Cuy, Canyons and the Capital

Arequipa, Colca Canyon, Lima, PERU: 19 - 26 March 2010

My first stop in Peru was the nice city of Arequipa. Highlights of my two days there included visiting a colourful convent and seeing the preserved body of a child sacrificed by the Incas. But my most memorable moment was being in a restaurant overlooking the main plaza (South America has a lot of impressive plazas, but Arequipa´s is one of the best given that there is a snow-capped mountain behind the cathedral that is looking onto the palm-tree-filled square) and eating the local speciality of cuy, i.e. guinea pig, which is served with its head and feet still attached. Ymm, crunchy!From Arequipa I went trekking in the nearby Colca Canyon. Although it is one of the deepest canyons in the world, trekking down into it and back up again wasn´t too hard. The amazing scenery, seeing huge condors flying right over my head, and relaxing in a true oasis at the bottom of the canyon certainly made for three enjoyable days.After the tranquility of Colca Canyon, I flew to the hot metropolis of Lima. I only spent two days there as I will probably end up back in Lima again. But in the short time I was there I saw two different sides of the capital - the bustling centre including the chaotic Chinatown, and the modern, peaceful beachfront. Reading on top of a cliff looking at the waves beneath while dozens of paragliders flew overhead certainly left me with a nice image of Lima.

Sand

San Pedro de Atacama, Iquique, CHILE: 15 - 18 March 2010

I spent two days in the fascinating oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama, in the middle of the driest desert in the world. In one jam-packed day I was up at 4am to get to a valley of geysers for sunrise (for breakfast we ate eggs that were hardboiled in the naturally boiling water surrounding us).
I ended that day watching the sunset while drinking a pisco sour in the incredible Valley of the Moon.
In between I relaxed in a thermal pool and then learned how to sand-board (i.e. its like snow-boarding except on sand dunes). It was great fun, but walking back up the dune after each go made we appreciate why ski resorts have chairlifts.
On St Patrick´s Day I spent the morning relaxing in San Pedro, then I bussed it to the coast and travelled up the scenic Panamerican Highway to the beach city of Iquique. There I again met up with my Czech friends Rudi and Jana, so I finished the day with a nice beer for the day that was in it. Waking up in a desert and going to slept next to the ocean shows the unique nature of Chile.

The next day was mostly spent relaxing on the beach and swimming in the Pacific - a nice way to spend my last full day in Chile.

Run for the hills!

Santiago, Valparaiso, La Serena, CHILE: 8 - 14 March 2010

I had intended to cross from southern Argentina to southern Chile, but the big earthquake in Chile (which people in my hostel in Bariloche felt but which I slept through) necesitated a change in my plan. So I double-backed on my route (i.e. I again did the 20 hour trip from the Lake District to Mendoza) and went from Mendoza to Santiago. Although it was a bit of a mission, crossing the Andes and watching the most amazing electrical storm I´ve ever seen made the trip memorable for the right reasons.

Santiago was the first really big city I´ve visited in quite awhile (it was my first time on an underground metro system since Mexico City). The main image of the two sunny days there was seeing Chilean flags everywhere, with ones in official buildings flying at half mast - the earthquake has certainly stirred up alot of patriotic feelings.From Santiago I went to the coastal city of Valpariso. Parts of this city are listed by UNESCO as being "world heritage sites" - sometimes I don´t know what those UNESCO people were thinking, as most of Valpariso was a just a grubby port with lots of shanty towns. But I will always remember Valpariso because while on the way to the beach we felt a tremor which was quickly followed by a tsunami warning; so we joined everyone in the city as they headed for the hills. It was quite exciting at the start, but after two hours of sitting on high ground looking at the sea the novelty had worn off. Still, good to have an earthquake/tsunami story.I then headed north to the pretty seaside town of La Serena. The highlight of my two days there was going stargazing at an observatory. Due to its dry climate and consequent lack of clouds, this part of Chile is ranked as one of the best in the world to see stars. The tour was excellent and seeing Saturn and its rings through a telescope was certainly memorable.

