Cuzco

We got to Cuzco Saturday.  Cuzco is an amazing place.  Yes it is touristy, but the drama of the landscape, colonial architecture, baroque and gothic churches and locals milling about is very cool.  Looking up and down every street is so neat because the city is very hilly and therefore you can see far into the distance or at a perfectly framed cityscape.  We spent the first afternoon and evening just walking and wandering.  We caught sunset looking out over the city and the surrounding mountains. For dinner we found a really wonderful local restaurant up on the hillside and ate alpaca and beef dishes.  On our first full day we woke up and wandered the Sunday market.  There were clothes, household goods, jewelry, fruit, vegetable, meat and random knickknacky vendors.  It's funny before Cuzco people came up to Ching Jen and inquired, china? Here they ask koreano? Japon?
> After the market we wandered the city some more.  We found the stone with 12 corners.  The inca architecture, especially their stone cutting, stone carving and wood car ing is incredible.  How they fit and measure the stones, which are heavy, into perfectly straight allignments without a mortar is amazing.  For lunch we continued our streak of peruvian food and had a local poultry soup with once frozen potatos, meaning potatos that are harvested in winter and papa rellena, stuffed potatoes with beef and vegetables. In the afternoon we went on a your of the city and nearby archaeological sites. The first stop was the cathedral at the plaza de armas.  The plaza is by far one of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen.  The cathedral and other churches are beautiful.  The plaza at the center has a fountain and lots of flowers.  The other surrounding buildings have exquisitely restored, ornately carved balconies.  Inside the cathedral there is so much gold and silver!  Everything was gold and silver.  The Spanish who built the churches built them on Quechua religious sites and inca palaces.  The Spanish took the gold and silver from those sites as well as the stones and used it for their buildings.  There were a lot of instances of local cultural touches in the cathedral sculpture and paintings like a last supper mural with guinea pig at the center. After the cathedral we walked down a narrow street with original inca walls on both sides.  Sadly earlier this year, while a store was underconstruction, hidden under scaffolding, a developer removed an entire section of the wall fir storefront.  The government has no authority over this type of action- guess the developer has influence.  Our next stop was qoricancha, an inca temple that is located within a church.  Again the Spanish built their church on the land of inca significance as a way of impearializing the Quechua. It wasn't until a strong earthquake made the plaster walls fall off that it was revealed that an inca temple was at the foundation of the church.  From here we went to saqsaywaman a site above Cuzco.  It's a massive monument of a three tiered wall.  The stones that were used to built it are over 100 tons and again somehow fit together with complete precision.  It's a mystery. Small bits of stone can crumble from the touch of a finger yet somehow the transported these heavy stones, lifted the up to 4 stories high and put them in place without breaking or smashing.  Qenqo was the next site.  This is a huge rock where the Quechua carved a cave.  It's not clear what it was used for but inside there is a slit of light that falls on an altar, tracking the summer solstice.  The last site was tambochaya a natural spring where the Quechua built a fountain for bathing and an irrigation system for the valley.  The tour concluded with a stop at an alpaca garment factory/store. The wool certainly is soft.

On our last day we took it easy. We stayed in Cuzco and soaked up some sun. After breakfast we went to the Museum of the Incas. It was a grand overview of the history of Cuzco from pre-Inca period and well after the Spanish conquest of Cuzco. In the courtyard, there were three ladies in traditional dress weaving. Ching Jen´s mom would have loved to watch them weave their colorful and intricate cloths. Afterwards, we went to a small plaza with three fountains overlooking the cathedral where Jon sketched and Ching Jen wrote in her journal. The plaza is next to an elementary school and when they got out at lunch time, some of the young boys watched Jon draw. We found a great local place for lunch, where we got a set menu of soup and an entree (Jon had white beans, steak, egg and rice; Ching
Jen had rice and chicken with onions and tomatoes). We ended the day with
some more time in another park just writing. At night we went for a briefing for our Machu Picchu trek, we are told we will reach a height of 4000m and cover 46km of ground. It will be challenging, but we are excited.

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Mirachifa!

The moment we got to our hostel we headed out to find dinner. Since Peru has a large population of Chinese (most seem to be 4th or more generation), we went to find a Chinese restaurant. At the suggestion of a family friend we went to Wa Lok, which was convenienly above a casino,and ordered one of Ching Jen's favorite dishes: lightly battered fish with cream corn. She was very happy indeed.

