DAY 293 - Cusco, Peru

Copacabana is a small town in a beautiful setting on the edge of Lake Titicaca near the Bolivian border with Peru. It nestles between two hills and although it doesn't have the sand, glamour or burnt bodies of its more famous namesake in Rio, it's still a very nice place to stop for a couple of nights. Nearby in the lake is Isla de Sol, a mystical island of wonderful panoramas, ancient ruins and locals who will try to charge you every couple of hundred metres for walking over their land. They'll even try to sell you tickets to places they know you have no intention of going. The people of Copacabana itself are no better. They've had years to work out of to mercilessly rip-off tourists by, for example, blatantly overcharging and hoping you won't notice or quoting you one exchange rate then actually using another. Still, the street dogs are pretty friendly (for half an empanada).

 

There's a clearly defined gringo route through this part of the world and we keep running into the same people as we follow it up the continent. For all the minor mistakes we've made, it's always good to run into Brian the American who seems to be having an even harder time than we are. For one thing, every time he crosses a border he seems to have to pay over $100 just to get into the country (because that's what the USA charges the Bolivians, Chileans, etc to get a visa). He also seems to be fleeced more often by the locals because he doesn't shop around. We can always spot him a mile off because the only thick piece of clothing he has is an enormous silver puffer jacket he bought in New Zealand. It makes him stand out some what against the local Inca ruins. Hi Brian, if you're reading this...

 

On Sunday we crossed over into Peru and took a bus ride to Cusco. After all the promises of rape, pillage and torture at the hands of masked bandits apparently common on Peruvian roads, the trip was largely uneventful if a couple of hours late. We took a taxi to the hotel, avoiding being throttled in a knife attack as all Peruvian taxi drivers are prone to be complicit in and went to bed, fortunate to still be alive.

 

This is my second visit to the Inca capital but Dan's first. It's not a bad place to come to twice, although it's very expensive. I do drone on about the costs quite a lot so i won't mention them again except to say i haven't completely ruled out remortgaging the house. Cusco is certainly one of the most pretty towns in South America with its nicely preserved colonial architecture, grassy squares and mountain setting. There's everything a traveller would want here to take it easy for a few days before pushing on. That said, the food has been underwhelming to say the least, with a wet chili, poor service and utterly flavourless steak. Dan had the Guinea Pig one night. It was presented as billed in the menu, half an animal cleaved right down the middle with half it's head still attached, teeth an' all. It had the constitution of an old granny's handbag and there wasn't a single knife in the restaurant that could penetrate the skin. In the end he had to pick it up to eat it. It put me off my food just watching the show across the table.

 

We did Machu Picchu on Tuesday and it was still pretty amazing third time around. They've permanently shut the train station in Cusco now, so you have to get a coach 12km out of town to catch the train. This is a shame because the repeated switching back of the train on the way out of the steep Cusco valley was part of the fun of the trip. Our pick up wasn't particularly well organised and we only got to the station with minutes to spare. The guide was ok but we couldn't climb up the nearby mountain for the really good views this time as they've limited the number of people who can go up each day. To be honest, this was a theme repeated throughout our visit to Cusco. The authorities have restricted where and when you can go a great deal in the last five years. You can no longer climb over the ruins almost unfettered like before, but are herded in narrow corridors along pre-defined paths. I can understand why they would do this as some of the sights must have been being seriously damaged by all those tour groups trampling over them. However, it does detract quite a lot from the experience, especially as they haven't made alternatives available (such as raised platforms so you can see the carvings and markings on the top of the rocks you were once allowed to climb up to see).

 

We now have one more place left in South America before we start our very long trip home - Arequipa.

 

Rich.

DAY 286 - Copacabana, Bolivia

We will be home on 1 May. All the flights are booked. I'm touched that the South American don't seem to want us to leave though, as evidenced by the ridiculously expensive air fares to almost anywhere outside their continent. To get a decent price (and that's still almost £800) we will fly Arequipa (Peru), Lima, Newark (USA), Boston, Shannon (???!) and London. Needless to say, we've decided to break it up with two nights in Boston (where it seems almost impossible to get a room for under a £100 a night).

Back to Bolivia then, and we crossed the border from Chile in a 4x4 on a three day tour up to a place called Uyuni, via the salt pans and national parks of the "southwest circuit". The guide book is very clear that these trips "are no walk in the park" and prone to various disasters, so we booked with whom we thought were a reputable company. Despite this, the vehicle proved temperamental, refusing to start on numerous occasions and conking out on others. The bonnet would frequently be raised and string applied to reconnect the accelerator pedal to the engine. To be honest, all these shenanigans didn't bother me so long as they didn't bother the ever-grinning driver, even when the engine wouldn't start slap bang in the middle of the worlds largest salt pan. More annoying was the driver playing his one and only tape of Bolivian music over and over again at full volume until our ears rang. You got it worst in the front seat which I had the misfortune to occupy on the middle day.

