{"id":90,"date":"2010-08-31T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2016-09-18T16:48:44","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:48:44","slug":"peru-trip-12-final-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/peru-trip-12-final-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Peru Trip #12 – Final Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Peruvian adventure has been both fascinating and – strangely enough – restful. A change is as good as a rest, so they say, and I have to say that perutourism.com<\/a> have really done well in escorting me around the country – meeting me everywhere and ensuring I get the buses, trains and planes in my itinerary, picking me up from hotels to take me to train stations, bus stations, and airports, and collecting me from them to transfer me to my new hotel, each time. It has meant the entire holiday has been stress free, as far as making arrangements is concerned – all of that is taken care of. The fact that the vast majority of the time I have had ‘private service’ – a driver, a guide, and me, either in a small minivan or private car – has meant that I’ve had a more personal experience than the description ‘guided tour’ usually implies, able to have a one-to-one with each guide, getting the most out of each place I have visited. Worth every penny – and the exchange rate has really been in my favour: Peru is cheap. And, of course, as my conversations with fellow travellers in the Cusco restaurant and at Intipunku proved, this is the surest way to insulate oneself from the potential downsides of being in a very poor country.

\nHighlights<\/strong>
\n\"Me
\nThe highlights of the trip include, of course, the Lords of Sipan
\nMuseum, which was an extremely well thought out, brilliantly executed,
\nand fascinating museum, which taught me more about the Moche people than
\nany other visit; and Machu Picchu, the deserved crown of Peruvian
\nancient architecture, unmolested by anything but the jungle for 500
\nyears since it was abandoned, an absolute jewel set in some of the most
\nstunning scenery I have been fortunate enough to discover. These two
\nreally stand out as the most amazing visits of my trip. But also of
\ncourse Huaca de la Luna was an eye-opening masterpiece, too, showing
\nthat the Moche produced all the stunning artwork known so well from
\ntheir ceramics, in relief on the walls of their temples, too. I really
\nenjoyed the extensive collection of Moche ceramics at the Casinelli
\nMuseum, and the Lady of Cao pyramid and museum at El Brujo proved the
\nMoche had great Queens as well as Kings. I was suitably awe-struck by
\nthe megalithic scale of the Inca architecture at Saqsaywaman, despite
\nonly the foundations remaining, and only 20% of the site open to
\ntourists, and I really enjoyed the stunning Inca palace at
\nOllantaytambo, with its technical wizardry, wonderful location, and
\nstill living streets and squares.<\/p>\n

Lowpoints<\/strong>
\n\"One
\nLowpoints, if there were any, were principally Nazca – I’d say ‘not to
\nbe recommended’, in the end: the discomfort of the experience outweighs
\nthe opportunity to take poorer photographs than one is able to google at
\na moment’s notice.<\/p>\n

Perhaps to be considered a lowpoint, but also a welcome rest, was my day in bed in Puno trying to breathe at 13000ft!<\/p>\n

But probably the only real ‘lowpoint’ as such, was, certainly during my
\nfirst few days, that my hip was still giving me grief, and the
\nassociated inability to do much walking, or, later, any serious climbs.
\nThe damage done to my hip through compensation issues related to my
\ncongenital back problem, came about as a result of my ThomasCook
\nsardine-can trip to Vancouver and back, in June. [KLM to Lima were much
\nbetter, and I paid extra for a good seat.] Having been using a stick
\nas recently as days before departure, and wearing a strap daily right
\nthrough the holiday, I am nonetheless grateful that, in the end, this
\nreally did not overly impact upon my Peruvian trip. I was restrained,
\ncautious, and careful, and it paid off. Only on a couple of occasions
\n(including the walk to Intipunku) did I really feel I was pushing it,
\nand, towards the end of this three week adventure (especially on the
\nwalk to Intipunku) my general caution and care seemed to have nurtured
\nenough healing for me to achieve the things I really wanted. All I
\nwould say that it has cost me (apart from the nuisances associated with
\nthe strap) were: I didn’t climb the pyramid at Tucume; not wanting to
\nclimb Amantani contributed to my decision to stay in bed on my first day
\nin Puno; and of course Wayna Pichu, the mountain peak overlooking Machu
\nPicchu, was out of the question, even though, by that point, I was
\nactually feeling not bad. But only 400 people are allowed up it each
\nday, and it’s apparently a seriously taxing climb, an absolute no-no for
\nanyone in my condition. But going to Intipunku, the Sun Gate, instead,
\nwas lovely! The Inca Trail, four days for 20 year olds on gap years or
\nUni summer breaks, was clearly exhausting even for those I saw arriving
\nat Machu Picchu for the dawn, and it’s more than 20 years since I last
\nwalked a long distance for several days in a row.<\/p>\n

