My Ten Day Holiday

---

Something that you can choose to do at any time on my project if you are staying for a reasonable amount of time is take up to two weeks holiday from the rainforest, so last week myself and a friend from my project, Kayleigh, went traveling around Peru for 10 days. We arrived back from Tambopata on a Friday evening and the next day woke up bright and early to catch our flight to Cusco, the only place that you can fly to from Puerto Maldonado (other than about twice a year, when apparently they fly to Bolivia, and this warrants the title of "international airport"). Puerto Maldonado airport basically consists of three rooms - a room for check in, a room for departures, and a room for baggage collection. But at least that means that it’s not too complicated to navigate. We flew into Cusco and went straight to book a bus to Arequipa for that night. The bus terminal was rather overwhelming, with lots of people shouting out various destinations and trying to force you into going to Puno, or wherever else they happened to be offering buses to. Eventually we found our way to a booth where they were offering buses to Arequipa at the time that we wanted to go, and bought our tickets for 30 soles (about 5 pounds). After that we did a bit of shopping round Cusco, and then we went to eat lunch in a British restaurant where you can buy marmite, pg tips and roast dinners amongst other things.

After spending the rest of the day in Cusco relaxing, we went to the bus station to catch our nine o’clock bus to Arequipa). We were both rather dubious about the whole thing... the booth that we picked didn’t exactly look like the most professional of joints. We kept wondering if we were going to be taking to the middle of nowhere and then dumped minus our luggage or something. But when we got on the bus it didn’t look too bad. The seats reclined a little bit and most things seemed to be in reasonable working order, other than the fact that the ceiling was dripping... but it didn’t rain too much, so we were alright. We left the station at a Peruvian nine o clock (so about 9.30).

After a fairly sleepless night, we arrived in Arequipa at 5 in the morning, wondering where on earth we were going to go and what we were going to do. We took a taxi into the main square, which is very pretty with a cathedral and a nice layout, then sat on a bench for half an hour inspecting the guide book. We worked out a good direction to head off in to look for a hostel and set off. After a while we came to a reasonable looking hostel that had a "We are open" sign on the door. We entered and it had pretty little courtyard and winding stairs, and we were informed that it had hot water and double rooms, which sounded pretty good to us.

After sorting ourselves out we went for breakfast on a balcony overlooking the plaza, and then we spent some time looking around Arequipa, booking a tour to the Colca Canyon for then next few days and doing more eating. In the afternoon we decided that on our one day in Arequipa we should really do something cultural, and the main thing that seemed to pop out was the Santa Catalina Monastery, which is meant to be the most spectacular building in all of Arequipa. We spent a few hours wondering around, and it really is beautiful. It has rather an archaic style; it is full of passages, tiny rooms and gardens and nooks and crannies. The walls are painted in cobalt blue, terracotta orange and white, and there are flowers and trees everywhere. Nowadays only thirty nuns live there, in a section blocked off from the public.

We had supper in a traditional Arequipenean restaurant, where I had roast alpaca (very tasty) and then went to bed, ready for another early start. We were booked onto a tour of the Colca Canyon, famous for condors, which started at 7.30 in the morning. After a quick breakfast on Monday, we sat outside and waited for the transport to pick us up. Surprisingly, the guide was only fifteen minutes late. The vehicle in which we would spend much of the next three days was an air-conditioned van with seatbelts, very luxurious from our point of view. The tour guide was a little bit overly chipper, with a lot of "Hello, I’m Maritza, your tour guide. But more than that, I’m your friend, and if you’re not smiling then you’ll be thrown out of the van". Which of course immediately made both Kayleigh and I exceptionally grumpy. Luckily we weren’t thrown out of the van though. As we drove through Arequipa, she told us a bit about the city and the three volcanoes that surround it, one of which is called Misti, and the other of which I can’t remember.

