Salt flats, Chile and Argentina so far.

In recent weeks our eyes have been assaulted with a succession of pretty amazing sites all prefixed with the moniker ‘World’s…… ‘. In my last post I recounted how we’d visited the World’s largest canyon/highest capital city/highest city/ largest high altitude lake/most dangerous road/worst mine etc and to this list of general wonderment we can now add ‘World’s Biggest Salt Flats’ and ‘World’s Most Arid Desert,´ both courtesy of a tour taken from Uyuni in the of South Bolivia, our next stop following departure from the extremely pleasant city of Sucre. After a full days worth of being relentlessly jiggled in a crappy bus we finally arrived at Uyuni; a charmless tourist mecca whose every inhabitant seems intent on selling you pizza. Thankfully, we’d sorted our tour tickets out in Sucre and thus bypassed the tour agency gauntlet in favour of settling to the far less odious task of sleeping, preparing for what was meant to be an early start the following day.

View over the city, Sucre.

After sleep we organised ourselves for pick up only to be left waiting on our 4×4 for 45 minutes. This inauspicious start was further worsened when our car’s steering wheel began to smoke, a process which led us to be hussled out the car so our driver could figure out why our transport was starting to resemble Bob Marley’s hot boxing shed. Whilst our vehicle for the next few days was in the process of immolating itself we got on with the business of meeting our 3 fellow passages, who turned out to be a delightful Bolivian mother son combo and his Chilean girlfriend on holiday from Santiago. They were so lovely that within 15 minutes we’d been told that if we had any accomodation problems in the Chilean capital we were welcome to stay with them. Whilst Chilean/English international relations were rapidly improving a replacement car turned up to belatedly whisk us off to our first destination, a train graveyard located a few kilometers out of town. Upon arrival we were confronted by the ìmpressive vision of 20 or so rusting steamtrains with tourists busily clambouring around. We, of course, followed suit and thus began the process of taking an obscene amounts of photos of the starkly beautiful surroundings.

Train Cemetary, where trains go to die.

After we’d finished messing around in the corpses of Thomas the Tank Engine’s friends we set off for the salt flats proper. Driving into the salt flats we were confronted with the remarkable scene of white plains stretching far into the horizon, with only specs of mountains seeming to indicate any end. Being faced with this near sublime scene we did what seemingly every British/Australian groups do; utilise the distorted perspective in order to take photos of us shitting each other out and generally dicking around. We weren’t the only ones and a quick glance around revealed dozens of people lying flat on their stomachs taking photos with props, trying their damnedest to harness nature’s wonder for amusing facebook shots.

Vast expanses of Salar de Uyuni.

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Reboarding our 4×4 we set off an island marooned in the middle of the salt flats called ‘fish island,’ a place where the only thing that grows are huge, oddly shaped cactuses whose alien appearance sent me into another flurry of photo taking. From here we rocked up to our hotel for the night, a hotel made entirely out of salt which we quickly confirmed by licking the walls.

The next day saw us visit a series of brightly coloured lagoons with pink flamingoes padding around serenely inside. This riot of colour was simply incredible, without doubt one of the most stunning places I’ve ever visited. Leaving the flamingoes to strut away we ventured into the Atacama desert, the most arid place on earth, where we stopped at 5000m to have a wander round whilst the drum and bass we’d put on blasted from our speakers. Our car had one of those magic tape mp3 devices leading us to rock the salt flats pretty hard to a bizarre combination of the XX, Animal Collective, Girl Talk and the aforementioned drum and bass. When it was the Bolivian’s turn we listened to a lot of Beyonce, with Paul attempting to channel her spirit by aping her moves from the single ladies video. It quickly became very apparent that Paul is about as Bootylicious as Anne Widdecombe.

Flamingo Lake complete with a layer of salt.

Whizzing off we left to view the celebrated ‘rock tree,’ which, as the name suggests, is a rock that looks like a tree. Despite featuring heavily on salt flat postcards this site was a total dud as the authorities had seen fit to fence it off, meaning the predominant symbol of the salt flats now looked ridiculous. Making up for this disappointment was the fact that the huge rocks surrounding it were easily climbable so we spent our time scampering around pretending to be Tom Cruise from the beginning of Mission Impossible 2, though hopefully in a less dickish way.

Laguna roja, algae responsible for the colour change.

