thesacredvalley

after just one full day in Lima we packed up and headed out in the direction of Cusco, the jumping-off point for the Sacred Valley area of Peru. it's either a 30 hour overland trek or a 40 minute flight, so we plumped for the latter and had our bleary morning eyes opened wide by the stunning scenery afforded by the Andes foothills, which rise fast and steep out of the permafog that envelops the narrow coastal plain.


five minutes out of Lima and the mountains are already over 10,000 feet. the wing is that of our small but new TACA Airlines Airbus A319, a comfortable ride even at that early hour.

to catch the 7am flight we were up before five, but getting to Cusco didn't mean we could slow down. we were on our way to the town at the base of Machu Picchu, called Aguas Calientes, and for much of that distance there is no road. many people take the high-priced train all the way from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, but we decided to break the journey up and go part way by road.



scenes from the beautiful Sacred Valley region of Peru, between Cusco to the south and Ollantaytambo northwest of there. below, Jill and i were glad for the wise luggage choices we had made, especially given the cramped bus conditions on the way through the Sacred Valley; what you see in the picture is our entire compliment of luggage for the whole nearly two-week trip. genius!



after getting our bearings and taking a moment at Cusco's Plaza de Armas (did i mention all Peruvian cities have at least one square, or plaza?) to observe our third anniversary, we went in search of a bus station and began the very crowded, though thankfully cheap, drive to Urubamba. conveniently, the bus terminus in Urubamba was the departure point for a whole bunch of minivan taxis, or combis, so we crammed into one of those for the remainder of the trip to Ollantaytambo, the end of the road.



many people in the highlands display a pair of toritos, or little bulls, on their houses as a kind of talisman (this picture also neatly shows off the zoom capabilities of my new camera: when this picture was taken we were sitting at a restaurant all the way across the plaza--yes, even Ollantaytambo has one--about 300 meters away. the camera is at full 40X zoom and not supported by a tripod, yet see how nicely the picture turned out). below, the kind of native dress that makes the region famous began to pop up all over the place.



what we found there was, although of course touristy, so much different to the big city of Lima and even the bustling Cusco. this was a real highland village, and we began to see many people dressed in the native style, and apparently for their own reasons and not just so they could sell themselves for pictures with tourists. either way it was a nice, sleepy town and we were early for the train that would take us the rest of the way to Aguas Calientes, so we settled down to an early lunch of "pizza" and Inca Kola at a small family-run place on one side of the plaza. the Inca Kola was pretty much standard but the pizza, while not bad, might have been better described as some slightly soggy bread with a whole bunch of cheese on it. but pizza retaurants are all the rage in Peru, and we had been told that when in doubt, they were usually the safe place to eat, so we did.

and then we started to wander around town, which was when we came across Juan Diego:


Juan Diego serenades Jill in appreciation for her kind donation.

his sign reads as follows:

ME LLAMO JUAN DieGO
I am BLiNd
THanK you FOR youR DONATiON
GOd BLess you
SOy INVIDENTE
GRacias por su DoNacioNes
y que Dios Los BeNDiGA

Juan Diego was sitting outside the gate for the Ollantaytambo ruins and, with his strange harp-like instrument played and sang a quite haunting tune to Jill:



we decided not to pay the fairly high entrance fee for the Ollanta ruins, reasoning that we would soon be getting quite a fill of other ruins just up the road (or track), but there were all kinds of hewn-rock structures scattered over the hills surrounding the town. many of them blended in quite well and you would be looking around to admire the scenery and suddenly realize there were buildings there,camouflaged by their having been constructed with rock the same color as the mountains. they were all over the place.



the marketplace near the entrance to Ollanta's official ruins had all kind of wonderful things on sale, like this fun balaclava that i thought was something to do with Peru's version of lucha libre, but turned out to be for a type of traditional dance called the Capac Qolla. the mask itself is call a Waq'ollo and can be had in all color schemes imaginable, and is usually worn with a square, flat hat called an Aqarapi that is intricately adorned with antique coins dangling from its brim. at one point we actually caught a couple of brief glimpses of this dance being performed for some other tour group as our train passed theirs. below, the market and some of its other wares in context of their dramatic surroundings, made more so by the ancient buildings almost hiding scattered in the hills.



after the market we made our way down towards the Urubamba river to catch our train, which would follow that water course through ever-deepening canyons to Aguas Calientes. progress on the train was slow, taking about two hours to cover something like 25 as-the-crow-flies miles, but the scenery was beautiful and the dryness of the open valleys began to give way to descending mists that laced the mountain trees.



