Today is our day to enjoy the hotel Titilaka, and Lake Titicaca. We arrived yesterday late in the afternoon after two flights and a lot of driving, and basically settled into that room and had dinner.

{/rant on} Our travel agent insisted that we only needed two nights in each of the last three stops: Cusco, Titilaka and Culca Canyon. That might work if, for instance, you leave one location after breakfast and arrive at the next shortly after noon for lunch. But the transfers between each of these, plus the one to Cusco from MP, consume the entire day. Thus you have a single day in each location before having to pack and leave again. That is not enough time to enjoy any of them, let alone enough time for relaxation.

We discussed this with him several times, but he consulted his advisors and insisted it would be fine. It’s not. {/rant off}

The food at this hotel is adequate.

Our room faces east overlooking the lake, with a huge picture window. So our plan was to wake early and watch the sunrise over the lake. So we woke about 5:30am – sunrise today is 5:50 (1) – and found the sky was grey.

There are a number of activities at the hotel. Perhaps the most unique one is to visit two islands in the lake – one a set of man-made floating islands, and the other a natural island with a very primitive pre-Inca culture. We didn’t want to spend the entire day away, and the second island included a one mile uphill walk (2), so we selected the three+ hour trip to the floating islands.

We didn’t really know what to expect with “floating islands”. The ride out in the launch was comfortable enough, and took about an hour and a half. While it was still cold outside it was comfortable in the cabin. On the way, our guide explained about the cultures in and around the lake and gave us some insight of what to expect. But we were still surprised as we approached our island.

A large ceremonial gondola approached our launch, being poled by a member of the island we were visiting. This was to take us to the island. The structure of the gondola is entirely made from reeds that grow in this shallow part of the lake and are harvested for everything. The body of the gondola is filled with empty plastic bottles – reuse at its best.

The picture in the upper left was taken once we were all loaded into the gondola.

The next part of the program was a second fellow who came out in his work boat – same construction as the gondola we were on – and showed us how they harvest the reeds, and collect fish from their nets.

We were then invited onto the island itself. It’s hard to believe, this entire structure reeds and filled with empty plastic bottles – is floating. Its ties to five stakes tethered in the lake bed. This one is one of a group of five islands in this area; there is a much larger group several miles away with perhaps 20 islands. This island has five families, all related. We got to look into their living quarters, and see brief demonstrations of some of their daily activities. Sally bought some bracelets for gifts (and one for herself).

While it might seem that they are wearing costumes, Sally asked one of the women and she said this is her everyday dress. That’s borne out by the fact that we saw women all over dressed like this. I’m pretty sure the men don’t normally dress like this, but most of the men we saw were either laborers or hotel staff.

Then it was back to the hotel.

The public areas of the hotel were funky and had lots of interesting sitting areas for quiet contemplation or reading, or just looking out at the lake.

I went out for a walk, while Sally relaxed in the room. Then we had another average dinner, and went to sleep early. Tomorrow’s another opportunity for a beautiful sunrise in bed.

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(1) We are about 13 degrees south of the equator, so the daylight ranges from 11 to 13 hours all year round. Today, four weeks before the winter solstice, there were 11 hours 18 minutes of daylight.

(2) We’re still at 12,500’, and the oxygen is scarce.

The plan for today was to drive through the Andes on an nine hour trip from Cusco to the Titilaka Hotel. But that was not to be.

About 9:30 last night, we got a call from our local travel coordinator. It seems that labor strife with the possibility of violence or a complete shutdown of the roads (1) along our route from Cusco to Titilaka made driving inadvisable. They suggested that we fly instead, first to Lima and then to Juliaca, “only” two hours from our destination.

Sally and I discussed rearranging the itinerary to skip Titilaka, but we were informed that the reservations were not cancellable. After an hour of back and forth, we agreed to the new plan. So we packed last night until 1:00am, then got up at 5:00am for another marathon travel day.

In hindsight, we made some mistakes in planning this trip. The first was one too many stops. The second was too many two-night stays, with a full day of travel in between. Not only was the travel tiring, but we had no time to relax in between the travel days.

The transfer went smoothly, despite the last minute arrangements that needed to be coordinated. We left the Monasterio in Cusco at 6:30am, reached our destination around 5:30pm – the nine hour plan turned into eleven hours. Instead driving through the Andes, we spent most of the time in airports or airplanes.

