Hola otra vez Chicos!!!!!!

 

For those of you following this little serial we left our heros in the bowels of Lima Peru.........

 

So there we were, shell shocked from jungle ayauasca and smack dab in the middle of what is supposed to be one of the most dangerous cities in South America. On the first day we poked our heads cautiously out of our hostal to discover.........one of the cleanest and most beautiful South American cities yet. The colonial architecture was amazing, and the city was very clean! (I´m sure that those of you who have experienced the third world you will recognize the novelty of urban cleanliness) There were a lot of machine gun toting coppers and more than a few crowd control type riot police with vicious looking dogs but we didn´t have even the slightest problem. In Lima we checked out the Catacombs under the Monestario De San Francisco where they have the remains of 70 000 people (that´s a lot of bones) and later explored the secret underground cells and torture rooms at the centre of the South American Spanish Inquisition (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition....) . Inexplicably we took no photos of the Inquisition chambers.

From Lima we took the overnight bus to Nasca, home of the famous Nasca lines, desert geographic shapes and figures built in the desert some 1500 years ago by the ancient Nasca people. No one really knows why they built them but the theories range from worshiping rain gods whom they depended on to alien runways built by extraterrestrials. We of course favor the latter interpretation. The lines are so huge that they can´t be appreciated from the ground (some of the lines are up to 10km long!!) so we took a 45 min flight in a 4 seater plane with a guy who looked like he had slept in his pilot uniform. He, at least, did have a ID that said ¨PILOT¨ so we were reassured. The flight turned out to be incredible and the lines were great. We saw designs of Monkeys, Hummingbirds, Whales, other animals and many, many geometric shapes, fantastic. Nasca had a couple of other cool sights as well. The Nasca people had built hundreds of kms of irrigation canals to be able to farm the desert and a large portion are still in use today so we headed down for a look and a drink. Also there was a cemetary that was both amazing and really sad because the entire area, more than 300 graves, had been looted. The amazing thing is that because the surrounding area is so dry, the unwanted items (cotton that was wrapped around the bodies, pieces of 1000 year old textiles, broken pottery and bleached white bones) don´t decompose and just litter the desert like it´s a human garbage dump. There were some really well preserved graves however and some effort is being made now to preserve what is left.

From Nasca we headed blindly to Abancay in the Andes because it seemed like the closest city to a little known Incan site called Choquequirau that we were  determined to try to get to. When we arrived no one in the little pueblo knew anything about getting to the site but while wandering around the market one day we heard ¨Hey, do you speak english?¨ said in quite an incredulous voice. It turns out that the speakers were a fantastic missionary family from Minnesota in the USA. Jeff and Stacey Krohn and their 3 boys Brandon, Jon and Nathan were a fantastic help lending us camping equipment and even organizing their work schedual to take a trip to the little village that we needed to get to in order to hire a guide and a mule for the trek. On the way to Cachora (the little pueblo that is the starting point for the trek) we stopped at a 13000ft pass to indulge Jeff with a little high altitude golf and smacked a few balls around ourselves (good fun) and later they took us to another Inca site called Sawite where there is an amazing ceremonial rock carved to represent the entire Incan empire at it´s height that has 3 resevoirs carved into it. One for Chicha (corn beer), one for water and one for blood. When you poured one of the liquids into the resevoirs the channels it chose to run off the rock helped to divine the future, wild!! To top it off the whole thing had been covered with a giant tupperware lid of pure gold which of course was taken by the friendly Spanish Conquistadors in 1532.

In Cachora we hired a quide (Pedro) and a mule (Tomasa) for whom we paid the ridiculously cheap price of 12 dollars a day. Early the next morning we headed off covering 7200 vertical meters (not a typo) and  33km in 4 days. The path went from the village, up to the lip of Apurimac canyon, down 1500m to the river and then climbed up to the site 1550m above on the other side before returning on the same path: stupid, stupid Incas. It was smart in one way though because the Spanish never found Choquequirau. Choquequirau or ¨Cradle of Gold¨ was magic, nestled in a saddle between 2 peaks at about 2850m. Each morning it is shrouded in mist and the site itself is amazing with temples and incredible stonework. One of the highlights was the agricultural terracing  below the site which was decorated with life sized stone llamas made of pure white quartz. The best part of the whole thing was that we were the only people to visit that day and the site quardian spent 5 1/2 hours showing us every nook and crannie of the site It was great. Back in Abancay after the hike we spent a couple of days with our new friends the Krohns cleaning up and enjoying real home cooking (if you meet Stacey try her cookies!) before heading back to tourist land in Cusco.

Cusco was an eye opener. Off the bus we were immediately surrounded by blond heads and a dozen different languages. Everybody spoke english if you wanted (which was kinda nice). The city however was beautiful with the entire colonial centre being 15th and 16th century cathedrels ,churches and palaces built on the foundations of Inca palaces. The surrounding hillsides are littered with Inca forts and ruins and we spent a day there riding around exploring. In Cusco we met up with our French jungle buddy, David (how closely have you been paying attention?) and a new arrival to SA his chickita Anne-Claire. With the frenchy to non frenchy ratio thus evened up we headed out to tackle Machu Piccu .

Cusco´s many tourists mean tourist prices so it´s really expensive for backpacker types like us but we have to say that soft white guy sized beds and international cuisine was a nice change. So the four of us taxied and bused as far as we could before we were obliged to take the fascist Perurail train to Aguas Calientes (Hot Waters) that is the town nearest Machu Picchu. At 0500 the next morning we (Frenchies and Jay because Cheryl had hurt her knees climbing around the ergonomically challenging Incan ruins of the past couple of weeks) started out on the climb to the citadel and after a good hour we met Cheryl at the gate before entering the city. Machu Picchu is rightfully one of the premier tourist attractions in the world! The ruins are incredibly intact and the Incan stonework is both beautiful and perfectly constructed! We saw all the site with a guide then did another climb to Wayñu Picchu (the military strongpoint of Machu Picchu) that gave us breathtaking views of the city. We spent the whole day there just wandering around before climbing down to soak our sore bodies in the hot waters of the Aguas Calientes thermal pools.

After the trip back to Cusco we said ¨au revoir¨ to our French amigos and headed to Arequipa, the so called ¨white city¨ where all of the colonial architecture is made out of pure white volcanic rock. Here we checked out an amazing 15th century convent, Monesterio Santa Catalina, that is actually a city in itself that was cloistered for over 250 years before being opened to the public. We also saw ¨Juanita¨ the Ice Maiden. Juanita is a frozen Incan sacrifice found at 6200m who was an offering to the Ampatu mountain. She was only found in 1995. Some of you might remember her because Nat. Geographic did a program on her. She is incredibly well preserved and they even know what she ate as her ceremonial last meal. We got to view here encased in ice in a transparent freezer, cool. No pun intende...

After hanging out a couple of days in Arequipa for some R+R and catching up with our travel buddy from Ecuador, Michael (he´s American but we like him anyway) and his Peruvian girlfriend Evelie, we headed into the Colca Canyon. It´s a canyon that´s twice the size of the Grand Canyon in the USA and that has massive areas of Incan agricultural terracing that is still in use today and is one of the best places in the world to view the Andean Condor. The Condors are amazing and they put on quite a show riding the thermals all around us for an hoiur and a half, fantastic!! 

 

After Colca we headed to the shores of Lake Titicaca and crossed into Bolivia.

 

That´s another adventure yet to unfold. We have however been told there is a place in Bolivia where you can buy dynamite, light it and throw it out into the desert just for kicks.....can´t wait.

 

Later Muchachos

 

Us