For instance – walking down the street can be hazardous. That is, if you don´t pay attention. On just about every city block there are great big gaping holes in the sidewalk from where someone has stolen a manhole cover or a utility panel. Sometimes these holes are a few inches deep and full of trash. Sometimes they are a few feet deep. Never are they cordoned off.

And hiking is still fun and adventurous in this country. Several times we´ve scooted across flimsy little bridges made of rotting bamboo poles that groan and creek when we step on them. Hand holds are a luxury. A couple of times we´ve encountered wooden ladders nailed into the sides of mountains that stretch up more than the equivalent of six stories. You can´t see the end of them, you just keep climbing and never look down . . . the wood is green with mold and kind of slick to the touch and every once in awhile a rung has rotted away.

Sometimes there are exposed electric wires coming out of the shower head . . . Matt got a shock the other day. Eh, it happens. Building permits are unheard of, so anything goes. A friend of ours has a staircase made out of wood slats about the thickness of veneer . . . good thing he´s not too fat.

Nope, no one in Peru is going to hold you by the hand and alert you to the dangers in the streets, houses or on the mountaintops. You have to take care of yourself, use your brains, keep your eyes open and alert . . . and not do dumb shit.

In my opinion, Nazca blows and should be skipped entirely.

If you decide to ride a bus from Lima to Cusco, the bus will blast through the desert town of Nazca. Everybody is hot for Nazca because of the famous Nazca Lines. I´ve heard that if you take the airplane ride – for minimum US $50.00 – that the Nazca Lines are awesome. But I didn´t want to spend the dough . . . my fault, I realize . . .

The entire Nazca area is a tourist trap that is 100% set-up to promote the Nazca Lines, which are impressive, but in my opinion, a bad idea for building a successful economy around. And everything in town is carved with reproductions of the Lines . . . the monkey and the spider especially. Everything from the sidewalks in the town square to the endless trinkets like rocks, wallets, postcards, clothing . . . anything, you name it . . . will have that damn stylized monkey line drawing painted or stitched or etched into it.

And that´s it. There is nothing else going on in that town.

We arrived at 5AM just as dawn was breaking over the city. The bus dropped us off in a cloud of dust and sped very quickly away. Some guy approached us with a big smile and spoke great English. He offered us a reasonable hostel room and drove us there, too, whereupon we immediately crashed out. (Night bus rides are intense because you don´t get much rest. The tour guides know this and that´s when they strike – in the early morn about two seconds after you´ve stepped off the bus – when you are tired and at your weakest. More on this later.)

When we woke up, I realized that the glass piece above our hostel door was missing. It would have been easy for anyone to get into our room. It´s not uncommon for theft to happen in hostels. When I asked for another room, the management acted like I was asking for the moon and the stars. Then we refused to go on a tour and the clerk got very visibly upset with us. Not a good combo.

I carried my valubles with me all day long.

I had a naive idea that we could maybe hike out to the desert and walk the length of one of the formations . . . like maybe the spider. I thought that would be pretty cool. But we found out, luckily before we executed my plan, that a hike out to the lines will automatically land you in a Peruvian jail for a few years. I was dissappointed, but I understand the need for conservation. So, we decided to go to the ´viewing platform´ where supposedly, you can climb up 60´ above the desert floor and see a couple of the line formations. It was a JOKE.

The viewing platform is in the middle of a no-man´s land that resembles a moonscape. It´s desolate and fairly ugly, the PanAmerican Highway is three feet away with busses and oil tankers blasting past every few seconds. You climb to the top of this viewing platform . . . and . . . and . . . you see a stylized hand glyph and a tree glyph (I think). Both of these glyphs are so much less than impressive, not to mention about five feet square in size.

So, expect good ceviche (served with lot´s of attitude), old men fixing up rusting muscle cars (that was cool – they were putting Nissan engines into old Chevy´s), but don´t expect to see many awesome glyphs, unless you take a flight.

And of course, don´t go to Nazca expecting to see dancing horses.

About a year ago, the bridge was completed and as a result, Santa Teresa has become a modern-day backpacker boomtown. It’s certain to change quickly within the next few years as tourism brings in a fresh infusion of capital and cosmopolitan influences, so experience this still-rugged adventurer outpost now. The crowd is fairly young – I saw a few spirited (non-local) folks who were probably 50+, but most are the 20’s-30’s range. The music thumps at all hours of the day and night, so bring earplugs if you’re sensitive.

