Onwards and Upwards

Hello hello fom the sunny side of Peru! Since my last blog I have made my way to the desert and north following the sunshine all the way! I can see why the wishy washy conquistadors were happy to stay at the coast allowing the Incas anothe 40 years in teh Andes after they arrived here!

Leaving Arequipa I boarded my first ovenight bus! Wow! It was luxury, almost fully reclinging seats, with food, films, blankets and cushions not so bad after all. UNitl they chuck you out of thebus in some dodgy looking town at 5.30am saying you´ve arrived! As it turned out I had actually arrived at my destination, but as most of you will know I´m not a morning peson and don´t appreciate such a rude awakening!

The place I had arrived was Nasca, it has some pretty pictures made in the desert by some pre-inca civilisation and a cemetary full of mummies, it felt very Indianna Jones! Nsca was a strange town, it seems as though half of it wants to welcome the tourists and the other half doesn´t. The views are around the town are so different fom what i´ve been used to for the past 7 or 8 weeks. It is in the desert after all and is shaddowed by the worlds highest sand dune, cerro blanca.

The Nasca lines were pretty spectacular too, especially since I had to fly in a tiny 4 seater aeroplane to see them!

I left Nasca for a place called Ica and a much more sensible bus journey of 3 hours! There´s not a lot in Ica but I had a hotel with a pool and my own room and bathoom with cable TV, this is luxury! I spent a few days erlaxing Ica, after all this travelling thing is really quite tiring! I visited a pisco bodega and probably not very sensibly afterwards I went sand boarding! Never mind no broken bones!

I also visited "the poor man´s galapogas" or by its official name Islas Ballestas, it was kind of like a boat trip to the bAss rock but with different animals and more sun. I did however get to see Dolphins, I have never seen dolphins either in the wild or in capitivity, they were swimming in the bay as we left in the moring. The island was covered in South American Sea lions, penguins, pelicans and the peruvian boobie (teehee!).

Now I am in Trujillo, north of Lima for a couple days before I head to the beach and then back to Lima for my flight in a weeks time.

Since leaving Arequipa I have felt as though I am in a different country becasue the landscape is so different, th cities are diferent and the people are so different, I didn´t get harrassed half as much by men in the andes! I think that is the only thing that I have lost patience with so far. It is driving me mad now, why would they think it´s ok to shout things at a single female visitor to their country?! Anyway I´m not going to have a rant I´m going to try and control myself so that I dont turn around to some poor unfortunate peruvian and give him a piece of my mind in my best Penicuik slang!

Arequipa

I arrived in Arequipa, Peru´s second largets city, last Tuesday and boy was it a welcome relief from La Paz! The city is way more laid back with space to breathe, there are tourists but much less tha Cuzco which is pretty good too.

The city at first glance appears very European and you´d be forgiven for thinking you were in spain if you suddenly woke up in the centre one day. There are lots more spanish decendants here as I slowly and reluctantly move further away from the Andes. The centre is dominated by a huge main plaza with the biggest cathedral I´ve seen so far, the university is situated near the main plaza as well as lots of private buissnesses. Then after you sepnd a few days wandering the streets around and further away from the centre the class divide reveals itself. From my brief stay here it seems to have the same problems as Lima - the whites have the good jobs, large houses more disposable cash and the indeginous Andean people are the ones living on the street or attempting to sell anything and everything. The divide is maybe not as clear cut as Lima but it´s definately there.

The hostel I´m staying at organises volunteer opotunities in a local school and so Wednesday and Thursday I´m going to visit and help out with whatever needs done, I though it might be cooking and cleaning but Iñve since heard that several teachers have left becuase of the lack of pay and so I have a feeling I might be in the classroom!

I have just gotten back from a trek in the Colca Canyon, the worlds deepest canyon (4000m). It was pretty spectacular. I have never seen scenery like it before, we walked down 1000m to the botom of the canyon, with the mountains towering above us and some fantastic rock formations - I know that sound really geeky but you should have seen how beautiful it was! We then walked through one of the villages and onto the next small village where we stayed with a local family for the night. The views in the morning were amazing, there´s nothing quite like getting washed outside with huge mountains towering over you on one side and sheer cliffs on the other.

