Halle-fucking-lujah!

Okfirst off, did I spell "Halle-fucking-lujah" fight? It's tough work inserting profanity in the middle of words usually considered sacred. Anyway, as all 0-3 of my readers know, I spent most of the summer backpacking around Peru and Bolivia. While that was great for seeing and doing amazing things, it was very ineffective for my summer blockbuster going. While I'm slowly but surely catching up, I still have a ways to go. "Order of the Phoenix" crammed an 870 page book into barely a 2 hour movie, the first of the adaptations that I've found wanting. However, as you may have surmised, a so so Harry Potter movie is not going to merit the amalgation of the sacred and profane that titles this post...

The Simpsons Movie was the highest point the show has reached in years. It's depressing that what (on the basis of its first 10 or so seasons alone) was once the best show in the history of television has now been bad for nearly as long it has been great. Apparently, they were saving their load for the big screen, because the phrase "return to form" immediately sprang to mind. Among the many throw away jokes and sight gags that have always made this show genius there are: Full frontal Bart, Marge saying "goddamn," and of course Spider Pig. Plus the American government borrowing Tom Hanks' folksy credibility, and the return of a villianous Albert Brooks. Anyone who remembers the swath of destruction Hank Scorpio cut across the Eastern United States knows that that is a good thing.

In addition to Matt Greoning, Simpsons OGs James L. Brooks, Mike Scully, and John Swartzwelder are all among the credited writers. I wanted this movie to be good more than any movie since the Star Wars prequels. Unlike George "fuck my fans and my legacy" Lucas, Groening and his compatriots delivered on all counts.

See this movie.

Machu Pichu

The train station at Ollantaytanbo resembles nothing so much as the concentration camp at the end of Children of Men, only instead of ethnic minorities being forcibly rounded up and deported from the UK, the station is full of gringos clamoring to get on a train to Aguas Calientes, a town notable for little more than being located at the base of Maccu Piccu.

It´s after dark when we arrive having (barely) survived a 1.5 hour cab ride from Cuzco to Ollantaytanbo, where our train is departing from. Apparently, when it´s both the high tourist season in Peru and Peruvian school vacation week, then it behooves the individual to make reservations for one of the most visited archeological sites in the world, Maccu Piccu, more than 24 hours in advance. We can be accused of a lot of things, but consistent forethought is certainly not one of them. After a day of scrambling and plan changing, we finally came up with an itinerary that allowed us to visit Maccu Piccu and a bit of the Sacred Valley as well before we need to return to Lima (via 19 hour bus...awesome!) and eventually the states. Unfortunately, said itinerary involved us catching a train in Ollantaytanbo, not Cuzco...

Which brings me back to the cab ride introduced way back at the begining of the last paragraph. Actually, the email started with the train and the train station which I´m currently laboriously trying to wind my way back to, via cab ride anecdote, and events that happened even earlier. The fact that I´m actually paid to teach children to write makes me shudder a bit. Fractured narratives are all well and good for David Foster Wallace or Dave Eggers, but I´m trying to convey information here.

Anyway, the cab driver, I´m pretty sure hopped up on something, drives like a maniac the whole way, flashing his brights, honking incessantly, and passing on the outside, even on blind turns, but we make our destination a solid half hour earlier than our travel agent estimated. Driving into Urabambo, we almost hit a mule crossing the road, and ás we zoom on, I´m begging children and old ladies to not try to cross in front of us because I don´t think this guy is going to stop.

Ok, we´re back at the train station. It´s the constant jostling of many people in a confined space combined with harsh halogen lights and chainlink fences that put me in the mind of Children of Men, as opposed to random beatings, torture, and squalid living conditions. However...