The Titilaka hotel sits right on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world (2). We are at 12,500’ now, and I can feel the effects. The place is beautiful but small; thirteen rooms. Ours faces east over the lake with a large picture window, and we plan to wake up early and see the sunrise over the lake.

The room itself is small but comfortable and well appointed. It suffers from one of my pet peeves about hotel rooms: no space for unpacking (3). I mean none. Not one drawer or shelf. A closet with room for six hangers. So we’re living out of the suitcases, which is inconvenient. We look out over the lake to the east, so we plan to get up early for a change to watch the sunrise from our bed.

Everything is included here: food, activities, excursions. We had dinner in the beautiful dining room, but the food wasn’t great. Oh well.

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(1) We got confusing and conflicting explanations from different people. We’ll probably never know the truth.

(2) There are all kinds of of caveats to this claim.

(2) My other pet peeve is lack of accessible or functional power outlets. Titilaka is okay in that regard.

We got here really late last night after our long train ride from Machu Picchu.

This morning Marisol, our guide, basically threw out the itinerary because one of the attractions was closed. So Jorge drove us out of town to Saqsaywaman, an archeological site containing a fortress built by the Incas in the 15th century. Where Machu Picchu was about 8,000’ elevation, this site is 11,700’. We were already dealing with way less oxygen than we were used to, and this took it to another level. While there wasn’t any extreme climbing, walking up a simple set of stairs was an effort.

On top of the lack of oxygen, the thinner atmosphere makes the effect of the sun much stronger. Almost everyone outside of the cities wears a hat, and Marisol was wearing a hat, a hood and gloves to cover as much skin as possible.

Saqsaywaman was designed by the Incas to withstand any attack. And it probably did withstand direct assaults by the Spanish; but it fell after the Spanish laid siege to Cusco and continued with their conquest of the Incas. The Spanish took many of the stone blocks to rebuild Cusco after the conquest, but some of the walls are still standing. They are impressive.

We spent about an hour there, and then went back into Cusco center and visited the Cathedral. No pictures are allowed in there, so I can only show you the outside. It’s a typical European style Catholic cathedral – lots of alters, lots of gold leaf, lots of enormous paintings of religious scenes. The only part about it that was interesting to me was how the Peruvians have blended their tradition pre-Spanish beliefs and symbols with those of the Catholic Church. But we spent two hours listening to her go on and on about this painting and that one; our bad for not cutting it short. We both thought it would end very soon. But it didn’t.

Our travel agent had arranged for a lunch for us at a place that seemed too fancy, so we got them to switch the reservation to dinner and took a suggestion from Marisol for a casual Italian restaurant, which turned out to be really good. We both were able to get pizzas that we liked.

After that we walked back to the Monstario Hotel, which was only a few blocks away, and then I went out to wander around the center of Cusco. Being Sunday, it was very busy, but I had no idea of how busy it was going to become.

One interesting thing I saw was professional photographers, all waiting to take your picture with your family or friends. I haven’t seen much of this since phone cameras ate the photography business.

I wandered around for a while, first circling the main square and then branching out into side streets.

I was a few blocks away when I heard music coming down the street. I pursued it and discovered a parade carrying giant statues of Jesus and Mary. When I caught up with them, everyone was just standing around, and the group closest to me consisted mostly of boys, all dressed in white shirts and ties.

A few minutes later the parade resumed. I couldn’t see what happened to Jesus because of the crowd, but apparently the men lifted the statue off the table it was sitting on, and the boys’ job was to pick up the table and carry it to the next rest stop a couple of blocks away.

It’s hard to say how heavy the table was, but ten or so boys were struggling to carry it. It needed to be heavy, to support the weight of the Jesus statue. Sure enough, a few minutes later the young men carrying Jesus came along.

It’s clear that these men were not having “fun” in any traditional sense. But they must have volunteered for this job, and probably considered being chosen to participate an honor.

Let us not forget Mary. She was also attended to by a bunch of kids carrying the table, and young men staggering down the street carrying her.

After each of the statues were marching bands. I didn’t recognize any of the tunes they were playing, but they sounded pretty much like every marching band I’ve ever heard.

