The Lost City of the Incas is lost no longer!!!

The Bravo team has discovered it!!!  We just returned to Cusco after a 4 day, 3 night trek from Cusco to Machu Picchu.  Called the Inca Jungle Trek, we went with a great guide company, Lorenzo Expeditions.  At first we were hoping to go unguided, but its really tough to self organize treks to Machu Picchu.  The whole permit system seems organized around the guide services.  Permits for the original Inca Trail are booked for the rest of this year.  Climbs of Huayna Picchu, a mountain next to M.P. is booked during the busy dry months of July and August through 2014!!!

After reading a bunch of reviews about Lorenzo, we signed up for their Inca Jungle Trek, billed as an adventure travel trek on much of the same or alternate trails as the original Inca Trail.  Along with our terrific Quechua guide Wilbert, we headed out with 2 Germans, one Norwegian, and one Belgian fellow trekkers. 

The first day was a 54 km mountain bike leg, starting in a chilly mist at a Andean pass of Abra de Malaga at 4350m  (14,270').  The route was all down hill, as we wound around endless switchbacks, dropping down into the town of Santa Maria at 1430m (4690') a drop of nearly 10,000' !!!  The route would definitely have been more interesting if on dirt and single track instead of paving, but whatchagonna do??? 

The ride was fun anyway, as we got to know our fellow travelers and guide extraordinaire Wilbert, an incredible guy who shared his pride and knowledge of his people during the entire 4 day trip.  Without his experience and expertise of local customs and routes, the trip would not have been anywhere near as fun, if not downright impossible.  Trail signs are non existent, and available maps have no detail.

Looking back at our route up from the valley below.

After a night in a nice hostel, we left Santa Maria for the first, and longest day of trekking, around 17km.  The trail followed ancient Inca travel routes through the mountains, as we worked our way up toward the town of Santa Teresa, complete with natural hot springs to soak in.  Totally perfect after a full day on the trail, passing through Quechua coca and coffee farms and yards, with stops at local homes for snack breaks and lunch.

Coca grows everywhere

Another coca patch along the trail

Rest stop.  The pelt of the endangered jaguar above the door was a shame, but this is real life, and not simply a stop for tourists for these folks.

Fellow Belgian traveler Sidney stylin' up the trail

Ancient Inca trade route winds up the steep mountain

Typical lunch stop.  The food was fantastic!

The morning of day 3 started with a side trip to a zipline course.  With 6 lines, the course 150m over the Sacsara river is spectacular.  The first zipline course in Peru, and also the highest, we had a blast.  Guides let you fly upside down over the canyon, and strapping my GoPro camera to the helmet was "no problema"!!  Very cool, and different from the policies of some other zip companies we've tried in Mexico and Canada.  Unfortunately the video files bring this little netbook computer to its knees, so we'll have to post them another time.

After the zip course we continued hiking for several hours.  The route this day primarily followed train tracks, passing through a beautiful river valley surrounded by Yosemite like granite faces.  Definitely some amazing big wall climbing  here, though Wilbert said none is really done. 

Before hitting the tracks, though, the trail passed by a small Inca site, just recently discovered after hundreds of years lying beneath the jungle growth.  Archeologists have been working the site for only the past 5 weeks, with every day offering the possibility of great discoveries.  While we weren't allowed to watch them work, we were able to see a bit of the areas where the overgrowth has been cut back, exposing much of the same type of stonework that we'd be seeing in Machu Picchu.  Indiana Jones??????  You bet!!!

Cindi checks out the carved pools, believed to be "sun mirrors" at the solstice.  Yellow tape marks the archeologists work area.

Finally we arrived at Aguas Callientes, the tourist town created about 30 years ago as a staging ground for visits to Machu Picchu itself perched in the mountains above. A bit of a weird place, it reminded all of us of a mountain ski village, completely artificial, and created completely for tourism.  Its "big game" tourism, with people from all over the world, and the number of languages being spoken in the restaurants and trinket stalls was incredible. Everyone wants to cross Machu Picchu off their "bucket list".

After a great dinner we got to bed early, to get ready to be in the bus line by 5am in order to get to the Machu Picchu site by sunrise.

With our terrific guide Wilbert, we made it in plenty of time, and spent an amazing 2 hours wandering the site together as the sun came up over the surrounding peaks, with Wilbert sharing his knowledge of the Incas, their history, religion, and customs, as well as the archeological "discovery" of the site by a Yale University / National Geographic expedition in 1911.  (Word "discovery" in quotes, because local Quechua people were living on the site when Hiram Bingham's team were led to the site by an 11 year old Quechua boy, after years of searching for the fabled "Lost City of the Incas").  As Wilbert said, in many ways the site remains an enigma.  No one knows for certain about the lives of these Incas who inhabited the site.  Their knowledge and worship of the sun and early astronomy is evident by the alignment of various portals and sun dial like structures with the solstice sun angles.  The masonry work is really unbelievable.  How they moved and worked the huge stones, with such accuracy, is a real mystery.  But the fact that the Spanish conquistadores never reached the Machu Picchu site has left it in amazingly well preserved condition.