The canyon has 12 villages with a population of 800, mostly young children and older people. Our guide was telling us that because most of the teenagers have to go to secondary school in the nearest town they don´t want to return to the difficult life in the canyon after they have finished either school or university and so the population and the traditions associated with the villages here are disapearing quickly. The tour company, Land Adventures, try to arrange for volunteers to stay in the canyon for 1 month to help in the school and to help adults to learn to read or write or learn english so that they can subsidise their farming income with money from tourism. I feel the need for another trip coming on..... Our accommodation for

the first night

Anyway back to the trek, We headed through another couple of villages and then down to an oasis on the floor of the canyon to chill out by a pool and have some lunch. We had to wait for the sun to disapear before we began the 3 hour climb out of the canyon. The last day of the trip we went to a place called Cruz del Condor where we saw the condors flying across the canyon and right above our heads - it was mesmerising and a lot of fun to try and photograph. The last part of our trip was chilling out in the natural hot springs in a town called chivay. Lots of hot water with the volcanos surrounding Arequipa.

So now I have two more days in Arequipa before I head to coast to work on my homecoming tan! and probably not many more blogs before I have to think about returning to reality!

"Her name was lola....."

Well it´s been a week since i left Cuzco and I miss it! Nowhere I´ve visited since has come close to it! I´m currently in La Paz, the worlds highest capital (well technically on paper Sucre is the real capital of bolivia!) and it´s not my kind of city. But before I get into La Paz let me update you on my journey so far!

Puno and Lago Titicaca

I arrived in Puno at about 6pm just as it was getting dark and well if there´s a good time to arrive in this city it´s definatley not as it´s getting dark or when it´s raining! Puno is really not a nice place, despite what everybody else told me about I was still disapointed and shocked to see how ugly it is! It´s full of neon lights and grimy tourist places but it´s neccessary to visit if you want to see the floating reed islands of Lake Titicaca.


I took a day trip out to the lake to visit the floating islands and another island called taquille. Apart from the over commercialisation that exsists on the both the floating islands and taquille it´s still a pretty cool experiences as you step off the boat and onto the 2m thick "ground" of reed roots and fresh green reeds laid down as the floor!





The lake itself is pretty spectactular, it is so huge (sorry but I cant remember the actual size right now!) that you forget that it´s a lake because it stretches for as far as you can see, and it is the most spectacular blue colour when the sun shines on it.







Copacabana

This is small quiet town just over the Peru/Bolivia border and despite it´s name there were no show girls - how disapointing! Instead it was a lovely retreat from Puno. The town sits on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca where you can visit la isla del sol. This island is where incan legend says the first incan Manco Capac and his wife first rose from the rock/ water depending on which version you read!

There were a few of us that had arrived in Copacabana at the same time so we all went to the island together. We did a tour with a local guide to see the legendary stone and the local temple and then I walked from one end of the island to the other, it was a good walk if a little tough being 3.5 km above sea level!

La Paz

I arrived in La Paz on Friday with an Austrailian couple I met in Copacabana. As the bus comes from Copacabana which is situated on the andean altiplano (high plain) it reaches the edge of what can only be described as a crater! The "crater" holds the city of La Paz, the view from the top is pretty amazing, unfortunately I couldn´t get my camera out in time to get a good shot! The city looks as though it´s sitting in the bottom of a huge bowl with a little bit climbing up the walls.

La Paz is what I imagined a large south american city to be like. It´s really big, busy, noisy and full of traffic fumes. Actually I hadn´t expected quite so much traffic. There are loads of high rises that sit in the very botom of the "crater" where the main road runs and it feels so claustrophobic. I´ve only been here for four nights but i´m longing for a quiet plaza or park to just sit relax and take everythin in, I haven´t been able to find that here, maybe becuase the pace of the city takes you along with it!

I did however cycle the worlds most dangerous road (sorry mum I left the dangerous bit out of your email!) yesterday and that was cool! The road goes from La Paz to the a place in the jungle called Coroicco. The cycle starts at 4670m above sea level and descends over 64km to 1300m above sea level. The first section of the road is tarmac and is open to traffic. The second section, which is now closed to traffic, is gravel and sometimes very large rocks. You also have to cycle under waterfalls that cascade over the road and into the valley hundreds of meters below. I´m not ashamed to admit it, I was seriously scard, becuase as most of you know I´m pretty clumsy and don´t always have great co-ordination or balance, but I managed to do it without falling off the bike or the side of the cliff!

Tomorrow I leave to return to Peru and a city called Arequipa, I think it´s Peru´s second largest city. And yes I am gutted that Daniel Craig is currently filming the new bond in Cuzco, I´m a little tempted to just go back there for a peek!

More photos later in the week hopefully! It takes too long to upload and well there´s just so much to do here!

El Camino Inka

Well its my very last day in Cuzco and I have had a great time here over the past six weeks, and Im really quite sad to be elaving both the people ive met and the city which I love almost as much as Edinburgh but not quite! I could easily stay in this city for the rest of my time here but as I said to a friend yesterday, who was trying top get me to stay, there are so many other places inPeru to see and so I have to leave!

