For Al (Yes, You)

Dear Diary, It´s been quite some time since I´ve written.

Isn´t that how every single journal entry you started as a child went? No commitment to writing, just a whim. I swear, diary, I´m going to write every day from now on. We´re still best friends, aren´t we, diary?

Oh, boy...

Well, I am back in Buenos Aires. To very briefly sum up the last couple of weeks:

1. I spent five amazing days in the jungle in Peru. Lots of creepy crawlies and humid air and muddy jungle walks. We saw monkeys and spiders and flowers and birds and frogs. It was wild. Literally! And, as I was joking with the rest of the group about how I was expecting someone to walk out of the kitchen with a birthday cake with my name on it, someone walked out of the kitchen with a beautiful chocolate cake that read, "Happy Day Hellen". Unbelievable! They also served us all a free Pisco Sour. Que amable.

2. Two days after returning from the jungle, we boarded the first of four buses that would eventually take us back to Buenos Aires. We left Cusco on a Friday around 2:30 PM, arriving in Tacna, Peru around 7:30 AM on Saturday. (This, by the way, was quite possibly the most miserable bus ride of my entire life. The bus was ICE cold. No heat whatsoever. And we had no blankets or anything. And there were irritating Peruvians piled up in the stairway and the aisles, so I had to crawl over them all to get to the baño. We thought we´d booked with a good company, but it turns out that silly company sold us a bus ticket for another, much shittier company. Why? That REALLY ticked me off and made me feel many not so nice things about the country of Peru. Good thing I was on my way out.) We then crossed the border into Chile and killed the entire day in Arica, Chile, waiting for the next night bus. By Sunday evening, we had made it to Salta, Argentina. (After a ridiculous three hour layover in some little town that began at 5 AM. What do you do when the bus just dumps you out in a town you don´t know at 5 AM? You take a cab to the Esso TigerMart, apparently, where you drink coffees and eat hame and cheeses and play I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE and watch the sun come up.) We finally took a night in a hostel in Salta, and then Monday afternoon, we were back on another overnight bus, delivering us to Buenos Aires by 9 AM Tuesday morning. Yowsers. That´s travel for you.

3. What am I doing in Buenos Aires? Well, a few things. First, I came to escort my traveling companion to the airport. Bjorn left for Sweden yesterday morning, and well, it´s not the same without him. That´s all I´ll say, Diary. Let´s not get personal. Second, I am doing a month-long TEFL certification program, starting TODAY! TEFL is Teaching of English as a Foreign Language, and the certification is required by most English language schools around the world. So, no, I am not planning to come home anytime soon, at least not for a permanent stay. But, who knows. My dear mother says I don´t have to plan the rest of my life, just the next six months or so. Well, I´ve got June planned. Maybe in a couple weeks I´ll figure out July. Uncertainty has a certain beauty to it, don´t you think?

That is all for tonight, Diary. I am sleepy, and I need an ice cream bar. I´m not sure about our future, Diary. I´m trying to stay loyal to you, but my head is distracted and I haven´t felt like writing much lately. Perhaps the new program will give me some new fodder for you. I hope so.

Much love to you all.

Machu Picchu

Blog, blog. I do not feel like talking to you today. But I´m-a-gonna do it anyways.

So! Big last few days. After I left you in Aguas Calientes, I wandered off to find the trailhead for Cerro Putukusi. My guidebook said it was a 90 minute - one way - hike up to some amazing views of both Machu Picchu and the town of Aguas Calientes itself. Well, I thought, I have nothing else to do this afternoon. A three hour hike ought to fill the time nicely.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

After about fifteen minutes on the trail, I encountered a father and son, father climbing up a very steep ladder, son taking his photo from below. Son was giving father posing directions in a distinctly redneck American accent; father was replying in Spanish. I waited for the photo shoot to end, and then fell into a conversation with these two.

Javier, the father, is from Mexico. He and his wife moved to Greenesboro, North Carolina, where they had Carmen, the son. I know Greensboro! I said. We know Tennessee! they said.

So what´s the deal with these ladders? I asked them. Not sure, but apparently there are at least four of them, they told me. They had just run into a group who had turned back after one of its members got vertigo halfway up the first ladder.

I was lucky to meet these two when I did, because I feel certain that had I not had people to hike with, I would not have motivated myself to get up all of these ladders. They were scary! And scarier than climbing up them was the prospect of climbing back down them. When we finally reached the top of the mountain, an old Peruvian man told me that there are 270 ladder steps in total. Insanity.

