Sacred Valley, Peru

This tour (also from SAS) took us to 3 ruins, I mean archeological sites, in the so called Sacred Valley near Cusco. It´s a very large and quite verdant valley with the Urubamba river running through it. This river eventually reaches the ocean after 1600km in Brazil - as the Amazon.

First stop was a actually a small market near Pisac, where Kate couldn´t resist buying an Alpaca sweater, and some alpaca socks for the Inka Trail! We then visted the ruins at Pisac, followed by a visit to the main market in modern (collonial) Pisac, where the range of handicrafts etc was so vast, you needed a whole day to do it justice.

After another expensive & not particularly great buffet lunch at a restaurant in Urubamba chosen by the guide, we visited Ollantaytambo - another big ruin, with big rocks etc. etc. Finally we visited Chinchero where there was an old church, more inka walls, and more people selling handicrafts to tourists!

After this tour we vowed not to do any more organised tours if we can possibly help it! At least we had a decent minibus for this one though . In the evening we had a briefing for the Inka trail, ate lots of pasta, and packed up or stuff for the Inka trail.

Inca Trail aka the Inca Trial

We were picked up from our hotel at 4.45 in the morning for the 3 hour bus journey to km 82, the start of the Inca trail. We had breakfast at the trail head and had the chance to chat with the rest of our group, a good mix of English, Canadians, Australians and Americans. And of course our guide Ozzi, the Peruvian cockney wide boy. He suprised the English members of our group with phrases such as 'lovely jubbly', dodgy, cream crackered etc. Not the usual phrases taught in English lessons! It turns out that he lived in Willesdon Green for 6 months and picked up the more colourful aspects of the English language!

The hike started out quite easy with the path following the Urubamba river. The first climb was hard and I found myself walking on my own. I was convinced I heard footsteps behind me but there was no body there. I kept hearing them, perhaps ghosts of Incas following me up the path! Ozzi told me there were lots of ghosts on the trail .... creepy. We arrived at a flat piece of ground high above the river, with huge glacier covered mountains towering all around. The mess tent had been set up and we experience our first SAS hot three course meal, served up in the middle of nowhere! After lunch it was a up hill hike to the campsite, up a steep side valley. So much for the easy day. We were all exhausted when we got to the campsite, but it was cool to find the tents all set up and tea and snacks ready for us. This was really camping in style, however, for the 12 of us, there were 17 porters, cooks, and camp coordinators and 2 guides!!! The view from our tent was amazing, looking down a steep valley with mountains all around. After another 3 course dinner, we were all tucked up in our tents by 8.30!

Day 2

Woken up by roosters crowing at 4am. We were brought tea to our tents at 6am. After a breakfast of pancakes and porridge and loads of coco leaf tea we set off for the toughest day, all a bit worried. The first part of the day comprised a relentless up hill climb up a forest filled valley filled with butterflies and amazing flowers. I was finding it hard to breath properly and it was a real struggle. I had been too cheap to hire a porter to carry my pack for the day and was regreting it, but Ozzi took pity on me and carried my bag for me, what a star! We walked out of the forest onto the bare mountain side to see the path up to Dead Womans Pass ahead of us. This was the worst part of the trail. A path of mainly steps going straight up, it was a really nasty sight. SAS had set up the mess tent and they fed us fruit salad, cookies, cheese sarnies and lots of coca leaf tea really for the push up to the summit. We felt very smug sitting eating in our tent, while other groups sat around on the grass!

Bizarely, I found the last bit up to Dead Womans Pass easier than the climb through the forest, despite the higher altitude. I think it was a mix of three bowls of fruit salad, furiously chewing coca leaves and the White Stripes played very loud on my iPod, that got me to the top. It was a massive sense of achievement, and probably the hardest walk I have ever done, but the view from the top at an altitude of 4198m, was amazing.

At the top of Dead Womans Pass, from left: Ozzi, Joanna, Claire, Spring (crouching), Paul, Kate, James, Lise, Donovan (crouching), Richard, Rachel, Henri (crouching), Lucy, Lee

Then it was time for the down. Steep stone steps heading down the mountain, really hard on the legs and more painful than going up. However, the landscape had changed on the other side of the mountain, and we were walking down through tropical flowers with hummingbirds all around.

