Traveling is a highlight of life. I inherited my itchy feet from my parents, and the love of adventure transferred to my daughter, who also desires experiences offered by new horizons. To commemorate her graduation from UNC Chapel Hill, we saved for "the trip of a lifetime," a seventeen day jaunt through South America
.Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, the spiritual center and "Lost City of the Incas" in Peru, was high on my list as a "must-see." An NPR broadcast said the Galapagos Islands are in jeopardy, its fragile ecosystem threatened by an influx of non-indigenous animals & plants. They recommended seeing it within the next two years. Overseas Adventure Travel offered exploration of both places, as well as a visit to the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador.

Peru is a poor country by our standards, but filled with bright, colorful Andean woven handicrafts. Our first day in Lima, a city of 8 million (the majority of the country's population), we hired Juan & his taxi for the day. He took us to El Museo de Larco Huerrera which has one of the largest collections of pre-Incan & Incan pottery in the world, plus feathered & woven garments dating from 1100AD.

In the old city we viewed the Plaza San Martin, the National Presidential Palace and the Catacombs of San Francisco. Our evening dinner was at La Rosa Nautica Restaurante, which resembled a garden gazebo of massive wood joists and windows constructed on a pier extending out into the Pacific Ocean, where waves broke underneath. The seafood was some of the best we have ever eaten.

Next our group of nine flew to Cuzco, at 10,909' above sea level. At the hotel, Ed forgot to "take it easy" to prevent altitude sickness and ran up 3 flights of stairs, which made him queasy & lightheaded for the next few days. Coca tea and altitude pills helped us all combat the effects.

For over 200 years, Cuzco was the center of the Inca Empire, which 500 years ago reached from Columbia along the entire west coast of South America. Its intricate paved road system (with woven bridges over huge gorges) connected all the conquered peoples in one great nation. Waterways followed the roads, and still bring water from the Andes to many cities. Cuzco's religious center, Qoricancha Sun Temple, is composed of various smaller temples. Its interior walls were covered with gold plates, blinding to the eye when the sun hit full-force, which led to the downfall of the empire once Pizarro's forces saw that bounty.

Temple of the Sun

In the Temple of the Stars, emeralds, turquoise, and semi-precious jewels were embedded to represent the night sky, which the priests studied. The gardens held full-sized gold llamas and trees. The massive stones that form the edifice were cut and fit without mortar, and could not be duplicated by the Spanish after they seized the city in 1538. Some of the doorway stone blocks have up to sixteen angles. Tiny keystones held the blocks in place, and the Temple of Rain, Rainbow, and Lightning were built so that their windows form a straight line from one room through the next. In the Temple of the Sun, a large stone semi-circle held a massive gold disc, which the Inca king Atahualpa lost to the Spanish in a card game, before the Spanish stole the 700 wall plates of gold to melt down and send to Spain. While the Spanish held Atahualpa, he learned to read and write their language in 20 days, no small feat when you consider Pizarro was illiterate.

Because the Inca had no written language, our knowledge of their world comes through Spanish chroniclers such as Garcilaso and Sancho, who marveled that such wonders could be built by human hands. The walls, niches and windows were all built as trapezoids, creating stable structures that have withstood earthquakes, unlike the Spanish construction which mostly collapsed in the 1650 quake. The Spanish allowed waste and garbage to fill the waterways, making them unusable.

We also toured the Church of the Merced (Mercy) where Francisco Salam (1684-1732) lived in underground tombs which he painted, six days a week, with images of heaven and hell. On his day off, he came out from underground to carry a massive cross around the gardens.

Cuzco was built in the shape of a puma. Sacsayhuaman, the Incan ruins above the city, represents the head of the puma. The fortress walls are double zigzags and represent the teeth of the puma, 60 feet high and sawtooth, which made it harder to breach the walls. The straight street that connects the head with the city body, Puma Cuku, represented the puma's spine. Spanish conquistadors called this structure the Ninth Wonder of the World. Many of the larger stones of the ramparts weigh 125 tons. All were notched together after being brought to the site on rollers and pushed into place with logs and rope (60% of the stones were brought from a quarry 12 miles away, the rest were local). The grass esplanade hosts 150,000 people each year on June 24th for the Sun Festival, where 680 actors portray the rule of the Incas. It was the center of the Incan administrative, military (it garrisoned 5,000 troops), and political rule from the 11th thru 15th centuries.

