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!

Massive photo update

Today I'm attempting to put all my photos online so far, as we finally have some free and reasonably fast internet. If you'd like to see check out Lew's Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lewisasutton
and hit 'collections' or 'sets' to see the photos!

I've just finished putting all of Cuba online and now I have Venezuela and Colombia to add!

Leaving Cartagena

So yesterday we said farewell to our friend Oli who we´d been travelling with for a couple of weeks. We´re gonna miss ya dude! We also bade farewell to our new friends Julian, Dennis and Marta as we moved on from Cartagena. I tried to get all my photos online but the net was going very slowly and I only got 100 up. I will try again today. We nearly missed our bus as no taxi wanted to take us to the bus terminal in rush hour, but we just made it with 5 minutes to spare. 13 hours of bussing through the night and we´re here in Medellin!

Ciudad Perdido

During our time in Santa Marta, Colombia we decided to follow the not-to-be-missed advice in our Lonely Planet and visit the ´Lost City´ (ciudad perdida), an ancient ruined city hidden in the jungle, and only discovered in the 70s. The trek takes 6 days in total: 3 days up into the mountains (cannot be reached any other way), 1 day at the city itself, and then 2 days to get back to Santa Marta.

On the first day were up early to get the necessary passport photocopies. Lewis and I were still shedding skin like you wouldn´t believe from our sunburns. After meeting the rest of the group we would be doing the trek with we took a big ´fun-bus´, like a big jurassic park jeep, up towards the mountains until the road ran out. The drive itself was spectacular, as the big engine struggled in first gear to mount the dirt track that took us up, up into the mountains, skirting the peaks and valleys on top. The ocean was still visible in the distance behind us as we reach the tip of one peak. The view is now also very Jurassic Park, to match our truck. The lack of dinosaurs is made up for by the fact that the scenery was more beautiful than any hollywood movie, and with no CG required. Where´s Samuel L? At 12 we are stopped and searched by the Colombian military - looking for guns I think. Luckily I had been advised not to wear my Cuban military hat - could have got me into trouble as a guerilla! 20 minutes later and there´s no more road. We had a sandwich lunch then headed off into the mountains. We hiked for about an hour before stopping at a spring to swim and rest. At 6pm we reached our resting point for the night. The views along the way were amazing, and photos don´t do them justice. I could never get bored of looking at the mist-hewn mountains, with many colours as the layers of peaks disappeared into the dusty sky. Small cottages and farms were occasionally visible on top of an adjacent hill tops. Our porters were 6 donkeys, and with sweat pouring down my face I felt sorry for them carrying all our food. Once we had stopped and had dinner I wrote in my diary under candlelight between our hammocks and a small wood fire.

The 2nd day was more hard work - up, up and up. Very sweaty. The food is amazing on this trek though! This morning Chris and some others also went to see a local farmer who makes cocaine. Coca plants are everywhere here and the paramilitary see to it that plenty is grown as they use the money for funding. Chris got some photos on my camera on the condition that he didn´t photograph the guy´s face. We also had some downhill trekking this day which was a relief! But still hard work as it was very steep. This seemed a harder day than the first - I have no idea how the mules managed. At the top our accomodation has running water and even toilet paper! How amazing 2 days into the jungle! After staking my claim on a hammock we went swimming nearby. It was so awesome, with natural waterfalls and big rocks to jump in from. We even had a little of the local 'erb to chill out to. Fantastic.

The 3rd day. More sweaty trekking! The guys here who have been to Macchu Pichu tell me this is nothing compared to the inca trail! Doh! Lots of hiking - always up or down, never flat, and wading across rivers - my waterproof boots are very god at keeping water IN as well as out it seems. And then finally we have hundreds and hundreds of very steep, very slippy steps up from the river to the lost city itself. Excitement grows as we are getting closer. Wow. A mystifying view from the city itself! I can´t describe the feeling of completing the trek up here and seeing the view. I hope the inca trail will be the same and more. Different coloured flowers lined the side of the final ancient mossy 'stairs' that seemed to go on forever, before opening inot the foundations where ancient houses once stood. We stared in awe at the view from the top, clouds only just above our heads cloaking nearby peaks. Light rain fell and thunder rolled heavily around the mountains.

