Beautiful Cusco

First of all, thank you for the nice comments (off the blog) about my last entry. Just want to point out that I am doing really well now. I am currently in Buenos Aires, Argentina and loving it. My activities consist of eating, shopping and going to wild rock concerts (ok, just the one, amazing, concert). And I haven´t cried or looked back since Cusco.

What to write about Cusco. It´s the prettiest place in Peru. Even the locals think so. It´s nestled in between mountains and it´s got-obviously-cobblestone streets and just an overall adorableness about it. Ever since we started our trip, we had heard about people getting ¨stuck¨ there for weeks and loving it. Here´s what I saw when I would step out of my hostel:

It´s got really cool gothic architecture, like this cathedral in the main square:

It happens to be the main point from which all the Macchu Picchu trips leave from and also a central place with a lot of activities like rafting, horse riding, trekking, paragliding etc. It´s very touristy and definitely not cheap, but it´s so cute that you just go ahead and slip into total tourist mode without blinking an eye. Here´s a picture of what the Israelis called ¨simtat hametsikim¨

inspired by all the tour agents that attack you like bees when you enter the street. We spent quite a lot of time there. The only reason it´s so empty is because the picture was taken on a Sunday. Obviously Cusco is full of Israelis and if it isn´t the Hebrew you constantly hear on the street that gives it away, there´s a ton of little notes like this all over the place to remind you:

So once again, I felt the pull and push of being Israeli. There was something very cozy and comforting about knowing that so many of ¨ours¨ were there and also something a little suffocating. What with my crying/introspection theme at the time, it seemed like a good idea to stay in a separate hostel which was not full of Israelis, so I picked this cute place which was literally just around the corner from where Rikki was staying.

So what did we do with our time in Cusco? We had decided that we would stay there until Inti Raymi which happens to be the biggest festival celebrated in Cusco, a pagan homage to the sun. It´s not that anyone really worships the sun anymore, but I guess they just kept the tradition up for the tourists. At any rate, that meant that we had about 2.5 weeks to fill with activities. But first we had a Shabbat + Shavuot combo to get through. So that´s how we started our 2.5 week love affair with Beit Chabbad Cusco:

The Beit Chabad was 5 minutes from our hostels and had a wonderful little restaurant in it. That´s kosher food on demand, people. Shnitzels, stir fry, chips-it was heaven! We even had fried fish for Shavuot! I think we cumulatively spent more time there than we did anywhere else on our trip. :)

The other great thing about Cusco was reuniting with our friends Maya and Omrit from Santa Cruz. We got along so well that at some point we even ¨swapped¨ our travel partners! Omrit and Rikki really wanted to do a rafting trip and a really cold hike to Macchu Picchu whereas Maya and I decided to go for a more tropical trek to Macchu Picchu and a kabbalah course.

Yep, you read that right. I did a kabbalah course. If Madonna is doing it, then why can´t I, right? :P You will not get a review of the course from me here since it was after all in a Beit Chabad and so had a heavy dose of their ideology mixed in with the mysticism. All I will say is that I am glad I could take a break from all the running around and put in some spirituality into my vacation. Plus, I got this wonderful shot of the Rabbi.

The other thing I did with my time was a Spanish course! Finally, after years of longing to learn this language, I did a proper, one on one course for 20 hours. It was intense. Because of all the time constraints (Shabbats, Sundays, Shavuot, various Cusco festivals) I only had 5 days in which to do it so I was doing 4 to 6 hours a day and oh my God, did I love it!!! I think I could spend my entire life learning languages. It is so fascinating. I found a really cute, informal language school and had 2 AMAZING teachers there.

OK, so remember how I mentioned that I was looking for bubbly South Americans? So here they were! Or was rather. Dora, on the left, is Peruvian whereas Eva is Spanish. Most of my time was spent with Dora who just cracked me up. She was super sweet and funny, telling me on our first lesson how she has never loved any of her boyfriends (TMI!) and later on expounding on how she responds to men on the street who try to flirt with her (you don´t want to know). The first time I met her she gave me a kiss and was all smiles. That´s the warmth I´m talking about people!! Ironically she is from Lima. She told me how Peruvians are divided into costeños (from coastal towns), selbaticos (from the jungle) and serranos (from the mountains) and how every group dislikes the others. She´s only 36 and she founded the language school 4 years ago with a friend and she said she had been treated with a lot of prejudice from Cusqueños (people from Cusco).

