Wish List – Baikal-Amur Mainline Railroad (BAM) – 8/15/12

Ahh, Dear Reader.  It is mid-Summer, your Blogger and the Lady have done absolutely no non-work travel since Peru in March, and we are getting antsy.  Fortunately we are able to do some armchair (or if we’re being honest, office chair) travelling via the old interwebs.  WordPress has been helpful in this regard (I particularly enjoy the missives from  waterfallsandcaribous and the Ego Tripper (who wins the “best travel handle” name award)), but as with most things, when the New York Times bothers to pull out all the stops it does a hell of a job.

This article has inspired me to create a new category of posts – Wish List posts with links to places or trips that stike your Blogger’s fancy.  This one got me because it combines several of my favorite things – train trips, booze, a truly random collection of people thrown together (with booze), and being way the hell away from civilization.  I’ve long wanted to d a Trans-Siberian Railway trip, but had never heard of the BAM before reading this and it sounds amazing – sort of the pre-tourist version of the Trans-Siberian, and something that has to be done.  So tell me, what must make trips do you have on your list, Dear Reader?

Days 8 and 9 – 3/23-3/24/12 – Cusco; Lima

The Ubiquitous Alpaca Picture

Dear Reader, our voyage is coming to an end, and thus is this round of blogging.  Friday and Saturday were travel days, with Friday seeing us head to Lima from Cusco and Saturday seeing us head back to the ATL.  While in many ways my favourite days of this trip due to a lot of solid leisure time with my family, there is little to tell of interest to anyone other than ourselves so I will wrap up this travelogue.  I must say, however, that this trip wildly exceeded expectations.  Peru is a hell of a lot more than just Machu Picchu, with parts of Lima like Miraflores and San Isidro being as beautiful as any urban areas that we have visited.  I did not realize the degree to which Lima has rebounded from the awful civil war and terrorism of the 1980s and early 1990s to become a truly thriving regional economic engine.  Given a reason, I would very seriously consider living here.  Cusco was something else entirely – far more of the Andean capital / Spanish colonial city that I expected and much more in line with places like Quito and Panama than with Lima.  Despite the obvious Andean and Spanish connections, however, the vibe of the town reminded me most of Kathmandu, which really took me by surprise.  I will leave you, dear Reader, with one last though on Peru:  this country has done something that none of the other 30 or so that the Lady and I have been to this century has accomplished.  During this entire trip, we did not hear a single rendition of Hotel California.  Congratulations, Peru – you have broken a streak well over a decade long!  And thus, Dear Reader, I bid you adieu until our next journey.  Until then, I hope your life is well and your travel is smooth!

Day 7 – 3/22/12 – Cusco

Cusco

Dear Reader, one of the best things about travel is that the days from which you expect the least often turn out to be the best days of a trip.  Today was a perfect example, as we were not expecting much.  The plan was to meet Gilmar in the morning for a leisurely stroll through Cusco, including a visit to the main city market, take a siesta, then spend the afternoon visiting Inca sites.  This didn’t sound all that appealing given yesterday’s tough travel day, but at a minimum the morning’s walk sounded good, so rather than take the day off we went ahead with the plan.  As it turned out, we underestimated the morning, and were just flat wrong about the afternoon.

Day 6 – 3/21/12 – Machu Picchu; Cusco

The post-card shot

Well, Dear Reader, every trip has at least one tough day, and today was it on this one.  Things started off very well as today was an unchaperoned day at Machu Picchu.  The Lady, TBJ and your Blogger headed out for a hike, originally planning to take the relatively easy trail to the Sun Gate, but making a game time decision to hike up to the top of Machu Picchu Mountain.  As it turned out, this was a bit ridiculous.  The trail to the top of the mountain would have been challenging on its own, but with the added weight of TBJ in a backpack it became excruciating.  We made it about 2/3 of the way up until we got to a little clearing and realized that we had just made it to the hard part, then headed back down.  Even that, though, as a good 2 hour hike, so we were feeling pretty good about ourselves.  Since we had already checked out, we had a few hours to kill before catching the Hiram Bingham train back to Rio Sagrado, and from there a van ride to Cusco.  We spent a nice few hours hanging out in Sanctuary Lodge’s botanical garden watching TBJ play in one of the absurd number of fountains in Peru, as well as a few hours in the bar attending to miscellaneous matters including jotting down this journal for your benefit, Dear Reader.

Day 5 – 3/20/12 – Sacred Valley; Machu Picchu

The Lady and TBJ at Machu Picchu

Today dawned absurdly early as it was a heavy travel day involving a 7:05 train from the hotel to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu, then a bus trip up to the top of the mountain itself.  I had a funny little experience when the train pulled up (and by that I mean when the train literally stopped outside our hotel for Gilmar, the Lady, TBJ and myself to get on) as we were expected a “real sized” train, but the one that arrived was only 2 cars long.  Our return trip will be on the famous Hiram Bingham train, but I had understood that the trip to Machu Picchu was on a normal Peru Rail train.  This thing, however, was tiny, and I briefly thought that we were to have our own private train to Aguas Calientes.  Thankfully (sort of), this was not the case and it was just a short train that had come up in the rotation .  We got lucky on seats (which is its own story involving one of the people across from us who could have been the central casting version of “spoiled ugly American”, but luckily we scored) and TBJ absolutely loved the Thomas- and Chuggington-like experience of actually riding a real train, so the journey was quite pleasant.  We also saw the character of the Urubamba change completely as the bottom dropped out of the river and it went from “swift but flat” to some of the most insane Class V stuff that I’ve seen.  It looked ridiculous even from the train, though it did make me long for my kayak even if I would have been taking the “far right” line on most of the rapids.

