Cuzco

I have arrived in Cuzco in Southern Peru. The city is very beautiful, with alleyways lined with precise Inca foundations, and colonial cathedrals surrounding large, green plazas. It was once the capital of the Incan empire and the oldest continuously inhabited city in South America. It was designed to form the shape of a puma, with a large, jagged-walled fortress as the head. Of course the city has grown over the past several hundred years, filling the valley and it appears to be more of an elongated amoeba shape than a puma at this point. When the spanish conquered the city, they tore down most of the imperial buildings and used the stone for their own structures. However, they often left the foundations and built on top of them, recognizing their strength in this earthquake-prone region. As a result, there are buildings where precise inca foundations are topped by a comparatively messy pile of rocks held together with mud that the spaniards built. 

I saw some very interesting cathedrals there, but you weren't allowed to take pictures of the interiors. In one the interior was entirely covered in mirrors, while still keeping the traditional shapes of the carved wooden interiors I had seen all over the country. They were placed there to entice the native population into the church to worship. Another church had a pulpit carved from a single tree trunk, with several heretics, including John Calvin and Martin Luther, holding up the weight of the pulpit and grimacing.  

I spent several days walking around town before and after my trek to Macchu Pichu, and I took hundreds of pictures, but here are the highlights:

Every church has a statue of the Virgin or Christ that gets paraded around town on an annual basis. They are incredibly heavy, as you can see by how much the men are struggling to maneuver it around the city streets.

The Jesuit church on the main plaza.

New cat, old stone

The famous 12-sided stone

Spanish stone

The Archbishop's residence

Museo del Convento da la Merced is the best museum of religious art that I visited. Most of the religious art that I saw wasn't executed particularly well, and while a picture of Mary squirting her breast milk into a grown man's mouth is certainly interesting the first few times you see it, as a whole, these types of paintings are pretty boring. However, this museum had detailed explanations of the iconography of the paintings which was quite interesting, and was in a stunning building. 

There is a silver busker in Portland.
I found his brother!

Lake Churup

I woke up early one morning not really knowing what I would be doing that day. I had two options: Lake Wilcacocha was an easy hike that I could do alone, and Lake Churup was more strenuous and slightly dangerous and would need to find people to go with. Both trailheads could be reached via ´´combi,´´ the small town public transportation method of packing 15 people into a minivan. At seven in the morning I went to the corner where I had been told the combis gathered. I saw vans, but all the drivers were sleeping, and there were no gringos - and no local passengers for that matter. I flagged down a taxi driver and asked him how to get to Lake Wilcacocha  and he said combis left from a corner three blocks away. I walked there, and since there were still no gringos, I decided to go to Lake Wilcacocha, only to have the drivers there tell me that I needed a different corner, about a 15 minute walk away, to get there. I started walking, and by lucky coincidence saw a group of Israelies that had been on the hike to Laguna 69 two days earlier. I shouted across the street ´´Where are you going?´´ They responded ´´Lake Churup!´´ So I joined their group for the day. 

The hike to Churup was very strenuous. Steep portions of the trail were covered in loose rocks that slipped out from under your feet during the descent, and some places were so steep that there were cables attached to the rocks to aid the ascent. By the time I got back to the hostal at 5 that afternoon, I was barely able to haul my tired body up the steps to my room, where I managed to stay awake only until 7:30.

It was windy.

For a sense of scale, check out the people on the bottom left.
This it the portion of the trail that had cables.

Made it!

We started at the base of this valley.

Laguna 69

I had planned to do a 4-day trek outside of Huaraz, but due to an illness in the group and a late-night ER visit, I wasn't able to go. I couldn't have gone later, but they wouldn't refund any of my money, and I didn't feel like paying for it twice. Instead, I went on a couple of day hikes. The first was Laguna 69, a stunning blue glacial lake at 4650 meters elevation. The hike travels by two other large lakes, glaciated peaks, and lots of bovines. I felt the effects of the altitude. I was a little light-headed, sleepy, and out of breath, but I made it safely. The sight of the glowing blue lake made the trek well worth it. 

So let the photo bomb begin:

The first of many lakes

Bashful donkey

I could have sat here and looked at this view for hours. 

Made it!

Peruvian Cuisine

Ok, so I ate guinea pig. I'd been told "It tastes like chicken." No, it doesn't. It tastes like you would expect a rodent to taste, but greasier and with a thick, crispy, leathery skin. 

I also had a Pisco Sour, a mixture of grape brandy, lime, syrup, egg whites, and bitters. The first one I tried was not unlike having a pissed-off ex-marine lime walk up and punch you in the mouth. The second one was not nearly as strong and quite refreshing.

Huaraz

I took the night bus from Trujillo into the Cordillera Blanca and I woke up just as it was getting light. I could faintly see the silhouette of razor-edged peaks and meandering streams as they reflected the rapidly brightening sky. I lack the technology to capture anything in that light, but pretty soon I got this picture:

Copper colored grasslands with glaciated peaks in the background, and shallow streams flowing through flat floodplains. This landscape is so new to me, and stunningly beautiful. I went on several hikes while in the area, and they are awesome enough to warrant their own posts, so there are many other pictures to come.

Trujillo and the ruins

I spent two nights in the city of Trujillo after a lengthy bus ride from Guayaquil in Ecuador. The northern coast of Peru is a flat desert with a few rocky hills rising out of the sand, but there are some excellent ruins right outside of town and the city has a nice colonial core. The central plaza is surrounded by stucco buildings painted the traditional colors of brick red, mustard yellow, and vivid blue, which you can see in the following pictures.

I visited several ruins that are in the area. The first were the "Temples of the sun and moon," which is actually a misnomer. The first archaeologists to work on the structures attributed an Incan religion to them, but in fact they pre-exist the Inca. The smaller of the two buildings, or the "temple of the moon," has been excavated and the colors are remarkably well preserved because the people built one temple on top of the other, filling in the rooms of the lower levels with bricks before building a larger, taller one over it. The frescoes were protected from the elements because of this and the intact colors are quite a rarity among ruins.

The "temple of the sun." It hasn't been excavated due to lack of funds.
The remains of a city are visible on the left side. 

The second ruin of Chan Chan was an other worldly experience. Massive stucco walls surrounding immense courtyards and narrow hallways, and everything you see is the color of sand. It felt like I was in Egypt rather than Peru. The Chimu who built it were another pre-Inca culture, and the complex that I toured was one of thirteen palaces, and the third largest, if I remember right.

Those are squirrels running along the base of the wall, and the lines above represent waves.

The diamond shapes represent fishing nets.

Photographers: you need to do a fashion shoot here.
Your model should wear a turquoise dress.

They dug wells within each of the palace complexes.
The green island in the ocean of sand heightens the other-worldliness.