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It’s true! It’s true! There really is substandard food in Peru. We found some twice in 1 day! First, breakfast in our hotel in Olletaytambo. The hotel had a lovely breakfast room with beautiful music playing and a view of the glacier peaks that is astonishing. The fresh fruit was abundant and tasteless. Absolutely tasteless. But why would someone think that watermelon, papaya, pineapple and such would be either fresh or tasty at 11,000 feet? If the eggs had not come out of a carton, then the chicken lives in the carton. Ugh!
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Then we walked down to the train station at the foot of the only street in that part of town and waited for the Vistadome train to Aquas Calientes, from where we would take the shuttle bus to the entrance to Machu Picchu. During the train ride of about 2 hours, a gracious pair of hosts served General Bert and me a snack which would do any cheapo airline proud. It was two horrifying pasteries and a pair of lovely smiles. We appreciated the smiles, but not the dreadful pastery.
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So it is possible, after all.
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I want to share Machu Picchu and Hubert with you because both of them are extraordinary.
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Unfortunately, I can only give you a hint of the brilliance, magnificence and thrilling energy of Machu Picchu. It truly is indescribably powerful if you are sensitive to energies and just indescribably magnificent if you are not.
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Machu Picchu
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It is hard work and you need to pay attention to your footing, but we saw the halt, the lame (not the blind) and the slow carefully treading their way up and around and down and over and under via the absolutely marvellously engineered footpaths and stair ways carved astonishgly carefully out of stone, both the living stone ofthe earth and imported blocks of astonishing size .
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There is a world view in Machu Picchu that I hope that you and I share with the Incas: they saw a world of structure and energy and created a harmonious place for themselves in it and for it in them. You can see it in the architecture, for example, where a uniquely shaped mountain is echoed in the uniquely shaped building that you see when you look toward the mountain from that side of the city and the result is a melding of the immense and the human in one continuum of experience.
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You feel it in the careful placement of astronomical apertures and structures which open the mundane to the celestial and the celestial to the mundane and you feel it in the power of the energy sites where the sacred places were built with attention to every detail possible.
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The Hitching Post of the Sun

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Hubert is from the village that once a year repairs, as a ceremonial community activity, the last remaining Inca rope bridge in the world (Google it!). He lives the deep Inca philosophy and brought his personal shining radiance and deep and adoring love for his culture, his wisdom wealth and his world to usrope during our time with him, shining brightly during our tour of Macchu Picchu with him today .
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I can only wish you all a guide to Machu Picchu like Hubert!
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We took the shuttle bus back to the town and and, as it happens, there is a a handicrafts and art festival in Aguas Caliente and we are off to enjoy it.
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Then dinner at the Indio Felice. I will let you know if it results Los Touristos Felice!
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Yours in health and freedom,
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Dr. Rima