Incan Adventures

We've started a family tradition, that when a child turns 10, we get to do an awesome adventure together. This serves multiple purposes: creating a fun memory, opening up some overseas experiences/perspective for the child, and allowing Dad to milk this incremental mid-life crisis he has been having. This month, Ella and Daddy when to Peru together, and had a great time. Here is a day-by-day break-down of the adventure...

DAY 01 LIMA:

We flew on TACA airlines out of DC/Dulles (red-eye flight, nice because you avoided the NOVA traffic). We liked flying Air TACA - Ella because they gave you TWO meal choices, Daddy because they were on-time and the staff was very friendly. The connection through El Salvador was easy and uncomplicated. TACA (amusingly close to TACO) also gave you a kids coloring book that allowed Daddy and Ella to have a Yoda-drawing contest. Ella experienced using an airplane bathroom in-flight for the first time (!). Ella wrote what she liked about the plane trip: French toast, window seat, pillow, tracing stars into shapes, controllable air-conditioning - the turn-off little lights alone produced squeals of wonder. I tried to explain how flight happens; my sketches deserve to be preserved for posterity.

DAY 02 - LIMA - NAZCA:

We arrived in Lima and no one was there to pick us up. Daddy got a taxi and that guy tried to exploit us several times but we made it to where we needed to go. After checking into the Hotel Girasoles (in an affluent suburb of Miraflores) and the nice lady there (Milagros) fixed everything with the tour company), we toured the city. The Lima traffic was nightmarish; it was crowded and not terrific by any definition. At least where we stayed was nice enough (the hotel was very nice), you could walk around and there were shops and restaurants and such. Downtown Lima had some nice sites around the Plaza de Armas, but we walked fast and held hands and didn't stay too long after nightfall! After returning to Miraflores after a heart-stopping taxi ride, we eat in a little restaurant that Ella proclaims is her favorite place ever to eat ("extremely delicious" a powerful review for the hole-in-the-wall Rinconcita de Emma restaurant). We had a lot of discussion about poverty, bars on windows, petty crime, etc.

We woke up and had breakfast (Ella likes hotel breakfasts), literally by ourselves because of the early hour - which means exclusive access to the yummy fruit plates. We go to the bus station and take a double-decker bus on the Cruz Del Sur lines, from an admirably well-organized and clean bus station. The ride is long (8 hours) but we have the front two seats on the upper deck of the tour bus, which gives us an almost IMAX-style perspective of the crazy "mano-a-mano" traffic combat the bus engages in. If that weren't exciting enough, we watch 3 movies! We drive through some crazy isolation in a desert section of Peru, passing villages and isolated shacks that look that they could (and did) survive the end of the world. If we had known better then, we would have liked to have stopped at Paracas (coastal sea life tour we've heard good things about) and gone further down to some Condor canyons - but maybe for the next trip.

We arrive at the Hotel el Nido del Condor outside of the sleepy town of Nazca. The hotel is a little...not too nice, but Ella is thrilled because they have in pens an alpaca, a llama, and a taruka (Andean deer) - which she promptly names Ja-hooty and bonds with for life. She almost got spit on either by the alpaca or llama (I'm still not clear as to the difference), but she braves the potential for animal spittle to hang out with Ja-hooty many times during our one-night stay. Ja-hooty was the highlight of that hotel stay, with the notable exception of discovering the joys of "Inka Cola", a bright-yellow/cream-soda-esque soda that becomes a trip favorite of both Ella and Daddy. We hang out by the pool and talk to some British vagabonds, and take frequent trips to see Ja-hooty. Ella dropped her socks in the toilet and thus prompted the first of many pillow fights. It was a slow day, and a long night highlighted only by a 3am hunt/search/destroy mission for a cricket living "la Vida Loca" in our bathroom. It shall no longer reproduce, and I got back to sleep after the second 3am mission that was more successful than the 2:45 am aborted mission (they are hard to find when silent).

DAY 03 – NAZCA - LIMA:

Breakfast was hurried and spartan by decision, there had been frequent warnings not to eat very much given what we were about to do. We took an aerial tour of the famous Nazca lines. Cut into the stony desert are a large number of lines, not only in parallels and geometric figures, but also of forms of a dog, whale, an enormous monkey (the best kind), a hummingbird, spider, etc. The lines evidently represent some sort of vast astronomical (pre-Incan) calendar. The flight was fun, lots of heavy banking (hence the no breakfast warning), and the view was pretty cool. You can see plenty of Nazca flight images on YouTube, which are really quite nice.

