Lima then home

We fly back to Lima and spend the day in the Monestary catacombes which are full off an impossibly huge amount of human remains, arranged in chambers and concentric circles. The guide is awful and keeps sneaking out of the room ahead of us to hide. None of the group hear much of what he says and he just seems to prove our thoughts that Lima really has all the right ingredients and the wrong cooks. The tours elsewhere in South America have all been much better.

We eat tasty arabic food in Miraflores' posh restaurant district and have to say goodbye as Sophie goes out to get her flight. I spend the final evening in the hostel chatting to a welsh couple and drinking.

Final day - i get up early with a slight hangover and decide to walk the length of central Lima from Miraflores to the Plaza de Armas. The weather is foggy 9 months of the year here and it never rains. The bullfight museum is shut but I make a beeline for the art gallery and along the way I stop at Huaca Pucallana and see the pyryamids built of mud bricks. I get to the park but the gallery is shut so go to the Plaza San Martin where the sculptor misunderstood the order to place 'llama' (flame) on the staue's head and dutifully put a small llama. The walk takes all day and I finally get to the plaza and celebrate with a final Pisco Sour before getting my taxi to the airport and the long flight home.

Iquitos pt.2

We went and met our guide and went up river to visit the Yagua tribe. The tribe welcome us with red face paint and give us a welcome dance. It's all for tourists, but nice to see what you'd think of as a typical amazonian tribe. We fire blow darts at a target and buy a couple of trinkets, before leaving for the zoo.

At the zoo were groped by monkeys, handed caimen, clawed by parrots and draped with snakes. The guys are friendly and we drink a glass of Clavihuasi with them - apparently it's an aphrodisiac. When we pay, they don't have change and so we go out to a floating petrol station to get some!

Next day we go out to Lago Quistacocha where we see a selection of jungle animals including Puma and the 2m long Paiche fish, then walk around the lake and botanical gardens. For lunch we eat paiche - really tasty and more like white meat than fish.

The next morning we went back to the market for another look about and bumped into Lito again. We ask him to take us out to see the Vitoria Reina - the giant water lillies, and we do. On the boat today is Marlo and Jorge, 2 friends who also live in Belen. They invite us to go for a drink in a floating bar and we drink Chuchuhuasi & coke, while listening to the local talents of 'Ilusion' - a local band. When the bar is full on a weekend everyone is knee deep in water! After a few jugs of Chuchuhuasi we head back to Iquitos to find that the city is closed down in protest of the oil firms damaging the environment and pushing out the indigenous people.

Iquitos pt.1

Iquitos was a bit of a last minute decision between Equador and the North West, but I really wanted to see the stereo typical amazon tribes before leaving.

We woke up to find our room crawling with lines of ants and nearly ate a bowl of them with our cereal as they'd got into the bag over night. To continue to theme we ate alligator and turtle at a local restaurant for lunch after wandering around the tour agencies who were offering trips out to the amazon to stop in lodges, but many of the activites we had done in Bolivia, and so decided to stick around Iquitos instead. I'd recommened turtle but they are protected I found out later :S Ooops...

Later we met a guy who introduced himself to us in spanish and asked where we came from. We said 'Birmingham' and it turned out that Mad Mick had been to Black Heath market the week before to buy fishhooks! Proof that no matter how far you stray from home there's always someone else there who lives around the corner. That night we watched a Brazilian troup doing Capoeira as we supped a few lagers.

The market at Belen was incredible. We saw monkeys, turtles, snails and much more. While walking through we were approached by a boatman called Lito who offered us the chance to go out to see the floating town. Lito lived there and Belen was spectacular - a town of raft-houses with stilts sitting on the river alongside Iquitos. Boats passed with people selling goods and kids played in the water, there was even a gay bar! Back on land we met another local lad who asked if we wanted to go out tomorrow and we agreed to meet and go to visit the local tribes.

The trek to Kuelap pt.3

We eat and set off by taxi for the massive hillside fort of Kuelap. The site is as big as Machu Picchu but only partially excavated and the many circular building are covered in moss and surrounded by trees. Apart from us, there are 3 others at the sight - a bit of a difference from Machu Picchu! One reconstructed building shows how they would have looked (with pointy thatched roof) and we're shown carved animals in the entranceways in the stonework.

We drive back to Chachapoyas and eat Guinea pig (which is definately recommended) with Tom & Brad after realising at 11pm that in order to catch our flight tomorrow we are going to have to leave at 4.30am!

