It was time to get out of La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. I had spent around a week there doing... well, basically nothing. Anita would head out to her Spanish lessons leaving me in bar eating breakfast. She would return in the afternoon where I would be in the bar eating lunch. Then after a shower and siesta she would come down to find me in the bar eating dinner. I had been suffering from travel lethargy by this point and I was very happy just taking some time out.
We took a bus from La Paz to the city of Cochabamba ,the jumping off point for the little visited National Park, Torotoro, 140 km south of the city. We disembarked at 12:30am in the middle of a road without a hostal booked and in a rather dodgy looking part of town. There seemed to be no official taxis in this city so we reluctantly took an unmarked one to various hostals in the guidebook. All were closed and as we were feeling uncomfortable roaming around this desolate city at such a late hour so we finally settled on the only place that seemed to be manned, a place called Hostal Malibu which had what can only be paralleled to asylum with creepy rooms off in an echoing and hollow corridors.
The following day we headed out through town to go in search of tours to Torotoro, on the way back through one of the markets I was happily and absentmindely ambling through the streets when suddenly a man grabbed me by the arm and said something hurredly and panicy in Spanish. Oh my god! I thought, he is mugging me!! My heart flipped... Actually turns out he was warning me that someone had opened my bag and was about to take my wallet, thankfully I had some crackers on top of my valuables so he didn´t manage to get anything. Thank god for crackers, I´ve said that more than once in Bolivia! A few minutes later huddled together I was walking behind Anita and saw that her rucksack had a slash right across the middle and all her stuff was hanging out. We were thoughroughly shaken by the experience and headed quickly back to the hostal to calm our nerves.
Anita in her ever positivity was determined to get to this national park now to make the trip to this town and such an awful experience worth it. The next day we headed not to the regular bus station, but to a collection of local, run down buses on a random road miles away. We were the only Gringos on the bus and we sat in our seats at the front of the bus, scrunched in on ourselves as we had our backpacks in front of us on the seats and Anita had bags of random grains and corn stuffed under her seat by a Bolivian woman who started shouting at her in spanish for taking her seat. A boy of about 14 was running up and down the corridor of the bus, through windows up to the top of the bus and jumping down again like a monkey strapping all sorts of goods for the ride to Torotoro. After ages of faffing, and around 2 hours after the scheduled departure time, we headed for Torotoro. Uncomfortable as we were in our cramped seats, in front of me was a woman of about 80 years old sitting on an upsidedown dustbin with her legs around her ears. Yes I confess I did not give up my seat and sat for seven hours feeling guilty and wondering in what horrible fashion karma would pay me back.
One thing with Bolivian buses, they don´t ever have toilets and we could never figure out how the locals could hold in their pee for so long. Between 5pm and 2am this bus stopped only once for a toilet break. The worst we had was 12 hours straight without stopping. Buses crowded of the full spectrum of ages from children to old people all with bladders like concrete dams, however Anita and I had to fall in line and surprisingly after a while we could hold ourselves without it bringing tears to our eyes. We arrived at 2am having been abruptly awoken from quite deep sleep and a lady greeted us freshfaced at the hostal saying she was waiting for us. I went to bed that night in complete nervousnous wondering if she was really who she said she was and clinging my Swiss Army Knife. Not that I could have done a single thing with it if someone decided to break in, except for telling them to wait while I try and open the correct flip for ´knife´and probably settling for the wine opener (since that was all I had used it for so far).
We were up at 7am the following day, collected by the renowed Torotoro guide Mario Jaldin, a timid skinny little old man with small kind eyes and a cheeky grin. It was the usual ridiculously greasy fried bread for breakfast then we started the walk into the park. Within a short time Mario was point to the ground to show us the footprints of a three toed dino, from the Spanish I understood it to be from a velosoraptor. The scenery soon opened up to sparse and yellowy scrubland with pretty undulating sedatary rock hills in the background rolling concentrically into the distance. We walked for around 2.5 hours and were shown various footprints of dinosaurs along the way, and everytime it fascinated us! We were the only people that were around for that entire time, which was peaceful and refreshing to be so away from the tourist trail where treks can sometimes feel like processions.
We arrived at the Humajalenta cave and Mario lit a flame on the front of his helmet. We were given hard hats and left our belongings at the entrance of the cave then started descending down, just us three still for miles around, above and below. What makes Bolivia so fun in many ways is its god-awful health and safety policies. Mario would hand us a rope and tell us to just climb down it, a drop of dozens of meters on one side, no ceremony or prep, just go for it, nevermind if you slip you might break your leg or neck. Cave Humajalenta is one of the longest and deepest caves in Bolivia so we spent a good hour going down 164 meters, sometimes opening out into vast, echoing caverns, sometimes funnelling to the smallest crevice where we had to shuffle on our belly to get through. At the bottom, still completely alone, we reached an underwater lake in the pitch dark that had fish swimming in it! I felt like Bilbo Baggins from the hobbit in search of the Ring and expected to have gollum creeping out of the shadows at any moment!
We spent an hour ascending, clambering over huge rocks, ducking under stalagmits and finally came out of the cave, squinting in the sunlight. It was incredible! The best was yet to come... we headed back to one of the dirt roads in the middle of the park and then three incredibly cool dirtbikes pulled up with hunky Bolivians driving them.. this was our ride back. I hopped on the back and then clinging for dear life, no helmet as usual, we sped off through the rolling dunes of the park, downhill, the wind in our hair, chucking dirt up and the mountains flowing past us in the distance. It was dangerous but thrilling!
After lunch and a siesta we headed out for a short walk just outside town where there were massive brotosaurus footprints! As cool as they were, the trip was cut short by a fierce thunder and rain storm that we could see fast approaching from the distance beyond the hills outside the village. We then had dinner at our guide Mario´s house, incredibly hospitable as his family was, then we were walked back home to our hostal by his dog, which was very sweet.
The next day we headed a different way in the national park toward the Gran Canon Torotoro. We saw some massive Brotosaurus footprints and from their structure and angle you could tell the movement the dinosaur had been doing and where he was walking - incredible! There were also some interesting natural bridges along the way and after about an hour we reached the Torotoro canyon. It totally took our breath away. The viewing platform went right out over the canyon and the sheer drop below was like the scenes from the Wile E Coyote cartoon when he would each time go plummeting to the bottom of the canyon after another failed attempt at catching Road Runner. Colourful parrots flew through in packs and we could see a flowing river way below running through the canyon. Once again we were the only tourists we had seen at all so far that day, which made the experience so much more special.
We descended down into the canyon to a fairly dry river bed, then did some rockhopping until we reached a lush oasis in the canyon where a subterranean waterfall flowed out in thin streams into the river. It had created tropical vegetation all over the walls of the canyon and beautiful isolated fresh water pools amoung the rocks with little rainbows catching in the sunlight. It really was like a little paradise and we froliced on our own amoung the various waterfalls for a good hour, totally isolated from the world.
Feeling refreshed, it was then back up the canyon again in the blazing heat, which was very tiring then we had a late lunch at Mario´s with animals of all sorts, dogs and puppies, cats and birds running around the yard. We then had your standard extremely salty Bolivian meal of reconstituted meat, rice, chips and a fried egg. Always a fried egg. It put Anita and I in a bit of a hysterical mood so we just sat at the table while our bodies attempted to process the salt giggling a lot and repeating the word "caka", which for some reason we found was hilarious as the Spanish word for ´cake´. It got even worse when an even more intense thunder storm than the day before descended upon us and all the electricity cut out. Still hysterical, we counted down from three in the door of the restaurant then legged it across in the pouring rain to our hostal, screaming at the fun of it all.
The following day we caught the bus at 6am back to Cochobamba. Even though I was tired I forced myself to stay awake as the scenery was the most beautiful I may have ever seen in my life. Low lying clouds floated amoung the hills and the deep yellows of the canyon started to come alive as the sun rose. Continuing through the countryside every colour on the spectrum existed in the scenery, the rich autumnal reds of the rocks, orange of the stones and yellows from scrubland, all kinds of green in the foliage, blues of the sky and the rivers across the plains, the purples of the flowers on the trees, and whites and browns in the chalky soil. This part of Bolivia is truly capitivating.
Arriving back in Cochobamba we wanted to get out of that city as fast a possible. We were also amazing that a place as beautiful as Torotoro could be such a short while away from a city as rough around the edges as Cochabamba. We then took a 5.30pm bus overnight east toward Santa Cruz.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Bolivia - La Paz and The Jungle
We had pretty much a full day of bus travel from Puno in Peru into Bolivia toward La Paz. At the border between the two countries we were surprised and fascinated to find the largest street market we had seen yet in South America. It sold everything from furniture to tupperware, toys and shoes, all kinds of fresh and cooked foods and basically simple everyday items that anyone in the world would desire but somehow we had managed to miss so far because we were too busy shopping for ponchos and other tourist tatt.
We had an incredible faff getting across the border as not a single person spoke English, and those that spoke Spanish made no allowances for us by speaking that bit slower. We had to cross the border back and forth a few times to get various stamps and signatures and by "cross" I mean run uphill through the market dodging carts, stalls and people as the bus looked like it was about to leave without us if we didn´t hurry the hell up. There really is nothing more awful than being in a fluster and running uphill through hundreds of people when you are about 4,000 metres above sea level and the air is as thin as wafer. It had all the right conditions for coronary and we felt like our hearts were about to explode by the time we finally sat down on the bus.
It was then a very long journey through the barren and rolling Bolivian landscape to La Paz, I looked happily out the window at some truly beautiful snowcapped mountains on the horizon. I noticed pretty quickly that Bolivia, at least in the countryside anyway, looks incredibly poor. The houses have no aesthetic design about them whatsoever, just functional brick and square structures. More than half of the construction projects we passed on the way were unfinished with no sign that there was intention to complete them, and rubble and rubbish lay everywhere. Anita and I looked out the window on this view from our tourist bus listening to our ipod and discussed how bloody lucky we were to have the lives we do back in the UK.
The views of La Paz on entry are really spectacular. Little lego-like brown houses speckled across the mountainside and the larger buildings in the city centre snuggled comfortably in the middle of the valley. It is expansive and somehow exudes a sense of boldness and fortitude, but as we spiralled down the mountains and into mouth of the city we felt welcomed by it.
Both Anita and I had enjoyed Wildrover Hostal so much in Cusco, and so we decided to also stay at the Wildrover La Paz. We both were feeling travel lethargy by this time and actually spent more days than probably necessary staying in at the hostal, socialising at lot, eating bacon, eggs and beans, bangers and mash, cottage pie and other ashamedly British food, drinking PG Tips and watching shows like the Inbetweeners to make us feel homely. There was a famous tour that we could have done near La Paz, which is to take a bicycle to a place called the Yungas along "the world´s most dangerous road", named "Death Road". Approximately 200-300 people are killed along this road in a year. This is the point where I realised I really am not an adventurous traveller and when asked if I was going to do it I responded unequivocally and without hesitation "absolutely NOT". Just considering doing it was making me lose sleep with fear. Anita on the other hand decided not to do it because she decided it wasn´t "deathly enough"! So instead we relaxed and waited for our friend Laura, the girl who we met on our first day in Rio and got along with like a house on fire, to arrive in La Paz so we could organise our jungle tour. She was also travelling with a Dutch girl called Mariska, who would also be joining us on our travels.
