One Way United

So after saying goodbye to Julian (we’ll miss you!) I waited a long time for my bus to Nazca to show up. It did about an hour late and I got on. The man who ran the luggage counter was rather old and his eyes were going bad. This was obivous as every time he looked at my ticket (which was a couple times) he had to squint at it. At first he thought I was going to Lima. I managed to convince him I was going to Nazca, but I suddenly became concerned for my luggage. I watched carefully out the bus window but never saw my bag get on the bus…and we were about to leave. So I jumped off the bus and ran inside to ask if my bag was still in the office. It wasn’t, but now I had to run completely on faith that my bag would be in Nazca (it was, turns out it had gotten on a different bus for some reason; I’m assuming space issues). The ride was at least five hours longer than I was told it would be and was rather uncomfortable. Not to mention we broke down at one point and had to change a tire, which had about ten more holes than it should have. By the way: don’t ever show your camera to the locals unless you feel like taking a lot of pointless pictures. But I did have a nice conversation with a teacher who lives in Lima. She told me the city was rather expensive and not that interesting. I had been expecting this and it only confirmed my feeling that I wasn’t going to stay there that long.

Finally we got to Nazca and I jumped off the bus in jubilation. A quickly found a nice hostal and set off to see the city. In short there was not much to see. In fact the only reason anyone really comes here is to see the famous mysterious Nazca lines, the geoglyphs designs set into the pampa nearby. I had wanted to see these ever since I was about ten years old and first heard about them from a video game (no that’s not a joke). These lines were thought to have first been made around 500 B.C. and continued through the eras of Nazca civilization. Their exact purpose is yet unknown and especially confusing to researchers. Why put so much time and effort into creating something that you really can’t see unless you’re directly above it in a plane, particularly a few thousand years before they’d even be invented? Maria Reiche spent more than 50 years studying the lines and she believed that they were a giant astronomical calender. Others thought they were used for worship rituals. Others suggest extraterrestial intervention. Some people think they’re mearly the result of some halucinagenic substance experimentation. Whatever you want to believe these things are quite beautiful seen from above…but rather hard to photograph. There are many interesting shapes including triangles, a killer whale, a monkey, a condor (my personal favorite), and a strange figure called the astronaut. A warning though to anyone considering doing the flying tour. The companies mention that anyone prone to motion sickness may have difficulty during the flight and they weren’t kidding. The constant rocking of the tiny plane was really unsettling. There were five tourists including me in my plane, and by the end three of us had thrown up. Fortunately there were enough air sick bags to go around.

Back on the ground I got on a bus for short ride to Ica. Arriving in Ica I somehow found myself swept into a cab and taken to nearby Huacachina. This is a small town of only 300 people or so nestled in the giant sand dunes. This place was a real oasis that I had never seen before and was very peaceful…for a bit. The hostal was quite happening. Packed with tourists who drink at the bar by the pool and blast horrible disco music long into the night, this wasn’t really the place to go for peace and quiet. The dorm room I slept in consisted of no less than 18 beds, and they were almost all full. There’s not much to do around there but I did climb to the top of the largest sand dune I have ever seen to watch the sun set. One of the local dogs even followed me to the top to keep me company. Ahh…I love dogs. I miss you Jesse! (unfortunately my dog has never told me if she can read or not) The rest of the evening was spent lounging around the hostal pool.

The following morning I got up to go sandbuggying. This is where the hostal takes you out in a sand vehicle that looks like it’s powered by a lawnmower engine around the sand dunes. I actually enjoyed this more than the Nazca lines. Two vehicles went out into one of the vast expanse of the desert. The whole world was their racetrack and the drivers had no inhibitions about cutting loose out in the sand. This meant they’d challenge each other to drag races and often come mere inches away from whamming into each other and then one would put on a burst of speed and zoom right in front of us, literally making us eat his dust. Must be how they keep their job interesting. Now you may not realize it but I’m a bit of an adrenaline junky, and this wild ride sure got the heart pounding. The driver surged around tight corners just a few steps away from tumbling over the side of the sandy mountains. He’d charge up a steep slope only to plummit down the other side. This was a rollercoaster ride that had me grinning from ear to ear (which tends to get sand in one’s teeth). That  wasn’t all though. We also got to go sandboarding. This is a lot like snowboarding (which I have done once), except when you fall it doesn’t hurt that much. We’d be driven to the top of series of dunes, strapped on the boards, and then went on down. The results were always humorous. We were given no instructions by the way. I am definitely getting back into skiing or something when I get back to the states. So after a fun afternoon of tumbling down the slopes we were set to go back to our hostal, and then in typical fashion our sandbuggy ran out of gas one kilometer from the end. The driver called for help and soon another buggy came with to gas us up. For some reason the buggy still wouldn’t start up. After couple of minutes of it failing to turn over the guys in the other buggy tried a time honored tactic: ram the clunker from behind. So they gave us a good “push” with their buggy to start us up. I have no idea why, but it actually worked.

