Los Aventuras de Edmundo y Linda

Took a 10 hour bus ride to Arequipa and arrived at 5:30am. We didn´t sleep much on the bus because the heat was on full blast and we were sweating like crazy. The whole bus stunk because of the sweaty, discusting people. Had a free breakfast at the hostel. Met Kealy & Nico, a cool Austrialian/Argentinian couple. Slept for many hours on the hammocks on the roof and did some city exploring.

Left the hostel at 8am to Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. The bus ride to the canyon took us over 5000m above sea level. Everyone on the bus had altitude sickness and had to drink coca tea and chew coca leaves or take pills. One man even had to take a ride back to Arequipa because he was having problems with his heart. We saw lots of cool lamas and alpacas, man are they cool and cute! We ate some that night and they were really tasty! Did a hike up to some pre-Inca tombs and lookout over the valley and then went to some hotsprings. Stayed overnight in a town called Chivay.

Left our hostel in Chivay at 6am and did a hike through part of Colca Canyon. The canyon was about 3500m deep at the point we visited but gets to over 4000m in some places. We saw tons of HUGE condors flying around the canyon. There wing span is about 2.8m! Took the bus back to Arequipa and sang along with the sweet 90s tunes the driver was playing. Said bye to Nico and Kealy… thanks for the book!

We enjoyed the fantastic view from our hostel, while eating free breakfast, which Edmundo thinks is awesome because he writes it down in our journal everytime. The hostel is really cool, it has been converted from an old farm. We spent most of the day walking around the main square (Plaza de Armas). We also looked for warm clothes since our bags got stolen in Huacachina, Peru. During the night we enjoyed an awesome meal, even though Edmundo was still a sicko.

We went to a few stores to replenish our gifts and did many walks back and forth to the hostel. The Plaza de Armas was full of people today, because of the Festival del Sol celebrations. We checked out the parade and festivities. We decided to cook our own meals and went to the supermarket. It´s cheaper and we are also way over budget. We also stopped at a delicious bakery on our way back to the hostel.

Woke up at 6am. We both didn´t sleep much because Linda was coughing all night. We met some friends at the Plaza de Armas at 7am. We grabbed a small bite to eat and then walked to get a seat on a dirt hill overlooking the festival area. We arrived about 6 hours early and it wasn´t even that good. Peruvians were throwing rocks at other people standing up and blocking their view and thousands broke through police barricades to sit on the ruins to see the festivities. Later that night we meet some Brazilians, French and Americans and all had a mini fiesta at the hostel.

We decided to walk around town very slowly, because were waiting for our bus to Arequipa, Peru.  We were so hot cause we left our long underwear on all day.  Edmundo thinks its so funny that the propane companies deliver tanks chained to the delivery mans motorbike.  The rest of the day we hung out around the hostel and admired the view. 

We woke up at 4:30am to take a 4 hour train ride to Aguas Calientes, a city near Machu Piccu. We bought some wool mitts and toques because we were so cold. The area we are in now is approx. 3,000m above sea level. It gets pretty cold here at night and in the shade. We were served some breakfast on the train and meet some very nice Peruvian and Argentinean ladies. Spectacular views during the entire train ride. The town was very nice and was surrounded by amazing mountains, a creek and lots of markets. We went to the ¨hot springs¨ that weren´t even hot are really brown. We walked around town and ate some traditional Peruvian food, stuffed (vegatable and meat) peppers.

The next day we woke up at 4:30 in the monring to stand in line to catch the 5:30 bus to Machu Piccu. Amazing there was 22 buses that left at that time. Machu Piccu is absolutely beautiful. We also did a hike up to WaynaPiccu (the younger mountain). The hike was a crazy steep stone path that zigzaged up the mountain to the peak with awesome views of Machu Piccu, the mountains and the valley.

Finally got to Cusco, Peru after a 15 hours uncomfortable bus ride.  We could barely sleep because there was a baby crying almost all night right behind us.  The first picture shows a bunch of roosters in a mesh bag tied to the roof of a bus!  We didn´t do much today, just lounged around the hostel.  Last minute we decided to go to Aguas Calientes (near Machu Piccu) the next day and had to organize a whole bunch of things last minute.

Happy Birthday Edmundo!!! The hostel in Huacachina organized a tour to the Nazca Lines for us… a two hour bus took us there. We hopped on a little 6 seater airplane and we had a crazy plane ride over the lines. Edmundo puked on the plane and Linda thought his puke bag was gonna explode so she gave him hers.

