Nothing’s Familiar

Different day, different country. I suppose I should elaborate on what I did in the last few days in Buenos Aires but there isn´t really too much point. I can and will explain it in about 3 words; Drink, Sleep, visiting-more-dead-people. One of these dead people was actually someone important this time, Evita. I´ll get my mum to explain more about her if you are interested, all I know about her was that Madonna played her in a film and there was that song “Don´t cry for me Argentina” which was either about her, or sang by her. Apparently she was the ex-presidents wife and also had a fling with Che Guevara, but let´s be honest which of us haven´t?

Oh, I also went to the dodgiest part of Buenos Aires to watch a semi-final football match between La boca (Argentinean) and Catoilica (Chile), we were advised to leave everything of value at our hostel and to pay the extra bucks to get more expensive seats. Sadly, we couldn’t afford a days budget to watch a football match so we settled on the cheap “popular” standing. I am glad we did, the atmosphere was absolutely intense! Lots of jumping around and shouting songs to cheer on their side and to put the fear into the other side. People were climbing all over the railings, firing off flares and screaming at the oppositions goalie every time he got near the ball. I suppose it was educational for me to, prior to this I didn’t know any swear words, now I know if someone says “hijo de puta” they are calling someone a son of a bitch and if they say “puto” – they are saying the Chileans goal keepers name, which translates as “Faggot”!

*The score was 2-2 by the way

Anyway back to the travelling bit……….

We set sail across a small splotch of ocean to reach Uruguay in a boat which resembled a fancy floating shopping mall, it took us 3 hours to reach Montevideo (Uruguay’s capital) and costs us about 20 pounds. Another stamp for my passport then a quick and highly expensive taxi ride later (apparently we had to pay for each of our bags as well) we arrived in another hostel, dumped our bags had a quick game of ping-pong, played on their 6 stringed guitars then went to bed.
The reason I decided to go to Uruguay was to basically relax on the beaches all day, it was either this, or travel 40 hours south to Patagonia to look at a Glacier, which is obviously pretty cold.
In total I spent 6 days in Uruguay relaxing on Beaches, trying to beat my Swiss friend at wave riding, cycling around on bikes and generally just getting a lovely tan. 5 of us rented a small car and travelled up the coast to other beaches of greater quality.

I really cant think of much else I have done to be honest, I am back in Buenos Aires now tearing my hair out trying to find an Internet cafe with a CD Writer and USB and a post office with envelopes or small boxes (who said travelling was easy?)

I plan on leaving here tomorrow to travel 18 odd hours to Mendoza where I will drink wine and relax just a little bit more before my flight to New Zealand in 9 days.

Until then,

Rob

Well after my last post I haven´t done a great deal worth mentioning, unless you all want to know the in depths to my new and much appreciated diet, which I will tell you about anyway as it will pad this out a little bit more…

I arrived in Salta (Argentina) and immediately fell in love with the place. Admitably the reason for my positive outlook was the fact I could purchase something other than indigenous clothes, llama meat or 3 stones stuck together to resemble a monkeys face, but – there were also nice women to look at too. So, enjoying the new style of life I stayed in Salta for a while and ate nothing but steak (occasionally with chocolate sauce) ice cream and played ping-pong all day, I also managed to watch England Vs. Argentina in my hostel surrounded by Argentineans.

After 4 days of losing ping-pong to my Scottish buddy I decided it was definatly time to move on, so in the true spirit of budget travelling I jumped on a 28 hour bus trip all the way to Iguazo Falls to avoid him – it was just a shame he sat next to me on the bus, stayed at the same hostel and then continued to beat me at ping-pong for the following 2 days.

In between getting beaten at the-only-sport-Scottish-people-seem-to-be-good-at we visited the mighty Iguazu Falls. The hostel where we stayed was on the Argentinian side of the Falls and if you walk for 10 minutes towards the river you stand at a point where you can see Paraguay and Brasil (and obviously Argentina, if you look at the ground). The waterfalls are shared between Argentina and Brasil so for the first day we ventured into Brasil. We received a few more passport stamps (upside down) in the process of crossing the border and jumped on a few more buses to get to the National Park. Inside the park we walked around for about 4 hours being truely impressed by the waterfalls, the park itself was pretty tacky with hundreds of tourists (bloody tourists!!), adventure trips, and various other things which resembled an amusement park, but the waterfalls made it all the worth while. I also had the pleasure of meeting some Chinese tourists and impressed them with my ability to speak Chinese. I pretended to understand everything they were saying, then just to clarify my fluency I threw in occasional sentences here and there. Impressed, they then grabbed my Scottish mate (he´s called Alasdair) and said something like “You have red t-shirt, me white t-shirt, photo together my English friend”…To which Alasdair replied….”SCOTTISH”. I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the Chinese dudes camera.
I suppose I should mention that I abseiled down a cliff with the waterfalls behind me, but to be honest it was pretty rubbish. It cost over my days budget and I spent most of the time trying to spin myself around to look at the waterfalls behind me.

The next day we walked around the Argentinian side which wasn´t as good (more tourists), but it took us further into the waterfalls. We payed a few pesos to ride a power boat into the waterfall and to ultimately to get drenched. I have hundreds of photos which I am sure will bore the living socks off you, but I will post a few of them on there just to give you an idea of why the waterfalls were so spectacular.

