Huacachina, Arequipa, Cusco and Machu Picchu: such different places, yet all in Peru!

Hello and sorry that there have been no updates for a while! We've visited quite a few places since last time...

First of all, after a gruelling bus journey from Huaraz (which left me sleeping for about 20 hours after we reached our destination), we went to Huacachina (near Ica) - literally an oasis in the desert. It is a little village built around a lake in the middle of tall and impressive sand dunes. Very touristy, as you can imagine. We spent one afternoon visiting the wineries of Ica: we tasted pisco (the local spirit, very similar to vodka I guess) and local red, white and sparkling wines. While Pisco can hold its own, neither of us were very impressed with Peruvian wine. I guess we'll stick with the occasional (yeah, right!) glass of Chilean or Argentinian wine while we're out here.

Anyway, back in Huacachina, we also went on a "dune buggy" tour, which was really good fun. You are basically driven around the desert, up and down huge fat sand dunes, in a car which looks like that...

... and it feels like being on a roller coster! One of the other tourists in the buggy was actually sick. The poor guy was sitting right at the front.

While driving around the desert, we also made a couple of stops to do some sand boarding. You basically lie down, head first, on something very similar to a snow board and go down a very steep slope (given that you can't slide down on sand as fast as you do on snow, the incline of the slope needs to be quite steep if you're going to get down to the bottom). Unfortunately it's hard to get a real impression of how steep the descent was on a photo, but here I am in action for the record:

Finally, before heading back we were treated to a stunning sunset:

After Huacachina, we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru, which also boasts some stunning colonial buildings. We didn't get up to very much there apart from walking around the city, drinking good coffee and eating cakes, and visiting the "Juanita Museum". "Juanita" was a Peruvian girl, 12 to 14 years of age, who was sacrificed and buried on top of Mount Ampato about 500 years ago. She was discovered in 1995, her body perfectly conserved. It was a common Inca ritual to sacrifice children of noble blood (never older than 15) as a gift to the mountain gods, asking for their mercy (especially as local volcano eruptions were concerned!) . On top of "Juanita" (although not literally), another 18 children were found buried atop of volcanoes in Peru, Argentina and Chile - having died and been buried in the same conditions.

After a couple of days in Arequipa, we headed over to Cusco, the base city to go off and see the world renowned Machu Picchu. Cusco is nice enough but incredibly touristy. Around the Plaza de Armas, every step you take you are asked if you want a tour, a restaurant, a massage... we hadn't been harrassed like this since visiting the north of Vietnam. It gets a bit weary after a while!

We booked a 4 days/3 nights trek to get to Machu Picchu. We left on Thursday last week and the first day consisted in a 4 hours drive followed by 3 hours' mountain-biking downhill to get to the small town of Santa Maria, where we spent the first night. We were in a small group of very nice people: Anat and Nadav (a PHD student and psychologist from Tel Aviv); Gloria (she was from Lima, working for a law magazine. It was great to be able to practice our Spanish with her, but she spoke incredibly fast - especially for someone who was so tiny!); and Svente (a Swedish investment banker who lives in London). Here we all are...

On the second day we trekked for about 7 hours. We got some breathtaking views of the surrounding canyons before heading into the jungle; it was a nice change, walking in a jungley forest when the last treks we had done had been high up in the mountains.

On the evening of the first night, after we had reached the (once again small and remote) town of Santa Teresa, two Australian girls - Linda and Felicity - and two Brasilian/Japanese guys - Flavio and Mauro - joined our group for the rest of the trek. After dinner, our guide treated Gary to a birthday drink called a "Machu Picchu": layers of lime, pisco, grenadine and mint. He did drink it in one go but said it was disguting... happy birthday, Gary!

This was actually the night before Gary's birthday, but it was more convenient to go out and celebrate then rather than on the actual evening of his big day because we were to get up early the next day to visit Machu Picchu.

So on day 3, we had a 3 hours' long and rather dull walk along railway tracks and we reached the town of Aguas calientes, which is right at the bottom of Machu Picchu, at lunchtime. After a big meal, we set of in the afternoon to climb up this baby:It's a mountain called Putucusi, located right next to the Machu Picchu mountain. To reach the top you need to go up steep (and rather scary) ladders like the one in the picture below, and climb endless stone steps. All in all, a pretty physical and sweaty walk up...


