South America, 2018
8 stories, in order from the beginning of the trip.
1February 8, 2018
Dateline February 8, 2018, Lima, Peru
A bucket-list trip to South America began in Lima, with Janice's brother Steve and his wife Marilyn along for the whole adventure: a land tour of Peru's Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, then a cruise around Cape Horn to the Falklands and Buenos Aires, and finally Iguazu Falls. Our first day downtown brought the changing of the guard, a wonderful free-tour guide named Alejandro, the square where Peru declared independence, a bar with a heart, the unloved Pizarro statue, and a Pisco Sour or two.
2February 9, 2018
Dateline February 9, 2018, Cusco and the Inca World
Our Peru tour was a group affair, four busloads sorted out in Cusco, and ours became a happy little 'Mob' for days. With our guide Edgar we took in the Inca world: stonework so fine it needs no mortar, the Sun temple the Spanish buried under a convent, the Cathedral's Last Supper set over a plate of guinea pig, the great fortress of Sacsayhuaman, and the children of Pisac Market with their baby llamas, one of which John nearly brought home for the grandchildren.
3February 10, 2018
Dateline February 10, 2018, Into the Sacred Valley
The second day took us into the Sacred Valley itself, the green corridor the Urubamba River carves between the Andes, which the Inca saw mirrored in the Milky Way overhead. We climbed breathless to the temple above Ollantaytambo, marveled at Moray, the Inca crop laboratory of circular terraces, ate guinea pig cooked in the ground, and watched the weavers of Chinchero turn berries and leaves into color. Edgar saw us through it all, and Machu Picchu waited for morning.
4February 12, 2018
Dateline February 12, 2018, Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu, top of so many bucket lists, was ours at last. We rode the glass-roofed Vistadome up the Urubamba, climbed the breathless steps at 8,000 feet, and got that first look down at the lost city that no photograph can match. With Edgar we walked it until evening, heard how Hiram Bingham was led to it in 1911, eyed the peaks we'd have climbed twenty years younger, and rode back to Cusco with costumed dancers working the train. One of the great days of our lives.
5March 5, 2018
Dateline March 5, 2018, Chile and the Patagonian Fjords
From Peru we flew to Santiago and, with Steve and Marilyn, boarded a Princess ship at San Antonio for fourteen days around the bottom of the continent. Our balcony looked out on the Chilean coast as we sailed south: a day among the volcanoes and falls near Puerto Montt, and a slow, breathtaking pass by the Amalia Glacier off the Patagonian ice field. The Horn and the penguins lay ahead.
6March 8, 2018
Dateline March 8, 2018, Penguins and Cape Horn
Off Punta Arenas we went ashore on Isla Magdalena, where 120,000 Magellanic penguins nest in the heart of the Strait of Magellan, and walked among them past a lighthouse from 1902. Then the ship carried us around Cape Horn, calm and kind to us for once, though the old shipwreck stories were never far from mind. The Falklands were next.
7March 10, 2018
Dateline March 10, 2018, The Falkland Islands
A small set of islands with a big history. In the harbor, Chinese squid boats, the catch that earns the Falklands much of their living; on the land, the wreckage of 1982 kept as remembrance, and a people firmly British and glad to be. Janice took a rough two-hour drive across roadless country, past cowboys working the sheep, to Volunteer Point and a colony of King penguins balancing their eggs on their feet. John, under the weather, had to take this one on faith.
8March 14, 2018
Dateline March 14, 2018, The Last Days and Iguazu Falls
The cruise wound down hard: a lovely afternoon in Montevideo, then the flu swept the ship, Janice was quarantined, and Buenos Aires slipped away unseen. Still we kept our plans and flew to Iguazu, one of the seven natural wonders, 245 waterfalls on the Argentine and Brazilian border. We walked the Brazilian overlooks, took a boat right under the cascades on the Argentine side, dodged the cheeky Coati, and, sick as could be, made it home. Back in the USA.