Our Family Adventures 2018 / 2019

2018 ended with a bang here in Peru. We are not really big party people, and most New Years Eves we spend time with family earlier in the day, and then are home early, and usually in bed well before midnight….yes, we are a bit boring….After how tired our children were during Christmas Eve  we figured we would have an early night as usual, well Peru managed to keep most of our family awake….some of us can’t stay awake no matter what. December 31 we had a lazy morning, called my brother Alex to wish him a happy birthday, and then wandered down to Plaza de Armas in search for the Catholic University of Santa Maria’s Museum of Andean Santuaries, where a famous mummy called “ Juanita, the ice maiden” is displayed. This is one of Maija’s many bucket lists items, and she will write a little bit about it on a separe post. After a lot of walking as usual we headed home, and then went out to look for a Peruvian Chifa. It is a family tradition to always have Chinese food on New Years Eve, and

Who Is Juanita? Juanita the Ice Maiden is a mummy kept in The Universidad Católica De Santa Maria. She is a natural mummy, as in, not mummified like most royalty, but frozen on the summit of the Volcano Ampato. When she was found, her body was wrapped in blankets, very well preserved. Her face was exposed to the sun, the reason of her discolored skin. Juanita before being unwrapped

Arequipa is only 90km from the ocean (although due to the state of Peruvian roads, that 90km takes about 2.5 hours to navigate), so we decided to head down to the beach for a day or two.  Our plan (although the 'p' word implies a whole lot more planning and forethought than we gave to it) was to take a collectivo down to the beach town Mollendo, investigate hotels when we get there, possibly stay overnight (depending on hotel prices and availability), and hopefully get back to Arequipa some time. Considering how loose the plan was, I think we did OK. When heading down to the bus terminal, the Uber driver suggested that we take a car instead of a bus, as the car only needs to find 7 people before it goes, while the bus needs to find 15.  When we got there, the car was ready to leave and there was no bus to be found, so we just took the car. The landscape between Arequipa and Mollendo is some of the most desolate desert I have ever seen.  Most of it has no plants whatsoever

Yeah, it has been a while since the last post.  Suffice it to say, we are alive and well in Arequipa. For those not familiar with it, Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, with a population of about 850,000 people.  It is located about 90 km (2.5 hours driving) from the coast, and is a highland desert with pretty much the perfect temperatures year round (average highs of 22 C, average lows of about 10 C, and even in the midst of the rainy season no more than about 5 days / year of rain). We are living in Cayma neighbourhood, one of the more modern districts.  Our AirBnB is on the 7th floor of a newly constructed apartment building.  The kids are ecstatic that our front door opens directly into the elevator door, and that you need a an RFID keychain to even get to our floor. Anyway, this being Christmas, we have tried to keep some of the feeling for the kids.  We bought a 2 foot tall Christmas tree from a street vendor, complete with fake snow, and the kids have created dec

Dear Mrs. L-J, I went on a bus that was a double decker, it was called Cruz del Sur. It was very comfy, it was my first time travelling in first class. The bus ride from Cusco to Puno was 7.5 hours long, but I slept right through it! This is me riding the bus In answer to your questions: 1. Yes, the condor had a net for it’s roof cage. 2. I did not see the cage for the parrot (it was not in a cage when I held it). 3. A tortoise dwells well on land, a turtle dwells well in the water.. 4. Most of the city of Cusco is made over Inca ruins so it is almost a district of ruins. I can’t wait because I can eat “panetón” tonight. Panetón is a food that is traditional in Peru!! It is a sweet bread loaf. What are you doing in school? What are your favourite foods for Christmas? Love, Terran

First of all, we have only really explored Puno for one day, and we actually stuck around the house a lot (there is a piano and a guitar in this Airbnb...) so I am sure there is a lot more to it than the few pictures we have here. Puno seems a lot poorer than Cusco, and not as colonial, and touristy. After Amantani we thought it would be cool to try to go swimming in Lake Titicaca, but, well.....this side of the Lake is not as nice...it is to be expected though, most bodies of water next to big cities are not clean. We would not want to jump into these waters

After our night of partying, aka dancing three songs, and getting to bed by 9 pm, we woke up early, and ate a breakfast of pancakes, and jam prepared by our sweet Mama Virginia. She gave us her address, so we need to make sure to send her a post card from Canada when we get back home. She told us that next time we can contact her directly and stay with her. If we ever get a chance to come back, I will need to practice at least a little bit of Quechua, it would be great to have a nice long conversation with her, although I don't think I could ever get to a conversational Quechua....one can only dream. Saying our goodbyes to Mama Virginia at the port.

