Kirsten Fix is in Peru!

One of my best friends from college has come to visit Cusco and stay with me for two months. I am incredibly grateful to have her here. I have been in Peru for five months and Cusco for three, marking halfway point in my time. Daily life is like anywhere else. Days pass with routine: work, spanish classes, exercise (these days it's spinning classes and an occasional run) and cooking dinner. I enjoy life here, but I miss the people who know me best. It is great to have a little piece of that. Plus Kirsten is the perfect excuse to adventure on my free time and see the tourist sites I have heard so much about.

Moray Agricultural Ruins

Her first weekend was packed with activity. First was a day trip to the famous ruins Moray and the Salineras (salt mines). Moray has a series of circular terracing for agricultural research. It is thought that the terracing could replicate a variety of micro climates, including the wet, humid, hot jungle and the dry, aired dessert of the south. Everything from the type of rock that would retain the sun's heat to the circular structure to trap air movement, and the type of soil at each level was intricately planned.

Moray

The Salineras are salt mines fed by a salty warm spring. There are over 3000 wells producing the majority of salt for the region since Incan times. The system, structure and irrigation of these wells were again incredibly impressive.

Kirsten and I can someone else's motor bike with the Salineras in the background.

Salt mines

Salt crystals

Big chunk of salt

Saturday started with a high altitude morning run around a lake about 45 minutes away, followed up with a brunch feast, Netflix, and wandering the City. Oh and drinking beer and watching the olympics.

Kirsten and I post run 

Brunch Feast Featuring (from left) Pastries (pear pie and alfajores), Peanut butter french toast with bananas and mango, topped off with yummy Peets coffee courtesy of Mom!

Beer and the winter Olympics

Sunday we went to Pisaq, a town about 20 miles away in the Sacred Valley. We hiked up to some ruins just above the city. Agricultural terracing, military look outs, sacred baths, living quarters, and storage rooms. The ruins are so much a part of the Peru history. The Incan and pre-Incan people were incredible architects and engineers. All of the living quarters had running water and the agricultural area was irrigated. AND it was all built to last thousands of years, withstanding earthquakes and storms all on impressively steep slopes. We then spent rest of the afternoon exploring the enormous Sunday crafts and food market.  We supplemented the slow economy due to the tourist low season, picking up a few beautiful textiles, yummy empanadas, and (my favorite) a chocolate lúcuma smoothie.

Storage houses

Water irrigation for baths

Taking in the view and glimpse of sunshine

The expected and unexpected in Puno and The Big Lake

My roommate and I headed south for a long weekend to visit another Fulbrighter, explore Lake Titicaca (the highest navigable lake in the world), and the high planes around Puno. We did a lot in four days so this post is a bit long, but don't worry it's mostly pictures. 

Other than Cusco and Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca has to be on of the most visited spots in Peru. Prior to our visit I had heard so much about other people's experiences, I new what to expect. Tours of Lake Titicaca are strangely uniform. Everyone who visits the lake will tell you about the Uros (floating reed islands), walking up a big hill to a beautiful textile shop on Taquile, and probably even dressing up in traditional clothing and going to a tourist dance party at night.  Within that expected tourist experience is still me, visiting a place for the first and probably only time, and I was still struck by the history and beauty of the region. Knowing your experience is the same has the millions of people who have come before you can be difficult to swallow. However there is still something to learn and to experience. 

These traditional communities have adapted to a modern economy through tourism. They would not exist with out it. Another day I can talk about the positives and negatives of tourism, but for this trip I tried to look beyond the routine, expected tourist visit and look at the experience through the lens of adaptive, changing communities doing what they can to preserve a certain way of life. 

Without overwhelming you here are some photos from the tour!

Uros Demonstration-Expected

Traditional Titicaca boats-Expected

On the Uros 

Amantani one lake island

Breath taking views on Amantani-Unexpeted

Rock fence to section off farming plots

Amantani and Lake Titicaca

Amantani

Rain on Taquile-Expected

Spending time in Puno with a friend, Carrie and I discovered a Molecular Cafe and Bar. The scientists in us could not resist. This was certainly and unexpected experience in Puno!

Chilcanos on Nitrogen-Unexpected

Gel Mojitos-Unexpected

Another reason we chose this particular weekend to visit Puno was the beginning of Puno's biggest festival, Festival de la Virgen de la Candelaria. We got various versions of the origin story from different people. The unifying piece was that now the festival is a reason to dance and drink for two weeks straight. The first weekend regional groups perform traditional dances in the soccer stadium and then they continue to dance in processions through the streets for rest of the day. This is repeated the second weekend with even more dance groups from all over Peru performing more modern dance routines.

This festival both an expected and unexpected experience. We came to Puno for this festival, but didn't know quite what to we were going to get.

People from the surrounding communities traveled to the city for the day and camped out at the stadium. The dancing started at 7 in the morning and the stadium was full of families ready for the whole day with huge breakfast and lunch spreads. They were prepared for the strong alitplano sun, shockingly cold shade, good possibility of rain showers. We only went to the stadium for a while in the morning and then watched groups coming through the streets. The costumes, dancing and even music really varied by group. Overall a very impressive and I suppose unexpected experience. Here are some pictures!

Dance shows in the stadium

Dance shows in the stadium

Pipe players leading a dance group

These guys had battle whips and were whipping each other all day long.

