Peru — Lima, Peru
Returning to Peru came with expectations beyond the dry, desert coast which I visited last time. I have talked about Lima in another blog from a previous trip but this was my first time in the flashy suburb of Miraflores which is a lot nicer and more developed than the rest of Lima, which is very comfortable on one hand but boringly western on the other. The restaurants in Miraflores are really good and I had a fantastic seafood meal with a girl from the tour on the first night. I had been forced to rush away from the rest of the tour group who were dining in the historic centre to collect my washing and she chose the first night of the tour to present herself as a self-entitled annoyance and therefore came back with me so she could experience the culinary phenomenon that is supposedly Lima, or more specifically Miraflores. Despite my dislike for her it was interesting listening to her cliché hippy drawl and her tales from the jungle retreat she had just come back from called 'The temple of the way of the light', which sounded just as kumbaya as the name implies. It revolved entirely around nightly trips on some hallucinogenic root, which allows you to "increase your vibration and communicate with the spiritual world about your problems". Bring on the condescending “enlightened” ********!
From Lima we flew to Juliaca across the snow capped Andes and transferred by bus to Puno across the barren high altitude plain (altiplano) which is drably decorated with ugly clusters of unpainted mud brick houses. Impressive in general but far from beautiful. Puno itself seems a lot like many other large latin American towns: a little chaotic and a little dirty, but it too suffers from the uncharacteristic lack of colour of the area, which doesn’t extend to the brightly coloured clothing of the locals. Everything looks so dry and the sun is so bright that it is always a shock to walk outside into the chilly air. We had a late lunch and skipped dinner because everyone was a little worse for wear due to the high altitude. On a side note, I had alpaca for lunch and now realize that Australia is not the only country in the world that eats it’s most iconic fauna. The next day we rickshawed down to the port and jumped on our boat out into Lake Titicaca. We headed to Isla Taquile first, a large island about three hours from the mainland where the indigenous community welcomes a small trickle of tourists to see their way of life. We had their traditional foods including some tasty Titicacan (I may have made that word up) trout. After lunch we hiked slowly over the top of the island and down the other side through the farming terraces and villages. In the afternoon we went to the small indigenous community of Santa Maria on the Capachica Peninsula. We were handed off to individual families where we spent the night, played volleyball with the women of the village and helped them cook. I really can’t imagine the experience being anything but awkward if you didn’t speak spanish. It was a great experience as you’d expect with very rustic style cooking (no gas, no running water etc) and interesting discussions of their customs like children getting married, pregnant and moving out to live on their own as young as thirteen.
The next day we went back to Puno via the super touristy, but still enticing, floating islands of Uros. Lake Titicaca itself is quite impressive and culturally rich but it would be hard to argue it as being particularly aesthetically beautiful. The floating islands on the other hand, no matter how touristy they have become, are a fantastic sight. We stopped on one of the islands where the community president showed us how they build and maintain the islands and then a different community member showed us each their homes and how they lived. It was presumably a standard tourist experience but I still thought it was cool, the islands themselves in particular which feel like you are walking on a giant hay bale. Afterwards we boated back to Puno and took it easy, eating out at a nice restaurant with live traditional music and dance shows.
The next day we took the seven hour bus ride north to Cuzco. I have to admit I was a little disappointed with Cuzco. It is a nice place, but it had been talked up a little more than it really deserves. This is obviously tourist central and has all the positive and negative aspects that come with it. Somewhere along the line I built up this idea that Cuzco was going to be a Peruvian version of Medellin. The main plaza is definitely beautiful and there are some nice cobblestone alleys scattered around the place but at the end of the day it is a small latin American city, surrounded by small, barren hills with a scattering of plain housing.