The next morning we went to downtown Lima and saw two beautiful churches. One dated back to the 1500 and gave a tour of the catacombs.  Literally bones and skulls were piled up; Jon thought they were awesome and Ching Jen thought it was a little creepy.  We both thought downtown was great with the mix of historic buildings amongst the current ones. For lunch we found a great Peruvian restaurant that all the businessmen went to. One of the plaza in downtown has a statute representing the Mother of Patriotism. When it was being sculpted a ring of fire was to be her crown, however the person requesting the crown of fire forgot the double meaning of the Spanish word for fire and instead the statute has a small llama animal squatting on her head.

Near dusk we went to a large shopping center located at the edge of the cliff that overlooks the ocean. We were comforted by the sound of the ocean that reminded us of home. We found a place for drinks were Jon had a pisco sour-a classic drink of Lima while staring out into the ocean. 


Day two in Lima took us to the top of a Huaca in the middle of the city.  It was very cool.  The huaca, a 1500 year old step pyramid is constructed out of handmade adobe brick.  The top is a flat top and actually the overall construction is not predetermined.  With each period of human and object sacrifice the Lima culture people added additional layers and the dimension of the pyramid grew in both height and diameter. The adobe bricks laid vertically in trapezoidal sections to withstand earthquakes. It's an active archaeological site and there were super lucky architects drawing the location and features of each individual brick. The Arcadian goats were calling to me.

After this we went on a quest for ceviche form lunch, but we don't know what was with our luck.  Each restaurant we found qnd had recommendations for was closed.  Hawaii has delicious ceviche and sashimi and poke, but no ceviche in Lima we felt like we might be missing out.  Eventually we found and it was actually only okay.  In the afternoon we took a cab out to the history museum.  We've become pretty adept at haggling for a cab and price.  For dinner we splurged again, when in Lima!  The food here is a fusion of Spanish, african, indigenous and Asian flavors.

Bogota! Bogota!

We got to Bogota on Saturday just as the presidential elections were concluding. The combination of our flight delay and some friends we met in Cartagena that we were joining up with for dinner meant that are plans for dinner at a famous Colombian steakhouse and dance ranchero were foiled. Instead we arrived in Bogota and went out to find a late dinner and check out the festive scene. The neighborhood of "la t" is super nice, fancy, full of bars, clubs and restaurants - it was pulsing. Our first day in Bogota we took the wonderfully designed bus rapid transit (wish Hawaii had this) to the central business district to try and ride an elevator up the tallest building but sadly it was closed for repairs. Therefore we wandered the streets, which was very pleasant since it was car free Sunday! Everyone was out on bikes and rollerblades and running. We went to the gold museum and saw the treasure of el dorado. We walked around la candelaria, which is the old colonial part and went to the plaza bolivar at the center of the city. The plaza and many buildings throughout the city were decorated with Colombian flags and colors because of the election. For dinner we made it to the famous steakhouse, their other venue. Dinner was huge! And we got serenaded, if that is the right word, by a small marching band while paper hearts and butterflies fell from the sky over our heads.
The next morning we went up Monserrat, 10000 feet in elevation. Bogota is an incredible city. It spread north, west, and south from the slopes of an eastern mountain ridge. It was just so beautiful just like the photo in chapter 3 or 4 in my Dime UNO! Textbook. For the ride up we went in the train at a 60+ degree slope. On the way down we rode the funicular dangling out 2000 feet above la candelaria. We loved it.

From Monserrat we headed down back to La Candelaria for some traditional food. The day before we had found a sweets shop that also served lunch so we went back. Ching Jen had a dish called ajiaco, a thick soup with potatoes, chicken, avocado,capers and corn- it's one of my favorite meals so far! After lunch we went to the Museo Botero, which featured his works (many from the late 90's) and many other famous artists like Picasso, Miro, Klimt, Giacometti,and Degas. Botero's paintings were great-his perspective of everything fat made it fun. His painting of the Mona Lisa is a favorite.

