Arequipa and Puno

While Anna went to Lima to pick up Kate and then they both went to Cusco and Kate acclimatised, Jordan went to Arequipa with a good friend from CARE Indonesia – Santi.  The two went off on a walking adventure to see the Colca Canyon – a beautiful, deep canyon that is extremely dry, but with Oases at the bottom of the canyon, where villages have sprung up becasue of the oases.

But before they went to Colca Canyon, they had to arrive in Arequipa and have a bit of a look around.  Arequipa is an old town, and the second largest in Peru, after Lima. The centre of the city is built in white stone, because that is the only type of stone in that area.  It is very pretty, and being only 2700 metres above sea level, it is also easier to breathe and hotter.  We actually wore only shirts on the first day and had to wear hats and sunscreen the whole time we were there.  That was nice!

We went on a day bus tour of the city, which was a bit of a hop-on, hop-off, get ferried this and that way tour, but it gave us a good idea of the city and it´s suburbs, as well as all of the lookouts and outskirts of the city.  Like all in the mountains, it has Inca terraced fields around the city, and is also surrounded by some pretty impressive mountains – all around 4-5000 metres high – nice!

Then we went on our trek, with about 6 others from Brasil, England and a mix of other countries. The beginning was to go to the lookout to try to see the amazing and large Condors float past looking for dead things to eat.  We saw some, but a long way away.  Then we walked down the canyon to a village at the bottom (about 1000m down, but 6km in total).  The walk down was not hard, except on the knees.  We stayed in that village overnight and then walked through the bottom of the canyon, through another village until we arrived at an oasis, where everyone had built a hotel and pool.  We got there midday and had the whole afternoon to relax and swim and enjoy the sun, getting to know each other better.  Then the last day was the hardest, where we walked back up thatv bloody canyon (same thing, 1000m up, but 6 km in total).  We got a good workout really early in the morning, before the sun hit that side of the canyon, and were buggered, but finished at 9am in the morning (don´t even ask what time we got up – oh, ok, so it was 5am).  We then had breakfast and took the long way back to Arequipa by going through a 4900m high pass to try to see a view of the mountain range, but it was cloudy and snowing, so noone even got out of the bus.  Then Santi and I went to visit the small museum in Arequipa that houses the Juanita mummy.

This mummy is famous because she was frozen in the permasnow of one of the mountains (which is actually a volcanoe), and an archeologist just happened to be on the top of the mountain looking for Inca stuff when the volcanoe was erupting and the little Juanita mummy had melted and rolled down the mountain.  She is one of the many children that were sacrificed at the top of the mountain to appease the mountain god when he was erupting, or had erupted.  Because she is in perfect shape, skin and all, they have learnt alot about the rituals and the way in which they were conducted.  She was 13 yrs old when she was sacrificed, and she had been prepared for it her whole life. 

Then we went to a monastery, which is called a city inside a city it is so big, in the centre of town.  The monastery was only for nuns, and was completely closed off to the outside world from when it was built in the 1600´s until the 1970´s, when the government opened it up to the public, but with one sectioon of it still closed to all and holding about 30 nuns to today.  Facinating architecture and changes in architecture after each earthquake that caused them to have to re-build bits of it.  I would put photos of these things into this blog, but the computer is really slow and I dare not chance losing my writing, so you will all have to look at the photos on Arequipa and try to work out what it what : )

Then Anna and Kate arrived and did shortened versions of what Santi and I had done, while Santi and I decided that we were going to pretend to be young and hip and check out the nightlife of Arequipa.  Unfortunately, we are old, because we were out at 11pm to start the night, while the nightlife didn´t actually start until 2am.  We managed to stay up past our bedtime, and party until 3am and actually had a really good time : ) We went through every nightclub three times, though until we found music we could handle – peruvian rock, reggaeton and techno kept us going.