This week I walked the inca trail - it was amazing and a little difficult, but once Id finished I could have happily have walked it over again even though almost every muscle and joint in my body ached!

I did the trip with 7 other people, a father and son from Hawaii, two guys from Denmark and three other girls who are also travelling alone. Joy from Telford, Renske from holland and Kim from the USA. The four of us became the sisterhood of the inca trail!

For the eight of us we had two guides, Roberto and Rolando, eight porters who carried our tents, the cooking equipment and lots of luxury items for us and our cook who was fantastic! Each lunch and dinner time we had tables set with covers and cutlery and two courses followed by matte te and between lunch and idnner we had afternoon tea of popcorn, crackers tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Now this is the type of camping I like! When we arrived in our campsites each night the tents were ready for us and in the moring we were woken with hot tea in our tents!

The first days walking was fairly easy, which was good to allow us to get to know each other, we visited one archealogical site along the way, I htought that witht the number of sites Ive visited by now I would be unimpressed but with eachnew place the incas surpirse me with the ingenuity and skill! The views of the mountains and the valley were astounding and there were many periods of silence as we tried to take in the beauty of the landscape.

The next moring we were introduced to our porters before setting out on the most difficult days walking at 7 am. We had 6-7 hours of walkingahead of us before we reached camp and our lunch. Our breakfast of porridge, pancakes and toast set us up nicely! we had to climb 1100m from our campsite to the highest pass on the trail called warmiwañusca or dead womans pass. Most people who have walked the trail will probabñy agree that the it is a very apt name for the pass! The first leg was a relatively easy before we ascended into the forresst and our first experience of inca steps at wich point I started to curse the incas and their stupid Andes! Out came the walking sticks (yes ria,I know,Im pathetic but thank Pachamama I took them!). The climb became steeper and more crowded with all the groups walking the inca trail as people slowed down and had to take many rests. But again the views of the valley below, the wisps of cloud floating around and the daunting pass towering above us kept us going. The last section of the climb was a nightmare and well quite frankly I dont think I enjoyed any of the 2 hour climb until I reached the toip and suddenly the satisfaction of reaching it reieved the pain and tiredeness in my legs and I felt full of energy and slightly elated - i blame the altitude!

Then cme our descent into the valley below where our campsite and lucnh awaited us, this was a nightmare. After about 2 or 3 more hours of stupid inca steps and a pair of very sore knees we reached our campsite and the best lunch Ive ever had! This campsite was stunning, behind us were waterfalls cascading down the mountainside and to the front,the deep valley and towering snow capped mountains.

The next day was difficult because of our tired and sore legs and feet, but we had several archaelogical sites along the way to break up the walking. IN the afternoon we walked through the cloud forrest. This was my favourite part of the trail. Its like nowhere Ive everbeen before and felt like a different country. The inca road here was breathtaking. It perched on the side of the mountain with a sheer drop below and more mountians above us. It snaked around the mountainside and the number of different plants and trees were amazing, we were surrounded by clouds and it felt as thought we were the only ones there (except when the porters came running by with our tents and kitchen!). In the last section of this days walking we were greeted by the most ridiculous steps which took us about 3 hours to go down to reach the campsite. The thing that kept me going was the thought of the hot showers and a cold beer in the very civilised final campsite - oh yeah and learning rude words in quechua and spanish with one of the guides!

The shower was great the beer better and our final meal together was a feast. We even had energy left for some dancing! The next moring we started walking at 5.15am in the dark to try to reach machu picchu for the sunrise. Unfortunately when we reached intipunku (the sun gate) there was only cloud. We waited for a bit with the hope that it would clear but with no luck we started our final descent into mach picchu. As we reached there the cloud started to move and it felt magical and mystical watching the site appear and disapear in the cloud.

We had our tour of machu picchu but we were so exhausted that it was too difficult to explore properly. I was really glad I had visited previously. By the time we were ready to leave the sky was blue and I had a little sunburn, just so people knew I was a british tourist! I had the best time on the inca trail and I think it has been the highlight of my trip so far! I have around 200 photographs for the trip and at the moment I cant upload any of them, maybe next time!

I{m off to Puno tomorrow and then after that to Bolivia for a few days and it{s all very exciting not quite know whats coming next agian. Im also more than half way through my time here so I{m definately going to have to make the most of it! So until nbext time, whenever that is ciao!

