Inca Trail, part 2

Day 3

This was the most beautiful day.  After lunch, we walked along a section of the trail that was really well-preserved, hovered at around 12,500 feet, and took us through cloud forest, along giant valleys, and in view of many huge snow capped peaks.  It was during this portion that one of the porters walked with me and gave me some insight into Quecha culture.  His name was Ephraim Cruz Huaman - the first two names very biblical and the last name very indigenous (it is the Quechua word for an eagle-like bird).  Huaman was his mom's last name.  His wife's last name is Condori.  As you guessed, it means condor.  He pulled some pod-like plants off a vine on the rock face and had me eat some.  They were sour in a good way.  Placados, he called them.  And he took some berries off a plant, which he called macha-macha, and said that if you eat more than one you hallucinate.  Obvi, we did not eat those.  He also taught me some Quecha words which I used that night on the other porters during the goodbye "ceremony."  I'm sad to report they had almost no effect.

Anyway, after the nice scenic portion, we eventually got to another mountain pass with llamas at the top, and proceeded to Phuyupatamarka, a ruin with some excellent examples of Inca ritual baths.  They even had water still flowing through them.  Our understanding of the Incas at this point remained somewhat nebulous.  Our guide and the guide for another pair of tourists in our group were saying some inconsistent things (about whether or not the Incas sacrificed humans, for example) and we are not sure whether anyone knows the answers to the questions we were asking. 

The next stretch was pretty horrific, with somewhere around 2,250 stairs down to our campsite for the night.  I don't want to see another staircase for the rest of the trip.

Day 4

Shockingly, we were woken up at 2:50 am (!), given a sack lunch and led to the final checkpoint, where we sat and waited for two hours for the gates to open.  This was ostensibly to enable us to see the sunrise on Machu Picchu, but honestly, we could have still done so if we had woken up at 5 am like normal, and skipped waiting in line.  We think it was to allow the porters to get home earlier.  Anyway, we were some of the first people of the hundred or so that waited in line that morning.

Once the door opened, the hike to the Sun Gate took about half an hour.  It should have taken twice as long, but we were literally running at times because A) there were more steps and descending staircases and I wanted to be done with them as soon as possible, B) we really wanted to beat the rising sun, and C) a strange competitive spirit took hold among the front of the pack.  A group of Australians behind us began shouting things like, "Let's hunt 'em boys," and "Up and at 'em!" and "We're gaining on 'em."  One of them even blew into an animal horn he was carrying, like he was in hot pursuit of wild game.  We pushed ourselves hard to stay ahead of them, and got to the Sun Gate panting and sweating profusely.

Then there she was.  The ancient citadel, and the best preserved Incan city discovered to date.  For about three hours, we walked between the terraces, temples, houses, and plazas wondering how they built with stone like this and what it was all used for. Our guide led us along the main route, and then we walked around to the other side of the hill behind the citadel and admired the Inca bridge.  Built from stone stacked against the sheer face of a soaring cliff, the Inca bridge was almost more impressive to me than the city, because it highlighted in one clear line how complex the engineering was.

We walked down to the tourist haven of Aguas Calientes and had a soak in the weirdly murky but relaxing hot springs.  This was just the antidote we needed for our aching calves, knees, and thighs.  We had lunch and dinner with Harriet and Franky, our new friends from the UK, before getting on the train back to Ollantaytambo, and then the bus to Cuzco.

I would recommend the Inca Trail to anyone who likes guided package tours and exercise and photography, and is willing to pay top dollar.  I would recommend it less to someone who is trying to understand the Incas in depth, or to anyone who wants to do day hikes like the ones we have in the US national parks.  This trail was very rough-hewn and steep and uncomfortable, and the information on the Incas is not very site-dependant.  Machu Picchu was the single most expensive piece of our trip, and while it may not have been completely worth the cost, it was definitely worth the time and effort.

Inca Trail, part 1

Day 1

At kilometer 82 where we started, the Inca Trail begins as a footpath that was built and maintained in the 1980s.  The actual path built by the Incas is now buried underneath a railroad which runs to Machu Picchu.  The scenery is spectacular, with glaciers poking out behind mountains carpeted in green - a huge difference from the dry, completely barren mountains near the coast.  Our first day did not really follow the path, though we witnessed where it would go through the Urubamba river valley.  Our guide Ramiro told us that we would see parts of the original trail the next day, and that it was 60% "new trail" at this point.

