Tag: peru

I hate night buses

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that if sleeping was an Olympic sport, I would get gold every time. I slept through an earthquake in La Paz for heavens sake. I could probably fall asleep now as I sit at a small Ikea style table overlooking the pool just outside of Huacachina. Anyway, I think you get the idea that if you look up “Katy Boyce” in the dictionary, it would say “main occupation: sleeping”. Night buses in Peru however have proved to be somewhat of my Achilles’ Heel. Perhaps this is revenge for me claiming that I can sleep anywhere, ‘ha ha!’ thought the bus, ‘I’ll soon show you!’. The seats are not made for ample Western bottoms and if you’re anything over about 5’6 then good luck! Also they seem to insist on making the leg rests out of this awful plastic which isn’t ideal when you’re travelling in heat, as you find yourself having to repeatedly unpeel your sweaty legs – YUM!

 

We were picked up in a timely fashion from our hostel in Puno and headed out to the suburbs to meet the larger bus which was to take us to Arequipa. In true South American fashion nobody was telling anybody what was going on and so all the people going to Arequipa and all the people going to Cusco found themselves in front of just one bus, but planning to go in completely separate directions. As it transpires, when we got onto the bus it was then that the guide decided to inform us that the bus would go about 4 hours towards Cusco (away from the road to Arequipa), and then those travelling to Arequipa would change buses and go all the way back down. Fantastic. So now not only would we be able to get no sleep but we would also get to be interrupted half way through our journey! It turns out that reason for this is that those travelling to Arequipa meet the bus that has departed from Cusco and so it means they only have to run 2 buses rather than 3. I’ve had only good things to say about Peru Hop up until now but honestly for the price we paid, it hasn’t been half as good as it has claimed to be. The seats recline just not quite enough for you to get comfortable (not like our lovely El Dorado bus in Bolivia ❤ ) and there aren’t always USB chargers on every bus like they claim. It’s nice to have an English speaking guide on board but I think knowing what we know now, we wouldn’t use them again.

 

Arriving in Arequipa our lovely AirBnb host Rosa-Luz had advised us that checking in at 5am wouldn’t be a problem, for which we will be eternally grateful. Once again however, Peru Hop had other plans. We stepped off the bus, groggy and grumpy and ready for a nice long kip, and were promptly shown to our minibus and taken to our AirBnB. Just kidding, we were made to wait 45 minutes in the dark with no apology and no one telling us what was going on. One of the guides did seem to be getting arsey with someone on the phone but at no point did she stop to communicate with us just what was going on. When a minivan did eventually turn up, the driver and his companion spent a good further 10 minutes chatting away outside the van while we got more and more frustrated. This wasn’t helped by the woman next to me saying “this is just how it is in South America, just calm down”. I’m not sure that ever in the history of someone telling someone to calm down has it ever actually resulted in that person calming down, in fact it often, as in this case, has the opposite effect. The rage was palpable but as I am a calm natured person and rarely lose my temper (*cough*) I chose not to punch her in the face and we were soon underway. We dropped off a few of our fellow travellers and then the driver decided to stop at a random doorway, get out of the van and proceed to have a further 10 minute discussion. Anyway, we finally arrived at the AirBnB at around 6:30am, a good 1h30 minutes after we had arrived in Arequipa. Not great. I fired off an e-mail to PeruHop to complain and to their credit I did receive a response from one of the owners but it was very cut and paste, oh well, enough complaining, time to enjoy Arequipa!

 

As is tradition post-nightbus, Dave went for a well needed nap and I stayed up and tried to get the TV to work. Our AirBnB was located to the North of the city just outside of the main tourist area next to a beautiful green park and with cracking views of two of the city’s Volcanoes: Misti and Chachani. Luckily both are closely monitored in case of eruptions so we felt very safe. Following Dave’s awakening we popped down to the town centre for a mooch around and discovered the beautiful Plaza de Armas, with towering palm trees and the white volcanic buildings, it firmly shoved Sucre out of the way, claiming the top spot for most beautiful city (sorry Sucre, still love you for dinosaurs though.) Groceries acquired and still feeling a little worse for wear we headed back to the flat, settled down with a mountain of nachos and spent the rest of the evening exploring exactly what there was to do in the city.

The answer is, not that much really. The main pull of Arequipa is the nearby Colca Canyon, the second deepest Canyon in the world and one of the best viewing points for spotting the endangered Andean Condors in the wild. We did however manage to find a free walking tour and so normal service resumed. We popped along to the Las Gringas restaurant meeting point and were greeted by our delightful guide whose name has unfortunately escaped us (Dave thinks it was Juan, I said that was racist). He was certainly one of the best guides we’ve had in our time in South America, with exceptional English and a flamboyant style, he took us round the city and explained the history of Arequipa. With almost year round late spring/early summer temperatures, it attracts a lot of Europeans and there seemed to be French people everywhere. The upside of this is that we consumed a lot of tasty crepes during our time there. We also found out that evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory (the space one, not the awful TV show) was uncovered in the Boyden Observatory just outside of the city, so that’s pretty darn cool! We finished our walking tour at a rooftop bar just before sunset and spent a bit of time taking it all in before heading back to Las Gringas for a pizza and a beer. Or at least we would have ordered a beer if it was possible to have anything but craft beer in Arequipa. As an aside, they do have various different ciders which are brewed locally so that was a nice treat, but to be perfectly honest, sometimes you just want a beer. A normal pilsner with no frills and no inflated price tag. Sorry it seems this is turning into the agony aunt blog post, I’m not ungrateful I promise, I fully appreciate just how wonderful an opportunity it is that we have to be travelling like this…….but……beer!

Aside from a beautiful main square and excellent walking tours, another of Arequipa’s main tourist attractions is the fabulous Mundo Alpaca or Alpaca World! I think the use of the word World here is probably slightly hyperbolic as it’s more of a shed with a small field filled with llamas and alpacas. The guide gave us a quick tour in v-e-r-y s-l-o-w and v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r Spanish and we had a chance to feed the llamas and get up close and personal with the machinery used to process the wool, which was really interesting. We could have taken the opportunity to see yet more traditional weaving patterns but if I never see another one of those, it will be too soon. After visiting Alpaca “World” we one again trotted off into town to see another one of Arequipa’s claims to fame: Juanita. Juanita is a perfectly preserved ice mummy, killed between 1450 and 1480, when she was between 12-15 years old, as a human sacrifice to the Ampato volcano god by the Incas. Her skin, teeth, hair, organs and blood are remarkably well preserved. Sadly for preservation reasons, we didn’t get to see Juanita in the flesh (sorry) but we did get to see another equally impressive mummy – Sarita. She’s not quite as well preserved as Juanita but it was still really interesting. Our tour guide spoke very good English and explained all about the different artefacts that were found surrounding her before we finally stepped into a freezing cold room to see Sarita herself. I think I probably could have stayed there all day staring into those empty sockets but we were soon ushered out by the guide. It’s definitely worth a trip if you’re in Arequipa, especially if you’re there during the high season when you get to see Juanita herself, and there’s a short film at the start all about the discovery and the conditions surrounding it.

 

Feeling suitably peckish after our visit to Sarita, we headed off back to the AirBnB to do a bit more research about Colca Canyon tours. We booked with the Peru Hop recommended company, hoping that their tour group recommendations would be better than their ability to organise minivans and luckily for us we were correct. Paying around £40 for a 2D1N tour, we were picked up just down the road at around 7:30 and began our long drive through the Arequipan landscape, stopping at various points along the way to be sold tourist rubbish but also to see some more volcanoes. The landscape around Arequipa is almost prehistoric, the volcanic nature of the terrain provides for some excellent photo opportunities. Our group consisted of ourselves, a handful of Israelis, a Spanish couple, an older Swedish couple and a young family from New Zealand travelling with their 10 year old daughter. We got quite friendly with Rachel, Stu and Isabelle during those two days and were grateful for their company. Stu set up a pest control business that it turns out sold its products in the garden centre Dave used to work at – small world eh! Continuing on our journey, our guide Flor pointed out the mountain where Juanita was found and also the volcano just next to it which erupts on average around 24 times a day. The air was noticeably hazier and it was clear just how much the ash lingers and why when that volcano erupted in Iceland it proved to be such a big problem. We reached a high point of 4910m that day, not quite the highest we’ve been but close enough that we were starting to feel a little wobbly from the altitude. We quickly headed back down to the town of Chivay at around 3500m and headed to our third hot springs of the trip where we got chatting once again to Rachel and Stu about life, the universe, and everything. They were going to spend ~2 years travelling all around the world before probably heading back to New Zealand. Apparently 10 is the perfect age to do it because children still like their parents at this age, are old enough to appreciate it all, and haven’t turned into horrible teenagers yet, so that gave us some food for thought with regards to future plans.

After the hot springs our guide told us that during dinner we’d be treated to some more examples of local traditional dances and songs. ‘Oh goody’ we thought. It’s not that we’re heathens and can’t appreciate the subtleties of tradition and local culture but dear reader please understand that at this point this was about the 15th time we’d been ‘treated’ to these dances, and often they’re by bored looking teenagers who have obviously been bribed into it by the prospect of tips from the gringos. However, I have to say that on this occasion we were pleasantly mistaken. The couple performing the dances seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, or at least doing a very good job of faking it. The food was also really nice, especially as it was evident that this place exists solely for tourists. I even got to hit Stu with a bit of rope so I can’t complain. Isabelle was adamant that we get involved at every single opportunity but unfortunately as we are boring grown ups and would rather have a conversation she was often left to her own devices, twirling around the dance floor and generally having a jolly good time. After this we headed to our hotel which, given that we’d only paid £20 each for the whole thing, was better than expected. There was the usual 1 pillow, twin beds, no TV remote situation and Dave did manage to leave his fantastic flamingo swimming trunks behind (add that to the list of ‘things Dave has left in South America’) but it was clean and warm which is all you want really.

 

Up bright and early the next morning for our 5am departure, we were finally off to see the thing we’d come all this way to see: the condors. There’s a particular point along the Colca Canyon called the Condor Cross which is the best place to see them as they sit lower down in the Canyon waiting for the thermal currents to be warm enough to lift their huge 3m wingspan 15kg bodies up into the air. Before arriving to the cross, we took a short hike to a point slightly lower down to appreciate the full depth of the canyon, we also saw some dead cows which I thought was exceptionally cool but which Isabelle thought was gross. and was much more interested in asking us what our favourite brand of sock was, or what our favourite mythical creature was, or what our favourite colour was, or if we were a dog what breed of dog we would be, (Marks and Spencer, Dragon, Green, German Shepherd, in case you were wondering) before promptly dismissing our response and telling us what hers was. Kids are great. We then finally headed up to the Condor Cross where we only had to wait a short while before the flight of the concords (not the band) began. We saw about 10/12 in total which is really good luck as some people come all that way and don’t see any of them. In fact several groups arrived about an hour after we did and didn’t see a single one. It’s really very impressive to watch these huge great birds fly around and we were completely mesmerised as they flew incredibly close straight over our heads. They didn’t seemed to be fazed by the tourists at all and it’s clear why they attract so many visitors. After about an hour we made our way slowly back to the bus, but not before stopping to introduce Rachel and Isabelle to the wonders of the Granadilla, and managing to convince Isabelle that the seeds inside are in fact frogspawn and that we were eating baby frogs. I’m now starting to understanding why my older siblings and parents (ok, my Dad) spent all that time winding me up when I was younger, it really is quite fun. And so began our long drive back to Arequipa, we stopped in various places to take more pictures and look at more of the same jumpers/scarves/condor keyrings/penis masks that you see everywhere else in Peru but after the Condors, nothing really came close.

Arriving back in Arequipa we said our farewells to our Kiwi friends. We were going to be getting the same bus to Huacachina in a few days time so it wasn’t goodbye forever and Dave and I were particularly looking forward to more opportunities to answer Isabelle’s relentless questions. Our final day in Arequipa was fairly uneventful, apart from some particularly good pasta and a cracking pizza, there isn’t much that stands out as being particularly memorable. There was also a cat that looked remarkably like my brother’s cat Spock so I called him Spocky Dos (Spocky Two)  and also a lovely ginger cat. Yes ladies and gentlemen I did come all the way to South America just to talk about the cats I’ve seen. You should think yourself lucky, I think Dave’s going to strangle me if I stop to pet another dog in the street. Anyway, on to Huacachina…

An Englishman, a Kiwi and a Bolivian go out in to the desert.

Apologies for the delay in this blogs publishing, we’ve been staying in a series of places with very unreliable internet connections.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned during our time in South America, it’s to never take the UK’s small geography for granted. This is a lesson that was going to be hammered home very hard over the coming week.

Our bus to Uyuni from Sucre, winding westwards through the Andes to the vast Plain which hosts to the Bolivian Salt Flats took just over 8 hours. After the steep slopes on which most of the towns we’ve visited in South America sit, the pancake-flat Uyuni was something of a welcome change. That’s pretty much Uyuni’s only redeeming feature though, it’s a small, dirty and dusty block-layout town known, even amongst the locals, as something of a ****hole. The town used to be a hub for exporting the regions rich mineral deposits but now serves primarily as a jumping off point for tourists visiting the salt flats. The strong winds that blow off the salt flats through the city strew rubbish everywhere and cover every surface in a thin layer of grey-brown, salty dust.

After spending half an hour waiting for the receptionist to show up we finally checked in to our hotel for the night, a somewhat underwhelming twin room (we’d asked for a double, but this is South America; sometimes you just have to settled for a rough approximation of what you asked for (further note on this; this can go either way. At time of writing we’re sitting in a suite room where we’d only booked a double. Six of one…)) which looked like it was last renovated in the late 80’s. It was the best we could get for a reasonable price and for just 1 night it served its purpose. Due to Uyuni’s remote location and the high salt content in the soil, there is no agriculture or fresh-water supply and consequently the cost of living is very high; a cost reflected in the price of hotels, restaurants and other amenities.

The following morning, we headed over to the offices of Quechua4WD, our tour operator for our 3-day salt flats tour. Here we met our guide Nando, our Driver Daniel and Saatchi, a Kiwi of Sri Lankan heritage who now lives in Canada and spent much of the first day of our trip seeking my approval for the numerous (he claims) sexual conquests he’d made during his time in South America, and largely ignoring Katy.

