Hangin' in Rio

I've been up since 6.30am on Friday morning in Rio. It's now about 2.30am Sunday morning in Rio so that's nearly 48 hours. I did doze a bit on the plane home (13 hour flight!) but I'm a bit tired so not sure how comprehensible this post will be. But it's been a huge day and I really feel I need to finish the blog with the last day post.

I was supposed to go hang gliding on Thursday morning but the weather was bad and it was cancelled. I stuck out my bottom lip for a while then rang them back and arranged it for Friday morning. They were pretty sure that there was time to fit it in and still make it to the airport for my 1pm international flight.

I had my bags packed and was ready to go at 7.30am as the park where the takeoff site is opens at 8am. Antu (or Hantu or something completely different) had only a 20 minute warning that I was coming and jumped out of bed to come and pick me up. We then went back to his place where we picked up a woman and a hang glider. Two minutes later a man on the side of the road handed him a card. Further up the hill another man got into the car and then another man handed him a ticket. He lives just down the hill from the takeoff site so we were soon all kitted up and doing a bit of a practice. My instructions were:

- hold lightly to the red handhold on his back and his side and we then run together. Don't hold too tight and don't push him or we will crash and die
- once we've started down the ramp, don't stop running or we will crash and die
- keep running off the end of the ramp - don't jump or push off or we will crash and die
- don't touch the bar or the cables or we will...hmm, I think you can guess

After this inspiring introduction and a disclaimer form (ssshh, don't tell Mum that hang gliding isn't covered by my travel insurance) we were ready to go. I followed all instructions exactly but had to shut my eyes going down the ramp so I didn't hesitate or freak out thereby causing us to crash and die.

When I opened my eyes we were flying over the trees of the largest urban forest in the world (Tijuca forest). So that's what it looks like for birds. We could see Cristo Redentor in all his scaffolded glory and had great views over parts of the city, the beach and out to sea. I absolutely loved it.

We glided over the golf course and some apartment buildings, then out over the sea and down to land on the beach. First of all when we were about 60 metres up (I have no idea how far up actually, that's just a complete guess, but it felt quite high) I lifted by leg up and Antu removed the cables holding my legs up. I really felt like I was falling but obviously I didn't. The photos with my legs hanging down look really funny though. We kind of turned and swooped quite bit on the way down and then we had to run along the sand and then it was all over. The flight was about 15 minutes but I loved it so much and I hugged Antu when it was over. I am definitely going hang gliding again. Antu reckons he's coming to Queenstown in the summer to do tandem hang gliding. I think I might have to pop down and have another go.

It was all over by about 9.15 so I go to the airport with plenty of time for the flight. We had a 10 hour stop over in Buenos Aires so had time for some last minute shopping (lots of wine and a handbag for Debbie) and dinner at one of the best steak houses in Buenos Aires (and there there a lot of good steak houses), La Cabrera. At all the other steak houses we've been too, you order a steak and you get a steak. It's large, but it's all alone on the plate. So we ordered fries to go with it. What a mistake. My very large steak came with 12 different little side dishes including a mini cast iron pot with an omelette in it. Debbie had ordered a half portion of steak so she only got eight side dishes. She didn't manage to finish even her half a steak (Jeannie, Leon where were you? We needed you to finish our dinner for us!) A very nice bottle of Argentinian Malbec (red wine) accompanied the meal.

Then it was in a taxi to one airport to pick up our bags and go to the international airport. We had a little prang in the first taxi. I had been expecting it for the whole 5 weeks of the holiday so I really was surprised. I think there was another sharp inhalation and my heart beat a bit faster for a while, but I was remarkably calm.

And now I'm home. Lots of photos and memories, a few bottles of Malbec to drink and remember, a stack of alfajors (yummy chococlate biscuits) and some dulche de leche (caramel spread) to help me get back to my usual weight, and a hankering to see more of South America. I'm gonna have to start saving my leave again.

Rio in a day

Due to a change in our flights made by the airline, we effectively only really had a day in Rio. we started slow with a walk to Copacabana beach. Thankfully, Debbie navigated otherwise we would have ended up at a tunnel (who could tell from the map?) We had a nice walk along the edge of the water until a big wave came along and went straight up my skirt and soaked the bottom of Debbie´s trousers. We took the hint and went shopping.

We booked a city tour for the afternoon and saw the highlights of Rio in 6 1/2 hours. We started with Cristo Redento (the big jesus on the hill). The train isn´r running because of the landslides so we took a van up instead. Jesus is also a bit sick because of the landslide and is covered in scaffolding. The views from the hill (highest in Rio) were fantastic - looking out across the bay, the lagoon, the favelas (slums), the beaches.

Next we went to the Maracana football stadium where I put my feet in the footsteps of some great Brasilian players - Pele, Kaka, Renaldo. I´ve never heard of any of them, but I´m sure some of you will be impressed.

Next was the Sambadromo where carnival is held. It´s a little boring without all the people, bright costumes and people dancing, but there was a video playing in a little musuem/shop and it would be pretty cool to visit during carnival.

We then turned a little spiritual with a visit to San Sebastian cathedral. It has some great stained glass windows and I imagine on a sunny day it would be stunning (it was overcast, with occasional drizzle).

Last stop was Sugar Loaf. It´s two cable car rides up to a 396 metre rock. The second rock is almost a sheer drop and I must be turning into my ssister because I almost announced to all 40 people in the car that we were going to die. Again, fantastic views, but this time at twilight and at night. Some people climb the rock but they must be nutters.

We finished the day at the restaurant where ´The Girl from Ipanema´ was inspired. Very touristy, but nice food. It all ended badly though when I looked down and say a giant cockroach on my thigh. I managed not to scream (sharp inhalation only) and shook it off to the floor where it was promptly squashed by the waiters shoe.

Then home to bed. The place where we stayed was really noisy - taxi stand just outside the door - but with ear plugs we were fine.

Brazilian haircut

No, it~s not some new form of waxing. I got my haircut today in Rio. It was another early morning start to get to the Brazil side of the falls and catch our flight to Rio. Nice two hour flight with some nice views of the coast.

We got our transfer to the hostel okay (nice drive through the city) but the damn hostel had screwed up our booking so we´re at a nicer cheaper place around the corner. Worked out well really.

We have a lovely lunch at a posh Asian fusion restaurant just one block from the beach (nice beach, can~t figure out why they~re all sitting in deck chairs when the sand looks lovely). Three course meal and wine all for about $30 each. Spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the shops (and getting a haircut of course). Have a big day planned for tomorrow and then we head for home on Friday.

I´m going to sue the entire city of Puerto Iguazu for emotional distress

Okay, so only four people live here so calling it a city is a bit of an exaggeration. But all four of them have put bathroom tiles on the footpath outside their shop/house/vacant lot. And when it rains (which it has been doing a bit of lately) they get all slippery and I spend my days and nights walking with trepidation everywhere with the occasional slip, wobble and whoa until I steady myself.

Rant over. Have been for lovely meal of pizza (with fresh ham and some kind of lettuce - rucula) followed by brownie. mmmm.

Bus stop in Brazil

Today we saw the falls from Brazil. We missed the bus from Argentina and the next one wasn´t for an hour so we caught a taxi instead. It´s quite a different view of the falls from the other side. You get more of a whole of the falls view (funnily enough, just like the guide book said). there´s really only one walk worth doing and that didn´t take us that long. I took quite a few more photos - I´ve taken about 1500 photos in all so far on thsi trip. It´s going to be a nightmare to try and whittle them down to the best for showing to other people.

