To Bolivia

Finally leaving cusco (with the second biggest party of my trip so far), we bussed to Puno, by Lago Titicaca. Supposedly the highest navegable lake in the world, but I guess that could be just a big fat lie as well! Anyway, with 3800 meters it´s high enough to make this kid lose her breath. Strikes and roadblocks have been messing Peru´s normally amazingly reliable transport system, so we had to leave Cusco early to get to Puno at 3 AM. Dodgy hostels all over so no real problems. The day after we left for las islas flotantes, the floating islands. The floating islands are made out of reef and are truly amazing. It´s a bit of a tourist attraction but it didn´t really bother us as the people on these islands are just so funny.

Besides, we decided to spend a night on one of these islands which for some reason nobody seems to do. Well, the cold temperatures might be a reason but nothing that 10 heavy blankets won´t solve! It´s an experience sleeping on nothing but reed, including cabaña and beds. In the morning one of the islanders gave us a rowing boat to go and explore. Traditional boat, including the very heavy paddles which meant crappy rowing, getting nowhere and having all the islanders make fun of us.

From Puno we crossed the border to Bolivia. Funny story! I got my passport stamped, saying 90 dias, very nice as it should be! My fellow traveler, a Canadian, got a stamp saying 30 dias... I asked for some explanation, but the only decent thing we got from them was something about no authorisation to give 90 days (bullshit offcourse, if ayone will have authorisation it´s border police and I just got 90 days) and the fact that they were thirsty and wanted a coke. Well, there´s a shop next door, I said and so it became clear they wanted us to bribe them. Not even a decent bribe like 100 dollars, no, with a COKE! We couldn´t help laughing and a clear ¨look, we know he is entitled to get 90 days¨ actually solved the case without us buying any soda´s. Without any further issues we got to the city of Copacabana, leading to a weeklong Barry Manilow tribute from our side (remember? copa-copacabaaana, the hottest club north of havana). Things started well in Bolivia as on the day we arrived it was mother´s day in Copacabana and the way they celebrate has nothing to do with children singing songs and bringing breakfast to bed. No, it was a big street party involving lots of very cheap beers and the women were the most drunk as this was their holiday.

The next day we took the boat to Isla del Sol. Unlike most people (once again, no idea what makes all travelers do exactly the same things) we walked from the south part to the northern part of the island. When we got there, we found a beatiful beach, filled with people in traditional outfits and dressed up with masks and other ¨stuff¨ (don´t really know how to describe). Some questioning learned us it was ascension day (hemelvaartsdag). Well, I´d go Catholic again if we would celebrate as they do! A live band, literally all villagers drunk and dancing and talking to us without making any sense.
Very interesting evening except for the fact we couldn´t get any dinner as all restaurant owners were, correct, drinking. In the morning we found the band on the beach again, washing up their instruments in the lake after which the whole thing started over again.

We took the boat back to Copacabana and from there to La Paz. There are no words to describe La Paz. It´s insane and I loved it from the very start. You can probably buy everything on the street in La Paz, there are simply no supermarkets. There is a witches market that sells baby lamas to offer to Pacha Mama (mother earth). Street food is amazing. We forgot about all you-re-not-supposed-to-eat-meat-on-the-street warnings since everything looked so good. Most travelers complain about Bolivian food but between the salteñas, choripanes, good soups, trout by the lake and tons of vegetarian and gringo restaurants, I think I could easily survive a very long time. Even though the locals do stick to fried chicken with rice and french fries on a daily basis.

We hung out for a few days and the took a bus to Rurrenabaque. Well, this is an adventure-bus. It´s supposed to take 18 hours. Our bus left La Paz 2.5 hours late since there was so much cargo to put on the roof, including a kid´s bike, 5 old wooden chairs and tons and tons of clothes. After a few hours, the bus broke down a first time and this would happen a few more times along the way. We sat in the back, on the last row, jsut behind us a very cute kid that couldn´t stop pulling my hair or crumbling cupcakes all over us. It took us 24 hours to get to Rurrenabaque in which I probably slept 30 minutes. Pavement doesn´t exist and the road is more then bumpy. The road is one of the world´s most dangerous, leaving almost but not quite enough room for 2 cars to pass by. Since we were delayed we were doing everything in the dark, the driver manoeuvring us on the side of a cliff to let others pass by. Let´s say we were very glad we survived. What´s in Rurrenabaque? Well, a hell lot of alligators, that is. And piranhas, looots of big big birds, pink dolphins, the cutest monkeys qnd most awful spiders... Bolivia is the Botswana of South-America!

