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Published: April 8th 2005
Notes on travelling sensibly...If you read your travel guides carefully, the sensible way to travel in high altitudes is to take it at 1000 metres every two days to let yourself acclimatise properly! However, as you would imagine if you know us at all... we travel as we do life!... trying to do way too much in way to short a time!... so we started in Lima at 0 metres above sea level... we had climbed to 4910 m in 20 hours (all by land I might add!) Dave of course didn't even notice the height apart from a little bit of insomnia... I, however, had blinding headaches followed by nausea followed by insomnia!! great combination at the best of times...but when you are on a bus or supposedly walking around and enjoying the view it is even worse! Apparently the coca leaves are great for overcoming this problem however since the smell made me feel even sicker (combined with the fact that it is illegal in every other country of the world - and me being a stickler for the rules even when not in the country!) i went with the other option which is lots of water... and my
Llama
very tasty, highly recommended with ketchup.favourite - lots of chocolate!! a couple of hours of hell and I was ok again... combined with the fact that we have come back down to 2000 m which is much nicer...
anyway... the idea of the trip was that we go through the colca canyon to see CONDORS!! which if you have not grown up in my fathers house, where documentaries on the andean condors is required viewing!, are very big birds!! Actually vultures if you are at all interested! Anyway...they have a 3.2 m wing span which is pretty big... and as you can imagine from the name they are only seen in the ANDES! so since we were here and i can still remember the documentary, we thought that we had better go and see them
for those who work on a need to know everything basis - more info on the condor...http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/priors/george.shtml
However one more FUN part about visiting condors (apart from the blinding headaches!) is that they are only around very early in the morning - so off we trecked at 5 in the morning to get to the canyon where we could see them! Well... after about 10 mins of sitting
Pretty church
Dave experimenting with spires... in the cold hoping that we would actually see them they started to fly - they were absolutely magnificent!!!! about 3 adults and 2 or three more juveniles flying so close with the most magnificent back drop of the mountains... it was the most exciting thing... i think that i took around 100 pictures (you should all be thanking God that they are digital and therefore we will delete lots of them before we show them all to you! not even dad could sit through 100 pictures of the same condors!) So it was all worth it!
Peru is a bit of a strange place... desert on the coast followed by incredibly beautiful mountain ranges in the middle and then rainforest at the top in the east! In one day you can see cactus and sand and the next you are driving through thick rainforest (well maybe not in one day!) Anyway lots of beautiful pictures of mountains to take your breath away!
We are now back in arequipa which is quite pretty although not incredibly exciting... think that it is a public holiday today because of the funeral for the pope so it is all a bit
Mountain terraces
Clever incas... they actually managed to irrigate all this... with no power tools! quieter here except for around the cathedral which is buzzing with people trying to sell picture of the pope! We are heading off to cusco tonight overnight so will have pictures of machu pichu hopefully on our next blog!
ps: we keep getting hassled by touts in Arequipa - they don't really speak english, but come charging you with dubious looking brochures and menus. They don't take no for an answer, but seeing as they don't speak much english, they all retort with a standard phrase... "Maybe later". It happens with such regularity, it's become our phrase for Arequipa.
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peru
snorting coke and eating household pets... enough said! Just curious, your apartment has always had a problem with rats right?? have fun guys! - Andy