The final day we rose early in order to see the sun rise amidst huge sulphurous geysers before leaving for yet another thermal bath, our fourth in this trip so far. In fact we’ve been to so many that I secretly think South America is conspiring on slowly cooking us in stages so that we can be feasted on at the end of our trip. Not wanting to be slowly boiled alive Arthur and I took shelter in a cafe whilst Paul took a step closer to being a South American Hannibal Lector’s dinner. After visiting one more lagoon our tour concluded and we were dropped at the Chilean border where we were caught a bus to the Chilean town of San Pedro where we went through the normal immigration hullabaloo.

Our expectations of Chile had been pretty high, related to the fact Chile is the second most expensive country on the continent (Bolivia is the cheapest). At first the difference seem to be marked, instead of the usual, shoddy and ageing bus our transport was a new Mercedes and instead of cracked roads we found ourselves on smooth tarmac, a change that elicited a small cheer from within our bus. Unfortunately, this promising start to Chile went downhill quickly when we arrived in San Pedro, a small, horrendously overpriced, tourist town whose adobe brick houses looked close to collapse. It has earned its place as a tourist hub due to its location in the Atacama desert and close to a variety of attractions. During the 3 days we stayed there we could not, however, afford to go to barely any of these sites apart from a couple: Death Valley and the Valley of the Moon. These strange rock formations at these sites were interesting but ultimately underwhelming in comparison to the salt flats, that was until we witnessed an incredible sunset from the top of a huge sand dune, our vantage point ensuing that the lowering sun framed the surrounding desert and volcanoes in dramatic shades of pink and red. It almost made up for the fact that San Pedro was a dump.

Valle de la Luna at sunset.

Leaving San Pedro (happily) and Arthur (sadly, he couldn’t change flights so had to mission it back to Peru), we headed down South on a 16 hour bus to what we had been told was the country’s premier beach resort, La Serena. Arriving on a gloomy day we quickly decided that La Serena was a pretty underwhelming town. Making matters worse was that our accommodation, the cheapest in town, was owned by a total mentalist who had a petty rule for absolutely everything. The ‘hostel’ only had 4 beds, with the remaining space taken up by plethora of cheap and nasty antiques. This arrangement coupled with his wierd demeanour gave the impression that it was a house owned by someone who hated backpackers.

Leaving our hostel we set off for the beach stopping off on the way at one of the town’s main attractions, a gaudy lighthouse which smelt unnervingly of piss. We quickly tracked this smell down to a cannon which stood proudly at the front of the structure and seems to have been used for generations as a safe piss point. Also enhancing the experience was two fat people trying desperately to suck each others face off. This combination ensured that this scene one of the most distressing we’d experienced, making the any grinding poverty we’d encountered seem like a charming Richard Curtis film where Hugh Grant plays the bumbling lead in comparison.

Departing La Serena the next morning, after just one night where we hung around with a Dutch couple taking the piss out of the owner in secret, we took a 7 hour bus ride to Valparaiso, the country’s biggest port and apparently the best place to go out in Chile. Thankfully Valparaiso managed to save our sinking view of Chile being a vibrant city with some great street art, ace nightlife and picturesque hills to explore. Whilst here we split our time getting horrendously drunk and walking the streets. Of particular note we were lucky enough to track down one of the few clubs in South America which didn’t play the musical crime of Reggaeton but instead the much more agreeable mix of drum & bass and dubstep. Good stuff.

Residential hills of Valparaiso.

Our final destination in Chile was Santiago, a city we immediately took to as the city had clean streets, a pleasant climate and all the trappings of modernity (including drinkable tap water!) that we had been missing over the previous 3 months. Our hostel, located in the heart of the bohemian area of the city, was also incredible and inhabited by a nice bunch of people who we spent the next few days hanging around with. Whilst here we got extremely drunk on 2 of the 3 nights again, spending our sober periods exploring the city. During one of one sober periods we went to one of the numerous coffee shops staffed entirely by scantily clad women. These places are called ‘cafe con piernas’ (coffee with legs), and seem to be a strange Santiago quirk, with these coffee shops ranging from the fairly tame to virtual brothels. Despite opting for a reasonably tame one it was hard not to feel slightly awkward sitting amongst smartly dressed, and often ridiculously fat, business men who were holding hands and chatting with these women, no doubt whilst their trusting wives held fort at home, it all felt pretty sleazy.

Santiago skyline.

