And The Touristing Begins

9/12/09
It’s been a long couple days of traveling. At the moment, I’m sitting outside at Ollaytatambo, way early for our train but the earlier train is all filled up. I can’t believe I was still in Huancayo yesterday. Went to the vet place and cleaned the floor, washed a dog (Pisco was back to get his bandage changed, and they for some reason changed it first and then told me to bathe him… doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a new dry bandage?)… Said goodbye to the doctors and wanted to take a picture with them, but one of them insisted on taking out his old digital camera, putting the batteries in, and using that to take pictures instead of letting me use my camera. I kept explaining to him that I could email the pictures to him but he said of course, of course, and kept taking pictures of me in every random place of the hospital with his camera. Strange.
After goodbyes at the house, it was off to Lima on the bus. Really really nice bus with seats that reclined back to become almost beds. Really comfortable and tons of room, but it was during the day, so I couldn’t manage to get any sleep. I’ll be on the same type of bus for my long 21 hour trip from Cusco to Lima, so I should hopefully be able to sleep then at least. Watched Slumdog Millionaire in Spanish and a pretty funny Wallace and Gromitt movie, and talked a bunch to the guy sitting next to me. The seven hour ride went by quickly enough. It was snowing for part of it, which was really cool to watch from the window… I hadn’t seen it snow in such a long time, and especially in the Andes, it was really nice. Then off to the airport to spend the night, where I probably got about twenty minutes of sleep total. Wasted time messing around on my computer, snacking, and attempting to sleep but it was really bright and loud so it was pretty hopeless. Abby, of course, is way too lucky and can sleep standing up if she wanted to. No fair!
Finally, took our one hour plane ride to Cusco. Really gorgeous trip, going over the Cordilleras Blancas and watching the sun rise. We landed just at 7am to reports that it was going to be 5 degrees Celsius outside. Eek. I didn’t remember where I had packed my gloves! But luckily, it ended up being a pretty nice day, a bit windy, but not too cold at all. Dumped our stuff at a hostal in central Cusco for the day, wandered around dodging the people offering us hostals and breakfast and massages and on and on. Cusco is a really pretty city, reddish brown and green hillsides accented by rows of red roofed houses in the mountains. I loved the narrow cobblestone streets at first, but soon, my feet were not very happy with the slippery and sometimes sharp stones. Definitely wearing my other shoes tomorrow.
Nothing was open at first, but eventually found Iglesia Santo Domingo. It was interesting at the time but not particularly memorable aside from a really nice bathroom, pretty flowers, and a cool architectural structure. Oh, there were also some ruins inside, mostly empty rooms with unknown purposes, some with holes in the walls that used to allow sound to come in from the street. Lots of stones carved in different styles from Incan times. Ooh, there was a cool room with a description of Incan astronomy and a painting of the way the dark and light spots around the stars line up to make a llama and her baby and some other animals that are very important in the culture.
Then walked around trying to buy tickets to get into Macchu Picchu and also to get from Aguas Calientes, the nearby town, to Macchu Picchu in the morning. We asked a ton of people and just got sent in circles over and over again, it was really frustrating. Finally found the place to buy the tickets, and had to go somewhere else to buy the bus tickets. Took way longer than it should have and it was hidden in this tiny little place because almost everyone goes with a tour, so no one tries to buy tickets just on their own. Oh such fun.
Our errands finally done, we set off to the Cathedral of Cusco. Was pretty expensive (by Peru standards) to get in, but we got a ticket that covered that and three other places as well and it lasts for ten days, so we can finish them off on Monday when we are back in Cusco. Did an audio tour of the church… they have headsets and numbers of what you are supposed to play at which place in the church. It was really, really long and got a bit tedious and too much religiousness for me, but overall, it was interesting and worth doing. The church was gorgeous. Simple but huge domed ceilings, fourteen chapels, countless paintings. The tour talked about a bunch of the different saints, including the one that women pray to to get a certain man to marry her (they write him messages and turn his figure upside down every Friday to remind him of their wishes), the one men use to keep these women away, the one that wards off earthquakes, etc., etc. There was a lot of pure silver and gold shaped into people and birds and basilicas. Paintings over all the domes by a famous painter whose name I of course can’t remember, all very red and blue in color. Lots of paintings showing the cross and combination between the local Andes culture and Catholicism… one of the last supper where the foods on the table were local fruits and cuy (guinea pig. Ick). They talked a lot about the Mestizo presence in the church, how it had a lot of Spanish influence from the conquistadores but also so much from the natives, all meshed together into one. And then of course different bits and pieces of it redone in different time periods thanks to earthquakes and damages so of different, more modern styles altogether. In the choir, there were two organs that were made when the cathedral first opened in the eighteenth century and have been since refurbished and are still used today.
Last museum was of religious art, which I wasn’t really into. Had the audio recording thing again. Lots of paintings of bishops and priests, angels and other religious figures, all meaning something to so many people but not too much to me. The one group of paintings I liked in there were a set of zodiac paintings that each represented one member of the zodiac and were based in the Netherlands, because basing them here in the Andes would be too normal and not special enough for the zodiac symbols, which were tied in these paintings to Incan gods. There were only nine of them – the painter didn’t start them until he was 70 so he died before he got around to finishing all twelve.
Lunch at a vegetarian restaurant was very yummy… wheat bread, salad from a mini salad bar, lentil noodle vegetable soup, a broccoli dish with rice, and chamomile tea… all for 2 dollars. I can never get such full meals at normal restaurants because they offer cheap big meals all the time (set menus are always wayyyy cheaper than any of the things would be on their own)… but this is the only time it isn’t meat. So stocked up on all the veggies I had been missing from the last week. Then got our stuff back, took a bus to Urabamba. I actually fell asleep on this bus even though it was a completely rickety old bus with tiny uncomfortable seats. I woke up to amazing views outside and tried to keep myself awake for them but couldn’t. Then had to take a shared taxi into Ollaytaytambo, where we were going to see the ruins. They turned out to be almost as expensive as the entrance to Macchu Picchu and we only would have had just over an hour to see them, so we gave up on that and just wandered the tiny town a bit and ate. So now I’m still stuck way too early at the train station, just over an hour to go until we leave. It’s supposed to be a really pretty trip, but it’s nighttime so there won’t be much anything to see… we’ll see it on the way back on Monday. Have to find a hostal once we get there and then get up super early, 4 something, to be in the first 200 people to get to Macchu Picchu so that we are allowed to climb the biggest mountain there…. Number 201, too bad. So we’ll have to get to the bus station super early to make sure we can do it.