But, as most difficult things are, it was totally worth it. Anyone can visit Machu Picchu. Anyone can take the train to Aguas Calientes and then the bus up to Machu Picchu. But not anyone can see Machu Picchu from the top of Putukusi. The view was outstanding. I have pictures, though they do not do it justice. We passed about an hour up there, without hardly noticing the time. Just sitting on a rock, staring off out at the wonder in front of us, marveling at man, at history, at nature.

While sitting up there, an Asian man joined us. It appeared he had been running up the mountain. I watched him as he stopped to catch his breath, but I noticed that he didn´t even bother to look across the valley. He took a few pictures of his watch (maybe to mark how quickly he ran up the mountain?) and then started to head back down. He walked past me, stopped, looked out in the direction I was looking, and then said, "Is that Machu Picchu?" Uhhh...yep, I said. (Duh.) He took out his camera, shot one picture, then ran back down. If that´s not efficiency, I don´t know what is. But what is the point?

(On the subject of Asians and an obsession with efficiency, there was this Asian gal staying at my hostal in Easter Island who only stayed for two nights! Whyyyy on earth would you bother coming to Easter Island for only two days? I do not understand this. Just get there, get your pictures to show to your family and friends, and then move on? At what point are you experiencing or enjoying ANYTHING? Or are you just trying to check things off a list?)

The climb back down to Aguas Calientes wasn´t as bad as I thought it might be, but those ladders are dangerous. I´m telling you! If you misplaced one hand or one foot, you would just be in free fall. Not good.

The following morning, against everyone´s urgings for me to wake at an ungodly hour to climb up to Machu Picchu, I woke at the reasonable hour of 5:30 AM. I walked out of my hostel at 6:15, and was at Machu Picchu at 7:40. Again, I was very thankful for beautiful scenery to keep me going. It was about 20 minutes walk to the trailhead, and then a solid hour of just walking up stone steps. And after the previous day´s hike, my legs were in shock. What are you trying to do to us?!

But I´m glad I chose to walk instead of take the bus. Anyone who hikes knows that the pain of the trek is in pursuit of that big something at the top. Just getting to the top wouldn´t be half as exciting if you didn´t put in any effort to get there. And so it was with Machu Picchu. I felt like I needed to exert a little energy before seeing the great ruins.

And they were great. Let me first tell you that a whopping 80% of the ruins are reconstructed. That´s correct. Almost all of it was not there when it was discovered back in 1911. So...part of me wants to be disappointed by that, and another part of me says that the place is still incredible.

Most stunning about Machu Picchu is simply its location. These mountains are breathtakingly beautiful. Stunning. Amazing. Green, lush, jewels twinkling in a valley. It´s a perfect place. So, for that reason, it makes sense that the Incas wanted to build a sacred city there, in such a sacred place. But, for the Incas to have the confidence and the vision to build an entire city on top of one of these mountains is really ludicrous, when you see them. This was no easy construction process. The mountain is hard to get to. Period. Harder, I would imagine, when you are carrying huge granite boulders. It´s mind-boggling, this place.

And it is sacred. If only for the beauty of its natural surroundings, it is sacred. My guide, a Peruvian, in telling the story of the discovery of Machu Picchu, made a point to say that although history says that it was found in 1911 by Hiram Bingham (a Yale University professor of South American History), it had never been lost by the Peruvian people. They ALWAYS knew it was there but chose to keep it to themselves, with good reason. It was their special place, their history, the work of their ancestors. Why would they want to tell anyone about this kind of secret?

But, somebody told the secret to Hiram Bingham, and then he took all the goodies from the ruins back to Yale. I like my country just fine, but it is just wrong that we have these things in our possession. They are not ours! The Peruvians are apparently trying to get them back, and I hope they do, even if it is our loss.

A local told me that to really know it, you need an entire week at Machu Picchu. The ruins themselves are like a maze; I kept wandering around, getting stuck, backtracking, getting lost again. And then, outside of the main ruins, there are a few other sites, a hike away, worth looking at. But I didn´t have a week (not to mention that it costs $45 US to get in for one day), so I spent about 6 hours there, just soaking it in. You can take a tour, you can have every bit and piece of the ruins explained to you, but in the end, what you really want to do when you get there, is sit down, hang your legs off the side of the mountain, and just breathe. Just get a good look at everything. Just try to get your head around what you´re seeing and what it means.

It´s magnificent, really. I hope you can all go someday. (And soon! Before they start building hotels up there. I wouldn´t put it past the power of the tourist.)

And now I´m back in Cusco, taking a day off, doing laundry, playing on the internet, regrouping.