Santi went back to Cusco to continue her lessons the next night, and Anna and Kate went to Colca Canyon, so I went to Puno to visit to Uros floating islands on Lake Titicaca, going back up to 3800m above sea level.  The floating islands are made of a base of the roots of this special reed that grown in the shallows of the lake, with the dried green part of the reed piled on top over and over again (and continuously added to each 5 weeks) and then anchored to the edge of the lake somewhere to stop from floating off. You can eat the white part of the reed, animals can eat the green part of the reed and the flowers of the reed are good for an upset stomach. It was just an afternoon visit to the islands and then off to Copacabana the next day…

Machu Pichu – The Final Destination

Ok, you must be saying, enough of these flowers and stuff, what about those _big_ ruins you went to see?! I´m sure many of you have seen pictures or programs about Machu Pichu here in Peru, but I´ll give you my version.  

We made it!

The most important thing? We made it! After 4 days of trekking, with a number of half-days in the rain and a lot of fog to hamper our view from far away, we reached the lookout to Machu Pichu, and the mountain in the background, Wayna Pichu. I had been advised to climb this if I could but my little legs were about ready to give up! 

Rob and Adrian

2 guys from our group, Rob from Australia and Adrian from Ireland, decided to _run_ with one of the guides, Cheo, all the way to Machu Pichu starting at 5.30am, which we walked in about an hour and a half and they ran in about 45 mins! Let me tell you, I would not have trusted myself running down those stairs, but the guys said it was easier than walking because you kind of sprang off each step instead of landing heavily.  Still glad it was them not me!

And at the top there was....fog

 Oh yeah, they weren´t just running for the fun of it, they were wanting to get there early so they could get a voucher to be able to walk up Wayna Pichu. There is a limit to how many people can climb this extra mountain, and in the line they _just_ missed getting vouchers, but they were on the waiting list, and when 10am came around, as it was foggy, they had no problems starting off. Turns out the fog hung around for a bit!

Machu Pichu from Wayna Pichu

Amazing views, once the clouds moved on, and another sense of achievement, but I´m happy staying at the lower altitudes!  Thanks heaps to Rob Guerra for the 3 photos above.

Dedicated to Hiram Bingham

A little bit of history. This sign says ¨Dedicated to Hiram Bingham at the time of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Machu Pichu, 1911 – 24 July – 1961¨. It´s interesting that we say that he ¨discovered¨ Machu Pichu, because the locals had known about it for a long time, and other non-locals had been there before Hiram, but Hiram was the one who had the money and the time to start clearing away years of the jungle slowly taking over the area. So yes, he was an important person in history, but it´s a bit like saying England ¨discovered¨ Australia. Just a personal little gripe!  

Restored and unrestored

About 60% of the site is as it was, and about 30% has been restored – to how it was, not how someone thought it should be. I must say, I´m not sure how they knew how things were, but maybe there were some buildings and terraces that were in better condition than others. We still don´t really know why this city was abandoned, but possible theories are disease or a long-lasting drought. No written records have been found, although some hieroglyphs have been found.  Apparently there were some records, but when the Spanish invaded they burnt all this historical information. Ahhh…they Spaniards have a lot to answer for!  

¨Let´s look through the trapezoid window¨

Many of the views are breathtaking, and of course the camera cannot do them justice, but we still try, don´t we?! These trapezoid shape windows – slightly wider at the bottom than the top (is that a trapezoid?!) – were used throughout the city, and they are much more stable than rectangular windows in case of earthquakes or other natural disasters. Through the window you can see one of the restored buildings in the background, and some terraced fields in the foreground. The fields for cultivation were on one side and the buildings were on the other side of the city.  

¨You lookin at me?¨

Here we have  just two of many llamas wandering the ruins. Just previously the (gelded) male tried to have it on with the female, but she would have nothing of it! Apparently the males need to have the snip because while there are lots of males around they will fight each other and grow big eye teeth to go for the throat of their opponent. Not the sort of thing you want to see at a historical site! They´re still dangerous, and you wouldn´t want to get too close to them.  

As we had woken at 4am in order to get to the sun gate before sunrise (which was totally enveloped in clouds, so no sunrise for us) and to get to the ruins themselves before 9.30am when all the tour buses arrive. I have a feeling I would have been more interested in exploring the ruins and listening to the history if I hadn´t just had a tiring 3 days of walking previously! Never mind, it was still spectacular.  

