Ziplining in Peru

 

Since we were always looking for things to do in Peru, our travels on this particular day had taken us to Lunahuana, a quiet little town a few hours south of Lima.  The little pocket of civilization flanked a roaring river, and as a result of this fortuitous location, Lunahuana was also a popular destination for white-water rafting in Peru.

In fact, we had just finished a two hour white water rafting trip through class-four rapids, and had just regrouped at our adventure guide headquarters.

Two ziplines stretched across the raging river, anchored to the huge mountain just across from us.  Our guides offered a longer tour of several hours, but we didn’t have the time today.  Since none of us had been ziplining before, this was an obvious place to start.  Just across the river and back – it couldn’t be that bad.

We paid our money, less than the cost of a few cocktails, and were told to wait near the harnesses, and someone would help us get geared up.

I kept looking around, until I realized that “someone” was an eight-year-old boy who spoke no English.

I’m pretty sure that there should be some sort of law or regulation or something, but I thought back to something our river guide said, as we were rafting:

If someone gets hurt or dies, it’s bad for business.

Okay, so we were going to let the free market decide this one, but honestly, the kid knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t the first time we had gotten ourselves into a ludicrous situation.  Within a few minutes, my whole family was geared up, and we stood in line on the launch platform.

Probably the scariest part was the climb up the cliff on the opposite side.  Steel rungs had been driven into the rocks for a thirty-foot climb to the return platform.

A video is worth a thousand kilobytes:

Read about some of our other adventures, and give them a +1 or a like/share if you enjoyed them:

Train from Lima to Huancayo, the second highest in theworld

Island of sea lions near Paracas, Peru.

Islas Ballestas near Paracas, Peru

In the next chapter of our continuing adventures, our heroes (that’s me, my wife, and two of my daughters) journey out into the sea to visit a great monument built in tribute of fertilizer.

We boarded a van at the hotel, and found ourselves at the waterfront in Paracas, Peru.  A short time later, at a cost of about $22 USD/person, we sped out of the bay, aboard a boat called “Penguino 4.”

For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough, and the tiny ship was tossed…no really, the water was pretty calm, and we sped out into the bay, bound for Islas Ballestas, which is Spanish for, “islands made entirely out of seagull poo.”

After about a half hour on the water, we reached a mystic place called “The Candelabra.”  This is the only geoglyph near Nazca that is visible from the ocean, and while not officially part of the Nazca lines, is said to point to them.  It turns out it's 183 meters long, just like several of the others.  This makes sense, because any aliens flying in over the water would need to know where they should land.  If the Nazca tribe had worn their tin-foil hats, we wouldn’t have nearly the troubles we have now with Congress.  But I digress, there's nothing we can do about it now.

We continued the trip to Gullpoo island, which turned out to be quite a treat.  At any given time, the rocks are covered with thousands of sea lions, all eager to deliver their state-of-the-union addresses to us.  Other wildlife include massive starfish, a few hundred penguins, and a gazillion seagulls.

A few man-made buildings accent the island, since the Peruvians perform some seasonal mining there, the poo so rich in nitrogen that it is used for fertilizer and explosives.

Seeing so many sea lions in their natural habitat was an amazing experience, but even more so was the sound they made.  The island consisted of a number of caves and inlets, and the wailing sound of the animals sounded almost human.  That is, a human possessed by the spirits of an angry sea lion.  I can see, however, how a ship full of sailors, either drunk or dehydrated, sailing into the coves in the fog, might invent all sorts of stories about how the demons of the sea just didn't want them to land there.  Any of them brave enough to do so anyway got mated by an 800-pound sea lion bull, and told even taller tales to their shipmates.  By a taller tale, I mean demons, evil spirits, monsters, or anything else that would explain lots of bruises and loud noises in the fog, but would at no time mention that the sailor was mated by an 800-pound sea lion bull.

After a time, though, we returned to the bay on Penguin 4.  I was really glad that I didn’t have to spend years filming a hokey television series stranded on that island making all my modern conveniences out of bamboo.  Anyway, I hadn’t seen any.

