Cusco

Hola!

So, another week has passed and more adventures have been had. After scary cockney girl left the hostel, it became apparent that actually, there was very little drama at Loki, and that staff and guests alike were very calm and relaxed and fun, apart from when it came to scary cockney girl, where one guest summed up the sentiments of all with the statement, 'I want to stab her in the face'. Aggressive, but maybe true and necessary.

Anyway, my bar team, who no longer need pseudonyms to protect identity, are very lovely and work hard and have lots of fun, apart from maybe Shaggy who is on a completely different planet due to the consumption of far too many illegal substances and a profoundly philosophical outlook on life. He is very concerned with good and bad energies. Yes, Shaggy...

So all my shifts are going very well. Being at the Loki hostel is a little like being at freshers week in university over and over and over again, which is fun, but quite damaging for your liver. Despite many nights out, I have forced myself to be cultural and have visited the nearby ruins of Saksaywaman, many garish Catholic churches, and a little further afield the market town of Pisaq, which also has Inca ruins. Now when I arrived in Pisaq yesterday I was feeling a little worse for wear as the night before had been a rather messy Smurf Party and as staff, I had been obliged to dress up and make a fool of myself, but when I got off the little minibus, having just driven through the beautiful sacred valley (really, really stunning), I discovered a market full of pretties that I wandered around and took artistic photos of, and then thought 'ah, these Pisaq ruins look like an easy cultural sight to tick off on my list, and since I have an extortionately overpriced tourist ticket, I should go and check it out.' Little did I know that the ruins at Pisaq are MIGHTY and AWESOME and HIGH UP and I had to walk 3 miles uphill in jeans and rubbish little trainers, feeling hungover and needing the toilet, to get to them.

However.

A most joyous and wonderous discovery has been made.

The. Incas. Liked. Steps...!

So through the mist of delicate stomachs and fatigue, and heat and sweat and chaffing jeans, I was truly and honestly ecstatic. Just imagine - thousands and thousands of very high steps, branching off in all directions to reach cool fort ruins where you can still clearly see separate rooms and doorways and irrigation systems and round look out fort bits with windows for throwing spears and shooting arrows. Who wouldn't want all that when grossly hungover and probably still full of vodka? Of course I took many photos of BEAUTIFUL STEPS that I am unable to upload onto the blog, and now I am pretty much convinced that I am somehow descendent from Incas and that this obsession of steps has trickled down through the bloodline to endow me with a special feeling every time I climb steps.

After going 'ooh, aah, Pisaq is way cooler than I expected' and realising there was an easier, fat American tourist way of reaching it by road and minibus and feeling superior and fit despite the many 5 minute rests I took on the way up to 'appreciate scenery' (read: die inside a little), I walked aaaall the way back down again and had pumpkin soup in a restaurant. And then I came home again. Home being the hostel I now feel I was born in and will never leave, and for the first time in a week had a quiet night and watched a ridiculous Will Farrel movie and ate an overpriced McFlurry. Because I am wholeheartedly embracing Peruvian culture, you see.

I have, also, had ten intensive hours of Spanish lessons and have learnt conjugation of all verbs including reflexive in the present, preterite and perfect past. Now I only have two other past tenses, the future and the conditional to learn myself... and I have to remember them all and put them into practice! It's been very encouraging that nobody I meet who speaks Spanish and has the ability to at least speak basic English, has bothered to speak English to me. This has of course left me with the delusion that I am now trilingual, which I am not. But the goal of learning conversational Spanish has been achieved. Well done.

Projects for the coming week include: trying to convince all guests at the hostel that Stu and I are in fact related, booking my trek to Machu Picchu, doing some more cultural things, having at least one night off from drinking and uploading some photos onto my bloggy blog. We shall see how many of these things can be achieved...

Only four weeks until I come home. So many things still to be done!

La Paz - Cusco

I think this might be a record for time in between blogs. A whole week!

Somewhat deceptively, the most exciting part of this blog did not happen in La Paz, it is left over from Samaipata. On my last day there I decided to take a tour lead by a crazy Dutch man into the cloudforest. I was accompanied by the most miserable German couple, but this didn't ruin the experience in the slightest: there were giant, prehistoric ferns, slugs that spat yellow acid, monkey tracks (no actual monkeys), jaguar tracks (no actual jaguars, I would probably be dead by now), and many other exciting and Othello-soliloquy things besides. It was very pretty, but alas, the computers still can't cope with photos so you'll have to wait a bit to share the beauty.

I then took a three hour taxi ride to Santa Cruz through some more amazing cloud forest scenery and got on a bus straight to La Paz. On the bus I sat next to a nine year old boy who was travelling all on his own - you thought I was brave! I felt very maternal. This bus, though far superior to the previous life-questioning buses, took so long to get to La Paz I nearly cried, but eventually we got there and I went to meet my two friends Una and Kate in our hostel.