The most exciting part of the day was the trip home. We thought that there was bus to Argentina at 1pm but we got on a bus to Foz de Iguazu (in Brazil) and the women said that we should change buses. She even told us when we should get off. So there we were, in this shoddy looking excuse for a bus stop with no idea where we were or where we were going. A bus to Paraguay went passed and then Debbie had the bright idea that we should walk up to where there were road signs. Twenty metres down the road and a bus to Argentina went by. Damn.

So we went back to the bus stop and stood there watching traffic go by for a while and finally hailed a cab. Turns out we were about 200 metres from the border and we were standing on the wrong side of the road. Oh well, we got home with very little trouble in the end and it only cost about twice as much as the bus.

Things were much more organised when we had a tour guide (thanks Shiry and Leon) but we´re quite enjoying our mistakes and having to navigate ourselves. We´re having to use our spanish quite a bit more too. And I don´t care what Debbie´s cussie Chris says, they really so say grassy-arse (Gracias).

Paraguain adventure

The guidebook says that Paraguay is a great place to shop. It also says that we need a visa to enter. But the man in the information centre said that we don´t need one and that we should only go to customs on the Argentinian side. So that´s what we did. I´m still not sure if we were illegal immigrants again for a couple of hours.

Ciudad del Este - the city in Paraguay right by the border - is basically madness. Crossing symonds street all those years at University was good training - except in Paraguay there are also motorbikes everywhere weaving there way in and out of the traffic and playing chicken with oncoming traffic.

I think we only went about 500 metres into Paraguay, but that was enough. There are people everywhere trying to sell you stuff on the street. Apparently, I looked like I was in desparate need of socks as everyone tried to sell them to me. There are arcades full of shops with electronic goods. Debbie bought some cheap GHDs (hair straighteners) but we´re not sure if they´re the real thing or not.

We ended up in a fancy mall having a fancy lunch and then coming home. As we didn´t have clue where the bus stop was, we just stood on the edge of the main street and luckily a bus with ´Argentina´on it came along straight away.

I read a book once set in South America where it said that sitting in the middle of hte bus was safest. The main character made the mistake of sitting in the front and his girlfriend died. As popular fiction is the best source of tourist infomration (ha ha), I´ve been following this advice as much as possible. However, the bus was jam packed and I found myself resting my arms on the dashboard trying not to lean against the door and thinking about this book. But it meant that I had a great view of the road and I probably had a better ride than if I´d been crammed in the middle somewhere. And they bus ride was only about 45 minutes.

Iguazu fly by

I think I pulled out the ´O for Awesome´ too soon. I could put an expletive in front of it, but my grandma may read this and there´s a small chance she thinks I don´t know those words. I was thinking ´Iguazu is the schizz´ but I´m not entirely sure what ´schizz´ means and it might be a bit rude.

Anyway, Judith Bassett told me in tutor training that ´wow´ and ´awesome´ are not appropriate descriptions and stating why things are so good is required.

So, we flew from BA to Iguazu and the pilot took us over the falls. Twice. They look great from the air with plumes of mist coming up into the air. Lorna from our group tour come with us and we all stayed in the worst hostel in Iguazu for the next two nights (Debbie and I have now moved and Lorna has gone back BA). El Guembe Hostel House is crap. The shower doesn´t work and the toilet only flushes when it feels like it. It was also very, very noisy last night. (Rant over.)

We got up early on the first morning and caught the first bus to the Argentinian side of the falls and arrived at 7.30am. Unfortunately, the park doesn´t open till 8am so we had a nice sit. The park covers quite a large area and I thought there was no way we´d see everything in a day, but it´s not a bit as it looks and we managed to see quite a lot. Getting there early was a good idea as we had several of the walks practically to ourselves.

There is so much water going over the falls that there is a mist in front of them and it´s quite hard to see from some angles. They closed one of the walks because there´s so much water. Just one of the falls by itself would be impressive but seeing them lined up one after the other is amazing. And they looks so neat and tidy. Huge amounts of water go over the falls, especially at the Devil´s throat. I was almost mesmirised watching it. They have a walkway out over the river and the islands so that you are right beside the fall. The photos simply don´t do it justice.

We took and inflatable boat ride down the river and saw a baby alligator and the river from a quieter angle. Then it was in a jeep from which we saw toucans and down through the jungle to a boat. It was an 6km boat ride through some rapids which were fun, but nothing on the next bit. The boat goes really close to the San Martin fall >(second highest in the park) and the water just sprays out at you (screaming in delight is compulsory and Lorna, Debbie and I complied). The boat also goes into the beginning of the Devil´s throat and practically under a waterfall. Just to make sure you´re really wet. Saturated but happy, we then made our way home and went out to a lovely chinese restaurant (wok) which makes a chocolate volcanoe which we all had to try.

A place where you can flush toilet paper

I told myself that I was not going to write about toilets on this trip, but it was so, so nice to be able to flush toilet paper down in Buenos Aires instead of putting in a little rubbish bin in the bathroom. Of course, now we´re in Iguazu and back to the rubbish bin, but those four days were fabulous.

Buenos Aires is fabulous for other reasons as well, of course. Shopping, for instance. The main tourist shopping area is Florida street and it´s full of leather and clothes and markets. Of course, latin american women and small and nothing fits me. Not the beautiful leather boots nor the lovely tops. They have some quite large shops where individual designers have their own little shelf or two each where I found a top and a skirt. Just as well because I´m really sick of the clothes that I brought with me. What kind of moron thinks three t-shirts will be enough? And I´ve bought a couple more along the way.

We´ve seen quite a bit of the Tango with lessons and a show the first night and a visit to a local tango spot where they were having a competition on the third night. We also visited La Boca and had a small tango show with lunch. La Boca is the old port area but is really really touristy now and is much smaller than I expected. I did buy a painting there though and Debbie got some jewelry.

I did a city walking tour with a bunch of others from our tour group while Debbie slept and shopped (she´d done the city before). We started at the place where Parliament sits (Wednesday´s only - what a life) and walked down past some of the lovely buildings including one based on Dante´s Inferno - can´t remember the name of it. We stopped at the Plaza de Mayo and the guide gave us some of the history of the dirty war and the mothers who still protest at the square every thursday. We encountered a number of protests on the walk, including one group who were letting off very loud fireworks every couple of minutes. Apparently there are 8 protests a day in BA on average.

We stood outside the Casa Rosada where the president works and saw the balcony from which Eva Peron spoke (and Madonna sang - which may mean more to some of you). Debbie and I went on a tour of the Casa Rosada on a different day - it´s usually closed but they have opened it for the 200 year celebration. In one room they have photos and brief bios of some of the important women in Argentinian history which was interesting. There were some great paintings as well.

The city tour also took us to the obelisk which is in the middle on the widest street in the world Avenida de 9 Julio. Actually, a street in Rio is wider but in some point in history the one in BA was the widest and no-one´s had the heart to break it to the Argentinians.

People in Buenos Aires tend to stay out late and I did my best but failed miserably. On our first night after the tango show, we went out to Palermo to a bar. We boogied for a bit and had a couple of drinks but by 2.30am I was ready to go home so came home. On our last night, we had dinner in a nice place in San Telmo. It looked a bit dingy but the food was really nice (I´ve never eaten so much steak in my life). We then headed back to Palermo to other couple of bars and drinks. Again, at 2.30am I piked and come home (we did have to get up and fly to Iguassu the next day).

One of the best things we did in BA was visit MALBA - a latin american art museum. Some really great paintings in a really nice gallery. The only disappointment was that they didn´t have many prints of the art actually in the gallery. Quite a few Van goghs and monets but who goes to South American to buy european art prints?