Day 3

After spending a peaceful night in our campsite high up in mountain forest we set out again. Another climb up to a mountain pass. Not good first thing in the morning. Then we dropped down into the high jungle. We were now walking on the original Inca built trail. The previous trail had been restored due to erosion, but everything from Day 3 was exactly how the Incas had left it. We visited Inca cities high up in the jungle covered mountains and treked along the path perched on the sides of sheer drops. Due to the cloud swirling around us, we couldn't see how high up we were which was probably a good thing. Ozzie was telling us stories of people that had slipped off the edge and fallen to their deaths, really reasuring!! The walk down to the campsite was amazing. Alot of the time I was walking on my own on the moss covered stone path through misty noisy jungle. Occasionally, we got glimpses of huge mountains and steep valleys all covered in lush jungle, with no sign of human presence. You could really imagine how the guy who discovered the trail in the 1900's felt walking along it for the first time!

Day 3 was one of the best days, but was really long. We all had sore legs and feet from the hundreds of Inca steps we had to climb down! That evening the cook impressed us all at our last dinner by calving humming birds out of carrot and condors out of aubergine!!

Day 4 - Machu Picchu

We were woken at 4 am for our early morning hike to MP, it was early, everyone was grouchy, everything was damp and I had no clean clothes left. After 2 bowls of porridge things seemed better, and I was ready to go, really excited at the thought of finally seeing MP. The so called easy hike to the Sun Gate was an hour of mostly up hill up flights of steep stone steps, made for people with very long legs (I always thought the Incas were short!). We got to the sun gate, the place where you get the first view of MP and were faced with a fantastic view of ......... NOTHING!!! The cloud was so low all we saw was grey. There were mutterings of 'no wander the Spanish didn't find it' and 'we walked all this way for this'. It was all a bit disapointing.

We walked down the last bit of the trail into the city - which was a great feeling (and one of relief!). We got occasional glimpses of the city through the mist, but it was lovely and quiet at 7 in the morning as the day trippers had not arrived yet.

The view of a misty Machu Picchu from Guardian´s house when we first arrived

We had a tour of the city and then we given time to explore. We were glad to escape from the hordes of Peruvian school kids, who saw our group of gringos as a better tourist attraction than the ruins! We had all these kids staring at us and taking pictures of us sitting and listening to Ozzie. Paul even had a group of girls shouting "I love you" at him!

We were amazed at the size of the city. There were lots of terraces, houses, temples etc to explore. All built high ontop of a massive mountain surrounded by jungle. How on earth did the Incas pick this site for their city? We hiked back up to the guardians house when the cloud had lifted to get the best view of the city. We were surrounded by clean, glamourous tourists, who probably thought us filthy smelly trekkers were a bit grim! It all added to the satisfaction that we hiked to get to MP, though.

We caught the bus down to MP town to our hostel. We were all so exhausted that it was hard to believe that we had seen MP. We ate the biggest lunch ever and had the best hot shower. It was really good to be clean again!!

Just to add my take on the trial, personally I found Day 2 the best day, strenuous as it was. And I hated Day 3 - far too much downhill for my liking, and a very long day. Set off at 7am, arrived at camp 3 at about 6pm, with an excrutiatingly painful shoulder and generally knackered!

By the way, you can find some more digital photos from the trail via the World Trip Photos link in the box-out on the left.

Had a day loafing about and sleeping in Cusco after getting back from the Inca Trail. We met up with the rest of our group in the evening for a farewell meal and some beers. A couple of people wanted to try roast guinea pig before they left, so off we went to a restaurant which served the Peruvian speciality. I think we were all expecting a small spatchcocked bit of meat on a skewer, as seen on the flyers touted by all the restaurants. We did not expect the thing which turned up on a plate surrounded by chips and salad. It looked like the poor little creature had been caught in a nasty fire. Its skin was all blistered and crispy but it was still a definite guinuea pig shape, with teeth bared, eye sockets staring and little claws turned up - it was pretty grusome. I could hear past pet guinea pigs squeaking in distress and it really put me off my dinner (a very boring chicken burrito!).

