I, of course, don’t mean that Peru has perished since Marcella and I left it—I think my intestines were the only casualty of this particular trip. (They’re running at 93%, if you were wondering. Argh.)

When Marcella and I left Machu Picchu, we went into Aguas Calientes for lunch, checked out of our hotel, and took another PeruRail-style voyage of adventure and poor planning.

When we booked the train, I got all excited and said, “look! This return trip is way cheaper! And a fraction of the time, too!” However, this turned out NOT to be because the train was going DOWNHILL and was thus faster. Oh no. It was cheaper and shorter… because it only went about one-third of the way back to Cusco.

Oops.

Our train was going to Ollantaytambo. Say that four times fast, I dare you. And then find a taxi to drive you the next 90 minutes BACK to Cusco, because that’s where you left 75% of your luggage before you went to Machu Picchu. Heh. And that’s exactly what we ended up doing.

AND I’M SO GLAD! That taxi ride up and down the Andes was THE most incredible thing ever! Marcella slept for most of it, but I was glued to my window, blown away by the Peruvian landscape. This never got old.

And before I knew it, we were back at our first hotel, the Andean Wings, in Cusco. And we were feeling juuuuuust fine. Unlike our first visit, we were sorta peppy. It was like we were drunk, for many hours, without having a drink. We instead had dinner. And I think this photo, with the look on Marcella’s face (which she hates, so I’m glad she doesn’t read my blog!), really captures how ridonkulous we were feeling…

Ooh. Tweaky.

But seriously: wasn’t the Andean Wings gorgeous?

The fountain was riveting:

Here, as we ate dinner, Lisa (the proprietess) popped in for a chat, along with Ingrid, her (German) co-proprietess. We got to talking… and ended up spending hours and hours and hours there talking. (This is when I learned about San Pedro’s magical properties, from two people who had done it… unexpected to hear from women of a certain age, but OK!). Also that the Andean Wings is an esoteric healing centre as well as a boutique hotel. Oh, the stories… one of these stories included how we were going to have trouble finding a taxi to take us to Urubamba, where our hotel for that night was, and that we should stay. But we couldn’t, because our hotel in Urubamba was already bought and paid for, and I really, really wanted to stay there, anyway. It was an old MONASTERY!

I left Marcella the Spanish-speaker to go work out our taxi sitch for the evening, and also for Sunday morning so we could get BACK to Cusco (again) for our flight back to Lima. And then I went to go and talk to Ingrid, the German, because I love talking to Germans. She used German words mixed into her English, and some really great Denglish phrases like, “and then I became my children.” And that’s just crazy talk, unless you know that the phrase in German “meine Kinder bekommen” means “to have my children”—not “to become”. Beware false cognates, Ingrid. BEWARE. No judgment from me, though, I love this stuff… and I loved our story time, until Marcella appeared and said, “Dude. If we don’t go, the TAXI opportunity will DISAPPEAR.”

OK.

Our quasi-drunkenness seems to have been the last remnants of adjustment to altitude, and it persisted on the cab ride to Urubamba. We laughed. A lot. Like at the fact that Urumamba was on the road from Ollantaytambo to Cusco… so we had driven right through it that afternoon… only to circle back. And only on our drive BACK out did we realise that we could have just gone straight to Urubamba, spent the night, and picked up our luggage in Cusco before our flight the next day… “I Am Ass, PART III”.  And, still giddy, when we were checking in, Marcella made me cry in front of the hotellier, I laughed so hard.

I mentioned having taught Marcella the phrase “lazy eye” in Aguast Calientes… well, as I stood filling in my information sheet at the desk, this couple shuffled through reception behind us, said something in Spanish, and walked out. I thought Marcella was talking about the hotellier when she said to me, “I think that guy’s got a lazy eye”. And because the hotellier was not two feet away from me, I started to laugh. And laugh. And I just couldn’t stop until I was crying… I couldn’t believe she’d say something about someone RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. Hence my laughter—but she actually meant the couple who shuffled through reception, because she thought when the guy barked “is that the matrimonial suite we’re in?” that he was asking her. “How the F would *I* know?!?” her inner monologue said (and she repeated to me). And I started laughing again. Altitude: cheaper than alcohol, folks…

That story is for my own sake—thanks for indulging me—and if I’m ever having a bad day, I know I can come back and read it and laugh again. Whenever I think of it, wherever I am, it makes me laugh… Awesome.

