I was surprised to learn that Trujillo is Peru's third largest city with over 1 million inhabitants since it seemed smaller and laid back.  It has done a good job of preserving its colonial center and early architecture, most of which is occupied and part of the business community.

     The coastal city of Trujillo was founded in 1535 and named after Francisco Pizarro's birthplace in Spain.  In the early days it was surrounded by a wall to keep the pirates out and was a main stopover for Spaniards making the overland trip between Lima and Quito on an otherwise lonely and unpopulated route.  In December, 1820, it was the first city in Peru to declare independence from Spain and from here Simon de Bolivar prepared his campaign for liberating the rest of Peru.

     The main reason to visit Trujillo today is to visit the archaeological sites of the Moche and Chimu cultures.  Like the rest of the Peruvian coast, it is extremely arid in the surrounding area but, like the Nile and Indus River valleys, a source of water provided the impetus for an early, sophisticated series of civilizations.
     The first culture in the area was the Moche, dating from 100BCE to 850CE.  It's main sites are the Huacas (temples) del Sol y de la Luna, two adobe pyramids separated by a plain on which the people lived.  The larger huaca, del Sol, is currently being excavated and was the administrative center.  The smaller huaca, de la Luna, was the religious site.

     The pyramid shaped mountain was itself sacred and its power flowed down and into the adobe pyramid constructed by the Moche.  The structure is actually a series of temples superimposed on one another to form a pyramid.  Unlike other huacas along the coast, the Moche covered the temple with beautiful, brightly colored murals. 
     It also became clear to me here how the ruling priests used gold and silver, the possession of which was tightly controlled and confined to the use of only the highest castes of priests and nobles, to wow the populace.   The pyramid is about 150 feet high and overlooks the main plaza where the population came for events.  The chief priest would appear on the top level of the pyramid covered in gold and silver, including the face and a large headpiece, reflecting the sun.  He would have been quite an impressive sight in an otherwise drab setting.

A slideshow of some of the design elements...

Between Trujillo and Cajamarca we visited three other pre-columbian sites, the Huaca Arco Iris (rainbow), Huaca el Brujo and Chan Chan.  Chan Chan has the distinction of being perhaps the world's largest adobe city, laid out over 7.5 square miles and inhabited at its peak by 100,000 people.  Its seven citadels were enclosed by a massive adobe wall.  It was the capital of the Chimu empire, a successor to the Moche.  The empire lasted from 900 CE to 1470 when it was overtaken by the Inca.  The Inca left the Chimu alone, only to pay annual tributes.  The sophistication of their irrigation and metal working was so advanced that the Inca sent many of the engineers and goldsmiths back to Cusco. There is some color at El Brujo but the main draws are the size of the adobe walls at Chan Chan and the carvings in the adobe walls at all sites.

     After leaving Chan Chan we headed into the mountains to visit Cajamarca, an agricultural and dairy center of 120,000 people.  We have come to appreciate the mountains and their people immensely.  Cajamarca had the distinction of being one of the largest cities of the Inca empire, though its founding predated the Inca by a thousand years.  In also has the distinction of being where Pizarro kidnapped Atahualpa, the Inca emperor, held him for ransom and ultimately killed him.
     Something I found very interesting here, and it is also true of places like Cusco, is that in spite of being one of the largest cities of the Inca empire, there is not a single thing left in Cajamarca from the Inca time except for the room where Atahualpa was held hostage.  Everything else was razed.  For those who don't remember the story, Atahualpa told Pizarro he would fill the room twice with silver and once with gold as ransom if Pizarro would release him.  The precious metals were delivered, Atahualpa was garroted, though after he had been baptized.

There are a couple of sites outside of town that are worth seeing, too.  The first is the Ventanillas (little windows) de Otuzco.  The "windows" served as an ancient burial ground, predating the Inca by more than 500 years.

Another area we visited was Cumbemayo.  The first reason to come here is to take a great hike in a beautiful place.  The area is studded with huge rocks that have been eroded into many interesting shapes.

