Inca Route

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Well, almost at the end of our trip. We are now in Lima having completed the last stretch of the journey.

La Paz was a city anywhere we have seen before. Complete with a witchcraft market (where you can pick up dried llama foetus and stuffed armadillo..), women in bowler hats selling anything you could ever want and more, and a constant barrage of tooting cars.

From La Paz we went to the original Copacabana on the shore of Lake Titicaca and caught a boat to the Isle del Sol, birthplace of the Incas. The contrast with La Paz couldn´t have been greater as we wandered across the island with some great views of the lake in the peace and quiet apart from a llama which wanted to practice it´s spitting techniques on us! We spent a night on the island, ate trout from the Lake and saw our first Inca sights before catching the boat back and crossing the border into Peru.

We caught the train from Puno to Cusco which was quite an adventure as the track travels through the centre of towns including the market place of Juliaca. We managed to take out at least one market stall and seemed to be sitting on the top of most of the others. We resisted the temptation to buy any stuffed llamas which were thrust at our windows for most of the journey by jogging bowler hatted, large skirted ladies.

From Cusco we did most of the typical tourist routes including a tour of the City and the Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley. The precision of the stone buildings and temples was astounding. We caught the first bus up to Machu Picchu which meant we beat most of the tour groups and we were lucky enough to see the incredible site in the sun. We also had a sweaty climb up WaynaPicchu, the mountain overlooking the site, and also to the sun gate which gave us some incredible views.

We then caught a bus to Arequipa from where we went to visit the Colca Canyon (the second deepest canyon in the world) and where you can see condors flying. We were lucky enough to spot a couple overhead.

We have now spent a couple of relaxing days in Miraflores, one of the nicer suburbs of Lima by the sea before we fly home this evening.

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