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Published: September 7th 2008
Awwwwwwww....
You dont know cute until you get a baby alpaca to rub noses with you on command. besos (kisses)Hi all,
Nick Here: yes, its time to say goodbye to Bolivia, land of cheap food, cheap thrills, and cheap gastro and enter the tourist wilds of Peru.
We took a bus from copacabanna on the shores of lake titicaca through to puno, and with a quick "Amazing Race" style negotiation managed to jump aboard a moving bus to Arequipa within 5 minutes of our arrival. And amazingly without totally being fleeced of all our cash.
Arequipa is a town most renowned for its proximity to the worlds two deepest canyons. Now many of you have heard of some of the natural disasters that the Andes throws out. Especially in Peru where there have been some devastating earthquakes in recent history.
Now we recently managed to escape by a few weeks the chaiten volcano disaster. Attached are some photos of the hostel Casa Hexagon, we stayed in. My condolences to Stefan the owner of the hostel. I hope you can resurrect your dream retreat.
In Arequipa this time we were shaken and stirred by a surprisingly strong 5.5 earthquake that shook the city. They only get 2 of earthquakes this strong a year in the region
apparently.
Basically we were waken up in the early hours of the morning in our queen size bed. At first i though Rin might have found a 2 sole coin slot in the bed head for a vibration massage. However after a few statements like "Rin, I think we are having an earthquake" and questions like "Should we run outside, Will it get stronger. Should i put some pants on just in case"
Luckily it didnt get stronger, nor did it last much longer than a minute. But in that time quite a bit of plaster had rained down, and more than enough tourists had run outside... not sure if they were pantless. Unfortunately the cleaners took my souvenir piece of plaster.
Canyon de Colca was a pretty amazing site. We had to brave another tour to get there, but the shots of the condors soaring the ridgeline were worth it i think.
Cusco and Machu Pichu were the next stop after yet another overnight bus ride. After arriving early in cusco and then once again braving the taxi drivers we bargained him down to 2/3rds the price (still a fleecing) and the bastard left us
family resemblance
condors win big in the animal kingdom wingspan awards but boy did they get beaten by the ugly stick 2/3rds the way to the hostel. At least we had a map to leg the rest of the way. But you have to watch out in Cusco as its a fleecers paridise. To many wide eyed tourists ready to be duped.
(note: We have now taken to the synchronised taxi bail out which Rin and I have perfected. This involves basically one of us asking the price in spanish. As soon as they give you the old hyperinflated quote which sometimes doesnt happen until your inside the cab, the call is made ¨Nup¨ and both of us bail at the same time, usually in about 3 seconds and generates a few mutters from the cabby or abuse. Rather Amusing.)
Now before arriving to Cusco all i could wish for was good deep tissue massage. Then getting to cusco, all i could wish for is not to be pestered by the 100s of touts offering "massajes" every 5 meters. Someone should start printing ¨just massaged¨stickers like the just voted stickers you see on polling day in Aus to stop them pestering you.
So onto machu pichu. We took an alternative tour to the famed lost city via a
1 day downhill bikeride and two day walk from the jungle. Sounded good, but the quality of the bikes was attrocious! warped back wheels, broken gears, broken chains, no tools and even no back sprocket where the starting or ending states of the bikes we rode.
However the experience itself was amusing just because every time the guides asked how you were going you could say. "Im having a great time, but your bikes suck!" They even started towing the line and laughing with us. "great! we know they are shit!" Then burning off down the road in their support truck.
So many broken promises of the travel agent and 100 or so sandfly bites to Rins tasty legs and we arrived at Machu pichu a few days later. Did the hike up the 1,000 or so steps for dawn and then watched in amazement at 6am when 50 tourists arrived each minute for an hour or more in the buses. Forget piece and tranquility at Machu Pichu unless you are prepared to walk up to the Machu Pichu peak, which is outside the realm of most day trippers and get a feel of the view.
Its
road works in peru
.. and by road works we mean, the grader rips it up, the buses honk their horns and play chicken on the remaining road, and all the villages come and nick the bitument blocks for their new home theatre expansion project of course all worthwhile to see the amazing city built 700 years in the past, and wonder at the type of lives the Inca lived here.
