Blog of the Gaps

Following on from Legless in Lima...

17/10 Second day in Lima. Explored the old city centre - best part of Lima. I'm developing a worrying fetish for Peruvian traffic police (all female in tight trousers or slit skirts). Evening - more clericot.

18/10 Visited a pre-Inca archaeological site - a massive temple complex built entirely of mud bricks - apparently functional because it never rains in Lima...

mud city

One of the less sucessfull features of the site was their attempt to model the original inhabitants...

dummies in nappies

Went to a potato restaurant for lunch and achieved instant fame. A Chinese TV crew were filming for a food series and asked me for an interview! So I now have star status in China (and - who knows - maybe worldwide). Evening...

more clericot

Over the years I've had some stick from Monic and other fashionistas about wearing sandals with socks. In retaliation I'd like to publish the following evidence...

Monic in socks and sandals

19/10 Leaving Lima (no regrets - it's not our favorite city) - Cusco here we come. There's some photos taken from the flight here. LAN's idea of a tasty airplane snack...

When we see our room we are nostalgic for our Lima dungeon - appalling - ended up eating in a place with wifi (sod the food) as we needed to plan Machu Picchu trip and find a new room.

21/10 Walked up to Sacsayhuaman (Inca ruins) before moving to human habitation. The drugs appear to be working - at least we don't keel over from AMS during the (rather steep) climb. Although Machu Picchu is far more spectacular as an overall package, I'd rate Sacsayhuaman as the best bit of stonework that I've seen. All Cusco photos (including Sacsayhuaman) are here

22/10 Sacred Valley tour (photos here) plus train to Aguas Caliente (nearest town to Machu Picchu) - annoyingly tour guide tells we have to miss best part of best ruin to get train.

23/10 Machu Picchu

25/10 My favourite exhibit in a Cusco archeological museum ... in a list of ethnic groups conquered by the Incas, the Wankas came first.

26/10 Last look around Cusco - catch night bus to Nazca at 18.00.

Knackered in Nazca

Took the night bus from Cusco to Nazca. Arrived knackered at 7.30 and set out for our flight over the Nazca lines. It all went well - only two others tourists on board, window seats all round, good weather and, most importantly, excellent views of the lines.

Unfortunately most of the photos were rubbish - I've tried to crop out some of the pointless acres of desert. Now sitting in a restaurant rehydrating and waiting for our 22.00 bus to Arequipa.

The rest of the photos are here.

The rain in Peru falls mainly in the train

We've been lucky with the weather so far. In fact, I'd say it was ideal - no rain, t-shirt warm during the day and fleece-cool in the evening. However, my luck ran out 20 minutes into the train journey back from Machu Picchu when the aircon on the train started leaking just above my seat. A few drops at first that soon turned into a flood.

The train guard's best effort was to wedge paper towels against the grill - this lasted all of 5 minutes. Things weren't looking good but fellow travellers came up with a plastic poncho and some tape and we rigged a heath robinson fix that guided the water away from me. The kindness of strangers wins out - luckily for me as the guard said that there wasn't a single free seat on the whole train.

It may not be pretty - but it worked

Photos

More photos than you can shake a stick at. Here's links to all the photos. I'll keep adding to them as we go...

Lima

Andes from above

Cusco

Sacred Valley

Machu Picchu

Nazca

Arequipa

Puno

Copacabana

La Paz

Salar de Uyuni

Salar de Uyuni extra

San Pedro

San Pedro extra

Santiago

Lake District

Lake District extra

Torres del Paine

Torres del Paine extra

Los Glaciares

Los Glaciares extra

Iguazu Falls

Iguazu Falls extra

Buenos Aires

Easter Island

Easter Island extra

Tahiti

Tahiti extra

NZ Northland

NZ Northland extra

NZ Hobbiton

NZ Hobbiton extra

NZ Waitomo

NZ Waitomo extra

NZ North

NZ South

Machu Picchu

Finally got round to setting up a blog. I'll write a catch-up post sometime but for now, here's a few pictures from the highlight so far...

All the Machu Picchu pictures are online here.

We wimped out of any climbing and got the bus up at around 7am. It was a magical (and slightly scary) drive up through mountains wreathed in cloud. We were lucky with our timing - it had been raining - but the sun came out as we reached the top - and, yes, it's pretty magnificent.

The main drawback was the hordes of other tourists (how dare they). We left our group pretty soon (the guide seemed intent on telling us at length about his utopian take on Inca society) and as we were there ahead of the daytrippers we managed a fairly peaceful self-guided tour.

Our only mistake of the day was walking down instead of taking the bus - the views from the bus on the way up were spectacular but they more or less disappeared on the footpath - still, at least we didn't walk up!

Legless in Lima

Thanks again to Phil for braving great big tracker dogs to smooth the start of our trip. We finally arrived in Lima - zombied - at 6 am to our first minor hiccup - the arranged pickup at the airport doesn't show. No problem -  intrepid travellers that we are - we hitch into Lima we get a taxi. Forestfield to Pradera Verde hostel in 24 hours!

The second minor hiccup is the small dungeon we have booked has no window - just a hole in the ceiling that goes up to a hole in the roof covered by boards. But - hey, we're only sleeping there. We wandered around Miraflores most of the day in a daze - but in the end we got our reward with an excellent meal (ceviche (Peruvian sushi) and fried yucca) in a restaurant that served clericot (our new favourite drink - white wine and lemonade with added fruit) by the jug - so we ended our first day legless in Lima.

Oh yes, Lima photos are here.