I have seen the lowest circle of hell and it is the 8:15 Ollantaytanbo-Aguas Calientes train. Initially on boarding you find that a group of American college students have taken your seat in order for them to sit together. They tell you it´s fine, you can have theirs, even though their seats are apart from each other and you are traveling with a friend who you´d like to sit with. You and your friend at least had enough forthought to book seats together. The students are part of a larger group of 12 who seem to be terribly excited by the prospect of the train ride. You are once again reminded that you´re not as young as you used to be, but for one of the first times ever you realize that this might not be a bad thing. The train lurches into motion only to suddenly stop, seemingly at random, multiple times, and for varying lengths of time. You´ve been up for close to 20 hours, but you can´t sleep. You´re pretty sure you can smell the socks you´ve inexplicably been wearing for the last three days, even though you´ve got a bag full of freshly laundered pirs back in Cuzco. When the train finally pulls into Aguas Calientes, the disembrking is only slighly less chaotic than the (?) embarking. Exhausted, you shuffle off, carried along by the crowd, and realize that one thing has gone right this day as you see a young woman holding a sign reading ¨Bwem Brinkop Cfris Willar¨. She will take you to your hotel and blissful, blissful sleep...

Augas Calientes is a nice little town built lmost entirely out of the profits from tourism to Maccu Piccu. Laid out along the Rio Urabamba and the train tracks, it serves little purpose beyond getting people in and out of Maccu Piccu. We collapse for the night at the Payacha Hostal, literally the nicest place we´ve stayed ll trip. Highly reccomended, even though we only slept there for about 4 hours before waking up the next day to hit the site.

Up at 4:30 to catch the first bus. We´ve heard that if you miss the 5:30 bus, then they only run every subsequent hour. After queueing up patiently we watch group after group of tourists arrive after us, balk at the ever growing line, and then trudge dejectedly towards the back. It´s early enough to still be dark, but we are comforted by the knowledge that we got there erly enough to be on the first bus. We chuckle at everyone else´s misfortune, and, with a little bit of preliminary stretching and some light calesthenics, give ourselves a congrgulatory pat on the back.

Around 5:30 we hear the rumble of diesel engines. Chugging up the hill comes our bus!, but it is followed by at least nine more. As we begin to board, I am literally the first person not allowed on the first bus. My heart falls, all of our diligence for nothing! However, 30 seconds after the first bus leaves, the second pulls up and I am sheparded aboard. It takes about three minutes to pack it full nd then we are off. On one hand, I´m happy to have the opportunity to get there early, but on the other, I´m livid that people who slept an hour later than me will still arrive at roughly the same time. After 30 minutes of tortuous, winding switchbacks we arrive at the park, only to immediately get into another line waiting to enter the site proper. We are informed that we can bring in none of the food we have rought, nd Chris is forced to check his backpack stuffed full of delicous sandwich fixings.

None of these minor inconveniences mtters in the least once we enter the park. We are among the first 100 people in and are able to to glimpse it in relative solitude. By midday, there will be better than 1500 people crawling about its various temples, dwellings, and complexes. We immeditely climb up towards the guardian hut and the sun gate (entrance from the Inca Trail) so we can view the entire site from the terraces above it. It´s even more brethtking than we anticipated being. There are certain places you can visit (Mt. Rushmore springs immediately to mind) where you think ÿep, just like it looks in all the pictures I´ve seen of it.

Maccu Piccu does look like pictures you´ve seen of it, but these pictures can´t begin to do it justice. The scale is unbelievable. Maccu Piccu is 1000 meters lower than Cuzco, but it seems infinitely higher. As you gaze down from the terraces you see: To the west, cliffs plunge straight down to the Rio Urabamba far below. To the east, it is surrounded by dozens of different, jagged individual peaks, all covered in cloud forest all they way to their summits. To the north looms Huayna Piccu, the guardian mountain of the city. Later that day, I would wait in line for over an hour to climb it, as if it was a roller coaster ride.

As we pose for pictures and just marvel of the realization of mutual childhood dream, the sun comes up over the mountains and bathes the buildings in that special kind of early morning sunlight, the kind that makes everything seem fresher, more distinct. The kind that reminds you that there is a huge difference between daylight and sunlight. Grinning like children, we turn down to begin to explore the buildings.

Like Sacsayhuaman above Cuzco, Maccu Piccu was built with out mortar. The buildings, displaying different styles in different areas, are all composed of perfectly shaped and positioned stones that hold together as well today as when they were first laid over 500 years ago.

