Moray and Maras Salt Mines

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Lark

Like any “travel day”, the morning of our day-long transit to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu Mountain, was a bit hectic. Our friend Amerigo the taxi man (who we met on the way back from Saqsayhuaman) had trouble finding our hotel, but it was okay because he was running EARLY. A Peruvian. Running early. I’d never heard of such a thing.

While Amerigo’s punctuality was surprising, his confusion certainly wasn’t. Our hotel was accessed by walking THROUGH a school. If this sounds like the strangest thing, yes. He called us to say that we gave him the wrong address, that it was a school and he couldn’t find parking because of the morning drop-offs. We told him we’d be right there, grabbed our bags, and weaved our way out to the street, through the crowds of students gathered in the school’s courtyards. Can you imagine something like that in the States? A school with a bunch of strangers walking through at every hour of the day? Yeah, not a chance.

The plan for the day was simple. We left Cusco at 8AM, right on schedule thanks to Amerigo’s early arrival. We had a 3PM train to Aguas Calientes from Ollantaytambo, a town about an hour and a half from Cusco. Along the way, I wanted to stop at two other sites, Moray (an Inca ruin) and the Maras Salt Mines. That gave us seven hours for the drive and sightseeing which seemed like plenty.

Sacred Valley view. The drive from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is very pretty!

As we headed out from Cusco, Amerigo started asking about our plans and if we were staying overnight in Ollantaytambo. I told him no, we were taking the train. He asked if it was the 6:00PM train… nope, the 3:00. He freaked out. He said that we didn’t have enough time, that we should have left hours earlier if we wanted to make the 3PM train. I said that I was pretty sure we were going to be fine. He was adamant, and I started to worry. Was there some road condition or change from my last visit that I didn’t know about? Jocelyn put it into google maps, and the total driving time came back as 2.5ish hours. I didn’t want to insult Amerigo with a “well, google maps says…”, but I was SO confused. And terrified that I had made a huge mistake.

To this point, his driving had been as un-Peruvian as his early arrival… safe and rational. From then, though, it was like he flipped a switch. He morphed into a maniac racecar driver, testing his car’s limits and passing people left and right. A bus tried to run us off the road as we passed it (seriously, what is the deal with these drivers?!?), and we breathed a collective sigh of relief when we didn’t die. I thought Mom was going to hurl. Even though Jocelyn and I were used to Peruvian driving, which is of a similar style even when you’re not in a rush, this was a little scary. I appreciated his determination to get us to our train on time, but it really wasn’t necessary.

Thanks to Amerigo’s breakneck speeds, we got to Moray earlier than expected. I tried to talk to him again after we got out of the car, thinking it would be easier to sort out our misunderstanding face-to-face instead of with Jocelyn and me yelling in Spanish from the back seat. Maybe I was missing something? Or maybe he was planning for more stops than I wanted? Nope. Our conversation resulted in no further clarity. He insisted that we didn’t have enough time and would miss our train. I said I didn’t understand and walked away baffled.

He asked us how long we needed at Moray, and I guessed maybe 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Not too long. He didn’t look like he believed me. There are a few different routes for exploring the ruins: a 2-hour loop that goes around the entire site, a 1.5-hour loop around the main area, or a 1-hour loop to see the highlights. The highlights are sufficient, and looking at the path in real life, I had no idea how it could possibly take an hour. Is that the crawling time? The tortoise time? I don’t know. I usually trust my judgment, but again, I thought I must be missing something since Amerigo didn’t believe me and the sign said it took an hour. We took our time because while I didn’t want to stress him out more, I also didn’t want us to rush through the site for no reason.

The not-very-accurate map of the site, showing the different loop options (also, who made this sign? It’s very confusing because there’s a photo of the site in the background, but it doesn’t correspond to the diagram and is just super misleading. Ignore the background image. Look at the line diagram). We took the yellow loop which goes around the big circle thing in the middle.

Does this look like a 1-hour walk to you?? We went down the path that comes in from the left and up the path on the right.

Moray is an Inca site unlike any other. The Incas modified the natural topography to create a series of terraced depressions. The leading theory is that this was essentially an agricultural lab where the Incas tested various plants to determine which were best suited to grow in the different parts of the empire. How did this happen all in one site? WELL, this is crazy. Thanks to the depths of the depressions and the orientation in relation to the sun and wind, different climate conditions are created on different terrace levels. The largest depression, for example, is about 100 feet deep, and amazingly, there’s a massive annual temperature difference between the top terrace and the bottom – nearly 27°F (15°C)! Also, soil testing has revealed that different soils were transported from near and far to Moray. With this, the Incas were able to use this one research lab to test the performance of their crops across their diverse empire, from the sea-level desert around Lima to the high-altitude Andes and the tropical Amazon. They determined which crops grew best where and modified them to thrive in various conditions.

If that isn’t impressive enough already, the terraces themselves were engineered to include an irrigation and drainage system. Even today, hundreds of years after they were built, the terraces never flood, no matter how heavily it rains.

Headed down the path… seriously, so cool!!!

Can you see the stairs sticking out of the terrace walls?

It’s kind of like an optical illusion. I can’t imagine building this place!

Hundreds of years do tend to take a toll… looks like we have a bit of a landslide on our hands.

This is the largest of the “labs”. Isn’t it a masterpiece?

We took our time walking the 1-hour loop and were back at Amerigo’s car in 35 minutes… He seemed no less stressed as we headed to our next stop, Maras Salt Mines (the site of my multiple mountain biking wipeouts last time I was in Peru. This visit was slightly more relaxed and involved far less bleeding), but thankfully, there wasn’t much opportunity for maniac driving on the winding back roads we took to get there.

This is one of the smaller labs next to the one we walked around. I don’t know what the deal is with the piles of stones, but I assume they were gathered together as the site was being excavated/restored? Maybe?

The lab with the worst view. Kiddingggg check out those mountains!

The Maras Salt Mines, unlike the Wieliczka Salt Mines that I visited in Poland, are not underground mines like you’re probably imagining. More accurately, they’re evaporation pools. An underground, salty stream brings water to the site naturally, and it’s distributed among the thousands of man-made, terraced pools by a series of channels. This kind of mastery of water has “Inca” written all over it, but unlike most Inca masterpieces that lie in ruin today, Maras is still being used for its original purpose! Actually, salt production at Maras dates back to the Wari people, a pre-Incan civilization, but the Incas improved and expanded the production area. The setup looks intricate, but the process itself is fairly simple. Salty water fills the shallow pools. The water evaporates. Salt is left behind. This fill/evaporate process is repeated a few times, more salt accumulates, and then, the salt is harvested.

Pools stretching as far as the eye can see… and my gosh, what a beautiful view! (I mean the mountains… but also the pools are kind of awesome.)

I know the mountain slope helped with the construction of the pools, but still, what an undertaking!

Just think… every single one of these pools had to be constructed. The channels between them were formed. The walls built out of stones and mud. The ground compacted down by hand to make it easier to harvest the salt. Repeated thousands and thousands of times.

Some of the channels that distribute water to the pools.

As you might expect, this works better in the dry season when the water evaporates more quickly. This results in higher quality salt, either pink or white in color. In the rainy season, the salt is more likely to have a brown tint to it. The best salt is exported, and the rest is sold in Peru. Even the lowest quality salt can be sold, and while it may not make it to someone’s kitchen table, it is used in industrial processes, agriculture, and raising livestock.

We were there in December which is the beginning of the rainy season. I’ve never visited in the dry season, but apparently the pools are much whiter thanks to the more rapid evaporation.

It’s kind of hard to grasp the scale of the site, even when seeing it like this.

Like, that last picture didn’t even show all of the pools. They’re endless!

When we’d seen enough, we headed back to the car for the final leg of our journey with Amerigo, from Maras to Ollantaytambo. We met him at the car, and this was the point when he realized that we were not actually going to miss our train. We had more than enough time, in fact, and he resumed driving like a rational human. I breathed a sigh of relief, happy that I wasn’t crazy.

We said our goodbyes to our friend Amerigo as he dropped us off in the main plaza in Ollantaytambo. It was 11:30AM, earlier than expected, thanks to the maniacal speeding. We had more than enough time to eat some lunch and explore the Ollantaytambo ruins before our train left at 3. To be continued…

Cusco Adventures: Q’enko and Saqsayhuaman

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Lark

Last time, we left off on the side of the road after being released from the world’s craziest colectivo. (This time, get ready for a long post and lots of pictures!) The driver dropped us off across the street from our next destination, Q’enko (ken-koh), a large and formerly important rock. “A rock?” you ask. Well, yes, but this is no ordinary boulder. It is limestone and is what’s known as a “karst” landscape, or an area of soluble rock that has dissolved over time to create an irregular formation. Or so I’m told.

Q’enko is the rock on the right, above the grass, and Cusco is in the distance.

Sikllakancha. Nope, I don’t know what it is. But those are some nice rocks, amirite?

Q’enko is not the original Incan name for the site, rather it’s the Quechua name (Quechua is an indigenous language commonly spoken in the Peruvian Andes). That’s the case for many of these sites, with the original names either lost or in disuse. Anyway, the Quechua name, meaning labyrinth, twisted, or zig-zag, has been around since the 1800s. There is, as you can probably guess, an abundance of theories about Q’enko’s use, but they all consider it an important religious ceremonial site. Part of the challenge of understanding the Incan culture results from the Spanish campaign to destroy anything that had to do with pagan religions. Idols made of precious metals were stolen; rocks carved for religious purposes were destroyed. There’s limited information to work with, but at least they didn’t find some way to destroy the whole site.

There are still carvings visible on top of the rock, along with some zig-zagging channels that liquid could flow down. Theories for what liquid may have been used: corn beer. Or maybe animal blood. Basically the same, right? An interior chamber was used for sacrifices (human sacrifices were NOT typical in Incan society, in case you were wondering). There’s some other stuff on top that was probably used for charting the sun. Lots of things happening in/on/around this rock!

The sacrifice chamber beneath the rock. That’s maybe the altar on the left?

I liked this little guy… kind of looks like a Nittany Lion!

