On-the-Road Tales

I am a big fan of public transportation so instead of taking a 75 cent taxi ride, I decided to brave the bus. This morning I took a microbus to school. It is a crazy system but it works. There are small minivans which kind of come to a stop but mostly just roll along with a guy shouting out the window the stop names. There may be 5 busses at a time with everyone screaming in rapid succession. You hop in the minivan which is standable if you are under 5 feet and wait for your stop, paying the guy at what appears random times. It is only about 10 cents so an economical way to travel. Hostel dormitaries here run about 5$ a night and a good meal will set you back another $5.

No wonder there are a lot of people trying to find themselves here with these prices! THe timing is perfect, weather decent and not many tourists I can not even imagine it in high season.

I met up with another student from the school at 0830 for a tour of the ruins just outside cusco on horseback. We went to several temples, ceromonial centers, baths and rode in the backcountry, it was impressive. Of course the horse guides were small children and this being my third time on one of the beastsm I doubt they could help me if it decided to run. The other student was from France so we spoke only spanish the whole day which was exhausting and a bit frustrating at times.
We went to Saqsaywaman, an impressive Incan complex with stones twice the size of me. THe temple of the moon, yet another building where on the 21 of June the moon light enters a chamber. Afterwards, I toured the city, San Blas. THe Incans were great architects and did not use mortar, their stones fit together perfectly, in one example in the city there is a stone cut with 12 angles just to fit in perfectly. The spanish destroyed most of their works to use the stones but the while the spanish structures had not withstood the frequent earthquakes, the Incan buildings have. I walked home and had a good meal at the casa.

We took a taxi the hour back to Cusco for around $3.00 wach. That is an average wage here in Peru so with 4 people, the driver made many days worth. Petrol runs about $16 a gallon!! So I am not sure how the drivers make any money. I toured a couple of musuems and my host family came to pick me up.

They are very nice and live about a 45 minutes outside the city. My spanish is improving because well they have no english so there is no choice in the matter. I went to mass and stayed in to do some studying.

Bonfire went well, the only comon songs we could sing around the fire were John Lennon or [we are the World so we spikked the singing thing. The stars were amazing until the fork lightening started hitting the Andean peaks around us and the downpour started. It rained through the night and I was oblivious walking to and from town via a shortcut bridge that a small landslide had wiped out the only road into the town. I thought the bulldozer was a little out of place.
I met a local woman walking back but she only spoke Quechua so we walked together pointing things out and nodding. I finally understood I was walking much too fast for her when she said rapido, she was a solid foot shorter than me as most of the locals are.
Packed up for the journey back to Cusco. It was a lovely week in the mountains, even with frigid shower water and half the house getting ill at one point from god only knows what. Back to the big city.

Learned the past tense today. It took us a whole year in highschool to learn this stuff, things move fast here in Peru. This afternoon we took the minibus up a road that would most certainly be condemned in the US. It was paved, once upon a time and there were huge chucks of fallen rock the driver just avoided. No nets to catch them like you see in Colorado or Arizona. We were dropped off at the ruins of an old city. There were different sections, agriculture, animals, etc and they traded their goods amongst each other for commerce. In the center was the royal compound. One house was for the most beautiful women in the city who were offered up to the Sun God and they got to spend their life alone, on the highest plateau as an offering to the Dios del Sol. (I will reserve comment on this)

In the middle is an ancient sundial of sorts. This is one of the few surviving as the Spanish invaders destoyed most of them through the Inca kingdom. On the 21st of June, the sun hits a certain point and casts a shadow on a pointed stone to complete its other half, forming the Inca cross. The middle of the cross is a circle which represents the centre of the kingdom, Cusco, the points are the other cities. The Inca culture uses symbols in threes the Eagle, Puma, Snake as guardians, past present future etc. alot of symbolism in their religion. The dial was to tell the seasons so they knew when to plant the crop etc.

It reminded me of Knowth, Ireland or Newgrange where also there was an intricate buidling constructed for the same purpose, for the light to reach a chamber only on the equinox.

We hiked down for about 1.5 hours and let me justsay, I am glad we were going down and not up with the steep steps. We passed native children bouncing up from school to get home. There was a woman we saw twice selling water in two different sections then she popped up selling textile woven belts on a terrace far away. There are many tunnels in the mountains and I am betting the locals still know them. We passed a lovely waterfall to end up again at the market.

The culture of Peru permeates you at every corner. The women are weaving or making the textiles in the stalls so ´when they tell you ´hand made´there is no a doubt. There are DVDs playing in some stalls of music videos native dancers in full regalia dancing. THe locals just gather around to watch, especially the children who are dressed in the colorful textiles of the people in the video. It is just an amazing country. Must get home for the bonfire tonight. Adios…

Classes today we learned the present tense. This will disrupt my pattern of saying everything in the present as I do now “yo estoy en Bolivia” No tu es en Peru “Si mas yo estoy in Bolivia despues” it is a fun game. Past tense will come in handy.

