To start this post, I will quickly note the most prominant parts of mine and Franklins little adventure while max was staying in Arequipa. Firstly, we caught a 6am bus to Puno from Arequipa, seeing some gorgeous scenery along the way and herds of wild Vicuñas, a llama like creature whos hair is so fine it was used only for the clothes of the incan kings. Well, I saw some lovely scenery, while Franklin and a local lady used their feet to hold a cover over a massive hole in the bus, through which you could see the engine below. The only other noteworthy point of that trip was the communal toilet stop on the altiplano, when everyone on the bus to random places on the altiplano to, well, you know... When we arrived in puno, we found a hostal and went to explore the city, famous for being on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest lake of its size in the world. We then explored some markets, where I bought a fedora and Franklin made a woman cry with his hard line bartering. Our time in Puno was over when we caught the 6am bus to Desaguadero (the border town) the next morning. After a relativly easy crossing (I had to pay a ´fine´ for loosing my paper visa, no big deal in South America), we met a friendly Bolivian ´business man´, although we never found out his business. We then caught a bus and headed to Tiwanaku, the base of one of the largest civilisations in South America. It was here that we realised how cheap Bolivia was going to be, as Franklins Model of the large Ponce (don´t laugh) cost just 50p. A Combi then took us into La Paz, during which time we learnt that locals do get car sick, and not all locals speak spanish. La Paz itself, we found, is an exciting city to say the least, full of large plazas, colonial buildings and very dangerous road crossings. Our tatics for crossing roads in La Paz were to stand behind larger Bolivians (or better yet police men) or just run and hope. During the next few days, we went to a few museums, walked up a 5400 metre mountain (although we were driven 5300 metres of the way up) and saw the Valley of the Moon, a valley full of weirdly eroded rocks. We then met up with Max, and did the whole ´road of death´ thing.
Anyway, back to the main story. After a dinner of ´Heart Attack´ pizza pie or llama steak pizza, we headed back to the hostal, and the next day took a 6 hour bus to Potosí, a city which was once one of the biggest and most profitable in the world. This was due to the large mountain overlooking the city, which was once full of silver and other precious minerals. However, these days are long gone, and due to the way it was run hundreds of years ago, none of the profits from the mine went to the miners or the city. Nowadays, the miners work for themselves in family groups, which is more beneficial. We stayed in dorms on the top floor on the hotal, which is a pretty tiring climb when the city itself is above 4000 metres above sea level. Here we met 2 dutch guys who had just come from Sucre, and had warned us about the riots going on at that time, and a French girl called Margo. we decided to go for dinner, where we got proper llama steaks, and then for a drink. A word to the wise - anyone who wants as llama steak should have a large collection of toothpicks ready. The next day started like any other, with us exploring the city. I then went back to watch the football, along with some fellow Brits, 3 Mancs and a Cockney. The beers started flowing during the football and film which followed, to the point that by the time we went for dinner I was not at my most, well, you catch my drift. I can recall very little of that night, but apparently I was a barrel of laughs, high-fiving tramps, asking peoples names again and again, telling a story, apologising for repeating myself, then starting all over again. The 2 things I have absolutly NO recollection of is having a 5 minute conversation with the waiter about the way I wanted my steak cooked, and ordering a bottle of water for ´table Alex´. Franklin very kindly escorted me back to the hostal, where a good nights sleep helped me return to my normal self. The next day was a rest day for myself, whilst the other went to various museums and markets, where instead of purchasing the cow heads for sale, they bought CDs and DVDs for ridiculously cheap prices. After that, it was time for our trip to the mines...
The Potosí mining trip experince is a fantastic one, but not the sort of one you ever do again. It starts with getting mine-suited up, wearing protective trousers, jacket, helmet, torch and boots. After this a trip to the miners market is in order, where for $3 you buy dynamite, ammonuim nitrate, a fuse and a soft drink. This is your standard present for a family of miners. Our group also bought a few sticks of dynamite extra, for a little ´celebratory party´ after the mines. You then go to the refinery, where you stand uncomfortably close to liquid Cyanide, which is used to separate the percious minerals from the useless rock. Then it´s into the mines proper, a place not reccomended for claustraphobes (no problems there) or asthmatics (ah...). The mines are as you would expect; dark, dusty and dangerous. Pipes of air are used to provide oxygen for the lowest levels, and miners aged from 14 to 40 work there, although if you last 20 years you are considered very lucky. Our tour took us to the 4 main levels, where miners work for 50 pounds a month shoveling, transporting or dynamiting the rubble looking for silver, lead or other minerals. It was a tough but amazing experience, one that I would reccomend doing, but just the once. Again thanks should go to Efra, our guide who, at the end, gave us Conac and blew up excess dynamite.
