Mike and Michele’s Global Wanderings

Michele here…we are way behind on the blogs but think we may be able to catch up today (May 24th). We are actually in Ecuador now but we will write about that later.

The day after we got back from Machu Picchu (May 11th), we did not plan anything and did not do too much.  In the morning we bought post cards, burned CDs, and did research on jungle lodges around Iquitos, Peru (since we would be flying there on May 15th). In the afternoon we went to the Monastary of Santa Catalina and Museum of Popular Art then headed to the bank and picked up our laundry ($10 – a bit expensive but this is a touristy town).

The next day we spent breakfast talking with a woman and her daughter from Isreal before walking to the Inca ruin near our hostel called Sacsayhuaman. The tourists pronounce this ruin, ¨Sexy Woman¨.  It only took about 15 minutes to walk to.  We love exploring places and spent about 4 hours there wandering around and even going into some caves.  The most striking thing that is left of Sacsayhuaman is a 3-tiered zig zag fortification.  Some of the stones weigh 200 to 300 tons.  The story is that the Incas envisioned Cuzco in the shape of a puma with Sacsayhuman as the head and the 22 zig zag walls are the teeth. 

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Mike writes…

We awoke early on the morning of May 10, 2006 to catch our 6:15 a.m. “backpacker” train to Machu Picchu Pueblo.  Our intention was to walk to the station because it was only a couple of kms.  However, by the time we had walked about 500m and arrived in the Plaza de Armas, a taxi driver offered to take us to the train and we relented.  After all, It only costs $1-2USD.  We arrived at the train station a bit earlier than was necessary and sat around until time to board. 

Once on the train, we were disappointed to find there was very little legroom and, in fact, the seats were arranged such that each pair of seats faced another.  Ugh!  This meant we would be riding for four hours with our legs tangled in those of the passengers seated across from us.  We can´t imagine why they arrange the seats this way since it was clear it does not save any space. 

Around 10:30a.m. we arrived in Machu Picchu pueblo and just outside the station a smiling youthful local girl was waiting for us with a sign for Quilla Hostal in her hand.  She led us across the bridge over the Urubamba river, through the handicrafts market and up the narrow central pedestrian street, Pachacutec.  Once at the hostal, our hostess gave us the choice of either one room overlooking the street or one facing the mountainside behind the hostal.  We chose the latter, relaxed a couple of moments and then headed back out to find our bus tickets, the tickets to the Machu Picchu ruins and some lunch.

We had no problem purchasing our tickets and settled on a restaurant just off the Plaza de Armas where they were offering four drinks for the price of one.  This kind of offer is actually quite common in this town.  However at this particular restaurant we recieved four extremely watered down (not surprising really) Pisco Sours for what could probably have normally bought two regular potency drinks.  oh well!  The lunch menus we ordered were mediocre but filling.  One thing we´ve learned on the trip is that if a restaurant has a great location (overlooking a central square for example) the food is generally not that good — it doesn´t have to be — the appeal is the location.

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Hi Michele here….

We arrived in Cuzco on May 7th and checked into our wonderful hostel, Piccola Locanda.  Months ago we had planned to do a 5 day hike once we got to Cuzco but, for a number of reasons (including plain ol´ lack of motivation), we ended up scraping this idea.  This left us with 7 nights in Cuzco and 1 night in Aguas Calientes (also known as Machu Picchu Pueblo).  Oh, what would we do with all this time? We read through the guide book and realized there was enough to do in and around Cuzco for a month so no worries about us getting bored.  Besides, would it kill us to not do something every minute of everyday?

The second day we were here we didn´t set the alarm and it felt great to sleep in.  Piccola Locanda Hostal has my favorite breakfast (lots of cookies and cake!) included in the price and glorious brewed (not instant) coffee. On this second day in Cuzco we walked around, took photos, and made arrangements for visiting Machu Pichu and other Inca ruins in what is known as the Sacred Valley. We knew from reading the guidebook that we were to buy the train tickets to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo) at one train station but depart for Machu Picchu from another train station. So, we walked to the train station where we were supposed to buy the tickets.  We saw a sign that indicated there were two types of trains going to Machu Picchu. The faster, super duper extremely expensive, Vistadrome (whatever that means) service and the slower super expensive Backpacker service.  The Vistadrome train was over $100 USD for a round trip ticket and the Backpacker train was $68 USD for a round trip ticket.  While this may not seem like a lot by European or U.S. standards, this is outrageously expensive for Peru – a country where you can travel all day for about $12.  Needless to say, we were in shock but paid $136 for both us to go from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes on Tuesday, May 9th and from Aguas Calientes to Cuzco on Wednesday, May 10th.

