Hola Familia y Amigos
It felt like we had been bucked off a wild horse and now had to get back on and ride that steed off into an even more active month of travel. We spent a mere two weeks at home after spending a month in Europe, celebrating our 40th anniversary and would have to shake off the comfort of the home front and jump into our first foray into South America. I know this is an ‘oh you poor thing’ whine, but the aging process seems to be creeping up a bit. This would be Part 2 of stretching out our 40th celebration (October 3, while we were briefly at home). We initiated it with a 4 night visit with our son Jordan and his family in Oceanside, per our grandson Moses’ sweet telephone request to please come visit before we begin our trek. Hard to say no to a pleading 3 year old! We moved on to Mexico City whose altitude at 7,000 feet would help acclimate us for Peru’s Andes, where altitudes would near 13,000 feet and a 6 hour hike on the Inka Express Trail would elevate us from 6,000 to 8,000 feet at the end of our 2 weeks in Peru.
Staying at our favorite B & B, the Red Tree House in Mexico City’s Condesa district, we found ourselves walking a lot and using the excellent subway system (free for those over 60) to take in Frida Kahlo’s and Diego Rivera’s Casa Azul, now a museum honoring their lives together, their art and collectibles, the history of their tumultuous marriage and Frida’s long standing painful health issues. It was a 2 hour affair to fully take in their 20 years together, including housing Leon Trotsky, a Russian Marxist exile who was subsequently murdered. These two artists never had a dull moment!
We ventured to the Historic District’s Secretaria de Educacion facility, home of many Rivera murals, reflecting rural life and political strife, having seen many of his other ones at the National Palace on a previous visit. We walked most of one day to experience Parque Chapultepec, home to Castillo Chapultepec, Emperor Maxillian’s residence until his execution in 1867. The significance of this? In September we walked 5 miles in Trieste, Italy to another castle, Castello Miramare, which Maximillian had built for himself and his wife Charlotte and where they lived until he was appointed to his ‘Emperorship’ in Mexico. It was notable to make comparisons between the two and their decorum, bringing European furnishings to Mexico to feel like home. Both were quite ostentatious!
Arriving in Peru’s sea level capital, Lima, near midnight on October 24, we met up with two of our party of four who would share guides, drivers & boatmen over the next 2 weeks. Our companions were the same 2 couples we had spent 10 days with in Borneo’s Danum Valley 3 years ago, Kurt/Joan & Phil/Marilyn. All of us flew to Cusco (Cuzco) the next morning, arriving at our hotel base, Casa San Blas, just off the narrow and cobblestoned Calle Tocuyeros, which our van could not maneuver, leaving us to haul our luggage uphill, gasping for breath, as we were now at an elevation of 11,200 feet. The bags had barely made it to our rooms when we were whisked away by our guide, Ruben, with his driver Oscar, to visit the nearby ruins of Sacsayhuaman (or the Quechuan, Saksaq Waman), which we bastardized, as had other visitors, to ‘Sexy Woman’, helping us to remember this unusual name. Ruben regaled us with the history of building this site in the early 15th century, with huge stones being moved from distances longer than four miles away. What we were viewing were the remains of what is left after 400 years of taking stones for construction purposes elsewhere, i.e., churches and houses. He went into great detail on the setting of stones, their tightly fit joints, and how very large stones were broken up through natural means, e.g., chiseling holes, stuffing them with wood wedges soaked in water, resulting in swelling and eventual splitting of the huge stones, making them more manageable for transporting to the site.
Moving on to one such structure probably benefitting from these stone removals, we ended the day at the Plaza de Armas in downtown Cusco, at the Cathedral Basilica de la Virgen de la Asuncion, completed over a 100 year period in 1654. They built things to last in those days! By a stroke of luck, we came upon a choir of Quechuans in their local dress, singing in their dying-out-language, a haunting, riveting and emotional delivery, echoing throughout the church, accompanied by fiddle, accordion, and a very old looking wooden harp-like stringed instrument. We were absolutely transcended by this heart-piercing chant-like singing. Unfortunately, being ‘guided’ we had to move on before we were ready and, having honored signage regarding not allowing photos to be taken, we have to hold this scene in our memories.
