That Sexy Woman in the Sacred Valley

This second post was the inspiration I needed to sort through a large tub into which I tossed any and all paper as we unpacked. It wasn't all that easy at times to write down notes both for this blog and to help me remember details of the many things we saw and did. (On the Uros Islands, someone asked if I were writing a book. I got the same question once as I was taking notes in Vietnam.) And I took notes on all sorts of paper including boxed lunches.

Next up on the tour was were two days in the Sacred Valley, the area around Cusco.

Side Note #1: People checking the weather on their iPhones (via wi-fi) noted two listings: Cusco and Cuzco. Upon investigation, we learned that in adapting the name to Spanish, the "s" was changed to a "z." "Cusco" is how the locals spell it today, so that's what I'll do, too.

The morning flight from Lima to Cusco was uneventful, fortunately. The tour usually picked up our luggage, so all we had to do upon arrival was hit "the facilities" and get on the bus, where we met our local guide, Fernando.

Side Note #2: Using the "facilities," banos, or bathrooms took some getting used to. Occasionally, one had to pay to pee. The price was usually quite reasonable, typically 1 sol (about 30 cents) or two people for $1.00 US. The admission ticket you were given was good for return visits; I ended up with several different ones in the pockets of various pairs of pants. Paying to use a rest room is something I've done before. Not flushing the toilet paper is not. There was always a small waste receptacle into which you deposited your used toilet paper. The aim is keeping the toilet paper out of the water the sewage goes back into. If I research this a bit and find out whether flushing the paper really is bad for the environment, I'll let you know.

We actually would not be staying in Cusco until after we had visited the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Cusco itself is at an altitude of 11,155 feet, we were going to be going a bit higher, as can be seen here.

Our first stop was to the north of Cusco, at Sacsayhuaman or as Fernando told us as a memory aid, "sexy woman." The Quechua name actually means "satisfied falcon." Sacsayhuaman introduced us to something we would see countless times in the next few days--rock walls made without mortar. And we aren't talking small rocks either.

Stone walls were often constructed as terraces, with the height of each level often being seven or more feet.

 

The size of the rocks at the base of each level was truly amazing. I can't really imagine how
they would have moved rocks that size and placed them so precisely.

 As the walls got higher, the size of the rocks used decreased. Still, they fit together nicely even without mortar.

We had been told assorted signs of altitude sickness--sore throat, headache, fatigue, sleep problems--and told to stay hydrated. Coca tea and chocolate were other "remedies" offered. Most importantly, though, we were told to let someone know if we were feeling any of the symptoms. One member of the tour did require help at Sacsayhuaman, but that was quickly taken care of so that she could get back to enjoying the tour.

Just driving, well, riding on the bus, through the countryside was interesting. For example, the husband had never heard of quinoa, seen growing here.

By the time the trip was over, though, he'd eaten a great deal of it. We all knew that we would, when having lunch with a Peruvian family, be offered roasted or fried cuy (that's Spanish for guinea pig). It was a little disconcerting, though, to see some actually on a spit.

Our hotel home for two nights in the Sacred Valley was a reworked monastery. It was perfectly natural, then, for the next day to begin with an "Offering to the Earth" ceremony conducted by a local shaman. Various natural ingredients including three coca leaves each of us had held were combined

into a packet to be offered to Pachamama or Mother Earth.

The offering was done via fire.

 

The ceremony finished, we set off on what may have been the busiest day we had. Our first stop was the Urubamba Market. It reminded me a lot of the markets we saw in Vietnam, something I hope to elaborate on in a future post.

We had been told that if we wanted to take a photo of someone we should offer them 1 sol, which I did to get the following shots.

 

 

Look at the size of the squash in the photo below--one that has been cut and another that has not. In general, vegetables were much larger there than they are here. Carrots might be three inches in diameter at the base.

The hand below belongs to the husband who was salivating at the size of the batches of quacamole these over-sized avocados would make.

There are 38 varieties of corn grown in Peru, and this is one of them. It can be made into chicha morada, a sweet, non-alcoholic beverage that we had with lunch several times.

After the market, we went west to Ollantaytambo, which some guide books hold is the best preserved of all the Inca settlements. Best preserved or not, it is definitely impressive both from the bottom

and the top.

