27th November 2006 - Iguazu!

I'm in Puerto Igauzu, and it's bloody beautiful. (or Ig-wa-zoo)
We visited the falls today and they were stunning, so beautiful. The whole area around them is fantastic, lots of jungle! So green.
More photos to come soon, and more details.

26th November 2006 - Buenos Aires, baby!

After almost two weeks, we have actually stayed in the same place for more than one night! YAY!!! Though, we have been in Buenos Aires three nights and stayed somewhere different for the first night.

We're leaving Buenos Aires tonight to head for the Igauzu Falls with our current band of travelling friends. The group we're with are the collective who we met on the Pachamama tour in Chile, it'd been a month or two since we'd seen people and it'd been great being back to together. It was Sancha's birthday so we all had a lovely night out, doing the Argentinian thing of going out at 11 and eating at around midnight, lovely Moroccan food.
Buenos Aires is nice, but we've not seen much as the fact that there's an apartment we can just lounge around in and watch cable TV (all six P&P episodes - yay!) and not worry about our bus that evening. Great stuff.

So, not much to add. Had a night in Salta before getting here. Just a night so not much to report of the town as we had an early-ish bus.

Life is good, we're happy.

Some running totals:

Number of night buses taken in one month: 7
Totals hours on said night buses: LOTS! (exact figure to come)
Pairs of sunglasses bought (Ellie) : 4
Pairs of sunglasses bought (David): 1

If you want a running total of something, or have a suggestion - please post it!

A new arrival!

Please welcome the latest member of our travelling band, or family as we like to think. Our newest baby: The Canon Powershot A530. A wonderful 5 mega pixels, but keeping the 4x zoom. We miss the old canon, but this one is better. Sorry.

20th November 2006 - Explosives are fun.

This morning we went into the mines. Potosi's silver mines. Craziness!
For Leicesterians, you might've visted Snibson´s mine, but this was nothing like that. The mines are tiny, sure there are some bigger passages for the wagons to pass by, but mainly you're on your hands and knees. There's multiple levels to the mines, you enter at level 1 and the furtherest we went down was level 3 - far enough! At one point I had to slide down a wooden slide, basically, not realising until I got to the bottom that there was bloody wagon coming down behind me!
The air was incredibly dusty and all around there was cooper sulfate, asbestos and cyanide. Yeah, we found that out after we'd gone "Oh, look at that!" *poke*. Hmmmm.
My voice has lowered by a good few semitones, all the dust!

The best part was building a rather powerful explosive. I shall explain all next time as I have to catch a bus to Villazon now.

18th November - David doesn't like the fact I've found an "extreme" side to myself

Ok, it's not that he doesn't like it, he just doesn't like having to partake in its flights and fancies.

My lovely parasites say "HELLO!". Yes, they're so friendly like that. If only they were nicer to me and didn't get me intense attacks of pain in my intestines. I started having pains just over a week ago, after speading time on the Amazon. Me thinks I brought a little of Peru with me.
Ah well, it's not stopped me from enjoying South America.


From Arequipa we got a bus to La Paz, oh the fun of overnight buses. (I think the total we've taken is well into double figures now.) In La Paz we did all our Christmas shopping, sorry if I didn't get you anything - maybe a different country? And booked our ride down THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS ROAD.


Yes. That's right. This article appeared on the BBC last week, perfect timing! I didn't let David read it.

So a few days ago, we got up early and climbed into a van to get to the top of the road. We werent driving, we were gonna mountain bike it! It's actually a lot safer, you're smaller and have control over yourself.


I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It was great just whizzing down the hill, ok mountain down a road with the most spectacular scenery. There shall be photos soon!


David hated it. Bless him. And blames me for it. Silly thing. At least his bike had rear suspension so he didn't get a horribly bruised bum like me.

Ah well.
After that we stayed in a lovely hotel Coroico with beautiful views over the mountains and valley.
We saw multiple condors as well, like millions. Almost.

So in La Paz now, heading for Potosi tonight. Then, on to Buenos Aires: we're coming Sancha!

A beloved one passes away, but a baby is welcomed

With great sadness I must announce the death of our camera, Canon Powershot A430 in Red.

