Counter Punch — Wow, I wanna subscribe when I get back home.
We did Machu Picchu kind of on the cheap.
People are paying close to $300 to hike the Inca Trail because it’s not required that one have guides and all kinds of stuff like that. I didn’t really research doing the Inca Trail hike because it seems like such a crowded thing anyway, they let 500 people on the trail a day. That’s a lot. Crowded. Stepping on heels. I’d rather go somewhere more remote.
A Japanese girl, Yorico (spell?), that Jason knew from before told us about how she had gone to M.P. with a group of friends for quite cheap. Now ‘The Man’ makes M.P. pretty expensive to get to. They really try hard. Tourist rates for everything. To ride the train to Aguas Calientes costs S/11.00 for the locals, $3 more or less. They charge $12 for Outsiders for 1 train every day, basically the one that leaves at the crack of dawn. The ones at normal hours of the day all cost $30. Then they have the buses from Aguas Calientes to M.P. They cost $4.50 each way. Entry to M.P. is $20 for adults, $10 for students.
Yorico told us that it’s an 8 hour walk up the railroad tracks. Then you can leave nice and early from A.C. and hike up to M.P. before dawn. Before the Inca Trailers get there. Before the Buses start running.
Freya and Prim, our British buddies gave another tip. They printed out official looking letters with a college logo pulled from the web that ‘certified’ that they’re students. Save $10 getting in. $10 isn’t really all that much but here it definitely stretches a long way.
Armed with all this information Jason, Ina, and I set out for Machu Picchu on Wednesday, noon-time, after I had cooked some pancakes. We took a bus to Pisac, had some lunch, and bus to Urubamba where we chilled out for a bit. Jason had packed a bottle of rum, we bought some coke and lime and had ourselves some Cuba Libres in the park before heading to the next bus. This bus to Ollyantaytambo was on the road for about 40 minutes. We were in the very back. Drinking. Decided to pull out the music. I brought my Mp3 player, Ina has some battery powered speakers. We rocked the bus out with some chilled-out funkadelic and some blues. I’m not sure what the locals thought. Crazy gringos are crazy, maybe they thought.
We got to town, found a hostel for the night, and cruised to the market to grab a cheap dinner. It’s fun eating in the market with the locals. They’re so friendly and curious as to why the hell we’re not eating at the fancy tourist establishments. Well, those are expensive and you meet only tourists. We had a drink at a tourist bar, jason did some card tricks, and soon after we all passed out.
Thursday we got up at 8am in order to get hiking toward Aguas Calientes. We found the train station and found it nicely guarded. No getting to the tracks there so we walked throught some famer fields for a little bit until we could get to the tracks without too much notice. So far so god. The battery powered speakers were bumping some bluegrass. We were chewing some Coca leaves. We walked for about 1.5 hours until we realized that there was still a road alongside the railroad. Hmm, why aren’t we taking a bus. Did that Japanese girl say something about taking a bus, we weren’t super sure. We finally decided that it might be better to get to walking on the road and try to flag down a bus as we still had 40 kilometers to walk to A.C. from where we where at. That’s about 10 hours at our pace, and we’d already been walking a while.
After seeing a big fat turkey and gobbling back and forth for a bit we were able to catch a taxi out to kilometer 82, where we should have started at the beginning of the day. Oh well, it looked like we’d be hiking into the night. Our pace was about 4km per hours, leaving us with 8 hours of hiking. A.C. is at km 111. At some point there was supposed to be a checkpoint where we’d have to sneak in order to get past.
We hiked until km 88. It’s not easy hiking on the track. Sometimes there was a god-send path alongside, sometimes we had to deal with the nasty rocks. Usually they covered the railroad ties so there was nothing level to walk on. Jason and Ina discovered that if they held hands and walked alongside each other, each on their own track, it was a lot easier to balance. So, yes, we arrived at km 88.
We had options, we could try to sneak around the top, stay on the tracks, or sneak by the river. Km 88 is the start of the Inca Trail, that’s why they have the controls there. The trails starts across the bridge. We decided to go high and stupidly walked right into the control post. We should have know better. We said hi, that we were just out for a little day-hike and were promptly sat down in an office where they took down all our passport information, were told that they were proud we came from all around the world to be there, but that we had to turn back because we did not have permission to hike the tracks. Meanwhile I’m sure a few locals passed by on the tracks. Protected area or something. Tourist extortion isn’t gonna work if they let you walk to A.C.