Huacachina is a really cool little town.  The town surrounds an oasis in the desert and is surrounded by huge 300 meter sand dunes.  We took an insane, death dune buggy trip into the desert and then went sandboarding, and stopped on top of a dune to watch the sunset.  We got sand everywhere that you can imagine.  Later that night we hung out with 8 French medical students and 3 Canadians (2 of which were medical students), lots of good French practice!  We had most of our clothes in the laundry that night and so we were pretty cold.

We climbed up a sand dune… and it wasn´t as easy as we thought.  We made a bet on how long it was going to take and we both lost.  We couldn´t make more than 40 steps before we were completely out of breath and had to stop for a rest.  It was beautiful when we finally made it to the top!  We also ran down the dune and that was crazy too! 

We stayed here a little longer than we expected because Edmundo felt poopy.  So he decided to get some blood tests to make sure he didn´t have malaria.  The results negative… sweetness! 

We also found this hotel that had a turtle as a pet.  Turtles walk so funny… we made a video, too bad we can´t post it!  Next door to our hostel is a farmer who likes having many animals as pets and one of his huge geese crash landed inside our hostel in a plant.  Weird and super funny!

We left by bus (4 hours) to Paracas, the landscape was beautiful.  Peru is surrounded by desert with huge sand dunes.  On the way into town we passed a whole bunch of fish meal processing plants… man did it smell disgusting.  We had dinner on the beach, which was under construction.  We were the only people in the restaurant and they were so happy they gave us 2 free drinks.     

We went to Isla Ballestas, nicknamed the ¨Poor Man´s Galapagos.¨  Check out the HUGE jelly fish that washed up on the beach.  On the way to the islands, the indigenous people of Paracas dug out a chandelier like shape into the side of the sand dune that can be seen from 22km away, its was really cool.  On the islands there were tons of birds, penguins, sea lions and pelicans.  The area smelled like bird poo though and we goot pooed on.  An interesting fact about the islands is that every 7 years people scrape off the bird poo (which is often more than a few meters thick) and sell it as fertilizer.   We met a really cool French couple (Benoit and Mode) and traveled with them to the next town (Huacachina).

Lima is a huge city… about 8 million people live there.  There are some very beautiful parts of town that we visited.  The first is a shopping mall that was built into the side of cliff above the ocean.  And there were people surfing with wetsuits in the poluted ocean.  Lima was way colder then we expected and we didn´t bring enough warm clothes so we´ve been really cold!

Later that afternoon we took a cab to the historical center of town.  It was very beautiful!  We saw an amazing outdoor photography exhibit titled ¨The world from the sky¨in a park.  Later, we took a tour of a cathedral with catacombs underneath full of human bones!  It was truly a strange experience.  The church has lots of paintings of people with their heads missing and also a very strange Last Supper painting with a round table, cutlery, the devil wispering in Judas´s ear, and tropical South American fruit and birds.  Edmund tried to take a picture of Linda running through one of the squares and we were hoping all of the pigeons in the square would get scared and fly into the air creating a magnificent picture… but the pigeons are so lazy that the never fly away!  They just walk far enough not to get stepped on.

We arrived finally in Bogota, Colombia after a 17 hour bus ride…wow!!  We met two Irish guys named Darrah and David on the bus and then shared a cab and a room in a hostel.  We walked around Bogota´s old town and explored, it´s beautiful.  The old city is full of old churches and cobblestone street and the whole city is surrounded by mountains.  That night we had beers with Dave and Darrah and some Aussies we met (Franky, Tuna, Michael, Cameron).  Oh… and the hostel owner is super nice and has given us free beers.

We took two buses to a town called Zipaquira with the Irish and Aussies dudes.  We  went to a really sweet underground Salt Cathedral.  It was amazing!  It used to be an underground salt mine  and is now cathedral 200 meters underground.  The awe and beauty of the cathedral was disturbed by a new addition to the area: an underground salt conference center.  We saw a super cheesy 3D movie in the conference room which was pretty lame and funny.  After the cathedral we walked around Zipaquira and had some tasty food and then returned to Bogota.  Later that night we all went to a club/bar area called Zona Rosa that was really expensive, 7000 pesos for a beer which is about 3.50 CAN which is ridiculous for South and Central America.

Everyone decided to to see a movie today…Indiana Jones in a super modern shopping mall.  Three dollars for the movie.  We had popcorn which we had been craving for a long time and the rest of our crew had McDonalds.

There are lots of free museums in Bogota so we went with Michael and checked out the Gold Museum and The Fat People Painting Museum (forgot the name) and then checked out some markets.   We relaxed back at the hostel at night for some beers with everyone.

We booked our flight to Lima, Peru so we have been relaxing around the hostel and taking care of important things like updating this blog and doing laundry which was greatly overdue.

We stopped over in Taganga for one last night to catch a bus to Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Our favorite hostel was full so we checked into Villa Mary. Here is our view from our room.