Change of Address

Suri Alpaca on the road to Lares.

This is it I guess.  I mean, what do you do after you name your blog “fromperutoyou” and then you leave Peru?  I have so enjoyed sharing our adventures through this virtual venue, and I am really going to miss writing it.  It has been an amazing year.  Unforgettable to be honest.

Locals riding on top of a truck's cargo on their way to somewhere on the cheap.

The ubiquitous Tico, a car never meant to be driven on roads.

The back side of PumaWanqa.

Me in the blazing hot spring pool at Lares, a three hour drive from Cusco.

So, on one’s last day in Peru after 11 months here, what does one do?  A hard question to answer in the general sense but I can tell you what I did. 

After waking up and getting my bags ready and placed by the door I headed down to San Pedro market for breakfast.  The market had been emptied of vendors all last week for "cleaning."  This is the euphemism for "getting rid of the hordes of rats" that live in the market.  Ick.  While the image of rats in the market is nasty, the reality of all the displaced vendors clogging the streets around the outside of the market was almost worse:  it was utter chaos.  So it was a nice surprise this morning to discover that the de-ratting was over and the market had been reassembled.  I headed down to the lower level of the market and ordered myself a steaming hot bowl of chicken and rice soup.   

San Pedro Market "food court"

I sat at a communal table, the early morning light shooting searing beams through the iron bars and onto the concrete floor.  My plastic flowered bowl arrived full to the brim with soup and a whole chicken breast lurking just below the surface.  It was served with a colorful dish of uchucuta (hot sauce) on the side.  It’s funny to watch people eat here.  Peruvians in Cusco are normally very polite and rarely touch their food with their hands.  Things are different in the dark recesses of the city market.  My neighbors at the table were stabbing their meat with their low-rent cutlery, suspending it above the steaming broth and then slowly turning it as they gnawed away at it with their teeth.  The soup also had a Peruvian variant of ch’uñu, freeze dried potatoes, called moraya.  I liken the taste of moraya to the smell of goat hooves.  After one bite I decided to focus more on the chicken. 

I couldn’t leave the market without a tamale.  I ordered one from Doña Rosa, my weekday tamale lady who, on a Sunday morning, didn’t recognize me.  Amazingly, or maybe predictably she tried to charge me 2 soles for what normally costs 1.40 soles.  The rules and prices and laws are all up for discussion in Cusco. 

This is an aspect of South American culture that I both like and abhor.  It makes for a more mellow vibe, but it also forces you to let go of expectations and assumptions.  Nothing is ever for sure, but sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by an unanticipated triumph.  If your expectations are low, then everything is a win.

I brought my second tamale back to Centro Tinku to share with K’Ori, Jean Jacques’ golden retriever.  She was pleased, to put it mildly.  While getting my bags together my friend Miguel showed up to switch out a pair of pedals that we got mixed up while I was picking up a bicycle.  I was leaving for the airport at 10:00 and he showed up at 9:57. 

The flight out of Cusco was as stunning as ever.  In this dry time of year the grasses covering the mountains are a monochromatic brown, punctuated by black and gray rock outcroppings and cliffs.  We flew directly over the ruins of Tipon and then turned out of the Cusco valley to the west.  Even though I was reading a great book I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the wildly wrinkled landscape.  The lighter brown outline of roads winding their way around the ridges, valleys and peaks looked like the backdrop from an episode of the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote. 

Landing in Lima after leaving Cusco is always a shock.  It is a vast, congested, and fast paced metropolitan complex.  I went straight to the gentrified neighborhood of Miraflores where I attempted to return some camping items that Krista had bought in April for her trek with Isabel.  The lack of customer service or, really, the disdain for the customer was almost funny.  Needless to say they grudgingly allowed me to return a pair of pants but only for another piece of merchandise.  Sheesh. 

Ceviche, octopus and fish skewers.

Miraflores as seen from La Rosa Nautica restaurant.