They escorted us a good ways back down the tracks. We had been busted. We went down to the river and had lunch. We looked at how feasible it would be to sneak along the river during the day and decided that it’s too risky, especially having been busted before. We didn’t feel like being detained. It was 3pm and we decided to wait for dusk. I built rock walls and stuff until we decided that it was safe to go at 6pm. It was fun sneaking along the river, I led the way and whenever I looked back I could hardly see the other guys. There was no way we were gonna be spotted unless someone was really keeping an eye out for us. It was fun. It felt like in some spy movie. We finally got the the other end of the train station and had to work our way up between the bridge from the Inca Trail and the Station. The hillside was so damn steep we had to risk taking a well-trodden path. Oh well, right when I was about to climb up onto the tracks I dove back down into the bushes. Out of the darkness a figure had appeared walking down the tracks. We were to dive into the bushed many more times that night. Finally we had an all-clear and made a dash into the train tunnel a short ways down the track. Whew. We made it past. We were ultra paranoied.
Every time a train came past we’d jump into the bushes, behind a bank, anything to hide. Yuch, it was 6:30pm and we still had 23 km to walk. That’s about 6 hours. Off we went. Diving into the bushes every now and then. Trying to find the most comfortable place to walk. Sometimes we dove into the bushes on false alarms.
After eating dinner we encountered a light flickering up ahead by the track. We sat there a long time trying to figure out if it was coming closer. Waited waited. Finally we had to risk it. It was a gas/kerosene flame that was freaking us out. We’d been walking by moonlight so long that any light seemed like a risk of getting busted. I’m still thinking that once we made it past the guard station no one gives a shit, but we weren’t gonna risk anything. Turns out the light had just been left on by the guy that seemed to be passed out listening to the radio in his earthmoving equipment. Disaster averted.
Hours later, at 12:40 we got to Aguas Calientes. Our feet were hurting from the crappy surface. We had some quick french fries and a beer and hunted a hostel to pass out at.
To get to M.P. by sunrise we would have had to get up at 4am or so, not so likely having just gone to sleep at 2am so we decided to kick it in A.C. for a day and hike up to M.P. the next day. We’re not that hard-core. Plus there were hot-springs to sit in. We sat for about 3 hours. We spent a lazy day. It was nice. In the evening Jason and I set about making our ghetto enrollment certifications from Evergreen College, yeah, likely that was going to work. The logo printed all grainy and I just made up a bunch of text.
Friday Jason and I got up at 4am to start our hike up to M.P. It was a road walk and then a steep climb for about an hour. We got to the gate just when then guards got there as well. We had just signed the fake signatures on out letters and were ready to bullshit our way in for 10 dollars. We made the letters out like form letters. To someone that doesn’t read English they looked identical. They scrutinized and scrutinized. The guy was pained telling us that he couldn’t let us in cheap because the letters looked the same. Ok, once we showed him the names in the text and compared them out passports he sighed in relief, gave us a big smile, and told us it was no problem to let us in for $10 a piece. Yay, we just wowed some peruvians with some tech-savvy. They screw us at the market because we don’t know what stuff is worth. We screw them when it comes to official looking documents. I’m glad they didn’t look at the grainy logo to closely.
We were in. The first ones. Some grounds-crew were starting to seep in but there were no other tourists for about 30 minutes. We got a great view as the mist cleared. These ruins are definitely located at a magnificent and magical site. Very impressive. We walked around a bit, took some self-timer-naked-photos-from-behind, and headed up Wayna Picchu, the mountain on the north end in order to stay ahead of the flood of Inca Trailers whose camera flashes were very apparent from the Sun Gate way off in the South.
From Wayna Picchu we descended down to the Temple of the Moon. Some of these stairs that the Incas built into these bare cliff faces are damn damn damn impressive. Those folks had a lot of manpower. The temple was sweet, it was centered around a big cave formed by a huge boulder that had fallen to form a roof. There was some beautiful stonework. Jason passed out for a few hours. He was feeling sick. I went to look at the other smaller temple-cave and lit some insence there. Mhhh, Nag Champa. I also put a Sol by the other Sol that I found left as a tribute in the big temple. I did some sewing on my buttpack modification which is finished at the time of this writing.