We organised to take 3 days in the Bolivian Pampas near a jungle town called Rurrenbaque north of La Paz. The pampas are fertile South American lowlands that are temperate and borderline tropical toward the north. We combined this with a two day tour in the jungle, which is more how one would traditionally imagine the Amazon jungle to be. In order to save money and due to time constraints, we decided to take the bus to Rurrenabaque, which would take around 21 hours, and a flight back to La Paz, which would take around 45 minutes. The bus ride we had heard around was renowned for being scary, but it was only rumours to us so far. I asked the lady in the tour agency what it was like to which she responded casually and with a shrug, "It´s pretty windy, but not too bad... a bit like death road I suppose... but by bus". You must be bloody joking. Apparently most the accidents happened in the wet season where rains would wash the mud roads off the mountainside, so we "ought to take some comfort in that" as we were currently in the dry season. Well, it didn´t really matter either way at this point as unfortunately we had very little choice but to take it.
So the day of the bus, we´re exiting La Paz on a rickty old bus with oil dripping from what look like crucial parts of its fabric like, for example... the engine, with only locals for company, and what does it start doing? Snowing. It was bloody snowing and we're about to head onto death road in a 30 foot metal coffin. Doing the only thing I knew what to do at that point was to burst into tears while Anita cradled me on her bosom as though I were a terrified toddler. Thankfully after around an hour of actually quite a thick snow storm we started to enter a warmer climate and jungle territory, however at this point the roads turned to dirt tracks winding around the mountain. After another hour or so, the bus reached and impasse as the road had been blocked due to a mudslide... only in wet season my foot! We were losing time. Us girls didn´t mind at all, but the bus driver had a schedule to keep... and so commenced the most horrifying experience of my life. Once the road opened it was as though a starter gun had been fired and all the buses at once sped off at a speed of knots down the snaking narrow dirt roads in order get off the mountain before sunset. They took the tight corners so fast that made the bus tilted over the edge of the cliff down to the jungle abyss below, the standby drivers jogged down the isles forcing us all to close the windows to help keep the bus balanced. We all screamed at him "DEMASIADO, por favour!! Es muy rapido!! Please, please slow down!!!", he just ignored us and headed to the front, closing the door behind him. Anita, who if you remember had said ´death road is not deathly enough´, burst into tears and sobbed that ´she didn´t want to die on this bus´, Mariska also started to cry too. While I just clung to the seat and wondered if I could do my best Mission Impossible impression by jumping upward out of the window as the bus plummeted off the jungly cliff.
The logic of only opening northbound traffic to clear congestion before opening the southbound route obviously hadn´t occured to the locals on a road that can bearly fit one vehicle, so we all screeched to a halt in the middle where the mudslide had been. We then had to edge our way around all the trucks and cars coming in the opposite direction. I stuck my head horizonally out the window as we creeped around and there was literally just bus tyre and then 300 foot drop, I couldn´t see even a hint of the road edge. Even the locals were scared and standing around nervously in the isle of the bus. We couldn´t figure out a way to get off the bus as we would be knocked down by traffic if we just disembarked on the road and the nearest town was 2 hours away, so we just shut our eyes and said actual prayers until around an hour later when, firstly, the driver slowed down and, secondly, it got dark so we wouldn´t actually be able to see our death coming toward us.
We arrived at the stop point and went for some food in a disorientated stooper. We looked out the restaurant in ironic confusion as one of the buses managed to crash into another coaches out in the main square making its windscreen fall out, then a minute later one of the waitresses in our restaurant got in an argument with a customer and picked up a dining knife and started threatening him with it and a massive fight broke out. The whole thing was completely surreal after the sheer adrenaline of the past 6 hours on that bus.
After very little sleep we arrived in Rurrenabaque... 15 minutes before our tour was about to commence. We just wanted to sit on steady ground and maybe brush our teeth! The pampas tour was first and it was us four girls, a giggly Japanese guy called Taka, and a beautiful German guy called Niklas who would have easily made the cut for a boyband audition. We took a 3 hour jeep ride to the starting point of our tour on the river and met our tour guide Juan Carlos Wolf, who really looked just the way you imagine a guy from South America called "Juan Carlos Wolf" to look! Immediately along the river on our boat we saw masses and varied amounts of wildlife. Huge alligators and caimon warming themselves in the sun, herons, eagles, vultures, toucans and many birds of paradise partnered up in branches of trees or flying across our path to the foliage way yonder, big guinea pig looking things called capibaras, and cheeky monkies appoached us to see if we had food. It was brilliant to see as your eyes were being taken to all sides by the animals on show!
It took 3 hours by boat to our campsite for the 3 days, which had wooden walkways crossing through trees connecting the dormitories, bathroom, dining room and bar and other look out points, we felt like we were American teenagers arriving at summer camp! The food was fresh, tasty and abundant, we had a free afternoon to enjoy the sunset and get to know our group. That night we took the boat out again along the river to hunt for alligators, which was scary but exhilarating as you saw they eyes glittering in the distance, the stars also sparkled above and the milky way was crystal clear.
The following day we took the boat down river a short while then went for a hike through the pampas to arrive at a swampy area where we went anaconda hunting. Our guide gave us no techniques for actually achieving this goal other than "when you see one, just grab its head", which frankly was not detailed enough for me to even consider attempting it. In the end one of the guides managed to catch one in the water. It was interesting to see at first, but after about half an hour of watching this distressed snake being grabbed by the tail for photos by the tourists, I really just wanted them to let it go. Niklas has two pet snakes himself at home and was great with the anaconda, he held her properly, stoking under her belly to calm her down.
We then went back to camp and had a long lunch before heading our pirhana fishing in the afternoon, which I thoroughly enjoyed and found incredibly relaxing. They are scary little things, and ripped all the meat off the fishing hook on more occasions than I managed to catch one. In the end I caught two fishes, but didn´t want to catch more as it seemed unnecessary, it also disturbed me how they flapped about struggling for breath in the boat so I made Niklas hit mine with his shoe to kill it, which actually was horrible but somehow really funny. We then headed to a different site to have beers and watch the sunset over the Amazon, while the boys played football the girls chatted and relaxed. We then headed back to our camp again where we stayed up far later than we ought considering we were to be up at 5:30 the following morning to watch the sunrise!
I managed to drag myself out of bed for the sunrise the following morning, which was a fierce shade of red and appeared slowly out of the haze and dewy green grassland of the pampas. After breakfast we put on our bikinis and headed on the boat to a deeper area of the river where the pink dolphins congregate. Nik and Taka got straight in to play, but I was not so sure. I only got in when I looked over 20 minutes later and saw Anita flapping about in the water, it was squishy underfoot and rather disturbing as alligators were lining the shore only a short distance away and I considered why on earth I thought I was immune to their murderous bite just because I am a tourist. I then started to drift downstream and panicked when I realised "Crap... I can´t actually swim"... and so doggy paddled and half back stroked my way back to the boat where I was happy to get inside again.
We headed back to Rurrenabaque town where we had much needed showers and headed out for drinks and dinner, the following morning we said goodbye to Taka but Nik decided to also join us on our 2 day jungle tour. Before we left that evening I started to feel a dodgy tummy coming on but I just ignored it, the following day I felt pretty awful and was super stressed about the fact I had to sit in a boat for 3 hours without a loo in sight. We arrived at what appeared to be as an arbitrary shore off the river Beni and then with all our backpacks in tow along with plastic bags with our food for the next few days entered a small opening in the follage and followed a narrow jungle path for around 20 minutes to our campsite. I was in hysterics as I walked behind Laura who openly admits to having zero centre of gravity and she honestly just could not arrange herself with her belongings. She would take off her backpack and start rolling it uphill across the mud while simultaneously carrying a bag full of eggs. Eggs. She had a choice to pick up any bag of food from the shore to take to camp and she chose a bag with about 30 unbroken eggs in it. When we had to balance crossing rivers on planks of wood I could barely contain myself, it was like watching a bad episode of Challenge Anneka.
Our camp was a little open area just beyond a river and had little wooden huts on stilts with hay roofs, all very cute and jungly. After lunch my tummy was not feeling much better, but I still headed out with the girls and Nik and our guide into the dense jungle. The guide descibed all kinds of nifty medicines different woods and leaves could create, however we did notice it was a lot of "this leaf helps rheumatism... this leaf is like viagra... this bark helps anemia... this root is like viagra... oh and this stem is also like viagra". The jungle is a bit randy. Our guide also made a cool bottle holder out of a vine, he showed us little birds nests with eggs in them and how he has never got lost in the jungle because he uses the sun as a guide and breaks stems to create a return path for himself. It is pretty rare to see animals in the jungle due to all the foliage, but we were lucky enough to see a group of monkies eating out of a nearby tree and went in closer to have a look, they were very cute but I was convinced they were chucking nuts at us!
Later while we were looking at a bit trunk of an old tree I heard a buzzing near my head and swatted around my ears, it would not go away, I then moved around at bit but it still would not go away. I called Laura over and we both stood very still and she said she could also hear it but couldn´t see anything. I started to panic thinking I had a fly stuck behind my ear drum or something, suddenly I felt a massive chomp on my head and I started to scream and scramble my hands through my hair like mental patient and ran around like a headless chicken. The guide tried to calm me down but I was just screaming saying "ahhhh please get it out, get it out, get it out!!!" on the verge of tears, so he rummaged through my hair and picked out some weird looking black insect from my head, but that wasnt the end of it, the bastard had brought a mate with him and he was chowing on the other side of my head! Eventually we got them out but after that all the girls put their hair up as apparently watching me struggle like that was the stuff of horror movies.
I realised how much I had built up an ideal image of the jungle as being lush and hospitable if you act like you´re "one with nature". Actually so far, although I loved the greenery, I was definitely not on the set of Avatar... it felt like absolutely every creepy crawly - and I cannot emphasise just HOW MANY there are in the jungle - wants to eat you. The whole place was starting to give me the heeby jeebies as we ate dinner there were insects crawling in front of us, we went to the loo there were wasps in the toilet bowl, massive ants who just found you interesting to follow for some sinister purpose I´m sure. And mosquitos. Those little bastard were EVERYWHERE and ruthless. We got back to camp and apparently after dinner we were due to head out for a nighttime walk through the jungle and as I was already feeling like this about all the insects in the day, I just imagined walking face first into a tarantulas web. Instead Laura, Mariska and I stayed at camp on our own and ran from the dining block to the dormitories with our only source of light, a couple of candles and thoroughly searched our bed for these mini intruders. When Anita came back I was glad I didn´t go as apparently her light failed about 5 minutes into the hour walk, and she saw a big hairy spider the size of a huge hand eating its dinner in a massive web just a few feet away. No thank you.
