Advertisement
Published: February 16th 2012
For a change, the border crossing from Bolivia to Peru was simple, no lost passport, no complicated change of transport, not even a problem with visas, stickers, or anything else border guards could deem necessary, it was wonderful! We spent a day on the Peruvian side of Titicaca at Puno and ate far too much candyfloss while watching the endless procession of colourful dancers pass by. On a sugar rush with the FANTASTIC Inca Cola (iron Bru with more additives) as its origin, we hopped on a night bus and crossed the Andes to the colonial city of Arequipa.
We quickly realised that the wet season in Peru is a little different to the wet season in Asia, rather than 20 minutes of rain followed by a lovely day of hot sunshine the rainy season is well really rainy! But the show goes on and Arequipa was genuinely a stunning city. The Cathedral and surrounding Plaza were the most beautiful we´ve seen on the trip although for reasons to be disclosed we have no photographic evidence!
As well as enjoying fantastic 3 course set meals which are such good value you cannot justify not having them, we visited an
ice princess who after being sacrificed by the Incas on the summit of a nearby volcano was frozen in solid ice only to creepily look out of her -20 degree display casing 600 years later at gawping tourists. Terrifying sacrificial girls aside we took a two day tour of the Colca Canyon 200 miles outside Arequipa. The views (when the pea soup fog parted) were spectacular and to top it off we saw a whole group of rare Andean Condors gliding down the canyon. Growing to 3 meters across and looking startlingly like pterodactyls they were fantastic, and fantastically difficult to photograph too. The only downside to the trip was that the intended highlight, a viewpoint overlooking a drop twice as deep as the Grand Canyon which is universally described as incredible, looked a lot like the inside of a cloud to us! Oh well!
We spent a lovely day on Emma´s birthday doing exactly what she wanted which given how I’ve been rushing us from one sight to the next was a lazy afternoon in Starbucks and a great dinner! Caramel macchiato, alpaca steaks and a secret birthday cake later the wish was fulfilled!
It was no
Birthday cake!
Happy Birthday to you....real surprise to us when the flooding curse reared its ugly head again, what did come as a surprise was that it wasn´t until we got to the bus station that we found out the road up the coast to Nazca our intended destination was closed! With a quick change of plans and a ´what are we going to do´ coffee the next day we went with the wind (away from the rain) and 12 hours later were in Cuzco, which we love...
Our hostel is great (if cold!) and the town is fantastic, clean, beautiful and full of things to do. On the first day we explored the town, we had great cakes for lunch and had a tour of the Cathedral which, being the oldest in South America was full of interesting relics and bizarre hybrid Catholic/Inca paintings including a last supper with guinea pig as the main course (We tried guinea pig by the way... Rubbish!)
On our second day we took a taxi around 12 kilometres outside of the town and then walked back, visiting Inca Ruins on the way. Fuelled on Twix, the local Corn and the biggest breakfast we´ve had on the
Inca ruins
The stones weigh up to 300 tonnes and nobody knows how they were moved... entire trip (bacon and eggs at last, with beans tomato, potato, toast, WOW!) we more than whetted our appetite for Machu Picchu which weather permitting we´ll visit over the next few days.
Missing everyone, but not quite ready to come home yet!
Adam and Emma
P.s. Unfortunately the virus which I thought had been following us around was in fact being carried around by us (on my Camera´s memory card to be specific). As well as meaning I´ve now got 3 angry Peruvian internet Cafe owners braying for my blood, I’ve also lost 4 weeks of pictures! Noooo! Fortunately Emma can fill in some of the gaps.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.163s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0945s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pat
non-member comment
virus
How did you catch this virus? Is it contagious? Confused.com