Thursday, 1 March 2018 01:15 am
Peru Report
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deckardcanineI've been back from Peru for more than a month now. Didn’t get significantly tanned, my bug bites have subsided, and I’ve readjusted to the winter chill.
Not that it felt like a tropical summer for most of the trip. Only on a few days, in Lima and Puerto Maldonado, did I wear shorts. The rest was at rather high elevation. And despite Contiki's stated drug-free policy (not in evidence in Vietnam when our guide led us to a hookah bar), they encourage the use of coca leaves to combat altitude sickness. I settled for a few coca candies, being careful not to overindulge or to take any to the airport. You wouldn't eat them for flavor, but they're OK for medicine and reportedly taste better than leaves.
Less honest than the drug policy is what I'd read about tipping. It is not a country where you should tip only when the service is very good; these people are about as dependent as their counterparts in the U.S., if not more so. In the last 15 years, Peru has developed a pretty decent economy, but there are still signs of poverty. Some towns have lots of buildings with deliberately unfinished top floors to avoid taxes. Some, like muddy smuggling center Juliaca, are dangerous enough that the bus driver won't stop there if he can help it. Other towns, like Ollantaytambo, rely on tourism so much that I wonder where the citizens live; you can walk many blocks and see only hotels, restaurants, and stores, and more than half the vehicles are taxis or police cars. Pretty much everywhere, you'll find few beggars and no buskers (I assume that's what the "no trumpet" signs are about), but many people aggressively try to sell souvenirs, or they may encourage a photo with a baby alpaca and say you'll owe "whatever you want" but keep asking for more afterward. Every town has, shall we say, free-range dogs and cats, who don't appear to be starving, but sometimes you see them digging into trash piles.
You may also find obstacles in your three-star hotel amenities. I had a few ants on my first bed. Some rooms have no carpets and are too big for effective temperature control. Don't count on hot water -- or any water -- to last long, perhaps especially if you come with a group. Not all hotels offer bottled water, tho I never drank from the tap. Blackouts may occur. You get only one key per room and are advised to turn it in at the desk each time you leave the premises. Try not to come back after 10 p.m., or you may find yourself banging on a locked front door. I didn't need to bring my own TP, but it's a good idea anyway. Also note that there's always a trash can near the toilets, because you're not supposed to flush the TP. My worst experience was with a tall bathtub with awkwardly installed metal rails for a sliding shower door; I still see where I scraped my toe.
There are slightly more than three Peruvian soles to the U.S. dollar. Since this difference isn't as radical as with the Vietnamese dong, and since the sol symbol isn't far off from "$," you may get a momentary shock when you see prices listed. In general, you can get good value for your money, as was most plain to me when I got a great haircut, complete with eyebrow trim, for only 15 soles. I added a nice tip, of course.
Peru's greatest pride is cuisine, said to be even better than France's nowadays. They do have a good mix of domestic and international options, including a fair number for vegetarians, tho I frequently ate meat for the sake of experimentation. (The one vegan on our tour generally had to do her own thing.) Even our one box lunch impressed us. Their traditional fare is hit-and-miss to me, but that's no surprise. The chaufa and the causa libre can be all right as long as you like the ingredient ratio. Get used to plenty of quinoa and soup, not to mention some of the world-record 4,000 varieties of potatoes. The lúcuma is a bland fruit on its own but makes an OK milkshake. Alpaca steak tastes like beef steak, from my memory. Beef heart tastes like other beef. I found guinea pig inedible, but maybe that was just the particular picnic preparation. Don't be put off by "monkey meat"; it's really just soya. Whatever you order at a restaurant, you probably won't want both an appetizer (often labeled "entree") and a main course, because they pile it up even more than in the U.S. -- especially the absurdly large aeropuerto especial. You might go for dessert at one of the Choco Museos, which also offers a history lesson. At breakfast, I got tired of having to guess whether an orange fruit was cantaloupe, mango, or papaya.