What followed was a number of very lazy days. I have the excuse that not only were we getting used to the altitude, I was also feeling very delicate in the stomach region, and although I know exactly how to fix this, the thought of not eating for 24 hours and spending all day in bed does not appeal to me. Neither does dioralyte. So I have been suffering for some time. We therefore watched the Michael Jackson movie and 2012, ate lots of ice cream, spent long lunches in cafés, wandered around the streets shopping for alpaca themed pretties and visited some museums including the musical instrument museum where you are allowed to play all the instruments, including the armadillo harp. Awesome. We also had a number of good nights out.

I did not do the Death Road. I don't know why, but it just didn't appeal to me. Let's blame it on the altitude again (apparently 3600m above sea level). Kate and I did, however, go horseriding on some HUGE but very docile horses, all the way up to the tip of Valle de la Luna (there are lots of Valle de la Lunas - remember the one I went to in Chile? There is also one in Argentina, and apparently they are all individual and we have never seen anything like them before.) We also got to see the city from the famous viewing point, and it was pretty impressive. I am also coming to like horses more and more, though I still don't know what to do when they start to move faster than a steady walk.

Due to civil unrest and road blocks, we were unable to get to Copacobana and Lake Titicaca on a bus (pity) so we decided to be flashpackers and took a cheapish flight from La Paz to Cusco where we arrived on Sunday morning to our new hostel. We did fly over Lake Titicaca, which was pretty impressive, and don't worry, I will be getting myself down there. I'm not coming all the way here to miss the spooky Inca legends of the Isla del Sol.

Now, because I have the attention span of a fish, I am about two weeks ahead of schedule, having never spent longer than four nights in the same place. So I made the decision to stay put in Cusco for a while, and get free board and food at my hostel by working some bar shifts. There are many positives to this idea: it is only 4 days a week, leaving me free to travel to Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca on my days off, and to learn Spanish when I'm not working, and to do day trips to Saksaywaman and other interesting Inca sites, and to do some river running. However, it is a three week commitment, so I'll have to rush the rest of Peru into two weeks (probably more than enough time, I get bored easily) and, if any of you ever heard any stories of my ski season - it looks like it might be similar to that, but now I am older and wiser and better at avoiding DRAMA by disappearing or keeping my mouth shut or simply shrugging and saying 'I don't know man, I only got here yesterday, I'm not really sure what's going on.'

So the next few blogs will probably be stories of ridiculous people with code names, interdispersed with incredible stories of freezing to death on the way to Machu Picchu. It is cold here.

Last night's story involved Cockney girl, who doesn't even work at the hostel anymore, deciding she did not like the Pretty German, as the Pretty German had apparently been running around breaking the heart of the Boy Who Should Know Better As He Is 26 Years Old. Not that this had anything to do with Cockney, but true to form of all our favourite British representatives on international soil, she decided she would express her opinion aggresively, with violence, expletives and loud enough for the whole hostel to hear. How ridiculous. Finance Bear, a fellow Brit, summed up the thoughts I had tactfully decided not to articulate: 'I came travelling to get away from pikies like her.'

So, as I'm sure you will understand, I will be asking to work the night shift so I can avoid these social delights, and will be getting up before 9am every morning to slink out to my Spanish lessons/cultural experiences.

Until the next 'International Eastenders' episode...

Sucre and Samaipata

So, after a few boring days in Sucre - highlights of which included dinosaur footprints and a really nice sandwich in a café where I read some of my spanish book - I moved on to Samaipata. I had intended on going to Santa Cruz, but I really wasn't in the mood for another big city, so I thought I'd chance it on a little village just south of Santa Cruz called Samaipata. I'd heard it was nice, there were ruins nearby, and there was a Dutch run campsite. So I emailed ahead, and not waiting for the reply, I jumped on a bus headed towards Santa Cruz, asking the driver to let me know when to get off.

Now, Bolivian buses raise many Life Questions. My previous experience, from Uyuni to Sucre via Potosi, involved the bus stopping in Potosi for FOUR HOURS in the middle of the night, whilst everyone slept, unawares (I was awares) and then a man ran onto my bus saying 'Sucre?!', rushing me off and throwing me and my bag onto another bus where all the Bolivians stared at me as I had to haul my pack right to the back seat, taking out some small children sleeping in the aisles on the way. After this experience I thought, I AM A TOURIST, and had a small internal tantrum about being superior, and wanting high quality buses, so I picked the bus company with the most deluxe looking bus photo in their office, but I suspected GROSS DECEPTION, and true to Bolivian form, what turned up was a collectivo (rattly tin bus) with soft seats and no toilet. But one must accept ones fate, and so I spent the next 12 hours pondering the following:

Why am I the always the only gringa on the bus on a standard tourist route?
Why are these buses only capable of travelling a maximum of 40mph? (slower up and down hills)
Why must we stop at every village to allow people on the bus to sell us eggs and potatoes that we don't want, or to shove soda pop through the windows as we throw money to them?
Why do Bolivians not book seats for their children, and instead allow them to sleep in the aisles?
Why do all Bolivians, all of them, without fail, sound like they have whooping cough?
Why?
Why?
Why?