After Wilbert left us to head home, we had the rest of the morning and early afternoon to wander the site, take pictures, and climb Machu Picchu Mountain, the peak overlooking the site.  We returned back to Aguas Calientas exhausted, but thrilled with our visit.  We took the 3:45 train to Ollayantaytambo, followed by a totally hairball night time minivan bus ride, with no headlights save one bright beam across the Andes back to Cusco.  All in all, a fantastic trip.....

Beautifully carved stone hinge detail

Stone used for animal and possibly human sacrifices

"Inca Bridge" trail crosses an incredibly steep, narrow cliff bridge.

Llamas grazing all over the site

Tonight we'll be taking an overnight bus to Arequipa, home of the Colca Canyon.  The journey continues!

Exploring Cuzco

 We´ve been enjoying our stay in the city of Cuzco.  It really is a unique place.  Nestled high in the Andes mountains at an elevation of around 3,400m (11,200'), the city was originally the capital of the Inca people, until the Spanish conquistadores took over in 1532.

The city is also the gateway to Machu Picchu tourism.  And we do mean TOURISM!!!  Although a World Heritage site, retaining much of its colonial and even Inka architecture, the name of the game here is tourism, from all over the world.  A city of around 400,000 people (3 times the number of 20 years ago), the main source of income for the entire place revolves around the over 2,000,000 tourists that visit each year.  While the city certainly retains much of its visual charms, we find the constant barrage of vendors hawking trinkets, paintings, coca leaves, tours, etc., can be oppressive.  How many times a day can you say "no, gracias"???  And, of course, if you want a photo of a local in native dress, it'll cost you.  Although we certainly visited some touristic places in Ecuador, it was nothing like this.

Casa Grande hosted a Brazilian bike touring group.  Our room in the corner

But like many places on the world tourist circuit (Katmandu, Taj Mahal, Egyptian pyramids, etc), the popularity is deserved.  The city clearly works to retain its original look, with even the US chains (Starbucks, KFC, MickyD) all having discreet signs which don´t overpower the locals.  Our hostel, Casa Grande, was built in the mid 1800´s in the colonial era, and retains its original courtyard design, surrounded by the rooms.

All in all, we like Cuzco.  It has a terrific public market, with Quechua native people selling everything imaginable to eat or wear.  Llama and alpaca are key critters for food, transportation, and wool in the Andes, and the market has lots of all categories.  There´s a whole zone of the market dedicated to "INNARDS" according to the sign.  They mean it.  Stalls specializing in alpaca and llama lips were common.  We gave 'em a miss.  Maybe next time.  The cuy (guinea pigs) are also popular, but the rascals are a bit pricey, compared to chicken and various other carnes.

Coca leaves in many forms are available everywhere.  They're an important part of Inca and Quechua culture even today, with all of the local folks growing their own for personal consumption. It supposedly works wonders for altitude acclimitization, and all sorts of other ailments. We've now tried it in tea, candy, and cookies, as well as tucking a healthy pinch of dried leaves in the cheek.  Maybe we weren't using enough, but we didn't get much effect.  Too bad!!!  Pisco sours seem to work quicker for us...

Tough to be a cable guy in this town!!!

It's amazing to come across remnants of the original Inca buildings still remaining from the 1400's.  Although the Spaniards destroyed much of the Inca civilization, they used some of the bases of the original architecture to build their new city.  The Inca stonework is truly amazing, built without mortar, with the masonry crafted with incredible precision. 

Large stone in the middle has 12 corners

Kids are kids everywhere, and they don't charge to take a picture!!

Local weaver, working with alpaca wool.

We'll spend the next four days trekking to Machu Picchu.  Stay tuned!!!

Lima..... and oh, those erotic Incas

We had a great couple of days in Lima.  Stayed at an excellent hostal in the Miraflores area, Pension Yolanda, owned by Erwin, who´s perfect English and wealth of info on Lima and all of Peru made our visit really special.

Lima is a huge city, of over 10,000,000 people.  Miraflores, the area we stayed in is modern, happening, and safe.  With all of the locals on cell phones, ipods in their ears, and some really good modern residential architecture, we really felt at home here.

We visited a couple of museums and ruin sites.  The first, Museo Larco,the amazing collection of Raphael Larco Herrara, who collected over 15,000 pieces of pre-Columbian art in the early 20th century.  Housed in three buildings on beautiful grounds, the museum gave us a terrific overview of the ruins that we´ll be visiting at Machu Picchu and elsewhere in Peru.  Larco also houses the worlds largest collection of Inca eroticism.  Ya gotta like it!!!