When we returned, we told the van driver to just leave us, since we wanted to wander along the waterfront.  A handful of great traditional restaurants were there, as well as shops selling touristy things.  Since the area was geared more toward the Peruvian tourist, prices were pretty reasonable.  We ate at a seafood place, where I tried fish head soup (I was disappointed, as there weren’t any actually fish heads in it) and we were able to stuff ourselves to the gills with fresh seafood drowned in curry sauce and a few other strange Peruvian flavors.  We spent about $35 USD on the meal, and left enough food on the table to feed an extra person.  It sure beat the meal we had had the day before, courtesy of Paris Hilton.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering the waterfront, enjoying local food and flavor just like we belonged here.  I never once saw Mary Ann or Ginger. 

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Sandboarding near Paracas

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Sandboarding Near Paracas, Peru

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that most of the coastal area of Peru is a desert.  

In our quest to get out of the city for a while, we headed south of Lima by bus, to a tourist settlement called “Paracas,” which is a word from the ancient language of the Incas.  It means, “Charge double for everything if your customer is a white guy.”

This applies to hotel rooms and buffet meals, as mentioned in the previous installment, but honestly, the pricing structure of things to do is pretty reasonable, in the case of the below-mentioned activity, about $30 each.

We all piled into a van outside the hotel, where the driver romped on the gas like he had just stolen a family of Americans.  It seemed like none of the other cars on the road were going fast enough for this guy, and no-passing zones here are like…wait, there aren’t any, so I can’t compare them to anything else in some bright flash of literary simile.

After twenty minutes of a thirty minute drive, we arrived at our destination. 

A small building, with a covered pavilion, sat next to a structure which looked like a giant white beehive.  I speculated that a miniature Jabba the Hutt lived inside, and I guessed that he wore a sombrero and only spoke Spanish.  “Que pasa grin goh…ha ha ha haaaa…” 

Out to the horizon was a sea of sand dunes that gave me a flashback of Camp Beuhring, Kuwait, without the camels.  Our van driver handed us goggles, and we strapped ourselves into a dune buggy.  Mr. Fast and Furious climbed into the driver’s seat.  That explained a lot.

Within minutes, we were speeding across the sand, and up and down the dunes.  There was no rhyme or reason to our route, the purpose of which seemed to be only to instill my wife with terror.

“I’m gonna throw up!” yelled my older daughter.

“That’s why you’re in the back!” I answered back.

Finally we came to a stop at the top of one of the taller dunes, the driver shut off the engine, and we disincorporated ourselves from the buggy.

I seized a teaching moment.  “Your great grandma did this about six months ago.  She’s 87.  If she can hack it, so can you.”

“But I’ve got my whole life ahead of me!” answered my teenager.

At that point, personal responsibility went off the chain.  The second part of our activity consisted of riding a sand-board to the bottom of the dune in question.  It’s probably most similar to sledding, except hot, dry, incredibly fast, and with a much greater chance of open fracture.

Which of course meant my youngest and I were all for it, while middle-child and spouse would agree to participate if we didn’t die in our attempt.

After checking to be sure there wasn’t a Sarlacc pit at the bottom, I planted my tush onto this thing and hung on for dear life.  The total distance of the slide was maybe a hundred yards, and a pretty fun ride.

What wasn’t fun was the walk back up the dune in loose sand.  If you have a place like this in your back yard, there’s no reason to waste your money on a Stair-master.

After a few trips down the hill in this manner, the whole family was tired of walking back up.  One more trip down, and the driver would pick us up.

As we climbed back into our buggy for the trip back, I assessed the value of today’s activity.

“Did you guys have fun?” I asked my daughters.

“I’ve got SAND in my teeth,” the older said.

“If that’s the only place you’ve got sand, you’re doing all right.”

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The Beach near Paracas, Peru

I was irritated.