My stomach was feeling awful by this point and I awoke abruptly in the middle of the night and had to dash out to find a tree, the last thing I wanted and a terrifying experience. I walked past Anita the following morning outside the toilet block looking thoroughly in pain and she was clearly coming down with the same problem. She said she also awoke in the night to dash to the toilet block and was faced with about 30 pigs just standing randomly outside the dorms. Nik at breakfast also didn´t look too hot either so it seemed something was going around.
Anita stayed in bed but Laura and Mariska, who were feeling fine, headed out with us on the second day walk. Nik also amazingly wanted to come despite his bad belly. We reached some vines to sit and swing on a short while later, Mariska gave it a go and when the guide gestured to me to give it a go I politely declined, he offered the same to Nik who said pretty much what I was thinking: "No thanks, I´ll shit my pants." A short while later Nik decided to head back to camp because he was feeling too ill and we walked in opposite directions, a minute or so later we heard him shouting something in Spanish and we ran back only to find him grabbing the tail of some kind of 3 meter long yellow viper that was trying to slither away. We were all thinking he is actually mad. I asked him if it was dangerous and apparently one bite and you would be dead in a matter of minutes, yet he still wanted me to get closer for a picture. Mad jungle child! He then let it go and it disappeared into its hole.
We continued on walking for about 2.5 hours while Roberto stopped every so often to explain some or other interesting fact about the plants and animals of the jungle and show us yet more natural forms of viagra. We also drank from a piece of wood he cut that was dripping with water, Laura Mariska and I all decided it was the most refreshing drink we´d ever had!
Back at camp that afternoon they were all dropping like flies with this tummy bug, while I was finally starting to feel slightly better. The boat ride back to Rurrenabaque town looked so painful for Anita and Nik particularly. We then headed for the airport to catch our flight, Nik was on the same flight and was looking more ill by the second, when he disembarked from the plane in La Paz he was completely crumpled over and his heart was beating about at least twice as fast as it ought. We were happy to get back to the Wildrover, have a warm shower without feeling like a kebab on a skewer for the mosquitoes and get straight to bed.
We had an incredible faff getting across the border as not a single person spoke English, and those that spoke Spanish made no allowances for us by speaking that bit slower. We had to cross the border back and forth a few times to get various stamps and signatures and by "cross" I mean run uphill through the market dodging carts, stalls and people as the bus looked like it was about to leave without us if we didn´t hurry the hell up. There really is nothing more awful than being in a fluster and running uphill through hundreds of people when you are about 4,000 metres above sea level and the air is as thin as wafer. It had all the right conditions for coronary and we felt like our hearts were about to explode by the time we finally sat down on the bus.
It was then a very long journey through the barren and rolling Bolivian landscape to La Paz, I looked happily out the window at some truly beautiful snowcapped mountains on the horizon. I noticed pretty quickly that Bolivia, at least in the countryside anyway, looks incredibly poor. The houses have no aesthetic design about them whatsoever, just functional brick and square structures. More than half of the construction projects we passed on the way were unfinished with no sign that there was intention to complete them, and rubble and rubbish lay everywhere. Anita and I looked out the window on this view from our tourist bus listening to our ipod and discussed how bloody lucky we were to have the lives we do back in the UK.
The views of La Paz on entry are really spectacular. Little lego-like brown houses speckled across the mountainside and the larger buildings in the city centre snuggled comfortably in the middle of the valley. It is expansive and somehow exudes a sense of boldness and fortitude, but as we spiralled down the mountains and into mouth of the city we felt welcomed by it.
Both Anita and I had enjoyed Wildrover Hostal so much in Cusco, and so we decided to also stay at the Wildrover La Paz. We both were feeling travel lethargy by this time and actually spent more days than probably necessary staying in at the hostal, socialising at lot, eating bacon, eggs and beans, bangers and mash, cottage pie and other ashamedly British food, drinking PG Tips and watching shows like the Inbetweeners to make us feel homely. There was a famous tour that we could have done near La Paz, which is to take a bicycle to a place called the Yungas along "the world´s most dangerous road", named "Death Road". Approximately 200-300 people are killed along this road in a year. This is the point where I realised I really am not an adventurous traveller and when asked if I was going to do it I responded unequivocally and without hesitation "absolutely NOT". Just considering doing it was making me lose sleep with fear. Anita on the other hand decided not to do it because she decided it wasn´t "deathly enough"! So instead we relaxed and waited for our friend Laura, the girl who we met on our first day in Rio and got along with like a house on fire, to arrive in La Paz so we could organise our jungle tour. She was also travelling with a Dutch girl called Mariska, who would also be joining us on our travels.
We organised to take 3 days in the Bolivian Pampas near a jungle town called Rurrenbaque north of La Paz. The pampas are fertile South American lowlands that are temperate and borderline tropical toward the north. We combined this with a two day tour in the jungle, which is more how one would traditionally imagine the Amazon jungle to be. In order to save money and due to time constraints, we decided to take the bus to Rurrenabaque, which would take around 21 hours, and a flight back to La Paz, which would take around 45 minutes. The bus ride we had heard around was renowned for being scary, but it was only rumours to us so far. I asked the lady in the tour agency what it was like to which she responded casually and with a shrug, "It´s pretty windy, but not too bad... a bit like death road I suppose... but by bus". You must be bloody joking. Apparently most the accidents happened in the wet season where rains would wash the mud roads off the mountainside, so we "ought to take some comfort in that" as we were currently in the dry season. Well, it didn´t really matter either way at this point as unfortunately we had very little choice but to take it.
So the day of the bus, we´re exiting La Paz on a rickty old bus with oil dripping from what look like crucial parts of its fabric like, for example... the engine, with only locals for company, and what does it start doing? Snowing. It was bloody snowing and we're about to head onto death road in a 30 foot metal coffin. Doing the only thing I knew what to do at that point was to burst into tears while Anita cradled me on her bosom as though I were a terrified toddler. Thankfully after around an hour of actually quite a thick snow storm we started to enter a warmer climate and jungle territory, however at this point the roads turned to dirt tracks winding around the mountain. After another hour or so, the bus reached and impasse as the road had been blocked due to a mudslide... only in wet season my foot! We were losing time. Us girls didn´t mind at all, but the bus driver had a schedule to keep... and so commenced the most horrifying experience of my life. Once the road opened it was as though a starter gun had been fired and all the buses at once sped off at a speed of knots down the snaking narrow dirt roads in order get off the mountain before sunset. They took the tight corners so fast that made the bus tilted over the edge of the cliff down to the jungle abyss below, the standby drivers jogged down the isles forcing us all to close the windows to help keep the bus balanced. We all screamed at him "DEMASIADO, por favour!! Es muy rapido!! Please, please slow down!!!", he just ignored us and headed to the front, closing the door behind him. Anita, who if you remember had said ´death road is not deathly enough´, burst into tears and sobbed that ´she didn´t want to die on this bus´, Mariska also started to cry too. While I just clung to the seat and wondered if I could do my best Mission Impossible impression by jumping upward out of the window as the bus plummeted off the jungly cliff.
The logic of only opening northbound traffic to clear congestion before opening the southbound route obviously hadn´t occured to the locals on a road that can bearly fit one vehicle, so we all screeched to a halt in the middle where the mudslide had been. We then had to edge our way around all the trucks and cars coming in the opposite direction. I stuck my head horizonally out the window as we creeped around and there was literally just bus tyre and then 300 foot drop, I couldn´t see even a hint of the road edge. Even the locals were scared and standing around nervously in the isle of the bus. We couldn´t figure out a way to get off the bus as we would be knocked down by traffic if we just disembarked on the road and the nearest town was 2 hours away, so we just shut our eyes and said actual prayers until around an hour later when, firstly, the driver slowed down and, secondly, it got dark so we wouldn´t actually be able to see our death coming toward us.
We arrived at the stop point and went for some food in a disorientated stooper. We looked out the restaurant in ironic confusion as one of the buses managed to crash into another coaches out in the main square making its windscreen fall out, then a minute later one of the waitresses in our restaurant got in an argument with a customer and picked up a dining knife and started threatening him with it and a massive fight broke out. The whole thing was completely surreal after the sheer adrenaline of the past 6 hours on that bus.
After very little sleep we arrived in Rurrenabaque... 15 minutes before our tour was about to commence. We just wanted to sit on steady ground and maybe brush our teeth! The pampas tour was first and it was us four girls, a giggly Japanese guy called Taka, and a beautiful German guy called Niklas who would have easily made the cut for a boyband audition. We took a 3 hour jeep ride to the starting point of our tour on the river and met our tour guide Juan Carlos Wolf, who really looked just the way you imagine a guy from South America called "Juan Carlos Wolf" to look! Immediately along the river on our boat we saw masses and varied amounts of wildlife. Huge alligators and caimon warming themselves in the sun, herons, eagles, vultures, toucans and many birds of paradise partnered up in branches of trees or flying across our path to the foliage way yonder, big guinea pig looking things called capibaras, and cheeky monkies appoached us to see if we had food. It was brilliant to see as your eyes were being taken to all sides by the animals on show!
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| The girls watching the sunset over the Amazonian Pampas |
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| Our Pampas camp for 3 nights |
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| Us girls at the anaconda hunting pond |
We then went back to camp and had a long lunch before heading our pirhana fishing in the afternoon, which I thoroughly enjoyed and found incredibly relaxing. They are scary little things, and ripped all the meat off the fishing hook on more occasions than I managed to catch one. In the end I caught two fishes, but didn´t want to catch more as it seemed unnecessary, it also disturbed me how they flapped about struggling for breath in the boat so I made Niklas hit mine with his shoe to kill it, which actually was horrible but somehow really funny. We then headed to a different site to have beers and watch the sunset over the Amazon, while the boys played football the girls chatted and relaxed. We then headed back to our camp again where we stayed up far later than we ought considering we were to be up at 5:30 the following morning to watch the sunrise!
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| Me catching a Piranha! |
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| Sunset over the Pampas |
I managed to drag myself out of bed for the sunrise the following morning, which was a fierce shade of red and appeared slowly out of the haze and dewy green grassland of the pampas. After breakfast we put on our bikinis and headed on the boat to a deeper area of the river where the pink dolphins congregate. Nik and Taka got straight in to play, but I was not so sure. I only got in when I looked over 20 minutes later and saw Anita flapping about in the water, it was squishy underfoot and rather disturbing as alligators were lining the shore only a short distance away and I considered why on earth I thought I was immune to their murderous bite just because I am a tourist. I then started to drift downstream and panicked when I realised "Crap... I can´t actually swim"... and so doggy paddled and half back stroked my way back to the boat where I was happy to get inside again.
