Bolivia - Uyuni, La Paz 2, Arequipa and Nasca

We were booked on a 2 night 3 day tour of the Salt Flats, so we got up early, got ready, packed our bags, checked out of the hotel and made our way over to the tour agency to drop off our backpacks. Seeing as there were 6 people scheduled to go on the one jeep, along with a driver and a guide/chef, there wasn’t a lot of room for luggage and they’d asked us to put our 2 nights worth of clothes in to a small bag and leave the rest with them.

It was a little concerning that the door of the tour agency was closed but not locked (the padlock was hanging open) when we arrived. We let ourselves in and put our bags in the little room behind the flimsy net curtain. There were other people’s backpacks already inside, and I couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be for us to walk away with someone else’s worldly possessions. Similarly, how easy it would be for someone else to steal our backpacks from the agency while we were away. However with only half an hour to go before the tour was due to leave, we had to put all thoughts of stolen backpacks behind us and vamos to the nearest café for breakfast.

And another interesting breakfast it turned out to be. We ordered pancakes and after 15 minutes of waiting at the table outside, the waiter (who couldn’t have been more than 17 and judging by his enthusiasm, clearly Not in his dream job) unceremoniously dumped 2 plates on our table. The plates contained 2 perfectly round, perfectly cold pancakes which he’d clearly taken straight out of a packet and not even bothered to warm up. Lord knows what he’d been doing for the last 15 minutes. Anyway we sent them back and he microwaved them which made them slightly more edible.

Then we headed back to the tour agency to meet the rest of the group we’d be spending the next couple of days with. Fortunately they were a friendly bunch, consisting of a British couple and an Ozzie couple that already knew one another but didn’t make us feel like spare wheels to their quartet. It turned out there was also another group of 6 people that had signed up for the tour, and would be going in another jeep. Unfortunately three of them were an Intrepid group leader and 2 people on an Intrepid tour, which meant that they got the swanky new jeep with the English speaking guide, and we were relegated to the older jeep with the solo espanol speaking driver, and solo espanol speaking chef in the front. Needless to say this was a little disappointing since we’d been sold on the tour with this agency on the basis of their English speaking tour guide. As it turned out the guide did get out of the jeep and explain what we were seeing at each stop, so we only missed out on whatever information he would have been giving them along the way.

Then after a bit of last minute kerfuffle at the agency, where we found out that the previous guide had got the date for the return train tickets wrong (Tuesday night instead of the Monday night we wanted), and having to quickly dash around to cancel our matching hostel booking, they finally loaded our meagre luggage on to the top of the jeep under some tarpaulin, and we all clambered on to our trusty steed. Our driver turned around to establish how many of us hablo espanol, and quickly learnt that all 6 of us spoke little or no spanish, and that we’d been promised an English guide. But fortunately for him as he didn’t understand any English so our complaints fell on deaf ears, and we were quickly on our way to the first stop - the train cemetery which is not very far outside Uyuni.

The train cemetery is a pretty weird place. Basically its a string of old rusty trains in the middle of nowhere. However it does make for some interesting photos. After a quick photo session we set off again and within half an hour our jeep was stuck in some pretty deep mud. We were on the left handside of the train tracks and we could see all the other jeeps and buses whizzing by on the right handside of the tracks, while we were stuck. So we figured our driver had taken us down the wrong road. The boys got out and helped the driver to collect some large rocks that they placed next to the wheels and the driver tried to use the little jack to lift the car out, however that didn’t work. Eventually the other jeep, having dropped off its passengers at the salt mines (next stop on the tour), doubled back and brought a long wooden pole along with it. The guys actually tried to lift the chassis of the jeep out of the mud, using the wooden pole, however that didn’t work either. Eventually they ended up digging some mud out and placing more rocks behind the jeep and then reversing and that did the trick. It was a bit surprising that the jeep didn’t actually have any equipment on board, to deal with just such a situation as they do these tours every week! I would have expected at least a shovel for digging us out of the mud, but nope. Anyway, with that behind us we had lost about an hour and a half, so we had to skip the salt mines and go straight on to the main attraction - the salt flats.

The salt flats are an amazing sight and they stretch on for miles like a white sea horizon that you cant see the end of. And yes Suz you are right, it is the same place that messes with your perspective and allows you to take some pretty funky pictures e.g. A giant Kirsty stomping on a teeny weeny sized Steve he he he. We spent a bit of time playing with plastic dinosaurs and water bottles taking some more pictures, and then stopped for some lunch in the middle of nowhere. The food was actually pretty good, as we took our own cook along with us. After lunch we headed to Fish Island which was pretty otherworldly. Basically it’s an island in the middle of the salts flats, that is covered in these long tall cacti that are hundreds of years old. We walked up to the top of the island for some fantastic views of the jeep tracks running through the salt flats. Later on when the sun started to set we could clearly see the honeycomb shapes outlined on the salt flats due to the shadows, and that night we stayed in a salt hotel on the outskirts of the flats. The walls, tables, chairs, beds and bedside tables were all made out of salt bricks, that have been cut out of the salt flats. The other thing I should mention about the salt flats that is not immediately obvious, is that the salt (usually around 30 cm thick) is only a layer on top of the water. In some places there are holes in the salt and you can see the brine underneath. We had felt a little more comfortable driving over the top when we were under the impression that the ground was completely solid lol! We also found out that the salt is also incredibly rough/ hard, when we were lying down on the salt flats to take some of those funky pictures. For some reason I thought it would be softer, like a pile of salt, but it wasn’t at all.

