Hello everyone when we wrote last we were ...
Trip Start
Feb 01, 2001
1
5
7
Trip End
Sep 05, 2001
Huaraz, Peru
Thursday, July 26, 2001
When we wrote last we were in Potosi, Bolivia having just completed our tour through the amazing salt lakes of Uyuni. Potosi was founded by the Spanish in the mid-1500's and by the late 1700's was the wealthiest city in the Americas. The source of its wealth: SILVER.
Fortunately for the Spanish and unfortunately for just about everyone else the mountain behind Potosi was full of silver so the Spanish set about mining it immediately.... well rather they sent millions of others to their death to mine it for them. The silver in Potosi is buried deep inside the mountain so deep holes have been burrowed into its sides to allow crouching miners to crawl kilometres into the mountain to get it out. The Spanish really fancied this random metal of little intrinsic value but they didn't fancy having to work kilometres underground to get it so initially they brought in millions of African slaves to do their dirty work but after 8 million of them had died (they were kept underground for months at a time) they decided to use the native Americans instead.
These mines are still in operation though under freer yet still horrific conditions. There are regular tours into the mines one of which we duly joined. As luck would have it, it was the time for the annual sacrificial ceremony honouring Pachamama (best translated as "Mother Earth") so our guide, Roberto, first took us to the Llama market where 100's of these oddly shaped creatures decorated with woolly ear-rings awaited their fate. After a while we walked down to the local dynamite store where we bought a few sticks of dynamite and some bags of TNT and fuses as gifts for the miners as well as a few bottles of virtually pure alcohol (96%) which the label claims has "Good Taste". Dynamite is freely for sale to all here and, apparently, is quite a popular suicide method.
Laden with our bags of goodies we drove up the mountain to the mine entrances (there are a few hundred of them) where we went to meet a miner's widow. As miners apparently live on average for only 10 years after they begin mining there are lots of widows who are forced to eke a living from sorting through the discarded ore in search of minerals missed by the miners. The lady we met was 68 and had spent the last 40 years amongst the giant mounds of rubble slowly sorting them into piles... apparently her kids had disappeared off to Argentina.
Roberto, showed us how to insert the fuse into the dynamite and light it - he then put it in his mouth and in his pants explaining that there was more than a minute before it went off. He even let Natty and I hold it: holding a lit stick of dynamite with (apparently) 45 seconds to go does give one what you may call a moment of clarity! Then he handed the dynamite to two 10 year-old kids who ran away from us, put it down and then sprinted back before it exploded with a mighty bang.
Then the first lucky llama was brought to a mine entrance where its throat was slit and the blood collected in buckets. This blood was then thrown all over the mines, the miners' houses and equipment and even on the miners themselves.
After the ceremony we entered the mines. The mines are basically an elaborate network of tunnels kilometers long each ending at a rock face where a lonely miner sits for 12 or 16 hours a day in the pitch darkness hammering steel rods into the rock with giant mallets creating holes for the dynamite. At the end of the day all the holes (it takes around 3 hours to make one hole) are filled with dynamite and detonated and in the morning the rubble is inspected for mineral veins and the routine begins again. The first miner we met had been at this mole-like job for 30 years and expected to live for another 6 months by his own calculation, before the asbestos that is everywhere finally claimed his lungs - he was coughing blood.
We wandered around deep in the mountain climbing up ladders and down cliffs using ropes with only our torches as light, meeting various miners with similar, sad tales. We also visited the mine devil - a weird red sculpture - and made offerings to it before we doused him in Good Taste alcohol and set it alight (the rest of the alcohol was happily drunk by the miners).
Eventually, after around two and a half hours, we were outside again in the fresh air celebrating with some of the miners who had taken the day off to eat the llamas and get completely wasted on Good Taste which they shared freely with us before we headed back to the city.