So from the mecca of cusco, we bused it overnight to Lima for a well timed flight to the jungle town of Tarapoto. Our aim, to get to Yurimanguas to catch a Lancha (amazon hammock on a cargo boat) to the town of Iquitos, the largest city in the Amazon basin.
We have to highly recommend this activity of motoring down the amazon whilst slung up in a Hammock from the rafters. Not only because of the excellent chillout time, and gentle views that pass you on the way down. But also because of the interesting activities and cargo of the villages along the way.
Effectively, these boats are the lifeline for the villages and carry pretty much everything including people, livestock, bananas, fridges and motocarros. The essential technique for hailing a boat, if you don´t know already is the following:
1. stand on the shore. If you want a greater effect get all your friends there as well.
2. take off your shirt, OR if not possible for modesty
or because you dont have one.. get a white cloth
3. start a mexican wave style action with said cloth/shirt in your hands. Obviously the afore mentioned posse of friends should start as well. NOTE: You can never have too much enthusiasm.
4. keep this up until you can see the boat is actually turning your direction... and even to the point of until the boat has nudged its nose into the mud bank.
This is when the porters kick in with their 50kg loads up muddy banks with thongs on. Now as a tourist often you can try and do a runner for a craving for gelatinos (jelly in bags) or some other jungle fruit. Just make sure you have a quick word to the captain on when hes likely to leave. This usually entails him pointing to the pile of bananas on the shore and him saying beat the last banana on.
So after a few days of relative relaxation we arrive in Iquitos. Having been worded up by a missionary Nun we met on route, we hung back and let all the other tourists cop the oh so helpful touts and luggage grabbers. This enabled
us to saunter off when they had lost interest in our boat after about 5 mins and a few helpful christian words from our mother superior. Bless her soul.
Rin here:
Bizarrely, the largest city in the Amazon Basin is certainly one of the noisiest we have come across. The hundreds of motocarros (aka tuk-tuks) that buzz around the city create this almighty sound that is akin to standing next to an operating chainsaw without ear-muffs on. That said, it is not surprising that we only spent one night in town before deciding to visit a nearby village, 30 mins by a small canoe up river.
The attraction of the village was a ´butterfly farm´ and some small indigenous communities nearby as well. Unfortunately for the butterflies the numerous orphaned monkeys and other jungle animals really stole the show. And by ´stole´ I mean those monkeys are pickpockets!!! Within a minute of our arrival, I had a monkey with its hand fishing around in the pocket of my shorts and boy, it was not happy when i tried to stop it taking my keys out. This meant that for the next half hour I had this angry monkey
natural slippery dip
sasqsiwama cusco. sorry cant remember the spelling.. just remember sexy woman. screaming and launching itself at me - just a tad on the scary side.
Numerous times I had to retreat to the fully enclosed safe house! After visiting the beautiful butterflies we fed and patted a tapir (so cool!), we found out that Nick´s shirt pocket fits a monkey´s head perfectly and I had the same said monkey crawl under my tank top and hang out for a while. Very amusing - we will show you the video at a later date.
To cap it all off, the little angry guy with the fur jacket (for those of you who are Mighty Boosh Bob Fossil fans) decided that it wanted to groom my hair. I don´t think it found anything to eat in there but once it had had enough it promptly lay down next to me so that I had to return the favour! Such a cute little thing - until all the other monkeys became jealous and they all started trying to bite me.... Another retreat to the safe house before making a quick exit where i could walk in relative safety!
After all the activity we decided that a relaxing drink was in order
before dinner. Unfortunatey we were bailed up by this dodgy scammer outside his auntie´s bar which put us in a sufficiently bad mood to abandon the bar and head elsewhere. It worked out for the best in the end, as we ended up meeting one of the happiest and most welcoming people in the village. Jose had just returned from work and proceeded to help us drink a whole bottle of Pisco (a local rum-like drink) with a thunderstorm breaking around us and the frogs hopping in the rain. I think we understood about 70% of the conversation but there was so much laughter and gesticulating that it didn´t seem to matter. We slept through our alarm to the hazy thoughts of ¨did Jose really invite us over to his house for breakfast?¨.... Slightly hungover we ate freshly caught fried fish, fried plantain (banana) and tasted fresh coconut milk picked from his trees and this other fruit (can´t remember what it was called but very tasty). His wife and family were all so welcoming and generous - it really was one of our highlights whilst in Peru.