We were handed off on the 26th to our new guide, William, a stout, maybe 5 feet, 6 inches feet in height, 30-something native, wearing a camouflage cap, baggy convertible tan pants and a Tee shirt, with rock band stickers on his satchel (his handle in the guide world was ‘Gordito’ which we obviously never used to address him), and his driver Alfredo, who collected us at 6 a.m. to maneuver the winding, switch-backed gravelly, one-lane road toward the Andean Cloud Forest in our van. These are the roads one reads about where buses go over the edge (lack of guard rails), falling several thousand feet. Remember, we were starting out at 11,200 feet, driving down 5-6,000 feet; a couple of us chose to sit on the non-edge side of the van, like this would make a difference if we careened off into the abyss. However, this drive would seem like nothing compared to an unplanned transport coming up much later in our adventure! This all day journey would take us through 2 Andean ranges, cresting at 12,900 feet and the towns of Pisac (Pisaq) and Paucartambo, driving in a northeasterly direction. Along the way we were privy to alpacas, llamas (they have the longer necks of these two camelids and are twice the size) and horses sunning themselves in grassy fields, vacant stone corrals for sheep, housing with red tiled roofs and in the poorest villages, the roofs were topped with Toritos de Pucara (2 bulls on either side of a cross, representing a quest for prosperity or good luck). We had views of the Urubamba River (Willkamayu in Quechuan, meaning ‘sacred river’), which is a partially navigable headwater of the Amazon River, winding its way through the Sacred Valley below, with its lushness and corn fields. The steeply terraced hills would change as we ventured throughout the day, some being desolately brown and moonscape-like, others, lushly verdant green. Alongside the road we would periodically come across brightly attired women, sporting their quintessential black ‘bowler’ (Bombin) hats, broad-brimmed dark felt hats or colorful hats, with their bags slung over their shoulders, some tending to donkeys, sheep and pigs, herding them in front of our van. Our pit stops in the above-mentioned towns gave us more furtive photo opportunities of the people in their traditional colorful garb, the women’s long, black braids spilling from their hats.
Onward from Paucartambo toward the Cloud Forest with its lush vegetation, low lying fluffy clouds, and its flora & fauna: small yellow orchids; red and yellow Heliconia flowers; ferns; bromeliads; the blue-backed yellow-breasted Great Thrush, a slaty-colored bird (largest thrush in the Americas), sporting an orangish-red beak; the Golden-Headed Quetzal with his yellow beak, greenish head, teal-colored shoulders and a red breast; the cute little olive brown and orange Cinnamon Flycatcher with blackish wings; a butterfly alighting on my hand at lunch, licking the salt on my skin with its proboscis. I felt honored that I was its own personal salt lick until it started flirting with Kurt’s and then Maggie’s hands too. Tart! The most melodic bird which entranced us throughout the ensuing days was the Oropendola de Montezuma (aka Weaver birds), whose nests are up to 4 feet long, hanging from the ends of tree branches. Their song starts with dipping forward on a branch, rising up, then delivering a sound akin to drops of water falling some distance onto water, making a ‘ker-plopping’ sound, a virtual “liquid vibrato”. It started becoming obvious that birders and botanists have field days in this part of the world, something I have to admit I was enjoying immensely myself!
Arriving at the Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge in late afternoon, our first order of business was to walk quietly to the lek just off the road, where this wooden and covered blind provided for our viewing of the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, Peru’s national bird, a real beauty with their bright reddish-orange fan-shaped crests, making their appearance to be ‘fat-headed’. As with many birds, the colorfulness is with the males, a plus from the beauty aspect, a minus from that of drawing attention to its predators; the females are brown, which makes them more camouflaged and protected to carry on the species. We did witness courting behaviors, flamboyant strutting, wing flapping, and plenty of squawking. So the upside of being male is the beauty and the downside is its vulnerability to predation due to its flashiness! The next morning was another early riser (5:30), as were almost all of the mornings we would come to find out, since that’s when the action unfolds!
It turns out the road alongside our lodge provided an amazing array of spotting opportunities, with William’s aid through his amazing visual acuity, powerful telescope, ability to imitate certain bird songs, and when this falls short, calling up iPhone recordings while using his green laser to help us catch a view of these beauties with our binoculars. Lacking the proper cameras and telephoto lenses that real birders own to capture well-defined photos, we took copious descriptive notes, hence the following montage:
The Golden Olive Woodpecker, with its grey fore crown, red hind crown, and a black bill; the Silver-Beaked Tanager, with its black upper bill, bright silver lower mandible and crimson throat and breast; the Two-Banded Warbler, a very small yellow bird; the Pale-Breasted Spinetail with its red head, white belly and brown tail and feathers; the Red-Headed Barbet with its green body and yellow beak, related to the Toucan; the Giant Hummingbird whose wing span can be up to 8.5 inches; the Golden-Crowned Flycatcher and its yellow belly; the Owl butterfly with huge eyespots on its black and yellow wings; the Bombacaceae tree (cousin of the Kapok), with its pink flowering plants and its monstrous buttresses, getting to heights over 200 feet; the Mashonaste tree whose roots can travel up to 3 km (1.8 miles) to reach nutrients; and Capuchin monkeys swinging on the tops of palm tree stalks, playfully shinnying up small diameter bamboo trunks.
We will leave this dispatch driving along the Pillcopata River, entering the legal Coca producing region of Peru, moving slowly toward Patria, honking at every one of the switchback curves to announce our presence, viewing passion flowers, begonias and the Cecropia, a fast growing tree with a symbiotic relationship with ants and distinctively topped with a spathe (leaf bud). When we return with our 2nd dispatch, we will be immersed in the Manu Valley jungle, touring much of the way down the Madre de Dios River on a canopied dugout canoe, manned by 2 boatmen, carrying the 6 of us and William. Until then,
Hasta Luego,
Stan & Maggie