TravelStream™ news feed for member b-squared on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/b-squared en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:22:27 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1190385420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1190385420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1190385420/tpod.html Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:22:27 -0500 Peace Corps

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Jalpan de Serra, Mexico

Greetings from Mexico! We´ve been at our site for 6 months now, so we figured it was time to share a bit about our new home, work, and life south of the border! Here´s the lowdown...

La Reserva de la Biosfera Sierra Gorda

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve covers the entire northeastern third of Querétaro state, and encompasses roughly a million acres of mountainous terrain and the last remaining tracts of well-conserved forests in central Mexico. Unlike most reserves, the vast majority of this land is privately owned and nearly 100,000 people live in its scattered mountain villages. This means the Reserve´s conservation relies on the willing participation of local landowners, which is exactly what Biosphere Reserve´s seek to do- blend sustainable human use with natural area protection. Most of the people living here make less than US$6 per day which results in enormous pressure on the Reserve´s natural resources. Forests are cleared to create pastures and cornfields, firewood is harvested for cooking, and plants and animals are hunted for food. Nonetheless, extensive tracts of wilderness still exist including old growth cloud forests covered in bromeliads and orchids, high elevation pine-oak forests full of rivers and waterfalls, semi-deserts where cactus and wild oregano bloom, and tropical forests that are home to jaguars, trogans, and ancient cycads. With fifteen vegetation types this is the most ecosystem-diverse protected area in Mexico.

Nuestro Trabajo

Conservation of the Sierra Gorda has always been grassroots. Over 20 years ago, our boss Pati started the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda, an extremely successful and progressive family-run NGO, to protect this region. She is a true visionary and has built a conservation movement through sheer willpower and spirit. In 1997, when the area was declared a Biosphere Reserve, Pati was named the director, and Grupo Ecológico received co-management responsibilities with the federal government. Their work in environmental education and reforestation has expanded over the years to engage numerous communities in sustainable livelihood activities including beekeeping, artesania, ecotourism, and most recently payments for environmental services. We are working with cutting-edge conservation strategies like selling carbon credits on the voluntary market (international organizations pay local landowners to reforest their degraded farmlands in order to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and offset their business emissions), and helping landowners design management plans to receive payments for biodiversity protection and hydrologic recharge. With our friend Beto we monitor wildlife with remote-triggered cameras (that detect heat and motion), and have captured some great shots of jaguars, pumas, ocelots, coatamundis and others. As it is in conservation work, we´re surrounded by energetic and dedicated people incorporating sustainable practices into community life in the sierra. As one colleague put it, everyone in the group "can agree that they are working to protect life." It's an endless job, and an inspiration to see it being done well.

El pueblo

Jalpan de Serra is a town of about 8,000 people in the lowest, hottest valley of the mountainous reserve. It is the regional capital, so is full of stores, restaurants and hotels making it much more cosmopolitan than you might think. Every Saturday there is live music or entertainment in the plaza, and fireworks frequently wake us up at night, or early in the morning (we still don't quite get that one). Jalpan wasn't more than a small village when Junipero Serra, representing the kingdom of Spain and the holy conquest of Catholicism, arrived in the 18th century to build one of his five ornate missions. Jalpan later grew wealthy from its location along the Tampico-Queretaro trade route-a long, steep, unlikely route-that existed to transport Mexican textiles to Europe. In the early part of the last century the hacienda owners and trade merchants wore fancy clothing ordered from Paris and the town was quite well-to-do. When the hacendados lost their land in the agrarian reform the town fell on harder times and was suffering neglect, until in recent years when a resurgence of wealth has arrived via remissions from the US and wealthy Queretanos seeking a quieter life in the sierra.

La Casa

We live in the old central part of Jalpan, about two blocks from the big, ornate Franciscan Mission, built around 1740. The house we live in used to be part of a compound stretching a square city block. As is the style in much of Latin America, our house is built right to the street, with a large enclosed courtyard. We have a big open air kitchen shaded by a large zapote amarillo tree nestled into the courtyard, from which we hang our hammock. We´re surrounded by bountiful fruit orchards: lemons and limes, oranges and tangerines, papayas, mangos, palms and bananas, growing over the walls and providing needed shade, perches for chickens, and fruit through much of the year. Our back yard was conspicuously missing such a lush scene. Other than the zapote, the garden had two stumps, a couple old papaya trees giving their last fruit, and weeds growing waste high. En route to restoring our own orchard and garden we´ve unearthed garbage bags full of second-rate artifacts buried up to several feet deep: ancient tools, broken glass, old batteries, chicken wire. We now have three terraced garden beds ready to be planted in the new year. We'll eat home-grown fruits and veggies when you visit.

