Machu Picchu - Inca Jungle Tour

This may be a long one...

I awoke Sunday morning, got a quick breakfast --- eggs! An absolute luxury down here. ´Breakfast´ normally consists of these small circular bread rolls, some butter, jam if you´re lucky, and tea. Lots and lots of tea. So much tea that you almost forget to dot your I´s.

I came back to my hostel and met a guy who claimed to have been waiting for me for 30 minutes. Whatever. They told me 8 so I was there at 8.

I board a bus, groggly eyed, mumble hello to the other tour passengers. Upon quick glance, it appeared there were some Asians, a very affectionate and snuggly couple, a random man with a cowboy hat, and a peculiar looking woman. More on that later.

We bounce our way through Cusco in this small tour bus, with mountain bikes on top, until we pull up to another larger bus with Peruvians hanging their heads out the window in some combination of curiosity and boredom. Perhaps in search of a cool breeze.
And tons of things strapped to the top of the bus. I wouldn´t have been surprised to see a random cow on top of the bus, that´s how many things they had up there.

So, with people running all over the place - lots of action! Random people begin climbing on top of the buses and begin transferring the bikes from our small tour bus to this larger bus of chaos! I´m sitting there thinking... hmmm.... what would they be doing that? We already have a nice and tidy mini tour bus, packed with eager participants ready to ride bikes and tour jungles!

Well - turns out we end up traveling on the big bus with the locals! As a cost-cutting measure I´m sure. Great. So we board the bus with 50 something locals, begin bouncing our way across the Peruvian countryside. The bus ride was scheduled for two hours (ended up being a smooth 5), and they were playing some Spanish guitar music which actually matched our lackadaisical roll through farms and countryside. I thought ´wow, this is pretty cool.´

Bags were tucked into overhead compartments, many many bags! Only they had no way of securing these bags there, no net or anything, so as the bus bumbled over bumps -- bags would just fall on unsuspecting passengers! It was a fun little game for me to pass the time actually -- betting to myself on which bag was next to fall. Will it be the yellow one, or the brown box that looks like it could do some damage! Yippy!

We stopped in random towns, with random children boarding the bus to sell you things -- fruit, toys, eggs, vegetables, clothes -- the usual. I am used to this by now.

Then -- the fun began. Well, before we get to the fun -- they have these people -- there were two of them, on two separate occasions -- the first one stood at the front of the bus, shouting an impassioned speech about lord knows what.

He was speaking in fast forward spanish, so - obviously unintelligible to me. The speech went on and on. And on and on. I caught the random ´Senor and Senorita!´ occasionally, but other than that it was just a man standing and shouting.
After a good 20 minutes of so of this impassioned speech -- he began to walk down the aisle, distributing items out of a bag to people. For some reason he bypassed me and the other members of our tour -- apparently we didn´t qualify. Then he heads back to the front of bus and begins talking like an auctioneer! Uno, duos, tres, quatro, cinqo, seise! o23ijno2nf 2n3lfnn lnaslk n f !ª

He goes through the aisles again, this time collecting money from people! Finally, with my interest peeked to a fervishness I could not contain, I asked one of the random tour peeps that spoke Spanish what in sam hell was going on. They didn´t necessarily know, but thought that it was a fund-raiser for some family. We were not sure what role the candy played in this.

Anyway, after another one of the random stops in a random town, another speaker stood up in the front of the bus -- this man had a headphone, microphone -- amplifier! He meant business.
Turns out this man was selling some type of fortified powdered milk, or something. He also spoke for a good 20 minutes. How can you speak so passionately, and for so long, about MILK?!?

I have no idea.

But he did.

So he distributed the packets, then made the 2nd round of money collections, for everyone who couldn`t resist this amazing product! Then there was silence.

Ahhhhh.

And just when I settled into a nice glazed-over stare out the window -- it began.

The music. It was constructed using synthesizers, fake drums, and that same familiar beat that is recognizable in a lot of spanish music. I would describe it as Marc Antony mixed with UB40.
Because those are two of my favorite artists that I listen to ALL THE TIME.