The last site we visited here was to see a double irrigation channel dug in solid rock 1000 years ago to supply drinking water to the city 24 kilometers away.  Sharp turns in the ditches prevent the water from moving too fast, as do slight inclines engineered into various section.

Finally, no bird pictures this entry.  Instead, there are hats.  Every community in the Andes has a variation in hats and dress, dating at least as far back as the Inca empire.  The Inca made every community dress in a distinct way for social control.  The typical hat in Cajamarca is very different from other places in the mountains but the faces are all just as interesting.  A slide show of hats...

     Ayacucho is a lovely small city located in the south-central mountains of Peru, founded in 1540 by Francisco Pizarro himself.  It is locally famous for several reasons.  It has the largest Easter (Semana Santa) celebration in Peru.  Abimael Guzman, a professor at the University of Ayacucho, was the founder of Sendero Luminoso, the Maoist terrorist organization that controlled most of central Peru and parts of Lima for much of the period between 1980 and his capture in 1992.  A few kilometers outside of town lies the cave of Pikimachay where evidence was found of the oldest habitation in Peru.  From 500 to 900 CE the region held the capital of the Wari (Huari), the first expansionist empire that controlled most of the central Andes.  Finally, it is also near the site of the last battle against Spanish forces in the quest for independence.

 SEMANA SANTA
     The celebration is a two-for-one, at least if you are young and like to drink to excess.  Our hotel was located next to the alameda you see being cleaned above.  On the other side of the street from the alameda was the Fiesta Sagrada advertised by the banner above which was basically a concert that aired from sundown to 6 a.m.   The bass was cranked up so much that our room shook, needless to say we got little sleep.  The alameda was full of young people listening to the music, drinking huge quantities of beer and urinating and vomiting pretty much wherever they were standing.  I give the city of Ayacucho credit for a quick cleanup since this crew started at sunup and had the place shipshape each day by 9 o'clock.
     The second celebration took place in the center of colonial Ayacucho which has been fairly well preserved.  The city has 35 churches, one for each year of Jesus' life.  The Plaza de Armas, or main square, was the center of activity.  On Friday night, the dead Jesus is carried around the square after sunset led by a choir, quite a solemn affair.  Leading up to this parade and continuing through the weekend there is a huge block party of families and religious organizations playing music and dancing in the streets.

The culminating event of the weekend was the Easter sunrise service where a triumphant Jesus, risen from the dead, was paraded around the square on a float carried by 250 people.  Fireworks lit up the sky before the sun finally rose behind the cathedral.

These two women were selling flowers to passersby after the celebration.

PIKIMACHAY
Vestiges of human settlements dating to 15-20,000 years ago were found at Pikimachay, located 25 kilometers north of Ayacucho, making it the oldest known inhabited site in Peru.

With over 40,000 archaeological sites scattered around Peru it's interesting to compare what one finds here with what one would expect in the US.  What we arrived there was a sign alerting us to the site.  The cave itself is 24 meters wide by 12 meters high with a rock fall almost in the center.  The site was surveyed for the first and only time by Robert MacNeisch in 1966 and all he was able to survey was a 3 by 5 meter section of the floor where he found chipped tools, choppers and projectile points along with bone artifacts of horses, camelids and giant sloths.  Because there are so many sites to develop and so little money to develop them, nothing has been done at the site since.

Other than the sign there is nothing here--no park rangers, no ADA compliant access, just a steep, rocky trail up the side of the mountain.  There are also no railings to keep visitors out so people get to walk around inside the cave which is a nice touch.

THE WARI CAPITAL
     The Wari were mentioned in others blogs, for example Pisac.  Although the empire fell sometime around 900 CE, the cities and towns continued to be inhabited.  Many of the building techniques--trapezoidal windows and doors, stonework, terraces, irrigation--for which the Inca are famous were actually pioneered by the Wari.  400 years is a long time to improve skills.  The Inca only had about 200 years of empire, cut short by Pizarro.
     The whole area encompasses 1600 hectares, of which 400 was an urban area enclosed by an 8 meter high defensive wall.  The site is only 5% excavated so there is still plenty to be discovered.  Signs of the treasures possibly concealed there were evident in the pottery shards strewn across the paths.  Along with the ruins, there is an informative museum.  Slide show follows.