So all it took for me to finally warm up to Peruvians was one contact with one single person. This is what I had been lacking previously, but couldn´t pinpoint. I really enjoyed travelling with Rikki, who in her own right is really hilarious, but the problem with travelling with other people is that it makes it so much easier to stick to the crowd you know and stay away from these kind of interactions. In retrospect, I am glad I had all these sides to my trip (I´m currently all alone in Buenos Aires). I had a LOT of fun with Rikki and the girls, I really enjoyed spending time with South Americans like Dora and I am also very much enjoying my own company these days. As usual, God has been very generous with me.

With Eva I had about 5 hours of studying, but she was extremely sweet and professional. In our first lesson I discovered that she had, check this out, gotten divorced a mere 2 days before me and was going through pretty much the same kind of processes that I was! We spent about 3 hours chatting and I don´t know where time flew. At the end of the lesson she showed me the list of the vocabulary we had used during our discussion and also a list from a lesson with someone else. It was amazing to see how much that little sheet described about who I have become (the words that featured were: self confidence, process, gratitude, liberation, growth etc.).

So Cusco was where I took a vacation from my vacation. Not that I wasn´t running around like crazy-from an early breakfast to Spanish class to Kabbalah class to lunch to Spanish class to the internet to dinner to my room for homework and learning from subtitles on television (one of the main sources of my vocabulary!) . You know me, the movement keeps me alive.

Next post will be about Macchu Picchu hopefully and then on to the border with Bolivia...

Reflections

So, where were we? Aaah yes, the lovely trip from Arequipa to Cusco. Strange as it will sound, the reason why the trip was lovely is because I cried for a large portion of it. I suppose that requires some explanation. :)

If you´ll remember, it was around this time that I seriously started thinking about why I had come here and how I would like to spend the rest of my time in South America. Sometimes we do things with the full knowledge of the reasons that led us there and sometimes we have a strong feeling that something is required and only later do we discover the specific details. With me these kind of feelings are very common. It´s almost as if my body/subconscious/soul, whatever you want to call it, knows exactly what I need when I need it. When I ignore it, I usually end up paying for it at some point in the future. And so when I left Israel, I was fully aware that I needed to get away, but it was not entirely clear to me why and what I exactly needed. As is often the case, the journey itself was what led me to discover the answers.

Before I left Israel, a combination of very needful people/events/occupations in my life left me feeling very depleted and I seriously needed a ¨refill¨. I also went through a long and arduous process whereby I began to discover a lot of things about myself, a rebirth if you will. Now I am very appreciative of my friends and family and cannot thank them enough for the support and assistance I received during the difficult times in my life. Having said that, sometimes a person really needs to be alone to be able to pull himself together and regroup. So I chose to take myself out of my familiar settings in order to be able to disconnect completely and to ¨connect the dots¨ so to speak.

I have gone through a lot in the last few years and it has not been easy. I lost a lot of things along the way and gained even more. The survivor in me chose to take the lead in this process, so I have mostly been in good spirits and have moved on with my life, without stopping too much to dwell on the losses. So the truth of the matter is that I needed some time to mourn. And I needed to do it alone.

A very good friend of mine gave me an amazing book before I left Israel called ¨Eat, Pray, Love¨. It was written by Elizabeth Gilbert, a divorced woman in her 30s who decides to take a year off her life in order to rediscover who she is (sound familiar?) It was mind boggling to see just how similar some of our experiences were. There were times when I felt she was taking the words right out of my mouth. At some point in the book, she describes sitting on her own and remembering, one by one, all the negative experiences she went through in order to put them behind her. For some reason I was reminded of this during my trip from Arequipa to Cusco. It sounded like a little bit of hocus pocus, but strangely it also made sense. I had heard once, and experienced countless times before, that the easiest way to deal with pain is by going through it. So I decided to give it a try.

