Peru June 11-22, 2025

20250612_071830.jpg A statue near the lobby of the hotel. I can't find anything about it online.

20250612_072714.jpg A bull sculpture in June 7th Park, near the hotel.

20250612_072913.jpg And a giant ceramic pot.

20250612_073208.jpg The Parroquia La Virgen Milagrosa between June 7th Park and John F. Kennedy Park.

20250612_073333.jpg Sign describing why JFK Park was named the way it was. He was "considered an icon of the aspirations and hopes of Americans."

20250612_090851.jpg A pre-Inca stone mound in Miraflores called Huaca Pucllana, built by the Lima people some time between 200 and 700 CE.

20250612_090911.jpg Still more. You can see where some of the exterior bricks were removed over the years before the site was protected.

20250612_100049.jpg Part of the Basílica y Convento de San Francisco de Lima, where we went to see the catacombs.

20250612_100204.jpg The main entrance to the building.

20250612_105350.jpg Skipping ahead because no photography was allowed inside. This is a fountain in the square in front of the presidential palace.

20250612_110203.jpg The Basílica Catedral de Lima. The smaller part here is popular for weddings -- it's cheaper.

20250612_110215.jpg The presidential palace.

20250612_110631.jpg A basaltic stone from the Andes: a tribute to the last Inca ruler, Taulichusco.

20250612_110654.jpg This is (not) a statue of Francisco Pizarro.

20250612_112058.jpg The Convento Máximo de Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

20250612_121825.jpg After that we went to the Museo Larco, which has a bunch of historical artifacts. Here are some arrowheads.

20250612_121836.jpg Pottery.

20250612_122420.jpg The same guy, at three stages of his life.

20250612_123308.jpg Animals. The cat was associated with the mortal world.

20250612_123459.jpg I think this was the representation of a god, but I can't remember.

20250612_123619.jpg I think this is the same god, this time riding a bird. Maybe a condor? Those were associated with the realm of the gods. Also, the reflection of a doofus holding a phone.

20250612_123710.jpg Warning: Danger Noodle. Snakes were associated with the underworld/realm of the dead.

20250612_123828.jpg Condors and snakes.

20250612_123917.jpg A crab.

20250612_125347.jpg This was showing a family; grandma weaving, the kid learning, and Dad yelling that the kid is doing it wrong.

20250612_130005.jpg A ceremonial knife used to slit the sacrifice's throat, and the cup used to collect the blood.

20250612_131056.jpg More decorative items for the elite. This time from a Chimu's funeral.

20250612_151219.jpg We went to lunch at a mall overlooking the Pacific, after we ate we walked around a bit. This is looking down at the coast and the Carretera Panamericana Sur (Pan-South-American Highway) that runs the length of the Peruvian coast.

20250613_150111.jpg Flying to Cusco.

20250613_150158.jpg Snow-capped peaks in the background.

20250613_173253.jpg More mountains as we drove from the airport to the hotel in Yucay.

20250614_100406.jpg At the Pisaq site and looking down at the modern town of Pisac.

20250614_101605.jpg Looking at the top of the hill, we see some of the farming terraces with warehouses for the crops at the top.

20250614_102936.jpg Some scenery from the top of the terraces.

20250614_103110.jpg Alpacas.

20250614_103927.jpg A little bridge over a stream near the end of the site, with the warehouses in the background.

20250614_104407.jpg Heading back, baby alpaca.

20250614_104827.jpg Our guide told us what this was. I forgot. But you can see we're up high enough that larger trees don't really like to grow. We're at something like 11,300 feet above sea level here.

20250614_105500.jpg At the watchtower in the corner of the site, where they could look down the valley.

20250614_105505.jpg They valley again.

20250614_105523.jpg Inside the watchtower.

20250614_105544.jpg It was a decently-sized thing; the guards stayed there since there was just farmland here.

20250614_105600.jpg More of the remaining structures.

20250614_105626.jpg The farthest-forward structure.

20250614_105713.jpg Nooks the Inca built to help the building flex during tremors.

20250614_110109.jpg Looking down from near the top of the watch complex, selfie time.

