Second Go-Round in Lima This Trip

The Monument to Miguel Grau Seminario not only is impressive,
but it's right outside of my hotel in the Centro Historico of Lima

I am back in Lima for a few more days of R&R, with the main goal being to recover from the sleepless nights and long days of traveling, which seems to debilitate me worse and worse as I get older. I could respond to this age-related development. Option 1: Travel less. Option 2: Travel for longer periods of time each adventure to allow for R&R time. I plan to utilize Option 2 as long as I remain on this side of the soil. Surprised?

I seem to have caught a bug in Cusco which, at first, I thought was just a symptom of altitude sickness. But altitude sickness does not typically wait for three days to manifest itself. More likely, I caught the bug awhile back, but with all the travel-related issues involving too many days starting way too early and too many sleepless nights, I think I just lost the ability to fight it off. 

This is the Palacio de Poder Judicial. The Palace of Judicial Power. Don't you think that U.S. judges would love for their courthouses to have such a name. Even the U.S. Supreme Court sits in the modestly named United States Supreme Court Building. Think its opinions would carry more weight if they were issued from the Palace of Judicial Power in Washington, D.C.?

Apparently, and I just googled this, you can tour the Palace of Judicial Power, but tours are offered only twice a month and must be booked far in advance. I often seem to do insufficient tourism pre-planning.

Fuente de Neptuno, Neptune Fountain, in Parque Juana Alarco de Dammert, just south of my hotel. I am trying to visit this:

There's lots of construction going on in this area, so finding the entrance to the Centro de Estudios Historico Militares del Perú is proving to be exceedingly difficult.

Cool tree and nice looking vegetation at its base.

Finally, I get to the entrance:

This is listed as the Military Museum of Peru. And it was. Emphasis on that last word: "was." According to google, it still is. According to the soldiers at the entrance, it's not. I will defer to the soldiers guarding the entrance, especially given the fact that they are armed.

I was asking if this was the "Museo Militar," and they pointed across the way to the MALI, which is a museum -- a major museum -- but it's not a military museum. It's the Museo de Arte de Lima, the Lima Museum of Art. Which is sort of the polar opposite of a military museum. When I got back to the hotel, the front desk clerk told me it used to be a military museum open to the public, but it's not anymore. Perhaps the soldiers were trying to tell me that but since none spoke even a few words of English, I did not understand anything other than that this was not a functioning museum at this point in time.

I visited the MALI on my last trip. It's a perfectly nice museum. But it's not worth a second visit. There is only one museum in Lima worthy of repeated visits and it is one of my favorite museums anywhere: the Museo Larco, which has an extraordinary collection of pre-hispanic era antiquities. Well, given that the pre-hispanic era ended over 500 years ago, anything from that era would be an "antiquity" by definition, wouldn't it. (I think I just talked myself into going back to the awesome Museo Larco before this trip ends.)

So, instead, to get my museum fix o' the day, I visited the Museo de Arte Italiano.

No photographs allowed inside. So none were taken. The collection is small, and no major Italian artists are represented. This is not Renaissance-era Italian art. It's generally works for the latter half of the 19th Century. However, admission was a mere three soles, which is a little less than a buck. Well worth it.

In particular, I like two paintings on display far far more than any of others. The first was "Fuerza e inocencia," by Beppe Ciardi. The other one was "The Convalescent," by Alberto Zardo. I've embedded links to on-line photos of these works since I don't want to post anything I don't have license to use. These two jumped out at me from the rest of the collection. I don't know art well enough to explain why I felt these two had an extra added "oomph" in my estimation, but they did.

Last Day in the High Altitude of Cusco

Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, the statue of Pachacuti atop the fountain in the center of the Plaza Mayor,
and a small child who seems oblivious to Pachacuti just over her left shoulder. 

For a tourist town, Cusco sure has a lot of beautiful and/or interesting places where you are not allowed to take photographs inside, even "sin flash." Outdoors? Snap away. Step inside? Put that camera down.