Back at the hostal I quickly got my stuff together and jumped on a bus headed to Pisco. This town is by the Pacific coast and is host to a nearby nature reserve. So today I took a tour of the Nacional Reserva de Paracas and the nearby Islas de Ballestas. You can check out the new pictures to see how that went.

So tomorrow it’s on to Lima. I’m not really excited about this as I’ve heard it’s a very polluted city and rather expensive. They do have movie theaters though and some ruins closeby that are supposed to be cool. And I hear you can do paraglyding as well so I’m sure I’ll find something to do in my time there. Be sure to check for new pictures and our moments page (remember that?). There’s been an addition of a different nature recently. Love to all and happy graduation Grace!

Random fact. The Peruvian presidential election was held this weekend. Voting is compulsory in Peru. If you don’t vote you’re fined 120 soles (about $40). It’s also illegal to drink alcohol 48 hours before voting. Really. All the bars close before the election. I have never heard of this before.

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A giant important Incan city, larger than Machu Picchu, was discovered in 1824 but remained hidden and forgotten in the jungle until 1993 when restoration efforts began.  Today, only 30% of the ruins has been cleared while 70% remains engulfed by the dense jungle. 

This ruin is in so many ways the anti-Machu Picchu.  There are only roughly 20 people that visit this site per day compared to the thousands per day that flock to the tourist magnet of Machu Picchu.  Choquekiraw is a place that is still being discovered.  As recently as two years ago, terraces were found below the main ruins sporting white stoned llamas that were built into the terrace walls.  Fabrice and I were the first tourists ever to visit it.  This the only known site of this phenomenon in all the known ancient Incan empire.  As I visited the sites of Choquekirao, it gave me the feeling of walking through time.  We spent a whole day in the ruins just walking around and that whole time we saw maybe only a couple tourists.

However, I fear that Choquekiraw will become another Machu Picchu within the next decade.  We saw many preparations for such an event along the trail.  There was a first night camp being constructed with many buildings including a bar.  More restoration efforts are occuring everyday.  I can only imagine how beautiful this place will look when all the ruins hidden by the jungle are cleared out.  I am afraid the end result will be inevitable.  Many tourists will flock to see the ruins more beautiful than the famed Machu Picchu, maybe a road will be built, and something will be lost.  It will lose some of the mysteriousness of what remains hidden by the jungle.  It will lose the majestic tranquility.  No longer will it feel like you are walking through time, but only walking through another popular tourist attraction.  I feel so blessed to visit and revel in the purity of this place before its transformation into the next Machu Picchu.

Fabrice and I hired two of our porters from the Inca trail to take us to these ruins.  We also intended to take two horses for each of us to ride, but after the porters packed so much equipment with the anticipation of having horses, we were forced to take two more with us if we wanted the experience of riding for five days.  So our crew consisted of two porters/cookers, 4 horses, and a horse boy that came to take care of the horses.  Since both of us are traditional minimalist backpackers, it felt very strange having a whole entourage devoted simply to our five day excursion but I´m not about to complain.  The service was absolutely amazing.  The porters treated us to a fancy, tasty 3 course meal every time we ate.  A tea time was also included each day before dinner which consisted of tea, hot chocolate, crackers, cookies, wantans, and a ton of popcorn.  They even ordered the horse boy to help them prepare meals, wash dishes, and so on which we found very entertaining.  We just imagined him saying in Quechua ¨I´m only a horse boy, I don´t work on the frickin´ Incan trail!¨  We were pretty sure he despised us.

Riding horses was a great experience as this was only the third time in my life riding horses and my first time riding them for more than one day at a time.  Horseback riding is defenitely something I want to do more of as there is simply an indescribable feeling when its only you and the horse galloping on a trail in the middle of nowhere.  You and the horse blend into one being as a peacefulness overwhelms you, like that oneness was predestined. 

