Inca Everything

From the perspective of a tourist, almost everything in Cusco and the Sacred Valley is about the Incas. There are amazing Inca ruins scattering the hilltops, Spanish churches are built on top of old Inca walls and the local people still speak the Inca language. There are also Inca-buses, Inca-restaurants, Inca-hostels, Inca-pizzas and Inca-shops selling everything from postcards to alpaca sweaters. Before I visited Cusco I knew very little about the Incas and their history. But now I feel like I have had a comprehensive crash course in everything Inca.

I have to admit that initially I was worried about visiting Cusco and Machu Picchu because I had heard that they are over run with tourists. This may be true, but it did not ruin the magic for me. This is a place that deserves all the tourist attention that it gets. The mountains are beautiful, the buses are full of old ladies wearing colourful hand-woven clothing and chewing coca leaves, and the Inca ruins were even more impressive than I was expecting.

Cusco

Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire and some of their most impressive stonework can still be seen in the walls of the streets and the bottoms of the colonial buildings. It was a beautiful city to spend a couple of days in. One day we took a taxi about 8km up the road and then walked back to the city – stopping at all the ruins along the way.

We were lucky to be in Cusco on the first Sunday of the festival of Carnival. The twelve year old boy working at our hostel showed us how to participate in the festival by filling water balloons and throwing them from the balcony of our room onto the heads of people walking by. We all took a bag of water balloons with us to the main square where everyone was throwing water and spraying party foam at each other. We didn’t want to take our cameras to the square but this is how I looked when we got back.

Here is an example of Inca stonework in Cusco. The Incas were very good at fitting together odd shaped stones so that they fit perfectly – no need for mortar. This made their buildings very strong, beautiful and earthquake proof.

More Inca stonework at one of the ruins outside of Cusco. I was always impressed at how well the Inca buildings morphed with the natural rocks of the mountains.

 Machu Picchu

We took the poor-man’s route to Machu Picchu. To do this we took a 6 hour bus ride and then walked 2 hours along the train tracks to the tourist town of Aguas Calientes. Then we stayed overnight in Aguas Calientes and headed out at 4:30 am the next morning to give ourselves enough time to climb the Inca steps and reach Machu Picchu before sunrise. We spent all day at the ruins and then stayed overnight again in Aguas Calientes. It was really nice to have so much time to spend at the ruins. We did part of a guided tour in the morning and then spent 4 hours walking up and around Wayna Picchu (the small mountain beside the ruins). This was one of my favourite parts of the day because we got to walk on our own through beautiful Inca trails and hang out at some out-of-the-way Inca ruins. 

Walking beside the train track on our way to Machu Picchu

Our first view of Machu Picchu. This is my favourite picture of the 3 of us from the trip. Look at how excited Matt is to be awake before 7am! (Wayna Picchu is the mountains above Dylan's head)

View of the valley from the top of Wayna Picchu

It was pretty cloudy when we were at the top of Wayna Picchu but we did manage to see the ruins bellow us every once and a while.

This is part of the Inca trail that we walked to get around Wayna Picchu. There were so many stone steps! By the end of this day we were all wishing there was such a thing as Inca escalators or sip lines instead.

Exploring the Inca ruins around the Temple of the Moon on the far side of Wayna Picchu.

More Inca ruins

Matt in his Inca couch (at the Temple of the Moon)

My personal favourite picture of Machu Picchu. You can really see how the ancient town is hidden at the top of the mountain. On our way to Machu Picchu we walked along the side of the river you can see in this picture and we never noticed the ruins up above us. This is certainly the most spectacular location for ruins that I have ever seen.

All of us at the famous postcard view of Machu Picchu.

Everyone and their llama has a picture of themselves at this place.

The Sacred Valley

The sacred Valley is the name of the area near Cusco and Machu Picchu where many small Inca ruins and towns are. We stayed a couple of nights in the town of Ollantaytambo and spent time exploring the old fort nearby as well as the town itself. 

