Peru: The Build up to the Inca Trail

Only one sleep until another highlight of our trip!!!

Tomorrow morning at 5.45am we meet to go on the Inca Trail... we had a briefing tonight at 7pm and our group seems like a pretty sweet bunch - Aussies and Americans and one Peruvian.

Rodney and I chose not to get porters (they carry 9kg each and charge about US $120 I think.... not entirely sure, but we figured we could handle for how much it was gonna cost, the trip is expensive enough as it is!!!). Hopefully this is something we won´t regret, so I am about to finish packing LIGHT for 4 days, after I write this. It certainly won´t be a fashion show, will probably be having to don the same clothes most days!!!

The Inca Trail is 4 days and 3 nights, until we get to Machu Picchu. We have opted to stay a 4th night at a place called Aguas Caliente (direct translation, Hot Water) where there are hot springs and a hostel to relax at. So will be back to civilisation (and internet) on 25th (which is NZ 26th).

A quick run down of what we have been doing since last week... after climbing Chuchani we went to Cabonaconde with our two UK friends Karen and Tom where we stayed two nights at an awesome hostel with a restaurant attached, meaning a few drinks and laughs! This is the base town for the Colca Canyon which is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world (deeper than the Grand Canyon) at approx 3 and a half kms deep. The deepest canyon is not far from here, but Colca is much more commerical and touristy (and accessible!).

The walk down to the canyon is 2 hours down and a hard 4 hour slog back. Unfortunately I got the worst blister (which turned into a wound) during Chuchani which has prevented me from wearing shoes for the whole last week, so couldn´t do the canyon walk as it required proper shoes :( Went down to the viewing point though, so have some good piccies.

After the Canyon, we caught a bus to Cuzco, the base town for the Inca Trail where we have been for the last 3 nights relaxing. They tell people to come here for 2-3 days prior to doing the trail to acclimatise, but we are WELL acclimatised, so were here sightseeing mostly. The highest point of the Inca Trail is 4200m.

Yesterday we went to the Sacred Valley and checked out some Inca ruins and learnt the most cultural stuff in one day than we have the whole time since we´ve been here! The guide spoke very good english. Turns out the Incas only reined for 150 years (approx) until 1530 (approx) when the spaniards came and took over, so they got lots achieved in that time! It is amazing to see the HUGE rocks that they have carted for kilometres to get to the site they are at today. It would have taken hundreds of people to drag them! Many of the buildings in and around Cuzco still have the original Inca foundations which I noticed more so after having been on this tour!! There is your history lesson for the day....

Anyhow, must get an early night, unfortunately our hostel is a bit noisy and we have a large Iraseli group staying here who had a small gathering outside our room last night in the corridor, so sleep is even more important tonight! Also, you don´t sleep very well at high altitudes, so must get some zzzzzz´s while I can!!

Congrats to the Red Beach surf boat boys for getting 3rd in the long course in Gizzy, great news, wish we were there cheering you on!!

We will be back online in 5-6 days, so until then, take care of yourselves and watch this space!!

Much love
Mrs D X

Conquering my Everest: Mt Chuchani, Peru

Arequipa is a gorgeous city, this is where we are now. The centre of town is gorgeous and has that colonial spanish feel about it with a huge cathedral. It is also the town where you base yourself for some serious mountain climbing....

Rodreigo had been doing some research before we left NZ, and on his list of ´things to do´ he really wanted to climb Misti mountain, which is 5800m high. So we went to the tour companies to ask around..... and the lady from Colca Trek told us that Mt Chuchani was possibly easier (not as steep), but at a higher altitude of 6075m could be harder, depending on how altitude affects you.... of course she hadn't climbed it, and the way she was talking, it sounded like something we could do. And I figured, with a pack full of chocolate and energy drinks it would probably be rather enjoyable...!!! So we decided to do it, and Friday 13th, which also happened to be a full moon we committed to doing possibly one of the craziest things I have ever done......

Sooooo to set the scene...

Climbing Mt Chuchani - 6075m summit.
Thursday 12th March
Full Moon
Pick up from agency - 11pm
Drive to base, arrive at 2am
Start walking on Friday 13th March at 2.15am....
Walk will be approx 9km each way, if we make it all the way.

