6 Dec 2004 - Titicaca – Border Guards, Floating Islands, Dodgy Buses
Well finally escaped from Titacaca after being trapped there for the elections, not that we were complaining too much……the border turned out to be only 20 minutes away by taxi.
Went to go through exit procedures to find that our friendly immigrations dudes are demanding an entry permit which we were never issued….interesting…..turns out for a mere 20 bols (US$3.50) each they will turn a blind eye. Trina not being too impressed with this starts yelling at them, calling them all corrupt, and calling for the tourism police. Now there is generally one thing you do not do to a border guard (before he has let you through anyway) is call him corrupt, they start looking a bit pissed and disappear into the back office. We talk Trina down and try and coax the guys out of their back office, he finally surfaces and explains in suddenly excellent english that we can either pay up of wait five hours while the call the other border to see that we actually came in that way. Figuring at this stage discretion being the better part of valour we used our last few bols to sneak through.
From the border we caught a bus into Puno (still on Lake Titicaca) and sort out bus tickets for the 12 hour slog through to Cusco.
Figuring we have a couple of hours spare we book onto a tour and head out to the famous floating islands. This is a tribe of people that live out in the lake on rafts made of reeds, every couple of weeks they have to throw down another layer to stop the think sinking and basically spend their days fishing, talking, and of course everyones favourite hobby ripping off tourists. Only a couple of them allow tourists but they make the most of it. Just about every hut had solar panels and a tv or stereo. One of the islands even had a pay phone booth (made of reeds of course) with a satellite phone!!!
7 Dec 2004 - Cusco
Well survived yet another overnight bus to arrive at 5am in Cusco, the town itself is really beautiful, if only every second shop was not a travel agency with touts trying to sell us tours and stuff.
Spent the day trying to touch base with our tour agency who for some reason had decided to stay closed for the day. None of the contact details they left were working so generally a fairly frustrating day.
The nightlife in Cusco is pretty cool, all the bars are fiercely competing for your business so you can usually bargain at least half a dozen free drinks out of each one before moving on, though as the night progresses they wise up and they start tasting pretty foul. The two most popular places were Mama Africa and Mama America, Mama America was pretty much just a huge pickup joint for the locals so we pretty much adopted Mama Africa for our own (I could have the two mixed up its fairly blurry). Mama Africa had good tunes and lots of people fresh off the Inca trail keen to party and swap stories.
8 Dec 2004 - Cusco
Woke up very hung over from the previous night and basically just chilled out for the day. Contemplated going rafting for about two seconds (tail end of the season, most of the rivers are pretty flat). Bart and Carolina feeling far to energetic decide to do a horse trek.
9 Dec 2004 - Cusco
Can’t really remember what we did today, probably a repeat of 7 or 8……
Found out that it will just be the three of us and an Australian in our tour group
10 Dec 2004 - Inca Trail – Day 1
Very early start to the day as the guide wants to get the hard stuff out of the way on Day 1, we tried to persuade him to pick us up from Mama Africa but he wouldn’t go for it, very depressing walk to the bus with our backpacks at 3:30am listening to the party still going full swing upstairs.
We met our porters for the trek, they seem a good bunch but didn’t think we would need nine of the little dudes!!! Plus we were carrying our own gear so suspect some of them had empty packs….
The first day was fairly full on, we walked about 7 hours going from 2,750m up to 3,750m, most of that being in the last two hours. Definitely have a good cook, lunch was a three course meal with our own portable picnic table. The service is good with the porters racing ahead to setup tents start preparing food etc. Views from the campsite are spectacular. Back in cusco we had been debating what supplies to bring along for the trail and decided to bring along the dodgy bottle of Tequila that we had somehow acquired in La Paz and not dared touch. I think the rationale was to save weight by not carrying mixers???
11 Dec 2004 - Inca Trail – Day 2
The second day was a bit more leisurely with a stiff early morning climb up to the highest point on the trail (Dead Womans Pass - 4,200m), for some crazy reason decided we should celebrate by finishing off the tequila……not smart…..along the way we had been paralleling a couple of other groups so lots of banter. One group was a GAP tour and another one was made up of seven single girls and a priest!!!! Needless to say we seemed to spend a lot of time with them.
