Coroico

So, since our last blog we've travelled to the highest navigable water in the world, the highest city on the continent, the highest and largest salt flats, some weird geizers, a green lake full of arsenic, and a red lake full of flamingos. We also got our bag nicked in La Paz and have lost all our photos. Bastards.

We bought 2 cameras in La Paz, but no memory card, so here are the 7 photos that our camera holds. It should illustrate the hard life we're having in Coroico, Bolivia, in the week before our return to the real world.

bug
kitchen crisps
bug

me being a real man

fuzzyhair

PS: We took a normal camera to the salt flats and national park and took 72 photos of varying quality. Once we find a photo developer's that'll put them onto cd for us we'll upload them and talk about that. It's the weirdest place ive ever been to.

Update:

HOLY SHIT, ALIENS!!!1

we're passing through the puno region in a few hours time. I'll report back on any glowing children.

To Cuzco, Bankruptcy, and Some Quite Big Ruins...

We splashed out on a superdeluxeluxuryclass Cruz Del Sur coach for the 20 hours to Cuzco and i sat on the floor on the bottom deck because i couldn't stand the constant, ceaseless, hairpin swerving, threw up most of the way nonetheless, and got someone else's shit on my feet.

Cuzco is very nice, superbly picturesque, but definitely not worth the utter MISERY of that ride. Nor the altitude sickness, which appears to have rather unfairly affected the non-smoker. I am thouroughly thrilled to be ascending another thousand metres or so tonight, on another overnight fairground ride that is already making me feel gross.


Cuzco.With kid that ran in front of us.

Assuming that i should include some information about what we have actually come here to do: Machu Picchu is a letdown. If you want to pay a fortune to stand around in the cold and see some ruins that you could see the equivalent of in both scale and grandeur elsewhere for next to free (and in nice warm weather), then that is something that is entirely dependent on how willing you are to fritter away money, and how able you are to see through the brightly coloured Inka Kola t-shirts that are obscuring your view. Although, there was this bonkers group of new-age-crisis-aged American women that were quite amusing. They stood around in circles, eyes shut and holding hands, serenely swaying in people's way. Summoning their money's worth no doubt.
And here are the pictures i am supposed to put up:




Looking absol


It was a bit of a chore getting to the site. We pretty much just plainly couldn't afford the tourist train tickets (there is no road to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town) and Peru Rail don't allow tourists on the local train. Partially though, we wanted an adventure. This involved visiting some ruins in the Sacred Valley, getting a shared car to Santa Maria, a combi to Santa Teresa, a combi to a hydro plant, a walk along the train tracks in the dark, and more or less the same on the return leg. Unfortunately, our 2007 guidebook is not always as up to date as it could be, and the route is now a much plied gringo trail, which will cost you triple what you think it will.

I think the highlight of the excursion was probably our visit to Pisac:

Pisac market.
Pisac ruins...





Ollantaytambo.
Other less cultured Sophie and James activities include:
Smashing rocks.
Lying down.
Being James.

In conclusion, an update on our disaster-dodging so far: On Saturday, the town we are going to tonight was hit by a meteor which has left a hundred foot crater and mysteriously caused all the locals to become ill.

Through Ecuador to Trujillo and Lima in Peru

Since the last blog we've been doing a hell of a lot of travelling and seem to only find computers that don't let us upload our photos. egh. We spent a couple more days in Bogota and took the cable car up to the top of an overlooking mountain. Bogota is a bit big.




We then took an overnight bus to Popayan somewhere south of Bogota for a bit of rest in an old colonial town, before heading over the border into Ecuador. We met a Peruvian guy who predictably enough thought that a lot of Ecuadoreans were arseholes, but it meant our border crossing was relatively painless. Niether of us got cavity searches, although an official did put his screwdriver through the backplate of my backpack.

Our time in Ecuador was brief. We'd been on buses for over 12 hours and just slept away our first evening in Quito, and then checked the place out the following day before heading down to Cuaca.

Days of constant bus travelling began to take their toll.

Crossing the Ecuador - Peru border was a nightmare. We picked the shortest way to cross, and decided that despite our guidebook describing it as "harrowing", we would be ok since it was early in the morning, and would be quieter. Annoyingly, our bus to the border arrived at 4:00am instead of 6:30am so the place was in utter darkness, with only the most determined rip-off merchants around, knowing full well that you have no other choice. Getting through the border took us about 2 hours and cost us 17 quid in con-men taxi drivers. But at least we got to the bus terminal with plenty of time, and got on our way to Trujillo in Peru.

The journey there looked mostly like this for me:



And like this for Sophie:

Trujillo is a weird place. We thought it would be a welcome break from the cold weather of Bogota and Quito (2nd and 3rd highest cities in outh America respectably) since it's on the coast. But this place has a cold ocean wind that made it much the same, and almost negligible rainfall. All the farming and errigation is made possible by ancient and not so ancient canal and irrigation systems that collect water from some of the surrounding mountains and rivers. All the houses are mud brick, but seem to be quite sturdy. Especially the walls of the temple of the moon, which have stood for over 1000 years.

So, here's Huaca de la Luna, a Moche temple (coupled with the Temple of the Sun) witch was part of an ancient pre-Inca city. It looks shit from the outside. At least we managed to get a hairless dog in the photo though.


The paintwork on these things hasn't been touched up, its the original colours from 1000 years ago.

And here is another photo of that beautiful dog.


The morning would be complete without me standing in front of a mescaline-containing San Pedro cactus.


