TravelStream™ news feed for member chillwithjoe on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/chillwithjoe en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:45:13 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1224770400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1224770400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1224770400/tpod.html Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:45:13 -0500 The Big Kahuna - Trip of a life time! South America then Europe - a 1 year honeymoon. Yeow!

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Salta, Northern Argentina, Argentina

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Puerto Iguazu, Litoral, Argentina

These are the amazing Iguasu falls shared between Brazil and Argentina. Beautiful!
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Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hey hey, So, here are some photos of what we have been up to... Unfortunately I accidentally deleted our photos from before Buenos Aires except for a couple... Buenos Aires was great - We saw some soccer, tango and ate some steak which you could have eaten with a spoon... We are at Puerto Iguasu right now and leave on Saturday to fly out on Sunday from Sao Paulo to Italy.... Joe
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Cafeyate, Northern Argentina, Argentina

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Uyuni, Bolivia

Maggie, Joe and I set out from La Paz on a Thursday night, having paid a nice amount for a Bolivian luxury bus down to Uyuni.  In case you haven´t heard, Bolivian buses are renound for being crap and crap!!  So on the nice comfie bus we were.  After a 2 hour break down, in which we all slept through, we finally made it to dusty, stinky feral Uyuni.  I have nothing good to say about this town except that it is the place you go to get on a tour of the salt flats.Looking out the bus window as we entered Uyuni, i was thinking what lovely colorful flat lands Uyuni had, it was only when i rubbed the sleep from my eyes that i realized it was rubbish, EVERYWHERE.  Delightful!!Anyway we quick smart booked ourselves in for a 3 day 2 night tour of the salt flats.  Off we headed, six of us piled into a four wheel drive with our guide, cook and driver Juan.  After visiting a very boring train museum, which consisted of about 30 carriages in the desert, we headed for the famous salt flats.  They are amazing, to the sunglassed eye they are not quite as white as they look in pictures, but they are endless and wonderful.  We had lunch at a little salt lake island called Isla de Pescado, Island of fish, and no there were no fish, not even one, but there were a heap of cacti, some reaching over 20m.  The view of the salt flats was amazing from the top.    Driving out of the salt flats we were one of the lucky groups to stay right on the edge in a cool little hotel made of cement and salt.  We ventured out in the avo into the freezing cold strong wind to climb a hill, the view again... amazing.  Up at 5am, we set off to some Lagoons.  FLAMINGOS.... thats right the big thing of the day, and yes they are just as beautiful as you would imagine, just not as pink.  And the scenery around the high lands of Uyuni is just beautiful, much more beautiful to me than the salt flats themselves.  You will just have to look at the pictures for yourselves.  We made our way to a lagoon called the red lagoon.  They had wanted to make it a seventh wonder of the world.  And i suppose it is amazing, looks great in photos. Pretty much our guide said that it is red due to a chemical reaction when the sun rises and chemicals (all natural of course) in the water.  It is amazing, the lagoon is hemmed in by borax (massive white things like snow ledges) to one side, and mountains around the other sides.  Just beautiful.  The night was spent in a run down shelter previously used by research teams, it was freezing and noisy but thats ok.  A 4.30am start the next morning to see some steam geisers, holes in the ground formed by volcanic activity that blow steam, it was a beautiful sight but also freezing at below minus 10 degrees.  On then next to what I think must be the most beautiful hot springs in the world.  Get a look at the view.  The water was a great 30 degrees and me and Joe were brave enough to dip on in. Overall the sights on this tour are amazing, the most beautiful I think i have yet to see...  The high altitude (the highest we got to was over 5000m) make for a great clear blue sky and really sets the colours so they are striking.The rest of the day was spent driving back to Uyuni, great sceneray, and I would recommend the trip ... absolutely.  All the tours cheap and expensive seem to be much of a  muchness, so i wouldn't worry to much.  We said sad goodbyes to Maggie that night as she returned to La Paz and back to the orphanage.  We will miss her a heap, she is a great gal.  And we were so happy to have met her.The next morning we headed on an all day bus to cross the border into Argentina, and our downward (to home) journeying continues.  Argentina, Brazil (for 2 days) and then Europe.  YEEEHAAA
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1216946220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1216946220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1216946220/tpod.html Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:58:41 -0400 The Big Kahuna - Trip of a life time! South America then Europe - a 1 year honeymoon. Yeow!

