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PeruRain Forest, Ruins, Restored MonasteriesJudy Wylie
LimaLima has undergone a vast change in the last few years, when a new mayor took over and much like Giuliani in New York, spruced up the city, re-planted gardens, retrained street hustlers, relocated street vendors and restored historic building. The gardens burst with red salvia, cannas, fragrant stock and ginger, and it’s safe and comfortable to stroll, sit or wander over to the Presidential Palace to watch the stiff-legged smartly- uniformed guard on patrol. The most famous restaurant, the Restaurant Costa Verde at Barranquito Beach is outside town down on the water, and has won the Guinness record for the largest buffet in the world, with yards of buffet, serving dishes such as langosta, or small lobsters, anticucho, or beef heart, and lomo saltado or salted beef.. Sandoval Lake LodgeThe Peruvian rain forest covers an area twice the size of California, and at times it seemed like we covered at least half of it getting to Sandoval Lake Lodge, an eco- resort in the extreme Western Amazon, near the foot of the Andes. After landing in the gold-rush river town of Puerto Maldonado, we climbed aboard a long open motorized craft that would take us on an hour and a half ride down the Madre de Dios River. The jungle leaned forward from both sides, with an occasional rickety dock belonging to a family or a small lodging reaching from a bank. Eventually we hopped out to begin a two-mile hike through a muddy rain forest trail. The lodge had an optional rickshaw available, but the idea of riding in splendor through a rain forest struck us all as a bit indulgent. So we walked, hearing the slurping of the mud when we lifted a foot for the next step.
Cusco
It was in Cusco we first met up with guide Walter Huerta, a former history teacher and an agile gentleman well past 50, of stocky build, smooth brown skin and a profile straight from Incan carvings. As he led us through our first Incan ruin, Sacsayhuaman, he instructed “Say it like ‘sexy woman,” with the slow smile of one who has known a few. He stepped up to the tightly fitted stones of the Inca fortress and whipped out a credit card to show how well the Incans knew stonecraft. The blocks were so tightly fitted it wouldn’t slip between. At the Monasterio Hotel in Cusco the air was full of the low chanting of monks. There were no longer any robed residents behind the scenes in this former monastery, not even in the ornate, gold- encrusted chapel which had a flip chart near the altar, ready for the next business meeting. The music was on tape. But still, it made you sneak a sidewise glance into arched hallways to see if a procession might be coming your way. The arched arcades, wide courtyard, dark beams and hearty breakfast buffet make this a lovely place to stay. Machu PicchuHeading for Machu Picchu on the train means an early wake- up call. In the early dark at 6 a.m., we boarded the train, a cheery rake of yellow and orange cars which begins the journey by backing up, making its way by switchbacks in the steep terrain.. Below us the city slept, except for a few women in fedora hats, full skirts and bright shawls getting their bundles ready for markets down in the city. The four-hour ride is easy, the train clean and pleasant, with cabin attendants selling snacks and tapes of Peruvian flute music. After four switchbacks we descended into the plain of the Urubamaba river, which the Incas called the Sacred Valley, an important source of the headwaters of the Amazon. Terraced fields grew corn, onions, garlic and barley. Most of the corn is exported, some of it headed for corn flakes, with Kellogg’s being a big customer. Arriving below Machu Picchu, we walked down a dusty rock-strewn street at Aguas Calientes, past outdoor stalls selling jewelry, backpacks, bells, carvings and outdated film, and boarded a bus for the ruins. The 25 minute ride is a hair-raising lesson in dueling switch -backs, with steep fall-offs that had those sitting near a window gasping.
You can eat at the Ruins hotel at the site, where lunch is $18 for a hearty buffet, and it’s worth it, since it’s the only complete meal available there, and you can go right back to the ruins after lunch. Back down in Aguas Caliente, we walked five minutes to our hotel, the charming wood-and-stucco Hotel Machu Picchu Pueblo. At the bar we slugged back a couple of Pisco sours made with Peruvian grape brandy and toasted Incan ingenuity. On the train back toward Cusco the ride was dreamlike in the late afternoon light. The river gurgled and rushed alongside the tracks as terraces rose on either side and high above us ancient funerary caves studded the rock surfaces. Children waved from the side of the tracks, a dog chased the train for a while, and women walked along the sides with bundles, past scotch broom and prickly pear. At one point two small boys peeked out from behind an agave as big as a Volkswagen. Just as I was wondering how the human and animal population could live so close to the tracks without disaster, a cow appeared, walking casually down the tracks toward us. The trainman sounded his horn, at which the poor animal turned around, but it was too late,. As I sat in the second seat with a perfect view, the train hit the cow with a thud and tossed it up and out of sight. The train screeched to a halt, and much activity followed. Locals gathered as the train stopped and the staff got off to negotiate. Soon we were back on track. At Pisac, the site of an old fortress, we happened on a market and the celebration of the village’s centenary year. Young men in suits danced the local buck- and- weave step with anyone willing, women sold weavings, old keys and locks, and jewelry, as others made noodle soup and sold it at tiny tables that could seat two. I bought a long curved green fruit called a picae, to eat later. It cost one sole, or about 33 cents. I also found a tan baby alpaca throw for $20 and brass amulets to bury in the garden for crop fertility for $2 each.
