The heart of darkness

Posting from Copacabana, Bolivia, where I'm catching up with the events of the past days, blogger-wise!

A bird on the lake
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Exploring the depths of the jungle was the last thing we wanted to do after the horrible ending of the Inca Trail, but we had already paid lots of money for it so we mustered all our energy, packed up and left for the airport at 7am only to find out that our flight has been changed to 12:30pm... we could have slept, at least...

But it all turned out all right, and our jungle trip was much more relaxing than expected. Of course, there was walking involved (but not up and down) there were mosquitoes and sand-flies, but a good concentration of deet on your skin would scare the hell out of any living bug. The jungle-style accommodations (rooms open to the forest, no doors - just curtains, etc) were more comfortable than we thought - great beds, clean bathrooms, and awesome food. The only thing I didn't like was that people who had nothing in common were seated at the same table and occasionally I had to listen to obnoxious conversations of the type "so what exactly do you do in the United States", and god forbid, answer such questions...

Without asking for such a privilege, we had a "personal" guide - Omar - just for the two of us, which made things much easier - we walked at our own pace, asked all the questions we needed and were right close to him when he spotted animals hidden between the branches. We had to wake up at 4am almost every morning (understandably, after all those early awakenings on the Inca trail we hated getting out of bed before the sun) but we went to bed at 8pm so it was OK.

A tapir coming out of the water

The rain forest is indeed like nothing I have seen so far. The tall green canopies, the abundance of strange-looking tree species, the thin trunks rising straight up to the sky, the monkeys jumping from branch to branch high above your head... it was worth the effort and the money. Seeing the macaws, parrots and parakeets feeding on clay by the hundreds early in the morning - allegedly to neutralize the toxins contained by some of the fruits they eat - was one of those experience one never quite forgets. As one of the ladies who was watching the clay lick with us said, "this experience has enhanced my whole being". I'm too cynical to make such a ridiculous statement, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Angela missed this event entirely, because she preferred to sleep late that morning, he he... no enhanced being for her!

One of the things I've learned was that it's really hard to get good pictures of wildlife in the jungle. On the forest floor there's never enough light and there are so many branches and leaves between you and the animals that taking shots of them is usually a futile endeavor. At the clay lick the birds were too far away, even for my 300mm lens. I tried though, and I even got some great shots of capibaras, a tapir, some birds, and even a piranha fished out of the water by Angela!

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The Samay Wasi hostel - or the House of Thieves, in English

As we arrived at our Cuzco hostel that last day of the Inca trail, our thoughts were only to a warm bed (any mattress however broken was better than sleeping on the ground) and as many hours of sleep as we could catch. The next day we were going to relax, upload some pictures and prepare ourselves for our jungle trip. But things rarely go well once you’re in the gutter… as I counted the money in our money belts - which were inside the computer bag in the hostel’s safe box - I realized that two hundred dollars were missing.

What followed for the rest of the day and the next was a comedy of accusations and rebuttals and probably my best effort in speaking Spanish so far... (Follow the link below for the whole story)

The manager and the four employees who had access to the safe were quickly assembled at the reception. First they wouldn’t believe me, and tried to convince me that I counted the money wrong, since the employee I gave the pack to didn’t really count the money himself (but I had counted in front of him twice). Then they said that I may have taken some money out before handing the whole pack to the night watchman. Understandably, they tried to absolve themselves of responsibility any way they could. I hate to accuse anybody of theft, and before doing so I would doubt myself a hundred times, but there was no room for doubt here – there was no way I could have miscounted $200, and both Angela and I knew that we had one single $100 bill which was now missing.

The situation was made tougher for me by the fact that I had put a lock on the zipper of the computer bag. This was a three-digit lock with an asp, and it could not only be opened by trying every combination in a row, but the zipper could be moved far enough for a hand to get in the bag even with the lock. The lock on the bag was probably what the thief had counted upon in order to put the burden of doubt on me. How could anybody steal anything? You had a lock on it!

In an attempt to settle with me on the phone, the owner offered me to stay there for free the two nights that I had reserved. We’re talking $18 a night. Pfui!

So the next morning I went to the tourist police and came back with the “constable”. He explained to them that as things stood, the truth was on my side: there was the tag attached to the bag, that I had written before leaving, which had a certain sum that I had counted in front of the hostel employee. Even if I had been wrong, this was negligence on the side of the hotel for not checking and negligence comes at a cost. In all cases, if my complaint were to be registered, they would have to go through a trial, get a lawyer and in the end they would probably have to pay anyway. That perspective seemed to have scared the manager and she called the owner again. He made another offer that I refused (something about giving me $70 plus two nights) and finally he agreed to pay the whole sum, which the manager did later that afternoon. I was so paranoid by then that I immediately went to an exchange office and had the two hundred dollar bills checked to make sure they were real and replaced them with twenties.

