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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The day I left the Galapagos Island was completely dedicated to travel to Peru. It started with a two hour speedboat trip at 6am, after that a bus, ferry and bus combination to the airport, then a flight, then another bus to the bus terminal from which I took a bus to the border town between Ecuador and Peru. From there I took yet another bus towards a town in Peru. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that the immigration office for Ecuador is actually 4km before the border town and the border line. So when I showed up at the Peruvian immigration [View Full Entry]

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There is just one word to describe the Galápagos Islands which is either AwesomeHasToBeSeenToBeBelievedKindOfPlace or simply wow. Hope you understand that I had to add a million pictures I simply could not decide which to let out. The history of the Islands is the reason why this place is so amazing. The Galapagos Islands are a group of volcanic islands which were created over a couple of million years through a static hotspot in the earths crust. The tectonic plates over the hotspot shift and new Islands are created every now and th [View Full Entry]

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Its always a sad day when you have to leave a country you liked and it doesn’t get better when you are greeted by about 10 people on the bus station in Ecuador which want to sell a bus ticket for their bus to Quito. Haven’t been hassled in that way since I left India a few years ago. Not sure what they put in their food here but they should go easy on it. Anyway got a ticket in the end. The departure time which was promised as “now” was then also 30 minutes later and the bus to [View Full Entry]

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Popayán is sold as the white city and again as one of the most beautiful cities in Colombian (I gave up counting how many most beautiful cities they have here). To cut a long story short I didn’t like it that much. It has a lot of old buildings which are mainly white and the usual thousand churches but I’ve seen better in Columbia. Spent only one day here so there is not much more to say about it. One nice thing about stopping over in Popayán was that I could go to the Tuesday market in Silvia which lays 1 [View Full Entry]

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If you believe my guide book then San Agustin and Tierradentro are one of the most important archaeological sites in South America. Well they better be because the bus ride to San Agustin consisted of over 4 hours being shaken in a minibus as the road to the town is still not paved. Tierradentro is another 7 hours of which 2 are again on dirt road and on the way back there are about 2 more hours of the same. After all that you see statues carved out of stone in San Agustin and underground burial chambers in Tierradentro. This [View Full Entry]

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