Machu Picchu to Northern Chile

So there we were, hiking up the last leg of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. The fog of mosquitoes was relentless and the terrain was not meant for man to climb. I collapsed from exhaustion and begged of Sheer, “Go. Leave me, I’m done for. Tell my dad that I didn’t make it to manager but I died trying.”

Just kidding (obviously). So we arrived in the touristy town of Aguas Calientes (via train after the Lares Valley trek) and enjoyed ourselves for an afternoon and evening.

Aguas Calientes (the closest town to Machu Picchu).

At 5 am, after one night in Aguas Calientes, we took a bus up the switchbacks to the base of Machu Picchu, entered Machu Picchu and continued to hike up Huayna Picchu (the mountain in the background of most photos of Machu Picchu). It was beautiful.

Sheer interviewed a local llama.

I tried to ask him a few questions too but, after he found out that I work in the oil and gas industry, he turned his head and muttered some derogatory comments (awk-waaard).

We hiked up Huayna Picchu early in the morning.

Climbing up Huayna Picchu (you can see the switchbacks in the background).

Machu Picchu in the background

Just a couple dorks

Leader of the dorks

Then we hiked back down from Huayna Picchu to Machu Picchu.

Here's a look at Huayna Picchu from Machu Picchu

Rocks

Machu Picchu

Indiana Sheer and the Temple of Doom

llama break

Machu Picchu is one of the seven wonders of the world… which to me means that it is one of seven places that makes you wonder if you should be more moved by witnessing it. It's not about how great it is or isn't, that's not what I'm saying, it's just interesting to me how huge a role expectations play in leading up to and the experience of an expected event. For example, if
I were walking my sister's dog in some forest park in Atlanta that I've never been to and I stumbled upon 500 year old ruins, I'd be extremely excited... heck, I'd be excited and telling everyone I knew if I found $5 while walking my sister's dog.

So anyways, it was beautiful. I guess I was just a little let down after realizing that I wasn’t to gain clairvoyance from the experience. To be fair, I had visited before when I was a punk teenager. I guess punk’s not dead…

After Machu Picchu, we headed south for Arequipa (via Cusco). Arequipa is a beautiful city with a progressive feel, happening night life and much more oxygen than Cusco.

Arequipa

Plaza de Armas in Arequipa

Here's a neat little street with cafes and bars.

A couple girls in the plaza on Halloween.

Estabamos bloggando con cafe y dulces.

We intended to use Arequipa as a base for a trip to the Colca Canyon (one of the deepest canyons in the world) but after reviewing our schedule we saw that we were shorting our time in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. So after a few days in Arequipa we made way for Chile.

The border crossing was really interesting.

The Peruvian border town is called Tacna and the Chilean border town is called Arica. Chile has a much better public school system than Peru and Peru’s best public schools are in Tacna (the closest town to Chile... it used to be part of Chile). We spent one night in the Chilean border town of Arica. The exchange rate is about 500 Chilean Pesos per USD. It’s kinda weird exchanging a short cab ride for 1,000's of anything but we got used to it. We walked around this really neat, overlooked town. There weren’t nearly as many poor people or hagglers as in Peru. It was very pedestrian-friendly too. In fact, one time we were about to cross the street but stopped after seeing that a car was approaching. The car then slowed down to a complete stop and waited for us to cross. Sheer and I gasped, “What is going on?!” We doubted our observed respect for pedestrians but after repeated tests of the hypothesis (intentionally stepping in front of cars and taking a long time to cross the street), it became a theory: Chilean autos yield to pedestrians.

Arica, Chile

After a night in Arica, we headed to the highly recommended town of San Pedro de Atacama. The best analogies for this town in the U.S. are Santa Fe and Taos. It is a beautiful desert town with a really neat square, arts and it’s very expensive.

San Pedro de Atacama

Chillaxing zone at our hostel.

Hostel rooms

German Shepherd (or as they say, "a German")

"One day we're going to be rich, live in a palace and never have any problems at all." - Street Dog

From San Pedro de Atacama, we visited some geysers. They didn’t tell us that it was going to be sub-arctic temperatures so Sheer almost got frostbite from wearing her Tevas.

Sheer is covering her toes from the sub-arctic temperatures.

Sheer seeking shelter from the cold

Sheer sought shelter from the cold

They told us that a week before a girl got too close to a geyser/atmosphere interface, fell in and burnt her leg badly. They also told us that 10 years ago some French guy got way too close, fell completely in and went to heaven shortly after. I was really impressed with the Chileanos for our safety briefing ( in Guatemala, they let us walk within one foot of hot flowing lava without one word of safety). I was being ridiculously careful walking around the geyser/atmosphere interfaces thinking, “it would suck to die just because you went to see geysers.”

geysers

I saw a Japanese tourist closely leaning over a geyser feeling the steam with his hand. I anticipated his death while I thought, “he must have not understood the Spanish or English safety briefings.” The Japanese man did not die though… that’s two points for you anti-establishment folks.

The surrounding country was very beautiful.

After the geysers, vicunas in the same area

Later that night we took a space tour (at midnight). It was called something else but we kept referring to it as the space tour. The space tour will make my brother totally jealous. Basically we went an hour out of San Pedro de Atacama via bus to an observatory. In this area, we saw more stars than we’ve ever seen in our lives. I also noticed the slight side effects of my lasik surgery too but we can talk about that over a beer. Two astronomers lived at the observatory, the wife Chilena and the husband French. They pointed at stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae with hand held lasers and explained how to determine the axis of rotation for the stars. After the naked eye tour, we toured about a dozen huge telescopes that were all pointed at amazing objects far, far away: Jupiter, Beetlejuice, Andromeda, alpha centauri, etc. This was all done outside, in the blackest of a cold desert night. After an hour or two outside in the cold, they invited us inside for hot cocoa. The inside was very dimly lit with LED lighting. There we covered ourselves in blankets (we were a group of about 20, Sheer and I were the only Americans, mostly Europeans) and drank our hot cocoa while the Frenchman went through a very interesting and very humorous review of the human relationship with the stars. He talked about how for thousands of years all people could do at night was sleep or look at the stars. He talked about how the stars were seemingly so constant and far but how nobody could have really imagined (or guessed) how far they actually are. He talked about how so many civilizations hypothesized that after death we go from all this change we experience on the surface of the earth to the constant of the stars. As I said, he was really interesting, really funny and very French.

San Pedro at night

The stars

After a few days in this desert paradise we headed to the capital.