Backwards

The entire family has fallen in love with some of the cars we see around here.  The Toyota "ProBox" is at the top of the list.  It is best described as a no-frills Subaru Outback with a bit more head room and cargo space.  Talking with cab drivers it sounds like these four-wheel-drive cars go for around $10,000 used, with very low miles, shipped over from Japan.  I am particularly enamored of the Toyota HiAce van.  It's a five speed with a 3.0 liter turbo-diesel engine and again, four wheel drive.  Why can't I have one of these shipped to the USA?

Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors don't want me to.

Apparently the taxes one pays for these cars to enter our country are nearly equal to the price one pays for the car.  The big three have powerful lobbies that work to keep these cars out of circulation.  I know we need to protect our country's industrial interests, but it feels more like we are protecting ineptitude.  The Japanese cars here in Peru are THE BOMB!  They are rugged, efficient, nicely designed, and cheap!  If they were able to infiltrate the US market I am confident that nobody would be fool enough to buy anything else.  Oh well, I guess I will have to enjoy these vehicles while I am here. 

I'll try to post a few pictures of our favorites tomorrow. 

Glad To Be Here (by Lawrence)

 

Krista conducting business with the "nut and dried fruit Lady" at the San Pedro Market

Sitting in the backseat of the taxi, headed down the valley towards Isabel’s violin lesson, I closed my eyes and let the wind blow in my face through the open window. There were big puffy clouds around, but the sun was nevertheless making its way onto the thighs of my black jeans, heating them so much that it felt like I was leaning against a woodstove -- another reminder that we are living much closer to the sun here in Cusco.  Cusco is, after all, home to the Temple of the Sun and home to the Inca, the children of the sun.

We have had no problem getting used to the primarily warm weather down here. But it’s taking us some time to remember that we are living in the high mountain environment where changes in the weather are severe and happen quickly, without warning. As we walked back towards the Avenida de Cultura from Isabel’s lesson, we were pelted with hail forcing us to seek refuge under a garage awning. Once again the adult in charge (me) had left home without any of the many rain-protection items we own. Luckily we grabbed a cab before the skies completely opened up, which they most certainly did. Our cab had but one functioning windshield wiper which, combined with the fog accumulating on the windows, had me thinking that maybe this was it. What an inglorious way to go out. Luckily my morbid daydream was just that, and we made it back safely to San Blas Plaza.

Peruvian para-troopers during Sunday's political/military parade in the Plaza de Armas

We spent last weekend doing domestic activities. Krista and I actually sat down and watched an entire movie together. It was all about a 39 year old woman struggling with the fact that she was adopted and wanting so badly to have her own, biological child. How ironic that this is the movie I randomly grabbed from the "movie lady" outside the Mega Supermarket as I rushed by to do a grocery shop. Adoption is likely going to be the focus of Krista's work here in Peru, so it made for some good conversation.

More soldiers, these of the terrestrial (and suspicious) variety

We also hosted our first dinner guest here in Peru, Jean-Jacques Decoster, proprietor and director of the language school we first stayed at, Centro Tinku. It was great to have a guest! It made us look at our apartment more as a home than a flat we are squatting in. Jean Jacques brought his golden retriever, K'ori, along. It was nice for all of us to have a dog in our lives again, even if just for an evening meal. He also brought what must have been 70% of all the ice cream in Cusco. And since our freezer doesn't really work we fought hard to ingest it all before it shifted phase.


Poor Sophia and Krista were both feeling under the weather with belly aches, and Sophia actually vomited all over her bed in the middle of Saturday night. You have got love the laundry service on days like this...  Happily she is starting to eat again and is characteristically full of energy. Krista is rebounding a bit more slowly, but appears to be rebounding all the same. 

I have been talking with all my "Spanish teachers" (a.k.a. cab drivers) about the upcoming fiesta on October 31st, and it sounds pretty amazing.  While we North Americans are wandering about in clever outfits hording stale candy on a chilly fall night, Peruvians are partying with their dead relatives at the cemetery.  I hope to get a good taste of Dia de los Muertos on Saturday, and Dia de los Vivos on Sunday.

Hordes on the Plaza, Sunday morning

Birthday Gold

Sometimes the most unlikely experience presents itself, and because it is so unexpected, so out of the ordinary,  the impression it makes on you is deeper than normal.  My terrific birthday lunch on my 45th will be a very wonderful and clear memory for me.

