2022-06-29 Peru and Machu Picchu

2022-06-29

This trip is a special trip as we finally travel to Peru to visit the sacred Macchu Picchu.  This destination has been at the top of Holly’s bucket list since we met.  To add to the occasion, Heidi joins us for her first trip real international adventure trip.  The trio of us depart from Tom Bradley at LAX and start our journey with a 7 hour layover in Bogota, Columbia.  7 hours sounds like a ton of time to leave the airport and do a bit of sight-seeing doesn’t it?  Well after burning time with bathroom breaks, trying to brush the dust off our conversational Spanish, customs, baggage storage, figuring out taxis and ubers, the commute and a conservative pre-flight return to the airport, we were left with about 45 mins to explore La Candeleria.  However, in that short time, we got to explore a lovely neighborhood that gave Cartagena vibes.  It was pretty early in the morning, so only coffee shops were open but we were able to have our first empanadas, Columbian coffee and arepas.  Eventually the brick lined sidewalks led us to center of the city and a beautiful square bordered with government buildings and local vendors including some llamas (or alpacas, I have no idea).  We were delighted with the way we spent the morning and on our way back to the airport we drove through the shopping district.  What we didn’t realize about Bogota, is that the city is at 8,000 ft and is built right into the side of a mountain.  There’s a great cable car that we didn’t have time to do.  The scenery was very lush and the city seemed to take really good care of their public spaces.  Upon returning to the airport, we flew through customs and security, which just 3 hours before looked like a line of a few hundred people.  So what did we do with the 3 hours we had?  We found a pretty decent Peruvian restaurant, had a couple rounds of Havana Club rum, had a couple rounds of chichrrones and flirted with Laura, our fair skinned Columbian waitress.  Welcome to traveling with Rob and Holly, Heidi. 

Chicharonnes with fries and grilled arepa

Touchdown in Lima after our 3 hour transfer from Bogota.  I forgot how small the Lima airport was and how aggressive the taxis drivers were here.  We had at least 3 drives try to convince us to cancel our uber and go with them, and a 4^th driver snatch our bags out of our hand to load them into our uber just to demand a tip.  He got nothing.  FYI, Uber in Lima is the way to go if you don’t speak fluent Spanish.  The taxi drivers will quadruple the fare if they think you’re a foreigner. 

After checking into our Airbnb in beautiful Miraflores, we take an Uber to El Centro to have a walkabout.  We don’t get there until 9pm so most everything was closed; except we did find a Norky’s which served the famous Pollo a la Brasa (Chicken over coals) and also fried chicken.  Pollo a la Brasa is probably the most popular dish in Peru, and we are big fans of it in the US also.  This dish was actually invented by a Swiss man running a chicken farm in Peru.  His farm was going out of business and instead of letting all the chicken die, he decided to marinate them then slow cook them over Algarrobo coals (which is a relative of Mesquite).  He then put an announcement in the paper that read: Eat as much chicken as you want for 5 soles ($1.25 USD).  Customers really enjoyed the chicken, but more importantly, they enjoyed eating with their hands and picking meat off the bones as opposed to the very formal and proper eating style of the time.  Pollo a la Brasa quickly expanded throughout Peru, South America and the rest of the world.  While this is a wonderful origin story, our experience of the food was ordinary.  While the chicken was very moist and tender, the marinade or seasoning on the outside was overly salty and overly intense.  Usually the skin of a rotisserie chicken is a flavorful and crispy pop of flavor whereas the skin at Norky’s was something that needed to almost be avoided.  We were hoping that this an isolated issue, but our other two experiences at two different cities were consistent with our first.  I guess sometimes, the US can replicate imported dishes in a better way than the original, or maybe the US version is more suited to the western palate. 