The following day we woke up at 4am (I thought I was on holiday?!) to get an early start, as we had a very full day ahead. We were basically driving through the desert for a lot of the day (just like Atacama as we were close to Chile in the south of Bolivia), and we saw Laguna Colorada which is a pink lake and is full of flamingos. Basically the plankton in the water turn pink as a reaction to the sunlight, and the flamingos eat the plankton which turns their feathers pink. We also went to see Laguna Verge which is a green lake. The green colour is caused by the minerals in the water. Then we went to see the geysers, which was pretty impressive. Basically all these bubbling mud pits in the middle of nowhere, and then we stopped at some hot springs for a quick swim. The water was very warm and the views in the middle of the mountains were great. One of the our last stops was to see the stone tree which is literally a big rock that has been eroded in to the shape of a tree - very cool. That night we stayed in a very basic hotel in the middle of the desert, where all six of us bunked up one room and there were no showers. So it’s a good thing we stopped for that swim in the hot springs! To be fair it didn’t really matter that we were staying in a dorm as we were so exhausted after the long days driving and dinner that we went to bed pretty early and slept like logs.

On the last day we got up late (08h00 ha ha ha) and just had 2 stops before we headed back to Uyuni. I must admit by this point I was getting a bit tired of driving around the desert in the jeep (bit cramped with three girls on the back seat), as it was getting really warm inside the car. First we stopped to see some ancient paintings on the rocks (like bushman paintings) in red paint which were okay (we didn’t get much of an explanation other than ancient paintings) and then we stopped in a place with some very large rocks, that we could climb to the top of to see some awesome views of the desert.

By the time we got back to Uyuni we just about had time to grab some dinner and book our next hostel in the internet café, and then it was time to catch the night bus back to La Paz. The night bus along the dirt road was just as bad as I remembered it from the drive down to Uyuni - something out of the seventh circle of hell. However we did take some comfort from seeing that things could be worse. We got chatting to an Aussie guy in the internet café, and he ended up sitting across the isle from us on the night bus. He had the seat next to him free and the bus started to move at 20h00 (scheduled departure time) so he thought hed got lucky. However just then a local Peruvian woman with a baby on her back and 3 large bags came up the stairs and starting walking down the isle towards him. We tried very hard (unsuccessfully) to stifle the laughter as she took up the empty seat next to him, swung the baby around to her lap and starting breastfeeding him. Not to mention the fact that she left 2 of her big bags in the isle. We started to feel sorry for the poor Aussie, who know had zero space due to the woman and baby next to him. However about 10 minutes later the bus stopped and a man got on and walked down the isle, claiming that the local woman was in his seat (he had a ticket). The Aussie guy got up and said that the new guy could sit there with the local woman, and he would find another empty seat (he was keen to get away and who could blame him). So off the Aussie guy goes to the front of the bus looking for the empty seat, however there isn’t one. A couple of minutes later he comes back. It is clear that the local woman didn’t actually have a seat on the bus. However she says that she is not doing the whole 12 hour journey to La Paz, and the Aussie guy doesn’t want to ask her to get up now as shes got the baby on her lap etc, so he ends up sitting in the aisle on a blanket with one of the big bags at his back! This is on the bumpiest road ever. This went on for a couple of hours, until the local woman got off the bus. At which point the Aussie said the worst part was that the baby had been drooling on his head LOL. So I guess we should count our blessings that we at least had seats on that nightmare bus!

We had one night in La Paz in a very weird hostel (HI Onkel) were the staff didn’t speak a single word of English, and the shower issued an electric shock when you tried to turn the handle! We did manage to see a movie at the local cine (Resident Evil 4 - very forgettable), as it was showing in English. Then it was on to another night bus to Arequipa. We had thought that we would be able to do a day tour to see Colca Canyon however the woman in our hostel explained that it would take a 3am walk up and a 5.5 hour bus ride to get there (one way), so we declined and just spent the day around Arequipa itself instead. We were off to a slow start that day as the hostel was having problems with their water (bust pipe), so we had to wait until the water was switched back on again to get showered and head out.

We headed for the main square in Arequipa which is very pretty and surrounded by buildings all made out of the same white volcanic stone. We managed to find the English book swap in the guide, grabbed some lunch and then headed back to the hostel to arrange bus tickets and hostels for Nasca. We did head out for a dinner later on which was an interesting experience. On arrival the woman in the Arequipa hostel had given us a map of the area surrounding the hostel and circled a restaurant called La Italiana, about a 15 minute walk from the hostel ie closeby. However as it was late when we were going out for dinner and we didn’t have a lot of time before our night bus, we decided to hail a taxi. Now I should set the scene here, in that we have been warned by people and the guidebook that you can only take a certain type of taxi, as others have been known to drive tourists to some far flung destination and mug them... We had already read on the notice board at the hostel that the restaurant called La Italiana was on San Francisco street. So we hailed a taxi in the street and ask for La Italiana restaurant on San Francisco and the man nods and we get in.

After we’ve been driving for about 10 minutes, we look at each other and think that we have clearly already driven way too far, and then the guy takes us on to a highway, and at this point we are both thinking that we are going to get mugged. However the guy turns back off the highway again and heads in to town towards the main square. After some tense minutes he does indeed drop us off at a La Italiana on San Francisco, it is just not the same branch of the La Italiana resturant that was close to our hostel! With a sigh we paid the guy and got out of his taxi - I’ve never been so relieved to exit a taxi before in all my life lol!

Last night we took a Cruz del Sur night bus from Arequipa to Nasca, which arrived at 7am this morning. Luckily the hostel collected us from the bus station and had a room ready. So we checked in, asked the hostel owner to organise us a flight and then I crashed for a couple of hours. While I was sleeping Steve went out in to the garden and had a look over the back wall. There is a large black monkey in a small (1 sq metre) cage in the back garden of the next property, so Steve has emailed a couple of animal rescue places with the details, to see if they will come and collect it. Fingers crossed. The poor monkey looks very distressed in the little cage - very sad.

