According to Rolling Stone, "She’s Tina Turner, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, and Robert Plant all rolled up into a tiny but explosive package.” Don't miss a special evening with Austin singer/songwriter Patrice Pike. Click here for details. 

We are staying in a convent and home for orphan girls. The warmth they show is truly impressive. They love to hold hands with us, and hug and kiss Julia constantly.

We climbed to the ruins by foot instead of bus, saving some money, but more importantly gaining a much greater sense of awe and amazement for the terrain as well as the lost city of Machu Pichu.

For some reason we left our headlamp in our room, and the darkness added a big dose of adventure and excitement with the river so loud and the crazy steep jungled mountains soaring above our heads practically vertical on all sides.

Our new friend Bow and I spent the trip on the roof of the bus like kings of the Bolivian countryside, sprawled out on mattresses and sacks of bread and rice, seeing everything in all directions.

Because it’s a third of the price of home, I have begun to forget that we are not rich. Cappuccinos and crepes, Argentinean steaks with mashed potatoes, risotto, roasted vegetables and excellent Chilean wine.

Like Shasta, like Illampu in Bolivia, like the Twighlights and so many others, this mountain captivates the imagination, especially when the clouds are moving in and out, swirling around the summit, and the light is constantly changing.

Just in the area immediately surrounding the Ishinca valley there are a dozen of these massifs which we were able to see once we climbed higher, on our way to the summits of Urus and then Ishinca the next day.

We had excellent luck, and climbed quite well together and in good style.

We had the small summit to ourselves, and enjoyed a view that is nearly impossible to put into words—huge peaks on three sides, massive crumbling glaciers, brilliant turquoise glacial lakes, and building clouds already shrouding most of the highest summits around us.

We got a little bit of good advice from the guide on how to avoid the seracs and crevasses on the other side, and pushed on to the summit—perfect, cloudless, all to ourselves, and even more impressive than the day before.

We high-fived, and were about to remove crampons and head down to the lower lakes when an ice cave with a small stream running out of it at the toe of the glacier caught my eye.

Immediately we both gasped and I whooped with excitement. There was light coming from somewhere above!

Southern Exposure

by Benjamin Fisher

“Welcome to South America.” That’s what I was thinking as our taxi driver explained to my wife Julia and me that the day before our arrival in Peru, three protesting university professors had been shot and killed by military police, two here in Lima and one down south in Puno. Widespread marches and protests had been held throughout the country to speak out against President Toledo’s tragically top-heavy economics, and about the dismally low salaries of publicly paid university professors. Upstanding, educated, peacefully protesting Peruvian citizens had been murdered near the central plaza. Not arrested. Not beaten. Not tear-gassed. Shot and killed by the Policia Nacional. Apparently, more marches were planned for the following day, and our plans to stay near the central part of the city were rapidly changing.

While we were hastily scanning the pages of the “Lonely Planet” in the marginal light of the back seat of the cab, we did our best to absorb this news, tried to reason out the importance and the meaning. At the same time, we tried to politely keep up a conversation with our driver in Spanish and take in some of the sights and flavors coasting by us out the window of the beaten down Toyota station wagon.

For weeks before leaving home, as our two-month trip to the Andes drew closer and closer on the calendar, as plans were made and last minute items purchased or borrowed, we asked ourselves, “When is the reality of it going to hit us? When will it not be just a dream anymore?” For me, that was it—the taxi. That mixture of stress and excitement, the nighttime street scenes only half-glimpsed, and of course the news of discontented citizens and heavy handed government, so typical of Latin America. Somehow I wasn’t scared or even saddened at that moment. I was simply thinking, “Yep, this is it. It’s real now. Here we go…”

As it turned out, we stayed in a perfectly safe, though expensive, part of Lima. Chances are we would have been just fine no matter where we stayed. These were not radical terrorists kidnapping gringos. This was the government cracking down on… teachers? It seemed a little strange even in a poor Andean nation to be taking out teachers. We would later learn more about the perfectly justifiable complaints against the Toledo government, mainly involving hugely overblown salaries for the President himself, his staff and other appointed officials. Even seemingly random, low-level bureaucrats with little influence or responsibility were making many times the salaries of professors working for the state, who barely earned a living wage. But we never did find out what exactly the protesters had done to get themselves shot.

