Arequipa, Colca Canyon, and Nazca Lines

So we´ve made it back to Lima and just about completed the first half of our trip. After leaving Chile, we looped back up north into Peru to visit a few last places on our way to Brazil. First stop was Arequipa, which is another beautiful colonial city, much like the others we´ve seen. This one had one of the best plazas though and a great convent that we wandered in for a few hours exploring coridors and taking colorful photos…

Arequipa is also the starting point for tours to Colca Canyon, which has been declared one of the deepest canyons in the world although it`s still being debated which one takes the crown. The canyon had some of the best agricultural terracing we`ve seen, but the definite highlight of the excursion was the stop at ¨cruz del condor¨- a lookout for condors. Luckily, we got to see some pretty good fly-bys and Allen captured a few of them.

Finally, we made a quick stop to fly over the Nazca Lines, which are ancient patterns carved in the dessert by a pre-Inca civilazation that can only be seen from the air. They were pretty cool to see, although a little strange to wonder what they were for, which is still a mystery despite the many theories.

In a few hours we´re off to Brazil!!

Salar de Uyuni and the Bolivian Southwest

(heads up, lots of pics included)

Uyuni and the Bolivian Southwest. This has probably been my most anticipated part of the trip since we started to do planning back a year or so ago. High mountain deserts, enormous salt flats that stretch almost as far as you can see, lakes in the middle of nowhere, what more could you want? There isn´t a whole lot that needs to be told about the trip, but the basic itenerary was a 3 day trip starting in Uyuni going through the Salar de Uyuni (highest salt flats in the world) then continuing through various desert country in the Bolivian southwest to see beautiful lakes (with flamingos?), geysers, rock formations, etc, and ultimately taking us to the Chilean border where we crossed over. Anyways, the pictures say it best …

As you can tell we had quite a bit of fun on the Salar and the landscape is completely amazing. Sadly, on the morning of the second day we had a rude awakening and a reminder that we were very much off the beaten track …

luckily that wasn´t our car, so nothing happened to us at all. that car was however the second car in our group and all we know is that something happened to the wheels, they lost control and the car tumbled a few times before landing on its side. the passengers were very fortunate that injuries were comparatively minor and the worst we know of was one woman who broke her clavicle, most everyone else suffered just bumps and bruises. So naturally that added to the already surreal environment we were in …

So for now we are in Chile checkin` out a thing or two before we bus our way back up to Peru where we´ll finish a couple things there which we didn´t get to do before and then it´s off to Brazil and the other side of South America!

Sucre

We don’t particularly have a lot to say about Sucre, but it was quite a beautiful place and we were a little sad that we only had one day to spend there, but oh well. Sucre was the old colonial capital of Bolivia before it changed to La Paz and it’s commonly called “The White City” which you will understand after seeing the pics …

La Paz, Salteñas, and The World´s Most Dangerous Road

So, before and after going to the pampas our base in northern Bolivia has been La Paz, the world´s highest capital city at 3600m. We did such a whirlwind of activities in La Paz that I don´t even know where to start, but why not start with the food, Salteñas. Mmmm, so good. Here´s a couple pics to wet your appetite a bit …

Salteñas are a kind of food filled pastry, usually coming in either pollo or carne, and they have a nice semi hard exterior and a juicy and delicious mix of meat and other goodies inside. They are typically eaten in the late morning, kind of like a second breakfast (gawd what a brilliant idea that is!) We pigged out on Salteñas while we were in La Paz and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Aside from getting fat on Salteñas we also walked around the city a fair amount and probably our most interesting stop was the Coca Museum (yes, coca as in cocaine). The museum itself is very small and unassuming yet totally fascinating. We had already taken for granted that coca is part of the way of life of people (mainly andean people) here in the mountains and it´s been steadily available since we got to Cusco, but we hadn´t had a chance to learn much about where it came from and why it was so important. The museum explained lots about how the plant was discovered (there is a nice religious tale to that), how it became important for andean people, and how it was exploited to make cocaine.

It was quite fascinating to learn some things like … Coca Cola really did contain cocaine originally and that`s where it´s name is derived; Pretty much the only legal growers of the coca plant are the most powerful countries in the world, supposedly allowed to grow it to use for medicinal purposes. Anyways, it´s a fascinating plant and has had an equally fascinating history. Cool stuff.

So now that we are fat on Salteñas and high on coca we are ready to mountain bike down the World´s Most Dangerous Road! Chels isn´t big on biking so she passed on this trip, but I couldn´t resist it. Basically what we did was started in the morning by busing up to La Cumbre at 4700m up in the high mountains, then we went bombing down about 30km of paved road (well, as much bombing down as you can do on a mountain bike) before we reached the entrance to the dangerous part, from there it was another 35km or so down a fairly narrow road which has no rails and the shortest drop off the side is about 120m. We ended down at the bottom as some tiny place i can`t remember, but it was at 1100m, so that means we covered 3600m of altitude in about 5 or 6 hours, on a bike. whoot! Okay, the pics can say the rest …

I wish I had some kind of downhill video which I could have used, but couldn´t get anything setup. There are some more pics coming as well as some videos of people going down the road, so I´ll post those as soon as I can.

So, that´s what we did in and around La Paz. After La Paz it´s on to Sucre and Potosi on the way down to Uyuni where we´ll do what sounds to be a pretty great trip around the salt flats in the southwest of Bolivia.

