Breakfast in Tokyo, Lunch in Cape Town & Dinner in Medellín

We stayed in Medellín for 4 nights, relaxing, enjoying the fact that it’s not a touristy place and the summer weather every day.  The area around the hostel is so modern it doesn’t feel like South America in the slightest, like Santiago but more interesting.  The 2nd full day here we went downtown, walked around amongst the throngs of locals, I don’t think I’d ever seen this amount of people just out and about, not due to any event.  There’s several pedestrian streets in the centre, lined with shops and cafes and plenty of street vendors selling everything under the sun.  Architecturally the city is mainly uninteresting with standard brick high rise apt buildings, there are a few more interesting churches or govt buildings in the centre though.

Next day we were particularly lazy, just venturing out on the (clean, orderly, modern) metro to one of the cable cars taking you high up on the hill side for a view overlooking the whole valley Medellín is in.  Amazingly, the cable car is part of the metro system and included in a single ticket (0.75 usd).

The view at the top is good, however strangely enough there is absolutely nothing at the top cable car station, just a road and bus stop, no shops or restaurants or anything.  So we went back down the cable car to the base station which is in the middle of a quiet residential area with one main road full of cafes, grabbed some empanadas for lunch (they are made with corn pastry here) and chilled out with some exotic fresh tropical juice at one of the cafes.  Fresh fruit juice is available everywhere here, with fruits that don’t even have English names coming from the jungle.  I wont pay more than $1usd for a large glass, and that’s not a challenge.

Moving on from the juice to la comida tipico, Colombian food is good, filling and heavy on beans, rice (which has a little more flavour than the Peruvian stuff) and meat.  Fried or baked plátano (plantain or banana) is with almost every main dish and there’s about 4 varieties of plátano at the supermarket.  People have banana trees in their front gardens here.  Arepas are a good corn pancake, available at street venders, cafeterias and at supermarkets, best con queso.  We tried cazuelas one night, this is a hot pot with various kinds of meat and other ingredients, mine had beef, pork, beans and plátano and was delicious.

At the lowest key, least social hostel bbq I have attended on the trip (food was good though) I discovered that Argentinean box wine is actually drinkable and does not cause hangovers like the Australian ‘goon’.  Even if you consume a large quantity of it.  Strangely, the hostel here is full of mainly Americans, Aussies and British, lowest European contingent I can think of anywhere I’ve stayed.

I know everyone reading this is likely wondering how terrifyingly dangerous Colombia is, due to it’s reputation especially Medellín.  After 4 days here I haven’t felt unsafe once, including walking around the city centre upon arrival after dark when I didn’t know where I was on a map.  The city is generally affluent and moving forward well, modern and as far as I can tell and have heard, safe.  We’ve wandered around randomly in several sections of the city, not run in to any bad areas.  The people here are great too, everyone we have contact with is ranging from friendly to tripping over themselves friendly to getting the owner or someone who speaks English to help us.  I haven’t had locals this helpful and friendly since Japan.  Nice way to end the trip, just like it was a nice start in Japan.

We’re now in Manizales, built on the side of a mountain with mountains, jungle and coffee farms surrounding it.  Plenty to do here for the next few days.  The 4 hour minibus ride on the paved but windy mountain ride was the most harrowing bus drive on the trip.  The road is fine, the problem is all the large trucks and buses on it going very slowly up the steep grades.  This results in the minibus’s and cars overtaking on near blind curves and a fair bit of jerking around.  Overall it wasn’t too bad though, only had one moment that could’ve been particularly dangerous with oncoming trucks but they slow down for you here, the trucks let people pass them and get back in the lane quickly, it’s pretty civilized in that manor.  The scenery through the jungle and mountains was great the whole way and the bus was new and comfortable so there isn’t really too much to complain about overall for the bus ride.

Next Monday I fly to Miami, I’m into my last 7 days before returning to America now.  54 weeks on the road so far.

Getting to Colombia was a long travel day, we left the hostel in Lima in a taxi at 10am and got to the hostel in Medellin at 8pm.  The flight stopped in Quito, Ecuador on the way giving us some great views of the mountains near there.  Met by very friendly people at the information desk at Medellin airport, then on a bus for an hour to get to the city.  The ride was nice, everything is green here and everything we saw on the bus ride and walking around the city in the evening to find the hostel looks nice.  Much nicer than in Peru and didn’t look or feel dangerous at all.

We went out for dinner finally around 9:00, prices here are higher than Peru but the quality of the food was far higher.  Just had sandwiches at a nice restaurant, western food of the same good taste, quality and just as good service as most western countries but for less money.  I kept thinking throughout the night, this is the nicest bathroom I’ve seen since Chile or, this is the best restaurant service I’ve had since Chile.  etc etc.

