Advertisement
Published: August 1st 2010
San Pedro de Atacama Before we come onto Peru, we did, as Tracy said last time, arrive back into civilization somewhat in the form of San Pedro de Atacama,Chile. Bolivia was great and I really did enjoy the three day/two night (more like two day/two night) Salar de Uyuni trip but I was glad on the afternoon of July 11th to finally see what we as westerners would call roads. We arrived into San Pedro in time for the World Cup final, definitely my idea this. However if I´d have known what a dire performance Holland were going to put in I don´t know if I would have hardly bothered. It could be that I am still bitter at losing a wedge of cash as I had backed Holland to win the tournament at 12-1 before it had started with Paddy Power, but they were dire and though I was disappointed I have to accept the best team won. The less said about England´s performance during the World Cup the better me thinks!
San Pedro reminds me, somewhat, of Vang Vieng in Laos or Yangshou in China or even (as we shall see) Agus Calientes in Peru, in that
it is a pure tourist town, without tourism I am sure it would not exist. This is not to say it´s a bad thing, far from it, being a tourist you know everything has been set up purely to cater to your individual needs, its just that what goes with it is the deluge of locals bothering you non stop to eat in their restaurant or take their tour as opposed to the company right next door. You can´t walk past a restaurant or even give a surreptitious look at a shop window without someone bothering you. San Pedro is perhaps not quite that bad, but it´s not far from it.
Unfortunately with yours truly still recovering from a broken arm the majority of things on offer were off limits to me, things such as sandboarding or rafting etc. The one thing we had planned on doing was a visit to a planetarium/observatory. Typical though the guy that runs it (Allan) was off on two days holiday and we already had our bus ticket booked to Arica for the day he got back. We did toy with rescheduling the bus ticket but we felt we were up against it
time wise already so decided better of it and to stick with our plans.
San Pedro is a pretty nice town, clean and tidy with a very rustic look, whilst at the same time having some very nice restaurants. Our hostel (Eden Atacama) was great as was the owner, but as I said with my broken arm we could do little in San Pedro and the few tourist things on offer that I could do like visit some geysers or the cerro verde and blanco lakes we had already done on our three day Salar de Uyuni trip. The only thing we did really manage was to watch the World Cup final on the Sunday and visit the Museo Arqueologico Gustavo la Paige on the Monday. I thought the museum was reasonably informative and I liked their mock up of a atacamenan living pit, but it was nothing to get excited about. One thing that was exciting though, very exciting in fact was on our first night we visited an Italian restaurant for dinner and whilst sat there everything started shaking, then it stopped and happened again only a little stronger. Turns out it was an earthquake, very weird
the floor, tables, everything shaking, never experienced anything like it before and though it was exciting, I am glad it was just a minor earthquake and there is no rush to experience it again in my case.
Monday night we jumped on the 8 hour ´Frontera´ overnight bus to the Chile/Peru border town of Arica. We were told the bus was direct, that was a lie, it stopped at Calama and we were tossed off the bus and had to wait 45 minutes for another bus. Whilst waiting we met an American (mid to late 20´s I reckon), who wouldn´t shut up and was convinced he was going to learn how to build a raft from the natives in the jungle in Brazil and travel across the amazon, yeah, watching too much of ¨Bear Grylls¨ or ¨Into the Wild¨ me thinks. The night bus journey (as all these days) seemed to make me feel nauseous without actually being sick, it did mess up my ears though. I am sure it's due to going from 2500 meters at San Pedro to Sea Level at Arica, but all the next day I struggled with equalising.
Arica We arrived into
Arica at 6am, the owner of the hostel we stayed at (Sunny Days Hostel) could not have been nicer, he let us check into the room though check in was not officially till 1pm. The kitchen and shower there were great and as I said the owner was fantastic, very helpful with details on how and the cost of crossing the border, along with local knowledge of the area in terms of things to see and do. Once again though we met another American (mid 60´s this time) who was convinced everything in the world was a conspiracy, like the BP oil disaster was done on purpose to cripple the South in terms of the fishing industry, so that the South would rise up again against the North to point almost of starting a civil war, the whole thing basically done to destabilise the country. Incredible, you couldn´t make this stuff up.
In our one day in Arica we visited the Museo Arqueologico (in a nearby town) and the cemetery pretty much right beside it (cemetery recommended by the hostel owner) and a tour of the town. The museum was OK, the best thing about it were the mummies,
apparently they are 7000 years old, which makes them a lot older than any Egyptian mummies ever found apparently. I also learnt that up until the Spanish arrived in South America in the early 16th Century people in South America were buried sitting upwards with their knees up to their chin. It was the Spanish that introduced the horizontal position to the region. So all the mummies we saw were in pretty good condition due partly to that seated position. The cemetery, five minutes down the road from the Museo, was quite a site. All the graves seemed to be so well attended to and very colourful, unlike the UK ones I have seen. It was not quite as spectacular as Recoleta in Buenos Aires but impressive none the less.
