Houses of sand, streets of concrete and Machu Picchu for free…

Yep, an interesting title to start a new story with, but it´s true in the week I had between my two tours I went Cajamarca the pretty city with an important Inca History.  I went here to visit the famous Inca-Baths, Los Baños del Inca, which played an important role in the defeat of the Inca Empire. It were these baths where the Inca Atahualpa was resting from his winning battle against Huascar, when Pizarro silently took over the city of Cajamarca. After this he and his 160 men on horses captured the Inca and slaughtered more than 6000 of his men with a list. This, together with the civil war between the Inca brothers Atahualpa who ruled the north and Huascar who ruled the south of the Inca Empire were the biggest reasons for Pizarro´s success in defeating the ones so famous Empire.

What is left of this important part of history are the ransom chamber, in which Atahualpa offered the Spanish 6000 kg of gold and 12000 kg of silver for his release and the Inca Baths where this change of history started…

It didn´t take me long to find out that the famous Inca-Baths are now surrounded by a circus of tourist-attractions. The actual baths are closed, but part of the water is now used to fill small personal baths and a bigger public ‘swimming paradise’. I was disappointed by this, but giving it some more thoughts, I can´t think of a good reason why they should have made it any different.

Something that could/should be different is the respect that some Peruvians show for their own rich culture. I´ve seen it before on some less known Inca-sites and some other infamous cultural places and now I saw it again on one of the tourist attractions of Cajamarca, lasVentanillas de Otuzco.  At this site, were you have to pay 3 soles entrance fee, you can see from close by the remains of what was probably the funerary place of an ancient pre-Inca culture where archeologist still don´t know much about. But, like often it seems that not knowing means, not caring much either… However the site is ‘protected’ with a line of barbwire, small cactuses and signs with some information that try to tell you how important this site can be, there is no guard around and visitors can do what they want. This way it could happen that I saw a family helping their little children over the cactuses, so they could use the Ventanillas (or funeral windows) as a climbing device… Before I went to the Ventanillas de Otuzco, I went to the Ventanillas of Cobayo which are further away of Cajamarca (following a beautiful route, with great views!) and higher up a hill. I was surprised that this archeological site had no protection what so ever? But now I´ve seen that putting a ticket office and some barbwire around a site only seems to mean that some-one is aloud to ask an entrance fee, I guess it is good that the Ventanillas of Cobayo are only protected by their beautiful location…

After the Ventanillas I went to Cumbe Mayo. The official reason why this location is a touristic site is because of its pre Inca, ancient old canal, cut in solid stone to fertilize the surrounding land. I wasn´t very impressed about the canal or the ancient petroglyps (rock paintings), but I loved the surrounding and the splendid views around!

I also liked my stay in Cajamarca, it is a pretty colonial city with beautiful and green farming areas to walk around. One of the things that interests and surprised me about this city is that most colonial buildings are build with an old traditional and non-colonial system, which is nowadays still in use to build the cheaper houses in the field… It´s a system I hadn´t noticed before, because it is not with adobe blocks, like most pore houses. This system involves a wooden mall of two big planks with a certain distance in-between. This distance will be the thickness of the future walls and is around 30 cm for normal houses till more than 60 cm for the bigger colonial buildings, like the court-house. In-between these planks they don´t put cement, like we would do now, but just a little humid sand and grass. After this they stamp and pressure everything together. When they are satisfied they put a thin layer of rocks on top, they move the mall up and start over again until they´re high enough. You can see an example on the photo. Knowing that some of the big colonial buildings in Cajamarca are made with sand, it´s funny to see that a lot of streets in the centre are made with concrete. I believe that in most places this will be opposite.

All right, after my discoveries in Cajamarca, it was time to find out if all Belgium groups are so difficult too guide…

I had heard several disappointing stories from other tour leaders (even the ones from Belgium) and my agency that groups of tourists from Belgium are not easy to direct and very bad in giving tips, during the tour and at the end. For these reasons most colleagues prefer to guide groups from Holland instead of groups from Belgium.

Not something very promising to look forward too, but already in the first days my group showed that prejudices don´t always have to be true…

Now, at the end of a three weeks tour with 10 Belgium’s, I look back on an easy tour, during which we ate together almost every night and had a lot of fun. For sure I can say that this group from Belgium broke all the prejudices. They were even on of my best examples for the new formula of Koning Aap Holland, enjoying your vacation together with your group members…

What else can I say about this new tour; For a start that it was already more than two years ago that I guided a tour of three weeks like this one, lets see if things have improved during this time.

