Saqsaywaman The Falcon’s Fort

As 16th century ruins go Saqsaywaman (various spellings are encouraged) is a pile of rocks in a field at the top of a very steep hill overlooking the city of Cusco. 

The thing about this place, translated approximately from the Quechua as Falcon’s Fort, is that it was built by the Incas and when the Spaniards arrived in their capital of Cusco they resisted from their fort high atop the hill. 

After the Spanish subjugated the Incas they disassembled their buildings and used the masonry to build their own city. It’s said the Spanish architecture of old Cusco is built on Inca masonry pillaged from these locations. 

If you ever wondered why the  Coliseum in Rome looks half built it’s the same sort of theft. After the fall of Rome the residents figured there was no good reason to let that splendid masonry go to waste so they too used it. But the Inca walls that remain appear indestructible: 

They are set at a slight inward angle and it is their most famous feature that most puzzles people. How did they get these giant rocks, up to 200 tons apiece into place and so tight you can’t even slide a blade between them? And there has never been an earthquake strong enough to knock them down. 

If you’ve belong to the flat earth school of thought by all means attribute this construction to aliens. There are similar ruins at Zimbabwe in Southern Africa and in the days of apartheid white politicians in Rhodesia refused to countenance the idea that black savages could have built the Great Zimbabwe so aliens have always had their appeal as culprits. However the truth is blacks in Zimbabwe and browns in Egypt and Peru had the capacity to build like this. 

I found this article persuasive but be aware it is full of advertising so you need patience:

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/unravelling-mystery-behind-megalithic-stone-walls-saksaywaman-001470

According to a builder who has done his own experiments one way to build like this without mortar is to create a frame with wood and put the frame on a suitable boulder then chip away until it matches the wooden frame. I’m cutting to the chase here but read the article for the full details. 

Then slowly haul it in place and plop it where you want it. The Incas had time and man power so the fact that the method is painfully slow is no reason for it not to have worked. 
The point being that by the time the Spaniards in their armor had clanked up the hill, a half mile straight up from Cusco in the valley, they faced an impenetrable rock wall. 

Possibly built by bored aliens. Perhaps the same aliens that didn’t scribe the Nasca lines near the coast. 



You can hire a guide but I just wanted peace and quiet. 

I have read about this place and I enjoyed the opportunity to wander round, make some photos and be alone for a while. 



















Just about every heathen landmark in Latin America has a Catholic symbol planted on top as though to show who is now boss. 

This is a wall on the approach road where the modern lack of patience and care shows: 

The walk up from the square is about half a mile and the elevation is 500 feet roughly which doesn’t sound too bad. But for all that  I was guilty of slowly puffing my way up, lots of young people headed to the ruins were pausing every bit as much as I was. I am no longer used to 11,500 feet altitude. They were having a parade as I started my plot uphill. They do that a lot in Cusco, celebrating history and stuff. 

There were thank god toilets half way up. At 25 cents a total bargain and beautifully clean. 

You keep thinking  you’ve got to the top but you haven’t. 

If I looked down that (below) from the driver’s seat I’d refuse to take the plunge with GANNET2! But the walk up was satisfying. 

I confess after I toured the ruins I took a cab back down the hill to the square at the center of town. 





Cusco is conventionally beautiful and well preserved but it feels like Disney with the addition of dust catcher sales people in your face all the time. They’re like gnats and overwhelming. 

I know this is a tourist town and people need to earn a living but I can’t stand it when I politely say no thanks and they keep coming, ignoring my polite no. 



They were celebrating in the square talking loudly about the founding of a women’s college in Cusco. Then they trundled around a papier maché likeness of Simon Bolivar negotiating Peru’s post colonial status.

My evening flight back to Arequipa was at 6 pm getting me back to GANNET2 around 7:30 including the cab ride. As always LATAM airline screwed up the one hour flight to Arequipa with numerous delays and I got home at 10:30. 



The tour ended with shepherd’s pie at Paddy’s Irish pub on the square. It about finished me off. 