BATTLE OF AYACUCHO
    The final battle of South America's war for independence from Spain was fought on the 9th of December in 1824.  The outcome of the battle was never in doubt as it was the last stand of a crumbling empire.  The site is commemorated by an obelisk dedicated to the soldiers who fought there.  Just as at Pikimachay, there is little there beside the obelisk.  But there were plenty of Peruvians there to learn about their history during Semana Santa.  Just as in much of Peru, it's also a reason to gather to eat and talk.

A couple of pictures to end with.

      We marked our one-year anniversary in Perú with a trip to Puno and Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake (12,500 feet above sea level).  While most of our travels have been motivated by Steve’s passion for birds, William’s passion for hiking and history, or Sam’s passion for animals, this trip centered on my passion for people and their cultural traditions. Our arrival coincided with the Virgen de Candelaria festival, a two and a half week annual celebration recognized by UNESCO as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” The veneration of the Virgen (also known as Mamacha Candelaria, Mamita Canticha, and MamáCandi) is rooted in spiritual practices syncretized from local indigenous Aymara and Quechua communities and Spanish Catholicism. During the festival devotees celebrate the blessings flowing from Mother Earth during the preceding 12 months, especially the first harvest from the recent rainy season.  By celebrating Pachamama with love and gratitude, local people believe she will continue to bestow her blessings on them.  The festivities culminate in a massive parade, described by National Geographic as a “mashup of a holy procession, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Rio’s Carnival,” which involves 50 thousand elaborately costumed dancers and some 15 thousand musicians.  While viewing the parade was my main objective, we were fortunate to spend several days exploring the Lake Titicaca region prior to this grand finale. 

     We were welcomed by several families, who shared with us the process of constructing and maintaining their island. They recounted the history of the Uru people, who became island dwellers in order to flee enslavement from the Inca.  There was one child on the island – a shy, adorable girl about two years old, who staggered about the uneven terrain grasping a whole fried fish in her hands and tearing off bites whenever she paused to survey the gringo tourists, who were traipsing around her home. The women displayed their handicrafts, elaborate embroideries depicting Andean archetypes and themes, and colorful miniature reed boats and hummingbirds.  Sam spent his allowance on one tapestry that he especially liked.

     Because of the stormy weather our next excursion to the island of Taquile was cancelled, fortunately though, the boat dropped off us off near the village of Platería where we were delighted to encounter locals celebrating Pacha Anata.  Anata, which means “game” in Aymara, is a joyful carnival that celebrates the relationship between people, nature, and divinity; these rites, which involve family, dance, music, clothing, rituals, and food, focus on the theme of renewal and creation.  As we hopped out of our van, my eyes savored the scene – scattered across the fields before us were scores of musicians and vibrantly dressed dancers, women with long braided hair adorned with pompoms and young girls wearing long embroidered stocking hats with frilly brims fashioned to look like Peru’s national flower the cantuta.

     We watched them rehearse their performances before their stadium appearances.  One dance retold the story of a wayward, drunken husband, who was scolded by his wife, while others seemed more focused on choreography.  Our guide explained that each nearby village concocts its own performance and then competes to win a prize – usually a pot of money to fund community beautification projects.  From Platería we headed further up the road to a town called Acora, where an even bigger dance festival was underway.  We entered the packed stadium and watched while village after village stepped forward to display its own culture and creativity.  Each troupe had 50 to 100 people of all ages and we relished the palpable sense of community solidarity and joy that vibrated all around us.

    The next day we undertook a 17 km bike ride that allowed us to explore local communities and drink in vistas of vast blue skies, abundant green fields, and local people heading to the market, farming, herding, and socializing in small plazas.  Despite the muddy road, we felt liberated and exhilarated to be immersed in the scene rather than watching through the windows of a tourist van.  Sam likened the experience to being on an Andean safari – where instead of lions, giraffes, and elephants, we were treated to glimpses of every sort of domesticated animal; sometimes, in fact, we rode through small herds being taken out to graze. The ride ended with a picnic on the lake’s edge where our weary bodies welcomed the sun, the wind, and the serenity of eating alongside grazing cows and sheep.

