Machu Picchu

Alright a few weeks ago we traveled to Peru and more specifically Cusco and Machu Picchu. Out of the four major school trips ACA took us on, Mach Picchu was the one I had been the most anxious for. Machu Picchu is just simply amazing. There's really no words that can describe it. I have a bunch of pictures so hopefully I can get them all to load up on here with our super-duper slow internet. This is Plaza Mayor, the centerpiece of Lima, Peru.The Lima Cathedral.Monastery of San Francisco. This place was awesome. This place still remains today a running monastery. Inside are catacombs and a library with 500 year old books.Sorry for the blurry image. This is the library inside the Monastery. On the right you can see a giant book. It is actually a very old hymnal of Gregorian chants (you can see the blockish notes). This is undoubtedly the oldest piece of music I have seen to date--surpassing even anything from the Baroque era. When I was standing in front of it (an amazing feeling) I hummed a few of the melodies in my head. Scholars believe these eight-modal chants, composed by monks, to be the basis of classical music and everything that has come after it.A hillside overlooking Lima. You can see the many colorful houses of a poor urban sector. Above is the flag of Peru painted into the landscape.Getting to Machu Picchu you have to take a train from Cusco. Mind you this is already at 10,800 feet. This is overlooking one of the neighborhoods perched on the surrounding hills.
A nifty view of Putucusi Mountain, a neighboring mountain of Machu Picchu.Need I say more?These were super cool. You'd find these crafty staircases all over the place. This is how the Incas would climb from one terrace to another.A closer shot of the Western and Eastern Urban Sectors. You can see the rock quarry in the far left.This is The Terrace of the Ceremonial Rock. Ritually significant river rocks are found all over the place. This section was roped-off.A view looking down from The Terrace of the Ceremonial Rock.And here is the Ceremonial Rock. Sacrifices? No one really knows for sure.This is how the Incas did their farming.The Western Urban Sector. Royalty stayed in the higher part while lower classes stayed in the lower part. The Incas related their social ladder with the condor, jaguar, and snake. The highest class of people were represented by the condor, etc. The snake, being the lowest to the ground, was represented by the lowest classes.View from the Western Sector looking towards the Eastern.

An example of Inca genius.

Temple of the Three Windows with enormous polygonal stones, which looks down on the Main Plaza.

East wall of the Principal Temple settled during Inca times.

The river below.

A better shot of the Eastern Urban Sector.Flying over the Andes on our way back to Buenos Aires.

Iquique

Over Christmas break I traveled to the coast of Northern Chile. This was a daunting task in itself just because of the sheer distance. Our group of six initially had thought about flying but we later changed our minds to taking buses since we had a lot of time on our hands and also that we wanted to save money. Below is a map of South America. Our route was west from Buenos Aires straight across Argentina to Santiago, Chile. And then north from Santiago along the coast to Iquique. It might be hard to see Iquique on this map. Iquique is the last bit of vertical beach just before the left-sided bulge of South America juts out into the ocean. The total distance was a staggering 1,700 miles by roads. Getting there we took our time (we stayed a few days in Santiago), however none of us had really comprehended the distance to be so far. Some of the bus rides were a little sketchy. For example from Santiago to Iquique I was surrounded by a Peruvian family with eight or so screaming infants. Let me tell you after 25 hours I was ready to get off that bus! My 7 or so hour trips to school in Eastern Washington will seem like a picnic now. The good news is that our stay in Iquique was superb. Here's some pics. I like to say this was our hostel's backyard. You'd cross the road and the boardwalk and then you'd be here. I'm not kidding you. We stayed their about a week. With food and activities (surfing and paragliding) the cost was just under 100 dollars. Once again thank you Lonely Planet.Right before we went paragliding. We drove up to the cliffs that overlooked the city and pretty much ran off the edge (we were with a guide of course). With the constant warm up-drafts and Iquique's location, the area boasts one of the world best paragliding spots.A view of the entire city. Iquique is a desert city sandwiched between ocean and dunes. Chile itself is an amazing country with its desert beaches. So now for the stories.

My paragliding experience had its share of excitement. We were getting split up with the various guides. They asked us which one of us wanted English-speaking guides. We all could communicate in Spanish more or less so it really didn't matter. But somehow I got stuck with the dude who swore he could speak "great" English. So I thought "Ok fine, this will make things easier." Wrong. While he was explaining the instructions to me in very broken English (it would have been better if he spoke Spanish), I thought I would repeat back his instructions in English as proof that I knew what he was talking about. For example he would say, "Ok you do such and such" and then I replied with, "Ok I do such and such". Except this really ticked him off because apparently he didn't know what the heck I was saying, even though I was merely repeating back his own broken English. I mean for the love of Pete, I was about to go up 3000 feet and I didn't want to screw this up! Now that I look back, I think he thought I was asking him unrelated questions in mid-sentence, interrupting his instructions (which I couldn't understand anyway). So with second thoughts in mind about this guy I simply did the "smile and nod technique".

During take-off you're suppose to do a series of movements to ease the transition of going from ground to air. First when you raise the sail you brace against it. Then when it's ready you let go and it carries you up. In one movement you kind of sit back in an awkward stance and then scootch forward. I did everything fine. Except when it came to the hands. He never even said anything about your blasted hands! About ten seconds after take-off he says, "Ok hands good, hands good." This I thought meant that my hands were good where they were, so I didn't do anything. Then he freaks out and repeats, "Hands, hands here!" But he was driving the chute so he couldn't exaclty show me. So now I knew my hands needed to go somewhere, and I noticed it was probably important because it seemed my friends were all getting higher and that I was getting lower. I looked around and saw loops, cords, and every other matter of rigging imagineable. I dumbly fit my white, clenched fists through two holes, but then the guide totally pitched a fit so I took my hands out again. By now we are going down (flashes of playing Red Baron as a kid were going through my mind) and the guy is panicking. I'm falling out of the sky from 2000 feet and don't know where to put my hands because of some dumb guide that said he could speak English. Finally out of desperation I say, "¿Dónde me quieres a poner las manos?" (where do you want me to put my hands) The guide looked at me in surprise. Finally the world made sense. Soon my hands were in the right place. From then on things went smoothly. I made a point to speak in Spanish the rest of the way, and the guide apologized time after time. To this day my friends still don't understand why I didn't think paragliding was that great. I tell them I almost died. Unfortunately none of them took me very seriously.

On the way back our group of six split up to make traveling a bit easier. We made it back to school in record time (as good as time can get by bus). Our trip back took 52 hours. It was nonstop. The longest time we had to wait was in Córdoba for two hours. We got really lucky with bus times. After living on buses for 52 hours you will feel weird. I don't ever remember being so excited about using my legs.