Irrelevancies<\/strong>
\n\"The
\nOn my New Zealand holiday in 2007 there were quite a few stops arranged
\nby my travel agent that I really found superfluous (at best) or simply
\nspurious. I think I had greater control over this tour, with
\nPeruTourism.com, and managed to keep silly stuff to a minimum.
\nNonetheless there were a few things I could’ve foregone on a tour of
\nancient Peru: the horse show was definitely the most irrelevant – even
\ntiresome – hence this being its only mention; the brief stop at the Inca
\nBar to drink Chicha was charming but unnecessary; and the half dozen or
\nso churches I visited that I haven’t even mentioned in this blog. Most
\nwere actually ok, even quite interesting, but only for the syncretistic
\nincorporation of pre-Columbian symbols and motifs into Peru’s unique
\nbrand of Baroque Catholicism. I have to say that I concur with the
\nlong-held English tradition of anti-papism, and have been struck more
\nthan ever before by how (to use one of their favourite words) ‘evil’ an
\ninstitution the Catholic Church is. [Do see Stephen Fry’s wonderful critique of the Catholic Church.<\/a>]
\nOK, so the British (with help from the Germans, Irish, French, Belgians
\nand Dutch) exterminated much of the indigenous population of North
\nAmerica, and left a poisonous legacy in Africa, the Middle East, and
\nelsewhere. But the surviving First Nations, in Canada at least, have
\nmanaged to keep an unbroken line of tradition going, there; Africa is
\nproudly reasserting its own culture, and flexing its muscle in the
\nAnglican family. India is returning to her former glory after the brief
\nperiod of colonial nuisance. Here, in South America, following the
\nvile practices of the Inquisition, 90% of the people are still Catholic,
\nspeak Spanish, and view the darker skinned, more purely indigenous
\npeople who still speak Runisamy (the Quechua language) or Aymara, with
\ndistaste. I knew the British had a lot to answer for around the world.
\nNow I have seen how much the Spanish have to answer for, too.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Machu<\/p>\n

Finally, in a sort of sad, geeky kind of way, for a solo traveller in a
\nforeign country, I have to say that my Mac is my friend. It has given
\nme Facebook; enabled me to do all this blogging; iPhoto and access to
\nFlickr have enabled me to process and display all my holiday pics as I
\ngo along; and Hoyles games has wiled away the odd hour of an evening in a
\nhotel room before sleep. The iPhone of course is the compliment – and I
\nam very glad of the new EU cap on data roaming charges introduced in
\nJuly: I have spent more than in the past, it’s true, because I simply
\ndidn’t do data roaming in the past. But the cap means I now know what
\nthe max cost will be, and I have spent that: ergo the new rules are good
\nfor the telecomms companies. Foursquare<\/a>
\nI have to say has been lots of fun, on my iPhone, and I have become
\nMayor of two hotels in Peru, and, amazingly, became Mayor of Machu
\nPicchu, on Foursquare, too! How cool is that?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Peruvian adventure has been both fascinating and – strangely enough – restful. A change is as good as a rest, so they say, and I have to say that perutourism.com have really done well in escorting me around the country – meeting me everywhere and ensuring I get the buses, trains and planes in … Continue reading “Peru Trip #12 – Final Thoughts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-journeyman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}