Arequipa - El Misti Volcano

In Arequipa, we did a two day trek on El Misti which is a 5825m volcano. The first day we walked uphill for 6 hours, the air is very thin and gets thinner each hour you go up. It was very difficult, as least half of it was just climbing up very jagged rocky ground, and we were carrying our big bags, plus the tent, mats, sleeping bags, food etc. Sam and the guide Alex arrived at camp before Samantha, who was walking around 4 steps and then siting down for a rest. She was not very well from altitude sickness. Once we all reached camp, we had soup and pasta for tea and then went to bed at 6pm, as Sam had to be up at 1am. Before bed we noticed the city lights and the stars once again were truely amazing, with a gorgeous bright orange sunset. At 1am, Sam and the guide left for the summit of the volcano to climb the last 1325m (the recommended height to climb in a day is around 700-800m t0o avoid altitude sickness...). Unfortunately Samantha couldnt go as she was too unwell. She stayed in the tent alone, on the side of the volcano very scared. After twenty minutes of Sam having left, an animal of some sort started sniffing around the tent and eating any remainders of ths soup. Samantha very scared, tried to sleep. Sam meanwhile had reached the top in 4 hours, whilst his toes and lips had swollen up and his fingers were numb, but didnt suffer any altitude sickness luckily. He was freezing cold and his bottle of water actually froze along with his toes and fingers. A good example of the body concentrating on the essential organs lol. After staying at the top for 10 minutes or so due to having a big toe the size of a small potato and being frozen Alex the guide told me we would be down in less that 1 hour. 4 hours up, 1 hour down? From the summit they literally ran down one of the faces of the volcano because it just consisted of sand. For Sam that was a sport by its self, it was like skiing, but your hiking boots were the skis. It was pretty fun running down 1325m down a volcano back to base camp. From base camp we then walked another hour or so to the bottom and to head back to Arequipa.
Also in Arequipa Sam went to a Monostary that took up an entire city block. Inside it had its own street names and everything. Sam also went to see a 500 year old frozen girl 'Juanita the ice maiden' (still had skin, hair, organs, nails) that archeologists discovered on a nearby mountain to the volcano we climbed. At a restaurant in the main square Sam wanted to be a little adventerous and try 'Cuy'....Guinea Pig. When it came it had been opened up to be cooked, but it still had a few organs left in and teeth. There was hardly any meat on it, but it made a good photo.

Arequipa - Colca Canon and Rafting

In Arequipa, we visited the Colca Canon. On our way to the Colca Canon, we passed through a national park called Pampa Canahuas, in this park we saw Vicunas which are similar to alpaca but have less wool. We also saw whilwinds in the sand, they must have been at least 20 feet tall and there were about 15 of them throughout the journey. There was also a point on the journey which was covered in ice, this was the highest point on our tour and we could only stop for a few minutes due to the alltitude. We also saw many churches and local villages, with local people and alpacas. For lunch we went to a buffet restaurant where we tried Alpaca meat (an animal very similar to a LLama found in the Andes). It was pretty disgusting, it didnt have a pleasant taste at all. We finished the first day in a town called Chivay. In the evening we went to a local restauraunt and watched traditional dancers. At the end of the night, the final dance involved a woman being hit by a length of rope and being flung over the mans back. Samantha funnily enough was chosen as the nervous victim and got beaten by the rope. Luckily she got no bruises. On the second day, we saw a brilliant view of Colca Valley, and the terrances used for farming. We passed through a tunnel in the rock face which must have been at least 400m long, no lighting, and no asthetic work, just jagged rock. The Colca Canon is the largest canon in the world, with a depth more than 3400m, we stopped here and patiently awaited for Condors, the largest flying bird in the world, with a wing span of 3m. Sam perched himself on a rock in the valley wall, and got amazingly close to the Condor.

On returning to Arequipa, we spent the night in our hostel and the next day completed a level 3 river rafting expedition. The River Chilli, is the most popular in Arequipa and our run lasted one hour. We were accompanied by just 2 guides, making the raft itself very light in comparasion to a more full raft. This made the run faster and more fun, as the guides were more adventurous. During the run we went backwards into rocks, spun around and went down a 5 foot drop.

