Anne Around the World

I woke up and had breakfast with Stefan and another lady Angela, from Germany, who were both going to Agua Azul. I had decided to go to the ruins so that I was sure to have a full day there. I had a delicious breakfast of tropical fruit covered with yogurt and granola and fresh bread with homemade jam. Yum! We were joined by an American couple on a road trip from Louisiana who were curious about my bike trip and we all had a good trip until the van came to get Angela and Stefan and the Americans left to head back north. I went back to get my camera and when I came back noticed that the family staying in the dorm was in the breakfast area eating with another couple. Stefan had said that he’d seen another bike at a cabin further back, so I went up and asked if they were the cyclists. Indeed they were. They were Mauricio and Gabby, a Mexican couple on their first bike trip, for only a couple of days. We compared notes and talked for a while, and it turned out that they were also going to the ruins. We decided to walk up there together but ended up getting a ride from the other family. They were all really funny and nice people, and we had some good laughs.
Gabby, Mauricio and I climbed some of the pyramids and walked around for a while until they had to leave, but then we lost Gabby, so Mauricio and I split up looking for her. I walked down toward the exit looking for her and when I got back neither was to be found, so I assume that they eventually found one another, I got to see all of the outlying ruins, though and got a tremendous workout climbing 10 million stairs. The ruins at Palenque were some of my favorites so far. There were a lot of tourists, foreign and lots of people from all over Mexico as well, and the main plazas were filled with blankets of souvenirs for sale, etc. but the ruins were spectacular both in size and detail, and they were very peaceful in some of the outlying areas. There was also a really lovely set of waterfalls leading toward the exit. When I got back I went to get some dinner with Stefan, and we met up with the American expat couple as well so we all ate together and had a good conversation. We were all exhausted, though, and went back. The other family had left so I moved into one of the other bottom bunk beds. Just after we got back to the hostel it started raining like crazy and I fell asleep listening to the rain fall on the thatched roof. It was a really peaceful experience.
Somewhere in the middle of the night my partially conscious brain registered thunder. Only there was no thunder. A short time later there was a massive noise and the whole hut, and my bed, shook like there had been a tremendous earthquake. It was in fact, a huge branch that had fallen off of the tree hanging over our hut, and it had crushed a good part of the roof. We ran out with flashlights to examine the damage. Inside, the table and upper bunks were covered in dirt and bark, but fortunately there were only a couple of small leaks and everything stayed dry. I was happy to be on a bottom bunk, though!
The next morning came too early. I ended up going back to the ruins with Stefan and Angela since I had an overnight bus back to Playa del Carmen that night and had to pack up and get my things into town before dark. It was a really rainy day, but a very different experience since everything was cloudy and hazy, and significantly less crowded. Stefan had to leave early for a bus back to San Cristóbol, so Angela and I walked around for a while and then sat talking for a long while on the steps leading to one of the temples. I absolutely adored talking with her, she was a really wise and wonderful woman. She needed some help making some phone calls, so we decided to meet back at the hostel a few hours later and go in to town together. I packed up and took my things into town, then wen back to meet her, and we ended up getting caught in another downpour, and stopping for dinner at a really cute little cafe. She walked with me to get my bike and we stopped at a bread store on the way back to the bus station where I got the most phenomenal pastry I’ve ever tasted in my life. It was a flaky layered bread with custard pooled in the center and a whole fig halved on top of it. YUM! We then went on to the bus station and said our goodbyes, which was when the long wait began. I’d gotten there an hour early, since I wanted extra time in case I had problems with the bike. I walked it over to the boarding area, got my checked bag, assembled everything and then…waited. The area was soon packed like a can of sardines with backpackers, all moving forward and back to ask the guy at the gate if their bus was there yet, or how much longer. “No, not yet” he would reply. “Five or ten minutes more.” This continued for a full two hours. The bus, clearly, was on Latin American time.
This was the first time that I didn’t get an extra charge for my bike on a bus. It was also the first time I had to load the whole thing myself into a very small compartment. I ended up having to take off both wheels and do some careful layering with my bag and towel to get everything in, and I am pretty sure that the baggage guy got some amusement out of watching me. The trip itself was uneventful; I had a good wide seat that reclined pretty far and I ended up, miraculously, sleeping for most of the 13 hour journey. I got off in Playa del Carmen, where my bike case has been staying at my friend’s house, and stretched my tired, bloated legs before I set about the task of reassembling my bike. I had a lot of help from the baggage guy in Playa, and soon had a little crowd of people watching and asking questions. It was almost totally painless. From there I rode down to the beach to meet my friend Mike and his family. They were nice enough to let me stay at their beautiful house for a few days before my flight back. We hung out at the beach for a while and I got a very refreshing swim in…the water here is so warm and absolutely gorgeous. We all celebrated New Year’s Eve with their neighbors and had a great time, though we were all exhausted in the end and decided to celebrate in the Eastern Time zone. When I got into bed I fell asleep instantaneously.