Day 4 – 3/19/12 – Sacred Valley

Typical Chinchero View

Dear Reader, I’m pleased to report that today was exactly what I hoped this trip would be.  After a leisurely wake up and breakfast (hah – I was up at 4:30 for a conference call and worked until 7:30), we loaded into the van and headed to Chinchero, an Incan village at roughly 12,5000 feet on the Anta plain, to visit a local weaving project/workshop/museum.  Chinchero had several interesting features, the most pervasive being that it is one of the 12 Andean communities that keep the traditional urban design and social structures from Incan times.  This means a very winding urban layout following the natural contours of the hills on which the town is situated.  It also means a church built by the Spanish in the 16^th century on top of an Incan plaza.  Unusually, this church was an incredible example of syncretism at work. 

Day 3 – 3/18/12 – Lima; Sacred Valley

What awaited in the Sacred Valley

Sunday was largely a travel day for us, starting in the morning in Lima and heading for Cusco, one of the major Andean cities located roughly 12,000 feet above sea level , and the historic heart of the Inca empire.  While the ride to the airport was uneventful and our time at the airport was memorably only for the remarkable number of Chick Taylors’ on display, the flight to Cusco was one of the most challenging of TBJ’s young life.  For the first time, TBJ had a truly bad flight.  The good news is that we were surrounded by families, other than two poor souls with window seats in rows in which all 5 other seats held at least one kid and to old, well, assholes, in the first row.  For most of the flight TBJ had no issues whatsoever.  However, we could not get him to take a bottle once we started our descent about 25 minutes out (on a 1 hour flight).  As a result, poor TBJ couldn’t equalize his ear pressure, which resulted in 20 minutes of the loudest, most agonized crying I’ve heard from him.  Making it even more difficult, there was absolutely nothing that The Lady or I could do to help the little guy.  I have never felt so helpless. 

Day 2 – 3/17/12 – Lima

I had no idea Lima was so beautiful

Hot Damn!  Gentle Reader, you may have picked up a trend in these pages that as the Blogger and the Lady have progressed in our careers, our trips have become increasingly, well, swanky.  This trip bumps things up quite a bit in that regard, as it is our 10^th anniversary so we did not concern ourselves greatly with economy.  This showed once we cleared customs last night and were met by The Most Interesting Man in the World, Victor, who was our Mr. Wolf for the Lima legs of our trip.  Simply having a guide at all is a huge change from our historical approach of “get free ticket to most random new Delta destination, pick out a couple of places to stay, then wing it,” but with TBJ along for the ride we felt it best to have things pretty well locked down.  We did quite a bit of research, came up with a detailed itinerary, and then realized that every place that we planned to stay (along with the train we planned to take to Machu Picchu) was owned by Orient Express, so we called and got a personalized tour for less than we would have spent had we gone it alone.  This turned out to be a sound decision, paying almost immediate benefits, as customs was a bit of a mess, we had some confusion around where to get our gate-checked stroller, and by the time we made it through arrivals we were rapidly approaching being stressed out.  Victor immediately created order our of chaos, had his people take our bags, and escorted us to our waiting mini-bus for our ride to the hotel.

Day 1 – 3/16/12 – Atlanta; Lima

Hello again, Dear Reader!  In the words of the one-time sexiest woman alive, time makes you bolder, children get older, and I’m getting older, too.  Evidence of my age abounds, starting with the grey in my hair and continuing through the brace on my knee.  TBJ has gotten older himself, and is not a smiling, running, climbing, flirting 18 month old.  And as for getting bolder, well, the Lady (who remains teimelessly beautiful) and your Blogger are on our way to Peru for vacation with that smiling, running, climbing, flirting 18 month old in tow.  Fortunately, TBJ is a great kid, and in honey badger-like fashion, doesn’t seem to give a shit about very much that befalls him, remaining happy and cheerful almost always (except when he’s not).  This makes the prospect of our days in cities like Lima and Cusco pretty bright.  On the other hand, he’s a toddler, which means that he will hike around Machu Picchu strapped into a backpack on my back.  This will be interesting, and despite several “training” sessions, is fraught with potential for disaster.  Regardless, where your Blogger and the Lady go, so goes TBJ, so the three of us are ensconced in our seats on the way to Lima.

Days 4-5 – 5/30/11-5/31/11 – Gamboa; Atlanta

Evil Little Bastard

Dear Reader, our fourth and final day in Panama got off to quite a start. As I mentioned yesterday, Gamboa Rainforest Resort offers quite a number of excursions – a birdwatching trek, a ski lift-style ride for 1.5 km above the roof of the rainforest (which we obviously would have been done had it not been closed for maintenance for another 2 weeks), excursions around the canal, a dugout canoe trip to visit one of the local indigenous tribes, and our choice as the best combination of mildly adventuresome + TBJ-friendly, a boat trip to “monkey island” to see whatever wildlife we could see. If you know me at all, dear reader, you know two things about this – first, a boat trip to see wildlife in a rainforest is not something that I’m going to pass up, and second, that I’ve got a well earned fear of monkeys (with the scar and tattoo to prove it), meaning that this should be interesting.