Peru - Part 3, The road to Ruins... Cusco, Machu Picchu & Lake Titicaca

From Arequipa, we jumped on what proved to be our last luxury Peruvian bus for the overnight trip to Cusco. Claire and Leanne had both been there before some years earlier and had both loved it but were a little apprehensive after hearing a number of traveller tales through Peru about how a lot of the charm was now lost due to the volume of tourists. Any apprehensions were soon forgotten when we settled into a hostel in the San Blas area of town and took a wander around.... more tourists, yes, but still the beautiful city it was and no real grief from anyone, in fact all the locals could not have been friendlier! Whilst there is no denying it is hugely touristy in places and literally every shop is either a tour operator or an artesanial shop, it still has an energy and great character to it, and it is quite easy to spend a lot of time here...

We arrived feeling slightly homesick for some good pub grub and beer and where better to indulge than the Irish Pub.... blasphamy i know but after a good old homemade shepherds pie, beef casserole, a few pints of IPA on draft, a game of rugby on the tv and some typical english/irish banter, we could have been back home for sure ... great!

The San Blas area of Cusco is known as the bohemian area of town, filled with small bars, restaurants, clubs and cafes etc and although the hostel we were staying in was one of the cheaper on offer, it had everything we needed - but managed to employ the most inept staff of anywhere we have stayed. The guy on reception had to ask our names on a daily basis just to check his bookings were correct.... after staying there for 5 nights, he still had to ask who we were when we checked out....

We spent a few days in Cusco taking in the place, visiting the artisanal market in nearby Pisac & looking into the various options for taking a trip out to Machu Picchu. Things have definitely got substantially more expensive the further south we have travelled in Peru - which is to be expected as the majority of the major tourist attractions are in the south, though you have to keep on eye on what you are doing with your money, as at every turn someone will attempt to short change you, over charge you or generally look for any way to get more cash out of you. Something that is certainly true when it comes to Machu Picchu.

If you want to do the original Inca Trail, not only do you have make a reservation months in advance, but it will also set you back around $500 for the 4 day trek. There is also a train line that goes direct from Cusco to Aguas Calientes - the town at the foot of the mountain Machu Picchu is perched on, which only takes about 4 hours & costs $96 for the cheapest tickets - a price which has more than quadrupled in the last few years alone. There are a couple of ‘alternative’ hikes you can do, none of which actually allow you to arrive at Machu Picchu via the traditional entrance of the sun gate - all end in Aguas Calientes & you have to get the bus up the mountain the following morning.

Not feeling particularly inspired by any of those options, & being a bit trekked out after our time in the Cordillera Blanca we decided for the cheapest option of taking a mini van. However, there is no direct road from Cusco to Machu Picchu, so you have to take the long way round across the mountains & through the jungle before arriving at a hydroelectric plant which is connected via a 30 minute train ride to Aguas Calientes where you spend the night. Getting to the ‘Lost City’ should not be an easy task, & even in a car it is a pretty arduous 9 hour journey, over half of which is on unmade dirt tracks. One particular stretch that actually goes on for about 2 hours - is a track that has been scratched into the side of the almost vertical mountains with a sheer drop several hundred metres down to the river below, barely wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass (though of course is a 2 way ‘road’), & has rocks strewn all over it from the crumbling hillside where the track has been so roughly cut. Naturally none of this is tackled using a 4WD or anything, just a clapped out old Toyota mini van filled to bursting with ‘eager’ tourists…

When you arrive at Aguas Calientes the place is absolutely awash with tourists & everything is priced accordingly (basic hostel rooms can cost in excess of $50 a night if you turn up & try & get one off the cuff). Anyway you have to spend the night here, then get up at 3.30am to go & stand in a queue to buy your bus tickets - the ticket office doesn’t actually open until 5am & the first bus doesn’t leave until 6am, but if you want to stand a chance of being in the site for dawn you need to be on the first couple of buses that leave. You then have to join another queue for the bus itself, take the 20 min bus ride up the mountain, then join another queue at the gates of Machu Picchu waiting for them to open up at 6.30

Thankfully for our efforts we managed to get on the 2nd bus that left town & were amongst the first couple of hundred people to enter the site. Once the gates opened & we walked in suddenly all the hassles faded away & all the effort became worth it. The entire place was still shrouded in morning mist & dawn was just starting to break, initially hardly being able to see any of the site. Then as the mist began to rise Machu Picchu slowly started to reveal itself to us, a surreal & magical sight that is one anybody who experiences will never forget, & it all becomes clear why this is such an iconic place that attracts visitors in their thousands every single day. Pictures only tell part of the story with this place & it really does have to be seen to be fully appreciated. Believe the hype, ignore the hassle involved in getting here, book a flight to Peru & come see it for yourself!

Returning to Cusco we spent another few days enjoying the city & visiting the nearby ‘Sacred Valley’ (so named by the Incas as apparently the River Urubamba that runs through the valley mirrors the Milky Way) taking in two more impressive Incan ruin sites of Pisac & Ollyantaytambo before Claire & I left Cusco & moved onto Lake Titicaca - Leanne deciding to stay on in Cusco a few more days with the Irish girls.