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Riberalta, Bolivia

This is the link to where we are heading in Bolivia, the orphanage in Riberalta - apparently, sweltering hot.. Yeow!www.casasegura.spaces.live.comBy the way - looking at the map, you may think, why didn´t we go straight to Riberalta from Cusco, Peru. Well, we looked into it and it would have taken about 4 to 6 weeks on bumpy, un-paved roads and crapy buses.. I think we have picked the better option...                                                                                                                                                                        Hey all again... It has been a while since the last update. I'll try to briefly cover what we have been up to at the mo. So we spent a week in La Paz with Rodrigo and Wanda (friends of Mik and Kays who have now moved to Casa Segura permanently).  These two are the worlds most wonderful and accommodating hosts and gave up their free time to show us around La Paz.  La Paz is a beautiful city made all the more wonderful by the company of friends.  And unlike what you might think La Paz is not the capital of Bolivia.  We had originally planned on staying in La Paz for just 2 days arriving on the Tuesday and leaving on the Thursday but after an offer we couldn't refuse we ended up staying a week.  Rodrigo convinced us to stay for a conference being held on the Saturday called Noches de Gloria.  It was spear headed by a phenomenal man of God from South America.  We ended up being very glad that we had stayed to witness Gods power and love moving through this country.  It ended up being a great decision for other reasons too, when we found out that a plane we may have caught to Riberalta had crashed seriously injuring passengers.  All flights we subsequently cancelled. We finally made it to Riberalta after wanting to get here for many months.  We stepped out of the nice cool plane (being acclimatized to cold weather) and into the tropical heat of the Amazon.  As you can imagine for a small city the airport is tiny and not frequented with many Gringos, so finding the Gringos of Casa Segura was not to difficult.  Mik, Kay, Maggie and Rudy (who is a true blue Riberaltian working along side Mik since the start) were there to meet us with open arms.  We were doubly excited because no longer did we have to struggle and stumble through speaking Spanish, ENGLISH it was baby.... Good ol Aussies. Casa Segura is set 10km from Riberalta along the main road that connects the town to Brazil.  It is a good hour to the border... not far at all.  Mik was given a vision from God about 5 years ago. Mik describes himself flying over the orphanage just as it is now but a little greener and complete. He has been in Riberalta for around 3 years now, planning and building the orphanage from scratch which is located amongst the thick of the Amazon jungle.  The culture of Bolivia makes this a slow process and we really admire him and Kay for their determination. Currently stage one is being built and at its completion there will be 10 cabins housing about 60 children, a school, clinic, toilet block, laundry block, kitchen, dining room and wells to supply the community with clean, safe water.  Ohh now we cant forget the drop dunny.  We at least get to sit on normal toilet seats and if you don't look down the hole or breath in, it is quite a normal toilet.  Joe doesn't like the flies and bats flying out and hitting his bum.  Understandable ...   About one year ago a family (the family of Eddy) arrived in Riberalta and now live on the property.  Mik says that this family have been a blessing from God as before they came the property was regualry robbed.  The family also bless the project in many other ways.  Eddy and his son Alejandro work with Mik and Rudy building.  Sandra the daughter of Eddy has taken on the role of cook for the orphans.  In general the family have been wonderful for the first orphans as they provide an aire of familiarity amoungst a completely different and scary situation.  So they live at the front of the property in a beautiful little house that was made from donations from Australia after their old house was blown away in a storm.  We feel that since we have arrived we have been lucky to witness a great transformation at the project.  We have been here when the very first 3 orphans have arrived.  Yasmine (17), Rosa (14) and Mariano (10) lost their parents within the space of the last year.  They have an older brother and a sister who still live in town.  One can only imagine the heart ache and pain they have felt over the last year and a bit.  They have settled in here as well as can be expected.  