Whew! What a trip!

We made it out of Cusco to Arequipa (which is one of the most beautiful cities we´ve seen in a while) on an overnight bus that drove right into the middle of the roadblock! We decided to take a less well-travelled route than the Panamerican Highway, and opted for a dodgy-sounding back road that was supposed to take "just a little bit longer" than the main route that was very officially closed. So, after stopping the bus and sitting quietly for a while, 2 truckloads of police with shields and guns drove up to escort our group through the midst. After several more delays, we started to see rocks piled up in the road, big ones, small ones, trees, you name it. Our bus driver muscled his way through the pack and as we approached a small town, the tension in the air was practically palpable. We rolled past a burning tire on the side of the road, but there was some talk about the bridge into town being on fire...

Very exciting. We crept up to the flames, but sped by as the fumes were nasty. In town, there was another bottleneck. People on the side of the road, many obstacles, including a smoldering tree trunk. The instant we passed the tree, a rock came flying right at our window! Bam!! No broken glass or anything, just a mark, but it was definitely frightening. The whole time, we were afraid that we would hear the word that we would have to turn around and head back to Cusco through all that mess as we had seen other busses with "Arequipa" in their windows heading the wrong direction. But finally our salvation was in sight. The road ahead was completely dark and crossed one more bridge before heading up into the hills and out of the populated valley. Our bus attendant got out and paid a toll (or bribe) to someone at the bridge and our bloated bus crawled onto the wooden planks lining the bridge. After a little creaking (but no cracking, luckily) we were homefree! Homefree on a rainy night on a hairpin switchback dirt road also too small for a bus. At several bends, the bus driver had to make couple-point turns, tapping some boulders while he was at it. These poor busses take a beating.

The rest of the road was long and dark and uneventful (including too few bathroom stops; ask Anna about that), and we rolled into Arequipa as the sun rose over this beautiful high desert with volcanic peaks scratching the skies.

Heres some more photos from our world:

Compare these photos. One shows modern restoration of walls at Saqsaywamán, an Inca site just outside of Cusco. The other shows an original section of wall, including a couple limestone blocks weighing in over 100 tons that were dragged from a site 7 km away!

The original stone at this area is this beautifully carved granite.

These are the festive breads of All Saints week. There are baby ones too, but it would have been just too wierd to eat a baby.

The ticket "window" at Garcilaso stadium where we caught a Sunday game. Ciecianos (Cusco) beat Melgar de Arequipa 3-1 .

The police aren´t above helping to resolve disputes on the field. They also protect the visiting team from flying objects.

The penalty kick that won the match.

That´s about it for now. Thanks to everyone (the faithful four) who voted in the poll. You guys are probably sick of being polled right now anyway. The election is almost here!! I guess we´ll keep mixing it up with some photos and writing. Videos take too long to load on these South American connections.

Cañon de Colca and some tall mountains around here are calling our names right now. Although, there´s rumor brewing about another roadblock in Möquegua further south... More stories in our next installation! Until then!!

Cusco

Here we are stuck in Cusco. But we are making the best of it. It has been raining pretty much everyday and today has been a deluge. So I (Tony) started a Facebook account, finally. I guess its okay haha. So if you have a profile, look me up. I'll try to convince Anna to start one too. I´ve also had some free time because Anna is taking a Spanish course in the afternoons. The school is up and coming in Cusco. It is called Fairplay Peru, and it is a non-profit that employs local Cusqueña single mothers at a fair wage to teach Spanish to foreigners. Pretty cool. There is a great sense of community and the other night, we attended a cooking class where we learned how to make papa rellena. Highly recommended. Oh, and there are a lot of foreigners here.

The reason why we are stuck is because of a road-block and riots that have been going on to the south, in a little town called Sicuani. Here is a link to the only English-language article about it that I could find, if you are interested. Apparently there is some resistance to the constrution of a hydroelectric plant as the chief complaint. But people down here, especially the campesinos, the country people, have plenty of reasons to be disgruntled and they aren´t afraid to show it. Much of Peru´s population lives a traditional lifestyle in the hills, farming in small communities and speaking Quechua, the language of the Incas. But, a friend told us that when they want their voices to be heard about something, there is pretty much no stopping them. These strikes and road-blocks are pretty much a weekly occurence, from what we hear. The government on many levels is riddled with corruption, infrastructure is in tatters, and the economy here is worse off than many of Peru´s neighbors. On top of all this, the Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path, is making a violent resurgence in southern Peru.

