Where's Andrew

LIMA, NAZCA & CUZCO, PERU - OCTOBER 19 TO 27

After 4 days of trekking, the 1st Class seat on the bus from Huaraz to Lima was such a good idea and it only cost about $8US more than the regular seat. The seat itself is so comfortable and there is only 3 seats in a row and I'm on the side of the bus that has only a single seat. The bus trip is about 9 hours and I sleep most of the way but after the Santa Cruz Trek I kind of think I could have slept anywhere. I think Shane, Seleka, Carly and Stuart are also really happy with their 1st Class seats. We get to Lima at around 6:30AM. It really sucks to arrive so early in a new city or town as most hostels and hotels are not open so you got to wait around before finding a room, even most restaurants and cafes have not opened yet.

Lima is a huge city of more than 8.2 million people located right on the Pacific coast along the long desert plain the stretches from Ecuador to Chile. This time of year, the city is normally shrouded in fog and mist which keeps the daytime temperature somewhere in the mid twenties Celsius with moderate humidity. We plan of finding a hostel in Miraflores which is the most popular area for tourists to stay and is at the south side of the city right on the coast.

We all catch a taxi to a hostel that was recommended to us by the owner of the Huaraz hostel where we stayed. We get there around 7:00AM and are pleased to see that it is open but are quickly disappointed to find that it is full. Shane and Stuart go and check a number of other hostels in the area but they are all still closed, have no rooms available or are really expensive. Throughout Peru we have been paying around $10 - 12US for a single room while double rooms are usually $15 - 20US per night. The prices we are being quoted are double this or more.

We decide to walk to a Starbucks that we saw a couple blocks away and figure out what to do next. We mark down some hostel locations on a map that were listed in our guide book and Shane and I go see if we can find a nice hostel at a good price while everyone else and our baggage stays at the coffee shop. Shane and I check out at least a dozen different hostels as we wonder throughout Miraflores. We quickly find that rooms in Lima are a lot more than everywhere else that we have been and the best price we can find is double what we were hoping but the hostels at this price were awful. It seems that the 2nd hostel we went to before going to Starbucks was by far the best deal. So after almost 1.5 hours of walking around, Shane and I return to the Starbucks and we all head to the Explorers Hostel. We are relieved to find out that the rooms we saw are still available and I get a private room for about $20US.

My main mission in Lima is to finally buy a replacement Android tablet for the one stolen on the bus in Ecuador. I want another ASUS Transformer as it has everything I need like a keyboard, SD Card input and an USB input. I hope I can find an ASUS because I had no luck in Trujillo or Chiclayo. The lady that owns the hostel marks down a bunch of computer and electronic store locations on my map so I walk to the shopping district of Miraflores. The first place I go is a 3 story mall of nothing but small computer stores. Within 30 minutes I find 2 stores that have what I want and one them offers me a good price of $550US which is about $100US more than I spent in Canada but about what I had expected based on some research I did on the internet. I should have just bought it but I could not help think that I might find a better deal at one of the other stores. So, I spend about 3 hours walking around Miraflores going to every store that was marked on my map. None of them even carry the ASUS tablet so I head back to the computer mall. When I get to the store that gave me the good price, I find out that they do not have any in stock. The manager assures me that one of his other stores has stock and he will send someone to pick it up and it will be here in an hour but he wants me to pay for it now. I'm not keen on paying for anything until I can see it but we soon agree on a $100 deposit and I go find a cafe for lunch.

An hour later, I head back to the store and am pleased to see one of the staff returning to the store with the ASUS tablet. We unpack it from the box and power it up and I spend a few minutes surfing the net to ensure it seems in good working order before I pay the balance. I finally get back to the hostel just after 5:00PM. I want to get working on setting up the tablet but I'm supposed to meet everyone at 6:00PM and we are going to a park with many unique fountains that are lit up at night and they are supposed to have some kind of laser light show with music. So I spend 45 minutes setting up the tablet and downloading Android Apps and then I meet Shane and Seleka in the lobby.

We catch a taxi to the park which is near the old town center of Lima. We get there a little before 7:00PM and soon meet up with Carly and Stuart. There are dozens of fountains all in different shapes and colours but they are not that exciting. Then we come to a really long (80m) and narrow (30m) fountain. It is just one long line of jets that sprays water up to 30m high. As we get there, a show based on Disney's Fantasia is just starting. There are hundreds of laser lights of various colours shining on the fountain water jets that are timed to music. More impressively, there is a large video image displayed on the centre of the fountain's water jets. The most impressive images were of a ballerina dancing, a fairy and various local Peruvian dancers. The show lasts about 25 minutes and was very well done. My boss at Acumen would have loved this and he would want to design something like this for some project so I hope my photos turn out so I can email him some pictures.