 

My family of four had just sat down to a mediocre buffet lunch at the Hilton DoubleTree in Paracas, Peru.  If their defense, we were all stuffed, read: buffet.  The meal had cost me 132 of my hard earned United States dollars, and did not contain any traceable amounts of puffer fish, caviar, or other expensive raw materials.

I decided to sit down in one of the 30-dollar Chinese-made beach chairs which were free.  Well, they were included in the room price, which wasn’t cheap, either.  At least the heavy beach umbrella shaded me from the equatorial sun as I relaxed.  I don’t see how Paris Hilton could expect me to relax after she just pulled such a grand heist.

That’s when I noticed the red button.

Right there on the shaft of the umbrella, there was a clear plastic housing, which contained an oversized red button.  One would have to raise the plastic cover to press it, so I expected that this was actually the nuclear launch button.

Doesn’t that make sense?  If you were going to hide the button that, when pressed, was sure to bring about flaming Armageddon, wouldn’t you hide it in a place that no one would expect?

Admit it, that is the last thing you would expect on the side of a beach umbrella near a stupidly overpriced hotel on the beach in Paracas, Peru.  This is the logic I used, to determine that this must indeed be it.

So, irritated at having been ripped off for lunch, and knowing there was no way the Republicans were going to win the Presidency, I lifted the cover, anxious to end it all in a great blast of radioactive fire.  So long, world.

Instead, there were three smaller buttons: a diagram of a zombie with a stick, something that looked like a credit card, and a large X.  What could this mean?  Could I really apply for a credit card right here on the beach?

This was confusing - the big "X" inspired hopes that it would bring about global destruction, while the first one was obviously what to push in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I wanted to push this "X" button and wait for the mushroom cloud, but I had the feeling that the only thing that would vaporize would be more of my cash.  It was a brutal marketing technique to sell substandard margaritas.

My youngest daughter was trying to get my attention, she had spotted something near the water while she was wading.

It turned out to be another small scouting force of other-worldly creatures.  The size of dinner plates, a half dozen stingrays lurked in the shallow water. 

“Do you know what the buttons do?”

They didn’t answer.

“Which one of you is in charge?”

Again, silence.  So I picked up a rock and plunked it at one of them.

Lesson learned – never, ever, plunk an invading alien with a rock, especially an armed one. This thing was so fast, it just jerked and moved almost three feet, like a little underwater UFO.  Fortunately, its path was straight forward, so it swam away from me, but I had had enough.  Anything tough enough to kill Steve Irwin was not something I wanted to mess with, and my superior interrogation skills weren’t yielding anything.

I went back to my beach chair to ponder how I would defeat the fascists and the aliens.  Eventually, both would come, and I intended to be ready.


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Pachamanca, Peruvian Cooking Pit

Food entries are essential for travel writing, and Peru is becoming famous for its cuisine.  This is partly due to famous TV chefs like Gaston Acurio, but for centuries, the Quechua have cooked food in pits of stones.

Called Pachamanca (Quechua meaning "Earth pot") this style of cooking would be too labor intensive for a dinner for two, but for a few dozen, it seems to be worth the time.

A pit three feet wide and about as deep, lined with bricks, is used to build a fire -  round stones of black granite are used to cover the coals.  When the stones become hot, about half of them are placed aside, and various cuts of pork and quartered chicken, along with whole potatoes, are placed directly onto the remaining stones.  The rest of the hot rocks are then put back, and they start to char the food right away.

Loading the Pachamanca pit

On this day, our gourmet Quechua chefs covered this hottest layer with little packets - I don't know what else to call them.  The husks of the Choclo (corn, but with giant white kernels) was used as the wrapper for a mash of corn meal and cinnamon, making neat little tamale-like packages of goodness.

The final layer was a giant sack of Lima beans, still in the shells, which completely covered the other layers.  Apparently, the order of the food is important in the process, as the flavors of the searing meat rise to permeate the vegetables, and the juices work their way into the surrounding potatoes. In order to seal in all the flavors, the whole pit was then covered with burlap-like cloth and sealed with heavy brown-paper sacks.  The last few stones held it all down.

