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MORE PHOTOS HERE Thin Air
19 hours and 4562 curves later, and 3400m higher, I set foot in sunny Cusco. The air is crisp and clear, so different from the stifling and dusty humid air in Lima, and the sun feels definitely closer to my skin as I wait for Karine, a friend from Paris, in front of the amazing cathedral. As we both go hostel-hunting (couchsurfing is tricky in Cusco), we understand the meaning of "thin air". After only a couple of steps, we are breathless, as though we had just run a marathon, and we haven't even walked a block. So we settle in the first hostel we visit, decent enough, by fear of not making it alive to the next one. The plan is to take it easy today, rest and let our bodies getting accustomed to altitude.
Turning 30 in Cusco
Friday, I turn 30. My first birthday gift is to sleep soundly until 12pm, a real luxury I have not been used to in this trip. We bum around the city in the afternoon, one breathless step at a time. And to celebrate this new decade, we meet with a small bunch of couchsurfers
around a merry dinner of alpaca steak and good chilean wine, accompanied by a traditional Andean music group, and followed by Brahma beers in a crowded live music bar. So this is it. I'm 30. I poke myself, does it feel any different? The skin is still soft, no more wrinkles than yesterday, and... wait, the smile is bigger, the sadness is mostly gone from the eyes... Contrary to the slight depression usually linked with being over your twenties, I actually feel reborn. All the hurried happiness and important life choices of my early twenties, all the routine and boredom of my mid twenties, and all the pain and hurt of my late twenties can stay behind me. I am 30, life is just starting, and it is as exciting as it is scary!
Beautiful Improvisations
We have four full days to discover the wonders of Cusco, its beautiful churches and captivating surroundings Inka ruins, before Karine and I start the Inka trail. We snob the "tours" and hop on the crowded, beat-up and smelly local bus to reach Pisaq on Sunday. It's market day there and scores of Peruvian women roam about, wearing their felt hat, intricately
embroidered skirts and babies or veggies carefully wrapped in bright blue and pink fabrics on their back. It smells of cooked corn, fresh cilantro and rotting peaches, and it seems all the colors of the universe are on sale here. We get caught in the middle of a negotiation for a rainbow-colored silver ring by a sudden and violent hail storm. So much for counting on warm weather when seeing the blue skies in the morning... The ruins of Pisaq are set on the side of a mountain, offering (literally) breathtaking views of the valley below and its sacred river, silver-colored at this time of day. As we drive past a resort to reach the ruins' entrance, I have no time to take the picture of a sign: "Private Property. Do not enter. Trespassers will be slaughtered and thrown into the river." Argh, another case of the missing picture!
Monday was one of those half improvised days when you only roughly plan something and end up going from good surprise to another good surprise in virtually tourist-free places--possibly one of my favourite days in South America so far. In Chinchero, a lady who was cutting grass to fatten her
Guinea pigs for the next family feast, invited us in her home to see the natural and traditional process of cleaning, dying and spin alpaca and sheep wool. Later in Maras, after fattening up on chicharrones, a cab accepted to take us both to the Moray ruins, a huge circular amphitheater-like hole, and the Salinas. The latter are an impressively huge complex of thousands of interconnected pools that gather salt water from a natural source, alternately dried up to collect the salt. The structure dates back to pre-Inka civilizations and is still in use today, though we weren't there during harvest season. The Scenery in the Sacred Valley is just beautiful, with corn, potato and coca leaves fields contrasting with snowy mountain tops in the distance, which makes the smelly and dizzying bus ride back to Cusco an enjoyable one...
Before getting ready for our Inka Trail, we go for the four Inka ruins that surround Cusco, the world's navel, finishing in Saqsaywaman. Our guide there tells us that many would not believe the Inkas, or any human beings, would have been able to move such huge blocks of stone - it is indeed hard to believe. So, in
the 70s or 80s, a show was organized during which indigenous men were to pull a 10-ton rock. When they were about to start, the men refused to budge, arguing they were not paid enough for the job. Seeing that, their wives, mothers and sisters, understanding it was not about money but about their pride as a people, took hold of the ropes, babies on their back, and pulled the rock on 100 meters, before going back to their kitchens, heads held up high. Point proven...
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