By this time the crowd had swelled so much that it filled the space from building to building across the street. I had fallen back to the end of the parade taking pictures of the band, and there was no way for me to make my way forward. So I walked a couple of blocks out of the way and found my way back to the room.

That evening, after some more conversations with our travel agent, we went to the restaurant that had originally been our lunch reservation and had dinner. We were both skeptical, as it was billed as Japanese / Peruvian – not two of our favorites. But we were pleasantly surprised with the food, which was tasty. As a bonus, we had a window table overlooking the main square, where yet another parade was happening. This one consisted of marching / dancing groups that came pretty much in front of the restaurant and then did a performance for us (and everyone else). Tres cool!

Then back to the hotel to do a some packing before our 9:00 departure to drive to our next stop at Lake TIticaca. On the way, we walked a few blocks to a convenience store to get some snack for the nine hour drive.

Yesterday Sally and I did Route 1, which gave us the classic overview of Machu Picchu (MP). This morning we went into the heart of the sanctuary, which involved relatively little climbing (1).

We had agreed to meet Marisol at 7:00 (2), so we grabbed some early food.

Where yesterday afternoon the skies were bright blue, this morning started out cloudy with fog and a chance of rain. It had rained overnight, and the ground was wet. Our hotel room comes with ponchos, so we threw those in the bag and headed out.

You’ll see in many of the pictures that the rooms have very few windows. What may appear as windows at first are simply niches, which could be used for storage. As MP was a sacred sanctuary built by and for the Inca king, the stone work is fastidious. The stones are polished and often fitted together without any mortar. And they are standing 500 years later.

By 8:30, the fog was starting to lift. In the upper right of the next group, you can clearly see three niches in the wall and a single window above them. The circular building at the upper left is the Temple of the Sun. It has two windows which are aligned to the summer and winter solstice. It’s believed that this temple was used for offerings and ceremonies dedicated to Inti, the Inca’s god of the sun.

The fog and clouds continued to come and go as we started on the return trip. In the bottom image, you can see a huge rock carved to a shape and placed to mirror the mountain peak and range behind it. While the Incas did have metal tools, much of this sculpting was probably done with hard stone.

My plan was to have breakfast when we returned before going out for the last route, but we got back to the hotel just after 10:00, and the breakfast room closed at 10. They offered us a snack menu, which wasn’t very appealing, so I just had a granola bar in the room.

Now’s a good time to talk about the room. As I wrote earlier, the Sanctuary Lodge is the only hotel right at the entrance to Machu Picchu; all of the other hotels are in Aguas Calientes and require the 20 minute bus ride (plus queuing) each way. It’s also the second most expensive room we’re staying in on this trip. It’s 161 sq ft, and very poorly laid out.

The clothes closet shares a 3’ x 6’ space with the sink and tiny vanity (3). That is, if someone is using the sink, there’s no room for someone to get to the suitcases, drawers or hangers. And two people can’t access the closet simultaneously. This space is open to the entry area.

Once you pass through this tiny space, you come to the water closet with is divided half for the 3’ x 3’ shower, and half for the toilet. Turning on the light in the bathroom area also turns on the fan, which sounds like a jet engine. To get out of the water closet, you open the door into the sink/closet area – but you can’t see if anyone’s standing there until you knock them over.

The service is great, the food was great (not withstanding being closed from 10 to noon), but the facilities are poor.

Okay, back to MP. Sally called it done, but I went back at 11:00 for the third try, Route 2. Route 2 climbs almost as high as the Route 1 that we did yesterday, but then descends into parts of the sanctuary that the other two routes don’t include. I have to say, this entire operation is very well run. It’s crowded, but the crowds are controlled by assigning people 30 minute entry windows, and having rangers located all throughout the site (4).

Here are two views of the Temple of Three Windows. They represent heaven, the underworld and the present day. I’m sure the Incas didn’t call it by that name.

And finally, another view of the Temple of the Sun (the circular structure) and an overall look at this section of the sanctuary, including the mountain Huayna Picchu, still shrouded in the clouds.

After this, it was back to the hotel to clean up, have lunch, pack and relax, and then catch the Hiram Bingham train to our next stop at Cusco. This ride took us 3-1/2 hours, so we didn’t even get to the hotel until almost 10:00pm. And we were pretty tired by then.

