Washington, DC tour guides lose right to be wrong

by Tom Johansmeyer on

The right to an accurate tour is conspicuously absent from the Bill of Rights – unlike the freedom to run your mouth endlessly. For this reason, tour guides are fighting new regulations intended to ensure that visitors to our nation’s capital get the correct info. Tour guides will have to pass a 100-question, multiple choice exam that includes questions about Washington, DC‘s architecture, history and more.

Of course, some tour guides are pretty ripped about this.

Segs in the City, Segway tour company, claims that the exam infringes on their right to free speech. The company’s owners, Bill Main and Tonia Edwards, have filed a federal lawsuit to stomp out the new regs.

A pilgrim in Peru: Part Five, going to Racchi, Tipon, Pikillacta, and off the tourist trail

by Don George on

After croissants and café con leche in the elegant restaurant of Inkaterrra La Casona, looking onto the hotel-home’s green and graceful interior courtyard, I met Manuel in the sitting room. He had been infectiously smiling and enthusiastic every day, but today there was a special gleam in his eye. “Hola, Don! Que tal? Today we have a very wonderful journey planned: We are moving even further into the past, into the pre-Inca world. You will see places not many tourists see.”

We drove east from Cusco toward Lake Titicaca, and for me, this already induced the frisson of exploring virgin territory. Even though the road was a well-paved thoroughfare that clearly carried thousands of travelers, most tourists confine their Sacred Valley explorations to the region between Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Driving toward Lake Titicaca, we were moving beyond Pisac and away from the tourist trail.

Our destination was Racchi, about 70 miles southeast of Cusco. John drove us through more spectacular scenery: the blue-gray Vilcanota River ribboning through yellow-green grasslands patchworked with deep green crops, all framed by snowcapped mountains; mud-brick, terra cotta-roofed houses dotted the landscape and little boys in woven caps shooshed bushel-burdened donkeys along the side of the road.
Racchi itself was a revelation. This expansive 20-acre site includes the remains of agricultural terraces, storehouses, walls, baths, a jailhouse, a lake, and the impressive centerpiece, the Temple of Wiracocha, the Inca’s great creator-god. The temple is represented by nine towering rectangular columns, each more than 20 feet high and four feet wide. Built of polished stone on the bottom and mud brick atop the stone, the columns have a distinct earthen color and a shape unlike any other Inca monuments. These attributes imbued the place with a feeling of singular age and significance, and as I walked around the stark ruins, I felt immersed in their desolation and purity, as if I were stepping further and further into the ancient heart of Peru.



That feeling continued at the two other ruins we visited that day. Tipon was a vast grass-and-water complex of broad green terraces and burbling canals and aqueducts. Like Moray, Manuel said, this site – irrigated by water brought from a distant spring by an ingenious network of canals — had been used as an experimental laboratory for the cultivation of different crops. It may also have been, Manuel added, a place to worship the water gods. Wiracocha, water gods. I was beginning to get a sense that the Incas had been surrounded by sanctity – in the fields they worked, the water they drank, the sun that warmed them, the mountains they moved through.

We wandered alone through the terraced past and I had the impression that I was walking over a time-bridge, to a place rocky and green and smelling of fresh mountain water. Then a family appeared in rough woven clothes; they were calling and laughing to each other, the children hopping merrily on the ancient walls. A mirage?

Manuel whistled and said in a gentle voice that they should respect the walls and not play on them. The patriarch, splendid in a gray and green poncho, nodded gravely and they moved on.

Our journey climaxed at Pikillacta, a site built by the Wari empire, an advanced civilization that had been the dominant power in the central and northern highlands of Peru from about 500 to 1000 AD. Along with the contemporaneous and equally powerful Tiwanaku tribe, Manuel said, the Wari laid the cultural foundations for the Inca empire.

These ruins were the rawest yet and very much a work in progress. “Maybe only 5 percent of this site has been cleared and cleaned,” Manuel said; “there is still so much to discover. But this is good,” he continued, nodding at a distant knot of workers with a small smile. “I have been coming here for 16 years and this is the first time I’ve seen government workers here. More archaeologists are becoming interested not just in the Incas but in other cultures that lived here too. And more foreign universities and countries are helping with the excavations; this is what we need, and this will lead to our own government getting involved as well.”

Evidence of the excavations was everywhere. Near the entrance to the site a sign read, “Zona de Trabajo. Prohibido el Ingreso.” We could see workers with towels covering their heads and necks digging on a distant hill, and nearer, modern archaeological tools scattered in the shade of a wall, wood scaffolding bordering a paved pathway, and wooden props that had been set to keep a long, intricately pieced rock wall upright.