As for drinks, the signature pisco sour varies widely in sourness, rendering it a gamble; I liked the one I made myself at the Peruvian Encounter best. The colca sour tastes fine at first but develops an odd aftertaste. I never saw any milk to drink straight, which makes sense in a largely lactose-intolerant land. The Coca-Cola Company (which I realize might still use coca in Peru) totally dominates the soft drink market, leaving no space for Pepsi. I got a guilty pleasure out of their Inca Kola, which smells and tastes like liquid bubble gum. I missed my chance to try hot wine, but since I don't normally go for hot beverages or wine, maybe it's just as well. Might I say, I like the Peruvian way to toast: "Arriba, abajo, al centro, y adentro" -- up, down, to the center, and in, with the glass moving accordingly.
I have little butchered English to report, but for some reason, fonts often had C's look a lot like G's, and I swear I read "Garry" for "Carry." More amusing to me were the frequent unlicensed uses of American branding. I counted five different Looney Tunes in one day, two of them lending their names to local companies. Disney made a big target as well, of course. Some borrowed fictitious company names, like "Kwik-E Mart" and "Gusteau's Restaurant/Cooffee [sic]." Sometimes American companies had advertising they could hardly get away with in the U.S., like Duracell with a pink bunny mascot. (That one tied in with an ad for Los Ultimos Jedi, which was the first time I entertained the idea that "The Last Jedi" meant to imply a plural.)
The Contiki group was more than half Australian, so many of us hadn't taken a single Spanish course. Apart from our guides, I probably knew the language best. The rest of us were from the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand, at least for my leg of the journey. (Tourists pay for different dates and keep coming and going on these tours.)
For me personally, the highlight of the trip was my designated roommate, Kevin Pacelli from Connecticut, who has since turned 22. He says that I was the highlight for him, too. With our common interests, opinions, and appreciation of each other's doings, we became friends so fast that others thought we'd been friends beforehand. Sadly, personal complications got Kevin to leave a week early. I took cold comfort in getting double rooms to myself thereafter. But we still have email and Facebook. (Strange how many Kevin P.'s I know in RL and online.)
From a group standpoint, the worst moment was when our bus slipped and broke down on an icy rural road. It took four hours for the backup bus to arrive, and we had to skip ziplining and go unusually late to the hot springs. (Yup, late spring in summer.) We later saw another bus with the same trouble, so be warned that this may happen pretty often.
In truth, we'd probably have skipped the zipline anyway due to rain. But as the rainy season goes, those two weeks were quite dry. Almost like DC. I never had to put a bag over my backpack. We did eventually have to trudge in high-top boots through three kilometers of slippery/sticky rainforest mud and back, with several falls, but that would've been considerably more of an ordeal with a typical rainfall, especially if it came during the hike. (At one point, I growled in frustration, scaring people too far away to tell it wasn't some kind of beast. Apparently, my love of animals is taking a toll on my humanity.)
More Chronological Details…and Pictures
My trip started in the antique Miraflores district of Lima. I considered it a good sign when my cabbie asked where I was from; no doubt he could tell that Spanish wasn't my first language, but at least I wasn't a blatant estadounidense. He told me that most tourists in Peru are European, whereas U.S. visitors usually come for business purposes. At my request, he also explained the "JR." on many signs as "jirón," which refers to inner streets only in Peru and to shreds in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. Go fig.
Miraflores has a lot of public outdoor art.
The Parque del Amor includes a big red heart and arrow, as well as El Beso here.
Our group was not in Lima during the pope’s much-anticipated visit. Just as well, I’d say, for our purposes. Anyway, we did get some church culture, like the catacombs under the Convento de San Francisco.
Parque Kennedy, named for JFK, has about two dozen cats in or near it. This one appears to be most adored.
We went on to the distinctive Yanahuara suburb of Arequipa, with arches adorned with old writing. This one boasts how they were never conquered, being situated at the foot of a volcano for a good reason.
Some of us got to see the mummy of an Inca virgin sacrifice dubbed Juanita. She looks rather small for age 12+, presumably due to shriveling, but well-preserved enough to be kinda creepy. She still has all her teeth.
One cool thing about mountainside cities is that at night, it looks as if the distant house lights are floating. Kevin noted a passing similarity to the land of the dead as portrayed in Coco. By day, we saw something else on a different mountainside: a giant ad. Some corporations have no shame.