Museum mascot is a very friendly Peruvian hairless.  Must be an acquired taste...gimme a malemute any day!!!

All of the exhibits were beautifully and dramatically displayed.

The museum of erotic art was obviously a crowd pleaser.  Even the toilet signage was unique!!!

Hard to imagine a better wine bottle...

We also checked out the downtown ruins of Huaca Pucllana, in the heart of Miraflores.  Although the Spanish conquistadores trashed much of the pyramids, they kept quite a bit intact to use as a lookout over the harbors of Lima and nearby Callao.  Although much of the Inca temple pyramid and graves have been demolished by the development of modern Lima, in recent years much has been preserved, and the archeology has been actively underway since the mid 1980´s.  Today a lot of the temple has been restored, with an estimate that it will take 25 years to finish the exploration and restoration.  Amazing, right in the heart of the city...

Work continues on excavation and reconstruction

Reconstructed tombs

We arrived yesterday in Cusco after a 21 hour bus ride from Lima.  The double decker bus we rode was quite cool.  We rode in the ¨cama¨, or bed section, down below.  The seats recline nearly all the way down, and with two drivers taking shifts, and meals served on board, these kings of the highway never stop.  Not a bad way to travel.

We´re off on a 4 day trekking and mountain bike tour around Machu Picchu tomorrow.  No internet, obviously, so will report on Cusco / Machu Picchu when we return.

"On the road again....."

(with apologies to Willy Nelson!!!)

The Bravo crew finally exited Ecuador, and not a moment too soon!!!  Tourist visas in Ecuador are complex, and when you ask 10 people (officials, even), or consult 10 websites (including government sites), you can be guaranteed of 11 explanations of the system.  It´s confusing indeed.  Check this out from a Lonely Planet forum discussion: 

"I wanted to share what I know under a series of topics to help those who may need to deal with what is most certainly among the most complex in the world -- or at least one where attorneys can make a fortune because nobody can make heads or tails out of it. :-)  "

We knew our 90 day original visa was running out (calendar stops when out of country, so ours stopped when we were in US).  We needed to get an extension to be sure we´ll be able to visit the Galapagos for February and March, so with 9 days to go, we prepared our papers and headed to Manta, a 2-1/2 hour bus ride, to the immigracion office.  There we were told to taxi to the migracion police office, to get a "certificate of migracion", before we could apply for our visa.  OK, done, taxi back to first office.  Now we're told by one guy that the visa stops when we're out of country, like the first one.  Cool!!!  90 days will work fine.  But 2 other folks in the office say, no, it keeps running.  This won't work for us, as we'll be out of Ecuador for the next 2 months.  We're told, "go ahead and ask for 180, but our lawyers almost never grant this request!!!"  Also, no good!!!  So we bus back to Bahia that night, and get ready to quickly leave Ecuador to stop our meter running, to preserve the needed days until we return in December, when we can file for the 90 day extension once again.

Well, under this gun, Adam gets a terrible stomach flu the night before we leave for the border.  Trust us, a 15 hour bus ride would've been an UGLY trip.  Well, after a day on the boat in bed, he was deemed by the Chief Medical Officer as acceptable to travel, but just barely!!! 


Bubble boys playing in a malecon park.  Good for the parents, not sure about the kids!!!

 We headed to Guayaquil, spending one evening close to the hotel.  Took a walk on the new malecon along the water, but stilll felt pretty sick.




5 hour wait passed a bit slowly.....



The next day, we headed to the bus station to catch our road warrior coach to Peru.  Should cross the border by 6pm, we´re told.  No worries.  Except that the bus is late.....seems that political protests in Peru have delayed it, and it will be around a 4-5 hour delay.  Now we´re cutting it a bit close, to losing yet another day of our rapidly diminishing visa days.  Spent the day hanging around the bus station, finally leaving at around 4:30.  Crossed the border at 11 at night, barely keeping from losing another day on our visa!!  We now have 5 days when we return to apply for our visa extension, definitely cutting it a bit tight, but hopefully doable.




Farms were huge, as we rolled along the coast

 

The border crossing was a snap, and we rolled along through the Peruvian night, arriving at Chiclayo in northern Peru in the early morning.



Typical Chiclayo street scene

 One thing that's finally sunk in to our heads is that South America is a BIG place.  We've gotten so spoiled by our 5 week jaunt throughout Ecuador, that we really didn't appreciate how far the travel distances are, and how much bus time that means.  For the first time in a long time we're on a tight schedule, as we need to arrive in Buenos Aires on November 24 to meet friends David and Diana, coming down from Seattle to join us for some Patagonia adventures.  That gives us just about 1 month for Peru and Bolivia....sounds more like a vacation than our normal vagabond lifestyle!!!  Yikes, we´re not used to the stress!!!

