Lima

Lima, the Capital City lies on the west coast of Peru, roughly half way up the country. It’s a large, sprawling metropolis, and unfortunately like many large cities in South America it is known as a place to avoid exploring alone or by night. Saying that, we actually found it a very pleasant city to wander around by day, and had no problems at all with criminals… save using our usual avoidance techniques for pickpockets of course.

The historic centre of Lima is based around a few Spanish Colonial Squares – pretty, colourful buildings with lots of wooden balconies, nice fountains, green parks, and the usual elegant churches. The ‘historic’ buildings are very much mixed in with the functional commercial centre of Lima, giving the pleasant impression of a bustling hub rather than a tourist attraction. Admittedly, the ‘historic’ buildings aren’t exactly that ‘historic’ by our standards in the UK – every 50 years or so a cracker of an earthquake seems to come along and demolish half the city, meaning each beautiful church or hall has been reconstructed a number of times!

We actually stayed quite a long way from the old town centre, in the very pleasant cliff-side district of Miraflores. This affluent suburb with lively streets, parks and shopping centres had the advantage of being safe to wander around in the evenings which we thought would lead to a more relaxed stay. The central triangular park of Miraflores is a particularly nice place for an evening stroll on the weekend as a lively mobile market is set up. It was great on Valentines Day, when crowds of couples (and plenty of girl or boy groups hoping to couple up) bustled in all directions, fending off hordes of flower sellers and balloonists!

Our Valentines Day wasn’t particularly romantic – my fault I admit (although Gary’s not exactly romantic at the best of times!). The 14th of February this year marked the 6 Nations clash between Wales and England… and despite being in Peru we managed to find an English Pub in Miraflores that showed the match! Being a Welsh girl of course, I always enjoy it when Wales beat England at rugby! After the match we did have a pleasant meal out on the cliff-top complex of Larco Mar – a new development full of swish shops and restaurants with great views down over the beaches of Lima – before a nice stroll back along the cliffs to our hotel at sunset via the Parque Del Amor. Perhaps it wasn’t such an unromantic day after all!

Anyway, we are now leaving the Southern Hemisphere for Mexico and the last stage of our trip. We’ll arrive in Mexico City and then travel westwards for a month to the coastal town of Cancun and our flight back to the UK. And of course en route we plan to visit a few Aztec and Maya pyramids – apparently their appetites for human sacrifice was far greater than the Incas, and as a result the temples often have carvings of beheadings and the like all over the walls! Great!

Lima Pictures

The coastal cliffs of Miraflores, Lima, taken at dusk just as the lights started to glow! Very pretty for the most part - we weren't so sure about the giant luminous cross you can see on the headland at the right side of the picture...

Gary in a pretty Avenue in Miraflores, very clean, lots of trees, oodles of security guards everywhere...

Sunset on Valentines Day after Wales beat England. Nice evening!
This busy street was in the middle of the Historic Centre of Lima - every buildingin this area seems to be painted some bright coour or other, making the region very festive.

Our last glimpse of the Pacific ocean for the trip (not including the views from the airoplane of course). Lima does have some very pretty sunsets.

Paracas

Despite being reasonably adventurous and genuinely enjoying exploring the world, I’ve never really imagined myself as the sort of person to be found wandering through an isolated desert with vultures circling overhead. It’s too clichéd – the sort of scene you see in films but not real life. Well…

Our first few weeks in Peru were all spent high in the Andean mountain ranges, mostly greater than 2800m above sea level. But similar to neighbouring Chile, as you move to the west coast of Peru you rapidly descend towards the Pacific Ocean, where the country becomes increasingly barren and dry. Actually it takes a reasonable amount of time to descend from the Andes – we caught the night bus from Cusco down to Nazca, and spent the entire 14 hour trip being hurled from one side to another as the (very comfy) coach sped around a never-ending series of hairpin bends in the mountains. This didn’t exactly make it very easy to sleep (and if you did drop off for a few moments you’d be in danger of waking up with severe car-sickness!).

Anyway, we stopped off briefly at Nazca to recover, but soon fled the little desert town due to its incredibly high number of pestering tourist touts. And here we hit a snag. We had planned to make our way to Lima via Pisco, a small coastal town with access to incredibly diverse wildlife in the neighbouring Paracas Peninsular and Ballestas Islands. We even got as far as buying bus tickets to Pisco – except that when we were actually handed the tickets the destination typed on the front was Paracas, not Pisco. The bus ticket lady assured us that the major buses only stopped in Paracas, which was a short way from Pisco. Slightly perturbed we wandered to an internet café to do some research, and found that Pisco had been devastated by an earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale in 2007 – a year after our Rough Guide to Peru was published! The town was now more or less rubble, with variable reports as to whether any hotels were left standing, and numerous rumours of a dramatic increase in crime. Great.

