My Solstice

Where I live in Park City, the summer solstice is happening today. Of course I know that it doesn’t always fall on June 21. For instance, this year it’s on June 20 for me and can go to June 22, while happening simultaneously for all of us. Weird, isn’t it? 

This variation is due to the difference between the calendar year and the Earth's orbit around the sun. As you astronomers know perfectly well, the summer solstice is the moment when the sun reaches its northernmost point from the equator. 

So why in the world do I celebrate it at 8:42 pm on June 20, while my friends in the European Community get it on June 21 at 4:42 am and the folks from Sydney, Australia enjoy it at its fullest on June 22 at 2:02 am? Just because it happens precisely at 2:42 am in Greenwich, and all the other places see it at their own respective local times! 

What else can I say? Obviously, that it’s going to be downhill from there in terms of daytime length, except of course for my friends living in the 32 countries located entirely or partially in the Southern Hemisphere. They can expect longer days! To make the matter even more complicated, thirteen of these countries straddle the equator, meaning that they’re in both Hemispheres.

As I was told when I was younger, life is complicated, so instead of wringing my hands, I wish everyone a good solstice, just make it summer or winter depending on where you live and how hot or cold you feel!

Geography lesson

On Sunday, I was riding the chairlift with a snowboarder from... Vladivostok!

This Russian guy was “just” visiting some friends in Florida and make a quick detour to Park City to check us out.

We talked and got 5 more minute conversation as the chair stopped for that amount of time on the way up.

He was surprised to know that I knew were Vladivostok was and I said that I know that this seaport was the entry of all used Japanese cars with left-hand-side steering wheels that would eventually find a new owner in Siberia.

He told me he had never ridden in Europe, but mostly went to Japan that is only one and a half hour flight from Vladivostok and he liked Hakuba 47, a resort I happened to know as I have skied there many years ago.

He also went helicopter riding at Kamchatka and would go to Sochi on occasions. When I asked him about his town, He went on to say that it was very windy and cold in winter, and that it was a heavy industry center with a lot of former USSR factories still shuttered...

Small world!

The most populated ski town in the world

To my knowledge, there is no larger ski town in the world, from the standpoint of total year-round residents than Park City, Utah.

Next in line would be Davos Switzerland with 11,500 inhabitants, then Whistler, Canada, at about 10,000 and both Chamonix, France and Kitzbühel, Austria with around 8,500 people each.

Our community of Park City has fuzzy boundaries, though. First, there is the incorporated City of Park City where I live with its 8,500 population that manage to sit in the middle of a developing sprawl, also using a Park City address.

So here you have it: The small, original city of Park City with its 8,500 people and its 84060 zip-code, surrounded by cluster of neighborhoods that are borrowing our Park City name for recognition and for boosting real-estate values, just with a slightly different zip-code, 84098.

Park City is also the name of the school district that serves the entire community. This surrounding area adds more than 17,000 people to our City population and when all is tallied, people who claim to be "Parkites" are about 26,000 strong.

Together, we're all part of Summit County, Utah. Our population represents two-third of the entire County that is around 40,000 year-round residents.

This is relatively underpopulated when I compare the 1,882 square miles of the country with the 1,695 square miles of Haute-Savoie, the French Department I was born in, and its 800,000 population!

Peru trip – Photographic nightmare

The curse of digital photography is that we end-up taking far too many pictures. Then after a trip, an event or a celebration, we're stuck with a pile of shots that we don't know what to do about. First, we need to sort them out.

A long, painful process that calls on the most brain, energy-intensive operation called “decision”. Then, if we have the chance (or the curse) to use a photo editing software, we need to clean up each photograph, re-frame it, light it up or make it more contrasted, and continue the sorting process as we discover more shots that don't deserve to be kept, as we go along.

I've been working on our Peru pictures since we left Lima and haven't finished the work yet, more than two weeks later. Of course, I haven't begun looking at my Peru videos. Now I need a vacation!

Peru trip - Return trip

American “legacy airlines” are consistently setting a very bad example when it comes to service. My last bad experience happended on...Around midnight, last night, my wife and I were booked to fly on United Airlines from Lima, Peru to Houston, Texas, in Economy Class Plus, for which we had paid extra.

First, as we were checking-in, we learned that our flight was first delayed and shortly thereafter that it had been canceled. We were then re-routed on Copa Airlines, through Panama departing later that morning and causing us to get home some eight hours later at home.