The main street in town is the only one that’s finished. Both the streets in the village and roads leading into town are still bumpy rock and dirt. The town is compact, most buildings are one-story, and all the roofs in town are corrugated metal weighted down with big chunks of river rock. There are bars aplenty to offer cheap drinks and all-day happy hour. The juice bars are cheap and the produce fresh. The hostels are reasonably backpacker budget priced and comfortable. The people in the town are laid back – something not always easy to find in Peru.

The town plaza is brand new. The statues in the plaza are supposed depict Andean people in traditional dress, but I swear the facial features on those bronze statues looked white to me. The town has a real dichotomy in that one can find artsy BBQ joints, vegan eco-camps and the outdoor village butcher block (where if you are lucky, you might see a bloody cow head swinging in the open breeze) all on the same street.

And of course, there are the hot springs. Going only for the hot springs would be perfectly reasonable. Add the fact that Machu Picchu is only two mountains and an 8-kilometer walk on the train tracks away and you’ve got a town that is a true backpacker destination.

The routes in and around Cusco have been well-worn with tourism within the past few decades, taming some of the wildness of the area, but Santa Teresa is still a rough little gem. If you don’t care to take the European-owned (and stupidly expensive) Orient Express Train, the Inca Trail or another long hike in, this is the spot you’re looking for. The main town around Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes, where the stupidly expensive train runs is much more touristy and busy. And the hot springs are nowhere near as nice as those in Santa Teresa.

Keep in mind that it would be difficult to wake up in Santa Teresa, hike on the tracks to Machu Picchu, hike up the mountain and fully enjoy the ruins and hike back all in one day. Aguas Calientes is my least favorite town in Peru, but the day you go to Machu Picchu, you might as well plan on spending the night there. The kind hostel owners in Santa Teresa will gladly hold your packs the day you’re gone if you want to check out of your room and save a few soles.

In that post, I specifically mention that if the TD lasts more than three days, then you should seek medical help, because it´s NOT going to go away on it´s own. I had to use my own advice this past week.

And a quick word of warning should you become extremely gastronomically distressed while out there in the big, wide world – remember that it is KEY that you seek medical treatment in the country in which you were sickened. Never go home feeling ill in the belly and expect the Western Medical Establishment to be able to help you.

The  country in which you acquired the disease is accustomed to dealing with it on a daily basis. Most of the time, you can march down to the corner drugstore, tell the clerk your symptoms and they will prescribe the effective treatment for you on-the-spot.

Once, I made the mistake of drinking some bad water right before I got onto a plane bound from the jungle to LAX. When I got sick, I thought, ¨Great. I´m headed to my home city, where there are the best doctors in the world!¨

Wrong. The Western Medical Establishment is great for some things -  like if you´ve been in a car wreck or need to have your internal organs put back together. But hear me . . . most know nothing about effective treatment of parasites. Actually, with global travel becoming more commonplace, the instances of traveler´s coming home with nasty parasites is ever-increasing.

My well-heeled US doctors put me through a continual battery of tests that came out negative, but I knew something was wrong. They told me I was crazy.  If you feel you have an intestinal parasite, it´s imperative that you become your own strongest advocate (even though you may not have alot of energy to do so). After six months of problematic doctor visits, I finally had a friend bring some meds back from abroad and that finally fixed it. My doctors, all the way from my general practitioner to gastroenterologist at Cedars-Sinai, were all well-meaning, but clueless.

This time, the problem got fixed with some meds from the drugstore. All for less than $10.00 US. My US medical file is about 2¨ thick from the time when I was sick before. I wonder how much all of that cost the insurance company. I certainly know it cost me a great deal in time, anxiety and sickness – let alone dollars. And they still weren´t able to fix it, diagnose it or listen to me, the patient. It was as though they were offended that I might be trying to diagnose myself.

Trust me, fix it in the country where you got sick.

We went into a restaurant near the square in Arequipa with a sign that said it was their house breakfast special. We ordered. She said she didn´t have it. Robbed, I say! Robbed of my Lomo . . . we settled on the grilled chicken. It just wasn´t the same.

We wandered into an antique shop because it looked cool . . . Matt sat his backpack down and then walked around in the store.

