Chaska in South America

It’s been two whole weeks since I’ve posted anything. The past two weeks have been really busy and I haven’t had any time at all to sit in an internet cafe for long enough to blog. I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I’m in Cuzco now and have been for about a week and a half. The last post I wrote was from Arequipa and I think I was about to go to Colca Canyon. Colca Canyon is the second deepest canyon in the world (deeper than the Grand Canyon) …the deepest is also near Arequipa, but I can’t remember the name right now. Matt and I went to the canyon on a two day tour. Aside from both getting really sick just before going, we had a really great time. We both had gotten sick with major stomach problems (not pretty)…we’re not sure exactly from what, but probably something we ate or drank…it’s kind of inevitable here in Peru! Anyway, we got along really well with everyone in our group, and we had a CRAZY guide that kept things interesting. Colca turned out to be absolutely beautiful and we were able to do a lot in the two days. The scenery along the four hour drive was incredible, and we stayed in a town called Chivay for the night where we got to go to some really nice thermal baths, which was great because it was freezing there! The second day we visited several tiny traditional towns and saw about 7 or 8 condors. Since it’s the rainy season in the canyon, the condors don’t always come out…we got really lucky! Here are some pictures from our trip.

These are some little girls that were at a rest stop along the drive to the canyon.

Here’s a woman making sweaters to sell…there were set ups like this one all along the route during the two days because there are so many tourist buses that do the route regularly.

We had stopped at this rest stop to drink mate de coca (tea made from coca leaves), because it’s supposed to help with altitude sickness. I can’t remember the highest altitude we reached, but it was higher than Cuzco. Here Matt’s feeding the left over coca leaves from his tea to an alpaca that was there.

These are vicuñas. They’re related to the llama and alpaca but are much smaller and run fast. Our guide told us that the one in the front of a group is always a male and that the ones behind him are all females.

This woman was the owner of all the alpacas and llamas you see in the background. She let us go down and get close to them.

Along the road, there were TONS of these rock towers. According to Incan tradition, if you stack at least five rocks and make a wish, the wish will come true when the tower falls. We’ll see if my wish comes true!

This is the highest point we reached. That’s the town of Chivay below, where we stayed the night.

Colca Canyon.

Another shot of the canyon.

Here’s most of our group. Signe (Denmark), Christian (Austria), Darius (Germany), Miguel and Leticia (Spain), Cesar (our Peruvian Guide), and of course Matt.

We waited forever for the condors to come out, and many people left because they thought they weren’t coming. We waited, and they finally came out. They were amazing! One flew just beneath us, and we could see his full wingspan and his crest…I didn’t get a picture though. In fact, I didn’t get any good pictures up close. Here’s one from afar soaring in front of the mountain.

The whole time we were driving in the canyon, we kept having to stop abruptly because there was a shepard with sheep, a herd of cattle or llamas, or a person on a donkey, like this one, in our way. It was wonderful!

After returning from Colca, we stayed in Arequipa for a couple more days, and then had plans to leave for Cuzco. We purchased our first class tickets for a day trip and were sure our bus experience would be far better than the bus ride to Arequipa…we were wrong. Upon arriving to the bus station on Tuesday morning, we were informed (after about an hour of confusion) that our bus was broken and we wouldn’t be able to go directly to Cuzco. After about another hour of confusion, we finally figured out that our only option was to go to a town called Puno and then catch a bus to Cuzco from there (they told us it would be no problem getting one there.) We took the six hour ride to Puno, and then when getting there realized that they getting a bus to Cuzco was not as easy as they told us it would be. We would either have to wait till really late that night or till the next morning. We decided that we didn’t want another night bus experience if we didn’t absolutely have to, so we opted to stay in Puno and leave early the next morning. We tried to buy our tickets for the next morning, but were told that we could only make a reservation…and we were assured that we had “two seats in the middle”. Sure enough, they did have our tickets ready for us in the morning and we had seats number 25 and 26….the only thing was that when boarding the bus we soon found out that we weren’t the only ones with seats 25 and 26. We were told that we should just be patient, and we would only have to stand for about 45 minutes till we got to a town called Juliaca…you imagine our faces at this point. Luckily, we ended up finding two seats that happened to be empty…not everyone was so lucky. That 7 hour bus ride from Puno to Cuzco was the WORST bus ride I have ever experienced. I can’t even really fully describe it…I wish I had a video. The bus was full of some of the most “interesting people” I have ever seen. In two seats, there would be two adults and like two kids, along with about 80 million different bags and packages. The bottom of the bus (where our backpacks had to go) was jampacked haphazardly with another 80 million boxes, bags, blankets, tires, you name it. These people just loved to eat and anytime the bus would stop for a few minutes there was a mad rush off the bus to buy some sort of appetizing food to eat on the bus right next to us…for example, a boiled sheep head in a plastic bag. The trash was then always either thrown on the floor of the bus or right out the window into the beautiful Andean scenery…there was once a yelp from some poor person hit in the head below. At the time, Matt and I were so miserable and couldn’t even really laugh because it was so shocking…now we crack up about it and it’s become a good story. I hope I don’t have to experience that again, but I have a feeling that’s just the beginning of our unpleasant bus trips.