Of course, I was was then given the assurance by the United Airlines agent that we would get a set in Economy Class Plus, which didn't not happen as we found ourselves sitting at the very back of the aircraft. As we boarded the plane, I asked a flight attendant if we could be placed in a more forward section of the aircraft, but this was time wasted.

When I arrived in Houston, I went directly to customer service to complain that I didn't receive the extra service I had paid off. The customer service rep said he couldn't do anything in terms of refund, because United had no control over what Copa Airlines had done.

This clearly was not my problem, but United's with its faulty equipment that failed to provide me the service it sold me. I'll get this settled by contacting American Express tomorrow and by never, ever flying United again, unless, of course United makes me an offer I can't refuse!

Trip to Peru - Last day

Our last day in Peru was another bonus day in Cusco. In the morning we went shopping and completed the list of items we wanted to take home, find time to visit a few museums in the center of Cusco and were suddenly caught by a violent rainstorm that gave us little choice, but seek shelter under a succession of shallow entry doors along the narrow streets that were leading back to our hotel.

We were starting to get wet and the steep street were we had found refuge, turned soon into a thundering torrent. When cars passed by they would splash us to a point that we were now totally drenched. With minutes left before our pick-up back to the airport to arrive at the hotel, we ran as fast as we could back to the Quinta San Blas, got towels to dry ourselves, changed clothes and in a matter of minutes were driven to the Cusco airport.

Our plane to Lima was a bit delayed, but we didn't worry much about it, as our layover time before departing to the US was huge! When we got to Lima, we had dinner in a high visibility spot, inside the airport departure lounge, and did as much people-watching as was humanly possible since we had so much time to kill.

By 9:30 pm, we inquired about our flight to Houston, lined up like the rest of the passengers, only to be told one hour later that this flight would be canceled as the aircraft needed to take us back to Texas had to make an emergency landing in Costa Rica.

We were reassigned seats on Copa Airlines between Lima and Panama and a new itinerary was concocted that continued to Houston and Salt Lake, as this happens far too often. We were told that we would be home at 8:30 pm instead of the 1:30 pm we were counting on...

This awful change concluded a long day of varied events that reminded us that air travel is always peppered with all kinds of unpleasant surprises!

Peru trip - Machu Picchu

Finally the day of Machu Picchu had arrived! We left our hotel early to drive to the Ollantaytambo train station and catch the so-called Vistadome train departing to Aguas Calientes, the base location to the renowned site.

Even though we were sitting facing back in the train, we caught quite a few good sights... There, after disembarking we boarded a bus that drove us up to the actual Machu Picchu archaeological site through a zigzagging, unpaved mountain road dangerously narrow, with plunging views over the valley, an ultra-steep 4,200 feet below.

When we got there, along with an overbearing multitude of tourists (they were 400,000 visitors in 2004!), we took the tour of the ruins, listen to our guide story, took as many photographs as we could, had lunch in a tourist-food restaurant processor and then used up our precious remaining time to hike up to the “Inca Bridge” a spooky passage carved into the rock to protect the access of the ancient city.

The place is listed as one of the new seven wonders of the world and is also on Unesco's World Cultural Heritage sites list. The return trip starting with “undoing” what we had done in the morning, namely riding the bus on the never-ending hairpin turns road.

A modern gondola or better yet – a buried funicular - would be an excellent idea to replace this dangerous and polluting mean of transportation; this is something that has been considered and still is viewed – for no good reason – as a controversial issue!

When we go to the bottom, we spent sometime visiting the rather ugly looking agglomeration of Aguas Calientes below; a worst version of Chamonix, at the base of a major tourist attraction. Then, it was back on the train for a long trek back to Cusco where we arrived around 9 pm, totally exhausted.

Fortunately we had no longer any trace of altitude sickness and were fortunate to stay, once more, at our favorite Cusco hotel, the Quinta San Blas!

Peru trip - The Sacred Valley

We left reasonably early in the morning to explore what is called “the Sacred Valley” that lay just below Cusco and that wind its way down through what is called “the Inca's Balcony”, in Chinchero, a picturesque spot with some impressive views, where a dozen families still clings to the their traditional customs.

We were shown the ancestral way in which they process the wool, and get those vivid colors in their textiles. This stop was incredibly well staged, interesting and so informative that it may stay as one of the key highlights of our entire trip. We fell under the spell and bought some of their pieces.

