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Published: September 19th 2006
Heather arrives in Peru
Heather tries to look cool by using James' sunglasses 00
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Until we arrive home
A long journey from Arequipa to Lima was followed by a nice hotel (to celebrate Anne's birthday). We were waiting for Heather (James' sister) to arrive from USA so had a second day in Lima Miraflores district merely hanging around. An early start to meet Heather's plane from Mexico where she was transiting. We arrived at the airport around 5.30am but much to our annoyance the plane was delayed by over 7 hours. Anne disappeared back to the hotel whilst James sat and let the world drift by for what seemed an age.
Finally Heather arrived and was immediately surrounded by annoying taxi drivers - impressed with James' level of Spanish as he argued with various taxis until they came up with a reasonable price. A lighting fast drive into Lima was exciting for Heather as we whipped around other cars and people.
Because Heather's flight was late we stayed another night in Lima. Basically Lima is another dirty, polluted Peruvian city where people get robbed or worse. Anyway we left Lima on a 22 hour bus journey - at least the buses are good quality - towards Cusco the capital of the
Sexy Women
This imposing military camp was constructed in the shape of a Puma's teeth. It was the Inca's last stand. Inca empire.
Again hounded by taxi and hotel touts we found our way to a nice cheap hotel but again they needed a lot of work to come up with a mutually agreeable price. Incidentally Heather thought that we were being too argumentative over the price of everything. After 3 weeks in Peru she was to change her mind. The Peruvians only seem out to rip you off at every turn, there is always something more that they want. In all the other Latin American countries we have been too there is never a problem with money or taxis or touts!
Cusco is at about 3300m so we took it easy for the first day for Heather's benefit and then felt that we should see some Inca stone work. A short taxi drive to about 10km from Cusco landed us at some Inca baths, then a military camp, then some weird caves (still 5km from Cusco on our walk back James was getting all Archeologically digged out - but he kept going). Finally supposedly the best structure around Cusco came into view - this is commonly known as Sexy Woman and is an imposing fortress. This was pretty
Feeding the world
No schools for these kids cool with some of the stones weighing over 300 tonnes. Once finished here even Heather couldn't be bothered about climbing up to the top of a hill to the Christ statue.
The next day we headed on up towards Ausangate to do some river running. Sadly only grade III stuff (not the Grade V found in New Zealand). However we joined two Italians and had a great time in some of the stoppers and waterfalls. Heather ran out of steam before long and at times James felt like he was the only one paddling!
The 01 September was the date for the start of our trek through the Lares valley and then onto Machu Picchu. Lares Valley is a very remote area of the Cusco area with only a few tourists passing through each week and with 2 small poor villagers. Because of this we were advised to take some food and presents for the kids. Loaded with over 40 bread loaves, bags of heavy oranges and around 80 marbles we headed out into the mountains. A quick stop at the brown coloured thermal baths was a must but then we set off - Incidentally James carrying his
Lares thermal baths
Bathing in the brown healthy waters!! day pack and all the bread, oranges and marbles, Anne carrying her own stuff and Heather carrying ???.
Camp the first night was by a picture perfect lake although the cloud came in and you couldn't see more then a few metres ahead of you. A fantastic dinner including popcorn was prepared by our resident chief.
The second day of the trek involved an ascent of a 4500m pass. For Heather who was barely acclimatised this was going to be hard work. An easy start along the edge of a lake was followed by a gruelling 2 hour climb across scree slopes and boulder fields until the pass was reached. Spectacular views greeted us from the top over to snow capped mountains in all directions. Giant chunks of ice breaking from the glaciers made eerie listening. A ceremony for Pachamanna included giving an offering of coca leaves beneath a tower of stones. Unfortunately at the top Heather's boot fell to pieces. The whole sole had started to peel away from the leather. Thankfully due to James' first aid kit (courtesy of Palmerston North A+E department) he was able to fix it was a 3/0 nylon suture set and
a bandage. Although we had been told that the uphill was over that was not the case and we trudged up further slopes and eventually descended to a lower pass. The valley stretching out below led down to the Sacred Valley of the Incas which was our final destination in 2 days time. An easy descent down gravely paths passing another small village where the locals were pleased to get the rest of our oranges, and we reached our second nights camp by a river.
The final day involved an easy walk down the remaining valley for about 3 hours to meet a bus which would take us to the train station for the trip to Machu Picchu. The village at the bottom - Aguas Callientes is a horrible tourist trap from which there is little escape. Everything is very expensive for what it is and the place looks like a dump from the train in.
The following morning we got up at 4.30am to get an early bus with hundreds of others to Machu Picchu. Unfortunately it was raining, the cloud was down and you could barely see the place when we got there (they don't call
Heathers first night freezing to death
Temperature droppped below freezing this night. Note Heather's favorite politician. it cloud forest for nothing). Nevertheless we started the long wander and thankfully the clouds lifted a little so we could see the city and the surrounding mountains. Eventually managed to get a few good pictures and much to Heather's disgust we climbed the hill behind Machu Picchu which can be seen in all the classic photos.
To cut a long story short 7 hours later after walking pretty much every trail possible in the area we eventually got the bus back down to the horrible little town and caught the train back to Cusco. Little did we realise that it was going to take over 5 hours to get back - it is only 120km. Overall Machu Picchu was probably better than we had all thought it would be but the town at the bottom is little more than a joke.
A final day and night was spent in Cusco eating in cafes etc before catching another luxury bus to Nasca. Unfortunately the driver had the heating on full for the whole of the 12 hour journey and by the time we arrived in Nasca we were well cooked through. Nasca is another typical dirty Peruvian town
Start of the hard climb to the pass
Fantastic reflections in the lake on our onward route. Looking back to where we had camped the night. full of touts and dirt. The only thing to do here is see the Nasca lines so from minute one touts are pestering you to buy tickets. After a shower and breakfast (biscuits and crisps) we headed to the airport and found a reasonably safe looking plane to fly in. With two Australians we flew for around 35 mins seeing all the classic drawings in the desert. The flight involved lots of tight turns and high G, Heather was concerned that the pilot didn't know what he was doing when coming into land. There are many theories as to how these huge desert drawings were made but some of the best include Alien landing strips and water channels. Although it was pretty hard picking out the actual drawings from a plane as you were strapped in we still got some good views of the desert.
Next was the short bus ride to Ica in the middle of hundreds of enormous sand dunes. We stayed at a lovely oasis village - Huacachina - about 5km from Ica. Surrounded by dunes, swimming pools, lakes and parrots we hired out some sand boards - like snowboards - and hit the slopes. Although climbing
up the dune was little fun - coming down them was great! Although as Heather and James got cockier the falls and bruises got bigger!!
Three relaxing days included a couple of hours of dune buggying - like a rollercoaster ride through the desert interspersed with some sand boarding down some truly enormous sand dunes.
Finally it was on to Paracas now only a couple of hours away from Lima. A national park reserve with hundreds of sea birds and sea lions. We even saw penguins. We stayed at a deserted very upmarket resort and spent the last two days of Heather's stay playing ping pong, swimming and minigolf. The highlight was when James was lowering Heather over the pool fully clothed - needless to say what happened!
Finally it was back to Lima and a last day with Heather shopping for presents, a visit to Hooters for lunch and finally a taxi journey to the airport to sadly wave bye to Heather. She was about to start her nightmare 48 hour trip back to the UK.
Anne and James are now heading into the Peruvian jungle and then onto Brazil via the Amazon.
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Peter (TAO)
non-member comment
Heather's favourite politician
I really thought she had taste. How disappointing.