Luckily with a bit more digging around we managed to find some reports that a small port called El Chaco just south of Pisco and right next to the Paracas reserve was now the best place to stay in the area. So we shrugged, found the telephone number of a the small Hostal Santa Maria and booked a room. This turned out to be one of the best make-shift choices we’ve made in South America. We were met in El Chaco when the bus arrived by a man from the Hostal, who gave us a fun lift in a dune buggy! And the actual Hostal itself was one of the nicest we’ve seen in this part of the world – very clean, constant hot water, and it even had a restaurant attached serving delicious fish or chicken dishes. Better still, El Chaco (or Paracas as it is now sometimes called) turned out to be a lovely lively little coastal town with a pretty beach and good access to the Paracas Peninsular, although I suspect it will be a much bigger place in a few years time looking at the amount of construction work underway just inland or along the coast.

We were pretty pleased with finding an El Chaco that had recovered well from the earthquake, but we felt even luckier when we discovered that we had arrived on the day of the Annual Pisco Sour Festival! This effectively meant that a large hotel / apartment complex was given over to festivities for the entire afternoon… so you were welcome to wander in free of charge to listen to local music, watch weird dances, and sample the delicious national drink of Peru free of charge. As Gary and I both like Pisco Sours a lot, and the ones available were the best we’ve had in Peru, it was a very pleasant afternoon!

The next day we visited the Ballestas Islands by catching a small boat from the El Chaco harbour. This was truly amazing. These islands are hyped as being second only to the Galapagos in terms of density of wildlife in South America. As you approached the dramatically arched and cave-ridden lumps of white rock the entire surface seemed to be crawling with insects. Move a little closer and you realise there are no insects – just hundreds of thousands of birds! Pelicans, turns, vultures, gulls, and even sweet penguins! The perch everywhere, no ledge or outcrop is left unoccupied… unless a sealion has taken it for a resting place of course. The small beaches and caves of the islands were absolutely teaming with South American sealions, some of which swam out to meet the boat! One beach was particularly fascinating, as the mother sealions used it as a nursery. In between the adult monsters were hundreds of tiny sweet pups, many obviously trying to avoid having swimming lessons with Mum!

Our last day was spent exploring the Paracas reserve. We hired bicycles from another Hostal in El Chico and cycled 6km to the edge of the desert peninsula reserve where we took a brief break to watch a flock of flamingos in the bay before heading on into the desert. It took a reasonably energetic ride through the dramatic landscape to reach the tiny fishing village of Lagunallas on the far side of the peninsula. Here we rewarded ourselves with cold drinks and lunch (very fresh fish of course) before wandering along the coastline, gazing a flocks of pelicans and gulls, sealions playing around the boats, and at the vultures circling overhead! It is a magical place.

Anyway, now we must move on to our last stop in Peru, the capital city of Lima. From there we fly to Mexico, where we hope to swap Inca ruins for Maya pyramids for our last month of our trip around the world.

Paracas Photographs

Our limousine! This dune buggy gave us the most fun transportation we´ve had in a long time – and the best hotel transfer ever. You sit really low in the vehicle, and so it feels really fast...

At the Pisco Sour festival in Paracas (the nearest functional place to Pisco town after the 2007 earthquake) the afternoon was celebrated with a number of curious songs and dances. This particular dance that we photographed seemed to involve a flamenco-like girl constantly circled by a man on a horse... strange! Nice drinks available though!

Feeding time for the pelicans near the jetty in El Chico. This man attracted quite a crowd, all clacking their beaks viciously at him as he wandered around the sand with his bag of fish.

The pelicans weren´t exactly phased by humans – they let you come right up to them as they beg for fish. But thern again, their beaks are nearly as long as my arm...

The wonderful arches of one of the Ballestas Islands – lots of birds in the air, sealions in the water, and of course the rocks were black with aminal life of one sort or another.

This bold sealion came all the way out to our boat to greet us (or to fight us off more likely). They make a very loud impressive barking noise – and with thousands of the creatures near the boat at times the din was amazing!

A cave full of sealions – Mums and pups. Not very many Dads were in this area – apparently they believe their job is over after conception, and that looking after little ones is a job for girls! Sounds a little like humans really, don´t you think?

