In the morning, we walked to the central market. I think I've mentioned chicha before. It's a Peruvian mildly fermented beverage made from corn. Corn comes in many shapes and colors in Peru. Here is a guy selling it from five-gallon buckets in the street.
The strawberries weren't overly sweet but were bursting with flavor.
The meat market did not resemble our local markets at home. Meat does not come in neatly wrapped cellophane/styrofoam. I remember a lady telling me at my coffeeshop that she only buys individual chicken breasts because she doesn't like to be reminded about the chicken.
For lunch we went to the restaurant Chicha, based upon several recommendations. Unfortunately, the food wasn't that good, and it was probably the most expensive meal that we had in Peru. Sometimes, it's the hidden gems and surprises that form the best memories.
We spent the afternoon buying gifts for friends and family back home and hanging out in the plaza. Our time in Peru was coming to an end. On the next morning, we flew to Lima.
And then it was a flight to Miami, where we were finally able to complete our Global Entry interviews in anticipation of future international travel. Finally, we were on a flight for Chicago and driving back home.
We will be going to Mexico for a longer trip sometime next year While I plan to write about it during our travels, I'll most likely post here after we return.
One of the reasons for the Peru trip is that Julia has become very interested in the weaving hobby. She is on the programming committee for the Madison Weavers' Guild. After our Cusco guided tour, we walked over to the Textile Collective. In truth, I stayed outside on the sidewalk and people-watched on the busy downtown street, which is more interesting to me. But I took no photos, and Julia did, so here we go:
Here is the website link, if you want to read and see more.
That night, we met with Freddy, our Inca Trail Guide, and met our companions for the Inca Trail hike, which was to begin two days later.
P&G are a male couple from Scotland who had been enduring travel hell for the last few days. Their suitcases, and all of their gear, were still lost somewhere in Europe. Two different airlines were blaming the other.
What made things interesting was that P's bag had an Apple AirTag in it, so they knew that at least one of the bags was somewhere at the Madrid airport. The end result was that they had spent the last few days in Lima, buying all new trekking gear at the North Face store at very high prices.
During the orientation, Freddy explained that the porters would be carrying our tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and 7.5 lbs of our personal gear. We would be carrying day packs only. The hotel desk had a scale, and I was well under the limit; Julia was exactly at the limit. The van would pick us up at 4:30 a.m. for the two hour drive to the trailhead.
Freddy then turned very serious and said, "I have to talk about something that nobody wants to talk about. I have a first aid kit and an oxygen bottle for emergencies, but sometimes it is necessary for people to stop hiking and be evacuated for any number of medical reasons. This will be very expensive, especially if it's a helicopter evacuation. You will be transported to the nearest town and then it will be up to you to pay for any medical care and to get back to Cusco. Again, this will be very expensive. Carry extra cash and credit cards for this purpose."
We kind of all looked at each other, hoping that this would never come to fruition. During the actual hike, events ensued that reminded us of this part of the part of the orientation.
Julia and I generally do not sign up for tours, preferring to look things over on our own. In fact, on the day before our guided tour, we went to the market on our own and and enjoyed that experience.
But when you are in a foreign land, there are some questions that you just can't answer without the help of a local. Like what the heck is that?
As I mentioned before, one doesn't hike the Inca Trail solo. The Peruvian government requires that foreigners be escorted by a licensed guide, who is almost always employed by the tour companies. We chose our tour company because they received excellent TripAdvisor reviews and also are known for smaller groups. We expected our trekking group to be about 8-12 people. When our guide showed up at our hotel, we learned that our group was four people, and the other two people were working out some travel issues. As a result, we would be receiving a private tour.
Freddy turned out to be a great tour guide: down-to-earth, low key, relaxed, and not afraid to express his personal opinion or to ask yours.
That gray stuff in the pic up above taken from the public market? Julia and I speculated that it was some kind of weird seafood. Nope, Freddy said, it's yerky. Julia and I looked at each other before it clicked: jerky. In Peru, meat is heavily salted for preservation. After it's salted and dried, and salted and dried, and salted and dried, that's what Peruvian jerky looks like. It did not look like something that I wanted to put in my mouth.
During the first part of the tour, Freddy took us up into the hillside to the ruins near Cristo Blanco. While we learned a lot about the Inca culture, Freddie was blunt about the fact that so much is still unknown. The stones used to build the temples and government buildings were moved long distances and up steep mountainsides. The Inca had no horses or oxen. There were no steel tools for cutting or shaping stone.
