Toledo

On Saturday it was time to get out of the city. The two girls at the hostel from Uruguay (Helena and Christina) where feeling the same for their last day in Europe so we caught the bus down to Toledo only an hour away. Toledo was an old village set up on the top of a big hill. It was surrounded by a huge wall, with an impressive front gate. The city is famous for its cathedral so we checked that out and wandered the tiny streets past the souvenir shops selling medievil armour and swords. Visited some synagogue and plenty of old chuches and museums. It was stinking hot with 40 degrees recorded for most of the day, so by 5pm we were pretty tired and headed home to Madrid.

On Sunday I visisted the Prada museum with its exhibition of Partini and plenty of Goya´s works on display. In the evening 4 of us, including a fellow canberran, headed out to the Plaza de Torros for the bull fighting. This was serious stuff with 3 fighters competing on the night, each getting 2 bulls to overcome. First there were several guys out with their red cloths getting the bull to run around the field, then it was time for a guy on a horse. The bull would inevitably start ramming the horse, and sometimes evening lifting it up with its horns, and the rider had a big spear that he would stab into the bulls neck and back. Next the bullfighter had to stick 2 spears into the bulls neck while it was charging him. All the running around and blood loss started to tire out the bull, so the action became more intimate between the fighter and bull. The fighter would use his red cloth the make the bull charge until it was too tired to lift its head. At this point the fighter would get a sword and stab it into the bulls back. If it was a good hit, the bull would fall over instantly dead, otherwise he would have to retreive the sword and try again.

Madrid

After an uncomfortable overnight flight without reclining seats on Iberia, I arrived to Madrid. First stop out of th Arrivals Gate was the ATM to stock up on some euros. Just as the money was coming out a pregnant lady came up asking for money. I shooed her off and then got my receipt from the ATM but no cash. After 5 months in Sth America this girl just picked on the wrong bloke. She was still in sight, so grabbed her, found my wad of cash in her had and then proceeded to drag her kicking and screaming past the queues of people at the check in counter to the cop shop. After only 10 minutes in Europe I experience more crime than in 5 months in Sth America. Once the paper work was done, I metroed into town to my hostel. It was a nice change to have an extra 5 hours of sunlight in the evening, and so I walked around the Plaza Mayor, past the King´s Palace, some parks. All the streets and plazas were filled with outdoor cafes and restaurants with tourists from all over Europe enjoying tapas and beer for their summer holidays.
We headed out to party with everyone from the hostel, which turned out to be a group of 15 of us. All the bar owners were keen to get this big group of people on their dancefloor, so it was free shots all round, then we would hang around for 30 minutes before heading onto some more free drinks at the next disco.
On Friday I went into the King´s Palace where they had gone all out on the interior designing. Plenty of fancy treasures to check out too. In the afternoon I wandered through the huge Retiro park with some fancy monuments of old kings and down Gran Via, the main strip in town.
We headed back out to party with our big group of people, but someone made the mistake of giving the navigation task to a French girl and we ended up walking around a big circle of the city all night. One lesson learnt!

Quito

I arrived to Quito and walked through the historic centre and kept going to the new centre to find a hotel. Around the old centre the streets were lined with modern bars and restaurants, and before long the discos were starting to crank up. I settled down for a beer with the only problem that they would only sell sets of 3 x 1L bottles.... not to worry. A few locals joined in for a few drinks (Andrea, Jessica, etc) then we headed off to a local rock concert before continuing on to the salsateca to show off the dance moves for the rest of the night.
On Saturday I headed to the old centre to see the sights of town. The various plazas were impressive with all the old colonial buildings, as was the Presidential Palace. The highlight of Quito was unexpectantly the Basilica where they let me climb right to the top of 2 of the church spires. This involved plenty of rickety little ladders but afforded fantastic views of the entire city. In the evening we headed out to see the Saturday nightlife with everyone from the hostel. Needless to say that Sunday turned into a rest day with just a little walk around the cafes and watching a few movies with everyone at the hostel until early Monday morning.
With the remaining days in South America rapidly running out, I made an early start and headed to Mitad del Mundo which is the where the equator runs along just north of the city. First was the french calculated ecuator with a great big monument indicating the compass directions and the obligatory photo with the 0 degree sign. This marked the most northern point of my trip in South America, and plenty of long bus trips. After this was the peruvian gps calculated ecuator about 100m further north where the museum demonstrated the various phenomenans that occur on the ecuator. These are results of the correolis forces and were demonstrated with balancing an egg on a nail, the flow of water down a drain, and the reduction in resistance in your muscles. The museum also had a shrunken human head which looked cool. In the evening I caught up for dinner with Andrea, Jessica and friends, and then went out for a Monday night pub crawl with the hostal crowd. By about 3am we bumped into the Joannas (Giovanna and Yoanna from Lima) as they were knocking off work so we danced on till late in the morning.
Tuesday was my day to go shopping and replace the clothes and shoes that are all getting worn out after 5 months of travelling. Unfortunately after visiting almost every shoe shop in Quito, the biggest size available was consistently 2 sizes too small for me, so the shopping gets to wait until Europe. For the final night in South America I caught up with Jessica, Andrea and Co for a few drinks at our regular cervezeria, before having a food Argentinian parillada for dinner and then called past the bar where the Joannas were working for a few drinks, before moving onto another pub down the street.
Wednesday the Joannas and I headed up to the cable car (teleferico) that goes to the top of the mountain (4100m) on the edge of Quito. Unfortunately I only had a few hours until I had to get to the airport, and there was a very long queue, so instead we headed to the theme park and did a few runs of the loop-the-loop roller coaster and the spinning pirate ship.

