Journey to the middle of the earth

Our first port of call in Ecuador was Guayaquil - it's not a very touristy city but we walked along the pier which was lovely and wondered round a few interesting shops. A strange highlight of Guayaquil was our visit to a park where the trees were full of iguanas! Quite the sight. Not sure whether or not Guayaquil has a lot of 'Iguana road kill' but as there are busy roads close to the park it's a possibility :( Hopefully not!. We then took a bus to Banos in the middle of the country, hoping to go into the jungle from there but ended up going from Quito in the end; so our highlights of Banos were mainly food related (vegetarians look away now). We had a delicious meat fondue one night. Loved, loved, loved this :) and we tried barbequed guinea pig. It's spatchcocked, then has a spike inserted into it's nether regions before being barbequed. Despite seeing them cooking, complete with heads, teeth and claws, it tasted surprisingly good - a bit like chicken or rabbit.  |After Banos off to Quito and the jungle we go....

Iguana nestling in tree to sleep

 

It might not look appetizing...

...But it tastes good

Liz tries to decide if eating cute furry creatures is wrong

Our accommodation was in La Mariscal, an area which is party-central Monday to Saturday, but which is disarmingly quiet and a bit dodgy on a Sunday. One of the few times we felt on edge in South America... Our hostel was a bit like Fawlty Towers: If you asked for coffee they brought tea etc. Before we got too frustrated with them we took a 12hr nightbus to El Lago to start our jungle adventure. All was going quite well until the nightbus broke down at 2am on a mountain road with clutch failure and cooked brakes. Not a good combo on twisty mountain roads! After several botched attempts to fix it, the driver gave up. The bus company refused to send a replacement bus, saying they couldn't afford it, so it was left for the driver to flag down 2 buses going in the other direction, consolidate all the sleeping passengers into one bus, then turn the other one around for us to use. Despite having lost about 3 hours, we made it to El Lago on time, as our new bus drivers was Lewis Hamilton's latino cousin :) After a couple of hours in a minibus and a couple more in a boat, we finally made it to Cuyabueno National Park. Not a moment too soon..Phew!

3am chaos

We stayed in a lodge where the rooms had low walls made of bamboo with  the space above open to elements - and the insects! There was no electricity in the rooms- candles giving the only light. And the mosquito nets were very welcome as there were bugs and spiders galore. We stayed for 4 days, doing a night walk, a night boat ride, and various daytime rivertrips to see the animals. We spotted Cayman (little crocodiles, whose eyes glow bright red in the dark), turtles, toucans, pink river dolphin, 5 types of monkeys, pica, spiders, weaver birds and frogs, including one in our bathroom sink! We tasted edible bugs - a type of insect larvae that lives in a seed and tastes of coconut. It was pretty tasty actually :) We also tried our hand at Pirhana fishing - we both caught one, but they were too small to eat so after having a good look at all their teeth, we threw them back. When we weren´t looking at animals, we mainly spent our time swinging in the hammocks in the communal area. Overall, a great trip!

Only a little snake, thankfully

Making Yucca Bread

Man eating pirhana? No he's just holding it.

Whizzing along the river

Colourful jungle flower

And another

Peaceful river

Strange ape-man found swinging through the trees

Another colourful inhabitant

Not a great picture, but an amazing bird

Our Lodge

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Our trip back to Quito was long but thankfully less eventful, except for a captivating sunset over the cloud forest. Next day we headed off again, to Otovalo market - one of the biggest in South America, (but actually across the equator from Quito, in the Northern hemisphere). The animal market was fascinating. Pregnant Guinea pigs were selling for $7 each, and there was pretty much every other type of domesticated animal available too. (US dollars are official currency of Ecuador). There was also an enormous market for souvenirs and everything else you an think of. We bought a few Christmas presents - not live ones - and had some delicious spit roast pig for lunch.Yum yum :)

Young market-goers

Destined for the pot?