The Incas believed in reincarnation and saw life as a series of levels: Hana Pacha (god, represented by the condor), Kay Pacha (living currently, depicted by the puma) and Ukhu Pacha (the underworld, shown as a serpent). Machu Picchu is shaped as a condor as it was dedicated to god. The thousands who died in these constructions were vaulted to the next life, so to give one's life in the building was not considered a bad thing. There was no slave labor. A llama was sacrificed yearly at the wall to determine if the next year's crops would be good. (If the heart kept beating as it was put into a hole in the wall, the crops would flourish.)

A "guardian" of the site did another healing for us. Lyric was suffering from traveler's diarrhea and it boosted her flagging energy - so that she was up for our home-hosted lunch of guinea pig! Guinea pig is considered sacred & ceremonial, and as we had already sampled the alpaca and purple corn pudding at lunch the previous day, we were game. A bit dry and bony, it was not unlike dark meat on chicken. Ed won good luck by drinking a shot of rum with the inner ear bones of the guinea pig (which look like running foxes). Later that evening, our dinner entertainment was folk music and Peruvian dances of the Andes and Amazon.

The next day we journeyed through the Sacred Valley by bus to Ollantaytambo, a town built by a general of Pachakuteq (Inca #9) on the edge of the jungle. He ran off with the head Inca's daughter when dad wouldn't let them marry. The rock-laid water system built in antiquity still carries fresh water from the Andes and grey water & sewage in separate systems, some of it underground. Above this charming town stands the fortress built with stones from a quarry in the far distance. Ancient grain depositories flank the opposite mountain. After a walking tour, we boarded the train going up the Urubamba Gorge to Machu Picchu, viewing ruins of the Inca Trail (4 days to hike it!) along the way.

After lunch in Auguas Calientes (Hot Springs), we took a half-hour bus ride (multiple switchbacks with roaring busses passing one another on a very narrow road) up to Machu Picchu, "old mountain." Wayna Picchu ("young mountain"), the one seen in all the photos, was the lookout point, and controlled the Inca Bridge, which was raised to keep out unwanted individuals. Machu Picchu was built by 27,000 people over an 85 year time span. The Spanish never discovered it, which is why it remains intact today. In 1911 a Yale archaeologist, Hiram Bingham, was led to the site by a 12-year-old local farm boy. Bingham was searching for El Dorado, a city of gold that the Spanish believed existed. We entered from the caretaker's cottage & agricultural section. The first sighting of Machu Picchu invokes such a sense of awe that everyone stood quietly, drinking in the massive ruins. The green mountains highlight the stone walls and building against a brilliant blue sky, the place where heaven and earth are joined as one. Machu Picchu was known as the "Sacred Center" of the Incan Empire, and reflects the joining of spirit to nature through a man-made creation.

Entering Machu Picchu

At the Inti Temple of the Sun, the window in its round tower highlights the summer solstice along a rock edge inside; the Sun Gate on the Inca Trail directs the winter solstice rays to the temple. Below the temple lies a cavern whose walls are carved steps in front of representations of the three levels of the world. Water flows from a spring within the walls, representing the seminal fluid of Pachymama, or mother earth. To drink from it is sacred, bestowing eternal youth upon you (Ed practically bathed in it!) The astronomical observatory outside the main temple holds a stone representing the Southern Cross. Next on the path is the Intiwatana, or hitching post of the sun when the Incas "tied the sun" in solstice ceremonies to prevent it wandering any further away from the horizon. From here, Wayna Picchu lies due north and at the equinox the sun passes directly overhead.

The ruins are proof that the Incan people understood a great deal about astronomy. At the Temple of the Condor, where llamas were sacrificed, our guide pointed to the carved stone's resemblance of wings and the rock cut at the base in the shape of a condor. We walked through a narrow fissure that led to caves where any Incan found guilty of laziness, stealing or lying was forced to remain for 3 days without food or water. If he survived, he was freed, but a second accusation resulted in death.