The trips I need to come back to America for...
Venezuala, Colombia, Ecuador incl. Galapagos Islands - 3 months.
Central America (Mexico to Panama) - 4 months.
Trekking Patagonia, incl Antarctica - 2 months.
Trekking Southern Peru - 1 month.

Latacunga

I arrived to Latacunga after the nice drive around the Chimbarozo Volcano, but in town it was miserable and rainy, so I checked into the Chimbarozo hotel overlooking the main plaza in town.
Wednesday morning it was still looking a bit miserable so I opted to join a tour up to the Quilatoa crater rather than do a 3 day trip around myself on the local busses. I piled in the jeep with 3 other yanks and first stopped by the morning market at Pijili for breakfast. We continued on through some villages and farms, stopping off at some guys house that was made entirely from grass. Supposedly it lasts for 20 years. We also stopped off by a canyon before reaching the town of Quilatoa. From here we trekked the 1200m descent from the crater rim to the lake at the bottom. The lake was bubbling away and it was a hard slog of a climb back out again. On the way back we could see all the volcanoes in the region... Chimborozo, Illimiza (?), Cotopaxi, and ?? just behind Baños which was smoking away.
The next day I caught up with the Americans again for breakfast and we got a taxi out to Saquisili for the biggest indigenous markets in the country. They were actually pretty big with 5 plazas around town all packed with vendors. We checked out the animal market where there were plenty of guinea pigs, chickens, goats and turkeys. Also the fruit markets, tourist craft market, and the everything-else markets.
I got back to Latacunga to have my left over pizza for lunch and then enjoyed the sun in the plaza and a lake in a nearby suburb.
I was hoping to find some nightlife in town for the Thursday night, but instead all the restaurants were closed by 9pm so I headed to bed to watch some movies hungry!

Volcan Chimborozo

Tuesday morning I had a quick look around the centre of Riobamba but there was little to see. I was then heading to Latacunga and decided to take the scenic route via Guaranda.
I got the 9am bus out of Riobamba to Guaranda. This route was very nice passing high up on the desolate flanks of the Chimborozo Volcano. Unfortunately cloud cover obscured views of the summit and only the snow line could be distinguished. Several people got off near the top to hike up to the refuge which would have been nice, but I opted to press on.
After dropping back down into the valley I had lunch in Guaranda and then got a bus around the other side of the mountain. After having some heavy hail we broke through the top of the clouds and could see the glaciers flowing from the western side of the volcano, but still not to the summit.
I arrived to a rainy Latacunga and got myself a room in the Hotel Cotapaxi overlooking the town square.

Cuenca

After arriving to Cuenca just on sunset on Sunday I walked through town and found a nice hostel with a good bar with music.
On Monday I checked out the town square and what must be the ugliest cathedral anywhere, although the blue domes looked nice enough. I walked along the river to El Barranco where there were some famous `hanging´ houses that looked out over the river and were painted all colourful. Next stop was the museum where they make the famous Ecuadorian Panama hat - a white broadbrimmed hat. The Pumapunga Archaeological site was the other site to see in town. I walked down there and saw it from outside, but have seen many more impressive Inca ruins so didn´t bother going inside.
I caught the 14:30 bus to Riobamba which went through some nice countryside, particularly just before Alausi where the mountains dropped down 2500m to the coastal plains. Finally arrived in Riobamba at 9pm and had a feed from the street vendors and called it a night.

