Cusco

Having got back from Colca Canyon, I stayed the night in Arequipa, and caught the 8.30pm bus to Cusco. It arrived at about six in the morning - so I headed straight for a cafe called El Bueno Pastor - which helps street kids - and yes - it was as good as it looks:

I wasn`t really sure what to expect from Cusco - being that everyone comes here to see Machu Picchu. I was expecting it to be a real tourist trap, and while there are some elements of that, it`s got a lot going for it.

Here`s some photo`s:
It reminds me a lot of Spain - and the Spanish influence is fairly obvious.

I did the religious circuit - as they call it here - but you can´t take photo`s in any of the places. I did however take a few photo`s of some of the Inca remains. Cusco is actually built on an Inca town, and some of the buildings here are built on top of the Inca foundations.

Here`s a good example - the bottom section is Inca, the top section is Spanish:

And here`s some Inca Ruin thingies (not quite sure what it was but it was OK - and the weather was nice :-)
Met up with Cristian and his wife who are from Romania who I met on the Colca tour and we had dinner in Cusco. We ended up drinking Coca Beer which is a bit like a non-gassy cider. It was a bit odd but really refreshing. It rained while we were eating, and by rain I mean torrential. Luckily it stopped by the time we`d eaten.

Here´s a shot of the beer menu at the place we were at - weird or what:

Colca Canyon

I was originally going to stay in Arequipa for three nights, but Alexandra at the hostel kindly let me push back my third night so I could do the two day tour of the Colca Canyon. It`s one of the deepest canyons in the world, and is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

You can DIY trips, but I decided to take a tour to speed things up, and to get to meet some people - which really worked out, because there were some great people on the tour. Having now come back - it was an excellent trip, and I`d definitely recommend it. I booked with Colonial in Arequipa - and Dina the guide was excellent.

You start early in the morning, and head out to the highest point of the trip which is almost 5000 meters. Before you get there, they stop so everyone can drink Mate De Coca - Coca Tea. Basically leaves from the coca tree in hot water. Yep - the ones they make cocaine from.

It tasted good - a bit like green tea - just a bit stronger. Here`s Julian, myself, and Mark enjoying a coca tea and some sunshine.

As the area is a nature reserve, there`s plenty of wild life, including Alpaca`s, Llama`s, and we even saw a wild fox. Here`s a few pics:

And here`s one from the 4,900 high point:

I`ve never suffered from altitude sickness - and felt OK when we got to the top. Except I set off walking a bit too fast and suddenly felt dizzy and thought I was going to puke and pass out. You have to take it real slow at this height. I also got a light headache going down the other side - but it soon passed.

One of the tires of the van blew out, and I took this pic of my bag on the roof of the truck:

It`s down hill all the way to the town of Chivay, where we had lunch. A side trip to the hot springs for a soak (they`re 38 degrees Celsius) and then it was off to the "folkloric dancing evening".

We`d had a few laughs about the folkloric evening and how touristy it would be - but it was actually really great (although the food was not that good). They had traditional music and dance - with one dance about a husband who treats his wife badly, then gets malaria (falling to the ground shaking). The wife then gets her revenge, before deciding to look after him. He gets well, picks her up, and carries her across the room, before finishing with a dance.

To my horror, the lady grabbed my hand, dragged me up, and I had to take the place of the guy in the dance - including falling to the floor shaking with malaria, and then picking her up and carrying her across the room. Sadly, my camera was in my pocket - but here`s a pic of me with the lady and man, and a few of the band. I was really impressed with the band - they were actually awesome musicians - they must be they probably do this every night - but what really impressed me was that they all played every instrument - I counted about six or seven.

All danced out:

The next morning it was a stupidly early start, as we headed off to see the Condor`s. It was nesting season, and we only saw one - but still - it was an incredible sight. I managed one really bad photo before it went into the Canyon, but we also got some great pics of the canyon and the area - I took loads of photo`s so this is only a sample.

The river on this one is 1 kilometer straight down.


The terraces you can see in this next photo were built by the Inca`s - to make sure they got the water running correctly, they`d make a map on a piece of rock and try it out first - clever idea - the Inca`s must have been great Project Managers - if you fail to plan - you plan to fail :-)

Here´s one of the map:


Here`s a close up:
Finally - here`s a picture of me standing on the very edge of a 900 meter vertical drop - awesome!
Well - that`s it for now. I`m hoping to catch up with some of the guy`s on the tour next week - which will be good.