     We were fortunate enough to score VIP seats for the parade.  While I had worried that our 1:00pm arrival might make us miss much of the action (the parade started at 7:00am), this fear was quickly allayed when we realized that there were 83 troupes and we had only missed 23.  We marveled at the steady sea of dancers clad in intricately beaded and embroidered costumes with bells on their boots, interspersed with fleets of hairy black gorillas with orange spiders crawling on their backs, comical lawyers toting thick legal books, men masked with garishly long noses, and more traditional groups wearing ponchos, playing flutes and sporting hats crowned with feathers.  Then there were endless streams of demonic dancers sporting headdresses from which diabolic dragons with popping eyes and curling horns sprung skyward.  This dance allegedly references a group of trapped miners in a collapsed mine who feared for their lives and saw an army of demons pressing in on them; in desperation, they prayed for deliverance to the Virgen and were rescued.  Needless to say, we were stunned by the scope of the celebration and, when at 4:30pm, the sky split open and sent lightning, rain, and sleet from the heavens, we trudged through streets of rushing water getting soaked and eagerly boarded our van to escape to the airport.  All in all, Mamacha Candelaria and her lake made this pilgrimage among the most memorable of our Peruvian adventures.

     Expectations frequently get in the way here in Peru.  Having been raised on national parks in the US, I always expect things to be similar in other places.  When I hear of the Sacred Valley or Colca Canyon my mind's eye sees Utah, Colorado or Arizona:  Wide-open spaces unadulterated with much in the way of human settlement,  just lots of natural beauty.  Peru is not like that.  The dry western slope of the Andes is unpopulated but, other than that, we've only found one area in Peru, between Colca and Juliaca, to be without human settlements, too.  If there is a river coming down out of the Andes, even the dry western slope has people, as do many stretches of the god-forsaken desert between Lima and Paracas.  Anywhere there is water, there are people here.  Sometimes when there is no water there are still people.

     When I hear, "Colca Canyon, at a depth of 10,725 feet, is one of the deepest canyons in the world, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon," I'm expecting a big national park with a plateau cut insanely deeply by a river.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As you can see from the pictures, it's plenty steep and deep and it is, "a deep gorge, typically one with a river flowing through it," by definition a canyon.  It just didn't meet my expectations.
     Once that feeling was expressed and I starting looking around at what was there, it turned out to be an interesting place, one of Marnie's favorites in all of the parts of Peru we've seen.  While we did visit the Mirador Cruz del Condor for which the canyon is most renown and were able to witness the condors take their morning flight, this spectacle was mundane compared to the landscapes and people we encountered elsewhere.

      The hotel we stayed in (above), the Colca Lodge, was fantastic.  It is situated on a bend in the Colca River with a good view over and up the river.  We had a nice room with a loft for the boys to sleep in.  The lodge also had a llama farm for Sam and a series of large, outdoor natural thermal pools of varying temperatures overlooking the river for all of us.  In addition, the canyon is home to Wari ruins, terraces that are still heavily farmed, colonial churches and communities full of interesting people.

     Our first afternoon there we walked down and across the valley to visit the Wari ruin of Uyo-Uyo.  The Wari culture was ascendant from 500-1000 AD through most of the central sierra and much of the coast.  Although the empire declined after 1000, the cities and towns remained and Uyo-Uyo, still a vibrant community, allied with the Inca after 1300.  The Spaniard Gonzalo Pizarro arrived in 1540 and shortly thereafter burned what would burn of Uyo-Uyo and forcibly moved the populace across the river where it could be more easily controlled and available for forced labor on Spanish landholdings.  What has been excavated is worth seeing.

     Every small community in the canyon that dates to the Spanish conquest has a church dating back to the second half of the 1500's since the church was extensively used to pacify the Andean people.  Their appearance is similar to the missions in California.  A Catholic fraternal society in Spain is paying to have them renovated, a good way to preserve history. (A note here:  Peru is awash in sites that need to be excavated and preserved, so much so that there is not enough money to go around.  We recently visited the Wari capital city outside Ayacucho which was home to 50,000 people.  It's only 3% excavated.  A nearby cave was found to have human artifacts dating back 20,000.  Only a 3 meter by 5 meter area has been investigated.)

