Before heading out for beers we set up a sketchy surgery in our hostel room so Ellie the nurse could dig some sea urchin spikes out of my heel. They’d been having a great time in there since Huanchaco, causing infections and such.
We then went to the hostel bar and after to route 36 which was definitely a novelty.
Woke up at a decent hour to book our amazon and salt flat tours and then spent a tough day trying to get ourselves into some sort of an organized state before our flight to Rurambaque in the early evening. Annie and Ellie had cat food subway at the airport then we boarded the worlds smallest airplane and took off. They took one look at us and put us on the back seat bandit seat, you could see straight down the aisle and watch the pilots joking around and flying with no hands and having a great old time. I was certain I was going to die, then got really bad sinus pain which was awesome.
Lived to tell the tale and the next day we headed off on our Pampas tour. The Pampas is the flat river land area near the amazon. We opted for that instead of the amazon because of the opportunity to see many more animals. And that we did. Started with a three hour drive to our accommodation and saw a sloth hanging out in a tree by the road. Then had an epic lunch and went out on a long dugout canoe for some bird watching and swimming with the pink river dolphins. We saw paradise birds, huge herons, giant guinea pigs ( they were like massive wombats with a rodent face), a toucan, Capybara a sort of giant South American possum and a boa constrictor. Andreas the guide would just suddenly spin the boat around and spend 5 minutes trying to point out where the animal was to our useless westerner eyes.
We jumped in the river after Andreas assuring us there were no Cayman around (we saw one the following day about 50 meters from that spot) and nervously awaited the dolphins who apparently wanted to ‘play’ with us. Without warning I got tail slapped in the face, and the dolphins seemed to attack. One bit me on the foot and there were several more splashes to the face which seemed more alarming than playful. But we had fun jumping off the boat and watching the dolphins playing with some old soccer balls.
Also went out after dark and saw some cayman eyes on the river and Ellie and I got hundreds of mosquito bites while Annie laughed at us and enjoyed having blande flavourless blood.
Cold showers and the lights unexpectedly turning off at 9.30 made for early nights and cold mornings but the monkey spotting trip at 6am soon had our spirits up. Saw heaps of little yellow squirrel monkeys that would come right up to the boat to check us out and big black howler monkeys that made funny faces and a lot of noise. Also saw tree climbing ant eaters and a cayman lurking ominously just off the shore at our hostel. Piraña fishing on the lake was fun but our guide was the only one to catch one and the sunset over the water was probably the highlight. Ellie almost landed one but got a little excited and pulled the line so hard she brained it against the side of the boat and it got away.
Third day we went on an anaconda walk and didn’t manage to find one which is normal in the rainy season apparently. I saw an iguana but everyone else missed it and thought I was pulling their leg. Definitely saw it, sucks to be them.
Went for another swim with the dolphins on the way back and saw a cayman on the bank. Andreas reckoned the dolphins kept them away, and no bites from either animals so all was well. We ran into some Swedish girls we’d talked to in Rurambaque, two sets of sisters who wanted us to come to Mendoza with them. They were all talking at once and so excited to make friends, very funny and nice so we might meet up with them after the salt flats.
Took the remote control sized airplane back to La Paz and waited for our bus to Uyuni where the salt flats tour started. I managed to lose all our tickets and vouchers in the rush to the terminal so I guess that puts me well ahead for losing stuff at about 3-0. (I lost our lonely planet book and Annie’s expensive shampoo) all good though because I’ve been scabbing other people’s books, I bought Annie some lemon flavored shampoo for $1.50, and we managed to get on the buses and onto our tour with just our names. Admittedly our tour guide did find us lying on some park benches in Uyuni because we didn’t really know where to go, but all good.
Bus trip took a long time bouncing along the worlds worst road at 40 km/h so not much sleep was to be had. First day we met the rest of our group (a couple of Canadians and a Dutch lady) then headed to a train graveyard which was pretty cool, then to the salt flats. Guide told us how they sold the salt at $300 for 10 tonnes, and after watching them shoveling it by hand onto trucks I think I’m going to stick to finance.
Salt flats were astounding and an opportunity for some funny perspective photos to be taken with the endless white shimmering background a perfect back drop. Also checked out the salt hotels which are made entirely out of blocks of salt and fall down after 10 or so years. Had a great afternoon checking out the mirror lakes and watching a lightning storm roll around us while we stood in the sun in the middle.