It is believed death was caused by sand in the lens and being dropped a few too many times.

We shall treasure the many great pictures that it took.

Goodbye, dear friend.

.....

...

.

BUT!

We have a beautiful new baby in our travelling family.

Please welcome "Baby", our very own, brand new Footprints South American Handbook.

It's a beautiful bundle of joy and gives us both much happiness.

11th November 2006 - Ways to travel

So, I love to travel.
By boat and plane.
Not by bus.
I have done all three in the past few days and the first two top the lot.

The flight from Iquitos to Lima was beautiful. We took off at 5:30pm as the sun was setting, casting pastel colours on to the clouds. Then, as we flew over the vast Amazon, the river appear as a stream of liquid gold slinking it's way around the trees to the indefinite horizon.

Also, I saw a proper Ox Bow Lake. One of those things you hear about in geography but rarely see in England. This was rather impressive. See? I did learn something, Miss Slater!

Oh yeah, and I threw up after 20 hours on a bus from Lima to Arequipa.
It was impressive enough that we covered the whole length of the country in 24 hours!

9th November 2006 - In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

My life really doesn't suck right now.

Though, the distance I've travelled in the past few days is pretty astonishing, and the mileage will only clock up over the next two weeks!

The boat journey was fantastic. We paid our S/50 (about $15) for the journey, including food. We were on the top deck and had plenty of space, just us our hammocks and a roof covering, the sides open to the elements. Only a boat of around 120 people, there were 8 or so gringos. The 2nd deck of the boat was filled with around 100 people, four hammocks across all tightly fitted in side by side. We had to navigate through this to get to the bathroom or have dinner. It was exceedingly hot down there, we were quite glad to have the open air. The bottom deck was the cargo hold, full of many a wonderous thing. Kinda. Lots of bananas or plantain (savoury banana) and loads of cows squeezed into a horribly small pen, also 2 pigs. The hens and roosters lived with their owners on the 2nd deck so you had to be careful where you stood sometimes!

It was fantastic to be surrounded by the real Peru, something we hadn't really experienced in the touristy cities of Cusco, Nazca and Arequipa. There were many little boys who'd come and visit us on the top deck and say "hello" and try to talk to us in Spanish, very little of which we could understand.

We spent nearly all the time lying on the hammocks, just reading or watching the world go by. If you ever get a chance to go on a boat down the Amazon, do it. Especially for only eight quid!

7th November 2006 - Peru, where "medio litro" means 625ml

A note about Peruvians: they need to learn not to just chuck litter everywhere. It's disgusting. They throw bottles (both glass and plastic) out of windows or on the street. No wonder there's rubbish all over the country, from the sand dunes to the jungle.

White water rafting was awesome.
We did lots of class III with one class IV, great fun for an hour and a half. David keeps on saying (repeatedly) how we should've done that before the three days.

From Arequipa we got a night bus to Nazca. It was supposed to be a super delux "Super Dorado" and we paid s/80 for it as we wanted a good night's sleep. Bloody tour operator man. He put us on a less fancy bus and on the ticket it was only s/65. So we didn't arrive in Nazca in the best of moods and then we had the fuss of trying to find a flight. Which we did.

And it was awesome!

The pilot was lovely and we saw all the famous lines, as well as some not on maps that are more obscure shapes, hard to name. It's such a mystery how they got there. We went up the viewing tower as well (you can only see two shapes not so well) and there's still no hint as to how the lines appear, or stay - even during sand storms!

The best part (for me) was getting to fly the plane, great fun! David didn't have quite a good time as, when we were about to land - he threw up. Bless.

Onwards we continued to a desert oasis. A complete picturebook oasis called Huanachina. A lake surrounded by palm trees which has developed into a small village. We had a great few days just lounging by the pool, swimming a bit and drinking real coffee and fruit juices in a lovely cafe run by an English lady.

Myself and Sancha also went evening sandboarding, it was spigging awesome! We drove around the sand dunes in a dune buggy and did some boarding, but the driving was most fun. There was a beautiful sunset as well.