¨Aren´t you afraid that your pack will get stolen?¨ I asked.

¨No,¨ he said, ¨not even a little bit.¨

So, I didn´t say anything more. But it was a prophetic moment. We bought a couple of postcards, collected his unattended bag and walked on.

After a lovely evening stroll in Arequipa, we needed food. We wandered back into the edge of downtown. I spied a local sole menu restaurant with Lomo written on the sign. We walked in. Again, no Lomo. Damn! Robbed again . . . of my Lomo!

But we were hungry, so we just ordered something else. The restaurant was local – kind of grungy and packed with people. Lots of cars bounced by on the brick-covered colonial streets. Activity buzzed around us in all manner and form. Matt grabbed the water bottle we always keep on hand out of his backpack, which he then sat on the floor next to his leg.

I´m not sure at what point I realized that something was amiss.  I was busy people-watching. There was a cute old man wearing a dirty trucker hat who slurped his soup. Another dude looked like the real-life version of Smithers from the Simpsons. There were people getting up to pay just as a girl sat down right next to me at our table . . . unconsciously, I shifted my own backpack under my legs . . . and that´s when I looked over at a now-empty table that had been occupied by two young men . . . and I don´t really know why, but I suddenly shouted at Matt, ¨Where´s your pack? Where´s your bag?¨

He reached down, but it was already gone. In the shuffle, someone had just picked it up nonchalantly and walked out the door.

We hop onto the afternoon bus bound for Quillabamba and I am impressed. This bus is a Mercedes-Benz with freshly ironed curtains lining the windows. The entire bus has a crisp appearance, every surface has clean edges that don’t seem to be worn down with years, grime and abuse. But the best features are the padded, plastic covered leg rests. Ah, luxury! We recline our seats, kick down the leg rests and breathe deep. I am looking forward to a relaxing, comfortable ride to the jungle town of Quillabamba.

The lady across the aisle from us is the only other rider I have an awareness of. She’s holding a cute little puppy in brightly colored manta. Great! We’re riding in comfort next to a cute little puppy . . . can it get any better? We play with the puppy and his little blanket. The puppy eventually shits on the bus floor. We all laugh and the lady cleans it up and throws the toilet paper out the window.

The journey to Quillabamba is long and arduous. Not many travelers take the trip because it’s an eight or nine hour bus ride and the last few hours are on a bumpy, unpaved road and there aren’t many popular tourist destinations in that direction. Quillabamba sits in the high jungle just on the other side of a range of 14,000’ mountain peaks that overlook the popular tourist town of Ollantaytambo. We want to go to Quillabamba for an experience of the high jungle, locally grown coffee and just to see what it’s like.

The bus twists up and up and up for a couple of hours, on a really nice smooth paved road. Then we hit the clouds and we glide through mist. Every once in awhile, the bus is flagged down by little Peruvian kids wearing traditional Quechua clothing. We stop for just a second, the driver hands the kid some bread and we are off again. I’m so comfortable and I’m thinking about how I need to have an Anna-tude adjustment about riding the busses and just learn to relax and trust that everything will be all right. The clouds are so beautiful, we’re crossing the apex of the mountain peak, the cute little puppy is running around . . .

. . . and all of a sudden, there’s a bit of a commotion. No less than four Peruvian matriarchs, including the one sitting next to us with the puppy, run toward the middle of the bus. “Que paso?” I ask the guy sitting next to us. He makes a rounded-belly motion with his hand. “Nacimiento?” I ask. A birth? He shakes his head an emphatic yes. The bus still twists and turns through the clouds, not slowing down at all. I look up. Sure enough, there are four matronly ladies with concerned looks, swaying and staggering in the ailse as the bus rounds the curves, looking down at a passenger who is reclined in one of the comfy bus seats. All I can see from my seat in the back is that they are pushing on a woman’s belly. I’d like to get a picture, but feel it just wouldn’t be right . . .

They ask me if I want to see. I stand up and make my way, swaying with the bus, toward the woman. She’s reclined and her fists are clenched into the blanket that covers her waist. She’s made not one sound, hasn’t cried out in pain at all. “Has she had the baby?” I ask, thinking that the woman is still in labor. Then I notice the man sitting next to her. He’s holding the cloth that the puppy had been wrapped up in earlier. He pulls the cloth back to reveal a tiny baby so new that it’s still covered in goo.