Our final stop for the day was the Sacred Rock at the base of Wayna Picchu, a gigantic rock cut to reflect the shape of the mountain range behind it where the sun sets. The next morning, we went back to climb the steep ruins of Wayna Picchu. To hike this trail, you must sign in at the base and begin the climb before 1pm. They made it to the top and back in 3 hours, and their photographs show the "top of the world" that hovers 1500' straight up. Recovering from a recent bout of vertigo before our trip, I browsed the town and bought souvenirs instead. After lunch, we boarded the train to head back to Cusco and our last dinner. The flight the next morning to Quito was our jumping off place for our Ecuadorian adventure where we would meet the seven additional members of our tour group.

~ Gabrielle M. Thompson, 2006
© 2006 Gabrielle M. Thompson

We left off on our adventure in South America at Machu Picchu, the land where heaven and earth join together. As a spiritual destination, Machu Picchu fulfills its reputation. Your whole being is suffused with the beauty and energy of the site, even if you must share it with hundreds of other travelers. It was the pinnacle for my expectations; however, I found each leg of our journey supplied something totally unique to our experience. Quito, our next stop, surprised me with its beauty, versatility, history, and warmth of its people. The Amazon rain forest’s plant life was surpassed by the loving kindness of its people. The smiles and joy of our guides will always be what I recall the most from our time there. So, let us continue on the Thompson travel log, as we land in Quito, the city of volcanoes.

Quito  and The Amazon Wilds

Quito, the capital of Ecuador, lies at an altitude of 9,300', has two million people, is surrounded by 15 volcanoes (most at 17,000' have glaciers that supply the country with pure water), and lies at 0o latitude, which allows it 12 hours of direct sunlight every day. The temperature remains the same year-round, going up or down a degree for every 300' in elevation. This consistency in temperature combined with two ranges of the Andes and two cloud forests contribute to the country being one of the 10 most biologically diverse in the world. Only slightly larger in size than Colorado, Ecuador has 400 types of hardwoods, 1,600 species of birds, 130 species of hummingbirds, 440 kinds of frogs, toads & salamanders, over 4,700 types of orchids, and 20,000 species of plants. Ecuadorians grow their own food and ship bananas, roses, coffee, shrimp, pineapples, strawberries, broccoli, asparagus, chocolate and gold world-wide.

Oil is another export, and the impact of its being under the Amazon is causing a great deal of strife for the indigenous Indian people. Tourism is fourth in impact in their GNP. It is a country of great wealth bled dry by corruption in government, causing it to be rated as the third poorest in South America, after Bolivia and Peru. Thirteen billion dollars of the national treasury was stolen by nineteen bankers seven years ago, causing a banking crisis which the World Bank "solved" by tying Ecuador's economy to the U.S. dollar. (According to our local guide, Patricio, the previous president of Ecuador, whose job was to oversee the banking system, is now teaching at Harvard and most of the light-fingered bankers are living well in Miami.)

Seven years ago the volcano Pichincha, which means "many birds," blew after 95 years of dormancy, dumping four inches of ash over Quito. It took a month to clean up, but the ash was saved for fertilizer.

Quito's Lady of Freedom

On the National Basilica, the animals of the Galapagos and jungle of Ecuador are the gargoyles. There are 52 colonial churches in Quito; every Incan temple had one built on its ruins. 70% of the population is Catholic, 20% Protestant (mostly Mormon or Seventh Day Adventist), 5% Jewish, and 5% represent the ethnic religion, mostly in the Amazon region. We caught the weekly changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace, with all of its pomp and circumstance, then visited the Jesuit Church where five tons of gold leaf decorates the walls. Over 60 tons of gold remain in the churches of Quito. Built by the Society of Jesus after their arrival in 1605, this church displays the Moorish influence brought to Spain by the Arabs.

In 1736 eleven scientists located the equatorial line in Quito. We were invited for a home-hosted lunch with the Vera family, owners of Inti Nan Museum, an interactive museum about the equator. After a delicious meal, we watched with wonder as the family showed us how a sink on the line of the Equator lost its water straight down the drain when the plug was pulled, whereas three feet away on the northern hemisphere the water swirled out the drain counter-clockwise, and another three feet into the southern hemisphere it swirled clockwise as it left the sink. This is due to the Coriolis force. Of course, we all posed for photos with one foot in each hemisphere! The Incan word Quito means middle of the world, leading our guide to surmise the Incans understood Quito's placement from their astrological observances. Their Flame of Life ceremony celebrated the sun being perpendicular at noon here during the equinox.