El Perrito

Chavo Pantalones-Listos Lenth de San Antonio came to us in July, about 8 weeks old, hungry and tick-infested, from a ranch in the most remote corner of the reserve. He left his canine family and followed us heroically as we hiked over 10 km to set up wildlife cameras in the tropical forest, determined to disperse even beyond exhaustion. We brought him home, cleaned him up, and gave him a name; we started playin' and haven't stopped. He's bilingual and knows how to catch. He fetches for chicharones. Watching him grow and learn is now our favorite hobby. So much for studying Spanish, playing the guitar, or reading. Often we walk to the reservoir and swim. He helps us dig in the garden, clean the house (his favorite tool is the dust pan), and keeps us safe from frogs, opossums, and the neighbor´s cat. He probably has the best life of any dog in town. Chavo has gained great fame, accompanying us to stores and restaurants, entertainment in the plaza, riding in the back seat of the work truck. Kids we don't know call out "Ey Chavo!" when we pass by. Some people are terrified of him, expecting him to bite. A dog on a leash must be bravo-aggressive and dangerous. Why else would a he be restrained? Most are impressed with how clean, smart and "noble" he is. They marvel that a dog will sit or lie down on command, and they´ve certainly never met a dog who understands English. Showing other people that a puppy can be trained, well-behaved, and trusted is our "secondary project", a cultural exchange demonstrating the best of what dogs can be.

So there´s a taste of life in Mexico for you...if you really want to know you´ll have to come visit and see for yourself!

We can be reached by phone:
(52) 441-296-1672

And receive mail care of:
Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda
Carlos Septiem Garcia No. 46
Colonia Cimatario, Querétaro
QRO, Mexico 76030

Love to all,
Ben and Buffy

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1179017280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1179017280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1179017280/tpod.html Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:45:59 -0400 Peace Corps

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Jalpan de Serra, Mexico

The capital city of Querétaro lies near the southwestern border of the state with the same name, in the dry altiplano of central Mexico, at the southern end of the great Chihuahuan desert. Heading northeast from the city, the air gets drier. Cactus forests dominate the landscape, wild oregano blooms in arroyos, and the road begins to climb, entering the Sierra Gorda, a national protected area comprising nearly a million acres. Climbing, rows and rows of mesquite covered hills extend to the horizon, and as the roads get curvier and climbs higher, the air starts to cool. Trees start emerging from the matorrales below--tall pines, and hearty oaks with bromeliads and orchids in their branches. As the road approaches the ridge, it reaches the edge of the rainshadow, and drops into the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre, where waters from the Gulf of Mexico are swept inland to condense in these forests, turning the landscape lush and green and exploding life to the hills. Over the peak, the road winds down and down, through villages, past waterfalls and farms, past stands selling apples, roasted ears of corn, and pottery, past 400 year old Benedictine missions, past grazing cows and goats, wandering sheep, dogs, and children, and mules laden with firewood. As the road continues winding down and down it drops into the valley of the Rio Jalpan and to the small town of Jalpan de Serra, our new home. Further east lie the jungles, the stomps of jaguars...

100,000 people live in the Sierra Gorda, but in recent years this number has dropped as men head to the States for work. The reasons are obvious--the minimum wage in Mexico is 42 pesos a day--equivalent to about 45 minutes work at minimum wage in the U.S. The money they send home is collectively the second largest source of foreign revenue in Mexico, just behind oil. But unlike oil revenues, remissions are dispersed to the poor, bringing dramatic changes to rural areas. Huge homes (or 'dollar houses' as the locals call them) and big trucks purchased in the US look out of place. The women find themselves with more power, freedom, and responsibility, often running businesses and taking care of communally owned lands. The pressure to exploit natural resources has been greatly reduced, and forests are naturally re-generating on many of the steep slopes once cleared for agriculture.

