Cusco continued

Wednesday 27 June 2007 I´ve been in Cusco almost week. Its one of the most attractive cities I've stayed in on the whole trip and caters very well for tourists. The buildings are mostly well preserved or restored Spanish colonial style with some remnants of Inca architecture evident, usually the foundations of the colonial buildings. Most building have had to be restored at some time following earth quakes. The most serious was in 1950 but occurred as recently as 1996.

Last weekend was dominated by the Inti Raymi ( the Inca festival of the sun) which marks the winter solstice. On Friday the main square was full of dancing groups with marching bands circulating through the square. Although colourful and noisy I have to confess that one hour of that was about enough for me, although I did come across it throughout the day as I wandered about exploring the city centre. In the evening there were more contemporary rock groups playing on a stage, including some good cover versions of Jimmy Hendrix, Stone Roses, Black Sabbath and Nirvana.

Most of Sunday was taken up with the actual Inti Raymi procession and ceremony, but much of it was actually waiting for something to happen. I got up at 7am for an early breakfast and walked to the start of the procession, just a few minutes from my hotel. I waited from 8.10am to 9.40am for the event to start and it lasted about half an hour There was huge crowd, 70% tourists, by 9.30 and you could soon lose your position if you didn't stand still. The event consisted of colourfully clad Inca warriors and temple maids running and dancing around the foundations of the Qoricancha, an old Inca temple which was built over by the Spanish as a catholic monastery. Some Inca chiefs spoke grandly from the ramparts to their people in Quechan, the old Inca language, to which the warriors and maidens bowed down.

I then moved onto the main square where I again waited an hour for half an hour of dancing and marching but it wasn´t a very good view so I made an early start to the steep uphill walk up to Sacsayhuaman (pronounced approximately as "sexy woman") and took the picture of a church and square overlooking the town on the way up. Sacsayhuaman is the remain of a very large Inca temple two kms overlooking the city. I was pleased hat the altitude didn't seem to be affecting my walking.

At the Sacsayhuaman site those who, like me, hadn´t paid the $80 for a ring side seat had to sit on one of the hills around the site and get a distant view from about 200m. I think the main cultural experience for me wasn´t the Inca ceremony but sitting in a crowd of Peruvians for 3-4 hours and seeing how the interacted together. Most people were keen that the crowd should stay seated but were tolerant of people who got up to go out or take a quick picture. But some fellows stood up for while and after shouted requests to sit down were ignored people threw pebbles at them. It wouldn´t hurt them but must have made them feel uncomfortable because they soon sat down or moved off.

I was sat leaning against a bush from when the crowd was quite thin, with plenty of space. But gradually the crowd increased and my personal space was invaded more and more until one man was gradually taking over my leaning bush and my legroom was encroached by others siting in front and wanting a slightly higher position. The crowd was well policed and they seem to discourage hawkers but some did make it up the hill unaffected. One woman with traditional dress carrying a large shawl over her shoulder arrived at my bush and opened her shawl to reveal a large tub full of roast whole guinea pigs and potatoes which she quickly sold in plastic bags to the crowd sat around me.

After a few hours sitting with a limited view (apparently I missed the sacrifice of a llama) and the possibility of a shower looming I returned down hill to the City and retreat to a favorite bar for dinner.

On Monday I took a tour of some of the city and nearby sites, including revisiting Sacsayhuaman, to see the ruins at closer range. The mystery of the Inca ruins is, like the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge, how they managed to quarry and carve such massive rocks and create such huge structures so so accurately that the stones fit perfectly together without cement, without the benefit of machines or even the wheel.

Other notable highlights were the interior of the Cathedral with much silver and gold on show accompanied hundreds of religious oil paintings, interior of the Qoricancha building to see the Inca architectural remains. This included a human sacrifice altar located in a small cave. The end of the tour was the inevitable retail outlet, this time an Alpaca woollens factory where we were shown how to tell the difference between baby Alpaca, Alpaca and man made fibres.

