The dull headache that I originally assumed to be altitude related turned out not to be that at all.  Somehow the exhaust fumes of the el cheapo CIAL bus seemed to penetrate the shuttle that was pulling us up into the Andes.  Toxic dreams of lamas and llamas and terraced ruins mingle with some incessantly violent film from the US.  Yes, traveling is fun.  Cusco is a rather large clay-coloured city with many Colonial Spanish towers and cathedrals.  Colourful people from the mountain villages visit with their bright cloths, goods to sell and livestock.  It is necessary to spend some time here for all who wish to hike to Macchu Picchu.  Our time in Cusco has been passed by sorting out our bookings, buying airline tickets and visiting the surrounding towns.  The brief reign of the Inca empire and their destruction by the Spaniards is documented in what is left behind.  I find that exploring the ruins leaves a lot to the imagination and that one is left with trying to re-create a past with the atmosphere.  In this area, that is very easy to do though.  What the Incas built was fantastically planned, and on so many levels.  Strategically, the structures speak of power and domination.  But they are also cosmically aligned and filled withy symbology.  The power of Cusco, the city of the puma, cannot be denied.  The temple of the sun at Ollantaytambo is a particularly impressive and enormous edifice.  When the power of the earth is combined with religion, a force is created that grounds the stomach and lights up the head, in a dangerous way.

A few days ago we had a particularly wonderful day, still in Chile.  The geysers at El Tatio spout from a volcanic base and create a show at sunrise that is very reminiscent of Yellowstone.  My father and I had a brief swim in a hot pool between the geyser steam.  The surrounding area is very beautiful though.  There is a river with wild ducks, swans, a strange and large rock-living rabbit and beautiful mountains.  We saw many vicunas and some beautiful herds of llamas, the workhorses of the high altitude farming communities.  Eventually we left San Pedro de Atacama, returned to the coast and followed it north to Arica, where we crossed the border into Peru.

Southern Peru is a VERY impressive desert and I absolutely enjoyed the voyage.  There are huge dunes through witch the little road winds like a miniature thread.  There are occasional views of the snow capped Andes far to the east.   From these, rivers flow down to the coast, creating fantastically green valleys with rich farmland, small oasis towns in a many-coloured sand landscape.  One of the most puzzling, and crazy, riddles is that all through the desert, meticulously packed stone boundaries demarcate small plots.  These plots are completely cleared and small houses are even started on many.  Some even have small trees that someone comes to water, somehow.  Hundreds of kilometers of such plots are marked out, optimistically in a totally dry area where there can only be the remote wish of a well or a government water line.  Someone had a vision, it seems, a lurid one.  Later a lady in Nazca explained to me that in Peru, expensive land around Lima is actually bought, but that in most other areas property is grabbed, and possession is how you stake your claim.  These desert plots have been grabbed by those who hope that one day it will have water, and also be an oasis of sorts.  But it will be right on a snaking fume-filled bus and truck road.  And it seems like a crazy dream that water from the rain forests will ever find its way there.

In Nazca we found my sister Lanelle and Bianca waiting for us.  There were some celebrations.  The next morning we got into a small plane and flew over the Nazca lines.  These are possibly best left as unexplained, because that is the way I prefer it.  Somehow the ancients there constructed mythological and cosmic structures and designs of up to 100km in size, still preserved in the dry desert.  These designs can only really be viewed from the air.  Or through a hallucinogen-induced trip, from a flying sourcer or through a wakeful dream.

Today we go to Pisac, where the beautiful people here have their weekly market.  Yesterday we just passed through it on the way through the sacred
valley.  First there will be an excursion for the equinox though.  And tomorrow morning early we head out on the Inca trail.  Yippeee!

Until later,
eStefan

Oh please, remove that bland plate from my table.  Take my sunglasses, my warm shirt and my cane, you can keep those.  I so prefer the bright glare on the sun on the water, the stinging cold, the honest burn of the chili.  My ipod explodes in my head and I feel the new balance that I have recently reached.  A balance that touches all directions, the fire within, and the peace that comes with it.  Or maybe it is jus5t the altitude.  The bus that passes from Copacabana to La Paz is a special one.  Hehe.  Halfway, you leave the bus and get on a small motorboat while the bus itself crosses a narrow strip of lake Titicaca.  Good value, though, at $2 for the trip.  The lake itself is a 60km stretch of water at a thin-air elevation of 3800m.  Yesterday morning we took a boat out from Copacabana on lake Titicaca and disembarked on the north end of the Isla del Sol.  A six-hour walk on the island ridge takes you to the southern bay.  There, at last, I hugged my father and sister good bye.  How lucky I am to have them, so close in my life.