We were wrapped up super warm in our jackets, ski pants, real hiking boots and had lots of lovely accessories, such as our two walking sticks, crampons (thing spiky things you strap to your shoes to give you more grip) and ice axes strapped to our packs. What we didnt know is that we werent just doing another hike or tramp, we were doing proper serious real MOUNTAIN CLIMBING. Like Everest styles, just not as high or obviously as serious.

There was no snow for the first part, and yes the height at 5000 plus had us gasping for breath right from the start. We were zig zagging up the first peak which took us a couple of hours and then the hard parts started. To cut a really long story short, the hard parts where were there was snow, and we were walking along narrow ledges with scary drop offs having to use our ice axes to ensure we didnt fall down the mountain to support ourselves!! Daile really did not like this part, and there were two of these sections, which lasted a good couple of hours each.

At 5900m, after about 9 hours of climbing (all uphill) we wondered about turning back. Now neither of us give up easily, but we still had a mammoth walk back, and we wanted to do it safely as we were getting quite tired. Our guide, Angel, had a wee pep talk with us and told us that we should do it. He thought we were fit enough and weren`t too tired. As long as our legs weren´t too sore he wanted us to do it. SO WE DID!!!!!!!! We made it to the summit!!!!! It was super seriously hard, but the problem was, we had to go ALL the way back again!

It took us 10 hours to get there and 5 hours back, and we didnt like going back one bit. We were exhausted beyond exhaustion, and definitely pushed our limits further than I ever have before. We are now mountain climbers, although we have decided that is our first and last mountain we will climb...

A word of warning though to anyone who is considering climbing a mountain this high..... don´t!!! LOL! Ok do but get in lots of mountain climbing practise first, on smaller mountains....

We slept like babies that night, and both got a solid 12 hours sleep.

We did it, we conquered OUR Everest!!!!!!

Bolivia: The Worlds Most Dangerous Road

Well where do I start???

We have done so much since we last wrote, but will try not to bore you all as I fill you in on the goss!!

Right now, we are in Peru, crossed the Peru-Bolivia border on 10th March, our 1 month travel anniversary!! 3 countries down, 3 to go! We have been going pretty hard, never a dull moment, but have decided to take a chill pill when we get onto the Peruvian coast and relax on a beach for 5 days or so. Think we have earnt it!

So anyway, since we last wrote.... we left La Paz, which we both really enjoyed as a city. Daile was facinated in how the women dress, and took lots of sneaky photos of the many many ladies in traditional dress with their bowler hats... and thought that perhaps it might inspire Kelly Donovan´s first fashion collection?? Also the fact that it is 3800m high, meant that the view from almost anywhere was amazing as there are buildings perched on every space on the hillside! Part of the enjoyment of La Paz is that we made some friends, Brett and Heather from Melbourne, Cara from USA, Justine and Becs from UK, so on and off we were hanging with this group having lovely CHEAP meals (25 Bolivianos each for a 3 course set meal). NZD $1 is about 3 and a half Bolivianos, so obviously we were VERY well fed and watered!

While in La Paz, we signed up to do THE WORLD´s MOST DANGEROUS ROAD, downhill mountain biking! The company was a NZ company called Gravity and comes HIGHLY recommended from us both if any of you are ever tempted to do something so silly! So for those that dont know, the road has this name because it has the most annual deaths on it. Reason being, it is the width of one lane, and is a 2 way road, and it had sheer drop offs, and many vehicles literally do ´drop off´the side. On our way there in the bus, we saw a sign which said ´42 deaths this year´and it was only March 4th!!

So.... onto the ride itself! Rodney was a pro - the guide invited him to go biking with him and the guides that weekend, he was right behind the guide the whole time! We had strict instructions NOT to look at the scenery while we were riding, or our bikes would go there and we would be goners. We were also told many stories of people slamming on the brakes too hard, going over the handle bars and doing serious damage to their jaws. Apparently MOST tours they have an accident, which was not great news as we prepared to start the ride! We were then told that most of the people who do have accidents usually have cocaine in their system (they get tested in hospital) or are typically the Irish who stay out until all hours, get a couple hours sleep, and then attempt the bike ride! Duh!!! To make matters worse, after hearing all of this, we had to ride on the left hand side of the road, which is the cliff side! I dunno about Rodney´s but my heart was beating so loud I could hear it half the time and the adrenaline was pumping hard!