Next we travelled to Trujillo and Huanchaco to explore some pre-Inca sites. Huaca del Luna (a Moche temple) had some amazing paintings that have survived 1500 years, still brightly coloured, and Chan Chan, a Chimu city that the Inca's invaded.

Then, it was onwards to the JUNGLE!

We started our journey at 12:30pm on 5th November and arrived here in Yurimaguas on 6th November at 6:00pm.
We travelled by coach, taxi, car, mototaxi and found our home on a boat.
The coach from Trujillo to Tarapoto was a moonlight drive through shadowy peaks, arriving as the sunrose in the beginnings of the Amazon basin. Amazing. Then it was a car ride (colectivo) from Tarapoto to Yurimaguas on dirt roads up the sides of mountains covered in rainforest. Great stuff!

The real adventure has begun.
We've slung our hammocks up on the boat, very comfortable. We slept on the boat for free last night.
Today at 2pm we depart for Iquitos, a town only accessible by boat or plane. Two days and two nights on the boat and then, who knows?

All the cool kids...

drink INCA COLA

30th October 2006 - I miss you all very much and want to come home...

Ok, maybe not wanting to come home, but I do miss you!

(thanks gille´s pie)

We've finally left Cusco, yay! As beautiful as the city was, we'd spent almost three weeks there and became sick of the place. We are now in a lovely city called Arequipa, known as the White City as most of the building are made of a volcanic rock called sillar.



So, Cusco. The tooth is fine now, no problems. As a reward for dentistry, I forced David into doing a three day white water rafting trip on the Apurimac river with me. Oh, if only we'd known what was to come...


There were five of us in the group plus our guide and a trainee guide in the raft and a cargo boat and safety kayak rafting along side. Two Israelis, a frenchman and us, quite an odd group. First day was great, just simple rapids with a few class 3 and 4. We camped overnight on a beach after eating delicious food.

Second day was even better, the arms were aching a bit but nothing too bad. We had great fun running many class four rapids amid shouts from Jose, our guide, of "Forward hard! Hard! HARD! Did I say stop? No! Keep paddling". He should be in the army.

We got to try a thing called "surfing" where you just paddle the raft straight forward into a wave and jump forwards so the raft "surfs" the wave. So. Much. Fun. I fell out the first time we did it, only person of course, but falling out and running the end of class 3 rapid was great fun!


That night we camped on a beach again, but the night before there must've been lightning as the entire top of canyon on one side was covered in fires. It was such an awe-inspriring sight. When we got there it was still day light, so not too impressive, but as dusk set in and the fire just lit upthe canyon with an orange glow you could do nothing ut stare as the flames grew or smouldered, as things crashed causing another fire. Throughout the night you could hear massive rock falls crashing down the side of the canyon in the river. May sound dangerous, but luckily it was on either side of our beach and we never had anything crash near us.

Next morning, more rafting! Absolutely knackered by this point, but managed (somehow) to keep going! More great rapids and then a delicious BBQ kinda meal at the end before getting the bus back to Cusco. Ahh... sleep!

Only thing was, the night we got back to Cusco I got a fever and so spent the next three days in bed. Argh, stuck in Cusco again! Sadly, I missed going to celebrate Diwali at the only Indian restaurant in Peru, but David went and loved it.

As I said, we are now in Arequipa. If there's anything that the UK (and US) shoudl learn from South America, it's buses (well, and the fact that fruit juice should be that - pure fruit with a bit of water!) We travelled from Cusco to Arequipa, 10 hour journey in aboslute luxury for 90 soles, around 15 pounds! We got food on the coach, a movie and the seats! My word, we were
on the downstairs of a coach and there were three in a row and only 12 in the whole downstairs. So comfy!


We met up with Sancha, Michelle, Vicks, Gareth and Stefan who we'd met in Chile on the Pachamama tourbus thing and went on a 2 day tour to the Colca Canyon. We got to boil in hot springs and have traditional food and watch strange local dances. One of the dances (all involved one man and one woman) had the woman lying on the floor and the guy humping her and then vice versa and then they swapped so the woman was on the floor and the man started hitting her with a strange rope thing, of course they swapped so she hit him, but strange all the same. They goit members of the audience involved, but we managed to miss that! Next morning was early and we went to a place called Cruz del Condor and sat and waited for condors. We were lucky and saw a fair few, they are massive! 3 metre wingspan! Very elegant and beautiful as they glide through the air.

