(Update from November 7, 2010)
Greetings! As Marco and I are now down to our last couple of days in Sth America, I figured it was time for another group update before we leave the continent! We have spent the time since my last email working our way through Peru and Colombia and have seen some really spectacular things.
Peru was a really interesting place but was by far the most touristy country we've encountered. There's good reason for it though: the people are friendly and the country has some of the most amazing sights in Sth America. We crossed the border at Puno and headed almost immediately for Cusco, which is a beautiful, beautiful city and so OLD. The cobblestones in the streets are all worn so smooth they are positively slippery to walk on, and the rooves of the buildings are all covered with earth-coloured shingles which gives it very a distinctive look. The city is built around a couple of main plazas and courtyards which have wonderful gardens, amazing cathedrals and lovely Spanish architecture surrounding them. There are lots of water features and golden statues on the corners of the streets, and practically everywhere you turn there are plaques or notices telling you that this wall or that piece of stonework dates from the Incan period so you can never forget where you are. And of course, plenty of people in traditional dress walking around trying to get you to cuddle their baby llama or get you to have a photo taken with them... all for a healthy fee, of course!
We spent about 3 days exploring Cusco before setting off on our trek along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. We were lucky enought to have a very small group and a fantastic guide, so it was a great experience all round. We trekked through the Sacred Inca Valley... a narrow, ancient stone pathway through stupendously enormous mountains, all lush and green with waterfalls gushing out here and there. The views were breathtaking. Every now and again we would come to a place where we had to cross the river that ran through the valley but where the bridge had been washed away... so we climbed into a little metal and wooden cage with open sides that had been rigged up suspended from a metal cable and hauled ourselves across with a rope. Or to be more accurate, I should say Marco hauled us across while I hung on tight! Quite something to be dangling in a tiny cage swinging high above a madly rushing river!
We hiked for 3 days, and eventually came to the little town of Agua Calliantes, which is at the base of the mountain that Macchu Picchu sits on. It was an ugly and expensive place - but we were so exhausted from our days of trekking that we didn't care; just crashed and slept! The next morning, it was up at 3.30am to start the climb up literally HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of uneven stone steps to reach Macchu Picchu. We huffed, puffed and sweated our way up, and eventually reached the top just as the sun was coming up. I'm sure you have all seen pictures so I won't go into too much detail to try and describe it, except to say that being there was one of those experiences that really does go beyond words. Initially it was all very etherial and we could only see the ruins closest to us as the mist swirling around the top of the mountain obscured everything else, but as the morning wore on the mist cleared into a fabulous sunny day and we could not only see all the ruins, but the immense mountains stretching away on every side. Sitting there one on of the highest terraces looking down over them all, and then the mountains beyond that, was absolutely amazing.
From the whole 4 day experience (3 days trekking, 1 at the ruins) we returned to Cusco and spent a day recovering before taking the overnight bus to Lima. We didn't spend long there as it was a fairly hectic place - very big, loads of traffic and filthy dirty though it did have some quite nice architecture and some very impressive street performers! Our next stop: THE AMAZON JUNGLE! We started our Amazon adventure from a town called Iquitos. Though it is a bustling little place, as it is so deep in the jungle it's entirely inaccessible by road, and you can only get there by air or by boat. As such, we got a flight from Lima and although we landed quite late at night, the humidity was so intense that when we got off the plane it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. It took quite some getting used to! However, we only spent a night there before heading off on our proper jungle experience. We chose to do a 5 day, 4 night tour that began with a long boatride up the Amazon river and then an hours' trek through the rainforest to get to a little 'lodge' deep in the heart of the Amazon. We spent the first and last night of our tour sleeping in this lodge (there were cockraoches in the beds and tarantulas under them), but the 3 days and 2 nights in between trekking through the jungle carrying all our stuff in backpacks and sleeping in hammocks slung up under the canopy at night. The rainforest itself was thick, lush, dense and had some of the hugest trees I've ever seen, as well as lots of beautiful, brightly coloured flowers. We were lucky enough to see plenty of animals as well - a healthy collection of deadly spiders and snakes, monkeys, butterflies, birds, and even got to have a cuddle with a baby 3-toed sloth (easily the cutest animal I've ever seen). The only drawback was the constant, unrelenting heat and humidity, and the countless billions of mosquitoes that feasted upon us without pause. The feeling of returning to the lodge on our final night and having a shower to wash of 3 days of sweat and insect repellent was indescribable! Then, it was another boat ride back up the river to return to Iquitos for our final night in Peru.