It was a huge leap to go from cows in the streets (and on the tracks) to the sleek city of Lima again., where we roamed the Barranca neighborhood of old down-at-the heels mansions, good restaurants housed in old homes and a crafts shop where I bought a terra cotta figure that reminded me of the Angel Gabriel blowing his horn. But my biggest prize from the trip was a glass shadow box of 12 Amazonian butterflies found in the Indian market for $8.00. The brilliant four-inch blue Morpho butterfly alone reminds me of the stunning surprises Peru has to offer. This trip was booked through Abercrombie and Kent, which will put together a similar tour or one tailor- made to your interests. Abercrombie and Kent Sandoval Lake Lodge |
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TM
How can you not like a country
which has a soft drink named Bimbo, a restaurant that holds the Guinness World
Record for the biggest brunch buffet at 428 dishes, and a cathedral with
classical pillars built with bamboo to withstand earthquakes? Toss in the Amazonian jungle with multicolor
macaws and the eerie splendor of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu and you have one South American country you can’t
afford to miss. 
Another short ride in a
dugout-style canoe, then a last ride in a double-hulled canoe took us across Sandoval
Lake. On the other side, a modest dock came into view among the
leaves and soon we were walking into
the Sandoval Lake Lodge, the plushest of four eco-lodges in the area, where we
were welcomed with pitchers of star fruit juice and cocona juice from a local
fruit. The thatched-roof lodge is a long single- story run of rooms,
elevated off the ground, with two single camp-style beds to a cabin, each with
a billowy mosquito net around it. Because it rains a bit here, the hammocks are inside the lodge, so you
can swing gently as you peer out at the rain forest and the lake. One afternoon
I lay on my bed as the rain poured down, watching a 2- inch horned beetle cross the floor and
munching animal crackers shaped like llamas.
The walls were rough-hewn central American mahogany, some of it driftwood. Soon
part-owner Charlie Munn got us out and onto a motorized raft to cruise the lake
for wildlife. The sky cleared and we were rewarded with a cloud of red and blue
macaws screeching and fluttering in a
flooded palm grove. My favorite bird was the cartoonish Hoatzin, looking like a
figment of Dr Seuss’ imagination, with blue skin on its head, a rakish spray of feathers above, red eyes
and a constantly startled expression. On another wildlife cruise we saw capuchin
monkeys leaping, one after another in exactly the same arc, from one limb to
another. It made the old phrase “Monkey see, monkey do” come alive. 
In the main plaza at Cusco
the thin bright air was full of the constant
melody of Peruvian flute music, interspersed with snatches of Japanese,
Australian, American English and the motors of idling tour buses. Although the
outside world flows through it, leaving ATM’s and young men wearing satin
jackets with their eco-tour company emblazoned on the back, there are still
scenes you don’t see at home. Young Quechua girls of roughly 7 or 8, dressed in
their red and orange shawls and full
skirts strolled the square, each carrying in her arms a tiny lamb, approaching
visitors with a smile and a single word: “photo?” I also wondered if there
wasn’t a beauty shop for llamas in town, since older women who sought photo tips, dressed in native costume
often had a comely llama in tow. . The animal was always meticulously groomed: even the
llama’s eyelashes looked as if they had been carefully curled,
but maybe they just grow that way. 
When we reached the ruins the
crowds, bus exhaust and signs advertising helicopter tours might have spoiled
it, but after climbing only a few feet up we stood speechless at the grandeur
of the scene. This citadel reportedly housed priests, temple virgins, and military contingents, but it’s not too clear
why it was such a mystery in its own time. The mystery remains and regardless
of the crowds, you only need to go off by yourself for a few moments to feel
the eerie power of the place where anything might have happened to you. The
graneries, homes, temples, and carefully terraced thin strips of gardens made
clear the old Inca greeting: “Tell no lies, steal no thing, and do not be lazy.” Nobody was lazy here, or the
careful constructions of huge blocks of stones wouldn’t still be standing, so
well put together that even earthquakes could not move them centimeters apart.
A steep walk up to the Sun Gate took about an hour, as we passed organized
groups of hikers going the other way,
who had walked the four-day Inca trail to reach Machu Picchu. Their bearers
wore orange woven shawls and knitted multicolor caps against the cold night.. 
At Yucay we stopped for the night
at the Posada del Inca, a former convent. In the early morning I rose and
walked barefoot to the small yellow chapel, sitting in the simple wooden space
inside as the sun rose and streamed in the high windows. The courtyard of the inn was shaded with
magnolias and fig trees and
brightened with impatiens and daisies.
An impromptu market was set up in the
open courtyard, where local women laid
out blankets and sold hand-made alpaca children’s sweaters with a llama on the
front for $6.50. Looking out the front
entrance of the inn, we could see cows and donkeys walking toward the village
pasture for the day.