We get up early and get a combi to Pedro Ruiz - a transport hub we're told. We get there an hour later and are told that the only way to get to Tarapoto we have to go back the way weve come to cajamarca and then get another combi from there... Much much later we arrive in Tarapoto on the edge of the amazon and settle into a restaurant in a downpour. Unwillingly I order curried cows stomach - but I suppose thats what happens when you just order unknown things from a menu! We get our plane to Iquitos - the biggest city in the world inaccessible by road - and crash out.

The trek to Kuelap pt.2

Day 2 - we get up and set off across the hills around the river. My knee had been gradually getting worse throughout the first day and now starts to worsen. We trek across land and into the cloudforest walking along pre-columbian paths made from rough, pointy and slippery ancient stones. I end up walking with a knee support and a stick like an old man... We climb and are able to scramble into covered areas of the jungle to see unexcavated stone constructions hidden away on the hillsides! The ancient stones are covered in moss and climbing around them is about as close as being Indiana Jones as you'll ever get. We descend down a torturous path towards a tiny village where we can eat & sleep.

The next day we continue on horses, which turns out to be one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in a while! The path we take is up and across the mountains across roads that have been used for so long that the hoofs of the horses have, over the years, gouged the track into giant ruts. These ruts are full of rain water and mud. Our horses are knee deep and struggle over the hurdles, sliding and scrambling up and down steep banks, while we are battered with thorny bushes. the occassional shout of "cap!" indicates that someones lost a hat to the trees.

We pause on the hillside and eat lunch before continuing, occassionally disembarking so the horses can tackle the trickier parts without extra weight and we follow, jumping from mudd lump to slippy rocky after them, pulling ourselves up steep banks with our hands. We visit more hidden jungle ruins and eventually arrive at our next lodge where we are promised a beer and a hot shower... we get neither...

The trek to Kuelap pt.1

From Chiclayo we travelled east to Chachapoyas and booked onto a 4 day trek to the huge pre-Inca fortress of Kuelap, reached by foot and horse through cloudforest. We borrowed a camera from the nice folk at the hostel and donned rainponchos and wellies along with Brad from Colorado and Tom from Canada and set off..

We drove out towards Karajia but after meeting our guide soon hit a problem - locals in a village were digging up the only road through. After a few minutes the 30+ villagers came to the agreement that our driver could push 2 rocks over the divide and try to pass over the top of them in the car - it worked! At Karajia we could see a set of 8 sarcofogi on the cliffside - oddly primitaive clay figures painted in red paints with flat faces and some with skulls attached to the top - sons or trophyheads we were told... Bones lay around the path and our guide warned us legend has it they have a strange wasting disease that affects anyone touching them...

Back at the car we set off and shortly after this we hit the mud! After sliding around in the sludgey road we ground to a halt. Being good little travellers we all jumped out to help push to vehicle. I was soon sprayed head to foot in thick orange mud. Then it started to rain. We finally managed to back out the sliding car out and the driver refused to go on - it was on foot from here for another 2 and a half hours before we got to our lodge through the beautiful Gran Vilaya and the Valle de Belen with its huge snaking river. We passed the evening laughing with the 2 lads and gazing up at the incredible view of the stars above.

Chiclayo

Chiclayo in the North West is best known for the many ruins around and we went out to visit some of them - One tomb is the Lord of Sipan - a massive collection of torquise & bronze including huge earplugs that looked like they weighed a ton, masks, headdresses and other stuff including gigantic necklaces decorated as cats heads and nose rings so big they covered the whole of your mouth - probably to disguise the wearers expressions and teeth - they were supposed to be half animal-god with pointy teeth! They were also buried with a selection of warriors and women for the afterlife. We visited a site where there were 26 pyramids from the Moche culture and also the Sican cultures museum in which the lord was buried in a fetal position upside down with his head disconnected - in similar but less lavish bronze and gold. This time buried with 22 young females... popular bloke.

We visited the huge markets later in Chiclayo and saw chickens, guinea pigs (they eat them here - an Inca delicacy) and loads of other stuff including weird fruit (mangos the size of an apple) & Shaman goods and herbal remedies. I very nearly bought a genuine voodoo doll! Sadly I actually relaxed my gaurd a little too much here and took a few pics - then conveniently in a cramped isle a fat man in front dropped a load of change on the floor and blocked the way trying to pick it up. In the following crush of people, someone knocked me and stole my camera... I knew it immediately and swung around but there were too many people and it could have been anyone... grrrr... thank god I backed up my pictures 3 days ago... phew

Lima briefly

Finally arrived at Lima, Peru´s huge 8 million (i think) capital and quickly found it to be traffic hell, complete with expensive accomodation and little of much interest to do. Miraflores was a nice area but could have been anywhere. The coast was covered in fog and the place was teeming with joggers. We ate at a pizza restaurant with a couple of drunk men. We did meet a nice lad who ran an internet cafe though and chatted for a while then swapped emails - people in Peru are easily the most friendly i have ever encountered anywhere in the world. Hmmmm. We decided to leave as quickly as possible and booked a flight out to Pucallpa in the Amazon.

