Machu Picchu

So I've just returned from my Inca Jungle Trek to Machu Picchu (pronounced pik-chew, like picture), the ancient city of the Inca and a select few of the 10 million race. It was a challenging route and included ridiculously early mornings, but the journey made our arrival to the citadel all the more impressive. A few buildings have been restored, but for the most part the structures are so strong and still standing it's easy to transport yourself back to the busy town. The tiered levels provided them with farm land for Quinoa, and there were other areas for a cemetary, sacrificial stone, courtyard, university and temple. Llamas were walking around the site, and pretty orchids and grey lizards made the place their home. But why did they choose to perch on this mountain? How long must it have taken them to bring the heavy stones from 11km away? There's so many unanswered questions about their life and culture, but our guide, Henry, believes that the last of the Incan Empire is living on in the jungle. If we ever find them (or the lost city of gold), maybe we'll one day find out...


We were a group of 8 people- three guys just graduated and very sporty, a couple who had quit their jobs and sold their homes to travel and do as many adventure sports as possible, and another young couple from Canada who loved the great outdoors. So they were quite a fit bunch, and on the treks I had to push myself to keep up with them following my month and a half of tame city strolls. We got on really well and found out so much about the history of Peru. Henry lived and breathed the culture. He had a head in his house that had been unearthed by a friend (it has a really tall skull because the children wore tight bands around their foreheads in order to make it grow up. This was a status symbol, much like, I guess, the bowler hats now) because it's thought that this head will watch over your house and prevent burglaries. It still has hair. The hair is still growing.


On the first day we mountain biked down a valley into the Cloud Forest. The clouds were hanging motionless in the air, and the road was really quiet. It was almost eerie until it started raining torrents and we had to force our eyes to stay open to see the road. At the bottom we visited our first ruins (ruined by nature, not the Spanish) - a sacred place where they would make sacrifices to Inti, the Sun God. There's little evidence to support the idea that they killed people, but enough skeletons to confirm that Llamas were the main victim. Llamas were bred for meat, fur, manure and to be sacred. Essential creatures!


On the second day we woke up very early and had insect repellent showers before hiking for a couple of hours up hill. It's lucky we started so early because as soon as the sun had risen for a few hours we were really hot! The first stop was to visit a monkey, who promptly grabbed Sophia's water bottle that I borrowed and took a swig! I've drank from it since, following some scrupulous cleaning and I seem to be okay (fingers crossed). He was so cute. We continued up to a hut where we tried on some traditional outfits, and tasted some fruits from the forest. All our tours have been so educational. To be a tour guide in Peru, you must go to university for five years to qualify. From the mirrador at the top, we started walking down the steep steps (much harder than going up!) to find a landslip blocking the road. Following the rainy season of Jan, Feb, March they are quite common. We had to walk an extra hour to our lodge. This was no problem, however, because upon arriving we could see it was totally worth the effort. Bowls of sweet bananas and creamy avocados were dotted around the wooden lodge. Our rooms were open air, such that there were no closed walls. We slept to the sound of the rushing river, and cowered in our nets from the pesky mosquitos. But before we could enjoy sleeping, we went zip wiring! Maximum line was 150m above a valley - terrifying but exhilarating!

On the third day we faced a hard walk up hill. It was really steep and a little higher which meant it was harder to breathe. Not to mention the guy holding us up by herding his lazy cows up this narrow path. At the top we saw another site and had a great view of Machu Picchu, our goal! We had a delicious lunch, followed by a nap in the shade and I saw a bottle green Humming Bird darting about. Again, the downhill made our legs shake but we arrived on time to our next hostal and our final meal together - Piscosours included!

On our final day we woke at 5am and took the bus up with the many other tourists to Machu Picchu. We had a long guide around the old buildings, after we raced to get our cheesy trophy photos before the throngs in the background were spoiling the post card shot. We said goodbye to our guide and climbed Wayna Picchu. After three long days, this was the hardest part. Slippery rocks and narrow staircases...I was a little scared. The view from above was great, though. And my Pig made it!

