James' World Tour 2008

After the Inca trail we made it to Arequipa, and then took an overnight trip to the Colca Canyon (a canyon twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, apparently). On our way to the canyon our tour guide for the day decided to stop and show us pretty much everything they could find on the way. This included some green moss, some ´mountain ducks´ (basically standard ducks which happen to live in the mountains) and some ice. It was a gripping 5 hour journey. Things got better in the afternoon however as we took a trip to some volcanic hot springs. We made the amazing discovery that waiters would come over to you whilst you were in the pool and you could order drinks etc. Our group took full advantage, eating ice creams, drinking beers and a few even smoked whilst sat in the pool - it looked like a scene off ´Absolutely Fabulous´.

We took a night bus from Arequipa to our next destination - Nazca. After experiencing several night buses on my travels already I thought I knew what to expect. Usually they dim the lights on the bus, turn off anything noisy and let you drift off to sleep. Not in Peru. After dozing for several minutes I kept hearing Spanish numbers being yelled out very loudly over the speakers in the bus. For some reason the bus company thought it was appropriate to start up a late night game of Bingo (the grand prize was a bus ticket back from Nazca to Arequipa). Not wanting to win my passage back to Arequipa, I put my ear plugs in and tried to sleep. After the game of Bingo the bus company then decided to put on the movie ´American Gangster´ very loudly, which filled the bus with the sound of gunfire until the early hours. A few members of my group decided to stay awake and watch the movie, but unfortunately for them, the movie got switched off at 2am with about 15 minutes of the movie remaining, which didn´t please them too much.

In Nazca, I took a short flight over the famous Nazca Lines - bizarre lines and pictures drawn in the desert by some ancient civilization. The next day we continued to head north and stopped off at an oasis town near Ica. We spent a few hours sandboarding, but unlike the last time I tried sandboarding, we had a dune buggy to drive us around the sand dunes. When I first got into the buggy I did wonder why it had 2 inch steel roll bars and seatbelts which strapped both your shoulders in, but it didn´t take long to find out. Our driver set off by flooring the accelerator and took us flying up and down steep sand dunes - it felt like a rollercoaster ride. After a shower and swim in a nearby pool we set off to the town of Pisco where we would spend the night. Three quarters of Pisco was destroyed by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake last year and the place still looks a bit like Bosnia did on TV during the nineties. There are destroyed buildings everywhere, people living in tents and you´re advised not to leave your hotel because it´s pretty dangerous. Why our tour company still includes it on its itinerary I´m not quite sure!

I´m now in Lima, the last stop on my entire trip. On Wednesday night we had our last group meal and went out along the seafront, and the past few days have been spent sight seeing and souvenir hunting. I took a taxi earlier today to the centre of Lima and witnessed perhaps the wierdest sight of the past 6 months. In developing countries it is pretty common for people to try and sell you food and drinks when your car/bus stops at traffic lights. Usually it´s just crisps and chocolate bars. Cambodia took this a step further, with people selling fried insects and birds. However, there was a man today holding 3 dead rats by their tails and trying to sell them to passing motorists!

Flying home soon, which I guess makes this the last blog of the trip. One final thing, I discovered the other day that Paddington Bear was in fact Peruvian, coming from ´Darkest Peru´. Not quite sure how he happened to get to London but I guess he must have flown with Iberia to Madrid and then caught a connecting flight to Heathrow. I shall be following in his footsteps on Monday...

I´ve arrived back in Cuzco now after a 4 day, 3 night trek along the "Inca Trail". It´s a 45km route the Incas used to use to get from town to town, over 500 years ago. A lot of the route is made up of orignal stone paths and thousands of steps through the mountains. We set off from Ollyantaytambo by bus to a place known as kilometre 82 where the trail begins. Our group of 11 were joined by 2 guides, 2 cooks and an incredible 19 porters who carry all of the camping gear. What´s more amazing is that the porters carry 20kg each, and run ahead of us to set up camp. The first day was pretty easy as the terrain was flat, and we set up camp at Wayllabamba for the evening. The porters had decided to pitch the tent I was staying in on a slope so that when ever I moved in the night I slid down the hill so my feet hit the bottom of the tent. It didn´t make for a great night´s sleep!

