Cusco

On Monday after all festivities of Inti Raymi, I decided to see some of the sites in Cusco itself. I spent the morning walking around the historical centre of San Blas which had many nice little cafes. It was interesting to see many of the buildings had the first metre or two of the walls still the original Inca masonary work, with the top of the buildings being rebuilt.
The afternoon was spend catching up on some of the work that had been piling up for the last few weeks, had my Inca Trail trek briefing, and then I checked out the local nightlife that cranks 7 nights a week. We found a few good salsa clubs and enjoyed a few free drinks.
Tuesday I visited the premier museum in town, the Convent of St. Domingo, Qorikacha. This had some old Inca ruins that had been excavated, and plenty of religious art works. I then visisted the famous 12 sided stone that the Incas had carved out to use in their constructions. The precision of the Inca masonary work is quite remarkable, with no mortar being used the stones fitted exactly together. I also visited the local cathedral and some churches which were interesting enough, along with the Museum of Religious Art.
By Wednesday it was time to get out of town. The tours to the sacred valley were are rip off, so I jumped on a local bus to Pisaq. Looming over the town were several large sets of Inca ruins, so I caught a taxi up to the top one. The first site was quite interesting with several houses perched on the ridge of the hill. I walked around to some Inca fountains were there were several tour groups. The tour groups then headed right past the bottom of the next set of ruins. I decided to walk into the ruins which consisted of a whole town on the side of a very steep hill. It felt like you were right back in Inca times wondering up small alleys and visiting into different houses.
I continued on to the other 2 sets of ruins which were great, and then walked down through the terraces into the town of Pisaq. I grabbed an almuezo (local set lunch) then caught the bus along the sacred valley to Orubamba, then changed into a combi van with 20 other people for the final trip to Ollantaytambo. Here there was another huge Inca ruins, with a set of terraces going right up the mountain. All the school children were there practicing their Inca singing, dancing and fighting in preparation for performance for a local festival on Friday.
Further around from the ruins were the some aqueducts built by the Incas. These relied on extremely precise stone work with chanels carved into the stones to make fountains and water the fields. As it was getting dark I got the combi and bus back to Cusco.
Thursday I took another bus out to the ruins of Tambomachay on the road to Pisaq. These were pretty small so I walked 5 minutes to the next set of ruins Puca Pucara which were more impressive. Then I headed through a few farmer's fields to the ruins of Q'enqo. This is a huge rock with unusual carvings and tunnels built through it, and supposedly used for sacrificing llamas and some humans. From here I went back to Cusco, but visitied Saqsayhuaman on the way to see it without the thousands of people.
In the evening there was a big stage setup in the Plaza de Armas for a battle of the bands contest, but I didn't get to see much of the show as I was busy getting all my things together in preparation for the Inca Trail trek tomorrow.

Inti Raymi

I arrived to Cusco just in time for the biggest Inca festival of the year. Inti Raymi (Fiesta del Sol, or Festival of the Sun) is celebrated on the winter solstice each year and everyone comes from all over the world for the party.

