Recently, I made a claim that there really isn´t much difference between the wet season and the dry season in Peru. I hereby revise my earlier statement.

I lived in Pisac for the wet season this year, and in the Sacred Valley, I truly don´t see much difference between the wet season and the dry season. There is some rain (and great rainbows!) , but not the constant downpours that everyone foretold to me.

But, do beware if visiting other parts of Peru during the wet months of November through April. This past week I´ve realized why. The roads in the back-country places outside of The Sacred Valley just are not safe during the wet season. Rock slides, mud and slick conditions make travel by car or bus very treacherous.

It´s officially the dry season here now, and with it, I can see a HUGE increase in travelers. We traveled for hours last week along bumpy, unpaved roads that twisted through 14,000´ plus mountain passes with mountain streams often pouring across the roads. One taxi driver pointed out to us where a bus his friend was driving lost control last month on the wet gravel road and fell into a gully.

I´ve had a good time living here during the slowest part of the year, getting to know the people and seeing lots of rainbows. But there is a reason why the dry season is more happening for travelers in this region – it´s safer for travel and sunnier for sightseeing. But still, don´t let the wet season deter you as it´s got high points as well.

We decided to head to a high mountain town called Paucartambo for no other reason than that we heard the sunrise near there in June and July is amazing. We figured, eh, why not go check it out? It’s the end of April, so that’s close to around June, right?

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 . . .

After being in the Cusco area for a week or so,  it´s really easy to regard the next set of ruins on your sightseeing list as most likely being ´just a big pile of rocks.´ After all, if you´ve seen one set of ruins, you´ve seen them all, right?

Not so fast.

Tipon is worth a visit – for several reasons. First of all, it´s a relatively inexpensive site. It is one of the sights on the Turistico Boleto. The Turisto Boleto is a ticket with pre-paid entry for about ten sites and museums found in the Cusco area. The only problem is that the Turistico Boleto is only valid for about a week and it´s really difficult to find the time to see everything on it that you´ve pre-paid for. Most people have to drop something off their list. A lot of people skip Tipon because compared to most of the sites on the boleto, it´s slightly out of the way.

I love Tipon! Compare the ten sole (3. 30 USD) price of admittance (without a Turistico Boleto) to the $42 USD price of Machu Picchu and your wallet will be especially happy. Plus, while there are a fair amount of tourists, this site is tranquilo compared to the throngs of folks headed to Machu Picchu.

I have a feeling that it won´t be too long before the foot traffic at the Tipon site steadily increases. The town of Tipon seems to be working on the roads heading toward the ruins and the town is currently seeing alot of construction. Right now, there aren´t many restaurants in the square, but stop off at the main highway that goes through town after your excursion to the ruins and you´ll find no less than fifteen cuyerias – places that offer Peru´s specialty of guinea pig – served up fried, baked or wood fired in gigantic home-made circular clay brick ovens.

Tipon itself is amazing . . . ! The impressive Inca water fountains are still in working order 500 years after the collapse of the empire. I think that the gorgeous fountains alone are reason enough for a visit. But also, the grounds are immaculate – not much trash and very well-kept with lots and lots of green, green grass to lounge in or have a picnic.

There are three main areas to the ruins of Tipon. The main ruins are composed of a mass of twelve huge open grassy areas, each one larger than the next that eventually end in a network of gurgling stone fountains. Furthest up the mountain you´ll find more ruins that are difficult at best to spy from the main site. Follow the rock stairway to find this part and the overhang that gives a spectacular view of the entire valley surrounding the area. The third area you will see as you climb up to the main grassy area.  You will notice the entire area of mid-height ruins located sort of in front of the grassy areas, closer to the entrance, higher than the main area and lower than the highest points and not easily seen from the entrance.

More excavation is currently underway at the site – both at the top as well as the middle section. After we left the overlook at the top of the site, we decided to blaze our own trail down the side of the grass and cacti covered mountain instead of taking the paved route. That was a fun adventure, but if you decide to blaze your own trail, I highly recommend the use of a walking stick in order to keep the cactus from poking out your eyeballs. As we climbed down the side of the hill from the rocky overlook, our goal was to end up on the back side of the secluded middle area near the front of the site. After an hour of sliding down the mountain and avoiding cactus, we made it. We ended up surprising a kid who was excavating even more Inca stairways . . .