Leaving Santiago and Chile, after 5 nights in a row going to bed past 5am, we left on a night bus for Mendoza across the border in Argentina, The border crossing was easy but long, with us shuffling around between the hours of 2am-4am whilst our baggage was checked. Arriving in Mendoza we celebrated our arrival on our first night by feasting on the twin pillars of Argentinean culinary culture, beef and red wine. Absolutely delicious and a welcome contrast to the chicken and rice diet we’ve spent much of our trip on. Mendoza is known as wine country and the following day we hired bikes to go on a tour of the wineries in the region. Annoyingly we started late due to the bus stop being moved but when we set off in the early afternoon sun we had great time, getting progressively more drunk as we hit up numerous wineries and a beer garden.

Touring the wineries, Mendoza.

Moving on from Mendoza we took an 18 hour bus bound for Bariloche in the Argentinian lake district. Managing to fend off deep vein thrombosis we arrived at a slightly bizarre town that seemed to be of a pastiche of everything Swiss. The reason for the swiss love in, consisting as it does of a multitude of chocolate shops, wooden lodges and gigantic St Bernard dogs, is the surrounding area, which is gloriously alpine in its appearance; snowcapped peaks tower over crystalline lakes and pine forests making every view a potential chocolate box cover. Being poor due to the ridiculously high bus prices we spent much of our first day hitting up all the chocolate shops due to the fact they give out free samples, this being about all the entertainment we can afford. The next day we set about hiring bikes and going on one of the most glorious bike rides imaginable. Seriously, it was stupid nice .

Bicycles in Bariloche.

Rounding off, all we have done today is sell one of our kidneys in order to raise the funds to take a 26 hour bus journey south to the town of El Calafate. As well as being soul crushingly long it  costs $100, our most expensive journey yet. That’s about it and I will now apologise about the banal list format of this post. The time between posts has got longer and cramming it all in takes a stupidly long time and I struggle to be bothered by the end. Added to this the wine is so cheap here doing anything but drinking is hard. If things continue this way next time I might just write a place name accompanied by a one word description. We’ll see, bye.

Peru to Bolivia and enter the A dogg.

The previous post saw me being pretty damn harsh on Peru after a series of misfortunes cast us into a bit of a funk. Luckily, Jesus/Allah/L Ron Hubbard took pity on us with one of the assorted deities casting their benevolent gaze upon us ensuring the past few weeks have gone as smoothly as a George Clooney one liner. Things started to take a turn for the better after we left Arequipa for a 2 day tour of the Colca Canyon, a place billed as the deepest canyon in the world. Indeed this canyon is so deep it apparently makes the ‘Grand Canyon’ appear more like a ‘mediocre crevice’ when compared.

Waking up at ridiculous O’clock we hopped onto our tour bus and were quickly whisked away from the city towards a series of stunning locations. Much of this stunning scenery was somewhat lost on me, however, as the repeated sight of alpacas and llamas in their native climbs sent me into an apoplexy of photo taking. Ignoring much of the dramatic landscape I instead chose to harass the huge numbers of these ridiculously cute animals that dotted our route. Aside from this, our journey also involved a stopover at the chilly heights of 4800m where we observed a multitude of small rock stacks, created by locals as good luck charms. The first day thus concluded, with ended up hitting up yet another thermal bath, bathing in the hot water whilst watching over yet another stunning sunset.

Pretty darn cute.

The next day, again arising at what seemed like the witching hour, we set off for the canyon proper and a viewpoint known as ‘cruz del condor,’ a point in the canyon which, as the name suggests, condors can be viewed. Paul and I were initially a bit skeptical about condor spotting as we have no interest in our feathered friends whatsoever, but arriving at the canyon itself it was hard not to get excited about glimpsing them as in flight they are undeniably majestic, and ridiculously huge, creatures. The canyon itself was also ridiculously big, so big in fact that my limited adjectival grasp is insufficient to properly encapsulate it. It was just fucking big.

Stunning terracing in the Colca Canyon.

Leaving the canyon, after a brief detour where we had eagles stand on our heads, we grabbed a night bus to the most touristy place we’ve visited so far: Cusco. Arriving knackered on a fairly dismal day at around 6am we were initially unimpressed with the city, luckily, after a few hours nap in our lovely hostel this unfavourable impression was quickly banished, with us finding Cusco to be a beautiful place with excellent food and history seemingly dripping from every Inca stone lined street.

Incan brickwork in Cusco.

