Well now where did the time go? We left in November 2008 and I find myself writing this on a freezing cold November evening in Cork, back on the emerald isle, in 2010. Where did the time go? After my last post we meandered our way north along the pacific cost of Ecuador, over the mountains and into Colombia for our last few weeks of self indulgent sun soaked sandy serenity, before flying out of Bogota, into NY city, and home. Well I went home. The boys? Thats another story. Where did the time go?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, July 3, 2009
Peru, Peru, we love you so we do.
From the comfort and relative distance of the small town surfer town of Montañita in Ecuador, I am finally getting my act togerher and getting this blog up to date. This means writing about our time in Peru and on reflection it was really one of the best countries for me in South America. Peru offers SO much to the average visitor, and its been one of the most enjoyable places for us. Theres so much diversity in the landscapes and locations all around the country, similar to Bolivia, but there are certain things that put Peru a notch above its neighbours, in my book anyway. Firstly, Machu Pichu, the "lost city of the incas", hidden deep in the mountains in the Urubamba valley is one of the most striking, impressive, and atmospheric places I have ever been (more on that later). The nearby town of Cusco, altough full of tourists, is like Peru´s cultural capital and a great place to spend some time in. We ended up setting up base there in our nice quiet wee family house type hostel on avenida del sol - where somebody has to get up out of bed to let you in at night, happened a lot - and staying in cusco for 2 weeks! We finally managed to drag ourselves out of cusco and, after saying goodbye to two unreplacable members of the family (Sarah and Zoe headed back to ingleterra), and we headed east and finally came down to a lower altitude, ears popping all the way on the 24 hour bus ride away from the stinging cold heights of the andes, toards a town called Ica. Here you can find the largest sand dunes in south america. You take a tour in a dune buggy and if that doest rattle you enough you can rent a sandboard and fling yourself down the ridiculously steep slopes, ending up rolling down mostly and getting sand in places you never thought sand should go....
After Ica we continued up the coast towards the countries capital, Lima. We ended up spending a very enjoyable week there thanks to our good friend Pablo, who played host to us for 6 days and let us stay in his house. It as great to finally be in an actual house for the first time in months.... Lima is a HUGE city and thankfully Pablo did a great job showing us around, driving us mostly to the best parts of the city, giving us a chance to get a taste for the different barrios/neighbourhoods and some nights out in some very cool places. In the downtime, of which there was a lot, we basically did 2 things; watched DVDs and played pro evolution football on Pablos playstation. Oh, then there were the two actual football games that we played against Pablos friends ; and in both games hammered the peruvians 11-3 and then 7-0....these games took so much out of me that I ended up getting a flu after over-excerting myself in the second one....for Ali and Quinny it as just a run around, they really enjoyed themselves.
Onwards and upwards then and by now we were getting quite excited about the prospect of leaving all that high altitude mountain and city life behind and getting to the coast for sun, sand and surf. I cant really surf, it just sounds right to say that. More accurate would be sun, sand, beer, ballantines and sleeping in....We went directly by overnight bus (overnight buses by now are second nature to us; 16 hours, 20 hours, I will never again complain about the horrors of a bus eireann journey which might strech a whole 5 or 6 hours across our wee island) to Mancora, in the very north of Peru, close to the border with Equador. A nice little surf town, Mancora is known for its year round sun shine and right after arriving we got straight into the aul shorts and flip flops, and down to the beach, cold beer and suncream. Nice. No more wooly jumpers a la bolivia or cusco, thank you very much!!
So there you have it. Peru has been a blast. Diverse, like Bolivia, but offering so much more...and this was only a summary of what we got up to... Trekking, Quad biking, mountain biking, white water rafting, big city night life, small surfer town hippie life...and more....Peru will exci- wait a minute....im starting to sound really like a cheesy advert for the country, like some paid advertising monkey to boost tourism, so ill stop right there. you get the point. Peru = cool
Hasta luego (till next time)
Brian
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Looking out at the Salt Flats from isla de pescala
This and more photos of the salt flats and rest of Bolivia and Argentina can be seen on my facebook album... heres the public link;
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=258373&id=887685205&l=5d86abffd8
Chattin to the goats
A little clip of me attempting to make conversation with the goats up in some mountain farm during our horse riding with Enrique in Salta, Argentina.