I am now in Buenos Aires after a further 18 hours on a bus, I have carefully selected a Hostel without a ping-pong table and tonight, no doubt, I will get a sample of the Argentinean´s capitals nightlife.

Buenos noches chicos

Rob.

Hello people, how the devil are we?

I´ll try and be quick, but don´t shout at me if your cups of tea go cold.

I paid $60 to fly from Rurrenbaque to avoid the 18 hour busy journey across the worlds-most-dangerous road and mainly to avoid another 18 hours of bouncing up and down on my bottom. I also managed to smuggle my huge machette aboard which, hopefully, should have arrived in England by now labelled on the custom sheet as “crafts”.

I arrived in La Paz after the 1 hour flight, checked into a hostel which was next to plenty of hairdressers, declined every request to cut my crazy hair and then spoke to a crazy American who had just been released from San Pedro prison after 8 years inside. He wanted to sell me 3 stones. 3 stones superglued together which, according to him, resembled a monkeys head. However unlucky for him I had just spent 20 days in the jungle and had seen what monkeys really look like, so I declined his offer but gave him 8 Bolivanos so he could get himself a milkshake – and so he would get the hell away from me. I didnt tell him that, of course.

Me and my adequatly-goatied-Australian friend then boarded a 10 hour bus to Potosi, which only cost 30bolvianos (2pounds).

We arrived in Potosi at 6.00am tired, ate breakfast at 7.00am then managed to get on a tour to the mines at 8.00am. At 8.30am we were dressed in baggy trousers, big wellington boots, a leather type jacket and a bright yellow hard hat. “It’s fun to stay at the y-m-c-a”…. at 9.00am we purchased dynamite and lots of it. This has to be one of the only places in the world where a 9 year old boy can walk into a shop, purchase sticks of dynamite, fertizlizer and fuses. We were briefly told that out of the 3 choices of Dynamite; the Bolivian stuff was the best, the Argentinian stuff was good, but the Përuvian stuff was only used to throw at other workers/policemen during riots or fights.

I settled on the hardcore Bolivian stuff and gave them one pound for the privalage.

Potosi is officially the highest city in the world (4060m above sea level) and its main and pretty much only ´attraction´ is the mine. The safety record for this mine is outstanding, in 300 years the mine has claimed only 8 — million lives; after spending 2 hours of crawling on my hands and knees, climbing down crazy wobbley ladders, jumping out the way of manually pushed carts and breathing a life times worth of dust I can see why.

40m down in the mine I decided I needed a cigarrette and at high altitudes cigarrettes burn really slowly, so the upshot of this is they last a lot longer! ….. but when you are down a mine where the oxygen is even more limited they last even longer. Six minutes of puffing away only accomplished half a cigarrette, so I got bored and threw it away.

When we finally came to the surface we had the fun of blowing up the dynamite, but to make the dynamite even more powerful we removed the paper, repacked the explosives into a bag full of fertilizer and sealed it into another bag after attatching the fuse. The guides lit the fuse whilst we were all sat around and procedeed to do STUPID things like putting the dynamite into their mouths and posed for photos. I took a photo of them, then put the dynamite in my mouth. They then ran down a stoney hill and placed the dynamite on the floor before sprinting back to safety (after doing a few push-ups on top of them for comical effect). The explosion the TNT made was crazy, the inital explosion deafend me, then the shockwaves shifted through the mountain ranges and echoed for an eternity, well, 1 minute at least.

Hindsight tells me not to put dynamite in my mouth again.

…..Tea gone cold yet?

The next stop was Uyuni to see the spectacular ´Salt Lakes´, I paid another $65 dollars, then a further $50 on drinking lots of beer, bacardi and rum (so much so that we decided we´d snort the remaining 1/4 of a bottle through our nose)….. My headache and un-keeness to see anything but my pillow on the first day of the tour may have been related to the above.

I can´t really provided a detailed explaination of what the salt lake looked like, so I´ll save you the strained explaination and just tell you to imagine a lake, replace the water with salt and voila!

The rest of the 3 day tour took us around some amazing scenery and put us into a hostel made entirely from salt and the coldest ´hostel´ on this side of the earth. We also saw gyzers (not the cockney type), lakes of various colours and paddled in hot springs.

Make sure you look at these photos as the above explaination was pretty pathetic.

http://www.buzznet.com/burb

I am writing this e-mail in Chile, I arrived here 2 hours ago. It´s far too expensive to travel here (with a $30 a day budget) so I am going to Argentina tomorrow. I probably havent done Chile much justice only seeing an internet cafe, hostal and a bar…………but I fly out of Santiago/Chile in 1 month so I will see their airport as well.

Ok, people. Where do I start?

From the beginning I suppose, after my last entry I decided to hang around in Rurrenabaque to venture into the Jungle. I have always thought that walking through the jungle would be pretty cool, and seeing as there ain´t much jungle in England I thought I may as well go flat out and spend 20 days in the Jungle, learn vital life survival techniques and by doing this I was pretty much guaranteed to see no tourists, no signs of human life and venture into one of the most untouched, protected parts of the Amazon Rain Forest. River Madidi.

