La hoja de la coca no es una droga

Well, this is it, Lima and out. We`ve come from 51` South - further south than anywhere in Africa or Australia/New Zealand, all the way up to 9`South. Didn`t quite make it to the equator, but there`s always next time.

Lima, in case you needed a description, is a big ugly city of 8m people where you have to take taxis everywhere. Its covered in a grey coastal fog, you can`t see the sun.

Overall, I`ve found Peru very touristy. Cusco is the most touristy place we`ve been. Arequipa was nice but nothing exceptional. Hurraz was exceptional, I could have stayed several more weeks there (go to the Way Inn`s mountain lodge and play high altitude volleyball over an eat as much as you like bbq). Huacacina (Ica) was superb, and Nazca was OK (intriguing), Pisco was dire (but nice islands). Travelling in Peru doesn`t have the edge that travelling in Bolivia did, so many people always springing up to provide a "service" for you, some honest, some not.

Peru seems to have conquered all of the problems Bolivia faced, the politics seems stable now that Fujimori is staying in Japan "for a very, very long time". His right hand man was famously caught on national tv bribing opposition members. The economy is growing, the Shining Path movement silent for 10 years, coca leaf production doesn`t seem to overshadow the gdp - good signs.
(The title of this post is "the coca leaf is not a drug" - slogans emblazzoned everywhere in Bolivia, as they fight the US eradication of the coca plant, as they exist on the nutritious, fast growing, mountain loving plant. Nowhere to be seen in Peru).

Anyway, on to America, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal and India. We`re quite close to halfway through, doesn`t feel like it yet.

It was a full moon and the cows were getting restless

We're back in Huarraz after 4 days trekking in the Cordillera Blanca (the Santa Cruz route), merely going to 4850m (about 15,000 feet) on Punta Union. Reminder for next time: get a decent roll mat. It was 4 days of gorgeous views and no sleep, up a river valley and down another.

The valley itself is a pretty good pass between the mountains, which go up to 6000m (Huscaran). As such, there were tons of locals mainly herding donkeys. We had a strange experience on the second night, there was this trampling and sniffling sound all around the tent, we thought it might be a thief but it turned out to be a cow. Poking my head out the tent, it ran away - it was a really surreal view. The full moon was bright enough to make out every detail of the landscape, the cow backlit in ghostly black and white against a huge snowy peak. I would have taken a photo but it was 3am and freezing.

Views From Santa Cruz Trek











We`ve decided to stay in Huaraz, not head up to Ecuador for a couple of days (mainly for the passport stamp) or Trujillo for Chan Chan (no, not a tacky theme park for comedy martial arts films but an ancient mud fortress). We`ve found a great hostel here (the Way Inn), with sauna, gym, 100+ videos, breakfast, kitchen, pretty much everything.

Huarraz

We`ve just done a day of bus travel from Pisco through Lima to Hurraz. Hurraz is a very nice mountain town, with aparantely great trekking. We`re off tomorrow on the Santa Cruz trek, 4 days, only one pass of 4750m so shouldn`t be too bad. I`m hoping that only a week at sea level hasn`t ruined the acclimatisation, we`ll see. All of Lima and the coast (Pisco included) is covered in a grey fog for 8 months of the year (winter) and then ludricously hot and humid for summer, but Hurraz is nice and clear.

We`re leaving Lima on the 28th overnight, not the 27th as I think I wrote, so we`ll hide up here for a week. Passing through Lima, my first impressions were "big, ugly city", its got no center and its huge (8m people and growing fast).

There`s a good ex-pats cafe out here, they invited us to their traditional weekly ultimate frisbee game on a local soccer pitch (3200m), which was great fun. Most of them are peace corps volunteers, teaching people about water supplies and hand washing. Quite a few of them volunteered out here- its that kind of place, great atmosphere, scenery, friendly people (even the touts aren`t too insistant).

Pisco Sour

Pisco Sour before
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

You can`t come to Pisco without sampling the Pisco (grape brandy). Drunk with lemon, sugar and egg white to take the taste away.

Before;
After:

Matt with same, evil, drink.

Not everywhere we go is glamourous. This is Pisco.

