Cusco and The Inca Trail

The Inca Trail is a 4 day trek through the green hills and valleys of the Andes, following a route that the Incas made a long time ago. I met up with my group the night before and they seemed a friendly bunch, Gilly & Jennie (Eng / Kiwi friends), Dav & Katie (Eng / Aus couple) and Henry and Jane (both English). Not to forget Enrique, our tour guide. I was the only solo traveller, which was great as I got a tent to myself. The main thing was that we were all very similar standard of walking (except maybe Dav who was very fit), so we made a good team.

The 1st day we met in Cusco at 6am and got a bus into a town to faff about buying bamboo walking sticks and rain gear. We started walking at km82 around 10am. The first day wasn’t too hard, with only a gradual climb over 6 hours. All of us were accustomed to the altitude already which apparently causes the most problems.

The second day was much harder, climbing up to 4200m above sea level, our highest point. This was through an alarmingly-sounding Dead Woman’s pass, but we soon found out that it was named because the mountain looked like a woman lying down (it was quite amusing trekking all day towards a huge pair of breasts), not because anyone had died there.

Everyone says the second day is the hardest, but for me the third day was much harder. I was absolutely exhausted from the climb the previous day, and it didn´t help that I managed to whack my knee hard on a stone by falling down a hole covered in a clump of grass. Not the best thing to do when I was about to climb up a huge flight of steps. The others were great though, carrying my rucksack for me and offering me lots of potions and lotions for my knee. That day we walked for 10 hours, it was a long day and I was ready to collapse at the end. It was an organised camp-site at the end of it though, and the sight of a cold beer waiting for me when I finished was heavenly.

We were so lucky on the trail - it is the rainy season and the weather could have easily been worse, but it was gorgeous and clear skies meant spectacular views. The week before, Enrique had told us, it had rained constantly. For us it only rained when we were in our tents. There wasn´t a single point on the trail that we didn´t have amazing scenery, even at the campsites. We also had a lot of Inca towns to explore along the way.

Enrique, our tour guide, was good fun, informative and helpful. Along with Alex the salsa-dancing professional chef, Clever who attended to our every need, and the 12 other porters, we ate and camped in luxury (albeit no hot showers, I was very smelly at the end). The best thing was getting a cup of tea delivered to us in our sleeping bags, even if it was 5 or 4am in the morning.

The 4th day we set off early (5am) to get to Machupicchu early. I have seen lots of pictures of MP by now, but even so the first sight of it as we arrived through the sun gate took my breath away. Its not just amazing architecture but the location itself, in lush green valleys and mountains everywhere, is just incredible. The Incas really knew how to build in style. I could have easily spent all day on the hill overlooking the town. I had the same feeling that I got at Lake Titicaca, very spiritual and peaceful.

Luckily I was still in a peaceful mind when it transpired that it would take me a while to get back to Cusco. There are no roads to Machhupichhu, the only way to get there and back is to either walk or take the train. Unfortunately there had been a landslide across the tracks, and there was only 1 train at the time on the Aguas Callientes (the town where MP is sited) side of the rails, and hundreds of people wanting to get on it. After about 6-7 hours waiting at the train station, chatting to the other tourists and just chilling out, I was still even very un-stressed when I eventually managed to get on the train. Its amazing what travelling does to your stress levels. Even when the train was so packed many people had to sit on the floor, we all had a laugh.

My company met me with a mini-bus on the other side of the landslide. As I was the only one travelling back with them (the rest of the group had opted to stay at Aguas Callientes), the company gave a lift to the some of the hundreds of people stranded there with no transport. About half-way back, late at night, with me extremely tired, an argument broke out on the bus with most of the passengers fighting with the bus conductor. It transpired that the company was asking them for a small contribution as a bus fare. It was only about a fiver, but the bus driver stopped in the middle of no-where and refused to move until it had been sorted out. After about ½ an hour the many disgruntled passengers agreed to pay and we eventually got back to Cusco late at night.

I had a few days in Cusco to relax, and it was a beautiful place to end my trip. It has some great architecture, views, winding little back streets and a good atmosphere, which is what most people would want from a city. There are lots of Inca stones everywhere but it has a very Spanish feel (people say Cusco would have been far greater than Macchupichu if the Spanish hadn’t plundered it).

I met Mark and his friend Rob here, I hadn’t met them before but he was a friend of a friend and more importantly, he had my replacement bank card! They turned out to be really nice though and good drinking partners. With them, I explored Sacsayhuaman (known to the locals as ‘sexy woman’ as this is what it sounds like in a Peruvian accent). This was an Inca site just above Cusco (not very far but up a hill which was hard work!). It was just a pile of huge stones, an amusing ‘slide down the stones’ and giant seats. Good fun.