We left Cuzco in the morning and spent the day touring the sacred valley on our way to Ollantaytambo. We first stopped in Chinchero to experience a re-enacted Pachamama (mother earth) offering by some indigenous women. It was an interesting experience, but a little hollow and you would have to use your imagination for it to feel like anything particularly authentic or profound. However, the setting was nice (despite the chill) and it would be something you wouldn’t get to see if you were without a tour. Afterwards we went to a weavers cooperative which presumably sees a lot of tourists. They showed us their process from dirty, shorn alpaca wool all the way through to final product. It was interesting just to see the subtle differences between it and the other weaving cultures I have seen around the world, particularly India and Guatemala. At the end of the day it’s all pretty much the same just with differences in dyes and slight differences in weaving patterns and loom styles. After the display they fed us, including some deep fried guinea pig, which no one was particularly impressed with except our tour guide and driver. I think the effort required to remove the meat from the boney and sinewy carcass overshadows any redeemable aspects of the flesh. After lunch when everyone had finished buying too much alpaca items to fit in their luggage we headed to Urabamba via several lookouts. In Urabamba we stopped in a local Chicha (corn beer) brewery where we were shown the process and got to taste the acidic brews. After that it was straight on to the nice little town of Ollantaytambo for the night.
The next morning a group of us headed out through the town to hike up to some Incan granary ruins with great views over the town and across to some other Incan ruins on the mountainside on the far side. Our group got progressively smaller as we ascended, losing the older ladies first, then a middle aged lady and finally the younger ones at the ruins until it was just me pushing on higher up until I was content that the view wasn’t going to get any better. That afternoon we jumped on the tourist train to Aguas Calientes and finally came across some of the scenery I was hoping for from the Peruvian Andes. The dry and barren small mountains gave way to some greener landscape and nice rivers with looming glacial mountains in the background. The tourist train was a slow process, averaging about 35km an hour, but it was nice to just rattle along the riverbank, passing farms and small Incan ruins. By the time you get to Aguas Calientes, the scenery is simply spectacular and you start to be able to stomach Peru’s overblown status as such a tourist drawcard. The small town, which is 99% tourism, is very nice but the jutting mountains all around it, which protrude from the landscape like enormous inverted icecream cones are the highlight. The river rages between them and the lush green scenery is a very welcome change from Peru’s barren western majority.
The next day was the eagerly awaited climax of the trip. Machu Picchu. We got out the door of the hotel at 6.30am and took one of the constant buses up to the most recent wonder of the ancient world. We got a good day in the end, which I was a little anxious about since it had been raining the day before. The forecast insisted on rain but instead we got a nice day, perfectly overcast to allow great photos and pleasant wandering without the torment of the high altitude sun. It was however a little misty making the mountainous backdrop a little washed out. Machu Picchu is great but you don’t need to go there to know that. It’s what you see in the million photos of it. I was pleased to find that the throngs of tourists weren’t too bad at all and there were a few opportunities to get photos without the head of some other tourist in it. The ruins themselves are nothing special, the Mayans and Aztec ruins are far grander and impressive and make for a more interesting tour with their bizarre and impressive cultural heritage but the location of Machu Picchu makes it second to none. The mountains are as steep as they seem in the pictures and the ruins do sit on plenty of sheer ledges, some of which are terraced into impressive farming land. We did the standard guided tour and took all the expected photos and then had a couple of hours to wander about freely. About half of us took to the Inca trail in reverse to head up to the Sun Gate. About halfway we were content that the view wasn’t going to get any better due to the mist so we used the rest of the time to head back down to the main site and head around to the Incan bridge, propped up against a sheer cliff-face and making for a nice little walk along the ledges overlooking the sheer drop way down to the river valley below. After we descended back down to Aguas Calientes we had lunch and then started the journey back to Cuzco, taking the tourist train to Ollantaytambo and then our minivan back to Cuzco. We had a nice final dinner and the tour was finished. I think my body is starting to get a bit clever with all my travelling as it was that night, once the tour was finished and I had three more days to relax in Cuzco that I got sick. Nothing particularly unpleasant just a nauseous stomach and feeling slightly wiped out so I’m certainly not complaining. It really was the perfect timing since three more days in Cuzco wasn’t particularly enticing except for the tourist restaurants and plethora of souvenir shopping possibilities (most of which is cheap ****) before backtracking down to Puno and across the lakefront border to Bolivia.
