To Iguassu (via La Paz and Lima)

15–16 June 2013

It turned out that the hotel receptionist who assured us that we didn’t need to book a taxi to get us to the airport was wrong. With a big car race on in town, taxis were scarce and roads were closed. While the concierge tried his best to call one, we went outside to try to hail one and were saved by a lovely Bolivian man and fellow hotel guest who agreed to share his taxi to the airport with us when I asked him to. He (well, his company) even paid for it! He also turned out to be on the same flight as us to La Paz, and happily shared his favourite tourist hot spots with us.

The flight went off without a hitch this time. Chris even had his eyes open for take off! The views on our way to La Paz were gorgeous – mountain ranges as far as you could see, with detailed lines of different minerals (mostly red) along the mountainsides. Some mountain tops were covered in snow, while others just had a light dusting of it.

We opted to stay in the five-star Hotel President again, and were set up on the 13^th floor, in a huge room with views of the city and main square. We spent our afternoon doing last minute shopping in the markets, eating and drinking, and swimming in the hotel pool. With an early start in the morning, we opted for room service, bad TV and an early night.

Our journey to Iguassu went via Lima, and was thankfully uneventful again. We had some time to kill in Lima airport, which we spent shopping and drinking cocktails. It was a surprisingly comfortable and interesting airport.

The flight to Iguassu itself was with LAN, and it was lovely to be on a ‘proper’ airline again. They even had vegetarian food and decent whisky on board, and I spent the trip writing while Chris napped. We were pleased to be heading to a new country, not being completely happy with our time in Bolivia (well, mostly La Paz). 

Hotel Del Ray, where we were staying in Iguassu, sent a car to pick us up from the airport, so our arrival went very smoothly. The hotel was simple, but clean and modern, with great customer service. We explored the local area by foot, ditching the restaurant recommended in Lonely Planet for the one next door to it (a huge sports bar that just happened to have US basketball playing on huge screens, much to Chris’ joy!). We topped off our fajitas and quail egg salad with huge ice creams, then made our way back to our room to watch bad TV. We were absolutely exhausted again – although it was lovely to be at sea level once again (or near enough to it).

Our plan was to spend the next two days exploring the falls – day one from the Brazilian side and day two in a tour that goes to the Argentinean side – before staying in a super deluxe hotel in the national park next to the falls, then heading to Rio for our final week.

As sweet as Sucre

11–14 June 2013

Our trip to Sucre was slightly problematic, as we soon learned was to be expected with Amazonas. We left Uyuni bright and early, and while we waited to board our flight, we were entertained by the security guards hugging and kissing and taking photos of the cute, immaculately dressed little Japanese girls also getting on our flight. We ran to get our connecting flight in La Paz, only to find it had been cancelled and we’d automatically been put on the next flight that left two hours later. All without anyone actually telling us. At least this gave us time to walk around the airport, get some sunshine in the pretty gardens outside, talk to the birds and grab a late breakfast.

Chris ran into more trouble with security as we tried to board our flight. They found his personalised Swiss army knife in his carry-on luggage. It had been there for several weeks, but no other security guards had spotted it! We said farewell to his pocket knife and made our way to beautiful Sucre and its tiny but classic airport that looked like it was straight out of 1960s America.

Without doubt, Sucre is Bolivia’s saving grace. Despite the three pigs we saw grazing on the grass in a residential area near the airport, the city seems much more cosmopolitan, cultured, clean, young, orderly and organised. Traffic is less chaotic. Buildings are beautiful, well-maintained, old colonial-style mansions. There are lovely parks, gardens and squares, full of happy families, students, the elderly and birds, and decorated with lots of flowers, topiary bushes, big trees, lush green manicured lawns, fountains, old-style wrought iron lights, fences and benches. Even the stray dogs look exceptionally healthy and happy (the dogs with owners tended to look a little uncomfortable and embarrassed – probably because they were decked out in coats and jumpers!). Sucre feels modern, fresh and energetic. It’s got a nice vibe – and loads of cafes and chocolate shops. It’s also a very walkable city, and we walked everywhere (luckily, considering how much chocolate we (I) consumed).

Chris had booked us into a posh hotel in one of those huge colonial-style buildings, with rooms set around a central courtyard. It was immaculate and ridiculously comfortable, decorated with plush antique furniture and gorgeous indoor/outdoor plants, and had stunning views of the city and surrounding mountains from the rooftop courtyard outside our room. I spent several hours sitting there on a big egg chair, writing, while Chris napped.

The hotel owner met us when we arrived and gave us a private tour of the hotel’s underground museum(!). We later realised this was so they could put some complementary food and booze in our room, in celebration of our honeymoon. They provided an antipasto plate, cheeses, fruit, garlic toast, dried fruit, nuts and champagne. Delicious! In the evenings, the staff even turned down our beds and left chocolate on our pillow. Very decadent!

Our room was huge, clean, bright and classically modern, with a huge bed, tables and chairs, a modern bathroom with loads of hot water and a big shower, an ornate brick and wooden ceiling, a big flat screen TV, a rocking chair, and big windows that overlooked the city on one side of the room and the inner courtyard on the other side of it.

Breakfast was included and while Chris slept in the first morning, I feasted alone on a variety of bread, pancakes, cakes, biscuits, puddings, fruit, yoghurt, cereal, eggs (from the egg bar – cooked on the spot to your liking), juice, tea and infused water. Juan, the waiter, made friends with me and talked with me about the food, hotel, city and photos, and introduced me to Roberta, the egg chef. Chris managed to drag himself out of bed each morning after that, once I told him how good it was.

The food in Sucre was delicious, although sometimes the service was a little lacking. Because we had such big breakfasts, during the days, we mostly just ate chocolate (and cakes, crepes and fruit kebabs with chocolate sauce) and drank hot chocolate and coffee at Para Ti, a gourmet chocolate shop. (I also stocked up with chocolatey goodies for the hotel room.) In the evenings we got room service or tried local restaurants. At Lovet’s bar/restaurant we feasted on Mexican: fajitas, nachos and salad, and drank beer (for Chris) and mojitos with coca leaves (for me). The star restaurant, which soon became our regular haunt, was Florin, where we sampled more Mexican (mojitos, beer, nachos and quesadillas), plus wine, salad, a cheese platter, pad thai and lasagne (not all in the one sitting). We also popped in there for a cuppa and snacks during the day. It had a lovely, slightly alternative vibe, good service – and was no smoking between 6.30 and 9.30pm (generally smoking is permitted everywhere in Bolivia – gross!).

After a couple of false sightseeing starts (everything closes between 12 and 2pmish), we kept ourselves busy for the few days we were there with museums, galleries, parks and shops (although saved our last day for nothing more than walking, shopping, eating and drinking). Several times we ran into some of the people from our Peru tour, who had stopped in Sucre on their way to Brazil in another tour group.

Sucre’s touristy highlight for me was the biology/anatomy museum, which is linked to the local university’s medical school. It was filled with cadavers, body parts, skeletons, diseased tissues, preserved foetuses and organs, and wax work replicas of bodies and the cardiovascular system. It also featured the tools of the medical trade, which were a bit scary and gruesome. There were old scalpels, knives for amputation, blood pressure machines, needles, syringes, x-Ray machines, machines that restart hearts with electricity, and gynaecology and obstetrics tools – all very crude but similar to what is still used. Sadly, the foetuses (ranging from about 10 to 38 weeks' gestation) were from women who had died while pregnant, and most of the bodies and body parts were from dead people who had no relatives or money to bury them, so their bodies had been donated to science. 

A young med student gave us a tour of the museum and talked us through the displays, some of which the students have to make for their assessments. He looked up translations for terms on his phone and I filled him in on a few things he didn’t know (like about the meninges and meningitis). It was all pretty gory and garish, but I loved this museum. It was so interesting and different!

