Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon - The Happy Couple

The End

The Happy Couple — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

How could I end the blog without one last final tribute to Matt Harding?

I still haven't quite got his moves right. The man's a dancing genius, I tell you.

Goodbye

The Happy Couple — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The hostel in Lima we had been recommended seemed very nice, and the owners were very friendly, introducing themselves and remembering everyone's name. It was a shame to have to leave Huacachina so soon as it has been very nice to relax for a change, after getting over the shock of no internet.

We had been planning a big dinner out for our last night together but Joanne in particular was quite tired from the previous night's drinking then early rise and she asked me if I would mind giving the expensive meal a miss in favour of nice cebiche for lunch before she left. So we just got some food in a local place, where they at least sold litres of beer, and had a fairly early night. At least we had a double room.

Come on, give a cheers to the camera...

Wayhey!!

The next morning was all very depressing, while Joanne checked out and left her bag in storage and I transferred mine to a dorm – a different place from her bag. It didn't seem right. And it wasn't, but that's life, eh?

I think we went out for ceviche but I can't really remember, because we had a few cocktails while waiting for Joanne's taxi, then I continued drinking after she left. Everyone else on the roof terrace was planning to go out to a club that night and I was planning to go with them. The problem was that they weren't leaving until midnight, so common sense dictated at that time, while I still had some, that I should probably just go to bed instead of going out, which is what I did.

I wasn't sleeping too well and my room mates didn't come back until about 6am, when they made lots of noise, which prevented me from properly getting back to sleep again, if I had ever been properly asleep.

So, really, I think that has to be the end of the Round-the-World Honeymoon, because you can't have a honeymoon on your own can you?

With Joanne leaving, I felt a similar fear to the one I had before going travelling, or again before arriving in South America after safe Asia and New Zealand. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do. We had been together 24 hours every day for more than eleven months and I was already feeling completely lost.

Lima seemed like a hole, too.

Fin

Final Luxury

The Happy Couple — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We had really splashed out for Huacachina, since it was Joanne's second last place, and we had already booked a hostel in Lima that we had been recommended, so this was the last indulgence. Imagine our disappointment to discover that the “hotel” has no internet facilities; not even ones you can pay for, never mind free wifi! Imagine our further disappointment when we realised that there aren't any power plugs around the bar or outside areas for you to plug your laptop into. Imagine us not quite being able to contain our disappointment when we realised there was no TV in the room. OK, we got towels and soap, which hostels didn't always supply you with, but the rest seem to be considered standard in a hostel. Strange. The more you pay the less you get.

Cats

Never mind, it was a very nice place, with a convenient HUGE sand dune just out the back gate, and it did have a swimming pool which hostels hardly ever do. AND it was sunny and quite warm, for the first time in Peru, which is ridiculous because we were rapidly approaching the equator, so I think it should have been warm all the time, if not sunny. We went to a nice chilled-out bar-restaurant nearby for dinner, which had lots of tiny cute kittens in the garden, who were chasing their mother's tail. Back at the hotel, the barman wanted us to try his version of a caipirinha, using vodka, passion fruit, and limes instead of the usual cachaça and limes. It was very nice indeed.

Passion fruit caiprinhas

Joanne drinking

The breakfast was the same rubbish that you get in most hostels in Peru, though you could pay S5 to get eggs. We've had three-course lunches for S2.50 each! Anyway, it was an indulgence. We relaxed and sunbathed by the pool waiting for Lucy and Zdenek to arrive. I realised that this was the first time we have relaxed and sunbathed since the start of Cambodia. In February! Travelling is NOT a holiday. Since we were still quite near the coast, we tried the hotel cebiche. It was quite nice, but not as good as the stuff in Nazca.

Pool and dune

Joanne relaxing by the pool and dune

Joanne

Cebiche

Cebiche and cocktails

When Lucy and Zdenek arrived they seemed delighted with the place; they had decided to spoil themselves here as well. The previous day we had booked all four of us places to go sandboarding. Tess and Liam had done this before we met up with them again in Cusco, and Tess has sustained a bloody nose and a black eye doing it (so Liam claims, anyway).

In the buggy

The sandboarding included a dune buggy ride, which I hadn't been that bothered about: I had been on a quad bike in the Namib Desert, so I'd been there done that. I had no idea! These dune buggies are fantastic vehicles: 3.5 litre diesel engine, or so the driver told Zdenek, and that means a lot of grunt. Totally unrelated to a quad-bike. Even racing around town to the dunes was fun, but as soon as we got on the sand it was brilliant. I could not believe how fast we were going over sand dunes. At several crests it really felt like we were going to take air, and all the girls screamed. Then the descents on some of the big dunes was like being on a roller-coaster. What a lot of fun! I want one.

Stop for the view

When we came to a stop to admire the view with a big crowd of other people, I was disappointed it had come to a stop. We had paid for one hour and the clock was ticking! The drivers laughed when they heard me saying que mierda. But we were soon off again, but not for long. Next it was a stop to go sandboarding. By this time I really just wanted to keep zooming around in the buggy, but it was sandboarding we were here to do, so I thought I might as well give it a go. There were velcro bindings, but apart from that it was very like a snowboard. Which I have never used either, so that's no help.

Shadows

Dunes

The hotel's buggies

I bound my feet in an stood at the top of the dune and set off. I went quite slowly then fell over. It was rubbish. The bindings were mostly useless, so that falling over once, means you have to sit there and velcro yourself back in. Meanwhile the girls went down on their bellies. Faster than I started off, I thought. There was a French couple there, who looked very stylish and technical as they went down standing up, but also very slow. At the bottom they confirmed that they were snowboarders when I asked. I walked to the top and I tried standing up again, thinking it might be better if I head straight down, like the people going head first, and it was a bit faster, but I just fell off even faster. It was exhausting walking back up, then I realised that most other people weren't doing it, before the buggy tilted over the crest and came down to meet us, picked us up and took us to a bigger hill.

Another buggy

Doing up the bindings

At the next hill I had one last attempt (I decided) at standing up. It was useless. This time the hill was too big to try again and I just waited with the rest. For the rest of the increasingly large and steep hills, I went head first and it was a lot of fun and very fast if you didn't brake the whole way down. As it got steeper, Joanne and Lucy resorted to screaming the whole way down the slope, despite the fact they were braking the whole way down. Zdenek and I had competitions about who could get furthest by going fastest. Even the French snowboarder conceded that going head-first looked like much more fun and defected to the dark side. His girlfriend pursued her pointless, but elegant standing approach.

Getting out the sandboards

Off to the next dune

Before I really felt like I'd had enough face-first descents, the sandboarding was over. We were buggied to an oasis hidden between the dunes, after following rows of stones lined up together in what absolutely must have been an Inca or pre-Inca road, but nobody pointed it out or mentioned it; this was about fun, not culture. Then we parked up for sunset, in a most unusual place: most of the dunes were empty, but we parked in front of what looked like warehouses or factories; not the most attractive of sunsets. Someone asked a driver what the building were and he responded that they were cocaine factories, hidden in the dunes. I assume he was joking, but you never know.

Oasis

Pre-Inca road (I reckon)

Buggy on the dune

Joanne in the buggy

Sunset over coke factories

:-)

Zdenek and Lucy, here's your photo!

The end

Buggy into the sunset

The main oasis

On the way back to town, we past the main oasis that the town is built around. It smells a bit but it looks nice. Later we went back to the same kitten restaurant because Lucy is mad for cats, especially kittens. Then we got drunk: this was Joanne's goodbye with them.

Horrible fruit beer

In the morning, that was it: we had to leave and catch our bus before Lucy and Zdenek were up. Off to Lima!

Etch-a-Sketch Popinjay

The Happy Couple — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As soon as we got off the bus in Nazca we were confronted by hoards of touts waving leaflets at us, all desperate for our business. We hadn't seen anything like this for a while, maybe since Asia, but it soon became clear that this really is a one-trick town: all the touts seemed really surprised that we had somewhere to stay. Often they are surprised you have somewhere to stay already, but here it was at all; the representative of every company offering their flights seemed keen to emphasise that they had luggage storage. Clearly most people do not have a hostel to store their luggage in. We had been thinking about staying for two nights, just to slow down a little before Joanne left, but the presumption was already making us have second thoughts. Walking through town to our hostel made our minds up: we would only stay one night after all. It wasn't that the place was horrible; it just seemed like there wasn't much to it.

Cebiche mixto

Cebiche Pescado

Maiz Cancha

At last we were near the coast, so for lunch we went our for cebiche; or ceviche, they don't seem to be able to make their minds up, but since they are pronounced the same way in Spanish it doesn't make that much difference. I ordered mixto and Joanne ordered simple or solo pescado. They were both delicious and came with a big pile of large white corn kernels, a few slices of some unusual Andean potato a bit like a sweet potato, and garnished with seaweed. At last decent food again! They also gave us a little pile of salted maiz cancha or “corn nuts”, which is like unpopcorn. That night we drank a bottle of Peruvian wine. It was OK.

Cebiche Mixto without the seaweed

Joanne and Cebiche

Cebiche Mixto

*shudder*

As usual we were up early, not long after seven, and Joanne realised that she had misplaced the guidebook. This wasn't too serious for her because she was going home soon, but I was going to be in trouble without any kind of guide. We asked at the hostel but, even though she was sure she had left it at the internet PC the night before, nobody had handed it in. We went all the way to the cebicheria in case we had left it there, but they had found it either. The most likely explanation remaining is that some scumbag other traveller just put it in their bag.

We couldn't investigate further because it was time for our hostel pickup to see the famous Nazca Lines. First we were taken to a hotel where we were shown an introduction video all about the Lines. But before it was finished we had to go back to reception to be whisked off to the airport, which was very small, with lots of screen all round the waiting area, showing various videos about the Nazca Lines in different languages.

Getting in the plane

Soon we were bundled into a four-seater Cessna C172, along with a Brazilian guy. It's so small that we couldn't even take our bags in with us; they had to go into a small boot under the wing. As soon as we started down the runway I remembered that I love flying (though not flights), and I particularly enjoy flying in these little planes. We climbed a bit and flew for less than five minutes, then the pilot asked me if I was ready before banking sharply to the left, while chanting under the wing, under the wing, under the wing like a mantra. In fact he kept reminding me of the hypnotist character from Little Britain, saying look into the eyes, look into the eyes, not around the eyes, except this time it was look under the wing, look under the wing, not towards the tail.

