My plan had been foiled. As I stood at the exit of Terminal H in the Miami Airport, I looked longingly at the first class club that taunted me with its free drinks and bags of mini pretzels. I had to exit the terminal to get my checked suitcase, but without my boarding pass for my next flight I couldn’t get back into the concourse and proudly display my card that would grant me access. “Well,” I thought, “I suppose the rogue Peruvian trip starts now.”
I found my bag and a place to store it, promptly exited the airport and found a taxi. “Take me to your favorite place in Miami, please? I need to be back at the airport at 6:00, so not too far.”
“Ah, yes, I know,” said my Haitian cab driver. “I’ll take you to Mangoes, you can dance and drink and watch the ocean from your table.” It all sounded good to me, and a mere $32 later, I stepped out of my green taxi (who knew, they come in colors other than yellow?!) and onto Ocean Boulevard, the busiest street in South Beach and the only separation between the billions of dollars of real estate that tower up above the sunburned tourists and the Atlantic. The first thing I saw was a two-toned Buick Special, teal and white, regally sitting outside The Avalon hotel. I felt like I had taken a taxi from 2009 to 1957, instead of from the airport to downtown. I walked along the strip, past the hotels and restaurants that boasted 10 pound lobsters and 32 ounce mojitos and crab legs longer than my arm, and thought about my upcoming trip. For now I was feeling okay, and had Mom’s words ringing in my head: Julie, you’re joining the ranks of all the Fillmore’s and Appel’s who have taken trips like this one, and come back richer people. I felt like I was beginning my rite of passage; it was my turn to have stories and I was going to take advantage of it, damnit. The first way I did so was with a mojito and a dolphin sandwich on the porch of the Waldorf Towers, a stucco hotel that looks pretty much the same as the rest of the hotels along the strip. I don’t think I’d ever eaten dolphin before, so I was surprised when I found how much it tastes like swordfish, only a bit creamier and milder. With tartar sauce and lemon and some seasoned French fries, it was the best last American meal I could have hoped for. After I finished my lunch I crossed the street and stepped onto the whitest beach I’d ever seen. It was about 4 o’clock by then, so there were not many people left on the beach; only a few scattered here and there, desperately grabbing at their sun shawls to keep them from blowing away in the wind, which had picked up since I’d crossed the street. I sat down next to a big wooden box that looked like it held beach chairs and stared at the Miami skyline and the larger than life cruise ships that cluttered up the harbor. I just sat for a while, listening to the CD that Eben had made me before I left, and thought about the people who I didn’t even know, that would become my friends in the next 3 ½ months. It’s an odd feeling, like shadows following you around: you can feel their presence but as for their personality or their sense of humor or their hair color, it’s all a mystery. And, after a good bit of that kind of dangerous metaphysical thinking, I got up, dipped my feet in the water, left the beach, and got in a cab back to the airport.
From there, time seemed to slow down and has seemed to move at a snail’s pace until now. (I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing—quite to the contrary I’m getting to experience everything and everyone with a sense of time that I’ve never had before. I’ve only been here for 6 days, but I keep having to remind myself that it’s been that short of a time, as I feel like I’ve been here for about 6 months.)
The group, who by now had sat together in the airport in Miami and Cusco for a combined 5 hours and was beginning to get along like old friends at a reunion, got into Cusco around 11 o’clock on Sunday morning, and was immediately whisked to Urubamba, a small city about an hour outside Cusco best known for it’s position on the PeruRail train to Machu Picchu. The hotel we checked into, Hotel Maizal, was beautiful and peaceful and the perfect place to transition the U.S. to Peru. It is best described as a compound, as it is completely walled in and is a sanctuary unto itself; a respite from the busy street that lies right outside the front gate. There is one big building, divided into 9 sleeping rooms, a separate dining room building with wireless internet and water cooler, and another structure that we used for a classroom. All three buildings lie on probably ¾ of an acre, the rest of which is a beautifully kept lawn complete with a fire pit, a huge bird cage with the loudest parrots I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, a weeping willow tree, lots of beautiful gardens with odd and beautiful looking flowers, and a babbling brook. (I kid you not—there was literally a small stream running through the middle of the lawn—talk about peaceful!) Oh yeah, and the Andes rise up from the ground on all sides, creating the humbling and literally awesome feeling of living in a huge brown and green basin. The first morning I woke up and walked outside to see the clouds gently hanging low, obscuring the tops of the peaks, as if they were tired and needed a rest from being up so high.