There was a lot of whispering amongst my three girls in the days leading up to my birthday.  I am the only member of the family who is celebrating a birthday while we are down here in Peru, so they were very excited about it.  Despite their secrecy, I kept hearing utterances about fish.  I suspected we were going to a fish restaurant which seemed odd, because neither Isabel nor Sophia likes fish.  Not to eat that is...

I was led to a nondescript doorway in the corner of one of the smaller plazas in town, but as I crossed the threshold I entered a diametrically opposite world of unbridled creativity exploding in stunning paintings, sculpture, furnishings and decor.  Welcome to "The Fallen Angel," a restaurant/bar/hotel like nothing I have seen so far in Peru, and actually,  like nothing I have seen anywhere else.

 

Stars and clouds on the ceiling

I quickly found out what the big "fish secret" was:  the tables in the dining room are actually bathtubs filled with meticulously laid out aquaculture scenes.  Each one is beautifully lit and contains three or four fish.  Oh, and those benches?  They all have hinged lids so you can put your coats and umbrellas inside.

In the center of the Fallen Angel is a classic colonial courtyard, but far from the austere look that most of these spaces have, this one was filled with sculpture and surrounded by paintings.  The girls were drawn to the atrium immediately and found some clothing designers and a model there.  Really.  After nearly two months of traditional Latin American culture, we had stumbled upon Cusco's nexus of cutting edge, cultural creativity.  The model and her cohorts were preparing for a fashion show this weekend featuring high couture clothing made from everyday fabrics from the public market.

 

The Bar

 

Lunch was delicious, and afterward were invited upstairs to see the four thematic hotel rooms.  These rooms were to hotels as concept cars are to the auto industry.  I had to ask twice (in shaky Spanish) if these were in fact hotel rooms, or art installations.

See through managerie-bathroom

Inca Wall Shower

 Tunnel Foyer

That "stage" is the shower

  

One of the many amazing paintings by in-house artist Carlos Bardales

Another painting by Carlos Bardales

The rooms at Fallen Angel cost $250 US per night, which is a lot for around here, but definitely cheap when compared with boutique hotel prices in the US.  It is still amazing to me that having walked through that plaza a hundred times I had no idea that there was such a jewel hidden behind its blank, white walls.

The wind was carrying a rain storm into the city as we stepped back out into the plaza.  It felt a bit like we were leaving a dream and stepping back into our waking world.  This feeling was driven home by the strong smell of urine emanating from the ground on the pedestrian walkway called Siete Culebras.  We had left the realm of refinement and creativity and landed smack-dab back in what we we have affectionately dubbed "super-pee alley."  I think Cusco has a lot more to show us, and bit by bit we are figuring it out.

It was a great birthday.

Back from the Brink (by Lawrence)

I returned yesterday from a week in the city of Huaraz and its adjacent mountain range, the Cordillera Real.

Wow.

Both the city and the surrounding countryside are very, very different from Cusco and its environs. In 1970 Huaraz was reduced to a pile of rubble by an enormous earthquake that killed virtually everyone in the city. I'm sure that because of this in part, it has the feel of a frontier town -- blocky, squat buildings, built in haste, that have all the charm of a Siberian gulag, laid out in perpendicular streets. The neighborhoods and streets are so nondescript that I found it nearly impossible to tell one from another. I made a point of asking a cab driver who appeared to be my age if he remembered the quake.  "Yeah," he said, "I was working in a field across the valley with my grandmother, and we were the only members of our entire family to survive."  All I could mutter was "lo siento."

The trip from Cusco to Huaraz involved a plane to Lima, and then a bus through the night to Huaraz.  The buses in Peru take themselves pretty seriously, going so far as to call their bus stations "Tierra-Puertos" (earth-ports).  After showing my passport and getting groped with a metal detection wand I was shown to my seat where a stewardess attended to my needs.  There was even a video shown telling us how to operate our tray tables, seats, and emergency exits.  In a bold move the video informed us that yes, there was a bathroom, but only for urination -- if we had other needs we would need to speak to the stewardess so we could stop at a proper facility--most likely a boulder on the side of the road.  Sadly, the bus was populated with twenty or so teenagers on a school trip from Lima so not much sleeping occurred.  