The next morning, we were up very very early to be ready for our crossing into Colombia. We decided to be adventurous and cross the border via a 12 hour speedboat ride along the Amazon river. We were the only tourists on a boat crammed full of Peruvians and Colombians, so it was a very authentic experience. Finally, with our ears ringing from the sound of the speedboat engine, we arrived at the teeny, tiny little town of Leticia in the Colombian portion of the Amazon jungle. It was much, much smaller than Iquitos, and we had to walk for a long time with our heavy packs on to actually get from the place where the boat dropped us off to the town itself to find the immigration office to get our passports stamped. Once we were actually in the town, however, it only took about 15 minutes to walk from one side to the next. Luckily it had a tiny airport and we were able to get very cheap flights up to Bogota, the capital of Colombia.
After spending so long in small towns and the jungle, Bogota seemed an absolute metropolitan paradise! Which I think, by Sth American standards, it really is. There are loads of museums and art gallaries, and lots of free, cultural things to experience. Marco has some Colombian relations living there who were kind enough to let us stay with them for a couple of nights, and were absolutely fabulous tour guides. First up we were taken to Monserrate mountain, which affords a grand view of the entire city. You reach the top of the mountain by riding in a cable car, and once you are there there is a beautiful church and some lovely gardens so it's a great place to walk around. Just nearby this was the house and gardens of Simon Bolivar - a huge hero in Sth America as he was a military leader in the struggle for their independance from the Spanish. The house was filled with elegant, old furniture, but it was the gardens that were the best... so green and beautiful, with water features trickling here and there and wonderful flowers.
Next, we headed to the older part of Bogota and started our explorations from the centre of the downtown area, and saw some art galleries, the palace where the president lives, and the military museum with more guns than I've even seen in one place before. My favourite, though, was Plaza de Bolivar: basically, a huge courtyard with an enormous cathedral and impressive buildings all around it, filled with lots of story tellers, kids playing games and blowing bubbles, and people selling sweets and snacks from little stalls and carts. We were lucky enough to be there on a Sunday (which we were told is the best time to visit) and it was just a really fun place with great atmosphere.
So after a fun few days in Bogota, we hopped on a bus and headed up to the far North of the country to Cartagena, which sits on the Caribbean coastline. We had a tough time travelling - the bus ride was meant to be 22 hours but due to traffic and delays ended up being closer to 30. Then, to top it off, for some reason the bus dropped us off miles away from the centre of town and we were forced to take an expensive cab ride to get to a hostel, so we were both hot, tired, hungry, incredibly cranky and ready to hate Cartagena and everything in it. 5 minutes after we reached the Old Town, though, we were still hot, tired and hungry, but totally convinced that Cartagena was worth every minute of the trip. It is, hands down, one of my favourite places in Sth America. The Old City is completely surrounded by a massive old stone wall, and if you walk around it there are still the old watch towers and cannons from the days when the place was a major Spanish fortification against the English. The streets are wide and lined with lots of lovely, bright buildings with the jutting Spanish-style balconies sticking out from the higher levels, and flowering vines clinging to the sides of the buildings and hanging down from the terraces. Even brighter than the streets, though, are the people - on the beaches, there are lots of Caribbean-looking women wearing vivid red, blue and yellow dresses selling tropical fruit from buckets on the top of their heads, and street vendors selling everything you can think of. Lots of men sit and play dominoes or dice together in the streets with their shirts open and their fat, hairy bellies sticking out in the sun laughing their heads off and generally having a great time, and when you sit in the cafes there are loads of street performers who come up and sing, play, mime, break-dance or generally do anything to make you smile and give them a coin. Also, there is the famous Cafe-del-Mar which sits high up on the old wall surrounding the city, and had wonderful views of incredible sunsets of the Caribbean sea, though you have to pay through the nose for a beer.
We had such a good time in Cartagena we ended up staying almost twice as long as we planned, but eventually managed to drag ourselves away to head to our next destination of Santa Marta. Unfortunately, it absolutely poured with rain for most of the time we were there and the streets completely flooded, so we didn't get to the National Park it is famed for but headed south fairly quickly to Medellin, of Pablo Escobar fame. If you don't know who Pablo Escobar is (as I didn't before I came to Sth America) he is - or was - Colombia's most famous drug lord. He managed drug cartels, organised the trafficking of tonnes and tonnes of cocaine out of Colombia, and at one point was listed by Forbes magazine as the 7th richest man in the world. Additionally, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Colombian police before he was finally tracked down and killed in Medellin. We went on the typical tourist tour and saw a couple of buildings where he had lived, the building that was the headquarters of the Medellin drug cartel, some of the planes he used to transport drugs, the rooftop where he was finally shot and killed, and his surprisingly modest tombstone in a Medellin cemetary.