Pucusana

Pucusana was great. We arrived and were unable to get to our little hostel on the hill because the drivers of the little mototaxis (3 wheel motorbike things) were all watching the football. When it finiished they took us to the place where we were welcomed by the owner Elizabeth who was loveley! The views of the port were amazing and we went down to eat my new favourite food - ceviche - raw fresh seafood in a lime and chilli salsa... Next day we wandered off over the nearby hills in the garua - coastal fog which is pretty permanent for most of the year here. We found some old walls on the top of the hills, then decended down a perilously steep cliff to a stangely deserted beach, which turned out to be private, but there was noone around except for a gardener who didnt seem to mind us. We trekked back to town, visited a deserted beach reached through a cave and ate some more stunning fresh seafood before being chaufered around the harbour on a little fishing boat to see more wildlife. On the way back in we saw a huge fish being hauled out of a fishing boat by winch. We also took out an afternoon to go to a small village to visit the pools which have medicinal properties and weird green water.

From here we said our goodbyes and continued up to Lima...

Cusco to Nazca and up the coast

Back in Cusco we tried to make the most of the painfully expensive Tourist ticket we were forced to buy and visited some museums, got a body massage then hopped on a bus to Nazca. Unfortunately the bus forgot to drop in Nazca (11 hours away) and carried on up the coast to Lima (further 8 hours north) where we damanded a hostel room and a return bus later that day. We got into Nazca at 8pm that night making a nice 32 hour trip from Cusco - nazca... and booked our selves on a flight first thing over the nazca Lines.

The Lines to be honest were good to see but not much different from photos apart from the nausea caused by flying over then banking steeply every 2 second so people on both sides of the plane could see. They dont know what the lines were used for - some think they were for water aqueducts, some about constellation and some that they were for rituals but there are about 400 animals or figures hundreds of feet wide, only visible from the air and the people who made them had no way of viewinf them. Better than the lines was the Necropolis in which hundreds of tombs had been found and robbed leaving a desert full of bones and rags in which archeaolgogists had reconstructed a few tombs with what was left.

After Nazca we went to Ica and admired a few trophy heads, mummies and other stuff then nipped off to Huacachina - a desert oasis in the middle of massive sand dunes. The place was idylic and we went zooming over the dunes in a dune buggy! It was wicked!! I even went sandboarding down the dunes - they were really steeep, but I have to say that I made it look easy gliding gracefully to the bottom at top speed and then nearly braking my neck again as I realisied I didnt know how to stop and flew off.

from Ica we went north to Pisco and got a boat out from the harbour at Paracas to the Islas Ballestas (a poor mans galapogas apparently) and saw thousands and i mean thousands of birds and sea-lions on the islands - there are so may birds here the government collect their poo (guano) which is 8meters deep in places to sell abraod as fertiliser. The Islands all look white until they get to the sea there is that much bird shit on them. We wandered off from here to the Peninsula and saw several dead sea-lions and many birds and went wandering over the sand dunes to a tiny port which was in the middle of nowhere - it was incredible.

From here we decided we needed a little rest before going back to Lima, so got a bus and a selection of little local collectivo buses to the tiny port town of Pucusana which turned out to be the best spot in Peru so far...

Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu

After deciding that tours to Machu Picchu were expensive we decided to DIY it and go village by village to Ollntaytambo then get the train and take the inca steps up to Macchu Picchu itself..

The first stop was Pisaq a giant hillside fort surrounded by Inca terraces. The site was huuuuge and really impresive with atmospheric pipes being played and chimes. While exploring the ruins we were approached by the son of a Shaman (apparrently) who after a quick read of mine and sophies hand energy told me I was Ímpatient´ but that was ok as Soph was ´Patient´to balance... Urumbamba was a bit uneventful, we had planned to visit some more ruins but decided to press on to Ollantaytambo which had another huge hillside terraced set of ruins looking over the town. A podgy American pointed out the tiny curves cut into the giant stone walls and noted that the technology to cut this detail in such large pieces with such precision was still beyond us now and that obviously aliens must have interveined. From here we got a train to Aguas Calientes - the town next to machu Picchu - and very nearly punched the ticket man square in the face when he told us how expensive this little train journey was (considering there is no other transport there and you pay extra for useless tat like snacks and even dancing thrown in on the jounrey on the even more expensive trips). Anyway the mountains seen from the train were amazing and in contrast Aguas Caliente was a damp dump sat at the bottom of them. We got a bed in a hovel/damp cellar and set out in the morning at 5am to walk.