On the tour I met up with a bloke called Chris from Harrow who is on a quick tour to visit Peru as an addition to a wedding he´s going to in Brazil. We met up later for dinner and I decided it was time, for the purposes of research, I try guinea pig. Chris tried Alpaca steak. I can't say I was over impressed with guinea pig. It's too bony and short of meat to be very pleasant to eat. But this was washed down with some Cusqueno, local beer, in the ubiquitous Irish bar soon afterwards.

Next day I took another tour to the Sacred Valley of the Inca. This time the retail opportunity was the first stop; the market of Pisac. This was pretty colourful place and the locals were very welcoming. I enjoyed a couple of empanadas (pasties) straight from the oven.

After stopping to take pictures of these magnificent valley lined with some snow capped mountains we had a great buffet lunch (too great for later comfort) in a town called Urubamba. After lunch we went to more Inca ruins, this time Ollantayambo. Here there are stone great terraces lining the mountainside, providing a temple-come-fort at the top looking down over the small and pleasant town, alleged to have most inhabitants with pure Inca blood in Peru. After scrambling up and down the terraces for an hour we moved onto the small town of Chinchero where the tourist highlight was a colonial church with some remarkable paintings but for me the highlight was the baños next to the coach park.

In between these tour an visits I've been too many museums and galleries and one show of cultural dancing and music which I enjoyed more than I expected. However all of this is a prelude to the main event, the 4 day trek to Machhu Picchu on the Inca trail, which is principal the main reason for me coming to South America and which I start tomorrow

From San Pedro, Chile, to Cusco, Peru

Friday 22 June 2007
Last Friday evening I took the 11 hour overnight bus journey from San Pedro de Atacama, Northern Chile, to the town of Arica , on the border of Peru. The bus is what they call semi cama which is not as luxurious as my two previous bus journies which were cama. The bus was very hot, a window was rattling next to my head and I was squashed next to a fat Chileno. Needless to say I didn't sleep too well.

I was also feeling anxious about the journey ahead as I couldn´t book in advance any onward transport in Peru . So after reaching Arica I looked for a "taxi collectivo" to take me across the border from Chile to Peru to a small town called Tacna where I could get an onward bus. The taxi collectivos are taxis which ply the same route but don´t go until they have 5 passengers. Me and a young English guy, called Neal, from Bristol were waitng for more passengers when a group of 5 kiwis came in. Of couse as they were 5 together they got to go straight away.We had to wait about half an hour longer for three S Americans to take the other seats.The taxi was a clapped out limousine, everything falling a part but the driver was very helpful with border formalities.

At the border we caught up with the kiwis and I got chatting to them while we were waiting. It turned out they are theatre group from Christchurch going to a drama festival in Lima. In Christchurch they regularly perform in a Friday night improvised comedy show called "Scared Scriptless" which I remember seeing advertised in the arts centre, where I spent quite a bit of during my first three nights in New Zealand. I remember I thought about going to see the comedy show but for some reason, which I can´t remember now, I didn´t.

Any way after a couple of hours (mainly queuing for the border formalites) we arrived in a town called Tacna, where I had to organise my next move which was to travel to a place called Puno, 12 hours north of here and the gateway to Lake Titicaca, which is a highly recommended must do thing. After a few minutes of being bombarded by taxi drivers and coach company reps and being told I was at the wrong bus station, I found a travel agent at the bus station to help sort out my next seven days. Within in an hour my coming week was sorted all the way to Cusco.

Stage one of the plan was an overnight bus journey to Puno. I had about 8 hours to wait before the bus left so I hired a taxi to take me for an hour´s tour of Tacna which included a visit to the Cathedral and a railway museum. After the hour I got dropped off at a restaurant and managed to kill another two hours. I then walked around the city centre and spent some another couple of hours on a steet side cafe drinking coffee and red bull to try and keep awake, while reading a book.

