Our trip to Sukhothai was somewhat more straightforward than the one to Ayutthaya, consisting of a train to Phitsonaluk and then an hour’s bus ride to Sukhothai. Owing to the timetable, the only train that both left Ayutthaya and arrived at Phitsonaluk at remotely reasonable times of day was an express train (that joke is funny in both Thai and English) costing us the relatively extortionate price of £22. After arriving in Phitsonaluk only 40 minutes later than scheduled, we got a tuk-tuk to the bus station and bought our tickets for the bus to Sukhothai, which turned out to be a minivan that doubled as a rapid postal service.
No matter though, we got to Sukhothai in good time and after another quick tuk-tuk ride we made it to our home for the next 2 nights, TR guesthouse. Sukhothai is split in to 2 towns, the new town where we were staying is on the banks of the Yom river, whist the old town is about 10 miles to the west. As we had been very good and as we had been in Thailand for over two weeks without having one, we went for a pizza that evening at a very reputable pizza place just around the corner. Like so much of Thailand outside of Bangkok, we had the restaurant to ourselves. It’s amazing just how ‘off’ the off-season is here, unlike in South America where things were, say, about a third to a half as busy as they would have been in the high season, in Thailand it’s absolutely dead. A couple of times now we’ve been the only people staying in guesthouses or walked past rows of restaurants all with no customers. Makes you feel for the business owners here. No doubt they rake it in during the high season but balancing such an erratic cash-flow must be difficult.
After a good night’s sleep in a HUUUGE bed we set off early to get the bus to the ruins in the old town. The bus was essentially a giant tuk-tuk made from a converted truck, ‘bus’ is seemingly a very loose term in Thai. After about 20 minutes we arrived in the old town and were dropped off by the ticket office for the historical park. Unlike in Ayutthaya where the temples and the town were mixed up with each site having its own entry gates and fees, Sukhothai old town is dominated by the central Historical Park with a single-entry fee. Again, owing to the off season the park was nearly deserted and the lack of vehicular traffic made for a much quieter and thoroughly enjoyable few hours as we explored the ruins hardly seeing a single other person.
Sukhothai, which means ‘dawn of happiness’, was the capital of the first independent Thai Kingdom, creatively named the Sukhothai Kingdom. The city was founded as the capital in the early 1200’s after the Khmer empire which had used the town as a small outpost, went into decline and withdrew from the region. Sukhothai served as the capital for around 140 years until it was superseded by Ayutthaya. The runs today have been partially restored and are a UNESCO world heritage site.
We started by walking around Wat Maha That which, like its namesake in Ayutthaya, is the largest and most important of the temple ruins. Owing partly to its considerably less violent demise as well as the more extensive restoration work, the ruins in Sukhothai are generally in better condition than those in Ayutthaya, most notably in the form of the myriad sizeable Buddha statues around the site which still have their heads.
We worked our way steadily down to Wat Si Sawai, a 3-pronged Khmer style temple in the south of the complex and then north through numerous smaller ruins up to a Wat Sa-si, a huge stupa in the middle of a large artificial lake. After that we were suitably templed out, so we made our way out of the park and across the street for a late lunch, arriving just in time to avoid an epic downpour. We made our way back to the new town on the ‘bus’ and relaxed in the hostel for a few hours before heading out for Dinner at the wonderfully named ‘Poo Restaurant’. ‘Poo’ is the Thai word for Crab, tough normally it is written ‘Phu’. There’s a lot of English usage in Thailand where it is genuinely hard to decide if the author was accidently amusing or deliberately so. We decided in this instance it was probably deliberate.
And that’s about it. Hmm. That was short.
We’re off to Chiang Mai next, but Katy can tell you about that.
Day 4 dawned with Katy and I both finally starting to get over the worst effects of the jet lag and beginning to function on a daily rhythm somewhat in sync with the local time zone. For the past couple of days Katy has been waking up around 11-12 am -understandable given the 6-hour time shift from the UK- whilst I have been my usual self and made a point of being different, waking instead at any time between 3 and 5am. Whilst this has had the positive side effect of giving me an opportunity to do more planning for the day ahead or for further in to our trip, or merely to try and improve my terrible grasp of Thai, it has ultimately meant me sitting around in the hotel room for 6 hours getting hungrier and hungrier until Katy wakes up. And no, swapping a sleeping happy Katy for a half-asleep grumpy Katy is not a good trade.
Anyway, today I woke up at about 6:45 and Katy about 9:15, so at least we’re both steadily converging on a reasonable time to awaken. As today was set to be another scorcher (Joy confirmed that it’s hot even by Thai standards at the moment) we decided it would be a good idea to get out a little earlier ahead of the worst of the heat, especially as our firs stop involved a climb to Phu Khao Thong, the Temple on the Golden Mount. We had intended to walk down the road and get a bus, but Joy, eager to help as ever, suggested we’d be better off with a taxi and so commandeered my phone to order one through Grab (the local equivalent of Uber) and take the opportunity provided by the waiting time for the Taxi to make more jokes at my expense. Much to Katy’s amusement.
At 40 Thai Baht to the pound, the currency value is not quite far enough away from Sterling that you stop intuitively thinking of Baht’s on the same kind of scale (unlike, for example, Lao Kip, where £1 will buy you almost K11,000), so instinctively, paying 110 Baht for a 20-minute Taxi ride feels like a lot, until you work it out and realise it’s £2.75. Thailand is called ‘the land of smiles’, ostensibly because the people here are always smiling (and this is true, they are, except for the ones who work on the water taxis), but it is also because every time you buy something and work out what it is in pounds you can’t help but get a cheese-eating grin on your face.
With our budget only slightly dented then, we jumped out of the Taxi and set off in search of some breakfast. Thai cuisine doesn’t really have separate breakfast foods like we do in the west; they’ll happily eat noodles, rice, soup and the grilled and marinated carcases of whatever animal takes their fancy at any time of day. Whilst we have thoroughly enjoyed indulging in the local cuisine, we haven’t yet weaned ourselves off of the western need for good-ol’ hearty bread, egg and/or cereal based breakfasts. To that end, we settled upon a small, French style café in the lobby of a hostel near the temple for some scrambled eggs on toast and a tuna melt.
Stomachs appeased we set off back to Phu Khao Thong through a district of Bangkok specialising in the production of ornate wooden doors, picture frames and clumps of mushrooms. The Temple on the Golden Mount is a large, wide structure built in to 4 distinct tiers; the mount, the base, the temple and the stupa. As you enter the gates, the temple immediately before you is a striking sight; simultaneously inviting and imposing. Amongst the other more conventional wats and temples in central Bangkok, Phu Khao Thong is rather unique appearance-wise and has an almost Arabic look to it.
Built upon what appears at first to be the strange sight of a natural hill in the centre of the otherwise flat Bangkok, the mount upon which the temple sits is in fact the crumbled remains of an earlier attempt to build a huge stupa on the site. Owing to Bangkok’s soft clay soil, this original Stupa collapsed in on itself near to completion and wound up being left derelict for several decades. Today, the mishmash of mudbrick, earth and stone which forms the bottom half of the temple mount is overgrown with trees and vines and decorated liberally with statutes, waterfalls, golden buddhas and small shrines.
This section of the temple mount is perhaps the most enjoyable to climb. When you first set off, a small sign cautions you that there are over 300 steps to the top (Pah! Not exactly Salkantay is it!) and you quickly find yourself surrounded by the canopy of the trees overgrowing the mount from which hangs myriad thin, spindly vines. Along the route the path follows are numerous mist jets to assist with keeping the tourists and monks cool on their climb. Combined with the tranquillity of the waterfalls, statues and shrines, the luscious vegetation and the ringing sound of the bells and gongs which line the path and are merrily rung by each passing tourist, the ascent is an almost heavenly experience. No doubt this is the intended effect, but as a died-in-the-wool atheist, rarely at a religious monument have I found the intended effect to be so all-encompassing and potent.