Second day we got up early to beat the other tours and stopped first at a huge lava field. Climbed around the massive eroded rocks and taught the Canadians how to coowee. Saw some giant moss plants later which take 50 years for a metre to grow. Annie wanted to kick some but we managed to restrain her.
Stopped just below the snow line at a lake surrounded by mountains and found out that we were at 4500m. We chased some llamas and flamingos around and took some amazing photos then had lunch. After, we raced the other tour cars into the Atacama desert, took the lead and were first to arrive at the arbol (tree) rock made famous by Salvador Dhali who apparently painted it from people’s descriptions and looks almost exactly alike. But first I had to unload some extra baggage and ducked around some rocks to the ‘toilet’ area and found the great poo plane of South America. Apparently they don’t believe in burying their number 2’s here so it made for some great sites and smells.
Arrived at the red lake mid afternoon and even I could see how amazingly bright the water was. There were also ice islands scattered across it covered in salt and bromide so they looked like big fluffy clouds. Perty cool. Got to some dodgy huts where we enjoyed a quality nights sleep on rock slabs. We were told to keep the door open or we would asphyxiate due to the lack of oxygen at that height.
Woke at 4 the next morning and went into AN ACTIVE VOLCANO CRATER. I have wanted to do this for a long time, and it didn’t disappoint. First we went to a steam geyser and you could put your hands in it without quite burning yourself. It was still dark so you could get some cool photos with a torch or a flash, I put my arms around it and pretended I was goku from dragonball z. Everyone was really impressed.
Then went to the centre of the crater, it looked some sort of sci fi movie, especially in the dark with the car headlights shining through the smoke and steam pouring out of huge holes in the ground. We were warned not to get too close but the Canadians and I couldn’t resist, and shone our torches down some of the holes. There was really loud rumbling and spitting noises and we could see water churning and boiling away furiously. Other holes looked bottomless, and considering how slippery the muddy edges were we decided to keep our distance.
Having full filled a child hood fantasy we continued on to some hot springs with snow beating down on the windscreen. Had a hot soak looking over a blue lake filled with flamingos then stuffed ourselves with pancakes. Ellie saved a girl from her retarded guide after she fainted, what a boss. Thinking I should probably do some first aid, as all I did was yell out that Ellie was a nurse then run inside for breakfast.
Drove through a snowy pass in the mountains and made it to our highest point at 5100m. Blue skies and sunny and the ranges around us looked incredible. One of the peaks was 6000 metres!
Arrived at el lago verde(green) and dropped one of our group off for her transfer to Chile. Lake wasn’t as bright as the red, but knowing we were at the corner of the Bolivian, Chilean and Argentinian borders was pretty sweet. Then hit the road for our 8 hour drive back to Uyuni.
Comp update: times having had something explode in our bags, 1-1-1. Ellie and I with suncream and Annie with shampoo. Times fallen over goes about 30-0-0 to Ellie who has absolutely no balance. I pushed her over with my thumb the other day. And most fleas goes to Ellie in accordance with her obsession with playing with every mangy animal we come across.
Ellie arrived after 3 days of travelling including flying the wrong way around the world through Dubai and a nights stop over in BA. We decided to take her for a celebratory dinner where I accidentally ordered cow gizzards which had the consistency of hairy seafood and tasted like, well cow gizzards
I guess. We went back to the hostel and drank some beers, the girls bailed early and I almost got kicked out for wrestling with an English soccer hooligan.
The next day we had time to go to the beach before our bus to Cuzco, highlight of the day was Elly getting smashed in the surf and breaking her watch and almost her face. I laughed pretty hard. Then we jumped on the bus for 21 hours, the only interesting thing that happened was a bus and a truck getting wedged together and blocking the road for half an hour, and locals laughing at Annie for wandering the highway with no shoes on in her pajamas. Oh and the scenery was epic.
We arrived at the hostel and realised that Australia day was the following day so went to bed pretty early in preparation. And had the worst curry getting around and made some friends.
Australia day just a massive party from about 11 am with the hottest 100 and hilarious people. Conner the Irish dude, Celia the french Australian, and some guys from the north shore were standouts. I went out without the girls again but understandably as it was very late and the altitude sickness was kicking in, Cuzco was about 3500 m above sea level!
Spent most of the next day sleeping or watching Adam sandler movies and preparing for our inca jungle tour.
