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.

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.

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.

This post is coming out of order, so just bear with me for a minute.

This afternoon we went out for a three hour skiff ride (1), which was planned to extend to about 7:00pm, which would give us an hour in the jungle after sunset. This way we could learn and experience the jungle at night.

We left about 4:00 after having slathered ourselves in insect repellent, along with sunscreen. I snapped the picture above as we pulled away from the Aqua Nera.

About 4:05 it started to rain.

About 4:10 it started to pour.

By 4:20 it was coming down in buckets – the heaviest rain I’ve ever actually been outside in. Everyone in our skiff donned large ponchos.

This – meaning the torrential rain – continued until maybe 5:30. I can’t be sure, as I was huddled under the poncho and wasn’t willing to take my arm out to see the time. Around then, the downpour eased off to merely a heavy rainfall, which continued for another 30 minutes.

Everyone on the boat was soaked, despite the ponchos. Sally and my shoes are sitting on the floor of our cabin with the insoles removed, hoping that they’ll dry out by the morning. My camera strap and belt are both soaked (the cameras are all fine). All of our clothes are in the laundry basket, dripping wet.

The picture above might be the only good shot of the afternoon; I didn’t take another shot until it was dark and I don’t know if they came out.

As they say, travel can be an adventure. Unfortunately, not all of the adventures are fun.

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(1) The skiffs are the 10-passenger open boats that we take excursions in two or three times a day.

This trip will be a lot of stops, ranging from one night to three. Lima is only two nights, but our 7:00am arrival yesterday effectively gave us two full days to see the city. Which is not nearly enough, in my opinion. It’s a big city of about 13 million people, with many different areas and things to do. Yesterday was completely unplanned, while today was mostly planned.

After another breakfast at the hotel, we met our guide Miguel and driver Jose for a City Tour. This was to cover the old central part of the city. Lots of government buildings, churches and walking through the streets.

Peru has a robust middle class, but like all countries, also a group that is very poor. The average per capita income GDP is about $11,000, which you can double when adjusted for the cost of living here. That latter number would be about 21% of the US. Miraflores and Barranco, where we spent yesterday, are solidly middle and upper class. But from where we were today, you can see examples of the extreme poverty some endure.

As with most large cities, there is an active street life. We saw businessmen having a meeting on the street, a school trip, artists working and lots of security and police.

Our travel agent got the message that we didn’t want to tour any museums, but apparently missed the part about churches. So we hit two big churches, one of which is the Lima Cathedral. The second, especially, was quite impressive. Among other things, it contains the tomb of Francisco Pizarro, we vaguely remembered from our grade school history studies of the colonization of the Americas by the European powers 500 years ago. There is also lots of art. An interesting aspect is the depiction of Christ adapted to local culture.

At the end of the four hour tour, Miguel and Jose dropped us at El Mercado, a restaurant that our travel agent had booked for us. We’re usually a bit concerned about restaurant reservations like this; travel agents and hotel concierges like to recommend relatively fancy places. But we’re not fancy restaurant people. El Mercado was a pleasant surprise – lively, casual yet very nice. The staff was very accommodating and the food was fresh and good.

While we were touring with Miguel, I got a text from our hotel asking us if we wanted to schedule our complimentary massages. We didn’t know we had any complimentary massages. But after an exchange of texts with the lady from the spa, we arranged for a 4:00pm appointment for the two of us.

So after lunch, back to the room for a rest, and then we had our very nice, complementary massages.

We’re flying to Iquitos this morning to hook up with our Amazon cruise. I’m not sure I’ll get the Friday blog posted before we depart (we’re at the gate waiting to board now), and WiFi and cell service will be spotty at best while we’re on the boat.

I’ll post when I can.

So we arrived a bit early this morning at the airport, just before 7:00am. Surprisingly, we both slept well on the plane. That’s almost never happened to me. As usual (1) we were met at the airport after clearing passport control and customs and escorted to the Milaflores Park Hotel, in the suburb of Milaflores, Lima. Not surprisingly, our room was not ready (it was only about 8:30), but our travel agent had arranged to have a temporary room to use until our room was ready.

We had breakfast in the hotel. Breakfast is included, but we’re not sure about whether we’ll pay for this one, as we are not actually checked into our room yet. It really doesn’t matter; we needed breakfast.

I should mention the weather here in Lima. The high temperature every day is about 80F, and the sky is grey. The sky is grey pretty much every day from about now until the end of the year. Except when you can’t even see the sky because of the mist and fog. One of the nicknames for Lima is “Grey Lima”.

After a bit of settling in we went out exploring and went to Barranco, adjacent to Miraflores where we are staying. There was a beautiful park stretching along the Pacific, with great views, that we walked through. And then we went into a few art/artisan stores and saw some very interesting stuff.