The next day it was time for another night bus journey from Cusco to Nazca. I was sad to leave Cusco. Our supposedly "Imperial Class" coach was a bit old and knackered and designed for short people. We are coming to learn that South America is the land of miss advertising! The bus had sellotape sealing a leak in the roof above my head, which was not very effective when we drove through a massive thunderstorm in the mountains! A the bus took constant hairpin bends in the mountains in the dark and torrential rain, all the stories of buses going off cliffs came back to me. Paul and I made the effort to spend time untangling the seat belts, which I don´t think had been used before! The journey was like being on a boat in rough sea with the bus charging round endless switchbacks for 13 hours. You would wake up to find yourself plastered to one side of the seat then flung over to the other side, with bottles, rubbish and people´s stuff (including my shoes) rolling from one side of the bus to the other!). Not the best journey for sleeping!

We arrived at Nazca a bit shell shocked and were as usuall bomarbed by the usual crowd of people touting taxis, hotels and tours (really hard to deal with after no sleep!). We found a hotel where the room was basically a concrete box with a bed in but there was a lovely garden with a pool - which sold it to me!!!

Nazca Lines, Peru

Of course we had to do the traditional overflight of the Nazca lines (why else bother going to this otherwise unappealing desert town?!). These ancient geoglyphs date from around 600 AC and numerous theories abound as to why and by whom they were created - including speculation about aliens, as usual. The most convincing explanations for me were that they were created in an effort to encourage the waters to flow from the Andes during a 40 year drought; the animals created by shamans who were off the heads on hallucinogenic substances, and the trapezoids, lines etc by the people mapping the water courses. Here´s another site I just found.

We took a 35minute flight in a little 6 seater Cessna (including the pilot) over the lines, banking sharply to the left then right over each geoglyph so that everyone got a good look. From the air they actually seem quite small, until you see the much smaller shadow of the plane beneath you! Quite facinating. Shame they put the Panamerican highway smack bang through the middle of one feature (the lizard) before Maria Reiche discovered them! (Incidently, all the locals thought the German lady was mad for spending years in the desert, until they realised the tourist potential, and now she´s the local heroine!)

Spent the rest of the day, and the whole of the following day, loafing by the pool at the hotel. Then on Tuesday took the Ormeno Royal Class (now definitely our favourite bus service!) coach to Pisco on the Pacific coast - only 3 hours.

Pisco, Peru

Eponymous home of the national beverage (a sort of grape brandy - the Spanish discovered that the vines weren´t very good for wine!). Bit of a rough looking place on first impressions, but doesn´t seem so bad now we´re about to leave. Arrived to even more touts than usual - none of them will actually tell you how much the hotel they´re selling is, so as usual we just ignored them all & went somewhere in the book (San Isidro). Two of them (one of whom claimed to be a "diamond geeser"!) even accompanied us to the hotel (which will be great when they finish building the swimming pool!) & then waited for about 2 hours for us to leave again in the hope we´d buy their tour. We didn´t!

We did however buy a trip to the Islas Balletas (from Zarcillos Connections) which we took the next day (Wednesday).

Islas Balletas & Paracas National Reserve, Peru

We set off on the tour of the Balletas Islands at 7am in the morning. All of the tours in Peru seem to leave at a stupid hour in the morning. We got into a small motor boat and headed off through the fog towards the islands. The islands were rocky outcrops with lots of arches and large green waves sloshing about. They are also home to a large colony of sealions and several species of sea bird.

The sea lion colony was impressive with beaches crammed with females and pups, with the large males fighting and blubbering about.

The islands are also important for guano mining, as the lack of rainfall ensures that the guano remains really high quailty. From the boat we saw lots of guys (mainly poor Andean immigrants from the mountains) carrying the sacks down to waiting boats. It looked a very miserable life - living on a tiny rocky island shovelling bird poo, but better than ending up in the slums of Lima I guess.

