How ironic it was that we left Bolivia early to avoid a trans-
portation strike. Our bus arrived in Puno about 6pm and the first
thing we did was get a room in the Hostal Lima. Not bad at two
dollars a night for a private bathroom and hot water that was
turned on every evening promptly at eight. Then we went out to find
something to eat, met some other travelers and learn that the trains
were on strike in Peru.
As in northern Peru, the roads in Southern Peru are all but
worthless. Although it is possible to go by bus from Puno to Cuzco or
Arequipa, only a masochist would do so. Unlike northern Peru, Southern
Peru has an extensive network of trains, and the trains are far more
quicker and comfortable.
Learning that the trains were on strike, a group of us including
the Englishwoman and the Dane and a pair of sisters from
Switzerland went to the train station to learn what was going on. Yes
the trains were on strike. There was a rumor that the trains would be
running the next morning. What is a Peruvian rumor worth? Other
travelers had investigated the buses and learned that the fares had
been tripled to take advantage of the lack of competition from the
trains. Some travelers who had made the journey from Cuzco to Puno on
the bus described the trip as a twenty-four hour horror in a cloud of
dust. There wasn't much we could do except go eat supper, hope, and be
sure to be at the train station around six the next morning.
The train from Puno to Cuzco first skirts Lake Titicaca, then
continues across the altiplano through towns such as Juliaca, Ayaviri,
and Sicuani - like Puno, all the sites of rare DX catches. In every
town the train would stop for ten minutes and during that stop the
pasengers could shop from the convenience of their seats. It took only
an hour to get to Juliaca. There the vendors were not selling much
food, but did have sweaters and other woolen items. At other stops
such as Sicuani and Ayaviri the vendors were aiming more at the
passengers' stomachs. The South American Handbook recommends
Ayaviri as an excellant place for leg of lamb. Another passenger
bought some and agreed. Theresa and I prefered to stick to our
Brazilian corned beef and crackers. Buying food in the open market
like that, one can never be sure of the consequences to one's health
later.
Although we hadn't really expected it to work out this way, we
had arived in Cuzco just two days before the Inti Raymi, the
reenactment of the ancient Inca festival to the sun god, held every
year on June 24. The festival is held in an Incan amphitheatre on a
hill top above Cuzco, flanked by the ruins of Sacsahuaman, a huge Inca
stone fortress.
As luck would have it, the following morning, while looking in
the shops, we met a pair of older tourists, obviously the type
that stay in the best hotels. The subject of Inti Raymi came up and we
asked if they knew when it was. They told us and said one could buy
tickets for it for only fifteen dollars at a particular municipal
office. They felt that was quite a deal, as they had met others who
had paid as much as fifty dollars through a travel agent.
Fifteen dollars each sounded a little steep to our budget, and in
talking to some budget travelers who had been to Cuzco previously for
the festival, we learned what actually went on. The municipal
government sold fifteen dollar tickets for reserved bleacher seats.
The bleachers would be sitting in the bottom of the amphitheatre.
These would be occupied by the wealthy tourists. The local people and
budget travelers would walk up the hill and sit on the ruins of
Sacsahuaman, overlooking the amphitheatre, for free. It sounded like
a good deal to us.
The morning of Inti Raymi we made it up the hill to Sacsahuaman
along with thousands of others, mainly local people. We had been
told to get up early to get good seats on the rocks. We did leave
early, but still got some of the last good seats.
I wonder exactly how traditional the Inti Raymi festival has
remained. While most of the costumes appeared traditional, some
of the ones wore by the young women participating looked like
leggy adaptations of bathing suits designed to meet someone's
fantasies as to what an Indian maiden would look like. Overall, the
costumes were quite good, in fact the best part of the ceremony.
Everything was conducted in Quechua. Hmmm... maybe the Indian maiden's
costumes were to help non-Quechua speaking males keep their minds
occupied.
The entire program lasted about five hours, and mid way through it
started to sprinkle and did so for about ten minutes. As soon as the
rain began, the bleachers began emptying of their fifteen to fifty
dollar customers, who got in their tour buses to return to their
hotels. Within ten minutes the bleachers were over half empty. We and
other budget travelers (obviously budget travelers have no pride) made
our way down to the front and found seats in the bleachers. It never
rained again that afternoon. Those people who left missed the best
part of the show, too. When the Inti Raymi ceremony itself was
finished, they had a special program in which groups of folk dancers
from around Peru performed. That would have been worth paying fifteen
dollars to see.