So, for what its worth, in the mornings this week, we have been volunteering at a local comissaria, or police station of sorts, in the Santiago district of Cusco, that takes in children that have been abandoned, have run away from home, have been abused in some way, or have been getting involved in some minor crimes, like stealing or using drugs. The kids range in age from 0 to 17 years and may stay in this detention, which is basically one-room with bunk beds and spare mattresses, for weeks or months until their situation is resolved. We did what we could to help, taught a little English and math, took the kids out to run around and play ball in a nearby court. The organization that arranges this is called Aldea Yanapay, which is interested in keeping volunteering free, as it should be. I don't know if anybody who is reading this has looked into international volunteering opportunities, but there are many agencies out there now trying to make a profit off placing volunteers with organizations that may need them. If you ever find yourself in Cusco, look them up.

In any case, we are hanging in there, and hoping that these conflicts will be resolved so we can figure out where we are going to go next.

Much love,
Tony

Old Mountain

wow. That´s about all I can think to say right now...



Here´s what Pablo Neruda had to say:

"Entonces en la escala de la tierra he subido

entre la atroz maraña de las selvas perdidas

hasta ti, Macchu Picchu.

Alta ciudad de piedras escalares,

por fin morada del que lo terrestre

no escondió en las dormidas vestiduras.

En ti, como dos líneas paralelas,

la cuna del relámpago y del hombre

se mecían en un viento de espinas.

Madre de piedra, espuma de los cóndores.

Alto arrecife de la aurora humana.

Pala perdida en la primera arena.

Ésta fue la morada, éste es el sitio:

aquí los anchos granos del maíz ascendieron

y bajaron de nuevo como granizo rojo.
Aquí la hebra dorada salió de la vicuña

a vestir los amores, los túmulos, las madres,

el rey, las oraciones, los guerreros.

Aquí los pies del hombre descansaron de noche

junto a los pies del águila, en las altas guaridas

carniceras, y en la aurora

pisaron con los pies del trueno la niebla enrarecida,

y tocaron las tierras y las piedras

hasta reconocerlas en la noche o la muerte.

Miro las vestiduras y las manos,

el vestigio del agua en la oquedad sonora,

la pared suavizada por el tacto de un rostro

que miró con mis ojos las lámparas terrestres,

que aceitó con mis manos las desaparecidas

maderas: porque todo, ropaje, piel, vasijas,

palabras, vino, panes,

se fue, cayó a la tierra.

Y el aire entró con dedos

de azahar sobre todos los dormidos:

mil años de aire, meses, semanas de aire,

de viento azul, de cordillera férrea,

que fueron como suaves huracanes de pasos

lustrando el solitario recinto de la piedra."

-Canto General, Las Alturas de Machu Picchu (1950)

Huaraz and the 3 Cordilleras

Huaraz was a taste of real Peru. A town set on the frontiers of many massive mountain ranges, the push and pull of gravity is palpable. It felt great to get out of the city and up into some air clean and thin enough for a quick and easy case of the soroche, or altitude sickness. We took many beautiful day hikes up to passes and hanging lakes that are as high as the summits of peaks back home. The weather was predictable as the rainy season sets in, with rain pretty much every afternoon.

The three main mountain ranges are the Cordilleras Blanca, Huayhuash, and Negra. We spent several days with our good buddy Dave at a refugio in a rock forest called Hatun Machay. Sport climbs have been put up there and it felt great to finally break out the gear we´ve been carrying and get down to business, leading out at 14,000 feet. We hiked to a summit of a larger foothill of the Cordillera Negra, where one can supposedly see the Pacific on a clear day.

The climbing was really fun and the rock was beautiful, but the real imprint that the place had on us was through the people we met. We met a campesino woman and her two daughters who had been sheparding through the hills for the past few days. She was very sweet but she had little beyond what she could carry bound up in a colorful bundle on her back. We offered her some of our food and listened to our first exposure to quechua, with some castellano sprinkled in. Seeing the way they spend their days was a gift. Another woman drove her herd to a small summit with her dogs and rested looking out over the mountains, pastures, and down toward the distant sea. Her red skirt had beautiful shimmering beads in a sparse decorative pattern. The contrasts of colors and nature here are stark.

Moving in Peru

Here we are back in Lima after spending several days in the Huaraz area. There are so many memorable moments, but the ones that made a mark are those spent in transit. And when we say a mark, we mean a mark.

The first and most intuitive method of transport is by foot; which we´ve found to be the best. Mostly because you can be the master of your own destiny, for the most part. You just need to know where you´re going and to keep an eye out for vehicles blurring past...

Step into one of those warp speed warped metal contraptions and, well, you´re in for who knows what...

Here are a few things we´ve experienced on various sets of wheels, most of all in combis, the Peruvian staple of the road. A combi is basically a VW bus with retrofitted seats.