Photos from Islas Ballestas

Penguins!
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Penguins!

Some bird

Sea Lions

Fisherman

Photos of the desert

Desert
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

We`re just leaving Pisco, the town of the drink. Its been quite a dump, really. A tour tout very convincingly sold us something that quite nearly had an ounce of truth in it. So its time to blog those nice soothing photos.

This is the desert over Ica, gorgeous.

Sunset

Dune

Another dune. (Look, coming up with interesting names for piles of sand is tricky, ok?)

Huacacina and Ica

We were in Huacacina, a lovely desert oasis town just outside Ica (which is on the map). It has the highest sand dunes in the world, and the worst internet crash so far (I thought it was me having too many windows, it turns out its the entire cafe, and the entire town as well. Oh well, they say writing gets better with a second draft).

There´s not a lot to say really, gorgeous scenery, cheap, laid back town of about 200 people, dune buggy rides up and down the sand dunes and lots of sandboarding. Except we just spent the time wandering up the sand dunes for sunset (great fun running down a 60´sloped dune), lounging by the pool and generally chilling out.

I think I´ve just about got my head round Peru. In Bolivia, the sheer anger and surliness puts you on your toes. In Peru, the constant touting and badgering is a hassle, I think I was looking at it with the same paranoia reserved for Bolivia which was driving me a little mad. Its all the fault of America, of course. Too many gringos coming down here for 2 weeks, with 1000$ to spend, quite happy to go on 30-40$ tours a day. In Argentina you could just hire a bike and set out, in Peru, you´ll have no bike shop, just 20 touts offering special deals with a minibus.

Took a taxi collectivo from Nazca to Ica - great Dukes of Hazard style car, shame they crammed 5 people onto the back seat.

Nazca lines

Astornaut
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

This is an aerial view over the Nazca lines, mysterious huge lines drawn in the sand a thousand years ago (or more), not visible on the ground. No one knows why they were drawn, or why they resemble UFO landing strips so much.

This one is called the "Astronaut". He`s waving at something in the sky - welcoming the aliens maybe?

Conspiracy theories aside, the consensus is that these lines were part calendar (lines pointing to winter solstice sunrises etc), part ritual. Shamans of the area ingest hallucinogenic drugs that make them believe they`re flying, and that they can use the drawings on the ground as aids in their spirit battles. The entire region was paranoically fervant, as their entire life depended on rain coming down from the andes; if the rain and earth spirits weren`t pleased, the crops would fail. There`s been no significant rainfall in the Nazca desert since the lines were made.

This one is of the "Hummingbird". As we took the photo, there was a flash of light, the plane shook and everything went hazy for a moment. It all seemed fine afterwards.

Colca Canyon

San Juan, the village we stayed the night in (just visible in the below picture) is only accessible by foot. All the supplies to the village are carried by mule along the perolous routes. We arrived at the base of the canyon as the sun was setting so had to walk up to San Juan in the dark. Really enjoyable to walk beneath the stars in such a bright night sky but at the same time quite scary following the path in the dark.



Cocinilla Beetles living on the surface of cacti.

Condors
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

In the 1980's the market price for Cocinilla was very high. The villages in this part of the canyon prospered from selling the beetles. Now the price is a tenth of what it was many people have deserted the villages. The remaining population is not big enough to support a hospital or education above primary level.

Condors

Condors
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Andean condors flying at close range can be seen from Cruz Del Condor in the Colca Canyon. When domestic animals die here, the locals throw the bodies into the canyon for the condors to pick at. The condors only eat the stomaches of the corpses.

Arequipa

We´ve just taken a few days off, we´d been on one city per day for the last week and it was showing. We´re now in Arequipa, with the deepest canyon in the world (eat your heart out Grand Canyon) - going to go hiking in it tomorrow. Arequipa is nice, not particularly spectacular, warm - this blog might sound like everywhere we visit is superlative, but this is a plain old normal town.