Jill tries out some of Ollanta's "flying" steps made of cantilevered rocks in a wall, an effect we would see more of at Machu Picchu. below, the train we were about to get on to go there:



and that was it. we were finally almost where we had come all that way to be, and with just enough time to grab an early dinner and head for 7:30 bedtime. we had thought getting up at five to leave Lima was pretty intense, but that was nothing compared with the sleep sacrifice we made to ensure an early arrival at Machu Picchu.

thevalleyoffire

i've been to Las Vegas enough times that on our recent trip to the Silver State i wanted to get out of the bustle and neon glare of town while Jill was at her conference. so i chose to check out what the Las Vegas Review-Journal called "the best place to take out of town visitors" in 2008: Valley of Fire State Park. and all in all i'd have to say that (not having seen all of the other contenders for that title) i agree that it is about the best thing to see around Vegas.

here i am at the entrance to the park, with very little hint as to the explosion of color that lies just beyond the bend. being all alone and having forgotten a tripod, i had to make do with the roof of the car, which is the blurry red thing you can see at the bottom right of the picture. below, these shots should give you more than a hint at the colors, which are generated primarily by iron deposits in the silica that makes up these rocks. you can see some of them that don't have the iron deposits, and in some parts of the park the two colors are juxtaposed to very dramatic effect.

the park has several very distinct rock formations and clusters of formations, like the "beehives" that are pretty prominent inside west entrance. but a lot of the formations consisted of hollowed out areas in large cliff-like faces, which looked either like miniature or faraway troglodyte cave dwellings or gave the impression of ghoulish faces trying to break out from behind a stretchy screen. to me it did, anyway, very strongly. there are a few short trails in the park and if you hiked all of them and saw all the formation clusters you could do the whole park comfortably in five or six hours, plus another hour each way in travel time to and from the city. i didn't have quite that long, so i skipped a couple of the hikes and must have looked a bit strange hurrying around to see all the formations, but i did it, and that's what counts.

above: pretty self-explanatory, i hope. they're very proud of this one, and apparently it's quite famous. below: the north shore of Lake Mead on the alternate route back to town that takes you through some stunning scenery in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

when i had to go back and pick Jill up, i decided to take the long way 'round and went through the north end of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which had some great views of its own, including a few of the clear blue waters of lake, which in the dry desert heat of the day looked very inviting indeed. but i resisted going closer to dip in, knowing Jill was tired and hungry, and headed back on the long road to get her. i'm sure she'd had a good time at her convention, but the next time we head for Las Vegas, i think i'll spring her from all that excitement and take her to see the real jewels of the desert. she'll love the park and i won't have to use the car as a tripod, talk about a win-win!

thecityofthekings

so here theblog finally is, after all that waiting, in Peru. and it seemed like we waited a long time to go there too; after deciding some time last year that we were going to make this trip and booking all of our tickets and accommodations in January, May just took forever to come around. and now look, it's already a month and a half since we got back.

if there's not a cross on a hill in Peru, there'll be a flag.  oh look: this one, behind the President's Mansion in Lima, has both.  and its own condor doing fly-bys.

but this was a trip well worth the wait; it was a first time to South America and so something very different than we have been used to. the major motivation to go to Peru was to see the ruins of Machu Picchu of course, but with a 12 day trip there was plenty of time to see lots more. as a refreshing break from our usual travelling M.O., we alloted only one day to our initial destination, the big capital city, Lima. and what a sprawling mass it is, filling the gap between the Pacific coast and the nearby Andean foothills and teeming with something like eight million people crammed into all kinds of slums and tenements. there are nice areas too, but we didn't find those until much later in the trip.

but on that first day, we stayed clear of all the barrios and favelas and headed right for the tourist meccas in the heart of old colonial Lima. one of the main legacies of Peru's past as a Spanish colony is that every town has at least one plaza, or square, and usually several. the main ones usually take the name Plaza de Armas, but in Lima there are several of these so the very famous one, with the president's mansion and the cathedral, is simply called Plaza Mayor by the locals, meaning the main square.

examples of the fine colonial architecture from Lima's Plaza Mayor and just beyond are almost enough to make you think it was good of the Spaniards to take over. below, security around the Palacio Gobierno sometimes seemed excessive, but given the South American penchant for coups, may have been wise...

