Buenos Dias:)
It has been a pretty quiet week, mostly migrating South on buses toward colder and colder weather. Our last day in Cusco we went to Pisac, yet another amazing site in the Sacred Valley. Derrik and I had visited Pisac on our trip to Peru during the rainy season but it was like seeing a totally different place during the dry season (winter is their dry season). It was also quite the treck with the sun beating down on us as we climbed the 1000 meter mountainside while already starting at 3000 meters! That night we caught a bus for Puno. Unfortunately, the old lady behind me was quite large and refused to let me put my seat back all the way. I tried to explain that I had paid for a full reclining seat so if she can't fit she should move but my broken spanish and her stuborness weren't going to make that happen, so I spent the next 6 hours trying to sleep straight up. We arrived in Puno at 5am so we hung out and grabbed some breakfast until we could check in to our hostal. We spent the day wondering around the tiny city of Puno located right on the banks of Lake Titicaca. Joining a boat tour of the lake, we were able to see and learn more about this beautiful place. Lake Titicaca is the largest lake in South America and straddles the border of Peru and Bolivia. On our tour, we were able to visit the Uros islands. These islands are pretty amazing because they are artificial islands. That's right, they are all man made! Using the reeds that grow in the lake, people are able to use their roots and the shafts to build large floating islands for their family and friends. This system first began during the time of the Incans when another minority population was trying to flee persecution by the Incas. They first began by living on reed boats off the shore of Puno and eventually began building these islands. Many people still live on them too which was very cool to see. Later, the tour took us to Taquile Island, a place famous for its tradition and handicrafts. It is an interesting place because it is not the women who knit the handicrafts, but the men, and they are quite famous for it. Some of the things they knit are hats for the community. These hats are worn for a very specific purpose: to show marital status. If a person is wearing a red hat it means that they are married, but a red with white hat means that they are single. Children wear colorful hats and leaders wear colorful hats with a black one over it. While we were ther, the people of Taquile were at the end of a festival to celebrate the new year (the Andean year just began on the 1st). They had a huge performance in the plaza where the married men and women danced and played music in fancy costumes. The women wore large colorful peticoats and the men wore pants and colorful shirsts in addition to wearing their wife's braided hair attached to their heads! Its amazing to see these traditions still being practiced today. The next day we took a 6 hour day bus to Arequipa. This major city is so beautiful and likely much more wealthy than the places we have been so far. We have just been wondering through the city, eating good ceviche and shopping mostly. We might take a trip to Colca canyon, which is deeper than the Grande Canyon, or climb the active volcano Misti located right next to the city in the next couple days.. the adventure continues:)
Love you guys!
Friday, August 8, 2014
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Planes, Buses, and Police Cars
Hello lovely family,
Well it has been a week since my last blog so I will try to update you all on the adventures of the past 7 days. My first day I spent in Lima; usually I would go on to say how much I hate the capital city but this trip really allowed me to see the wonderful sights The City of Kings has to offer. The first couple nights I stayed in Barranco, the soho district of Lima. It was a beautiful area with beach access via a large staircase that scale the nearly vertical cliffs. The area was equipped with many tourist restaurants including a 19th century train car turned cafe and even a Dominos pizza. Lima was very Americanized with Radioshacks, Chilis, and Burger Kings sprawled across the modern part of the city. It was a bit quiet in my hostel in Barranco though so I switched to one in MiraFlores. This trendy and upscale part of the city had beautiful homes, a gym, and a mall built into the cliffside with all your Gucci and Prada needs. I went to an ancient site in the middle of the city that is over 1600 years old and made only from adobe bricks. Connstructed by the pre-Incans, the pyramid was built in layers every twenty years as a tribute to the shark, ruler of the sea. It was really an amazing site to see. My last two mornings in Lima I ran on the boardwalk along the coast, it was a very peaceful place and it helped me come to terms with my new life in South America. Tuesday I boarded a plane to Cusco to meet Alice and Wrenna. I have fallen in love with Cusco all over again; the sights and the people are so wonderful and welcoming. My first night we went out to eat and our waiter treated us to some free pisco sours. "For the beautiful ladies," he said, although the altitude was making them a bit stronger than usual and I had to turn down a few. The next day Alice was sick from the either some water or food she had so we spent most of the day taking care of her. Thursday she was feeling better so we went on a walking tour to Saqsaywaman and some more sacred sites