Guayaquil

The bus trip from Mancora was comfortable but very slow with the border crossing and all the subsequent document checks. The time passed by quick enough by chatting to Veronica, a nice girl from Lima heading up to visit her boyfriend in Guayaquil. An hour after the border we saw Machala surrounded my many banana plantations wizz past. The town wasn`t on the highway so the bus wasn`t stopping, so it looked like I was going to Guayaquil. Upon arriving to Guayaquil Veronica was met by her boyfriend Andrès, whose mum also invited me to crash at their place. Without any plans this sounded like a pretty good offer. We headed home and I claimed the sister, Karla`s bed and then we all headed out to the local parrillado for a good pile of meat for dinner. In the evening we did a lap through the city centre which looked very nice and modern.
The next day we all drove into town to have a better look around the Malecon 2000, the city´s waterfront precinct with plenty of nice gardens, restaurants and various monuments. We grabbed a bite to eat here then headed back home. Andrès` mum went back to grab the car and unfortunately got her handbag robbed on the way. She was a bit upset so being the only other driver around the duty fell to me. Was the first time driving on the other side of the road but this didn`t take too long to get used to, just the crazy ecuadorian driving took some adjusting too!
We chilled out back at home doing some karaoke to the local music and grabbed some dinner from the local hamburger stall about midnight.
This morning we had a big breakfast of omelets and then I headed off to the bus station to get back on track in Cuenca. The whole family decided to come along to see me off. Of course, many thanks to Andrès, Veronica, Karla and family for their very fine hospitality and making my stay in Guayaquil very enjoyable.
The 5 hour bus trip to Cuenca was very nice. Most of this time was spent ascending a single mountain so we really gained some altitude and then passed through the cloud forests and lakes of the Cajun national park.

Mancora

I arrived to Mancora at 9am on Wednesday. The town was only small stradling the Pan American highway with the beach on one side and desert cliffs to the east. I found a hotel right on the beach and then spent the rest of the beach having a swim and sunbaking.
Thursday I headed straight back to the beach for breakfast and didn`t do much more than the previous day. The wind started to pick up in the afternoon so the kite surfers were out to put on a show.
I headed to dinner with some POM and Irish blokes to the Luna bar and ended up hanging out there with some Aussie and Canadian people who were minding the place till 1am then had to quit so I could get the bus out the next morning at 8am to Machala in Ecuador where I plan to get another bus to Cuenca.

Trujillo

My overnight to Trujillo arrived at 6am so I walked the 30 minutes into the city centre. The Plaza de Armas was still pretty empty so I enjoyed to colourful architecture for a while before finding the bus station for going up north. I dropped my bags off there and had until midnight to checkout town.
The most important site in town is the ruins of Chan Chan. This was the capital of the Chimu kingdom, and covers 20 square kilometers so I caught the bus out there, had a quick look around the site museum then walked the 20 minutes through the ruins to the centre were the most impressive sites have been restored. The site was huge with mud brick ruins stretching as far as you could see in every direction. Intricate carvings lined the walls of the temples and palaces with fish and birds. The fish net style walls were also interesting.
There was supposed to be another set of ruins on the road back to town, so I walked back along but ended up back in Trujillo without seeing any other ruins. Although an armed holdup of some corner store with a dramatic getaway involving hanging onto the side of a bus did make the trip interesting and was the first crime I`ve seen in South America.
I spend the rest of the day in the city centre. Checked out the old city wall but it was not interesting, lunch in the market and got the bus out at 1am to the beach resort of Mancora.

