Buenos Aires

We arrived in Buenos Aires last Sunday and have been spending the week at orientation, which is really just a million tours of the city. This has been nice, but organized tours can be a little boring sometimes. The city is divided into several distinct neighborhoods that include San Telmo, Recoleta, Palermo, La Boca, Downtown, and Congreso. Obviously there are more but these are the ones I am familiar with now. The neighborhoods range from really modern, sleek highrises to cobbled stone streets and questionable electricity.

Buenos Aires has a ton of public plazas and parks that celebrate their heros - historical and political. Big ones being Evita, San Martin and Leloir. It makes for a nice break up of the bustling street traffic, but can make getting around a little difficult. 

San Telmo, is Buenos Aires' oldest neighborhood and is noted to still have cobbled stone streets, but we came across these in other neighborhoods as well. But the buildings in San Telmo did have their own old world charm. Characterized by the colonial style of the buildings, they all go right up to the sidewalk and then once you enter it opens up into courtyards.

This one that we stopped at opened onto several courtyard lined from front to back and was two stories. The building was occupied by several shops and boutiques. The San Telmo neighborhood is well known for its tango bars, restaurants and coffee shops.

The La Boca neighborhood is right on the harbor and is historically where all of the shipyard workers lived. It is now occupied by a vibrant arts community but is very local heavy and not very tourist heavy. It is also home to Boca Juniors, Buenos Aires' championship soccer team.

The buildings in La Boca are very colorful and bright, many of them sided with corrugated metal that was discarded by ships in the harbor and repurposed by residents. The water is super polluted and did not smell good at all. 

Many of the buildings that were non-residential were industrial style buildings, but didn't really seem to be in use anymore. But that may not be true because I have still yet to figure out when people work here. 

We did a bike tour where we rode from Palermo, where I live, to the Universidad de Buenos Aires to see the architecture school. We tried to mainly ride through the park areas because the streets of Buenos Aires are still not friendly to bicyclists. 

View of downtown across the park.

Machu Picchu

So, obviously Machu Picchu was amazing. We took the first bus up in the morning to try to catch the sunrise, but it was really foggy so there wasn't much sunrise to see. But I kind of think that the fog added to the quality of the place and gave it a really powerful feeling.

We hiked up to the sungate which is about 1.5 miles one way and is at 8924 feet and they aren't kidding about the altitude getting to you. It doesn't seem like it should be that high but the air is definitely different and the hike was quite rigorous.

The terraces are a common sight and are part of the sacred rituals that the Incas employed not just for farming but they considered the stepped terrace a sacred symbol. 

Alpacas, or llamas, roaming around. 

Aguas Calientes, Peru

We arrived in Aguas Calientes by train. Aguas Calientes is at the base of Machu Picchu and is where you stay before or after the climb to the ruins. Again, it is clearly a tourist town but as opposed to Cuzco there were no personal vehicles or even taxis. The only vehicles were buses that took people up to Machu Picchu.

We walked around and explored this town aimlessly as well. Everything pretty much went right up to the streets and all of the restaurants opened onto the street. The people who worked there were always out front trying to get you to come inside by bribbing you with free food or drinks. Instead of "happy hour" several of the places referred to it as "happy days," which I thought was funny. 

I love all of the color that they use, it really makes a difference in the street scene.

Aguas Calientes has a hot springs right above it that we walked up to but as the day goes on the pools get pretty grimy so we didn't go in, but this is a good illustration of where this town is placed right in the Sacred Valley. The surrounding landscape is obviously pretty spectacular and breathtaking. We went to bed pretty early this night because we were taking the 6am train to Machu Picchu to try to catch the sunrise.

Cuzco, Peru

Arriving in South America after a 24+ hour travel, we got into Cuzco, Peru at 7 am and checked into our hostel. Luke, Jess, Ashley and I took a 5 hour nap. When we got up, after a hot shower we went out into the city to find tickets to Machu Picchu and food. Cuzco as a city, is teeming with cars, dirt and people. Seriously, the cars are bumper to bumper all everywhere and are not concerned with pedestrians at all. I'm pretty sure I almost died at least 5 times, both as a pedestrian and a passenger.

The street scene in Cuzco was really vibrant, everyone was really nice and friendly. While obviously primarily a tourist town certain parts of the city had their own thing going on. In addition to cars, people were everywhere on the sidewalks as well. There were lots of street vendors selling everything from lemonade out of a bucket, meat on a stick to carts and carts of candy and ice cream.

We ate lunch at a place called Pacha Papa's, which was recommended by our hostel as a place to get good local food, that was pretty safe. Even still, we had all heard a lot about the water and food and were being careful not to get sick. So, we ordered pretty safe dishes - margherita pizza and quinoa soup.

Jess and Luke were adventurous enough to try Peru's national drink, Pisco Sour. It is a cocktail of pisco (a white brandy), lime juice, sugar, bitters and egg whites. Sounds kind of gross right? I know but it almost tasted like a margerita and while very strong it was rather tasty. Too many though and you might regret some decisions and have quite the headache the next morning.

 

After that we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city and checking it out. Cuzco has a lot of public squares and plazas and we came upon a parade in one of the plazas that was for the Virgen del Carmen celebration, which is a combination of Andean pre-Columbian ceremonies and Catholicism where they parade around in masks reliving ancient gods and rituals that celebrate the virgin which represents the Mother of God and Mother Earth. The masks were a little creepy, but puppets freak me out so that isn't a surprise, but it was really pretty cool all the same.

The neighborhood areas were really charming and were really interesting to walk around in. Narrow, cobblestone streets, mud bricks houses, hole in the wall markets, lots of handmade crafts, etc.