20250614_113022.jpg After we were done we heading back down into the village of Pisac to see a family-owned jewelry store where they use local materials including silver and various stones. That wasn't really my thing, so I poked my head outside and a local stuffed a baby alpaca into my hands to take a picture.

20250614_145449.jpg Next stop: Ollantaytambo, a defensive placement where two valleys come together.

20250614_150227.jpg "Countless stairs," redux.

20250614_150403.jpg Next to the warehouses, there's an angry-face-looking thing. The Inca didn't carve that, they just thought it was fortuitous.

20250614_150852.jpg Climbed up a bit, looking at the town. The train station we'd be at the next day is out of frame to the right.

20250614_151119.jpg Inca steps. Every day was leg day.

20250614_151454.jpg Farther up, looking at the town again.

20250614_151505.jpg And the angry face.

20250614_152052.jpg Another view of the town.

20250614_152055.jpg We were standing on a little complex off to the side where the Inca built a temple.

20250614_152130.jpg We know this was an important part because instead of using random stones and holding them together with mortar, they chiseled the rocks to fit together without any filler. They also shaped protrusions and holes into the stones, like giant Legos.

20250614_152208.jpg More windows and nooks.

20250614_152251.jpg This was about as high up as we went, looking now at a part that predates the Inca.

20250614_152818.jpg A better example of how the stones were made to fit together for the temple.

20250614_153410.jpg Looking along the side terrace. You can see the "Pre-Inca Section" sign from before.

20250614_170509.jpg In Chinchero, where they demonstrated traditional spinning and weaving with alpaca wool. This step was cleaning.

20250614_170740.jpg And after pulling, spinning. Then we looked around and bought stuff.

20250614_185746.jpg We headed back to the hotel, and while walking around I decided to take pictures of the little on-site church.

20250614_185754.jpg Along the walls.

20250614_185802.jpg And the other wall.

20250615_061715.jpg The next day, up early to drive back to Ollantaytambo to catch the train to Machu Picchu. There's a nice little fountain outside the church.

20250615_061730.jpg And the church itself.

20250615_080930.jpg The Urumamba river out the train window.

20250615_083655.jpg Looking back down the tracks.

20250615_090410.jpg Hikers, if you zoom in far enough to see them.

20250615_095725.jpg The tracks follow the river to Aguas Calientes, the town near Machu Picchu. There's another river, the Aguas Calientes, that cuts the town in two. Train station on one side, all the hotels on the other. Footbridges like this one cross it.

20250615_100231.jpg The Aguas Calientes River.

20250615_111201.jpg We've made it to Machu Picchu and started doing some climbing.

20250615_111457.jpg The elevation here is lower; we're in the rainforest instead of above it, so it wasn't as hard to keep my breath.

20250615_111500.jpg Looking into the main part of the site.

20250615_111617.jpg Still more climbing to do, as seen at left.

20250615_111744.jpg Up a little farther, looking down.

20250615_111955.jpg You can't prove you were there without taking a selfie, right?

20250615_112520.jpg The money shot. The path we'd take down is to the left.

20250615_113954.jpg This is where we started moving over to head into the site. There's some houses and a small temple on our way in.

20250615_114035.jpg The site with more of the mountain it sits on.

20250615_114629.jpg Some terraces on the side of the hill, if I remember right those were defensive in nature and weren't used for farming.

20250615_115152.jpg Looking into one of the houses. This was built for common use, it's irregular stones and mortar instead of the chiseled-to-fit stones like we saw in the temple at Ollataytambo.

20250615_115252.jpg One of the locals having a siesta.

20250615_115403.jpg More houses.

20250615_115457.jpg Looking up the street.

20250615_115935.jpg The round bit was a temple, you can tell from the custom-fit stones.

20250615_120221.jpg And the site now that we're past the houses.

20250615_120705.jpg And coming back around to more side terraces we saw before.

20250615_121044.jpg Part of a temple area in the main site.

20250615_121344.jpg Looking down an alleyway next to the temple.

20250615_121454.jpg More temple stuff. I think these windows were aligned for one of the solstices.

20250615_121458.jpg Looking out the window.