Jason came to and we climbed back out to M.P., not an easy uphill, but some more really cool stairs. Jason napped some more as I explored. I got a little tired too and read while he was sleeping. It was chill just sitting there watching the tour groups go by. The place was swarming with old and young.
We took off at about 4pm, Jason felt and was contemplating taking the bus. I went ahead to town, Jason headed back at his own pace. When I got back to A.C. Ina was there sitting in the park. She was supposed to have gotten back out Cusco that morning but the train sold out so she had to stick around. Jason was sick and as soon as we got a room he laid down and slept all night. Ina did too, she had been up all day since 4am as well. I went out to get some dinner, read some spanish, have a beer, and I was close behind in going to bed.
We got train tickets on Saturday morning, Jason was in no shape to walk. and made it back to cusco with no money to our names. We had to borrow 2 soles off another tourist to pay for the bus. We stood for 1.5 hours in the bus because the seats were sould out. It was good though because the standing seats cost S/3 instead of S/5 so we were actually almost able to afford them. There was no ATM in A.C. so we were getting really strapped for cash. All good though. I got some breakfast and slept for most of the day. I woke up when Ina walked in with someone we weren’t really expecting to see, someone whom we hung out with for quite some time, someone who was supposed to be in the Netherlands.
He’s got a good story, which I’ll try to relate in another post.
Anyway, Ina walked in with Leo.
Man, It sucked being sick for about a week there. I had no enery to do anything. We watched lots of movies down at the bars in Cusco and just kinda chilled out doing not much of anything at all. Discovered some nice clubs off the main square with good music, jazz, or good beats, stuff like that. Tangible Myth, Mandela’s Bar, Km 0 are all pretty chill. Good to get away from the pop hip-hop dance swill for the masses in the main plaza clubs.
In the daytime you can get great Avocado Sanwiches on the street for S/0.70 and at night sweeeet grilled egg sandwiches for S/1.00. Those are with an egg, cabbage, onions, french fries, tomato, mayo, mustard, ketchup, chili sauce, and olive sauce. We’ve been eating them nightly.
Then it’s off to the mate cart to get a great S/0.50 cup of hot beverage with all kinds of great flavorings thrown in. I love the street food stands. Delicious and a great value.
Last Saturday we hit the Molino Market which is a weekly flea-market kind of event. We ate some sketchy street food and looked at all the scrap pieces of iron being sold. Late in the day I hit upon the lady that had a few digital camera’s sitting on her milk crate, nice prives, some without batteries or chargers — definitely stolen goods. This is where all the swiped bags and hijacked buses go to live.
I found a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 lens that the lady wanted $250 for. Now I don’t even have a Canon EF mount camera body but this lens sells for over $1000, yes, it’s a little scratched up but I’ve dealt with worse. I talked her down to $200 and bought the whopper of an instrument. How am I gonna carry that sucker around. Ugh. I’m planning on buying a bunch of crafts and stuff in La Paz. I hope to get a reliable insured shipment (UPS,DHL,…) together and throw the lens in there. It costs a bit more to ship with the trusted carriers but it’s not gonna get lost, and if it does I get paid.
Today I borrowed Ina’s Canon body and was running around shooting a 36 exposure roll. I hope to finish shooting tomorrow and get it developed to see how things look.
Next I’ll have to get myself a Canon digital SLR body — or maybe I can sell the lens and get a Nikon, which I prefer after all my Canon A70 experiences and the lack of Canon Customer Reps getting back to me after multiple inquires about some problems with the camera software. Dorks. I’d rather not buy anything from them again. Bad customer support sucks. I’ll never get Sprint PCS again either.
Picture of me on Richard and Claire’s site.
Hey, new pictures up, starting with this one.
So I’ve been in Cusco for almost a week and I haven’t even gotten out to see any of the nearby ruins… We’ve been all busy moving into our room. We found the place after waling around for an afternoon and asking around a neighborhood to see if there were any rooms for rent… eventually we came upon this place. It has a dirt floor and the room had cuy (guinea pigs) in it when we looked at it but Paulina, the landlady cleaned it out a bit and allowed us to paint.
So paint we did, red walls except for where the walls are stone. There’s actually a nice outcropping of Inca stone in the middle of the room. We left one wall white and painted a big peruvian flag on it (red,white,red). Jason has adorned it with a nice caricature of the three of us, we’re something like the Independent Republic of Gringolandia and Igloolandia, the Igloolandia following from Ina’s Norwegian origins. It’s been fun fixin the place up.