“Close the windows!” one of the matrons calls out. Another passenger offers a sprig of some kind of plant. The woman holds the sprig over the baby and murmurs a prayer in Quechua. The Andean people revere the surrounding mountains as gods. The fact that this baby was born on the very top of this apu is not lost on these mountain women. This baby is special. That apu wanted it to be born right at that moment.

Sometimes the apus claim lives in horrific bus crashes. It’s a daily fact of life that Peruvians just live with. But this time, a new life is born, innocent and new at 14,000’, in the clouds and mist at the top of the mountain.

Across the street sits a tiny little cab decked out with flashy rims, waiting for us. The young driver is jamming in his seat along with the rhythmic “umph, umph, umph” of the dance music blaring from the speakers loaded in the hatchback. The hood of the cab sports a graphic of the Tasmanian Devil with flames. The interior of the cab is covered with a glitzy cloth in honor of Senor De Huanca, of course, but that’s the only similarity to the average Cusquenian cab.

I have a lot of respect for this kid’s cab. In a town where just about every taxi is exactly alike, Dante and his disco-mobile really stand out. We tell him that all he needs are disco balls and a van and he could start his own new kind of specialized tour company that caters to the party crowd. We jam through the streets of Cusco. Dante is such a personable guy that we get his phone number so he can be our regular cab driver. We ask him to pick us up later in the day at the same spot.

He returns promptly at 1PM and rocks us right back to the bus station, where we begin our adventure to Quillabamba . . .

We find a hostel/hair cutting place. There are actually still wet hair cuttings on the floor of the entryway. We explain to the clerk/hairstylist that we want to go to Tres Cruces to see the sunrise. She looks at us sort of funny, shrugs her shoulders and begins her schpiel. The taxi leaves around 3:30 in the morning and the cost is 100 soles for the cab to transport us there, wait for two hours and then drive us back. Taxi? I explain that we don’t need the extravagance of a cab and are really just looking for a bus to take us there. We could hang out in Tres Cruces for the day if we needed to. She looks at us funny again.

After I ask the same question four times, I finally realize that Tres Cruces is not a town or a village. It is a lookout point only. There is nothing there. No town, no village and no busses to get there. The clerk assures us that there will be lots of clouds and most likely no amazing sunrise. She does, however, show us a wall calendar with a golden picture of the three-sunrise optical illusion that only occurs in June and July. Yeah, most of the time I skip using a guidebook, or else I might know these things – but the trip would also be a lot more boring. I crave the ups and downs of self-exploration.

But we decided that dammit, we came all this way in a rusted tin can of a bus, bouncing around on dangerous, rocky roads for eight hours to do one thing – go to Tres Cruces – and nothing, not even clouds obscuring that magical rising sun was going to stop us. We hired the cab. After a couple hours of sleep and we get into the cab at 3:30 in the morning and head off, Matt with the hostel’s pillow and blanket in hand.

We are pretty much delirious from bad planning and lack of sleep. We just laugh at the ridiculousness of our journey and decide to have a blast anyway. The cab drives at approximately 25 MPH for over an hour, slogging through thick mud and big rocks. The driver and his partner in passenger seat both comment on how ugly the road is and how a month ago a bus driver they used to know lost control of his bus and slid off a cliff. Now the dry season was starting up again, so there was less to worry about.

It is still the dead of night when we finally get to the Tres Cruces area, where our drivers stop at an abandoned security shed so we can pay the ten sole park fee. They bang on the darkened door, but no one answers. We drive onward, to another park ranger building. The driver’s partner gets out of the car and pounds on the door for a few minutes, until a sleepy-eyed ranger opens the door. He explains that some people want to go to Tres Cruces. The ranger shakes his head and demands a 50 sole fee to walk to the gate and open it so the cab could drive through.

“So, I guess no one comes here during this time of the year?” I ask the driver.

And just like an American with attitude would shrug his shoulders as if to imply that my question was ridiculous, the driver says in an incredulous tone, “No, nadie!” No, you crazy gringa, no one comes here in April!

The driver himself gets out of the car and talks the ranger into walking down to open the gate so we can get through. We drive down a neglected path for about another half hour. When we finally get to the coveted overlook spot, Matt and I laugh together as we stand on the simple concrete slab while freezing in the pre-morning light. We watch the clouds lighten and cackled to one another, “No, nadie!” every once in awhile.