The last Inca chief, Atahualpa, was born in Quito. An interesting note - the sundials at the equator are vertical instead of horizontal. The museum stamped our passports for the equator, and showed us real shrunken heads (and gory drawings of how they were made) from the Amazon Jungle. Glass tubs filled with monster sized bugs and snakes had most of the women in the group wondering what the next leg of our journey held in store.

The Amazon basin is larger than the continental United States. The Amazon is 600 miles wide at its mouth and 4,000 miles long - second longest river in the world after the Nile, which is 100 miles longer. It has more water than all of the next four main rivers of the world combined. At its deepest, it is 22 stories deep, and has a thousand tributaries. It produces 25% of the world's oxygen, and every minute a football field length of jungle is destroyed for logging.

After visiting Sinamune Foundation, a music school for disabled children in Quito, we flew into an Amazonian town on the Napo River called Coca (its real name is Francisco De Orellan - named after Pizarro's cousin who kept wandering around the jungle searching for El Dorado). Here we got our rubber boots for our jungle experience and boarded our native craft for a 90-minute boat ride to the Yarina Lodge, located on the Manduro River.

For two days, we took daily morning and afternoon walks through the jungle. Our native guides and an interpreter explained about the flora and fauna of the jungle. The people in the lodge were so gentle and kind that we adored our stay.

 We learned at the beginning not to grab a branch without looking first, as the conga ants (about 1/2 inch in length) had such poisonous bites you would feel as if you were shot. We learned how to weave a basket from the fronds of the chambira palm whose trunk displayed huge thorns. We climbed the 165 steps carved into a hillside to a 140' tall ceiba (kapok) tree that was framed by a tower of another 130 steps. At the top was a viewing platform high over the forest. Golden oro pendola nests hung from high branches, and black ani birds perked in treetops, sounding like pots coming to a boil. Below, iridescent blue morpho butterflies the size of a man's fist fluttered by. A peccary, or wild pig, ran through the underbrush, and came back later to allow us a longer view. A small deer ran past, and leaf cutter ants formed long lines of green as they carried their treasure back to the hive. Marcher wasps amazed us as they beat their wings in their nests to scare us away, sounding like an army on the march. Tortoise and pygmy marmosets, rare tiny monkeys with faces no bigger than your thumb, were part of our "learning and discovery." Spider monkeys and golden mantle tamarin monkeys were drawn to the lodge by bananas, and frolicked in the trees during our afternoon siestas. One spider monkey climbed David's leg, scampered to his shoulder and held on for dear life, earning him the title of "monkey's uncle".

On the second night, our guides took us for a canoe paddle, three to each boat, in a lagoon filled with singing frogs, water hyacinths and water lettuce lit by phosphorescent glow worms, and, finally, the glowering red eyes of caiman (like alligators, but usually smaller.) Winter, our native guide, took us within 3 feet of a six-footer to offer the full experience.

On our third day in the jungle, we took a motor boat ride to visit the local Quichua school at St. Carlos plus a local farm. At the farm, our guides painted our faces with red manduro paint to represent tribes (macaws, anaconda, etc.) and demonstrated a wedding ceremony, with Lyric as bride. We then held a blow gun competition, which Ed won. His prize was a necklace of St. Peter's tears, huayruro seeds for good luck, and a big sonsemillus seed from the walking palm tree, so-called because it sends out roots to move it across the jungle floor in search of the best light, as much as 7 centimeters a year.

After our siesta with its musical accompaniment of the snores of fellow eco-travelers, the lodge staff prepared us a native meal of fish roasted in banana leaves, grubs on skewers (tastes like bacon - only Kitty was brave enough to eat one raw), white chocolate seeds on sticks, and plantains.

Our last night offered the healing ceremony of a jungle shaman (fanning you with incense, sucking the poison out of your head, and then spitting what smelled like Old Spice on your hair) followed by the staff in grass skirts playing guitars, drums, and singing - sort of like being in Hawaii!

