Peru

I had heard a lot of bad things about Lima before I arrived there so I wasn´t expecting too much from it, but it turned ot to be not as bad as everyone said. After the overnight bus from Arequipa I spent the morning in Miraflores, one of the richer areas of the city. Here I felt safe walking around alone, despite the warnings and had a nice morning seeing a small part of the city by the coast. In the afternoon I decided to go to the national museum, unfortunately most of it was closed so I saw an extensive exhibition about potatoes and an interesting photographic gallery about the recent history and terrorism in Peru. This was actually really interesting as it was something I knew little about.

My second day in Lima I decided to brave the city centre, apparently one of the least safe places in South America. I went with a German girl form the hostel for a bit of support. We saw the changing of the guards at the government palace, a very long ceremony that the ministry of silly walks would be very proud of. We went to the San Francisco monastery- One of the most interesting parts of the tour was the catacombs where there was a strange collection of bones. Apparently the archaeologists had organised the bodies by bone type so we saw a room of femurs, etc. In one area they had made an interesting mosaic pattern out of skulls and bones that was a bit disturbing. Other than that it was an interesting tour with some impressive architecture with a lot of influence from Southern Spain. After unexpectedly surviving the city centre we headed back to Miraflores on the buses, a bit of a challenge but we made it in the end. In the evening I tried to get the bus to Huaraz in the mountains, but due to strikes and road blocks there were no buses running that way, so rather than spend an extra few days in Lima I got on the only available bus and went further up the coast to Trujillo.

After an overnight bus ride I arrived in Nazca at about 5am, not in the mood to avoid the touts so I let someone show me to a hotel. For only 2.50pounds a night I thought it was quite good for my own room, private bathroom and TV. Unfortunately though after arriving at the hostel she spent ages trying to sell me various tours and flights for the next day, at prices well over twice as much as they should be. I eventually managed to get rid of her and go to bed only for her to come knocking on my door at 7.30am wanting to know if I had decided what I wanted to do. Because it was overcast the chance of getting a flight that day were very unlikely so I decided to do a tour of some of the archaeological sites in the area and go to the viewpoint where you can see a couple of the figures in the lines. Eventually she dropped the price by 50% and although I thought it was still over priced I gave in and agreed to it, just to get rid of her. After that, the day did improve the tour was actually better than expected, I had my own private guide for the day and he was very knowledgeable about the area, so I probably learnt a lot more about Nazca and the lines than I would have done doing a flight. In the morning we visited several sights including the aqueducts built more than 2000 years ago, that are still in use now and have survived numerous large earthquakes in the area because of the way they were designed. we also visited a Nazca cemetery which was a bit of a strange sight. The Nazca culture mummified all bodies and buried them in family graves. Despite being attacked by grave robbers, some of the mummies were still in very good condition and had been arranged on displays in the open graves.

In the afternoon we went to see the lines from a watch tower overlooking a couple of the figures, the view form here was better than I expected but obviously nothing like flying over them. And by this time some flights had started running as the morning fog had cleared, but they were all booked out by tour groups. The figures were impressive to see, along with the perfect straight lines that continued for kilometres across the desert. What was most impressive to me was that the lines and figures were apparently still perfect after hundreds of years with apparently no reconstruction. How have they survived weathering and earthquakes for that long? And although there are some theories, there are no really convincing ideas about why they built them.

Having seen everything there was to see around Nazca I decided not to stay and see if I could get a flight the next day and so I took an overnight bus to Lima.

I spent a few days in and around Arequipa, a very nice colonial city in Southern Peru. Within the city itself there are a lot of religious sites, including many churches, the cathedral and the Santa Catalina monastery. One of the main sites is the monastery and I spent a couple of hours visiting it. It is huge, like a separate village walled off within the town centre. It was really interesting to find out about the way of life for the hundreds of nuns that used to live there and the few that still remain today and there was a lot of impressive colonial architecture. I also visited the university run museum which displays the body of the child mummy Juanita found on one of the mountains overlooking the town. As the Incas believed the mountains were Gods there have been numerous child sacrifices found in the mountains across the Inca territory. Strange to think that it was thought of as an honour and privilege to be sacrificed, but only the best children were chosen. Because of the burial conditions the mummy was still in very good condition so they have done a lot of studies on the body and you could even see the facial expression of the child.

I also spent 3 days trekking in Colca Canyon, which has apparently just been reclassified as the deepest canyon in the world. It is a few hours drive from the city to the canyon, which was not the most comfortable ride on an overcrowded local bus that required a break for some repairs on the way. From the village of Cabanaconde we started trekking, down into the base of the canyon where we crossed over the river and climbed the otherside to a small village where we stayed the night. On the second day we had a couple of hours walk in the morning back down into the canyon to an oasis where we stopped for a few hours for a refreshing swim. In the afternoon this meant we had a steep 3 hour climb back out of the canyon to reach Cabanaconde. It was really hot and hard work and would have been good to have another swim at the top to cool off. On the final day we went to a viewpoint to watch condors flying over the canyon. Despite having seen quite a few before now, they are really impressive birds to watch flying and a couple of them came very close to the cliffs so you could really appreciate the size of them. From there we went to the village of Chivay where we visited a hot springs before getting the bus back to Arequipa.