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| Sunrise over the Pampas |
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| Playing with the pink dolphins |
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| The girls, Taka, Nik and Juan Carlos (far right) on our transport for the Pampas |
Our camp was a little open area just beyond a river and had little wooden huts on stilts with hay roofs, all very cute and jungly. After lunch my tummy was not feeling much better, but I still headed out with the girls and Nik and our guide into the dense jungle. The guide descibed all kinds of nifty medicines different woods and leaves could create, however we did notice it was a lot of "this leaf helps rheumatism... this leaf is like viagra... this bark helps anemia... this root is like viagra... oh and this stem is also like viagra". The jungle is a bit randy. Our guide also made a cool bottle holder out of a vine, he showed us little birds nests with eggs in them and how he has never got lost in the jungle because he uses the sun as a guide and breaks stems to create a return path for himself. It is pretty rare to see animals in the jungle due to all the foliage, but we were lucky enough to see a group of monkies eating out of a nearby tree and went in closer to have a look, they were very cute but I was convinced they were chucking nuts at us!
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| In the jungle! |
I realised how much I had built up an ideal image of the jungle as being lush and hospitable if you act like you´re "one with nature". Actually so far, although I loved the greenery, I was definitely not on the set of Avatar... it felt like absolutely every creepy crawly - and I cannot emphasise just HOW MANY there are in the jungle - wants to eat you. The whole place was starting to give me the heeby jeebies as we ate dinner there were insects crawling in front of us, we went to the loo there were wasps in the toilet bowl, massive ants who just found you interesting to follow for some sinister purpose I´m sure. And mosquitos. Those little bastard were EVERYWHERE and ruthless. We got back to camp and apparently after dinner we were due to head out for a nighttime walk through the jungle and as I was already feeling like this about all the insects in the day, I just imagined walking face first into a tarantulas web. Instead Laura, Mariska and I stayed at camp on our own and ran from the dining block to the dormitories with our only source of light, a couple of candles and thoroughly searched our bed for these mini intruders. When Anita came back I was glad I didn´t go as apparently her light failed about 5 minutes into the hour walk, and she saw a big hairy spider the size of a huge hand eating its dinner in a massive web just a few feet away. No thank you.
My stomach was feeling awful by this point and I awoke abruptly in the middle of the night and had to dash out to find a tree, the last thing I wanted and a terrifying experience. I walked past Anita the following morning outside the toilet block looking thoroughly in pain and she was clearly coming down with the same problem. She said she also awoke in the night to dash to the toilet block and was faced with about 30 pigs just standing randomly outside the dorms. Nik at breakfast also didn´t look too hot either so it seemed something was going around.
Anita stayed in bed but Laura and Mariska, who were feeling fine, headed out with us on the second day walk. Nik also amazingly wanted to come despite his bad belly. We reached some vines to sit and swing on a short while later, Mariska gave it a go and when the guide gestured to me to give it a go I politely declined, he offered the same to Nik who said pretty much what I was thinking: "No thanks, I´ll shit my pants." A short while later Nik decided to head back to camp because he was feeling too ill and we walked in opposite directions, a minute or so later we heard him shouting something in Spanish and we ran back only to find him grabbing the tail of some kind of 3 meter long yellow viper that was trying to slither away. We were all thinking he is actually mad. I asked him if it was dangerous and apparently one bite and you would be dead in a matter of minutes, yet he still wanted me to get closer for a picture. Mad jungle child! He then let it go and it disappeared into its hole.
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| Nik catching the viper |
Back at camp that afternoon they were all dropping like flies with this tummy bug, while I was finally starting to feel slightly better. The boat ride back to Rurrenabaque town looked so painful for Anita and Nik particularly. We then headed for the airport to catch our flight, Nik was on the same flight and was looking more ill by the second, when he disembarked from the plane in La Paz he was completely crumpled over and his heart was beating about at least twice as fast as it ought. We were happy to get back to the Wildrover, have a warm shower without feeling like a kebab on a skewer for the mosquitoes and get straight to bed.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Peru - 24th August to 8th September 2011
We landed in Lima, Peru, late at night and in a disorientated whirl managed to make our way to our rest stop for the night, the Parawana Hostel in the Milaflores district of the city.
The following day, Anita and I, along with another guy we had met at breakfast called Sam decided to go and explore the city. It was quickly apparent that to get anywhere you would need to take a taxi as the city is quite disjointed and full of highways, there is not a tree in sight and endless walls of concrete everywhere. The cars all push and shuffle and funnel through the streets like cattle into a pen and most are about the size of a Smart car but look like they have been put together with plastic and duct tape. In the centre of town there was an interesting cathedral and main square. We then walked three blocks on a road that looked scarily like Walthamstow market in London, then back down another three blocks on different street, arriving back in the main square. We all stood there quietly in a circle for about 20 seconds before Anita picked up the courage to say what we were all thinking: "right.... soooo that was Lima then, anyone fancy going to the bar?".
The following day we had an hour flight over to Cusco. To my mind we were running late and I was practically having a nervous breakdown and panic attack simultaneously in the taxi when the flight was due to take off in an hour and a half and we were at least an hour away, while Anita was happily looking out the window and totally chilled. From then on we decided that I need to call the shots on getting us out the door for deadlines as my heart cannot take the pressure!
We both immediately loved Cusco. It is an extremely pretty city, and it is certainly the setting that makes it so impressive. Brown stone houses are nestled up and away into the distant Peruvian foothills, eventually fading into the distance where only imposing mountains remain. The streets are clean and pedestrian friendly, covered walkways are created by wonderfully ornate pillars and there are plenty of squares with well maintained gardens, fountains and border flowers. Peruvian women with their coloured fabrics, raven black pigtails and top hats sit quietly in these squares and along the cobbled streets and watch the world go by. Anita and I spent around 5 days in Cusco and did very little touristy activity but simply enjoyed walking around and soaking up the atmosphere of the city, and we don´t regret it one bit.
We stayed in the Wildrover hostel in a 10 bed dorm and shared with a 24 year old guy from Australia called Dave, a forthright, jokey and uncompromising character, three 22 year old British guys called Ross, Rob and Francis who had been friends since secondary school and had hilarious banter. There was also an Irish guy called Conor who seemed to sleep about 22 hours a day, but the times he did prop himself up in bed to talk to us he was such an entertaining shambles. When we were feeling sociable, we spent most of our few days in Cusco with these guys. We also discovered a place called Jack´s cafe, which we went to every day for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner as the portions were stellar and the food was so tasty. We also spent a lot of time out shopping like all the other tourists for clothes/bags/souveniers made from alpaca clothing. The alpaca is a kind of herd animal that is bred specifically for its fibre at height in Peru and northern Bolivia. Travellers in Peru absolutely love it and I noticed one day going into the hostal bar that everyone was wearing a cardigan in exactly the same alpaca design. If that happened in a bar in the UK the victims would most likely slink out in embarrassment. For some reason all rules of individuality and personal expression go out the window for travellers! I have succumbed myself and now rock an alpaca poncho and far too many fabric friendship bands.
When we had been in Brazil we had met a couple of girls on Ilha Grande who had done the 5 day, 4 night Salkantay Trek to Macchu Picchu and who told us it had been the highlight of their trip in South America. Since then we had heard similar stories from various other travellers and had decided that we wanted to give it a go, even though it is renowed for being the hardest of the Inca treks. It did take some time to convince Anita but she decided to go along with it in the end. I must admit when the bus came to collect us at 4.45am on the first day I was feeling very nervous about the whole thing and wondered if I would actually be able to cover so much steep ground for such an extended period of time.
Luckily we had some very interesting people on our trek. Most fascinating of all was an Indian man called Malli who was travelling with his partner Jessica. Malli was the first Indian man to climb the seven highest mountain summits of all the continents of the world, including of course Mount Everest. He also did it in a shorter time than any other person in the world, making the Guiness Book of Records in 2009. He had an incredible passion for mountaineering and trekking but was also patient man and as it turns out it was great having him there for morale boosting and trekking tips as we were going. We also had a couple of Brazilian on our trek called Erik and Angelo who were friends from school and holidaying together, and Argentinian couple who were strangely enough on their honeymoon.
The first days walk started at a town called Mollepata at a height above sea level of 2,900 meters. The morning trek took around 4 hours and was pleasant and warm. The landscape alternated between a zero gradient meander to a downright scramble up dry dirt hills. We spent time getting to know our trekking group and enjoyed the scenery, which was quite similar to the mediterranean. Lunch was taken overlooking green valleys and we had a peak through the hills of the snowcapped mountain Soraypampa next to our destination mountain of Salkantay, this would be the base of first night´s camp.
The afternoon of the first day I found a real stuggle. Although it was not difficult, I had been suffering from a cold for the few days before and it was starting to run me down and I lagged right at the back of the group, struggling to breath at the altitude and fending off a headache. Toward evening the temperature really started to drop as we approached the base of the first snowcapped mountain at a height of 3,900 meters above sea level. Each step I could feel draining the energy out of me, and after another 4 hours walking I was ready to just collapse.
When we got to out camp at Soraypampa a freezing wind howled across the expansive open land and our flimsy tent quivered under its force. There was no electricity and we would have our dinner in a broken down 2-room mudhut that was the size of a hobbit hole but terribly maintained, there were open sections all over the hay roof and the walls were crumbling. I asked our guide where the facilities were and he pointed to a bamboo hut on a mound that looked miles away. The door was made out of taupaulin and it flapped furiously in the wind. No flush of course. "Ok..." I said, "so...is there anywhere else?" and was told that there was a toilet behind our dining mud hut, which sounded promising. I walked round and round the area but couldn´t see a thing. In the end he had to show me, and before my eyes a right-angled 3 foot high wall which had a scattering of toilet paper within it. I honestly had to control my laughter when I showed Anita and her face looked completely mortified. The poor cooks beavered away with their headtorches on portable gas cookers while we all sat at a rickety wooden table in silence, totally exhausted, cold, and contemplating the next day, supposedly the hardest of all the days. Anita´s only few sentences for the evening had been over and over "this is just... HORRENDOUS..." before she put her head into her hands.
The night sleep actually went well for me, Anita not so well. When the cooks woke us up at 5:30am with a coca tea we both sat up in a groggy stooper, Anita looked so pissed off and her first words before anything were "this is the most HORRENDOUS experience of my entire life", after she brushed her teeth next to the 3 foot high toilet-wall and combed her hair looking in a 1 inch square mirror she continued to mumble "this is just... HORRENDOUS". Much laughter was suppressed on my part but Anita would have her comeuppance over the next few days!
The guide debated with a few from the group over breakfast whether to get me a horse to go up the mountain as I had fared so terribly the day before and lagged behind everyone. This really got my rag up and I threw a bit of a hissy fit and said "NO! I´m bloody well walking it!", Malli however was sticking up for me and said I could do it. This discussion certainly got my motivation at an all time high to prove the guide wrong!