This first pass through the coastal capital of Lima was little more than a long layover on our way to the Cusco region further south. Arriving in Cusco was very exciting, and the trip quickly began to fill in with colors, smells, and sounds.

Cusco is the ancient Andean center of the universe more or less, and the capital of the Incan empire. These days it may be the most visited city in South America, mainly because Machu Pichu is close by. It's full of tourists from everywhere, and is a very busy, bustling city full of countless restaurants and shops of every type and budget. The city is nevertheless an impressive and fascinating place, full of ancient as well as colonial stone and brick work, cathedrals, convents, markets, tiny narrow streets, hidden alleys, elaborate doorways and arches, cobblestone, steep stairways, many different plazas, and the many sights, sounds, and smells of a South American hub. As you can imagine, just walking around is a mini adventure every day. We are staying in a convent and home for orphan girls. They are so sweet and happy to meet and greet us. The warmth they show is truly impressive. They love to hold hands with us, and hug and kiss Julia constantly. The home is a big place with two or three courtyards, a playground, a tiny cafe for guest breakfasts, and many, many rooms for the girls, the nuns, and the guests. It's very clean and well kept, with many hands sharing in the chores of gardening, cleaning, and scrubbing the walkways. It's a little bit more expensive than comparable rooms in hostels around the city, but being there is a special experience and supports a very good cause as well. It's sandwiched between a very old looking church and the train station with trains to Machu Pichu. It's across the street from the huge central market of Cusco, which is not really geared to crafts and tourists, but rather to everyday items—food, household goods, and most anything you could get at Mall Wart and then some. We've been warned that we are not in the safest neighborhood and that the central market is a good place to get a pocket picked, but we are careful and don't walk around with much of value.

Last night we went to a soccer game in the main stadium and had a blast. The level of play was, as expected, very high, and the local Cusco team won 3 to 0. The team is very good, with three players that also play for the national World Cup team. We sat in the cheap seats, which are not much different from the preferential seats. We paid about two bucks each.

Yesterday before lunch we went for a long walk up to and above the nearest ruin of Sacsayhuaman, pronounced more or less like “sexy woman”. We hadn't yet bought our tourist card, so we saw what we could from outside, which was impressive enough, and we plan to return now that we have our cards. The stones are absolutely enormous, and each one is cut perfectly and fitted so tight it is almost impossible to imagine how it could have been done without the help of magic and or extraterrestrials. One artist’s theory that we saw depicted in a surrealist painting explained the feat with the power of the earth and the power of lightning somehow doing the cutting while humans played a lesser role as middle men.

Machu Pichu

Wow. That’s all I can say about our four-day circuit of the Sacred Valley and Machu Pichu. The trip included many cool things, not the least of which was just getting out and about, riding the local busses and seeing the countryside. The first leg took us from Cusco to Pisac, a pretty painless bus ride despite standing room only. Pisac sits in the impressive Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River, several bus rides and a train ride upstream from Machu Pichu. Here the land is semi arid, and although the terrain is steep, the valley has a much more open feel than later on in the extreme cloud forests and overgrown gorges around Machu Pichu. The town is small, and had little car traffic, which was a nice change for us. The modern day Pisac is in the valley bottom, but the mountains all around are heavily terraced and Incan ruins are scattered along a lovely half- to full-day hike above the town. We had a great time getting some exercise and exploring, having different sites to ourselves much of the time. The terracing is incredible. So much work must have gone into them, and the steepness of the mountains never seemed to have stopped the people from building or planting. Even today, crops such as quinoa and other grains and who knows what else can be seen clinging even to unterraced slopes in a patchwork. Of course corn is a staple, but it seems to require more level ground. Julia and I wondered at the fact that the majority of the terraces seemed un-used other than for trails and tourism. We stayed the night in Pisac and generally had a nice time and enjoyed a mellow morning before continuing down river to Oyantaytambo, the end of the line as far as buses and the place to grab a night train to Aguas Calientes below Machu Pichu. Again, traveling the buses was a cheap and entertaining way to go, especially when the ride is broken up into bite sized pieces of an hour or less. I had a good time chatting with locals and learning some odds and ends. For example, we’ve learned that it's a good idea to ask the locals what the bus fare actually is before paying or you can easily get overcharged. One woman took it very personally when the ticket taker tried to overcharge us, because I had just finished asking her the price. She rallied to our defense, and I think she may have told the teenager that he would burn in hell for this kind of dishonesty (though her angry Spanish was extremely fast, and I could be wrong). Anyway, we saved about 12 cents, but worried about our backpacks on top of the bus after that. We reached Oyantay easily and were left with about six hours to kill before the night train to Aguas. Oyantay is another Incan site and home to some interesting history, including a memorable Incan victory over the Spanish (one of the few). Seeing the ruins, you can imagine them being easily defended. They are steep to the point of impenetrable unless you use the stairs, and the canal system which still flows with water could be seen. In the battle, the Incas flooded the lower areas and gave the mounted Spanish a hell of a time. These water canals are truly incredible, so precise and traveling such distances, sometime traversing sheer rock faces where they carved a narrow ledge and canal. Other wonders include super precisely cut huge stones, some of which were just laying around randomly, some in stacks and piles, like a spare parts yard. There were also some pretty extensive mazes of stone walls that were fun to get lost in.

