We have covered a lot of distance in the last 4 months, most of it by bus. Starting at the equator, and criss crossing the Andes all the way down to Buenos Aires is a long way to go. I thought it might be interesting to work out just how long we have been sat on a bus.

Turns out it is 111 hours (4 and a half days!). We also had a 9 hour train ride, plus all the various tours which I didn’t include in the calculations (some of the trips took 6 hours by mini bus). It would have been even longer if we hadn’t taken the 2 internal flights (managed to save 40 hours there!).

In conclusion, I have decided that my 8 gigs of music is just not enough to see me through these long bus trips, and have now signed up for a free trial at audible.co.uk (affiliate program on CJ). My free download is “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, which totals around 18 hours. Never listened to an audio book before, but it could turn out to be the perfect way to help pass the time!

Last Sunday we took the 6 hour bus ride from Cusco to the little town of Puno. Whilst there was not much to see in Puno itself, but we still had a great time relaxing by Lake Titikaka. We also took a half day boat trip to the Uros islands. These islands are made of reeds, and are entirely man made! The people living on them just keep adding more and more layers of reeds as the ones on the bottom of the island rot away. They use the reed for everything! Building their boats, their houses and even for eating! The trip was fantastic, if a little touristy…

Here are the photos…

We are a little behind with uploading photos… so just a short post about Machu Picchu. Most of the photos are from the day we arrived, but we did go back the next day because there was so much to see/take in.

Here are the photos..

First of all we would both really like to thank Fiona and David for our amazing 4 day inca trail! We booked through their website, ecotrekperu.com and had an amazing time! We were lucky enough to be the only 2 tourists on our trip, and with David (our guide), Fiona (company owner), a chef and 7 porters we totalled 12 people.

We set off at 4.15am last Monday (due to a strike blocking the roads and rail line to Machu Picchu). We managed to negotiate most of the minor road blocks, but eventually came unstuck at a sizeable block about halfway. David, managed to secure us a car on the other side of the barrier (our minibus turned back to Cusco) and so we could continue on our way! We arrived at the beginning of our trek (KM 82) in the pouring rain, but only had to walk 30 minutes before meeting up with our team of chef and porters for breakfast. (Due to a lack of time, I will write a full review of the trip at a later date).
The whole trip lasted for 4 days, and we climbed up to an altitude of 4200m (Dead Womans Pass), we walked for 23 miles, climbed over 1,100m in one day, descended over 1300m on another day, saw many many different ruins (all in the pics), loads of great wildlife, we ate cactus fruit and climbed over what felt like millions of Inca steps!

And the best bit of the trip? For the final 2 days we didn’t see another trekker (only our porters!). This was thanks to the brilliant planning of David.

The photos in the slide show are all in chronological order. Only the last six are of Machu Picchu! We will upload the rest of our Machu Picchu photos (in a separate blog post) later on..

We made it. The entire Inca trial, all 50,000 (or something) steps! Photos are taking a little while to sort out, but should be online at the next decent Internet connection. Off to Puno tomorrow…

To get to this Internet Cafe i had to run the gauntlet of little children hurling water balloons (apparently quite common here, especially at Carnival). I lost. So ive spent the last hour or so drying out, and waiting for our photos to upload. We have spent almost a week here in Cusco and it has been great! Every street here is beautiful, and some of the ancient Inca buildings, which the Spanish build on top of are highly impressive. We also visited the ruins of Saqsayhuaman (sexy woman), Q’enqo and Tambomachay. Last night we visited a unique restaurant called the Fallen Angel, where we sat on beds, and our table was a bath tub filled with fish!!

Tomorrow morning (at 4.15am) we start our Inca Trek. The trek lasts for 4 days, where we will climb up to 4200m. A blog post will follow after our return!

In the meantime here are the photos of Cusco.

