Merry Christmas and Happy 2016 !!

Nacimiento in Our Apartment

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Why San Miguel and why Mexico?  Despite the American press's depiction of Mexico as a dangerous, crime infested place, we have found it to be just the opposite.

Nacimiento in one of the town squares

Life in San Miguel is peaceful and stress free. The Mexican people are invariably kind, gracious and welcoming. 

The festivities surrounding the holidays are lovely and very sweet, usually involving lots of small children.

Community Christmas tree in front of Parroquia

Celebration of the Christmas season is taken very seriously. Starting with the Virgin of Guadalupe Day (December 12) until the arrival of the Three Kings (January 6), the town is filled with decorations, lights and parades.

From December 16 through Christmas eve, many neighborhoods or churches form "Posadas"--a small procession of people walking behind a flat bed truck on which children pose as Mary and Joseph.

Street doecorations

They are acting out looking for a place to stay prior to the birth of Jesus.  Behind the truck march a small group of musicians and some little children singing a traditional song, which asks for lodging. 

They trail through several streets and finally stop at a home which has agreed to host the pilgrims with candy and warm drinks waiting.

Poinsettias in our apartment

Everywhere you look, there are poinsettias, or Noche Buenas as they are called here in Mexico. All of the city parks are a-strewn with them, since there is no danger from frost.  We, of course, had to buy some for our little apartment and it joined our nacimiento.

Tin tree at entrance to our apartment

 















There are a lot of concerts and musical celebrations.  One of our favorites was a children's choir presentation at one of the city's oldest Catholic churches, El Oratorio.

We were one of the few gringos in the audience, and although many of the readings and prayers were beyond our Spanish comprehension, most of the the carols were familiar. We took a short video which we thought we would share. (It's probably not viewable on your email, but you can go directly to the blog to see it.)

Of course, we miss being with our family this time of the year, but we know we will see them soon; meanwhile, we content ourselves with snapshots, Skype sessions, and shared photos.

Snow Day for Bryn & Charlie

Charlie's school photo

Erin's Christmas Card

So from our Family to yours--a very Merry Christmas and we hope to see many of you in the New Year!

Peru, Part IV: Lima

A Happy Fella

Staying in Lima was a nice way to finish our all too short visit to Peru.

Fortunately, our Lima AirBnB was so much nicer than our Cuzco experience, providing us a modern, clean two bed, two bath apartment in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Lima (Miraflores.) We have come to rely on AirBnB in our travels, so we hated to have our faith in it shaken.

As we indicated earlier, Lima is a huge, traffic clogged city.  Very first world and cosmopolitan in some areas, full of world class shops, restaurants and museums, it's home to 10 million people. At times it seems all of them are in their cars on the roads and streets of the capital.

Historic Center of Lima

We found the Peruvians, to be warm, welcoming and very helpful, wherever we went. Our Lima driver, Daniel, was all that and more.

Kind, unflappable, attentive and always prompt, he made our stay in Lima a delight and worry free. He, and so many others like him that we have met in our travels in Latin America, work incredibly hard to earn a living and care for their families, striving for a better life for themselves and their children.

Being interviewed by school girls

One day we went to Old Lima, where some of the buildings date from the 16th century founding of the city by the Spanish.


Standing in front of the Lima Cathedral, trying to get our bearings, we were approached by a group of Peruvian school girls.  Studying English, their class assignment was to talk to tourists and query them about their experience in Peru and what they thought about Peruvian history, culture and food.  It was lots of fun to interact with them and to see their smiles when we said how much we liked their country.

Portrait ceramic recovered from a tomb

Perhaps our favorite day in Lima was spent touring the Larco Museum.  This private museum houses more than 40,000 Pre-colombiam ceramics as well as other treasures, such as silver and gold jewelry, tapestries, and mummies.

Larco was a Peruvian archeologist, who in the early part of the 20th century, discovered and explored numerous sites throughout Peru. Since most of the sites were previously undiscovered and had not been pillaged by treasure hunters, the ceramics and other treasures are remarkably whole and intact.