The studios of Radio Tawantinsuyo are in the back of the
building. Immediately inside is a desk where a secretary takes
down comunicados. Everytime I passed by there was a long line -
Radio Tawantinsuyo is the place to go for comunicados in Cuzco.
Indeed recent editions of The South American Handbook even
recommend that if one has something stolen or lost in Cuzco they
should go to Radio Tawantinsuyo and put on a comunicado offering a
reward.
The line was rather long when I arrived and, having no need to put a
comunicado on the air, I decided to wait inside until someone noticed
me. It took about fifteen minutes, but it was worth it to stand and
watch the rural Indians waiting in line. As Radio Tawantinsuyo plays
only folk music, it is very popular with the rural folk. A staff
member noticed me and asked what I needed. I explained who I was and
he disappeared upstairs for a moment then beckoned me up.
Station director Ing. Raul Montesinos E. is one of Cuzco's
prominent citizens. He is an engineer, as the title "Ing." in
front of his name attests. In Spanish it is common for engineers
to use their title as do doctors. Likewise for lawyers and teachers.
Senor Montesinos' office is a contrast to the downstairs filled with
campesinos. It is entirely modern, so even if his station caters to
tradition in its programming, his office looks toward the present.
Our conversation centered around Inti Raymi. He serves on the board
which oversees the festival, and is justifiably proud of it. I assured
him that I was very impressed. Along with verifying reports for myself
and another DXer, he gave me several pamphlets he had left from the
previous year's festival. He had none at the moment from this year's.
Radio Cuzco, like Radio Tawantinsuyo, is a huayno, or folk music
station for the ruralpopulation. That the two broadcast powerful
signals on shortwave attests to how important the rural audience
is to them. Radio Cuzco is only three blocks from the park and
would have been easy to find if only their sign hadn't fallen
down recently. A shopkeeper on the same block directed me tothe
right door, on a corner.
Upstairs in the first office I met Elena Lizarraga P., the
administrative secretary. The station was for the most part closed
down for lunch, but she was still working hard at her desk. Talking
to Elena I got the impression that she is one of those underpaid
secretaries who do their bosses' jobs. Elena opens and answers
(or tries to answer!) all foreign reports, a job which she finds
very interesting. She showed me some of the reports that had just
arrived. They get one or two a week, mainly from Europe. The
station takes reports seriously enough that it had its own QSL
card printed up. So I received one of those, along with my
prepared postcard verification which was stamped.
Radio Cuzco seemed to be well maintained, although both building
and equipment were old. The studio was on the third floor,
entered by climbing a narrow staircase up to a small patio, which
the studio opened on to. Like most small station studios, the
walls were covered with record posters and calenders. It being
lunch time , only the DJ on duty was there.
The trains did not run at all the day of the accident, nor the day
after. The third day they were rumored to run, so Theresa and I
went to the train station and took turns standing in line all
day. We left most of our luggage in our hotel room and were just
taking what we needed overnight. It was not until late afternoon that
they began selling tickets. The tickets for a local train, which was
fine by us.
There are two catergories of trains. First there is the tourist
train, which only goes as far as Macchu Picchu, doesn't take as
long as it doesn't stop as much, and costs three times more. Then
there is the local train which runs all the way to Quillabamba. The
tourist train is less crowded as local people don't take it. The cars
used by both trains are identical. There is no added comfort for the
added price.
It was dark by the time we left Cuzco, and midnight when we
reached Aguas Calientes. This little town is about two miles
before the Macchu Picchu train station. The main business is running
cheap hotels for the budget travelers. The only alternative for
staying the night is to go to the expensive government run
tourist hotel on top of the mountain by the ruins. It has an
excellant view and is very convenient, but was way beyond our
budget.
At Aguas Calientes we stayed at Gringo Bill's, a small hotel run
by an American who married a local woman and settled down here. He was
at the station looking for travelers like us, and his place sounded
like a good deal to us. Anyways we would only be staying there a few
hours.
