Machu Picchu, Huanupichu, living a dream

So we made it all the way to Machu Picchu in one piece although it may not have felt like it at the time. Amanda and I had a few guests that week to make the journey with. Her boyfriend came over from California and my mom and her boyfriend came to visit for a week. Amanda and I went our separate ways to entertain our visitors. My mom's trip seemed doomed from the start. With delays all over the east coast, they were going to miss their connection to Lima and so on. About twenty four hours, a handful of frantic text messages, and a phone call later they arrived at the Cusco airport...with no bags.  I showed them around town a bit, we went shopping in Pisaq ( the market I wrote about weeks ago) and then set out on our journey to Aguas Caliente. The base of Machu pichu.

Qorikancha church in Cusco

 I'm not sure if I've written on here about the strikes in Cusco, but they are quite annoying. Roads and businesses close, and tires are set on fire in the middle of the road. Lucky for us there was a strike to be planned for the same day we left. Since they usually start at 8am, I changed our tickets to an earlier time and thought we could miss it. When we arrived at an empty train station at 5am it quickly became apparent that that wasn't going to be the case. I've mentioned before that my Spanish is atrocious. That still stands, but it's not so bad that it's useless and having to carry my mom instead of being carried by Amanda's Spanish made me realize I have much more than I thought. The employees at the train were extremely helpful and managed to get us a taxi to the station where we could get the train which was two hours away. About a half hour into our drive, we came to a road blocked by protesters and had to turn and go another way. The road we had to take was a miners dirt road that could have been washed out at any given moment. Driving through sludge, dirt, and large pools, my mom and her boyfriend were just about shitting themselves. Accustomed to nothing going the way it's planned, I felt calm, but extremely determined to get there. I remember thinking to myself that if we got stuck I would just walk because there was no way I wasn't going to get there.

Travelling taught me to let a lot of things go. Sabai sabai as well, but there are some things you fight tooth and nail for and this was one of them. We got to the train station and paid a pretty penny for the driver, but we made it unscathed and got on a very nice train made of all windows allowing us to view the Sacred Valley from nearly all angles. 

Aguas Calientes is a town based on nothing but tourism. It's as if you took all the cheap parts of Cusco, took out the genuine people and put in a pool, you'd get Aguas Caliente. Our hotel was one of the nicer ones in town, yet was still no where near worth what we paid for it. That said it was just a place to stay for one night. We got up at 5am again the next morning and it was dumping rain outside. We ate breakfast slowly and then caught the bus up to Machu Picchu. We were going to climb Huanupichu which only opens to a few hundred people a day from 7-8 and 10-11. We ascended into a cloud climbing up hundreds of slick wet stairs carved out of rock. At some points you could grab a cable along the way, but overall it was difficult and wasn't for the faint hearted. Luckily I have never been faint of heart and since I'm a boss, I rocked that mountain. At the summit you can see over all Machu Picchu and you can look down on a huge raging river that curves around the bottom. This did not apply to us because we were still up in a cloud, so at the top you could see nothing more than white clouds on every side. The clouds would shift allowing you to see the steepness you were standing on for maybe a few seconds but then another blanket of clouds would roll in. 

A view from the top at the river below.

We loitered around at the top hoping for conditions to change, but they never did so we started our descent. At the bottom of Huanupichu is where we met up with Amanda and her boyfriend Tommy, who had just hiked up a thousand or so steps to get from Aguas Caliente to Machu Picchu. We walked around the ruins for a few hours, ease dropping on tour guides here and there. It hadn't occurred to me or Amanda's boyfriend, who was deathly afraid of heights, that there would be so many more stairs  to hike up at the grounds. With visibility going in and out so quickly we would climb up to one point to overlook an area and by the time you got up there you couldn't see a thing. It got a little tiring and eventually my body told me to sit the fuck down. We all hopped on a bus together and went back down to Aguas Caliente, where we ate like I hadn't seen food in months. After that we got on the train back to Pachar and finally arrived in Cusco after dark. 