Chile feels like such a long time ago

But really it was only about a week ago. And we were only there for two days. Our visit started with a border crossing experience. One must sit in the bus for an appropriate amount of time looking miserable before you can cross. Sitting in the sun outside the bus is not allowed and god forbid you get out a pink frisbie and start throwing it around. They will let an entire busload of people in front of you.

Once we passed that test, we were officially in San Pedro in Chile. There is not a lot there. A lot of restaurants and art and craft shops and markets but no pharmacy or supermarket. We made the most of the restaurants and shopping (surprising I know).

We did go sandboarding which was heaps of fun and both Debbie and I were very successful. The photos look very impressive. The video less so as you can see how slow we are actually going. But we managed quite a steep dune without falling over. The downside is that our driver was probably stoned and later in the day he was having a wee tipple of pisco sour before driving us all home. But wait, I{ve skippéd a bit. The Valley of hte Moon was included in the tour and he tried to charge us extra for entry (we did{t pay) and then we were late for the sunset. The views were still pretty awesome though.

We had a little trouble leaving Chile as they had moved the bus stop, but the border crossing was fairly tame (form, stamp, empanada, leave). The drive from to Salta across the Andes was pretty cool though. Lots of great views and a very dodgy game of high-low going on in the back seat. I wasn{t game to play, but I did get a good laugh at some of the antics of the others in the group. Not sure if Jeannie walking down the aisle as a chicken, Nurain with his pants down or Anish working it and kissing his guns was the funniest. Others were in rather less good taste.

We had very little time in Salta. We had a bus trip along the route of the Train to the Clouds for the whole day. There was some really lovely scenery but we were all day in a bus having just spent the previous day in a bus. And we didn{t really have time to see Salta. Debbie and I were a bit grumpy when we go back so decided to go out for dinner by ourselves. After a bit of shopping (Debbie bought art) we turned up to the best restaurant in town according to my travel book and found the rest of hte group. Had a really nice meal with them as we were in a much better mood after some retail therapy.

I´m having far too much fun in BA to do a real post

I´ve finally found time to stop at an internet shop and they close in 10 minutes. Rest assured, I´m still alive for those worryworts out there (that means you Iris!). Having a great time. Will have to catch you up on Chile and Argentina when we get to Iguassu (our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon).

The Rotorua of South America

I wouldn´t get up at 5am in the morning to go and see a tiny wee geyser as home so I´m not sure why I did it in South America. But it was Nikki´s birthday so we woke here with a resounding rendition of Happy Birthday at 5am before heading out to see some bubbling mud and a geyser. It was lovely to see the sun rise on the mountains, but it was way too cold to open the window in the 4WD so I hope my photos turned out okay.

The highlight was the hot pools at about 8am. We stripped to our bikinis in the freezing cold and jumped into the clear waters on a lovely, reasonably hot natural springs. We hadn´t had a shower for days so it was very, very welcome. All it needed was a massage and a pedicure.... The pancakes and dulce de leche (caramel kind of sauce) for breakfast were pretty good too.

Then we were headed for another border via some more spectacular scenery. Laguna Verde, some vicunas, some snow tipped mountains. It´s a hard life really.

Pretty (stinky) flamingos and snow men

So here I am in Buenos Aires, but I´ve yet to tell you about the rest of Bolivia, let alone Chile and Argentina so far.

Our second day on our 4WD trek across the salt plains and Atacama desert was very different from our first. Gone was the smooth white sea and we were back onto bumpy roads (my poor right butt cheek - I think I´ve broken my bum. Debbie is determined that there are no bones to break, but I´m not so sure. It´s been over a week now!) There are a number of lagoons filled with various minerals where the flamingos hang out. We got some lovely photos, but I have to tell you: flamingo poo really stinks. Kind of like Rotorua when the wind is blowing the wrong way. We had a nice (quite short) walk alongside one of the lagoons before lunch and then headed into the national park.

Unfortunately the entry fee (included in the tour) had increased from 30 bolivianos to 150 bolivianos on 1 May (apparently to pay to improve the roads which, quite frankly, could do with millions of bolivianos so I think you should all visit. Quite a price hike and our guide didn´t have enough money. I had american dollars but they wouldn´t take those so it Leon had to find someone who would change them for us.

It had snowed recently and the landscape was really pretty. Bits of snow littered the tundra like white plastic bags and was scattered across the mountains like icing sugar. It was quite hard and crunchy and difficult to mold into snowmen (or snow balls) but we did our best. There are some interesting rock formations which we also stopped to see and had another snow fight.

Much of the day was spent in the 4WDs. We had a bit of excitement when we got a flat tire but our driver lived up to his name (Gonzales) and had it changed in the time it took me to peel an orange and we were on our way again.

Our accommodation for the night was freezing. Debbie was sporting a sexy outfit which included nearly everything she had with her including her merino icebreaker dress. She got really cold in the night despite all of the layers, sleeping bag and about six blankets. Someone needs to introduce heaters to these people.

O for Awesome

Speaking of the alphabet, have you ever done the actions to YMCA while speeding across salt flats? I can now cross that particular item off my to do list.

But wait, I´m getting ahead of myself. Last post was from Potosi.

It as a long bus ride from Potosi to Uyuni where we started our salt flats tour. The bus, a private one, was apparently quite a lot better that the standard public bus even though we took orders from a 10 year old kid. No, you can´t have the windows open, turn down the sound on the video.... There was no toilet in the bus and there is literally nothing between Potosi and Uyuni so the toilet stop on the 6 hour bus ride was behind a rock while truck drivers watched on from above (at least, so I´ve heard).

The scenery was amazing. Mountains, little valleys with willow and poplar trees, rock scapes. Very beautiful. I´ve taken way too many photos.

There is nothing to do in Uyuni except go out onto the Salar de Uyuni and three 4WDs picked us up the next morning from the hotel. Our 4WD was driven by Gonzales (I kid you not), but we weren´t very speedy. He was a careful driver for whick my right butt cheek was very grateful. He had three CDs in his car - Disco Fever 1 and 2, and a bolivian national music. We were to hear much of all three over the next three days.

After playing silly buggers in a train graveyard, we were out on the plains. They´re like nothing I´ve seen before. You see a little mountain peering over the horizon and then a couple of hours later you´re dwarfed by that same huge mountain. There are little ´islands´along the way. And they´re covered in cactuses - I hadn´t expected there to be cactuses. The white of the plains stretches on forever and it´s really hard to get proper perspective. Great for photos. We had lots of fun for several hours playing with our cameras. Debbie has a great photo of her flicking me off her hand. I got to be the tiny person in a lot of photos.

Next we were off to our accommodation for the night. A hotel made entirely of salt. It was nothing like I´d expected. They cut bricks of salt our of the ground and build it just like a normal house. Only difference is that tiny pieces of salt fall off the walls and ceiling during the night and hit you on the head - I had a wee chicken little moment until I realised what it was.

The evening started badly with drinking games. I cheated massively as I just don´t recover like I used to and only had four drinks for the whole evening. It was quite fun though.

Everything in the salt hotel is run by generator so the lights are on until 10pm. Poneh and I went for a walk outside after lights out. The stars (no moon) were absolutely magnificent. Unfortunately, they locked the doors on us so we had to undertake a bit of banging on the door before they´d let us back in.

Boom!

Our transport from La Paz was a night bus to Potosi - the bus was actually quite comformtable and I slept for quite a bit of the trip (8.30pm to 5.30am). Our hotel in Potosi is pretty crap and I´m a bit suspicious of the sheets so have using sleep sheet (thanks Penny!).

Potosi used to be one of the riches towns in South America and much of the spanish empire was funded from the silver mines here. It´s a very pretty little town and we had a wander around the streets and some of the markets after a bit of a kip and breakfast at the hotel.

