Ollantaytambo, where things got a little crazy.

This morning, after a slathering of caladryl and a 6 AM dose of clorfenamina (an anti-histamine that is also used in small animal veterinary medicine) we were on our way to church in Urubamba. It was a really small branch but it was great to be there. After church, we went to lunch at Abuelo's cousin . . .something? I don't know. Most of the time I just followed and tried to catch as much of the Spanish as possible. Before lunch, we played a little game where you toss metal disks onto a platform. If they fall down one of the holes, you get points, depending on the hole. The best one is if you get it in the golden frog's mouth. That's 1000 points. Most of the time, my disks went way over the platform. And then, my mad Peruvian game skills came on in the last toss and I got the ace. Here's Abuelo and the game. Then we had the most amazing lunch ever. Peruvian food is heavenly and is one of the top world cuisines. Italian, Thai, Peruvian, Indian, and Chinese are my top five in that order (American cuisine holds its own special place as the ultimate number one, but I'm biased). I had potatoes with a chili sauce and then chicken with rice that was loaded with cillantro washed down with Inca Cola. Here's the papas a la huancaina (potatoes in chili sauce) yum. After lunch, Abuelo dropped us off at the taxi station in Urubamba and we took the taxi out to Ollantaytambo to visit the ruins there. We were pretty tired of taking pictures of us smiling by this point so things got a little crazy. This was probably the best afternoon in Peru. It was so so much fun. Thanks gentlemen!!! Ollantaytambo is an immense complex set up on the hillside above the town. It's the standard incredible Incan ruins with stones, fountains, channels, terraces, etc. We basically climbed up and over through the whole complex though we were still really, really sore from Machu Picchu two days before.
There are going to be a few pictures of me in the following sets but keep in mind that we're all taking incredibly ridiculous photos of all of us. Here's where we all climbed into the portal and took pictures. I went last and the guys made it look really hard to do this. It wasn't. Sorry men, it wasn't! And here's where I tell Jonny that I wasn't ready for the picture and to take it again. And here's where we were climbing up at the top of the ruins where we took some glamor shots. About the time as the sun was setting over the Sacred Valley . . . the complex closed so we left to go catch a bus back to Lamay. The bus to Urubamba was about the size of one of a VW van. People kept piling in and by the end, we had about 21 people in that thing. It was hilarious. Good thing we were in Peru and not a country where the last ten "Strongest Man" contest winners have come from. After Urubamba, we grabbed a bus to Lamay where it was a full sized bus but we were packed in like sardines. People were even sitting on the stairs leading up into the bus. On the way off the crowded bus, here's the crowd of people about to pack on. I have no doubt that they succeeded. Interesante!

La Fiesta de Santa Rosa and a trip to the hospital!