Shortly after paying for the venture, purchasing a machete, half a kilo of coca leaves, bico soda and 4 packets of cigarettes I started to realise what I was doing was pretty crazy, mainly because every time I walked into a bar the word had got around and people would point at me and simply say “that´s the crazy guy” or ask me “so I heard you are going into the jungle for 20 day, are you mad?”

I thought it was a pretty standard thing to do!!!

The Start

Me, my guide (Jose) and my chef (Alexander), met each other, realised we couldn’t speak each others languages very well and jumped into the jeep for 3 hours to the start of the rain forest. When we got out of the jeep we started to pack our bags full of food and supplies for 20 days, my bag was soon extended using a hessian sack and crammed full of flour, pasta and tins. It was easily over 30 kilos and I couldn’t even lift the damn thing alone, so after leaving half of our food supply and all our bottled water behind set off on our 20 day venture.

The Walking

We walked (with machete in hand) for the first 8 days solid from 9am – 5pm every day without lunch. We crossed huge rapid rivers, tripping on invisible rocks (due to the brown water) cut down through the deep jungle, walked across sand, up and down mountains, climbed over and crawled under fallen trees, crossed streams using fallen trees, broke straps on bags, dropped eggs, dropped rice, slipped down hills, tripped up hills and all of this was with this ridiculous weight on my back. We only walked 15k´s for the first 8 days, then 25k´s at the end of the trip.

The Rafting

To construct the raft we hacked down about 8 full grown balsa trees, pulled off their bark and turned the bark into string to construct our raft. We also chopped down palm trees to form the seats on the raft. for the first few days rafting we were all constantly getting out to remove stones and rocks so our raft would get down the shallow parts, then when it was clear we would jump back on the raft and float lazily down the River Madidi for about 7 hours in the day. After a few more days of rain the water level rose and the rafting became easier and faster. I wanted to have a go at controlling the raft down the rapids as I was bored of just shunting it along the still parts, but seeing as I couldn’t understand much of their rapid Spanish instructions, couldn’t balance on the slippery surface it wasn´t much of a suprise when I crashed into a huge rock and flew 3 meters into the rushing water, destroying my knee in the process!

The Camp

Pretty much every night we had to construct our own camp, this involved walking into the jungle hacking down about 30 trees and building a make shift camp site. If we were in a site for more than one day we would build fancier shelter and other things like mug holders and cloth lines, when it rained, which it did pretty much every night, my sleeping quarters would be drenched and I would wake up wrapped up in a drenched sleeping bag with water dripping on my head, for about 14 days out of 20 we would have huge amazing storms, but the flip-side of this means I would also have amazingly wet clothes!

The Food

I have eaten rice, rice, rice, rice, rice with fish, rice with pasta, rice with meat. For the first 5 days my guides were carrying pieces of meat with them leaving it uncovered and weren´t bothered with the flies or ants living off it. After we killed and skinned a deer the same thing happened, as did with the fish. Sooner or later I stopped caring and just ate anything that was put in front of me. Breakfast for me was the highlight of my day, after we ran out of stale bread we started cooking fried flour dough, with sugar and jam! Man I could live off this stuff. Between the 3 of us we consumed 7 kilos of sugar in 20 days. Every time I had a coffee it had about 3 table spoons of sugar, every time I had anything it had sugar with it!

The Drink

As we threw away the 6 bottles of water we had before we even started the trek I removed the water purification tablets from my bag straight away. For 20 days we drank from rivers, streams and in the morning we would have a nice supply of fresh rain water. To make the brown amazon water taste nice we had sachets of fruity flavour or in the morning coffee, tea or chocolate with powdered milk (and 3 table spoons of sugar). Our chef also made a nice sugary drink using only flour and milk, it was called something like ´creme de la murri bromar´ but the only problem was it used about 5 days worth of sugar for one small pan!

The Insects

Before I left civilization I had prepared myself mentally for the mosquito’s, I was drugged up to the eye balls on Lariam and had a little bit of DEET to warn them off, but there are very few mosquitoes here. I also had visions of fighting off tarantulas, lizards and snakes, but no, the main problem in the jungle are…

Wasps and bees – I travel all this way, walk for 20 days in stupid humidity and the main thing which I see I could get in my own back yard. In 20 days I have been stung 15 times, I have learnt that hitting wasps and bees (something you are told not to do) is the best way to get rid of them, standing still when they are attacking you is better than running and cutting them in half with scissors is great fun. I know what hours they are awake in. 5.30am – 7pm

Sandflies – these micro critters sneak up on you bite you during the day without your feeling them then leave a lovely blood blister on your hand. They only really itch at night when you are trying to sleep and BOY do they know how to make you itch.

Ants – Cutter ants ate through the straps and plastic on my rucksack, my mosquito net and sleeping bag but that didn´t involve pain or physical irritation.
Normal ants crawl all over you 24/7 and bite you when they feel bored, but they don´t cause to much pain.
Army ants (the little red ones) are the only critters which have made me strip off and jump into the amazon, each of there bites was a painful as a wasps bite and they are so small its really hard to remove them from your body, I got attacked by a load when I hacked down there tree.