It really does make you question basic concepts of humanity and existence.

Anyway, after an hour delay, a midnight stop at a random village for potatoes, chicken and rice and baño, I somehow managed to get some pretty good sleep. This makes me a superhero, as it is logistically impossible to sleep on these buses, unless you are a malnourished Bolivian child sleeping and coughing in the aisles. Then, at around 6am, the bus stopped and the driver stuck his head into the bus and said something along the lines of, 'Where's the tourist, the white girl?' I know he said white girl cos he did the international cheek-stroking sign that refers to skin colour. And THE WHOLE BUS turned around and pointed at me. Literally pointed. With fingers. 'This is Samaipata', the driver said and I, feeling very self conscious and DIFFERENT, put on my best, silly British accent and said 'oh! that's me! jolly good, tally ho!' and jumped off the bus.

Samaipata is truly beautiful. It's set in cloud forest, which is apparently like rainforest, but a big higher up, and all the hills surrounding it are green and lush and the cloud sits down on the horizon in the morning and it's very nice. I like. I'm camping in a tent lent to me by some elderly Dutch hippies who run a sustainable campsite/cabins on a hill just out of town. They make jam and have 8 types of fruit tea from their garden, and there is a herboria (I haven't discovered if it is a truly Dutch herboria yet, or if it is completely kosher), horses, beautiful dogs, fireflies, bees and frogs. It really is a little paradise and I'm loving every second of it. So much so that I don't want to leave, but I know I must!

I walked up to some nearby pre-Inca ruins yesterday with Victor the Australian park ranger, who exposed me for the poor walker I really am by getting half way through the walk back and saying: show me how much water you have! Do you think this is a stroll in the park? I did not have any water, because he had offered to share his at the beginning of the day. I also didn't have sunscreen because it was raining when we started off, which is the same reason I didn't have a hat. He also scolded me for not peeing enough, which was a clear sign I wasn't drinking enough water. But whatever, I beat him at scrabble that evening with 'DJ' plus triple word score and 'IQ', so I win.

This morning I went horseriding with Jessica, one half of the couple who will be covering the Dutch hippies' holiday to La Paz and she (who has been riding since she was 2 which is apparently possible/legal), said that I was very relaxed and competent for an (almost) first time rider, even when the horse got spooked by a bike and started to back down the hill backwards, which I'll admit, I nearly wet my pants over. I didn't tell her this, of course, as I was trying to save face.

I have noticed that nobody seems to comment unless I post photos. This is a clear indication that literacy in the UK is declining and we are turning into a visual generation. This saddens me. Do you not enjoy my stories? Did your parents not read to you when you were younger? Do letters jumble up and swim around in front of you when you try and read them on the screen? Do you not find my writing sans images deserving of comments?

Or maybe I am boring you? Hmmmmmmm? Comments please.

Uyuni Salt Flats

Greetings from Bolivia, home of the world's largest salt flats, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the HIGHEST city and lake IN THE WORLD. That's three IN THE WORLDS in one country. Pretty impressive, right?

So after Valparaiso and Vina del Mar I took a 24 hour bus trip of ALMIGHTY BOREDOM up the Pacific coast. I slept a lot, in close quarters with a young man I didn't know, waking up in the morning looking super attractive to realise we'd both been curled up in the foetal position, his face about ten centimetres from my own. Lack of personal space. Then I watched the sea for a bit and that was pretty, then the bus boy chatted to me for a long time and we began driving through the desert, which is exciting to begin with but then gets very, very dull. Highlight of the trip was the hotdog I had in Antofagasta with ketchup, mayo, mustard AND guacamole.

San Pedro de Atacama, my destination is a very cool oasis town, totally geared towards backpackers. I went sandboarding and to the Valle de la Luna (see facebook for pics) and then splurged on a really nice meal in a posh tourist restaurant. Chile is expensive.

Then I began my 3 day Tour of Wonder.

Now, this tour was particularly satisfying because I paid about 89GBS for an all inclusive tour that included EVERYTHING you could possibly want from the Uyuni salt flats and surrounding areas, where other tour operators charged 30GBS for each sight - and there were about 9 biggies to see.