We were hoping to fly back to La Paz but rain interfered. Airport was closed for 5 days so we took our chances, some valium (an over-the-counter-drug in Bolivia) and another bus.

Back in La Paz I decided that 4000 meters of altitude was not realy an achievement so I climbed a 6088 meter high mountain. Quite an achievement for someone who runs out of breath on the hostel´s stairs in La Paz. Three days: first day: How do i climb an ice wall in 1 lesson. First night: waking up with the most terrible headache ever and having to pie outside when it´s freezing. Second day: few hour slowest hike ever up to 5200 meters. Second night: pretend to be sleepy at 6 AM while someone is trying to brak our of your head with a hammer. third day: wake up at 1 AM and start walking up in ice and snow at -15 degrees. Every little step is 10 times as hard at this heighth and climbing ice walls in the dark is as hard as it sounds. When sun came up we could al of a sudden see the top and I realized we might be able to make it! And so we did, even though the last part was about the scariest thing I ever did. Not even enough room to put both feet besides one another which makes the "don´t look down" of my guide kinda ridiculous.
ice climbing and yes, that´s me!

don´t be fooled! it looks just like an edge but itùs actually a path
me at 6088!

Peru

In Iquique, Ruben and I said our goodbyes. He wanted to go to Bolivia while my head was turning towards Peru. Time to move on on my own again. It´s nice to have a travel buddy, but I noticed more funny unexpected stuff happens when you are alone. Saving quite some money, I minibussed myself over the border from where I took a night bus. Even though I was only 5 kms out of Chile, the differences were already huge. In chile and argentina, you go look for a bus, in Peru, the busses come to you! One foot inside the terminal and 5 company bus proppers surround you, all shouting their destinations and prices in your ear and promising they will leave within 5 minutes. Prices were a relief after Chile and Argentina and you can actually still bargain them. I randomly picked one of the girls that seemed nicest to me.

Now, this was a local bus, me being the only gringa on it. When I got on, I noticed the huge amount of bags (turkenzakken, that is) all the locals had piled up in the bus aisle, by their feet and literally everywhere. The woman next to me was actually wearing more clothes than what I´m traveling with! A quick, kinda anxious, ´Is it safe to put my luggage in the bus trunk?´ caused some laughter and a reassuring ´claro que si´! Somewhere in the middle of the night we were pulled over and my neighbour told me to get out of the bus to go look for my pack which I could no longer find in the trunk. Apparently customs pulled us over and they were checking all luggage. Seeing my innocent face, they handed me my stuff over immediately. Back to the bus, I saw huge amounts of clothes being thrown out of all windows. My loud and clear ¨Que???´ caused some more laughter and learnt me that secondhand clothes smuggling from Chile to Peru is common business. Back on the bus, i couldn´t really see the difference in amount of bags in the aisle, but we did leave a huge mess of clothes on the side of the road as we took off. Nobody is as smart as me, smiled the 100 clothes layered woman to me, blickering all her golden teeth, a fashion feature I´d see a lot in the coming weeks.

Anyways, we all got safe to Arequipa, my first stop in Peru. Lovely city, very beautiful, nice hostel. Good enough to make me spend a week there in which I visited the Colca Canyon. This is under discussion but this canyon is supposed to be the deepest in the world. It´s beatiful but honestly not what I imagined from a canyon (grand canyon images). It has a cool lookout point for condors, though. I suspect the locals from feeding the birdies since there were so many but that didn´t spoil the pleasure. We got there at sunset and I was still sleepy so no cool pictures, sorry. We hiked a few days down the canyon (valley, whatever) and spent the night in a tiny village with a local family.

In Arequipa, I also spent the worst 2 days of my travel, trying to change my United Airlines flight and spending literally hours on the phone, shouting to them. I even had the UA call operator hanging up on me with a sweet ¨thank you for calling United Airlines¨. Problem was some crap of me not having an Argentinean visa and them not believing that I wasn´t even in Argentina. Anyways, after 2 stressfull days, a nice lady from connections managed to convince them I´d have no visa-issues and they changed my flight to 20th of July.