Here is a shot of Lake Titicaca from the bus ride from Arequipa to Puno. Puno is right on the Lake and there are tours you can take out to several islands…we hope to return to do that.

We finally made it to Cuzco a day later than planned and for the first few days, the weather was warm and absolutely beautiful. My friend Leeza and her boyfriend Pepe arrived to Cuzco on Friday, Christmas Eve. Leeza and I have been been friends for several years. She and I met when studying abroad in Alicante, Spain and have been really good friends since. She also lived in Madrid with me for four months of my time there, and we’ve travelled all over Spain and Europe together. This was actually our second Christmas abroad together…two years ago we spent Christmas in Venice, Italy. Leeza is now living part time in Monterey, Mexico, and that’s where she met her boyfriend Pepe. The day they arrived, the weather turned bad. It’s been raining and cold ever since. Regardless, we had an awesome week together! We spent Christmas Eve with my Peruvian family at my aunt’s house and then had Christmas Day lunch at my other aunt’s. Matt’s friend Kerstin arrived Monday morning, and Pepe, Leeza, and I went to Machu Picchu Monday and Tuesday. Matt will go with Kerstin later. We stayed in the town near Machu Picchu called Aguas Calientes for a night and went to Machu Picchu on Tuesday. It was my second time visiting Machu Picchu (I visited it when I was 15), and it was still shockingly beautiful. We had SO much luck the day we went and it didn’t rain the whole time we were there. It poured the day before and it poured the day after. Here are some pictures from Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

Matt and my cousin Fernando sitting in the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco. On Christmas Eve the plaza was packed with stands and people. The campesinos (country people) come down for this day to sell their crafts and also to get free chocolate for the kids…there were huge lines of campesinos waiting in line to get this chocolate. They also all slept in the plaza the night before the 24th.

Fernando and I in the Plaza de Armas, in front of one of the churches, called La Compania.

Here’s the other church in the plaza, La Catedral.

The center of the Plaza de Armas.

Do these two look familiar? They are the Spanish couple who were in our tour group to Colca Canyon. Their names are Miguel and Leticia, and they are so wonderful. We randomly ran into them at the bus station in Arequipa and then again at the train station in Cuzco. They’ve become our really good friends. They also happened to be going to Machu Picchu the same day as me, so we went up together. It’s so funny how many people we keep running into from previous places we’ve been.

Leeza and Pepe had just arrived! Pepe felt really sick from the altitude and had to stay in bed for the afternoon while Matt, Leeza, and I walked around.

Leeza and I at the top of Mirador San Blas with Cuzco behind us.

This is in Aguas Calientes, the town next to Machu Picchu. You can see how jungly the area is there…Machu Picchu is at the start of some jungle. This is actually the road up to the thermal baths there. The scenery around was absoulutely beautiful, but these thermal baths were not nearly as nice as the onces in Chivay. In fact, they were really disgusting and dirty and Leeza and I decided to leave…Pepe didn’t seem to mind though and stayed for several hours to get his money’s worth.

Machu Picchu is at the top of a mountain right next to Aguas Calientes. You can take a bus, but we decided to hike to the top. Leeza and Pepe decided to leave a little earlier, and I went with my Spanish friends Miguel and Leticia. This is the the path up to the top…all stairs for about an hour and a half! We were supposed to meet up with Pepe and Leeza once at Machu Picchu but ended up never finding each other.

Once you reach the top of the zillion stairs, you’re rewarded by this.

We planned to hike to the top of Hayna Picchu, which is the small mountain in the photos behind Machu Picchu, but we ended up not having enouy time. Leeza and Pepe did it though and said it was pretty amazing.

Yesterday was Leeza and Pepe’s last day here. Leeza and I decided to do horseback ride to several ruins just outside of Cuzco. Pepe and my cousin Fernando decided to go somewhere else. I absolutely love riding horses, and even though it rained much of the time, I loved every minute of the trip.

Leeza on her horse, Viento. The scenery was so beautiful!