After dinner we walked across the street to the Medellin beer hall, that had good locally brewed beer on tap, surprised the hell out of me and some of the friendliest service (because we were gringos) that I’ve received anywhere.  It was also full of waitresses wearing German costumes.  I’ve been in Medellin less than 24 hours and I can already say the girls here, most attractive of any part of South America I’ve been in.  Hands down.  Been hearing that for ages, and it is indeed true.

The weather is also better, I don’t need blankets at night and I can wear shorts and t-shirts in the day.  Sunshine and 29 degrees, summer, ahhhhh….

Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Medellín, Colombia, the 18th and final country of my trip (unless I get deported somewhere when I try and re-enter the USA) and I’ve been looking forward to the flight since I finished the inca trail.  We’re back in Lima now for the night, 15 hour bus ride from Arequipa, thankfully my last bus ride in Peru.  It’s amazing how perceptions of places change with perspective.  Now that I’m back in the same hostel I stayed at my first few days in Peru I think it’s a really nice area, calm, quiet, clean etc.  Where as when I arrived I though it was loud, noisy, a little run down…  I liked it then and I like it now, but the difference is coming from Chile & Argentina or coming from the rest of Peru, which is full of louder more polluted streets, far worse looking areas (in tourist towns even), loads of people trying to sell you things everywhere you go and in general, over rated sights.

Machu Picchu is cool, though not as amazingly impressive as I thought, Nazca is a shithole, Arequipa, while an ok (still overrated) city is extremely polluted and noisy due to the insane amount of taxis everywhere and Cusco, which does have impressive sights in and around it, is also full to the brim with people on every street corner trying to sell you something.  The most impressive sight for me here was the Andes, the most dramatic mountains I’ve ever seen in terms of sheer vertical size.  It is these mountains all around that make Machu Picchu look so impressive.  I’m ready for Colombia, enough said on that.

We have 12 days in Colombia, before the flight to Miami.  Not very long, I’m wishing now I had the 3 weeks in Colombia and just spent the 12 days in Peru.  Can’t change that now so I’ll just have to see what my little time (and money) allow in Colombia.  If I really like it there than I’ll just have to go back in the future to see more of it.  Ending Peru on a somewhat high note, we just had a dinner consisting of a platter featuring 4 different criolla style dishes, which is by far the culinary highlight here.  The ceviche being the highlight, delicious.

Arequipa is surrounded by volcanos and the buildings in the city are made from a certain kind of volcanic rock.  This rock is normally white and shiny but due to the street level pollution here, it’s more off-white/greyish.  Lovely. It does have a cool texture to it though.

We decided to spend our last couple meaningful days in Peru taking a 2 day tour of the Colca canyon area, near Arequipa.  The route to the Colca valley heads into the mountains and the high pass we went through was almost 5000m/16,000ft.  The air is thin up there and the sky even looked different.  Glad I wasn’t hiking that high on the inca trail.

After the pass it was the long descent into the valley, which is full of pre-inca farming terraces.  Everywhere, far more than we saw on the inca trail or anywhere around Cusco.

We had a short hike after lunch by some of the terraces and food storage constructions, all pre-inca and then finished the day at one of the many local thermal springs.  This one was warmer and better than the ones in Aguas Calientes.  We spent the night in the valley.

Next morning, up at 5:30 (I’m really getting sick of this here) in order to get the 2 hour drive through the mountains over with early enough to see the Condors flying at one of the colca canyon viewpoints.  At this particular viewpoint, the canyon floor was about 1200m below the rim of the canyon we were standing on, with mountains rising up another 2000m above us.  Spectacular view.

The Condors were cool to watch too, though I don’t rate them as cool as the Albatross we saw in New Zealand last year.  Their wingspan is similar, slightly less, and the soaring was impressive especially with the backdrop of the canyon.  Nicer looking than the vultures in South Africa though.

After that and a great buffet lunch of local food in the town of Chivay (where I tried guinea pig,  ok, but not worth the effort to eat it) we headed back to Arequipa, taking the same route back through the high mountain pass.  Great views with the perpetual clear skies this time of year here, it is in this area that the amazon river starts, on this snow capped mountain.

