Jun 2008

After the Bolivian salt flats we arrived in Chile, San Pedro de Atacama, to spend a couple of nights of luxury, courtesy of my big sis, for my birthday.
We had champagne and nibbles,

a jacuzzi at our disposal and the biggest buffet breakfast I´ve ever seen. The hotel was made from mud and looked out onto a volcano. It was really, really nice.


On my actual birthday we went horse riding during the Day (Dan´s treat). My horse kept wandering off to eat stuff and Dan´s kept wanting to gallop home...apart from that, it was really good fun.


In the evening we went out for a posh meal, courtesy of my little auntie and cousins. That was really nice too. We had a good bottle of wine and some after dinner spirits, which came in a tumbler..

After those, Dan ended up swinging from the ceiling of the room (I don´t know, these 30 years old just can´t take their booze anymore).

After our time of luxury it was back to reality and we headed back onto our usual sleeper buses and into Argentina, to Salta. From there we went to a town called Resistencia, which is full of sculptures (over 300 of them dotted around town), and from these to Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is a great city. Lots of parks. We hired bikes and spent a day cycling round an ecological reserve in town, which backs onto the Atlantic. We went to an overly opulent graveyard, where we saw Evitas grave.

You get professional dog walkers here who walk several dogs at a time. 13 is our count so far. Amazingly, apart from poohing all over the pavements (which is more of the walkers fault than theirs), all the dogs are really well behaved. It does mean that we have to dodge the turds whilst walking round.

We then decided to get some more stamps in our passport and got the ferry over to Uruguay. We spent a night in Montevideo, the capital, which is the quietest capital city we´ve ever been to. We were there on a saturday night and everything was shut and there was no-one around. It was also extremely foggy, so we couldn´t see all that much. We decided to stop off for a beer, not realising that it was happy hour and ended up having 4 (litres that is). We then spent a night in another town, Colonia, which has lots of cobbled streets and is very nice, although again didn´t see that much of it due to the fog.

We´re now back in Buenos Aires getting a bus to Puerto Maldryn tonight (about halfway down Argentina in Patagonia). We´re hoping it´s not going to be too cold down there, and that we can go whale watching.

Dan has been living off steak since we arrived in Argentina, so much so that´s he´s lost quite a bit of weight - the Atkins diet!

After the coldest bus journies we have ever taken we arrived in the town of Uyuni. The start of the 3 day trip through Bolivias salt planes. We were meant to take a train but due to some political activity further afield they put a blockade on the track we were due to take. Exactly why, we still don-t know.
Uyuni is very much a frontier town. Dusty, cold and with only one purpous, to get you to the Salt plains although it did have a good line in exporting minerals but only when the trains were runing. We found an ok tour into the planes and set off in an old 4x4 with two Danes an English couple and one guy who was Swiss who could speak Spanish. The first stop was a train grave yard. a surreal place on the edge of the plains. Giant rusty old steam engines left for dead, huddled in a long line of neglect. Once great locomotives now piles of rust left for tourists to clamber over. After that we headed straight into the worlds largest salt plains. Miles and Miles of flat white salt. We all had to wear sunglasses becuse there was a real risk of going snow blind. They still collect salt from these flats. They just scrape it from the ground, crush it a little bit more, bag it and it ends on the dinner tables of South Americans. They only life to be found is on the small volcanic rock islands dotted in the plains. they are covered with tall cactus and some very dry looking grass. Due to the flat nature of the place we spent ages taking photos with trick perspectives. A bit cheesy but a lot of fun.
The next few days were spent driving higher into altitude to see barron lakes of different colours. One was even red another bright green. It was to do with a type of algae that lives in the water.The green one also had large amounts of arsenic in it so we were not advised to fill our water bottles Flamingos and mountain foxes and a few different types of Llama all living in and round these bizzare lakes at the top of the world.
The scenery was still amazing but the weather this high is always cold. Especially at night. On the last night of the trip the temperature went down to about -15c. We also had to get up early to see some amazing volcanic geezers. As the sun rose we were greeted with the amazing sight of huge clouds of steam bellowing from the ground. It was the most dramatic sights I have seen. It was as if we were transported back to the dawn of time.
I was the last day so, after the geezers and a very early cold start, we were treated to time in a thermal pool. At first we were reluctant to get into our swimmers as the air temp was still below freezing but once we did it was all worth it. After that we only had to think about getting back out.
From there we went straight to the Chilian Bourder to start our adventures in yet another country.

After spending the last couple of weeks at altitude we decided we might as well continue and headed from Cuzco to Puno, where Lake Titikaka is. Some say Lake Titikaka is the highest navigable lake in the world...Others say it´s not, there´s higher. Either way it´s very beautiful with bright blue/green waters.

