Copa.... Copacabana. 3rd April.

1st to the 3rd of April.

My arm was just recovering from the belting Jo had given it for me saying Lake booby brrm brrm all the time. When she started belting me for singing the Copacabana song all the time. To be honest I was completely sick of it as well, but it got her all riled up every time, so in my opinion it was well worth it.

We were crossing into Bolivia on the next leg of our journey, and had heard all kinds of stories of corrupt officials and the like, so we were not taking any chances with our luggage. However the border crossing is a little different, well it was for me, we pulled up in the bus and had to get off. We walked up to the police post had our passports stamped for exiting Peru and then walked up the road 200m to the Bolivian side to get stamped into that country. Our bus was to drive on through and meet us on the other side. This was supposed to take 5 mins, there was a friendship parade going on between the Peruvians and the Bolivians, complete with soldiers on parade with weapons.

Guards on parade.

If we hadn't seen the smiles on their faces we would have thought they were going to fight. This meant that our bus took more like and hour, with our luggage ' safely' stored on the bus. It all worked out ok and all our bags were in fact safe. I did see the same shoe shine boy on both sides of the border, he must have thought my shoes would have gotten dirty walking through the border. I guess he must have duel citizenship or something, but I didn't see him get passport stamps. The border guards on both sides quizzed us quite a bit on kangaroo's before they let us through, maybe they thought our passport were fake or something.
After checking that there was actually ink in our passports, apparently it is a bit of a trick of the Bolivians so that they can hit you with an on the spot fine later in your travels, we bordered our bus and hit Copacabana.

View of Copa from on high looking sth and down at the town.

Apart from Cuzco this place was the best we'd seen so far. It is smaller than Puno but with a much nicer feel. For $10us we got the best room we had had so far on our trip, I didn't have a tape with me but it wasn't far off being bigger than our apartment in London. I secretly wished Jo had held off a day being sick so we could stay here, but these are the hardships you face while travelling I guess. Everything was cheaper, so we kind of splurged on the meals a bit, for what we payed for an average meal in Peru, we couldn't spend the equivalent on the most expensive thing around.

View from the same hill looking nth.

Jo was soon feeling much better, but not quite up to climbing the hill right on the edge of the lake. It is a 140m climb talking about half and hour each way.The views were absolutely fantastic, you could see right across the lake to Puno, more than 100km, they said it has something to do with the thin air. I could certainly vouch for the air being thin, I kept having flashbacks to the Inca Trail.
We hung around for that day, organised a next day bus to La Paz and retired to our room thinking ' I hope the rest of Bolivia is this laid back '

Puno 31/3

Arrived 28th left 1st apr.

You could see the Lake as we came into town. It was the first day bus that we caught, so we saw plenty of the countryside as we went along. West of the mountains is all desert, dry and very dusty. Once you crest the peaks ( 4330m, highest point so far ) it starts to turn green. No plants to be seen, just grasses, but green no the less.
The town looked a bit run down as we came in and I gave Jo my usual ' where the hell are you dragging me now ' look. But I must say for a small town it was quite good. The main.... I can only call it mall...... They have paved in about 200m of shops, no traffic to be had at all. It was good to walk around without the threat of being run into by a taxi. I say run into because the cars are so small that all you would get is a nasty bruise, but it would still be nasty.It took Jo approximately 12mins to sniff out the bakery in town, so we found ourselves having coffee and cake on the first afternoon in Puno.
The next day we took a half day trip out to Sillustani.

Veiw of tombs.

It is on another lake about 40mins from Puno, but that could mean that it is within 5km the roads being the way they are. It is a site with some pre Inca burial tombs on it. Its a cool place with great views of the lake that it is on.
The biggest puppy of them all.



A full day tour, of the floating lake and an island in the middle of Lake Titicaca, was what we had planned next. Jo had wanted to spend a night with a local family on one of the islands, but I didn't. It was the over night thing that bothered me, one couple we talked to had said that they stayed overnight with a family that didn't speak Spanish either, just Quechua. So I didn't really fancy the idea. I won and we just did a day trip. It was essentially the same without the overnight stay.

Floating Island.