We departed Uyuni about 10am, stopping first at the ‘train cemetery’ 3 miles to the south of the town. Back in the late 19th and early 20th Century, Uyuni was a major rail depot en-route to the Pacific, but with the collapse of the Bolivian mining industry in the early 1940’s the line fell in to disuse. The majority of the engines and rolling stock were dumped in sidings on the outskirts of Uyuni where they quickly fell in to disrepair, and were scavenged for any easily removed valuable parts. Today, the nearly 100 trains slowly rusting in to the desert landscape with the salt-filled winds whistling through them are covered in gravity and an unrelenting swarm of tourists. There’s a plan to turn this place in to a museum; the sooner the better.

After half an hour of wandering around the train cemetery, we jumped back in our 4×4 and set off towards the small village of Colchani, one of several towns on the shore of the Salt Lake where the locals are permitted to mine and refine the salt. As well as packing salt for wholesale and retail, the locals use densely-packed blocks of salt from deep within the salt flats to construct buildings and make ornaments and statuettes to sell to passing tourists. After a quick tour around one of the many family-run salt refineries we headed out on to the salt flats.

The Bolivian salt flats (Known as the Uyuni Salar) are the largest in the world, covering an area of over 4,000 square miles, or about half the size of Wales. The elevation change across the entire Salar is less than 1 meter, meaning that satellites use the large, flat reflective surface for calibrating their altitude sensors. During the rainy season the Salar is covered in a thin layer of water, turning it in to the world’s largest natural mirror, whilst in the dry season, the water evaporates leaving just the crystallised salt deposits. In the centre, the Salar is about 50cm more elevated than at the edges, meaning that as the wet season ends, the centre is dry but the edges are still submerged in a few centimetres of water. This makes March the optimal month to visit the Salar as you get to see the Salar in both states. Lucky Us!

We drove out about 3 miles on to the Salar, stopping at a small outpost made of salt bricks, inside of which is an expensive hotel and restaurant. The outpost also serves as a staging post for the Bolivian Leg of the Dakar Rally, which has been coming through the Salar since 2014. Whilst we had a mooch about attempting to identify all the flags on small outcrop by the outpost, Daniel prepared lunch for us. Refreshed, we set off again deeper in to the heart of the Salar. Once we found a spot without any other tour groups too nearby, we stopped to take advantage of the Salar’s unique landscape for ‘perspective’ pictures. Nando showed off his creativity with the perspective shots, having us climb wine bottles, ride llamas, walk along our own shoelaces like tight-ropes and hold miniature versions of each other.

After an hour we continued further until we found the edge of the area still covered by water. According to Nando, at this time of year the water recedes at a rate of several hundred meters a day. The plan was to stay out on the Salar until sunset taking photos with the reflection, but sadly the high winds negated the mirror effect. To kill the time, we popped on some wellies and set off in the direction of some Flamingos we could see in the distance, deciding after half an hour that that was probably a pretty dumb idea and making our way back. As the Sun began to set the wind dropped off and we were treated to an utterly awe-inspiring scene with the mountains in the background, the red and pink clouds and the setting sun reflected off the now perfectly tranquil water.

In the twilight we headed back to Uyuni, stopping off at a small local restaurant for a meal where Saatchi informed us of his genius plan to control the human population by banning vaccines. That night our accommodation was a charmingly decrepit hostel with a surprisingly comfortable bed. It would have been a perfectly good night’s sleep were it not for the loud Americans banging on the door to the hostel at 2:30am. Owing to political disagreements between Bolivia and the US, Americans have to pay about $160 to get a Bolivian Visa. Evidently this is not enough.

Groggy, sleep deprived and cursing the USA we staggered down for breakfast with an irritatingly refreshed Saatchi who hadn’t been bothered by the commotion in the night. Nando turned up soon after to pick us up and we jumped back in to the 4×4, this timed joined by a Japanese couple who were travelling with us to the Chilean border. I’d tell you what their names were, but I can’t remember. They spoke little English and no Spanish (Goodness knows how they’d made it so far through South America) and spent much of the day asleep in the back of the 4×4.

Our adventure for the day took us south from Uyuni on a long trek through the epic Bolivian Altiplano towards Eduardo Avaroa National Park which occupies the southwestern corner of the country by the Chilean and Argentinean borders. The journey took us first along paved roads for a couple of hundred kilometres before heading off-road in to the desert. For hours upon hours we meandered through valleys and ravines, past lakes and mountains, stopping every few hours or so to take stock of the breath-taking landscape. With each valley we went through the geology and wildlife changed dramatically. One moment we’d be in sandy desert, the next surrounded by Quinoa fields or massive, chaotic rock formations shaped by volcanic activity and sandstorms. We passed several lagoons filled with Flamingos, including the aptly named ‘red lagoon’, given a deep crimson colour by the high concentration of Algae fed by the hot springs pouring in to the lagoon from the surrounding mountains. This is a really beautiful part of the world, and its remoteness means it is largely untouched.

Towards the end of the day we climbed to nearly 5000m (but not quite over 5000m, which is good because our travel insurance isn’t valid above 5K), the weather closed in and it started to snow. We made our way through the mist and snow to the Sol De Manana fumerals; boiling pools of grey volcanic mud that give off a constant stream of thick, sulphurous gas. The snow, mist and high winds combined with the fumerals created an utterly other-worldly locale, truly like nothing else on earth.

Our final stop for the night was a small, remote village on the shore of large lagoon where we would be staying the night. Our accommodation was a simple shared dorm with the mattresses propped up on breeze-block bases. Comfortable enough, but at 4400m, the prolonged effects of high altitude made for a difficult night’s sleep. Before bed though, there was time to head down to the hot spring by the edge of the lagoon. Our remote location, complete lack of light pollution and high altitude meant that the sky was more densely packed with stars that any night sky we’d ever seen. The ark of the Milky way stretched over the lagoon in front of us all the way to the horizon and for over an hour Katy and I just lay there in the hot spring, gazing up at the stars, more relaxed than we could remember being in a long time.

The final day of our tour started with a trip south to the Chilean border to drop off our Japanese friends. The car park for the Bolivian immigration office is on the Chilean side of the border meaning that, technically, we entered Chile. Yay! The border between Chile and Bolivia marks the frontier between South America’s richest and poorest nations, despite this the border is marked only by a small ditch that is easily stepped over. Nando couldn’t help but make sly observations regarding border walls. Our business concluded we set off back north, following a similar pattern as the day before, stopping off at natural beauty spots as we worked our way back up to Uyuni. The final stop we made was at Laguna Negra on the edge of an ancient lava field. The lagoon is surrounded by tall, jagged orange rocks jutting out at all angles from lush green grasslands, grazed upon by flocks of Llamas. Nando said this was his favourite stop on the whole trek, and it was very easy to see why.

After a long day in a 4×4 we arrived back at Uyuni and, having been without internet for 3 days, desperately caught up on the Grand Prix results. As if we hadn’t spent enough time in vehicles already, we now had a 10-hour night bus to La Paz ahead of us. Goody. As is tradition, I didn’t sleep a wink, meaning that by the time we got to our hostel in La Paz I’d been up for about 26 hours. We didn’t do much with our time in La Paz, I mainly slept, and Katy wrote the previous Blog post. We ate at the hotel restaurant and got an early night’s sleep as we had to be up at 5:30 the following morning to catch our bus back to Copacabana.

Up early but well rested, we departed La Paz for the final time, arriving in Copacabana about 11am. We checked in to La Cupula again, where we’d pushed the boat out a bit and treated ourselves to one of their suites complete with Jacuzzi, Chimenea and view over the beach. Despite the luxury, it was still a good deal cheaper than a night at a Premier Inn. The next day we took the boat out to Isla Del Sol, the only real Activity in Copacabana which we were unable to partake in on our previous pass through the town due to illness. Isla Del Sol is the birthplace of the sun in Inca folklore, and today is home to about 3000 people across 3 communities. Disputes between the communities over income from tourism spilled out into violence a few months ago, resulting in most of the island now being inaccessible to tourists and ruining it for everybody.

The boat ride out was about an hour and a half in to the wind and over choppy waters. Once at the Island we went for a short walk up past some ruins, north-west across the island before heading back down to another port in the village of Yumani. With most of the island closed off there wasn’t a great deal to see, but it was a pleasant enough walk.

We got back to Copacabana about 5pm just in time to catch our bus across the Peruvian border to Puno, arriving at about 8pm. It was sad to wave farewell to Bolivia, a country we’d both enjoyed greatly, and more so than we thought we would. Whilst on the bus we booked ourselves on to a tour of the floating Islands near Puno for the following day, which meant another early start for a 6:45 pick up. The minibus picked us up at the surprisingly prompt 6:50 to head down to the port where we boarded a riverboat with about 40 other sleep deprived tourists. To wake us up we were serenaded by the delightful combination of out of tune guitar and off-beat panpipes covering a medley of western pop songs. The offending musician then rounded the boat for tips (What’s Spanish for ‘guitar tuner’?)  before being replaced by Alex, our guide for the day.

The floating islands are home to the Uros people, an offshoot of the Aymara who live on a network of floating islands made of reeds which have to be constantly replenished to prevent them rotting away. In total, there are about 5000 people living in communities across Lake Titicaca on both the Bolivian and Peruvian sides, but by far the largest of their communities is the one near Puno, located in the centre of a large series of reed-beds and frequented daily by fleets of tourist boats.

In this community there are around 90 islands straddling a wide natural channel through the reed beds. Our first stop was at a small island in the channel approaching the village, here the village leader assigned us to a particular island to visit. This way the tourists are distributed evenly around the islands, allowing each island (typically home to 2-5 families) to share equally in the revenue from tourism, as well as controlling the footfall on each island which can accelerate the rate at which they wear down. We were assigned to ‘Condor Island’ about two thirds of the way up the western row of side of the channel. The islands inhabitants helped bring our boat in and we jumped down on to their home. The Islands are about 3 meters thick and 2/3rds submerged, they have the feel of a firm mattress, giving way slightly under foot and gently swaying with the movements of the lake. Our group was gathered around in a semi-circle and one of the Islands inhabitants who gave us a short demonstration of how the islands are built and how the locals go about their lives, complete with dolls and toy boats.

Our little show-and-tell complete we were invited to look inside the homes of the locals, take pictures from the islands watch-tower and, of course, to buy tourist toot. As we departed, we were given the option of riding on one of the large catamarans fashioned of reeds that they locals refer to as ‘Mercedes Benz’s’. Large and unwieldy, they exist purely for the amusement of the tourists. We couldn’t resist though and climbed aboard on to the upper deck for a ride across to the large capital island on the side of the channel, but not before the local’s sang us some farewell songs, including a rendition of ‘row row row your boat’.

On the capital island we had the opportunity to get our passport stamped with a ‘Lake Titicaca Islands’ stamp (bad idea) and buy more tourist toot. The floating islands are genuinely interesting and seeing the unusual way of life of these people is fascinating, but as with so many rural communities in the developing world the population is dwindling fast as the young depart for better opportunities in the cities. What’s left of the population is now totally dependent on tourism and the Islands have a gimmicky, almost theme park like vibe to them. It’s lamentable that the islands have lost their authenticity but were it not for the transition to capitalising on tourism, this is a way of life that may well have disappeared entirely by now… Half a dozen of the other.

After the floating Islands we set off for the island of Taquile, about an hour and a half’s boat ride away just outside of Puno bay. The experience here was much like the Isla Del sol the day before, without the disputes dividing the island. After an hour of walking along the north of the island we arrived at a rustic, rather charming little town square, much of which was unchanged from the colonial era. After regrouping we headed down to a small restaurant in the garden of a local family home for a very tasty meal of Quinoa soup and trout fresh from the lake (The trout is an invasive species here, so it’s guilt-free meat!). There was, of course, the usual demonstration of local textile production and traditional dances to accompany our meals and Alex gave us an explanation of the unique dress customs of the Islands communities with a suspicious focus on identifying who was unmarried. Like the floating islands, Taquile’s population is also in decline. Perhaps they hope to get more than just money from the tourists…

We headed down to the harbour and boarded the boat back to Puno, this time opting to sit up on deck with a Dutch woman called Ava and an Ausi called Paul who we’d struck up friendships with over lunch. We got back to Puno about 4pm and headed back to our Hostel to ready ourselves for yet another night bus, this time to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. But that’s a story for next time.

P-p-p-pick up a Puno

Here we are in La Paz then! Bolivia! A good 2 weeks after our final day of the Salkantay Trek and we’ve just about recovered. Our descent from Aguas Calientes was fairly uneventful, once again more beautiful vistas of mountains, rivers, and Incan ruins all seen from the train back to Ollantaytambo. The following day team TWC met up for a final team to visit Cusco’s newly opened cat café. It’s a really sweet place where you can sit and enjoy a sandwich and a coffee surrounded by kittens and older pussy cats, you can even adopt them if you’re so inclined. It definitely helped to fill the foster kitty shaped holes in our lives and was an excellent way to soothe our ever-aching muscles. Having spent a good 4 hours playing with the moggies and with the place getting a little busy, we headed off as a group to find some dinner at the excellent Maikhana Indian buffet – all you can eat for 15 soles, woohoo!  – before saying our final goodbyes and with promises to see each other again in another life.

