13/3/2012 - Death Road

Staying at the Wild Rover hostel is mostly a chore if you want to do anything other than party. And by party I just mean drink a lot, try and cop off with another traveller then drink more. Sigh. The night before we were due to do the bike ride down Death Road I didn't manage to get a wink of sleep not least because some idiot sat near out dorm and drunkenly attempted to play Arctic Monkey's covers on an out of tune guitar using his out of tune voice at 2am. To add insult to injury, as I started drifting off around 4am he, having failed to get lucky, returned to continue the concert in an even worse state.

We all looked a little sleep deprived as we woke the next morning. As we waited around the hostel reception at 8am, I was startled by a gruff voice behind me. “Phil!? Death Road!” barked a man gleefully looking at our sleepy-eyed crew. Show time.

Views from the start of the ride

The lovely tarmaced road we started on

After a van ride which saw us climb out of La Paz to a height of 4700 metres and kitting up (and our guides reminding us many times that it wasn't a race.. yeah right) we were off!

The first hour's ride was along sweeping nicely tarmacked roads with spectacular views. Although it was initially fun, I had no idea why anyone would call this Death Road. That is, until we got to the seconds part of the ride. Tarmac gave way to loose rock and gravel, wide gentle curves became fiendishly steep hairpin bends and a pleasant ride was transformed into a hair raising experience.

With gay abandon we bombed downhill after our guide, the ride seeming to become easier the faster you went and the more control you relinquished to the gravelly gods.

It definitely wasn’t for everyone and more than a few times we passed other cyclists taking tumbles and moaning bitterly about how much they hated it.

As we left the tarmac behind the road began to live up to it's name

We raced under mini waterfalls and rode through a couple of small rivers, all the while plummeting further down the road which now clung to the imposing cliff face like a caterpillar to a tree trunk.

Although the ride lasted several hours, the injection of adrenaline into the bloodstream was constant and I gave no thought to the fact that I'd hardly slept the previous night. Finally arriving at the end of the road where we procured much needed showers and food, I felt absolutely drained.

A free tacky t-shirt and a CD of photos later, we were back in the hostel and, since this would be our last night in La Paz together, we had a night out in the city which, despite being gringo-heavy was good fun.

The next day we spent wandering La Paz and picking up cheap gifts for folks back home. On several streets the market stalls spilled out on to the pavements in true south American style, but to my dismay the locals weren’t quite as up for haggling as they had been in Peru. Fortunately Bolivia is ridiculously cheap (owing to it being the poorest country in South America) so on several occasions it felt almost rude to try and get even more of a discount.

12/3/2012 - Heading to La Paz

I left behind the stunning scenery and lukewarm showers on Isle del Sol, retraced my steps back to Copacabana (meeting the Aussies en route) and, after a “Bolivian breakfast” at a local eatery (which was basically steak and chips), jumped on a bus to La Paz. Memorably, half way through the journey we arrived at a river crossing, had to disembark and board a smaller boat to cross the river whilst the bus went over on a different barge. At first we wondered why we didn't just stay on the bus, but seeing how the boat it was on lurched in the waves it became clear why this system was in place.

Arriving into La Paz was quite an experience. Our coach wound its way through what seemed to be twisting back alleys sloping demonically downwards into the melting pot of the valley in which La Paz sits. Much like the Vegemite that my Aussie friends made me try, La Paz seemed to polarise opinions. In both instances, I was charmed straight away.

We booked into the Irish themed “Wild Rover” hostel which was fairly middle of the road but did boast hot showers and a lot of travellers who seemed to be desperate to do nothing but party and enjoy gloriously superficial interactions with Bolivian culture. Mini-rant over.

The “must-do” things that everyone I'd met coming from Bolivia had mentioned were the mountain bike ride down “Death Road” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road and the starkly bleak landscapes of the Uyuni slat flats. My Aussie companions were eager to cram in both as quickly as possible and I jumped aboard.

11/3/2012 - Getting burnt on Isle del Sol

I'd allowed myself plenty of time to get ready for my 8am boat to Isle del Sol so I was somewhat surprised when the hostel owner, with whom I'd booked the trip, burst into my room at half past seven and asked me where the hell I was. Oh yeah... the hour time difference between Bolivia and Peru.

