tut tut tut steve...

Guilty, AGAIN! Guilty of letting time slip by unblogged. So a catch up...

So, during our time in Urubamba (where Lucy left it) we met an absolutely sound guy who had just started up a Sushi cafe. He was a Peruvian documentary film maker and so between us we had loads to talk about. He had studied in Mexico city and he wanted to get some kind of film course set up in Peru where apparently there are currently no courses. They made AMAZING food in the cafe (the best salads in Peru!) and they were sorting out a studio for artist residencies which is pretty exciting. So we might go back in that direction around Feb to make a film.

Skip a week of walking about in the sacred valley..sorry.. and we are sat on a kirb in a horribly tourist ruined town, waiting for a bus to the selva (farming region at edge of jungle). Our bus pulls up packed, driver not even thinking about letting us squash on. We make a sudden decision on whim to go 8hrs in the opposite direction and head to Puno instead. Puno is a city on the edge of lake Titicaca, apparently the highest navigable lake in the world. On the bus we got to watch Avitar and though it wasn´t quite the same in black and white with subtitles, it was still pretty good. Once there we found our way to some cheap digs where we met a hillarious french couple Colin and Tiff who we hit it off with straight away. We went to visit the last floating of 5 english built gun ships which were incredibally hauled up to the lake (3800m ish) in a million pieces taking mules and locals 6 years in around 1880. Once they were assembled by a team of scoucers they were used instead for moving cargo about, fueled by Llama poo.

A few days later we crammed into another colectivo out to a peninsular on the MASsIVE lake. It actually felt more like a really calm sea than a lake as the water met with the hoizon and it was lined with sandy beaches. We stayed with a lady who had a house on the shore which was really nice, I think she might have kicked a few people out for the night to make room for us but it seems to be a tourist trade out there so they would have been happy for the business. The lady was pretty keen on showing us the local dress style which was big hats with multi colored bobbles with black dresses stitched with multi coloured patterns. I did a bit of knitting with her. Then were picked up by her brothers boat and we were taken to the islands. We played lots of cards with the french and had some good competition. We climbed the hills on the islands which were beautiful, covered in terraces for the agriculture.

The coca museum
We´ve been drinking tea with coca leaves since we´ve been here but now I know some history and medical properties i´m psyched! Ive got a load of leaves stuck in my mouth right now and they make you feel funny. Loads of uses and can used to cure loads of things. They contain 14 alkalines, one of which is cocane which is sadly extracted for the punters in village pubs of Albrighton.

In the markets here they have all sorts of strange things. In some juices they drop in a live frog (apparently, not actually seen) and we saw what we understood to be dried out llama and fox fetuses the other day, not sure what they would be for but they were on a stand that sold fresh herbs... maybe some kind of garnish?..

Frogs on the line

Some fine views from hotel rooms (the overdue beginning of a photo series)



So now we are in Arequipa and we have been here about 10 days. Of course lots has happened but my fingers are aching and I already can´t remember some of it so I will very quickly bring you up to date. First impressions of Arequipa were that we were stuck in the middle of just another big noisy city, but after some time here it doesn´t seem so bad. The weather is perfect every day, the archetecture in the center is pretty nice, everthing colonial built out of the local white stone. After some trawling around the city we have a great studio appartment. It´s between Lucy´s work and the center (10mins walk to each) on a quiet street; It´s really light with great views of the mountains, amazing in the evening light; fully furnished with a new kitchen and bathroom and it has all the movie channels. Market just over the river, supermarket just up the road. Sweet!

I met an Israeli called Guy who wanted to treck up El Misti, the 5800m volcano which towers over the town. We printed off maps, took advise from trip reports on the internet and set off with about 18kilos of food, water and camping stuff each on our backs. You can take a 4x4 from the city to the beginning of the trail but we decided to just jump in a colectivo for 50c and walk an extra 8k. It turned out to be a good decision as after about a kilometer we were picked up by a 4x4 on it´s way to pick some people up and taken up the dust road for a doller. He was picking up an ozzy surfer type guy who had spent a night being sick at the base camp and not made it any further. We got to base camp at 4800m´s in after 4 hours where we met a group of four french/spanish people. It was steep all the way and the sand and rocks made it much harder as it was one step forward half a step slipping backward. I was feeling the altitude also so it was getting hard to take breath. I slept badly before the alarm went off at 3am. We then set off with the bare minimum for the top, the moon lighting the way. We were hoping to get there for the sunrise but we underestimated how hard it would be. So to cut it short we made it up there at about 8 and the views were incredable. The crater was steaming, you could have spent a week up there just looking at everything.

So that was yesterday, so we are more or less up to date. Next thing to do is find a spanish class and let my legs recover from all the downhill.