The Road To Arequipa...

Having had a great day in Lima hanging out with Renee, Jen, Alistair, and some other guy´s from the hostel, I got the taxi to the coach station in time to get the 7.30pm overnight sleeper to Arequipa.

The first part of the journey was on the famous Pan-Americana Highway - which is the world`s longest road - at nearly 30,000 miles. The only problem was - it was dark, so there wasn´t much to see.

Coaches are the way to go in South America if you want cheap transport across long distances - the only problem is they have an appalling safety record and accident`s are common. So I booked with the safest company in Peru - just to be on the safe side.

It took 15 hours to do the jounrey - non stop (they have two drivers who take it in turns) and they serve food (containing more meat - which I ate but didn´t enjoy) and play movies. They also have a game of bingo to win a return ticket - but it was all in Spanish so I quickly gave up. I managed about an hour`s sleep all told - but it was fun to watch the scenery go by through the front window of the top deck of the bus.

The terrain was mainly mountainous desert, and the bus takes so long because the road has to wind through the mountains.

At 11am the next day - we pulled into Arequipa.

I must say my first impressions were not great. The town is heavily industrialized, and we drove through the industrial part of the city on the way in. Having spent some time here - it`s actually a great place to hang out for a few days.

Here`s some pictures of the Plaza Amera (Mayor`s Plaza - every town seems to have one):

Arequipa is known as the "The White City" because the main buildings are built of a white volcanic rock which is common in the area. It`s certainly picturesque - but there`s another side to Arequipa. Part of it`s beauty are the volcanoes that literally hover over the town, bringing with them not just the fear of an eruption, but earthquakes. The last one was in 2001, and the next one is due in the next 5 to 10 years - add to this the fact that the volcanoes are due to erupt at some point in the near future.

Here`s some pics of the volcanoes:

There doesn`t seem to be much of a "travelers scene" here, so I took a few days out checking out the sites.

The main draws - apart from the UNESCO World Heritage Site main square - are the Juanita Museum and The Santa Catalina Monastery.

The Inca`s were active in this area over 500 years ago, and believed that the mountains were god`s. In times of trouble (e.g. drought or earthquake), they would sacrifice children to the mountain, usually a girl, usually aged around 12 to 14. Juanita was sacrificed and buried at the top of Mount Ampato - one of the mountains near here. You couldn´t take pictures (seems fair enough) - and all of the information was presented sympathetically, before they took you to see the mummy Junaita. Anyone who is interested can find out more here.

The second main draw is The Santa Catalina Monastery where nuns still live. The main part of the monastery is now open to visitors (paying for the bit you can´t look around). It`s a city within a city, with streets which have their own names. It took a good couple of hours to walk around.

Here`s some pictures:

Legend has it that the nuns who first went to the monastery lived a life of leisure and luxury, so they had to send in a tough nun to whip them all into shape. It didn`t mention anything along those lines in the guide book - but it was a fun story anyway.

Here`s a good one of slightly confused looking man with flowers on his head - which is probably what happens if you hang around nuns for too long :-)

You can find out more about Arequipa here.

Lima - Part 2

Well - I´ve just had two fantastic days in Lima. Got chatting to Renee at breakfast and we decided to take a run into the old part of town and see if the Plaza Amera was open - as it was closed due to the Apec Conference the other day I was there. Renee`s from Canada - OK - I won´t make any reference to Rush...

We caught the Collectivo into town and then had a look around. The square was sealed off, but you could walk around the outside of it - it reminded me a lot of Casablanca, with the archways to save having to walk in the sun. The main building is the Presidential Palace, with the Cathedral and Archbishops house on the other side. The Cathedral was closed all of the days I was there so I never got a chance to look in - but the rest of the churches were OK so there probably wasn´t much to see.

We then visited the Franciscan Monastery, church, and catacomb museum. It was really impressive - although they didn´t allow people to take photo`s (did they Renee? :-). They had a really large collection of books - a few of the books were for singing chant from and were about four feet by three feet in size. Under the monastery is the place they buried the bodies, and they reckon there`s the bones of about 25,000 people - which some archaeologist has sorted and counted. They even had a well that was 30 feet deep and full of bones. It was gruesome and cool all at the same time.