At about 4 pm I went back to the bus station and spent some time on the internet emailing before, at long last, I went by taxi, with an Israeli guy, to another station to catch the overnight bus. This wasn´t the luxury bus I had been hoping for although I was lucky that I didn´t have any one sitting next to me. It wasn´t too bad a bus but it was cold and no one was giving out the blankets. The service was used by a lot of local people who maybe aren´t used to travelling as there were people constantly being travel sick and a few babies crying. The bus stopped through the night at a number of towns which looked dusty and poor. Again I was glad when we arrived at the Puno bus station just after dawn. I took a taxi to my hotel which, at 6 am, appeared deserted but the taxi driver rang the bell a couple of times and the door was eventually answered by a small man who looked like he´d just got of bed and gave me my room key. It was cold and I was exhausted after the two overnight bus journies so went to bed. After an hour there was knock on my door and the local travel agent rep. had come to welcome me and ensure I was OK.

I went for a late breakfast overlooking a military ceremony happening in the main square in front of the Cathedral which culmnated in the raising of the flag. In the afternoon I went on a tour to some nearby pre-inca ruins called Sullustani . On the way we passed little stone cottages in walled compounds where women wearing tradional dress were making a living from keeping llamas and alpacas, and growing vegetables. The ruins were round stone towers, or chullpas approx. 10 metres high made from massive carved stones which fitted together perfectly and were used for burial purposes.

In the evening I had dinner overlooking the main town square with a German Physicist called Nikola whom I´d met on the tour, and who spoke good English.

Next day, Monday, I had a free agenda so I had a wander around the town and went to a couple of small museums. I then took a local bus out to a hotel on the lakeside where a ship, MS Yavari, built in 1862 was moored and under restoration. The ship, about 20 metres long, was built by an English company in parts small enough to be carried to Puno by mule from the nearest available railway staion, which at the time was Tacna. It took six years to transport the parts over the mountains and another year or two to put the ship together. In totalit took 10 years from commission to launch.Originally the boat was to have large guns for defence purposes,but these never left the coast and the boat was used primarilyfor cargo.The original engine was stem, but as there was little coal available they used llama dung, but this, being less dense than coa, greatly reduced the cargo capacity. In the early 1900´s the steamengine was replaced by a Swedish Bollinder diesel engine. A few years ago an English woman bought the boat as scrap and set up a charitable trust to retore the ship. It has been partly restored and relaunched with the long term intention of converting to a passenger ship for tourist trips on the lake.

On the ship I met an Irish couple, Graham and Sharon, and we spent a enjoyable hour chatting and drinking coffee sitting in the sun on deck chairs in the hotel grounds.

After sharing a taxi back to town I went for lunch in an open air cafe and on the next table were two Liverpudlian women, Sue and Diana, who had come to Peru to complete a fund raising trek on behalf of a breast cancer charity. Hearing their accents I started a conversation and we agreed to meet up for dinner later. At dinner we had a good laugh over our travel experiences. Both Sue and Diana have obviously 'made good' and moved out of Liverool to live on the Wirral and in Lymm respectively. This led to my recollection of going to Natural Childbirth Trust ante-natal classes in Lymm many years ago but I could not compete with Sue and Diana for funny childbirth stories as between them they have 9 children.

Next day I got up early a two day trip on the islands on Lake Titicaca. There were about 25 people on the boat of all all sorts of nationalites. After an hour the first stop was the floating islands of the Uros. The Uros´ have lived on Lake Titicaca since pre-colomial times. They build their islands by cutting the roots of the reeds into blocks, stitching these together with string and then placing several layers of the reeds over the top. About 1,500 people live on these islands situated in a sheltered area of the lake. The island we first visited was about 100m x 100m with a family approx 40 people living on it in huts made also of the reeds. After a explanation of their history and life style we sailed on a reed boat to another island which was much larger. They have schools and medical centre around the island and limited electricity from solar power.

We the sailed on the tour boat for a further two hours to the island of Amatani.This is anatrual island with a peak over 4,100 metres above sea level but as Lake Titcaca is already 3,800m above sea level the hike to the top to see the sunset wasn´t too bad despite the lack of oxygen.
On arriving at the island we were allocated to host familes for our overnight stay- I shared a room with Tyson from Chicago and Julian from Oldham (les tres amigos) in the our host´s, Olga, house about half way up to the top of the mountian. The house was two storey built into the hillside and constructed of mud stran and stones. Our bedroom was on the second floor accessed via very rickety stair case. The outside toilet was a very basic affair of a concrete WC pan and a bucket of water to flush with.