Oh and the reason for the day trip by myself? 
Good for ten years with 50 pages so lots of traveling to do. My thanks to the consulate in Cusco. Oh and I got my sneakers cleaned: 

Home sweet home:  

A Day Of Rest

The drive back to the campground on Friday was a brief taste of the new smooth shifting I can look forward to I hope.  $4100 for a new transmission, $650 for the code reader to unlock the computer and about $750 for assorted tows. Plus $250 for eight nights in a room at the campground. 

Rusty liked having a courtyard outside room 14. The staff pet him and play with him and even the house painters take time to greet him when they arrive each morning to  refresh the hotel decor. He really liked having a room with a king sized bed, but it’s back to van life. 

Happily we are back aboard though Saturday was a long day of hauling crap out of the room and filling GANNET2 and sorting where everything went.  It’s weird how no matter how much you dump stuff more arrives to take its place. 

We have found it hard yo buy decent sheets in South America oddly enough so Layne brought back a sheet to cover our bed as a dust sheet to keep our bedding clean. We use an RV Superbag which we had on our boat 30 years ago and they are still in production. It’s a king sized comforter with a sheet velcroed inside. 

One side up is thinner for warmer weather and the other is for cooler temperatures. We needed a new sheet liner after five years and the one Layne brought back from the States feels luxurious.  But it took time to get our bedroom reorganized.  Then the kitchen, then the odds and sods and half the day went by. Layne got my cough and mine had t finished so we ate a chorus of dry hacking coughs all day long. But slowly we restored order. 

Vans have been coming and going. Everyone has an issue. I directed a young French couple in a Chinese van they bought in Chile to Renzo’s shop where he diagnosed the need for a new engine as theirs has no compression.  A Dutch couple came in with a Volkswagen that needs an oil filter so far unobtainable and a Spanish family in a Ford Transit is looking for a mechanic to repair a timing chain failure.  It feels pretty good to be getting ready to take a drive in our restored Promaster. 

Tomorrow I’m gone all day flying to Cusco to pick up my new passport then Tuesday and Wednesday we have dental appointments to finish our crowns and I’m hoping Thursday we can take a drive to the coast for a few days camping on the beach. It’s winter so it won’t be swimming weather but some fresh scenery will be a break. 

I’m hoping after we get back we can complete our suspension replacement as Renzo heard the clunking on our test drive that I’ve been hearing on rough roads. The CV joints seem fine now after a one time clunk but we’ll get them inspected  when the suspension is out and make sure they are solid. They are aftermarket beefed up units so I was surprised to hear a clunk.  

I also dropped off the ethanol kit Layne brought from the States and hopefully Renzo can install it. Then we should be ready for Brazil. It’s still raining in the jungle so we don’t want to get there too early and August is the start of rainy season so our timing may be just right. 

I walked across town from my last dental appointment and took a few street photos of Arequipa.  We have been here altogether too long but it has been useful place to get stuff done.  

It’s rather odd to find myself familiar with the streets, used to dodging pedestrians in this oddly aggressive town where people walking two or three abreast will force you aside if you look intimidated but will yield if you don’t.  So I’ve learned to play the sidewalk game and try not to yield…learning to walk like a Peruvian. We have our favorite eateries, our mechanic, our dentist, our doctor… I really need to get back on the road. Rusty would be happy not to, he liked having a room of his own.

GANNET2 Lives

4th of July is one of the highlights of the calendar at home. Oddly enough no one in Arequipa cares too much about the holiday. This ancient city celebrated its five hundred and something birthday on August 15th and already the authorities are putting out more flags in anticipation.

No doubt Coca Cola is loading the shelves in anticipation of the holidays, and they make this weird soda called Inca Kola, inspired marketing no doubt. It looks like pee, tastes like cream soda with a hint of pear and is really a bit sickly sweet, but it’s everywhere of course. 

Renzo charged $4100 for the rebuild which is roughly what a rebuilt 62TE transmission would cost in the States where you can buy one on line and have it delivered.  The electronic guy charged $650 to clear the limp mode code from the van’s computer which seemed a lot to me as we paid $550 for an eight hour tow when we broke down originally, but one can’t argue with success and it took him some work reaching out across South America looking for a code reader to clear a Promaster’s proprietary computer. Modern engineering…

Everything feels back to normal and long may it last. It was great to be back driving even if it was Arequipa’s commuter hour. I gave Renzo’s assistants $50 each and they were overwhelmed so I hope they spend it very unwisely.

