Saturday September 5 to Sunday September 6 - Peru Week 3

Somewhat of a quiet weekend for me, my roommate was headed to Cusco with a buddy on Thursday so I was largely on my own this weekend. On Saturday I jumped onto one of the collective busses, which are large vans that drive up and down the roads, and headed to the Inca ruins at Pisac since I have not seen them yet. It was interesting driving across the countryside and through the various little towns of the Sacred Valley. The towns are dotted along the roadside and often have cows and donkeys tied up along the side of the road. Sadly the weather was not very good and after taking the bus into Pisac I arrived just in time for it to start drizzling. But I was there and no guarantee that the next day or weekend would be any better. Total cost of a one hour bus ride, 4 Soles or about $1.25.

Pisac itself is a modern tourist town, by Peru standards, and after walking around a bit I discovered that I needed to take a taxi up to the ruins, which runs 25 Soles in each direction, or about $8. That is not a lot of US dollars but considering what it cost to get to Pisac from Urubamba and that I can take a bus to Cusco from Urubamba, a 1-1/2 hour drive, for 6 Soles it seemed like a lot to me. But since I don’t have a good grasp of Spanish it was rather hard for me to talk to them about this and it was posted not something they made up on the spot, so I sucked it up and let them soak me. The driver spoke a little English and was nice and informed me that he would drop me off at the main entrance and I should walk around and meet him at a 2^nd place. Fine by me but it was drizzling steadily when he dropped me off and the clouds were totally covering the mountain where the ruins were so I was not all that excited about it when he told me the walk usually takes 1.5 to 2 hours to do.

 

Fortunately my rain coat fits over the backpack I was wearing so I was able to keep my stuff dry but I must have looked a bit funny with a hump on my back and the coat pulled as tight as it would go around me. But much better than the crappy plastic ponchos that were being sold for about 10 Soles each. They were not unlike what they sell at a baseball game and I saw many were torn on the tourists who were wearing them and not keeping them all that dry.

The ruins top sucked. It rained on me the entire time, I could not see very in the valley far due to the clouds, and the other tourists were walking so slowly in the rain I wanted to push them off the mountain side. I am not really a fast walker to begin with and these people were crawling around like it was some Halloween haunted house and they were waiting for an Inca warrior to jump out and chop them up with an axe. It was ridiculous and as soon as you got around one group another was in front of them.

Add to it the steady stream of muddy water pouring down the steps from above and I was not exactly excited with Pisac. I also only pulled my camera out one time when I was under a shelter just to prove I was there. The last thing I wanted to do was walk another hour or two on a trail in the rain to get to my cab but there was not a lot of other options for me. Unless I wanted to try and stow away on a tourist bus and I did think about this. As I was figuring out my options and I guess the Irish in me got up because I rather said fuck it and the Inca rain decided I was going to walk the trail out of spite. Perhaps the Inca rain god is a bit Irish too because as I did not get very far when the rain stopped completely and the sun came out! On top of that many of the tour buses with the painfully slow tourists I wanted to push over the edge had left. So other than a few other people, possibly also Irish, I had the place to myself as I walked the trail.

The trail itself hung onto the side of the mountain and lead to a cave tunnel and several other sets of ruins on the way to the second car park. These areas were much more interesting to visit and included a temple and a second city area below the top. I had a map that the cab driver gave me that showed the site and various areas, but like most things in Peru, maps and signs are not very good so it was hard to tell exactly where I was. But the guy told me up to two hours to walk it so I did not think much of it when an hour and a half later I was in a lower set of ruins and started to realize I had no idea where the lot was.

Around that time I also came around a corner to see an old Peruvian lady sitting on the ground selling tourist trinkets. I could not get by without her noticing me and I really did not want to buy anything but she put the hard sell on me and it had started to drizzle ever so slightly again. So I decided to buy one belt that was over priced at 15 Soles but she did not have change and kept putting the hard sell on me to buy two since she did not have change for the 50 I had. I am a sucker and finally gave in and let her soak me because I felt a bit bad she was sitting in the rain. She probably laughed at me all the way down.

Somewhere in there is an old woman dying to sell you a belt or some other Peruvian tourist chachkey

I kept following the trail and was wondering where the second lot was by the time I ran across somebody else and they had told me they were walking up from the bottom and I was already 2/3rds of the way down the mountain to Pisac. They had no idea where the lot was but it was not on the trail I was on so instead of finding my cab I ended up walking all the way down. At the very bottom it started to drizzle just a bit but by that time I was largely down anyway so no big deal.

Along the way the cab driver called my Peruvian phone several times and I think was annoyed with me but it was not exactly like I planned this. And he owed me 5 Soles from the trip up anyway so tough. I got his laminated map as a souvenir that I bet cost less than the 5 Soles. And the trail lead me out at the bottom of the hill where a market was so I was able to buy some souvenirs before hopping a collective bus on to Cusco for the night.

 

In Cusco I was a bit wet and cold and my feet hurt some from the unexpected hike so after checking into my hotel I took the first long hot shower I think I have had since July 4^th. It was so nice I had a hard time getting out and think I spend about 30 minutes under the water. That evening I mostly just took some pictures of Cusco at night and watched the second half of The Interview about killing Kim Jung Un with Seth Rogan and James Franco and the new Godzilla movie. Both were rather bad movies but they were in English and this was really the first TV I have watched since leaving South Africa four weeks earlier. The Interview was pretty stupid but it had its moments, Godzilla, don’t bother unless it is free and you have nothing to do.

Sunday I did a little shopping, bought some stuff for bug bites that has been helping clear up the spots on my legs, and visited a few museums in Cusco that are a part of the tourist ticket I bought at Pisac. Museums here are not quite what I expect in the US and they are typically very small and you could literally walk up and touch most things. But they also have an English translation most of the time so that is good.

I also had an absolutely huge breakfast with scrambled eggs, toast, bacon and sausage and most importantly, absolutely no corn! I am sick of corn as that seems to be in everything you eat here.