La Paz

The city looks a lot larger than it is by the fact that when you are in the valley of the central city you can see the buildings crawling up the steep cliffs like concrete ivy in all directions.  It´s not a pretty city, but it is in a pretty place, snow capped mountains and lunar cliffs are never far from eyesight and every so often a normal street gives you a panaramic view of the Andean surroundings.

It´s also a really lively city.  Unlike Quito, the streets are full of people and market stalls well into the evening.  People had warned us that the food wasn't very good in Bolivia and while it's true there is quite a lot of hamburgers and sliced hot-dogs with chips (in the british sense of chips), there are numerous tasty things such as the stuffed potatoes we found in Cusco and Api which is like chicha morada but hot.  OK so we ran out of things.  The food isn't Bolivia's crowning glory, but everything is SO cheap it's hard to care.  Also bottles of local wine only cost two pounds.

We've been enjoying local markets.  There is one in a poor district high on a hill above the centre (here the rich districts are lower down because it is milder), which only happens twice a week and sells EVERYTHING.  Really, everything.  Clothes, cosmetics, army surplus, books, films (from Bollywood to Korean), games, power tools, tyres, bits of cars dismantled, unexplained metal things, things that look like they have just been nicked, food, etc etc.  It was also huge, we wandered for over two hours and didn't see it all, and insanely cheap.  Back in the centre near our hostel, there is the Mercado de Las Brujas (Witches' Market), which sells weird cures and items for ritual offerings, including these dried sea-horses and llama fetuses.

We've also got out of the city a couple of times to hike the Valle de la Luna park, where different periods of rock formations have made a moon-like area

and the Muela del Diablo peak, not far from the city but a beautiful walk, with great views of La Paz.

We found a cafe run by Mujeres Creando, a very cool feminist collective who have also covered the city in graffiti and we enjoyed a meal there of Pesk'e (which is an unusual hot combo of quinoa, milk and cheese.  As we said food isn't Bolivia's thing.)

This is the cafe.  You can tell they are lesbian llamas because only women wear those hats.  Hurray!

Other strange animals we have observed are La Paz's Socially Conscious Zebras (SCZ).  It started when they were helping people cross the road, which given there are no actual crossings made sense (Zebra crossings get it?).  But then, we saw wall paintings of them helping children with homework and gardening and saw increasing numbers of SCZ roaming around

Then one night, it culminated in a collection of SCZ waving banners about brushing your teeth or choosing to be happy putting on a show in a main plaza with a drama group, an orchestra and break dancers.  It was weird.  But at least it seems they are getting some use out of out-of-work actors because the SCZ were all so enthusiastic and hammy.

We also briefly visited the National Museum of Art.  They were having a big display of gender equality posters from around the world, some of which were quite good

but then you entered the salas and found a bunch of paintings done by old men depicting women only occasionally as either saints or boobs.  But hey ho can't have everything from art museums... wouldn't have killed them to have thrown in a radical anarcha-fem lesbian llama though would it?! 

Tonight we are off to see some wrestling.  We never saw any Lucha Libre in Mexico and Chile (the next place where this is a big cultural thing) will be much more expensive than Bolivia.  Plus here, a lot of the wrestlers are traditionally indigenous women, which is a bit different.  So even though wrestling is not usually our thing, we are gonna give it a go.

Tomorrow we head for the Amazon to be proper tourists in an eco-lodge.  More on that afterwards.

Lake Titicaca and Thereabouts

Looking for missions that would take us out of Cusco while we waited, we went to more ruins, this time at Tipon, which is thought to be a fancy royal estate (because they have no clue and it is pretty).  It's most notable feature is a complex series of water canals and miniature waterfalls.  The first thing we noticed is it is located up 4km of steep switchbacks.  Still it was a really nice site to relax at

The day before we had been debating finding somewhere cheap/free to sleep, we happened to ask the owner of the hostel we had been staying in.  He said we could camp for free in the garden of a house he was renovating.  Not only was it free we had excellent views over the whole city at night.  Win.