I had a wonderful reunion with my long lost friend Eli Helmuth who runs his own mountain guiding service out of Estes Park, Colorado, climbinglife guides.  I also met one of Eli's proteges, Mike Arnold, and another client named Frank Nederhand (Frank was in Peru conducting experiments on air quality, snow and ice alkalinity, and weather patterns).  We spent the day figuring out food, shelter, climbing gear and how to recognize the signs of altitude related illnesses.  After an excellent Thai feast in Hauraz we went to bed, ready for a big day of hiking ahead.

The next morning we packed up the van and buckled ourselves in for the hour ride up to Pashpa, a tiny village about five miles (and 3000 feet) from our base camp in the Ishinca valley.

This is where we met our burros.  Let me just say that as someone who has backpacked thousands of days carrying my own load on my back, I really like burros a lot. 

We had to carry anything pointy that might injure the beasts of burden should they fall (ice axes, crampons), but all other items (preferably of considerable heft) were fair game for the poor creatures to carry.  And so it was with light packs that we headed across the meadows toward the soaring entrance to the Ishinca cirque.

The hiking was really pleasant.  The trail we were on was well maintained and at times contoured along canyon walls, ducked under dense trees fed by springs, and meandered through meadows littered with huge boulders (glacial erratics, left behind by receding ice).  My first view of the head of the valley, dominated by Tocllaraju, took my breath away even more than the altitude.

Tocllaraju

By the time we arrived at camp our cook, Joaquin, already had the kitchen tent set up and soup and tea ready for us.  Joaquin, a 58 year old Peruvian high altitude porter and cook, turned out to be  an enormous asset to our team and the entire experience.  This was one of his first stints in the mountains since July of this year when he had an accident.  While descending the extremely technical Alpamayo with an 80 pound pack on his back, the rappel anchor he was descending from failed and he fell 300 feet down a 70˚ ice slope.  He is lucky to be alive, but amazingly, he was not even seriously injured.

So Joaquin routinely made us enormous quantities of delicious food: steak, soups, quinoa, rice, eggs.  We all ate better on this trip than we do at home, and all this at 14,200 feet in a tent in the middle of the Andes!  Some of our ingredients were exceedingly fresh, (see below)...

Our first climbing objective was a mountain called Urus Este.  This is the easternmost peak of the Urus massif which defines the northern edge of the Ishinca Valley.  We packed the night before and woke up to cloudy skies at 4AM.  After an amazing hot breakfast of eggs and coffee we began the slow slog up a shallow ridge of glacial moraine that shot up 2000 feet from the valley floor.  Once we gained the start of the snow and glacier, we donned harnesses, crampons, and ice tools, tied into the rope, and began the real climbing.

Clouds trap heat between themselves and the ground, so the snow conditions after this cloudy night were softer than we had hoped.  There was a lot of post-holing and we had to be particularly careful around rocks and crevasses since the surface surrounding them wasn't supporting much weight.  We progressed without incident, traversing a slabby rib of granite, and then finding ourselves in a forest of three-foot-tall nieve penitente -- a dagger-like snow formation endemic to equatorial glaciers.

We had to ascend some loose granite slabs to get to the summit, and then we were there!  5430 meters (17,814 feet) above sea level.  I took this panorama of the view from the top.

The descent is often the most challenging part of a climb, and this proved to be the case for us.  Group travel on a rope is a very difficult type of climbing, requiring cooperation and communication over tricky terrain  after a hard climb up.  Add to this the fact that the snow is even softer in the afternoon and you've got a recipe for discord.  Needless to say, on the way down we all got a bit punchy.  I was sure not to congratulate anyone until we were off the snow -- I didn't want to jinx anything.  We arrived in camp with hot food and an amazing sunset waiting for us.

The next day was a "rest day,"  which meant we were just going rock climbing in preparation for a two day effort on or next objective,  the 6034 meter (19,796 foot) Tocllaraju.  There is a gorgeous cliff face 600 feet above the valley floor, and Eli accomplished his highest-ever on-sight climb at nearly 15,000 feet.  He said it was one of the best pitches of rock climbing he has ever done.  I made it through the crux, but didn't have the endurance to make it to the top.   I guess I'll have to come back to finish it someday.

