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Chris in Miraflores
Chirs and the beautiful view of Miraflores/Lima Now we are here, at the end of the trip. Or at least where we are gonna spend our last weeks in South America.
We arrived to Trujillo this morning and we have been able to look around the city a bit, and it's loud but quite pretty with it's old colonial houses.
Chris has already been away to meet the family his gonna stay with for the next 10 weeks. So this is what I'm doing when he's away socialising! :-)
I'm gonna get picked up tomorrow by the Son of the family that I'm gonna stay with, at 6 o' clock though, because it's Mother's Day here tomorrow so everyone is very busy.. and then I start at the orphanage on Monday, and Chris starts his school, he's actually gonna live in the family of his teacher, so he doesn't have to leave for school in the morning, they can have the lessons in the house if he wants.
Well.. we had a busy couple of weeks before we got here, trying to fit in all of the South of Peru in very little time.. but we managed to do quite a lot!!
We visited Machu
Machu Picchu
Me and the beautiful city of Machu Picchu Picchu, stayed with a family on an island on Lake Titicaca, saw the Condors in Colca Canyon and flew over the Nazca Lines!! It was really really good!!
Machu Picchu was of course the highlight of it all, and it was an amazing experience to get to walk around on that old ground. We went on a 2-day hike, so we didn't do the whole 4-day trek, mostly because we didn't have that much time.. and also because we are a little bit lazy... haha.. or actually it was already really tiring to do the 2 day one, so I don't know if I could have done the longer one!!
But I am really pleased that we did a bit of a hike at least, because it is so beautiful there. It's in the jungle, and you walk a long path of 6 km which leads you through different Inca ruins and finally ends in Machu Picchu.
We were really lucky as well because we had a great guide who told us a lot about the inca culture and also about the fauna around us.
Machu Piccu is a huge place, and very well preserved, it's surrounded by huge
Machu Picchu 2
Me and Chris were actually there!! tree covered mountains and it's a really mystical place, really beautiful. You get to go around on the old streets, look at their terraces where they used to grow their crops and you can walk in to what they think was their different temples, like the Sun temple (which they tend to have one at all the Inca cities, because what they mainly worshipped was the sun) and many other temples. The Incas were really in to astrology, and many of the buildings are made after a astronomical scheme, with the sun shining through special windows into special altars at the exact same day (start of their summer, and start of their winter) in different Inca sites around the country. Very interesting.
After the little Inca Trail we had 6 busy days ahead of us, and through some help from a woman at the hostel we stayed in, we had organised a nice trip of the South during these days. First destination
Puno and
Lake Titicaca.
Early on the day after we got back from Machu Picchu, we were off in a bus to Puno. We chose to go with one of those really touristy buses that stops
Sun gate
Two tired hikers at the sun gate by Machu Picchu along the way at different Inca ruins and churches, and that was a really good choice, because we got to see a lot of places that we would have missed otherwise (like a really beautiful 16th century church, a 12 m high Inca wall and to see some pre-inca sculptures).
On the way to Puno we drove through a place called Juliaca... and it was one of the worst places I have seen in my whole life.. I think I would rather stay in a Favela in Brazil than in this dump called a city. There was no real roads and no functioning system for collecting the rain water when it rains, and NO houses were finished. The reason for that is because people living there don't wanna pay taxes on their houses... and you only do that if you have a finished house, so people decided that it probably was better not to finish the houses. And it's because of this they don't even have anything else than mud streets, because there is no money to build them with!
This is also a place where they have many different illegal (black) markets where they sell all kinds of stuff..
Hello Llama!
Me and a Machu Picchu Llama luckily we didn't have to stay in this place...
But coming in to Puno we were not really stunned, it was not the nicest place that we have been in on this trip, and I wouldn't wanna stay too long.
But the people were nice and the main square and streets turned out to be quite nice.
The next day we got picked up to go and visit Lake Titicaca. We started of by meeting people from here and there (including a girl from Sweden) and then we went of in the boat, with (can it be any more promising) the lovely theme song of.... TITANIC! But it was fine, and he eventually change the song. We were from now on the group of Bruno. Whom was our tour guide, and he kept on saying Group of Bruno doing this.. Group of Bruno doing that...he was quite a funny guy.
Our first stop was
"Los Uros" which is the floating islands. That means that they are not actual islands, instead the people build them with a certain natural material, and then they stay floating on the water, they then build small huts there and support themselves by fishing and
Finally here!
We finally arrived in Machu Picchu, it felt great!! through tourism.
We got to see how they build the island, try a lake banana (a kind of see weed thing) and go on a reef boat.. it was really cool! I still can't believe that they live like that, and it's hard to know if it's just for tourism or if they just like it. They did say that there are some islands where they don't want any tourist, they just wanna live like in the good old days, supported by fishing.
What's truly amazing is that they even have a school on one of these floating islands, I guess they have some kind of a system going on, even though it seemed like quite a lot of the kids where home selling souvenirs when we where there.
After these strange islands (that actually went up and down like a boat when walking on the sea weed they built it of) we went of in our normal boat with an engine, towards the island
Amantanà , where we were gonna stay one night with a family.
Me and Chris got to stay with the family of Mendoza, a wonderful little lady who had 5 kids, but only living
Mystical city
The rain was coming.. at home. Her youngest Lisa, 4 years old, and her 15 year old girl. The other ones where in different places studying, one daughter in Puno studying at the university, Mendoza's husband also lived there, working and being with their douther. They only have money to come and visit once a year... by Christmas.
Being on this island was like going far back in time.. no electricity, out door toilet and kitchen with mud walls. But at the same time it was kind of cute, and not to different to some of the summer houses we have home in Sweden!
Mendoza made us food, and showed us scarfs and beenie hats (mossor) that she had made herself, and we got to borrow them for the evening and if we wanted we could by them. Many people on the island live on tourism, and it's the little that they get from having people at their house once a week, that makes it possible to send their children to university, and as Mendoza said, hope that they get to live a different life, somewhere they can actually get a job.
I think those hats they make is a real business, cause that
Botanical garden
View over Machu Picchy by one of the botanical gardens evening every tourist on the island was running around with funny coloured hats on.. and I would think a lot of the bought them (like we did) the next day.
That night we got to dress up in their traditional clothes and go to a real Fiesta. And it was kind of like a "mellanstadie party" (little kids disco) but a lot of fun, and they actually sold beer..so I guess that was the biggest difference.
We went there with the daughter of Mendoza, and she showed us how to dance.. and it was good fun..both me and Chris and everyone else were up plenty of times shaking away.
Early next day we went to the port, said goodbye to the family and went of to the Island of
Tanquile . We only spent a few ours on this island, and it was really pretty, it did feel a lot more developed than AmantanÃ, and they had an almost communistic way of ruling the island, with sharing most of the business.. One restaurant got the tourist one day, and then the next day another one got them.. our tour leader had to go to a woman on the
Los Uros
Floating Islands on Lake Titicaca main square, and she had a list with the different restaurant, and she told us which one to go to.
Here we had a bit of problem, because in our papers it said that we had this lunch included.. but our tour guide said that we didn't, so we were not so happy about that.. but than thinking how cheap it is anyway, we soon forgot about it.
All in all it was a true experience being on Lake Titicaca and see the old ways of the people living there. I am really happy that we did it, and that we got to talk to some locals about their lives, and enjoy a different kind of living.. It does make you appreciate everything that you got.!
I will soon write about Colca Canyon and Nazca Lines.. but I thought I stop here before your eyes will fall out.. and yes I promise more pics sooooooon!!!
Many hugs and kisses for you all!
Rosanna
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