The floating island was great. They have built houses and everything on to of floating reed islands. Apparently they throw new reeds down every 20 days or so. The floating platform ends up being 1.5 to 2.5m thick and it sags when you walk on it, well it does under my weight. They have a little trap door in the reeds, just for tourists, where they throw a rock tied to a string, just to prove that they float. The rock went down 15m before the string went slack. We even got to ride across on one of the reed boats.


Then we had a long boat ride out to another Island where about 4000 people live. Had lunch there and walked across the Island to our boat, which had gone to the other side of the Island to pick us up. It took a good three hours to get back to Puno.

Our boat is awaiting.

Jo had tried to book a fancy place in Copacabana, but they were full, so we decided to wing it, this from the girl who was reluctant to set foot in Sth America without guards.


Jo got really sick from the food on the Island we think and we had to spend an extra day in Puno, but she was well enough to travel the next day to Bolivia.

Arequipa 27/3

Nothing really happened to us in Arequipa, I think we were too knackered from our two night bus trips in a row. Plus we had 80 channels on a tv. We did go and see Juanita, the frozen girl from the mountain top, that was pretty cool...... ha ha ha, frozen girl..... hahaha.



Main plaza in Arequipa.

Anyway the only other thing we had planned to do was visit the Colca canyon. One of the deepest in the world. We went to a travel agency but were put off by the thought of another trek. They failed to mention that you can do a two day visit on bus, that would have been us. So we decided to give that one a miss. We were almost justified when we ran into two of the guys from the Inca trail, they had just come back from the canyon and said it was harder than the trail. Jo and I looked at each other, satisfied that we had done the right thing after all.
I was more excited about seeing lake Titicaca, so we shot off to Puno.

Nazca.... there's not much to do! 23rd Mar

With the Inca trail finished it was time to head off on the next part of our journey through Sth America. The next stop was Nazca. This is where they have all these drawings in the desert. We were going to take a joy flight over the Nazca lines and check them out for ourselves.
An overnight bus was taking us from Cusco to Nazca and we picked a pretty good one for the overnight 13hr trip. We caught the bus at 8pm and after the in service meal, which I had all of mine and most of Jo's, I fell asleep watching and English movie, dubbed in Spanish, but with no subtitles.
I woke at 6ish, still on the bus and reached passed Jo to open the curtains and revealed nothing like I had ever seen before. Australian dessert at least has some plants and scub, but this place was devoid of anything. We were still at 3000m, according to The Watch, and over the next two hours we dropped 2500m down into Nazca.

You've seen it before, but its a cool shot.

It was hot in Nazca, after Cusco, so we went outside in the sun in search of some breeze. We had booked a flight through the hostel to fly over the lines at 2 pm, a taxi would pick us up at the front of the hostel at that time and the girl on the front desk would let us know when he got there. Lucky for us that we were back at the hostel at 12.30, because the car was waiting to take us out to the local airport.
Pulling up to the airport, well across the road from the airport, we were taken to an office where we paid the $50us, for both, and told to wait. We were starting to get a bit worried after half an hour, plus we hadn't seen the guy we paid the money to since we paid the money to him, when another guy came up to us and said ' come with me'. He happened to be the pilot and he was leading us to a very small 4 seater plane.
It was at this time that Jo decided to tell me that small planes freak her out. Great..... I tried to explain to the pilot that I wanted to go up with someone else, but his English had deserted him and I couldn't get my message across. We piled in to the plane, and headed off down the runway. As soon as we were airborne, the pilot started to explain the Nazca Lines to us, and since I don't speak great Spanish, just four words, he must have remembered how to speak in English.


This one was the hummingbird.

The Lines themselves are truly amazing, the condor has a 120m wing span. Nazca is one of the driest places on earth, which is why there is so much still left for us to see. We also got to see Nazca's only other attraction, the biggest sand dune in the world. And since it was dwarfing the nearby mountains, I wasn't about to dispute their claim.
That was the problem with Nazca, in about 35mins we had seen just about all there was to see. We headed into town to check out the main drag. Nothing happening down there, so we went to get a bus ticket for the next morning, only problem was that the only buses out of there were night buses. The prospect of spending all the next day in Nazca was too much so we tried getting a bus that night to Arequipa. We wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, that was the feeling that we got from the place, a frontier town that probably hadn't changed much in 100 years.
A bus station was found but this is where our next problem was. We walked into the station only to be told ' no, no the computers are down '. We walked into the next place, only to be told ' no, no the computers and mobile phones are down '.The power had been going on and off all day, and right then it was off. So maybe Nazca had changed in the last 100 years. I found it a bit strange though that they were reliant on computers to book us a ticket out of there.


