Our recent trip to Machu Picchu

Looking out at the sacred valley below the ruins of Pisaq

We recently returned from our second trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. I never really wrote about the first trip, but after this second foray I feel like I learned a lot more about the area and travel options, and I wanted to make sure to share those with other future travelers, so I’m going to try and write a couple posts on tips and travel advice for visiting Machu Picchu, especially because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of good, easy-to-find information out there on the subject. However, first I just want to share some of the awesome experiences we had!

So, Machu Picchu is cool and all, but you know what’s really cool? A billion dollars. Er, I mean, Huayna Picchu. So what is Huayna Picchu? It’s the big hill you see in the back of all the traditional photos of Machu Picchu.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

For several reasons, visitors to Huayna Picchu are limited to 400 per day, so if you want to go up then you have to get up ass-early (like, 4am) to line up for the first buses going up to Machu Picchu. Once at the MP gates you can get a special stamp on your entrance ticket allowing you access to HP. Actually getting up HP involves crossing all of the MP ruins. Then there’s a crazy path full of switchbacks and uneven stairs hewn right from the mountain rock (and even a couple ladders) leading to the summit. It’s a taxing climb, even for someone in good shape, but when you reach the top all the effort and lack of sleep is immediately validated. You’re rewarded with a sweeping vista of snow-capped peaks, lush nearby mountains, the winding river valley, and a bird’s-eye view of the MP ruins. There are ruins all the way up here, too, which the Incas may have used for religious or astronomical purposes. But just the fact that they exist, at the top of this climb that I would’t want to go up burdened by anything more than a day pack, really says something of the temerity and capability of the Incas. Don’t get me wrong, Machu Picchu itself is impressive and worth a visit, but the easiest way I can explain it is that you experience Machu Picchu, but Huayna Picchu is an experience.

Daypack and glasses. So cool.

Sitting at the very tippy-top.

Relaxing after a hard morning's climb.

After visiting Machu Picchu, we spent a whole day climbing around the ruins in Ollantaytambo, a small town in the Sacred Valley about halfway between Machu PIchu and Cusco. The main ruins there are a common stop on tours of the Sacred Valley region, but rarely do you get enough time to really explore them. And there are more ruins on the surrounding hills that you can only see by taking your own initiative. The “grain houses” on the facing hill are an excellent example, as they’re no farther away than the main ruins, they’re free to go see (the main ruins require an entrance ticket), and like Huayna Picchu they provide a very different and in many ways superior vantage point for viewing the landscape than the more popular ruins across the valley.

Mike's a pretty tall guy. Used here for scale.

One little, two little, three little tourists

At the grain houses

Main Ollantaytambo ruins as seen from the grain houses

My favorite part of the trip, however, may have been our stop at Las Salineras de Maras, or The Salt Pans of Maras. Here the salt from a naturally (incredibly) salty mountain spring is harvested using an intricate system of shallow pools terraced into the cleft of a mountain. It’s all very old fashioned, with not a single piece of modern technology to be seen anywhere to aid in salt production. The “farmers” literally use things like big wooden blocks (to flatten out the pool bottoms), plastic sieves (for collecting salt), and small stones and bags (to redirect water streams). And yet it also feels incredibly clever and advanced. This system has been around since at least the Incas, and it’s still run as a community cooperative. Walking around it feels like you’re on an alien planet. At the entrance you can buy salt from the pans in various forms, for cooking, bathing, etc. as well as other little knick-knacks and snacks. One lady was selling fried platinos (little bananas) that were absolutely heaven – we bought 5 bags.