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I woke up and had an amazing breakfast (not to mention incredible coffee) at the Casa de Café.  The owner had told me the night before that a British couple was coming in and that I might ask to share the guide that they had booked with them.  I met them at breakfast and they were very nice and a delight to talk to, but I thought that we might not be the best people to tour together.  I definitely wanted a local guide, and they had booked an American guide, and were looking forward to doing a lot after, while I wanted to spend as much time as I pleased.  So I walked into the central plaza and got a moto tuc-tuc to the ruins. They are only a kilometer away, so I could have easily walked or ridden my bike, but the truth was that I really wanted to ride in one.

There was a guide station at the entrance, and one approached me who was very nice, he spoke many languages and asked what I would prefer to speak.  I told him, mostly Spanish unless I don’t understand a word, in which case the English equivalent would be nice.  He was really great about teaching me new vocabulary and correcting me when necessary.  It was perfect.

I’ve seen a lot of ruins on this trip and, to my mind, Copán is the most spectacular to date.  There are no massive temples as at Tikal, but the detail that remains is beyond belief.  Copán is known for its stelae, stone carvings to record historical events and the likeness of important figures. The stelae I’ve seen at other sites have been worn down so that their figures and hieroglyphics are hard to see, but this is not the case at Copán.  One king, 18 Rabbit, commissioned many stelae, and they are arranged in a huge sculpture garden.  Some are originals and others are replicas of those currently kept in museums.  We spent hours walking through the site and Juan (the guide) was very patient with all of my questions and had a great understanding of the history and the way that the people lived.  There is a huge ball court at Copán as well; the ancient ball game seems to have had many variations, but Juan said that they used a rubber ball and played in teams.  You would try to hit one of the markers on the side of the court without letting the ball hit the ground, and without using hands or feet.  When the game was played to ask favor from the gods, the winner would be sacrificed (considered a great honor), though sacrifice wasn’t necessarily a part of every game.

Perhaps the most striking thing at Copán, however, is the hieroglyphic staircase.  It is in the form of a snake, and each step is covered in hieroglyphics, spelling out historical happenings and beliefs, though some are massively eroded.  You can still see the remnants of the original colors in some parts of Copán and it is striking to imagine the way that it all would have looked brightly painted and filled with people.

The main plaza includes everything that I have talked about above, and is surrounded on 3 sides by amphitheatre-like seating, where the royals would sit to watch a ballgame or a sacrifice.  The acoustics throughout the plaza are amazing.  Juan and I were clapping and enjoying the echoes; when we parted ways and I returned to take more pictures a local lady had a little radio playing at low volume in the far end of the plaza.  You could hear it clearly throughout.

In another plaza we met an archaeologist working for National Geographic who had been working at the site since the mid-80s, especially on excavating the tunnels that run under the site and the layers that remain there (since they would rebuild when things started to crumble.) He had some interesting stories, but was more interested in talking about cycling.

I spent some time wandering through and revisiting a lot of the things I liked best.  It was drizzling all morning, but it started to really pour mid-afternoon and I decided to call it a day.  I was headed toward the exit and stopping at one of the final stelae, where there were two young girls.  They were taking pictures of each other with a cell phone camera and asked me: foto?  I assumed that they wanted me to take a picture of the two of them, but, no, they wanted to take my picture.  So, I let them and then took their picture in return.  The best picture I got, though, was of the two of them holding hands as they walked out of the site ahead of me.

There is an abundance of wildlife at Copán, largely because there are many feeding stations for a lot of the animals.  In particular, there are a dozen or so Macaws that hang out at the entrance.  I guess that they are wild in the sense that they don’t live in a zoo and fly around as they please, but they are very comfortable around humans so they are easy to photograph.

