Once in Cusco, we spent a day getting acclimatized and exploring the city. We went up to the ruins of Saqsaywaman and walked around, getting our first good Incan ruin tour from a guide in Spanish. We helped Thomas with translation but he must have paid pretty good attention in his Spanish classes since he got most of it. Back in Cusco we kept coming across folklore dances and processions in the main plaza. It seems every school child from kindergarten up to high school was involved and each class had their own dance and elaborate, colorful costumes! This also coincided with the end of Corpus Christi and there were tons of processions of huge statues of saints from the Cathedral to all the other parishes of Cusco. It was perfect, we couldn't have asked for a better example of what we've seen in South America to show Thomas. Here's our album of Cusco:
Then we headed down into the sacred valley of the Incans, exploring the ruins of Ollantaytambo and then caught a train to Aguas Calientes, which is the base town for all Machu Picchu visitors. We stayed one night there and caught the 5:30 am bus up to the famous ruins. We took a tour immediately and learned all about the city and its history, which lasted about 1.5 hours. Since we were there early, we were able to be one of the 400 people to climb Huana Pichu. It's the big rock behind all the famous Machu Pichhu pictures, so you get to get a birds eye view of the whole city. It was a hard climb so after that we headed down for a delicious lunch of tuna and crackers, then being a bit tired but not wanting to leave (so many people leave at 1pm!) we decided to take a nap on some of the agricultural terraces. After our nice sleep (Thomas likes to take a sleep sometimes), we decided again to go on a long hike and went up to the Sun Gate which was longer than we expected and higher too but we ended up being able to see the famous Incan trail that so many people take to arrive at the ruins. We were then some of the last to leave, making it a very full but very rewarding day. Here are the pictures of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu:
After getting back to Cusco very late (same day we were at Machu Picchu), we recovered for a day and decided that since we were so close to the rain forest that should be our next destination. We spent a day or two going to all the travel agencies, bargaining down and trying to find the best value for our trip. There were two basic tours, one was 4 days and the other 8. Only the 8 day tours got you into the pristine untouched rainforest so even though they were more expensive, we decided that if you were going to make it to the rainforest, you might as well go all the way.
The tour didn't leave for 6 days but since it was so expensive (even after our bargaining), we decided to try to lay low a bit in the Cusco area. We spent this time getting to know my little brother a little better. I was a little surprised at a couple of things I learned. The first was that Thomas had very little financial education. We set about rectifying this omission, teaching him about credit cards, stocks, bonds, IRAs, and all their advantages and disadvantages. It was crazy for us that Thomas who is now 18 had not been taught any of this in his school. He's heading off to college but he has friends who are not and are entering the “real world” without any of this kind of education! It only underscores for me the need for parents to teach their kids about money. I think that parents shy away from it because they think that money shouldn't be too important in their relationship with their kids and they don't want to obsess over it, but in reality they're doing their children a disservice. If they don't become victims to easy credit and get involved in paying 19% interest on credit card debt, then they'll never save for retirement or make any kind of investments, making whatever savings they have be whittled away by inflation. So anyway, we tried to teach Thomas all about this and even convinced him to go ahead and apply for a credit card which we did online. However, easy as it was for me to get one, he had a bit harder time. The credit card companies seem a bit more strict for first-time cardholders and new legislation is making it harder for young adults to get cards. I'm not sure I agree with the legislation since education seems to be more important in this regard but I digress... It wasn't all just about finance though, we also got Thomas hooked on the TV show “Lost” which we finally have started watching, so we would often sit up late at night huddled around EEVA watching 4 episodes in a row!
Finally, the day arrived for us to head into the rainforest. This particular national park was called “Manu” after the river that runs through it and it is one of the best places to get to primary rainforest (which is untouched rainforest). It's relatively close to Cusco which makes it convenient. Manu has several different administrative zones, one is multi-use which allows people to set up lodges that can use generators (only for a couple of hours a day), the other is the reserve zone which is open only to a couple of tourist companies, and then there's the vast majority of the park which is completely off limits to everyone except scientists. In there they have some native tribes who don't really want any contact with the outside world.
There are also several ecosystems in the park. The park begins at the eastern slope of the Andes so they have high altitude grasslands, then as the slope goes down, cloud forest where you constantly see clouds in the trees, then further down it flattens out into rainforest. What amazed me was the temperature difference between the highlands and rainforest. It went from cold to hot and humid so quickly! We stayed in lodges designed to keep insects out. All our beds had mosquito nets and the rooms had screens to keep them out as well. It was kind of fun to have your own little net around your bed, kind of like your own little kingdom. However I suspect that it wasn't completely effective because I definitely got bitten a couple in places that were always covered by clothes! So the only explanation that I could think of is that some little crawlers were either able to crawl underneath the net or were already waiting in the bed! In any case, the bugs were everywhere! I've never put so much Deet on my body for so long! Even when I would cover my body, the mosquitoes and flies would just hover around my head and arms. I realized I was torturing them, offering such tasty blood (I'm such a sweet guy you know) but covering myself with a dreaded smell. Perhaps it was like Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. So tasty but they knew it would kill them. In the end I think some flies and mosquitoes succumbed to the temptation and bit me anyway through my Deet or maybe through some tiny uncovered piece of flesh and I got plenty of bug bites as evidence!
In every zone, we took walks through the jungle with our guides, during both day and night in order to spot some animals. The most exciting animal was the Giant River Otter which is very endangered and lives on a lake formed when the river changed direction. We got on a small raft in the lake and paddled out to where they were fishing with their whole family. We got to watch them try to avoid the caimans (essentially crocodiles) who wanted to eat their babies. It was pretty cool. The other interesting animals we got to see were of course, monkeys! We saw five species of monkeys. They were relatively easy to spot since they usually go crashing through the trees as they move through the canopy. We saw and heard them eating, fighting and mating! One of our guides brought a telescope and we even got some real close up looks at their faces! It was also pretty cool. Finally on the way back out of the reserve zone we stopped at a lodge to spend a night and there they had a pet tapir! It's kind of like a giant pig but friendlier! So we got to feed Pancho and see a big mammal up very close, including all the disgusting ticks that were all over his head! :(
Overall, the jungle was really great! It was cool traveling along the rivers because roads there are really difficult to maintain. It was the dry season and the river was pretty low though, but you could see the huge trees that the river knocks down with every rainy season. Every rainy season the river knocks down more trees and leaves more new land for the forest to regrow. Some of the trees it knocks down though were so huge! The thing about the trees down there is that it's impossible to know how old they are since they don't really have seasons where they don't grow. I think I'd like to check out the redwood forest up on California to compare how they look to the trees we were just walking under.
We finished with the jungle and began our trip back to the U.S. We're currently in Lima awaiting our flight back to San Francisco. We dropped Thomas off at the airport yesterday and spent the day today looking for a new dress for Suzanne for the two weddings we are going to be going to. We're really excited to go back to the USA. It's been more than 5 months now and it'll be nice to speak in English to everyone and see a lot of our really good friends. I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is the almost 100% chance that we'll have toilet paper in all bathrooms and that we can also flush said toilet paper into the toilet! Small pleasures... Suzanne is most looking forward to being able to drink water from wherever and whenever she wants. This includes not being paranoid about accidentally opening your mouth in the shower. :) The thing I'm least excited about is 18% tipping at restaurants. What a ripoff! Here its maximum 10%!!! And no annoying tip jars at fast food places.
~Mike
ps. Will post pictures of jungle soon, though there won't be as many.
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