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(1) “Relatively little” doesn’t mean “none”, and we still don’t have enough oxygen.

(2) Each admission ticket to the site has a designated time to enter, with a 30 minute window. So you need to be timely – if you miss your window, you can’t enter.

(3) There’s no room to take any more meaningful pictures than the ones I have in yesterday’s blog.

(4) I never saw the rangers do anything, but then again I almost never saw anything that needed doing.

Friday was a split day: we transferred from our hotel in the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu, and we did our first circuit hike at Machu Picchu.

From now on I’ll write MP to refer to the site.

Sally and I had joked that this trip was cars, planes, trains and boats. We already did many cars and four flights, we spent three nights on the Aqua Nera. This morning we completed the set by taking a luxury train, the Hiram Bingham (1), from the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu.

If you picture the kind of old-fashioned luxury train epitomized by the Orient Express, you’ll get the idea. Well furnished booths with white tablecloths, uniformed wait staff, a kitchen that actually serves good food (which they are happy to customize to your taste). Food and beverages are included.

The train ride from Sacred Valley takes about an hour and a half, so we ate an early lunch and arrived around 1:00. You arrive in Aguas Calientes, and everyone has to take a 20 minute bus ride to get to the sanctuary. We were surprised when a huge tour bus pulled up, which had been hired just for us. Apparently no other vehicles are allowed, so it’s either a tour bus, or walking.

After quickly checking into our room, we went to see MP. We stayed at the Sanctuary, which sits right at the entrance to the site. All of the other hotels are in Aguas Calientes, and you take the bus ride up and down each day.

You experience MP by taking one of three routes through the site. Our first hike was Route 1, which took us up to the viewing platform where you get the classic view (and photograph) of MP. I took lots of photographs during the hike, but don’t really recall what most of the individual things we saw were.

But before you go, you have to suit up for the adventure and deal with the chaos of the buses and the entry lines to enter the site itself.

MP gradually reveals itself as you hike up Route 1. The first part of the hike is mostly a series of uneven stone steps. We’re now at about 8,000’. The two days we spent in the Sacred Valley (along with daily doses of acetazolamide) helped us with altitude sickness, but don’t help us with the lack of oxygen feeding our muscles. We needed to stop frequently to rest. You see some of the surrounding mountains, and then Huayna Picchu, a distinctive peak right behind the sanctuary, reveals itself. On one of the routes you can climb it, but we didn’t (2).

By this point you’ve reached one of the popular viewing platforms. But you’re not done yet.

We needed to climb a little more. At a few spots there are lines going through difficult areas, but overall the crowds were pretty reasonable. There are also some llamas living in and around the site, and we passed them resting in the sun. Now you can see some of the city itself.

Finally you get to the spot where you have the classic view you came to see.

I could write all about the historical significance of MP; our guide, Marisol, explained it all to us as we went along. But it went in one ear, and out the other. So feel free to look it up.

We got back to our room about 4:15, glad that we didn’t have to face the lines to board the buses for the 20 minute ride down to Aguas Calientes. Instead, we relaxed a bit, unpacked a bit (we’re only here one night), cleaned up and went to dinner in the hotel restaurant. Which was very good.

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(1) Hiram Bingham was an American archeologist who “discovered” Machu Picchu in 1911. His discovery required lots of deep and arduous work: he asked a local farmer where the Inca city was, and was taken there.

(2) The way up and down is about a 1,000’ climb on uneven stone steps, often with no railing.

The name of our hotel is Rio Sagrado, after the river which runs through the Sacred Valley. We’re here for three nights to both see the area, and begin acclimating to the altitude we will experience in our later stops.

We started the day with another lovely breakfast at the hotel. The alpacas were out in the yard, wandering around and munching on grass.

We started by driving through Ollantaytando, a small town near our hotel. While we didn’t stop, it gave us our first look at a small Peruvian town in the Andes. Everything is colorful, and we were surprised to see tuk-tuks, which we first encountered in our Southeast Asian trip a few years ago. These are actually more sophisticated; they’re still three wheelers, based on a motorcycle with a carriage appended to the back, but they enclose the driver and passengers to a greater extent.