Experts today can only hypothesize how the materials for construction were transported and then used at the building sites. And the hypotheses keep changing as more ruins are uncovered and analyzed.
Sacrifice Altar for people and animals
Window to a window to a window
Why can't we look back at the Inca written history to answer some of these questions? Because there isn't any. The Inca depended upon an oral history.
When the Spanish arrived during the 1500's, they killed off all of the leaders and educated people among the Inca. The Spanish also destroyed many temples. As a result, their history was mostly lost. The Spanish didn't care much about learning the Inca construction techniques, but they were seriously focused about learning where the hidden Inca gold was. As it turns out, there is very little gold or silver in the Cusco area. The precious metals mined from other places in Peru were carefully hidden away in the jungle--and only the elite knew the hiding places.
When the Spanish demanded to know where the gold was, the remaining Inca honestly answered that all of the people who had the answers were dead. To this day, treasure hunters are still trying to find the Inca gold.
Until we talked to Freddy, we had admired dozens of large Spanish churches. Freddy told us that the Spanish destroyed the Inca temples in Cusco, and replaced them with Catholic churches on the same sites. Somehow, the cathedrals didn't seem quite as beautiful with that knowledge.
Freddy left us around noon, letting us know for the first time that he would be our Inca Trail guide also. We would meet that night with our fellow trekkers and for our orientation.
The place that we heard and read about was called Chicha. One doesn't get a table for dinner there without reservations. And there were simply no reservations available before our Inca Trail hike, unless we were willing to eat at 9:30 p.m. I'm not one for eating a meal right before bedtime.
Instead, we ended up at a place called Morena Peruvian kitchen which overlooked the Plaza de Armas. Peru is well-known for delicious food, and this was probably the best dining experience that we've had in many years anywhere for less than the price of Olive Garden in the U.S.
It started with a Pisco Sour. Pisco is a grape distilled spirit. The cocktail is generally made with Pisco, lime juice, egg white, and bitters. Mine had some other fresh juices in it and was made table-side--something new to me.
Julia and I shared an appetizer: grilled alpaca on a skewer, along with potatoes and vegetables. Peru has over 200 varieties of potatoes.
Yes, the flowers are edible
Julia had a non-alcoholic drink made from purple corn and a chicken dish.
I had what they called beef stir-fry, but that doesn't do it justice. The marinated beef was flavorful and so tender that you could cut it with a fork.
Next up: our guided tour of Cusco's public market and historical sites.
Long time readers will recall that Julia and I took a tour of a chocolate factory in Belize in 2019. It isn't a coincidence that we toured one in Peru. First, I love chocolate. Second, there is a roasting process for cocoa beans (technically, cacoa seeds) that is somewhat similar to the roasting process for coffee.
When I roasted coffee commercially, I was approached by an investor in a Hawaii chocolate operation He wondered if there might be a way for me to roast cocoa beans in my Lodi shop. Meh, it wouldn't really be practical. The temperatures are much lower for roasting. And coffee beans and cacoa seeds don't mix very well on the same roasting machine in terms of odors and the clean-up.
But I'm still very interested in the process. The chocolate factory was around the corner from our hotel and offered a free self-tour. We feasted our eyes on the process but didn't buy anything here due to the "special" gringo prices. We later bought chocolate at the general market (more on that later).
Cacao Seeds and Sugar
This photograph shows the seed grinder and the mixers for the cacao and sugar. Factory workers are shaping and packaging.
When Julia and I came down the steep stairs from Cristo Blanco, we were greeted by all kinds of festivities in the Plaza de Armas, which take place every Sunday morning.
Girls Middle School Band
The photo above shows both the adult band and the local officials under the red tent presiding over the flag ceremony. On every Sunday morning, hundreds of local people in Cusco come to the plaza to watch the raising of the Peruvian flag and the flag of Cusco. Patriotic songs are sung to cheers. The flag ceremony takes well over an hour, including speeches. All of that time the flag raisers must stand at attention.
Elections were to take place the following Sunday. In Peru, voting is mandatory. There are no alcohol sales on the day preceding the election, the day of the election, or the day after the election. Voter id cards are required. There are stiff fines for not voting. Because so many people had their voter id card expire during the pandemic, there were long lines of people wearing masks to enter buildings in order to renew their voting cards during the week before the election. The reason that elections take place on Sundays is because that is the day off for family. Work is not an excuse. If one is required to work on Sunday, employers are required to let employees have time off to vote.
