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I figured I'd better update as I've been getting complaints, so I'm currently sat in a Bolivian cafe typing this up.
After getting back from the amazon lodge in Brazil, we decided against taking a slow boat (~4 days) into Peru, as we'd realised you can't really see much while travelling down the massive river amazon. The fast boat got us to Iquitos in half a day, an entirely uneventful trip, though the wriggling giant tortoise/turtle that the local next to me had brought on and placed on its back was an interesting sight. The whole area in Peru seemed to have a fairly large industry for selling wild animals like monkeys, big cats, parrots, toucans and other beautiful wild animals from the jungle, it was quite saddening to see them all caged up.
The harbour in Iquitos was full of old ships of all varieties, necessary for the locals as the city has no roads connecting it to the rest of Peru. The only options to leave are by boat or plane, and as the flights were very cheap, we took that option. We didn't spend long in the city, as it was very similar (particularly activities wise) to the city we'd just been to in Columbia. A tonic derived from a local plant costing $1000 per treatment by a shaman can completely cure all your vices, but being a creature of purity I gave it a miss, Shiv however required a double session and so has now entirely blown her budget for the trip. The flight took us on a short hop over to a place called Tarapoto, where there was very little of interest, but our moto-taxi driver/tour operator persuaded us to let him take us around a few of the reasonably interesting sights.
From Tarapoto we headed to Chachapoyas up in the mountains, aside from being a very pleasant colonial town with a refreshingly cool climate, it is also surrounded by a number of archaeological sites over a millenium old. Kuélap is the most important, a city built on huge raised platforms/walls (a quick look at my guidebook tells me it has 3 times the amount of stones in its construction as the great piramid at Giza). We took a tour up there, avoiding the 6 hour climb up the mountain, then walked down which at a fairly fast pace took 2.5 hours, our guide told us the locals have races down the same path, taking around 30 mins and occasionally resulting in peoples sliding off due to the very loose rocks along the way. The culture that constructed the sites clearly had no problem with heights or long steep walks over mountains, this was particularly clear from the sarcofagases(sp?) constructed high up in seemingly impossible to reach places on huge vertical cliff faces.
We got to know our guide pretty well while we were there (my Spanish has progressed to a level where conversations are more fluid and less frustrating), and he invited us to join him and his family on a trip out to a small village nearby where they were holding a festival celebrating the traditions of the surrounding villages. Each village would put on a show of music and dancing in a central area, with plenty of food, drink and games around the outside. Some of the acts were definately candidates for the early stages of the X-factor, one in particular with an old lady singing/screeching and an old man playing a violin badly were particularly bad, but got (unintentionally) a big laugh from the crowd. The festival finished with a treat for the kids, a large tree with branches full of treats was ceremoniously chopped down during a dance, the kids crouded around it waiting for it to fall, then when it did, ran for their lives as it fell towards them. The slower ones didn't quite make it and got flattened by the small branches and leaves at the top, I couldn't stop laughing for a while. They had a race on that day, which ended at the festival site, the winning runner ran a road over mountains which takes a car 2.5 hours, in a time of 2 hours.
Next stop was Tupiza on the Pacific coast, we were looking forward to a bit of time on a nice sunny beach, but arrived to find it covered in thick cloud. Deciding to cut our stay short we took a one day tour of all the important archaeological sites (Chan Chan, Temples of the Sun & Moon, and another place I've forgotten the name of). Our tour guide was a ~60 year old woman who had been touring the sites since they were discovered, and for every section she would have a story about discoveries she'd witnessed. She drove us around in an ancient battered gold VW beetle, a stop at the petrol station lasted a bit longer than planned as it took 3 people about 5 minutes to get the bonnet up to access the petrol cap. Aside from the excitement of having her regularly drive slowly infront of oncoming cars and swearing at them, the sites were pretty interesting, all made out of sand using different techniques, they have survived over the centuries buried beneath more sand. It was interesting to see the paint on sections of walls newly dug up at the temple of the sun was still very colourful.
We'd had several recommendations to head to a place called Huarez, away from the coast and into the mountains. It's a haven for the out-doorsy types, with a huge number of different possible activities on and around the mountains and lakes, it's also very beautiful. We did a 4 day hike along a route from about 3000m up to a mountain pass at 4700m, then back down the other side. The nights were freezing, but it was worth it for the scenery, and we got on really well with the isrealis and dutch that came with us. I also managed to persuade Shiv to try a bit of rock climbing while we were there, she didn't have the strength to get too high, but she enjoyed trying. I got to the top of the first route on my first go, but then my arms gradually let me down and I got thoroughly shown up by the other 3 girls (with experience) that were doing it with us.
In Columbia we met a couple from Lima who had invited us to stay with them when we reached there. However (I blame Shiv for this as usual) the piece of paper with their details on had been lost. Because of this, and many reports from others saying that Lima wasn't worth spending much time in, we only spent half a day there. We still managed to see a huge amount of the city, firstly from a general wander around in the morning during which there was quite an impressive parade, then from some unfortunate mistake where the address on our bus tickets that we showed to the taxi driver wasn't actually for the bus terminal, but for some bus repair depot in the middle of a very dodgy area miles outside of the centre. After an hour of driving round very confused in some shockingly bad traffic, we had some luck and found a mechanic for the company who pointed us back to the centre in order to get on the bus with 5 mins to spare.
