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Published: June 25th 2008
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La Paz fitted into alot of what I thought South America would be like before I arrived - chaotic, noisy, energetic. The motorists drive with their horns rather than with indicators; street stalls sell everything from fresh honey (so fresh, the bees are present) to lama foetuses; minibusses pass at every second shouting a list of destinations at all pedestrians. Right in the middle of a festival there, I was walking down the street, and was sure I could hear gushing water. Hardly someone going on the street I thought, surely not. I walked on, the gushing got louder, so I looked around for a guy going against a wall somewhere. Still nothing. Then I looked down to see the moon-bottom of a Bolivian woman squatting right in the middle of a group of undeterred people, emptying her bladder with glee. Another step closer and it would have been on my shoe! The place is nothing if not unique.
We stayed in the Loki hostel, which deserves a mention for doing just about everything right - nice beds, nice rooms, great staff, excellent parties! Without a doubt one of the best hostels I've been in to date! And the scene
of a lot of fun for the week we spent there. The week included the Champions League final (Thank God John Terry missed that penalty!), and the birthdays of Mark and Dan, so there was plenty of distraction. We also did a cycling trip down El Camino de la Muerte - a narrow road that plummets down the mountainside for 61km of excellent views and challenging mountain biking. With saddle sores and blistered hands, we all completed the route. What a great day out!
From La Paz, we travelled up to Cusco, via lake Titicaca, to get organised for our Inca Trail - a three day trek along the route that the Incas used to travel between the two important centres of the time - Cusco and Machu Picchu. The trek was quite challenging, especially the second day where it's all uphill and at high altitude! But the ruins at Machu Picchu are fantastic, and worth the struggle. And the guide gave us some bits of interesting trivia along the way. My favourite two:
1. Machu Picchu, also dubbed 'the lost city', was buried in jungle due to the fact that all the people there heard about the
arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, decided that they would be found and killed if they stayed put, and so fled. After they had fled, they were found and executed by the Spanish, and the city and the trail became overgrown in jungle, and was never found by the Spanish. So if they had have stayed put, they would have all survived.
2. It took us 3 days (and a fairly tough 3 days at that) to complete the Inca Trail. A race was organised to pit an experienced Inca Trail porter against some top marathon runners. The porter left them in his wake, completing the whole course in a staggering 3 hours 39 minutes.
We spent a while afterwards in Cusco, recovering our breath and generally enjoying ourselves. It's a beautiful town, which reminds me a bit of Prague for amyone that's been there - cobbled streets, beautiful churches, cathedrals and plazas. Into the bargain there was good food, cheap massages, good nightlife and friendly locals.
From Cusco, myself Conor and Steo took a round-trip into the jungle, with the ever-helpful Liz's explorers (and with the help of Liz's certified lunatic of a daughter) to a place
Dead Woman's Pass
After a solid day of Climbing. From left to right: Jacko, Me, Conor, Ronnie and John. called Puerto Maldonado. There we saw a range of wildlife - monkeys, anacondas, alligators, sea-turtles. And of course mosquitos. LOTS of mosquitos! We boated down the amazon and stayed in a Jungle Lodge for the few days. Was a really good experience, and a nice way to unwind and enjoy some top quality jungle fruit and food.
From the jungle, we travelled to the coast to the capital city of Lima, and down from high altitude for the first time in weeks. The novelty of climbing stairs and not being completely out of breath was brilliant! Lima is quite a nice spot, and good for a weekend trip, but by this stage we were set on spending a bit of time on the beach in the sunshine. So after a brief pit-stop in Trujillo (beach but unfortunately no sun), we travelled to the north of Peru to the beautiful beach town of Mancora. We took a surfing lesson and spent a day or two renting boards. I won't exactly claim to have taken to it like a duck to water, but I at least stood on the surfboard once or twice. I'll look into doing a bit more in
Australia when I get there - it's an entertaining passtime.
Quito was next on the agenda - capital city of Equador and second dodgyest city in South America in my experiance so far (Salvador in Brazil retaining the title by a nose). Met up with some Irish people I had met earlier in my travels (one of whom I'd known from college), and spent a weekend living it up at the Cento del Mundo hostal. Quito is not quite on the equator, but its close. A few bus rides gets you there, and as I had guessed all along, the equator is in fact a big red line that goes right around the world. Or at least at the Mitad del Mundo there's a bit of a red line marking it. Another fact of trivia to dazzle and amaze your friends with: the people involved in working out exactly where the equator was, finally worked it out and wanted to pick a site somewhere in the world to mark it. They wanted to pick somewhere relevant to mark it, but 0 degrees longitude with 0 degrees latitude is in the middle of the Atlantic. Similarly 180 degrees, and 270
degrees were nowhere they could really use. 90 degrees runs right through the Galapagos Islands - islands owned by and off the coast of Equador. So they chose Equador (but not the Galapagos - considered a bit too hard to reach) as the country in which to put the monument and red line marking the equator. Turns out they put it in the wrong spot - 200m away - but not a bad guess given the technology of the day. (GPS now allows us to determine the exact position).
And now, after my quick stint in Equador, it's back to the northern hemisphere and up to Columbia.
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