Hello Peru

The flight from Amsterdam to Lima on KLM was great. Great service, great food and great comfort. First time we’ve flown the Boeing 777. One unusual thing was that since it was a twelve-hour flight and we left at noon and we gained six hours via time zones…the flight landed in Lima at 6:00 p.m. Thus, we needed to stay awake the entire flight in order to avoid being up all night in Lima. Wasn’t too hard to do as we watched five movies in between the excellent meals and drinks. We stayed right at the airport since our flight south to Cusco left at 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Nice place.

We had arranged for a taxi to meet us at Cusco for the two-hour drive to Ollataytambo, Peru…our staging hotel for the trek to Machu Pichu. Marco the taxi man was dutifully holding the sign as we exited the terminal. Can’t beat this for $50 U.S. Cusco is 11,000 feet above sea level and thus tourists are warned about altitude sickness. Sure enough, as soon as we stepped off the plane, Bill was VERY lightheaded and had to hold on to Andrea for the walk to the baggage area. Fortunately, there was a huge bowl of coca leaves there (Inca antidote to altitude sickness) to suck on which immediately brought him back down to earth.

Pictures from the taxi ride, our driver Marcos was very good. Both hands on the wheel and no talking or texting while driving. 

The ride was chaotic out of Cusco but after awhile, we began to enter the “sacred valley” the seventy mile stretch of unbelievable beauty where the Incas lived from six-hundred to one thousand years ago and the ruins of their communities lie. No one knows for sure why the empire disappeared but the theory is that when the Spaniards showed up in the 1500’s, they brought smallpox and other diseases along with them and combined with their plundering and violence, literally wiped out the entire empire.

Hotel courtyard

Our hotel is right at the train station and our room has a balcony that is literally ten feet above the trains as they take tourists to and from the thirty-mile trip to the entrance to Machu Pichu. The hotel claims it is the oldest continuing operating hotel in the scared valley and we believe it. VERY quaint and authentic.

View from our room

View of Mt. Victoria.  It is the highest mountain in Peru at  6,768 metres (22,205 feet) 

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Today, we climbed the Inca ruins of Ollataytambo which was an incredible experience to see. It truly is amazing how these people built entire communities on the sides of the mountains in the Andes and did so with precision and of such quality that it has held up over many hundred of years. Today was a preview of what we’ll see tomorrow…the crown jewel of Inca ruins.

Al Pacca's

Storage rooms.

Room used for storage of goods

Obviously the Inca's were very small.

We climbed all the way to the top! 

View form the top:  How on earth did they ever build these??

Agricultural slopes; the rock walls were made to prevent erosion and they grew their crops on the flat grassy part.  

The town had a central plaza and we wandered thru all the small streets and marveled at how "dated" we felt. 

Selling goods to the people traveling on the train

The town is full of these canals of water, from the melting icecaps on the surrounding mountains.

This is their mode of transportation. In Thailand, they were called Tuk-Tuk's. Here they are called Mototaxis.  There are two main types of mototaxi in Peru. The most common is the converted motorcycle with the bench seat in the rear. In some towns, you’ll also see the small-wheeled trimovil, a three-wheeler with a more rigid, almost totally enclosed cabin. 

Andrea has been practicing her Spanish and took a quick Berlitz refresher course on the plane ride from Amsterdam to Lima. 

We went into a shop looking at paintings and there was a little girl there. Andrea struck up a conversation. The conversation went like this:

Andrea:  Cual is tu nombre?             Translation:  What is your name 

Little girl:  Mi nombre as Andreá.     Translation: My name is Andreá

Andrea:  Que!!  Mi nombre is Andrea tambien!!     Translation: What? My name is Andrea too!! 

Little girl:  De Verdad?        Translation: Really

Andrea: Si, foto juntos?        Translation: Yes, photo together? 

Little girl:  Si!                        Translation:  Yes! 

Andrea and Andreá

Fruit fan adorning doorways

By the way, we were able to find a laundry in this little town, which, for $14 got all our clothes washed and dried for the last time on this trip! We also enjoyed sampling the Peruvian cuisine, heavy in meats, potatoes and corn. One thing that we’ve passed up on the menu is the roasted giuana pig after we saw a bunch of them running around the floor of a shop we were in. It’ll be “Cuy” on the menu if you’re ever down this way and want to partake!

Running around the floor of a shop.  We thought they were pets!!

Cooked guinea pig as displayed on the menu: 

Almost all of the house have bulls on the top. This tradition is one of good fortune and protection for the house and the families that inhabit it. This tradition comes from the time of the Incas. 

To read more about this fascinating city and the Inca people, click here:

Ollantaytambo