We are off to the Manu Biosphere Reserve tomorrow, which is part of the Peruvian jungle. We are staying for five days and will spend our days looking at flora and fauna and our evenings in little jungle lodges (with hammocks!). I cannot wait, for a number of reasons. I cannot wait to get away from the commotion of the tourism industry around here. I cannot wait to feel isolated again. I cannot wait to get back down to sea level where it´s nice and toasty warm. I cannot wait to begin my 28th year, laying in a hammock, listening to the sounds of the jungle.

We´ll be back on Wednesday. Til then, my dears. Much love.

And...please check out photos of the last few weeks - http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.bucy . Unfortunately, to my GREAT frustration, my camera was out of batteries when I arrived to the top of Pisac, so I have no photos of that day. Lesson learned, I suppose!

Pisac en Español

(From yesterday...)

I have had a wonderful Spanish-speaking day. Bjorn left to do the Inca Trail yesterday morning, so I have been flying solo the past two days. I have nothing but nice things to say about my traveling companion, but...my opportunities for Spanish speaking are significantly limited when traveling with him (or really anyone, for that matter). When you are alone, you´re much more likely to get into random conversations with locals than when you´re busy talking to your traveling companion. Twosomes are notoriously evil, you know - who wants to bother trying to butt in?

Anyway, around 9 AM this morning, I boarded a collectivo (really cheap mini-bus, basically) for Pisac, a town about 40 kilometers outside of Cusco. A lovely lady who appeared to be about 65 sat down in the seat next to me, whipped out her knitting, and started chatting with me, en Español.

Turns out she is a retired - but still working - teacher of Quechua, which is the language of the indigenous people here in Peru, as best I can explain it. We discussed various places in the United States, as she has visited several times (though she told me about how COLD Dallas was, which makes me think she was confused about something); we discussed my interest in getting a job down this-a-ways; she asked me if I thought she could get a job as a nanny and cook in the States somewhere. (I kept trying to figure out how I could justify getting her to be MY nanny and cook, but I guess I can´t really afford that. She would be the BEST grandmother-nanny AND she could help me with my knitting. Que bueno.)

Anyway, I got off at Pisac, we wished each other "suerte" and that was that.

Pisac is a town famous for its market (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, 8-3) and for its incredible ruins. I wandered through the market for about 15 minutes before being overwhelmed, as usual, by the mass amounts of stuff for sale and the relentless salespeople. Buy this, señorita. NO, por favor!

The ruins begin after about an hour´s climb up, up, up into the mountains. The mountains are astonishingly beautiful, which is good, because the climb is serious. Stone step after stone step. After about 45 minutes, I heard a flute playing behind me and turned to find a local, climbing up the stairs behind me. How on earth this man could use his lungs for any purpose other than heave-hoing up the mountain, I could not fathom. As soon as he caught up with me, I stopped and said "Adelante" - go ahead. Then, assuming I could speak Spanish, he launched into a conversation with me. Turns out he is a guide around Pisac and climbs the freaking mountain every day. I guess THAT´S why his lungs are in good enough shape to allow him to play the flute while climbing.

As we progressed up the mountain at about the same pace, he started telling me about various points of interest along the way, and before I knew it, he was giving me a personal tour around the ruins. I AM special. I knew it.

It was such a nice, random thing to happen, especially because as we came upon the main ruins, the swarms of tourists finally came into view. I was silly to think I was practically alone up there - of course the tourists don´t climb the mountain; they ride the bus to the parking lot on the other side. Ugh! All of the tourists were getting led around in groups of twenty - see this! look at that! moving right along! things to do! I shouldn´t be negative about tourists because, well, I am one, and I´ve participated in many large-group tours myself, but can´t I feel cool for getting my own Spanish-speaking guide for FREE (though I did tip him afterwards) and for speaking Spanish to him? Yes I can.

The ruins were incredible. Really. I´ve seen some ruins around Cusco that were kinda "eh" but this was Machu Picchu type stuff (or so I think - I will know for sure on Thursday). In fact, my guide informed me that Pisac was actually much larger than Machu Picchu, with much finer architecture and stone-work, but Machu Picchu didn´t get destroyed by the Spaniards, whereas Pisac mostly did. I hope those Spaniards feel awfully guilty about the things they did to this incredibly intelligent people. I hope they feel worse than we do about what we did to the natives we found on OUR land.

The way these folks were able to put stones together in the 1500s is unbelievable. The structures are impecable, perfect. Each one fits with the next exactly - just like perfectly cut pieces of a puzzle. I cannot fathom how they did this.