Hmm... this is getting long and I'm only half way through...
From Lima we took the bus to Nazca, home of the Nazca lines. As the only real way to see the lines was to fly over them, we booked a flight for the next morning with a reputable company. After some pesky clouds had disappeared, we headed up in a 4 passenger plane with a pilot and co-pilot/chief-pointer. I was feeling fine at the start, despite some rough turbulence, however when we reached the lines and I started taking some photos I came very close to making a mess of the plane. I think the combination of flying at odd angles, and looking through the camera at even odder angles with the turbulence shaking it around was the cause, it took me the rest of the day to recover after that. The following day we went out for some sandboarding on the nearby dunes, we picked a slightly more expensive tour in which we were driven over the dunes by a maniac in a 4 seater extremely powerful dune buggy with a good suspension system. After the flight the day before, his stunts weren't enough to generate any fear. By the end of the tour we'd both managed to do some convincing boarding, but not quite mastered the whole steering thing.
A week later we spotted a story on the BBC news website about a 4 passenger plane crashing at Nazca, killing all inside. Apparently it happens fairly regularly and the locals don't really pay much attention to it now. Quite sobering.
Anyway, after Nazca we headed to Arequipa, where we ended up spending 2 weeks, one of which we spent learning more spanish at a language school while living with a family. We dropped quite lucky with the family, they were extremely friendly, and had a whole apartment for us to use, with lounge, kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms. We ate breakfast and dinner with them, as well as going out for some trips around the city and countryside. One of the trips was with a zoo keeper family friend, who took us 'behind the scenes' to a few areas. We got to see two Condors mating, which is apparently quite a rare sight.
Arequipa's a lovely place, with perfect weather and a beautiful centre, with loads of shops, restaurants, bars, clubs, and interesting places to visit. One of them was the Santa Catalina convent, practically a mini walled city in the centre of Arequipa, where for 4 centuries a population of around 450 nuns lived with their servants, a small number of nuns still live there in a closed-off area. We also visited a mummy of a girl called Juanita who was found up in the icy mountains, she had been described as beautiful by various sources, but personally I couldn't get past her leathery skin and lack of lips.
Our next stop was Cuzco, close to the main reason the vast majority of people go to Peru - Machu Picchu. We'd not wanted to be organised enough to set a start date for the original Inca trail 3 months before, so we'd planned to do an alternate trail. After a couple of unhelpful visits to some companies listed as reputable in our guide books, and both of us being in a fairly irritable state, we decided to sack off the trails and just go ourselves using local buses and a short trip on the expensive train. It turned out to be a pretty good decision, by doing it ourselves we visited the other sites we were interested in seeing in the sacred valley, and we weren't too tired when we made the walk up to Machu Picchu and the mountain overlooking the site, Huayna Picchu, which was a very tiring climb and a quite scary descent.
We had a perfect day of sunshine for the visit, and the overview of the site and scenery was as impressive as all the photos show and all the people who go make it out to be. However, and maybe I'm being intentionally picky (Shiv says I am), but the buildings themselves really weren't anything special. The skill shown constructing a site just outside Cusco called Sacsayhuaman (pronounced pretty much as sexy woman) was much more impressive, with huge (really huge) rocks carved and positioned to fit exactly together.
Cusco was a nice place, but very touristy and quite expensive. We stayed at a party hostel that encouraged drinking and games at most oportunities, we had a fun time. A particular highlight was a large drunken Argentinian guy managing to offend practically every girl in a club, one at a time over a period of an hour, then decided to do a strip tease and get himself thrown out.
From Cusco we went to Puno on the edge of lake Titicaca, with nothing much to see or do in the city, we headed straight out for an island hopping tour. The first we visited were called the Uros islands, which were floating islands made from the reeds which grow in that shallow area of the lake, boats, houses, and other constructions were also made from the same reeds. The inhabitants had once lived on solid ground there until it flooded, and were at one point devoted to fishing and living simply. They have since seen the light however, and now seem to devote themselves entirely to tourism, and have no issues with high pressure selling of tat. Not my favourite of places.
The second island was a bit more natural, we stayed with a family and helped cook in the basic kitchen along with the 3 year old daughter who was intent on cutting her fingers off with a large knife. We also went for a walk up to the top of the island where there were a few old ruins, and at night we went to a small bar where we danced in traditional dress to some traditional music played by some teenagers, it was fun if you didn't care too much what you looked like. The third island was yet less touristy, with a number of the locals a bit more wary and shy about us. The men on this island are who do the knitting of handicrafts as opposed to the women in the rest of Peru, they use 5 or 6 needles at a time and apparently they have won several competitions, and demonstrate and sell their work through Europe. Just goes to show what can be done when men take over.
That's it for Peru. I really enjoyed my time there, varied landscapes, lots to see and do, friendly people, good food, and cheap, what more could you want? From Puno we headed to Bolivia, where we've been for just over 2 weeks, another few days and I'll have another entry to write after heading down into Argentina.
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