Panorama of the salt pans

A dude farmin some salt

The Great Salt Lake (not really)

Getting my daily recommended value of sodium

Wall-o-salt

Back in Cusco we took a city tour (Mike’s first, but our second time around), where you get to see a lot of the coolest Inca ruins around the city and learn more about Incan history. It was interesting going a second time, because our guide (always a Peruvian with passable but certainly not impeccable English) provided new and different information than the previous trip. Getting a guided tour by a Peruvian of all the ruins in the Sacred Valley is culturally interesting, because it’s all basically one big story of how the Spanish conquistadors showed up and wiped out an entire civilization, as told by that civilization’s descendants. Peruvians in general seem to think lightly of this horrific tale of genocide. They’re not holding a grudge, or even unwilling to laugh at the absurdity that the largest pre-Colonial civilization in the Americas could be completely obliterated in a clean four decades. See, for example, this graphic that can be purchased on t-shirts and other kitsch from a popular Lima-based gift shop. But Peruvians are also a somewhat reserved people when it comes to negative emotions. They seem to rarely admit to being angry, upset, outraged, or pissed off.

Where I’m going with all of this is that our guide this time seemed to be more forthcoming with information. For example, there is a huge temple in Cusco called Qorikancha, once one of the most resplendent buildings in all of the Incan empire. Of course, the Spanish ravaged it and built a Catholic church on top. But what we learned from our guide is that while most of it is now open for tourists to view the remains of Incan stonework, there is a part that is still “owned” by the church. And it is believed that there are more undiscovered ruins and possibly other extremely valuable archeological remains beneath this church, but the monks won’t cede the site or let the Peruvian government excavate. We got a sense, as our guide was explaining this, that it was not ok with her, nor should it be for anyone. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it caught me off guard, and I have to say I was glad to hear the discontent in her voice. Peru recently won a big archeological victory over Yale University, who will finally be returning a ton of valuable artifacts from Machu Picchu that were taken unauthorized to the U.S. by Hiram Bingham back when he first discovered the ruins. The Peruvian government had been fighting for years to get the material returned, and Yale finally acquiesced. I bring this up because it’s another example of Peruvians being “pushed around”, and now finally standing up for themselves. In Sandra’s most recent blog post, she talked some about the new phenomenon of Peruvian pride. It’s wonderful to see a colonized country finally taking ownership of its heritage and rights. So thank you, tour-guide Martha, for not being afraid to speak out against established authority, even if it was done with subtlety and under the guise of simply piquing some tourists’ curiosities.

There are far more pictures from the trip, which I’m ever so slowly uploading to the internet so you can view them here. And I’ll be back soon with some more detailed posts on tips for travel in Peru, plus of course I’ll need to highlight all the planking we did.

It's fun to stay at the...SAQ-SAY-HUA-MAN

The state of basketball in Peru

Ronny Turiaf and Boris Diaw were here in Lima last week as part of some basketball exhibition thing. We went to their exhibition game where they played with a bunch of “all-stars” from the Peruvian basketball league. Basketball in Peru is not very popular right now, but I think it’s growing. It’s really hard to find a court to play on, but they exist and there are even some friendly public games to join if you know where to go. A lot of the league players are imports from the U.S. or elsewhere, but there are some Peruvians too. The game was a lot of fun, and I’m pretty sure Diaw and Turiaf were the two biggest people in Peru at the time.

The announcer was taller than the average Peruvian

After the game, Turiaf peaced out real quick without signing autographs or anything. He looked a little overwhelmed and/or uncomfortable. We were part of a crowd swarming the bench and heard him urgently ask his handler “Where’s the car?” It’s too bad because, unlike maybe some places in the world that he’s traveled for exhibitions, there was absolutely no danger here. Just a bunch of eager kids who’d probably never stood next to anyone over 6’3″. Diaw was a lot cooler, signing things and posing for pictures while throwing around some Spanish. He signed my friend’s basketball, and I got this picture by just stepping in front of him while he was posing for someone else . Dude is freakin’ tall!