My final days in Cuzco

Im sitting typing this after a nice chilled out Sunday morning spent sitting in plazas wandering the streets and visiting a museum. It´s the day before I start the inca trail - arghhhhhh! I´m just ever so slightly anxious about this! So this time next weekend hopefully I will have fun and exciting stories to tell you about the four day trek.



This past week and a bit has been mad, I think I suddnely realised I only had a little time left in Cuzco and made a mad dash to do everything that I had been planning on doing but thinking I had ages to do! Oh yeah and it was birthday too, so thank you for all of your birthdays wishes and those of you who didn´t send me any your names have been noted!












Last Saturday I went to Machu Picchu with another volunteer, Lisa, who very handily has a boyfriend who works for the train company that goes to and from Machu Picchu so cheaper tickets and free food and drink on the train, always good to know the right people!





a llama a machu picchu, you cant get more peruvian!





Unfortunately we only had about 4 hours to spend there sowe were unable to climb Wayña Picchu (the mountain that´s in all the postcards of Machu Picchu), maybe if I have energy after the inca trail!



Machu Picchu




The site itself is magnificent, when we arrived at the "postcard view" site, we were both speechless and I got goosebumps. How the incas stumble accross the site and though "ahh this would be a good place to build a city" I have no idea. The citadel perches ona small plateau between Wayña Picchu (young mountain in Quechua) and Machu Picchu (old mountain in Quechua) and there are steep drops to either side where they have managed to build agricultural terraces. I can´t imagine the amount of lives that must have been lost building this city attempting to move huge pieces of stone up and around the mountains is unimaginable.




There is so much to see in the site that I´m glad I get the chance to go back, especially since I´ll arrive before it´s open to the tour buses and I can take my time wandering round again and not having to wait for the countless tours given in almost every langauage (well maybe not quite every language!). It was very handy having Lisa there as she can speak 7 languages and was able to pick up bits for free from the tour guides!




Since I´ve visited Machu Picchu I´ve bee horse riding around Cuzco, and went to see a play/musical/dance show which was spectacular, and makes me miss the theatre company! Then I went away for a couple of days with my family in Cuzco for semana santa (holy week).


We went to a place called Mollepata where there are mosquitoes the size of blue bottles! So now I cant stpo scratching and my legs look very attractive with many swollen red bites! On Good friday we had "doce platos" which is 12 dishes, its a traditional thing for easter weekend. I only managed about 7 when I had to ask them to stop feeding which they found very funny! The family have a hacienda in teh town so there were 23 of us staying there and 19 of us travelled there in a pick up truck. I ssat in the back and have now decided that it´s the best way to see the country, if a little cold and uncomfortable!






It was also my last week at volunteering, it was very sad i hadn´t expected to be sad becuase I had been there for such a short time, but everyone was so nice and welcoming and the patients I worked with were great. I´ll be keeping in touch with Lisa as we might meet up in Arequipa if her plans to go there this weekend fall through.


Lisa, José and Me


I´ve found during my time at the health centre and in Cuzco that i have way more patience and tolerance that I thought I had. I see other travellers getting really worked up about things and I just sit there and think there´s nothing I can do to change it so why get upset! In the centre working with the patients and having so little langauge I´ve had to be creative in the way I worked with people, showing and decribing how to do things in a very different way. Although I hope when I come home I don´t run out of patience for my own clients and start comparing their lives to those of the people I work with here!

La Vida de Cusco!

Ok I could tell you all about the various ruins I´ve visited but actually I thought I´d save that for the slide show and history lesson when I return! (Emma I know you´re especially looking forward to it and as a treat I´ll have an extra long slide show for you!). So Instead I thought I´d try and describe some of the general stuff I´ve come accross.

The City

The centre of Cusco is beautiful. The buildings are an odd mix of spanish and incan architecture, the spaniards having used the large inca stones as foundations for their colonial buildings. There are several plaza´s with fountains and benches. My favourite is plaza regocijo, I like to sit in the sunshine watching people, the loca shoe shine guys and reading my book. It´s much quiter than the main square and has less sellers and more locals than the other squares.

Away from the centre and the tourist areas, its a different city altogether. I´m glad I´ve had the chance to see the other side, as if I´d stayed as a tourist in the centre like most people do I´d be leaving here with a dream like impression of the city. The wealth of the tourism industry unfortunately doesn´t reach accross the whole city.

My journey to work in the moring takes me along Avenida de la cultura. I pass almost every aspect of Cusqueña life on the way. The area I live in failr afluent by peruvian standards. The houses have electricity, cable tv, running water and are made of brick or breeze block. On way to work I pass the areas where most cusqueñas stay. In barrios (neighbourhoods) of adobe (mud brick) houses, often with no electricity or running water. Also very unstable when the heavy rains come. At the bottom of my street an adobe building collapsed during a particulry heavy rain storm last week.