The entire town of Ollantaytambo felt like an archaeological site. Even the wall of the internet café I visited was made of beautiful Inca stone work. This is the street that our hostel was on, and yes, it too is Inca-made.

A famous battle was fought at this fort where the Incas successfully turned back the Spanish by flooding the valley bellow (fort at Ollantaytambo).

 While we were in the sacred Valley, we also stopped in the town of Pisac. This is where we went on one of my favourtie hikes of the whole trip - up a terraced hilltop to see an Inca temple, Inca fort, and Inca tombs.

We picked up some felt hats at the market in Pisac.

Matt on the top of an old Inca observation tower. The buildings down the side of the hill probably used to be Inca storage houses. 

Dylan and our trusty guide dog, who joined our party in town and stayed with us for the whole hike. 

Dylan standing at the top of the Inca fort. You can see some Inca tarracing in the background.

I love mountains so much!

The walk back down, just before sunset.

The Pacific Coast

I’m sorry that this blog past is over a month late. But better late than never I guess. Here are some pictures from our time on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador and Peru. We spent about a week hanging out in beach towns in Ecuador before busing down the West coast of Peru to Lima.

 Ecuador

We stayed a couple nights at the fishing village of Puerto Lopez. The ceviche was amazing and it was interesting to see the fishermen coming in with their catch in the mornings.

Our first night we got to stay in a tree fort room.

Dylan building a river on the beach at Puerto Lopez

Puerto Lopez was full of cool birds that were trying to steal fish from the fishermen. The captain of this boat is a pelican and his crew are frigates.

We went for a 2 1/2 hour boat trip out to an island to go snorkeling and bird watching. Just looking at the picture of this boat makes me feel sea sick.

On the boat tour we got to see blue footed boobies. These ones were hanging out in the harbor of Puerto Lopez.

On the boat ride back from the island we got to tube on the ocean. 

One day we spent at the nearby National Park Machalilla. It has a series of  beautiful beaches that are each very different from each other. It also has lots of neat sea animals like crabs and sea stars.

At this beach there was smoothed down rock instead of sand.

A sandcastle I built on one of the sandy beaches

We spent a few days relaxing at the beach town of Ayampe. Basically all there was to do there was relax on the beach or surf.

This is the hostel/house we stayed at in Ayampe. It backed onto the beach and we basically had the whole place (plus kitchen) to ourselves.

We all tried surfing

And we even got good enough to stand on our boards every once and a while (this is a picture of Matt).

Peru 

Our journey down the Peruvian Pacific Coast was mostly spent in night buses. But we did stop for a couple days in the dessert city of Chiclayo. This picture is herbs and natural medications at a stall at the Witch's Market there.

We visited the museum of the Lord of Sipan. The discovery of his tomb has been compared to that of Tutankhamun.

There were many archaeological sites to visit around Chiclayo, such as these pre-Incan pyramids.

One of the night buses we took ended up being so classy that Matt got his own coffee maker

We spent one day in Lima in between night buses. While we were there we visited the museum of the Spanish Inquisition. It had really impressive ceilings.

It had really gruesome displays of people being tortured

"No one suspects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Now Dylan and I are on our way back to Lima in a couple of days. We are looking forward to getting a chance to try some of the amazing sea food that Lima is famous for.

Colombia

This is what my Lonely Planet has to say about Colombia: “…you’ll discover that Colombia is so much more than the old clichés of kidnapping, narcotics and plastic surgery. Check your preconceptions at the door and uncover more than a few surprises in this accessible and utterly thrilling destination.”

