I was worried Cusco and Machu Picchu might not seem as
special second time around but Cusco was just as charming as on first
inspection. And Machu Picchu was even better cos there was no rain and no rush.
We got to spend a whole beautiful blue day there and saw the sun gate and lots
of llamas ‘mowing’ the lawns. It’s been renovated but in a sensitive way that
blends in with the original site - just more walls and more gardens and
smoother paths to prevent injury.
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Aguas Calientes has grown a bit with more hotels but is
still as beautiful as ever.
The rest was new territory. Ollantaytambo turned out to be
our favourite town. It's a living Inca town where people live in the original
Inca houses on tiny cobbled streets and small canals run down every street
carrying fresh water. We stayed at Casa
de Mama hostel which had a very friendly manager Victor and endless hot water,
yay! (finally got to wash my hair). We visited the main ruins on the hill
overlooking Ollantaytambo, which were very simple ancient walls but gave
fantastic views over the surrounding countryside and farms in the Sacred Valley
and the colourful native flowers growing all over the hillsides. Next day we
trekked to some ruins on the other side of the valley just above Ollantaytambo
which cost nothing and gave fabulous views over the old Inca houses in town and
their lovely gardens and mini orchards.
Practically all of Peru was perfect. Highlights were the Nazca
Lines, Huacachina sand dunes (highest dunes in South America) and the islands
on Lake Titicaca (highest altitude navigable lake in the world). The reed
islands were the most interesting because they were so different but sadly we
didn't get to stay on a reed island. But the island we did stay on overnight
was beautiful - we felt as though we were on an island in the Mediterranean
with the calm blue lake so huge it felt like an ocean and all the colourful
flowers and buildings very Mediterranean as well. We were billeted in a large hostel built by a
middle-aged couple as their income source. After getting totally soaked on our
rainy trek to the top of the island to watch the sunset, we were fed and
dressed in warm traditional clothing and taken to the community hall to dance
to music by a local band. Next day we
toured another 'Greek' island where a man gave us a great feed in his garden
and demonstrated how they make shampoo from a plant that grows there.
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Bolivia was
all about Uyuni – the world’s largest salt desert – which took us two days of
bus rides to get to. We set off from Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca through
beautiful high altitude hills with great views down over the lake on both the
Peruvian and Bolivian sides. We could tell straightaway when we saw our first
Bolivian town that this was a poorer country than Peru. When we finally reached
Uyuni it was amazing. A friend in Australia had said to me when I told her I
wanted to travel miles from anywhere to see the world's largest salt flats and
Michael couldn't understand why, 'Well, think about it Elizabeth - salt flats!'
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But what salt flats. They were endless and as it got nearer to sunset
the textures and colours revealed themselves more strongly. By the time we got
to the cactus island, our final stop on the tour, it was late afternoon and the
walk around the island in the early evening sunshine was breathtaking. It's
hard to describe the vast sparkling immenseness of it, you had to be there. But
the photos certainly help!
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We left so late - it was hard to drag ourselves away when the full
sunset hit - we thought we were in danger of missing our overnight bus back to
La Paz, Bolivia’s highest altitude city. But these tour operators obviously
know what they're doing. They got us back just in time to grab a snack bar and
jump on the bus (luckily they'd fed us well at lunch in a cave-like restaurant
built entirely from salt).
We arrived
at La Paz central bus station at 4am so we had a long wait before we could
respectably arrive at our hostel. Stay in La Paz for a day to check out the
views of the snow-capped mountains overlooking this highest altitude city in
the world, eat at the 'vegetarian' restaurant Tierra Sana (Healthy Earth) which
has non-vegetarian versions of all its vegetarian fare, then go. (And be
prepared for taxes on everything, from the few metres trip from the bus station
to the bus stop, to the tax at Cactus Island that you weren't told about in the
tour itinerary.)
We stayed an
extra 'unnecessary' day in La Paz: unnecessary for sight-seeing but necessary
for recovery from our Uyuni trip - day and night on bus to get there, day
there, whole night to get back. Yours truly then picked up a brochure at the
hostel about the Peru/Bolivia Hop bus just as her long-suffering Michael was
about to book us a plane to Lima for a few days' rest & a day trip to the
Nazca lines, before flying home.
So the last week of our trip was spent cramming in as many of the
sights of Peru as we could by Hop bus. We went straight to Copacabana just
before the border on the Bolivian side. It was in glorious sunshine so we
planned to spend the day on Isla del Sol, a Bolivian island on Lake Titicaca,
but there was an argument between the tour boats and the Islanders about money
so they were on strike. Our consolation prize was to climb to the top of a hill
overlooking the lake and enjoy the 'Mediterranean' scenery again. Onward to
Arequipa which was supposed to be one of the most beautiful colonial cities in
Peru. We were a little bit underwhelmed because the colonial part of the town
was fairly small but our free walking tour explored the local market which sold
interesting things like llama foetuses and cactus fruit. And ended at a
restaurant which gave us free Pisco sours, our first Pisco sours since arriving
in South America.
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Bussed to Nazca, which was a nice little town with the typical
family-oriented central square like in most other Central and South American
towns. The trip to Nazca passed through some beautiful desert hills winding right
down to the Pacific Ocean. The very high and dry rocky dunes reminded me of the
beautiful rockscapes in Morocco. Next day we did the light plane flight over
the Nazca lines which was as much fun for the dipping and swerving plane ride
as for the huge figures of birds, monkey etc..
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By early afternoon we were back on the bus for a lightning trip to
Huacachina which has the highest sand dunes in South America. Shame we could
only stay an hour but we got the best hour of the day - sunset hour. Just had
enough time to climb up one of the dunes and get a view of all the other
surrounding dunes and the oasis below in the tiny town. Then on to Lima where
we arrived late at night to crash in a comfortable hostel room right opposite
Kennedy Park. So we got to say a brief hello to the cats of Kennedy Park next
morning on our way to pick up our bright red Peru Hop T-shirts and zip in a
taxi to the airport.
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| The cats of Lima |
The reed islands of Lake Titicaca
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