When the Guinea pig runs out......?

So we walked up the street in search of dinner, we had been told to try again for a ticket in an hour. I saw a guy clinging to a ladder scraping something off the side of a building. What made me look twice was the fact that he was all tangled up in the power lines, but since he wasn't doing a funny little dance, I concluded he wasn't the cause of the power problems. I wished I had got a photo of that.
The computers were still down when we got back, but the guy there had managed to get through and book us on a bus for 11pm. We went back to the hostel to tell them that we weren't saying after all. The girl on reception didn't seem surprised she just shrugged and said with a smile ' there isn't much to do in Nazca'.
So we arrived at 8am and were on a bus out of there by 11pm having seen all there is ( not quite true ).

I think the slogan should read........ Come to Nazca, there's not much to do!

Inca Trail Day 4 The Final Push

Day 4 The Race To The Sun Gate

5 km of gradual descent to 2400m, 280m down.

What a day Day 4 turned out to be.

We all got up at 3.45am, Jo could hardly move, we all could hardly move. But breakfast was cake this morning, so that made it easier to rise. The plan was to be first to the checkpoint, which opened at 5.30, to be first in line in the race to the sun gate.

We didn't actually make to the checkpoint first, we were second, that was ok, it wasn't raining and we only had 40 mins to wait for the checkpoint to open. There was a misty dampness in the air, so we had our wet weather gear on and I also had a jumper because it was cold.

The clock slowly ticked off the seconds. The checkpoint guards came down at 5.20.

Tick 5.28.

Tick 5.29.

Tick....... We were off. The gate was opened, our tickets checked and stamped, through the checkpoint and on to glory.

Well it might not have been quite that dramatic, I seem to be more excited about it than I remember being on the day, but it was good to be at the final hurdle.

A good pace was set, but after the last 3 days it wasn't too quick. The path was level so I was able to keep my place in the line. I soon got hot in my rain jacket and jumper. I wasn't about to stop and let anyone else get ahead of me. A few in front of me stopped to tie shoe laces or take off clothes and each time I passed one, it moved me closer to the front.

We were probably about two thirds the way to the sun gate, about 1 hour front the mornings checkpoint. We had had a couple of slight uphill sections and I was once again falling behind. Everyone was starting to string out along the trail. There was Quannah ( pronounced Conner ) form our group, closely followed by Roy, I was 10-15m behind Roy and Ouray ( Quannah's brother ) behind me, but out of sight from me.

I watched Quannah walk around a corner in the trail and then Roy just seemed to put his foot onto..... nothing and just toppled over the cliff......... yes TOPPLED OVER THE CLIFF.

It is one of the strangest and funniest things I have ever seen. You couldn't make this stuff up if you wanted to. Roy didn't make a sound, in fact he didn't say anything through the entire episode. I just heard the rustle of his poncho.

Roy's predicament.

Quannah later said that one minute Roy was talking away and then nothing, not a sound. He spun around and no Roy.

I watched it happen from 15m away, like it wasn't actually real. Then thought.. gosh.. mmmm not quite. Quannah said it was the fastest I had moved on the whole trek, I didn't put a stopwatch on it so can't claim otherwise. But we got to the spot where Roy went over and looked down to see him clinging to some grass and shrubs.

I had a rented walking stick, so that was useless, but Quannah had an illegal cane one, nice and long. Roy had to scramble back up the grass so that he could reach the walking stick held out at full stretch by Quannah. He grabbed hold of it and when there was enough stick I grabbed hold and we pulled Roy back up. We hauled him onto the path and plonked him down feet first, lucky for Roy he only weighed about 65kg.

It seemed like a long time but in reality probably took no more than 30 sec, because Ouray only saw us standing together on the path, he thought one of us had lost something over the edge..... we did..... his name is Roy.