But we walked too far, and were very tired by the time we got back to the room. I ran out to get a snack, while Sally rested up.

When we checked in, the receptionist told us that the hotel has a special complementary Pisco (2) Sour demonstration in the bar every day at 4:00, so we cleaned up and went down to see what this was about.

Well, we were very surprised and had a great time. Instead of the usual “here’s how you make this, and here is a sample” we’ve gotten at wineries, breweries and distilleries, our bartender, Andre, put on a two hour show that included an uncountable number of tastings and mixed drinks.

It started as any winery tour does. Here are three varieties of Pisco, here are the grapes they come from, etc. And of course, we tasted all of these.

Then Andre showed us how to make a Pisco Sour, which is similar to a Whisky Sour. But Andre was very particular about how to start:

• 3 parts pisco
• 1 part sugar syrup
• 1 part key lime juice
• 1/2 part egg white
• 5 drops of Angostura bitters.

Then there’s the construction: shake the first four ingredients for 15 seconds, add ice and shake for 10 seconds, etc. Be careful about how much foam is on the top of the drink (from the egg white). Fill the glass to the very brim. Drink.

And then we started on the variations. What happens if you use mango instead of the lime juice? How about ginger ale instead of the lime juice? We had small shots of different mixes, and also full-sized drinks. Coca, pineapple, passion fruit, ginger & honey. This went on for two hours. I lost count of the number of drinks we tried. Andre emphasized many times that we were under no obligation to finish any of them; we didn’t. I would have passed out at the bar if I did.

Adding to the fun were a gay couple from Pennsylvania, an Air Force fighter pilot and a senior HR executive, on their delayed honeymoon. The four of us bonded over travel and booze.

Then the four of us were invited to make our own (traditional recipe) Pisco Sours. It’s not really a hard drink to make; just pour in the ingredients, shake, add the ice, shake, add the bitters, drink. But of course, Andre insisted that we do each step with flair. Careful attention must be paid to the initial shaking, which creates the foam that must float in a layer of about 1/8” at the top of the drink. The glass must be filled to the very brim. A design is made with the drops of bitters; all of us used more than two.

By the time we stumbled out of the bar at 6:00, we were both buzzing. But this was a great, and unexpected, experience.

Since we were too buzzed to go out, we cancelled our dinner reservation and ordered sandwiches from room service. We have a 9:00 pickup in the morning for a city tour, so getting some sleep in is required.

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(1) As regular readers will recall, we have been traveling with end-to-end escorts on all of our major trips for several years now. It has advantages and disadvantages.

(2) Pisco is a colorless or yellowish-to-amber-colored spirit produced in winemaking regions of Peru and Chili, made by distilling fermented grape juice into a high-proof spirit. If not made in specified regions in Peru, it is called grappa. Peruvian pisco is usually colorless, and distilled to about 40% or 42% alcohol.

Tonight, at the stroke of midnight (1), our flight takes off to take us to begin our next adventure. We’re off to Peru, where we will travel using planes, trains, boats, busses and automobiles across much of the country.

As we are making 7 or 8 stops along the way, our plan was to go with only carry-on baggage. As always, the advantages are: no risk of having your baggage lost, and no waiting at the baggage claim carousel after each flight.

This has worked successfully for our last two trips, but we couldn’t figure it out this time for a couple of reasons. First, because of the length of the trip, our need for liquids exceeds the universal carry-on limitation. And we can’t just buy the supplies at our first stop in Lima, because we have four more domestic flights in Peru, and didn’t think a good plan was to attempt to re-buy the stuff every few days (2). Second, the combination of the length of the trip and the varied climates we will experience just requires too many clothing items. So, rather than fight the inevitable, we are taking one additional carry-on sized bag (3), which we will check for the flights. We’ll drag our cabin luggage with us, so we’re only at risk of loosing the one checked bag and not all of our stuff.

Our last several airport trips have been without incident. We broke that string tonight. First, we got caught by an open drawbridge and sat still for about 10 minutes. We breezed through the bag drop, and then found that TSA-Precheck lines are not open tonight. No reason given (4). So rather than spending five minutes going through security, it took about 25 minutes. Fortunately, we’re always overly cautious about leaving enough time at the airport, and we got to the lounge with an hour remaining before we need to head to the gate. Which is an hour before the scheduled departure.

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(1) Not exactly midnight: the flight is scheduled for 11:59. As if any flight actually leaves with that sort of precision.

(2) Some of our liquids are almost certainly not available in Peru.

(3) This bag is actually smaller than the standard 21.5” carry-on bag.

(4) But we can all guess the reason.