We were standing on top of the mountain, my guide and I, when he asked me if I meditated. No, I said. Not really (unless you count talking to yourself alot - does that count?). Well, he told me, this is a very sacred place. Has lots of good and powerful energy. Every summer pilgrims flock here to soak up the good vibes. And I can see why. This place did have a certain something. I´ll call it the "god spirit", to steal from Mr. Cloniger´s words at Margo and David´s wedding. Just take a moment, close your eyes, take in the sounds and the smells, and there it is. The god spirit.

My favorite part of the entire ruins was the old Inca cemetary. And it´s not at all what you think of when you think cemetary. You basically look across this huge gorge, and all over the cliff opposite you are little bitty holes, carved into the mud. And each of those holes is a grave! Each person was buried in the fetal position, my guide told me, because the Inkas believed in rebirth. Never in my life has the concept of dust to dust made so much sense. These people weren´t buried in a box, keeping that dirty dirt away from their bodies. They were buried right into the side of a mountain - right into the earth, right back to the Earth Mother.

After a quick jaunt back down the mountain, I lunched at a restaurant on the plaza and ordered the "menu" which always makes me feel a bit adventurous and cool. Every restaurant offers a set menu, which includes soup and entree and sometimes a drink or dessert. It´s a much better deal than ordering something off the regular menu, but, of course, you have little choice as to what you eat. So as the other tourists lunched on chicken sandwiches, I dug into some lamb (i think?) dish with yummy frijoles on the side. Tasty!

******

I am in the small town of Aguas Calientes today, the jumping off point for Macchu Picchu. It´s an itty bitty town that´s been put together for the purpose of dealing with the masses of tourists visiting the ruins, and I don´t imagine I will do much of anything today, aside from maybe a short hike and a visit to the hot springs. And lots of reading! Tomorrow morning, I will wake early to climb (or maybe bus - I can´t decide) up to Macchu Picchu. It´s only about an hour´s walk, I believe, but everyone´s pushing me to go at like 5 AM, so as to beat the crowds to the ruins. But...waking before 5 AM to hike...not appealing to me in any way, especially since I´m going to be able to stay at the ruins until 5 PM tomorrow. I think I´ll like these ruins much more if they do not require my waking at such a ridiculous hour. We´ll see.

I hope the big MP will be worth it because it sure has gotten a lot of hype. This area is beautiful enough for me, I think, so I doubt I´ll be let down by the ruins. Will report back on Friday, before heading into the jungle on Saturday morning! (That´s another story entirely...)

Much love, my loves.

A Country For Old Men

Peru has got me thinking about old folks. Who they are. What they do with their time. What fulfills them, and do they look for fulfilment at their age?

Maybe it´s an odd thing to be considering down here in Peru, in cultural heaven. Peru presents me with great ruins and amazing stonework and recovered pots and mummies and I want to talk about the old folks.

Two weeks ago, in Arequipa, Bjorn wanted to get a haircut. He needed one pretty badly - his hair was quite long. He looked just like a Nashville high-schooler, long curls hanging down out of his baseball cap. So, we thought, let´s just pop in somewhere and get a trim. We survived my big cut in Santiago, so surely this would be just as simple.

We spotted a classic-looking barber shop and were greeted at the door by an old Peruvian man. I´d guess he was 75. His Spanish was fast and his hands were furiously motioning us in, pointing at Bjorn´s blond curls as if to say, "I can fix that!" There was a middle-aged man in the seat, his wife waiting for him, and he graciously let Bjorn ahead of him, saying he was in no rush.

We assessed the situation. This middle-aged man had very presentable looking hair and was clearly a repeat customer, so the old barber must still have some skills with the hair, right?

Bjorn sat. The barber was all over him, fluffing his hair, showing him a picture of him and Hulk Hogan (no idea), wildly gesturing. I could not understand a word of this man´s Spanish. Not a word. But I went over and tried to help explain what Bjorn wanted - maybe an inch. "Of course, of course" the barber seemed to say. "I understand completely. Now, little lady, why don´t you have a seat, peruse a magazine. Nothing to worry about!"

I don´t know too much about cutting hair, I suppose, but I do know that when you´re just getting a trim, the electric razor probably isn´t the first step in the process. But that´s what Mr. Barber went with. Just combing Bjorn´s hair out, and then skimming the razor over it.

The next few minutes were hysterical. For me, that is, sitting in my chair, watching Mr. Barber butcher poor Bjorn´s hair.

I felt like I was watching your stereotypical old Italian man make a pizza pie-a. It was art. A couple inches off over here, maybe just 1/2 inch over here. Just whatever inspired him at the moment. Hair was flying, and he blabbered on and on during the entirety of the cut. I don´t know what he was saying, but I´m certain it was utter nonsense.

