Iquitos

By the the time we had to pack up and head to Iquitos we were feeling very comfortable in the Miraflores area and we were really enjoying ourselves. The sun was shining and we squeezed in every last minute we could at the beach before heading to the airport. 

Iquitos was unique. Definitely not my favorite city that we visited, but very unique! It is the worlds biggest city that cannot be accessed by road as it is completely surrounded by jungle and river. It is also probably one of the noisiest cities I have ever been to with everyone driving three wheeled motorcycles/ tuck tuck things everywhere! We arrived in Iquitos late in the evening so it was already dark, thankfully our hotel had arranged for transportation for us, in a car. We couldn't see much other than lots of traffic whizzing past us on our way to our hotel, which gave me the night to get used to the idea of another town. Although one of the things we did see upon arrival was the back of a pick up truck full of men and woman in army dress patrolling the streets with machine guns, so that was a tiny unsettling. Iquitos seemed to be one of those cities where the new and the old are all mushed into one. There were lots of historical buildings around, in fact the hotel that we stayed in was an old rubber plantation. The history of the amazon seemed to seep into everything there, the food, the clothes, and the buildings.

The hotel was clean and interesting, but I am a paranoid traveler... and because our hotel was so old the doors didn't shut all the way, there was a big gap at the top of them and the door handles where these tiny little nobs that even when locked could easily be pushed open. So I had a hard time with that, our first night I made Dahlin move the coach in front of the door to barricade it. I again was a little overwhelmed so we never left our hotel room that night.

The next morning we woke up early to get some breakfast and explore a bit before our tour guide came for us. Our hotel was literally right beside the amazon so it had a beautiful view! Everything looks a little bit dirty though. Maybe it is from the humidity, or just because there is no where to take all the garbage... I donno, but its definitely not clean! Soon our guide came and hailed us a tuck tuck. I was super uncomfortable riding on one, they don't wear helmets and they go super fast! Plus the smell of the exhaust is so strong! By the time we got to the tour office I was desperate to get off! Someone was running behind or something so we had to waste an hour or so before we could go so we again walked around for a while, with our tour guide showing us different things in the city center.

Next we again rode on a tuck tuck to get to this big market and the hub where all the boats are to take you onto the amazon. The market was crazy! You could buy everything there from fried grubs or alligator heads to woven clothes or whatever. This is where all the bush people who live on the amazon come to sell there stuff.

these are the fried grubs, the ones in the blue basin are still alive and moving around, so disgusting!!

every fruit imaginable

fresh fish everywhere... but it is really really hot in Iquitos and nothing is refrigerated so I found that questionable!

There are line upon line of boats tied to the shore. We ended up getting there right when the rain started. So we just went and sat in our boat again until it was time to head out. This was my breaking point, I lost it at Dahlin, everything was so wet, and noisy and dirty and we had been all over the place on those tuck tucks. I was mad that we were there and that we couldn't communicate with anyone and I was sick of not feeling safe.

Fortunately once we got going our day turned out to be pretty amazing! We first stopped at a farm with parrots, piranhas, crocodiles, and these huge fish called piache.

Next we headed to a ladies house who leaves food out for monkeys and birds and each day they come and eat and hang out and then they leave back into the jungle everyday. The monkeys are super friendly though and jump all over you. It was super cool, but totally, 100% overwhelming for me! Our guide kept trying to get me to hold all the animals and I kept trying to tell him that I just like to look but not touch, but he just kept helping the monkeys on my shoulders. Dahlin also held a sloth, and we got to hold an anaconda. Looking back it was a really amazing place!

Lima

So Lima was great. One of the most interesting things I found about it was all the different types of architecture. Because of the earthquakes buildings are destroyed and rebuilt often, while keeping what survives and building onto it, so it is kind of like a melting pot of styles. I loved it and thought it was beautiful and interesting.  

We spent a day at the Plaza de Armas and just happened to be at the Presidentail Palace at the time of the changing of the gaurds. It was super fun to watch and we were glad that we didn't miss it. We spent the whole afternoon exploring.