In one hut-like chamber we could clearly see the remains of an elegant rock floor and ragged swatches of white plaster on what had once been a gypsum-covered adobe wall. Suddenly I felt a sliver of what Hiram Bingham must have felt when he stumbled on Machu Picchu, and I could begin to understand what drives explorers and archaeologists to hack and stumble through swamp and jungle, to sift and sluice under a relentless sun – this sense of connection with a distant culture. I had no idea what feet had slipped across that white rock floor, what hands had brushed that age-worn wall, what joys and tears, despairs and dreams had taken seed and blossomed here. But still I felt a mortal, human, bond – that rock and clay called to me, pulled at something deep within. Part of me wanted to stay and sit under that thatch; part of me sits there still.

But life must be lived in the present, and we moved from the 7th century ruins to a 21st century home-cum-restaurant specializing in cuy, or guinea pig. This local delicacy was baked in a backyard oven to a crisp and served with its little paws splayed, its snout snouting and sharp teeth gritting, accompanied by noodles, potatoes, and beer. Lots of beer. The World Cup semifinals were being played, with Uruguay upholding the honor of South America, and the restaurant owner genially agreed to accommodate his guests by hauling his prized set out of his living room and laboriously connecting it to an Incan trail-like network of wires and cables, so that we could enact another semi-religious rite while eating our cuy: watching futbol on a grainy TV.


After our guinea pig gourmandizing, we set off toward Cusco and my final afternoon in the Sacred Valley. On the way we passed a roadside roof tile-making facility we’d seen earlier in the day, and Manuel said something quickly to John, who smiled and made a swift U-turn. Suddenly we were veering off the paved road onto a dusty driveway. We bumped and bounced past a mud-brick home and a wary grandmother perched on a porch and rolled to a stop at the edge of the tile-maker’s lot.

Typical of the hospitality we had received throughout the trip, rather than being alarmed or perturbed by the site of a gringo and his guide striding across his work site, the tile-maker welcomed us with a broad smile. When Manuel explained that I had been admiring the roof tiles throughout the Sacred Valley and wanted to understand firsthand how they were made, he beckoned me over to his workplace. There, surrounded by a growing gaggle of kids, he proceeded to demonstrate how he mixed, dried, wet and then fashioned the mud that became the terra cotta tiles, and how he smoothed them into just the right shape, making sure there were no bubbles that could crack later, and then carefully placed the semi-rounded tile in the sun to dry. Soon he was draping an apron over my neck and inviting me to plunge my hands into the muddy mound; with his help and the giggling encouragements of the kids, I shaped and smoothed a tile, gingerly separated it from the mold and placed it in the line of tiles that would eventually end up crowning some happy family’s home.


There were more treasures and grace notes to come. The next morning’s itinerary called for “free time in Cusco” before my mid-day departure for Lima, but Manuel rearranged his schedule and conscripted his benevolent, beaming father, who had recently retired from a career as a tour driver, to take us on an impromptu excursion to some of the city’s grand cathedrals and museums, the astonishing stones of the temple-fortress of Saqsaywaman just outside the city, and a heartening wildlife sanctuary called the Santuario Animal de Ccochahuasi, whose passionate founder proudly showed us a magnificent condor that was being nursed back to health there.

But when I recall this pilgrimage, Manuel — himself one of the principal treasures of the trip — guides me back to that afternoon among the ruins and the roof tiles, when I felt a first sliver of the explorer’s heart-quickening connection, that shiver of spanning time in the touch of cool white stone and the brush of gypsum line, and when a family of roof tile-makers opened their heart and art to me for a timeless half hour of their lives.

On that afternoon, this pilgrim found his way. Roof tiles are made from clay and in many ancient cultures it is said that men are made from clay too. I believe this is so, for I know I left a piece of me in the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Previously:
A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Three, arriving in Machu Picchu
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Four, visiting Machu Picchu at sunrise
Related: How to hike the Inca Trail

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and sunrise in Peru are purely my own. LAN Airlines recently celebrated the inauguration of its four-days-a-week nonstop service between San Francisco and Lima. LAN’s non-stop service to Lima with next morning connection to Cusco can help maximize your time in the Sacred Valley. Geographic Expeditions, a San Francisco-based adventure travel company offers overland tours, treks, walks, and expeditionary voyages around the world. GeoEx’s web site provides a wealth of information on its varied Peru tours.

Where I stayed:
In Urubamba: Sol & Luna
In Aguas Calientes: Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel
In Cusco: Inkaterra La Casona

The catacombs of Rome

by Sean McLachlan on


“There were 500,000 people buried here,” my guide whispers.

She leads me down a dimly lit, narrow passage that seems to go on forever. To either side the rough walls are lined with small niches.

“These are where the bodies were kept. There are twenty kilometers of tunnels, and while most of the tombs are now empty, some are still unopened.”