Some of Ina’s friends from before let us borrow some matresses to toss in the corner - I went out and bougth a big sheet of plastic so they wouldn’t get too dirty with the dirt floor.
We have a kerosene 2 burner stove to cook with. Showers are cold. Electricity is spotty but usually comes back when we ask about it. Why, I don’t know.
Water, so we always run out of water at around noon time. Apparently there’s a supply higher up the hill that gets depleted throughout the day so we sort of have to shower in the morning and fill up cooking water every morning. What I’m not getting is why they run the water down the tube until it runs out. After they’re done doing what they need to do they just run run run it down a drain. One has to beat the hose that’s draining water in order to take a shower. Weird, I’m not water engineer or anything… but I’m thinking maybe the water would last longer if they didn’t use it up every morning. Might even allow for some evening showers. Then again, they’ve probably been doing this for generations so who am I to say anything.
The other morning they were slaughtering a pig in the courtyard in front of the room.
Upstairs we have a neat musician/artist community. I’m not sure how many people are living up there but there’s often good music playing and every now and then a juggling pin from the roofdeck lands in the yard.
Today we bought some plants, Jason and Ina planted one of the Cacti in the floor. Looks good. A street vendor also randomly approached us with the Charlie Chaplin poster that Jason has been wanting to buy for days now.
Tonight we’re having a bit of a moving in part, inviting our local and gringo friends. I’m hoping for a good time.
Maybe we’ll make it out to some ruins or hikes soon.
This keyboard is a piece of shit, please excuse any typos and missing spaces :)
There’s a mess of sights to be seen here but all I’ve been doing is going out with the gang every night and dancing and drinking until the weee hours. Fun times but it’s hard tog et a lot done the next day when you either sleep until 1pm or are hung-over-like.
The bars here are,… hmmm,… interesting. I’m really just talking about the clubs around the Plaza de Armas. Every night of the week there are people passing out free drink cupons for their club, there are about 4 that are competing. It’s kind of a ritual now to start at about 10pm and go the the first place to get a drink. Most of the other joints have free drinks starting at 11pm. You can make rounds for about 2 hours and change,… Get about 4, maybe 5 free drinks. Rum and Coke and the likes.
They’re hoping that your group of friends gains momentum at that club and decides not to move on. Then they charge starting at about 12:30. The place that’s more popular ain’t givin’ out free drinks.
Music at these places can be decent but also suck. Maybe it’s not that it sucks but that there’s a lack of continuity. Ok, Image — James Brown followed by Counting Crows, Fat Boy Slim, U2, Eminem, a Salsa tune, and then maybe a nnnts nnnts nnnts nnts house tune. It can drive one nuts. The cool thing is that there’s no cover fee and I can just run from one to the other when the music goes bad. Also, I don’t know why, at one place the DJ seems to be changing the tempo of the song right in the middle throwing everyone off a tiny bit. Weird Stuff.
Moreover, the music is the same every night. Not only is it the same every night but it’s just about the same in all the clubs. Did I already say that. I forget. These DJ’s are pretty much all interchangeable.
I almost feel like I should flag one of them down one of these nights and offer to turn him onto some more music. For all the times I’ve heard ‘I Will Survive’ or ‘Mr Jones’ I would have loved to have heard just one Black Star ‘Respiration’ or one of those sick Deee-Lite remixes off of ‘Sampladelic Relics and Dancefloor Oddities.’ Oooh, I forgot to mention that they also repeat songs as many times a 3 a night, probably more but there’s a lot of club-hopping going on. Hint: Rather than repeating the same tune, that I admit is good, just play something else that’s equally worthy. Spare me the monotony.
Oh, and I have to stress this link again. Sweet vent about how DJ’s are often subjugated into playing the same old shit. Thanks Br Cleve and Weekly Dig.
We did get some things pulled together at the room that we’re renting. There’s a bunch of drum-playing-juggling-weed-smoking-dready-artisan-musican types upstairs. Gotta spend some more time with them.
Gotta run to meet Ina and Jason,… they’re watching one of the free movies at one of the clubs and it’s about to end.