We were up at six, ate some fruit, and took off walking along the
railroad tracks to the Macchu Picchu station. The ruins are on top of
the mountain, the station in the valley below. As there would be no
buses for almost two hours, we decided to walk up the mountain to the
ruins. Whenever we tell people who have been there that we walked up
the mountain, they look at us incredulously and say "You walked UP
it!?" The mountain is very steep and the road winds back and forth
along the side of the mountain, making hairpin curves at each end. The
road is easily five times longer than the old Inca trail that goes
straight up the side of the mountain. The walk was supposed to take
about an hour, but we stoppped to rest so much that we got there in
two hours, about the same time the first bus did. So we gained nothing
but some exercise.
I hate to say it, but we found the ruins of Macchu Picchu to be less
impressive than we had imagined. They are almost all only one story
high and are mainly stone buildings without roofs. For most buildings
the stone has been cut into blocks, with admirable precision
especially considering the primitive instruments used. But blocks of
stone, no matter how well carved, do not compare to the Mayan ruins of
Southern Mexico and Central America which consist of huge temples and
pyramids with intricate stone carvings. Most people we've talked to
who have first visited some Mayan ruins and later visited Macchu
Picchu were let down by the latter. If one wants to see excellant pre-
Columbian ruins, the Mayan ones are the ones to see.
Macchu Picchu does have one thing that the Mayan ruins don't
have. That is location. Macchu Picchu is on top of a very steep
mountain, surronded by similar mountains, separated by narrow valleys.
The natural beauty is stunning. Truly one of the most beautiful places
I have ever visited. Even more amazing is to imagine a town on top of
one of these mountains. That is impressive.
Although there were a few people from the tourist hotel in the ruins
when we arrived, generally we had the ruins to ourselves for the next
few hours. The ruins are big enough that we didn't run into others
very often.
In the late morning the tourist train from Cuzco arrived. Most people
who visit the ruins do it in one day on the tourist train, which
returns to Cuzco in the late afternoon. People using the tourist train
have about four hours between trains, which doesn't allow much time
for sight-seeeing. Most of them got off the bus at the hotel and
trooped into the restaurant for lunch first. This left the ruins
reasonably empty for another hour. Actually more, as the restaurant
was so crowded I believe it took some people two hours to be served.
These people could have had more time to see the ruins if they had
brought along some sort of box lunch; like tuna, bread and fruit; to
eat on the train. Instead once they get to a place they have traveled
thousands of miles to see, they spend half of their time eating
lunch!
One interesting point about Macchu Picchu is that it is one of
the few places in Peru where the water is safe to drink. That is
because it is located on top of a mountain and there is nothing
above it to contaminate the water.
About the time the tourist train arrived, we left the main ruins
and wandered back on the hill overlooking them. From there one has
the view of Macchu Picchu that is usually shown in travel folders.
We wandered around a bit and walked back an old Inca trail. Finally
in mid afternoon we walked down the mountain to the train station.
We figured if we could walk up it, we could certainly walk down it.
It only took half an hour going down. We bought return tickets to
Cuzco on the tourist train, arriving about nine p.m.
The festival turned out to be better than we imagined. Probably
becuase it was a traditional, untainted, festival. The Indians did it
for themselves, not for the tourists. There could not have been more
than a dozen foreigners there, amoung thousands of Indians. Much of
the action centered around the town square, where groups of local men
danced in elaborate, colorful sequined costumes. Each group had its
own little musical band and vied for attention. The leader of one
group, dressed with a sheep head mask, pulled Theresa in to dance with
him. At the time we were the only foreigners there, and we were
welcome to participate and enjoy ourselves.
Also in the town center, men were setting off some unusual fire-
works towers. These were literally towers, about eight feet high,
constructed of sticks, with fireworks tied all over them. A group
of of men sat on top of the church steeple with a cable, the
other end being attached to one of the towers. They then slid
something (I was never brave enough to get close enough to look) with
a flame down the cable. When it hit the tower the fireworks began
exploding, sending woodchips flying. Once it was through exploding, a
new tower was brought out and the cable hooked up again. They must of
had at least fifty of these towers. They were setting them off all
day.
Outside the central plaza was a shopping center. Hundreds of
Indian vendors had set up shop. There was nothing for tourists,
this not being a tourist event. Just basic household supplies,
clothing, and food for the campesinos. Some Indian women had set
up little kitchens; a fire, a pot, and a few plates and spoons;
to sell lunch. Some men had set up a few chairs and were cutting
hair, traveling barbers. The market itself was worth an hour of
wandering.
