Ecuadorian Andes

We stay busy sprucing up the boat in Bahia Caraquez through March.  Things like renewing the wind-vane steering re-mounting the solar panels, changing fuel filters for the diesel engine, polishing the stainless steel stanchions, hauling water to top off the tanks and varnishing the hatch frames are now checked off the 'to-do' list.  When we learn our Visas for French Polynesia are waiting for us in Quito we drop the screwdriver and paint brush and hop the next bus.  We combine a couple days of "business" with several days of seeing the sights before returning home to Kalliope.

Dawn raises her rosy fingers* and finds us in the town of Otavalo, a three hour bus ride north of Quito in a hotel much nicer than the hostels we usually camp in when we are on the road.  We heard Otavalo has a great market and it is very popular with Americans.  After spending Saturday, the BIG market day here, we believe both claims are true.  One group of students is speaking American English when Deb strikes up a conversation on the street corner.  She is so outgoing she does this regularly.

Hotel lobby/restaurant area.

Otavalo hotel garden

So, picture a town, small but probably tens of thousands of people nestled in an Andean valley with temps from 60° at night to 75° in the afternoons.  There is a low cost of living, a university, a trout stream, a lake, a waterfall, an outdoor market, a vibrant Native American culture, clean air, abundant water, good restaurants, Internet and CNN News in English at the click of a button.  I know Otavalo is a good place to visit and probably a good place to live.  No, we are not shopping for real estate.  The common thread between Otavalo and the Quito notes below is that they were both part of the same trip.

Archetecture

Deb takes a few photos from the vantage of Mt. 

Pichincha a few miles from downtown Quito.

                        Doors as art.

Since we are in Quito for Holy Week, we stake out a spot along the route of the Good Friday procession through the Historic District.  Thousands of marchers show up, more thousands of

watchers and at least hundreds of vendors selling everything from mango slices to umbrellas for

protection from sun and heat.

First come hundreds

of 'Penitents' in purple robes.

Some penitents perform self flagellation.  Others

tie crosses of cactus to bare backs or wrap their 

torso in barbed wire. **

Some Penitents carry heavy crosses.

Near the back of the procession 

come the 'Veronicas'

A few altars at the end of the procession merit

heavy police protection.

*  Wish I wrote the rosy fingers line, but credit goes to Homer.  If any copyright was infringed, I                            apologize.

**  Some penitents were harmed making this procession.

Bahia de Caraquez

We work on maintaining Kalliope when we can, go to Quito and Manta when we must and occasionally, OK frequently, visit one shoreside restaurant or another for a beverage or a meal.  Our new favorite cafe is part of the small Hotel Bahia B&B where David, a Canadian and Sophia, Columbian are building their business and their lives.  David does construction, accounting and customer service.  Sophia just charms everyone who comes in.  Sophia also makes a fashion statement, encouraged by her father who is visiting here now and brings her beautiful clothes from the family business when he comes.

Sophia modeling a dress from Columbia in the restaurant
of the Bahia Hotel B&B

One of the Cruising families we meet frequently on shore-
side excursions.

Sunday evenings, the cruisers treat themselves to a potluck.
 This cruising couple helps organize this event and others.

If you want to get a photo of Bahia Caraquez
you can take a taxi to the heights or . . . . . 

Either way, this is the Rio Chone and Bahia Caraquez with
the museum in the lower left and Kalliope near the center.

When we must go to Manta we take time out to observe this
repair facility right on the beach which has about a dozen
wooden boats just above the high tide line.

Let's See . . . where are we?

A brief glimpse at the interior of Ecuador.  We also went to Quito but

 Gregg prefers empty places or those with little development.

In Mindo, a few miles north of Quito, we hike to the  "Siete Cascadas"  attraction.  The trails to the waterfalls are on the other side of a wooded valley and are accessed via an areal tram more reminiscent of mining than ski resorts.

Miss Debbie relaxing at the cascades.

An aging but not typical house near the center of Mindo.

Mindo is a very small town at the confluence of

two lovely trout streams no one seems to fish.