The House of Liberty museum was also pretty interesting. It outlined Bolivia’s political history, fight for independence and wars with its neighbours. Bolivia is pretty bad at war to be honest. It hasn’t won a single war it’s waged, and has actually lost more land in the process!  The museum is full of old flags, weapons, a copy of Bolivia’s Declaration of Independence, and portraits of past presidents (only one woman) and historical figures. It features a chest that contains the bones, swords and shoulder plates of a national heroine. The woman fought for Bolivia’s independence in the 1800s, but was stripped of her status and military rank – despite her senior position in the army and the fact she’d lost her husband and four of her five children in the fighting – all because she was a woman and Indigenous. It seemed the new government didn’t want any challenges from Indigenous people or women. This poor lady died penniless and alone in her 80s, but was posthumously honoured with a senior military rank and is now a national hero.

The dinosaur park was a fun and different excursion too. We jumped on the open-top Dino Bus in the main square, which took us to the park about 20 minutes out of town on the edge of an industrial area. It was a strange but beautiful area, with great views of the country side, the rolling hills scattered with farms and houses, and Sucre in the distance. There must be loads of tectonic plate activity, because there are endless hills and mountains there, pushed up and shifted by all the movement underground.

The story goes that a huge earthquake in the 1800s flattened most of Sucre. The government gave permission for a concrete factory/mine to be built to help rebuild the city (the factory still operates next to the museum). When they were excavating minerals for concrete, they found dinosaur footprints on a cliff face, which they researched and preserved. Some of the cliff face has crumbled over time, revealing different footprints underneath. The footprints were originally made on the bottom of a lake/wetland, but the land had become vertical due to all of the earthquakes and land movement in the area. A little ravine separates the museum from the footprints on the cliff, so we couldn’t get up close to them, but the museum housed moulds of some footprints and actual footprints cut from the land. 

Our tour included a CGI movie about the dinosaurs (their development, daily lives and eventual demise) and a guided tour of the museum complex. The complex features several buildings that house the moulds, models of dinosaur skeletons, some footprints and other random dinosaur paraphernalia. It also has replicas of gardens/landscapes in which the dinosaurs would have lived – with life-size animal models; pieces of land and rock with dinosaur footprints on them; and a play park for kids where you can stick your head in a dinosaur’s mouth and uncover dinosaur bones and eggs buried in the sandpit.

Interestingly, the guide showed us a chart of how many years dinosaurs and humans had lived on earth, and how long the world had existed before us. She said that if the world was a book of 650 (or however many) pages, a page for each millenium that the world has existed, humans would only feature on the last one or two pages. Kind of puts things in perspective really, and makes you wonder what the world will look like in another million or so years.

We also visited La Recoleta (a little village/monastery and museum in old Spanish-style buildings atop a big hill, with beautiful courtyard gardens, loads of religious art and great views of the city); the ethnographic museum (a huge display of weird masks and the usual pottery, and information on books and the local language); and the cemetery (why not?!).  The cemetery was a bit quirky, really. Very peaceful, lovely gardens, big old trees, lots of big family tombs and crypts, and graves built in concrete blocks, five or six graves high and many, many graves long. The graves looked a bit like the shelves/drawers for bodies in morgues, piled high on top of each other. Most of them have glass fronts with pictures of the deceased, flowers, crosses and other memorabilia. But some are also decorated with musical cards that sound quite creepy when the batteries start to run low and the music turns slow and whiny.

Shopping in Sucre wasn’t particularly special, but I managed to spend a small fortune on gemstones and jewellery. Primarily bolivianite (AKA adventurine), which is a mixture of citrine and amethyst that is only mined in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile (or so I read), and only legal to buy in Bolivia. (I also bought millennium and citrine.)

While it was a little out of the way, Sucre was just the thing to take the edge off our general dislike for Bolivia, and was the perfect place to replenish our energy before embarking on the final couple of legs of our trip – Iguassu and Rio.  

Don’t eat the yellow salt

10 June 2013

The comfy beds and decent sleep at the ‘posh’ hotel made waking to our alarms at 4.15am slightly less painful (only slightly). It all went well at the airport this time, and we managed to check in with loads of time to spare before our flight to Uyuni. We even arrived on time!

Surprisingly, Chris didn’t complain at the size of the plane, which only had about 60 seats. I’m guessing that his trip over the Nazca lines in a little Cessna has given him some perspective on flying. As we approached Uyuni, we had great views of the salt lakes – endless stretches of bright white nothingness, with tyre tracks the only sign of life, and a few ripples of light grey here and there the only variation in the starkness of the land.

Outside the tiniest airport I’ve ever been to, the sun was bright and the sky was clear blue. It even felt warm, although the temperature couldn’t have been more than about 3 degrees celcius at most. A lovely security guard called us a taxi after we just missed the last one to get into town. It arrived about 10 minutes later, and we bumped around in the back of it, over dirt roads full of pot holes and cracks, into town to our hotel. (The roads in Uyuni town weren’t any better.)

Uyuni is an odd place. So very, very, very odd. I’m not sure if it’s the light or its remoteness, but everything feels exceptionally surreal. We kept expecting to see cowboys on horseback riding down the street, or spaceships passing overhead, being flight tested by scientists in a secret underground government installation nearby. It felt like an old-school film set or novel.

Everything is flat. Almost as far as you can see is flat. Great flat expanses of nothingness. This was a huge contrast to the hilly, congested landscapes we’d become accustomed to in the past month or so. It’s horribly dry and dusty, and there’s almost no vegetation (save a few patches of scrub). Instead, the fields and roads on the way into town – and even in Uyuni town itself – are all completely covered in litter. It’s as though someone sprinkled it around like confetti, and dumped a bigger pile of it every few metres.

There are dogs everywhere in Uyuni – sleeping in the sun, madly chasing cars and motorbikes, scavenging in the rubbish, and following people around in the hope of getting something to eat or just a pat. We made friends with one such scrawny mutt, who followed us as we walked around town before our tour. After it rejected some biscuits we gave it, Chris bought it some roast chicken slices from a vendor (much to her amusement). By that time, however, the dog had wandered off, so we had to go looking for it to give it the chicken! It scoffed it heartily, then followed us around again for the next half hour, wanting more.

The town looks incredibly sad, run down and poor. The tiny houses are built from square mud bricks, concrete or brick, and surrounded by mud brick fences/walls. Metal wires stick out all over the place, the houses incomplete or falling down. Everything is a miserable shade of brown or grey. The businesses in town are much the same – run down, falling down, dirty and dusty. Uyuni is missing its soul, life and energy. La Paz looks like Las Vegas in comparison!

Everything seems centred around the tourist trade here. Albeit not that well. There are a few (basic) restaurants, a few more (very basic) hotels and hostels, and several mini markets and craft shops, selling similar wares to those in the markets in La Paz.

After checking into our hotel and freshening up, we walked around the main streets. The shops were still opening, because it wasn’t quite 9am. Kids were already in school, sitting in assembly, or running down the street with their parents, late to class. We bought some snacks and supplies, and headed back to the hotel.

Our tour started (unsurprisingly) late. We were picked up from our hotel at 11.30am, then stopped 50 metres down the street to pick up three more people – somewhat pungent 20-something-year-old Argentinean guys with a very eclectic taste in music. We were ushered to the 4WD's back seats, squished in right next to the speakers, while the boys convinced the driver to play their music – hardcore heavy metal – at full pelt. Nice. Thankfully, this didn’t last too long, and they soon turned it down and started playing something a little more palatable – a mix of blues, Latin music, folk, jazz, AC/DC(!), pop and reggae – and we started talking together.

First stop of the tour was the train cemetery. Yep. Where the old trains go to die. There were a couple of lengths of well-rusted, heavily graffitied, old trains and train paraphernalia abandoned in the middle of what was essentially desert. Someone had also made swings out of some old train bits and pieces, and attached them to the trains. As you do. There were a few other tour groups there too, and they and the boys from our group were excitedly climbing over and through the trains, taking loads of photos. Chris and I just looked at each other a little confused.

About 45 minutes later, we went back into Uyuni to pick up the lunches, then headed towards the heart of the salt lake. After an hour or so, we made a pit stop in another dusty little town, which consisted of a few houses, a little market, and a museum built from salt bricks and featuring statues carved from salt. It was all very touristy, but all a little sad and run down too.

As we reached the first stop in the main salt lake, my Polaroid sunglasses did nothing to shield my eyes from the sun's glare reflecting off the endless stretch of stark white salt. It was blinding. The salt was a little bit like icy snow – dry and crunchy under foot, the particles having not quite melted to a solid block, but still slightly stuck together.

