Sunday, November 13th...a great week in Cusco

See the two flags - left is Peru and right is
Cusco - looks just like the gay flag.

This was a week of tourist activities as we purchased the 10 day tourist ticket which enables us to visit many of the sights both in and outside of Cusco. We are trying to see the sights that we did not see during our last visit. Try clicking on the above photo and see a short video of folkloric dancing - they use color and costumes so well.

Waterfall in San Blas neighborhood - love the geometric shapes

Sunday hike outside of town to local ruins -
Templo de la Luna

Seems like young girls are always asking
to take our pictures...and we took theirs

 Most of these photos are self explanatory. Incan walls are everywhere, usually the foundation for the churches and other structures in town. It is mind boggling to imagine how they moved some of these stones and how they managed to fit them together so well as to withstand so many natural disasters.

Incan walls which are usually made on an angle. Most
have withstood earthquakes. Notice the smaller stones
at the bottom which is the secret as to why they have remained
after so many years....no mortar, just stone against stone.

Weaving...usually sheep or llama

We have been to museums, monuments, textile factory, churches along with our classes of yoga and Spanish. We are making good use of our time during these 10 days and after tomorrow will get back to a less touristy lifestyle. There is so much to see here and we are really lucky to have a whole month. We have made a few friends as we usually do and that is also nice....Al, our yoga teacher and Jean Jacque who owns our Spanish school.

Pachacutec monument -
Led the Incas in city planning, building,
administration. Walked up to the top for
a great view of town.

Love the fabric here.

Peruianas are beautiful people

Cusco at night

Salt mines at Maras

Underground saltwater - different families own
each square and work the salt mines as a
cooperative - has been going on for hundreds of years

Yesterday's visit to Maras and Moray was so interesting from a historical perspective and for me for a design and great photo opportunity. As you know by now...I love geometric shapes and here was a chance in both sites to take many photos. Again, photos do not do justice to the immensity of both sites.

Moray - deep ampitheatre like terracing - the first three were pre-Incan.
Each layer has its own micro-climate according to how deep the bowl is and
 therefore was used for crop experimentation.

Look at the steps and the people to get a feeling of how large
these circles are. So impressive.

Ricardo climbing out of the circles

The steps coming out at each level
with over one foot between in each step.

We have had a chance to talk to some of you on the phone this week which is always great - keeps us connected which we both love. Having the technology that we have makes life so much easier for communication. We do miss you and love you.

November 2011 Lima and Cusco, Peru

A map of the luxury bus company
Cruz del Sur. We took it from Trujillo
to Lima and probably will use it again.
Very comfy "cama" (bed) chairs
as well as a stewardess

I am so glad that I am writing this blog as it is helping us to keep track of our lives during this incredible trip and we know that you are enjoying it also.   We have received many emails from our family and friends but these words from  Barbara Rodbell in Chapel Hill seem important to remember and help sum up our thoughts at this time.


" I love everything I get from you, story and pictures and I think I have it all and can look at it any time I want to. I think it is great that you have started to talk about staying for a longer period in one place: a kind of resting, thinking and getting back to yourselves without looking and gathering new experiences to work on every day. Memory will drop certain things in the long run and what you will have left will be the things which truly meant the most to each of you and might not be the same! I find that it is mostly a feeling of a period of time, a warmth and a color and-----a quiet gratitude to have had such wonderful adventures and having absorbed them well in the rest of life. Thank you for letting me share them! Love, Barbara R"

Lima, in Miraflores.
The city is right on the ocean

So, we left Trujillo for Lima on the luxury night bus arriving in Lima at about 7 am. We have decided that 9 hours by bus is great, especially in this style but more might not be. South America has a great bus system for travel and many travel this way as the airlines are quite expensive. We did fly from Lima to Cusco as that would have been a 21 hour bus ride! We will probably continue with a combination of this travel. We found a hostal which was fine for us - many are places for backpackers as well as travelers like us. Great places to meet other travelers and they are always so helpful.  

Causa - a special Peruvian potato dish made of
many different types of potato and other
ingredients  - this one was avocado.