This was good news indeed as we were due to stay in the city for 6 days, the longest time we have spent anywhere besides Quito. These days we crammed in a hell of a lot, stuffing history during the day and alcohol during the night. We were also lucky in that our hostel seemed to be mostly peopled by nice aussies with whom we partaked in our previously mentioned activities. Amongst the historic highlights was a plethora of Inca sites liberally sprinkled inside and outside the city, with the stunning, jagged walls of Sachsaywaman and the dramatic terracing of Ollyantambo being particularly impressive testament to their craftsmanship.

Incan ruins of Ollytaytambo.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm was slightly dampened after i developed a bad cold, caught off Paul, on the third day. All would have been ok had I not made the major error of taking some San Pedro, a legal, natural cactus extract that is supposed to give a mild, day long high. After mixing the green powder with some orange juice and downing the vile concoction Paul, Vinnie (one of the Aussies) and I set off for the Temple of the Moon, not actually a temple but essentially a large rock set amidst a wonderfully idyllic valley outside of Cusco.

Whilst Vinnie and Paul were having a lovely time wondering around admiring nature I spent much of the next 4 hours seeing dinosaurs in clouds whilst feeling queasy, eventually curling up into the foetal position and falling asleep. Waking up sunburnt (we were at about 4000m) we walked back into Cusco where I was to greet my uni buddy Arthur. What was to be a wonderful reunion was spoilt slightly by the fact I felt rough as, with me wanting to get as horizontal and asleep as quickly as possible.

Our reunion with Arthur was related to the fact we were due to go on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu together, a plan sadly derailed by the mass flooding that hit the area in January leaving access to the site impossible. Unfortunately for us we’d already paid a non refundable deposit for our trip and so we were given the stark option of either losing $175 or paying an extra $175 to go on an alternative trek. Not wanting to lose money we chose the latter option and a couple of days later we were clambered onto another bus bound for the Lares Valley, a site deep in the Andes. Thankfully, unspecified deity once again took pity on us and the trek was actually pretty good, with our all anglo-phonic group (the first one we’ve encountered) and the scenery both being lovely. Amongst the landscapes snow-capped peaks and mountain lakes were particularly impressive, seemingly jostling each other in our vision in a contest to be the most photogenic.

4,500m in the Lares Valley.

After four days of trekking we finished the hike in yet another thermal bath before returning to Cusco, a journey made slightly irritating by the driver’s decision to show the abysmal film 2012 in Spanish. Paul and I have now seen this celluloid lobotomy about six times on various buses, it being a particular favourite amongst South Americans due to the fact that the flimsy plot is predicated on the Mayan calendar.

In Cusco Paul and I immediately jumped on a bus bound for Bolivia and Lake Titicaca. We had to leave Arthur behind as he had his camera pick-pocketed just before we set off for Lares and he had to sort out his insurance claim. A process made ridiculous by Peruvian bureaucracy, with Arthur yo-yoing between tourist police and bank, with the Peruvian government enforcing a bizarre rule where you have to pay tax at the (closed) bank for any report to be made.

Whilst Arthur was dealing with his kafka nightmare Paul and I arrived in Bolivia with no hassle at all. Our first stop was Copacabana, a pleasant town which overlooks Lake Titicaca. First impressions were very favourable when we discovered just how nuts cheap Bolivia can be, with our hotel costing $2 each and decent food even less. The day after arrival we set off into the vast expanse of Lake Titicaca on the slowest boat in the world bound for the Isla del Sol, an island used extensively by the Incans as the site played an important part in their cosmology. Arriving at the Isla del Sol we spent four hours trekking the length of the island amongst scenery reminiscent of Greek trips. Only unlike Greece it was fairly tiring due to the fact we were above 4000m, also, unlike in Greece, our voyage back was made more spectacular by first sailing into a thunder/hail storm at what seemed like 1mph.

High above Copacabana and Lake Titicaca.

Spending another night in Copacabana we met up again with Arthur the next morning, a not entirely happy meeting as Arthur had another tale of woe featuring Peruvian beauracracy. Arthur had been doing earthquake relief in Peru for 6 weeks but it turned out the authorities had only stamped his visa for 15(!) days, meaning he had to borrow $50 from another traveller in order to get out the country.

Sympathising away we immediately hustled the poor guy onto a bus bound for the highest capital in the world, La Paz. La Paz lies at over 3800m and is dramatically nestled at the base of a bowl, with houses ascending vertiginously all around the surrounding area. Expecting a bit of a shit city we were again pleasantly surprised to find a compact, colourful and bustling city, the entire centre of which is seemingly devoted to a mad cheap market where anything and everything is for sale, often at the same store. Wondering round the market we picked up loads of bargains, including some dope Bolivian football shirts, before retiring to the various excellent restaurants which are silly cheap. I got so excited to see curry on the menu that I proceeded to eat it three days in a row at three different places, heady times indeed.