20250615_121644.jpg The big grassy area in the middle of the site.

20250615_122144.jpg At the far end of the "lawn", checking out some llamas.

20250615_122916.jpg More of the mountains.

20250615_123524.jpg There was some kind of mining in the valley if I remember right (I probably don't).

20250615_123703.jpg The buildings we saw earlier, this time from below.

20250615_124336.jpg Pretty sure the thing in the middle was astronomy-related.

20250615_124504.jpg Another look at the starting terraces. It was a pretty good climb up.

IMG_20250616_131708.jpg Me with a guy named Wiracocha.

20250616_131729.jpg The art piece is the god Wiracocha emerging from nature.

20250616_131935.jpg Now looking upstream on the Aguas Calientes.

20250616_132028.jpg This one is called Origin, Time and Movement.

20250616_132144.jpg Another statue.

20250616_132223.jpg This one is called Humanity's Hope.

20250616_132451.jpg Rock carving.

20250617_090555.jpg Before taking the train back to Ollantaytambo I took another quick walk and took some more pictures. This artwork is called The Gods' Kiss.

20250617_090705.jpg I don't know who the warrior guy is.

20250617_090839.jpg And another rock carving.

20250617_130010.jpg Trying to get some scenery along the way from Ollantaytambo to Cusco.

20250617_134239.jpg Farther outside of town, getting some scenery on the road.

20250617_151515.jpg Cusco. It's a much bigger place -- seventh largest city in the country, with not quite half a million people.

20250617_151521.jpg These were from the tiny little balcony in the hotel room.

20250618_091739.jpg Checking out the city. This was in a church that was built on top of an Inca temple, the Temple of Koricancha. This room has... an altar? in it.

20250618_092511.jpg A model of the structure, the rooms we were looking at are the two beside each other at the bottom left.

20250618_092518.jpg Terraces outside the complex, we'll see them in a few minutes.

20250618_093011.jpg On top of the Inca temple was still a Catholic church. This is their painting of the Virgin Mary, who was merged with the Mother Earth concept of Pachamama, which is why her dress is triangular like a mountain.

20250618_094022.jpg Outside, these are the terraces from the model. In the middle are the condor, puma and snake.

20250618_094027.jpg Part of the temple wall that still exists.

20250618_094030.jpg Looking at the church building.

20250618_094058.jpg Zoomed out a bit.

20250618_100212.jpg All the windows of those first rooms are perfectly aligned.

20250618_103334.jpg After that we went to an old fortification in the hills above Cusco called Saqsaywaman.

20250618_103837.jpg It's another important site with the custom-carved rocks. The big stone is notable for the number of sides it has carved into it.

20250618_105055.jpg I forget what the mound across the field was for.

20250618_105718.jpg Closer to the top, looking out over Cusco.

20250618_105727.jpg It's grown a bit over the last half a millennium.

20250618_105736.jpg At the top of the site, the foundation for a grain silo.

20250618_112545.jpg The remains of a gate.

20250618_112635.jpg Selfie.

20250618_115346.jpg After that we went to an animal sanctuary nearby (Manos de la Comunidad) to see some llamas.

20250618_120151.jpg Dude holding some corn.

20250618_120618.jpg More llamas.

20250618_120713.jpg A model of Machu Picchu. The terraces we climbed are on the left.

20250618_120729.jpg Condor. They're pretty big.

20250618_120758.jpg They also have quite the wingspan.

20250618_120906.jpg There we go; the full wingspan.

20250618_120908.jpg Again.

20250618_121013.jpg The other one decided to get in on the act.

20250618_121231.jpg They have bulls. They're kind of a good luck charm.

20250618_121247.jpg A model of the big church we'd been in that morning.

20250618_121614.jpg They also have a showroom with things from the pre-Columbian peoples of the area.

20250618_121620.jpg Pretty neat stuff.

20250618_121637.jpg This was from a non-Inca civilization called the Paracas.

20250618_121658.jpg Similar, from the Huari.

20250618_121714.jpg Dude blowing a conch shell. It was how they communicated over longer distances back in the day.

20250618_121721.jpg More weaving, from the Chancay.