Bjorn´s hair was destroyed. The one inch off he asked for turned into at least two, probably three, and well, that´s a lot for a guy. I suppose it would be one thing if it was short but well done, but it was too short and totally uneven. Bjorn´s right ear was completely cleared of hair (as in, you can see a good bit of skin around it), but the left ear looked normal, more or less, with hair coming down to the ear. The top was left long - about twice as long as the sides - and there were random long pieces sticking out all over the place.

Of course, I did all the right things (except for laughing during the entire cut - maybe that wasn´t the right thing?). I told Bjorn it wasn´t that bad. It´s just hair. It´ll grow. Give it a week - you´ll be totally used to it. He was not happy, however. My words could not make the situation better.

Why is this man still in business? He has NO business cutting hair. He must be basically blind behind his glasses - why should he be allowed to apply scissors to innocent people´s hair?

Last week, when we arrived at the Huancayo bus terminal, an elderly man (probably 80ish) approached us, asking if we needed a taxi. Well, yes, that would be great, thanks. He led us out to his car - about as old as he was - and we sat in the backseat for several minutes as he tried to get his baby started. Each time he failed to get the ignition to turn over, he´d look back at us. "Un momento!" After several momentos, the car finally croaked to life, chugga-chugging onto the dark and rainy streets of Huancayo.

I swear to you this man could not see ten feet in front of him! He drove about 15 miles per hour the entire time, came dangerously close to parked cars and pedestrians, and began his turns far too early, only to slam on the breaks when he realized he was turning the car into a curb instead of a street.

Again, I ask you, why is this man still in business? He has NO business driving people around. This isn´t just vanity, not just a bad haircut at stake. This is personal safety!

I am making light of these situations, maybe, but really it´s quite sad. The answer is clearly that both of these men need to work. They need to support themselves just like I do, just like everyone does. They didn´t get to retire. They couldn´t possibly have put enough money away during their younger years to spare themselves (and their customers) from working straight through to the end.

And, oh, the pride with which both of these men worked was heart- breaking. They both acted as if they were 30 - a bit cocky, a pro. Do they know, deep down, that they should not be working? Do they know their days of productivity are over? And if they do know, how do they go on?

But they go on because they have to. Homelessness is not an option they want to turn to. So they try to fool the public (and maybe themselves) into believeing they´re still as good at barbering, at chauffering, as they once were.

What if you didn´t have retirement to look forward to? What, then?

Heavy stuff. Lo siento!

I am in Cusco now and probably will be here for a while. There´s gobs to do here (aside from seeing Macchu Picchu, which I am doing on Thursday), so it ought to be a good time. Heaps of ruins today and white water rafting tomorrow and who knows what else.

Hope everyone´s enjoying a lovely May weekend! Much love.

And The Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day

My poor, neglected blog.

I don´t know why I´ve been so lazy on the blog the last week or so. Maybe it´s been a generally blah week, and nothing has moved me to the point of writing.

Nazca was a big blah for me. The town itself is just a big nothing - it´s only "thing" is the Nazca Lines. (If you are not sure what those are, click here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines) The lines are spread out across the desert, and the popular (and probably best) way to see them is from the air, so there are a bazillion tourist agencies that line up these short plane rides over the desert.

The airplane ride itself was more interesting to me than the lines. I don´t think I´ve even been in a really small plane before, so it was a bit terrifying for me. Not to mention, our guide in the Colca Canyon had warned us about how dangerous these planes are. Old planes! People dying all the time!

But, every other tourist in Nazca seemed okay with it, so I hoped for the best, climbed on into the six-person plane, and off we went! The pilot made me extremely nervous. He would take his hands off the steering wheel and turn his whole body around to talk to us. EYES ON THE ROAD! I wanted to say. He´d point out the various things below us - monkeys, hummingbirds, whales, etc. - and make circles around them a few times, making certain we all got a glimpse.

While the lines were impressive on some levels, I´m not quite buying into it all yet. I have a seriously hard time believing that these lines (which are really just rocks and dirt) have survived all this time. Don´t you think the Nazca people just might touch them up every now and then to keep the tourism industry going? Everything I´ve seen so far in terms of old ruins - temples, villages, etc. - has been at least partially reconstructed, so why would it be any different with these lines?

Maybe I was unimpressed because my previous knowledge of these lines had something to do with alien encounters, so when I found out that aliens had not, in fact, created these things, I said, BORING.

I´ve been in the grand city of Lima since Wednesday, and I still can´t say exactly how I feel about it. Usually, when I visit a new city, I am immediately struck with a sense of the place - something of its character or personality. But for whatever reason, Lima has not struck me in any specific way. After two days here, I realized I could not verbalize how I felt about the city, after someone asked me. "I have no idea," I wanted to say. "It´s just kinda Blah." Or put on my best American Valley Girl accent and said, "Ugh. Whatevs. Your city has, like, zero personality."