The group started grumbling about being hungry when we arrived at Q’enko and nearly staged a mutiny when I said it wasn’t lunchtime yet. Geez! Traveling with a group is such a pain! I’m kidding, I’m kidding! But it wasn’t even noon yet, and I only had the most perfect picnic spot picked out and had been waiting for two years to use it. No way was that getting taken away from me. Patience, people!

The path from Q’enko to Q’enko Chico, our lunch spot.

Q’enko Chico, Cusco, and the eucalyptus forest

Headed to Q’enko Chico (little Q’enko), probably used for religious purposes as well.

After everyone moaned and groaned their way through Q’enko and down the path to our lunch spot (with a sprinkling of accusations that I was trying to kill them), we finally arrived. WELL. The group’s attitude transformed. Everyone told me that it was worth waiting for, that the view was great and the rocks were nice to sit on. I KNOW. That’s why I picked it! Moral of the story is, trust me!

Q’enko Chico with a neighboring eucalyptus tree forest. These trees aren’t native to Peru. They came from Australia and were originally planted to be used for firewood.

Again, I wonder what this used to look like. I’m sure those walls weren’t always crumbling!

The bad news was that the sky grew increasingly threatening as we ate, and I crossed my fingers that the rain would hold out just a little longer, through our last stop at Saqsayhuaman (sak-say-WAH-man), the most expansive set of ruins. We walked there, got directions from the park rangers, and within minutes, it started POURING. Welp. So much for crossing my fingers!

The weather radar showed the storm passing in an hour, and the group started discussing staying vs. heading back to town. I really wanted everyone to see the last site, but we weren’t going to wait out in the open, and there’s nowhere to take cover… except… we spotted two roofed areas among the ruins. Our only hope. Benjamin and I looked at each other and made a beeline for them while everyone else followed behind.

Well, if only the route there was direct! We had to go up a few levels which meant finding stairs while pretending that we knew exactly where we were going to avoid losing the confidence of the group. Finally, we reached the right level! The end was in view! Anddd we stopped in our tracks in front of a sign strung up across the path. “No pasa”. Soul crushing. Dad caught up with us, looked at the sign, said “heck no”, and stepped over the rope without hesitation. It was hilarious. And that was all the encouragement we needed to follow suit.

Hehehe do you see the rain, streaking across the picture?

Dad, Mom, and Jocelyn looking happy to be under cover.

Doing some random internet fact read-alouds to entertain the group.

This ended up being the best decision we made all day (thanks, Dad!). Our hideout wasn’t particularly comfortable… we were all contorted and had to stay quiet to keep from attracting the attention of the park rangers who were just out of sight under the adjacent roof. But we were dry, and no way did we want to get booted out into the rain!

Zig-zag walls! Spot our heroic shelter. We were under the top left corner of the right roof. The park rangers were underneath the left roof, all the way on the left side.

Finally, about 45 minutes later, the rain slowed, and we decided it was time to make moves. As we climbed out, one of the rangers under the other roof started blowing his whistle (which is what they do when people are doing something they shouldn’t), and we kept moving, with no hesitation or glance back. Benjamin said he thought it was directed at someone else, but either way, I have no regrets.

Back in legal territory, we took a quick spin around the ruins. Saqsayhuaman is considered one of the most impressive Incan sites. Machu Picchu is so famous and popular mostly because of its location, not as much because of its construction. Saqsayhuaman, on the other hand, is an incredible architectural feat. The name is, of course, Quechua, but the meaning is debated with the most likely options being “marbled falcon” or “marbled head”. It is said that the city of Cusco looks like a puma/cougar/mountain lion, and Saqsayhuaman forms its (marbled?) head.

Faking smiles… just kidding. We were actually happy because we survived the storm without getting drenched. Jocelyn is totally rocking that poncho (jokes aside, she was the most prepared and probably the driest. And the most fashionable, clearly).

Construction began in the 15^th century, led by one of the most famous Inkas (kings), Pachakutec. He was responsible for many of the great Incan building projects, and this one took 50 years. You may be wondering – how did they have the manpower for a project like this? The Incas didn’t have slaves, and records claim that 20,000 men worked on the project. Since there was no money in their society, taxes to the government were paid in either labor or goods. This “labor tax” is what made so many of these grand, labor-intensive monuments feasible.

I’m telling you, the stonework here is some of the best.

Like seriously. I still don’t understand how they did this.

They say that the Spanish were so impressed by the construction quality that they thought the Incas must be in cahoots with the devil because there’s no way that mere mortals could build like this.

With the shoddy stonework that the Spanish were used to (re: all colonial buildings in Cusco. Yuck), no wonder they thought this level of skill and precision was above the capabilities of mankind.

While Saqsayhuaman is often called a “fortress”, it is believed that its primary function was religious and it was well-defended due to this religious importance, not because it was meant as a fortification. However, it did have its moment when it was used as a stronghold in the 16^th century during the Spanish invasion. Following the Incas defeat, the Spanish disassembled and buried the site to keep it from being used for that purpose again. Over time, many smaller stones were taken and used for other buildings in colonial Cusco, including the Cathedral. Even into the 20^th century, people could pay to use the site as a quarry for their own personal building projects. At the base, three imposing wall layers remain largely intact, thanks to the massive scale of the stones (one is nearly 30 feet tall and weighs 150 tons!). At the top, there used to be three towers, and only the foundations of those remain.

The base of one of the towers. One tower was round in shape, and the other two were rectangular.

More foundations at Saqsayhuaman that make you wonder what used to be there.

I mean, come on. Those mountains are fab.

Standing on top of the zig-zag walls and looking across at another maybe-sacred, giant stone that’s part of the Saqsayhuaman complex.

Pachakutec also created Inti Raymi in 1412, a festival dedicated to the sun god Inti and the celebration of the Inca New Year. It was held on the winter solstice until pagan religious celebrations were banned by the Spanish in 1535. In 1944, the festival was revived and is celebrated at Saqsayhuaman each year on June 24^th, featuring a theatrical representation of the Inca ceremony and festivities.

Even though everyone was feeling pretty drained after the rain, I did want to make sure we got the full experience… including my favorite part, the rock slides! (Admire my avoidance of the bottom-of-the-slide puddle.)

And my second favorite part, the weird tunnels!

The entrance to the tunnels… well, that’s not true. This is the exit, but we walked through the wrong way (whoops).

See the church just above the tree/bush/grass line? Okay, now look for the other church on the same square, a little to the left of there. That’s the Cathedral with its stolen stones, sitting on the Plaza Mayor, the main plaza in town (and also sitting on the foundations of an Inca temple that was destroyed to build it).

And here are other various pictures from around the ruins.

Some rocks that were probably important for something. Actually, this front circle area was definitely important because, as you can see, the stones are much more precisely cut than those other stone walls in the background (I think those are actually restored walls, but either way, the following statement is still valid). The Incas put more effort into more important buildings which is part of how you can tell that Saqsayhuaman was a very important place… so many of the rocks have those important-building-tight joints.

An amphitheater-like area that was used for something ceremonial and religious and important. Probably. Or maybe this is where they had the Inca version of gladiator fights (not a real thing).

I don’t know for sure, but I would assume that the bottom stones are original (the ones that fit together perfectly) and the ones above were rebuilt during restoration. This is a common thing to do during restoration because you want to rebuild enough to show what used to be there/make sure that it’s structurally sound, but you don’t want people to be unsure about what is original and what is not.

Another thing that shows a structure’s importance is these “pillow” stones. Instead of the stone faces being mostly flat, they are rounded. This is much harder to do, and so it is reserved for the most important buildings.

I’m not going to guarantee this statement, but a lot of times, when there are bumps on some of the stone faces, like on the bottom of that big stone near the front, they were used to connect sheets of precious metals to the walls, like what I talked about at **Qorikancha**. So maybe these stones also had some gold sheets on them. Or maybe I’m totally wrong.

Okay, THEN we’d had enough ruins for one day. I planned for us to walk back down to town from Saqsayhuaman, not remembering that the path isn’t exactly ideal… downhill with uneven and slippery rocks. We made slow progress until the end of the rocky part and breathed a collective sigh of relief when we hit a normal street.

We initially walked past a guy standing at the bottom offering taxi rides, but then I looked at my parents and changed my mind. Jocelyn and I conferenced to determine a reasonable taxi price, and I asked him how much to the central plaza. 10 soles. I said okay… and by the way, we have five people. He tried to raise the price, but we rejected that and got in the car telling him we’d pay 10.

I thought we’d have to squeeze with 5 people, but it turned out that his little car had two back rows. Perfect! As we rode back into town, he asked about our other plans and listed some other places he could take us. Hm… I already had our schedule planned out, but we actually DID need to hire a taxi. I asked if he was free the following day and how much he would charge for my itinerary. It was in line with the price I was expecting, so we accepted! It kind of felt like fate with his perfectly-sized car and open schedule. And it was a huge relief to get that settled!

The rest of the night was low-key. Back at the hotel, we got ourselves organized. We were leaving in the morning for an overnight trip, and thankfully, the hotel was letting us leave some bags there which meant we could travel lighter… but we did need to repack everything and pull out the stuff we wanted to take with us. We took a break to get some alpaca burgers for dinner and then headed back to the hotel to finish getting ready for the next day’s adventures with our new BFF, Amerigo the taxi man!

Cusco Adventures: Tambomachay and Puka-Pukara

Posted on July 14, 2020July 21, 2020 by Lark

I had all sorts of plans for our full day in Cusco. Essentially, I wanted to follow the same schedule as my first time in Cusco because I thought that it was a good intro to Incan ruins. There are four major sites within about 20 minutes, driving, from the center of Cusco. Last time, I tromped all over the city searching for a public bus to drop me at the farthest one and then worked my way back from there. This time, the lady at the hotel convinced me it wasn’t worth the pain to take the bus when a taxi was only 20 soles ($6), or 40 for the two we needed. The group seemed to agree which I guess is what happens when you travel while actually having an income. Weird, I don’t know what that’s like.