Our final destination in Colombia was Salento in the coffee region. It was lovely - set in amongst soft rolling green hillsides that were covered with mist in the morning and sunlight in the afternoons. It was a very quaint little town filled with authentic Colombian cowboys who ride their horses through the streets wearing cowboy hats and ponchos. We did a tour of a coffee plantation, and just enjoyed wandering through the really pretty streets of the little town for a couple of days.
Finally, we got on our very last Sth American bus and headed back to Bogota, where we arrived 2 days ago. We spent yesterday visiting a wonderfully impressive cathedral built ENTIRELY underground and ENTIRELY out of salt... aside from anything else, it was an incredible feat of engineering! But it was very beautiful, and the experience was enhanced by the fact that there were a troupe of very cute nuns all dressed in pure white there on pilgrimmage. Tomorrow is our last full day here, and then we jump on the plane and head to Kingston, Jamaica. As much as I am looking forward to it, I am quite sad to be leaving Sth America... I've wanted to come here for so long, and it certainly lived up to my expectations. With a couple of exceptions (getting sick on buses with no bathrooms, cockroaches in hostel beds, catching pick-pockets with their hands in my backpack), I've loved every minute!
Greetings! As Marco and I are now down to our last couple of days in Sth America, I figured it was time for another group update before we leave the continent! We have spent the time since my last email working our way through Peru and Colombia and have seen some really spectacular things.
Peru was a really interesting place but was by far the most touristy country we've encountered. There's good reason for it though: the people are friendly and the country has some of the most amazing sights in Sth America. We crossed the border at Puno and headed almost immediately for Cusco, which is a beautiful, beautiful city and so OLD. The cobblestones in the streets are all worn so smooth they are positively slippery to walk on, and the rooves of the buildings are all covered with earth-coloured shingles which gives it very a distinctive look. The city is built around a couple of main plazas and courtyards which have wonderful gardens, amazing cathedrals and lovely Spanish architecture surrounding them. There are lots of water features and golden statues on the corners of the streets, and practically everywhere you turn there are plaques or notices telling you that this wall or that piece of stonework dates from the Incan period so you can never forget where you are. And of course, plenty of people in traditional dress walking around trying to get you to cuddle their baby llama or get you to have a photo taken with them... all for a healthy fee, of course!
We spent about 3 days exploring Cusco before setting off on our trek along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. We were lucky enought to have a very small group and a fantastic guide, so it was a great experience all round. We trekked through the Sacred Inca Valley... a narrow, ancient stone pathway through stupendously enormous mountains, all lush and green with waterfalls gushing out here and there. The views were breathtaking. Every now and again we would come to a place where we had to cross the river that ran through the valley but where the bridge had been washed away... so we climbed into a little metal and wooden cage with open sides that had been rigged up suspended from a metal cable and hauled ourselves across with a rope. Or to be more accurate, I should say Marco hauled us across while I hung on tight! Quite something to be dangling in a tiny cage swinging high above a madly rushing river!
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| Preparing to haul ourselves over the river |
From the whole 4 day experience (3 days trekking, 1 at the ruins) we returned to Cusco and spent a day recovering before taking the overnight bus to Lima. We didn't spend long there as it was a fairly hectic place - very big, loads of traffic and filthy dirty though it did have some quite nice architecture and some very impressive street performers! Our next stop: THE AMAZON JUNGLE! We started our Amazon adventure from a town called Iquitos. Though it is a bustling little place, as it is so deep in the jungle it's entirely inaccessible by road, and you can only get there by air or by boat. As such, we got a flight from Lima and although we landed quite late at night, the humidity was so intense that when we got off the plane it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. It took quite some getting used to! However, we only spent a night there before heading off on our proper jungle experience. We chose to do a 5 day, 4 night tour that began with a long boatride up the Amazon river and then an hours' trek through the rainforest to get to a little 'lodge' deep in the heart of the Amazon. We spent the first and last night of our tour sleeping in this lodge (there were cockraoches in the beds and tarantulas under them), but the 3 days and 2 nights in between trekking through the jungle carrying all our stuff in backpacks and sleeping in hammocks slung up under the canopy at night. The rainforest itself was thick, lush, dense and had some of the hugest trees I've ever seen, as well as lots of beautiful, brightly coloured flowers. We were lucky enough to see plenty of animals as well - a healthy collection of deadly spiders and snakes, monkeys, butterflies, birds, and even got to have a cuddle with a baby 3-toed sloth (easily the cutest animal I've ever seen). The only drawback was the constant, unrelenting heat and humidity, and the countless billions of mosquitoes that feasted upon us without pause. The feeling of returning to the lodge on our final night and having a shower to wash of 3 days of sweat and insect repellent was indescribable! Then, it was another boat ride back up the river to return to Iquitos for our final night in Peru.