Moving away from the major cities, we got to see plenty of animals. These included familiar livestock -- cows, donkeys, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits -- but also alpacas, llamas, huarizos (llama-alpaca hybrids), vicuñas (all owned by the government, having the best and priciest wool), and guanacos. Some we met on a farm; others wandered with no obvious keeper in sight. I never realized before how cute alpacas could be.
We had to get an early start toward Colca Canyon to look for condors. Cruz de Condor (shown here with me and Kevin) had one show up eventually, but we saw more elsewhere, too high up and in motion for a good photo on my part. Oh well, they're rather ugly anyway. I took more interest in the Andean caracara, a small bird that makes a cool noise.
The village of Maca in the canyon seems pleasant enough, but our guide, nicknamed Jhono, asked us not to take pictures of the captive falcons, lest we support a bad industry. I took interest in the church, which had angled mirrors on the walls by the saint paintings; my best guess is that they mean to encourage introspection. There's also a field of vivid statues, my favorite including a fox.
Sadly, the Andean fox was not among the critters I got to see. Neither were the viscacha, agouti, capybara, puma, or…well, I didn't share some tourists' eagerness to spy an anaconda. More on what we did see later.
One morning we rode “triciclos” -- not tricycles in the usual sense but reverse pedicabs, with the pedalers in back, offering customers a better view at the apparent cost of safety. From there, we took a ferry on Lake Titicaca, which properly uses a throaty sound in between C and G, distinguishing the second half from the unfortunate Spanish word. The name is said to mean "stone puma." Peruvians traditionally revere a "trilogy" that consists of guardians for different altitudes: the condor, the puma, and the serpent. (Aspen would like that.)
Here was one of my favorite parts of the trip: the Islas Uros, inhabited artificial floating islands made of pressed reeds. You may find it unnerving to stand on "ground" with so much give, but the Uru natives seem to enjoy themselves, at least with tourists around. We met only women, girls, and a male toddler there, because the men and older boys had school and work elsewhere. Lest you think the women second-class citizens, one of them is the particular island's president (leading about 25 people). When neighbors can't stand each other, they may literally split an island. They somehow get satellite TV in their huts.
The lake also includes a natural rocky, grassy island: Taquile. It grows muña mint, which Jhono playfully identified as cannabis. You can just see Bolivia from there.
Native men and boys in the area use hats to signal their relationship status. For Taquile, that means a knit hat that hangs on one side for engaged, on another for single and looking, or in back for single and not looking (generally on the younger boys; they don't take open gays well). I volunteered to try on a preteen's hat; Jhono translated his subsequent Aymara reaction as "Really?" Personally, I prefer this married man look the women gave me.
Peruvian towns have various Christian (possibly syncretic) festivals. For instance, Jhono and his young son plan to dance in costume together at the next Festividad Virgen de Carmen. Beware if you want to visit Puno during the Virgen de la Calendaria celebration; the town square will be noisy into the wee hours.
In the Cusco region (whose name reminded not just me of The Emperor's New Groove), we saw the Raqchi ruins. This is what remains of an Inca temple after Spanish conquest.
Within the city of Cusco -- home to more old VW Bugs than I'd ever seen before -- is the sun temple, Qoricancha (among other transliterations from Quechua). It demonstrates one thing that Incas did better: packing smoothly hewn stones close enough not to need mortar. You can see a big difference in where the Spaniards took over.
If you see a rainbow flag in Peru, it's usually the flag of Cusco. Only by putting the purple stripe on top does it become an LGBT flag.
The San Pedro Market in Cusco is vast enough to have something for everyone, whether food, knockoff clothing, herbal remedies, or trinkets. You may find something to shock you, like stone penises or dried alpaca fetuses for rituals. What you won't find are trashcans anywhere nearby. As you leave to look for them, you may also see street vendors selling what you thought they couldn't, like brass (or not) knuckles.
Several cities have a chocolate museum. If you like chocolate, go ahead; have some exotic samples. In more questionable taste are the restroom doors that use strategically placed giant cocoa beans to illustrate the difference between men and women.