After a vegetarian dinner we were issued with ponchos and woolly hats and taken to the village hall for a party. The local women and the women in the tour group were all dressed in brightly coloured multi- layer skirts, white blouse waist bands and black shawls. The Uros women started the dancing to music of the typical Peruvian band. The dancing was exhausting due to the altitude and the never ending lenght of the songs the band played.

Next morning, Wednesday, after a breakfast of bread and jam, some eggy pancakes and coca tea we sailed onto another island called Taquile. This felt more developed than Amantani and the walk soon led us to a village centre where there was a bright modern municipal building and many restaurants. It was a beatuiful day and the views across the lake were stunning. After some lunch and a walk over to the other side of the island we rejoined our tour boat for a three hour sail back to Puno. That evening I met up with Tyson, Julian and a couple from Washington DC, Brian and Tracey, for pizza dinner followed by a moderate drinking session.

Yesterday, Thusday, I took an early morning tourist bus from Puno to Cusco. The trip took 9 hours but included about 6 tourist stops for, lunch, archaealogical sites and a market. I arrived in Cusco just after 5pm where my travel agent´s rep. met me off the bus and delivered me to my hotel where I am now staying for the next two nights, before I move to another hotel booked through another agency with which I booked several months ago, to do the Inca Trail in a week´s time.

Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Friday 15 june 2007 Its been a busy week and generally very enjoyable. Last Saturday I took a morning bus to La Serena, (160,000 population) a coastal resort about 480 kms north of Santiago, and the second oldest city of Chile. On the way the landscape was very barren scree covered steep hills and mountains with just bushes and, distinctively from other parts of the trip to date, cacti. Those tall ones with the arms pointing upwards.

I arrived early evening and quickly found my hotel/hostal which was a short walk from the bus terminal. After an evening exploration of the town centre, which is quite small, the next day I took a tour of the nearby Valle del Elqui. This is a combination of steep valley with cacti and a valley floor covered in vineyards to grow grapes for production of the Chilean favorite spirit, Pisco. We visited two distilleries, the oldest and the largest; the latter is run a co-operative basis. Also we visited the former home of the late Gabrielle Mistral, a woman who won the nobel prize for literature for her poetry, which our guide said hardly anyone understands. Lunch was unusual in that it was cooked by solar power in small ovens aimed to capture the rays of the sun.









Next day I took the local bus to Coquimbo, a small port and fishing town about 15 kms away. The main purpose to visit is to go up the Cruz del Tercio Milenio (cross for the third millenuium) which is a 96 metre high concrete constructon situated on a hill overlooking the town. From the top one had a great view of the town and the bay all the way back to La Serena and the surrounding hills. The cross is sponsored by the Catholic church and part paid for by public subscription.



Like La Serena, Coquina also has some fine examples neo-colonial architecture. After a long walk to the cross and a vist to the fish quay i retruned to La Serena to have look at the beach. This was a dissapointing reward for the long walk from the town centre. The only feature worthy of a photo is the disused light house which is striking at the end of the long avenue leading from the town centre. On closer inspection the lighthouse in some danger of eventually falling into the sea if repairs to the base aren´t carried out soon.


More rewarding was the daylight walk around the town centre and a visit to the local museum which had an exhibition dedicated to a former President of Chile, a collection of modern art, including some Picassos and Miros, and some local archive photographs and maps which show how the town developed in the last century.

On Tuesday evening I took an ovenight bus another 400+ kms north east to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is an oasis town located to the north of a large salt plain surrounded by mountian ranges, in the Atacama desert, one of the driest places on earth. I arrived about 11am and after checking in to a hostal for three nights I booked myself onto some sightseeing tour. San Pedro is very rustic but is also very set up for tourist with dozens of hostals, restaurants and tour offices.