Anyway there it was. The Whale.

Whale (and surely something beside it?)

Whale again

After circling it a couple of times at what seemed to almost ninety degrees, and checking I'd seen it, he flattened out, turned back, and went around it the other way for the other two (I was on the pilot's side). Next it was the Trapezoids.

The landscape

"Trapezoids"

More "trapezoids"

These "trapezoids" are good

In fact there are loads of lines, shapes, and “runways” all over this desert. The stylised animals only make up a small fraction of the marks in the desert, though the vast majority are very long, very straight lines. Next up was The Astronaut.

"Astronaut" on a hill, "under the wing"

The "astronaut"

I thought this was a bit silly. Why isn't it just a “person”? Anyway it is quite different from the rest in that it's done on a hill, and it's much messier. Maybe the hill made the work so much harder to do, maybe it's a fake later addition, though I think the archaeologists would know about it, or maybe it was made by aliens. Stupid aliens, who can't draw neatly. It's just not up to the same standard are the rest. Then it was the very impressive Monkey.

Monkey!

Is the moneky on a branch or something?

It really is a monkey!

This is particularly impressive because the nearest monkey would have been even further away than the nearest whale for these desert dwellers. Next up the Dog.

Dog. With two tails?

Dog

People say, yeah, but how did they make them so perfect?. Well, I think they are incredibly impressive, outstanding achievements, but perfect? Have you even seen a dog that looks like that? It's got two tails apart from anything else, but maybe that's supposed to represent it wagging. Perfect? No. Next Spider.

Spider with construction lines

Just spider

This one's interesting because it's the first that it is so obvious that the animal shape leads on from other more usual straight lines. One of its feet has been started at a pair of parallel lines. Next the Condor.

Condor

A bit less obvious than some of the others, but not bad considering that it is maybe more than one thousand years old. The desert gets so little rain, that even small accidental marks made on the desert stay for a very long time; tyre marks made in the vicinity of the Lines in the 20s are still visible today. The Lines however were made deliberately and are even more resilient than the tyre marks. Next up was the incredibly clear Humming Bird.

Humming bird

Humming bird plus construction

Humming bird again. It's so neat.

I have some doubts about the names they have give all of these. I think the design for the “humming bird” is very similar to the “condor”. Anyway, the humming bird also has obvious construction features, starting at its beak. It reminds me an awful lot of Etch-a-Sketch, where it is not possible to lift the “pen” from the “paper”, so you have to sneakily connect all shapes with construction lines. In fact I wonder if some of the less distinct faded shapes all over the desert are first attempts that have been erased, in an analogous way to Etch-a-Sketch: agitating all of those cleared rocks back where they came from, would make a reasonable job of clearing the image. Next, we passed over some marks in the desert which the pilot did not point out to us. I took photos anyway.

Were Argentinians here, I wonder?

Batman, Carlos, et al. woz ere

Then it was another short flight and we were at the parrot.

Parrot

Not sure how they know what it is. Doesn't look much like a parrot to me. It was one of the most obvious images from the sky though. Next I think it must be the Alcatraz or Heron Bird, but it doesn't really look like the image on the map they gave us, and it's very hard to make out.

Heron Bird?

Then the images they call Tree and Hands.

Tree and Hands by the road

Tree and Hands

The tree I am happy with, but I think “hands” looks like it's supposed to be some sort of other bipedal creature, probably another bird. Between the two figures, they have built a viewing tower, and isn't it remarkable luck that they could build the Transamerican Highway right through this site and only skim past a couple of images without ruining any? For good measure he took us past the parrot again.

Parrot yet again

Joanne had been looking a bit green for a while, but had not needed the sick bag in front of her. On the return flight I started feeling slightly sick, but even before we landed I was feeling better again. I think it was all the looking at the back of my camera instead of out the window. When we got out of the plane the Brazilian guy in front was grey and sat with his head between his knees for a while. Even when the bus came to take us back to our hostels he didn't seem any better. Everyone we had spoken to before this had mentioned feeling very sick, so Joanne had taken a pill for motion sickness, thankfully, whereas I thought sheer machismo and bravado would get me through.

Nice view on the way back

Just to prove that we were feeling sick, we went to a much cheaper, non-touristy cebicheria for lunch. We also ordered chicha morada which I had seen on menus for a while, but it was only on the Colca Canyon tour that I realised it means purple corn. It's really niced, not too sweet, and flavoured with lots of spices.

Then we took a bus to Ica. This time I opted to pay the extra S1 for ejecutivo to avoid the misery we had suffered on the Andoriña bus on the way to Nazca.

Upsidedown Munro

The Happy Couple — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We got up on schedule at 2:30am, although I was a bit confused when the alarm went off. Racing around to be ready for the guide arriving “between 3am and 3:30am”, we were interrupted by the hostel bell going then a knock on the door by the owner. Our pickup had arrived five minutes early! I know it's not much, but after getting up at 2:30am I want every last second to get ready. By three we were ready and stumbled out into the street to meet our pickup. It was just a young guy and no sign of any vehicle. We have to wait for the minibus he said. So after arriving earlier than our already early pickup time he is making us wait! Over half-an-hour we waited on the cold street for this minibus to pick us up, and when it did it was already half-full of people, which was odd because our young friend, who had since told us he was also going to be our guide, said it was only going to be us on the trek, and he only had enough walking poles for us.

The minibus climbed and climbed and it got colder and colder. For reasons I never worked out, not only did the driver not have the heater on, but he kept opening the windows. The only sensible theory I could come up with was that he had severe wind and was letting the smell out. So I froze the whole way up and over the pass at about 5000m so was completely unable to get any sleep, which was quite annoying. I was already asking myself why we had booked another tour when we always hate tours. At a (much too late for comfort) toilet stop, Joanne and I ended up swapping seats, and when she sat down she slightly missed the seat, which wouldn't normally be a problem, but this crappy old bus, possibly with no heating and faulty windows, was also missing the arms of the chair, leaving behind only a sharp bit of metal, which sliced a nice long rip right in the seat of Joanne's walking trousers. Now she was really annoyed too. How was she going to trek for two two with her bum hanging out? Having recently been on two tours with my crotch hanging out I had nothing but sympathy for her. She told the guide what had happened, but he clearly didn't know what to do and just chuckled a bit.

By the time we got to the next toilet stop, I had decided that I was going to tell him that it was the fault of his company's badly maintained bus, there is no way my wife can walk like that so, unless he can find some way to get them replaced or repaired, we would like to be driven back to Arequipa to have our full money refunded. I didn't know how it would go down, but the guide seemed like quite a nice guy, even if customer services isn't such a well defined concept in South America. There just didn't seem to be any other way, though, until a little later, I remembered that I had my trunks with me for the oasis at the bottom of the canyon. I told Joanne I could walk in my trunks and she can have my trousers. They would be too long for her, but they are the walking trousers I bought in Cusco, which have two-stage zip-off legs; taking the first stage off would make them short enough. They still had an unrepaired hole in the knee from Machu Picchu, but it's not too serious. Now that I had thought of a way out, there was no way I could maintain my anger at the poor wee guy, at least not as far as insisting on a lift back and full refunds. Joanne insisted that I couldn't possibly because it would be too cold, but now that we were lower again, near the edge of the canyon, the temperature wasn't too bad at all, and it was still early in the morning, so during the day, and as we got deeper, it was bound to be perfectly OK for the short shorts that my trunks are. Nonetheless, to prevent the risk of me being cold, she in turn came up with her own plan: she could wear he bathing costume under the trousers and it wouldn't be so embarrassingly revealing. However the tear would probably still grow when walking, so she still wanted to try and do something about it.

A less crowded viewpoint below the cross

Soon we stopped at the first major point of interest: Cruz del Condor, where we had been pretty much guaranteed that it would be teeming with condors. I wasn't too bothered because we had already seen loads of condors since we arrived in South America and I didn't really consider them anything special, however I thought it might be rather impressive to see them in such large numbers. Most people on the tour, however, were very excited, and when we passed a group of maybe fifteen circling, people were jumping up and down with their cameras squealing to get out; there were already a few tourists there taking photos, but we continued on to the famous Cruz del Condor. There were literally hundreds of tourists here, yet not one single condor. It was bizarre: everyone had their camera in hand, looking out over the canyon. When a single condor came cruising down the canyon everyone went wild, snapping photos, myself included I must admit. It just seemed to be the done thing. Some time later a pair flew around for a while, but that was it! We had seen more condors in the main square of Arequipa the previous morning.

A female condor (white collar)

Two condors

I was more interested in the Canyon itself, after it was so hyped by several fellow travellers, and I had since read that it was over twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, so I was really excited after that. But now that we were standing on the edge of the Canyon, I was not at all impressed. The Grand Canyon must be really boring, I said to Joanne. It didn't look particularly deep or breath-taking. Considering that the Grand Canyon is frequently voted the best thing in the world, I was very surprised. Oh well, no need to make it to the States then, I was thinking. Before we got back in the van, I asked the guide about the possibility of a repair. He said he knows a family at the bottom of the valley who can sew it up, if we can last to there. He didn't even have any Duck Tape for a temporary repair. Of course we should have had some tape: it's one thing that has been consistently wanting in our kit, though usually to tape over speakers directly above our heads on buses, but it had a million uses. Anyway, I reckoned the rip wouldn't grow much when walking down; it was when stepping up I thought it would get worse.

The canyon

The canyon. Big wow.

