Peru Part 4

Ok, crazy night and morning yesterday.  Made it back on the North Island in the nick of time.  We caught the ferry and drove onto the island right as a MAJOR storm was about to blow in. As it turns out, they canceled all ferry trips right after ours made it over.  We didn't know a storm was coming in right behind us since we have been a bit disconnected from the web and television as of late.  We found a place to camp out in the car down by the ocean front.  We were wondering why the coast was so empty.  It was like a ghost town.  Even downtown Wellington seemed to be deserted.  We woke up in the middle of the night to 100+ kmh  winds blowing the car back and forth with a horizontal blast of rain and ocean spray!  It was crazy!  Ryan panicked when he woke up because it felt like we were floating away in the ocean the way the car was rocking back and forth in the pitch black night.  He thought we were in the middle of a flood or something.  Ha!  Once he got his glasses on and got a good look out into the darkness we realized we were still on dry land and ok. Haha.  Needless to say we didn't get much sleep last night.  We drove into town and found a covered parking structure to get out of the storm.  Close call... We tuned in on the radio and found out the storm did a lot of damage and people were bunkered down to stay out of the way of the storm. And there we were, parked on the ocean front and took the storm head on in the middle of the night! It was a pretty crazy experience!

CUSCO AND THE SACRED VALLEY:

After a 25 hour double decker bus ride south east across Peru and into the Andes mountains we made it into Cusco. A sudden drastic elevation change from sea level to 11,500 feet. The drive was a nauseous switchback route through the mountains but with absolutely stunning views of the Andes. We spent a few days adjusting to the elevation, and the majority of our stay was at Casa de Campo Hostal tucked into the hills of the San Blas region of Cusco. Views were stunning from the hostal and the service was warm and welcoming. We really enjoyed staying there. So much so, we didn't stay anywhere else during our 2 weeks in Cusco. We got a discounted cheap deal somehow (giving the receptionist a couple freshly made warm tamales every other day probably helped), and got upgraded to one of their less used units furthest and highest up on the hill. We loved lighting fires during the cold nights on our covered balcony connected to our room.

Some of our Cusco highlights include getting lost wondering the city. Which may be a bad thing anywhere else, but in a city built ontop of ruins, every corner you turn you find something cool. We pretended we were food critics when we ate out, we had fun bartering with the vendors at the street side markets, getting them to go super low with their price, then giving them what they originally asked for and watching their frustrated but grateful reactions. We have a hard time buying overpriced items for ourselves, and instead have bought cheap little things for a future little Waldron babies that may come along eventually. We learned a lot about the dishonesty of the Peruvian government and how they take advantage of the poor native people. We both lost a lot of weight since we were eating light to save money, and constantly walking around viewing ruin sites, and climbing the thousands of stairs to get around the city.  And at 11,000 + feet, we really got into good shape!  We loved our time in Cusco!

Here are a few pictures and stories:

Our meal on the bus ride. 

Yes, we know, it looks really good, but it wasn't, trust us!

The next 15 photos were taken with the point and shoot through the bus window on the way up the mountains to Cusco. 

First glimpse of Cusco during the descent into town off of the tips of the Andes

The first day we were in Cusco a school was protesting in the Plaza de Armas. We think it was about the dangerous traffic conditions around the school.

These next 22 pictures are where we stayed during our time in Cusco

Our first room before a single bed room was open.

Ryan getting the fire going in the mushroom fireplace

This was on our balcony overlooking Cusco city. 

We got upgraded to this room after we fed the hungry receptionist fresh tamales.

They told us the room didn't get used very often. Maybe this was why?! Since we basically were in a tree house tucked into the hill side, we had to share our room with a few of these big guys. About the size of your palm.

Warming up dinner. Mmmm..Tamales

The way to our room. This is what got us into shape during our stay. Remember, this is at 11,000 ft. 

The entrance to the Hostal was behind us from where the photo was taken. But down about 6 more flights like this.

We enjoyed our walks up the beautiful grounds.
The key to not getting altitude sickness here was staying hydrated.

These were all growing along the walk up to our room.

Nope, Nancy did not go to jail. One of the windows in our room.

This is the church of 

La Compania de Jesus on the Plaza de Armas in Cusco.

 We watched this dude trap and kill a pigeon on the street, cut it up, then feed it to his pet hawks he was training. Right in the middle of the Plaza. AWSOME!

