Peru

 As our family has gotten older, we have come to realize that life never stays to the same.  Kids move away, health problems creep up, age begins to take its toll.  Bucket list items are becoming more important to us.  Memories are the legacies I want to leave for my kids.

Peru November 2022

I had to wait for one year after my transplant before the doctor would allow me to leave the country.  We found a great deal to Peru at almost the year mark.  Good enough, right?  Hiking the Inca trail has always been on my bucket list.  

Tom, Isaac, Nick and I flew into Lima and then immediately flew to Cusco to begin acclimatization.  Peru can be a wild place plus we needed a tour guide and permit to hike the Inca trail.  So we deviated from our usual mode of planning our own travel and booked this trip with a tour company.  

In Cusco we visited several Inca sites.  It turns out that Cusco was actually the capital of the Inca nation.  I had no idea, I guess I thought it was Machu Picchu.  We learned that Machu Picchu was actually a sacred city and was hidden from the Spanish which is why it has survived as well as it had.  The main cathedral in Cusco was actually a converted Inca temple.  So fascinating. 

The Inca trail is a beautiful hike.  It took us 4 days to hike 26 miles with a max elevation of nearly 14000 feet.  We had a team that included our guide, a chef, porters and people that set up and cleaned up our camp.  We even had our own private toilet in the wilderness that followed us from camp to camp.  Sound like glamping?  Well, I guess it was, but this was a pretty typical set up for this hike.  The food was delicious and the chef even made Isaac a birthday cake as he celebrated his birthday while we were on the hike.  The trail is actually a pilgrimage route taken by the ancient Incas from Cusco to Machu Picchu and you literally walk on the ancient steps made by the Incas

We got to hike in and around many ancient Incan ruins and we saw monkeys, llamas and alpacas in the wild.  Visiting Machu Picchu at sunrise before the crowds hit was amazing.  Of course we took the obligatory picture with the city and the mountains in the background.  When we returned to our hotel, we found that the steps that were so difficult when we initially arrived were now pretty manageable.  Thank you acclimatization.  

Once done with Machu Picchu, we rode a train to Lake Titicaca.  I loved this train.  The countryside is so cool.  The elevation is so high, you are above the treeline for much of the trip.  Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world and is higher in elevation than Cusco.  The coolest thing we saw here was the floating islands made out of lake reeds.  The ancient people made these islands to protect themselves from the war monger Incas.  The people living on these islands allowed us to look around their houses and community sites.  We tried not to be too intrusive, I wouldn't want strangers snooping around my house either.  

From Lake Titicaca we flew back to Lima and were supposed to take a bus to see the Nazca Lines.  Here is where we ran into some trouble.  Just after we left Cusco, the president of Peru was deposed and a new government was formed.  There were many demonstrations about this and the population used the major highways to announce their displeasure.  This made the busses stop running.  We weren't able to get to Nazca in the way that we had planned.  We could either skip Nazca or we could hire a private car to take us.  We already had the airplane tour and penguin tours booked and no one would be giving our money back.  Plus, we figured we weren't likely to return to Peru, so we sprung for the private car.  This turned out to be a great investment in the end because it made it very easy to visit the nearby National Park after we were done with Nazca.  

I loved the Nazca lines.  I was even able to get over my fear of weed hopper airplanes to enable our family to see these mysterious decorations from a civilization older than the Incas. The lines are best viewed from above and the airplane would fly along one group of geoglyphs with one side tipped so one half the plane could see, then it would turn around and do the same so the other side could see.  We would then move to another group of geoglyphs. Tom and Nick were DONE with the airplane by the time we landed (Nick actually barfed) but all agreed it was very cool and worth the effort.  

After the Nazca lines tour, we took a boat out to some islands and saw actual penguins that live there in the summertime (our winter).  That is the first time I have ever seen penguins in the wild.  The nearby national park was on the beach and we took a great hike over the cliffs while also learning about the makers of the Nazca Lines.  These people were precursors of the Incas and likely traded with them as the Inca's empire was building and Nazca was declining.

Luckily there were no demonstrations at the Lima airport and we were able to exit the country without difficulty.  The tour company took great care of us and we never felt like we were in danger despite the unexpected political instability while we were there.