The second morning´s walk from camp at Soraypama was undulating and pleasant under the shadow of the mountain. The temperature was chilly and the views started to become craggy and more and more dramatic as we proceeded to the base of the Salkantay mountain. After a short rest once we entered the sunshine we started on the hardest section: a 3 hour consistenty upward trek toward the Salkantaypampa mountain pass at 4,650 meters. I got into a rhythm and actually found this section grueling but enjoyable. Anita however had was really struggling with this section, finding it extremely difficult to breathe at the altitude and also lacking in energy from a bad night´s sleep. She hitched a ride on a horse for some of the way to ease the strain. When we finally made it to the highest point of the trek, the views of the Salkantay mountain were imposing and breathtaking and we made an offering to the mountain as was tradition and enjoyed the exhilarating feeling. We then started for a further 2 hour walk downhill to our lunchpoint at Andenes Arayaniyoc. I really peaked at this point and were practically running down the mountain!
The lunchpoint was very odd, and not unlike an poor mountain farm. Anita was feeling run down and in a terrible mood at this point, she asked the guide where the toilet was and he pointed to an oversized boulder in the distance. Exhausted, she then found the only place to lie down which was a rock and after a brief snooze woke up to find herself surrounded by half-starved chickens, ducks, horses, cat, dogs cows and piles of animal poo everywhere, it was another "this is HORRENDOUS" moment. It was down, down, down-hill in the afternoon as Salkantay disappeared behind us and we started to enter lush jungle and it would spit rain through the intermittent clouds. Anita and I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the afternoon for the first couple of hours and Anita stormed ahead, but when it turned into 3 hours, then 4 hours of downhill our knees were both just aching to get to camp!
Our second night´s camp was at a place called Chaullay, 2.900 meters above sea level and set by a waterfall in a jungly mountainpass. While Anita had a nap in the tent I headed down to the waterfall and had a refreshing shower there as the sunset through the mountains thinking idly how I could SO be a good wife to Mowgli if it ever came to that.
Over dinner Malli told stories about his expeditions in the Antarctic and how he would chuck boiling water into the air and watch it freeze and turn to snow within a matter of seconds! The evening was cut short by a very treatening and aggressive thunderstorm, Anita and I dashed to our tent only to find it leaking all over our sleeping bags, Anita didn´t have the energy for a "this is HORRENDOUS" and we both actually went to sleep quite quickly and soundly.
The third day was both of our favourite day of the trip. We spent time chatting as we trekked through lush and rolling and open jungle and the sun shone down on us. A river raged alongside and every now and again we passed pretty waterfalls and flowers. It was a non-stop 6 hour walk this morning but we both had the energy for it. It was a free afternoon at our third campsite and we both laughed with happiness when we saw it had an actual flushing toilet with a door. We repeated to each other, "simple pleasures, my friend, simple pleasures!". That night I tried to close the zips of the tent door but realised they were broken and it wouldn´t work no matter what I did with them. I pretty much lost it in frustration, the same way you would when you just can´t unwrap christmas lights no matter how patient you try to be. A whole manner of curse words came out of my mouth while I smacked at the tent door and pouted like a 5 year old. Anita told me to calm down, tried her damndest to hold in hysterics at my girly spack out, and helped me close the tent door with safety pins.
The following morning on the fourth day at the 6:30 wake up call I had calmed down and sat quietly in my tent with a coca tea and looked out at the rising sun of the jungle campsite in a daydream. Then out of nowhere a chicken came into view, casually strolled across from left to right of my tent and back out of view again. There was a pause and I suddenly just burst into laughter as it suddenly registered just how different my life had become in a matter of weeks.
We took a bus this morning to a place called Hidroelectrica then took a 3 hour walk by the railway line to the base town of Machu Picchu, a place called Aguas Calientes, 2,000 meters above sea level. Anita and I had a great time this morning chatting and laughing and debating life and acting as though we were were in the "Stand By Me" movie. When we got to our guesthouse and realised we had a private ensuite with a hot shower we literally jumped for joy and screaming and hugging each other in elation as though we had both won the lottery. Anita had her first actual wash in 4 days and she was repeating over and over in the shower "Oh my GOD...this is AMAZING!!".
The following morning was an early start at 4.30am as we were to do the one hour walk up the Inca steps to watch the sunrise over Macchu Picchu before the first buses with tourists arrived. This was a very difficult walk after an already difficult 5 day trek, but it was completely worth it. As we entered the site we were astounded by what we saw, it was quiet, humbling and did have a near tangible sense of spirituality about it. As the sun rose, the sky turned an intense shade of of pink and blue behind the rich green mountains to the fore. Anita and I were genuinely in awe of the entire ancient city. I was amazed that we had free reign over the site and we weaved and wandered around the ruins, exploring every nook and cranny for several hours in peace before settling on some grass on a mountain face overlooking the site and just took in the view. Around midday we headed down the mountain on the bus and discussed how it was one of the few tourist attractions we had ever been to that really lived up to the hype. That evening we took the train back to Cusco and a well deserved rest.
It was soon time to move on as we were getting itchy feet now for a new place. We decided to head on the overnight bus to a place called Puno, next to the highest navagable lake in the world: Lake Titicaca. Our hostal was on the ourskirts of town and looked like it was in a war torn part of the world with garbage everywhere, no real roads or pavements and stray dogs wandering the streets. We did a two day tour of the lake, starting with the floating islands of Uros. The Uru people are pre-incan people who live on forty-two self fashioned floating islands on Lake Titicaca. Not really knowing what that meant as such, when we arrvied at the islands Anita and I sat down to hear the stories of the island came to be from the president. Feeling a bit disorientated and not really listening I said to Anita "I SWEAR the ground is moving...", to which she responded "I don´t think so, it must be like... perspective or something". But sure enough the president opened a hole in the ground and the whole island undulated. He put a pole through the hole and it disppeared for a couple of seconds before popping back up again from the bouyancy of the water! It was all very impressive.
From here we headed on a 3 hour boat ride over to the island Alamantani where we would be spending the night with a local family. We were greeted at the port by about a dozen Peruvian women dressed in traditional clothing of bright pinks and greens with flower prints and a thick black headscarf. Our host for the evening Martina was 26 but looked easily about 36, and walked uphill through the village very very slowly, she also spoke very slowly and had a measured look about her. We figured it must be the high altitude and laid back way of life that makes them so lethargic. We were surprised by how well the people of the island lived, the house was planned around a pretty courtyard with pink climbing flowers growing all over the walls. All the people on the island are vegetarian so we ate our meal of tomatoes, potatoes and fried cheese before going for the half hour walk to the top of the island, which had stunning views across the lake and the yellowy brushland of the island.
In the evening Martina dressed Anita and I in the local clothing and took us to the town hall where they hosted a traditional Peruvian fiesta for us. We walked into a echoing concrete hall with plastic garden chairs around the outside, men on one side and women on the other. A group of Peruvian teenagers from the town then played some upbeat music for us on their windpipes and drums and everyone got up and began doing energetic dances around the hall holding hands and jumping around. I actually felt more like I was at a kids party playing "ring a ring of roses"! After the exhausting antics of the evening we headed to our host family and to bed.
The following day we took the boat to the nearby island of Taquile. The sun was beating down on us, the lake was a rich azul blue against the sunflower yellows and forest greens of the island´s shrubbery, we had a tasty lunch of locally caught trout and soaked up the lazy, hazy atmosphere of the island before heading back in the early afternoon for Puno. When we got back, we booked a coach for La Paz in Bolivia for the following morning.
The following day, Anita and I, along with another guy we had met at breakfast called Sam decided to go and explore the city. It was quickly apparent that to get anywhere you would need to take a taxi as the city is quite disjointed and full of highways, there is not a tree in sight and endless walls of concrete everywhere. The cars all push and shuffle and funnel through the streets like cattle into a pen and most are about the size of a Smart car but look like they have been put together with plastic and duct tape. In the centre of town there was an interesting cathedral and main square. We then walked three blocks on a road that looked scarily like Walthamstow market in London, then back down another three blocks on different street, arriving back in the main square. We all stood there quietly in a circle for about 20 seconds before Anita picked up the courage to say what we were all thinking: "right.... soooo that was Lima then, anyone fancy going to the bar?".
The following day we had an hour flight over to Cusco. To my mind we were running late and I was practically having a nervous breakdown and panic attack simultaneously in the taxi when the flight was due to take off in an hour and a half and we were at least an hour away, while Anita was happily looking out the window and totally chilled. From then on we decided that I need to call the shots on getting us out the door for deadlines as my heart cannot take the pressure!
We both immediately loved Cusco. It is an extremely pretty city, and it is certainly the setting that makes it so impressive. Brown stone houses are nestled up and away into the distant Peruvian foothills, eventually fading into the distance where only imposing mountains remain. The streets are clean and pedestrian friendly, covered walkways are created by wonderfully ornate pillars and there are plenty of squares with well maintained gardens, fountains and border flowers. Peruvian women with their coloured fabrics, raven black pigtails and top hats sit quietly in these squares and along the cobbled streets and watch the world go by. Anita and I spent around 5 days in Cusco and did very little touristy activity but simply enjoyed walking around and soaking up the atmosphere of the city, and we don´t regret it one bit.
We stayed in the Wildrover hostel in a 10 bed dorm and shared with a 24 year old guy from Australia called Dave, a forthright, jokey and uncompromising character, three 22 year old British guys called Ross, Rob and Francis who had been friends since secondary school and had hilarious banter. There was also an Irish guy called Conor who seemed to sleep about 22 hours a day, but the times he did prop himself up in bed to talk to us he was such an entertaining shambles. When we were feeling sociable, we spent most of our few days in Cusco with these guys. We also discovered a place called Jack´s cafe, which we went to every day for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner as the portions were stellar and the food was so tasty. We also spent a lot of time out shopping like all the other tourists for clothes/bags/souveniers made from alpaca clothing. The alpaca is a kind of herd animal that is bred specifically for its fibre at height in Peru and northern Bolivia. Travellers in Peru absolutely love it and I noticed one day going into the hostal bar that everyone was wearing a cardigan in exactly the same alpaca design. If that happened in a bar in the UK the victims would most likely slink out in embarrassment. For some reason all rules of individuality and personal expression go out the window for travellers! I have succumbed myself and now rock an alpaca poncho and far too many fabric friendship bands.
When we had been in Brazil we had met a couple of girls on Ilha Grande who had done the 5 day, 4 night Salkantay Trek to Macchu Picchu and who told us it had been the highlight of their trip in South America. Since then we had heard similar stories from various other travellers and had decided that we wanted to give it a go, even though it is renowed for being the hardest of the Inca treks. It did take some time to convince Anita but she decided to go along with it in the end. I must admit when the bus came to collect us at 4.45am on the first day I was feeling very nervous about the whole thing and wondered if I would actually be able to cover so much steep ground for such an extended period of time.