We took the train in the dark, trying to make out the towering glaciers, rugged ridges and roaring Urubamba in the light of a nearly full moon. Arriving in Aguas Calientes around 9:30 p.m., we found a fairly affordable and friendly hostel, bought some snacks and water, and tried to get some sleep for our pre-dawn wake-up time. We were lucky enough to learn that it is possible to beat the vast majority of visitors to Machu Pichu who arrive by train from Cusco by getting there early. We climbed to the ruins by foot instead of bus, saving some money, but more importantly gaining a much greater sense of awe and amazement for the terrain as well as the lost city of Machu Pichu. The morning began while the town still slept, and we walked along a dirt road following the mighty roaring Urubamba for about one kilometer. For some reason we left our headlamp in our room, and the darkness added a big dose of adventure and excitement with the river so loud and the crazy steep jungled mountains soaring above our heads practically vertical on all sides. We were feeling like maybe we were sitting ducks for a mugging or some other unknown fate, especially because two people had followed us since we left the light of the city. We decided to shout a greeting, and they turned out to be tourists, a couple from Chile. The four of us walked together and we all felt safer. We arrived at the bridges (one for buses, one for foot traffic), crossed, and began the climb up ancient stone steps. The hike up was so awesome, with the dawn slowly coming on and the steep vertical terrain all around. Once it got a little bit light, our Chilean friends fell behind, and we enjoyed an invigorating brisk climb through the cloud forest. As it turned out we arrived to Machu Pichu just at full light and well before the sun broke above the eastern ridge. Perfect. We are so glad we did it this way. Already there were plenty of other tourists, mostly those that had completed the one, three, or four day Inca Trail trek. Julia and I wandered (and wondered) about in the lost city for a bit and then found ourselves a peaceful spot to enjoy the sunrise with its warmth and new sights becoming clearer by the minute. Julia took a catnap, I took some pictures, and we soaked it all in. Truly incredible. One of the coolest places I've ever been. The rest of the day was magical, but this early morning was my favorite.

Greetings from Bolivia!

The terrain and scenery here are impossible to truly capture in words, let alone the more subtle cultural obstacles and landscape.

The road to the town of Curva was something I will never forget. Super amazing! Especially the second half, which our new friend Bow and I spent on the roof like kings of the Bolivian countryside, sprawled out on mattresses and conforming sacks of bread and rice, seeing everything in all directions. I truly love traveling this way. This ride and the ride back from Pelechuco on the other end of our trek were well worth the wait. The bus top is unlike any other type of transportation, and I recommend it. We had soaring birds riding the air currents off the back of the bus, sometimes close enough to see into their strange eyes. These were cool birds, kind of like a cross between a huge magpie and a mini turkey vulture with a red beak and throat.

