Tag Archives: Scenery

Trains (well, train)….

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18th April 2018

[Short read but lots of pictures alert]

All too soon our day of leisure in Cusco was over and the relentless tourism resumed with an 0500 alarm set for the next day, all so we could go and catch a train. Not just any old train, though – we would have got up later for that – but the Titicaca train, operated, as is the Machu Picchu service we travelled, by PeruRail, and thus sharing many of the same characteristics – friendly staff, drinks and food on board and a fashion show to try to extract a few extra tourist dollars. However, the journey we were undertaking was a significant one – over 10 hours to cover the 384 kilometres from Cusco across the mountains to Puno, on the shores of Lake, you guessed it, Titicaca. (Starting altitude 3,354m above sea level, finishing at 3,828m and, in the middle, getting up as high as 4,319m – over 14,000 feet, and within a very short spit of 2.7 miles high. By way of comparison, the cabin pressure you experience on a typical jet flight is equivalent to an altitude of 2,000 – 2,500m).

If one has to spend 10 hours on a train going over very significant mountainous terrain, it’s reassuring to know that a full meal (and bar) service is provided, as is an observation car.

Prompt at 0710 we started the journey and it was immediately clear that we were in for some great scenery.

It was also nice to see the locals waving a friendly greeting as the train went by.

as well as some who were simply getting on with the daily grind of, for example, subsistence farming of quinoa,

or llamas

which may well have this as their home.

After a short while, the entertainment started in the bar.

and it became clear that the repertoire of traditional Peruvian music stopped at around El Condor Paso (yes, the tune immortalised by Simon and Garfunkel) and tunes such as Hotel California and Sweet Child of Mine were pressed into service – all with some skill and great verve. There was also a dancer

who had at least one costume change and who also got passengers involved in the fun.

And then it was time for the fashion show.

before we had a stop at the highest point, La Raya, where – goodness me! – there was a retail as well as a photo opportunity. My, what a surprise!

Then lunch was served and we could all settle in to a nice siesta.

The scenery continued, of course

(the power of prayer clearly being insufficient to hold this church together)

and then we noticed a bit of a change in the landscape, from the absolutely ubiquitous terracing (e.g. above) to stone-walled corrals

perhaps indicative of a move out of the Inca influence and towards the Titicaca tribes, who it is thought were the first to people the land in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. But this was only temporary, and before too long we were back to terracing, so who knows?

As time moved on, the landscape flattened out and we passed all sorts of rural scenes: evidence of oat farming on quite a big scale;

as well as subsistence farming (this is quinoa)

and we’re not sure what this chap was carrying.

Adobe is a common building material

and we even saw a couple of flamingoes, something I had never expected.

And then….we hit the outskirts of the major town of the area, Juliaca (whence we shall fly en route home in a couple of days). It was, frankly, dispiriting, with a very scruffy industrial area outside the town

which gave way to an extraordinary scene – a market of sorts, bordering the railway, for what seemed like several kilometres into the town.

with stalls literally within centimetres of the train as it went by – and even….

…on the track itself! I’ve called it dispiriting, but I guess it’s just how life goes here, and people were calling out cheerily to the train as we went by; they didn’t seem dispirited.

From Juliaca to Puno is flat and uneventful, although you do start to see the incursion of Lake Titicaca as you go along.

From a brief conversation with a guide, I believe we’ll find out much more about this when we go out on the lake tomorrow. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out, won’t you?

Breathless in Cusco

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16th April 2018

After the toils and travails of walking up to Machu Picchu, I was looking forward to some less relentless tourism – a visit to Cusco, the city that was the centre of the Inca empire in its glory days.

The journey from Machu Picchu involved once again catching the train to Ollantaytambo, where we had a chat with a couple from Bristol who were nearer the start of their South American adventure than the end. Remarkably, the train staff, having served drinks and snacks, then staged a fashion show with a view to selling us some fine examples of Andean costumery. I bet no-one told them about this sort of thing during careers guidance at school.

The train journey was followed by two hours of purgatory in a taxi. The driver seemed to be a devotee of a particularly tedious variant of traditional Peruvian music which he started playing to us, unasked. It involved a low-quality synthesised guitar/harp/keyboard background to a couple of guys who mainly shouted things like “Ariba!”, “chicos!”, “Cusco!”, “senoritas”, “cerveza!” and so on, and who very rarely actually sang anything recognisable as a tune. At every change of track, I prayed for some variety, but no – tempo, key and harmonic structure, involving just two chords, carried on unabated. I hope the driver enjoyed the music, otherwise there were three of us in the car who hated the music.

Since Cusco’s altitude, at 3,400m above sea level, is somewhat higher than anything I’d experienced before, I was expecting perforce to have to take things gently. In the event, I didn’t suffer from altitude sickness – but I did suffer from altitude. The visit’s prospect of a full day at leisure, something that we’d come to realise is important to factor in to long holidays such as ours, was thus very alluring.