I asked her to schedule them for a couple of hours later (and I was really proud of myself… this all happened in Spanish. The woman’s daughters speak English, and she was going to call them to help with our conversation until I told her I wanted to try. She was really nice about it and spoke clearly and gave me a big confidence boost. Good way to start the day!), and she gave us directions to a grocery store so we could buy supplies for lunch on the go. On the way, we stopped at the famous 12-sided stone, another example of Incan stoneworking excellence, though after the 14-angled stone from Qorikancha the day before, it’s just another rock. Kidding! I still think it’s awesome. Seriously, Incan stonework is a detail-oriented, precise, engineering-minded person’s dream.

With the 12-sided stone. Count the sides and check out those tight seams! It’s pretty darn amazing, isn’t it?

Mom and Dad insisted on a picture with this keystone-shaped stone (because Pennsylvania).

The alleyway. The lower part of the wall on the right is an Incan masterpiece (it’s the wall containing the 12-sided stone and the keystone), and the upper part is the laaame Spanish colonial structure that they built on top. Sorry, that was probably rude. The upper part is the perfectly adequate but disappointingly boring Spanish colonial structure that they built on top. Was that better?

The Plaza Mayor (the central plaza in town)

The courtyard at the hotel. It’s all VERY decorated for the winter holidays, including these incredibly annoying music boxes that played constantly until Dad went and unplugged them because we could hear them from our room hahaha. But it’s also such a nice escape from the city!

We also picked up our tourist tickets along the way. They’re good for something like 12 different sites across Cusco and the Sacred Valley (technically the “Sacred Valley of the Incas” which is the valley at the heart of the Incan empire and has a ton of significant sites), and four of those were the ones we were planning to visit that day. From there, we rushed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and were reconvening in the hotel courtyard just as the taxi guys arrived.

Most actual tours of these ruins start in Cusco and work their way out from the city. Since the official Lara-guided tour goes in reverse, there was practically no one around when we got dropped off at our first stop, Tambomachay. Also, part of that might have been due to the weather. It was drizzling when we got there, and the rain continued off and on, in varying intensities, for the rest of the day.

Tambomachay was a place of rest and relaxation for the Inkas (the kings – from now on, I’m going to use “Inca” to describe the people group and “Inka” for the kings. This is just for my sanity. In reality, both are acceptable spellings for both). “Tambo” means that it is a lodge, or a place where travelers can receive food and lodgings, and “machay” means that it is a resting place. It is believed to have been used by the Inkas as a base while hunting and was also a sacred place.

The niches in the wall were likely used for golden idols and maybe even mummies. There are a few fountains, still operational, fed by an unknown source and brought to the site through underground channels. Some claim that the water has certain mystical qualities that grant the drinker eternal youth or fertility (one specifically promises to give you twins).

You can see the fountains on the right side. A park ranger we met at the site told us that the two fountains at the bottom are the ones for having twins, since the water stream splits into two, and the one on top is for eternal youth.

The niches were probably possibly maybe used for golden idols. I’m picturing giant, human-sized, golden corn cobs in all of them (that’s not historically accurate, it’s just for my own personal enjoyment).

You can see some terracing continuing out from the main part of the site… it makes me wonder what this used to look like in its former glory. Like we see these few fountains and a couple of walls now, but there’s no way that this was all there was to it back in the day.

The crew, slowly perfecting our selfie game.

Across from the main fountains, there are the foundations of a destroyed watchtower. According to a park ranger we met at the ruins, it was part of a tower network used to spot enemies and communicate with surrounding towers. From the Tambomachay tower, they would have communicated with the people at Puka-Pukara, the site across the street and the next stop on our tour. Like so many other things, the Spanish destroyed it when they invaded. He told us that it was 30m high (100ft)! That seems amazingly tall for the time and technology, but it’s gone now so who knows? And it’s not like the Incas didn’t accomplish other seemingly impossible feats.

A good view of the whole site, with the main fountain area to the right and the tower foundations to the left.

The foundations of the maybe-30-meter-tall watchtower.

This is from Puka-Pukara looking towards Tambomachay. If you see the road, then that parking lot with the building with the red roof, and then go straight back from there, that’s about where the watchtower would have been.

Puka-Pukara, which means “red fortress” in Quechua, was more of an observation post than an actual defensive fortress. The stones used in its construction have a red hue to them, and it’s located on a natural high point with a clear view of the approaching valley. It was meant to protect the sacred Tambomachay and was also a lodge for travelers, offering shelter and food. Well, all of that is the speculated use, at least. It also was maybe a storage area and maybe a barracks and maybe a checkpoint for travelers. But whatever it is, it inarguably does have a great view of the valley.

Puka-Pukara. I guess the stone does look kind of reddish?

We enjoyed the signage at the ruins IMMENSELY. These activities are forbidden and clearly translated into English:
DON’T HORSE RIDING
DON’T SOLD ON THE STREET
DON’T MOUNTAIN BIKING
Do you think they paid someone for this work??

Here we have:
DON’T ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
DON’T FIRE
And, since they deserved to get at least one right,
DON’T THROW GARBAGE
Their greatest mistake was translating “PROHIBIDO” as “DON’T”. Whether you speak Spanish or not, I’ll leave you to work out what a better translation could have been.

Again, this is what we see now, and it just makes me wish that I could see what it used to look like!

I assume the view, at least, is about the same. Maybe? Well, either way, it’s fabulous.

I’m obsessed with these walls. I want every wall in the universe to be as satisfyingly exact as Inca walls… and this one isn’t even the most precise! This is their “eh, not so important” level of precision! Whatever happened to craftsmanship? They don’t build things like they used to, that’s for sure!

Yup, good spot for keeping an eye out for approaching armies. Or just enjoying the view. Do you think they did? The Incas, I mean. While they were up in their towers, keeping their empire safe, do you think they took a second to look around and be like, “Man, what a world!”

The next part of our adventure was the only part that I was worried about. The walk between Puka-Pukara and Q’enko, our next destination, is fairly long and not especially exciting. I didn’t want to make my parents walk it if they didn’t have to. There was plenty of mandatory walking in our schedule, so no need to wear yourself out on something that you could do by car! My hope was that we would find a colectivo (public mini-bus) going in the right direction, but you never know when those will come along, plus it was a Sunday which makes “schedules” even more erratic.

Welp. I shouldn’t have worried. About half a second after we planted ourselves on the side of the road, a crazy colectivo came whipping around the corner, and we flagged it down. If you’ve ever seen/read Harry Potter, imagine the Knight Bus, though thankfully a mini-bus doesn’t have quite the same tipping potential. Every colectivo driver isn’t equally terrifying, but this one was absolutely on that level. Mom, Dad, and Benjamin found seats, and Jocelyn and I were left standing in the aisle. That was preferred, really, since we were the most experienced in uncomfortable public transit. It seemed like the driver was doing his best to knock us over, and he nearly succeeded a few times as we had to release our death grips on the seats to dig out some money – 1 sol (30 cents) each! Thankfully, we were only on there for about 5 minutes – enough to give my parents and Benjamin a taste of the colectivo experience but not long enough for permanent psychological damage.

Back on solid ground, we made our way across the street to the next site on our whirlwind tour, Q’enko. To be continued…

Next time, Q’enko and Saqsayhuaman!

Off to Cusco! And a Visit to Qorikancha

Posted on July 7, 2020September 11, 2020 by Lark

Travel day! Our final morning in the rainforest was another leisurely one. After eating 7AM breakfast, we walked to a boat, boated to a bus, and bused back to the tour company’s office in Puerto Maldonado to pick up the bags we’d left there. We arrived at the airport about three hours before our flight. Checking in, checking our bags, and going through security took up about 5 minutes of that time. Exploring the entire terminal took maybe 1 minute. Great! Only 2 hours and 54 minutes left.

The Puerto Maldonado to Cusco flight is one of the best I’ve ever been on. You take off over the rainforest and get one last look at the rivers winding their way across the earth. Then, for the landing, you fly through breathtaking mountains, descending into the valley that is home to Cusco. It’s quite the welcome!

These mountains just have such good texture to them, you know? I love them.

Besides the dramatic change in landscape, we also experienced quite the change in climate! After three days of hot, humid rainforest air, eternally damp clothes, and sweaty, sticky skin, the crisp, cool air of the mountains was invigorating! Cusco also brought a fun change to our group dynamic. Jocelyn, my friend from Esperanza de Ana, and her brother Benjamin joined us for the Cusco/Machu Picchu portion of our trip! The more the merrier! Well, sometimes that’s not true, but I wasn’t worried about this group. Everyone was easygoing and happy to leave the planning to me. Since I had already been in Cusco (when I was in Peru in 2017), it wasn’t too hard to put together an itinerary of what I felt were the “must-dos”.

We made it to our hotel, said hi to Jocelyn and Benjamin, and took a little time to get settled before heading back out into the world to make the most of our day. This was also the first day of Tour Guide Lara, a title I qualified for by 1. Having a guidebook, 2. Knowing incrementally more about the things we were seeing than the rest of the group, and 3. Having previously visited most of the sites (throwback: you can check out my original post about Qorikancha. We’ve certainly made some photo-quality improvements since then).

Our destination was Qorikancha, an Inca temple that was converted into a church and convent after the Spanish conquest. I love Qorikancha. It’s an incredible example of Inca construction, and since it was the most important temple in the empire, dedicated to their supreme deity, the sun god “Inti”, the craftsmanship is exceptional. Unlike many other Inca sites, there’s actually a decent amount known about its design and function in the Incan society.

On that note, there’s another important point to make, and it’s the fourth reason why the group was fine with having me as its tour guide: even real tour guides have a questionable quality of information, not because they’re bad guides but because there is so much that is unknown. This isn’t as true for Qorikancha because the Incas were still there when the Spanish arrived, and there are numerous written accounts of what it was like, but for places like Machu Picchu (which we’ll get into later) where everyone was gone by the time it was found, it feels like every “fact” carries a strong “maybe” disclaimer. If you want to know every theory about each stone, hole, etc. then it’s totally worth getting a real guide. If you are happy to know some vague details and have the time to walk around and appreciate the beauty of the site and its construction, you might be better suited to a Lara-guided tour.