Day 2 started at 5.30am and is supposed to be the hardest day as you climb to 4200m to the ominously named "Dead woman´s pass". To be honest there were a lot of steps to climb, but it wasn´t too hard. I set off at the front with a couple of others in our group and we some how managed to get to the pass 90 minutes before the back of the group. It later emerged that one girl in our group had got altitude sickness, and then blacked out just as a doctor, a surgeon and a psychiatrist were walking past. They got here moving again and we all made it to the second camp of Paqaymayo where a slightly more level tent awaited us. On Day 3 we walked 16km more, this time past a lot of Inca sites along the way and down 3500 original stone steps which left a lot of people in pain when we finally reached Winaywayna. The views on day 3 were amazing, passing along the side of mountains and through forests.

On our final day we were woken at 4am to make the final 2 hour trek to Machu Picchu - the last city of the Incas. We climbed up some steep stairs that were almost like a ladder to get to the "Sun Gate" where you can often see an amazing view of the city. Unfortunately we seemed to have climbed into a cloud, so we had to walk another 30 minutes to see Machu Picchu. When the cloud finally lifted, the view was stunning - you can see a huge Inca city sat on top of a mountain with mountains all around it. It is the best old building I have ever seen bar none. We got a tour around the site for a few hours, seeing things such as the inca sun dial, compass and the sun temple.

The plan was to spend most of the day at Machu Picchu and then get a leisurly 4 hour train back to Cuzco. However, whilst we had been hiking the Peruvians had decided to go on a 48 hour general strike (protesting is almost as big as football in South America). This meant the train back from Aguas Calientes to Cuzco was not running. No problem, I thought, we can just get a private bus. However, it turns out that Aguas Calientes is perhaps the only town in Peru not accessible by road, and is entirely dependent on the railway line! This meant we had to leave Machu Picchu at 10.30am, and walk for 3 hours down said railway line to a hydroelectric plant where the nearest "road" is. I say road, but it´s one of those single lane dirt tracks with a 250m drop on one side and a mountain on the other. This one also had a lot of streams running accross it which our bus had to cross. As part of the general strike the Peruvians had also decided it would be a good idea to block the roads by putting massive boulders all over them. The police had cleared most by the time we droved back but we still had to weave around some rocks that were about 3 feet tall. Got back to Cuzco at almost midnight last night, off to Arequipa today, barring any more strike action...

Back in La Paz for the third time, and having seen a lot of the sights already, a few of us decided to visit a slightly different ´tourist attraction´ - San Pedro Prison. This is a prison unlike any other in the world as there are no guards inside the prison itself. It´s split into two halves – one half containing about 1500 (mainly locals) and another half housing about 70 foreigners. It was this half which we visitied. Inside we got shown around by a South African inmate who had been running the tours for several weeks. We learnt that prisoners have to pay US$400 just to get into the ´good half´of the prison, and once inside they have a choice of either buying or renting accomodation. Property prices range from $4,000 to $23,000, or those who prefer to rent can stay in a shared room for about $0.80 a day. Prisoners work for a living, doing all sorts of jobs such as cooking, painting, building etc. Many also have children who are free to come and go as they please. In this half of the prison there is a free gym, church and billiards room where regular tournaments are held. The prison gets full cable TV, but no internet connection… yet. It is more of a hotel than a prison.

On the other side of the prison things are apparently much different. As there are no guards, inmates have to resolve their differences themselves. You can apparently pay to have somebody murdered in this side of the prison for less than $10. This prison must surely be the place that ´Soma´on series 3 of ´Prison Break` is modelled on. We heard enough interesting stories inside the prison involving corruption, drugs, etc. to fill many more pages but for various reasons it´s probably best not to publish these on the internet!

