MACHU PICCHU

January 18, 2014

I have to explain why you have not heard from me. It seems the ship has an Internet service which uses one satellite.  The ship was in dry dock before this trip and the Captain fired the Internet provider before we started.  He hired a new one, Herris.  I don’t know what country they are from but they are not doing a good job.  They cannot keep the connection to the satellite so we cannot connect.  The Captain is so angry that when we came back from Machu Picchu he told us he had flown a technical person from the company from Paris and it will be fixed “come hell or high water”.  We may never have connection but I will keep writing in case the day comes I can post this.

 

In Lima (which means lemons) Peru we were taken to the airport to fly to Cusco, a town of 500,000.  We went to our hotel, Palacio Del Inka, which was a first class hotel. This hotel was the palace built by the Spanish conqueror in 1534.  Cusco is over 11,000 feet high and we had to fight altitude sickness. It starts with light headed feeling, loss of appetite, and a bad headache.  Some had to be given oxygen. At the airport in Lima we were able to buy coca candy to fight it so we ate it on the trip. The hotel served coca tea and coca leaves to chew on. It’s something they have used for centuries and it really works. It is not cocaine as we first suspected but just a medicinal leaf.

 

The next day we set out for Machu Picchu. We first rode a bus for one and half hours to a train.  We saw snowcapped Andes Mountains. We were going down to 8,800 feet to the Sacred Valley of the Incas.  They can only raise potatoes and butter beans at this level.  Our train ride was one and half hours ride.  We were delayed one hour then as there had been a land slide and we had to wait until it was cleared.  The mountains are so steep that the rocks are always falling and are really a hazard. Once cleared, we then had a bumpy bus ride the last half hour and then the walking began.

Once we were through the gate I have one word for the scene – AMAZING!!!! The Incas who lived here were 1000 learned people who were trying to make a difference we were told. The people were astronomers, farmers experimenting in hybrids, and the like.  It was a sanctuary and holy.  They started building it in 1438 but abandoned it in 1534 when the Spaniards were in the area although they never found it. It was finally discovered by an American college professor with the help of a local farmer in 1911. The Incas building skills were a marvel. The way they terraced their crops were a wonder.  Only about 30% of the city has been uncovered so there are more treasurers to uncover.  We were told to take a rain coat with us but it was a warm beautiful day as we toured. But as we started out to walk the one half mile to the bus a torrential rain came and we were glad we had our rain coats.