At 1pm a man came to collect us and take us to the airport to see the Nasca lines. Only the first stop we made was at a school to collect his 2 children. Then the second stop was to drop the children with a woman. Then the third stop was to pick up 2 other passengers lol. We were beginning to wonder if we were going to make the flight after all the unscheduled stops. Eventually we get to the airport and are lead to the small 5 seater Cessna plane. At this point I am wondering what I have gotten myself in for. I had heard stories about the turbulence and had already taken 1 dramamine to try and prevent the nauseau.

We had one pilot and one co pilot who’s job it was basically is to point and say ‘there, there!’ whenever we got close to a nasca line. There were twelve lines of interest that he pointed out to us. Basically the little plane would fly over, for example the monkey, on the right handside of the plane and then quickly turn around so that the left handside of the plane could see the same thing. The plane banking around quickly was horrendous and it was all I could do to hold on to my lunch! However I was very impressed with the monkey and the humming bird drawings in the sand. They were a bit fainter than I expected them to be, so it was difficult to take pictures, but we tried all the same. The plane ride, fortunately, was over pretty quickly and we were soon back on the ground heaving a sigh of relief and glugging down water. Despite the terrible naseau I am glad that we got to see the Nasca Lines. Its just a shame that no one can explain who / why they are there.

So that was all for today’s excitement. We have a night off to relax tonight and then we are catching another bus up to Lima tomorrow morning. This should have us arriving in Lima tomorrow night, just in time for our flight up to Guayaquil on Saturday morning. If all goes according to plan with the flight it will be a great success as we will have managed to whip around Bolivia and take in the Road of Death, Floating Islands, Isla del Sol, Uyuni and Nasca, all within a space of 2 weeks and return to Lima in time for our next flight!

We are looking forward to taking the foot off the gas a bit on the Galapagos Islands. Hopefully we will manage to find a discounted tour, as we are going in the low season (rough seas - Dramamine on standby he he he).

Love to all at home.
Kirst x

PS I have gotten used to the fact that I cant put any toilet paper down the loo in South America, however I am still struggling to come to terms with the fact that a hostel ‘breakfast’ consists of a white bread roll, some butter and some strawberry jam and no one has heard of an English Breakfast tea!

Peru - Puno & Bolivia - Copacabana / La Paz

The Cusco clinic gave me the all clear on the parasite, and the next morning we got an early bus to Puno. It was an interesting bus journey. When we first got on to the bus there was a little girl in my seat, who quickly moved back to her mother when we indicated they were our seats. Then during the journey the local mother proceeded to look through the girls hair, pulling things out and killing them between her thumb nails. I can only assume that the child had lice, and spent the rest of the bus journey wondering whether she had transferred any to my seat! This particular bus also had a rather special toilet. I opened the cubicle door to be greeted by a toilet and nothing else, no washbasin or toilet paper on the wall. When I opened the lid of the toilet it was literally a hole in the floor and I could see the road passing by underneath the bus! There was nothing to stop people from going to the toilet in the middle of the road in a local town, as the bus passes through - erm rather unhygienic! After about 5 hours trying not to think about the lice too much, we got in to Puno which is a little town alongside Titicaca lake. The town was nothing much to look at, but that is one enormous lake. We checked in to our hostel (Scottish logo but strangely no Scottish staff) and booked a tour first thing the following morning to go out to the Floating Islands of Uros and then Tequile Island.

Later we headed out looking for some dinner. We found the main plaza and the pedestrianised road with all the restaurants and shops on it easily enough. Then we walked for about 10 minutes trying to find a restaurant that was in the Lonely Planet guide. When we eventually found the right address, it had closed down, so we ended up eating somewhere else anyway - unfortunately despite the recent publication date you cant always trust the info in the Lonely Planet to be up to date! Puno has also got some of those motokars that we first saw in Iquitos, which provide a quick and cheap way to get back to the hostel when its cold.

The following morning we got a bus to the jetty and then a boat transfer to the Uros floating islands. Once on the boat we started to realise how big Lake Titicaca actually is. It seems to go on forever in to the horizon, and with the waves you could be forgiven for thinking you were on the sea rather than a lake.
I was amazed by the floating islands. When we arrived about 6 of the local people were all waiting to receive us and (clearly coached) sang out a greeting. There were 6 families staying on the island we visited, and the leader and his friend gave us a brief introduction in to how they make their floating island, using the reeds that grow all around them in the lake. Then we each went along with a local woman in to their houses. Now I say houses, it is actually just one room made entirely out of reeds. Reeds below, reeds above and reeds on all sides. It was hard to believe that a family of 5 people were living in that one little room, with only a curtain on a string dividing the two mattresses on the floor, and all their clothes hanging from the reed walls. Their one luxury was a little portable TV that was hooked up to a car battery that was sitting on a chair. Seeing that really made me thankful for the way we live back home. I can only imagine how cold it must get on that reed island in their little reed house at night time. Frankly I was so shocked at how they were living that I didn’t really know what to say to her inside the house, but the local woman was obviously very proud of her little home and happy to show us around. Thankfully another English tourist managed to spit out ‘Muy Bonita’ so we weren’t all completely silent when she showed us in! They also took us out for a wee ride on the lake in one of their reed boats, which are fantastic. It looks like a large canoe made entirely of reeds. I was impressed with how much they managed to create out of a simple pile of reeds. Not to mention the fact that the very ground you are walking on is entirely made up of reeds and reed roots that they have cut and strung together - phenomenal. We’d never seen anything quite like it, and probably never will again. The reed ground was actually quite soft underfoot, and apparently they have to continually replenish the reeds as they rot away in to the lake.