Lima is a very big city and since we had been here 6 years ago we decided to stay in a different section of town - Miraflores. It was great as the hostal was centrally located and we could walk to so many places. As usual, we found great vegetarian restaurants and walked along the coast both days.

The sculpture at the coast in Lima

I loved the shape of the waves on the shore

Nature is incredible!

A followup to our last blog....we did have a chance to go to the Ecuadorean Embassy and talk about our "blackmail".  They were very embarrassed with the situation though they could not do anything about it except to speak to the lawyers for immigration. The fact of the matter was that we did indeed overstay our 90 days in Ecuador (because they counted the Feb/Mar trip and this past trip together - unlike Mexico and other countries that allow you to start your days over each time you leave and return.) Ecuador only allows 90 days/year so because of that we cannot return to Ecuador at Christmas unless we get visas which together with airfare back to Ecuador would be prohibitive. So, in keeping with Barbara's words above, we are going to stay put in Cusco for one month and then travel to a few places in Peru and Bolivia and hopefully change our return ticket to fly from Lima instead of Quito. (We know all our friends in Cuenca will be unhappy to hear this news as we are also.)

We have moved from the coast in Lima to Cusco -  the Sacred Valley and land of the Incas. We were here in Sept., 2005 to hike the 4 day Inca trail to Machu Piccu and promised ourselves to come back as it is was beautiful with so much to see. We are remembering things as we are here that we had forgotten and just looked at all our pictures and read my "haiku"s that I had written for that trip. We're not sure if we will go back to Machu Piccu this time or just keep our memories from the moment we entered the sun gate 6 years ago - an unforgettable memory. We are off to a one day hike tomorrow on our own to see several of the Inca ruins right above the city. By the way, it is over 11.000 feet here and for the first few days we did feel the altitude - more tired and a little dizzy with light headache here and there. Now as it is 4 days since we arrived we do not notice it. 

Narcissa and her husband in Cusco - our friends from the
Spanish school in Cuenca....what a small world. We took
the city tour together.

Cristo Blanco - copy of the Christ in Rio de Janiero
He watches over the city of Cusco

Special bread for Nov 1
Dia de los Difuntos

We are settling down and have rented an apartment in an old colonial building that serves as a hotel or apartments by the month or longer. Here are a few pictures of the inside and outside. We have one large room and a kitchen and bathroom with plenty of space. Having wi fi allows us to stay in touch with all of you and we are back on skype. Send us your telephone number and a good time to call and we will. You can only call us if you have skype but we can call you on skype or your home or cell phones.

Outside our room - second floor on balcony

Richard in the downstairs courtyard

Our room and little sitting area

Looking into the little kitchen with bathroom
 off to the right

Plaza de las Armas - the main square.

Tile roofs 

An example of Inca stones. They are very large and hard to
imagine how they were moved and put together with
no mortar between them. They still remain as the foundation
for many of the buildings and churches still standing today.

An example of a chess set - with Incans vs. Spainards!

Interesting angles

That's it for this week. There will be many more pictures of this beautiful town as we explore more and more each day. It is much larger than SMA - about 300,000 people. Many many tourists from all over the world and indeed many young people - adventuring for the various hikes and adventure sports in the Sacred Valley. We are going to Spanish school again - for 2 hours/day and have also found a yoga class. There are others that we will explore in the coming weeks.  Once again....thanks for traveling with us.

October 30, 2011 The adventures continue....in Peru

Bye for now to Cuenca, Cajas and Ecuador 

Thank all for traveling with us from Ecuador and now to Peru. For our last day in Cuenca we headed to our favorite park - Cajas for another walk around a different lake - with the familia, including Ana and Brian - two other students at Amauta.

