Saturday, May 20, 2006
Travels in South America
Ok so we missed out telling you about Nicaragua and Costa Rica, mainly it entailed swinging through the jungle on giant flying foxes, hanging out in spectacular lagunas, watching bright red lava explode from Central America's most active volcano and visiting beautiful beaches, attempting to surf them only to be dumped shameless amounts of times, but what is all this when you get engaged in the Andes in a tent?? So lets jump straight to Peru!!!!
We landed in Lima on the 1st of May and started our trek through Santa Cruz on the 3rd, we decided to do it solo so lugging 25kg bags packed with meals and of course secret sweeties we took on the Andes!!! It was a spectacular walk, and we had the luxury of camping in really remote places with not a person in site, the only company we had at night were a few hungry donkeys. Andrew was carrying a fair bit more than me when you take into account the bottles of wine, birthday cake plus beautiful ring he produced while proposing to me! The following photos are from our four day trek there, the one in the tent is from our final night!
So obviously after finishing our trek and getting engaged it was time to CELEBRATE!! And what better way to do this, than in a small town called Ica set in the Peruvian desert??? Which happens to be surrounded by wineries and home to sand dunes made for sand boarding!
Our oasis town near IcaAfter Ica it was off to see the Nazca Lines, these are incredible very random lines in the desert that can only be truly appreciated from the air in a tiny plane. They date back to 600bc to 700Ad, the Nazcans made them by removing the sun darkened stones from the surface of the ground. The photo below shows a particularly strange line named "The Astronautt", Coff is convinced that it is not a legitimate line and that some kid is playing a practical joke, because the rest of the lines are very sophisticated outlines of beautiful animals, I don't think our pilot appreciated Andrews outlook on this....
We then did a 14 hour bus ride to the beautiful Cusco, to acclimatize and soak up the scenery before embarking on the Inka trek to the Macchu Picchu.
Cusco's central plazaWe had to reserve our spot on this trek in early January because places fill up so fast. It is probably the most famous walk in the world, and with 500 tourists starting it each day you are certainly not alone in your pursuit to see the beautiful Macchu Picchu. Despite the numbers doing the walk it was suprisingly quiet and most of the time it was just you and your group (which entailed all of 4 people). We passed through some beautiful ruins and walked in places that were truly spectacular.... The best of course came at the end with the town of Macchu Picchu itself.... You now have the option of catching a bus the last morning to the Macchu Picchu but being stubborn and probably a little ridiculous we decided to walk up there so set off at 430am for a two hour climb.... meanwhile Coff had the flu plus Giardia (nasty hard core bug) but we made it and unbelievably had Macchu Picchu to ourselves for all of one minute.... but trust us this is a very special and unique thing, considering 2000 tourists visit it every day! Photos can never do a place like this justice, but here is a glimpse of what it was like.
Ruins on the way to Macchu Picchu
Our porters carrying our three course meals, tents, and anything else you could imagine.
Views on the Inca Trail
Macchu Picchu
Inside an old Incan houseSo that's it from us now, we are both still on such a high, off to Bolivia in two days to start some volunteer work and get settled in one place after over 2 months of being on the road. Thank you for all of your lovely emails, keep sending them we love hearing your news.
Adios Amigos,
Andres y Alicia xoxox
# posted by Unknown @ 6:54 pm 