Then we got back on the boat and took a slow putter to Tequile island. Frankly it was 2.5 hours that probably could have been better spent as it was a long way to go to see an island. However we got some beautiful views of the blue water of the lake from the top of the island, and the locals made us lunch in their communal restaurant (trout caught in Lake Titicaca is the speciality there and was pretty tasty). The communal restaurant is an interesting idea - basically rather than one family always benefiting from the tourists eating in their restaurant, the families rotate making the lunch in the community restaurant so that everyone benefits. How very fair. Our tour guide did give us some interesting info about the locals in the village while we ate. You can apparently tell a lot about a person by looking at their clothing and hair. For instance a man with a certain belt around his waist is married, and a woman in a darker skirt or hair tassles is also married. A boy wearing a certain hat a certain way is looking for a girl. The men on the island all weave fabric, whilst the woman spin the yarn. Apparently when they want to get married the boy takes a hat he has woven himself to the girls father, and the father pores water into the hat, to see whether the weave will hold water, and if it doesn’t hold water the boy is a lousy weaver and wont get his daughters hand!

We are keeping to a tight schedule at the moment, as we have to make it all the way back to Lima in 2 weeks to catch our next flight. So we only spent the one day in Puno, and the next day we took a short bus ride (3 hours) to Copacabana. This involved us stopping at the Peruvian/Bolivian border, getting off the bus and getting our passports stamped. The other interesting thing about coming in to Copa, is that the bus stops at the local municipality and some guy got on and charged us 1 BS each just for coming in to town! Talk about milking the tourists. When the bus pulled in to Copacabana at the terminal terrestre (bus station) it was only a short walk up a hill to our hotel. We actually lucked out with the Hotel Cuppula, which was up on a hill overlooking the lake and had some fantastic views. Not to mention the fact that it actually had a hot shower as advertised, which is turning in to something of a novelty now. The combination of good water pressure and consistent hot water can cure almost any ailment! Lol. The only trouble with the hotel is that it didn’t have any internet connection. This came as a bit of a shock (welcome to Bolivia) as we have had either a PC or Wifi at every hostel we have stayed in so far. Again we only had one day to spend in Copacabana, so we booked a tour through the hotel, to go and see the Isla del Sol the following morning.

That afternoon we walked down to the beach (well it felt just like a white sandy beach although it was a lake) and went to see the lake up close. Copacabana feels a lot more touristy than Puno and has a load of paddle boats for rental along the beach. There was also a main road that ran down to the beach that was covered with restaurants/bars and shops. I took the opportunity to buy one of those typical Peruvian brown alpaca jumpers, which is very soft and warm and so far has proven a wise buy. That night we had a couple of drinks on the beachfront and watched the sunset over the lake.

The following morning we got up early and attempted to get some pancakes for brekky at the hotel restaurant. After 15 minutes of sitting around with some great views, but still nary a cup of tea between us, we had to cancel the order and head for the boat. So we ended up eating Doritos and boxes of juice for our breakfast. The boat transferred us to the north side of the Isla del Sol first, where the man mumbled something in Spanish about the time we had to meet back at the boat, and we all clambered off. The strange thing about the boat tour, is that it wasn’t so much a tour as a boat transfer. The minute we got to the Isla del Sol we were on our own. However we spotted a tourist information centre and thought ‘great’ perhaps they can direct us to the path we need to walk up to see the Inka ruins. The north of the Isla del Sol is famous as its supposed to be the creation site for the Inkas, and is where a certain Sacred Stone can be found. So we went in to the tourist info office to find a man that only spoke Spanish, charging for maps that were all in Spanish and depicted one path up to the ruins (little help). So we decided to wing it and had a walk around until we found the path leading upwards. I think that after seeing the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, we were bound to be a little disappointd by these ruins, which consisted of the remains of some Inka houses up on a hill. However we got some great views over Lake Titicaca on the walk up. The lack of tour guide and complete lack of any signs on the island meant that we almost missed seeing the Sacred Stone. However we asked a local girl that was selling something and she pointed it out…basically just a big stone. From a distance it looked like there was a smiley face on it, but I doubt that was what we were supposed to be looking at lol.

We walked back down to the boat, which then took us over to the south side of the Isla del Sol. However we only had 50 minutes there, before the boat was leaving to return to Copa. So off we marched up some steep Inka steps in search of the second ruins. However again without a guide, and with no useful signs we were a bit stumped when we came to a t junction in the path. There were some more tourists up ahead of us and they took a left, so we followed them. However it ended up being the wrong path, so we never did see the second ruins. Soon it was time to head back to the boat, and then back to Copa. Not before asking someone Quanta Questa for a kit kat, and they replied 15 BS - what a rip off - it seemed because it was an island that they were charging 3 times the price for everything on sale. We headed back to Copa for the night, were we grabbed some dinner at a cute little restaurant / chill out bar that would not have been out of place in Amsterdam, filled with fairy lights, tree branches and fairy pictures.

The following morning we packed our bags again (this gets a bit old when you are repacking your backpack every 2 days), and walked back down to the terminal terrestre to catch our bus out to La Paz. The person that sold us the tickets for this bus said it was a 3 hour direct service and should arrive in La Paz around 16h30. It is worth noting at this point that Copa has no ATMs and we had just spent our last BS on checking our email in the internet café, and getting some snacks for the bus ride. We had already paid for the hostel and bus tickets, so we reckoned we should be okay until we could get to an ATM in La Paz.