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present tense note:
As I write this a long way from Potosi, we are flanked on the right by giant desert dunes and on the left by the Pacific Ocean. A strange South American custom on buses is for someone to get onto the bus and stand at the front and begin a long speech - we've got one going on right now: she's speaking with great passion and is showing us some identity card as she slowly walks towards us. We never know what they say - it could be a sop story, it could be preaching, it could be product information - what we do know is that after boring us to tears she might sing us a song and then she'll hand each of us something - sweets, medicines, etc - which we'll be allowed to admire for 5 minutes before she returns to demand payment and then gets off the bus. If we're lucky we can refuse the product, normally it's just forced onto our lap. Today's product seems to be some sort of medicine.
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Anyway, we left Potosi by bus for Sucre which, as its name might indicate, was sweet. Our days there were spent lapping up all the delicious goodies that Bolivia has to offer. Whole sections of the markets were dedicated to decoratively iced cakes, chocolates and, our favourite, the Jugos (fresh fruit juices). Every morning we would head down to our friendly juice lady who would whip up a milkshake with any combination of about 20 fruits: Natty liked the carrot-apple combination while I preferred the more normal pineapple-passion fruit-banana-kiwi fruitshake! These used to set us back about 20p.
We were still hanging out with almost half our Uyuni-tour clan so the nights were spent watching not-so-good English movies with Spanish subtitles, playing on the Internet at any of the 20 or so cybercafes (which charge around $0-50 per hour!) and trying out the local vodka celebrating Claire's birthday (and drinking to the health of colonel puff puff for the 50th time)! We even had a boogey at the local dance club with a strong Latino flavour and a drunk MC who's job it was to scream random statements over a loud speaker to "enhance" the music.
We visited the textile museum and watched local women produce an amazing array of intricately woven fabrics - some of the patterns were mesmerizing, taking months to produce. The indigenous peasant people in rural Bolivia have quite a novel way of differentiating themselves from one another: each village/ethnic group has a unique hat which they wear most of the time. Walking around Sucre, one could spot people - and hats - from lots of different villages who'd come to town to sell their goods: there were funny conquistador-style leather helmets, black and brown bowler hats, intricately beaded top hats, and many, many others.
We hadn't planned to stay very long in Sucre but ended up stuck there for almost a week due to the blockades afflicting most of Bolivia. There is widespread discontent amongst Bolivian campesinos (peasants) at the state of the economy and their lack of representation in power structures so as a result many of the main highways are regularly blockaded making movement impossible. After a week and a few false starts we finally made it out of Sucre on a torturous bus journey to Cochabamba - one of Bolivia's biggest cities.
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******Things You Didn't Know About Bolivian Electricity******
1. Bolivian plugs have only 2 prongs which means there's no Earth prong and thus no safe way for excess electricity to escape.
2. Most Bolivian hotels have no hot water cylinder. Instead they use an electric attachment which fits over the shower head which (barely) heats up the water before it's released. You adjust the temperature by adjusting the water flow - the slower the flow, the hotter the water. These attachments have a lot of excess electricity, apparently.
RESULT: You standing naked and wet in a shower with all the excess electricity flowing down the water pipe to the tap which you need to use constantly to get the temperature correct. Needless to say, the showers in Bolivia are shocking.
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Cochabamba was unremarkable other than for its large number of Hare Krishna vegetarian restaurants where I learnt for the first time that all Hare Krishna music - and there's a lot of it - has the same lyrics (hare krishna hare krishna, krishna krishna hare hare, hare rama hare rama, rama rama hare hare), the only thing that changes is the tune... In Cochabamba as in all of South America there are thousands of dogs. Everywhere. Most of them look like strays, but healthy nevertheless and many of them are kitted out in wooly jumpers of all shapes and sizes - well they have to be all shapes and sizes because they have to fit some of the strangest looking dogs we've ever seen. Sterilization is not in the local vocabulary apparently so all these dogs breed some incredibly bizarre combinations: Alsatian sausage dogs and Doberman poodles!?
