South America so Far!

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Hola Amigos!

Well we arrived safely in Santiago in Chile where we spent a couple of days sight seeing and getting over our jetlag before flying up to Lima in Peru. We found a really nice area of the city to stay in called Miraflores. We spent a few days here exploring some Inca ruins and appreciating the Spanish architecture of the Plaza de Armas. The Cathedral and surroundings buildings were beautiful. We also visited an interesting monastery famous for its catacombs, which housed tens of thousands of skeletons!! In keeping with the Peruvian passion we also attended a football match between a local team and a big Argentinian side - River Plate. The atmosphere was great!

Next we travellend to Huacachina - a small tranquil oasis surrounded by towering sand dunes where we spent a few days relaxing. We also decided to give sand boarding a go (literally snow boarding but on sand!) It was pretty good fun but after falling over a few too many times we decided to just lie on our boards and go down head first! The bugees which transported us up to the dunes were even more fun! They were basically 4X4´s, with no roof, just a metal cage and the drivers just rag you around the dunes without a care in the world! They were really fast and we came out of our seats on every bump, but it was totally exhilerating!

Our next stop was Nasca, where we saw the amazing Nasca Lines - a striking network of animal and plant drawings made by the Nazcan culture by removing sun-darkened stones from the desert, and dating back to 900 BC to AD 600.

Our journey from here to Arequipa was somewhat eventful! The bus ride should have taken us 8 hours but ended up taking 24!!! When we neared Arequipa, our bus was stopped by local farmers striking about the price of milk. They were all over the road so we couldn´t get past and they put massive rocks in front of the bus wheels. Next the locals were lighting tyres in the streets and rioting! After a very long wait the police finally cleared the roads, with the help of brute force and tear gas, and we were on our way again.

On arrival in Arequipa we visited the Santa Catalina Monastery - a small town itself within the city where nuns still live to this day. From Arequipa we also went on a trek into the Colca Canyon - the second deepest canyon in the world! We spent 3 days trekking the country side, staying with local families and appreciating local food, including alpaca.

Next we crossed the border into Bolivia and stayed on the shores of Lake Titicaca at Copacabana - a lovely little bohemian town with lots of nice bars and restaurants. We took a boat trip to the Isla del Sol (The Sun Island) which according to Incan legend was where the sun was created. Strolling around the island we got some stunning views of Lake Titicaca and also saw some interesting ruins.

We then travelled down to Uyuni in the South of Bolivia - on the bus journey Adam has his bag stolen from the overhead storage whilst we were sitting underneath it!! Feeling thoroughly annoyed we were then surprised when it was handed back to us by the driver once we arrived in Uyuni. It seemed that either the driver or another passenger had snatched it, rifled through it and after finding nothing of value decided to give it back to us!

This aside, we had a fantastic time in Uyuni - doing a 3 day trip to Salar de Uyuni (salt flats covering 12 000 square kilometers!). We travelled for hours over the immense mass of salt, watching trucks shovel up salt for the likes of us to put on our chips! We saw some beautiful lagoons, including the Laguna Colorada which was red in colour and was the home for hundreds of flamingos. We also explored the Isla de los Pescadores, with giant cacti and amazing views of the salt planes and surrounsing snow-capped mountains.

Next we travel back to Peru to do the famous Inca Trail.....

Lots of love
Janice and Adam xxxx

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