From La Paz we crossed the border to Peru and stayed in the town of Puno, on the banks of Lake Titicaca. The next morning we set off by boat to Taquile Island, home to 2000 indigenous people who live in a slightly strange communist society. The men here wear red hats if they are married and red and white hats if they are single, to make it easier for the women to pick a husband. This island also shuns modern medicine, and instead doctors diagnose illness by getting the patient to sleep next to a dead guinea pig for a night. By disecting the guinea pig they then claim to be able to work out what is wrong with the patient. Despite this form of medicine, the island somehow the island achieves a life expectancy of 75 years!

We took a boat from the island to a small peninsular town where we would be spending the night staying with local families. Our group was greated on the shore by people playing drums and a whistle, and invited to take on the locals at another breathless game of high altitude football (this time at about 3,900m). We spent the night in the house of an old man who spoke Aymara as his first language, and Spanish as a bad second language, so the conversation didn´t exactly flow. After dinner we went to the local school where the locals showed us some of their local dancing and music. Back in Puno, we went out for some typical Peruvian food. I sampled a roasted guinea pig which is a delicacy here. It came served whole (head and all) and tasted, as most things do, a lot like chicken.

I´m in the city of Cuzco at the moment and have spend my time here looking round the town, and mountain biking through the Sacred Valley. I now know why they called it ´downhill mountain biking´, after going down some of the tracks yesterday! On to Ollyantatambo tomorrow, and then the 4 day Inca Trail…

The crazyness in Bolivia continued after meeting up with my tour group in Sucre. Our next destination was supposed to be Potosi, but after locals had blocaded almost all of the roads out of Sucre in protest at something, it looked like our only option would be to pay for a flight back to La Paz. Fortunately, on the morning we were due to fly we got news that the blockade had been lifted, and we were able to get a bus to Potosi. That being said, our bus was delayed slightly leaving Sucre as we had to get past hundreds of protestors marching and setting off fireworks in protest about something else!

That being said, we did manage to use our extra day in Sucre to good effect, with eight of us deciding to go paragliding. This basically involves driving to the top of a hill, and then running off the edge with an instructor and a parachute attached to you. On my flight, we were fortunate to catch a thermal and got a good twenty minute flight in. The landing was slightly less successful - a late gust of wind meant we ended up landing in a field full of vegetables and a pile of ants which decided to bite my hands.

When we finally made it to Potosi, we took a trip to a local working mine to see how the Bolivians still mine today. On the way we stopped to pick up a few supplies from the local mining store. Firstly was a gift for the minors consisting of some cocoa leaves (which they chew), some cigarettes, and some 96% alcohol which they seem to favour. At the same shop we also picked up a stick of dynamite along with some fuse wire, detonator and some fertiliser soaked in diesel (for that extra bang), the whole lot cost £1. In most countries, it is probably hard to find shops selling potent alcohol and cheap dynamite, but not here.

Our guide took us up to the mine and showed us what sort of explosion you can create with a small a stick of dynamite - a very loud one which makes the ground shake. We then went into a mine itself and got a tour down some of the tunnels and saw a few minors at work. It is a pretty shocking place to work - most minors only live 10-15 years after they start mining and children as young as eight still work in the mines here. The UK also buys a lot of the resulting metals.

Next stop was Uyuni, where we embarked upon a three day tour of the Salt Flats and the "South West Circuit". This involved the now familiar format of bundling into several battered Landcruisers and driving off down bumpy tracks. The Salt Flats cover an area bigger than Wales and are stunning to drive accross - there is white everywhere with the occasional "island" full of huge cacti. That evening we drove to a village called Bella Vista (population c. 20) to spend the night. A few of us spotted a concrete football pitch and decided to challenge some of the locals to a game. It ended up being the Bolivians and Brazilians against the English and the Americans. The game was knackering as we were playing at an altitude of over 3000m (FIFA recently tried to ban international football above this height until the Bolivian president of all people intervened). Not suprisingly the locals and the best footballing nation on earth defeated our team made up of players who call the sport "soccer" and others who couldn't qualify for Euro 2008. Later that evening we went for a walk to take a look at the stars, but ended up seeing a lot of burning fires on the hillside. It turned out we had stumbled upon the one night of the year that the villagers burn bushes to celebrate the longest night of the year. They invited us to join in their bush burning ceremony, it would have been rude to say no.