Huaraz

My bus arrived to Huaraz in the dark at 5am. I waited half an hour for the sun to come up and then walked around town to find a hostel. To avoid wasting anytime I got the walking shoes on and after a quick taxi ride out of town, started on the walk to the pre-Inca ruins of ****. This walk pasted through some nice little villages on the side of the hill and afforded fantastic views of the 20+ 6000m peaks of the Cordillera Blanca that surround town. The ruins were reasonably impressive with a 3 storey tomb and another set of ruins with a few houses. I returned to town passing through several farms. I headed for some expensive, but very nice thai food for dinner and then hit the sack to get up early the next morning to do some more exploring around the area.
The next day I packed a few sandwhiches for lunch and then caught a combi van up the mountain to Pitec, the starting point of the walk up to the Churrup Lake. The combi trip saved a big walk up the hill and they also threw in a free 40 minute wait in Huaraz. From Pitec I followed the ridge up the the base of the mountain and followed the contours around the mountain. It had been nice and sunny in town when I left off, so I had opted to leave the bulky jackets behind. This now seemed a foolish decision as it started to hail and the clouds appeared to be moving in over the mountains. I almost decided to turn back but pressed on. The next section of the walk required climbing up the climb by the side of the waterfall that led out from the lake above. As much of the water had frozen on the rocks, this was a difficult stretch, however once I reached the top the view over the Lake Churrup, Nevada Churrup and its glacier was amazing. I enjoyed my sandwhiches while perched on a rock to enjoy the view. With the snow starting to fall, it was time for me to get back into town and get a jumper on. I returned pretty quickly to Pitec, but there were no regular busses to this point, so I continued on the trail following the aquaducts to the village of ***, but the last bus had already left, so I continued on towards Huaraz. I met a local couple with a 15 day old dog that were also heading down to find a bus into town so I joined them for all the local shortcuts. The dog died along the way, but fortunately it wasn't far to **** where we caught a combi the final few kilometers into town. From the lake down I had decended about 1500m so my feet were certainly feeling it. I decided it was time to try out the cuy (guinea pig). Unfortunately there weren't too many restaurants serving it, but found a guy wheeling around a crate load of live specimans, so followed him to a local restaurant where he was doing a delivery. I ordered the cuy broaster which turned out to be remarkably similar to a peice of KFC chicken, but with less meat and more small bones. It tasted great and I could have easily eaten a few more, but called it a night.
The next day I had my overnight bus to Trujillo leaving at 8pm so decided to have a day break from the fast travel pace and all the walking. So I checked out the cuy in the local markets, did my shopping in the mercado artesanal and then read a magazine on the roof of the hotel enjoying the amazing view over the city to the montains. This was just interupted to go down to the plaza for a good pasta in the sun. In the evening we had some chifa (chinese food) and then chatted to a few people in the hostel who were all serious montain climbers planning to climb several of the surrounding peaks.

Lima

I arrived to Lima late on Wednesday night and got a taxi over to the Loki hostel in Miraflores. This is a suburb towards the beach and has all the bars and restaurants, while central Lima is desserted once the sun goes down.
On Wednesday I explored Miraflores. First stop was the Larcomar, which they describe as the face of modern Peru. However it was just a little shopping centre on the top of the cliff that dropped into the Pacific Ocean. Certainly not something I would want to base an entire nation´s hopes on... but then they did have a Hooters there so that´s probably what they are celebrating.
I walked around the top of the cliffs to San Isidro to find the local Qantas office to change the dates on all my flights. This took most the afternoon. Then I walked back to Miraflores past the pre-Inca ruins of Huaca Pucllana. These were just closing so I ran around them quick for free. They were reasonably interesting with a big mound of old bricks.
Friday I caught a mini-bus into Central Lima. There were some demonstrations planned for the day so the main plaza was all blocked off, as was the area around the Congress but the police were happy enough to give me a leg-up over the barriers. I checked out the Cathedral, then it was time for the changing of the guards at the Presendential Palace. They had the usual weird marches, but seemed to enjoy playing their trumpets and big drums. I called past the Congress building and over to China town to have some spring rolls and dim sims for lunch. Next I went to the church for a tour of the catacombs where they piled in the bones of an estimated 25000 people. They didnt seem to like my questions about if they were all the non-beleivers. They did come up with some nice designs with laying out the skulls and leg bones though.
Back in Miraflores I had dinner in Pizza street, and had to try out the local raw fish speciality of Cebiche which was surprisingly nice with the lemon dressing.
Got the 10pm overnight bus to Huaraz.