You did not have to trek to the top of the many terraces to see one of the more unusual features of Ollantaytambo, a face in the side of the mountain on the other side of the valley.

 If you can't see it in the photo above, try the one below.

As was getting to feel usual, the placement of the rocks to meet each other with no mortar in between was pretty darn amazing.

 

How they got the top rock to curve into the seam between the two blocks below it is beyond my comprehension. Never mind that some of the large rocks do not appear to have been mined in the valley below.

I mentioned above that this was a very busy day. Next up was lunch, which turned out to be more a feast than a mere meal. When they brought out some massive platters of meat, we assumed it was the main course and dug right in (except the beef heart--the texture did not at all appeal to me). It turned out that those meats were just part of an appetizer course. Dinner was included at the hotel that night, but more than one of us said we would be skipping it. (The husband and I had soup and a fruit salad.)

There was not just lunch, though; there was an exhibition of Peruvian horses doing their signature four-beat, lateral gait known as the paso llano. We were told that the gait was ideal for someone learning to ride in that it is quite smooth and steady. The four riders did an elaborate program crossing this way and that, diagonally, around the perimeter of a square, and so on. My photos would not do it justice, so they're staying on my computer.

 

But it wasn't just horses. There was also dance. First, a female dancer danced with a horse and rider. Later, a male dancer joined in.

 

After lunch, horses, and dance, we went to what I had most been anticipating that day, a weaving demonstration. It took place in the town of Chinchero. When I posted some photos on Facebook showing how to wrap and carry a baby, one of my friends queried, "Chinchero?" I guess it's a popular place.

The wool is dyed using all natural ingredients.

The wool is washed, again using only natural ingredients.

 Then the fleece can be spun into yarn. No spinning wheels here; drop spindles are used.

 The spun yarn can then be dyed using those natural dyes shown above.

We also had an interesting demo on how various dye substances combine to give different shades or even different colors.

 And the dye does not have to be used only on wool or fabric.

 

 

Although we were told that the dye would stay on for 24 hours, it wasn't there at breakfast the next morning. The yarn, once dyed, is woven into all sorts of things--bags, shawls, table runners (what I purchased), even bedspreads.

 

 

That finished off the tourist part of the day. We went back to the hotel, some to pisco sours and a band playing for happy hour, some to a light dinner, some just to be. I think we all may have been a wee bit excited given that the next day would hold what most of us had come to see, Machu Picchu.

Best. Trip. Ever.

The title above was the Facebook status I posted as we were leaving Peru. The husband and I were in total agreement that the trip we were finishing was our best trip yet. (I'm excluding our two stays in Vietnam since those were more the living-there variety.) This was also the first trip we'd taken as a guided tour. We had a travel agent help us getting things schedule on our 2014 visit to Australia, but not in a guided tour sense.

We booked our trip through Odysseys Unlimited, a company I chose chiefly because of its insistence on small groups; the Treasures of Peru tour we took was capped at 24 people; it turned out that only 19 showed up. It was a good group. I had thought that I, at 60, might be the youngest in the group, but there was a mother-daughter pair in which the daughter was 50. Besides the mother-daughter pair, there were seven married couples, and three solo travelers. As one might expect, we got to know some people better than others. I will admit that I never really learned everybody's name though I did learn which two people went together as a couple.

Our tour consisted of 11 days in Lima, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Cusco, and Lake Titicaca. We and two other couples had also booked an extension of three days in the Amazonian rain forest after the principal tour ended. Most of the folks on the tour were retired; the husband and I may have been the only still-employed ones there. We shared names and other information at the organizational meeting on the morning of the first day (most of us had arrived the evening before). We also met Sheila, our tour director. After the formalities, we visited some vestiges of colonial Lima, beginning with the central plaza.

There were various school groups there, identifiable by their school uniforms. It was not clear what these folks were doing on a side street just off the plaza; your guess is as good as mine.

Down a side street off the plaza, we visited Casa Aliaga, one of the oldest homes in Lima. The land for this house was a gift to the Aliaga family from Francisco Pizarro. It is hard to say how large the house is, as we were only allowed to visit part of it. That part included this courtyard.

There was also an library that was not too well-lit, but still quite impressive.