Lake Titicaca

We took a small boat with a group of other tourists on the 8500 square kilometer lake, for about 30 minutes to the Isla Uros (Uros Islands). These many small islands are totally made up of the reed that grows in the lake naturally. The inhabitants float huge pieces of root filled soil and anchor them to the bottom of the lake. They then lay masses of the dried reed on the soil and make themselves their own island to live on. The islands themselves are spongy to walk on due to them only being made from soil and reed floating on water. We got took into one of their houses to be shown some handicrafts and how the locals live. We then got back on the boat for 3 hours to get to Isla Amantani,( a real island, not a floating reed island) where we had our very own local family to stay with for the night. We had our own room there in the house with a 4-5 foot door which was handy to get through at night. They fed us basic food as they dont have meat on the island. Each family may only have up to 15 sheep but when one of the family members is married they kill 5 sheep to eat at the ceremony so they cant eat meat at all. So we had rice and curried veg. We also had peppermint tea, but the peppermint was actually off the bush in twig form, so we had quite a twiggy and leafy cup of peppermint tea. We walked to the highest point of the island to view the scenery of the lake and to watch the sunset. At the night time there were a blanket of hundreds stars out in the sky (too many times on our travels have we seen this that we dont get to see at all in England). We also got dressed up in the local islanders clothes for the ´grande fiesta´ (big party) with all the other families and their adopted tourists. Sam wore a cloth poncho and a hat, but Samantha got the full works, a petti coat, pleated skirt, embroided shirt, waist belt and a shawl. At the party we were dancing with our local family whislt the young boys played local music (drum, guitar, panpipes, wood flute and ukelele) and of course there was plenty of cerveza (beer). The next day we said bye to our family and headed off on an hour boat ride to Isla Taquile. Here the local dress is more or less the same but more plain. The other difference is that single men wore a red and white hat, where as married men wore a stripy one. Single women wore a coloured skirt, where as married women wore a black one. Here on Taquile we walked around the island and learnt about the local traditions and customs before we got back on the boat for the 3 hour ride back to Puno (the city on the Peruvian side as half he lake is also in Bolivia).

Salkantay Trek

On the day of leaving for our Slaknatay trek we were travelling to the starting point Mollepata at 4.30am, here we had breakfast and prepared to walk the first 10km. In Mollepata we were advised to buy Coca leaves for chewing on to help alltiude sickness. Before lunch the walk gradually ascended. For lunch we stopped and had our food served to us by 2 waiters and a chef in uniform, this was very funny considering the view was Humantay Glacier and we were 3700m above sea level. Lunch consided of a starter (always prepared as a 5* restaurant would), a soup, a buffet lunch of about 10 huge plates for 12 of us. After around 7km more walking , passing the Humantay Glacier, we reached the first camp. This was the coldet camp and was -10 degrees, so difficult to sleep for Samantha in her -5 sleeping bag. The second day we woke up at 4 and had 18 km to walk, half uphill and half downhill. The air was very thin and sometimes difficult to breathe due to the allitude. We passed through Salkantay Valley and saw Salkantay Mountain. We heard 2 avalanches but did not see them, apparently they are very common there. Once arriving at the second camp, after walking a long time, we had our happy hour ( crackers, jam, hot drinks, juice, popcorn) and our 3 course tea. This night was slightly warmer but still cool. On the third day we woke up at 6am and walked for 12km, we reached Camp Playa (unfortunately not by a beach, Playa is Beach in Spanish ) by lunch and Sam still had time to play some Glacier side football on the way with the guides and other tourists. At La Playa we washed in the river which was absolutley freezing as its water source was from the glaciers. On the forth day we went to the hot springs in Santa Teresa, these are natural and crystal clear and by the bottom of the mountains. There were 3 hot springs and one cold one, which Sam dared to go in. The best one was the size of a swimming pool, and deep enough to dive in. We then caught a train to Aguas Caliente and stayed in a hotel for our final night. The fifth moring we woke up at 4am and joined a bus queue for the Machu Picchu ruins. When we arrived in Machu Picchu at 6am, it was cloudy and cold as its 2400m above sea level. After our tour by our guide Marco we adventured it ourselves and the weather cleared up. We hiked to the sungate which had spectactular views. The view we had was incrediblle, it looked unreal like something from a film. It was also much bigger than we had imagined, from the pictures that we have seen. We saw proof that the site had never been finished and the Quechan people had abandoned it before it was complete, probably due to spanish invaders. We saw a sundial which on the 22nd of June for 4 minutes is on the equater of the earth. Machu Picchu was incredible. Finally we got a bus back down to Aguas Calinete as we didnt fancy more hiking after the 60km we had just done.

