La Paz is the worlds highest capital city at a altitude of 3,600. That means three things. First the city is in the Guinness book of world records, second it's cold and third you are out of breath if you walk up two stairs or a steep road of which they have plenty here. Not much to report from here as I spent most of the time either shopping, trying to send a parcel home, in my hotel room in my bed trying to get rid of the cold I got at Lake Titicaca or sitting in internet cafes writing travel [View Full Entry]

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The “World most dangerous road” or “Death Road” as it is lovingly called by some tour operators in La Paz is a 40 km stretch of dirt road on between La Cumbre and Coroico just outside of La Paz. The stats say that on average 20 vehicles go over the unprotected edges and around 100 people loose their lives on this stretch of road per year. The cliff drops in some places a couple of hundred meters before gravity is defeated by well ground. The reasons why there are so many accidents is that the dirt on the road is very [View Full Entry]

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Lake Titicaca is (and here comes another superlative) the highest commercially navigable lake in the world at over 3800m. It is also mentioned as one of the highlights of Peru in my guidebook. What they don’t mention that it’s also a freaking cold place and not that interesting. Did I mention that I disagree with my guidebook? Ok it’s not such a bad place as it might have some attraction to some but let's start from the beginning. I arrived in Puno after a nice 8 hour bus ride from Cusco. You really have to say that s [View Full Entry]

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Machu Picchu is likely the most famous archaeological site in South America if not the world. About 400.000 tourists visit the site per year (at least you’re never alone). It was founded ca. 1440 and was inhabited until the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire. The name Machu Picchu is not the original Inca name for the site as this one was forgotten over the centuries. The name is derived from the mountain the city is built on which simply means “Old Mountain”. The city was more a luxury retreat for the Inca nobility than a n [View Full Entry]

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Cusco is the longest continuously inhabited city in South America. It was the capital of the Inca empire and the seat of the last free Inca before the Spanish disposed of him (speak murdered). One of the literal translations of the word Cusco is "Centre or navel of the world". The city was planned to be shaped like a puma and with a little imagination you can see that. It had four quarters each representing one of the Inca provinces. A road was build from each province to the capital and each province leader had to have a house in Cusco [View Full Entry]

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Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru and was mentioned as one of the highlights in my travel guide. Well not Arequipa itself but the Colca Canyon which is apparently the second deepest canyon in the world (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon). Apart from being very deep it also contains a horde of Condors. The way to visit the canyon and to see the Condors is to do a 1, 2 or 3 day tour or trek. Sounds reasonable … well I didn’t do any of that. Can’t really explain why I didn’t want to go and see [View Full Entry]

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Unless you were hiding behind a rock for the last 20 years you will have heard of the Nazca lines. For all those of you who were hiding behind a rock the Nazca lines are a set of gigantic geoglyphs in the Nazca desert. The figures are up to 300 meters long and include animals (such as hummingbirds, dogs, spiders and monkeys), geometrical figures (such as trapezoids, arrows) and other like the astronaut. The lines were done by the (surprise) N [View Full Entry]

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Lima is as you will know the capital of Peru. It was once the seat of the Viceroy of Peru the most powerful man in South America. He was representative of the Spanish king in South America during the colonial era. My guide book didn’t give me much hope as it described the city as big and overcrowded but also mentioned that it has its nice sites. I started wandering around the streets without much expectation but I have to say that I liked the city in the end. There is not heaps to do but the buildings, which were mostly [View Full Entry]

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The main reason why I came to Trujillo was because I saw the Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Moon in Google Earth. And then there was the recommendation in my guidebook that its worth stopping and the fact that it nicely breaks a otherwise 16 hour bus ride neatly in two halves. Trujillo has a third important archaeological site called Cha [View Full Entry]

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The Chachapoya culture and people were in the region for thousands of years before they were conquered (like the rest of South America) first by the Incas and then shortly after by the Spanish. It is thought that the Kuélap fortress was inhabited for over 2000 (possibly 3000) years. They were great warriors as they constantly had internal conflicts and were later used by the Incas as a kind of SAS (or cannon fodder depends on how you look at it). They left hundreds of now ruined cities in the Chachapoya region. Some estimations go a [View Full Entry]

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