We spend today moving out of the hotel room back aboard, picking up laundry, setting up Starlink so I can have a decent connection to upload pictures. Then I fly to Cusco Monday to pick up my new passport. After that we wrap up our crowns at the dentist, where I should point out Layne spent $123 for a root canal and $1450 for three crowns. You could fly to Lima and transfer to Arequipa, stay in a lovely hotel for ten days and have these dentists do your work for the cost of a single crown in the US. Clean modern and filled with lidocaine, and Jaime the husband in the team speaks fluent English.  

After all that we are going to take a test ride down to the coast. It’s winter so it won’t be swimming weather but we want to be travelers again, camping in our home walking Rusty on the beach and being nomads. A couple more jobs on GANNET2, suspension and conversion to ethanol flex fuel capability and it should stop raining in Brazil. The desire to explore is growing. And by the way fierce winter weather in Chile is closing highways with mudslides even in the Atacama Desert. Last year we got stuck in a road closure south of Arica after an earthquake closed the PanAmerican Highway for a few days, this year they had rain…

Tropical Brazil looks like a good place to be for us. Actual jungle in a van we hope will run smoothly. 

Transmission Fixed

Renzo called last night and said the transmission is fixed. Apparently it took some electronic magic  but he’s happy with it and we are delighted. I have a dental appointment in the morning but we will be picking up GANNET2 today in the afternoon and we will finally see the bill which I will of course record here. A complete fully reconditioned 62TE transmission in the States costs up to $5,000 for reference. 

I spent six hours at the very clean modern dentist office Thursday getting four teeth prepared for new crowns. I had old ones that had worn out so they cleaned the stumps and set me up with a temporary arrangement. The entire business to be completed next week is costing $1800 which is about half the cost of one crown in the US as I recall. Weird isn’t it? I explained how much dentistry costs at home and they fell out of their chairs.

Well now, what next? We are thinking Brazil is back on the agenda. Chile is undergoing a horrendous cold snap with the passes through the Andes to Argentina closed by unusually heavy snowfalls. The GMC van in the photo below is for sale in Chile if you feel like imitating us. They got it unstuck after four days and backed out of Paso De Jama (15,900 feet) where we were this summer. 

It’s still raining in Brazil so we are in no hurry to go east this month and we have some mechanical work on the front suspension to get done next. We’ll be using Peugeot Jumper parts, as you do when you have a Promaster in Peru. But the transmission is working and I can’t wait for my test drive. Cheers. 

Stuck

GANNET2 is having a hard time giving up its code secrets to the electronic guy. We’ve got ourselves a repaired transmission but the problem is the computer onboard doesn’t know, and the access to the computer is blocked. 

I have suggested a visit to the dealer to unlock the code but that suggestion has been rejected on the grounds the dealer isn’t interested in repairs. I don’t think asking would hurt but so far I get the feeling our problem is an interesting challenge, possibly a learning experience for these repair guys dealing with the first Promaster. 

Apparently the electronic guy is calling in help from abroad, I’m not clear on the details, and the idea is a collective head scratching amongst them may come up with a solution. Meanwhile we wait. 

When we dropped GANNET2 off at the transmission shop we met the young French couple who’d asked us directions to a good mechanic. Their Chinese van needs a new engine as they have no compression and very little power. How they crossed Bolivia, most of which lies between ten and 14,000 feet with a powerless engine caused some interesting conversation. Renzo figured he can have it fixed by replacing the block with a new one in a week. I doubt it but they believed him. It will take the time it will take. This is Peru.  

We are taking advantage of being stationary by going to the dentist. We’ve been sitting around reading and Layne is trying to learn to curb her impatience. I feel like an old hand at it by now.  I’m just glad to see it’s still raining in Brazil so that’s a no go for a while. I just wish we were stationary with a working van. Soon, maybe. 

Giovanni Giannini 1958-2024

One year ago I took a call from my nephew in Italy with bad news. It wasn’t one of my sisters, ten years older than I, but it was my childhood friend, 66 years old killed by a heart attack in his cardiology office in Italy.

I last saw him in 2023 just before we took off for South America and we always expected to have time to catch up more on the next visit. He came to see me in the Keys in 2007. We talked of what we would do together when we got old. 