So on the first day, me and my new crew - 4 Frenchies, 4 Brits and 2 Dutchies - headed off to Laguna Blanca, very pretty, and Laguna Verde, which is supposed to be a photoshop green. As we approached, I said to our driver, José 'It's not very green' and he thought, 'spoilt, tourist brat, I bring her into the middle of this amazing scenery and she complains about colours not being enhanced enough', but he said: 'just wait.' And how cool is this - when the wind blows across the lake, it stirs up a load of minerals that then turn the water this incredible turquoise blue colour, and you see it spread across the lake with the wind. Very exciting.

Then we went to hot baths and geysers (but not the ones that go puff, just bubbling smelly mud ones) and to Laguna Colorada, a huge pink lake filled with flamingos and algae that makes everything pink. Then we went to our refugio for tea, chats, dinner and a game of Pass the Pigs, which is an awesome game, if anyone knows it.

I haven't mentioned though, that Bolivia is a pretty high country and we had ascended from about 2500m to 5000m in a day so I was feeling a little fragile and the French lady had to spend most of the day in bed being sick. But the best part of altitude sickness (other than running up a small hill for spare camera batteries and having to lean on the door of the 4x4 to stop from passing out) is the surreal nights' sleep you have. I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep much, and I had the impression that a man kept standing in the doorway of our room to check on us. Fabian, one of the Frenchies, also must have had a crazy dream because he just started screaming in the middle of the night, which Brad and Jen, who couldn't sleep found really hilarious, but mixed in with my spaced out dreams, I found a bit disconcerting.

On day two we saw lots more lagunas and a rock-tree-tree-rock, and I climbed over lots of rocks and felt like a desert explorer and kingoftheworld. Then... we had lunch and... everything is blurring into one. A volcano and lots of volcanic rock and Backstreet Boys and lollies and then a small salt flat in preparation for THE BIGGEST SALT FLAT IN THE WORLD. Ah wait, I forgot to mention that I have perfected the 'how to make your tour group look like idiots' game. You say 'hey, hey you guys, who can do the best impression of a flamingo?' and then everyone stands in a line experimenting and you take a photo, and chuckle to yourself as grown men wobble around on one leg with their heads stuck out, or bent down to scoop up algae... hehe...

Our penultimate stop was the tiny village of San Juan where we were lucky enough to witness school band practice - made my day - and the drivers drank their 'non alcoholic' beers. Sure guys. When we got to our lodgings in San Martín, Mark, other Brit, had the grand idea of climbing up to a viewing point. So we did. Still at about 4000m above sea level here. We nearly died, so we decided to drink wine to see what would happen, but it didn't do much. The moon that night was so bright through my window that I couldn't sleep again.

On day three we left at 5am to catch the sunrise on the Uyuni Salt Flats (largest in the world) and it was really beautiful. Quote of the morning was Brad's sudden: 'This is crazy. It's 5:05 in the morning. I got up at 4:30. HE (Fabian) got up at 3:30!' Fabian had forgotten to change his watch to Bolivian time. The sunrise was beautiful. Now, just to explain for those who are confused, these salt flats, as with most salt flats, were formed when a huge prehistoric sea that covered most of south Bolivia, north Argentina and Chile dried up, leaving salt deposits that are, in some places, a metre deep. It is only now I am beginning to care about physical geography. Mr Barton would be proud. We then continued on to an island in the middle of the salt flats, where all the rocks are coral fossils because it was once underwater. We had breakfast here, took some wacky perspective photos and I split three nails playing frisbee. You'd think that after two days of voluntarily not washing and wearing the same clothes this wouldn't bother me, but it did. Poor nails.

We finished the day somewhat wearily seeing the salt museum/hotel, the salt mines and a small village where they had salt factories (small and medieval). We then arrived in Uyuni, where we visited THE TRAIN CEMETARY. Have you ever heard of anything cooler? Loads of 1880s steam trains, rusted and empty and lying in heaps all over the place and you're allowed to run all over them and climb on the sides like Indiana Jones singing the theme tune to yourself whilst the rest of your tour group goes 'what's the big deal about rusty old trains?' They were not quite as enamoured as I was.

So that brings us up to today. Lunch was had in José's house, where he was greeted by his three year old son, Kevin who cried 'Daddy I've missed you so much!' What a cutie. I almost died.

Unfortunately, Uyuni is not the world's most modern city, so you may have to wait a while before I'm able to upload some photos of green lakes and me standing on top of a jeep. Off to Sucre this evening for more fun and adventures (probably just two days worth of chilling in the colonial centre). Much love x

Famous!

What did you do in South America? Oh, nothing much, just made it onto local news.

Check out what I just got sent by one of the boys who got stuck in the National Park with me: http://www.rionegro.com.ar/diario/2009/10/24/125635512827.php# For all those who read Spanish, this is the somewhat exaggerated/uncensored version.