About 500 metres from us, a man was scraping the salt into mounds with a shovel, harvesting it to dry for sale. There were hundreds of these little knee-high mounds around us. Little puddles of water surrounded the mounds, filling the lake from where they'd been dug up, the only reminder that this had once been a lake.

We drove on to what I presumed was once a hostel or hotel in the middle of the salt lake. I’m guessing it’s no longer used, based on the gaping cracks in its salt-brick walls and holes in its roof. The whole place, including furniture, is made of salt. In the front ‘yard’ is a big concrete podium, with posts flying flags from all around the world. Tour groups stop there to have picnic lunches, buy tacky souvenirs and take photos of the spectacular landscape.

The pure white lake stretched far into the distance, disappearing where mountains, volcanoes and glaciers arose from the horizon. It contrasted beautifully with the crisp, clear, bright blue sky, interrupted only by the occasional wisp of white cloud and a helicopter taking posh tourists from sight to sight.

I’m not sure if it was an optical illusion (or my lack of Pisco sours for the day), but the light and scenery seemed different out on the salt lake – brighter and sharper. Maybe the light reflects and diffuses differently over the white, or isn’t as polluted. But things definitely looked different.

While it was cold and the wind had a strong chill factor, it wasn't freezing outside, thanks to the warm sunlight. I didn’t quite feel the need to break out my beanie or gloves, but I was agog at the guys in T-shirts and shorts. Sheer madness!

For lunch we stopped in a field outside what appeared to be a deserted village on the other side of the lake from where we started (or so it felt). Outside the walled village entrance, a huge flock of flamingos, ranging from pale coral to a dark hot pink, was standing in shallow water, eating. The birds were so perfectly reflected in the water that every time they dipped their head to the water to eat or drink, it looked like they were kissing another flamingo. We managed to get about 10 metres away from them before they started to move away and we backed off.

After our simple lunch of veggies, salad and rice, Chris and I managed to get pole position in the 4WD. This was particularly handy considering the driver had found another two tourists who needed a ride back to town. They and the smelly Argentinian boys looked quite cosy in the back!

We explored ‘Fish’ Island on the way back to town. The island is a huge rock in the lake, and is covered by all sorts of huge cacti. It features an untended ticket booth, a restaurant, a shop, a toilet block and what I think must be the world’s smallest (and lamest) museum – one room with a few rocks on display, a reproduction of a ceremonial pit with bowls of cereal, grain and other offerings, and a couple of statues. It looked like there might have been a little house behind the shop/restaurant area too, though living on the island would be tough. Everything was so very dry, dusty and desolate.

The island's main rocky path leads up a steep hill to a lookout, which is surrounded by huge cacti and boulders. The lookout was pretty impressive, with 360 degree views of the lake around us; the land, volcanoes, mountains and glaciers in the distance; 4WD tracks like stitches and scars across the lake; and the salt ‘ripples’ and ‘waves’ where the lake meets the island below (presumably from where the water had lapped the shoreline long ago). We sat atop the hill for about half an hour, watching the 4WD cars come and go and the people walking around the lake and shoreline below us in miniature.

On the way back to Uyuni (which took about 1.5 hours), we stopped at some cold-water geysers, which were more like little bubbling ponds. We watched the sun setting behind us, turning the sky vibrant orange, pink, then red. It was stunning. It was also very cold, so we got back in the car and, with a Bob Dylan, AC/DC and reggae soundtrack, made our way back to the thriving metropolis that Uyuni is (not).

Chris and I walked into town for tea, keeping a wide berth around a rather large, angry mob that had gathered outside the police station. There were more people there than I would have imagined actually lived in Uyuni, including women, young children and babies. They were yelling and trying to get into the building, but the policemen had so far bravely kept them at bay. We couldn’t work out what had happened, but knew it wasn’t good. We’d read that Bolivians had started taking the law into their own hands of late – burying an accused rapist and murderer alive with the dead alleged victim, and burning alive two men accused of larceny. Let’s hope the police won that battle.

After our fill of pizza, beer (for Chris) and wine and Pisco sours (for me), we spent the evening in our smelly, sparse, slightly decrepit hotel room. The staff finally got our heater working, but sadly not the hot water. Chris went straight to bed while I watched TV after a 'shower' under a dribbling cold tap. We were very grateful to receive a refund for the previous night in that hotel that we’d missed due to the cancelled flight – the La Paz travel agent had kindly arranged it for us.

Although it was a bit of a whirlwind – and strange – trip, I was glad that we’d made the trek to Uyuni to see the salt lakes. Technically, there’s not really much to see there, but the landscape is so very different from anything we’d seen or experienced that it's worth the effort. I wouldn’t have minded spending another night out on the lake exploring (despite the freezing temperatures). However, that would have likely resulted in divorce.

The highs and lows of travel (AKA four days in La Paz)

7–9 June 2013

We did our best to make our time in La Paz enjoyable, although it was often a struggle, and it was likely the low point in our honeymoon. I’m not sure if that's because it’s such an unpleasant place, or if our energies were running a little low, or both. We spent our few days there quietly wandering around, visiting some touristy sights, eating, drinking and resting.

Despite its superficial ugliness, La Paz does have some interesting and beautiful features. On a day tour, we visited the Valley of the Moon, a vast natural phenomenon where the earth has eroded and left strange formations that look like a moonscape or lots of ant hills bunched together. The guide told us that La Paz was built on the site of an old lake, and when the water disappeared, these formations were left behind.

We also visited a lookout that gives you a good view of most of the city and the huge glacier and snow-capped mountains around it. Very pretty. Apparently the locals can see five different things in the mountain top. Three of the things are a condor (easy to tell), a woman with a baby on her back and an old man (not so easy to see). The guide didn’t tell us what the other two things were, possibly because he and Chris were too busy bonding over their respective football teams, which had the same team colours and Tiger mascot!

The tour ended at a lovely little square, Plaza Murillo, that had pretty little gardens, a big fountain, and hundreds of pigeons who little kids and old men feed by hand. The gardener had left the hose running and the pigeons were having a grand time splashing around in the water and flying through the rainbows in its spray. Next to the square are the Presidential Palace and Legislative Palace – both impressive buildings. Apparently the remains of the fifth president of Bolivia are in one of the palaces, guarded by very fancily dressed men who we watched go through a precisely choreographed changing of the guards, just like the guards outside Buckingham Palace.

The cathedral crypts were closed when we tried to visit them one afternoon, so we just walked around the cathedral itself. Like most old churches, it was quite ornate, with lots of gold and statues of saints, a huge altar, and more paintings of tortured, dead, dying and decapitated people than I care to remember! Seriously, hasn’t Christianity heard that you catch more flies with honey?

At the San Franciscan museum, a lovely lady gave us an English tour, telling us all about the art, architecture, wine making, gardens, robes and crowns. The museum is in the grounds of an old monastery and convent, where monks and nuns still live. We were surprised at how interesting the tour was, and how beautiful the museum was, with its lovely architecture, murals, art and gardens.

I ditched Chris to explore more museums, visiting the free exhibition about coca at the Museum of Art. That was rather interesting… a strange combination of abstract, modern and traditional art and craft all centred around the coca leaf. The main art gallery was a little more to my taste – a combination of historical (religious and Dutch), modern and abstract art. It was nice to have a break from religious paintings, at least in part. The building that housed the art museum was beautiful in itself too – an elegant old mansion with a central courtyard, just off the main commercial road.

Food in La Paz was a good mix of traditional and Western cuisines. We tried a quinoa restaurant atop a building overlooking San Francisco Square, where we had a drink made from quinoa, barley, sugar and cinnamon; a quinoa salad; and toasted sandwiches, enjoying the sunshine and view from the rooftop seating. We also found a lovely little vegetarian restaurant that did set breakfasts (think juices, smoothies, cereals, fruit salad, yoghurt, eggs, bread and jam – too much to eat!) and another popular restaurant called Sol y Luna for dinners (think meze platters, fajitas, felafel, plus good wine, cocktails and fresh juices).