The second tier of the temple is the base; a wide, conical shaped retaining wall which occupies the central quarter of the structure. The wall is painted a brilliant white, save for a small amount of red detailing which follows the stairways that spiral steadily up the perimeter. The base is elegant in its simplicity and nicely juxtaposes both the chaotic beauty of the mount below and the opulence of the temple above.
Atop the base sits the Temples 3rd tier, a relatively simple square building with intricate gold trim and an awning which overhangs a broad, sheltered walkway around the heart of the temple and from which hundreds of small bells and wind chimes are hung. In the heart of the temple, connected by 4 small passageways, is a small and, by local standards, very modest statue of the Buddha around which incense is burned and monks offer their prayers.
The final tier is the roof, a smaller walkway around a large stupa with a thin, domed base and a tall spire protruding from its centre. The stupa alone accounts for perhaps a quarter of the total height of the temple and is painted solid gold and indented with multiple layers of geometric shapes. It’s a genuinely impressive feature of Buddhist architecture and design that they can make such liberal use of gold yet never make it look gawdy or tasteless. I can think of at least 1 world leader who should take note. The walkway around the stupa, some 150ft high, also offers fantastic views of the city. The Vista of Bangkok from this temple is a microcosm of Asia at the start of the twenty first century, a chaotic and vibrant fusion of old and new, innovation and tradition, wealth and poverty. The foreground is dominated by corrugated roofs, low-slung concrete dwellings and the leisurely chaos of busy market streets peppered with the brilliant golds, greens and reds of temple roofs jutting out from every other block. In the distance the skyline is dominated by huge steel and glass skyscrapers; the visual manifestation of the huge wealth flowing into this developing economy and to which a new building seems to be being added every time you blink; such is the pace of growth in this part of the world.
Stunning though it was, the view from the top could not win out against the strength of the sun, and we soon had to retreat to lower levels for shade and some water in an attempt to cool down (as if such a thing were possible). One we had sufficiently rested we proceeded (slowly) across town to have a late lunch and let the worst of the middays sun pass, stopping en-route in Saranrom park near the royal palace for some much-needed shade. As we finished lunch the clouds started to thicken bringing in a precious few degrees of coolness to the air. Rejuvenated we set off across the river to Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, which is named for the way it catches the dawn light on its ceramic surface (suffice to say, we never got up early enough to see this).
The temple is a series of five stupas laid out like the 5-side of a dice and dominated by its central stupa which stands a good 150ft tall. Each of the stupas is decorated with millions of hand-crafted ceramic tiles of various colours, chiefly dominated by green, blue and white. The tiles are laid out to form intricate geometric patterns as well as flowers and animals and several statues of elephants and buddhas crown the steep upper slopes. The temple site is fairly small though and by the time we arrived it was swarming with tourists (yes, I know) and so we decided to make our way back to avoid the steadily darkening crowds. There was, of course, time to stop off and say hello to some cats that had made the temple their home though.
As an aside, in Thai, the word for cat is ‘Maow’ like the noise they make. This leads one to suspect that maybe sheep are called ‘Bah’ and dogs are called ‘Woof’ but sadly that is not the case. It does however mean that the name for the brutal Chinese mass-murderer in Thai was ‘Chairman Cat’, so that’s fun.
And that more or less finished off our activities of note in Bangkok. With the exception of getting absolutely hammered on the Khao San Road, the only major tourist attraction in which we had not indulged was visiting the Royal Palace. The Palace, however, has a very strict dress code which calls for long sleeves and trousers. Given the weather we thought it better to save a visit until our return trip in November, when the temperature may even be as cool as the high 20’s! We opted instead for a day relaxing in a riverside bar enjoying a beer (just one) and then spending the rest of the day on the roof of our hostel with our kindles.
For our last day in Bangkok we intended, on Joys advice, to head up to the outskirts of the Royal Palace in the evening where apparently a light display in celebration of the recent coronation of the new king was taking place, but a fierce storm soon put pay to that plan and we again wound up on the roof of the hostel reading and enjoying a beer (just one) before retreating from the torrential downpour and lightning that rolled in in the late afternoon.
After dinner we took stock of our time here in Bangkok. It’s safe to say that the city has left a far more positive impact on us than Lima did; Bangkok is an accessible, inviting, vibrant and joyously chaotic place. The food is amazing, the sites spectacular, the people are as warm as the climate and the city has, despite its status as he worlds most visited city, not sold out its character to the tourist trade. You really feel like a guest here, rather than a walking ATM fit for a swindle. That said, it is still a capital city, and like all capital cities it has a character and dynamic distinct from the rest of the country, so it’s with great excitement that we look forward to exploring more of Thailand, starting with the small town of Kanchanaburi, roughly 80 miles west of Bangkok and home to the Bridge over the River Kwai.
It’s safe to say that, by now, we’ve had more than our fill of night buses in South America. Thankfully, the one from Puno to Arequipa was the last one we’d have to endure as our journey to Huacachina, nearly 400km to the north, featured the ever so slightly less tedious prospect of a 12-hour day bus. Far from being done to save my heavily strained circadian rhythms though, this seems simply to be a result of timetabling constraints imposed by the need to get buses back up to Lima as quickly as possible.
But anyway, whilst the nuances of trans-continental transport logistics may be of interest to me, I doubt anyone else cares. Least of all Katy, who stood in the courtyard of Flying Dog hostel at 5:45am stewing over the need to be up for a 5:15am pickup which, of course, did not happen at 5:15am. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that Peru runs on GMT (Greenwich Maybe Time), but we still haven’t managed to work out how exactly anything is able to function when there is such a lackadaisical approach to time-keeping. Perhaps this was just more irksome this time because every minute that passed was another minute that we had unnecessarily dragged ourselves out of bed.
Shortly before 6am, our guide turned up at the hostel and escorted us to our bus for journey ahead, a single-deck, semi-cama coach. Fine for a day-time trip, but as we got on, the bus was still offloading very cranky, sleep deprived Hopsters (‘Hopsters’ being the collective noun for Peru Hop customers that the company insists on using at every opportunity, Marketing’s invisible hand is slowly working its magic in Peru) who had just arrived after a 10 hour overnight ride from Cusco. Poor sods.
The bus made its way through the streets of Arequipa, picking up and dropping off passengers as it went, including our Kiwi friends from the Colca Canyon tour. Our guide for this leg of our journey was a young, curly haired and fresh-faced Peruvian called Joao, who was surprisingly enthusiastic for someone who had was slap-bang in the middle of a 22-hour shift. After a quick pit-stop at a garage just outside of the city, Jaoa handed out a packed breakfast to each of us and sent a menu round for our lunch for later in the day. Breakfast consumed, we bedded ourselves in for the first leg of our journey to the small coastal town of Chala.
On top of not screwing up your sleep patterns for several days, the day busses have the advantage of giving you something to look at. After leaving Arequipa the bus descended quickly through the Peruvian Desert, a patchwork of red and brown chasm and vegetationless golden dunes stretching uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. 3 hours after our departure we dropped down through a deep, rocky ravine following a dried up river bed which led us down to on to a large roundabout overlooking the Pacific where we joined Route 1, the Peruvian stretch of the Pan-American Highway. Despite its lofty title, the road is a poorly maintained single carriageway which meanders along the clifftops overlooking the sea, providing an exciting rallying opportunity for our driver who had a keen interest in the back-ends of the numerous trucks on the road
We headed north for a further 4 hours, arriving at Chala at about 2pm where we were treated to a surprisingly pleasant lunch of fresh Ceviche and Fried Trout in a sea-front restaurant. After a short break we boarded the bus again and headed inland through the Nazca desert, one of the driest in the world and home of the renowned Nazca Lines. The southern end of the desert is a baron, sandy plain which stretches from the coast to the foothills of the Andes about 30 miles inland.