By the time the show is over, I am exhausted. Spending 6 or 7 hours on my feet again after a 4 day trek was not exactly as planned. I'm so tired I decide to skip out on dinner with everyone and catch a cab back to the hostel. I spend about and hour setting up the tablet but soon go to bed. The next morning, I continue working on the tablet. I have about 1000 pictures that I need to get transferred from SD cards to the tablet then uploaded to my web storage site. Getting the photos on the tablet only takes about an hour but uploading them to the Picasa site is an excruciatingly slow process. Over the course of the day, I only get about 60 uploaded. With the slow internet that is common to almost everywhere I stay, it's going to take forever to get my pictures all uploaded especially considering all the photos I take almost every day. While uploading the photos, I also start working on my blog as I'm almost 3 weeks behind. To post pictures on the blog, I need to first upload the photos to Picasa so I am motivated to try and get as many photos uploaded ASAP.

Nazca Main plaza

That afternoon, Carly and Stuart catch a bus to the coastal town of Pisco. Shane has caught a bad cold and is laying low but he and Seleka have booked a flight to Cuzco the next morning to avoid the 20 - 22 hour bus ride. I have decided to catch a morning bus to Nazca which is about 8 hours away to the south by bus. I am hoping to meet up again with everyone in Cuzco and then do a trek to Machu Picchu. Nazca is a desert town located between the mountains and the coast. It is famous for about a dozen huge images that have been carved out of the desert floor such as a monkey, dog, humming bird, condor, and parrot to name a few. Archaeologists have differing opinions as to what the lines represent. The lines that form the images were made by a pre-Inca civilization a couple of thousand years ago. Theories range from they are religious symbols made to honour their gods to the lines were part of an elaborate running course for ceremonial races. There are even some who think that aliens came to Nazca and made these images. I tend to favour what seems the most obvious choice that the lines are religious symbols made to honour their gods.

Spaceman Lines at Nazca

I arrive in Nazca around 5:00PM and I am approached by a guy saying he has a new hostel a couple of blocks away if I am interested. It is right on the way to the main square where most of the hostels are located so I decide to take a look. The hostel is very nice and very new. In fact some areas are still under construction but the price of a private room is right, $15 per night, so I decide to stay. There is a tour company based in the hostel and I decide to check on the cost of a small plane tour of the Nazca Lines. They want about $170US for a 40 minute flight which seems really high and is much more than what my guide book says. I'm getting a really hard sell and I feel like he's trying to take me for a ride. So I tell the guy that I will probably book the flight but I want to shop around at some other tour offices. He tells me there is only 1 spot left on the morning flight and that the airport is about to close but I think he is full of shit. As I leave he follows me outside and quickly drops the price to about $100 and even reduces my room rate by half as long as I promise not to tell anyone else at the hostel what price he is offering. I tell him that his offer sounds great but I am still going to shop around. I walk to the main plaza and stop off at 3 or 4 tour companies. Everyone quotes me between $90 and $100. I saw our hotel book 3 or 4 couples at the $170 price each, what a rip off. I decide to book at the hostel anyway because of the discounted room rate and the fact that I would get picked up right at the hostel and driven to the airport which was not included by the other tour companies.

Humming Bird Lines At Nazca

After booking a morning flight, I decide to have a couple drinks at the hostel bar which is having Happy Hour and I chat with a number of other hostel guests. I am once again uploading photos to Picasa and I leave my computer in the room uploading while I have dinner at a local Chinese restaurant.

The next morning I'm picked up at 9:00AM and taken to the airport. I've never seen a small airport so busy. There are hundreds of tourist waiting for their 40 minute flight and this is the slow season, I can't imagine what peak season is like. After about a 45 minute wait, our co-pilot comes to take 4 of us to the plane which is a small Cessna. There is only seats for the 4 of us in back plus the pilot and co-pilot. We are given a map of the area we are flying over which shows each of the images we will see. The crew then does a pretty extensive check of the plane which I get the sense was really only for our benefit but definitely makes me feel better about the plane. Shortly after, we are in the air.