The girls are older than what had been planned, and with this brings difficulties of teenage girls. But the family is some what together and for that they are happy. Since arriving Joe with the boys have been busy busy busy building.  The very first cabin has been completed with Maggie and the kids moving in.  The brand new school is complete, a new jetty was built in the pond.  Joe has built the new kitchen for the orphans.  The laundry is on its way to completion and we have put a new door on our previously trap doored house. Katie has been helping in the building when possible but also runs English classes in the afternoon.  She is planning out the clinic which will not be built for a few years.  Restocking first aid kits, Tending to people here when they cut themselves, sprain themselves or are just sick.  One of her major tasks before we leave is to set up a hand washing station outside the toilets to try and lower the rates of belly illnesses here. We stay in the coolest little place down a little jungle track from the main cleared area which is so peaceful.   Ours is a plastic house, first made as a platform for Miks tent when he first moved out here and then later extended with a fake floor, trap door and plastic walls.  It can get pretty hot in the middle of the day but we love it.  The heat here is pretty intense at times... But bearable... We eat lunch in town on most days with the towns pastors family (Luis Antonio) which we love - they are the nicest and most welcoming family.  Luis Antonio and his family are originally from La Paz and Mik had worked with Luis for a few years in the prisons and with the street kids there.  They are such a great loving family.  They provide us all with lunch every single day. We had a day trip to a lake with the street kids from the town which was great... Everytime we go into town now, they are always yelling out to us... Pepe (Nickname for Hose - Joseph in Spanish) and Peepee (Nick name that we came up with for Katie which stuck) they call us. They are always keen for a little chat and bug you through dinner or in the internet... We love them... And love them even more so recently after we thought we had lost Katies bag with a lot of our valuable stuff in it. We went into to town to ask around where we thought we had left it but they didn't know and the street kids were so concerned... We are known as hermano Pepe (Brother Joe) and hermana Katie (Sister Katie) at the casa segura site which is because every Christian calls another Christian Brother or sister over here.  There are three dogs here in Casa Segura, Blondie (Miks dog), Weaky (Eddys son, Alejandros' dog) and Blancito or whitey (Eddy's dog).  I (Katie) am in heaven with them all.  When we arrived Blancito was soo skinny.  I took a liking to him and started to feed him.  We have injected him for skin conditions, sprayed him purple for skin infections.  Poor dog.  But now as we come to our end here, Blancito is looking great, muscly and strong.  He has grown up from a big hyperactive puppy to a strong bush dog.  I love him so much, he is our dog now.  Poor boy he has never been liked by the family who own him, and is blamed for everything.  But he is a sweety and I love him.   There is an assortment of animals here, sheep, pigs, chickens.  The sheep have had 2 babies since we got here, the first got eaten by the dogs one night.  The second is now 2 weeks old and growing stronger every day. The property has a beautiful creek on the edge of the boundary.  Here we can swim or the more common thing is to wash our clothes.  A good 2 hours of working with scrubbing brush and soap turns our red clothes into their normal colours again.  Not the kind of work we are used to back home hey.   Mik is from Dayboro Church and spear heads the project.  He is a great guy and has such a passion for the plan God has given him.  Great sense of humor too.  Kay is from Taigum Church and has been here helping Mik for 2 and half years.  She heads up administration and is soo kind and gentle.  The calm one of the place.  Maggie arrived 4 months ago and is also from Dayboro.  She is the very first house mum here and has been doing a brillieant job in a situation that is quite difficult.  She also runs Sunday School. We have had to renew our visas twice.  People here take it very easy and each trip in to renew our visas takes hours as each line is written with such perfection it can take up to 5 minutes.  PHEW.... Talk about us learning patience.   We are leaving here on the 9th of October to return to La Paz for a few days.. Then we plan to go down to Uyuni (Bolivia) and do the salt flats and then travel through Argentina... Until next time - Still kicking Joe and Katie
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Cusco, Peru