The Valle Sagrado de los Incas is home to the Pisac ruins. They make for a bit of a hike, but they were just a warmup for the main draw of Peru, which you should already know.
We tourists who were less confident in our endurance took the train to the mountain town of Aguas Calientes -- one of the few Peruvian places with hotels taller than four stories -- and then a bus on a worryingly narrow road. There, near the Urubamba River, was Machu Picchu, now home to llamas and lizards.
I returned to Cusco sorer than you'd think, so I sure am glad to have skipped the Rainbow Mountain segment of the tour. Having a free day, I walked the historical San Blas district.
The Mendívil family has their name all over it. The most famous member was Hilario Mendívil, a 20th-century artist with a modest museum. His most distinctive artworks to me were the cuellilargos, longnecks, inspired by llamas. Does this look like a respectful rendering of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to you?
I might sooner recommend the Pre-Columbian Art Museum or even the museum of Máximo Laura’s tapestries, but I didn't photograph them.
At last, we headed toward the rainforest. This created inconvenience long before we arrived: First the starting airport was terribly slow to list gates, and then the Puerto Maldonado airport provided minimal services. We did some boating before the aforementioned mud hike, and because of my concerns about that mud, this capuchin is the last photo I took for a long while.
I can't endorse many of the activities we did out there. The canopy trek is disappointingly short if you don't sign up for the zipline, and the kayak trip was tiring. Much more enjoyable were the animals: Apart from several species of monkey, we had thankfully distant stinkbirds, an adorably squeaky otter family, a Spanish-speaking parrot, and an unusually touchable squirrel we found indoors (Aussies especially loved that one). By night, we went out to see creepier critters, including tarantulas, a scorpion, and caimans.
The night life, if you will, got a bit scarier after we went to bed. The Sandoval Lake Lodge doesn't seem very secure against invaders. I heard scratching on the wall and flapping overhead. I decided not to turn on a light, lest I totally freak out. Fortunately, the only sign of intrusion in the morning was a new dead cockroach. I got used to the bugs around there.
Thankfully, the mud trail wasn't quite so hard on the way back, despite a more recent rain; I had a better idea of how to approach it. It was nice to return to Lima shortly thereafter, taking a little more time to enjoy it as a modern city. I could see going again someday.
Not that it felt like a tropical summer for most of the trip. Only on a few days, in Lima and Puerto Maldonado, did I wear shorts. The rest was at rather high elevation. And despite Contiki's stated drug-free policy (not in evidence in Vietnam when our guide led us to a hookah bar), they encourage the use of coca leaves to combat altitude sickness. I settled for a few coca candies, being careful not to overindulge or to take any to the airport. You wouldn't eat them for flavor, but they're OK for medicine and reportedly taste better than leaves.
Less honest than the drug policy is what I'd read about tipping. It is not a country where you should tip only when the service is very good; these people are about as dependent as their counterparts in the U.S., if not more so. In the last 15 years, Peru has developed a pretty decent economy, but there are still signs of poverty. Some towns have lots of buildings with deliberately unfinished top floors to avoid taxes. Some, like muddy smuggling center Juliaca, are dangerous enough that the bus driver won't stop there if he can help it. Other towns, like Ollantaytambo, rely on tourism so much that I wonder where the citizens live; you can walk many blocks and see only hotels, restaurants, and stores, and more than half the vehicles are taxis or police cars. Pretty much everywhere, you'll find few beggars and no buskers (I assume that's what the "no trumpet" signs are about), but many people aggressively try to sell souvenirs, or they may encourage a photo with a baby alpaca and say you'll owe "whatever you want" but keep asking for more afterward. Every town has, shall we say, free-range dogs and cats, who don't appear to be starving, but sometimes you see them digging into trash piles.
You may also find obstacles in your three-star hotel amenities. I had a few ants on my first bed. Some rooms have no carpets and are too big for effective temperature control. Don't count on hot water -- or any water -- to last long, perhaps especially if you come with a group. Not all hotels offer bottled water, tho I never drank from the tap. Blackouts may occur. You get only one key per room and are advised to turn it in at the desk each time you leave the premises. Try not to come back after 10 p.m., or you may find yourself banging on a locked front door. I didn't need to bring my own TP, but it's a good idea anyway. Also note that there's always a trash can near the toilets, because you're not supposed to flush the TP. My worst experience was with a tall bathtub with awkwardly installed metal rails for a sliding shower door; I still see where I scraped my toe.
