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Published: September 11th 2008
Miraflores- Lima, Peru.
Street markets in the centre of Miraflores.After Costa Rica we flew into Lima. We were expecting something like San Jose but were quite pleasantly surprised when the taxi pulled up at Miraflores, an area within Lima. It was much more clean and up market than we expected. The smog was quite a shock though. We ended up staying a few days to make some arrangements to travel on from there. The next stop was Nazca where we were lucky enough to get on a small plane to go overhead the Nazca lines (or signs as our hostel owners told us). It was amazing and very worth it. The plane ride in itself was pretty crazy and I think our stomachs were still doing flips for a while after!! Nazca itself was a pretty cool city and we enjoyed just hanging about in the sunshine and people watching.
We then caught an overnight bus to Cusco. It would have made for a really scenic journey but it turned out to feel like the bus ride from hell. It was about 18 hours and half way through Karl became really ill and threw up several times. Emma only did once. I think it was from the altitude combined
Nazca Lines
One of the many amazing images we saw from the plane. with the windy roads and not being able to get off the bus for fresh air didn´t help. We arrived at our homestay in Cusco feeling pretty wiped out and despite Karl not feeling well for days we managed to go to our Spanish lessons. We only had 5 days and whilst we did learn a lot we still aren´t very good at it. It was really great to stay with a Peruvian lady though. After we hung out in Cusco for a couple more days and did the walk to Saqsaywaman (gringo tourists often refer to it as sexy woman) Ruins which was really interesting and nice to get out of the city for an afternoon.
From Cusco we organised our 5 day Salkantay trek to Macchu Pichu. It was an amazing 5 days of walking through small communities, past rolling mountains, rivers, and our first highlight reaching the top of the pass at 4600mwith the spectacular Salkantay mountain (it actually means Savage Mountain and has never been successfully climbed) surrounding us. Beautiful snow capped mountains, and a few avalanches to add to the buzz. It was a hard climb but worth every step. The same day we
spent the afternoon in the jungle, pretty amazing scenery all in one day (9 hours). We also spent an afternoon at some lovely hot springs and the last day walked along the train tracks. With over 70 kms of hiking it was such a diverse trek, we loved it. We had a great group of 8 too which added to the experience. The real highlight of course was Macchu Pichu. It was pretty surreal to finally reach there. We hung out there for hours just taking it all in.
We also made a trip to Puno and the Uros (floating Islands) at Lake Titicaca. It was a 30 minute ride on the boat along the pristine Lake Titicaca. We arrived at Uros and were amazed. A series of Islands all made of floating reeds that local people live on, in fact they even eat the reed as a vegetable too. We tried it but not much flavour to speak of. We were also offered a ride on one of the boats, that you guessed it, was also made of reed.
After Puno we made it over the border to Bolivia but more on that next time.....
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david jenkinson
non-member comment
peru
peru..looks great.... what a memories...