We are in the Catacombs of Domitilla, one of the largest of a half dozen underground burial places dug out by Christians during the second and third centuries AD, when most of the Roman Empire was still pagan. My guide, a knowledgeable young Polish woman, is leading me through a warren of passageways, rooms, even subterranean churches. Incredible facts drop from her mouth every minute.

“This is the oldest of the catacombs with some of the earliest Christian paintings anywhere. There’s even a painting of the Last Supper that’s 1,800 years old.”

The frescoes are tucked away in little vaults built by wealthy families, or on the domes of small mausoleums. They show simple Christian scenes–the Good Shepard, baptism, the saints, painted in a capable but not overly talented hand.

“Since most people were pagan, the early Christians had trouble getting good artists. You can see it with the inscriptions too. They’re not done in orderly lines and clear letters like you see on monuments above ground.”

Somehow that makes me like them more, that these paintings were done by common people, not famous artists. The ones showing prayer are the most evocative because they seem to portray real individuals as they looked in life. They all take the same pose–with arms flexed outwards, palms up.

“This is how everyone prayed back then, both pagans and Christians,” my guide explains.

“Shi’ite Muslims still start their prayers in that pose,” I say.

She gives me a narrow look before leading me down another hallway. We pass a vertical shaft where we can still see small footholds cut into the side for the original builders to climb to the levels above and below us. The walls and ceiling of the tunnels are rough, with traces of the last cuts of the pick clearly visible. The stone is volcanic tufa, a rock so soft that it can be scraped with a fingernail, yet compact enough that it can support an immense amount of weight.

My guide stops in the middle of the hall and points to the wall.

“Look, this one is still buried here.”

One of the niches is sealed up with a rectangular slab. I know I’m not supposed to touch but I do anyway, pressing my hand against the cool, damp stone. Inches beyond my warm flesh lie the cold bones of one of the earliest followers of the world’s biggest religion. What I’d give to talk to him or her for just five minutes. My guide notices what I’m doing and smiles.

“Most of the bones were removed in the Middle Ages to protect them from relic hunters, but a few hundred tombs still remain unopened,” she explains.

%Gallery-102540%Sadly this slab is blank. Some have the person’s name carved on them. In some sections of the tunnel fragments of these tomb facings have been plastered onto the wall by later hands. The earliest inscriptions are in Greek, the language of the New Testament. Later ones, dating to the fourth century when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, are in Latin.

Pagan Romans cremated their dead, but Christians believed in resurrection and practiced burial so the body could rise up on Judgment Day. The Roman Empire was generally tolerant of other religions, incorporating new gods into the existing pantheon, but it looked upon monotheistic Christianity and Judaism with mistrust. While followers of Jupiter or Mithras or Ra acknowledged the existence of other gods, the monotheists dismissed all other gods as impostors or demons. Even worse, they refused to sacrifice to the deified emperors. Several emperors persecuted them, although the extent and violence of these persecutions have been exaggerated by early Christian chroniclers. The image of thousands of Christians being thrown to the lions is myth. People were sometimes killed, but more often their churches would be destroyed and property confiscated. The main victims were church leaders like bishops and early popes, some of whom are buried here; regular Christians were generally left alone. Many of the biggest catacombs were built right under the Appian Way, the main road leading into the city and lined with the tombs of wealthy pagans. While everyone knew where they were, most pagans were content to leave the Christians to their strange rituals as long as they kept out of sight and didn’t cause trouble.

Two other networks of catacombs along the Appian Way are popular with visitors. The Catacombs of San Callisto are as impressive as those of Domitilla and have several good frescoes. The Catacombs of San Sebastiano, under the church of the same name, are smaller and less well preserved, yet there’s an interesting room used for funeral banquets where early Christians carved their names or the names of their departed loved ones along with prayers. All three catacombs can be seen in a single day.

The catacombs stay at a constant 15°C (59°F), so it’s best to bring a long-sleeved shirt or light sweater. Photography is not allowed. I won’t ask how GerardM at Wikimedia Commons got the above image, or how the photographers who took the pictures of the frescoes in the attached gallery got theirs. I’ll assume they went through the red tape to get permission from Papal Commission of Archaeology. I’ve heard that if I do the same I can get a papal archaeologist to guide me through parts of the catacombs closed to regular visitors. My guide warns me I need a valid reason and lots of patience with bureaucracy. Perhaps next year I’ll be back.

“We’re nearing the end of the tour,” my guide says, “but I have one last thing to show you.”

We come to a large, empty tomb that has been converted into a display case for artifacts found by the archaeologists. Through the metal grille I see oil lamps the Christians used to find their way through the dark, shells that were pressed into the wall near a tomb to help identify the occupant, and bits of cheap glass jewelry.

In one corner are a collection of little ceramic animals, dolls, and rattles, simple toys put in front of the graves of children.