Our first stop was an archeological site which was a fortress that guarded the Sacred Valley against intruders. It was built between two mountains, looking almost like a terraced farm, but there was no farming here. At the top are unfinished military structures, reflecting the rapid collapse of the Inca society after the arrival of Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors in 1529.

As you can see in the picture above, in addition to looking at the ruins, many visitors climb up to see the military ruins and the views from the top. We both had some trepidations, but decided to take it slow and see how far we could get.

Sally made it up the the red circle, which was pretty good considering this was only our second day at altitude. I decided to continue up, and Sally down to some shade.

We all found the climb somewhat breathtaking, as in, we needed to catch our breath after we finished (Marisol less so than Sally or me).

As we headed to our lunch reservation, we stopped on Ollantaytambo to walk around and get a look at the town. We had driven through several times already, but never stopped there.

Our lunch was at a mansion that has been converted to a restaurant, The place is exquisitely furnished and decorated, and has an outstanding collection of Peruvian artifacts. I didn’t take any pictures of them because I found them boring 🤨.

Our last stop was at a the Seminario Ceramics Workshop, a studio where they manufacture both unique pieces and mass-produced pieces. Sally does ceramics as a hobby, and was very interested to see some of the artisans at work, and to learn about the studio’s processes.

Last night we arrived at the hotel Rio Sagrado in the Sacred Valley. According to my (never wrong) iPhone, we are at 9,497’. On the trip here from Cusco Airport, we went as high as 12,500’, but didn’t really feel it as we were just sitting in the backseat of a car with our guide Marisol and driver Jorge. We finally arrived at the hotel at 9:30pm.

The hotel is beautiful. There was a mixup when we arrived, and we were placed in the wrong room – a much smaller room than we had reserved. We didn’t realize this, and spent the night there. It was really crowded, and we were constantly bumping into each other trying to get ready for bed. It wasn’t until the next morning when we stopped at reception to officially register (we were too tired the night before) that I saw the wrong room catagory on the registration slip. After much discussion, we were offered the correct, larger room. We couldn’t see it, as someone was still in the room, but if we packed our stuff, they would transfer us to the new room before we returned from the day’s touring.

When we went down to the restaurant for breakfast, we saw young alpacas wandering around the property. More on them later. There was also a musician playing on a harp outside the restaurant. I’ve had El Condor Pasa (1) as an earworm for days now.

So we left on our day. There were three stops planned, plus a “picnic lunch”.

The first stop was the town of Chinchero, an old Andean village inhabited mainly by indigenous people of Quechua descent. The buildings are mostly constructed using adobe, and many of the people seem to be dressed in traditional clothing: colorful wraps and blankets, hats, etc.

The town is very hilly, and we were not anywhere near acclimated to the altitude (2), so walking around was a slow and arduous process. But we persevered, and make a circuit before returning to our car.

Next was a stop to look at the Maras salt pools. There are thousands of these, each set owned by a citizen of the town – no outsiders are allowed. Each pool can generate about 8 lbs. of salt per month, with the top layer being a prized pink salt.

The last touring stop was Moray, where there are some ancient circular agricultural terraces built by pre-Spanish conquest people to experiment with crops. Each level of the terraces had a slightly different micro-climate. These peoples were quite scientific in their approach to the world, trying out different solutions in a controlled way to improve the productivity of their agriculture.

There were several of these circular terraces, but only one remains is good condition

Finally, we stopped for a picnic. I expected a cooler with food and drinks from the trunk of the car, but what we got was something different.

We drove down a couple of dirt roads, and then turned off into a field. I could see the mountains in the distance. And then a tent. And then what you see above. They had arranged a 4-star meal in the middle of nowhere, complete with hors d’oeuvres, wine, mixed drinks, and a four course meal. And you couldn’t beat the view.

But the fun of the day wasn’t over yet. After lunch we returned to our hotel to deal with the room screw up that had happened the night before. As promised, our stuff had been moved to the much larger, beautiful room you see in the pictures above, conveniently close to the restaurant (3). After checking out the room and getting repeated apologies from the hotel manager, we went outside to see what was billed as an alpaca feeding.

The hotel boards a herd of young alpaca, all under a year old. While they seem to be munching on grass when we saw them in the morning, they get very excited when the staff comes out with boxes of baby bottles for them to feed on. Everyone who wanted got a chance to participate, and Sally really enjoyed it.