This new trail was very smooth dust and gravel and allowed for an easy day of walking, with several ruins along the way.  My favorite was Llaqtapata, a paw-shaped settlement set in a dramatic valley.  The ruins were very green and, Josh noted, shockingly orderly.  It is obvious that Peru puts a lot into maintaining this area.  It was a bit difficult to imagine a day in the life of the people who lived here, but we can see that they had lots of decorative niches in their house, and no windows.  It was also obvious to see that they had intense city planning and really liked landscaping!  I was not as moved as I had been with some other ruins on this trip, where you could see individual etchings or inscriptions, and imagine some ancient story behind it.  But they were beautiful, almost otherworldly in their smooth, terraced shapeliness.

Speaking of otherworldly, Ramiro told us about a theory that the Incas had uncovered the secret to teleportation.  We both gave him quizzical looks.  He said, "Who knows?" and went on as if he might actually believe it.  But really?  We figure, if the Incas had teleportation, why would they have built this trail?

Day 2

This day is known as the challenge day. We started at 9,800 feet, climbed up to the Warmi Wañusca pass at 13,800 feet, and descended down to our camp at 11,800 feet, all within 6 hours.  It was definitely painful and slow going.  The path was a continuous steep slope.  And while we did see the original trail today, it was not exactly a relief.  The Inca had built steep stone stairs that made the slope even harder to climb, in my opinion.  We had to take big steps that challenged the limits of our glutes.  Meanwhile, the porters (local men hired by the trekking companies) were carrying gigantic backpacks (at least four times as big as ours) and passing us constantly.  Some were like sixty years old!  The climb was a humbling experience whose details are, sadly, hard to remember due to the fatigue.

There were no ruins along the way, other than remnants of the trail.  While relaxing at the camp, we shared pictures from our entire world trip with the porters.  They laughed at the pictures of women carrying baskets on their head in Africa, and they did not know who Nelson Mandela was.  I did not get much farther than that because lunch was shortly served - lomo saltado, barley soup, rice, and salad with cheese.  (The food on the trail was always really good!)  We relaxed all afternoon, but the German couple in our group did not make it down to camp until 4:30pm.  We think the altitude really got to them.  Fortunately they brought some meds that they shared with Josh, who also had altitude symptoms that evening.  This did not stop him from getting out of the tent in the middle of the night to admire the stars (and use the toilet...) which in his words were wondrous.  Altitude has its benefits!

Sitting on the dock of Iquique

Our detour around Bolivia took us to the (completely unfamiliar to me) north coast of Chile.  I don't know why, but I was expecting something Mediterranean.  But no, as we were landing in the town of Iquique, we pulled down the airplane window shade and saw a vast desert stretching away as far as the Andes.  Then all of a sudden the word "Atacama" came back to me from geography bees past.  We were in the driest place on Earth.

In Iquique, it turns out, the whole reason for the city to exist was mining.  The big sandy hills that surround the city are full of minerals like nitrates and saltpeter - minerals valuable enough that Chile went to war with Peru over them in the 1800s. The area was full of small mining towns until they were gradually abandoned in the mid-1900s, leaving giant refineries abandoned in the desert. We heard that there was a particularly well preserved ghost town just 40 km east of us.  The place was a saltpeter mine until it was abandoned in the 1960s and now it is even a UNESCO world heritage site.  It is called Humberstone, which the people here pronounce like "Ombertun." 

Our misadventure trying to visit Humberstone need not be recounted in detail.  Let's just say, due to traffic, it took us an hour to go 5 kilometers of the way there before we decided to get out of the car and turn back so that we could catch our onward bus.  We were annoyed that we couldn't make it in time, but later found out there were several earthquakes last month (around 8 on the Richter scale!) that badly damaged the highway out of town.  I felt sheepish for complaining about the traffic when I found that out.

But still, we wanted to do something before leaving.  The tourist information office recommended an hour boat trip out past the harbor.  But lo and behold, when we got there, no boats were running.  Just our luck, right? 

Dejected, we went to the dock to look at the water.  There was some kind of huge brown bean bag on the dock.  As we got closer, it opened a sleepy eye and watched us.  A sea lion?!  Was this really a lone sea lion, sitting fat and sassy on the dock of the bay?  They live in colonies, so it made us wonder why this one was alone.  Maybe he was taking a break from the group, or maybe he had been kicked out.  He seemed pretty content either way, and his serene smile made us feel better about the failed Humberstone and Boat trips.