There are slightly more than three Peruvian soles to the U.S. dollar. Since this difference isn't as radical as with the Vietnamese dong, and since the sol symbol isn't far off from "$," you may get a momentary shock when you see prices listed. In general, you can get good value for your money, as was most plain to me when I got a great haircut, complete with eyebrow trim, for only 15 soles. I added a nice tip, of course.
Peru's greatest pride is cuisine, said to be even better than France's nowadays. They do have a good mix of domestic and international options, including a fair number for vegetarians, tho I frequently ate meat for the sake of experimentation. (The one vegan on our tour generally had to do her own thing.) Even our one box lunch impressed us. Their traditional fare is hit-and-miss to me, but that's no surprise. The chaufa and the causa libre can be all right as long as you like the ingredient ratio. Get used to plenty of quinoa and soup, not to mention some of the world-record 4,000 varieties of potatoes. The lúcuma is a bland fruit on its own but makes an OK milkshake. Alpaca steak tastes like beef steak, from my memory. Beef heart tastes like other beef. I found guinea pig inedible, but maybe that was just the particular picnic preparation. Don't be put off by "monkey meat"; it's really just soya. Whatever you order at a restaurant, you probably won't want both an appetizer (often labeled "entree") and a main course, because they pile it up even more than in the U.S. -- especially the absurdly large aeropuerto especial. You might go for dessert at one of the Choco Museos, which also offers a history lesson. At breakfast, I got tired of having to guess whether an orange fruit was cantaloupe, mango, or papaya.
As for drinks, the signature pisco sour varies widely in sourness, rendering it a gamble; I liked the one I made myself at the Peruvian Encounter best. The colca sour tastes fine at first but develops an odd aftertaste. I never saw any milk to drink straight, which makes sense in a largely lactose-intolerant land. The Coca-Cola Company (which I realize might still use coca in Peru) totally dominates the soft drink market, leaving no space for Pepsi. I got a guilty pleasure out of their Inca Kola, which smells and tastes like liquid bubble gum. I missed my chance to try hot wine, but since I don't normally go for hot beverages or wine, maybe it's just as well. Might I say, I like the Peruvian way to toast: "Arriba, abajo, al centro, y adentro" -- up, down, to the center, and in, with the glass moving accordingly.
I have little butchered English to report, but for some reason, fonts often had C's look a lot like G's, and I swear I read "Garry" for "Carry." More amusing to me were the frequent unlicensed uses of American branding. I counted five different Looney Tunes in one day, two of them lending their names to local companies. Disney made a big target as well, of course. Some borrowed fictitious company names, like "Kwik-E Mart" and "Gusteau's Restaurant/Cooffee [sic]." Sometimes American companies had advertising they could hardly get away with in the U.S., like Duracell with a pink bunny mascot. (That one tied in with an ad for Los Ultimos Jedi, which was the first time I entertained the idea that "The Last Jedi" meant to imply a plural.)
The Contiki group was more than half Australian, so many of us hadn't taken a single Spanish course. Apart from our guides, I probably knew the language best. The rest of us were from the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand, at least for my leg of the journey. (Tourists pay for different dates and keep coming and going on these tours.)
For me personally, the highlight of the trip was my designated roommate, Kevin Pacelli from Connecticut, who has since turned 22. He says that I was the highlight for him, too. With our common interests, opinions, and appreciation of each other's doings, we became friends so fast that others thought we'd been friends beforehand. Sadly, personal complications got Kevin to leave a week early. I took cold comfort in getting double rooms to myself thereafter. But we still have email and Facebook. (Strange how many Kevin P.'s I know in RL and online.)
From a group standpoint, the worst moment was when our bus slipped and broke down on an icy rural road. It took four hours for the backup bus to arrive, and we had to skip ziplining and go unusually late to the hot springs. (Yup, late spring in summer.) We later saw another bus with the same trouble, so be warned that this may happen pretty often.