It was dark and damp and we set off up the mammoth trek up vertical Inca steps that took about an hour+ to climb and arrived knackered at Machu Picchu to be clapped to the top by a small group of Israelis only to behold a stunning vista of telephones and waste bins. We nipped round these and showed our over priced ticket to the guy to see Machu Picchu proper. The view was stunning. Stunningly white actually as it was completely covered in mist and we could hardly see a thing. Slowly it lifted and we could finally see the giant complex. It was pretty amazing, but better than the site itself was the trek up the massively steep Wayna Pichu (The peak at the back of Machu Picchu) which we clambered up and down over several hours and at the top even crawled through a cave and up over steps to a small temple right on the very top. The views were immense!

Canyon Country, Cusco and The Scared Valley

From Arequipa we headed North to Colca Canyon. To get to the deepest Canyon in the World (the one next door is actually a little deeper in truth) we went in a taxi via series of little villages. At the first we clambered up a waterfall only to descend down into an old mans trout fishery! He was soo friendly and gave us a peek around. We also went out at 6am to see wild Viscatchas - which are like chinchillas - bounding across rocks in the freezing cold of the desert. We saw different traditional dress including white hats and sequins on the women (one of who we gave a lift to as we passed her village). As is usual in South America each village had a central Plaza de Armas and Iglesia (Church) established since the Spanish Conquision. We eventually got to the Cruz del Condor - a point from which you can see Condors fly closely and possibly the most dramatic canyon scenery ever! It was soo vast and deep its hard to believe and made you feel wably approaching the edge - the sides are incredibly steep and so big that villages exist a regular points along its sides. Most people trek down to the bottom and back, it takes a 5 hours down and more back up... we opted to walk over the rim of it, stopped at an amazing hostel drinking Pisco Sours (incredibly tasty alcholholic drinks) and ventured down a bit, then nipped off to Cusco.

Cusco was pretty touristy and although the streets are cobbled and many of them have ancient Inca walls on top of which the new building are built, it felt a bit hollow as every building was a restaurant or shop. We stayed in a great hostel previously a Tambo (roadhouse) looking over the city. I didnt really like Cusco much until we were suddenly caught up in a parade of dancers that continued for hours. Many tradional costumes and dances were in troups by region and they banged drums and swirled about wearing really bright, decorative costumes. Some oddities were cowboy-types with whips, guys in grass hats, a drunken man and wife fighting song and a gang of men in balaclavas with moustaches on them who whips each others legs then danced off arm in arm- presumably traking the piss out of the spanish who of course conquered the country.

We got a bus out to Tambo Machay - an Inca fountain and walked back to Cusco via another Inca ruin to Saksaywaman (pronounced sexy woman) which was a huge ruin with zigzag walls designed to be the head of a puma - a shape the ruler wanted for the town.

Back in Cusco we headed out for to Machu Picchu.

Lake Titicaca & finally -- Peru!

We got a bus to Copacabana (not the Brazillian one but the Bolivian one) and went wandering the ruins. The lake is the Wolr´ds highest navigable lake and is closed in by the Andes mountain range on the border with Peru. From Copacabana we got a boat out to the Isla del Sol - the Isla the Sun was born on and center to a handful of South American cultures including the Incas.



We made friends with a gang going to the nothern most point of the island on a tiny boat on top of which we had our bags balenced and feared they would slide off into the sea forever. At the northern bay it was incredible - goats, donkeys, families worked on the land and there were hills over which we found a sacrifical table and a set of ruins from Inca times. The views of the lake were immense. We spent the next days in the fields around the northern part in which husband & wife teams in traditional dress tilled the land using hand trowels, digging potatoes.



Back in Copacabana we headed north to Peru on a bus and crossed the border to find clean busses, paved roads, good food and expensive accomodation in Puno.



From puno we headed for Arequipa and found it to be rather noice actually. The food in Peru ois great unlike the greasy, carb laden-efforts in Bolivia. In Arequipa we visited a monestry which was like a huuge complex, a town within a city. Every corner looked like a medaeval kitchen or bed chamber with whips that the nuns had used up until the 70´s. We saw books that were hundreds of years old in an ancient libarary at the Recoleta and a tradional band in a Pena - trad. folk club.



From Arequipa we tried to go to a bull fight but it were unable for a week or so, so headed to Cusco..