the plazas actually tend to be very pleasant spaces, oases of relative calm and clean in seas of chaotic traffic and dust. it's nice to have some green and a place to sit and slow down right in the middle of a big city, and the tremendous colonial architecture as a 360-degree backdrop doesn't hurt either. Lima has the very best examples of such buildings, largely i suppose because they have the money to keep them looking nice. the north end of the plaza is entirely taken up by the Palacio Gobierno, or Government Palace, which sits well behind a large, guarded fence and, in clean gray stone serves as a nice contrast to the many brightly colored buildings on the south and west sides of the square. these are bright yellow and have ornately carved wooden balconies, as do several of the buildings down the side streets, which are likewise painted in bright yellows or blues. on the east side of the square is the large cathedral, and about a block to the northeast is the Convento de San Francisco, or San Francisco Monastery, which houses an extensive array of catacombs, all the bones from which have been organized by type and even in some cases arranged into hypnotically ghoulish circles of femurs and skulls.

the Museo Taurino in Lima's apparently very dangerous Rimac area has a fairly impressive collection of tauromachian art, including this and another numbered Picasso prints. the steps in the one room museum have tiles depicting the brands of the major ganaderias, or bull breeders. also pictured are museum boss Jaime and i in the stands of the plaza, and Jill and i outside the ring.

coming up from below ground, we headed across the Rio Rimac and into the neighborhood of the same name to go and see the famed Plaza de Acho bullring of Lima and the bullfighting museum next door. there was not very good information on this stuff in our guidebook, so when we got there in the late morning we were a little distressed to find the whole complex gated and locked, with scarcely a soul in sight. giving the fence a bit of a shake did bring a guy out from the bowels of the museum, and he let us in even though he looked very bewildered by our presence. for our $1.67 apiece admission we did get the personal attention and guide services of the museum's jefe, Jaime, who communicated the best he could with very limited English and Jill's translations of the non-fight specific words. later, he took us into the plaza itself, though he somewhat indignantly declined my request to walk on the sand. instead, i got a couple of preprinted pictures of some young bullfighters, including Peru's own wunderkind matador, Paco Cespedes, which he said he gave me because he could tell i had aficion for the art, which i admit was somewhat gratifying to hear.

the Templo de Lima Peru de La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias, where Jill used the signage to remind herself that her body is a temple, and that mine is... a youth center and a cafeteria. who knew?

following our foray into the fighting world, we planned to head back to the touristy section of town to regroup and consider what to do next, but our new friend Jaime wouldn't let us leave unless we were in a taxi. he seemed genuinely concerned so i don't think he had a racket going with a cab driver friend, but he kept saying how dangerous the area was and that even in broad daylight and with only a couple of blocks to go, we simply couldn't be out walking around as foreigners in these parts. so even though we had walked over with no incidents other than being stared at a lot, we took the taxi and soon decided to take another one out to the eastern reaches of town to see the LDS temple in the La Molina area. it is a nice, middle class feeling area, and the temple sits on beautifully kept grounds, as they always do. there were people about but nobody seemed to take much of an interest in us, and it was even a little difficult to get someone to take a picture of us, though we did manage in the end. after that we retired to the comedor, or cafeteria, for some pretty decent treats, as we had recently eaten a late lunch back in town.

my lomo saltado and Jill's supremo al pollo, a type of breaded chicken cutlet, that altogether set us back about US$5. just behind the mustard and salt are the pictures that Jaime had given me from the bullring. don't tell him, but i accidentally left them there and they had been thrown away by the time i went back to pick them up!

Peru is not exactly known for its native cuisine, but there are some pretty good dishes to be had, like what pretty much constitutes the national standard, lomo saltado. it's basically just steak strips, french fries, tomatoes and onions all cooked together in a beef gravy and served with some rice: simple but effective, and covering the main food groups. the important ones at least. almost all meals in Peru are heavily dependent on potatoes, and when you grow something like 4,000 varieties, that makes sense. it also makes for food that seems pretty safe to us, if nothing else, and for a diet that can tend to make people fairly stocky. alas, it didn't do that for me, but we will have to leave the City of the Kings and continue our adventures in the rest of the country to find out why not, so stay tuned!