When it came time to go back to our hotel we ran into some difficulty getting home. We found that hardly anyone spoke any English and we spoke very little Spanish so we couldn't communicate with the taxi drivers about where we needed to go. It was stressful because we didn't want to use just any taxi -lots of them looked super sketchy and like they were about to fall apart. We walked around for over an hour trying to find someone to help us or a cab that looked like we could use it, eventually I was getting a little overwhelmed so we decided that we would take a break and go get some ice cream. Unfortunetly our timing was off for that to, while we were waiting in the ice cream line two guys started talking right in front of us and before we knew if there was a drug deal taking place. We had no idea as we couldn't understand anything anyone was saying, so we decided to forgo the ice cream and try and get home again. Eventually we found a taxi that looked okay so we hoped in it and were able to communicate to the driver to take us to the mall that was only about 4 blocks from our hotel and then we just walked the rest of the way.

Miraflores

I feel like our trip was planned perfectly, which is really something considering we didn't know anything while planning. Every place that we went was increasingly overwhelming for me, but because we had been in the previous place I was able to handle it, if that makes any sense.
 
We started in Lima, which is a really crazy, really big city! Lima is the biggest city in South America, there are almost 10 million people living there. It began badly with my luggage being lost and trying to deal with LAN airlines to locate it, which they were unable to. Then leaving the airport was super stressful, the traffic was horrendous! It didn't seem like anyone obeyed traffic laws, which is always especially stressful for me! Driving people would squish in as close as possible to the vehicle in front, beside, behind, anywhere they could inch their way forward... it was pure craziness, and this craziness was just magnified by the fact that no one spoke English... It could have also been the fact that we had flown over night so we were running on next to no sleep. By the time we got to the hotel my nerves were thin, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

Best decision ever was staying in the Miraflores district! I loved Miraflores!! We stayed at the Radisson, the continental breakfast is beyond amazing, if you ever stay in Lima I highly recommend this hotel! Once we got settled there we set off to go find a few things to replace my lost luggage. The funny thing about Peru is that they close everything down from around 11 to 1, so of course our luck had it that we got to the mall at 11. So we walked around for a while until we found a place to eat, which was a little stressful cause a lot of the restaurants only had menus in Spanish and the waiters only spoke Spanish. We did finally settle on a restaurant, and the food was so good, actually all of our food in Miraflores was so good!!

We just hung out all day enjoying the beautiful scenery. In the evening we decided that we had better take a turn paragliding. It was super cool! So beautiful! And just an all around cool experience.

What is all this about a Strike?

So the thing is, we never knew we were walking into the middle of a strike when we arrived in Cusco. Our bad that we were not checking regional news before flying into each new area. Lesson learnt!!! We did however feel a little frustrated because we had dealt with both our hotel as well as the airline because our flight had been overbooked and no one ever mentioned anything about it. So when we finally got to Cusco we were surprised and completely caught off guard. As soon as we landed the strike was evident, there were lots of police guarding the airport and there were no taxis to be seen, which was very unusual in comparison to the other airports we had landed at. But even that we were able to shake off as we had seen so many army and navy personal in Iquitos that it didn't seem to outta control. Once we started trying to get into the city and experiencing so much difficulty  and then arriving in the city and seeing how deserted the streets where, it began to be evident that more was going on. Still it didn't seem that dangerous, we walked around, did a little bit of shopping where we could, it wasn't until the evening when we asked our hotel receptionist for restaurant recommendations that we realized maybe we were taking things a little to lightly. He advised us not to go far, to just stay nearby and to stay off the streets as it was not safe, probably should have been common sense. But as first world citizens do we sometimes think we are invincible traveling? I think Dahlin and I do! But everyone was just saying that the strike was a transportation strike and no one ever got into details explaining what it was about. So we thought no taxis, no buses or trains, we could live with that. It wasn't even until we were stuck in the road block that we realized we might be in over our heads!
So what was the strike all about? Apparently a law had been passed in the beginning of October to  allow private companies to provide tourist services at Peru's archaeological sites. This would allow state governments to award 10-year licenses to private companies for cleaning, security, restaurant and museum services at archaeological sites. Cusco locals had immediately voiced opposition to the new law but nothing had come from it. Until the Regional Federation of Cusco Workers organized a two day strike, which we just happened to be in the middle of. So the entire city and surrounding area was striking... including the city leaders, demanding that Peru’s national government repeal the law. Definitely more than just the transportation strike people had sloughed it off to be.

