Wednesday May 9, 2007

We got up and ate breakfast then Harry picked up our nine-person group and we piled into the Sprinter. First, we went to a local food market, where we saw many Cuzqueños having breakfast and shopping for food. Harry bought a large (like a bike tire) loaf of sweet bread for us to try, as well as a delicious fruit called cherimoya or masasamba, which had a green skin and a juicy white flesh that was very sweet. Daddy loved it! Then, we left the market and drove out of Cuzco, past Sacsayhuaman and the other sites we saw earlier, and over the pass into the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

The pass was beautiful, and as we drove we got wonderful views of the valley below us. We stopped at a particularly stunning vista and Crystal bought some green earrings from one of the ever-present vendors. Green being her favorite color, when the man approached her with a board full of about 70 pairs of earrings, each with at least one green stone, she couldn’t help herself. I was glad to oblige her request for a pair because it was only about $3.

We continued down the valley (we also stopped and looked at some llamas and alpacas in a pen on the side of the road) and finally go to the town of Pisac next to the Urubamba river, the river which flows down the sacred valley, eventually going past Machu Picchu. We drove through town and headed up a side canyon to nearly the top of one mountain. There, while we waited to enter the Pisac ruins site, local ladies came to windows of the van peddling water. This one woman was fairly insistent, so I reached onto the seat between Crystal and me and held up a 2.5-liter bottle we brought with us. The woman’s eyes widened and her mouth said “oh,” then she walked away. Crystal and I were quite amused by her reaction, especially because it was through the window so we couldn’t hear her, but knew exactly what she was saying.

We then went into the ruins at Pisac (the modern town was named after the ruins) and wandered all over the mountain following the Incan paths, some of which were right on the cliffs. Most of the non-cliff mountain side was terraced; with irrigation canals coming form springs at the top of the mountain. We hiked over one point to the ruins of the city’s main complex and there saw another Temple of the Sun, this one with a semi-intact sun stone. Outside the temple was an interesting rock, shaped like half of the Incan cross. The Incan cross is a representation of the Southern Cross constellation, which the Incas used for navigation. It is an equilateral cross, with several steps on each quarter like this: (get picture of Incan cross). The amount of steps does not have to be uniform. Anyway, the rock with half the cross carved out of it showed the shadow of the whole cross when the sun hit the right place.

The temple also had a spring by it, with several of the Incan water structures, of pools and channels and fountains, with which I am so impressed. I took a plastic water bottle out of a garbage can and plugged up one channel for a few minutes, then delighted in watching an increased stream of water go down the hill when I removed the bottle.

We hiked back to the van, which again put us on a steep staircase on the side of a cliff. It was exhilarating. After everyone made it back to the van, we drove back down to Pisac where we ate lunch and went to a market and did some shopping. Then, we got back on the bus and drove down the Sacred Valley along the Urubamba River.

Along the way, Harry played us a CD showing examples of Peruvian music and its influence on world music. One example was the tune “Condor Pasa,” which was written in the 1950s in Cuzco, then used by an Argentine group in the ‘60s and Paul Simon in the ‘70s in his song, “If I Could.” The tune for the song “Guantanamera” is also Peruvian. It was a fun way to learn more about Peru, and explained why many of the local bands play “Condor Pasa.” Interestingly, world music has also influenced Peru, in that the Beatles were and are very popular, so we heard lots of local musicians playing Beatles music (especially “Hey, Jude”) on their typical instruments.

We kept driving down the valley, seeing various rock fences around homes. Some of the fences had cactus growing on them like natural barbed wire, which reminded me of seeing people in Venezuela cement pieces of broken glass bottles on the top of their brick walls, and it reminded Crystal of her dad driving nails part-way into fence then cutting the nail heads off and making spikes. I assume they all keep people out.

We also saw many homes with long poles topped with red plastic flags posted near their doors. The poles represented that at that home was a vendor of corn beer. We stopped at one such place to see how the corn beer was made (mostly by fermenting one of the dozens of types of corn grown in the area) and try some of the beer, from which we abstained. Then we got to see what the lady did with the fermented corn mush left over from the “brewing” … she fed it to a roomful of guinea pigs! She had dozens of the furry little rodents running around in that room. They were cute, but I knew they were each meant to be dinner for someone. Also at the corn beer stop, we played a local bar game where we threw metal tokens at a target trying to get them to fall into various holes for various amounts of points. My team lost, and Crystal (who was NOT on my team) turned out to be way better than me at the game. I was proud of her, and grateful that she didn’t rub too much of my earlier trash talk back into my face.

We got back on the bus and headed to Ollantaytambo, which is both the name of a large ruins complex and of the last town on the road before you get to Machu Picchu. When we arrived, we only had about an hour before night fall, so we hurried to the ruins and Crystal, Daddy and I were the only ones to go to the top of the ruins with Harry. There, we could see down over the town and across to another large hill with more, smaller ruins. At the top of the ruins, Harry told us the largest stone on top was 190 tons, and that the stones were quarried on a peak on the other side of the valley, dragged down to the river, across an ancient stone bridge, then down the valley a few hundred meters and up the other side to the temple site. I was continually impressed by those resourceful Incas.

After wandering around the beautiful ruins for a while, we went to our hotel, Hotel Pakaritampu, which was near the river and the train station where the train to Machu Picchu leaves. The hotel had six separate buildings (four with rooms, one with a front desk and another with a restaurant), all of which were beautifully set in a landscaped area, with stone terraces rising behind it. One terrace had a patio with a large oven (where they baked bread for the restaurant) and, at the other end, a pen with two alpacas.

Harry told us that the next day’s lunch at Machu Picchu would be quite expensive ($40 for a lunch buffet or $18 for sandwich), so we opted to buy food at a local tienda for lunch rather than pay the exorbitant sums at the ruins. We bought some tuna fish, cheese, crackers, olives (for Daddy, of course), wafers and peanut-butter Oreos. We got enough for lunch for Thursday and Friday.

Then, we were going to find a place for dinner (we even got shown a menu for one restaurant by a midget in classic Andean garb (see above)), when we ran into Harry and invited him to eat with us. We went to a delightful restaurant, Mayupata, and had fun chatting with Harry. I had some delicious trout and a local band, Munay Sonqó, came and played for us. Daddy bought their CD. On the way back to the hotel from dinner, I looked up at the stars and started wondering where the Southern Cross was located. I finally found it just above the mountains to our south (the valley runs east-west). It was cool to see it, and Daddy got a picture of it.

The stars were bright and beautiful, at least those that could bee seen despite the towering mountains surrounding us (an effect that was surprisingly similar to the jungle, where the trees blocked out many of the stars).

Crystal and I went to see the alpacas at the hotel, and when I tried to touch one, it kicked its back left leg and sent a big cloud of dust all over Crystal. She laughed about it and was a good sport, for which I was appreciative. Then, we went to bed, excited about going to Machu Picchu in the morning.