We spent two days in Urubamba, during which we had various seminars on how to stay safe in Cusco and avoid petulant health problems like altitude sickness and Rabies (I surely won’t go near another wild dog ever again), and went on some excursions into surrounding towns.
Then we went to Machu Picchu.
Surprisingly, as we all know how 5:15 in the morning feels and all wish we didn’t, no one said a word about having to wake up at 5:15 to catch our combi (like a bus but less safe—for those of you who have been to Ghana, it’s a lot like a tro tro). After a less than safe combi ride, we boarded PeruRail, which runs from Urubamba to Machu Picchu. As you descend down you can see the vegetation begin to change noticeably, from trees and grass to jungle like vines and thick reeds. Corn doesn’t grow down here—it’s much too densely populated with other plants. As you descend into the valley that will eventually bring you to Machu Picchu, the ride gets slower and slower, because of the abundance of trains coming from the other direction. (They only have 1 track, and only a few spots where trains can pass one another, so whenever another train is approaching you have to stop for as long as it takes for the other train to come chugging by.) Finally you get to the city at the base of the mountain—I’m not sure it has a name, but all I saw was an over-abundance of people selling not-so-cheap novelty items that say “Machu Picchu” on them—and get into an air conditioned bus that will take up to the actual entrance of the park. I’m sure this is designed for American or European (or other rich) tourists—the train ride there is $60, the bus ride up is $14, and entrance to the park is some obscene amount of money (I’m forgetting now). It even costs 1 sol (=Peruvian currency, equal to about 33 cents) to go to the bathroom! But then you enter the park, and you forget how much you spent because you’re overcome with what you’re seeing in front of you: huge green towers above you, and thousands of moss covered rocks, that have been painstakingly fit together over hundreds of thousands of years. The ruins are incredible: they are so vast (like the mountains they are covering) and so intricately built that it’s hard to remember that you’re actually seeing them. You feel like you’re a cut out picture that’s been placed on a National Geographic magazine with the title: Wonders of Peru. The colors don’t vary much when you’re looking at the ruins, because it’s so hard to take them in all at once. I had to take more than a few pictures to remember that they were actually right in front of me. We climbed up into the ruins (you can walk right in to them and walk around, as if you’re taking a tour of an old house), and our guide kept telling us about all the rock formations, and what they meant to the Incas. I just looked around and felt that eerie sensation that I get when I’m looking at Jim Morrison’s pants in the Hard Rock Café, or at Lady Bird’s inauguration gown at the Museum of American History. People actually lived here 600 years ago! I entered into that dangerous metaphysical thought territory again: it’s in places like that where I feel like a dot on the infinite line of humanity, like I’m playing only a bit part in this play that’s been going on for thousands of years and will be going on for thousands more.
After we had taken a tour of the ruins as went down to the base for lunch, and then were free to roam around by ourselves for a few hours. A few friends and I found ourselves on the way up to Intipunku, or “La Puerta del Sol,” the Door of the Sun. It’s a beautiful hike up to the left of Machu Picchu on a trail that eventually will lead all the way back to Cusco. We hiked up it with another American we’d met during lunch, for about 50 minutes, until we reached the top, which was 2,720 meters up. Quite a difficult hike, but worth every minute of it, because I have never seen anything like it before. It kind of felt like when you’re sitting in the Imax at Liberty Science Center, and the movie begins to be shot from the birds-eye-view, except for that you’re actually living it and breathing it. At the top we stopped for about 20 minutes, where we took some typical tourist pictures, and sat and marveled at the view for a while. Then we hiked back down, got back on the bus, got to the train, back to the combi, and ate dinner at our hotel, wondering what we had really just seen.

