David Grajal

My day trip to Machu Picchu was the best experience of my Peruvian trip. I’d have to say this place surpassed all of my expectations and I’m very glad I saw it. Words, videos and pictures can’t really capture it.

Welcome to Machu Picchu!

The city, the smell and the views are impressive. You really need to be there to understand how magical this place is. Once I reached the point from where Machu Picchu’s famous panoramic pictures are taken I was feeling like I was on the top of the world. I spent several hours walking around the complex trying to imagine how this city would have looked at the peak of the Inca civilization on the XV century. Once I got tired of walking around the ruins I went to the higher point and sit there. Surrounded by Alpacas, Llamas and Vicuñas, breathing fresh air and looking at one of the most mystical places on earth I could just clear my mind and think about nothing.

Jumping@Machu Picchu

After a while sitting with my eyes closed I felt relaxed like never before. I knew that my South American trip was almost over but an urge to come back to explore the rest of magic locations on the continent started to grow on me.

South America is now for me like Philippines was for MacArthur. I shall return!

Cuzco is an amazing city full of history placed at 3300m on a fertile valley on the Andes. Cuzco (Cusco, for the locals) was the capital of the Inca empire. After the Spanish conquest was the capital of South America and the religious capital on the new world (A second Vatican City). Once Peru got independence, Cuzco was completely forgotten until they realized they could make money from their past. Nowadays they have a powerful tourism industry and it is an obligated stop on all the South American tours, because the of city itself and because it’s the start point on your way to Macchu Pichu.

Cuzco Cathedral

I was feeling on Cuzco something special. On my first night there, while walking around the streets I experienced a cultural shock because
It was the first time on my life being surrounded by poverty. Cuzco buildings and streets looked like the most depressed towns in Castilla… until occasionally you discover a 700 years old Inca wall used as foundation for a building. This city is placed on the country side and fells more real, not as superficial as Lima. You can peel the different historical layers like an onion.

The first thing I did on Cuzco was drinking Mate de Coca to get used to the height. I don’t drink coffee so drinking those massive quantities of Coca prevented me to fell sleepy or even to feel hungry. The locals drink it all the time and some of them chew it.

Inca Wall on Cuzco, very close to the "Stone with 12 sides "

Apart of walk around all the city and visit the cathedral where Pizarro is buried, I visited all the Inca ruins near Cuzco. I went to Tambomachay or Inca baths, then I went to Pukapukara and after that I went to Q’enquo where I met an Inca Chaman. All those ruins still have some walls but they are really deteriorated and they mostly look like if somebody dropped randomly some huge rocks. The last ruin was Sacsayhuamán, which is the most important because it was one of the most important Inca temples. In Sacsayhuamán I met some local students that were kindly enough to offer me a tour on the ruins. With their wording was easy to imagine how splendorous the construction had been.

This is sacsayhuamán, placed on the top of a hill dominating the city. Notice the size of those stones!

Those locals wanted me to understand better their country and recommend me to watch some peruvian movies I unfortunately couldn’t find on the net. They also recommend me “The Motorcicle Diaries” which I’ve already watched and it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with South America culture.

With a local on Tambomachay

Cuzco is a extremely nice city and it’s completely worth to spend here several days. Don’t miss the oportunity of discover it even if you are blind of excitement after visiting Machu Picchu!

Lima is the capital of Peru. The city looks messy but modern, with dirty and wide avenues. Lima is flat and huge. There are 9 million people living in Lima, mostly on  two story buildings. The city follow the coastline but it is the first city I’ve visited that instead of hugging the sea, it looks designed to give it the cold shoulder.

Lima, Plaza de Armas

Lima is a grey, functional city. The people look busy and only in the oldest part of downtown you can see some buildings with historic value, narrow streets and colonial style houses. My most interesting experiences in Lima are related to the traffic. Traffic in Lima is awful. Most of the cars are really old and are full of dents.

Public transportation is very interesting and have their particular name: “movilidad”. There is no subway or street cars. They don’t use the European concept of urban bus, but they have microbuses. Those microbuses are basically vans that move on a predeterminate route. There are two guys in each van, one of them is the driver. The other guy go out of the vehicle when there is a stop and start yelling to announce where the van is headed. Some microbus stops are clearly signed but frequently any red light is used as improvisated stop where you can get on or off the microbus.. even if it is on the middle of the road!.