So we got on the bus in Copa, and after about an hour and a half the bus stopped and a man came up and said something in Spanish. I looked out the window and we appeared to be at some sort of port along the lake. The majority of the passengers on the bus started picking up their stuff and getting off the bus, so we figured we must have missed something. However as we were clearly not in La Paz yet and it was meant to be a direct service, we stayed put. Eventually the same guy got back on the bus and repeated his statement to us in Spanish, to which we said ‘Ingles?’ and he said ‘you have to get a ferry’. It turned out that the ‘direct’ bus service involved us getting off the bus halfway and paying another 1.50 BS each for a ferry ticket to get across to the other side of the lake. They put the bus (with all our baggage on it) on to its own ferry type thing and it bobbed dangerously along in the water. Now the astute amongst you may have noticed that we are currently short to the tune of 3 BS for our ferry tickets, as we have absolutely no BS left and were not expecting the extra charge. So rather annoyed and slightly panicked we ambled over to the queue for ferry tickets. We did have a couple of spare 1 dollar notes, so we were hoping the ferry guy would accept one of those, and after a bit of complaining, thankfully he did. Otherwise we may well have been stranded in the middle of nowhere for want of 3 BS (30 pence). So we got the ferry over to the other side of the lake, and with typical south american efficiency the bus is now nowhere to be seen, and there is no one from the bus company to meet us and tell us where to go. So we hung around in the middle of nowhere for a while, until the bus made an appearance and we could all clamber back on board - all very odd. The remainder of the journey to La Paz was fairly uneventful. We did meet a friendly Irish girl that had been promised a direct service from Cusco to La Paz, and had already changed buses twice and caught the ferry, not to mention being about 8 hours behind her promised arrival time, so we really couldn’t complain too much.

When we neared La Paz the bus driver stopped along the top of the hillside, and we got an amazing view of the city in the valley between the mountains. La Paz is a large sprawling city (I suppose it is the capital of Bolivia afterall) and I was pleased to find that the city felt a bit more well kept. Well better kept than the little grungy towns we’d been staying at along the way. Whilst we still saw a lot of poor people on the streets trying to sell you things, we also saw a number of more modern looking buildings and people in business wear making their way around. The other thing that struck me about La Paz were all the minibus taxis, it could almost have been a scene from SA, with all the taxis queued up along the side of the main road, touting for customers to their next destination - Wynberg Kaap!

Again we only had time for a short stay in La Paz (1.5 days), so we’d prebooked ourselves on to a Gravity tour (thanks for the recommendation Ags) to do the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (or road of death as its more commonly known). Once checked in to the hostel, we had to make our way to the Gravity offices to check our passports and sign their disclaimer, before we could get a bite to eat and relax for the night. The following morning we were up super early again, so that we could meet the Gravity guide Phil at 07h00 in a coffee shop, before heading off for the tour. Basically Gravity offer a guided mountain biking ride down the WMDR, with a shower and lunch at the bottom of the road at an animal sanctuary, and a bit of optional zip lining.

So we grabbed an early brekky, and then met Phil our mountain biking guide, who we were slightly alarmed to hear had only been in La Paz for 2 weeks himself, so he was a bit new to the game. However the owner of the company was along for the biking as well. Basically a small bus, with all the bikes on the roof, drives you up a mountain for about 2.5 hours, and then they hand out all the kit (waterproofs, helmet, gloves, goggles) and give you a briefing on the bikes. We then had a short ride along a gravel road to get used to the new bikes, before we starting on the WMDR itself.

At this point I was starting to feel a bit nervous, and keen to see the road itself and understand what I was really getting myself in for. The WMDR is in fact a gravel / dirt road, and its pretty much all downhill. Which is good as Im not particularly fit. At the top of the road and in some places it does get fairly narrow (wide enough for one car only). However the gravel and the narrowness are not the real issue. The issue is the sheer cliff / drop along the left handside as you are riding along. Gravity were actually pretty good, and divide the road up in to sections, so you stop every 5 minutes or so and get a briefing about the next part of the road that is coming up, which does help you to feel more secure. Phil’s catchphrase was ‘Don’t be a f*ing idiot!’ meaning that as long as you ease your way down and don’t take any stupid chances, you wont go off the edge and become another fatality. As if to remind you of this statement, every now and then on the road there is a cross, or a sign remembering an unlucky individual whos brakes failed, or who leaned the wrong way and lost their balance. Actually it sounds a lot worse than it is in reality, and there are some great views of the mountains along the way. It really is a spectacular road, although you wouldn’t want to be coming down there in a big truck let me tell you (and the locals still do!). We did take the road at our own pace ie very slow and the guides didn’t rush us, so once you’ve got to grips with the brakes on the gravel, you can take in the views, and stop stressing so much about the sheer drops. It was actually quite a long bike ride at 4 hours, even though it was downhill, as I was gripping the brakes the whole way down. By the time we got down to the bottom my hands and shoulders were aching from the strain.

The animal sanctuary at the bottom was cool, and housed a number of different types of monkeys and birds. We saw some beautiful macaws, some spider monkeys (How long ARE their limbs??) and some kapuchins. The young kapuchins were pretty tame and one of them walked right up to me and insisted on using me as a climbing frame - very cute. After a well deserved lunch, Steve went off to do the zip lining across the valley, while I took some photos. Then it was a long bus ride back to the Gravity offices to collect a photo CD of the day, and exchange my tshirt. All in all a great day out.