Arequipa, like Cusco, is near to the Andes, but the mountains that surround it are much more arid. As we drove higher and higher we saw lots of cacti and the land got sandier and rockier. We stopped briefly at a place where you can bury three coca leaves and then make a wish (I’m not quite sure who is meant to grant the wish, possibly the god of the mountains?) which was interesting because the whole area was covered in rock piles, but neither of us built one of our own because we both felt a bit like our tour guide was dictating to us. We then started our descent down towards Chivay, the town from which we would go to the Colca Canyon. We drove a little way beyond Chivay go to a traditional Andean restaurant for lunch. We sat and had coca tea outside looking out over the mountains. The food was also delicious. I don’t really know what I ate... I only know that it involved potatoes, trout and yummy stuff. After that we walked to a view point from where you could look out over Chivay and the mountains, and in the afternoon we went to some hot springs, which was a relaxing end to the day. We had supper at another Peruvian restaurant in the evening, where the food was again very good, and then had an early night in preparation for yet another early morning.

At 5 the next day we got up to get ready for the trip to the Colca Canyon. We left the hotel at 6 in our van. Along the way we stopped in various villages to look at Churches, and bought some alpaca gloves, as it was rather chilly. By the time we arrived at the viewpoint for the condors, it was about 8.30. Our guide informed us that condors are birds of prey, and that they can live to be about 40 years old. They have a wing span of approximately three meters and they change colour three times in their life. I can’t remember exactly in what way... I think they start out as a reddy brown colour, then turn black, and then develop white flashes on their wings and head, which turn greyer and greyer as they get older. For the first half an hour we didn’t see anything, although their where rumours that there were some behind a cliff nearby. After a little bit more intense staring they started to appear over the edge of the cliff. At first they were too distant to really tell how massive they were, but as they got closer and closer you could see how huge they were. After a few hours sat watching, we took a half hour walk back through the mountains over to our van. On the way back to Chivay we stopped at another cathedral which was very much typical of the local style - painted statues of saints and lots of gold guilt. We had lunch at a Peruvian buffet and were given the afternoon to ourselves, which was nice given the hectic pace of the trip so far. We went to the market where I bought yet more bracelets.

The next day we set off on the bus to Puno at 9 in the morning. The scenery that we passed through was truly beautiful. First of all we drove back through the desert like part of the Andes where we could see herds of llamas, alpaca and vicuñas grazing, and then we drove into a much greener and grassier area with an incredibly blue sky. We had lunch overlooking a lake. After 6 hours we arrived in Puno, which is not an incredibly nice town. We said goodbye to our tour guide, who had been very informative, but was rather annoying at times. And she was obsessed with cement factories, which are really not very interesting buildings.

We spent the rest of our evening in Puno reacquainting ourselves with freedom.

The next morning we got up early yet again to head off to the port from where the guidebook suggested it was easy to get a boat to see Lake Titicaca. And indeed as soon as we arrived at the port we were jumped on by a man who claimed to be the “Captain” of a launch trying to sell us his tour. At first we were a little dubious but both the tour and the price looked pretty good so we decided that if the boat didn’t look like it was going to sink then we would go on the tour. Arriving at the boat, it did look rather like it was going to sink, but then so did all the others, so we decided to go for it.

