Isla Del Sol & Into Peru

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Leaving the jungle and saying goodbye to everyone was very hard, but I did not realise how attached I had become to my old mate Simba. We had booked a flight out of the jungle on Monday morning to La Paz and Pete was going to come with us travelling north in Peru. We sat out on the road on Sunday night for a hitch for 3 hours until at 9pm we gave up and went to bed, our flight was at 11am the next day so we were getting a bit anxious about the timescales. Lucky for us at 7am on Monday morning after only 30 minuets on the road we got a lift and were in La Paz for lunchtime. Going back up to that altitude from basically sea level left us gasping for breath and it was a quick reminder that the nights were going to get real cold again. As the place is a real crap hole we opted for a bus straight out to Copacabana on the edge of Lake Titicaca which was even higher than La Paz. We had a night in Copacabana and got the early boat to The Isla Del Sol which was the birth place of the Inca religion and it’s where they thought the sun was born. It is a very sacred place, desolate, eerily quiet and dazzlingly bright without a single cloud; at this altitude you’re above the weather.

To get up to where the accommodation was on the Island we had to walk up the steps to reach the cliff tops. It took us 20 minutes and we were stopped every 10 yards to get our breath. I thought the jungle walks had made me fit! The afternoon was spent wondering around the island at a slow pace before going to watch the sunset, there is something magical about sitting and looking out onto Lake Titicaca with the mountain backdrop. It was like stepping into a fridge when the last of the sun’s rays dipped behind the horizon, the walk home was perishing.

Another early boat back to Copacabana followed by a night bus to Cusco in Peru, a snip at 10 hours. When we got to the border and stamped out of Bolivia the immigration officials laughed at Pete who had overstayed his visa by 3 weeks, he was being charged $2 for every day he had overstayed. He had no cash and the bus was waiting... out came our emergency stash of Soles. We had extended our visa a few weeks previous after a heated debate about the length of the Bolivian visa....and Pete was there but just didn’t realise. Drama over, we was back on our way!

Cusco, we arrived to our hostel at 05:00 in the morning, had a nap and went out on the free walking tour for the down low on the city. It turns out Cusco was the Inca capital from the 1500’s until the Spaniards came and infested the place with disease in the mid 1800’s. Then cleverly after a few years of observing a feud between two brothers that ruled the Inca Empire whilst they were at civil war the Spaniards announced that they would implement Christianity and wipe out the Inca Culture which they did with ease. The Incas had llamas and bamboo, the Spanish had horses and swords! The final battle took place at the fort of Sacsaywoman, a huge fortress in the hills above Cusco. When the Spanish had finished the massacre thousands of dead littered the site which prompted a swarm of Vultures, now a symbol of the over world and represents heaven in the Inca Culture. As a result of the Spanish invasion most of the city of Cusco is built in Colonial style, huge cathedrals now stand where the Inca monuments to the sun and moon once stood, the place is beautiful!

We spent 4 days in Cusco furiously planning our trip to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley but we found time to explore the Inca ruins around Cusco on horseback, the smallest horses in the world, I have seen donkeys on Scarborough beach with more meat on them. Mine was called Coca Cola, Nat’s was Principa they must have been having a lovers tiff because if Principa got a nose in front, Coca Cola would run and bite her. I found this hilarious but Nat was getting scared so when Nat would become more confident I would steer Cola towards her and he would get the idea and bite Principa on the back leg, which would in turn bolt off. Nat was trying to tell Coca Cola off in Spanish which was also amusing. Cola clearly had anger management problems and may have been suffering from Napoleon’s Syndrome!

Initially we wanted to do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu but the 4 day trek was fully booked 3 months in advance so we had 2 options, either to go via the jungle for 4 days by mountain bike, raft and zip line (all which we have done before) or go on the train with the rest of the tourists (very expensive). In the end we decided to DIY and found a theoretical combination of buses, 5 in total over 2 days would take us through the Sacred Valley and get us within a 2 hour trek down the train line to Aguas Calientes, the stop over town for Machu Picchu. In practise things were a bit more complex so we found a tour agency to take us from the Sacred Valley town of Ollaytaytambo all the way to Hydroelectrica where we would walk for 2 hours to the final destination. The night in ‘Olly’ was weird as we met an English lady, quite well spoken, on a bus who had a hostel. We ended up going for a drink with her to a bar that had swings as seats and a bamboo firemen’s pole exit from the 1^st floor!! ‘Olly’ warranted a longer stay than 1 evening, its shear mountains that flank the river are littered with Inca ruins, all the streets are also Inca designed (narrow and cobbled) with little streams running down each one for irrigation, the place is a modern day Inca city. The minivan collected us the following morning, 1 hour late. Half way through the trip at Santa Maria (where we would have changed the bus on the DIY route) he told us “cambio, cambio” which means change and pointed to a taxi driver, so we got out and he drove off. After a little conversation with the help of a Columbian girl the driver was actually a taxi who was unaware of the situation, clearly. He then took us for 2 hours on some roads of questionable integrity to Hydroelectrica, the start of the walk.

As the crow fly’s the journey is not very far but the steep mountains make for a very winding passage, the train line basically skirts around the base of the Machu Picchu Mountain’s adjacent to the river of the Sacred Valley and through the jungle. The walk was interesting like a scene from the film ‘Stand By Me’, we had to traverse streams and rivers on several bridges walking on nothing more than railway sleepers (don’t look down, or backwards and feel the tracks for the tell tale vibrations of an approaching train). We completed the walk in good time, making it just before dark to Aguas Calientes. By the way, the tour agency returned our call and apologised for the problems then assured us that a bus would be waiting for us the following afternoon at 2.15pm.....

We woke at 04:30 to get a 05:30 bus to the entrance of Machu Picchu. We were on the 3^rd bus going up so were one of the first people in to the ruins, we hired a guide and set off into the mist. The place takes your breath away and with the clouds slowly lifting, bathed the site in an eerily warm glow from the morning sun. Nobody really knows what the real purpose of the site was, there are many theories and the most widely accepted is that it was some sort of college where a chosen few would come for a few years to learn astrology, masonry skills and experimental farming among other things. Machu Picchu was at the centre of several key Inca sites and had trails leading directly to each one, passersby could use some of the facilities on route to other locations but could not stay at the main centre. Only 30% of the structure has been restored (70% is the original site) and so the details still remain. From the hill entrance you can see the different sectors, living, farming, religious and astronomical. The site was built in a specific way so that the sun of the summer solstice would project through a specific window and the sun from the winter equinox would project somewhere else of importance. The whole site was built in alignment with the stars and planets, atop a mountain of some 3500 meters, amazing!

We made our way up Wainapicchu Mountain following the completion of our tour, this steep mountain overlooks Machu Picchu from the south and it took some getting up. By now the sun was blazing and the views were magnificent, we had our packed lunch on the very top of the mountain and made our way down, we still had the railroad trek to complete before we got the bus.

Two trains passed us on the way back, fast and close, they just had a guy on the front waving at us furiously to get out of the way. We made it back in one sweaty piece to find 2 buses of which none were ours and they only had 2 seats anyway.....in the end after waiting 45 minutes they took us crammed in like sardines. They had managed to get in touch with our travel agency who had made a mess of the transport yet again! 6 hours later we were home, the driver was nearly falling asleep but we made it.

At 10:30 the next morning we boarded a bus to Lima and left Pete in Cusco to collect the refund from the tour agency, the bus took 21 hours. We stayed in Lima for a night at an old Hotel with Peacocks and Macaws on the roof terrace, there were also two 40 year old Tortoises knocking about and one slept in the toilet next to the pan!!

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