Afterward, we continued down to Ollantaytambo, one of the most monumental architectural complexes of the ancient Inca Empire, which also happened to be one of the few places where the Spanish conquistadors lost a major battle.

Very well known for its “andenes” (agricultural terraces dug into the mountain slopes), Ollantaytambo served both as a strong fortress and a temple. Another great opportunity to come close and personal to the incredible stone masonry technique mastered by the Incas.

Then, we walked around the town of Ollantaytambo, “a unique living Inca town” standing example as the best surviving example of Inca city planning, with its narrow cobblestone streets that have been continuously inhabited since the 13th century. Our guide also share with us the Incas creed, or Chakana, that said it all in three key principles; “Don't lie, don't steal, don't be lazy.” That one made a big impression on me!

Our hotel for the night was the San Agustin Monasterio de la Recoleta. a charming hotel, planted in the middle of nowhere in Urubamba, with poorly trained personnel. We walked through the poor town of Urubamba in the afternoon, took refuge inside its covered market to escape a rain-shower and walked back to our hotel.

Our health and appetite were still in recovery mode...

Peru trip - Cusco

From the get go, Cusco has it all. It is a picturesque place cradled into the surrounding mountains with many historical buildings dating back from the colonial era, the Inca artifacts having been demolished by the Spaniards and their jigsaw puzzle wall “recycled” into cathedrals.

The city, which is on the Unesco World Cultural Heritage list, is half a million strong, quite large for a tourist resort town, and spreads its neighborhoods all around its surrounding hilltops. We first explored the city on our own and fell under its charm. In the afternoon, we did the official tour with our Belgian friends.

The tour took us to the Koricancha Temple, an old Incan palace and main center for the worship of the sun god, Inti. Once the Spanish conquered Peru, the Dominican order built Santo Domingo, a spectacular church over this temple’s foundations.

We followed with the the Main Square, and then the adventure continued at the Sacsayhuaman Fortress (pronounced “sexy woman”) built of enormous stone blocks expertly carved to fit like a perfect jigsaw puzzle, Inca stule, these ruins were strategically located at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Cusco and offering a superb view of the city.

Unfortunately, half-way into the tour, we got drenched by a sudden rain shower! In spite of this, the tour continued with visits to three archaeological sites: Qenko, Puca-Pucara, and Tambomachay, that all were important religious and administrative centers for the Incas. Finally we visited an art workshop named Inkas Expresion, presenting silversmith and wood painting artists.

At night, we returned to our hotel in Cusco, the Quinta San Blas, steps from the center of town and run to perfection by Sandra, its manager. In the evening we discovered the “Cicciolina”, a terrific tapas bar that far exceeded our expectations. That night, we were almost through with our altitude-sickness problems and slept much, much better!

Peru trip - Puno to Cusco

This was a day we were all dreading as it entailed a 10 hour bus journey from Lake Titicaca to Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas. The good news was that the bus was more spacious as well as much more comfortable than the previous vehicle we had between Colca Canyon and Puno.

They were also many stops on the way to break the possible boredom. We began by visiting Andahuaylillas, a town famous for its very unique 17th century church boasting a gaudy baroque interior. We also stopped to visit the Racchi ruins, known as "The Temple of God Wiracocha".

Just to get another serving of high altitude, we climbed to 14,300 feet to La Raya, the highest point on the road between Cusco and Puno, a place surrounded by glacier-covered high peaks and very thin air that none of the passengers were really looking for. This was another typical place for many photo opportunities among high-mountains and merchants trying to sell their alpaca woolen designs.

We finally got to Cusco without having suffered too much from what could seem like a horrible journey at the outset. The hotel, Quinta San Blas, we went to was very charming but had no windows which made us feel a bit claustrophobic.

That night marked another improvement for us as we were beginning to get acclimated to the high altitude, slept much better and took control of our headaches and nausea more thanks to swallowing ibuprofen pills, more so than chewing coca leaves. We should have done it right from the start!

Peru trip – Lake Titicaca

Like zombies, we boarded the bus to Lake Titicaca (which name allegedly stands for “rock puma”) for a day that would proved to be an opportunity for discovery and wonderment. We began with boarding one of these 25 or so, passenger boats, that take tourists over the lake and then sail over to the famous Uros Islands, that are a set of man-made floating islands, made out of totoro reed, on the edges of the Lake Titicaca National Reserve.