So I woke up this morning at about 4 AM with the desire to have my poor little legs amputated. Fortunately, when I graduated from BYU, Uncle Scott and Aunt LuAnn bought me a first aid kit. I brought it with me. After scavenging through everything (it's got hundreds of things, thanks you guys!!!)I found a few small packets of anti-itch cream. I applied it liberally and could fall back asleep. When I got up, Abuelo, Steve, and I drove to Calca to the botico to get some caladryl, my addiction for the next six days. The pharmacist was horrified at the sight. But here's a picture of Calca in the morning. After Calca, we stopped by Abuelo's friends house who is a doctor (didn't occur to me to say, hi, look at this!) His home was stunningly beautiful and his steward took us through the complex. In the back, some of the staff were preparing cui for the festival that day. We have unbelievable timing. Abuelo lives in Lamay and once a year, they have a festival celebrating their patron saint, Santa Rosa. Today was the start of the festival and they had dances going on all day. Anyway, cui is basically guinea pig. They raise the cui in legit stables and then kill them, as shown here. Then they boil the whole thing so that they can just pluck out the fur as shown here. I don't have a picture of cooked cui but if you think they just serve the meat, you're wrong. The serve it to you whole hog. Closed eyes, little ears, little legs in the air, small yellow teeth . . . with a side of fries. I wish I were kidding. Anyway, here's a picture of my legs this morning. My skin is significantly more angry at this point. Anyway, we decided to spend the entire day at the festival. The coolest thing is that all of their dances were not for tourists. It's for them. We were the only tourists for most of the day. This warranted several shout-outs to "Los Americanos" from the MC throughout the day. Everyone stared. So the dances in Lamay are pretty much all the same. They have a line of men and a line of women that twirl around. Then they have two men chase, kick, and whip a third man as some sort of comic relief. They'll also usually have a line of little boys and girls doing the same dance off to the side. It was wonderful!!! Here are some pictures of the dancing and the costumes. The costumes are so intricate! Half-way through the day, we stopped off and chatted with Abuelo's cousins for awhile who live in Lamay. The cousin's daughter and grandaughter were visiting from Germany. We went back out for a couple of hours to watch more of the dancing and the festival. Here are some boys playing foosball. And have I mentioned that Peruvian children are beautiful? They're so cute. Tomas thinks it's because they're naturally more beautiful than kids in the northern hemisphere. I think it's because of two things. One, they don't wear SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirts. They wear little vests and jackets and sweaters so they're super cute. Second, they're just beaming. So cute! And three more pictures and we'll be done with today. First, this is super typical of Peru. There's a questionable bucket of a sloshy liquid being ported around a sold by the glass. I use the article "the" specifically because there's only one glass. And everyone uses it. I stuck with Cielo!, the bottled water down here. And here's a picture of Tom, Steve's cousin, and Steve's aunt from Germany. They were fantastic and really fun to talk to. And here's a picture of Jonny and I enjoying the festivities. When we were walking back, it was so incredibly itchy on my legs. As soon as we were through the gate of the Ponderosa, I pulled up my pant legs to see a whole lot of swelling, as if I had sprained my ankle or something. Gross. At that point, to Steve's credit, he had his grandpa take me to the hospital. Oh Peruvian hosptials. You know, I got took so many precautions and spent so much time at the health clinic in the states getting medication and shots to avoid this. Actually, it was pretty nice. The doctor gave me a shot/pills of corticosteroids/anti-histamine and I was good to go. the whole thing cost 85 cents American because Abuelo knew the doctor. Thanks Abuelo!!! The frustrating thing about the doctor is that the whole experience was only in Spanish and I was 5% scared that it was something serious and I couldn't tell at all what was going on. It got even sketchier when it seemed like the doctor thought that plants had made my skin more attractive to the insects and that I could not have any Inca Cola, chocolate, or fat. Solamente pan y agua por dos dias? I asked. Si. Uh . . . what the heck? But, when he said those magic words of corticosteroids and anti-histamine, which are the same words in English, I felt relieved and happy that whatever the doctor thought, at least it was the right prescription. So after collecting six pills and getting a shot in the high hip, I was good to go. The pills definitely took the edge off and the swelling went way down. Thanks Lamay hospital!

The attack of the near-killer Peruvian plant.