So we made a quick decision to abandon our discovery of northern Peru, and fly from Chiclayo straight to Lima, to really begin our Peruvian adventure down here. 

First impressions of Lima, it's a beautiful, bustling city.  More to follow.  We´re here for a couple of days before heading up to Cuzco, to get set to hike around and explore Machu Picchu.

Copperfield leaves a trail !!!

We subscribe to a "cloud" backup service, "sosonline".  Though we've only been using it for the past few months, it saved us a great deal of pain when we realized that our files on our stolen computers, include all of our photos, are safely backed up to some mega server out in cyber space.

What we had forgotten was that the backup is working behind the scenes, continually backing up new and changed files on our protected computers.  Yesterday I received an automated email report, generated every week or so, from SOSONLINE.  Tells me what has been backed up recently.  Amazingly, we saw a bunch of new files on our stolen netbook!!!  It seems that "Roberto", in the Ecuadorean army, stationed at a base in or near Quito, is the proud new owner, and user of the computer, which continues to send out notices of added or modified files!!!

So far I've been unable to find anything which gives Roberto's email or land addresses, just a new folder called "Roberto", which contain a bunch of files and sub folders.  Lots of army info and files.  And obviously Roberto is oblivious to the fact that we get this record, and since we have the password, we can read any of the files that he records.  The backup happens seamlessly and automatically.

Unfortunately we've not yet seen any backups for the MacBook Pro.  We had set it up to require a password to even open the computer desktop, so it may be either still secure, or the system has been hacked and disabled.

In case anyone is interested, the backup service that we're using can be found at sosonlinebackup.com


Roberto, be careful what you write, you rascal !!!  Oh yeah, and what photos you take!!! 

Magician David Copperfield Rides the Bus

Wish we had seen him.....

Just returned to Ecuador after a whirlwind month in the US.  An exhausting 38 hours of travel from leaving 'Bravo' to arrival at Adam's dad's place in Pennsylvania.  Spent a few days visiting with Lou and sister Lilli and her family before heading to Seattle for a mix of business (our house needs some repairs requiring our attention) and pleasure.  Had a terrific time visiting with old friends, swapping stories, and buying stuff to bring south that's simply not available where we now live.  To those friends we missed seeing on this trip, our apologies, hope to do better the next time we pass through.

So what's up with this David Copperfield thing, you're probably asking???  Well first, we've received numerous comments from friends(?) that our blog can't be for real....we seem to be having too much fun...we must have SOME bad days!!!  For example, check out this emailed comment from a very close buddy:  "Your blog totally sucks. Makes me feel like my ass is glued to the chair………I want some horror stories to make me feel better."  Not wanting to disappoint our readers, we had a bit of a rugged day on the 8 hour bus ride back home from Quito.  

We boarded the bus at 10:30 am.  Adam put his bag on the overhead rack, right over the seat in front of us.  We're talking 2 feet away!!!  Definitely got complacent after the US.  This was the first time we'd put anything on the overhead rack in 5 weeks of buses in Ecuador.  We were only 3 seats back from the front.  Checked to see that there was a rack support right behind the bag, so it couldn't slide back out of our sight.  Got up when we stopped for lunch.  Grabbed the bag, it felt really light.  Open up, there's his fleece jacket on top, neatly folded.  But damn, our iPad, netbook, and brand new MacBook Pro laptop had all been removed, along w/ all cables and chargers.  The fleece jacket was neatly folded and put back in the bag as it had been originally.  And the bag put back exactly where I put it.  Was it David Copperfield riding the bus?  Who knows, we just know that damn, the bastards are good.  We still have NO idea how someone took all the stuff w/ us sitting 2 feet behind the bag!!!  It really hurts, as electronics in Ecuador cost nearly 3 times the US price.  Looking for other expat travelers to contact to bring replacements down.  Yuchhhhhhh.....  Bottom line:  The warnings to keep your bags ON YOUR LAP on the buses is for real.  We even just heard of a fellow cruiser who had her camera stolen from her bag that she put under her seat.  Someone had pulled the bag on the floor a few seats back, and did the deed there.  (They now use a carabiner to clip their bag to the window curtain rope...we'll do the same!!!).  Also, for cryin' out loud, don't put all the goodies in one bag!!!  What were we thinking???

To add insult to injury, when we finally were back aboard Bravo licking our wounds we opened our suitcase, and find that TSA in Seattle had removed 2 quarts of varnish and 4 tubes of caulk.....Left their damned note "For your safety....."   Crap, over $100 of boat supplies that are non-existent in Ecuador.

Not a good day yesterday, to be sure, but sure felt great to be back aboard.  OK, let's get back to the fun stuff.....Boat chores await, then off to Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile for more adventures...