Peru

Many friends and relatives expressed concern back in August and September when I told them I was traveling to Bolivia in October. And there had been political turmoil there in those months, with many fatalities. American Airlines, my carrier from Miami to La Paz, had even cancelled flights from Sept. 15 to Oct. 5. But these problems were in the lower elevation provinces, where dissatisfaction with the central government had been focused. Since I was going to stay in the higher areas to the west, I wasn’t worried. And in fact things went very smoothly during my entire stay in Bolivia, and everyone I met there was friendly. So, when my time to travel to Peru came, on the 22nd of October, I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary to occur. Peru has a "centrist" government currently, not as "left-leaning" as Bolivia, Venezuela, or even Chile now, but more in-line with that seen in Brazil. And it has been relatively stable over the past several years, with only minor outbreaks of political disturbance in outlying areas.

My plan was to take a bus from La Paz to Cuzco, Peru on the 22nd, arriving there at 8pm. I had a train ticket and tour of Macchu Picchu scheduled the next day, starting at 0630. The bus left as planned at 0800 from La Paz, and we were on the eastern branch of the Pan American highway, the main arterial linking all the countries of South America. We went through the Peruvian border in the run-down and poverty-stricken town of Desaguadero; clearing Peruvian customs took us an hour, since there were several buses in addition to ours doing the same thing. We sailed through Puno, Peru, on the shore of sparkling blue Lago Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the World, at 12,506 feet.

Puno was not an especially attractive city, but being on the lake certainly did add some appeal. One thing I noticed in Peru was that most of the houses and buildings looked unfinished. Re-bar and a layer or two of bricks stuck up from from most of them. My neighbor next to me on the bus, a Bolivian man from Cochabamba explained that in Peru, you get a property tax break if you declare your building to be under construction, hence, they all are!

After a refreshment stop in Puno, we hit the road again, and for a few hours traveled through the altiplano of Peru, amongst tiny villages with people engaged as they have for hundreds of years, herding their livestock and coaxing crops of potatoes, quinoa, and onions from the poor, meager soil at those high elevations. As we approached the small town of Sichuani, still about 150 miles from Cuzco, the bus lurched to a stop. After a minute, when we didn’t resume, all the passengers got up, and we went out of the bus. Ahead of us stretched a line of about a quarter-mile of blocked traffic, with the engines off. We had to investigate.

The first picture, above, is the view just in front of our bus, the line ahead of us, and some rocks on the road. What? So the driver, a few other tourists, and I walked down about a quarter mile, and came to this.

About a thirty foot section of the Pan American highway, the main travel and commercial link between all the countries in the lower half of the continent, covered in about 30 feet of boulders and pieces of metal. Guarded by about ten sharp-eyed youths with sling shots and rocks-in-hand. Off to the right side of the road were 10-20 more of them. After standing around for a few minutes, about 20-30 very angry bus and truck drivers, 8 Argentinian motorcyclists on a trans-continental trip, and a few tourists, myself included, milled around, pondering the situation. The drivers were having a heated discussion, no doubt trying to plan taking back the road, and it only took me a minute to size up the scene and come up with a plan myself. But, a female driver in the group kept pleading with the others not to do anything. This went on for almost an hour, by then it started getting dark, it was about 7pm, then it was too late. Probably for the best, as had there been an attempted take-back of the road, there would certainly have been injuries. Still, we were all angry, we all had plans, and there were many families with small children on the stopped buses. But there was nothing for it but to head back to them. At the time, we didn’t even know what these people were protesting, but I later found out that villagers in this area were angry at the provincial government because of plans to build a hydroelectric project that would inundate some of their grazing and farmland.
So we all went back to the bus and waited, and waited. Around 11pm, with no movement or engines running, my new friends Damon, a British tourist from Bristol, Richard, a Bolivian man traveling for his textile company, and I walked a quarter mile back to find a store. We were starving, and didn’t have a food supply. We found a tiny store open catering to all the stranded people and got some crackers and a beer. All of a sudden, as we were finishing our beer, we heard the distant sound of engines starting. Uh oh…not a good place or time to be left stranded. I was wearing the best shoes for fast movement, hiking boots, so I sprinted back as fast as I could, which proved interesting, at 14,000 feet, after having a large beer, and breathing concentrated diesel fumes. I pounded on our bus to slow down, which it did, I jumped on, and told the driver two more were coming. Damon and Richard jumped on a minute later, and we caught our breath, very relieved to have made it back in the nick of time.
It took us two more hours to get past the block site! All the traffic kept starting and stopping. Finally, as we slowly ground past, our bus was pelted with rocks! But tempered safety glass is very strong, so I wasn’t worried. We never did find out who cleared the block, was it the Army, or did the villagers relent? At no time did we ever see any police. Peru is in serious trouble if they can’t keep open their major highways. There were hundreds of buses, trucks, and other vehicles, blocked on both sides of the road.

