Highs and lows (and not just the altitude)

Hola!

Since I last wrote I have had the lowest and possibly the highest points of the trip so far in a very short period of time. I'm now in Chile in a charming town called San Pedro De Atacama but my last week in Bolivia is one I'll never forget. 

Marjolein and I arrived in Sucre, the previous capital of Bolivia, after a very stressful experience of getting on the wrong bus at La Paz although, as always happens when you travel, things worked out in the end. Our first day in the city was a very relaxed one as we tried to recover from the night bus and we explored some of the area near our hostel. The city is known as the white city as a lot of the buildings bear the signature white exteriors of Spanish colonial architecture, making it a very beautiful place. 

The next morning we signed up for the walking tour and learned about the rich history of Sucre, which was where the first rebellion against the Spanish in South America began, where the national courts of Bolivia are held and where the richest man in Bolivia once built a park complete with Parisian statues and a miniature eiffel tower just to propose to his wife. 

That afternoon I had heard of a dinosaur museum in the town which had hundreds of dinosaur footprints in situ so we jumped on a (very slow) local bus to visit it. When we arrived we were disappointed to find that the only times they do tours to the footprints was at 12 or 1pm, which we had missed. Instead of paying the entrance fee we stood outside where we could get a view of the footprints from a distance, well at least we can say we saw them. 

The next day I woke up feeling really ill, I must have picked up a stomach bug somewhere because even getting out of bed was a struggle. This was esepcially disappointing because Marjolein, another dutch girl called Erna and I had decided to take the night bus to Tupiza in the south of the country that evening. As the day went on I realised that there was no way getting a bus was a good idea so I booked another two nights to rest at the hostel. Luckily, as Marjolein left, Sara (the other girl I had been to the amazon with) arrived and we spent the day doing nothing, which is always better to do with some company. The following day I woke up feeling somewhat better and decided to try and eat and do something besides lying horizontally. That afternoon, we took the bus to a castle on the outskirts of the city which the same man who had built the park had built for his beloved wife and their 200 adopted children. The special thing about this castle is that it is nearly completely pink, so we spent some time exploring its halls pretending to be princesses (because who wouldn't want a pink castle). 

That evening I felt well enough to get the bus to Tupiza, and arrived very early the next morning. After a nap I went and booked to go horse riding in the area around the town which is famous for being where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid apparently met their grisly end. The horse riding was amazing, I really felt like I was in a cowboy film, riding through the dramatic orange rocky landscape. 

The next day I set off, with Torre Tours, on what is considered the highlight of any trip to Bolivia, a four day jeep tour, ending at the world famous salt flats of Uyuni, which are the largest on earth. My jeep was made up of a Swiss couple called Marc and Sarah, a woman from Denmark called Mette and our tour guide Pancheato and his wife Philamena, our cook. Pancheato was a tiny, big-hearted, and excitable indigenous man and although Philamena started off being quite shy, she ended up being very outgoing and funny. As everyone spoke some level of Spanglish we managed to understand each other most of the time and Pancheato was great at telling us all about the incredible nature we saw along the way. On the first day we visited a huge sand rock structure that looked like a natural cathedral, the ruins of a Spanish colonial town and saw countless beautiful views from the car. 

On day two we visited a huge white lake, which we had completely to ourselves. We then stopped in a mini salt flat where Pancheato explained how the mineral borax formed under the layer of sodium. 

We then drove to the green lake, where you could see a huge volcano in the background. 

Just before lunch we had a dip in the natural hot springs with views of a lake full of flamingos and then in the afternoon we got to visit a thermal area, where there was a geyser producing huge plumes of smoke and lots of bubbling and spitting hot pools.

The final activity of the day was to see the red lake, where we were able to get closer to the flamingos and appreciate the vivid colours of the lake. 