Nazca

The overnight bus trip from Cusco to Nazca was uneventful. The bus was nice and comfortable but the winding road through the mountain prevented any sleep for the night. We arrived to Nazca at 5:30am when it was still dark. There were plenty of hawkers waiting for us, so we accepted a free taxi ride out to the airport to find a flight over the lines. We were promised to be a flight at 8am which sounded resonable so we signed up. By 11am we were getting impatient, and with the assistance of the local police, got our flight confirmed at midday... only a 6 hour wait!
The flight over Nazca was very good. We had just a little plane with 5 passengers and we flew over the desert for 30 minutes making sure to swerve back and forth around all the lines. Other travellers had told me they could hardly see the lines the previous week, but they were amazingly clear. We could clearly distinguish the whale, triangles, trapexoid, astronaut, mnkey, dog, condor, spider, hummingbird, alcatraz, parrot, tree and finally the pair of hands.
After a safe landing I headed into town with the koreans, had a feed and jumped on the bus to Lima.

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

On Friday I got up bright and early for the start of our trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. I got picked up at about 5am and we all headed out to the town of Ollantaytambo in the sacred valley where we had a nice enough breakfast in a restaurant overlooking the central plaza. The locals were all out trying to sell walking sticks to the throngs of trekkers. We continued on to KM82 which was the starting point for our trek. The porters were quick to grab their huge bags and start running down the track. We certainly had enough with our group of 12 people we had 20 porters, a cook and 2 guides. It was a leisurely walk along the river past some small Inca ruins. At lunch we were impressed to find the big tent already made for us, with seats set out. First course was a fancy avacado salad, followed by 2 more courses. We certainly weren't going to go hungry on this trip. From here we veered off the main valley and followed a tributory to our camp only 1 hour away.

In the morning we had an early 4am wake up, but the pain was eased with the guides delivering us hot chocolate in bed for us to wake up. Along with some pancakes for breakfast we were ready for the hardest part of the trek. This was a 1300m ascent to the Dead Womens Pass. Our group was made up of 3 american couples who were all equally slow and struggling even on the easiest sections of the trail, a group of 3 young english lads who prefered to sprint the track, 4 norweigans who powered along, and a kiwi guy and canadian girl. We broke away from the americans and got to the pass in 3.5 hours. Here we got another 3 hours to enjoy the fantastic view while the americans rolled up the hill, but with snow capped mountains all around and the sun shining it was very enjoyable to hang out here for a while. From here we descended almost another 1000m with almost as many stairs to our second nights camp. Here we had the most amazing views down to the valley below. With a nice stream flowing right past the campsite I even enjoyed a dip in the glacial waters.

Sunday we started the morning straight up with another big climb up the second pass. This seemed more difficult than the previous ascent given the fatigue and extra steepness. At the top of the pass we visited another old Inca fort, and then followed original Inca trails that were nicely paved along the ridges and contours. At one point we trekked into the bush and found a ruin that hadnt been restored yet, and was being overgrown by griant trees. Along this stretch we had great views to some of the highest mountains in this part of the woods. Our lunch site was on the top of the ridge looking back down to the sacred valley, the town of Aguas Calientes, and we could even see the mountain of Machu Picchu, behind which was our ultimate destination. From our lunch spot it was a steep descent nicknamed the 'gringo killer'. After 2 hours of continuously going down steps we made it to our final campsite, perched on the side of the mountain.

We decided to make a early start in the morning with the aim of being the first people to Machu Picchu for the day. With this aim we got up at 3am and had everything packed up by 4am. Just outside the camp was a ticket control point which opened at 5.30am so we waited there for 1.5 hours being the first people there by only 5 minutes. By the time the gate opened there was a lengthy queue with several hundred people. We got through and it was everyone for themselves dash in the dark with torches in hand to the Sun Gate. I got to the sungate pretty quickly with our group being the first to set eyes on the Machu Picchu ruins. From the sun gate the ruins were spread out just like in the postcards with the mountain of Huayna Picchu in the background. We continued down to the actual ruins to watch the sunrise. The ruins were remarkable, set right up the top of sheer cliffs and mountains towering all around. There were areas with houses, temples and plenty of terraces. Our guide gave us a tour of all the sites and then just squeezed in as person 388 out of the 400 person daily quota to climb up Huayna Picchu. This was a bloody steep climb up the mountain but gave another fantastic perspective over the ruins and also of the trek we had just completed.

Once I'd seen enough of the ruins at 1am we got the bus down to Aguas Calientas for lunch with the group. The main street in town was the train line, with trains going just 2 meters from our restaurant table. We got the train back to Ollantaytambo and bussed it to Cusco to complete a great trip.

On Tuesday I enjoyed a much deserved massage and visisted the remaining museums in town. In the evening I took the overnight bus to Nazca.