Another word on Machu Picchu itself.  Some of the pictures I took are the traditional well known angle but all in all it wasn’t exactly how I expected it.  Part of this may be I hadn’t really looked up much information about it ever.  For one thing, the rocks used to build it weren’t transported here, there’s a large quarry site in the city where the incas broke up rocks.  That’s another thing, there’s not many large rocks in buildings, mostly just small stones typical for what you would expect in stone house construction.  The city is hugely impressive, just plain huge too, spreading out across the plateau on top of the mountain with all the terraces, but there’s not a “how the hell did they do this 500 years ago?” factor.  Not for me anyway.  No more than how did anyone build castles on mountains in Europe in the middle ages.  All of this makes me want to go visit an older civilizations ruined cities/temples.

After attempting to sleep in and giving up around 7:00 the next morning in Aguas Calientes we caught the train part way to Cusco and bus the rest of the way.  Back to the hostel we were at before the trail.  Just one more night here, nothing else we were interested in seeing in Cusco and it’s really annoying not being able to walk around without people trying to sell you stuff, constantly.  So we got 2 of the last seats on a night bus the next evening to Arequipa.

Spent the day in Cusco looking for a cool inca trail t-shirt or other interesting souvenirs, hardly found anything.  Typical, I’ve never seen more tourist shops than there are in Cusco but they all have the same lame t-shirts.  Empanadas for lunch, again for dinner, I’m totally fed up with the local cuisine of flavourless rice with boring beef or chicken or even the “jungle potato”, yuca, which is like chewing starch with no real flavour.  I miss the flavour highs of Argentina.

The overnight bus ride to Arequipa sucked, 10 hours, semi cama, no where near enough leg room for me.  Still cost me $30 though.  More expensive than the Argentinean and even Chilean buses with much less service en-route and less comfortable seats with no legroom.

We arrived in Arequipa around sunrise, saw the volcanoes surrounding the city from the bus then took a taxi to our hostel at 6:45 to wait for the place to wake up.  Walked around the centre later on, it’s no Cusco but still a fair share of nice older buildings, giving it some character even if most are slightly run down.

Went out to a pizza/pasta place for dinner since we’ve seriously had it with chicken and rice dishes. (and the dodgy stomach problems they cause)  Restaurant was good anyway, after that it was the Irish pub for very cheap happy hour drinks.  In case you can’t tell, I’m bored of Peruvian stuff in general.  This is the last stop here, flying to Colombia on Thursday.

Day 4, the last day of the Inca trail does not involve much hiking on the trail, only about 2 hours and then you are in Machu Picchu.  However, you wake up at 3:45 to be waiting in a queue at the checkpoint 5 minutes from camp when it opens at 5:30.    None of that was fun.  From there, it’s and hour hike up to the sun gate, all before sunrise.  Arriving at the sun gate was anticlimactic since instead of the majestic view of Machu Picchu there was a large cloud.

As the sun started to peak it’s way over the tops of the mountain peaks, the clouds slowly started to clear giving us little snapshots of the mountaintop city in the distance.

From the sun gate it’s about 45 minutes hiking downhill to reach Machu Picchu, numerous great views along the way, peaking with the one when you reach the high outer edge of the city.  Mission accomplished!

After the obligatory photo shoots up here and some formalities we headed into the main part of the city.  Firstly for a boring tour led by the guide, 1 1/2 hours, and then we were free to explore on our own.  Unfortunately we couldn’t climb Huayna picchu, the iconic mountain sticking up directly behind the city of Machu Picchu, because the limit of climbers for the day had already been reached.  So we just spent several hours exploring the 15th century city.  Numerous houses, temples, farming terraces, storehouses, staircases, sacred stones, fountains, the quarry where they got the stones from and even one sacrifice stone are all here to see and I was amazed at how much of our group didn’t hang around much after the very basic and uninformative tour by our guide.  I hiked for 45km to get here through the freakin Andes, I’m going to spend at least a few hours here now that I made it.  The weather was gorgeous, almost a little to hot even!

After exhausting ourselves walking all over Machu Picchu for several hours, we headed down into the valley on the bus to the base camp town of Aguas Calientes to meet back up with our group at the hostel we were staying in that night and have lunch there.  A glorious shower followed lunch, then a trip to the, warm (I wont call them hot) springs to relax.  Some drinks in the evening and dinner, then passing out after an incredibly long and rewarding day.

5:15 wake up call in the morning of day 3, I hadn’t slept the best and unfortunately that meant it was going to be a harder days hiking.  Especially since I had to carry my own backpack again.  The sunrise during breakfast was beautiful though.

The morning started with more uphill hiking to the 3rd pass of the trek, the views along the way just kept getting better.  The vertical size of these mountains is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  There’s loads of mountains, all big, most with jungle vegetation on them and then some gigantic snow capped peaks dominating the landscape.  At one point, near the pass we went through one of the inca tunnels on the trail, carved out of a combination of a landslide and solid rock.