It rained all night and the river rose eight feet. In the morning, the dock was under water, along with the cages of the animals they were rehabilitating. The guides told us the only animal having a problem was the blue-billed toucan flying back and forth in its cage. Two ocelots in cages were high in branch lofts.

After another boat ride to Coca, we flew back to Quito, where we caught an afternoon market tour and checked back into the Reina Isabel Hotel to pick up our clean clothes and catch a bit of sleep before the last leg of our journey in the Galapagos.

~ Gabrielle M. Thompson, 2006
© 2006 Gabrielle M. Thompson

The Galapagos Islands

White clouds, thick as cotton, covered the sky below us as far as we could see on the next morning's flight. A volcano, covered with ice except for a black stone mass in the middle shaped like eye, looked like the head of a condor against the brilliant blue sky above the cloud mass. On every flight in Ecuador, we received full meals (or snack on the half-hour flights) and roses upon our arrival at our destination.

During our time in Ecuador, our guide was Estaban, a twenty-year-old from the Galapagos. (Lyric, at twenty-one, had thought she'd be the youngest!) To be a trip leader in the Galapagos National Park, one must be a graduate of the Charles Darwin Research Station program. Estaban applied at age sixteen (his father is a doctor on Santa Cruz) and was accepted at eighteen. Trained as a naturalist, the guide is designated to show the beauty and uniqueness of the islands while protecting the impact on the fragile ecosystems. Immediately upon our arrival on San Cristobal Island, Estaban took us to the Interpretation Center of the Galapagos to teach us about the unique history as well as the rules visitors must follow in the Parque Nacional Galapagos.

Darwin studied the unique animal life of these islands in 1855 for five weeks. The islands were formed over four million years ago, and new islands are still being created over the hotspot in the Pacific Ocean on the Nazca plate, a stationary spot below the islands. The islands are dry and barren and that supreme deprivation and its effects led to Darwin's suppositions on the survival of the fittest. His study, particularly regarding the finches and their specialized beaks reflecting the food source of each island, led to his theory of evolution. Trained as a minister, he did not publish his ideas for many years for fear of the wrath it would generate from the church. The Galapagos were declared a wildlife reserve in 1934. After reading a bit of the history, we boarded our panga, or dinghy, to be taken to the Carina, our 100' motor yacht and home for the next three nights. I noticed a large, blue trimaran leaving the harbor. It was Lammer Law, a charter boat we knew from our fourteen years in the Virgin Islands. Talk about a small world!

The food aboard was gourmet and plentiful, with treats such as lobster salad and filet mignon for lunch! Soup was always served, usually a choice between two kinds, besides the appetizer, main course, and dessert. After lunch our first day, we anchored off of Isla Lobos, also know as Loberia, or Sea Lion Island. The islands have multiple names derived from the multiple nations that have ruled here. We swan with sea lions, which played with us as if we were members of their family. They would swim backward, come nose to nose to your mask, dive down the front of your belly and swirl around you as if you were part of the show at Sea World. At one point I was treading water, fiddling with an underwater camera trying to discern if I was working it correctly, when a pup swam up, put its head on my shoulder, sighed in my ear as if to say, "Are you going to play with me or mess with that stupid camera?" It then back-flipped around me to nip my wetsuit, rubber-encased upper arm as if I had just been declared "it" in a game of tag.

After our swim we returned to the Carina for showers, snacks, and then a visit to the beach where we met the 500 pound sea lion bulls. They were quite territorial. Estaban ran from one who gave chase. Everyone laughed until he showed us what the teeth looked like on a dead pup. Because sea lions can use their front feet to propel themselves, they can cover ground quickly on land or in the sea. The pups frolic in the sea, but the adult males take their space ashore seriously.

After dinner we hove anchor for Espanola, or Hood Island, the oldest of the chain of islands. We anchored near Gardner Island and snorkeled the caves the next morning. We stuffed ourselves at lunch on prosciuitto, cheese, calamari, and chicken, not to mention a delicious white asparagus soup and boysenberry mouse. During siesta, Ed and I toured the bridge of the Carina, getting to know the captain, Luis. Siesta is the time to skip the heat of the day ashore, so in the afternoon we prowled Espanola. It the island where the waved albatross mate in a choreographed dance that lasts for hours, raise their young, and take flight by jumping off of magnificent, massive cliffs. These sea birds are too large to take flight from the ground. They can spend years flying over the ocean, never touching land, and have been revered by sailors as good luck. With their hooked bills, they must scoop squid and fish from the waves; they cannot dive for food like the boobies.