Some are more than 2000 years old, but look like they were produced yesterday, and thanks to the Larco family they have remained and will always be a part of the Peruvian patrimony.

What the ceramics and other artifacts show is that were a number of incredibly complex and sophisticated cultures in what is now Peru. These cultures produced art and artifacts rivaling that of many other world cultures, including the Greeks, Romans and other European cultures.

We had a wonderful, bright and English speaking young woman as our guide--and a guide is really necessary to help interpret and lead you through this delightful treasure house. Hearing about the history of the cultures who produced these beautiful objects is really so very important.

Mummy--X-ray has shown that there is a child still wrapped inside

All the  guides surely must love showing their visitors through the erotic gallery, as ours did.  But these ceramics played an important role in the religious and cultural life of the societies that produced them.  We, of course, laughed and stared at them with great curiosity, but also marveled at the skill and artistry with which they were created.

In the Larco Museum garden

One of the unexpected delights of the museum is its Cafe.  Our lunch was perhaps our second best meal during our entire Peruvian visit, and the "tres leches" or three milk cake we had during our coffee break was to die for!

The Best Restaurant experience of all was at Lima 27, where along with Erin and a couple of her State Department colleagues, we enjoyed a true gustatory delight. In all of our travels in the U.S., Europe, and Latin American, we can not recall ever having had a better meal.

On our final day, we once again met up with Erin, whose security conference had finished the night before.

We decided to end our visit where we started, the Mango Restaurant, overlooking the fog shrouded Pacific Ocean and toasting Peru and its wonderful people with our farewell Pisco Sours.

Ending how and where we started our trip, but on a chillier day

All three of us were so happy that we were able to visit Peru.  It was extra special because we got to share, at least part of the experience, with Erin.  Thank you, Honey, for inviting us.

Sunset over the Pacific

Peru, Part III: Pisac

Up close and personal with a Mama LLama (see baby feeding)

Following our wonderful trip to Machu Picchu, we decided to explore another Inkan historical site, Pisac, which is about an hour outside of Cuzco.


On the drive there, however, we came across an animal shelter for rescued and abused animals and decided to make a quick stop. Two hours later, we left having had a super experience, learning about a number of animals native to the Andes, like the llama (and its cousins the alpaca and the vicuna) and condors, and shopping for native handicrafts.

Giant condor strutting its stuff

 Like most tourists to Peru, we were fascinated and charmed by llamas.  At the sanctuary, we were allowed to pet them and have our photos taken with them.

The alpacas are less friendly and the vicunas downright hostile; they are actually very aggressive and often will attack the much bigger llamas and alpacas, not to mention their human caretakers and visitors if you're not careful.

Traditional Loom, Lovely Weaver

The most interesting part of the sanctuary tour was getting up close and personal with a condor.
They are magnificent animals with a wing span of close to 10 feet--we never thought we would have the opportunity to see them fly and feed.

Having been raised in captivity, the ones we saw have little fear of humans, so we were able be in the same enclosure with them, little more than 10 feet away.  It was a once in a lifetime experience.

Being good marketers, they had us finish the sanctuary tour at the gift shop, watching one of the local women weave and then being offered the opportunity to purchase local handmade crafts.

Who could resist--the proceeds help support the sanctuary as well as the local indigenous population.  Baby alpaca wool is so soft and luxurious feeling that once you touch it, you want to wrap your neck with it.

One of many farming terraces at Pisac

But we needed to press on to Pisac, our original destination. Whereas Machu Picchu served as a religious and learning center for the elites, Pisac was a farming community that provided food for both Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

The ruins are impressive, but even more so are the terraced fields--four giant ones, all facing the east, so they get the more gentle morning sun.  

Trekkers

The Inkas brought water through elaborate irrigation systems from springs and watered the entire area, providing crops all year round.