Here it is when it's done. Yum!

For those who preferred something other than Pachamanca, there was an abuelita (little grandma) cooking trout on the grill and deep-frying cuy (guinea pig) in a big pot of oil - everything fueled by a wood fire.

The fifty-or-so Peruvians who were waiting for lunch had seen the process before, but they weren't wasting time.  A boisterous game of volleyball was ongoing, as were games of sapo.  Sapo, or "frog" is like Peruvian beer-pong.  Heavy brass tokens are tossed at a specially made box, about the size of a nightstand.  If one of the tokens lands in one of 16 holes in the top of the box, it is worth points.  The greatest number of points is earned if the player can land a token in the mouth of the brass frog bolted to the top of the box.  It seems to be played by all ages, although it looks to be the most fun when alcohol is involved.

Our outdoor "restaurant."  The Pachamanca pit can be seen on the far right near the white chair.

Our hosts started bringing out the Pachamanca about a half-hour later.  We sat on wooden picnic tables under thatch roofs and drank Cusqueña malt beer.  Moments like this are among the perfect ones in life, with a warm sun and gentle breeze, nature's silence broken only by the laughter of people, and some of the best food I have ever tasted.

Sorry, Gaston, you're #2.



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Redneck Diplomat in Huancayo

OR

Our adventure continues in the Suburbs of Huancayo

OR

Read about how we got here, by riding the train from Lima to Huancayo, the second highest in the world.

Because we were so thrilled with his service, I am going to insert a shameless plug here for our guide, IncasdelPeru, who set the whole thing up for us.  They offer train packages, but will tailor a custom tour for your family, native arts and crafts instruction, and even treks through the jungle, depending on what you would like to see in or around Huancayo.  Ask for Lucho.

Aliens Invade near Paracas, Peru

Those of you who are my friends, or who have been following me for a while, know that I love a good adventure almost as much as telling the story that follows.  When I grow up, I want to be the Dos Equis guy.

Over the long weekend, my family and I had decided to head to Paracas, a tiny coastal town about three hours south of Lima.  We looked forward to spending some time on the ocean, but the primary goal was escaping the hustle of the city.

Without a clear plan of activities, we headed straight down to the beach behind the hotel, to walk along and enjoy the ocean.

That was when we discovered the first signs of alien invasion.

A half-dozen orange jellyfish, or malaguas (It means “bad water” in Spanish), were waiting for me just a few feet into the shallow water.  They obviously had some way to communicate with the others, who had told them that I would be coming, and to send reinforcements.  I should clarify that I am not talking about the wispy cute little jellies that you see in the zoo.  These had heads about two feet across, with tentacles between four and six feet long.  This is what the invading force had sent for me.

Part of my obsession with this particular species of alien is my quest for payback.  In late December, when I first tried surfing with my family, I encountered one of these evil beings while paddling out to catch the next wave.  I basically stuck my hand in the middle of the thing, and was stung mildly on the left hand.  It hurt a bit for a few hours, but served to teach me that I didn’t want to get wrapped up in one of these things.

Since one definition of “sense of adventure” is the lack of the ability to leave dangerous stuff alone, I began searching for a stick, and found a piece of plastic pipe about two feet long.  My children and I approached one of the beasts with caution.  The tentacles swirled around it with the current, so timing would be important, I didn’t want to step on one of those.

As the slow, almost invisible wave turned the jelly’s weapons away from us, I stepped forward and poked it with the stick, jumping back immediately, since I wasn’t sure what kind of psychic abilities it might have to sense my location in the water.

It did nothing, so I poked it again, and dragged it a few feet to the very edge of the water, so I could stand on the sand and torment it further.

Still it did nothing, which made me suspicious, and I looked around for signs of reinforcements.  Once it was out of the water a few inches, I poked it again, and even lifted one of the tentacles with my stick, er…I mean my war club.