My bus arrived on Saturday afternoon, so I checked into the Loki Hostel (yes, back at party central) and headed down to the Plaza de Armas where the warm up parade was already well underway. Groups of musicians and dancers were all dressed up in their traditional costumes. Many of the groups had bands playing the wind pipes and big drums, with the troups of dancing girls doing some pretty energetic traditional dance moves. Each group had anywhere between 30 and 100 people, and since the parade was already up to group 47 I thought it must be almost finished. Yet they kept coming. By group 75 I was getting freezing and had to call past the hotel to grab the beanies They came up the main street, did a lap of the Plaza de Armas past the local politicians and then all piled into the second square. This is where the party started so I headed uickly back here to join in. Plenty of old ladies had turned up with crates of beer, and with all the musicians busting out some tunes and the dancing girls looking for dancing partners, a great night was had. Needless to say my traditional peruvian dance moves have progressed from nothing to pretty good. At about 2am I called past the main plaza again, and was amazed to see the parade still in full swing. The local polititians were showing the effects of all the drinks and dancing around on their podium, but the musicians and dancers (now up to group 218) were still going strong.
The next day was the actual Inti Raymi festival, so I joined everyone else and walked up to the Inca ruins of Saqsawaman (or ´sexy women´ for us english speakers). Everyone was piled in on the hills surrounding the parade ground between the ruins, so I squeezed in and found a tiny bit of rock to park on from where I could see a bit of the festivities. At 1pm a procession of people all dressed up as Inca warriors arrived from their parade through town. They streamed out from between all the ruins, with the Inca king chilling out on a big pile of rocks in the centre, the 4 Inca armies marched out. They were followed by groups of dancers. After a few hours of different dancers and people moving around the field they decided to sacrifice a llama before a bit more dancing. The whole event was pretty slow and could have taken 20 minutes instead of 4 hours. The tour groups that had front row seats must have agreed and just 10 minutes before the show was over they all walked off through the middle of the performance taking some photos as they went. Everyone else then decided they wanted to take close up photos too, and within a few minutes the whole place was inundated with thousands of locals and tourists.

A few of the Inca armies still marched around the parade ground, while we checked out the ruins and then headed back to Cusco.

Lake Titicaca

Monday morning I took the bus over to Copacabana on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca. It was a nice little town so I checked out the big white church that dominated the main plaza. It was more impressive outside than inside. Next was a quick trek up the Cerro Calvario just to the north of town. The hill has some religious monuments on the top and is used by locals for their pilgrimages, placing rocks at all the crosses on the way up. It proved to be more popular with the tourists who didn´t have to carry rocks up the hill, so they flocked up there to see the sun set over the lake.
The next morning I packed my bags and set of on the 17km trek along the peninsula from Copacobana to the small village of Yampupata. This was a great walk passing through little villages. The locals here didn´t meet many tourists and all wanted to have a chat. Once I reached Yampupata I hired a little boat and a driver to take me across to Isla del Sol. The island is popular since it has several Inca ruins.
The boat dropped me off at the base of the Inca stairs which went straight up the hill to the small village of Yumani. I settled in to a hostel at the top of the ridge, with a great view out one side to Bolivia and the snow capped peaks of the Cordillera Real, and on the other side across the lake to Peru. After relaxing in the sun and enjoying the view I walked down to the main ruins on the south side of the island, Pilko Kaina.
Wednesday morning I had breakfast outside overlooking Peru, then grabbed my bags and trekked along the ridgeline to the northern end of the Island. The first challenge arose just outside of the village at the ticket office, where I had to convince the corrupt ticket salesman that I would not pay B15 for a B10 ticket. The trail followed the ridgeline for the length of the island. I had lunch with some hopeful mountain-bikers at some ruins and then explored the ruins of the Inca palace.
From here I went down to the village of Cha´llampampa and caught a boat back to the Inca stairway to lay in the sun for 2 hours while waiting for the next boat to go back to Copacobana. Enjoyed some good Lake Titicaca trout for dinner with the Kiwis I met a few days before on the bus.
Thursday morning I enjoyed another trout on the shores of the lake, and then caught the bus in the afternooon across the border to Puno, Peru.
Puno was actually quite a nice little town, with a pedestrian mall full of restaurants and bars that we had to check out.
Friday I did a full day tour to visit the main peruvian attractions in the lake. First stop was the Los Oros. These people didn´t seem to like living on land so they built their own floating islands from reeds. This keeps them busy as they have to keep piling on new reeds while the ones on the bottom rot away. The advantage being that if they don´t like their neighbours they just pull up anchor and float away (perhaps the Monc should´ve been on a reed island?). The Oros people also got creative with their reeds and made everything out of them, including their houses and some fancy boats.
We then took a boat for 2.5 hours out into the middle of the lake to visit Isla Taquine. The people on the island all wore their traditional outfits. The guys had to wear red hats if they were taken, and red and white if they are single. Unfortunately the girls didn´t have a similar system.
The 3 hour boat ride back to Puno was passed with several games of cards while sitting on the roof.
Saturday I took the bus over to Cusco in time for the big Inca festival of Inti Raymi (sun festival).