At least I didn't have problems with my intestines while in Peru, but getting cuddly with some Peruvian flavor of poison ivy wasn't exactly my idea of a good time either. Sho enuf, while hiking down the back of Huayna Pichhu, I found my own special souvenir from Peru that I'm still dealing with over a week later. But, that's ahead of the story. We got up this morning at about 3 AM and left at around 3:40 so that we could drive the hour north to Ollantaytambo where the train leaves for Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. The stars were still out and absolutely stunning. I was feeling at about 53% that morning and on the bumpy ride there, it quickly plummeted to about 12% as I was three second from yelling "ALTO!!!", dashing over Jonny or Tom to open the car door, and well, be carsick . . . which as my parents will tell you is a time honored tradition for me. Tomas leaned over and asked if I was okay, and I had them roll down the windows. Ahh sweet relief of fresh air. This whole time I was thinking . . . um, I don't think I'm going to hike up Huayna Picchu which is the huge mountain you see in the back of almost all Machu Pichhu pictures. We got to Ollantaytambo and lined up behind some school kids that were there from Juliaca (a Peruvian city near Lake Titicaca in the south). We boarded the train and sat it what has to be the most comfortable public transportation seat I have ever had the honor to enjoy. About thirty seconds later, most of us were asleep despite the Highway 2-esque beauty passing by outside the windows. We arrived in Aguas Calientes which exists due to one of the 7 Wonders of the World being perched on the hillside above. Here's an Incan to greet us. We caught the bus which does steep switchbacks up the hillside and comes dangerously close to crashing into all the other buses. Intersante! Arriving at MP, we made our way across the complex so we could sign up for the Huayna Picchu (HP) hike. They only let 400 people up per day. 200 starting at 7 AM and 200 starting at 10 AM. So, you pretty much have to get there crazy early in order to hike it. Being about 175th etc. for the first group, they let us start the hike at about 8:30a. Here's our first view of MP with all the morning clouds breezing up the hill and into the complex. Amazing. Okay, so here's the deal with HP. It's incredibly safe . . . but . . . realistically speaking, if you stumble once, trip once, take one false step . . . I'm fairly confident that your chance of surviving is about 24%. Almost the entire hike is steep, narrow, deep stone steps with precipitous cliffs being your constant companion. If you stumble, there is about zero room for error. You would try to catch yourself on nothing available and tip over the edge to the valley floor. Or, if someone behind you trips and falls into you, you're both goners. I'm sure a few people on the trip (i.e., the three boys) would disagree with me but really, anything goes wrong, you're done. Here's an example of how steep it is. As part of my evidence, a poor woman died on this hike a few months before we got there when she fell off the trail. Fortunately, we were entirely fine and the only downer was all the up and down of stairs. And no oxygen. And the heat. And the poison ivy. But, IT WAS AWESOME!!! Here's the view back towards MP. If you go, go on this hike. It was worth every step. After we climbed to the top of the ruins on HP, we decided to go on the side hike (supposedly 40 minutes) to the Grand Cavern. If you go, do not go on this hike . . . unless you like Chutes and Ladders, the Live Action Version . . . or you just enjoy stairs. Also, wear pants. No shorts. Here's part of the hike down. Yup, those are tiny stone steps angled downwards followed by a thirty foot ladder. It was actually quite fun. Down near the bottom (after some time wondering if we had taken the wrong trail and would ultimately end up in Aguas Calientes and after some time talking about the Tahoe Death March) we came upon the cavern. Tomas thought it was cool. I decided that I may or may not slow down my car if I was driving past it on the side of a road. Despite that, I'm still glad we went down to see it because we still had enough time to see MP and make a grand day out of the whole thing. As we were climbing up and out, we came across only a few other hikers that informed us they had been climbing down for thirty minutes already. Wow. Well, the US National Park service grossly overestimates hikes (2 hour hike is really about 20 minutes), the Peruvian service grossly underestimates. So, all in all, there is balance in the universe. We were on HP for about 4.5 hours instead of the estimated 2-3. I think they were a little worried about us. Here's another view from the top before I talk about MP. After HP, we sat outside the gates (no food allowed in the complex) and rested, rehydrated, and rested. I think all of us were thinking . . . hmm . . . maybe we've seen enough already? But when you're at MP, you gotta do the whole thing. So we hired a guide (absolute must for MP!!!) to take us through the complex. She only spoke Spanish which meant that I probably missed a lot of detail, but I got the gist and I thought, "meh, when in Rome!" She was fantastic, here she is! Peruvians are such a friendly and beautiful people. As she took us through the complex, she explained that Machu Picchu was probably a mountain resort of sorts for the Incan emperor. Only his BFFs were allowed to come up and stay with him. The complex housed hundreds of workers,farmers, artisans, builders, etc. to support the sweet digs. Several cool things and then lots of pictures. First, they built most of the complex in rough stone work but when it came to their temples, they switched over to extremely fine and tight jointed masonry work. Here's the "rough" stone work that is typical of most of the complex (still nice after 600 years huh?) Here is an example of the stone work that would be reserved for the temple building. The second cool thing is that they had a series of pools and fountains that you ritually washed in as you ascended the hill towards the temple.
Finally, the Incans believed in three worlds. The condor represented the heavenly or celestial realms. The puma represented the earthly world and the serpent represented the world below the earth. Hmmm . . . sounds vaguely familiar. They also had a large grass plaza for staging large ceremonies and dances but is now home to llamas. And here's a pretty picture of the complex and a llama (this place is just beautiful everywhere. I took about 50 pictures because with digital, why not?) And a beautiful tree where a couple of years ago, they found a gold Incan bracelet. Wow! At this point (about two hours later) the tour was over, the guide took off, and Tommy and Steve decided to climb the hill the guard house. Jonny and I decided to head toward the bus and wait for them there. While we're waiting, I discovered scratches (bites) something on my legs. At the time, I thought they were plants, but since I'm writing this about a month later, I can tell you that they were chiggers. And I still have dozens of scars. Exfoliate! Vitamin E! We checked our email in Aguas Calientes as we waited for the train back to Ollantaytambo and here's us on the train. I think we're tired. What an incredible to day. And to think that it was only a week ago that I was climbing the stairs at St. Paul's cathedral in London!