Arriving in Nasca I was wondering about the results of my television performance of last time. For sure it had caused some discussions, there had been a few phone calls to my agency and some local agencies seem to have said that they don´t want to work with me. Meanwhile there is also been a meeting, between the earliness, but about it´s subjects and results I couldn´t find much info. Something I did hear about is that shops and restaurants in the centre of Nasca are also complaining about the long waiting times at the airport, because during these times the tourists don´t spent any money in Nasca…

This time the flight reservations of my group members were respected, but again not the hour of flying. Time for a different approach; I went to the flight-tower to ask what´s really true about the flight permissions and times. They explained me that there´s a list with permissions to fly, this list tells over the whole year which of the 9 flight-agencies is aloud to fly in the first turn of the day and which is to fly in the last turn. Complete with this list, the knowledge that there are 34 airplanes, how much planes every agency has and that there need to be 5 min. in-between every leaving airplane, I can now calculate, from the moment the weather is good enough to fly, at what times the planes of my agency are aloud to fly. I also know now that some small agencies are better to avoid when you want to reserve your ticket. Tae for example has only one plane with 3 seats. On a good day, when it has one of the first turns to fly, it can fly max. three rounds so 9 people, imagine what happens on a bad day. I will not bore all of you with the details, but for who wants to know more about this, I will put the rest of the info on my website in the chapter of tips.

After some good conversations with a colleague of my, one I use to dislike, because I thought that he was to busy with earning money during his tours instead of providing services to his groups, I learned some interesting things. First I have to admit that however he is asking commissions on everything, he do is trying to give the best service he can towards his groups and he is also using some money for idealistic purposes. He even seems to be concerned about the impact of cheaper tourism in Peru and Bolivia. Since most people in these countries lack the quality of looking ahead, it is apparently not so difficult to get cheap, long time allotment contracts for the hotels. In the beginning it must be nice for a hotel to get a whole year of security to have guests, but if the money they get for this is just enough to survive, the quality of the hotel and service slowly becomes less important. Something we all have to keep in mind when we look for the lowest possible prices…

Some more disturbing news about Nasca and surrounding is that studies seem to show that within 8 years there will be a serious shortage of (ground) water in the province. Due to the high level of cultivation around Ica and the oases of Huacachina, the ground water level has dropped so much that it is now already necessary to artificial refill the lake of Huacachina, to keep the oases alive. What´s making the situation worse is that (mostly) Chilean companies are buying lots of very cheap, but fertile desert ground to cultivate vegetables for exporting. The only thing they need to do is investing in some water pumps to get the ground water up, put some seeds in the ground and the fertile ground does the rest. These actions cause strange contradictions, for example close to the very poor neighborhood of Portachuelo (Nasca). This place is to poor to buy water pumps, so they receive only one truck of water each day, which they have to use for drinking, washing and cleaning. But about 2 km further they use a lot of water to sprinkle desert ground, to grow vegetables for the export…

A big jump now into the San Pedro Prison of La Paz. I know, most people would probably prefer to jump out of a prison, but about this prison there exist some interesting histories (even a book, of which I forgot the name) and I was curious to find out what´s true about them. They say that in this prison exists a little village ruled by the prisoners themselves. A little like the series of Prison Break part 3? You understand, I had no idea what to expect, I only knew that due to some problems they had been closed for tourists for a long time and now recently (about 14 weeks) they are open for tourists again. Why? To earn money, so they can improve their stay in prison. With the money they earn they pay each day more than 19 guards, so they can live a more comfortable live in prison. Who are they? They are a foundation of about 100 prisoners, mostly drugs related, who separated themselves from the other 1100 prisoners in the San Pedro Prison. The founders are non Bolivians who were trying to find a way to survive in a place were they were not welcome. They found this way in uniting themselves, creating money funds and basic rules: no stealing from each other, not ‘talking’ with the cops, no unfair fighting and keeping the hands off the family from others… Working together they were able to create a little ‘village’ an ‘island’ inside the dangerous prison, where they can shop, eat hamburgers, use a pool table and even order prostitutes if they can afford. As far as I understood everyone who is willing too accept the rules of the foundations and contribute for his part, is allowed to join. The money has to come from outside of course, from family, friends, tourists and maybe more, but between themselves they can also earn money with selling, fixing and cleaning things. Who breaks the rules goes for a few days to a small chamber, but who breaks them badly goes to the other part of prison and will never come back. Especially a foreigner is not very welcome there and with bad luck, he even never comes out again…  The (much) better live circumstances inside this so called ‘village’ and the fear to be rejected if you don´t behave, automatically keeps the inmates more calm and doesn´t turn them into ‘monsters’ with nothing o lose. Our guide, who in this prison for drugs smuggling, told us that it will cost him no more than 20 Boliviano´s to get someone in the other part of the prison killed. 30 Year is the max. a prisoner in Bolivia can get. In that part of prison there are a lot of prisoners who are sentenced with 30 years. They have not much to lose, the live-circumstances are already bad and they can´t get more than 30 years anyway. Looking from this point of view I don´t feel bad that I paid money to criminals, who are mostly drug-related, to see how they live. I think that prisoners from this ‘village’ will have a better change to return to a normal live after their stay, than prisoners from their other part. I also think that it´s a good initiative that our criminal guide, after his release, wants to try to do the same in other prisons. A good initiative that we shared a glass of illegal, but good whiskey over. My group was also impressed about our special tour, so maybe I will come back. For extra information; if you want to visit this part of prison, you have to contact the prisoners directly and pay them 250 Bs (22 Euro). They don´t work with tour agencies, because they want to keep things in their own control and also don´t want agencies to make a profit over their backs. 