I think I’ll be staying in Cusco a few weeks. Jason, Ina, and I just rented a place for a month. It’s pretty nice now that they’ve moved out the Guinea Pigs and we’ve painted some of the walls. It’s really nice to have a place to yourself for a bit after 3.5 months of travelling. This is a lot cheaper too. 150 soles for the month, that’s like… $15 each, or about $0.47 a night. A lot better than the $20 a night I was paying in Boston-town.
We’re heading out to hit the bars and meet some people now. Soon we’ll have a housewarming party. Yay.
Ok, so backing up to add a bit more detail,…
Pisco is one of those gringo trail stops that eveyone makes to book a trip to the Islas Ballesta. The Islas are a 30 minute boat ride out and contain huge colonies of sea lions, penguins, cormorants, pelicans, even vultures that snack on the corpses of sea lions. The islands are have been beautifully undercut by the waves, creating caves that sometimes go all the way underneath the island. Sea Lions yell around in the caves creating some haunting echoing sounds. Guano is harvested every few years to be used as fertilizer. Obligatory tourist trap, check. Done did it. My first one on the trip, it was worthwile though. I just can’t get over the “Ok, we’ll stop now so you can take some pictures” thing. It’s ok, I’ll deal.
After the trip I had some ceviche, grabbed my stuff at the hostel, and cruised on to Ica where sandboarding outside the beautiful desert oasis of Huacachina was to await me. I had gotten word from some friends that one of the hostels there tried to penny pinch and exploit you for every last penny so I tried taking a cab to an alternate place. Shut Down. Oh well, I headed to the Casa de la Arena. There were a lot of people hanging out and it was a chill scene but they really did try to push you into eating there and taking their dune buggy rides and all that stuff. Oh well, I had a good time nonetheless.
As soon as I got my bag dropped off I headed into the dunes. It was my first time in a real desert like this. I had been to White Sands before where we played disc golf on the dunes, but I’d never seen anything like this before.
The peace and quiet of the desert was amazing. I just sat there in the sun for what seemed like days absorbing the new environment. Every now and then I took another sip of my water. Dunes are hard to walk up but fun to walk down. I played with the sand for a long time, sitting halfway down a dune and digging until there was a little dip in the ridge and I was buried under piles of sand. I had a great time. Around sunset time I headed to a flat spot and felt inclined to salute the sun — the sun salutations I learned in yoga sure came in handy. I felt great out there.
That evening I spent hanging around with the people at the hostel. There was a poolside bar and lots of hammocks. A really good chillout scene with Isrealis, Swiss, Germans, Dutch, and maybe a few others that I’m forgetting. Everyone there just to relax.
The next day I slept in, did some reading over a beer, and waited for the dune buggy/ sandboarding trip. It was kinda expensive but all the rates were the same and it waw good in order to get a few more rides of snadboarding in. Huffing it up thuse dunes really is no small feat. The buggy ride was fun with the driver plunging down some serious drops. Very roller-coaster-esque.
Duneboarding is a lot like snowboarding. You need a much steeper slope than in snowboarding because the sand is a lot slower. The boards are basically like snowbaords, without metal edges. We used velcro straps that were kind of a pain in the ass because it was hard to get them tight enough to hold your shoes on well. My heel was way to mobile and it made it really hard to make a heel-to-toe turn because the damn board would just not lift when I lifted my heels. Grrr. It was fun all in all though. In the end we did this thing where you just lay down on the board and hold on. Talk about cruising fast fast fast. That was arguably the funnest ride of the day.
That evening I got a good history of Isreal and current talks about the Israel-Paelstine conflict. Lots of Israelis out there that just finished their obligatory military training and are out the get the hell away from it all for a while. Interesting perspective, I’m not sure I agree with everything said, but then again I’m not Isreali.
The next morning it was off to Nasca and Cusco.
I’m in Cusco now. Shall write more soon.
Lima to Pisco and the Islas Ballesta.
Pisco to Ica, and the little oasis just outside with the sandboarding.
2 nights there. Chill time. Dune buggy rides. Too expensive.
Tonight I decided not to go to Arequipa but accelerate my move toward Cusco and Boliva in an attempt to give myself some more time in Argentina which everyone has been saying is so great.
If I get around to it i’ll try to drop more reports on duneboarding and stuff, but now my buss leaves in 45 minutes from here in Nazca and I still need to buy water and snackies and maybe an ice cream treat.