First stop was the often-overlooked Museo Inka, the Inca Museum. Maybe you'd get more visitors, Museo Inka, if you let people take photos inside "sin flash," without flash. A surprisingly large amount of the exhibit space is taken up by the civilizations that prospered and controlled notable swaths of Peru in the pre-Inca era. And thus I learned: the only really important pre-hispanic archaeological area I have not yet visited is Tiawanaku, between La Paz, Bolivia, and Lake Titicaca. And it's high on my list, especially now that Bolivia has cancelled its visa fee for U.S. passport holders.

The Inca exhibits go back to the early years of the Inca, when the Inca were based out of the Lake Titicaca area, before they settled in Cusco. That leaves a surprisingly small part of the collection for the era of the Inca in Cusco, that 125-year period of the Inca Empire that existed before the Spanish arrival. There was pottery. There was jewelry (lots of its nasal based). Some textiles, but those were recreations because textiles disintegrate and do not survive the ravages of times. Mummies? Yes, a few mummies (and this where I would agree with the "no photography" rule -- it's bad enough you spend your eternity as a museum exhibit, but being subjected to endless photography somehow adds to the insult -- so "no photography" is a minor nod in the direction of dignity maintenance).

The biggest disappointment was only one small exhibit case showing the Incan quipus. This is a system of tying knots on strands of cloth for record keeping purposes, mostly numeric but apparently alpha-numeric. The Inca quipu system would be worth a museum in its own right. It's amazing and ingenious and I want to learn more. The Inca Museum, however, is not the place to achieve this objective.

What to do next? Sit in the Plaza Mayor, a.k.a., the Plaza de Armas, and contemplate one's next move.

While sitting there, I noticed something to the northeast corner of the plaza that I had not noticed the other day when I chilling in the chill of Cusco's Plaza Mayor:

Can you see it? Or should I see, can you see him? Up on the horizon line, at the top of the green hill.

Zoom a little closer:

Between those two trees sticking above the horizon line is Cristo Blanco, Cusco's answer to the Christ The Redeemer Statue on Corcovado above Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Zoom in to the max:

Of course, you can walk up and get a close up. But, of course, walking in Cusco Town requires climbing endless stairs. And I'm all staired-out at this point. Of course, it might not be the stairs, or at least not primarily the stairs. Could be the lack of "oxigeno," or, more specifically, "oxígeno respirable," breathing oxygen. I haven't gotten full-blown altitude sickness -- and yesterday's visit out of the "altitude sickness" zone to Machu Picchu helped-- but I do feel a mild tightness in my chest -- sort of like the mild onset of a panic attack -- but it's not a panic attack -- unless I am panicking from the insufficiency of breathable oxygen -- and I tire easily. So no trek up the hill to visit Cristo Blanco.

Final stop of the tourism day was a visit inside El Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, the Church of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit Church:

It's beautiful inside and out. And admission is only 12 soles, which is $3.50, a ridiculous bargain. But, of course, no photography inside the church, even though some of the altar pieces on display are breath-taking. This church, however, has come up with a really good compromise on the "no photography" rule. You can download a QR code and received pictures of everything photogenic inside. It did not do so because I do not have the QR code downloading software on my phone, primarily because I don't trust it. I don't know what's being loaded into my phone with a QR code. While, yes, I do trust the Jesuits to be on the up-and-up with their QR code, I can't say that with most QR codes I'm asked to download (such as restaurants that don't want to give me a paper menu, even one laminated in plastic, and want me to get the menu via a QR code which will send me spam when it's detected that I'm driving close to the restaurant).

But the church's exterior balcony is a "take all the photos you want" zone. So I did. 

The balcony overlooks the Plaza Mayor, which I've photographed before. But not from height!

Same goes with the Cusco Cathedral:

Looks even better from the balcony. And the street view was pretty good to begin with.

Zoom a little closer:

You can barely see Cristo Blanco in this photograph, especially since the clouds are perfectly placed so that the white statue blends almost perfectly into the white cloud.

Same shot, artsy version, framed by the balcony's arch.

