Im alive and in Peru. Arriving in Lima, Peru´s 9 million+ capitol, in the dead of night was an incredible rush of culture shock. We took a rikety third world taxi cab from the airport through forbiddeningly dark and dirty streets but the driver assured us this was a fine neighborhood for Lima. Lima is well known as one of the rougher cities in South America. The city was bustling in the day and seemed pretty interesting but rather than explore its different areas we decided to head for the mountains and so we caught a 22 hour bus ride to Cuzco far into the Peruvian Andes mountains.

The bus ride took us south along the coast through barren desserts of billowing sand dunes and desert comunities. As the bus left the coast the sun went down and the world disappeared but we could feel the bus start to climb. Higher and higher switchback after switchback until finally I dozed off. When I awoke well before sunrise we were in a sleepy mountian city. From their we climbed high over a pass and soon came my first site of the Andes Mountains. Towering glaciated peaks reaching over 6000m could be seen far in the distance. I was thrilled because they were in our direction. The whole morning we passed through mountain towns bulit of adobe bricks. Exactly my idea of life in the Peruvian Andes with dusty children playing, elderly woman with wide brimmed hats and long skirts pushing and pulling giant pigs, chickens and dogs scurring away from the path of the bus and of course amusing llamas with hilarious hair styles gawking at us as we passed. I was very tired but absolutely mesemerized by the incredible scenery and scene of life so I couldn´t take my eyes off the window and go back to sleep.

We met two really nice girls on the bus from Washington, DC so we left the bus with them to find a hotel room in Cuzco. We found a nice hotel with an incredible patio over the old colonial plaza. We soon found as expected that Peru is unbelievably cheap. In the market I ate a delicious lunch of vegetable soup with sauteed beaf and vegetable with french fries and rice for 1 sole (33 cents), I guess I should include the fact that we both ran back to the hotel with explosive diarhea. But at the same time I am paying several hundred times that to see Machu Pichu which is a massive rip off but Im here amd I want to see it. I figured that for the price of transportation and entry ticket I could eat lunch at the market for an entire year! But on the other hand that would be alot of explosive diarhea. Clearly this will definetly be an amazingly cheap but an amazingly expensive trip due to Mountaneering and such adventuring but that is mainly why Im hear so Ill just have to do it.

Cuzco was incredibly beautiful possibly my favorite city that I have ever visited, atleast in Latin America. An incredible colonial atmosphere of cobblestone streets and intricate cathedrals. Set in a natural bowl with the town climbing high up many of the slopes and nothing but tiled roofes all the way. High in the mountains with clear air and sharp light especially in the evenings it is just about as photogenic as any city Ive seen. Impressive enough but also it is at the foot of the sacred valley and at the center of the ancient Incan empire. Before the Spanish arrived in 1527 the city and area hosted a population of over 200 000 inhabitants. The town is built upon these incredible Incan ruins with some building literally with visible ancient Incan stone work as their foundations. It is surrounded by tons of beautifully situated ruins an easy walk from town. I shouldn´t say easy though as the thin air at this elevation impedes even the fittest hikers.

The Andes mountains are massive, its simply a delight for me as such an enthusiast to seeing new landscappes. This city itself is higher than the elevation of Mount Baker which looms over Vancouver on a clear day while there are still peaks nearby that are climbing over 3000 meters above it. At the same time the city lies only 50 km from where the Andes fall deep into the Aamazon Basin. I can hardly wait to see the Amazon although it will be a while as mounatins are our primary goal at this point.