Boarding the boat among the scathing looks of fellow passengers who'd been waiting a good half an hour, I perched myself next to the captain and we set off for our destination. Our journey saw us hug the coast and retrace much of the journey I had done yesterday and I had a good natter with the captain about the various villages we spotted en route.

Finally arriving at Isle del Sol around 10 am we disembarked and I was in an exploratory mood. As I followed the path to the north of the island I was confronted by a man insisting I had to buy a 10 Boliviano (£1) ticket to progress. I was struck by an inexplicable determination to not pay this minuscule amount, complained bitterly to the guy about the injustice of having to pay just to walk along a path and asked him if there was any way in which I could avoid this trail. He pointed to the steep rocky incline to the left of the path and said “Straight up... but you'll bump into more ticket checkpoints later”. I decided to take my chances and started the ascent.

Isle del Sol is gorgeous. As I reached the summit of the hill it turned out I was climbing, I was struck by just how idyllic the setting was. Floating in the middle of the spookily still Lake Titikaka the island felt like a forgotten world of hills and pastures, hardly touched by humans. I barely noticed the Inca ruins on the island – the natural beauty trumped any attempt by the Inca culture to steal the show. I turned off the main track and headed for the west coast of the island, walking for several hours without seeing another soul until, atop one of the hills, I bumped into a sheep herder who lived on the island. As we paused at the summit and chatted about where else I could explore while I was here, he pointed out 2 playful eagles, swooping and diving majestically in the valley below us. This place was ridiculous.

The sun beat down heavily as I topped the highest summit on the island (which thankfully wasn't high) and caught a glimpse of Peru on the distant shore. Eventually I made my way back onto the beaten track. As promised, I did bump into a couple of ticket checkpoints, but they were negotiated surprisingly easily by asserting that I had already bought a ticket and walking briskly away as the weary ticket inspector called after me to produce it. There were several communities living on the island and the majority now made their money from tourism as opposed to traditional methods. I made it to the village of Yumani a few hours before sundown and found lodgings in a half finished hostel which nonetheless had comfortable beds and awesome views over a scenic bay. I'd been walking for over 6 hours so it was with weary feet that I headed along the village's main street in search of food. Stumbling into one of the many touristy looking establishments I was confronted by 3 Aussies, twins Francis and Scarlett and their friend Grace, who were following a similar path to me. Once we'd ordered and were sat chatting, it became apparent that the owner of the place had to either ring up the chef to come cook for us or obtain food from a different establishment. Either way, the food was very welcome and the bottle of cheap wine I shared with the Aussies went down a treat. Little did I know these guys would be part of my life for the foreseeable future.

10/3/2012 - Into Bolivia, Copacabana

An hour from the border crossing into Bolivia, our bus was greeted with a line of cheerful but determined middle-aged Peruvian women blocking the road. I learned later that the protest was about land disputes – apparently the Peruvians want Copacabana to be part of Peru and are thus trying to block the border to stop supplies arriving into land-locked Bolivia.

Standard day on the Peru-Bolivia border

 Somehow our bus managed to skirt the first blockade but 10 minutes before the border we were confronted with another and this time the women really weren't going to budge, so we had to walk it.

In my experience, South America seems to be a place where you have to do your research and be clued up before doing anything that involves money. A lot of travellers I had met got angry and annoyed about the constant attempts of many locals to try and rip you off but I saw it as good fun and a bit of a challenge. This is why I couldn't help but giggle when a woman tried to give me a pitiful exchange rate at an “official” money exchange kiosk. I turned to the guy in the kiosk literally next to her and after some gesticulating got a decent rate from him. Do I feel sorry for the hundreds of people she rips off everyday? NO! Do your research people.

The border crossing itself went smoothly and before I knew it I was in a mini bus bound for Copacabana, a small Bolivian harbour town which sits on the shore of Lake Titikaka.

After finding a room in a hostel overlooking the harbour, I booked myself on a boat for Isle del Sol (an island in the middle of the lake) tomorrow morning, and thus had the rest of the day to kill in Copacabana. “If you want to come back to the hostel after 11pm I will show you how to use the gate” said the kid who'd checked me into the hostel and can't have been older than 17.

“No, it's ok, unless there's a good place to go partying in Copacabana?” I asked.