By 10:00 we´re ready to try our hands at Huayna Piccu. By this point of the trip we´ve survived El Choro and Choqequirao, so we´re supremely confident we can handle on last 600 m ascent. There was one thing we didn´t count on: steps. It´s not trail up the mountain, it´s a series of stone steps. Hundreds and hundreds of stone steps. Some close together, some fr apart, some so far apart that I literlly have to crawl up them. Halfway up I´m cursing the superior Incan stoneworking that I´ve been so impressed with this entire trip. Three quarters of the way up, I´m only still going because I saw a 60 year old lady come down from the mountin earlier that day. Nine tenths of the way up I encounter my finl obstacle. The pth winds through a cave that I literally have to get down on my belly and wiggle through to make it.

Once at the top, however, the pain and the sweat, and the aches drop away as if they´d never existed. Maccu Piccu, so sprawling and enormous from ground level, seems tiny from up here. I´m eye level with many f the peks of the surrounding valley, and actually above many others. This is easily one of the coolest things I´ve ever done. Maccu Piccu lived up to and vstly exceeded every expectation I had of it. No wonder it is one of the new 7 Wonders of the World. The descent from the summit, was less tiring, but more terryfying. Some of the stairs going down had an incline of close to 70 degrees, and most of them weren´t much more than six inches wide. The image of me missteping, pitching frward, and tumbling right off over the side was not a hrd one to conjure up. Thankfully, we both made it down unhurt.

9 hours after arriving, we headed back for Aguas Calientes, exhausted, but giddy with accomplishment and wonder. As prone to jadedness and sarcasm as I am, it felt really good to be passionately enthusiastic bout something. Such is the majesty of Maccu Piccu, it managed to puncture the ice-encrusted piece of coal that shudders arythmically within my chest.

The next day, we headed back to Cuzco via a couple of other stoips in the Sacred Valley. Now, if you are ever visiting Peru, I reccomend that you do the Sacred Valley on your way out to Maccu Piccu. This is what we had intended to do before circumstances went beyond our control. Ollantaytanbo was a series of terraces and buildings built into the side of a cliff literlly right next to the town of the same name. We hadcome down in altitude by now, and the terrin was very deserty. Reminded me a lot of Jabba´s palace from Return of the Jedi, but then again, I´m a huge nerd, and comparing things to Star Wars comes as easy to me as brething does to other people. Moray was slightly more interesting. A site of both agricultural and ritual significance, many believe that it´s design was experimental in nature. Indeed, the terrces here are circular, and descend concentrically down seven levels. When we visited, there was some sort of Incan preharvest ritual going on (Apparently happens all of August) and for the first time Peru felt similar to Boliviva in terms of its pride in its indigenous heritage.

After that it was back to Lima vi 19 hour bus where I currently type this email. Visited the Museum of the Inquisition today, and despite reding all about the horrors and injustices, the scariest thing I saw was that we´re (The U.S.) still using some of these techniques today. Lima in the winter is super depressing, consistently grat and overcast for all of June, July, and August. As we left the torture museum (which it might as well be called) we were greeted with gry skies, and a buncj of enormous crows perched in a dead tree cross from the museum. I don´t know how people do it. The 12 hours or so I´ve spent in this city are have already been much worse than the entire winter I lived in Washington. Anyway, sorry about the length, but it´s the last rambling email you´ll get from me this trip. We leave late tomorrow night. Haven´t driven a car in 6 weeks (longest ever since I was legally able to) and I can´t wait to se a movie and eat some ice cream. This trip has ben amazing on so many levels, but I´m also ready to get back to the states. Travel is great for opening your eyes to the world, but it´s also great for making you appreciate your home.

Nice Mohawk, Jackass.

Made it back safely from Choquequirao, a literal lost city of the Incas. Though it´s whereabouts have been known by the locals for centuries, it has only been recently that it has been excavated and accessible to tourists. Known as Maccu Piccu´s sister city, it can still be visited in relative isolation. Alas, a new road is being built, and within a few years the allure of visiting a ruin accessible only by a two day hike will be lost forever. Soon there will be gift shops, tacky (but maybe kind of awesome as well) t-shirts, and tours full of loud mouthed, ill tempered, litterbug Isrealis. Not that I haven´t been any of the previous three at one time or another in my life, but I´ve can safely say I´ve never been all three simultaneously.