Our evenings in La Paz were pretty quiet. Chris wasn’t feeling great from the altitude and we were both wary of venturing too far alone at night, so after dinner, we’d spent the night in our hotel room watching old movies on telly (romantic features like Lethal Weapon!), eating chocolate and drinking tea.

On the afternoon of 9 June, we were due to fly to Uyuni to visit the salt lakes there. However, to add to our Bolivian discontent, when we got to the airport (after an odd taxi trip in which our driver stopped and picked up random women along the way, as you do), our flight was delayed, then cancelled, due to mechanical issues. Our only option was to catch the next flight at 6.50am, which would get us to Uyuni just in time for our tour at 10am. It’s fair (and polite) to say that Amazonas, the airline, lacks any kind of quality customer service and their staff are not familiar with the concept of communication. After two hours of ‘discussions’ with them, we’d arranged overnight accommodation in a five-star hotel in La Paz, return airport transfers and a place on the morning flight. We could only cross our fingers and hope that it didn’t break down too.

The hotel, Hotel Presidente, was quite nice. Not five-star by Western standards, unless you time travelled back to 1960, but it was clean, big and a little bit fancy. And the service was impeccable. It was a huge improvement on our La Paz accommodation to date. Our room was huge, with two double beds, a flat-screen TV, two arm chairs, a table, a suit and shoe holder (?!), a big bathroom with a bath, views of the city, and gold-plated and brass highlights galore. We immediately decided to upgrade to this plush pad from the less enticing Las Brisvas and its grumpy, gropey staff, where we were booked to stay for one night between Sucre and the Iguassu falls.

With another afternoon to kill in La Paz, we went shopping in the market. Chris was particularly happy with his purchase of a tacky, nylon jacket in the Richmond football team colours, tiger logo and all (I'm not saying it's boganesque at all). Then we decided to make the most of our hotel – going for a swim in its (slightly run down) pool and eating dinner in its restaurant with 360 views of the city – all lit up and deceptively beautiful – while the waiters played the Beatles’ over the PA. There was even a song on the album that Chris hadn’t heard!

The food there was hit and miss – sticky cold pasta and sauce, but nice salads and delicious cocktails (I figure a chocolate martini counts as dessert). I rounded my night off with a Chivas in my big, comfortable double-bed (honeymoon, schmoneymoon – we had a plush bed each!) while I wrote and my husband, remotely happy for the first time in days, watched basketball and drank bourbon. What had become a rather trying day, after a several days in a so-so city, had ended quite nicely.

Hot tip: when things go bad, a nice hotel can make you feel better!

The road to La Paz

6 June 2013

Today was overcast, grey and rainy, with a touch of hail that was so light it was almost snow. It was the perfect day for a quiet road trip. The double-decker bus from Puno to La Paz followed a main road along the lake’s shoreline. We passed field after field of sheep, cows, vegetables and fruit, and small villages consisting of little shack-like houses similar to those we’d stayed in on the island. The houses were made with concrete or metal walls, and had reed, matting or metal for the roof. Their metal front doors were painted to look like they had little insets and carvings, with pretty little decorative swirls and flowers.

In the lake, fishermen had set up rows of big black nets and moored their dinghies and motor boats at wooden posts hiding among the tall reeds. Where the water had flooded onto the land near the road, birds were happily washing and flicking water about.

The bus itself was pretty chilly, and most of our tour crew was coughing, full of colds that Chris had probably given them! We made it through the Peru–Bolivia border crossing fine (my unmarried status – and that of one of the other girls – didn’t go unnoticed by the customs man) and we settled into our slightly crappy, disorganised hotel, Las Brisas. While most of the staff did their utmost to be rude to the hotel guests, the security guard was very friendly to me in the lift. A little too friendly, you could say. So, after checking with Dennis (our tour leader) that it wasn't some odd Bolivan custom to try to kiss random strangers on the lips, I dobbed on the guard and we didn't see him again.

Dennis took us on a little walking tour of La Paz. And I have to say, first impressions weren’t great (nor were any later impressions, to be honest).

La Paz is a little like Quito, in that it’s a huge city in a valley, spreading up and across the big hills around it, as far as you can see. And that’s where the similarity ends. Bolivia is clearly a lot poorer than Peru, and with that comes a certain seediness and sense of desperation, and overall shabbiness.

Beggars ask for money (and get cranky if you refuse). One beggar babbled incoherently at Chris, bowed to him, then walked away. As you do. The streets are very dusty, dingy, grotty and run down, with rubbish and graffiti everywhere, and cracked and holey roads and footpaths. Everything is ‘in construction’, with concrete, metal, bricks and wires lining the street.

The city is rather chaotic, with cars going wherever their drivers choose without indication or attention to the road rules (if there are any). Like in many third-world Asian cities, it comes down to whichever driver is the most persistent or stubborn. People drive fast and slam on their brakes at the last minute, and push in front of each other, hoping the other person will give way. The only saving grace is that there don't seem to be quite as many cars, buses, motorbikes or bicycles as there are in Asia (but it comes pretty close).

On the way into the city, we saw an effigy of a man tied up high on a pole, like they used to do in medieval times. I’m not sure what it was about, but it left us feeling rather uneasy! Actually, the whole place has a bad vibe and we were a little more alert and aware walking around there than we were in Peru.

On our walking tour, we stopped by the witches’ market, which I'd been really looking forward to. Sadly, it was a little disappointing – more a row of several shops with a bizarre (and not entirely Wiccan-related) mix of paraphernalia, including dried llama foetuses, baby llamas and other dead animals; various herbs and plant matter; novelty sex-related items (like ashtrays that look like bums or boobs); tinctures; oils; lots of religious icons and talisman; and random snacks, cigarettes and magazines. It was all rather gruesome and peculiar. The market is also rather pungent, I presume thanks to the formaldehyde used to preserve the dead animals.

We made our way through the streets – directed where to cross the road by some men dressed as zebras (still haven’t worked that one out, although I do get the zebra crossing pun!) – to San Franscisco Square, outside the big cathedral, so we could get our bearings. Then Dennis took us back to the hotel so we could relax before our last tour group dinner at a Thai-Indian-Malay fusion restaurant.

The restaurant and meal were quite nice, and we enjoyed sampling the cocktails and Jaegermeister (for medicinal purposes, of course). And while it’s always sad for chapters in your journey to end, Chris and I were also looking forward to having a bit more freedom to do as we wanted, when we wanted, and having some quiet time to ourselves.

Islands in the (Peruvian) sun

3–4 June 2013

Sadly, it was time to leave Cusco (and Jack's cafe!) and make our way to La Paz via Puno and some floating islands.

The scenery on the way to Puno was mostly sparse and uninspiring. It looked very dry, arid and desolate, with brown fields as far as you could see. In the distance were the occasional snow-capped mountain and glacier, and from time to time we passed through a small, simple village or farming area. But that and the occasional bush, tree or patch of brown grass was as exciting as it got. It was a bit like driving through the outback here, but with more mountains.

Puno itself is a smallish town, with about 200,000 residents. A lot of the buildings look incomplete, with work being done over what seems to be the long, long-term. The architecture isn’t particularly special, decorative or old. Quite ordinary in comparison with the other towns we’ve visited. Puno has a main square with an imposing cathedral, and a large, but not very long, main street with restaurants and shops. Its market has separate rows for fish, beef, cheese, chicken, vegetables, fruit – and potatoes! Like I said before, Peruvians love their potatoes.

Here’s a useless fact for my Irish readers: you can dry potatoes and they’ll last for 10 years or more! They go hard like rocks. Leave them out in the icy winter to keep, then just soak or boil them to rehydrate them. You’ll thank me come the next potato famine.

Surprisingly, we ran into one of the guys from our Lares trek in Puno (I guess most people take a similar route around the area). He’d arrived earlier in the day and was also out exploring.

We ditched the tour group for dinner and spent a quiet night in our hotel room, with bad TV, fried cheese, salad and pizza… and whisky (I’d had my daily Pisco earlier – an interesting mulled wine version). We must be getting old!

