I took an insane number of photos this trip. I’m breaking it all up into a few posts, but here are my faves from Friday, which I know as “EPIC JOURNEY from Cusco to Aguas Calientes Day”. And we’re off!

I’m fascinated by South American building. I took photos in Campos do Jordão for my dad, who’s building a house, but *these* ones felt worth sharing… Mud huts housing!

Mud huts are, of course, made by mud bricks:

Pre-roof, or an abandoned project?:

And when it comes to the roofing, it goes sticks and thatching, then clay tiles—got it, Andie?:

I was OBSESSED by the scenery and Marcella was OBSESSED with a bird game on her iPhone—lucky for me, because then I always get the window seats and I make good use of it. Most of these were taken from the train… so when there’s glare or a bad angle, you know why.

Cemetery in sepia:

working the field by hand—we saw ox-drawn ploughs and a lot of back-breaking farming going on…

A functional bridge:

It wasn’t all villages, though—there was also THE ANDES. LOVE the Andes:

Peaks like these next few, all snow-covered and only visible from the train’s roof windows, are clocking in at about 5,000m in elevation.

Wow:

Totally blue my mind. As in, “cerulean”. Heh.

I just can’t get enough / I just can’t get enough…

Have I mentioned that PeruRail pipes in PERMANENT PAN-FLUTE MUSIC? ‘Cause they do. I was pretty sure Marcella was going to jump. The look on her face says it all:

I am SO going to send her a copy of Zamfir’s greatest hits when I get home.

At this point, about halfway through the trip, they served our “snack”:

I provided my own water… and they gave me A LOT OF CARBS. That’s Peru, folks. You’ll come within a starchy carb of your life, even at altitude where baking is no laughing matter… What you see there was a “cinnamon bun” that tasted like the shellacking on the fancy-schmancy box… a “sandwich” made of bun, a whisper of mustard, and a sad looking square of ham (did not want), melons (which had been joined by watermelons—I actually ate those, but EW on the other melons), then there was a puffed rice / puffed quinoa mix—sorta squishy but edible, and then an unidentifiable fruit… possibly what inspired the little girl’s second round of illness.

And here’s the inside of the train during the snack period. Say hi to our unidentified Latino seatmates, right across the table *and* at the buffet at the top of Machu Picchu later—totally random, RUTHIE with the big honking sunglasses on, and to the farthest right is the little girl with altitude sickness… this was shortly after the first round of illness. Notice that she’s EATING. Crazy.

As the voyage went on, I spied… another PeruRail train:

and the porters for the Inca Trail trekkers—the locals are hired (and probably exploited terribly) to carry for the foreigners hiking to Machu Picchu. They start here, before the 4-day, 3-night hike:

And some of the helpers aren’t human:

By the time the Inca Trail started, there were ruins everywhere!

Small…

and large:

and the landscape became greener, the water more extreme—check out this erosion damage on the rock!

and then it was clear: we were in a whole new ecosystem—which almost reminded me of New Zealand, actually:

and again:

I think it’s because the mountains look carpeted… so pretty!

and then, ta da! Not even noon, but it felt like it could be midnight!

We had arrived!

Having dropped a kilometre in altitude, it felt AWESOME to be in Aguas Calientes:

and I got to engage in my red flower fetish:

once more, with feeling:

taken outside our Aguas Calientes home! This is it! It didn’t give us hand towels or soap! Our “Full American Breakfast” in the morning was bread, butter and jam! We slept in the “Matrimonial Room”! It had the world’s smallest double bed! But that’s OK!

Something was actually burning when we arrived in AC, and the air got smoky and opaque quickly—I worried for photo quality and was glad we weren’t going to Machu Picchu till the next day… but from the inside of Indio Feliz, nothing else mattered.

the curse of the mood lighting is that my pictures aren’t great—but how cute is it that they have a corner booth labeled “kissing place?”

Keeping with the naval theme, the fireplace had a serious rack:

They seated us next to the bar… but I wasn’t drinking at altitude (yet), so it was a wasted bounty. Heh.

I can’t tell you how the World Cup ended up there…

Marcella might be deep in thought pondering the decor… but actually, she’s playing “guess the dialect” of the Germans dining to her right. You can see the male half. The female half led to me introducing Marcella to the phrase “lazy eye”, which would come back to bite me in the ass the next night…

And at the end of it all, I can only show you the bread, butter, my agua con gaz, and Marcella’s PISCO SOUR, because none of the rest of my food shots turned out. Do people KNOW about Pisco Sours? I didn’t. Apparently, they’re traditionally Peruvian. I thought it tasted like a very cold, slightly more complex caipirinha, or “caipiriña” to the Spanish-speakers (which made Marcella’s teeth gnash). Pisco Sours are GREAT. They’re made with Pisco (a grape brandy), lime juice, sugar, ice, a splash of bitters, a pinch of cinnamon… and an egg white, all blended up. Lo:

And with that, oh my god, I’ve got about 2 more posts of photos from our trip to show you. Poor you. And as I write this, I’m packing for Rio, where we’re headed for the weekend. So there’s bound to be a lot of vacation on the blog for awhile. You’ve been warned…