La Paz is buzzing.

We were also lucky enough to be in La Paz during St Patrick’s Day, a day which was unsurprisingly messy, involving copious amounts of drinking at an infamous Irish run hostel called the Wild Rover. Whilst in la Paz Paul also had an enjoyable day mountain biking down the ‘world’s most dangerous road,’ an experience that Arthur and I couldn’t afford, with my finances in particular running perilously close to that of ‘Dickensian pauper.’

World´s most dangerous road innit.

From La Paz we continued on to the mining town of Potosi, the highest, and perhaps most tragic, city in the world. At almost 4100m the town is dominated by the towering form of Cerro Rico, a mountain that once possessed so much silver that in the 17th century the inhospitable are became a boom town, with Potosi quickly becoming the largest city in South America, with the town at its peak supporting a population of 160,000 people and a number of impressive colonial buildings. The tragedy relates to the fact that the indigenous miners who ensured Potosi’s splendour worked in near slave conditions, with Cerro Rico having had up to 8 million deaths attributed to it. The tragedy still continues today with workers as young as 12 still toiling away inside Cerro Rico’s bowels.

Partly due to its tragic history Cerro Rico has today also become somewhat of a tourist attraction, with numerous tour companies offering tours inside its depths. We decided to take the plunge into the mines, though not without some reservations on my part regarding potential exploitation related to my conception of poverty tourism.
Nevertheless we booked a tour and ventured into the mine after buying coca leaves, foul cigarettes and drinks as gifts for the miners. Scrabbling around inside was unsurprisingly unpleasant if interesting and half way through we bumped into some ridiculously young-looking miners, their eyes glazed and unfocused, no doubt due to the fact they each had a large wad of coca leaf inside their mouths.

Exiting the mine after occasionally having to crawl through small gaps our guide proceeded prepare and set off dynamite which we had bought at the miner’s market. This was pretty jokes with us each holding the dynamite next to our wangs before the guide scurried off to place it a safe distance away from us. Unsurprisingly what followed was a large bang that sounded a lot like dynamite going off.

Leaving Potosi we arrived in our current destination the lovely, whitewashed city of Sucre, a Unesco world heritage site since 1991. Here we have eaten loads more delicious food and visited a bunch of well preserved dinosaur footprints accompanied by guide who kept walking backwards slowly, holding a tiny umbrella and repeating to us the words ‘Imagine every step we go back 68 million years in history’ in an English accent. He was brilliant. Tomorrow we’re off to the salt flats before moving on to Chile. Fingers crossed that the flying spaghetti monster continues to look favourably on us.

Dinosaur park, Sucre. RAWR!

Peru

If I were to write this post a week or so a go I would likely have written a harsh diatribe against Peru, undoubtably describing it as one of the worst countries I have ever visited. Such an attitude stemmed from the fact that, within the first 5 days of us being in Peru, more things conspired to go wrong than the combined prior 6 weeks of our trip. The difficulties began before we’d even received our immigration stamp, with us immediately being accosted by a dodgy taxi driver the moment we took our first steps over the Peru/Ecuador border. This driver was the only one about and seemed pleasant enough as he led us to his unmarked piece of crap taxi. Taking our seats in the back we were joined by another peruvian guy who jumped into the front seat, claiming that his role was to sort out all the security checks and immigration hassles. The Peru – Ecuador border is actually a total bastard, with disputes today ensuring that the two immigration offices are about 8 km apart. We thought this a little dodgy but left anyway for the Peruvian office, whereupon the drivers immediately asked for a $5 dollar bribe so we could skip to the front of the queue. This formality over we also found we had to pay another $2 bribe, our drivers having thoughtfully managed to illegally park for the 5 minutes it required to sort our transaction. Pulling off again the two douchebags suddenly decided that it was going to cost us $20 dollars to take us to the nearby city of Tumbes, a journey that should have cost half that amount. After a huge amount of arguing Paul managed to barter it down to $15, an argument that had to be repeated when they asked for petrol money when they pulled into a petrol station.

Arriving in Tumbes, a blisteringly hot and architecturally gaudy city with nothing to recommend it, we got into one final argument as our drivers refusing to accept dollars, despite an earlier agreement. Eventually the stand-off resulting in me having to go to a flashpoint to get out some Peruvian currency. This was not the start to Peru we were hoping for.

