Arequipa

After arriving from Bolivia we spent a couple of days relaxing in Arequipa. It is Peru's second biggest city and quite a cosmopolitan place with lots of nice bars and restaurants. The highlight of our time in Arequipa was a visit to the incredibly beautiful Santa Catalina Monastery.

Founded in 1575 it used to be home to about two hundred nuns and their three hundred servants. None of these women were ever allowed to leave the monastery which is in the middle of the city but surrounded by huge walls. In 1970 the nuns opened the majority of the monastery to the public who were allowed in for the first time since it was built. There is still a corner of the monastery though where the remaining 30 nuns live in seclusion from the outside world.

Walking around all the courtyards, streets and rooms the monastery felt like a small town in its own right, even though in places you could hear traffic noise from outside. There was a really creepy room where the nuns used to be laid out before burial complete with portraits of about 15 nuns, all painted after they had died!

After looking around Arequipa we headed off to the Colca Canyon about 200 kilometres away. The Colca Canyon is one of the deepest in the world and we were planning to do a three day trek. The plan was to descend to the bottom of the canyon on the first day, walk across it on the second day and back up it on the third day. Unfortunately we hadn't factored in Steve's legs!

The first day went reasonably well but by the second day Steve was hobbling along like a wounded dog. We had brought along a guide called Joanna who got into quite a bad temper when she realised we weren't going to be walking fast enough to stick to her preplanned schedule. She didn't actually say anything to us directly she just asked us what time it was every ten minutes and then sighed loudly until we were both ready to nudge her off the edge.

By the second night Steve was barely able to walk from our bamboo hut to the dinner table, so we decided that we weren't going anywhere the following morning, let alone on a 5hr hike up to the top of a huge canyon. To our relief Joanna went back alone that morning leaving us to relax. The hostel that we were staying at, at the base of the canyon, was quite a fun place to hang out with a slightly grubby swimming pool, two cute baby ducks and an amazing view.

In the end Steve´s state forced us to suffer the indignity of having to hire out two mules to take us to the top of the canyon. For a reason we couldn't quite work out the mule owner would only take them up at 3am in the morning. So today we got up in the middle of the night, got on to our mules and started heading up the canyon. To start with I was convinced this was a horrible form of animal torture with the added disadvantage of potentially dropping off a cliff edge. However we realised that our mules were as hard as nails when they started racing each other in a competition to see which one would be in front. Steve hung his head in shame as we passed fellow hikers walking up the canyon the old fashioned way. However, the view into the canyon at dawn was pretty spectacular.

We are now back in Arequipa recovering for a day before heading off to Nasca tomorrow night to see the ancient lines in the desert.

Rurrenabaque

We spent a week studying Spanish in Sucre at the Academia Latinamericana de Espanol.
Steve learnt how to name many different types of furniture and was given a small woollen llama by his teacher as a birthday present. I watched videos about Che Guevara and listened to my teacher talking about Bolivia´s problems, it has quite a few!

We then headed off to the Jungle in Rurrenabaque. The flight from La Paz was in a 12 seater plane, which felt a bit like being in a flying minibus, but we got some amazing views of the mountains and the jungle. The airport in Rurrenabaque consisted of a grass runway and a hut and the town felt very hot, humid and sleepy.

Our first stop was the Chalalan Lodge inside the Parque Nacional Madidi. In order to get there we had to take a boat for five hours upstream of Rurrenabaque. The further we got from Rurrenabaque the more pristine the forest started to look and we spotted our first Capybara on the river bank. Capybaras are the worlds largest rodent. They live on underwater plants and look like an oversized guinea pig.

Chalalan Lodge is about half an hours walk from the river bank, by the shores of a beautiful lake. It was set up by the charity Conservation International when the national park was created. The local community of San Jose de Uchupiamonas live in a protected area near the park where they have rights to hunt, fish and carry out traditional slash and burn agriculture. The idea of the lodge was to provide the local community with a sustainable way to supplement the income from their traditional lifestyle. It is now run by the local community who take it in turns to work in the lodge and by all accounts has been a big sucess.