We decided not to go to the hot springs before our train back, because we had gone on the second day instead to rejuvinate ourselves for the rest of the trip. It was delicious. 28 Degrees Celcius, we got there at dusk and watched the outline of the mountains blend into the sky as the stars come out. If it wasn't for the walk in the dark back across the fresh landslide (literally fallen that morning) then I would have been completely relaxed!

I really enjoyed myself, and promptly sent Dad a gushing email about how it was 'so inspiring, dude'. It's clear why Machu Picchu is one of the beacons of South America. 2000 people visit it every day, 400 people clime Wayna Picchu, and this happens for 11months of the year! I've been there, done it, and I think I may have to get the T shirt!


I wish you could have all been with me, lots of Love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(I will add photos a later!)

La Paz

La Paz is the highest populated city in the world! It’s really polluted, built on a mountain and has a local witches market where you can buy Alpaca skeletons and dried frogs. I would love to bring one home (they have put sequins where the eyes are, and coated them in glitter spray!) but I don’t think I could get it through US customs…

Our favorite herbal concoction is the Coca Mate tea which tastes as though it has some Fennel, Green tea and Mint in. The coca leaves reduce altitude sickness, weariness, cold and pain. The Inca love goddess is depicted holding them aloof, and they used to be used in trading (weird having a currency you can actually eat). All the locals chew them (especially bus drivers), and we’ve been getting better and better at spotting those telling hamster cheeks! The British Queen was even given them when she visited South America.

Mate is the Argentinean drink which adds the Fennel flavor to the tea. The locals drink it from clay pots, using straws that have filters at the bottom of them (definitely bringing one for Sarah for drinking loose leaf Green tea! Such a clever idea! ). They carry them around EVERYWHERE, along with thermal flasks of hot water to keep it topped up. Mate had to be banned from public busses, because people would not stop drinking the brew for more than a minute to get their change out!


Yesterday was our first day in La Paz, but Sophia and I needed a day of recovery so didn’t explore much further than the local Moroccan restaurant for our first hummus in a whole month!

We were very sad to leave Sucre, it was a pretty, chilled town and we made lots of friends who accompanied us to the local Karaoke bar, and who we could feed the local PiscoSour to for the first time (reminiscent, I imagine, of watching babies drink something fizzy!).


We will be in La Paz for the next two days...lots of fun things planned!

Unboliviable Places

Current destination: Uyuni, Bolivia. Current activity: coming up with ingenious punns and jokes on our long bus journeys across the Siloli desert.

After crossing the Bolivian boarder, we went on a 3 day tour (just getting back this afternoon) around the highest desert in the world (5000m above sea level), seeing flamingos, red, green, black, yellow and white lagoons and amazing mountains. Yesterday, we were reclining in a 35degree hot spring, looking over the flamingos mooching around in the basin and the surrounding snow peaked mountains. If you'd have told someone where you were they wouldn't have Boliviad'ya.


One of the most striking things upon leaving Chile is the way that the locals dress, and the difference in prices. Bolivia is a lot less developed than Chile - one night in a hostal is roughly three pounds, and whilst this doesn't always include a hot shower, Chile was more around ten pounds. Secondly, the locals all wear the traditional uniform of Latin America. The women have metre long plaits which are half brown and half grey, revealing their age in the same way as the rings on a tree stump. They wear bowler hats, wide puffy skirts, shirts and crochet jumpers. They carry around kids on their back in big blankets, and wear stockings and black leather shoes. This is all in a rainbow spectram of colours and materials. The llamas (seen LOADS now!) even have colourful socks attached to their ears so each owner knows which llamas belgon to who. The colourful, Pachamama woolen blanket that mum knitted for me has been greatly admired!