We left Cochabamba after some more good byes and headed for La Paz, Bolivia's capital and at over 4000m the world's highest capital city (with the world's highest McDonalds).
After an uneventful bus journey we reached the outskirts of La Paz where our journey came to an abrupt halt: blockades!
We got out of the bus and headed off to the front of the long queue of vehicles expecting a surging mass of people only to find a few rocks in the road and a few dozen folk milling around - not exactly a South African-style protest. As we wandered back towards the bus there were a few explosions and all the buses suddenly started up their engines and started driving off. We managed to wave down our bus (with all our luggage) just as a whole posse of riot police on motorbikes wearing camouflage and carrying big teargas launchers appeared. They quickly moved the rocks and the people and then the large convoy of vehicles was led through the blockade and down a winding pass with a steep cliff to our right and the giant city below.
La Paz is quite something to see. It's built in a depression surrounded by steep cliffs which climb up thousands of meters to snowcapped Andean peaks which ring the city. There is a main road which is more or less on the bottom of the depression with steep roads rising up to the left and right like veins on a leaf. Theoretically, if you get lost you just walk down and you find the main road.
Other travelers had told us loads of stories of thieves and muggings in La Paz: Yoshi had been robbed 11 times in 11 months, there were old women in the markets who'd throw water at you and then rob you while they dried you with a blanket, there were fake police who'd "arrest" you and then take you off to be robbed, there were stranglers who'd strangle you till you were unconscious and then take everything and of course there were the usual pickpockets and petty thieves... so naturally we expected the worst.
However, the biggest problem we had in La Paz was that there were so many delicious snacks for sale that we just couldn't try them all! Hamburgers, cakes, saltenas (delicious pastries, a bit like a pie), fruit salads, ice-creams. jelly's, puddings, doughnuts, pizza slices, freshly squeezed orange juice, popcorn, chocolates, sandwiches, fresh fried crisps, candy floss and so much more were all sold by street vendors everywhere you looked, making a walk down the road like a walk through Charlie's chocolate factory. We spent a week in La Paz.
We wandered through the local witches' market filled with a weird assortment of potions and remedies - llama fetuses are very popular as are parts of dead birds, armadillos, lizards... even sheep toenails... which cured all manner of ills but with particular emphasis on sexual performance issues... We bought a few of the tamer potions which stored little charms for health, money, good luck, etc...
One in every 17 Bolivians is a policeman and almost all the rest are taxi drivers. Literally every second car in Bolivia (and Peru) is a taxi, and all of them find it necessary to hoot inquiringly at you as they pass - quite irritating, especially when you almost never use one!
A few kgs heavier we left La Paz (with all our possessions) taking a route around the blockades to the border with Peru. Happily we left that troubled land of blockades and strikes for the relatively more stable Peru - if you can call a country where the president had fled the country to Japan a few months before "stable"! No more blockades! (little did we know...)
Our first stop in Peru was Puno, on the shores of lake Titicaca. There we found ourselves a hotel with en suite bathroom (non-electric shower) and cable TV (English channels) for £2 per night. Styling!
The next day we were off on a 2 day tour of the islands on the beautifully blue lake Titicaca. We stopped first on the amazing Uro floating islands where villages are constructed on floating reed islands which the villagers have to maintain by regularly piling on more reeds to replenish the ones which rot away underneath. The Uros believe that first there was them and the rest of the world evolved from there and that they had black blood and couldn't drown - quite a humble bunch - but they loved my digital camera when they realised they could see the photo's straight away and soon everyone wanted their photo's taken! After fun hour of inspecting their reed houses, reed boats and their various arts and crafts we headed off to Amantani Non-floating Island where we were introduced to a local family who hosted us for the night.
Amantani Island has quite an effective tourism project whereby local people build an extension on to their house for tourists to sleep in. The island tours then use this accommodation for all the people on the numerous tours - a good money spinner for an otherwise poor community. The villagers only get paid $2 per night which includes accommodation and three meals - so the meals suffer.... rice and an egg three times a day. But the people are very welcoming and super friendly.