In Cusco I had managed to acquire a very dodgy 100 sol note, which wasn’t fake but was old. In Peru the banks don’t accept old and damaged notes, and it seemed that neither did any shopkeepers. I had tried to get rid of it several times and had arguments with people, even if I had no other form of payment. At sexy woman, I managed to buy a ticket with the note, but unfortunately Mark & I were stupid enough to hang around the ticket office talking, and after a few minutes the ticket-seller came to give me my note back. We learnt from this experience and I finally managed to get rid of the note by paying for a meal in a restaurant and us legging it down the street before they could refuse my money! That was funny, and it set the scene for last night madness which was fantastic fun.

Copacabana, Lago Titicaca, and back to Peru

The bus to Copacabana took 5 hours instead of the 2.5 they told me. There was no reason I could see for a delay, so as has happened before, the bus company blatantly lied just to get me on their bus. There was one highlight to the journey though - floating the bus across Lake Titicaca on a very dodgy looking raft. Luckily the passengers caught a much safer looking boat, as the bus looked like it was going to tip up at any moment.

Copacabana (the original, the famous beach in Brazil is named after this place), is a nice little town, the main reason to come here though is the beautiful and immense Lake Titicaca, the world´s biggest high-altitude lake.

The lake is a spiritual centre for the Incas, and some of that spirit must have rubbed off on to me. As I sat on the hill overlooking the lake the madness of the previous week fell out of my mind and I felt calm for the first time in ages.

I wandered around the surrounding area and came across two children who were desperate to show me something. I couldn’t understand their Spanish but I followed them anyway. They showed me an ancient Inca site, which was just a pile of big stones but I saw the Inca seat (like the king’s throne), and had fun with the kids. They insisted I took a picture of them, and I knew they were only doing it for some money, but they were so nice I didn’t mind paying them.

I would have like to stay there longer to visit the islands, but I had totally run out of time and needed to get to Cusco. That was another fun journey - I decided to not bother with the tourist buses which ran at stupid times and chance the local transport. These are generally minibuses called ´collectivos´ which wait until they are full before departing at random times. When I say full, I mean not only every seat taken, but every spare inch of space - floors, aisle, even the driver’s window. I was squashed between two fat women and their children on their knees, luckily they had big shawls on so it was like being squeezed by two big cushions. I was so jealous of the kids though, they amazingly managed to fall asleep 5 mins after we left and woke up 5mins before we arrived.

My bags were put on the roof of the bus, which I started to worry about when it started raining. I shouldn’t have done, they were thankfully kept dry, what I should have worried about is the customs officers climbing on to the roof of the bus to inspect the bags, then opening my bag and leaving it like open until I discovered it 20km later.

The border crossing between Bolivia and Peru was one of the most lax I have ever seen - I could easily walk between the two countries without anyone stopping me or even noticing. The fact that I actually wanted stamps in my passport meant I had to actively seek out the relevant offices.

I changed buses in Puno, where a chatty bicycle-rickshaw boy took me across town to the other bus terminal. I asked him what the time was, he said 12:45pm, which is what I thought it should have been. He took me to a bus company leaving for Cusco at 1pm, so I asked the time again (this time 12:50), so I bought a ticket and left my bags there to go and grab a sandwich.

10 minutes later I went to collect my bags, then tried to get on the bus. The bus man wouldn´t let me through the gates, saying I had to wait an hour. After a bit of an argument, I found out the time was actually only 12pm and everyone had lied to me, to get me to buy the bus ticket. 3 border crossings and I had messed up with the time 3 times.

After this followed a very long journey to Cusco, stopping for every man and his dog. We stopped for an hour for an unknown reason, and stopped again to change a tire. When it got dark it transpired that the interior lights didn´t work, so no reading, no music (mp3 player has broken), resulting in a very long journey.

In Cusco my cheap hostel from the guide book turned out to be a not so cheap hotel, but by that point I couldn´t care less so I enjoyed the luxury of my own room, own bathroom with hot shower and not having to go outside into the freezing cold just to visit the toilet like most places. Sheer luxury.

Stacking it on the World´s Most Dangerous Road

Whoever decided to promote the WMDR as a tourist attraction is either a marketing genius or a complete idiot. Probably both.

Here are the stats: up to 200 people a year die on this road, in the rainy season a vehicle goes off the road on average once every two weeks. Which wouldn´t be much of a problem if there wasn´t a 500 - 900m sheer drop down the mountain and no barrier to hold you in. Basically if you go over the side, you´re toast.

