The HOPE team goes to Peru!

Today two big things happened: we made Christmas trees in the daycare (huge deal for me), and I got a letter from my dearly missed friend, Pari, in the States! It was the first piece of mail addressed to me (is that sad since it's been over three months?) and I was pretty thrilled to get it. So, just in case anybody cared about this tidbit of fact, I'll announce on my blog that it doesn't cost much to send a letter to Bolivia. :)

Now, on to what's been happening here in South America. Big things first: the HOPE team went to Peru! Two weeks ago on Thursday we headed to the airport at 7am ("we" being my parents, Lin, Jordyn, Matt, Gwen, Ashley, Mark, and myself) and took the short flight to Cusco, Peru. I'll split my documentation of the trip into the days to make it easier to follow:

:)

THURSDAY: The first thing we saw getting out of the Cusco airport: a McDonald's billboard. Jordyn, Matt and I being typical American youth, took pictures and vowed to fulfill our promise from a few days ago that we would go (naturally, Matt found out that Mickey D's was in Cusco, so we had our real freak-out session days before arriving). As we got into the city, we realized just how tourist-filled this capital city of the Incas is. It's a typical South American city with historic buildings, beautiful architecture, surrounded by breathtaking mountains and rampant with really cute latino kids, but I'd estimate about half the people we saw on the streets were foreign tourists. We'll see the occasional gringo or other tourist here and there in La Paz, but Cusco simply survives off tourism, so there's white people all around. It was incredible; as stunning as the city of Cusco was, I came to appreciate the thoroughly Bolivian city La Paz is. (Of course, there's tons of political comments I could make about the benefits of tourism and how President Evo is slitting the throat of his own country by egotistically prohibiting American merchandise and companies to infiltrate it and hence advertise the beauty of Bolivia to expats and visitors... but I won't say anything about it now.)

(Half of) Plaza de Almas

The "youngins" of the team

We spent the whole day in Cusco; we shopped in a market, ate lunch and dinner at different places in la Plaza de Almas (where Pizarro proclaimed conquest of the city back in the day!), went to a meeting with our tour guide, and mainly just walked around the downtown area. It's definitely a stunning city, but much less extreme than La Paz, in many ways. The best part of the day was probably sitting on a balcony overlooking the plaza at lunch and trying to guess where everyone below us was from. Determining Germans from Australians is harder than it sounds, really.

Cusco hotel

In Cusco we stayed in a breathtaking 300-year old house renovated into a hostel. Other than that morning I slipped down the entire flight of stairs, and Matt being sick the whole time, our stay there was perfect. (By the way, I still have bruises the colors of Barney and all his friends on my knee and thigh from that nasty spill on the death stairs, which my dad later stumbled down, as well.)

Lookout over the Sacred Valley

FRIDAY: Early the next morning, the groggy-eyed HOPE team clambered into a mini-van that would take us to the town of Ollantaytambo (they keep names short over there in Peru), where we would later catch a train to the pueblito beneath Machu Picchu called Aguas Calientes. On the two-hour van ride, our (really good-looking) tour guide named Edi described to us the historical significance of the Sacred Valley that we were traveling through. When we arrived in Ollantaytambo, which hosts the ruins of a small Incan city shaped like a llama (!!), we took a quick hike to look at an alleged Incan prison and some ancient storehouses. We passed time in Ollantaytambo (that's the last time I'm typing it), then boarded a train to Aguas Calientes. After two hours of stunning scenery and making puzzles and sitting in super comfortable seats and drinking "Inka Kola", the team disembarked at the tiny tourist-based town nestled at the feet of crazily dramatic and green mountains.

See the llama?

We spent that afternoon walking around Aguas Calientes, which really only featured a few streets swarming with desperate white-people-seeking merchants, shopping and eating pizza. Later, Ashley, Jordyn, Matt and I headed up to the natural hot springs (aguas calientes, get it?) and soaked for an hour in a lukewarm, murky pool that reeked of pee and was filled with flirtatious hairy foreign men. Needless to say, the experience was worth 10 soles, as we laughed the whole time at our typical luck. And we completely lost it when we are accidentally flashed by old French women (no pictures of that, don't worry). That night we went out to a nice dinner with the entertainment of my parents and Mark and Lin dancing to Andean music. Naturally after that full day of traveling and walking and swimming in pee-stench, we all collapsed in exhaustion the minute we got back to the hotel.