Like at Machu Picchu, the incredible walls and buildings of huge, elaborately fitted together stones are still awe-inspiring and very much intact some four hundred years later.

In the cliffs above the site, the Inkas buried their dead.  The hillside is honeycombed with hundreds of cave-like openings to the graves (long since looted, of course), but impressive to see. 

Luther played his pan pipes for us--a mesmerizing experience

Why there?  It seems that the winds blow almost constantly from the East, up the mountain cooling and drying the area, providing a natural air-conditioning to preserve and keep the mummified bodies. 

Our guide was a young man named Luther.  He was born in the area to a campesino family, and had a compelling life story.

One day when he was about ten, he was selling water and soda to tourists at the entrance to the site.  A French woman tourist asked him what he was doing and when he told her, she asked if he would not rather be in school.  

He told her yes, but he had to help support his family.  

Spot the traditional Inkan. Plus Erin has on an official police hat which she received as a gift at one of her meetings.  It caused a stir wherever we went, including people asking to have their picture taken with her or with the hat.

She then went with him to talk with his father and offered to pay for his schooling. With his father's blessing, she proceeded to support him and his education for the next decade.  Luther finished school and then went to university.  Through an exchange program,  he worked in Brazil learning about medicinal plants that are used to treat cancers and other diseases. 

He has now returned home, has a family of his own, works as a licensed tour guide and also works in his community to grow and market medicinal plants.

He loves Pisac and its history which made for a very interesting and informative guide.


 

Inkan precise construction with feeble attempts to restore at the top  

Remains of a wall--compare stone sizes with people in front

 On our return to Cuzco, our driver had us stop at an Inka ruin site, just outside of town. This site was a military installation that guarded Cuzco and Pisac.

The Inka Empire did not have a static history. They won and forged the empire through fighting and subduing other peoples and all through their history, had to fight others who wanted to rebel or conquer them.

Overview of Cuzco

Near the site, there was a lookout or mirador where you can look down on Cuzco.

It was very clear to see the colonial parts of the city (the center part with all of the red tile roofs) and the newer part of the city.

Machu Picchu and Cuzco were named world heritage sites in the 1980's and since that time Cuzco has grown tremendously, and, of course, not all of the growth has been for the best.

We are ending the blog with two videos, the first of the Pisac area and the second of the condor we saw at the Sanctuary.  These video are not viewable if you are viewing the blog from your email, but if go directly to the Two for the Road blog, you should be able to see them.

Peru Part II: Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu: a true Wonder of the World

Erin, Sue and our guide, Wilfredo

All too often a well known tourist site proves less than its hype.  Not so with Machu Picchu! The site and the experience far exceeded our expectations.

Inkan construction--perfectly built walls with no mortar and each rock carved to intersect with its neighbor. They did this with no metal and no pack animals...How??

Located in the Sacred Valley about 75 miles from our base, Cuzco,  it's possible to get there, by car, but we chose to use Perurail, which provides a comfortable three hour train ride passing through picturesque Peruvian countryside and ending at Aguas Calientes, the gateway town for Machu Picchu.

Only authorized buses are permitted to travel from the town to the site; a stomach lurching experience providing breath taking views of the town, valley and the Urubamba River as you wind up the mountain on a continuously switchbacking road.

Arriving at the entrance to the Park, we were met by our guide, Wilfredo.

What are thought to be ruins of dorms or class rooms

Born nearby, he grew up speaking Quechua, the language of the Inkas, but as a teenager, he signed on as a cruise ship steward, learning English and seeing the world, as he says.  But now, he has come home and having completed the necessary training, he is a certified Machu Picchu guide.

For the three of us he was the perfect guide. Considerate, patient and well informed, he provided a tailor made tour for two aging American tourists and their more youthful daughter.

More of the incredible Inka construction (bottom rows) and feeble attempt at reconstruction (top)

Not as high as Cuzco, touring the site still involves a lot of walking, hiking and even scrambling, but Wilfredo understood our needs and provided a lot of stops for history lessons, picture taking, and reflection on the incredible accomplishments of the Inkas.