Liz enjoying  red banana

Some particularly popular guinea pigs

Bananas or various sizes and colours

When we returned to Quito again we finally got to explore the Old Town. It's beautifully preserved with wonderful architecture and one particularly stunning church called Iglesia de la Compañía. The whole interior of the church was gold leaf...spectacular! The whole city is built on a series of volcanoes, making it very hilly to walk around- thankfully taxis are incredibly cheap. Quito can be a bit dodgy so taxi's ain't a bad idea ;) We also went to the top of the hill overlooking the town and climbed up inside the statue of Virgin Mary to a viewing platform with great views over the whole city.

Quito's historic centre

Only photo we didn't take! As 'no photos allowed' in this real gold  leaf church!!!
It was truly beautiful and magnificent

The Large Virgin statue you climb to look over the city

On our final day in Quito we had an induction for our 3 week trip to Galapagos. A biologist gave us a really interesting talk on the islands, and we got loads of practical info to make sure we didn't get too lost. We met 2 of the three others in our tour group too, so we knew who to look out for at the airport at 6am the following day. Sooooo excited to going to the Galapagos!!!

Peru Treks

We arrived in Puno to find a comfortable and warm hotel, which Liz was very grateful for as she was determined to recover from being in ill in time to trek the Inca Trail. She spent 2 days in bed while Marc went on various missions around the town to bring back mashed potato for the patient, which was all she wanted to eat. In the three days we were there I (Marc) saw 3 different festivals in the main square, which at least gave me something to do.The women in particular wear their brightly coloured traditional dress, and there's usually an effigy of the Virgin Mary involved too. Those Peruvians certainly like a marching band and a parade!

We took a bus - the most luxurious bus we've ever been on - to Cusco. This pretty little city exceeded all our expectations. It's a really beautiful place in a natural bowl, with a large main square containing 3 huge churches, and lots of narrow cobbled streets full of pretty little houses and interesting shops.It's quite touristy, but that hasn't spoilt the city at all. In fact it's the most attractive city we've seen in South America. In all we spent 6 days in Cusco, during which time we saw 3 more parades, and had a really good Indian meal (our first for 6 weeks or so).

But our main focus was the dilemna of whether or not to do Inca trail. Liz in particular had wanted to see Machu Picchu for years, and we were biooked to do the trek, the dates for which could not be changed. We'd paid a sizeable deposit before leaving the UK, which we didn't want to lose, but the remaining cost was significant too, and we didn't want to waste more money. The trek covers 26 miles of steep, high altitude terrain over 4 days, but Liz was still finding walking up small hills difficult on her lungs, and Marc had developed a sore throat and seemd to be getting Liz's lurgy. Luckily the company we were booked with gave us an extra 24 hours to decide whether to commit, before we paid our money. In the end we decided to go for it, thinking it's the the things you don't do that you end up regretting, not the things you do.

The following day we were picked up before sunrise and taken to the trail head, where we met the rest of our group. We had our passports stamped with an 'Inka Trail' stamp and set off while the rain poured down around us. Thankfully the first day is also the easiet, and we made camp in good time. We were surprised how good the food was - delicious 3 course lunches and evening meals, all cooked in a tent on portable equipment. The camps themselves were very basic, but the views were second to none! That night we were introduced to the support team. There were 17 porters, 2 guides and 2 cooks to assist our group of 12 tourists. Sounds like overkill, but all 33 people needed food, tents, sleeping bags, clothes etc to last 4 days, not to mention the tables, chairs, stoves and gas bottles. We came to realise what an amazing job the porters do. After we left camp, they would pack up, take all the equipment up the same trails that we were struggling up, set up the next camp and cook lunch before we even arrived. Then they'd do it all again before we reached the camp for the evening. They are some seriously fit people - they put all the tourists to shame!

