California: summit to sea

Shooting Stars in the high Sierra

After flying to the US from Argentina I got a little antsy. There'd be no more rickshaws, guanacos, or empanadas to be found and I was worried about taking up bad habits from the past. Z spent a week out in the Baltimore/DC area, visited friends and family, and experienced some serious heat and humidity. Cambodia had prepared her well. I would have just melted.

The best part of the greater LA area is getting away, and there are some really wonderful places to escape to when the mercury rises and the smog obscures the mountains. Rick Graham, my uncle and longest-running climbing partner, and I headed up the East Side of the Sierra Nevada in search of long days on clean granite. We secured a permit for the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek near Mt. Whitney and climbed the 'Mithral Dihedral' on Mt. Russell (14,086 feet), and what a gem it is! The route takes its name from a rare metal from Tolkein's Middle Earth and follows a beautiful 300-foot long vertical corner. This was Sierra rock climbing at its finest.


Massive Mt. Russell looms above


"Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim." Gandalf, Lord of the Rings


Still climbing together: 23 years and counting


Tulainyo, North America's highest alpine lake

Elizabeth returned a week after I did and we quickly scheduled a trip to Crystal Cove, a special beach where my grandparents used to rent a summer home in the 60s and 70s. It was overcast but the waves were enormous and impressive. Perhaps most importantly, delicious date shakes could be secured at a shack above the beach on the Pacific Coast Highway.


My grandparents, Jim and Liz, brother Paul, and aunt Phoebe

It feels good to be back stateside. And I can honestly say I've never appreciated safe tap water as much as I do now.

We took our backpacks and went huge, the last time

[More-or-less English version below]

Desde Cusco, fuimos a Buenos Aires al fin de nuestro gran aventura. Fue un placer de ver los amigos en nuestro departamento en Talcahuano -- ¡y también habia, claro, fiebre de Mundial! Por supuesto, también habia un feriado (el día de independencia), y muchos negocios estaban cerrados.

Tratamos de visitar el museo de inmigración, pero también estaba cerrado. Pero cuando estuvimos caminando por la ciudad, nuestra ultimo camino allá, encontramos una muestra de fotoperiodismo, de muchos fotógrafos Argentinos, de 2009. Los fotos fueron muy grandes y muy impresionante.

Fuimos con amigos a un cafe muy típico, La Poesía, en el barrio viejo de San Telmo, para ver el partido final del Mundial. Fue emocionante, pero tuvimos que salir antes del fin del partido! En la calle afuera de nuestro departamento, escuchamos la gente gritando -- fue el gol de España, y España ganó!

Por el momento, todo de Buenos Aires fue de España. En nuestro departamento, dimos felicitaciones a nuestra compañera de casa, que es realmente de España. Despues de unos fotos (¡que todavia necesito de nuestra amiga!), llevamos nuestras mochilas enormes y salimos, la ultima vez.

En el taxi al aeropuerto, todo la ciudad estaba fiestando, con banderas rojo y amarillo. Una linda vista de la ciudad que vamos a extrañar.

El aeropuerto fue un quilombo pero con mucha suerte encontramos nuestros aviones y salimos para volver a los Estados Unidos, al fin, finalmente, de nuestra gran viaje.

...

I dropped this into Google Translate to check my Spanish. The combination of my errors and its misunderstandings is too good to fix, so I think I'm just going to offer you the translation verbatim:

...

From Cusco, we went to Buenos Aires at the end of our great adventure. It was a pleasure to see friends in our apartment in Talcahuano - and had, of course, World [Cup] fever! Of course, also had a holiday (Independence Day), and many businesses were closed.

We try to visit the museum of immigration, but also was closed. But when we were walking around town, our last journey there, find a sample of photojournalism, many photographers Argentinos, 2009. The photos were very large and very impressive.

We went with friends to a typical cafe, Poetry, in the old quarter of San Telmo, to see the World Cup final match. It was exciting, but we had to leave before the end of the game! In the street outside our apartment, we heard people screaming -- was the goal of Spain, and Spain won!

For now, all of Buenos Aires was in Spain. In our department, we congratulate our home colleagues, which is actually from Spain. After a few photos (which still need our friends!), We took our backpacks and went huge, the last time.

In the taxi to the airport, the city was partying with red and yellow flags. A beautiful view of the city that will be missed.

The airport was a mess but with luck we found our planes and went back to the United States, at last, finally, our big trip.

The Cappucino Kid

Puzzled by the ritual of mate? Just not sure about the legality of coca tea? Had your fill of extraordinary malbecs? If you´re in Buenos Aires, you´re in luck. Porteños speak coffee and wouldn´t be caught dead drinking the dreaded Nescafe, let alone something as morally reprehensible as decaf.

They also seem to have a knack for building extravagent surroundings for your daily constitutional. Take for instance the mighty El Ataneo, the operahouse-turned-bookstore that is without peer.