... however once you reached the top, you are rewarded with views like these:

(that's Machu Picchu up there in the distance!)

The next - and last - day of the trek, we got up at 4.00am and it took us one and a half hour to walk up to Machu Picchu (stone steps, again!). Bill Bryson recently wrote an article about the 10 most overrated tourist sites in the world and he included Machu Picchu as one of them. Frankly, we couldn't disagree more, the place is just magical and even though I had seen hundreds of pictures of it before, it didn't disappoint in real life. We were lucky to get there early (when we left the site around noon, it was flooded with thousands of tourists). I will let you enjoy the views...
We got back to Aguas Calientes early in the afternoon, legs slightly exhausted from all the walking up and down steps of the past couple of days. We hung around most of the afternoon waiting for our train/bus back, and were back in Cusco at 10.00 pm last night. So all in all a rather long day! But we were happy with the trek overall, and would definitely recommend it to people who do not want to pay the $500-$800 that is charged to do the famous Inca Trail!

So, what's next? Well, we decided we fancied a bit of a change from the Andean Mountains landscapes we've been visiting in the past few months. So we are now headed for Brasil! We are taking a bus to La Paz tonight (we will be crossing Bolivia to reach Brasil).

More news soon, until then, take care!
C.

Pisco, Pisco Sours and 'hueveando' around

After we got back from our Santa Cruz trek, we’d decided to have a few days’ rest, then attempt a proper ‘mountain climb’. What this means is basically you try to reach the top of a snow covered mountain, which involves putting on the full gear (ice axe, crampons, harness and ropes), so it’s more full on than normal trekking. The mountain we were going to attempt to climb, Pisco, is 5,700 metres high, or almost a kilometre higher than Mont Blanc, the highest in Europe. It should be pointed out that proper mountaineers would do this peak in their sleep, and would refer to it as simply a long trek, however any mountain like this still involves an element of risk, you’re wearing ropes for a reason, namely that when you’re walking on the snow, technically on a glacier, you’re potentially walking over crevasses that are covered by new fallen snow and therefore can’t be seen…the rope is there to prevent you falling in. In theory, our Santa Cruz trek should have given us adequate acclimatisation for the altitude, however that all went wrong when we discovered 13 Buhos, or ‘Luchos’ bar.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, a couple of quiet drinks on a Thursday night with a couple of French friends we’d met in Quito, and subsequently on the Santa Cruz trek. However the bars here have a habit of making it very difficult to leave. The owner of this bar in particular, a guy called Lucho (the typical South American nickname for Luis), is simply the friendliest bar owner I’ve ever met. They brew their own beer using coca leaves (in addition to the usual hops, barley, water and yeast), and it tastes really great. The bar had a really great mix of Peruvians and ‘gringos’, and we staggered out of there at 4am. Then repeated the following night. So it turns out, medically speaking, that to acclimatise properly to altitude, getting pissed till 4am in the morning isn’t regarded as particularly beneficial.

Anyway we set off on the Sunday morning, with a nice 2 hours’ trek to ‘base camp’ at 4,600 metres. Pisco is right behind me on this picture...

A few hours’ sleep, then up at 1 o’clock in the morning to start the trek (the aim is to reach the summit early in the morning, before the snow gets too soft through the heat of the sun… bearing in mind that Peru is pretty close to the equator so the sun’s really strong). To actually reach the snow line, it was necessary to cross the ‘moraine’ first. What happens with the mountains here is the snow falls on top, so on the steeper, higher sections you’ve essentially got fresh snow on top of the rock. As the snow drifts down the mountain, it compacts under its own weight into ice, forming the glacier (with the crevasses, or cracks), this tends to be less steep. Over time, the glacier moves down the mountain (if you ever watch the David Attenborough type programmes, they often show this movement speeded up, it’s relatively quick for a natural phenomenon), and the action of the ice moving over the rock, as well as the sheer pressure of it, breaks up the earth underneath into boulders, rocks, rubble and sand. This is known as the moraine, and on Pisco at least it was a few hundred metres wide, over a kilometre long, and in the form of a huge channel with steep walls.

