Living la vida Loki

Serendipitously, I ended up in La Paz just in time for the festival of El Gran Poder - the biggest party of the year. It started at 6 in the morning and kept on going until midnight, with a massive parade, coordinated dancing routines, and drinking in the streets. But instead of going out, I was laid up in the hostel all day long, nursing my stomach bug and reading a Russian translation of The Razor´s Edge that I found in the book exchange downstairs. One of the best days so far.

I´ve been staying at the Loki La Paz - a party hostel that took over a respectable hotel in an old colonial building a few years back. There are a few of them on the gringo trail, and they know their market well - there´s a bar which is the focal point of social life; breakfast is served until 1; and leaving the building is basically optional. This one in particular is reminiscent of a Harry Potter movie because there are so many British kids on gap year running around.

So in between altitude weariness, stomach upsets, and sociable neighbors, I´ve gotten to know the hostel a whole lot better than La Paz. But I hear it´s a nice town.

Once More to the Lake

Last night I said good bye to Peru and got on an overnight bus headed to Copacabana - a small lakeside town 8 km past the Bolivian border. Copa feels a lot more like a lakeside resort than does industrial Puno, so it´s a pleasant stop on the way to La Paz. This afternoon I climbed the local lookout point, where I ran into a very pleasant group of Irish, Portuguese, and Australian tourists, who shared their wine and adventures with me as we watched the sun set over the lake. We didn´t quite make it to the sunset because we ran out of wine and it got to be freezing.

You guys are a chatty bunch. If you don´t feel like leaving a comment, drop me a personal note.

"Once More to the Lake" is one of my favorite E.B. White essays.

Machu Picchu and the Festival of Ollantaytambo

.. or, ML <3's>

We spent all day Friday at Machu Picchu.

The archeological site itself is flanked by two mountains - Machu Picchu (old peak) and Huayna Picchu (young peak). At the advice of our newly minted friend with the eco-lodges, we made a beeline for Machu Picchu as soon as we got there. It takes a bit over an hour to get up to the top, so a lot of visitors choose not to climb it - which made for a surprisingly serene morning. On the way up, I developed a crush on Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor who found Machu Picchu back in 1911. We had our picnic at the top, looking down to the ruins and all around at more massive green mountains. Once again we had a bit of magic - there were a group of Peruvian hippies at the very top worshiping the mountain a la Inca rituals. They were singing quiet beautiful songs and playing the recorder - music that I would have smirked at anywhere else.

Reinforced by a Snickers bar and a Coke, we tackled the ruins in the afternoon. To my amazement, they weren't nearly as overrun as I'd expected - there was room to contemplate what it might have looked like once.

For Saturday and Sunday we headed to Ollantaytambo, a small town in the Sacred Valley where Lizz had been volunteering. Ollanta had their annual fiesta in honor of the town´s patron saint and we wanted to be there for the party.

Ollantaytambo is the kind of small town where if you want to talk to someone, you go out on the street until you bump into them (usually takes under 15 minutes). But they really rally for the festival, which as of last year has been designated 'national heritage'. The fiesta is a really curious mix of Catholic worship with local tradition - group dances performed around the clock in elaborate costumes and masks. By Sunday, the party got rowdy - there was a corrida in a local bull ring (we couldn´t stomach it after they thrust a terrified 10 year old boy atop a buckling donkey) and drinking everywhere. The highlight was the cargos - barbeques or massive cookouts - that each dancing troupe organized. They were extremely welcoming, so we hit up three, where we were treated to large chunks of meat, beer, and dancing. A good note to end on.

Chapter II, in which our heroes climb mountains, plunge into rivers, ride horses, and visit an ancient Inca citadel

Last week was so full of adventures that we didn't have time for a write-up. But now that Lizz is en route to hot showers and summer weather, I have time to sit here in my long johns and fill you all in.

Part I. The night that never happened
I'm referring here to the Saturday night in Cusco when we went to bed early instead of meeting a group of Limenos in town for the weekend and staying up at the discoteca until sunrise.

Part II. Choquequirao
Monday through Thursday saw us on a 4 day trek to the ruins of Choquequirao. Choquequirao is only about 30% excavated and is supposed to be what Machu Picchu was in the '60s - i.e. hard to get to and relatively untrampled.
It was indeed a pretty tough hike, with a 1500m descent to a river valley followed by 1500m climb on the other side. The sun was also to be reckoned with - mostly by getting a very early start. All of this was made tolerable by the fact that we had horses to carry our stuff and a cook to keep us well supplied: both left us with time and energy to look around.
What is most awe inspiring about the Andes is sheer scale. I've seen green mountain sides before, and snow covered peaks, and big stretches of sky - but never so grandiose, or extending so far as here. Our last camp site was particularly magical - overlooking the river valley where we had been earlier that day, facing west as the sun set behind the mountains. It was warm enough to take the rain cover off, so we slept with the starry sky over us.
We also met a man from Cusco who was doing the trek with his friends - all of whom, as it turned out, were prominent in some way. One of them is the biggest asparagus exporter in the world. Yep. The other owns eco-lodges throughout the Andes and has served as Dalai Lama's guide in Peru. (I'm hoping he'll set me up with an internship next summer.)

Peruvians in general have been very friendly and willing to help, which makes all the difference to this traveler.

Don´t give me that altitude

Turns out I´m not as immune to altitude as I thought - my body is taking its time adjusting. What that means in practice is that I get to laze around and drink coca tea several times a day, so I´m not complaining. (Actually, Lizz says I complain all the time.)

I arrived in Cusco on Tuesday afternoon after a whopping 24 hours of travel time. Our hostel is up a serious set of stairs which at this altitude is a bitch, but there´s a beautiful view over the city. Turns out that the unofficial Israeli corner is also right near us, so we ended up having dinner among a bunch of twenty-year-old Hebrew speakers eating hummus and shakshouka.

On Wednesday, we went up to the Saqsayhuaman (or, as Lizz calls it, "sexywoman") ruins outside Cusco, where our guide´s name was Vladimir Ilyich - that´s after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, for those of you who don´t know. His brother´s name is Ernesto Che Guevara, and they have a sister named after a Bulgarian communist too. Saqsayhuaman was an Incan temple of the Sun, which the Spanish took apart to use for their own cathedral in the city´s plaza. Vladimir made a point of referring to the Spanish as "invasores" rather than "conquistadores" and told us how chicha is really made.

Highlight of the day - finding the local food market and the hundreds of juice ladies.

Tuesday night we caught a night bus to Puno, a town on Lake Titicaca - the largest high altitude lake in the world (or so we read). After killing a couple hours in the bus terminal, we caught the slowest boat ever to Amantani. To my admittedly inexperienced eye, Amantani looked a lot like an island in the Mediterranean - well groomed, green, nice looking houses amid beautiful blue water. At night our hosts dressed us up in local wear, and we went to the town dance where French tourists outnumbered the locals.

Highlight of the day - seeing an insane number of stars from a whole new hemisphere. We saw the Southern Cross too. (Cathy, all I could think about looking at those stars was BSG - also they have cookies here called FRAC.)

Now we´re back in Puno waiting for our classy cama bus back to Cusco after burning all our money on alpaca sweaters, scarves, hats, and socks.