One of Wilfredo's heroes is Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor and Indiana Jones model, who rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911 and shared his discovery with the world.

Machu Picchu was, possibly (no one knows for sure), a religious and learning center for the Inka Empire, consisting for the most part of a population less than a 1000.  It was dependent on other larger settlements, like Pisac (which we also visited on this trip) for its food and other necessities.

Terrace farming, which would have provided food for only about 40 people.  Might have been experimental, as perhaps 1000 were thought to have lived here

The Inkas did not have any metal tools or any beast of burden animals, nor did they have a written language.

 Despite all of these disadvantages, they managed to construct a true architectural and engineering wonder.

They transported stones weighing thousands of tons and constructed incredibly complex and beautiful buildings.

Erin and Sue

Even today, after hundreds of years, seams in some of the buildings are so tight that you cannot insert a wedge into them.

As we walked around the ruins, we listened attentively to Wilfredo's account of the history and what the daily life in the city must have been.  He also shared Bingham's book complete with photos of the site as it looked when first discovered.  Though attempts at restoration were made, that was halted forever when the site was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.

Erin expressing how we all felt !

As we often tell ourselves, we are so fortunate to have the resources, the time and the opportunity to experience places like Machu Picchu and indeed Peru itself.

Can you tell we had a fabulous time ?

If you have the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu--don't pass up the opportunity!  We are truly happy we could have the experience and very highly recommend it.

Peru: Our Introduction

Our first of many Pisco Sours

We returned to San Miguel after a wonderful trip to Peru that we were able to share with our younger daughter, Erin.  We were so impressed that we will spend several blog posts recounting our adventures.

Getting there was something of an ordeal, however. We left our apartment in San Miguel at 9:30 am and arrived at our hotel in Lima at 2:00 am the following morning--more than 15 hours on buses, plane and taxis.

First view of the Pacific

Exhausted, we fell into bed, but were able to rally later that morning when Erin met us to join  us for breakfast in the Lima neighborhood of Miraflores.

It's really nearly impossible to get around the sprawling and traffic clogged Lima without a driver--fortunately Erin found an incredibly good and charming driver, Daniel Flores, who chauffeured and cared for us throughout our stay in Lima.

Cuzco's Main Plaza

After a leisurely two hour breakfast and an introduction to Pisco Sours overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean, Daniel picked us up to take us back to the airport for our flight to Cuzco, the Spanish colonial city and former capital of the Inka Empire.

Cuzco sits at an altitude of more than 10,000 feet so it is best to take a little while to acclimatize and adjust, so we had factored in a couple of days for doing just that--and it is a good thing that we did because Erin got incredibly sick our first night there, but miraculously recovered in just about 24 hours.

Interior Courtyard of JW Marriott, Cusco

Her recovery might have been enhanced by her surroundings.  For Erin, our tour of Cuzco and its nearby Inka ruins, was sandwiched in between two State Department business meetings, one in Trujillo (a city in the north of Peru) and a second one in Lima.

Knowing  how hard she would be working in both, she had consciously booked into a very nice hotel, the J W Marriott El Convento in Cuzco--one of the nicest hotels we have every experienced, with  extraordinary service and personnel.  The Marriott Corporation spent six years and untold amounts of money restoring a 16th century Spanish colonial convent and converting it into a world class, five star hotel.

Unfortunately we stayed at a pretty ratty AirBnB apartment a few blocks away. We only visited Erin at the hotel, but we were treated like valued guests whenever we were there, including being given a free box lunch and a free breakfast on our last day in town.  Each staff member seemed nicer and better trained than any we have ever encountered.

Cuzco has some charms, especially its main plaza and Cathedral, but we used it mostly as our jumping off place for our visit to the Inka ruins at Machu Picchu and Pisac, which we will talk about in our next blog.