We went for a tour of the silver mines yesterday afternoon. I´ve been down a coal mine on the west coast and had envisaged a similar sort of thing. We were dressed up in gumboots, leggings, top, helmet and light (Debbie had a sexy pink pair of leggings, I was in a yellow and red ensemble). All quite familiar so far.

Next we stop off at a shop to buy supplies for the miners we were going to see - you know, the usual: biscuits, cigarettes, cacao leaves, dynamite. On the west coast it was Playboy magazines so I had my first inkling that things might be a bit different.

I had to bend over just about double to get into the mine and things did not improve much from there. It was often low, narrow and you had to watch out for ´hole on the left!´. I felt quite uncomfortable in a number of places - as did many of our group. The tunnels we were in were built in the 16th century so that´s why they´re so low. Also, the people are quite short over here.

On meeting our first miner (at 60, a miracle man as most miners die by about 45) most of us had a go at using the hammer and chisel to make a dynamite hole. Then, out of the blue, our miner disappears and we´re told we need to move back down the tunnel as he´s going to let off some dynamite. All of our lights are off, we´re huddled in the dark (well, apart from the lights from everyone´s camera´s) and then BOOM followed by nervous laughter from all of us.

I´d had enough by then and would have been quite happy to leave, but we had to go through all of these other tunnels, meet other miners and go and visit the devil. This is a statue underground with a very large red topped penis. If you touch his penis you can make a wish. I declined. The devil is how the spanish convinced the native people to continue mining. They told them that the devil would take their spirit if they refused to work. Eight million people died in the mines. There is still about one death a day, but now it is a cooperative (if I understood the guide correctly) so they are responsible for their own safety. They use oranges as a guide to bad gases. They put half an orange out and check it every 10 minutes. If the orange goes rotten, it´s time to hot foot it out of there quick smart.

When we were finally outside, our guide lights up a dynamite stick and then calmly walks maybe 200 metres away from us, puts it down and then runs back to us. There was actually plenty of time - it was about a minute and a half before we got our second boom. It gave me such a fright that I pushed the stop button on the video recorder of my camera - still go the explosion though.

The tour was interesting, but I was a bit unimpressed. There was very little information given, the safety information was non-existent and I felt that they were making a tourist attraction out of the poor working conditions (that damn Janet has got to me).

We had a lovely dinner out and I had Bolivian food (well, kind of) for the first time. Llama, chicken and bacon skewers with chips and veges. Mostly I´ve eaten Italian and Asian food in Bolivia. There are some quite interestly food on the side of the road, but I´m not prepared to get sick again.

The British Invasion

Even though we´ve booked a 26 day tour, it´s actually two tours joined together so not only do we have a new tour lead (Leon the Brit living in Argentina) but we also have four new people. All Brits. Half of our group are now British. And we are no longer a group of chicas. There´s two new women, Lorna and Lucy who I don´t know a lot about yet except that Lucy is a primary school teacher. There are also two blokes Anish and Nurane (unsure of spelling). So three guys (including tour leader). It´s a very different group dynamic. There´s few single girls in the group so should be interesting.....

I survived death road (with only a few scrapes and bruises)

An early morning start, a very unsatisfying breakfast (reheated toast, a one hour bus trip and we were freezing our arses off at the top of some very foggy hill. They´d provided us with pants (too short), gloves, an orange vest and a helmet. My red raincoat topped off the look. Our aim: to mountain bike 3345 metres over 64 km down hill. The first 25 odd km was on a wide, well-marked tarseal road and was quite good for gaining confidence with the bike. I had the brake on most of the way as I don´t like to go too fast. Then, we got on the bus for the 4km uphill before we reached the death road.

The death road got it´s name for obvious reasons. Lots of people have died on it. But it used to be the main highway and therefore had lots of traffic on it. They´ve put in a new road now and there are hardly any cars so it´s a lot safer - as long as you take a bit of care and stay away from the sheer drops. The first 10km are the worst so I took that really slowly and was a bit nervous.

The rest of the death road was a lot of fun and we had some really good views as we got lower down. The flora really changes (probably the fauna too but the most we saw were a couple of really huge brightly coloured butterflies). We got down to about 1000metres and my lungs couldn´t believe their luck. I hardly got out of breath on the slightly uphill bits! I´m gonna be able to run a marathon when I get back to sea level.

Having successfully navigated the death road, we took an alternate route down and this is where I took a wee tumble off the bike. Don´t worry though, my right butt cheek took most of the brunt of the fall and that´s well padded. The worst was that my sunglasses slid up under my helmet and I have too small cuts on my forehead (paired with the tan marks from my sunglasses, I´m looking quite the thing right now).

I got back on the bike and did the last 10 minutes (otherwise they wouldn´t have given me the t-shirt!). The chappie from the bike company then washed down my arm and put disinfectant on my cuts. He looked a little concerned when I mentioned that my bum was sore, but I reassured him that I wasn´t expecting him to wash it.

It was a three hour trip home on the ´good´ road (ha, ha). Once again, we had problems getting into La Paz. It was 1 May (labour day) and there were all sorts of celebrations going on. People dressed up in flamboyant costumes (some looked quite oriental) and blocked roads. We eventually made our way back to the hotel where I had a well deserved early night. Debbie had chickened out of the bike ride in favour of a more relaxing day (smart woman) but they´d encountered May day protests with people firing guns into the air so stayed close to the hotel most of the day.

Today has been quite a quiet day. A wander though some parts of the city looking as some museums and taking in the atmosphere. We´re on the night bus (groan) to Potosi tonight with our new tour guide Leon for the rest of the trip - a Brit from Argentina.

Bolivia land of protest part II

So there we were, wending our way through the streets of El Alto to no avail. A quick conversation between the guide and some people and a bulldozer and we were off back the way we came, looking, I thought from trying to translate their spanish, for a bridge. Eventually we turned off the main highway and followed a group of cars, trucks and buses and forded a stream. All of the other cars, trucks and buses turned left and we kept going straight ahead. Oh f%$k, I thouhgt, where on earth are we going to end up. The outlet for all the sewage apparently. The road kind of disappeared and we forded stream after slushy pile of sewage to the soundtrack of whoops of delight from the driver at another successful manoevre and some lively spanish folk music followed by something reminiscent of a communist russian rally chant.

Thanks to some creative visualisation from Debbie, we eventually arrived at a tarsealed road and were back to hour hotel quite some time after we´d planned.

Debbie and I then went out for Pizza.

The 30 April in La Paz was a bit of a shit day. Not the fault of the city. I´d been feeling a bit unwell for a while, but felt quite crappy and had to go the pharmacy for some medicine (it kicked in really quickly and I´m feeling much better now). We wandered through some of the markets, watched a protest (very well behaved) through the main street. I think it was for education again. It was our last night with our Tour Guide so we went out on the town (I was home by 10pm - not feeling well annd all - but some of them stayed out to the wee hours of the morning).

To answer Mum´s question, Bolivia is a really poor country. La Paz is made up of three sectors. The top at about 4100 metres is the highest and is where the poorest people live - but they have the best views. The lowest is about 3000 metres and this is where the (relatively) rich people live. The reason that they live in the area without the views is that it´s about 6 degrees warmer at 3000 metres. Most of the farming I´ve seen is done by hand or with the help of a donkey.

Bolivia - land of protest

We were supposed to see the ruins of Tiwanaku on our way from Peru to Bolivia but, because of the change of plans, we headed out from La Paz yesterday. From the motorway we say a big stream of people walking down the street. The bus driver said that it was parents protesting for better equipment in their children´s schools. Sounds far enough to me - I´ve seen some of their schools.