From there it was lots of downhill and then a second pass up to around 3,800m, a lot easier than the first day.
12 Dec 2004 - Inca Trail – Day 3
Third day was even easier and had some of the most spectacular views yet, walking through beautiful cloud frorest and inca tunnels. We stopped off to check out a few ruins along the way and made it into camp about lunchtime and to the bar about five minutes after that. And they had showers….hot showers….mmmmm….so good.
13 Dec 2004 - Macchu Picchu
Yet another bloody early start (what is with this holiday) to line up at the gate to be let into the park. Lots of clouds around so don’t fancy our chances of seeing Machu Picchu from the sun gate. Sure enough get there and it is complete white out, never mind, we cruise on down to the main ruins and luckily after about an hour after the clouds lifted and we were treated to the spectacular sight of Machu Picchu in the sunshine. It was an awesome sight!
Bart talked us into climbing Huayana Picchu (the mountain behind Machu Picchu in all the postcards). It’s a fairly steep clamber using guide ropes to assist your ascent, takes about an hour and is so worth it, from the top you get 360 degree views of the surrounds.
Fairly tired by this stage so we caught the bus down to the train station and off for the return journey back to Cusco.
Did I mention we were tired, well that didn’t stop us going out to the early hours of the morning to celebrate, they have the 24 hour challenge, basically from reaching Machu Picchu you have to stay up another 24 hours, the hard core do it with a drink every hour as well…..not quite us old fellas.
14 Dec 2004 - Unwanted Hitchhikers (Cusco)
Over the last few days had noticed that a couple of insect bites hadn’t been healing and in fact were growing. Turns out I’d picked up a couple of unwanted hitch-hikers (aka parasites) that were busily burrowing their way just under the skin of my leg….mmm…tasty. The funny thing is that in a normal day they would move about 2cm’s but if we went out and had a big night they would move about 6cm…..must have liked the rum. Went to the doctors and he had a bit of a prod and poke, didn’t seem to think it was too serious and gave me some creams and antibiotics to sort it out.
15/16 Dec 2004 - Cusco - Lima – Buses – Cuenca – Aleusi
We had decided it was time to push on so booked a flight from Cusco to Lima and then caught a bus heading north, this was going to be another one of our marathons, we stayed on the bus until we hit the border. The border crossing was a real scrum with lots of touts and supposed helpers. Kicked on from there and after about 36 hours we made it Ecuador and our next stop of Aleusi.
17 Dec 2004 - Devils Nose - Banos
Aleusi is a nothing town with not much to see, the only thing worth doing is the Devils Nose train ride, originally it went down to the next town but now it is just an hour long ride down some really steep switchbacks. Imagine a supersized roller coaster and you are not far from the truth. Did we mention that we ride on the roof of the train!!! The driver had to stop every so often to clear fresh rock falls from the tracks.
Kicked on to Banos (spanish for bathroom) which is really pretty resort town set in a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanos. Our plan was to do an amazon trip from here but decided we wanted to go deeper into the jungle and would need to head north to Lago Agria.
18 Dec 2004 - Banos - Quito
Kicked around in Banos for a bit, found a really cool hostel, would love to stay a few more days but christmas plans mean we need to charge through to Lagos Agria.
19 Dec 2004 - Quito - Lagos Agria
Wandered around Quito trying to sort out our flights to Central America, given its a Sunday shouldn’t be surprised that everything is closed. Well, a trip to Quito isn’t quite complete unless you make the short 1 hr drive to the Equator. After playing around taking some cool photo’s standing either side on the line drawn on the ground symbolising the equator, we later found out that the line that was drawn was 200 meters away from the true one. So our infamous photos are now a complete dud! Off on yet another night bus to Lagos Agria, this one turns out to be freezing, we end up sitting on the bus in thermals, beanie, you name it, about ready to mug the guy next to us who has a sleeping bag.
20 Dec 2004 - Amazon Day 1
Survived yet another night bus, this would have to be one of the worst, the road was terrible ie going about 20kmh and millitary checkpoints every so often. We hit Lagos Agria and its a real dump, it basically lives off oil exploitation.