Day three was a day full of amazing rock formations. We started at a huge rock that looked like the world cup trophy, then one which looked like a giant camel. Pancheato took us to a really impressive rocky valley where we all climbed to the top to get a breathtaking panoramic view. We were quite surprised when we saw Philamena climbing up too, in her ballet pumps and traditional layered skirt, but she did it like a pro and sang us a song at the top. 

Our next stop was a serene lake, where we sat for a while in silence enjoying the sounds of ducks and watching the occasional llama grazing in the nearby marshy fields.

Next we stopped at a viewpoint where you could gaze down on the 'anaconda' river far below before we having a picnic lunch in an incredibly peaceful valley, which once again we had to ourselves (apart from the numerous sheep and their old Bolivian shepard).

 That evening we stayed in a hotel just on the outskirts of the salt flats which was built entirely of salt. We got our first experience of the salt flats that night when we drove onto it to watch the sunset.

We woke up at 4:30am the following day and drove once again onto the salt flats to watch the sun rising from one of the 32 islands that can be found there. This island is made partially of coral which formed when the slat flats were a huge lake hundreds of thousands of years ago. The coral was the perfect host for cacti and so the island was completely covered in these HUGE plants.

After some breakfast at the island we set off across the impossibly vast salt flats and and found a perfect place to take the obligatory salt flat optical illusion pictures (see below). 

We then continued to drive across the flats and briefly visited the now illegal salt hotel on the flats themselves before heading off the salt and into Uyuni the nearest town. Uyuni itself is a very ugly and dirty town with nothing much to do and I was very glad I had decided to start my tour from Tupiza rather than Uyuni like many tourists do. After visiting the overly touristy 'train cemetery' we stopped for our final meal together before bidding a very very fond farewell to Pancheato and Philamena and killing some time in Uyuni before boarding a bus to Chile.

The border crossing to Chile was very intense, with drug dogs, top to bottom searches of the coach and a full check of the contents of everyones bags but eventually we got through and made it to San Pedro De Atacama. 

And so that is Bolivia finished. I highly recommend a trip here to anyone who loves outstanding nature and a healthy dose of adventure (on an amazingly small budget)! 

Thanks for reading :) 

Emma x

Lovely Lakes, Crazy Cities and The Amazing Amazon!

  Hola!

So, I’ve been REAAAALLY bad at keeping up to date with this and I apologise. So I am promise I am going to keep this brief but still tell you about all the awesome stuff I’ve been up to since I arrived in Bolivia. 

My first stop was Copacabana, a sleepy town the other side of Lake Titicaca from Peru. I spent a few days here relaxing at an awesome hostel called Joshua Eco hostel whose mission was to be completely self-sustainable and had incredible vegetarian food, very comfy hammocks and free yoga classes! 

One day I took the boat over to Isla Del Sol, an island the Incas believed was the birthplace of the sun! On the boat I met two Dutch girls (yes more Dutch people!) Marjolein and Sara. We spent the night on the island and had a brilliant dinner at a restaurant called Las Velas which was in the middle of a forest and had no electricity, so everything was by candlelight. 

I returned to copacabana the next day and travelled to La Paz that evening where I met up with Sara and Marjolien again in the Wild Rover hostel. We had a few drinks at the bar that night and ended up in one of La Paz’s infamous clubs. The next day I had a much needed lie-in and we explored a little of the local area however the following day I got to see much more during a walking tour, which took us to the witches market, a couple of churches, plazas and taught us a lot about the culture of the city.

The next day was full of food and finished off with a trip on the Telefonica, a huge network of ski-lifts that the president has built to connect the sprawling districts of the city. It was beautiful seeing the city from above and being able to see the sunset and the millions of twinkling lights as far as the eyes could see. 

In the morning we caught a flight into the Amazon rainforest for the exciting activity I booked a while ago, a three day wildlife tour on the Amazon river! The flight there was beautiful, over the Andes and the incredible jungle. Getting off the plane was a bit of a shock, as we had come from the colder weather in La Paz to the hot and crazily humid climate of Rurrenabaque. We relaxed by the pool at the hostel trying to escape the heat and prepared for our excursion the next day with Fluvial Travel. We left the hostel at 9:30 the following morning and zoomed into the jungle on a very dusty and bumpy road in a rickety Toyota. After three hours of driving and the occasional stop to view some road-side wildlife, we reached the river where our little boats were waiting for us. 

