So far we´ve figured out a few things:
Water "sin gas" means non carbonated water,
A Cappuchino is a long black coffee topped with a mountain of whipped cream, and
when you see two riot police trucks with water cannons drive past, walk the other way

That´s all for now...off to see the mummies at the Natural History Museum.

Cath & Andy.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 5, 2007 from Santiago, Chile
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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We went to the pre-columbian museum and saw a whole bunch of statues of cool dudes. The exhibitions were awesome and we´re thinking of going back for another look next time we´re here.

Pidgeons in the Plaza de Armas

Andy vs Empanada - Serra San Christobel

Diego Bar

Heading to the Atacama desert tomorrow morning.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 6, 2007 from Santiago, Chile
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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We got to the airport and got to the check-in desk only to discover that we had booked the correct flight, but on Saturday the 28th of April ... not the 7th. After a minor panic, the lovely Lan lady just changed the dates for us and booked us on the right flight. Lucky, as when we boarded, we realised that the plane was full. We doubt we would get off so scot-free if the same thing happened in Australia!

We flew over the Andes, this time remembering the camera, (simply amazing scenery). We had a rather ´interesting´ landing coming into Calama rather rapidly descending after crossing over some mountains. We landed in a place where there was no vegetation and a whole lot of dirt and mountains.... the middle of $#%&ing nowhere. Caught a bus to San Pedro de Atacama which is the launching place for many tours of the Atacama Desert. No words can explain the culture shock of going from high rises, smog and tonnes of people to volcanoes, sand, salt and a whole lot of nobody. That said, this place is simply an experience not to forget.

Down town San Pedro de Atacama

Valle dela Luna - Atacama Desert

We managed to get a tour out to the Valle de la Luna this afternoon to watch the sun set and tomorrow we´ll be heading to the Altiplano lakes and Monday on a geyser tour before getting on a bus north to Arica overnight. At some stage we´ll slow down and take it all in, we promise Benny :)

Street in Socaire, Altiplano region

Salar de Atacama

Flamingos on Salar de Atacama

At the salt flat we saw flamingos and some little lizards. The salt flat wasn´t like any that we had seen before, we´re used to seeing an actual flat lake type thing, but this wasn´t flat at all, it had huge lumpy salt crystals - very weird.

The altiplano lakes were definately a highlight, and at 4300m you could say they were breathtaking!

Lake Miscanti, Altiplano region

Street in Socaire, Altiplano region

We got up this morning to catch a 4am bus out to see the El Tatio Geysers which are best viewed at dawn. Again we were back up to 4300m and at 6am in the shaddow of the Andes it was positively freezing! Thankfully our guide cooked us some boiled eggs in a plastic bag dunked into a boiling waterhole which helped to warm up our hands a little. We started to think that we should have bought some of the local handcraft beanies, scarves, gloves and ponchos.

El Tatio Geysers

Our spanish is certainly getting a workout as we have not had an english conversation except with our guide yesterday since we left Santiago. Nobody speaks any english here and we are quite proud that we can order a meal and have some idea of what we are likely to get. Cath is starting to master the cuisine in Spanish while the rest is up to Andy to figure out (anyone surprised?)

Andy tackles a Llama kebab

Flamingos in the Altiplano

Cath has really liked this town with its adobe buildings and dirt streets but Andy has felt it is a little too touristy with restaurants, hotels and artisans taking up every door in the street. However, we both think that what is on offer around San Pedro is simply stunning. There is so much variation in the rocks, mountains and hills that Andy wished he was more of a rock-nerd, but they´re a strange bunch.
There is so much more on offer here like sand boarding, volcano hikes and mountain biking but if we stayed any longer we´d be broke in a week as it is quite pricy here.

Church in Tocanao

Tonight we jump on a bus to Arica so we´ll wake up on the coast - another contrast overnight. We plan to spend a day veging out there before crossing into Peru.

Chao chao! (local saying)
Andy & Cath

written by  Cath & Andy on April 9, 2007 from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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After a moment of panic thinking that we had lost eachother in the public toilets, we caught our first taxi of the trip into the centre of the city and sat in a park looking for a hotel to book in to. After we had sorted that out and had a shower (we were still in the clothes we put on at 3:30am the day before) we decided to discover the coast by foot.