The ride itself was amazing! We got tips along the way on how to ride each section, and my confidence grew and I got faster and better, and was quite impressed with my efforts by the end of the day. It was a real sense of achievement finishing, and this is another highlight of our trip for sure! Even though I dont normally drink better, the free beer at the end was gone in seconds!

We finished at an animal refuge which the Mt bike company have an affiliation with, had a hot shower, a feed and then got to check out all the animals, mostly monkeys! I was busy playing with the cutest baby monkey and then I thought ¨DUH, rabies!¨and quickly stopped. Rodney then assured me that he saw a sign saying all of the animals are vaccinated, but you never can be sure, so that was the end of that!!

That night, we stayed at a cute town called Corioco, which is only about 1200m above sea level so was semi tropical which was so so nice! Up in altitude it has probably been an average of 15 degrees, so it was nice to get some sun and wear summer clothes again! We stayed there for two days with Brett and Heather our Aussie friends (they did bike ride with us), at a hostel with a pool and a restaurant and bar, and had an awesome time drinking cervezas and vino tintos! (beer and red wine!)

After a lovely two days of good company and chilling out, nursing any sore muscles from the Mt Bike ride, it was time to move on, so we said goodbye to Heather and Brett and caught a bus to Copacobana, which is a lakeside town, by Lake Titicaca, one of the worlds highest navigable lakes, also at 3800m. They supposidly have one of the biggest breeds of trout that you can catch (Trucha in español) but the ones we saw at the markets were not overly big! People outside restaurants were constantly cat calling ¨Trucha, Trucha¨trying to entice you into their restaurants. We were not tempted, gotta be careful what you eat around here, and neither of us are really trout fans to be honest! Copacobana produced our cheapest accommodation to date, at 50 Bolivianos total for a matromonial room (a queen sided bed with a bathroom), which if you do the conversion is probably only about $15 NZD give or take a few dollars! Score!

After two nights here, we decided to tackle another challenge (our adventurous feet were getting itchy again!) so decided to do the highly recommended 18km walk to the end of the pennisula where you can get a ride to Isla del Sol on a local´s boat for a small fee when you get to the end. Yes the scenery was lovely, but this walk was hilly and at over 4000m was tough!! After an exhausting walk, we did negotiate a boat ride with a local, but he ripped us off hard (its not like we had many options) for our 10min boat ride and charged us 70 Bolivanos, more than our accommodation!!! We then had to walk some more to the nearest town on Isla Del Sol, so all in all we comfortably walked a half marathon that day and were rather tired!!

We bought a 2L bottle of Coke, sat down in the sun, and Daile invited a UK couple over to share our much deserved drink and this is where we met Karen and Tom who we have been hanging out with for the last week. Isla Del Sol was lovely, and again we had good company to spend the night with. Caught the boat the next morning, and decided to go all the way to Arequipa in Peru which consisted of 2 bus rides, 3 hours to Puno, and then another 7 to Arequipa. You would think we like long bus rides or something!!!

Next up, all about Arequipa, Peru and our mountain climbing efforts.... Chau for now!

D X

Bolivian highlights including Salar de Uyuni

Well we have had a rather adventurous last week, and I think our trip has picked up a notch in terms of activity and excitement!

Chile was nice and a great way to ease into Sth America, but now that we have our 'travel legs' and are starting to meet new people and do unique experiences we are loving it even more!!!

San Pedro de Atacama was a very cool place and we loved the desert. I could have easily stayed there for more days, but we have to keep moving! The bike ride through the canyon was breathtaking (both literally because of the altitude and because of the scenery!)

The Valley of the Moon tour was cool with very unique scenery of large sand mountains and dunes...

We also had a very cool hostel that we found which had a mint kitchen so we cooked up a few feeds, including good ol scrambled eggs! We stumbled across a blender which had Daile in a frenzy wanting to make a fruit smoothie, which tasted awesome, but caused a sore belly for 2 to 3 days! Couldn't hack it after so little fruit for so long!!

Anyway moving on from the food cos I don't want to bore anyone senseless... Thursday morning was the beginning of an adventure we were very much looking foward to! A 3 day 4WD trip from San Pedro to Uyuni in Bolivia. It is so hard to describe how amazing this tour was! Day one was full of lots of Lagoons - a white lagoon, green lagoon, and red lagoon (and they really were these colours!!!) We saw our first flamingos (so pretty!) and geysers (sorta like the ones in Rotorua with no fences or anything!).