By then, it was already time for dinner.

I’m sorry for them and their reputation but there’s one person who works there and who is not honest. All these explanations and negotiations took place in Spanish and the fact that I’ve been able to pull this off made me really proud of that my level of proficiency. I’m happy that Angela was sick in bed with her cough and fever for most of the day so I was able to deal with the problem without screaming and yelling. The lesson for me is not to ever leave anything in a hostel’s safe, or if I do, it will be in the presence of the manager and another employee, and they get to do the item counting themselves.

Ladrones!

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The Trail of the Inca - or how I missed Machu Picchu altogether

A tree against the sky
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Day 1 - the start of the Inca Trail

We woke up at 4:30am because the tour agency bus was supposed to arrive at 5am to pick us up. We left our big bags in the hostel storage and gave the hostel night attendant our computer bag with the money belts to put in the safe. I counted the money in front of him, put one of our wire locks on the zipper and gave him the whole. Before we could have some breakfast, our contacts arrived and we headed on a freezing cold bus to pick up 14 other passengers and drove to kilometer 82 of the valley road, where the trek begins. We stopped in Ollantaytambo to have breakfast and as soon as we got off the bus we were attacked by local vendors - walking poles, hats, gloves etc. I negotiated with them but they were tough nuts and keep saying “for my family”. After breakfast we headed off for another hour or so down a dirt road to the beginning of our hike.

The first hiking day wasn’t too hard, it’s sort of a warm-up day and there are water and candy sellers all along the trail. The longer you walk, the higher the water prices get. Basic economics, I guess… Our sleeping bags worked well that night; REI didn’t lie to us about the quality of their products...

The group was a fair mix, with a slightly higher ratio of males, ages between 20 and 36. The young people (Angela kept calling them “The Runners”) - about 6 of them, were always ahead going fast, including one Canadian girl who just couldn’t stop talking, whether she was walking up the hill, sitting down for dinner or having just woken up. There were 4 Norwegians who mostly stuck to themselves, fast goers as well, and a few other couples from the US, nice people, and usually as slow as us.

Our guides - Max and Gladys – proved quite helpful from the beginning and our porters, about 20 of them loved to play card games at night and were always first to the scene with their 40lb packs, literally running by you on the trail, smiling all the time. Don’t even think to compete with these people…

Dead woman's pass - 4200m

Day 2 - Inca Trail Hell

On the mountain waking up is always before dark, usually around 5am. There’s nothing wrong with this since we’ve been sleeping since 8:30pm the previous day, but Angela started to come down with a bad cold which only got worse during this day and the next and ruined her trip.

Day 2 is the toughest day of the trip: the trail ascends up to about 4200 meters and then goes down for 5 or 6 hundreds. Going up wasn’t easy on Angela with her cold in the frozen morning air; as for myself, I discovered that I was sufficiently in shape for this endeavor, but I took it easy nonetheless, knowing that I haven’t taken a serious hike in a long time. Of course, “the runners” made it to the top way ahead of us and had to wait there for a while until everybody made it for the group picture…

Finally we had to descend for hours on the ancient Inca stone stairs and Angela’s walking pole came in very handy but her knees started to hurt. I know very well the sudden pain jolts caused by long downhill walks and I have felt like that in the past, but surprisingly and luckily, this time my knees were just fine all the way. Maybe the many hours of walking I’ve added up during this trip and the short hikes up and down so many ruins have helped.

We made it to the tents around 2:30pm and almost immediately went to sleep until dinner time. In total we hiked 9 hours. 3am rolled around and Angela ran out of the tent and didn’t come back until 45 minutes later, having taken over the bathroom with terrible diarrhea. It just kept getting better...

Lunch at 3600m

Day 3 - Inca Trail and sick people

By the time 4:30am came around Angela’s cold has gotten worse, but the diarrhea was under control. Some other people were sick with stomach issues while others were perfectly fine. It must have been the food or the water they used to cook and make tea and juice with. The water was supposed to be purified with iodine and boiled but you never know how long they were boiling it…

At breakfast (and every other meal), the cook gave Angela a special plate omitting eggs and dairy products. This usually creates a little embarrassment at the first meal, when everybody around the table has to find out about her stomach issues. But there’s no shortage of people interested in hearing about this and ready to share their own digestive problems with you.

Within 1½ hour after departure we were at the “top” (meaning the highest altitude we were going to climb that day) happy to be done with the hardest part of the trek (we thought). Even Angela made it uphill like an Energizer bunny, taking sips of coca tea every few steps.