Arica is a strange town. We are at the same latitude as Cairns but instead of Rainforest meeting the sea, there is just sandy desert and big mountains with no vegitation. There is a massive bluff right next to the city which is where Chile defeated Peru in the Pacific war. Quite an interesting museum and a very impressive sight looming over the city.

El Morro headland, Arica

Where the desert meets the sea

We have just been chilling out for two days in the tropical beach climate. Andy made friends with a waiter who, when we stopped back into the restaurant for a coffee this morning was so happy to see us again, he shook our hands and gave us free biscuits. And finally after about 30 attempts at ordering a decent coffee we finally got it right. Chileans have their coffee black and when you ask for it ´with milk´(con leche) they make it with hot milk, instant coffee and no water.

We have also discovered that Chileans eat big. We have no idea how there are so many good looking Chilean women wandering around because they eat such big meals! All bread, rice and fried stuff. Our lunch today consisted of:

Bread with salsa,
A bowl of mixed vegetable soup,
A main of chicken, a cup of rice, and salad, followed by
Dessert of cake or some other sweet,
A half litre each of freshly made juice

All this for approximately $4.00 Australian each. The food here is not spicy or adventurous, really just a lot of BBQ chicken, fried eggs, hot dogs and steak. The people watching has been great in this city with guitar players and singers roaming up and down the local restaurants (Cath´s dad would love it, they are very talented musicians) and people playing dominoes in the street. Andy has really loved this town as it certainly isn´t set up for western tourists like San Pedro was.

We´ll upload some photos later, we didn´t bring our cables for the camera and only popped in to check email while we´re waiting for the post office to open up after its 3 hour lunch break (this is normal). We´ve noticed some of our pictures are coming up wrong or have been lost by the site so we´ll try and fix that when we can.

Sunset, Arica

Iron Church built by Mr Eiffel

Tomorrow we are off on another bus adventure crossing into Peru and up to Arequipa. Its been great to spend two days doing very little and taking the city in after being toured out in San Pedro.

Talk to you from Peru,
Cath & Andy.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 11, 2007 from Arica, Chile
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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There were a few other passengers and, as it turned out, plenty of other drivers doing the same thing. Apparently this is actually a taxi service not something dodgy, but we did share a few nervous glances at eachother during the process. We were dropped at the bus station in Tacna, Peru and shuffled into a bus agency for a transfer to a bus to Arequipa.

All things went well until about 3.5 hours into the trip when in the middle of the desert, half way up a mountain and with no mobile phone reception and no water, the bus stopped. We sat there for nearly an hour while our bus driver donned the overalls and proceeded to venture into the engine bay of the bus to fix it while the passengers looked on. The best we could make out was that there was some problem with a drive belt as there were plenty of spares hanging from a hook inside the rear hatch. Noone mentioned anything to any of the passengers about what was going on and we only found out when we decided to get off the stifling bus to sit in the sun and breeze and have a look for ourselves. We both wished that Gaz was here with his deisel mechanic skills.

The bus being fixed - with supervisors

View from where our bus broke down

We made it to Arequipa and through some Bangkok like traffic and crazy taxi drivers in tiny cars we arrived to the stunning central Plaza de Armas, Wow. We had planned to spend some time here to get some more aclimatisation and do some tours of the surrounding region but after a short walk around, we think that we might possibly stay for a while...

Our hotel room has a balcony with a view to one of the volcanoes covered in snow that surrounds the city, city centre, cobblestone streets and stunning colonial buildings.