However, we still had to be ready at 0830 to be taken on a guided tour of the city and its environs – who says tourism is relaxing, eh? We were reunited with Camila, our Sacred Valley guide, and she started off by taking us up to Cristo Blanco – the white statue of Jesus Christ which oversees the city. The site offers an excellent view over Cusco.

After this, we went to the nearby Inca site of Saqsaywaman. This was a citadel, with sections originally built by the Killke people, with the Incas adding to it from the 13th century. It’s a large site, with two temples either side of a huge plaza, large enough to hold several thousand people for ceremonial occasions. This is a panorama across the huge main Temple of the Sun, taken from the other temple on the site.

(Note: I had to walk up about 30 largish Inca-style steps to bring you this photo, at the top of which I had to sit down for a couple of minutes, since this site is at 3,700m altitude. So, thank you. Thank you for appreciating the effort I’ve had to make to bring you this educational piece.)

As you can see, the main temple is very substantial (indeed, the whole site occupies some 3,000 hectares). The wall is some 400 metres long, and the estimated volume of stone in the temple is 6,000 cubic metres. The stones in the bottom layers of that wall are vast, with the largest estimated to weigh 125 tonnes.

and yet, you can clearly see the precision with which the stones have been fitted together, with no mortar, and no room even to slide a piece of paper between the stones. The precision of construction and the intricacy of interlocking design are thought to have been the reasons that the site has survived Cusco’s various devastating earthquakes.

To remind visitors that there was doubtless a ceremonial aspect to the site involving the sacrifice of llamas, there are camelids on the site, in this case alpacas, both long- and short-haired varieties; we were particularly taken with this cute little one which can only have been days old.

After the visit to Saqsaywaman, it was time to head back into Cusco proper, where Camila took us to a well-known market called San Pedro (in the square outside St. Peter’s Church).

Before going in, she warned us to take only essential items, as the risk of pickpockets was high.

The San Pedro market was similar in concept to the San Francisco market we’d visited in Quito – organised in sections and with a food court – but much larger and more crowded (hence better turf for pickpockets, I suppose – at any rate we escaped unscathed in that respect). Like all such markets it’s very interesting, varied and colourful.

There are plenty of stalls offering fabrics and clothes; and if they don’t have your size, they can easily make adjustments for you there and then.

As well as the official stallholders, there are people selling from ad hoc locations just sitting on the floor (they need the relevant stallholder’s permission to do this). This one, for example, was selling cuy (guinea pig), and you could take your pick – raw or cooked!

After the bustle of the market, it was time to make things more thoughtful and spiritual, with a visit to a major temple site in Cusco, called Qorichanka. This was the most important temple in the Inca empire (of which Cusco was the capital, as you’ll know, because you’ve been keeping up).

Since this can roughly be translated as “the place with gold”, you’ll not be surprised to learn that it was pillaged by the Spanish when they arrived. Indeed, having stolen the gold, they destroyed much of what was left in building the Church of San Domingo which stands there now. However, some of the original Inca stonework survives, and, indeed supports parts of the church.

There were three temples on the original site – the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon and the Temple of Venus and the Stars. The type of stonework was the most sophisticated and labour-intensive sort, called ashlar masonry, involving cuboid blocks of similar size, fashioned to the most exacting standards in order to fit together with complete precision.

Here you can see the precision involved; even though the lines of the stone are not necessarily completely straight, the fit is as snug as a very snug thing indeed.

and the precision of alignment of the various components very high.

This was why the Inca remains have survived Cusco’s devastating earthquakes, whereas the church has had to be rebuilt. Hah!

Camila pointed out one other feature which underlined how clever the Incas were. As I say, the stonework was made to great precision (indeed, modern “experts” have failed to disassemble the remnants of the temple stonework without damage, trying to understand how the ashlar masonry worked, and have been unable to reassemble it with the original precision).

The protuberance top left is actually part of a sundial, very carefully calibrated to allow the Incas to understand the time and the seasons. Clever chaps, the Incas.

We were allowed to photograph as much of the Inca work as we liked, but prohibited from photographing the colonial/catholic religious parts of the site. In theory this is out of respect (cameras can be noisy in use; and there is nothing in the world of photography more dispiriting than seeing someone waving a selfie stick around in a place of worship) and possibly because camera flash light can be damaging, and there are (too many) people in this world who don’t even realise that their camera is using flash, far less understand how to stop it doing so. In practice, I actually believe it’s so they can sell you postcards.

The next place we visited, and the final one on our tour, was the cathedral, on the (handsome) main square of Cusco.

No, they don’t let you take photos inside there, either, so this is all you get. However, we were amused by the stories that Camila told us of the rivalry between the cathedral (left, above) and the Franciscan church (the other slab of masonry in the photo). There was political point scoring on every side, with the cathedral having to add elaborate decoration on the front and a dome on top to match the (very ritzy) façade and dome of the Franciscan church; to add two other chapels to make it larger than the Franciscan church; and to forbid the Franciscans from using a part of the building for religious purposes to limit the size of the Franciscan church so that the cathedral was actually larger.