This rock was typically heaving with birds – in this case some very hyperactive pelicans and slightly quieter penguins below. The whole series of islands was literally crawling with avian life just like this (meaning the rock was white with bird droppings of course – harvested every few years for a lucrative fertillser industary!)

Penguins! These lovely little birds were actually quite common here, although admittedly not as common as the gulls, pelicans or sealions. I never realised that penguins lived this far from the South Pole.

The beautiful Paracas peninsula seen from the water en route to the fascinating Ballastas islands. It a pretty bleak place!

Cycling into the middle of nowhere? Gary tackes the desert on his mountain bike (probably stalked by hopeful vultures in the clouds above). The cliffs and ocean behind set off the peninsula pretty well.

This dramatic red beach was only one of the many small coves lying on the south shore of the Paracas Peninsula, constantly battered by waves and the occasional sealion!

And finally, we couldn´t resist including this beautiful sunset scene from the beach at El Chico towards the Paracas Peninsula – wonderful colours as the sun goes down over the Pacific.

Machu Picchu

Hyped as one of the modern ’Seven Wonders of the World’ and the ‘Premier Attraction in South America’, Machu Picchu has a lot to live up to! The most famous Inca Citadel of all is situated in the midst of the Andes north of Cusco, at the lower end of the Sacred Valley. Due to all the hype we deliberately left visiting until the end of our time in the area… it seemed only appropriate to keep the most spectacular Inca structure for the grand finale.

Getting to Machu Picchu is interesting - below Ollantaytambo the Sacred Valley becomes too narrow for a road to be built, meaning that you can only arrive on foot (by hiking the Inca Trail) or by train along the narrow track squeezed in by the side of the turbulent River Urambamba. We opted to visit by train as we wouldn’t have had the time to see all the interesting places in the Sacred Valley otherwise - and as the Inca trail is closed in February we didn’t have much choice anyway! We were pleased to find that booking tickets a few days in advance at the main Cusco train station was simple (all staff even spoke perfect English), if a tad expensive $92 US return for the basic ‘backpacker ticket’. Booking everything was so easy that when we turned up at a painfully early 6.30 am to board the train from Cusco’s San Pedro Station, we were slightly taken aback to find that most people were being guided aboard the rickety old train in Tour Groups. Groan.

Fortunately, we soon forgot about the groups as the train left Cusco. The line was obviously built a long time ago on a tight budget which didn’t stretch to simple things like bridges and tunnels! In order to ascend the mountain on the north edge of Cusco the train had to wind back and forth upwards in a series of zigzags. The slope was too steep for hair-pin bends in the track, so instead every few hundred yards the track would stop and reverse on itself in a switch-back, meaning the train would have to change direction for every zig and zag... After meandering back and forth upwards for nearly an hour we finally left Cusco, and the train picked up slightly more speed. Well, not much more speed – it was just as well that the scenery en route was stunning as the trip lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes!

Once we finally jumped off at Machu Picchu Pueblo (the small town that has sprung up to cater for the Inca Complex), we had to run the gauntlet past a hoard of guides and touts brandishing signs for Tour Groups and on right through a huge craft market that forms the only exit to the train station! After deftly dodging numerous sellers of woolly jumpers, shawls, woven things, silver jewellery, paintings and pan-pipes we dashed over the raging River Urambamba and swiftly caught a bus up to the Temple Complex… where of course the lovely sunny weather we had watched with delight all morning through the train windows vanished, and it started to pour down!

We weren’t exactly surprised – every picture of Machu Picchu we’ve ever seen has either had fierce clouds outlining the mountains or has been digitally manipulated to show blue sky! This Inca Temple may have been a place of Sun Worship, but it seems much more effective at summoning clouds! To be honest, the rain wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – the clouds and drizzle certainly gave a bleak sinister edge to the incredibly dramatic and beautiful Complex. And the rain brought another bonus - when we first started to wander around with our umbrellas out there were lots of Tour Groups around the place forming very obvious colourful clusters of mostly middle aged people in bright waterproof jackets or plastic ponchos. The site of the Machu Picchu is so extensive that it could easily cater for the numbers of people, but every now and then you’d get caught behind one of these very slow moving groups, and have to put up with the loud voice of the Guide ruining the tranquil beauty… until you finally escaped past! Fortunately the rain seemed to scare most of these away, so that by early afternoon when the sun emerged from the clouds we more or less had the stunning place to ourselves.