On Thursday we packed up camp in Urubamba and boarded a luxury bus for Cusco, where we would meet our host families. I grew more and more nervous as we approached the city—sure, my host family would be nice enough, but what if that was it? I started to wonder about the $35 in New York souvenirs I had brought: what if they thought they were tacky? What if they already had 4 Statue of Liberty figurines in their house? What if they only ate tripe and sauerkraut? It turns out my worrying—like so much of it throughout the trip, actually—was all for the naught. My señora is a lovely woman, who is ever accommodating and loves to cook (good fit there!) and wants to teach someone how. She has a son who is a chef (nice match up there, too!) and daughter who works for LAN airlines. There are two girls, 15 and 18, who work in the house all day, and the father of the children who comes at night sometimes. (I’m still not 100% sure about their relationship, but I don’t think it would be the most polite thing to ask about it.) I have a very quaint room all to myself, with a bed, desk and a drawer that locks, so I can keep my finger puppets and pictures in there when I’m not home. I haven’t spent too much time here, though, because on Saturday morning, at 6:30, we boarded another luxury tour bus, this time destined for Lake Titicaca.
The ride, normally six hours, took a bit longer because of all the bathroom stops we made, but by 1:45 we were in Puno, the city that lies at the edge of the highest navigable lake in the world. We boarded a boat to take us to La Isla de los Uros Q’hantati, one in an archipelago of floating islands made from dried reeds that have been packed down, bound, and fastened to the ground so they won’t float away. There are many islands like the one way stayed on, all of which cater to tourists like our group. The island is only about 200 yards long by 100 yards wide, and has about 10 huts (also made of reeds), which we all slept in. There are 8 indigenous people who live there all the time, and are constantly giving people like me the “indigenous experience,” by which I mean that they are serving them trout and quinoa, taking them fishing with nets and letting them dress up in native garb. Being there gave me an odd feeling, somewhat like what I’d imagine living in the “It’s A Small World” Disney World attraction is like. Still it was nice to walk around barefoot on the reeds, and there is nothing like waking up early in the morning and looking out at a lake that is 3,800 meters above sea level. It reminded me of being in Rhode Island during that tiny sliver of time when not even the golfers are out on the golf course and the day is just deciding whether or not it really wants to start. It’s that point of tangency between night and day, and I think the most peaceful stolen piece of time in the entire day.
Around 8 o’clock we boarded our boat back to the Puno, and when we got there we were immediately guided towards La Avenida Bolivar, where the Festividad Virgen de la Candelaria was going on. The week long celebration to honor the Vigren Mary was capped off by today’s festivities that included a parade, music and dancing. The parade consisted of dancing troupes, all dressed up in impossibly bright and ornate costumes marching about 100 yards and then stopping to do an impeccably choreographed dance. I saw dozens of different dancing troupes, all wearing different costumes, ranging from scary Diablo attire to full gorilla-like suits. Neon green, purple and day-glo orange seemed to be the favorite of all the colors, but you literally cannot think of a color that wasn’t represented in some way. Marching bands were interspersed among the groups, and the entire parade had to be at least ½ a mile long or more. Street vendors were selling all kinds of food, none of which I ate because I had been duly warned about it’s safety (although I’m going to have to stop on that “culinary safety kick” if I’m going to have anything interesting to talk about, so stay tuned for interesting stories about food and hopefully no stories about the aftermath), and carnival souvenirs. One man had a pole of cotton candy 15 feet high! I found a spot watching the parade with a few of my friends, and we stood drinking a beer and watching the parade of senses flow by. The parade seemed to be suspended in time and place, an entity all to its own. It was 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, and people were dressed in ridiculously grandiose costumes, marching and dancing in the biggest parade of the year! It was like being in an entity all of its own, that could own fit into a continuum of its own being—the past was only past parades, and the future only next year’s. It couldn’t exist outside Puno either. Something about the buildings, that weren’t old or new but just existent, and the streets that were just wide enough to hold four dancers or tuba players. We were a few minutes late getting back to our bus, because the wall of people was only semi-permeable, but it was worth it if only because I got to put on a gorilla head.
And now, to bed.