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve was founded 10 years ago, after a decade of hard work by the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda, the non-governmental organization where we will be working for the next two years. The program was founded by a remarkable local woman named Pati Ruiz, whose larger-than-life personality, inspiration, and dedication have motivated legions of employees, volunteers and residents throughout the Sierra Gorda and across Mexico to conserve this diverse landscape and provide sustainable livelihoods to its people. Pati's husband and two sons live and work in the Sierra as well, and have helped to build a progressive and successful community-based conservation organization. Our work here will be varied, but will center on technical assistance with some very interesting programs. Buffy's first task for work is to attend a meeting on Bainbridge Island, just across from Seattle, to learn about Biodiversity Offsets, and how they might be applied in the Sierra Gorda. Ben will be helping to manage the Sierra Gorda's monitoring program as well as joining the GIS team. We will both be supporting the reserve's biologists, and helping to expand the ecological monitoring the reserve does.

On June 13th, Ben's birthday, we offically ended training and become cooperantes. The US Ambassador was present, attracting other pescas gordas (big wigs), along with all our spanish teachers, professional counterpars, and Mexican families. Formal speeches were followed by finger food and a surprise appearance by a Mariachi band, who serenaded Ben and Tony Garza, the ambassador, in honor of Saint Anthony (who shares his name) with the beautiful Mexican birthday son "Mañanitas." The tequila came later, along with fireworks celebrating San Antonio in the big chuches downtown. Now, we're on our own!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1175316120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1175316120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/mexico/1175316120/tpod.html Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:58:11 -0400 Peace Corps

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Querétaro, Mexico

Saludos de Querétaro! This lovely colonial city in the high, rugged central plateau of Mexico has been our home for three weeks, and will be until mid-June. To get here we flew into the megaMEGAlopolis of Mexico City, then followed thousands of semis full of exports headed north up the the Pan-American highway towards Texas (NAFTA in effect), before dropping off and into the old city of Querétaro, where the bus stopped and we had to walk because the streets are too narrow for buses. We immediately happened upon folk dances in a plaza next to a fountain framed by rows of square trimmed trees. Most nights since then there have been dance performances, live music, or festivals taking place in the numerous plazas and gardens, with crowds of friendly, well-dressed people enjoying the cool evening air. Particularly interesting was the Procession of Silence on Good Friday, wherein hundreds of people move slowly through the streets clad in pointed hoods like the KKK wear, but in many colors (and with a much different purpose). They carried heavy crosses and icons of various Virgins, the streets silent except for the hiss of chains dragging from their ankles. Heaviest parade we`ve ever seen.

Within days upon arrival we were settled in with our host family parents, Leticia and Jesus, feeding us fantastic soups, empanadas, pozole, eggs with chipotles, corn tortillas and fresh squeezed orange juice every morning. One son, Gerardo, still lives at home. He is our age and has an adorable 1 year old named April, who loves to chase Goofy, the tiny tortilla-eating poodle around the house. Gerardo`s two brothers and one sister stop by nearly every day to visit, and we feel very welcome and at home.

Our daily walk to Spanish class winds along narrow streets lined with colorful facades textured with a century of weathered paint, underneath bougainvilleas spilling off balconies and rooftops lined with potted agaves and geraniums. By dawn the crews of sweepers clad in orange are at work, keeping the city impeccably tidy, and many vendors have already set up their stands with food, jewelry and clothing on the streets to sell their wares for the day. Walking the narrow streets one must remain vigilant for trucks climbing the sidewalks to squeeze through. Some sidewalks themselves are so narrow, we have to walk single file like ducklings. To maintain chivalry and manners when these sidewalks become crowded, a protocol of sidewalk behavior has developed in which men always stay on the outside of the sidewalks, presumably protecting the women from traffic and bright sun (and eventually rain). Similarly, youth yield to elders. Clear enough when passing one person, but how to be polite when we together pass couples is unclear, and often we need to dance back and forth before choosing which way to pass. We`re told most gringos are oblivious to this sort of thing, so we feel we`ve already made a little headway towards integrating culturally.

Peace Corps training is a busy time, with 8 or 9 hours daily of Spanish lessons and various talks on Mexican culture, history, politics and natural history, interspersed with endless regulations on how to be overseas as part of the US government. Our group is only 13 people, aged 26 to 63, and we get on well despite the long days together. In addition to lectures and lessons, we have gotten out several times into the countryside, to learn about the natural history and rural issues that make conservation such an urgent undertaking here. Mexico is actually the country with the 5th richest biodiversity worldwide, and has the greatest number of cacti and reptiles, and among the most flowering plants of any country. One of the greatest conservation challenges is soil erosion, caused by both rain and wind and accelerated by farming and logging on steep slopes. Erosion has severely limited the productivity of the land in many areas. Much of the world, of course, faces this same challenge. As a group during our training we are drafting a management plan for a local watershed, attempting to address not only erosion and environmental degradation but to identify sustainable income generation activities for local communities as well. We won`t get too far with this, but subsequent groups will build on what we started, and eventually the effort will move to other areas.