So! to Urubamba now, let me show you why I wanted to stay at the monastery so much:

Uh, does this roof look plum to you?

the view from our room…

And now the best part… my new best friend! At the hotels around Cusco, Quechuan people come and sell their knitted hats and clothes, and beaded bracelets. When we came out from breakfast, a woman was sitting peddling her wares in front of the restaurant… sitting with her was the CUTEST little girl ever. I bought a bracelet from the woman, her little girl bonded with me, and then we went to pack and check out.

But the little girl wasn’t done with me.

She was playing with the flowers and the fountain, as Marcella and I waited (and prayed, frankly) for our taxi to arrive, allowing us time for solid international relations.

And it was totally infectious… first Marcella got to play…

And then she felt like my glasses needed a little more daisy:

And then came a rousing couple of rounds of “He loves me, he loves me not”:

I’m trying to read this like tea leaves… what do you think? Love? No love?

I’m going with “love”, because then her dad appeared:

And it was time for us to leave Urubamba… if you ever want to stay here, I’ll say this: the hotel’s common areas are STUNNING, the rooms a bit blah. Could use a little work… and in both the San Agustin hotels we stayed in, this one and the next night in Lima, the mini-bar fridge wasn’t stocked, which involved some discussion about “no, it’s not empty because we consumed it, it’s empty because it was empty when we got there…”

One more fabulous cab ride:

And with that, and a one-hour flight, we were back in Lima… where we had dinner at Rosa Náutica. Kinda touristy, mediocre service, and the food didn’t touch Huaca Pucllana from the first night…

(Sidebar: Oh, look! Lima has a Christ statue just like Rio! And, hello again, Pacific Ocean!)

Regardless of the resto’s shortcomings, the location was sweet!

And it had maybe THE most fascinating dessert option:

Do you see it there? Lúcuma Tart with Alaskan Railing Shape. The mind BOGGLES at that one, but isn’t it appetising?!?

With that, the trip to Peru is done, I have a post or two on a cidade maravilhosa, Rio de Janeiro. And then, we resume regularly scheduled broadcasts…

What’s the best bad English you’ve seen on a menu?

When I went to NZ on my last trip, I was at a conference at the FABULOUS Te Papa museum in FABULOUS Wellington. Being part of the conference gave us the chance to go behind the scenes and explore the museum storage and to talk to the curators and exhibit designers.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: if I could live on a hope and a prayer, I’d go to work in a museum and be the happiest little thing EVER.

So those tours at Te Papa were too perfect for me—especially the one on Maori taonga (treasures), which was a highlight. We got to see a lot of cloaks, masks, weapons, icons, etc etc etc—the stuff the average person doesn’t get to see on exhibit—and all of this relates to Peru.

Really.

Fast forward to Peru: When we drove from the airport to our hotel, we drove right past a huaca—just blocks from our hotel! “Huaca” is the Quechuan (Peruvian Native American) word for “something revered”, usually used for a monument (as it was in this case). And in New Zealand, the “waka” is a canoe, and what brought the Maori people to Aotearoa from Polynesia.

Like so:

Displayed here, this waka seems like a monument, aka “a huaca”. And as it happens, the two words, “huaca” and “waka” are basically pronounced alike.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But then there’s this:

At Huaca Huallamarca (the huaca we had driven past heading into San Isidro), Marcella and I visited the on-site museum and found a relic taken out of the huaca when it was excavated:

the pattern on this woven mat reminds me of stuff like this:

(source)

Maori art. Of which I saw lots in the behind-the-scenes tour at Te Papa in New Zealand.

Do you see it, too, or am I over-thinking?

It made me think about Pacific exploration and connections—I see them, or I think I see them, but Marcella and the half-Kiwi, half-British tourist who joined our conversation in the museum both said “no, it’s a basic design and that’s why you see it here and in New Zealand. It’s just a repetition of a simple pattern.”

Kill-joys.

But let’s begin at the beginning… there was this huaca first: Huaca Huallamarca, which I didn’t photograph in its entirety. Oops:

(source)

But I did get bits and pieces! Here’s the view from the top, down into what’s been excavated:

We wondered what this was all about—how does what looks like a bunch of mud endure for centuries?

I just don’t get it. Do you?

And as we peered down at the mud construction, I said, “that looks like a bone. I think it’s a bone.” Marcella said, “no, probably just some garbage.” Max said, “no, that looks like a bone to me, too.” And you?