After a sumptuous breakfast spread the next morning, we caught tuk tuks to the pier, where we bought some food and toys for the families we were staying with overnight, and got on the boat that took us around the local islands. It was a gorgeous day – sunny and clear and not too warm or cold (even though it had apparently got down to 3 degrees celcius overnight). We sat outside for a lot of the trip, on the roof or out the back of the boat, enjoying the fresh air, view and sunshine.

First stop was one of the floating islands. These islands are manmade, cut from peat and covered in three metres of water reeds/rushes. They are very spongy to walk on – a bit like a trampoline or water bed – and tiny, only around 30 metres by 30 metres. You’d want to get on well with your neighbours! When new ‘land’ is needed, the islanders cut more peat from nearby land and move it to make another island.

The islands are surrounded by water reeds, which are the life blood of the island. Everything is built from them, including the ground, buildings, boats, mats, seats and souvenirs to sell. The islanders even pick and peel the roots of the reeds that grow in the water around their islands and eat the tubers like a banana. We didn’t want to sample any though, considering the water quality probably isn’t top notch because they use it as a toilet and garbage bin. However, some of our tour group were a little more adventurous than us (and survived)! Our guide told us that the reeds filter the water, so the locals can use it for drinking and cooking, despite also using it as a toilet. We weren’t convinced.

Four to five families live on each island, in little huts also made from the water reeds. Despite being so basic, surprisingly the huts had solar panels! But I guess they’re not exactly connected to mains electricity.

Sadly, the island was very quiet that day because most of the families were on the mainland burying a two-year-old girl who had lived on the island and drowned the day before. Apparently it happens sometimes, when the adults aren’t watching the children closely enough. The children usually know how to swim by the time they reach five or six years of age, but that wasn’t soon enough for that little girl.

In addition to the dubious looking weed, islanders eat whatever they can catch from the islands (mostly ducks and fish) or barter for on the mainland (rice, potatoes and other essentials). I imagine it’s a very limited and confined life on such small islands, especially for women. On Saturdays, the women go into town to the markets, but that’s it. The rest of their time is spent on their island. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be in winter. The huts didn’t exactly look weatherproof.

The women and children there had a few stalls set up with various handmade items, including mobiles, pottery, cushion covers, jewellery and other souvenir type things. We bought some little bits of pottery, some pendants and a small rainmaker with the Peruvian trilogy on it (snake, puma and condor). I didn’t barter like I normally would. It didn’t feel right.

Next stop was Taquile, a ‘proper’ island two hours away on our boat. After a very slow, steep climb, we reached the small main town and visited its market, before having lunch in a garden restaurant, which had spectacular views of the lake’s shoreline, the water (a lake that is so big you think it’s the sea), and the Bolivian mountains and glaciers far across the water. We actually thought the glaciers were clouds, because they seemed to float in the sky and were an exquisite, pure white.

Over lunch, our guide told us about the local customs, mostly about relationships and marriage (I guess not a lot else happens around there!). People meet their partners at school or at unchaperoned dances. Courtship is a little aggressive, with boys throwing stones at the girls they fancy or shining torches/lights/flashing mirrors in their faces, as you do. If the girl flashes a mirror or light back, the guy is in luck.

Couples live together for two or three years before getting married (try before you buy!). After the two or three years, the girl cuts off her hair and they both weave it into a belt for the man to wear. He wears it for the rest of his life (and hopefully he washes it from time to time). Then they get wed.

Weddings last for three days and three nights, during which the couple sits apart on opposite sides of the room, looking solemn, to show their patience, while everyone else parties hard.

It’s a very communal/community driven town. The town gathers together to help build the newly married couple’s new home, on land their families gave them when they got married. In turn, the couple will help another young couple build their home later.

There is no divorce here. It’s shameful. As is cheating. (Let’s hope you don’t marry an abusive, cheating, gambling, drug-using drunk!) If you’re caught doing anything unwholesome, you’re kicked out of the community. Your standing in the community is everything, and the threat of ostracism is usually enough to keep people in line. There’s no crime here, no police or judges. People know everyone else and what’s going on and are quick to tell you to toe the line.

Incidentally, single people are viewed as ‘worthless’. You only have any standing in the community if you are married. And only married people and young children can attend normal town functions. Unmarried people and teenagers have their own functions, to encourage them to hook up with someone.

Also, interestingly, boys learn to sew and weave from five years of age, and make themselves a half red, half white hat. This means they’re single. When they get married, they make themselves a red hat. If they have a black hat, they are a town leader. Men do all of their family’s weaving, knitting and embroidery, making all the beautiful shirts, skirts, blouses, hats and vests the locals wear. They’re highly skilled artisans.

We spent the night on the next island, Amantani. After winning a dusk soccer game against the local boys, our tour group was led to the town hall, where we met our host families. Chris’ and my host family was Christiano (maybe around 45 years old) and his wife (whose name I didn’t catch). Then the Peruvians dressed us up in traditional garb – I was fitted out in a fetching heavy, layered, green wool skirt, pretty embroidered white blouse, belt and head scarf, while Chris wore a poncho and beanie with ear flaps. A local band played traditional music, while the people waved flags around in a tribute to Pacha Mama and Pacha Papa, and swung us quickly, almost violently, around the room in different traditional dances. As our photos later showed, it was all a bit of a colourful blur.

Christiano’s house was up a bit of a hill and quite large, with several outbuildings built around a central courtyard, in which they stored vegetables and labouring equipment. This style reminded me of buildings I’d seen in Europe and Africa – protecting residents and belongings against the elements and forming a central meeting and working place for the family. Our room was clean and tidy, and had electricity. It was dark by the time we got into our room, but in the morning light, we could properly appreciate the beautiful landscape and view: past the surrounding rocky fields filled with llamas, sheep, other livestock and the odd scraggy tree, the windy old stone fences and little cottages (again, very European), all the way down to the water, sparkling in the sunlight, and the breathtaking Bolivian mountains and glaciers far in the distance.

The toilet and washing area was down near the vegetable garden and kitchen, towards the back of the property. The kitchen was quite dark but clean and simple, with a wooden bench table and seats, an old wooden dresser for crockery, a radio, a gas cylinder and cooker, and a little wood stove in a little nook. The building, including the floor, was entirely concrete (as were all the buildings there). The lady had dressed up the room a little, with pretty curtains, a tablecloth and cloth on the seats.

We offered to help Christiano’s wife cook tea, but he dismissed us with a laugh, and we sat a little awkwardly at the dinner table, trying to communicate in what little common language we shared. I’m presuming it’s a cultural/manners-related thing, but she ate in the kitchen nook next to the fire, and he came back in to eat after we’d finished. It was a little odd, for us at least.

The food during our homestay was simple but delicious (and apparently all of the host families had fed their respective guests from our tour group the same thing – the host families are trained to look after us tourists, including how to cook and basic English). For dinner, we had soup and bread, carrot, potato and tomato stew and rice, and muna (mint) tea. Breakfast was pancakes, jam, bread and muna tea. Lunch was quinoa and vegetable soup, two types of potato, tomato, cucumber and fried cheese, and muna. We certainly didn’t go hungry, although I’m not sure we’ll opt for the potato option off a menu anytime soon!

Despite the cold (and wearing all our clothes), we slept well and long. We helped pod mountains of dried broad beans (Chris’ favourite!), sitting in the courtyard on stools, under the clear blue morning sky and warm sunlight. The lady showed us where they dry all of the vegetables. She had loads of beans, peas, corn and potatoes out drying on tarps on the ground and roof, and some already prepared and stored inside the outbuildings.

We explored the landscape, winding our way down the hill through the dry, dusty fields to the shoreline. We met stunted sheep that only came to our knees, chatty donkeys, and smiley fishermen and farmers. We followed the shoreline along for a couple of kilometres to the port, and sat for about an hour on a large boulder, watching the waves splash the rocks below us and the water ebb in and out with the tide, the ducks and seagulls floating along with it. A little sparrow-like bird flitted around near us. It was hard to remember that it was actually a lake and not the sea. You seriously can’t see the other side of it.

Our homestay couple saw us off at the port – the lady walking us down to the boat and Christiano coming over on a break from work to hug and kiss us and shake our hands farewell. It was very sweet.