Last weeks of summer

Cafayate, Mendoza, Bariloche, El Bolson, ARGENTINA: 20 Feb - 7 March 2010

Based on friends´recommendations who described Cafayate as a quiet little town surrounded by amazing scenery, I headed there from Salta. But my weekend there coincided with La Serenata music festival so the town was anything but quiet! As this was one of the last weeks of the summer holidays (schools re-open on 1 March), the plaza was constantly packed with people, many of whom were engaged in a constant foam and flour fight. As well as going to the festival, where I saw the main act Jorge Rojas (a slightly sleazy, cheesy, tap-dancing folk crooner), during my time in Cafayate I did some free wine tasting at a local vineyard and I hiked up a river to a waterfall. Drinking wine and cooling off from the heat by plunging into freezing water would prove to be the theme of my few weeks in Argentina.
My next stop was Mendoza, a nice plaza-filled, tree-lined city. The highlight of my time there was the day I spent cycling with five people from the UK between a dozen or so vineyards. After several little tours and explanations and multiple tastings, my appreciation of good quality, cheap wine was certainly enhanced - the same could not be said of my cycling ability.

I continued south to the Lake District, centred around the pretty town of Bariloche. What an amazing place! I happily spent ten days in this most scenic of areas. The weather, which apparently had been bad just before I arrived, was gloriously sunny the whole time I was there. I first spent a few days doing treks, cycling and relaxing by lakes. I then teamed up with a girl from Devon for a three-day cycling and camping trip of the "Seven Lakes". We covered 150kms, about 40kms of which were on ripio, i.e. unpaved, rocky roads. Cycling uphill on those roads with panniers full of camping equipment on the back of my bike was a challenge, but the scenery made it totally worth it. The only downside was that my camera was stolen from a bag on my bike when I left it unattended for five minutes at one of our campsites. But luckilyI had backed up all my photos the day before and the camera is covered by my travel insurance, so it wasn´t a big deal. My time in the Lake District, and that three-day cycle in particular, has been a highlight of the first six months of my travels.

Czech Mates

Salta, ARGENTINA: 16-19 Feb. 2010

My journey from Potosi in Bolivia to Salta in Argentina highlighted some of the many differences between the two countries. The ten-hour trip in Bolivia (which cost €7) was along a bumpy dirt road in a typical (by that I mean bad) Bolivian bus. I then walked across the bridge at the border and boarded a top quality Argentinian bus (which cost €14) for a smooth seven-hour trip that brought me to Salta. However, although the roads and buses are better in Argentina, the same cannot be said of the hairstyles where the mullet and terrible versions thereof are very much prevalent.

I spent three days in the nice city of Salta, a highlight of which for me was the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology which detailed the discovery and preservation of the bodies of three children who were sacrificed by the Incas on a 6000m mountain.

In Salta I met up with two friends of mine from the Czech Republic, Rudi and Jana, who are doing a five month round-the-world trip in between moving back home after five years in Dublin. The two days we hung out together were nice and relaxing, and they included a trip on a cable car, viewing some nice churches, sitting in plazas, and playing cards over some cheap wine; it was nice to see familiar faces.

¡Carnaval!

Oruro, BOLIVIA: 12 - 14 Feb. 2010

I had never heard of Oruro or its Carnaval before arriving in Bolivia. But I heard so much about it in the month building up to it, including the fact that Lonely Planet ranks the carnaval in Oruro to be up there with the one in Rio as a South America highlight, that I decided to spend my last couple of days in Bolivia experiencing it for myself. And what an experience!
The city, which was dead when we spent New Years here, was totally transformed into one huge party. On the Firday night we danced into the early hours in the central plaza which was the scene of a battle of the bands. Multiple bands were set up on nearby stages, and they played loads of Bolivian and South American anthems which the crowd were loving. The Americans I was with were shocked by the lack of health and safety when a huge fireworks display was set off from right in the middle of the crowd.