We did a tour of the island and visited the temple of Pachamama which is a sacred Inca site still in use today. Our guide explained the significance of Lake Titicaca to the Inca civilization and how they used the various diagonals which can be drawn connecting points on the lake with the major Inca cities to form the celestial chart which is central to Inca's philosophy and which was used for navigation.
That night everyone on our tour was herded off to the local school by the women of the household (in our case the wife, but in many cases the oldest daughter) for a fiesta. This was a very orchestrated affair with the women seemingly under orders to dance their guests till they dropped. Each time the panpipe and guitar band struck up a new number our host would hurry up to us and grab one of us by the hands and we'd do this strange dance which involved kinda waddling around and swinging each other's hands from side to side for the duration of the song. And they were very very long songs. Our poor hostess was clearly a bit embarrassed by all of this and so while she was resting other younger teenagers would grab hold of us which made things a little easier as you could just spin them round and round Latino style till they got dizzy which meant less work and more fun for us.
The next day we bid farewell to our hosts and headed for Taquile another sacred island where the most interesting thing we learnt was about the people's floppy hats: the men on Taquile where weird, sort of Father Xmas hats with a long floppy bit on the end. If they hang it to the left it means they're searching for a woman and if it's to the right it means they have a woman... we didn't work out what it means if it hangs down at the back.
We wandered around there for a few hours and then we headed back to the boats and after a 4 hour boat trip chatting to Nillie, Yael and Stephanie on a grey and gloomy Lake Titicaca we were back in our beautiful hotel in Puno.
The following day we toured the Sillustani burial grounds situated in a stunningly beautiful valley circled by brilliantly blue lakes. Here we learnt about the myriad of pre-Inca cultures that had existed in Peru for over 10 000 years leaving sacred monuments scattered about. Our guide seemed keen to emphasize the "pre-" part of the pre-Inca as some Peruvians appear a little offended by the implication that the Incas represent the origin and highpoint of their ancient civilizations. In fact, although the Incas were a huge and powerful civilization, they only lasted for around 100 years which pales compared to some of the pre-Inca civilizations which lasted for 1000's of years. The Sillustani burial grounds consisted of a series of stone towers built as tombs for ancient rulers: we were allowed to enter only if we had "faith" - we weren't sure what that meant so we didn't go in. The whole area is supposed to exude a peaceful, meditative energy and we each went off and found a remote spot on the cliffs overlooking the magnificent lakes to link into the peace. Definitely one of the most tranquil times I've experienced on this trip.
The next evening we headed off to the famous Inca town of Cusco, the biggest tourist mecca in South America. We found ourselves a lovely guest house (electric shower) and then headed into the town to explore. As we walked in we passed the Golden Courtyard which used to be a stunning religious centre for the Incas plated with 700 sheets of gold each weighing 2kg and all of which were removed by the Spanish conquistadors. The conquistadors also went and built a church on top of every major Inca temple!
Cusco till exudes much of its former glory with many of the buildings using the ancient Inca walls as part of their structure - the Inca walls have survived the earthquakes far better than the modern walls. The giant plaza in the town centre is ringed by dozens of gringo restaurants and tour agencies most of which market the fabled Inca Trail...
On one of our first days in Cusco we met up again with Stephanie who we'd met on the lake and headed out of town to visit a witch village. Although it seemed more like a distant suburb of Cusco, this "village" did have some strange people and we got to sit with a "shaman" for a few hours who read our fortunes in the coca leaves and performed an elaborate ritual involving lilies and frankincense... an interesting though not earth shattering experience as he had a lot to say about my younger sister Maria... (I don't have a sister).
And then it was time to walk the ancient Inca Trail to the fabled site of Machu Picchu.
