Lake Titicaca and into Bolivia

Hi everybody! We're in La Paz - the world's highest capital city. On our way here from Cusco we stopped off at Puno and had a tour of the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca - we visited floating islands made entirely of reeds (good for moving home - you just chop your house off and float down the road), and stayed with a family on the traditional island of Amantani. They gave us funny ponchos to wear for the night hehe. I'm not sure about the traditional dance though! Bit silly.




After than we travelled all the way here to La Paz, stopping off at the Copacabana for lunch. I couldn't help annoying everyone by singing the song. And then here we are. La Paz is basically one giant street market, so we've done a lot of shopping and now have to post a big pack home cos we've no space in our bags hehe. Luckily it is ludicrously cheap here - the cheapest place we will visit I think. Let's see - pair of trousers: 2 pounds; hostal for the night: 2.50. Yay!

Yesterday we went bike riding down "the world's most dangerous road" which was great. We didn't die and we have T-shirts to prove it. Hurray. Plus we looked great in our orange tracksuits. Mmmm


Tonight we're off to Uyuni where we'll be visiting the salt flats, which are supposed to be beautiful.

Catch you on the flip-side!

Peru update: Lima, Cusco and Machu Picchu

It's been a little while since our last update. We made it to Lima fine, and met a lovely little lady on the bus called Carmela, who took us round the city and showed us all the sights. Here she is with Lew and Chris


We saw piles of bones in the catacombs, paragliders off the cliffs of Miraflores and enjoyed all the luxuries of being in a capital city - international calls to home and laundry being the best ones.


From Lima we flew to Cusco, which saved us a full day on the bus. The flight instead is 1 hour. Cusco is the tourist mecca of Peru and where we are still now. It's very beautiful here. I could spend a long time here if only we had more time. Still, I feel very priveleged to be here in what was once the capital city of the Incas.

Of course, the other thing we did was the inca trail... one of the highlights of our whole trip, and... wow. Breathtaking. It was a beautiful trail, full of ancient ruins and mystical views. We had an amazing guide who explained so much about the Incas. They really were incredible engineers to have built such amazing cities, complete with underground irrigation, terraces, fountains and over 2000km of inca 'royal highway' running for much of the length of the Andes. Anyway, here's the picture you'll all be expecting hehe. There are plenty more if you follow the link.

In darkest Peru

So we made it to Peru! It took us more than 36 hours and 5 buses to get from Montanita in Ecuador to Huaraz in Peru. We left at 5am on 15/04 and arrived at around 6pm on 16/04. That was a lot of travelling. We did however have 1 awesome bus through the night from Tumbes at the border to Trujillo where the seats were HUGE and reclined almost all the way down like beds. Amazing! Plus they were showing Labyrinth on the TVs! Perfect.

Anyway it was too much travelling and just goes to show how little time we have left now that we have to cross such large distances in 1 go. And being on a bus that long just ain't that much fun. From 1 of the buses however, we did get to see the sunrise behind the Andes! First just vague shapes, maybe clouds, then slowly the contrast increased and there were 2 or 3 layers of vague gray outlines as the sky slowly filled with colour: gray to white and hues of red and gold. By the time the sun itself was appearing, only just hidden from us, mist rolled up from the gound as if the mountains were floating. Soon everything was obscured again, but for those 20 minutes or so it was perfect.

So anyway we spent 3 nights in the lovely mountain town of Huaraz. We visited ruins, glaciers and ice caves and it was great! We have a bunch of photos too, so use the link on the right hand side to see.

Next stop Lima, and from there we fly to Cusco for the inca trail! We also worked out it will be Chris's birthday on the morning we arrive in Machu Picchu! So excited.

Montanita

After the busy city-life of Quito we did what any sane person with only a few day left in Ecuador would do... we went to the beach! 3 bus rides and 15 hours later and we're in the wonderful little surfer town of Montanita (literally 'little mountain'). I have to thank our German/Ecuadorian friends Julian and Dennis for recommending this place to us. It was very pretty, had everything a tourist could want without being in your face, and had some of the best surf in Ecuador!



There's me and Chris with our surf instructor Michel. We still suck, bit it was great fun! I guess we figured that with all the travelling and trekking we would be doing in the next few weeks, we needed a little R&R. And Montanita is known as a party town. Unfortunately for us, we had picked the 1 weekend when it is forbidden to drink due to the elections! They don't want people voting under the influence basically! Luckily for us, not all Ecuadorians obey the law, and following a bunch of crazy drummer dudes we found plenty of booze flowing freely on the beach into the wee small hours.

At 5am on Sunday morning we caught the first bus out of there. Onwards to Peru!

Quito

Vast, loud, polluted and very busy. Quito is as any capital should be with the added bonus of being at 2800m cradled by even taller mountain's peaks, some lovely old architecture and some big parks.

We stayed in the travelers ghetto, named so due to the high concentration of hostels and traveler based cafes, bars and restaurants. Yay much food and much drink.

We visited the equator, and we had our GPS with us, it turns out the monument and the line are in fact about 250m shy of the real equator, and atop a near by mountain is a pre Inca monument that is exactly on the equator beating the French measurement technology, no less than 1000 years previous. We were informed all this by a most passionate and disgruntled Ecuadorian of the Quiasto organisation (who had recently been moved from the monument complex for being a "problem") who's function is to preserve and inform people of the pre Inca people who had mapped the equator and various other important measurements.

Ecuador

We set off from Popayan to the boarder town of Ipiales, lovely bus ride, breathtaking scenery. Ipialyes is a bland stop off point for travelers and goods transport alike, it's an unassuming town it's high and the air is thin flanked by no less than 3 volcanoes and huge mountain peaks. Just yonder the town is a very spectacular church, as describe by Sam "like a castle from Zelda".



At our hotel we had bumped into 2 fellow travelers from the coast of Colombia and made arrangements for the border crossing the next day, we were warned by another traveler there was a 4 hour queue at the boarder so we set of nice and early.

A collectivo was found with great ease and after it was packed, we set off, passport formalities were quick and painless, where was this 4 hour queue ?



Yet another collectivo to Tulcan and then we hopped onto a buss to Quito, how very easy and painless this was.

Popayan

We're in the lovely colonial town of Popayan. Yesterday I managed to get my favourite photo ever (see below) and also there was a massive Jesus parade because it's semana santa - Easter holy week - and they all go nuts for Christ round here. Tomorrow we're planning on going to visit a cool archaelogical site and then we have to make for the Ecuadorian border as we now only have 2 weeks to get to Lima - whew, we'd better get our skates on!

Don't believe what anyone tells you about the Colombian armed military police - they're a lovely bunch of boys and girls! Click the pic for a bigger version.


Email me (samwessel@gmail.com) or leave us some comments! It's great to hear from you all back home. I know some of you have had a chance to trawl through all the photos so let me know what you think!