That afternoon I went to a place known as Valle de Luna because of is alleged similarity to the surface of the moon (I haven´t been there yet!). ´Whether its like the moon or not it is an extraordinary landscape of shaped rocks and sand dunes. After a short walk, including running down some sand dunes, where others were sand surfing, we were taken to a ridge from where to observe the setting sun. There was some cloud on the horizon and this resulted in an a beautiful red and yellow sunset and also a red glow onto the mountian range behind us. On this trip I met Michael, a Hong Kong/Canadian, with whom I´ve spent a lot of time sharing meals and tours in the last few days.



On Wednesday we went a full day trip to the salt lake which is very rough texture due to the fact that the salt is aborbed from water below the ground, not from rainfall. On the salt pools there are colonies of flamingos who eat mircoscopic shrimps that can survive the salty conditions. After this we drove 50-60 kms to 2 beautiful blue lakes, Lagunas Miscanti yMiniques, at 4,300 metres above sea level surronded by volcanoes. The picture of me in front of a lake looks like it there are waves on the shore. This is in fact salt formations.



Our guide on this trip was a man called Juan, who as a small child lived in Weymouth (you wouldn´t make that up) and therefore could speak good English and was quite a character, calling upon "Inca power". This he demonstrated by stopping the tour bus on what appeared to be an upward slope. When the engine was stopped they released the handbrake and the bus appeared, when looking out of the front and back of the bus, to be rolling up hill. I assume it was some optical illusion due to the shape of the landscape but it was impossible to discern. Only when we travelled on a few kms and look backwards could I see that the road was a continuous downward slope with some changes in the angle of the slope. It was still an amazing experience.

Juan then took us to see his favorite lama which just happened to be located at a village craft shop. I have now bought the almost obligatory woolly hat, but no photos available yet. In the evening I had the best meal and best value meal so far in South America, in a restarant run by a French man living in San Pedro.

Incidentally there are an awful lot of French and German tourists here and relatively few British. Most other Brits I´ve met are young back packers while the French and Germans are often older couples so I don´t feel like the only over 30 on this part of the trip.

Next day, Thursday, was a 4am start to see the El Tatio Geysers located about 90kms north and close to the Bolivian border. After a rough 2 hour bus ride, but still managing about another hour´s sleep, we arrived at the volcanic crater, and dawn was beginning to break. It was freezing cold at this 4,320 metres high location. Despite being well wrapped up it was hard to keep from shivering. The justification for the early morning start and freezing cold is that the steam spouts are much bigger in the sub zero morning temperatures. As the sun rose after 7am one could see the steam spouts rapidly reducing in height.

I couldn´t help comparing these with the geysers I saw in Rotorua, NZ, about 3 weeks ago. I think NZ win on height of hot water geysers but Chile wins on the number of steam spouts and the more natural environment in which they are situated.

After eating some breakfast just next to the largest geyser, we drove a short distance to a hot water spring where on could bathe or paddle. I´d lost this detail in translation so wasn´t equipped for bathing but enjoyed a paddle.

On the way back from here we saw some long tailed ´rabbits´which belong to the chinchilla famile and different species of lamas or vicunas. I was surprised how many there were roaming in small herds living in such a barren landscape. Other wild life seen included a fox, geese and ducks.

After a further hour´s drive we stopped in a village for cheese empanadas (little pasties) and a walk down a beautiful gorge which involved quite a bit of rock clambering and river jumping. The small waterfalls and cacti against the background of the magnificent mountian ranges visible through the gorge entrance in bright sunlight made a wonderful scene. The river runs off the Andes mountains snows and sustains enough pampas grass to give my mother nightmares.



Today is a day of rest and recuperation before I catch an overnight bus to Arica in the very north of Chile and, hopefully, tomorrow crossing the border into Peru.

Santiago continued

Friday 8 June

Its Friday evening and I´ve finshed my week´s spanish classes. I can´t speak spansih but I know a few more words than i did a week ago. The last two days i´ve shared the class with a young Australian called Paul, which made it more interesting. Also at the home stay a young ´German has come to stay who speaks quite good English.

