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Machu Picchu, Cusco
Warning: This is a long post about our two week vacation to Peru, but I think friends and family will enjoy reading about our trip in this much detail. We posted a few pictures here on the blog but the slideshow which we will add soon will have many, many more.
Michelle and I recently got back from our two week trip to Peru. We had such an amazing time, we visited so many cool places and saw so many awesome ruins throughout the entire country. Despite all the cool places we visited, our favorite part was spending so much time with my friends and the families I knew in Peru on my mission. We were fortunate enough to not have to stay a single night in a hotel due to the generosity of my friends in Peru. In Lima, we stayed for a week with a family that I baptised and hadn't seen for over five years but while there I found out that they had been sealed in the temple. We also spent a week up in the high mountains of Cusco. The elevation in Cusco is 11,000 feet but some of the ruins we visited had an altitude of even higher. Needless to say, it took us a couple days to get acclimatized. In Cusco we stayed with the same family that I lived with and that prepared my meals while I was a missionary. We were very lucky that the families in Lima and Cusco both had extra rooms in their houses. Spending so much time with these families and other friends we met up with was by far the highlight of the trip. It was so hard to say goodbye. While in Peru, we filled every moment with fun things. We usually left the house pretty early and got home pretty late. We did so much.
Nazca
The highlight from our time in Lima was an overnight trip we took to Nazca to see the Nazca Lines. You may have seen these in the latest Indiana Jones movie. Basically, there are thousands of geoglyphs (drawings, designs, and shapes drawn in the dirt) in the Nazca desert that are so big that you can only see them from a plane. Michelle and I went on a 30 minute private plane ride at 2,000 feet elevation and saw the amazing drawings in the desert. There were birds, hands, a tree, a monkey, a spider, and many other things designed 500 years ago that are still there today. Nazca is a desert with so little change that the lines have been there for hundreds of years and never go away. The lines were formed by removing the darker rocks and soil from the top of the desert dirt, revealing a lighter whiter color below. This is all they did to make the lines that you can see from a higher elevation! The biggest formations are almost 700 feet long. The lines are only 10-30 cm deep but they never go away because nothing ever changes in the Nazca desert's climate. It is still something of a mystery why they made these lines. There are some very paranormal theories out there, like that they were used as landing strips for aliens, and some more down to earth theories that they may have been religious symbols or may have marked underground rivers.
Lima
Another highlight was the recently completed "Circuito Magico del Agua" (Magic Water Circuit). It is the world's largest public park of water fountains. Unfortunately our camera died while we were there so we didn't get too many pictures, but the ones we got were amazing. I thought this place was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. There were 13 tremendous, unique water fountains. There was an amazing show with lasers, lights, and videos projected into the water and into the sky. I think it would be worth visiting Lima just for this show. This large park somehow adds so much to the city of Lima, well done to the mayor who commissioned this project.
In Lima, we spent a day in a really nice part of town called Miraflores. We walked around the city and the beach. There is a famous park called Parque Del Amor (Park of Love) and a really nice shopping center called LarcoMar. We also made a visit to the Lima Temple. Michelle says it looks a lot like the Boise Temple. In the city center of Lima, which they call the Plaza De Armas, we saw the Palacio del Gobierno (the Peruvian president's mansion, like the White House) and watched the changing of the guard that they do there every day. There are also some huge cathedrals that you can tour at the Plaza de Armas. The coolest part of the Plaza de Armas was the Catacumbas (Catacombs) of the Catholic Church. Here we toured a very old Catholic Church and got to go into the basement where thousands and thousands of people are buried and whose bones are still on display. There were literally rooms, filled over 20 feet high, with people's bones. Interestingly, they had them organized very neatly and sorted by bone (skull, femur, etc.). In the colonial times in Peru the Catholics thought it would help them 'rest in peace' and get into heaven if they were buried under a church.
In Lima's major port city of Callao, we toured an old military fortress called Real Felipe. Here, we got to see the inside and out of the fortress Peru used to unsuccessfully fight of off Chile, but Chile was nice enough to give Lima back after a few years. In one of the rooms of the fortress there was a 'wax mannequin' of a pirate. While the tour guide was teaching us about the history of pirates in colonial Peru, the 'wax mannequin' started moving and talking. Everyone screamed as we realized it was actually a real person. Inside the fortress we also saw an old prison that Spain used for anyone that opposed them.
An interesting note, before moving on to our week in Cusco, is that a neighborhood I lived in for 6 months in Peru that was nothing more than an invasion of squatters from the mountains (no plumbing, no pavement, most of the houses were shacks), was now much more developed and had paved roads. As they say in Peru, "Juntos Avancamos!" (together we advance).