The last day, upon suggestion of our friend, we traveled to a few surrounding towns to see more of the area. The first was to the ruins of Sillustani, a pre-Incan burial site. The tower structures are above ground tombs. As many as 20 remains, probably families, were found in each tomb, along with gold, copper, jewels and tools for the afterlife. It was great to get outside of Puno and see more of the Peruvian high plains. I am continually impressed by the beauty and diversity of the landscape in this county. The Puno alitplano offer yet another breathtaking scene.

Sillustani-Unexpected beauty

Sillustani

Sillustani

Lake Umayo and Sillustani

Sillustani

We then went to another small town on Lake Titicaca. Juli is self named "Little Rome" for the impressive number of churches in a small town. This beauty was another unexpected surprise that we only found by suggestion. Here are more pictures.

Trucha!-Expected and delicious

Juli- Unexpected

Juli Church

View of Lake Titicaca from Juli

Lake Titicaca in Juli

Another successful trip to a new region of Peru. I hope you enjoyed the many many photos. Back to work for another week, and more adventuring on the weekends.

Viaje a la Playa

Relaxation, going with the flow and enjoying the journey, this was the theme for my Christmas and New Years vacation, and are all themes of my time in Peru. Many of you know I could use a little more of these things in my life. Traveling in a group for ten days, over the holidays, without anything planned was good practice.

I had some time off of work for the holidays and so traveled to the beautiful and warm north coast of Peru with some friends from the US living in Lima.

Christmas day in Huanchaco

We started in a beach town Huanchaco outside of Trujillo. We arrived on Christmas Eve and the place empty. Christmas Eve is a day spent at home with family. It came alive on Christmas day though. People stated arriving and parking their cars and vans on the beach at 7 am and the party didn’t end until after midnight.

Traditional fishing boats lined up on the beach

One of the Christmas traditions in Peru is to eat a treat called Paneton. It is a large bunt shaped bread with gummy candy bits cooked inside. EVERYONE I have talked to in Peru LOVES paneton. At first I could not understand what could be so delicious to captured the love of an entire country (several countries I would later learn. Paneton is originally from Milan Italy and is eaten in many western European countries as well as many in South America). I believe it is part of the whole experience. Paneton only comes out during the holidays. People hunt down their favorite bakery or brand, buy several, but then save it for Christmas or New Years. What is that saying? Hunger is the best spice? Then anticipation is the second best. We heard about paneton, spent weeks talking about it and how it can’t be that good, but we HAVE to have some for Christmas. Once in Trujillo we began assessing bakeries to make sure we got the best one, until finally we pilled the trigger and brought home the prize. The result was delicious. The three of use exchanged gifts, watched the sunset drank Trujillo beer and ate an entire paneton. This ended up being our Christmas dinner of champions.

Devora eating paneton like they do on the commercial 

Christmas paneton dinner

Next we took and over night bus to Tumbes and made our way down the coast. Finding a place to stay was always and adventure. From Tumbes three hungry, tired people made it through a near adventure to Ecuador (we didn’t end up going), a taxi driver trying to over charge us, and decision making when to stop and choose a hotel for the next several nights. We ended up in a beautiful beach town, Zorritos, in a lovely hotel. Here we spent our first full day on the beach, learned to play Casino (one of my favorite card games), and visited mud baths.

Only a few kilometers outside Zorritos were medicinal mud baths. There were three baths, each with a different type of mud said to help different ailments. One for your bones, one for arthritis, on for your skin. We spent the afternoon caking ourselves in mud, drying, and then repeating in the next pool. I now understand the appeal of mud bath spa treatment.  We also had the plus of a beautiful outdoor environment and scenery.

From Zorritos we ended up in Punta Sal for a few more beach days, and then Mancora New Years. Moncora is a party surf town, not usually a place I would pick for vacation, but I was enjoying the journey and it ended up being easily the best New Years party I have ever experienced. Easily over a thousand people packed onto the tiny Mancora beach. Liquor stores around the corner sold bottles of liquor, mixers and cups, while the bars on the beach only blasted loud music. Despite the rowdy appearance of the scene the crowd, up until midnight, was a mix of ages, families blended in the majority of young tourists. At midnight, instead of a countdown to a blast of celebration, there was a solid 45 minutes of cheering and fireworks lit off from the middle of the crowd.

Punta Sal

Punta Sal

We also learned about a few other South American holiday traditions. The first is to wear yellow underwear for financial good luck in the New Year. This picture is of Devora and I buying my pair on the street. Mine had grapes on them; another tradition is to eat 12 grapes at midnight. The last tradition is burning of Muñecos, life sized dolls stuffed with straw. The tradition is to burn them at midnight to signify ridding yourself of the bad in the past year to cleanly enter the New Year. I am not use to seeing burning figures of people in the street, but I tried feeling the cathartic energy to for the New Year.

Buying New Year good luck yellow underwear

Mancora Beach

After one last relaxing beach day we returned to Lima, and then I to Cusco, relaxed and ready to get back to work. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday.

Happy 2014!

Huchuy Qosco

Huchuy Qosqo- "Little Cusco"





In December I went on this beautiful and challenging day hike with two friends. We started in a small town Tauca at 3800 meters.

The water source for Cusco.

Climbed a few hours passing the Cusco water source and impressive aqueducts and terracing to a 4400 meter unnamed pass.











After lunch hiding out from a hail storm we descended through a herd of sheep, to an enormous Inca archaeological site preciously placed on a ridge between the pass (600 meters above) and the Sacred Valley (600 meters below).

Picking Muña (an andean mint) for tea

Huchuy Qosqo

Huchuy Qosqo looking into the Sacred Valley

Huchuy Qosqo

Lamay from Huchuy Qosqo-That was our finish point