We met up and spent a nice afternoon evening with our Quebecois enjoying the market, the herb cheeses, the tamales (which are really good and come in savoury and sweet varieties) and other things one last time, endured a massive tropical downpour and in the morning were happy to leave Cusco and get back on the road

Still travelling with our friend AR, Peruvian hitch-hiking remained kind and we reached Juliaca and bedded down for the night in the huge bus terminal.  However before we did so, we enjoyed a huge bowl of chicken broth, with lots of chilli onion mix to add as desired.  We've all been a bit stuffed up with cold recently and this was the perfect medicine for that.

The next day we went out to the beautiful grave sites at Sillustani.  Though we were going for the ruins, we were amazed at how beautiful the nearby lake was and all the small stone compound type homes in the area, with pretty arches and good luck cow statues on the rooves.

We did some more gorgeous hiking and camped there (again for free) for the night.  However we were now about 3800m above sea level and the while the stars were pretty, the clear night left us shivering.

Puno is the Peruvian gateway to Lake Titicaca and numerous islands.  It's also a pleasant, cheap, lively city with several markets and 2-3 sole (50-75p) two course menus.  A friend of AR´s had recommended Taquile Island as a place to hike and we decided to tag along.  The ferry took about three hours to reach the island, helping us appreciuate the sheer size of Titicaca. Along the way the boat stopped at one of the 'floating' Uros Islands, which are made from layers and layers of reeds with reed houses atop them.

It was interesting to see how they make the islands, but kind of a strange place to be.  It seems the island you visit is more of a display and doesn't look actually lived on, and you are immediately surrounded by people trying to sell you artesanias of various kinds.  A combination of bag space and Scottish/Yorkshire heritage means we almost never buy souvenirs and when we do they have practical uses.  But it's a dynamic that makes you uncomfortable.  And so it should.  Compared to the Uros Islanders, any tourist is rich and privileged, usually directly because our economies Take All The Things from their type of economy.  But aside from the issue of not being able to buy from everyone, it doesn't feel to us like its the way out of these situations anyway.  Tourists can only come and buy these things whilst we are all richer than the artists in question.  Any actual redressing of that inequality and they would find their economy no longer has a base.  We've taken away all autonomy and power from these places but told them it's ok, they can be just like us and rely on consumerism for everything.  We'll toss them just enough crumbs that they can remain romantically poor.

Taquile itself felt like a  much more genuinely inhabited place.  The colours of the stunning blue lake and the red tin rooves and the labyrinthine network of stone dykes that covered the island made for some gorgeous hiking, even with our tortoise-like pace up the hills (it´s the altitute we swear).

The second day we even found a beach to enjoy a brief swim.  The lake looks crystal blue and inviting but is freezing.

It was during this time C finsihed The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian author.  As we´ve mentioned we have been looking up some Latin American authors and books while we are here and WotEotW is the best Latin American fiction C has read yet. A novelisation of a real war, don´t look it up or you´ll spoil the plot, but do read it!

Returning to Puno, we napped in another large 24-hour bus station (it´s quite common here, kids and families waiting for a morning bus etc) and set off to an Incan fertility temple in Chucuito, although since it wasn´t built on a hill, lording it over everyone else, we are suspicious as to its Incan authenticity.

But it's really very educational and interesting, and anyone who giggles at this is obviously much more immature than us.

It was after this that we parted company with AR.  It was fun travelling with someone else for a while as it makes a change.  We set off for the border and after smooth process we were in Bolivia!

Bolivia is somewhere we have both wanted to go for a long time and it felt really good to have made it.  Copacabana is the Bolivian gateway to Titicaca and is the original that the Brazilian beach is named after.  It is also home a very important pilgrimage site, where people walk the 200km from La Paz over Holy Week. Fearing we might be trapped by road closures for this we decided to get a bus that night to La Paz.  This was fine with us, as we had already eaten some delicious, battered, tiny lake fish called Ipsi and Copacabana was a much more tourist-filled place than Puno, and we were struck by the sheer number of signs in English advertising wood-fired pizzas and vegetarian menus.  So we didn´t feel very tempted to stay longer than a couple of hours.