Within each district the houses are closely mixed with buisness including restaurants, internet cafes are every few meters and larger heavier industries, like timber merchants, garages and JCB depots. Past these districts are the pueblos (small villages or towns) where people survive by subsistance farming. There are all kinds of animals roaming the towns streets, chickens, horses, cows, ducks and pigs. The hills are so green, the mountailns high and imposing and the sky feels so close!

The People
The people I have met here have been so hospitable and generous. They are immensley proud of their incan heritage and of their city and country. They are so desperate for people to enjoy themselves and to love the country as much as they do.

Above all I am so appreciative of their patience with me and my shaky spanish-although it is getting better! They find other ways to say what they need to say and help to correct my spanish when I get it wrong. Which in a city as busy with tourists as cusco is astounding that they can do that people. One guy Herbert, originally from Arequipa works as a lab assitance at the centre, likes to visit some of the tourist sites with myself and Lisa and also helps me with my spanish daily!

Almost everybody I´ve met within the first few minutes wants to know where you are from, how long you are here, what other countries have visited, how much did the flight cost and how long was it and have you tried cerviche/cuy/pisco sour yet! If you answer no to the last question they then proceed to tell you the best places to try each!

Which leads me on nicely to food..........

The food

For peruvians, as with most countries, food is central to their identity. They eat all the time! Well it certainly seems like it sometimes! With every dish you have potatoes and rice, and i mean everything, breakfast, soups lunch and dinner!

I had expected the food to be spciy but I´ve not come accorss anything that I would consider spicy. There are lots of fresh vegetables and meat in probably every second meal I´ve had.

The past couple of weeks I´ve been trying out some of the street vendors and "fast food" places that are dotted along every street. I love choclo con queso, it´s like giant sweetcorn, but not sweet to taste and the peruvian cheese, is like a hard goats cheese. Choclo sellers are everywhere, with their canister of gas and little stove, boiling the corn. Yesterday I had piccarones which are batte rings served with syrup over the top, so tasty!

Each town in to the andes has their own speciality, cuy (guinee pig) was in Tipon, Lucre a village further along is pato con arroz (duck) also very tasty and the cillage where I work is chicharon (pork), that is next weeks new thing before I leave!

I´m going to wait until I get to the coast to try cerviche, which is trout marinated in lime juice, the national dish!

Too close for comfort!

This week I have been mostly eating Guinee-pig! Well actually that´s a lie just the once still! I hope you all like the picture as much as I liked the cuy! Cheers for everybody´s comments they do make me laugh!


Well this past 2 weeks I´ve been getting into a bit of routine, which seem strange since I only have 2 more weeks to go in Cusco! "Working" in the morning, home for a huge home cooked lunch, then either some site seeing or spanish classes. I´ve also started seeing a young Brittish woman who had a stroke in November. She has been seeing one of the physiotherapy students almost daily and is now ready to begin working on upper limb and hand function. So I see her a couple of times per week.


What I´m struggling to deal with just now is how physically close people get to you! I´ve adjusted very well to the whole kiss on the cheek thing when you meet someone or say goodbye, in fact us foreign lot at the centre do it automatically with each other now! Although I think there might be some sort of etiquette that no-one has told me yet as on a few occassion I´ve gone in for the handshake and kiss/"como estas" and the other person has looked ever so slightly shocked!

Peruvians are very touchy feely people, after they´ve kissed you they like to get very close whilst talking to you and some of them like to sit with their hand on your back or leg. And before anyone says anything it´s not just with me, I´ve noticed them doing it with other people! Some days its ok and others I want my personal space and at least half a meter when I´m talking to someone!

Oh yeah and machismo is going strong in Peru! Cusco is not as bad as Lima, men don´t tend to shout things at you as you walk by, but the men that I work with do think they can say what they like to female co-workers and patients! Although having said that there does seem to be a mutual respect for one another in the work place even if there are many "inappropriate" comments!

My Spanish is driving me mad! Now that I know how to say things in different tenses and I´m picking up new words people seem to be talking faster and seem to think that I can suddenly understand everything! How infuriating! Although I will now keep that in mind when talking with people at home who are learning English!

I think this must the frustration stage of culture shock! But I think that might be my rant over with for now! Looking forward to the weekend when I´m going to visit a local market town, some ruins there and then go horse riding at saqsaywamán with a couple of people from work.