In Mindo the bananas are abundant in March.  They

begin something like this

Carry the violet color to the small fruit.

Then green and, if you don't pick them in time, yellow.

Fanesca is a very rich soup traditionally prepared at

Easter time or 'Semana Santa.'  This photo is for Phil.

New Year in Palo Alto, CA

'

Today the nearly deserted Stanford University campus is blessed with crisp cool air and the morning light shining on mature trees and well-maintained lawns.  The Rodin Sculpture Garden, though echoing with the noise from nearby construction is as beautiful as ever.  I search in vain for "The Thinker" even assigning a spot where I think it should be.  After turning this over in my mind a while, I remember it was the University of Houston campus where "The Thinker" sits in a prominent spot.  Rodin Sculptures are probably the only similarity between these two schools.

Not far away on the Campus is the "Main Quad" with a minimally landscaped courtyard surrounded by buildings.  Each building is fronted by a portico or "peristyle" a wide porch with one side open to the breeze and the roof supported by columns bridged by graceful arches. The crowning glory of the Main Quad is a pair of ivy-covered arches over the two entrances to the courtyard.

One attraction of Stanford is a big antique clock mechanism originally installed in another building on campus which was damaged by an earthquake.  The clock works were stored for several years, then reinstalled in a rather plain purpose-built tower.  The beauty of the installation is that the pendulum, gears, fans, levers, pulleys "the works" can be viewed from all sides through a glass enclosure.  Pretty cool when everything starts spinning and whirring in time with the chiming of the bells in the tower above.  No?  Well it's a guy thing.

Machupiccu in the Misty Mountains

Speaking of Machupiccu, it is maintained with the help of llamas which may be found wondering among the ruins and cropping the grass.  They provide a very pleasant contrast to the lifeless stones around them and provide great amusement to the throngs of tourists taking photos.

After joining a tour of the central area, Deb and I venture out along a trail that was a key access route before the coming of the roads, the busses and the trains.  In places, this trail is only a narrow shelf cut in a sheer rock wall with a drop that must exceed a thousand feet.  There is a unique feature in this trail, consisting of a missing section of the "shelf" spanned by a couple of logs that are easily removable.  Of course this makes the main village easier to defend from hostile forces like Spanish Conquistadores.

We don't cross the "Inka Bridge."
This is far enough.

To be clear, we understand the Spanish never visited Machupiccu and there is no evidence of battle.


Back in the central area, we swing through again, trying to absorb the significance of the structures.

Mysteriously shaped stones are the centerpieces of
several courtyards may have been altars.

Stone steps and water-courses are abundant and we enjoy thinking about the feet that trod the steps before us.  As the bard once wrote.  "So light a step will n'er wear out the everlasting flint."

Approaching the altar.

There are just a few restored buildings which give a sense of the appearance in the fifteenth century and in the case of two buildings, shelter scantily clad tourists from a brief rain shower.

Guard House or Storage - Memory fails

The entire complex is served by streams that originate higher on the mountain and follow channels through various buildings and sixteen fountains.  There is a separate drainage system for rainwater runoff which includes a porous sub-base in each of the terraces to prevent them from becoming mud slides decorated with corn and potato crops rushing down the mountain.

Did I mention the water still follows the channels?

Dear reader: amateur bloggers tend to get the sequence of blog posts inverted from time to time and on behalf of amateurs everywhere, I beg your indulgence.

Machupiccu, Holiday Retreat of Inka Kings

Apparently no traveler's bucket list is complete without Machupiccu and it is certainly spectacular.

My! That's a long way down.

This is what I think of as the iconic view.  As you can see
there was a bit of cloud and mist during our visit.

We stay a couple of days in the nearby town of Aguas Calientes and spend several hours in the beautifully curated "Museo de Situ"  This museum does not allow photography, but each case is clearly labeled in Spanish and English showing when and where the artifacts were found as well as details about the item like the age, presumed use, material and significance to the culture.  

We had this one taken to prove we finally made it to the
holy grail for South American travelers.