What the stats don´t say is that it is also one of the world´s most beautiful roads, and brilliant for mountain biking.

So, I decided it would be a good idea to cycle down it. Here is a typical conversation.
-"Is it a dangerous tour?"
-"No"
-"But isn´t it the world´s most dangerous road?"
-"Yes! But its not dangerous for cycling, only for buses"
-"How do we get back to La Paz?"
-"By bus! You are insured by the way? Are you sure, can you check your medical insurance?"

Hmmm. I wasn´t put off though, and I soon realised its safe to go down, as long as you listen carefully to the guides advice, and don´t make any mistakes.

We started off at 4000m, and although I had 6 layers of clothing on, 2 pairs of gloves and a woolley hat beneath my helmet, I was still freezing. We all checked our bikes, paying particular attention to the brakes, then had a drink and paid homage to the earth goddess Pachamama, to ask her for a safe ride.

The first 20k of the road was bloody fantastic. It was a hard paved surface, and we got up some serious speed on the steep slopes. The front guide knew how fast to take the corners, so we all followed suit, overtaking cars and lorries along the way. It was such an adrenaline rush.

Those 20k seemed to last about 5 minutes, until we reached the 40k of the WMDR. I´ll describe this road: it is a rough track, about the width of 1 lorry, which is useful as lorries frequently use it. In fact we only saw big lorries, buses crowded with people and the odd jeap, a normal car would have never got down the road. There is plenty of traffic, in both directions which makes for interesting head to head traffic jams, with about 4 vehicles in each direction, and one line having to reverse back. Everywhere in Bolivia drives on the right hand side, except for this particular road where the rules are reversed. This is because vehicles driving up the road cling to the mountainside, forcing anyone (including us) to pass on the left. Which would be fine, if it wasn´t for that 500-900m drop I mentioned earlier.

If all this wasn´t bad enough, the road was rocky, muddy and slippy. We even rode through waterfalls and rivers during our descent. Needless to say we got soaking wet and covered in mud. The road is almost perfect for mountain biking, if we didn´t have to keep stopping to let the traffic past.

I´m quite proud of the fact that, out of 20 or so cyclists, I was the only one to fall off. It was at a point where the goggles, that I had to wear to keep the mud and grit out of my eyes, were caked in mud and I could only see about a metre ahead of me. I had stopped to wipe them a few times, but 2 minutes later they were full of mud again so it was pointless. Then suddenly, a stone about the size of a house brick was at my front wheel, and I had no time to avoid it. As I hit the brick, me and my bike went flying, thankfully into the middle of the road, and not to the side and over the edge. I escaped with aggravating my old shoulder injury, big bruises and a swollen leg, but luckily nothing too serious. I had many admirers that day, because everyone thought I was really ´hard´for continuing to cycle after the accident. Everyone insisted on inspecting my leg, with lots of ´ooh´and ´ahh´ing noises, which I had more fun with when I showed people my two big black toe-nails, which I got during the Colca Canyon trek, and which show no signs of recovering.

p.s. since writing this, my shoulder is really hurting and my leg has come up nicely purple and black, and hurts a lot more, but I´m still off to do a 4 day trek tomorrow...

La Paz

I have very mixed feelings about La Paz, I both love it and hate it at the same time. By far the most interesting thing about it is the people, so I´ll describe who I met in a typical day:

- Business men and women in smart suits.
- Aymara (indiginous) women who wore funny bowler hats that were too small for them, perched on top of their heads. They also wore big shawls and voluptuous skirts, which made the women look triangualar in shape. They were short, with withered brown skin, funny small black eyes, and long black hair in plaits. These women were everywhere, and seem to control the city.
- Policemen, in heavy green uniforms, white helmets and carrying huge guns. They were on almost every street corner, which was actually comforting as they were a reassuring presence.
- Shoe-shine boys, who did not have the ´cheeky, happy-go-lucky´ demenour of the boys of neigbouring countries. These boys wore black balaclavas, and clothed head to foot, so you could only see their dark eyes. They looked liked they were about to murder someone, and were bloody scary.
- The con men. I almost got caught out, by two fake tourists, and a fake policeman. Luckily, the people at my hotel had told me to be beware of ´policemen´who were not in the green uniform. The ´tourists´asked me to take a picture of them, which happens to me all the time so I agreed. I thought it was a bit dodgy, so as I took the picture I tried to see if anyone else was hanging around, ready to steal the wallet I didn´t have. Which is pretty hard when you have a camera held to your eye. The street was really busy, so the ´tourists´tried to take me down a dark alleyway to get out of the way of everyone. I knew then something was wrong, but I had their camera in my hand and I didn´t want to walk off with it. I stayed near the entrance to the alleyway, and when a man came up to me flashing a police ID, I chucked the camera at the tourists and scarpered. The next day I was telling this story to an English couple, they said a friend of theirs was in exactly the same situation, and had all her money and camera nicked.
- The ´witches´at the ´witches´market. I don´t think they were real witches, but they certainly sold some weird stuff: I saw loads of dried llama foetuses, a giant snake skin, an eagle´s wings (with no eagle body), a head of a deer which looked like it had died painfully. Also lots of weird potions and lotions, and lots of little statues of the earth god Pachamama.
- Smiling waiters and waitresses who are great at smiling but absolutely useless at serving.
- Fantastic men & women who have little orange-juice making machines on the street. The delicious juice costs 10p for a big glass, and is fresh as they press it in front of you. Every town should have one.
- I was in a cafe having dinner when I saw outside that a crowd had gathered in front of an electrical store, of about 100 people. I realised that they were watching the football game (La Paz against a Mexican team) on the TV in the shop window.

