Reflections from places much better built than Phoenix
6/28/24 to 7/7/24 – Cusco & Aqua Calientes, Peru – Valle Nevado, Chile
Crew – Lily (my middle sister) and my Mom
I don’t know who coined the phrase, but a common thing uttered here in Phoenix is that “This hellhole is a testament to humankind’s arrogance”. We saw a place with no running water, ports, brutal temperatures in the summer, and truly nothing for hundreds of miles in each direction except for more desert and said “Yep! This is the spot to build a major city.”
I get more of a front-row seat to this than most because my job entails keeping the infrastructure alive, but the sheer amount of money and work that is put into keeping the city’s sinks running and air conditioning on is staggering. Not to mention in the least highly inefficient. For a place to build America’s 5th largest city, it’d have been hard to pick a worse one.
But I can think of one city built in an even worse area… And I paid money to visit it!
Peru
The Inca empire was astounding in both its achievements and the things it missed along the way. They lacked steelworking, a written language, or even a wheel but were able to put together a complicated economy, military, and political system. Not to mention that this empire didn’t stretch across some stable farmland but rather across one of the largest mountain ranges on Earth. If it wasn’t for some rather bad luck when it came to immunizations against smallpox I would be very curious to see where the empire went. It had only been around two centuries when it collapsed when the Spanish showed up.
The ruins, though, still remain and are there to visit. Albeit I didn’t originally intend to go there. This whole thing began when my mom wanted to go skiing in Chile, during the summer of the Northern Hemisphere. Sure her ski pass (Ikon if you’re wondering), got her two free ski days down at the resort there, but also she just wanted to check it off her list. And hey she makes enough money that the Kia dealer thought she wrote her yearly income in the section that said “Monthly income”.
(She had written it correctly).
With that agenda, she reached out and asked my sister and me if we would like to go. And sure why not. Except she was being generous enough to pay for the flights down there and I mean if we’ve already paid all the money and flown down there… What’s the harm in adding another country?
Machu Pichu speaks to the abilities (mainly arrogance) of an Inca ruler to take a good long hard work at an empire, see the highest possible mountain peak and say “That’s the ticket”. And it speaks to the Inca’s ability that they were able to actually build that.
This site, chosen in 1450, would become Machu Picchu. It would be abandoned by the end of the 16th century and today is considered one of the world’s seven new wonders.
(I’ve only seen 2 of the other 6, the Colosseum in Rome and Petra in Jordan. I need to make it out to the other four: Chichén Itzá in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, the Taj Mahal in India, and The Great Wall of China).
To get there is a pain and a half. Partially because the Phoenix airport connects to nowhere but even then I flew to Miami (4 hours), then to Lima the capital of Peru on the coast (5.5 hours). I met up with Lily here, stayed the night, and then flew to Cusco (1.5 hours). Then you take a train to Aquas Calientes, the town right outside of Machu PIchu (4 hours). Finally you then either have the choice of walking up the mountain to Machu Pichu or taking one of the buses. So to be honest it’s rather a lot of buy to get there.
I also need to mention here that Cusco has a reputation for building a city at a particularly high elevation, approximately 12,000 ft above sea level. Lily and I got lucky enough that nothing bad happened to us but there are stories of people having trouble acclimating to the height when they land. When you take the train to Machu Picchu, you actually descend around 1,000 ft which becomes evident as you see the terrain go from largely barren mountains to an endless jungle.
Machu Picchu, despite also having pages and pages of warnings about how crowded it is, was not really that crowded. Certainly not compared to a place like the Louvre or actually anywhere in one of Japan’s cities. Apparently, the circuit system made it much less chaotic to get tickets but I found they hyped up the issues with getting tickets more than they needed. But I get it. There would probably be nothing worse than traveling all this way and learning that you needed to book tickets in advance and you now can’t get on the mountain.
At the site, you can see the various farming terraces, temples, and buildings that make up the site. There are also specialty areas like sports fields that have become hollowed out.