The general format is this: I read all sorts of information that I’ve gathered from here, there, and everywhere. Everyone gets to participate while we assign the information to what we’re seeing (“Maybe that is the stone they’re talking about?” “I think this is the rainbow temple?” etc.). It might be wrong, or it might be right, but does it really matter? In the end, you probably remember everything better because it’s an active discussion instead of a passive lecture. Sure, some of what you remember might not be right, but what is “right” when it’s 90% a mystery anyway? (This seems like another good time for a disclaimer that I try to make these posts factual but don’t guarantee anything.)

Qorikancha is a fantastic example of the cultural tragedy that was the European conquest of the “new world”. As I said, it was the most important temple in the Incan Empire, and as such, the best of the best was put into its construction. The stone used in the temples is incredibly difficult to work with, and any stone that was less than perfect would not have been included. The sheer effort that went into its construction is a testament to both its importance in the Incan culture and the labor resources of the empire.

Cool shadows on the rainbow temple maybe? We’ll go with that. But look at how tight those joints are!

Even though you can still see the phenomenal stonework, today’s Qorikancha is but a shadow of its former self. Originally, there were hundreds of solid gold sheets mounted on the exterior stone and inside the sun temple. The temple literally would have shone. Inside, temples dedicated to the moon and stars were decorated with sheets of silver. Other interior walls featured other precious metals and stones. Golden corn, golden llamas, and golden babies were used in various rituals, and life-sized golden people and other figures filled the lawn. I can’t even begin to imagine how it must have looked, but it must have been an incredible sight! Then, the Spanish came. They melted down the gold, took the jewels, and destroyed what was left behind. Like I said, cultural tragedy.

This building, now the church, was built on the foundations of the sun temple. Look at how weak the Spanish stonework is in comparison to the crisp precision of the Inca temples.

Moon and stars temples. Imagine those walls covered in silver! This is also where you’ll find the famous 14-angled stone. It’s in the doorway at the bottom of the picture, covered in glass. It’s one stone with 14 edges that line up perfectly with the stones around it, just another example of their impressive stonework

What remains of the temple grounds. This is what was filled with golden figures. They also used to actually plant the golden corn during agricultural rituals.

I read something that explained the difference in how the Spanish and the Incas viewed these riches. The Incas valued them highly for their beauty and thought they should be displayed for people to enjoy. They didn’t place a monetary value on these precious metals and stones, but since they were seen as valuable, they were used mostly in religious contexts. The Spanish, on the other hand, valued them monetarily which meant that they took the beautiful things and hid them away so that no one could steal them. That seems like a shame, doesn’t it? I wish we operated more on the Inca mindset than the Western one for this.

Other random fun Qorikancha facts:

Mummies of the old incas (kings) were housed here and brought out each day to be “fed” via burnt food sacrifices.
The golden fountain in the middle of the courtyard used to be covered in 55kg of gold (which sounds like a lot, but I have no concept of how much gold weighs. Okay, I just looked it up, and 1kg gold brick is about the size of an iPhone 6. Geez).

Just imagine 55 solid-gold iPhones sitting right there in the middle. Magnificent! (hehehe)

Qorikancha means “golden courtyard” or “golden enclosure” in Quechua. It can also be spelled literally however you want, as long as you kind of end up with the same pronunciation. This is a typical problem with Quechua names as there’s no standard spelling, so you might also see it spelled Coricancha, Koricancha, or Qoricancha. Even “Inca” can be spelled “Inka”. (This irregularity bothers me, so I choose default spellings based on whichever one I like best.)
Qorikancha has survived multiple large earthquakes, as have many other Inca sites, thanks to their no-mortar construction technique. The lack of mortar allows the stones to move individually during earthquakes, and they’re so well-fitted that they settle back into place when it’s over.

Pretend the flowers are facing us. I didn’t want to disturb them just to get a better picture.

There’s also some stuff onsite to see that’s associated with the church, but I don’t have much to say about that. Lots of religious art that sometimes intriguingly combines aspects from pre-Spanish cultures with Christian images. To me, though, the building is the most interesting part.

The response when I told everyone to make cool shadows. Kind of weak, but we’ll give everyone a pass as it was our first day all together.

There are some changing art displays in the museum as well. This industrial-vibe nativity is a little offbeat but kind of fantastic.

When we’d had enough, we stopped for dinner and then headed back to the hotel. Before going to sleep, Mom, Dad, and I hung up every piece of clothing that we had with us in the rainforest. Literally everything was damp because of the rainforest humidity. The rainforest was great, but I wasn’t upset about leaving its air behind!

Lomo saltado (beef stir fry), a Peruvian classic and one of the best meals at EA.

Oxbow Lake

Posted on July 3, 2020 by Lark

We got to “sleep in” on our second morning in the rainforest. Breakfast was at 7AM, and we left directly after for our morning excursion. The weather looked mildly threatening, but since it wasn’t raining, we decided to chance it and visit a lake about an hour’s walk away, Lake Condenado.

Despite our optimism that the rain would hold off until we got back, well… that didn’t happen. We were walking for maybe half an hour before it started sounding like the rains were coming. Have you ever been in a forest as a storm was approaching? It’s a little intimidating! You hear the leaves rustling and the rain pounding down in the distance, and it sounds like it will be on top of you in a second. I always feel this tension in the air, like a foreboding, and a voice in the back of my head is yelling, “Run! It’s coming!” It’s pointless, of course. There’s no outrunning a storm like that (at least not at my speed). So, we did the next best thing and took advantage of the warning by donning our rain gear. We’d all brought umbrellas, too, which ended up being the best idea of the day.

Mom in full rain gear. I used to think ponchos were nerdy. In a rainforest, ponchos are incredibly fashionable and also practical. Also, the entire path, as you can see, is a puddle. So yeah… waterproof boots were a must!

I thought this was a big tree until we saw some actual big trees later in the day… stay tuned!

These are the roots of a “walking palm” tree. The name is based on an unsubstantiated theory that the tree can move up to a few centimeters per year in order to position itself for the best sunlight. True or not, I would believe just about anything weird that you told me about this tree, including that it comes alive at night and walks around on those creepy stilt legs.

Speaking of weird roots… I don’t know if this is another variety of walking palm or something else, but it just looks like the tree has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing.

A couple of minutes later, the rain reached us, and from then on, it was pouring. POURING. I kept hoping it would let up a little… nope. We got the full rainforest experience. It was still going strong when we reached the lake.

I was surprised to hear that there are lakes in the rainforest. Maybe it’s just me, but “rainforest” puts a picture of rivers in my head rather than lakes. Well, the reason for the lakes is actually the rivers! Remember that picture of the winding river that I took from the plane? Here it is again, in case you don’t:

Look at those crazy bends. This is what causes lakes to form!

As the river turns, there are two things happening: the outside of the bend erodes and inside builds up deposits of silt. Eventually, enough erosion happens between two bends that a shortcut is formed, and silt keeps building up until the loop of the river between the two bends gets cut off. Water stops flowing through this original route, turning it into a lake, called an oxbow lake. These lakes create a completely new habitat within the rainforest. Enjoy a very helpful visual aid below:

Focus on those two bends where all of the arrows are pointing. On the insides of the curves, there are silt deposits (red arrows). On the outsides, there’s erosion (blue arrows). Eventually, those two erosion points meet, essentially short-circuiting the river and making the loopy original route unnecessary. After the silt deposits build up enough, the loop gets cut off from the river and becomes a lake (green oval). (Excuse this rudimentary visual aid. I tried.)

We loaded into a canoe at the lake, and Juvenal paddled us across while Dad bailed out the boat. And it kept on raining.

Calm, serene oxbow lake (actually though, that rain is no joke!), and another group.

Mom smiling because she’s dry under that poncho.

Dad taking a break from bailing (see bail bucket aka cut off milk jug to his left).

We unfortunately didn’t get the full lake experience because of the rain. Normally, these lakes are great places to see wildlife. Endangered giant river otters, the longest of all weasels (they grow up to 5’ long!), take advantage of the more sheltered habitat to raise their young. Caiman, including the 15-foot-long Black Caiman, and anaconda sightings are possible if you’re very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint). Piranhas are guaranteed to be in attendance, and Juvenal brought bread to lure them up to the surface. Who knew that piranhas were such carb-lovers? We couldn’t see them, but we could see the pieces of bread bobbing up and down as they were eaten from below. Apparently, piranhas will jump out of the water when the weather is nice, but they don’t do that in the rain. Why not? Who knows? It’s not like they’re worried about getting wet!

(Here’s a terrible piranha video I took where I apparently got distracted partway through and let the bread drift out of frame even though it’s only 20 seconds long. My videography skills could use some work still…)

Speaking of animals getting wet in the rain… We saw some birds around, sitting in the trees around the lake. They looked just about how I felt: soggy and a little miserable. I hadn’t really thought before about the animals having to deal with the rain. In my mind, they all have nice, dry jungle houses to go to. But those birds were definitely not nice and dry. Maybe that doesn’t actually bother them at all, but they sure didn’t look very happy. As they say, misery loves company, and seeing them made me feel slightly better… and also thankful for my umbrella and waterproof clothes. At least I was dry!

Across the lake, we got out of the canoe and to visit a couple of trees. The best thing about trees is that there’s a 100% chance of them being there where you left them (except maybe, theoretically, in the case of the walking palm tree…), unlike any time you go to look for wildlife. The first was a huge tree with some serious buttress roots. I don’t remember what kind of tree it was, but maybe a ceiba (kapok tree in English)? That’s my unprofessional guess, based on other ceibas I’ve seen. We’ll just go with that unless any of you know any better, then feel free to burst my arborist ego.

We asked how old it was, and Juvenal said that there’s really no way to know for sure. Even if the tree was cut down, there are no rings to indicate its age! Each ring marks the beginning of a “growing season”, and in places with cold winters and hot summers, the result is one ring each year. In the tropics, the weather is relatively stable throughout the year which means that the trees have nothing telling them to stop growing. Their growing season is ongoing. So, we have to be content with the mystery.

This isn’t the ceiba. This is just a tree that I thought was pretty.

My first attempt to convey the magnitude of the ceiba.

It really doesn’t come through well in pictures.

People shown for scale. Still not helpful, though.
Note: Despite how it may look in this picture, I’m not pregnant and also do not have a new beer belly (ditto for Dad). I put my backpack on my front/inside my rain jacket to protect my stuff because it’s much easier to keep a backpack dry with an umbrella when it’s in front of you! Otherwise, the umbrella runoff often falls right onto your bag.