NBA players are kind of tall

But the best part of the game wasn’t even the basketball. There had been a women’s exhibition game first, and in between periods there were some dance performances (some salsa, some hip hop) which were quite enjoyable. So during halftime of the men’s game, with the referees just milling about on the court, a couple people came on and started to dance. Ok, whatever. And then, the refs joined in! And then the coaches! And a whole bunch of other people in random basketball jerseys. Here’s a quick video I shot:

Traditional Peruvian Basketball Halftime Dance

It was like a guerilla performance art number. They danced a traditional Peruvian dance, with scarves and leg kicks, and the entire crowd got into it. Then suddenly it was over, and the refs mopped their brows and gave the crowd a little wave and the second half started and it was business as usual.

I think this is the sign for excessive celebration?

So now you don’t have to ask me anymore why I love Peru. THIS is why.

Want to see more pictures? Check out the picasa gallery here.

Photo Hosting

So I need recommendations for hosting digital photos. Specifically, I want some kind of online “cloud” storage that I can use to host images for other places on the web, like this blog. Flickr is a basic example, but I don’t want to use that for a number of reasons.

Ideally, the service would have some kind of gallery viewing ability, with privacy settings for photos/albums. There should be a way to prevent hotlinking. It should support different image formats (at least jpg, png, gif) and allow me to upload very large uncompressed stuff. It doesn’t really need to serve as backup, but being able to download the original file (say in raw format) would be nice. Video hosting would be cool too. I’d rather not pay, but if the service is good enough I’m certainly willing to shell out. I’m not a professional photographer and don’t need to sell my stuff, I just want to have a clean and centralized way to organize and share it.

I’m open to anything, including installing self-hosted software on my own server, using some kind of cobbled-together solution with Amazon S3, a straight-up paid service, or something in between. I know there are a lot of options out there like smugmug, picasa, shutterfly, etc. but I’m hoping I can get some first-hand knowledge instead of just trying to peer through all the BS. C’mon internet, don’t let me down.

People Groups

I had a conversation a long time ago about the names of different animal groups. Most people know, for example, that a bunch of lions is a Pride, lots of fish form a School, and you run away from a Swarm of bees. Some lesser known examples that you’ve probably heard: a Murder of crows, a Pod of whales, an Army of ants, and a Gaggle of geese. But there are even better ones than these. The San Diego Zoo website has a page with all manner of crazy animal group names. For example: an Obstinancy of buffalo, a Mob of emus, and a Crash of rhinoceroses. Check out the page for more; my personal favorite is what you call a group of wombats.

Clearly a creature of great intelligence

This popped back into my head recently when I walked past a group of motorcyclists. Even though these weren’t a bunch of leather-clad harley riders, it seemed appropriate to refer to them as a Gang of motorcyclists. Which got me thinking, what other names do we have for groups of people? And more importantly, what can we make up? Here’s what I’ve got so far, and please please please add your own ideas in the comments.

First, the obvious ones:

• Gang of motorcyclists
• Board of executives
• Legion of fans
• Band of musicians
• Class of clowns (wocka wocka)
• Chain of fools

And now, the new ones:

• Brief of lawyers
• Bundle of babies
• Corollary of mathematicians
• Function of programmers
• Furrowing of farmers
• Hush of librarians (my favorite! courtesy of Sandra)
• Irony of hipsters
• Jam of motorists
• Palin of idiots
• Round of doctors
• Scoop of journalists
• String of physicists

That’s all I’ve got so far. What else can you come up with?

I need a printer recommendation, because the Epson Stylus TX420W is a piece of shit

Seriously, why are printers the work of the devil? It seems like printer manufacturers are in a close race with telecommunications companies for first place in the How Much Can You Rape And Pillage Your Customers And Still Make Shittons Of Money competition.

About that time I ate a glacier

We recently took a short vacation to Huaraz, Peru. It’s about an eight hour bus ride north of Lima. Or at least, it would be eight hours if your bus didn’t break down 10 minutes from the bus station, then again about an hour later, and then a third time another hour down the road so you then had to wait for two hours for a different bus to come meet you since for some stupid reason you didn’t turn around and head back for the station after breaking down a second time. On a related note, I don’t recommend the tour bus company Movíl Tours.