La Paz

On Tuesday afternoon I headed to the San Sebastian Church where I got a guided tour of the museum and could climb up the bell tower for a view over the city. The next morning I trekked through town and up to the Mirador Killi Killi for a great view over the entire city. The city looks very nice stuck in a big bowl, with mountains surrounding it on almost all four sides. This was a great spot so I spent several hours laying in the sun and enjoying the view. In the afternoon I visited the Coca museum where they showed how to process it to cocaine and had a good stab at the USA for consuming it all. Cocaine seems to be everywhere in this town. There are even bars that ask you how many grams you would like when you order a cerveza.
I moved to the Loki Hostel in search of some more social scene. First stop for the night was the Loki hotel, then we moved on to Mongos and later on we ended up at Traffic for some dancing. I had to crash early at 3am to go mountain bike riding in the morning, but when I got up at 6am everyone else was just arriving back... not bad for a Wednesday night out!
I headed into town and had a quick bacon and eggs with our riding team of 6 people and then drove up to the lake at La Cumbre at 4700m. This was the start of our ride down ´the world´s most dangerous road´. Surrounding us were 6000m + mountains and glaciers so we put on all the warm clothes we had before setting off on the ride. After several kilometers we left the paved road and flew down the original road. The ride was amazing with the road cut into the cliffs and going right under waterfalls. We had 2 guides, the owner of the company and the other was the number 3 mountain biker in Bolivia, so we had a cracking pace and completed the 50km track almost 2 hours ahead of the usual speed. We finished at the animal refuge in Yolosa at 1100m where we enjoyed the warm, humid weather, the extra oxygen, a warm shower, swim in the pool and a big buffet lunch. The animal refuge also had plenty of little monkeys, macaws and other animals they had rescued from the markets.
Since we had plenty of spare time we decided to drive back up the dangerous road rather than the new road which is normally taken. This allowed us to enjoy the scenery without worrying about flying off the side of the road and straight down the big cliffs (which happens regularly!).
Friday morning I was stuck in town for the day so I could get the all clear from the dentist in the morning. This was acheived, then I enjoyed a big lunch near the main plaza and spent several hours burning all the photos of the last few months to CD. In the evening I went with the guys from Loki to Mongos for a big mexican burrito, then back to the Loki bar, back to Mongos and eventually to Traffic for a good night out.
Saturday I got up early to wait to be picked up for a trip to the summit of Chacaltaya. After waiting an hour we discovered the trip had been cancelled. So I headed down to the company to find something to do. All other tours had left so I got a lift with one of the drivers who was heading to the Huayni Potosi (6088m) base camp where he was picking up the team that had just reached the summit that morning. From the base camp I trekked up to the glacier and enjoyed the view of the mountain and the Cordillera Real. I joined the climbers on their return to the bottom where we had a big meal waiting for us.
Back in La Paz I headed to the local pizzeria with another Aussie bloke. We were tempted by the largest pizza available which had a diameter of 1.5m, but opted for a smaller one when they didn´t have a table big enough to eat the giant pizza off. I then caught up with my Bolivian mates from the previous day and a few extra people and cruised over to the Hard Rock Cafe where they had a live band playing through the night.
This morning I had another early start and the tour to Chacaltaya actually showed up. We drove up through the suburb of El Alto at 4000m, and continued up to the highest ski resort in the world. It was out of season for the snow (the glacier has shunk 80% in the last 20 years anyway, so is almost unskiable), so instead we began the trek to the summit. After less than an hour we summitted the 5421m peak of Chacaltaya.
We then drove back through La Paz to the Valley of the Moon where there is a clay valley that has eroded over many years to form a strange landscape of columns and deep holes.
Tomorrow I hope to take the bus over to Copacobana from where I will visit Lake Titicaca.

