Sunday, March 29, 2009

Inca Jungle Trek

You won't hear a peep out of me for the next several days. I'm going on a 4 day, 3 night trek to Machu Picchu. It sounds pretty cool. It's not the famous Inca Trail, but one of the segments of the trek does use old Inca stone roads.

Qorikancha: Inca Temple









The foundation of the most extravagant Inca temple is still in tact in Cusco. A cathedral was built over top of the looted temple by the Spanish conquistadores. Cusco used to be the center of the Inca civilization. Now it's a tourist hub to Macchu Piccu. There used to be ridiculous amounts of gold and silver cladding covering the temple, as well as solid gold & silver cerimonial artifacts. All were looted and melted down by the spanish. But, look at the insane stonework craftmanship on the temple walls. You can't swipe a credit card between the perfectly fitted stones that's for sure!

My Never Ending Quest


I have a never ending quest to try any new beer that I come into contact with. Here's some Peruvian coca beer that I tried. It was interesting. I don't think I'll buy it again though.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Tililaca & Huillanopampa Islands
















We also visited some permanent islands where there are indegenous people living. There were about 2-3 thousand people living on each island. These islands are more isolated than the mainland, but less so than the floating islands.

Floating Islands














Lake Titicaca

I was at Lake Titicaca for a few days. I went on a boat tour of some of the islands. There is one tribe of indigenous people that live on floating reed islands which they construct themselves. They have done this historically to isolate themselves from outsiders. Intermarriage with outsiders is very rare. But today, they are very open to tourism.

It seems like tourism has spoiled a lot of the indegenous people here. Not just with the floating islanders, but also with the permanent islanders. Today, these groups have an economy that seems to be half subsistance farming/fishing and half tourism. I think tourism has really changed these places. A lot of the time, I felt like we we're getting a show of "what the tourists want to see". But, maybe not.

Our tour group was split up, and we each spent a night on the permanent island with a host family. At night, there was a party. Our families dressed us up in native clothing, and we all danced at the "town hall" with some live native music... That was weird to say the least.

Arequipa at Night


I left Arequipa earlier this week. Arequipa is the 2nd largest city in Peru. I liked it there. It was a nice place, and also very cheap. They had lots of trips for tourists to take, and good shopping too. Here's a picture of the Plaza de Armas at night. All of the buildings are built from a white volcanic stone that is bountiful around El Misti.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Mountain Pictures, Day 2, Back Down



















Mountain Pictures, Day 2, Reaching the Summit























Mountain Pictures, Day 2, Rise and Shine









Mountain Pictures, Day 1
















El Misti

I climbed El Misti this weekend.

El Misti is a volcano mountain close to Arequipa, Peru. It stands at 5822 meters (19,101 ft). That is just about exactly the same height as Mount Kilimanjaro for comparison. And, I did it with diarrhea the whole time. I think that increased the difficulty level three fold at least. I wasn't sick all week, but the day I climb the mountain, about 2 hours into the hike... bam, problems. Montezuma... his revenge is brutal. At times it was complete misery.

The mountain is not for the out of shape. I didn't get altitude sickness, but I was using altitude sickness pills and coca cookies. Even so, my heart and lungs were pumping hard trying to deliver oxygen in the thin air... for an extended duration. It was very difficult, a challenge for the spirit.

The first day, we were driven to the start of the trail at 3300m. We hiked with full gear (tent, sleeping bag, mat, 5 liters of water, food, other equipment) up to base camp at 4500m. My backpack weighed 60 pounds! We set up camp, ate dinner, then went to sleep at around 6pm. At 1am, we had breakfast, and started the hike to the summit a little before 2am with smaller day packs. Each day was about 6 to 7 hours of uphill hiking. I felt that both days were equally challenging, because of the heavy gear on the first day, and the thinner air on the second day.

The way down was fun. There are large volcanic sand chutes which we "skied" down to the bottom. The soft sand was very easy on the knees. There was only about one hour of non-sand hiking on the way down, which was a little bit tough on the joints.

Friday, March 20, 2009

There's a bunch of posts that I could do right now. But I have a mountain hike tommorrow, early. I got into grad school withthe free ride, yesah. I'll be away for a few days. tchau.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Menu of the Saints




The convent has a cafe inside for tourists. I got a kick out of the menu.

Monasterio de Santa Catalina






















Arequipa has a historical monastary. I took the guided tour, and it was VERY interesting. This used to be the place for rich Spanish families to send their daughters. The families paid a large dowry to the convent. The nuns had servants and all sorts of ammenities. The pope found out about the goings on after about 100 years and cleaned up their sister act. The complex is quite extensive. In it's hayday, 500 people lived inside the walls, including servants.


There are some clever things that they used to do here. For instance, they made natural water filters from the porous volcanic rock here. It can give to a few gallons of microbe free water in about 7 hours.


The convent also housed a unique nun, who successfully predicted when people were going to die. All of her predictions came true. A bishop protected her from being persecuted as a witch. Some years after here death. Her cremated ashed were given to an advanced stage cancer patient. The patient ate the ashes and was cured. Apparently, this is a medically confirmed miracle.

Bhuddist Temple




After Itaipu, I went to lunch and to a Bhuddist temple with a civil engineering professor I met while on tour. I didn't get any pictures of her though. Too bad, she was a looker.