Abroad

Arequipa is my favorite city of Peru so far. Would happily spend more time here if I wasn’t on my last few pennies. Street food is a brilliant option of you’re low on cash as long as your gut is in good form. It’s always delicious and never costs more than the equivalent of 2 euro. Actually. It’s usually always delicious, but yesterday I was a bit weakened. I bought a bag full of large pieces of barbecued corn and what looked like delicious bits of chicken. The corn was sublime. The chicken feet weren’t the best. The dogs loved them though.

Cusco was a laugh. Plenty to do for far too cheap. ‘Happy hour’ in one of the clubs was 6am to 7am.. It was a challenge. Our reason for visiting Cusco was its proximity to Machu Picchu. The Classic Inca trail is closed during Feb for maintenance so we did a Quechua Community trek instead. Turns out the Classic trail is packed full of tourists anyway so it worked out better in the end. On the Quechua Trek we visited 4 different Quechua Indian communities hidden away in the Peruvian Andes. It took 4 days. I learned how to say “cheers player” in Quechuan. Definitely can’t spell it though. Sounde like “su pikey, guchewato.” Machu Picchu was unbelievable but incredibly busy. A bit stressful even just walking around. The history behind it is incredible though. The lack of decent toilets anywhere was also inconvenient whilst suffering from some very dodgy empañadas. Stomach of steel..

After the whole thing we camped the night at the nearby hot springs. These were swimming pools fed with hot water from the earth. One pool I chanced was so hot it peeled any attempt of a tan I’d been working on right off.. Nice spot to chill out after all the walking.

We arrived at a very remote little village, 6 hours north of Potosí to spend the night with the local families. Being at such high altitude even standing up is exhausting. We played a game of football against the kids. We were 5 players against three local boys under 10 years of age. We were absolutely slaughtered. Our side spent most of the time lying down trying to catch our breath, and the kids spent most of the time lying down with boredom. A light jog almost put me in a wheelchair..

We were shown how llama and alpaca wool is made into clothing using traditional methods. The women here can spend weeks on one item of clothing. Later a shaman foretold our future by tossing coca leaves onto a cloth and reading how they landed. I asked the shaman if I should go back to college.. Coca leaves said yes. We’ll see..
We ate a traditional llama stew which was unbelievable.
The little girls were fascinated by our cameras. Especially the pop up flash.
These families are direct descendants of the Incas and are almost completely untouched by the influence of modern civilization.

You can buy anything on these streets.

We arrived yesterday at the city of Potosí, Bolivia. Potosí sits at an altitude of 4090 meters above sea level making it the highest city in the world.

Today the streets filled up for the Miners Carnival. Crowds of people throw water balloons, spray water guns and empty cans of shaving cream at each other whilst the miners play music and performers dance, all dressed in bright colors. Being a complete tourist, I noticed I made a fantastic target. After a three slick side-step maneuvers, I embarrassingly failed to dodge a fourth ballon. It hit me straight in the eye. At least the crowd found it funny.

This is Amber, our truck. Shes from 1977 and has been heavily converted to withstand the roads (or lack of) through South America. Amber carries us through Argentina, Bolivia and Peru over 42 days.

We arrived yesterday at Uyuni in Bolivia. The town here is full of life. The shops and street markets are unbelievably cheap and very colorful. I’ve kitted myself out fully in llama wool and I look ridiculous. It was hard to resist though. We spent last night in “The Extreme Fun Pub” which was a great little spot. The tables and chairs are made from crystallized salt, and the drinks were definitely extreme. As a result I’m in bits today. Our main reason for visiting Uyuni is to take a tour of the nearby salt flats “Salar de Uyuni”. We drove across these flats today with a guided tour. They are spread across 12,000 square kilometers and and at the moment they have a layer of water about 20cm deep. The surface of the water almost perfectly reflects the sky, and with no horizon this make for some surreal views. We had a laugh playing with perspective photos. Out in the flats there’s a hotel made entirely from salt. The bricks, mortar and furniture all carved from slabs of salt. After eating lunch here we were driven back to our hotel.

Before crossing over from Argentina into Bolivia we made a stop over in San Pedro de Atacama in the very north of Chile. San Pedro is a brilliant little town, 10 minutes drive from the Chilean border. The buildings here are all made from adobe and the restaurants are fantastic. We went sand boarding in Death Valley and saw the salt formations in Lunar Valley. I absolutely creased myself sand boarding and eat a lot of sand. Great fun though. The sunset afterward was good too.

Cafayate for some wine tasting.. Life is tough.