South American Trip February 25 -- March 10 -- Watery Aspects

I had been to Ecuador and Peru in 1966, thanks to Uncle Sam, but this trip with Lene was much better.  All I said was, "Whatever happens will be nice; so relax and enjoy." Lene chose the destination and the tour operator, carried the passports and the money, negotiated better seats and tipped the many people who helped us.  I enjoyed everything especially her company. In the past she tended to isolate with me, but on this trip she was an equal partner in starting and maintaining conversations and friendships with fellow tourists. When we sail I take the planning, worrying and laboring oar, but not on this vacation. Monogram Tours runs a very classy operation. We were met at and dropped off at each airport and hotel, by local people with cell phones back to the office. Almost every time it was the local host and his or her driver. With two people, a car, and airlines that change plans, it was amazing to me that there were no dropped balls. One driver was about twenty minutes late so he called a co-worker for another firm in the industry who found us and chatted with us at Starbucks until he arrived, and apologized. Yet so many flights and hotels make for a less fun experience that aboard the ILENE, where side benefits are that we get to eat a lot more of our own, healthier, home cooked meals, our planning is a lot more flexible, our cats can come along, and we do not have to pack and get to airports about every day and a half. 

Between Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos our flight stopped in Guayaquil, where the Hammerberg put in back in 1966. It was a very sleepy small and impoverished town back then but now has 3.5 million residents!

The first of our four Galapagos days was lost due to airline delays. The islands, look bleak from the air, set in the sea.

Nearing the airport we flew close to an island that I thought seemed like the island which was the setting for "The Beak of The Finch" and later Google confirmed that indeed it was Daphne Major.  Clearing into Baltra airport from Ecuador should be a snap, like flying from New York to Chicago, but it is not. For one thing there is the systematic collection of the $100 per person entry fee, which in our case had been prepaid with receipt by the tour. They inspected the interior of our hand luggage and had a dog sniff all the checked luggage, apparently sniffing for drugs. They are very concerned with the importation of alien species, intentional or not.

Once on the airport's island we had a five minute bus ride, a five minute boat ride to Anta Cruz, the central island, a 45 minute bus ride across the center of that island to Puerto Ayoro, its town, on its southern side, a five minute boat ride to the hotel's side of the port and an eight minute walk to the the Finch Bay Eco Hotel with its pool between the building and the small beach. There is a bunch of sea bums who climb our of the water and like to use up the shaded benches on the docks. Witty and Alfie, you now have competition for Lene's heart.

It is warm here; we're about 40 miles south of the equator. We were each being given a free glass of wine at the bar with the excellent four course dinner. This is an excellent hotel, though the alternative accommodations, on a boat, would have been even better.

Next day was a land day, exploring the highlands, the crater pits and the land tortoises.

Then a jaunt in to town for a postcard and stamps and a lipstick for Lene who left her collection of them in Quito. On the way I saw a flag of the ARC, a rally for cruising sailers. ILENE's romp on the Caribbean 1500, from Hampton VA to Tortola BVIs in 2010 was an ARC event. In the launch, they call them pangas, from town to our hotel, I saw a group of folks who had the fit lean look of cruising sailors. Yes, they are on the ARC and set to depart next day for the Marquesas, about 3000 miles west of here. That made my day.

Next morning, an earlier breakfast than usual to join a group of 15 on the hotel's 60 foot yacht, m/v Sea Lion, bound for Santa Fe Island, about 18 miles to the ESE. Not much wind.

We came to a cove and one crew got into and detached the big dink and affixed the mooring line from the boat's bow to the cleat on the mooring. The matting at the bow of the dink and pangas

is because embarkation and debarkation is over the bow to the dock or seawall. Our first excursion was by dink to the beach (only our feet got wet) to look at the colony of about 40 sea lions, lounging and playing on and off the beach.

We learned to distinguish between the genders by the shapes of their foreheads. There were a couple of babies only two weeks old, maybe 18 inches long.