For the past few days we've been driving around various flamingo filled lakes, geysers and hot springs etc. This involved getting up at five this morning in -18 °C temperatures which a few of the group weren't overly happy with. Back in Uyuni now, waiting to take the midnight train to La Paz, which explains the length of this blog.

I arrived in Bolivia after taking the bus from Chile. La Paz is the world´s highest capital city and I was seriously feeling the altitude when I first arrived. Just walking up stairs gets you out of breath here. On my second day I met up with some people I had met earlier in Chile, and a couple of people I had met in my strange hostel in Singapore several months earlier. We booked a three day tour in the Bolivian Amazon. My initial plan was to fly to the town of Rurranebaque (1 hour) but there was a 4 day wait for flights, and flights couldn´t take off because it was ´raining´ (even British Rail don´t use that excuse!). We looked into taking a bus, but that takes between 17 and 30 hours, depending on the condition of the road etc (when it rains bits of the road often get washed away). We ended up opting for hiring a jeep and driver, which was supposed to be a fair bit quicker.

The next morning our driver Juan and his son turned up in a Toyota Landcruiser, which had over 320,000 km under its belt (it showed). Our group of 3 English and 4 Irish set off down a winding tarmac road through the mountains. ´Before we left, we made sure that we weren´t going to travel down the ´World´s Most Dangerous Road´ (a Bolivian claim to fame) and this tarmac road had been built as a replacement as buses kept going off the edge of the old road. After a few hours however the tarmac ran out and we hit a dirt track cut into the side of the mountains. In places this road was only wide enough for one vehicle, with a sheer drop of hundreds of metres on one side and with no safety barriers. The views were stunning but it was a tad scary at the same time!

We broke up the journey with a lunch stop in a rural Bolivian town. Juan proudly led us to his favourite restaurant and ordered the set lunch menu for everyone (it cost 70p) The menu warrants a mention:
Course 1: Half a fried banana
Course 2: ´chicken´soup containing chicken livers. One girl in our group was lucky enough to get a whole chicken foot as well. She freaked out.
Course 3: It looked like a fillet steak, but turned out to be a cows tongue. Tasty though.
We arrived in Rurrenabaque after sitting in the bumpy jeep for about 14 hours.

The next morning we drove to a river where we met up with our motor canoe. We cruised down the river for about three hours, spotting a ridiculous amount of wildlife. There were a type of alligator called ´camen´ everywhere (some up to four feet long), along with monkeys, turtles, pink river dolphins, lots of birds, and a type of rodent the size of a pig. We spent the night in a lodge and the wildlife didn´t stop there - we had a bat flying around our room all night, carpet bombing us with droppings.

We were up early the following day for a walk through the pampas to try and find some wild anacondas. One of the guides found one pretty quickly - it was about 5 feet long and we all had a hold of it around our necks. After lunch it was time to swim with dolphins. By this point we realised that this meant swimming in a murky river containing alligators, anacondas and piranhas! However the guide assured us that it is perfectly safe and that they are all scared of humans. He seemed to be right as we all made it back safely onto the boat. On our final morning we went fishing for some of the piranhas we had been swimming with the previous day. Our bait of meat and fish soon had them biting and I landed a couple myself. The cooks back at the lodge fried them up for us.

The trip back to La Paz was an adventure in itself. We had agreed for Juan to pick us up at 6am, but he clearly enjoys his lie ins so rocked up at 7am with a big grin on his face. After less than an hour we got a puncture, which meant changing the tyre and then drive to a tyre repair shop, where they removed the offending nail and fixed the tyre. This cost us another hour. Maybe 5 hours later we got our second puncture, which meant another tyre change and trip to another tyre repair shop. This cost us more time and meant we had to do part of the narrow road in the dark. We finally got back at 10pm.

I´ve now met up with my tour group, who I´ll be with for the last month of my trip. We flew into Sucre yesterday and are spending 3 nights here. Sucre may well be home to the cheapest ice lolly in the world, you can buy one hear for 50 cents (about 4p) from most good newsagents. Just got back from the cinema this evening - the movie cost us 70p and there was a cat running around inside the cinema. Bolivia is crazy.