Sharpie's big skive!
24th Oct 2006Peru We´ve been in Peru for almost a month and time is flying by, in no time at all we´ll be back home! Last night we stayed on one of the remotest islands on Lake Titikaka. We all stayed with different families, three to a house. We got there and had to hike up to the village centre which took us about 30mins but up a really steep slope, but the time we reached the top we were all gasping for air partly because we´re unfit but also because we were about 4000mtrs above sea level so the airs really thin. They made us dinner at their houses which consisted of soup to start which was lovely then rice and potatos. Conversation at dinner was pretty limited as they speak in Quechua, they do speak some Spanish but again my Spanish is very limited! Conversation mainly consisted of words from the Quechuan phrase list we were given, so a lot of hellos and thank yous, although thank you is the longest word they have Ýuspagarasunki! Easy hey! After dinner they dressed us up in their traditional wear, an embroided blouse and a three layered skirt...very heavy clothes especially for the weather, we all looked pretty stupid and had a good laugh dancing in the disco to panpipes, not that we´ve had enough of them yet!!!! Today we´ve visited the floating islands of Uros, which are islands on Lake Titikaka that have been made from the reeds. Very strange stepping onto what you think is a solid land to still be bobbing up and down as if you were still in the boat! Again, once we were there we were offered all sorts of tapestrys and ceramics to buy.....shame my bag´s already full! We´ve crammed quite a lot into the past few weeks. We meet our group in Lima. There´s 12 of us travelling through Peru together and everyone is really nice, no problems so far. Our tour leader Carlos is very laid back and sometimes it seems like he can´t really be arsed but as long as our accomodation and transport is sorted I don´t really care. Lima was made out to be a really dangerous city, but we didn´t come across any horror stories while we were there. On our bus journey from Santiago to Lima we meet a Patty from Chile who was going to see her friend....who turned out to be her girl friend she meet over the internet. Anyway, we meet Patty and her girlfriend for lunch where they treated us to some typical Peruvian delights....raw fish marinaded in lemon juice. Sounds gross but it was actually really nice. We took a flight over the Nazca lines, which was really amazing. You can see why they didn´t discover them until 1940s as it was even hard to spot them when the pilot was pointing them out as they blend into the desert. We all started to feel sick as he was circling the drawings, thankfully no one was sick in the plane! We´ve also walked the Inca trail to Machupicchu. 47km in total up and down through the Pervian mountains. It took us three and a half days and parts of it were hell! The first day we stopped for lunch ( three courses!) then after we let our lunch go down we had a 4 hour climb of 800mtrs...it´s was a killer! Half way up Freddy are tour leader who was a legend gave us so Coco leaves to chew on, they are a natural stimulant that help ozygen around your body...they also use it in cocaine....whether it was all in the mind or not they actually helped. I don´t think I would´ve managed it without them! It felt like we were climbing the steps forever, and around each corner you just hoped the campsite would be there but oh no...finally we reached the campsite and the relief I felt was overwhelming!!! The second day wasn´t as bad we had two passes to climb, the highest was at 4200mtrs, then from there it was all down hill.....1000m in all...not good for the knees! The food made up for the pain. I dont know how the porters and cooks managed it but we had three courses for lunch and dinner, one lunch we were ever given pizza and jelly! The porters put us all to shame when they would pass us carrying our main bags and all the camping equiptment...we would be gasping for air and concentrating on our next step! On the last day we were up at 4am to get up early to trek to Machu Picchu to see it in the sunrise....it was amazing, quite emotional for us all, especially that we´d just walked 47km and could hear the train in the distance! It was such a brilliant experience! Well we´ll be in Bolivia tomorrow for 10 days so Í will let you know how we get on there! Take care everyone.......see you soon!
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