Sitting there ended up being lovely.  Out in the ocean, the most enormous waves I have ever seen crashed against the distant breakers.  The little sandy beach was strewn with tons of large, intact mollusk shells.  A black bird with a long red beak stalked the surf, while men stood on boulders fishing for whatever could withstand that tide.  We left Iquique wishing we had stayed longer.  I know so little about the Atacama region, but what little I know says there is a lot going for this little mining town.

See Less, Live more

Post by Josh

I grew up obsessed with the ancient world, building castles and cathedrals out of whatever I could and taking classes on Greece and Rome and Harappan India whenever I could. When we were setting up this trip, Hammad and I laid out several anchor destinations and built our route around them - Angkor Wat, India, Istanbul, Rome, Egypt, Machu Picchu, and Aztec Central America - all places with famous ancient cultures and impressive ruins. This is what gave our blog its title of Ancient Roads. And we are now a bit more than halfway through the route of our travels, having seen more than half of our anchors, and they were all pretty cool. The most recent, Egypt, lived up to its awesome reputation and was chock full of ancient roads.

These places, however, have not been the coolest part of the trip. Sites with lots of tourist hawkers, entrance fees, overloaded infrastructure, and sketchy guides have been the most aggravating things we have seen. And even if an ancient site is standing in pristine condition, all it is is mute stone. It may be a beautiful place, but it does not have much meaning without the stories and histories that let us know why it was built and who lived there. It is impossible to understand what is important in what we see without outside information. Guidebooks and signs help, but only if you already have some background information.

What is most interesting is dealing with actual, living people. And they don't even need to be in a mythic ancient site. We had more fun and learned more hanging out with the Östlunds in their Stockholm living room than wandering through the breathtaking but impassive fields of Bagan in Myanmar, where nobody could answer the 'why' questions we asked. Our time in Budapest was made by the wily Brazilian and Telluride friends we had there more than the gorgeously preserved architecture and excellent museums. And in Egypt, our experience with the Pyramids was frustrating and lame compared to touring a much less impressive temple in Luxor with a good guide we met through CouchSurfing.

We've been using CouchSurfing consistently in Africa, and it has made a world of difference. It makes it harder to set our own agendas and see all the sites recommended in the guide books, but instead we get taken out to the Mediterranean coast of Egypt for a weekend or invited to an Ethiopian wedding - things that we would never get a chance to do if we were still staying in hostels and trying to figure everything out on our own. We get to live with and like locals, which is much more the point of travel. See fewer tourist destinations but see them with more explanation  so they can truly come alive, and spend the rest of the time in an Addis Ababa cafe, full of expressive Ethiopians and Kenyans as Liverpool tries to regain the lead from Chelsea. Now this is real and quite unexpected cultural experience.

Dos and Donts of Ancient Egypt

Do bring a student ID card - you get discounts at almost every site.  It doesn't matter that neither Josh nor I are students any longer, and in fact I don't even have a student ID.  I used my Washington DC public library card and they gave me the discount.

Don't use large denomination bills.  Taxi drivers and such won't give you correct change, and will keep the remainder as "baksheesh."  You'll also need small coins to tip the guards and stray kids at museums who will otherwise not let you through or may pester you relentlessly.

Do let the little kids that are asking for money have some fun with you.  They have good senses of humor when you ask them their name.  Josh and I ask them for help (where is the closest ATM?  Can you sing a song for us?) before giving them any sort of tip.  They like having a job.

Don't go it alone.  When you are visiting these places with a local, the hasslers will approach them first and far less frequently.  But if you go alone, you will be targeted.  They will tell you the pyramids are closed, or that they can let you in for a fee, or find a way to climb, or that it is too far to walk, until you don't know what to believe and end up buying whatever it is they are selling.

Do visit the temples that you have never heard of.  The pyramids at Giza and temple of Luxor were far less interesting than Medinat Habu, the latter being a funerary temple for Ramses III.  So many of the bigger ones are in bad shape or riddled with tourists and obnoxiousness, and their contents are in Museums anyway (which may be better to visit).  But we went to Medinat Habu on the West Bank of Luxor, which was basically empty, had tons and tons of detailed hieroglyphics and statues, and felt hallowed.  It is not far from the Valley of the Kings which we skipped.

Don't ride the horses at the pyramids.  That is the best way to be captive to your horse owner, and to have a sore butt while not being able to concentrate on the pyramids at all, since you are spending all your effort just to steer and avoid minibus traffic.