After the pass it was steep downhill on a really cool inca stairway surrounded in bamboo, leading to another inca lookout station.  Great view here, great spot. 

Unfortunately our dimwit guide decided to make a speech for an hour here.  Not about the lookout station, he didn’t mention it once, but about random historical facts (many of which were incorrect).  We ranked this as the low point of his extremely low performance.  This speech included drawing a map of Europe in the dirt (god knows why), informing us that in latin american history there were only 2 empires, the incas and the “mexican empire” and that in current Central America there were two countries, Mexico and Guatemala!  Such wonderful “facts” were accompanied by, about every 5 minutes, the date Machu Picchu was discovered and the name of the guy who discovered it.  I think I heard that about 1000 times over the 4 days.  Still, here’s the view:

Moving on from the so called guide…  Next we continued descending through the jungle in what was now a hot sunny day with muscles that had gotten tight while we were sitting through the speech.  The scenery was still great, and we could see Machu Picchu mountain now (the other side from the city) but this bit was tougher for me, partly due to the fact that my legs had tightened up but more because it was quite hot and I was carrying my backpack.

After hiking down for what seemed like an age, less time hiking than the previous days but more distance since it was much less uphill or steep, we finally got to the last campsite, complete with showers.  This last campsite, like all the others had a stunning view of mountains across a valley.  It also had the Huinay Huayna ruins very near to it, the most impressive inca site on the before Machu Picchu itself, lots of farming terraces and an incredible water system.  Our backup guide did the tour of this so I actually learned something about it…

After the day of hiking, exploring the inca site and taking a much needed shower everyone just waited for dinner so we could go to bed.  I was shattered and the next morning had a 3:45 wake up waiting for us, in order to hike into Machu Picchu early.  Yes, 3:45am.  I haven’t gone to bed before 9 this many days in a row before since I was a little kid. Here’s the view from my tent…

A wake up call with coca tea at 5:00 was the start of day 2, the toughest on the trek.  12km hiking, slightly less than day 1 but much steeper terrain at higher altitude reaching the highest point of the trail, dead womans pass at 4200m/13,800ft.  After breakfast we started with the climb to dead womans pass, about 1km of elevation gain over 4km of distance, pretty damn steep. 

I made it up there without any of the altitude sickness symptoms except a headache, that would be with me on and off for the rest of the trail, something about my brain liking oxygen or something….  Anyway, the view on the other side of the pass changed dramatically and we were looking at the kind of mountains we’d be looking at for the rest of the trek now, with high jungle growing on them.

It’s slightly disheartening after you have just gained 1km of elevation at your own effort to descend 700m very steeply immediately and the whole time knowing you have to go back up another 500m after that for the 2nd pass of the trail.  All together I climbed a vertical mile in the day with two long descents as well.  So after the very steep descent down stone stairs from dead womans pass we stopped at a campsite for lunch there and regained some energy for the next climb.

The climb to the 2nd pass of the day was much easier than the first, about half as much elevation and we’d just completed the hardest part of the trail and covered half the distance so that boosts the energy a bit.  Up inca stone stairs on the side of the mountain with jungle growing around you the scenery from here was better than the morning hike too.  We also had a fantastic view of the massive mountain we’d just hiked over. About halfway up to the 2nd pass we stopped at an inca lookout station perched on the cliff for a break, good stopping point.

At the top of the pass, 4000m, the clouds started to roll in but fortunately didn’t bring any rain.  From here it was a more gradual descent through the jungle on the stone inca trail we’d be on for the rest of the trek.  Beautiful everywhere you look and the clouds coming and going gave it a cool aura.

About an hour before dark we reached another inca site, Sayaqmarka, a short distance from our campsite.  Another lookout station, this one was larger and more impressive.  Since our main guide seriously lacked in organizational skills (among other things) he gave us 15 minutes to explore it on our own and gave us no information on it before heading to camp, leaving the 2nd guide behind to make sure we all found the camp when we were done exploring.  Fortunately the 2nd guide was cool, didn’t care about the time (since there was no reason to) and we stayed for longer, the place was really cool in the fading light with clouds all around the valley.

Thus ended day 2, the hardest of the day and I felt fine, legs only slightly sore.  After dinner they gave us a local drink made of rum, oranges, apples, spices and some other stuff I don’t remember.  Same idea as hot apple cider but a lot better.  Macho tea they called it.  After a few of those we all went to bed.