They have no fear of humans but our guide told us to stay maybe four feet away and not use flash, though it was full sunlight. We learned about their feeding and mating habits and their enemies -- sharks, which sometimes catch them when they go out to catch fish. Mamas turn this fish to milk and nurse their young -- they are sea mammals.

Then a walk on a rocky path, after we put on our shoes, to a hill covered with many cactus trees. These flower all year long and each male of the species of land iguana who live only on Santa Fe, yellow orange in color, sits in the shade of the trunk of his own cactus tree and eats the fruit bulbs when they fall off. All female iguanas are welcome.

Back to the boat for a good full lunch on China with cloth tablecloths and napkins. Then back to the dinghy with snorkel gear. They provided "Snorklepro" brand gear which fit me better than any other I have tried. The fish were plentiful and varied in their multicolored show. I especially liked the yellow orange mullet which swam at surface level, above my eye level and are said to be tasty, and the King Angelfish, black except for a white vertical stripe down the middle of its side, a long white protrusion underneath, a thin violet thin stripe of piping along its top edge and a shockingly brilliant small yellow tail.  After this it was time to cavort with nature's cavorters: the sea lions, who were swimming very near shore. Our naturalist guide, Soto, advised us to swim in close to the rocks and then move away, drawing the seals out to play with us. Through our masks, under the water surface, we saw a fabulous display of their dexterity.  Next it was off to try to find sea turtles, also in this same unnamed bay, but we had done this in the Tobago Cays and I was tired so I went back to the boat. I hauled in the mooring line when the man in the dinghy cast it off the mooring.

During the ride home, I asked a lot of questions about the boat and then offered to take the helm. "You want to?"  "Yes!" And so he let me have it.

The boat does not have autopilot not a chart plotter. I just love a driving boats.

The first half of our last full day in the Galapagos paradise we visited the Charles Darwin Nature Center, which is at the far eastern end of Charles Darwin Avenue along the waterfront of Puerto Ayoro. The place was reopened last week after extensive renovations, but was rather underwhelming, with its focus on the raising of the Giant Tortoises. Then, after lunch we went by a much smaller boat to Devine Bay, to the west of Puerto Ayoro, where we  saw some blue footed boobies,

a unique Galapago breed, hiked across the peninsula to the colony of black marine iguanas which swim down using their long powerful tails to propel them, grab onto rocks with their large claws and bite off the algae.

Back to the boat for a round of cooling but unspectacular snorkeling except that Lene followed a sea tortoise around. Lene had no great expectations for the Galapagos but now she wants to return.

An 11.5 hour travel day brought us to Lima Peru. Its airport and seaport are in Callow, where again, I had been with the USS Hammerberg

in 1966. Our hotel was in the fashionable Miraflores section, set on a high bluff above a narrow beach with Pacific rollers coming in from Asia. A lot like Miami Beach with high rises and wealth

 The Sacred Valley, a richly fertile narrow flat area through with the Rio Urubamba, brown with erosion flows, ultimately to the Amazon, surrounded by steep jungle mountains. We stopped at two ancient Inca settlements on terraced hillsides, where we climbed, a lot, to the stone structures.

The first was near Pisac and the last is at Ollantaytambo.

If you are a "if you have seen one church (or in this case Inca place you have seen them all"  type person, this trip is not for you.  Between the two we stopped for shopping in Pisac.

Next morning we were dropped at the railroad station of  Ollantaytambo for the 90 minute ride to the tiny town that is the base camp for Machu Picchu: Aguas Caliente. The train was crowded but with tables and we had tea and a sort of large hot flat pastry filled with raisins and quinoa, analogous to snack and beverage service on an airplane, but served on china with metal cutlery. 