In total we spent two days in the beautiful Arequipa, with a 3 day tour/trek down into the Colca Canyon sandwiched in between. In Arequipa we got to visit a fascinating monastery right in the city centre (it was huge!), as well as visit a museum all about “Juanita”. Juanita is a mummy found on the top of the Ampato volcano, and was thought to have been a sacrifice to the mountain gods by the Incas. The museum trip only lasted about an hour, but it has to be one of the best so far in South America. (we weren’t allowed to take any photos though…)

We also decided to take a trip to the Colca Canyon, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world (deepest is also in Peru), where we got to see condors, eagles (at very close quarters!), and the fascinating valley itself. At one point we were walking at 4900m (to put it into perspective the highest mountain in the UK is Ben Nevis at 1344m, and in Germany is Zugspitze at 2967m). On the 2nd day we trekked 1100m down into the canyon where we stayed the night in tents. And the final day was the very tough trip back out of the canyon! Overall we had a great time, and once again were very lucky with the other members of our group.

We are now in Cusco after a 10 hour overnight bus and we will be here until Monday when we take on the Inca Trail!

Here are the photos…

We arrived in Nazca on Monday afternoon and booked a land tour of the Nazca lines for the following day. The best way to see the lines is to go up in a little aeroplane, but with both Friedi and I being total sissy’s, and the fact that a plane crashed only last week meant we took the safer option. The safer option is viewing 3 of the lines from a tower, the tree, the hands, and the lizard. It is amazing to think that they created such large images in the earth when they couldn’t really see what they are doing (see the photo from the ground). We also visited a museum, saw the very impressive aqueducts from 2000 years ago, and visited the burial grounds/mummies in the desert. Tonight we take a 10 hour bus to Arequipa where we hope to spend a few days visiting the Colca canyon.

Today we decided to explore Ica and visit the oasis at Huacachina for some sand-boarding. We were wandering why Ica seemed so flat when our guide took us to the old church (see photos). It turns out that there was a 7.9 earthquake only last year which hit the town badly. We saw entire streets that had been demolished, and the main church had lost its roof. After a whistle stop tour of the town (there isnt really much to see) we headed on to Huacachina. To get the the top of the sand dunes you need to hire a buggy, and part of the tour is to be driven around the sand dunes at top speed! (Friedi was very brave, again check out the photos!). Just when we thought we couldn’t take any more near vertical drops over the edges of the towering dunes we stopped for a bit of sand-boarding. This is essentially lying (the pros stand) on a snowboard, pointing down the slope, and letting gravity do the rest! Fantastic fun. The day ended with a tour of a Pisco distillery (where they produce very sweet wine and liquors without the use of any machinery), which was a great way to relax after our morning excursions. Tomorrow we plan to take a 2 hour bus ride to Nazca.

Friedis thoughts: if you like an adrenalin kick then I would strongly recommend the buggy ride but if you haven’t even been on a roller-coaster in your life then do not do it!!!
There is also a lovely story about how the sand dunes and the lagoon were formed (for the Spanish speaking people look at the photos or otherwise wait for our 10 hour post travel slide show!). I enjoyed Ica a lot and looking forward to what’s coming next.

And if you turn your head sideways you can watch me sandboarding!

Our first experience of Peru was a 4 day stay in Lima. We took 2 bus tours (one round Lima city centre, and one to the ruins of Pachacamac), spent one day relaxing, and took a bus to Ica where we are currently staying. Lima gets a bad reputation amongst travellers partly due to the size of the city (8 million people!) and the smog/fog that comes in from the coast. We found parts of the city fascinating, especially the catacombs under the Baroque Church of San Francisco (no photos were allowed) and the Pachacamac ruins which were built in the pre Inca times. The taxi rides were particularly scary, even by South American standards and there seemed to be a ridiculous number of casinos.

Now we are in Ica (300km south of Lima) which is surrounded by sand dunes, and tomorrow we plan to visit a nearby lagoon and go sand-boarding down the slopes!

Here are the Lima photos…