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Mike writes… 

On April 5th, 2006 we left Nazca on a Flores bus at 6:15 a.m. bound for Lima.  The funny thing about most of the long distance South American buses we have ridden is they are both long-distance and local buses.  This means that while our ride from Nazca to Lima could probably have been made in 3-4 hours it took about 7.  It can be really frustrating when the bus stops in the center of some small town to pick up a handful of passengers (who end up standing in the aisle for lack of space) only to stop 30 seconds later to pick up a couple more (the second group COULD NOT have been bothered to walk to extra 100 meters to the actual bus stop).  Anyway, besides the mild frustration of stopping every 10-15 minutes, the bus ride was uneventful.

Upon arriving in the bus station in central Lima we were greeted by a taxi driver with an official looking badge on his shirt who offered to take us to the Miraflores district where our hostal awaited.  Twenty minutes later we arrived at Albergue Miraflores House without incident.  Upon arriving we were greeted by the House´s jovial owner, Francis.  This ended up being one of our favorite budget-level accommodations on the entire trip and most of this is due to the friendly and dedicated attitude of Francis.  As a demonstration of Francis´ dedication to having a great hostel, after we rated the place (very highly mind you) on Hostelworld.com and commented that we would have traded the T.V. in our room for a mirror and some hooks (for clothes, towels and such), he went out and bought these items, installed them in the room and emailed us pictures of the improvements.  This is all in the matter of 2-3 days!  Wow!

We didn´t do too much in Lima besides go out to dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet and spend the night in the relaxing Miraflores House.  The next morning we prepared for our flight to Cuzco at our leisure and took a taxi to the airport at around 10:30 (for a 1:15 flight). 

Upon arriving at the airport and going to check in , we learned that our flight would be delayed until 4 p.m. but LanPeru gave us a voucher for a free-of-charge lunch.  We spent the next few hours eating and using the internet cafe to write up our blogs about Arequipa and Nazca. 

About 1 hour before our flight we headed through security and, shortly after, to the gate from which we expected our flight to leave.  Our flight was supposed to stop in Juliaca and continue to Cuzco.  When we got to the gate, the attendents told us our flight was canceled.  This was quite confusing to us because the sign at the gate clearly indicated the flight was going to Juliaca.  Apparently, the plane was only going to Juliaca and stopping which we learned after practically forcing our way backwards through security and standing in line for an hour back at check-in.  Our primary concern at this point was that our luggage had already been checked in.  Fortunately, it had been pulled off the plane before it departed for Juliaca. 

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Hi! Michele writes….

So, on May 2nd, we took an overnight bus from Arequipa to Nazca (8.5 hours).  We were in the top front seats of the double decker bus, which allowed us to clearly view the scary driving tactics of the driver. For the first 5 hours we were on roads along the side of a mountain. The mountain roads were dark and it was foggy out. Our driver seemed determine to pass as many other trucks and buses as possible while driving way too fast and going right to the edge of the cliffs. Since we were in the front seat, I couldn´t help but look over the side of the cliffs and see the tiny lights and cars far down below.  I decided it was probably best to simply avoid looking out the window and instead trying to go to sleep.  However, there was a large man behind me and when I reclined the seat to try to sleep I felt his knee lodged in my back. Meanwhile, Mike was uncomfortably warm. Oh, the joys of overnight buses!

We were surprised when the bus attendant told us at 5:00am that we had arrived in Nazca.  After exiting the bus, we walked across the street to our hostel. When a place is across the street from the bus station, that´s generally a bad sign. Our place looked like a dive from the outside and although it is said you can´t judge a book by it´s cover…yea, well, this place was a dive on the inside too. The room was pretty depressing and run down.  There was also a dog living on the roof above us. The dog was constantly running over the corregated sheet metal roof making a lot of noise and the area outside our door was a parking lot for buses.  Despite these problems, the room did have a private bathroom, was convenient to the bus station and for $13, we decided we could live with it. We slept for 4 hours then went out to explore the town.