Again on the Phoenix note, I have a grudging jealousy for the designers here. In that, they adapted the land to meet their needs and worked to use it to their advantage instead of blunt forcing an accepted solution. The style of plattening terrace areas to grow food and the vast network of the road system have lasted sometimes until today. This is largely due to using a mixture of excellent craftsmanship and brilliant stormwater (basically rainfall) management. Machu Picchu itself gets 72 inches of rain a year and the runoff systems that keep the roads from being flooded are astounding. In contrast, out here we built every house like we did in Northern California: Wooden frame, a grass lawn, and large windows. It’s just a shame that we don’t have water to keep the lawns out and wooden frames while great for earthquakes are awful for keeping heat out and we don’t have earthquakes here.
Other unexpected guests included llamas who didn’t care in the slightest about holding up traffic and tourists and hung out with us.
The town itself is also gorgeous. I’m kicking myself for not getting more photos of the town itself but it’s surrounded by the mountains and per the name there’s a large river flowing through the town and various hot springs. (The town for context is only around 4,000 people). Sure it’s a tourist town but who cares at this point?
The second day in the Town we made it over to a butterfly exhibit and then went hiking to try and find a waterfall. Turns out mudslides had shredded most of it, and we learned this about an hour into hiking in the jungle, but hey it was still pretty and it was empty with us meeting only hikers here and there.
We watched Peru do their best against Argentina in the Copa Cup, and they put up a good effort but they ended up being eliminated from the tournament.
After this we headed back to Cusco and stayed at the first hotel we stayed at in Cusco. The hotel owners were nice enough to let us store our luggage there in a spare room while we were in Aqua Calientes. Truthfully everyone was nice and understanding on this trip. This feeds my theory that the world is actually just a lot of nice people doing their best but that’s a topic for another time.
Cusco is a much bigger city and both the cultural and tourism capital of Cusco. A lot of the trips to Machu Picchu are just incredibly long day trips from Cusco. (Travel time alone would be around 9 hours for a day trip). But we had a few days to kill and there was plenty to do.
Lily and I took out 6 museums in one day. Chocolate museum? History of the Inca museum? And one on Coco, the thing that’s in cocaine, coca-cola, and the leaves everyone either chews or drinks in the country. Also, a weaver’s museum that had people doing it the classical way and I wish I actually had the money to afford any of this.
Per usual I’m not really a foodie but every place served both alpaca and guinea pig (which would be roasted and given to you whole). And they loved their avocados in dishes. Lily (and in Chile my mom as well) are both gluten-free so let me tell you finding a place for two celiacs and a vegetarian to eat is an exercise in patience.
The last day the best thing we saw was an animal sanctuary that was probably 45 minutes outside of the city. We showed up and had a guide give us a tour of the various animals they’ve rescued over time from tiny spider monkeys to the Andean condor which was both frightening large and old. The guide explained that the condor was in his 70s as he had an 8-ft wingspan. Also panthers, a lot of colorful who were in pairs and “not mates just best friends” and plenty of alpacas, llamas, and Vicuñas.
I also coughed up and bought $2 PEN hot chocolate from a vendor. It was great. It also might have given me food poisoning. Probably still worth it.
Without a doubt, I recommend it to anyone looking for a travel trip. The logistics are well ironed out by the Peruvian government even if just the distance alone makes it hard. At the end of the day, this is an archaeological ruin on top of a mountain in the middle of a large mountain range. The trip can only be cut down so far. So I would say based on Machu Picchu and Aquas Calientes alone that I would fully recommend a trip to Peru and it enters the top of my list of countries that I have visited. Cusco is also a great city even if I wouldn’t put it in the “Must visit” list.
Chile
With Peru out of the way we moved on to the second part of our trip! Lily and I woke up at 6 am or some nonsense and got on a plane that flew us into Santiago. Santiago, the capital of Chile, is larger than Phoenix population-wise (7+ million), and was built in a bit of a better environment: Surface water and on the coast. It is also a prettier city after a short time there I determined. I mean it’s not hard to beat Phoenix when you combine the asphalt, copy-paste housing, and smog, but still. Good for them.
Immigration took forever (but I got a new physical stamp in my passport!), and Lily and I met up with my mother who had flown in the night before and was staying in a much fancier hotel than the ones we had been staying in when we were in Peru.
Those two took off to take a look at a sightseeing park from the top of the city but I felt like absolute trash by this point and took the next three hours to lay in bed and watch YouTube.