Yikes

The next few pictures were taken as we just wondered around. We'd come around a corner and run into some cool stuff.

This alpaca was just cruising the streets. All on its own. We watched it as it charged a dog that was in the trash. It was pretty cool. We kept our distance though. We didn't want to get punked like the puppy! ha!

This llama let us get a little closer. They were stinky.

Ryan has talked about starting a mobile pizza van before. He got the idea from seeing a successful couple run one in Cedar City, Utah. When we saw this thing, Ryan's eye's lit up and wanted to buy this sweet van. Didn't catch it when it was serving though. We wondered how the food tasted. Just another gem as we cruised Cusco.

Wondering around is how we found the source to the best tamales we had ever tasted. Each one was about 0.10 US Cents. We bought a few dozen and used them to snack on, pay our taxi drivers, give to hungry bums and hungry Llama's on the street, and of course, bribed our Hostal receptionist with them. 

Ryan sweet talking the tamale lady in his broken spanish. He was trying to say please give me a dozen of the beef tamales. But I think he asked her if she likes to swim in salsa. ha!

The next run of pictures are of some of the meals we had while exploring the restaurants Cusco had to offer. We LOVED the food here. You have to be careful because a lot of it is very overpriced, and still can be unsafe to eat. But for the most part we were lucky and had some really good experiences dining in Cusco. Like this place for example: 

We found this hole in the wall place call Pachapapa. AMAZING stews and pizza's. there was also a kid dropping some mad cords on the harp to set the mood. We bought his cd, he was stoked. 

The best pizza maker in Cusco. Much respect for this guy. Probably works for pennies too.

Fresh bread.ha

Anticucho skewers with roasted potatoes and a salad with killer tomatoes. ha

Nancy had a hot chocolate with every single meal. No joke, she seriously insisted on it. 

They were pretty good though.

This meal was special. This was our first Thanksgiving meal together as husband and wife. We had been at Machu Pichu all day, made it back to town with just enough time to find this Australian place open called Jacks. They served the closest thing to a Thanksgiving meal we could find. Chicken soup and baked chicken with mash and a portobello mushroom gravy. Fruit smoothies to drink. REALLY GOOD EATS HERE! Stoked to have a tasty Thanksgiving meal in a unique place.

T-giving meal

T-giving meal

Cheap food was only a little bit of work to find. 

Most the time away from central city, you would just follow your nose. 

We always were greeted warmly. 

Especially away from the busy central part of the city.

Things would get weird most the time after a full meal. 

This is right before "food coma" sets in. Nancy doing her best giggling squirrel impression. Ha!

Uh oh...looks like food coma set in on Ryan already. 

Loss of speech, pupils dilated, face muscles relaxed, stroking of the mustache....

Yummy frozen creamy fruit things. Like a Jamba Juice...

Jacks restaurant makes an addicting breakfast as well!

Most the time, we would catch the taxi back home after dinner because we were too stuffed to walk all the way back up the hills to the Hostal.

We loved watching storms roll in from the Andes and dump on Cusco

2 screen shots from some video we took

Rainbow over the San Blas hills during a storm

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks...

The rest of the following pictures are from our exploring the ruin sites of the Sacred Valley.

Temple of Coricancha. 

An ancient Inca temple that was almost completely demolished by spaniards. Now a spanish cathedral sits ontop of the still standing Inca walls. 

Spanish top, Incan bottom

Inca wall. The Inca people had amazing architectural techniques that made these walls withstand the invasion of the Spaniards and last over such a long period of time. 

The spaniards wall. Not as nice...

The Inca's would build the walls slightly slanted towards its self for stability.

Each of the holes used to be plugged with jewels and gold.

The Incan's would fill this tub with beer, it would disappear, and everyone would celebrate. They thought the Gods were drinking it. But really there was a secret hole underneath and it would just drain out into the ground. 

The Incas used a "male" and "female" type of system to build their structures.

This ruin site was called Sacsayhuaman. It was really cool.

Most of this ruin site was destroyed by Peruvian people themselves, at least up until regulations stopped the removal of stone from this site. People used stone from here for their own houses. What's left here though is still pretty impressive.

We were told they still sacrifice lambs here every year. Cooool....

The famous rock of Sacsayhuaman. The Inca's actually hoisted this thing upright into place.

This would have been the main entrance to this village in ancient time.

This next site is called Pisac. 

This ancient Incan village is known for the vast terraces carved into he mountain side as well as the hundreds of tombs dug into the side of the mountain.