After we got in 3 hours late, this happened (bus is blocking 4 lanes of traffic)

What’s so cool about Huaraz? It’s surrounded by snow-capped mountains! So if you’re a big fan of really tall pointy cold things, Huaraz is a pretty cool place. You can do all sorts of hiking, enjoy hot springs, see glacial lagoons, climb mountains. But we chose something even cooler: we ate a glacier.

OM NOM NOM

Well, not a whole one. The Pastoruri glacier sits at about 17,000 feet which is easily the highest I’ve ever been while at rest with respect to the Earth’s momentum. To get there, you take a tourist bus up into the mountains, right to the foot of the glacier. Then you just have to hike up a few hundred meters, although at that altitude it feels like your heart is an alien baby trying to break through your ribcage. When you reach the glacier, you can scrape ice right off the top and it’s just like the crushed ice from a snow cone. If you ever go, I seriously recommend bringing some flavored syrup and those little conical paper cups to make your own snow cones.

A little cherry syrup would have been perfect

Sadly, the Pastoruri is actually disappearing right before our eyes. It’s the world’s largest tropical glacier (the mountain range near Huaraz also includes the world’s tallest tropical mountain, Huascarán). For now. I’m glad I got to see it. When the polar caps finally melt, I’ll get to reverently tell my grandkids about it the same way our grandparents told us about black and white televisions.

The rest of our time in Huaraz was very pleasant and relaxing. It has a smaller-town feel (very different from the metropolis of Lima), with lots of cute markets and good places to eat. We stayed at a very cute B&B just outside of town run by a man named Gilf (pronounced with a hard G!!!) and his wife Maruja. From our room you could see Huascarán in the distance. It was absolutely lovely, and I highly recommend it.

This was the view from our room at the B&B

I’ve got some more cool stuff to write about our Huaraz trip, but I think it deserves its own post so I’ll just leave you with some more photos.

Collect the whole set

A brief excuse for the long delay since the last post: I’m working on a new project which includes setting up a new website and home for this blog, which I was hoping to have done a couple weeks ago but of course the planning fallacy has reared its ugly head again. Anyway, I was trying to hold off on updating until I had the new site ready, but I’ll give you a brief rundown now.

We already have two Africats and a North Americat, so how could we say no to a South Americat?
Actually, the story is a lot more complex than that, but at the moment we are the proud parents and caregivers for a tiny little kitten that Sandra found dying in the hallway of a hospital here in Lima (yes, IN the hospital). He’s been seeing the vet daily for a week getting IV fluids, antibiotics, blood tests, etc, plus all the yummy cat food he can stomach at home. When we got him he had a very swollen abdomen (which was drained a few days ago) and he’s still very jaundiced and hemolitic. We still don’t know exactly what’s wrong (vet suspects exposure to something poisonous at the hospital) or if he’ll survive, but we’re doing our best. His temporary name is Squeaker, which provides quite a bit of amusement when Spanish speakers attempt to spell it phonetically. And now all we need is an Antarcticat to complete the set.

One awesome note: veterinary care here is excellent and cheap. The place we’ve taken Squeaker has staff who speak English, they’re efficient and knowledgeable and kind, and the cost of medicine is clearly socialized because a round of antibiotics and IV fluids plus the cost of the visit is 30 soles or about $10.80.

His leg is fine, the bandage is just to protect the IV catheter

Here's his skinny butt looking all crabby at dad for taking these pictures

Besides cat rescue, I’ve been working on a bunch of web design projects, both through the regular job I have here plus some contracts. I hoping to turn that into a real business that can pay for all the new gadgets I want. On a related note, if you’re in the market for a new crock pot please hold off on buying one for a few weeks.

In two weeks’ time we’ll be home for the wedding of one of my best friends. We’ll only be back for a week, and a lot of that time will be taken up by the wedding (I’m a groomsman), so if you want a chance to see us I would recommend booking that ahead of time, as my parents have already so intelligently done. Appointments can be scheduled by email.