 

 

Off we trotted to join the Bolivia Hop bus which would carry us the delightfully arduous 9-hour journey to Puno. The bus is about as comfortable as you could reasonably make it, reclining around 150° with a blanket provided and somewhat ample legroom, depending on whether you ask me or Dave. Unfortunately, being anything over around 5’7 puts you at a distinct disadvantage over here. Dave often finds himself to be too tall for beds, doorways, and public transport (female privilege strikes again!) and there have been choice words expressed on more than a few occasions when his head has met with various South American doorframes. After a bumpy overnight journey during which I managed to get some shut-eye and Dave, with what might just be the worst superpower ever, once again stayed up all night due to his inability to sleep on anything that moves. Arriving in Puno at around 5am we were dropped at a hostel where we could at least charge our phone and use their wifi to entertain ourselves while we waited to check in to our AirBnB at around 1pm. Puno is an odd little town that sits on the shore of Lake Titicaca, a short drive from the Bolivian border. Its main attractions include a large condor statue that sits a princely 700 steps above the city, the Uros floating reed islands, and a surprisingly well stocked supermarket. In our sleep deprived state, we had somewhat neglected to realise that our arrival into the city had coincided perfectly with Carnival, a festival celebrating the final week before lent. Celebrations in the larger cities range from throwing paint around to chucking water balloons at each other and in rural communities they’ll take it in turns to whack a tree until it gets chopped down – you know, normal celebratory type stuff. Puno however celebrates Carnival in a much more traditional sense, with marching bands at 5am and a little van that drives around playing an out of tune, out of time jingle, and selling juice to revellers. It was at this point that my body decided that the best thing to do would be to come down with a cold. Thanks body. As a result of this our time in Puno was decidedly uneventful, luckily our AirBnB had a big smart TV with Netflix so that was my time in Puno, being woken up every morning bright and early by marching bands, music in the streets, random air-raid sirens, oh and the random train which goes through the middle of town so has to beep to alert people to get off the tracks. Wonderful. Luckily Dr Dave was on hand to cater to my every whim and walk up and down the 6 flights of stairs to our apartment fetching various cold medicines as well as breakfast, lunch & dinner. Luckily (or not as the case may be), our journey back up to Lima will take us back through Puno so we can take the time to do all the touristy stuff we missed out on, on the way back. Phew!

bdr

After 3 days spent miserably bed bound, it was time to head to Copacabana and our first step into Bolivia! After reading horror stories about dodgy police offers, muggings, and general ineptitude, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the border crossing went smoothly. We hopped off the bus with our bag, received our exit stamp from the Peruvian side then climbed the short hill and went under the white arch marking the border between Peru and Bolivia. We were greeted by the Bolivia Hop bus guide and filled out a form before heading to Bolivian customs where the form was briefly glanced at and then added to a pile with all the others. We were then swiftly waived through and that was that! Not wanting to add myself to any sort of list, I’ll just say that if you were that way inclined, you could probably make your way through without encountering any sort of border official at all, thus avoiding any visa fees, should your country need to pay them. ANYWAY.

Our Bolivia Hop bus this side was a single storey affair, unlike our double decker beauty in Peru but as our final leg was only around 20 minutes this wasn’t terribly inconvenient. Copacabana accompanies Puno in the “odd little town” gang and seems to exist solely to provide overpriced mediocre food to tourists as well as tours to the Isla del Sol which is currently embroiled in somewhat of a local civil war between the North of the island and the South of the island. It doesn’t seem to be anything to be concerned about, it just means if you want to go to the opposite end to the one you’re currently on, it’s a bit of a pickle. Copacabana also sits on Lake Titicaca and the lake front looks like some sort of dystopian Blackpool with grubby swan pedalos and kayaks littered about the place, surrounded by more common litter such as Inca Kola bottles and random less buoyant plastic shapes. Its saving grace was our beautiful beautiful hotel. The view over the bay and the town with the lake is breath-taking and it is surrounded with alpaca filled gardens, deckchairs and hammocks. Our room left a little to be desired with a skylight that dripped sporadically during one of the region’s many thunderstorms but at only £20 a night we couldn’t really complain. There really isn’t enough in Copacabana to spend 4 nights there but gosh darn it we did! Still suffering the after effects of the cold and with the 3821m altitude not helping, most of our time was spent lounging around in the gardens, eating too much food, reading, and catching up on podcasts – almost as if we were on holiday! The baby alpaca frolicking around also provided ample entertainment. In an effort to feel mildly active and not let all that trekking go to waste, we trotted off on a little jaunt to the headland, about a 3 hour round trip away from the touristy town centre but sadly not the litter. While us Westerners sit in our little circle jerk feeling smug about buying metal straws and canvas bags, Bolivians are over here not giving a **** (insert word that Grandma definitely wouldn’t approve of here)! We’ve seen people chucking rubbish out their car windows and just dropping litter on the floor, it’s really quite sad and my Spanish isn’t good enough nor is my sense of superiority strong enough to interject. Poor planet. I imagine like most developing nations, they’ll get there eventually. In the supermarkets there are signs encouraging you to use re-usable bags so we live in hope and along the coast (Is it called a coast when it’s a lake?) there is some sort of eco-village with signs warning people not to litter, they’ve also collected a lot of litter and repurposed it into buildings which were quite cool as well. Most importantly however we ran into a little dog half way along the path who was swiftly named John Locke which definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve been re-watching LOST. He followed us to the headland and I shared a cereal bar with him before he trotted off back to the eco-village on our return journey. The following morning we had a huge great hail storm which made everything turn white which was pretty cool. The storms in general in Copacabana were some of the biggest we had seen so far, our dinner every evening was accompanied by flashes from across the bay.

I started to feel a bit more human on our last day but not quite enough to climb the big old hill just up the road so we hung around in the gardens while we waited for our bus to La Paz, around 4 hours away. There was a beautiful ginger cat who kept us company so it wasn’t a particularly arduous wait. As with Puno, we’ll be heading back through Copacabana on our way back up to Lima so we can stay in the lovely hotel again (but in a nicer room this time) and do all the touristy things then! The bus ride to La Paz is worthy of its own post so I’ll sign off for now, we’re doing Death Road tomorrow! 😀

What’s your version of Drunken Baptism? Salkantay Trek Part 2:

4am. It’s dark. I hear chickens. Ok, where am I? Oh yeah, totally authentic steel frame and plywood Andean hut. Bloody hell, just remembered, we hiked over a mountain yesterday. Hmm. Better check the appendages. Arms? Check. Legs? Yep, check, legs are there. Knees bend. Good. They don’t hurt, that’s pleasantly surprising! Toes. OW. Ok, don’t bend those. All in all though, body parts are less achy than I was expecting. Don’t have to be up for a few hours yet, might try and get some more… SHUTTUP CHICKENS!!!! Ok, forget that plan.

5am. Light creeping in from under the sides of the hut. Are those slugs? Yep. Great. Slugs on the ceiling. There’s a flickering light coming from the other side of the hut. A mobile phone! That means Katy is awake. Amoroso will be round with Coca tea soon. Mmmmmmmmm Coca tea. Should probably get up and get dressed. As much as Amoroso is a seasoned professional, a naked hairy Brit at 5am might be a bit much. Ok. Getting up, need to wake up and switch out of first-person narrative mode anyway.

Day 3. Katy and I crawled out of our authentic Andean Hut to be greeted by clear blue sky and the Sun beaming down on the tips of the mountains behind us. Feeling orders of magnitude more human that we had felt the night before we joined the rest of Team White Chocolate, the team name having been near unanimously agreed upon the whilst at the top of Salkantay the day before. Oxygen deprivation is a funny thing. It was reassuring to hear the rest of TWC™ complaining of aches and pains from Day 2’s ordeal and we all looked forward to the ‘considerably less arduous’ day 3.

On paper, Day 3 was to entail a half-day steady downhill trek to our next camp site, the Jungle Domes (whilst this sounds like a zone on the Crystal Maze, it sadly isn’t that exciting), followed by an afternoon excursion to the Hot Springs in Cocalmayo de Santa Teresa. We also said goodbye to Darwin, our horseman at this point. From here on out, everywhere we were headed was accessible by road of train, so the mules (moolees) were no longer required. We set off about 7am, the clear skies and lower altitude making for an almost perfect morning. We left our campsite via a back path taking us down a short drop to the river running around the campsite, crossing the raging torrents on a reassuringly solid wooden bridge.

Up the other side we joined a dirt road which, by the standards of terrain we’d be used to over the last few days, was like joining a motorway. We followed this road for about 40 minutes as it meandered down the valley, all of us in good spirits and chatting away, soaking in the views of the mountains around us. Near the low point of the valley we broke off from the road and followed a path down across the river where it was joined by a tributary, the swirling waters making for a great scene. Over the bridge and up in to the jungle on the other side, we continued up for another 20 minutes then down steeply for another 30 minutes. This was now just starting to look like a Peruvian ‘considerably less arduous’. But still, we persevered, and about an hour after leaving the road we found ourselves at a small clearing down near the river.

After a quick pause for some water and to slap on some more sun cream, we continued following the jungle path that roughly followed the bank of the river, only to encounter an another Salkantay trek group (I don’t know there team name, but it certainly wasn’t as awesome as Team White ChocolateTM ). Turns out the path ahead had been blocked by a landslide in the night and so that left us with no choice but to double back on ourselves. Climbing back up the hill with the sun beating down, the previous days exertions began to catch up with us and by the time we got back to the road we’d fallen some way behind. Amoroso, noticeably more anxious about time-keeing than he had been the previous day (we were now 2 hours behind schedule after all) negotiated with a local in a pickup truck to give us and a straggler from another group a lift to the next rendezvous point, a roadside restaurant and shop with a covered structure on the cliff-side of the road.

From here, we had a clear view of a huge landslide blocking the road ahead. Apparently this one had happened several weeks ago and was the reason for our diversion to the jungle path on the other side of the river in the first place. Once the rest of TWCtm had caught up (Come on guys, we’re waiting here!) Amoroso stated in no uncertain terms that we were not crossing that landslide. The locals had created a small footpath across the landslide, but it was barely the width of a microwave and very unstable looking (you make think that a strange analogy, but the AirBnB I’m sitting in right now is fairly baron and devoid of familiar small objects approximately the width of the path in question for comparative use). The alternative route we’d be taking involved using a rope-drawn cable car to get across the valley, each crossing taking 2 people at a time. With 3 or 4 trek groups queuing to get across, this was going to take some time. Wanting us to get a head start on the rest of the group, Amoroso sent us over first, instructing us to continue along the path towards another small clearing with a couple of houses in it.

The heat of the day increasing and the blisters on our feet worsening, we trudged along the path. Stiff upper lip and all that. Fortunately, this section was relatively flat, although we had to take the odd detour through the undergrowth where the path had been washed away by the river. An hour later, after another trip through a waterfall for an involuntary foot bath we found ourselves at the clearing Amoroso described (We hoped) and waited for the rest of TWC to catch up, keeping ourselves entertained by playing with a puppy in the meantime. 15 minutes later TWC was reunited and we continued along the path, now a good 3 hours behind schedule.

The Path continued to wind its way through the jungle, up and down, zig-zagging side to side, crossing more streams until we arrived at an elevated section with a clear view downstream. About a quarter of a mile ahead we could see a wooden suspicion bridge. ‘That’s where we are crossing back’ Amoroso said. Before we could make it to the bridge however, we had to traverse another landslide that had taken out the footpath, smothering it in rocks and fallen trees. This was easily the most unnerving part of the trek so far, edging across the churned-up landscape trying to find the rocks that didn’t wobble when you stepped on them and holding on to hiking poles for dear life. Once we reached the bridge our bodies and minds were really starting to feel the strain of this considerably less arduous day and the sight of the steep climb on the other side of it was just too much. Marley, because she’s awesome (and seemingly some sort of superwoman), ran ahead to grab some  blister treatment packs for us from Brandon’s bag before returning with the news that, with the impeccable timing usually reserved for the arrival of good guys in action films, at the top of the climb a minibus was waiting to take us on to the jungle domes. According to Amoroso we were still the best part of 3 hours trek away from the Jungle domes and we wouldn’t have reached there much before 5pm, without having stopped for lunch and having long exhausted our food and water supplies.

About 2:30 we finally made it to the Jungle domes and to our awaiting lunch. A quick turnaround in the domes, which look something like Dalek head sunk in to the ground, and we were back on the minibus headed to the hot springs about an hour up the road. After the ‘considerably less arduous day’ we had just had, the hot springs were absolute heaven and we spent well over an hour letting the warm waters soothe our aching joints and muscles. There are 4 springs in all, with the hottest at about 47/48C and each subsequent pool a few degrees cooler. Between the 3rd and 4th pools were a set of outlet pipes which poured water on to a stone bunch, wide enough to allow about 6 people to sit on them and shower (bathing suits on, of course, or rather ‘nuse clothe of bathes’ as per the rules). The site was exceptionally pleasant, set on to a gentle hill with a sheer cliff forming the back wall against which the pools were built. Around the pools were flagstone pathways and flower beds with 2 sets of loungers under painted steel awnings and just the right number of security guards to be reassuring rather than unsettling. The hot spring were frequented by a varied mix of locals and travellers of all ages, including a trio from Bournemouth who were doing Salkantay with a different tour company and who’s guide had made them cross the landslide we had taken the cable car to avoid. Seems we made the right call opting for one of the more expensive tours.

Muscles and joint soothed and spirits lifted, we all convened in the make-shift bar area to enjoy a very well-deserved beer whilst Amoroso regaled us with stories of life in Peru and the underhanded behaviour of tour companies he’s worked for in the past. Our drive back was upbeat, owing in no small part to the alcohol coursing through everyone’s systems. Now that we were all that bit more familiar and at ease with each other, we began sharing stories of drunken antics from our teenage years, leading Jo to ask the question ‘So [in England] what’s your equivalent of Drunken Baptism?’ To my mind, this is the finest question every asked by anyone, of anyone, in the history of the English Language. The high spiritedness would not last however; dinner that night was marred by a bitter division in TWC over whether or not Nicholas Cage was conventionally attractive. Before going to bed, Katy and I decided to take Amoroso up on an offer he made to us earlier in the day for a shortcut the following day  that would cut the day in half and see us skip a 750m climb and descent to the ruins of Llactapata.

As Day 4 dawned, whilst we wiped ourselves clean of the condensation that had dripped on to us during the night, we quickly concluded that we had made the right decision. Despite the wonders of the hot springs and Marley’s blister packs, we were still very much worse for wear and so were relieved to be facing only a 10km steady incline rather than a 12k steep ascent and descent; and then a 10km steady incline. Waving goodbye to the rest of TWC for now we were left at the Jungle Domes for a few hours before being tagged on to the private tour of a strange Mexican couple and their guide Geordie. We boarded the minibus with Geordie, the strange Mexicans and the crew of porters transferring our belongings and set off down the winding, single trac dirt road for about 20 minutes before grinding to a halt. Up ahead a group of 30 or so locals were running ropes up and down into the undergrowth just of out view and a JCB was parked diagonally across the road. All of the Peruvians on our minibus promptly jumped out leaving just ourselves and the strange Mexicans completely clueless as to what was happening. Shortly thereafter the police showed up and amongst a sea of Peruvians gesticulating, shouting and pulling on ropes what was transpiring ahead just became even more unclear. 15 minutes or so after we’d stopped and the issue apparently being unresolved, everyone simply shrugged, dropped what they were doing and went back to their vehicles to carry on about their day. As we started moving again and passed the scene of the commotion, we looked down the bank to see a minibus about 40-50 foot below. From what we could understand from the conversations being had by the Peruvians, it had gone over the edge the night before. As to why they suddenly decided recovering it was a waste of time? No idea. Survivors? Not a clue. Katy and I looked at each other, gulped, then checked that our seats and seatbelts were firmly attached and stopped looking out of the valley-side window.