While we were waiting for the CD, we met another couple (a guy from Florida and a girl from Tazmania) who had done the same ride, and we got chatting, and then decided to head out for some dinner together. This is one of the weird / cool things about travelling. We spent the rest of the evening with these people and they were very friendly and we chatted easily about our respective travels etc, and then at the end of the night we said our goodbyes and got in to our taxis home…and as we never thought to ask we will never know what their names are! Lol

The following day in La Paz we had arrange to meet up with Connie and Loz (we knew from the earlier Gap tour) and got some lunch. It was great to catch up and see some ‘old’ friends. We went for a walk around and saw the witches market (llama foetuses are strung up all over the place - gross) and to an old church, and then stopped for an ice cream, before it was time for us to head off and catch our night bus down to Uyuni (11 hours).

The bus proved to be the worst night bus we have taken so far. Despite the semi cama seats, and the recommended lonely planet bus company (Omar) that we used. The bus was meant to leave at 19h00, but at 19h30 the bus was still nowhere in sight. And the complete lack of information from the bus company didn’t help the situation. The bus did eventually leave at 19h45 without one announcement as to its ETA, or an apology (again its all about south american time). There were no videos, a toilet or any snacks on the bus, and the overhead lights didn’t work. The minute I decided to start reading my book the lamp gave out on my torch and I was cast in to darkness. Then at about 01:30 in the morning just when we were getting to sleep, the tarred road ended and the dirt road began. You have never heard that sort of ungodly rumbling, cracking, racked in your life. The bus was basically rattling its way down the road, not to mention the rattling sensation that I can practically still feel in my bones now. And it continued that way relentlessly for pretty much the next 5 hours. Needless to say we didn’t get any sleep, and I couldn’t actually believe it when I heard a local man snoring away next to us. I don’t know how anyone can possibly be expected to sleep through that noise and constant shaking! It was with some relief and total exhaustion that we eventually arrives in Uyuni around 07h00 and crawled our way to the hotel. We left our bags there (too erly for check in) and got an interesting breakfast from a café whilst we waited for the room to be ready. I ordered bacon and eggs, but I ended up with some sort of omelette with long ham strips in it! Lol

Fortunately the room was ready early, so we got a couple our hours kip and then headed in to town to find a tour of the Salt Flats. Much to our dismay every single tour agency was closed up. We learnt that during the day their offices are actually all closed, and that they only do early mornings and late afternoons. So we grabbed some lunch and then managed to find a tour agency open later on, that has promised us an English guide for our 4x4 trip.

We are doing a 2 night, 3 day tour that promises to take in the Salt flats, some geysers and some coloured lagoons, so we are looking forward to some awesome scenery but more about that later.

Hope alls well at home.
Kirst x

Peru - Cusco, The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

We got a Cruz del Sur night bus from Lima to Cusco that was scheduled to take 21 hours. We were armed with books, charged ipods and snacks and we had booked the luxury cama (aka bed, reclining) seats. However it was still quite a long bus journey along some very winding mountainous roads. We had a crazy bus driver that insisted on overtaking any other buses and trucks that were in our way, which resulted in a couple of near misses with on coming traffic. We literally had front row seats on the action (front of the bus), and in the end we elected to shut the curtains and try to get some shut eye, sometimes its better not to know.
The following morning when daylight broke we were rewarded with some beautiful mountain views on the way in to Cusco. The steep cliffs are covered in a golden coloured tussock (which reminded me of New Zealand), and looks beautiful in the sunlight. We were almost home and dry when the bus driver pulled over for an unscheduled stop. Apparently the bus tyre needed changing, which unfortunately changed the 21 hour journey in to a 24 hour journey (painful).

In the end we arrived at Cusco bus station and managed to get a taxi just outside to take us in to town. We later realised that the taxi driver ripped us off (gringos) as it is the most expensive taxi we took the whole time we were in Cusco. My first impressions of Cusco were that its an enormous, sprawling city. For some reason I had expected a small mountain village, more along the lines of a ski resort. In reality its a pretty large city, although still quite picturesque as it nestles in a valley surrounded by the pretty golden mountain slopes. The scenery had also started to look a bit more Machu Picchu-esque and we were starting to get excited /nervous at the prospect of the trek. If I won;t sound too racist, then the people in Cusco also look more Native Indian / Peruvian to me, than they did in Lima, and its quite cool to start to see people that look a little different on our trip.

Cusco itself is a maze of narrow one way, pebbled roads with very small pavements (like 2 feet wide) on either side of the pebbled roads. There are also a number of independent taxi drivers on the roads which leads to an interesting phenomenon. Basically the taxi drivers go motoring up the narrow one way roads and the pedestrians are forced to jump out of the way on to the narrow pavements on the sides (there is not enough room for you to pass someone coming down the other way). Cusco is also the first place that I have ever been to where the taxi drivers actually solicit business! We were sitting on the steps on the Plaza de Armas, and taxi drivers would actually stop next to us on the road and hoot to ask if we wanted a ride (I mean were weren’t even standing up! Lol).

We didn’t do a whole lot for the first few days in Cusco, other than strolling around to see the Plaza de Armas (central square), going to see a couple of churches and the Pre Colombian museum. Re the churches, the woodwork/carving of the altars in these churches is really ornate/ stunning and all covered in gold leaf. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let us take any photos inside the churches. We did get a guided tour around one of the churches and it was really interesting to see how the local artists incorporated local aspects in to their old religious oil paintings. For example the angels pictured had large macaw coloured wings, and the roman soldiers had Spanish soldiers helmuts (red feathers). We also got to see the famous painting of the last supper with the guinea pig being served up for dinner. Very cool to see how the paintings were influenced by the local painters, while essentially the same biblical stories are told, just with a bit of added local flair.