From the ruins of Tipon, we walked the entire way down the mountain back to the main road and town. BTW, the guide book we have says the hike UP to the ruins will take about an hour. That is completely incorrect. Get a cab up there, or else the altitude will wreck you . . . it would have taken me at least two and half hours to walk up there. But the walk down DOES take about an hour and since it´s all downhill, it´s fairly easy. From the ruins, there is a separate footpath that runs almost half way down the mountain so that you don´t have to walk the entire length via the dusty gravel road that the taxis take.

The people in the actual town of Tipon are not as accustomed to seeing tourists as other towns like Pisac, Cusco and Aguas Calientes. Not that the people of Tipon aren´t friendly, just know that the kids will probably stare more or possibly poke some fun at you . . .

Tipon is incredible  . . . and mark my words, within the next two years, I am willing to bet that the tourist traffic there doubles.

I want to visit some places that are not as trampled and full of people as Machu Picchu. For the record, Machu Picchu really is spectacular and all, but since it became one of the New 7 Wonders of The World in 2007, not only has the already heavily toured area become ever more dense with sightseers, the entire area surrounding Cusco-Machu Picchu has become significantly more expensive – particularly the heavily advertised sites, museums and towns near them. Machu Picchu is truly great, but many people fail to realize the amazing amount of beauty and wonderful things to see that are (literally)  just around the bend.

Many people come to Peru with only a couple of weeks to attempt to cram pack in as much adventure as possible. That´s fine, but if you can stay in Peru longer, you definitely should. Take it easy and leisurely and you will find some incredible gems and meet wonderful people, probably see some crazy stuff along the way and never be sorry for one cotton-pickin´ minute that you aren´t back in your home country working the same boring grind.

Oh yeah, and that travel guide that someone gave you as a gift for your Peru trip . . . just one bit of advice . . . Travel guides are great, but don´t expect the information in them to be current . . . even if the book was published recently. We have a travel guide published in late 2008 that covers the entire Inca heartland. All the prices are waaaaay underestimated and a lot of the information is already outdated. Peru gets more and more travelers every year. Consequently, prices keep rising accordingly and infrastructure gets changed often. So while the info on the sites themselves is mostly correct, just be aware that pricing and modes of transport to get there may not be up-to-date.

The friend I was house sitting for in Pisac came home at the beginning of April right on schedule.

My plan was to house-sit and nest and get all comfy in Pisac for the entire duration of my friend´s vacation and then upon his return to use his house as a sort of home base while I get out there and enjoy some of the sights of this awesome country. So, that´s what I´m doing now.

Last Saturday was the first night I´ve stayed away from ´home´ since my arrival in The Sacred Valley back in December of 2008 . . . nearly three and a half months of staying in one place and now I´m back on the open road, with hardly a minute to process all the wonderful things that unfold on a daily basis . . . stay tuned for updates from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia before I finally head back to the US . . .

So, Matt and I are checking out The Inca Heartland from now til the end of April . . . trying to see as much as we can that is off the beaten path. That means we´re not going to Machu Picchu. He went in February with some friends . . . and I went in 2005. We´ve found some breathtaking places that are much more secluded and continue to stumble upon the greatest people and situations . . .

There´s this super cool couple that Matt and I know in Cusco, Nilton and his girlfriend Muncie. We hang out with them all the time, they take us to the local places in and around Cusco and are just all round great people.

 Nilton is an artesano. His jewelry is AWESOME. He makes all this stuff by hand and his designs are nothing like anything you will ever see anywhere, except maybe Cusco, but even then, his work stands out among all the rest. And I´m not just saying that because he´s our friend.

In an effort for shameless promotion of a friend´s work, click here or go to photobucket.com/artisano to look at some of his stuff.

I will be bringing home some of his jewelry for myself. When you see it, you will want some of this work. I promise. So, check out the link and if you want me to bring something home for you, I will. It would be best if you want something that you paypal me at the address listed on the contact page of my website. I will charge only Nilton´s prices, which average about 35-45 USD per piece, usually less, depending on how complicated it is or how rare the stones are. Also, he uses exclusively South American stones, most of them are Peruvian.

If you wait until I come home and you want to buy something, I will be bringing extra, but I will also be charging extra . . . and I´m not going to bring too much back with me. I have other things to do than become a jewelry seller, but I do really like Nilton´s work and want to help out a fellow artist.