We travelled along the river for 2 hours in our boats. The first alligator and capybara we saw we took tons of photos and stopped to watch for a while, however by the end of the 2 hours we had seen countless numbers of both and it had almost become normal. 

Our camp was basic but charming and the food was delicious! We woke up with the sounds of talapoin monkeys scuttling over our heads and sometimes even poking their heads into our room to see if there was some stray food they could cheekily grab lying around. 

That morning we got suited and booted for our first activity, anaconda hunting. Yep, really. Our guide wasn’t the most talkative guy so we followed him through snake infested fields with not much of an idea of what we were about to do. Soon the fields turned to a marsh which got deeper and deeper until we all had swamp water in our boots. 

Trudging through a swamp where you know anacondas, rattlesnakes, and alligators are living is a strange experience, but to be honest my biggest concern was trying not to get my wellies stuck in the thick mud. We were all getting tired and a bit frustrated with the lack of information when we heard that another group had found a snake. I was desperate for all my effort not to be in vain and so marched straight through a VERY deep part to get to where the snake had been spotted. Luckily we all got there in one piece and got the chance to see this beautiful animal up close. 

That afternoon we all had lunch and a siesta before jumping back in our trusty boat for a spot of fishing, piranha fishing. We tried a few spots with little luck but at our third area we managed to catch 11 of the fish using fresh meat as our bait. When I say ‘we’ managed to catch I really mean that our guide managed to catch, the rest of the group were all pretty awful at it. We are the piranhas for dinner that night and they were actually delicious, an Amazonian version of fish&chips! 

I woke up the next day to a very strange sound and it took me a while to realise that it was a howler monkey. The noise was unbelievably loud and like nothing I have ever heard before, almost alien! The howling went on for about 40 mins and after snoozing for a while afterwards in relative silence we started the day. And what an amazing day it was! We took the boat for about 20 mins past the alligators we had become accustomed to and got to a wider and deeper area of the river. Here the guide stopped the boat and told us to jump in. Yep, jump into the water that we were all too aware was teeming with alligators and piranhas (and who knows what else)! Nevertheless, I did it. It may seem crazy, and looking back it probably was, but the reasoning behind it was that in that part of the river lived the beautiful and elusive pink Amazonian dolphins! 

We swam close to a pod of them for a while, which was absolutely magical! We then got back in the boat and went slightly downstream and just watched them making bubbles and giving us a glimpse of their fins and noses every so often. We returned pretty chuffed, showered, had our final delicious meal and rode the boat back to where our cars were waiting to pick us up to take us back to Rurrenabaque. During the car journey we got one final wildlife wonder, when the driver stopped the car and guided us to see a sloth and her baby chilling out in a tree, which was just the cherry on top for me! 

Those three days were seriously some of the most surreal, exciting and adventurous days I’ve experienced and I highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of visiting Bolivia (just remember your suncream and insect repellant!)

The next day in Rurrenabaque Marjolein, Sara and I went on a hike next to the river in the morning and in the afternoon took a quick boat ride to the other side of the river, where you can find an abandoned 5-star hotel, which it’s rumoured that Brad Pitt once stayed in. I don’t know the full history (you’ve got google for that) but the reason it was abandoned has something to do with one of the preset dents of the country being killed, apparently. It’s been unused since 2010 and the buildings are really starting to crumble, we walked through old hotel suites, still with beds and working taps, under roofs now habituated by bats, past a kitchen with cutlery and pans still on the drying rack, and to the natural waterfall pool which must have been the centre point of the once lavish hotel. 