Bolivian Pampas

Finally some warm weather!!!

So we´re back from the jungle now. We spent 3 days staying in an eco-lodge, taking boat trips down the Yacuma river to view wildlife, and hanging out a lot in hammocks. It was super relaxing and a nice change from our practically 2 straight months in the mountains. (Although now we´re happy to be away from the mosquitos and not sweating profusely!)

Although it was a little difficult to get there (because the tiny planes that only fly a few times a day are often cancelled or delayed due to weather), we luckily made it! Our bus did break down for a short bit and we passed through mutiple big dust clouds on the way, but we arrived to the sleepy town of Rurrenabaque on Sunday.

The next morning we took a jeep ride (again dusty – glad I put on clean clothes for the ride!) to our lodge right on the Yacuma river. After lunch and a nap in hammocks, we set off to explore the wildlife of the pampas. While floating down the river, we spotted tons of alligators, birds and turtles as well as native animals called a capybaras (giant rodents), some monkeys, and more.

At night, we set out in search of more alligators. If you shine a flashlight on the river, you can see their eyes popping out of the water in bright red. We rolled up a little too close for comfort to some of them and got a few good scares ourselves. As you can see from the pics, we were inches away from them, just waiting for them to jump. I was freaked out, but it was good fun.

The next day we went swimming with pink river dolphins. It was a bit of a risk because there were actually still alligators in the waters near us, but the dolphins protected us (or so the guides said). We weren´t sure how safe it was given we passed a good 100+ alligators on the way and could barely see the dolphins in the water, but we did it anyways and survived.

That afternoon we got the chance to go fishing for piranas, which is not easy, but of course Al caught a few. You can see their nasty little teeth in the pictures. We tasted them later as well, but they have no flavor. Not really worth it since they are so small….

Finally, on our last day we went out in search of anacondas (world´s largest snakes). Unfortunately after a gruelingly hot walk along a dirt road for hours, we didn´t find any. Maybe that was for the best since I probably would have screamed, but I think the 2m long fresh skin we found was at least a taste of what it might have been like to find one…

All in all, the jungle was good fun and very relaxing. I have to say I love hammocks, so am looking to get me one of those. You also can´t be riding through the jungle on a boat…

Luckily we also made it back to La Paz, but I wouldn´t want to try my luck again…

Journey to the Jungle

getting to the jungle proved a little more challenging than we expected…

…ahhh Bolivia…

Lago Titicaca

So after tons of fun and adventure in the Cusco area, we were excited to see what laid ahead in the rest of Peru and Bolivia. Our next stop was the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca and then onto the Bolivian side….

After a half day bus ride from Cusco, we arrived in Puno and booked a tour of the three main Peruvian islands for the next two days. Not much to say about Puno except that its a touristy port for trips to the islands. On day one of our trip we visited Uros, which is a cluster of tiny islands made of reed that are completely artificial, but surprisingly interesting to see. They were a real higlight because they were so strangely unique and a bit spongey to walk on. It was hard to believe that people actually live on these tiny islands pretty much made entirely of straw. Although now they are primarily for tourism (the people live with solar panels, etc), you still got the idea of what they would have been like to live on a long time ago.

After Uros, we headed to Amantani, the largest island on the Peruvian side, where we stayed overnight with a local family. Although the island is primarily set-up for tourism now, the families and the way they live were all still authentic. We thought it might be a bit padded for the tourists, but our was stay was pretty real, down to taking our meals in their tiny stone kitchen with no light. The food was really good, primarily consisting of quinoa soup, boiled potatoes, and vegetable omelettes with rice. That night after a short hike up the island, we dressed in the local clothing on loan from our families and joined them in a traditional dancing ceremony (again touristy, but fun). The second day we made a quick stop to Taquile island, which mostly just had beautiful views of the lake.

After a quick border cross the next day, we dropped our bags in Copacabana (the main port for the Bolivian side) and headed straight for Isla del Sol. After a lot of steps to reach the top of the island, we were rewarded with great views from both sides. We watched the sunset over the dark blue water and had a “home-cooked meal” (b/c restaurant means lady cooking from her house) before bed. Day 2 we hiked from the South side of the island (Yumani) to the North side, where we did a quick ruin tour and spent most of the day just getting the ferry back to Copacabana. Be forewarned the ferries only run a few set hours each day and take a long time!

While the culture and history of the Peruvian islands were interesting to experience, the views from Isla del Sol were spectactular, making both sides of the lake worth a visit. The funniest part of our whole 4 days on the lake was that we didn’t realize in advance that there are no cash machines in many small towns in Bolivia. Hence we crossed the border with only $40 to spend until we reached La Paz. Luckily accomodation and food is cheap here, so we scrounged by, but after a few unexpected boat expenses, we had to not eat all day until we realized there were some shops that gave cash advances on credit cards in Copacabana. We were able to get some cash just in time to load up on snacks and luckily get dinner and a bus to La Paz…it was a close one and a lesson to read the guide book closely before you arrive somewhere…

We are now in La Paz enjoying the sights, the delicious saltenas, and our awesome hostal (Adventure Brew). So far, we are impressed with Bolivia as the people are more pleasant and it seems less touristy. Although there are a number of backpackers roaming through, it’s a much less travelled country, so you don’t get the same hassling as you you will find in Peru.

We’re off to the jungle tomorrow (hopefully if the flight goes) …