      We were also lucky enough to be in the area during the Wititi festival, which celebrates the legend of a young man, who disguised himself in a skirt and hat in order to dance near a young woman whose father opposed their relationship. Much to our delight every village we passed was celebrating.  The colors, decorations, dancing, cross-dressing and beer drinking were sights to behold and the bands played with a lot of gusto.

As usual, a few animal and bird pictures.

     The first terrain we entered was the Argentinian steppes, an arid landscape lying in the rain shadow of the Andes.  Much of it looked familiar, an amalgam of the sagebrush desert of Nevada along with aspects of Wyoming and Utah.

El Chaltén
     El Chaltén is the northern end of Glacier National Park and is the Tehuelche name for Cerro Fitz Roy, named after the captain of the Beagle of Charles Darwin fame.  It has the distinction of dating only to 1985 when settlers were encouraged by the Argentine government to move in as a way of buttressing territorial claims with Chile.  Today it is a town of 4000 dependent exclusively on tourism.  Fortunately, it has Cerro Fitz Roy, popular with climbers around the world; additionally, it is considered Argentina's trekking capital.  We found it to be quite friendly with a good pub and a great place to stay.  Beautiful hikes to various destinations were plentiful and trails originated right in town.  Our biggest regret was that we didn't schedule enough time to thoroughly appreciate the area.

Sam can always find something of interest...

 ...but Monte Fitz Roy is the star of the show.  At just over 11,000 feet, it isn't really that high but it attracts climbers from all over the world due to its sheer granite faces and weather that is exceptionally inclement and treacherous.  Photographers are also drawn to the mountain thanks to its unique shape. We hiked to Laguna Capri, where the boys impressed us with their hardiness and took a swim in the cold, glacial waters.

     El Calafate lies near the southern end of Glacier National Park and is the location from which tourists go to see Perito Moreno, the area's largest and most accessible glacier.  It has a longer history than El Chaltén, having been established 100 years ago as a gathering spot for sheep ranchers both to set off with their flocks to market and to purchase supplies and meet neighbors.
     It's still a very pleasant little town, full of tourists of all sorts and situated on a beautiful lake.  Just walking along the lake or ambling through the bird sanctuary would be a worthwhile trip, but the pizza and burgers were both great and Perito Moreno didn't disappoint.  Unfortunately, our skills as photographers are not adequate to do Perito Moreno justice, but we hope you'll get a good idea of its spectacle.

     Argentinians drink a lot of mate, an herbal tea made from the leaves of the local yerba maté plant and considered medicinally potent given its antioxidant and cholesterol-lowering properties, as well as its dose of vitamins C, B1, and B2.  The tea culture comes with lots of paraphernalia – tall double thermos cases with shoulder straps that look like they might contain giant binoculars, as well as a range of drinking devices.  Mate is the Quechuan word for "gourd” and so many Argentinians drink the tea from a gourd with a metal straw called a bombilla.  We saw taxi drivers, tour guides, and day-trippers sipping all day long to relax and restore.  Sam and Finn were game to be like the locals.  Sam, by the way, is wearing his new Chilean baqueano (cowboy) beret.

Birds
     Of course we end with some photos of birds.  Many of the birds proved to be quite willing to stick around and give me good photo ops.  The first two are of the black chested buzzard eagle which may be the most elegant bird I've ever seen.  It was perched on a fence post on the side of the road and didn't mind at all that I'd stopped to take its picture.  Many of the others were about as cooperative.

    Torres del Paine National Park is a national park made up of mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers in southern Chilean Patagonia.  It is a beautiful place and ranks as Marnie's favorite of our summer trips.  We caught a bus from Punta Arenas to the park and the trip got off to a great start with an unexpected stop at Estancia Cerro Negro.