Back in the big smoke, we explored Puno’s bars and restaurants, indulging in cocktails, Pisco sours, wine, nachos, and pizza and salad. Then some more cocktails (dessert ones, of course) and an early night in preparation for our eight-hour bus trip to La Paz, leaving our hotel at 6.50am. (Have I mentioned that sleeping in is so overrated?)

Come home with me, Senorita! (Finding love in Cusco)

31 May–2 June 2013

Some well-deserved – and well-needed – R&R was in order, and Cusco is the perfect place in which to do it. It’s a largeish town, very pretty, with lots of beautiful old Spanish colonial-style buildings and town squares, and is surrounded by mountains. Its food, architecture, fashion and daily life is a good blend of traditional Peruvian and Western/European culture.

Cusco reminds me a little of Quito, with its architecture, landscapes and little cobbled back streets. Also like Quito, Cusco is quite high up altitude-wise, so you have to take it relatively easily walking around or you become puffed and dizzy. But it’s the kind of place you don’t want to rush around anyway.

We had a few days of free time away from our tour group, and could do whatever we wanted. We chose to:

• not wake up to alarms
• sleep a lot
• eat and drink a lot, mostly at Jack’s – it’s a local institution: we saw people from our tour and Lares trek there every time!
• sightsee a little (the usual churches, galleries, monuments, shops)
• shop a little (well, shop a lot)
• people watch in the main town square (while we ate and drank some more)
• drink delicious cocktails, beer and whisky, and eat tasty tapas, in a cosy Australian-owned bar (Los Perreros?) that reminded us of one we’d find in Brunswick – chilled lounge music, couches and all
• eat chocolate and drink whisky in the comfort of our bed
• watch US crime and spy dramas, the only English language shows on telly (while we ate chocolate and drank whisky in bed)
• visit markets
• post our (my) shopping home (which was surprisingly easy!) – and say a prayer that it would make it (it did – about two months after we got home!)
• get massages (good ones this time!)
• watch military and uniformed groups, and kids in fancy dress, parade around the main square for the Corpus Christi festival
• play Connect Four in a Mexican restaurant/bar, with fires burning, music playing and red Chilean wine flowing (and me kicking Chris’ butt)
• make friends with local cats
• recover from our respective colds.

Our days started with a mid to late morning breakfast at Jack’s – usually an egg and veggie combination; sometimes porridge or burritos and salad; and always fresh juices, delicious lime/lemon, honey and ginger tea, and what Chris tells me was very good coffee. We’d chat with people from our tour and trek who were always there at the same time, read the paper or a book, and maybe write a little. (Hot tip: get there late morning and you probably won’t have to queue.)

After breakfast, we’d walk around to settle our food and explore, before eating and drinking some more.

There are four churches in the main square, Plaza de Armas. Three of the churches are connected, one of these being the quite impressive cathedral. Due to the Corpus Christi carnival (a big, religious shindig that goes for a week), there were a lot of religious effigies being carted around and displayed in Cusco. The cathedral was full of them. Around the effigies, the locals had put mountains of flowers and other decorations. If you could ignore the statues’ odd sizes, slightly creepy facial expressions and beady eyes that followed you (us heathens) around the cathedral, it was almost festive.

The churches were built on top of Incan ceremonial sites/temples and monuments (of course), to blend Incan and Spanish religion. The architecture was meant to be a blend of Inca and Spanish design as well, but we couldn’t see anything about them that looked Incan. They looked very similar to the other South American churches we’d visited: with more than one scary-looking Jesus bleeding left, right and centre; blingy Marys looking down at us angelically; weird cherubic heads being stood on by old men in robes; and lots of antique artwork, gold leaf and wood carvings. I guess it’s the same in Europe – the churches (as pretty as they are) start to blend into one after you’ve seen, well, more than one.

Steven, the older man from our tour, told us there was a surprisingly unassuming wooden cross in one of the churches that Pizarro carried with him on all of his travels. We think we saw it in the Company of Jesus church, but weren’t sure. (We couldn’t get an audio guide because of the festival, or closing times or something.)

We visited the Inca Museum and Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. They were both quite good, and featured historical art and artefacts dating from around 1500 BC to 1500 AD. The Inca Museum has a much broader and more general display than the art museum, and was more interesting than the art museum, even though the quality of its displays isn’t as good. The art museum has high-quality, well-preserved displays of pottery, silver, gold and woodwork in a nice environment, but terribly cheesy and pompous descriptions that we stopped reading after a few minutes.

Shopping in Cusco is very good – with a range of proper silver and goldsmiths and their (expensive) shops, wool mills and their (expensive) shops, pottery makers and their (expensive) shops, and (relatively inexpensive) markets. There are also general clothing, shoe and souvenir shops. We bought some locally made jumpers, boots, sandals, herbal medicine and tshirts – and posted a big box of stuff home, because there was no way everything was going to fit in our backpacks!

While we were out shopping, I befriended some of the more furry of the locals (as I tend to do). At the market, I met a particularly affectionate tabby with a very large, cartoon-like angular head. He pushed his way up onto my lap when I bent down to pat him, then gave me head butt kisses and snuggled into my arm pit, where he drooled away happily as I scratched his ear. I stood up and this little guy held on to me, paws stretched around my arm and nuzzled in in a big hug. He didn’t want to let go of me. So very cute.

I also became attached to a rather gorgeous, chilled out, calico cat called Senorita, who lives in a dark and dingy rug/poncho/blanket shop among all the posh restaurants and clothing stores in the main square. We went back several times to pat her. The owners, who proudly display behind the counter a picture of their elderly mother with Mick Jagger, invited us in to pat Senorita each time, without trying to sell us anything (quite refreshing really!). Said elderly mother sat quietly in a chair next to door, a blanket over her knees and white Maltese terrier on top. Of course, because they were so lovely, we felt like we should buy something, but couldn’t see anything we wanted (other than the cat of course, but she wasn’t for sale). Incidentally, Senorita’s fur seemed to coat all of the rugs/ponchos/blankets for sale, probably because she lounged wherever she liked.

We could have done more sightseeing in Cusco, and there was more to see, but what we did was perfect. We felt much better for these few days’ rest, getting on top of our colds, catching up on sleep, and being well fed and watered. We felt a little more human, back to our relatively normal selves and ready to tackle the final leg of our Peruvian tour.

Machu Picchu

30 May 2013

The rude start to the day with alarms at 4.45am, breakfast at 5.30am, and bus to the ruins at 6am was worth it for the sunrise over the centuries-old ruins atop a mountain in the middle of a Peruvian jungle.

Understandably, we were extremely, bone-achingly, mind-numbingly, stomach-churningly knackered after the hike. (I had to try very hard not to vomit on the bus ride up the mountain. Although that may have had more to do with the fact it was a very windy, one-way road, without railings, upon which two big luxury buses had to pass each other as one went up and the other down.) Our exhaustion made fully enjoying the experience – taking in the stunning views and all of the guide’s information – a little difficult. But we did our best!

We started with the traditional photos of us on the rock jutting out over the side of the mountain, with the ruins in the background. Then we watched the sun rise over the mountains, with shards of light shining down onto the remains of temples, homes and businesses below.

The members of our tour group who had trekked the real Incan trail, which ended right then at that point on the mountainside, joined us. They didn’t look too bad considering their efforts, although apparently two of the English girls had been very sick along the way. Their route was longer than ours, although it didn’t climb as high (and our guides assured us ours was harder!).

A local guide took us around to the various points of Machu Picchu interest for two hours, regaling us with tales about the area’s history, right back to the Ice Age, plus how the Incas came to live here, and how they lived here.

The Incas originally moved inland to escape natural disasters and the threat (and reality) of invasion. However, they didn’t have the adventurous, explorer instinct that the Europeans did. They had all they needed to survive here in the highlands, and were happy to live here quietly. They had no currency, but used minerals (gold, silver, quartz, copper) for exchanges as needed. Their justice was swift and deadly – people who did bad things were killed, and the whole community had to bear witness so people learned to be upstanding citizens.

Apparently they lived in quite an egalitarian society, where everything was merit based. Regardless of your age, gender, social status or family, if you were smart enough and could do the job you aspired to, you could be and do anything you wanted to. And each role was seen as equally important – from farmer and labourer to astronomer, leader and priest. Although the rich or powerful people, the ‘thinkers’, lived at the top of the mountain, and the ‘workers’ lived at the bottom. But that may have been more for practicality's sake, as they lived near where they worked. 