We partied like animals in Cuzco as the bars are cheap and full of locals and a massive array of people from around the world, it is very touristy here. As handsome gringos me and Sam found ourselves to be almost like movie stars without having to try at all with the ladies but I managed to make good friends with one of the girls from the US and after that I was not concerned with the other girls while Sam made friends with an attractive local girl of Q´uechua descent. After one good night of partying we forced ourselves out of bed and down to the train staion where we were shocked to find that the train was far more than we had anticipated. Costing 226 soles (72 $US) for the cheapest ticket from the closest entry point on the train. This was a huge shock and I feel quite angered about the situation especially when I learned that it is a private company who is raking the tourist like this rather than the government. This was a terrible headache for already aching heads especially that the woman in the station kept changing the avalability of the trains. She says "No, por el 23 de Octubre esta complet,"
"Oh no the train is full tomorrow damn now what do we do, okay I guess we can go the next day."
Then she says, " si hay mucha lugar por el 23 pero no por 25, pero hay por 26."
"Okay? then tomorrow is good but we cant return on the 25 so well stay until the 26." But then of course" no, no hay por 26,"
"Oh shit we have to stay until the 27th."
But then" quieres regrasar por el 25, hay much lugar!" Okay? does she hate us or does she play this game with all the gringos? Finnaly we got it sorted out just as the train station was closing. Of course both there and back the train was half empty!

The train ride was gorgeous but not 72 dollar gorgoeus especially when the locals are paying only 3 dollars. As the train neared Agua Caliente, starting point for Machu Pichu, the mounains got incredibly verdant as if we were enetering the Amazon yet still surrounded by shear cliffs. The town itself was incredibly situated with mind boggling cliffs from all sides. I was just with the girls as Sam was still in Cuzco to spend another evening in Cuzco. With plenty of time left in the day we set off to venture a hike. We were directed to a mossy staircase coming up from the train tracks. The trail took us through humid steep jungle to a giant ladder 100 feet high that climbed up a 70 degree cliff. We climbed it to find another and then another. From such direct acsending suddenly we were very high above the valley continuing up a mellow ridge. We arrived at the top of Montaña Pukaska 2600m, my first summit of the trip, and low and behold a great terraced ruin was across the valley from us. Machu Pichu! A great reward for a sweaty climb to see one of the most famous ruins in the world. We had a beautiful view from up there but had to return quickly as thunder began to rumble down from the higher mountains as the threat of rain while descending the ladders seemed unappealing.

The next day the girls left early for Machu Pichu while I waited for Sam to show up. He showed up with a Peruvian friend named Simon who he met on the train. Sam was ripped, he said they smoked a huge spliff on the train because the dude he was with knew the conductor. Immediatley Simon rolled up a huge spliff and lit it up. I hadn´t smoked in a long time and I got very high, all of a sudden the jungley cliffs became incredibly impressive. I was in total awe at the seemingly impossible cliff setting of the town; the verdant slopes were alive with birds churping harmoniously accompanied by the rush of the creek below our hostel. Then Simon said that he had Mesacalina which he recieved as a gift from a shaman in Ayacucho. He was happy to give us it for the ruins. I asked him how much to take and said half the bag is good, he ate the whole bag this morning but he assured me" I am veeery high." I guess that whould explain why he was so sweaty and had a giant bag of fruit which he was continuosly devouring. I liked the idea and so did Sam, eating mushrooms in the Mayan ruin of Palenque in southern Mexico was an incredibly beautiful life experience and surely this was to be aswell.

We woke up at 4 30 in the morning and set off but Simon was not in the plaza to meet us, thats okay though we were sure it was going to be an incredible day with or without. Obviously rather than pay another 12 dollars for the bus we were going to hike up and beat the crowds. We entered the site and were in thick clouds; it was incredibly eerie as stone terraces and walls gave way at their edge to nothingness. We began to wander in just as Simon came up behind us, we hardly recognized him he was not sweating profusly and looked clean shaven and normal. "Do you guys want it," he said. We wanted it so we ate less than half of the dusty and fuzzy chips of greenish brown cactus. We knew right away we were in for a trip. Upon advise we headed directy across the ruins to the hike up Waynapichu the smaller of the mountains surrounding Machu Pichu. We were almost the first to enter and could feel the mescalina taking hold as we climbed the vertical mountain side on a series of Incan built stairs and stairs chiseled out of the shear cliffs themselves. We arrived near the top where incredible ruins sat shrouded in the early morning clouds. It was inspiringly beautiful as our senses were totally intuned and our head was extaordinarily clear. The drugs visual effect was very minimal but things definetly looked very trippy. The sounds of birds were crystal clear and we could feel where our legs and feet were precisely as we negotiated through and around cliff clinging buildings and trails. The question often asked by people who visit these ruins built upon almost shear cliffs is jokingly " What the hell were they thinking." To me it was painfully obvious that they simply wanted to live in the sky. This is exactly what I wanted more than anything atleast at this moment. We climbed to the very top of Wanyapichu and were the second to arrive surprisingly considering our drug induced dawdle as we stopped to inspect and marvel at so many points. We chilled and indulged in the view of passing clouds and misty mountians that shot up across from us. After a while many people began to arrive and the atmosphere deteriated as tour guides babled to thiers groups.