    Liability issues must be very different in South America.  We signed up for a horseback ride that was billed as easy.  Before we knew it, the horses were blazing new trails up the side of a steep slope and on through forests replete with low hanging branches, which snagged on our clothing, slapped and slashed faces, and demanded agile body contortions to avoid injury.  One teen-aged boy actually fell off his horse, 2 other novice riders offered that they were scared witless, while Finn and Sam, having no expectations, took it all in stride and begged the guide to trot the horses. Needless to say, they looked like real baqueanos--Chilean horsemen -- and they received lucky horseshoes to remember their ride.

     We did several hikes around the mountain.  Our hike to Salto Grande, an impressive cascade, transpired on a tempestuously windy day. We cinched our hoods tightly, chased runaway baseball hats carried by the wind, and leaned into the gusts as we tried to walk forward, but were caught in limbo between the force of the gales and our body weight.  Sam amused himself by unzipping his jacket and making himself into a sail, while Marnie was blown over once when she focused too earnestly on taking a picture.  The howling winds produced a magical display over the surrounding lakes, where water spouts swirled up like tornadoes into the sky and white caps spilled onto the shores. The following slide show will give you a flavor of the terrain.

As usual we have a few birds, but this time we also have some mammals of note in the following slide show.

Next stops:  El Calafate and El Chelten

We stayed in a hotel a few kilometers south of Tumbes.  Not a wealthy area by any means but the people seem to get by.

We went on a couple of excursions during the week.  One was to Acapulco for whale watching, the other to Puerto Pizarro to the crocodile rescue center and mangroves.  Puerto Pizarro has the added distinction of being the location of Pizarro's landing on his way to his momentous meeting with Atahualpa.
ACAPULCO

There really isn't much to Acapulco except a few houses, some stores of various sorts and the fishing pier.  Lots of fishing here and the catch is still good. 

PUERTO PIZARRO
Puerto Pizarro is much more of a tourist draw than Acapulco.  People come to see the mangroves, the crocodiles and to eat seafood, including the famous, at least in Peru, black scallop.

The Tumbes River crocodile is endangered due to hunting for meat and leather and habitat destruction for agriculture.  This facility has a breeding program that returns crocodiles into the wild.  Sam and Finn found it quite interesting while I found myself thankful I could see them here instead of meeting one on a swim.

BOCAPAN
Bocapan is another fishing town a few kilometers south of Tumbes and happens to have a nice Casa Andina hotel where we stayed for the week.  We have found that tourists from outside of Peru tend to stay a day in Lima, go to Macchu Pichu and then go home.  Most of the places seen in the blog are Peruvian tourist destinations and this was no exception.  We met two families from Lima, one from a school against which Sam played basketball and another with kids at the same school the boys go to.

It was quite a nice hotel with a giant swimming pool the boys enjoyed immensely.  Sam really liked swimming up to sit on the underwater stool and order his daily Fanta and tequenos.  We appreciated the bungalows with the boys upstairs and Marnie and me downstairs.  Very quiet, relaxing place that gave us a week's refuge from Lima and school.  In addition to the pool, the hotel had beach front property.  Ocean water was a comfortable 75 degrees with a nice shore break for boogie boarding and empty stretches in both directions for relaxing walks.

 BIRDS
Peru continues to be a delight in the birding department and Tumbes was no exception.  Slideshow follows:

THANKSGIVING
We post this blog almost halfway through our South America adventure and a week before many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.  As we reflect on the bounty we have received this year in terms of new experiences, new friends, and new vistas, we are humbled and grateful. We thank you -- our readers -- for sharing the journey with us. 

     I had the pleasure last month of taking some time to myself for a couple of days in Cusco and then on to Cachoro  for a "trek" (backpacking without the backpack) to Choquequirao, an Inca site.  It was my first chance to get into a Quechua speaking community to see what life is like in an agricultural area in the Andes.
At first glance Cachoro looks pretty bleak.

     But after spending some time there, it actually looks like a pretty good place to live.  It's a beautiful setting with the Nevado Padreyoc in the background.  The main occupation is subsistence agriculture, the plots are small and worked mostly by hand and animal (I saw only one tractor at work in the area, probably shared/rented out) and the land seems productive. 

