Wunderteam update: The Fellowship is breaking, Frodo! No, it`s cool. Linda stays in Cusco to do her volunteer practicum thing for a month or so. Lena and Alex have decided to extend their stay in Cusco so that they can keep on salsatanzen and go to the Inka Trail when it opens at the start of March.
About the author:
I, the person with the dual time/money limitation, hear the rumor that all the transport workers will start a huelga at the beginning of this coming week, and set out this morning dead-set on making it to Machu Picchu. Judith, also under the time restriction of having to see things and somehow make it to her Buenos Aires to Colorado flight in a week and a half, comes along. We break the cardinal ¨book ahead of time¨ rule and take a precarious high-speed taxi ride, shared with a German guy, through the beautiful green valleys between Cusco and Ollantaytambo.
Adventure
At Ollantaytambo, we eat a trout lunch and climb up the terraced Inka fortress that once set the stage for a major Inca victory over the Spanish, wherein they flooded the ground below and threw things at the Spanish until they went away. There we meet an eccentric Brasilian flute player wearing medieval boots, who dances and riffs on the beautiful acoustics of the ancient rocks.
We then board a train that takes us through a valley so deep that we have to stick our heads out of the window to see the sky for most of the ride. It is lush, green, almost jungle-like, nothing like the dry Andean route my imagination had painted for me. We share the ride with two Chilean doctoral students and compare notes on Peruvian literature.
I am now in the impossibly touristic Ewok village that is Aguas Calientes. At 4:30am I`ll wake up, eat, and board the 5:30am bus that will take us up to Machu Picchu, lo máximo, the tourist site to beat all tourist sites, the archeological capital of the Western Hemisphere, the ancient ruins that tell Stonehenge, ¨Ché flaquito, vos sos un tarado.¨ (My Machu Picchu speaks porteño.)
Photos to come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
OK, Charly, using all the translation means at my disposal, I cannot accurately translate your last line. I gathered it was something like, "Hey Stonehenge, old buddy, who thinks it's so old, you're a gunky" Please translate/explain for the unilinguals!
Have fun! :-)
PS: Hey, what happened to the beautiful pictures of Peru?
Post a Comment