Pollo a la Brasa

The next day, we went on a food tour that was in the same location that we went to the night before.   However, this time it was during the day and everything was open.  There were many stores and eateries in this 20 block historic city center.  Many of the buildings were restored original buildings from the Spanish reign around the 1500’s.  Turns out this food tour was more of a city tour with some food.  We did get to visit the central market which is a giant semi-open air building that is home to hundreds of tiny stalls.  The market is sectioned off into different areas including meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, seafood, clothing, housewares etc.  Pretty much anything you need, exists here and you’ll have your choice of a few dozen vendors that provide the same product. 

Just outside the massive market was Lima’s Chinatown, complete with red buildings, dragon sculptures and waving paw cat figurines.  Black slavery was ended in Peru in 1854, Chinese laborers immigrated to Peru to fill the need for mass labor.  With them, the Chinese brought their culture including their food.  Chinese food restaurants, known as Chivas, are as rampant as the Pollo a la brasa restaurants.  Additionally Chinese cooking styles are responsible for the creation of dishes like lomo saltado, another Peruvian staple. Its really funny to me that the most recognizable Peruvian dishes were accidental successes and came from non-Peruvian cultures. 

This door and façade was built in front of the original building to preserve the original architecture

This door is 500+ years old

pan con chicharon

Maiz Morado, purple corn

Quail Eggs

Churro filled with dulce de leche

Causa Rellena - Mashed Potatoes and Chicken Salad

One food that is definitely Peruvian is ceviche, the national food of Peru.  Since Peru boasts a very large coastline, it makes sense that their seafood is excellent.  I think most people know what ceviche is, but in addition to ceviche, the Peruvians have an upgraded version called leche de tigre (tiger’s milk).  The original leche de tigre refers to the mixture of acids and seasonings used to marinate and prepare the raw fish, shrimp, octopus or whatever seafood is in ceviche.  In today’s menus, leche de tigre is known to include both the liquid and the seafood.  The leche de tigre recipe adds in more flavor and a stronger punch when compared to traditional ceviche.

Okay one last food fact.

Papas fritas, or French fries, seem to accompany almost every Peruvian dish in place of rice, bread, or noodles.  Peru has 90 microclimates which allow it to grow many types of plants.  This allows for 4,000 varieties of potatoes to be grown natively in Peru.  Unfortunately, the demand for potatoes in Peruvian cuisine is limited to only 3 varieties, and the demand is so high that Peruvian farmers aren’t even close to meeting the demand.  For this reason, Peru imports all these potatoes from the US.

Ceviche

Grilled Pork

Arroz con Mariscos

Parihuela - Peruvian Seafood Soup

Everyone knows how much we love the nightlife, and since I had visited Lima before, I knew that there was a really popular district of clubs with all locals.  Unfortunately, I didn’t really remember where it was.  We originally went to Barranco, which is an upscale seaside town, but it was clear that this district was way too nice for me to have enjoyed myself previously.  So instead, we took an uber back to Miraflores, specifically Kennedy Park to visit all the dozens of park kitties.  The last time I was at this park, there were hundreds of park kitties.   They’ve since built a parking garage under the park, and the park kitty population has plummeted.  We did however, enjoy the dozens of park kitties that remained there.  As we continued to walk back to our Airbnb, we started to see crowds of people and bright lights.  Sure enough, we walked right into the locals hot spot, which was only a few blocks from our Airbnb.  It was a pretty crazy night.

The street in Miraflores with all the nightlife

Another pan con chicharron

7/2/2022

Next stop Cusco, elevation 11,280 ft, which means altitude sickness.  It hit all three of us, at all different times, in different ways.  We all had trouble sleeping both nights here, the second night I didn’t sleep at all.  Apart from the pains of altitude sickness, the town itself is very quaint, at least Plaza de Armas.  It really felt authentic with churches, government buildings, a huge square, lots of street vendors and lots of street puppies.  During our stay here, we found baby goats and baby llamas, a classic car show, a classy dinner and drinks place with live Spanish rock and traditional music, and a very lively Saturday nightlife and somehow managed to walk right into a gay pride parade!  Cusco was the capital of the Inkan empire so it makes sense why it is the jumping off point for the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. 

