My son Jack is here in Arequipa, so let the good times roll. I met Jack in Cusco on Tuesday (11/27/12) morning at our hotel, the Munay Wasi. It was a nice place a few blocks from Cusco's Plaza de Armas. We had time to say hello and then we immediately took off on a whirlwind "City Tour" that included visits to churches, temples, fields, temples, churches and some fields. It was OK, but we were tired, and we also got tired of getting on and off a hot bus every nine minutes to see the churches, temples and fields. You weren't allowed to take pictures of the artwork owned by the Catholics in the churches, but you could take pictures of the Andean artifacts. The next day we toured the Sacred Valley. This was a nice trip at a less frenetic pace. The ruins we saw were impressive, and we went to a pretty cool Inca burial site. They put the bodies in the fetal position and "buried" them into the side of a mountain that now looks like brown swiss cheese (lots of holes where the bodies were placed). After the Sacred Valley tour we had a couple of hours to kill in Ollantaytambo before we caught a train to Aguas Calientes near Machu Picchu. Funny, but the short stay in Ollantaytambo was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We sat drinking cappuccinos at a cafe in Ollantaytambo's central plaza. The weather was perfect, the pace of life seemed idyllic, with schoolkids chatting and locals going about their daily routine at a leisurely pace. The taxi traffic was minimal, and everyone gave us a nod or smile while we sat taking it all in. That'll be a wonderful memory for me. The train ride to Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu was uneventful and we got to a pretty nice hotel, The Green Nature, which was close to the train station, and just as close to the bus that would take us up to the Machu Picchu ruins on Thursday (11/29/12). We toured the ruins, which was pretty awesome, of course. I also signed us up for a hike up Wayna Picchu Mountain. It's pretty much a straight-up hike that got creepier and creepier the higher you went. Creepy in the sense that there are no railings near the top. I panicked, and refused to the walk the "ledge" around the side of the mountain that led to the peak (there was no railing and the drop was very, very precipitous to say the very, very least). Jack scaled the final 20 meters to the peak, while I sat defeated on a little ledge at the top of ridiculously steep stairs. A young woman I saw had the same experience I did and we both agreed we had gone high enough. I just don't like ledges with 1,000-foot drops and no railing. Call me crazy, or a coward, but that's the way it is. Going down the mountain wasn't bad at all once I got past the steep stairs, so I considered the hike a success. We hung out in Cusco on Friday, flew back to Arequipa on Saturday, and enjoyed some pisco sours Saturday night. We're just going to chill out and visit the school where I teach on Monday. I'm not teaching this month so I could spend time uninterrupted with my son, but I'll be giving new students placement tests closer to Christmas.
Finished up with my 5 p.m. group, and we had a wonderful class of pizza and cake and pictures and exam preparation. They all passed, of course, because they are the greatest students in the world. Maybe I'll teach them again, maybe not. I'll never forget that bunch. Same with the 7 p.m. group. They got through fluency, enduring the writing and speaking assignments and their gringo teacher with the spotty Spanish. We had a wonderful night out. Great, great, great students here.
