Peru

We hadn´t gone more than a dozen steps after returning to Cuzco, exhausted from completing the Inca Trail and toting our backpacks, when we heard it:

"Amigo, masaje?" (Friend, massage?)

We´ve since heard the pitch maybe 40 times, and are all but certain that massages are not what´s really being offered.

It´s virtually impossible to cross the very pretty main plaza in Cuzco without encountering frantic requests to buy a "massage," or perhaps attend an adult-oriented show, or contribute to a child´s foreign coin collection, or invest in finger puppets, postcards, "original" paintings or a woolen alpaca hat. At some point, a light jog becomes necessary to evade the hordes, who have yelled out on occasion, "Maybe later? Maybe next year?"

The llama-like alpaca, incidentally, seem to have copied their faces from the Ewoks on "Return of the Jedi." Or maybe vice-versa.

Anyway, Cuzco has continued the theme of strange but intensely fascinating cultural pairings in Bolivia and Peru. At some stores, for example, you can buy dolls of sobbing children who have bloodied their feet after stepping on large thorns. Based on our limited Spanish, the symbolism seems to be both religious and superstitious. At others, you can purchase explicit paintings of the Virgin breastfeeding baby Jesus. Still others offer grotesque masks of colonists (used during festivals), including one of an ugly man with um, his private parts where his nose should be.

The real show-stoppers, though, are the amazing Inca walls (one large stone boasts 12 precisely carved sides to allow it to fit precisely with its neighbors) and the elaborate Catholic churches, the latter often purposefully built upon the solid foundations of destroyed Incan temples.

We´ve tended to agree with the common sentiment here that it´s very fortunate the Spanish conquistadors never found Machu Picchu. Otherwise, the Inca Trail might lead to nothing more than another extremely large cathedral.

Here´s the obligatory picture of us after finally reaching the site. Fortunately, it´s not possible to smell us:

And here´s another of our first glimpse of the ruins, once the thick morning fog finally began to dissipate.

And here´s a sample of the amazing orchids we saw along the way. This one is called "Forever Young," and a great Incan ruin not far from Machu Picchu shares the same name.

In the Bolivian town of Copacabana, home of the famous Virgin of Copacabana icon and the daily blessing of the cars, the gigantic cathedral has borrowed heavily from Moorish designs, while old women sell Ekeko dolls (god of plenty) right in front of the large cathedral plaza.

First, the cathedral:

And the Ekeko-themed stall with miniature homes and cars:

The cathedral, by the way, was located in the town because of the supreme importance of the nearby Isla del Sol, where the Incas believed the sun was born. We spent a night there, and couldn´t resist snapping a picture of a local boy riding his somewhat stubborn donkey.

The significance of other oddities has been mostly lost on us, but makes them no less interesting.

In the Cuzco church of San Blas, where a beautifully carved cedar pulpit includes cupids with arms bent backwards and (according to legend) the skull of its creator, the custodians have apparently forgotten to turn up the heat. A statue of a bishop or other important church figure comes complete with bright red knit gloves, while a small statue of Jesus sports a knit woolen hat.

Perhaps our favorite bizarre moment of all came on the train from Aguas Calientes (a town below Machu Picchu from which nearly all travelers depart). At one point, our train porter went to the bathroom and reemerged as ... Captain Cuzco!*

• (Very likely not his real name)

The cultural significance of this transformation was lost on us, but we think it may have had something to do with selling alpaca wool products. At any rate, he danced down the aisle in a red hat and white ski mask (made of the finest alpaca wool, no doubt) and wielded a large stuffed alpaca that he would thrust in the faces of passengers, inviting them to pet it.

Here´s a close-up:

After his spirited show, our two stewards also disappeared into the bathroom and re-emerged ... for an alpaca wool fashion show, set to the disco remix of the flowerchild classic, "If You´re Going to San Francisco."

You just can´t make this stuff up.

After four incredible but exhausting days, we finished the 45 kilometer-long Inca Trail to Machu Picchu yesterday. Despite our sore thighs and aching calves, the whole experience was exhilarating and unforgettable (pictures coming soon).

On our trek with the local outfitter United Mice, we started hiking with our guides Sol and Josef through a semi-arid Peruvian landscape dotted with cacti and Spanish moss-covered trees, then climbed 1,200 meters to a 4,200 meter-high pass (named Dead Woman Pass after the suggestive shape of the mountain peaks).

Then down to a cloud forest dense with orchids and wildflowers and finally down yesterday morning to the well-preserved religious and farming complex of Machu Picchu. Along the route, we passed some beautiful mountain vistas and more than a half-dozen other Incan ruins of varying size, nearly all requiring large and well-shaped rocks to be hauled up steep slopes. Nearly as amazing (and a tad guilt-inducing), we feasted on surprisingly good and fancy food the whole time and watched in awe as our group´s 15 porters nearly sprinted past us on the trail while carrying tents, tables, chairs, food, propane tanks and our extra bags.

Machu Picchu itself was humbling. Dozens of terraces thought to be used like greenhouses for domesticating crops climb up the side of a mountain, with interspersed religious buildings and the remains of housing for an estimated 600 people. The wood and grass roofs are long gone, but some of the solid and precisely-built walls look almost new (Incan walls have apparently survived numerous earthquakes in Cuzco while many of the city´s colonial buildings collapsed).

As a final test, we climbed up the steep Wayna Picchu mini-mountain that overlooks the site. Unbelievably, there are well-preserved Incan ruins there too - at heights that required holding onto a cable to ascend and made more than a few hikers cry.

