Peru, The Land Of Ruins

After not eating for about a week it was heaven arriving in Cuzco, a place where you can get every type of food and generally it is delicious. It also offered me a chance to sit in some nice cafes and sip real coffee and enjoy life, knowing that later I would have a soft and warm bed.

Of course like everything in Cuzco, and generally peru, it cost much more than I wanted to spend. Cuzco is tourist trap plain and simple. Unlike Bolivians, most Peruvians speak english, but only to try and sell you things that you do not want.

Shaped like a Puma this ancient Incan city has large churches sitting on old incan sturctures which are displays of the once great civilization. Unlike the current inhabitants of the city the Incans appear to have been an incredibly motivated and industrious people, capable of great advancements in masonry as well as finding hundreds of uses for the coca leaf, generally speaking they were ahead of their time in technology.

Modern day peru is far behind. One of my major greivances was that not a single place accepted credit cards. This includes the train to Machu Pichu, probably the most lucrative business in the city. Most likely the train compnay does well over 10,000 dollars worth of business a day, considering they charge and arm and a leg for a ticket, yet they only accept cash! Then to further prove their backwardsness the train takes 4 hours to travel 60 kilometers, giving you very little time at the park, unless of course you can afford to pay the entrance fee twice as well as stay in overpriced hotels at the site.

Having said that, Machu Pichu is by far the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life. it is quite simply amazing, affording great views of the surrounding andes and bringing to mind just how much labor it must have taken to build. While there we hiked 45 minutes up steep stairs to find a view high above main site. After working our way back down the stairs we wandered the main grounds, which overflows with tourists from all over the world. The ruins themselves are made from massive stones that boggle the mind as you wonder how they ever got carried to such an inconvenient and high place. Wandering around the site are also el paca´s who act as the groundskeepers, knibbling the grass down to near impeccable and consistent height.

After Machu Pichu and Cuzco Nate and I headed for the coast, where we saw sea lions and ate civeche -fish cooked in lime juice- at a national park, which we were led to by a pot-smoking toothless man who I think may have overcharged us but was very friendly.

From there we continued up the coast, through Lima -a great city possesing great food- for a day and then onto Chuan chaco aka the best surfing town in Peru. The waves were perfect and I spent two days with locals surfing the break. We even met an old surfer dude who in his younger days hitchhicked from Chuanchaco to San Fransisco and back.