Peru!!

South America » Peru
September 10th 2005

Published: October 2nd 2005

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Jo and Mark

Your Tank Awaits!

Border crossing South American Stylee.

Another mammoth 24 hour journey brought us to Peru, the border crossing was pretty cool, in an old North American gas guzzling tank!
Peru is an amazing country, one we´ve both been really looking forward to, some strange customs we had to quickly get used to, beggars use buses to give you their story then give everyone a handful of sweets and collect money afterwards, on the same bus journey, we wondered why it took the local women an hour to get dressed in about 5 layers of clothing before they got on the bus, we soon found out why, the bus stopped at a checkpoint and people with guns and black suits and balaclavas got on and started searching bags etc, (good job they didn´t check our underpants while they were at it!), we thought we were gonners till Vic, our travel partner worked out the word for "customs", then we relaxed a little, they must not be allowed to take clothing from one area to the next because they took loads of bags of clothes off the locals?
Arequipe was the first stop, most Peruvain cities have really lovely "Plaza D Armas" (Squares)and Museums, here was no exception.

Plaza D Armas, Arequipe

The city is nestled between two volcanoes where the Incas used to take children to the summits and offer them as a sacrifice to the mountain Gods in harsh times. We visited the museum that houses the Ice mummy called "Juanita", due to the temp on the summit, her body remained intact complete with all internal organs until an eruption freed her, she was then recovered and brought to the museum, she´s still preserved there today, she´s unique as all other bodies found were just mummified husks.
We then travelled through some amazing rocky barren terrain and vast inca terracing to reach Canyon Del Colca, famous as the world´s second deepest canyon, also famous for the Andean Condors there. It was truly breathtaking......AND IT SNOWED!!!!!!
After a few days here, we travelled on to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca, (the biggest lake in the world above 2000 metres), first stop island hopping was Uros, there´s nothing quite like it on earth, it´s an island chain made exclusively of beds of reeds, when they rot below, they get replaced with fresh layers on top. Then we spent a couple of nights on Amantani, extremely basic way of living,

TAXI !!!!!!

no leccy, no running water, you live with a local family and eat their food, again extremely basic at times, everything cooked on a fire stove. It was an unforgettable experience. The Island itself was also very beautiful and it was difficult to imagine that you were in the middle of a lake, with the vastness of the surrounding water. Tequile was the third and last Island we visited, again extremely basic but beautiful, the people were really friendly and lived the lives of their ancestors before them, nothing much changing with the passage of time.
From Puno we made our way to Cuzco to acclimatise ourselves for the Inca Trail, on arrival we went straight to the travel agents to confirm our places on the trail. We´d booked four places and were heartbroken to be told that only two places were actually booked, and they were for our travel partners, Vic and Sig, and even those places they booked wrong with the wrong Surname and wrong passport no. The closest we could get was two places on the 3rd of Oct, 10 days away, this wreaked havoc on our schedule and left us with only 3 weeks to do