He smiled a sad smile, looked down and shook his head. It must suck to be a teenager here.

I hadn't had any fresh fish since those lazy days on the Colombian coast so when the lakeside shacks beckoned me in for a lunch of freshly caught trout, I duly obliged. The double-carbs made a reappearance (rice and chips this time) but I steered clear and the fish itself was excellent.

Another thing I hadn't done for a while was any exercise so after lunch I set off on a meaty 4-hour hike along the lakeside using some sketchy instructions from my lonely planet guide. The scenery was spectacular and the sense of adventure was augmented by mild assaults from territorial dogs and the odd rally car speeding along the dirt road along which I was walking (turns out they were practising for a race tomorrow). Lake Titikaka is huge to the point where the opposite bank is invisible to the naked eye and the bank to the east was framed by snow capped mountains in the distance - it felt more like walking next to a sea than any “lake” I'd ever been to.

As dusk approached I still hadn't reached my final destination and, although the occasional minibus had passed me, the lonely planet guide suggested getting a lift back to Copacabana might prove difficult. Despite this I persevered, convinced that if the worst came to the worst I would retrace my steps. My weary legs weren't so sure. Finally arriving at my destination, the village of Yampupata, I was overjoyed to see a minivan still parked by the harbour and the driver said he'd give me a lift back for a quid. I was less overjoyed when I saw that I would be sharing the journey with what must have been several hundred kilograms worth of freshly caught fish.

Having stuffed the minibus full, we set off and it quickly became apparent that our driver was in a hurry. Setting a pace not dissimilar to the rally cars I'd seen earlier, we quickly caught up and overtook several 4x4's I'd seen leave the village 5 minutes ahead of us. As we sped along the winding road, lined with more than the odd sheer drop, I envisaged headlines in the South Manchester Reporter in the event that this journey should be my last (they all revolved around sleeping with the fishes). On the other hand I reflected that this ride was far more exhilarating than many roller-coasters I'd been on. Probably because the potential for death was a bit more real.

Back in Copacabana I had trouble finding food that wasn't pizza or burgers but eventually stumbled upon the still-open market where old women cooking in the open air could be relied upon to provide cheap greasy fare. Copacabana is another town where the monster of tourism has begun to devour everything in its path and I didn't feel compelled to spend any more time here than I had to.

19/2/2012 - 9/3/2012 - Still in Arequipa, where the hell did the time go?

Looking back I can't really explain why I stayed in Arequipa for so long. It was probably a combination of travel fatigue and freaking out about the fast approaching end of my trip (and associated return to “real life”) which prompted me to start thinking about the future and looking for jobs back in the UK. I moved out of the relatively expensive Irish party hostel I'd been staying at into a more chilled out local run place. My recollection of the 2 weeks is a little hazy but involved a lot of time in the local library job hunting on the internet, cheap Chinese-Peruvian food (called Chifa) and a bit of sightseeing around Arequipa. 

Typical plate of tasty chifa

    Although in some ways reminiscent of a European city (attractive colonial-era architecture was ever-present, as were the McDonald's and Starbucks jostling for space with the local restaurants), Arequipa still held a lot of Peruvian quirks. One of the most striking was the clustering of shops which sold exactly the same thing and resulted in particular streets around the city being lined exclusively with, for example, opticians or suit makers etc. Apparently this is useful for shopping around and haggling the pants off competing shopkeepers. Makes sense I guess. Probably makes price fixing easier too.

I frequented the library in Arequipa so often that I became friendly with the receptionists to the point where one of them even invited me to her friend's wedding which I sadly couldn't attend since I'd forgotten to bring my suit to South America. The library also contained some private study rooms for which I was competing with a bunch of, believe it or not, physicists.

I'd walk into the rooms in the morning to find a garbled mess of maths and graphs which my brain assured me I'd known the meaning of once upon a time but which now looked like utter gibberish. Seeing the physicists sweating away at horrible looking equations late into the night really took me back to last year. Did I detect a faint urge within myself to go back to it all...?

At some point, the fear of not having a job when I got home was overpowered by the fear that I wouldn't actually make it to Buenos Aires in time for my flight home if I didn't start travelling again. And so on Friday the 9^th of March I finally packed my bags, waved goodbye to the hostel owners with whom I'd shared a frequent rum and jumped in a cab headed to the bus terminal.