In the afternoon we went to Chan Chan, a Chimu city of up to 30,000 people that lasted for over 500 years, before the Inca's took it over in the 15th century. Archaeologists have restored a lot of the walls and such, but when the last earthquake hit, all the restored walls crumbled, and all the old original walls stayed standing exactly how they were. So it seems the Chimu knew how to build sandcastles.






Next stop was Lima, the capital of Peru. We were only stopping there for a rest and for the connecting bus to Cuzco, but had a nice wonder around Miraflores; the old, gringo friendly, wolley-hat-selling area of Lima.

james...

... shouldn't take so many pictures of me looking daft.

Merida and Bogota

So, we haven't seen any big snakes/ reptiles/ nasty things that bite since Sophie's last blog, mostly due to us not having the time or money to go on a 3 day excursion into the jungle. These things are expensive and always seem to be run by Germans. Not that they'd be any cheaper if done by any other nationality of course.

What we did do however, was go to Merida, a city nestled in the middle of a rather large valley.


Me annoying Sophie with the camera as the bus careened around the side of mountains.


The peaks around the valley can reach over 4km and the highest has one of those bloody Bolivar statues that seem to be around every corner of every town in every south american country. We stayed in this place run by Germans (again) and Sophie made me go horse riding.

1. James doesn't like horses
2. James thinks it's odd that we still sit on animals

So basically, i was shitting myself. So thankfully, to put my mind at rest, i soon learnt that:

1. We weren't going to be wearing helmets
2. We were going to be riding through a JUNGLE
3. The other 4 in the group were drinking aniseed flavoured cane liquor

I got on the horse and after about 10 minutes of praying i wouldn't fall off into a river, i learnt that i had the most docile, ignorant and slowest horse in the whole ranch, and began to enjoy it. Huzah!

Thankfully, you cant quite see the panic in mine or Sophie's eyes. My horse is eating. It did this a lot.



As did Sophie's.

I don't really understand the cowboy hat obsession myself


Or why the French guy with the camera turned it onto black and white mode. Maybe it went with the hats.




We spent the next day trying to walk normally around Merida whilst finding camping shops (one was crap, one didn't exist, and one was closed. pfft)

The square, with some mountains behind, covered with clouds. Some of them had snow on them.



The next day, we took off to the Colombian border via bus and then taxi. In our guidebook it says that many taxis will take you over the border for $20, stopping for exit and entry stamps and whatnot along the way, and this seemed like a good idea compared to waiting for a busload of people to get their passports stamped before moving on. Unfortunately, the taxi driver we ended up with didn't have a clue what he was doing, bungled through the towns on either side of the border, banged the taxi into a lamp post and possibly someone's truck, and got us to the airport for our cheap internal flight about 30 minutes before it was taking off.

So now we're in Bogota. The first thing to say about this place is that it's bloody cold. It's 16 degrees today, and i look at the UK weather report with envy. The UK perception of Bogota is a little unfounded. There are rough parts, like in every city, but this is the first city we've been to that seems to have art, music, fashion and nightlife that a mature capital city should have. We've checked out the gold museum (which has a lot of gold) and the Botero museum (which has a lot of fat people) and Sophie has spotted a woolly jumper that will make her look even more like Marla Singer than she normally does.


PS. Sophie bought a poncho and gnome hat in Merida

sophie and james have ended up in SOUTH america...

We seem to be travelling in more or less complete ignorance of extreme weather disasters taking place across the continent, haphazardly arriving at new destinations with eyes averted from hurricanes and/or earthquakes. In fact, upon arrival at Caracas, the closest either of us came to being concerned about the hurricane taking place in the country was to babble about the ridiculously heavy rain delaying our flight.

I have to mention here that amidst the airport-wide yelling, crying, confusion and people demanding courtesy 500km taxi rides, the officials at our desk told us that there was no plane for us. When shouts immediately began about the plane that had been sitting outside our terminal for the past three hours, we were told: "Well, there is no crew". Ten minutes later, over 3 hours late, we took the invisible unmanned flight across to Margarita Island, couldn't get my card to work, couldn't pay our taxi driver, and were greeted by a security guard who had no idea who i was, a very locked door, and a broken intercom with my parents 9 storeys above us. We were in South America, and we were eventually bailed out by my mother running about in a swimsuit and sarong at midnight wondering where the hell we were.

The next week was nice and EASY. I hardly had to say a word in spanish, courtesy of my aunty Karina, and we didn't really do anything. At all. Except sun ourselves and eat, which of course we did in abundance.

A week later we took a ferry to the mainland and a bus to Ciudad Bolivar, where we found a nice hostel run by some Germans who served really bad food. Teamed with 3 days in Canaima on a trip to see Angel Falls, where the food was either chicken or egg with chicken or egg (i don't eat chicken), i reckon we have just about atoned for the sheer gustatory decadence of our holiday from our holiday now. It is a hard life, after all...

Anyway. Despite the direct negative correlation between the cost of a tour to the Falls and my enjoyment of it, i would reccommend that anyone sold a body part in order to be able to go. We flew (me with my eyes squeezed shut) by Cessna to the camp and took a four hour boat to watch a lot of water drop off a big rock, got wet, slept in hammocks, got cold, got the boat back, got wet and cold, went to another waterfall, walked behind it, got very very wet, dried off then went for a beer and got rained on. It was amazing. Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves.

The sun came out the next day...

Sapo Falls

Brown water. Good for the skin, apparently.

This morning we set off for Los Llanos, but have got as far as back into Ciudad Bolivar. The bus doesn't leave till the evening, hence the massive blog update. We both have high hopes for seeing some big snakes/ reptiles/ nasty things that bite once we get there, but judging by previous luck with excursions we might see a llama.