Peru part four - Lake Titicaca to La Paz

After a well-deserved party in Cuzco we left for Puno and Lake Titicaca which was our last stop before the trip ended in La Paz. Puno was a boring city. It wasn't very pretty either, as they have a stupid rule here saying if you don't finish building your house (i.e paint it) you don't have to pay tax for it. So you can imagine how pretty all the houses looked...
We spent the afternoon shopping for our hostfamily, having dinner and watching Germany kick some English ass in the world championships.

The next morning we boarded our boat and set sail for Taquile, the first island we were to visit. Lake Titicaca is really beautiful, it's the largest lake in South America and one of the highest navigable ones in the world, sitting at 3800 meters above sealevel. The trip to Taquile took about three hours. We walked across the island and looked around the main square before we had lunch. I'm glad I had my big lense, as I got to take some sneaky pictures of the locals ;)

After lunch we carried on towards Iquitos, where we were spending the night at a local family's house. We were met by the families when we arrived, and they played music for us while we walked up to the school. We were assigned to our host-mum or -dad, before we played some football. Great fun, but very tiring running around as we were so high up! After that we walked up to our house, I was sharing a room with Maxa and Cyndi. We dumped our stuff and went to the kitchen/living room which was actually a house by itself. Unfortunately none of us speak very much spanish, so we tried to communicate by gesticulating and pointing. I managed to say I was from Norway and was 25 years old and that was about it. But our family was really nice so there was a lot of laughter in spite of not managing to communicate properly. We helped prepare dinner by peeling and cutting potatoes. Then the youngest girl came home, and showed us her drawingbook, where we drew our self-portraits among other things. Dinner was delicious, and we all rolled out afterwards.

Then it was time to get dressed up and go dancing! Our mum and the three daughters came to our room with clothes, and we were dressed up in the local costume. It consisted of four skirts layered on top of each other, a shirt/jacket, wide belt, cloth draped over our shoulder and on top a bowler hat. We all looked beautiful! Then we were guided down to the school in the dark where we met everyone else. All the girls had the same costumes, and the boys had pink ponchos, a cocaleaf bag and broadbrimmed hat.

First the locals performed a dance for us, and then we had to dance like them. It wasn't that difficult, and it was great fun! We were at the school for about two hours dancing and watching the locals dance. We even tried to teach the young girls how to dance to Saturday Night! A lot of fun :)

The next morning it was time to say goodbye to our family and head back towards Puno. On the way we stopped at Uros, the floating islands. Very interresting, everything is made of a type of straw, even the houses and the boats! It was strange walking on the island, the straw sank down as you walked, and it was actually quite hard work! They had a pool on the island with an island on it where they kept the guinea pigs :)

Back in Puno we were even more bored than before, because it was a bank holiday and most of the shops were closed. Maxa, Alex, Dani and I found an open restaurant where we had chocolate cake and lemonade before we went to get a manicure and pedicure. It was the worst one I've ever had... The woman doing my pedicure didn't know what she was doing and was constantly asking the other woman what to do next. To top it off poor Alex and Dani got a fake 20-note as change!

The next day we took a bus to La Paz which took almost all day. In La Paz we went out for a last dinner at a very nice restaurant, and out for a drink afterwards where we also met up with Hugh, one of the guys from our Lares trek. I think I picked up something in Puno cause I was quite ill that night and the next day, so spent all morning in bed. At 2 o'clock I managed to have a shower and go sightseeing for a couple of hours. Then Maxa, Hugh and I went for dinner before we said goodbye to Maxa and met up with the others who had done the Death Road that day. Went out for one last drink with them before I went to bed and left for Trondheim the next morning.

A great trip with great people! Hope to see you all again someday :)

Peru part three - Lares trek and Machu Picchu.