The chatty cab driver further put me in a travelling mood and, as we saw a wild eyed man in a torn shirt running away from a woman who looked like she was in the process of beating the crap out of him, I decided this was the right time to leave.

A relatively short bus journey saw me travel east and end up at Puno, a town near the Bolivian border, where I was rewarded with a glimpse of Lake Titikaka. Puno was a little touristy but it was nice to be exploring new places again. For dinner I found a cheap little place, asked for a typical dish and received fried sausage with spaghetti and chips. This was not my first, and certainly wouldn't be my last, encounter with “double-carbohydrates” which is omnipresent in Peru and goes some way to explaining people's podginess. Although I would be crossing into Bolivia tomorrow I'd been told the food there was more of the same. Bring it on.

16-19/2/2012 - Time out in Arequipa

I felt like I'd been on the move non-stop in the last week so once Dan and Jill headed off I spent a few days around Arequipa relaxing and taking in the city. I paid a visit to the Santa Catalina Monastery which is a fairly huge complex of colonial-era buildings which have been very well preserved despite suffering heavily from the numerous earthquakes which have plagued Arequipa. Billed as “A city within a city” it is hidden behind formidable concrete walls and more or less lived up to its name - I spent a good couple of hours wandering along the brightly coloured streets and taking arty photos through archways leading into nun's quarters and shadowy kitchens.

 

The next day I finally bit the bullet and decided to go for a cookery class. I hadn't done much cooking for a while (and definitely nothing traditional since those arepas in Santa Elena) and the session also involved learning how to make a Pisco Sour so how could I refuse. I was joined by an Irish couple who lived in San Francisco – Jon, an engineer-turned-neuroscientist and Anne-Marie, who worked for Google. Betty, our teacher was, understandably, a little taken aback when we all told her what we did. We had a great couple of hours, visiting the market to buy supplies and then preparing our own lunch in a tranquil outdoor kitchen attached to an upmarket hostel. The starter, the name of which I forget, was basically a tower of zesty potato, tuna and salad while the main was a dish I'd seen being sold in virtually every restaurant in Peru: “Lomo saltado” (literally “jumped shoulder”) which is shoulder of lamp or pork fried in a pepper and garlic sauce and so-named because you're supposed to toss the meat in the air as your fry it (we were a little more cautious). As we sat to devour our delicious meat the owner of the place came and taught us how to make Pisco Sours which basically involves remembering the magical 3:1:1 formula (3 shots of Pisco, shot of lemon juice, shot of sugar and some egg white if you're feeling fancy). Although delicious, a 70cl bottle of Pisco would set me back around £30 in the UK, so its unlikely I'll be treating anyone to one these once I'm back home.

And no undercooked burgers in sight

Another note-worthy trip I made was to the museum which was all about Inca sacrifices and, among other items, housed the body of a child sacrificed by the Incas. The body on display was one of many discovered in the last couple of decades all over the territory known to have been occupied by the Incas, which stretched from Ecuador all the way to southern parts of Chile. The bodies of the children, who were sacrificed up in the mountains, were well preserved due to being almost instantly frozen after the sacrifice (as I found out first hand its pretty cold up there) and were only found because a nearby volcano had recently erupted and the ash fallout had melted the ice surrounding the bodies.

Apparently these child sacrifices correlated closely to the La Niňa Southern Oscillation climate pattern which occurs every 4 to 5 years and, amongst numerous other things, brings drought to the coastal regions of Peru and Chile. The Inca assumed that God was probably a bit angry and that the only way to appease him was to kill kids. But not just any old kids. Only special “pure, healthy and beautiful” children who, once chosen, lived their whole lives in a special preparatory school in Cuzco, could be sacrificed. Once the time was deemed right they would set off with a convoy from Cuzco to their sacrificial sight, the journey to which could take anything between a few days (eg. Misti volcano) and a few years (Chile). Once atop the mountain, the kids were given a strong fermented drink, bashed on the back of the head and buried with all the stuff they would need in their after-life with God (pots, plates, sandals etc). You can't accuse the Incas of not planning ahead. 

I'm gonna miss those Aussies

14-15/2/2012 - Colca Canyon

Happy Valentines day amigos!