Why is Machu Picchu so beautiful? As an estate agent might tell you – it’s all about location. To be brutally honest, the buildings and temples littered throughout the site may form an extensive and well preserved town, thankfully free of the ravishings of Colonial Spain, but they really aren’t that wonderfully constructed. The Temple of the Sun at Pisac and the fabulous fortifications of Sachsayhumuam actually have far better stone-work. The extensive network of agricultural terraces that flank the sides of Machu Picchu cling to the mountain spectacularly, but no more so than in many of the other sites we’ve seen in the Sacred Valley. No, what makes Machu Picchu stand out as one of the most spectacular places we’ve ever seen is it’s positioning on a dramatic saddle of a high sheer-sided mountain surrounded by a U-turn in the raging River Urambamba hundreds of meters below, only just visible through the drifting clouds. Add into the mix the impressively steep mountain of Huayna Picchu towering vertically behind the hillock of the Sun Temple and you have one of the most memorable scenes you’ll find anywhere on Earth. You have to admire the Incas for building here – very beautiful, but completely impractical! They must have been mad (or at least hyperactive)! Just think of all the climbing they had to do to get up out of the river valley, or even worse, to scale the peak of Huayna Picchu.

We didn’t realise before we arrived at the site that you could climb Huayna Picchu, the almost vertical mount immediately behind Machu Picchu. Once we discovered this we made a bee-line for the entrance, and were very lucky to be one of the last few people let through that day. Of course it rained heavily during the entire exhausting climb up hundreds of large stone steps hewn from the sheer rock cliff face – which were made nicely slippery by all the water! It did make you think about the vertical drop down to the river hundreds of meters below… But when we eventually reached the Inca Citadel at the top we were very pleased to have persisted, if only for the spectacular views down over Machu Picchu. We were also rewarded by the chance to explore a wonderful vertical maze-like town where you had to climb sheer walls of rock and crawl through tight caves to reach the summit. As we arrived at the very top the rain magically stopped, and we were even treated to a few rays of sunshine! It couldn’t last – Machu Picchu generated more clouds over the course of the afternoon and only let the sun show the Temple’s full glory for the occasional moment. But those moments were beautiful!

So does Machu Picchu deserve all the hype? It is a nice well preserved Inca Complex in possibly the most dramatic site we’ve ever seen anywhere. The buildings can’t compare with Angkor Wat or the Taj Mahal, but on the other hand neither of these were dangled off the top of a narrow, vertically sided mountain! Machu Picchu is truly spectacular – and well worth a trip to Peru. Try and see it before the Peruvian Government starts taking things like ‘Health and Safety’ seriously, or I doubt you’ll be able to climb the rock cliff of Huayna Picchu, whose crazy citadel and views down over Machu Picchu are possibly the highlight of the whole place – if you don’t mind heights and slippery steps above long cliff drops that is…

Machu Picchu Pictures

The magnificent Machu Picchu - vertical-cliff-sided mountains, sheer stone agricultural terraces, simple elevated temples... and the inevitable looming clouds. Spectacular place! And below you can see the rain that came from those gloomy clouds. Climbing up Huayna Picchu (the steep mount in the background of the first photo) with an umbrella in hand wasn´t the eastist thing - it made you very aware of the long drop over the edge of the cliff should you miss your footing.

The view from Huayna Picchu down towards the main Machu Piccu Complex, far, far below! As you can see, the whispy clouds were pierced by the odd ray of sunshine, making the view truly spectacular. You can appreciate the extent of the terracing in the site fro this angle too. Below you can see Machu Picchu´s circular terraces in the foreground, with Huayna Picchu towering in the background against the clouds.

Sunshine! When the ancient temple was lit up the terraces looked beautiful, but it was a rare event. Huayna Picchu behind is still dark and gloomy however.

A classic view of Machu Picchu, with a very small Vicki perched on a terrace at the right of the photo. More gloomy clouds above, but a few rays of sunshine escape to brighten up the complex below.

Ollantaytambo and the Sacred Valley

We’ve spent a reasonable amount of time travelling up and down the dramatic Sacred Valley over the last few days. After first visiting Pisac and spending ages admiring the upper end of the valley from the great height of the mountain-perched Inca complex, we thought we’d have a go at venturing a little further. Pisac was very easy to get to – just hop on one of the small rickety local busses that leave every 15 minutes or so from Avenida Tullumayo in central Cusco and it’s an extremely cheap 30 minute trip. Our next target, Ollantaytambo, as well as proving much more difficult to pronounce, was much trickier to reach.