When they got back my mom had hired a driver to take us up the mountain to the top where we would be staying. When I was looking up the ski resort, there were various resorts discussing how doing the drive if you got car sick could be a bad idea and after driving it I think I see their reasoning. We all did ok but I would glance at Google Maps and there would be just jagged lines from a dozen switchbacks in a row. Do this a few times.
Of course, this takes a distant second to Machu Picchu where the bus drivers would rocket up the mountain on equally sketchy switchbacks except in old buses and often passing one another at the same time. When they got to the top or bottom they would do a U-turn in the middle of the street and then repeat the route. Props to them. The bus line moved fast Anyhow at the top, we found the apartment we would stay in and passed out.
The next day we made it out to the ski resort to rent gear. My mom had dragged, bless her, enough ski clothes for all three of us across the planet and her snowboard boots to boot. So between that and the stuff Lily and I brought we had everything except rental gear. Which was an easy enough process to get alongside the lift tickets.
Side tangent here but after years of learning and keeping up on Mandarin it really isn’t useful as often as I’d prefer. Lily on the other with a good working knowledge of French and a passable knowledge of Spanish carried us hard on this trip by being able to translate and get by. At one point the rental worker turned to me and told me “That I really wasn’t pulling my weight here”.
Finally, with gear and equipment, we made it onto the mountain to start. If you go skiing or snowboarding ever it is pretty similar to most out there. There are a few fun quirks like T-bars instead of chair lifts in many places: But not common in the US because snowboarders have a much harder time with them. The ski school was halfway up the mountain where the gondola dropped you off instead of the usual spot at the base or entry point to the resort.
Most unique though is that Valle Nevado is fully and truly above the tree line. There are no trees or foliage of any kind on the mountain. Besides rocks, there was nothing between each ski path on the mountain. So the resort took advantage of it and the entire mountain is fair game. There were signs in places where if you went over you’d be in trouble but any space between runs was fair enough. My mom and I took advantage of this constantly by skirting between groomed runs for powder or added difficulty.
Not sure I’ve ever discussed it here but I was lucky enough to grow up skiing, and probably have skied somewhere in the range of 100 days over my lifetime. Which is nothing to a dedicated liftee or superfan but I think I can hold my own relatively well. Just don’t expect to see me do backflips. I’ve absolutely had some bad experiences when skiing but my mom won that competition by being able to say that she’s been buried by an avalanche. I learned about this in college when she nonchalantly dropped on a phone call that her ACL had been ripped in half in Japan. When I inquired why she mentioned that there had been an avalanche.
“Oh ok. Well I’m glad you didn’t get buried in that.”
“You misunderstand. I was on the slope?”
“You outran an avalanche???”
Laughs “Not even close.”
Heli-skiing and being a ski-patrol are on my endless bucket list of things. Both also require money and a lot more than most hobbies. I put it up there in the same tier as learning to fly a prop plane in terms of realism in my current state of life.
Another thing of note was that cable TV had a channel that only seemed to play movies with the Rock in it. We watched the Jumanji remakes and “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. Both are surprisingly entertaining. If you’ve never watched the original Jumanji movie, the one with Robin Williams, I’d recommend it. If only because it punches way above its weight in terms of horror. As my sister put it, only it and Coraline are that unexpectedly scary.
Actually on Coraline. I learned about a decade after I watched it that one it was based on a book that Neil Gaiman wrote (everything now makes sense) and two that the entire thing was shot using 3D printed models, not in the modern digital style. That might be why the art looks so amazing.
But besides that, we largely repeated this routine for the next two days. Wake up late, ski the mountain for a few hours, and eat some food in between that, I cough constantly, and then watch movies and get food at some point.
I had the opportunity at one point to grab a few sunset photos of the Andes with the lift shut down and I’m proud of the results. So I’ll put a few below.
On the last day, my flight wasn’t until 9 pm so we checked out at 11, hung around until 3 when we drove back down to Santiago, and then spent a few hours in the airport just going to different restaurants, gift shops, and my mom and I shared a surprisingly good Asian salad. Then nothing like an overnight flight to work on a Monday morning. Ah, the joys of being young.
I will also take a quick second to brag and say that now having visited 32 countries, for the first time in my life I’m the first in my family who has traveled to the most countries. Anyways.
Next up on the travel plan… a bit of an ambitious one if it pans out. We’ll get to that next February.
Cheers,
Sam
Dead Man Travelling 