The inside dope on Machu Picchu
What You Need To Know Before Going to Machu Picchu
By now, that iconic Incan infrastructure, its imaginative inclines and inventive shanty fortress chalet, should have awoken that adventurer we have safely snuggled in our souls. That bombastic Indiana Jones, every man - in their pipe dream fantasies wants to emulate, slapping us awake and yelling at us: “get off your ass and do something!” The fedora wearing inner swa-shbuckler doth protest too much of our wandering ways through Netflix’s catalogue; the specter not grasping the nuances of living precariously through digital avatars while chomping away at Pringles, our gut and love-handles a treasured commodity we invested far too much in.
Off to the map we skate, the wolf screaming in our loins to eat, fuck, procreate and break some shit up. Down boy, let’s first stake a territory. Time to make our mark, and piss on land and go all Gollum on it’s bedeviled territory: “MINE!”
Well, let’s get a gander at that fine ball of madcap we call Earth… Everest? Nope, too cold and who wants to spend their vacations scrapping dead popsicled hikers off their boots?… Kilimanjaro? It’s just a bloody rock….Burning Man? Scantily clad runway models hijacked from Mad Max, a no responsibility free zone?… I’m warming up to the idea… Vegas near by?!Maybe next year. Build up a tolerance for its toxic air by going to Colorado and Jamaica first; might swing by Colombia for some of its zany moon-dust.
Like they say:
“You don’t do Burning Man… Burning does you, with a pound of meth, bareback and a medieval strap-on, while a gaggle of midgets watch and toss Prozac to their trained chimpan-zees and everyone cheers.”
So, you slap the planetary plan, slap you gargantuan gut, slap yourself awake, and slap you bank account, and, as everything jiggles and waves fizzle out, an epiphany strikes you cold. Yup, you realize that the mortgage Gods, that pantheon of economic freebasers, have left you just the right amount of cash for a place in Peru called Machu Picchu. Oh joys of joys, you wont have to sell you kidney for a plane ticket. Thank you Lord for the mighty Dollar, the ef-fervescent Euro, the pulse pounding Pound, and badly managed Latin American Economies with Monopoly Money; Conversion Rates are the bomb!
What Is Machu Picchu
Here’s a nifty little video to whammy ignorance away and give you the scoop on what exactly is Machu Picchu. Why a video? Because like that Guru of gurus, Robin Williams once said: “It’s not ADD, it’s multitasking.”
The Diplomatic Goon Squad:
That’s drug slang for Immigration. Peru, like many South American governments, are contained loop ecosystems that have a nasty habit of needing anti-psychotic when it comes to their political underpinnings; manic depressives with the attention span of gerbils and the me-mory of pet rocks. To the chagrin of certain Gadafy paladins of politics, some are only just this very decade tragically falling to democracy; dictators pipelined by the CIA into retirement. So, as I write this article, and pen this prose, you’re in the green as far as Visas and whatnots… But, do check with your State Department and Government before thinking that Death Squads and waivers are a thing of the past.
“Peru is basically a country of open doors. The entry into Peru for Citizens of most American and Western European countries does not require a tourist visa.”
Peruvian Government Officials.
Shots, pinpricks and needles:
Peru is nestled deep inside sections of heavy, heavy rainforest, swaths of trees that were once used by dinosaurs as toothpicks. Sure, there are pumas, and jaguars, and mountain lions, and venomous snakes and hellish tarantulas, and smugglers, and the occasional Chupaca-bra, and other creepy crawlers snared from our most nauseating nightmare, but the real danger in these savage outskirts are… MOSQUITOS. Each mephitic little monster genetically enhan-ced by that bitch called Mother Nature with parasites, viruses and God knows what else. Mur-derous diseases that, if caught, will make you swear off your decent, baseline God and jump over to new exciting pantheons; making deals with cloven hoofed Pagan Deities before your skin falls off and your willy plops to the ground due to necrosis. So, here’s the tip of the day, go to your local hospital, roll up your sleeve and get every vaccination known to mankind… The trick is to come out of that clinic glowing radioactive with so much medicine coursing through your veins that even Godzilla falls dead just for looking at you funny.
Altitude Sickness and AV Radiation:
Cusco, where the planes boots you out in order to make the long trek to Machu Picchu, lies at 11.152 ft above sea level; that’s almost 3.5 KM up in Yahew’s no trespassing backyard. From certain spots, you actually have to look down in order to see the clouds. In mid-day the sun will bake your scalp off. At night you will freeze to death. And, while you’re walking around town, you will feel like a pig has climbed onto your shoulders and another one is bea-ting your testicles like a punching bag. You will feel altitude sickness and you will get a nice skin-cancer worthy tan. Here are a few suggestions to ward it all off, or at the very least deal with it:
- Take it slow.
- Hydrate like fish out of water.
- Buy some Cocaine… Wait, I mean Coca leafs. We do do not endorse snorting that majestic marvel in this website, although, the former is done with the latter; wink, wink.
- Lay off the heavy foods.
- Settle in and wait for you body to adjust.
Lamas:
The fuckers spit like those malodorous reptiles from the only decent Jurassic Park movie. Stay away from their alpaca hides.
Crime:
For many westerners South America is nothing more than the filming location of Nar-cos. The minute you get off the plane, you’re swamped into a war zone that makes Sarajevo look heavenly. Well, you xenophobic prick, here’s the inside dope, Miami is the real battered backdrop of Narcos not South America; that place makes even the scummiest sicario go: “What is wrong with these people?”
Do I look like an Idiot?:
Crime, vandalism, theft, assault, and armed robbery are way down… Corruption, bri-bery, and charging you an extra, known as the “Twang Tax”, are WAY WAY UP. Shop around if you want to buy something. If you’re getting a tour, do it at your hotel or with government approved guides. NEVER, ever, not in a million year, ask: “How much is that worth?” Act uninterested and make them beg. If you really like something, chances are that bartering will be involved.
There you go. Now go and ransack your local sport’s goods store, flex your muscles in front of the cute cashier and get your Macho on by winking, with devil may care, at her dim-ples.… You never know, you might just find a buxom bunk buddy for the ride.
Check out part 2 of our Peruvian exploration!
Check out part 2 of our Peruvian exploration!
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Travelers, snake-charmer, writer, Shakespeare’s guro. Purveyor and collector of cool stuff.