Ticks -These little critters look like mini crabs, latch onto you when you brush against a tree then bite into you and burrow there head into your arm and suck blood as if there is no tomorrow. To remove them you need to burn them off or pinch them off. Luckily only had a few and they came off with just a bit of physical persuasion.

Fireflies – Something friendly, these dudes fly around and they have 2 sort of eyes which glow fluorescent green, I tried to catch one once but instead I hit it, it fell to the ground then it´s lights started getting dim until eventually they went out. I nearly cried.

There are other insects, most are dangerous and all need killing.

The Animals

In the Madidi it is possible to see Jaguars & Tapbeers (something from the Elephant family), and if you do a 20 day trek you would be very unlucky not to see these. So, sadly unlucky old me had to settle on just hearing them or seeing there footprints. I have however learnt how to talk to monkeys, I can now speak Spider Monkey, Cappachino Monkey, Howler Monkey and Squirrel Monkey! You make their sound and they will talk back to you even thought they are about 1 mile away, this was one of the highlights of my trip along with sneaking up on a tree full of spider monkeys and watching and listening to their reaction when they spot us.
Parrots flying over my head became normal and eagles and vultures camping above us was also a everyday occurrence.
The rarest animal we saw was a baby panther, the little dude walked down to the stream in the morning as we were just waking up, at first I thought it was a weasel but the guides assured me it wasn’t.

The Pain

I can talk about this for, well, pretty much 20 days solid. So I will just list the top 10.

10) Pains and cramps on my shoulders and backs from carrying 10000 kilos every day.

9) Standing or walking through trees which are solely designed to inflict pain on anyone walking through them, similar to bramble bushes or rose thorns but 10 times larger and more prickly

8) Stubbing my toes on the rocks for 3 days, I now have one black toenail ( i think it will make it ) and one toe nail waiting to fall off.

7) Jumping rafts only to slip, do the splits and rip my groin.

6) Falling off rafts and banging my knee of over sized rocks

5) Getting blisters on every one of my toes and watching the skin peel off my feet as a result of having drenched feet for 5 days in a row

4) The bees and wasps using me as a pin cushion

3) Army Ants getting all over your body biting the shit out of you

2) Playing football with local children for 40 minutes, 2 minutes before the end I stick my ankle in a pot hole hear it crack then watch it swell up to the size of a balloon. I couldn’t walk on it for 2 days.

1) At the top of this email I mentioned I didn’t really see mosquito’s, but I have got 2 bites from a UFO which has now been identified as a large mosquito bite. It has been stinging or biting me now for over 4 days, each day the pain is increasing and is becoming more frequent. I have now discovered I have been bitten by 2 big mosquito’s who have impregnated me with worms. Now the worms are inside me biting me when they get hungry, I have the following options to look forward to;

a) wait for 3 weeks for them to bore themselves out
b) wait a few more days and forcefully squeeze them out
c) get a cigarette on them and burn them out

Great!

The Highlights

Arriving in a small community of 50 families, showing the children magic and playing football with them.

Seeing the delights which was deforestation!! They hack down huge amounts of the jungle and replant it with banana trees, papaya trees and passion fruit. After 18 days of eating nothing fresh fruit has never tasted so good!

Talking to and watching monkeys

Rafting down stupid rapids, falling off and struggling to stay afloat.

Watching what my guides could make from trees and plants (flutes, fans, houses, bows and arrows, blow pipes etc..)

Breakfast

Meeting other tourists on the 13th day (just before I went insane) and travelling with them for the remaining 7 days!

—

So people, I am sorry this is so long, I have probably missed lots of interesting facts out, but I have already spent 5 hours writing this, re-writing it, getting drunk, returning, re-writing etc….

Oh and also I am sorry for not telling you all I wouldn’t write for 20 days, thanks to everyone for their concern.

Ciao for now, my non-insect friends.

Hola! people from around the world.

I am now sat in an internet cafe in the Amazon region of Bolivia (Rurrenabaque), to explain how I got here and what I have done before now will invlove me starting a new paragraph. Please bare with me.

Thanks, — Leaving Cusco I set off on a journey which cost me 70 Soles, stole 15 hours of my life and forced me to listen to children of different cultures´ crying. The bus drove back 7 hours to Puno (where I spent 4 days there 2 weeks ago) and then proceeded onto the first of my border crossing experiences somewhere in between Bolivia and Peru, as I live on a poxy Island somewhere to the west of Europe I have never experienced crossing a border where you can physically step on one side and proclaim “I am in Bolivia” then get forced back by the hordes of women carrying anything from wool to cows, and think “Bastard, back in Peru again”. This rigmarole lasted a good hour as at first I forgot to get an éxit´ stamp from Peru, so faught pointlessly to Bolivia just to get catapulted all the way back to Peru. After repeating this process a few more times I jumped back onto MY bus and sat the remaining 4 hours until I arrived in La Paz.

Arriving in Bolivia, or at least La Paz, was excellent. Everywhere I went in Peru there was always someone trying to grab me and force me into their hotel (sadly not beautiful women), or people shouting at me to get into there taxi. Bolivia was the complete opposite. Jumping in a taxi with an girl from Israel we checked into a hostal and read the ´Lonely Planets´ comments on Bolivia´s capitol ” The highest capital city in the world 3660m…….blah blah…..It´s nearly impossible to get lost”

So, after 2 hours of getting lost and walking up and down through La Paz attempting to find various locations we finally managed to book our trip for ´the most dangerous road in the world´ and found our way back to our hostal.