This was our guide, Omar. He’s 11 years old and absolutely adorable…I seriously wanted to take him home with me. When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he told me he wanted to do karate. He works as a horse guide during his vacations to save up money for karate classes.

We rode through tiny little pueblos that were just so picturesque.

A baby llama along the ride.

Leeza and I with some of the ruins fromTambomachay behind us. I have a lot more pictures of the ruins we saw yesterday, but my camera’s battery just ran out and I can’t download them, so this is it for now.

One last photo. The other night, a bunch of us went out together and had a really fun night. From the right, Miguel, Leticia, me, Kerstin, Matt, Leeza, Pepe, Fernando, and Fernando’s friend Johan.

The last two weeks have been super busy, and I can’t believe how much I’ve done in such a short period of time. Kerstin, Matt’s friend, will be here till the 8th, so we’ll stay in Cuzco till then. Matt and Kerstin are doing a lot on their own, so I’m going to enjoy just spending some time with my family here and may go to a couple small towns on my own for a couple nights. I’m looking forward to just taking it easy for little while before starting up some major travelling again. I hope all you have a great New Year’s Eve tomorrow night, whatever you do. I look forward to hearing from all of you about how your holidays went.

Matt and I arrived to Lima last Friday. I’ll have to say that even though I’ve been here several times, it was still a shock upon arriving. Argentina is so European that I didn’t really experience any culture shock at all when first arriving…Peru is very different from Argentina!!! We got to Lima Friday morning and luckily one of my mom’s cousins came to collect us from the airport…we were kind of in a daze from only having about 30 minutes of sleep the night before, and things would have been pretty interesting if we had to get a taxi ourselves. My mom’s cousin, Susanna, got a taxi for us and took us to our hostel and was such a huge help! She also took us to a really typical Peruvian restaurant for lunch (which we would have NEVER gone in without her), and we had an awesome lunch for $2 each. Susanna also gave us the lowdown on how to take a “combi”, which is the Peruvian form of public transportation. There aren’t normal buses like in Buenos Aires, just small bus/van things that pick you up and drop you off where ever you want along their route. It’s a bit scary to jump on one if you don’t know what do do and say, so it’s so great that Susanna was able to tell us how to do it…otherwise, again, we would have NEVER done it on our own. Taxi’s are different here in Peru than in Argentina too…there aren’t any meters or anything, so you have to use your bargaining skills to get a price for the journey before you jump in the car. Most foreigners get charged WAY too much because they don’t know how to bargain. Within the 3 days spent in Lima, Matt and I got pretty good to bargaining our taxi rides and taking the combis…we were pretty proud of ourselves, although I’m sure we got ripped off a couple times. One really stupid thing I did while in Lima, right at the start, was I left my organizer on the seat of the taxi that took us to our hostel…I could have killed myself when I realized what I did! I didn’t have anything like money or anything like that in it, but I lost all phone numbers, addresses, email addresses and all contact info I had gotten from people prior to coming to South America. Oh well, hopefully that’s the worst thing I lose along this trip.
Matt and I left Lima Monday afternoon, after spending the whole morning trying to get our yellow fever vaccine that we need in order to get into Brazil from Peru…it was a pain in the butt, but we finally got it done. I swear Brazil better be amazing…you can’t imagine the trouble we’ve gone through to get there!!! We went to a tiny coastal town called Pisco that is just a few hours by bus from Lima and stayed one night there. While in Pisco, we took an excursion out the some islands called Las Islas Ballestas (called the poor man’s Gallapagos in our guide book.) It was really cool…mcuch better than I imagined. We went in small motor boat with a guide and about 20 ohter people. We saw so many animals, it was amazing. We saw dolphins, sea lions, and zillions of birds…including penguins! After Pisco we went to a town called Ica, where we spent one night. We visited a couple local bodegas (wineries) where they make wine and pisco (the most typical Peruvian alcohol), a modern one and one that is super old and traditional…they dance on the grapes to smash out the juice! They do that in March though, so we didn’t get to see them do it. While in Ica, we actually stayed in a tiny town just outside of Ica called Huacachina. It’s right in the middle of enormous sand dunes and we rented a couple sand boards (meaning a piece of wood with velcro straps on it) and went sand boarding…not as cool as I thought it would be since the wooden planks don’t work so well. We left Ica Wednesday night and took an overnight bus to Arequipa, where we are now. Oh my god, that bus ride was one of the craziest experiences. The bus driver seriously was going like 80 miles an hour on tiny moutain roads and even around sharp corners. He also loved passing up huge trucks on the two lane road with traffic coming quickly in our dirrection…I honestly thought we were going to die several times. Not exactly the easiest conditions for falling asleep…Matt and were absolutely bewildered by all the snoring Peruvians surrounding us. Thanks to our maniac bus driver, we made it to Arequipa in record time and arrived two hours early, despite leaving an hour late. Matt and I have decided to only take first class buses from now on…the driving may not be any better, but at least we’ll die in class!
So, anyway now we’re in Arequipa. We’re staying with some relatives of mine whom I just met for the first time yesterday. They are really friendly and are so nice for having us stay with them, but at times we feel a bit “trapped”… they insist on always eating with them, doing things with them, etc. Again though, they are SO nice for accepting two more or less strangers into their home!!! Arequipa is a really nice little town with a really beautiful center and a lot to see and do. We went out with my cousin and his girlfriend last night and had a really fun night…Matt is absolutely LOVING all the female attention he’s getting here in Peru. You should have seen him last night, just surrounded by beautiful girls on that dance floor! As my uncle called them today, “casadores de gringos” (gringo hunters.) Tomorrow, Matt and I are planning to take a two day excursion into Colca Canyon, a nearby canyon where we are going to go see condors. Well, here are some photos from this past week!