After heading through Nazca City, we worked our way through the rocky northern section of the Nazca desert which is covered in a layer of deep-red oxide coated rock and sand atop of a greyish subsoil. It’s this area of the desert which hosts the Nazca lines, a network of enormous glyphs, figures and anamorphic shapes up to 370m long. The lines were created by the Nazca civilisation roughly 1500 years ago, each consisting of trench about half a foot deep dug through the top-soil. Even today it is not fully clear why or how the lines were created, and theories range from the more rational – they were religious symbols drawn to appease the gods – to the stupid – they were landing pads for alien spacecraft. Today, with the exception of a depiction of a lizard which had a Highway ploughed through it, and a depiction of a hummingbird permanently scarred by idiots from Greenpeace, the lines are remarkably similar to how they were when first constructed; preserved naturally by the arid conditions and surprisingly consistent temperature and humidity in this costal desert.
The Nazca lines are dotted around the desert over an area of about 20 square miles, and the only way to see them properly is from the air by taking a bi-plane out of Nazca or Ica. The tour operators who offer these flights are poorly regulated though, and fatal crashes involving tourists are all too frequent, so we opted instead to stick with the free trip Peru Hop do to one of the viewing towers overlooking the site. It was pretty late in the day when we got to the viewing tower and there was quite a large queue of tourists waiting their turn to climb to the top. As the sun set it was our turn to climb, making it to the top to look over the lines with just enough time to spare before the light faded too much. From our vantage point we could see the tree, the hand/frog/thing and the Lizard, cut in two by the road. Along with the zoomorphic shapes we could see numerous other lines and large geometric shapes stretching off in to the distance. It was really cool to see these lines up close and to get a sense of their scale, but to be perfectly honest they are best off appreciated in a photo gallery where you can see them in their entirety. Its impressive that the ancient Nazca people pulled off drawing these huge shapes without being able to see them from above though.
The sun set across the desert as we set off again for the final few hours of our drive to Huacachina, the small Oasis just outside the city of Ica. We arrived about 8:30 in the evening and were dropped off in a large, sparsely developed plot of land about halfway between Ica and Huacachina where we checked ourselves in to the Huacachina Desert Hotel. A little confusingly the hotel didn’t have a sign outside, so we ended up ringing on the door of the only building in roughly the right location. Luckily this turned out to be the right place and we found ourselves in an exceptionally pleasant, clean and well laid out little hotel with a pool, a kitchen which was free for guests to use, a bar and dining area and a 2-story block of 10 rooms at the back. After a long day of being on a bus we were fully ready for bed so stuck on the industrial size fan the room was equipped with and went to sleep.
The following day we woke to gorgeous sunshine, blazing heat and huge sand dunes towering over the walls around our hotel. Ica and Huacachina are on the edge of a vast sandy desert filled with towering dunes, it’s the picture postcard image of the typical desert you might imagine as a child. But having not been able to see the dunes when we arrived the previous night seeing their imposing presence so close caught us by surprise. We’d earmarked the day to be a relaxing one where we didn’t get up to much so after a quick trip to a supermarket we spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool reading and taking the occasional dip. It’s a hard life all this travelling.
Monday rolled in and we spent another morning and early afternoon being rather unproductive, before setting off to Huacachina for the Dune Buggy and Sand Boarding tour we had booked on to with Peru Hop. We walked the 20 minutes or so to Huacachina through the sandy verges of the road until we dropped down the short hill in to the Oases. Huacachina is a small lagoon surrounded on 3 sides by restaurants and hotels with the 4th side being a sandy beach stretching straight onto a dune. The permanent residency is only about 100 people with the whole town geared up solely for tourism. We’d heard before arriving that Huacachina was a bit of a dive and a tourist trap but were pleasantly surprised to find that, whilst certainly not the world’s most amazing place, the lagoon and its surroundings are really quite pleasant. A wide, bench-laden stone promenade lined with trees and rustic Parisian-style streetlamps encircles most of the lagoon, the town is clean and the restaurants and shops overlooking the promenade are pretty much what you’d expect to find in any tourist district in South America.
We got to the meeting point about 3pm along with around 150 other ‘hopsters’ and were slowly and chaotically organised (there’s no translation for this word in Peruvian Spanish) in to groups before being led up on to the dunes and assigned to a buggy. The sand buggies are large, open sided vehicles with broad, deeply grooved wheels, huge suspension springs and a reassuringly beefy roll cage all around the passenger compartment. The seats are arranged in 3 rows of 3 in a stadium like layout with the front seats nice and low down towards the centre of gravity. Katy and I ended up in the front seat with the driver and the gear stick stuck in to Katy’s leg.
Our seatbelts as tight as we could make them, the driver jumped in, turned over the engine which coughed up a plume of sand from its previous adventure and we were on our way, steadily heading out of the make-shift car park and up to a small control point where our driver handed over our entry tickets to a customs officer of some description. Only the Peruvians – a people with an incredible imagination for arbitrary taxes – would bother to have a ticket control point to entre a desert. It was like the scene in Blazing Saddles where there is a single toll gate in the middle of the Utah desert and nothing to prevent you going around it. Once through the control point the driver stamped on the throttle and the buggy bolted up the massive dune in front of us and Katy, as if physically linked to the throttle pedal, dug her hands in to my leg and buried her head in my shoulder.
The buggy tore over the sand at break-neck speed, bouncing over bumps and hurtling down the valleys between the dunes. I loved it. Katy hated it. The driver, a big jolly fellow who had enough confidence in his own driving to not wear his seatbelt seemed to get off on the screams of the gringos, finding particular amusement in the moment Katy grabbed his leg as we went down the side of an especially steep dune. After 20 minutes or so of bombing around we congregated with a group of other buggies atop a trio of ridges to do some sand boarding. The driver handed out the boards from an open storage cage at the back of the buggy (somehow, they hadn’t been flung free) and we took it in turns sliding head first down the dunes. Piloting the board took a little bit of skill and there were more than a few who took a tumble on the way down, but the forgivingly soft dunes ensured that nobody suffered anything worse than a grazed knee and a mouth full of sand.
After taking on the 3 smaller dunes the driver took us to the top of the tallest dune for miles around and we had the more daunting prospect of a much longer and steeper run. Katy and one of our fellow buggy buddies (I know! I should have thought of that sooner as well!) egged each other on to go down. Another smaller dune and then a final really steep dune later we were done, but not before I managed to fall off on the last slope, diving shoulder first in to the dune and completely smothering myself in sand. The sun was setting as we made our way back to Huacachina where Katy had decided that after our ordeal, we needed a sizeable amount of booze to soothe our frayed nerves (for the record, I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to argue). We headed to a restaurant down on the shore of the lagoon and made full use of the happy hour specials. Several beers and cocktails later, we got back to our hotel and decided that the best way to get all the sand out of our hair, ears, toes and all the other places sand can get to when you’ve spent the day sliding through it on your stomachs, was to go for a late night swim.
Our final day in Huacachina was an early start as we’d booked ourselves on to a tour of El Catador vineyards just to the north of Ica. The region of Ica is renowned for its Pisco production, regarded by many as the best in the country. At El Catador they still make the Pisco using the traditional production methods developed during the colonial era. The grapes used for Pisco are descendants of the grapes originally brought across by the Spanish in the 16th century when they began setting up vineyards for wine production. The hot, dry conditions in Ica cause the grapes to grow small and sweet, the high sugar level making them produce very sweet wine (way too sweet for the export market but popular here) and also makes them perfect for distilling in to the much, much more potent Pisco, typically between 40% and 45% proof. After a brief tour around the production facilities we were led down in to a basement bar for an opportunity to sample the products of the vineyard. We sampled the Rose and a couple of Whites produced on site, all of which were too sweet for our taste, as well as 3 varieties of Pisco including a creamy liquor made with maca root that tasted surprisingly like Baileys. Sampling complete we merrily staggered back on to the bus and headed back to our hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon again lounging by the pool, letting the effects of the Pisco steadily wear off.