The Incan people were very intelligent and resourceful. They knew the Earth was round, and created a calendar based on the sun that will be accurate for the next 1500 years. They knew about equinoxes and solstices, and understood about the angle of the Earth’s axis. They also followed the stars and constellations, replicating them in their temples and other structures. 

Machu Picchu itself was built from granite on top of a very, very big mountain. The Incas levelled the mountain top first, gathering stone from that mountain and surrounding areas for buildings, and then terraced its sides. There were no gardens as such, other than for fruit and vegetables, because the people were surrounded by nature, by the jungle. Unlike us now, where we have to build gardens and parks to feel close to nature.

The Incas designed and built buildings that have survived countless earthquakes, and their irrigation and drainage systems still work today. Like buildings we’ve seen in other parts of Peru, Machu Picchu architecture features special gaps and windows in walls, certain sized rocks used in certain places, special materials (different sand and gravel) compacted to provide stable ground for buildings, and foundations that go particular depths into the ground – all to provide stability and absorb tremors to successfully stop buildings collapsing during earthquakes. Buildings were also created with natural ventilation to preserve food and create a hospitable environment for those living inside, and on certain angles to protect them against bad weather. Eight to 10 people lived in each house, and there were about 100 houses at Machu Picchu. Priests and astronomers lived alone.

They were truly ahead of their (and our) time with their knowledge. Researchers have come from around the world to study their designs and structures, and to try to replicate them.

The Incas were relatively peaceful people, so the Spanish had no problem invading and imposing their beliefs on them. One of the Spanish beliefs was that women were second-class citizens. The Spanish tortured and burned alive any educated Incan woman – leaders, astronomers, architects, engineers, healers and priests, all gone. And along with them, all of their knowledge – and Incan society’s equality. Thankfully, the Incas were able to protect Machu Picchu, hiding it from the Spanish by leading them on random hikes on trails through the mountains and often ‘losing’ them along the way. But other townships were not so lucky.

The direct, full-blooded descendants of the original Incas live very remotely, one month’s hike further up in the mountains in relative isolation. Anthropologists find it really difficult to find them, so have relied mostly upon Spanish chronicles (which aren’t all that reliable and are pretty biased) to trace and retell the Inca’s history. That and they guess it from what they’ve found among the ruins.

Archaeologists are also still discovering new parts of Machu Picchu and new information about the Incas. In 2012 they found another Inca trail leading to a sun gate they found 20 years ago.

Chris and I spent a couple of hours battling among the hordes of other tourists walking around the ruins, up and down and around the mountainside. The views, like elsewhere, were stunning, with beautiful sheer, rugged mountains circling and forming the valleys, huge lumps of rocks and land covered with jungle, and deep crevices in the mountains through which rivers flowed. Clouds smothered the mountain tops, drifting down into the valley, with tufts of jungle poking out. A cloud forest. A city in the clouds. Without all of the tourists, it would have been quite a spiritual and peaceful place. You did feel like you were closer to God, or to nature at least.

At midday, we hopped back on the bus to town and met our group in a restaurant for lunch, where we all ate and drank and rested well for a couple of hours. We got the train back to Ollayantambo (I slept the whole way), and the bus from there to Cusco (the train lines were blocked). Thankfully, we managed to somehow get a better (less smelly!) hotel room than last time. And after a shower and rest, our first port of call was… Jack’s for dinner, of course! Simple food, but delicious.

Even though we were so exhausted at Machu Picchu, it was truly special to visit and see how beautiful it is, and how the Incas lived in relative peace. We forget how important it is to live with nature, to be close to it. We search for so much in material goods and each other, when all we need to do is spend some time with our heads in the clouds and our feet in the sand/sea/soil/grass, to find what we need to be happy.

Call me Chaska (an Incan trek)

27–29 May

We were duped with the whole trekking to Machu Picchu thing. Mainly because we didn’t actually trek there. Nope. We trekked in a big, fat circle over three days. It was a fantastic experience, sure. It just wasn’t quite what we had in mind when the travel agent said that the Lares Trail was an alternative to the Inca trail. It wasn’t like tossing up between taking Plenty Road or the Eastern Freeway via Heidelberg to get to the city from our place. No, it was more like trekking Plenty Road to the city versus hiking along Diamond Creek Road for 20 km, then turning back towards Greensborough to get the train into the city instead. But more hilly. And with fewer hoons.

The trek started at some hot springs, where we got to know our new tour group (our normal tour group had split up for the trails/staying in Cusco). The new, trekking group included a couple of Australian girls from our normal tour group, some English brothers, a guy from London and another from Bristol, a German guy and girl, a girl from California, two guides (Edith and Jesus – at least God was with us on this road…), two cooks, and a porter who reputedly ran the Inca trail in three and a half hours. (Is that even humanly possible?)

Truthfully, the hot springs were pretty gross – nothing on those in the Colca Canyon. We stayed in the relatively clean, warm one (the hot one being too hot), and watched with amusement as the English guys tried and failed to hit on the oblivious American and German girls.

After lunch, we started our trek from the springs. That first day we walked four hours, a lot of it uphill, stopping regularly for snacks and rests. The second day was a gruelling eight hours of trekking and breathtaking scenery, and the third a much more reasonable three hours with a good break in the middle.

The path ranged from wide dirt roads on sparsely covered mountain ridges to narrow, almost non-existent paths on hillsides, shrouded with bushes that you had to push past. The trek went up and down the mountains, sometimes very steeply, sometimes very level, and crossed over fields, rivers and streams.

I found walking at that high altitude quite hard, especially on day two when we reached 4600 metres above sea level (the highest point of the trek). I mostly kept a slow pace towards the back of the group with the American and German girls and one of the English guys (a really nice bloke, but the epitome of a whinging pom. The poor guy was so ill prepared for the hike. He hadn’t even bought any snacks for the three-day hike, bless the one pair of cotton socks he did bring!). About half way through day two, the guides popped my and the American and German girls’ day packs onto a lovely, chatty donkey/mule, who had been conscripted in case someone needed a ride. This made our trek a bit easier, thank goodness. The English guy was as stubborn as he was whingy, and insisted on carrying his day pack, despite looking and sounding like he was on a death march as he trailed behind us.

In good news, Chris stepped up and took the hike all in his stride (boom tish!). I think the drugs he was taking for his chest infection helped. We both had a touch of a cold as well at this stage, which didn’t help, and probably contributed to several blood noses.

Along the way, we parted with some of the ‘treats’ we’d brought along for the local families, including bread and fruit. As we walked, Peruvian kids would rush over to us (probably knowing they’d get presents), and although they were quite shy, they were very polite and always said thank you. Sometimes they’d play football with the boys or chat with the guides, and let us take their photo. They were beautiful children, with gorgeous smiles. But clearly very, very poor, with threadbare, worn clothing and quite dirty and snotty.

We passed locals walking their horses, llamas and sheep along the path. They wore traditional clothes – and sandals of all things. Their feet were black as coal, their skin weathered and worn, wrinkled and dry. But they always smiled and nodded. We also passed some entrepreneurial local women and children, selling snacks and drinks, and knitted goodies (like bracelets, socks and scarves) along the way.

The landscape was gorgeous and so peaceful. We were surrounded by, and followed, endless rugged mountain ranges, topped with snow and ice, frozen rivers and the occasional glacier. Lower down, the land turned more lush green, rippled in little hills, with stone walls forming rough fields filled with llamas, sheep, cows, horses and pigs. At the bottom of the valley, there was a river that rushed over and around stones and boulders. It occasionally formed a little lake, around which a village was built. These villages (usually only a handful of buildings) and other farmhouses were all built from stone. It was all extremely picturesque.

The microclimates were quite obvious along the way. The first day or so, the valley was wide, with few trees, and so was much colder. The second day or so, we walked through a narrow valley, which had much more vegetation and so was much warmer. As we walked down and out of it, the bushes and trees became denser, and it felt almost tropical.