I relaxed in my chair and let scenes run before my eyes, uncomfortable situations I got myself in, places I cried my eyes out, instances I was hurt, instances I let myself be hurt, the anger, the pain, the humiliation, the frustrations, anything and everything I could think of. And I cried. Let me tell you, it´s not very easy to cry discreetly when you´re travelling with someone else. Thankfully Rikki fell asleep at some point so that made life easier. :) And I let the sadness wash over me. And I enjoyed the crying and the sadness. I enjoyed it because I was not the same person anymore who had gone through all that. Because I had chosen to accept the past and grow from it. Because I could give the sadness the space it needed and not let it consume me. And I laughed and I cried all together because it was all behind me and I was happy. That was my catharsis and it was the beginning of the final chapter (I hope!) of my healing.

So then I knew what I had to do. I had not come here to live someone else´s dream. Someone in a Beit Chabad once quipped that the theme in South America is ¨it´s my vacation and I will do exactly what everyone else is doing¨. Well, my vacation was an internal one and I needed to do whatever I felt would facilitate that process. So I was not going to spend my time running from attraction to attraction or seeing countless Inca ruins, however much that might shock people.

With that mindset I arrived in Cusco. And promptly signed up for a very popular trip to Macchu Picchu. :P

Well, OK, not exactly. But you´ll hear more about that in my next post. Which I promise will include more photos, if not less gab. :)

To Trek or Not To Trek

So, the Nazca lines... They are basically these huge formations in the sand, apparently created by humans, that can only be perceived from the sky. There are hundreds of them spread over 500 square km. of the Nazca desert, some are simple lines and others are more elaborate, like birds, spiders etc. Apparently it barely ever rains in Nazca so the figures have kept their shape for over 1,000 years. Nobody knows who made them and why, but there are plenty of theories that base their presence on a multitude of purposes, ranging from agricultural to religious. It is possible to look at the lines from the ground, but I think it requires a lot of imagination to perceive them properly.

We decided to dish the extra cash and took a flight, which was most definitely worth it. Before getting on, we were handed a little map of the 15 or so designs that the flight focuses on. Lonely Planet and some other tourists we met claimed that it would not be wise to have breakfast before the flight and indeed, the pilots did push our stomachs´ limit by turning the small plane sharply in all sorts of directions to get the best sight of the designs. It´s not very easy to discern the figures from the photos I took (I blame the pilot :P) , but here´s a relatively clear one of a condor:

Once we were done with Nazca, our next destination was Arequipa. We were a little wary of going there, what with the Israeli girl who had recently been murdered in the city, but we made sure not to do anything silly and hoped for the best. I found Arequipa to be very cute. But then again, give me some cobblestone and narrow streets and I might even find Lima to be cute. :P I mean, look at this, isn´t it adorable?

We arrived in Arequipa thinking we were going to trek the Colca Canyon, which is what people generally do there. After we went to a few tour agencies, we got all excited about the 2 volcanes by Arequipa which we were told we could climb. It was only the 5th or so agency that thought to ask us how long we had been in Arequipa and declared that we were not acclimitized to the height and there was no way we could climb those mountains. So back to Canyon Colca it was. We decided to spend the rest of the day walking towards a lookout point from which the mountains were visible. And what should we come across on our little journey, but even smaller and cuter cobble stone streets:

and, of course, some sort of celebration in the street. Because a day without celebration is a day wasted in Peru: The next day we set out early for our hike to the colca canyon. When I say early, I mean 2 am. So, yeah, not quite morning. Because you see, it´s very important to get early to a point called the Cruz del Condor, where you watch the sunrise and wait for the condors to show up.

Never mind that it takes the condors about 3 hours to appear and you have turned to a block of ice by that point. Never mind that the condors don´t even come near you and rather blend in with the canyon when you try to take a picture. And never mind that the actual trek is quite warm so that you have to schlep all the warm clothes you brought for the duration of the whole hike. The scenery was beautiful:

so I have nothing negative to say about that. The problem, once again, was my breathing. The first day of the hike is going down into the canyon and the second day is climbing back up, a distance of approximately 1,000 meters. I had an extremely rough time on the second day, owing in part to some digestive issues I had along the way. Mainly though, I think it was the climbing that did it. A wonderful Australian guy kept me company at the back of the line, together we made our way to the top slowly and he kept encouraging me along the way. This trek was the straw that broke the camel´s back though. I really suffered and did not get any satisfaction from my hiking. I barely looked at the view and was way more concerned with keeping people waiting than I was about enjoying myself. And I couldn´t breathe and had to stop every few minutes.