I should probably mention at this point that I did have a mild case of altitude sickness, which showed itself as a constant low level headache (rather annoying) and a complete loss of appetite - great diet! Not to mention the breathlessness and dizzy feeling when climbing up a few stairs. Our hostel Samy Wasi was in the San Blas area, which basically required us to climb a whole load of stairs each time we went down to the central Plaza de Armas area. Steve seemed to be less affected by the altitude than me, or perhaps he’s just less of a whinger! I was also still suffering from the travellers diarrhoea that I picked up towards the end of our Amazon trip, so I wasn’t exactly in tip top shape, but I was certain that all would be well in a couple of days. We had been told / read that it would only take about 2 nights to get over the altitude sickness. We had given ourselves 5 nights before we were due to set off on the Inca Trail on the Saturday morning. The hostel we were staying at was giving us free coca tea every morning with breakfast, although to be honest I cant say that I noticed much difference and my headache still persisted for days. What can I say, my body needs oxygen!

The following day we did a spot of shopping in preparation for the Inca Trail, and we found three outdoor shops around the Plaza de Armas, and managed to get some better trekking pants (trousers) and walking socks. We also booked ourselves in for a tour of the Sacred Valley the following day. There are scores of tour agencies dotted around the Plaza de Armas and they are all begging to give you information about their tours, so it wasn’t difficult to find a tour company and Steve managed to negotiate the price down a bit on an English guided tour bus. I cant talk about the Plaza de Armas in Cusco without mentioning the number of woman trying to sell you a massage. You literally cannot walk around the square without 6 different woman offering you their services. Massage is clearly big business in Cusco, for all the people coming back off their long treks with their aching muscles. However when you havent started walking yet, then all the people trying to sell you paintings/jewellery/Peruvian dollies/photos with a llama and massages are really just a bit of an annoyance. Oddly if Steve and I are walking along together and a woman asked him if he wanted a massage and he said No, then they would turn to me and ask me if I wanted a massage as well. Relentless! Now it was around this point on Wednesday that I started to get some serious stomach cramps, that were making it difficult to walk around town.

However on the Thursday morning we had an early start to meet the tourbus at 08h30 and headed off to see the Sacred Valley. The tour bus stopped at Pisac first were we had a walk around a big outdoor market, and bought a couple of souvenirs to send back home, and then Ollytaytambo, which was more impressive. Here we got our first real sighting of the famous Inka farrming terraces. Then one last stop in Chinchero where we visited some locals that gave us a demonstration on their hand weaving techniques, and went to see some more Inka terraces and an old church, before we headed back on the bus to Cusco. By the time we got back in to town it was around 7pm on the Thursday night, and with the stomach cramps having bothered me all day, I started to tally up how many days I’d actually had the diarrhoea. I was on the second box of Immodium, which probably should have set off some alarm bells. However with the combination of altitude sickness I wasn’t really sure which symptoms to associate with what problem! I managed to work out that I was on day 7, which seemed an unusually long time to have diarrhoea. So when we got back to the hostel, we asked them about finding a doctor in the area. I thought I could just pop by the doctors on the Friday morning and pickup a prescription for some antibiotics that would help to clear up the problem.

So on the Thursday night around 8pm, the guy at the hostel rather helpfully gave us a brochure for a local 24 hour clinic, and offered to call them on my behalf. He said they call out fee would be the same whether the doctor came out that night, or in the morning. So about 20 mins later I had an English speaking doctor in our hostel room, feeling around my stomach and asking me questions. At which point he said that he would like to take me in to the clinic for some tests, and asked us to go back with him in the ambulance. He said he would have the results within 45 minutes (Result!), so off we went with the lights flashing! They checked me in to the clinic and took some blood and a sample. Now I should mention that I am Not at all fond of needles and giving them blood was already a big ask for me. About 30 minutes later the doctor is back with a printout of my results and breaks the news that I have raging salmonella (a count of 320 for you doctors reading this, which he told us is as high as it can get). We informed him that we were set to start the Inca Trail in just over 24 hours, and he recommended that with the high count that I had, and the limited time we had left, that I should stay in overnight and take the antibiotics through an IV. Now again I refer you to my earlier statement that I really do Not like needles, and I had certainly never had to endure an IV before, which ranks up there with my worst nightmare scenarios, somewhere between being covered with tarantulas and going down in a plane crash.

However with the Inka Trail hanging in the balance I acquiesced and said that I would stay in overnight, rather than getting a prescription for the antibiotic pills. Steve had to head back to the hostel and get me my Pjs and toothbrush, bless him. At least I had cable TV to keep me company while he was away. The doctor implied that an overnight stay on the IV would pretty much sort me out, and we would still be able to do the Inca Trail, and that I would probably be able to check out just after breakfast on the Friday morning. So the nurse put the IV in my arm (I gritted my teeth and looked the other way again), and I settled down watching CSI while the antibiotics dripped away.

After a restless night with the IV in my arm, and breakfast the following morning, Steve came back to check on me at 9am. Shortly after which another doctor arrived with some more bad news, apparently the tests revealed that I actually had an amoeba parasite as well - well excellent I thought - best to get it all out the way at once! I am certainly getting the full South American experience here! However this meant that I would have to stay in the clinic until lunch time, and then take four big pills to knock the parasite out. It was around this time that the needle in my arm really starting bothering me, and I asked the doctor if they could take it out, but he said there were more antibiotics yet to come.

So the nurse hooks me up to the IV again and I idle the time away, whilst in the meantime Steve goes to meet the Inca Trail group for the pre trail talk. At this point I was still confident that I would be able to check out after lunch, and do the Inka Trail the following morning. The doctors assured me that the antibiotics would start to work pretty quickly and I would start to feel better already the following day. Unfortunately the IV stopped working and the nurse came in and said that she would have to change it to another IV, and this was the final straw for me - 3 needles - I didn’t sign up for that!? In the end she didn’t have to change the IV so I was very thankful for that.