At the next stop our guide got off the minibus and said that the others should stay on to meet their guide in the Cabanaconde, the town we had stopped short of. Now it all made sense; apparently the others had opted for the three day trek, which was the recommended one, but we had decided that we couldn't really spare the time when Joanne was leaving so soon. Ours was going to be a bit tougher going apparently, but that's good: we needed to get fitter. We set off down a well-maintained but very dry and dusty path. We were all slipping a bit, but the new soles on my shoes, in particular, seemed totally inappropriate for the rugged path; more suited, perhaps, to a squash or basketball court. The view was OK, but nothing too different from the sort of views you see a hundred times a year if you are walking frequently in the hills of Scotland. The distance we were going to drop down to the bottom of the valley was just over a thousand metres, though I've since read that the valley is over 4000m deep. I don't know how they work the depth out: perhaps all of the downhill from the high pass we went over is included as well, but that's blatant cheating as far as I'm concerned. Anyway the drop is fairly typical of the ascent on a moderate day's Scottish hillwalking, so the view is fairly similar to the view of a valley between two hills. I decided that the whole concept of a canyon is cheating, since you get much larger valleys between mountains. Everyone else, especially Lucy and Zdenek, seemed really impressed though, so I kept my mouth shut to avoid being a killjoy.

Joanne and Lucy at the edge of the canyon

The canyon

Bottom of canyon

While I was busy being unimpressed to myself, my shoes were slowly falling apart. I got my shoes repaired in Laos and they lasted an extra seven months, included several tough treks; I get my shoes repaired in South America and they only seemed set to last a few days! Typical! Every day I spent in South America seemed to be making me even more of a fan of Asia.

The wall of the canyon

Zdenek at lunch

At the bottom of the valley, we stopped for lunch. It was quite nice and green at the bottom, in stark contrast with the parched side of the valley we had come down, where even the cacti seemed to be shrivelled and dying. At least it was a bit prettier here. There were several types of fruits growing, though the guide told us that purple corn was the most important crop. At a prickly pear cactus, the guide stopped and took what looked like some fungus off a leaf, but told us it is a beetle, which is very important for clothes and art. He then crushed what was presumably the chrysalis of the beetle and his hand was covered in a bright read colour. “Oh cochineal”, I said, feeling very pleased with myself when he said, si, cochinilla. What a swot!

Lunch stop

A short climb past prickly pears

The canyon

After a little bit of climbing we came to drop where we could look down and see the oasis we were staying in for the night, and a little later we had taken the path down and were at the pool. We had asked the company recommended by the Lonely Planet for a quote for a tour and it was about four times what our company were charging. At the oasis, they had told us, they camp instead of staying in the cabins like all the other companies, because they have heard that they have bed bugs; the guy told us he didn't know what these “bed bug” things are, he just knows that there won't be any in the tents. This had made us all a little bit nervous, but I suspected it was just a little bit of industrial espionage, and nobody had reported bed bugs on the online reports of the tours. Nevertheless we checked the mattresses and found nothing. A swim, a meal, a beer, and (most of) one night's sleep later and the rip-off company were proved to be liars. There were no bed bugs.

First glimpse of the oasis

Las Mulas

Closer look at the oasis

Waterfall

The next morning we were up in time to set off at 5am. The guide had told us there was an option to start at 6am if we wanted to rent a mule to take us back out of the valley, but we had all bravely refused. The climb out of the valley was a bit harder, since we were going up, but near the top it really started to take its strain on all of us, because of the altitude. It's not so high we would have been bothered by it normally, but you feel it earlier when you are exercising hard. Joanne and I made it to the top before the first mules past us, carry all the lazy people from another group. Lucy was really struggling by the top, but she managed anyway.

Interesting rocks

Ascent continues

Our guide on the way up

First lazy peron arrives after us

Then it was a ten minute walk to Cabanaconde town for breakfast. We were taken to a really nice looking bar / restaurant, where the manager was running around clearing up glasses when we arrived. Sorry we had a big party last night, he said. While we were eating our breakfast a confused looking tiny old lady appeared at the back of the bar and hung around for a bit. Apparently she had accosted Joanne on her way back from the toilet, but she hadn't been able to communicate with her. The manager went to the door, shoed her away, and closed it behind her. Not long later she appeared again and this time he took her and led her through the bar out through the front door onto the street. As she was taken past us she was saying buenas, Señor to everyone she passed. The manager came back and explained that it was his granny, who was ninety-two. He said she sometimes gets confused and forgets things: she still thinks that this is her house. I don't know why he kept kicking her out though; she seemed harmless enough and very polite and friendly. And, after all, it is her house. Zdenek reckoned he was embarrassed of his old granny.

Purple corn growing

After breakfast, we went to the main square to wait for the bus, passing granny on the way, shuffling down a street, saying buenas to everyone. We waited ages for the minibus and other groups appeared. We wondered how on earth we were all going to fit into it. When it arrived one of the other two guides and the bus driver told our guide that he had got it wrong and there was no space for us; his bus must be at a nearby town getting repaired, so they prevented us from getting on the minibus and insisted that their groups get on first. Then it came out that our names were on the sheet after all, although it seemed like the company had messed up and booked one place too few. That meant crushing up a bit on the bus, and when I got on I couldn't see a seat. “Where should I sit?” I said, and the evil guide replied “ask your own guide”. What a nasty piece of work! It transpired that there was a seat for me at the back, crushed horribly between a fat guy, who couldn't help it, and a silly macho French guy, who seemed determined to win at shoulder jockeying. A nightmare!

Luckily it wasn't too far to the lunch spot, where we had been told we could choose our own restaurant on the main square. Instead, we drove right through the main square to the edge of town where we parked outside the only restaurant in sight. The evil guide told his people that they could have a look and decide, but our guide said nothing to us, he just looked bullied and crushed. Stitched up again! Typical of a tour! It was predictably expensive: there was a buffet, which I have banned myself from, especially at that price, and nothing cheap on the menu. Joanne opted for spaghetti bolognese, which was one of the cheapest things on the menu, and I refused to buy any food, settling instead for a beer for lunch. Lucy and Zdenek gave in and had the buffet but, apparently it was pretty awful. After lunch we made sure we were back on the bus early to get good seats to the hot springs (not included), then we left the hot springs early to ensure good seats for the long trip home.

Joanne was planning to go to the office when we got back to ask for compensation for her trousers, which, although she had got them free in China, were good walking trousers: possibly not fake North Face, and now they were ruined. Now she was also going to complain about the minibus and restaurant, and the other guide if he turned out to be from the same company. I asked our guide and he said that, no, both the other guides were from the same company, but not his. So they were ganging up on him and bullying him. And he was only twenty-one. Poor thing.

In the event, we arrived back much later than scheduled and we didn't have time to complain at the office, just head off for our bus to Nazca. Lucy and Zdenek were staying for another day to relax but, as always, we had to keep moving. The cheap bus company we had chosen was a shambles: they had no idea how they were loading the luggage and seemed to have a very complicated and pointless process for doing so. It took forever and the bus left more than an hour late. By this time everyone on board was getting very annoyed and stamping on the floor. The bus itself was fine. The seats themselves were fine. We had been a bit worried about these when we went for the cheap seats on the cheap bus, but they were both up to the usual standard. The problem we should have foreseen is that they had crammed 66 seats on the top floor of a bus that usually only has 40 seats on that floor. What fun! Remarkably, I got some sleep, but Joanne had a terrible night. We both had very sore knees by the morning.

Mugged Beef and Trade Unionists

The Happy Couple — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When we arrived in Arequipa our hostel room wasn't yet ready. To be fair, the bus did arrive very early, although to be a bit more critical, the bus always arrives that early and the guy running the place had not come to pick us up at the bus station as promised. No matter, we just went to the main square for breakfast.

Well the sun's over the yard arm - woops no it's not

After breakfast, I thought I might as well have a wee drink, since it feels like I'm still up from the night before, and we'll be going to bed for a rest soon, what's the harm? Of course everyone else agreed it was an excellent suggestion and joined me. How civilised the world is outside Scotland, that you can just order a beer whenever you, as an adult feel like it. We weren't alone in fact, and I was actually given the idea by the older guys at the next table from us who were already drinking.

Main plaza

Condor overhead

Lovely restaurant balcony

Condors

Lucy

After a couple of beers, a march started in the square below. After a bit we realised it was more of a demonstration: it seemed to be trade unionists from the local area, then they were joined by trade unionists from other areas, but it all seemed very peaceful. After a while longer, some other groups arrived that didn't seem to be trade unionists, and they started marching around the square in the opposite direction. Round about this time, the riot police arrived, although they didn't look very heavily kitted up. There was lots of military-sounding music, possibly some communist- and some fascist-sounding, but there's not much to choose between tunes intended to rouse the proletariat, so I couldn't be sure, but in the end they all just marched away in different directions and it remained just as peaceful as it had first seemed.

Trade Unionists

Marching

People marching the other way too

The plaza

Once the demo had disappeared, we returned to the hostel, buying tickets for a Colca Canyon tour the following day. Our minibus pickup was at 3am. I have never got up so early so often other than on this trip!

A big rabbit

That evening I finally had lomo saltado, which literally means “jumped beef”, though I'm not sure what it means: mugged beef, maybe. It's a national dish of Peru and I had never really fancied it, but the cheap restaurant we had gone into didn't have many other choices, so I decided to make it a bit more exciting and have it mixed with beef spaghetti, which was one of their options. It's kind of like a Chinese beef and peppers dish, except that it has chips through it. Great cuisine in South America.

Lomo saltado (on the right of the plate) - Yum yum!

New beer

More new beer

Plaza in the evening

Big Banana Feet

The Happy Couple — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

After returning from Aguas Calientes, it was quite late by the time we had checked back into our hostel, so we just went to the nearest restaurant for food. It seemed like quite a nice place and I ordered calzone. It was large, as they often are, but the filling was a bit cold. It must have been sitting around a while, waiting for other people's food, I thought.

I didn't sleep at all well that night. Lucy and Zdenek had been put in the room we had before and our new room had a really old uncomfortable mattress. To make matters worse, my stomach felt really unsettled and by morning I was convinced that I had food poisoning again, so I stayed in bed all morning while everyone else went out. By the afternoon I was starting to wonder whether altitude sickness wasn't playing at least a part in my ill health; Machu Picchu may be quite high, but it's not really high enough for altitude sickness, and the town is only at about 2000m, so I had probably de-acclimatised while there and now I was having to re-acclimatise in Cusco. Or else it was just food poisoning, I'm not sure. I managed to get up in the afternoon, but I still wasn't feeling right by the end of the day.