So there it was then. I decided, with a very heavy heart, that I couldn´t do any more of these kind of treks. I may not have formulated my exact expectations from my vacation at that moment, but I definitely knew that I hadn´t come here to suffer. Some people like a physical challenge for the challenge and are even extremely happy at the end of it to have made it to the peak. Not me. I don´t derive any satisfaction from having gotten there, all I feel is relief. If the ¨reward¨ at the end doesn´t make it ¨worth it¨, then all I´m doing is torturing myself. And I really don´t need that in my life. I decided that the last ¨climbing¨ trek I would do would be Macchu Picchu and then I would look for flatter hikes.

Can you tell which one of these is the donkey and which one the donkey lady? :P

After leaving the Colca Canyon, I had the most wonderful bus ride to Cusco, but more on that in the next post...

The Trek Not Taken

The story of our trip to Huaraz won´t be complete without a mention of Huayhuash, ¨the other trek¨. Well, that´s not exactly a fair description of Huayhuash. It´s supposed to be the ¨2nd best trek in the world¨, though not quite clear by whose rating. :) Since we were yet at the beginning of the trip and I was much more gung ho about trekking, I was interested in doing it for a while, but there were a bunch of problems with it: It was a more difficult trail than ours, lasted 8 days and supposedly got much colder. We could have maybe gotten around Shabbat by stopping in the middle of the trail, but we also had Shavuot to think about.

All my hesitations disappeared however, after I did Santa Cruz. I love to breathe and I wanted it to stay that way. This difficulty of breathing at high altitudes was not a problem I had foreseen and it messed up my plans of hiking the breadth and width of South America. As those of you who have hiked with me will know, I am generally all the way at the front of the trail, complaining about those lagging behind. So this was a humbling experience to say the least.

It was roughly around this time that I started thinking seriously about why I was here to begin with. Yes, I love nature and hiking and yes, a little challenge killed no one. On the other hand, I came here to enjoy myself, and God knows I´m not one to run away from challenges, but I really, truly, do like to breathe. So I decided that Huayhuash was out and we set on the road back to Lima. The stunning picture above is from a friend who actually did take the challenge.

Once back in Lima, we were appalled once again by its ugliness. :P I mean, we went to see the ocean and even that was gray and boring and ugly. We did, however, do one thing there which was a lot of fun. They had an amazing display of fountains in one of the parks, supplemented by sound and light shows and we spent a good few hours gawking at them. Rikki jumped into some of the fountains with all the other children and I had a great time watching her get wet. Don´t judge me, ít´s winter here. Besides, somebody had to stay outside and take photos, right?

We were told by a few different people not to take the direct route from Lima to Cusco so we decided to run through various cities along the coast in order to make it there by Shabbat.

First destination: Ica. An oasis in every sense of the word. From the bleak and cold skies of Lima we were transported to summer for a few hours, without so much as a warning. Yes, I knew we were going to a place with sand dunes, but somewhere in my head I hadn´t associated that with heat. I´m talking palm trees, people.

I´m talking about a blazing sun, a small body of water surrounded by trees, in the middle of the desert.

Rikki pretty much hit the sand dunes directly with a sandboard. See that little dot on top of the sand dune? Yep, that´s her.

I had no interest in burning myself and/or breaking my bones, so I decided to follow the example of these wise dogs...

...and proceeded to lie down in the sand and watch the view for a full 2 hours, all the while listening to radio PA-NA-ME-RI-CA-NA! I caught a lot of slang in those 2 hours and finally felt like I was in South America. Bubbly radio presenters, adorable Spanish, lively Latin American beat-that´s what I´m talking about! It was a piece of heaven.

The next stop on our itinerary was Pisco-the poor man´s Galapagos islands. I must say I was a little underwhelmed by it, considering it was freezing cold and all we got to see were some ugly sea lions:

also a lot of different kinds of birds. Booooriiiing. NEXT!