Well the day of the inca trail dawned, (incidentally also marking moving beyond the 1 year point of my trip!) I was already up and waiting for a pickup from the tour company and not feeling the greatest.  Felt bad the whole previous day (I think from altitude or food, likely a combination) and hadn’t done anything, the morning was better but still not great, especially getting up at 4:30.  Anyway, the pickup never came so we had to get a taxi to the meeting point for the bus to the trail starting point (2 1/2 hours from Cusco).  This was a sign of the wonders of our tour company for the trip.
2 hours into the bus trip we stopped for breakfast, I felt a bit better and ate that, also bought the things we weren’t told we would need until our pre trip briefing the night before the trail started, and never ended up needing at all.  SAS travel is the company in case anyone reading this is thinking of booking any trips in Peru.  Don’t use them, they screwed up lots of stuff in the office including several peoples passport numbers that were correctly submitted online, also misinformation about weights of sleeping bags and mattresses provided beforehand.

Moving on from the un-endorsement of the tour company…  When we got the trail head the weather was perfect and after organizing the bags for the porters we headed to the checkpoint to verify our passports and then crossed the river to the start of the trail. 

We started hiking at about 11:00 and got to our campsite around 5:45, just before dark.  Most of the day was gentle uphill and then downhill sections, following the river valley in between some very high mountains.  Sharing the trail with locals, including donkeys hauling packs in and out of the mountains.

We passed a couple inca sites along the way but mostly the scenery was just natural.  Trail mainly dust/dirt and wide, not and inca built stone trek at this point either.

I didn’t hire a personal porter for the trip so I had to carry my own sleeping bag and all my belongings in my pack, the porters carry the tents for everyone.  By the end of the day I was tired and while not regretting my decision not to pay the extra for a porter the whole way I decided to hire one for day 2, when you can hire locals just for the day since it’s by far the hardest day of hiking and the highest altitude.  After dinner at the campsite with our group (12 people + 2 guides) everyone pretty much went straight to bed, 8:00.  The stars that night were amazing.

Second day in Cusco, feeling no ill-effects from the altitude we decided to hike up the hill North of the city to the ruins of the Sacsayhuaman inca fortress, only 40 minutes steep walking from the plaza de armas. With this view along the way…

We had planned to just visit this ruin for the day and go to the other 3, smaller ones the next day. However when we got to the entrance of Sacsayhuaman we discovered that the entry ticket for all 4 was 50% cheaper if we visited them all in one day. So we bought the one day discount ticket, at 1:00pm, with 5 hours of light left in the day. This meant a lot more hiking in between sites.

Sacsayhuaman is a large fortress, built by the inca civilization in the 15th century. Enough of it remains for you to imagine a very formidable fortification. A sheer cliff on one side, and 3 levels of high walls made of massive stones zigzagging at right angles across the flat open ground below.

There’s more to the site than just the main fort, with tunnels, lots more building foundations and a circular arena.

We didn’t linger long, in order to get to the other 3 sights before sunset. The next one, quite small, was the inca rocks of Qenco. I met an Andean shaman there who was explaining to me the energy that (the incas) believe is in the rocks here.

After that we walked what was supposed to be a 1 1/2-2 hour tough uphill climb, according to me rough guide. So naturally, we got to the next ruin easily in 50 minutes after a mainly gradual uphill walk along the side of the road. More kudos to rough guide for accurate information. Just before reaching the ruins of Pukapukara we passed through a small farming village. Houses built of the mud blocks and the fields surrounded by them too, they even had a football pitch in the village…

Pukapukara was the gate house for the incas, a medieval customs office for the people en-route to Cusco complete with, apparently, hotel rooms of a sort.

The last of the sites, 10 minutes down the road from Pukapukara, was the baths of Tambomachay. Another small site, with a cool inca water system there.

It started to rain while we were admiring the baths, and since we were completely unprepared for the day, only taking stuff we thought we’d need for the first ruin (no coats, jumpers or much of anything else) we caught a 1 sole (usd 0.30) minibus taxi back to the first ruin instead of walking in what was now a chilly day with the sun long hidden behind clouds. It was not raining back at Sacsayhuaman so we figured we’d walk around some more there. Apparently our ticket was meant to be for one entry per sight (which makes no sense to me since it was only valid for today), but I concocted a story in spanish for the ticket person which she seemed to possibly half believe, and let us in regardless. The light was different and the wind was cold, but we walked around a bit more imagining what the place would’ve looked like in it’s day…

After that we headed quickly back to Cusco, and warmth. Stopping briefly for some shots of the city at dusk, it’s a stunning view night or day.

The first restaurant we found with alpaca on the menu was our next stop, to try the local dish. I’d rate it average, pretty tough with decent flavour. Now I just have to figure out where I can go for a ride on one…