Salar de Uyuni
Along the tourist trail in Bolivia one of the most visited places is the Salar de Uyuni, or the Salt Flats as its known in English. It is the worlds largest salt flat at 10,582 km squared. We visited it from Uyuni (hence the name) which is the town most people access it by. The town seems to exist solely for the purposes of tourism, and its a cold, dry deserted place which I would advise anybody to only spend a minimal amount of time in. Altough most people take a 3 day tour, we were advised ny a few people that one day is really enough to get out to the middle of the flats, experience it and get back before you get stranded out in the night cold! We left (realtively) early in the day and drove out of Uyuni about an hour, along the abandoned train tracks to get to the salt flats. We stopped on the outer fringes of the flats for half an hour so the locals could tempt us to buy their merchandise of al paca clothing and souvenirs fashioned out of salf. On we drove then into the heart of the flats stopping along the way to get out of our 4x4 and really experience the vastness of it all.
At one point I walked away from the group for about 10 minutes in no particular direction, just towards nothing. After a while I was completely alone in the middle of the desert and the rest of my group and the car were but speckles on the horizon a few hundread meters back. It was one of the most eerily quiet yet serene settings Ive ever found myself. If I was into meditation, I´d imagine it would have been a perfect place to do it.
Towards the end of the day our guide brought us to isla de pescado; a strange cactus filled "island" in the middle of the salar. Here you can climb for 10 minutes to get to the peak (avoiding the huge cacti) where you find an amzing panoramic view of the whole area. Driving home in the jeep with the sun setting on the salt flats and some nice tunes on the radio was a memorable experience. (see some photos above)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Onwards and Northwards
After Iguazu, and as happens every few weeks, we had to take a look at our time and money situation. We decided that we needed to start heading generally north if we wanted to make to Bolivia and Peru with adequate time to go where we wanted. Usually people go from Salta directly to Bolivia, but considering we had already been there and taken a 23 hour bus ride to get to Iguazu which borders Paraguay and not Bolivia, we figured the best way to go from there was through the less travelled Paraguay. So thats what we did. The next few days were spent just getting to Bolivia and all I remember is a haze of night buses, border crossings, and a day in Paraguay´s capital, Ascuncion, about which I have nothing really notable to say!
Deciding which route to take through Bolivia depends largely on where you are coming from and where you are going to next. As we entered the country on the south east border from Paraguay, we wanted first to go to Uyuni which is like a base camp for tourists going to the Salar de Uyuni, or the Salt Flats. From there the rough plan was to head up to La Paz and use it as a base for activites and deciding where to go next.
Bolivia is a country of constrasts. And extremes. Anyone traveling there should be prepared to be tested physically and mentally and no matter how well prepared you think you are to travel in a place like this, you will likely encounter something completey unexpected. From the dizzying heights of La Paz (Located at an altitude of 3,660 metres (12,008 ft), it is the world's highest capital city), to the lowland tropical regions of rurrenabaque and the pampas rainforests and everything in between, you can feel like you are in a completely different place from one day to the next because climate, landscape and even the local people change dramatically from one area to the next.
We crossed the border - with all the formalities including presenting your passport to be stamped in a dark room with a dodgy bolivian offical, showing your certificate of vaccinations against dengue fever, then being accompanied back to the bus by a few boys no older than 16 in military uniforms brandishing AK-47´s - and arrived in a tiny isolated town called villamontes. From here a group of around 6 of us (being the only foreigners in the whole area) splashed out spending a whole maybe 3 dollars US each to get a private minibus to bring us to Tarija, where we killed time for the day walking around the town, before taking a night bus to the slightly larger town near Tupiza. After arriving here at 4.30am we said goodbye to the japanese couple who had accompanied us thus far but no were reseigned to taking a hotel room for the day and sleeping. Not wanting to be stranded in another isolated Bolivian town we got to work on negotiating with the few taxi drivers who had flocked to us knowing we were looking for a way to Tupiza as quick as possible, and soon enough we struck a deal with an eager young man with a decent looking car who would drive us all the way there over a rocky bumby road in the mountains. Of course, 3 hours in and just after sun rise, we encountered a puntured tyre. Our driver quickly and casually got out to change the tyre in a way that I could tell it happened all the time. With the boys asleep in the back, myself and Mattias got out to walk around and enjoy the morning view of the mountains...( evenutally, the boys woke up and joined me for a photo op - see photo above)
Eventually we arrived in Tupiza, and the next morning took a 7 hour bus - one of my most uncomfortable bus journeys ever, for many reasons - to get to Uyuni. We made it, shivering from the cold and out of breath from the altitude, but excited to plan our trip to the salt flats.
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