Luckily we had some very interesting people on our trek. Most fascinating of all was an Indian man called Malli who was travelling with his partner Jessica. Malli was the first Indian man to climb the seven highest mountain summits of all the continents of the world, including of course Mount Everest. He also did it in a shorter time than any other person in the world, making the Guiness Book of Records in 2009. He had an incredible passion for mountaineering and trekking but was also patient man and as it turns out it was great having him there for morale boosting and trekking tips as we were going. We also had a couple of Brazilian on our trek called Erik and Angelo who were friends from school and holidaying together, and Argentinian couple who were strangely enough on their honeymoon.
The first days walk started at a town called Mollepata at a height above sea level of 2,900 meters. The morning trek took around 4 hours and was pleasant and warm. The landscape alternated between a zero gradient meander to a downright scramble up dry dirt hills. We spent time getting to know our trekking group and enjoyed the scenery, which was quite similar to the mediterranean. Lunch was taken overlooking green valleys and we had a peak through the hills of the snowcapped mountain Soraypampa next to our destination mountain of Salkantay, this would be the base of first night´s camp.
The afternoon of the first day I found a real stuggle. Although it was not difficult, I had been suffering from a cold for the few days before and it was starting to run me down and I lagged right at the back of the group, struggling to breath at the altitude and fending off a headache. Toward evening the temperature really started to drop as we approached the base of the first snowcapped mountain at a height of 3,900 meters above sea level. Each step I could feel draining the energy out of me, and after another 4 hours walking I was ready to just collapse.
When we got to out camp at Soraypampa a freezing wind howled across the expansive open land and our flimsy tent quivered under its force. There was no electricity and we would have our dinner in a broken down 2-room mudhut that was the size of a hobbit hole but terribly maintained, there were open sections all over the hay roof and the walls were crumbling. I asked our guide where the facilities were and he pointed to a bamboo hut on a mound that looked miles away. The door was made out of taupaulin and it flapped furiously in the wind. No flush of course. "Ok..." I said, "so...is there anywhere else?" and was told that there was a toilet behind our dining mud hut, which sounded promising. I walked round and round the area but couldn´t see a thing. In the end he had to show me, and before my eyes a right-angled 3 foot high wall which had a scattering of toilet paper within it. I honestly had to control my laughter when I showed Anita and her face looked completely mortified. The poor cooks beavered away with their headtorches on portable gas cookers while we all sat at a rickety wooden table in silence, totally exhausted, cold, and contemplating the next day, supposedly the hardest of all the days. Anita´s only few sentences for the evening had been over and over "this is just... HORRENDOUS..." before she put her head into her hands.
The night sleep actually went well for me, Anita not so well. When the cooks woke us up at 5:30am with a coca tea we both sat up in a groggy stooper, Anita looked so pissed off and her first words before anything were "this is the most HORRENDOUS experience of my entire life", after she brushed her teeth next to the 3 foot high toilet-wall and combed her hair looking in a 1 inch square mirror she continued to mumble "this is just... HORRENDOUS". Much laughter was suppressed on my part but Anita would have her comeuppance over the next few days!
The guide debated with a few from the group over breakfast whether to get me a horse to go up the mountain as I had fared so terribly the day before and lagged behind everyone. This really got my rag up and I threw a bit of a hissy fit and said "NO! I´m bloody well walking it!", Malli however was sticking up for me and said I could do it. This discussion certainly got my motivation at an all time high to prove the guide wrong!
The second morning´s walk from camp at Soraypama was undulating and pleasant under the shadow of the mountain. The temperature was chilly and the views started to become craggy and more and more dramatic as we proceeded to the base of the Salkantay mountain. After a short rest once we entered the sunshine we started on the hardest section: a 3 hour consistenty upward trek toward the Salkantaypampa mountain pass at 4,650 meters. I got into a rhythm and actually found this section grueling but enjoyable. Anita however had was really struggling with this section, finding it extremely difficult to breathe at the altitude and also lacking in energy from a bad night´s sleep. She hitched a ride on a horse for some of the way to ease the strain. When we finally made it to the highest point of the trek, the views of the Salkantay mountain were imposing and breathtaking and we made an offering to the mountain as was tradition and enjoyed the exhilarating feeling. We then started for a further 2 hour walk downhill to our lunchpoint at Andenes Arayaniyoc. I really peaked at this point and were practically running down the mountain!
The lunchpoint was very odd, and not unlike an poor mountain farm. Anita was feeling run down and in a terrible mood at this point, she asked the guide where the toilet was and he pointed to an oversized boulder in the distance. Exhausted, she then found the only place to lie down which was a rock and after a brief snooze woke up to find herself surrounded by half-starved chickens, ducks, horses, cat, dogs cows and piles of animal poo everywhere, it was another "this is HORRENDOUS" moment. It was down, down, down-hill in the afternoon as Salkantay disappeared behind us and we started to enter lush jungle and it would spit rain through the intermittent clouds. Anita and I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the afternoon for the first couple of hours and Anita stormed ahead, but when it turned into 3 hours, then 4 hours of downhill our knees were both just aching to get to camp!
Our second night´s camp was at a place called Chaullay, 2.900 meters above sea level and set by a waterfall in a jungly mountainpass. While Anita had a nap in the tent I headed down to the waterfall and had a refreshing shower there as the sunset through the mountains thinking idly how I could SO be a good wife to Mowgli if it ever came to that.
Over dinner Malli told stories about his expeditions in the Antarctic and how he would chuck boiling water into the air and watch it freeze and turn to snow within a matter of seconds! The evening was cut short by a very treatening and aggressive thunderstorm, Anita and I dashed to our tent only to find it leaking all over our sleeping bags, Anita didn´t have the energy for a "this is HORRENDOUS" and we both actually went to sleep quite quickly and soundly.
The third day was both of our favourite day of the trip. We spent time chatting as we trekked through lush and rolling and open jungle and the sun shone down on us. A river raged alongside and every now and again we passed pretty waterfalls and flowers. It was a non-stop 6 hour walk this morning but we both had the energy for it. It was a free afternoon at our third campsite and we both laughed with happiness when we saw it had an actual flushing toilet with a door. We repeated to each other, "simple pleasures, my friend, simple pleasures!". That night I tried to close the zips of the tent door but realised they were broken and it wouldn´t work no matter what I did with them. I pretty much lost it in frustration, the same way you would when you just can´t unwrap christmas lights no matter how patient you try to be. A whole manner of curse words came out of my mouth while I smacked at the tent door and pouted like a 5 year old. Anita told me to calm down, tried her damndest to hold in hysterics at my girly spack out, and helped me close the tent door with safety pins.
The following morning on the fourth day at the 6:30 wake up call I had calmed down and sat quietly in my tent with a coca tea and looked out at the rising sun of the jungle campsite in a daydream. Then out of nowhere a chicken came into view, casually strolled across from left to right of my tent and back out of view again. There was a pause and I suddenly just burst into laughter as it suddenly registered just how different my life had become in a matter of weeks.
We took a bus this morning to a place called Hidroelectrica then took a 3 hour walk by the railway line to the base town of Machu Picchu, a place called Aguas Calientes, 2,000 meters above sea level. Anita and I had a great time this morning chatting and laughing and debating life and acting as though we were were in the "Stand By Me" movie. When we got to our guesthouse and realised we had a private ensuite with a hot shower we literally jumped for joy and screaming and hugging each other in elation as though we had both won the lottery. Anita had her first actual wash in 4 days and she was repeating over and over in the shower "Oh my GOD...this is AMAZING!!".
The following morning was an early start at 4.30am as we were to do the one hour walk up the Inca steps to watch the sunrise over Macchu Picchu before the first buses with tourists arrived. This was a very difficult walk after an already difficult 5 day trek, but it was completely worth it. As we entered the site we were astounded by what we saw, it was quiet, humbling and did have a near tangible sense of spirituality about it. As the sun rose, the sky turned an intense shade of of pink and blue behind the rich green mountains to the fore. Anita and I were genuinely in awe of the entire ancient city. I was amazed that we had free reign over the site and we weaved and wandered around the ruins, exploring every nook and cranny for several hours in peace before settling on some grass on a mountain face overlooking the site and just took in the view. Around midday we headed down the mountain on the bus and discussed how it was one of the few tourist attractions we had ever been to that really lived up to the hype. That evening we took the train back to Cusco and a well deserved rest.
It was soon time to move on as we were getting itchy feet now for a new place. We decided to head on the overnight bus to a place called Puno, next to the highest navagable lake in the world: Lake Titicaca. Our hostal was on the ourskirts of town and looked like it was in a war torn part of the world with garbage everywhere, no real roads or pavements and stray dogs wandering the streets. We did a two day tour of the lake, starting with the floating islands of Uros. The Uru people are pre-incan people who live on forty-two self fashioned floating islands on Lake Titicaca. Not really knowing what that meant as such, when we arrvied at the islands Anita and I sat down to hear the stories of the island came to be from the president. Feeling a bit disorientated and not really listening I said to Anita "I SWEAR the ground is moving...", to which she responded "I don´t think so, it must be like... perspective or something". But sure enough the president opened a hole in the ground and the whole island undulated. He put a pole through the hole and it disppeared for a couple of seconds before popping back up again from the bouyancy of the water! It was all very impressive.
From here we headed on a 3 hour boat ride over to the island Alamantani where we would be spending the night with a local family. We were greeted at the port by about a dozen Peruvian women dressed in traditional clothing of bright pinks and greens with flower prints and a thick black headscarf. Our host for the evening Martina was 26 but looked easily about 36, and walked uphill through the village very very slowly, she also spoke very slowly and had a measured look about her. We figured it must be the high altitude and laid back way of life that makes them so lethargic. We were surprised by how well the people of the island lived, the house was planned around a pretty courtyard with pink climbing flowers growing all over the walls. All the people on the island are vegetarian so we ate our meal of tomatoes, potatoes and fried cheese before going for the half hour walk to the top of the island, which had stunning views across the lake and the yellowy brushland of the island.
In the evening Martina dressed Anita and I in the local clothing and took us to the town hall where they hosted a traditional Peruvian fiesta for us. We walked into a echoing concrete hall with plastic garden chairs around the outside, men on one side and women on the other. A group of Peruvian teenagers from the town then played some upbeat music for us on their windpipes and drums and everyone got up and began doing energetic dances around the hall holding hands and jumping around. I actually felt more like I was at a kids party playing "ring a ring of roses"! After the exhausting antics of the evening we headed to our host family and to bed.
The following day we took the boat to the nearby island of Taquile. The sun was beating down on us, the lake was a rich azul blue against the sunflower yellows and forest greens of the island´s shrubbery, we had a tasty lunch of locally caught trout and soaked up the lazy, hazy atmosphere of the island before heading back in the early afternoon for Puno. When we got back, we booked a coach for La Paz in Bolivia for the following morning.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Foz Do Iguacu - 20th August - 22 August 2011
The following morning after our first of two ham and cheese toasties for the day, Anita and I took the 13:40 bus to Sao Paulo to the West heading toward the falls. It was a 6 hour journey and fairly comfortable as the seats went back to almost horizontal and they played the movie "Wayne´s World" on repeat the entire time.