For a renowned tourist trap, Huacachina had proven rather pleasant and we enjoyed our time there a lot more than we had expected to. We were sad to leave our lovely little Hotel the following afternoon to make the next leg of our journey with Peru Hop to Paracas, a small coastal resort on the other side of the desert built around the bay formed by the large, mushroom shaped Paracas Peninsula. We arrived in the early evening and headed to our hotel in what had been described by one of the reviews as being ‘in the ghetto’ (presumably by someone who had never been to a developing country before, by local standards it was a perfectly normal street). Hungry, we headed out to one of the restaurants recommended by our Peru Hop guide, a 5th floor rooftop fish restaurant which received our business only because we were hungry and didn’t know until we were up there how expensive it was. That’s how they get you.
An underwhelming meal later we headed back to our hotel where we both had a terrible night’s sleep owing to the noisy fan and plastic mattress protector which we had to unpeel ourselves from every few hours. Ho Hum. At least we were only staying there for 1 night owing to it being the Easter weekend and every hotel in Paracas being full.
We woke up involuntarily early the next day and trudged down for breakfast, groggy and irritable. We did at least have something to look forward to though, a boat trip out to Islas Ballestas Nature reserve, a small chain of islands about 10km off shore that hosts thousands of sea birds including pelicans, cormorants and humboldt penguins as well as being a breeding ground for sea lions. We spent about an hour on the boat working our way around the island and watching the mass of wildlife, the highlight being the infant Sea Lions only a few weeks old frolicking in the water on the gravelly beaches. The mass of wildlife on the rocks was incredible and as we made our way back to shore a vast swarm of blue footed boobies (lol, boobies) was making its way back to the island from a fishing expedition, all flying in formation close enough that they appeared almost like a black blanket floating across the sky.
Back on land we went for a spot of lunch at a small bar that served the tastiest smoothies ever in giant glasses shaped like fish bowls. Our adventures for the day continued with a bus ride around Paracas National Reserve, a national park covering the Paracas Peninsular as well as a small stretch of desert further inland. The bus stopped at several vantage points overlooking the sea and the rest of the reserve as it worked its way back up the coast. Not a great deal to see, but the sparseness of the landscape has its own charm and the jagged rocks along the sea front had the familiar feel of the Dorset coast, albeit without the vegetation.
Our short tour finished and we headed back to Paracas to board our final Peru Hop bus, a 5-hour ride to Lima, stopping en-route at Tambo Colorado, a set of Inca Ruins named for the red colour the buildings were painted, some of which can still be seen today. The site is a large and fairly impressive complex used, rather mundanely, as an administrative outpost overseeing the coastal trade routes.
The sun set as we left Tambo Colorado, setting too on the final stretch of our South American adventure. Next time it rose, we’d be back in Lima with just over a week to go before flying home.
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…
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.
‘Trust me’ said Omar, the rep at Gravity Mountain Biking who booked us on to the Death Road tour, ‘there’s nothing worse than trying to ride a mountain bike with a runny stomach’.
Good advice.
Heeding it, the evening before our tour we opted for the very safe bet of Tuna Pasta to cap off what had been a rather lazy day, save for heading across the street to pay through the nose to get our clothes laundered. Machine washing isn’t really be a thing here, many of the locals believing that it doesn’t get clothes as clean as hand washing, so the few laundrettes that exist can charge something a premium to travellers in need of the service. Some you lose, I guess.
We begrudgingly got up at the crack of dawn the day of the tour to head over to Higher Ground Café in Belen district, the meeting point for our tour and an opportunity for a spot of breakfast at western prices and some much-needed caffeine. 20 minutes or so after we arrived, a young American with a wide, warm smile, a blonde ponytail, Gravity branded hat and jacket and a clipboard (the universal symbol of competent authority) came in and introduced himself as Nate, our guide for the day. Once the final few bits of paperwork were sorted out, he rounded up our group and took us down to the waiting minibus with racks of mountain bikes on the roof. In we all climbed to head to the starting point for the tour, on the way getting to know the rest of the group; an Irish couple from North London, an American from Georgia, a couple from Belgium and a Frenchman.
Just over an hour later we arrived at La Cumbre Lake about 60km north-east of La Paz, the starting point for our ride. At 4,700m the altitude here is even higher than Salkantay Pass, but our short stay at this altitude meant the low oxygen levels had little impact. Pulling over in to a large dirt car park by the side of the lake the Gravity crew unloaded the bikes, gloves, helmets and overalls and handed them out. We were given 10 minutes or so to get comfortable with the gear and a feel for our bikes; high-spec and highly tuned mountain bikes with wide tyres, highly absorbent suspension and ultra-responsive disc brakes.
We soon got a feel for the bikes and Nate gathered us around to give the first of the many safety talks of the day; all of which essentially boiled down to the same message: ‘Don’t be a (expletive redacted) idiot’. Following this we gathered our group by the lake for a photo op and each of us made an offering to Pachamama for good luck by pouring a small amount of stupidly potent alcohol on to the ground, on to our bikes and then in to our mouths (Yes dear reader, the wisdom of the combination of high strength alcohol and ‘Death Road’ crossed our minds as well). Along with Nate we had a second guide called Luis who rode around the group taking pictures and ensuring that nobody fell too far behind unaccompanied. Over the course of the day Luis took the best part of 250 pictures, saving us having to worry about stopping to take photos ourselves. Apparently, Gravity offer this service so that their customers aren’t tempted to try to take photos whilst riding along and winding up on the wrong side of a cliff. According to Nate this is not unprecedented. Remember ‘Don’t be a (Expletive Redacted) Idiot’.
It was reassuring how safety focused Gravity were compared to the service offered by other tour operators also departing from La Cumbre lake, and you could clearly see where the extra money was going. Where we were riding as a group of 8 with 2 guides and a support vehicle, other groups had a single guide for groups of 20 or more and provided far less suitable looking bikes. Nate also told us that all Gravity staff are rope rescue trained up to 100 meters. Not hugely reassuring since the drops in many places are 400m, but he assured us that if we fall more than 100m it wouldn’t matter… Good to know…
Equipment readied, bikes tested, safety briefing complete and Pachamama appeased, we got under way. The first stretch, about 22 kilometres, a steady downward section along a wide, smooth tarmacked road. This was an opportunity to get comfortable with the bikes handling at speed, getting a sense of who are the faster and slower riders and, most importantly, to get used to how the brakes react. 99% of all accidents, according to Nate, occur when riders come up to a corner too fast, panic, hit the brakes way too hard and go flying.
After a short ride through La Combre Pass, the road turned a corner round the side of a mountain and the vista opened up overlooking a huge valley stretching off in to the distance. The view from here was stunning, the black and grey volcanic mountains flanked a wide, half-pipe shaped valley peppered with thin patches of vegetation. The meandering river in the valley basin caught the sun at just the right angle to make the whole thing glisten and the road ahead snaked down the northerly mountain side roughly parallel to the river. The morning cloud layer was breaking up under the heat of the sun and what was left of it was clinging to the tops of the mountains and casting patchy shadows on to the slopes below accentuating the slopes and the overall scale of the scene before us.
One of Nates points during the safety briefing was to not get distracted by the scenery. ‘The bike will follow your eyes’ he said, ‘so if you stare at the scenery for too long, you’ll end up joining it’. To not miss out on the view, Nate stopped us at the side of the road near the entrance to this valley for a photo opportunity and to give us a bit of history lesson.