Pride Parade!

Chicharron

Coca leaf products, for altitude sickness and IYKYK

Pisco and Inca Cola

Lomo Saltado and Beef Steak w/ Egg and Heidi living her best life

The Square at Plaza de Armas

Holly wearing a Chuyo which now belongs to Celida

Heidi, Mother of Street Puppies

Republica Del Pisco

Anticuchos - Beef Heart

Same square, the next morning

Leche de Tigre and Ceviche

Arroz con Mariscos

On today's walk, we ran into another parade, this time it was a religious one.  Apparently every village in the Cusco area comes to Plaza de Armas on Sundays to represent their village and celebrate.  Our timing could not have been better as we were able to catch almost the entire parade.

Guinea pigs are raised here for food and are apparently very delicious.

7/4/2022

We leave the big cities of Peru and start our tour of the Sacred Valley.  We hired a guide service to take us through the Sacred Valley in a nice large van, put us on a train to Machu Picchu, provide the tour of Machu Picchu and bring us all the way back to Cusco.  Highly recommended to do it this way, we got a ton of interesting information that made what we were seeing more relevant and interesting to us. 

First stop was Chinchero at an Elevation of 12,000+ feet.  Established in the early 1600’s it was destroyed by the Spanish and only 15% of the original building materials are left, mainly the foundations where the Spanish then built on top of them.  The Incan’s built many temples to worship the different gods; some of these temples still exist.  They regularly performed sacrifices at these temples, mostly with Llamas but sometimes there were human sacrifices.

Fine fabrics are found in many places in the world, Peru is no exception. There are 4 types of Andean camel: Llama, Alpaca, Vicunya, and Guanaco.  Llama and alpaca were domesticated, the other two weren’t. A scarf made from wild Vicunya would cost $5,000 USD vs a domesticated alpaca scarf would be $50 USD.

Hundreds of potatoes laid out on the fields to dry out. The resulting dried potatoes are shelf stable for up to 20 years.  

Moray

At the next location, we witnessed terraces that were built in the 12^th or 13^th centuries for Incans to experiment with agriculture.  There are 4 Muyos that took over 20 years to build.  Each terrace was its own micro climate.  The surrounding area is all very dry but in this valley there was heat and moisture.  The Incans also built an aqueduct to supply water, but has since been destroyed.  Even though the Muyos were built in valleys, they never flooded because the Incans engineered a drainage system of increasingly larger rocks below the Muyos.  There was once a house on the site for the farmer to live in and the site is still used for ceremonies.  The sites are very well preserved with no trash and the rocks from the fallen walls have been neatly piled together for ongoing restoration.  The archeologists that worked on these site have found hematite (natural iron rock), hammers, and other tools in the last Muyo which could indicate that the Spanish invaded while the last Muyo was being built.  Roads to this site were only created 10 years ago so very few people have visited it.

Mara, Salt mines

These salt mines have been functioning continuously for 3,000 years.  There is a water source, which was possibly ocean water was trapped here providing a source of spring sea water to fill the salt mine pools which are only a few inches deep.  White, pink and brown salts are produced here.  White for cooking, pink for medicinal and brown for fertilizer and cattle. Every year the pools are drained after the rainy season, the clay that lines the pool is removed, disposed of in some other town, new clay is brought in and pounded into place and the pools are refilled from the saltwater spring.  The village of Mara has a population of about 1,000 people and each family own 2-3 pools which they harvest and maintain.  

Ollantaytambo

The Inkan Empire spanned from the bottom of present day Columbia to Argentina.  Cusco served as the capital of the Inkan empire as it was centric to the Inkan land.  Throughout the empire, the Inkas build pathways both costal and inland.  Some pathways were 50 meters wide were some were only 2 meters wide.  Every 16km, the Inkans constructed a resting place called a tambo with the smallest housing only 20-30 people and the largest housing 50,000 people.  There were 4 main tambos leaving Cusco and Ollantaytambo was one of them.  