When I got back to the Casa de Café I decided to book a massage.  It was absolutely wonderful and much-needed.  The only downpoint was when the ‘relaxing sounds’ CD started skipping (a bit ironic, considering the birdsong that fills the air anyhow) and the lady put on a classical CD.  The second song was one I love, Chopin’s opus 10, no 3, which my sister plays.  I absolutely melted with glee as the first notes rang out, as the grace notes flitted through the birdsong. But then my brain kicked in and I thought…this isn’t exactly a relaxing song. It has a lot of tumult in the middle and, as I was wondering how they were going to resolve that, the strings kicked in. Stings! I could feel my body tense, and I tried to ignore what was actually playing and hear it in my mind. But, then the trumpets started. So I focused on the sound of kids playing down the street and tried to forget what was playing. It really made me miss my piano, though, and my songs, so I resolved to find one.  It turns out that there is no piano, anywhere, in Copán Ruinas. There is an organ at an Evangelical church, but I was not keen to ask about playing that.  It is an extremely delicate question in Spanish, since the verb ‘to play’ is also ‘to touch’ in Spanish, and ‘organ’ is subject to double entendre… So I resolved to look for a piano elsewhere.  The rest of the massage was wonderful by the way.

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I got on a 5:00 bus to Tikal so I could catch the early-morning light; I stupidly signed up for a guided tour which is a lesson learned. (We spent daybreak instead in a lousy restaurant listening to the guide argue with each person in turn as to why he was suddenly needing another $22USD for the entrance fee…  I’ll keep this one short lest I complain to excess about the guide, who called himself “Little César” (as in, pizza! pizza!) and who had a disdain for actual facts, preferring to relate his more fantastic opinions.  For example, did you know that soon we will have a vaccine from vultures that will cure all diseases?  After all, nothing will eat a vulture, not even a dead one. And they transplant pig organs into humans, so it isn’t that far fetched.  So went the commentary throughout the massive, spectacular site of Tikal.  Only half-way through the tour did I remember the advice of my friend Alex from Orange Walk, to get a tour with a great woman on-site. Ugh. But Tikal was spectacular, and I was glad to have seen it.  I didn’t have a great day for photos as the lighting was all wrong and there were people everywhere.  On one hand, I was really impressed by the ruin, but on the other hand I missed the quiet tranquility of some of the sites I’d seen in Belize.

Some photos below, but the gallery is better. I am going to stitch some of these into panoramas, so there are a lot of odd shots…

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I woke early and got everything packed to head out to Guatemala then went to have breakfast with Mariam, who runs the hotel. I had met her a few mornings before when I was having breakfast and told her briefly about my trip, and when I came in from ATM last night the guy at the front desk asked if I would be free to make breakfast. I was so glad that it worked because she is just an outstanding person. She gave me a necklace with a carved toucan on it and a Belize pin to remember my trip by and we had a lovely chat. She told me about a bike ride scheduled for the next day, from San Ignacio to Belize City, to benefit children with cancer. It was being organized by one of their frequent guests, a guy from…you guessed it…Boulder, Colorado. I would have ridden except that the group planned to ride together at ~22MPH and I am riding a heavy mountain bike but what a small world. As we were saying our goodbyes we were joined by Mariam’s sister Paultia, the manager of the hotel (it is a family-run, and woman run business). She told me that her husband was going to ride and invited me to ride along in the support vehicle with her. I thought about it for about 5 seconds and decided that this would be a cool experience and something to see. They generously offered to comp my stay for the night and the following night and invited me as well to a concert of the Belize Choral Society being held at the hotel that night. Wow.

Given that I had some extra time in Belize, I decided to spend the day at the Xunantunich ruins, about 7 miles down the road. I took my bike and rode down in the late morning. About a mile from the site you have to cross on a ferry, which is a floating platform that would fit a car or so, which is pulled along a cable using a hand crank…talk about a monotonous job! While I waited for the ferry to come across to get me, I was talking to one of the vendors there about the ride on from that point. He said there is one hill that is steep, but when you are climbing it, you have to think of how fast it will be on the way out. Most excellent advice! He was selling some amazing stone carvings but of course that sort of weight is difficult to justify when traveling by bike. In the end, I had him make me a necklace with the symbol on the Maya calendar for Sara and my birthdays.

The site of Xunantunich is impressive and I was glad that I had the time to see it. There are several plazas, but the main attraction is ‘El Castillo’ (the castle) which is a huge pyramid with impressive friezes on the north and south sides. From the top of El Castillo you can see across the border to Guatemala. Once again, the site was virtually empty. There were probably 7 to 10 people there, total, so it was easy to take in the sights in solitude, and at leisure. I spent a couple of hours there then got back on my bike and enjoyed the fast descent to the ferry again.