Cusco got better the 2nd time around, we´d followed our senses to what we thought was the non-touristy part first time round, it turned out to be the tout-ly touristed area. We accidentaly stayed for Corpus Christi, the first sign we had that it was a special event was the entire town eating roast guinea pig in a huge market (yes, yes, its a small fluffy mammal but is it any cuter than rabbit?). Then -it was like deja vu all over again- marching bands, a procession, and people holding up gold leaf objects. Inti Rahmi, the Inca winter solstice festival is in a week or two.

The bus to Arequipa was particularly bad, we were promised semi cama and "directo", which as far as I can see, means "stops anywhere for anyone for any length of time". They kept showing movies through the night, even turning the volume up at midnight.

Next up; Nazca, for the insanely big drawings of aliens in the desert, Pisco, for grape brandy and sea life, Hurraz for trekking ("the highest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world" says the guidebook - the only concentration, surely?) and then we fly out on the 27th.

Pretty Polly Parrot Poll

Macchu Picchu

Macchu Picchu
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Cue drum roll - the picture you`ve all been waiting for. Well, not exactly. This is Macchu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. No one knows why it was built, there`s speculation it was a temple (80% of skeletons were female -could have been a temple, or the men might have been off fighting). No one knows the real name - the Incas didn`t have writing.

Its a bit whelming really, neither over nor under. Grandiose names ("Temple of the three windows") give way to what are essentially piles of rocks. Very well hewn rocks, lugged halfway up a mountain, but this is the 1500`s were talking about, its hardly the pyramids.

Its also the most expensive tourist attraction in the world, at least that which I know off- figure 100$ to catch the monopolised train, bus and entry ticket. And don`t even think about doing the Inca trail in the high season anymore -booked out solidly for months.

The real spectacular aspect is the situation. It is perched on a mountain top, with ludricously steep slopes on each side. The mountain side has been terraced to grow crops on. An ingenious system of canals (at least, I couldn`t figure it out) somehow gets 24hour running water that high up.

It feels like its defined this leg of the trip, so many plans were made in the "and then we get to Macchu Picchu...".




Macchu Picchu as it was first discovered in 1911 (ok, the photo was taken in 1925), covered in vegetation, a lot of restoration has been going on.



View of the Caretaker`s Hut - see all the terracing.

Inca ruins outside Pisaq

Inca ruins
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

The warm up for Macchu Picchu. Those Inca engineers have for sure mastered steps. Shame the Spanish mastered gunpowder instead.

Gran Poder

Gran Poder
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

La Fiesta del Señor Jesús del Gran Poder (the festival of the Grand Power of the Lord Jesus), in La Paz.

All day long, 50 plus marching bands (from 7am to 11pm) went round a huge 4km circuit in the capital, interspersed with traditional dances from every corner of the country (Bolivia). Fancy costumes, fake bull fights, spanish-taunting, amazon-huntering, dance of the dead, pretty much everything.

Its really cool being over 6foot, you could see over the entire crowd.

This was our chance to get out the country, the protesters had called a halt to the demonstrations to get drunk. The monday afterwards they redoubled their efforts. (Oh, and its official, the army is not planning a coup: BBC news

Mwa hah hah ha

I`ve found the Legendary Internet Cafe of Speed, Value and Workingness. There`s now a sitemeter (so far, I`m the only visitor - that`s right, I`m watching you!), a poll, and lots more pictures. The dates might be a bit squiffy, I`ll try to put them in rough order.

Hmm, flickr is changing a lot. Gone are the Macromedia Flash image wrappers (good), anyone know how to get it to link to the high res version and not the medium? (Without manually hacking each link, which gets a bit tedious). Anyway, if anyone wants high res versions of these pics, just email me.

Sunset over Copacabana (Bolivia)

Sunset over Copacabana (Bolivia)
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Feels a lot like the villages outside Stockholm, only the fresh trout is cheaper.

Salt pyramid

Salt pyramid
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

They leave it like this for the water to drain. Then its simply shovel it into a truck.

Me with dynamite

Me with dynamite
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Yup, its 10p a stick out here.

Potosi - Pachincha

Pachincha
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

The big music festival in Potosi.

Bolivia is really big on marching band festivals, its quite amazing the number of players (although not the standard - still, if I was playing for 10hours solid like them, I`d sound a bit tired too).