The next day we took a bus to Zipaquira, a small town about an hour away from Bogota. It's famous for a salt mine in which a cathedral was built into it. 14 enclaves were built down a winding pathways, each one depicting a station of the cross. Then we were lead further into the mine where we entered the actual cathedral. We were standing amongst columns 25 meters tall! Because it is dark in the mines, the crossses were often lit, making for pretty photo opportunities. The salt mine was formed when the ocean receded and left the salt, and then the tetonic plates shifted so that the Andean mountains formed over the salt, and then the salt rose towards the top of the different sediments because of pressures underground. Their is more excavation of the mine going on, they plan on digging another level in the mine and turning the excavated salt into revenue. Needless to say, it was neat to see!

MUD

Ching Jen and I totally got stuck in the mud. A big 15m high ant hill of mud, bubbling volcano mud, natural muddy hot spring mud, really really grey sloppy mud. It was very cool. Outside of Cartagena there is an actual volcano that burps out mud. It is now of course a tourist destination and you literally go into the crater, which is kept at a 15' to 20´diameter. The mud that bubbles up the skim each day so that the volcano stays at it´s current dimensions. I´m not sure where they take the mud nor how long they have been doing this. The volcano is situated next to a lake so after soaking up the mud (feet don´t hit the bottom, you kind of just float, like in pudding) we then walked down to the river where you wash off. After this trip the tour took us to a beach village where we hung out for a couple hours and had a lunch of grilled whole fish, it was so tasty! We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the old city, when it rained again. We ducked into the Gold Museum, out of the rain, but it rained through sunset, so no Cafe del Mar, a drink on the walls looking out at the Caribbean.
The day before we went to the fort San Felipe. It is huge, big and very cool with many tunnels mazing around in the foundation. The day was super hot. From the fort though there were beautiful panoramas of the city. After this we headed to walk around the old city, but we sort of didnt make it there. It poured! It rained buckets and we got trapped under a bank building with the locals who were kicking a rat around into the flooded street. It was actually kind of fun. Ching Jen felt sorry for the cute cute rat. I think she misses the subways in New York. We eventually did make it to wander the old city and the walls, but it was too rainy, cloudy and wet everywhere to watch the sunset.
We´ve met some great travels, a total of 2 couples moving to australia in the next 6 months, go figure, and another bunch of australians. All on multi month travels around South America. They love their 5 and 6 week annual vacations or the ability to leave their jobs and easily find a new one with all the benefits.

Yeah, the Australians pity us Americans in this situation! The Australians didn´t have high recommendations for Playa Blanca (a famous ¨beautiful¨ white sand beach), they felt that there was too much trash and too many interruptions by men selling all sorts of goods. So we took that into consideration and decided not to go as we have been told that the beach would not compare to any in Hawaii anyway. So we decided today to set out on foot and walk out into Bocagrande, a pennisula with beaches on one side and high rises on the other. We walked the entire length with a break in the middle watching fishermen pull in an enormous net, however, we didn´t see a lot of fish caught! Today was also the day of fruit juices! All together we have had mango, passion fruit, pineapple and ¨zapote¨ (an eggplant shaped fruit). They were all tasty and much needed in this hot weather. For dinner tonight we had crepes and ice cream. We also made it to Cafe del Mar tonight at the perfect timing. The sun set just as we sat down and we were right up against the wall. Tomorrow is our last day in Cartagena, not set on what we´ll do exactly, but likely another trip to Bocagrande beach and more wandering in the walled city.

We´re Here!

Today we arrived in Cartagena, Colombia! It was a very humid day and there was a lot of sweating involved while wandering the old city. The main attraction in Cartagena is the walled city with narrow streets and colorful colonial houses. Today was pretty low key, we just walked around and went to the ¨Museum of Modern Art¨ of Cartagena. We found a great place for dinner and we are already back at the hotel to get a good night´s rest.
Oh yeah, the flights down were great, but with two layovers and overnight flights we didnt get much rest. Luckily, arriving in Cartagena before noon we were able to check into the hotel, trading up for air conditioning! A short walk out to explore led us to Las Bovedas and the San Diego neighborhood. Later the museum was a good escape from the heat and humidity. We siesta(ed) for a couple hours before hitting dinner at a traditional seafood restaurant. It is a beautiful historic city, straight from a 17th century painting. Bougainvilla and flowering pots extend out over the sidewalks. Tomorrow with some rest we will storm the fort and meander the streets, soaking in the sun, the sea and the wide variety of fruit beverages!