The next day we were crammed into a bus with lots of other people, bags and other bits and bobs and drove to the top of the mountain to start our 5 hour constant (excluding 20 minutes of uphill) downhill challange. After around 40 minutes of overtaking trucks, cars and other slower-than-us vehicles on tarmac we arrived at the start of the dirt road and as we were so high up (around 4600m) the visability was shocking, all we could see was around 5 meters in front of us and when you are riding on a road which is large enough for 1 car, with drops of 800m on your closest side this isn´t the most disirable of conditions to be speeding down there, but, being a very adventurous or either stupid person I joined the fast group and basically followed our guide down this hill at break neck speed, overtaking trucks with around 10 centermeters between the truck and the cliff!

For lunch we stopped at the point where an Israel girl fell to her death a few years before, she was riding on the right hand side of the road (drop is on the left) and as she went round the corner a truck came from the opposite direction so she panicked and swevered to avoid (as you would) but fell off the cliff to her death.

This was also the the point that I noticed that the I.D number on my bike was ´13´

So, I survived the death road, got a T-shirt to prove it then stayed in a small town called Corroico.

The the next day I went against my guide books´ advice “Riding a bus on the death road at night is suicidal” and spent 15 hours on bumby roads, at night, to reach where I am now, Rurrenabaque.

I have just returned from a 3 day trip ($20 a day) to the Pampas (wet lands surrounding the jungle, in the heart of the Amazon). Here I saw aligators, piranahas, those big rodent things (see my pictures), snakes, thousands of birds, frogs, stroked a sloth, swam in the Amazon with fresh water pink dolhpins (plus aligators and piranahas). Went fishing for anancondas, (in waist high water with our feet), found a black mamba, fished piranhas, fed monkeys and basically had the most amazing time ever !

I have been in Cuzco for over 2 weeks now, waiting to do the Inca trail, so when September the 24th arrived I was perfectly happy for Andean Life to wake up at 4.30am to start my trek.

Day 1
After the numerous hostel pick-ups the 14 of us, plus a few porters drove in a very comfortable minibus to our first stop. Breakfast. After 45 minutes of chatting with a lovely American girl called Yen, consuming a continental breakfast (Bread & Jam) and slurping sugary coffee until dubious ´milk´ was added I visited the female toilets and embarked on the bus again for the 30 minute drive to another town where, yet again, I forget the name. I will say this is probably the best town in Peru to purchase wooden walking sticks, coca leaves and if like me you only have 50 sole notes it´s also a great place to purchase toilet paper for the sole purpose to get change to buy the aforementioned sticks and leaves.
Hopping on our bus again we drove over rail tracks, gazed in amazement at the height of the snow peaked mountains, begged for seat-belts as we overtook other buses on blind corners of cliff roads and reversed over and over again to let other buses pass us on most-definite-one-way roads. We arrived at forgotten name place 3, received our sleeping mats and I received my 10 kilo sleeping bag, to which after purchasing some belt strap type things I managed to ´secure´ it to my now over weighted and incredibly uncomfortable ruck sack. (I am sure you will understand that after trekking 28 Miles, with altitudes ranging from 2,450m and 4,198m I was really glad to put my bag down for the final time on the 4th day!)

So, after getting out passports stamped with the first of the Inca Trail´ stamps we headed off over a wobbly bridge to commence our trek.

The first day trekking was relatively easy with frequent informational stops, food breaks and tutorials on how to squash small cocooned insects and wipe their blood on your face (I forget the reason behind this). We also, well, I also played with a piglet and had lunch.

I will briefly explain about the porters and our chefs. They carry 25 kilos, walk very fast and cook the most amazing, un-imaginable 3 course meals, 3 times a day. A insight to what food we had to eat on our trek; fresh soup followed by a main course of meat and rice with stuffed peppers, then for afters pancakes with caramel sauce. Nice.

The remainder of the day involved, believe it or not, walking until we reached our already erected camp site. We all jumped into tents and after eating dinner, we went to sleep at around 8.00pm in preparations for the infamous day 2.

Day 2

After possibly the worst nights sleep I ever had, we had breakfast whilst I moaned to various people about waking up at 1.00am and failing to get back to sleep.
Day 2 lived up to it´s reputation, it was really cold in the morning so we all had jumpers, hats and gloves on. After the first 5 minutes of ridiculous step climbing we all stopped at the top and removed every item of clothing we had just put on!
The remainder of the day involved many ´fake tops´ which, if you are familiar with annoying soul-destroying moments in life you will probably find walking to the top of a massive mountain only to discover another mountain just as large hidden behind it a normal everyday experience. What a bastard.

The last part of the day was walking back down the other side of the highest mountain to our camp site. Down hill, what a blessing!! What a pain in the arse, possibly because I only had 5 hours sleep, sat on and broke my walking stick and felt like my knee´s belonged on a arthritic wooden rocking horse being ridden by an obese power lifter, whilst working on his daily 50 kilo lifts.

I got to the camp, ate tea, slept for 2 hours, woke up in 2 hours for dinner, ate dinner, slept for 10 more hours.