The other “tree” was a parasite. You can see these growing all over the forest in varying levels of development. It’s quite the long process… the parasite tree grows around an existing tree. It looks like interconnected vines wrapping around the trunk, and eventually grows to about the height of the host tree. The parasite ultimately chokes out the host tree and kills it. Over time, the host decays and leaves the parasite standing on its own with a cavity in the middle where the original tree trunk used to be.

So, this particular parasite tree was at the point where the original tree was gone, and since it was so big, we could go inside! How weird. It was hard to take pictures with the rain and such, but I did my very best (and that will have to be enough).

Mom making her way into the parasite tree

The ride back across the lake was about the same as the way there. Juvenal paddled. Dad bailed. Mom and I sat and tried to stay dry (important work we were doing). From there, we headed back to the lodge, and the rain started to slow when we were nearly there. I was ready to turn around and give the lake another try! Thanks for nothing, rainforest weather! Though, I do have to point out that we were incredibly lucky/foresighted when we decided to visit the macaws the previous day and not risk hoping for better weather the next morning. That would have been a huge disappointment! The trees are there rain or shine, but the macaws aren’t.

It would probably be super nice on a sunny day.

We had some good relaxation time for the rest of the day. We made a quick trip across the river in the afternoon to check out some of the plants that people grow in the region, as there are people who live and farm in unprotected areas of the rainforest. There are also indigenous tribes who live in the protected parts of the forest (as many as 15 uncontacted tribes in the Peruvian Amazon alone), but they aren’t planting and growing cacao and sugar cane.

Did you know that a banana tree only produces one bunch of bananas before it dies? Well, the whole tree doesn’t die, but most of what you see does. The base of the tree remains, and after about nine more months, another tree will stand in its place and produce another bunch. Seems like a lot of work for a substandard fruit (sorry if you’re a banana-lover. I’m decidedly not).

A pretty night after a not-so-pleasant morning.

A little too cloudy for a good sunset, but there are some hints of color!

Dinner was a lot of fun that night. There were so few people staying at the lodge that everyone started talking. It was like a weird extended-family dinner. I got to practice my Spanish with one lady who works as travel agent in Lima. She was visiting with her sister and niece to take pictures and assess the lodge for work. Pretty cool! She could speak English, but it was probably about the level of my Spanish… decent but tentative. We made good Spanglish conversation buddies!

After dinner, we had to pack up our stuff because we were headed to Cusco the next day! I was sad to be leaving the rainforest but excited about the possibility of sleeping past 6AM for once…

Our last time coming “home” to the lodge.

Brazil Nuts, a Lizard, and Creepy Night Crawlies

Posted on June 30, 2020June 30, 2020 by Lark

After a morning full of macaws, we had a slightly more relaxed afternoon plan. We were heading to another clay lick, this time one that’s frequented by mammals like jungle pigs, deer, and other herbivores. Unlike the macaws, the mammals’ schedules aren’t so predictable, so Juvenal warned us that there was a good chance we wouldn’t see anything. Oh, well… what can you do? I’ve been working on my patience, so at the very least, I’d get the chance to practice that.

Before we headed out, though, Juvenal showed us how to crack open a Brazil nut pod. Remember when I talked about those? Brazil nut trees are super tall, and the nuts are contained inside large pods that are similar to coconuts. The pods fall to the ground, and that’s how they’re “harvested”, even for commercial purposes. People just gather the ones that have already fallen to the ground.

Juvenal had said that we didn’t want to get knocked in the head by a falling pod, and after witnessing the effort required to break through the hard outer shell to reach the nuts, um… yeah. Definitely not the kind of thing I want hitting my head. He handed us a machete and told us to take a crack at it (hehe he didn’t say it in those exact words, but he should have). Dad went first, and despite his many strong swings, the coconut held strong. I took a few until I felt like there was no progress being made. Mom even hopped in there for a second. And then Dad went back at it until we finally got a hole big enough to squeeze the Brazil nuts through. Geez. It’s quite the undertaking! And then, that’s not even the end! You still have to crack the casings around each of the nuts, though they had a big nutcracker for that so it was much easier than opening the coconut.

What a good sport! (This was the end of her swing, by the way. This was just bad picture-taking timing on my part.)

There MUST be some sort of trick to this, right???

Here’s Dad in action:

The whole thing is fascinating. The coconuts can have anywhere from 10-30 nuts in them, and based on its size, Juvenal guessed that ours had 20. There were 19. What an impressive and yet incredibly useless skill. I didn’t realize until we got it open that I’ve seen Brazil nuts before. Mom used to buy them, and she said that she used to really like them and then decided that they weren’t worth the effort. Ha. And she didn’t even have to open the pod! But I hear ya, Mom. I tried one of the ones we cracked… it was fine. Kind of bitter. I don’t know. I wouldn’t choose them necessarily, but if I was starving or lost in the rainforest, that would probably be the thing I would go for (though then I would almost certainly die because I’m not sure that the energy you get from eating the nuts is greater than the energy you put into accessing them).

Pulling the nuts (in their final protective layer, as if they needed another one) out of the tiny hole we managed to make in the pod.

And cracking them open to get to the actual nuts inside.

After that whole adventure, we headed out into the rainforest to visit the mammal clay lick, about a 30-minute walk from the lodge. There were a few cool things that we came across along the way…

This mud tube was built by a cicada! This isn’t unique to the rainforest, but I’d definitely never seen one before. They build these when their tunnels are in danger of being flooded, to keep the cicada nymphs from drowning (that’s what comes out of the ground, the nymphs. Then, they shed their exoskeletons and begin transforming into adult cicadas).

This is an entrance into a leafcutter ant colony. It may not look like much, but don’t let that fool you! The nests can be 30-60 meters in diameter underneath the ground. That’s 100 to nearly 200 feet! And they go 6-8 meters deep (20-26ft). Also, did you know that the ants don’t actually eat the leaves that they bring back to the nest? They bring them into a special chamber underground where they cultivate fungus to feed their larvae. THEY’RE FARMERS. Is that not the craziest thing????

At the clay lick, there’s a “blind” to sit in, a camouflaged hut with a little sliver window to look through so that the animals don’t see you while you’re creeping on them. It was kind of rough in there… hot, unventilated, and not the most ergonomically designed… the window is too high if you’re sitting down and too low if you’re standing up. So if you want to keep an eye on the clay lick, you have to stand in an awkward half-squat the whole time.

Since I’m so young and agile, I took one for the team while Juvenal worked on a Rubik’s cube and Mom and Dad lounged. Mostly there was a lot of nothing, nothing, and nothing. I kept having a feeling that something was going to happen soon, but it was just my optimism at work. No herds of jungle pigs came thundering through the forest, though if they had, I absolutely would be saying right now, “I knew they were coming! I must have some sort of gift.”

Finally, I saw some leaves moving! I couldn’t see the rustler at first, but it seemed unlikely that it was very big. Definitely not pig-sized. At first glimpse, it seemed like it could be a snake? But no, as it got closer, I could see that it was a big lizard! I got everyone up to check it out, and while it wasn’t exactly what we were hoping to see, it was better than nothing! I was content with our creepy forked-tongue lizard.

There he is! He was probably at least 3 feet long. I don’t know. I’m a terrible estimator.

That forked tongue really kind of freaks me out.

Check out the cool patterns on his skin.

We headed back to the lodge, had some downtime before dinner, and then had another activity after we ate! They do a “night walk” each day where you walk around the forest at night with a guide, and he points out all of the cool things that you can see more clearly at night. Mom opted out of this one, but Dad and I went and had a great time!

There was a different guide for the night walk, and after about 5 seconds of walking with him, it was clear why he got the job of leading that activity. He LOVED bugs and night things. He was seriously having the time of his life, and even though I am generally not excited about bugs and night things, his enthusiasm was contagious. We were also lucky because we were the only two people in the group which meant that we could ask as many questions as we wanted!

We started out by wading in some ankle-deep water where he pointed out various frogs and their eggs which look like weird jelly-like globs hanging off of branches. While we were still standing in the water, the guide started shining his light on the surface like he was looking for something. I asked what, and he said “caimans”. WHAT. They’re like alligators! I would have thought he was joking, but that didn’t seem like his style. I freaked out a little and he goes, “but just small ones!” OH, JUST SMALL ONES? THAT’S FINE THEN. Um. NOT. Much to his dismay (and my relief), there were no caimans to be found. Except now that I think about it, just because we didn’t see them DOESN’T MEAN THEY WEREN’T THERE. Ahhhh. Now I’m retroactively freaking out which makes no sense, but ahh, I can still imagine standing in that water and now I’m picturing my reaction if a caiman had come and it is decidedly not chill.

See that weird, jelly-like stuff hanging off of that branch? Those are frog eggs.

Another frog! (Smack dab in the middle.)

ANYWAY, we headed back to dry land, past a large, poisonous spider (no pictures of that, sorry. I practically ran past, as if it was planning to leap through the air at me). I started thinking that maybe it hadn’t been a bad idea for Mom to skip this. We saw a bunch of other bugs… grasshoppers and a scorpion spider and crickets maybe? I don’t know. They’re all just bugs to me. I also spotted a little red snake on a tree.

Then, this was crazy… the guide turned on a blacklight, and it made a little scorpion glow bright green! There’s something in their exoskeletons that glows in blacklights, though no one knows exactly what the purpose is. When it was glowing, it was incredibly obvious because everything around it was that regular, blacklight purple. Then, he switched back to normal light, and we could barely see it because it was brown and so was everything around it.

The best part was when the guide told us to turn our lights off and wait. We stood there in the dark for about a minute before these little glowing things slowly started to appear at the base of the tree near us! Glowworms! Like, what the heck?? Nature is insane!

Mom was asleep when we got back, and it didn’t take long for the two of us to join her. It had been a VERY long day! Thankfully, we didn’t have quite as early of a start the next day, though we still weren’t “sleeping in” by any stretch of the imagination.