When I got back to the hotel I had a late lunch and took a nap, then got ready to go to the concert. I was underdressed in my hiking pants and vaporwick shirt, to be sure, but Miriam and her family were very gracious. The concert was great; they sang a variety of Christmas carols, including some Belizean carols that I had never heard before. You have to love a country that includes rum even in its carols! After the concert I had dinner with Miram and her family and really enjoyed the evening. They are a lively and hilarious bunch of ladies. I got to sleep rather late and set my alarm early to get to the bike ride.

I was so glad that I had the flexibility to rearrange my schedule because it was a day that I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

There are more (and better) photos in my gallery (follow the link to the left) but I don have time to organize them now…

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Today was a most outstanding day. When I was planning my trip my friend Sunny had lots of great advice from a similar trip she had done, and she said that one of the highlights of her trip was visiting the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave (Cave of the Stone Sepulcher), a cave that contains Maya artefacts and remains. The Maya used the caves for religious rituals, including some apparently gruesome sacrifices.

I had tried to arrange a tour through a local agency and they said that they would call me by 6:30 yesterday evening to give me the details; they never called and I was really disappointed and once again the people at the hotel impressed me beyond words. None of the places we checked had tours going, but they got a guy on the line who agreed to take me. I had to pay for two spots since that is their minimum, but it was well worth it to me in order to see the cave and it turned out to be great since I got to ask all the questions I wanted.

I ended up having a guide, Abraham, and a guide’s helper, Francisco, along with me, it felt sort of like my own personal entourage. They were hilarious and also mountain bikers, so we had a lot to talk about. To get to the cave you go 7 miles off of the main highway down a rough dirt road, then hike in a good distance through the jungle, crossing 3 rivers. There are no bridges, so you wade through the water. The ground level of the cave is filled with water, up to chest deep in places (though you have to swim a short distance into the cave, since the water is about 12 feet deep there. That was quite an experience, swimming into the turquoise water at the mouth of a cave! Once we got beyond the entrance you could begin to see the magnificent stalagmites and stalactites. It was like a cathedral until we turned out our lamps and sat talking in utter darkness.

We walked about half a mile into the cave, scrambling over rocks and swimming through the deeper spots until we came to what they jokingly call the Maya elevator, a large group of tall rocks you climb up to reach the upper chambers where the artefacts and ruins are. We took our shoes off there, since they would damage the fragile cave floor, and walked in socks into a cathedral-like structure where there are whole and broken pieces of Maya pottery. The theory is that these carried offerings that the people brought in to offer to the gods, and they are traditional vessels for things like corn, and blood. A bit further along we came across a skull belonging to one of the 14 sets of human remains found within the cave, followed by two sets of bones jumbled together, one a person of at least 40 and another who was in their teens or early 20s. Abraham said that in some cases it was a great honor to be sacrificed to the gods by your own people, but that they would also sacrifice captured enemies hoping to win favor from the gods. The latter was a bit more brutal, and even involved skinning the victim and a warrior subsequently wearing the skin. Ewwww. The assumption is that the skeletons in the cave were enemies brought in against their will and sacrificed there.

The highlight is definitely a skeleton in a chamber even further up which you access by a roped-in ladder. There are actually 2 skeletons up there, one of a child which they think had hydrocephalus and the other of an adult woman whose skeleton has minerals from the cave deposited on it (after having spent the past 1100+ years in the same spot) so that she glistens. She is called the Crystal Maiden, and it’s very striking to see…an experience I’ll never forget.

When we got back out of the cave we had lunch of ham & cheese burritos and veggies. They were the best vegetables I’ve seen all trip and I devoured a ton of them as well as two burritos. Then wet, cold and stuffed to the gills we stumbled back across the rivers and headed back to San Ignacio. It was an extraordinary day.

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I woke up early hoping to see a lot of birds; a nice guy at the hotel suggested that 6:30 was a good time to be out and looking for them, so I set myself up with a cup of coffee and a camera on a balcony overlooking the tree that they like to frequent. Absolutely the laziest and most enjoyable bird-watching ever. Best, there were indeed lots of great birds…but then it started raining. After the rain let up a little there were lots of birds that returned, including some little toucans that were eating from the tree. Very cool.