I decided to leave Lima with a better taste in my mouth and I knew just what would do the trick.  There is a restaurant, visible from the top of the Miraflores cliff that juts out into the surf of the Pacific on pilings covered with barnacles and seaweed.  I had a lovely walk down to the shore and got a table pressed right up against the window and ordered my pisco sour and a plate of ceviche and grilled octopus.  Sitting in the surf, eating the freshest of creatures from whence they came, I watched surfers ripping up wave after wave.  Up behind me above the shore paragliders sailed back and forth riding the updrafts of the wind coming off the ocean. 

Beautiful seabird outside the window from my table.

It’s going to be a bit of a shock to be back in Maine, but I am ready.  In my last days in Cusco I became more and more aware of the dangers there that I don’t have to think about in Maine.  Earthquakes.  Floods.  Traffic accidents.  No airbags or seatbelts.  Food borne pathogens.  Theft.  Pollution.  But I also thought about the delicious flavors of the vegetables.  The warmth of the people.  The extraordinary beauty of the landscape.  The intact remnants of the civilizations that somehow managed to thrive in such a wild landscape. 

Once you visit a place it becomes a part of you.  Cusco and I know each other pretty well now.  I hope we can be reunited before too long.

Brotherly Love

It's been just over a week since my brother David came down for a visit, and we have been busy boys.  David had about a month long list of trips he hoped to accomplish in his two weeks in Peru, but we separated the wheat from the chaff and came up with a few excellent choices.  

I had biked down to Urubamba from Chinchero along an amazing trail and thought that would be a good trip for us.  David saw that there was also a road down from Huaracondo and we opted for this route instead.  It was, indeed, a road (as opposed to a trail) but it was completely devoid of other travelers.  It was pretty special to descend 3000 feet in solitude through this canyon from the chilly highlands down into the sacred valley. 

Right as we exited the dirt road and hit the pavement David's slow leak on his front tire turned into a less slow leak, and I got to patching it.  As the bike parts were sprawled on the edge of the road a taxi slowed down and offered us a ride to Urubamba.  He turned out to be a cab driver we had seen in Cusco that morning.  It was a good thing he drove us because the ride would have been another hour on a really dangerous road full of crazy drivers whisking panicked tourists to trains and planes for which they were probably late.  

 

David came down with a bit of stomach pain and fever and so was out of the picture for Sunday's planned hike up the mountain valley of Chicon.  I caught a cab up about a 1000 feet and then hiked right up the valley towards the summit.  I made it to around 3900 meters where I found a huge expanse of flat grassland surrounded by 2000 foot cliffs on three sides.  It was an amazing sight.  I shared the space with a herd of cows.  I had obviously found an amazing place, but there was no way to get out of this valley on foot.  After a few minutes I turned around to head down.  At the first little town I came to I spied a moto-taxi parked outside a bar.  I was marching into town with ten minutes to go in the first half of the World Cup final game.  The cab driver was inside, glued to the television.  He said he'd give me a ride but it would have to be on the back of his motorcycle -- it was quicker and he'd get back to the game faster that way.  We got back into town in time to catch the second half and get some fresh trout for lunch.

I worked during the week and Dave and I made our plans for trip number two.  I had always wanted to walk to the town of Lares, and looked at a bunch of different routes to get there.  Looking at the outdated Peruvian Geological Survey maps it appeared there was a road delivering us to a location quite high up into a key valley.  As it turned out that road had been abandoned in the mid 1980's and we were left off 4 hours from our chosen campsite.  This was a bit of a problem since we were first getting there at 1pm.  So much for the alpine start.  We pulled into a camp at 5 pm just as the sun was setting.

It was a cold night.  It had snowed the night before and the air was still frigid with it.  We estimate the temperature was around 15˚ F on Saturday night.  Cuddled into our down bags in our little shelter we were cozy, but didn't dare venture out in the middle of the night.  

The valley we were walking through was populated with a most extraordinary stand of Kéuña trees.  Species of these trees are found throughout the South American continent but are most notable for their ability to grow at altitudes up to 5300 meters (17,500 feet).  Much of the Kéuña trees were felled during the time of the conquest to fuel smelters and to be used in construction.  It was wonderful to see such a healthy forest here with trees that were large enough to have easily predated the arrival of the Spanish.