Death Road is in fact known by 3 names; Death Road, North Yungas Road and The World’s most Dangerous Road. North Yungas Road is the roads formal name and until 2005 when the new road was built bypassing the most dangerous sections, it was one of only a few routes (and by far the shortest) connecting the Yungas, the name for the heavily forested region of the lower-Andes that border the Amazon Rainforest, with La Paz and the rest of Central Bolivia. The original road was about 55 kilometres long and ran from La Combre Pass to Coroica, descending about 3,600m in the process. Built in the 1930’s by Paraguayan prisoners of war, it was from the high death rate amongst the workforce that the road got the moniker ‘Death Road’. Through the 80’s and 90’s and in to the early 2000’s, the road started to see much more traffic and much larger vehicles than it was ever intended to deal with. For much of its length it was only single-track dirt road and had numerous sharp, blind corners. By the time the new road was completed in 2005 the original road was seeing 200-300 fatalities a year, earning itself the title of ‘world’s most dangerous road’.
Today, the new road follows the path of the original road for the first half, the section we were currently riding on, before heading north away from the original road, by-passing the most dangerous section; a narrow 15km descent winding along mountain sides complete with waterfalls, tight turns and sheer drops with no barriers. Nowadays this section specifically is the one generally referred to as Death Road, omitting the upgraded sections and the new bypass.
Before heading on our way, Nate invited us to peer over the edge of the cliff from which we were admiring the valley. About 100 meters below was the wreckage of a bus that had met its fate some 15 years earlier, apparently the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. A poignant reminder, if one were needed, that we whilst we were here to have fun, this road was not to be (expletive redacted) with.
We continued down the new road for another 10km or so, enjoying the thrill of the speed that the descent allowed for as we wound our way down the valley to a drugs checkpoint. Not really aimed at traffic headed in our direction, the checkpoint was there to prevent (or more likely to take a cut of) cocaine being smuggled from the jungle up to La Paz. Here Nate stopped us for one of his frequent head counts and to check how everybody was getting along and to give us a warning that the section ahead was a little bumpier and to take it easy round corners. Along the way I caught a bump unseen which knocked my right foot off the pedal and made the back end step out. The tyres and suspension did their jobs though and what would have been a nasty accident on a road bike was taken in stride by the mountain bike. A bit of a hairy moment, but It was actually pretty reassuring to feel the stability and understand how the bike would react and correct itself from a momentary loss of control.
Stopping to regroup before a short tunnel we got our first opportunity to try the bikes out off-road. Following a rather nasty accident a few years ago inside the tunnel involving a group of cyclists and foggy weather, the local authority had built a small gravel track by-passing the tunnel for cyclists to use. According to Nate this would be one of the most technically challenging parts of the day; the gravel track is only about 200m long, but as it isn’t used by vehicles the gravel isn’t as packed down and present more of a challenge that dirt roads used by vehicles.
Shortly after re-joining the main road we arrived at a checkpoint where we each were required to pay 50 Bolivianos (£5.50), ostensibly as a tax to help maintain the road. Bolivia, like Peru, forbids tour companies from including taxes in the ticket prices, obliging them to be paid individually by the tourists, so this is something that we’d got used to now. We’d been cycling now for about an hour and a half and covered the best part of 20km. We took a short break to use the toilets and have a quick snack and Nate gave us the option of either cycling the next few kilometres, all uphill, or loading up the minibus and driving to the top. Nobody wanted to be the first to say that they wanted to take the van, but as soon as someone said they didn’t want to cycle, the rest of the group quickly fell in line.
So on to the bus we all hopped for the 10-minute ride up to the start of Death Road proper. After a few photos with the ‘Welcome to Death Road’ sign we gathered around Nate for another re-iteration of ‘don’t be an (expletive redacted) idiot’ and a briefing on what to expect, what to look out for and techniques for riding downhill on Gravel. Death Road is still a public road, although since the construction of the by-pass the volume is nothing close to what it used to be and is now only really used by locals to access the handful of villages along the route. Nate also said that, owing to a landslide about half way down, he didn’t expect us to see any traffic at all, but that we should be vigilant nonetheless. A rule on Death Road that dates back to before the by-pass was built is that traffic has to drive on the left, rather than on the right as in the rest of Bolivia. The reason for this being that it puts the downhill driver on the outside of their vehicle where they can more easily see where their wheels are in relation to the edge.
As ready as we’d ever be, we set off down Death Road. Proceeding steadily at first, we quickly built confidence in the bikes handling on the gravely and rocky terrain, controlling the speed by constantly riding the brakes. The first section had a few steep drops but was quite wide and it was easy to maintain a comfortable distance from the sheer drops to our left. At several points we stopped so that we could take photos, take on water and snacks and give Nate a chance to brief us on upcoming sections which may catch out the unprepared.
About a quarter of the way down we stopped by San Pedro waterfall. If you’ve ever seen pictures of Death Road, chances are this is the where it was taken. The waterfall is about 40-50 meters wide and cascades over the top of the road which is nestled in to the cliff along a crescent-shaped curve. The final few meters of the waterfall drop straight down on to the road in a way that cannot be avoided when cycling through. The stretch of the road after the waterfall is relatively flat, but also featured the narrowest and windiest section of the road, with sheer cliffs overhead on one side and unguarded drops of near 600m on the other. Doing this on a mountain bike was unnerving enough but to think that Trucks and Busses used to drive along here (and sometimes still do) is just mind-boggling. The numerous crosses lining the road-side testament to those less fortunate souls that have passed along this route.
As we descended further down the mountain the temperature quickly rose so the numerous encounters with waterfalls and streams posed little concern. The road also widened out a little and Katy and I continued to get more confident in the handling of the bikes. In a refreshing change from the Salkantay Trek, we found ourselves routinely at the front of the pack following Nate down and waiting for the others to catch up at our various stopping points. With the adrenaline pumping and the wind rushing past us, not to mention the perfect weather, we were now thoroughly enjoy ourselves. The confidence got the better of me at one point though; carrying too much speed off the exit of a left-hand hairpin I drifted out wide from the flattened dirt groves left by passing vehicles and onto a patch of larger stones and rocks. Before I could slow down enough to get the bike under control the front wheel bounced out from under me and tipped me on to my side. The fall left me with a nice gash square in the centre of my left shin and a broken pair of sunglasses, but otherwise I was OK and able to carry on after a quick dusting off.
Shortly thereafter we came across the landslide Nate had mentioned earlier, in the process of being cleared by a JCB. The mangled terrain could only be traversed on foot pushing our bikes over the rocks and through the thick mud that we quickly realised we stood no chance of avoiding getting covered it. On the far side of the landslide an ambulance waited for a rider from another group who had had an off much worse than mine and had to be carried down by one of the guides. Good thing we have our travel insurance documents with us.
From here on out the road was much flatter and smoother and the edges much more forgiving. This was to the great relief of our group all of who were, to some extent, really struggling with the constant vibrations and riding the brakes that came with the steeper, more rocky sections. We were still descending quite rapidly, and the terrain went from black and grey rock to brown and red dirt and dried mud. Following another short stop, we encountered a second landslide near a stream which ran across the road. We were left with no choice but to wade through the ankle high mud, before then wading in to the knee-high stream which proceeded to clean us off quite nicely. After crossing this Nate assured us that we’d cleared the last of the mud and water, and were now home free with only a couple of Kilometres to go until we reached the end of the tour; La Senda Verde animal sanctuary near Yolosa, deep in the valley at the bottom of Death Road. Just as we entered Yolosa we came across another thick, muddy landslide. So much for the last of the mud eh, Nate? To be fair, this landslide had apparently only happened a few hours earlier, so he can’t have reasonably been expected to know about it, but we had to cover ourselves in mud again regardless.