Good times................So, We caught a bus down from Lima and as we were researching tickets every vender was telling us about this thing they called "El Paro" (Literal translation - The stop) which is a protest throughout the entire Peru on there independence day where everyone protests about the government.. And nothing in unison.. Anything about the government as I understood it... Anyway, a few of the bus companies were not running because of it and we found a few that were and they, as they always do, reassured us by telling us what we wanted to hear, and said "it wont be a problem".. Let me tell you.. It was! Maybe not that day but our bus journey was supposed to be a 21 hour overnight bus journey to arrive us in Cuzco around 1:00pm the next day... Well we arrived at midnight because at around 6:30 in the morning, we ran into our first road block and protest in a little town in the middle of nowhere... They weren't agitated - yet.. and we ended up bribing them - 1 sol (30 cents) each, between all the passengers, to get through their road block... We ended up having a good chat with the other passengers in our cabin and were told we had another three towns to get through yet.. We had no such luck at the next town and ended up waiting there until around 6:00pm until the protest died down... Other bus companies arrived to where we were waiting with words painted all over them and paint on the windscreen and they had had a much harder time getting through the Paro that we bribed our way through... We got going again, but it was a bit dangerous as all traffic was supposed to be stopped for the 24 hours of that day and people didnt take very nicely to people ignoring their protest rules... There was one point when the hostess for the bus came running into the cabin, rushing to tell everyone to close the curtains as we drove through some town... As we kept moving, people began to throw rocks at the side of the bus which made a huge noise from the inside! Anyway.. Most of the way to Cuzco from that point, we were dodging rocks and logs that had been left on the roads which was slow going... We made it to Cuzco - by midnight!!!!!!!! Yay... Only 11 hours late! And saw a number of large dints in the side of the bus which I imagine wont be coming out anytime soon After our arduous 31hour bus trip through riots and protestors from Lima, we arrived to Cusco over 12 hours late!!  Cusco is a beautiful touristy town and is of course full of tourists, hasslers, tourist agencies and more tourists - the kind of temporary tourists that come for a week or two with there fancy pants and rolly suit cases.  Being over 3000m high in altitude it is rather nippy but does create a stunning backdrop with clear crisp blue skies.  We decided that wanted to do two tours whilst in Cusco - Macchu Picchu of course and white water rafting.  The Famous Inca trail has been booked out for months so Joe and I settled on this hike called Santa Maria, where on the first day you mountain bike for 6 hours and then hike for 2 days to Aguas Calientes (the town at the base of Macchu Picchu).  The hike itself wasn't too impressive having just done Santa Cruz but the company we had was great.  Joe and I also got to taste the famous Coca leaves with the stimulant, a black gooey stuff.  It is awesome, this stuff really works, and I found it so much easier to walk up the hills at high altitude!!  We really lived it up on this hike, staying in Hostals and eating at restaurants the whole time.  We even got to spend a glorious evening floating in beautifully clean hot springs!!  Arriving in Aguas Calientes we had a little sleep before getting up at 3.30 in the morning for the hike up the hill to Macchu Picchu.  It felt like we were caught in a trail of very anxious, competitive ants as we made our way to the top.  We lined up with the other 300 000 (yeap - no exageration) tourists and made our way inside.   Due to the massive amounts of tourists that come through Macchu Picchu daily, they have set restrictions on climbing Wynapicchu.  Wyn (I will call it for short) is the mountain in the background of nearly all the Macchu Picchu postcards.  Only 400 people are allowed each day, so we bypassed our tour guide and went straight to line up for this lil bit of adventure.  We were told that about a week ago a tourist fell to his death from this mountain, so that was encouraging news.  Anyway we climbed about a million stairs straight up the side of the mountain for about 45 minutes arriving to some Inca platforms.  The views were amazing.  The heights staggering.  The very top of the mountain was covered in hoards of people spread across the massive boulders which call this magnificent place home.  I had wondered whether or not Macchu Picchu would be all it is said to be.  I can now honestly say it is magnificent.  