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(1) El Condor Pasa was an instrumental written by the Peruvian Daniel Alomia Robles. Paul Simon later added lyrics and covered it with Simon & Garfunkel.

(3) Every tourist we met is taking acetazolamide to combat altitude sickness. It does nothing to get more oxygen into your lungs.

(3) The hotel is built on a hillside, so you have a choice of being close to the restaurant near the bottom, or close to reception near the top. Most people called for a golf cart to shuttle them up and down the hill.

A typical day on the Aqua Nera goes like this:

• Breakfast
• Morning activity, usually involving taking the skiffs out
• Lunch
• Some free time, followed by an optional lecture on some highly interesting and relevant subject (“A Talk About the Taricaya Project”) in the lounge
• Afternoon activity, usually involving taking the skiffs out
• A briefing about tomorrow’s schedule, and then …
• Dinner

Today our morning activity was taking the skiffs to a local village to learn about how they live. The answer to that question is: they live a very primitive life, dependent on what the Amazon gives and takes from them, and with few modern conveniences.

The skiffs are metal boats fitted with 12 seats, plus one for the driver. On this cruise of 40 passengers, we’re divided into four groups of 10 then ride together each time. We get a different guide each time; each of the guides is a trained naturalist for this area, who also grew up in the Amazon Basin.

The Aqua Nera makes stops in the Amazon River itself as we travel each day and some nights. The skiffs rides often go off into tributaries or lakes that feed into or out of the Amazon. We’ve seen big rivers before: we grew up near the Hudson, we cruised along the Columbia, we’ve both flown over and walked near the Mississippi. But the Amazon is something else. We are 2,300 miles from its mouth at the Atlantic and the river here is masssive.

Today we rode past a couple of settlements before disembarking at our destination.

The small village we stopped at has somewhere between 60 and 80 residents (the guide wasn’t clear), and most of the buildings were surrounding the football (soccer) field. We had passed several other villages where the football fields were flooded; the Amazon water levels are apparently extremely high this year.

The houses and buildings, both here and the other villages we passed on the river, are all very crude. Wooden boards, no insulation, many with no real door, and almost all on stilts. Of course, the people are generally too poor to build better, but the river destroys everything too frequently to invest much in better buildings. They do have electricity through solar power, and I saw rechargeable batteries by one house.

We went and stood on the porch of one house, while the guide described some of the aspects of the locals’ daily life and diet. The woman who lived there stood by and occasionally answered questions he put to her. It definitely didn’t sound like a lifestyle I would enjoy; the romanticism about how they are living simple, natural lives would or we should somehow envy or emulate it doesn’t resonate with me. Nor does the view that we should protect their lifestyle rather than “ruin” it with modernity. Obviously, I wouldn’t force anyone to live any particular way. But they’ve adopted solar power, rechargeable batteries, internal combustion engines, and other selective aspects of our technology and seem better off for it.

We finished up by stopping and looking at crafts that the women were selling; some of our group bought some but we didn’t.

Then it was back to the Aqua Nera for a cooking demonstration, followed by lunch. The food on the boat has generally been good. The portions are modest but sufficient, and there’s always seconds if you are still hungry. Of particular note is that they are extremely attentive to the garlic issue; each meal comes with special dishes prepared for Sally without us even asking.

After lunch we rested for a while, and then went out for the afternoon skiff outing. I already told you what a disaster that was – torrential rain, followed by darkness while we looked for small birds and animals in the trees with a flashlight. The result is a crappy picture.

Tuesday was a very long day with very little “fun”. TL;DR – we traveled 13 hours from when we left the boat until we got to our room in the Sacred Valley:

• It takes two flights Iquitos -> Lima -> Cusco.
• There’s a lot of driving – from the boat to the airport, and then from the airport to our hotel.

The Aqua Nera offered a 6:00am skiff outing (2). It was just a ride across the river to Nauta to visit a local craft market. We decided to skip this and get a bit more sleep.

So we got up at 6:00, finished packing, put out the bags, and went for breakfast about 7:30. At 9:00, we collected our hand baggage and went to the skiffs to transfer across the river to where vans were waiting.