Again, you will never see this kind of handiwork in the states and you will never see it at this kind of price, either, so order up! I´m leaving Cusco in less than two weeks, so hurry.

I am lucky enough to gaze at Apu Pachatusan almost every day. It sits in the distance, just down the valley, looming over the Urubamba River, in view of the place I´ve been living for the last five months, on the outskirts of the town of Pisac.

I´ve been calling Apu Pachatusan ´The Rhombus Mountain´ because a unique rock formation just below the tip of the mountain resembles several rhombuses folding into one another. Sometimes it´s nice just to sit down at the river, listen to the water flowing by and look up into the far-off rhombuses and daydream. It truly is a special mountain.

Since Incan times, the earth-based religion of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador has referred to the spirits of the mountains as apus, or gods. Each mountain, or apu, has it´s own spirit, name and unique qualities. Apu Pachatusan has been revered as a sacred mountain since pre-historic times as a magical place of healing waters. Over the centuries, this mountain´s legend has been Catholicized in an effort to christianize the local indigenous population. As a result, The Sanctuary of Señor De Huanca at Apu Pachatusan, the site of the most popular Andean Catholic miracle, is one of the most visited holy sites by the local population because supposedly Jesus has appeared on this mountain several times and has spoken messages of peace and love.

Almost every car, taxi, bus and store around here displays some mention of Señor De Huanca, usually complete with a glitzy display of a bloody Jesus. I lost count a long time ago of the number of businesses with the name of ¨Señor De Huanca.¨Finally I managed to visit the sanctuary for myself . . .

And I don´t know what took me so long! The place is really beautiful – full of flowers, gardens, groves of eucalyptus trees and flowing fountains reputed to contain magical, healing water. Although there were young, shirtless Peruvian men playing in the water fountains, we collected several bottles of ´magic water´and immediately sterilized our samples when we got home. We shared the magic water last night at dinner. The verdict is out on the water´s healing abilities, but I´ll keep you posted . . . I mean, it´s got the vibes of shirtless men, so it´s got to at least be . . . ahem . . .  energetic, if nothing else.

Upon arrival to the church and sanctuary of Señor De Huanca, the first thing we heard was an explosion of firecrackers that someone set off inside the church! I thought that was pretty cool and I wonder if this kind of thing happens regularly . . .

A couple of things I recommend bringing with you on your trek to the monastery at Señor De Huanca is a plastic bag to collect trash and some dog food. For some reason, there is quite a lot of trash in and around the sanctuary grounds and it´s a custom to collect one bag full of trash as a gratuity. Next time I go, I will also bring either a small bag of dog food or some scraps, as I´ve never seen dogs as skinny and starved as the ones at the top of that mountain.

We went inside the massive Catholic church that´s built at the base of the sanctuary. I found the burnt remnants of the packaging of the firecrackers I´d heard earlier in the day. One interesting thing about the church is that confession is offered in both Spanish and Quechua. The church is a typical Latin Catholic church, full of altars and flowers and bleeding Jesuses. That Thursday afternoon when I visited, the pews were full of praying families and squirming kids.

Most of my attention was focused to the window near the ceiling of the church, which shows a spectacular view of the peak of Apu Pachatusan. I´m glad that at least the church respected the Apu enough to include a window so that the indigenous, Catholicized mountain people could at least have a scrap of memory about the original significance of their sacred mountain . . .

Here´s the view of the Sacred Valley from the fields above the sanctuary of Señor De Huanca . . .

Tourist season is back in full swing. And so are the strikes in the Cusco region.

But, I say, ¨People of Peru . . . Go for it!¨ The strike on transportation that happened yesterday was for a damn good reason – the giant Bechtel corporation is trying to privatize the water in Peru. This is BAD, BAD, BAD for the Peruvian people . . . water is life and it belongs to everyone. Bechtel has been systematically privatizing water throughout South America with disatrous results.

So, just know that if you come to Peru, that yes, there may be a strike. This means that you could get stuck somewhere for a day. At the worst, you may miss your plane or the train to Macchu Picchu may not run that day. Yeah, it´s all a real big bitch for tourists, but the Peruvian people need to show their government that selling their water rights to a giant corporation is NOT OK, and this is how they do it – by organizing transportation strikes.