A couple of hours passed, and we arrived at Hydroelectrica, so named because it has a hydroelectric power station (see, Spanish is easy!) From here we walked along the railway line that follows the Urubamba river upstream around Machu Picchu Mountain, giving us our first tantalising views of the citadel. Our destination was a 3 hour walk away, the small town of Aguas Calientes. So named because there is hot water (I suppose any langue is easy when the place names are so unimaginative). For perhaps the first time in the whole of our time doing the Salkantay trek we weren’t the slowest ones as the strange Mexicans routinely dropped behind causing Geordie, Katy and I to stop and wait for them. Not that we were complaining.

As we approached Aquas Calientes we dropped down from the railway line to join the road by the entrance to Machu Picchu. Aguas Calientes is only accessible by train or on foot, the roads here are a closed system which basically entails the zig-zagging road up to the citadel and the short bridge connecting to the road in to Aguas Calientes. How did the buses get there in the first place you might wonder? Nobody knows! But given how expensive it is (£20 each for a round trip) to use them, I assume the were flown in on gold-plated Chinooks.

Aguas Calientes itself is a tourist town. Pure and simple. Its sole reason to exist is as a base for Tourists heading up to Machu Picchu. That said, it’s not too unpleasant of a town. Sure, it’s overpriced and excessively westernised, but it’s nicely laid out, it’s very clean and the central boulevard dissected by a small river crashing down to join the Urubamba at the bottom is flanked with statues, small parks and buildings with lavish facades, which get steadily less lavish the further up the hill you go. A train line also runs straight down the middle of the main restaurant street, making for a pretty novel place to have dinner and empty the content of your bank account. Katy says it’s quite like a typical alpine ski resort town.

Our short-cut had brought us to Agua Calientes a good 4/5 hours ahead of the rest of TWC. Our bags had also yet to arrive, due about the same time. In the meantime, then, we most full use of the shower and amenities at our surprisingly nice hostel, before having a good long afternoon nap. The rest of TWC caught up with us at about 5:30 looking very battered and tired, but with a small Labrador cross they had christened Lola in tow, who had followed them all the way from near Llactapata. Lola became the honorary 12th member of TWC as she joined us for dinner that night, hiding under the table as we ate. Heartbreakingly she then followed us back to the hostel, but this was where we had to part ways and leave her to get acquainted with her new home town. I imagine there’s worse places to be a dog, although Amoroso informed us that any dogs that wander up to Machu Picchu get rounded up and put to sleep . He may have been pulling our legs, but his deadpan matter-of-fact delivery of this information made it very difficult to tell.

But I digress. I don’t want to talk about the local canines so much that I lose sight of what we had achieved over the the course of the trek, and what was still to come. After 4 days of hiking and sweating and bleeding and using language Grandma most certainly would not approve of, we were here! Machu Picchu was only 1 sleep away.

A very short sleep it would transpire. In order to make the entrance of Machu Picchu at 6am to allow us to see the sunrise from the Citidel, we would need to get to the bus stop in Aguas Calientes at about 4:30am to beat the queues. Assembling in the hostel lobby with our crew of cranky caffeine craving North Americans we set off for the bus stop and a place selling coffee at this ungodly hour. Luckily for us an enterprising local had recognised the demand for caffeine filed liquids at this time in the morning and we able to top up before jumping on the bus. Tyler, Julian Madeline and Machine Webb the unstoppable (who, the previous day, had walked so far ahead of the rest of the group that he’d overshot the lunch spot) decided to make the climb rather than take the bus, so we rendezvoused with them in the queue at the entrance.

With the dawn mist hanging in the valleys and the sun just beginning to break over the horizon, we awaited the opening of the gates. Dead on 6am we were in and Amoroso lead us quickly up a steep staircase to the west through a bank of trees, allowing us tantalising glimpses of the Citadel, up close for the first time. Doubling back along a set of agricultural terraces, we came to a large artificial plateau by the guard house – one of a handful of the buildings around the site that had been fully restored to aid in visualising Machu Picchu during its heyday. This vantage point gave us our first uninterrupted view across the whole site, a view which left everyone in silent awe. The dawn mist had now condensed in to thin, patchy clouds which hung over the ruins and clung to the steep slopes of Huayna Pichu mountain behind. The sun was now creeping over the mountains to the east and illuminating the top of Huayna Pichu, as well as the snow-caps of the mountains in distance to the west. Behind and to the sides of the ruins a ring of mountains covered in lush green vegetation formed a natural amphitheatre, but on an epic scale, and the patchy clouds drifted serenely between them all helping to provide a sense of the sheer scale of the vista.

It was one of the most perfect scenes Imaginable, accentuated by the weather which, with the clear air, sunshine and sporadic clouds drifting gracefully over the ruins, could not have been better. We could all have spent hours standing there watching the scene slowly change throughout the day, it was really that stunning. After a good 15 minutes of snapping photos and soaking up the views, Amoroso led us up to a slightly smaller level populated by a spittoon* of Llama’s to give us a short history of Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is in fact the name of the large mountain to the south of the Citadel, with the ruins straddling the wide ridge of land connecting Machu Pichu Mountain to Huayna Picchu. The name Machu Picchu is used for the ruins as the original name, as well as the Citidels original purpose are, sadly, lost to History. During the Spanish conquest, it is believed that Machu Picchu served as one of the final hideouts for the remaining Inca’s. In an attempt to hide it from the Spanish whilst retreating they torched the city and allowed the jungle to overtake the ruins. Archaeologists point to the high concentration of ash found in the soil at the site to support this theory. Whatever the truth of what happened or why the Citadel was abandoned, the attempts to hide it worked as the ruins laid undiscovered to the outside world until the early 20th Century, known only to a few local farming families. After their rediscovery, the quickly became a site of archaeological significance and then later a tourist attraction. In 2007, Machu Picchu was names one of the New 7 Wonders of the world, a source of great pride for Peru.

*Yes, that’s right, I googled ‘collective noun for Llama’s but sadly they don’t have a word more interesting than ‘Herd’. Lamenting this, some random internet user on a forum I stumbled across proposed the word ‘Spittoon’ for Llamas, Alpacas and Vicuñas and I rather like it so have chosen to adopt it here.

After our brief history lesson, it was time to bid Amoroso a very fond fair well as we had a mountain to climb (quite literally). As part of our entry ticket we also had access to Machu Picchu mountain, but the entry window was only open between 7am and 8am. Owing to the narrow, winding and at times precarious path upwards, there are a limited number of entrances spread throughout the day. On the wall of the control booth was a sign stating that a trip to the top should take about an hour and a half. Given our current physical state that was optimistic. The climb, with several stops for water, sun cream, a quick snack and to catch our breath took the best part of two and a half hours. The path mostly consisted of original Inca steps and stonework, many of which were worn, uneven and at times very steep. Furthermore, the climb was on the East side of the mountain, putting us squarely in the sights of the now fully risen sun and the heated air currents rising out of the valley below. About three quarters of the way up we bumped in to Julian and Madeline on their way back down, who uttered those fateful words ‘you’re nearly their’. As they had an early train to catch this was our final goodbye to them, which is probably a good thing, as we were still about 50 minutes from the top and we would have needed to have words later! Nicholas Cage level words!!!

We finally finished the 650m ascent at about 11am, thoroughly exhausted from what was, In my opinion, the toughest climb that we had done during the whole trek. Although that probably would have been true of whatever the last thing we did happened to be. The climb was worth it however, the view from the top was absolutely incredible. The mountain top allowed for a 360-degree view of the surrounding landscape with Salkantay visible to the south, the great sprawling extent of the Andes to the east and west and Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu to the north, which we were now steeply looking down upon. Katy was particularly inspired by the view from the top, so much so that she asked me to marry her. I’m sure it would have made for a somewhat different blog if I had said no, not to mention a very awkward descent back down the mountain, so it’s a good thing I suppose that I agreed. In all seriousness though, it was a wonderful, if slightly surreal, moment and I don’t think there could have been any combination of moment, person and location that would have been more perfect.

The descent was, as has been established on previous occasions, worse that the ascent and not helped by the grinning giddiness of our recent change of relationship status (If only we still had Facebook). By the time we finished hammering our knees and ankles down 2600 or so steps we’d exhausted our water, our snacks and most of all our legs and we set at the edge of Machu Picchu bathing in the sunshine just happy to have the weight off our feet and watching a storm roll over the mountains in the background. We’d hoped to explore some more of the ruins, but we were just too wiped by this point and, annoyingly, there are no shops, cafes or toilets within the Machu Picchu complex, meaning you have to leave to use the facilities just outside the gate. For a while, we simply sat and enjoyed the moment though. We were weary, battered, bruised and burned out, but we’d done it, we’d trekked Salkantay and climbed Machu Picchu. There was something eerily poetic about the sight before us, Machu Picchu is glowing sunshine, the golden rocks glistening and the vibrant green vegetation neatly segmenting the site, with the dark clouds, flashes of lightning and sounds of thunder rolling around the mountains. Our thirst and exhaustion got the better of us and we begrudgingly left, boarding the bus back down to Aguas Calientes mere seconds before the storm rolled in our direction and the heavens opened.

I take it as a sign that the Gods approved of our decision. Thanks Gods. Thods.

P.S. Tyler and Webb aren’t a couple, they are friends travelling together. See guys, told you I’d get to that 😊

White Chocolate presents: Nicholas Cage. Part 1.

 

It’s just ticked past 9am on our first morning at our latest stop; an AirBnB in central Puno located just off a street filled with nothing but party shops… oh, and an army training centre. Katy sadly has picked up a cold and is bed-ridden and I’ve just got back from the shops to acquire paracetamol and other goodies for her. We’ve both been up since 5am. We were awoken by the usual cacophony of fireworks and car horns. However, Puno added a small group of men dancing to very loud music in the street, a marching band, and a van that sells mystery juice that plays an out-of-time, out-of-key 15 second audio loop that sounds like it’s been lifted from an early 90’s children’s toy, to the mix. Still, it wasn’t all bad, the early start allowed us the opportunity to see the gorgeous sunrise over Lake Titicaca from our 6th floor apartment. But anyway, once again I’m getting ahead of myself. Enough about Puno for now.

It’s been an uneventful week, with the exception of climbing a mountain, trekking through the jungle for 5 days and visiting Machu Picchu, it’s been somewhat unremarkable. So don’t expect this to be a long post. I jest, of course, it’s been an incredible week. We’ve been pushed hard, seen amazing things, shared incredible moments, and met wonderful people and it’s an experience that will be with us for the rest of our lives. To be honest I’m not sure where to begin, other than to say that after everything we’ve been through this last week our 6th floor apartment feels more like a 60th floor one.

The evening before our trek started we went to the offices of the tour operator ‘Salkantay Trekking’ for a briefing, an opportunity to meet our fellow trekkers and our guide for the next 5 days, a warm, cheerful and informative man named Amoroso (whose name, as helpfully pointed out by one of our fellow trekkers, literally translates as ‘Love Bear’, a name to which Amoroso was somewhat ambivalent). After an in depth discussion of the trek and what to bring (not that we had time to buy anything we didn’t have by now anyway) and signing away our ability to hold them accountable for anything stupid we might do to ourselves, we were loaded up with duffle bags to pack for the trek and sent on our way, being instructed to be ready for collection from outside our flat at 4am the following day. Goody!

The following morning, bleary eyed, disorientated and ignoring the endless stream of Taxis waving, flashing and beeping at us, we boarded the bus at what turned out to be a Peruvian 4am to be whisked away to our trek. Heading west out of Cusco the drive was a refreshingly pleasant one, Amoroso provided us each with a blanket and we were treated to a great view of the sunrise flooding over the mountains and into the valleys, with Salkantay Mountain looming in the distance as we meandered towards it. About 2 and half hours after departing Cusco we stopped at a small bare-bones concrete and brickwork restaurant in the middle of a corn field overlooking the valley we had just ascended for a much-anticipated breakfast.

This was the first real opportunity we had to get to know our fellow trekkers. As these were the people who were going to be waiting for us to catch up for most of the rest of the trek, it was very important to get off on the right foot! According to Amoroso, Salkantay Trekking always try and put similar people together into groups with a maximum number of 10 for each trek. The principle divider between groups is language, but after that they organise by factors they think will best allow people to have a positive experience; so there will sometimes be 10 single men, 10 single women, younger groups, older groups, student groups and family groups. According to Amoroso family groups are the worst as you can never make the all happy at the same time. In our case, we’d been grouped with 4 other English-speaking couples* in the mid-20’s to early 30’s, all of whom were noticeable fitter than we were, being much more seasoned travellers than us. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a tick-box for ‘slow and plodding travel noobs’ on the sign-up sheet. Our group consisted of two pairs of Americans; Joe and Ashley from Arkansas and Webb and Tyler from Colorado, and two pairs of Canadians; Madeline and Julian from near Toronto and Marley and Brandon from British Colombia.

*Don’t worry Webb & Tyler, I’ll get to that.

Stomachs filled and acquaintances made, we jumped back on the bus reaching our drop off point for the start of the trek around forty minutes later. Once the bus was unloaded, the mules were saddled up and the hiking poles were assigned, we set off on our way. There had been no going back for some time now I suppose, but now there really was no going back!

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Here goes nothing…

Our first hike, a sort of ‘baby’s first hike’ was three hours in all, taking us up-hill for about an hour and then following a water course (in to which I dropped my hiking pole, first fail to me!) for a couple of hours, arriving at our base camp for the first night shortly after midday. Our homes for the night were ‘sky-domes’ each shaped like a large igloo with clear glass allowing for a glorious view of the night sky (weather depending) and an unnecessarily small doorway. After offloading our belongings into our sky domes, we went to the on-site cafeteria for a lunch which was way better than any of us were expecting. Each group of 10 trekkers has, along with its own guide, its own cook, porter and horseman, all of whom make the trek with us ensuring our belongings arrive safely at our next destination and that we get a good hearty meal when we arrive, and boy are they hearty!

