americans!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
bogota
really excellent graffiti in Bogota. We also went to the Bolero museum(columbian painter who painted the very plum ladies with tiny feet). The graffiti was by far much more creative and alive.
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