The food in Peru continues to be awesome. Some friends recently took us to try Anticuchos, which were incredible, although not for the faint of heart (har har). And yesterday mangoes were on sale at the grocery store for 69 céntimos per kilo, aka 11 cents per pound. You can put that in your dollar menu pipe and smoke it.

Ditching RSS (mostly) for Twitter

So I recently decided to “clean up” my online life, meaning trying to cut down on distractions and wasted time online, inspired by a slew of signals (including this xkcd blag). The first thing I did was cut out all the RSS feeds in Google Reader that posted more than a few times a day (e.g. techcrunch, engadget, boingboing). I still have a lot of blogs that I follow (~30) but combined they only account for a few posts per day, that I check once in the morning and once at night.

I replaced that by following a bunch of new twitter accounts for those same sites and related people. To avoid getting completely bogged down by twitter instead of rss, I set my twitter client to automatically scroll as new tweets arrived, and created a couple lists for “don’t miss” important accounts (close friends). I still scroll back sometimes, usually if I’ve been disconnected for a while, which doesn’t happen too often. But overall I’m just checking it passively, and any interesting links go into a separate browser window that I go through at a convenient break time instead of on the spot.

The big question was, would I still get the news I was interested in? Would I miss anything? Would I actually cut down on my “wasted” internet browsing? Initial results say yes, who knows?, and definitely. I mean, if I’m missing something, I’m not really going to know that I missed it, am I? (For those of you sitting in the back, if you can’t hear me please raise your hand.) But I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. And it also seems like I spend less time reviewing things that don’t interest me. The twitter character limit and not being able to immediately view posts like in GReader makes skimming over unimportant content quicker. Or more avoidable, or something. Overall, it feels like a definite productivity improvement.

Now trying to decide what the next productivity change should be. Thinking of “dark” hours (i.e. times when I’m not allowed on the computer, or maybe just the internet), which is difficult since my work is so closely tied to being on the computer. Thoughts?

All hail the old lady food huts

Ok, now let me tell you about something that makes Lima, in the words of Shakespeare, “The sheezey for reezy.”

There is an entire economy here built up around what I will term “mobile purchases,” and I don’t mean cellphone apps. Essentially, when you’re out and about, there’s a vast network of people selling cheap goods on the street, anything from newspapers to ice cream to meat on a stick. Because of the congested traffic, on any major road (and on some minor ones) there will be people waiting near the stoplights who will wander through the packed cars offering goods. Stuck on a hot, cramped bus? Don’t worry, here comes the guy with the cold Inca Cola – just pay through the window and enjoy. On the larger buses, people will get on at one stop with goods to sell to the passengers, exiting at the next stop. On the right buses, you can even buy apple pie!

There are also food carts, similar to a hot-dog stand in the U.S., where you can buy sandwiches, empanadas, drinks (with some very interesting options: I have yet to work up the courage to try to Quinoa-based drink), fried donuts and other desserts, etc. And then, there are the “Old lady food huts” as I have affectionately named them in my head. They’re basically newspaper stands converted to hold all kinds of candy, drinks, and other goods. They’re staffed without fail by old Peruvian women, and there’s pretty much one on every corner. This means you are never more than a block away from being able to purchase a cold Coke (1.70 soles, or about $0.60 for a ~13oz bottle – not even a bad deal!). No need to go into a store. No need for a receipt. Instant refreshment.

If I end up going broke here, it won’t be because of all the fancy restaurants, it’ll be because I can’t help myself with all of the impulse food purchases while merely commuting to work. I can already picture this being the biggest culture shock when I get home. “You mean I’m in the middle of downtown and I have to walk four blocks to the nearest convenience store for a Coke? WHERE IS MY OLD LADY FOOD HUT?!?!”

Thank you for bringing that to my attention

So far, I really love living in Lima, but it’s always easier to whine about petty annoyances and grievances than flowers and sunshine. Did I say whine? I meant write.

