Hi everyone
We will miss San Pedro, we had a relaxing time there and had really felt at home, we knew our way around and enjoyed the people and casualness of the whole place. Our landlady, Rosana, was like a Mum away from home, did our washing and made sure we were all OK! Amazing how nice that is when you are travelling. It's Curtis that everyone we encounter seems to love, everywhere we go people comment on how cute he is, much to his embarrassment, but it gets us special treatment! - the best is in the bargaining, people don't like to be too hard on him and he has taken to it like a duck to water, so we've managed to pick up a few good deals!! He also wants to give every beggar and old lady selling something on the street some money, we might have to come home early yet!
The overnight bus from San Pedro to Arica on the Chilean border was pretty good - 10 hours and compared to my bus travels when last in SA, 17 years ago, it was luxury. We stayed at a hostal in Arica, it was comfortable, clean and run by a great older couple. Arica itself was OK, we just enjoyed wandering and watching the locals, and hadn't actually done that much research on the place, it was the gateway to Peru for us, however it turned out to be a really interesting place steeped in the history of their ancient cultures - particularly the Chinchorro's. These people were around from about 7000 BC and we saw mummies of theirs from 5000 BC. They were practising mummification well before the Egyptians and were quite sophisticated. The arid environment helped preserve them as well. At first Curtis was horrified he was looking at real skeletons, but soon became quite blasé about it all! He loved the history lesson though and all the artefacts and models they had depicting the life of the Chinchorro and their ancestors. We also saw some great geoglifos from around 600-1000 years ago on the surrounding hills of the Azapa valley, depicting their life of farming at the time.
Oldest mummy ever found - Chinchorro 5000BC
We left Arica for Peru by land, and had read some stories of cheating and deception of us gringos, but frankly we experienced a great crossing, probably easier than getting into the UK on my NZ passport! The worst thing were the young Chilean couple who shared this huge American car taxi with us and sat in the front and "sucked face" the whole way - 161 times exactly according to Curtis who struggled to keep his breakfast down!
Tacna is the Peruvian border town, they aren't usually much, but Tacna had some character and vibrancy, especially as we managed to arrive on their 84th anniversary celebrations and stumbled upon a great street parade of all the different local cultural groups that make up the people of Peru. We explored their local markets, had a juice after being hassled by around 20 woman to spend your money at their stall, unfortunately there is only one winner! - she made a damn good juice too!
Next day we had an early start to catch a plane to Cusco. The airport check in and security were a shambles, all bags going onto the plane as baggage had to be checked by hand. They took one look at my pack after looking into curtis's and decided not to bother! The flight into Cusco was similar to approaching Queenstown. Mountains on both sides with the added huge turning sweep in order to line up with the runway! Our hotel is a little out from the main Plaza, but is really nice, set in an old inca building.
Our hotel - The Tierra Viva Saphi Hotel
I have loved being back in Cuzco, it is a very different place from 17 years ago, but still the old City is standing and the amazing Inca architecture is still present. There are cobbled and paved streets everywhere, there is even a similarity to the old English villages from centuries ago. The greater town has increased it seems 10 fold on the periphery, most of them ugly buildings half finished. They have also had to plant quick growing trees for firewood and building as the population has exploded, so there are forests of gum trees everywhere. Churches on every corner and hawkers in every street, "no grassy arse" has been the most used words so far! Talking of grass, there has been virtually none since we arrived in Santiago nearly 3 weeks ago, however here in all the little plazas, they have a person constantly watering to keep a small patch of grass growing- it felt so nice to walk on it even, didn't realise how much we had missed it and that we take it so much for granted in NZ.
The food is interesting, a huge mixture of European with the odd Peruvian thrown in, but they still try and cater for the gringo, by offering papa frites (chips) and rice with almost everything. We all had a Peruvian meal last night, I had Alpaca - Jo you should definitely think about farming them for meat! Andy had pork marinated in the hottest red pepper you have ever tasted - he was daft enough to have a full bite and boy did he suffer!!! He sweated and choked for a good 20 minutes even the owner thought he was a daft gringo and offered him a free pisco sour to help with the heat!! The food unfortunately doesn't look so appetising in the markets, espceicially the meat section - I took Curtis through the offal aisle, and we both nearly threw up, nothing went to waste, guts, hoofs, skulls, entrails the lot, all on display, waiting for someone to buy them! I wouldn't even have fed any of it to our dogs Millie and Meg!!
Today we hired a taxi driver to take us to some smaller towns outside Cusco, it was the best way for us to see the area and gave us the independence to stop where we liked along the way. We visited the Pisac ruins and they would have to be some of the best I've seen and we went on a neat walk through some Inca tunnels and pathways to get to an old Inca temple. The stone work was magnificent and at nearly 3000m the walk back up along the steep Inca terracing was a physical challenge! We've actually all acclimatised really well, came armed with diamox in the drug box but so far have had no need to use it!
The Pisac market was a good one as far as markets go, another opportunity for Curtis to try his hand at bargaining! He's not shy and stands his ground - had a good teacher of course! The problem now is stopping him buying too much as the extra room in our packs is rapidly disappearing! There are so many neat things to buy though.
On the way back up the hill from this market, it was the the most dangerous piece of road, up a windy hill and on the outside of the road and our driver decides he's tired, we caught him doing the nodding off thing, which totally freaked us out, Andy was ready to grab the wheel, I told him to slow down and open his window, and luckily the next place was not far away and the fresh air woke him up as he seemed much better for the rest of the trip.
We stopped at a village called Awana Kancha, specifically set up to continue to support the local indigenous families and their traditions of weaving cloth from baby alpaca wool. The photo below shows how they get all the colours of their wool totally from natural products, the most amazing one is they have a base red colour (crimson) that comes from the cochineal which is a scale insect in the suborder Sternorrhyncha, from which the crimson coloured dye is derived. A primarily sessile parasite native to tropical and subtropical South America and Mexico this insect lives on the prickly pear cactus feeding on plant moisture and nutrients. It was fascinating to have this demonstrated by the indigenous community. The work they produced was amazing, so we bought a sample from a tribe near the Amazon who depicts the southern cross as one of their motifs. We thought that was the piece for us!
Tomorrow we head for the Amazon by flying to Puerto Maldonado and then getting a dug out canoe to a lodge. There's no wifi! So we'll be offline until we get back to Cusco on Tuesday next week. The weather down there is in sharp contrast to here - warm and dry, and the Amazon is 37 degrees with a 66% humidity!
Sacsayhuaman - Cusco
Sacsayhuaman
Bye for now Karen, Andy and Curtis
How did they cook the alpaca? And has Curtis tried
ReplyDeleteAny guinea pig yet!