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!