Maybe it´s not that the city has zero personality - it has too many personalities to keep up with. It has no idea who it is. It has the historic and beautiful town center, full of pale yellow cathedrals and pigeons and guards in blue and maroon uniforms. It has the modern suburb of Miraflores, full of cinemas and shopping centers and Starbucks and sushi restaurants. It has pre-Inca mounds, that rise out of the earth right in the middle of the city, a ever-present reminder of the past. It has gorgeous, out of my dreams, colonial mansions - everywhere! I want one! A different kind of past. It has skyscrapers. Bank buildings. KPMG logos. It has people - about 34 million of them (and that´s more than TWICE as many as in the 70s!). It has growth! And, of course, it has poverty. The nice part of the city - the part all the nice tourist folks get to see - is in stark contrast to the neighborhoods surrounding. Dirt roads, mud brick homes without windows.

How is this all one city?

So I´ve felt out of sorts here. Not sure what to make of it all. Wandering through a huge shopping complex the other day, I couldn´t hardly believe I was in the same country as poor Puno. The people themselves could not salut the same flag, could they? They are having such different experiences of the same country! One´s drinking Starbucks and working at KPMG, while the other just got electricity a year ago! I suppose it´s the same in the US, isn´t it?

And one last blah thing about Lima, for my Blah blog post. This weather! Every single morning, I wake to white-gray skies, totally cloud covered. Usually, by around 2 PM, the sun has managed to break through, leaving the afternoon sunny with blue skies. But ugh! What a way to spend HALF of your day...every day!

Onto the Central Sierras this afternoon. Going to make a few stops in Huancayo and Ayacucho before heading onto Cusco on Friday. Will be in touch, I promise! Much love.

The Colca Canyon

Finalmente! I DO love Peru, after all.

I returned yesterday from a three day trek through the Colca Canyon, and I finally feel like I´ve gotten a genuine taste of Peru. (It´s possible that I just didn´t WANT poverty-striken Puno to be my real taste, but oh well...)

Monday morning, we boarded a 6 AM bus that would take us to Chivay, Peru, about six hours from Arequipa. The bus system is...interesting. We had paid for a ticket from Arequipa to Chivay, but throughout the entire ride, we acted like a local bus, making irritatingly frequent stops to pick up Peruvians and drive them a mile or two down the road. I suppose this is a very nice service for these folks - many of them are women carrying heavy loads of produce or children - but it was slow going. They stuffed the bus to the gills, too, allowing people to stand in the aisles. It felt like a Manhattan bus - I will endure having a stranger´s armpit in my face if it means I can have a seat!

We arrived at the town of Cabana Conde, a town of 3,000, around noon. We had booked the entire trip, everything from bus tickets to meals to guide service included, through the owner of the hostel in Arequipa. The owner seemed so kind and enthused, that we figured it would be better (and cheaper) than going through a big tour company, so we signed on, hoping for the best. The owner had put us on the bus that morning, instructing us to go to Mumia Juanita´s Restaurant when we arrived and to ask for Edwin, our guide-to-be. Easy enough, we thought.

But, when we found the sign for Mumia Juanita´s, the restaurant was boarded up, closed, and seemed to have been that way for quite a while. We stood there in the middle of the dirt road, surounded by hand-made brick homes and Peruvians eyeing is curiously.

Well, let´s just ask someone, I said. Somehow, saying "Edwin" was enough. Someone knew him and went off to find him for us. Thank goodness! We never actually met Edwin, but another guide from his "company" came to find us, and led us to a restaurant where lunch was awaiting us. The restaurant was full of other gringos with their guides, so we breathed a sigh of relief. It was all going to be okay!

It was better than okay, as it turned out. This little excursion will be joining my "best of" list.

At about 1:30 that afternoon, after a filling rice and beans lunch, Juan Carlos, Bjorn, and I, headed off into the canyon. I don´t know how we managed to get a guide to ourselves, but we did, and it was great. Although Juan Carlos didn´t speak hardly any English, I put my comprehension skills to work and managed to get most of what he told us.