During our time in and around Lake Titicaca we heard several different explainations for the name.  We were told that 'Titi' means cat in Quechua and 'Caca' means grey in Aymara.  We were also told that this name referred to;
1) A big gray rock shaped like a puma on Isla del Sol (Incas were always seeing puma in everything)
2) A legend about the creation of the lake involving a crying Sun God and some bedraggled survivours
3) If looked at upside down from space, the lake is the shape of a cat (it isn´t)

Anyway, we were really pleased with all the hiking and things we got done over the last week or so, but feel like a break from old stones and camping for a little a while and are looking forward to exploring the massive sprawl of Nuestra Señora de La Paz (highest capital city in the world, except it´s only the de facto capital, which makes the claim a little bit qualified but there you are).

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

Cusco is bigger and more industrial, less touristy than we expected.  But given we were expecting San Cristobal in Mexico that isn't saying much and it's still pretty touristy.  Our first day here we roamed around eating lots of tasty food, visiting a weaving museum and generally relaxing.  However on Monday, we were up at 05:30 am as we had heard you could get into nearby Inca ruins for free if you got there before 7am and the word "free" will get us up at pretty much any hour.  This turned out to be true and we enjoyed beautiful views over Cusco

and explored the ruins of Sacsayhuman, a large fortress shaped like a puma (they say), with some very impressive huge stones and stonework.  It was the site of a major defeat for the Incas against the Spanish and the image of the condors that eat the dead was on the Cusco town flag for many centuries before they adopted the current rainbow flag.

We ended up extending our hike for a few hours visiting other free sites and heading back to town on a beautiful old Inca road

and that afternoon we took a free walking tour of town.  It's clearly used as a way to promote a lot of businesses but involves getting a LOT of free food and drink samples and also involves some interesting facts.

We had mentioned to the folk running our hostel that we were interested in trying guinea-pig (called cuy here) as it is a really common food in this area.  However in the city centre, tourism makes the prices very high.  In the end, about a dozen people around the hostel chipped in and we decided to cook our own

It's a bit like rabbit, but not a lot of meat for your money and we're not particularly recommending it, alpaca has been a better discovery.  Also, every time one of these local meats gets mentioned, people always mention the health benefits.  This has been true of everywhere "Cuy is low fat", "Moose is a healthy protein source", "the ancient Lima culture ate alpaca as a low cholesterol meat" and so on.  We think this is silly (especially the last one).  New and interesting food doesn't always have to be justified by current health fads.

After another day in Cusco, visiting the natural history museum and endless artesanias, we were pretty ready to leave on Wednesday morning.  Our first port of call was Ollantaytambo, where we found a campsite and enjoyed a beautiful hike up the steep side of the valley around the free Inca ruins of Pinkuylluna

The following day we headed to the village of Huilloq, where the local women have a weaving collective.  Normally, we feel kind of uncomfortable using people's lives as a tourist destination, but in this situation a friend of AR's had lived here some years ago doing research and had sent us to say hi to people she remembered.  We bought a couple of things and ended up staying in one of the families homes,

getting dinner, a cozy bed and breakfast the next day for a very low price.  People were lovely and we were very impressed by one ten year old boy in particular who translated our Spanish into Quecha for his mother at speeds they pay very highly for at the UN, and also wove some very pretty bracelets.

Rather than take another taxi back, we hiked about 6 km down the valley and then up to yet more stunning ruins at Pumamarca, where we were able to camp

and today followed old Inca trails another 6 km back to Ollantaytambo, pausing only for some chicha.  Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from fermented corn brewed in local homes.  When they have enough to share, they hang a red plastic bag outside and for 25-50p you sit in someone's living room enjoying the huge glasses

(pictured chicha also has strawberries!)


We are now back in Cusco for a night and hoping to catch up with some other WWOOFing friends for the evening before we all finally go our separate ways.

Farming

The bus rides out to our host farm wound through stunning Andean landscapes

though at times it was a bit death defying where the edges of the road had collapsed and we swayed dangerously over dizzying falls.  But we made it (which is probably clear as we are writing this update) and descended the mountains again a little to the more humid area near the tiny pueblo of Chahaures where we were to work.