Stomachs refilled and all of us very pleasantly satisfied with the quality and quantity of our meal, we gathered our poles and ponchos (a flurry of showers meant this loathsome but annoyingly functional piece of cheap plastic was called for) for our afternoon’s activity, a trek up to Humantay Lake about 2km to the north and 300m further up the mountainside. Unlike Baby’s First Hike where we stuck together as a group, the steep and relentless ascent to Humantay very much sorted the wheat from the chaff as Webb and Tyler sailed up off the hill and Katy and I began to drop back with everybody else strung out between us. There was no rush though, and more than anything we didn’t want to overdo it today with the 22km hike over Salkantay the following day. For a little while Marley hung back with us for moral support, and to inquire as to our thoughts on Brexit, before chasing up to Brandon again as he had their water.

A small side story here dear readers: When we went to Greece a few years ago, a matter of weeks before the EU referendum, the locals and other holiday makers we would get chatting to would, upon finding out that we were English, invariably want to know our opinion on Brexit. With this experience in mind and with Brexit imminent (possibly) I was expecting similar during our time in South America. Maybe not from locals, but certainly from other travellers. Anticipating this I had prepared answers to the question, serious answers for when I felt like discussing it and asinine answers for when I didn’t (I intend to claim that the UK voted Brexit to annoy the French (Unless I happened to be talking to French people, in which case I would say it was to really annoy the French)) But no, 5 weeks in to our time in South America and not once had we been asked about Brexit. Not, that was, until we were hauling ourselves up a mountainside sweating profusely and barely able to catch our breath.

An hour and a half after setting off up Humantay we bumped in to Tyler on her way back down. ‘You guys are so close, it’s just around the corner’ she said encouragingly, although our time in South America had quickly ingrained in us a scepticism of unqualified adjectives such as ‘close’. Fortunately however, ‘close’ turned out to be true, which is good because otherwise Tyler and I would have been having words that evening. We rounded the corner and followed the stream flowing out from the Lake and saw the rest of our group standing on a bank overlooking the water.

The view was absolutely worth the climb, Humantay lake is a vibrant, almost glowing turquoise glacial lake formed in a long thin valley just below the snow-line. The sides of the valley are steep, with lush green vegetation lower down towards the lake and thinning off higher-up giving way to grey and black rock then the brilliant white of the snow-cap. The day we were there was overcast and so the snow-caps disappear into the cloud layer, adding an almost ethereal sense that the mountain could go on for ever. The valley edges are tallest towards the mountain end of the lake and so a near perfect V is formed with the streams running off the glaciers above trickling down the middle to join the lake. A young couple took the opportunity to get engaged shortly before our arrival, and who can blame them? Not many places trump this in the ‘oh yes darling well we got engaged at X’ game.  After about 30 minutes of taking in the sights we decided to head back down, ending up in a conversation with a guy from Sao Paulo called Lucas who runs a balloon factory! We’ve decided if Brexit really goes south, we’ll go and work for him.

That evening, over another splendid meal we did that cliché thing that Brits, Canadians, Americans and all other Anglosphere residents always do when they first go to know each other and compared notes on linguistic differences, before moving on to the light-hearted subjects of gun culture and political polarisation (spelled with an ‘s’ guys, not a ZEEEEEEE). Amoroso joined us for dinner to inform us that we would be heading off at about 6:00 the following morning, so we’d need to be up at 4:30 to get breakfast and get our stuff together. He would, at least, be bringing us Coca tea first thing, so it wasn’t all bad. With a long day ahead of us we decided to get an early night and headed to bed about 7:15 to enjoy some of Julian’s 90s disco music from the neighbouring sky-dome. As night set in the temperature dropped quickly, and so Amoroso also supplied each of us with liners to go inside our sleeping bags. Tucked up cosy and warm in our glass igloo we waited for the power to be turned out around the site so we could see the stars only to realise that the condensation building up would prevent that anyway. At one-point Katy was forced outside by nature’s call and got a view of the stars uninterrupted by steamed up sky dome and said it was absolutely breath-taking. I very nearly got up to take a look, but by then I was sleepy and very snug and warm in my multiple layers. Besides, the stars have been there for millions of years, they’re not going anywhere.

Day 2 then. According to nearly every blog, article and tour operator the hardest day of the whole Trek. 22km in total, peaking at 4630m. Using the previously established BMI (British Mountain index) metric from earlier in this blog; that’s 1 Ben Nevis and 3 Snowdons (plus a handful of London buses to make up the final few meters). The initial climb up to Salkantay pass entails a 7.5k hike with a 700m gain in elevation, before descending nearly 1800m over the remaining 14.5km down to the next base camp. After breakfast and loading up on snacks for the day ahead, we left base camp just after 6am for our estimated 4-hour hike to Salkantay Pass. The initial 3rd of the climb was a steady ascent following well-travelled farm tracks and for a good while Katy and I kept pace with the pack. The sun hadn’t yet got above the mountainsides and the cloud hung low drizzling on us with just about enough intensity to necessitate the loathsome ponchos.

About a 3rd of the way up the angle of ascent began to increase and the terrain become more gruelling, intersected by mountain streams with makeshift bridges traversing them. Webb and Tyler flipped on some sort of afterburners and went off into the sunrise whilst Katy and I resumed our usual role, forming a rear-guard action. I thought we might claim we were watching for Pumas sneaking up from behind and therefor we were serving a useful purpose, but I doubt that would have flown.

Still, we slowly and steadily made our way up, beginning now to get overtaken by the mules and porters carrying our belongings, as well as those who had opted to pay 130 soles to ride a mule (in this context, referred to as ‘taking an Uber’) up the to the pass. That felt good! Sure, we were slow, but by Jove we were doing it undo our own steam! We could claim a moral victory if nothing else! Amoroso, with the nimbleness and elegance of a mountain goat flicked back and forth between checking up on us and ensuring the rest of the group didn’t get so far ahead as to take a wrong turn. As we got to about 2/3rds distance the rain stopped and the cloud began to lift allowing us to take off the blasted Ponchos. Even with cloud cover still present, at these altitudes the thinner atmosphere makes it deceptively easy to burn, so we stopped to slap on some cream and remove a couple of layers of clothing. As cold as it was at night, now that the Sun was up and burning off the cloud layer it was warming quickly.

3 hours in and with about a kilometre to go, the clouds started to break enough that we could see the peak of Salkantay mountain (summit height of 6271m, or BMI: 3BN+2S+14LB) mistaking it at first for a strange cloud formation. We caught up with Amoroso at a small plateau with the sun now fully out and giving us a great view of the trail behind us. ‘About 40 minutes to go he said’ as we passed a sign indicating that we were only 200 meters shy of the pass’s altitude. It was from this point onwards though that the altitude really started to kick in. As much as we were now comfortable with Cusco’s altitude of 3,400m (BMI: 1BN+2S), this extra 1,400m (BMI…oh whatever) was really taking its toll. Barely making 10 steps at a time before having to stop to catch our breath, the final few hundred meters were very hard going.

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Not far now

But, with minutes to spare, we made it in under 4 hours, arriving at the pass shortly after 10am. Excitement overtook exhaustion and we got a round of high-fives from our speedier fellow trekkers, none of whom seemed to be bothered by having to wait for us in this kind of location and best of all Alberto, one of the porters, had a cup of Coca tea waiting for us on arrival. Perfect.

Salkantay pass is between the peaks of Salkantay and Humantay, and whilst the cloud had broken for a while a new bank was rolling in and it started to mist up pretty quickly, so sadly we didn’t get the best of views from the pass. Before it clouded over too much though, we were able to see enough of the peak to see the frequent avalanches and rockslides tumbling from the mountainside, the roars of the great movements of earth and ice echoing between the adjacent peaks. Several group pictures, coca tea and arguably the most well-deserved Twix of all time later we were ready to make our descent west off the pass and down towards our rendezvous with the chef for some Lunch.

The descent was uneventful, with the thickening cloud and the returning rain (BOOOO Poncho) there wasn’t a great deal to see. It was just a long, tedious and honestly rather painful descent. When engaging in a trek like this one always looks at the ascents knowing they’ll be a challenging undertaking, but the descents are often overlooked. I genuinely found the descent tougher than the ascent; the constant impacting on the knees, the rocks moving under foot causing the feet to land at awkward angles and the consistent need to look down and focus on each and every step.

After a few hours we made it to a small rest stop for a very much needed lunch break. Following lunch the descent continued for a further 4 hours, although the changing terrain made things a little easier. Where higher-up the descent was over narrow rocky paths through thin grassland and boulders, the lower altitude brought warmer temperatures and the lush, rich vegetation of the cloud forests. The flora slowly grew around us, the calls of the local fauna become more frequent and varied and the mountain streams ensured we had numerous compulsory foot baths along the way.

Weary and battered from the trek, and with night beginning to draw in we staggered in to our camp for the evening escorted by Amoroso in his helpfully fluorescent Green Poncho. It had been a hell of a trek, but we had made it! Day 2, the hardest day, was done, and we’d managed it without the use of an Uber! Our accommodation for the night was ‘Andean Huts’ which consisted of a thatched roof over a metal frame with plywood sides and, again, an unnecessarily small door (I’m thinking shares in Peruvian Chiropractic services would be a sound investment). Still, they had beds in them, and right now that was the only thing occupying my mind. After a short dinner exhaustion took over me and I headed for bed whilst Katy took the opportunity to have a shower. Before going to sleep Amoroso had some good news for us! As the following day was considerably less arduous, we could afford to have a bit of a lie in, only need to get up at 5:30 the next day.

Considerably less arduous

Considerably less arduous

Yes, those were the words I needed to hear, and I felt asleep with those words still echoing around my mind.

Considerably less arduous…

Considerably less… Well yes, I’m sure you can see where this is going… but that will have to wait for part 2.

Why do they have a dance called sauce?

Well hello again to our several readers! I’m sorry that we haven’t been keeping you up to date with our adventures more frequently, but we’ve just been too busy this week! Actually, that’s a lie, we’ve mainly been lounging around.

About 3 weeks ago, probably still suffering the slight mental impairment that comes with Altitude sickness and certainly under the influence of some form of liquid intoxicant, we decided it would be a good idea to book ourselves onto the Salkantay trek, a 5 day, 45-mile trek through the mountains peaking at 4,580 meters, with the final day bringing us to Machu Picchu. The decision to commit ourselves to this trek came about whilst we were still at Pisco and Soul, trying to work out the most cost-effective way to visit the Incan Citadel. As Peru’s premier tourist attraction and owing to its remote location, visiting Machu Picchu is very expensive. Furthermore, in order to help preserve the ruins, access to Machu Picchu is limited and there are only so many tourist entries allowed each day, serving only to hike the price even higher.

Trying to find a 1- or 2-day trip for a reasonable price was a minefield; Cusco is absolutely jam packed with tour operators attempting to cash in on the lucrative tourist trade, and whilst many of them will offer a great service, there are plenty of rogue traders out there. Reading online, you can get some great deals, if you’re lucky, but many of these businesses have review pages riddled with horror stories of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere or tour buses not turning up or not having the right tickets for the right days etc.

1-day round trips from reputable tour operators out of Cusco are expensive, starting from about £200 each. These also give you only a short time at Machu Picchu itself; the bulk of the time being taken up by the bus ride to Ollantaytambo (probably with another driver with a death wish; since our experience in Moray and Maras, we’ve concluded that tourist minivan drivers are the Peruvian equivalent of BMW drivers), the train to Aguas Calientes, and then another bus ride to Machu Picchu.

2-day trips are equally costly. Going with one of these we were looking at the best part of £600 for both of us. We looked at doing it off our own backs; using a local bus to get to Ollantaytambo, buying our own train tickets, booking ourselves in to a hostel near Machu Picchu and then hiking to the top of the mountain (skipping the short bus ride to the top which, alone, is £15 each. If there’s one thing the Peruvians know how to do, it’s exploit a captive market). However, mainly due to the cost of train ticket (see previous brackets) this worked out more expensive that going with a tour operator.

A half-day spent trawling the internet and getting ever more frustrated and exasperated, we decided to go to the other extreme. If we’re doing Machu Picchu, we’re doing it properly! Hence doing the Salkantay trek, costing about £800 for both of us after applying an early season offer. As this includes 5 days food and 4 nights accommodation, per day it works out at a much better price. I don’t know why I’m justifying this to you, we’re doing it now and you can’t stop us! Or maybe I’m still trying to sell myself on the idea…

All we had to do now was kill some time; during the height of the rainy season in February the trek doesn’t run, starting again for the new season in March. Knowing we were going somewhat over budget with our Salkantay expenditure, we booked ourselves an AirBnB with a small kitchen, allowing us to self-cater for the 11 nights to take us through from checking out of Intro hostel to the start of the trek on March 1st. The AirBnB we found is a lovely little roof-top flat near the city centre, with views of the mountains to the north and west and the tower of Santo Domingo church peeking up over the rooftops from a few blocks away. The large balcony has a covered area with sofas, table and chairs, kitchen sink, cooker and a very plush washing machine which sings a happy tune to itself when it’s finished a load. The large bedroom with one of the comfiest beds we’ve ever encountered joins off the side wall and the bathroom off the backwall, thus creating the only real downside with this flat; when you want to visit the loo in the middle of the night you have to go outside. Brrrrrr. Still, of all the places we’ve stayed in Peru so far, this has hands-down been our favourite.

So, for the last week or so we’ve been spending a lot of time here, relaxing on the balcony, listening to the music from the salsa classes below (and wondering why they have a style of dance called ‘sauce’), reading, playing cards, befriending the local wildlife (we have a regular visitor, a small bird that Katy has named Paco, who eats all our crumbs), being bemused by the Peruvians obsession with setting off fireworks in the middle of the day, enjoying the sun and then quickly ducking under the cover of the corrugated roof as soon as a storm rolls in. We’ve averaged about a storm a day for the last week, they roll in quickly off the mountains and can come from any direction. 10 minutes after wind, rain and flashes of lighting, it’s straight back to glorious sunshine again. The rapidly changing and unpredictable weather makes us feel right at home (As if to engage in a game of one-upmanship though, as I’m writing this a hail storm has rolled in).