The views are amazing, the heights death defying to us Aussies who live at sea level.  What amazing people the Incas were to create and live in this place.  Even on the top of the mountain they have running water!!  AMAZING We met some amazing people on this hike who just made the experience all that much better!! Our next and my favourite adventure so far was white water rafting for 3 days and 2 nights down the Apuraimac Canyon.  We decided on River Explorer (a tour agency) partly because Joe had met a really great Maltese couple before booking who were going with them at the same time.  They would also be filming and taking pictures for us as we went.  I was a little nervous of this adventure being that I had never done rafting before and that we would be doing levels 1-5 rapids.  Sounded a little scary to me, especially since this agency has an advertisement picture of a boat standing up right and people falling out.  But off we went. I felt immediately at ease when our 5 guides came on the bus and introduced themselves.  They were all hilarious, reminding me of the Aussies that try anything and get away with it.  Arriving at the drop in point we had an awesome fried rice lunch and then slipped into our completely sexy wet suits, spray jackets and life jackets - oh and don't forget helmet.  We jumped in the boat and then jumped out of the boat to practice rescue techniques.  The water was freezing!!!  White water rafting is amazing and everyone should do it.  We spent the first day doing level 1-3 which were fun but not scary rapids and found our way to our first nights campsite.  I thought all our other hikes had great food, tents and what have you.  Well I was blown away.  Not only were our tents massive, our guides had bought a toilet seat and made a nice toilet for us.  The food was incredible.  We had BBQ this first night, with delicious chicken and beef cooked over an open fire, plus, salads, soup and teas and all sorts of other things.  AMAZING The stars were clear as I have ever seen and we woke up the next morning to bright sun and our guides bent over tables styling fruit salad, porridge, bread and yogurt.  What a great start to today's rafting!!  Another day of a little more extreme rapids and fun. We woke up the next morning to PANCAKES... can you believe it.  Today was our final day and we were to complete level 5 rapids before the day was out.  I was pretty excited cause I had loved the rapid so far.  Well what a hoot.  We had so much fun bumping our way down the river.  Our guide Frank would make things a little more exciting by running us into rocks and over bigger rapids!!  We did a few drops on the boat which were fun.   ¨Get Down, Get Down, forward forward, back paddle, get to the left, get to the right¨. There you go some rafting commands for you. We just finished our level 5 rapid when Frank asked us if we would like to jump off a cliff (about 10 m high) into the river.  We were all keen so up we climbed.  Joe and a few others jumped off first.  Then came my turn.  I was sooo nervous, the last time I had jumped off a cliff was to impress Joe and I had ended up with a huge Wedgie and bruises so I wasn't that keen.  But I went up to the ledge with the help of Frank who was holding me steady by my life jacket.  They started to count me down when the camera broke, so I had to wait a few more seconds.  YIKES I was getting nervous.  So they counted me down again and when they got to #  one, Frank still had not let go so I yelled ¨Let me go¨ as he let me go I took a step, slipped and started to fall off the edge, frank caught me by my life jacket but couldn't hold on.  So down I fell with a nice little scream!!  I back slammed into the water.  I surfaced feeling a little dazed and wobbly to see good old Noel our safety kayaker who came and got me and took me to the boats!!  So I survived and have a great little video of it all!!! We then continued down the water to level 2 rapids which we floated down, just us in the water.  Man we all thought we would drown ahahaha, it was great fun though!!  What a bang to end our trip.  When we got back to Cusco we watched the video in a club and had a great time. All in all this was my favourite trip.  Our guides were amazing and I loved every minute. We are now off to Riberalta in Bolivia.. Our bus leavers Cusco tonight for La Paz (the capital of Bolivia) where one of Miks friends will pick us up from the bus station (first class treatment baby!) and help us find flights with the various companies around...I would love to show you piccies of the white water rafting but, they gave us the photos on a disc so it is a matter of finding a computer over here that has a disc drive... Soon... I´ll put them up soon... Over and out, Love Joe and Katie
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Huaraz, Peru