The people of La Paz certainly sum up the city - wild, colourful and f-ing crazy. So, I love La Paz because its the most interesting and crazy place I´ve been to, but I hate it because I had an urge to hide in my hotel room all day because I was scared.

There´s only 2 more things I should mention - La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, which makes it hard work to walk around the steep streets at this altitude. Also it looks amazing, it is cradled by the Andes like a baby in its crib. I had the pleasure of descending into the city twice, once by day, and once by night when it was lit up. Both times it took my breath away.

From Argentina to Bolivia

After crossing the border from Argentina to Bolivia, the difference in countries is striking. The first challenge (Bolivia is full of challenges) was getting across the border. The formalities were easy enough, albeit some complicated questions in Spanish (am I a terrorist? have I ever been involved in sabotage?) that I managed to translate. The real challenge was walking through the narrow corridor, trying to avoid the hundreds of people running through the same corridor with what looked like heavy sacks of cement on their backs. They were obviously getting paid per sack, as I said they were running through, and didn´t appreciate being held up by us and our backpacks. There was not enough room to overtake and I couldn´t run like them, even with half the weight on my back, so they pushed us through instead.

Safely across the border, I got very confused with the time difference (I put my watch forward instead of back), I had to wait 3 hours instead of 1 for a bus. I passed the time eating crap food in a cheap cafe (missing Argentinian food already), and warding off the beggers that kept asking me for money.

On the bus, as there was no air-conditioning (I´m missing Argentinian buses too), I nearly passed out with the heat. I have never been so hot in my life, but annoyingly, as I sat there in t-shirt and shorts, the woman next to me had a thick jumper and heavy shawl on. I was saved by a friendly German, who gave me his seat next to the only window that would open. After what seemed like hours, we arrived in Tupiza.

Tupiza is a funny little place, at first I didn´t like the dirty and dusty town, as it seemed to be deserted. I then decided to avoid the expensive tourist cafes, and find where the locals hang out. Although at first the restaurants looked pretty awful - very stark, no decoration, bright neon lighting, a TV blaring in the corner and questionable hygine, the lack of ´put on´ atmosphere was more than made up for by the atmosphere created by the locals chatting and laughing. And of course it is incredibly cheap, a decent meal for less than 1 pound.

Tupiza really felt like ´wild west´country, with a desert like-landscape with loads of red & brown rocks & mountains surrounding it, and cool cacti. Cacti that was at least 25ft tall, and with huge spikes. It is even close to the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are supposed to have died in a shoot out. With countryside like this, I had to go horse-riding.

The horse I got was very lazy, and it took all my effort just to make it canter for a short while. At least I wasn´t afraid of it taking off. Annoyed with my stupid horse, I just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery instead. As I said, it was stunning, rocks and hills of all colours and shapes and sizes imaginable. I now know how they used to cross the desert by saying ´turn right at the elephant shaped rock´and ´left and the rock with the funny top´. I saw rocks that were 40ft high, just as wide, but had a depth of about 3ft. They stuck up out of the mountains like someone had just thrown them in there. I saw huge pillars of rocks in a place called ´valley of the chicos (valley of the young men)´. They really did look like people, well people who were extremely tall with no arms anyway.

my wallet: a life story

5 years ago, I went to Italy to visit my friend Christina. Whilst in Florence I bought a lovely wallet: soft brown leather, the perfect shape and size. Christina was very annoyed with me as apparently it is bad luck to buy your own wallet. I thought that was superstitious nonsense.