Second mountain in from the right. Yeah I climbed that. So high you can't even see the top;)

The next day I met my mom and her boyfriend for breakfast at their hotel, which was set high up overlooking Cusco. A young blonde blue eyed man came over to ask how breakfast was. He ended up being a masters student in international affairs at the University of Utah. We all chatted for a bit and eventually got down to life advice. We did the familiar debate/discussion of 'do what you love' vs ...not. My friend Brian recently sent me an interesting article about how that's actually a terrible philosophy.( ). Anyways the point is, we can't all afford to do what you love. Sometimes you have to take on extra work. I'm not saying just shut up and work your miserable cubicle job, but something I learned from teaching in Bangkok is that you don't have to love what you do. If you make millions of dollars and have no time to spend it, to me that's worthless. If you can afford to do what you love with the money and time you have then you're doing okay. I mean after all it is called work for a reason. It's work, not play. If you get to go into your office and feel like you're just enjoying yourself the whole time, then understand you're one of the lucky ones. Someone has to deliver mail and clean toilets and so on, and they don't have to be in love with that. I don't care that much about teaching, but I can do it and I did it with amazing staff in a fun place where I could afford to vacation frequently with the money that I earned. But tell me I'm supposed to love explaining present perfect to a fifteen year old kid and I'll tell you to fuck off.

 Anyways, I told the blonde boy who was saying he wants to take time off to surf in Hawaii that you don't have to love what you do every minute of the day. Everyone's got a different way to live. Nobody's right and nobody's wrong. An Aussie I sat next to on the bus from Pachar to Cusco was leaving his life in Australia to continue travelling. "Work to travel, Travel then work, and do it all over again", he said. Couldn't argue much with that. 

 I said goodbye to my mom as she got in a taxi to the airport. I immediately went to go get a massage. Although I'm still sore from the hike, three days later, I have had more energy this past week than the whole trip so far. I've been doing yoga with Amanda and although I've held downward dog for an absurdly long time today, I feel good once it's over.. Good enough to be eating this chocolate brownie that's currently in front of me. 

Tomorrow, we hit the road again. Having a home has been nice, but we aren't seditary people and we still have so much more to see. We hope to hit Santiago by my birthday, until then it will be one bus ride after another with a stop over at the beach in Arica. We will hopefully find jobs at the beach because right now I'm good on the mountain department. The Andes are amazing and so different than the Rockies, but I guess I just don't appreciate mountains as much when I have to walk up and down them vs chairlift and snowboard. However, they are really cool and absolutely HUGE!  On a side note, all this writing and traveling has paid off. I got offered not one, but two jobs. One is blogging for a women's travelling website which is pretty cool and the other is writing a blog for a teaching program. In other writing news, my paper from my presentation in Uganda is soon to be published. I'm excited to be able to get more writing out there hopefully it'll be like the entrance to the Temple of the Moon where whatever you put in you get out three fold. Well just have to wait and see. Ciao. 

Temples, Caves, and Yogis

Oh hey there folks! Wanna see me do cool yoga poses on a rock? No? No one cares. Oh...okay.

Then let me tell you about this really cool hike instead. There's two main ruins along this hike. First is the Temple of the Condor (See above) and then the Temple of the Moon. Both are super cool and require an unnecessary amount of stairs to get to. Plus side is it's absolutely gorgeous after you climb all the stairs to get out of town. You can overlook the city and you're high enough you get to a point you can only see the mountains level. You also start to see a more realistic Peru that's got more families with mud packed houses and farms. Normally in the city, you see people dressed up in 'traditional garb' with llamas that are also dressed up. They charge you a sole to take a picture and that's their livelihood. Up out of the valley, which is still 11,000 feet, there were woman grazing their llamas or goats or sheep with their herd dogs. They were in normal clothing. 

After climbing a plethora or stairs carved into the side of a mountain, the land eventually flattened out and we came to the Temple of the Condor. Now on our way up these stairs, both sides are surrounded by beautiful purple Irises and these cute little yellow flowers I didn't recognize. Me, Amanda, and her friend from yoga are trekking up, panting away, and this old couple that was minimum seventy years old is hauling ass up. When we got to the temple, the woman starts explaining one carving in the rock that was a monkey, but when the Spanish came they chopped off the heads of all the carvings. It's really too bad the Spanish conquerors were such assholes cause they really ruined some cool stuff. Anyways, we did a bunch of yoga poses on the rocks with cool back drops and then climbed through one of huge caves and found the condor carving. It's huge and really hard to see in a photograph, but basically there's a big chunk coming out of this cave that is the head and the body of the condor, which is one of huge three main animal symbols that's significant in Incan culture. Over the body you can see what was two huge spread out wings. 