He told us about Cabana Conde, about how poor everyone is, about how the governor in Lima doesn´t help the small villages, about how they are forgotten. He told us about every single plant we passed, practically. This guy knew his stuff! I am so envious of people who have this kind of knowledge - who can name trees and plants and birds, who can tell me which plants are edible and which aren´t, who know the medicinal purposes of the plants. He knew everything. Plants for stomach ache, plants for broken bones, plants for impotence, plants for constipation, plants for sore throat. You name it, you can find a cure growing naturally in Peru. He even showed us the original dyes used to color lipsticks that we Americans used to use! There are insects that attache themselves to cacti, creating a white, powdery, fungus type of thing on the cactus. When you scrape one of these little pods of insects off and smash them between your fingers, blood squits out - Ooooh! Just my color! Juan Carlos made us smear the blood on our arms, demonstrating its dyeing capabilites. (Seriously, it was just my color, except that I never wear makeup out here...)

This canyon boasts a 1000 meter drop from top to bottom, and on that first day, we climed all 1000 meters down. It was fairly steep, but the paths make nice zig-zags across the mountain, so it doesn´t get too overwhelming. The way down took us about three hours, and we passed a ton of locals, making their daily (!) trek up the canyon. I cannot imagine getting used to this. These were not young folks, either. Most of them were over the age of 50, I´d say, and I´m not dissing anyone in that age group, but I´m just saying, wow! They were carrying heavy loads in most cases, and in all cases, they were wearing sandals!

We arrived at the pueblo of San Juan, where we were to spend the first night. San Juan consists of about five families. Yep, that´s it. There are several "hospedajes" for trekkers like me, and I´m guessing the money that comes in from these keeps the pueblo alive. Otherwise, these folks are subsisting purely on their own efforts. Farming, farming, and more farming.

I may have said that I felt like I was in a remote location when I was on Easter Island, but the remoteness of Easter Island is NOTHING compared to these little pueblos in the Colca Canyon. These villages only got electricity as of ONE YEAR AGO! Wow. On some levels, I cannot understand what makes these people stay here, and on others, I get it completely. These people don´t have any easy time of it, by any means. Their survival is utterly up to their own efforts. But they are missing out on so many delightful modern-world worries - it must be such a peaceful life out there in the canyon.

We feasted on alpaca meat that first night. I can´t say I liked it, really, but I also didn´t really taste it after the first bite. I covered it up rather well with rice and salt. Poor alpaca. You´re so pretty. I´m so sorry to eat you.

The next morning we had some delicious pancakes (one of my favorite Spanish words, by the way - panqueque, pronounced pan-kay-kay) and were on our way out of San Juan by 7:45 AM. We passed through two other small pueblos, one of which we stopped in to visit the local "museo". The museum consisted of one small room, full of tools and stuffed animals and clothing. A sweet local lady, whose gums clung to her remaining 6 or so teeth, gave us a tour through the museum - basically just explaining what each item was. After the tour, she let us sample some of her own home-grown peaches and cactus fruit, showed us the baby chickens that had just hatched, and her home-made bricks.

I´d kind of like to go to pueblo camp out here. Learn the plants. Learn to cook. Learn to survive! I´d probably go crazy, but it´s a nice idea, I think.

We made our way down to the bottom of the canyon to "the Oasis", which was basically just an area full of nice river-fed pools. We spent several hours here, relaxing, playing with llamas and kitties, and eating lunch.

And then...it was three hours straight back up, out of the canyon. Yowsers. That was not easy. But again, the zig-zagging paths did help. I could do that walk once a week, tops. Maybe twice. But just think - what if that was part of your job, your survival? Gotta go into town today, honey. Taking the donkeys. Be back tomorrow. Is this 2008?

That was the end of hard part of the trip. We spent the second night in Cabana Conde and woke early the next morning to head to Cruz del Condor, a good spot over the canyon for viewing...condors! It was chock-full of tourists, but it was a worthy tourist spot. Those condors just come swooping right over your head. They´re huge! We then made a brief spot at a hot springs for a dip, some lunch, and then it was back to Arequipa.

We are heading to Nazca on the night bus tonight. Hopefully going to see some of those crazy Nazca lines that are so famous. We shall see.

For now, Peru...I sure do like it here. Much love to you all

Oh, and please check out http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.bucy for pictures from Puno and Arequipa and the Colca Canyon trip. Enjoy!

Reed Places, Holy Places

Well, I am feeling unsure about Peru so far. Not about Peru itself, I guess, but about my place in Peru.

On Thursday we took a full day tour of a few of the islands on Lake Titicaca. The island communities are what the lake is famous for - that, and the fact that it is supposedly the highest navigable lake in the world.

The first island community we stopped in was called Uros, which is notable for being entirely man-made out of reeds! About 1500 people live on these islands - I´d guess there are at least 50 in total - and make their living through fishing and...tourism.


Our little boat pulled up to the island, and several women in traditional dress were waiting for us on the shore, waving. They were expecting us. This is their job.