The farm focuses mainly on cacau at the moment (though there is enough coffee that every morning we were drinking what J was pretty sure was pure gold).  We picked it and also spent some time splitting the pods and extracting the seeds for fermentation.  They come in a white goop which, whilst tasty, is nothing like the end result of chocolate.

We also picked and hauled corn

weeded with sickles, shucked the corn inside on rainy days, hefted firewood, and when not working played card games with one of the kids and helped out with cooking.  Sadly this was the worst part of our stay as we never quite got enough to eat.  At times it was watery oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch and the same soup watered down for dinner.  It wasn't just our huge appetites- there were several other people working there at the same time and everyone was struggling.  Three people left early and others bought extra food to keep themselves going.  It was a shame as leaves a bit of bitterness with otherwise lovely people and they would find it easier to keep workers if they could manage to up the rations a bit.

We got on very well with our co-wwoofers though and have adopted one to travel with for a while, the lovely A.R from Oregon, USA- who has her own blog here.  We might meet some others later as well.  The three of us retraced the beautiful journey to Cusco last night.

and have found a very cheap and friendly hostel and eaten some alpaca (it is very good, not unlike lamb, very rich and not industrially farmed).  Today we shall begin to explore the town.

Lima

The Couchsurfing didn't really work out, but we've made the best of it and there are some pretty cheap hostels here.  Unfortunately we both got a bit sick from something (at the moment we suspect the new malaria pills we got for our farming stint next week), so have been taking it pretty easy.

That said we did manage to get out and about a bit in Lima.  We went to the ruins of Pucllana which was a large temple complex made by the Lima culture (not their own name, just the name posterity has assigned them) about one and half thousand years ago to worship/appease a sea goddess.

Because of the lack of writing systems and the occupation of the site by several different cultures afterwards, there was definitely a lot of guesswork showing in the interpretations.  One of the later occupiers from the Wari culture, which was an empire which lasted far longer than Inca one. But, as we are discovering, like the Aztecs in Mexico, the Inca are the most famous simply because they were the most major culture the Spaniards met and crushed.  The Wari used Pucllana to bury some important people and they buried their heroes with several babies who would act as guides to the spirit world (maybe, possibly).

Also at the site were gardens with a lot of traditional crops and animals as would have been cultivated by the people here.  There were sweet potatoes, chillies, yuca as well as animals like guinea-pigs (which due to upset tummys we still haven't eaten yet) and alpacas.

We felt this was a nice addition as it provided variety from mud bricks and introduced the agriculture and food culture of the people, understanding its food is really importan in understanding a place and also if you are from Peru, would highlight that the diet wouldn't be a million miles from modern Peruvian food.

We also went to the monastery of San Francisco still owned by the Franciscan monks.  You weren't allowed to take photos inside, possibly because it would show just how much golden loot this supposed poverty-sworn order have in there.  It was used as a graveyard for the city for almost three centuries so there are catacombs underneath filled with bones, which modern archaeologists have arranged in fetching patterns for their own amusement.  We didn't think archaeologists were supposed to do this.  There was also a library of 60,000 volumes some dating from the 16th century, with spiral staircases, that we both would have liked to live in.

On Saturday night, we went to Parque de la Reserva where there are dozens of fountains and light displays every night.  Considering it only cost about a pound, it was a lot of fun and very magical.

Later on, there were also lasers, which we suspect is an addition to the 1930's fountains (oh the jaded youth of today, not satisfied with fountains alone).

Today we are taking a 20 hour bus to Cusco, where we are going to work on a coffee farm for a week.  As Peru is one of the world's biggest producers of organic coffee, this should be pretty appropriate and interesting.  We are also looking forward to the change of pace, as we are a bit travel worn.  

Trujillo

We enjoyed our stay in Trujillo as we got on well with our hosts and saw some interesting things at a relaxed pace.  Our hosts turned out to be really into chess and this made J very happy as she enjoyed endless tournaments.  Between all the chess and some nice evenings with local beer and food, we explored Trujillo.  The city is surrounded by desert and the stuffy dry heat never leaves and even in the city centre, there are cracks where the desert pokes through.  There are numerous historical sites in and around the city, we first visited the city of Chan Chan, capital of Chimu culture until conquered by the Inca half a century before the Conquest and largest adobe (sun-baked mud bricks) city in the world.

