More bus and aeroplane fun ... and Peru

We´re in Buenos Aires now after almost 2 weeks in Peru. A theme emerging on the trip is that we seem to be saying ... "we´re finally here". That´s because there seem to be problems with our mode of transportation almost every time we move around. I´ll elaborate below ...

Arequipa and the Colca Canyon
We stopped here for a couple of days to see the Colca Canyon. The canyon is over 3,400m deep which is twice the depth of the Grand Canyon - and yes, it can be seen from space. Unfotunately we didn´t have sufficient time to get to the deepest part of the canyon but instead visited a section about 1,200 deep where Condors are regularly sighted. There were hundreds of tourists but we were lucky enough to have a huge Condor fly overhead no more than 50m away.

The other really interesting thing in Arequipa is the Ice Mummy Juanita. This is an Inca mummy who dies around 1440 and was discovered on top of a volcano. The volcano was active and melted the ice revealing this mummy. She still has skin, muscles, and internal organs.

Leaving Arequipa I think we´re up to Bus

Inca ruins at Pisac

story #3 but it doesn´t really compare to our others ... This was a 6 hour bus trip from Arequipa to Puno and we had two - one in front and one across the aisle - children vomiting on the bus right next to us. One kid in front clearly had something viral or other serious affliction and the mother gave it a yoghurt drink that came straight back up into the aisle about 15 minutes into the trip. Then the kid across the aisle started vomiting about 4 hours into the trip all over the grandmother. We made it out alive but only just.

Puno and the Uros Islands
Puno is just a shithole but it´s on Lake Titicaca and worth a look for the Uros Islands. These islands are made entirely of reeds. They´re the highest manmade islands in the world at 3,800m.

Cusco
We decided to get the expensive bus up to Cusco ... and it didn´t break down, we didn´t have anybody vomiting, it was great - and a good 8-hour opportunity for Dave to pull out the GCSE Spanish textbook and practice his grammar. It was a tourist bus designed for English-speaking tourists in the 50yr to 70yr age group (we have almost 60 years between us!) and it had a tour guide pointing out interesting sights along the way. We were sitting in the back row with the two guys giving the tour. After pulling out the Spanish textbook the guy giving the tour hijacked it (the book, not the bus) and started using it to brush up on his English .... so Dave went to sleep and Lisa had to help the guide with his English.

We ended up in an amazing little B&B in Cusco where everybody only spoke Spanish. It´s amazing how much cheaper places are if they are not listed in the Lonely Planet. We stayed in San Blas which is up on a hill and had a loft room with a view over the whole of Cusco. All in all we loved Cusco. If you look hard enough there are some great restaurants, shops and people. We also ate our first guinea pig here but slightly cheated because we had it as a tapas instead of having the entire creature splayed out on the plate.

List of novel food we have eaten so far:

• Cuy
  
  A condor!
  
  / Guinea Pig (tastes like chicken?)
  
• Llama (tastes like Beef)
  
• Apaca (tastes like Beef, very lean)
  
• Strange jungle roots and potatoes
  
• Strange varieties of corn and maize

The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu
We walked the Inca Trail into Machu Picchu. There are other easier and harder ways to visit Machu Picchu but this particular trail has many other Inca and pre-Inca archeological sites to visit and it is the most popular walking route into the site. It´s 4 days of walking at altitudes up to about 4,200m so it can be hard work and each morning we arise at the earliest at 3:30am and the latest about 5:00am.

The trail is awesome. It´s well worth spending the time walking and as long as you have adjusted to the altitude it is pretty easy. Machu Picchu is also out of this world. It´s a massive site and remarkeably well preserved/restored for something that was completely overrun by jungle for 500 years. The pictures tell the story. The weather was changeable and we went from having clear views of the city to having cloud, fog and rain drifting through at various times in the day.

Lima
Have we mentioned that Lima is also a shithole .. ?? Flight story #2 So we flew from Cusco to Buenos Aires via Lima and the flight into Lima was delayed by about 90min due to bad weather. We missed our connecting flight in Lima and had to stay over for 24 hours ... This is of course our second unplanned stay in Lima (out of two) and no freebies this time, so we decided we should head into the city and look around. The city is pretty average and we went into Chinatown for some good Chinese food.

We will fly through Lima for a third and final time when we are in transit from Buenos Aires to San Jose, Costa Rica. Surely this can´t happen three out of three.

Coming Up ...
We are finishing our trip in South America with 2 1/2 weeks in Argentina. We already love Buenos Aires! We´re going to spend 1 week doing a Spanish course here, Boca Juniors are playing soccer on Sunday 26-10, we will go whale-watching in Patagonia, visit the Iguazu falls, and briefly head into Uruguay to Colonia and Montevideo. That means we get two extra countries in the passport for Uruguay and Brazil that we didn´t know about.

(Dave) -- I only have two blank pages in my passport so it will be completely full by the time we return to Aus. Lisa hasn´t travelled as much so she still has plenty of free space ... We had some minor water damage to our passports at Machu Picchu but we should still be allowed back into Aus ... the US might be a different story... :S Lisa will need a new passport soon anyway after she changes her name when we get married. --

(Lisa) -- Dave´s just annoyed that despite all those stamps, he and I have been to the same number of countries and mine are better than his :)

Dave & Lisa

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