But just knowing that we were standing on the lip of a mountain that plunges down over 10,000’ into a cloud covered jungle, whether we could see it or not, was enough. We watched the sun rise and it didn’t matter to us if the three suns were rising behind grey clouds or not. We were acutely aware of everything, appreciating even the smallest details of the obscured morning – first the infinite quiet, then the sounds of the earth waking up. Every dew-drop, every frog croak and every scrap of light that made it through the layers and layers of fast-moving clouds that engulfed us were sheer wonderment and excitement for us. That was the real magic of the morning.

We found out that this is because of local superstition regarding the mountains, or apus. Each mountain has it’s own apu, or mountain spirit, each one sacred and each one considered to be a god. According to the locals, some mountains, or apus, are good and some are not. Regardless of their personality, no one wants to attract the spirit of the apu toward them. They are afraid that the spirit of the apu might take an interest in them and ‘want them.’

So, if riding in a hot, cramped bus and an old Quechua mamacita asks you to please close the window, just do it, out of respect for the mountains. It’ll get hot and stuffy on board, but it will keep the apus from wreaking havoc with the humans. And with the roads and bus conditions in this country, everybody needs every little bit of help that’s available.

So when we get on a bus, Matt usually tries to get on first, open as many windows as possible to let the bus air out before the journey begins. Then the windows slide closed one by one as the bus careens through the mountains. We sweat, smile and watch the gorgeous apus as we glide by, undercover and with respect for the gods who watch over this sacred land.

We sort of knew what we were getting ourselves in for. The amazing sunrise near Paucartambo, in a place called Tres Cruces, is nearly always obscured by clouds. But during the months of June and July, the high clouds disappear, revealing a strange atmospheric phenomenon that makes the horizon appear as though three golden suns are rising above a sea of lower clouds that cover the jungle in the basin below. We held out hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d be lucky and there wouldn’t be any clouds when we visited.

We made several critically wrong assumptions on this leg of our journey. It never occurred to me that the road and bus would be sketchy. With all of the crazy bus rides I’ve had lately, I should have known better. And honestly, there isn’t much going on in that part of Peru, unless of course, it’s June and July, the season for the amazing sunrises. We decided we were in it for the adventure, no matter what did (or didn’t) happen. In the end, we at least had some good laughs.

We caught the last bus of the day to Paucartambo. I was in seat number 49, all the way in the back. I got a glance of the bus before boarding and I immediately had my doubts. The huge front tire was worn down, with gash covering what little tread was still there. The front half of the bus was divided from the back half by a jagged rusty line of corroded metal. The windows seemed loose in their casings and the luggage rack above everyone’s heads was rigged with a combination of plastic strips, wood pieces and extra screws.

Once the bus went into motion, I jiggled around so much that a few times I actually caught some air, getting tossed upward in my seat. The windows rattled, the entire bus creaked with every shimmy and the luggage rack shuddered like it would fall down any second. This bus was like an amusement park ride, made to feel scary with jumps and jolts and sharp turns that pull your stomach in the wrong direction. Except this was not an amusement park ride, safe and comfortable with a false specter of danger.

This bus ride was tense. And it wasn’t just Matt and I who felt that way. Nearly every man on the bus broke a sweat and kept an eye on the road with a worried glance. The guy next to us ate crackers obsessively, nervously finishing one package and immediately opening the next. We left the paved road at the base of the mountain and headed up a dusty, rocky trail barely wide enough for a fifty-passenger bus. Essentially, we were off-roading in a tin can, creeping up the side of a 14,000’ mountain, taking blind curves and oncoming semi-trucks with the honk of a horn and the prayer of everyone on board.

There were several times when Matt and I began talking about those last second scenarios, like in slapstick movies, where the plane has malfunctioned and everyone on board acts crazy during their final moments. Most of the time, we were shaking around so much that truly, it was difficult to even talk to one another. We made the trip with sweaty hands and stiffened muscles. Coca leaves helped with the altitude. The spectacular and often stomach churning views of mountain peaks kept our attention focused on the wide open spaces just beyond the bus windows, instead of focusing our attention on the fact that the road was so small that we couldn’t even see it moving below us . . .