But the scenery was the main attraction. The river narrowed as did the valley. The river was continuous rapids as the valley descended in altitude. The water, appearing like chocolate milk, swirled around boulders, moving, by my estimate at eight knots. And the mountains rose very sharply and steeply close aboard. We descended into a rain forest with its different ecology. The "Inca Trail" to Machu Picchu, joined the tracks and then rose far above us into the mountains. This part of the trail is a four day trek for the fit. Our guides told us that day one is exhilarating "and then, on day two, you die", from the strain. We also learned that the Inca sites we climbed the day before were good for conditioning our legs for Machu Picchu. Our bus passes were scanned and we were off on a half hour bus ride from the village to the main attraction that crossed the river and then climbed about 2000 feet via about 20 switchbacks to the site, arriving at about 10:30. There,  separate site tickets and passports were examined and we were in. And it is a breathtaking site. The town of stone houses, factories, warehouses and temples was built by the Incas between 1450 and the arrival of Pisarro in 1532. It was not finished but was abandoned from then until it was put on the map by Yale's Prof. Hiram Bingham in 1911 (the same year that the NYPL and Grand Central Station opened). So for 380 years it lay dormant. The city or citadel is on a steep hillside plateau in the saddle of a ridge among even higher hills, east and west, with that raging milk chocolate river winding around the site about 2000 feet below. The hillsides are terraced for agriculture with some llama grazing contentedly. Water flowed through it from springs higher in the mountains and it gets lots of sun.

The granite rocks did not have to be carried up to the site because the whole mountain is granite. Speculation about how the Incas split and polished the rocks was discussed. Speculation because while they were obviously well educated no evidence of Incan writing has yet been found. It is not a very flat plateau, with elevations  within varying by perhaps 400 feet. During a delicious buffet lunch at the cafeteria just outside the site my body fought with my mind. The later wanted to continue touring the site -- by then the rain had stopped -- but my body said no way! During our second day in Machu Picchu Lene elected to shop the tiny town and enjoy a message.  I went back up and was at the site, alone, for four hours, of hiking and climbing the steep trails. The first two hours involved a steady but light rain, and the sun did not break through the clouds until the fourth hour. 

The most famous views of the site are essentially looking westward over the stone city with a mountain at its west end in the background. One can climb a trail to the summit of that mountain but the number of people allowed per day is limited and we had not obtained a permit, a month in advance. 

If one does an about face after climbing a bit, one sees the entrances to trails. To the right, around the south side of the bigger Machu Picchu ("old mountain") itself, which towers over the east end of town, is the trail to the Inca Bridge. The path averages about three feet wide, along the face of a near vertical mountainside and gives a view of the part of the river, and the thundering sound of the crashing waters rising 2000 feet. At the end of this trail a strong wooden gate bars further access. A retaining wall was built up against the cliffs with a twenty foot wide section naked except for several old wooden rails. The trail continues past this bridge but only for Incas -- who are extinct. 

The other two trails to your left, lead to the peak of Machu Picchu itself (for me "the trail not taken") or to the Sun Gate. A stony path with stone stairs in parts, along the north side of the mountain to that site, higher than the climbable peak at the other end of town. There are stone structures at the Sun Gate. The path consists of one very long path alongside the mountain, with views back to the ancient stone city, the switch back road that the buses take, and the river, below.

On the train back to Ollantaytambo the pastry given out with the tea was savory, like some sort of pizza. And the crew of three stewards/conductors put on a fashion show and offered to sell us the sweaters and jackets. At the terminal, Emir and his driver for a two hour drive back to Cusco. 

Our trip was toward the end of the low season, the rainy season, which meant that rain and clouds were a problem at Machu Picchu. The positive side is that five times as many people are there in the high season, making it hard to pose for pictures and to traverse the narrow stone staircases.

One thought that passed my legally trained mind was that the experience would not be permitted in the US due to liability fears. Our building codes have standards for the width of steps, the grade, and for hand rails. The only boundaries I saw were to temporary, to keep people away from small areas so the grass could grow.

I very nice winter vacation, thank you, with just enough water to keep me happy.