Bus Ride from Uyuni to La Paz

After the 3 day trip around the salares, I jumped on the overnight bus from Uyuni to La Paz. The local bus was already full, so I claimed one of the last seats on the cama tourist bus.
We stopped in a small town at 11am for a nice 2 course meal for a whole B$6, and then stopped quick at the petrol station in Oruro at 4:30am.
Shortly after, between 5 and 5:30am we were suddenly awoken as the bus slammed full speed into the back of a truck that was parked on the side of the road. I was sitting in the front row, on the aisle of the left side. This proved to be very lucky, as the korean bloke sitting next to me by the window suffered some severe lacerations to his head from the shards of glass and bits of steel and appeared unconscious, and the israeli couple sitting across the aisle from me were looking at the back of the bus only 20cm from their noses. The girl had her legs broken. In front of me there was previously a glass wall, then another 2 meters of bus where the driver sat along with his son. Now it was just a tangled mess of strips of steel and I could look down between my feet and see the road below.
I was relatively fine so quickly found my shoes, gathered all my belongings which luckily hadn´t dissapeared (many people lost bags, cameras, etc in the confusion). Noticing diesel pouring out the front of the bus, I decided it was a good time to get out of the bus. The 2 guys sitting behind me couldn´t understand why I would want to get out when it was freezing cold outside (still pitch dark) but was nice and warm in the bus.
I headed towards the back of the bus. The scene was quite extreme with people all over the place, blood sprayed all over the bus, and many seats had been ripped from the floor of the bus and tossed around. Towards the back of the bus we smashed open 2 windows and jumped the 2m down to the road. Most people got off the bus, with a couple remaining including the brazilian doctor to assist the girl from the front.
Some people attempted to stop the traffic to get assistance, or call for the emergency services. Much to our disbeleif, and what should be severe embarrasment for all Bolivians, cars and busses would only wind down their window a few centimeters to say they can´t help, while the others wouldn´t even slow down. Some said they would call for help at the next town.
About 15 minutes after the incident occurred, another bus and truck attempted to pass at full speed alongside our accident, causing the truck to fly off the opposite side of the road and almost roll over.
The few natives that were on the bus then decided to start lighting up the tusks of grass along the road. With sparks being blown around and diesel still coming out of the bus, we were in grave fear that the bus would soon go up in flames. First thing we got the last few people out of the bus, then we wanted to retreive our bags from the cargo bays. These were of course locked, so we managed to smash them open and retreive all the bags from the bus and put them a safe distance away.
Since the accident we saw no sign of the driver. We only assume that we was tossed through the windscreen and had taken off. We decided this was excusable given there was little left of his son.
After 2 hours it was clear that no help was on its way. Two guys had just managed to get a lift in a car to La Paz, so I joined the brazilian doctor and the swedish nurse couple and managed to get a lift on another bus for the remaining 3 hours for the journey to La Paz.
On arriving to the La Paz bus terminal 5 hours after the accident, we went to the office of the bus company, who, to our sheer amazement were not even aware of the accident.
The tourist police soon took interest in us since we had blood all over us, and the brazilian guy had a big cut to his lip. This took about 3 hours while they took details, some more people from the bus started to arrive, and I showed the photos I had taken to some police boss with a thousand gold stars on his shoulder.
We dropped our bags at a hostal. I suffered chips to about 6 teeth, so I went for a walk through town to the Australian consulate to see if there were any reputable dentists in town. I was quite impressed by the service they provided. Within 10 minutes they had sent my details to the embassy in Chile and onto Canberra so everyone knew I was OK, had booked me in to see the consulate dentist that evening. Next stop was the tourist police office to get a police report of the incident for the insurance. They were overrun with everyone coming from the bus, and liasing with all the embassies. Apparently the worst injury they were aware of was a guy undergoing serious surgey to his upper nose, but they hadn´t even heard about the girl that had gone to hospital with the broken legs.
With my police report in hand, it was time to head to the dentist. He was a bolivian guy and didn´t speak any english. Unfortunately my spanish does not yet extend to understanding dental diagnosis, but I had the girl from the consulate on the phone the whole time to translate. I got 2 teeth fixed up there and then.
In the evening I met up again with the brazilian and swedish and enjoyed a good meal.
This morning I headed back to the dentist and got the rest of my teeth patched up, so they should be almost as good as new now. Fortunately all the damage was very minor and easily fixed. Only one tooth caused any pain, and another tooth is slightly more exposed from the gum than before so is quite sensative to temperature for a few days. I organised to visit again on Friday just for a final checkup before getting on with the travels, but will no doubt have to visit an Australian dentist on my return home just to check up on his work.
This is actually quite amusing given it was only the day before yesterday that we were joking about the state of bolivan dentistry. We thought that bolivian dentists must only be trained in extractions, and I could almost have been convinced to get a full set of gold teeth like every second Bolivian seems to.