Tocllaraju is a high enough peak that it warrants an advanced camp, at nearly 5000 meters to shorten the climb on summit day.  Eli and Mike ferried two big loads of gear to the the high camp later on the afternoon of our rest day while Frank and I actually rested.  The next day we all headed up to the high camp with the rest of our gear.  To save weight we only brought up one three person tent for the four of us.  We pitched it in a small flat spot among the broken rocks and talus. Eli leading a gorgeous rock route  with our route on Urus Este visible above, and our base camp below on the valley floor

High Camp on Tocllaraju

 We knew it would be tight in the tent, but not THAT tight.  I swear I heard people snoring, but when my alarm rang at 2AM, each of us claimed we had slept less than an hour.  I am sure that part of the difficulty was the altitude, but the cramped conditions didn't help either.

Eli was on top of getting us fed, and we were headed up the hill by around 3:30 with headlights blazing.  The snow on this glacier was wonderfully frozen giving us a much more solid surface to walk on.  The faceted flakes shone like diamonds as we walked up the steep slopes in the pre-dawn darkness.  

As the sun began to rise the enormous scale of Tocllaraju became apparent.  This is one really big mountain.  As the world continues to warm up, tropical glaciers like the ones on Tocllaraju are becoming more dynamic, more volatile, and more dangerous.  Safe routes through crevasse fields change from week to week and some of the cracks in the ice are huge.  Eli did a masterful job of guiding us through the labyrinth of seracs, snow bridges, and holes.  The temperature was around 12˚ Farenheit as we made our way up, away from the valley floor still cloaked in low clouds.

After our second break I began to feel kind of crappy.  Mike also was not feeling well and actually vomited up his breakfast.  I began to lose concentration and balance, and started to weave a bit. I still had enough sense to realize that it would be really bad if I lost my balance and fell.  I told Eli that I was not feeling well and might need to turn around.  He heard me, and we both agreed to try and see the end of the summit ridge before  making a decision.  With our ropes pulled tight Eli tip-toed his away around the corner to the east side of the ridge, where he found himself on a wall of loose rock and ice dropping thousands of feet below him.  As it turns out, the summit ridge was not easily surmountable, and I threw in the towel.  I couldn't go any further.  5650m (18,500 feet) was as high as I would get on this day. 

The walk down was stunning, but I was pretty disappointed that we weren't able to make it to the top.  We spied more nieve penitente on this glacier, although it was not nearly as tall as the penitente on Urus. 

I have been home now for two days and am just starting to get some energy back.   The high altitude environment took a lot out of me.  Krista reminded me that that the last time I climbed above 5000 meters in Bolivia in 1996 I said that I liked climbing, but I didn't like altitude.  I feel the same way after this trip, but I did find it a little bit easier this time.  If this pattern holds true I should be back up high again in 2021 when I am 57 years old (ha!).  One thing is for sure, this trip has gotten me excited to explore the mountains of my home state of Maine and its neighbor New Hampshire.  All the excitement of the high alpine environment and none of the oxygen deprivation of the Andes!

I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to travel through one of the most dramatic and dynamic mountain ranges in the world.  I am in deep gratitude to my darling Krista for giving me this opportunity, and also to Eli who didn't hesitate to invite me along and kept me safe throughout the journey.  Sophia and Isabel jumping into my arms upon my return further cemented the fact that I am a very lucky man indeed.

on recipes, movies, and homeschooling (by Krista)

I seem to have much less time than Lawr has to blog.

So here are some highlights of the last couple days:

•Isabel and I went to a fabulous museum of PreColumbian art day before yesterday. http://museoarqueologicoperuano.museolarco.org/museo_en.html

My favorites were the Mochican pottery/sculptures—wonderfully realistic water birds, long necks curved , a duck shaped pitcher; cups with expressive (human) faces. All somewhere close to 1000 years old. Isabel loved seeing the gold “earrings” (ear plugs) Inca nobles wore—as thick as my finger and six inches in diameter—and the amazing shell and silver jewelry.

Yesterday Sophia was watching “Mama Mia” with Isabel while I was cooking Cornflake Crumb Chicken. (If you haven’t tried this, it’s a kid pleaser. Crushed cornflake crumbs are available on your US grocery store shelf. Recipe on the back of the box. Here in Peru we crush our own cornflakes. Oh, and for those of you who read Lawr's blog regularly, when “we” deglaze the pan with Coke Zero, it does taste really good. I got the idea from an NPR piece—the chef/author of a cookbook had a recipe in honor of her mother’s CocaCola Ham or some such thing).