It´s also worth mentioning that on the hardest part of the second day I met two more people who live in Macclesfield, they live on South Acre Drive and know the Mantons, the Grimeses and I used to know their son.
Lynn and Carl Kirby?
When they get back to England say hello to them will you please Chris or Johnny!

Day 3
Another early start, waking up to the sound of rain splashing on our tent, the screams of the brave people attempting to shower themselves in subzero temperatures and a lovely cup of Manzilla tea brought to our tent. Donning my rain coat, rain cover for my rucksack and feeling incredibly refreshed we set off for yet another ridiculous climb up steps so steep they would make Shaquile O´Neil complain nearly as much as we did.
Living in England I am used to rain, so for the 3 hours which is pissed it down uncontrollably I was in my element, because walking at around 4000m above sea level is really tuff on your breathing due to the lack of oxygen, but when it rains all of a sudden you can breathe again, so I pretty much shot up the first few mountains and for the remainder of the day myself and Irish Andrew jogged down the crazy steep steps.
Day 3 was by far the nicest scenery I had ever seen, admit ably it was clouded over 90% of the day but we walked through cloud forests, past ruins, Inca terraces oh and I saw an Andean turkey!
When we finally arrived at our base camp we ate dinner, tipped our porters, guides and chefs (“use donkeys or llamas”) and then proceeded to consume alcohol, blessed alcohol! We also shared some alcohol with Pachamama (mother earth) to thank her in advance for letting tomorrow be a cloud free experience.

Day 4
“Pachamama is a bitch”
We all stupidly agreed that waking up at 3.30am to be the first group at the check-in point would be a wise Idea, which if the weather was fine it would have been an idea as wise as the wisest man´s wisest thought.
After waiting for the gates to open we burst through them as if chasing a fake rabbit on a track and started to trek the last remaining part of the Inca Trail.
2 hours of steps, slipping and getting shouted at for setting a ridiculous pace we arrived at the ´sun gate´, the place with the postcard view of Machu Pichu. Luckily for us however we got to see the non-commercial view, grey mist.
After relaxing and complementing each other we set off again to the main site wincing our eyes together to see if we had the magic x-ray vision superman had, bizarrely enough we didn’t. So after waiting 10 minutes we bit the bullet and left the high part of Machu Pichhu to check in our bags and get the finally stamp in our passport.
After 20 minutes of relaxing, preparing ourselves to walk around Machu Pichu in the fog I assume Pachamama must have woke up blurry eyed and realised we got her drunk for free so decided to sort out the weather for us. (sorry for calling you a bitch)
As the clouds slowly moved we caught a glimpse of the most spectacular view, Winapicchu and her surrounding mountain buddies. In 10 minutes all the clouds had disappeared and the sun started to burn away at our now mud tanned bodies, it was glorious and defiantly worth the 28 miles of insane trekking we had done. The only problem was though, after 28miles of insane trekking the last thing we wanted to do was walk around and look at the place we had trekked 28 miles to see! But we had come all this way, so we did.

A lot of us climbed Wynapichu, which is the mountain at the back of the postcard view you will have probably seen, and after reaching the summit felt like a relief like no other.

Machu Pichu rocked.

Day 4 (night)

Waking up at 3.30am, walking 2 hours to Machu Pichu then climbing up another mountain, then going out to get drunk until 5.30am the following day isn´t sensible if you were planning to sit on a bus for 15 hours to Bolivia the next day. So I didn´t, I waited until the next day before getting on the bus.

Fin

Sorry about the length of this , if you don’t want to read it all, read this bit first.

“I had a great time”

Speak to you from Bolivia in a few days.

What´s up peeps? Sadly I haven´t got many exciting stories, I have just been relaxing and studying in Cusco, I never thought I would actually sit in my hostel and study for 2 hours a night but I have been, and I have completed 28 hours of intense Spanish lessons.

Cusco is OK, in fact it would be even better if it wasn’t for the bastard touts. I don’t understand why so many people want to clean the 2cm of extruding sole on my shoe. I didn’t clean my own shoes in England when I was earning money, what makes people think I would pay to get my shoes cleaned?

However, saying all this I have been here now for around 2 weeks so is starting to feel a little like home – with added llama.

My budget is getting slowly back on track as I have started investing in bread rolls, tins of “Fanny” tuna (only the English people in this mail will find the funny side to this) or eating at the local market where a bowl of rice, eggs and chips costs 20p.

The other day I had to get up to walk to some Inca ruins, which as the name suggests are buildings which are now ruined, made by Incas. Our planned trek would have allowed us to see 7 of the most spectacular sites around Cusco, but seeing as we were still blurry eyed from the night before we some how missed 4 of them, and couldn’t be bothered seeing the last one.

I have also been on my first trek, organised by my school, it was an 8 hour trek but myself and an American girl shot of and managed it in 5 hours. We then sat at the end of the trek and waited 3 hours for the others with nothing to look at apart from the “Holy Water” at this very religious site. This “Holy Water” is meant to cure you of cancer, aids and free your mind of bad shit etc..

I suppose death from water poisoning is a cure for the afformentioned.

So that’s it, oh, I chatted to two people from Cheshire who happened to live on Beech Lane and drink in the same local as we used to “The Ship”

Ever so sorry I haven’t lost, dropped or broke anything.