I feel like in order to get the significance this law would have on the Peruvian people you have to look at how ingrained history is in them. I obviously am not an expert, and I have only a small short experience to base this on but it seemed like their entire identity was based upon it. The people seemed to have more passion for their history than any culture I have ever experienced. So when they argued that the private companies could never possibly manage everybody’s heritage and that it was an attack against their culture I had to agree. However once getting home I did some research about the law and the law would not apply to archaeological sites which are officially designated as national or world heritage sites, sites like Machu Picchu. But there are 19,000 archaeological sites identified throughout all of Peru, the majority of which have not been deemed either national or world heritage sites. So most of them would have been affected.

I feel like the people had a right to fight for their rights. I don't know that this was the best way to do it as it was estimated that each day of striking cost the region $1.5 million in revenue from tourists. But in the end they did rebuke the law so it was obviously effective. It makes me appreciate a little more as to why they were so persistent in not letting us get to Machu Picchu.

In the end, this ended up being a huge learning lesson for me. I think that every cities peace and safety is incredibly fragile! We need to always remember that we are visitors, their is so much more going on then we are aware of as tourists. It is our responsibility to be vigilant in trying to be aware of what is going on so that we can do all we can to keep ourselves safe. Thankfully we were never hurt and nothing got violent, but it could have easily went the other way. I don't ever want to be in the wrong place again just because of ignorance.
This is of course all just my opinion!

Machu Picchu

Our last day again began early, we were up at 3:30. This time though I had a harder time getting up. We had to wake up early so that we could walk 15 minutes to stand in line at the check point which would open at 5:30 to continue on the rest of the trail to Machu Picchu. For some reason we had thought that we would be able to be at the sun gate at sun rise, but that was not the case. Eric did however give us the option to go to another near by archeological site and watch the sun rise from there rather than wait in line. The only down side to that was that we would be the last group to be in line when the check point opened. He let us choose which we would like to do, we opted to go to Winawayna. We were so glad that we did. It was so beautiful and peaceful as we again were the only group there. Seeing all of the archaeological sites was truly breathtaking every single time! Each one of them where amazing and unique, I would not have wanted to pass up the opportunity to see any of them.

This also was the first chance we got to see the Lamas, which I of course was afraid of.

 

Once it got light we headed back to the cross the check point. We got there with plenty of time, enough that we still had to wait in line for a bit. The hike from the check point to the sun gates is pretty tame in comparison to the previous days. The highlight was definitely the monkey stairs where Dahlin and another of the trekkers raced to the top. Wish I had a picture, but they are called monkey stairs because they are so steep you have to use both hands and feet to climb to the top of them, but they are short, it took Dahlin less than 30 seconds to get to the top of them. Dahlin and I also felt pretty free hiking this day as we got to send our sleeping bags and mats home with the porters so our bags where literally half the size as they had been before.

Machu Picchu was beautiful! We spent 3 hours touring the different areas and learning about the significance of everything here, which I really really loved! Again everything was so impressive and amazing! But it was super busy! And super hot! And we were all super tired! So when free time came no one really stuck around too long, we decided to jump on the bus and head down.

We learnt a ton of interesting things during the tour, one of the things I thought was most interesting, and sad where these orchids. They cause you to hallucinate and apparently this is what the Inca people would give the children that they were going to sacrifice and then they would take them to the top of the mountain and leave them. This was apparently a huge honor to the families of the child being sacrificed.... but to this mother it breaks my heart hearing about it a little.