After lunch there was a bullfight in a fenced off plaza. The bull
had probably been pulled from somebody's field, as it didn't seem
to know what was going on. Nor did the fighters, who seemed to
have more bravery than experience. Not that much bravery either,
considering how many jumped over the fence! After the bull fight
we went back to town, wanting to get ahead of the crowds.
The most often heard station from Puno, and probably southern
Peru, is Ondas del Titicaca, or "Waves of Titicaca" on 4922 khz.
It is heard many mornings in North America if Radio Quito isn't
on 4920 to provide interferance. Ondas del Titicaca was founded
with a different name on September 25, 1961 by APRA, which is the
most important liberal political party in Peru. A few years later
the station was sold to commercial interests and the name was
changed. Today it is located on the first floor of a run down building
at Arequipa 835. By the door there is a homemade sign withthe station
name pasted on in gold sequined letters. It looks somewhat gaudy.
Inside there is one huge room. The half by the door is empty and the
other half has been partitioned off into a small office in the front
and a studio in the rear. The door to the studio was open and on it
was an "Ondas del Titicaca" sign done in crayons on white posterboard.
Despite the rundown surrondings, the equipment in the studio is
modern, with professional turntables, cassette decks, and console. It
is the quality of the signal that counts, not the room that it is
produced in. The man behind the ,mic was Felipe Paquita, the station
administrador. He runs the station for the owner, a local businessman.
Seeing me, Felipe put on a LP side to play, asked for my reception
report, then went into his office to type up a veri letter. I didn't
even have to ask! I learned that he has had previous DX visitors and
knows what they want! Just because he got the veri letter done
quickly, didn't mean he wasn't willing to talk however. That's why he
put on the LP side to play, and later flipped it over with just a
brief time check and ID. He told me about the station background and
showed me some reports. They receive about two a week, mainly from
Europe. Felipe answer all of them, he says, and I believe he at least
tries, as Ondas del Titicaca verifications are regularly seen in
DX bulletins, and not one of my DX friends had asked me to verify
it for them.
Radio La Voz de Altiplano is Puno's other shortwave station. It
makes occasional appearances around 5816 khz, but was not on the
air at the time of my visit. The station occupies the second and
third floors of the Banco de la Nacion building. Unfortunately in
two visits to the station the receptionist said that noone else
was there except the announcer, and she wouldn't let me visit the
rest of the station. The only consolation was that she did verify
the two reports I had brought.
The following morning Theresa and I were back on the train to
Cuzco. This time we only went as far as Juliaca, an hour away.
Juliaca is said to be the cheapest place in southern Peru to buy
wool sweaters. If that wasn't reason enough to visit the town, it is
also home to Radio El Sol de los Andes. The most immediate visual
treat was neither radio stations, nor wool sweaters, but rather
Juliaca's unique taxis. Simply a bicycle with a huge front basket
which can carry either goods or passengers, dozens of these are to be
seen in the streets of Juliaca. Conventional auto taxis are also
numerous, as in any Latin American city. The bicycle taxis are cheaper
though, cheap enough that even campesinos use them.
Radio El Sol de los Andes (3230 khz) is in a spacious one story
building immediately behind a large church which faces a treeless
park. The street is narrow and the sidewalks are filled with vendors,
especially the sweater ladies who sit in groups with their merchandise
piled up around them. Entering El Sol de Los Andes, there is a huge
room with offices to the right and studios to the left. The studios
can be seen through the almost customary plate glass windows. They are
typical with new equipment, old records, and girly and music posters
on the walls. The secretary was busy with a line of people waiting to
give communicados. The administradora, Adela Martinez Arce had a few
people waiting to see her, but I was able to squeeze in for a few
minutes and get the verifications for myeslf and several friends
signed and stamped. She didn't have the time to talk, but insisted
that I look around all I wanted. Nothing out of the ordinary was
there, but to be polite I hung around outside the studio for a few
minutes pretending to be interested in watching the DJ change records.
Then I went out to met Theresa, as prearranged.