A cricket? I think? Kind of terrifyingly large…

Macaw Morning

Posted on June 16, 2020November 10, 2020 by Lark

If you’re looking for a relaxing vacation where you can sleep in and lounge around, the rainforest probably isn’t a good destination for you. Well, there’s plenty of lounge time, and you couldn’t pick a prettier place… but don’t expect to do much sleeping in. We set our alarms for 3:30AM because we had a 4:15AM meeting time with our guide, Juvenal.

So, what exactly was exciting enough to rouse us at such an absurd hour? Macaws. We’ll get to that in a bit, but at the end of this post, you can be the judge and let me know if you think it was worth waking up well before dawn was even considering cracking.

When our alarm went off, it sounded like it was raining outside, and Juvenal had mentioned that it’s only worth going if the weather isn’t bad. We got dressed anyway and headed to the lodge to figure out the plan.

Juvenal said that he thought the rain might stop, and it was up to us if we wanted to chance it and go or if we wanted to try the next morning instead. I was 100% on team “let’s go” because no way was I trying to have ANOTHER 3:30AM wake up call the next day! The only thing worse than an early-morning wake-up is an unnecessary early-morning wake-up! And what if it was raining even harder then? We delayed for a few minutes in the hopes that it would let up a bit and then grabbed our boots and umbrellas and hit the road. Well, hit the trail. And then the boat.

My first attempt at taking a picture of a flying bird… hehe not great.

Much easier when the birds are moving slowly!

We had a two-hour boat ride, and by the time we reached our destination, the rain had stopped completely, and the weather was absolutely perfect!! So, what exactly WAS our destination?

Every morning, as long as the weather is nice, you can find huge numbers of macaws gathering at clay licks to, as Juvenal put it, “get their daily vitamins”. The macaws visit these areas to literally eat the exposed clay. Experts aren’t entirely sure of the reason for this behavior, but a leading theory is that the clay contains salt that is otherwise hard to find in the Amazon. Salt is important for many bodily functions and helps to keep the nervous system and heart functioning properly. Animals, like macaws, with a primarily plant-based diet can have trouble getting sufficient salt from their food. Consuming the salty clay helps to cover this deficiency. Another theory is that the clay helps to cleanse the naturally occurring toxins that are found in plants and prevents them from being absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. The sodium theory is more widely accepted because studies of macaw behavior have found that they prefer saltier clay. There was one clay lick in particular in Peru where macaws were seen eating from a specific clay layer, and analysis showed a much higher concentration of sodium there than the layers above and below. This isn’t a behavior of only macaws in the Amazon. Other plant-eating birds, like parrots and parakeets, do the same, and even mammals like jungle pigs and deer make regular visits to the clay licks, though not quite as often as the macaws.

The boat docked, and from there, we had an easy 10-minute walk to the viewing area. There was one other tour group already there, but everyone had plenty of space and a good view. Juvenal said that it can get very crowded in the high season, so I felt pretty good about our timing, even though the more unpredictable weather of the rainy season was less than ideal.

When we first arrived, there wasn’t much going on. There were some macaws high up in the surrounding trees, but none of them were anywhere near the actual clay lick. Juvenal said that they partner up for life, so if we watched closely, we’d notice that they go and come in pairs. More and more gathered, and then they started creeping down to lower and lower branches. He said that all they needed was for one bird to make the first move and then they’d all be on the clay. Sure enough, one brave soul boldly landed, ate some clay, and flew away… and then came back after nothing disastrous happened. Pretty soon, there were birds all over it!

Getting a liiittle bit closer, with a couple of new friends.

These are all basically the same now, but my gosh I just can’t even believe that this is a real, normal thing. Like, this happens EVERY DAY. What a world.

I’d never seen anything like it! I mean, I don’t know when I would have, but the screeching and the sounds of their wings flapping… well, I think you have to hear it for yourself.

I was having quite the orientation with my new camera. I still wasn’t really sure about the settings or what everything meant, and Dad told me to just shoot on auto because it would still be better than anything I would take with my cell phone. True. The next leg of my trip, after my parents left, was with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and my uncle knows a lot about cameras. I planned to take advantage of his knowledge, but until then, I just had to make do and play around with it. So… yeah, these aren’t the best pictures. But I’m pretty sure that taking pictures of distant, flying birds is just about the hardest thing to start with.

I wanted to get some pictures of them flying because the colors are even more incredible when their wings are open.

Pretend this isn’t blurry and just appreciate how majestic these birds are.

That one with its wings open on the tree… whoa.

Those two birds flying away on the left are awesome!

The best thing, though, was that Juvenal had a telescope with him. It made you feel like you were right next to the clay lick! And you can literally take pictures through the telescope using a phone camera which is crazy!

It’s like he’s staring straight into our souls

If I were a bird, I think I would like to be a macaw.

That one on the bottom left is taking a big ‘ole bite. Yummm, clay!

We saw three different types of macaws. The scarlet macaws are, to me, the classics. They’re the ones that look the most rainbow-like. The red-and-green macaws are very similar, but they don’t have yellow feathers like the scarlet macaws. And finally, the blue-and-yellow macaws are pretty easy to separate from the other two. See if you can spot all three types in this photo!

At one point, something scared the macaws and they all flew away. It happened so quickly… they were all on the clay lick, and then a second later, they were gone! I guess they just went and took a lap or something because soon enough, they started gathering in the trees again, and the whole creeping process repeated until they were back on the clay lick in full force.

I’m telling you, taking pictures of flying birds is not easy!

Not a great picture, but I just love those two blue-and-yellow macaws who look like they’re resting their heads on each other.

Getting set for another round at the clay lick

I think I could have stayed there watching until all of the macaws left, but after a while, we called it a morning and headed back to the boat. The ride back to the lodge was so pleasant. There was no sign of the nasty weather from the morning. The sky was blue, and being on the boat on the river was the best feeling in the world. I sat cross-legged on the bench so that I could face forward and look out at the riverbanks and decided that I was at my peak happiness on the river. You think I can live on one of those boats?

The fam with the clay lick in the back left

We didn’t see anything too thrilling on the way back, but we did see a bunch of birds. We cruised past another, small clay lick right on the edge of the river. I was no longer afraid of using my camera on the boat, so I had it out (with the strap around my neck and a VERY tight grip in my hands) and was snapping sure-to-be-terrible pictures along the way. The only way to get better is to practice!

It was only about 10AM when we got back to the lodge, but I felt like we’d already lived an entire day! Thankfully, we had some downtime before lunch, and I used the time to lounge on my bed and rest up for our afternoon adventures… which I’ll talk about next time!

Puerto Maldonado

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Lark

We’re back in Peru! I know, for a time when travel is all but impossible, we sure do seem to move around a lot. But that’s the joy of the internet! And memories. For me, it’s been fun to relive some past excitement while actually sitting in Pennsylvania, feeling like I’ve had my wings clipped.

So, we last left off in Peru as I headed to the airport from Esperanza de Ana, not to leave the country but rather to meet my parents and kick off our family Peruvian adventure! I had quite the crazy mix of feelings. I was sad to leave EA, happy to see my parents, sad to leave my friends, happy because Jocelyn and her brother were meeting up with us later in Cusco… and on top of my conflicting feelings, it was nearly the middle of the night which is never good for processing emotions or thinking clearly.

Seeing my parents walk out into the arrivals hall was surreal. I don’t think I realized how much I missed them until that moment! Between that and my excitement for the trip ahead, I didn’t have a chance to dwell too much on my feelings about leaving everything else behind.

OH! And I had one more thing to distract me… my new camera!!! I had been thinking about buying a real camera for years, and this seemed like as good a time as any to take the plunge. I bought one, shipped it to my parents in the States, and they brought it along with them! This is my first “real” camera, so bear with me… things started out a little rough as I tried to figure out what the heck I was doing, but you’ll see that over my month and a half of travels, my skills went from very rough to kind of okay! (I still used my phone a lot for pictures as well, but the camera was infinitely better for anything requiring a zoom.)

Anyway, after our bleary-eyed airport reunion, we headed to a hotel near the airport to get a few hours of sleep before our morning flight to Puerto Maldonado!

It’s a far cry from the brown desert climate of Lima!

One of the major places to visit in Peru, besides Machu Picchu, of course, is the Amazon Rainforest. Most of the rainforest (about 60%) is in Brazil, Peru has the second largest area (~13%), and seven other South American countries contain the remainder. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest, containing more than half of its entire rainforested area.

The Peruvian Amazon covers more than half of Peru, but only about 5% of the population lives there. (The majority live along the coast, like in Lima and its suburbs, where it’s easier to find work.) The two major tourist gateways are Iquitos in the north, home to the famous pink river dolphins and the only place to actually cruise the Amazon River, and Puerto Maldonado in the south, sitting at the intersection of two Amazon tributary rivers, the Tambopata River and the Madre de Dios River.

Check out these river views. What a crazy route!

I chose Puerto Maldonado because it’s a much smaller city, there’s a ton of biodiversity in that part of the rainforest, and it’s way more accessible to/from the other places we were planning to visit (you can fly direct to/from Lima and Cusco). One of the EA directors recommended an eco-lodge that she had visited, and so, we had our first destination!

After a short flight from Lima, the company picked us up from the itty bitty Puerto Maldonado airport and drove us about 5 minutes to their office in town where we left any luggage that we didn’t need for the rainforest leg of our trip. From there, we had an hour-long bus ride to the Tambopata River followed by a 1.5-hour boat ride to the lodge.

Lunch on the go! Chaufa (fried rice) in a banana leaf

Along the way, we got our first glimpse of rainforest wildlife! One of the guides spotted three capybaras down by the water (the guides all have eagle eyes, it’s crazy), and we watched them climb their way up probably 15 meters of what seemed like an impossibly steep riverbank. It was extra incredible because capybaras are NOT the most agile-looking animals. They’re the largest rodents in the world and my best description is that they’re like large guinea pigs or maybe large, tailless rats? I would have a picture to show you… but they were too far away for my phone, and I was still in the “new electronics” overprotective mode with my camera (I was certain that I was going to drop it into the river… and I still had no idea how to use it).