Our early start ensured that despite the hairy bus journey I managed to get some sleep. We drove through thick fog, which didn't bode well for our trek, but I was fairly relieved that I couldn't see the ever-present sheer drop just a few meters to the side of the road. We passed the “Condor” viewpoint but the area was completely drowned in fog so we didn't bother getting off – I'm not sure there were many condors to be seen. Arriving in Cabanaconde and setting off was a little uninspiring – the cloud hung thick around the path and, although we knew there was a majestic canyon on our left, we couldn't see anything so there was little we could do except forge on along our misty route.

Slowly but surely we descended into the canyon and slowly but surely the cloud dispersed, treating us to a great view of the canyon spreading out below us. We snaked our way down the twisting path to the bottom where we paused for breath before continuing onto the first village on our route. Here we were greeted with offers of food and accommodation (we'd brought plenty to keep us going and it was only midday so we declined both) and also recommended a place to stay at the “Oasis” further along the trail - more on that later.

Our trek saw us saw us repeatedly climbing into and out of the canyon whilst taking in a variety of terrain (in one section the path was flanked by dry-stone walls and I could have sworn I was back in the English countryside) and passing through several more villages. Although the villages themselves weren't particularly picturesque, the spectacular setting more than made up for it and in one particular village the presence of a central square with a fairly sizeable church made me laugh at the colonial opulence which must have demanded its construction in this remote location.

 

After a few hours slog we got out first glimpse of the inviting “Oasis” and from afar it really did look idyllic – on a lush green plateau in the bottom of the canyon sat several perfect-blue swimming pools, each surrounded by a cloister of huts with bright red roofs and palm trees poking out between them. Too good to be true? We would soon see for ourselves.

As we again descended into the canyon and crossed the Colca river we lost sight of the swimming pools behind the foliage and were left walking up a windy path in the direction of where we'd last seen them. Eventually we stumbled on a swimming pool with a guy next to it offering us accommodation in the nearby huts (which unsurprisingly looked less inviting up close) but Jill had her heart set on finding the swimming pool which was “in all the pictures” so we headed on. Idyllic it may have been but well organised it was not so we quickly lost the path and were rambling through what seemed like back gardens in the direction of swimming pools we could see in the distance. 

Finally we caught sight of the one Jill was talking about but we were somehow in a dead-end garden and had to resort to a bit of fence climbing and roof-hopping to get to our prize; its just as well the whole Oasis seemed to be completely deserted. Although slightly puzzled by our unorthodox arrival, the man in charge of this particular pool and set of huts was happy enough to give us food and lodgings for a small fee and even started filling up the, currently empty, pool just for the 3 of us. As I took in our surroundings I became aware of just how big but also how eerily quiet this place was. There were around 30 huts all connected by lawns and stony paths on several terraces around the swimming pool but apart from us the place was completely empty. One could imagine that during high season the place would be filled with sun-baked tourists getting drunk and frolicking in this palm-shaded paradise, but right now, with a mild drizzle helping to fill up the pool and not a soul in sight, it felt like the opening scene to a bad horror film.

Despite the weather being less than favourable we felt obliged to have a swim in the pool which had been filled exclusively for our use and after a quick nap, ate a dinner of stodgy soup, rice and vegetables by candlelight (I spied the odd light-bulb hanging around the place but there seemed to be no electricity).We went to bed trying to freak each other out but slept surprisingly well in the extremely basic huts which nonetheless contained the most comfortable beds any of us had enjoyed in South America.

"Paradise"

We had all survived the night, so the next morning all that stood between us and our starting point of Cabanaconde was (according to the map) a winding 4 hour hike up and out of the canyon. We raced up the mountain-side, quickly putting a good distance between us and the creepy oasis down below and overtook a bunch of slower tour groups en route. Our lively pace meant we made it back to Cabanaconde just in time to catch the 9am bus back to Arequipa which nicely rounded off what had been an excellent 24 hours in Colca Canyon.

Back in Arequipa (initially with no electricity) I shared a goodbye drink with Dan and Jill - they would be jumping on a plane to Ecuador tomorrow and our paths would certainly not cross again for a good long while. They had been great companions and both had an infectiously positive attitude towards travelling which I loved. When I eventually head to Australia I'll definitely have to stop by in Wodonga.