We meet up with the group that we are heading into the Amazon with and they seem a good bunch. We decide to stock up on supplies to make the Amazon more interesting and Trina comes back with a 2lt bottle of dodgy Ron (Rum in spanish). The first half of the day is spent in a minivan making our way into the jungle proper. Fairly rough ride, at one point the coke bottles stored on the roof start exploding from the vibration showering everyone in nice sticky cola and dust...nice. Then about 10kms down the road the back door of the van flys open and half our luggage flys out, luckily the Ron survives but Frank is not so lucky with his bottle of red wine and is going to spend the next few days washing out his pack.
About lunchtime made it to the park proper where we all boarded a dugout canoe for the run into the lodge, along the way is a three hour game cruise, along the way we spot five species of monkeys, some pretty cool birds (Mccaw and Tucan). The lodge itself is fairly basic, no power but we do have toilets and showers and best of all hammocks.
21 Dec 2004 - Amazon Day 2
First half of the day is another river cruise and we had no longer set off when a pink freshwater dolphin surfaces near the canoe and starts teasing us by popping up at random intervals, lots of photos of small spalshes in the water before he got bored and swam off. Very lucky to see a dolphin as they are rare and very shy. From there it was the usual monkey, bird, sloth, etc, until we got to the lake proper where the guide took us to check out an anaconda was curled up inside a hollow tree trunk, he was asleep but according to the guide was about 6m long!!!! Had a bit of a nature walk with Trina checking every tree to see if it was a hallucinogenic.....alas no luck.....we did find these special ants that feed off the lemon tree and hence you guessed it are lemon flavored....basically you stick your tongue on the tree wait until a few climb aboard and then crunch....only thing if you are not fast enough the ants bite back!!!!
From there it was back on the boat for a swim in the middle of the lake and then off for a spot of pirhana fishing. This time our luck was better and we both caught a Pirhana, including a rare orange bellied one which is supposedly the most vicious. Our guide was trying to tell us that Pirhana are actually vegetarian???? funny they really seemed to like the steak we were feeding them......
22 Dec 2004 - Amazon Day 3
Decided to have a lazy day and spent the whole time in a hammock while Trina cruised off for some more jungle walks, visits with locals, and some cooking lesssons...needless to say she didnt bring any home as it was fairly dodge. Couple of the guys tried a few more insects and grubs.
Back at the campsite we started teaching the crew how to play grass when a huge hairy tarantula (Terry) came for a visit. He was just over 10cm (yes someone had brought a ruler along) and was reasonably friendly spending the rest of the evening scuttling around the rafters over our heads.
23 Dec 2004 - Amazon Day 4 - Bus dramas
Well time to head out of the Amazon and get back to the Black Sheep Inn for christmas with Bart. Given it was getting close to christmas we figured it could be a bit interesting getting back to Quito.
Our wonderful guide dropped us off at what he claimed was the only bus company and gave us the good news that we had tickets but that half of us would have to stand on the nine hour journey back to Quito and then scarpered. We decided there had to be a better way and eventually found the main bus station where about ten other bus companies were waiting. Trina did well fighting through the scrum to grab us a couple of tickets and we took up residence on our bus......three hours later and lots of shouting and spanish goobledy-gook and the police climbed on our bus and two other buses and ordered everyone off the bus, they gave us our money back and there we were on the side of the road at midnight with no way to get back to Quito....hmmmmm.
We ran into a Dutch couple who were desperate to catch a flight the next morning from Quito. We started asking taxi drivers for quotes for the seven hour taxi trip, they all came back at around US$200, which given you could fly for US$50 was fairly extortionate, finally found a guy who would do it for US$120 and piled in with all four of us and our luggage. He then decided he was a bit tired and recruited a mate to help him drive. As the car was fairly small the thought of fitting a sixth person didnt really seem such a good idea. We suggested instead that we take turns driving ourselves!!!!! Very interesting drive, especially having to stop before each check point to let the taxi driver take charge again. Heading in towards Quito he was seriously falling asleep but luckily made it to the airport, unfortunately we were about half an hour too late for the Dutch flight....
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