The famous blue-footed boobies and masked (or Nazca) boobies nested along the trail. We watched the albatross in their mating dance and cliff launches. Swallow-tailed gulls, with their red-ringed, large black eyes also camped along the rocky edge. Red marine iguanas and the ever-present, psychedelically patterned, red-and-yellow Sally Lightfoot crabs basked in the warmth on the black volcanic rock. Below, a blowhole shot white water high into the air creating a curtain of mist that floated along the breeze to the shore. Mockingbirds raided waved albatross eggs, breaking their shells for the water within, the only known predator of the large birds.

Again we traveled at night, rocking in the swell, to arrive at Floreana (or Santa Maria or Charles Island). It is approximately 2 million years old (the newer islands over the plume are only about 700,000 years old) and has a green beach of magnesium and silica, called olivine. Flamingos fill the lagoon, feeding on shrimp, which gives them their pink color. On the fine white sand beaches Pacific green turtles lay their eggs after a thirty-five year ocean voyage. Their nests are obvious from the "tractor-like" imprint in the sand leading to a deep burrow. Feral pigs and goats are their worst predators. The government of the Galápagos is trying to eradicate goats. Over 100,000 were killed on Santiago Island at a cost of 13 million dollars. "Judas goats" are turned loose with necklaces that emit a signal once there are twenty or more goats gathered together. Military helicopters and hunters respond to the signals.

We snorkeled Devil’s Crown and then saw the penguins, almost decimated by the 1998 El Nino, but bouncing back with governmental protection. We walked up a hill to a viewing platform on Baroness Point. The baroness wished to build a five-star hotel on this bleak, dry island, but her penchant for affairs and murder caused her to disappear before her dream could manifest.

Post Office Bay

Our final stop on Floreana was Post Office Bay. Since 1793 sailors have left mail in a barrel for delivery, and people today still take the letters to be hand-delivered to the sender. It may take years for someone to choose your letter (if they plan to pass by your neighborhood). I had read of Post Office Bay when we were building our schooner, Satori, in the 1970’s. Little did I know I would someday leave a post card of my own. Some of the letters awaiting delivery were from Europe and Asia. (Note: we got our cards back in late August from a Weaverville, NC family!)

Santa Cruz is the home to the Charles Darwin Research Station, our final stop and home to the Galápagos giant tortoise breeding program. The turtles could survive a year without food or water, so filled the bilges of ships outward bound from the Galápagos as fresh meat. They can live 150 years but do not reproduce often, which is why they are being bred. Certain species live on each island, and the center raises hatchlings until they are five years old and have no predators. Then they are released on the island of their particular species. The temperature of the eggs controls the sex of the hatchlings.

The center is also breeding land iguanas to repopulate Baltra Island where they were indigenous before the U.S. military destroyed 10,000 of them during World War II. At that time, the U.S. occupied Baltra as a strategic site to protect Panama. Some of the iguanas ended up on Seymour Island and are the basis for this program. Part of the effort of the Darwin Center and the Park is to return indigenous species to the correct islands, and to remove any species that did not originally belong there. One of the species of giant turtles was down to 2 (uninterested) males and 13 females when a relative was discovered at the San Diego Zoo. He has been returned and is happily swelling the ranks of his species, more so than the indigenous male survivors. Lonesome George is the most famous Galápagos turtle, approximately 100 years old. Also uninterested in females, he will be the last of his kind.

On the bus ride to the airport we stopped at The Twins, huge gas bubbles formed along a lava tube on the top of Santa Cruz Island. Our flight from Baltra returned us to Quito for our last night’s good-bye dinner. It was time to say goodbye to our group of 16 travelers and our guide Estaban. It was a perfect adventure of learning, beauty, and great fun, a vacation that I will always recommend as most memorable.

Other Articles by Gabrielle Thompson