Inca wall

Despite that, I still managed to go out with the other three to book bus tickets to Arequipa and take a few photos of the town, since we had been too drunk last time. Zdenek was keen to see an Inca Sun temple, but we discovered it had been added to significantly by the Spanish and they had turned it into Santo Domingo Church. See how they've done that? Sun. Domingo. Anyway, you had to pay to go into the church to see what was left of the temple inside, so Joanne and I didn't bother, but Lucy and Zdenek later told us it was quite nice.

Sun temple turned into a church

Front of Santo Domingo Church (Sun temple)

Main square

In the morning I was feeling much better again. We walked around a few travel agents, considering changing our next destination from Arequipa to somewhere there might be a beach for Joanne to relax a bit before heading off, but in the end it was just going to be too much hassle and it would mean missing out on the Nazca Lines, as well as Colca Canyon, which a few people had told us was their next favourite after Machu Picchu, and one person even went as far as saying they thought it was better than Machu Picchu.

Nice balcony

Way up to our hostel

Coca shop very near our hostel

Since my shoes had finally died, it was really urgent that I get a new pair, so we returned to the two shops I had seen likely candidate shoes last time we were in Cusco. Unfortunately neither of them were open, so we had to try some other shops. In the first few shops, I looked for a pair of shoes I liked then asked if they had them is a size 44, to which the all said that they had nothing bigger than a 42, so in the next few shops I just came straight out and asked if they had anything in a size 44; a couple of shops said that, oh yes, they do have a size 43, which they seemed to look at as a kind of outsize shoe, but they didn't fit me. The two shops that weren't open must have been stocking gringo shoes, because nowhere else did anything bigger than a 43. I didn't think my feet were that big, but when I asked for a 44, the shop owners all looked at my feet in amazement. I told them all that Peruvians are small. Then we tried to get Joanne trousers and exactly the same thing happened, so I told them that Peruvians are small again, and one woman replied that Americans are big, so I put her straight on that one. Instead, I resorted to getting my last pair of shoes repaired. They hadn't fallen apart as badly as the ones I had just thrown out, they just had holes in the soles, so maybe they were salvageable. The guy put new soles on them and we were off again.

Ancient rite

On the way back to the hostel we passed an advert for an ayahuasca ceremony on Friday. This is a plant used in shamanic rituals, which sounds quite interesting, though I don't think Friday the 13th would be the right day to have the shamans treating you. Once we got back one more thing fell apart: the leather and stone bracelet thing that Joanne had got me for my birthday had finally had too much continuous wear and completely fallen apart. Nothing lasts a year!

Dead birthday present

When the taxi came to pick us up to take us to the bus station and deliver our tickets at the same time, we realised we had been done: the company on the tickets was not the company we had agreed to go with. When we got there we were at the back of the bus, where we had specifically asked not to be, instead of the middle where we should have been, and we discovered that the tickets had cost S35 rather than the S60 we had been charged. This was the first time in South America we hadn't got the tickets at the bus station and it was a mistake. We had thought S60 was OK because the hostel had tried to sell us tickets for S165! As it happened the bus was actually fine, but it was still very annoying knowing that we had been ripped off like that.

However, a good night's sleep was not to be had: some idiot had set their mobile phone alarm to go off at 4am and took ages to switch it off. It might not have bothered me so much if it hadn't been the alarm on my old phone I used to use to get up for work. I was completely awake. Then just as I thought I might get back to sleep some evil person called me on my phone. It really irritates me that I can't turn off all incoming calls. I can divert them all, but to where? I want them to divert to nowhere (or /dev/null if you want to get geeky).

Location, Location, Location

The Happy Couple — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We had to get up at 5am to catch the train we had booked to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo). There was one train before and others after ours, but we had booked the “backpacker” train, which was the cheapest option at US$50 each way. Now considering you can travel the length of the country for less than that on the most expensive coaches, there is clearly something wrong here. Later we found out what is wrong is that the “Peru Rail” is a Chilean company. However, if we had done the Inca Trail, we would have had to book several months in advance, precluding any reorganisation of the schedule and it would have cost us somewhere in the region of US$1000 each, so we weren't complaining much. This is the cheap way to do it!

Warning this entry MAY feature excessive photography

The train was nice enough and I wondered why you would possibly want to pay double for a journey that only takes three hours, until we left, passing another train full of passengers with tables between them and waiters bringing them breakfast on platters, and absolutely no riffraff like us on board. Lucy, Joanne, and Zdenek all slept on the train, but I didn't. I just don't sleep easily in transport, also the scenery was quite nice. When we arrived, the people in the hostel were really nice, and one girl in reception told us where the locals eat to avoid gringo prices. We found a place with a S6 cena menú which was perfectly alright, then we bought entrance tickets for the next day and went to bed very early.

The reason we went to bed so early is that the next day we had to get up at 3am to ensure that we were able to get a ticket for Waynapicchu. Waynapicchu is the distinctive mountain towering over the main complex of Machu Picchu. We had heard you get great views from there so we wanted to be in the first four hundred, because only the first four hundred get tickets for Waynapicchu: two hundred are allowed in at 7am and the rest at 11am. We set off not long after 4am and headed down towards the entrance, head torches at the ready, however it was just after full moon and it didn't seem like the lights would be necessary, despite the hostel (and the Machu Picchu entrance tickets) insisting that you bring torches and spare batteries. There was certainly a small crowd heading the same direction as us, but we were in no danger of missing out on our rightful places up Waynapicchu.

Pink-faced people at the gate

There was still an slight air of competition and it was quite steep, but I had weighed myself on the control-freak hostel owner's scales in Puno to discover, after the Bolivia Diet I was only 87kg, a full six down from my peak after Argentina, so it was going to be easy for me. By the time we got to the entrance at the top of the path, at about 5:30am, lots of people had steam rising off them, and nearly everybody had bright pink faces. Now that the sun was coming up we could see some of the stunning scenery we had been climbing through. The surrounding looked quite like the karst peaks we had seen in Halong Bay in Vietnam and Yangshuo in China.

Similar to karsts

Surronded by mountains

Then we all has to stand in line and wait for the gates to open at 6am. Just before the gates opened the first three buses arrived; they would all get to go up Waynapicchu and none of them had to go through what we did. We all agreed that Waynapicchu tickets should only be available to people who have walked up from Aguas Calientes. Then, when the gates opened someone went down the queue, asking whether we wanted to be part of the 7am or 11am group for Waynapicchu. We said 7am, because we wanted to get the early morning views of Machu Picchu and avoid climbing in the midday sun; however everyone else seemed to have received counter-intuitive advice and asked for the later entry. When the gates opened and we all piled in, the 11am crowd all headed sharply up to the left. They obviously knew what they were doing. Or thought they did.

Llamas

Joanne next to nice Inca wall

Not sure what this is. Cute though

Hard not to grin

Houses to the right, temples and stuff to the left

Across the plaza to houses

Almost as soon as you are through the gate, you get lovely views of Waynapicchu and you can already get a feel for the size of the place. Round the first bend we were met by a herd of llamas who apparently live in Machu Picchu, keeping the grass short, I suppose. Most of the buildings aren't too badly ruined, but there large piles of boulders here and there, and none of them have roofs anymore. We headed in the direction of Waynapicchu in case we had estimated the distance badly, but we were there in no time and hung around looking at other nearby bits. We took so many pictures that I can't be bothered continuing very much with the description. It is an amazing place. Machu Picchu was one of my reasons for wanting to travel and it wasn't disappointing.

Waynapicchu and Huchuypicchu

Joanne and Waynapicchu

Me and Waynapicchu

Us!

Something sacred

When the gates for Waynapicchu opened we had to queue again, then sign a register. Most ominous. The track up the mountain was quite difficult going, and very steep in places; nothing for a seasoned hillwalker such as myself, of course, but the others struggled a bit, especially Lucy. Near the top of the path, some typical Inca terracing started; this is usually used for agriculture, but here the ground was ridiculously steep. Then we saw that at the top of all the terracing was a ruined house. Insane! Somebody had built this path to access, and built all this terracing as a vegetable garden for one house. Someone must have really hated the rest of the community or been very important. As we got higher the views of Machu Picchu started to disappear as clouds started to rise out of the forests we had climbed through that morning. I imagined that it was actually all of the sweat form the early arrival, rising to form clouds. I wondered if this is why most people wanted the later tickets. For a while the view was obscured, then much nearer the top is started to clear up again and it stay completely clear for the rest of the day.

Start of path up Waynapicchu

Joanne struggling a bit

First view from above

Crazy terraced garden

Crazy steep path

Moon behind the Waynapicchu house

Waiting for the view to come back

The View is clearing

A bit higher and it's definitely clearing

Me and Mach

There's also terracing further down

Crowds at the top (it was much worse on a bit)

The top of the hill only has a little space and you can see why they restricted the numbers; otherwise it would be like lemmings up there. The views are fantastic. The stonework, the architectural, and engineering achievements of these people who didn't even have the wheel, are very impressive indeed, but what really makes this place is the scenery. What a place to build a town: at the top of a mountain, surrounded by other beautiful mountains and valleys, and from the top of Waynapicchu you can really appreciate the full context of Machu Picchu. I was really glad that we had got up so early and managed to secure our free tickets to the mountain. The first bit of the way down was even steeper than the way up and most people were going very slowly. In front of us was a group of about five middle-aged Canadian women. They had apparently been adopted by a young Glaswegian guy, who must have been working for the Scottish Tourist Board. He was keeping the ladies laughing the whole way down, offering to take their walking poles at tricky bits, and taking their hands when necessary. By the time we overtook them at a wide bit, they had started calling him their “path angel”. Good work! All Scots are like that, of course.

Incredible terracing and Huchuypicchu

Big mountain nearby

More garden, I presume

Back near ground level I decided I wanted to climb the smaller mountain, Huchuypicchu, closer to the ruins, but nobody else would join me. They would wait for me, they said. I set off quickly, not wanting to hold them up to long and soon I had to squeeze past some slower people on the trail. Not long after that I was aware of a bad smell. Checking me shoe I realised that I had stood in something, and my stomach told me it was something human. I tried to wipe it off as I was walking and retching, but the smell still followed me. I pushed on faster, still retching, hoping there would be lots of grass at the top, but the haste I had added to my speed just caused me to trip, and I fell on my knee, ripping the new trousers that I had bought in Cusco to stand in for the ones with the crotch rip. I really wasn't having much luck with trousers! Anyway, at the top I was able to clean my shoes more and get fantastic views of both Waynapicchu and Machupicchu that are closer up than viewing one from the other.