The lake is located at almost 13,000 feet (3950 meters), not an elevation the doctor would order for me at this particular time. When we got to these Uros islands, we where meet the islanders (they're now Aymara Indians) who ambushed us into their huts and literally trapped us inside to make us buy their handicraft.

These guys knew how to round up tourist and rightly so since they were hunters and gatherers before, and descendants of the first altiplano inhabitants. What was remarkable was the way they build the totora reed platforms, live on them and replace them every 40 years or so. To a certain degree, the highly staged, mercantile side of the visit felt fake and just like the typical tourist trap.

Apparently, everywhere we went during the entire trip, guides get a piece of the action if the tourists they bring along buy something. When we were done with the islanders, we were taken to nearby Taquile Island, where the culture allegedly dates back to pre-Incan times. These islanders, on “terra ferma” this time, still live according to the traditions and beliefs of their ancestors and are world renowned for their remarkable outfits and incredible fabrics.

We were told that Unesco has declared Taquile Island's textile as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, for whatever that's worth. We were showed some demonstration of fabrication of soaps from local plants that can be used for washing everything from laundry to hair and are said to prevent white hair and baldness (I should have tried it earlier on!)

We were also treated to a dance by the locals while we were all having lunch on the island. What was the most remarkable to me, was the fact that this was the only tourist place without one element of mechanized transportation in sight. Back at the same hotel, even though our appetite was still down to zero, I was feeling a little better and managed to sleep a few hours that night, sans oxygen. Hope was definitely returning to me!

Peru trip - Colca Canyon

The day would prove to be a long exhausting bus trip, after we visited Colca Canyon and try to catch a glimpse of the famous condor sucking up thermals on the edge of a abyss at times more than 13,000 feet (4000 meters) deep.

We waited and waited, missed a few and then, César took us on a side trip farther away from the crowds and then we saw a few of the legendary Andean birds. All big, impressive and effortless in performing their cleaning work! After that main sight, the trip was long, uncomfortable and endless in a cramped bus and we arrived in Puno late and completely exhausted.

Our guide César had consistently remained a piece of work for the duration of his guiding assignment with us. All day, we hovered between 13 and 15,000 feet and this continued dose of extreme high elevations wasn't not helping our general discomfort. Before we reached Puno, we crossed the town of Jayllihuaya and were treated to its crowded thoroughfare with similar stores and businesses all grouped together in ways we had never seen before...

That night, we were put up into a pretentious hotel, the Jose Antonio, on the outskirts of town and we were so sick that we even took some oxygen in an attempt to revive us with little positive effect. Clearly, I was at a point where I was hitting the deep end.

Again, I couldn't sleep at all (Puno is still at 13,000 feet!) and was helped in this by some dogs barking all night just under our windows overlooking the beautiful Lake Titicaca. I felt so bad during that night that I was seriously thinking about going home the next day...

Peru trip - Chivay

Early that morning, it was the turn of our new guide César, to pick us up at the hotel to take us to Chivay, our final destination for the day. First, he gave us a complete lecture about the merits of chewing coca leaves in order to fight altitude sickness.

His entire speech on the subject took at least one full hour. I tried with little enthusiasm, and perhaps (as a doubter) this was the placebo effect, but it wouldn't work miracles on me as I was soon to find out. That day involved a lot of climbing in the minibus, to a top elevation of 16,109 feet.

We saw vicunas roaming free at these high altitudes, froze our butts and were almost ready to touch the nearby glaciers coming out of the surrounding 20,000 feet (6000 meters) peaks. We went through Yura Village, the Aguada Blanca National Reserve and the Pampa Cañahuas before making it to the little town of Chivay located around 12,000 feet.

That day, we traveled along with a group of gregarious Belgian tourists and we had a wonderful time in terms of our battling symptoms of nausea, headaches and shortness of breath. The hotel we had that night was the Anrawa Colca and both my wife and I were both stricken by a bad case of altitude sickness. In retrospect, we shouldn't have drank alcohol the nights before and stayed away from coffee.

While my wife was able to sleep some, I just couldn't do it as my body seemed to have lost the natural ability to fall asleep; as soon as I would start losing consciousness, I would gasp for air and wake up... Great, wonderful hotel, but terrible stay because of “soroche” the Quechua's name for the ailment. ,

Peru trip - Arequipa

Our day started early at 4 am by our various alarms set the night before and a phone call from the hotel reception, letting us know that our missing luggage had been returned to us.