I had tried to pick it up with said war club, but there were two things that prevented that.  First, the lack of solid structure meant that its body would either not be supported, or it might tear.  These things look exactly like jello that is cooked just a bit too long and has gotten a little rubbery.  Secondly, they are heavy, and you wouldn’t think so, but I estimate this one weighed about 10-12 pounds, more than a full eight-pound jug of milk.

Enter the real villain in this story – a little girl.  She was the child of one of the guests at the hotel, and spoke Spanish and English with equal precision.  Obviously, she was a trained operative.

This little girl walked right up to the alien and almost stepped on it.  I blocked her with my stick, and told her to be careful.  She stepped around my stick and slapped the alien on top of its head.  Splat.

I again to her to be careful and not to touch the tentacles.  She then said something to me in Spanish which I’m pretty sure meant “stop acting like such a little girl.”

She then lifted one of the tentacles with her bare hand, lifting almost to her shoulder height before the weight and the sliminess of it pulled it from her grasp.  She obviously had some kind of peace treaty with the aliens, and this was a trick to get me to touch it.  I looked closely at her eyes - they looked so real.  Their technology was amazing.

“It’s dead.  It can’t sting you if it’s dead, silly.”  (In little girl language, “silly” means “stupid *$#@% idiot.”)

I still don’t know how she knew, but I expect this is all part of a broader conspiracy.  I am sure the aliens will be back for me.

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Redneck Diplomat in the Suburbs of Huancayo, Peru

We followed Lucho, our guide, out of the ruins and away from the small museum.  While this was the first time I had ever left a historical site with numbness in my lips, my middle child will still say that ancient ruins are "just a bunch of rocks and dirt."

As interesting as history is to me, living people are more exciting.  Gathered in a public area, in one of the suburbs of Huancayo, Peru, were clusters of people, out to enjoy the Sunday morning sun of the November spring.

There are dozens of tourist sites in Peru, like Macchu Pichu and the Cathedrals of Lima, but Huancayo doesn't feel like those places.  No one hassled us to sell us trinkets, or rushed up to us in their native garb, selling a memorable photo opportunity for a sol (the Peruvian unit of currency, about 39 cents).  People just went about their daily business and didn't seem to notice us.  It all felt very...Peruvian.

In the small square stood a pole carved from stone a few hundred years ago and placed there by the Catholic church (The symbol of the Freemasons was conspicuously displayed on the back, but the Andeans are notorious for religious irony).  At the base, people were gathered around in tiny chairs, watching groups of colored candles burn away near an altar of flowers as they meditated and prayed.  Lucho explained that the color of each candle signified a concept of prayer - those burning green candles hoped for wealth, red meant a prayer for love, white meant peace, and black was used to smite one's enemy.

A young woman approached us and spoke to us in Spanish.  She wanted my wife to hold her baby while a friend took a photo with us - the Redneck Diplomat and his two blonde daughters included.  We were incredibly amused by this.

"Hey, you girls could walk around charging money for photos and get back some of the money we spent in Cuzco," I suggested.

Lucho then led us across the street to a candle vendor.  The lady there sold over a dozen different colors of candle, and was happy to explain to us what each one of the colors meant.  She also rented the small chairs, and would "read" your melted wax for a small fee once you were finished, predicting your future or some such.

"Just hand me a whole bundle of those black ones," I said, drawing harsh looks from the women in my life. 'Don't mess with me, I haven't put names on them yet."

Lucho told us that it was even possible to hire someone to sit and watch your candles burn.  To say that Peruvians are capitalists is an understatement.

We stepped quietly into the back of the church.  While we didn't see the spectacular golden altars of Lima, or the silver ones of Cuzco, what we saw was ten feet tall, and no less spectacular in a more humble, all-carved-by-hand-out-of-wood sort of way.  Since we weren't allowed to take photos, I had to sneak this one:

Somehow, the tributes of the poor have always seemed more powerful in their humility than the ostentatious, shallow offerings of the wealthy.