We were both feeling pretty good when we went to bed on the previous night. However, morning came at 4 a.m when the hotel kitchen staff started getting ready for breakfast, which is available from 4:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. Our room was across a small courtyard from the kitchen, but we made the mistake of leaving our windows open.
After breakfast and coca tea, we left the hotel at 7:30 a.m. for our self-directed hike to Cristo Blanco, the most famous monument in Cusco. Make no mistake about it: this was not a nature hike. We would walk on pavement across the city, past the tourist areas, and up into the mountainside where working class Cusco lives.
The Spaniards built cathedrals everywhere in Cusco, so I guess it's no surprise that a huge white Jesus overlooks the city. There were some other interesting sites along the way.
We were so focused on getting to the top of the mountain that we took a wrong turn into some ruins.
A very upset parks employee came up to us and demanded that we buy $40 tickets to keep looking at the ruins. When we asked where Cristo Blanco was, she gave us a disgusted look and pointed to where we had missed our turn. I think she said "gringos" under her breath but it could have been something more colorful.
I can't say that I was impressed with the 26' tall White Jesus, but I liked his view.
We took a different way back down. I don't think Julia liked these steps.
But she made it without blowing out a knee. We survived our first steep hike above 11,000' and experienced some breathlessness but no other side affects. We didn't know at the time that these stairs were a very good introduction for the Inca Trail later that week.
It was only 9 on a Sunday morning. The city was just beginning to wake up. More on that in the next post.
Our tour guide gave us several instructions for the first couple of days acclimating to Cusco's elevation. Avoid physical exertion. No alcohol. Stay with safe foods. She recommended the chicken soup and no seafood or red meat.
After five hours on the ground without eating, we sat down at Los Portales, a restaurant facing the Plaza Kusipata, and started breaking the rules.
Julia ordered trout soup, and I ordered seco de cordero (lamb in cilantro sauce). To drink, I ordered a Cusquena Dorada, which was a malty pilsner that came in a 620 ml bottle. The entire meal, including tip, was $25. Everything was delicious. The fruits and vegetables in Peru are more flavorful than the genetically-engineered stuff in the U.S., designed for maximum shelf life. Our stomachs survived the adventurous meal.
Naughty rule-breakers
On the next morning, we would break the remaining rule and go for a rigorous hike.
Fortified with our coca tea, Julia and I headed out into the streets of Cusco. A city of about 500,000 people, the tourist areas of Cusco are relatively safe and easy to find one's way around.
Cusco has two seasons: wet and dry. We were there at the end of the dry season, so it was appropriate that it rained on the day we arrived. It's rare to rain all day, so after an hour or so, the rain stopped, and the streets dried up.
When we arrived in Cusco, a representative of Sun Gate Tours was waiting for us at the airport with a sign that said "Julia." This was very exciting to me because I've seen many folks with signs at airports but the sign was never for us before.
That's because we've never booked a tour like this before. Our normal way of travel is to explore the area on our own. However, that's not possible if you want to hike the Inca Trail. Peru requires all hikers to be accompanied by a government-licensed guide and to have an Inca Trail government permit. These permits are highly sought-after, and one generally needs to get a permit months in advance.
The easiest way to get a guide/permit is to sign up for a tour package. The tour company then handles everything: airport transfers, booking the hotel, booking day excursions, hiring Inca Trail guides, cooks, and porters, transfers to and from the trail, and transfers back to the airport at the end of the trip.
Isn't that expensive, you might ask? Probably, yes. However, to pay for this trip, Julia used credit card points that she earned from paying for stuff over the course of thirty years of operating her business. Peru was on her bucket list, so my frugality had to be set aside. Besides, I was getting to hike in some very cool mountains so I kept my mouth shut about costs.
Flying from Lima to Cusco, we were changing in elevation from sea level to over 11,000 feet. We immediately noticed the thin air, and our tour company representative advised us to avoid any alcohol, to take it easy for the first couple of days, and to drink lots of coca tea. One makes coca tea by dropping whole leaves of the coca plant into hot water. Our hotel kept a big glass container of leaves in the lobby, along with hot water. When we arrived at the hotel, we did as we were told.
While the leaves of the coca plant are the base for making cocaine, coca tea is only a mild stimulant. I'm not sure how much it helped us to adjust to the elevation, but it tasted pretty good--much like green tea. After a long travel day to Lima and only a few hours of sleep, the tea was just what we needed before heading out to explore Cusco on our first day.