In truth, we'd probably have skipped the zipline anyway due to rain. But as the rainy season goes, those two weeks were quite dry. Almost like DC. I never had to put a bag over my backpack. We did eventually have to trudge in high-top boots through three kilometers of slippery/sticky rainforest mud and back, with several falls, but that would've been considerably more of an ordeal with a typical rainfall, especially if it came during the hike. (At one point, I growled in frustration, scaring people too far away to tell it wasn't some kind of beast. Apparently, my love of animals is taking a toll on my humanity.)
More Chronological Details…and Pictures
My trip started in the antique Miraflores district of Lima. I considered it a good sign when my cabbie asked where I was from; no doubt he could tell that Spanish wasn't my first language, but at least I wasn't a blatant estadounidense. He told me that most tourists in Peru are European, whereas U.S. visitors usually come for business purposes. At my request, he also explained the "JR." on many signs as "jirón," which refers to inner streets only in Peru and to shreds in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. Go fig.
Miraflores has a lot of public outdoor art.
The Parque del Amor includes a big red heart and arrow, as well as El Beso here.
Our group was not in Lima during the pope’s much-anticipated visit. Just as well, I’d say, for our purposes. Anyway, we did get some church culture, like the catacombs under the Convento de San Francisco.
Parque Kennedy, named for JFK, has about two dozen cats in or near it. This one appears to be most adored.
We went on to the distinctive Yanahuara suburb of Arequipa, with arches adorned with old writing. This one boasts how they were never conquered, being situated at the foot of a volcano for a good reason.
Some of us got to see the mummy of an Inca virgin sacrifice dubbed Juanita. She looks rather small for age 12+, presumably due to shriveling, but well-preserved enough to be kinda creepy. She still has all her teeth.
One cool thing about mountainside cities is that at night, it looks as if the distant house lights are floating. Kevin noted a passing similarity to the land of the dead as portrayed in Coco. By day, we saw something else on a different mountainside: a giant ad. Some corporations have no shame.
Moving away from the major cities, we got to see plenty of animals. These included familiar livestock -- cows, donkeys, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits -- but also alpacas, llamas, huarizos (llama-alpaca hybrids), vicuñas (all owned by the government, having the best and priciest wool), and guanacos. Some we met on a farm; others wandered with no obvious keeper in sight. I never realized before how cute alpacas could be.
We had to get an early start toward Colca Canyon to look for condors. Cruz de Condor (shown here with me and Kevin) had one show up eventually, but we saw more elsewhere, too high up and in motion for a good photo on my part. Oh well, they're rather ugly anyway. I took more interest in the Andean caracara, a small bird that makes a cool noise.
The village of Maca in the canyon seems pleasant enough, but our guide, nicknamed Jhono, asked us not to take pictures of the captive falcons, lest we support a bad industry. I took interest in the church, which had angled mirrors on the walls by the saint paintings; my best guess is that they mean to encourage introspection. There's also a field of vivid statues, my favorite including a fox.
Sadly, the Andean fox was not among the critters I got to see. Neither were the viscacha, agouti, capybara, puma, or…well, I didn't share some tourists' eagerness to spy an anaconda. More on what we did see later.
One morning we rode “triciclos” -- not tricycles in the usual sense but reverse pedicabs, with the pedalers in back, offering customers a better view at the apparent cost of safety. From there, we took a ferry on Lake Titicaca, which properly uses a throaty sound in between C and G, distinguishing the second half from the unfortunate Spanish word. The name is said to mean "stone puma." Peruvians traditionally revere a "trilogy" that consists of guardians for different altitudes: the condor, the puma, and the serpent. (Aspen would like that.)
Here was one of my favorite parts of the trip: the Islas Uros, inhabited artificial floating islands made of pressed reeds. You may find it unnerving to stand on "ground" with so much give, but the Uru natives seem to enjoy themselves, at least with tourists around. We met only women, girls, and a male toddler there, because the men and older boys had school and work elsewhere. Lest you think the women second-class citizens, one of them is the particular island's president (leading about 25 people). When neighbors can't stand each other, they may literally split an island. They somehow get satellite TV in their huts.
