Nasca Lines and Lima

We have now arrived in Peru´s hectic capital Lima with over 12 million people and it is a refreshing change to be in a big civilised city with shopping malls, huge supermarkets and lots and lots of international restaurants. As you can see... am getting a bit excited about food!! We had dinner in a Swiss restaurant tonight and I think the waitress felt really sorry for me seeing me so excited about Rosti! DELICIOUS! Anyway...

We took the bus from Cusco to the coast - a horrendous endless fourteen hrs ordeal. I felt a bit sick in the stomach anyway (a constant reminder of being in Peru it seems) and then the bus was winding its way down from over 3300m to sea level in an endless series of zigzags... And sitting on the top level of a fairly wonky bus - that can really get to you! Plus the heating was on full blast and I was sitting there sweating, trying not to be sick and not to melt. It was awful!!! We arrived in Nasca in the early morning and I could not wait to get on a little plane!! NOT!

But flying over the stony desert in the heat, observing the moon like landscape made me forget that I did not sleep all night and felt rather sick. It was amazing!

Unfortunately, even though we rushed to the little airport soon after we arrived to make sure we get into the air before the mist sets in, they made us wait for hours and we watched the visibility get worse by the minute. It was slightly misty by the time we set off. I am not sure if you can make out the lines in the pictures if you do not know what you are looking for.

The lines that are etched into the rock and form all sorts of geometrical shapes as well as animals are from 900 BC and were completed around 600 AD by the Nasca tribe. Their exact meaning is still unknown but it seems to be something like a giant astrological calendar.

Some of the animmals are over 100m long. They are really impressive and I cannot imagine how they were able to create those perfectly aligned shapes without every seeing them from above. Here are my favourites - the kolibri/hummingbird and the monkey:

As soon as we got off the plane we got on the bus again to continue the journey to Lima - fortunately the bus was then going in a very straight line up the Panamerican Highway, what a relief! Lima is everything we expected it to be and there is so much to do that we decided to just take it easy, eat well, drink lots and sleep lots and enjoy not being cold.

We are now planning our next trekking adventure in the Cordillera Blanca . We are thinking of walking a part of the Huayhuash Circuit, which is where "Touching the Void" happened. From Huaraz alone you can see 23 snow-capped peaks over 5,000m and the Cordillera Blanca contains the largest concentration of glaciers found in the world´s tropical zone which form lots and lots of emerald lakes. It is one of the top 10 trekking areas of the world! We cannot miss that obviously.

Cusco - celebrating Inti Raymi Festival

We spent a fantastic weekend in Cusco celebrating Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun) with thousands of other visitors. It is the biggest festival in Cusco and attracts enormous crowds of mainly Peruvian tourists. The entire town was a single party with everybody dancing in the streets wearing traditional costumes - a very colourful spectacle.








I foolishly tried visiting an art gallery (while Craig was pretending to be sick) and wasn´t aware that the courtyard of the gallery is used as a giant bar for the local male dancers... and before I knew it I had a hat on my head, a poncho around my shoulders and a beer in hand and a string of quite pissed Peruvians asking for a dance. It was hilarious!



On the Saturday night Craig and I bought some strap on angel wings and joined a huge party at an art gallery/restaurant/club called "Fallen Angel" which is probably the most famous hangout for the Peruvian gay community. Craig was very popular! :-))) One of the very yummie chaps did actually ask me if I knew whether he had a boyfriend!!!!!! God did we laugh! Well, anyway. It was good to be on a dancefloor again and enjoy some GTs. Tasted like England!!!! Admiring lots of delicious guys in drag or just their knickers... very entertaining! It did make getting up the next morning to watch the solstice ceremonies a little bit hard....


The main Inti Raymi ceremonies were held on the Inca site above the city called Sacsayhuaman ("sexy woman") - a beautiful Inca construction representing the teeth of a puma. Apparently Cusco is laid out in the shape of a puma... Mmmh. Anyway. Great engineering and I would love to know how they managed to get all those gigantic rocks into place! Here´s Anki and I having a closer look...