Terracing up the side of Huchuypicchu

The top bit where we all were

Top of Waynapicchu close up

We spent the next few hours just wandering around the site, taking photos, lazing about in beautiful places, and trying to take in as much of the experience as we could, simultaneously trying to ignore the lingering aroma from my shoe. Eventually the crowds really started to fill the place up and some small black flies, just like the evil ones at Iguazu Falls, started attacking us. The locals all talk about mosquitos, but this was not a mosquito as we know it, it was more like a midgie, but the bite is much itchier and each one actually draws blood. I wonder if to Spanish speakers “mosquito” just means little fly i.e. mosca + diminutive.

This rock is meant to have power

Oh yeah I feel it now

Curious llama

The "power rock" is meant to mirror the mountain profile

Joanne and llama

Llamas

Awesome Inca stonework

Temple of the Three Windows

Looking down on the housing

Huchuypicchu

Someone on top of Huchuypicchu like I was

Except nobody took a photo of me

Views from higher up on Machu Picchu

We were there!

Joanne was there!

Pose

More Chinese or American

Views from higher up on Machu Picchu

Views from higher up on Machu Picchu

Chased off by the little flies, we decided to see what remained of the site and be off. The last bit was an Inca bridge, which was another fifteen minute walk. The bridge was another incredible feat of engineering, in fact the whole path along to the bridge was, but it was undergoing some reconstruction, so who knows what state it was in before. The strangest thing about the bridge is that it didn't seem to go anywhere: it clearly crossed a difficult gap on the contour the path was on, but then it seemed to peter out. Maybe it was all just eroded and there used to be a path beyond the bridge heading up to the next pass, but it wasn't obvious. Anyway, Machu Picchu is an awesome place and everyone should go there. The ruins are great, but it's really the scenery that makes it stand above any other ruins I've seen.

Joanne and Inca Bridge

But where does it go?

Flower

Waynapicchu from near Inca Bridge

This is the Inca Trail

View from Inca Trail

Machu Picchu

We had planned to get the bus back to town, but when we discovered that the $7 did mean US$7 and not just 7 Soles, we decided to walk back down again. It was purer that way anyway, wasn't it? We celebrated with beer and coca sours (another take on Pisco sours), and Zdenek bought a kilo of cheese from a street vendor. Happy days.

View of site from ground level

Aguas Calientes

Coca sour and Cheese

Looking pleased

They make everything from coca

And it is good for everything, as David said

The next day I thought my shoes had been through enough and I wasn't convinced they'd ever smell right again, so I threw them out. The rest of the day was spent at the baths the town is (or used to be) named after. Quite nice, very cheap, but oddly they have a sand bottom which makes the water look really dirty. Then it was back on the train to Cusco.

End of shoes

Machu Picchu was the coup de grâce

Location, Location, Location

The Happy Couple — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Alpaca: clothes and food

The Happy Couple — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The overnight bus to Cusco was incredibly hot. At least is wasn't freezing cold, but why can't they get it right? It seems that the temperature outside being above 23C means they have to try and lower it to 10C, whereas the outside temperature being above 23C means they have to try and increase it to 40C, which I'm pretty sure the achieved on this particular bus: my big bottle of water felt hot when we finally got off the bus. Incredibly the promised pick up from bus station was actually there, for which we were very grateful.

At first impression Cusco looked like a rather attractive place, in particular the main square and a wall near our hostel, which had been built by carving large stones so that they fit perfectly together; a technique I knew, from some documentary I once watched, was an Incan architectural technique meaning that no cement or grout is required. Incredible. Worried about how cold I was going to get in the Machu Picchu trek, considering that I still had no warm clothes since my thermals were stolen and my one pair of long trousers were ripped again, we went shopping for clothes for both of us. I bought a nice warm-looking alpaca wool jacket, though I wasn't all that keen on the style or the fact it was very bulky and therefore going to take up a lot of space in my bag. Nonetheless, the vendor lowered her price until I didn't feel I could say no and I really did need something warm. I also needed some shoes, since mine were finally starting to fall apart, months and months after having them repaired in Laos. I thought I might get some walking boots, but these were all very expensive. I nearly bought one of two pairs, but I couldn't decide which fitted better, deciding I could come back to choose in a day or two.

That night we met up with Tess and Liam, who had been in Cusco for two weeks already, learning Spanish. Predictably it turned into the usual late night and drunken carnage that seems to be all they do; though they claim that we are a bad influence on them and they spend all their time learning Spanish and doing other wholesome things while we are not around.

Guy in Liam and Tess's hostel with a big bag of coca leaves

The following day Lucy and Zdenek arrived and we met up with them to coordinate Machu Picchu, and bought very expensive train tickets to the nearby town of Aguas Calientes, which seems almost completely to have changed its name to Machu Picchu Pueblo, unsurprisingly. Pleased at our decisiveness and progress we went out for dinner and I had an alpaca steak, which was rather nice, but not a patch on an Argentinian Bife de Chorizo.

Alpaca steak

Floating Islands and Reed Bananas

The Happy Couple — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the morning, before heading off on our floating islands tour, I had a small run-in with the weirdo control freak of a hostel owner. There were two small jugs of coffee by the rest of the breakfast things, which I thought was a bit odd since there were quite a few rooms, but I assumed he must periodically refill them. I helped myself to a cup of coffee, leaving behind maybe a third of one little jug, and before I sat down in my seat the owner was at my side saying “THINK!!” and tapping the side of his head: “Twelve breakfast and twelve coffees. Take only a small amount and fill up with hot water”. He looked like he was about to explode, so I just returned to the jug and slopped most of my cup of coffee back in the jug and dribbled in a bit of hot water. The coffee hadn't been very good the day before, so I didn't want to make it taste any worse. “You are crazy!” he continued ranting, “It's too strong! You'll make yourself ill! CRAZY!”. I wonder who the crazy one is. His coffee started off weaker than the espresso I normally have a mug of for breakfast at home, so I don't think I was in imminent danger of ill health from his pathetic microwaved filter coffee. Looney!

Native fish

Someone we had met in Asia, who was doing their RTW trip the other way around from us told us about the Islas Flotantes in Lake Titicaca. We had been told how amazing it was because these people were originally from some Pacific islands, but had experience xenophobia when they arrived in South America, so instead took to building entire islands made of reeds in the middle of the lake, to keep them safe from xenophobic harm, and the descendants of these same people are still living there more than a thousand years later; it does seem incredible, however I had read nothing since that corroborated this exact explanation.

On the (very slow again) boat on the way to the reed islands, our guide, who for once really was a bilingual guide and translated everything she said, whichever language came out first, started to tell us the story of these people, the Uros people. According to her they were living there, along with many other ethnic groups, before the Inca Empire arose around the Lake Titicaca area. As I listened I wondered how on earth the others had got the impression that they were from the Pacific islands. The guide went on to explain that the Incas wanted to charge high taxes on the land around the Lake, where the Uros had been living; it was for this reason, she said, that they moved onto the lake, simply because they could not afford to pay the land taxes. Then after telling us what a peaceful people they were, who didn't want conflict with the Incas, she said that they were able to continue their pacific way of life on the floating islands on the lake. Was that it? Was it the confusion between pacific and Pacific that led our friends to believe they came from Polynesia or somewhere? I wondered if they had taken the exact same tour, with the same guide and her preference for pacific over “peaceful”.

Main group of floating islands

Anyway, the Uros people are apparently still living the same lifestyle as many hundreds of years ago, although it is now being heavily influenced by tourism, and intermarrying with the surrounding Aymara people means that less and less are they a people in their own right, and more and more are they becoming absorbed into mainstream Peru, just another part of the tourist industry. Oh well, things change, and I'm sure they are better off weaving colourful clothes and making ornaments for tourists than they were subsisting on fish and reed roots. Also, I can't help thinking that an isolated population of only a few thousand must be a bit inbred, so mixing with the landlubbers can't be a bad thing either. Also, they have long stopped speaking Uros and now they all speak Aymara, but Spanish is beginning to creep in.

Nonetheless, there are still large numbers of people living on these bizarre man-made islands. They have floating schools, two floating hospitals, two floating churches, floating shops, and most other services you would expect in a small city. This is the real deal, unlike the Bolivian side. The guide had told us how these people look very different from people on the land, due to their genetic history, but I didn't really see it; they did have some different dress styles, but the only people we saw were on a couple of islands used exclusively, I suspect, for tourist visits, so even the difference in dress may just have been for our benefit. It would have been much more interesting to hire a boat and float among the real, working reed islands, but how were we to have known the tour would be so superficial? If only there had been a clue, like the word “tour”.

Unmarried girl

The first island we stopped at we were introduced to a few of the Uros, men in their shirts made of reed fibres, and women with different-sized pompoms in their hair: large for unmarried, small for married. The guide and an Uros helper built up a scale model of the island to demonstrate how it is constructed. It really is quite incredible: using specially designed (metal) tools, they cut a several metres thick layer of reed roots, which are very buoyant, to use as the foundation for the island. On top of this layer, which float below the surface of the water, they start layering and weaving the tops of reeds, until there is a three metre pile of these on top of the base. This is what we were standing on. Then, she explained, to prevent them from ending washing up on Copacabana beach, in Bolivia, they anchor the islands in several places using up to seven-metre-long reed stakes, one stake for each anchor point on the island and one into the lake bottom. Then they build their houses and so on made, also made of reeds.

Guide with Uro guy and scale model of island

Then they talked for a bit about the food they eat. They use the reeds for everything and sure enough this includes food. We were each handed a piece of reed shoot which we were told was an “Uros Banana”. It tasted OK, very fresh, but you would get bored of it very soon. Before the Spanish arrived, she told us, the delicious trout and king fish that the lake is now full of, were not here; the only fish were some really small unappetising fish, and one of the poor things was shown to us by an Uros lady. This was their staple until the bigger fish were added, and it was also the basis of their economy, because this isn't really enough to live on, and they have always traded extensively with their neighbours, particularly for things like alpaca wool and potatoes. The guide told us that until recently the Uros never used money, despite the Incas bringing it to the region, and barter was done on a basis of volume for volume: one armful of fish for an armful of potatoes. I'm sure the Spanish must have loved that system when it came to gold!