First day we started early with mountain biking down a highway, it was about 2 and half hours with 2500 m of vertical, so rad. Annie thought she would suck since it was her third time on a bike but rode like a boss and beat most of the other riders. Then we went white water rafting in grade 4 rapids in a river with black water. It was pretty hair raising and the water was so strong you could hear the massive boulders on the river bed being rolled into each other, it sounded like a thunderstorm or a landslide. Elly proved her water
capabilities here and we all managed to stay in the boat which was good as we were pushing around grade 5 rapids that looked like you’d go down and never come up if you were swimming through them.
Then walked to a village in the mountains on the way seeing a monkey humping a teddy bear and Annie and Ellie nearly passing out from exhaustion, but papa puma (our guide) got them there and I was fine cos I’m super fit.
After some cold showers, cards, a delicious Peruvian meal, some shared jokes about each others countries, and everyone ganging up on me because I screamed in the shower, it was time for bed. Papa puma told us a bed time story about the incas and everyone passed the f@$k out.
The next day we got up early and Did the start of the inca trail along a cliff with 500 metre drop about half a metre away from where we were walking. I’m a little scared of heights and Annie had a great time telling me what a puss I am after I had heckled her about her fitness or lack thereof. We stopped and had our faces painted with some berries and heard some more stories about the Incas. We thought that was awesome at the time but a few days later we were cursing them and wondering why they couldn’t have built their stupid cities on the river like every other civilization. We came across a landslide that had covered the path and patty ‘captain ‘merica’ the ex marine pretty much carried every one over it including the guide haha. Amazing walk including a cable box that you sat in and got pulled over the hectic river two at at time and hot springs were the last stop of the day. Had some beers there and then headed to a village for dinner, a few inca tequilas and another high school style disco which the girls bailed early on as usual. Showed off our pole dancing skills with yuri the estonian, Gary the Pom and Marie the Canadian.
Third day we went zip lining in the morning, Elly couldn’t figure out how to brake and did some pretty impressive flailing and air running which had all the guides falling about laughing. I nearly shat myself on the first one as its a few hundred meters up with only a harness supporting you but by the end Annie and I were going upside down like the pro’s. Then we had a walk along a train track for a few hours with Marie pissing herself at me because it turns out my poncho looked more like a dress than a rain jacket, and some amazing photos being taken. We arrived at Agues Calientes late afternoon, it reminded Annie and I a lot of Thredbo with narrow streets a big central river and the amazing mountains surrounding the town shrouded in mist.
The 4am wake up call and 1800 steps were a bit rough but all worth it in the end when we watched the sunrise over Macchu Pichu. I had a bit of a scare when I thought I’d lost my entry ticket not once but twice, in the space of five minutes when we were lining up to get in. Laugh it up mox haha.
We also hiked Whannu Pichu which over looks Macchu Pichu and added another 2000 stairs to our tally for the day. We climbed through a cave and had about 20 minutes of clear skies for a few photos before the fog rolled in, and the decent was a parody of screams by Joss the tiny puerto rican girl, Marie, and myself in the rain. It’s hard to describe how beautiful it was but I’ll show the photos sooner or later.
Headed back to Cuzco and dealt with a crazy french couple on the train and bus who were alternately spewing and choking each other. Lots of fun.
Went to the markets yesterday and just arrived in La Paz bolivia after the bus ride from hell, with no food, toilets, or blankets on a freezing bus with water dripping on me, and stood in line for an hour at the Bolivian border at 7am. So now we’re going for some burrs.
Also I am winning the beard growing competition by a few whiskers, Annie reckons I can’t shave until we get home.
We spent the day in Lima before heading to the surf town of Huanchaco. Central Lima was not what I expected and reminded more of down town Baghdad with a fair few buildings being covered in rubble and some scary looking dogs roaming the streets. Funnily enough we caught the bus about 10 blocks away and ended up in the beach suburb miraflores, which looked a lot like bondi with really nice shops restaurants and amazing cliffs.
The bus rides here are not the usual pack of people with their noses pressed against their iPhones like at home. Every few stops we’d get new buskers jumping on to perform in the aisle whether there was room or not. We had a kid playing Guns and roses, an old guy yelling something about the government and pointing vehemently at Annie (maybe he didn’t like tourists, or her funny lookin face I’m not sure) and two guys beat boxing and rapping who were my favorite.
The beach was more of brown ooze smashing onto stones but there were plenty of beautiful people around and I went for a swim anyway.
Went for a walk along the cliffs, booked our tickets to cuzco for the following week and jumped on the bus to huanchaco.
The buses here have ladies like flight attendants who serve you dinner drinks etc, and warn you to use the toilets for urination only, and to let the driver know if you have ‘other’ toiletry needs haha.