After our chilly night we decided to try and get up to a series of lakes that led to the pass to Lares.  David stayed behind at the first lake while I sped ahead to get a view of the area above.  Rising out of the first lake was the complicated and imposing face of Puma Huanqa, a diminutive 5300 meters in height but still an immense presence keeping watch over the landscape. 

As I continued up I ran into a fresh layer of snow, very rare for this time of year.  It had coated the land above 4200 meters the day before and made for spectacular scenery.  The final pass (4600 meters) can be seen at the top of these switchbacks.  

At 4400 meters I found this beautiful flower, tucked into a crevice in a rock. 

There is a single house on the flat land below the first lake.  It is a makeshift store and corral, supplied by the horses that continually pass by either with trekking groups or on their way to pick one up.  The couple who live there are named Mario and Barbara.  Mario was happy to see us and we sat and visited for a while over some potatoes that he boiled for us to share with him.  I asked him why he had six dogs and without a moment's hesitation he answered "Pumas."  

Later, while David slept by the big lake, I crept up behind him and gave my best imitation of a Puma growl.  David levitated, turning in mid air to throw his water bottle at me.  He missed me by inches and I am sure that if I were a puma I would have turned tail and gotten the hell out of there.  That is if I weren't laughing so hard.

One of the saddest things I saw on this trip was the quantity of trash tucked behind rocks and clogging both the trail and streams.  The ethic of land stewardship in rural Peru is not congruent with the west's current thinking on land conservation, to put it bluntly.  And to be fair, the valley we were walking through has been populated, cultivated and worked for thousands of years by humans.  The difference is that the economy has shifted from subsistence to tourism, and with tourists comes trash.  There has always been trash, but for millenia it was decomposable.  It is a real crisis here  and I would like to help educate the locals about low impact camping practices and help clean up the mess.  They have to understand that aside from fouling such a beautiful place, tourists (the main source of income) will stop coming if they keep filling the valley with garbage. 

We descended nearly 5000 feet from the snow down to the Urubamba River valley in three grueling hours.  Amazingly we grabbed a cab right away and were in Cusco an hour later.  It's quite ironic that the land surrounding the snowy peaks is far more moist and lush than the warm lowlands along the river.  It's a bit like upisde-down-world.  But as long as those glaciers keep providing moisture, the Kéuña forests will thrive and maintain this alpine zone as a vibrant and moist habitat for all manner of living things.  A fact that is hard to believe at such a high altitude. 

I hope to return to the Lares trail in the near future.  I'd like to do so with signage in multiple languages explaining the "pack it in, pack it out" ethic, and a team of horses to carry out the evidence of all those who came before.

Cloud Forest!

It's a strange thing to drive and drive and drive, up up up, crossing a high pass only to cross other, higher passes, on a dusty road clinging to the edge of a cliff face who-knows-how.  Stranger yet is to arrive, after hours of travel, at a place where the land stops and in its place float cotton white clouds, blinding in their brightness and soothing in their softness and promise of moisture in an otherwise arrid landscape.

We met at a gas station on the outskirts of town at dawn.  "We" being the staff of Ausangate Bilingual School, where I teach sixth grade.  The director of the school, Veronica, was taking us on a trip to the Wayqecha Biological station to celebrate Teacher's Day, an actual holiday in Peru.  I was able to sleep for the first bit of our journey as we slid along on the only section of paved road  we would see all day.  Soon enough the road turned to dirt and not -so-gently woke me out of my slumber with its lurching, head banging rhythm.

A bit about this road:  It was terrifying.  

As we cleared the second high pass of the day it became clear that we would be descending one nearly vertical valley wall to the level of the river that cleaved it, only to contour around the other side while the river fell further and further below.  On that far side of the valley the bus wheels were skirting along the edge of the single lane road, just one foot away from a 1000 foot fall.  I watched the driver intently in the rear view mirror, making sure he had his mind on the task at hand. 

In a country whose topography most closely resembles an enlarged version of crumpled paper, there is no other way to get from place to place than to create roads and pathways where really, none should exist.  Driving through this improbable relief it's amazing to see where people are able to cultivate land.  Hanging off mountainsides at angles that (as I learned in geology class) are way beyond the comfort level of unconsolidated particulate matter, there are plowed fields, some even green with vegetation thanks to the springs and irrigation canals that are prevalent here.  That people have been able to thrive in this harsh environment for thousands of years is perfectly unbelievable.