Lake Titicaca is widely referred to as ‘ the highest navigable lake in the world’ - a claim that is now disputed by some, but either way at 3856 metres above sea level it is up there as one of them. And it is big - huge in fact, more an inland sea than a lake it is roughly 8,500sqKm & some 200m deep. It is roughly the size of the country of Corsica, & is shared 50/50 between Peru & Bolivia as it straddles the border.

From the lakeside town of Puno, Claire & I took a boat out to the floating islands of Uros, made from the same Tortora reeds as the fishing boats in Huanchaco, they are man made islands where a community live. Originally developed several hundred years ago by a tribe of people wanting to escape the mainland & have autonomy over their own actions & decisions - as no standard Peruvian laws applied to them on the islands. Sadly they are now little more than a floating theme park for the benefit of tourism. The smell of money being enough to bring conformity to a group of once staunch non-conformists apparently...

From Uros we travelled another 3 hours out into the lake to the island of Amantani - where Spanish is still very much a second language (Quechua being the first), there are no vehicles, no hostels/hotels, no restaurants & very little electricity save for that provided by a few solar panels dotted around - but despite all of this it actually attracts its fair share of overnight visitors. With no traditional means for supporting tourism on the island, the community have developed their own co-operative where on a rotation basis & for a flat rate fee of c. £5, families take it turn to welcome guests into their homes & provide board & lodgings for them. The family Claire & I stayed with were lovely & made us feel very welcome in their modest home. It was like something out of Alice in Wonderland, as the average person on the island is substantially shorter than your average European, & the height of the door frames barely reached my shoulders!

The food they made for us for the 3 meals we shared with them was really nice, being a completely vegetarian island for the entire year with the exception of 2 annual fiestas where they sacrifice animals & eat the meat, the meals consisted of imaginative ways of making potatoes & quinua interesting, including some really tasty soups.




The following day after a rather cold night on Amantani, we sailed across to the neighbouring island of Taquille - steeped in traditions & customs of it’s own. A place where the colour & angle of a mans hat indicates his marital status, & the angle the women’s shawls hang across their faces indicates their marital status, where women have to walk a couple of meters behind any man due to the ‘macho’ beliefs, though bizarrely men walk the streets & sit around the squares openly knitting!

The following day back on the mainland in Puno, Leanne rejoined us, having managed to escape the clutches of Cusco (this actually being her 2nd attempt to leave, the first being hindered by her bus ticket being burned in the pub by an Argentinean guy whilst having leaving drinks). From here we waved goodbye to an amazing 5 weeks in Peru & drove to the other side of Lake Titicaca crossing the border into Bolivia.

Peru - Part 2, Mysteries of the desert & Canyon country

Claire & I arrived in Lima & met up with Leanne & Ruth (one of the Irish girls we met in Montanita) where we all jumped on a bus down the coast to a little desert oasis town called Huacachina. Leanne’s week of surf & Spanish lessons in Lima hadn’t exactly gone to plan, not managing to further her surf career unfortunately, though she did manage to get some 1 on 1 Spanish lessons - which consisted of meeting up with an overly tactile middle aged ‘teacher’ in McDonalds every day for a lesson & gourmet meal…the several nights of heavy drinking & partying that ensued were obviously a necessary antidote to the rather bizarre lessons.

Huacachina is a funny little place, literally a very small town built around the banks of a picturesque desert oasis - surrounded by huge towering sand dunes. The key attractions of this place are chilling out, partying, sand boarding & dune buggying. After a night of partying & a day chilling out, Claire & I decided to go on one of the dune buggying & sand boarding trips - Leanne & Ruth opting for the more chilling option until a few days later when they would give it a go as well. Most of the boards available are just basic pieces of wood , modified with a slippery base & straps for your feet or hands. A couple of places offer actual snowboards with boots & bindings, so Claire & I decided to upgrade & go for the snowboard option.

We set out at 4pm in the buggies for a 2 hour trip that would include a desert sunset. Within the first couple of minutes it became apparent that the dune buggy drivers are totally psychotic & our guy proceeded to drive this thing at full throttle over the huge expanse of desert & dunes - regularly taking flight as he launched us over the top of another dune. This was like something out of the film Mad Max - really good fun. We had several stops at the top of some of the largest dunes to board down them. Very similar to snowboarding in deep powder, as its all about keeping the nose of the board out of the sand. We had a real laugh launching ourselves down the dunes, even managing to incorporate a jump over the lip of one of the dunes down into another - great fun.