Our only two major excursions in the last week have been a trip to Cusco Park on the hillside near Sacsayhuaman, and to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary out on the road to Pisac. Cusco Park is a kind of outdoor museum, with farm animals, a straw hut for demonstrating traditional textile production, a short bridge constructed in the Inca style with grass rope, an aquarium, a series of small buildings with various pre and post-Hispanic artefacts and a separate series of buildings with dioramas of the Inca ruins from the surrounding area. Our guide around the site was a young Peruvian man who didn’t speak a word of English. He came running over to us within about 5 minutes of our entering and, without checking that we spoke Spanish, promptly led us around starting with the huts full of dioramas. Owing to the language barrier we didn’t catch his name, but he was the spitting image of Pedro Sanchez from Napoleon Dynamite, so for the purpose of this blog he will now be referred to as Pedro. Vote for Pedro!

Although he gave us the entire tour in Spanish, we were, more often than not, able to follow the gist of what Pedro was saying. In no small part because a lot of what he was saying was stuff that we already knew: Cusco is shaped like a Puma, the Inca’s built EAT’s, they developed over 2/3/4000 varieties of potatoes (depending on who you ask) and corn, the cabinet full of money, coca leaves and bottles of alcohol are offerings to Pachamama. You know, the usual. #justIncanthings. Pedro concluded our tour with a climb to their adventure play area where we had the opportunity to go zip-lining between the trees. We didn’t partake.

It being the off-season, the park was very quiet and the small workshops around the site where presumably there would be demonstrations of wool dying and weaving were mostly unstaffed, but even so, we got the best part of 2 hours out of it and understood at least some f the things we were told. It’s a pleasant site with a lot of potential to be a really good tourist attraction and at £10 for both of us including a tip for Pedro, it was worth our while.

Our other adventure took us to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary, about a 25-minute drive north of Cusco. The only way to reach Cochahuasi was to take a tour on one of the many open-top tourist buses that Katy swore from the moment she saw them that she would most definitely not be getting on. Alas, this was the only way to do it, and it turned out to be a rather pleasant way to see the city. The tour guide, a cheerful and animated guy called Peter met us in the main square before rounding up a load of other tourists for the trip and walking us up to our bus. After a 30 minute pootle around Cusco enjoying the view from the top deck, the bus took us up past Sacsayhuaman and out along the road to Cochahuasi. Peter gave us a running commentary of the sites we were seeing, stringing together the sites with a little history of the city. Of the 20 or so people on the tour, we were the only non-Spanish speakers, but to his credit, Peter spoke great English, never skipped anything, and always ensured we were as well informed as everyone else on the tour. The driving was also very good. Well, it wasn’t terrifying anyway.

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Arriving at Cochahuasi our group was split in 2 with Peter taking the Spanish speakers, and a member of the Sanctuary staff, Melissa, taking Katy and I for essentially a private tour of the sanctuary. The site isn’t huge, but the enclosures are suitably large for the animals they keep, and they aren’t overcrowded. All the animals at the site are rescues and some of them come with really tragic stories of cruelty and neglect, such as a Puma that was rescued from a nightclub in Lima where it was used as entertainment, and an aviary full of macaws rescued from smugglers trying to ship them to Europe out of Lima Airport. Where possible, the animals are released back in to the wild, but some are sadly too conditioned to captivity or permanently injured to be released.

In total there’s probably around 80 or so animals on site, ranging from Llamas, Alpacas and Vicunas to Condors, Pumas and Spectacled bears (yes, that’s the bear that Paddington is). Melissa was very knowledgeable, and she walked us around the site for about 40 minutes. The staff are clearly very caring, and the animals are well kept and cared for. Perhaps the most impressive part of the site is the large Condor enclosure which stretches from the opposite cliff face up to the near-end of the site by the road, with the visitor path straight through the middle of the enclosure. Having these huge birds swoop overhead as the staff feed them is an unforgettable experience. It’s just a shame the site is overall quite small, simply for no other reason that that more space would allow them to care for more animals, you can’t help but think that they are forced to turn animals in need away for lack of space.

Just as we finished our tour and got back on the bus the heavens opened, leading me to discover another thing in Peru that wasn’t designed with people taller than 5 foot 6 in mind, as the whole tour group squeezed itself onto the lower deck on the bus. On the return leg of our tour we stopped at a small hut overlooking Cusco where we were given traditional blessings by a Shaman. This allowed Peter to show off another of his talents as he translated from Quechua to Spanish and English on the fly. The Shaman was from a very remote community in Northern Peru largely uninfluenced by the outside world and still very committed to the Quechua religion, folklore and way of life. Whilst this was very much a show put on for the tourist, it was a charming if brief insight in to the ancient customs of this part of the world.

Our final stop was another trip to Cristo Blanco, perhaps serving to underline the fact that we really had done everything Cusco has to offer now. We finished up back in Cusco about 45 minutes later that scheduled, for which Peter was unnecessarily apologetic. All in all, this was a very enjoyable day and, as the trip had cost us just £12.50 for both of us, one of the best values for money days we’d had!

We have ventured out a few times other than that however, mainly whenever I started to get a bit of cabin-fever, we made another trek up to Cristo Blanco to get some practice in before our hike, this time choosing the longer, but considerably less steep, route up via Sacsayhuaman. We had a tasty meal at a vegetarian restaurant with the most disinterested server we’ve ever encountered. We’ve also made numerous trips to the local bakery which does absolutely fantastic pastries and seems to be permanently frequented by every French tourist in Cusco, and we went for an excursion to the market to buy essentials for the trek. For our final proper night in Cusco we went to an Indian Buffet restaurant around the corner from the main square. Sitting on the balcony overlooking Avenida El Sol and enjoying a beer, the incessant beeping of the traffic and the incomprehensible whistles and glow-stick assisted gesticulations of the traffic police, we decided that we had thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cusco.

Salkantay Trek next, so we’re going to be off the grid for a few days, we’ll be sure to do another update as soon as possible afterwards though, so watch this space.

Buses, birthdays, Basil Fawlty

When one decides to a visit a foreign country, there are certain aspects that you know won’t be the same as back home. The food is different, the culture is different, the tea is different, and if you really fancy a Dairy Milk at 2am you can’t just pop to Sainsbury’s. These are all things for which you feel perfectly prepared. After all, if it wasn’t such a different way of life, there would be no point in going to experience it. Up until this point, this attitude has served us well. We’ve tried alpaca which is delicious and very low in fat and cholesterol, we’ve embraced coca tea as part of our daily routine, we’ve tuned into the Peruvian mindset and felt our shoulders descend from somewhere up in the stratosphere back to a more stress-free position. Inevitably however, Murphy’s Law will kick in at some point and you will find yourself very much wishing you were tucked up in your jimjams with a nice cup of Yorkshire Tea and a Custard Cream watching Call the Midwife (fear not dear reader, the fact that I am writing this now is testament to us having survived what it is to come!)

 

Having had a jolly good time on our Sacred Valley tour the previous day, we decided to visit some more of Cusco’s ancient offerings with the same tour company. This time we were headed to the ruins of Moray (oh yes, more experimental agricultural terraces!) and the salt mines at Maras. We were told to be ready by 8:20 and were looking forward to a bit of a lie in given that the day before, we were the first to be picked up. The same woman greeted us as she had done the day before and warmly welcomed us with a big smile as she ticked our names off her list. She told us the bus was running a bit late so we stood around and chatted with her for a while. We talked about where we were from and what Peruvian food we’d tried. It was raining for which she apologised and we said it was fine and that it rains in England all the time. When we say this to Peruvian people they seem to take it quite literally but I suppose that comes from the fact that they only have two seasons here. Oh well, at least if they ever make it to the UK they might be pleasantly surprised to see that big yellow hot thing in the sky, I forget its name. The bus ended up being about 40 minutes late but we didn’t mind too much, if the previous day was anything to go by we’d be off out having a lovely time in no time at all.

(EDIT: before going any further, I just wanted to say that after writing this blog post, we contacted our tour company and have since been offered a full refund. 10/10 customer service. Anyway, back to the story…)

As we boarded the bus we found that it was full. There were no seats. This isn’t like a city bus where standing isn’t a problem, it’s essentially my old Argos van converted into a minibus, standing is not an option. Dave was quickly directed to sit in the front next to the tour guide and the driver and the guide told a woman and her 6/7 year old daughter to move up so I could sit next to them, placing the girl on her lap. Not exactly the height of comfort but it was a short drive and we were determined to remain positive! Not long to go until the fabulous sites and tours commence. And so off we went.

 

I pause here for a moment dear reader to explain that driving in Peru and driving in the UK are two entirely different skills. In Peru, your horn is to be used more often than it is not, for example, to beep at tourists to notify them that your taxi is available, to beep at other cars for not pulling away 0.00001 seconds after the traffic light turns green, to beep at someone you know, to beep at someone you don’t know, to beep at people not crossing the road quickly enough, to beep at people crossing the road too quickly…. I think you catch my drift. Another difference is their seemingly cavalier attitude towards things like stop signs, warning signs, speed limits or indeed anything else that tells our Peruvian cousins that they MUST or SHOULD do something. Their healthy disdain for authority reaches as far as driving and is something one embraces early on. We thought we’d finally sussed it and that the mildly overeager driving style of our minibus driver the previous day was to be expected. Har har we chortled, that was a bit hairy but we never felt unsafe.

 

Our driver on the second day however seemed to have been bearing a grudge that Formula 1 hasn’t really taken off in Peru in the same way that it has in other countries and saw fit to take this out on poor unsuspecting tourists. Eek. As a child, my family and I often went skiing so I’m quite used to mountain road driving, with its sharp turns and sheer drops. I’ve also seen my fair share of broken barriers and buses half hanging off the side of the mountain, to know that roads like this are not to be messed with. Our driver seemingly had other ideas and was determined to drive as fast around these tights corners as possible, leaving us helpless tourists clinging on for dear life and desperately hoping nothing was coming the other way, as he once again took the racing line around a blind hairpin bend. I couldn’t even bury my head into Dave’s shoulder because he was up the front, presumably a lot more terrified than I was because he could see exactly how fast the driver was going and see when he answered his mobile phone as we were bombing along as well. We stopped briefly at another one of the “this is how we make alpaca stuff” workshops which was in English this time so that was at least one positive. There was also a nice kitten that we said hello to and also, rather morbidly, under the stove/fire they were keeping guinea pigs. There were even baby ones. I thought I might be able to try guinea pig while I’m here but memories of my pet Rodney from when I was a child came flooding back and now I’m not so sure. I’ll probably do what I did with Alpaca and get Dave to order it and then try a little bit, pretending it’s chicken. After trying and failing to take a picture of a hummingbird we jumped back onto the Terrifying Transport™ and on we went, hiding our eyes and praying to the flying spaghetti monster. We arrived at Moray in one piece and were quickly ferried off the bus by Eddie our tour guide. Eddie didn’t really speak very much English. His descriptions and explanations were a lot longer in Spanish than they were in English and because he did the Spanish bit first, we were left with very little time to explore. He seemed very eager to get us round Moray as quickly as possible and kept repeating “take a picture then back to the bus!”. Poor Eddie, we felt a bit sorry for him. Why they’d decided to put someone who didn’t really speak much English onto an English tour is beyond me but there we go. After our whistle stop tour around Moray (which, by the way, is actually quite impressive, I learned more from the Wikipedia article than I did from our tour though…), we were herded back into the Abominable Autobus™ and on to our next stop.

With promises from our tour guide of chocolate at our next destination, it was almost enough to forget about the awful driving. Who am I kidding, no it wasn’t, it was bloody awful. And our next stop really wasn’t much better. We exited the Terrifying Train™(ok I’m running out of these now…) to find that we’d been shipped to a tourist trap in the middle of nowhere. There were at least 10 other coaches full of people crammed inside this shop which sold everything from snacks to coffee to the generic tourist crap you can buy anywhere in Cusco for ¼ of the price. We had some tiny morsels of chocolate thrown at us (which to be fair, were quite nice), at which point Dave and I looked at each other and decided the best course of action was to spend absolutely no money here and go and stand outside, at least then we would get to spend some actual time together. Alas, this was short lived and we were once again herded back onto the Awful Automobile™. Dear reader, I am not a good flyer. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I get very nervous at the prospect of being on a plane. However, during our journey down into the Maras salt mines, I can honestly say that I would rather have been on a plane or indeed anywhere else at that point in time. I once again feared for my life as we descended. At least we’ll be on the inside on the way back up I thought. The salt mines are found down inside a quarry like valley and have been there since before the Incas. In and of themselves they were quite impressive. They’re all the same depth and are fed by one salt stream via a series of aqueducts down the hillside. They’re then plugged to stop the water flowing in and left to let the water evaporate. Each pit is owned by one family and there are a series of small shops at the top before you walk down selling salt from the mines, as well as the usual tourist toot to which we have become accustomed. We were given more time at the Salineras than we needed to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather have spent more time going round Moray but it wasn’t too long before we were once again herded back on to the bus, making our way back to Cusco.

I can honestly say that the best part of the tour was when we got off the bus at the end. We went and sat on some steps near the square where we had been dropped off and reflected upon how it could be possible that we were still in one piece. We think what had happened was that we’d been lumped in with another tour group, hence the lack of speaking English and the lack of any semblance of non-terrifying driving. Upon further research this seems to be quite common but it was such a diversion from the day before that it didn’t really seem fair. After our adrenaline levels had returned to normal, off we went to find some lunch, stumbling upon a tiny little café which promised sandwiches and a drink for 10 soles – wonderful. A bumbling old Peruvian chap (think Basil Fawlty but shorter and darker skinned) came out and took our orders and we were served two tuna sandwiches as well as a glass of Chicha Morada for me and a “cappuccino” (with almond?!) for Davelar. Chicha Morada is a soft drink made from purple corn which I have absolutely fallen in love with. It’s sweet and tastes nothing like anything we have back in the UK. We should have saved ourselves some money and just bought loads of that instead of fearing for our lives for half the day but you live and you learn. It was only a matter of time before something went a little bit pear-shaped and as we’ve both managed to avoid the dreaded Traveller’s Stomach so far, I suppose it was only fair that we shoulder some of the poor tourist experiences. Ho hum. It wasn’t quite how we expected to spend our 6 year anniversary but it’s certainly made for a good story and besides, tomorrow was my birthday!