Nazca and Cusco

In Nazca, we Visited the Nazca Lines, we did this by visiting an observing tower, but most importantly taking a 35 minute flight in a cesna plane, to see them from the air. This was an amazing experience, and the lines looked amazing from the air. We managed to see the several including the spider, hummingbird, monkey and whale. These lines are beleived to have been created by the Nazcan people from 900BC, to attract attention from the gods to help rainfall.

After an 18 hour bus journey from Nasza, we arrived in Cuzco. Cuzco is 3326m above sea level, so we were there to acclimatize before the Salkantay trek. In Cuzco we visited Saqsaywaman, Pisac, Q`engo, Pukapukara and Tambomachany, all of which are inca ruins. We also visited Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo where we watched traditional andean dances. In Qorikancha museum, we saw mummys which had been preserved and saw many inca artifacts. In Cuzco Cathedral, we did a self guided tour with headphones. The cathedral itself was built in 1559, and survived the earthquake in 1650.

Peru - Lima and Huacachina

Before we could begin our flight to Lima, we had to spend 17 hours in Caracas Airport until 6am the next morning. This was worse than we imagined as there were no chairs, except in the food court. The flight was fine, we both slept straight through. In Lima, we stayed at a very grand hotel, there were pieces of artwork and statues of naked greek men everywhere. In Lima we visited San Francisco Monastery, where we did a tour of the catacombs. In the catacombs there were over 25, 000 peoples bones all arranged into bone catorgories in graves. We also looked around at the Cathedral, the Congress building and the Inquisition Museum where people used to be tortured for information. We then went to China town where we looked around the market and had sweet and sour chicken, which was a welcomed change.

Next we went to Huacachina where we did sandboarding. This involved riding up the dunes in a dune buggy and sandboard down them. First Samantha slid down the dune using the board as a sledge, Sam went down standing up. On the last dune we were both standing, however Samantha went to fast and fell over and got a face full of sand.

Coro and Puerto Columbia

In Merida after all the activities we had about 8 days spare until we flew to Peru. We decided to go to a colonial town called Coro. Here we walked around the center, which is preserved as a world heritage site. We were waiting in Coro for 3 days to do a tour of a peninsular that is joined to the mainland by a thin strip of land. On the tour we were took to various small towns to look at the buildings and things. In one town we were let into a church by the priests son called ´Jesus´ (pronouced hay-sus) which was ironic. Here we went up to the bell tower and loked around the church. We also did a walk around a arid woodland, where we saw cactus, something that translates to tree beard, a bright red bird. There also lives a bright blue trantular, but when we went they were all sleeping so we didnt get to see any unfortunately. We got taken to a lighthouse on the most northen point of South America. We went to a lake that i so concentrated with salt the colour of the water is pink and ther are loads of huge salt crystals around. Near the salt lake we got to see wild flamingos. Nearer to the end of the day we stopped off at a beach for an hour and then headed towards the narrow strip of land thats connected to the mainland. In this strip there happens to be a desert with huge sand dunes.
After Coro we decided to go to some beaches at Puerto Columbia on the coast as it was fairly near to Caracas (the capital city) for the flight to Lima in Peru. From Coro we got a bus to Maracay and then from there you can get to Puerto Columbia. The bus journey to Puerto Columbia was crazy. It was a total pimped out American school bus type with tinted windows, blasting reggeton out (Venezuela music similar to Sean Paul, but more rap-like with massive beat), driving over a huge hills with windy, foggys bends. Rather than the driver brake round a corner, he would just beep his ship sounding horn and expect any oncoming traffic to hear this and stop. Also his green lights didnt help with the fog as it made the fog blend in with the forest. In Puerto Columbia we have just been going to the beach. On the beach there are at least 6 foot waves everyday so you cant swim too far our as they just batter you around. Everyday so far the life guards have been going in because people cant swim back because they are stuck in between the huge waves sucking them back and hitting them all the time. Also when you are trying to avoid getting hit by a wave you are also dodging the surfers riding them.