Sometimes sheep or llamas would start following us as we walked, and the guides would shoo them back. We also attracted a few local dogs, who followed us almost protectively. I nicknamed the one who was with us the longest ‘the Watcher’. The Watcher was a young dog, maybe not even a year old, and a beautiful creamy orangey colour. She/He was very friendly, alert and watchful, following us most of the time and stopping when we stopped for a break (when I’d feed her/him my sandwiches and food scraps). If The Watcher went on ahead, she/he would stop occasionally to check if we were still following. It reminded me of my brother’s working dogs, rounding up sheep. I thought The Watcher was one of the crew’s dogs, but they said no, she/he just lived in the mountains and protected the sheep, llamas and alpacas from foxes. Maybe she/he thought we were a strange new alpaca breed?

We were very lucky with the weather. Even though the nights were very cold, as soon as the sun rose and we started walking, it soon warmed up and we were stripping off to singlets and shorts. The skies were clear blue, with white fluffy clouds. There was a touch of rain on the last day, but it soon passed, and we enjoyed our farewell lunch in the sunshine, wearing hats and sunscreen.

At one of our first rest stops, the guides talked us through a ceremony, in which we were given Quechan names (mine was Chaska, meaning star, and Chris’ was Waka Mayu, meaning sacred river). We all paid our respects to the mountains with coca leaves and asked for safe passage from Pacha mama (Mother Earth). It might have been touristy hogwash, but it was also quite nice.

The guides gave us lots of information about the Incas and Peruvian history along the way, but I was usually too busy inspecting the local plants to pay much attention. I liked looking out for wild muna (mint-thyme) and other herbs I’d started to recognise and sniff and nibble on along the way.

Each evening when we reached our campsite, we were lucky enough for everything to be set up waiting for us. The porters and cooks had pitched our tents and had hot water, tea and nibbles waiting for us. This was handy, because it was usually getting pretty chilly by that stage (around three or four degrees celcius at sunset), and the sun was setting. We’d wash, put on warmer clothes and pull out something to do or drink before dinner. Dinners were delicious, usually a vegetable-based soup, then a vegetable curry or stir fry with rice, and cups of tea and coffee to finish. We soon learned that rum goes surprisingly well in a range of hot drinks, including coffee, black tea, anis tea, chamomile tea, mulled tea, and clove and cinnamon tea. 

The first night, we camped at 3700 metres above sea level. It was ridiculously cold overnight, around minus 10 or 15 degrees celcius, Jesus said. No one slept well. We couldn’t get comfortable or warm in the tent, despite wearing everything we had brought with us. In the morning, everything was covered with a layer of ice. Thankfully the second camp was more sheltered, despite being at 4100 metres above sea level, so it only reached about minus five degrees celcius. We still awoke to ice and a chill in the morning though.

At least the morning routine made the early, freezing starts easier. Jesus woke us with cups of coca tea and the porter left hot water for washing outside our tents. Chris and I would get up straight away, wash and dress, unwrap our electrical items and put batteries back in them (at night we wrapped them in whatever we weren't wearing, then tucked them into our sleeping bags to keep them warm overnight, otherwise they’d go flat and break in the freezing temperatures), pack our things and head out for breakfast. We were served delicious quinoa porridge, pancakes with caramel sauce (poured to spell out Peruvian animal names!), hot rolls with jam and honey, omelettes, tea and hot chocolate. 

On the second day, we started with a visit to a local home and met the residents. As a thank you, we gave the family a bag of groceries our group had bought at the market, including things like noodles, rice, sugar, tinned milk, tinned tuna. It didn’t really seem enough.

The family live in very basic, poor conditions. The home is one big room in different sections (how I imagine people used to live in the very olden days, especially in rural areas). In one corner, was a quite dirty, shabby, hard-looking bed in which four people sleep. It was basically a platform of wood covered in llama and other skins that they used as mattresses and blankets. The family’s guinea pigs lived under the bed. The room was lit by one electric light globe, which didn’t really provide any substantial or effective lighting – it was very dim and gloomy inside.

The kitchen area on the other side of the room consisted of two stoves – one the lady built and used, and a ‘nicer’ one the government gave the family to use (but they didn’t use it because the older one still worked fine). The government provided the new stoves to try to reduce smoke-induced illness in the people, but it can’t make them use them. The old stove clearly doesn’t remove the smoke from the house, and the house fills with smoke – the roof and walls, and everything inside them, are stained charcoal.

When we eventually reached the highest point of our trek (a fearful 4600 metres above sea level), we stopped on top of the mountain and had a little celebration. The weather was perfect for it – a cool breeze, but warm sun and clear blue skies, with the odd bit of white fluff drifting across the rugged mountain tops around us. There was a huge lake on the other side of the ridge we’d climbed up, with llamas and other animals wandering around it. Edith fed us each some rum (well, the breeze was very cool) and thanked us for our efforts (I imagine she meant for the lack of medical emergencies and her not having to whip out the oxygen tanks, which she had only just admitted to carrying with her). We thanked Edith and the mountain for our safe passage, then congratulated and hugged each other, rubbing petals from local flowers that Edith had given us into each others’ hair, as she directed. She told us to stop and acknowledge where we were and what we’d achieved, so that we remembered it when we got back to work. We had a group photo and yelled out ‘Freedom!', as you do, before making our way down the other side of the mountain to the lake for rest, tea and a huge lunch.

On the third and final morning, we started very early, when the sun was only just rising and it was still icy cold. We were all rugged up in beanies, scarves, coats, gloves and long pants. But after a brief spatter of rain, by the time we reached the end of our trek at lunch time, we had stripped down to singlets and shorts, and put sun hats on.

Our final lunch break was spent lolling around on a grassy lawn at a home slash trout farm. We napped and chatted and played with the dogs and chickens, while the mozzies had a good meal off us. While we’d meandered down the hill, the crew had arrived earlier, and had laid out all the tents and equipment to dry in the sun and set up for lunch. The cooks had prepared a feast for our last meal together, with rice and vegetables, chicken, eggplant chips, yucca, coleslaw, and pumpkin stew with cheese. To top it off was a banana cake with thick, creamy, blue and white icing with 'Happy honeymoon!' written on it in caramel for Chris and I! The head chef had got up at 3am to start baking it, bless him. It was delicious – so moist and pretty, especially considering the conditions he’d cooked it in.

As I have a tendency to do, I made friends with the local cats. One in particular, Gringo, a pretty, white fluffy cat with gold-coloured eyes, took a liking to me. This may be because I shared our food with her... she particularly liked the chicken (from Edith’s plate), coleslaw, cheese and icing. During lunch, Gringo sat on one of the spare chairs at the table, paws on the table, looking to see what was on offer, waiting (im)patiently for food and a pat (just like Bella does at home). Cheeky mitty! After I snuck her some treats under the table, she was soon on my lap, licking icing off my fingers and nuzzling in for a kiss, all the while purring contentedly while I scratched her ear.

When it was time to go, we thanked the crew and guides, leaving them with our leftover coca leaves, fruit, bread and some money/tips. We had a farewell ceremony, stating our Quechuan names and origin (Waka Wasi – the local mountain), and our real names and origins (Melbourne). We dropped the horsemen, cooks and porter at the bottom of the hill to get a bus home and said goodbye to our guides at the train station. Then we got a rather posh, glass-roofed train from Ollayantambo to Machu Picchu, admiring the scenery along the way. We passed through the bottom of a valley, alongside a river, through very tropical vegetation consisting of tall trees, thick vines and glossy bushes, and with scary cliffs towering over us.

Machu Picchi town is humid and tropical (although not as much as in the Amazon). Dennis met us at the station and took us to the hotel (quite nice), where after a brief issue with the shower curtain (I broke it), we had hot(!) showers and rested, before meeting some of our original tour group for tea (the rest were hiking the real Incan trail and would meet us in the morning at the ruins). Over expensive (but delicious) mojitos and burritos (for me), beer and pizza (for Chris), the group shared its respective stories from the past few days. Chris and I were pretty exhausted, so headed back to the hotel for our first sleep in a warm, comfortable bed in what felt like weeks.

As a side, in our exhaustion, we thought Machu Picchu looked like quite a pretty town, and rather interesting. It’s a shame we didn’t have more time there to explore.