That night we slept on mattresses - a nice change from hammocks. The stars were very bright, and Chris showed me Orion and his belt. We also saw fireflies everywhere tonight. They are so beautiful.

The 4th day was spent at the city itself. Our guide (the awesome Edwin Rey) gave us a full tour, and also explained the story of the tourists who were kidnapped and held hostage by guerillas in 2003 for 101 days. Thankfully it´s much safer now due to increased paramilitary presence.

The 5th day was the hardest of all. We had to cover 14km in the one day, retracing our steps. All the downhill parts of day 3 were now uphill. Oh my god it just seemed to go on forever. At lunch we said goodbye to some of the group, taking a different route back with an extra night stop. We stopped to swim and wash at our favourite waterfalls - fantastic again - then once again we headed up and up, until our bodies almost refused to walk anymore. Every time we thought we were nearing the tip of a mountain we rounded a corner and found more hill to climb. With sheer drops to the left and right we didn´t understand how the mountain could get any higher. This all made the earlier 7 river crossings seem easy peasy. Finally we arrived at the day 1 hut. The 3 of us, plus our friends Oli and Mickey made it an hour ahead of the others. Huzzah! After dinner I fell straight asleep as I was utterly shattered.

The final day! Ahhh a good long sleep that way. With Oli and Mickey as our pacemakers we set off for the finish and we were there by 10:30am. All our clothes were digusting, dusty and smely. Mickey (the lovely Israeli that he is) bought us all a beer at the finish. The others arrived another hour later. We managed to see scorpions, lizards and ant highways along the way that morning. But now we were hungry and couldn´t wait for a shower! Ahh the fun bus to take us back to Santa Marta. Perfecto.

More Colombia

Sat on a rather swanky white beach for 2 days, ahhh, but alas the road is calling, we make tacks tomorrow evening and head to the Colombian interior in preparation for boarder crossing.

Colombia

Well here we are Santa Marta Colombia OOOooOOO, the border crossing was amusing consisting of a ride in the back of a truck and a dutch man telling border officials we were on a trip with him to his farm, what did that man grow?


The people are lovely the town is nice, if not a little smelly, but nothing the popular media had geared me up for, guerrilla fire fights, police battening and military road blocks.

Here it is very well policed, and like any normal touristy destination, people trying to sell you every thing and anything, all of course fake. who wants a knock off Rolex?

We have teamed up with a lovely German called Oliver, and we shall in the next few days head to the Lost City, so no communication for 6 days.

Venezuela briefly

Day 1

We arrive into Caracas airort we had been given four pices of paper to fill out on the plane for venezualen customs to check, we all felt gettin in to this one would be tricky, moments later our passports are stamped and we are through.
We wait for our baggage at the carossel. Sam is first to get his bag, but what's this? A wii controler placed in his bag?! dodgey.
We amediatly find the unofficial money swappers and sam gets a deal than anything the officials have to offer. we walk up into the food court of church's chickin, our lodgings for the night.

Day 2

Grabbled a hugely overpriced taxi to Caracas. bugger. when we arrived at the bus station we were told to hurry in not to stop and talk to any one.
Inside that bus station it was like Mosisely from Starwars, crazy busy.
Thanks to Sam's Spanish and sign reading abilities we were soon on our way to Maracay.
Maracay is a small disheveled city. we consulted the lonely planet and found a place to stay.
The blog was updated for the first time and then everyone snoozed, so much snoozing was done we slept past the the opening and closing times of the restaurants, on arrival back at the hotel very hungry a dodgey man walked out of our room.
Starved

Day 3

Grabbed a fancy bus to Puerto Colombia, what an awesome ride, stunning views out of every window plus the excitement of a crazy fast mountain road bus ride, fog horns used at every corner, HOOONK.
Ah this is more like it, relaxed and friendly greeting by a man with a huge machete, he relays the directions to Sam via blade.
We opt for the Colonial, nice rooms set around a courtyard , most plesant.

