South!

...America -- Part I

Mike and I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Paraguay and Peru in December/January. It was lovely. It was lovely in fact in three distinct parts. First was touristiness, i.e. Cusco, Peru & Machu Picchu. Second was family, i.e. Asuncion, Paraguay visiting Mike's oldest brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. Third was nostalgia, i.e. Pucallpa, Peru and its surroundings, where I had spent a year in 2002-03. This post will get you as far as Cusco and Asuncion, with Pucallpa (and of course some new goat/chicken returned-to-Wenatchee updates) saved for next time.

1. Cusco and Machu Picchu

Cusco was the old capital of the Inca empire, and Machu Picchu was (perhaps) its university, hidden (well, not hidden at the time, just hidden for a while after the Spanish conquest) in the mountains nearby. Nowadays you typically access Machu Picchu by train and bus, or by walking 4 days along the Inca trail with a guided tour group. Mike and I chose, well, neither -- we ended up on the compromise access route, leaving the train partway and walking 1 day with a guide. I think it was a good compromise. Allows you to arrive to Machu Picchu on foot, which is impressive in that you walk through high jungle mountains for hours and then magically come upon a huge ancient city from above.





But it doesn't require 4 days time for the full walk, nor the (I've heard) sometimes weird social dynamics that can come with a group of 6-8 foreign adventure tourists plus 3-4 Peruvian porters cooking and carrying tents/food/stove for 4 days. In any case, it was a great visit, and we were also able to spend some time during our stay walking around Cusco and the nearby town of Pisaq, adjusting to the altitude, eating lots of food (within which may have been lodged some Shigella bacteria that stole a ride with us back to the States), and walking around a few other archaeological sites around Cusco.


Cusco


Pisaq

The funniest part, perhaps, was being there with Mike. In Peru, I stand out a little bit as a gringa. But I'm small, and I know the language and the geography, and so I often feel (although perhaps just in my head) like I can walk around with at least a modicum of anonymity. But accompanied by another gringo, and in this case an extremely tall extremely bearded gringo, cancels out any shred of anonymity there might have been. Our wanderings around Cusco were greeted by shouts of "Hola, Papa Noel" or "Mira, Santa Claus!" And we realized that, given the time of year during which we visited and Mike's bearded look, we should have come with pockets full of candy canes.

In fact, both the fun part and the tiring part was our inability to pass as anything but tourists. Of course we were there in fact being tourists, so it's not fair to complain much. But it is nicer to be a tourist tourist in a place you don't know at all, where the shopkeepers' attempts at English and the inflexibly compiled pricey tour packages are, if not ideal, at least very helpful. In this case, it felt slightly frustrating, knowing better, to pay twice the going rate for food half as good as in other parts of Peru. But it was a great first stop for us and of course, a beautiful spot (with certain geographical similarities (and differences) to Wenatchee, which is interesting in and of itself).





2. Asuncion

After a brief stop in Lima, where we spent the day with the family of a coworker of mine from Wenatchee at her Christmas/birthday/family reunion party (where Mike got to be the big tall bearded Santa-Clausy gringo who provides entertainment by attempting salsa and huayno dancing with the relevant aunts, which he and they thoroughly enjoyed), we flew to Asuncion, Paraguay, to spend a week with the bro-, sis-, and nephew-in-law.

Paraguay involved lots of relaxing and sleeping and swimming and barbecuing and eating sopa paraguaya (or paraguayan soup, which is not actually soup, but instead a cornbread-like-dish). Culturally, Paraguay is a lot closer to Uruguay or Argentina or Brazil, if I were to put it in terms of what I know of South America, than to Peru or Ecuador (of course of course yes yes there are big big differences between each of these countries, but still...). It's east-side South America, with plains and cattle and mate (tea, kind of) and beef and European flair; different than the Andean llama jungle style of west-side South America.


left to right: Jason, Sebastian, Dallys, and amiga Cynthia


with Sebastian and Blondis the cat

In any case, here ends South America Part I. Stay turned (hopefully soon-ish) for South America Part 2. Note, meanwhile, that Mike is at this very moment working on uploading pictures to one of those photos websites where you can go to see more of them if you so choose, but until then you just get my limited photo choices :). I'll keep you posted, though.