I had planned to go to two local ruins for the day by bike, but the intermittent downpours made me think twice about that, and instead I went on the hotel tour to their iguana sanctuary. The green iguana is increasingly threatened here due to hunting and the difficulties the young have in surviving, so they have a sanctuary here where they raise the iguanas from eggs and then release them into the wild when they are more mature; perhaps more importantly they educate the local children about the iguanas with the hope of encouraging the next generation to see them as the remarkable animals that they are, rather than ‘bamboo chicken.’ The tour consisted of me and a great woman, Stephanie, from San Francisco, and our guide. On the way to see the iguanas we walked through some forested area to look at some of the local medicinal plants. We found some termites and our guide asked if we’d like to try eating them. Never one to turn down an odd food source, I told him I would as long as he did first. They taste like carrots, crunch and all. I thought I would be repulsed by the idea of eating bugs, but I had a few and found them quite interesting.

The iguana sanctuary was very cool. We learned a lot about the iguanas and got to get (fairly) close to them. One of them, Gomez, is tame and they use him for their educational programs. We got to pet him, and he would close his eyes with this gleeful look. (It was cold outside, so I am sure he appreciated the warmth!) When we got to the baby iguana area that was a lot of fun. The guide let us hold them (as long as you don’t poke at them they are not aggressive…yet) and as you can see from some of the photos I was soon covered in them. They are very cool animals, I was glad to learn more about them and to see that the people here are helping to preserve the species.

From there I walked up to the Cahal Pech ruin with Stephanie. It was almost totally empty and a great time to see it; it felt very remote and a little eerie, in a good way. The coolest was walking to the top of the sacrificial altar, which looks over the rest of the site. You could only imagine what had happened there in the past! When we were leaving we saw a gibnut, a huge rodent which I mistakenly assumed was a capybara. They are a delicacy here (no, I haven’t tried one!) and also known as the royal rat. Royal indeed, they are the size of a small dog! It just hung out for a long time and let us get fairly close to it. I took a lot of video of it, but I didn’t get any still photos that turned out well.

(I’ll upload pictures of the ruins for tonight, but until then, here are some iguanas)

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I spent Friday on a trip to the Lamanai ruin, which is about 32 miles south of Orange Walk, accessible by the New River (not a place that you want to ride a bike!).  It was a fantastic trip.  There were 4 of us total, and our guide, Carlos was outstanding.  On the boat trip we did some wildlife spotting; I was skeptical since I’ve done wildlife trips by boat before and it is usually the case that a guide sees something in the top of the tree that I can never quite make out, or the animals have just disappeared for the day, etc.  Since it had been rainy there for a couple of days before, however, the animals were out in droves.  We saw iguanas, crocs, spider monkeys and tons of birds, all at close range.  To be fair, we may have tempted the spider monkeys with bananas… I have a great video of one of the crocs but it is far too big to upload.

The ruin itself was fantastic.  There were a bunch of people from a cruise ship walking around, but we only crossed paths with them once; other than that it was the four of us walking around and taking our time.  I realized about 3/4 of the way up the high pyramid just how afraid of heights I am!  Descending the steep steps was definitely my adrenaline rush for the day!

I took lots of photos but unfortunately only some are uploaded now since the connection is really slow here.  Check back in the gallery section (follow the link on the left of the page) in a few days…the temple of the masks is worth seeing.

I had a great dinner of ceviche with one of my fellow travelers on the tour, a great German guy named Alex who has been many of the same places I have.  It was a really wonderful day.

(thanks for all of the comments, I am really enjoying them)