After the boat trip we joined a tour to the Paracas national park which covers the Paracas peninsula and the surrounding ocean. It was not the most exciting tour we have been on. We drove miles over featureless desert to see a coastal arch and cliff formation called the Cathederal, however it was so foggy we couldn´t see it, so we hung around in the foggy desert for half and hour waiting for the bus to leave. The highlight of the tour was the lunch stop at a tiny fishing harbour. Expecting the resturant there to be a rip off tourist trap, we were surprised with reasonably priced very fresh, very tasty sea food - yum.

We arrived back to our hostel in Pisco to find the builders busily building the swimming pool and making as much noise as they could. We decided to walk into town to escape the noise but constantly and pointlessly hooting traffic, barking dogs and street vendors trying to outdo each other with ´who can shout loudest on the megaphone` competions! Decided that Pisco was probably the noisiest place we have been to, especially when the builders started up again at 7.30 the next morning.

Lima, Peru

Hung around the following morning and caught the coach to Lima at lunchtime. Feeling a bit nervous about arriving after other travellers stories of robberies, dirt, noise, pollution and general scummyness of the whole place.

The Lonely Planet mentioned that Lima taxi drivers were generally rip off merchants and the taxi driver that took us from the bus staion to our hostle was no exception. Giving him the address of our first choice of hostal, it was all `no problem`, however, once we got going he came up with an excuse, in Spanish which we couldn´t make out, about why he couldn´t take us to our first choice hostal, and how he was going to take us to `a much better one´ (where he got commission probably). So we turned up at this expensive looking place, which we refused to even look at. He continued to flatly refuse to take us to our first choice hostal so we gave him the address of our second choice. He set off, then told us that he knew a better place (by now a familar story!). We couldn´t just get out of the taxi as we didn´t know where we were in a potentially dangerous city, had all our baggage with us and no map. Eventually the taxi driver gave up, after Paul constantly pointing at the right address and shouting that we wanted to go there, however, he charged us for 2 journeys which we paid. We were just glad to be out of the cab at the place where we wanted to be!!!

Our hostal, the Flying Dog Backpackers, was right in the centre of Miraflores, the rich, beach suburb of Lima and much safer than the center. It was strange to be back in a big city with all of the shops, parks and resturants. There was also really bad traffic, constant noise and smog.

The hostal was good with free internet and a big TV lounge with a pile of DVDs and a very friendly ginger cat. The only bad point about the hostal was their safe. We needed to get our passports out of the safe and found that all our plane tickets, travellers cheques, passports etc had been soaked through. Apparently one of the guys had overwatered the plant on top of the safe and all the water had flooded in. It was lucky we got our stuff out when we did or everything would have dried and stuck together, then we would have been in trouble!

We were pleasantly suprised by Lima after hearing really bad things about it, but we didn´t really have time to venture into the centre. However, the noise in the city is constant. We were woken a few nights by loads of hooting traffic. Paul became a bit unhinged by all the noise!!

We spent most of the time wandering around the shops & markets. We had one excursion to the Peruvian Gold Museum out in one of the suburbs. It was amazing, 4 huge rooms full of gold artifacts from Perus pre-colonial cultures, along with textiles and more mummies! However, we now read that it`s all fake (full story)!

There was also a Armoury museum upstairs above the gold museum, which was crammed full of guns, swords etc. If you´re an enthusiast I guess it could keep you busy for hours. Even I found it quite interesting, although Kate went & sat outside. It included a Wilkinson Sword sword presented by ERII on her corronation to Emperor Haele Selassi . So they don´t just make scissors.

Our exit from Peru was complicated when we popped into the LAN Chile office to reconfirm our flights and discovered that we weren´t booked on the flights. It turned out that LAN Chile had cancelled all of our flights after we were a "no show" for the flight to La Paz. The 07:30 to Santiago was full, so we had to take the 00:55 flight instead, and then had a 7 hour wait until the flight up to Mexico. The only good thing about this was that we saved on one night in the hostel!

Having got a taxi to the airport straight after dinner, we queued ages, waited ages, got on & took off, got served breakfast (at 1.30am!), fell asleep watching Tomb Raider - for about an hour - then arrived in Santiago where we attempted to sleep in the lounge, played Canasta, & got very bored. Anyway, to cut a long story short, by the time we arrived at the hotel in Mexico City almost 24 hours after we set off, we were totally knackered!