I walked into the bedroom where the girls were curled up, and Sophia asks why the mom, Meryl Streep, is crying if her daughter is having a wedding. It’s near the end of the movie and the mom and daughter are walking down the aisle. “Well, because when people get married they usually don’t live with their parents anymore and sometimes that makes the parents sad.” What was I thinking? I’d already disappointed her by telling her she couldn’t marry Isabel. (She’d asked if two girls could get married; I said yes. She joyously announced that she would marry Isabel.) Sophia in tears…“Do I HAVE to get married, Mom? I don’t EVER want to live somewhere else.” It took us a while to get her calmed down. For the record, I told her she doesn’t ever have to get married, and Isabel and I have added “Mama Mia” to the growing list of movies that are on Sophia’s “DON’T SHOW” list.

The DON’T SHOW list includes among others: “Homeward Bound” about two dogs and a cat who run away in search of their humans (who went on vacation)—SK review: “But where is MYYY DOOOOG?”; and “Monster’s Inc.” Little girl arrives on the wrong side of the closet door, wrecks havoc among the monsters, and then is finaly returned safely to her room; friendly monsters promise to visit soon—SK review: “But WHYYY does he (the monster) have to leave?”)

Isabel and I have been working on percentages and exponential numbers and multiplying decimals in math. I have proudly bucked the Everyday Math system and given her a new “algorithm” (I.E. I showed her how to multiply numbers with multiple digits the way everyone who went to school in the 70’s did).

We are also reading a book called Peeled. One of minor characters, who owns a restaurant in the story, had parents and grandparents who participated in the shipyard workers protests in Poland in the 1980s. So now we’re both going to learn a little history of the former Eastern bloc. Maps will be in order.

We all took a walk yesterday afternoon to the postoffice. It only took us a month to buy stamps and send the postcards. Now we know it costs almost $2 (U.S.) to send a postcard. Only a very few of you will be lucky enough to receive one—who will be the lucky winners?!

Sophia, Isabel, and I all took photos on the way there: Q’oricancha is an Inca temple that the Spanish tried to tear down. They ended up building a huge monastery and church on top of the Inca temple foundations.

The mural is also on the way to the post office--the photo above only shows a small fraction of it.

Isabel and I didn’t have her camera in the San Pedro market earlier in the day—she helped me buy a bunch of fresh vegetables and tried to close her eyes as we walked past the squid and frogs and whole pig carcasses. Yum. We’ll take those photos another time.

I fear I may have shrunk my photos down so small that they won't show up well on the blog--but I have to go to sleep! Sophia woke me up at 5:30 this morning and never went back to bed.

Tomorrow we are planning to head off to Ollantaytambo. We will see some ruins there and huge circular agricultural terraces at Moray this weekend. Maybe even go horseback riding!

Parades... By Isabel

Today we saw another one of Peru's parades... there were lots of masks, scary gorilla costumes, and ridiculously heavy looking floats of saints. I think todays festivities were dedicated to St. Rosario. In addition to all that, there were some beautiful dances, involving swirly skirts and fancy head dresses.Today I learned an important lesson; DO NOT take pictures of men with strange masks unless you want to dance with them!Of course, I was the lucky one.Among the dancers we could see 5-8 year olds , swaying to the sound of trumpets in glittery costumes, dragging their little siblings along with them. The costumes used in these parades are not little kids dressed as lobsters,(as we have in Maine), instead they are bejeweled works of art, swirling pieces of color, dancing along the streets of Cuzco. I may sound like I'm making this up but I'm not, just look at this video: Watching that close up is a memory I'll never forget. Even Sophia was amazed at that!!!! I have a feeling that when we get home, the whole war veteran troupe in full costume- including guns- at the Fourth of July parade is going to seem pretty boring from now on.