We fly at 2500 feet and when we get to the first set of lines, I'm surprised how small they are and how faint the lines are. It is also really hard to take pictures. First, it is a nice sunny day and there is a lot of hot air rising from the desert floor which we feel as turbulence so we are bouncing around quite a bit. And secondly, it is really bright in the plane and the desert floor is really bright and I can't see any detail on my cameras LCD screen. I find it more effective to not even look at the LCD screen but instead to to just visually aim the camera at the lines below. I'm not really sure if I'm getting any good photos or not. We only spend about 20 seconds flying by any one set of lines on one side of the plane before doing a sharp turn and passing the lines again on the other side of the plane. I don't normally get motion sickness but between the turbulence, the sharp turns and trying to aim the camera to take pictures, I'm starting to feel a little queasy. Apparently, some one uses one of the little bags on almost every flight. Thankfully, no one needs to use their bag on this flight.

Dog Lines that I Didn´t Even See

I'm surprised how hard some of the lines are to see. Some, like the dog, I don't see at all even though the co-pilot is trying to point it out below. Out of the 40 minute flying time, less than 25 minutes is spent above the lines and between the straining to see the lines, trying to take some photos and the violent maneuvering by the pilot, I don't really enjoy the flight that much. It probably would have been nicer just to forget about trying to get good photos and enjoy the view itself, especially after I look at my photos after landing and seeing that I only got about 3 or 4 decent shots.

After getting back to the hostel, I head to the area in town where all the bus companies are as there is no central bus station. It seems quite common in Peru for there to be no bus terminal but at least in Nazca all the bus companies are in a 2 block stretch. In Lima, they are spread out all over the city making it really tough to shop around. I buy a ticket for a night bus to Cuzco. The bus is scheduled to leave at 9:00PM and it is 12 hour trip to Cuzco. I spend an hour or so wondering around the main centre of Nazca but it is not really that nice of a town. After grabbing some lunch, I'm back at the hostel working on uploading photos and updating my blog.

Cuzco Plaza Armis

I'm looking forward to getting to Cuzco. Before I left Vancouver, I read a book called the Last Days of the Incas and much of it is centered around Cuzco. Machu Picchu is also just a couple days away and is supposed to be the best ruin in Central or South America. Unfortunately, I will not be doing the traditional Inca Trail as it is limited to 400 hundred trekkers a day and is sold out a minimum of 3 months in advance. There are a couple of other options to trek to Machu Picchu, the next most popular is called the Salkantay Trail. It is a 5 day trek with the last day in Machu Picchu compared to 4 days on the Inca Trail. Both trails have a similar altitude high summit but the Salkantay trail is about 20km longer. It is also half the price and only about 20 or 30 people leave on this trek daily this time of year as we are only a week before the official start of the rainy season. Arranging a trek will be my first priority when I arrive and hopefully with Shane, Seleka, Carly and Stuart.

Traditional Live Music in Plaza de San Francisco

My bus leaves Nazca over an hour late and for some reason I'm not at all tired so I can't sleep. I end up watching a movie I had downloaded on my tablet for a couple of hours and then finally get to sleep around 1:00AM but I sleep terribly. We finally arrive into Cuzco around 12:30PM which is a couple hours later than expected. I need to find a Wi-Fi connection some where so I can see if I have a message from Shane and Seleka saying where they are staying. Cuzco has a central bus station and there is Wi-Fi available for passengers but I can't get my tablet to connect for some reason. So, I catch a cab to the main plaza which I am pretty sure will be fairly close to their hostel. I then go into an Internet Cafe and sure enough

Inca Stone Foundation Walls

there is an email waiting. They are staying in a hostel in the north end of the city known as San Blas a few blocks uphill from the plaza that I am in. As I am walking in the San Blas area looking for the hostel, I bump into Shane who is doing a walking tour of the city. He gives me some quick directions and I soon find it. They have reserved a room for me which is nice.

Shane had also told me to meet him, Seleka and another friend at a cafe in the main plaza at 3:00PM where we will discuss options he has been looking into for a trek and then we we hopefully go book it. I've also received a message from Rachel and Itamar who hiked with us on the Laguna 69 and Santa Cruz treks saying they will be in Cuzco in 2 days are they are hoping to join us on whatever trek we are doing. I meet up with Shane and Seleka at the cafe and meet John who is from England, he met Shane and Seleka while they were all kiteboarding in northern Peru. He seems like a really good guy and I think he will be a great guy to Trek with.