 

Having realised a little while ago that we would be spending my birthday in Cusco, I already knew that I wanted to go and stuff my face with chocolate and then go for a curry. So that’s exactly what we did. After a lovely lie in we once again trundled off to Jack’s Café for a MAHUSIVE veggie breakfast and Dave had the banana pancakes. Jack’s is overpriced compared to a lot of the Peruvian family run restaurants, where you can get a full meal for 10 soles, but by English prices it’s cheap as chips and when it gives you a little taste of home, it’s worth every penny. Breakfast consumed and with our chocolate making workshop not until 1:30, we headed back to the hostel for a quick video call with my parents. Dave had also secreted away some cards from the parents and Grandma which was really lovely and made me a bit homesick. The promise of impending chocolate however soon made everything better again. The ChocoMuseo is a chain of chocolate museums/shops/workshops that spans across South America and is doing very well for itself. Not only can you buy handmade chocolate and various silly trinkets but you can also take various workshop, which is exactly what we did! Our ‘guide’ Jeremy was a 23 year old Venezuelan refugee who had moved to Cusco 2 years prior, seemingly having seen which way the wind was blowing and getting out while he could. He told us his family was still there, apart from his sister who lives in Madrid and who he is desperate to go and join. In the meantime however, he works at the ChocoMuseo, showing tourists how chocolate is made, pretending to slice their wrists in order to show the traditional Mayan way of making hot chocolate (no, he really did do this to Dave, I was terrified) and putting up with two silly Brits making stupid jokes and making a big old mess. It was such a laugh and we had such a good time, they even brought me out a little brownie with a candle in it and sang happy birthday! Leaving with our bags full of chocolate, we slipped a healthy tip to Jeremy and shook his hand, wishing him all the best. It was quite a strange contrast as we’re obviously here just to have a good time and it’s easy to forget just how lucky we are to be here, experiencing all of this, and that really a bit of a dodgy bus driver is nothing compared to having to flee your home country.

After popping back to the hostel for a nap, off we ventured to Korma Sutra – Cusco’s highest rated curry house. We weren’t really sure what to expect, what with it being Peru, and India being quite literally on the other side of the world from here (actually, it’s somewhere in Vietnam which we’ve just decided we definitely have to go to). It definitely wasn’t quite up to UK standards but it was a damn sight closer to curry than we were expecting to find in this part of the world and it was still really yummy. A little tipsy and with the raining pitter pattering away, we wandered back to our little hostel with a few extra beers and settled in to catch up on Hell’s Kitchen. A jolly lovely birthday if I do say so myself. The events of the previous day were already starting to seem a little bit funny, and with the promise of moving into an AirBnb all to ourselves on the following Monday, the path forward seemed a lot brighter.

Visa welcomes you to Pisac. Cash only.

Blimey time moves fast. it’s only been 4 days since we moved up to Intro Hostel, but we’ve done so much in that time that I’m having to get cracking on this blog post now so that 1) this blog entry doesn’t get too long and 2) so that I don’t forget what we’ve done.

During our time at Pisco and Soul we pretty much covered all the bases as far as the tourist sites in Cusco go, so we decided to venture out of the city. Armed with our Tourist tickets, we ventured off to see the Inca ruins of Tambomachay and Puca Pucara about 5 miles North of Cusco. Our plan was to take the bus to Tambomachay, the furthest of the sites we planned to visit, and then walk back via Puca Pucara, Q’enqo and Sacsayhuaman (more-or-less pronounced ‘Sexy Woman’, but with a thick, inebriated, highland accent).

Our first task in this endeavour was to navigate the shambolic local bus system. We’d read numerous online blogs, asked Gonzalo at Pisco and Soul and asked the lady in the Tourist information centre where we got our tourist tickets from, but could not get a consensus on which bus to get or where to get it from. The crux of the issue is the bus ‘system’ (I’m using the word ‘system’ here as there isn’t a succinct word in English for a group of busses that drive around a city with no discernible route plan). Extensive online searches as well as perusing the pamphlets in the tourist information centre confirmed our suspicion; there is no map of the local bus routes! Furthermore, none of the bus stops say which buses stop there, there is no timetable – at all – and none the buses use numbers, instead each ‘route’ has a name which is displayed only on the front of the bus (most of the time) and a list of some of the destinations it serves written on the side (again, most of the time).  The bus lines have names such as ‘Servico Rapido’ (You’d think the name translates in to English as ‘rapid service’ but there’s no evidence to support this) ‘Batman’ (no, really) ‘Satellite’ (Again, you’d think this would translate in to English as Satellite; implying an orbital service. Wrong!) ‘Tupac Amura’, ‘San Sebastian’ (which the name of is one of the districts of Cusco, so I guess that one at least makes sense) and ‘Servico El Zorro’ (En-garde!).

Perhaps the Incas should have thought to implement this public transport system before the Spanish invaded, they probably would have got so fed up trying to work out how to get around that they would have given up and gone home.

Anyway, somewhat exasperated at the unnecessary complexity of the whole thing, we asked the receptionist at our current hostel who told us that we needed a bus called ‘Senior Del Heurto’ from down by the University to take us to Tambomachay. This advice was different to anything told to us by anybody else, but whatever, we decided to throw caution to the wind and just do as he said. Worst case scenario, we end up in an unknown part of Cusco and have to get an Uber back.

We walked our way down to the university and after waiting about 10 minutes at the side of the road, there it was! Senior Del Heurto, and it even had ‘Tambomachay’ written on the side! We crammed ourselves into the over-subscribed bus, paying 25p each for the privilege (we were undercharged in fact, but we weren’t going to argue), and followed its meandering course through the suburbs of Cusco and up on to the road towards Tombamachay. The local buses are, it seems, a family affair; Husband driving, Wife collecting the fares and shouting out the names of the stops and jumping out to fill buckets with water from a road side stream (honestly, your guess is as good as ours) and two daughters squabbling on the front seat ensuring that the driver’s attention was suitably divided.

Just as we left Cusco, heading up the hill past Cristo Blanco from our previous excursion we found out why we had been undercharged; the road had been blocked by several fallen trees. The road in front of the blockage had been turned in to a make-shift Senior Del Heurto coach park and we were told that this is far as we could go and that we needed to get off (at least, that was our interpretation; the engine turned off, the wife yelled something in Spanish and all of our fellow passengers promptly disembarked).

Aside from an enterprising local who was offering horse rides up the hill, nobody was really doing anything about the blocked road, and it was apparent from the way the trees fell that this had been done deliberately (maybe by the aforementioned enterprising local? It’s unfair to point fingers I suppose, but he was doing very well out of the circumstances at hand). We stood around for a few minutes scratching our heads before deciding to carry on on foot to Tambomachay, which we reckoned to be about an hour’s walk up the road. We were out to get some decent walking in before our trek to Machu Picchu anyway, so why not make the most of the situation. Keep calm and carry on and all that!

Numerous others, both locals and tourists, had come to the same conclusion so there were quite a few of us spread out along the road. With no traffic coming past (it became apparent that there must have been a blockage further up the road as well as there was absolutely no traffic in either direction) the walk was a very serene and peaceful one, including walking through a small village called Huayllarcocha which gave us our first insight into life in Rural Peru, with deep-red mud clay brick single story houses, farm animals and small family run textile factories.

DSC00221
In every way, we’re a long way from Lima now.

A short descent down the road on the far side of Huayllarocha and we arrived at Tambomachay. Tambomachay features a series of Inca buildings set into the side of the hill with a series of waterfalls and streams cascading through them. The function of the site is not known, but the best guesses are that it was a spa resort for the Incan elites. Being Bathonians, the appeal of such a site was perhaps somewhat lost on us, and we found Tombomachay to be slightly underwhelming, especially as the description in the handy little map that accompanied out tourist tickets really bigged it up; accompanied as it was with photographs taken using the estate agent technique of making things appear larger than they actually are. No matter though, the secluded location in the valley provided a good opportunity to see some wildlife and take in the scenery, and the road closures had all but halted the steady flow of tourists. We therefore pretty much had the site to ourselves.

Heading back up the hill, our next stop was Puca Pucara (literally; Red Fortress), a hill fort constructed of deep red clay and stone across about 4 or 5 levels. It was built to guard the entrance to Cusco from the Sacred Valley pass. Puca Pucara is a more sizeable site than Tambomachay and offers great views across the valley and luckily the weather held back enough to allow us some good shots of the mountains to the north.

We began making our way back along the road to Q’enqo (yes, pronounced like the coffee) which was still seemingly closed at both ends, although a couple of locals with cars had evidently cottoned on to what had happened and appointed themselves local taxis for the day, driving backwards and forwards with cars full of tourists and offering us lifts with every pass, irrespective of how many times we declined their offer.

About 3 hours later, we again came across the spot where the fallen trees had blocked the road only to find that they had still not been cleared (The highways agency would never have stood for this!), although evidently someone had been along with a chainsaw to remove just enough of the fallen trees to allow the horses an easy pass from the adjoining side road, but had seemingly saw fit (hah! Saw! Get it?) to disappear again without clearing the main road. My suspicions of the enterprising local with the horse-riding business continued to grow.

Q’enqo itself is about a further 20 minutes’ walk down the road and overlooks Cusco from the northwest. The site is a ‘Huacas’ (Incan holy place) and is, like most Huacas in the Incan empire, built in to a natural rock formation that, in this case, looks like a miniature Uluru/Ayres Rock. It has a narrow but passable split down the middle and a short tunnel underneath out of which the Incas carved blocks used for the construction of ritual sites on the eastern side facing Cusco. Sadly, as with much of the historical legacy of the Incas, the exact purpose and meaning of the site is lost to history.

Our final stop, a further 20 minutes down the road, was Sacsayhuaman (strangely enough, whilst spellcheck is having a very hard time with all these Incan place names, it has no objection to Sacsayhuaman. It’s not in the dictionary, I think spellcheck has just given up). By far the largest of the Incan sites on our itinerary for the day, Sacsayhuaman (or, according to Wikipedia; Sacsahuaman, Saxahuaman, Saksaywaman, Saqsaywaman, Sasawaman, Saksawaman, Sacsahuayman, Sasaywaman or Saksaq Waman) features a 3 tier, zig-zagging wall of huge (no really, HUUUUGE) interlocking stones held together with gravity alone, along with occasional doorways and stairwells leading between the tiers. Across a large open space still used to this day for ritual festivals on the opposite hillside is a set of EAT’s (Experimental Agricultural Terraces. I won’t say much about these here, but they are going to feature very heavily for the foreseeable future of this blog).

By this time, we’d been walking for the best part of 5 hours and it was starting to rain and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely (it felt remarkably like Scotland for a time) so we decided to head back down into Cusco to get a well deserved milkshake and a sandwich from JC’s café, fast becoming our favourite haunt. Exhausted and barely able to communicate with each-other, let alone in Spanish to the waiting staff, we decided to go to the closest pizzeria to our Hostel. The more things change…

On to the following day then, and after our sizeable hike we decided to have a much more laid-back day and visit a couple of the art galleries in Cusco to which our Tourist Ticket gave us free entry. We started with the Museo de Arte Popular which is situated in the town hall. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a drove of riot police, various different stripes of municipal police, a handful of dignitaries and important looking people, journalists and camera crews. And one lone malcontent across the road who yelled at the assorted dignitaries and security forces for a good 20 minutes before the police finally had enough and escorted him elsewhere. Sufficed to say, we decided to skip this gallery and move on to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. Following our handy tourist map, we found ourselves in the middle of a municipal building that appeared to be a time warp to 1975, complete with pencil pushing desk clerks, massive rooms of folders, wooden panel railing along the stained creamy yellow walls and not a computer in sight. On the left as you entered was a floorplan of the building, on which nowhere could be found the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. ‘Well whatever’ we thought, deciding instead to go and sit in the square outside the townhall to watch the world go by whilst being offered the usual assortment of massages, tours to Machu Picchu, cigarettes, shoe shine, Llama keyrings, bracelets, mass-printed paintings, sunglasses, weird wooden pot things that make a clip clop sound, mystery juice and, of course, drugs. Later research online would tell us that we were in the right building, it’s in the basement and full of nativity scenes and pictures of Jesus, so we were understandably devastated that we missed out.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the pool (table) back at the hostel, making the most of our quiet day before retiring early to bed. We’d booked ourselves on to a full day tour of the Inca Sacred Valley which meant catching the bus from outside the hostel at the crack of the dawn for a 2-hour drive through the mountains to Pisac. The drive through the mountains was stunning; the weather was perfect, clear and sunny with a smattering of clouds clinging to the valley edges and mountain tops giving a fantastic sense of the scale of the vista in front of us. Pisac is a small town at the eastern edge of the Sacred Valley on the banks of the Urubamba river, the main water source for the flat valley base which was the breadbasket (specifically, the corn and potato basket) of the Cusco region.

The town itself is home to a small population with a burgeoning tourist industry and craft factories specialising in silverware and other jewellery. On the mountainside to the northeast of Pisac are the largely intact ruins of a massive network of EAT’s and a small village which housed the Incan agricultural workers, most of whom lived their whole lives on these slopes. The terraces are spread over nearly a kilometre of elevation, with a considerable variance of temperature and humidity between the lower and upper levels. The Incans used these terraces to experiment with growing corn and potatoes at different altitudes, developing thousands of varieties of each and massively increasing crop yield and resilience to adverse weather. This commitment to food stability was arguably the most important contributing factor to the immense size, wealth and power of their empire at its height.

The tour group was a real international bunch; Brazilians, Chinese, Spaniards (one wonders what it’s like being on holiday and every 5 minutes seeing something that your ancestors destroyed…oh wait, we’re British, we know exactly what that’s like), US Americans, Mexicans, Chileans and us plucky Brits. Our tour guide Freddie did a fantastic job juggling the bilingual needs of our group, ensuring we were all well informed as to what we were seeing, where we were going and how the day was to pan out. This actually worked out rather well; Freddie generally did the Spanish portion of the tour first, then repeated himself in English. As the group consisted of Spanish speakers from a lot of different countries, he spoke very slowly and very clearly in Spanish, and this allowed us to test our Spanish comprehension before he repeated himself in English, giving us and opportunity to ‘check our work’ so to speak. He also reassured us when we first set off that our driver had had only 10 crashes during his career, so we were in safe hands. Judging by the standards of Peruvian driving we have witnessed to date, there’s every chance this wasn’t hyperbole.