This three weeks already feels like a long time, and we miss you all. Hope some of you will consider visiting. Stay tuned for news about our future home, Jalpan de Serra, in the Sierra Gorda of northeastern Querétaro state.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1172443320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1172443320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1172443320/tpod.html Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:23:06 -0500 Las lunas de miel!

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Jericoacoara, Brazil

From deep in the Peruvian jungle we emerged, a little sweaty but spirits alive, and walked across a bridge into Brazil. The language immediately led to some confusion, everyone saying "Oi! Oi!" like they were kvetching, but "Yo" is a much better translation. Crossing the border, the roads were immediately smoother and the drivers faster, and we wisked our way east and rapidly towards the coast, to Bahia, to rolling hills full of waterfalls and world-class swimming holes, and on to Salvador de Bahia, the center of Afro-Brasilian coastal culture and capoeira, with a huge Carnival in prep when we arrived.

As a man from Salvador explained to us, Brazilians´ greatest passions are fútbol, the beach, and religion. In that order. He expained that Brazilians are so happy because everyone has access to the culture´s greatest riches. We have to add Looking Good to the list, because it is a national passion as much as any of the others. We have found Brazilians to be friendly and kind, going out of their way to help us. We speak very little Portugese, but the thumb´s up is a great substitute. Positivity is all we need to communicate.

Carnival!!! The week-long party was stunning. These people know how to party. It´s all organized in social units called "blocos", groups of neighbors or friends who form a party team. The teams often spend months in prep, choosing uniforms and costumes, forming a marching band and a dance troop, practicing, organizing food and drinks, decorating buildings and streets, and generally preparing for the biggest party in the world. And it is. In Salvador the streets were going to be too crowded for our tastes, so we headed up to Olinda, a much smaller town with a lively carnival, still so lively that we could only take a few days before retreating to the beaches further north.

On the streets and beaches of Bahia and the northeast coast, Capoeira circles draw crowds. Capoeira is a playful fight-dance with African roots that looks like a blend of breakdancing, gymnastics and kung-fu. It´s accompanied by a beautiful, rhythmic chant with drumming and coconut-shell one-string violins that makes you want to dance. It can be an intense battle of swinging limbs and gravity-defying acrobatics, but the coup de grace is never delt. When the moment is reached both players know who won, and the beat goes on.

Our final destination on this continent is paradise. We arrived in Jericoacoara just before sunset and walked down to the beach. Bathed in a golden light was a beautiful little town lined with tall palm trees at the edge of an expansive beach stretching out towards the horizon. On the sand playground were fútbol games, capoeira circles and dancers, on the endless sets of waves were windsurfers, kite surfers and bathers, and at the far end of the beach rose a huge dune climbing towards the sky, full of people watching the sun sink slowly into the water, all smiling.
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Olinda, Brazil


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Salvadore, Brazil


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Brasilia, Brazil


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Rio Branco, Brazil

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Puerto Maldonado, Peru

From Cusco we flew up and over the white snowy peaks of the Andes and down into the great Amazon Basin. A dark green blanket of forest stretched out before us as far as the eye could see. Nothing broke the vast canopy of trees but an occasional brown river snaking it´s way through the forest. We landed in Puerto Maldonado, a frontier town dotted with palm trees, and crossed by dirt roads full of motor bikes and noisy rickshaws. Families of four bumped through the potholes, squeezed together on one bike. The town was originally founded by rubber tappers, then taken over by the timber industry, harvesting huge hardwoods. Later the gold miners came in, dredging the rivers, and digging ore from the clay soils. Only now is Puerto Maldonado making the transition from extractive use, to conservation and tourism.

Leaving the noise and dust of the town behind, we caught a boat and headed 78 km up the Tambopata River, past clay licks with 3 species of Macaws, up to Picaflor Research Station, where we volunteered for 2 weeks. Laurel, a British zoologist, and her husband Pico, a boat captain whose family has lived on the land for 3 generations, along with their 3 year old son Picito are the stewards of a 1,300 ha conservation concession within the buffer zone of Tambopata National Park. The forests here were never covered by glaciation so diversity has flourished uninterrupted for eons. Researchers in the national park estimated 200 tree species per hectare (our most diverse forests in the United States have fewer than 20 species)! Laurel has been busy defending her young forest preserve (one of the only private reserves in Peru) from illegal loggers who have been encroaching from the North. The lawsuit looks positive for Picaflor, and will hopefully set a strong legal precendent for new conservation concessions in Peru.