Steve out.

Ruining it in the Sacred Valley

Hello hello! Im going to try to bring this blog up to date a bit before I forget whats been occuring.

We arrived in Cusco about 10 days ago, and had planned to spend a night and get out as we´d heard it was teaming with tourists and we´d been enjoying it in the almost tourist-free places we´d been so far...but Cusco is actually lovely- a beautiful colonial city build on a sacred inca city which was originally planned out and built in the shape of a puma- not that you can see it now, as the majority of the inca temples were pulled down to build cathedrals- although not all as you will see in some pictures of the Sacsayhuaman ruins above the city (the pumas head), which now stand alongside a gigantic christ that looks down on the city.


the bithday boys and a pan piper called george.

So we spent a couple of days in cusco, ate LOTS of food as there are veggie options galore there, then headed off to do a few days volunteering in a hare krishna yoga retreat in the scared valley. the term volunteering shouldnt be taken too seriously, as most of the time there was only me and steve there chilling out and the guy who ran it wasnt very demanding with the workload he gave us to say the least. So that was lush.

(retreating)

From there we headed to a nearby town in the valley called Pisac- climbed a massive girt hill to visit some inca ruins- cant remember the name but muy spectacular indeed.

(checking out the lack of pointing)

Then we went back to cusco thinking we´d get some more camping stuff together and go do a machu picchu trek. but after umming and ahhing about it, we decided we really couldnt face the touristyness of it, and have decided to boycott the expensive trailaround we expect it to be.

So came out to another town in the sacred valley yesterday and did a hike to Moray- an amazing inca site nearby which was used many many moons ago as a microclimate in which to tame wild species of veg into horticulturable ones. cant think right now what the proper name for this is, but look at the pics and you might get the gist. got a bit lost getting there so hooked up with a sheep/cow/donkey herder named Juaquin and did some herding.

Moray

Planning on a couple more ruiney things in the valley, which gets greener the further we travel up it, and then up into the jungle for a few days to get eaten by insects. Will report back on how that goes. Encountered a hellish big spider today- I guess theres more of that to come.

Must try to break this diary style narrative.

Post two

Ok. Dear Blogworld.
Please forgive me. It seems that i´ve been letting the whole team down by neglecting our travel blog, so let´s get cracking Steve! Play the game before Lucy steps up her bullying.

Since the first post we´ve done so much ´traveling about´ that i´m going to struggle to do many of our Peruvian experiences justice. Let´s begin where Lucy left it, Huancavelica. We stayed a few more nights in Huancavelica lodging in a strange room that seemed to be charged with static electricity. We had to take the light bulb out at night as it wouldn´t turn off completely and sparks kept flying off our sleeping bags as we rolled around. We did another big walk into the incredible mountains which surround the town wondering way off piste, always exciting. After some time and distance wondering where the bloody hell we were, we found a track and a sign post which led us up to an abandoned mercury mine which was once of great importance to the Spanish. It turns out that they exploited the obligatory labour of the towns people to such an extent that there wern´t enough people left alive to do the work, so the mine closed. Lucy also taught me to nit in Huancavelica and I got a bit obsessed.

Next we took a painful 15 hour bus journey along a perilous single track dirt road to Ayacucho. The journey was broken into two by a nice 5hour stop in small crossroad village. We arrived in Ayacucho at about 4 in the morning and slept a few hours at the bus stop before taking a tuk tuk to our hostel. It took a couple of days to recover, moral was down. Lucy was feeling pretty rotten and couldn´t eat. We made friends with some artisans who showed us to a much nice hostel/ family house on the top of a hill with a massive view of the whole city. The artisans fed us and and chatted to us about all things from Peru to premier league. They informed us that the next bus journey to Cusco was going to be about 20hours over the mountains, I felt sick. Following their directions we walked into town to book our bus for the next day. However, at some point we took a wrong turn which took us past a sign saying 'FLIGHTS $80'. SWEEET! So we went back to the hostel, slept and we were checked into our Cusco hostel before 9AM! Amazing.

Cusco is a beautiful town full of colonial architecture, pizza restaurants and tourists. Until we arrived in Cusco we had met two french tourists in almost 3 weeks. So we got our fill of music and nice comfort food. Brill! After some umming and aaaaring we decided to go to a yoga place way out in the Sacred Vally for a few days. When we got there it turned out to be run by Harri Krishna nutters, nice nutters. It was nice to be out towns and at least our host Rama had a good old story to tell so we enjoyed the peace and quiet under sky full of stars avoiding any kind of indoctrination.

We have moved on since then but I think i will stop here as I feel myself going on. Maybe Luce will fill in a few of gaps. Photos to follow.

Steve.