Certainly all the staff were incredibly friendly and enthusiatic. After arriving we were given an absolutely delicious lunch and felt more like we had arrived in a luxury hotel than the middle of the jungle.

During our time at the lodge we were taken on walks into the jungle, one lasting five hours, and boat trips on the lake. As well as lots of amazing plants we saw capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, macaws, hoatzins (a weird looking bird that looks a bit like a prehistoric chicken), bats, frogs, caimans (which are like black crocodiles) and a tarantula. Our closest encounter with the wildlife was when we went on a night walk and the frog we were staring at jumped on to Steve.

On our last night the staff organised a traditional party complete with chicha (a beer made from corn which in my opinion tastes a lot like off milk), coca leaves and a band. The most enthusiastic party goers were the staff themselves who continued long after all the tired tourists had gone to bed!

After our trip to Chalan we headed off on another trip to the Pampas of Yacuma. This is an area a few hours by truck from Rurremabaque which is mainly grass and swamp land. The same types of animal live in this area as do in the rainforest but because there are fewer trees they are easier to spot.

One of the reasons why the area is not rainforest is because it is grazed by cattle. For me one of the strangest things in the jeep on our way to and from the Pampas was seeing domesticated animals like cattle and horses along the road. Then spotting wild ones alongside them including an armadillo, a sloth and a pair of ostrichs.

Our lodge was alongside the river Yacuma. It was nice enough but this time there was no chance of mistaking it for a luxury hotel! The wet season had got underway and all the swamp land in the Pampas at this time makes it a perfect breeding ground for mosquitos. Despite wearing 50% deet insect repellent all over my body and wearing long trousers and a long sleeved shirt and putting 50% deet insect repellent all over my clothes and hair I still managed to get about 250 bites, as counted by Steve. Our guide explained to us that in the height of the wet season in January he has tourists that come for a three day trip and are begging to be taken back after two!

However the wild life that we saw made the trip definately worth it. It felt like we had been transported to a kind of animal Disney Land. In boat trips along the river we saw more Capybaras including a whole family with baby ones. We saw loads of Cayman, Bolivian Cocodrilos, Turtles and many types of birds.

The most friendly animals were the pink and grey dolphins that live in the river and seemed almost to be showing off around our boat and the Squirrel monkeys who came down to see if they could get anything to eat. With the shyer animals though, we did end up feeling a little like animal papparazzi. Our guide would often ram our boat into the shore causing whichever animal we were looking at to make a quick exit while we tried to photograph them.

We were taken to fish for piranhas. I thought that as I eat fish it would be hypocritial not to join in the fishing but felt rotten after catching a catfish and watching it slowly suffocate to death. In the end no one caught any piranhas but we caught five catfish which we ate for dinner. On the way back on the river in the dark there were so many fire flies that the whole sky seemed to be twinkling.

On our last morning we went to a road in the grass lands behind the river to look for an anaconda. Our guide joined forces with another guide, leading a group of Japanese tourists, to improve his chances of finding one. Eventually they found a baby anaconda, which was still impressively large. We were all looking at the anaconda when one of the Japanese tourists in a shocking example of ego (as opposed to eco) tourism decided to kick the anaconda sending it slithering off.

After our trip to the Pampas we flew back up to La Paz and then went on to Copacabana near Lake Titicaca. Unfortunately our 30 day Bolivian visa was nearly about to expire so after stopping briefly we got the bus on to Peru. At the moment we are in a town called Arequipa in the south of Peru where we plan to relax for a few days.

Tupiza

We were still in Tupiza, the town in southern Bolivia mentioned last time, on 2nd November which is the Catholic holiday of all saints day and a big event here. It seemed like everyone in town got dressed up in their best clothes and went to the cemetery to put flowers on the graves. Outside the cemetery there was a big party going on with stalls, food, drink and music.

The next day we went horse riding in Tupiza which was really good fun though my backside is still suffering as a result. They have great wild west style landscape around the town and the horses were really calm apart from when mine was chased by three dogs and went for a bit of a run.