This is in stark contrast to the women of Buenos Aires. They wore jeans, a nice top, fancy bag and shoes with a minimum of a two inch heel. Sophia and I regretted not bringing a luxury item of wedges to try to fit in more with the buzzing, well presented community.

Apologies that I don't have any photos to upload but this internet cafe doesn't let you use USB :(. Shame, given that the photos of the lagoons I've just taken are the best so far - the red lagoon was nominated as one of the 7 wonders of the world! Not sure why it didn't win, and neither was our cool tour guide, Al.


Tomorrow we are taking the bus to Potosi, a mining town, and then on to Sucre to stay for a few days and finally wash our clothes (can't wait!).

Pictures to follow xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Update on clothes and costumes: I lost some of my clothes on an overnight bus, and have had to stock up on a llama and alpaca mix sweater (so. soft) and some green hareems. The travellers try to look indigenous and the locals look how we noramlly do!

Getting Lost in the Desert

Over the past six days we have travelled from Santiago to San Pedro De Atacama through sandy deserts, boulder fields, mountains and rural towns. We were in a group of 13 people (all from various parts of the world but with English as the common language), moving from point to point by mini bus and blasting out the trance music of our Chilean guide, Ariel. We saw cave paintings that are around 8000 years old, swam in natural oases and saw the sun set behind the sharp, pointy peaks of the moon valley salt caves.

Since being mostly in cities, this was our oppotunity to see some exotic South American wildlife. On our first day we saw a Pelican catching fish in the town of Pichidangui ('small raft' in Mapuche language). It was our first stop along the way and featured a church perched on the cliff that didn´t have any walls, instead leaving it open to the fresh sea air, and had ivy and creepers growing up around the alter and pews. Totally a place of peace, man.

On the second day Ariel spotted a desert fox lying in the shade of a cactus. We slowed down to look at it and watched it run away when it got startled, slinking between the rocks and sporting a similar camouflage to Echo. The same day we took a boat ride out to a rocky formation called Isla Damas, to spot some sea birds and creatures. We saw: Red Beaked Cormorents, Penguins (sweet statues), Peruvian Boobies, Sea Lions, ´Jotes´ or Vultures, more Pelicans flying in a formation, Black Oyster Catchers, One-eyed Cormorents and Olivacious Cormorents. Our guide explained how Cormorents go blind after two years of diving to catch fish, because the impact is so great when they hit the sea. We also looked out for a resident Sea Elephant and Bottle-nosed Dolphins but we didn´t see any, sadly.

A few days later we arrived at the salt flats. Before crossing them, we stopped at a look-out point on top of the coastal mountain range, Cordillera de la Costa, and before us lay the expanse of the valley and beyond that the Andes snow-capped peaks. It was such a breath-taking view, definitely added to the yoga 'happy place' list. Ariel said there aren't many villages or nomads in this area, so I wasn't expecting there to be much wildlife. However, we descended the mountain and turned into the National Flamingo Conservation Park and watched the pink birds hanging out in salty pools of water. There were also a few lizards and little birds, but the organisms living in the water were probably the most diverse ecosystem. A particular pool we saw was 300m deep- not sure what kind of animal can survive that much pressure as well as living in a liquid that contains more bromine, lithium and salt than actual water (probably).


I still haven't seen a Llama or an Alpaca!


We were with a really fun bunch of people, and in the evenings we drank beer and chatted about our experiences and where we´ll be going next in South America. They left us this morning to return to Santiago, and will see some more sights in Chile.
Sophia and I are still in the desert, deciding how to get to Bolivia.

Love xxxxxxxxxxx

Don't cry for us, Argentina!

Later on this evening we'll be pulling out of the Cordoba Omnibus Station to start a 16hour bus ride to Santiago. However, we'll be going over the Andes under the morning sun, and I've got my ipod ready to provide a soundtrack to stunning views. Our tactic for surviving this has been to eat lots of ginger, drink fizzy water, and go out dancing the night before for optimum sleep deprivation on the bus.