The late-afternoon’s sun was really belting down on us now and the 38 km bike ride we had just completed had really taken its toll. Thoroughly exhausted, we wearily made our way in to the animal sanctuary grounds, which entailed crossing a precarious wooden bridge and then walking through a ‘human cage’, a wire mesh tunnel through the middle of the sanctuary surrounded by monkeys, parakeets, deer, capybara and all manner of other native species. We soon reached the sanctuary’s restaurant, a large open-sided wooden structure built around a central kitchen with a buffet counter and an upper terrace looking eastwards (not that a huge amount could be seen through the dense jungle). Waiting for us in the restaurant was a pasta buffet and a glass of the tastiest and most refreshing beer any of us had ever had. A good meal, an ice-cold beer and a refreshing shower later a few of us opted to go for a tour around a part of the sanctuary to see the Spectacled Bears. One of the sanctuary volunteers led us off through the jungle, over a small stream and up to a pair of enclosures constructed on to a steep cliff side filled with trees, shrubs and a small rock pool. Each bear had about a square kilometre of space; an awful lot more appealing as a captive environment than the animal sanctuary we went to outside of Cusco. The volunteer guiding us had brought a tupperware box full of peanuts and the sound of him throwing a few in to the enclosure was enough to bring the bears out of the undergrowth and down to only a few feet away from us.
Bolivian law prevents the sanctuary from re-releasing the animals in their care back in to the wild, but as they are accustomed to humans now, for most of them re-release would be very dangerous as they would not have any compunction about wandering in to Human settlements where they would risk injury, capture or even death. It was great to see the bears in a more natural habitat and the sanctuary has about 800 animals in total, most of which have free-reign over the site (except where it would be dangerous to allow, such as the bears and the Jaguars). We had a long drive ahead of us to get back to La Paz though, so we and headed back over the dodgy bridge to the waiting minibus for our 3 hour drive back.
On the ride home it finally sunk in what the day had taken out of us, arms aching, legs numb and barely able to sit down owing to the effects of the thin, hard saddle. But also, we reflected on an absolutely phenomenal adventure which we both agree had been the most enjoyable thing we’d done since arriving in South America. To cap things off, a giant storm blew in over the valley behind us as we made our way back up the new road, past the entrance to Death Road and through La Combre Pass back to Lap Paz, finally crawling back in to our apartment with its super amazingly comfortable bed at about 10pm.
Thoroughly burned out and very saddle sore, the next day we did nothing but binge watch the Netflix F1 documentary. 1 more night left in La Paz and then we have the pleasure of the night bus to Sucre.
After our rather uneventful week in Puno and Copacabana, we decided La Paz would be the place for us to pick up the pace a little rather that lounging around reading, drinking and eating trout cooked every which way you can imagine in the hotel restaurant. We departed Copacabana for our 4 hour journey to La Paz in the early evening of the 14th. Our Bolivia hop bus was oversubscribed, so we were bumped on to a local minibus chartered to carry the overflow, sharing our ride with couples from The Netherlands and the USA as well as having our own guide accompany us.
Copacabana is on a large peninsula jutting north-east in to the eastern end of Lake Titicaca. The land connection is on the Peruvian side of the border and so Copacabana and its surrounding villages are a de-facto exclave of Bolivia, accessible only by crossing a narrow stretch of water in a town called Tiquina about an hour’s drive from Copacabana. The lake here is a few hundred meters wide at most and the low, flat banks provide for a natural crossing point. Rather than a bridge or ferry, here a fleet of large wooden skiffs are used to transport vehicles across. The skiffs have a ramp at one end and a single outboard motor at the other and are large enough to take a single coach or about 3 or 4 cars at a time. Each has a crew of two sailors (I guess that’s what you’d call them, skiffers maybe? Hmm, no, that that sounds like prison slang for someone who provides an unpleasant service), one to operate the outboard which is the only source of power and steerage for the craft, and another to run up and down the skiff preventing collisions with other skiffs by yelling at them and warding them with a long pole.
We arrived in Tiquina after nightfall where the skiffs lack of any lighting only added to the chaotic scene, and also sadly preventing us from getting any good photos. Even by Bolivian standards, this crossing is considered somewhat hairy (and this is the country that has a road called ‘Death Road’), so passengers are off-loaded from their vehicles and ferried across the lake about 20 at a time in small passenger boats. Not the most comfortable things ever; it was the 26th mode of public transport in South America that I banged my head on whilst entering, but certainly preferable to staying on the bus whilst it traversed the lake.
Re-united with our transport on the other side we continued our journey, arriving in El Alto, La Paz’s neighbour city at about 9pm. The larger, but also younger and considerably poorer of the two city’s which make up the La Paz metropolitan area, El Alto (Spanish for ‘The Heights’) sits on a plateau to the west of La Paz, almost 400m higher than the affluent down-town area which occupies the cluster of valleys that merge below. Looking at the cities from above or on a map, you’d be hard-pressed to say where one ends ant the other begins, but from the ground the boundary is very stark as the cliff drops suddenly and steeply from El Alto down to La Paz. Not only geographical, the boundary between El Alto and La Paz is starkly social and economic and until the cable-cars were built only a few years ago, travel between the two cities was limited to a handful of heavily congested roads.
No such trouble for us arriving so late at night though, and the brief descent from El Alto to La Paz gave us some fantastic views of the city. From the drop off point it was a 30-minute walk, or about a 10-minute taxi ride to our AirBnB. La Paz is a generally safe city for tourists (very safe by South American standards) but the home office website (see Dad, I am checking it!) advises not to wonder around unfamiliar areas of the city at night and not to flag down taxis on the street. Fortunately, our guide was able to phone ahead for a taxi and so we had one waiting for us when we were dropped off. Arriving at our AirBnB we followed the instructions provided to us by the owner and asked for the key from the doorman, only to be greeted by nonchalant shrugs and grunts from the most unhelpful man in all of Bolivia.
La Paz viewed from El Alto
At this point, dear reader, I’d like to say that we aren’t the sort of anglophone tourists who expect the rest of the world to speak English, and indeed we have got to the point where even I can muddle through a simple conversation in Spanish and Katy can usually get several sentences in before she has to resort to google translate for assistance. When spoken slowly and clearly with plenty of gesticulation, we’re generally able to follow the gist of what is being said to us in Spanish. This doorman, however, had the most indecipherable accent ever and mumbled quickly as he tried to deal with us as hastily as possible so he could go back to watching Game of Thrones on the lobby TV. Again, we tried to explain who we were and why we were there and again he just mumbled and shrugged leaving us none the wiser. Tired and stressed and unable to get our phones to download data in order to contact the AirBnB host we were starting to get quite worked up, the doorman eventually pulled out a notebook with a telephone number for a woman called ‘Gabriella’ in it. The number however didn’t include the dialling code for Bolivia and when we tied to ask the doorman for it, he just looked at us bemused and said we didn’t need it. We explained that we did need it as our phones were UK registered but again, he just shrugged and went back to watching Game of Thrones.
After about 10 minutes of badgering him and frantically trying to think up an alternate plan the doorman finally got fed up enough to phone the number for Gabriella himself and pass us the phone. Turns out she was the woman who looks after the apartment for the owner and was up in the flat the whole time waiting for us. In retrospect, that’s probably what the doorman had said to us right at the start. Stupid Gringo’s. It was about 10:45 when we finally got in to the flat, a gorgeous 2-bedroom apartment on the 7th floor with views in 3 directions across the city with one of the cable car lines running right outside our window. The apartment had a tasteful monochromatic decor and was fitted out with all the mod-cons. A smart TV in every room, a nicely fitted out kitchenette, a small bar with a few complimentary drinks, glittery black bathroom fittings (the internal designer was presumably getting a little carried away by this point) and the comfiest bed in all South America.