On the same day that we visited the island, we also managed to catch one of the very last flights over the Nazca lines. The lines were cool, but the plane was cooler! It was a 4 person plane, probably the closest thing to a private jet that I´ll ever fly in! The view was superb:

In true tourist fashion, they gave us a little map of what we should expect to see-the various shapes according to how they are arranged on the ground. I just realized as I was writing these lines that I haven´t given an explanation of the Nazca lines. That´s what happens when half of Israel is travelling with you and you get the feeling nothing you do is original and so, obviously everybody should know what all these places are!

So more on the Nazca lines in the next post...

As Close As I´ll Get To Snow

OK folks, I am determined to finish posting about Santa Cruz, so brace yourselves. Just to give you some perspective-I´m currently in La Paz, Bolivia and planning to move to Argentina next week. I got stuck here for reasons I will explain, at this rate, by oh, I don´t know, October?? I am behind by about 7 weeks!!! I guess I only have my own babbling mouth to blame...

The above picture was taken quite a while before we got to the pass. So that you can see how close we got, ie how high we climbed, here´s a picture of the snow capped mountains from near the pass:

We only went down a few hundred meters to the camp site that night, so I was freezing by nightfall and that is when I understood I had sorely underestimated the weather conditions. My sleeping bag, while very light and compact, was nowhere near warm enough for this kind of cold. My teeth were chattering the whole night and I barely managed to sleep 2 hours. Rikki, on the other hand, was quite cozy:

Heee, I´m mean. That night, I think, was when I decided not to go on more treks at such high altitudes. I can't breathe during the trek, I can't sleep at night, do I really want to get any nearer to snow capped mountains?? More on this dilemma in another post.

Now that I think about it, this trek was chock full of drama, quite fittingly for South America. As we were approaching our camp site the 2nd night, we heard about an accident that had taken place quite near Santa Cruz. Apparently a French ( I think) couple were trying to climb a mountain called Alpamayo (at an altitude of 5,947 m.) on their own when the guy had fallen and died. Luckily, the reports were inaccurate and the next day we got news that he had *only* broken his ribs. Still scary. I can´t exactly remember which of my pictures is that of the Alpamayo, so I´m putting a random picture here instead which I think is very cool and deserves to appear on the blog:

In my opinion, the 3rd day of the trek was the most beautiful, mostly because there was a lot of water involved. Also, it didn´t hurt that we were walking downhill and could actually breathe and enjoy the scenery, which looked something like this:

This was also the day when we got in close contact with some donkeys on our lunch break:

They just kind of came and surrounded us and refused to leave, it was quite surreal. But I have one more drama to tell from our trek, one which we keep remembering to this day. Our camp site for the 3rd night was smack next to a stream of water, which was ridiculously loud.

I was wondering just how I was going to sleep with that roaring sound when we realized that one of our party was missing. Maya, who had been travelling with Pinto up until the 3rd day, had decided at some point that she wanted to walk and gotten off. The only problem is that she hadn't made it to the camp site and we didn't know whether she had fallen behind or missed the camp completely and kept on walking. I was convinced she had missed the site because I myself had almost gone past it without noticing, but everybody else thought this was unlikely. So Chagai decided to walk back from the camp, in the hopes of finding her. He came back a while later, saying that he had walked until the last spot we had stopped at and not seen her. In the meantime, someone else walking on the trail passed us by and told us he had seen someone who fit Maya's description go by. By this time, it was nightfall and we were starting to get worried.

It would soon be really dark and it was a really scary thought for a girl to be walking alone at night in the middle of the mountains. The truth is that the end point of the trek was at a village 2 hours from our campsite and Juan told us that the donkey bearer's brother lived there. So he decided to take Pinto, Maya's sleeping bag and a flashlight in the hopes of finding her there. We gathered in the big tent, which was generally the warmest place in the camp because of all the cooking, and continued waiting nervously. On the one hand we were scared, but on the other I think we were hoping for the best so we started playing silly games to pass the time.

Looks easy, right? It isn't. Don't try it at home, kids!

Well obviously Maya's story ends well-Juan found her at the village as we had hoped and we found out that she had actually had quite a nice time there. She had realised at some point that she had missed the camp site, but hoped to reach the village before nightfall. When she got there she found a little boy with whom she sent a note to us to let us know she was ok. The family in the village took her in and were very generous to her, she was even serenaded with a harp before going to sleep.