I never thought I'd live to see the day.

This morning, I woke up pretty early and drove into Lamay with Abuelo and Steve to buy some bread for breakfast. Here's a street of Lamay in the morning. We stopped into a little corner store and then went through to the back where they were baking the bread. I think the dude's bread shovel was about twelve feet long. Ohh, that fresh bread from a clay oven is good. Did I mention I liked the bread? Here's the set-up, not the best picture, but I didn't want to be a super annoying tourist, only mildly annoying. Then, we went back to the house where Jonny and Tommy were just getting up (it was still really early and Peru is on central time) for breakfast. We had that Sanka/Pero/Postum or whatever it's called and some bread, butter, and jam. I'm not really a fan of that wheat coffee but Jonny was in memory lane heaven as that's what he drank every morning for two years in Chile on his mission. To start our day, we drove north to Calca for some fruit juice. I wish Peruvians were hip to the idea of paper cups (i.e., sanitary) and cold drinks (i.e., delicioso) but the juice was still great with papaya, red pineapple, pineapple, and who knows what else as we got the combination. But it was better than the other juice we saw all over which was a questionably colored mess served from a bucket into a single glass cup that the whole town used. After juicing it up, it was time to unload a whole pile of nuevo soles on souvenirs from Pisac market. It was awesome. There were hats and scarves and blankets and board games and fruit and grains and guinea pig food and pieces of raw pig and everything else. Here's where we played a little game called, find the people you know. I think all three of the boys are in this picture at the market. After we were poor again, we drove south towards Tipon which is the site of a hill-top fortress that was used for agricultural research and innovative water-garden landscape design. On the way, we stopped in Oropesa which is supposedly the site of "The World's Best Bread". They were actually right. It was really, really good. Jonny won't even give his own dad's bread a 5/5. But here, in Peru, this happened. I never thought I'd see the day. Then, up into a mountain pass to get to Tipon. Tipon was cool because in order to get to the next levels, you had to climb these stone steps jutting out of the wall. Here is a picture of the water works that runs down narrow channels throughout the whole complex. And then here I am goofing off at Tipon on the stairs. After a somewhat tiring hike at high altitude throughout the entire complex, we headed back down the mountain and drove to Cusco to grab some late lunch/dinner at a restaurant. Abuelo was going to take us somewhere a little cheaper but he figured we'd get really sick, so he opted for this place where I ordered (drum roll please) chicken milanesas which is basically chicken fried steak. Mmmmm . . . the guys ordered lamb with tamales and stuffed peppers. We also had Inca Cola, El Sabor de Peru! It looks like antifreeze, tastes like cream soda. Pretty good stuff. Here's a picture of me enjoying the national drink. After lunch/dinner, we stopped by the tailors because all the boys wanted to get tailored suits. As I love menswear, it was an enjoyable evening of helping them decide on fabrics, cuts, and styles. Tom wanted to get a corduroy suit but as they didn't have fabric for it, he settled for this nice jacket. I think he likes it. The tailor was going to have mock-ups ready for final measurements in just a few hours so we made our way to the Museo Inka where they had lots of clay pots and other artifacts and . . . about six or seven Incan mummies displayed creepily in this little room lit by red light. Ooglie! All of the mummies were had grotesque expressions on their faces and one was buried with what looked like his dog while another was clearly mummified with a baby. Yikes.