We were lucky in that we arrived in Sao Paulo and immediately managed to jump on the 16 hour overnight coach to Foz do Iguacu. This journey was quite possibly the worst journey I have ever experienced in my life. When we left Paraty it was roughtly 30 degrees and hot, while we tried to sleep on the coach it was around 4 degrees outside and the air conditioning was blowing on us at full blast. Anita and I expecting sun and sea for our entire time in South America had at most a cardigan which was jammed at the bottom of our rucksack. Of course our rucksack was safely stowed away in the coach hold. We actually thought we might die from exposure on this coach. Grumpy, frozen to our marrow we disembarked in Iguacu 16 hours later where all the locals were in woolly hats, big coats and mitts and their breath misted the air. I walked into the bus station in my jean shorts and Anita in her t-shirt to bemused local stares. We ran to the loos and pretty much emptied our rucksacks clothing ourselves in vest tops and other inappropriate layers.
Our only salvation at this point would be to arrive at a warm hostel, have a hot shower and get into our sleeping bag liners. We rocked up at the only hostel we could find in town, one totally open to the elements with outside showers and no heating until 9pm. It´s ok, it´s ok, just a hot shower, that´s all we need... I shuffled out to the shower block shivering and turned on the shower. Stone cold. Oh My God. I was getting irrationally angry at this point and just wanted to cry.
The next day, no surprise, both Anita and I had a cold and felt like death warmed up. It was monsoon raining outside and about 5 degrees again. We managed to get dressed and head over to Foz do Iguacu, which actually in spite of all the pain, cold, rain and discomfort was worth it times a million. They were absolutely massive, thundering and beautiful. The rain made them all the more magnificent and we managed to walk our to viewing platform in the middle as the waters raged beneath us, we screamed and giggled in excitement and kept saying ´oh my god, oh my god!!´. A true thrill and absolutely terrifying. By the time we made it back to the hostel there was not an inch of us that was dry, our walking boots like puddles but we felt totally exhilarated by the experience.
The following day we mooched about the main town Foz do Iguacu, which was a weird mix between a Middle-America town, an Australian town and a Brazilian Town. Taking time out today, we were starting to see the pleasure in the small things, such as having dry socks and paper towels in the toilets. One of our happiest moments we were starting to notice is every time we came across the perfect size shape and consistency plastic bag. They can be used to separate stuff in our rucksacks, hold our ham and cheese toasties, store wet toiletries. There is no end to their usefulness! We salvage and hoard them in our rucksacks like candy, and get plastic bag jealousy when one of us gets a really good one. Ham and cheese toasties are beginning to become a luxury, this morning Anita said she was going to make a ´sandwich´, which actually turned out to be a peice of dry bread that she nibbled on like the little match girl. Endless hilarity.
That evening we then caught a flight in the evening up to Lima, Peru where we would gradually work our way back down the continent.
We were lucky in that we arrived in Sao Paulo and immediately managed to jump on the 16 hour overnight coach to Foz do Iguacu. This journey was quite possibly the worst journey I have ever experienced in my life. When we left Paraty it was roughtly 30 degrees and hot, while we tried to sleep on the coach it was around 4 degrees outside and the air conditioning was blowing on us at full blast. Anita and I expecting sun and sea for our entire time in South America had at most a cardigan which was jammed at the bottom of our rucksack. Of course our rucksack was safely stowed away in the coach hold. We actually thought we might die from exposure on this coach. Grumpy, frozen to our marrow we disembarked in Iguacu 16 hours later where all the locals were in woolly hats, big coats and mitts and their breath misted the air. I walked into the bus station in my jean shorts and Anita in her t-shirt to bemused local stares. We ran to the loos and pretty much emptied our rucksacks clothing ourselves in vest tops and other inappropriate layers.
Our only salvation at this point would be to arrive at a warm hostel, have a hot shower and get into our sleeping bag liners. We rocked up at the only hostel we could find in town, one totally open to the elements with outside showers and no heating until 9pm. It´s ok, it´s ok, just a hot shower, that´s all we need... I shuffled out to the shower block shivering and turned on the shower. Stone cold. Oh My God. I was getting irrationally angry at this point and just wanted to cry.
The next day, no surprise, both Anita and I had a cold and felt like death warmed up. It was monsoon raining outside and about 5 degrees again. We managed to get dressed and head over to Foz do Iguacu, which actually in spite of all the pain, cold, rain and discomfort was worth it times a million. They were absolutely massive, thundering and beautiful. The rain made them all the more magnificent and we managed to walk our to viewing platform in the middle as the waters raged beneath us, we screamed and giggled in excitement and kept saying ´oh my god, oh my god!!´. A true thrill and absolutely terrifying. By the time we made it back to the hostel there was not an inch of us that was dry, our walking boots like puddles but we felt totally exhilarated by the experience.
The following day we mooched about the main town Foz do Iguacu, which was a weird mix between a Middle-America town, an Australian town and a Brazilian Town. Taking time out today, we were starting to see the pleasure in the small things, such as having dry socks and paper towels in the toilets. One of our happiest moments we were starting to notice is every time we came across the perfect size shape and consistency plastic bag. They can be used to separate stuff in our rucksacks, hold our ham and cheese toasties, store wet toiletries. There is no end to their usefulness! We salvage and hoard them in our rucksacks like candy, and get plastic bag jealousy when one of us gets a really good one. Ham and cheese toasties are beginning to become a luxury, this morning Anita said she was going to make a ´sandwich´, which actually turned out to be a peice of dry bread that she nibbled on like the little match girl. Endless hilarity.
That evening we then caught a flight in the evening up to Lima, Peru where we would gradually work our way back down the continent.
Ilha Grande and Paraty 16th - 19th August 2011
It was time to start feeling like a true traveller and work our way out of the city. Anita and I both agreed that although we had loved Rio, we were getting itchy feet. We took a bus from the Rodovaria (bus station) north of the city for Agra Dos Reis to the West, then on a boat to Ilha Grande. Approaching the island was very interesting, Anita and I paralleled it to watching the movie Jurassic Park with rolling hills covered in dense folliage and palm trees. The approach to the port at dusk was just like arriving at Utopia. Pretty lights lined the shore and rustic furniture spilled out of restaurants along wooden boulevards, and not a car in sight.
We started to quickly realise that the best way to get tips on what to do was to simply talk with other travellers. Two girls that we met in the Biergarten Hostel Lindsay and Jenny suggested the 2.5 hour trek to the Lopez Mendes beach on the south side of the island, which we did the following morning. On the way we passed these little monkey-rat-squirrel things on the way that on first sight looked quite cute, but we decided they looked like they wanted to nick your wallet so we shuffled along quickly. The beach was like paradise beach and we stayed lolling about swimming and sleeping for the best part of the afternoon before taking the boat back to the main port.
One of the best money saving ploys we had discovered in our short time in South America was to eat a ham and cheese toastie from the free buffett at breakfast, then make another one for lunch. So up to this point we had classified what we ate into one of two categories of meals: ham and cheese toastie or NOT ham and cheese toastie. This allowed us to splash out on dinner. By this point in the trip we calculated we had eaten at least a dozen ham and cheese toasties and counting. Today we made our toastie and headed back to the mainland and on a local bus to a little colonial town called Paraty a couple of hours away.
Paraty was so quaint you just wanted to roll it up and take it with you in your pocket! Cobbled streets, well maintained little squares with white washed colonial buildings lining the perimeter. Brightly coloured windows all around, pinks, blues, purples, greens, and matching flowered vines surrounding every entrance door. There was a strong European influence, and little trinket shops and well decorated little restaurants we around every turn. Just lovely! Our hostel was on the beach, but we were starting to see the downgrade in hostel facilities, and we were sharing a tiny room stacked 3 beds high with 8 other guys, who openly admitted they hadn´t done any clothes washing for roughly 3 weeks. Fortunately, however, we had arrived just in time for a samba festival that many locals attended each year. After a few drinks on the beach we got our groove on and watched all the live acts. It was great fun and interesting as there were many Brazilans who travelled to the town especially for the event.
We decided to stay another night for the festival and the following night had a barbeque with some other travellers and a few of the local guys Tomas from Argentina, and Eddie from Brazil. We all sat around the barbeque talking culture and football, mixing the Brazilian language Portugese with English. We ate melt in the mouth steak and listened to London Drum & Bass music from the sound system as the waves lap the beach. It was amazing how easy it is build bridges between cultures when food and football is involved!
It was then to bed after a late night as we tried to get our head around the fact we had a 21 hour bus journey west to the Iguacu Falls the following day.
We started to quickly realise that the best way to get tips on what to do was to simply talk with other travellers. Two girls that we met in the Biergarten Hostel Lindsay and Jenny suggested the 2.5 hour trek to the Lopez Mendes beach on the south side of the island, which we did the following morning. On the way we passed these little monkey-rat-squirrel things on the way that on first sight looked quite cute, but we decided they looked like they wanted to nick your wallet so we shuffled along quickly. The beach was like paradise beach and we stayed lolling about swimming and sleeping for the best part of the afternoon before taking the boat back to the main port.
One of the best money saving ploys we had discovered in our short time in South America was to eat a ham and cheese toastie from the free buffett at breakfast, then make another one for lunch. So up to this point we had classified what we ate into one of two categories of meals: ham and cheese toastie or NOT ham and cheese toastie. This allowed us to splash out on dinner. By this point in the trip we calculated we had eaten at least a dozen ham and cheese toasties and counting. Today we made our toastie and headed back to the mainland and on a local bus to a little colonial town called Paraty a couple of hours away.
Paraty was so quaint you just wanted to roll it up and take it with you in your pocket! Cobbled streets, well maintained little squares with white washed colonial buildings lining the perimeter. Brightly coloured windows all around, pinks, blues, purples, greens, and matching flowered vines surrounding every entrance door. There was a strong European influence, and little trinket shops and well decorated little restaurants we around every turn. Just lovely! Our hostel was on the beach, but we were starting to see the downgrade in hostel facilities, and we were sharing a tiny room stacked 3 beds high with 8 other guys, who openly admitted they hadn´t done any clothes washing for roughly 3 weeks. Fortunately, however, we had arrived just in time for a samba festival that many locals attended each year. After a few drinks on the beach we got our groove on and watched all the live acts. It was great fun and interesting as there were many Brazilans who travelled to the town especially for the event.
We decided to stay another night for the festival and the following night had a barbeque with some other travellers and a few of the local guys Tomas from Argentina, and Eddie from Brazil. We all sat around the barbeque talking culture and football, mixing the Brazilian language Portugese with English. We ate melt in the mouth steak and listened to London Drum & Bass music from the sound system as the waves lap the beach. It was amazing how easy it is build bridges between cultures when food and football is involved!
It was then to bed after a late night as we tried to get our head around the fact we had a 21 hour bus journey west to the Iguacu Falls the following day.