So, please support the strikes. Talk to the people. Let them know that you agree with them. And, don´t use transport on strike days. (You´re not going to be able to anyway.) Sit back, relax. Climb a mountain.

Today was the day after the strike and huge rocks still lay in the roads . . . as though the people are ready to strike again if need be.

I’ve been purposely reticent about ceremony the four months I’ve been in Peru, for a lot of reasons. I feel like now is the time to shed some light on those choices and to also open up a bit about plant medicine.

When I came back to Peru, I had a lot of inner work to do and I knew it. I was in a sad funk, fighting the same old battles with myself regarding work, money and life. It seemed like I had almost everything I wanted: living life on the road, in love, traveling with a great boyfriend, seeing and doing so many exciting things every single day – but it was like I couldn’t appreciate any of it. I was all plugged up mentally and spiritually and didn’t even know why.

I was still carrying the same old stories. I was still in shock from the whirlwind that had been 2008 – temporarily leaving Venice Beach, quitting my job, living in hotels with my cat, bouncing around for eight months. I was so stressed out that the hair on the back of my head began falling out at an alarming rate. By November of last year, I had a smooth bald spot beginning on the nape of my neck that extended halfway up the back of my head. And the hair wasn’t growing back. I was concerned. Stress releases lots of toxins into the body and mine had become a wasteland.

When I began taking part in ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies in Peru again I did not want to write about the details of my inner healing. I did not want to diminish the power of the process – and I felt like my very life and health depended on it. I didn’t want my innermost healing on display for the entire world wide web to read about. I didn’t want the pressure of having to blog about any of it or analyze it in a public forum. I didn’t want to worry about what my or Matt’s family might think about it.

Ceremony for me isn’t about sitting in the dark, puking while hearing some pretty songs and seeing some cool visuals . . . man. It’s hard work, sometimes frightening, often cathartic. I wanted my healing to unfold naturally, without being rushed, judged or critiqued. I needed an indefinite amount of time to focus on nothing except my own health and healing – and so that’s what I have been doing. Now here I am, four months later, and my life is completely changed as a result. I’ve rid my body of the toxic stress – that habitual underlying current keeping my insides agitated. I’m no longer in a funk, my writing arm doesn’t go numb anymore, I’m excited about life, my hair is growing back and I’m well on the way to writing as my full-time career.

I’ve thought about all of this long and hard and the bottom line is that plant medicine has saved my life – literally. There are lots of first-person accounts written by people from around the world – click here for my own 2006 article published at Perception Engine. Do I want to become a shaman and facilitate other people as they work directly with plant medicine? No, but I do have a very real pull to write about it in a new way.

Plant medicine is such a big subject – the politics involved (both locally and globally), the huge spectrum in modalities of use, unspoken controversies, and a new emerging feminism within the movement. My goal is to facilitate an in-depth and well-rounded understanding for those with an interest in the subject, particularly those focused on their own inner-healing.

All the locals around here stare openly at Matt´s giant red beard.

Peruvian men don´t have the genes for  growing much in the way of facial hair, so his is a real novelty around these parts. Yesterday, we sat in a shady spot and did our normal thing – watched the Sunday market in the Plaza De Armas in Pisac, Peru. We were quietly resting when Matt suddenly exclaimed, ¨Aha, I caught them! I caught all four of those ladies staring at my beard!¨ He pointed toward four Andean women across the walkway from us who were sitting on blue tarps in the bright sun selling onions, peppers and carrots. They all smiled and quickly looked away, giggling.

We waited, resting for a few more minutes. I let my eyes drift over toward the row of women. I waited until they all stared again, because I knew it would happen . . . and then . . . just when all eyes were on Matt, I reached over next to him, still staring straight ahead and with no emotion and without looking at him, I gave a good solid yank on his beard.

They all fell into fits of laughter again, this time whispering to one another behind their hands. Then we got an idea. We practiced the whole schpeil in Spanish a few times first. Then I went over to talk to the women.

¨Hello! Good Afternoon!¨I said to the ladies in Spanish. ¨You know, if you want to touch his beard, it´s ok with me. Only ONE SOLE.¨ They knew I was kidding. They shook their heads and the laughter started again. ¨But, you can touch it for free if you´ll let me take your picture while you´re doing it!¨

No takers. Darn. We would have traded – a little touch of the beard for some onions . . . why not?