We got in to Cuzco at 330 in the morning, 7 ½ hours later than expected. I had a hotel room reserved, fortunately, but Damon and Richard didn’t. So I let them camp out on the floor while I took the bed. For my two hours of sleep, since my Macchu Picchu tour was to start at 0630. I thought briefly of cancelling it and just sleeping in, then finding a flight back to La Paz, thinking that things could get worse, but I’m glad I didn’t. I caught a ride to the train station in Cuzco, and then got on the slow four-hour train ride to Macchu Picchu. Although I was dead-tired, and starving, not having had time for food, I stayed awake for most of the train ride, as it was very interesting. Cuzco is a little lower than La Paz, around 11,300 feet, but the train had to go over a 14,000 foot pass, then slowly wind down to the canyon of the Urubamba river, which it then followed to Macchu Picchu. This canyon was amazing, in some areas more than 10,000 feet deep, as glacier-clad peaks sometimes came in view through the clouds as we descended into the jungle. We arrived to the town of Aguas Calientes, the base village containing hotels, restaurants, and shops, at 1100. I was even more faint from hunger, and tired, but had to catch my bus up to the ruins, so couldn’t stop for a meal. The buses wind up a narrow dirt road about two thousand feet, on the side of cliffs. The terrain there is incredible, I’ve never seen such steep gorges and hills, all clad in thick, tropical vegetation. Two thousand people a day are allowed into the ruins, I was with a group that had an English-speaking guide, so after we cleared the ticket booth (it was almost like entering Disneyland!), we began our tour. My pictures don’t do justice to the incredible terrain here, and the scale of the ruins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu .

Our guide led us around for two hours, explaining the history and purpose of the site, and it’s discovery in 1911, by Hiram Bingham, a Yale University archaeologist. Considering how thick the vegetation is there at 8000-9000 feet on the moist eastern side of the Andes, it’s amazing how thoroughly archaeologists and others were able to clear and restore the ruins. There are even more yet to be restored, sloping down on the side of that steep mountain. It is estimated that thousands of Incan people built the city over a period of 20-30 years, between 1430 and 1460, or so, before it was abandoned, for reasons unknown. The Spaniards never saw it during their conquest of the region 100 years later.

Although I was in near-desperate straights from hunger and lack of sleep, just being at this incredible place helped sustain me. After our tour, we had an hour to ourselves before having to get back on the bus down to Aguas Calientes. I just strolled through the ruins, trying to visualize the people that built the city, and how they lived there. I even made a new friend, she let me approach and pet her long furry neck for a minute, before resuming her meal of tasty green grass.

It started raining as my hour came to an end, so I headed back to the tour bus, on my last legs. I had my best meal during the whole trip at the base village soon after though, fresh sautéed trout from Lago Titicaca, which helped me regain some energy. I was able to sleep most of the way back on the train to Cuzco, which helped even more.

After a much-needed good night’s sleep in Cuzco, I had to re-assess my travel plans. I had a bus seat reserved to return to La Paz that afternoon, but I found out all the bus companies traveling that route were on strike, because of the roadblocks! I had to get back to La Paz as my flight back to Miami was on the 26th, and I had stored two of my bags at my hotel there, so I could travel lightly in Peru. I found a travel agent who spoke some English, and she got me a last-minute plane ticket from Cuzco, to Lima, then an overnight flight back to La Paz, and it wasn’t cheap! I then had two hours to kill before needing to get to the Cuzco airport, so I walked around the main plaza.

These beautiful old cathedrals date back to 1540, and inside (no photographs allowed), elaborate altars with intricate gilt-leaf inlays are present. A turbulent history in that area though, my guidebook listed several battles and assassinations having occurred there over the centuries.

My crowded flight to Lima (filled with stranded people like me) left in the afternoon. It was interesting watching the terrain become increasingly drier as we headed west, and the incredible shroud of air pollution covering bone-dry Lima, population roughly 8 million, which has an annual average precipitation total of less than two inches! Air pollution as bad or worse than any I’ve ever seen in Los Angeles. The Lima airport was also very interesting. I didn’t feel like exploring Lima, not wanting to take any chance of missing my flight back to La Paz, so I stayed in the airport for 8 hours, until my midnight flight. What was so interesting about the Lima airport was the affluence, after being immersed in the poverty of Bolivia and the rest of Peru. Most of it was very new and polished, and the prices for souvenirs, food, and everything else, were higher than I’ve seen anywhere in the U.S.! Obviously only a small fraction of the population of Peru could ever afford to fly, much less be allowed to set foot in that airport.

I noticed a few differences between what I saw in Peru, and experienced in Bolivia. First, prices are significantly higher for everything in Peru, though still cheaper than the U.S., for things like meals and lodging. Second, there were fewer "full-blooded" indigenous people in the areas of my travels in Peru, more people were Mestizo, the mix of indigenous and caucasian, and hence, lighter-skinned, and taller. And third, although the people in Peru were not rude, or hostile in any way, it just seemed like the majority of people I met in Bolivia were friendlier. I'm not sure why, perhaps because the tourist industry in Peru is much more developed, and the number of tourists much greater, that there is some resentment amongst the locals. Who knows...

The rest of my trip was uneventful, a nice restful day in La Paz after getting back in the early morning, then a smooth flight back to Miami, the next morning. All in all, I had a great time in both countries, most of the people were friendly, and though I didn’t get to summit Illimani, the view from 18,000 feet was well worth the hike. The alternating excitement and boredom of the Peruvian road-block experience was also interesting, and a good reminder for me how fortunate we are in the developed countries. I plan on going back to Bolivia some day, as well as to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, more of Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil too, I have developed a fondness for the people and culture of the parts of South America I’ve seen so far.