 

Leaving Tumbes early next morning we travelled to the beach resort and surfing destination of Mancora. Hoping for a relaxed small town like Taganga in Colombia we were instead dumped in a sprawling, tacky place whose huge amounts of building work made it resemble more a bombed out Kosovo than a tranquil haven. Luckily our hostel was a kilometer up the road from the town in a relatively secluded location by the beach, with us pulling up in our shanky rickshaw to a sign which stated ‘welcome to paradise’ (there’s that phrase again). The people in our hostel were all pretty much surfer/ traveller clichés, with Bob Marley and Jack Johnson on constant repeat, but were on the whole pretty nice. The beach itself was also pretty spectacular, though not quite as nice as the ones I’ve visited in Asia it did have some of the best sunsets I have ever encountered. The couple of days we spent in Mancora we didn’t do a huge amount, just splashing around in the ocean, reading, eating and drinking, all fairly nice but almost undermined by the multitudes of mosquitoes determined to become obese on our tender western flesh. 

One flat beach - Mancora

Taking our leave after a morning body boarding on the worlds most scratchy body boards we left for Piura, four or so hours South. This town was pretty much nothing but a stop off point and, apart from playing chess against some locals in one of the parks (I got stomped), nothing of note really happened. Jumping on another four-hour bus the following morning we headed to perhaps the shittest place in the world: Chiclayo. We came not for the town but for the nearby pre Inca site of Tucumbe, also known as the valley of the pyramids.

Valley of the Pyramids, Túcume

Arriving in Chiclayo we hopped in a cab to be told by our taxi driver that the hostel we wanted had closed (probably a lie) and he took us to different one that was overpriced. Baulking at the price we got him to take us to another, cheaper one, our room coming with the added bonus of dozens of insects buzzing around. Steeled by our cheapness we each armed ourselves with one of my flip-flops and commenced committing insect genocide before sleeping.

 

The following morning we set off to get to Tucume, a process which proved tricky as no one seemed to know where the collectivos (basically rammed, sketchy vans) to the site went from. Eventually we hailed a cab in order to get to the collectivo area, a rather stupid procedure as the driver didn’t know where they went either. Whilst we were trying to solve this conundrum a passing local decided to add to the good times by reaching through my open window and snatching my wallet from my lap. I reacted as any sane person would be shouting ”cheeky fucker” before getting out the cab to run after him. Unfortunately for me he had a 30m lead and after a chase which wasn’t quite up to Jason Bourne’s standards he turned a corner and disappeared, taking my wallet with him. Luckily it only had $30 in it and no cards but I was pretty pissed off as we finally managed to find the place for the collectivos to Tucume. Boarding one I spent the next forty minutes feeling pissed off whilst being sandwiched between two ridiculously fat Peruvians until we finally polled up to the site.

 

The site itself was actually pretty interesting and beautiful, the centre point being a mountain called “purgatory mountain.” Around this a number of huge adobe brick temples set in desert were clustered and in turn countless acres of lush green rice fields in surrounding them. Walking round the site followed by an ascent of the mountain saw my black mood being lifted, with the view from near the peak being pretty special. This brief high proved, however, to be a cruel trick played by fate as at the exit of the site I discovered that I had dropped my treasured mp3 player somewhere on purgatory mountain. This was a worse disaster than losing my wallet as my mp3 player is the thing which has shielded my ears against the aural crimes of the repetitive South American music blasted out in every bus and the banality of Jack Johnson, Coldplay etc blasted out in various hostels.

 

Returning to our insect infested hole of a room we went to sleep only to wake the next morning with stomach cramps, probably caused by eating some dodgy ceviche the day before. Ceviche itself is the national dish, supposedly consisting of it does of mostly raw seafood flavoured with lime and red onion. I say supposedly as in reality it normally tastes of lime flavoured food poisoning.

 

The final kick in the balls Shitlayo gave us was when we thought we were home and dry, trying to leave. The bus system in Peru us pretty stupid due to the fact that instead of having a central bus terminal where all companies go from Peru’s system sees every company run their own, meaning checking bus times involves mini hikes between terminals. Consequently this meant we had to trudge around for ages trying to find a bus which went to Trujillo, our next destination. After a couple of hours of looking and waiting we finally found one and left the city, vowing never to return.