The next part of the trail was relatively easy, going a little way up and down through the cloud forest, but the day ended with a thousand-step descent toward the night camp which was very hard on Angela’s already weaken knees; she limped but nevertheless we made it safely together. Her bronchitis however didn’t seem to show signs of relief.

Day 3 was when we were supposed to tip. The instruction sheet given by the company was complicated and useless and I had to stop people from trying to find exact bills and coins to divide the money into 20 equal parts for all the porters, as they initially thought it had to be done. I tip - I don’t want to have to divide the money to make sure all recipients are happy. As I correctly anticipated, the head porter gets the money and divides it, but it gets it from us in front of the whole gang, so everybody knows what the sum is. If anybody feels cheated, they can always kill the head porter, their business, not mine.

There wasn’t too much money gathered and I’m sure some people tipped at the low end, but that’s a personal decision so I wasn’t going to try to change people’s minds. I’m usually not a very generous spender and I tip a little above the middle, but this time I felt quite guilty for the small total sum and added more money to the pot than I would have liked to. Thank god Angela was sick in bed and didn’t get up to insult who she may have thought tipped badly…

Dawn at the lost city
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Day 4 - How it can always go worse than you thought

Because every group wants to be the first at the checkpoint and of course, at the ruins, we woke up even earlier than usual, around 3:30am. As soon as I got up I knew that my stomach had been taken over by a bug – the stomach chills, the cramps, the sulfurous burps… it had to be Giardia – sometime in the past days, or maybe even earlier in Cuzco I had some water that was infested (it has been all cured by now with a fair does of Flagyl, but I didn't have any at the time). It all went downhill from here.

We were the first group at the checkpoint and we had to wait for 45 minutes for it to open, so that “the runners” could be the first on the trail. Angela and I lagged behind and I didn’t care much about it; my concern wasn’t at all to be the first since there’s no joy in taking pictures while you still have to carry a flashlight to see the way.

I made it somehow to Machu Picchu and I even thought I would get better, but once I entered the “city” I realized that I’ll have to abandon the guided tour that Max was giving us, say goodbye to climbing Wayana Picchu and spend the rest of the day close to the bathrooms. I gave Angela the camera and didn’t look back. So I can’t tell you much about the lost city of the Incas just that seeing it from afar as you cross the Sun Gate is an unforgettable moment.

That evening we made our way back to Cuzco feeling awful, but the trail of surprises wasn’t over yet…

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Get me out of Cuzco!

The Sacsayhuaman fortress
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For any pleasure traveler to South America Cuzco is a mandatory stop. And therein lies the problem: everyone comes here…

Cuzco is a very pretty high-altitude town with an impressive old center, a mixture of colonial architecture and Inca walls. Often, the colonial houses are built on top of the Inca stonework. With every earthquake, the Spanish houses used to crumble down but their Inca foundations would remain in place, attesting to the far superior building technology of the Andeans. And their stone workmanship is unmatched: blocks of stone of all sizes, from finger-sized pebbles to 50-ton gigantic boulders fit together perfectly with no space in-between, and no mortar was used to hold them together. Seismic resistance is achieved by building at an 8 degree angle (not straight up like the Spanish), by putting the larger stones on top of the smaller, and linking those stone bricks together with bronze keys to make them move as one in case of earthquake. I hope the pictures I took speak more than my words.

Yes, Cuzco is beautiful, but if you are like me and you hate being surrounded by throngs of tourists you’re in the wrong place… Just to give you an idea of how “touristy” this place is, let me tell you that for the last two months, ever since we have started our trip, I’ve been looking for a 58mm polarizing filter for my camera all over Central and South America. I looked in tourist-only areas and in large towns like Quito and Lima, without success; most photography shop employees hadn’t even heard of polarizers. In Cuzco every other shop has them. Regular and circular. All sizes, pick yours…

The Inca reenacted at Inti Raymi
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On the street, one is always harassed by locals trying to sell you massages, postcards, artwork and tours or to get you into a restaurant, sometimes all of them at the same time. But that’s the least annoying of all… On the old town streets you have a higher chance of bumping into a group of loud 21-year-olds than into a local.

One thing that irritates me beyond sky and earth is the fact that in this town of billions of restaurants, most of them pretty, good and cheap, there’s a place, Jack’s café, which always has a line of white people outside. What the hell makes this restaurant so popular? The food must certainly be good, but it is so in other places as well, and it’s not like you can be a regular customer when you’re a tourist. Is it the fact that the owner is an American and most American tourists would consider an American-managed place safer than locally-owned restaurants – giving in to the unspoken preconceptions that locals are dirty and only a foreigner would know how to keep decent hygiene in the kitchen? Or is it the fact that it’s in the travel books and it’s located in a busy intersection? No idea… anyway, there’s no excuse for the waiting line!