La Paz is actually made up of two cities - La Paz and El Alto. And we needed to go through La Paz to get to the ruins. Unfortunately, the protests were continuing. This meant that the main road was blocked with so we did a little tiki tour (aptly named, you´ll find out why later) throught the back streets (all dirt roads) of the neighbourhood. It added about 30 minutes to our trip but was quite interesting looking into backyards etc.

(Apparently the reason for the protests is that the Ayamara people would like a separate district in the city from the other people (mainly Quechua)).

There was some lovely pastoral scenery again out to the ruins. The houses are still built like they were 100 years ago. Clay bricks, thatch roofs because this provides the best protection from the heat in the summer and cold in the winter. Mind you, they were still harvesting the crop by hand, so it must be a pretty tough life.

The ruins we visited were from the Tiwanaku people who were around from c.1500 BC to c.1250 AD. They were the longest surviving empire after Egypt. They were faily well advanced with their own pyramid at Tiwanaku along with a temple and other ruins. They were the predecessors of the Inca people (Quechua speakers) and I think also the Ayamara people (who were one of the few people who had an alliance with the Incas rather than being conquered by them). There are a number of statues surviving at the ruins, including a sungate and the Kontiki statue from which the reed boat expedition to the Easter Islands and then (failed) to New Zealand took it´s name.

There´s also a museum at the ruins and the guide (Eduardo) took us through it explaing the most important pieces. It made it far more interesting that if we had wandered through ourselves. I made a last minute toilet stop and the bus nearly left without me. Fortunately, a chorus of ´where´s Nina?´ saved the day. It would have been a long walk back.

The guide gave us some interesting pieces of information about Bolivia along the way. For example, health care is free. Education and health care is compulsory for children. Public university is virtually free (c.US$ 30 a year) and c.50% of med students are women. 50% of Engineering students are also women. Perhaps we should send someone over here to find out how they managed it?????

Getting out of La Paz had been a bit of a challenge. Getting back in was a three hour cross country journey. We tried to go throught El Alto but met road block after road block after dead end. The main road was littered with rocks (some of them quite large) and therefore unpassable.

I have to meet with the group on 3 minutes so I´m gonna have to leave you on tenterhooks as to whether we managed to get back into the city yesterday.

Immigration by candlelight (entering Bolivia Che Guevara style)

We were supposed to stay in Puno last night, but we needed to get into Bolivia before the strikes started. So we were on a bus by 4.30pm and were racing towards the border before it closed. Well, we I´m pretty sure the buses are affected by altitude too because they go very slow up hills and and the roads aren´t much to speak of anyway, so ´racing´ may be stretching it a little.

Anyway, so we were driving at 80kph towards the border and were treated with a moonrise that puts many sunrises I´ve seen to shame. The moon looked huge (maybe because we´re closer to it!) There was some really lovely pastoral scenery along the way as well.

About 10 minutes before the border, we´re told that we have to pretend that we don´t know our guide (no working permit for Bolivia) and are given instructions for the border crossing. Get off the bus, go to Peru border control, walk 300 metres and then you are at Bolivian immigration. Oh, and the Bolivian border closes in 20 minutes so get a move on.

Peru was fairly simple and then we head towards the other side. I walk straight into the rope much to everyone´s amusement. Then we cross a dark bridge and start looking for immigration. The entire place in darkness and once we´d been walking for about five minutes, the road came to a dead end. Debbie asked someone confidently in spanish where the customs were (thanks Debbie´s cussie Chris) and we went back the way we came and finally found the immigration office (the clock is ticking, they closed 20 minutes, but that was 10 minutes ago).

The immigration office was also entirely in darkness and we stood in a queue before being given a form in spanisht to fill out. We filled the forms out by candlelight and Nicky´s wind up torch. I was winding like mad while everyone else filled in their forms. Another woman had a candle but she was determined not to share it and positioned herself so that she blocked the light. Then someone held their mobile phone for me while I filled in my form.

Another queue to see one of two customs officials who were operating by candlelight. They stamped my passport and form with no fuss (Despoina had a bit of trouble because the guy didn´t know where Greece was).

Finally, we were all through and back on the bus. Some other tourist had tried to get on our bus, but luckily our guide had words with the bus driver and said that there was no way he could stay (he had a stash of wacky backy which she´d spotted).

And then...da dint, da dint, da dint (that´s the Jaws music by the way) when we´d been driving for 20 minutes we got stopped again by an army road block. One of them boarded the bus and wanted to see all of our passports to check that we had the appropriate stamps. I very nearly pulled out my wad of US dollars from the money belt at the same time as my passport. Luckily I was able to manouevre so that the money stayed in.

You´d think that was enough excitement for the night and that perhaps we´d have just arrive at the hotel and have a nice long sleep. It was not to be. We arrived at the bus terminal, collected our bags and headed off to catch the bus to the hotel. It never turned up. Luckily we were with another Gap group so there was 14 of us, including a couple of blokes. We huddled together in two circles on the side of the street, talked in broken spanish to the policeman who came to check on us (and warn us that this wasn´t a good spot to wait).

Ten minutes later, our guide turns up with a bus. She had commandeered one of the local buses and we all piled on. Quite a few people tried to catch the bus (it still had it´s destination on it´s window so you can´t blame them really) as we wended our way through La Paz to our hotel and a very welcome shower and bed.

The islands of Lake Titicaca

Our second day in Puno started bright and early with our own personal limousines arriving to pick us up at 8am. By limousines, I mean bicycles with two seats on the front (kind of like tuktuks but more open). Luckily, it was mostly downhill so I didn´t have to feel bad about some poor bloke huffing and puffing to get us up a hill. We went in convoy and the lead bike (the one in front of us) navigated the traffic by ringing his bell (it sounded just like those bells you had on bikes when you were a kid). We were in the second bike but one of the other blokes pushed in when we went round a corner. Our driver/cyclist was having none of that and with a burst of energy passed and cut off the other bloke. All was right with the world again.

Having had some history and legends from the guide (Lucho) and some time sitting up on top in the sun, we arrived at Taquile Island. A short walk up the hill still made we out of breath as we are still quite high (c.3900 metres) and had a fabulous al fresco lunch of quinoa soup followed by freshly caught trout. The view was better than any restuarant I have ever been to. We could see across the really blue lake to the snow capped mountains of Bolivia (where I´m now writing from).

After lunch we walked further up the hill to the market. Taquile Island is known for it´s weaving. Only the men do the weaving which is quite unusual. I spent a bit of money on woolly things - everything is so cheap (except the woven things which were expensive so I just admired them). Back down the hill (more bloody steps) and onto the boat again as we made our way to Amatani Island.

There were a bunch of women in tradtional dress waiting our arrival and, once we had been allocated we handed off our gifts - food and toys for the kids - and made our way to our allotted house. Handing off the gifts first was a really good idea as that meant we didn´t have to carry them up the hill! We were with Elsie and her two children Janet (16) and Rannie (10). Not sure if I´ve got the boy´s name right - it may have been Ronnie. We had quite a nice room with pink walls, a blue tarpaulin roof and a view to die for across the lake to the mountains.

Next, we were off up the hill (again) to watch a football match (really a rest stop) and then up to the top of the hill where there were ruins and a sunset/moonrise. I´ve dipped my face in freezing cold water in Scotland for eternal youth (hasn´t it worked well?) and kissed the blarney stone for the gift of the gab so walking three times round the ruin anticlockwise for a wise was an easy task. I stopped to take photos of the sunset and the moon on the lake along the way. They´re not nearly as good as the real thing.