And so I’m going to write about taxis in Lima, and more specifically the behavior of taxi drivers. Now, I’ve never before lived in a big city and so I don’t have a reference for whether this is common or just an aspect of Lima’s culture (although I expect the latter, which I’ll try to write more about in the future), but taxi drivers here seem to operate on the assumption that every pedestrian is a blind idiot just waiting to be rescued by a cab. As if we’ve suddenly found ourselves far from our desired destination with no means of transport, unable to carry ourselves under our own power for more than a block, and ignorant of any means of attracting the attention of a driver-for-pay. If only one of these dozens of vehicles passing by could give us some kind of sign that they might be of service!

You know, besides the one on the roof that says “Taxi.”

Walk down any street in Lima and taxi drivers will employ several means of signaling to you that they could pick up your sorry ass off the street. The most common and favored means is honking, which is done with gleeful abandon. I’m sure that, being an obvious gringo (I stand out even more than most because I haven’t shaved), I get honked at more than my fair share, but I’ve observed that it is not limited to foreigners. It’s standard practice for a taxi to honk at someone walking down the sidewalk, then honk at the next person 20 paces further down the sidewalk, then at the next person, etc. I imagine the thought process of the driver goes something like:

“Hey, look at that foolish guy strolling down the street. He appears almost blissfully unaware that he could be riding in my taxi right now. In fact, I don’t think he even realizes that I’m here, so absorbed as he is with the sip of Coca-cola he’s taking whilst gazing skyward. The only logical thing to do is engage my horn, which surely will snare his attention and thus immediately bring recognition to the error of his ways, and he will gladly board my taxi that, while currently headed in the opposite direction along a one-way road, will nonetheless bear him swiftly to his destination, be it across town or just around the corner.

Well, that’s strange. He neither reacted to my horn nor showed any other visible signs of distress at not having a taxi at his immediate disposal. That poor soul, who no doubt shall…oh ho, there’s another pedestrian not 10 meters distant from the first, who I can only assume in no way had the remotest chance of hearing my honk which was so just so rudely neglected. Surely this time my taxi’s dulcet trumpet will attract a passenger.

But I’ll honk thrice in quick succession just to make sure.”

What bothers me the most is what must be lost on the taxi drivers, namely the absurdity of honking to get people’s attention in a huge, traffic-dense urban area where the sound of a car horn has become so banal that after merely a month I’m more aware of their absence than their presence.

Wait, I take it back. What bothers me the most is that I can’t help feeling that this behavior somehow reflects on how I am perceived by Peruvian taxi drivers. Because the key point is that, as in other big cities I’ve visited, there is a perfectly sane and standard method of flagging down a taxi if you want one: you stick your hand out and look at them, and maybe even say “taxi” (although here that is never necessary). I have yet to see a person in Lima get in a taxi that has pulled over for them without having first clearly signaled for a taxi. On the other hand, I have yet to witness a person who has made no obvious signs of wanting a taxi respond to their being honked at. I am not stupid. I am not lost or confused. I am willing and able to make gestures with my arms and stand stationary on the curb and make eye contact. If I want a taxi, I will seek one out. Otherwise, leave me alone.

Other methods taxi drivers use to try to get your attention: flashing their headlights on and off, waving out the window, slowing down as they approach you, and yelling “taxi” from their window or while standing next to their parked car. The best is when they park along some side street, and when I turn my head to make sure it is clear of traffic to cross, they yell “taxi” and point at the car. If I’m here long enough for my Spanish to be awesome and my understanding of Peruvian humor/sarcasm to be refined, I’ll take the opportunity to yell back something along the lines of “No shit, Sherlock.” Until then I’ll just keep walking.

P.S. I won’t even get into the issue of cab fares, which are fluid and negotiable and always skew high for foreigners, since that isn’t limited to taxis or to Peru, but is also a source of agitation. And again, for the record, living in Lima has been awesome so far. I’m just not a fan of the taxis.