There were 4 other volunteers out there with us, and we were kept busy with a variety of projects- mostly feeding baby animals and wielding machetes. One of our primary responsibilities was looking after "Ron" a baby capybara who was orphaned on the river front the week before we arrived. Capybaras are the world´s largest rodents, adults weighing about 150 pounds! Ron only weighed about 5 pounds, and the sweet little thing wanted nothing more than to suckle, so we spent many an hour with a finger in Ron´s mouth trickling warm milk down into his belly. We also fed nine orphaned baby rabbits that were so small we held them in one hand and dripped milk into their mouths with an itsy bitsy syringe. (Life and death in the jungle: keeping rabbits was an experiment, a demonstration that hunting isn´t the only way to procure meat. The rabbits were facing an epidemic, possibly due to humidity, but the other animals--chickens, turkeys, and guinea pigs--were doing fine). Another Picaflor pet--and possibly the worst pet possible--was Chik-Chik, the jungle fowl (wild chicken-type thing) who was also adopted as an orphan, freshly hatched. Chik-Chik amuses himself by terrorizing people. He hides in the rafters, or sneaks up in the bushes, then starts whining, then squawking a deep, throaty call of terror; then, in a blur of black feathers and talons, attacks, going for the head. It´s horrifying, the makings of a good horror flic. His croak haunts the shadows of the forest.

We also did lots of gardening. In the tropics, this mostly means weeding, carefully watching for hard-biting ants and sharp thorns and swatting mosquitos. We cleared vegetation from around pineapples and lemon trees, ginger, bananas, cocona, papayas...in places where the vegetation had only been growing back a few months clippers sufficed, but in the area that had grown back for eight years we felt like we were clearing jungle for the first time, taking huge swings with our machetes. We also cleared the orchid house and overgrown trails through the forests taking out bamboo, aggressive vines, and all sorts of amazing fast growing plants. The most involved of our work was helping with the Brazil nut harvest. Before we got to Picaflor we envisioned walking through a tidy orchard with small trimmed trees, casually gathering nuts, but it was nothing of the sort. Instead we´d head out into the conservation concession, trying to keep up with Pico over 3 or 4 km through primary forest dominated by the towering Brazil nut trees, hundreds of years old and hundreds of feet tall, passing troops of monkeys, gorgeous butterflies, walking palms, bamboo stands, bullet ants, strangler figs and toucans. The harvest started with a round of bocci ball (we were thankful for all of our recent experience!). About 20 Brazil nuts all fit together like wedges of an orange in a big heavy cask about the size and weight of a bocci ball. We´d spread out 50 m or so from the tree, and search for nuts on the ground, picking them up and launching them towards the tree´s massive trunk. We´d work our way towards the center until we ended up with a big mound of balls. Then we´d sit on the ground, nestle a cask into the soft forest floor between our legs, and start whacking away with our machetes. Buffy started out needing about 60-100 strikes to get one open, and eventually worked her way down to only 10-15 whacks. Ben picked it up too, and was sometimes matching Pico with only 5 strikes. When we´d finished the whole heap we´d load up the nuts on our backs and troop to the next tree. It was exhausting, gratifying work, and fun to be part of such an old sustainable tradition.

Everyday when we finished working we were filthy dirty and dripping with sweat. We would head straight down to the river, and jump in. The water was the color of mud, but so cool and refreshing we didn´t mind in the least. There was plenty of entertainment beyond all the work, especially from Picito the jungle boy, who can growl like a jaguar and slide in the mud like a river otter. In the mornings he ran down the walkway to our rooms to greet us "Are you happy?" and "Did you sleep?" In the afternoons when it was time to get sweaty again pumping water Picito would play in the mud with his boats just loving getting filthy. Then we´d all go swim in the river again, the low light bathing everything in a golden glow, and the river making us feel clean as new. In the evenings we relaxed in hammocks, played with Ron, and of course worked on the task of shelling the nuts. We made delicious food chopping them up and sauteeing them in butter, then roasting them with fresh vegetables, grinding them up and putting them in cakes with bananas, ginger and lime, making nut roasts, and Brazil nut sausages! We ate very well and usually went to bed by 9 o´clock exhausted. Several mornings we got up before the sun to go bird listening. We had hoped to bird watch, but in the dense rainforest we heard about 50 times more than we saw. One afternoon we were out walking with some of the other volunteers. Ben was up ahead, when we heard a strange screeching and squawking. Two big red-throated caracaras flew in dive bombing the third bird and making a similar squawk themselves. The rest of us listened to the chorus of three birds perplexed. Was one of them a baby bird? Or did one have a sore throat? Was it sick? None of the above. It was Ben, squatting on the forest floor with a blade of grass between his thumbs, learning his first words in the complex language of the jungle.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1168639140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1168639140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/b-squared/sudamerica_2006/1168639140/tpod.html Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:17:03 -0500 Las lunas de miel!