It was dark by the time we went down the hill (my head torch came in use) for a hot chocoate (with Baileys) at the local bar/cafe/dairy and then back to our homestay for dinner. Elsie and her kids speak spanish so we were able to talk a bit but I think they were quite shy. We ate dinner in their kitchen at the table while they sat on stools or on the floor. It felt very awkward. Dinner was potato soup followed by potato stew and rice. Quite nice, but far too much.

To top off the night we were dressed in local costumes (they were so tight around the waist it was like wearing a corset) and down to the community hall for a dance. Quite hilarious, but we were shattered from the long day so were back home in bed by 10pm.

After breakfast (pancakes) we were back on the boat again. Nicky helped us pass the three hour trip with an impromptu Spanish lesson from her book and then we were at the Uros floating islands. Nowadays, they are just a tourist attraction. There main form of income (fish) was wiped out due to the introduction of trout to the lake (I think that´s what the story was anyway). The construction of the islands themselves was really interesting - they really do float and you can feel them move. We went for a short trip on one of their reed boats and I had a go at rowing it for a while.

The road to Puno

At last, I´ve caught up! And it will be a brief post about today as we spent most of in on a bus - seven hours in fact. But the buses are really comfortable, there is a place to put your legs and the seats go back really far. I even slept for a while. The scenery was lovely. Kind of like the drive through that station in the middle of the South Island only greener.
We got up to 4338metres before coming down to Puno at about 3900 metres. Puno is on the edge of Lake Titicaca.

We went through quite a few villages and towns along the way. It´s like going back hundreds of years. The buildings are made of brown clay bricks and have thatched roofs. There are shepherds along the sides of the road grazing their sheep on the grass verge. And the occasional run away donkey. Most of the women are in traditional dress. But our guide on the Inca trail told us that the government has passed a law that the people in some villages have to wear traditional dress so it may be for that reason.

We haven´t really seen much of Puno yet. We went out for a late lunch/early dinner and I had a traditional lamb dish which I can´t remember the name of but it was quite nice. But I think I prefer lamb from home. It came with baked potatoes (papa al horno) which given Peru´s large number of potato varieties isn´t surprising. They were really nice when mixed in with the lamb sauce (but otherwise too dry).

We´ve out to check out the town shortly so maybe will see some more.

Cusco - the final day

[Thanks for all of your comments - it´s really nice to feel like people are reading my ramblings.]

We returned from the Inca trail and Aguas Calientes by train and then bus and then had a nice long sleep before our last day in Cusco. Despite having been there for several days already we didn´t really feel like we´d seen anything, so planned a day of tourist activities.

First stop was the Pre-Columbian Art Museum. I was a bit annoyed to start off with as there was all of these artifacts and the descriptions was all about their artistic value and there wasn´t any information about what they were used for. Then I saw a quote on the wall from Claude Levi-Strauss (he was an anthropologist, not a jean maker) that basically said that we need appreciate the art of ancient civilisations and not just view them as artifacts. And some of the art was amazing. There were ceramic bottles made shapes of animals and mythology, ´cubist´ art which apparently inspired Picasso and some really nice jewelry. I´m not convinced that a plain silver bowl is art and I still would have like to know what the objects were used for, but I could appreciate the curators obstinate refusal to provide this information.

Our other major tourist stop for the day was Saint Domingo church. This was originally an Inca temple and after the Spanish conquest was given to some important blokes brother who bequeathed it to the church on his death. A church now stands there, but much of the Inca temple has been incorporated into the construction. I figure that they started to pull it down (the spanish destroyed most of the Inca constructions) but it got to hard so they figured, bugger it, we'll us this as the cloisters (or some such thing).

There is also a contemporary art exhibition in the church. As one person in our group said, the art could have been done anywhere in the world. But I think some of the art very much spoke of Peru. There was a sculpture of a body in a foetal postion which is how the Incas buried their dead - preparing them for birth again (they also buried them with the tools they would need in their next life, such as building tools if that was their profession). There were also a number of political statements in the pictures.

Last up was a night out on the town including Salso lessons. It looked a little like line dancing some of the time when they were teaching us. It was quite fun, but I like watching the professionals dance - really amazing, would probably take me forever to learn so I was content to just watch most of the time.

Odds and sods on in the sacred valley

Ok, so there weren´t any sods, but there were lots of other things that we saw.

The sacred valley is THE place for corn. They grow a gazillion different varieties in the valley (Cusco is the place for potatoes - most of the varieties in the world are grown in this region). They make a couple of drinks from the corn. One is chicha morada - which is red and I think it is about 4% alcohol. It´s quite nice.

We stopped at a weaving community on the way to Ollantaytambo where they make various things from llama wool. Llamas are shaved only 3-4 times during their lifetime - which is why it is so expensive. The first shave is called the baby wool - even though the llama isn´t a baby at the time - and this is the softest wool. The women in the village (whose husbands are porters on the Inca trail) spin and dye the wool themselves. They use natural dyes such as some worm thing that lives on the prickly pear. They dry them, crush them and then add lime juice or salt to change the colour so that get ranges of reds to orange. The also use the crushed worms as lipstick. Mmmm, yuck.

They keep a couple of llamas in the village, mostly for the tourists I think and they mostly buy in the raw product. I wanted to get a photo of Debbie with one of them and kept telling her to get closer. But then one spat on her. Some nice green stuff. Needless to say, she wasn´t very happy with me.

We also stopped at a number of Inca ruins.

Ollantaytambo is the place where we stayed before we started the Inca trail. The town and the temple of the sun located there are amazing. There are water channels through the town that are a remnant from Inca times.

The Incas had some amazing technology. Temples and palaces were made from the interlocking rocks that most people associate with the Inca civilisation. These were incredibly complex to make as they didn´t have any tools, only harder stones for shaping the rocks. Some of the temples took 50-70 years to complete, and some - such as Ollantaytambo - were never finished. The Inca civilisation (in its expansion phase) was from 1438-1532 and building on many of the temples didn´t start until well into that period. They had aquaducts that carried water quite some distance and you can still see it running in many of the places including Machu Picchu.

After we´d been to Machu Picchu, we went down to Aguas Calientes (water hot). They have some hot spring pools there that I´d been looking forward to the whole tramp. But they were a bit of a disappointment really. They were tepid rather than hot and I think they were quite dirty.

Sorry, I forgot to introduce you

to the people I´m travelling with. There were supposed to be 14 on our trip but we started with six and then two more joined us at Machu Picchu. Our tour leader, Shirly, calls us `las chicas` as we´re all women. So apart from Debbie and I, there´s Despoina from Greece, Nicky from the England (who says, `I´m not being funny like` quite a bit), Jeannie from the England (who says f#&k like she´s the Queen), Poneh who is Canadian Iranian, Christine from Denmark and Mathea from the Faro Islands (population 50,000, major industry fishing, ten points to anyone who actually knows where it is).

Only Jeannie did the Inca trail with us. But we also had Atilla the hungarian australian and his wife Melissa (who were on their honeymoon) and Andrew, also from Australia. You wouldn´t believe how small the world is - Andrew used to be the Registrar at VUW (last name Neeson for any of those of you university folk with long memories). Nice chap, long winded stories (many of which were quite interesting).

I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more

This was my chant on the last day as we were climbing to the sungate. Others included: I am Edmund Hillary, I am Edmund Hillary´s sherpa (both courtesy of Debbie), I will have buns of steel (going up a million steps). The Inca trail is magnificent. It´s also hard work. The two days chilling out in Cusco and getting used to the altitude were so worth it. Even then, I think the altitude made it harder.

The first day is a gently walk from 2600 metres to 3000 metres over about 9km. There are a couple of Inca ruins along the way which we stopped at and our guide Humberto gave us some of the history about. He has been a guide for 23 years and gives you some of the various interpretations of the ruins and then what he thinks they were used for and why. As a former history student, I loved his way of presenting the information. He was very proud of his Inca heritage and all the things that the Inca nation achieved. And very rightly so. Some of the feats of engineering are amazing.