We passed countless llamas and alpacas, and some vicuñas. We passed through a dozen or so tiny and remote villages of crumbling adobe and wandering chickens and pigs. The people would stare and stare, rarely returning our waves and greetings, as if we weren't quite real. Several times we passed a person wandering with a flock of this or that, seemingly so far from any village that it may be that they don't go home for weeks at a time. Sometimes this seems like an idyllic lifestyle, and at others it seems as lonely and empty and barren as much of the lower mountain terrain. From afar it seems there are no trees most of the time, although up close it is full of life. All in all, the ride to Curva was a blast. Scary, yes. There actually were times when I felt the need to pre-visualize how and where I could jump off at the last second, and I wished Julia would find a way to climb out and onto the roof. Mainly though, I will remember the wild terrain, the massive, semi dry rock and glacier peaks gaining more and more vivid detail with our approach and the declining angle of the late afternoon sun. We arrived in Curva at the tail end of a soccer game. The tiny village was full of activity and visitors from neighboring valleys and from as far away as La Paz for the annual three day fiesta beginning the next day. We seemed to be the only gringos in town. We decided not to try to leave until after the fiesta on Monday, giving us Saturday and Sunday to watch the all day soccer tournament, hike, rest, and take in the village and the fiesta.

Hola de Huaraz

Now we are here in Huaraz, the "trekking and climbing Mecca of Peru", and it is obvious that even a month would have provided only a sampling. Huaraz is spectacular. Huge glaciated peaks sprawl out from practically the edge of town for miles and miles. From the rooftop patio of our funky hostel we can see at least a dozen beautiful summits, some just peaking out above the closer ridges, revealing only their sharp and craggy high points to tease us. Several others, including the massive dome of Huascaran (Peru's highest) are visible nearly in their entirety. The weather is perfect every day this time of year, dawning in a hazy cloudless blue that adds to the surreal floating appearance of the high glaciers shining in the morning sun. Later the warm and sunny afternoon fades to a calm and cool evening just cold enough to allow long pants and a jacket. There are tourists everywhere in the central parts of town, but they are all wearing technical fleece jackets and suntanned faces from various high altitude adventures. Many of the locals seem to be getting at least some small slice of the tourism pie. People are often well-dressed and stylish downtown, and if you don't head outside this small bubble of a dozen blocks or so it would hardly feel like the third world at all. Below the main strip however, the scenes are more familiar. Women crouched under makeshift tarps and umbrellas selling their grains, produce, breads, cheese, and all kinds of household items. Bicycle carts full of oranges with a loudspeaker and a guy riding and repeating into the microphone: oranges, mandarins, oranges, mandarins, oranges, mandarins. Locals’ restaurants are packed every day for lunch, offering a generous three or four course "menu" for a tiny fraction of what the tourists are paying two blocks away. So far we have opted for the expensive restaurants and the food is fantastic. Because it’s a third of the price of home, I have begun to forget that we are not rich. Cappuccinos and crepes, Argentinean steaks with mashed potatoes, risotto, roasted vegetables and excellent Chilean wine. Thai food. You name it.

We're back from our mini-climbing trip in the Ishinca valley, which was a huge success and an amazingly beautiful four days. We climbed two peaks, one on either side of this incredible valley—Nevado Urus and Nevado Ishinca—both in the ballpark of 18,000 feet. This valley is a fairly popular area for climbers acclimatizing for some of the bigger nevados, and is therefore a pretty busy place, especially around the central base camp. Julia and I, however, camped just a three minute walk below the main base camp, next to the river, totally private, totally idyllic and perfect. Rad. Definitely one of the most memorable camps of our lives. Magnificent granite boulders with striking lichens, a dense and thriving Polylepis forest full of large hummingbirds darting everywhere. The river itself tumbling and rumbling in small waterfalls and fairy pools where we occasionally saw cool aquatic birds diving and swimming downstream in pairs or groups of three or four. And of course the mountain! Tocllaraju to be specific. This is the 6000 meter nevado that sits at the back of the valley and undeniably dominates the landscape. All I can say is I am a huge fan of this mountain, and I probably took forty different pictures of it in different light and with different foregrounds to prove it. Like any other magnificent peak, like Shasta, like Illampu in Bolivia, like the Twighlights, like so many others, this mountain captivates the imagination so much that it's difficult at times to take your eyes off of it. Especially when the clouds are moving in and out, swirling around the summit, and the light is constantly changing.