Solar panels

We were then invited to have a look around the island and try on their clothes in one of their houses. Joanne and I declined to try on the clothes, but we had a wander around. Beside one house a French couple, in the same subgroup I had been separated off into, had spotted solar panels, so they asked our subgroup Uros guide what it was for. Electricidad the woman replied, and the couple seemed satisfied with the answer, which I thought was nothing more than a statement of the obvious, so I continued and asked what they use the electricity for: television seemed to be the most important thing. At least they are not ashamed of, or hiding, the modernisation of their culture from the tourists, so maybe this will allow their way of life to continue for some time, but I'm still sure their days must be numbered. You may be able to get all the benefits of modern life on the islands, but it's just so much more convenient on the land.

Us in the reed boat

Next we were invited to take a trip to the next island in a “traditional” reed boat, which would cost us a further S10 each. Joanne was keen so we did it, but then noticed that none of the large group of Peruvians who had got on the boat paid anything. Joanne pointed this out to the couple sitting next to us and we all stared at the Peruvian end of the boat until, embarrassed, their apparent leader handed over S5, which I suppose was meant to cover the cost for all of them; there must have been about eight of them! Joanne was very unhappy with the unfairness of it and tourists being ripped off, but she really should have been used to it by then! We were treated to short songs in Uros, Aymara and Quechua as a farewell from the ladies of the island, then bizarrely they went through Spanish and English versions of things like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. When we arrived at the next island and were invited to pay for various traditional foods, we boycotted!

Singing to us

Leaving first island and our boat behind

Approaching the second island

Joanne not impressed

Cooking

Bigger better reed boat

Outlying tourist islands

Then it was back on the main boat and we chugged slowly off towards the next part of the tour: Isla Taquile. What we hadn't realised when we booked was that this island is two-and-a-half hours away on a slow boat like ours. The guide told us all about the unique culture and history on the next island, but I just drifted off. I couldn't believe we had five hours more on this torturously slow boat. I can tell you that, unlike the rest of the area around the lake, it is and always was a Quechua speaking group of people on the island, and the economy of the island has always been organise on a completely communal basis: everyone earns the same amount of money, no matter what job they do, she told us. Everything is shared among every occupant of the island. And they've been doing this since long before Lenin or even Marx, and their society is still functioning fine about one thousand years later. She then went on to tell us in more detail, then about their clothes and other traditions, but this was when I drifted off. Joanne later told me that most of it was about the different headdress they wear: men wear floppy hats, one type for married and one for single; and women wear cloaks over their heads.

One married man, one single

Taquileñas

Alighting from the boat, I re-ripped my recently repaired trousers where they had been stitched back together. The clothing was moderately interesting, but not worth a five hour return journey to see. Likewise, the island itself wasn't particularly attractive, not a patch on Isla del Sol. I wondered why on earth the tour included it and now I had to walk around with my pants on display. It was a bit of a hike up to the top of the island, where the guide had told us to go and wait in the main plaza. There were some fairly old people in the group so we had to wait a while in what is undoubtedly the ugliest main square I have seen on this trip. Even Japan didn't have one this ugly, although they don't go in for plazas much. The buildings round the square are all made of reinforced concrete and have rusty corrugated iron roofs, just like the rest of the ugly little island. The only building that was a bit different was a super-modern mayor's house, but it wasn't very nice either. Then the guide revealed what must be the real reason for bringing us all this way: UNESCO had declared the island's weaving the best in Peru in 2005, and we were all invited to browse the goods. To my eye it was nice, but no different from weaving we had seen in Bolivia or in Puno, except that it was about ten times the price. Nobody bought any. Another example of bad business sense in South America. Maybe if they had dropped the price a bit, a few people would have bought some.

Ugly main square

Mayor's house

Most attractive part of the square

Expensive weaving

Then it was time for lunch. We were told we had to eat at one specific restaurant, for reasons that were unclear. We assumed that this was just another ploy to overcharge us, but in fact the prices were the same as tourist restaurants in Puno. It was trout, which we was very please about, and when the waiter came out to our table with one massive trout and two small ones, I thought oh goodie! a massive trout for me, especially once he had given Joanne a small one, because apart from us it was only some old ladies sitting at the table. But no! The idiot of a waiter gave me the other tiny one and proceeded to give an old lady the giant one! I couldn't believe it. What a fool! The next round of fish he brought out included one almost as large as the giant one and a couple of medium-sized ones a bit bigger than our minnows. I was furious. It reminded me of the wine-tastings in New Zealand, where we were given much smaller samples than the “respectable” people there, even though we spent as much money in the end. Do people just look at us and think we don't deserve good things – instead of the waiter thinking “he's a big lad, I'll give him the big fish”? Predictably the old ladies left about half of their fish; the giant one was probably only one third eaten. We were pissed off and just wanted to home. On another 150 minute boat ride.

Rusty-roofed houses

The Islas Flotantes were interesting, albeit totally touristy, but I deeply regretted having gone for the option including Isla Taquile, and was glad to be able to warn Lucy and Zdenek when we discovered they had now arrived at the hostel we were about to check out of. We went out for dinner with them before the owners veins exploded because we were spending time inside after checking out. Dinner was nice, but beautifully finished off with pisco sours. At least, we get to taste the real thing instead of the Chilean copies!

The only attractive thing on the island

Not Puno Day

The Happy Couple — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The hostel in Puno was really quite nice. It was organised into little apartments and our room was part of a two bedroom apartment, sharing a bathroom, kitchen, and TV room with one other couple. At first the manager seemed very keen to please and very helpful, but we soon realised he was just a very bossy control freak. He didn't recommend we walked far form the hostel at night, which reduced our choices of what to eat for dinner considerably: it was a Chinese or chicken. We opted for Chinese, more because we happened to pass it first and we were starving, than any real decision. Ordering in Spanish in a Peruvian Chinese restaurant was quite challenging, but we managed in the end.

First group spotted

The plaza is where it's all happening

The next day we booked our bus onwards to Cusco, as well as a tour to the Islas Flotantes. The bus station was a bit of a walk away, but it meant we could save a fair bit of money on the fare the bossy hostel manager was charging, as well as having a look around the city. The hostel manager had told us that lots of things would be closed because Puno Day was coming up in a few days time. We had decided not to bother hanging around for Puno day, but as we walked around the city it seemed like the celebration was already well underway: colourfully dressed marching bands were slowly making their way through the city streets.

We sat down in a restaurant on the marching route, advertising menu del dia for S2.50 (Soles), where we were able to watch troupe after troupe shimmying past us. The menu was actually very nice, particularly the huge bowl of sopa criolla to start. It was certainly a step up from Bolivia. During lunch the costumes went from rather over the top and very colourful to totally ridiculous high camp: tassels and sparkles were in abundance, then this gave way to giant collars even Ming the Merciless would think twice about wearing, until they lost the plot completely and it changed to Gorilla costumes with pierced noses and guys wearing wedding cake skirts and full face masks of pipe-smoking Chinese demons with giant blue feathers sticking out of their hats (at least that's what I thought they were). The dancing looked really disorganised, the music was cacophonous and most of the bands seemed to be (trying to?) play the same tune, or one of a few options, but it was very entertaining all the same; clearly it is all really about the costumes, not the bands or “marching”. A nice, unexpected surprise when we thought we were going there only for the Islas Flotantes.

Costumes getting more outlandish

Gorilla suits?

OK, getting quite whacky now

What?

Birth Place of the Sun and the Moon

The Happy Couple — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the morning, my food-poisoning seemed much less severe, but I was starving, having not eaten much the day before. Unfortunately the place we went for breakfast gave us only five little hard bits of bread between us and a smidgen each of the disgusting red jam and industrial-tasting margarine (always called “butter”) that are so widespread in Bolivia. We bought a packed lunch each from the place we had eaten the night before, since the food had seemed OK, and got on the boat to Isla del Sol.

Pathetic packed lunch

Once we were chugging our way out to sea, very very slowly as it happened, we had a peek into our packed lunches to see what we had to supplement our meagre breakfast. It was terrible: the “fruit” we had been expecting was actually just a sugary fruity drink like a froot shoot and the rest of it hardly made up a meal substantial enough for what we ha paid. This was the last straw for me and South American food: it is awful; the only thing to recommend about it is the steak in Argentina, but then it's just meat meat meat, which gets rather tedious. Mostly the food is fried rubbish; I think the influence of their fastfood-loving neighbour to the North has destroyed any idea of a traditional cuisine. Or maybe the food has always been terrible.

Lazy captain

Pathetic engines

The boat took an incredible amount of time. Instead of having a decent-sized on-board engine and large propeller attached to the hull, they were powering this passenger boat, at least the size of a small fishing boat, with two outboard motors, presumably after realising that one wasn't going to do it.

Incan terracing

On the trail

Finally we got to the island, in Inca mythology as the birth place of the Sun and the Moon, it was an extremely important location to them. We paid for our ticket which, they told us, would cover entry to the museum, the ruins, and todo, then we set off on the path towards the ruins. On the way we passed Puma Rock, which in Quechua is titi kala, after which the lake is probably named. We passed a table, reportedly used for sacrifices. The island was very dry, though very pretty with the Incan terracing and surrounded by clear blue water.

Looking back at the port

"Sacrificial" table

Funny angled islet

When we first approached the ruins, it just looked like a few uninteresting stone houses and I felt the disappointment of Tilcara rising all over again, but when we got closer I realised that these houses were linked into other houses further down the slope, in an interconnecting network of tunnels and passageways. It must have been quite a busy little village at one time, but how absent privacy must have been, when every house is connected directly to several neighbours; in effect is was really just one big building with a large complex of rooms. Much more interesting than the Tilcara ruins an in much better condition, though these ruins are probably a few hundred years more recent.