Have you ever wondered, Aussies, what mountians higher than 4000m look like.  Considering that our highest mountain is only just over 2000m I am sure you are all wondering.  Well it is amazing.  We are currently staying in Huaraz, a small, popular town in the Andes, Peru.  This town is famous for its nearby National park which has over 22 peaks higher than 6000m.  The view is amazing from every part of the town, with snow topped peaks everywhere.  Temperatures in this town are not to bad maybe reaching 5 degrees at night time.  The main reason people come here is for the hiking.  So of course we decided to take part.  Santa Cruz is a popular 4 day hike about 3 hours from Huaraz.  We set out on a Sunday morning in true Peruvian style.  Supposedly leaving at 6.30am but not really until 7.30am when the guide finally turned up.  With 8 other tourists we travelled in public micro-buses to a small town call Caraz and then onto Santa Cruz, the beginning of our trek.  The first day, Joe and I were photo happy, surrounded by cliff faces and following a fresh, icy cold flowing river.  We walked along a valley with a beuatiful white snow peaked mountain (our destination) in the distance.  The days hike took us past waterfalls, flowing rivers with little grassy areas by the water, wild dangerous donkeys with their hearders, dangerous cactus plants and more.  In fact Joe got attacked by a round cactus plant and had about 15 needle like spikes sticking out of his leg!!  OOOOOOUUUCCH.  The first night we camped at 3760m at a camp called Llamacorral (Yamacoral), the sun setting early around 6pm and the cold coming in and freezing us to our bones!!  All 12 (including our guides) of us had to try and fit into the cooking tent big enough for maybe 8.  We ate well the whole trip, with hot breakfast in the mornings, eggs, porridge (Joe says the best he has ever had) and aromatic tea.  Lunch was sammies, chocolate and biccies and dinner started with a nice hot cup of Coca Tea, soup and a main dish.  SOO YUMMY and kept us warm and full.  Temperatures dropped below 0 the first night and I spent the night teeth chattering and snuggling with hubby to keep warm.The second day saw us climb to 4250m.  A mostly flat day it was quite easy walking, cut in the middle by climbing a stupidly high and steep Mirador (look out) to over 4300m. Oh thats right we also came across a disgusting cows head stuck on a rock!!  EEEEW The view was amazing with white peaks (over 6000m) and the valley around us.  Sleeping in minus 10 degrees was a killer and we woke up with ice on our tent and all over the grass.Day 3, the big DAY, the summit day. This was always known to be the hardest day and it was.  We climbed ffrom 4250 to 4750m.  The altitude was really felt at these heights and every 100m I would have to stop to catch my breath.  Couple that with the fact I had a broken toe on the left and sore heel on the right, the climb wasnt very pleasent.  The views from the top however were worth everything.  AMAZING!!  Imagine standing on the beach and looking out into the oceans horizon about 5km and now tilt your head straight back so you are looking 5km up into the sky and that is about how high we were. Words cannot even describe how beautiful this place is and how amazing God is to have created something so enormous!!  After summiting the mountain ridge pass we spent about 4 hours walking down to our next camp.  I was delighted to have met another Aussie Clint from Victoria, who like me grew up with good ol John Williamson.  We belted out many tunes and laughed and laughed!!Our final night on the trail met us with the same stunning views of stars.  Ever night the stars were so bright and there were multitudes!  Our favourite was seeing the southern cross.  Made us feel close to you guys.  Isnt it amazing that this far away we can look up at night and see the same sky and stars!!  Being so cold at night at this altitude we couldnt stay out watching the stars too long.  Day 4 saw us hike out of the national park, wait for a bus for almost 2 hours and return home.  We had a great time, the group of people we were with was perfect, the view stunning, the cold chilling but most of all the landscape, like nothing i could have ever imagined!!A few sum ups: have you ever tried peeing in minus 10 degrees at night... eeewww soo cold, donkeys are awesome, I was thrilled to be surrounded by dogs, donkeys, cows, chickens, goats and sheep for much of the trip.  Our guide Abel had done the same hike in 8 hours, just remember we took nearly four days!! Views were stunning and the mighty Andes dwaffed anything. We saw the mountain ridge pass on our first day and we didn´t reach it until our 3rd day! Unbelievable!We all went out to dinner for Chiffa (Chinese) after the hike and I was in awe of Clint after eating almost 7 dessert items from the cake shop!!  How impressive is that!!  And I thought my mum and I were sweet toothes.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1214005140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1214005140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1214005140/tpod.html Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:44:47 -0400 The Big Kahuna - Trip of a life time! South America then Europe - a 1 year honeymoon. Yeow!