After a brief stop in the valley town of Paucartambo we headed back up to another pass.  The landscape was beginning to change before our eyes as we climbed.  In place of tan grasses and brown dirt thirsty for the moisture that is in such short supply during this time of year there were small trees and bushes choking the clefts that began on the skyline ridge and made their way down the valley floor.  Then, as if out of a dream we turned a bend at the pass and caught our first glimpse of a very different sort of terrain, the cloud forest -- the first obvious physical marker that we were descending toward the Amazon Basin. 

The actual change in the environment was more subtle than the shock of the those clouds down below.  As the road wound around the undulations of the ridges I noticed progressively denser vegetation in the draws we encountered, especially those with a spring running through them.  But then as we exited these indentations and reentered the mountain face it was back to business as usual: dusty, dry grass lands.

We reached the research station at noon, just as the first bits of clouds from below were beginning to whisk by the windows of the dining hall.   Like clockwork, most days during the dry season begin with a crystal clear morning.  As the day heats up and moisture is sucked from the jungle, it rises on hot air to higher elevations where it makes its shift from gas to liquid in the cooler temperatures.  These clouds typically cover the forest at treeline by mid afternoon.  

 

The first thing I noticed stepping out of the bus was the smell and feel of the air.  It was a welcome relief have something so rich and loamy enter my nostrils and caress my skin.  After living for the better part of a year above treeline it nearly brought tears to my eyes to be standing in a place that was so unmistakeably alive. 

The yellow flower above is one of the many orchids endemic to this part of Peru.  But there were wonderful flowers everywhere.  While some of the vegetation looked familiar, other plants were otherworldly.  Tree ferns were plentiful as were ferns with broad flat leaves studded underneath with thousands of neatly arranged spores.

The vegetation and moisture make for a thriving environment for wildlife here at the edge of the Andean alpine zone.  And all those flowers, with their gaudy colors on display and full of nectar are the perfect place for my favorite of all animals, the hummingbird.  Above is an Amethyst Throated Sunburst.

   

Just about a year ago the biological station completed its Canopy Walk, a series of aluminum Burma Bridges and platforms designed to allow researchers to view and study the forest from different levels.  It was a bit exciting to step out onto those swinging bridges a hundred feet in the air.      

My pal Heather on platform #1Betty (above) and Cristina on THE WORLDS STEEPEST SPIRAL STAIRCASE

 

The ride home started peacefully enough, but after a quick stop at the package store in Paucartambo, things took a turn for the debauched.  Two bottles of Pisco were purchased, one for each bus.  As luck would have it the first bus pulled off before its bottle could be delivered.  So, we were, um,  stuck with two bottles for our bus.  What to do...?  Drink it!  My headlamp came in very handy as shot after shot of the Peruvian magic liquor was served.  The first taste is always a bit harsh, but by the third glass I must admit it goes down pretty smoothly.  

Too smoothly. 

I am not usually a proponent of ignorance, but the combined effects of the darkness and the buzz helped us forget the fact that we were driving on the most precarious of roads.  As we sang songs and laughed together we were able to let go and enjoy the drive.  The driver of the bus on the other hand was probably less enthused.  Camucha (the woman wearing my headlamp) generously offered him large cups of Coca Cola every twenty minutes or so. 

On one of the last cliff bound sections of road we came upon an enormous backhoe, perched at the edge of the maw, halogen lights blazing as it widened a curve at 10:30 pm.  Whoever was operating that machine must have had very, very strong faith and/or a belief in the afterlife.  One false move and man and machine would have been sent cartwheeling for 1000 feet to the river.  But with the enormous Paucartambo Festival coming up in two weeks, what are your options?  Get that road done, no matter what.

I stumbled into my new apartment realizing that I had left my favorite down jacket (purchased in 1990!) on the bus with my beloved iPod touch in the pocket.  What a crappy ending to a great day.  Honestly, if I leave Peru with all my body parts and a pair of clean underwear I will consider it a great success.