Didn't do much journal writing while traveling in Peru, so I pretty much only have the photos to share. Somewhere along the line, I did turn them into these little collages though. :)
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Scenes from Cusco, the old capital of the Incan Empire. What an amazing place!
With our base in Cusco, we visited many other sites and small communities that are remnants of the great Incan Empire -- like Ollyantambo and Saqsayhuaman, and of course Machu Picchu. Here's some pictures from those stops:
(You'd think I would have taken more pictures of Machu Picchu. Sheesh!
As usual, I loved the human component, and you can't beat a rural market for loads of culture!
One memorable stop was staying on little
Taquile Island, on Lake Titicaca. We did a 2 day homestay and while it wasn't exactly comfortable (no electricity, rodents, etc...), it was very fascinating!
We also visited the
Uros Islands, which are really quite amazing. They entirely manmade out of reeds, and were originally made by small groups seeking to flee the conquering Incan empire. Sadly, today it's really little more than a tourist attraction, with locals continuing to inhabit the islands just to sell tourist garb. But still...pretty cool to see
an island made out of reeds!!!
We also spent a few days in
Arequipa, a beautiful coastal city in the south of the country. One of my favorite sites in the city is the historic
Santa Catalina Monastery, home to hundreds of nuns in it's heyday, but is now
quiet and more populated by visiting tourists than resident nuns.
And I vividly remember visiting
Colca Canyon! Our bus
broke down three times, and this was especially unpleasant for me because I
had very bad altitude sickness since arriving in South America,
and on this ride I was having a really hard time breathing with the
thin air of the high Andean passes. It was scary. I admit it -- I cried. Breathing is kind of important.
Here are some scenes
en route to Peru's Colca Canyon, reputed to be the deepest canyon in
the world. (Top right): One highlight was watching the condors ride the
thermals up the canyon early in the morning. (Middle right): (Bottom right): Flocks of alpacas
were everywhere in this high altitude landscape.
Later in the trip, we traveled to Nazca, and flew over the famed
Nazca Lines--a series of enormous
drawings etched into the landscape and only visible from far above. No
one is really sure who created these large figures, how they did it, or
even why they did it.
It
was a truly unique experience, but after 45 minutes of non-stop
circling, I was feeling mighty queasy and could focus on little more
than WHEN ARE WE GOING TO LAND!
While in Nazca, we make a little day trip out to see the
Nazca Graves. What a creepy place to visit. These tombs have been heavily raided by
robbers, so bones are strewn all across the landscape and many tombs have been
fully opened, exposing the fascinating and gruesome remains of these
ancient peoples. Yeeek!
One of the least memorable things we did was to visit the
Ballestros Islands. That was a lot of uncomfortable traveling for not a lot to see. It's often called “the poor man's Galapagos”, and that's even a stretch. We went to see the seals and birdlife, which was cool, I guess, but I think it's better to just fork out the money and go to the real Galapagos (which are off the coast of Ecuador). En
route, we passed this large and mysterious carving in the side of the
hard sand dune. Several centuries old, the carving baffles
archeologists, who think it perhaps was an ancient navigational aid.
And of course we spent some time in the capital city of
Lima:
Lastly -- midway
through our itinerary (sorry, but this is all out of order -- can't remember what we did when), we took a two day beach break at some small town
along Peru's northern coastline. To this day, I have no idea where we
really were---what the name of the town was---but I guess that's the
point of this type of 'getaway', eh?