Needless to say it was worth the hassle. The first day started with a drive up to some boiling volcanic mud pools and some superb lake views. The accommodation that night was basic but warm (dorms and no showers). Fortunate really, as it gets toe-numbingly cold at night four thousand metres.

The next day was very long, starting with some flamingo watching, then more mineral coloured lakes, some weird shaped rocks in the middle of a sand desert and a vast pan of dark salt with a railway line running over the top. That night we stayed in a salt hotel with almost everything made of the stuff, including a carpet of salt crystals covering the floor.

On the last day we reached the Uyuni Salt Pan, the biggest in the world, and it was vast. All you can see to the horizon is a white landscape and blue sky. The light hurts your eyes, even with sun glasses on. We spent most of the time taking silly pictures using the lack of perspective caused by the blank landscape to make it look like we were standing on bottles and stuff. Wait for the pics and it'll make sense.

We finally pulled into Uyuni on Easter Sunday to find there was no way of getting out. All the buses were full and all the banks were shut, so most people couldn't even get any local currency. Even the ATMs were closed. We had some Chilean money which we were able to change which kept us going, but we still had to stay a night in possibly the remotest, most desolate and most boring town on Earth. We had twelve hours to kill on Monday so saw the only attraction in town: a pile of rusting train engines. We finally got the bus to La Paz at eight in the evening.

La Paz is the highest capital in the world at about 3.6km up, and it's built in a canyon. The views from the top are great, but the city itself is dirty, over populated and poor. It feels quite safe though as every other person is either a policeman or in the army, and they all wear paramilitary garb. Even the traffic wardens carry guns. Except the traffic wardens who are dressed up as zebras, who don't appear to carry guns. (The zebras are there to help people cross the roads at the crossings, as Bolivian drivers would rather kill someone than stop to let people across.) To mitigate the dirt, we stayed in the La Roserio hotel, one of the best I've stayed in. We saw some pre-inca ruins at Tihuanaca, and yet another Moon Valley, although this time it did live up to it's name, and was pretty impressive. Very tall columns of rock formed from the erosion of the material around them. You walk along the top on a straw path and hope to god you don't fall over the side as there are no barriers.

We're now in Copacabana on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Very nice it is too, but more on that next time.

Anyway, put the kettle on, we'll be home soon...

DAY 278 - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

There's an air of mixed emotions and conflicted feelings around our rather cosy hostel cabin today. We're both getting travel weary, the money's running out fast and there's the distinct feeling that the end is approaching. On the other hand, we still have some of the best places ahead of us and don't really want to miss them.

There are a number of things we can't ignore though. Firstly, from hereon, the travelling gets tougher, both from a logistical and security stand point. Secondly, we've looked at the cost of flying home and it's going to be at least a grand each, putting further pressure on the finances. Thirdly, as i've said, we're both starting to think we've had enough.

Before breakfast I'd been taken aback by all the dire warnings in the guide books and from one particularly negative Canadian about travelling in Bolivia and Peru. However, over our eggs we talked to an Irish couple who had just made their way down the route we are to follow and they said they saw no hints of any trouble and they enjoyed it immensely. Still, we will try to avoid being car-jacked, mugged, having our backpack slashed or being raped. Would be a tad inconvenient, but thanks for the warning Lonely Planet.

It's also Dan's 40th birthday (and he won't thank me for telling everyone). I think he's feeling a bit old, but tonight we dine in style (budget: £10 including drinks).

Anyway, back to Port Valparaiso, a town on two levels with about two dozen very old ascendeos (cable cars on tracks) linking the two parts of town if you can't cope with the steep climb (and there were occasions we couldn't). It's a nice if disheveled place with no hint of municipal planning given the way the buildings have been flung up. Houses are often on stilts, in any nook or cranny available on the network of hills and narrow valleys behind the centre of town. There's not actually much to do there, but it had a faded grandeur worth spending a few days looking at. The locals almost encourage graffiti, which they consider art. The end product is like a cross between St Ives and Lewisham, or a weird Camberwell-on-sea.

We found a great bar called La Playa which played 80s music all night, so we got drunk with only a plate of chips to eat. Dan finished off with an unspecified cocktail, plied upon him by some old bird, old enough to be his mother, who wanted us to 'go downstairs' after the place shut. We didn't, but went back to our hostel to suffer the consequences to the excesses for the next 24 hours.