The powers that regulate tourism in Peru have figured out how to make the most of this national treasure.  Therefore it takes quite a bit of time and money to get there.  Our travels outside of the Cusco/Machupiccu area have been bare bones or shoestring tourism, but Machupiccu is the exception.  Many travelers rush through the area so fast that they spend six or eight hours on the train and on the road on the same day they spend two hours actually exploring the site. We are fortunate that our timetable is more flexible.

The site is accessed from Aguas Calientes in the river valley by taking a bus up a short bad road to the gate.  At this point we are not very high by local standards, but we must be 2,000 ft above the river and the drop is very steep on two sides.  For those of us with acrophobia the thrill is enhanced by the view to the valley below.

In some historic sites in Peru "huacheros" or grave robbers did immeasurable damage before scientists and the government stepped in to protect the sites.  Part of the beauty of Machupiccu is that there was very little damage other than the natural decay of grass-thatch roofs and wooden roof beams.  The Inka culture peaked in the 1,400s and reportedly lasted about 100 years.  They extended their influence over other tribes in an area stretching a couple thousand miles from present-day Columbia to Chile.  These tribes paid taxes by providing workers for Inka roads and towns.  Without hard metal tools, the workers chipped away at softer rock using chunks of harder rock and developed a unique way of fitting the stones together without mortar which proved highly resistant to the earthquakes common in the Andes.

No straight horizontal lines to be found here.  There is much
we don't understand about how they could achieve so fine a
fit between adjacent stones with crude tools.

This is an altar-type structure, one of several.  Some had calendar
and astronomy related functions: alignment with the sun on winter
solstice and so on, but information we found was not too clear.
It is clear that this is  a restoration with poorly fitted joints.

This example shows the well-preserved condition of many
buildings at Machupiccu.

Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo, Peru


North of Cusco we find the delightful village of Ollantaytambo where we are never more than a ten minute walk from cafe' con leche or our choice of awe-inspiring Inca or pre-Inca ruins.  The ruins require one to hitch up his britches and exert a little effort to climb but they are worthwhile.

This Inca structure is on the left side of the river and is not controlled or patrolled.

The site above is known as temple of the sun.  This and the associated ruins are on the right side of the river, require an admission fee and are carefully patrolled and regulated.

Terraces near the temple of the sun.

The best part is that the village of Ollantaytambo itself is a fascinating place occupying the same buildings occupied by the Incas in the fifteenth century.  The streets too narrow for an oxcart, uniquely fitted stonework of the walls and cobblestone pavement attest to it's origins.

Typical street in Ollantaytambo

This is actually a staircase in an area

away from where most tourists circulate.

Up the down staircase

From our base in Ollantaytambo, a cold-water hostal, we patch together buses and cabs to take us to the neighboring town of Urubamba and a unique mountain site where a spring of salt water flows out of the mountain and over a large matrix of salt pans constructed centuries ago on a terraced hillside.

This stream is only a couple inches wide.  If you
look closely you see salt crystals on the the edges.

The stream feeds a large complex of drying ponds.

In addition to selling the salt, modern-day Peruvians benefit from the patronage of tourists who visit the site called "Salinas."

As an aside, the majority of tourists we meet in sites other than Machupiccu are native Spanish speakers and I believe they are mainly Peruvians.  The largest minority of foreign tourists appear to be French.  A local guide we meet at breakfast points out that there are an awful lot of folks from USA at Machupiccu.

One of the English-speaking tourists charms a local child.

We understand the locals speak the Quechua language.

These costumes are common on the streets of Ollantaytambo.  This hat indicates a different "tribe" from the lady above but we have not learned names of histories of the groups.

A lot of my interest in the ruins is related to architecture.  In this area they use straw thatch for the roofs.

The life expectancy of a straw roof is about one year.

The thatch is supported by wooden "beams" which are in turn held down by leather thongs secured to stone "anchors" in the masonry gables.

This following photo is representative of the area around Ollantaytambo.

This glacier appears high above Urubamba and is readily visible from the village of Moray where we stop for lunch.  We took a delightful stroll through corn fields to get to Moray.  

In November, the campesinos are preparing the soil and planting the seeds.

Quite a character to find behind a team of oxen