Every single song sounded the same. I think the songs were theoretically supposed to be different, but they were not. And inevitably, in each song, they would shout ´bilah chicas! bilah!´ over and over, then, a little later -- actually at the beginning and the end of each song -- would shout ´Los... Putos!!!´ over and over -- super loud.

So, ok. A few songs is cool. But this went on for HOURS. I am not kidding.
Hours.
And it was LOUD. So loud. I looked around the bus, thinking ´what does everyone think of this? Is this normal? It can´t be. It´s too loud. Too obnoxious.´ But it kept going.
My initial anger and impatience eventually turned to laughter. It was too much. Like my good friend Tom always says -- you can either laugh or cry.

Finally, finally! The bus stops. Oh, and the bus at this point is traversing switchbacks up the impossibly imposing and gigantic Andes mountains.
I´ve never seen anything so steep and neverendingly tall.
It was quite a sight. Andy in the Andes!

How these mountains came to be I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine techtonic plates meeting in oceans and pushing each other skyward. Out of the ocean. Subversion?
Whatever it is, it is very hard to imagine.

Ok - moving on! I will have to fast forward this story because i have to get to the airport to catch a flight.

Long story short - we get the mountain bikes down. These bikes... are barely bikes. They barely had wheels and brakes, but nonetheless the group -- which had never even been introduced to each other! (nice guiding mister tour guide!) begin rolling down the mountain. It was all downhill from here. We rarely had to pedal. At first I was hesitant, because we were biking down steep bouncy mountain roads (the term road is used very loosely here, it is more a ´path´where trees and various impediments have been cleared), but eventually I became more comfortable with the bike, and the speed, and the fact that at least we had helmets.

Ahhh, biking. It brought back a lot of memories. Both of my cross country trip, and of Hawaii. These mountainsides looked very much like the Oahu countryside.
Misty, foggy tropical beauty. Streams and waterfalls and greenery. Fast-flowing water rushing down the mountainside.

Later that night, after we got to the hostel (picture four walls, a ceiling, and a bunch of beds piled into a hot room, with a bathroom whose shower´s water actually landed on the toilet! -- amazing. You had to sort of straddle the toilet to get the water to hit you -- and mind you there are precious few hot showers down here. Most are bone chillingly cold. Shockingly cold, where the water hits you and you unconsciously utter a startled sound! You can´t help it).

Anyway, we (the group who had yet to be introduced -- and, turns out, never was) were rehashing the events of the day, and this English dude Russ says, of the Los Putos music -- ´Death would not take me soon enough!´-- ha.
Apparently I wasn´t the only one who noticed the music. Good times.

The bike ride went through random towns, as did a lot of this jungle tour. They weren´t really towns, I would call them more settlements. Most settlements consisted of houses that you can´t really call houses in the way that we think of houses, they are more walls with leaves, branches and boards resting on the top of the walls.
And a general store that had shelves of water and cola and bread.

And children. The children! Peruvian children are the most happy and beautiful people on this earth. I am convinced of it. Every town I passed through a town there were endless smiling children waving and saying ´hola´. They all said hola. It was so great. They had nothing, not even shoes, but they were so happy and friendly. It was neat.

Anyway, the people on this tour. There was one English couple -- Ross and Rosa-- whose main concern seemed to be how many bottles of water they had. They were endlessly concerned about their water levels. They would race ahead of the group as if it were indeed a race, then wait for us to catch up. Then they´d talk about water.

Then we had 3 girls from South Korea. I still have no idea what their names were. Only one of them spoke English, she was our translator for the other two. They were giggly and fun.

An interesting thing about these South Koreans is that they brushed their teeth after every single meal! I was very impressed by this. Their oral hygeine was world class. And -- they never ate all of their rice at any meal. Ever. I also found this very interesting. I thought Asians enjoyed rice.

Well, I´ll have to continue this later on, or tomorrow. So much more to tell, including Machu Picchu! And 80´s music, and wandering chickens, and being scolded for picture taking that steals souls, and... lots of stuff.

My flight is either at 2pm or 4pm, I need to get to the airport to confirm. I´m flying to Lima and then hopping on a bus to Huarez. Huarez is in the Andes, full of snow-capped mountains, gleaming glaciers and pristine lakes.

More later!