We arrived at about 7am after 9 hours on the bus and headed to our hostel. I wanted to have a surf as it looked really nice with long 30 second rides breaking left across the beach. Epic. Hired a board and a whetty after being convinced I would need one by some lady and was glad I had it because the water was freezing.
Apart from nearly crapping myself because I thought an animal surfaced next to me, it was a bommy of coral, I had two good surfs that day and hung out with a kiwi couple Annie met on the beach
That night we watched the sun set over the ocean and watched a procession of surfers head out in the water and hold hands in a circle. Apparently a freak wave hit the beach one year before and killed 6 surfers.
After we went to dinner with the kiwis and some Canadians and had some awesome vegetarian burritos, a few pisco sours and a pretty good time. Pete showed us his Spanish skills with a few ‘bloody yo tengos’ and we taught him some swear words.
Annie and my travel competition has been coming along nicely. Caught without toilet paper goes 2-1 to me, times sunburnt is about 4-1 to me, and times we’ve thought we lost our passports is at 1 all. Unfortunately I’m winning the gastro competition 1-0 though and spent Thursday and Thursday night catching up on the how many times spewed challenge which I think I’m still behind in though.
Headed back to Lima Friday night after more surfing and being very tranquilo (relaxed) to go to some desert ruins and sand boarding for the weekend. The ruins ended being a little bit of a let down with the highlight being the crazy traffic and driving (our friend said her cousin has seen 7 people die on the streets of Lima since he’s lived here.)
We decided to stay in Loki hostel this time in Lima, a more upbeat place with a cool bar and rooftop. The first guy we met’s name name was lance and he quickly got hammered and told us about his brother who’d changed his legal name to ‘Megatron Juan Coolsville’ and been arrested for smuggling acid between Canada and New Zealand. The following newspaper article now hangs framed in their parents house and it was probably the funniest/weirdest story we’ve heard so far. We met heaps of people that night and when Annie went to bed I decided I’d go out with my new amigos. We got separated on the way to the clubs and I ended up at a cool indie rock sort of place and made friends with a heap of locals and a kid from the our hostel called Sonny none of who could speak English. They thought my Australian accent when speaking Spanish was hilarious and so had my limits tested with a whole night of only Spanish. Got home at about 5 ready for our 9am bus to Ica for sand boarding.
Ica was faaaaantastic, an oasis right out in the desert with massive sand dunes surrounding the village. We arrived to a Sunday session in full swing with a pool full of half naked people and a Dj blasting ‘what the fuck’ a dub step song that was way to intense for our present state of mind. But the dune buggy ride soon cleared our heads which was like a roller coaster through massive burms and down nearly vertical 100 metre high dunes. Hard to convey how awesome it was and the sand boarding was nearly as good. It wasn’t as similar to snowboarding as I had hoped but awesome anyway, the driver would drop us off and we’d slide down 3 massive dunes in a row while he drove around to the bottom to pick us up and take us to progressively bigger and bigger dunes. Annie and I both nearly tore ourselves new ones with some big stacks and we’re still trying to get sand out of the crevases today. We’re currently waiting for Ellie to arrive at the hostel back in Lima and planning our activities in Cuzco for when we leave tomorrow. So many activities!
So we went to Lost, I can see why you liked it Lux, it was hip hop central. Played some drinking games with people at the hostel and got taught how to say Maer (to piss) on the bus which is apparently very rude and not to be yelled in the streets.
Grabbed a beer and stood to watch the break dancing circle which was a very serious and talented arena. By far the most amazing break dancing I´d ever seen ( I´ve seen a lot), except for the worm which was thrown down by Mikkel the danish guy much to both ours and locals surprise, they loved it.
Annie tried to make friends with the biggest black guy with dreds I have ever seen, he was more interested in the large number of booty dancing locals though. I tried to request a song but got yelled at by a very intimidating bouncer so we made a quick retreat upstairs where we made friends with a local couple. Probably the coolest dude in the club who´d been king of the dancing circle earlier came over and Annie and I had an awesome time trying out our spanish, and I successfully pulled off my first joke in Spanish by trying to Cambiar (swap) Annie for one of the guy´s girlfriends. Unsuccessfully though much to our dismay. Tried out some two stepping, not sure if I thought it was funnier or them.