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Cusco, Peru

There are places on Earth with natural powers, centers of energy and worship. Their unmistakeable power is a product of both awe-inspiring natural beauty and long histories of the awe they have inspired, awe that leads to the construction of shrines and monuments that dazzle the mind and lead people closer to the divine. Macchu Picchu is such a place.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Incan Empire stretched from Ecuador to Argentina, centered in Peru. We began our Inca pilgrimage in Copacabana, Bolivia, where we took a boat across the gem blue waters of Lake Titicaca to the Isla Del Sol, the site of the Inca creation myth. Here Inti, the sun god, source of warmth, light and protector of the people, brought his children out of the crystal clear waters of the lake to found the Incan dynasty. We took an early morning boat out to the island, sitting on the roof in the chill morning air. A devout old man sitting behind us sang song after song in Quechua, his voice sorrowful and sweet. We passed by the Island of the Moon, and docked at the jetty beneath the Fuente del Inca, a pure spring thought to be a fountain of youth. The majority of the island´s inhabitants speak Aymara and practice agriculture on the ancient terraces covering much of the island. From here, we took a bus up the west shore of the lake into Peru, where we passed the floating islands fashioned out of reeds by the Uros who originally built their island homes to escape the Incas. Bus-weary, we arrived in Cusco, the capital city of the Incan Empire. It is still a beautiful city, but with few Incan constructions remaining. The Spanish destroyed the Incan city and used the same stones to build their cathedrals in the15th and 16th centuries.

To the north of Cusco runs the Rio Urubamba, through steep mountain valleys lined with cloud forests and high peaks, flowing north clear across Peru and eventually into the Amazon. This river forms the Sacred Valley of the Incas: the geography alone is worthy of the title. The Incas knew this, and built many towns up and down the valley, with numerous paved roads linking the empire together. The purpose of one such trail was exclusively ceremonial, and every solstice the Incan royalty would pilgrimmage from Cusco to the Sacred City, Macchu Picchu, to offer blessings to the powers of the Earth, Sun, and mountains.

We were lucky enough to follow this pilgrimmage over 4 days, allowing us to anticipate and enjoy the power of Macchu Picchu when we finally arrived. The trek was not what we expected-- a guide is required, so we signed up, and ended up with a private tour, quite the luxury experience: just the two of us accompanied by our guide, 2 cooks, and 3 porters attending to our every need. It was decadent--hot tea brought to us in our tent every morning, huge gourmet meals served at a table (with a tablecloth!) and chairs--making the experience much more like a royal pilgrimmage than our usual style of backpacking. It was uncomfortable at first, but we relaxed and appreciated how good we had it. After all, it´s our honeymoon. Hay que disfrutar. The whole crew were descendents of the Incas, speaking Quechua, the language of the Incas. Our guide, Edgar, was expertly knowledgeable in Incan history and culture, as well as the natural history of the areas and the links between the two. He opened this culture to us, revealing secrets and mysteries from this lost civilization, identifying orchids, trees and birds. All along the trail were archaeological sites, shrines to water, earth, and the sun, and incredible terraced agricultural fields supporting these mountain cities.

On day four, when we finally arrived at the Sun Gate, the entrance to Macchu Picchu through which the sun enters on the summer solstice, all was shrouded in rain and clouds. The rain did nothing to dimishing the mysticism of these misty mountains, but added texture and mystery to the whole scene. Instead of seeing the ceremonial city all at once, it was revealed to us piece by piece: temples, terraces, plazas and fountains magically appearing out of the mist. We spent most the day there, climbed up to the lookout on Wayna Picchu, up above the city, where the sun came out to dry us. We left inspired, utterly awed by the experience. The energy there is tangible, it is truly a wonder to behold.

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