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| Marco with a pet we picked up in the Amazon - Tarantula! |
After spending so long in small towns and the jungle, Bogota seemed an absolute metropolitan paradise! Which I think, by Sth American standards, it really is. There are loads of museums and art gallaries, and lots of free, cultural things to experience. Marco has some Colombian relations living there who were kind enough to let us stay with them for a couple of nights, and were absolutely fabulous tour guides. First up we were taken to Monserrate mountain, which affords a grand view of the entire city. You reach the top of the mountain by riding in a cable car, and once you are there there is a beautiful church and some lovely gardens so it's a great place to walk around. Just nearby this was the house and gardens of Simon Bolivar - a huge hero in Sth America as he was a military leader in the struggle for their independance from the Spanish. The house was filled with elegant, old furniture, but it was the gardens that were the best... so green and beautiful, with water features trickling here and there and wonderful flowers.
Next, we headed to the older part of Bogota and started our explorations from the centre of the downtown area, and saw some art galleries, the palace where the president lives, and the military museum with more guns than I've even seen in one place before. My favourite, though, was Plaza de Bolivar: basically, a huge courtyard with an enormous cathedral and impressive buildings all around it, filled with lots of story tellers, kids playing games and blowing bubbles, and people selling sweets and snacks from little stalls and carts. We were lucky enough to be there on a Sunday (which we were told is the best time to visit) and it was just a really fun place with great atmosphere.
So after a fun few days in Bogota, we hopped on a bus and headed up to the far North of the country to Cartagena, which sits on the Caribbean coastline. We had a tough time travelling - the bus ride was meant to be 22 hours but due to traffic and delays ended up being closer to 30. Then, to top it off, for some reason the bus dropped us off miles away from the centre of town and we were forced to take an expensive cab ride to get to a hostel, so we were both hot, tired, hungry, incredibly cranky and ready to hate Cartagena and everything in it. 5 minutes after we reached the Old Town, though, we were still hot, tired and hungry, but totally convinced that Cartagena was worth every minute of the trip. It is, hands down, one of my favourite places in Sth America. The Old City is completely surrounded by a massive old stone wall, and if you walk around it there are still the old watch towers and cannons from the days when the place was a major Spanish fortification against the English. The streets are wide and lined with lots of lovely, bright buildings with the jutting Spanish-style balconies sticking out from the higher levels, and flowering vines clinging to the sides of the buildings and hanging down from the terraces. Even brighter than the streets, though, are the people - on the beaches, there are lots of Caribbean-looking women wearing vivid red, blue and yellow dresses selling tropical fruit from buckets on the top of their heads, and street vendors selling everything you can think of. Lots of men sit and play dominoes or dice together in the streets with their shirts open and their fat, hairy bellies sticking out in the sun laughing their heads off and generally having a great time, and when you sit in the cafes there are loads of street performers who come up and sing, play, mime, break-dance or generally do anything to make you smile and give them a coin. Also, there is the famous Cafe-del-Mar which sits high up on the old wall surrounding the city, and had wonderful views of incredible sunsets of the Caribbean sea, though you have to pay through the nose for a beer.
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| The narrow streets and delicate balconies of Cartagena |
Our final destination in Colombia was Salento in the coffee region. It was lovely - set in amongst soft rolling green hillsides that were covered with mist in the morning and sunlight in the afternoons. It was a very quaint little town filled with authentic Colombian cowboys who ride their horses through the streets wearing cowboy hats and ponchos. We did a tour of a coffee plantation, and just enjoyed wandering through the really pretty streets of the little town for a couple of days.
Finally, we got on our very last Sth American bus and headed back to Bogota, where we arrived 2 days ago. We spent yesterday visiting a wonderfully impressive cathedral built ENTIRELY underground and ENTIRELY out of salt... aside from anything else, it was an incredible feat of engineering! But it was very beautiful, and the experience was enhanced by the fact that there were a troupe of very cute nuns all dressed in pure white there on pilgrimmage. Tomorrow is our last full day here, and then we jump on the plane and head to Kingston, Jamaica. As much as I am looking forward to it, I am quite sad to be leaving Sth America... I've wanted to come here for so long, and it certainly lived up to my expectations. With a couple of exceptions (getting sick on buses with no bathrooms, cockroaches in hostel beds, catching pick-pockets with their hands in my backpack), I've loved every minute!
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