2 days later I left Tino in Florence and travelled to Rome, the very first time I had ever been away on my own. Rome is lovely, and I spent a full days sightseeing, so busy that I had forgotten to eat. At 6pm I realised I was starving, so caught the metro accross town to my hotel. Then disaster struck. A nasty little man put his nasty hands into my bag and took my wallet. I could see it happening, but there were hundreds of people around, and he disappeared as quickly as he had taken it, so there was nothing I could do.

Stupid as I was, all of my money and all of my cards were in that wallet. Its a very humbling experience when you don´t even have enough money for a packet of crisps when you are starving. I went to the tourist police station, the Italian police were absolutely useless. I went back to my (thankfully pre-paid) hotel room, with my stomach rumbling, not having any idea what to do. I needed to cancel my cards but I didn´t know the phone number. I didn´t speak a word of Italian. In the end I went to the British embassy, and burst into tears. They were brilliant, they gave me a cup of tea (doesn´t the whole world seem better if you have a cup of tea), and sorted me out.

I was just as upset about losing my lovely wallet than the money, so back in Florence Tino bought me a replica version, and put some money in it for good luck.

Then passed a couple of years without incident, til I started work. I´ve lost count of the number of times people came up to me at my desk, to return my wallet. I´d left it in the crew room loads of times, the gym, the showers, etc. I remember going out in Fleet a few times and having to borrow money off friends because I´d left my wallet in my desk.

In Australia I left it on a bench outside a bus station whilst I caugt a bus to Cairns. It was returned to me the next day by a friendly bus driver, all money and cards intact.

In Bali I managed to leave it in two restaurants, going back hours later to find it still there, which is surprising as Bali is a poor island. Its like I couldn´t get rid of the thing, until last Sunday.

After managing to survive an overnight train journey, I was about to board a bus at Ororo in central Bolivia. 3 big men surrounded me, taking it in turns to push me around. I thought they were after my bag, which was on my back, so I turned towards them to get my bag out of the way, and yelled at them, then they disappeared with my wallet which was in a zipped up pocket.

The bastards, they obviously targeted me as I was alone - there were loads of other travellers about (in couples) who saw the whole thing but were powerless to help. There was nothing I could have done, I´d be pretty defenceless against 3 men. An annoying thing is that it was 8 o´clock in the morning in a crowded bus station, its not like I was stupid enough to be wandering around dodgy areas or late at night. At least I wasn´t physically hurt.

Anyway, after that experience in Italy I knew I would be ok, as I keep loads of emergency cash and a spare credit card. It´ll be enough to see me through the next couple of weeks. The incident did shake me up though, and it took a huge effort in La Paz not to go and hide in my hotel room the whole time. La Paz can be pretty scary, but I´ll write about that in another post.

Northern Argentina – Corrientes, Salta and Humahuaca

Corrientes was pretty uninteresting but it provided a much needed stop to break up an otherwise 26 hour bus journey. I was still travelling with Cliona, Siobhan & Elaine – it was great to be with them as they were good fun and easy going, although I was jealous that they had loads of nice clothes, about 10 times as much as me. They were also awful at overnight bus journeys. Argentine buses are the best I´ve ever seen, I wonder what they will think of the crappy Bolivian buses.

We spent 2 days in Corrientes doing very little, and then we moved on to Salta where we spent a further 2 days doing nothing; 1 to recover from the bus journey and 1 to recover from a night getting drunk. After 4 days of doing nothing at all, I was craving some exercise, so I climbed up the local hill. It was great to get some fresh air into my lungs but it made me realise how unfit I am. I hope I´m ok to do the Inca trail in a couple of weeks.

The next day my health burst caught on and I persuaded the girls to go cycling. It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day and a great road to cycle on in the countryside – except that it had a slight incine all of the way up. That was ok though, because it meant coming down was brilliant fun, we freewheeled all the way. It took us 3.5 hours to get up (the girls insisted on stopping all the time) and 0.5 hours to get down.

That night I had the best steak, maybe the best meal I have ever had. It was so good I had to write about it here; thick steak cooked so it almost melts in the mouth, wrapped round cheese & tomatoes with potatoes & brocolli. Washed down with a bottle of red wine. The whole thing cost less than 6 pounds, which is actually quite expensive. I am going to miss Argentinian food.

I left the girls in Salta and headed north towards Bolivia. The closer I got to Bolivia the worse the buses got, so I shortened my journey by stopping in a small town, Humahuaca. I´m glad I did, as it was lovely – cobbled streets, small cafes, but very few tourists. That night the sunset was beautiful and turned all the streets and buildings pink.
I am definitely going to miss Argentina and all its luxuries – the 1st class buses, the amazing steaks and red wine, and beautiful scenery. I feel like I´ve only seen a very small part of the country, so I hope I come back one day.