After Tupiza we went to Potosi which at 4100m is the highest city in the world. It was built at such an inhospitable location because of the mountain next to it which had huge silver deposits. The Spanish brought local people from all over the Andes to work there as slave labourers and as a result both Potosi and Spain became incredibly rich.

There are still local people, including children, who work in the mine even though the average life expectancy for a worker is apparently only 15 years because of accidents and lung disease. Strangely the most popular tourist tour, which didn´t appeal to me at all, is a trip down into the mines crawling on your hands and knees and breathing in the toxic dust.

The reason that we were enthusiatic about going to Potosi was the amazing Spanish colonial architecture mentioned by our guidebook. What it didn´t mention was that all the colonial architecture would be covered with grafitti and falling to bits and that it would be possibly the most filthy city in South America.

Both Steve and I took an instant dislike to Potosi and so after looking at the old Spanish Royal Mint, which was really quite interesting, we moved on pretty quickly to Sucre.

Sucre is the offical capital of Bolivia (in case any one ever appears on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and it comes up) even though the government and most other things usually associated with the capital of a country are actually in La Paz.

So far it seems like a really nice town so we are planning to spend a week here taking some Spanish lessons.

Bolivian White

We arrived in Bolivia last week. First stop was the capital La Paz. It is a city with a pretty dramatic setting, in a valley with huge snow capped mountains around. There is nothing particularly exciting to do in La Paz, but it has a good atmosphere and is a nice place to wander around. There are loads of markets and stalls with indigneous women selling things.

Our next stop was to Uyuni to visit the Salt flats and the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina. We went on a three day trip in a jeep with four other tourists, the driver Carlos and the cook Marianna. Marianna was the only cook we saw dressed in the traditional Bolivian way, with a bowler hat and plaits down to her waist.

On the first day we went out on to the salt flats. The salt flats near Uyuni are the biggest in the world with an area of about 12000 m2 that used to be covered by an enormous prehistoric lake. We drove to a catus covered island in the salt, Isla del Pescado, and climbed to the top. From there all that you could see was this white salt desert that looked like snow in all directions.

The area around Isla del Pescado seems to attract lots of different people. Apart from the expected tourists there was a film crew and group of dancers dressed like Incas (except in very short skirts) recording a music video in the middle of the salt. There was also a ballerina being photographed dancing around and some one doing a headstand by themselves, presumably just for fun.

At the island we sampled Marianna´s cooking for the first time, which was quite nice if you didn´t eat the meat, and discovered that the best way to spot our jeep from a distance would be to go to whichever one had the bonnet up.

After lunch we drove out of the salt flat to a small village to spend the night. On the way we saw some vicunas, a small endangered wild relative of the llama that looks like a deer and has beautiful wool.

The next day we drove into a strange high altitude desert with bizarre rock formations. We went to several lagoons where there were lots of flamingos eating algae, proving that flamingos don´t just like warm places like Florida. We also saw some Viscachas which look pretty much like rabbits until they move, when you see that they have long tails and hop like kangaroos.

The second night we went to stay at a basic lodge inside the National Park at Laguna Colorada, a bright red lake at 4500m, which two of our group fell into to.

In the morning Carlos woke us up at 5:00am in the freezing cold to go and look at some Geysers. Unfortunately the jeep wouldn´t start so Carlos decided to unfreeze the engine by starting a fire with paper under the bonnet. That got it going for a bit but when it stopped again he got the gas cooker off the top of the jeep. At that point forseeing the headline, six tourists plus cook die in explosion, we got out of the jeep. It turned out though that Carlos just wanted to remove a piece of the engine and heat it on the gas fire rather than sticking the fire itself under the bonnet. Strangely after that the jeep did get going again.

The geysers at 5000m (the highest we went) were really spectacular and after that we went to some thermal pools where I defrosted my feet. Then it was on to Laguna Verde (green due to natural arsenic deposits apparently) and up to the Chilean border. At the border we droped three of the group off before driving back to Uyuni. Altogether a pretty amazing trip.

Today we came down to Tupiza a town right in the south of Bolivia near the border with Argentina, that is surrounded by desert that looks like the wild west. We are planning to stay for a couple of days before heading north again.