One kid looks up, the other kid looks down

B has joined us!  Which means that we are supplementing our air-and-space tourism with some paleontological adventures.  We've been digging around in the area of the Jurassic Cliffs, on the south coast of England.  

[A couple of specimens from the fossil museum in Lyme Regis--an ichthyosaur, above, and a HUGE heteromorph ammonite, below]

And I mean "digging around" literally, because there are areas near Lyme Regis where the layperson is welcome to excavate for personal treasures. Some of the fossils are a bit too big to pack into the carry-on luggage....

But some of them are more portable that the giant ammonite above, and we've found ancient life aplenty in the cliffs and along the beaches--belemnites and ammonites primarily.  

It's fantastic for me to be with these guys for a while, and to supplement my endless obsession with mountains with more down-to-earth pursuits. Being with my kids provides its own altitude.

 

Niche sightseeing

When each of my kids graduated from high school, my gift to them was a trip to wherever they wanted to go.  B was very quick to choose his adventure, and we spent several weeks trekking in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.  E has been more....thoroughly deliberative...in selecting his destination; this summer, as he finishes his Masters degree in aerospace engineering, he's finally decided on his high school graduation trip.  

(A Handley Page Halifax, at the Yorkshire Air Museum)

We've met up now in England, where we are fully immersed in E's favorite form of travel: aircraft tourism.  

(A Vulcan--a Vulcan, people!--at the Newark Air Museum)

Our family have spent a lot of time and effort traveling to see airplanes. We once spent 2 weeks in California visiting 9 different iterations of a single aircraft. So in some ways this portion of the adventure is not such a departure from custom. What's new (to us) is the density of air museums in England relative to the land mass.  Because England was on the front lines of two world wars, there are TONS of decommissioned wartime airfields--small, local endeavors--that now host tiny but passionate air museums or commemorative sites, as well as a few quite huge collections.  

(A near-mint-condition Avro Shackleton, Newark Air Museum)

So while other folks are touring the castles and art and the grand holdings of the imperial basement, you'll find us happily wandering along the national byways looking for airplanes.

(Inside the Shackleton's front gunner bay)

(And we're also seeing some castles)

Fabulous foods of South America

Moving on to the next phase of my globetrotting, but I can't leave this continent without providing an overview of some of my favorite edibles...

Argentina:

This rustic dessert of cheeses, compotes, and fresh and dried fruits at Paso Garibaldi, perhaps the best restaurant in Ushuaia:

All the varieties of perfect empanada from La Marmita bakery in Ushuaia, but especially the tomato and olive:

Bolivia: 

The jawita is a La Paz staple.  It's a familiar concept:  dough baked with melty cheese inside.  But the jawita is unlike any of its South American analogues (the empanada, most prominently) in that it is made with a super thin sheet of very soft enriched dough--so soft that it has the texture and pliancy of fabric.  Before baking, the jawita is brushed with butter and chili powder.  These cost maybe 50 cents each.  The first time I tried it, I ordered one from a streetside vendor, took my first bite as I started to walk away, turned around, and bought another one.

Peru:

These three mango ceviches I made at a cooking class in Cusco.  The rest of the class made ceviche the traditional way, with fish.  To a person, they all preferred my mango options:

This vegan tacu tacu from Green Point in Cusco: a base of beans and quinoa topped with grilled veggies drizzled in chimichurri, and a luscious plantain:

This mango I ate off the tree in Lucmabamba, as big as my head and twice as juicy--which I chased shortly thereafter with an avocado I ate off another tree too messily to manage the camera:

No, I did not eat guinea pig.  But someone I met while traveling did.  Here's how it was served to her, with a pepper stuck right between those little front teeth:

Ups and downs

There are two classic multiday treks in the greater Cusco region--"classic" in the deep historical sense, because each of these two routes incorporate sections of the ancient Inca trail through the Andes.  One of these treks is the Inca Trail; the other is the Salkantay.  

(A section of that original trail of the Incas)

For conservation purposes, the Peruvian government limits the number of people who can walk the Inca trail every season, so you have to plan well in advance to get one of the coveted spots.  It perhaps will not be a surprise to hear that I, wandering vaguely through these mountains, did not plan well in advance.  I don't really care all that much, since both treks spend a couple of days at high altitude and then descend, arriving finally on the last day at a shared endpoint (though they approach it from different directions)--about which more in a moment.

The Salkantay trail takes hikers up first past a beautiful blue lagoon snugged into the base of the Humantay mountain and glacier.

The trail then proceeds the following day up a steady grade to the Salkantay glacier at about 4600 meters (~15100 feet).  Not super high altitude as the Andes go, but definitely some high-altitude views, as Salkantay Peak towers up to about 21000 feet.  

After the Apacheta pass, the trail just drops for about 10 miles, down and down, from above the timberline through the first Andean cedars, through layers of low-hanging cloud and into a temperate rain forest, and then finally to the tropical climate around Collpapampa.  

The fourth day of hiking brings folks to the floor of a valley at about 6700 feet.  That's a lot of downhill, through plantations of mango, coffee, avocado, banana, pineapple, orange... in short, a lot of fruits you generally don't associate with a glacier trek.  It's just a tremendous difference in elevation, and the radical difference in climate that goes along with it is something I haven't experienced before.  From well below freezing to sweating through my clothes in a jungle in just one day.  From that valley floor, there are steep, vegetation-carpeted peaks and exposed cliffs on all sides, and if you squint from below, you can see some structures up on one of those steep places.  

On the fifth day, you hike the last 3 miles of your 50-mile adventure, climbing up a whole bunch of stairs so that you can actually see those distant hilltop structures up close: 

And hello, Machu Picchu. Given that both the Salkantay trek and the Inca Trail end up with this view, I guess it really doesn't matter all that much which direction you approach from.  Either approach provides the opportunity to walk on the stone paths of the Incas, and to appreciate just how vast was their empire--and to admire from a temporal remove the stamina of their running messengers, the chasqi, who ran along the length of the empire like a more agile pony express, a network of relay sprinters covering up to 200 miles a day.