Rather than giving Ja-hooty more of us to miss, we high-tailed it early back to Nazca with the hopes of taking an earlier bus to Lima. While waiting for this bus, we walk around the little town, and are pleased to find the central plaza, where local elementary school is doing some sort of parade, complete with flowering speeches by local politicians. Just beyond this spectacle, we find an actual street market that stretches for about 20 blocks. Ella is amazed to find this post-Incan version of Wal-Mart, where everything from underwear to apples to furniture is sold to the locals (we stuck out like a couple of sore thumbs) from roadside stalls. It was really cool to find this place, far away from the tourist zones. We even found Ella number-one favorite Peruvian delicacy, churros filled with dulce-de-leche (sort of a deep-fried sugary dough tube stuffed with caramel); Ella writes about churros in her journal "EAT IT! EAT IT! EAT IT! EAT IT! EAT IT!” We single-handedly supported the Peruvian churro industry while there, a sort of targeted micro-stimulus package. We bought some drinks and fruit and headed back to the bus station.

After the churros and some more Inka Cola, we took the long bus ride back to Lima. Back to the wonderful Hotel Girasoles, that we appreciated all the much more after Nazca (though they didn't have animals to bond with).

DAY 04 – LIMA - CUZCO:

The good folks at the Hotel realize that the tour agency scheduled us for taxi pick-up about the same time that our actual flight was leaving. Milagros and company work hard to get everything corrected, and the night crew prepared a special breakfast before-operating hours so we have something to eat before we leave (they were really awesome) for the airport at 5:30am.

We fly Peruvian Airlines to Cusco. The plane was nice and the flight more pleasant than most US flights we've ever taken. We arrived in Cusco and we properly picked up this time and we check into the Hotel Mabey. Ella and I walk around the city and immediately feel the effects of the high-altitude location - Daddy had to stop and catch his breath after a few blocks - Ella was largely unaffected. She overheard folks talking about high-altitude sickness and wrote in her journal that "when you get sick, that means your brain is swelling"...I wonder if that is true!

Cusco is the ancient capital of the Incan empire, and the Spanish built colonial masterpieces on top of Incan masterpieces. The city is quite lovely and there is a lot to see and do. The city was clean and it felt safe, we could have spent the entire time in Cusco and been very happy.

Ella and I took our time exploring the city and the street vendor in an around the main plaza. There were friendly people to talk with and lots to see. We did some souvenir shopping at the craft market. In the afternoon we connected with our tour group and got an excellent tour of the inside of many of the sites we had seen from the outside. We toured the main colonial structures built on top of Incan ruins, and then took the bus to see surrounding Incan sites around the City. These included the gigantic zigzag stone-walled temple/fortress of "Sacsayhuaman", which is curiously pronounced as a drunk would slur out the words "Sexy Woman". We saw the shrines of Kenco, briefly saw the fortress of Puka Pukara and the Incan waterworks/fountains at Tambomachay. The tour was excellent, our guide was terrific. It was well into nighttime before we got home and we slept well.

DAY 05 - CUSCO - SACRED VALLEY:

After some much-needed aspirin and a bunch of water, Daddy finally adjusted to the altitude (Ella never was fazed). Much to our delight, our next day tour was with the same tour guide (Edith), and we had a full-day excursion to the Sacred Valley of the Incas. We went to the Indian market of Pisaq, and in the afternoon explored Ollanta, a fortress under construction when the Spanish conquered the Incan empire. We saw raided tombs and hilltop villages, and terraced mountainsides that were by any measure impressive.

We ate lunch at a restaurant and had a delicious sweet dessert made from purple corn, it was really quite good. The fortress of Ollantaytambo was amazing, with some of the finest stonework ever achieved by the Incas.

We went to Chinchero and saw a terrific demonstration of some local weavers of the various natural color dyes used by the ancient artisans to dye the alpaca wool used in many of the handicrafts for sale (including one where the dye had to be peed in by pre-adolescent boys!).

We saw the amazing local church and local market. It was a great day, and a great tour. We were dog-tired when we got home, but we caught a meal at a local place up the street and eat our meal watching the televised soccer match while being stared at by the locals. Ella declared to her tired Daddy that she loved climbing rocks and wanted to know when we could climb more. It's a good thing that Incas were all about big rock structures; Ella was a happy as a mountain goat at all of them, with her wheezing father trying his middle-aged best to keep up with her.

Day 6 – CUSCO - MACHU PICCHU

We woke up early and transferred to the train station at Poroy, and we took the cool train for 4+ hours to Aguas Calientes (Ella liked it because they "gave snacks! Yum!" (I liked the Vistadome see-through roof). At a few stops some travelers got off and starting hiking the Incan Trail (which is a must for the next trip, at least the last 8 miles), which can be a 4-day/3-night trek from its starting point. We didn't know enough to do this, but it looked cool. The scenery we were passing through on the train was amazing, so much to see. We arrived at Aguas Calientes, which should be renamed "Gringo-ville" for the number of tourists walking around, waiting to see Machu Picchu. The town was really small and really quite boring, but we did eat alpaca for lunch (Ella refused on moral grounds but she did killed a perfectly innocent lemon meringue pie) and a yummy sweet drink made from this same native purple corn. We ran into a pair of missionaries there (one Bolivian and one Peruvian) who told us the town had a branch of approx. 12 people in it. The scenery was amazing, extremely steep hillsides and raging rivers...all in a fairly tropical yet highland climate. The town had some sort of natural hot springs right next to it, but we decided not to head that way, given the number of drunk and mangy-looking Caucasian tourists headed through those gates!