A bookstore to end all bookstores


Refurbished box seats make great places to read

Un cafesito, por favor

Built in 1858, Café Tortoni is another caffeinated institution well worth at least one visit. Artists, authors, and heads of state have all paid Tortoni a visit and its storied walls and amiable mozos (waiters) add flavor to any of the many drinks on offer.

Inside the famed café

The old master himself (a regular)

Another old master; perhaps he's been working there since Borges stopped by

Z with Borges

No, it´s not a privatised club for intellectuals but a state of mind for all those who refuse to submit to the way our world is run. ...

--The Style Council

Cusco or Cuzco or Qosqo, Peru

The cobblestone streets in Cusco are narrow and treacherously slippery at times, but I think this may be overstating the case.



The streets here were so narrow that when we first arrived, late at night after the guinea-pig-and-chicken bus, we opened our cab doors and gently grazed the walls. I asked our taxi how he would get out. “Can you turn up ahead?” I asked solicitously. “Oh, no, there’s no out there,” he said. And backed up the entire length of the street.

But I guess they've had time to get used to it in colonial Cusco, especially in the hilly and quiet San Blas neighborhood. Our second hostel was apparently in a 350-year-old building.




1660 Año

Cusco is a much more cosmopolitan place than the Bolivian towns we'd been in lately. And more touristy: we saw (and heard) more Americans than we had encountered in ages... must be summer! Still, it's a beautiful city.


Colonial buildings and brooding skies



We enjoyed wandering through its streets and trying not to be intimidated by Quechua spelling.





Roof cows watch over most of the houses. They’re often intertwined with a cross but they seem not to be at all Catholic. I’ve been told they’re good luck. And wouldn’t you feel better with these guys on your house?

Public art--from murals to decorated letter drops--is popular.




Reminds me of Roman Holiday

One of the treats of walking around Cusco is the peeks you get into courtyards.



Although it's hard not to like the white-washed colonial buildings with their ornate doorknockers and quiet courtyards, you do get some reminders that all this was built on top of an Inca city, often cannibalizing its stones for new buildings.

This is particularly explicit when you visit the Church of Santa Domingo, built directly on the central Inca site of Qoricancha, or Temple of the Sun. Many of the walls inside remain. The walls were once covered with sheets of gold, and Atahualpa ordered his people to tear it down to try to buy his freedom back from Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors. Once they got the gold, however, they killed him.


Smaller stones of the colonial building above, enormous gray Inca stones below -- the Inca stonework is much better, too

Another extraordinary sight that the Spanish reported at Qoricancha (before, presumably, stripping it) was a garden made entirely from gold, silver, and jewels, right down to the insects and the clods of dirt and grass. Today there is a rather nice large garden behind the site -- all natural. And there's a museum below with rather disturbing displays of trepanned skulls (a 60% survival rate!), skulls shaped into oblongs, and mummies.




Around town, many indigenous people sell weavings, hats, socks, etc. Some also bring alpacas or llamas with them to get people to take pictures. It's quite an experience to go down Cusco's foot-wide sidewalks behind the shaggy swaying rump of a llama.

Once you get a couple of blocks downhill from Cusco's main plaza, the tourists start to thin out, the architecture becomes more of a mix of colonial and modern, and things start to bustle. Here we came across all sorts of interesting markets and entrepreneurial street vendors.

For example, the quail cart guy:


Is it just me, or does he look like Hugo Chávez?

This is quite a contraption. Eggs and cooking setup above, actual quails below.




Ice cream at speed




Pedal-powered beer billboard


A gizmo for advertising your own wares

We also explored an enormous market which sold everything from the ubiquitous llama hats to colorful jello desserts to large dead pigs to huge slabs of chocolate... and much much more.



We spent a long time ohing and ahing at the produce, which is far more diverse than what you see in American supermarkets.



The market spilled into the street outside, too.



Our last night in Cusco was memorable: first the cooks in a tiny vegetarian restaurant cooked us a special Peruvian dinner--they'd offered earlier to make us a saltado de soya if we came back at an appointed time, so of course we did. It was delicious. We perched on stools and chatted with the other diner and devoured our treat.



Then we went off to try pisco. I can't say we could tell much difference between piscos--it's all high-octane but fairly palatable liquor--but we did get an awfully good drink with some sort of passionfruit. I think it was maracuya. We have a picture, anyway. Yum.


Maracuya demo



And yes, we still made our early-next-morning flight to Buenos Aires.

Sacsayhuaman and Incamelids

Sacsayhuaman, an enormous Inca site, is a shortish walk uphill from Cusco. We spent a morning exploring the ruins and looking ridiculous in the Inca "throne."

The site itself is impressive.



The stonework here is careful and exact, even with stones that sometimes weigh many tons. The trapezoid shape the Inca liked is common, and the walls also have a slight angle inward (from bottom to top) to add stability. Many stones were removed by the Spanish to build Cusco, but you can understand why they didn't take the ones that are several meters tall....