Dylan and I fell hard for Colombia, so hard that we are already dreaming of coming back to it sometime in our future to live and work in Bogota for a year or so. What did we find so seductive about Colombia? It has beautiful landscape and wildlife, there is a diversity of cultures, the cities we visited were a vibrant blend of old colonial and very modern and the people are stylish and very friendly (ex. a police officer approached us on the street to chat, to give us his cell number in case we ever needed help, and to invite us to add him on facebook – instant amigos). We were in Colombia for 3 weeks in total. We spent about 1 week in Colombia’s capital city, Bogota, about 1 week exploring a couple cities/towns around the Caribbean coastal region, and about 1 week relaxing on the beaches of Tayrona National Park.

Bogota

To me it felt like cool things were always happening in Bogota. It is a hip, edgy and welcoming city unlike any I have been to before. There is so much energy and its streets and plazas always feel full of people bustling around, selling things, playing music, etc. Our first impression of Bogota was that it reminded us a bit of Toronto. The thing that made our time in Bogota extra special was having friends there to show us around and tell us a bit about Colombia.

The end of a street concert we ran into

Bogota is famous for its beautiful graffiti 

This is the street we stayed on both times we were in Bogota. It is in the historic colonial downtown where most of the buildings felt like cozy country bars to me.

We visited Bogota's Gold Museum that has one of the largest collections of gold artifacts on the continent 

We took a day trip with Nico to a nearby town to visit the Salt Cathedral 

The Salt Cathedral is in one level of a huge salt mine that is still being mined today. We all got a chance to help mine for salt. All of the walls tasted like salt.

The slat in the water of this pool make it so still and reflective that we all thought it was a hole in the ground at first.

Nico in the main hall of the salt cathedral. To me this place looked more like the Mine's of Moria than any other church I have ever visited.

Dylan and I out for a night of Latin dancing and hat wearing. It is a tradition in Bogota to try different hats on all night.

Nico and I taking a break on our 1 1/2 hour walk up to Monserrate. Monserrate is a mountain on the edge of Bogota with fabulous views over the city.

Looking over the mountains from the top of Monserrate

The whole gang (Dann, Diane, Nico, me, Dylan) at Monserrate

Cartagena

Cartagena is famous for its beautiful old colonial city center and its history of pirate attacks. We were only here for 2 nights but we really enjoyed walking around the old city in the evening.

These are the walls that were built to keep pirates (like Sir Francis Drake) from plundering the city

Mompos

It was a last minute decision to come to Mompos. It is a small out of the way town that few tourists find the time to visit. But when Dylan read that this place was “Straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel” we decided it was worth the trip. Mompos used to be on a main Spanish trade route until the river silted up and it was left more or less lost in time. It took us a whole day by bus, boat, and taxi to get to this town and when we arrived we spent most of our time wandering around the streets, taking siestas, and sitting in plazas watching time stand still.

We hung out by the river

We hung out at this restaurant in a beautiful colonial house. It seemed like every house in Mompos was huge, had a long garden courtyard, and was full of wooden rocking chairs.

We hung out in this square every night eating tasty street food

Most of the streets looked like this - rows of connected colonial buildings. In the evening there were bats flying around and many houses had people sitting outside in their rocking chairs.

Mompos is so lost in time that this tree has had time to eat this bench.

 Tayrona National Park

This is a large national Park on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. We meant to stay for 3-4 days but we ended up staying for 7. The beaches were beautiful and not too crowded, the jungle was full of lizards and the camping was cheap. We even slept in Hammocks for a couple nights. If we hadn't had to catch our plane back to Quito we probably would still be there.

The views were amazing and the beaches were covered in large rounded boulders - and to this day, I don't know how they got there.

The swimming was fabulous

There were plenty of coconuts to keep us well fed and Dylan figured out how to open them using large rocks (like a monkey).

Our ocean view campsite

There were lots of iguanas (above) as well as small lizards with bright blue markings. We also saw one 2 m caiman just off the path to the beach one night and Dylan caught sight of the allusive giant night lizard on 2 of our night hikes. He says it looks like a large monitor lizard that slunk away into the bushes very silently before I ever got to see it (but he says it is real).

Dylan exploring the boulders at the edge of a beach (looking for crabs, parrot fish, and birds)