Do take time to wander the streets and see stuff that is not really historic, but living and local.  We ran across an alley with a canopy of festive LED garlands and rope tassles and flowers, where children were playing and horses were having lunch.  We also went shopping for pants and found the Facebook store, which sells nothing you'd expect.

Don't eat the Luxor street cheese.  'Nuff said.

Likya Yolu

Ancient road number 5: the Lycian Way (Likya Yolu in Turkish).  So to be honest, this is not really a road and it is not really ancient.  It is a 510 km collection of footpaths, major streets, mountain trails, beach walks and so on, and it goes across some ancient sites along a southern peninsula in Turkey that used to be the home of the Lycians.

Ruins are pretty disheveled here but the coastal scenery is gorgeous.  We walked one stretch from the coast to a mountain village (used to be a lake but was apparently drained by the Romans).  A goatherd along the way made excellent hissing and screaming noises to clear the goats off the path for us.

When we got to the top of this trail, we were in a village where the only place to stay charged 90 euro per night!  It was a fancy B&B in a really small and not exactly prosperous hill town.  I was kind of embarrassed that the owner would charge that much.  To get out of there, we hitchhiked on the back of a tractor (FUN!) and landed a comfortable room for 50 lira (a fifth of the price) back on the coast.

I think the best part of the actual ancient sites here are the rock cut tombs.  In Myra (now Demre) some have Lycian inscriptions (looks a bit like Greek, but it's not!) and you can climb up into them, as long as you don't mind being barked at by village dogs.  Fortunately for us, we somehow acquired a stray mutt on the walk from the bus station.  He became our loyal friend and defender and visited all the sites with us - about 8km roundtrip!  With him by our side, other dogs seemed far less menacing.

We named him Nikolai by the way.  Why Nikolai?  Because Myra was the bishopric of Saint Nick!  This town definitely claims him as their own, with a Baba Noel museum (the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas) and the market of Santa kitsch.  It was pretty bizarrely excellent to see vendors selling icons of Saint Nicholas for Russian tourists.  And weirder still, the town hall has Santa's jolly face as part of its seal.  Thinking of him as Mediterranean makes me realize how little I know of Santa's actual life.  It definitely messes with the traditional North European-American reindeer and elves thing.

Day after tomorrow, we leave the Lycian Way for Istanbul and further into the Balkans!

Angkor part II - Angkor Wat

Ankgor Wat. The crowning accomplishment of Khmer culture. The archetype for all religious architecture in Indochina. The pride and national symbol of Cambodia. The 8th Wonder of the World.  Angelina Jolie's first destination in the Tomb Raider movie.

It's that important.

Angkor Wat was a fantastic conclusion to our exploration of the Khmer monuments. It is a massive temple. From the main west entrance, one first crosses a naga-lined causeway over the moat, passes through an extensive entrance portico, and continues on a long raised platform between pools and libraries before entering the temple itself.  Four concentric squares of galleries, each higher and airier than the last, lead up to the central sanctuary, towering 55 meters above the ground. The effect of this approach and procession are impressive. And unlike all the other Khmer temples, this one has been continually used since it was built - first as a Khmer Hindu site, then as a Buddhist temple into the modern era. It never had to be reclaimed from the jungle or reassembled from collapsed stones. Because of this, its interior carvings are sharply detailed and its columns bear inscriptions and dedications from nine centuries of use. The first gallery is famous for its virtuosic bas-reliefs, which show stories of Khmer military triumph and tales from the Ramayana.

We were able to be there while the crowds dispersed for lunch - it's a poor time for photographs but essentially the only way to not be surrounded by loud tour groups. We were able to lurk around the highest levels in near solitude, gazing over the ancient carvings and wondering how these elaborate spaces would be used in the temple's heyday. While I was sketching in the courtyard on the second level, one of the Apsara guides sat down on the ledge beside me and began to play the troh, a traditional stringed instrument of Cambodia, sending his simple haunting melodies to echo off the towers above. It was a beautiful and incredibly relaxing experience, and my favorite of our time in the mightiest of Wats.

Khmer architecture is all about hierarchy - the center is always the tallest and grandest, with every other part of the composition focused on it; doors were marked by elaborate cornices with tall carved central pediments, roofs were constructed of multiple levels that all stepped up to the center, and the towers of a temple always led to the mightiest and most sacred place at the very center - the metaphorical holy mountain. Cambodian and Thai traditional architecture still follows these rules.