The experience was marred only by learning that Machu Picchu´s incredible Incan aqueducts and fountains, still fully functional after nearly 600 years, have been reduced to a mere trickle by a luxury hotel that has received permission to redirect the water for the exclusive use of its pampered guests. Nearly as outrageous, we learned that the famous Inca sun dial, vaguely resembling a modern chair and positioned in one of the most important religious temples, was chipped on one corner when a camera fell on it during the filming of a beer commercial.

During the past week, from Bolivia to Peru, we´ve learned a lot about the power of icons and symbols, and how easily they can be manipulated. The Inca Trail, we learned, represents just a fraction of tens of thousands of kilometers of Inca-built trails, designed to help rulers consolidate and retain their power as the empire grew.

Back in Bolivia´s Madidi National Park (last week´s adventure), we learned just how incredibly diverse the Amazon jungle can be when we saw three monkey species we had never seen before, including up-close views of brown capuchin monkeys, red howler monkeys and common squirrel monkeys. If anything helps preserve the Amazon, maybe the ecotourism promise of seeing cute monkeys - icons of the jungle - may do the trick.

In La Paz, we learned that it´s possible to receive an obviously fake 100 Bolivianos bill (about $12 US) ... from a bank´s ATM machine. Needless to say, the country has a teensy problem with counterfeit currency.

In the small town of Copacabana, Bolivia (the original Copacabana, by the way), we learned from a colorful wall mural celebrating polio vaccinations that the only truly happy child is one with a large syringe protruding from his bare bottom. In the same town, it´s possible to buy small statues of Ekeko, the mustachioed god of household plenty, who carries a bundle of miniature cash, food, comfy bedding, and other longed-for domestic goods. If you don´t fancy him, you can buy dollhouse-sized stores, homes or a tiny suitcase with international money and passports to increase your chances of a round-the-world trip.

Right behind the stall selling Ekeko and his accessories, incidentally, is the town´s humongous Moorish-style cathedral, where you can have your car blessed in the mornings and where the famous carved Virgen de Copacabana icon can be seen in all her glory on a large lazy Susan that swivels out from a small upper chapel to the main altar of the cathedral on special occasions.

The unusual set-up, according to our guide, is intended to prevent actual movement of the icon, since the last time someone tried to transport the Virgin (to the Vatican to be blessed by the Pope in the 1800s), a huge storm shipwrecked the boat and killed all but two priests who salvaged her and managed to swim to what they subsequently named Copacabana Beach in Brazil. According to legend, moving her again will trigger catastrophic floods.

Next door, in a crypt-like chapel where the walls have been blackened from all the candle-lit prayer requests, devotees have drawn some of their specific requests to the Virgin with candle wax on the walls, including a very artistic drawing of a home with a huge satellite dish.

It´s remarkable to me how often South American cultures, from the introduced Catholic religion to the homegrown Incan empire, assimilated the icons of defeated civilizations to help convert and control people. The Incas, for example, borrowed heavily in their architecture and iconography from earlier cultures that they eventually overran, even taking as their own an existing god of creation to be worshipped by nobility. The Catholic church, for its part, frequently allowed Incan symbols to appear in religious art in order to smooth the way for converting new followers. Over and over, we´ve seen Mary depicted as the equivalent of Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), complete with a large sun behind her head, a moon at her feet or bosom, and a flared-out dress that resembles a mountain in shape.

And in the Cuzco Cathedral, a famous painting of the Last Supper contains a local specialty as the main course: whole roast guinea pig, with its legs sticking up from the platter as Jesus and the disciples look on. In another painting, a serpent appears beneath the Virgin and child (snakes were important Incan symbols), with tropical birds and what look like llamas behind her. Finally, the wonderfully detailed choir stall in the cathedral contains carvings of important saints and martyrs. Beneath them,though, are what look like naked pregnant women. Upon closer inspection, the naked statues contain both female and male parts, symbolizing the important Incan concept of male-female duality.

It´s not entirely clear whether the naughty wood carver pulled one over on the church, or whether the powers that be simply looked the other way.

Hello from the bottom of the world.

OK, not quite, but as far south as either of us has ever been. In the last few days, we´ve gone from the tropics of Panama City to Lima, Peru via Miami and then on to Santiago, Chile and down to the rather chilly Patagonian cities of Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales. Tomorrow, we begin a four-day hike through Chile´s Torres del Paine National Park, and are hoping that it won´t snow again so we can access all the trails.

Going from nearly 90 degrees to less than 40 has been a bit of a shock, but southern Chile is lovely despite the weather.

During the lesss than 24 hours we spent in Lima, we did dine on less then appetizing guinea pig but also visited some beautiful churches and the Larco Herrera museum, which had possibly the most amazing collection of ceramics I´ve ever seen. All were pre-Columbian pots, some sporting amazingly sophisticated scenes, colors and glazes. And the storehouse of extra ceramics not on display is jaw-dropping, with row upon row of perfectly preserved jars arranged by topic: scenes of bats, monkeys, one bird, two birds, husband and wife drinking in their house, and so on.

The museum even has an entire wing devoted to erotic art, including several scenes that would make Hugh Hefner blush and a section of skeletons, um, doing the nasty.

Whereas parts of Lima seemed like a never-ending U.S. suburb, I´m sure that Chile´s Puerto Natales would remind us of northern Europe if we had ever been there. The fairly modern city lies on a pretty fjord with snow-capped mountains in the background. It´s also rather colder than we were expecting, but we´re excited to have a closer view of the beautiful mountains starting tomorrow. Stay tuned ...