The first challenge was getting down into it. This involved a steep sandy path, with precarious footholds and a very steep drop if you slipped. Needless to say our guide José and Carine skipped down it like a couple of mountain goats, leaving me panicking like a little girl behind them. Once we’d got past this, what should have taken us an hour and a half ended up taking double the time, as the altitude sickness kicked in. Carine was feeling dizzy and nauseous, and neither of us could walk more than a few metres at a time without stopping. It was physically exhausting, with the snow line, our target, constantly seeming closer but getting ever further away. By the time we reached the snow line, at 5,200 metres, we were shattered, and the sun was coming up. We managed to walk for another hour on the snow, to reach the ‘col’ of the mountain at 5,300 metres, before we had to call it a day. ‘Col’ means shoulder, it’s basically like the lowest point of the ridge joining one mountain to the next, but it was a target to aim for in that it allowed us to see over the other side of the valley and enjoy the views. To have carried on to the summit proper would have taken another 4 hours or so, so we weren’t even close. To be honest, if we’d been properly acclimatised, we’d have made it further up, but I doubt we’d have made it to the top, you just have to be in incredibly good shape for that.

At the exact time we reached the highest point we were to go up to, the church service for Carine’s grand father Gaston’s funeral was taking place in France, so it was nice to pause and think of him and all the family back in France.

Getting back to base camp was even harder, scrambling over big boulders is hard enough with fresh legs, with tired legs it starts to get a bit tricky. And the final path up out of the moraine was even scarier in the daylight when you could properly see how big the drop was. Carine even managed to trip and fall off one of the ridges, luckily the gradient wasn’t too steep and she managed to stop herself falling to far (insisting on shouting out she was fine even as she continued to slide down the slope of loose rock and sand). Eventually, 9 ½ hours after setting off, we made it back to base camp, very tired and exhausted and ready for some sleep. You just couldn't beat the view from our tent 'window'...

The following day, with fresh legs, we trekked over to ‘Lake 69’ (and yes, it does have the same connotation in Spanish). This was a fantastic day’s walking (just a mere 5 hrs this time), over paths that were narrow at times, but not quite as bad as the day before, with the reward of a view of Chacraraju mountain overlooking the lake itself as you come over the ridge of the mountain separating the two valleys. Probably the most spectacular scenery I’ve even seen when out trekking.

It was quite enjoyable as we took the ‘motorway’ (i.e. easy) path back to the road, passing day trippers looking absolutely exhausted, making us feel a bit better about our own physical trekking ability. Our guide was a top bloke, but he was a genuine expert mountaineer, and these people are seriously a breed apart.

Back in town later that day, we hit the bars again, this time discovering ‘Xtreme’ bar. Again, a quiet Thursday night beer turned into a 4am finish (quite how we managed to pull ourselves out of bed the next day to do a 35 kms mountain-bike ride, I’m not sure…), as Maria and Ericka working in the bar turned out again to be the loveliest friendliest people, giving us freedom of choice on the music selection (they even had Big Country!), free cocktails every so often, and so on. Carine ended up dancing on the bar along with the girls working there, pure class.

We had so much fun we decided to stay on till the weekend, however the combined effects of days out walking in the mountains plus nights out on the piss were more than my body at least could handle, and by the last night I was shattered, back in bed by a none too impressive one in the morning. Can’t hack it like I used to unfortunately.

Anyway as I write it’s Sunday, and we’re off to Lima tonight, from where we’ll grab a bus to Huacachina (an oasis in the desert, literally). From there we head off to Cuzco (for Machu Picchu) via Ayacucho. There was some crazy talk last night of having a couple of weeks off the cerveza and Pisco Sours, we’ll see how that goes…

Gary

Santa Cruz trek

On Sunday, we joined a 4 days' trek in the Cordillera Blanca. It is the Santa Cruz trek, one of the most popular in the area.

We left Huaraz at 6 am and after a 6 hours' drive (which included going up a steep unpaved road consisting of an endless succession of hairpin bends), we reached Vaqueria, a tiny village where the trek starts. By then we had met our guide, a 22 year old Peruvian called Abel, and the people we would be walking with: Stephen and Lison (backpackers from California) and Aviv and Michal (newly-weds from Israel who were there on their honeymoon. Not quite the usual Caribbean honeymoon dream!). We walked for 4 hours on the first day and reached the camping site at about 5 pm.