Friday morning we left Urubamba. and headed to Cusco, we spend the evening there before catching our night bus to Puno, Peru. Puno is a city in southeastern Peru, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca....our kids always giggle when saying that name...so immature! lol...ok we do too. So far all our travelling has been via air, and we wanted to check out bus travel in Peru. Wyatt did some research on Bus companies in Peru, and we decided to go with Cruz del Sur. They seemed really thorough. They had breathalyzer tests for the driver, they checked everyone's ID, and took a video of everyone on board. The seats were super comfy, and they provided a snack on board. As we told our kids, this is probably the one and only time that we can travel "first class" as a family. We were very impressed with their service, and honestly it was a lot less stressful than air travel. A few weeks ago we had walked over to the bus terminal in Cusco, and purchased our bus tickets to Puno. Wh

Today is our last day in our Secret Garden AirBnB.  This is a beautiful little cabin with about 1 - 2 acres of trees, grass, flowers, rock walls, little waterfalls, etc.  The cabin itself has solar power for electricity, on-demand hot water in the shower, a fireplace (although the weather was too warm to use it), a zip line and tree house for the kids, etc. Terran was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday, so we stayed around the cabin while he rested.  While exploring, we found some plum trees (both purple and yellow), watermelons, raspberries, and tons of other plants.

Today we did a little hike which was recommended by a couple sister missionaries that we ran into in Urubamba's Plaza de Armas.  It was not very long (maybe an hour or so round trip), with a beautiful waterfall at the end.  The trail was not marked (and to be fair was not really a trail - it started just at the side of the road where the taxi dropped us off, and went up through a town and along various farming paths).  After a few wrong turns we eventually got to the waterfall.

Just up the mountain from our house is an old Inca storage facility.  It's not on any of the tourist maps, and I can't even find what it was called.  Our AirBnB host told us about it while explaining what to see in the area.  Apparently the positioning on the mountain and the cool breezes that blow at that elevation combined with the thick stone walls allow it to keep food cool over the summer. On the way up we walked past the coolest house I have seen here so far... it looks like something out of a Dr. Suess fantasy.  The entire house looks to be built out of concrete, including the domed roof.  I don't think there is a right angle anywhere; everything is curved and organic looking.

So after checking out the local tarantulas and our cool cabin we got pretty hungry, and decided to wander into town. Peruvian food is awesome, but our eating experiences have been somewhat hit and miss. Today though we got lucky, and found this really cool place right off the main highway. Out whole family LOVES sushi, so when we saw this restaurant we could not turn it down. Puka Pukara, Sushi and Ceviche! YUM!

Monday morning we said good bye to our nice home in Cusco, and headed to Urubamba. We walked down to the paradero, and took a "colectivo" (a large 20 person van), paid our 6 soles/per person, and rode for about an hour and a half to the town of Urubamba. According to Wikipedia, Urubamaba or Urupampa in the Quechua spelling means "flat land of spiders"....poor Maija.  (We didn't tell her yet... she can wait until we leave or she reads this blog post to find out). The Sacred Valley is much warmer than Cusco, and is full of flowers. A beautiful little town

Our time in Cusco has at last come to a close; it has been a wonderful month, both seeming to have gone quickly and slowly at the same time.  Trying to remember back a month ago to our life in Calgary seems like another lifetime. For our last Saturday hike, we finally made it up to Templo de la Luna, which Monica, Maija, and I had attempted but failed to reach back on November 14th.  It is a small-ish set of ruins, but quite pretty with an interesting set of caves (which were unfortunately mostly cordoned off, although you could look through them). One of the caves which you could actually enter.  There is a large altar here, similar to the one at Q'enqo

