Photos from Peru

Ladies at the market in Puno, Peru

Click here to see my online photo album from Peru

In Peru, It All Seems to be About Hats

When traveling through the Andes in Peru, there is so much to see.  Radiant green landscapes with soaring mountains and sprawling valleys.  Snowy peaks in the distance.  Incan ruins clinging to the mountains above.  Fuzzy llamas and alpaca grazing on the high altitude slopes.  Enormous, ornately decorated cathedrals showing the Spaniards wealth and power...  But for me, a person who travels to see people and culture, my eyes were mostly focused on the hats.  Tops hats, bowler hats, straw hats, woven hats, leather hats, fabric hats, flowered hats...  Round tops, flat tops, soft tops, ruffled tops...  Brown, black, red, white, tan or brightly colored...  It never ended.  It was a feast for my eyes.

Wearing traditional dress is still the norm for large parts of this mountainous region where the Quechua people have been able to retain their cultural traditions.  This means most people are sporting bright colored textiles: men in ponchos intricately designed with customary patterns, women in woven or embroidered skirts that they wear sometimes up to 15 layers deep to create the full look with multi hued ruffles showing underneath. The vibrancy doesn't end there though.  Goods from the market are packed up in vivid cloths and tied to ones back along with babies and everything else.  Then add the piles of fruits and vegetables in all shapes and sizes.... Color, color, color! Viva Peru!

Taquile Island, Peru in Lake Titicaca

Visiting Machu Picchu. One of the 7 Wonders of the World

Perched way up in the sky on a mountain top, often hidden by clouds, lies Machu Picchu, an intricate and sprawling complex built in the 15th Century and abandoned in the 16th Century when the Spaniards conquered the Incan Empire.  I arrived in the early morning in the pouring rain.  The clouds were so thick I could only see 30 feet in front of me at a time and even then not too clearly.  I walked with no concept which direction to go. I spent hours sitting watching the clouds come and go and the scenery focus and then fade again.  At first I couldn't see all the mountain peaks surrounding the site or the valleys deep below it.  Finally the sun broke through and there below me was this amazing sight.

The incredible part of Inca building is that they didn't use draft animals or even use the wheel but somehow managed to transport all these huge stones up mountains and build walls that still lie intact today without any mortar between them.  Many of their stones were cut to interconnect much like Lego and throughout Peru, a highly volatile seismic region; their buildings survive earthquakes as modern architecture falls.

Incan structures are visible throughout the Sacred Valley of Peru clinging on the side of mountains and nestled in valleys.  In Cusco, the main city of the region and the capitol of the Incan Empire, the Spaniards built right on top of the Incan sacred sites, perhaps in an effort to quickly replace their religion and introduce Catholicism. Luckily the Spaniards never found Machu Picchu though, so it remains for all of us to enjoy.

The Difference Between 12 Days and 12 Months of Travel

Going to Peru means wandering the well worn backpacker trail.  In the US, we celebrate a one week vacation, which is a striking contrast to the travel that is going on in here in Latin America.  Conversations with fellow travelers here talk about 3, 6 or 12 months of travel.  I even met a French guy who has been traveling for 2 years and isn't sure when he is going to stop.  This type of travel has few set itineraries and is filled with 24 hour bus rides on local buses sometimes to places you just heard about at breakfast the day before, sleeping in bunk beds at hostels, eating in local markets and checking out the best of the world's sights one by one, but also believing that those sites are better if you take time to explore the wider land and community around them more.

Cusco - The Heart of the Peruvian Highlands