We begin in the town of Cochara, not much to look at, but notable for being the closest significant settlement to Choquequirao. We began our hike (Chis, myself, a Peruvian family-Mom, son, daughter, grandma, another Peruvian, Piero, our guide, Walter, and a team of cooks, porters and burro wranglers) downhill from the town´s central plaza into a fertile valley where I assume quinoa and potatoes (principal crops of the region) are grown. It´s nice to not have to carry a pack, as we walk unfettered, our packs are strapped to the strong and steady backs of several burros accompanying us. Several of them are indeed done up in mohican style hairdos, see the subject line.

Cochora and the Valley below are dominated by an incredible range of glacier topped mountains, the first we have seen in Peru that can rival the mind-blowing awesomeness of Bolivia´s Cordillera Real. These peaks are easily 17,000 feet high, but we are currently so high up that they seem half that. The pace is easy going and downhill (a fact that I would come to regret in a couple of days. Choquequirao is not a loop. You hike two days in, and then 2 days out over the same route. Anything that you go down one way, you need to go up coming back.) we wind through fields and into a eucalyptus forest. The tree is not native here. The Spanish planted them to stabalize the slopes of the mountains and hills of the areas. As we continued to hike, we would eventually leave the Eucalyptus behind, a sign that we were also leaving the realms of European colonization. A gentle breeze blowing in the leaves makes a pleasant walk downright magnificent. Once we clear the forest and hike along a rutted dirt and gravel road, we are again facing the massive mountains in front of us. We will hike towards them for the next 2 hours or so, our forward vision always filled with their sheer immensity.

We break for lunch and it turns out Grandma isn´t up to the task of hiking. Why she even signed up in the first place is beyond me, as this trek is generally regarded as very tough. She rode a burro to lunch, but after returned to Cochora where she would stay in a hotel for four days waiting for us to return. More on the suitability of this trek for the very young and the very old to follow...

After a punishing 2 hour descent (oh my knees and toes, god I´m getting old.) we arrive at our camp where we are immediately assaulted by tiny gnat-like insects that leave bites like a volcano, complete with tiny red crater in the middle. The itch is maddening, and they are especially prone to bleed freely at even the slightest scratch. Chris might posses the zen discipline required to ignore the unignorable but I am no Bhuddist, and soon my legs look like Dresden circa February 15 1945. We had purchased new DEET rich bug spray after exhausting Chris´s New Zealand Army surplus, but by the time we realized we needed it it was far far too late.

Other than the entomological problems we encountered, the campsite itself was fairly pleasant complete with snack hut, and flush toilets (although no toilet seats). We were to get up at 4:30 the next morning in order to begin hiking by 5:30. The logic of thise insanely early rising being that it would allow us to do the bulk of our hiking before the punishing sun could poke its nosy rays over the tops of the mountains surrounding us. Sure enough we were awakened at 4:30 with coca tea, and accustomed to a certain degree of pack up and go from our Gray Wolf days, were packed and ready to eat by quarter to 5. We then proceeded to wait and wait and wait. Apparently, despite the repeated warnings of Walter the night before, the family decided that they didn´t want to get up that early. As my rage slowly simmered towards boiling, I watched the night turn to dawn turn to full-fledged morning. By the time we finally finished breakfast and hit the trail, it was 7, 1.5 hours later than we intended.

Day 2 is far and away the most difficult of the trek. After a brief hour descent the rest of the way down to the river, we crossed a suspension bridge, and immediately began to climb up the other side. We then continued to climb for the next 3 hours or so. We occasionally rested, once at the village of Santa Rosa where I bought an insanely overpriced bottle of Gatorade (although in the villagers defense, knowing supply and demand as I do, I would have charged twice what they did) and once on the side of the trail when we finally crossed out of the blissful shade of the mountain into the full intensity of the morning sun. At this point, all I could think about was the fact that we should be 1.5 hours further up the mountain. The pain was intense, especially in the lower calves, but after a while, you develop a certain zombie-like rhythm and continue to shamble forward and up up always up the trail. Needs like water and rest become secondary as one thought begins to consume me, ¨stop at the top.¨ I´m counting switchbacks since our last pause, and despite especially long and steep ones on 11, 14, and 16, 18 turns out to be the one that takes me to the crest at the village of Marapata, 1500 vertical meters above the river. As I sit, exhausted on a rock overlooking the valley below me, I realize that I´m eye level with the clouds.