I know, this sounds really bad, but our favourite food in Peru so far seems to be pizza.  Now, to our defense, the pizza here is not quite the same as Canadian pizza.  The crust is much thinner (but is not the hard crunchy 'thin crust' pizza either).  I think a big part of how they do this is by cooking the crust first, separately - you see a big pile of already cooked crusts in most pizza shops.  The toppings also have a different feel to them.  Finally, there is some sort of creamy garlic sauce that every shop seems to have which adds a really nice touch. Anyway... today after walking to the bus terminal to purchase tickets for our bus ride from Puno to Arequipa, we were walking around Plaza de Armas (of course) and found a tiny little pizza place called "Urpi", just a couple of blocks off the main square.  The entire restaurant sat maybe 12 people (although it looked as if there was an upstairs room with more seats).  In the corner was a prominent wood fired stov

I wanted to write a little about some of the people we have met here in Cusco. As I have mentioned before we are lucky to find fast friends in our local church congregation. We still have one more Sunday here in Cusco and thought we would take the opportunity then to say good bye to our friends and take pictures too. Well, at the end of our church meeting we found out that next week church is cancelled all over Peru due to elections. Apparently a lot of shops, and churches do not meet since people have to travel back to vote in their designated areas, and no one goes to church anyway, thus we were not able to get pictures of all the many people that have shown us kindness here in Cusco, but here are a few: Maija met two really nice girls at church, we could not find Aby, but here is Maija with her friend Flor. They kept asking Maija how to say things in English

I've been enjoying all the small luthier shops around this area... this afternoon / evening we were walking through the San Blas area, and found another one. Marimacho - a 16 stringed instrument with 4 courses This luthier has all sorts of instruments, but the one which impressed me the most is a 16 string variant of the Bandurria with 4 courses (4 strings in each course) which the luthier calls the "Marimacho", seen above.

 So, after I went to Rainbow Mountain on Saturday, I have a few things to say about it.Pretty, and painful. If you wanted to do it while you are in Cusco, I would suggest it only if you are a strong hiker, and if you are an intermediate hiker, I would suggest getting to the first summit and sucking on Coca leaves. Maybe get help from horses, it pays off with the view at the first summit. My dad made it to the 2nd summit. The hike down is easy and it has a good view. You see a valley with random alpacas dotting the green grass. The alpacas are fairly tame, but will still run away if you approach them too fast.  Some fun facts about this Mountain are: 1. Another name for Rainbow Mountain is Vinicunca. 2. When you are on the first summit of the Mountain  you are closer to the Mount Everest summit than you are to Calgary. 3.There is snow on a mountain close to Vinicunca.  The roads on the second half of the way there are the scariest roads ever. And we were in a bus. A BIG bus.

Dear Grandma and Grandpa, How are you? On Saturday I hiked Rainbow Mountain, it was colorful, breath taking, and hard. The Hike was literally breathtaking because when you take a deep breath you don't get much oxygen. Grandma you would have liked all the alpacas in the valley. I think Grandpa would have liked the horses. I would do the hike someday, but not when I am still little. How are all the animals doing? I miss you. Love, Terran Terran's illustration of Rainbow Mountain. 

Today we took a tour bus to the trailhead of Vinicunca, or Montaña de Siete Colores (Mountain of Seven Colors).  This is a recent addition to the tourist catalog in Cusco, only becoming popular in the past couple of years.  The pictures on all the tour guide billboards are obviously photoshopped by someone with knowledge only of the contrast slider, but it still looked like a fun trip. Located about 60km SE of Cucso, it takes a 3 hour bus ride to get there.  Our taxi picked us up about 5:30 AM and took us to the bus.  After about an hour and 45 minutes, we stopped at a small place for a light breakfast.  We then re-boarded the bus for a terrifying ride up a narrow cowpath, with blind corners, steep drop-offs, rickety bridges, and brakes that sounded as if a pig was being murdered.  (I am reminded of the Parable of the Chariot Driver. A stagecoach company was hiring a driver, and asked each of the three candidates how close they can drive to the edge of a cliff. The first bragged he c