HUARAZ
From Iquitos we flew back to Lima then another long haul
lots of mtb downhill opps
this is the alternate route to machu pichu, good fun descent when the bikes are good. Hard to find good single track descents here though. Always seem to be on roads of some type. bus trip straight on to Huaraz, high up in the Cordillera Blanca in the north of Peru. Its absolutely stunning country with outdoor activities abounding. With limited time available we decided to take on the Cordillera Huayhuash challenge and turned it into a mini-huayhuash. Initially the organisation of the hike seemed to be going smoothly - the guide was organised, food enough for 4 days was bought, the bus ticket out to the start of the hike booked.... Until we realised that it wasn´t guaranteed that our 2 mules would be there.
The bus trip out to the start of the hike was an adventure in itself. Beautiful views or what we could see crammed into the back of a mini-van, we arrived at the small village of xxxx desperately needing to stretch our legs and to find a bathroom. A frustrating hour later, we finally had our bags on the mules and our mule driver, Jacinta, sent us on our way.
This first day of hiking was quite challenging, not technically, it was just straight up hill to a pass at 4, 850 m (which makes me the highest Poulier yet!). Poor communication from the mule driver and
nice and chunky
always look both ways if you want to avoid being hit Nick with a painful altitude headache meant that we didn´t haul ourselves into camp until around 7pm in the dark. We were not happy campers that night...
Day Two turned into a rest day and we pottered around to the nearby glacier and walked around the Laguna Lacochocha. The sun shone brightly, we were both able to eat properly as we pondered our route upwards to a second pass for Day Three.
The day started badly with the mules having gone awol down the valley somewhere as they hadn´t been hobbled properly. Starting later than we wanted I began the slow huffing, puffing and nauseating shuffle up towards the next mountain pass. Sucking on dried pears, i had just enough energy to take some photos of the glacier and incredibly blue lake below before making to the pass within the timeframe I had set myself. After a quick lunch with Jacinta and her dog dobby we began the long slow descent into a second valley. The descent meant that I was feeling much better and able to enjoy the amazing views of the valley far below. Arriving into camp early meant we were able to enjoy some ´play
time´rolling rocks down the mountain sides, trying to feed carrots to the mules and playing with dobby.
Our final day was unfortunately along the private gravel road back into town - supposedly a four hour stroll... After spending half the night outside the tent with (yet another) bout of gastro, the stroll turned into a shuffle and we began to wonder whether we´d make it back to catch the bus in time. Our mule driver had passed and left us far behind so we had no real way of knowing how much further it was and all the locals we passed had no concept of time at all. Thankfully a kind miner in a jeep picked us up which meant we made the bus on time but only saved about half an hour of walking...
Getting back to Huaraz was another debacle - no reserved bus tickets and only one bus going b-c it was saturday.... As there was no way we were staying in the village for any longer than we needed to Nick managed to wangle us seats in the aisle admist a whole bus load of israeli hikers who had been out hiking for the
the reality of MP
lots of tourists.. its 6am in this photo and each minute another bus of 30 tourists arrive. previous 10 days (yes, a bit of tiger balm under the nostrils didn´t go astray!). It was with some relief that we arrived back in Huaraz and a few days of luxury at the Way Inn to recouperate.
Nick here: After a few days relaxation, i decided i wasnt leaving Huaraz without scalping a big wall climb. So after organising some guides and a taxi dude to drive us to a 140m wall. Off we set. Very cool to be climbing so far up. You really have to know what your doing, and you have to carry all your gear too. Like jackets. I left mine down the bottom being a seasoned 30m top roper, back in 20 mins kinda climber. Uh Uh. Only problem with doing this sort of climbing is my rock climbing gear shopping list just grew by 10 items.
Well next stop Equador. Hasta Luego amigos
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