Peruvian Madness

Dorthe crosses a log bridge deep in the amazonian jungle

The last month has been a crazy mad one. Admittidly the previous months here in South America have also been mad and crazy, but this time we seem to have switched the dynamite throwing protestors for a different type of travelling - Dorthes parents and her brother arrived here at the start of the month, and ever since the five of us have been flying around this country at a great rate of knots, fitting in as much stuff as we canin the four weeks available to them.

And fit in stuff we have indeed. After a couple of days in Lima, we headed south and inland to Arequipa, where we were greeted by a bit of Dejavu - we thought we´d left the blockades behind in Bolivia, but NO! A 13hr trip was turned into 23hr trip, complete with 10km walk through the high desert (with luggage), and a two hour ride with seven people in a stationwagon. Ahhh, I think we´re going to miss travelling in South America when this is all over. Travelling in the west is just so dull by comparison.

Arequipa is a particularly beautiful colonial city, and it was a pity we had to leave so soon. But our destination, Puno, was the shores of Lake Titicaca, was equally picturesque. There we visited ancient incan and pre-incan burial tombs, the famous floating reed islands, and spent the night with some locals on one of the more solid islands. We also crossed back into Bolivia for the day, visiting the religous town of Copacabana (not to be confused with the beach), where the priests come out to bless the buses, cars, trucks and Toyota Land Cruisers of whoever wheels up. An interesting spectacle, suffice to say.

But our ultimate destination was Cusco, the tourist and former Incan capital of Peru. And it is easy to see why this is the case - Incan ruins abound at every turn, from the foundations of many of the cities oldest buildings, to the many abandoned incan stone cities around the town. And every single one of them is impressive. We undertook a rather hot and tiring four day trek through the surrounding hills to one impressive set of ruins called Choquiquiraw, and paid the obligatory visit to Macchu Picchu. And then there were all the other smaller sites along the way, like the agricultural town of Pisac, the incan food research lab (yup, thats right) of Moray, and the salt production facility of Salinas. By the end of it, the brilliance of Incan stonework was starting to appear a little normal to us!

...which is why our foray into the upper reaches of the Amazon jungle was a welcome relief from the ruins. The five of us spent five days along the Rio Madre del Dios, seeing lots and lots of birds, waiting (fruitlessly) for Jaguars to appear in the dark, swinging Machetes, falling in rivers, and keeping the local mosquito popular well feed. And of course, we all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

And so it is rather sad that is chapter of our travels is comming to an end. Travelling with Dorthes family has been very different for us - we ate good food, and stayed in nice hotels with hot water (well, some of the time). Mark even shaved occasionally.

But the rest of our trip is by no means over. What happens from here, and were we go, we have now idea. There is only one underlying theme for the rest of this trip: 28 days to Rio.......