Since Iquitos airport is 2-1/2 hours from where we disembarked in Nauta, we killed an hour and broke up the trip by stopping for an hour at an animal rescue center along the way. The boat crew kept calling it a Manatee Rescue Center, but it also rescued other rain forest animals: parrots and macaws, caymans, turtles, etc. While it’s a worthwhile cause, it really just filled the hour and gave the Aqua Nera a chance to say they had another activity on your three day cruise. It was pretty forgettable.

Overall, the day was uneventful but exhausting. Dinner was MacD’s at Lima Airport. We arrived at our hotel around 9:30, and went directly to our room to get settled enough to get up the next day for our morning tour of the Sacred Valley.

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(1) We probably sailed somewhere between 60 and 100 miles in total, branching off of the Amazon itself to huge tributary. I have no real idea where the boat stopped, or where we went in the skiffs, as they were not permanent towns.

(2) There’s a bit of misleading information about the ship’s activities. They advertise two skiff rides per day, so we would get six on our three night cruise. The implication is a morning and afternoon ride every day. But you don’t board until 4:00pm, and there’s no activity that afternoon. The second day, there’s a one hour ride at 6:00am, a three hour ride at 10:00am, and a second three hour ride at 4:00pm. (Sunrise and sunset are at 6am and 6pm). The third day had a three hour morning and a three hour afternoon ride. And on the final day, just a 6:00am one hour outing, a five minute ride across the river to a craft market.

After the disaster of yesterday’s late afternoon skiff ride (1), we were hoping for bettter results today. The plan for the morning ride was to spend some time looking for rain forest animals, and then to engage in some activities.

We actually got to see some animals this time: a couple of iguana, a sloth, a snake’s head, and parts of some dolphins.

We also cruised by another village. This one was more complex than some of the others we had seen, with bigger buildings, bigger and motorized boats.

The first activity was taking a ride in a native, primitive canoe. Each person, or couple, got to ride with a woman from the village. In our case, the woman also had her teen daughter with us. There was no conversation, as we don’t speak her language and she doesn’t speak ours. But the ride was pleasant enough, or as pleasant as one can be sitting on a plank of wood in a heavy wooden canoe.

Next we went fishing for piranha. Each person in the skiff got a bamboo pole with some fishing line and a hook with some chicken on the hook. We dropped it in the water, and used our best fishing skills to entice the piranha into grabbing at the bait and getting hooked. The fish proved very proficient at surgically removing the bait from the hook; I lost two loads of bait and Sally lost 10. One of the men on our boat caught several piranha, several other people caught one each. Everybody got very excited when there was a catch. Of course, we (i.e., the guides) threw the fish back in the river.

The final activity was an opportunity to swim in the Amazon. Of the 10 people on our skiff, only two participated (2). The other boats seemed to have a slightly higher participation rate, but overall most people declined. The weather was hot and we were all sweaty, but the water just didn’t look appealing – dark brown, and filled with piranha, cayman, and who knows what else. Even though no one got eaten, I’m confident we made the right decision.

By the time we went out for the afternoon ride, participation was starting to drop. This ride was supposed to include a walk in the jungle, but it kept getting pushed back because it was raining. By the time we left, the ride had been shortened to an hour, and the jungle walk was canceled.

As we had been told the jungle walk was slippery and mosquito infested, Sally had decided to not participate. I noticed empty seats on each of the skiffs.

The shortened outing took us downstream from where we were anchored to the confluence of two major tributaries of the Amazon. You could see the churn of the water as the two streams merged to make a bigger Amazon. The first drops of water that form the Amazon come from high in the Andes, near where we’ll be in a few days.

Along the way, we saw lots of dolphins swimming in the river. When I say “saw”, I mean mostly we saw dark forms just under the surface, and occasionally got a glimpse of a fin, a tail or a nose. Getting a picture is very difficult, as they are only above the surface for a second.

When we got to the confluence, the skiffs tied up against another boat that had come from the Aqua Nera, bringing celebratory drinks to honor the occasion. By this time the Aqua Nero had cruised to join us, and we boarded while it was still moving up river towards Nauta, where we will disembark tomorrow.

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(1) It’s been several days, so you may have forgotten. But that’s when we rode around in the skiff in a torrential downpour for two hours.

(2) They are Australian, which probably explains why.