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Published: January 2nd 2007
Saturday 18th November - Puerto Inca
Today we drive to Puerto Inca. On the way we stop in Pisco where we have to have a famous Pisco Sour. We have lunch here except Kate, Bambino, Vicky and I choose the wrong restaurant. We order pizza and it has to be the worst in the world. They don´t seem to actually stock or make anything in this restaurant. They have to run to the shop across the road for our drinks and when the pizza arrives it has a soggy base and an eyelash on it. Nice!!! Needless to say we don´t eat much. Also its the most expensive pizza as well but Kate wants to leave a tip as they are so friendly in the restaurant!
The pisco sour is actually pretty good. We order a jug but Bambino and Vicky can´t drink theirs so unfortunately Kate and I have to finish off the jug! What a shame especially as they are so strong, I have a good sleep on the bus afterwards!
Puerto Inca is a nice place. Its another beach camp by Inca coastal ruins (hence the name). They used to catch fish here in the
early morning and could run it 60 kilometres up the mountains to Machu Picchu to serve for dinner the same day.
We spend the afternoon chilling by the sea and play some volleyball in the afternoon. We´re really rubbish at the volleyball, none of my training from school paid off!
This is our last night at sea level for awhile so we make the most of it!!
Sunday 19th November - Arequipa
Another really long driving day to Arequipa, known as the White City because it is so beautiful with lovely white buildings and architecture.
We drive all day and arrive in time for dinner in the evening. We stay in a very sweet hotel, called The House of my Grandmother (in Spanish of course). The hotel is like a green oasis (cheesy I know) with each room having its own character!
We wander a few blocks down for dinner. Tonight we get to try the national Peruvian dish. Deep fried guinea pig with chips. We share one between 6 of us as we slightly intrepid as to what it will be like. When it arrives it is literally a flattened guinea pig with
its head and feet still on and in batter. There isn´t much meat on it and its fairly grim, especially with the front teeth poking out of its mouth. Still we have great fun playing with the claws and stroking each other with them!
Martin, Vicky, Bambino, Kate and I go on to a bar. This is our last night of drinking before we go dry in preparation for the Inca trail! We head to a local bar and have a few pisco sours. It turns into a fairly drunken night and its only really us dancing. There´s a drunken slumped girl in the corner of the room so we take it in turns to see if we can wake her up - we can´t as she is comatose!
Eventually we stumble home in the early hours of the morning!
Monday 20th November - Arequipa
We wake up slightly the worse for wear, in fact I feel really sick and we have full day of sightseeing ahead of us!!!
We sit on the delightful terrace taking in our breakfast. The next thing I feel is a rumbling and shaking of the table. Vicky is moaning
to stop it as she feels sicks! It takes us awhile to realise that this has been an earthquake tremor. Kate was sitting on the toilet at the time. She recounts the story as she thought I was so very desperate for the toilet as why was I banging so hard on the door to get in, until she realised the walls were vibrating too!
We wander into town taking in the sights of Arequipa. We head down to the main square and to the local museum with more cultural artefact's!!! This museum houses the Ice Princess Juanita, the most important recovered body in the world! You get to watch a video about the Inca sacrifice of Juanita. She was sacrificed to the mountain gods high on a volcano. She was only discovered recently when a nearby volcano erupted and melted all the ice that covered her! She is the best preserved oldest body as she was in ice for so long. The museum is quite freaky as it gently leads you to the grand finale of seeing Juanita in a glass freezer. Mmmmm, nice, she just looks a bit black and has her eyes missing! I´m feeling so
rough that I look more like a frozen mummy than Juanita!
Still feeling rough but we sit in the main square for lunch, which perks me up a bit.
In the afternoon we visit the Saint Catalina monastery. Its a large complex that was only opened to the public about 10 years ago. The nuns still live there but are shut in a small complex so we can't see them! I´m glad we left this for the afternoon when I´m feeling a bit better as this place is beautiful - with wide streets and lovely gardens. I´m not sure what the nuns do now except make good chocolate cake as we chow it down.
Tuesday 21st November - Chivay
We drive to Chivay up over the stunning mountain passes of the Andes. It´s beautiful here but very cold. We climb and descend several times that day over passes in excess of 4500 metres. Really good for those people suffering from the altitude. Vicky expands in a way that I´ve never seen anyone do before. Not just a little bit but a full 9 months of pregnancy, pretty scary stuff. The higher we go the fatter she
gets (will she burst). Its not nice for her but we have fun taking the Michael, at this rate she won´t need to walk the Inca trail, we´ll just tie a piece of string to her as she can fly it like a helium balloon!
At the top of the pass we all get out to pay homage to the mountain. We have to build a cairn which represents our sins and we leave them on top off the mountain so that we can descend clean and free of sin! My cairn is tiny of course but you should´ve seen Kate´s! There weren´t many rocks left once she´d finished building hers!
All the way along the passes there are llamas and alpacas, we end up trying not to create anymore road kill. They are very sweet and we stop to take lots of pictures!
At Chivay we visit some more hot springs. This is supposed to be a camping night but everyone else has upgraded top rooms (wimps, its not that cold and we're only camping at 3800 metres!). In fact Kate and I are the only ones to Kate. Vicky and Bambino sleep on the bus.
We actually camp in the grounds on the hot springs. Everyone leaves when it closes but we get to go in again. We have the place to ourselves, sitting in the hot water looking at the stars (well actually its raining but I don´t want to spoil the image). This is a great place to camp
Wednesday 22nd November - Colca Canyon
Yeah another early start at 5am to get the tent down to go to Colca Canyon. But that's fine, because all the locals arrived at 4am for their early morning baths and woke us up anyway!
We head off into canyon. Another stunning place, one of the deepest gorges in the world at 3600 metres deep and a sanctuary for the condor. We sit on some rocks at the Mirador del Condor (Condor look out!) waiting for these chaps to rise from the gorge on the thermals. We sit there for a couple of hours and out of nowhere this condor floats from the canyon. We only see it for a few seconds but its a marvellous sight, as it flies higher into the sky on the thermals before flying out to sea. We´re lucky
enough to see 2 more condors in this manner. One is actually attacked by a hawk as it flies too close to its nest. They are amazing birds with huge wingspans and just seem to float in the sky with no effort. I actually think they look a little like flying turkeys but with more grace.
We spend the rest of the drive going over more stunning and beautiful mountain passes (does this sound familiar yet??). We camp at just under 4000 metres. On the way Bambino has been vomiting so we tuck her up on the bus for the night. Its freezing at this altitude but we have to put our tents up. We´ve stopped in the dark in a place which I´m sure is a quarry. It takes 3 of us 30 minutes to put up our tent as we can´t get the pegs into the ground. I feel like I´m starting my own mine as there sparks flying off my mallet!! We´re in foul moods by this time that we won´t help with dinner. We let Vicky share our tent which at least helps us stay warm. Poor old Bambino is all feverish and shaking. I
hope she feels better in the morning.
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Ade
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Arequipa
Howdy, There was no need to go half way around the world to Arequipa to see a dead body in a freezer. You could have come over to my flat. Oh well. Happy new year and all that!