And as we stood at the top of an historic monument, in the lovely San Isidro district of Lima, I looked up and said, “one day, I will live there.”

penthouse = awesome.

Then I could look out and see the huaca every day, and its hanging flowers and San Pedro cacti…

(San Pedro is the tall guy in back. I didn’t know it when I took this picture, but there are cults devoted to the ingestion of San Pedro in a boiled, tea form. It makes you puke, think you’re going to die, and then challenge all spheres of consciousness. That’s a story for another day, though…)

And also from my penthouse, we could see star trees!

And then Max, Marcella and I set off walking for Huaca Pucllana, the BIG huaca (and, coincidentally where M and I had our dinner reservations that night—seems that there’s a nice resto attached to the ruins. Cool!)

We got there at 4.51, after a series of wrong directions, and found ourselves at a gate with a man who wasn’t going to let us in, because the huaca *closes* at 5pm.

So Max decided to scam them, sort of. Here, he’s explaining his cunning plan to Marcella…

It went like this: He explained to the guards that I’m the “most important” researcher of Incan History in the United States (!!). We gave the guard my card. He kept it, but he didn’t let us in. He sent us to another gate. I think it would have worked better if I didn’t look like I was 20-something, you know?

Long story short: they never let us in, in spite of Max’s best efforts. The best we ever got was a view from the outside:

Well, in daylight, anyway… because M and I were going to be back that night. Huzzah! Defeated, we left, and walked back to the “roundabout of joy and American chains”, where Max left us and Marcella and I had Pinkberry, before walking to the hotel for a little relax, refresh, and return to the Huaca for dinner.

WOW. If you go to Lima, EAT AT HUACA PUCLLANA.

And so was the view from our bench… to the right in that lower picture are doors leading to a veranda that overlooks the ruins, all lit up at night, and ALL rented out by Coca Cola, so we were inside. Now, I don’t know how normal this is, but most hotels we went in Peru offered us a free drink. Because we made our reservation at Huaca Pucllana from our hotel, *that* got us a free drink… our first Pisco Sours!

Pretty, but the best one, we agreed, was the one at Indio Feliz in Aguas Calientes…

And then… dinnertime! We ordered an appetiser—a sort of salsa with an “empanada verde” or something of the sort… I don’t know what it was, but it was vegetarian and a fabulous GREEN!

Unfortunately, the lovely green colour was obtained with liberal use of cilantro, which gives me (at best) an instant headache, and (at worst) occasional respiratory issues. So I have to go easy on it… BUT! Thanks to this appie, the allergic kid now knows what ceviche is all about—Marcella tells me that the “salsa” to the left in that above photo tastes “just like ceviche”. And Ceviche tastes a lot of cilantro. And after this, I no longer felt like I was missing anything in Peruvian cuisine, given my fishy inabilities…

Don’t get me wrong—I thoroughly enjoyed the few bites of this I had, in spite of the cilantro. This was one mighty fine restaurant…

For the mains, Marcella got the ceviche, and I got a braised beef with mushrooms (REAL MUSHROOMS!!! I’ve missed you!!) on cheesy polenta. Delicious, but I barely ate half of it:

(please note, again, the GIANT CORN in Marcella’s ceviche)

And then we went out to hit the ruins at night… now, for comparison, this is by day:

and by night:

Way cooler, I know!

Well, it was until we overheard a man telling some people how these weren’t “real ruins”, but had in fact been “recreated to capture the essence of the huaca”. Great. The guy was an academic—I felt inclined to believe him, but the academic in me doubts until I can see the sources, myself.

So: from huaca to waka to huaca, and GREAT FOOD to boot. I love you, Lima… one more Peru post, then RIO, then my LAST WEEK IN BRAZIL!!! (where does time go?!?)

So I’m writing this on Day 74, as I sit in our Rio hotel waiting for Marcella to wake up from a nap. It’s 3.41, and I’m going to get downright ornery if I don’t get lunch soon.

My stomach is at about 85% these days. I’m not up for coffee, my veggie quotient has dropped, and the VERY minty smell of Marcella’s gum in the taxi curdled me a touch. Oh, the delicate constitution of one (possibly) not meant for travel… But I’m on the mend! And really, really glad we went to Peru, whatever the toll… And for now, I have pictures (a LOT of pictures) from Machu Picchu so we can all relive the glory together.

The buses to and from Machu Picchu run at almost constant intervals in the busy times, and drop to every half hour intervals the rest of the time. We knew they started at 5.30, that they didn’t take reservations, and that sunrise was at 7.15, and we WERE NOT going to miss that.