After a 20 minute or so talk about the site and its history, Freddie gave us a good 40-50 minutes to explore the ruins and take pictures before returning to the bus and heading down into Pisac town. Here we stopped for a brief demonstration of the silverware manufacturing process and the importance of certain jewels and gems and their supposed supernatural properties. A brief wander around the markets and we continued our way through the valley, following the meandering course of the river through the valley to the town of Urubamba at the heart of the Sacred Valley. Here we stopped for lunch at a secluded and remarkably up-market restaurant for a buffet lunch of freshly cooked Peruvian delicacies, all included as part of tour ticket. We were expecting a short stop at the side of the road for a quick bowl of soup and some rice at a rough-and-ready café -which would have been fine- so this lunch was a very pleasant and unexpected bonus.

After a pleasant 45-minute break for lunch and a walk around the grounds of the restaurant with llamas, Alpacas and Vicuna (the n should have a wiggle above it, but I can’t be bothered to work out how to do that) we continued on our way to our second major stop of the day at Ollantaytambo towards the western edge of the Sacred Valley. Like Pisac, Ollantaytambo features a set of EAT’s, about a third of the size of those at Pisac and facing east along the valley. At the top of the terraces are the remains of the Temple of the Sun and a passageway working its way through the cliffside connecting the two sets of terraces. The Temple of the Sun features impressive stonework made from huge stones that were quarried from the hillside opposite and transported via the Urubamba river. The Incas were able to redirect the river either side of a central island, allowing for the passage of the stones, before working them up the other side. Freddie took this moment to scoff at those who say that moving these big stones across the valley is evidence that Aliens must have built the Inca temples, adding that you should never underestimate Human ingenuity. Here here! Across the valley from the EAT’s are a series of open-fronted terraced caverns built into the side of the mountain. The Incas would use these caverns to dry corn and potatoes, storing them for up to a decade at a time, enabling them to keep their population fed through drought and crop failure.

We were again given a good amount of time to explore the ruins at our leisure before returning to the bottom of the terraces for a group photo, a brief visit to the water temple (like a mini Tambomachay) and an opportunity for Katy to befriend one of the local street dogs who joined us for the group photo and then followed us back to our bus, making Katy the happiest she had yet been during our whole trip.

As the sun lowered in the sky and our bus climbed its way out of the Sacred Valley back towards Cusco, the clouds mostly cleared and we were treated to fantastic views of the snow-capped peaks of the Andes in the distance, the acute angle of the sunlight highlighting the peaks and troughs with accented colours and contrast of the green vegetation, red soil and brilliant white glaciers above.

Our final stop for the day was the village of Chinchero where we were treated to a demonstration of traditional textile production by the Quechua, the native people of Peru. This was the only part of our tour that didn’t have an English translation, but again, the Spanish spoken was slow, clear and simple enough that we (ok, Katy) could follow the gist of what was being said. A shopping opportunity later we boarded the bus again for a short trip to another church (yawn) built on top of Inca ruins (boo) and then made the final hours drive back to Cusco, the setting sun providing a final few breath-taking views across the plateau Chinchero sits on.

We arrived back in Cusco just over an hour later, tired, but both of the opinion that this was the best day we had yet had during our time in Peru. The sites and sights were amazing, the guide was excellent, the history was fascinating and the whole day was paced perfectly; we were never bored, we were never on the bus for too long at a time and we also never felt rushed to keep with a schedule. All in all, this was £50 very well spent and, having already booked ourselves onto another tour the following day with the same company, we went to bed greatly looking forward to what the next day would hold.

But that’s a story for next time…

No one expects the Spanish Interruption!

We’ve been in Cusco for a week now and have changed locations from the quaint but quiet Pisko & Soul to the considerably more uphill Intro Hostel. It’s a larger hostel located in a quiet courtyard with rooms all around an open middle section with tables, a pool table, a very sad looking fire pit, a soggy hammock and what I can only loosely refer to as a “water feature”. It has rained a lot more over the past few days, but the weather is very changeable. This morning it chucked it down but now it’s perfectly pleasant as Dave and I sit on tiny stools, not really suited for sizeable bottoms, around what appears to be a giant empty cotton reel repurposed as a table. There’s a lot that’s been upcycled here, I suspect that during the high season it’s full of the type of people we’ve been doing our best to avoid. So far so good!

The day after our walking tour we decided that we’d better get into some sort of shape (other than round) if we’re going to be doing this 5 day trek up to Machu Picchu and taking the advice of our tour guide from the day before, decided to go and visit old JC on the hill. The Cristo Blanco (or Christophe Blanc as we took to calling him after our old landlord in France), was a gift from Christian Palestinians to the city of Cusco as a thank you for harbouring them safely during the end of World War 2. We’ve tried to find out a bit more about these Palestinians as it sounds like a really interesting slice of history, but local knowledge is patchy at best. Standing a somewhat measly 8 meters high (compared to Rio’s 30-meter-high Christ the Redeemer), JC sits atop Pukamoqo Hill which, according to the locals, contains soil samples from all 4 quarters of the ancient Inka Empire. The hike to the top involved several sets of very steep, somewhat crumbly steps up through the outskirts of Cusco, winding up through local houses, plants and at one point, a basketball court. I won’t pretend it was an easy climb, especially when we eventually got to the top and discovered that we’d come the “difficult” way up and if we’d in fact bothered to check the map, we’d have found a much gentler winding slope…but we did it! And the view from the top was breathtaking. The pictures do not do it justice. We sat at the top and enjoyed a Crunchy Nature Valley Bar ™ as we watched the planes land in the valley. Having caught our breath and taken our fill of the amazing landscape (not another bloody mountain!) we decided to take our leave of old Christophe and head down to Mr Eiffel’s market for a bit of gringo toot shopping.

Putting the dried baby llama foetus’ to one side for just a mo’ and ignoring the underwhelming architecture of the place, the San Pedro market is actually really cool. One of the first sections you come across is a long strip of white stools in front of fruit-laden cabinets, behind which stand very smiley happy Peruvian ladies waving menus at you, tempting you to come and enjoy a fruit juice/smoothie at their stall. We opted for a lady called Ana. The names of the women are written in big letters on top of the prices of the juices, once again we suspect shenanigans but have not yet been back to confirm whether they are actually their names, or they just put that so the gringos can see a nice Western name as they’re being fed mystery juice. Once again the portions were sizeable and the costs minimal. We paid 10 soles (about £2.50) for both drinks which were topped up not once, not twice, but three times by the lovely Ana during our visit. Feeling suitably refreshed, we continued on our way through the market, passing a rather hench woman hacking at a large piece of mystery meat. Needless to say we decided we would probably be eating elsewhere that evening. Having been only slightly ripped off (10 soles for a notebook and a snazzy yellow over the shoulder bag), we left the market and headed back to the hostel. Our dinner that evening of fried trout & pasta was served by Fidel Castro. It is also worth mentioning a particular quirk of Peruvian etiquette here, in so far as no matter who asks for the bill or indeed who pays for it, it is always placed in front of Dave. I’ve decided this means he has to pay for everything from now on. Free trip woohoo!

bty

Cusco, like many large cities, offers tourists the chance to save a bit of dosh and acquire a Boleto Touristico. This gives you access to some of the smaller (read, less well funded) museums in central Cusco, as well as the plethora of ruins at varying distances outside the town, for a reduced cost than buying individual tickets. Having acquired ours the previous day and having been woken up at 2am by a taxi who decided that 2am was the perfect time to be beeping and revving his engine right outside our window, we decided to take it easy and visit some of these little museums. Who knows, we might even learn something. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. Our first stop was the Museo Historico Regional, situated inside a Ministry of Culture building which follows the style of many of the buildings in the city, having a courtyard in the centre, with various rooms around the outside on two floors. The Museum follows no discernable timeline or narrative, starting with a massive, almost complete, fossil of a Glyptodont – SO COOL – before then moving on to various cabinets filled with ancient pottery and poorly translated English descriptions. Then it skips several hundred years to a small exhibition about Tupac Amaru II, a Peruvian hero during the Spanish ‘interruption’ in the 16th Century. After this it’s just some Western style paintings of various Goddy Jesusy people. We’ve been told a few times by our various tour guides that art played an important part in the conversion of the indigenous Peruvians to Catholicism but we can’t really see why.

Tourist Ticket Map
You can’t take pics inside the museum so here’s a picture of the Tourist Ticket Map 😀

Our second museum of the day was Qurikancha, which is entirely underground and sits underneath what once was the Inca Temple of the Sun (before the Spanish built a church on it). We were warmly welcomed by an indigenous Peruvian chap who shook both our hands and welcomed us to Peru. On the whole, Cusconians are exceptionally friendly and happy to help, though we’ve found they have a rather dry sense of humour. This is all very well and good when you’re compos mentis but when you’ve just carried a very large, very heavy bag up a very big hill only to be told by the chap on reception that he only speaks English when he’s forced to isn’t ideal. Anyway, I digress. Qurikancha very much follows the same theme of the first museum with what can only be described as an omnishambles of a collection of various bits of pottery, arrowheads and poorly translated signs. It only took us about 30 minutes to go round the whole thing. We began to suspect at this point that the tourist ticket is a very good way of getting unsuspecting Gringos to visit some of the less well funded museums but we didn’t mind too much as we’d spotted a lovely French style coffee shop where we decided to stop for lunch after visiting our third and final museum of the day: Monumento Inca Pachacutec. This tower in the middle of downtown Cusco consists of a museum as you go up the tower, as well as a viewing platform at the top, crowned with a huge statue of the Inca king Pachacutec/Pachacuti. He’s a bit of a symbol round here, like Tupac Amaru II, as he grew Cusco from a small hamlet to a great ruling empire and won quite a big battle against a local tribe that tried to invade Cusco. He is also the subject of a cracking song in the BBC series Horrible Histories but again I digress. Recent historians believe that Machu Picchu was built as a summer home for him but the evidence, like a lot of the history round here, is lacking *shakes fists angrily at the Spanish*. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time here as it was very rainy and we were hungry but it was definitely the best of the 3 museums we visited that day. We ate at Amaranto Anticuchos & Café that evening where Dave had beef & chicken skewers and I had the biggest portion of egg fried vegetable rice ever. We were pleasantly smug that the woman serving us spoke to us solely in Spanish and spoke to the American chap dining in front of us solely in English. I’ve actually been really surprised by how much of the Spanish I attempted to absorb before our trip has managed to stick. The say that once you learn one language it’s much easier to learn a second and that seems to be at least in some parts true, which is good because we’ve noticed people are a lot more smiley and willing to help when you at least only partially butcher their native language, rather than just assuming they speak English; which I suppose is true of everywhere in the world (apart from Paris where everyone is grumpy all the time).

Up early the following day and upon the recommendation of Gonzalo on reception we decided our itinerary for the day would include the Inca Museum and the Santo Domingo Church. Paying 10 soles each for the privilege, our first stop was the Inca Museum; located just off the main square where, as usual, we were steadily approached by people offering walking tours, massages, commercially reproduced paintings, trinkets, and various illicit substances. As you walk through the rooms coming off the central courtyard you are treated to explanations and examples of the various tribes that existed across Peru/Bolivia/Ecuador/Chile before they were united under the Inka Empire. This was great as alongside the museums from the previous day, we were able to start to piece together some sort of timeline from pre-history up to the modern day and as much of the information is repeated between the different museums, some of it finally started to stick – hoorah! The only minor downside to this museum is that by the end they have just given up on translating anything into English so you just sort of have to muddle through on your own. BUT this was more than made up for however by the fact that there are REAL LIFE ACTUAL MUMMIES. This was worth the ticket price alone. Mummies in Incan culture were treated as part of the family and during festive periods, people often brought their Mummy to visit other Mummies as they believed they liked to socialise in death as they had done in life. It’s quite sweet really and memories of visiting the British Museum as a kid came flooding back. Everything else paled in comparison to the Mummies really, even the giant mural of ol’ Tupac being quartered in the main square didn’t quite cut it. That’s what Cusco needs, a good horror/gruesome walking tour. Dave can attest to how many of those I’ve dragged him on in various places around Europe, including one in the middle of summer on a sweltering hot day in Edinburgh. ANYWAY. On to the Santo Domingo church.

 

Ah not quite, we had lunch at what has now become a firm favourite of ours: JC’s Café. It’s cheap by English standards and the portions, as we’ve come to find is quite the norm in Cusco, are huge. A plate of nachos and a tuna sandwich with ‘french friss’ later, we carried on to see some more stuff that the Spanish ruined.

 

The Santo Domingo church was built on top of the destroyed Inca Palace of the Sun and its foundations incorporate much of the original structure. When it was occupied by the Spanish, they painted over all the Inca stonework with Catholic murals and they also removed all the gold that covered many of the walls. Before we went inside, we were approached by a local woman named Diana who asked if we had a tour group. We did not have a tour group and so paid 40 soles for a private tour of the ruins/church. We could have gone round on our own with the audio guide but Diana’s English was really good and when the monthly average wage here is about 1400 soles (£350), it’s good to support locals when you can. Diana told us she was born in Cusco and had lived there her whole life, only leaving a few times to go to Arequipa which, she told us, has a whole bunch of volcanos, which is why property is cheap there. Honestly the photos do not do justice as to just how impressive this place is. The precision of the Incan architecture is breathtaking and the stones are massive! Diana pointed out one stone which had 14 different corners. We spent a good 2.5 hours going around the whole site which include a cracking view over Cusco and Qurikancha from the day before, as well as a very charming garden where we tried, once again in vain, to capture a picture of a hummingbird.

And that just about brings you up to date! Sunday was a write off as we had a rubbish night’s sleep so we used the VPN on the laptop to watch some stuff on BBC Iplayer (thanks Daddy!), went out for a burger (alpaca/quinoa), then came back to the hostel with a few beers and watched The Emperor’s New Groove. On Monday morning we said goodbye to Pisko & Soul and lugged our heavy rucksacks up to Intro Hostel where I’m writing this now. Over to you Davelar!