During the afternoon I´ve been to a various sites around Santiago. Besides the city centre cahtedral, view points etc I ´ve been to a vine yard and the palace of a very wealthy Chilean family who were once the 10th wealthiest family in the world due to silver , coal and gold mines.

I´ve also been to a jazz concert and I´ve managed one pub for a couple of pints. Its still cold but I´ve acclimatised somewhat.

Tomorrow I travel north by bus for 6-7 hours, to La Serena, in the hope of slightly warmer weather and more English conversation.

Auckland to Santiago

Tuesday 5 June
I arrived in Auckland on Friday and after returning the camper van to the hire company I checked into a very nice city centre boutique (a much over used adjective in NZ and OZ) budget hotel. After a little exploration of the city I went to a boutique restuarant for a boutique meal and retired to a decent bed for the first time in 3 weeks.

The good news about my visit to Auckland was it coincided with a All Blacks playing France at Eden Park. So the priority for Saturday morning was to get a ticket which was remarkably easy. The French have been criticised for fielding a ´C´team while their top players are still committed to club rugby in Europe. This seems to have reduced the demand for tickets and I was able to obtain a ticket within half of an hour for a mere $42Nz (16 pounds) from a ticket agency.
After sorting this out I continued with the sight seeing, travelling up the ubiquitous communications tower. I think every city of any note has one now. The views were slightly marred by the cloud but it still gave a great sense of the shape and size of Auckland. This was followed a short bus trip around the city centre and a trip out to the boutique suburb of Parnell.

After a rest back at the hotel I took a train from the central Britomart station (where did they get that name I wonder) to Eden Park and found my seat in a nearly capacity crowd. The seats are very squashed together and had no back rest. The atmosphere was subdued compared to any Twickenham game and the game itself didn´t do too much to raise the excitement. As expected, after a fairly slow start , with the French throwing all they had into the game at the beginning, the ABs gradually got on top and were scoring freely later in the second half. Some where over to my left some people did get over excited and had fight but I couldn´t see what was happening because of the standing spectators. But generally the atmosphere was good and quite a few people dressed up to make party of it including a flock of NZ sheep seen on the train on the way home.


On Sunday after spot more site seeing I went to the airport to catch my plane to Chile. The plane was delayed by 3-4 hours but I spent the extra time chatting to fellow travelers and eating in the cafes with the voucher I was given.

The flight took about 12 hours and incredibly, because of the international date line, the plane lands before it takes off if you know what I mean. I took off at 9pm on Sunday 3 June and 12 hours landed in Santiago at 5pm 3 June. After landing and a worryingly long wait for my luggage to appear I went through immigration and into the arrivals hall. I´ve booked my self onto a one week Spanish course and the school administrator, Juan, was there to meet me and deliver me to my Chilean homestay family, Jorge and Patricia.

Monday morning Jorge took me to the school where I met my teacher , Erika, and it turns out I´m the only pupil for the week. The format is lessons with Erika each morning and then trips out around the city with Juan in the afternoon. See my pìcture outside the presidential palace.

Its been a cultural bungee jump from my time in NZ and Australia to Chile, but I couldn´t have hoped for a more welcoming experience.

Last night I lay awake worrying about my travel plans and the difficulty of travelling alone with such poor Spanish and made increasingly anxious by all the personal safety warnings in Lonely Planet. It may have also been jet lag. I really don´t know what time it is now in New Zealand but my body took 4-5 days to adjust in Thailand, so its likely to take a while now I´ve moved back 18 hours in time.

This morning I set off to school by myself. After 10 minutes I realised I´d been walking in the entirely wrong direction, so I was half hour late for class. My teacher, Erika, was patiently waiting for me.

This afternoon I went into the city centre and bought the bus ticket for my departure from Santiago and a jazz concert for tomorrow night. I´ve decided to travel further north asap as its pretty cold down here at the moment. I´m now feeling much more positive than I was this morning. What a difference a day makes. Perhaps it was jet lag after all. Better get on with my homework now as its school tomorrow. Hasta la vista!