Peru

I have not blogged for more than an year now. Life has been pretty hectic and it just gets worse everyday. No wonder my new year resolution is to get rid of 'extra information in head' and get back to basics. Throw wii player into trash and go back to running in the wild! More on this later but for now let me write little bit about our trip to Peru.

Anu 'always' encourages me to plan trips ahead in time but for a person filing taxes on 15th April every single year, that's too much of a planning. Luckily this time Anu's friend Tania and her husband Mohit decided to join us and took the lead on planning. We took the package tour for four of us through a travel agency (Carlson Wagonlit). Peru has rich history and it was a great idea to have dedicated guide for all the places. We flew to Lima, Peru's capital. One of the most striking thing about Lima is its taxi drivers solicitation! Not much different than at Delhi except the language. I was amazed at physical similarity between us and local people. Well I felt bit taller!

While we were preparing for the trip, we consulted a doctor for travel advise. We had to take vaccines for various diseases, main one for yellow fever, prevalent in Amazon jungle. Well, 'prevalent' is a strong word. Later on I found the chance of getting yellow fever are more like 1 in million visitors still doctor was able to scare us to take the vaccine. She also advised us to drink bottled water (nice idea actually) and avoid salads and fruits (bummer, as Peru has some of the most amazing fruits). I also realized what it feels like for Americans to travel to India. Doctors kill the fun!

We did not spend much time in Lima and flew straight to Cuzco. Cuzco is on high elevation - 3310 meter and there is always a concern about altitude sickness. As soon as we reached hotel, we took a nap (a long one) and drank lot of Coca tea. Coca tea was super-helpful in alleviating altitude sickness. I know some of you are smiling as Coca leaves are used for making cocaine (oops now this blog is going to appear on cocaine googles). Cuzco is a beautiful city and used to be capital of old Peru. To give you folks a historic background, before Spaniards took over Peru in 16th century, Peru was ruled by Inca (ruler) and corresponding era is called Inca era. Inca civilization was quite advanced both economically and spiritually but lot of the history (specially the ones involving gold and money) is destroyed now. However Inca people managed to mix up with Spaniards and most of the current population has mix blood. In Cuzco we visited many monuments from Inca era. In fact Peru tourism is primarily focused on exposing the Inca civilization.

We took a tourist train from Cuzco to Machu Picchu. Train took about four hours for 70 mile distance! It was a good experience to take the train. We were told that there would be a meal and I was thrilled to see the menu. Management had spent significant money on menu and 'waitress'. Both were amazing. However rest was pretty useless for veggie people. As part of the cultural program, waitress did 'fashion show' as well, later on I realized that was a good effort to sell really expensive items to 'recently fall-in-love' couples. Anu did not bother to shop!

Its hard to describe beauty of Machu Picchu. You have to visit the place to fully appreciate it. Its surroundings make it very special. Incas built the city as they believed they will be closer to God (Machu Picchu is built on high mountain). The highest point in the city is a temple. One of the amazing part of the temple was trapezoidal structures. It is specifically designed to resonate the sounds. I found many of the religious symbols/concepts similar to Hindu religion.

Other interesting part of our trip was Amazon jungle. It was raining a lot during our stay, however we managed to checkout various birds (Macaws were amazing), animals, crocodiles, various insects, plants and trees. Our stay and food was quite amazing, given we were in jungle! I become an expert on avoiding mosquitoes. Our lodge was deep into jungle. We had to take boat for an hour, walk 3 miles on muddy path and canoe to cross a lake.

Finally here are the photos (~100 photos were selected out of 1300 photos to save your valuable time):