Rob.
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(EDIT)
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Since I wrote this draft I have broke something!

I went out for a pizza and meal with my friends from School. After the meal we ventured into a night club, which, bizarrely had walls built by the Inca people. Anyway, after a few cervezas I placed myself carefully on a glass table to chat to a chap from Wales (see where this is going?)
Now either the conversation got exciting or the alcohol I was drinking altered my weight, but, either way the table smashed from underneath me shattering shards of bottles, table and wine glasses all over the club. The best part of this was the music in the club was stupidly loud, yet luckily for me my table smashing antics were louder, so every one in the club turned round and stared.

30 soles to pay for a replacement (4pounds)!

Ciao for now.

After our 5 hour journey from Arequipa, with the delights of watching “Maid in Manhattan” dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles, passing fields full of Llamas, sheep, deer and other four-legged-money-making-animals we arrived safely in Puno; the land of high altitude (3860m), cocaine leaves, rain and the home of the worlds highest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca.

It should also be famous for making people leave things, Jurgen left his coat on the bus, to which on return it we discovered it had been stolen. Then we went to get some money out of the ATMs, I entered my pin-number, whilst being very secretive of my finger movements, withdrew the equivalent of 34 pounds, carefully placed the money into my wallet, then walked downstairs to the bank to change my newly acquired money into smaller notes. (No where in Peru seems to accept notes larger than 50 soles, 7 pounds) Money changed, bonus!

All of a sudden a police man pulled me to one side and handed me my receipt which I left in the machine, he muttered something else in Spanish, probably to the effect of “you stupid fool showing people how much money you have” which, I suppose if he had muttered that it would have been a fair mutter. “Si Si, Gracias” I thanked him for his concern, twisted on my heal and headed for the door.

The next Policeman who stopped me seemed more concerned than the first, so much so that he wouldn’t accept my nodding and “Si Si, Gracias” as a reasonable response to his conversation. “No problemo” I said confidently, “Uno momento” (Ok I lied, I can speak Spanish!)….I then turned around to grab my American, Spanish speaking friend, Mark.

After a few minutes it was clear that something a little more serious was happening. The police man was making “beep beep” sounds and miming key-pressing actions with his hands.

“Rob, did you take your cash card out of the machine?”……

I hadn’t, in fact It seemed I didn’t even bother to press the button which said “No more transactions” and walked away from the cash machine, leaving full access to my account. I feared the worst, assuming the policeman’s miming was a perfect description of a “bandito” withdrawing all my money, making “beep beep” sounds of glee then fleeing off to purchase all the Llama affiliated products he (or she) could buy.

Luckily, I found out the machine got bored of waiting for me and decided that eating my card would be a more entertaining use of its primitive time. So after waiting for a Peruvian half an hour (1 hour) I had my card returned to me, hopefully, not financially lighter!

The next day, after a night out on the town and a speaking to a really rude girl from Singapore we left to go to Lake Titicaca. The crazy thing about travelling is every thing you experience seems to be the most amazing thing you have experienced yet, this was no different. Firstly we visited a small Island made entirely out of reeds, then we learnt that the reeds are used for everything (food, toothbrushes, buildings, beds, curtains, boats) then we were allowed to wonder around this beautiful island, entering their houses and taking photographs of their way of life.

The most beautiful thing happened next, I, as some of you may know can do a simple magic trick which involves shoving a hankie into my hand and make it disappear. A little nervous, I sat down next to 4 really small island children and displayed my trick, at first they were just fascinated by the fact I had a red silky hankie and missed the point that I had then made it disappear. I repeated the trick to the warming sight of smiles and laughter “uno mas” (1 more) they begged, so I repeated the trick again, then more children arrived, again I repeated.

After a while with a smile of satisfaction I walked away, but got called over to the Dad of the island who wanted to see what the commotion was all about. Slightly worried I would be decapitated for preaching voodoo practices, I displayed the same trick to this 50-ish year old dude. He watched, amazed. His smile beemed from side to side and he laughed. The next time I did this trick he worked out how I did it, very rare. He pointed at me and laughed hard, real hard! The kind of laugh you do when your friend has just fallen over into a puddle of piss.

Amazing.

We then set sail to an Island inhabited by around 2000 people, and stayed with a local family with a house with no electricity, TV, phones or an inside toilet. These people were so warm, they cooked us 3 meals, spoke to us in Spanish (Quechua is their native language), joined in with our photo taking, loved looking at photos of my friends and family and hugged and kissed us when we gave them presents of rice, tuna and oil. We scaled the top of this island, which after a short game of football at 4400m above sea level was a bit of a nightmare! The altitude killed us, and the short climb was similar to climbing Everest, drunk.
At night our family (forgot about you already Mum & Dad) dressed us up in Ponchos and hats and walked us in darkness to the local village dance hall, where we danced the night away to a 5 piece local band., using only their very simple and bizarre dances!

I will briefly mention what we did in the next island as I am sure you all have important things to do.
We learnt about how the Takelia people wear hats to display there marital status, happiness and power. We learnt how the men throw stones at women to chat them up, purchased more things to make me look like a stereotypical traveller and ate various forms of coca leaves, monilla leaves and some rare stone type stuff to help us acclimatise to the altitude.