Anyway, you get the feeling. When the alpenglow started in the evening, there was really no point in trying to do anything but stand around and gawk until the last bits of yellow then orange then bright pink then soft pink faded into a silvery blue-white that continued to glow powerfully hours after the rest of the valley was completely dark. And this peak is just one of over fifty peaks of 6000 meters or more in Peru. Just in the area immediately surrounding the Ishinca valley there are a dozen of these massifs which we were able to see once we climbed higher, on our way to the summits of Urus and then Ishinca the next day.

We had excellent luck, and climbed quite well together and in good style. On our first morning we changed our plans from climbing Ishinca to climbing Urus on the opposite side of the valley due to the fact that clouds were already building on the higher mountains and the fact that Urus, while a bit steeper, is a considerably shorter approach and simpler line in terms of route finding. We left our tent (after hiding all our valuables in the dense trees on the other side of the river) twenty minutes or so before first light. The approach from the valley floor to the snowline is a brutally straight up dirt slog for two thousand feet or so. Despite the awkward footing and despite the fact that it was Julia's first experience with the large and clunky clumsiness of plastic mountaineering boots, we found a good rhythm and steadily gained on and then passed a group of four friendly Swiss climbers who were less acclimatized than we were. Like most Euros that we have come across, they were much more technically equipped than necessary, fully harnessed, roped once they reached the snow, and carrying technical ice tools instead of a simple mountaineering axe. Seeing all this gear made me wonder momentarily if we had gotten good information, or if we were in over our heads. As it turned out, we were perfectly equipped.

Although the climbing was moderately steep in one or two places, there was enough soft snow and good steps to make climbing easy and no crevasses to deal with. We reached the summit easily around 10:00 a.m., removing crampons near the top and sticking to the striking white and golden granite boulders and slabs for the last 500 feet or so. We had the small summit to ourselves, and enjoyed a view that is nearly impossible to put into words—huge peaks on three sides, massive crumbling glaciers, brilliant turquoise glacial lakes, and building clouds already shrouding most of the highest summits around us. We didn't hang out long. The descent was fast and painless in the soft snow, and then fast and painful on the long dirt and scree trail straight down to the valley. All in all a perfect day!

The next day our nest of down and nylon was so seductively cozy we almost didn't get out of bed. As all mountaineers know, this is often the hardest crux of the climb, leaving the warmth of the bag well before dawn to brew a quick cup of tea and force the body to start its engines. Well, this one was a narrow escape. We had been up at four in the morning the day before, and already felt somewhat satisfied with one summit under our belts. Thank god we kicked ourselves out and got going, because we would have missed a truly unforgettable day. Ishinca is everything that a moderate alpine peak should be. In contrast to Urus, though slightly higher, more massive, and more glaciated, it is much less steep, and the approach is a gradual and scenic trail up through various levels of high alpine meadows, meandering streams, waterfalls, and striking boulders. Then up to the moraines and two different levels of glacial lakes. The peak itself is full of contrasts. The side facing the lakes is all nasty, near vertical rock and ice, and very unstable. However, two perfectly easy ridgelines offer themselves, one on either skyline. We chose to climb the right hand skyline. As it turned out, actually getting to the glacier is really the only exposed part of the whole day, as you have to climb a slippery granite, sand, talus, and slickrock trail around the back side of the highest lake to reach the snow. Once on the snow the climbing is easy, which is a good thing because it's impossible not to rubberneck at the views the whole time. We actually never put on crampons until the last twenty feet up to the summit itself. This side of Ishinca passes almost directly under the steep and menacing 6000 meter Ranrapalca, which was producing rock and ice fall on and off throughout the morning. (We could hear the echoes of the rocks, but never actually pinpointed the falling rocks themselves, lost in the vast face of the upper peak.) We took our time, somewhat tired still from the day before, and enjoyed the excellent weather. We passed a group of three climbers, a young American guide, a middle aged father, and an 11 year old! They had climbed the left ridgeline and were descending on our side. We decided to do the opposite, and descend the other side.