Cheers!

Of course, the actual end of the tour had to involve alcohol and red meat for many of us - two things we were encouraged not to have on the trek as both would make our walk more difficult. We all enjoyed getting back to the hotel, having a long hot shower (although apparently the water pressure was a bit varied as everyone had the same idea at the same time!) and putting on clean clothes.  

Our guide Carlos and half the gang

We went out to a restaurant with an excellent chef for creating new versions of traditional recipes. Who in our group can remember the name of the restaurant? I really wanted to try guinea pig, as it´s a delicacy (When in Rome….) but no-one would share it to me.  I have heard of the whole animal coming out, fur and all, so maybe it was a good thing no-one encouraged me!  

Let´s drink!

The three Aussies on the left decided to really enjoy their drinks! It´s not very clear in this piccie but two large cocktails were ordered and a long, cold beer. The cocktails lasted most of the night. We all slept very well that night – the end of a long walk and an ultimately fun journey where we started off as strangers and ended up friends. Yes, it was worth it, but no, I wouldn´t do it again! I would, however, recommend it, but don´t follow my preparations – make sure you´re quite fit and that you have the stamina. Go on, give it a go!

Machu Pichu – Part 3

Sorry there´s been a bit of a pause in the storytelling – my stomach, unlike Jordan´s, is not an iron stomach, and something I ate didn´t agree with me Feels like the altitude doesn´t help much either. Here in Cusco we´re at about 3,500m above sea level.

Tiny ferns that grow at about 4000m above sea level

I just wanted to share some of the flora that I was able to photograph, being the slow one at the back of the pack! It was amazing the difference in the flora on the side of the first mountain we climbed, as everything was a bit stunted due to the strong winds and I think less rain. As soon as we crossed the pass (The dead woman´s pass that was so damn difficult to climb!) the vegetation was so different – lush and green.

Sweet little bells

But I wonder if it´s the altitude that affects their growth too – there´s not a lot of spare oxygen and I guess carbon dioxide up there! Apparently this plant, in the jungle, has really huge flowers, but I thought these were sweet.

A little orchid

December is the month for the orchids to flower and fortunately we got to see some of them, even though it was barely December.

Is this another orchid?

I think this is another orchid, but in any case, I liked it.

A beautiful set of bells

And here´s my last pick for you all for now. Again, can´t remember the name, but I do like the interiors.

Machu Pichu – Part 2

Our tour was with GAP Adventures (www.gapadventures.com) and there were 16 of us, 2 guides, 20 porters and 2 chefs.

The Inca Trail group

The nationalities represented in our group were Australians (of course. 5 of us), a British guy, Canadians, a Finnish woman, Irish – Northern and Southern, Norwegians and our 2 Peruvian guides, Carlos and Cheo. I´m already missing the group – amazing how quickly you get to know someone when you´re both going through a pretty extreme experience.

The porters and chefs range in age from 20 to about 54, and their service with GAP is from 1 to 5 years.  It has only been since 2004 that GAP has been independent in Peru. They used to run the Inca Trail walks through other operators, but now they use their own brand.  Jordan spent quite a lot of our time at the campsites learning the local language of the porters, Quechua. I didn´t have any extra energy for things like this!

Eating in style

The porters did an amazing job of packing everything up each morning, strapping 25kg to their backs, and pretty much running to the next meal spot so they could set up our food tent and prepare the meal.  The 2 chefs were from Cuzco, and we really did get gourmet meals – quite unexpected halfway up a mountain!

Our tents set up for when we arrive

Each night we would arrive at our campsite to our little red tents all in a row, a hot drink of juice, and hot water for washing our hands. Tea would be first, around 5.30, with popcorn and biscuits and hot drinks (mmm….chocolate!) then dinner around 7.30, served by our own waiter, Abel. Talk about luxury! Many games of cards were played after dinner, and I even taught a few porters how to play spoons!