Town itself was nice in parts and not so in others (just like most towns I guess) we looked around the main centre taking in the traditional Plaza Colon, a couple of buildings designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel, obviously more famous for the Eiffel tower in Paris and also visiting the harbour. There were many fishing boats and boats in dry dock around the harbour but the
most impressive thing was all the pelicans, there were hundreds of them. They are big birds when you get to see them up close, this took our attention away, if only momentarily, from the South American traditional stray dog problem, which I am afraid to say Arica has just like all the other major towns/cities we have visited, such a shame.
So the following morning we said our goodbyes to Arica and headed over the border to Peru initially to the border town of Tacna, which took a couple of hours with border checks, but was pretty painless, only then to get the ´Flores´ bus from there to Arequipa.
Arequipa Arequipa is a beautiful town, I say town, but its more like a city, it seems pretty big and very cosmopolitan. Indeed the main square there (Plaza de Armas) is probably the prettiest square I have seen in all of South America and I thought it looked especially magnificent at night. The cathedral in the square is enormous and it is offset magnificently by the fountains in the middle of the square. The remaining three sides of the square just look beautiful with the white washed buildings.
Indeed the white washed buildings are a definite theme of Arequipa, including our hostel, ´Home Backpackers´. The hostel is pretty new, only open 6 weeks or so, the building however is an old, traditional and I should say beautiful, white washed colonial building. The ceilings are all high and arched, I really did like. The hostel itself needs a little work but I am sure when they have finished painting and generally tarting it up it will be a great place, especially in summer as it has a big pool and an outside bar.
We had two days in Arequipa, half of one spent in front of the TV watching the third golf major of the year, the Open, in my case, the rest was mainly spent walking round the main streets and taking in a few churches (Tracy´s thing) and buildings. One of the churches (La Compañia) and its Jesuit cloisters which looks like a courtyard is spectacular, I am sure the pictures won´t do it justice. We also booked a two day trip to Colca Canyon.
Colca Canyon Colca Canyon (apparently bigger than the Grand Canyon) is one of the must do things we were
told in Peru. It takes quite some time to get there from Arequipa as it some 150km away and the roads are winding and climbing up mountains to say the least. It felt to me like we spent an awful long time in the bus and that maybe I should have done the three day tour as the hostel guy had said and tried to sell.
The tour was OK I guess, apart from all that driving, on our first day we did see quite a number of different Andean animals such as alpacas, llamas etc and visited a pretty decent hot spring in the town of Chivay. We stopped in Chivay overnight, its a pretty basic town but the hostel the tour company put us up in was pretty good actually, even if the restaurants they took us to for lunch and dinner weren´t. On the second day we saw some spectacular scenery including the farming terraces (created by the Inkas). They are amazing, it looks like a big staircase for a giant 50ft man to walk down, instead it is purposely designed for farming with irrigation in mind and it was done so some 500 years ago,
amazing I think. The depth of these terraces is awe inspiring, well over a kilometre deep in places.
We also went to see the famous condor birds at the mirador ´Cruz del Condor´. Well we did see a couple of condors this day, all be it from such a great distance that they looked like swallows, maybe our luck was out. What we did see though were thousands (literally) of other tourists all equally disappointed and it was at this point that I thought the whole Colca Canyon trip was just a big tourist trap and ploy by Peruvian tourisim to make money. In my past I have been to the Grand Canyon and I have to say though it´s hard to compare to Colca Canyon I thought it was much grander and I would definitely go back, I am in no rush to revisit Colca Canyon.
Anyhow, Colca Canyon and Arequipa done, on the evening of July 18th, after watching Louis Oosthuizen easily win golf´s third major of the year, Tracy and I caught the ´Cruz del Sur´ overnight bus to the former Inca empire capital, Cusco.
Cusco Cusco, before the Spanish set foot on
South American soil in 1532 or so, was the capital and centre of the Inca empire which covered most of today´s Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and a sizable chunk of Argentina too. Today it is the main stopping town and stepping point to the town of Aguas Calientes otherwise known as Machu Picchu Peublo.
We spent three days and nights in Cusco, sleeping at Hostel Apu Wasi, pretty decent place that I would recommend. We visited pretty much most things in the town that didn´t require the $50 Cusco tourist ticket such as the Inca museum, the San Pedro market, Koricancha and a few churches too, including the San Francisco, San Blas and Le Merced. Indeed the only thing we didn´t get to see that I would have like to have visited was the Inca ruins of Sacsayhuaman fortress, but as this would cost $50 and we were visiting Machu Picchu in a few days time, we decided it was not the be all and end all anyway.
The Inca museum was pretty decent, it was full of Inca history and Inca treasures. In fact there was so much in there that you got the feeling the
owners didn´t know what to do with it all. It showed the history of the Incas and there colonisation by the Spanish in the 1530´s but still their determination to remember their heritage with certain clothing and colours.