Mexico City, Mexico

We only spent one night here, and hence picked a hotel near the massive nothern bus terminal. So the morning after arriving we had breakfast at the hotel (more on the food shortly) and then jumped on the bus to Morelia.

Morelia, Mexico

After a fairly tedious 6 hour journey (despite a very plush & almost empty pullman bus, and The Two Towers & The Edge on the TV) we arrived in Morelia, a supposedly beautiful old colonial style city, still feeling knackered, and Kate feeling a bit ill. Had a wonder around, and it was pretty scenic - lots of big old buildings made with the local pink volcanic rock and pretty plazas full of topiaried trees and lots of tasteful white xmas lights everywhere. Still having trouble getting to grips with the local food, and as Kate wasn´t hungry, I´m afraid I gave in to a basic urge & had a BK Whopper con queso! And boy was it good!

In the morning we found somewhere good for breakfast - Kate even got a bowl of cornflakes with banana & hot milk, just how she likes it. By the way, it was chuffin` freezing that morning until the sun got higher in the sky - even the locals were complaining - trouble with being back in the northern hemisphere again - back to winter.

At this point I should perhaps explain why I keep mentioning the food. It takes some getting used to; far more so than in S America. Mexicans seem to eat exactly the same sort of food at all times of day. So breakfast (taken mid morning) consists of various stewed meat type concoctions, eggs in various combinations with other stuff (mainly more meat), with beans & tortillas. Lunch is taken at around 2 or 3 pm, and consists of exactly the same things, with fewer eggs. Dinner is generally only a snack (asking for the menu of the day at 8pm doesn´t get you very far, as I discovered last night), but consists of much the same again. Unfortunately I´ve discovered I don´t really like tortillas (they`re made from corn here, not wheat like at home)!

Back to the narrative... after breakfast we took in the rest of the sights, including the Cultural centre, then got a cab back to the bus terminal (while again cursing the useless Rough Guide that had said the bus terminal was in the centre of town). Fortuitively we caught the bus about 10 minutes later to Guadalajara. Only 3 hours this time, and guess which film we had - yep Lord of the Rings again!

Gualalajara, Mexico

Had a frustrating morning, first trying to find somewhere which did a decent breakfast for a reasonable price (we failed & had another buffet) then trying to find a laundry (we failed - neither of the two listed in the guide book existed, at least not where it claimed - mind you the last two hotels we´ve stayed in were marked in the wrong place). Then we tried to buy a new guide book, and failed (the english language bookshop listed in the Rough Guide didn´t exist).

Then visited the Museo Regional (not bad - lot´s of cool ceramics - and a blessed haven from the noise of the city), had lunch (buffet again!), and wandered around the very large market (featuring lots of trotters - the pig/cow kind, not the Del Boy & Rodney variety - and brains, lungs, cows heads etc., amongst other non wobbly meat things).

Tequila and into the Sierra Madre, Mexico

Made a day trip from Guadalahara to Tequila, as a visit had to be done. We got the very cheap local bus, which after managing to get through the nightmare traffic, rollled through countyside full of loads of fields of blue agave cactus. At $6 each this was considerably cheaper than the Tequila Express, which would have been $65 each!

The town of the Tequila was a very, small sleepy place, and apart from the shops selling fake Tequila to the unsuspecting tourist there was not much going on. We found a place that organised tours to a big distillary out of town and we had the whole tour to ourselves. We first had a look at the agave plants, which grow the best around Tequila due to the volcanic soil (the town is named after the Tequila volcano). Only the blue agaves are used for the best tequilla and a plant takes 8 to 10 years to mature. They then strip off the leaves and harvest the´pineapple` in the middle, which can weigh up to 300 pounds (most about 18" in diameter). The pineapples are then packed into an oven and steamed for 36 hours, which sweetens the agave juices into a really sweet caramel taste. The juice is then squashed out of the fibrous pineapple and mixed with yeast to ferment it. The fibre is recycled for furniture stuffing and other uses. The inside of the distillery smelt lovely and there were loads of vats of bubbling agave juice (18,000 litres in each vat). The distillery we visited then triple distilled the tequila in three massive stills. We were given a large measuring cyclinder of the fresh distilled tequilla to swig out of! It was powerful stuff (about 55%!), but left a lovely glow !