Machu Pichu – Part 1

Well, we made it to Machu Pichu and back, and I reckon it was the most difficult walk I have ever done.  So many stone stairs – hundreds of them up and down the mountains!

4184m above sea level

For me, the biggest achievement was not the final destination, but was reaching the highest summit on the second day of walking – Warmiwañusca, or Dead Woman Pass, at 4200m above sea level. And here´s the proof! A combination of the high altitude and my poor level of fitness meant I was pretty much out of breath most of the time, and those stairs were a real challenge to climb up. Fortunately Jordan used the same technique on me as she used on her 7 year old niece in a fun run – ¨Pick a point and make it there, take a breather and a little water, then pick your next point¨. It was a slow and painful process, and I guess I´ll never know if chewing those coca leaves really did anything or not, but we did make it to the top.  Then of course there was the downhill steps which I found fine and Jordan wasn´t so fond of, cos it´s such an impact on our knees.

Jordan doing star jumps to keep warm

Jordan´s challenge was keeping warm on the walk, particularly at those points were we stopped for a break, so star jumping and jumping on the spot were her techniques. We had a couple of days of really good walking days – a little overcast but no rain and not too hot – and a couple of horrid times when it was raining and we had to be especially careful of those downhill stairs. At one point we had to walk down a part which had become a waterfall with all the rain!

More stories to follow.

Iquitos and Zoo Peru

It is lucky, though, that we always manage to get the date wrong the day before rather than the day after – so we are just getting to know airports a bit better than we wanted : )

We have now been in Iquitos for the past week.  We have met up with the great guys from Zoo Peru, and their friend, Jason Edwards, a photogrpher for National Geographic with a wicked ability to tell stories leaving you in stitches.  We spent a day at the Zoo, Quistocoche, 8 km from town.  Marni and Nicole showed us around after a fairly traumatic, but successful move of a pink nosed river dolphin that Antony had insisted upon arrival needed to be moved to a cleaner pool of water, as the pool the dolphin was in was bright green. As Antony ran around the rest of the day catching up on who was doing what and where all the animals were, Marni and Nicole showed us around, introducing us to the amazing animals of the zoo, giving us a history of each animal and their compounds – what had been built with the help of Zoo Peru and what still needed to be done.  It was a great and facinating, but tiring day, as it was the first day in the true tropics again, and Anna was really affected by the heat and humidity.

The guys then took us the next day to a Maniti refuge, where they take in and raise injured and orphan Maniti. Maniti are kind of like Dugong and are like the cows of the water.  They are beautiful animals and we spent a whole day with five Maniti, as Jason took photo after photo after photo and did a video on how they are endangered and being killed from being hit by boats and because the locals believe that some part of the Maniti has some mystical properties. We have been learning alot about the Amazon and it´s wildlife and the problems here : )

Then we spent the last three days traveling to Otorongo Expeditions, about two hours by speedboat down the river from Iquitos, where we stayed with Anthony and Ivy, the couple who own this place, and a guy who had come down to trek through the rainforest with Anthony and some local guides for 7 days.  He and Anthony got back the night we arrived and the next day, Anthony took us on a little 5 hour trek up to a beautiful cool stream and back. But before that trek, we spent the first night searching just around the camp for animals, and found tarantulas, a new species of frog that Anthony discovered, scorpion spiders, and many more little animals.

The walk the next day probably would not have taken so long, but Jason was there to take photos of animal and plants, and so we stopped alot to get the photos along the way. Anna was still a bit affected by the heat and decided not to risk getting wacked out by the heat half way there, so she stayed at the camp with Ivy and the other locals.  I´ll let her tell that story : )  The walk was nice and full of really interesting small animals that we found along the way, such as a venomous snake related to the death adder that everyone walked past without noticing until Antony saw it, a couple of frogs, lizards, spiders, etc.  We were sopping wet with sweat by the time we got to the stream, bathed and cooled down in the stream, and then got sopping wet with sweat by the time we got back to the camp.  Good walk : )

That night they set up a light under a white cloth thingy to attract insects and Jason spent the next five hours taking photos of them and going around the camp again with Anthony this time to find more small animals to take photos of.  He struck gold on some of them and has some of the most amazing photos I have ever seen.  No wonder he is a professional and makes a living from it – he is gooood : )

We tried to go for a little half hour trek the last day to find this really really big tree Anthony knew about for Jason to photo, but the river was too low, so we ended up just walking along a little beach in the middle of the river, where the sand and silt had built up enough for some small shrubs to grow in them. Anthony said that that would change in a month or two, when the high waters come through and wipe out alot of islands and the edges of the river.