So, a year ago yesterday I left Scotland and arrived at my first destination, St. Petersburg. Many countries, fights, treks, tours and bus journeys later I am in Peru, still enjoying travelling. I missed my flight home from Mexico last week, so think I will be staying here for a bit longer yet.
I have spent the last couple of weeks, having a bit of a break from everything, staying in one place, doing very little sight seeing and have instead been enjoying doing a bit of work, trying to improve my Spanish, watching a lot of the football and tennis and just having a bit of a break. So to celebrate my year anniversy I decided to get going again and spent the day on the bus to Arequipa thinking about everything I´ve done over the last year. Its hard to remember what my expectations were when I left home, but I think the trip has far exceeded anything I thought was possible. I have seen all the major sites I dreamed of going to, the Kremlin, the Great Wall of China, Uluru, trekking in New Zealand, Patagonia, the Amazon and Macchu Picchu, to mention just a few. I have also been to many other places that have been equally impressive, even though I´d never heard of them before. I have also met some great people on the way, so despite travelling by myself I have never really been alone. A lot of people have asked if I´m bored of travelling yet, but everyday I am still constantly impressed by the new things I see and experiance. Yes there are times after a sleepless night in a crowded dorm room I think of going home to my own room and a change of clothes but I think my trip is far from over yet. Just a quick look a the job adverts is enough to make me want to stay away just a bit longer, and the more I travel, the more places I find there are that I want to visit.
So my plans for the next few months. I´m going to spend July travelling up through Peru, and August in Equador. Then I´m off to Costa Rica and I´ll probably spend a couple of months travelling up through Cenral Amercia to Mexico, where I will fly home in October/November. Well maybe, I haven´t been too good at sticking to plans, and I haven´t booked the flight home yet....

After being picked up at 4am from the hostel it was a couple of hours bus ride to the village of Mollipata where we were to start trekking from. Here we met the rest of the group and our guides for the next few days and after breakfast we started trekking. The first morning the walking was all up hill until we reached where we stopped for lunch, a place with great views over the valley where we had come from. In the afternoon the ascent was more gradual and it was a nice walk to our first campsite below the Salkantay pass. Unfortunatly the clouds had come down so we were unable to see the mountain Salkantay. It was a cold night, camping at about 3800m and we had an early start the next morning so after dinner everyone went straight to bed. The second day of the trek was the longest and hardest but the scenery made it worth while. After our 5am wake up we started climbing up to the Salkantay pass. The pass is the highest point of the trek at about 4600m between the mountains Umantay and Salkantay, both of which are unclimbed peaks over 6000m. As we climbed higher the clouds lifted and we had excellant views of Salkantay. After stopping for a break at the top of the pass, it was all downhill into the next valley where we stopped for lunch. From here the landscape changed dramatically, we left behing the snow covered mountains and entered the high jungle. We reached our 2nd campsite late in the afternoon and as everyone was tired after a long days walking, it was another early night. The next day we had a lie in until 6am. We spent the morning walking down the valley past waterfalls and plantations of coffee, bananas and passion fruit. We reached the village of Playa for lunch and from here we took buses to the village of Santa Teresa where we had our final camp. The rest of the afternoon we spent at a natural hot springs just outside the village. This was a welcome chance to wash after 3 days of trekking. The final day of the hike we were mostly following a river through more plantations. And just before lunch we had our first view of Machu Picchu from the valley below the mountain. In the afternoon we spent several hours walking along the train track to reach the village of Aguas Caliente below Macchu Picchu. The town itself only seemed to exist for tourists, every building was either a hotel, restaurant or gift shop and everywhere you went people were trying to sell you something.
On the 5th day we had the choice of walking to Machu Picchu or getting the bus. Having walked this far I decided not to give up now and walk the final hour or so to the site. This meant another early start, starting walking at about 4.30 to reach the top by 6am. It was a steep climb up hundreds of steps but we eventually made it to the top as it was getting light and had a bit of time to wait for the people who had decided to go up in the bus. We entered the site just after it opened and spent the first hour or so having a guided tour of the area. Unfortunatly our guide wasn´t very good and spent a long time telling us very little about nothing much, but it was good to finally be there. And luckily our guide seemed to be in a hurry to leave so we soon had time to explore by ourselves. I decided to climb Wayana Picchu, the hill overlooking the main area of Macchu Picchu. This did mean another hour or so of climbing steep steps, but it was worth it, the view from the top looking down over the site was amazing. Somehow I seemed to take an alternative route down and despite it being crowdwd at the top I didn´t see anyone else until I reached the Temple of the Moon at the bottom of the hill. It was an interesting route down as well, not so many steps, but a few long wooden ladders loosely attached to rocks that didn´t look that well maintained. The Temple of the Moon is a small area of ruins in and around a cave near the bottom of Wayna Picchu. Unfortunatly from here I had to climb yet more steps to reach the main path up to Machu Pichu again. I then spent several hours just looking round the main part of the site and walking out to some of the further away parts including the Inca bridge and the sun gate, the enterance to the site from the classic Inca trail. After nearly 9 hours of walking around the area I walked back down the steps to Aguas Caliente where I met up with other guys from the trek for a drink befote we got the train and bus back to Cusco. We eventually arrived back in Cusco at about 10pm so it had been another long day but it had been worth it.