From Arequipa, I once again took a local nightbus (gee, Peru WAS going to be cheap compared to Chile and Argentina) to Ica where I took a taxi to Huacachina. Huacachina is an oasis, no other way to describe it. Surrounded by sand dunes, a small tourist village around a lagoon. Main attraction of the village being sandboarding and lying by the pool. (Yes, hostels with pool!) . To go sandboarding, we requested ´the craziest driver´and got him. They drive you with a sand buggy over the sand dunes and give you a candle to wax up your sandboard. The sandboarding was great, great, great fun even though I just went down on my belly (but reallllly fast!!).

backpacking in style!

Huacachina being a dangerous place to lose lots of time, I forced myself to not do this and made it up to Paracas, by the ocean. From Paracas I visited las Islas Ballestas, also known as the ´poor men´s galapagos´. Well, I guess the lack of turtles and tropical coloured fish actually do make it the POOR men´s galapagos but tons of dolphins, pinguins and sea lions and above all disgustingly amounts of birds still make it a cool place. It is one of the world´s largest producers of fertilizer, meaning that every few months people go on the islands to scrape off the bird poo.

Although I didn t initially plan on going I did take a flight over the Nazca lines. A fellow traveler mentioned a theory that it is better to regret having done something then to regret not having done something. The flight was bumpy yet fun, even though the puking girl behind me wouldn´t agree. And the lines remain to be one of the world´s largest archeological mysteries.

In Paracas I met some travelers who told me a spooky story on their local night bus crashing as it only had 1 driver and the dude fell asleep. They were fine but people did die in the accident with kinda gave me a wake-up call on those cheap buses so I took a better one to Cusco. From now on checking amount of drivers and if contents of thermos is coffee whether pisco.

Cusco is place hard to describe. On one hand it is annoyingly touristy. It´s impossibe to walk over the main square without getting at least 5 offers for hand massages, inca trails or cocaine. But once you wander a bit off, you´ll notice this city has a soul. Cusco has lots of street food, an amazing central market next to which locals come dancing on the street at night, lots of alpaca clothing markets and lots of dodgy clothes markets. Lots of travelers stay around for weeks, just to party hard with fellow travelers, being it sunday, wednesday or friday. But you can party and meet locals as well. Personally, I had a great time, I think I was able to find a balance between all these things.

Ofcourse, people come to Cusco for one main reason. I visited ´the thing´ as well, but I refused to pay 450 dollars to book a hiking tour 3 months in advance, so I just kinda bussed through the sacred valley towards Aguas Calientes. Last part of this trip is a 2 hour train ride for the ´reasonable´ price of 31 US dollars (love that they even bother giving this prices in dollars i.o. local currencies). Adding the high entrance fee and tons of oher tourists.............. it is still absolutely amazing. We hiked up very early in the morning to be able to climb Wayna Picchu (the mountain you see in the background of all MP pictures) Only 400 people a day can climb this mountain and they go up in 2 shifts, giving us still a kinda priviliged view over the site. The tourist flocks only enter the site after 9, 10 AM anyway. I heard from a Peruvian guy there was a way to avoid the expensive train ride, resulting in us walking over a train track for some hours and bussing/taxi´ing over, ehm, ´interesting´ roads, including a stone avalanche and us running through it (and the driver shouting from the other side that we had to run faster)

This is still really early and there were almost no people on site yet

But they found their way...

Walking back over the railway

Besides MP, I got invited to a free canopy tour by some people from an agency who passed by the hostel. They were just starting this tour and wanted to make a promotional video. Backpackers hearing the F-word, we all massively joined in. A day of free mountain bike, some canopy and a thrilling rappel. The tour agency is called Omega and the video is supposed to be on youtube.

To conclude I went on an absolutely amazing 3 day rafting trip. Class 4-5 rapids, camping on the side of the river, hot temperatures compared to Cusco, campfires at night. It was one of the most fun things I´ve done so far, I enjoyed every minute of it! I have amazing pictures the agency took but I have them on a CD that is currently in my hostel. Will see to put some online next time!