higher up in the hills. It was really amazing to see the sites again but with a local guide, Erick, to tell us the history, and with such enthusiasm. Finally, yesterday we got up early and took a bus to Moray and Maras. It took about three hours to get there and it was a pretty amazing show of Incan achitecture and agricultural inovation as it was terraces used for agriculture but made into perfect spiraling circles. Unfortunately, Wrenna lost her phone in the taxi so we spent much of the day trying to get it back. Thats how we came to be in the back of a police car hunting down the taxi driver as we suspected he found it and was going to sell it. We weren't able to catch him before he headed back to Cusco to likely do just that, and although it was pretty upsetting for the both of them we continued our journey. We wanted to visit some salt flats we had heard were very cool but as we were low on money we decided to walk. It took an hour to walk through the desert like farm land, locals riding donkeys past us along the way, but we made it and the Salinas de Maras but it was worth it. A thousand pools of salt flats covered a mountain side in classic scaled fashion and it was amazing to learn that no company owned them, each family in Maras owned from 1-50 depending on their wealth and would come to harvest the salt each weekend. Walking through and past the flats, we went to Urubamba to catch a long bus back to Cusco. The day had been very long so we went to bed early and slept in this morning. Today we decided to keep it low key and just explore more of the city of Cusco. I will try to write more often to keep these shorter but there is always something to be doing! I love you guys, talk to you soon!
Well it has been a week since my last blog so I will try to update you all on the adventures of the past 7 days. My first day I spent in Lima; usually I would go on to say how much I hate the capital city but this trip really allowed me to see the wonderful sights The City of Kings has to offer. The first couple nights I stayed in Barranco, the soho district of Lima. It was a beautiful area with beach access via a large staircase that scale the nearly vertical cliffs. The area was equipped with many tourist restaurants including a 19th century train car turned cafe and even a Dominos pizza. Lima was very Americanized with Radioshacks, Chilis, and Burger Kings sprawled across the modern part of the city. It was a bit quiet in my hostel in Barranco though so I switched to one in MiraFlores. This trendy and upscale part of the city had beautiful homes, a gym, and a mall built into the cliffside with all your Gucci and Prada needs. I went to an ancient site in the middle of the city that is over 1600 years old and made only from adobe bricks. Connstructed by the pre-Incans, the pyramid was built in layers every twenty years as a tribute to the shark, ruler of the sea. It was really an amazing site to see. My last two mornings in Lima I ran on the boardwalk along the coast, it was a very peaceful place and it helped me come to terms with my new life in South America. Tuesday I boarded a plane to Cusco to meet Alice and Wrenna. I have fallen in love with Cusco all over again; the sights and the people are so wonderful and welcoming. My first night we went out to eat and our waiter treated us to some free pisco sours. "For the beautiful ladies," he said, although the altitude was making them a bit stronger than usual and I had to turn down a few. The next day Alice was sick from the either some water or food she had so we spent most of the day taking care of her. Thursday she was feeling better so we went on a walking tour to Saqsaywaman and some more sacred sites higher up in the hills. It was really amazing to see the sites again but with a local guide, Erick, to tell us the history, and with such enthusiasm. Finally, yesterday we got up early and took a bus to Moray and Maras. It took about three hours to get there and it was a pretty amazing show of Incan achitecture and agricultural inovation as it was terraces used for agriculture but made into perfect spiraling circles. Unfortunately, Wrenna lost her phone in the taxi so we spent much of the day trying to get it back. Thats how we came to be in the back of a police car hunting down the taxi driver as we suspected he found it and was going to sell it. We weren't able to catch him before he headed back to Cusco to likely do just that, and although it was pretty upsetting for the both of them we continued our journey. We wanted to visit some salt flats we had heard were very cool but as we were low on money we decided to walk. It took an hour to walk through the desert like farm land, locals riding donkeys past us along the way, but we made it and the Salinas de Maras but it was worth it. A thousand pools of salt flats covered a mountain side in classic scaled fashion and it was amazing to learn that no company owned them, each family in Maras owned from 1-50 depending on their wealth and would come to harvest the salt each weekend. Walking through and past the flats, we went to Urubamba to catch a long bus back to Cusco. The day had been very long so we went to bed early and slept in this morning. Today we decided to keep it low key and just explore more of the city of Cusco. I will try to write more often to keep these shorter but there is always something to be doing! I love you guys, talk to you soon!
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