Those vans have around 20 small seats but there are frequently full and the people stand straight. I’ve seen full of people vans with probably 30 people inside. The ticket for the micros are absurdly cheap.

The other half of “movilidad” concepts are cabs. They are a more expensive than the micros on long distances but the price on short distances is cheap and everybody can pay for them. Actually I guess 70% of vehicles in Peru are Taxis. The quality is… not good if we compare it with European standards. First, you need to stop the taxi and barter with the driver. There can be a huge difference between a taxi and another specially if they realize you are not from South America beause they will try to rip you off. And second, the cars are really old and dirty. Really dirty. And don’t expect the driver to wear a nice suit. Not expect even clean drivers.

Car = Cab on Lima

My best moments in Lima were in the cabs because it was a very good opportunity to speak with locals. Lima is a huge city and I needed a 40 minutes ride to downtown from the hotel (Paying like 1 EUR). Those people were honest, and they were clearly interested on having a foreigner Spanish speaker on board. I guess the drivers are not used to it because most of the tourists don’t bother taking taxis. It is something dangerous according to the travel guides.

About our conversations, the taxi drivers were street smart people. The general consensus is that everybody knows that the state corruption is abysmal but they accepted it. I will close the post with a cite I love from one of the Taxi Drivers because it shows clearly what I’m referring when I say they are street smart.

“We need intelligent people to lead us, and intelligent people are always smart to keep for themselves part of the wealth”.

After my short South American trip I’ve become very interested on the continent. I’ve been reading a lot about South America and I’m thinking about going for a trip from South to North following the shadow of Ernesto Guevara.

Why this sudden interest in South America?
It’s difficult to say. In South America I could feel my Spanish roots more powerfully than on Spain. South America people is closer to the XV century Spaniard adventurer that current Spanish people are. We have become too influenced by other cultures while South America is still faithful to the old spirit. The people is street smart, some of them are dreamers, most of them just live on the present and none of them seem to think too much on the future.

In South America happened one of the few moments in history when a developed civilization contacted a less advanced one. South American people had never contacted Greek and  Roman civilization and in consequence they developed by they own at lower pace. By the time Francisco Pizarro discovered them, they were 10 centuries behind in technical development. The Inca civilization was as military, social and economically complex as the Roman Empire had been in Europe.

At that time we didn’t have the same high moral and ethics we have now and we didn’t care about the social or scientific possibilities of such contact. Ten centuries of technical development between the too civilizations was simply too much. Spanish powder and Inca naivety were enough to subdue them on the wink of an eye. After the conquest, we took possession of a huge part of the continent and we made them a colonial province of the Spanish Empire . They become the main source of gold and silver to finance the Spanish expansion all around the world.

They become the magic key of the Spanish Empire. South America changed the course of the history five centuries ago.

In a few centuries South America was linked to the Spanish culture. We mix our races and we force them to forget their old natural gods and tribal languages and convert to Catholicism and a common language.

I spoke with lots of people about all of this. They consider us their roots and they blame us about how we invaded their country and took advantage of the local wealth instead of invest it there. Basically we place them on the modern world in exchange of several centuries of domination and exploitation.

The next posts will deal with what I discover in Lima, Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Stay tuned!

In October I went for a week long trip to Peru for business reasons. However I didn’t want to flight all over the world without also exploring the local culture. I enjoyed 5 days in Peru, 2 of them in Lima and the rest exploring Lima, Cuzco and the Sacred Valley.

This experience have been my first time in South America and also, my first experience in a country where you can touch, listen and smell poverty. It was short, but revelatory experience. After those days, I changed. A bit. You always change your mindset when you visit other cultures but this time has been different. In Peru the people is happy without any of the artificial modern complications we enjoyed on Europe. At the end of the trip I felt closer to human nature.

In Peru I had my first hands-on contact with South America Spanish. It sounds old, like stuck in time. The grammar they use is the same, the pronunciation sounds sweeter. The vocabulary is clearly different. They use the same words as in Spain with different meaning and they use completely different slang. In Peru the people doesn’t seem influenced by the American English as Mexicans do but they often mix Quechuan words with Spanish in their conversations. When I was speaking with locals we could understand each other without problems but sometimes we needed to ask for the exact meaning of the words.

I really liked the trip. It was intense. Not a lot of time but lots of experiences. I really want to explore the entire continent.
Many places to visit… and lots of different cultures to discover.