In finding El Sol de Los Andes, I had found the main sweater market,
so it was back there we went. We were disappointed we hadn't bought
some in Cuzco. Although the prices were a little higher there, the
quality, selections, and designs were much better than in Juliaca.
Still, Juliaca is the place to buy for cheap sweaters just to wear
around the house and keep warm in. I picked up a thick wool cardigan
for only three dollars. The buttons were carved wood - that being
cheaper than being plastic ones. Also we bought three pullover sweater
vests at prices ranging from 75 cents to $1.40, one for me, and one
each for two of Theresa's brothers. For 100% wool, it was hard to
complain.
To get back to Puno we took a colectivo. These are very common
in Peru, but not so much elsewhere in the Andes. This is simply a car
that runs between two fixed points, in this case Juliaca and Puno,
taking paid passengers. It will only run with a full load. The first
person there must wait until it is full, be it a few minutes, or two
hours. More expensive than buses, colectivos are more
comfortable and quicker.
After teaching two years in tropical Surinam, they were now going to
go to the other extreme. They already had made arrangements, via
family at home, to take teaching positions in a remote town in
northern British Columbia. They were especially interested in
teaching there as it was a hardship post and qualified them for extra
pay. They wondered, however, how their daughter would respond to the
cold. They had left Canada when she was less than a year old, and she
had grown accustomed to the tropical heat of Surinam. She had been
complaining a lot about the cold of the Andean highlands, and that
certainly does not compare to the Northern Canadian winter! I do
admire this couple for traveling six months with a young child. It was
encouraging to see that it can be done.
At the Arequipa train station we went different ways. They were
going to stay at the house of some people they had met in Cuzco.
Probably the advantage of traveling with child - it encourages
friendliness. We, meanwhile, took a taxi to a hotel that had been
reaommended to us in La Paz. Finding it full, I left Theresa there and
spent an hour looking for another one that was within our budget and
looked safe and comfortable. After that I was sort of glad that
Arequipa was the last "new" stop on our trip. From here on we would be
traveling in familiar territory from the beginning of the trip.
Arequipa is Peru's second or third largest city, either ahead or
behind Trujillo, depending on the source. Either way, the population
of each is only about ten percent of that of Lima, so there is little
chance of Lima losing number one to either.
We only spent two days in Arequipa. Had we not been starting to get
anxious to get home we would probably have stayed longer. Arequipa is
a beautiful clean city, much a better'place to visit than either Lima
or Trujillo. Many of the older buildings of Arequipa are built of an
off-white volcanic stone locally quarried. For that it is known as the
white city. One of the most interesting places visited the entire trip
was the Santa Catalina convent. This was literally a town within the
city, covering about five acres. Built in the 1500s, it was completely
walled off and once a girl entered to become a nun she never left for
the rest of her life. Except for a priest who was allowed to enter a
connecting chapel only to serve mass, no one else entered the convent
until 1970 when it was finally opened to the public. A small corner is
still closed off for the approximately thirty nuns who still live
there in seclusion. At one point nearly five hundred nuns, plus
numerous servant girls under the same life committment, lived there.
The convent is very beautiful and well restored and a must to see if
visiting southern Peru.
I did drop in on one shortwave station, Radio Continental, on the
edge of town. The company also runs a TV station from the same large
modern building and the radio station seems to be the forgotten step
child of the whole operation. They did present me with one of the best
pennants of the entire trip though.
The bus ride from Arequipa to Lima, at eighteen hours, was one of the
longest of the trip. As we left in late afternoon most of the trip was
in darkness, but it was made more interesting by talking to a local
medical student who was doing research in unusual tropical diseases.
After that discussion I was glad we wouldn't be doing any more
excursions into jungle areas!
In Lima we stayed with our friends there. By now the upstairs
bedrooms and kitchen of their house were finished. They took us
around to see much of Lima, including the famous gold museum,
with its accompanying museum of armaments. Expensive, with a five
dollar entrance fee, but worth the money.
Theresa and I spent one day on our own in Lima and I took the
opportunity to drop in on Radio El Sol, 5970 khz,in central Lima.
It is on the seventh floor of one of Lima's many high rises.
Radio El Sol is a modern radio station, equal of any in the US, and
probably with a little more class. Besides the commercial MW/SW
station, they also run a noncommercial classical music FM station on
88.9 MHz called Sol Armonia. I wonder if there are any privately owned
stations in the US that altruistic.