The second day we climbed from 3000 metres to 4215 metres (dead woman pass) over a very short distance. And mostly in steps. Over the last stretch I´d manage about about five steps, have a brief stop and then do another five steps. I´d get my breath back really quickly but be out of breath again just as quickly. I´d like to blame the altitude but I think it was also to do with my level of fitness. But I felt such a sense of achievement and the view from the top was spectacular.

Then we dropped 600 metres to the campsite for the night. At times the drop felt vertical. Again, there were lots of steps and I was incredibly grateful for my two walking poles and for nurofen. My knees felt a few twinges but they were fine for the whole trip (yay! I was really dreading having bung knees).

We climbed another pass on the second day (Runkuraqay) which I think is 4000 metres. This day was hard as well, but I´d got into a rhythm with a certain level of puff and I felt much more comfortable walking. Fantastic views from the pass again and all along the may. A couple more stops at ruins and down to the camp site at a fairly brisk pace(this is the day that they clapped when we arrived).

The next day started a 3.45am so that we could get down to the control gate for the walk up to the sungate (intipunku) so that we could see the sun rise over Machu Picchu. The gate opens at 5.30am and we were there at about 4.30am - second group there. We then practicallly ran up the hill (I kept up most of the way but the nearly vertical 50 steps took the stuffing out of me so I was a bit behind the others). Didn´t matter though because all we saw was clouds - I have a lovely photo of nothing). It also started to rain to it was ponchos all round for the 30 minute walk down to Machu Picchu. It was a shame not to see the sunrise, but if any day was going to rain, this was the day. It would have been miserable to walk in the rain on any of the other days. We had beautiful weather on the first three days which made the walk so much more enjoyable.

five star service

So I knew that there were going to be porters on the trail who would carry most of our gear and provide meals for us. I´d expected very basic kind of stuff. Camp cookup, a sandwich for lunch and maybe porridge for breakfast if we were lucky. Man was I wrong. The porters include a cook (Miguel) and an assistant cook (Julio) and eleven small strong men led by Ypoleta (not sure how to spell his name). They´re all from the same village. On the third day they clapped when we arrived - which is kind of embarrasing really seeing as they left after us, carried 20kg as opposed to our about 3kg and still got there a long time before us.

On the first day, we had a gentle(ish) walk to the lunch stop. One of the eleven porters meets us on the track and guides us to where a tent is set up with a fully set table (including nicely arranged napkins) with a stool each. There is a divider in the tent and half is the kitchen and half is the dining room. Our waiter Ricardo (yes, that´s right, our waiter) pours us a glass of freshly made lemonade on arrival and there is a nice plastic sheet laid out where we can put our bags so they don´t get wet from the grass. There is a basin of water and soap for each of us so that we can wash our hands before lunch. Lunch starts with soup and then some nice boneless chicken in a sauce, rice and vegetables. Mint tea (made from mint plants along the trail) completes the meal. Then camping mattresses are laid out so we can have a wee rest before heading off on the next part of the trail.

While we´re walking, they pack up the tent and everything, load up their bags (c.20kg each) and then run past us so that they can set up camp for the night before we arrive. On arrival we´re provided with a warm basin of water and soap so that we can rinse of the grime from the day. Our tents are already set up and when I pull out my camping mattress a porter is there to blow it up for me.

Afternoon tea is at 5pm with a selection of teas, including cacao leaves, coffee, hot chocolate and some nibbles. We usually played cards until dinner at 7pm which was a three course affair - soup, a main meal with meat, and then dessert. On the last night, dessert was cake. How they managed to make cake in a tent kitchen is beyond me.

We were usually in bed around 8pm and the wake up call was about 6am. Freshly made cacao tea and a basin on warmish water to start the day. Then breakfast, which again is a two course meal. Porridge, pancakes, omelette all featured on various days.

On the really hard day (dead woman´s pass) it wasn´t possible to set up tent for lunch along the way so we were given a snack bag each with chocolate, biscuits, lollipop and a cheese sandwich. To use Debbie´s words, best stale cheese sandwich I´ve ever tasted. Lunch was then served at 2.30pm when we arrived at camp.

If it weren´t for dead woman´s pass, I´d do the whole thing again just for the food.

11pm

I`ve had a fantastic five days since my last post. But it´s 11pm and I´ve just had a long bus ride back to Cusco so I´ll just touch on the highlights and then make a nice long post tomorrow (or it might require several). First, have brand new SOFT pillow in hotel so am a happy chappy.

The Inca trail and all the ruins are fantastic. We had spectacular weather on all except the last day and had breathtaking views. Hang on, that might have been the climb to dead woman´s pass at 4215 metres. The ruins at either end of the walk - Ollantaytambo and Macchu Picchu - were definitely the best of the lot that we saw, but the one´s on the track were interesting too. Fabulous guide, fabulous service. Sore calves, sore thighs, filthy clothes, slightly sunburned arms, great people to do the walk with, ready for nice long sleep before exploring Cusco tomorrow now that we´re much more used to the altitude.

throwing a (very polite) wobbly

So I mentioned in the last post that our hotel room was a wee bit cold. I finally decided that being curled up in bed wearing my warmest clothes and hat and gloves was not okay. On complaining, our tour guide turned up (in a towel and not a lot else) and told me that we would need to hire a heater. I firmly and politely told her that a freezing room was completely and her two options were to provide heating in the room or find us another hotel. A heater arrived shortly after. So the room is now very warm. Pity about the lumpy bed and plank of wood for a pillow.

Then we went to dinner. There is supposed to be 14 people in the group, but the volcano in Europe has completely screwed everyone´s plans and there are six of us. Two more arrive after the Inca trail, but the rest of postponed or cancelled. Nice small group. So five of us and the tour leader (Shirdy) went to dinner and I had Alpaca saltado for dinner. Basically like a beef stirfry with red peppers and onions on rice. It was very nice. There were lovely views across Cusco from the hotel roof - Debbie got some nice photos but mine were crappy. The hillside looked a bit like a christmas tree.

I didn´t sleep well at all last night so was a bit of a slow start to the day. Went for a nice wander around the town with one of the other girls from the tour. Some of the buildings have some of their walls that date back to a 6th century (?) Inca palace. There was a lovely square (pazleta san blas) where there was a chap playing his guitar. I bought a nice painting from a chap (Efraine?). He says he painted it himself - it´s probably all part of the sales pitch, but I´d like to think he did.

We thought we´d go back to the hotel a different way and I promptly got us lost. But it was a lovely walk. I´ve taken far too many photos of windows, doors, balconies, streets, steps, dogs (they lie around on the streets everywhere and people just walk around them), hillsides (writing on hillsides seems to be the done thing over here - viva el peru glorioso is one example in Cusco), old churches/cathedrals (there are a lot of them in a very small area) and a row of policeman with their riot thingys. I did ask first - in spanish no less.

Debbie and I made our way down to the artisan´s market after lunch. The guidebook says that 50% of the price goes to the artist themselves from this particular market. I bought a few things which are apparently llama wool, but they were very cheap so I´m a bit dubious.

My phone is useless - it´s not picking up a signal anywhere. Not sure if this if vodafone´s fault or my phone is playing up. Also can´t log into gmail on very many of my computers. So the blog it is. There is internet access in most of the hotels we are staying at so will try to post something everyday. Won´t on the inca trail obviously or the homestay on lake titicaca.

