After a few days in Santiago, we made our way to Lima, Peru.
We arrived and checked out Miraflores which was a cool area, and very safe too. Stayed a night before we met with our tour group of 5 others the following day. ur tour leader had been stranded in Cuzco with bad weather. so she met us later on in the evening. We had a tour downtown Lima which was really cool and visited a Franciscan Monastery which had the most amazing library, that looked like something from Harry Potter, and underneath were a series of catacombs with thousands of bones, sorted and piled. It was rather eerie. Unfortunately we werent able to take any photos. Everyone on the tour seemed nice enough and the following day we set of for Puerto Maldonaldo, in the Amazon Basin.
Our flight was via Cuzco and upon approach we shook about in the plane, made a sharp move to the right followed by a very steep bank to the left, followed by a missed landing, needless to say I spent the whole time asking Philip if this was all normal, holding on tight to the chair, silently praying while I thought we were about to spiral to our very early death. This was not the case, as the pilot made another go and got us to the ground safe, and passengers around us clapped, obviously hairy landings are all to common in Peru. Ali, our tour leader later informed me that the landing was quite normal.
We took of and flew into Puerto Maldonaldo. The humidity was incredible and after just a minute of walking the sweat was poring of both of us, it was an experience thats for sure, we did a walk where we found out all about local plants and medicinal uses for them. We swung off a rope, and both of us felt a little Indiana Jones. We went on a boat cruise that night looking for Caymans, but didnt see any however I was SO lucky to see the Capybara, the worlds largest rodent. They were so big and cute and my amazon experience was now complete. The heat the following day was incredible, maybe not so much the heat, but the humidity and the 80% deet that we needed to rub over any exposed skin.... we spent the day in hammocks reading and looked forward to our departure the following day. Some of the others did a 10 hour hike to a place where lots of 28's live, as we see this bird quite regularly @ home the idea of trumping through mud, to visit a colony of parrots in 100% humidity wasn't particularly appealing, bring on the latest UK Esquire magazine.
Tucan in the jungle
The following day we departed for Cuzco, where we landed without any of the previous drama. The air here was much thinner as we were at 3400m above sea level. We dropped of our laundry (oh how I miss the laundry services of South America) rested for some time, went to a Coca shop where we had coca tea, coca brownies, and although I think it was either completely psychological or something to do with my brain not getting enough air, I got the coca giggles.
After a good night sleep we set of to Ollantaytambo via Sacred Vallery with a few stops at other sites of importance like Saqsaywaman which were very cool. After stopping at Pisac for an empanada for lunch we headed to Sakaka community and gave an English to some very cute kindy kids who speak Quechua and Spanish, which was a hoot, the ladies there were super kind and asked if Philip was single while remarking to me that I look much older than 28... yeh, what ever.... Sacred valley was amazingly colourful, and it was great to see so many Peruvian people living such traditional lives, so close to nature. We arrived at Ollantaytambo in the afternoon, had some time to rest and then went up to Hearts Cafe for dinner, a local cafe that is run by a British woman, to help the local community with health and education projects.
After heading off to bed I work approx 4 hours later and spent 8 hours on the loo suffering from very severe food poisoning, I will not go into detail. I cannot say exactly where I picked up this bug, but thank goodness it was short and sharp, and I was traveling with my own very loving physician.
After a morning in bed... (thanks to the hotel for not making me check out early) we made our way to Aguas Callientes the closest town to the famous Inca remains of Machupicchu. The hotel that we were staying in was a complete pigsty, and we all decided that it was not fit for us to stay in and had to check in else where.... it didn't help that I'd had two hours sleep. expelled my own body weight in fluid, and just wanted to sleep. It also didn't help that there was a building site next door, which thumped and banged and the workers didn't finish up for the day until 8pm. Problem solved, new hotel, basic and quiet, and here I slept.
The next day we were up at 4.00 for to head for sunrise at Machupicchu. When we arrived after traversing the steep mountain path by bus, there were not to many tourists and we started our tour of the amazingly built Inca village. When the sun came up over the mountain and illuminated the remains, it was a STUNNING sight. I had always imagined it to be larger than it was in real life. The pure genius involved in building Machipicchu, the shaping of individual stones in far away quarries, weighing tonnes and being delivered to this inaccessible site in the middle of know where says something awe inspiring about the Inca civilisation.We spent a few hours there and before we knew it the whole place was full of tourists, spotted everywhere like multi coloured ants, arriving in groups of 50 by the super efficient bus service from Aguas Callientes. We needed to leave before our memories of sunrise at Machupicchu were forever tarnished by the shrill sound of obnoxious and rich Americans, and thus our Machupicchu experience drew to an end. I needed to rest more as my stomach still wasnt the best. Well thats one off the list...
We spent another night in Aguas Callientes and just before check out, while I was downstairs, heard a large smashing of glass, when I went up stairs it turned out that the light fitting in our room had almost fallen right on Philip's head, close call. Next was the train to Ollantaytambo, where we were picked up in a minibus and drove straight back to Cuzco. After another 2 nights in Cuzco, one of which saw me dacing on stage with local youth looking rather hilarious ... it was time to set of to Puno, and then to lake Titicaca.
On the way to Puno we reached the highest point of our time in Peru at almost 4400m above sea level, we then continued on our way, the landcape becape dry and barron and we were the completely blown away by the town Julliaca, one of the ugliest places I have ever seen in my life, and apparently a black market town that is used for transfering many an illegal product between Bolivia and Peru. We kept on our way only to find that Puno was not exactly a picture of beauty, and our first site of Lake Titicaca, was that of a algae infested, litter polutes cest pit... however as we had travelled so far to see it, I wasnt going to write it of at that very moment.
After a night of acclimitising to the altitude we set out for our day trip of Lake Titicaca, the sky was grey and the hourney in the tuk tuk, was damp. The lake we had seen in brochures was calm and azure blue, however the lake we were about to set sail onto was grey and resembled more of a stormy sea.... we made our way in our somewhat tiny boat, rocking from side to side, to Taquile Island. It was rough and almost three hours long, and towards the end I was sure we were going to capsize, however the to and fro of the boat put everyone into a coma and before we new it we were back on dry land. It was here that we met villagers from a local community and had another very sincere experience with local people. The community were almost completely self sufficient and cooked us lunch in exchange for a small fee along with teaching us about the medicinal and functional uses of local plants and also showing us how they weave the many items that were for sale (it was nice to see the weaving as at point my cynacism made me believe that everything in Peru was produced on mass in factories in Lima), the ladies here were bewitching, with warm kind eyes and big friendly smiles.... after lunch we were treated to a performance... and off we set to return to the boat, now moored on the calmer side of the island, why could we not have just moored there to start off? Its all in the experience I guess. We made way to the floating Uros Islands.... another wise known as the gimicky floating quality that is geared at making money from tourists, and providing you with a preprepaired info-mercial like experience. Lets just say that we loved Taquile island and would recommend spending a whole day there.
The following day we set off to the airport via another amazing Inca ruin, the name at this late stage has escaped me. We then flew back to Lima where we dissapeared into a very convenient B&B for rest and recovery before heading to NYC, and back to the english speaking world.
12 °C
10 °C
10 °C