We got back yesterday, and had a quiet one today, just emailing and interneting, relaxing after a hard, but wonderful couple of days : )

The art of travel

Jordan and I are becoming quite expert in making a reconnoitre visit to the airport on the day before our plane is due to leave. On our latest visit to the airport, Jordan walked around the facility at 3.30am, assessing where the interesting stores were…when they opened, where the amenities were, and where we check in for our flight. Unfortunately at 4am we discovered that our flight was not that morning as we had thought, but it was the same time (6am) the next day.  We had a look at our itinerary, and sure enough, there it was, Sunday 15th, not Saturday 14th. Very clear. Just that I somehow misread it and Jordan trusted me.  She can do the double and triple checking next time.So the next morning we didn´t leave our hotel again at 2.30am but we slept in til 4am.  Most of that day had been spent sleeping too.

One time is not really something to comment on, but so far we have managed to do this twice on our first 3 months of this trip.  The first time (which we decided  not to tell you about when it happened…) was in New York, and this was a legitimate stuff up – we somehow had 3 different dates of when our plane was supposed to leave, so we were pleased that we had picked the first date, not the third one!  Apparently our travel agent had switched dates a few times, for a cheaper fare I think, and we had printed out the 3 different versions! So we got her to resend the final version of all tickets, including ticket numbers (cos they´re all e-tickets) and we thought that would be that.  We just hadn´t banked on pure human stupidity. And in New York it meant I got to spend an extra day with my little niece, Eva.

Cuba and her cars, bailar and cigars

One of Cuba´s many old American cars

I rediscovered that I have a love of really old american cars, restored or not.  So Cuba was really the place for me. It was like stepping back in time! Many of these old cars, like this one, have been modified to have 2 rows of seats in the back and they are now used as local taxis who work on a ´run´a bit more like a bus than a taxi. Payment is a fixed amount regardless of distance, in the local currency, moneda nacional, which tourists aren´t supposed to have access to but many do. The official taxis are like a regular taxi and payment is made in the convertible pesos.  This dual system of currency, where the convertible pesos are worth 25 times the local money, can be confusing even to the locals. Cubans get paid in moneda nacional, but most of what they buy is imported so has to be paid for in convertible pesos.

Bailar – to dance – this is the main reason I came to Cuba.

Jordan and our teacher Aspirina

We finally found some live salsa when we went to a little colonial town in the southern central part of the island, Trinidad. Every night they have live music at ´the steps´of an abandoned church. We would all watch from a stand of stairs where there was a live band every night! Dancing in the streets! We discovered there used to be dancing in the streets in Havana until the government figured out that many of the tourists in Cuba were there for the salsa, so they moved all the salsa to expensive venues and banned dancing in the streets. Thankfully not in Trinidad as well! Our first night there we watched a lot and danced a little at the end, and the next night I went down and hovered by the dance floor until I was asked to dance, and there was the rest of my night! Cuban guys who knew how to lead well, and it wasn´t all about spinning me dizzy on the dance floor. When we returned to Havana we found a couple of other venues, so I was happy.  We even got to see a Cuban group live – Van Van. Throughout the show everyone went up the stairs to pose for a piccie with the singers or musicians! This photo shows Jordan with our dance teacher who came to our house and taught us salsa and a little son and a little rumba (to Jordan´s delight.  I couldn´t quite get it!).

Finally on our last day in Havana I went and bought some Cuban cigars. So many different options! I think I ended up getting a fat, short cigar that Fidel Castro smokes.