This is part of a palace complex.  For being made of mud, it is a very impressive and beautiful site, though much of the surrounding city is now little more than unusual tumours in the desert outside.  Hanging around we met one of these guys;

It's a Peruvian Hairless Dog, a type which existed here alongside many Pre-Colombian peoples for many centuries.  We would later discover that the governement decided to keep several of them at many different Pre-Colombian sities, as a sort of living piece of pre-conquest culture we suppose.  They certainly seemed happy enough bumbling around the various pyramids we saw.

As well as Chan Chan we also went to a pyramid which has now been surrounded by modern Trujillo.  It's only a single building but we had it to ourselves and enjoyed the elaborate reliefs, the compulsory hairless dogs and also saw a burrowing owl flitting about.

The next day J got her hit of horses when she went to see a display by some Peruvian Paso dressage riders.  There were also dancers and sometimes the two were combined;

We returned to historical sites at Huaca Moche, a holy site from the culture that preceded the Chimu of Chan Chan.  We were lucky enough to get a great guide and he took us through not only the history, but the current archaeological projects at the still working site;

The site is often referred to the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon.  However, our guide was explaining to us that the deity represented had nothing to do with either of those and the names date from white people in the 19th century who had been to Mexico and decided to label any indigenous site larger than a house "of the Sun or Moon".  We had encountered this problem in Teotihuacan (as anyone who's followed us that long might recall).

We also experienced a bit of a cooking fail, when we got some of the purple corn and tried to make corn-on-the-cob with them.  After half an hour of boiling, the corn was no softer and our host realized what we were doing.  This kind of corn is only for making chicha morada with, she explained.  People don't eat it.  The tasty chicha morada nearly made up for our embarrassment.

Yesterday we set off for Lima, expecting it to take a couple of days.  Once again, we underestimated Peru and arrived in Lima late last night with a friendly trucker (who also bought us dinner).  We are hoping to Couchsurf most of our stay here, but are currently in a hostel in the city centre.  Today we've explored parks and big colonial buildings and got some shopping and important errands done:

From Darkest Peru

We caught a bus south in order to escape the sprawl of Quito and get to a turn off for a pretty volcanic lake we were planning to visit.  Unfortunately, one of the down-sides of getting up at six am is being pretty tired and we missed the city we were suppossed to get off at.  Having avoided paying more for our mistake, we made the decision to keep pushing south towards Cuenca (in classic colonial spanish style the city's full name is ridiculously long: Santa Ana de los cuatro rios de Cuenca).  The mountains were beautiful as always, and with the good hitching here we reached the city that very night.

Carnaval was still on-going and it was fun to see foam and water flying everywhere.  However, it made hitching a risky prospect and at least once J got a face full of foam from a passing vehicle.  Another consequence of the festivities was that nearly everything in Cuenca was shut on the day we arrived.  And we mean everything.  This wasn't so terrible as we the city is very pretty and it is enjoyable just to wander through the old centre.  Not holding out much hope we strolled through town towards the Museum of the Central Bank, which was next to some Inca ruins.

It was surprisingly open.  Numerous toursits were drifting towards it suspiciously, exclaiming to find it both open and free.  There were numerous exhibits on the Pre-Columbian society that lived there, conquered in the late 15th century by the expanding Inca empire, where it became Tomebamba, the most important city in the northern empire.  Next to the museum, the ruins of the military/administrative hub of the city, called Pumapungo still remain.

We were informed that the usual archeological series of small walls were once barracks, homes for the sacred virgins, canals and religious baths and a foundry.  It was very interesting and a really nice peaceful place to come for picnics or reading since it was free access so we were pleased.

Having failed to get the the National Park we had meant to go to, we heard of a petrified forest to the south-west and made the decision to go there to get our camping and forest-wandering fix.  Again, we underestimated how easy it is to hitch-hike in Ecuador and we made it in a day's beautiful hitching in mountains and through dairy farms

We crossed a beautiful but somewhat dangerous mountain road past a valley that is being converted into a hydro-electric dam followed by mile after mile of banana plantations in the province named 'El Oro' after the fruit, reaching the park as firefly illuminated night fell.