The lake also includes a natural rocky, grassy island: Taquile. It grows muña mint, which Jhono playfully identified as cannabis. You can just see Bolivia from there.
Native men and boys in the area use hats to signal their relationship status. For Taquile, that means a knit hat that hangs on one side for engaged, on another for single and looking, or in back for single and not looking (generally on the younger boys; they don't take open gays well). I volunteered to try on a preteen's hat; Jhono translated his subsequent Aymara reaction as "Really?" Personally, I prefer this married man look the women gave me.
Peruvian towns have various Christian (possibly syncretic) festivals. For instance, Jhono and his young son plan to dance in costume together at the next Festividad Virgen de Carmen. Beware if you want to visit Puno during the Virgen de la Calendaria celebration; the town square will be noisy into the wee hours.
In the Cusco region (whose name reminded not just me of The Emperor's New Groove), we saw the Raqchi ruins. This is what remains of an Inca temple after Spanish conquest.
Within the city of Cusco -- home to more old VW Bugs than I'd ever seen before -- is the sun temple, Qoricancha (among other transliterations from Quechua). It demonstrates one thing that Incas did better: packing smoothly hewn stones close enough not to need mortar. You can see a big difference in where the Spaniards took over.
If you see a rainbow flag in Peru, it's usually the flag of Cusco. Only by putting the purple stripe on top does it become an LGBT flag.
The San Pedro Market in Cusco is vast enough to have something for everyone, whether food, knockoff clothing, herbal remedies, or trinkets. You may find something to shock you, like stone penises or dried alpaca fetuses for rituals. What you won't find are trashcans anywhere nearby. As you leave to look for them, you may also see street vendors selling what you thought they couldn't, like brass (or not) knuckles.
Several cities have a chocolate museum. If you like chocolate, go ahead; have some exotic samples. In more questionable taste are the restroom doors that use strategically placed giant cocoa beans to illustrate the difference between men and women.
The Valle Sagrado de los Incas is home to the Pisac ruins. They make for a bit of a hike, but they were just a warmup for the main draw of Peru, which you should already know.
We tourists who were less confident in our endurance took the train to the mountain town of Aguas Calientes -- one of the few Peruvian places with hotels taller than four stories -- and then a bus on a worryingly narrow road. There, near the Urubamba River, was Machu Picchu, now home to llamas and lizards.
I returned to Cusco sorer than you'd think, so I sure am glad to have skipped the Rainbow Mountain segment of the tour. Having a free day, I walked the historical San Blas district.
The Mendívil family has their name all over it. The most famous member was Hilario Mendívil, a 20th-century artist with a modest museum. His most distinctive artworks to me were the cuellilargos, longnecks, inspired by llamas. Does this look like a respectful rendering of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to you?
I might sooner recommend the Pre-Columbian Art Museum or even the museum of Máximo Laura’s tapestries, but I didn't photograph them.
At last, we headed toward the rainforest. This created inconvenience long before we arrived: First the starting airport was terribly slow to list gates, and then the Puerto Maldonado airport provided minimal services. We did some boating before the aforementioned mud hike, and because of my concerns about that mud, this capuchin is the last photo I took for a long while.
I can't endorse many of the activities we did out there. The canopy trek is disappointingly short if you don't sign up for the zipline, and the kayak trip was tiring. Much more enjoyable were the animals: Apart from several species of monkey, we had thankfully distant stinkbirds, an adorably squeaky otter family, a Spanish-speaking parrot, and an unusually touchable squirrel we found indoors (Aussies especially loved that one). By night, we went out to see creepier critters, including tarantulas, a scorpion, and caimans.
The night life, if you will, got a bit scarier after we went to bed. The Sandoval Lake Lodge doesn't seem very secure against invaders. I heard scratching on the wall and flapping overhead. I decided not to turn on a light, lest I totally freak out. Fortunately, the only sign of intrusion in the morning was a new dead cockroach. I got used to the bugs around there.
Thankfully, the mud trail wasn't quite so hard on the way back, despite a more recent rain; I had a better idea of how to approach it. It was nice to return to Lima shortly thereafter, taking a little more time to enjoy it as a modern city. I could see going again someday.