Machu Picchu

Originally we'd planned to find the ruins of Machu Picchu by ourselves, bypassing the plethora of tour agencies and following the route in our own time. However we'd met some people who had recommended the 'jungle tour' which included some mountain biking and trecking all for a pretty decent price. I was well up for the cycling bit, so in the end we booked onto a tour.

Our group was a nice varied bunch, made up of a couple from Oz, another from Barcelona, a couple of comedy welsh fellas, a guy from South Korea, and a bunch of rowdy young Chilean cousins.

On the first day we travelled high up into the mountains to Abra Malaga (4316 m) where we were surrounded by the snowcapped Huacay Willca Mountains. Here we were issued our bikes, helmets and gloves, and began a two hour descent, bombing through different ecological zones at a crazy speed. I loved it! It's been a while since I've mounted my trusty stead, the majestc Raleigh Mantaray, and I've certainly never reached speeds like that before. At times it felt like 'Tour de France', the 15 of us cruising down, passing each other and various other groups along the way. The views were awsome. It made for pretty good buzz and has wet my appetite for more mountain biking. Can't beat a good bit of wholesome, carbon-free fun! As we descended the temperature rose, the insects began to sing and the sweet unmistakable scent of tropical forest became frequent. That night we stayed in the small town of Santa Maria, which felt to us a bit like Colombia, and where the local kids seem to play volleyball twenty four hours a day.

The next day was on foot. We walked for many hours, climbing narrow paths which ascended through the forest, passing the remote homes of banana growing families. It was a pretty tough day, which made the natural hot springs all the more rewarding when we got there. We stopped for the night in another tiny town, and all went out for some food and cocktails.

Next day was a 4am start, and we continued along the sacred valley of the Incas, following the beautiful Urubamba river and a disused railway track. It was a nice walk, and we reached the town of Aguas Calientes in good time, where we relaxed for the afternoon.

The next morning we started at about 3am and hiked up to the entrance of the ruins. It was pretty tough going, steep step after steep step for about 2 hours, along with the hoards of others making the same pilgramage. By the time we reached the top, there were probably eighty or so people already there, from all over the world and by the time we were allowed to enter the crowd probably swelled to about three hundred.

The 'Lost city of the Incas' were every bit as impressive as the pictures, and being there for the sunrise was nice, especially as only a fraction of the 2500 or so daily visiters were clambering around at that point.

The Incas had commenced its construction around AD 1430 as a kind of exclusive dwelling for the Inca rulers (although there are various theories about its purpose), but was abandoned a hundred years later as the Spanish pushed futher into the territory on their bloody conquest, although it turned out they had'nt even known about it anyway. Consequently they did'nt destroy it like the many other significant inca settlements they left smashed in their wake.

Most people queue for the twice daily opportunity to climb up Wayna Pichu mountain, which over looks the ruins. After hearing tails of irate tourists fighting tooth and nail to make it for the 200 places allowed, we decided to climb the less often visited Machu Picchu mountain, which stands at the oposite end of the ruins and is much higher, offering an even more spectacular view. And it was worth it. After our sweaty, heart-pounding ascent in the mid-day heat, we were rewarded with a really special view, and spent a few hours up there. To make the day even more memorable, our Australian friend proposed to his girlfriend on the way up, to the cheers of our motley crew! Luckily for us, the sun shone all day with no cloud or mist to obscure the view. All in all it was a wicked trip with a great group of people.

Border crossings - illegal aliens in Peru (Soundtrack: Sting - Englishman in Peru)

We returned to Copacabana had a quick breakfast, went to the book exchange for new reading material and then did a bit of haggling for bus tickets to the city of Cusco, Peru. Unfortunately the official at the border didn't agree with our calculation of 90 days as the total of our duration in Bolivia - he counted 91 days (including the day we arrived as one whole day, as opposed to one day being 24 hours after the moment we arrived). So, we had to join the naughty line to await our charge of about one quid fifty each. The meagre penalty itself we could have lived with - it was what happened afterwards that became a ball ache. As we'd had to spend extra time queuing in two queues we were quite far behind in line, and most of the people from our bus had moved on. The bus conductor was getting impatient and moved us to the front to get our stamp, telling us to hurry up. We got our stamps boarded the bus once more. It wasn't until we had almost reached our destination that we realised that we'd only recieved our exit stamp from Bolivia, and not our entry stamp for Peru! Whilst we had been waiting to pay our fine (which we shouldn't have had to pay in the first place) our fellow passengers had dissapeared, not to the bus as we'd thought, but to another office to get their entry stamps. No one had told us about the other office and we'd been rushed through. So we were illegal aliens in Peru.


As we passed through vast expanses of open fields the air became jet-black with smoke from huge areas of burning grass; some kind of natural pasture burning for grass renewal. It gave the impression of traveling through a war-torn country dotted with the smouldering remains of bombed-out villages.

We arrived in Cusco late and managed to find a fairly cheap hotel despite the 'historical centre of Peru' being possibly one of the most tourist-driven places in South America, due to it's history as the capital of the Inca empire and its close proximity to Machu Picchu.

Despite it being completely over-run with visiting foreigners (ourselves included of course), with over 850,000 visiting in 2007 alone, and with all the high brow accommodation and restaurants to cater for them, Cusco is a pretty nice city. There's plenty of nice old colonial architecture and narrow cobbled roads and stone walls (many of which were built by the Incas), and the many plazas are always bustling. You do get sick to death of the countless people trying to sell you dinners and massages though, prompting the creation of the Irish bar's 'NO GRACIAS!' T-shirt. There were few street parades during our time there and we visited an art exhibition of giant paper mache swine-flu related pigs!