Since we were at 3,900 metres, the night was cold and it was pretty hard to get out of our sleeping bags when we woke up at 5.30 am! However the view we got of the sunrise made it well worth it:

We set off after a quick breakfast (Stephen and Lison actually didn't continue the trek but made their way back to Huaraz as she was feeling very ill). Day 2 was definitely the most physically demanding, as it consisted of going up a pass at 4,750 metres above sea level. We walked for just over 8 hours - it took about 5 to reach the top but our efforts were rewarded with some amazing views:

Despite the fact that we are well acclimatised to the altitude (after all we spent a lot of time in Quito, which is at nearly 3,000 metres above sea level), we both felt the effects of going up so high over a short period of time.

On the way down from the pass to our camp site, we bumped into Gerome and Virginie, whom we had met in our hostel in Quito over a month ago. How strange that this should happen in the middle of nowhere! A funny coincidence which we turned into a nice Kodak moment ;)

Back at the camping site (4,200 metres up), we had once again amazing views of a huge mountain called Taulliraju:

Abel cooked us a lovely meal which helped us recover from our altitude headaches. Once we were warm and had a full stomach, he introduced the idea of doing a detour to see a lake at 4,600 metres the next day, which meant we would do a 9 hours' walk rather than the standard 6. I guess he got us at a moment of weakness, as we all said yes! We were tucked up in our sleeping bags by 8 pm, having no energy left whatsoever to socialize with our trekking partners.

So on Day 3, we once again woke up at 5.30 am and set off at sunrise. The good thing is, you tend to warm up very quickly! On the way to the lake, we saw a mountain which looked very familiar... does it remind you of something?

Here's a clue...

The detour was definitely worth it: fantastic views on the way and the lake we were aiming for was stunning... we could hear avalanche sounds coming from the mountain directly opposite us. This kind of thing makes you feel very very small!

(from afar the piles of stones look like Buddhist stupas but they were really just cairns).

We were stunned when we saw a woman from another group taking a dip in the freezing lake. Seriously, it was cold! She actually had a bit of a swim... even Abel told us that he had been in the water once, but not stayed in for more than 20 seconds. What a (brave/crazy) lady!

On the way back down, we had a nice picnic lunch... how very civilised. We were seriously spoilt by our guide :)So we had plenty of energy to walk all day, and we did make it to the next camp site in the 9 hours predicted. On the way there we were once again treated to some lovely landscapes...

And for our last night we camped in a nice little spot by the river.

I guess we had built up stamina from the day before, and in the evening we had enough energy and enthusiasm left in us to play a few games of card with Aviv and Michal. I am pleased to report I kicked Gary's ass big time!

Finally (and sadly) the last day came... we reached the little village of Cashapampa, where the trek ends, in a couple of hours. We stood, proud and stinky, for one last photo...

Needless to say it was wonderful to peel off our clothes and have a hot shower when we got back to Huaraz yesterday! We were a bit too shattered for a celebratory night out, but after a good night' sleep and a nice lie in this morning, we are both in the mood for a few Pisco Sours tonight.

We are going to stay in Huaraz for a bit, as the plan is to try and climb a snowy summit (we're currently thinking of Pisco, which is 5,700 metres high). It'll be my first time, I'm both scared and excited at the prospect... watch this space!

C.

Southern Ecuador and Northern Peru

So after a couple of days' chilling in Quito (where we took the last of our salsa lessons... check out the video below, our efforts are recorded on tape. We're absolutely rubbish but I guess we get points for trying), we made our way south via Cuenca and spent a few days in Vilcabamba (still in Ecuador).

We found a jewel of a hostel to stay in (called Izhcayluma and ran by a German guy) - slightly above our budget but it included a delicious and huge breakfast which set us up for the day, so I guess we saved what we would have otherwise spent on food during the day. The views of the surrounding mountains were amazing. They also provided us with detailed maps of treks you could do locally, and we chose a lovely, varied one which took us on the ridge of a high hill - very nice, if a little bit scary.

The next day we did another trek on horseback and it was fantastic. Gary is even starting to get a taste for it!