A different Bonanza and Cusco, Peru.

So we landed this morning in Cusco at about 7 AM. There were *BING* four flights to *BING* Cusco within 20 minutes of each other. Really? Really. After eating the most delicious stick of chocolate ever as an in-flight snack, we landed and Steve's grandpa, hereafter referred to as "Abuelo" (or Edgar) drove us the hour up and over the mountain down into the Sacred Valley to his house, Quinta la Ponderosa (after the Bonanza ranch since Abuelo LOVES Westerns). We napped in the courtyard for an hour and then had a breakfast of cake, bread, butter, and hot chocolate. What a country! Here I am at the ranch. After breakfast, we took naps until about 1 PM since we were so exhausted from not sleeping all day. Then Abuelo drove us back up the valley where we stopped for some choklo con queso which is pretty much mutantly ginormous corn served with a small wedge of cheese. Delish! This was of course the start of about a bazillion rides in the back of a car sandwiched between Tom and Jonny. Oh Tomas, oh Jonawhatevertheespanolisforyourname. I have such fond memories of being stuck in the middle with you both. Good, good times. 16 MVP points awarded to both for entertaining me. We gave Abuelo's caretaker's daughter a ride up into the mountains. She was so cute (as are ALL Peruvian children) and I gave her the rest of my choklo. I'm not sure if she wanted it but she was nice enough to take it. In Cusco, we went over to the Plaza de Armas where the Spanish removed people's arms, hence "de-Armas" right? Well, they did chop off a few heads here. Here's the Cathedral. In this plaza, the Incas would import white sand from the beaches (days and days away) and fill the entire courtyard so that they could host beach volleyball tournaments . . . or just fill it with gold statues as well, I don't remember which one and my Spanish isn't very good. After the plaza, we needed to find a bank (questionable), get bus tickets to Machu Picchu (MP), pick up our train tickets to MP, and entrance tickets to MP. Um, I have found that in Peru, why do something once when you can break it down into 18 complicated steps. After we sorted that out, we went back to tour the Cathedral. Inside the Cathedral are about a bazillion altars to a bazillion virgin Mary's all done in cedarwood intricately carved and covered in silver or gold. Wowzahs. Here's the sun setting in the Plaza and we're on our way to see some stones that are fit together without mortar. These people did intricate masonry with no mortar or apparently an appreciation for rectangles. Here is a 12-sided stone in the side of a building. Interesante! Then it was off to dinner. I don't know if I can type enough about how delicious and amazing Peruvian food is. It is in the top of world cuisines. Amazing. I even had potato salad . . . and you know how I feel about that stuff. This was incredible. We also had chicha morada (sp? words?) which is a blue corn juice. In the country, women chew the corn and spit it into a cup, let it ferment, and then drink it. I'm hoping that's not what we had. It didn't taste like it had already been tasted, so I'm sure it was the sanitary version. We also had roasted chicken (pollo al brasa?) and fries. Yummy yummy! Then, it was back home to sleep again!