panzón and i went to peru for our honeymoon because we did not want to relax on a beach somewhere. that's just not us. we wanted to do something adventurous like staying in the amazon rainforest and going to machu picchu, which we did by train because we thought the three day hike from cuzco was too much. and that's not us, either.
we spent the first two days in lima, where we visited the historic center of the city, went to a great museum (http://www.museolarco.org), ate unbelievable ceviche(http://www.larosanautica.com), enjoyed a delicious meal in an archeological site, (http://www.resthuacapucllana.com) and drank inca kola, the national soft drink, which is as yellow as the colonial buildings in the plaza de armas. the view of the sunset over the pacific ocean was breathtaking from the rooftop pool of our hotel (http://www.miraflorespark.com), but even more astonishing was the blinding milky substance with which the building was enveloped every morning, a dense fog called garúa.
from lima we took a plane to puerto maldonado and then a windowless bus to the madre de dios river and then a small boat to our eco-lodge (http://www.inkaterra.com/en/reserva-amazonica), located in the tambopata natural reserve, which is in the amazon basin. we spent four days there, amidst all kinds of wonderful wildlife (like an over-sized snail, swinging spider monkeys, the occasional toucan and the capybara, a.k.a. the largest rodent in the world), wearing black rubber boots that got stuck in the mud during our excursions. we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of the rainforest, but were awakened on our last night by an offbeat sound, the sound of a leak in the roof of our cabaña, of giant drops of water splashing into an open duffle bag filled with dirty laundry. although the smell of the rainforest is fresh after rainfall, our soggy, muddy clothes had a more rancid scent.
it's quite a change to go from the warm and humid lowlands of the amazon basin to the chilly heights of andean cuzco, so we arrived at our 16th-century-monastery-converted-into-hotel (http://www.monasterio.orient-express.com) in a daze. while sipping a welcoming coca leaf tea in the lobby, we were quite embarrassed about the foul odor emanating from our luggage.
the next day, we boarded the machu picchu-bound train before dawn and watched the sun come up as we zigzagged our way out of the valley (this sounds faster than it actually is, which is painfully
s l o w). the spectacular trip through the sacred valley, passing the colorful villages tucked in the foothills of the andes, following the urubamba river ended at the aguas calientes train station, where we took an exhilaratingly bumpy bus ride on a narrow road to the ancient citadel of the inca empire.
machu picchu is an awe-inspiring place to say the least. the heavy rocks that make up the architecture (temples, housing and terraces alike) are shaped and placed with utmost precision and uncanny delicacy. the energy there is unbelievable and it made me feel very big and very small at the same time.
we had been walking around for hours and i was getting kind of tired, so i decided to sit down for a bit. it was during this short resting period that a nearby llama got irritated at a tourist for taking its picture and charged towards me, the innocent bystander with partially sunburnt calves (namely, the part between my cropped pants' legs and socks). i had heard that llamas spit when annoyed, so i quickly left the scene, just like the perpetrator had seconds before.
a romantic inca bath awaited us back at the hotel that evening, complete with rose petals, bubbles, chocolates and champagne. as i undressed, i noticed a respectably sized mole on my left side and thought, huh, wasn't that on the other side? had one of my moles shifted from my right side to my left? i asked panzón to help solve the mystery, which he did with a pair of tweezers by extracting a tick. it was in fact a mole, a tiny parasitical mole burrowing through my skin to feed on my blood. the little sucker probably attached itself to me during the short break i took in machu picchu, right before the llama incident, probably right at the moment when that insensitive tourist's camera's flash went off.
we weren't going to let this spoil our evening, so we slipped into the no-longer-so-warm, yet fragrant waters of our honeymoon bath. we were clinking our champagne glasses together and popping a truffle in each others' mouths, when out of the corner of my eye i saw something, slightly more elongated than the chocolate melting in my mouth, but pretty much of the same size and color, move across the open doorway. we got out of the tub to investigate. there it was, a huge cockroach scurrying underneath our hotel room door towards the hallway. it had apparently hitched a ride with us all the way from the rainforest in our reeking duffel bag and was now on its way to mortify us, by making a public appearance. panzón, shoe in hand and wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, valiantly stepped out of the room and returned with the SMACK!ed and CRUNCH!ed cockroach corpse.
and so it was that the andean tick and the amazonian cockroach went on their final journey together, individually wrapped in shrouds of tissue paper, flushed down the toilet of a high-end hotel.
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