Cuzco - Peru


My alone time did not last very long; in the name of my newfound love of Israelis I chatted up a very cute one in Copacabana (Lake Titicaca) about a week ago and have been travelling with him and a friend of his since then. The lake is beautiful, there were hardly any tourists and after crossing the border we even got to visit the famous floating islands on the Peruvian side. After arriving to Cuzco it quickly became apparent that there is no chance that I will be able to do the actual Inca Trail, a three-day trek leading up to the Machu Picchu because I should have been organized and booked a place about a month ago. Instead, at the suggestion of a nice English guy, who came over to our hostel for a schnitzel and mash potatoes lunch enthusiastically cooked by the Jewish boys, we all booked an alternative trek that also ended at the Inca site. So we set off for the mountains at about 5 am five days ago: four guys (Ofir and Roy, the Israelis; Andrew, the Brit; and Arnaud, the Frencgman), a little peruvian man as our guide, a couple of horses and their caretakers (to carry our stuff), and me. The trek involved all sorts of challenges: walking uphill in the burning sun; climbing over a 4500 meter high snow-capped peak in a snowstorm; and then fighting the continuously pouring rain for the last two days. This latter fight we lost: every single piece of clothing and equipment I had got soaking wet, which did not make for pleasant nights...It was fun and by the time we arrived to the goal the rain had stopped so we managed to visit Machu Picchu in semi-decent weather. It is truly an impressive site, you get an especially beautiful view of the old Inca city from another peak close to it (Huayna Picchu), which I climbed despite the fact that by that point my knees and feet were killing me. I was duly proud of myself and looking forward to going down and not having to climb another Inca step for a long time, but the local boy with the machete guarding the peak was feeling funny I guess, so he suggested that we descend on an other, shorter route, which, of course, turned out to be another two-hour climb...I was slightly upset, but with hindsight, it was just another challenge (and more fat burning for me).

These Incas and even the pre-Inca cultures that existed here were amazing. They were so good at technology, architecture, astrology and arts: I had already been impressed in Bolivia when Andrea and I went to visit Tiwanaku, a village in Bolivia, which was the centre of one of the major pre-Inca cultures, and now that I have visited Machu Picchu and the Inca museum here in Cuzco I am even more amazed. In Europe we learn almost nothing of these cultures; South America (and Africa as well) only make it to the map once they have been colonized, and even then. And when you think about what was going on in Europe around the same time (ie in the 13th-16th centuries)...

I am trying to recover from the physical exertions of the trek and I am enjoying hanging out with myseld for a bit because on the trip I served as universal translator: being the only one who could communicate with the guide I had to translate to the others the (very vague) instructions reluctantly shared with me by the guide (who was evidently weirded out by the fact that he had to talk to the only woman around); plus, I was the main facilitator of the "let´s learn each others´languages" movement that somehow began on the first day. French, English, Spanish and Hebrew (which I am getting good at...); of course everybody gives up on Hungarian after finding out how to say "cheers".