We then continued on to the Temple of the Moon, which I learned was actually formerly called the Temple of Pacha Mama (Mother Nature). It's essentially a large cave and it's got lots of cool carvings in it. Come to think of it, I'd never seen that before. So there's stairs carved in the stone to get down and at the entrance there are two carved snakes. A small one going in and a bigger one coming out above it. This is supposed to represent the energy you put into the world, whatever you put in you get back three fold. On the other side was a small carved puma that had also had it's head removed. Then there are two bench like seats carved into the side, where people came to resolve their conflicts with one another. After they talk it out they would go through a small entryway into the sacrifice room. Above the doorway, Prachu Mama was carved into the sealing. You can see the bottom view of her legs and her bottom and back. And the entryway is supposed to be what she is birthing out into the world. Once in this room, there was a type of bowl carved to hold water and another ledge for people to put their sacrifices on when praying to Prachu Mama. It had just a few Coca leaves scattered on it, but when looking up, there's a hole where light shines down exactly on the spot for sacrifices. Apparently when it's a full moon, the light shines directly through this hole and lights up the whole cave. On our way out of the sacrifice room, right under the Prachu Mama, there are two rocks laid in the entry way. Amanda's extremely informative yoga friend told us if you pick up the first rock there's a draft of air coming up from the ground which is said to be the same air Prachu Mama is breathing, or making or something. I'm not sure exactly, but we lifted up the rock and sure enough there's a draft of cooler air coming up from the ground.

At this point the older couple is in the cave with us and Amanda's friend explained the Pracha Mama air to them. The woman was extremely informative and offered to show us some carvings, we never would have noticed, on the top of the cave. We followed her out and up to the top, where you overlook some of the Inca trail as well as locals playing soccer, and some grazing horses. This woman ended up being from Oregon and lived in Peru 4-6 months a year just hiking and doing trails. I already mentioned how she whipped our ass hiking up to the caves, but when she started talking to us about 1-2 day hikes and parts of the Inca trail we could do she did some weird arm gesture and it became apparent exactly how jacked she was. The definition of wiry. I just pictured her fighting drunk other wiry Irish people. By the way, Happy St. Patrick's day everyone. Enough about her presumed fighting skills, she had a wealth of knowledge about trails and Inca history. She showed us carving after carving in the stone that we would have never found and then proceeded to give us walking directions to the next four towns just in case we were up to it. We never even got her name, but she was pretty rad I must say. 

After that we headed back into town, ate a bunch of vegetarian food, then laid in bed for the next three hours. Amanda coached me through some yoga poses which was really fun. I did some strange thing into a headstand and back down, which sounds weird but it's actually super impressive. Trust me. We ended the night with below average Thai food, but a valuable lesson was learned. It's looking like a busy week ahead, but don't you worry, I'll be in touch!

Look Ma, No Hands

This is our crazy cat...

This is my crazy life

This was my crazy view from 5000meters up in the air. 

I used to have a magnet that read,"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you've imagined." I could never have imagined a life as crazy as the one I'm living right now. I'm currently reading Augusten burrough's 'This is How' and he talks about confidence being about being in the present. With this life, why would I want to be anywhere else, but here and now at any given moment. 

When I went paragliding last week with some of the volunteers and a regular from work, one of the guys asked me where I'd been. After I told him, he asked me what other cool things I'd done. I rattled off climbing a fourteener, living on a ship for six months, and doing stand up comedy and eventually he responded, ' wow I haven't done anything cool.' This of course was untrue as he'd previously told me he'd been mountaineering glaciers in Chile, which is pretty fucking cool. He also climbed three fourteeners. He lives in Colorado on occasion. I told him he was young and he had time. He's twenty two. Yeah he has time, but I have time and look what I've done already.  Yes I had opportunity which I said yes to every time I could, but at the same time I'm also just really fucking awesome for my age and I really should start owning that a little more, rather than weirdly making up some bullshit reason as to why I'm not as cool as I seem. I am THAT cool. So much so, that I keep coming across people throughout my life that present me with some blind faith.