20250618_121739.jpg This one was Inca.

20250618_123724.jpg Some more weaving, and you can see the "trinity" of the condor, puma and snake.

20250618_130040.jpg Next we went up the road to a site called Q'enqo.

20250618_130619.jpg A table inside a carved-out room. They think it was used for either sacrifices or mummification. The window/hole was used to direct light into the room.

20250618_131026.jpg Back outside and looking at Cusco between the hills.

20250618_151225.jpg After finishing up for the day we headed out for some chifa (Chinese food) for lunch, then headed over to the main square. Ideally we would have toured the cathedral in the background here -- the Coro Matrimonios Catedral del Cusco -- but due to the festival the tour wasn't available. So we just checked out what was going on.

20250618_151916.jpg Part of a little parade that was going on, with a person re-enacting the (not-)Pizarro statue, maybe? The church in the background is a different one next to where we entered the square, it's the Iglesia de la Companía de Jesús.

20250618_152331.jpg Then they turned and headed into the cathedral.

20250618_152539.jpg The flag here is typically used to represent the Inca, they didn't have their own flag. The rainbow was an important part of their religion.

20250618_155950.jpg The cathedral again.

20250618_163709.jpg They have a soda in Peru called Inca Kola, which is mostly bubblegum-flavored with a little citrus. It's pretty good. Luckily for me there's a diet version ("sin azúcar" means "without sugar").

20250619_073608.jpg Not too long after we started our trip, we stopped briefly in Oropesa -- the "bread capital of Peru". This is a loaf of chuta bread. We each got a little sample. I liked it.

20250619_080003.jpg The next stop was at the San Pedro Apóstol de Andahuaylillas.

20250619_080124.jpg There was a very old tree outside. No photography allowed indoors, so that's it until the next stop. But they do have a web site where you can see some pictures of the inside.

20250619_102117.jpg Our next stop was a little farther away, at the Raqch'i archaeological site. Walking around in the colcas -- grain storage buildings.

20250619_102147.jpg A closer look at one.

20250619_103354.jpg And one in the back that had been reconstructed.

20250619_103613.jpg Moving into the town area this was one of the larger buildings.

20250619_104343.jpg The temple of Wiracocha. The big wall was the load-bearing wall that ran along the length. Due to its size (and weight) it was only built with stone at the bottom and then with mud brick for the rest of its height.

20250619_104632.jpg We walked along the length then around to the other side. The round structures here were foundations for pillars holding up the roof.

20250619_104729.jpg A look at the interior wall, with the notches for the ceiling beams.

20250619_105627.jpg Walking back to the bus and getting a pic of the defensive wall behind some of the buildings. This is quite a ways away, the guide said it's a few meters tall to be seen from this distance.

20250619_105859.jpg The restored colca.

20250619_110232.jpg Inca steps as we were walking back.

20250619_110359_02.jpg A statue of Wiracocha.

20250619_121041.jpg Just up the road we stopped for lunch. This waterfall (on the Urubamba River?) was behind the restaurant.

20250619_121051.jpg And of course some mountains.

20250619_121121.jpg This little building was there too. It looks a bit like a tiny old church, but it just had some horses standing beside it.

20250619_130653.jpg We got out at the highest point along the road, 4,335 meters (14,222 feet, about 100 feet higher than the summit of Pike's Peak) above sea level. As you can see from the sign the mountain we're looking at is much higher.

20250619_130802.mp4 Taking a video of it.

20250619_130844.jpg Selfie with the mountain.

20250619_143957.jpg Moving along again, at our last stop before reaching Puno, the Museo Arqueologico de Pucara. Here's a diorama of the original inhabitants about 12,000 years ago.

20250619_144112.jpg Paintings from between 10,000 BCE and 3,600 BCE.

20250619_144233.jpg Another diorama from the (likely) beginnings of human habitation of South America, this time showing the start of farming.

20250619_144253.jpg A piece from the Qaluyo culture, about 3200 years ago.

20250619_144359.jpg Humanoid figures.

20250619_144725.jpg Puma.

20250619_144729.jpg Another puma.

20250619_144832.jpg I forget what this was for, I didn't take a picture of anything that described it.