Once we reached the “dock” near the lodge, we had a 20-minute walk through the forest with our guide for the rainforest portion of our trip, Juvenal (who-ven-ahl). He gave us some basic rules of the rainforest: Stay together, never put your hand somewhere without looking first (unless you want to risk touching a biting ant or worse), and walk quickly when you see Brazil nut pods on the ground or flowers from their trees. Okay, the first two seem like common sense… but the third one?

Brazil nut trees can grow to be VERY large: 160ft (50m) tall and with a 100ft (30m) diameter canopy. The nuts are contained in coconut-like pods that are usually around 3-7 inches (8-18cm) in diameter and can weigh more than 5 pounds (2+ kg)! Within each pod, there can be anywhere from 10-30 Brazil nuts. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. The most important thing to know is that the pods fall from the trees whenever they’re good and ready, so unless you want a 5-pound coconut to whack you in the head after a 160ft fall, it’s best to minimize your time underneath the trees during the falling season. Juvenal showed us how some of them had embedded themselves into the ground after the fall. Eek! Don’t have to tell me twice! No, thank you to a dent like that in my skull!

Brazil nut pod (I was really taking my life into my hands by pausing to take this picture, so I hope you appreciate it… I was kind of operating on the “lightning never strikes the same place twice” principle, even though that’s a bunch of baloney even in regards to lightning and definitely doesn’t apply in this context).

This tree is funky… look at how weird and smooth it looks! I don’t remember the type of tree, but Juvenal explained that it sheds its bark every so often to get rid of anything that might be growing on it. Cool!

This tree should take some hints from the bark-shedding tree because there’s all sorts of stuff growing on this trunk.

The lodge! This is where the common spaces are, like the dining area, spa, and educational spaces.

If this isn’t the most picturesque place to get a massage…

They have nightly lectures about bugs and other similarly thrilling topics here (okay, that was rude. I’m sure the lectures were interesting… but it’s a fact that they were frequently about things like moths. MOTHS).

The walkway from the main lodge area to our room.

View of our room’s building from the walkway.

We had some downtime after we reached the lodge and used it to get settled. Mom wasn’t thrilled about the room… our rectangular room had only three walls, and even those barely qualified as such. They were made of bamboo and had “windows” (aka openings) just above head level between the room and the outdoor walkway/hallway. And the shower was a step up from floor level, so you could literally see people walking by while you were inside. It’s good that we went in the off-season because if there were people in every room, the lack of privacy/separation would have been more apparent.

The fourth “wall” was left open to the rainforest. Juvenal promised that we probably wouldn’t end up with a jaguar in our room. Heh. I’ll tell you now that we didn’t have any animal issues, but there are some LARGE rainforest bugs. Our beds had mosquito nets, at least. We gave Mom the bed farthest from the open wall, I slept in the middle, and we offered Dad up to the forest.

Yeah, there’s nothing covering that “window”.

Camera practice. Not especially well-focused, but a cool flower nonetheless.

We saw these tamarin monkeys from our room as well!

Unfortunately, the bugs didn’t have the same sense as the monkeys. I should have put something in this picture for scale, but this beetle was at least an inch and a half long. Mom wasn’t into it.

We had some time before dark and took advantage of the good weather by climbing the “canopy tower”, a tower that’s maybe 150 feet tall? Its top platform sits up above the tree canopies, and we spotted a few birds flying around and watched the sun start to set before heading back to the lodge. We headed down before it got too dark at the top, and by the time we reached the forest floor, it was juuust light enough to see our way back. The canopy-level and the ground-level are two totally different worlds!

The ground around the tower. I liked the colors.

Quite a different perspective from the ground!

The viewing platform at the top of the tower

Dramatic skies from the top of the tower

Back at the lodge, we ate dinner, slipped into our mosquito-net-shielded beds, and passed out. Not only had it been a long day, but we had a painfully early start the next morning… 4:15AM! I wish I was kidding.

Casa Rosada and La Boca

Posted on June 4, 2020September 8, 2020 by Lark

It’s our last day in Argentina, folks! Mike and I had an evening flight back to New York which gave us most of the day to do some last-minute sightseeing. I was excited because it was a Saturday, and Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, is open for tours on the weekends. I made reservations online for the 12:30PM English tour, giving us plenty of time to wake up, get ourselves organized and checked out, and walk over for the tour.

Casa Rosada. We got to make a grand entrance right through the front gate and archway.

We arrived a little early, found the line for our tour, and were chatting to pass the time when the guy in front of us struck up a conversation. This is one of the great joys of traveling – meeting new people in the most random of places. Sometimes you hit it off and become fast friends, and sometimes you leave the interaction scratching your head, but either way, it’s all part of the fun!

This situation was more of the latter. First, he asked us why we were in line for an English tour because, “You two look Argentinian!” I’ll admit, I was happy our chameleon skills were working in Argentina. But still, strange question. Second, he asked Mike to take a picture of him with his (Mike’s) wife… aka ME. I reacted, well, poorly. My face transformed into one of horror as I set the record straight, “He’s my BROTHER!” Anyway, we may not have ended up with a new friend this time, but in hindsight, it was kind of entertaining.

After that, they started filtering people through security, and we reconvened inside the building as we waited for our guide and for everyone to get checked in.

The ceiling of the entry area where we waited to meet our guide.

The Casa Rosada, or pink house, is only “home” to the presidential offices. The president’s actual house is outside of the city, about half an hour away in the suburbs. The fastest way to commute is by helicopter, so obviously that’s how it’s done because heaven forbid that the president should have to sit in traffic.

Anyway, the palace was built on the site of an old Spanish fort, used by the viceroys during the colonial days. After independence, it was chosen as the seat of the executive branch. You might be wondering why it’s pink… why, oxblood, of course! An oxblood/lime/who-knows-what-else mix was applied to the exterior for waterproofing purposes.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the two sides of the building aren’t symmetrical. This is because it started as two buildings, the Central Post Office on the right and the old Government Palace on the left. Tamburini, one of the original architects of the Teatro Colón, designed a central archway to join the two buildings together in 1890.

Please admire this floor. You know how I feel about fancy floors (and if you don’t know, I love them).

My personal opinion of the building itself was that it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. There are some cool elements, but the interior decor is erratic. It doesn’t feel like there’s a cohesive design, and maybe there actually isn’t. We learned that when a new president comes into power, they can redesign the interior spaces. They just can’t touch the facade. I don’t know. It just wasn’t my favorite.

A potential contributing factor to my opinion was that the tour itself was incredibly boring. It didn’t have to be, but the guide had no concept of storytelling or determining which facts are interesting and which are unnecessary. Mike entertained himself by pointing out terrible lighting and poorly hidden cabling and laughing at my reactions because he knows how much that stuff bothers me. It’s just… if you’re doing work to update a historic building, you can’t just run exposed cables all over the place! Come on, people! At least TRY to conceal them!

Here are some interior pictures. What do you think about the decor choices?

A meeting room. Looks like they could use a bigger TV. I mean, come on. What is that? A 50″?

I liked this wood detail around the tops of the walls.

This balcony, with its view out to the Plaza de Mayo, has been used for many famous speeches in Argentina’s history. Eva Perón made her final speech from here during a workers’ rally (she died a few months later).

The balcony has a pretty fab view of the Plaza de Mayo.

Another conference room. And seriously, that TV is way too small. Do people sit at that table with the chairs so close to one another?

Really, the whole building is just a bunch of huge rooms with tables and chairs. I guess it is basically just a palatial office building but like… how many conference rooms do you need? (Also, look at that ceiling!)

Here’s a better view of that conference room ceiling. Fancy!

Honestly, this little courtyard was probably my favorite part of the whole building. It’s the only part that didn’t feel overdone.

This is the White Hall where the president is sworn in. It’s also used for press conferences and other important events.

The ceiling paintings commemorate the May Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.

The room is pretty epic, but the lighting is so distracting that it makes it hard to really focus on the details. That chandelier has 456 lamps, and all of them are 100x brighter than they should be. My gosh. It’s like the sun… Don’t look straight at it or you might go blind.

Try to ignore the glarey lights and focus on some of the other details which, while completely overpowered by the lighting, are quite nice.

The floors are also fantastic in this room. It’s more Croatian wood (like the wood floors in the Teatro Colón).

This is one of the staircases, the “France” Stairway. The tapestry on the wall was a gift from the French government for the 100th anniversary of the May Revolution.

The Hall of Honor is full of busts of former presidents. It also has a very intense ceiling and very bright lighting.

This is the presidential elevator which seems like overkill for a 2-story building. Maybe it’s 3-stories in some parts? But the president’s office is on the second floor which means that there’s a ridiculously plush bench in that elevator so that you don’t have to stand for the 5-second ride up/down ONE floor.

One more picture of a nice hallway for good measure.

After the tour, Mike and I hopped onto a bus and headed for La Boca, a southern neighborhood of Buenos Aires famous for the brightly colored buildings on its most famous street, El Caminito. In the 19^th century, there was an influx of Italian immigrants from Genoa who settled in La Boca. It was a shantytown, overcrowded and dirty, and came into its colorful existence when the residents used whatever paint they could find to brighten up their dwellings. Now, it’s taken on a more touristy vibe, but it still has a certain charm and is filled with vendors selling artwork and handcrafts.

On the approach. Lots of knick-knacks and souvenirs.

In one of the side shops. The colors were almost as blindingly bright as a Casa Rosada chandelier.

Already melting (but still delicious) ice cream.

We didn’t have a ton of time to spend exploring, but we managed to stroll El Caminito a few times, eat some ice cream, and walk around the neighboring streets. From there, we headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and took a cab to the airport.

Whew! Can you believe it? We’re finally finished talking about Argentina!

Coming up next… get ready for some more recent escapades! We’re headed right back to where we left off in Peru, with me on the way to the airport to meet my parents for 10 days of Peruvian adventures!

“Random Buenos Aires” Tour

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Lark

Welcome back to the world’s longest day! I’ve already talked about our morning of wandering and visiting Recoleta Cemetery and our tour of Teatro Colón. When we left the theater, it was only 1:30PM! We grabbed some lunch before heading to our next activity, a city tour. Since I’ve already shared a lot of the things we learned on the tour, between the Argentina History posts and other tidbits here and there, I’m going to take you on my own little city tour. And so, welcome to Lara’s “Random Buenos Aires” Tour!