 A volunteer recently asked me if I could do anything and money was no object what I'd do. I said cook and he asked if I'd consider being a housewife. I told that to a new older friend of mine and she responded with a scoffing response that I wouldn't be happy doing that and that I'm going to be some "powerhouse business woman who can go off to France for a month and fuck a twenty five year old when she's forty if she wants." Those aren't my heartfelt aspirations, but I think it was a compliment and I do appreciate the blind faith to be something greater. 

Ok, enough about how awesome me and surrounding parties think I am. Paragliding. I think I mentioned being bored in my last post, if not it was the previous one I was writing that got deleted. Point is, I was getting really bored in Cusco doing just the volunteering and not a whole lot else. This was causing me to be quite unhappy in the situation. However, in this particular situation I was in complete control of my unhappiness. It's not like I was so overworked and underpaid I couldn't do anything but slave over my 9-5 then go home and bitch about it. I could literally do whatever I wanted within a budget. South America is huge on adventure tourism and although I'm not a huge fan of hiking or standing for that matter, I do like a lot of adventure type things; Like bungee jumping, rafting, occasional motorcycle conquests. Although I've never had a desire to skydive, when I saw adds for paragliding a light went on. I like jumping off things and I don't like falling on my face. I shall paraglide. Conveniently enough, the next day two of the volunteers told me they were going to check out prices the following day. I went with them and we ended up booking a trip. We drove up to 3800meters and hung out waiting for the winds to cooperate. I went first and with a small Peruvian strapped to my back telling me to run, I watched as my feet still moved underneath me while distance grew between me and the ground. With that we sailed off the edge of a cliff into the sky. I could see the Andes stretching out in every direction with glaciers topping a few of huge mountains. We could overlook Utamaba and a big lake with a hillside covered in Lilacs on the other side. After about twenty minutes of flight time we landed in a field with a bunch of very panicked sheep. We received a few dirty looks from nearby cows, llbut no one was hurt and the farmers seems unphased. Me and the pilot chatted in what was probably the worst Spanglish he'd ever heard and eventually a car picked us up and drove us to meet the others who were waiting for their ride on top of the mountain. I spent the rest of the day getting sunburnt (despite applying sunscreen) and watching a few sketchy take offs and some very cool flights. 

When we got back, we stopped for a beer before heading to a Brazilian steakhouse to binge an ungodly amount on meat. It was delicious, but rarely have I felt more disgusted with myself than I did the next morning. However, Amanda and I are taking part in a thirty day plank challenge which is going rather swimmingly I must say. We are aiming to stay and work in Vina del Mar, a beach town in northern Chile so a beach conditioned body would be nice. As part of this and a few failed promises, I finally attended Amanda's yoga class. It worked out that it was also her first time teaching the class. She didn't exactly take it easy and they used all the yoga names for everything so as usual, I did a lot of guessing. After about thirty minutes another more intense woman took over. I was shocked and impressed that I could do most things she presented to the class. Balancing on one foot and one hand and 'opening my heart to the sky' wasn't one of those things. We also had all the lights off and only four or five candles around the room. One happened to be right behind me, so if I lost balance I easily could have lit my hair on fire. Anyways, I felt great afterwards, and the next day my whole arm was in pain. I can't say this was in any way, shape, or form, relaxing, but it was a good class for sure. 

Today Amanda graduates from the course and we will have a few free days before we head to Machu Picchu where she will do the hike up to it and I will do Huanupichu. I'm looking forward to the train ride which is supposed to be gorgeous and the actual hike, which is also known as the 'Stairs of Death'. Bring it on. My friend who was visiting last week did the Inca Trail and Huanupichu and said they were both so amazing. My friend who did is is actually a raft guide from Colorado, who I met in the Fort Collins post office after coming back from SAS. Tonight we will have a light dinner to celebrate and attend a salsa class of one of Amanda's classmates. Tomorrow we'll be hiking in the morning in some caves and sometime in the next few days Amanda's boyfriend will arrive from California to stay for a week. Hasta lluego!

PS: My Spanish is awful...still.