We took a boat trip onto the lake to see the floating reed islands where people live. It´s amazing that they´re made out of reed and as the reeds rot with contact with the water they literally have to pick up their houses and put more reeds under every 15 days.

From Puno we crossed the border into Bolivia. This involved a bus and ferry journey across the lake. Our bus took one ´ferry´ and us another. How the bus made it over on the flat wooden ´ferry´ without toppling over was a marvel.

We stayed on the Bolivian side of Lake Titikaka for a night, in a town called Copacobana. Much more attractive and less poluted than the Peruvian side.

From here we went to La Paz, the crazy capital. It´s built in a canyon (and still at altitude) with houses on all the hills surrounding it.

Peruvians and Bolivians love their parades and demos. Nearly everyday we´ve seen them. There was a huge demo in La Paz, literally thousands and thousands of people marching through town, letting of fireworks and bangers. Ended up shut inside an internet cafe at one point and sounded like gun warfare outside. All noise though. It was a very peaceful demo!

It was explained to us in Brazil that ´compared to Brazil, Bolivia is for free´. Very true, it is sooo cheap here that we´re living it up, staying in posh hotels, eating out, drinking bottles of wine. It´s going to be hard when we get into Chile and the price goes up again.

We´re heading down Bolivia to visit the salt lakes, which sound very interesting, and still at altitude. When we return to sea level, we´re hoping we´re going to be very fit from all this altitude!

In case anyone´s interested we´ve been charting all our travels on a travel map on this blog, which shows exactly where we´ve been and when.

More bus journeys but this time to altitude. Cuzco, the ancient city greeted us with thin air and steep slopes. The Inca city stands at over 3000 meters above sea level making you run out of breath when taking on even the mildest of slopes and giving you a real fear of altitude sickness. We had arrived to acclimatise before we took on the famous Inca trail, a 4 day hike of mountains steep passes and glaciers.
We had to book months in advance to get a place as it fill up pretty quickly due to the fact that there are only a limited amount of people allowed throughout the year.
We soon realised that our meagre sleeping bags would not withstand the cold of the second nights trek so we had to hire some which did the required job adequately.
The first day, we were told, was the easy day. We met our group of 13 people and took a bus to the start of the trek. “Easy” wasn’t the fist word that sprang to mind when faced with the first climb. The paths were steep and the air was thin but we got through it with good humour and the group bonded very quickly. We were all in the same boat so their were many helping hands when things got tough.
The next day we all soon realised why they called the first day easy. Our wake up call was 4:45am, starting the walk well before 6. Were warned about this day but the toll of 4 hours up hill to a mountain pass called the, “Dead Woman’s Pass” was a lot to take. The pass was 4200m above sea level. The going tough. Every footstep was laboured and every meter higher we went seemed to take just that little bit more air out of your lungs. Sue, to her credit and defying her asthma, made it with out any problems. We all did. It was hard but the surrounding views of vast mountain ranges and our own sense of accomplishment made this one of the most memorable moments in Peru. And that was all just before lunch. We walked one hour down hill and ate a hearty lunch only to discover we had another full day of walking all up hill!
The next day was shorter, stopping after more lunch. It also gave us a chance to thank our porters. These men are truly supermen. The walk the same trail as we do but carrying all of our tents, food, our clothes ect and there own equipment, setting off after us and arriving before us (they would pass us on the trail during the day) to make lunch and the campsite ready for us. Tipping them at the end of the trek was essential.
Photos cannot come close to how beautiful the Inca trail is. Nor can my words for that matter. Just trust us to say it is one of the most incredible, awe inspiring places that anyone is likely to visit. Mind bending vistas, cloud forests and hills whose heads touch the heavens. Nature showing off.
We passed many incredible ruins on the trek but nothing prepares you for the spectacle at the end. The great Machu Picchu city. The last day we woke even earlier 3.45 am and started a 1and half hike to the Sun Gate. A place overlooking the city ruins that catches the first rays sun. We did it 45 minuets. I don’t know what happened to the group but we steamed through the last trek. Stripping off layers (but not stopping!) as the sun appeared on what seemed like a race to the end. The group even left our guides behind! They turned up 10 minutes later confused onto what just happened.
Again, words and photos fail to describe just how wonderful Machu Picchu is. I can just tell you that we spent half the day there wallowing in its beauty. We were fatigued and our legs ached but we all had a great time.
The group we trekked with, two couples being honeymooners (!), all met up for a drink the day after to recall how tired, smelly and out of breath we all were over the last 4 days. An experience we all will not forget.