Pasta, Mafia, Spaghetti

"How is it that people in this country always associate Italians with the Mafia?" It has to be a longstanding friendship when you get sideswiped by such a complicated question late at night. We were standing on the White Street Pier watching the street lights twinkle along Smathers Beach, and such a watery place would naturally lead to reflection. The fact that Giovanni, a cardiologist, was visiting for just two days on the back of a medical convention on the mainland meant we had a lot of catching up to do in a short while.

We grew up together, Giovanni's family spent most of their time in the city and I spent most of my life in exile at that age, in an English boarding school. After I left Europe Giovanni, who followed the conventional life plan laid out for the son of a doctor remained my tenuous connection with he Old World, a thread threatened by time, distance and commitments, but that has become less frayed as we grow older. We try to meet at least every couple of years alone or with family and ride a motorcycle, laze on a beach always staying up late to set history and the world to rights.

Explaining the Mafia stereotype to a forty-nine year old Italian who has never imagined hanging out with, or being intimidated by Cosa Nostra back home isn't easy. The Mafia is as far from his life as it is for any American, its a subject for the movies; Hollywood is short hand for graven images. "Well, you've seen the Godfather," I start out by saying. "Il Padrino reinforced the image first created when Italian immigrants started coming in large numbers to the US..." And his rebuttal, built around the irritation he feels when he replies, in his broken English, to strangers that he is Italian not Mexican, and they go on and on about the few things they know about Italy,The Mafia, and Italian history followed by a tour of monuments they've seen. Giovanni sighs and leads us to a discussion about the stereotypes of la dolce vita an image of Italy created in turn by Italian filmmakers.

Too often I hear about how Europeans have it easy with long vacations and lots of time off, but I remember well Giovanni's incredulity when we walked one morning into a California Starbucks and he couldn't believe all the lounging around going on during a workday. In France the 35-hour work week stands a good chance of being overturned because people are tired of the financial constraints of a short work week which yes, allows for more time off but it also severely limits incomes. The new French President is currently struggling with that problem and at the same time in Italy, pension plans, those distant rewards for a life time of 51/2 day work weeks, are being pushed back by threats of State bankruptcy.

Giovanni, who lives in a magnificent, high ceiling'ed, apartment in the heart of the Terni envies me my suburban American life. He loved to sprawl in my California backyard smoking and pretending to be house owner for a week or two. In Florida its the wide open deck we hung out on at night, me in my Keys uniform of cargo shorts and a tee shirt while Giovanni, even en deshabille, wore a crisp collared shirt and ironed Dockers, stretched out in our recliners admiring the stars and setting the world to rights.

We don't drink much alcohol together, we usually get drunk on exhaustion, talking about the past, musing about the future, wondering how we got to where we are. Giovanni doesn't see a very rosy future as he has bills to pay and many more years of hospital work and private practice to pay his bills, get his kids through college, help them buy homes, pay off his own mortgage and finally qualify for a his State pension. He drives a nice car, rides a big motorcycle, takes vacations where he likes, and rarely has time to be alone and think. Which he says, is just as well. Even when he is alone he thinks about what gifts to shop for and take home to his family.

"The big difference between us, " he said as he was struck by an epiphany between the eyes as it were." The difference between us is that you don't have children." He's right. I view the future as a series of different choices, variations on the various forks in the road that have led me to this point. It's all speculative but I wonder if perhaps I may or may not allow myself to live some of the time in Italy, riding around in Giovanni's wake... A fantasy rudely shattered by his insistence that these possibilities aren't open to him. La dolce vita promises him a life lived hard at work till the last possible minute. But always fashionably well dressed...

Over the decades I have come to appreciate the reality of Giovanni's daily life in Italy which is, for most Americans, a romantic idyll far removed from reality, a movie set inhabited by cheerfully gesturing lovers divorced from traffic jams, endless bills, and unemployment. Pretty much the same way every Italian in America is probably intimate with the inner workings of the Mafia.

I snapped this picture of Giovanni hanging with my buddy Scott at the Tropic cinema one warm sunset. I too love hanging out with Giovanni, he always makes me appreciate my life all the more.