When we returned to the house where we were staying I found some space on the floor and fell fast asleep. Given that during Carnaval tens of thousands of people descend on this usually sleepy town, accommodation is in very short supply. So I slept on the floor of a room with eight other people in a house that held about 100 people that weekend.

Up at 8am on Saturday to watch the parade, which had already started a few hours earlier. This parade would put the best St. Patrick´s Day parade to shame. It consisted of thousands of fabulously-costumed dancers and it went on continously (literally non-stop) for the entire time I was in Oruro, i.e. all day Saturday and Sunday.

When gaps developed between dancing groups, the spectators on the two sides of the street attacked each other with water balloons and spray cans of foam. This fun battle lasted all day, so at all times there was the potential threat of being soaked or covered in foam or both.

What a way to finish off my two months in Bolivia. Next stop: Argentina.

Rainy season? Well there has certainly been a lot of water!

Sucre, BOLVIA: 25 Jan. - 11 Feb. 2010

My month studying Spanish in Sucre went well. The classes were good, although I have a lot still to learn (there are four past tenses in Spanish!). And through the school I did lots of random things, like salsa clases and the very popular sport in Bolivia of ¨wally¨, i.e. indoor volleyball.

Sucre, which about the size of Cork, is a city with some nice plazas, parks and lots of impressive white classical buildings. But side by side with such buildings are things like big plastic dinosaur public telephones (because of the dinosaur footprints that are preserved outside the city) - a bizarre juxtaposition if ever I saw one!
My time in Sucre coincided with two things related to water. The first was that it was rainy season. But this was nothing like as dramatic as it was in Macchu Pichu. Here it generally meant really nice sunny days, then an hour of thunder, lightening and lashing rain in the evening. The second was that the city centre was constantly the scene of a huge waterfight. In the month leading up to Carnaval (i.e. the month that I was in Sucre), all the kids, and many adults too, engaged in a ¨boys v. girls¨battle. People threw water from balconies, kids with supersoakers were driven around the city for the perfect drive-by shooting, and people carried and threw water balloons everywhere. Even the shoe-shine boys, of which there are dozens, diversified into selling bags of water balloons. The other feature of the build-up to Carnaval was that there were constantly bands of musicians partying in the streets - the fact that they were an easy target for water balloons seemed to be all part of the fun.

For the first two weeks in Sucre I stayed with a Bolivian family, which meant I ended up in the middle of some random situations. For instance, I celebrated the news that my brother Terry´s wife Martina had given birth to my new nephew Christopher by attending a birthday party for a 13 year old girl! For the party of the youngest daughter of the family I stayed with I was seated right in the midle of the huge extended family that attended the birthday lunch. An interesting experience!

A highlight of my time in Sucre was going paragliding for the first time. Though it was a bizarre sensation running off the edge of a mountain, the fact that it was a tamdem flight eased any worries I had. It was great fun and something I´d like to do again.
By the time I leave for Argentina next week (after attending the famous Carnaval in Oruro) I will have spent two months in Bolivia. There are loads of things, mainly good though some bad, that I will remember about Bolivia. These include:

• people chewing coca leaves and the mantra ¨coca is not cocaine¨,
• the Bolivian navy training on the shores of Lake Titicaca - Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile over 100 years ago but still thinks it will regain it somehow,
• lovely, hearty soups, including ones that come with chips floating in them (unfortunately I cannot claim credit for the classic line ¨Waiter, is that a fry in my soup!¨),
• llamas,
• women wearing amazing indigenous clothing and hats while carrying huge bundles and/or babies on their backs,
• the panic when the ATM gave only 200 Boliviano (20 Euro) notes - no one in Bolivia ever has change for notes, and that often includes 20 Boliviano (2 Euro) notes!,
• showering while pretty much standing on the toilet in a country where shower curtains are a luxury and the idea of a wet room is far removed from the ones you see on Cribs, and
• the widespread availability of big, cheap, fresh fruit and vegatable juices.

But one image certainly dominates all others - that of Evo Morales. Bolivia´s first indigenous president was re-elected for another five years just before I arrived and his image is everywhere. In Bolivia, its certainly All About Evo!