thepageant

we were sure tuckered out the following day, but i think it was worth going to the Manti Pageant last Tuesday night for the first time in about 20 years. officially known as the Mormon Miracle Pageant, it is an enjoyable, if slightly unusual theatrical performance seemingly held over from a heyday of similar church spectacles (does anyone remember the Young Ambassadors?) stylistically, this seems to have been around the time of the American Bicentennial in the mid-seventies, though this pageant actually started a decade earlier. there are still such pageants all over the place, but Manti's is probably the biggest, and possibly eclipsed in renown only by the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York. both depict the origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and i believe that these days they even use the same scenery, shipping the simulated boulders and trees all the way across the country from Manti to Palmyra between shows.

the east tower of the Manti Temple as seen against the fading evening light.  the show starts around 9:30 pm, well after dark has fallen over the Sanpete Valley.

the nice thing about the Manti Pageant is that it's performed on the hill right in front of the temple, so there's a wonderful backdrop for the whole thing. most LDS temples have a gold statue of the angel Moroni on top, but several of the originals, including Manti, don't. instead, as part of the performance, they have a live actor representing him stand on one of the towers, complete with flowing white robes and a long trumpet.

as the name suggests, the "plot" of the Miracle Pageant follows several of the wonders of Mormonism, recounting Joseph Smith's First Vision, wherein he said he saw God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ, who let him know that at that time, the Gospel was not to be found in its fullness upon the earth, and that through him it would be restored. part of that restoration consisted of Joseph translating a record of ancient inhabitants of the Americas that had come to the continent from the Holy Land by divine direction. they had been led by prophets who had written about their interactions with God, and one of the last of these, a man named Mormon, had gathered the records, abridged them and inscribed them onto plates made of gold. as such the book that Joseph translated was named the Book of Mormon, and several of the scenes in the middle of the pageant are reenactments of Book of Mormon stories. Mormon's son was named Moroni and as the last righteous man in the line of these prophets of old, he took the plates and hid them in the side of the hill Cumorah and returned many centuries later in angelic form to direct Joseph to them, hence his prominent position as a herald atop so many temples throughout the world.

the most important portion of the Book of Mormon being presented: Christ's visit to His people in the Americas. below, the pageant culmination with a choir of "angels" to the right of the spectacularly floodlit temple, and in front on temple hill a reenactment of Joseph Smith receiving his vision in the Sacred Grove, which actually is in Palmyra, New York, quite near the hill Cumorah.

the Book of Mormon prophets repeatedly stated that the Americas would be a promised land to those who would keep God's commandments; the pageant takes up this theme and culminates with stories of Mormonism's early pioneers crossing the plains and leaving the United States to colonize the Utah Territory. all in all it's a very well done production, requiring something like 800 cast members and a crew of some 300, all volunteers as far as i know.  in recent years they have had attendance of just under 100,000 people over the eight days of performance, and there is seating for something like 12-14,000 provided. not all of those seats were full on Tuesday but i understand weekend crowds are huge; in a town with just more than 3,000 inhabitants, you can imagine what 6,000 cars all leaving at once will do to traffic, so getting home at 1am on a work night was a small price to pay for not being stuck all of a Friday night in a traffic jam down in central Utah.  i guess once every 20 years that wouldn't be so bad, but the experience was a good enough one that i don't think it'll be that long before we go back.

thecamera

still building up to the Peru posts, but here's a little teaser about one of the things that made it possible to bring those posts back to you: my new camera, the first one i've bought since early 1998. that one was a crappy old film point-and-shoot that i got for about $35 to take on my mission with me. it served me well and as far as i know still works, even after taking pictures in the middle of a tropical cyclone in Samoa. but this one is much better. behold:

the Canon SX110 IS in silver. 10x optical zoom and a huge screen on the back. and best of all, it takes AA batteries.

its a bit hefty but it still fit handily in my pocket, and it met my main criterion of having some serious optical zoom (and with the 8GB memory card i got for it, i could take about 3,000 high-quality pictures).  i'm not sure where i picked up this fetish for optical zoom, but Jill seemed to think i had gone quite out of my mind when that was all i could talk about in the weeks prior to ordering it.  but i think even she was convinced of the wisdom of thejayfather when we got to Peru and started tromping around in the great big outdoors.  and i'm sure you will be too, Dear Reader, soon, very soon.  in the meantime, here's a little taste of what it can do:

a shot of the machine in action, as it were, with Jill's Gorillapod holding it to a post; below, the picture we turned out with this handy setup near Parque Del Amor in the swanky Miraflores district of Lima.  a teaser, remember, just a teaser!