Another big jump to Machu Picchu Pueblo, or should I still say Aguas Calientes like I still hear most citizen do? The Backpacker train from Cusco was already full, so we had to go by bus to Ollantaytambo and from there we took the train at 7:05 am to arrive in A.C. around 8:30 am. I had already recommended my group that if the weather was good, it would be better to visit Machu Picchu directly, because we had a lot of time now and you never know how it will be the next day. The weather was great and we were even able to change our tickets to leave next day at 9:30 am instead of 16:50h. We didn´t have to wait in line to get a bus to the site, at the entrance it was calm, we had a great and sunny day on the site and after 15:00 it also became a lot calmer.

We were lucky, only next time we should bring up more things to drink, because 10 soles (3.40 US$) for 0.5 liter of water is ridicules.

Being a whole afternoon on the site of Machu Picchu, also gave me the change to learn some new things about its administration. I was very lucky to be able to exchange my entrance ticket of Machu Picchu with someone from Belgium who changed his mind about going up the Huayna Picchu Mountain. That day he and his family had woken up around 4:00 am, to stand at 4:30 am in line for the bus to which leaves A.C. around 5:30 am to Machu Picchu. They were in the 3th bus to go up and at the entrance of Machu Picchu they had to wait again in line. When they were finally through they literally had to run in the direction of Huayna Picchu, meanwhile trying to find their way, which isn´t very clear. Arriving there around 6:20 they had to wait again until the gate to Huayna Picchu would open at 7:00 am and they would give 200 permissions to climb between 7:00 am and 10:00 am and 200 permissions to climb between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm. With all this effort, at 10:15 am, when they were waiting for the second time in line for Huayna Picchu, I still received nr. 243 out of 400 from them and entered at 11:00 am through the gate. All this time of waiting there are no toilets around and there is no-one who tells the people in this second line that they are only aloud to climb up if they got their permission earlier in the morning…

After this I could already expect that nothing had changed on the dangerous part of the route to the top and I was right. Time for new complains to other people…

I made a new video about the dangerous situation and I complained against the manager at the site of Machu Picchu (who told me that there had been some more complains and they were waiting for permission and money to improve things..?). I also explained my story to two men who were mapping new routes on the mountain and site of Machu Picchu and who also told me that probably in a couple of months they want to close Huayna Picchu for some time for tourists to renovate the site and route. Let´s hope they turn the sign around before this and don´t maintain the same wrong direction. Just in case I also went again to the office of INC Peru to complain. The director wasn´t available after which a friend suggested to visit a local television station. Why not. But if we go there we better complain directly about all the bad and unorganized service that the Peruvian government is giving too its tourist, who have to pay more and more to visit the touristic locations. I even heard rumors that they want to raise the entrance fee of Machu Picchu to an 80, or maybe even 100 US$! For this I now have a contra answer: There is also one positive site about Machu Picchu being disorganized, they are hardly checking our tickets at the entrance. In the afternoons after 13:00h already, it gets ‘worse’ and is it very easy to use the ones of others to get in. I did it 3 times with my Belgium ticket… More info will come on my website, under the chapter of tips. I don´t mind paying an entrance fee if I see improvements around or know that it would help the country, but no-one knows really where this money goes???  Half of all the money that´s generated by the sites around Cusco and Machu Picchu now goes to the government of Cusco and half to Lima to be spread over the country. Only the site of Machu Picchu already generates about 90.000 US$ a day with almost zero (visible) costs…

The television station now has my little video and a list with complains and suggestions  to improve the service towards tourists (not about the free entrance ;-), however with the student protests there are now in Cusco, other news is a bit less important. The students are protesting because they didn´t receive a new carnet card, which gives them a 50% discount in public transportation. I keep you informed.

After this tour unfortunately I also have to admit that it´s not only Latin America in which bad habits are difficult to change. Also my own agencies sometimes can be stubborn in remaining things which could be (easily) improved. For example the tour I guided now. In 22 days we travel more than 4000km over land through Peru and Bolivia, we have one and a half day in Nasca, but only one broken day to see Arequipa. And for who wants to walk the 4 day Inca Trail, he/she has to choose between this trail or seeing Cusco, because who walks the trail, would literally have no time at all in Cusco…

I already send some suggestions to my agency ;-)

To end this mail with something totally different, I´m proud and happy to be able to announce that my friends in Ecuador are finally for 100% the owners of Merazonia´s 100 hectare of jungle! Now it´s our plan that I will go at the end of October for 2 weeks to Holland, which gives me time from January to April to temporary manage Merazonia, so my friends can take a well deserved vacation. Let me know what your plans are around that time…