The women pulled our boat in and tied us up, and helped us as we, one by one, stepped from the boat onto the pile of reeds that is their ground. I wish I could explain to you exactly how this works - an island made of reeds - but I´m afraid my eyes and mind were wandering around the little island while the guide was doing all his explaining. The basic gist, though, is that they harvest reeds (like 6 feet long, thick, hard plants) from other parts of the lake, and then lay them across each other (think weaving) on top of thick slabs of mud that basically float in the lake. Hence, they are sometimes called The Floating Islands.


This first island was easily the best part of the whole day - absolutely fascinating - but I couldn´t quite (and still can´t) decide how I felt about it all. Sure, these islands were originally created for a real purpose, but what about now? I felt very much like the locals would not have been wearing their traditional dress had it not been part of the dress-code for their day job. Many women had sweatpants under their frilly skirts. One woman was wearing an Adidas visor with hers. Digital watches abounded. What is this place? And should I really be impressed by seeing what feels like a recreation of a place that WAS amazing a hundred years ago?


When we were finished talking with our guide, the women opened up their stalls for business. And frankly, I was not impressed with what they were selling. No part of me believes that they made any majority of the jewelry, ceramics, textiles that were on display - it was the EXACT same stuff that was being sold in Puno. Do they have this stuff brought in from Puno? What is the point? Do the other tourists eat this stuff up?


And then again, this is just their way of thriving, surviving, making ends meet. But...


Puno had very little to offer aside from tourist companies and shops geared toward tourists and restaurants with tourist menus. I sort of wanted to tell Puno to get a life after a day or two. Show me something I can´t see in New York City, Puno. Show me something REAL. Something GENUINE. Something untouched. Pulease!

I guess the poverty is real, though. I take it back, Puno. I´m being a snotty Ameircan now.


I´m back in Arequipa as of Friday evening. Arequipa is Peru´s second biggest city, and compared to Puno, it is very modern. It´s called the White City, for all the buildings made from the white volcanic sillar, and this characteristic is most noted in the city´s gorgeous Plaza de Armas, set right in the city center. White colonial buildings surround the square, with a lovely fountain as its centerpiece. At night, the white plaza glows with little lights that sit on the balconies of the buildings. Enjoying a dinner from a second-story restaurant, on a balcony overlooking the plaza, I forgot where I was entirely. One morning I´m in impoverished Peru; that evening I find myself in Europe.


Yesterday, we took a tour of the Santa Catalina Monastery, and I was wowed. This place is awesome. The monastary opened its doors in the 1570s and at its height was home to about 200 nuns. The nuns lived in total seclusion - after taking their vows, they did not leave the monastary for the rest of their lives. They devoted everything to their faith. Until the late 1960s , when the nuns finally opened certain parts of the monastary to the public, no one, other than nuns and servants and clergy, entered its doors.

Only 30 nuns live in the monastary today, and, as they live in total seclusion, we did not get to see any of them or their living quarters. But, thankfully, the original part of the monastary has been turned into a museum of sorts, allowing visitors to wander in and out of the former nuns´residences and to try to get some sense of what this life must have been like. It´s so lucky (and rare) that the monastary has kept to itself for so long, because they´ve been able to preserve so much from the original days. Rooms now uninhabited are still filled with furniture, china, cooking utensils.

Although these gals were living the secluded life and had sworn off all of their vices (do nuns have vices?), they were not, by any means, roughing it. The monastary is a stunning building - the architecture is superb. Each nun shared her quarters with one or two others, and between them, they had an outdoor cooking area, beds situated into little nooks under archways, sitting rooms, the works. I actually found myself wishing I could live in such a place.

"Silencio" is engraved over arched doorways, reminding the nuns to always engage in thoughtful prayer. Listening, rather than talking. Listening, waiting, meditating, praying. One could go crazy, couldn´t one? But...if one could deal with it, what could be gained? I wish I had it in me to know. But I am far too worldy. I like my vices. I choose my vices!

The monastary takes up about six city blocks. It is a massive, sprawling, maze - its own city, really. We must have spent two hours in there, just puttering about, in one room, out the other.

Skepticism strikes all the time, of course. But, wandering through such a place, where so many women spent their entire lives, giving themselves blindly to something they could never be certain of...it makes you think. There must be something there.

Tomorrow morning, we are off on a three day trek through the Colca Canyon. Supposedly it is twice the size of the Grand Canyon (though I don´t know if that means depth or width or what), so it ought to be something to see! We are going with a guide and staying in little villages in and around the canyon, so I expect it will be quite an experience!

Back on Wednesday evening...til then, my pretties. Much love.