Lucho quietly led us out, and we walked further up the hill, where he finally explained the giant Dr. Seuss plants that we had seen since we entered the high Andes.  Like the tops of giant pineapples, but ten feet tall and at least as wide.  The plants would bloom once, and then die.  The bloom was a twisted piece of something that looked like a giant stalk of asparagus, 30 feet long, lifelike, something that would make you nervous to stand next to, lest it eat you.  I didn't have the courage.

 This is the base of the plant, for size comparison.  The blooms grow from the center.  This one is about 3 years old.  They bloom in their fifth year, then die.  The fibers from the leaves are used to make incredibly strong rope.

 

This is a straighter flower stalk, but many are twisted 

and snakelike, like they might strike out at the 

nearest victim.  Lambs are often found dead, tangled 

in the bases of the plants, which adds to the legend.

Having had about enough of ruins, old churches, and man-eating plants, my family voted for lunch, which is the subject of our next adventure.

 

Related Posts:

Read about how we got here, by riding the train from Lima to Huancayo, the second highest in the world. 

Because we were so thrilled with his service, I am going to insert a shameless plug here for our guide, IncasdelPeru, who set the whole thing up for us.  They offer train packages, but will tailor a custom tour for your family, native arts and crafts instruction, and even treks through the jungle, depending on what you would like to see in or around Huancayo.  Ask for Lucho, of course.

Magical Circuit of Water - Giant Fountains of Lima

Recently, my family and I hopped a public bus in Lima (An adventure in itself) and wrote over to one of Lima’s big attractions, a huge public park filled with giant fountains.  The words “huge” and “giant” are understated.  Lima’s Parque de las Reservas (Park of the Reserves, named after a militia unit in some battle or another) is the current Guinness record holder for the largest fountain complex in the world.  This place has 13 works of oversized wet art, including an animated array on the same order as the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, a giant central fountain that spews 250 feet straight up, and a number of smaller sculptures.  We had visited this place a few weeks before, but we were going to try something new.

We wanted to see it at night.

After standing in line for only about ten minutes, we finally gained entry.  The fee is reasonable, 4 soles (about $1.50) per person.  Outside the park, there are plenty of candy apple and cotton candy vendors, so of course we had to partake of some cotton candy (another whole sol for each of those).  Peru’s economy is bustling – if there is a market for something, the industrious Peruvians will fill it, even if selling cotton candy isn’t a great income, it beats poverty.

The place was pretty crowded, but it wasn’t noisy, and it was virtually litter-free.  The crowds milled slowly to each fountain, including the tunnel of water, and the fountain of the children, whose primary purpose seemed to be soaking everyone to the skin who dared get close. 

Did I mention it was dark?  At night, the fountains are lit up by rainbow-colored lights that often change, giving the waters a spooky appearance that lives up to the name, “The Magical Circuit of Water.”

Three times each night, a laser light show is projected onto the largest fountain array, and this lasts about 15 minutes.

You can view my two-minute YouTube video here.

Including bus fare, cotton candy, and park admission, my family of four spent about $12 on the evening.  I must say that I was amazed - Parque de Las Reservas is one of Lima's must-see attractions.

Read about our recent trip to Huancayo, Peru, aboard the Central Andean Railway.

Train from Lima to Huancayo - Highest in the World

Okay, the second highest.  The Chinese had to build one, too, but they spent $3 billion on theirs.  The train I speak of is the Central Andean Railway, or Ferrocarril Central Andino, in South America.  The line was completed over a hundred years ago, and while today it is used mostly for cargo, on occasion a passenger train still runs from Lima over the mountains to the city of Huancayo, Peru.

My family and I set out early to Desamparados Station in downtown Lima (it means “departures” in Spanish) for the 7 a.m. train.  Unlike most things in Peru, we expected it to be on time, and it was.  We were in tourist-class, which meant slightly more legroom and access to a lounge.  While the seats are modern, the walls of the train are covered in wood and brass, reminiscent of the age.

