After the Amazon, we flew back from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco, then on to Lima. I must say it was nice to settle into a modern hotel in Lima, Peru’s capital of nearly 10 million people, for the last two nights with our fellow frosty tops, who are all leaving on 23rd, either for NZ or elsewhere in South America. Continue reading
Jungle here we come – and what a highlight! Somebody said to me before we left on our trip “You won’t have a holiday, but you WILL have an adventure” and that really sums up this trip, which has been amazing. We flew from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado, a fairly scruffy town in the Peruvian Amazon, and were taken by bus to the office of the tour company so that we could re-pack and get ready for the long trip into our remote Amazon lodge called Sandoval Lodge on freshwater Lake Tambopata. That was when we were given the news that there had been some rain for a couple of days beforehand, so the track on which we had to hike 3.5kms was extremely muddy and slippery and it would take close to 2 hours to walk the track instead of the usual one hour.
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It was nice to have three nights in Cusco, after such an exhausting week of travelling and short hotel stays, in our very well placed hotel on the edge of the main square with a rooftop garden. The room was small enough to seriously damage a cat, if I’d had one to swing. But it was quiet and had the best views ever of the festivities going on in the square as the lead-up to the annual winter solstice celebrations, all of which were very colourful (and mostly musical),as you’ll see in the photos. Continue reading
Well the pace of the tour has picked up and we’ve had some very very long days. Left Puno at 6.30am, joined other tourists on a larger tour bus – very much bigger and better than our usual mini van AND with a toilet on board that DID have a toilet seat, which is an extremely rare luxury anywhere in Peru. I must say at this point how grateful I am to my mother for introducing me at an early age to The Hover Pee, which was taught to avoid the possibility of catching some heinous life-threatening disease by ensuring that no part of your anatomy actually touches any part of the toilet. It’s come in jolly handy and I am still alive to tell the tale.
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Considering I’m not really a morning person, I think I’ve done well to last the distance for all these incredibly early starts (we often have to be up at 5am if not earlier) and long busy days. As it’s mid winter here, it’s freezing cold, except for about 4 hours during the day, but Puno is where we have felt the coldest yet. It’s a bit of a dump as cities go, lots of rubbish lying around as usual, and all the houses are only half built because until a house is completely finished, the owner does not have to pay tax. A cunning but very unsightly plan. But we were in Puno mainly to go out on Lake Titicaca and visit the floating Uros islands made of reeds, of which there are 87 in total, so still well worth the visit.
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Left Arequipa at a very reasonable hour, with our local guide Jesús (a very common hispanic name, pronounced Hay-zoos), for the long ride up towards the Colca Canyon, the deepest Canyon in the world, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and home to the giant Condor, which has a wing span of up to 3 metres wide, weighs up to 12 kilos and can fly at heights of up to 7000 metres (23,000 feet). Wow, that’s a huge bird. Imagine the size of its droppings.
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Welcome to darkest Perú where guinea pigs are very nervous and are apparently best served deep fried or roasted, with paws, eyes, ears etc still intact. I will upload a photo if I ever summon up the courage to try one.
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Ahh the Chilean desert….a bit of a change from our frosty crossing from Argentina at some ungodly hour of the morning. It’s about 2-4 degrees C at night and 28-32 during the day right now (winter). Very extreme, but manageable if you dress in layers.
I’m a bit behind with the blog I’m afraid, but here’s the post about the next stop in chronological order. From Buenos Aires, we caught a flight to the town of Salta, a old colonial town in the North West of Argentina, founded in 1582. To give you an idea of the distance to Salta from Buenos Aires, the same journey by car would take 20 hours – what appears a relatively short distance on a map of South America is always much MUCH further than you can imagine. Continue reading
After our exciting border crossing, we spent the next morning on the Argentinian side of the Iguazu Falls visiting the ‘Garganta del Diablo’ (Devil’s Throat), a thundering 80 metre high waterfall, which is both deafening and exhilirating to stand beside. It was great to be able to see the Falls from both the Brazilian and the Argentinian side, as they each have their own special views and wildlife. We then caught a two hour flight to Buenos Aires and checked into our hotel in the Ricoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. It’s a city of 14 million people, so three and a half times bigger than the entire population of New Zealand, but it felt totally different to (and somehow safer than) Rio, despite warnings to the contrary. It was certainly a lot cleaner and more prosperous-looking, although I’m sure there are parts of it that most certainly aren’t.
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2 Frosty Tops Do South America 