I`d been saying that I`d not seen much of the local food in Lima, and Renee suggested we tried the Cerviche - basically raw fish in lemon and lime juice, with some herbs and stuff. Luckily (for me) Renee speaks perfect Spanish, so was able to get a local recommendation from a policeman.

Here`s a pic of us in this tiny place with huge plates of food, and another one of the actual food. The stuff on the left is corn - the pieces of corn here are the biggest I`ve seen. The orange stuff on the right is sweet potato mash, and the rest is raw fish - crab, something I couldn´t identify but which was great, large prawns, squid, calamari rings. It was awesome. Really fresh - and fairly cheap.
















After lunch we headed off to the Inquisition Museum - the Spanish tortured the Peruvians on and off for 250 years if they did stuff they didn´t like - you can´t really imagine it going on for that long. All of the methods were totally gruesome, and very imaginative. Basically - you always ended up confessing, and then got killed in the main square. It´s amazing the church is still so popular after all of that. The tour was in Spanish - and I was able to work some of it out from the pictures and the rest Renee filled me in on.

A quick wander around, and we found ourselves in St Martin`s square. Some guy from the City wanted to honour his wife, so had a statue made of her - asking for a ring of flames around her head. As the Peruvian word for Llama is very similar the artist got confused and decided to check if they really did want a Llama. The guy told him to just get on with it, so he stuck a Llama on her head. Here´s a great pick of the statue and said Llama:



Having had a good look around we headed back to Miraflores. In the interests of keeping the food theme, we walked down to the sea and had Sushi - followed by Pisco Sour - which is a cocktail made from rubbish wine which is distilled into Brandy and then made into a cocktail. It´s a bit like a Margareta - you can read all about it here.

It was late when we got back - and I headed straight to bed and slept solidly for an hour, and then woke up and lay awake all night. I should have said in my previous blog that I´ve hardly slept since I left London - although I don´t feel tired at all. Not sure what`s going on - but it`ll be interesting to see what happens with the sleep thing - I´ll keep you updated for all of you who`ve had to endure my constant sleep updates :-).

I got up fairly early, had breakfast, and then headed to the coach station to buy a coach ticket for my next destination. A quick Starbucks, and I headed back to the place to meet Renee and a load of other people staying at the place for lunch. We ordered - the food came - and mine had chicken on it. So I ate it. It was OK I suppose. But the fish and even more Pisco Sour was great.

Hung around for a bit having a drink, and then said goodbye to everyone and headed off.

Well - that`s it for know - I´ll be off the radar for a while, but will return...just trying to leave it on a cliff hanger :-).

Take care.

The Travel Experience

Thought I´d do a quick update on how things are going and how I´m feeling about things. Barcelona was a great start to the trip, and it was good to have a few days in London. But now I´m here it feels like the adventure has really started. I´ve had a great few days, more of which is above.

I do wish I´d had time to learn some more Spanish - mine is less than basic, and I fell bad having to rely so much on other peoples English. Everyone who´s been here did tell me to get lessons, but I just didn´t have time. I´m thinking of taking an intensive lesson when I get to higher altitudes and need to just do nothing.

While working 70 / 80 hour weeks for the last six weeks or so meant I didn´t have time to plan a route, on the real plus side it´s made everything really flexible, and I really do feel like I can do whatever I want.

I´ve also found that I´ve really slowed down - I´m not rushing about so much, and am just taking things as they come. Which is fun.

I know that on a one or two week trip I´m probably the worst person to be with because I just want to see and do everything. But now I have the luxury of time, and even though I´ve slowed down a lot, I´m still getting to see what I want. I do feel incredibly relaxed. After the intensity of the past year it´s a complete change and I´m really enjoying it.

I´m not home sick, and I´m not suffering from culture shock (although as I write this I´m at a fairly high altitude and feel slightly stoned :-).

I´m sure that there are going to be some tough days - it all goes with the territory and is part of the experience - but so far everything is going great.

I do miss home a little - particularly The Dude - he has so much energy and life. I was chatting to Renee about The Dude after we saw a fair ride, and was saying how he´d love something like that - it´s moments like that when you really miss people.