We arrived to Choquekiraw on the second day of our trip.  We ditched the horses at the camp below and hiked up to explore the ruins a little bit before the sun went down.  When we got to the main plaza at the top, we noticed that a television crew was there taking a lunch break or something.  Fabrice was informed before the trip started of a really amazing place below the ruins by one of the younger porters from the Inca trail.  He was dissapointed to find out it was prohibited to see as it was only for Archaelogists.  However, the dissapointment was short lived as we apparently caught a major break.  The Australian television crew had special permission to have full access to all the sites for the day and we got there permission to go down and see that place.

This place I´m talking about are the terraces with the white llamas.  A worker there took us and a guy from Holland down to the terraces.  As we walked down and talked to this guy we found out that we were the first tourists to EVER see this area.  It is normally restricted to only Archaelogists but only because the television crew had the rights for that day and gave us permission, were we able to see it.  And so, with pure luck, we became the first, of I´m sure millions of tourists to follow, to see this amazing site.  There were 22 white stoned llamas covering the terrace walls.  There are 100 terraces in this area but only parts of about 23 have been cleared out thus far.  These terraces were only discovered two years ago and there is still much work to do before it can be open to tourists.  The worker that took us down did not know when it would be opened.

That was all of the ruins we saw on the second day as we planned on setting aside the whole third day for exploring.  So the next day we saw everything.  We walked to the top of the sun temple where we were able to take some great pictures of Choquekiraw from above.  We walked up to the higher part of the ruins and I saw the tallest walls of any Incan ruins I had seen.  There was also many structures that looked like very long, random hallways.  We were very perplexed by the architecture at the top part.  After that we followed a trail through the jungle a little bit to see where it led and after realizing it probably went to some distant city, we turned around and then waited for lunch at the main plaza.  The porters met us there with lunch and then took to being tourists themselves as it was there first time in the actual ruins.  Apparently they had done the trail many times but never went up to see the actual ruins because of the entrance fee.

After lunch, we began our jungle excursion…what we like to call the Hiran Bingham experience.  Hiran Bingham was the guy who discovered Machu Picchu.  He was trekking through the jungle when he ran into a high wall, thus discovering the sun temple of Machu Picchu.  Since most of Choquekiraw remains hidden in the jungle, it´s possible to try to walk through the jungle (try is the key word) and discover Incan stone walls like they were first discovered (or perhaps discover them for the first time).  So, we began our jungle walk.  Let me tell you something, walking through the jungle is very, very hard.  Everywhere we got stuck in vines, got scrapped up from sticks, and got stabbed by plants.  There is no good way to walk through a jungle, you just go and hope to make progress.  We were rewarded by many stone walls.  Sometimes we would be walking on top of one and not even realize it.  Other times there would be one right in front of us and after a few minutes of being stuck, we would realize it was there.  It was incredible how the jungle was able to easily swallow up what once was a great Incan city.  It made me wonder what else could lurk in the vastness of the Peruvian jungles. How many ancient cities are still undiscovered?  It is amazing how the structures of such a great civilization could be lost, only because of nature.

After the jungle trek, we walked down to our camp where our porters had made us a cake.  After that we still had our regular tea time and 3 course dinner of course.  The next 2 days we spent coming back.  The last stretch of our trek, Fabrice and I raced our horses while another crazy horse carrying some of our equipment joined in.  All three horses were in full gallop neck and neck and it was an exhilirating experience.  Unfortunately, I was on the old horse and Fabrice was on the really good horse so my horse died and I watched his horse and the other horse go at it.  I eased my horse to a steady walk, taking in the experience as the horse boy ran to catch up. 

After we took a cab to the main road, we saw one more ruin as were waiting for our bus.  I only mention this because in this ruin was a boulder that had a three dimensional map of the whole Incan empire.  I had never seen anything like that before and wondered why the Incans so despised paper that they would go through all that work in carving a boulder.  Seriously though, I thought that was pretty cool.

During the bus ride back to Cusco, I reflected on my experience.  The ruins of Choquekiraw were more than just another ruin to me.  In it, I saw a place in transformation.  A place gradually turning from a forgotten city into a major tourist destination.  I saw the powerfulness of nature and how, in the end, even mighty civilizations can be forgotten, swallowed up like a grain of sand in the mighty ocean.  How many other great human achievements have been forgotten, vanishing with time?  How many other great things still lie out there never to be discovered?  There is a magic to the ruins of Choquekiraw that causes one to think like this.  Soon, many tourists will flock to this once mighty city, and the magic will disappear.  It will still be beautiful and inspirational but one will forget what the ruins were like before they were restored to greatness, that they were once just a footnote in the great vastness of the jungle.  Instead, people will see it as only another Machu Picchu. 