A Condensed Fortnight of South American Hijinks
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Ages since our last post so I'll just give the much-edited highlights. Our last full day in Cusco was the day of the Corpus Christi processions so we spent ages watching the various floats, brass bands, dancing school-children and people dressed up in brightly coloured woollen costumes. Another plus was that as part of the celebrations, everywhere served 'chirri uchu' which is a plate of chicken, pork, guinea pig, toasted corn, caviar and seaweed that you eat without cutlery. For some reason ours came with a glass of straight pisco that tastes like petrol so we subtly mixed it with coke to make it actually drinkable. After this Alex and I went to 'Paddy Flaherty's, the highest Irish pub on the planet!' which as promised was very high and fairly Irish.
Next day after a full English breakfast and some general Cusconian wandering we get a hefty night-bus to Arequipa and spend the following morning recovering in our hotel. For lunch we go to a Turkish place where we bump into Leela and Ellie! Bizarre how things like this keep happening. In the evening we meet up with them at the house they've been staying for the last month or so, for Chinese take-aways and a really long game of 'Ring of Fire', then more drinks at a club until the morning.
Alex and Franklin left for Puno a couple of days later while I stayed on in Arequipa (for more details of their time together see Alex's post, coming soon to a blog near you). My time alone was not as exciting as I'd been planning given that I was laid down by some stomach bug so rather than live the Arequipan high-life I spent most of my three days lying in bed watching crime shows. I have very little else to report other than that I went to a massive nunnery and spent half an hour in a park translating someone's English copy of National Geographic into Spanish.
Border crossing into Bolivia was successful other than the git of a border official who searched me "for drugs" and ended up nicking forty dollars from me. First Bolivian stop was Tiahuanaco, a massive archaeological site that is still being excavated by all of the Tiahuanacan locals. After that I bussed to La Paz and met up with Alex and Franklin at our hostel (which is insanely cheap, just like pretty much everything else in Bolivia). La Paz is a cool city with a decent cocaine musuem and a witches' market where you can buy basically everything from armadillos and llama foetuses to cat toenails and a candle for raising the dead. The rest of our time was spent finding a decent tour agency for the Death Road, which we booked for the following day (sorry Mum). Anyway, it was amazing - about four hours of mountain-biking down a narrow dirt-track with massive drops to our left. Luckily we only met two other vehicles on the way down. High-speed riding and some great views, then to finish off we had a massive buffet lunch at a high-class hotel. And no-one fell off, which is a plus.
After some more exploring of La Paz we got a bus to Uyuni, a freezing cold dead-end town which you'd never visit other than to book a tour to the salt flats, which we did without much hassle. And the tour was stunning. The salt-flats themselves are amazing and we got all kinds of crazy perspective-cheating photos, but they only made up a small part of the tour - as well as that there was the train cemetery, coloured lakes, volcanoes, geysers, the Salvador Dali desert and a surreal cave that looked like it was made out of papier-mache and fibreglass. Almost as surreal as that was the fact that in one of the dead trains we met Fenna, a Dutch girl who we last saw partway through Ecuador. Another highlight was the thermal baths, which were fun to get in but painfully cold to get out of. Our agency (Oasis) was great - they gave us cake and wine, and against all the odds our desert jeep didn't break down once.
After that we got out of Uyuni as soon as was humanly possible and now Alex, Franklin, Fenna and I are in a hostel in Potosi about to go out for dinner because all we've had to eat today is Pringles. Next stop Potosi mines, which are meant to be like 'hell on Earth'. So that should be a laugh.
Next day after a full English breakfast and some general Cusconian wandering we get a hefty night-bus to Arequipa and spend the following morning recovering in our hotel. For lunch we go to a Turkish place where we bump into Leela and Ellie! Bizarre how things like this keep happening. In the evening we meet up with them at the house they've been staying for the last month or so, for Chinese take-aways and a really long game of 'Ring of Fire', then more drinks at a club until the morning.
Alex and Franklin left for Puno a couple of days later while I stayed on in Arequipa (for more details of their time together see Alex's post, coming soon to a blog near you). My time alone was not as exciting as I'd been planning given that I was laid down by some stomach bug so rather than live the Arequipan high-life I spent most of my three days lying in bed watching crime shows. I have very little else to report other than that I went to a massive nunnery and spent half an hour in a park translating someone's English copy of National Geographic into Spanish.
