£1.50 for a bottle of Rum - such is the cost of living in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America yet one of its richest in terms of natural resources (oh the wonders of exploitation). Anyway, I'm not complaining about this one particular aspect seeing as between the four of us (ourselves and some friends - Jon and Kat) two bottles have been devoured tonight with surprising ease and very little impact on our ever-decreasing budget.
We successfully crossed into Bolivia from Peru along the banks of Lake Titicaca yesterday, the 12th October. What we expected to be a routine bus journey turned into a minor adventure as an axel on our bus broke in the middle of an overtaking manouvre (naturally?!), and our bus ended up front first in a ditch... Kudos to our driver as another two feet and the bus would have totally flipped.
Eeeeh...
All was well in the end so I'll start where I last finished, sometime around the end of September. As always, some photo highlights included below, but all can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/fernando.nilanga.
Cusco's charms
Our mammoth 52-hour bus voyage from Cuenca in Ecuador to Cusco in Peru ended without a hitch, and we had a few days to explore the wonderful (yet obscenely touristy) city of Cusco - heart and capital of the Inca Empire and the longest continually inhabited city in South America.
The Incas were the first real invading power in this part of South America - expanding their empire in the 14th-16th centuries to stretch from Argentina up to Ecuador. That was until the Spanish came and desimated them with horse-back troops, lies, more sophistated weaponry and a not an insignificant amount of smallpox. Hardly anything is actually documented about the Incas, thus many of the historical pretexts are vague, contradictory and based on word of mouth in Quechua (the indigineous language still spoken in these parts).
Cusco is a city located 3,300m above sea level amid dazzling golden hillsides. Much of the city is built atop immense Inca walls - some built without any mortar with stones the size of houses, all carved into perfect crazy paving. You cannot even get a razor blade between the stones in some cases - quite incredible for 500+ years ago.
Big bricks
We were welcomed on our first night in Cusco by the owner of our Hostel - Coco - and his famous Pisco Sour cocktail. After a few of these, many more beers, and the worst game of darts ever known to man, we thoroughly enjoyed getting horizontal for the first time in four days.
Plaza de Armas
Plaza San Blas
Cusco really is a picturesque city but it is frustratingly touristy: I do not want to buy any paintings, carvings, pots, sunglasses, hats, gloves, jumpers, ponchos etc etc! Fair play I guess given its proximity to one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, I am of course talking about Machu Picchu.
Fat Nilly would have taken the train
We were fortunate enough (thanks to Jo) to book onto the Inca Trail a few months ago - as is required - so we embarked on our 4 day / 3 night trek early on the 29th September. Our two guides, Frank and Jose, picked us up at 5am from our hostel and we were off - along with 7 other merry trekkers (Irish, Americans, Kiwis and an Australian) and 17 other-worldly super-human porters. Our group was great and we hit it off from the start.
Our merry band of trekkers
The Inca Trail is understandably over-subscribed, and numbers are controlled heavily for a reason... It's incredible and needs to stay that way. Except for the toilets - which are incredible in another way. We were to walk the next 26 miles over four days, up and down three mountain passes, through various different terrains and viewing at least four Inca sites before the big daddy.
This involved, for those of us NOT clever enough to hire a personal Porter, carrying the best part of 10kg for up to 8 hours a day - reminding me of what it felt like to be Fat Nilly again, except of course he would have got the train. This also involved sitting (thankfully) in our tents during of all things a hailstorm (very rare I'm told), getting beaten consistently at cards, eating incredible food (how the hell can you bake a cake in a saucepan in the middle of forest?!) and learning a lot about Inca and Quechua history thanks to Frank.
After 3 great days of hiking (and surprisingly decent sleep) we woke at 4am to hike the final 2 hours to the Inca's infamous lost city - Machu Picchu. Nobody is 100% sure why the city was built - theories include a university, a refuge for the virgins of the sun (interesting...) and a secret city only known to very important people. What cannot be disputed is its magnificence; built in the least accessible place possible, surrounded by a huge ravine, a gushing river and immense mountains. It is no wonder it was not discovered by the outside world until 1911.
It is the most amazing thing I've ever seen (I'm sure many who have been will agree), and the four days of trekking along the path the Incas walked and/or ran was undoubtably worth it - an unbelievable all round experience. Especially when we finally got back into Cusco very late that night and had a long hot shower and got into a bed. With a pillow.
Setting out on the last morning - myself and Frank
The first glimpse of the Lost City
Wow...
The next few days were spent nursing hangovers, getting full body massages and eating a lot of curry (we found an Indian buffet run by the ONLY Indian family in Cusco). After this period of rest and indigestion it was time to move on, and we headed south to Peru's second city - Arequipa.
A taste of luxury and then MORE hiking
Arequipa, or 'Cuidad Blanco' (the White City) is dominated by three substantial volcanoes - the most famous being 'El Misty'. It is also famous for its white walls made of volcanic rock that glow in the sunshine. It's a pretty enough city and the glow of the setting-sun on the volcanoes is special, but the real highlight was a long Ceviche lunch over wine (our first bottle consumed in public for well over 3 months), with cutlery that didn't bend and cloth napkins, a real luxury.
Ceviche!
A day or two in Arequipa was enough before we moved onto our next (and last) destination in Peru, the second deepest canyon in the world - Colca Canyon.
The sun-setting on El Misty
Colca Canyon is famous for two things: Trekking amidst magnificent scenery, and the iconic Andean Condor. Not content with our trekking to Machu Picchu, we got stuck into a two-day trek up and down this huge canyon, hiking 1,000m uphill and downhill no less than twice and destroying my knees in the process.
On the first morning we saw something we'd never previously encountered - a rainbow AROUND the Sun, believe it or not it was quite remarkable...
The views, thermal springs and oases were well worth it - as was the pizza, beer and hot pisco cocktail on our return to our hostel in one of the canyon's small villages.
Up and down and side to side:
Things in South America routinely run late - it's a fairly reliable premise. That is, until something actually leaves on time, well, ahead of time actually. The next morning we rose early to get the 06:30 van to the Condor viewing point - to find that it had left before 06:30, most likely because it was full with local women and their wares to sell to tourists. Who they were going to sell to was a mystery to me seeing as all the tourists that intended to catch the van couldn't and were left in Cabanaconde, alas the Condors will have to wait...
The following days were spent travelling south to cross over from Peru to Bolivia - this involved sitting on the dashboard of a bus for 2 hours as it hurtled through numerous mountain passes (see below) and the aforementioned ditch-related incident.
Which brings us back up to now - a £4 hostel room, rummed-up blogging and a sense of excitement as to what our last two months of travels will bring. I'll leave our adventures in Bolivia for another time but as a clue the two main adjectives most used in the past two days have been 'cheap' and '****ing cold'.
Hasta luego amigos!