We fled down the other side of the mounatin along a wickedly built Incan trail down into the jungle to the temple of the moon. We were the first their and I found a noble rock perched high above the valley where I sat cross legged and meditated in the glory of foriegn nature. This would be a totally different trip in my native wild. Again eventually more people arrived and murdered the mood so we moved on through the jungle and onto another impossibly built trail chiseled into the cliff side. Eventually we accepted the hordes of tourists and ventured into the main ruin area; by this point we felt much less high but intensely clear headed. After checking out the houses and irrigation systems I decided to hike up to the other side and left Sam to read his Incan book on a terrace. The view from the other side is the classic Machu Pichu view with the sharp toothlike peaks of Huynu Pichu and WaynaPichu backdropping the ruins. The kind of view you see in a thousnad photos but when you see it for real just blows you away. I decided to hike to the Inka Brigde which was a very nice hike along similar cliff clinging trails and then very spontaneously with no water or food left decided to hike up Montana Machu Pichu at 3060m by far the highest in the ruin site.

I began up feeling alredy dehydrated but very focused and soon all hunger and deydration was forgotten and me and the mounatin was all that seemed important. As I neered the top the trail began to climb steep staircases. Intense clarity like none I had ever experienced before swept over me. It was not a brief sensation but one that stayed with me while I climbed. Climbing a mounatin had never made so much sense to me before. At the top the view was surreal and I felt great appreciation to be there. Somehow I was not tired and I started down the steep stairs in a full on run every time my foot articulated perfecty and with amazing finess as I shot down the mountain side. I stopped briefly at the ruins but then continued on past all the tourists lined up to take the bus back and shot down again down the steep stone stairs blasting by other tourists. At the bottom my feet were quite sore I had just decsended almost 1000 meters in about 55 minutes or so. I met Sam back at the hotel and we took an early night. By the time I had awoke 13 hours of deep rejuventaing sleep. With many hours to kill before our train back to Cuzco I drank beer on the river side while Sam tried his luck fly fishing. He caught nothing but a lot of attention from everybody as they had never seen such a funny style of fishing before.

Back in Cuzco we settled back into the same hotel and prepared for one final night on the town. After three more final nights on the town I pulled myself away to go meet our American friends Rebecca and Cat in Puno on Lake Titicaca. I met them at a arranged hotel and we decided to leave the next day and cross over to the Bolivian side of lake Titicaca after hearing from a guide that it was much nicer on the that side. As he said "Peru´s side is the Caca (shit) while Bolivia´s side is the Titi." We caught an early morning bus that traversed along the side of the unusual lake at over 3800 m in height with many claims to fame being "the highest navigable lake in the world," "the worlds largest lake over 2000m in elevation," and many claim the finest sunsets in the world. Indeed its height in the atmosphere makes the sky unusually clear making for incredible visiblity and sharp colours at sunset.

I felt like I had hardly touched Peru in my 2 weeks and a bit but hoping I would return after the South and I was incredibly anxious to enter Bolivia. We arrived at the border and had an easy and casual crossing which surprised me very much. We were now entering a Bolivia probably one of the most politically unstable countrys in the world having had 192 different government changes in only 178 years of confederation. Also South Americas poorest country it seemed they welcomed the tourist dollar. This was where we were to begin our proper mountain adventures in Latin Americas highest country geographically with 19 peaks over 6000m.

Cuzco

Agua Caliente and Machu Pichu