There's another town just round the coast called Viña del Mar which we walked to on Saturday. You definitely got the feeling it considered Valparaiso it's evil twin. Viña is all tree-lined boulevards, green squares and sandy beaches - the very opposite to it's neighbour.

We moved on last Sunday. Another 24 hours on the bus got us here to San Pedro de Atacama. It's in the Atacama desert surprisingly enough and consists only of hostels, tour agencies and over-priced restaurants. We paid too much for our first meal here, but Dan wanted a curry (so predictable). It was served in a coconut shell mounted on a bed of salt, so it was worth it (not).

We booked the accommodation in advance as it's Easter and I was getting worried the place would be overrun by Chileans. It isn't at the moment and there's more danger of all the locals shutting up shop and going to Santiago for the holiday weekend than there being too many local tourists.

There are lots of desert-centred things to do here. We started with a cheap tour of Death Valley (it's a desert, so you have you have a Death Valley) and The Valley Of The Moon. Originality, if not tourists, is in short supply here. Still, the landscape was fab and the sunset passable.

On Wednesday we got up at 4 in the morning to see some geysers and then have a swim in a thermal pool. Was knackered the rest of the day.

As for today, me and the birthday boy don't have too much planned, but that's ok. Tomorrow we head off in a 4x4 with 4 strangers to Bolivia.

Rich.

DAY 271 - Valparaiso, Chile

I read somewhere that nobody reads travel blogs unless they know something really awful has happened to the people concerned. They're not interested in people having a great time abroad while they're stuck in their offices at work. You're not like that, are you?

I'm amazed at how much Spanish I've picked up in the last three weeks. Don't get me wrong, I can't actually construct sentences but, for example, I managed to put my laundry in for washing with a mixture of Spanish, pointing and laughing nervously. I still can't say the number seven though without wrapping my tongue around the nearest lamppost.

Salta is a town with a lot more character than most Argentine cities. It's on the edge of the Puna, a high plateau in the Andies and there's a much bigger influence from the indigenous peoples than elsewhere. The heat was significantly more oppressive there than elsewhere, particularly in the afternoon when it's almost impossible to do anything except find some shade and veg out.

We took a tour north-west out of the city on Sunday which took in some pretty breathtaking views, some old pre-Inca ruins and a large salt pan. The route up was through a long valley lined with cacti that looked as if they were straight out of an old western film. The low morning sunlight was shining through their hairy tops making them look like they've been dipped in icing sugar. The salt pan was pretty interesting too. Water runs off the Andies into the central plain, then evaporates leaving the minerals behind. The light reflected off the white landscape meant you had to put sun cream on the underside of your arms to stop them burning.

Before getting the coach out of Salta we took a cable car up to the top of a nearby hill for views of the city. It was all very nice, but then we had to walk back down in the heat which was pretty bad planning on our part, given we were going to spend the next 22 hours on a bus.

Chile won't let Argentine vehicles into their country. It's not hard to see why. Some cars here are barely one run up the vehicle food chain from baked bean tins. Many don't seem to run at all and only qualify as vehicles because they can be pushed to induce movement.

After Salta it was onto the bus again to Mendoza. Once the bus had set off the delightfully chirpy cabin attendant handed around bingo cards. The game was in Spanish of course. Despite what I've written above, congratulating myself on all the Spanish I've picked up, i've only got to "20" in the numbers. Despite this, I won. Credit must go to Dan who fortunately knew 21 to 90. The rest of the bus didn't look so impressed with a non-Spanish speaking gringo winning though. Oops.

Mendoza was a surprisingly nice city. Despite being in the desert it's very green. Irrigation channels are everywhere. We got some cheese and bread and took it to the park with the bottle of wine we'd won for a picnic. The temperature and weather were perfect. Of course the city is famous for it's wine and you can even get wine flavoured ice cream, complete with alcohol. Fab.

The next day we hired bikes and did a tour of the local vineyards, olive producers and a chocolate factory(!) The bikes were awful with stupidly hard seats and handlebars only loosely connected to the front wheel. I'm now convinced that this apparent structural defect is in fact a deliberate ploy to compensate for the wobble induced by all the alcohol consumed in the tastings during the trip. Despite all this, I am now a wine expert. Honest.

So that's it for Argentina. I won't miss their tediously relentless Falklands obsession, cheese and ham sandwiches (it's ALWAYS cheese 'n ham) or high prices, but I will miss the Empanadas, national parks, cafe culture, cervesa bock, buses (except the dreaded Fletcha company) and snowy, pointy mountains.

We now have to negotiate travelling Chile in Easter week. Oh joy.

Rich