29/08/2005 by drops.

We have lots to tell you after a few weeks of silence. We did a hectic tour of Cuzco and the Sacred Valley, and have spent the last few days exploring the altiplano and Lake Titicaca on both the Peruvian and Bolivian sides. For those of you who want to see everything, new Peruvian pictures start here. Click here for Bolivian photos.

Cuzco is an elegant colonial city, amazingly well preserved and not at all as crime infested as we had heard. The city has in fact been cleaned up over the last two years, so the centre is fine, at least until 9 or 10 at night. However, we found the atmosphere tense and unfriendly, and the backstreets smelly (which unfortunately can be said of a lot of towns in Peru). Something else we didn’t expect were the hills. With our usual impeccable judgement, we chose a hotel almost at the top of Cuzco, which meant trudging up a very steep road several times a day. Not an easy task at the best of times, let alone at an altitude of 3300m. We just couldn’t believe the locals skipping up and down the road while we were huffing and puffing our way up the hill. At least this got us fit for Machu Picchu…

There’s lots to see in Cuzco. The guidebooks will tell you about heaps of churches, but after a couple they all blur into one, and the only one we found really worth visiting is the Cathedral in the Plaza de Armas. We also enjoyed two museums, the Museum of Pre-Colombian Art, with beautiful exhibits dating back to before Christ, and the museum of La Merced for its remarkable paintings of the Cusquena school arranged in galleries around a pretty courtyard.The city itself was built by the Spanish on top of Inca walls and foundations. The stonework is so good that it has survived, whereas the colonial buildings it supported have often crumbled away. It’s a kind of a last laugh, after the Conquistadors did so much to annihilate Inca culture and architecture. There are also impressive ruins just outside town. Sacsayhuaman is a fortress of zig-zagging walls built of gigantic stones, in places weighing up to 300 tonnes. It’s amazing how the Incas got these huge blocks to fit together exactly so that even now you cannot get a knife between them. They did not use mortar. Tipon is a scenic set of agricultural terraces irrigated by aqueducts that still work today.

Our next stop was the Sacred Valley, starting with the top tourist destination in Peru - Machu Picchu. We caught the train at the crack of dawn and froze almost all the way there; our first-class train had neither heating nor blankets. Something we have come to realize now is that Peruvians don’t do heating, even though night-time temperatures in some places regularly drop below zero. We visited Machu Picchu over two days and it cost us a fortune. It’s become very expensive and even though they halve prices for locals, the vast majority still cannot afford it and will never know what their biggest national treasure looks like.

The setting is magnificent. The ruined city sprawls over a hilltop surrounded by misty mountains spiking up through the jungle. This is something that no pictures of Machu Picchu can prepare you for (except ours, maybe…). The views are what really makes it special. The citadel is vast and, aside for a few rooftops, very well preserved. The Conquistadors never found it, or it would have been pulled down. However - heresy coming! - after the Mayan temples in Mexico, we found the individual buildings lacked detail. In fact, we wish we’d gone to Peru first and then Mexico.

Visiting Machu Picchu means lots of scrambling up and down mountain paths. A fun hike is the trek up Huayna Picchu, the huge mountain behind the citadel. It only takes an hour to get to the top, because you already start off at 2492m, but the climb is steep and demanding. Sometimes the steps disappear altogether and you have to scramble over boulders, and all that separates you from the void below is a rickety handrail. Neil, never good at heights at the best of times, has had nightmares ever since…

After Machu Picchu we visited the fortresses and temples at Ollantaytambo and Pisac, in the Sacred Valley. However, we particularly enjoyed staying in Urubamba, a relaxed little town a world away from the hectic, commercial pace elsewhere in the Sacred Valley. From there we visited the surreal salt pans at Maras, and the almost alien concentric terraces at Moray. We also got to know interesting locals and ex-pats there.