Radio El Sol is owned by several local businessmen and run by
director Gabriel Miro Quesada, who was educated in an English language
school in Lima and spent two years studying in England. Consequently,
he speaks excellant English. We spent much of our time discussing the
differance between British and American English. DX wise, he is
interested in reception reports, and the station even has its own QSL
card.
I also briefly stopped by Radio Victoria, 6020 khz. The station is
located in a very run down building. I talked to a woman who was one
of the subdirectors. The MW/SW station had been closed down for over a
year, but would be back onthe air "soon" she assured me. Meanwhile
only the FM station was broadcasting.
Theresa and I took a long distance TEPSA bus for the trip from Lima to
Tumbes, on the Ecuadorian border. Said to be a 20-22 hour ride, it
turned into a 28 hour one, primarily thanks to the driver who took
over in Piura and made the two hundred kilometers left drag out into
nearly ten hours by stopping in every little town he went through to
talk to a friend or have a beer. The result was that we arrived in
Tumbes too late to cross the border into Ecuador and had to spend the
night there. With the added expense of a hotel bill, we had hardly any
Peruvian money left and the only thing we could afford for supper was
bananas. We could have tried to change a small bill, but by that point
we were too tired to care. The next morning we crossed into Ecuador.
Now the trip seemed almost over.
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We were close to the front of the line the next morning. No one
knew if there would be a train or not, but there was a line.
After about a half hour some one came and opened up the door to
the station, leaving us in. The ticket window was still closed, but
being left inside was a good sign. The hour that the train was
scheduled to depart came and went. Finally the window opened. There
would be a train. In the end we left only an hour after the scheduled
departure. A Visit to Cuzco
Cuzco, of course, was the ancient capital of the Incas.
Unfortunately little remains of what the Incas built in Cuzco itself.
The Spanish tore down the Inca temples, leaving only their foundations,
then built their churches and houses on the Inca foundations. The
foundations, which are all over central Cuzco, show that the city was
one of the great pre-Colombian cities of the Americas, and ironically
if left as it was, it would today be far more impressive than Macchu
Picchu. Yet the Spanish never discovered Macchu Picchu and today
people come to Cuzco as the first step in visiting what was just a
provincial town of the Incas, yet today represents their memory to the
world.
Shortwave in Cuzco
There were two stations I really wanted to visit in Cuzco. One was
Radio Tawantinsuyo, at 830 Avenida Sol, one of Cuzco's main streets.
It is located in a simple two story building with the station name
painted in very smail letters across the middle. Still, with the name
being so long, it stretches across the building. The name Tawantinsuyo
is that which the Incas gave to their empire. The empire was further
divided into four quarters, being northwest, northeast, southeast, and
southwest of Cuzco. Old time DXers will remember Radio Qollasuyo in
Juliaca. That name refers to the southeast quadrant of the empire. On to Macchu Picchu
The day before the Inti Raymi festival there had been a train
crash on the Macchu Picchu line. The line that goes to Macchu Picchu
goes beyond it to Quillabamba. Early in the morning a local train
coming from Quillabamba crashed just outside Cuzco, when the engineer
attempted to take a sharp turn at sixty miles an hour. It was later
alledged that he was drunk at the time. A number of people were
injured and some killed. Additionally the track was torn up in the
accident. It would be a few days before the trains would be running
again. Back to Puno
Early the next morning we were up and at the other train station,
from where trains leave for Puno. The following day was June 29,
Day of St. Peter and Paul. The South American Handbook said
there was to be a festival in Puno. Once again we rode through the
towns of Ayaviri, Sicuani, and Juliaca, arriving in Puno in late
afternoon. We went back to the Hostal Lima, and were able to get
instructions on how to get tothe festival which is actually held in a
small village a few miles outside Puno. La Ciudad Blanca
The following morning we were on the train for Arequipa. Seated
across from us was a young Canadian couple and their three year old
daughter. They were both teachers from British Columbia and had left
Canada over two years before to go to Surinam to teach. After
finishing in Surinam they decided to travel through South America for
several months before returning home. They were now near the end of
their travels and had to be in Quito in two weeks to make their flight
back.
Association of North American Radio Clubs
DXer of the Year for 1995.