Starting to clear up

Still super foggy

SATURDAY: At four in the morning, Gwen, Dad and our new German friend/travel companion Toby began their trek on the thousand-stair passage up the side of Machu Picchu's mountain. The rest of the team was not so willing nor energetic, so we took a bus at 5:30am, zig-zagging across the misty mountain, until we reached the site's entrance gates. There we met the sweaty hiking trio as well as our friendly tour guide, Darcy. The first thing you see after entering the site grounds is the recently redone part of the city, where 90% of the stone buildings we saw were majorly reconstructed by scientists and archeologists. Our first hour in Machu Picchu was spent listening to Darcy talk about the history of the lost Incan city, and we sat in the same place without walking around because, at six in the morning, the fog was still thick over the site. At some points early on you could barely see ten feet ahead, but as the sun rose higher and the fog began to lift, it became clearer and clearer that we were standing in one of the world's greatest wonders. The severely sensational mountains all around us slowly became apparent, as well as the enormity of Machu Picchu itself with all its stone walls and farming pastures and guard houses and temples and astronomy/astrology rooms and multitudes of tourists. As we roamed about, snapping pictures and listening to Darcy, it was impossible not to be in awe of the genius of the Incan people. So many things that we learned and saw left me with my jaw dropped. For example, one room that never supported a roof was declared an astronomy room for the priestesses (since the moon was a feminine god while the sun was masculine). In the middle of the floor there were two circular figures raised in the stone that served as looking pools; water that remained on the surface of the circles stilled and functioned as mirrors reflecting the night skies. Another thing that amazed me was the irrigation system--little fountains all throughout the city that haven't ceased their flow of water to this day. I also won't forget to mention the colossal sundial, the carved boulder exactly replicating the appearance of the distant mountain range behind it, the thirty-six angle rock, the twelve month stone calendar, and beautiful ancient red flowers sprouting up all around the ruins!

Here's what we saw when the fog cleared!

Mark, Mom, Matt, Jordyn, Me, Ashley

Templo del Sol (Temple of the Sun) with altars and what not

Needless to say, the city of Machu Picchu itself was breathtaking and awe-inspiring, for both historical and aesthetic reasons. After we had walked through almost all of the city, the lot of us minus Mom, Lin and Mark trekked over to the foot of Waynu Picchu, the huge mountain next to Machu Picchu that hosts more Incan ruins at the peak. The hike up Waynu Picchu is notoriously arduous, but who could go to Machu Picchu without getting the full experience? So Dad, Gwen, Ashley, Matt, Jordyn and I began our journey up the steep ancient mountain. It took over an hour to reach the peak and thirty minutes to descend. Those two hours consisted of me stumbling all over the place (typical), ripping my dad's rain jacket (typical), getting rocks accidentally kicked on me by Argentine men above us (typical), and then making friends with them (typical). As we ascended the cruelly steep stairs up Waynu Picchu and passed by exhausted victors clambering down, we were always encouraged by the passing groups that we were "almost there". Fifteen minutes later, still receiving "almost there"s. Fifteen more, same thing. An hour later, we were actually "there", sweating and angry at all the liars who had happily descended past us. (Of course, when we later went down the mountain ourselves, we encouraged each struggling hiker we passed that they were "almost there," despite their being ten minutes into the hike.)

View from Waynu Picchu

My water bottle's there
somewhere...

The view from the peak of Waynu Picchu is one I'll never forget. Albeit, there was limited space on the few boulders to sit on at the top, and it would've been all to easy to take the terribly nasty fall off the mountain, and I did drop my water bottle down the side (once again, typical), but none of us minded any of that. We sat for a few minutes and were overwhelmed by the exquisite scenery--alongside tons of other foreigners--and shortly thereafter it began to pour down cold, fat raindrops (yet again, typical, as right when we reach the summit and before we scramble down the slippery stone steps it starts to rain). The rain inevitably made our descent a lot more interesting and forced us to be extremely careful (I fell many times, I assure you), and various times on a very narrow path, someone in the group would being singing "I'm coming up, Lord, and I'm coming up soon!"

Jairo and I

So, the experience in Machu Picchu was unforgettable, and when we boarded the bus to leave the site we were all cheerfully exhausted, accompanied by our wet ponchos and Machu Picchu-stamped passports. I also made friends with a whole class of Peruvian teenagers on the bus; the girls exchanged emails with me and the boys took individual photos with me. By the time we arrived back in our cozy hotel in Aguas Calientes, I felt that I'd had a thoroughly awesome experience in Machu Picchu, which had been one of my dream trips for many years. A cherry on top of it all was the new friend I found in Jairo, the five-year-old son of our hotel owners in Aguas Calientes! Because nobody was energized enough to do anything when we got back, we all sat in the lobby together, watching Independence Day in Spanish and ordering cafe con leche after cafe con leche; I got lots of great bonding time with Jairo playing 52 card pick-up over and over again.

HOME: That night we took a train back to Ollantaytambo, then hopped on a van back to Cusco. Late Sunday morning we flew back home to La Paz, weary, grateful, filled with experiences and glad to be home.

So there's my take on our voyage to Peru; I'm sure another HOPE team member has an even better account of it all. Of course, there's tons of things to catch you all up on from these past two weeks in La Paz, but I'll save it for a later post. Thanks for reading, and please remember to keep the La Paz church, the HOPE team, and the children of Bolivia in your prayers!