We walked around the small town of Nazca (population 53,000) and after our treking disaster in Colca Canyon, went only to the guidebook recommended places to inquire about flights over the Nazca lines. Flying in a small aircraft over the Nazca lines was our main reason for coming here but we decided that if we could fit it in, we would also like to go to Chauchilla Cemetary, an ancient Nazca burial site with mummies on display.

Upon getting information on a flight over the lines from one agency, the man also mentioned that they had a guided trip to Chauchilla Cemetary leaving in 2 hours. We weren´t sure we really wanted to go on a tour after having just gotten up an hour ago but the man lowered the price to $10 each so we said o.k. The guide we had for the Chauchilla Cemetary tour spoke perfect English and was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. The Chauchilla Cemetary turned out to be a fascinating place.  It is full of graves the size of small rooms and there are about 10 graves on display with the mummies still in the graves. The mummies are approximately 500 years old and very well preserved. There were graves filled with adult mummies as well as some with small mummy babies and children. The bodies we saw were wrapped in cotton then covered with beautifully decorated Peruvian cloth. The graves also contained pottery and other items that the guide said were placed there so that the people burried would be able to use these things in their next life. Here is a picture from one of the graves:

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This is a combo blog written by both Mike and Michele… This is a blog on our trip to Colca Canyon where things did not go as planned, thanks to a tour agency called Pachamama Explorer (314 Jerusalen Street, Arequipa).  This company also appears to go by the names Wayra Explorer and Continental Explorer.  If you are a traveler reading this, you need take away only one message: DO NOT USE THIS AGENCY!

So, on to the blogging…

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Mike writes…

Well, for the past hour i have been trying to book accommodations on hostelworld.com but the computer i´m using isn´t cooperating with that web site so i have only managed to book one night in that time. In the meantime, i thouight i might try something else while Michele is doing whatever she is doing on another computer nearby.

So, i´ll try to fill people in on the hectic life that has been ours for the past 36 hours or so…

We woke up Friday morning (April 28th) around 8 a.m., ate our breakfast, returned to our room and packed up our stuff. By 11 a.m., we were at the internet cafe where we used the internet for too long. We needed to catch a cab to the bus station but first we needed to buy lunch and drinks, collect our bags at the hotel and pay our bill – and we had about 15 minutes to do all of this. We bought sandwhiches at a shop near our hotel although we didn´t know exactly what kind of sandwhiches we were buying (turned out to be chicken and mayonaise). Then we got our bags, quickly paid the bill and ran down the street to catch a cab. We made it to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare but were confused about which bus we were supposed to board (a common occurance). O.k., we figured that out, got on, and about 30 seconds after we sat down the bus took off for Arica, Chile, the last town in Chile before the Peru border.

(Michele writes…)

We arrived in Arica at about 7:00pm, after a 6 hour bus ride, and took a taxi to our hostel, which turned out to be in the Arica suburbs (no wonder it was so cheap!) The owner of the hostel, Roberto, is a wonderful and crazy guy. The decorations in the hostel reflected his personality – loud and crazy. In the front of the hostel, there was a huge tiled courtyard. In the courtyard was a big tree with photos and other trinkets hanging from the branches. The courtyard tree was also filled with Christmas lights. Scattered about the outdoor area were several statues including a devil smoking a cigarette. There was also a bar area with blue lights combined with small flashing lights. Roberto had the music turned up pretty loud and he was handing us beers and talking continuously in a heavy Chilean accent. The whole atmosphere was pretty overwhelming, even for this adrenaline junkie. After we put our bags down, Roberto called us a cab and we went downtown and ate dinner at a very nice place (probably too nice for our budget but the food was fantastic). I had conger eel for my dinner. This is a dish that Mike and I have come to really like during our travels thus far in South America. By the time we got home and went to bed it was 1:00a.

We got up at 7:00a the next morning (Saturday, April 29th), scarfed down our breakfast, and caught a cab to the Arica bus station. We tried to change Chilean pesos into Peruvian soles but the bank at the bus station had run out of Peruvian soles (probably because Monday, May 1st was Dia del Trabajador, otherwise known as Labor Day).