Woke up late on Friday and was convinced I should go play soccer in a local pick up game. So much fun, and scored a goal. You had to be bloody fit though since we played four twenty minute games in succession. There were kids there that weren´t allowed to play and spent their time doing tricks on the sideline. I would rather have had them on my team though because they were incredible.
I´ve been getting slaughtered by mosquitos or spiders and have big red bites all over me. Annie´s really enjoyed each morning where I show her my new ones and complain about them all day. Its ok though because I get to listen to her descriptive analysis´of her spewing through her nose after having a few too many DF tequila´s.
Went to a movie friday night where we thought we´d get to practise our Spanish so we picked something simple, “La ultima noche para todo humanidad.” But unfortunately it was in English so we just sat there and annoyed the locals by whispering loudly about how crap it was.
Made it to the Florida street markets on Saturday and Annie got a kiss from another large dude with dreds who was a bit on the smelly side, didn´t manage to wrangle one for myself. Bought some cool stuff. Then we went to the bond street mall and found BA´s goth population. Checked out some awesome tattoo places and tried to take some inconspicuous photos of the ringed and tattooed skaters.
There was a big party planned by our new hostel Millhause that went to a corny high school dance style party but then to the most epic club called the terrace that had about 8 different dance floors with all different styles of musica. When we were trying to catch cabs there we were turned down because apparently all the cabs in that street (there were about 15) only sold drugs and wouldn´t take us anywhere. All lost each other at a few points throughout the night, but I had a great time cruising around annoying the local girls trying to practise drunken Spanish/tango.
It was a surprise to walk out of the club and realise it was a bright sunny day outside and we headed home to sleep the day away. Annie had another surprise when she was dragged out of bed by some crazy chick about half an hour after we went to bed, who Annie thought was accusing her of stealing her boyfriend. Turns out her boyfriend was money and we spent a few hours trying to sort out with her translating friends what had happened. It was all good in the end when everyone decided the girl had lost her dandoos and we went back to bed.
Went to the San Telmo markets when we were feeling up to it, and they were probably the best markets I´d ever been to. Annie and I bought a local artist´s T-shirts that had huge portraits of famous people on them. I bought Einstein and Annie got Heath Ledger as the Joker. We then went home and booked our flights for Lima and said Hasta Luego to our amigos.
So we´ve arrived in central Lima and are staying at a nice hostel waiting for our bus tonight to Huanchaco which is apparently the surfing Mecca of Peru. No English here but we´ve gotten by pretty well and I´d definitely say our Spanish is 100% better than when we arrived. Off to do a historical tour so we better vamanos. Ciao!
So we went to the airport three hours early like you’re supposed to and proceeded to wait 7 hours to board the plane. Entonces we were finally in the air! We got talking to the lady next to Annie and tried out our Spanish for the first time, with no response. Turns out she was a Maori lady and we were on the way to new Zealand haha.
So after a stopover in Auckland we hadn’t known about we were finally off!
The taxi driver to the hostel didn’t try to rape and rob us like we expected. Although he asked to have Annie for his girlfriend, he said I could have Ellie though so that was nice. Definitely made some ground on our confidence with Spanish and had a decent conversation.
Found the hostel then went and got burrs and some pizza. A bum stole some but that was ok because it was huge.
First day! Woke at 6 due to jet lag and sweating. Did the walking tour which was rad (cheers for the recommendation Mitch) found out a lot of people are just finding out that their parents had killed their real parents and adopted them as a part of a the dictatorship regime about 30 years ago. Imagine finding that out!
The city is dirtier than expected but really old, lively and friendly. We can’t tell if we look like tourists or are just really good looking as we’ve been catching a few funny looks.
I bought a film camera. It’s awesome, could take a while for photos to appear here though.
Went to dinner at a nice restaurant for some steaks and luckily ordered one to share instead of one each like our Danish mates said, it was huge. Had a bottle of red and some salad only cost about 15 each. Yew!
Got drunk on the rooftop of the hostpital with a heap of people from the hostel. My favorite is a Canadian guy called Ryan and the two Danish dudes Tor and Mikkel. Hilarious guys, Danish is so fucked to try and speak though. We bonded over tintin and helping them try to seduce some local girls that came over.
Today slept and went to the pools. Everyone wears g strings, from 13 year olds to 60. Fat and thin. Even blokes. Couldn’t convice Ryan to buy one though. Annie and I did some in pool aerobics following a crazy dance instructor on a stage. I was by far the best.
Hitting the town esta noche in pelermo on a recommendation from lux in a few pubs, which is pronounced poobs haha. Woo hoo!