Day 4

We were up early for a 12k jungle walk, it was indeed a most jungley walk. apparently not as lush as it is in the wet season but it was still dense, green and bursting with life.
We stopped at the top of some waterfalls with a shrine to Mary and consumed luch which consisted of cheese cucumber bread and tomato and a whole heap of fruit.
Saw sugar factory bloody hard work that is, we then had a beer on our guides roof and went for a swim in the stream nearby.

Day 5

A beach day, not the cleanest beach in the world, what it lacked in cleanliness was more than made up by the views, on our right rolling mountains with cloud forests, on our left a huge steep green hill, behind us were coconut palms and in front was the warm blue green Caribbean.
must buy a higher spf cream, ouch.

Day 6

No colombian border crossing today, chris' bag was stolen from the room in a most daring and annoying fasion.

We were up early for the crossing and had all left our room, as i headed back to the room a man lept up the wall breaking off a tap, he did not seem to have anything so i was not too worried, it is now evidnt that while we were finding someone to deal with the water tap a second man entered and stole chris' bag, it contained his camera, mp3 player, books and diary. ger bugga.
chris and sam went to the police station, copliance is not expected.
compliance was granted all is well for insurance.

Cuba

Ok so the first time I wrote this all up the PC ate it, so here goes attempt number 2. So what to say about Cuba? It´s a strange place. It´s a wonderful country but I think to really understand it you would need to live there for about 2 years. There are so many rules for everything and it was very bemusing to us. However the people are wonderful and it´s a beautiful place.

So anyway, after a day exploring Havana we headed off in our ´guagua´ (bus) to a place called Soroa, stopping off to swim in natural springs. The whole area around Soroa is a big UNESCO protected wildlife reserve, and the impetus (as with much of Cuba) is on the environment. We even ate at a veggie restaurant! Probably the only one in Cuba. It was great. At Soroa we stayed in little huts on a hill. We found massive spider legs in the air-con unit which was a bit scary, but no living specimens luckily for me! We also hiked a massive hill there with some friends Sarah from Germany and Stacey from Oz. We got a bottle of rum for about 3GBP which caused Lewis to almost offend everyone. Very funny - they all forgave him later. He also tried to get into the mirror of our room, thinking it was the bathroom. Haha. Before the rum incident we had drinks by the pool with live salsa music and Chris and I even learnt a few moves.

After Soroa we headed out to a Vinales, which is like the old west of Cuba - real cowboy territory. We stayed 2 nights at homestays, so we were guests of Cuban families. It was cool. We toured tobacco farms (smoked a few cigars), and rode horses. We explored caves too. Lots of cool things to do. At night they had an awesome salsa club. I got pressured to go up for the ´contest´ where they embarass the gringos, and would you believe it I won! Lots of mojitos are required for salsa but it´s great fun!

After Vinales we visited the Robaina plantation. Mr Robaina is the only person in Cuba except Fidel to have his own cigar brand. We met the main man and had our picture taken. Even got some free samples.

Next stop was Maria La Gorda (fat Maria) which was just tropical paradise - golden sandy beaches, palm trees, all of that. We have some snorkelling pictures. We got some rum even cheaper on the way from a rum factory (about 1.5GBP for a massive bottle) and using its influence we climbed palm trees for coconuts! Chris was the only once to achieve success! He was so happy he juggled them.

Finally we had one last night in Havana. All in all it was a really cool tour, and the group we were with were really great people. Hopefully we will stay in touch!

Sorry that´s a bit rushed but I´m almost out of time here! There´s so much more to say but that will have to wait until I see some of you.