I have visited that many churches and cathedrals now that I have run out superlatives and ways to describe them and Cusco´s efforts fall into this category. From the exterior San Blas, San Francisco and the Cathedral in the main Plaza de Armas square (which is very pretty and impressive, but not as impressive as Arequipa´s I think) are all spectacular. We only visited the Le Merced as others seemed to be closed when we went to visit, but we weren´t disappointed. Le Merced was extremely grand, the paintings inside were enormous and amazing. It also housed what looked like a big jewelled sceptre, about a metre tall, made from gold and diamonds (over 1500 of them), it also has quite a number of pearls in it. All this said it is the building itself with its huge arches and white washed walls and the cloisters that I thought were the most amazing and beautiful bit of the Le Merced.
On another day we visited the Koricancha. This was once an Inca religious temple that was converted into a catholic temple by the Spanish using parts of the existing building. When you walk round it you can see the old Inca walls (and impressive they are too) and how they have been incorporated into the design of the present building. These walls seem to have no cement or anything in between them yet they fit so perfectly together and are so smooth to the touch, its impressive craftsmanship and its 500 years old. Just like the Le Merced the Koricancha housed an impressive amount of religious art, a lot of it dedicated to the virgin of immaculate conception.
Getting away from churches and buildings we did visit the San Pedro market for a change. Like many other markets we have seen you can buy almost damn near anything you want but sometimes it would put you off buying anything. We saw plenty of cows heads, pig heads and other parts and the conditions within the market didn´t always look the most hygienic and clean. We did come across one young boy though who seemed extremely happy to be there
working on the potato section (of which there seemed to be about 30 different varieties). He was transfixed with Tracy´s camera and wouldn´t leave her alone until she took his picture, amazing the things we in the western world take for granted like cameras that others rarely see.
Finally after spending over a week in Peru between Cusco, Arequipa, Colca Canyon and a few overnight buses we made our way to one of the worlds greatest man made achievements, Machu Picchu.
We had booked the train from Cusco (actually Poroy, 20 mins from Cusco) all the way to Machu Picchu. However due initially we thought to a strike, then we were told points failure and then we told scheduled maintenance work (still not to sure which explanation is accurate) we had to take the replacement bus from Cusco to Ollantaytambo and then get the train to Machu Pichu. I wouldn´t mind but we had considered getting a bus to Ollantaytambo and the train from there but had decided against it for the ease of the journey and had paid $17 extra for the train from Cucso, typical. Still we left Cusco at 6.30am in the morning, and eventually
arrived into Machu Picchu just after midday. The train journey from Ollantaytambo is pretty easy on the eyes especially looking at the snowed covered mountains on the right and winding river on the left.
Machu Picchu Machu Picchu is an amazing site, no doubt about it, situated high in the mountains above the town of Aguas Calientes, the size of this Inca village that is still in great shape makes you feel you are seeing one of man´s true world wonders. I guess it was good that the Inca´s abandoned the site just after the Spanish landed in the 1530´s otherwise I am sure it would not look the same today. It was rediscovered by US explorer Hiram Bingham in approximately 1911 and as he was sponsored by one of the US Universities they now have pretty much all the treasures that were found, much better than the Spanish eh. It is a shame the treasure is not in Peru but still the buildings of Machu Picchu are still well worth seeing even without the treasures.
We were told by our guide that Machu Picchu´s location was due to the stone used to build it already being
high up the mountain and the favourable images in the surrounding mountains. Indeed if you used quite a bit of imagination and looked hard enough you could see the Puma face and Condor bird shape in the mountains, but mostly I just saw trees.
The town of Aguas Calientes just below Machu Picchu on the other hand was far less than impressive, indeed I did think at times I was in a Mediterranean beach resort such as Benidorm or Magaluf such was the hassle we received from all the restaurant and bar owners trying to get you to visit their particular establishment. Many places offer 4 for 1 drinks usually for 20 Sol, which sounds all good until I looked at the price of a beer individually and discovered it was 5 Sol, not exactly the great deal they are claiming. The town is one big tourist trap, I really felt it had nothing to offer all its their to do is service the spectacular site of Machu Picchu. Even our hostel (Pirwa) which was OK was charging $35 USD a night for an average double room with hot water that was half the time non existent. Don´t get
One of the churches in Arequipa
They were all so intricately decoratedme wrong, I thought the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu were fantastic and well worth seeing, a must do as the guide books would say, I just wish it wasn´t so pricey (relatively speaking), I am sure if you were on a two week holiday you wouldn´t think it was costly at all but when you´re 10 months in like us you start to appreciate value for money.
Anyway enough moaning, two days spent in Aguas Calientes and we made our way back to the adminstrative centre of the Inca empire, Ollantaytambo for one night and no sooner had we arrived at our hostel in Ollantaytambo than something quite special happened and I will let Tracy bring you that story (amongst others) next time.
Thanks
Patrick
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0309s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