Same artsy touch, only the other side of the arch:

Not a lot of photos today because I visited places where photography was verboten. I tried to paint a mental picture here. But this is a photogenic town and real photos would have been preferable. Tomorrow, it's back to sea level or close enough. Where's there's more than enough oxygen for everybody. Oxygen. You don't miss it until there's not enough of it.

Machu Picchu

Huayna Picchu with the town of Machu Picchu in the foreground

Machu Picchu. One of the Seven Wonders of the Tourist World? Or over-hyped?

The mountainsides are steep which means a slow drive up to Machu Picchu on a road with plenty of switchbacks.

Machu Picchu is located in the jungle, at about as high as the jungle can get before it stops being jungle.

Soon the terraces came into view.

And, soon, we were at the entrance to Machu Picchu.

Access is limited to prevent Machu Picchu from being destroyed from over-tourism. Guides are required because tourist do stupid things. They walk where they're not supposed to walk, off the well-marked trails. They fall off cliffs backing up to get that perfect selfie. And your precious time in the park is limited, again as a crowd management practice.

During high season, a tour of Machu Picchu has to be booked months in advance, High season is the Northern Hemisphere summer, which is also when it is drier in Machu Picchu, Cusco, and the Andean Highlands. The rainy season is the slow season, which is why I was able to book a trip a few weeks ago. One of the people in our group actually booked her trip the night before. That is not happening during high season.

Your guide will lead you on a tour of either Circuit 1, Circuit 2, or Circuit 3. Circuit 2 and 3 include the walking through the "town" part of Machu Picchu. Circuit 1 is the higher elevation walk, above the "town," where all the best photography viewpoints may be found. For absorbing the "town" part of Machu Picchu, Circuit 2 would be preferable. For getting the perfect photo, Circuit 1 is King.

We drew Circuit 1.

So this is me before I get all winded climbing up the mountainside to get to all those perfect photo spots because, as any true tourist-about-the-globe will tell you, it is much better to get the perfect photo than it is the perfect experience.

By the way, as an aside, any reference to "going high" and taking Circuit 1 is not a reference to the fact that I've had a few cups of the coca tea to deal with the altitude sickness in Cusco. It really does help. And you want to know what coca tea tastes like? Spinach. It tastes just like spinach. Not what I was expecting.

I am most definitely ready for my close up.

This is our guide Roy. Standing much closer to the edge of the cliff than I would were I him.

But I'm not. Not only am I away from the cliff's edge, I am holding on to this sign as if gravity itself required me to do so.

Looking over at Huayna Picchu.

By the way, most of the mountains here have "picchu" in the name. Machu Picchu is one, must less photographed moutain. Huayna Picchu, which translates to "young mountain," is another. But the whole place is lousy with picchus.

There is a structure visible in front that is believed to have been used by the Inca as a guard house.

Let's talk about some myths and realities about the Inca and Machu Picchu. The Inca Empire lasted for a little more than 100 years before the Spanish arrived in South America. It was not a long-standing Rome-style empire. The Inca had consolidated power only shortly before the Spaniards arrived, but, in their defense, they consolidated power quickly.

The Inca capital was Cusco. Machu Picchu does not appear to have been politically important, religiously important, or militarily important. It was at the outer edge, maybe even beyond the outer edge of actual Incan control. And it was built relatively shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. It may not have been even completed. But the lack of political, religious, or military importance is probably why Machu Picchu survived and, eventually, was lost for a few hundred years. It just wasn't a big enough deal for the Spanish to hunt it down.

 

And the lack of empirical importance is evident from the fact that it was a relatively small town. This was an outpost. It was not a key city in an empire that dominated the western half of the South American continent.

I am looking stern as I contemplate the fate of Machu Picchu.

So, yes, there is an element of the popularity of Machu Picchu being a triumph of marketing. It's not a mysterious and mystical "lost "city. It's a city that "lost" its importance when the empire of which it was a part collapsed.

And being "lost" meant it was not built over, as the Spanish repeatedly did to important political, religious, and military centers of the New World lands it conquered. The irony of Machu Picchu is this: If it were more important, it would not have survived for us to see it for it was in the late 15th Century, on the verge of Spanish conquest of the New World.