There was a very large pavilion for maybe as many as a hundred people to eat, and inside large meeting rooms we could see rows of shiny mountain bikes, presumably for hire.  However in all this they forgot to provide space for people to actually camp.  We set up in the eating area, which we were grateful for when a tropical rainstorm lashed onto the roof for much of the night (and thankfully brought the temperature down a bit with it).

Armed with our ever present tin of pulses/beans and some cheap fresh local cheese (the cheese in Ecuador is both tasty and cheap.  It was explained to us by a lift from Colombia who worked in dairy products that while Colombia had been conned by free trade agreements and much of its dairy products were from the U.S.'s leftovers, Ecuador imported barely any dairy and had a strong and plentiful local industry), we set off into the forest picnicing.  As well as the 100 million year old fossils, many of which still had bark or rings visible, the site is in a very current rainforest as well and we enjoyed the abundant life as much as the fossils:

At this point we were a bit concerned that we were moving too quickly and would reach our next planned destination (Trujillo, Peru) days before we asked Couchsurfs, and indeed before any had replied at all!  This rapid pace was arrested somewhat the next day due to border faff.  The hitching remained as good as ever and we watched the landscape become increasingly arid and desert-like from the cabs of several trucks as we made our way to the Peruvian border at Alamor.  Here we found the 'border control' to be the porch of some man's house, the only indication it was a border control being his posession of a ink pad and stamp.

However, he was the Peruvian border guard and we found ourselves once again needing to officially exit a country before we could be allowed into the next one.  A backward glance across the blasted desert showed a distinct lack of an Ecuador border and we were told we need to back to the nearest town Zapotillo.  When we arrived back there however, we discovered that the border police in this town didn't have the authority (or possibly skill?) to wield a rubber stamp and that we had to go another couple of hours to the town of Macara in order to be allowed to leave.  This was pretty frustrating, but the aforementioned great hitching here made it doable and we did reach the correct town and settled in for the night.

The next day we crossed into Peru, back on the Panamerican where we belong and headed south.  We got away from the border in a collectivo since they made up over half the traffic there.  We've done this at quite a few borders, however this "collectivo" was only a normal estate car.  Refusing to accept the limitations of this, the driver managed to get seven other people and two live goats (plus baggage) in there in an immpressive defiance of physics.  The hitching here was as good as in Ecuador and we rarely waited more than 10 minutes.  This was a good thing as the land had turned into a fully fledged desert with dunes and vast, stunning vistas of nothing;

and the heat was punishing, so we were very glad that people were as friendly as they were as there was little in the way of shade to hide in.  One lift told us that the area in the picture flooded every year during the rainy season and so everything we could see was underwater a few months ago.  The further south we moved though, the scrub grew even thinner and the only thing breaking up the landscape was the occasional cement factory and ruined shacks.

When we arrived in Trujillo, we relished in the chance to do all kinds of luxurious things like lie on a bed and shower.  We also went for a wander to eat.  On the recommendation of a fellow Couchsurf who has been in Peru for a few months, we went to get some ceviche.  It was a huge helping (we shared one) of fresh scallops, crab, mussels, octopus and a lot of some delicious fleshy fish with yuca, something like yuca, all covered in a sharp lime sauce.  It was amazing and at the risk of this becoming a food blog, we've also been enjoying some other Peruvian food in the last couple of days.  Chica morada is a drink made from purple corn and with the cloves and cinnamon tasted for us like Christmas.  Cheap and easily wowed as we are, we have also been enjoying lots of fried corn that gets handed out as a side/appetiser often with garlic/lime sauce.

We're going to be here for a couple of days exploring before we move south.  There are nice fruit and veg markets here.  Peru grows everything from dozens of types of potatoes, to tropical fruits, to olives, so there is plenty options for us to munch on over the next few days.

Also, for those who didn't get the joke in the title- what were you doing with your childhoods?!