After Casa Aliaga, we visited the Larco Herrera Museum, which brought back some memories of the Phallological Museum in Reykjavik (described at the very end of this post from 2016). These were not biological specimens, though, but a collection of pre-Columbian ceramics.

Don't you just love the facial expression in the second photo?

While many aspects of Peru (to be covered  in a later post), one thing reminded me instead of Rome. There, it seems as if any excavation to build a new building will uncover some sort of archaeological find. We passed something like that in Lima, set right beside an expressway.

We had the evening free, but taking photos off four cameras (we each carried two) and getting things in line for the next day's flight to Cusco and the Sacred Valley meant no blogging in "real" time, a state that continued throughout the tour.

Random Musings

I thought that for a lark I would play with blogging on my Amazon Fire. The small keyboard is a challenge, as would be adding photos. I think I'll save photos for another day.

Today was supposed to be somewhat special. The husband took the sons to run a 63-mile race. They took my car meaning I'm housebound which was supposed to be a good thing. I could run, pin a small quilt and perhaps even get it quilted. Then younger son told me I could use normal batting on the housewarming quit I'm making them. Great, methinks, I can get it pinned. Wham! No new packs of batting. I'll piece some leftovers together into the large piece I needed. Did that and it was not a quick process. Despite my best efforts, there were too many puckers; the vatting would not lie flat.

Okay. I'll run. I got down to the road, a half mile, and one of the subdivision dogs usually kept inside was out and his owner was not at home. This dog has never bothered me when I have Biscuit with me, but supposedly went after another subdivision dog. He came toward me in a less than friendly manner, at which point I stopped running and walked slowly by him. So much for running.

By this time, most of the day was gone. Needing to accomplish something, anything, I reverted to pinning the small quilt I'd originally planned to work on. At least that sent well, though as usual I looked at the back and thought I could/should have gotten it pristenely flat which I had not. I've set it aside and will decide tomorrow whether to leave it be or re-do it.

News here has been covering a Central Virginian who's been diagnosed with rabies. The person got bit by a dog in India six weeks ago and did nothing about it. If you've known me once 2009, then you know that I know something about this, having been bitten by a dog in Cambodia. It's too late, obviously, but I want to shake this person and yell at them about seeking treatment. You do not gamble with something that essentially has no treatment. I can't stop thinking how this could have been prevented, how easily it could have been prevented.

Experiment done. It would take practice, but I could do this. The day, while not being totally redeemed, has gotten better. Insert smile emoji here.

Lots of Little

The joy of travel ... lots of little things to do on the way to ones departure, some more important than others. Drugs of various forms were important. In my case, that meant a tetanus booster, typhoid, yellow fever, and malarone (an anti-malarial) and a general antibiotic that I hope not to need. For the husband, it was the same along with flu and pneumonia, two vaccines I already had. The yellow fever was the dicey one. There's a shortage, and by mid-summer, the vaccine may no longer be available in the US. The tour company we're using doesn't require travelers to get any vaccinations, but we're going with what the CDC.

Our burner computer presents another little thing. I'm doing this post because I had to make sure I could get to the "new post" option. It seems that I dhad id not write down or otherwise note what my password was for Blogger. Fingers crossed that as long as I logged into Gmail I could get one Blogger. As we say at the 6:00 am workout, hooyah! It worked.

I still need to assemble all the camera gear--extra batteries chargers, memory cards--and figure out what is going in my carry-on and what the husband is carrying. Our carry-on bags will, I expect, be heavier than the ones we check. I pulled out almost all of the clothes I plan to take as well as the accessories that will go in my checked bag, and I expect my checked bag will weigh not much more than 12 pounds. When we get to the rainforest visit at the end of the tour, there is a luggage weight limit of 35 pounds for the boat trip up the Amazon. I do not expect we will have trouble with that and, should we, there is a secure place at which the overweight stuff will be kept until we come back downriver.

Since older son is our house and Biscuit sitter, I will not need to write down all the info I would leave a non-familial house sitter. Still, there's emergency contacts, Biscuit's medication schedule, and plant-watering to cover, and likely more when I start into it.

There are more items, but the above are enough for me to test out Blogger on the burner, which has been named Hiram in honor of Hiram Bingham. I'm going to trust that adding photos will present no unexpected difficulties.