My Old Flame (by Lawrence)

It's been a long time since I have had to pack for a climbing trip. Since making up my mind to join my old friend Eli on a couple of peak ascents in the Cordillera Blanca, I find myself in that "climber's" state of mind.The life of a climber is so much simpler than the life of a husband, father, teacher, homeowner. On an expedition there is a set list of gear to bring, there are specific protocols to follow, there are maps, there are time limits, there are plans. I find comfort in the simple structure of it all; you bring your sleeping bag and your harness, you assess the conditions, and starting in the middle of the night you make a dash for the summit if the weather looks good. It's a meditation, and when everything works out, you are flooded with euphoria at the accomplishment of reaching a place that is so rare, so beautiful, that it feels like it could be on another planet.

I came to Peru with the faint intention of "marching up something tall" at some point during our stay here. In my mind one of my friends from the states would come down with a rope and we would walk up something "easy." By "easy" I mean a glacier without any parts so steep or broken up that they would require a belay. Well this is a nice fantasy but the reality of the situation is that I have not set foot on a glacier in ten years and I probably could have gotten myself into a heap of trouble had I gone off on my own. So it was a cosmic gift that my long lost friend and Outward Bound colleague, Eli Helmuth, was guiding a trip up two "training peaks" this coming week. Eli is now a professional guide and a guide trainer in the disciplines of mountaineering, rock climbing, and ski-mountaineering. His excellent website, climbinglife.com, is a great resource for the latest practices in safe climbing and I found it last year while preparing to attempt my first multi-pitch alpine climb in 10 years. I was back on the site again this fall just to see what was new, and there was an expedition to Peru listed for early October. Krista, in her eternal wisdom, recognized that me going with Eli was a much safer proposition than me going by myself or with some unknown guide. Having all worked together, Krista and I know Eli as a kind, calm, calculating, confident and cautious presence in the mountains. True to form he described himself in a recent email to me as "one of the most safety conscious (and scared) guides out there." This is the guide for me!

In addition to Eli's excellent services, we will have mules to carry gear, porters to set up camp, and cooks to feed us. This is a far cry from my last Andean adventures when I would hump a 90 pound pack up to high camp at 17,000 feet with a single partner, set up camp, cook , and on some occasions build a snow-block wall to deflect the wind. This time I just have to put one foot in front of the other and not have the psychological stress of the whole show resting on my shoulders. I have gotten a bit soft over the years and I am happy to hand over some of the responsibilities to able bodied professionals. Better yet when one of them happens to be an old friend.

I am really excited about this adventure and I can't wait to write about it. Whoa, look at that! I am already writing about it and it hasn't even happened yet. I hope to give a detailed account of my time in one of the worlds most spectacular mountain ranges, but it will have to wait until I am back around the 14th of October. Until then, maybe Isabel will write another post? See you all in a week.

Yeah!

What a lovely day. The sun was shining, the shower performed well for a change, and Sophia was in her first-ever school production.

There she is now putting the "O" in Roy G. Biv.

There was a quite a line to get in the door to see the show.
And some of the line-cutting shenanigans were amazing to witness. The show was all about the environmental crises facing our world, and what we can do to help. It was surprisingly well done. The musicians accompanying the performers happened to be the same band I sat in with last weekend! I'll have to go back to Le Nomade and tell them they were backing up my daughter. Below are some of the images I caught of the colorful, creative show.


After the show we went out for lunch at a restaurant called Los Balcones. You can see how it got its name from the image below. We all had the prix-fixe lunch which began with a favorite: choclo completo. Big kernel corn boiled and served with a slab of fresh sheep's cheese. Krista and I both had trout caught straight out of one of the local rivers and we all enjoyed a glass of fresh lemonade. All this for 10 soles a piece, or $3.50 with the tip.

Later I went grocery shopping with the girls and finally paid a fair price for the cab ride in both directions. I must be getting closer to "local" status. We branched out and bought some beef to make some comfort food tomorrow night, Beef Stew.

In the mean time I am preparing for my first mountaineering trip in some time. I fly on Monday to Lima, and then jump an 8 hour bus to the town of Huaraz. I am meeting a friend who will be guiding me and another client on attempts of Urus and Toqllayraju in the Cordillera Blanca. I am both nervous and really excited. I'll be sure to tell you more as the story unfolds.

Against my predictions, we are indeed beginning to assimilate here in Cusco. I am so proud of Isabel and Sophia as they take this amazing and diverse experience in stride. The memories we are creating here in Peru will remain with us for the rest of our lives.