We left Rurrenabaque with a head full of new memories and returned to the now stormy La Paz, where we got ripped off by the taxi driver straight away (classic) and spent the rest of the day relaxing and eating. I’m now on a bus in the main terminal at La Paz, having said a fond goodbye to Sara, waiting to leave with Marjolein for our next stop Sucre. 

Wow, I’m quite proud of how relatively concise that post was, I hope you enjoyed!

Emma x

My Last Week In Peru

Hola!

The last week has been my last in Peru. Honestly, I had had high expectations of this country and in reality it has managed to exceed them in every way. I had been expecting awesome views during my Salkantay trek but not only was this trip way more beautiful than I imagined but I have been lucky enough to visit many other landscapes that have been difficult to capture fully on camera. One of these places was Colca Canyon, which I explored the day after I arrived in Arequipa. At my first breakfast at my hostel I met Martina, a Dutch solo female traveller who was travelling while working on her own leather bag brand as well as designing for another brand. She said that her and another Dutch girls she had met were booking to do the two day, one night trip to the canyon and I asked to tag along. I met the other Dutch girl, Pleuni, that day and we all went on a free walking tour of beautiful Arequipa. 

Our guide was pretty quirky, giving us very random and hilarious ‘facts’ including, at one point at the end of the tour, showing us a photo of a friend because he thought his friend looked like a pit bull. The next day I woke up at 2:45 for a 3am pick up for the canyon tour. We travelled to the area in an extremely cramped minibus and after breakfast went to visit the condos viewpoint, where we saw around 9 of these impressive birds. After this we started our steep walk down into the canyon. 

The walk was beautiful with lots of interesting rock formations and cacti but I was happy to get to the bottom as I don’t think my knees could cope with any more downward steps. In the valley we walked along the river until we got to out stop for the night, a green oasis in the middle of the dusty canyon. Our accommodation was basic but did have a  pool which, although it was cold, was soothing for our aching legs. After dinner we got an early night. The next morning we started walking before the sun rose, and as we had spent the previous day walking downhill, it was time to walk back up. We walked up non-stop for around 2 hours, which was tough but allowed us to see the sunrise in the canyon which was stunning and as always, the experience of reaching the end of a difficult trek makes you feel a bit like a superhero. 

After the trek we went to our guides village to eat a much needed breakfast and then took a minivan to some natural hot springs to relax. These springs were much better than the ones I had visited near Machu Picchu and we sitting in the 38 degree water drinking beer we could almost forget the gruelling hike we had completed that morning. 

After the hot springs we had lunch and head back to Arequipa, stopping at a lookout point for the huge active volcanoes in the area and to take some photos of grazing alpacas and llamas.

That evening Martina, Pleuni and I went out for some dinner and a couple of beers and stayed chatting about life for a few hours. I was sad that both of them would be leaving Arequipa the next day. It’s amazing how quickly you get close to people when you travel and I hope to visit them in Holland soon (and for them to come to London). The next morning I tried to do some life admin, which turned out to be quite stressful when my iPad decides to crash every 10 minutes. I was able to book something exciting for when I get to Bolivia though, but I’ll leave that as a bit of a cliffhanger! As I was eating breakfast an American girl came and sat with me and it wasn’t long until we realised that her parents were from them same town that I went to college in! Kim (her name) and I then decided to visit a museum in the afternoon after grabbing a crepe for lunch. The museum was famous for being the home of the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who was sacrificed by the Incas at the top of one of the local mountains. She had been discovered by complete coincidence when the smoke of a nearby volcano had melted the peak of the mountain causing her tomb to collapse and her remains to roll downwards. A few days later, an American mountaineer was happening to hike past where she was lying. The museum starts with a film explaining the history of Incan human sacrifices (all beautiful young children from noble families), the process of bringing the remains to the museum and the other remains that had been found in the wake of this discovery. We then walked through and saw many artefacts from the tombs and finally the remains themselves. What struck me the most was that her hair was exactly the same as a living persons, also, the skin on her elbows was eerily life like. That evening we had some delicious pasta for dinner and a couple of drinks at the hostel bar.