Ruins

Joanne sitting in ruins

After the ruins we decided we would walk the seven kilometres to the South end of the Island rather than retuning to the port to get a lift there in the boat. The guide book said it was the only way to truly appreciate the island and we thought we needed a bit of exercise to get us in training for Machu Picchu, which was now only a few days away. It was hot and the altitude meant that we found it quite difficult (the summit of the island is over 4000 metres above sea level), so I took out the bag of coca leaves I had bought on the Salar de Uyuni trip and started chewing. Ever few hundred metres, a few people would be standing with a bundle of tickets, claiming that we needed to pay 5 Bolivianos to continue down the path; no we don't I explained, our ticket is for todo, but none of them cared, so we just told them that we didn't have any money and kept walking. I was fairly sure it was a scam, but I wasn't sure until we passed a South American guy who was waving away the ticket vendors and shouting something at them in a very irritated voice. Did you pay them? he asked and said he was very pleased when we told him no. We really didn't have enough money for all the tickets, since we were leaving Bolivia that day and had been running our funds down. We could have bought a few, but we needed money for a beer when we got to the end!

Modern stone work

The long path ahead

The interior of the island

Inca Steps from top

Joanne keeping the sun off

The island had been getting progressively more green as we headed South, until the end of the walk where it was very green and much less dry-looking than the North. There was much more development at this end of the island too, and the highlight seems to be Incan Steps up from the harbour to the plateau of the island. We rewarded ourselves with the beer we had been waiting for, and sat on the grass and chatted to an Irish couple from the same boat. They had paid every one of the rip-off 5Bs tickets, though now they said “I knew it! I knew it was a scam!”.

Inca Steps from bottom

Last chance to photo Bolivian ladies

Joanne cold

On the way back we had to endure the super-slow boat even longer than necessary because they stopped off at a “floating reed island”. We had heard about these islands on the Bolivian side, but hadn't realised our tour included it; the genuine reed islands are on the Peruvian side, and we knew that these ones were fake, recently constructed for tourists. They were charging 2Bs per person to get off the boat and wander around, but the only people who did were two Bolivian ladies. You can tell Bolivian ladies by the fact that they all wear unusual hats, like tall bowler hats. Nobody else seemed interested; presumably everyone else knew they weren't the real thing.

Silly floating "reed" islands

Bolivian ladies the only one to get off

Copacabana

Back in town, we had a few hours to wait for the bus and only enough money for one more beer. Everyone around us was ordering food and it looked like the food there was really good, especially the pizzas some people near us ordered. I called the waiter over and asked if they would take US Dollars, since we still had some left over, but he told us that they would accept Dollars, but only on bills over a certain amount that just two people could not easily have spent, and we certainly didn't want to. We were starving though, so not long before our bus was leaving, after we had paid our bill and not long after the people with the pizzas had left, we made a quick exit, passing the table where the girl had left half of her pizza untouched, and I lifted two of the large pieces off her plate. It was only one piece each, but we reckoned it would be enough to keep starvation at bay until we arrived in Puno anyway.

The border crossing into Peru, not long after leaving Copacabana, was nice and easy, but someone got on the bus at the border who had the smelliest feet I've encountered since India, and we had to move one row back to avoid vomiting. We would have moved further back, but the rest of the bus was full, because even where we were it was still slightly stomach-churning. I love bus travel.

Good Food in Bolivia!

The Happy Couple — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I just wanted to leave Bolivia, but Joanne had been reading the guide book and Copacabana was going to be nice, apparently. At least is was at the border with Peru. Bolivia had been one of the countries we were most looking forward to, but I was feeling very negative about it now. Looking back at it, the Salar de Uyuni trip was amazing: the landscapes we went through there was fantastic, but it cost a lot of money; in fact, taken together with the Death Road cycle, they alone used up what I had estimated our entire budget for Bolivia would be. South American “cheap” is not like Asian cheap.

Anyway, one thing we were looking forward to in Copacabana was, because it's on Lake Titicaca, fish in Bolivia would finally be safe to eat, and trout is abundant apparently. Of course, we were looking forward to the ceviche in Peru even more, but a Peruvian guy staying at the Wild Rover had told us that we have to wait for the coast for the ceviche to be safe in Peru; apparently the fish from Titicaca isn't right for ceviche. However I was still really ill and wouldn't be eating anything; I just wanted to get to the hostel and get to sleep. The hostel was apparently very disorganised and had no idea that we had booked with them, so they did not subtract our ten percent booking fee from the bill, although I think what they charged us was less than the online price anyway.

I just went to bed, leaving Joanne to fend for herself for the first time in ages. I slept all the way to morning, but when I got up and used the shower I was not impressed: there was no hot water, which wouldn't have been a problem if it was warm, but we were at about 3900 metres above sea level, so it was cold. To make matters worse, this cold water was streaming through bare wires hanging down from the shower head, where they were presumably supposed to do something about heating the water, but were just scaring me instead. Online we had booked for two nights, but decided to take advantage of their ignorance by moving hostel to a much nicer place.

I wasn't much impressed by Copacabana itself, but perhaps the main reason for going there is to take a trip to the nearby islands, so we made enquiries at a couple of travel agents. The woman at the desk of one reasonably-priced place told us that the trip leaves early for the Isla del Sol, visiting the South end of the island, before stopping off for an hour or so at Isla de la Luna and returning about 6pm. We bought tickets for this half-day ticket, but when we returned to get on the boat, the captain said that we were going to the Isla del Sol then returning at 4pm. I was still annoyed with Bolivia, so I got very angry and demanded our money back. He sent us back to the office and we did get a refund. The woman at the desk denied that she had told us that the trip went to Isla de la Luna. What a liar!

I was still feeling quite unwell anyway, so I returned to bed and sent Joanne out to get me medicine, book a full day trip the next day, and book the bus to Peru. For the first time, I gave her the dictionary and an extra phrase book; she was going to have to speak Spanish! She had started quite well, making a reasonable effort in Chile, but has quickly become lazy as my Spanish got a bit better. Now she was in at the deep end. A bit later she came back with everything, having apparently found it all easy enough. There were no trips to Isla de la Luna, even though every travel agent had a sign outside saying “trips to Isla de la Luna”. Everyone had told her that you can only do it with a private boat, which they don't offer. We theorised that because high season was now finished, they were no longer doing there.

Trout. Nice food in Bolivia!

I was feeling lots better, so we headed out to find some trout. We found quite a nice place at the water front and I ordered a trout. For reasons I cannot understand, Joanne ordered lasagne; here we are at a lake full of fish, which we had been looking forward to for weeks and she orders lasagne. The trout was very nice, though a bit on the small side. Apparently Joanne's lasagne was OK. Definitely feeling much better after dinner, I finally got around to smoking the Cohiba I had bought in the Cuban bar in La Paz.

Joanne got lasagne for some reason

Good Food in Bolivia!

The Happy Couple — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Trout. Nice food in Bolivia!

Joanne got lasagne for some reason

More Bolivian Misery

The Happy Couple — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Lamentable empty club

When we got back to the hostel after surviving the Road of Death, we thought we should get into the party spirit of the hostel and had a few drinks. One thing this party hostel does which actually makes it much easier to sleep than most party hostels, is it organises taxis to whisk people away to different clubs every night, by about midnight. So we decided to go to that night's club when the taxis turned up. The club was completely empty until we arrived there. It was awful, so we just accepted our free drinks and then headed out to look for somewhere more interesting. We did find a more interesting club, which meant that we only left it when it was light, a situation we took advantage of by picking up our Death Road t-shirts and CDs. There were traffic zebras everywhere.

Traffic zebra

Two traffic zebras

Predictably, we spent most of that day sleeping and feeling terrible. Eventually we got up for food and I had a burger in the bar. That was that day.

The next day was Friday and Lucy and Zdenek were arriving. They had decided to give our hostel a miss and instead book into the Adventure Brew Hostel which has its own microbrewery. We went looking for them, hopefully to join them for a beer, but they weren't answering text messages when we arrived there and I was starting to feel really ill again; I could barely drink the beer from the microbrewery. By the time we gave up waiting for them and left, I was convinced that I had food poisoning again. I suspected the burger. This partly ruined our plans for the night because I was too ill to eat anything, let alone the hottest vindaloo in South America (maybe the world) and when they woke up again we discovered that Zdenek hates curry anyway, so he wasn't interested. Oh well, at least I had my Death Road t-shirt.

That night we went out again, this time with Lucy, Zdenek, and Ricarda, but even on Friday night we struggled to find lively places and spent a fortune going from place to place in taxis. Eventually someone told us about an after-hours club so we took a taxi to there. I was in the front seat and everyone else got out so it fell to me to pay the driver, however I had nothing smaller than a Bs100 note which people are always sticky about changing. Before I handed to him I asked him if he had change and he said yes. Then he took a pile of small coins out and said no and could I ask my friends, so I turned to ask the others and Ricarda handed me a Bs20. When the taxi driver handed me back my Bs100 note something almost registered, but didn't quite make it though the drunken fog. It was only after I got out that I realised the note he handed me back felt completely different from the one I had handed him. I looked down and it was pretty sure it was an obvious fake. The bastard had realised I was drunk enough (only just actually) and switched it on me after directing my attention away from him.

Robbed again! Why did nobody warn us about Bolivia? At the door I tried to use the Bs100 note but my suspicions were confirmed that it was an obvious fake, but the people on the door were nice enough to apologise for the taxi driver when I cursed him. It actually seemed like a really good place, but it was packed with nowhere to sit and we were all a bit tired by that point. And I was completely fed up, as well as still feeling ill. At that point I was completely sick of Bolivia. Poisoned twice and robbed twice. What a place. Just before we left, I spotted Chello, our guide from the Road of Death, wearing his “I survived the Road of Death” t-shirt. He came over and hugged as both before heading on towards the bar. I think it was a proper cool underground club we had stumbled on; if only we had found it before so many of the other rubbish places that we'd nearly had enough. I didn't care: I just wanted to go to bed and dream of murdering taxi drivers, who seem to be almost consistently the most evil people in any country. OK, you do get nice ones, but most taxi drivers seem evil in every country.

Road of Death

The Happy Couple — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Road of Death cycle route starts at an altitude of 4650 metres and then it's almost continuously downhill to 1200 metres. The road was declared the world's most dangerous road in 1995, with around 300 people being killed each year on it. It's much safer now that a new road has been opened, which means that there is almost no traffic on the Death Road now apart from mountain bikes and their support vehicles.