And it has llamas:

These, we were told, are definitely llamas because the "jungle" of Machu Picchu is too hot and humid for the furry alpacas.

Close-up view of llamas:

Would it have been nice to explore the town part of Old Machu Picchu?  Yes. But given the limited amount of time you get to see as much as you can by guide -- the alternative being over-tourism that means hardly anyone can enjoy it -- the top-down view did make for great photos.

So, was this one of the Seven Wonders of the Tourist World or just another over-hyped tourist magnet? Can it be both?

I present to you for your consideration, Machu Picchu.

I do have a theory about what the true purpose of Machu Picchu was for the Inca leadership. Read no further if you think this might destroy the magic and mystery. But it shouldn't. Machu Picchu is beautiful and extremely preserved because of -- not in spite of -- the fact that it just was not a critical political, religious, or military center. I also don't think it was a season getaway "country club" for the Inca elite, and some historians have surmised.

Given its location just outside the area of Incan control, I think it served as an intelligence gathering post for potential future conquests as all empires live by the inviolable rule of expand or die. Why else built it here? I know that answer is not romantic. There is no aura of mystery to it. And Machu Picchu does not need to mysterious and magical to have a reason to be. Being a well-preserved, well-maintained glimpse into a world from 500+ years ago, isn't that enough?

The Road to Machu Picchu

Train's on time.

The road is long. With many a winding turn. An overwrought pop song? Or the story of the trek from Cusco to Machu Picchu?

The first leg was by bus.

Not that bus. This bus.

The "many a winding turn" line clearly refers to all the switchbacks getting out of Cusco and then up the hill to Machu Picchu.

Then there was a train.

Not that train.  This train.

A blue PeruRail VistaDome, with glass roofs to see upward into the sky.

Which really isn't necessary because all the scenery you want to see you can see from looking out the windows to your side. You don't need the "up" view.

What, you may be asking, am I doing on the Road to Machu Picchu? You may remember me once saying that Machu Picchu wasn't really on my list. And it wasn't. Until I changed my mind. Which I did. So I went.

The train is the most common, most tourist-friendly way to go. Of course, you could hike the four-day hike along the Inca Trail that runs roughly alongside the train tracks which run roughly alongside the Urubamba River for the journey from Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley to the tourist town of Aguascaliente, the terminus of the rail line to Machu Picchu.

The Urubamba River looked very angry today.

I'm not sure if it is like this all year long or just the rainy season. This is, by the way, the rainy season.

The forecast was for a thunderstorms at Machu Picchu all afternoon.

These last few pics, by the way, were shot looking outside the window of the train car. That's usually not ideal, but it worked because of the amazing scenery, going from the desert-like environment around Ollantaytambo (you can see trackside prickly pear cactus growing a few pictures up) to the jungle area of Aguascalientes.

The travel from Cusco to Aguascalientes was a fairly major decent, going from the 11,150 feet elevation of Cusco, to 9,160 feet above sea level at Ollantaytambo, to a mere 6,790 feet for Agauascalientes. (We will re-ascend to 7,972 feet for Machu Picchu.) Essentially, we go from where altitude sickness is a major problem (Cusco) to maybe a little shortness of breath but no headaches or nausea (Ollantaytambo) to a problem-free elevation at the end of the line (Aguascalientes), with Aguascalientes being the elevation of Flagstaff, Arizona. And no one ever got altitude sickness in Flagstaff.

This is the tourist town of Aguascalientes.

 

Lots of bars and restauraunts, souvenir shops (usually selling stuffed llamas), and some hotels for people who have not scheduled a killer 16-hour one-day round trip to Machu Picchu from Cusco.

The final mode of transit will be another bus.

I love Andean flute music. Who doesn't. It is appropriately atmospheric for the journey from Cusco to Machu Picchu. But after listening to a steady supply of the atmospheric Andean flute on the bus and then the train, a change of pace was nice. This is what was playing on the bus when we started the drive to Machu Picchu.

Next post: Actually being at and seeing Machu Picchu. This post was just about the journey. And isn't that what's it really about it? Well, maybe not when you're talking about one of the world's major tourist destinations.