We were quite relieved, went down to the lobby, had a cup of coffee and chatted with César Melendez, the front desk employee, who told us he had learned English over 4 seasons working at Deer Valley Resort; small world indeed!

The Condor Travel crew picked us up on time and drove us to the airport at 5 am, the city was filled with traffic as the disco and bars were just closing after a busy night... Our flight to Arequipa, south of Lima, was on LAN, an airline we had never taken before.

The town of Arequipa, founded in 1540 is about 1 million strong, stands smack in the middle of the Atacama Desert the largest in the continent and driest non-polar desert in the world and is just below three volcanoes that are about 18,000 feet tall.

There, we visited the Ciudad Blanca (the city center) The historic downtown is almost totally built out of sillar, a white volcanic stone, that gives the city its name. We took a tour of the Main Square and its colonial buildings, the Church of the Society of Jesus with its mix of baroque art and Spanish churrigueresque baroque from the XVII century, along with some colorful fresco paintings at the San Ignacio Dome, known as America’s Sistine Chapel.

We also toured the Santa Catalina Convent, that is more a XVI century citadel than a cloistered convent. We had a wonderful dinner at Zig-Zag, a local restaurant, ran by a Swiss fellow from Neuchâtel. The place and the food were divine.

We stayed in a picturesque but very noisy hotel, the San Agustin Posada del Monasterio, near the local night clubs on a busy Saturday night. I could sleep, but my wife couldn't. I wish we were still 20 and could get all worked out at the nearby disco! melendezces01.87@gmail.com

Peru trip - Lima

We spent the morning doing the necessary chores, like changing money, getting cell phone service and orienting ourselves around our hotel. One of the beauty of that trip, except for the late night arrival, was the total absence of jet-lag. Only one hour difference from home!

The Miraflores district is apparently the best area of the 10 million people city that Lima is today and the Pacific coast bordering it is pretty nice. In the afternoon, it was time for our first guided tour. We were just the two of us with our guide, and visited the colonial section of Lima, went around the Main Square, where the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral, the Archbishop’s Palace and the Metropolitan City Hall are located.

These are historic buildings that somehow never get totally destroyed by the some of the worst earthquakes the city endured over the years. Since Catholicism played such an important role in imposing the Spanish colonial culture, we got treated by the visit of the Santo Domingo church and monastery, a XVII century jewel, listed as part of Unesco's cultural heritage.

We saw a few singular sights on the way, like folks being expelled from their apartments, with all of their belonging thrown in the street, or like certain popular districts, dealing in specialized trade like construction materials, for example. We concluded our tour day by visiting the Larco Museum, a private collection that hold an impressive array of treasures from Old Peru, and makes visitors discover, understand and enjoy more than five thousand years of ancient history through more than 45,000 pieces on display.

At night, tired and famished, we returned to the ocean and joined the local weekend crowds for an earthy dinner in a popular spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean...

First trip to South America...

Even though I always wanted to, I had never traveled to that continent before. Some normal anxiety but also a lot of anticipation for a trip planned back in July.

We flew from Salt Lake City to Lima via Houston and, true to its reputation (at least in my mind), United Airlines managed to lose one bag during the transfer. That meant some justification for my apprehension.

Driving from the airport to our hotel, in the Miraflores area of town was a bit spooky and reminded us justly that we were in a developing nation, not a spoiled place like Park City.

The difference is of course, striking; Peru is the same size as Tchad, Niger or South Africa (twice that of France), has a per capita GDP of about $12,000, like Jordan or Tunisia and totals 30 million inhabitants, 10 million of which live in Lima, its capital city.

Could I live here?

Wherever I go, I like to ask myself that simple question; would I – or rather – could I live here? As far as the greater Charleston area of South Carolina is concerned, the answer is an unqualifed “no”. My reasons for this are twofold: First, I'm not a marine person and second, I hate any form of hot and sticky weather.

I love the beaches though, but only during the off season and for up four to five days maximum. So at least for now, you know why I'm so attached to my mountains and can resolve myself to leave them for long...

Daylight and latitude

I always was concerned about knowing the way latitude affects variations in daylight, especially in some ski resorts I happen to know. The research was excruciating but, at long last, I fond a precise way to calculate it, using longitude and latitude data.

This means that you'll end up spending more time basking in the sun in Taos (watch for melanoma), too many hours inside the pub in Whistler and Morzine (don't drink and ski) and just the right dosage of daylight time outside in Park City (we already knew it). Here it is for you all to see!