Let’s back up a little and start our tour at lunch. Mike and I went to Galerías Pacífico to eat, which sounds like it could be a very fancy restaurant but is actually just a very fancy shopping center with a food court. I wanted to go for the architectural experience. Mike wanted to go for the food. How fortunate that, in this case, our interests so easily converged! It doesn’t always happen like that.

Galerías Pacífico was built in 1889 to house a world-class department store, home to the latest international fashions. It was completed just in time for the 1890 economic downturn, and the store never opened. In the following years, the space housed the National Museum of Fine Art, offices for a railway company, and a hotel before being transformed into the current shopping center in 1992 (not-so-fun fact: the basement was also used to hold and torture people during the last military dictatorship).

In 1946, five Argentinian artists were hired to paint murals on the ceiling in the central dome. It’s interesting to see how the varying styles of each artist come through in the different panels!

The many faces of the Galerias Pacifico ceiling…

They did coordinate at least slightly, so the general theme and color schemes are similar.

But it is cool to see how the different artists’ styles come through.

While Galerias Pacifico is one of the most popular, Buenos Aires has no shortage of beautiful shopping areas. Mike and I also randomly wandered through Galería Güemes, probably while seeking respite from the heat and humidity. It was completed in 1915 and is much smaller than Galerías Pacífico, but the art nouveau architecture (and air conditioning) made it more than worth a walkthrough. You can also go up to the 14^th floor for an inexpensive view of the city, but I had no idea about that at the time because that’s what happens when you don’t plan ahead!

Mercado San Telmo. Check out that roof structure!

On a less high-end note, I immediately fell in love with the interior of Mercado San Telmo, a market. It’s bright and airy inside, and the metal structure gives it some real personality. It was built in 1897 and hasn’t changed much since. The stalls inside sell everything from food and produce to knick-knacks, souvenirs, and antiques. On Sundays, there’s a big flea market in the nearby streets and plaza, but we, unfortunately, weren’t in town to experience that chaos. Instead, we had to settle for walking through at midday during the week. Honestly, that was fine with me. I’m not one for flea markets, and it was nice and empty which made wandering with my eyes glued to the ceiling less hazardous.

Now, let’s fly across town to the Palacio del Congreso (Palace of Congress), the seat of Argentina’s parliament. If you know anything about the structure of the United States government, you won’t have trouble understanding Argentina’s. It’s divided into three branches: executive (President), legislative (Congress), and judicial (Supreme Court). The legislative branch is composed of two bodies: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Each province is represented by three senators (6-year terms) and is allocated deputies by population (4-year terms).

The organizational structure of the legislative branch isn’t the only thing taking hints from the U.S. Does this building look like another building you may have seen before? (Attempt to see past the monument that’s obstructing your view.)

Palacio del Congreso with the Monumento a Los Dos Congresos (Monument to the Two Congresses) in front.

If you said, “the U.S. Capitol Building”, give yourself a pat on the back. The two buildings have a very similar form, but the architect, Vittorio Meano, still managed to give it a style of its own. Meano was also one of the original two Italian architects who I mentioned were involved with Teatro Colón. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to see the completion of either because side story: he was murdered by his wife’s lover when he discovered their affair. Eek.

Construction began in 1896, and the building was inaugurated in 1906… but it wasn’t fully completed until 1946. Whew! There was a lot of time-consuming ornamental work, so even though it wasn’t technically ‘finished’, it was occupied before then. The building is mostly marble and granite with an 80m tall bronze-plated dome, and it faces a large, grassy plaza, Plaza del Congreso.

This massive tree is in the Plaza del Congreso. I think it’s a gomero tree, or rubber fig tree. Whatever it is, it’s crazy!

One of the 20-some casts of “The Thinker” made during Rodin’s life can be found in the Plaza del Congreso. It’s surrounded by a fence and sits on a tall podium to protect it from being defaced during protests (apparently it’s happened before).

Palacio Barolo, looking especially tall from this awkward angle.

Only a few blocks from the plaza, there’s one building that towers over its surroundings. Standing 100m tall, Palacio Barolo had to get special permission to exceed the height ordinances when it was built in 1923. Why 100m? To maximize the rentable office space on the site? Silly, of course not! The building is an architectural tribute to the Divine Comedy, a 14^th-century narrative poem about Dante’s (the author’s) journey through the afterlife. It’s a prized piece of Italian literature, and the Italian owner and architect turned their passion for Dante into a hulking reinforced-concrete building. Talk about superfans!

The design is completely over-the-top, but it’s a fascinating concept, translating literature into architecture. This is another “maybe someday I’ll go on a tour” building (but they’re not cheap, so it might have to wait until I have an actual income) and then I’ll write a whole post on it. For now, just the basics: The architect pulled various numbers and concepts from the work and translated them into architectural elements. The 100m height corresponds to the 100 “cantos”, or songs, that compose the poem. There are 22 floors for the 22 stanzas in each song, and as you move up the building, you travel with Dante through hell, purgatory, and heaven. The interior is filled with quotes and other decorative details based on elements from the poem. At the very top, there’s a lighthouse that was meant to communicate with its fraternal building twin, Palacio Salvo, located in Uruguay. It was designed by the same architect with a similar style and lighthouse on top… but without the insane Divine Comedy connection.

Okay, back to the government buildings! We’ve covered the legislative branch, and now it’s time for the judicial. The Palacio de Justicia (Palace of Justice) is home to the country’s Supreme Court. I actually didn’t know what it was when we walked by, but I thought that it looked like a fancy/important building, so I took a picture and looked it up later. Designed by a French architect, it’s not as heavy on the ornamentation as the Palacio del Congreso, which allows the symmetry and simple geometry of the building to stand out. It definitely caught my eye! Also, it’s a little intimidating which seems right for a justice building.

The plaza in front of the Palacio de Justicia is dedicated to this guy, Juan Lavalle (at the top of the column). He was part of the army that crossed the Andes to help liberate Chile and Peru. He also led a coup at one point (geez, is there anyone who DIDN’T lead a coup?) and only managed to hold on to power for a year before he was forced to resign. Fun fact: his bones are buried in Recoleta Cemetery. Yes, just his bones. He was killed in a time of conflict, and his followers fled with his body to prevent it from being desecrated. They boiled it to separate the flesh from the bones, buried the flesh in an unmarked grave, and took the bones with them. Ew.

La Casa Mínima is the skinniest house in the city, at only 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) wide. It was part of a much larger house that was poorly divided up over time, creating a bunch of reasonably sized houses to its sides and one super skinny house in the middle. Um… has anyone ever heard of planning??

Finally, the executive branch. Sitting on the Plaza de Mayo is Casa Rosada, the President’s house. It actually faces the Palacio del Congreso, which is a little over a mile away, a reminder that power is shared with the people (a reminder that didn’t seem to do much for the military dictators of the 1900s). The Plaza de Mayo is named in honor of the May Revolution which, if you remember from our history lessons, launched the Argentinian War of Independence against Spain. Aside from the President’s house, the plaza is surrounded by other important buildings like the Buenos Aires City Hall, the Cabildo (the colonial town council building), and Catedral Metropolitana, the National Cathedral.

Plaza de Mayo. The white pyramid/obelisk in the distant middle is the “Pirámide de Mayo”, commissioned in 1811 to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the May Revolution. This was Argentina’s first national monument. The figure at the top represents Liberty.

The Ministry of Modernization of the Nation… I just took a picture because I thought it was a nice building.

The cathedral is the main Catholic church in the city, and the first iteration was built on the site in the 1500s. After building a series of collapsing churches (I assume not intentionally, but there seems to be a theme), the current building finally came to be, albeit very slowly. It was started in the mid-1700s as the EIGHTH iteration of the church, and construction went on for about 100 years which seems to be about par for the course (or even kind of fast) when it comes to building grand cathedrals.

Catedral Metropolitana. From the outside, it looks more like an ancient Greek temple than a church.

Looking down the central nave of Catedral Metropolitana.

More Venetian-style mosaic floors! I’m not mad…

After our tour, Mike and I walked back to our hostel via the waterfront, rather than taking a more direct route. This part of the city was once a port, used for storing goods, but as ships got bigger, a new port was built and the old fell into disuse. In the 1990s, it started being re-developed and became an official neighborhood of Buenos Aires. There’s a walkway along the waterfront that we took on the way home, and it was nice to get away from the more crowded city center for a bit!

The Puente de la Mujer (Woman’s Bridge) links the main part of the city with the new neighborhood, Puerto Madero. All of the streets in the neighborhood are named after women, hence the name of the bridge. Rather than lifting up, like a drawbridge, to allow boats to pass, a portion of the bridge pivots 90 degrees! Pretty cool!

We had only a short time to relax after getting back to our room because we had dinner plans! Our dad works for a big, international company, and one of the people he sometimes works with is based in Buenos Aires! She’s around my age, and after some back and forth where she gave us suggestions for things to see and some general tips for traveling in Argentina, we made plans to get dinner together while we were in the city!

She came to pick us up, and on the ride to the restaurant, Mike and I realized for the first time that she and our dad have never actually met in person! We thought that was hilarious, that we were meeting her before he did. It ended up being a ton of fun! She brought along another friend from work, and they did the ordering, determined to give us an authentic experience. They made sure to get some “normal” things like steak and French fries, plus a couple of classics: cow gland and intestine. Mike took on the responsibility of taste tester. He reported that the gland tasted like “less strong bacon” and assured me that I would survive tasting it. Be proud of me… I did it! And decided that his taste description was spot on, but the texture was a ‘no’ for me. Who wants less strong bacon, anyway? The intestine was less positively received. Mike described the texture as “crusty balloon filled with sandy glue”. The others took a moment to think about it and said, “Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good description.” I passed on that one.

We got ice cream after dinner, grabbed a beer (well, except for me), and then headed home once everyone’s eyes started to cross from sleepiness. Our new friend was nice enough to drive us back to the hostel, and I collapsed into bed. When I was like 90% asleep, Mike goes, “That intestine tasted HORRIBLE.” I mustered the energy for a weak, “Okay,” and then I was gone. Sorry, Mike! I laughed about it the next morning, at least.