So it was time for the big challenge! The one we all were looking forward to, and wondering the most how would go. The Lares Trek. I was originally going to do the Inka Trail, but because my original trip got cancelled I didn´t get the permit for the Inka trail cause we got there on a different day. It didn´t really matter too much though. We started off from just outside Lares town, with our daypacks, walking sticks (oh yes the proper ski-pole-like ones) and Coca-leaves.
The first part wasn´t very difficult, we walked through really nice landscape, lush and green. Had a couple of hours hike before lunch. The food on the trek was amazing, we had our own cooks who made three-course meals for both lunch and dinner.
We started off at about 3400 meters above sealevel, and our camp for the first night was at about 4200 meters. Which meant we had some climbing to do, which we discovered not long after lunch. We had just walked through a little village when we came to a steep hillside. I thought "no way we´re going up there??" But oh yes we were! It was almost vertical and we were all out of breath before we´d walked 20 meters... But we all made it in the end, I´m very glad I had my walking sticks and my mantra: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!"
We started hiking at about 11 am and reached camp at about 5 pm, and went to bed at about 8 pm... I didn´t sleep very well, it was really cold, even though I had thermals and a woolly jacket. There was frost on the inside of the outer tent and the water in the bowls outside were bottomfrozen the next morning. Nice! It warmed up quite a lot when the sun came though.
Before we started hiking we got invited to visit a local house next to where we had camped. It was very simple, no electricity or water, and just one room. One part was the kitchen and the other the bedroom. In the bedroom there were loads of guinea pigs running around. And no, they were not pets...
The first part of the second day hike was quite hard as we had to go over a pass which was 4500 meters, and again we had barely started when we came to an even steeper hillside than yesterday. Yup, we were going up! Coca-leaves and walking sticks are priceless...
It was worth it though, the view from the top of the pass was amazing... Untouched mountains as far as you could see, a lake at one side and Llamas and Alpaccas grazing all around. The whole of the trek was pretty amazing actually, we only saw 4 other tourists, and only for about 5 minutes, and then nobody else apart from locals and animals.
After the pass it got easier as we were going down again. By 4 pm we reached our second camp which was also the end of the trek. It was really good to get there, everybody had sore feet and knees, so the rest was very welcome. We celebrated with a couple of drinks and cardgames.

The next day we went to Aguas Calientes, which is the town of Machu Picchu, where a couple of the girls and I went to relax in the hot springs for an hour. Mmm... Got up at 4 am the next morning to get an early bus to Machu Picchu. We got there in time for sunrise, and man, it´s amazing! It´s such a big area and all the ruins are intact, it´s really impressive. And it wasn´t as touristy as I thought it would be (at least not that early), it was actually quite peaceful sitting there watching the sun come up over the mountains. Then we had a guided tour of the ruins before we hiked up Wayna Picchu, the mountain next to Machu Picchu. Only 400 people are allowed to do the hike every day, so we were lucky! But it was HARD! It´s a really steep mountain, and the path consists of steps winding themselves all the way up to the top. It took me about 45 minutes to get to the top, but it was worth it! You get such a great view over Machu Picchu, and all the surrounding mountains. Back at the bottom I wandered around by myself for a bit exploring before we set off back to Cuzco. Went out for dinner and drinks and had a wonderful night to celebrate that we all made it! Definately one of the most beautiful things I´ve ever done.

Peru part two - Arequipa to Cuzco

After Nazca we went to Arequipa, a really beautiful old town, with lots of old white houses. We spent a couple of days there, visiting churches and museums and eating good food. I tried Guinea Pig! It does actually taste a bit like chicken, I quite liked it.

Then we went to the Colca Canyon, which is the deepest canyon in the world. We stayed in a little village near Colca town, a really nice countryside place next to some tall mountains. We did a hike on the first day to acclimatize our bodies as we were at about 3800 meters. It was quite exhausting, but I just told myself "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" and it helped :)
The next day we went to the actual canyon which was really stunning, it´s so deep, and the walls are so steep! We saw about 10-15 Condors which were really cool, they are huge birds, about 3 meters wingspan. One of them came really close, and passed just a few meters above us. Cool!
In the evening we went to some hotsprings and had dinner at a restaurant where they played traditional Peruvian music and performed dances for us.

Spent a day in Arequipa before getting a nightbus to Cuzco. I really like Cuzco, even though it´s quite touristy. There was a festival going on so lots of people in the streets, prosessions and dances and fun. Spent the day wondering around markets, and visiting a convent with some old Inka-ruins in it. In the evening there was a concert and dances in the main square, and some great fireworks at the end!
The next day I went on a guided tour of the Sacred Valley, where we visited two different Inka ruin sites. They were both quite impressive. The last stop was an old church with beautiful paintings in the roof and on the walls, and lots of gold. A bit weird to find such a decorated church in a little town in the middle of nowhere! Came back to Cuzco and went to dinner at an English pub, before we had to pack for the Lares trek.