• -Cramming 20-25 people inside, and that´s not all babies
• -A driver reading the newspaper about Peru´s loss to Bolivia 3-0
• -Incredibly pushy drivers who don´t mind laying of the horn for as long as it takes for traffic to move; and their attendants, who also direct traffic unofficially, when other cars are moving too slow
• -Sheep. That´s right, a couple sheep are welcome passengers
• -Vomit-buckets
• -Antique speaker systems blaring cumbia
• -Roads that require more than 2 sports bras
• -Milking mamas
• -Splitting headaches as you come down from a dizzying height, the soroche setting in and, as the vice tightens around your temples, another hairpin turn at terminal velocity
• -Femur-crushing ergonomics and surgical insertion of a metal edge right into your spine
• -A variety of horn sounds you can choose from to soup up your ride, including police siren, ambulance and cat-call whistle

Would you step into or off of a moving combi? Oh yeah, we forgot to mention that they barely slow down to pick up and drop off those, what do you call them? Oh, that´s right: passengers!

Second-favorite Peruvian bumper sticker: "Pasame, pero a tu hermana"

This list will surely grow as we continue poking around South America and other destinations. Tomorrow, we leave Lima for Cusco and finally begin moving South in a real way.

Huaraz post to come.

Yahoo Peru!

So, our time Brazil has passed. It´s stolen my heart. In Brazil, all you need is a smile (many people wear little more than that anyways haha). The people are as warm as their sun and the water. Wow, absolutely one of the best places on earth that we´ve seen. We´ve added all our photos to the Brazil album on Picasa, and we´ve started our Peru album. Check them out!

We just arrived in Huaraz, Peru, after spending 3 days in Lima looking at Incan ruins; downtown Lima where we saw all the Spanish architecture and cathedrals; we surfed, yep, in Peru; it was great. We also met up with the Gringo camera crew for a SciFi show called Ghost Hunters International and have been hanging out experiencing the night life with their crazy paranormal group. They are getting paid to travel and explore creepy, old, haunted fortresses, houses, and well you name it.... They´ve really been a fun group! We saw some live music including a U2 cover band which I think was really U2 disguised as latin men. The other group we saw was a sweet fem all girls band who loved the 80s and wore black and pink plastic sunglasses. I hope to get the videos from one of the SciFi camera techs and post it here. Although he fell into the pool yesterday with his camera and all his clothes on, so hopefully the memory card is still intact.
We were staying with a CouchSurfing friend, Paulo, who just got back from some time traveling on a surfing trip and doing a little couch surfing of his own. He was the best guide and a fabulous driver in the chaos of Lima. Who knew there could be so many car horns sounding at once? His family took us in and we stay in their guest section of their house. They were a wonderful, well educated, english speaking family and had similar beliefs about holistic health so it was fun to explore their ideas. Our fist day there we cruised around the city on sweet, townie single speed bikes. It was so nice to get some real exercise after a 16hr traveling day the day before. Although, being on a bicycle (or on foot, for that matter) in hectic Lima traffic is a little scary. I didn´t think traffic could get much worse than Brazil, but what do I know? We still have a lot to see. There could even be one place worse than Lima! Then as I wrote above we explored some ruins and the downtown. For the next two days we went to a beach house about 45 min. down the coast south of Lima at a beatiful place called Punta Hermosa! The waves were pretty big for us, about 1.5 meters and there was a lot of crashing going on. The water was cold, but wetsuits made it feel very comfortable. It was so worth it. The friends that we have made here surf a lot and Nicole´s father was Peru´s national surf champion back in the 70s and she is currently sponsored by many surfing companies at the age of 20, so need I say more but we got a personal surfing lesson in the biggest waves I have ever seen or gotten on, about 1.5 meters. I think I am in heaven! I still have salt water randomly dripping from my nose.
I just have to say one thing about the food, WOW I love peruvian food! Ceviche!!! Leche de Tigre!!! Fried squid and octopus!! Fresh OJ every morning and this weird dessert made of honey and baked with flour called Torron. Mmm so good!

So we are now in Hauraz at about 3100m, surrounded by permanent snow capped peaks of the Cordillera Blanca rising about 5000m. Magnificent and beautiful backdrop! We came by a double decker bus over night and are waiting for time to pass so we can call our next couch surfing host.
That´s my update for now. Have a wonderful weekend. Love you and miss you all!

Best thing that we´ve taken with us on this trip: Smiles
Best Peruvian bumper sticker: ¨Brother, el claxón no empuje¨

Maracana stadium! Flamengo vs. Ipatinga