View of Cuzco
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Of course, I’m being unfair and a hypocrite, because I, as a tourist, am part of the problem. But that doesn’t prevent me from wishing the other tourists the one thing I always wish them: “Stay home, yo!” (in the translated words of my friend Mihai M. who long ago uttered this memorable sentence as we were trying to get on a full bus to a remote village in the mountains of Romania.)

What about us?

Despite the crowds here, we had a good time. But make no mistake, it’s not easy to adapt to 3400 meters of altitude: not even thirty minutes after getting off the plane I have been hit with the worst headache in the history of man, and weak as I was, I was barely able to reach my hotel room and crawl in bed – all this, courtesy of altitude sickness. I woke up 4 hours later feeling worse, if worse had a meaning by then – at least Angela seemed to be better. And then we discovered the miracle cure – “mate de coca” – infusion of coca leaves. Not only it made me feel better, but it immediately took the headache away and poured some fuel in my lifeless legs, enough to make me able to get out of the hostel and explore the town which was happily and colorfully celebrating the ancient Inti Raymi festival of the sun. Coca leaves are a staple around here and it’s no wonder the ancient Incas considered it a sacred plant. I hope the US government, focused on its misguided war on drugs, will never succeed pressuring the government of Peru into outlaw this plant, as they did in Ecuador. But let’s not turn this travel blog into a political forum; I have my other blog for this, although it’s been quite dry over at livejournal since I started this trip...

We met again with Michael and Mor, our friends from the Galapagos, and spent some days together in Cuzco and visiting the Sacred Valley. It was good to see them again. They got fed up with Cuzco fast (for the same reasons as me) and decided to spend a few days in the village of Ollantaytambo, in the Urubamba valley. Hopefully, we’ll meet again in Bolivia and Buenos Aires.

A last bit of trivia about this place: Cuzco, and much of Peru, seems to have been invaded by an army of young Israeli backpackers. More than anywhere else, you hear Hebrew spoken on the street; there are plenty of restaurants with Hebrew-written menus and Israeli food, and the Spanish keyboard at the Internet-café where I’m writing this blog entry has Hebrew characters glued on the keys. We got the drill from Michael and Mor (themselves belonging to the chosen people as well) – apparently, traveling to South America, and more specifically to Peru, has become sort of a rite of passage for young Israelis. As soon as they get out of the army, many spend a few months traveling this continent. The funny thing is that even those who don’t want to or couldn’t care less about traveling do it because of peer pressure…

Well, I still have to meet any Romanians on this trip…

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Lima, Baby!

Lima colonial-style balcony.
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It's winter in the southern hemisphere and I'm savoring its crisp, foggy taste in Lima. The garua blots the sky, the light is flat and seems to come from nowhere and the city looks frozen in time because there's not much of a difference between morning and afternoon, or night and day. Although we are at tropical latitudes, jackets are needed most of the time.

However, I like it. I've heard stories of how horrible Lima is, how it's not worth wasting any time here or how dangerous it is to walk the streets, even in broad day light. All crap! For two days now we've been exploring the streets of this gigantic urban sprawl. It's no Paris, of course, to keep you fascinated for weeks, but it has an unmistakable big-city charm given by the combination of elaborate colonial architecture, proud neo-classic republican buildings, as-ugly-as-can-be contemporary high-rises, ultra-modern glass and steel headquarters of international corporations and hip nightlife-r-us neighborhoods. Of course Lima wouldn't be Lima without the endless downtrodden, run-down streets with crumbling houses, some of them decayed colonial gems, streets that best reflect the nature of this gigantic town, born by the will of the gold-hungry conquistadors as a showcase for the power of Spain, and built by the blood, sweat and tears of the indigenous, the poor and the desperate, who were looking for a home as well.

We walked everywhere in daylight and in the evening and took cabs for the endless rides between the interesting neighborhoods (indeed, we didn't walk those dirty streets with tottering houses, I still have some shreds of common sense left). We had cheap lunches and then blew $100 on dinner at an overpriced Italian restaurant which we selected just to make ourselves feel better and to forget all that chicken and rice we had swallowed in the last weeks.

We'll fly to Cuzco tomorrow and won't be back in Lima again, so my adventure of discovery of the misty, cold streets will have to stop prematurely. There will be more big towns later in our trip: Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Cairo, Barcelona. They may rank higher in sights and beauty, but I'm almost sure that Lima could easily win the award for the city with the most crazy cab-drivers. And speaking of cabs, a lot of them are Daewoo Tico, which were produced in Romania in the nineties. How did they get so popular here?

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