We got a little bit of good advice from the guide on how to avoid the seracs and crevasses on the other side, and pushed on to the summit—perfect, cloudless, all to ourselves, and even more impressive than the day before with unobstructed views of Tocllaraju, Palcaraju West and Palcaraju East, Ranrapalca, and countless other peaks of all sizes and personalities. Again, I have to stress how blessed we were with the weather, having no reason to rush the descent, no clouds, and no worries. The day before and the day after would have been a completely different experience with moderate to high winds, clouds, etc. As it was, we milked every last drop from this circuit, going out of our way, taking pictures, trying to commit everything to memory, knowing that the photos can never truly capture the terrain. We found the easy way down, made good time, scooted quickly through the only area of real objective hazard, an obvious rock fall zone, and crossed the dirty, grey and crunchy lower glacier. We high-fived, and were about to remove crampons and head down to the lower lakes when an ice cave with a small stream running out of it at the toe of the glacier caught my eye. I suggested we have a peek inside, and Julia was up for it. We mucked through some silt and mud and gravel, through the half ice, half water stream and ducked inside the mouth of the ice cave. Immediately we both gasped and I whooped with excitement. There was light coming from somewhere above! The cave opened into a long tunnel of perfect, solid, glacial ice, just big enough for a climber to half hunch, half crawl through! We immediately reached a consensus and began to scrunch our way up through the belly and into the intestines of this beautiful ice beast. The atmosphere in the tunnel was so wonderfully spooky and cool. The walls and ceiling were so smooth, sometimes opaque blue, sometimes perfectly, perfectly clear, so clear that the ice was optically correct and we could see sand and gravel trapped inside ice several feet thick with no distortion. The small amount of light entering from either end of the tunnel was more than enough to see by, and to bounce and reflect and create all sorts of trippy ethereal effects. The tunnel turned out to be maybe 150 to 200 feet from end to end, and consistently just big enough to move through. We spent some time just chillin' (hee hee) in the top end of the tunnel and taking pictures, hoping that some of the brighter and more striking illuminated ice features might come across on film. This was truly a crowning jewel for the day and a perfect side dish to compliment the wide open views and glaring brightness of walking on top of the glacier. We both felt very lucky, and grateful for our curiosity and healthy sense of adventure! The remainder of the day was standard fare, bonking blood sugars after nine hours on foot, resting and snacking in the alpine meadows, seeking shade after being baked on the glacier, rambling back to camp.

The next day was our third wedding anniversary! We spent it sleeping in, savoring the morning and the memories of the past few days, and the paradise we were camped in, packing up, cruising out with our heavy loads, somehow running into a taxi driver a mile up the trail, offering our last five Nuevo Soles (a whole other story), and making it back to Huaraz in time to eat out in style and sleep in a soft bed. Pretty perfect.

Reflecting

It's good to be heading home, but it will be weird to be back in the land of refrigerators, fancy cars, and manicured lawns. Our time in South America now again seems like a dream. Life here is so different, especially without things like work, school, bills, and obligations filling up most of the days. I’m going to try to remember specific moments, scenes, faces, and details. I search my mind for the random stuff, the everyday stuff. It’s easy to remember the amazing and the beautiful, the shocking and the disgusting. In reality though, these things are the exceptions. The tapestry of the trip is woven mostly of common things. It’s the rows and rows of street vendors that most tourists don’t dare eat from, and for good reason. It’s the guy with the cart full of oranges attached to a bicycle and a loud speaker mounted to a tall wooden poll who repeats “Naranjas a cincuenta (Oranges for fifty)” endlessly in a strange monotone. It’s the random stall in the central market that specializes in two completely unrelated items, like insoles and nail clippers or newspapers and semi-pornographic T-shirts. It’s the restaurant down from our hostel that offers “movie lunches” where the whole room is turned to face a dubbed American “B” movie as they scoop the inexpensive four-course lunch to their mouths without even looking at it. It’s the ever-alert street dogs that look very relaxed and well fed, and have mastered the art of ducking into local restaurants to beg and then out again before the owners have seen them. It’s the face of the indigenous man sitting on the steps of a colonial Spanish cathedral, smiling approvingly as I kick the soccer ball on the sidewalk with a group of five to eight-year-olds. It’s also the beggars, the children, the old, the deformed, and the ridiculous constant honking of horns.

There is so much more to tell, and many small things that cannot be told. Travel is addicting, and we have only begun to scratch the surface of South America. We will be back.

CONTACT US