The passenger car was built in the 1930s, and evidence of this can still be seen

The 13-hour ride starts near sea level, and ascends an average of 27 feet per minute into the Andes mountains, which make the Rockies look like foothills.  68 bridges, 71 tunnels, and 9 “zigzags” punctuate the trip.  The zigzag is self-explanatory, a simple, yet brilliant way for the train to ascend a few hundred feet in an otherwise impassable area.

 This photo illustrates the scale of the Andes, when compared with the highway below

Enough boring statistics, because that doesn’t do this trip justice.  Facing rearward, and after rolling handily through the outskirts of Lima for almost an hour, we picked up speed and steamed around the mountains and gorges near Peru’s desert coast.  We saw entire fields full of giant prickly-pear cactuses, their pods used to make dye, but I thought it was a great guard against intruders.

Our first stop was a small train station and roundhouse.  The locomotive had to be turned around so it could pull us up the mountain.  We were distracted by an old steam engine and missed the action, but the roundhouse was old-school – no hydraulics.  Using nothing but gravity and leverage, a single man can rotate a 50-ton modern locomotive in about a minute.  One of the passengers was allowed to perform this task.  To me, this type of 19^th century engineering makes the iPhone look rather obtuse.

Facing forward again, we spent the next five hours chugging up mountain after endless mountain, seeing amazing waterfalls, gorges, mountain villages, and alien vegetation.  I must not forget about the alien plants – imagine the top of a pineapple, except fifteen feet across and ten feet high.  Out of the top, grows a flower that looks like a giant stalk of asparagus, but crooked and snakelike, straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.  The kind of plant that makes me nervous if I get too close to it, because it looks like it might just eat me, or at least sniff the back of my neck.

The train finally reached its highest point at 15,583 feet, which I believe is about a thousand feet higher than Pike’s Peak.  By this time, several passengers had received supplemental oxygen, although I felt fine.  Actually, I felt better than fine.  In spite of my avoidance of the bar-car, other than for some sightseeing and photo-taking from the open rear section, I was absolutely giddy – without the best oxygen supply, my brain seems to interpret everything from cancer to genocide as the funniest things ever – I think we were 2,000 feet down the mountain before I could wipe the smile off my face, but I came up with the most interesting conspiracy theory about the link between the Curiosity mission to Mars and the Federal Reserve Bank.  I wrote it down, and that may be the subject of a later post.

By the last third of the trip, we were all pretty beat, and ready for it to be over, but occasional view of snow-capped peaks or rushing rivers kept us going until sunset.  A few more trips to the lounge car at the end of the train, just to give us an excuse to stand, proved helpful, although it raised another question to my oxygen starved mind:  there is enough lateral movement that the walk through four cars to get to the bar feels like a condemned ride at Disneyland, yet in all the movies, the heroes and villains always end up fighting on top of the train.  We could barely stand up in the center of the thing without holding on.

 This is the entire train, taken from the open lounge car at the rear of the train

The last hour or so of the trip was in the dark.  Even that proved fascinating – so far away from the scourge of civilization, there are only a few million extra stars to look at.

Follow our adventures into Huancayo here.

Because we were so thrilled with his service, I am going to insert a shameless plug here for our guide, IncasdelPeru, who set the whole thing up for us.  They offer train packages, but will tailor a custom tour for your family, depending on what you would like to see in Huancayo.  Ask for Lucho.

Redneck Diplomat goes to Huancayo

There’s nothing like waking up to the sunlight.  With the foggy weather of Lima, it had been months, but this morning we woke in a humble little hotel in Huancayo called “Grandma’s House.”  It was cheap, clean, and cheap, my three requisites.

   

Lucho, our guide, met us out front, and within minutes of the ride to our first stop, we could tell that Huancayo was nothing like our corner of Lima.  It felt more rural, more…normal.  The tiny museum was in the corner of a tiny suburb, and a group of kids, well dressed from mass, were gathered in the town square, which might have been a hundred feet across.  We were quickly the main attraction.

