World Cup Fever

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has just started in South Africa but it has already taken over South America. During our travels the locals have told us that everything would come to a stop when their country was playing..........no one would go to work, and with the 6-7 hour time difference, most games would be on TV during the morning so it would be unlikely that anyone would go to work in the afternoon after the games. Yesterday, we went to a pub in Cusco to cheer on Mexico (for Javier) against South Africa (it ended in a 1-1 draw), and the place was crowded with noisy Mexican fans, some of them wearing Mexican wrestling masks, and the pints were plentiful at 10 am in the morning. TV cameras came into the pub near the end of the game to capture the festivities. Hopefully we will be able to catch another game, with Peru playing while we are still here.

During the week there have been two day trips into the Sacred Valley to see Inca ruins which seem to be everywhere. Most were damaged during the Spanish conquest but it is still easy to visualize the cities that they built. It will make the preserved city of Machu Picchu (not found by the Spaniards) seem even more special when we arrive there in a few days.

We experienced another massive parade while we were in Cusco, this time celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi. Large statues from surrounding area churches (temporarily relocated to have their religious powers rejuvenated) were brought out of the main Cathedral by groups of 20-40 men and carried around the main square, with rest stops along the way using a separate platform carried by young boys trying to emulate their dads. There were well over 20,000 people in the square celebrating the event and we were fortunate to secure balcony seats at a restaurant just before the start of the parade where we were able to view the festivities for 4-5 hours. The parade was repeated the next day, expanding the route to other parts of the city.

We are now in Ollantaytambo, which is the starting point for the Machu Picchu treks. There is a lot of reconstruction going on in this town of 2000 people which is slowly recovering from the damaging rains and mudslides earlier this year. In fact, the train route has been shortened and buses, sometimes running along the damaged track path, are temporarily in use with major road detours snarling traffic........but the show must go on. This morning Caity, Rachel and Javier started their 4 day trek while we remained behind wishing we were healthy enough to be on the trek with them (Mike's sciatica and Rhonda's problems with altitude over 3500 metres have sidelined us.) We have some local exploring to do in the meantime and we will be taking an early morning train on Tuesday so that we can catch up with them just before reaching the gates into Machu Picchu. At least we will all be together when we see the ancient city for the first time and get to experience it together.

We'll publish one more post after this final adventure for this trip.