There are several common themes that are beginning to define elements of our Latin American experience - the first of which is the seeming inability of anyone to actually tune a radio in - every radio drifts in & out of reception & is full of static the entire time - even on the buses. Our first tip to Latin Americans to make life better for all concerned would be either learn how to tune a radio in or turn the damn thing off. The second common theme is the utter uselessness of all waiters & waitress’ in every single restaurant. Items ordered are regularly completely forgotten, they literally cook one dish at a time & bring it out one by one (even if it is multiple orders of the same dish) - meaning that you never actually eat together around the same table, everyone sits there watching each person take their turn of eating. The staff have also perfected the ability to avert their eyes from the entire restaurant the entire time, so it is impossible to get their attention without actually getting up & tapping them on the shoulder. The time that you regularly have to wait to receive your orders is ridiculous as well - something that pushed us to breaking point one night in Huacachina. We ordered our meals (after waiting over 30 mins for the waiter to come to our table) & it then took another hour & a half until the first dish came out - all the while Peruvian families are being served in record time & meals arriving together. So after consuming several beers & one meal between 4 of us, we got up & walked out, still waiting for 3 meals to arrive, without leaving any cash - appalled at the lack of service & motivation of the staff. Tip number 2 - the idea of running a business is to make money, in order to maximise your profits, learn the basics of your trade first & then try actually carrying them out!

Rant over.

Next we continued south through the Peruvian desert, a dramatic landscape originating from an antient sea bed, to the town of Nazca to checkout the mysterious Nazca Lines. The best way to view these giant ancient etchings in the desert is by air, so we chartered a small cessna plane and took to the sky. The Nazca lines consist of hundreds of perfectly straight lines in the sand at various angles as well as a variety of shapes or drawings of animals & symbols such as a spider, hummingbird and whale, all several hundred meters in size. No one actually knows what the meaning of it all is although there are a variety of theories ranging from the reasonably plausable to the utterly ridiculous (extra terrestrial landing directions being one of the the more ridiculous theories!) They are believed to date back some 700 years and were only really discovered about 50-60 years ago. The most believable explanation for the straight lines are they are indicators left for successive generations, of the water sources available in anotherwise desolate desert landscape.

This doesn´t offer any explantion to the animals & symbols drawn into the landscape however like the spider below:

Seeing them first hand is an unusual and fairly impressive sight, though you have to hold onto your stomach during the flight as the pilot flips and turns sharply to allow all passengers a good view! A french girl in front of us managed to fill a number of plastic bags with vomit whilst her boyfriend sat there with a complexion ranging from ghostly white to green and sweating profusely! Thankfully the flight only lasts 35 minutes by which time the rather unpleasant aroma that had developed in the plance and the constant flipping around had started to make me feel queasy as well....not helped by the ham and cheese toastie, 2 cups of coffee and slice of cake i had just eaten before boarding the plane, thinking we had over an hour until our flight!

Nazca is also home to the the worlds largest sand dune.... Cerro Blanco is over 2000m high which is the height of 2 Ben Nevis´s stacked on top of each other of just sand... impressive.

After a fleeting visit to Nazca, we jump back on a bus and headed back down the Pan American highway and headed further south through more rugged desert landscape for the next 8 hours until we reach the colonial city of Arequipa, otherwise known as ´el ciudad blanco´, the white city as a lot of the buildings are built using a white volcanic rock known as ´sillar´taken from the several volvanoes that surround the city. The most impressive of which is El Misti which is not only over 5000m but is the perfect conical shape generally associated with a volcano.

Arequipa is a beautiful city made up of spanish colonial and moorish style architecture and with a host of moroccan and turkish restaurants, has a completely different feel about it than any other Peruvian city we have visited. It is also a major tourist destination & a visit to Peru would not be complete without coming here and visiting the famous Colca Canyon and ´Juanita´, the ice princess. Juanita was a teenage girl offered as a sacrifice by the Incas to the mountain gods in cerca 1500ad. Her perfectly preserved body was found in the 1980´s after a minor erruption dislodged some rock and unveiled her body, sitting in the foetal position, adorned with all sorts of material offereings. Apparently this was a regular practice of the Incas who worshiped the earth, the sky and the mountains and sacrificed (usually) young girls to the volcanoes to appease their anger and prevent erruptions.

After a couple of days milling around Arequipa and enjoying the delights of some good food in nice restaurants, we sign up to one of the tours going to the Colca Canyon. The Colca Canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in North Amercia and stretches for several miles along the Colca Valley, awash with inca terraces and inca burial sites which are still used by many indigenous communities today.

The main reason people make the 2 day trip is to travel to a specific point along the canyon where the Andean Condors take to skies in search of food. We stayed overnight in a small town called Chivay on route along the Colca Canyon, and woke very early (5am) for the bus ride to the view point. Bang on schedule between 8am and 9am, up to a dozen or so condors, some with a wingspan of up to 3m, start to leave their nests and soar on the canyon thermals for an hour or so before heading off in search of food. It's an impressive sight to see such huge birds, gliding so effortlessly only metres from you head.

Other highlights include seeing wild vicuna, domesticated alpaca and llama and many indiginous communities in an array of different colourful dress, descendants from Inca times and the different communities are still identified by the different types of hat they wear.