The treasures, indeed, are hidden.  But the force that draws us to them is unmistakable.  Unseen strings, the siren songs, words on the wind, they all guide us in time.  Alter four days, we left the mountain stronghold of Cusco and hiked the Inka trail.  Each day of this pilgrimage brought for me a different experience.  I have found the hiking easy going, but the experiences clear and special.  The places of power are old and the sacred undercurrents are everywhere.  Before we left, Bianca has brought a light upon us by finding a very special person while we were temporarily lost beyond the temple of the moon.  He invited us back and on the equinox he opened our eyes to the true sacred valley.  So much older than the Incas are the natural formations where the ancients worshipped not only the sun and stars, but also the monkey, the mammoth, the dinosaur and the condor.  From Neolithic times.  Molded into the rock are the sacred shapes that guard the ways of humanity.  In ways that give me hope.  I have flown on the back of the condor, I have seen the sacred water that we drink.  There are no words to describe that day, so I will not.  Above Pisac, the road to the Inca terraces rises sharply over the ancient terraces.  One’s breath is sucked fast, but you breathe out a landscape that fills the valley of the Urubamba river.  I remember those free moments, my time with the Condor again.  The Inka stonework there is of course stunning, as it is at Sacsaywuaman also. 

On the way to Macchu Picchu, the coca leaf juice recalls an ancient us.  The rain forests and the orchids are fantastic and the steep passes are still filled with the thoughts of those that have passed there for centuries.  And so when after four days I arrived in the sacred mountain city, I was not disappointed.  All of it so magnificent, I guess I will publish my photo essay later.  I climbed the peak of Wayanapicchu and found peace in the forsaken temple of the moon behind its back.  My own peace, and that of the many that live within.  Below, in the village of Aguas Calientes, there is a stream with warm pools where we chilled, and laughed about our impermanence.  We snaked down the Urubamba to Lake Titicaca in a train while playing cards.  And there, at Puno, I filled my camera with the most incredible local market scenes.  And on the unlikely floating straw islands of Uros, we ate cerviche while drifting on these man-made islands, only 2m thick.  Life was good, and the people beautiful.

Here in Bolivia, La Paz is at 4000 m asl and the highest capital in the world.  It is also the poorest that I have ever seen and the snow capped giants above the teeming valley leaves one with anticipation and a scary trajectory for the human race.  Surely this is not the Olympus of old, and the gods never lived so simple.  (Neither did the goddesses wear Charlie Chaplin hats, of course).  Apparently cocaine is cheaper than water.  This might give the impression that water is really expensive, but it is positively dangerous to even brush your teeth with the water here.  Because of the altitude, even boiling the water will not kill what so virulently lives in it.  I thank REI for my water filter every day.  So far, my health has been excellent, and my choices sane.

Tomorrow morning early I head up to the hills where starts The World´s most Dangerous Road.  It is a whole day of steep downhill on an insanely thin road with a mountain bike and eventually you end in the rain forests far below, in Coroico.  But until then I will drink the local brew and breathe the thin air.

Blessings on all from above (here).  And hasta the Future in the sweet lap of the Present!
eStefan

Well, a quick note for 3 Bolivianos.  In La Paz the Caparinas stopped flowing at 1AM.  But just after 8AM we bikers were at a lake above the city at 4200m asl.  The Worlds Most Dangerous Road is a 3000m descent to Coroico.  Steep, with multiple blind 400m drops over the cliff edge.  Over the last 5 years 11 cyclists have died on this adventure and hundreds have been badly injured, hence the auspicious name.  But I found it to be a lot of fun.  And apart from the rush, the scenery is spectacular.  You leave the clouds and snow caps for a rapid change of vegetation. The alpine desert gives way to vines and thick tropical growth.  All along there are eagles, many of them, and then the butterflies spring forth too.  You need good brakes on the loose gravel !  At the bottom of the ride there is a nature reserve with many parrots and different monkeys.  A short hike above it is a great little waterfall, with many butterflies to chase.  And at night there are the fireflies.  Here in Coroico itself, things are rather relaxed.  Now to find a way back to Peru, around the north end of Lake Titicaca.  I still believe it is possible. 

Until later,
eStefan