The Inca's used these terraces to plant crops and also flowers to spruce the place up a bit.

All those holes once were filled with mummies and riches. All stolen and burned by the spainards we were told

Water used to flow from the mountain in the background back in the day for the Inca's here.

Next site, Pukapukara. 

We didn't think this place was too great. Not much to see. But there was a cool story behind it, involving really fast runners and flying fish..or something?...It started raining on us here. Thats all we remember.

Standing in a Inca living room. This was probably were papa Inca was munching on Dorito Cheese chips watching the ball game on the flat screen...

Wet vendors. They hustle rain or shine.

As we moved along we came to this next site called Tambomachay. The story behind these ruins was that it used to be a hide out for the powerful and elite Incas. Only the the most wealthy and respected were allowed to come here. It was tucked back in the hills, and had a stream running through it cascading down a number of different small falls. 

Supposedly the old Inca's used this place like a bathing spa. The water here was believed to make you younger, and more fertile. 

People were drinking and washing their faces in the water down stream. We decided not to partake, since old Inca's used to wash their bums in this stream. And up stream the source looked like sewage run off.ha

This next ruin site we can not remember or find the name. We were told the spaces between the rocks here were for mummies.

Nancy still all smiles after a full day of looking at rocks.

There was a small cave you could climb into at this site and there was a prep table where the Inca's would preform embalming procedures and other religious rituals.

Over looking Cusco from this site. It started getting dark and a passing by tour guide told us to get out of there soon as we can because once it gets dark, really bad things happen here.... We didn't wait around to see if she was telling the truth.

The next day we continued our Sacred Valley run. We hired a tour guide this day to give us some more information about what we were seeing. We got totally scammed. Hiring the guide included a ride to and from the last few sites plus lunch. They took us cleeeeear out in the middle of no where, half way to a ruin site, then told us there was a mistake with the pricing and we had to pay more or they would leave us out in the field. We put up a huge fuss and refused to pay. It was really hard to keep our cool, but we're glad we did. They didn't leave us, but our guide ditched us for a few hours and ate our lunch. You should have heard his story about how he got lost and an eagle swooped down and took all of our food or something. HAA! We were not happy! 

This site was still cool to be at. Even though our guide made up a lot of stuff we knew wasn't true about the site. I mean, we had a map and information in our hands, and our guide had the nerve to make up stories about the city. Oooh well, we tried to learn from the situation and we were grateful it didn't end worse.

Ollantaytambo.

It was a looong climb up to the entrance to Ollantaytambo.

The terraces built by the Incas here were very impressive.

WARNING!! If you are in Peru, and see this man, hide your lunch! Our sticky fingered guide. ha!

The entrance to Ollantaytambo...

...plus Nancy

The mountain that the Inca's worshiped and used to tell the time of season.

Ollantaytambo market.

Can you find the face in the mountain? (Think side profile, looking left, angry face) 

The Inca's supposedly worshiped this face

One of the many "fountains of youth" here at Ollantaytambo.

We left and and drove through some of the Andes to get to the next site. We caught a glimpse of the Veronica Glacier.

The day did get better, and since we were stuck with the lunch bandit, we tried to make the best of our time with him. He wasn't a mean guy. Just really dishonest, ha. I think he was taken back that we reacted the way we did, and didn't try to beat him up (Ryan really wanted too though..haha). It resulted in the guy opening up a bit and told us he spoke the native tounge of the area. It lead to some interesting conversations with native young vendors from this land working in the streets. We were surprised to hear how they are treated and how flawed the tourism system is in these parts. It was sad. Most of the people we had our guide talk to, told us they were being watched and would be punished if they talked to us any further.....SKETCHY! An experience we won't forget.

This last site was one of our favorites (besides Machu Picchu)

We're not sure why. It was just really peaceful in this area and uncrowded. There was nothing really impressive about it. But we just got a good feeling while here. There were families hanging around and kicking the soccer ball around. Little lambs that were cruising around. Old grandmas giving us huge smiles as we walked by. Noone selling us "free massage, you want free massage"..ha

This place was called Chinchero.

So, we're hearing from some of you that your disappointed with our lack of posting. We are disappointed with ourselves too! We know we are terrible at blogging :( So sorry!...BUT bare with us. Don't stop checking in! We're doing our best. 

Hopefully this last HUGE post made up for some of the lost time. When it rains it pours right?

Miss you guys. 

-N & R