I heard that close to 100,000 people watched the over 600 dancers and the fairly incomprehensible ceremonies from the rocks. Including Bill Gates and Cameron Diaz apparently (not together as far as I know!). It was really cool to see all the local families out, everybody very jolly... everybody in colourful wraps and skirts and silly hats, very nice!


There were flags absolutely everywhere - very pretty! The Cusco flag looks a lot like a certain gay symbol... please note that this is pure coincidence...

Tomorrow we head off to Nasca and then on to Lima - on the coast where it will hopefully be a bit warmer. After that we go to Huarez in the Cordillera Huayhuash for more trekking. Yippieh!

The Inca Trail and Machupicchu

We are back! The Inca Trail to Machupicchu - a dream come true!

I will never forget those 4 days trekking on old Inca roads built around 1450s to Machupicchu. One of my longest held dreams came true! For about 15 years this adventure has been on the top of my list of "Things to do before I die" and now we have done it. We have seen the site in sunrise and thinking back to the first moment I saw MP still gives me goosebumps.

We signed up with Andean Life (in April) and left at 5 am last Thursday morning together with our friends James and Anki and 4 other travellers (all from the UK), our wonderful guide Manuel and 11 (eleven!!!) porters! What a treat not having to carry all our stuff!!! The guides carried all our clothes, sleeping bags, tents as well as food and all other equipment for our group of 20 for 4 days. They are absolute superheroes! I will never forget them running past me up and down those hills with close to 30 kg on their back and little sandals on their feet. Very impressive!

The first day was relatively easy, we only walked for 5 hours until we reached the camp and settled into our tents after a delicious dinner. The second day was really tough, we had to climb 1000m in height (to Dead woman´s pass! Very aptly named!) and decend about half of that again. I was shattered and my knee the size of a football! All day very steep Inca steps steps steps up and down and up and down. Very tiring. But the views on top of the passes made it all worthwhile. Simply stunning. This is the profile of the walk - we did the red one which goes up and down a lot!

The Cordillera Alta overlooking us with snowcovered peaks, green steep valleys with Llamas and cows and cloudless blue skies... You should have been there! :-)))

We visited several fascinating Inca sites on the way and Manuel explained their impressive culture and scientific achievements. It is incredible that such an advanced culture has left so few traces. I feel I need to have a word with the King of Spain when we are back in Europe!

The third day was a bit easier thankfully and we reached our camp ealier in the afternoon. Big sigh! Just behind the campsite was the Inca site of Wayna Wayna which we explored all afternoon with great interest. The stone work is so well preserved after almost 700 years, amazing. And the terraces are really impressive in their geometrical precision. We loved it!

And the sheep enjoyed themselves as well!!!!








Then day 4 was the big day, getting up at 4 am and running towards the Sungate Intipunku to see the sunrise over Macchupicchu with another 192 tourists. The Inca Trail to MP is now limited to 200 tourist per day and their porters, hence the 3 months waiting lists. Nevertheless, it was a very moving moment to set eyes on the famous site for real. A perfectly clear morning (which was really lucky) and even the most chatty of tourists stopped talking.




I was so happy!!!!


Slowly we decended into the site and waited for the first rays of sun to hit the rocks and wake up the colours. It was spectacular and all the tiredness was forgotten. We walked through the site for a few hours and Manuel did a great job at explaining everything. Very clever those Inca chaps!!! Knew everything about the stars and the universe!!! They even had a perfectly precise Southern Cross pointing out where East/West/South and North is - Craig could not get enough of it!





We then climbed up Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind the site which was almost harder than the trail itself!! Ridiculously steep stairs run up to the top and I had to go down backwards on all fours for parts of it because I was worried about falling over (clumsy as I am with slightly shaky knees!!!). Not to mention the tunnel we had to crawl through and the ladders at the top! Nice icing on the MP cake!!! (As well as my 48 mosquito bites - new record!)












Once on top high above the site with all the tourists looking like tiny ants we felt like being in the clouds!!! On top of the world!