Despite not being able to do anything without sitting down and taking a rest every few minutes, despite the occasionally ridiculous and noisy traffic and despite the difficulty sleeping because of the resonant quality of the hotel plumbing and/or the barking dogs, I liked Cusco a lot. It felt safer, it was more compact, and it had more history to be explored than other South American cities and it has been a pleasure to be here.

A train, a boat and planes lie between us and going home, so stay tuned. But for now it’s time for lunch. (Time For The Bar happened about halfway through the above.)

Oy, Oy, Ollantaytambo – a day in the Sacred Valley

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13th April 2018

[Long Read Warning – this was a content-rich day. Get a coffee, or a drink, is my advice]

The valley that runs from Pisac to Ollantaytambo was called the Sacred Valley by the Incas, as it ran along side of the Urubamba river, also known as Willkamayu in the local Quecha language, meaning “sacred river”. It became an important part of the Inca empire, and having the advantages of lower altitude and water, was a good area for farming, principally maize and potatoes.

Our day in the Sacred Valley was spent travelling through the valley from Pisac to Ollantaytambo. The weather at first was very dull – raining quite hard at times – but it cheered up as the day progressed.

Pisac is well-known for its market, which takes over a latge part of the town. These days, it plays mainly to tourists, and, like many such, it’s a colourful place.

Many of the stallholders dress traditionally,

and there are one or two locals also dressed traditionally, in the hope of getting a tourist Sol or two as a photo opportunity.

Some of the fabric designs are wonderful.

Traditional dress figures strongly among the locals (particularly, it must be said, the older ones)

but modern life exists alongside tradition.

Carrying milk, direct from the cow, to sell it at a stall

 

Shortly after I took the picture above, one of the ladies handed her lamb to the other, and pottered off on some mission or other.

The town itself is pleasant, quite pretty in places, but the usual South American mix of colour, charm and scruffiness.

On the outskirts is a tiny church (not the only one, but the cutest)

and many of the buildings sport a pair of animal statues on their roofs, by way of a blessing.

The town is well-paved, with aqueducts running along many of the streets

beside which you see mosaic versions of many Inca animals, with the condor (the animal the Incas held in very high regard) featuring often, in different representations.

and other traditional Inca animals such as the snake (bottom of the snake-puma-condor hierarchy).

Occasionally, you can see, outside a shop, a small basket hangingn on a pole. This means that the establishment is a public bakery. People can bring things – including cuy, or guinea pig – to be baked.

If the pole sports a red thing at the end,

it means that the place serves chicha, a local alcoholic drink. There are plenty of these establishments.

The town’s Inca roots can be seen in some still-extant terracing, originally used for farming, but here used to support a cemetery. Note the protrusions in the middle of the terrace wall; these form an Inca-style staircase

which is still in use today!

Our journey from Pisac to Ollantaytambo involved some notable items of interest. For example, a town called Lamay seems to specialise in eateries which will serve you the local delicacy – guinea pig, or cuy. The marketing is not subtle

in the way that it tells you that you get guinea pig on a stick.

Jane tells me that it smelt delicious.

Cuy is very clearly a delicacy and one to market heavily.

We stopped for lunch (not guinea pig!) at a splendid place called “Sol y Luna“, which, being Relais et Chateau, was, obvs, dead posh. We had a lovely lunch and were, unexpectedly, entertained with a display of traditional Peruvian horsemanship

and dancing.

After lunch we went to Ollantaytambo, which was a delight, but only after bumping up a considerably cobbled road through narrow streets. The town itself is, yes, typically South American – charming in places, scruffy in others and quite colourful.

but what it’s best-known for is a very substantial Inca fortress.

which you can climb up if you have the stomach (or, rather, the lungs) for 300 steps up at altitude. If so, you get to see some fabulous Inca stonework

with beautifully interlocking (and very substantial) stones which provide a base stable enough to resist earthquake)

containing niches for idols, fashioned in the traditional Inca trapezoidal shape)

and differentiating between the temple part (on the left, with top notch stonework) and the farming part (on the right, still good stonework, but not of the top quality reserved only for noble houses and temples).

At the top is the throne, reserved for the ruler to view his fiefdom,

and this is his view. Note that the alignment of this is such that at spring equinox, the sun rises exactly over the top of the mountain in the centre of the picture.

There was a huge amount to learn from the Ollantaytambo site – how the accoustics of the design allowed for eavesdropping on conversations at a lower level; how it was never completed; how much of it was buried so that when the Spaniards came and took over (after a battle which they lost, incidentally) they didn’t find (and hence destroy) what was there – it’s around 80% complete and only the perishable stuff (like roofing, traditionally made using bamboo to support thatching) has disappeared. Some restoration work has been done, but fundamentally the site has survived over the centuries due to the remarkable stoneworking abilities of the Incas.

This was the first significant exposure to Inca work that we had seen on our travels, and it was a very impressive site and sight. There is much to learn about the Incas, and Camila, our guide, gave us some wonderful historical and cultural insights. I’ve tried to get across some of them, but, fundamentally, what takes your breath away is the size and scale of the place – an excellent end to a long and varied day.