Cusco
Machu Picchu
Cusco is a mysterious, breathtaking, marvelous, historic, city. It is full of ruins that the Inkas and some pre-Inka civilaztions created that have been preserved for hundreds of years. The crown jewel of Cusco, and possibly all of Peru, is Machu Picchu. We were fortunate enough to visit Machu Picchu and many other ruins. We arrived at Machu Picchu by riding a train through the mountains for 4 hours and then taking a bus for another half hour. It really feels like you are going into the middle of nowhere and then somehow you magically arrive at Machu Picchu. The Spanish probably would have destroyed this ancient Inka city for the upper class if they knew it existed, luckily they never found it. We spent several hours walking through the rooms of this ancient city, playing with the llamas, and looking at the amazing view (despite how cloudy it was that day).
City Tour
Despite going from the coast to well over 10,000 feet elevation in one day, the first day we arrived in Cusco we went on a tour known as the 'city tour.' This starts at the second most amazing ruin in cusco: Saqsay Waman (not a joke, that is its name in the Quechua language). This was a fortress used to protect the city of Cusco when the Inkas lived there. I like this place a lot because it has the largest rocks in all of the ruins in Cusco. The largest in fact, is so big that it is hard to get a picture of the whole thing and still be able to see the people's faces that are in the picture. Saqsay Waman has three walls on a hill, the first hill is made up of very large rocks, the second wall was made of medium sized rocks, and the third wall is made up of small rocks. The other reason I love this ruin so much is because the rocks in the walls, no matter how huge they are, have been transported from very far away and have been carved so that each rock fits perfectly together without and type of cement. You can not even stick the point of a needle in between the rocks, it is spectacular. Other ruins that we visited here were Pukapukara, Q'enqo, and Tambomachay.
Sacred Valley Tour (Valle Sagrado)
We went on the Valle Sagrado Tour, a tour through three ruins up in the mountains of Cusco. We started at Pisaq, which has a very large terraces going up the side of the mountain. Terraces basically look like huge shelves going down the side of the mountain that have been carved out of the mountain. They speculate that the terraces here, along with the other terraces all throughout Cusco, were used to conduct experimentation with their plants on the different terraces. Because of the terraces and the wind around the top of the hills, there were very different temperatures on the different levels of the terraces. Also at the Valle Sagrado Tour was Ollantaytambo and Chinchero, where they taught us how the Inkas died and wove articles of clothing.
We visited many other ruins in Cusco, but you can only write about rocks and ruins for so long before it starts to sound all the same. Some of the other highlights of our time in Cusco though was a stop we made on the way to Moray at the Salineras near Maras. Salineras was a salt mining area where a hot river flows out of the mountain and brings tons (literally)of salt with it. There were thousands of small man made pools full of water and salt that each yield 1,000 kilos of salt per month. At the Salineras you can reach down and grab a handfull of salt, rinse it off in the river, and taste it.
Going back to Peru made me realise how
much I miss everything about it: the people, the culture, the language, the ruins, and especially the food! We really want to go back.Comments from Michelle: Like Chad said, Peru was amazing! I just wanted to add a little more about my experience there, specifically living in a country for two weeks where I can't speak the language. I know a little bit of Spanish, but not a ton. I can understand a fair amount when Chad is speaking, at least enough to get the gist of the conversation and be able to follow it, but I don't speak Spanish very well yet. I still need to memorize all of the verb conjugations for the different tenses and get used to the sentence structure. Anyway, staying in Peru for two weeks was a great opportunity for me to use my Spanish skills. While in Lima, I didn't understand much of what anyone other than Chad said because they talked to fast and the accents were too think. It was a little frustrating at times to not know what was going on around me, but a great learning opportunity and Chad helped interpret. However, in Cusco I was able to understand a large amount of what people were saying. They talked slower and didn't have as much of an accent. I picked up quite a bit of Spanish in the two weeks we were there, which was fun.
The trip was so amazing that Chad really does want to go back - not just to visit, but to live. If it were up to Chad we would have just stayed there another year or so and not come home. Now he wants to find a job there. I think he was meant to serve his mission in Peru and now it is his second home. His Spanish is incredible and he loved getting to use it. While we were there almost everyone Chad talked to was amazed at his Spanish and asked him how he knew how to speak so well. This presented a couple of great missionary opportunities as well. It was so fun to listen to him talk.
To sum up, here are the things I miss about Peru the most: the food (only when it doesn't make me sick), how nice and friendly the people are, the weather, the way the people there personally greet and shake hands with everyone in the room when they arrive, the beautiful things to see and do in the city of Cusco, the simplicity of life there...Here are some things I have an increased appreciation for in the United States: traffic laws (in many places in Peru there are not stop signs or lights - you just drive aggressively while honking your horn and watching the people around you - Crazy and scary!), not having to worry about drinking the water or which food is safe to eat, cleanliness, carpet, advanced technology, heated water and air conditioning...