20250619_144853.jpg More pottery, this from the Tiahuanaco culture, between 600 and 1100 CE.

20250619_145015.jpg And a statue, holding a person's head.

20250619_145220.jpg A real Inca mummy. They were wrapped up in the fetal position, waiting to be reborn into the realm of the dead.

20250619_145241.jpg Funerary items, including the chullpa -- the little brick tower -- from just before the Spaniards arrived. The climate wasn't as dry in that location so the person wasn't mummified and decomposed instead.

20250619_145410.jpg Lucky bulls.

20250619_145419.jpg More bull.

20250619_193308.jpg After that we made our way through Juliaca without stopping, then the last hour or so to Puno. This was from the hotel patio, looking at downtown over Lake Titicaca.

20250620_060733.jpg I took the same shot the next morning. And yes I actually planned it that way.

20250620_060741.jpg Our hotel had its own pier into the lake. Due to climate change the level of the lake has overall dropped the last 10-20 years, so the pier only barely makes it to the water now. In the foreground are some railroad tracks with a gate you had to buzz through to get to the pier. Part of me wanted to go out and take a picture, most of me couldn't be bothered.

20250620_081601.jpg After breakfast we took a tour boat out onto the lake. The part of the lake near Puno is pretty shallow and reeds grow in it. On the Uros floating islands they take the reed roots as they begin to become buoyant, lash them together...

20250620_082241.jpg ... and cover them with reeds in a criss-cross pattern. After which they construct their houses.

20250620_082649.jpg An observation tower shaped like a catfish. The catfish also gives this particular island its name -- Mauri.

20250620_083121.jpg One of the smaller buildings.

20250620_083125.jpg And a house. The inhabitants know they're putting on a show for the tourists, but it still felt like it would be weird to just take picture's of somebody's studio apartment. So, exterior only.

20250620_083226.jpg Pumas.

20250620_084350.jpg Up on the catfish tower, a better view of the island and also the type of boats they've been using since their ancestors migrated out onto the lake. Modified a bit for the tourists. Basically, two boats are made into a kind of catamaran with a cabin in the middle.

20250620_084409.jpg The neighboring island. Who gets visitors is done in turns, so everybody has a chance to get some of that tourist cash.

20250620_084412.jpg The reeds between Mauri and the next island. Since they're used as the platform the reeds need to be constantly replenished.

20250620_084416.jpg The island we were on, and different neighbors.

20250620_093549.jpg Just in case you forgot you were in Uros.

20250620_093559.jpg Condor.

20250620_113045.jpg From there it was about two hours to Taquile, where we started by watching the Indigenous population show off their moves.

20250620_113052.jpg More.

20250620_114625.jpg Another member of the group and I decided to 100% the island and hiked all the way up the ridge to walk to lunch. The sensible people walked along the side of the hill.

20250620_114903.jpg Looking toward the top. The people on the island are in charge of maintaining the path and they do a good job of it.

20250620_124958.jpg Sheep.

20250620_115256.jpg Almost to the top. From here we can see Bolivia on the far shore.

20250620_125402.jpg Burial/memorial marker, I think?

20250620_115500.jpg Selfie from the top, with the hat I'd bought a few minutes earlier. Kept the sun off my head.

20250620_115647.jpg Looking back towards Peru.

20250620_131449.jpg The people who work on the paths sometimes take credit for their efforts.

20250620_132054.jpg Some of the walkway stones had pictures carved into them. This one was a condor.

20250620_132132.jpg Fish.

20250620_132203.jpg Not entirely sure what this one was.

20250620_165446.jpg A lucky bull at the hotel, walking to the restaurant.

20250621_084312.jpg I was at Lake Titicaca. Of course I did a Cornholio before I left.

20250621_131129.jpg Snow-capped peaks in the distance as we flew back from Juliaca to Lima.

20250621_140251.jpg Getting to the edge of the mountains now. Not sure if that counts as clouds or fog. After that we landed in Lima and I put the phone away for the rest of the trip. We got to Bogota after dark for our final transfer and didn't land at Dulles until 5:00 the next morning.