The second day was the one we were all dreading, particularly the climb up to Dead Woman's Pass, three quarters of a mile vertically above our first camp. Unfortunately one of our group was sick, and had to return to the start, so the 11 of us remaining set off. The trail went relentlessly and steeply uphill for 5 hours. This was a real struggle on Liz's lungs, and it's amazing how debilitating the altitude is. Near the top we were going just a few yards at a time before having to stop to catch our breath. Luckily our guide was very supportive, despite us lagging a long way behind the rest of our group. Eventually we reached the top at  4215m. The views were amazing, although at times we were in the cloud. After a long break to get our breath back we set off down the other side of the hill, thankful to be going downhill at last. We were incredibly relieved to reach our second camp, because it was almost all downhill from there.

Day 3 was a breeze. A few climbs, (long and steep by normal standards, but easy compared to the previous day) followed by lots of downhill sections through beautiful terrain, in bright sunshine. This was interspersed with several smaller Inka ruins and sightings of humming birds along the trail. We were amongst the fastest in the group downhill too, so didn't have to worry that we were holding everyone up again. All in all an wonderful day!

On the final day we were woken at 4am, and left the camp in the pitch dark to reach the Sun Gate, overlooking Machu Picchu, just after sunrise. It was cloudy when we arrived, but the cloud cleared almost immediately, revealing Machu Picchu glowing in the golden light below us - really magical. The last couple of hours walking were a doddle, as the 'lost city' got ever closer. It took a few hours to explore the whole site - it's really impressive, much bigger than we expected, with incredible views. Nonetheless we were glad to leave, as seemingly millions of tourists arrived.

We took the bus to the nearest town, a spa town without any road access, but with a railway line down the middle of the high street. We had lunch and a very well deserved beer with the rest of our group, followed by a soak in the outdoor hot pools, more beer and an enormous sense of achievement. We nearly missed our train back to Cusco when one of our group developed some 'toilet problems', but we found the energy from somewhere to sprint through the town to the station in the nick of time for the 4 hour trip back to Cusco. Boy did we sleep well that night!

Over the next cuple of days we relaxed, planned the rest of our trip, and visited a couple of other Inca sites. The name of one - Sacsayhuaman - amused us: To pronounce it's name you have to adopt an exagerrated latin accent and say 'Sexy Woman'. Despite this, these other ruins paled into insignificance compared to Machu Picchu.

We were sad to leave Cusco and knew we had a lot of travelling to do in a short space of time afterwards. We had a real flying visit to Lima - we fle out 24 hours after flying in, just having time to walk alomg the cliffs overlooking the Pacific near our hostel. Then we flew to Ecuador, our last new country. But that's the subject of the next instalment...

Beautiful Bolivia

We arrived in Bolivia unsure of what to expect, with warnings from the guidebooks of a poor, crime-ridden country ringing in our ears. We didn't recognise what the described in our first stop, Sucre. It's a small, pretty town with whitewashed buildings and narrow streets.

One of Sucre's churches

Seat of Local Government

We arrived and tired but due to time contraints we had to organise a tour for the following day. We ended up with a whole day tour in a private car, with just us, driver and aguide. This meant Liz got lots of opportunity to practice her Spanish as we bounced along the dirt roads that constitute the mean highways in Bolivia. We visited an old waterfall which has sinced dried up, and a huge crater, which is believed to have been caused by a falling meteorite. This created cliffs of various colours of sand.


Liz inside the Devil's Mouth, an old waterfall



A Condor (we think)

Part of the huge Maragua crater we trekked in

  

Then we set off on a 45 minute walk to see some dinosaur footprints. At least, we thought it was a 45 minute walk. It turned out to be a 5 hour trek, none of which was flat, and that we'd misunderstood the guide. Once we got over the shock, the scenery was breathtaking, both for its beauty and for our lungs, as we had to climb to 3500m then descend back down to get to the footprints. We'd only arrived at 2750m the previous day. As a result we really struggled on the walk. Thankfully, the dinosaur prints were worth it once we reached them. They were left in the mud 64 million years ago, then covered in ash when the meteor hit and fossilised, only to become exposed recently due to erosion. They've been verified by the experts as belonging to a Tricerotops and a baby T-Rex. Pretty cool! It was especialy cool because we didn't see any other tourists or anyone other than the tribal people who lived in the area. This was verifiied by the visitor book, the  local lady asked us to sign, which showed that we were the only tourists who'd visited for couple of days! A truly authentic experience!