Have had a lovely day but am feeling a little sorry for myself af the moment. It´s cold and I´ve had an upset stomach late this afternoon (read, mad dash to hotel to use own toilet). I think lunch might have been dodgy. But we had a nice conversation with the waiter in spanish - I even used past tense!

dizzy blonde - today is rest day

Have arrived in Cusco after a 5.15am start. We're currently more than 3000 metres above sea level and boy am I feeling it. Went for a brief walk this morning when we arrived and felt quite dizzy. Had a long nap and went for a late lunch and am feeling a lot more human. Still very little energy though (is gonna make for a slow walk on the Inca trail if I don`t improve).

The hotel we are staying at is built from an old stone palace. It`s $#%&en freezing.

So far the highlight of the day has been discovering that Debbie has been given a fake coin. Who would have thought they`d counterfeit the coins?

Thanks for your messages. You`ll see I´ve obliged with the pisco sour recipe mum.

pisco sour recipe: so those of you at home can join in the fun

Pisco Sour

Ingredients:

7 ½ oz (or 3 parts) Peruvian Pisco
2 ½ oz (1 part) key lime juice
2 ½ oz (1 part) sugar syrup
1 egg white
Angostura bitter

Preparation:

Pour the Pisco, key lime juice and syrup on a jar blender with enough ice to double the volume.

Blend on high. Add one egg white and blend again.

Serve. Pour a drop of Angostura bitter on each glass.

Tip: to make the sugar syrup just put ½ cup of sugar in a pot with 3 tbs of water, bring to a slow boil (always stirring), and cook until all the sugar has dissolved. Let the syrup cool before mixing with the Pisco and lime juice.

mmm pisco sours

If I was in Edinburgh right now, I'd be ringing Grandma. Have been partaking of the local cocktail. It's fabulous. Very much made for our family - has that nice sour bite to it.

The food here is very, very good. Have just been out to Osaka, a japanese restaurant here. Prawns to start - mmmm- followed by Thai ceviche - omg good, better than mudbrick food - and a taste of Debbie's tuna.

But have a five oclock start tomorrow and need to be sober by then, so off to bed.

I like Lima

Sounds like there´s been a stuff up with our hotel, but I´ve had such a good day I don´t care. I´ll let the tour people sort it out.

After a bit of a walk around Miraflores and a chat to a nice man in the park (in spanish!, okay so we didn´t understand everything he said), we caught a taxi into town ($NZ10). We had a wee chat in spanish to the driver. When I say ´we´, I mean mostly Debbie who speaks spanish really well. She´s had an extra week to practive. The city is full of lovely buildings so we took lots of photos, walked the pedestrian mall, and took more photos.

The Plaza de Armas is where the palace (surrounded by guards with guns) and the cathredal are. We got stopped by some school kids who were doing a project where they interviewed me in English and videoed it. They wanted to know if I had eaten ceviche (not yet) and if Peru was similar to my home (yes, lots of traffic and bad drivers).

We had lunch at what we have decided is the Peruvian equivalent of KFC. Huge plate of chips and 1\4 chicken for $NZ 3.50. Also had our first taste of Inca Cola. It´s yellow and looks like mellow yellow. Quite nice.

After lunch we took a bus up to the Cerro del Cristobel which is on a hill (400metres) looking over the city. We drove though the shanty town on the way. All of the houses that you can see from the city are brightly coloured, but most on the other side of the hill are plain brick to I think they paint them for the tourists.

Then a taxi back to the hotel ($NZ5, so we must have got ripped off on the ride in, but I don´t care).

Debbie has just told me that we have to change hotels. So off to the origninal one.

I thought it would be bigger...

Buenos Aires airport I mean (what were you thinking?)

So the flight started with the song "I will go down with the ship" playing over the sound system which did not inspire confidence. I got a seat by the emergency exit so plenty of leg room, and a nice brazilian man sitting next to me. He´s been working in construction in Australia for the past two years. Nice biceps. Other than that, the flight was pretty dull. Not enough sleep, teenage vampire movie.

I did the full circuit of BA airport a couple of times. It´s about the size of Auckland airport. I´d expected it to be much bigger.

Met up with Debbie and a five hour flight to Lima. No movie at all. Just a snack to eat. A very nice snack but was starving by the time we arrived. Lima is a fabulous airport.

We´re actuallly staying in a different hotel than the one we booked. Seems to have been a mix up with the travel agent.

Off to explore markets of Miraflores and then into the city proper.

flooding and landslides

Some of you may have seen that Rio de Janeiro has recently had torrential rain resulting in flooding, landslides and, sadly, quite a few deaths.  

This is the reply to my email to MFAT (thanks Anna from the Consular Division):

Thank you for your enquiry.  MFAT is not issuing any specific advice for travellers on the recent flooding and landslides in Rio de Janeiro.  It is always advisable, however, to follow any instructions and restrictions that may be issued by the local authorities - i.e restrictions on travel to certain neighbourhoods affected by the flooding.  Our travel advisory for Brazil can be read through the following link: www.safetravel.govt.nz/destinations/brazil.shtml  We do recommend you have comprehensive travel insurance and register your details with us prior to any overseas travel.


I have also looked on Google maps (the terrain view) and ascertained that there aren't any hills near where we are staying.  

And we won't be there for another 5 weeks so the sun should be out by then. 

A big continent (but we're going to see as much as we can)

South America is a big continent so I long ago abandoned plans to hire a ute and do a road trip (I don't think Debbie was ever keen on that idea anyway).  I'm also not keen on spending 30 hours on a bus so we're taking quite few flights.  There will still be some long hours spent on the road.  But not in the first week.


Kick off is in Lima and then we head to Cuzco (by airplane) for a few days taking in the sights and getting used to the altitude.  Then we walk the Inca trail (via the Ollantaytambo Sacred Valley).  The walk is about 40km over four days.  Which doesn't sound too bad until you realise we get up to nearly 14,000 feet which will take our breadth away.


Next stop is Lake Titicaca (via a long bus ride) where we have a homestay on one of the islands.  That's where we go from Peru to Bolivia and spend some time in La Paz and Potosi before making our way to the Uyuni Salt Plains (I'm hoping by train, but I think there's another long bus trip in there).


At some stage we must cross the border to Chile because we have a look at the Atacama desert before taking a van ride across the Andes to Salta and then we avoid a long bus ride by flying to Buenos Aires. That's where the tour ends and Debbie and I are left to our own devices (somebody should warn them).


We'll spend a few days in BA and maybe take a day trip to Uruguay before flying to Iguassu Falls.  A few days in Iguassu including a day trip to Paraguay - cheap leather.  Then its off to Rio and then home.


So, half a continent in four short paragraphs.

blog vs group email

So I've been planning this trip to South America for quite some time (and talking about it constantly much to the disgust of my family, friends and work colleagues).


I'm going to need some way to led everyone know about all the fabulous things that I do and see along the way.  I could set up an group email list but I'm thinking this has a number of disadvantages:

• I could miss some people  off the list and offend someone, especially after the whole stepbrother fiasco of 2000 (we emailed Rodger, but not Geoff; mum emailed to say poor Geoff was feeling left out but accidently cc'd Geoff onto the email; Geoff emailed to say that he wasn't feeling left out at all; Geoff was added to all subsequent emails and probably ended up being one of the people in the next bullet point)
• I could include too many people and end up annoying my work colleagues who really don't want to know about that nasty episode of diarrhea I got after drinking freshly squeezed orange juice (stupidly with ice)
• people have a nasty habit of changing their email address (and do I send it to their work email and risk their boss reading about the aforementioned diarrhea or do I send it to their hotmail/gmail/yahoo account which they check once in a blue moon?)

So a blog it is.  Now I just need to figure out how to invite people, load photos and see what all those other buttons on the left do.