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So we celebrated Jordan’s birthday in Cusco. His 22 was spent in a local bar watching Miami beat Detroit for the second time in their playoff series and playing Pinochle which we managed to teach to Fabrice and Julian. The next day Jordan and Fabrice had to wake up early to start their hike to Choquequirao, another set of ruins near Cusco that are supposed to be cool. They made the deal with one of the porters we had on the Inca trail and are even going to do some of it on horseback. I decided it would be better if I stayed out of this one, so Julian and I made our way to Arequipa, through a long uncomfortable bus ride that at least had the kindness to play some movies with English subtitles.

Arequipa is Peru’s second largest city after Lima and legend claims it’s name came about when the Incan king passed by the area and the locals said in Quechua, a popular indigenous language of these parts, “Ari, quepay” which means “Yes, you can stay”. The town itself is very beautiful with plenty of old churches and side-walk cafes. It is also is near the second deepest canyon in the world Canon del Colca, at around 3400 meters deep. The deepest canyon is actually closebye and is named Cotahuasi Canyon and is only about 163 meters deeper. Originally I thought I was going to do a two day tour of the place but it proved to be a bit more expensive then advertised and didn’t sound that spectacular enough to merit the price.

So instead Julian and I spent the first day sleeping and recuperating from the bus ride, then we went out to tour the town a bit. It’s a lot lower than Cusco and is quite a bit warmer which I’m appreciating. There are even palm trees in the main plaza. All the old buildings in this town are made out of volcanic stone so they have an beautiful white appearance, giving Arequipa’s nickname “The White City”. The town is nestled nicely in the Andes surrounded by many mountains and volcanos including El Misti at around 5822 meters. Julian and I appreciated all this beauty just long enough to find the nearest mall so we could go to the movies. We saw “The da Vinci Code” which I thought was pretty good. I’d really enjoyed the book and was excited to see how it translated onto to the big screen. All say it was good and leave at that rather than spoil anything. I was even more excited to see that X-Men 3 is finally out. This means that when I get to Lima I will probably be able to see it *eyes flash with joy*. Yeah, I know I’m a dork but I’ve been wanting to see this movie for roughly three years now. That’s a long waiting period.

The next day Julian and I went to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina. This massive convent covers a whole city block and was built in 1580. A rich widow chose her nuns from the richest families in the area and from the age of 12 onward lived solely inside the walls and were never allowed out. There are still nuns living there today but their lives are not quite as strict. There are many little streets inside this small city and lots of little apartments for each of the nuns, who at first could buy special priviliges with money and class.

We also went to the Museo Santuarios Andinos to see one of the city’s most famous attractions: Juanita the world’s highest human sacrifice. The Inca’s believed the mountains were gods and if they erupted or anything of the like the people would offer sacrifices to appease them. The sacrifices were usually children aged 12 to 14 who were chosen around the age of 3 to be sacrifices. They were raised especially carefully to maintain their health and purity. It was considered a great honor to be chosen as it was believed they would be going to live with their gods upon being sacrificed. Even still hearing how this was carried out unsettles me. This poor girl had to walk from Cusco to hear over many days of travel and then had to climb to the top of an almost 6000 meter peak in very weak shoes and clothes. Then after the ritual ceremony the child’s face was covered with a vale and then the preist would smash her skull in with a large stone mallet and then buried for the gods. I can’t imagine what the kid must have felt like leading up to that. We were not allowed to take pictures of the actual mummy, but if you do a google search under “Juanita the inca ice mummy” you can find some more info and pictures.

Sadly, Arequipa is also were I will say goodbye to my friend Julian who we met way back in San Pedro de Atacama. He’s a very cool guy and has been fun to travel with. We’ve discussed the finer points of German beer, American-European intricacies, and taught each other numerous card games. He leaves tonight to go to Lima and fly back to Europe to continue his trip before he does his required service time. I hope he has a safe journey and that I get to see him again someday. I’ve always wanted to visit Germany anyways!

So that’s it for now. There are pictures from both Cusco and Arequipa for you to look through. The people page has also been massively redone with pictures of people we’ve met and links to our adventures with them. Hope everything’s great with all of you.

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