Word for Tuesday = Shopping

I kept telling them to just wait for our market day to buy. I know Susan didn´t trust me totally. We had bought a few things during the last week and half but I just kept telling them to wait. And they waited. So I hired a driver and van to take us Tuesday, which is market day in the Sacred Valley, to Pisac then work our way back if we needed too.


Well we didn´t need to stop anywhere else then Pisac. The drive was beautiful, from one end of the Valley to the other. About 2 hours. It took us a bit longer due to all the trees and big boulders in the road due to the general strike the day before. The road was still blocked here and there and the driver had to slow down and dodge around the piles. Kinda fun and very different. Can you imagine people dragging huge tree roots and boulders out in the middle of main roads and closing down traffic for a day... then just leaving it there.

Pisac´s Tuesday market is smaller then their Sunday market, but Tuesday has a quarter of the tourist gringos going for a bargain. So it´s much more fun and you can enjoy the other parts of the local market that is wrapped around all the stalls for goods that tourist are mainly interested in. So my Spanish may be rusty and fitful, but my calculator and my love of bargaining makes for one of the best times around. Mom, Nat and Susan I think were a bit stunned if not in awe of my just standing there and going calculator to calculator with the women running their stalls. It´s all fun and you have to enjoy the part you are suppose to play as well as love the expressions, the sighs, the conversations about how cheap I am really getting it already, oh and it´s already a special price just for me. I could barely finish up one transaction at one stall before I was being called down the narrow street to another stall to start another one. I got in some bargaining for myself along the way too.

We spent hours there... and Susan admitted she was totally satisfied and could leave. So we wandered back to our driver and van and drove slowly up the valley back towards Ollantaytambo... stopping along the way to look at Urubamba. Slow quiet afternoon then a our big evening adventure was getting Mom up into a moto taxi. It´s really a tuk tuk like in Thailand. A motorcycle with a covered bench and floor board attached to it for passengers and other goodies. They are used around the towns here. So I ordered two and we took Mom up to dinner along the river. Dinner was Peruvian with international twists and very good. Then the young guys who owned the moto´s were waiting for us to take us down the road back to our hotel. Oh and by the way... to get Mom up in the moto you just go find a nice big square rock and plunk it down on the cobblestone and there... Up and in. Why didn´t I figure out about the rock earlier.. huh!

So today we woke up at 4:am so we could get the 5:30am train to Machu Picchu. Was a slightly cold a bit misty morning... Onto the train after going and finding the metal stairs myself and having one of the train guys help me lug it back so Mom could get up into the train. So off we go.... sun comes up.. well it does but the clouds are thick... then it starts to pour, buckets, buckets and the sky opens up the water and last Wednesday was nothing compared to this folks. When the train stops in the station it´s raining so hard that I don´t even notice that we have not stopped at the train station until I get off. I was getting off before the 3 of them because I was going to run up and get the tickets for the ruins and the bus tickets as they helped Mom out of the station. Nope, not now, so I stand there in the pouring rain, waiting to get back on the train so I can help them with Mom since it´s a 3 foot drop onto the rail tracks right in the middle of town. We get Mom off with some work, but we get her off and she´s not broken... Down into the puddles and the pouring rain then up onto the sidewalk right in front of hostel that I decide we are going into to get Mom into her poncho and us out of the rain while I figure out where we were exactly since we were not at the train station. The lady running the hostel let us come in and she sold us 3 more ponchos. I took off and told them to stay while I got soaked and got all the tickets needed. Actually it turns out we were right where the buses took off so it was great. And with Mom once again we just go to the front of the line and get the front seats on the bus.

Up, up, up we go...wondering if we are going to be watered down the side of the mountain. As we climb higher the rain starts to slow down and the drops are not so big. By the time we get out it´s just misting up at top. Off comes the ponchos, one by one, then up the steps filled with people on tours, up over the smal incline then down the many steps to the opening of the ruins... All the rain has stopped and we are in the big fluffy clouds, every where .... right in the middle of them with the ruins hidden, yet peaking out here and there, then disappearing. Mom and Nat decide to sit under the covering of the thatched roof of one of the building so Susan and I head off for an hour on our own. We start to climb, higher and higher, up and up, past the terraces, up and around then up again to the guard house. Then we keep climbing... all the time the clouds and sun play their dance of teasing us.... The ruins appear then disappear... you see mountains surrounding us then it becomes white...only white. A rainbow here in the valley looking down to the river then bobs in and out of the mist between you and it many thousands of feet below.

Then the sun comes out for good and the whole vista appears. And you just stop in awe. Because on 3 sides you are surrounded by shear cliffs that drop down to roaring rivers. Susan and I giggle like kids and run around up and down the ruins, taking photos and laughing and loving the beauty. How can you be unhappy up here among such gorgeous nature and human made beauty.
Then it´s time to head down. To go back among the stairs we have negotiated... 3 times before and we run into our guide from last week who smiles so big when he sees Mom once again. I feel sorry for his group today. I bet the first person to complain got info about Mom and how much she climbed around last week. And here she was again!

Down to the town and train station where I helped Susan finish off her purchasing in the market. Then some sandwiches and sodas with potato chips for a meal. Mom and Nat ate their left overs from last nights dinner up at the ruins while Susan and I were running around.

Then it started to rain again. HA! Perfect timing cuz it was time to get on the vistadome and come back.

Nat and Mom are napping, Susan is doing some business email, I came up to mail postcards at the never opened postoffice here.. and guess what. It wasn´t open. Plus I had to recomfirm our flights over the phone. So now it´s done and I will head back to the garden to sit and have a beer and enjoy the rest of this gorgeous afternoon on our vacation! Tomorrow morning back to Cusco, the day and night in Cusco then the plane early on Friday to Lima. But for now sunshine and a beer.