Arriving in Cuba

Looking out over the dilapidated Havan skyline to the ocean, fantastic old cars passing noisily beneath our window, we giggled tiredly at the events of our first day of travelling. In between 16 hours of travel time we had had a few glitches.

The first came when we almost missed our connecting plane in Madrid. The flight from Heathrow was a little late, and we had failed to understand the Spanish instructions to help us make our connection (get off at the back onto a special bus) so we got off the front with everyone else, only to find we were at completely the wrong end of the wrong terminal. Glancing at the boarding card I estimated 15 minutes to make it! A cold sweat descended as we realised missing this flight could ruin our entire Cuba trip! Adrenaline kicked in as we raced down 2km of walkays, corridoors, escalators, lifts and 1 small train. Breathless, I confronted the lady at the boarding gate, waving my ticket at her. She made the internationally-recognised gesture for 'calm-the-hell-down', and explained that boarding would begin shortly. We had misread the boarding time on the ticket as the flight time. With very red faces, we joined the other waiting passengers and laughed at our own stupidity.

Once we had survived the flight and customs at Havana airport (very serious) we took a taxi to Havana itself - should take around 30 mins. I was feeling especially pleased with myself for having negotiated a fare with the driver in Spanish. However, we were unprepared for the Playstation-style auto-rampage that ensued as our driver felt it necessary to race a sporty red car along the 'race-track' that is the highway to Havana. He shouted and cackled incomprehensible Spanish at us as the clock span past 150 (kmph I hope!) and with the constant smell of burnt rubber he ran red lights, swerved past pedestrians and traffic police alike, and screeched into brake-locking drifts when confronted with cross-traffic, all before bringing us to a sudden jarring stop right outside our hotel in a bustling part of the Cuban capital. We had been geuninely terrified, and too frozen into our seats to look up 'slow down you maniac' in our phrase-books. But now it seemed fantastically silly. We lay back and wondered what else Cuba would have in store for us as we closed our eyes.

We've found the internet!

Hello all,

After searching for an internet cafe in the Venezuelan town of Coro where we are staying at the moment, we finally found one (and found out we had walked passed it on numerus occasions)! So Sam i busily tapping away on a pc next to me preparing a write up of our time in cuba for you all to read, and lewis is uploading the contents of everyones memorycards so you can see all our pictures too.

Hope everyones well.
Bruce.

Some teaser photos from Cuba

Follow this link of the photo below to see a few more.
We must have taken around 400 in total between us already! There are more to come.

Hola amigos! Updates are coming!

Wow! We've just had an awesome week in Cuba, and we made it into Venezuela ok too. We're in the town of Maracay right now. The internet and even phones are very limited in Cuba so we haven't been able to update until now. However, some of the highlights so far have been 150kmph taxi rides along Havana's highways; horseback riding to a tobacco farmer's plantation, where we smoked hand-rolled cubans with him; I won a salsa competition (who knew I had moves); Chris exposing himself on the paradise golden sands of Maria la Gorda; climbing palm trees for coconuts; and Lewis got so drunk he tried to get into the hotel mirror thinking it was the bathroom.

We have many pictures and stories already, which we'll be adding slowly now that we have some better internet access. I hope you are all well back at home. Just know we were thinking about you and what a bunch of suckers you are while we were sipping mojitos on the beach.

Why is the rum always gone? Because it's $3 a bottle!
Pictures and more updates coming soon!

Hasta luego amigos!

Give us your travelling top tips

We've only got a couple of weeks left until our trip now. It seems like there's so much to do before a big trip like this! There's travel money to sort out, vaccinations to get, new gear to buy, routes to plan, and we have to fit everything we need into one bag each. In my case that gives me 65 litres of possessions. So what exactly do I take? I've read up on it and I *think* I know what I need, but there's nothing like experience is there!



I know that many of you reading this have been travelling before. I want to know your top tips for going away. What did you wish you'd taken with you? Similarly what did you spend money on only to find you didn't need it after all? Leave us a comment to let us know. Thanks!