This is the Plaza de Armas in Lima. It is SO much nicer and cleaner than I remember it being when I last visited it about 10 years ago. All of Lima is actually really clean. There are people in little orange suits sweeping up constantly. It was especially noticeable to us since we were coming from Buenos Aires, which is definitely not the cleanest city in the world.

The plaza was all decorated for Christmas. It was really pretty.

Here’s a picture of a hill in Lima. You can see the pueblo joven, which is what the shanty towns that surround Lima are called. We really got to see a ton of pueblos jovenes on our way out of Lima by bus…it was pretty incredible to see the living conditions.

The coast in Lima. This day was actually a little bit sunny. It’s rarely sunny in Lima.

This is my mom’s cousin Susanna who helped us out so much. Our hostel was just across from this park, yes that is a statue of Kennedy…the park is called Parque Kennedy.

Matt enjoying a nice refreshing Incakola…the most popular soda in Peru. It tastes like bubble gum and looks like pee.

We went to my mom’s uncle’s house for lunch one day. These are some of my family…Uncle Cansio, Jose, Vilma, and Susanna. Oh yes, we had Incakola!

My cousin Erin is living in Lima with her husband Tim. They teach in an international school. We met with them one afternoon.

These are what the combis look like. There’s always a guy at the door yelling out the route to people on the sidewalk.

This, on the other hand, is the public transportation in Pisco. They’re fun to ride around in! The church in the back had a big banner with a National Geographic on it. We think maybe it was in National Geographic?

This is the Plaza de Armas (main plaza) in Pisco.

This was on our trip out the Islas Ballestas. All the little black things underneath the arc are sealions.

Penguins!!!! They were so cute.
These are Peruvian boobies!

This was on the way out to the islands. They aren’t exactly sure who did it…either the Nazcas or the Incas. We decided not to go to Nazca because we were told that you can’t really see the lines without going up in a plane. It was cool to see this though!

This was our hostel in Ica, or actually Huacachina. It was basically a gringo haven…so many gringos! It looks a lot nicer than it actually was. The bathrooms were absolutely discusting!!

Matt checking out the slopes.

This was our tour guide to the bodegas, Williams. He was actually our taxi driver on the way to the hostel and convinced us to do the tour of the wineries with him. He was a really nice guy! They put all the grapes in that big cement thing and dance on them, then put the big log down to get the rest of the juice.

Me and williams. They keep the wine in those big ceramic things behind us…all just piled up in that room like that.

Here’s a painting of how they dance on the grapes. If you go in March, you can actually jump in and join them!

Yes, we got to taste it! It was all really good, but the pisco was super strong.

This is my uncle (not my uncle, but I’m not sure what to call him) in Arequipa. He showed us all around yesterday.

This is the whole family. Floro, Josefina (my grandfather’s cousin), and Jose.

The cathedral in the Plaza de Armas in Arequipa.

The central market here in Arequipa. It’s huge and really cool.

You can just barely see it behind all the haze, but this the Volcano Misti here in Arequipa.

The river here in Arequipa.

This is my cousin Jose and his girlfriend Brenda.

Here’s Matt last night, just loving all the attention he’s getting from las Peruanas!

Yay!!!! This was in a market in Lima…it was the name of the little shop. Chaska, for those of you who don’t know, means star in Quechua (the Incan language.) Wasi means house.

Wow! Tonight is my last night in Argentina. I have to really hurry with this post because I don't have much time! The south was absolutely beautiful...breathtaking really. Matt and I spent a week total down ... [Continue reading this entry]