Uyuni and tour to the Salares

On Thursday I planned to leave Potosi and head to Uyuni. I arrived to the bus terminal at 11am only to find that the only bus leaving before 6pm was already chockers. Despite persistent pestering by me, they wouldn't even let me sit in the aisle for the 6 hour trip. Not to be deterred, I walked to the outskirts of town, flagged over the same bus and got to Uyuni by 5pm. The landscape on the way was spectacular with bare mountains and plenty of llamas.
At 11am Friday I joined a group of 3 german girls and 2 POM lads for a 3 day expedition around the south-west corner of Bolivia.
For the first day we went to Colchani, a small town where they process the salt they collect from the enormous salares (salt lakes). However the main attraction seemed to be a crazy llama that was intent on attacking me by jumping on its back legs and kicking with its front legs. Fortunately a few good kicks to it's neck convinced it to settle down. Next we headed off in our 4x4 to the middle of the salar where there is a hotel built entirely from salt. Next we had llama steaks for lunch at Isla Incahuasi, an island in the salar covered in enormous cactii. The largest was 12m tall and took 1200 years to grow. We spent the night on the edge of the salar in another hotel built entirely from salt. With big salt icicles it felt like we were staying inside a big christmas decoration rather than a hotel. Before dinner we had a quick run up the mountain behind the hotel to see the salar change colours with sunset.
Saturday morning we headed to the Laguna Colorado. A big lake that in the day glows red from the micro-organisms. It also had islands of borax, and several flamingos. We visited in total 4 similar lakes, as well as some interesting rocks that were deposited a while back by the nearby active volcanoes.
We spent the night in a small hut in the middle of nowhere. It was getting pretty cold (-15 degrees that night) so we got a fire going and shared it with the Irish guys from the neighbouring tour group. Before long all the music instruments came out... between the 12 of us we had enough to form a full band. The instruments consisted no less than 2 guitars, drums, harmonicas, a saxaphone and several other unique instruments. It's quite amazing what some people cart all over South America. With all this music we sang the night away, only to be back on the road at 5am the next morning to visit the geysers. Then breakfast was had at the thermal pools. After an hour drive we got to Laguna Verde, then dropped the german girls off at the Chilean border.
The remaining hardy souls drove the 10 hours back to Uyuni, with lunch in a small village and a quick visit to the train cemetery.
Tonight I'm just about to take the overnight bus up to La Paz.

Potosì

I arrived to Potosì on Monday afternoon. The city is at an altitude of 4060m, but walking up the hill from the bus station I didn`t feel the altitude at all. However, Tuesday morning I was getting out of breath just walking around town. Fortunately by the afternoon I was back to full strength. I went on a tour around the Casa National de Moneda, which used to be the old mint and is now the countries best museum.
On Wednesday I went with Greengo Tours for a trip into the local silver mines. Over 15000 people work in the mines, and they are the backbone of the local economy. The mines have been used for over 500 years and still going strong, but with around 8 million deaths in this period it`s fairly dangerous work. Even today the mines lack any real safety precautions. We got decked out in some gumboots, overalls and helmet. First stop was the miners market to buy some drinks for the miners, some coca leaves to chew on, and some sticks of dynamite to make the tour a bit more interesting.
The entrance to the mine was too small to stand up, but we had to run at full speed to beat the trolleys full of minerals being pushed out of the mine. We explored the caves for several hours, saw the tio (devil) which the miners give cigarettes to so they dont have accidents, and met the miners, the youngest was only 13 year old.
In the evening I headed to the markets to see the local buskers do their comedy performance (as the night before). Inevitably, being the only gringo around, they had to involve me in the show. This was a good test of my spanish, having to speak infront of 200 locals. However, after several minutes the spanish exceeded my knowledge, but this was probably fortunate since all Bolivian jokes seem to revolve around being gay.
Now I´m just about to catch a bus for 6 hours to Uyuni. This is the starting point for the 3 day trip around the salares (salt lakes), lagoons with flamingos and geysers. I´ve had lots of reports that its -15 degrees down there, strong winds, no hot showers and hardly a roof on any of the hostels, so hoping that my jumper will hold up to this test.