So that's where we are now, just a little update.
Tomorrow we are going white water rafting again - yay! Just for a morning this time. Then it's a bus to Nazca to fly over the lines, very exciting.

To keep up to date, you can follow our progress on this map here:
http://www.getjealous.com/getjealous.php?action=map&go=eleanoroundtheworld
I'm gonna try and prempt what we're doing, but things are very much subject
to change in the future.

Also, our most beloved technically minded friend, the very lovely Adrian
Hull, has uploaded ALLLLLLL our photos on to the internet, which can be
viewed here:
http://www.adrianhull.com/gallery/travel1?page=1
There's some videos but they'll have to be updated somehow else. We'll see.
And eventually I'll get round to captioning them

How I survived Peruvian dentistry and the Inca Trail

Never play "Punch Buggy" in Cusco, you get a dead arm in an hour.
Just a small bit of advice.

http://www.getjealous.com/getjealous.php?action=map&go=eleanoroundtheworld

Instead of listing all the places we've been to, here's a map with our route so far and dates when we was there.

La Paz was interesting enough, not David's favourite place, but I enjoyed it despite the smell of dead llama foetus on the witches market, strange I know.

Copacabana was a lovely little town on the shore of Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side, we got a boat from there to Isla del Sol, an island on the lake that the Quechya people believe was the home of the Sun. We stumbled across a fantastic little festival going on with people dancing all sort with bright and wonderful costumes on, just to celebrate the anniversary of the school.

Around this time I'd started getting toothache and so when we had to spend 12 hours on buses to get from Copacabana, Bolivia to Cusco, Peru, I had never been more glad to leave a bus. We got on in Copacabana and there was just a coupe of gringos, then half an hour later we stopped at a small town and the bus became over packed with locals, old women sat in the aisle on their packs as there weren{t enough seats and the bus would stop on the road to pick anyone up.

So we're currently in Cusco, such a beautiful city. Lots of small paths all over the place and most of the architecture is half Inca (the bottom bit) and the top is the Spanish. Our hostal is up on a hill in an area called San Blas and we have a spectacular view over all over Cusco when we have breakfast.

The most amazing thing we have done so far in our travels has been the Inca Trail. Neither of us really understood what we were getting ourselves into. I'd though it was just a nice trek for four days and David didn't even realise it was that. My word, were we in for a shock! The trek involved waking up and down numerous mountains with uneven rocky paths and steps which weren't really steps! We slept in tents on steep slopes, getting up each morning at 5 to start walking by 6:30. But iwas worth every footstep. The views were breathtaking. You were literaly in the middle of the mountains with nothing else around you, no sounds of trains or cars or roads, just green and blue. We walked through cloud forests were the beautiful green was punctuated with bright reds and purple orchids and the sounds of bubbling streams. And Machu Picchu, wow. When we arrived at the sun gate it was completely misted over, you couldn't see anymore than 20 metres or so ahead, not a chance of seeing it, but we slowly descended and stopped every now and then to check the clouds and then slowly the mist would lift and we could see the ruin laid out infront of us. I think the mist and the clouds made it even more spectacular, very magical and mysterious. If you ever get a chacne to go, do it. It's amazing. Not just the ruins, but the locations in the middle of the most beautiful mountains.

As for the dentistry, I started having toothache in La Paz and it just got worse and worse, by the time we arrived in Cusco I wasn't eating or sleeping much so it was off to the hospital where I saw a doctoer who referred me to a dentist who said I needed a root canal. Yay! That's almost finished now and there's no pain, but I wasn't expecting Peruvian dentistry. The dentist is lovely and speaks reasonable Engish.

Not a clue where we're headed next, but we're mulling the idea of getting a boat down the Amazon from Iquitos to Brazil after exploring a bit more of Peru. Life's exciting, never knowing where you're going next.