We found respite from the masses in the local semi-open air market, where each we'd start by eating breakfast with the locals. This would consist of a couple of Tamales (steam cooked corn dough, sweet or savoury, wrapped in a corn husk) and bad coffee, and maybe an egg buttie for good measure.

Due to the daily turn over of visiters using Cusco as base to visit Machu Picchu, there's a pretty good night life, with several clubs lining the central plaza. On our second night I asked around to see if I could get a gig or two and soon enough I'd been invited to play at 4 clubs the following night!

The first one had a really nice layout with the booth up on a balcony looking down onto the crowd below. Some classic Hip Hop and Funk coaxed out a couple of B-boys and soon enough there was a battle going on, much to the delight of the circle of onlookers. Thats the first time I've played to the B-boys in a while and it felt good, reminding me of the K0 Rockin'It days! Just shame I was playing on the most basic of CD decks - I was itchin' for a scratch! In the second I played mainly breaks and a bit of reggae, and ended up playing for a good 4-5 hours, so I never made it to clubs 3 and 4!

We booked the mandatory trip to Machu picchu. We chose the 4-day 'jungle tour' which would involve one day of bombing down a mountain on a bike and a few days trecking through the jungle to get to the ancient site. We'd originaly wanted to do it alone, without a tour, but the price was pretty reasonable and I was well up for some mountain biking. So we packed our bags and got ready for some serious walking.....

Isla del sol

During my last day in Sorata I came down with some pretty bad sickness, maybe food poisoning. This put me out for a good 5 days, leaving me a bit underweight and weak. During that time I still managed to get back to Cochabamba, which took the best part of a day, where Colette was waiting to give me lots of sympathy and attention. Eventually we finished off our loose ends and were ready to leave the city where we'd stayed for a good 2 months. Once again we caught the bus to La Paz, where we stayed for a week, buying presents and shipping two huge parcels home. We stayed in a cheap little hostel near the 'witch market', where rows of stalls sell all your ceremonial needs; coca leaves, incense, colourful sweets, tiny figures and, of course, a selection of llama pheotuses in their various stages of development.


Then we headed to Copacabana, a small town on the shore of lake Titicaca. The journey involved the crossing of a narrow stretch of the lake using a coach 'ferry'. It's a nice place, if a little over done on the tourism front. It feels a bit like a seaside resort with the boats and endless blue of the vast lake; lago Titicaca is South America's largest lake and one of the world's highest navigable lakes, sitting on the border between Bolivia and Peru at 3812 m. We found a really nice room with a great view of the lake for only 15 bolivianos each per night, around a quid forty or so each.



After a couple of nights we caught a boat to the sacred Inca island of the sun - Isla del Sol. I've probably used the word 'stunning' one too many times in my writings on this blog, but I really can't find another word to adequately describe the beauty of the places I've been fortunate enough to visit on this trip. The island is stunningly beautiful. The rich colour of the deep blue water, the immense Illampu glacier on the horizon, the clear air and bright blue sky, and the lack of any paved roads or vehicles make it such a wonderfully tranquil place. The boat drops you off on the south side, which is pretty busy with tourists on half-day or day trips, but once you walk up the hill and over the peak people are few and far between and consist mainly of the scattered 800 or so Aymara or Quechua families which inhabit the island. Once again we found a lovely place to stay, with an awsome view of the distant Illampu. We'd wanted to camp on the island, which can be done safely for free, but in the end the low temperatures were enough to deter us.

Later in the evening we witnessed an impressive 'moon rise' and the reflected yellow light shone across the water and provided sufficient light for shadows. The next morning we woke up early for sunrise, which could be seen from the comfort of our bed once the curtains were opened. We set off for a walk to the northern end of the island. We wandered through the scenery of a time gone by, passing the brightly clothed locals as they walked their mixed heards of goats, sheep, llamas and pigs along the dusty paths. I'm not quite sure where they were taking the animals, but everywhere we went people were walking their flocks back and fourth, from children of no more than 8 years to women who looked impossibly old, whose weathered faces had endured a life's worth of the island's harsh climate. Donkeys and llamas grazed side by side on the sloped fields above us. Occasionally a walking bush would appear on the horizon and trundle towards us, eventually morphing into an old man or woman hunched over at a right-angle with a huge bundle of harvested bean stalks slung over their back. We passed quiet hamlets where children ran to greet us and people worked harvesting corn or ploughing the fields with a bull-drawn plough. And all without the sound of a single internal combustion engine! Perfect.

Colette became annoyed at my insistance on taking lots of photos of donkeys. She thinks I've developed an obsession. However, I'll be having the last laughs when I return home to jobless situation with an entrepreneurial trick up my sleeve; 'Donkeys of Bolivia' calender 2010 here I come. Only April, August and November left to capture.

We reached the north side and checked into another cute place at a bargain price. After a read and doze on the beach we walked to the Inca ruins right near the northern tip and watched another gorgeous sunset. This is the kind of place we could have stayed for a week. But we had reached the 89th day of our 90 day visa for Bolivia, so after getting up for a final sunrise, we reluctantly caught the boat back to Copacabana to get ready to cross the border to Peru.