Once you round the corner in the village, you can see the ruins, still several kilometers distant, perched on top and on the side of the mountain. We wait for an hour in the village but the family never shows so we just push on to the Choquequirao campsite. We´re there for a solid 2 hours before they finally get htere. Now, I don´t begrudge them being slow, god knows I went slow enough going up El Misti, but what does really piss me off is their rudeness in waking up in the morning. We´ve now lost close to three hours of the day waiting for them, and by this point it´s late afternoon and we have very little daylight remaining.

Chris and I decide to head down to some terraces that are literally built into the side of the mountain. They´re called Casa de Agua Caida (House of Falling Water) I assume because their steplike formations resemble a waterfall. The great thing about them is Chris and I are literally the only people there, something unheard of in this day and age of eco and anthropological tourism. The only sounds are the wind in the trees and the rumblings of a distant waterfall. As we look out over the path that we have come up and the cloud forest that surrounds us, and then down at these enormous stone steps (all of which still contain fertile soil) we are momentarily overwhelmed by the majesty of this place. All of this was built by hand, and has lasted undisturbed for well over 500 years. Unfortunately, momentarily is the key word in the preceding sentence, and after only 15 minute or so we are forced to head back to camp in order to have enough time at the primary ruins before nightfall.

We hustle back up the trail to camp, and from there it´s another half hour up to the primary ruins on the top of the mountain. I´m breathless by the time we arrive, but also impatient, and I urge my aching body further, faster. First I encounter more terraces, they appear in front of me without warning as the forest abruptly ends. I follow them, ascending when I encounter stair cases between levels. Ahead of me and above, I can see the main complex, but I can also see the rapidly waning sunlight. I put on a final burst of desperate speed, and I´m almost running by the time I scramble up the remaining bit of the trail.

By the time I´m there, the ruins are virtually deserted. Outside of our own group I only saw 4 other people the whole time we explored. Set on the edge of a cliff, Choquequirao offered its inhabitants an unobstructed view of any possible attackers. Its height offered the perfect natural defense as there is really only one possible route to take to the city, and because of the terraces it was self-sufficient agriculturally. In short, before it was abandoned, it was virtually inpregnable to conventional attack as the Incas knew it.

There is a central square with a major temple facing it. Behind the temple lie the ruins of smaller buildings and dwellings. To the south the mountain rises another 50 meters or so, we encountered a sacrificial area for priests, and to the north, also on an elevated area above the main complex, lay the homes of the royalty and nobility. Unlike Maccu Piccu and Sacsayhuaman, the buildings here were built with rocks and mortar, not just perfectly shaped rocks. We climbed an ancient stone staircase to the area of the priests and witnessed spectacular vistas of the whole city, terraces, temples and all, and it was from here that we watched the sun set over the distant mountains. It was now a bit cold and we descended back to camp, the wonder that the city inspired slightly overcoming the resentments I had towards the family for costing me valuable exploring time.

Since this email has already droned on way too long, I´ll be succinct and say that the next two days were spent hiking out. The family delayed us again, but on the last day they surprised us all by getting up on time. Everything we had hiked down we had to hike back up, and vice versa. In the grips of a powerful case of ¨trailhead fever,¨Chris and I motored out the last day with a sort of Batan Death March like intensity.

Back in Cuzco now, we leave tonight for Maccu Piccu and the Sacred Valley. After that, one last overnight bus ride back to Lima for a day and a half or so, and then home. Unbelievable that six weeks is almost up. Thanks to grad school summer programs, I won´t be able to do another trip like this, at least for the next two summers. Glad I got the experience in while I had the chance.