We've heard several different stories about the meanings of the site: its zig-zagging walls (above) may represent lightning, or they may be the teeth of the puma-shape formed by the whole city of Cusco. The three levels (also above) may represent the underworld (snake), earth (puma), and heavens (condor). Some say it was a religious site, some a fortress.

We heard much of this from our guide, who looked quite imposing in the Inca throne.



The beribboned (beyarned?) llamas grazing nearby were also notable.



The most fun part of touring the site is going down the slide, once a play area for Inca children. Unfortunately, although our guide told us to brake with our hands, we weren't paying attention to the verb; Marty may have thought frenar meant "zoom" or something, because he went really fast.



This would have been fine, but he gashed his hand at the bottom. So we had a little medical interlude, in which our worried guide took us over to the red cross tent and Marty got enormous amounts of iodine and bandages put on. (It worked though: healed fast!)

We visited another nearby site, and on the steep walk down to town we were charmed to come across a "camelid demonstration center." This august-sounding institution consisted of a field with a couple of rusting soccer goalposts and three pairs of South American camelids: 2 llamas, 2 vicuñas, and 2 alpacas.



The alpacas almost aren't believable. What other animal looks more like something you'd win playing darts at the county fair?

In Ruins: the Sacred Valley

"One problem for serious-minded archaeologists is that ancient Peru seems to have flirted with every element of archaeology that the public most like to sensationalise and which as a consequence professionals like to downplay: human sacrifice, stargazing, wild sex, psychedelic drugs and the mummification of the dead, let alone leaving treasure concealed in pyramids."

-- Hugh Thomson, Cochineal Red

It may look like Lhasa, but the Inca were no Buddhists

Even if you're not into the sensationalism, you might think Machu Picchu has it all: lawn-mowing llamas, massive rock, sun worship, vizcachas.

But there's more to Peru than the greatest hit. We hopped back on our Peru Rail train and alighted at Ollantaytambo, which is a small and beautiful village near the confluence of the Patakancha and Urubamba rivers.

Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of Emperor Patchacuti, who conquered the region, built the town, and moved many a stone. The town itself is full of Inca walls and waterways, and has been consistently inhabited for nearly 700 years!

What remains of the Inca compound is above the town, set around terraced hillsides with an elaborate irrigation system. It, like much of the Urubamba river valley, catches beautiful late-day light.

A few days in the so-called Sacred Valley offered a nice way to slow down before returning to Buenos Aires.

If we understand it correctly, these bulbous extrusions allowed greater leverage when moving the stones -- usually they were then removed once the stones were in their final place

The chakana, or three-stepped cross, is faintly visible at right. This was a symbol the Inca borrowed from an earlier culture, along with the meaning of the "trilogy" their architecture sometimes refers to: the snake of the underworld, the puma on earth, and the condor in the heavens

A dry waterway

Going up the ingenious stairs in one terrace: just long flat rocks extending out -- these are used today, too

A working waterway

A tiny oasis around another fountain

Ferns aside, this valley is generally very dry and warm during the day, quite unlike the lushness around Machu Picchu. (And like any desert, cold at night.) Hugh Thomson, whose book we were reading as we were there, compares it to southern France. He lived here for a year and so it is possible this is wishful thinking on his part, but in any case it was a good place to hike.

One thorny plant thriving in the dry climate

Lupine, familiar from dry California

From Ollantaytambo, we hiked an hour or two back along a valley, contouring among crop terraces and surprising the occasional goat, to reach another Inca site called Pumamarca. There was no entrance fee, there were no signs, and there was no one there at all, so we wandered around guessing at the function of the various crumbling walls, then had a picnic.

The remains of the Pumamarca site

On our final morning in Ollantaytambo, some wrangling with a cab driver got us a ride to the Urubamba bus station. From there we caught a slow but pleasant local bus down the Sacred Valley to Pisac, our last stop before returning to Cusco.

Pisac was another small village set below steep Inca terraces. Usually people bus up and walk down to explore the extensive ruins, but we figured we'd walk up. Turned out this was one of those enterprises where, when you reach the top, you're glad that at the bottom you didn't know how far you'd need to go. Anyway, it offered spectacular views.

Rings made of stone on either side of a doorway -- perhaps a red velvet rope passed across...

One especially interesting thing about this site is that, at the top and across a valley, there are pocked cliffs that acted as an Inca burial ground. I don't know whether the holes have always been there or whether they were made by grave-robbers, but it's ultimately an enormous vertical cemetery.

The scale may be tough to see, but the green stuff is trees -- it's big

After sitting up top, watching the early sunset (early sunsets and late sunrises are an occupational hazard of valleys), and listening to the evening sounds of the town drift up, we descended to Pisac for the night. In the morning, we wandered through the lively market.

Traditional dress... and yes, that squash is bigger than that baby

Powders for painting and dyeing: the colors they make aren't necessarily the colors they look -- want purple? try the green

After almost a week of climbing Inca stairs and relaxing in the Sacred Valley, it was time to go. We shouldered our bags, walked to the edge of town, and got back on a crowded minibus to stand and sway our way up the switchbacks to Cusco.