Ollantaytambo was built in 4 parts: the upper town, lower ceremonial area, the temple and the agricultural section.  We climbed the to the top of the Temple del Sol and as we did we passed more agricultural terraces that share the same irrigation and drainage system as the Muyos in Moray.  Here we got a demonstration of how the Inkans were able to construct interlocking granite blocks weighing up to 60T (120,000 lbs) and individually match each block with its neighboring blocks leaving a seam less than sheet of paper.  

Ollantaytambo is nestled in the valley between mountains.  The Inkans carved the two faces of gods into the face of the mountain adjacent to the town to bring good weather for crops.  Additionally there are several crop storage buildings that are built into the mountain side.  The cold temperatures and the constant wind provided on the mountainside made these hillside buildings the perfect place to preserve the town’s food.

Ollantaytambo was actually named after a lower class citizen, Ollantay.   He was born in Ollantaytambo and went to Cusco where he became the general of the entire Inkan army.  He then fell in love with the princess, but the king would not allow their marriage because Ollantay was from the lower class.  Ollantay then went back to Ollantaytambo and used the army he commanded to provide water to the neighboring villages.  10 years later, the Incan died making his son the new king.  The new king was a friend of Ollantaytambo and invited him to return to Cusco to marry his sister.  To commemorate the union, they named Ollantaytambo after him.

In Inkan culture, there are 3 animals of great importance, the condor, the puma and the snake.  The shape of Cusco was designed to be in the shape of a puma, Ollantaytambo was shaped like a Llama and Machu Picchu is shaped like a condor.

From Ollantaytambo we take a train to Aquas Calienties, the nearest town to Machu Picchu, which will be our starting and returning point for tomorrow’s visit to Machu Picchu.  The train travels through a picturesque section of the Sacred Valley and the train cars have both side and ceiling windows.   The train follows the River Urubamba through Sacred Valley and this river actually turns into the Amazon River.

Agua Calienties is a beautiful town that is on the shores of the Urubamba river and has another river feeding the Urubamba that runs through town.  It very much has an upscale feel to it, by South America standards. However, Agua Calientes suffers the same capitalist fate as the every other highly tourist town: poor quality of food and service, severely inflated prices and high pressure tourist traps.  Ordinarily, I would just avoid the touristy areas, but this town and the towns along the Sacred Valley are all completely tourist towns.  The culture here is minimal and it felt like a Las Vegas version of Peru. 

We ended the night early in anticipation of our 5:30 am start to Machu Picchu the following day.  Gratefully, we all slept much better at 6,700 feet than we did at 11,200 feet even if it was still a very short night. 

Our guide met us at the hotel and walked us down to the pick up point for the busses to Machu Pichhu.  The line is a few hundred people long, but the buses are also lined up to pick people up as quickly as they could board.  It’s about a 30 minute ride from Aquas Calientes to the entrance of Macchu Pichhu Puebla.  The drive is mostly tight switchbacks all the way up the mountain and you could really feel the steep grade the entire way up.  We arrive at the entrance to Machu Picchu Puebla just as dawn breaks.  It’s a crisp out and the morning mist is setting a very suspenseful and mysterious mood.  The path into the main area of Machu Picchu has a wall on one side and is open to the beautiful valley and mountains on the other side.  A short walk later the path leads us into the open terraces of Machu Picchu and we are able to see the two sectors of Machu Picchu, Ceremonial and Industrial, along with Huayna Picchu and the other surrounding mountains.  This moment immediately puts Holly in tears.