Typical Bolivian hill-farmer's house

Liz, local lady with her baby on her back and our guide

Baby T-Rex beat us here by 64million years

Once we made it down we also watched local lady doing some traditional weaving. They make fabrics with the most amazing patterns, which can take months each to complete. We bought ourselves a small one, but it wished we could have bought more - if only we didn't have to carry them for the next couple of months. We arrived back into the town as the worst thunderstorm imagineable started, with rivers running down the streets, making us very glad our journey on dirt roads snaking up and down the hillsides and wading across rivers was already complete.

Traditional weaving

Beetle splashes through the downpour

Next stop was La Paz - a big city in a valley at 3700m and sprawling up the sides. It was noisy, busy, conjested, polluted with diesel fumes, very edgy... and brilliant! The steep little roads are full of ancient, colourful buses, market stalls, and shops piled high with the usual tourist merchandise, but also with things only a local would want. In the Witch's Market this included dried llama feotuses for good luck!  Apparently, one placed the llama feotus in the foundations of a new house...nice! It was also the first place where we saw the Andean ladies dressed in their traditional clothes and bowler hats. The bowlers were brought over by British railway workers 100 years ago, and adopted by Bolivian women as a status symbol and they were them with pride until this very day :) We took an open top bus tour in the pouring rain, where we learned how poor the country is, but that the government ministers earn 40x the national average. They've recently brought in a pension for the over 65s, which would be quite generous if it wasn't for the fact that only 4% Bolivians lives to 64 years old or older....  

Dried llama feotuses - Anyone want a souvenir?

Looking down on the 3700m high city

Colourful La Paz

Fabrics waiting for tourists

Traditional local dress

We decided that mountain biking down the Death Road (supposedly the world's most dangerous road) in the pouring rain wouldn't be much fun, so we decided to leave that  event our next trip to South America, which we are already planning, and head to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) instead.

Isla del Sol is on Lake Titicaca, South America's largest lake spanning 2 countries. We bused to Copacabana (the pretty little Bolivian one, not the famous Brazilian one) where we watched the local kids dressed in all types of costumes, during a parade to mark the beginning of summer. We then boarded the slowest boat EVER to the island. The island is incredibly steep, so we had to recruit a donkey to carry our packs up to the hotel at the top whilst we wheezed our way up on foot. Annoyingly, our tour operators did not inform us of anything useful that we needed to know, such as 'steep climb with heavy ruck sack at high altitude!!!' Sadly things went downhill for us from there. The hotel was FREEZING cold, Liz got ill and the food for the next 2 days was a choice of either of trout or chicken every mealtime.  Although we did manage to find a local restuarant that cooked mighty fine Pizza. Life saver!!! On the upside a couple of saving graces were the spectacular view from our hostel and the cutest, frueindliest baby donkey :) Marc also visited a small ruined Inca temple. We have to admit that we couldn't wait to get off the island. On the mainland we immediately crossed into Peru, the subject of our next posting.

Our coach crosses part of Lake Titicaca on a raft

Kids parading through the streets

Two residents of Isla del Sol enjoy the view

Isla del Sol sunset

 Although our time in Bolivia ended on a low, it's a beautiful place, but has almost no infrastructure, so getting anywhere takes forever and guides and trips aren't that professional - but that's the beauty of travelling, right?. Despite that, we'll definitely be back to visit again, to see more and to tackle Death Road and the Salinas del Uyuni.

It's cold in here! And I don't feel well!