Exhausted, Katy took herself off to bed whilst I stayed up for a bit to indulge in some Netflix and poured myself a glass from the complimentary bottle of white wine in the drink’s cabinet. It turned out to be a corked desert wine, but I guess it’s the thought that counts. Half an hour in to an episode of The Expanse I noticed myself swaying gently on the sofa, which was strange as I really didn’t think the unpleasant glass of wine wasn’t that strong. A moment later the bedroom door started rattling and I noticed that the rail holding the blind in the kitchen was rocking back and forth and clattering in to the window. Earthquake! Within a second of me working out what was happening the swaying stopped and the building settled down. Like any millennial faced with an alarming situation they don’t fully understand, I quickly turned to Google for information and advice on what to do. Should I stay put? Should I get Katy up and leave the building? Where there likely to be more, stronger quakes coming? Fortunately the answer to all 3 of these questions turned out to be no, what I felt were merely the tremors from a quake near Cochabamba about 200 miles south east of La Paz. Relief could reflexively become excitement at the fact that this was the first time in my life that I’d experienced an earthquake.
The following morning, we ventured to down-town La Paz to have some breakfast and to visit the offices of the mountain biking company whom we had chosen to take us down Death Road. This meant making use of the cities cable car network ‘Mi Teleferico’ which had been constructed over the last 6 years or so and to which new lines were still being added, the most recent of which opened only a few days before our arrival. The network now consists of 10 different lines connecting over 30 stations across La Paz and El Alto and constitute the world’s largest cable car network. Cable Cars aren’t unusual in mountainous south-American cities -Rio De Janeiro being perhaps the most famous example- as they’re relatively cheap to construct and far more suited to the terrain that other mass-transit systems. La Paz is unique though in that it is the first city to use them as the primary public transport system, rather than to supplement other systems like subways or trams.
Taking the White Line from Plaza Triangular two blocks down from our AirBnB, we paid our 5 Bolivianos each (about 55p) to the friendly ticket booth operator and headed through the gates, guided all the way by the numerous helpful and cheerful members of staff up to the platform, and in to one of the cars which whisked us up out of the station. The line took us up along the main street past our apartment building and up to the large square at the top of the road where we transferred to the Orange line. This line took us west, scending over the steep northern suburbs of La Paz and down towards the central station in the next valley. The views from the cable car are fantastic and give a great view of the whole city. The journey time, which would have been half an hour on foot and about the same by taxi in the heavy traffic was cut down to about 15 minutes. Clean, smooth, intuitive and very cheap, we could have happily spent a day just bombing around La Paz on the cable cars. Unlike the Tube or even street level transit, they give you a great sense of the geography of the city and allow you to very easily familiarise yourself with the city’s layout. Furthermore, the fact that the cars on each line are different colours means that from the ground it’s very easy to orient yourself based on what coloured cars you can see.
Arriving at the central station we took a short walk down the hill to the Belen and San Pedro districts of La Paz, an area consisting of about 10 city blocks just off the main arterial highway and that contains the bulk of the tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. Down Town La Paz is a bustling, vibrant and as fast-paced as any European capital The wider streets are lined with trees, street merchants and high-rise buildings with western style (but notably not western branded) shops and restaurants in their lobbies whilst the narrower side streets are filled with every manor of business you can conceive of, from cobblers and furniture makers to language schools and cement mixer merchants. With its cool climate, the city has a surprisingly familiar vibe; On the main streets surrounded by commuters and towering buildings you could easily be in central London or New York, albeit with even more chaotic traffic. We had breakfast at the highly recommended Carrot Tree restaurant where our waiter Johnny, who spoke near perfect English with a strong US accent, sold us on the Cholitas Wrestling experience they offer for the coming Sunday. A short walk through the backstreets with their myriad tourist shops brought us to the offices of Gravity, the most highly recommended tour company for cycling down Death Road. If we’re going to do something this stupid, do it with the best.
Our business for the day concluded, we meandered our way down to the Celeste Cable Car Line and headed south through the cities large Central Park which follows a deep canyon leading from the centre to the south-west of the city. The cable car follows a route under the many bridges which connect the two halves of the city dissected by the park, to a pair of stations flanking the road where we changed on to the southern end of the white line. One stop up and we were back where we started.
Saturday rolled in and we booked ourselves in for a walking tour around down-town La Paz starting from San Pedro Square, adjacent to which stands the infamous San Pedro Prison; a uniquely bizarre prison operated by the inmates where the families of long-term inmates will often voluntarily reside alongside them. The prison has a fully functional(ish) internal economy; prisoners are not assigned cells or provided food or other amenities, but rather must provide goods and services and trade for the things they need and rent their cells. The bulk of the cashflow in to the prison comes, not massively surprisingly, from cocaine production and the inmates are supposed by those in the know (read: not me) to produce the finest in the world. The guards provide a perimeter to keep inmates in, taking a sizeable cut of the cocaine and other illicit revenues, but beyond that the inside is a self-regulating free-for-all which is, by all accounts, a remarkably safe place to be, provided you know the right people to slip a few hundred Bolivianos to. The prison use to allow tourists inside for tours (this was one of the services provided by the inmates in order to earn their keep) but in recent years such tours would end with tourists being marched by the guards around the numerous ATM’s in the area being made to empty the contents of their bank accounts to pay to be ‘released’.
Whilst waiting in San Pedro Plaza for our walking tour to start we began eavesdropping on a small group of tourists circled around a short, skinny man in dishevelled clothing and heavily worn sandals. The man spoke with a thick US accent and barely stood still as he gave an erratic, flamboyant and somewhat unhinged regaling of stories about the prison. For a while, it was unclear whether this was an actual tour or whether these were just some unfortunate tourists cornered by a local lunatic, too polite (or too alarmed) to make their excuses and leave. It transpired later that the man in question was ‘Crazy Dave’ An American citizen and something of a local legend who spent over 17 years inside the prison for attempting to smuggle 2.5 kilos of cocaine out of Bolivia and now earns his keep telling tourists his story outside the prison grounds. As entertaining as this all was, there was something rather pitiable about the scene of a man ravaged by drug addiction and prison, who had lost contact with his wife and children and had ended up here, reliving it all as entertainment to make a living. There was an unsettling midnight-express undertone to his performance and whilst the thought did cross our minds that it might be interesting to spend half a day following him around and hearing his stories, there was probably better ways to find out about the inner workings of the prison.
The guide for our walking tour was the much more down to earth and level-headed Marisol of Red Cap Tours. Unlike in most of the cities we’ve visited where we make a point of seeking our free walking tours, operators in Bolivia are forbidden from offering services for free, so they charge the minimum of 20 Bolivianos (about £2.20) upfront and ask for tips at the end. After a somewhat more objective overview of the prison and some tips on navigating the hectic traffic in La Paz (‘just ignore the traffic lights, their just decorative’) Marisol lead us up to a Rodriguez Market, a large market used by locals that, on weekends, spills out in to the neighbouring roads for several blocks.
Somewhere in the warren of stalls and tarpaulin Marisol found a quieter spot talk to us about the history of Lap Paz and the Aymara people, the largest of the over 30 ethnic groups native to Bolivia and by far the most prevalent in La Paz and the surrounding area. The City, like many in this part of the world, has roots that go back to the Incans. Laja, as it was then, sat on the intersection of several major Incan trading routes before the Spanish arrived and established La Paz in 1548. La Paz was often a troublesome city for the Spanish to control, being the site of many revolutions and sieges during the Hispanic period. In 1809 the city declared its independence from Spain, being amongst the first places in South America to do so. The rest of Bolivia would follow suit in 1825 and since then La Paz has functioned as the seat of government and de facto capital, with Sucre recognised as the constitutional capital.
Our tour continued down to Plaza Murillo, the square around which sits the presidential palace and the congress and site of many of the most pivotal chapters in Bolivia’s history. Marisol told us of the numerous uprisings and revolts that have seen the Plaza be their epicentre over the years as well as giving us our first insights in to contemporary Bolivian politics. In 2009 President Evo Morales, the first president of ethnically Bolivian (Aymara) descent ushered in a new constitution for the country, changing its name officially to the ‘Plurinational State of Bolivia’ to recognise its diverse and multi-ethnic heritage. Morales has adopted notably anti-globalisation and anti-western policies (hence the presence of western style business but lack of western brands in the country, with the notable exception of Coca Cola, which is seemingly bloody everywhere) and has pushed an agenda of nationalisation and fighting corruption (juries out on his success here) as well as investing heavily in infrastructure (Such as the cable cars, so that’s a big point in his approval column). Whilst a divisive and polarising figure within the country, it can’t be overlooked that since his presidency began in 2005, the country has enjoyed a level of economic stability and prosperity unparalleled in its 200-year history. Tellingly of the slightly darker side of contemporary politics in Bolivia though, Marisol told us that she would be saving some of her more controversial thoughts on Evo Morales until we were in a private place and no longer in earshot of the police outside the presidential palace.