So that brings us to the end of our very eventful first trek. Next post-our whirlwind week going through Ica, Pisco, Nazca and Arequipa by the coast. Until then...

Santa Cruz, part 2

Before moving on to the nitty gritty details of the trek, I should introduce to you 2 more of our party in Santa Cruz: Juan and Pinto. Juan was our wonderful guide, who also doubled as my first Spanish teacher in Peru. He spent the first day of our trek helping me learn past tense and very patiently correcting my mistakes. It was a very welcome lesson as it was getting really difficult to explain myself when everything seemed to happen in the present tense. Would you believe he's only 36 years old???? There's something in this continent which seems to age people very rapidly, I can't remember the number of women I saw who look like they are 200 years old. Case in point:

Rikki thinks it's the sun. She probably has a point. I mean we are traveling here in "winter" and despite the cold, which will only get worse as we progress in the trek, it's almost always been sunny. So much so in fact that the locals in the villages use solar power to dry their laundry:

Yes, Peruvians are indeed very resourceful. See here another product of Peruvian creativity:

Why throw away perfectly decent shoe soles when you can just recycle them to attach a wooden gate in the middle of nowhere????

But I digress... Where was I? Oh yes, Pinto. As you might have figured out by now, he's a horse. :)

We discovered very early on in the trek that Maya and Omrit had only arrived in Huaraz the day before our trek. Altitude problems are very individual so while Omrit was happily ploughing along on the trail (she's an energizer bunny anyway), Maya had breathing problems from the first half hour of our walk. Chagai and Roni were super sweet, offering to carry her bags and waiting for her when she needed to rest. Seeing as the hard part of the trek was still before us, Maya requested a horse that night and that is how Pinto joined us. After spending many hours together, Maya and Pinto had formed a very special bond by the end of the trek.

The only other event worth mentioning on our first day was the rain which seemed to come out of nowhere in the afternoon and lasted for a good 2 hours so that by the time we made it to our camp, we were all soaking wet. Or rather some of us were. I had on a wonderful raincoat from the other SA which meant that not a single drop of rain made it inside. Oh Cape Union Mart, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

It was the second day of the trek that registered the highest ascent. Very early on in the walk we could see the snow capped mountains in the distance:

We had, as Juan described it, a 1.5-2 hours of 30% ascent, then a 1.5/2 hours of 45% ascent and then a 1.5-2 hours of 60% ascent. Everybody seemed to have a different pace so we were kind of all scattered along the trail. This suited me just fine since I quite like to be on my own when I walk so I can soak up the view to my heart's content. I just kept taking breaks to make sure I could still see the person behind me. Which cannot be said of those in front of me.

When we made it to the 60% ascent, I had slowed down considerably as I could hardly breathe. So at some point I couldn't see anybody in front of me and the people behind me seemed to be going even slower than me so they were also out of sight. All this would have been fine if the trail up the ascent were clear. At some point however, the dirth path had disappeared and there were huge rocks which made it very unclear to see a path. Soon I came to a point where there were very steep mountains in front of me and the only way to get to them was to climb the rocks with my bare hands at said 60% slope.

I yelled out at the people in the front. No answer. I yelled out at the people in the back. No answer. I tried to see if I could spot other hiker groups. Absolutely no one. Trying not to panic, I started climbing the rocks. I could easily have slipped and fallen. I could easily have broken a bone. It's a miracle I didn't, especially considering I am capable of slipping and falling on absolutely flat surfaces. It took about 20 minutes until I finally spotted some people in the distance. A 20 year worth of 20 minutes! I made my way towards them, in the hopes that they were indeed on the correct path. Once I had made it there, I yelled out at Rikki in the back: "Rikki, where are you?". The answer came: "In Santa Cruz". Yeah, Rikki's funny like that.

Once I made it to the path, I also saw the guys in the front who seemed like little dots up in the distance. They seemed to have made it to the top a long time ago and directed me towards them. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it to our pass of 4,750 meters and I have the picture to prove it!!

So much for today. Hope to wrap this up in the next post. Bye for now!