As we were greeted with staccato choruses of “good morning,” Lucho explained that they learned some basic English in school, but didn’t understand much.  Once they realized that we spoke Spanish, they were a bit quieter, but a few talked with us like kids do.

After a five-minute tour of the museum, which was just one room, we walked down some stone steps to a set of ruins about the size of a basketball court.  A few hundred years ago, the Catholics had covered the ruins with dirt, in an effort to bury the religious beliefs of several millennia.  Surprise, the Peruvians have shovels.

Walls several feet thick surrounded a central courtyard filled with thick green clover and two ancient, twisted trees.  Shallow pits walled with stone graced the center courtyard, where we saw three men quietly meditating near one of them.  An older one was talking quietly to the other two, who were about our age.  We stepped quietly passed them, not seeking to disturb, and kept to other parts of the sacred place.

Our respectful gesture may have impressed the old man, because he spoke to Lucho, and we were invited to sit next to them in the circle under one of the twisted 500-year old trees.  In the center, a small bundle of candles burned with black smoke, and a cloth with various objects sat near.  The objects, as Lucho explained, represented various aspects of life, like the sea, or Mother Earth.  There was also a small bowl of coca leaves and cheap cigarettes near the candles.

The old chief offered each of us a handful of coca leaves from a small bag, we were to sort them and pick out the best three (the number three representing the heaven, the earth, and the underworld) and place those back into the bowl, a gesture of recognizing the gods for what we had been given.

The rest of the leaves we quietly chewed while we made small talk with the old man. The old man then offered a pinch of ashes to go along with the coca – apparently the lye in the ash serves to “unlock” the spiritual properties of the leaf.  I’m pretty sure it’s just chemistry.  I did as our guide did, wetting the leaf in my mouth and blotting in onto the ash, then placing it in my cheek.

I don’t remember anything after that.

I’m kidding.  A person would need several pounds of coca leaves to feel any significant effect, and even then, the leaves are unprocessed, not like the concentrated, alkaline substance produced by the ton a few dozen miles further into the jungle.  The raw leaves are either chewed or brewed into a tea, which is stimulating, but not as much as caffeine.  It also fixes nausea and a host of other things.

I didn’t see any little pink elephants (elephants are in Africa anyway) but my mouth got a little tingly, and the altitude headache I had been coping with most of the morning disappeared.  

Any euphoria I felt was caused by a quiet minute to sit down, without the noise of the city, and just talk quietly with people with whom we shared little in common, other than simply being human.  We all felt incredibly lucky that they had shared this intimate and important part of their lives with us.

After a few minutes we stood up, thanked them, and moved quietly elsewhere.  We spent a few minutes hunting four-leaf clovers in the old courtyard, which Lucho said were lucky even in the pre-Inca culture.  

“The odds of a four-leaf clover are about one in ten-thousand, and a five-leaf is a one-in-a-million chance, and although sometimes certain patches have lots of them, that’s not normal.”

He looked at me skeptically, like he didn’t trust my facts.  It is true that 72% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

I told him about hunting them with my Grandparents when I was a kid, not being any good at it, and that I had found a 5-leaf only once in my life.

Five seconds later I plucked a five leaf, and held it out to him.

“Twice.”

“Remember these things, children do.  Yours will remember this, too.”

Lucho may be a long-haired hippie looking, Yoda-talking, Inca tour-guide dude, but he’s a pretty smart guy.

Related Posts: 

Our adventure continues in the Suburbs of Huancayo

OR

Read about how we got here, by riding the train from Lima to Huancayo, the second highest in the world.

Because we were so thrilled with his service, I am going to insert a shameless plug here for our guide, IncasdelPeru, who set the whole thing up for us.  They offer train packages, but will tailor a custom tour for your family, native arts and crafts instruction, and even treks through the jungle, depending on what you would like to see in or around Huancayo.  Ask for Lucho, of course.