Our "familia" in Cuenca

Then...a long day by bus (one of the many of this week). We left Cuenca for a bus to the border. The adventure of the day began when we arrived at the border in Machalla and the officials at immigration told us that we had overstayed our time in Ecuador (which was not true) and that the only way to get our passports back was to pay a "multa" or fine of $200. each. We had been warned by many not to carry much cash while traveling on the bus so of course we did not have $400. So....they instructed one of the "guards" to take us to the bank in town to withdraw money. They wanted me to stay behind while Richard went with him but we decided that we should definitely stay together so we both went. We knew that we could only take $300 from the bank (the most they allow at one time) so Ricardo "negotiated" our multa down to 300. When he said yes to this, we were convinced that this was a scam, which we had already suspected...however....we did want our passports back!!! He pulled the car over to the side of the road and asked for the money. He pocketed 100 and held the 200 for his buddies back at immigration. All this while, we were holding up the next bus which would take us to Peru. (We never knew till we got back whether the bus would wait for us or not - it did.) When we got back to immigration they gave us our passports with no receipt or information that we had paid or any indication that we had indeed done anything wrong.

So, back on the bus for 4 more hours to our destination...Mancora, Peru....the coast. BEAUTIFUL weather for 4 days and swimming, relaxing, walking the beach, and yoga! Also....the best vegetarian restaurant that I have ever eaten in...Angela's place with delicious yucca bread and sweet potato bread as well as many incredible dishes. Needless to say....we ate there every day. We found a good Thai restaurant for dinner meals too.  We loved our yoga class at a beautiful hotel on the beach with the sound of waves and wind during the whole class. Mancora is on our list of places to return to.

Sea horse on the beach

The docks at Mancora

Our hotel in Mancora....finally great weather

We even found a yoga class in Mancora...
with an incredible view

Our next interesting adventure was the night bus from Mancora to Trujillo. We left at 10:30 pm and then arrived at about 7am. In some ways this is a great way to travel...save on a hotel room and also have an extra day wherever we are going and coming from. They have "cama" or bed buses with reclining seats so it is fairly comfortable but not the best sleep of our lives. Otherwise, uneventful.

Plaza de Armes, Trujillo...great colors

Trujillo is a beautiful city with a colorful historic center. It is a great place to be for a few days as there are many local tours to the ruins of the area. The ruins include several different cultures and we saw two...Moche and Chimu. We enjoyed our Spanish speaking guide with much information and though I did not understand everything, it was an eye opener to these cultures that were unheard of to me. We went to Huanca de la Luna and Chan Chan. At one point there were 60,000 people living in Chan Chan.  I plan to read a bit more about these cultures when I have time, though we are now heading south and soon will be in Inca country where the culture, building, gods, and lifestyles were much different. Here close to the coast all the building was made of adobe, and cover with some kind of aloe vera product which has kept if for over 1000 years, through all kinds of weather related problems.

amazing work down on these large adobe temples
(100 BC-850AD)

While we were here in Trujillo there was an earthquake in Lima - about 9 hours from here, which we did not feel. This was going on at about the same time as many of you in "el Norte" were experiencing snow in October. Mother Nature seems quite upset these days!

Huanca de la Luna...Moche cultural site
built with mountain in view.

Believed that this was a calendar of the Moche people

Tourists....great that we can go with
Spanish speaking guides.

Chan Chan...the largest adobe city in the world. Chimu culture
(850 AD - 1530's when the Spanish arrived)

Chan Chan - just one LARGE area is open to the public, one adobe mansion
and there are at least 15 more that are uncovered. They suspect
that there are many more buried areas of the Moche and Chimu
cultures here on the coast of Peru. Why do we only think
of the Incas?  I am always amazed as what we (I guess I should say I)
do not know about these other cultures if the world.

Now, Sunday, we are planning another night bus ride to Lima, the capitol of Peru where we will spend a few days. At the suggestion of our friends at our school in Ecuador, we have been in touch with the Ecuadorean embassy and plan to visit them on Monday and discuss our "adventure". Our main reason to go is to find out what the visa situation is for Ecuador and whether we can return one more time in 2011. If not, we can plan for other adventures in South America. After Lima, we will fly to Cusco where we plan to spend one month. We are hoping to rent an apartment and "settle down".

We look forward to hearing from you and wish everyone a Happy Halloween and Dia de las Muertos.

Many details of fish, birds and other
sea wildlife on the walls of Chan Chan

The beach at Huanuco, Peru.
Fisherman still use these boats