Amantani Island

That afternoon we arrived at Amantani island where we were to spend the day and night with a local family. Rebecca and I were lucky enough to be given to the Yanarico family. Silvia, one of the daughters was our host. We slept, ate, and spent time with her and her lovely two year old daughter Jese, sister Rebica and son Brayan, father Marcelino and mother Constantina. They were very generous hosts, giving us our own room and huge amounts of food and Coca tea (which we are becoming quite accustomed to). While there we played a local football team (and lost 4-3 although I’m sure some of their players were not local) and in the evening we were dressed in traditional clothes and went to a dance evening at the community hall. The overall experience was wonderful, the island beautiful and the people incredibly happy and welcoming. Quite an example for some of us!

Lake Titicaca

Next we drove to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Not much of a drop in altitude as the lake is the highest in the world at 3820m. The scale of the lake is quite amazing at 9000 sq km. Shared by Peru and Bolivia, our trip to the various islands confined us to the Peruvian side.

An earthquake hit Peru in the early hours of the 20th. At 6 on the richter scale it was large but no fatalities were reported(ed-we found out after we wrote this that 17 people had died and there were hundreds of casualties.) The main areas affected were all places we had visited in the past couple of weeks – Pisco, Nasca and Arequipa. The reprocussions for us were that the lake was VERY choppy and our boat was not all that stable or powerful (the 100 guinea pigs spinning wheels in the engine room were just not working!) Our first stop was the floating islands, which are made from the huge amounts of reed that grow in the lake. The base is constantly topped up with additional reed and each island has a lifespan of around 10-15 years before the inhabitants have to leave and start again. You can even eat the reed, which is pretty tasteless and feels like stringy celery.

Machu Picchu

A couple of views of the Lost City itself.

The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

Where do we start? The Inca Trail was brilliant, one of the best things we have ever done. The walking was tough, especially on the second day when we climbed a total of 1400m including the first pass of the trail named ´Dead Woman´s Pass´ - see if you can spot Rebecca and friends at the top of the pass! In total we walked 42km over the four days to get to Machu Picchu. The sight of the city on the final morning was awe-inspiring. It appeared through the cloud slowly as if on cue for us arriving at the Sun Gate. (end of the trail) As if the 4 days wasn´t enough, we climbed another mountain, Huayna Picchu at the end to get a terrific view looking directly down on the city.
For the 21 of us in our group we had 3 guides and 26 porters! The food was out of this world, I will never know how they produced such dishes from equipment carried all that way.

Start of the trail


On our way


Camilla, Rebecca and Siri


Early morning breakfast


Dead women


Looking down Dead Woman´s Pass


Exploring Inca ruins


Bad weather and lovely ponchos!


Stephen, Scott, Siri and Lee at the Sun Gate (the first to arrive!)


Rebecca and Stephen with Machu Picchu appearing from the clouds behind

Back on the truck...

On our way to Cuzco we stopped in a fantastic remote loaction next to a river to camp for the night. A thunderstorm in the distance gave us plenty to watch. It was both our coldest night yet under canvas and also the highest camp at 4200m.

Colca Canyon, the world´s second deepest

From Arequipa we started our climb up to altitude again, at one point passing just over 5000m. It really affects your breathing, just going across the road to the toilet makes you out of breath. The snow capped mountains were beautiful and we saw many local people at roadside markets selling amongst other things much needed woolly hats!
The Colca Canyon is the world´s second deepest at 3191m and is stunning with many terraces, used for generations by the Quechua people for farming.
On our final day we were hoping to see wild Andean Condors soaring above the canyon. After two hours though we had to leave without seeing any apart from a finger puppet bought by someone!

Arequipa, Peru

The colonial city of Arequipa is probably the most beautiful we have seen so far in South America. It is much cleaner than most with cobbled streets and white stone buildings. The surrounding area is a dramatic backdrop of snow capped mountains and volcanoes. During our couple of days there we visited an archeology museum and saw ´Juanita´ a mummified girl who was sacrificed at the top of nearby Mt. Ampato over 500 years ago by the Inca. She had been very well preserved by the extreme temperatures and was only found after a nearby volcano erupted, melting the ice cap she was buried under.
At a group meal one night to celebrate Tehri´s birthday we all had the chance to eat Guinea Pig - which tastes like grissely chicken and is very boney.

Nazca Lines

Spread across 500 sq km, the mysterious Nazca Lines form a network of lines, figures, animal and plant drawings. Nobody knows how they came to be although there are many theories including them being an alien landing site or the representation of a hallucinogenic shamen´s dream. The only way to see them is from the air, so we took a flight in a light aircraft and saw the most elaborate including a monkey, hummingbird, condor, spider and a figure known as the spaceman. Our stomachs managed to keep down breakfast even with the steep turns of the plane to spot the lines. Stephen even managed NOT to drop any camera gear out of the window!

Desert Safari

From the oasis town of Huacachina, we ventured into the desert over huge sand dunes in 8 seater sand buggies. Our driver, known as ´King Kong´ is currently the second best rally driver in Peru and his trademark is wearing a chicken style hat. He also seemed to have a liking for the local tipple, Pisco! The v8 powered buggies ripped up and down the sand dunes like we on a roller coaster. In several places we stopped to sand board down the dunes which was excellent! The day ended at sunset with a camp under the stars. One of the best days yet.

Ballestas Islands

The Ballestas Islands lay in the Pacific Ocean just off the Peruvian coast. On our boat trip we were lucky enough to see dolphins, seals, sea lions, pelicans, boobies, penguins and many other birds. It was fantastic although the smell of poo at times was overwhelming. The islands however make a lot of money from the sale of the bird droppings for fertilizer. Over thousands of years the deposits of droppings have reached as much as 50m deep! Lovely.

Lima, the capital of Peru

A long drive south took us to the capital, Lima. It is a very big, busy and smelly city with constant noise from the overwhelming amount of taxis, one of which we had the pleasure of riding in on our final night. I have never driven so fast in all my life, the driver obviously spent too much time on his playstation and at one point after a particularly loud `clunk´ from under the car - he opened his door to make sure nothing had fallen off and then put his foot down again. Also, using the left lane of a three lane road to turn right was his speciality! Having said all this, the central squares of Lima are beautiful and we were lucky enough to see changing of the guard one day.

Chan Chan ruins, Peru

We visited the ancient ruins of Chan Chan, a mud brick city that once was home to over 60,000 people. It was an amazing sight to see the remains even after the El Nino rains of 1998 had devastated much of the site. We were staying nearby in the port town of Huanchaco which seemed to be home to more stray dogs than people! We even kicked one dog out of the campsite one night only to find in the morning that it was the owners!

Punta Sal, Peru

After getting very hot in the jungle, we made our way south across the Ecuador-Peru border and down to sea level at a place called Punta Sal where we spent a few days relaxing, playing volleyball etc. Rebecca was thrilled to find out that her cook group´s evening meal one night was to be a whole spit roasted pig! The cooking took all day but was delicious in the end.

More posts to come...

Hello everyone. We are not lost somewhere in the jungle but have been constantly on the go since our last post! Currently in Cusco, Peru (today 13th October) we start the Inca Trail tommorow morning at 5.30 am. We will upload more posts next week when we are back in the city. There is lots to see...