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.

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.