Next, we headed off to Peru - setting off from Vilcabamba on 22/8 at 6 am. First of all we took a bus to Zumba, which was meant to take 6 hours but due to the state of the road (unpaved, up on the side of a mountain, with road works and rain) it turned into a 10 hour journey. At one point the bus couldn't go up a steep slope because the rain had turned the road into mud, so we waited two and a half hours there waiting for it to dry out a bit. We were amazed to even make it to Zumba!

From Zumba, we took this funny looking open-sided local bus:Once we got on the mountain road that led us into Peru, we were glad that a) the bus had wide, sturdy front wheels which looked like you couldn't take them off the ground if you wanted to, and b) that the driver was over 50 years' old, which means he'd survived a few years driving on this mad, windy road hanging off the side of a mountain so he would hopefully get us there in one piece.

We got to La Balsa (the border between Ecuador and Peru) at 7 pm and entered Peru on foot in the dark. We were welcomed by a very friendly Peruvian customs officer, but unfortunately had to spend the night at the border because there were no taxis to get out of there. So we booked ourselves into the only "hotel" there and shared a room with a couple of huge beetles (which had taken residence in the shower), scary giant moths and God knows what else.

The next day, we woke up at 4.30 am and managed to find a taxi to San Ignacio, which we shared with a couple of very nice locals. After a couple of hours we reached San Ignacio, and from there we once again shared a "public taxi" with a couple of friendly locals to get to Jaén. We reached Jaén in a couple of hours and from there, surprise surprise... we took another public taxi to Bagua Grande. Which we also reached in a couple of hours, and where we took another public taxi, the last one (!) in the direction of Chachapoyas, our final destination. When we got there at the end of the day, we had to lie on our stomach on the bed for a couple of hours as our backsides were hurting so much from spending the past 48 hours in narrow seats and on bumpy roads.

Anyway, it was worth it! A not so straightforward but exciting way of entering Peru, and also a great opportunity to chat with the locals we were sharing transport with. Peruvians are generally very, very friendly and happy to listen to our broken Spanish and converse with us, which is the loveliest feeling.

The next day in Chachapoyas, we walked for a couple of hours to reach the 800 metres' high canyon of Huancas (chuckle chuckle... if you don't understand why I am saying this, read "Huancas" out loud...). It was stunning:On the way there we met Fabio, an Argentinian architect from Buenos Aires who is travelling around Ecuador and Peru for a couple of months. So as well as doing a lovely little trek, we chatted away in Spanish with Fabio for 4 hours. Hopefully he enjoyed the conversation as much as we did, as we agreed to meet up for dinner that night. He told us all about the corruption of the Argentinian government in a very passionate way, hard to follow but once again very good practice for us! Anyway we exchanged e-mails and are hoping to see him when we reach Buenos Aires in the next couple of months.

The next day, we took a day trip to Kuélap, 'a pre-Inca walled city' discovered in 1843 and apparently built over a period of 200 years, between 900 and 1100 AD. The mountains around it were really spectacular, too:

On the same day, we took a very comfortable overnight bus to Trujillo, on the coast. We stayed there for a day and a half and visited more archeological sites:

- Huacas De La luna, a huge Moche pyramid which consists of several levels. Each level, inhabited by an emperor, was covered in bricks each time the emperor in question died (it was basically turned into his tomb). This means that the decorations and paintings on the walls, which were uncovered throughout the 90s, still have their colours pretty much intact. It was amazing to stand before these walls and think that the colours were applied to the walls about 1500 years ago!

- We also visited Chan Chán, which our Footprint guide tells us is the remains of the largest adobe city in the world, built by Chimú kings. The archeological site where they have been uncovering remains for the past 20 years or so is amazingly big (something like 28 square kms). Once we entered the one adobe site where visitors are allowed, we almost had the impression we were in Egypt...

I even started to 'walk like an Egyptian'... ah ah... erm, ok, not.

A few kilometres away from Trujillo, thereis a little seaside town called Huenchaco where you can see both surfers and local fishermen on traditional canoe-like boats braving the waves. We enjoyed a lovely sunset on the pier.

Finally, we took another really nice and comfortable overnight bus to Huaraz, where we arrived six days ago. We had a lot of fun going on a trek in the past few days, but I think I will write about it separately as this is a really long entry...

C.