Because I've got a helluva lot more stuff to write, I'm going to keep my account of our stay in the city of Cuzco relatively brief. It was our last stop before we caught the train out to Aguas Calientes and climbed up to Machu Picchu.
Cuzco is a tourist town and not just for the brand of edgy young backpacker that we saw in Hacachina. Wealthier middle-aged folk from the US and Europe will skip Lima and fly out here before they begin their train-rides or treks out to Machu Picchu. This may only be a stopping point along the path to their final destination, but the town is ready for them, offering all manner of souvenirs and high-priced goods; there's something for travelers of every station.
I don't mean to denigrate all of the arts and crafts because of the high-price tag; some of it was quite spectacular. We stopped at one gallery where a guy made elaborate pottery, rich with traditional designs of animals and gods. The painted detail on the ceramic was such that the two-dimensional surface seemed to come pop out and come alive for the viewer. Some of the bigger plates and pots that he was selling were over four feet tall, which might have been a bit large for many travelers' suitcases. No problem. If you could afford it you could get free air-shipping.
The big stuff in the ceramic shop might have been a bit out of our league, but there were plenty of other people in town who wanted to do business with us. Unsurprisingly, many sellers wanted us to purchase products of the smokeable variety. Every city we had visited so far had come with drug-dealers but this was a whole new level.
"Weed man?" "He-e-ey amigo, good weed here." "Good pizza here, cheap menu.....I got weed. You want weed?"
When we were going down an alley, a guy actually held a bag of the green stuff aloft for us to see. "You want weed?" he shouted, waving it like a banner in his hand. It was clear that the sellers focused on selling exclusively to tourists, probably because they paid more. Peruvians they left alone. Later on, I was walking alone on a crowded street when I heard a guy shout out to me and then saw him run across traffic to get over to my side. For a second, I thought, he might have something important to tell me.
"Hey, you want weed? Coke?"
Whitey likes his weed apparently. In Peru, there is ganja for the gringos. Still there are limits. I saw an amusing little scenario play out in a supermarket when a dumb, grinning tourist came in and asked the cashier if he could buy some marijuana. He walked away disappointed but now I wish I'd tried to sell him my bag of lentils to smoke for a hundred dollars.
Even if I had wanted desperately to toke up, I would have taken a pass here because of the guidebook's warning that many dealers were actually cops looking to bust people. Drug time in Peru is serious, and the prisons are far worse than in the US.
The massage trade was another popular business for the street. Every time we walked near the Plaza de Armas there were women thrusting cards for parlors out at us, and calling out "massage Señor?" in seductive voices. Word on the street (or maybe just our guidebooks) was that such massages were likely to go a bit further than only a massage. Thus, a routine trip to the internet cafe was now a battle against temptation, and a recommitment to the righteous path.
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You even have to pay to photograph llamas in Cuzco, unless you're sneaky like me
There were a few ruins around town, including Sacsaywaman, popularly pronounced, "sexy woman". Formerly a fortification around the town, it featured big stone walls with perfectly shaped stones, designed so that they fit seamlessly without the need for grout. They formed a saw tooth shape along the battlefield to break up the enemy hordes.
Max and I went for a run the afternoon of the day that we arrived and it soon became apparent that we were above 11,000 feet. We were going uphill to Sacsaywaman and eventually had to stop, defeated by the stone steps and thin air. Things flattened out a bit at the top of the hill and the going became more tolerable. In fact, that stretch of road, lined with pine trees and with low numbers of cars, was probably the nicest place in Peru we had run yet.
Because of our late start and because good things are not meant to last, darkness soon fell around us. What looked like an obvious shortcut along a good road ended up getting us pursued by a pack of dogs. We had to scramble down a ledge and through some briars to get away. The rest of the run, we were in a state of vague paranoia about where dogs might be planning to lunge out of the shadows.
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-----------Sacsaywaman, with Big Jesus in the background------------
The next day was kind of a wash. We spent the morning trying to figure out how we would squeeze the jungle into Max and Ben's timetable--whether we'd fly out to Puero Maldonado near the Brazilian/Bolivian Border, take a tour in the Manu Wilderness for $200, or else go crazy and take a bus out to the remote town of Quillabamba right after we hit Machu Picchu.
Ultimately, we put the decision off until we could buy our train tickets for Aguas Calientes. That turned into an ordeal because the only way to buy them was going through about the most obscure, frustrating fucking website in the world (I felt great about giving them my credit card information.) After about forty-five minutes of error messages and disappearing windows, we had successfully paid them our $120 dollars for the trip out and our return back to the town of Ollantaytambo. Because of the higher volume of trekkers that took the train on the way back, It was far cheaper to get out early than to pay for the whole ride back to Cuzco.
Though we had all been talking about going to the jungle in one form or another, I had begun to think about where my path would go after Machu Picchu. More than anything, I wanted to do a trek, better yet, a real mountain in the Andes. I was antsy that I would miss out and go home unsatisfied. Especially now that we hadn't climbed El Misti in Arequipa, I felt the need to go climb something as a low-level urge in the back of mind.
The jungle would take time and money that I wanted to spend in Cordillera Blanca and Huarez. It would also mean going to low altitude again, and probably losing what ever acclimatization I had gained from my time in the highland cities. With all of this in mind, I made the hard decision to part with Max and Ben after Machu Picchu. It had been great having company, but now it was time to to the lono thing--if I was up to it.
Note on the state of the camera: I actually took the pictures that you see here after my return from Machu Picchu. Determined to revive my busted camera, I left it at not one but two camera shops in Cuzco to see if someone could fix it. I finally got lucky at a shop that specialized in repair. The guy spoke good English, told me that he thought the camera would pull through, but he would need a few days. Unfortunately, I would be spending those few days at one of the most beautiful, archaeologically significant places in the world. Reluctantly, I agreed to leave the camera in the shop. It was worth it, in the end, but it did suck to miss out on photographing such a magical place.
------------------Kite flying near Sacsaywaman-----------
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