Rio de Janeiro 11 - 15 August 2011
Rio was just a fantastic city, and it was the people we met that just made it a million times better. So lucky on the first day we met a lovely girl called Laura, same age as us at 27 and Anita and I immediately hit it off with her like a house on fire. She had been working in Hong Kong for 5 years as a teacher then had decided to up sticks and go travelling around South America on her own. It was so refreshing to see a girl confidently forging her own way in life who was interesting, open minded and a laugh too. Books Hostel was then descended upon by a group of 13 lads from New Zealand, who would you believe came all the way over for a couple of weeks on a stag do, they were a real laugh and when we weren´t out and about sightseeing or taking our lives in our hands on the local buses we were hanging out with these guys.
On the first full day Anita and I went for a long walk through the city, the place has got serious style and the people a real sass, graffiti is everywhere but purposeful and artistic and seems to be very much embraced as part of the culture in Rio. We stumbled upon a "weight and pay" buffett in the north of the city, which was our first intro to Brazilian food. We poked and proded and sniffed the food, sampled some and spent the whole meal not in conversation but saying ´hmmm....mmmmm.... interesting.... that´s nice... what´s that? It looks like chicken has the texture of potato but tastes like tofu?" Whatever. In it went.
In the evenings we went down to the hostel bar, which was basically a table with caprinhas on it. Caprinhas, wow, if I knew that there weren´t mixer cocktails but actually just a glass of pure alcohol with some fresh lime on top I would not have drunk so much! We headed out in our local area Lapa, which had a fantastic street party on every friday and saturday with samba music playing and dancing.
As we decided it was time to be like true backpackers Anita and I decided to cook our own food in the hostel so went and bought some pasta with veg and salami to make... some kind of dish. We´d been students before, it´d be fine. The hob in the hostel had a flame the size of a lit match so after a bit of rough guessing decided to leave the pasta and sauce on for 30 minutes instead of 10. Mistake. By the time it had cooked it looked more like green porridge. But we sat down and ate it in silence and at the end we just looked at each other and burst out laughing, which got more hysterical when we salvaged an old ice cream tupperwear box from the bottom of the cupboard under the sink, spooned the mush in and put it in the fridge for later. I actually ate it cold the following day, a true trooper! Anita warmed hers up and literally slapped a whole pack of ham over the top to give it some flavour, it pained me to watch her take each mouthful.
We spent a few days touring the city, down to Copacobana beach, which although beautiful and hot I sat there in my hiking boots clinging to my bag for dear life because of the mugging horror stories I heard, much to Anita´s amusement. The Christ statue was a real highlight, the people of the city have a real pride for it and I had seen men on more than one occasion with large tattoos in its honour. Santa Teresa was also a very pretty little spot, and not unlike the winding streets of Italian villages, with cobbled streets and bright flowers spilling over weather-worn shop fronts.
The event that really made Rio for both Anita and I was the favela tour. A favela is the poorest part of the city, slums that seem to organically grow up the sides of the Rio hills. We went to the largest one in Rio, 200,000 people. We had mixed feelings about it to begin with as surely it was just asking for trouble, wealthy looking tourists dropped in the middle of an area organised by drug lords and criminals. All of us got off the tour bus and we must looked quite the sight huddled together entering the mouth of the slums. We had to get to the top by motorbike, which was actually a taxi service and the best way to get through the winding streets of the favela. We would then walk down, stopping a various places along the way. Now THAT was real fun, both our first time on a motorbike. We sped up the main street of the favela, weaving in and out of traffic, skimming buses with the skin of our knees and dodging people on the way and the taxi drivers shouting "go faster faster for the girls!" in Portugese, no helmet of course!
Our tour guide Marco was full of beans, a real charasmatic, funny and interesting guy and with a real passion for the favela. The only thing I can compare these overhung higgly piggledy streets to was a concrete rabbit warren. There were electricity wires and pipes everywhere, the residents just tapped in as and when they could. Men walked past us with pistols slung around their hips. We stopped at a gallery and a look out point near the top while Marco explained the history of the favela, the conflict between police and the drug lords in the favela, how the area is run much like any government would run its people with adminitrators and accountants and security and recruitment, which did baffle the mind somewhat. The favela´s "soldiers" would do military training through the streets with their Uzis and AK 47s while kids walk past on their way to school, it´s quite surreal.
The people here loved it, they were proud to show their home to the ´gringos´ (us tourists), which made us all feel a twinge of shame that we thought it might be like looking at animals in a zoo coming into the slums. As we weaved our way down the streets it became apparent to us that actually this was the safest we had felt so far in Rio. As Marco points out, there is no petty crime in the favela as the leaders here would not tolerate it and in the past have apparetly burned people alive in the streets for such crimes to set an example to the others in the community. Extreme of course, but having come from the UK where teenagers were smashing in shop windows and looting I couldn´t help thinking the UK government could learn a thing or two from the way things were operated here!
So after feeling very humbled by the experience in the favelas we left Rio no a reflective note and headed on a 2 hour bus journey west to Ilha Grande.
On the first full day Anita and I went for a long walk through the city, the place has got serious style and the people a real sass, graffiti is everywhere but purposeful and artistic and seems to be very much embraced as part of the culture in Rio. We stumbled upon a "weight and pay" buffett in the north of the city, which was our first intro to Brazilian food. We poked and proded and sniffed the food, sampled some and spent the whole meal not in conversation but saying ´hmmm....mmmmm.... interesting.... that´s nice... what´s that? It looks like chicken has the texture of potato but tastes like tofu?" Whatever. In it went.
In the evenings we went down to the hostel bar, which was basically a table with caprinhas on it. Caprinhas, wow, if I knew that there weren´t mixer cocktails but actually just a glass of pure alcohol with some fresh lime on top I would not have drunk so much! We headed out in our local area Lapa, which had a fantastic street party on every friday and saturday with samba music playing and dancing.
As we decided it was time to be like true backpackers Anita and I decided to cook our own food in the hostel so went and bought some pasta with veg and salami to make... some kind of dish. We´d been students before, it´d be fine. The hob in the hostel had a flame the size of a lit match so after a bit of rough guessing decided to leave the pasta and sauce on for 30 minutes instead of 10. Mistake. By the time it had cooked it looked more like green porridge. But we sat down and ate it in silence and at the end we just looked at each other and burst out laughing, which got more hysterical when we salvaged an old ice cream tupperwear box from the bottom of the cupboard under the sink, spooned the mush in and put it in the fridge for later. I actually ate it cold the following day, a true trooper! Anita warmed hers up and literally slapped a whole pack of ham over the top to give it some flavour, it pained me to watch her take each mouthful.
We spent a few days touring the city, down to Copacobana beach, which although beautiful and hot I sat there in my hiking boots clinging to my bag for dear life because of the mugging horror stories I heard, much to Anita´s amusement. The Christ statue was a real highlight, the people of the city have a real pride for it and I had seen men on more than one occasion with large tattoos in its honour. Santa Teresa was also a very pretty little spot, and not unlike the winding streets of Italian villages, with cobbled streets and bright flowers spilling over weather-worn shop fronts.
The event that really made Rio for both Anita and I was the favela tour. A favela is the poorest part of the city, slums that seem to organically grow up the sides of the Rio hills. We went to the largest one in Rio, 200,000 people. We had mixed feelings about it to begin with as surely it was just asking for trouble, wealthy looking tourists dropped in the middle of an area organised by drug lords and criminals. All of us got off the tour bus and we must looked quite the sight huddled together entering the mouth of the slums. We had to get to the top by motorbike, which was actually a taxi service and the best way to get through the winding streets of the favela. We would then walk down, stopping a various places along the way. Now THAT was real fun, both our first time on a motorbike. We sped up the main street of the favela, weaving in and out of traffic, skimming buses with the skin of our knees and dodging people on the way and the taxi drivers shouting "go faster faster for the girls!" in Portugese, no helmet of course!
Our tour guide Marco was full of beans, a real charasmatic, funny and interesting guy and with a real passion for the favela. The only thing I can compare these overhung higgly piggledy streets to was a concrete rabbit warren. There were electricity wires and pipes everywhere, the residents just tapped in as and when they could. Men walked past us with pistols slung around their hips. We stopped at a gallery and a look out point near the top while Marco explained the history of the favela, the conflict between police and the drug lords in the favela, how the area is run much like any government would run its people with adminitrators and accountants and security and recruitment, which did baffle the mind somewhat. The favela´s "soldiers" would do military training through the streets with their Uzis and AK 47s while kids walk past on their way to school, it´s quite surreal.
The people here loved it, they were proud to show their home to the ´gringos´ (us tourists), which made us all feel a twinge of shame that we thought it might be like looking at animals in a zoo coming into the slums. As we weaved our way down the streets it became apparent to us that actually this was the safest we had felt so far in Rio. As Marco points out, there is no petty crime in the favela as the leaders here would not tolerate it and in the past have apparetly burned people alive in the streets for such crimes to set an example to the others in the community. Extreme of course, but having come from the UK where teenagers were smashing in shop windows and looting I couldn´t help thinking the UK government could learn a thing or two from the way things were operated here!
So after feeling very humbled by the experience in the favelas we left Rio no a reflective note and headed on a 2 hour bus journey west to Ilha Grande.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Rio Newbies - 11 August 2011
After an 11 hour plane journey we finally made it to Rio, absolutely shattered. Our first introduction to Rio was on a local bus, and was the most terrifying white knuckle ride I´d ever experienced. Weaving in and out of traffic and screeching around corners, I actually thought I was going to die before even starting the 10 months. Anita found it hilarious for some reason. We struggled to figure out the correct stop to get off on the only map we possessed, whilst simultaneously rattling around inside this bus like nuts in a maraca attempting to put on our rucksacks. We disembarked in the middle of a traffic island at 12am in the heart of the city and the first thing I realised was I had managed to leave the map on the bus, which by this point was a mere dot on the horizon. Our immediate reaction was to just burst into fits of ironic laughter, sods law is transatlantic. All our worldy possessions in tow we set off in search of our first three nights accomodation, Books Hostel in Lapa. After wandering the streets and attempting to mask our fresh-off-the-boat look with a sense of purpose, we hailed one of the city´s hundred of yellow taxis. I showed the taxi driver the map and quickly realised charades would fare far better than an Portugese I knew; I pointed to the address I had written down before leaving the UK. The taxi driver squinted for all he was worth and held the paper so far away from him it was actually outside the window of the car. Nerves started to kick in. After a bit of dab handed negotation we agreed 10 Brazilian Reais to go what turn out to be two blocks drive away and was not a bargain at all, unsurprisingly the taxi driver managed to crash into a concrete bollard like a dodgems car in that time, scaring us witless. Anita handed him the 10 Reais and in our fluster of disorganisation he handed us back 5 reais saying it was the wrong amount. Anita handed him another 10 Reais. Our first experience of being ripped off and it had been less than an hour in the country. It was straight to sleep in our 14 bed dorm.
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