We went to see a Salsa band yesterday, and quickly learnt a couple of other people's moves, after being told that the British are rubbish dancers! The music was fast, feverish and you couldn't help but join in.

On one of our last few nights in Buenos Aires (we were very sad to leave both the city and our eclectic group of amigos at the Hostel) we went to see a spectacular Tango show. It was a very beautiful form of acrobatics: the costumes, live music, spins and lifts made us want to uproot all of our plans and stay in Buenos Aires to master the dance. Just walking along San Telmo market on Sunday, street artists would invite locals to join them for a spontaneous exchange on the cobbled streets.



Paula suggested we go to an Afro-Carribean gig too, which we went to without hesitation on Thursday night. The Drums and the Clarinet got faster and faster throughout the evening, as did the crowd despite the humid evening and the 'intimately sized' venue.

Another musical evenings was Groovestock at a place really close to our hostel. It was a line-up of local bands all playing cool Indie music and each with their own dedicated team of hard core groupies. They had flyers, flags, mosh-pit-starters, t-shirts, and people to sing along louder than the main dude. A Senor at San Telmo market who had a stall dedicated to selling horse riding equipment told us about how in Argentina, you have to find your passion and spend your life working on it. His is horses- and these guys' one was their band.


This Senor's stall was really interesting, he could have kitted out a little group of horse-back travellers. However, I was most interested in the 'Don't Touch The Guns' sign because after carrying our backpacks around our arm muscles are getting in to serious shape!

Wish us luck tonight :)
Chao x

Buenos Aires First Steps

Sophia and I are chilling out on the roof of our hostal. It's a grey day (unlike the past two) but the streets are hot and the Spanish is flowing. Well, for Sophia anyway - my language is more of a shameful Frespanol...

So far we've been seeing the city by foot, but our tired legs are telling us that we have under-estimated the size of the city. Buenos Aires is pretty massive. Each barrio has it's own community and personality attached: leafy, posh Palermo or expenisve, glamorous Recoleta. Having said that, we walked past a great bit of graffiti yesterday telling us that even if you're leaving one barrio to go home to yours, then you've already arrived - BA is one organism.

There's colour everywhere- orange, green, blue buildings. Even parliament is pink. This is especially the case in La Boca, where we stumbled across a little village of Glastonbury-esque street performers and music. Very cool. Very Bohemian.



Paula, our kind, local portena, invited us to her place yesterday. From there, we went out to a Tango class and learnt some (really complicated!) moves. The proffesional dancers make leg crossing and backwards walking look easier than it is! Felt a bit out of place in my schoolboy daps and shorts combo next to the ladies with red-dresses, but we're told the sentiment of passion is the most important aspect. In South America, dancing is an art.

I have sampled an Argentinian steak, which brought me close to Dad's Banana and Chocolate Pancake Epiphany (p.s learnt the word for Pancake yesterday - Pancakas, or thereabouts), but there are still Empanadas to try. Luckily however, it means that lunch has been sorted for today.

There's still a lot to see - I hope all is well at home, and that the Spring weather is continuing!

My number is 1161513126. Pero no se el numero para argentina. Something like that.


Adios Amigos, Suerte!!
Lx

And They're Off

Sophia and I have taken a year out of education to explore a small section of the globe, experience life as spongy, chilled travellers and to discover the weird and wonderful world of the Americas.


This picture of a llama in the Colombian landscape (top left - the other picture is just a funny picture of a llama) has been the background of my work computer for the last 5 months, and now we're almost off to see the real thing - Peruvian coat and bells included I hope!

We're currently packing and arranging confusing, but necessary, stuff like phones, insurance and money. Of course we also have scheduled in our 'New Bikini' shop for tomorrow morning...

Nervous but excited. I can't honestly picture what the landscape will look like - or our reactions! Complete culture shock, or tangoing chicas by the end of the first day?

Our first stop is Buenos Aires, after a brief change over in Amsterdam.
I'll keep you posted, please read on if you would like.

Lx