Be well, all. Yuch, I don’t want this 13 hour bus ride.
Oh, and I fucking hate romantic latin music. Hate. A lot. Really. And why is it always on at the internet cafe�s. I think it�s affecting my blog entries.
Damn, So I was gonna spend my last night in Lima going to see some more Jazz but I happened to get quite ill and just slept it off in the hostel. It was a dumb idea eating pizza on top of a slightly aching belly. That ended up getting rejected by the body. Life goes on.
Yesterday I walked around Miraflores again. I found an internet cafe that had a compact flash card reader. I had a compact flash card that croaked out on me and lost its format. The pictures were still on it but the camera could not read it anymore. So I decided I’d grab the software that was so often touted on my favorite digital camera review site, Photo Rescue which did the trick in minutes. It wasn’t exactly the cool hacker approach but I really wasn’t into messing around with stuff too much. Cost me $29 for the software. I have a feeling I may be using it again sometime in the future anyway.
I bought some fabric goods and things, hoping to maybe find someone at the hostel to take stuff back to the US for me to ship things but the two candidates were very reluctant. Oh well, so I had to drop a bit of cash on that.
I mailed the package today, cost me 125 soles, about $38 or so, 3.7 kilos. I could have gone up to 5 kilos for the same proce but at this point I just didn’t feel like dealing. I just wanted to get out of Lima. Would have been kind of interesting today though, the Coca growers are in town demanding more rights. They’ve been blocking traffic and trying to get some demands met. I think they’re trying to get Coca growing legazlied, big issue here. I still don’t full understand it. The whole main plaze was roped off and there were riot police wanderng around all over. They were very helpful when I asked them directions to the post office.
I hopped on a bus to Pisco, Peru at 13:42 and just checked into the hostel, booked a tour for the Islas Ballesta where I hope to see some penguins and birds and sea lions and stuff like that. We shall see. Now I’m off to find me some dinner. I’ve only eaten junk all day. A great habit given that I had a nasty stomach last night,… even this morning even.
Sweet. It was good to get out for the 3 day hike. Mind clearing and physically challenging. I took off on Thursday morning at 7am and took a kombi to Macara, just 30 minutes north of Huaraz. The plan was to get to Laguna Akilpo that evening. Taking a taxi from Macara to the trailhead would have cost 30 soles ($9) so I opted for taking another kombi as far as it goes and walking for 2 hours. The map had a trail marked on it that circumvented a lot of nasty road-walking up switchbacks so I tried my luck with that. Going was very nice for about 20 minutes until I found myself in a little creek valley with no way forward, only backward and up. I look up and there are two campesino girls laughing at me, hinting that I better climb up to where they are because there’s no way around.
I climb up and they lead me down a path, through loads of brush, paths made for people 5 feet tall, not 6ft4 with a big backpack. I got caught on quite the number of plants but we finally made it through to the footbridge indicated on the map. Whew. The whole way they keep looking back at me with kind of a curious, what the hell is this poor fool doing out here, kind of look. I guess I was a bit of a curiosity. After the bridge they ask me for a tip, I give it, and we go our own ways.
2 minutes later I aquired another guide, a little quy packing a big machete. He motions that I better get some expert advice crossing his land so I offer him a sol to guide me across the cow-field. Along the way he keeps asking me how much I was going to pay and I caved. In the end he got 2 soles. $0.75. Not a huge expenditure in the grand scheme of things.
After that it was just me by myself trying to find the main trail. I was not really looking for the main main trail because I was afraid there might be a ranger station there that would be charging me the 65 soles for camping in the park. If there was one I successfully skirted it and would have to do so again in the other valley on the way out.
So I walked, up, up, up. From 2500m to 4700m. It killed me in the end. I was a bit off in estimating when I’d get the the lake and kinda made things harder on myself by following smaller paths, trying to take shortcuts. Either way I ended up at the lake right around sunset, my ass had been kicked by the last steep 200m ascent. The stupid soup packet that I had was cream soup. It congealed into something rodck-like asparagus tasting. I could barely put it down. I threw most of it away and ate cheese and crackers instead. I had tent pegs held in by big rocks. It was cold. There were avalances going off all around on the surrounding glaciers. I heated up a 1L nalgene bottle to take into bed with me and read a few lines of The Teachings of Don Juan before passing out.