On our way to Lake Titicaca, the scenery got really interesting as we climbed up to the altiplano. The landscape changed from green hills to rugged, velvety mountains covered with golden straw, and high granite peaks and glaciers. Llamas and alpacas wandered free in large flocks. Lake Titicaca has been claimed to be the highest navigable lake in the world. At 3800m, the air is very thin and even though we came from the Sacred Valley, we found it tough going for the first couple of days. The water is a mesmerizing deep blue, bordered by green and golden rushes. From Puno we visited the fascinating Uros floating islands, constructed entirely from reeds by the local people, and the beautiful Aegean-like island of Taquile. From the top of Cerro Calvario, Copacabana, on the Bolivian side, the lake looks like an immense sea enclosed by hills and mountains, including the white-capped Cordillera Real range. From there we also hiked along the gorgeous Isla del Sol.

We’re off to Arequipa this afternoon, which will be our last destination in Peru. Until the next time, goodbye!

18:51:01 - Monday, 29.08.05

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12/08/2005 by drops.

Here’s an update on our time in Huaraz, northern Peru. We needed somewhere to relax after some mad travelling and we found Huaraz the perfect place for that. Although it is a major stop on the tourist map, it is hassle free and laid back. It also seemed to be an authentic Peruvian town, with people getting on with their often tough lives, unconcerned by the invading tourists. Not beautiful in its own right (the old town was completely razed to the ground in the 1970 earthquake), what makes it special is its setting in the heart of the Central Andes, and we eventually joined the hordes of Gore-Tex gringos on their slopes. Highlights for us were the Pasto Ruri Glacier and the Huascaran National Park. Peru photos start here.

We did the Pasto Ruri Glacier on an organized tour. We were dropped off at the foot of an uphill path leading to the glacier. As we’d already been in Huaraz for a week, we thought we were fully acclimatized, but the altitude there (5200m at the top) made the walk really tough. Every few steps we had to stop and take a rest, envying the sensible people who had taken a horseride part of the way. Once we got there, the views over the surrounding peaks were staggering (and so were we). Getting down the glacier was a lot easier - on our backsides! We also realized why people here are so worried about water. The glacier has retreated by 400m over the past ten years; in another ten years it may well be gone. Without glaciers there’s no water, and without water there’s no agriculture or electricity, and the towns will eventually die. Rain has been sparse here and one of the first things that we noticed when we came here was how arid and dusty the land is. Bush should come here! On the way there, we saw the Puya Raymondi plants, a giant relative of the pineapple that only grows between 3800 and 4200m, and only in this area. They are majestic plants reaching 12m in height over a lifespan of 40 years.

Huascaran National Park was really beautiful. First we visited the Llanganuco Lakes, turquoise expanses of water trapped between sheer granite cliffs, with Peru’s highest mountain, Huascaran, peering over the top. That was an easy trip. Our next - to Lake 69 - was a hell of a lot more difficult. The local guide office said we should do it easily in 3 hours. It took us 3.5 hours of hard, exhausting scrambling up steep mountain sides, going up from 3800m to 4700m above sea level - almost a vertical kilometre. We didn’t help ourselves either by losing the path and having to scramble on our hands and feet up one hillside to rejoin it. But the fight was worth it. On the way we passed frozen waterfalls, glaciers, pristine lakes and superb views of the surrounding ice caps. Lake 69 itself was a blue circular lake completely enclosed by mountain tops, with fingers of ice reaching down to its banks, and we had it all to ourselves.

After sunny Huaraz, we went back to foggy and cold Lima for a couple of days. We got ourselves a friendly and honest taxi driver, who took us on a tour of the city. We were glad we went with a local because we were concerned about crime and he kept an eye on us and showed us where it was safe to wander and take photographs. Some places were beautiful, but we were glad to take the plane out to a safer environment the next day.

We are now in the old Inca capital at Cuzco. We’ll tell you more about this in our next post.

Hasta la proxima!

01:56:42 - Friday, 12.08.05

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