The main problem is that direct busses to and from Ollantaytambo are few and far between – leaving only once or twice a day at inconvenient times. So, to get there in ‘local style’ you have to first catch one of the incredibly popular busses that leave Avenida Grau to go to another town in the Sacred valley called Urubamba every half an hour. This was sort of OK –we weren’t lucky enough to get seats and so had to stand in the isle with 15 odd other poor devils in the packed bus. We were getting the hang of keeping our balance around the tight hair-pin bends as the road wound up out of Cusco when unfortunately the bus started to warm up. This is one thing that we really can’t understand about the locals here – they wear layer upon layer upon layer of clothing ALL of the time. Yes, the evenings and nights are bitterly cold, but the days are often sunny and warm. This was a warm day and we were in a packed, overcrowded bus – so the temperature rose rapidly until Gary and I were boiling! But even though the locals seemed to be wearing more than 4 times as many clothes compared to either of us they closed all the windows and wrapped themselves up in more coats to make it even warmer! We just don’t get it, they must have been roasting, but they all kept their coats on!

Anyway, the trip to Urubamba wasn’t the most comfortable, but it did offer some wonderful vistas as we descended into the Sacred Valley. Then we had a relatively easy transfer onto a Collectivo bound for Ollantaytambo. A Collectivo is a sort of clapped-out mini bus that only leaves a bus terminal when it can’t possibly fit any more passengers on board – but of course it will stop every now and then along the way to squeeze in anyone else who hails it down! Still, out reward for successfully traversing the Sacred Valley was to have a few hours exploring the very pretty little town of Ollantaytambo with its impressive Inca Fort.

The ruins here aren’t anywhere near as impressively located as those in Pisac. The main Inca Citadel is only 200m or so up the mountain above town, and so as you climb you do get nice views back over the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo itself, but they don’t compare to the vistas from the Pisac Temple. On the other hand it only takes a gentle 10 minute climb to reach the top rather than nearly 2 hours of hard hiking! It is for this reason we suspect that Ollantaytambo is particularly popular with tour groups. We were fortunate – we had just enough time to make a leisurely ascent to the citadel, quickly explore the small ruined Temple of the Sun, and then stroll along the top of the beautifully geometric agricultural terraces before the tours descended upon the place. As we made our way down the far side of the Inca Complex to our horror we saw hoards of tourists making their way (very very slowly) up to the Citadel we had explored only half an hour earlier. There were loads of them! At least five groups, each with 10 to 30 people… it looked like the stone terraces had sprouted a particularly virulent and colourful fungal infection! We actually felt sorry for each of the poor sods struggling upwards. Whereas we’d enjoyed the stunning temple and scenery in peace, they would be herded around the place with billions of others, never really getting the chance to appreciate it properly. And I dread to think how much more a guided tour would have cost compared to the pittance we paid for our local transport adventure!

This made us think of a conversation we’d overheard a day earlier while having a pizza for dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Plaza De Armas in Cusco. We don’t usually listen to other people’s conversations… but here we had no choice. Two couples in their late middle age sitting at adjacent tables began to chat – one from Denmark, the other from the USA. And trust me, if we’d been sitting in the restaurant next door we’d probably have still heard the North Americans clearly! They started off by saying ‘You know, we had a real adventure today – we were picked up by our guide at 8.00am and didn’t come back until 5.00! We visited the Sacred Valley’. At this point the Danish couple politely asked where in the Sacred Valley they had visited. ‘Ugh, I don’t think it has a name other than the Sacred Valley. There were some salt mines…But our Guide was really good – he’s written a book! I bought it…’ As you can imagine, this went on for some time! Eventually the Danish couple explained that they had used local buses to see the valley a few days earlier – and that they had been travelling up to Cusco from Lima by bus. The couple from the USA could barely disguise their horror: ‘Local buses? That must have been, err, interesting. Have you been to the Airport here? No? It’s really unusual…’ It was clear that the Danes had completely fallen in their estimation for not spending more money to travel in luxury – and for becoming somehow contaminated by ‘mixing’ with locals.

We listened to all this (we had no choice given the volume the North Americans shouted) with utter horror. I really hope that most people who travel have a genuine interest in the places they visit – and are willing to explore them rather than wanting bits and pieces handed to them on a 5 star platter. Having the opportunity to explore and get a real feel for a place is so much more fun than simply being bussed from point to point with crowds of other tourists. And on a practical note – independent travel is much cheaper too!