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.

First week in Peru.

Plaza Mayor in Lima



So due to popular demand, me and Steve are going to make a bit of a blog of our travels. Here goes the first entry...


We have been in Peru for a week now, but it feels a lot longer because we have already done quite a bit of wandering. After a few smog-filled days in Lima (which smells about 4 times worse than La Linea on a particularly smelly oil refinery day...that may not mean much to some people, but honestly, it stinks) we headed inland to a biggish town called Hunacayo, which was great, but a bit of a shock to the body, and we both had a couple of groggy altitude sickness days.


One day we caught a collectivo (a ram-packed minibus) to a village in a beautiful valley, and went on a tour of an 18th century convent, and showed around by an utterly joyless woman, and subject to loads of paintings (old and new) of monks dying with smiles on their faces as hoards of savage indians hacked them to death. My already watery opinion of the roman catholic church plummeted. But luckily there was some sort of movement of independance and the people of the valley have mostly turned their backs on that scene and have returned to bonkers oldschool ways as we discovered the next day when we wandered into a fiesta in the village where all the med were dressed as crazy chickenmen talking only in squeeky voices, with fullface balaclarvas complete with knitted noses. Ill include a picture of that for sure, although I have no idea what was going on in terms of cultural context, but I´m betting it had little to do with catholics.



Now we are in a small town called Huancavelica, heading in the direction of Macchu Picchu (which is still about 20 hours of bus travel away), but this town is lovely and surrounded by mountains on all sides. We climbed one today and are going to stick around here for a few more days to climb more. I´m also on a missio to find some alpaca wool which is proving more difficult than I thought for some reason- the people are knitting crazy here, and loads of people just wander around the towns whilst knitting. Will have to get a picture for all you stitch n bitchers out there- it´s incredible!


Ive already written more than I wanted to so will stick a few pictures on here now and be off.

Big love xxx


Ps. Peruvian people are SO nice. So far everyone we have met has been welcoming and friendly and honest and generally really lovely.



First lung-splitting hike above the convent




At the top




Fiesta in Ocopa



Above Huancavelica