The ´Death Train´ to Santa Cruz

The overnight train trip on the infamous ´Death Train´ was actaully very comfortable, despite being on the worst and slowest train. The train stopped in several small towns where we got off an had dinner. In the morning the fast train that departed 6 hours after us overtook us. It was looking like it was going to be a very comfortable trip until 1 hour out of Santa Cruz the carriage in front of ours derailed. The passengers were telling us that it would take at least a day for the train to be put back on the rails, so we started walking to the nearest village, Cococa. From here we caught the bus into Santa Cruz. I wondered around the sites with Katie (english girl from the train), climbed up the top of the church bell tower for a view of the city, and found some sloths climbing up the trees in the central plaza. We took the 5pm bus overnight to Sucrè. This was the most uncomfortable bus trip I have ever had... the seats were so packed that my knees were almost touching my chin, and I`m sure the old lady behind us was shitting in a bucket and tossing it out the window.
On Sunday we arrived to Sucrè (2700m). Checked out the markets for a big lunch and a couple of fresh fruit shakes for the total cost of about A$2 - it might as well be free. Checked out the local cemetary and walked up to Mirador de La Recoleta for a view over the city. The town is full of students, with over 60% of the population under 23 years old. So as you would expect, there were plenty of lively bars in town to check out.
Monday morning I splashed out on some more fruit shakes, then caught the bus up to Potosì.

The Pantanal e Corumbà

I left Campo Grande early on Monday morning for a 5 hour drive in the van, then transferred into the back of a truck for an hour down a bumpy dirt road to our base camp for the next couple of days. The sun was out so there were thousands of caimans (aligators) sunbathing by the wetlands. We arrived to camp and claimed a hammock which proved to be very cold at night. The evening was spent by the camp fire, mixing up caparinahs.
In the morning we had breakfast at 6am then headed for a trek through the wetlands. Levi our guide helped Marcel and I track down some monkeys, and caipiburras (largest rodents in the world). We returned to camp for lunch then joined the other groups for a boat trip along the little rivers. We spotted lots of birds, including several tucans, macaws, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, kingfishers, and many more. After dinner, which was the same pile of rice, pasta and beans every day for lunch and dinner, we all piled into the truck for a beer run to the local grocery store. I think he hasn`t had so much business all year.
Wednesday morning we again went hiking through the wetlands but failed to find many animals due to the cold weather. In the afternoon we drove in the back of the truck for 2 hours to a farm and went for a horse ride. We found some armadillos, and enjoyed the ride through the wetlands spotting lots of stalks and jabirus as the sun was setting over the palm trees. We were very happy to find 2 different snakes on the ride.
After surviving another freesing night in the hammock we piled in the boat and went fishing for piranahs. With just the basic equipment of a bamboo stick, some line and meat we quickly hauled in several piranahs and some catfish. This was a welcome addition to lunch and with one guy getting a bite to the finger we were glad to be eating them before they ate us.
I caught a truck back to the main road and waited by the highway for a bus to Corumbà where I enjoyed a good churrascaria after so many days without a good steak. This morning I have just crossed the border to Bolivia and waiting for the train to Santa Cruz. The train with airconditing and meals was all booked out so we are in `first class` with the cows and chickens. Should be a interesting trip across Bolivia!