At the Copa, Co, Copacabana

BOLIVIAAAAA!!!!!

We took a boat from Copacabana to the other side of Lake Titicaca to stay the night on a beautiful Island called Isla Del Sol. We stayed in the south of the Island in a place called Yumani, at a local Bolivian womans hostel. We ate fresh ´trucha´ (trout) for lunch, and then again for dinner in nice restaurants overlooking the Lake. It was really surreal as there were also snowy mountains in the distance, that looked like theyd been photoshopped there, and were floating in the air.

In the morning we took a boat to the north of the Island, as we believed it was a common thing to walk the 3-4hour hike across the length of the island. When we got there however, it was only us on the trail. So yes, we actually did some voluntary extra hiking at 4000m altitude. But it wasnt completly pointless, as the views were incredible and it only took us 2hours 15 minutes as we´ve become such pro hikers after MP.... ;)


(By the way, I know the Barry Manilow song isn´t actually referring to THIS Copacabana!)

Who knew a guinea pig was so useful?

After Huacachina we went to a place called Puno, which borders one of the biggest, high altitude lakes in the world, Lake Titicaca (4000m). From there we took a tour to a floating island, Uros. The locals created this island by layering reeds ontop of each other, in layers and layers till they compress enough to form a solid mass, which then becoes the island. Unbelievably, people still live on these islands, and some straw huts even have radio and tv! Me and Tilly were taken into the president of the islands hut, and sat down on their tinyy floor with him, his wife and small daughter, (who was soo cute).

Our guide told us that these local people prefer not to go to hospital when they´re ill, but instead choose to go to an Andean Priest. The Priest gets the patient to lie on a bed, then places a ´cuy´ (guinea pig) on their chest for 25 minutes. When they remove the cuy, they take it to another room, cut it open and inside it is the disease of the patient........ Crazy times!!

Huacachina

Huacachina should be paradise, but to be honest  it´s really not. Firstly, the lagoon is more like a pond, I think the colour has definately enhanced in all the photos, it is actuiallywuite like Hampstead ponds- but less clean. It is beautiful here however, the sand dunes go on forever  like in Sex and the City 2, and all the shops and restaurants, which are all may I add exstortionately expensive, face in to the "lagoon".

Yesterday, we arrived around lunch time and were told nearly every hostel in town was booked up except the one we end up staying in, where buggy/ sandboarding tours are cumpulsory and included  in the price.
Around 5 we went sand boarding and left  in this crazy looking buggy. At several points  in the trip we thought we were actually going to die. The man who was driving was a complete nutter... not only was he elderly but he nearly crashed the buggy and almost ran over some children on the way to the dunes. He also liked to drive on the wrong side of the road.

He would drive full speed over the top of dunes and then down the bottom accelerating...

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But the sandboarding was really fun, especially with the sun setting over the dunes. Tilly tried to stand up but fell over lots of times, perhaps slightly too overexpectant of her sandboarding skills... on the otherhand, I didn´t realise you had to put your feet down to brake, so went flying down soo fast it was crazy.

On the road again

Legs aching and sleep levels significantly low, we survived a 16hour overnight bus ride to Nasca where we have just settled into 'WalkOn Inn' hostel. They have a pool!! It's quite cold but still, luxuries like that get you excited when you've been away for so long...

Just a quick post to say how beautiful the scenary was travelling from Cuzco to Nasca through the scorching desert. The sky is the brightest, clearest blue, and the surrounding mountains and sand dunes are dusky orange, red and brown. There are even cactuses, just to add to the movie effect. The long winding roads look kind of scary but sooo fun to drive down. Proper Thelma and Louise moment.

We're taking a well deserved day of relaxation today, and will see the Nasca lines tomorrow, although we won't be taking a flight as it is quite expensive for a trip which lasts around 15minutes and is guaranteed to make you vomit if you have eaten anything prior... So we're doing the cheapo option and climbing a tower which allows you to see a few but not all of the famous lines...

Inca Trail

We are officially back alive, although Phoebe insists she has a very sore achilles tendon.
It was probably the hardest thing both of us have ever done, as mostly it consisted of walking up a mountain- on winding staircases, and then down again in the rain. It was however a worthwhile experience, as the scenery was amazing and the people were lovely. We are completely tired and  I think our clothes might be unfit for the launderette, as we were hiking all day with no shower.

Day one:
On the first day we got up at 6, and then ate loads of breakfast (because it was free and we have to get our moneys worth. Next we got into a minibus and went to a village which is sponsored by the company we booked the trail with (Gap adventures). They support this village making sure they continue their way of life using traditional processes without the interference of globalisation. Phoebe bought a poncho... crazy times....

After the village we moved on to an Inca site called Pisac, which mainly consists of agricultural terraces and a religious sector, located not far into the Sacred Valley.

We stayed the night  in a place called Ollantaytambo which has another Inca site (and guess what there are a lot more to come). In case you didnt know, an Inca site is basically just walls, interesting walls but still walls. But there are different walls... pre inca walls... granite walls... lots of lovely walls.

Day Two:
This was day one of the actual Inca trail, with lots of walking and sweating. This day wasn't too hard as it was more of a warm up to get us acclimatised but still it was a bit of a shock, as neither of us had done any real exercise in a long time. We treked for around six hours but it was mostly flat and nothing compared to what was to come...

Day Three:
Possibly the worst day of my life. Literally. Actual hell. It was a little like the punishment of Sisyphus (eternal pushing of a boulder up a hill and then watching it roll back down), except unfortunately Phoebe was Sisyphus and I was the boulder.