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Chachapoyas, Peru

Where did we leave off?We are now well in Peru after a number of gruelingly painful and long bus journeys... Summary for thou... Loja (Ecuador) to Piura - a nothing town where we stayed for a few nights in an attempt to delay the inevitable, dreading the thought of our next long bus journey... In fact, our next bus journey was very pleasant from Piura to Chiclayo and was along the Pan Americana highway, on the coast, which means it has no Andean mountain ranges towering out of the Earth anywhere which makes the trip ten times shorter! So our 3 hour trip to Chiclayo (where we stayed for one night) was surprisingly short and raised our spirits before we jumped on a simi cama (semi bed) bus to Chacapoyas.. Now this is the silly thing over here.. They have all these private bus companies right.. Now - one, they don´t make it easy here in Peru by having a bus terminal where all the buses leave from like Colombia and Ecuador, but rather have their own "terminals" for each individual bus company which are spread up and down a couple of streets or, in some cases, around the whole town... This make it very fun for us - Lucky things! We now have to walk around from bus company to bus company trying to figure out who is going where and at what time and for what price and what is the bus like (big variances - from really nice to really, well the opposite) etc. Good times. Secondly.. As the case seems so far, each bus company usually has 2 options to get to the places that we have been trying to get to, granted - they Aren´t exactly the country capitals - in fact they have been quite out of the way, but they have one economico (economic / cheap) option and one simi-cama / cama option which leave 15 or 30 minutes after each other. Now, one would naturally assume that given the amount of competition, the next bus company will have different options for times, but you would be wrong! They all seem to leave at the same time from company to company and at really "odd-folk" times. Our bus to Chacapoyas was around 10 and a half hours and between the 4 or 5 companies that provided the option for the town, they all left with in half an hour of each other between 6:30 and 7:00pm which means that you arrive in Chacapoyas at 5:30, (if you take the latest bus possible) to join the patrons of the other buses in a tired, dazed and dark walk around town in search of a place to sleep. Sorry, got carried away with the summary bit... Turned out to be a bit more of an elaborate summary than I was going for...Anyho.. We Went to Chacapoyas, not for the town, but for the barely visited ruins of Kuelap which lie nearby... The town itself was pleasant and quiet with not a sight of tourists.The Kuelap ruins are set on a magnificent mountain ridge at an altitude of 3100m, once a cloud forest. The ruins were built by a pre-Colombian civilization known as the Chacapoyas people. The ruins that remain now is a platform, approximately 600m long by 100m wide which stands about 8 - 10 metres high off the top of the mountains ridge. From the outside of the ruins, it looks like a long wall with a few entries. Once on top of the main platform, You can see another 3 platforms high which sit on top of each other and many circular brick house ruins. The  platform has 6 entries which narrowly pierce the wall and climb paths which get thinner and thinner (to around 60cm) as you get to the platform level - built like this to help fight against intruders - The Incas in particular.Archaeologists believe people were living here as early as 400 AD.  A Peruvian man who re-discovered it in the last 200 years some time found a mummy in a tomb.  Not just any old mummy though the person buried here had blonde hair and blue eyes. This civilization despite appearing uninvadable, was conquered by the INCAS in the 1400´s.  This fact is evident in the buildings. The pre-Colombian people had circular houses with a peaked top made of grasses.  Post Inca invasion the building bore the classic Inca look of angled walls (squares, rectangles, etc). And hows this - The Chacapoyas people bury their dead in tombs under the floor of their house in a small hole and continue living on top - You could see one of these holes in almost every house.. Many of the bones however, have been taken by thieves.  At this time the people were buried in the fetal position, to represent coming to life from mother earth and returning the same way as they came.We did the tour guide thing this time round because it turned out that we weren´t going to make a big saving by doing it ourselves and we both really wanted the English guide because that is some Spanish vocabulary that is beyond us. So it was just the four of us including the driver who stayed in the car and after we had been driving to these ruins for an hour, we saw our first glimpse from them across a great big Andean valley... Another 2 hours later, we arrived! Yeap - 2 hours after seeing the ruins! Flamin Andes - Nah, we actually love the andes! It is not hard to do a journey through the Andes because the views are so spectacular. When we arrived there.. It was just the three of us (Me, Katie and the guide), a few local Peruvians, a bunch (yes, not a school, not a pack, or a heard, a bunch) of Lamas! (Yeow! Our first Peruvian Lamas) and the National geographic team who were doing an article on the place (about 6 of them). We were in such awe of these ruins that it seemed unimaginable that they are so unknown and that so few visit them. Apparently, only 1% of the tourist crowd that come to Peru visit Northern Peru because it is difficult to get around and to get there, and of that 1%, only a tiny fraction take the time out to visit these ruins... There has been talks about putting a cable car to the ruin site making it much more highly accessible but there is some bad feelings about this from the local people who think it will ruin the site and surrounding views. After the amazing ruins we left for Trujillo (on the coast) on a night bus - Shocking night bus with flamin Movil who played the music all night long! They have no drivers compartment door either so we were stuck listening to the flirtatious bus attendant lady and the driver chat all night - Loudly! Man alive... And the air con... Well it was a bad trip anyway. Trujillo - Not a great place to go for the beaches because if you stray less than 1km in either direction - "Muchos ladrones (Many thieves)" and there has been plenty of brutal muggings we found out. We stayed in the town, which was very nice, for a few nights (We have actually forgotten how long - hahaha - Thats terrible! It´ll come back to me) and then caught yet another night bus to Huaraz - Great trip with linea! Our best bus ride yet - Thank God!. They even took our finger prints as we entered through security checks before hoping on the bus.. We felt very safe! Thats all about that.. Joe from Huaraz!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1213568520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1213568520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chillwithjoe/world-2008/1213568520/tpod.html Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:01:51 -0400 The Big Kahuna - Trip of a life time! South America then Europe - a 1 year honeymoon. Yeow!

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Cuenca, Ecuador

Yeap.. Cuenca!
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