Border crossing into Bolivia was successful other than the git of a border official who searched me "for drugs" and ended up nicking forty dollars from me. First Bolivian stop was Tiahuanaco, a massive archaeological site that is still being excavated by all of the Tiahuanacan locals. After that I bussed to La Paz and met up with Alex and Franklin at our hostel (which is insanely cheap, just like pretty much everything else in Bolivia). La Paz is a cool city with a decent cocaine musuem and a witches' market where you can buy basically everything from armadillos and llama foetuses to cat toenails and a candle for raising the dead. The rest of our time was spent finding a decent tour agency for the Death Road, which we booked for the following day (sorry Mum). Anyway, it was amazing - about four hours of mountain-biking down a narrow dirt-track with massive drops to our left. Luckily we only met two other vehicles on the way down. High-speed riding and some great views, then to finish off we had a massive buffet lunch at a high-class hotel. And no-one fell off, which is a plus.
After some more exploring of La Paz we got a bus to Uyuni, a freezing cold dead-end town which you'd never visit other than to book a tour to the salt flats, which we did without much hassle. And the tour was stunning. The salt-flats themselves are amazing and we got all kinds of crazy perspective-cheating photos, but they only made up a small part of the tour - as well as that there was the train cemetery, coloured lakes, volcanoes, geysers, the Salvador Dali desert and a surreal cave that looked like it was made out of papier-mache and fibreglass. Almost as surreal as that was the fact that in one of the dead trains we met Fenna, a Dutch girl who we last saw partway through Ecuador. Another highlight was the thermal baths, which were fun to get in but painfully cold to get out of. Our agency (Oasis) was great - they gave us cake and wine, and against all the odds our desert jeep didn't break down once.
After that we got out of Uyuni as soon as was humanly possible and now Alex, Franklin, Fenna and I are in a hostel in Potosi about to go out for dinner because all we've had to eat today is Pringles. Next stop Potosi mines, which are meant to be like 'hell on Earth'. So that should be a laugh.
The road to Machu Picchu
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After spending 15 hours on a bus ride from Nazca watching some dreadful films, we arrived in Cuzco and headed straight to a hostal. Afterwards, a spot of lunch was in order, where we started to get the ´Cuzco gringo experience´, which involves the constant offering of hats, puppets, massages and drugs. We declined all except the hat. The morning of the next day consisted of getting a full english breakfast from the only Real McCoy restaurant in Peru, looking for a decent tour to take us to Machu Picchu, and going to internet cafes. After uploading some pictures on Flickr (a link for which you can find on the webpage) we met up with two Australian travellers, Zane and Emma, Who we met in Vilcabamba, in Ecuador (during the night of free alcohol - see one of the previous blog posts). We then went for an all-you-can-eat indan buffet, for about 4 quid each. Also at dinner was Todd, who worked as the ´director of Cinematography´ in the adult entertainment industry. Didn´t really ask him about his work, but apperently he intends to name one of his future movies with the lead characters called Zane and Emma. We wern´t sure what to make of the either. The next day, I went quadbiking with Zane and Todd while Max and Franklin went to one of the massive markets in this area. After this, it was time to prepare for our 3 day tour to Machu Picchu, which would consist of biking, rafting and hiking.
The tour started at 6 am Peruvian time (so about 6:45 am), when a minibus took us and some fellow travellers to the top of a nearby mountain. We got our helmets and gloves wrapped up warm and headed off down the mountain, firstly on tarmac roads and then on dirtroads. By far the best bit was cycling on the dirtroad, due paticually to the heavy rain fall that started as soon as we got on to the dirtroad, which made things all the more exciting. During the biking, both Max and myself fell off, grazing our left knees. Max fell whilst high-fiving peruvian schoolchildren, whilst I fell after trying to simultaneously take a photo and steer a bike. Fortuantly, we are now both ok (relativly), but my camera has seen better days. With the biking over, we thought we would do a little white water rafting, but with only one place available, the others kindly let me do it whilst they drank 1.1 litre bottles of lager. After this is was an hours drive to the next town, then bed. The next day was taken up by a rather long hike through the highlands of Peru, which mainly consisted of climbing up one big hill, seeing some ruins (and Machu Picchu from a distance) and walking back down. This left us quite hot and sweaty, so the guide suggested a dip in the river at the bottom of the valley. However, this is where Max decided to get rid of pair number 3 of his sunglasses, for when he went under the water he was with sunglasses, and when he emerged he was without. He then had to borrow my ´Genuine´raybans for the rest of the walk, but I believe he has now bought his own, for the pricey sum of 5 pounds. After a decent lunch we headed up to the town of Aguas Calientes, following the river. On the way we learnt a quechua word ´apucontititriksiillawericochapachayacachik´. This means God. Just God. Why not just say God. Its not hard to learn, but much quicker. Ridiculous. In Aguas Calientes we trated ourselves to warm showers, ate dinner and went to bed, unaware of how long the next day was going to be...