Craig and I decided to stay in Aguas Calientes for the night so we can stay in MP for the late afternoon when all the tourists are gone and we had some wonderfully quiet hours strolling around, trying to imagine life in Inca days. It felt really magical. All you could hear was the water in the little canals feeding the ritual baths and the birds singing. Very romantic and it really felt like being closer to the Gods. Unforgettable.






The trek was worth every penny and will definitely be one of the big highlights of our trip.
We are now back in Cusco recovering and doing very little... apart from making plans for our travels North towards Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands!!! Yipppieh!

PERU: Arequipa and Colca Canyon

PERU PERU PERU PERU

We have now arrived in Peru after 6 weeks in Bolivia and have fallen in love with beautiful Arequipa. Being below 3000m has filled us with new energy. Arequipa is really pretty, clean and white, full of history and sunshine everyday - it is like being on holiday! Lovely plazas, beautiful people, trendy bars and outstanding restaurants. Heaven! Very happy to run around in skirt and flipflops after all the cold days on the Altiplano.

We have visited Colca Canyon for 2 days and admired the sheer rock faces of this very narrow abyss and the condors who float through the air effortlessly. A beautiful sight!

The canyon is about 3000m deep and we wish we would have time to do some hiking in the valley.

But - Cusco and the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu are calling and we are meeting Anki and James in Puno on Sunday to travel to Cusco together for the big adventure! Yippieh!

Lago Titicaca and the Isla del Sol

After another crazy party weekend in La Paz with Ceci´s lovely friends and family we have now left the big city and are at the famous Titicaca lake - an oasis of blue in the middle of the Altiplano. The scenery is stunningly beautiful and the lake is an unbelievable shade of blue with cloudless skies every day. I completely understand why the Incas believe that the sun was born here...

We spent 2 wonderful days on the Isla del Sol and hiked from one end to the other in blinding sunshine (my ears are peeling now...). A fantastic walk, partly on old pre-Inca roads with blueblueblue all around. We have climbed every single mountain on the island and built cairns on those who did not have one yet. What fun!

We slept in our tent on a little secluded beach and admired the sunset from top of a mountain, the sunrise from the warmth of our sleeping bags. What bliss! I just love sleeping while listening to the waves! Very romantic indeed ;-).

It was great walking past lots of farmers looking after their animals and going after their daily chores, oblivious to a so much more civilised world on the shores of the lake. I have never seen so many happy pigs in my life! Pigs crazing with sheep, sheep drinking on the beach, donkeys shouting and carrying huge loads of harvest, herds of sheep and llamas, chickens everywhere....

A different world, very relaxing.

The world´s most dangerous road - Craig´s report

How much fun can you have on a mountain bike?

Well I found out on the world´s most dangerous road! So called because on average 100 people die each year on this narrow dirt road cut into the side of the mountains. They didn´t tell me at the time I booked the tour but the fatalities include 11 mountain bikers on organised tours! Fortunately for the locals (and bikers) there is a new road that now takes most of the traffic.

The road winds its way down 3345 metres through the mountains from La Cumbre (4640 m) to Yolosa (1295 m) over a distance of about 70km. The first half is on sealed road - descending 1600 metres at a terrifying 70 kph - it was wicked fun! Unfortunately we had our first casualty within the first 10 minutes - some fool caused an accident and Brenton (an aussie guy we´ve befriended along the way) went over the handlebars while trying to avoid other fallen riders. Sadly he broke his collar bone and is returning home while he convalesces.

After the hair-raising descent and a short climb the best was yet to come as we turned off the pavement onto the unsealed section - the "death road". Here we were split into smaller groups according to riding skill and/or blind stupidity. Of course your truly just had to be at the front of the fastest group...

Over the next 35 km or so we raced down the mountain, down through the clouds on a slippery gravel track only 3m wide, around blind hairpin bends with sheer cliffs to our right and 1000 m drops to our left. Wow! Awesome fun! Miraculously everyone survived and after a hot shower and nice lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the lower altitude and warmer climate poolside at a hotel in Coroico. After a long bus ride back to La Paz I arrived tired but very happy after an amazing day!