The reason we went to the bus station was not to take a bus but rather to take a collectivo across the boarder from Arica, Chile to Tacna, Peru. A collectivo is like a taxi but it is much cheaper and only leaves when it is full of people. We didn´t have to wait long for our collectivo driver to gather up 3 more people for the drive across the boarder. We handed our passports over to the driver and he did all our paperwork for us before we took off. Crossing the boarder in a collectivo is much faster than taking a bus because if any one of 30-40 people on the bus has a problem, you are going to be stuck at the border until the problem gets resolved. In a collectivo, there are only 5 people and the driver crosses the border everyday so he knows all the officials. We had no problem at the Chilean border. After being in Chile for one month, we quickly got an exit stamp in our passports. Next we drove through no man´s land (the area between two borders), before getting to the Peruvian border. There, we took our packs out of the back of the car, had them x-rayed, and handed in our paper work. We were now in Peru and had to turn our clocks back 1 hour (which means we are in the same time zone as the east coast in the U.S.).

We drove a total of 1.5 hours from Arica, Chile to Tacna, Peru. The collectivo dropped us off at the national bus station in Tacna where we went from bus company to bus company looking for the next bus to Arequipa, Peru. We found one leaving in about 45 minutes (at 10:45a) and bought tickets for the 7 hour bus ride. During our time on the bus we saw 3 Chinese films dubbed over in Spanish. These movies were definitely R-rated with a lot of graphic violence. Mike and I couldn´t help but cringe, looking at the children around us, when there was a rape scene or a part in the movie where someone´s arm was cut off and blood was spewing out everywhere. Anyway…

We arrived in Arequipa, Peru (population 2 million) at about 6:00p with no place to stay. While I guarded our bags, the Spanish-speaker of our little group, Mike, bought a phone card then called a couple of places in our guide book. Mike only had to call two places before finding a room. We then caught a taxi from the Arequipa bus station to the downtown area where we were pleasantly surprised at how nice our hostel and room was. We dropped our bags, went to a nearby restaurant, used the internet (for a record low of 21 cents per hour), returned home, took a shower, and went to bed.

That´s how we spent the last 36 hours. Whew!

Michele here….writing about our last day in San Pedro de Atacama. We got up this day (April 25th) at 3:15am in order to take a 2-hour bus ride to El Tatio Geothermal Field, which sits at an elevation of 14, 256 feet. When we signed up for this tour yesterday it took us a while to understand that the guy at the agency was telling us to avoid eating red meat and drinking alcohol because the elevation was so high. As I have mentioned before there is almost no English spoken in Chile and this concept (about avoiding alcohol and red meat due to the high altitude) was difficult to grasp in Spanish.

We arrived at the geiser field just as the sky was getting light. I definitely underestimated how cold it was going to be at this place and my hands were numb and I was freezing until the sun came up. Despite how cold we were, we both thought the geiser field was awesome. We walked around taking pictures for about 45 minutes before being served breakfast. The breakfast included, among other things, of hard boiled eggs that were boiled for about 20 minutes in one of the 600 geisers in the field. Here are a couple of pre-dawn pictures. The first is of the geiser field and the second is of us in front of a geiser spewing out boiling hot water:

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Michele here…
On Monday, April 24th, we checked out of the hostel we stayed at for the first night in San Pedro and found another place to stay – cheaper and better. In the afternoon, we booked two tours. The first involved seeing the Valley of the Moon at sunset and visiting a few other places. This would start in the afternoon. The second excursion would be the next day starting at 4:00am when we would visit the world´s highest geiser field at 14,256 feet. Below are some photos from the Valley of the Moon tour.

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Michele here…

On April 24th, we got up at 5:15am in order to catch the 7:00am bus from Antofagasta to San Pedro de Atacama. We were the only tourists on the bus, which is now becoming the norm for us. After 5 hours we were dropped off in the middle of no where in San Pedro. Eventually a taxi came by and although the place we booked was only 1 kilometer away we decided it was worth the $2 to take the taxi because we couldn´t figure out where to go. We checked in then walked through the town. San Pedro is an interesting place. It is one of the driest places in the world. While here we constantly had static electricity in our hair and clothes. It´s also very dusty and hot and the roads are not paved. All of the buildings are adobe style. The main street seems to have 3 types of establishments – tour excursion offices, restaurants, or hostels/hotels. The restaurants are all quite nice and include a big bon fire in the middle of the restaurant at night since it gets very cold in this desert area. Here is a picture of the main street: Read the rest of this entry »