After a short stop in another market for some fresh fruit juice and a stop outside San Francisco church (Another Bloody Church) Marisol lead us to a bar a few blocks down from the start of our tour in San Pedro. Here we were each provided with a shot of Singani, the national liquor, mixed with Orange Juice. Singani is a hard flavour to describe, it’s not that much like anything I’ve tried before. There’s a hint of Ouzo to it, but beyond that it’s a rather unique flavour. In the privacy of this bar Marisol felt more at ease to discuss the more negative aspects of Evo Morales presidency, most notably how he had bent the rules of his own constitution to give himself a 3rd term (where he should be limited to 2) and is now lining up a referendum to allow himself a 4th. Morales has also concentrated a lot of power in the executive branch and become increasingly influential in setting media narratives and agendas throughout the country. Around La Paz his face is commonplace on adverts and billboards and his personal banner adorns the side of every cable car carriage. There are the trappings of a dictator and a cult of personality in the making here and although he shouldn’t be able to run for a fourth term later this year, lamentably Marisol suspects that he will, and that he’ll win, largely as a consequence of the alternatives being even worse. Marisol also told us of bad policies he has enacted and bizarre statements he has made such as claiming that eating chicken makes you gay as well as, more concerningly, being an outspoken supporter of Maduro in Venezuela.
Our tour concluded, we retired again to our apartment and looked forward to our leisurely Sunday morning and the evening’s entertainment, the Cholitas Wrestling we’d signed up for back at The Carrot Tree. We weren’t totally sure what we had got ourselves in for, but we would soon find out.
Late afternoon Sunday then and we headed off to the rendezvous point for the Cholitas Wresting a short walk from our apartment. Our bus (comically names ‘Jesus Team’) meandered around the streets for half and hour or so picking up Gringos before heading up to El Alto. On the way our guide laid down the ground-rules for our visit. No glass bottles in the arena, no alcohol, no videoing the wrestlers and no throwing things at the wrestlers as they will retaliate, and you won’t like it…Ok… (For the record, once we arrived, beer was being sold, the complimentary drink we were provided was Coke in a glass bottle and there was absolutely no enforcement of the ‘no videoing rule’).
Arriving at the arena we found ourselves in a semi-enclosed basketball court, a wrestling ring with an entrance ramp coming off the wall on the far side and a concrete stand opposite about half filled with locals and a few tourists. Around the ring, separated only by a metal crowd-control fence was about 3 or 4 rows of plastic ‘VIP’ seats which we were invited to sit in. All in all the audience was about 50/50 locals and tourists. It’s not totally clear if this event was set up for the tourists and the locals started tagging along, or vice-versa, but it seems to have genuine appeal to both audiences now.
Not long after we arrived, the lights came up, the music started and a Spanish announcer using a PA system that distorted his voice to the point where it was completely unintelligible began excitedly whipping the crowd’s energy up. Although we couldn’t understand a word being said, the use of tone and elongated vowels were unmistakeable as introductions and two male wrestlers came out from the behind the curtain at the top of the ramp and made their way down the entrance ramp to the ring. According to our guide the men go first because they aren’t important, the Cholitas are the real stars! After the wrestlers were introduced the referee came out, a portly middle aged man all in black, effeminately dancing around the ring and goading the crowd to waves of boos and hisses. Evidently this referee has prior form. The fight started with the Referee overtly siding with the antagonist, a man dressed like the gimp from Pulp Fiction, against the hero, a man in a red Mexican Wrestlers mask and wearing non-specific oriental style garb and shouting ‘HI-YA’ as he performed flying kicks and chops. The wrestling style was a mix of WWE and Mexican wrestling and, to their credit, the wrestlers were very good, selling the punches and falls and performing acrobatic jumps and slams off the ropes and turnbuckles. The fight ebbed and flowed and the referees prolonged counts on the protagonists pins suitably rousing the crowed before eventually, as form would dictate in any staged event, the hero won, and the referee and the villain slunk away.
Go with Christ.
Next up were the Cholitas! Bit of background; the Cholitas are the women of the Aymara and Quechua communities in Bolivia who wear the traditional garb of broad, multi-layered colourful skirts, knitted cardigans and small bowler hats*. Until Morales came to power, the Cholitas were a marginalised underclass in Bolivian society, but in recent years they have seen their social and economic status grow substantially, and now they are free to put on wrestling shows for the delight of locals and tourists alike… Perhaps it’s best not to try and make sense of all of this…
*The small bowler hats weren’t originally part of the traditional attire, apparently the hats were intended for the British railway workers who came over to Bolivia during the late 19th century to construct the nations railway network. The hats ordered were way too small for the British engineers to wear however, so the distributor, stuck with thousands of useless hats, manged to convince the local women to start wearing them and the fashion stuck, now forming part of the Cholitas iconic appearance.
The first match was between two sets of young women in a sort of tag-team match. At least that was how it started. The match, again overseen by the faux-camp referee of dubious integrity, quickly spilled out and in to the space around the ring and then over the barriers and in to the crowd, much to the visible surprise of the front row of tourists who suddenly found themselves with Cholitas being hurled into their laps, and the shrieking delight of the locals who had seen this all before. From there the room descended in to total chaos. The wrestlers started grabbing the drinks cans of audience members and emptying their contents on to each-others heads, sometimes taking a mouth-full and spraying it in to the crowds as well. The locals started pelting the villains with popcorn and chastising them. In turn, the villains ventured further in to the crowd to target with drinks bottles the crowd members who challenged them. All the while the music blared, the lights flashed, the crowd booed and cheered, and the announcer excitedly shouted a running commentary that surely now nobody could make any sense of. The Referee then got involved, chasing the wrestlers around the ring, whipping them with some cord he’d acquired from somewhere until the fight eventually worked its way back in to the ring and the heroes finally turned the match around and won, to the ecstatic delight of the crowd.
Soon after that match the music pipped up again and an older cholita and a large male wrestler in a Mexican mask and tight-fitting spandex made their way out to the ring. They started by taking the microphone from the announcer and addressing the crowd before the introduction of their opponents. Before the opponents could enter the ring though, one of the younger cholitas from the previous fight began to woo the male wrestler, much to the chagrin of the older female cholita and the hissing disapproval of the crowd. She chased away the younger cholita away before proceeding to punish the male wrestler for his perceived infidelity, throwing him out of the ring and breaking a plastic chair over his head. This exchange carried on, interwoven with impassioned exchanges on the microphone between the warring parties. At one point, another male wrestler appeared, seemingly a love interest of the younger cholita. He shouted a few things then disappeared again before finally the older male wrestler turned on the young cholita to the delight of the older cholita and the crowd, pinning her in the ring and winning a match that, from what I could work out, had never even started.
The last fight of the evening was between 2 cholitas and 2 men dressed as flys. Yes. As flys. They even squatted and bounced around as if they were flys and used their hands to wash their fake compound eyes. By this point we had completely given up trying to work out what the hell was going on. The whole night had been very, very surreal and totally ridiculous, but thoroughly entertaining. Before leaving we took advantage of the opportunity to take a photo with the Chlitas, who had fortunately put their differences aside long enough to allow us to take some pictures.
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!
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! 😀
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 😊
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!
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.
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.
Katy and Dave Avoid Adulthood 