As I said nothing was spoken by Roy and if either Quannah or myself said anything, i have forgotten. The tree of us just dusted down ourselves and resumed our march to the sun gate. We hadn't even lost a spot in the queue.

I don't think Roy realises how lucky he was, we hadn't gone more than another 150m along the trail, where if he had tried his stunt here, there would be no coming back, just straight down no grass.

Roys problems were over, but unfortunately mine were about to start.

Lifting Roy up hadn't done me any good, in fact it had severely aggravated my hernia. Those that don't know I developed one about 5 or 6 years ago. It isn't a bad one, and until now hadn't had any problems at all, and I was fine again 3 days later. But right then I wasn't. Straight away I didn't notice, or was still nice and warm, so it didn't worry me. I thought that it was not too bad. I just had some pain, so I continued to the sun gate. That was probably the best, because as you reach the gate, there are about 100 steps and they are almost vertical. It was of course slowing me down and I wasn't too happy to see others pass me along the way.

I made it to the sun gate, but as we rested up there I knew that I wasn't very well, as we cooled down I stiffened up. I couldn't stand erect, i was at about 10 to 15 degrees doubled over, to relieve the pain.

Our view at the sun gate.

I told Marko and Casiano what was going on and that all I need was to put my feet up. So Casiano sent Marko and I down to Macchu Picchu on our own. We got down to the guard house before anyone else, form our group, and set up shop just above the ruins. I had a great view of the place and Marko pointed lots of things out while we waited for the others. At one point Marko turned to me and said that Macchu Picchu would be gone soon. I didn't know what he meant until I saw the clouds roll in. I just hoped that the rest of the group had gotten there in time.

The mist just about to obscure Macchu Picchu.

They had, just, where i had about 15 mins looking at Macchu Picchu they had about 5, just enough time to get the group photo's out of they way.

I had walked 4 days to sit above the ruins for 20 mins, was it worth it? At least I have a good story to tell. And if i get the chance I will come back and walk around the ruins. That's right, no need for me to hire a porter, because I'm catching the train next time.

What I got to see in town waiting for the group.

Inca Trail Day 3 19/3/07

Day 3. It is 5km of flat walking followed by a knee jarring 1000m drop to camp. Overall distance 9km.

It rained pretty hard during the night and only finished at about 4am, we had been lucky with the rain so far and our luck was holding. The clouds and the mist rolled over the mountains so we didn't have the best of views, but it looked rather spectacular anyway. It was to be a short day, where we were stopping for lunch was also our nights camp, before the assault on the sun gate early the next morning. There was also the promise of a hot shower, for only 5 bone ( bone is the currency of the day when you can't remember the actual currency. Thanks Andy R and friends for that. Soles is the actual currency of Peru. )

Descending through the cloud forest.

We got into camp around 1.30pm, after descending through some more Inca sites. The further we went along the better they were getting, and strangely enough it was inversely proportional to our care factor. We were absolutely jiggered. Casiano announced that we had free time, siesta time, until 4pm. So I retired to the tent, to sort out all the gear..... ok someone woke me at 4, and I could smell the popcorn that the staff was preparing. It had become a regular thing before dinner and signalled the end of the days march, I can't describe that it is like to walk into camp to the smell of popcorn. Those who worked at Wiluna during a certain popcorn era will understand.

The last Inca site before Macchu Picchu, complete with stone terraces for crops.

We had a short 15min walk to our last Inca site before Machhu Picchu, by now I was starting to think we had taken a wrong turn somewhere and the guides were going to come up and say ' er we have to tell you guys something..... ' The site itself was the most impressive one we had visited and we couldn't wait for the next day.
But first, we had to stop off at a bar and have a beer. Yep one day out of Macchu Picchu is a place where you can have a drink, nice to see that the priorities are in order, even up here. A round of drinks was bought, downed, and then some roadies for the night ahead. I didn't buy any, and I still can't believe it, but at the time I didn't want to be hungover for the final push.
It was dark by the time we made it back to camp, we were able to find our way simply because the porters had come down the path looking for us. You see we were late for dinner and Casiano had said we wouldn't need torches, we would be back while it was still light. Either his grasp of English wasn't what I thought it was..... oh I know Irish, Pub. Yep that was it. Dinner was accompanied by cheap cask wine, supplied by the tour group and dragged up the trail with the rest of the gear.
Roy's day was much better, he wasn't sick any more and had a relatively incident free day. I say relatively because he lost his walking stick, rented from Llama Path, ( it cost him 40us to replace), we think he left it at the pub. Its funny because it was the first time he had used it, it had been strapped to his bag the rest of the trek.