So another fun few days, tomorrow I am off to Cuzco where I will spend 2 weeks doing stuff related stuff.

I have to write frequently or I will forget what I have done, well,
forget the fine details. (Like teaching Peruvian girls the “big fish
little fish” dance)

So, since my last email a few days ago I have arrived in Arequpia. I
could quite happily live here, its so relaxed and very beautiful with
views of mountains surrounding the whole town. Ive done the typical
tourist things like visiting a huge Monastry, eating alpaca (llama),
eating alpaca kebabs (filthy horse type creature) and now have food
poisoining!! Some guy fixed my camera, some pigeons have landed on me,
I have eaten crepes and have bought pointless presents for anyone who
visits me when I return.

Fun parts, I have rafted down Rio Chile river which has class 1, 2 , 3
, 4 rapids, this was absoultey amazing. You would be suprised at how
much of a bond you can create with 4 people when your life (or warmth)
depends on it. We also saw some funky bird which rides the rapids for
fun, really, really amusing to watch.

The following day we rented bikes and set off through mad traffic and
headed towards the mountains, the rental place provided us with a map
but the map failed to list road names. So we got lost. Favellas
(correct spelling?) are houses built on mountains usually for very
poor people, we ended up cycling around here. Everytime we met a
Peruvian person we were greated with either curious frowns, huge
beaming smiles or wolf whistles!

As I said, I have food poisoning now and to pin point what I have
eaten to give me this would be a impossible. It could have been from
the resturant where we went in, sat down waiting for the menu and just
got given a soup full of bones, potatoes and other bizarre foreign
objects which are usally only seen in autopsies. However, saying that
it might have been from the Llama kebabs I bought whilst strolling
back drunk from a night club, kebabs and alcohol. Another Universal
thing.

Anyhow, the people at my hostel are only to happy to help me with my
illness. They rub their belly, make some kind of downward flushing
action with their hands and hips then give me the remedy in Spanish.
I just nod lots, say “si si, gracias” then empty my bowels none the
wiser.

Tomorrow I am off to Puno where we will chill on Lake Titticaka.

Take care people!

Rob

Ok Ive done a fair bit this week, last time I wrote to you all I
explained it was cheap out here. Which, don’t get me wrong, it is.
However there are lots of things which aren’t so cheap and makes the
whole budgeting process a little, well, variable.
After my last email I went around the Ballestas islands and started at
large amounts of sea lions, pelicans, dolphins and a copious amount of
“guana” (bird shit) which is actually imported from Peru and sold to
other countries for something or other. I then entered the desert
whilst wearing a jumper and hat (see my photos for proof) we went to
see flamingos but a few pink birds weren’t as spectacular as the
vastness of the desert. We also saw some dead mummified paracas people
who enjoyed stretching there skulls.
That night my new friend Jurgen (who I am still travelling with now)
and 2 local Peruvian girls went to watch Miss Pisco 2005. This must
have been the largest event in their calender, they had singers all
the way from the city, lights, speakers and even stadium seating. They
also splashed out on a 70s disco CD . Myself and Jurgen where the only
tourists there and we had to enter through a small door attached to an
enormous metal gate (Peru is very security concsious). I entered first
and felt very strange, eyes turned on us and as we were late we didn’t
have a seat, but alas this didn’t matter! Two handsome tourists get
rights over the locals so after the ushers removed some locals from
there seat we had front row sitting. The girls were beautiful, but not
so beautiful when we found out some were 15 yeas old. I was staring at
there costumes only, I promise.
After 5 hours of duet Spanish singing we decided we couldn’t really
care which girl won so left at 2am.
The next day we set off to Ica and Huachina (a small oasis in the
middle of a desert) we got a sand dune buggy to take us around the
desert at break neck speed. If you ever get the opportunity to ride in
a sand dune buggy around the desert, do so. We were dropping
practically vertically off dunes around 1000 meters high, then banking
so steeply it was a wonder we didn’t roll over. At one point I swear I
saw boba fett fall into the sand beast thing from star wars (help me
out here Ben) We then commenced the Sand Boarding, this was insane as
well!! I will cut this part short, but we eventually went down a dune
2000 meters high, at stupid speeds. Falling off was OK though, as it
was just sand, sand which enjoys living in parts of my body that
others don’t!
I dropped my camera to, so this is well and truely broken. I will have
to buy another one today if i cant get it fixed.
Next was Nasca, a very historical place famous for the “nasca lines”
— which is effectively old people graffiti. No asbos for these
people I guess.
For $50 I had a 30 minute flight over them all, sat next to the pilot.
The plane only held 5 people so I am sure you can imagine the
intensity of it, in fact it was so intense the plane before me
EVERYONE was sick. I got on, and after 15 minutes fell asleep.

We then visited the burial ground of the Nasca people, thousands of
dead people propped up in small crypt type things. Excellent for
tourists who enjoy dead people. We were probably what you call a
little disrespectful, laughing at there silly boney faces with huge
rasta hair.

I am in Arequipa now.

Tomorrow I will be rafting down the second biggest canyon in the
world, then after that trekking to volcanoes to see some condors.

I have put some pictures here

http://www.buzznet.com/burb