Machu Picchu was built around 1350 and took about 50 years to build.  About 1,000 Inkans lived here at any point.  Machu Picchu is the only sacred Inkan site to not be discovered by the Spaniards and subsequently it was not destroyed and everything we see today is original construction with the exception of minor renovation and preservation.  The Inkans only lived there for 100 years.  There are two running theories that try to explain why the Inkans left this sacred site.  The first theory claims that there was some sort of endemic that killed the residents or chased them away.  The second theory explains that the Inkans left Machu Picchu to prevent it from being discovered and destroyed by the Spaniards once they started attacking all of the Inkan cities.  Either way most of the paths leading to Machu Picchu were destroyed and eventually the vegetation of the mountains grew and hid the remaining paths and eventually Machu Picchu itself.  The city remained hidden until 1902 where farmers went searching for places to start farming and discovered one of the hidden paths.  They followed the path up the mountain and were led to the hidden city.  They lived and farmed on a small part of Machu Picchu until 1908 when Hiram Bingham of Yale University discovered it.  Hiram was researching Inkan history and was trying to discover the lost city of Vilcabamba.  During this search, local people told him of a hidden city in the mountains and a 10 year old boy became the first tour guide of Machu Picchu, leading Hiram’s first expedition to the city.  After exploring Machu Picchu for 2 weeks, he returned to Yale to petition the university for funds to completely explore and excavate Machu Picchu.  Hiram finally returned to Machu Picchu in 1911 with a crew of 50 archeologists, biologists, engineers and laborers.  During this time, Hiram asked the locals what the city was called.  The locals did not know the name of the city, but they did know the name of the mountains Machu Picchu was built on, Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, which translates to old mountain and young mountain.  Hiram named the city after the old mountain or Machu Picchu. 

Staircase carved out of Stone in the Condor Temple

Machu Picchu had its own aqueduct system supplied by a spring from a nearby mountain.  It still runs today almost 800 years later like the other cities.  Of the various temples at Machu Picchu, the sun temple is the most interesting.  It has two windows that point Northwest and Southwest.  During the summer solstice, the sunrises through the Sun Gate and aligns perfectly with that window.  During the winter solstice, the sunrises through a “V” that the Inkans carved into the mountain on the other side of the valley, and the light shines perfectly into the other window.  I might have got the combinations wrong, but you get what I mean.  It amazes me how much construction the Inkans have completed on such massive scales without machines, wheels or horses.  On top of that, they had an understanding of astronomy that must have taken centuries to acquire.

After a tour of Lower Machu Picchu, we follow our guide to Huayna Picchu hike.  FYI, this is the hike that everyone gets their Instagram pics from and it a separate ticket from the general entrance.  Before COVID, you were able to see the entire Machu Picchu and do the Huanya hike at your leisure. Post COVID, there are 4 individual circuits that you can take, unless you do the Huayna hike, then you were limited to just the lower level and the Huayna Picchu hike.  The entire city now has a designated flow of traffic that you cannot ignore.  The hike is 2.5 miles roundtrip and there is about 1100 feet of ascent.  The ascent is essentially stairs of irregular granite rock and is very accessible to anyone with 2 legged mobility.  It is a decently tough hike/climb, especially starting at 8,000 feet, but we did see some very out of shape people complete the hike.  There are stunning views of Machu Picchu going both directions and there are several terraces and locations at the top to take your time and get that perfect picture.  Only 300 tickets a day are available for this hike and they sell out months in advance. For Machu Picchu itself, only 3500 daily general tickets are available post COVID. 

Time to head back down....

Heid overcame her fear of heights, but was glad to be back down.

I would say that the culmination of visiting Machu Picchu and climbing Huayna Picchu was well worth the trip to Peru.  Stopping in Bogota, Lima and Cusco were very cool also adding some current day South American culture to our experience.  The Sacred Valley cities were interesting to witness some of the technology that the Inkans developed. The people were all very nice, the cost of everything not tourist related was about 4x cheaper than it was in the US, the seafood was top notch, and there was strong cell phone signal EVERYWHERE which really helped us maximize our opportunities.  I’m not sure that I could have done more days of the same thing; I would probably need a completely different culture to keep going.   I guess I'm just getting older.  Strike this one off the bucket list, DONE!