Seeing Angkor Wat also drove home the fact that everything weathers over time. All the temples made use of canonical tower forms, door pediments, carvings, and the like. All of these were clearly discernable and exquisitely done at the fist temple we visited - Banteay Srei - but had worn down to near indiscernability at Angkor itself. The scale and exposure of the large temple subjected its sandstone ornamentation to the full brunt of the weather. Its famous towers now look more like stalactites or giant mushrooms up close, and its elaborately textured roof stones have been reduced to near Modernist geometric simplicity.

Hammad and I both noticed that many of the ancient stone temple buildings we saw looked uncannily like Victorian train stations. Part of this was due to their weather-worn simplicity, but more of it had to do with the common cultural heritage behind almost all of the great civilizations of the Old World. The incredibly familiar column and molding shapes used in Khmer temples show a direct lineage from those of the ancient Greeks, probably carried via India from the time of Alexander the Great. The train station deja vu probably went the other way, as the British adapted the richly ornamented and evocative material cultures they encountered throughout the Empire into their own distinctive look during the Victorian periods.

(Post by Josh)

Angkor part I - The Khmer Civilization

The Khmer were one of the first modern peoples to establish themselves in Indochina, migrating down out of Central Asia around the second century AD. By the time the Laotians, Siamese, and Vietnamese moved into the regions they currently occupy, the Kingdom of Cambodia was a firmly established, powerful military state. Their culture was based around the Tonle Sap lake and its fertile seasonal floodplain, where their cities sat raised on wooden stilts to ride out the rainy season and their traditional festivals centered on strong rains and successful harvests. At the center of their cities rose great temples to the Hindu gods, built as earthly representations of the heavenly Mt. Meru and the only structures sacred enough to be built out of stone. As political fortunes waned and Khmer cities moved or were abandoned, everything rotted away except for the temples, and even they were lost to the jungle. It is these remaining monuments that we have come to Cambodia to see.

The Khmer civilization reached its height from the 900s through the 1200s, when their god-kings repeatedly moved the capital and embarked on aggressive building campaigns, each trying to outdo the devaraja before him. This has left monuments scattered over a broad swath of land; visiting colonials grouped 20-odd of them into a 'Grand Tour' when the sites were rediscovered and modern tour companies will follow the same route in one jam-packed day, but we decided to see fewer of the sites and take the time to fully explore each one while we were there. This was one of the locations I was most excited about in this entire global tour, so I wanted to do it well.  We spent three days amongst the temples - the first at distant and secluded sites, the second within the walled city of Angkor Thom, and the final day at fabled Angkor Wat itself.

The two sites on our first day were a perfect introduction to Khmer architecture. The first, the diminutive Banteay Srei, is a perfectly preserved minor temple that has some of the finest stone carving in the world. It illustrated the standard layout and iconography of the Angkor temples while staying compact enough to be easily intelligible, and its fiery demons and gracefully dancing Apsara figures were in better condition than any others we saw.

As a fitting contrast, our second site for the day was as large as any at Angkor but has been completely overtaken by the jungle. Beng Mealea was an enormous square temple, complete with moat and stone causeway, monumental gates, four concentric rings of walled galleries, and a massive central tower. Much of this has collapsed and weathered away.  What remains is the perfect Indiana Jones / tomb raider landscape of crumbling galleries, shattered towers, mossy piles of stone blocks concealing hidden rooms and carvings, and everywhere the jungle extending its roots and branches deeper into the structure.   We clambered over rocks and through collapsing false arches here for hours, getting a feel for the organization and majesty of the Ankgorian temples. And just having a blast. Our tuk tuk driver seemed a bit exasperated at how long we had spent at the temple, but it gave us much to think about on the long drive home.

Our second day was the great walled city of Angkor Thom, located immediately adjacent to the more famous Wat and containing a host of temples and public buildings from the height of the empire. We walked its walls, climbed its reconstructed temples, explored an archeological site run by a Japanese team with a penchant for volleyball, and wandered through the elaborate carvings of elephants, demons, and gods that adorned the terraces fronting the public square. The main temple of the city was Bayon, thought to be one of the more bizarre temples in the area for the giant faces that adorn its towers. This whole area was literally flooded with tourists - bus loads and bus loads of them, from Japan and China and Vietnam and France - so most of the temples had been carefully cleaned and cordoned off to control the flow of people. Most of the buildings thus felt half-finished, with all the parts that had been crumbling carefully removed, leaving safer but incomplete monuments. They were majestic to see, but lacked the intensity and sense of age as the more remote sites. They made me look forward even more to seeing Angkor Wat itself on our final day among the temples.

(Post by Josh)