 

Although nominally headed for Trujillo our guidebook informed us that most people stay in the quiet ex fishing village of Huanchaco, 15 minutes by cab from the city. Once again hoping for a quiet, tranquil stop, Huanchacho actually turned out to be another sprawling and charmless town which Peru tends to specialise in, this time with the added feature of a decent beach. Thankfully our hostel was actually very nice with a number of cool people in it and decent restaurants nearby. Thus again our mood began to improve and thankfully this time stayed fairly buoyant.

 

Ornate windows, Trujillo.

Our reason for visiting the area was due mainly to the historic sites in the vicinity and we set off for the first of these, Chan Chan, the following morning with a couple of nice Americans we met during breakfast. Chan Chan was the capital city of the pre-inca Chimu culture who began building work on the city around AD 700, with the remains of the huge site today scattered around the area between Trujillo and Huanchaco in varying states repair. Starting off at the large main complex we found an evocative place in the midst of the desert that had a number of beautiful reliefs and a small but picturesque lake in its centre. Following this we grabbed taxis to two other temples, (known as huacas) that were interesting though somewhat underwhelming compared to the grand splendour of the main complex.

 

Chan Chan city complex of the indigenous Chumi.

The following day we hit up another couple of huacas, the huaca del sol and huaca de la luna on the far side of Trujillo. Though it took us an obscenely long time to travel the 25k to get there (about two and a half hours) they were thankfully worth it, with the huaca del sol in particular being wonderfully preserved. Having had our fill of the area’s history we spent the following day lazing on the beach before exploring Trujillo, another average town raised from mediocrity by its attractive colonial centre. At Trujillo I also picked up a new mp3 player, a piece of crap ipod mini ripoff called simply the ‘reproductor mp3.’

 

Huaca de la Luna, Huanchaco.

Huaca Pullaca, down town Lima.

Leaving Trujillo on a night bus we ventured to Lima, arriving early hours at our plush hostel in the Miraflores suburb of the city. Many other travellers are pretty harsh on the city, describing it in no uncertain terms as a hectic, polluted dive which they could not wait to leave. Our own view is that this description is a little harsh, sure, plenty of the city matches this description but there are a few nice nooks and crannies and points of interest. During the 3 days we spent there we hit up another huaca, had a tour of the world’s most boring house, went round the world’s most boring museum but were thankfully saved from complete boredom by an interesting Italian art gallery. Frustratingly, the other major museums were either closed or we weren`t allowed in due to not carrying any ID,  we spent our spare time buying pirate DVDs and a racist chess set. The nights we spent drinking at our hostel with some guys we met in Mancora and getting too plastered to leave. Go us. To complete the excitement one night our sleep was also rudely interrupted by one of our dorm mates who was too hammered to find the toilet and decided to just take a piss on the floor, lovely stuff.

 

La Iglesia de San Francisco, Lima - complete with riot van.

Leaving Lima on a plush bus, replete with hot meals and waiter service, we continued to Nasca, home of the famous lines. Nasca was a fairly pleasant town and the lines themselves were extremely interesting despite us only being able to view a couple from a metal tower (to see them all you need to fly over them, we are too cheap for that.) After viewing the lines we whiled away the rest of the day waiting for our night bus walking around the outskirts, viewing more ruins, a football game and some impressively built Inca aqueducts.

Nazca Lines, Peru - Pictured: Figure of a Tree.

What would have been a pretty good day though was almost ruined by the worst meal I have eaten since pig knuckle soup in the Philippines: fried seafood. What I thought was going to be like calamari actually turned out to be overpriced sadness on a plate, rubbish.

Boarding another night bus, this time the cheapest we could find, coming as it did with the added benefit of constant shit smells, we left for our current destination, Arequipa. Here we have had a nice time spending a couple of good days touring the colca canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. I’ll write about this on the next post as writing so much is making me lose to the will to live. Adios.

Ecuador

‘Paradise’  is perhaps the most over used word in South America. The word seems to be optimistically slapped on all manner of things and places by over enthusiastic tourist agencies. As previously documented our first encounter with the word was at Tayrona in Colombia, though in that case paradise was somewhat tainted by the myriad variety of insects trying to feast on our flesh. The second incongruous encounter occurred in the small village of Papallacta, our next stop from Quito, and a sign welcoming us to its thermal baths which we had been informed were the best in Ecuador.