The company logo on the van

We were picked up early at our hostel and driven to the starting point of the route. It was nice and sunny, but still very cold at that altitude. We had heard some dodgy tales of unscrupulous operators using badly maintained bikes and minimal protection. We had been recommended Vertigo by someone who had used them and they were offering a low season discount so it cost only Bs400, more than Bs200 less than the most famous company, Gravity, who the Wild Rover Hostel would have been happy to sign us up with.

Me looking really white

Joanne looking really cool

Me looking cool

Full bike team

There's not too much more to say about the day, but I have lots of photos as the fee includes a CD of photos and a t-shirt saying that you survived the Road of Death. Most of the photos were taken on the day, but they also included some standard ones, including lots of photos of shrines and a couple of jokey ones. I was surprised they are still so flippant about it, after our guide Chello told us that there was a fatal accident with their company not that long ago. There are still occasional fatal accidents, but nowhere near the levels they were at before the new road opened.

There are lots of shrines on the road

I'm surprised the company still joke like this

The route starts off on tarmac but at the point the new road splits off it turns into a crumbly gravel road. The mountain biking wasn't as tough as anything I've done in Scotland, though the chances of dying if you do have an accident are certainly much higher: those drops are long. The bikes were good, it was probably the best mountain bike I've ever been on, but they didn't seem to be geared very high, which meant I couldn't go as fast as I would have liked. Maybe this is deliberate to reduce the chances of people taking corners too fast, or perhaps it's just that I'm used to road bikes, which are usually much faster. Nonetheless it was a lot of fun and the views were great.

Top part of the road

The road

Chello taking it seriously

Me near the start of the gravel road

Joanne and scenery

The road

The Road

Standard pose apparently

More posed shots (tired)

Promotional shot

The whole team, including driver

The drop

The finish

La Paz

Dried llama fœtus

The Happy Couple — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We had agreed that by the time we got to La Paz we would have recovered from our party excesses nearly two months previously in Chile. After the towers of beer in Sucre we weren't so sure, but we had already booked ourselves several nights in what we had heard is one of the most extreme party hostels in South America: The Wild Rover. Yes I know it sounds Irish rather than Bolivian, and that's because, well it is an entire hostel in the style of an Irish bar. I know, it's awful, but these are the sacrifices you have to make if you want to have a good time.

Unlike most hostels, they didn't provide any directions on the website, just an address and how much you should expect to pay the taxi driver. Obviously people who go to party hostels have lots of money. We checked in an headed out again, wary that we should try to get as much done as possible before we found ourselves with crippling hangovers.

Suburbs at the top of town

A traffic zebra

Typical street

Illimani Mountain peeks through the buildings

La Paz is quite high up, so we were a bit worried about altitude sickness, but hoped that our previous high altitude experience was recent enough to protect us. The city reminded me slightly of a very Shimla: blocky houses on steep slopes, though La Paz was missing that everything-on-stilts, Dr Seus element to the architecture that makes Shimla so strange-looking. At one end the streets at one end of town there is a huge mountain. Once in the center, zebras were driecting the traffic. Yes, zebras.

St Francis Church

There was quite a nice church, though undergoing renovation, in one of the main plazas, and Joanne was keen to visit the witches market, which she thought looked good in the guide book. They did have some interesting, even nice, things, but they also had some rather gruesome objects for sale, most notably the dried llama fœtus, which is apparently a standard house-warming present for good luck. Good yuck, more like!

Dried llama fœtus and other stuff at witches' market

Witches market

Joanne has a mojito...

After perusing the fœtuses for a while we booked a cycle trip down the Road of Death for the following morning, then we found a Cuban bar and stepped inside to see what was on offer. Mojitos and a Cohiba: that'll do nicely! Heading back towards the hostel we popped found an Indian restaurant, run by an English guy, so we thought we'd try it for lunch, after all it couldn't be worse than the usual standard of food in Bolivia. In fact the food was excellent. I opted for the vindaloo, which is so hot they give you a t-shirt to finish a full portion, however I was only having a lunch portion; I saw it as a test run for the real thing. It was exceptionally hot, by far the hottest food either of us had eaten on the trip, but I reckoned I'd be able to earn that t-shirt.

... in a Cuban Bar

La Paz

Joanne wearing a bracelet from Tarabuco

Hottest food on the whole trip

Back at the hostel we unpacked and I discovered that my dry bag, containing my thermals, was missing. Someone must have stolen it during the night, from the where our bags were stored on the bus from Sucre. And soon we would probably be needing them again, since we were planning to go trekking in Peru. Thieving scum!! I was really going off Bolivia: first food-poisoning and now theft. Nobody warned us about this, everyone had said Bolivia was the best place in South America and everyone we had spoken to before getting there had loved it. Now that we were there, everyone we spoke to had been robbed and had food-poisoning. A strange difference.

That evening, the bar was very loud and lively, and we had a few drinks and chatted to some people. Most of the people staying there were younger than us and a large percentage were Irish. One Irish guy said that he had recently got his vindaloo t-shirt even though he hates curry, which made me more determined than ever to get one of my own. He had made himself sick after finishing the bowl and thought it was very brave of me to have even a lunch portion the day before our death road cycle. You don't want that in you he advised, helpfully. Later, Ricarda appeared and also seemed keen to go for the vindaloo t-shirt. We all agreed that we would do it on Friday when Lucy and Zdenek arrived in La Paz; I was sure he would want to have a go at it too.

Tourists Trapped in Tarabuco

The Happy Couple — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Next morning we were booked to go on a tour to Tarabuco, which is meant to be a lovely little town with a Sunday market, mostly of traditional textiles from different nearby villages. The market was traditionally held for locals, but it was now chiefly a tourist event, we understood. Unfortunately I was too hung over to shop. It's not easy for me at the best of times, but virtually impossible with a hangover. When we got off the bus, we headed straight for a cafe for some coffee. The first place we stopped had such bad coffee that we poured it away before heading to another place.

Joanne eating Api con buñelos

Nice restaurant

The next place we found was actually quite nice and we ordered a “traditional breakfast” without really knowing what to expect. It was described as being Api con buñelos but I had no idea what either were. Api, it turns out, is a hot and spicy fruit drink; very nice and thick. Buñelos are little biscuits, for dunking into the api I supposed.

We bought something from him

I think this statue is something to do with defeating the Spansih

Textiles

Woman in traditional clothes

The stuff on sale at the market was quite nice, but the town was a tourist trap and people constantly hassled us; something that hadn't really happened since Asia, and something my hangover did not equip me for. I just wanted to leave but we couldn't because we had taken the tour bus instead of getting the local bus: we had to stay until our bus was leaving. In the end we did buy a couple of things are probably got quite good prices for them, but I found it so irritating being hassled constantly for the whole day, I wouldn't recommend the place. Yet, when the boot is on the other foot it's a different matter: I asked an old man if I could please take his photo, and he just looked annoyed, as if he was sick of all this hassle, and said no. Horrible place! Maybe he's not involved in the market and it is all annoying for him too.

More traditional people

More traditional dress

Babies, goods, and goats are all carried in those

Armadillo guitar?

Back in Sucre we went out to Locot's Mexican Restaurant, which the guidebook recommended, saying it had wifi. We got the worst service so far on the trip, which is saying something, and the wifi wasn't even working. I was really becoming sick of Bolivia. Lucy and Zdenek arrived later in the day and were also staying at La Dolce Vita, but he was really ill and not up to socialising at all. He also believes he has a really strong stomach (unlike Lucy), but the food in Bolivia had struck him down.

The following day we managed to find an open tailor and get my poor broken trousers repaired, along with various other items of clothing, mostly shirts, which had ripped to a greater or lesser degree. The repair was cheap and quick, so I had trousers again! Just in time for another overnight bus. This time to La Paz. We had to check our bags in like a plane and mine weighed only 25kg, so I was at least losing some weight from my bag. It was another horrible bus journey: the speaker above our heads rattled loudly, the toilet stop was far too late again, but at least I finished my Che Guevara biography. It was heavy going but really good. And how appropriate, I thought to finish it in the country where they did him in. And what a cheek, I thought, for all the tourist places to be selling goods with him image on them, when the people of Bolivia constantly reported his presence to the military and their betrayal led directly to his death. Still, I suppose nations can change. And he was a bit stupid launching a guerilla campaign in Bolivia in the first place, not helped by the Stalinists in the country deceiving him, causing him to make serious tactical errors.

Sleeping in Sucre

The Happy Couple — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We were absolutely shattered when we arrived in Sucre. Three days in a row of getting up at or before 5am really takes its toll, especially when immediately followed by a night bus designed for garden gnomes. Sucre is supposed to be a nice colonial place, which is why we were there. It was Joanne's idea; I had seen enough South American colonial towns, but people did rate it highly. We really weren't up to sight-seeing when we arrived, so we just spent time online, drank, and then went to bed about 7pm. The hostel we were staying in, La Dolce Vita, was a bit pricier than we were expecting for Bolivia, but it was supposed to be a good one. Despite that, they did not let guests use their wireless internet connection. There is no excuse for not having internet access, especially in a more expensive place!

We had read that Bolivia is famous for its fruits and we hadn't yet a a chance to sample them, since we had only been on the tour and in a very dry part of the country before that. So we went to the nearby market to buy some fruit and also buy some of Bolivia's famous fruit juices. The juices were a real disappointment: the guidebook raves about them, but they are not a patch on the juices and fruit shakes you can get all over Asia. You can't usually even just get fruit juice: you have to choose between con agua and con leche. Funnily enough, one tastes like watered down fruit juice and the other tastes like a milk shake. What a let-down!

Arches just outside Cafe Mirador

Beer at Cafe Mirador

One highlight of Sucre we had been told about is Cafe Mirador, in a nice part of town, with amazing views over the city. So we went there. It rained, but we bumped into Ricarda, the German girl we met in Salta, then again briefly in Tilcara. Cafe Mirador was OK. I suppose it would have been better in the sun. At least the beer in Bolivia is quite good. We agreed to meet up with Ricarda later, where we were planning to meet some other people from our hostel later. We drank too much. We drank two towers of beer. It was messy.

Sucre