We woke up at 3.30am and started to walk to Machu Picchu at 4. To get to Machu Picchu, one can either catch a bus, or climb 3600 stone steps built by the Incas. Naturally we chose the latter, and 45 minutes later we were waiting at the entance, about 50th in line. At 6am the gates opened, and we started our tour of Machu Picchu. The first place you go to is the ledge just behind the city, which is where all the stereotypical pictures of Machu Picchu are taken. After getting our pictures of the sunrise over the Incan city, we learnt about the various temples and houses that make up most of the city. A little bit of history: Machu Picchu was an Incan stronghold for about 70 years after the Spanish invasion, after which there is little evidence of where they went next. Some believe they may have fought and killed eachother, but some believe they retreated to the jungle, where they formed the city of ´El Dorado´. After the tour, we hiked up Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind Machu Picchu in all the photos. A gruelling 30 minutes hike and we were at the top, savouring the grandeur of the occasion (or for Max, having a little nap). After getting our customary photo at the top, we headed back down, where Max and Franklin headed to the Sun gate (another part of the ruins) whilst I went up Machu Picchu mountain, a trek that was exhausting but totally worth it. By the time I got back down, it was time to leave. Being the skint students that we are, we walked back down to Aguas Calientes instead of getting a bus, where we killed time until the train by eating dinner and listening to ipods. 1 train ride, 1 minibus ride and 1 coach ride later, we arrived in Cuzco at 2 am this morning, exhausted but amazed by what we had done. A big shout out to Hugo, our guide for the trip, who was full of facinating stories, useful information and ´interesting´ jokes.
The tour started at 6 am Peruvian time (so about 6:45 am), when a minibus took us and some fellow travellers to the top of a nearby mountain. We got our helmets and gloves wrapped up warm and headed off down the mountain, firstly on tarmac roads and then on dirtroads. By far the best bit was cycling on the dirtroad, due paticually to the heavy rain fall that started as soon as we got on to the dirtroad, which made things all the more exciting. During the biking, both Max and myself fell off, grazing our left knees. Max fell whilst high-fiving peruvian schoolchildren, whilst I fell after trying to simultaneously take a photo and steer a bike. Fortuantly, we are now both ok (relativly), but my camera has seen better days. With the biking over, we thought we would do a little white water rafting, but with only one place available, the others kindly let me do it whilst they drank 1.1 litre bottles of lager. After this is was an hours drive to the next town, then bed. The next day was taken up by a rather long hike through the highlands of Peru, which mainly consisted of climbing up one big hill, seeing some ruins (and Machu Picchu from a distance) and walking back down. This left us quite hot and sweaty, so the guide suggested a dip in the river at the bottom of the valley. However, this is where Max decided to get rid of pair number 3 of his sunglasses, for when he went under the water he was with sunglasses, and when he emerged he was without. He then had to borrow my ´Genuine´raybans for the rest of the walk, but I believe he has now bought his own, for the pricey sum of 5 pounds. After a decent lunch we headed up to the town of Aguas Calientes, following the river. On the way we learnt a quechua word ´apucontititriksiillawericochapachayacachik´. This means God. Just God. Why not just say God. Its not hard to learn, but much quicker. Ridiculous. In Aguas Calientes we trated ourselves to warm showers, ate dinner and went to bed, unaware of how long the next day was going to be...
We woke up at 3.30am and started to walk to Machu Picchu at 4. To get to Machu Picchu, one can either catch a bus, or climb 3600 stone steps built by the Incas. Naturally we chose the latter, and 45 minutes later we were waiting at the entance, about 50th in line. At 6am the gates opened, and we started our tour of Machu Picchu. The first place you go to is the ledge just behind the city, which is where all the stereotypical pictures of Machu Picchu are taken. After getting our pictures of the sunrise over the Incan city, we learnt about the various temples and houses that make up most of the city. A little bit of history: Machu Picchu was an Incan stronghold for about 70 years after the Spanish invasion, after which there is little evidence of where they went next. Some believe they may have fought and killed eachother, but some believe they retreated to the jungle, where they formed the city of ´El Dorado´. After the tour, we hiked up Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind Machu Picchu in all the photos. A gruelling 30 minutes hike and we were at the top, savouring the grandeur of the occasion (or for Max, having a little nap). After getting our customary photo at the top, we headed back down, where Max and Franklin headed to the Sun gate (another part of the ruins) whilst I went up Machu Picchu mountain, a trek that was exhausting but totally worth it. By the time I got back down, it was time to leave. Being the skint students that we are, we walked back down to Aguas Calientes instead of getting a bus, where we killed time until the train by eating dinner and listening to ipods. 1 train ride, 1 minibus ride and 1 coach ride later, we arrived in Cuzco at 2 am this morning, exhausted but amazed by what we had done. A big shout out to Hugo, our guide for the trip, who was full of facinating stories, useful information and ´interesting´ jokes.
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