Day 7 - MACHU PICCHU:

We had to wake early to get to Machu Picchu by sunrise. We had a guided tour with just one other couple, so it was really cool - most groups looked like they had 20+ people in them. The bus ride there up the mountain was certainly thrilling, the road was dirt with only the occasional (very dented) guardrail, and a sheer drop-off at the crumbling edge of the road - it was stomach-churning to look down the drop-off, which unfortunately you had to do occasionally when you averted your eyes from the other buses that were descending the mountain in a chicken-like duel with those headed up the same.

The tour was terrific, I can't really describe how awesome Machu Picchu is - it is very much worth seeing. Unfortunately, we didn't catch the whole sunrise affect, it was too misty. But, the site was practically deserted for the first few hours we were there, and the tour was excellent. Ella writes that Machu Picchu means "Old Mountain", and we learned that it was built over a period of 400 years, with evidence of pre-Incan civilization work there. Afterwards, Ella and I decided to climb the trail to the peak of WaynaPicchu, the almost-sheer peak that is in the background of most of the Machu Picchu postcard pictures. That was quite a climb, and Ella didn't seem to mind the almost sheer drops and crazy Incan stone staircases. Daddy on the other hand almost died, and was soaked through with sweat by the time the top was conquered! the trek down was almost worst, because you could see DOWN the slopes just beyond the non-existent handrail - I'm glad Amy wasn't there to see the crazy trek Ella was doing! The view from the trail and the top were unforgettable - the entire area was other-worldly with natural beauty and the awesome presence of Machu Picchu. Ella was delighted with all the wildlife we saw up there - a few chinchillas, a lizard, and a few birds that seemed to love the tourists - the terraced sloped had llamas and such grazing all over them. We had our scriptures with us and we sat on a terrace overlooking a sheer drop and read several passages from the Book of Mormon about Lamanite/Nephite cities and their defense systems - that was pretty cool.

Afterwards we took the buses back and had a nice lunch in Aquas Calientes. We grabbed our gear and took a train back to the station to Ollantaytambo. We had a terrible trip from there back to Cusco, but that was a rare low point, and the tour group was apologetic. A friendly taxi driver and a good night sleep at the Hotel Mabey cured most of my anger over a terrible bus ride.

Day 8 - FLIGHTS HOME:

We woke up, flew from Cusco to Lima, and killed about 4 uneventful hours in the Lima airport (Ella writes that we got "swirl ice cream"). Then we took flights our TACA planes home (another good experience on TACA - I wish they would take over the US airline industry) , arriving at DC/Dulles about 2am. Ella and I played lots of hangman games, and actually read a book page-by-page together to pass the time! After customs, a bizarrely-slow shuttle bus ride to the long-term parking lots, and the 3am traffic delays on the Beltway, we arrived home about 5:30am.

POST-TRIP-THOUGHTS:

We would definitely do it again, though we would contract with Rainbow Trail Tours directly for a next time (the California group we bought the trip through just out-sourced it to them), "Juan" there is an excellent contact and trip compiler, and his English is very good. We wish we had hiked that last leg of the Inca Trail (about 8 miles), even though there are a few 15,000 foot passes (you can hire porters if you need to). Also, we might have supplemented the Nazca side-trip with a few stops along that route OR ditched the whole side-tripe in favor of either more time in Cusco OR time in the Amazon portion of the country. That's all 20/20 hindsight of course, but we did have a wonderful time with what we did - and there is only so much you know before the trip. The National Geographic book we bought was excellent, and really helped understand the sites.

Ella was a wonderful travelling companion, never complaining once and a wide-eyed wonder full of questions the whole time. She really enjoyed the adventure and saw lots of things that a 10-year-old probably should see to expand their horizons. I'm not sure that we feed her enough at home, because almost every journal entry she made included a very detailed list of everything she ate. She eyes were closed almost as they hit the pillow almost every night, so I know she had a good time.

Daddy was glad he knew Spanish, that ability cured quickly most of the hiccups on the trip, but enough Peruvians knew enough English to make that a luxury, not a requirement, for a good trip. It was fun travelling as a Daddy-daughter team.

The Cusco Incan wonders were amazing, and worth the time to explore closely. We only hit about a third of what we could have seen in that area, and it's worth exploring fully.

It had been a long time since I had travelled like that, and we always enjoyed meeting the fellow travelers backpacking, motorcycling, and touring the sites by other means. Ella was a big hit with other travelers, they were amazed to see a 10-year old on such a trip (we occasionally saw a few family groups and some kids, but not very often - though everything was perfectly fine for an older child to manage). It's always fun to chat with so many folks from around the world who appreciate the fun and adventure of travel, that's an amazing experience (and an important one) in and of itself.