We left as much luggage as we could at our guest house and then set off by bus to the start of the walk. The first day was a relatively flat walk although we sat around for quite a while waiting for our guide, Miguel who had the mysterious habit of disappearing for long periods of time. We walked for about 4 hours through a valley with giant mountains on either side passing the occasional donkey and being passed by numerous jogging porters carrying food, gas cylinders and tents using make-shift backpacks of sack and rope.
Our trout dinner was superb and we crashed early into bed. The next morning at 6 we were up and we began the steepest climb either of us had ever seen - around 4 hours straight up! The path began in the lowlands and passed through the beautiful cloud forest until we finally crossed the pass with ice scattered around us. An arduous climb which we managed with backpacks and all... some people couldn't make it so they handed their packs over to porters or locals to carry for them. Quote of the day (American accent): "Like I felt bad when I found out she was 9 years old, but like I felt it was kinda ok 'cos she wanted to carry it"!
We then began an equally steep descent down stone steps laid by the Incas in the 1400's and eventually, jelly-legged, we reached our 2nd camp situated above another forest and surrounded on all sides by giant snow-capped peaks. We rested a bit and then I climbed down into the forest and sat in a tree quietly listening to the animals and birds moving about. Back at camp we feasted on popcorn and chicken stew rounded off with jelly and then sat about chatting with
our group members while sipping on hot chocolate mochas and devising marketing slogans for our strangely named tea: "Anis Tea, it's good shit!"
That night we lazed around staring at the fantastically bright stars, watching meteors falling out of the sky and trying unsuccessfully to work out in which direction the earth is moving (that is the direction of our orbit and not our rotation - something no-one yet, not even the guy at the Observatory, has been able to tell us).
On the third day we were up at 5am and this time the trail of precisely laid stones led us up another mountain to some Inca ruins overlooking a picturesque valley. These were the remains of a temple which must have been magnificent in its day, situated on the edge of the cliff and built with precisely fitting stones with a brilliant series of aqueducts to bring water to the various sacred baths. Our guide Miguel either didn't know too much or had trouble explaining what he knew as he seemed to place a high emphasis on using our imagination to answer any questions we had. "O.k. my guys, Imagine!" he would say repeatedly.
We did learn a little about Inca mythology which seemed largely centred on various trilogies: the upper mystical world, the earthly world, and below the world of the dead; the condor, the puma and the snake; "don't lie, don't steal and don't be idol"; and again the mystical lines that connect lake Titicaca, Cusco, Machu Picchu and other sites dotted all over the Andes as far north as Equador. We also learnt that the Inca trail was built in order for messengers to carry information from one end of the giant empire to the other - these were verbal stories as the Incas had no written language.
The trail then wound through more forest and along the edge of cliffs, through giant holes carved in massive boulders until we reached an amazing saddle that gave us an incredible 360 degree view level with the clouds, looking down on immense forested mountains on all sides.
We passed more beautifully situated ruins and then began a torturous 3 hour descent into warmer jungle until eventually, after 10 hours of walking we reached our last campsite. There we found a canteen (!) and we could even buy Snickers bars and of course coca-cola (Natty gleamed). We ate our last dinner together with everyone and tipped our porters before falling asleep, feeling filthy (no shower in 3 days!).
On the last day at 3:30am we were up again stumbling bleary eyed through the dark forest in order to get to the Gateway of the Sun by sunrise. We reached some ruins and were told loudly by a Frenchman wearing hi-tech hiking gear including special leggings for snow walking that "zis is ze gatevay, 'cos I hev bin here before 2 years ago!" and he argued loudly with anyone who disputed this. After we had sat there for about half an hour we discovered that this was in fact not the Gateway and we had to walk another 45 minutes to get there!
Anyway we arrived at the Gateway of the Sun which consisted of beautiful columns and steps overlooking a mist-filled valley which we knew housed the mystical Machu Picchu. The sun rose and the mists began to clear and then after a few hours of quiet contemplation a hole appeared in the mist to reveal the magnificent ruins.