Jo having a bit too much fun I think.

After dinner drinks were flowing. But it was also time to make speeches to thank the porters, they would be leaving us in the morning and heading back to Cusco, jogging probably. So there was lots of hand shaking and some dancing, for the girls anyway. None of the porters wanted to dance with me.

After all that James ( one of the Americans ) got sloshed. We were all singing ( I think the high altitude had something to do with this ) songs form god knows where, but were left absolutely awestruck when James sang both parts of a duet from Les Miserables. It was one of the most impressive things I have seen or heard.
I left the party a 11.20pm, we had an early start the next day 3.45am, we needed to line up at a checkpoint which opened at 5.30 and we wanted to be first to the sun gate. I wouldn't know what time the rest went to bed.

Inca Trail Day2 18/3/07

Day 2 was supposed to be a lot easier, after all it was only going to be 14km long with an immediate 400m climb to the top. This is followed by a 620m descent, a 420m climb and a 400m descent to our camp for the night. Easy hey!
We had two guides with us, because the group was so large, and I am thankful for that otherwise we, and I mean Jo, Steve and myself would have kept the rest of the group back a bit. Casiano was the head guide and Marko was the second guide who's main job was to round up the stragglers.
Marko was supposed to wake us all up with a cup of tea in bed at 6am, I couldn't sleep, so at 5am I got up and watched the sun rise. There was a bit too much mist in the morning, so it was hard to see the glacier where the sun was coming up over. It didn't matter too much because we had a clear view the night before.

The highest point 4200m, we made it.



We had our breakfast and headed off for the highest part of the trek, dead woman's pass, 4200m, a 400m climb to start the day. I won't say we were all eager to start out, but we tackled the pass with the knowledge that the hardest part would be over. Well that's what we were told, and we believed them. The pamphlet we had said it should take 2hrs to reach the pass from where we were, and when Jo, Steve and I crested the rise it had taken us 1 and a half. Yes I know the rest of the group go there before us, but they are freaks.

Going down the other side was much better, at least we could appreciate the scenery without worrying where our next gulp of air was coming from.


Lunch day two


We had lunch at Pacaymayu, elv 3580m, a pretty little valley which i didn't take any photo's of. Lunch was another 12 course extravaganza, but i had learnt from the first day and only had the soup and nibbled the other dishes. After lunch our next ordeal was the second pass, this one was only 4000m a mere 420m up.

Roy, another troublesome Aussie, was starting to feel a bit sick. He had a bit of a head cold and when we stopped at each Inca site for a look around he was getting really cold and fidgeting all the time. The last time was when we were descending into our camp site for day two, we could see the site from another Inca ruin, which we were told once housed 60 families. Yeah whatever, they may not be tall but you try and get pass one of the local woman when she is standing in the isle of a bus....... not possible. Anyway Roy was doing his ants in his pants routine, but I didn't think too much of it at the time.

A watchtower, used to signal dangers



We left the Inca site and headed for camp. Oh, I must mention that the Inca site was called Sayaqmarka ( meaning inaccessible) and it sure was, we had to climb a very narrow set of steps to get up to it. So we were heading to camp for the night, and there was a slight uphill section and was a bit behind the group. As I crested the rise I saw Roy staggering along the path in front of me. Something was very wrong, I hadn't seen him on the trail since........ well the start actually. He said he was ok and we were within spitting distance, so I made sure he made it the 20m to camp and went to dump my stuff in our tent, which I have to add is also put up by the porters.

The next thing I knew there was a crowd around Roy's tent, with Casiano and Marko speaking in Spanish. I thought it was a bit serious when a oxygen bottle was produced, but Jo sorted him out with regular checkups through the night and making sure he was kept warm. Lets face it there really isn't much that can be done where we were.

The rest of us passed the night away playing more games of cards with Marko hoping that the Irish had brought two bottles of Irish cream and had just forgotten to bring one out on the first night, he was disappointed and so was I actually.