This hill was imense in fact to get up to the killer hill you had to walk up something which was basically a mountain for two hours. Oh and I forgot to mention we didn't have trekking poles as we were too cheap to pay to hire them. At the top of the mountain is 'Dead woman's pass', at 4200metres (or as our guide liked to call it 'Gringo killer'), the peak forms the shape of a nipple which made the experience all the more surreal and emotionally traumatic.

And then of course what comes up must come down... The down part was wet, and the Inca's really couldnt get enough of stairs. They couldnt even make nice straight ones. However, on a postive note Phoebe discovered her true talent. Down hill hiking.

Day Four:
More Inca ruins and a lot more rain.

Day Five:
We woke up at 3 in the morning becasue there is only allowed to be 500 people inside Machu Picchu at once because of crowding issues, this means that it is a race to be first to get throught the gate which opens at 5.30, and even then it was a 2 hour hike in the rain to get to the Sun gate which is where you finally get a view of the famous site. Obviously they weren't going to make it easy... For one, our guide was playing cringey 80's music which is not what you want to hear at 4 in the morning waiting in the pitch black rain for a kiosk to open in a hour and a halfs time. But, we were the first group in line... and Phoebe was the second person to reach the Sun gate.

On top of that those fun loving Inca's added monkey steps (virtical climb more like) in the forest just to make our journey more pleasant and to make us wetter and considerably more dirty, (I'm sorry mum for not brushing my hair in the photos... it wouldn't have made a difference anyway.)
When we finally reached the top it was really cloudy as we were in a cloud forest so we couldn't really see that much of MP at that point anyway but that didn't stop it being beautiful.

During the day the sun came up and it was quite hot. Machu Picchu is beautiful, and it is incredible that the Spanish found it necessary to destroy such an interesting and unthreatening civillisation. It was discovered by a man called Hiram Bingham (only an american would call their child Hiram), who found it by surprise when a little boy led him there, as it was a site long known by the local people. Since then a great deal of it has been re-built with the rocks that had fallen and it is now a MASSIVE tourist hot spot filled with half of Japan and China, donned in Machu Picchu hats with attatched mosquito nets, gloves, face masks and all. There are also a lot of people like my dad skulking around with cameras desperately fighting to get the best picture- or most of the time picture of someone else taking a picture (arty). But it was amazing, so you can completely understand why people go. Oh and they use llamas to cut the grass (llamowers) and sometimes the llamas just stand in the middle of walkways creating havok with terrified old ladies and also making substancial traffic jams.

Cusco

SOoo, we start the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu in 2 days... Sadly Gaby has abandoned us to go to Bolivia as she has less time than us and wants to see as much as she can before going to Central America in a month...

We´ve been to lots of Cathedrals (there are 7 just in Cusco), museums and markets.

Today we hiked for an hour in the baking heat to a White Christ at the top of a mountain overlooking the whole of Cusco. It was so hard and you´ll see by the pictures that our clothing was not perhaps the appropriate hiking attire! The views were amazing and we were so lucky to have done it on such a sunny day.

Tilly´s been playing with llamas and alpaccas whenever she can... I wouldn´t be suprised if she stuffed one into her backpack. We actually tried Milenesa de Alpacca the other day at our hostel. It was so taasty! And we spoke to some Canadians about Argentina and all the meat and wine we´ll be eating! Mmmmm

The sun´ll come out tomorrowww

Just a bit about Mancora...... the sun was so hot as we were so near the equator and apparently the position of the Earth´s axis is at the closest to the sun it´s been in however many years; so we all got burnt, me and Gaby included.... (Tilly always burns). We bought suncream, but a day late so the damage was already done!

Anyway, Mancora was great. We surfed and stood up a few times but the waves were so high- because of the recent tsunami and position of the moon, we hear. Gaby and I went swimming at one point and what was a nice swim suddenly changed when we realised that we were needing to tread water really close to the shore, and weren´t going anywhere even whilst trying to swim back. Luckily, an Australian man shouted to us that we were caught in a riptide and had to swim sideways to be free. Scary times as we were later told by an American that a guy he was travelling with had witnessed another person die further down the coast by drowning in a riptide!
Mancora´s quite a party town, especially at Loki where we stayed, however it was a nice break from busy city travelling and we made lots of friends (and created lots of gossip..)

Just thought I´d mention how hot it was in Mancora, because in Cusco now it is freeeeezing. We´ve all got kitted out in Gringo alpaca jumpers and thick bed socks to keep us warm at such high altitude, around 3,400m!

Lima to Cusco

We were only in Lima for a night because it is so massive, and really quite like every other city in the world. However we did have time to meet up with a Canadian we met in Mancora, and we tried Pisco sours, which are like strange mixture of Pisco (a white grape brandy), egg white and lemon. Other than that not much really happened except we sold out again, we went to Starbucks and got frappichinos.

Ok. So now we are in Cusco and have spent all our time shopping eating and sleeping.Oh and a bit of drinking (but only coca cola of course). And maybe some Inca Cola which is bright yellow and tastes like a mixture between irnbru and barroca. We tried cocoa leaves, which your meant to chew and then leave under your gums, and are supposed to have a caffeine like effect, however if you cover them in alkaline apparently thay become slightly phychotic. Anyway, we´ve been here about three days so far and  I managed to have an epic game of Peruvian monopoly with some Norweigians... I came second but  I suspect there was some cheating going on. They were also horrified with the fact that I couldn´t point Norway out on a map.

It has been along time since any of us have washed our clothes, and they have begun to feel like second skins... slightly smelly second skins, although Phoebe wants to buy some lynx (or axe as it is called here) to cover it up. I told her just to take a shower but she wouldnt listen....

So we don´t start Macchu Picchu untl the 12th and we have lots of free time. To be continued.............