We topped 5000m that day and slept at 4200m, and there were lots of very big headaches amongst the group and people even vomitting! Rodney and I were very lucky, he got a pretty bad headache, but I was rather stoked with myself, I just felt a bit tired...

Day two was mostly making up the miles... and I am not sure if I should tell you this next part or not.... as we were driving along we saw some people waving us down (from another company) to find that they had rolled their 4WD. 3 people were injured, one with a broken arm, another with a sore back and ribs and another with a munted arm. It was not nice for those in that car and our first aid skills were not required as everything was under control by the time they got there, but we squeezed people into our car to get them to the next hostel while the injured got taken to hospital. This reinforced our decision that we are willing to pay a bit more money for the highly recommended companies (we did our research before we booked). Put a bit of a downer on the day, but at least no one got seriously injured. (I hope this doesn't make anyone worry about us!!!) FYI our company was called Estrellar del sur, and were very good, safe and fed us really well!

Day three was the highlight of the trip. The Salar de Uyuni Salt flats. 30 years ago this was a salt lake, but has since dried up and is now the largest salt flat in the world at 12,000 sq metres. It was unlike anything we have ever seen and was AMAZING!! We took some pretty cool pics, (sorry to tease you about those when we havent uploaded any yet). I can't describe in words how facinating the 360 degree views are. White salt on the ground, which meets the horizon all around. And it created amazing reflections of the clouds in the sky. A HUGE highlight for us!!! We also saw giant cactus which was over 1000 years old. They were massive, like 3 or 4 Rodney's high!! (aka 6 to 7 mtrs).

We then arrived in Uyuni which is a hole... and booked a bus to get out of there immediately. As it is rainy season we were told that the road was very wet, and there was a chance the bus may not go. We were also told that we would get 3 toilet stops over the 11 hours. Weeeeellll the bus did leave but the toilet stops were few and far between! The bus was an epic journey to say the least... The road was so rough it´s difficult to describe!!! We could feel our kidneys bouncing around in our guts which was not overly comfortable. More than once, we got bounced about 30 cm off our seats so we were totally airborne and all this in pitch black darkness. The aisle and drivers cabin where filled with locals, sleeping on the floor! Parts of the road had been washed out and after a few hours, we started to understand why they were hesitant to leave... We had to forge a number of rivers where the drivers lacky had to walk through first to make sure we could get across in our off road bus with around 1 and a half meters of ground clearance!!!! Was a few very dodgy moments where we thought we might roll it.... At 3 am (that is 7 hours folks!) we got our first bathroom stop much to everyones relief! As you can imagine, the constant jolting and bouncing were not helping!!! Rodney jumped off the bus straight into a knee deep puddle! Anyway, we eventually made it to La Paz some 14 hours later!!! Bus ride would have been quite fun if there was a bathroom on board and no people sleeping everywhere there was a bit of floor space!!! We were travelling with an Aussie couple we met and a cool chick from the US which made it more comfortable, having safety in numbers!

La Paz is pretty sweet. Got a nice place too stay and are spending some time with people we meet on the tour which is great. Food so far has been awesome and super cheap. 3 course meals, are only NZ$5 each!! Booked in our bike ride down the "Worlds Most Dangerous Road" for this Wednesday which sounds awesome and we are really looking forward to that. See http://www.gravitybolivia.com/ to read about it. Pic at the start of this post is a teaser for you from the website.

Had planned on catching a local football game but nothing on for a week so will have to wait for Bogata or Rio. Had planned a tour of the San Paedro prison but apparently a little girl living in the prison got killed a few days ago so theres a bit of clamp down at the moment so thats a no go unfortunately. Gonna do a bus tour of the city tomorrow and then the bike tour the next day. Gonna spend a night or 2 in Corioco which is at the end of the bike tour and then onto Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. Gonna spend a few days around there and do a walk for Copacabana to the end of the peninsula and then catch a boat over to Isla Del Sol for a couple days and then onto Puna and Cusco for the Machu Pichu trip.

So that is us for now!! Having an awesome time, living the dream completely! We think of you all lots and wonder how you all are! Thanks to those who have been emailing us and keeping us up to date, its great to hear the local goss!

Chau from La Paz, the highest capital city in the world!
xo