Walked into the markets this afternoon, first day of rain. There are some beautiful stones here (yes more rocks too bad I can not carry them) Sepentina is a lovely green one mined from machu pichu. Lapis, pearl shell, jasper are popular.
I see many houses with a long stick and a red-colored bag at the end. Some are pointed out and some are leaning against the houses. I was told when flagging, it signifies the person in the house has made fresh chicha, a local liquor or poteen/moonshine. 30 cents for a glass. While I am usually adventerous with local cuisine, I think I may skip that one. The local food speciality is cuy al hurno. That translates to Guinea Pig. You can get big or small and it supposed to be delicious. Alpaca is also on the menus. I tried the ceviche which is raw fish marinated in lime and juices. not bad. Time to go study…

After class today, we piled into a minivan to visit some salt mines about 30 minutes away. As soon as we turned onto tarmac we were pulled over at a police checkpoint. THe driver apparently did not have a proper license for a minibus. The fact that the spedometer did not work or that there were 18 gringos piled into this thing did not bother them in the least. We eventually continued on and made it to urubamba. We climbed a steep (read huffing again) hill to an ancient place where the Incas had carved out huge basins in a salt mineral rock. They are filled with water, or the rain and when that evaporates, they pickax the salt and collect it in sacks. They use donkeys to transport the salt to sell at the market. The little girl guiding the donkey cuold not have been more that 4 or 5. Hard work. Beautiful drive through the valley…while it may seem i have lost my ability to spell – not all the keyboards have any letters left and things are in the wrong place so i am sorta going by memory! ciao!

Classes a la manana, review but i need it since my summer class seems so far away. In the afternoon I hiked up a valley, past a waterfall and up a switchback. This valley is only 8000 feet so better to acclimate but exertion still causes huffing and puffing. I saw some walls near the top and though I had come upon some old village when i realized…I had actually just hiked to the road! Disappointing accomplishment but the views were worth it. Quick run into town and then we watch the movie Babel. Culturally appropriate for our imersion in another land…

Up and to the Airport again. Last time sitting in the middle of the back worrying about people smashing in windows to steal backpacks. The flight to Cusco was amazing. Flying over the rugged Andes you would see these teeny villages perched atop the summit seemingly impossible to access and the land terraced so steeply. It was like a sea of emerald peaks but smooth, hardly any trees unlike the Alps. I gained a new appreciation for why it take one hour to fly form Lima to Cusco but 25 hours by bus! I was met and brought to the school to wait for transport. I met students who were staying in the flats there form all over but primarily US and Holland. I popped some altitude pills and ingested copious amounts of coca tea to avoid the effects of Cusco at 10000+ feet.

Our transport for the 18 people going to the Sacred Valley was a local bus ticket – no luxury minivan for us. We piled out backpacks along with out weeks supply of toilet paper, rice, meat (yeah I asked but was told oh dont worry its frozen it will be fine). We filled the seats and then people came on to stand in the aisles and a little ways down the road more people piled on and it continued for the next hour. We piled off in the nearest metropolis, Pisac. There was one taxi so he made numerous trips to get us down the dirt road, The house is well…adequate…it has a roof, plenty of room and occasionally enough water to flush the toilets. Sans paper of course, the sewer system here does not handle that at all. Nice though. The first evening we walked the 20 minutes into town and ate. There were a million and one star on the return caminar home, breathtaking. possible more than i have ever seen….

So, one day you are reading an article on mysterious lines and zoomorphics found in the Peruvian desert discovered by overflying airline pilots, another day you are in you very own cessan caravan doing 60 degree banks left to right to left to right thinking you can get better photos than natl geographic, study them and maybe just maybe prove they really are an alien landing strip or an astromical calendar! very cool. if the german mathematician is correct and they correspond to the zodiac…then sagitarius, my sign, is the hummingbird symbol. And…its beak points to magnetic north. given my theories on ancients harnessing magnetism…i think this is a sign (yeah).

For those of you unaware of the lines. They can only be seen from the air and they were made by removing darkers stones on top to reveal lighter desert coluors belows for a contrasting picture almost 1500 yrs ago for unknown reasons. my hummingbird by far not the largest, is 50km long. there was a crackpot about 30 yrs ago who wrote a theory these were a landing strip for extraterrestials which set off a massive debates and some of the more feasible theires lost credibility bc they were lumped with his. The math lady spent 50 yrs of her life out measuring to prove they were really a calendar for eclipses, seasons, so it could dictate planting crops. We will never know i suppose but they are pretty darn cool. that took the entire day. long flight to Ica, overflight to nasca, then back.

leave 0430 manana por el aeropuerto por cusco, if i get a ticker that is! someone accidentally never booked it or cancelled it or who knows. to be continued…i have an altitude sickness preventative pill to go swallow…