Our first stop was one of the many amazing floating Uros Islands. These were initially constructed by the Uros Indians as a way of keeping themselves safe from other encroaching cultures, but now days they are mainly tourist attractions. They are constructed from reeds by hand, and everything on them is also made from reeds. They also have boats built from reeds with scary faces, which have become sort of the symbol of the Uros Islands. Walking on the islands is particularly weird. They are very squidgey, and it sort of feels like if you put your foot in the wrong place that you are going to sink. Certainly not ideal for a morning jog. We only got to stay on the island for a few minutes as our next stop was one of two fixed islands that are visited by tourists and would take a few hours to get to. The boat journey there was very relaxing (so relaxing that most people actually fell asleep). The island itself, Taquile, was like a hilly mound rising out of the green blue waters. Which meant that the first thing we had to do when we got there was climb up to the main plaza. It was rather steep… I didn’t find it too much of a struggle but my friend Kayleigh is a smoker so she had a few problems… it didn’t help that I spent most of the way laughing at her… but once we got the top the view around was amazing. You could see over to the Andes and our guide pointed out the border between Bolivia and Peru. We spent a while wondering around and having a look a t everything, and then we climbed a bit higher to a restaurant where I had kingfish, the main fish now found in the lake, for lunch. Afterwards we climbed all the way back down and got in the boat to head back. The Lake itself was beautiful, and in the shallows you could see the rocks at the bottom of the pool. Unfortunately though it wasn’t the clearest of days so we didn’t get the best view that we could have done. Nevertheless, we were very glad to have seen it. We got back to the port and had a few hours to kill before taking the night bus back to Cusco, which we spent in a café.

The bus that we took was rather nicer than the previous one, but it was still hared to get to sleep, and we arrived in Cusco at half past four in the morning. We took a taxi to a hostel and went straight to bed. We spent that day in Cusco eating lots of nice food and doing lots of shopping.

The next morning we got up at six to prepare for our train journey to Machu Picchu. We were met outside by a tour bus and taken to the train station, and then we boarded the train. It was rather posher than we had thought it would be, with nicely dressed porters and food served on board, as well as a loo that actually had loo roll, which is thoroughly unusual for Peru. Even the journey up was beautiful. First of all we climbed up through the mountains and then we entered the cloud forest which is similar but not quite the same to the rainforest. The journey took about three hours and then we arrived in the town of Aguas Caliente, from where we would take the bus up to Machu Picchu the next day. That afternoon we found time for yet more shopping, and later on we went to the hot springs, which were set in a beautiful dip between mountains, with clouds hovering just above.

The next day we took a 6 am bus up to the ancient city of Machu Picchu itself. We met up with out tour guide and then entered the city. The first and probably the most famous view that you get comes just as you round the corner near the entrance, from where you can see almost the entire city of ruins. At that time in the morning it is truly mystical, as clouds roll over the city and the surrounding mountains so that your view is constantly changing. The sun rose up through the clouds over the mountains in the distance, and our tour began. Our guide told us about the symbolism and carvings in the rocks, pointed out the carefully designed and carved water channels in the rocks and told us about the Inca Culture, or the Quechuan culture as he called it, as the Inca was only the God of the Quechuan people. The tour lasted about two hours, and after that we had free time to explore where we wanted to. First of all we climbed up to the guard tower, from where you get another view out over the city, and in the distance you can see some mountains which, if you turn your head to the side, look like and Incan god.

After that we decide to walk the hour long walk to the Incan sun gate, which is in a valley between two mountains. Our guide had informed us that it was an easy, gradual walk, but I don’t think that we would have wanted to tackle anything harder. Along the way we stopped at a temple where there were some stone piles and made our own ç, along with a wish. I like to think that it will be sitting there overlooking Machu Picchu for quite a while.

The view when we reached the Sun Gate the view, over looking Machu Picchu, the surrounding mountains and rivers, was worth the walk up. It is also away from the main city of Machu Picchu, so we had the view mostly to ourselves, without having to battle with other tourists, which made it much more peaceful. By the time we got back to the main city of Machu Picchu, it was absolutely full of tourists, and we decided it was time to get going. That afternoon we did yet more shopping… and then took our train back to Cusco at 5 in the evening. The journey took longer, but we got a beautiful view of Cusco at night as we approached. We went for supper and then straight to bed.

We flew back on Tuesday looking forwards to the sunshine and warmth of the rainforest… but we arrived right at the start of a friaje, which is ridiculous, as they had one just a few days ago. But apparently that was a different type. So for the last few days it has been cold and raining, and I am dressed in all my alpaca goods. Great. This afternoon we are heading back to Taricaya. I’m so glad that I took the chance to see a bit more of Peru, as it is such a beautiful, varied, and cultured country.

---