      The people who did all of the work so we could walk with our daypacks and shoot photos consisted of a family of 4 brothers.  They were born at mile 17 in a Quechua speaking hamlet (40 people in its heyday, all related) still owned by the family and run as a campground by the mother of the clan.  Only one brother still lives full time on the land, everyone else has found it necessary to find employment in Cachoro, Cusco or elsewhere.  The boys grew up making the trek to town and back once a week to attend school, boarding in town during the week.  The guide, Juan Carlos, now speaks Quechua, Spanish, English and some Portuguese. 
     There is a very productive garden at 9700 feet with fruit trees that provides quite a diversity of foodstuff plus chickens, pigs, and guinea pigs to provide protein.  We spent the second night there after the big ascent before heading to the ruins the following morning.

     CHOQUEQUIRAO:  Peru is blessed and cursed by a plethora of archaeological sites.  Caral dates from 2600 BC and is the oldest civilization in the western hemisphere.  From Caral through the Inca, one civilization after another built on and enlarged the advances made by the previous.  As a result, Peru has sites from one end to the other without the funds to explore and develop them.  Choquequirao is one of those sites.  It is a few hard and beautiful days walk from Machu Picchu. (If any of you are interested in making the trek next summer, let me know.) Some of the area has been cleared and quite a bit of study done but things are now at a standstill. 
     In the first photo in the following slideshow, you will see some terraces down the side of the mountain.  These terraces at one point ascended to the summit interspersed with housing and workshops which still exist under the brush.  The terraces then descended down the other side of the mountain--the site is incredibly extensive but no longer being cleared.  Like Machu Picchu, there is a lot left to know about Choquequirao.  The stonework is not nearly as good as other Inca structures leading some to surmise that it was built in a hurry.  It was also not found by the Spanish and no one knows why it was deserted.  A unique feature among all of the Inca sites uncovered so far are llama images embedded in the terrace walls.

     The Andes are a huge chain of mountains which change quickly in many ways.  Much of the chain is drab and dry, other parts lush and many parts are incredibly beautiful.  The following slideshow and subsequent blogs will expand on this idea.

     On Sam’s 8th birthday we went to Iquitos and because we arrived  early, we visited a fish market.  It smelled horrible.  And then, we took a long boat ride, half way through we stopped at a village and we saw some kids riding on makeshift go carts. I wanted to try, but there wasn’t time to ask. 

I was in Cusco for a day last month with the family and left unimpressed.  I just returned for a couple of days and came away liking the place more.  I still think it is more of a way station on the road to elsewhere but it does have its sights.  Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire, considered to be the navel of the universe, and the center of religion and government.  The problem for the modern day tourist is that the Spanish obliterated most of the Inca structures in order to stamp out past religious practice and to impose a new social and political order.  The church of the convent of Santa Catalina was intentionally built on the foundation of the Inca Temple of the Sun long after the Spaniards looted it of tons of precious metal.

The Plaza de Armas is the center of Peruvian towns and cities and Cusco is no exception.  Cusco's is in line with the paradox of Peru.  On the one hand it is the least interesting I've been to.  It's full of tourists and vendors of trinkets.  While I admire the work ethic of the vendors, I tire of the spiel of the 20th offer of "original" art that is the exact same as the prior 19 "artists."  And then, when I'm about to escape to the hotel, the street in front of the cathedral fills with the cutest kids imaginable dancing in costume in a competition in honor of the Virgin of Carmen.

Here are a few more pictures of the market in Cusco, you know you're not in Kansas anymore.

Here are some photos of places in Cusco.

Sacsayhuaman is the fortress above Cusco reportedly capable of holding a garrison of 5,000.  From here, the last great threat to Spanish control was launched by Manco Inca in 1536, a 10 month siege of the Cusco.  Much of the outer wall remains intact but most of the internal buildings are gone, having been used as a quarry for much of the Spanish construction below.  Many of the stones are massive, as heavy as 125 tons, and were quarried and transported over 30 miles of mountainous terrain without the benefit of the wheel.