So we got up at 5.15 (so MANY early mornings on this trip!), had our “full American breakfast”, and headed to the bus stop. We were at the top by 6.15… and it was already promising to be beautiful:

… provided you weren’t looking to get INTO Machu Picchu in a timely fashion… The Sanctuary Lodge hotel apparently gouges you on the price, but it also is the only way to get in for some alone time before the hoards (pre-hoard hoards, actually, since the REAL hoards start when the trains start pulling into town) amass. And for future reference, 6.15 is the worst POSSIBLE time to appear at the gates:

the green roof marks the entrance… we were about 240 people back from it. Gad zooks.

You might have heard that this is Machu Picchu’s 100th anniversary… which is illogical if you consider that these are pre-Incan (and possibly Incan, no one really knows…) ruins. But what happened is that, an American historian / anthropologist named Hiram Bingham was led there by some locals, and so 2011 marks 100 years since Machu Picchu was introduced to the world. I’m going to refrain from making nasty comments about the ticky tacky and the oppressive tourism, since this is undoubtedly a major part of subsistence for many, many, many Peruvians, but… MAN.

Props to HB for his “discovery”, nevertheless:

To get the perspective from which “these hills just sing”, you have to proceed through the gates and then climb, climb, climb up to the “Guard House”, so called for allegedly guarding a crypt. But again, more is not known than known about MP, right?

Marcella is a sedentary occasional smoker, at altitude. So she told me to go on my own and she’d catch me at the top… and I did. It was like the amazing race, with a bunch of confused tourists all trying to make sure they didn’t miss out on something… and fitness level seemed to be the determinant of whether or not you were willing to let people pass you on the path up. Heh. I stopped occasionally for photos… first glimpse of the mountain!

And on I climbed… pausing to have a touch of vertigo. There are SO MANY PLACES you can fall to your death at MP, I am amazed we don’t hear more stories about it…

And here’s the sunrise peeking over the eastward mountains:

which caused the village to go from pre-dawn to it’s full glory… chronologically, here we go!

Well, that was fun. But this looks a lot like, oh, everyone’s travel pictures from Machu Picchu… so here are a few things you might not see elsewhere:

First of all, there’s Marcella! At Machu Picchu! I was trying to take as little of the surrounding flotsam and jetsam of tourists, but once the sun came up that was increasingly impossible…

And there were some yogis! Very cool! And notable because it was quiet, hundreds of people were being respectful, there were people doing *yoga*, and then this girl came walking along shrieking about how eating tripe was, “EW! That’s, like, the worst thing you can eat EVER!!” and I shushed her. (I cringe a bit—why am I the noise police? Dunno… I shushed before I even thought about it—it was still SO EARLY—and in my defence, “you know what, Loud Girl? It’s people like you who give Americans abroad a bad name.” End sanctimonious rant.)

“Llama face!”

Yep, there are llamas at Machu Picchu. I think they tend to the grass… the downside is that it leads tour guides to take group pictures, asking the group to say “sexy llama!” which is just wrong.

See how unimpressed the sexy llama is about the shout-out?

And to continue the legacy of pictures of the back of my head in various international locales, voila: Lulu goes to Machu Picchu:

All of the above photos were taken from up there:

All of which is brought to you courtesy of this kind of masonry work… wow:

And around the site, there were some of the lovely Peruvian hanging flowers. I LOVE these ones:

And some naturally occurring orchids:

And after climbing up to the guard hut for sunrise, Marcella was DONE with climbing anything… so I left her behind and went to the very front of the village to get a better glimpse of the mountain behind the site… which ALSO has ruins on it! And people—so you can climb it! I think this is Wayna Picchu:

And I found some wildlife around—well, a lizard and some chinchillas, anyway:

And then I lost Marcella… aged 10 years because HOW do you find a missing person HERE?!?… and found her.

On the phone.

At Machu Picchu.

I asked her why. She said “because it rang”.

Fair enough.

And then the sun was high, there were TOO MANY PEOPLE, and I was all Machu Picchu’d out—after only about 3.5 hours there. We went in search of food, back down the mountain…

And found Inkaterra. Isn’t Peru a little bit of perfect sometimes?

And more red flowers:

um, are those POINSETTIAS?

I have no explanation for this at all:

I’ll leave you to ponder that one…

And hurray! Just one post left of delicious, divine, delectable Lima, and some insane outtakes from Cusco…

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…