Lunch came and went and I took the pills, however unfortunately the doctors shift had changed at the clinic. Now the new doctor that had just started wanted to observe me some more, and said I should be able to check out around 6pm. However 6pm came and went, and she returned to say that I would have to wait for the morning doctor to come back on shift to release me at 9pm. Also although I hadn’t had anymore antibiotics since before lunch time, she wouldn’t let them take the IV out of my arm - not my favourite person I can tell you. We were starting to realise that it’s a lot easier to get yourself checked in to a clinic than it is to get yourself checked back out again. With all the moving goal posts I was started to feel like an extra in One Who Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest! It also started to dawn on me that checking out of the clinic at 9pm, would mean getting back to the hostel around 10pm, which did not leave a lot of time to shower, and pack a bag for the Inca Trail the next morning. The tour company was all scheduled to collect us at 6am!

Anyway without much further incident we eventually got out of that clinic around 10pm, by the time we’d paid the travel insurance excess etc, and it was really late by the time we actually got into bed. However I was still keen to give the Inka Trail my best shot, and we set the alarm clock for 5h30, all the while thinking that the doctor had assured me I would feel much better in the morning.

So at 05h30 the alarm goes off and we get up, only instead of feeling better, within about 10 seconds of being vertical was overwhelmed by nausea and rushed in to the bathroom to be sick.

Whilst clinging on to the big white telephone around 05h45 on Saturday morning, the penny finally dropped that I was kidding myself, and I had to let my Inka Trail dreams fall by the wayside. It was a bitter pill to swallow after all the pre trek build up and the carry on with the clinic the day before, and I was in tears. I broke the news to Steve who took it very well, and it was then that the tour guide arrived to collect us, so Steve went and broke the news to him as well. Steve, despite my protests, rather gallantly gave up his own Inca Trail dream and decided to stay behind too and look after me. Frankly Im very glad that he did as I spent the whole day in bed exhausted, and someone needed to make arrangements with the hostel and fetch and carry my food from Jacks café, not to mention administering the raft of drugs from the clinic!

So after a day and half in bed, I started to feel a bit better and we ventured out around Cusco again. The tour company were actually very good and they then arranged for us to take the train over to Aguas Caliente on the Monday, so that we could meet the tour group at Machu Picchu and still have the guided tour of the site.

So on the Monday morning we got a taxi transfer to Ollantaytambo, and then got the Peru Rail train to Aguas Calientes. Aguas Calientes is the nearest station to Machu Pichu and really is an odd little place, that consists entirely of hostels and restaurants and is built around the railway line. It exists solely to ferry tourists to and from Machu Picchu. We’d decided to stay the night in Aguas Calientes the day before visiting Machu Picchu, so that we could get there first thing in the morning when the site opens. As it was we ended up getting up at 04h00 and getting in to the queue at the bus station at 04h30. There were already about 70 people in the queue in front of us. We wanted to get the first bus at 05h30 to the site, which opens at 06h00, so that we could get the Wayna Picchu stamps on our entry tickets. Only400 people are allowed to climb Wayna Picchu every day, so we didn’t want to be late and miss it.

As it turned out, we managed to get on the third bus up to the site, and got the stamp without a problem. Then we had some time between 06h00 and 08h00 to look around Machu Picchu before meeting up with the tour guide. After queing up to get through the gates, we had a short walk uphill before we got our first sight of Machu Picchu and it really is something to behold at 06h15 in the morning, when the mist/clouds are just starting to clear. We were really lucky with the weather that day, and we managed to get some great pics. The benefit of getting there early is that we managed to march around the site and get some pics before the crowds arrived, which makes it a bit more difficult. We then managed to get back to the entrance gate for 08h00 and got to meet the 4 other people that would have been on our trek, who were very friendly, and didn’t look as tired as I had expected them to.

Then the guide walked us around Machu Picchu for around 3 hours pointing out allsorts of interesting things, and I can tell you that those Inkas are an amazing bunch. I was surprised at how much planning had clearly gone in to the creation of the site, and how much work had clearly gone in to turning that mountain in to such a beautiful place. Everything from water fountains, to sacrificial rocks, to toilets, to terraced farming and gardens, to sculptures of nearby mountains, and guinea pig hutches, showed us just how intricately planned out the site had been.

After the informative tour we said goodbye to the group again and headed for the entrance of Wayna Picchu. It took us about 2.5 hours to do the round trip back to Machu Picchu and it was a steep climb, but the views of Machu Picchu were well worth it from the top.

After that we were pretty knackered and lay around on the grassy terraces for a time recuperating. Then we didn’t have much time left to walk around the site, before we had to get the bus down to Aguas Calientes and get the Peru Rail train back to Peroy (for Cusco).

That was an interesting train journey. I didn’t realise it was going to be 4 hours long (as we got the train out from Ollantaytambo instead), and we had a Chinese woman and her young daughter sitting opposite us, staring at us for most of the way. The train also rocked quite hectically from side to side, so it was a relief when we finally arrived at Peroy and got the taxi back to the hostel. All in all an awesome day, but pretty tiring as we were on the go from 04h00 to 22h00.

We have one days rest in Cusco to head back to the clinic for a check up, and book the onward journey, and then we are off to Puno to see the floating islands. The plan is then to head on to Copacabana and La Paz before making our way down to Uyuni to see the salt flats (goodbye Peru, hello Bolivia).

Well we have been away just over 2 months now, and there’s been a lot happening in the world since we left. Congrats to Cyril and Wendy, Christo and Anina and Jacqui and Leo on their new bundles of joy, and congrats to Matthew and Emma on their engagement!

Hope alls well with everyone at home.
Love Kirst x