second time around

From Quito to Lima and overnight at the Fancy Hotel. From the Galapagos tour it was just Poe and I with one other family. It was great being five of us instead of a tour of 18. We got to know the guides, Lucero and Alvin well. Fortunately we had Rick, Mary Beth and Preston as tour mates, and not Cheech and family. The five of us got along very well, and are of similar bent. We got in late and didn’t really want their four course meal as we had to be up by 5 AM for our flight to Cusco, so we just had some chicken soup, which fixes everything. Cusco is at 11400 feet and we could feel it. The Diamox helped, but still had some headache and lightheadedness. The construction of the Incas is even more impressive than the Mesa Verde pueblos. This is made of Granite, hauled 5-10 miles and then hand carved to fit together so tightly that even a fingernail can’t fit in. It also has posts and grooves like giant lego blocks making it earthquake proof. The Spanish tore a lot of temples down, and built churches over the top of the lower walls. When the earthquakes come, the spanish buildings fell down but not the Incan walls underneath.
I am much wiser now, I can tell the difference between a Llama, an Alpaca, A Vicuna or a Guanaco. The Incan temples and towns were very amazing, certainly a tough people to survive in the area, and go up and down the mountains. Machu Picchu is definitely all that! Caught the upscale “Hiram Bingham Orient Express” train to the town of Machu Picchu then a bus up the hill. It is a 1900 foot climb up a one lane dirt road with two lanes of buses coming and going. We only had to back up once, but I had to close my eyes a few more times. The day was cloudy and cool, which was nice, although the blue sky and sun are pretty, they are blisteringly hot for walking around, and walking up and down is what you do at Machu Picchu. Our guide Alvin was great at explaining the history and culture of the Incas. They accomplished an amazing amount in the short century or so they were united.
Back to Lima for a day tour and then flew on home to Orlando. Tired and dirty, but what another great leg in the journey. Some last minute details, and then on to the South Pacific.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2011 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.