Morning held a nast scramble up to a pass. The terrain wasn’t diffiult, just steep. And I though I had had some kind of acclimatization from the 9 day Huayhuash trek, maybe for altitude, but carrying the full pack over the 5050m pass was dragging me down. Up and over, I took the time to build a few cairns and pitched my tent on a little outcropping just above the Ishinca Refugio, located at 4350m, I think. More reading during the afternoon rains. A delicious soup. Some moonlight photography, and 3 attempts at going to sleep, foiled by lack of tiredness and a desire to keep reading.
Another day, I booked it down the Ishinca valley. Right past the ranger station, didn’t even blink. I got away without having to pay the 65 soles. yay. Here and there I had to ask some directions of how to get to the rode, paying bribes in chocolate to the direction giver’s daughter. I really should have asked him to let me take a picture of the star engraved in his gold tooth. It was pimp.
Working yn way through flocks of sheep and passing and getting passed by farmer families carrying their potatoes down the hill I got closer and closer to the main road. Then there was the guy with the badly chapped lips, no, turns out he had a chapped throat, mouth. He asked mr for medicine, anuything. Eeeek. All I had was some topical antibiotic that he could maybe put on his exterior sores. I treally didn’t know how to help. I wish I had. Then there were a few jehova’s witnesses that i ran across. They shared their lovely publications about doomsday theories before we pareted ways so they could go preach their gospel to someone else.
That afternoon I had a chill day in Huaraz. Pancakes with fruit at the California Cafe. Moving photos to dirtmine.com. Stuff like that. Miles the British bloke was trying to convince me to take a mountaineering course with him. I’m trying to get myself moving on a lot more to see, sorry kid.
The next day I left for Lima. That day I ripped a few CD’s from the hostel to mp3 to burn for myself. Yeah, yeah. Now I’m travelling with some Ludacris, Coolio, and Snoop. Miles and I touched base on music and it turns out he know just about all the original tunes to all the dub and dj versions of all the reggae classica. I know some but this kid was incredible. Damn 19 year old. I guess that’s what growing up in London does for ya. We headed to Alex and Jen’s house for a little bit, Miles to pick up some books on Mountaineering, I to get a Baby Donkey sticker for my nalgene. That’s the Mex. restaurant they’ve been running in Huaraz in previous years. They gave it up for this year. Boo. A lot of work it was.
Bus to Lima, damn guy in front of me has to recline his seat. I listen to Snoop and am trying to place whether all the things I recognize are original or copies of old-school rap memes. Oy, I’m so not informed.
In Lima I checked into The Point hostel, and slept from 8am until 1pm. Clean myself up. Wander around Miraflores district for a while, get a guidebook for SA at the South American Explorers, the South American Handbook. I’m sick of trying to hunt down books for every country. Chill at Cafe Zeta for a bit, nice little place I stumbled upon. Great espresso, and nice artsy atmosphere, I dig I dig. My kinda place.
That night I went out with some of the hostel crew to see some Jazz at La Noche it was a decent jam of blues and latin jazz. Not bad for free. It wasn’t Murphy’s but it was good. I asked the bassist about what else will be going on and he’s pointed me to a tuesday night jam that I will try to go to tonight.
Today I spent the day kicking it around Miraflores again. Eating good food. Buying crafts. Practicing my spanish on Pot Dealers, Coke Dealers and Pimps.
I have clean laundry. Some more music tips in my little notebook. I think I’ll leave Lima tomorrow. It’s kinda polluted here. A decent vibe on the street aside from all the damn coke dealers that keep wanting to be your friend.
I forgot to mention this.
The ring that was stuck on my finger came right off after Huayhuash trek, I was just giving it my habitual daily tug and it slipped right off. Maybe it was the oil and scum accumulatd on the trip, the meager rations, the cold of the hands, the lack of oxygen at altitude, the relief of not having to be around a nutso social situation anymore.
I’m out to either go to sleep or find some nightlife, not sure yet. Tomorrow I shall blog about my mind-clearing do-what-i-want-to-do and noone else can tell me what to do solo 3 day trek. A good thing-in-all.
If anyone out there with smaller fingers than mine want a nice hand-crafted silver-ish ring, get a hold of me at floydfest or something.
O yeah, come to Floydfest everybody. It shall deserve its own blog entry someday. Do does Floyd, VA itself.