Machu Picchu was "discovered" by a Dr Bingham in 1911 who was shown the ruins by a family living in the area (!). They were completely overgrown by jungle which took three years to clear. Once all the vegetation was removed it revealed a town built with perfectly fitted stones topped by numerous temples and it was at once recognised as one of the most sacred Inca sites. The mystery surrounding Machu Picchu is what happened to it as it was never discovered or plundered by the Spanish, so where did the people vanish to...?
We walked down to the ruins and learnt this and other amazing facts about Inca astronomy from a knowledgeable guide. He told us how they calculated the angle of the earth's axis and how they knew the earth went round the sun as well as how their feats in selective breeding managed to produce the llama (a complex hybrid of huanaco and vicunas which would require genetic engineering to achieve now) and also how the Inca princesses were all selected on merit and talent and never by birth.
We spent a few hours wondering round the ruins and then walked another hour and a half to the nearest village called Agua Calientes, "Hot Water" which, after 4 days without a shower, was exactly what we needed! That evening we headed straight to the hot springs which give the town its name where we lazed for a few hours sipping beers and savoring our cleanliness.
The next day we were back in Cusco where we did a few walks to nearby ruins and then we were off on a 20 hour bus ride to the coast. At around 2am our bus stopped unexpectedly as in front of it the road was on fire with burning tires: a blockade!? Turns out that the little town of Puquio was unhappy with its lot so they'd decided to block the main highway to draw attention to their plight. The entire convoy of buses was forced to spend the night there but by 6am it seemed we were ready to go so we walked in front of the buses clearing the rocks out of the way. We reached the centre of town but the protesters were adamant that we would not pass and heated exchanges between passengers and locals ensued with the odd bit of stone throwing included. Eventually the town's mayor came out to address the crowd and he became the object of their wrath - scuffles broke out and he was forced to flee to the safety of one of our buses! The police seemed powerless but eventually four representatives were invited to meet him on the bus but as soon as the door opened hordes of people pushed their way on and forced the mayor off. All hell broke loose with teargas being fired and the Mayor being manhandled down the road... this proved to be our window of opportunity so the buses sped off as quickly as they could. The last we saw of the Mayor, he was being led on a donkey, bloodied and beaten towards the town square...
That afternoon we arrived in Nasca a warm oasis town in the middle of the coastal desert which was a nice change from the previous month on the chilly altiplano. Nasca is home to the famous Nasca lines: mysteriously lines drawn in the desert. They can be viewed only from an aeroplane and represent massive drawings of monkeys, birds and aliens which are thought to have been used by the ancient peoples as astronomical or seasonal charts. We couldn't afford the viewing flight so we climbed a nearby hill to get a partial view of some less interesting drawings and also visited the some ancient spiral aqueducts.
Then we were off again, this time to the fishing town called Pisco. There we spent a very pleasant day sitting on the beach in the nature reserve watching the flamingos and pelicans. The next day we went on a boat tour to the nearby islands where we saw the mysterious Candelabra - a giant carving on the rocky cliffs about 200m high, 50m wide and 1m deep of unknown origin. We also visited some sea lion breeding colonies and saw loads of strange birds including some sort of sea vulture, penguins and a local gannet-like bird called a booby.
We left later that day for Lima, the capital. All the way up and down the coast road is pure desert on our right and the Pacific Ocean on our left, broken with small settlements in artificially green valleys from irrigation. I liked it better without the settlements!! We spent a day in this grey, dirty, sprawling city trying to organise our remaining visas as well as other odds and ends for the Amazon. Unfortunately, the Peruvian coast is almost permanently covered in a grey fog off the Pacific which casts a depressing gloom over this city which does have some fantastically grand colonial architecture. We were happy to leave Lima and we're now in the beautiful town of Huaraz with rolling green mountains all around us and glaciers and lakes awaiting us tomorrow.