The tequila is then watered down to legal levels and put in canadian oak barrels to mature for different lengths of time, or sold direct as ´blanca´. The longer matured stuff is alot more expensive to buy, not least because after 5 years the barrel has absorbed most of the liquid!

Then it was off to the distillery shop for a tasting session, where we tried the ´reposado´ (aged for 6 to 12 months) tequila and various other types. All had the destinctive caramel agave taste. For someone who previously has avoided tequila like the plague, I was enjoying this proper stuff. Then we tried the mixto tequila, which is not 100% agave tequila but a mix of the inferior agave spirit, sugar and water. The nasty rough taste took me back to my Uni days !!! I think I will stick to the 100% stuff in the future! They had a special "buy two bottles and get one free" offer, but alas, we had no room in our rucksacks, so we just bought the one bottle to tide us over christmas.

The next day we left Guadalahara for a small town called Tapalpa, in the Sierra Madre mountains. The pretty little town was situated in pine forests and was a welcome relief from the heat, noise and smog of the city. Our hotel room overlooked a sunny courtyard with a fountain - lots of peace and quiet I thought (apart from a pumping disco one night and someone revving their monster pickup at 6 in the morning it generally was!). We didn´t really do much in Tapalpa - just wandered around, sat in cafes / bars and slept. We did go for one walk up through the mountains to giant stacks of boulders in the middle of a field. All the occupants of the 4x4s roaring past us up the road looked at us as though we were mad because we were walking. It was scorching when we walking, but when it got dark it was freezing cold - I was glad I had not sent my thick fleece home after leaving Peru!

After a couple of days in Tapalpa, we caught the bus through the mountains to a town called Colima. I think the bus drivers must have been having competitions with who could fit the most people on the bus. It was packed, and at every stop there were four or five people waiting to get on, and they did, somehow!! We had seats which was lucky! Nearing Colima we passed the Volcan de Colima, a perfect volcano shape, which even had steam coming out of the crater - brill! It is the first proper smoking volcano we have seen.

Colima is home to two really good museums displaying ceramics from local archaeological sites, but unfortunately they were both closed, along with most of the shops, not giving us much to do while we waited for our night bus (nooooo - not another one - please don´t show Lord of the Rings again!!) to Puerto Vallarta.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

We left Colima at about 23:30 (45 minutes late) and thankfully no films were shown. Arriving at Puerto Vallarta at about 6 am we waited for it to get light before once again leaving our packs at the guardia and caught the clapped out bus into PV centro. The 2 mile drive into town past the airport and literally hundreds of hotels, most of them high-rise blocks, was not particularly inspiring.

As we´d been warned, everything in PV was twice as expensive as elsewhere in the country, and we were astoniched by the number of locals speaking English. The place was chock full of americans and canadians, although we were still something of a novelty as englishmen. Had a good american style breakfast at a place called Freddy´s (owned by a jovial american named Freddy!). Then wondered around the shops, sat in a square cooling off for a while, and then had lunch! After this hectic (!) morning we headed back to the bus station and caught the local bus up the coast to La Peñita.

La Peñita, Mexico

This small town on the coast is a bit of a haven for americans and canadians. We´re staying with Canadian friends of Kate´s parents inwhat the locals call "the Canadian condominium" - a little haven of green and peace with a swimming pool in the gardens, and the beach a hundred yards away.

Did very little on Christmas eve, and not much more on Christmas day, except walking along the beach and having a swim in the relatively warm Pacific ocean. In the evening we were treated to a fantastic traditional turkey dinner with a dozen or so Canadians. When we set off from home I´d imagined that xmas dinner was going to consist of tortillas & beans etc!

Kate has now got one of her nasty chesty / sinusey colds (for the 3rd time this year), so we´re realing doing nothing at all!