All of my stuff is working out well - a lot of people have commented on how light I`m traveling and how small my bag is. The only thing I`m not sure about are the sport's sandals. They take up about 10% of the of the bag and weigh about 600grams, and I´ve not used them yet. I even bought some Jangles for dirty showers and to wear around the hostels. I might post them back from Oz - or give them away - but I always imagined walking around South East Asia in them so the jury is out at the moment.

Everything else is working great - I might buy a cheap T-shirt as it was cold at night in Lima and I´m heading to about 4000 meters - but I´m going to see what happens.

I´ve taken the book ahead strategy, using Hostel World. My plan was just to score places as I went along, but I might just continue with this approach - particularly as we run up to Christmas and the New Year.

Did a bit of sewing today - no major problems - just making sure a velcro fasten didn´t come loose on a pair of trousers. I´m also washing stuff on a regular basis - which is less of a chore than I thought it would be.

So - to sum it all up - I´m having fun - really relaxed - and excited about what´s ahead - particularly as I don´t know where I´ll be next week!

P.S. Thanks to Lindon for prompting me to write this.

Lima

Had a slow start today. Woke at 5am and then dozed for a while. The place I´m at is noisy - I´m near the kithcen but had no problems with the ear plugs in.

Breakfast is included in the room price, and was served at 8am. It was great to catch up with the people who were staying there, swop notes and get info from people who´ve been to places everyone else is planning to visit. It was a fun start to the day - and it´ll be interesting to catch up with people tomorrow.

I then had a wander along to the ruins in Miraflora, which are around the corner from the place. Here´s a few pictures - including one of yours truly - just to prove I am travelling and not in prison on a 1 year jail sentence :-)

They performed human sacrifices at this place - which was kind of creepy.

I then caught the local bus service (basically a minibus that picks up and drop off anywhere on a defined route). It´s about 7km between Miraflores (the posh bit of town) and central Lima (the other OK bit of town). On a slight point of amusement, the steering rack of the minibus was clearly broken, and we weaved all the way as the guy tried to control the bus.

I´m really struggling to describe Peru (or the small bit I´ve seen). Lima at least seems to be split into three bits:

Miraflores - the posh bit of town - reasonably safe to walk around - with a large Marriot down the road where President Bush is staying.
Central Lima - Which is a slightly less safe place, which is the commercial and Federal centre.
The Rest - Which is where the more than 50% of people in Lima who are below the poverty line live. I did go into one of these areas on the above weaving minibus, and you could sense the change as the bus went over a bridge from Central Lima into The Rest.

Lima is hosting the APEC summit - which is causing mayhem. Most of the central area, and a lot of Miraflores are sealed off - inlcuding just about all of the main sites. I asked when it would be open and I was told an hour. Having found this out, I decided to go to a Vege / Vegan restaurant just down from the main area - it was a weird experience.

First - no menu.

I sat waiting for ages, and then they brought this fantastic soup.

Then - nothing for ages - and they brough a plate of rice with veg and what looked, felt, and tasted like meat. It definitely wasn´t Tofu or Satan - I´ve had both - so not sure what it was - but the food was great.

Then I went back to the main area and was told it was going to be open in about an hour.

So, I had a wander around Lima, including a quick look in one of the churches. Here´s some pics of Lima:

This is in one of the buildings overlooking one of the main squares in central Lima:

This is one of the new bit of town where I´m staying - it couldn´t be more different than the rest of the place.

I went back to find out if the main area was open, and was told - come back in an hour. So I went and watched Quantam Of Solace. It was ok - Daniel Craig makes a great Bond - it just seems to lurch from set piece to set piece.

I then went back to see if the main area was open and was told an hour. So I gave up and headed back to Miraflores to find food. And then things got interesting.

I decided to find a seafood place, and asked a Taxi driver if he could take me, showing him where it was on the map - which of course he said he could. So we end up driving around, and he keeps stopping to ask people where to go. I could have driven my own way there - and it was obvious we were going wrong. He spoke no English - I speak no Spanish - so it was kind of hard to explain.

After about 15minutes we ended up at the police check point for the Marriot (Dubbya´s staying here) and he insisted that the Marriot was it. So I paid him and then had to walk back to the centre of town because it was too far to walk to the restaurant!

Well...that´s today - I´m planning an early night - or I was - there´s a great jazz band downstair so I might have a quick beer before heading back to the place.

Until next time...