Plaza Aramis and San Blas District

After some tea and coffee, we head to a nearby tour company. Shane and John have checked around so they know what is supposed to be included in the Salkantay Trek and we are soon talking the details of price and what is and isn't included. We are thinking there will be 8 of us assuming that Rachel and Itamar will join us along with Carly and Stuart. We negotiate a few extras like an earlier train back from Aguacaliente which is the town near Machu Picchu and an additional entrance ticket for Huayna Picchu which is the small mountain next to the ruins. We agree to a price of $250 per person including the entrance fee to Machu Picchu and the train back. We will leave Cuzco for the trek on Saturday morning in 5 days time. We then head to a nearby restaurant and have a nice 3 course meal with the main course being Alpaca for about $5 each.

Church & Convent Built on The Inca Temple de Sol

The next morning I wake up with a cold. It's a minor sinus cold, I just hope it does not get worse. Shane still has his cold including a bad chest cough. The ascent to the summit of just over 4600m on the Salkantay Trail will be hard enough, I just hope I don't have to do it with a bad cold. I spend the day wondering around Cuzco. I visit 4 churches that were built on the 4 main Inca temple sites shortly after the Spanish arrived around 1530. At each location, the church was built on existing Inca stone foundations. The stone work is incredible as they carved the stones so perfectly that no mortar was used, this is the trademark of Inca construction. I also see many other building that have incorporated parts of existing Inca walls in their construction.

That day, Itamar and Rachel arrive and they book the same trek as us. They have also been in touch with our 3 Israeli pals from the Santa Cruz trek, Arnon, Chen and Yoram. So we all get together that evening for dinner at a really good but cheap Israeli restaurant. It's great to see these guys again, they are such good guys and a lot of fun to be with. They are doing the same trek as us but they leave the day before us. They booked it in Israel before leaving on their trip. We have also heard from Carly and Stuart and they won't be arriving in Cuzco until a few days after we leave so they won't be joining us.

Plaza de Regocijo

The next morning, I awake and find that my cold is about the same as yesterday, so I've got my fingers crossed that it won't get worse. Seleka, Rachel, Itamar and I go on a free walking tour of Cuzco. There is about 25 people on the tour and the only cost is to tip the guide which is actually optional. The guide takes us on a 3.5 hour tour of many of the out of the way locations in Cuzco. The trek is more focused on the food, drink and culture of the local people with a little bit of history thrown in. We get to sample many types of food and drink as well which is great. I really recommend this tour for anyone visiting Cuzco and it starts each morning at 11:30AM in the Plaza de Regocijo, just look for the tour guide in the green vest.

That evening, Shane and I go to the tour company office to try out a sleeping bag for size. We both had problems fitting into the mummy style bags that were provided during the Santa Cruz trek and we are relieved to see that our tour company has found some nice large sized sleeping bags.

The next day I wake up and my cold is definitely a bit worse but still not too bad. I spend the day getting errands done like laundry. I am still trying to get photos uploaded to Picasa but I seem to be taking photos faster than I can get them uploaded. That evening, I'm starting to feel pretty lousy but I'm in denial so I just try and ignore my cold. Shane, Seleka, John and I head to an apartment that Brad and Liz have rented. I first met Brad and Liz in Guatape Colombia along with Shane and Seleka. They are an Australian couple and I ran into them in the Galapagos Islands and now again in Cuzco. They have some nice meats, crackers and wine to share with us which is such a treat as I have not had anything like this since leaving Vancouver. While there socializing, my sinus cold hits full force and I barley last until we leave around 10:30PM. I worried how I can do a 70km trek with this cold, hopefully I will feel better in the morning.

When I wake up, I feel awful. I even check to see if I can postpone my trek. The tour company says their part of the trek can definitely be changed to a different date but the Machu Picchu ticket and the train ticket are not refundable or transferable and their value is $120 which is almost half the overall price. So, I decide to just try and push my way through the cold and hope for the best. I buy some provisions for the trek; a decongestant, 2.5 litres of water, lots of snacks and the most important thing, toilet paper. I get everything packed up for the trek, I can bring more stuff than the Santa Cruz trek since the mules can carry 5kg of personal gear which is great because I think I will need more warm clothes in an effort to not make my cold worse. So, I'm already to go, I just hope I feel better in the morning which will come early as we are meeting our tour van at 4:55AM. Shane will also be hiking with a bad cold, I hope we won't regret our decision of going with bad colds. I am also hoping we get some favourable weather, this close to the start of rainy season, it could rain every day and that won't exactly help the cold either.

So long for now and more on the Salkantay Trail and Machu Picchu next time.