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Today was a very long day.  I woke up in Tulum (the town) and having not yet seen the Tulum ruins decided to do that first thing this morning.  I got all of my bike bags packed up so they were ready to stick on the trailer and go, then caught a taxi to be at the entrance at 8.  To my dismay, there was already a line when I got there, but that dismay quickly turned to glee when I realized that the 15 or 20 people ahead of me were the only other people at the site…and that there was no one behind me.  I really enjoyed Tulum.  It is magnificent and truly beautiful beyond just being interesting.  The water has shades of blue and turquoise that are unimaginable and which the photos don’t come close to capturing.  There were also lots of large lizards.  I didn’t see any of them at first, then one moved and suddenly once my eye was tuned into them they were everywhere.  I walked back to the center of the ruins along a treed path.  A german guy came up to me and started speaking German (this happens to me a lot) and even with my rudimentary German it was easy to figure out that there was a huge lizard on the path ahead. Luckily I knew how to thank him in German!  I caught a cab back to town and loaded up the bike, refilled my water bottles and headed south around 11:30.  I read in several books that it is easy to get a bus to pick you and a bike up all along the 95km route that has roughly nothing except a few huts and a taco stand along its entire distance.  So I was relaxed and feeling good until about km 55.  There I encountered road construction that changed my previously HUGE shoulder into roughly…nothing.  Essentially, a barely 2-lane strip of asphalt that I was expected to share with buses and trucks traveling at the speed of light.  Right.  So I did what any sensible girl would do and hung a slight right into the construction zone.  It was dirt but very nice dirt and the construction workers didn’t seem to mind, they just whistled and yelled ‘hola!’ as I passed.  That nice dirt turned to sand, then to a pile of torn up concrete, however, and by that point I was so much lower than the paved portion that I had to walk my bike through it.  Insult to injury came when the construction ended and revealed a narrow two-lane road like the one I’d been struggling to avoid, only bumpier.  Still, everyone was really courteous and willing to let me take my time, a nive change.  It started to get late, so I decided to flag down a bus.  The only problem was that the books I’d read were completely wrong and the drivers only waved like we were old friends as they blasted past.  @#~€¬€! I knew that there was no way that I could make it to the next town by dark, so I had a couple of options. 1) ride, and hope that the big trucks would notice me. 2) walk, and hope that the big trucks would notice me. @#~€¬€! At this point the kind voice of the lady at the German hostel in Puyuhapi last year echoed on my ears: ‘ah, niña, tienes que hacer el dedo’, ah girl, you have to hitchhike.  But that wasn’t exactly appealing, so I hatched another plan.  I waved at passing vehicles that appeared, at first glance to be relatively safe, with the idea that I could get a feel for the person before blatantly announcing that I wanted a lift to town before I became roadkill.  Within 5 minutes I had a new friend, approaching from the opposite direction.  He yelled (in perfect English) ‘Hey do you need help?’  He had been traveling my way and turned around to see if I was ok.  I asked sheepishly how far it was to town (already knowing that it was 18.5 km). He said, it is too dark, come on, I’ll take you.  So we loaded up the bike into his little truck and headed down the road.  He stopped for gas on the way and I asked if I could pay.  He said that I could not, that his brand new truck had been a gift from a friend of his in Canada and that he liked that he could use it to help someone else.  He dropped me at a great and reasonable hotel (with questionable decorations!) and I had some tremendous enchiladas in the restaurant next door.  It was definitely a day of contrasts, highs and lows, but a day like all the rest that turned out well.

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It was an amazing day at Machu Picchu, though the sun rose into thick fog so we didn’t get to see the sun shine through the window in the temple of the sun. Still, we got several hours extra at Machu Picchu out of the deal, and I had a wonderful time exploring and photographing. The photo above is of the Temple of the Sun at sunrise.
The first hour or two that we were at Machu Picchu is was raining, and raining enough that I couldn’t take photos except with the disposable I brought along. Add to that a seriously sore knee, thousands of steps and a tour that focused at least as much on the Spanish conquest and rudimentary astronomy as Machu Picchu. Jerry, One of the guys on the trip, took a picture of the group that was absolutely brilliant. All pancho-clad and soggy-looking with the most incredibly long and bored faces you’ve ever seen. Every face was hilarious and we all had a good laugh at it later that night over beer.

The temple of the condor. The natural rock formation is meant to form the condor’s wings.

The highest point pictured here is the main temple at Machu Picchu, which contains the “Hitching Post of the Sun” which of course our guide told us was a sun dial (it’s not). This is not to be confused with the Temple of the sun, where the solstice phenomenon we were hoping to observe occours. That temple is in the complex below the main temple.

There are llamas at Machu Picchu. They are planted there for the tourists and also it seems to help control the vegetation, though that may just be wishful thinking on my part. I was taking photos in a little orchid garden and this llama walked right behind me. Llamas have very interesting feet.

The rock quarry at Machu Picchu, where new stones were cut and shaped. We saw a stone that was left in the process of being split. No one knows how it was done exactly, but some theories think that the gaps were carved and wood was placed into the gaps and then soaked in water so that it would expand. In any case, a decent it of work.
We all met in Aguas Calientes before taking off to the train station to say goodbye, though it was only really a goodbye to our guides as the porters and cooks had already left and the rest of us were near one another on the train and met up for drinks once we got back to Cusco.

We all met up at the Cross Keys, a British-style pub in the Plaza de Armas. I figured that I should have a pisco sour while I was in Peru, so I had one there and it was seriously powerful. That, and a Cuscueña, had me singing for the rest of the night. And, since I woke up to catch my flight a mere 4 hours later, a good part of the next morning as well.

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