South America

PeruRail, you rile me

PeruRail is the most expensive way to travel in South America outside of a helicopter. In fact, you could almost hire a private plane for the price of some of their tickets from Cusco to Aguas Calientes.

I tried to stop them from ripping off gringos, but as you can see, failed miserably. There is no other transportation option to get to Machu Picchu, those train-running rats!

Ironically, this picture was snapped just 10 minutes before our actual train was set to depart. This was where our arriving train had dropped us off the day before, but of course, this was some sort of decoy train meant to confuse and rile tourists. Our actual, departing, train was a 10 minute run down the track from where you are looking right now. There was a funny moment indeed when we asked the conductor, who was equally surprised that we tried to get on his clearly not-departing train.

We bolted for our leaving train, and heard the classic train whistle. With no regard for safety, I flew down the stairs screaming espera, espera (wait!) until the nice men at the gate started blowing whistles and put their hands up in an "X", apparently the international sign for stop the damned train the gringos have fallen for the decoy train again.

Luckily, no conductors where hurt in this incident, and after a half hour, I stopped sweating and enjoyed the rest of my 2 hour, $32 train ride back to Ollantaytambo.

Machu Picchu for UNDER US$100, it can be done, here is how

The holy grail of South American Travel: Machu Picchu.

If you haven´t already been there, you are going to go there at some point in your life, it is nearly inevitable. When you go, Machu Picchu will attempt to take as much money from your wallet as possible, in a very short period of time. Íf you try and fight it, it will suck you in like a ruinous Incan money vaccuum made of stone.

It does not have to be this way.

If you wish to go to Machu Picchu in 2 days, for under US$35 a day, or US$70 per person for the trip, do read on. Otherwise, wait patiently until the time when you do plan to go to Machu Picchu, then read awa
y.

Lima is a dump

From Albert...

and in other news, i just heard on NPR on the carride to work that some 40% of the garbage in The Lime is never picked up. it just sits in makeshift dumps in the barrios.

And it is TRUE. Not that this is so much an outlier in South America, but there are many visible roudside dumping areas to be seen throughout coastal (at least) Peru.

That said, there are also pristine neighborhoods (Miraflores, Barranco) that have Papa Johns Pizza and Adidas stores in areas of Lima, where trash can´t even be found. If you have a friend from Peru who is living in the United States, that is where your friend is from. The rest of Lima is like a real life interpretation of Mad Max.

By the way, we got a large ham and cheese pizza with breadsticks, a coke, and those awesome garlic sauce packets and watched Shaq get slapped silly by Ben Wallace. It was a great, if not hardly South American, night.

Good hostal in Lima

There is no good information out there about cheap hostals in Lima, so here is my suggestion.

Try Hostal Excalibur, 950 Palacios in Miraflores. Call em at 446-2851. We got a big bed (now possibly filled with tiny bugs, my fault entirely), cable, our own bathroom, etc for 35 soles a night. That´s around US$5 a person, and we even have a remote for our 75 channels.

I´ll be watching The Film Zone later tonight, hoping for something good and explicite.

Attack of the Pygmie Rappers: Reggaetoon 2005

Thursday night marked the very first Reggaeton concert event I've had the pleasure of attending. Reggaeton, basically, is a style of music that combines Caribbean beats with fast-paced rapping in Spanish. Although entirely done in Spanish, Reggaeton sources much of it's culture and style cues from US hip hop acts. The concert, pronounced Mega-ton, was spelled Megatoon. Please don't ask me why.

Oh, the comedy I saw. First of all, none of the band members stood over 5 feet tall, and their stature looked worse from their oversized US sports apparel.

The show itself consisted of 4 bands from Peru, each of which took the stage with a spotlight, a little fog machine, and accompaniment provided by CD player. It was nothing if not bare-bones. Do read on...

Friendly travel update - Jay is in Machu Piccu

Well, as I´m in Buenos Aires sucking down bus exhaust, Jay, an old friend from NYC, is up in the clouds at Macchu Piccu. I am compelled to include this pic, and if you´d like his full account, or more pics, email him. Here´s an excerpt:

Anyway, we reached the sun gate around 6 am and waited for the clouds
to clear so we could get our first glimps of the myscially city from a
distance and you could hear the digital cameras clicking. During the
the 25th of december a ray of light goes throgh the sun gate, and all
the way into the the sun temple in machu pichu and illuminates some
arcane rock with symbols, which anthropologists have no idea what is
means. its amazing.

Good stuff from Jay. My only question is, how was he able to upload 200 pics from an ancient Mayan civilization, while I can´t seem to get more than one pic a day up from the middle of this city!

Yes, I´m way too lazy to look up the proper spelling for Machu Piccu. Looks good to me that way, so I´m going with it from now on.