Don’t miss the rest of my Vacation with the Dead: Exploring Rome’s Sinister Side.

Coming up next: The Death of Paganism!

Oprah fails to rescue Australian tourism

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Tourism is underwater in Australia, and it looks like even the most powerful woman in the world can’t turn it around. Originally, the country’s Tourism and Transport Forum thought Oprah Winfrey’s visit to Australia would be great for tourism, attracting visitors from around the world. Well, it looks like early expectations are being revisited. While Australians are still leaving the country on vacation in record numbers, the rest of the world isn’t returning the favor.

Overnight visits to Australia fell 1 percent for the year ending June 2010, according to the National Visitor Survey. But, visitor nights were up 0.4 percent and total spending climbed 1.9 percent – so, there is something of a silver lining here.

Before we decide that Oprah didn’t deliver, however, keep in mind that the number of visitors form the United States surged 8 percent. So, the talk show queen may still surprise the folks down under.

[photo by nayrb7 via Flickr]

Cairo in the full heat of Ramadan

by Grant Martin on

It’s 6:14 in the evening in Cairo, and 140 Muslims are lined up banquet style on the bank of the Nile across from the Marriott Zamalek. A hotel worker scurries across the street shuttling plates of rice, chicken and gravy, placing dishes carefully in front of each anxious visitor, but nobody is eating. A palpable tension hangs at the table; some diners banter back and forth, gesturing cautiously as they avoid bumping into their full drinks and salad bowls; some stare sullenly into the distance; a few lie with their heads on the table unconscious.

Ramadan is in its last week, and the effects of fasting during the daylight hours are starting to show on the faces and in the interactions of Cairenes. Emotions run high on the streets of the city, and as the sun beats down on hungry residents it seems that the smallest infraction can set a temper off. Even those working in the full shade and air conditioning show the weight of the fasting – seem irritable, less patient. Who wouldn’t be?

As I pass by the waiting dinner party and under the 26th of July bridge I wave to the sulking parking lot attendant as he scowls at me and then dive through four lanes of traffic. Brown and gray are not just colors here, they’re the tapestry on which Cairo is painted, filthy cars kicking out smoke and blaring horns as they pass dusty, dilapidated store fronts and acid rain-etched columns. The small respite from this madness comes in Zamalek, where the tree lined streets vainly try to soak up some of the non-stop city blare and hide the permahaze that hovers hundreds of feet above the city.

And then, from deep in the depths of urban Cairo to the east the call to prayer rings forth. Iftar, the traditional breaking of the fast, has arrived. It’s time to eat.

Like clockwork, the rows of dinner guests dig into their food. Now in Zamalek, where I’m currently heading to the market, the shops button up and commerce slams to a halt. Pockets of shopkeepers and residents filter into the street, many seated on the sidewalk in communal circles, many in the traditional Egyptian dress. At the gas station, workers hide at a table positioned behind stacks of oil as they ravenously tear at a loaf of bread while a few unlucky staffers finish up washing the city off of a 1960’s fiat.

A foreigner among Cairenes, I navigate the suddenly crowded city streets, avoiding eye contact with diners and getting closer to the store in mind. On my way out of Cairo airport earlier in the week, I earlier exchanged pleasantries with a group of security guards breaking fast on the side of the street next to their booth. Spotting my curiosity, one held up his bag of milk for me – it’s tradition and polite to share with anyone on the street once fasting breaks.

Today, though the gesture is appreciated, I’d rather not distract anyone from their current meal. Turning off the main thoroughfare and onto a side street, I reflect that Ramadan in Cairo has definitely had an impact my my tourist’s take on the city. Many of the public works and attractions operate on abbreviated schedules so as to accommodate hours for fasting and napping. Alcohol is almost never-consumed, and even restaurants that normally serve it tend to abstain.

And then there are the people. Fasting and sleeping at strange hours brings brings out the best and worst in people. Innocuous, simple tourist questions can quickly become matters of irritation among guides, taxi drivers have little patience for English and it seems that the weight of everyone’s temper balances on the edge of a knife.

After Iftar, however, everything turns on its head. Finally with a stomach full of food the relieved Cairenes head out into the street to finish their day to day business. The city teems with life, with many shops staying open well after midnight and many of the citizens staying out later. Much further into the night, they’ll still be up having their breakfast suhoor right before preparing for another long day of fasting.

As for me, this Iftar meal isn’t necessary but it’s interesting to practice the tradition while deep in the gristle of Cairo. I pick up one Cornish hen and a stuffed pigeon for the pure sake of adventure and make my way back through the melee towards the hotel.

“Welcome back,” says the now-attentive parking attendant, in English as I pass back through the lot. I smile. In the fifteen minutes since I had been away, Cairo is now a completely different city.