The next day I relaxed at the hostel in the morning. Kim and I checked out a vegetarian restaurant for lunch, which was delicious and super cheap and then that afternoon we booked onto a chocolate workshop at ChaqChao chocolate factory. It was AMAZING. The instructor was a chocolate expert and taught us all about the history of chocolate from how the Incas used to drink the cocoa beans in a hot drink with chilli for courage before battle and as an aphrodisiac to which companies he believes are making good chocolate nowadays.

 We started by peeling the cocoa beans, roasting them and then trying the Incan drink. Then we learnt about how to split the beans into cocoa mass and cocoa butter. The process of then mixing both of these back together with some sugar is what makes chocolate. We then moved downstairs to see how the chocolate is tempered and then got to make our own chocolates using flavours of our choice. After the workshop Kim and I tried a Peruvian beer tasting board at the cafe and then had some pizza (including one with berries and cheese as toppings) and some Peruvian gin and tonics at a cool restaurant below the chocolate cafe called La Gringas. A truly perfect (and indulgent) day to end my time in Arequipa. 

The following day I travelled by coach to Puno, a town on the banks of Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. When Kim arrived on a later coach we walked to a viewpoint to get our first real glimpse of the lake and decided, as Puno itself is pretty quiet and uninspiring, that we would book onto a two day tour of some islands for the following day. 

The tour started early and we hopped on board a small boat to travel to our first stop, the Uros floating islands. I have never been anywhere quite like it. 

They are a group of small man-made floating islands made of reeds and buoyant earth, each with a few reed houses which people live, work and go to school in. We spent some time here learning about how they make the island, what life is like for the local people and why the islands exist before heading off  to our next destination, Amantani Island. After three hours of travelling through beautiful blue waters we reached the island and were introduced to our local host families, who we would be spending the night with. Everyone of this island wears the traditional clothing, and the colours of the women’s skirts relate to which of the 10 island communities they belong to. 

The island is also completely vegetarian and has very limited electricity, which makes it a very calm and peaceful place. Our host was an old lady called Francesca who lead us up impossibly steep paths to her home, right next to the quaint main square. She prepared us a lunch of three types of potato, rice and Andean cheese (a bit like halloumi) before we went to join the other tourists and hike up to the temples at the highest point of the island (4,000m above sea level) to watch a glorious sunset.

 When we returned to the house we sat and admired the Milky Way. Thanks to the lack of electricity we got an absolutely stunning view of it from our balcony. We had dinner of more potato and rice (it was more tasty than it sounds) before getting the very exciting opportunity to dress in the islands traditional clothes and go to a party with local musicians. I loved wearing the layered skirt and beautifully embroidered shawl and blouse and didn’t want to take it off after the music and dancing was finished! 

The next morning we woke up early (again) and left the island after breakfast to travel to our final stop Taquile island. Here we spent some time in the main square visiting the local market and seeing some of the UNESCO recognised textiles that the men on the island knit together. We then took a lovely walk around the perimeter of the island with views of the sparkling blue lake and distant islands around us. We stopped for lunch and our guide told us all about the specific clothing traditions of this island, where all the men wear different hats and belts depending on their age/ marital status. The people on this island were certainly not scared of colour or the use of huge rainbow Pom Poms, which I greatly appreciated. We were also shown how the local people make their natural shampoo from a plant and were assured that even the 95 year old people on the island did not get grey hair thanks to this recipe.

After lunch we jumped onboard our boat again and head back to Puno, feeling like we’d been away from the mainland for much longer than just one night! Kim and I grabbed a pizza and watched a film before saying our farewells and going to bed. I hope to see Kim after her travels, as she is thinking of moving to London! 

Now I am on a coach heading to the Peru/Bolivia border and onto my next adventure! 

Can’t wait to see what Bolivia has in store for me! 

Thanks for reading,

Emma