The only other aspect of Cuba that I didn´t get to photograph was their love of white clothes. There were numerous Cuban men decked out all in white, from the shiny white of their shoes to the tip of their white cap. As if that wasn´t stunning enough on its own, wait til you see them all in a nightclub – bring on the flourescent lights! So you´ll have to use your imagination for that image, because we didn´t want to take our camera when we went out dancing – too easy to be stolen and annoying to carry when dancing!

Cuba!

Well we’re here in Cuba and there’s even internet access!  We have to wait another hour until our salsa venue here in Havana is open for dancing…so here we are at one of the many posh hotels. We’ve had one private dance class and our (rather elderly but very sprightly) dance teacher has taken us under his wing and has been taking us out to music venues over the last few days.  Trouble is, they’ve all been Folkloric Music and Rumba venues…not that we don’t like that music, but we want to practice some of our salsa moves! We went to one venue this evening…but no dancing there til tomorrow night.

Anyways, the reason I wanted to write this post was about the Rumba music that we were taken to 2 nights ago.  It was in a very small venue with some sitting room around round tables and a little standing room, so the venue was packed. It is somewhere in the maze of streets that make up Old Havana. The setup was 3 drummers playing 3 drums or a wooden box instrument of some sort, 2 players with the main beat playing (using Jordan’s words) “a stick hitting another hollow stick for clacking”. Very technical. The were 4 or 5 singers and a lead singer on mikes. The drummers then proceeded to play very complicated rhythms that somehow fit together and the lead singer would sing over the top of that.  We were sitting right near the drums so knew all about them! The best bit, I reckon, was when the dancers came out – a guy and a girl, each with a scarf or some some such thing and they danced a very sexy, jumpy dance that I think was Rumba.  The scarves were used very sugestively and the dance consisted of flirting towards and away from each other.  Many of the songs also included audience participation, so the crowd loved it.  Our dance teacher also teaches rumba and  so he sang and danced as well, to the crowds’ delight. The music was infectious and the dancers just made me smile and smile and smile. No photos though – you’ll have to imagine it.

Mayan Ruins – Tulum, Tikal and Palenque

Tulum ruins

We´ve now seen 3 different locations of Mayan ruins. The first was Tulum near Cancun in Mexico. As we mentioned before a lot of the rooves were wooden so they don´t exist any more. Tulum is thought to have been built between 1250AD and 1521AD. Its location was very secure, hight up on the cliffs by the sea, and it also had a big wall around the landed part. A lot was roped off and you couldn´t get close, especially in the buildings in the inner temple.

Tulum by the sea

The mayans had 2 different calenders – one was a sacred calender of 260 days and one was a civil one of 365 days made up of 18 moinths of 20 days plus 5 special days. They also had hieroglyphic writing from at least 250BC, and they used zero way back then too.

Oldest temple in Tikal

Tikal is in the far north of Guatemala. A lot of the construction was from limestone, so after heavy rains (very frequent in the wet season) some of the building material would wash away. It is thought that they used some kind of concrete to render some of the buildings, or something like it, but what it means is that many of the buildings were not in good condition when they were discovered.

Very tall temple in Tikal

Some buildings, like this one, have been reconstructed, still with limestone, to give us an idea of the majesty of the place. Jordan climbed up the very steep steps on the other side of this temple.  I just waved from below!

A lot of the detail of this will need to be pieced back together by the two of us because we had a 12 hour bus ride then went straight to the ruins and had a 3 hour guided tour.  So we now don´t have a little booklet to refer to! Tikal was built between 500BC and 700AD (I think!).

Palenque ceremonial headdress

We´ve just been to Palenque…but I´m running out of time here.  I have to pack my bag before we go to Cuba! But just briefly, much more still remans at this site in Mexico. This site was built between 100AD and 804AD. Again, check out our flickr site to see more photos. I´ll try to wirte more when I can…. Suffice to say, Palenque, although much smaller than Tikal, was more fun cos you got to walk all over it and through different bits.