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New! New Machu Picchu Slideshow at bottom of this post...
New! New Mighty Amazon Slideshow at bottom of this post...
It was a great time and, as always, good to be back. We had an amusing delay once we had boarded the flight for Miami in Quito... well, not so amusing for those with tight connections in Miami. A flight attendant knocked the 'Salida/Exit' sign with a bag he was putting in the overhead bin. It didn't break, and they were able to fix it with some clear tape. But of course that wasn't good enough. They had something like 10 technicians come on board. They would look at the sign, scratch their heads, have a meeting... I'm not making this up! They took the tape off as that apparently wasn't a satisfactory solution. Then after an hour and a half, and several meetings, they ended up taping it back up. Then they moved passengers from the back of the plane to vacant seats in the front part of the plane, taped off the back several rows, fed the new weight distribution numbers into the computer... and we were off! We got to Miami and then on to Denver after a 16 hour day. A good time was had by all.
We loved the sights and the scenery and the animals. But the overarching feeling both Jan and I came away with was what a warm, gentle, happy and proud people these Peruvians and Ecuadorans were. As always, it's the people who give any journey it's context and value.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children. ~Charles Darwin
And if you don't believe Jan or Charles, and will tolerate a short commercial interruption, check out the short video below, titled 'Gesto de Amor. It won first place at Cannes for commercials.
While waiting for the Nariz del Diablo train ride, I gave a boy named Luis $2 to shine my shoes. It was a fortune to him, and I got the deluxe job for it. His smile made it the best $2 I ever spent. A few hours later, after our train ride, Luis saw us on the street and came up and said hello, flashing that big smile.
While eating our box lunches on the way to the train ride, Jan asked an Indian woman if she could have a photo. The woman was old, with a well lined face, and wearing the traditional Indian garb for the region. The woman politely declined, and Jan respected that. Some cultures believe that a photo will take away your soul. Jan went back to her sandwich and, after a while, the woman came over and sat with Jan and they conversed with Jan's broken Spanish and the bus driver trying to interpret. They talked and joked and laughed. We wouldn't need a photo for that memory.
Our guides for the Amazon and for the Galapagos segments of the trip were especially good. Raul, our Amazon guide was born and still lives on the River, and he wants nothing more than to remain on the river and share his extensive knowledge about the River, the jungle, and the people. Luis, our Galapagos guide, was born and raised on the Islands and they are his passion and his pride. Like Raul, he is incredibly knowledgeable about his subject. I'm going to help him start a business website to purvey some Galapagos items, and to offer his own tours of the Islands he loves.
Luis
It's always about the people!
...when we took this photo of the piranha she was selling.
And the dogs...
...thanks for sharing our journey.keep scrolling down for new Galapagos slideshow
run time ~ 10 minutes
Grab a cuppa, turn up your speakers, sit back and enjoy the islands...
I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.
~ Charles Darwin
run time ~ 6 minutes
The Incan people believe that the condor is the conduit between earthly life and the afterlife, that the condor transports you to this next life after you have been carried across the river by a dog. Our Machu Picchu guide has seen a condor only three times at Machu Picchu in his hundreds of trips there. He and two of the members of our group saw one when we were there.
The song, El Condor Pasa, is actually an ancient Peruvian tune, made popular in the US by Simon and Garfunkel. While eating dinner one evening in our hotel in Cusco, a local musician serenaded us with harp music, including El Condor Pasa. We got his CD and his beautiful harp version of El Condor Pasa is the background music to our Machu Picchu slideshow below. Turn up your speakers and enjoy the show!
run time ~ 4 minutes
The Amazon part of our trip was a 'pre-trip add-on' which we thought we would enjoy. We both came away, however, liking it even more than we had anticipated. The mighty river. The exotic and varied wildlife. The way of life on the river. The people, living day to day, but as 'rich' a people as you will ever meet, happy and at peace. The River is all!
We were summoned to meals at the Amazon lodge by the beat of a drum, a hollowed out log, resonating through the jungle. The screened dining hall allowed us to see and hear the sounds of the jungle, and was lit at night by kerosene lanterns. (And they had WiFi - how cool is that?!) The music background in our slideshow below is from Rich LaPenna's 'Heavy On The Drums' album, titled 'Amazon.' Sit back and ride along with us on the mighty Amazon!
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