View from our hotel room

Carrot art - served with our omlette

We can´t wait to have a coffee at a second story restaurant overlooking the Plaza and people watch tomorrow morning.

ciao ciao
Cath & Andy.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 12, 2007 from Arequipa, Peru
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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Peruvian Market Lady - Canyon Del Colca

Cath drinking Mate de Coca (coca tea)

Andy with folk dancing girl - Canyon Del Colca

The next day was a 5am start to get out to the Condor viewing area at a high vantage point in the Cañon. The half hour wait in the freezing cold wasn´t fun but we did get to see the town waking up and some spectacular views as the sun came into the valley around us. The cañon is 3191m deep and is second in the world only to another one close by. It was impossible to get any sort of perception of scale, we couldn´t figure out if things were a couple of hundred metres away, or kilometres. Unfortunately, you can´t capture that in photos either. In the picture of Cath with the cañon behind her there is a single lane bridge at the bottom of the cañon which is just tiny. The Condors took a while to show up and we only saw 10 in total but these birds are huge! They have a wingspan greater than 3m and a body to suit, but tiny little heads. At one stage everyone was watching one glide around out in the middle of the cañon when one did a fly-by close to the viewing area too quick for anyone to take a photo. All we could hear was people gasping and saying ¨cor blimey, look at that!¨ well, whatever that translates to in Spanish anyway.

Condor - Canyon Del Colca

Cath next to Canyon Del Colca - look for bridge in picture to see how big this place is!

Back on the bus and a few more roadside stops on the way home before arriving back in Arequipa. A day off today to soak in more around town and then a flight to Cuzco tomorrow morning.

Mountain Market Lady - Canyon Del Colca

Our arrival in Cuzco was nothing short of whirlwind. Our flight left Arequipa at 8:00 and by 10:30 we had booked into a hostel, and booked three tours for the next three days with an ever so friendly travel agent. It all seemed a bit pushed upon us, but we didn´t get anything that we weren´t after anyway and the price was reasonable.

Cath next to Inca Wall - Cuzco

Plaza de Armas by night - Cuzco

Cuzco is an interesting town. It is in a valley totally surrounded by close mountains and at night when standing in the Plaza it looks like jewels all lit up around you. That said, we would probably like it a lot more if there weren´t so many pushy restaurant touts and people selling crappy textile goods from finger puppets to drink bottle holders. We cannot walk or sit for more than 30 seconds without being approached by someone wanting our money. There are lots of very steep cobblestone streets and the town is really set up very well for tourists.

Yesterday afternoon we did a tour of some churches (both Inca and Catholic) in town and some Inca ruins just outside the city. Simply breathtaking standing next to a 130 tonne block of granite that had been carved, polished and moved 17km into place more than 500 years ago.

Andy at Sacsayhuaman (pronounced sexy woman... almost)

View over Cuzco at Dusk

Today we did a full day tour of the sacred valley culminating with a visit to Ollayantambo which was a Inca fortress and city about half way between Cuzco and Machu Picchu. The 240 stair climb to the sun temple at the top was worth it simply to marvel again at the engineering feats of the Incas. It became fairly obvious to us when we saw it just why the valley was sacred to the Inca (and pre-Inca too) as the valley is very long, wide and fertile at the base in a landscape dominated by the steep volcanic Andes.

Sacred Valley - near Pisac

Market weaver - Sacred Valley

Ollantaytambo - Inca Terracing

Cath overlooking Pisac ruins

Tomorrow we are off on a train to Aguas Calientes just below Machu Picchu to take in the Sacred Valley some more and then head up to Machu Picchu on Saturday. Cath has wanted to go there since she was about 12 years old so the anticipation is palpable.

Talk to you all in a few days time!

Andy & Cath.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 19, 2007 from Cuzco, Peru
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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He came back and actually turned out to be a nice guy who we had a fairly long conversation with along with the people around us. It ended up with him talking in Italian to another Italian guy across the isle. That guy´s girlfriend was from Peru and ended up talking in Spanish to the Brazillian lady sitting across from us! We didn´t understand a word, but they seemed like good conversations.

At Aguas Calientes we spent a down day going to the hot springs, eating and drinking doing a mini pub crawl on the hill down from the hot springs. It was interesting when we had to meet our tour guide that night after quite a few...

Machu Picchu House

Machu Picchu Street

2 Aussies on top of a mountain

The train ride back to Cuzco wasn´t nearly as interesting as the ride out and we were absolutely knackered after getting up at 5am to get up to Machu Picchu for a 6:25 tour.

written by  Cath & Andy on April 21, 2007 from Aguas Calientes, Peru
from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America
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