I’ve been lucky enough to visit some pretty awesome ‘bath-type’ places where the moniker paradise could arguably be applied, most spectacularly in Pamukkale, Turkey. With such visions in mind my expectations for Papallacta were, consequently, set unreasonably high and initially I found the bath complex somewhat underwhelming with its cracking concrete pathways and general dilapidation reminiscent more of a soviet training camp than a land of milk and honey. The waters themselves were, however, pretty pleasant and we spent a relaxing couple of hours splashing about getting wrinkly amongst the multitudes of visiting Ecuadoria, most of whom were wearing what can only be politely described as ‘unflattering’ swim ware.

From Pappalacta we continued South to the town of Tena, a place with little to recommend it apart from the fact it offers some of the best white water rafting opportunities in South America. Arriving fairly late on in the evening we planned on staying only for one night but unfortunately found that rafting trips were unavailable for thw foloowing day and we were instead forced to organise a trip for the day after. Annoyingly this left us with an empty day in a town with seemingly nothing in it, thankfully our English rafting organiser was sensitive to our plight and gave us a few tips so we could fill the empty hours. The first recommended place was sold to us as a monkey sanctuary, a prospect which did not exactly fill Paul with expectant joy seeing he hates monkeys following the theft of his camera by one in the jungle.  Despite his protestations my will prevailed and off we traipsed. In actuality the sanctuary was nothing of the sort, with the place consisting of a deserted hotel with 4 vicious monkeys prowling around, all of whom seemed intent on jumping and biting us. Perhaps this place was once a peaceful haven of monkeys but if it was these 4 vicious bastards had almost certainly driven them any nice ones off.

Trying to avoid rabies/rage virus was not much fun so we quickly ran off deeper into the jungle surrounding the hotel. After a bit of aimless wondering we chanced upon a couple of crumbling bridges with children spear fishing underneath, a rather more tranquil scene hat banished the images of monkey evildoers from our mind.

Jungle bridge complete with children

Monkeys drawing blood

Our second tip was for a cave a couple of miles up the road, the entrance to which came replete with another sign stating ´welcome to paradise.´ My conception of a cave is just a big hole you go in for a few minutes to check out a few ‘mites and ‘tites in before leaving. Thus the revelation that we would need a guide to examine a th site came as somewhat of a surprise. This surprise was ratcheted up a couple more notches when the first thing our new guide told us to do was take off our clothes and hand over all the contents of our pockets. Thankfully this was not, as we feared, a pervert mugging but instead was due to the fact he expected us to descend into the darkness in just swimming shorts and shoes. Not being prepared for this we had to explain we only had shorts on, which he met with a shrug of his shoulders and the passing over to us of us headlamps.

Descending into darkness for the next hour or so we clamoured around underground with our headlights providing just about enough light so we didn’t crack our heads and die. The reason we had to get mostly naked was also made clear when it turned out that the walls were made out of brown substance which quickly made my white shorts look like I´d shat all over thme. This and the fact we had to actively swim across a pool to get out made us look like total states when we emerged blinking into the light again. Compounding things we also had a pretty embarrassing bus ride back to Tena, in our wet and dirty states the driver didn’t allow to sit down and so we spent the 40 minute ride being stared upon by dozens of quizzical looking Ecuadorians. Arriving back in Tena we found a televised volleyball game in mid flow on the main square and sat down to watch for a couple of hours, tired but pretty happy with the days events.

Ecuadorian underground scene

The following day we woke up bright and early for white water rafting to be told by our guide that 5 people out of our group of 8 had to pull out due to contracting food poisoning. Despite this, our rafting group of Paul, me and a tiny swiss girl went ahead and we had a lot of fun going down class IV rapids. Our joker guides were also pretty cool, repeatedly pushing us into the water and trying to topple our raft. Although rafting itself was a good adrenaline rush the periods of quiet where we floated along silently observing jungle sights was in many ways just as enjoyable. Birds, butterflies, monkeys and, most unnervingly, giant spiders were all out abundance, flitting around attractively amongst beautiful waterfalls and dramatic cliff faces.

Face melting solos

Returning from rafting exhausted we immediately jumped on a bus bound for Banos, a place described in Paul´s Lonely Planet as ´perhaps the most perfect destination in Ecuador.´ Once again the reality did not quite living up to the billing with Banos being a pleasant town unapologetically geared towards the tourist crowd, with tour operators vying with each other for our dollar dollar dollar. Unfortunately for them we had no money to spend, with our plan to do bridge jumping sadly curtailed when we discovered that it cost the frankly extortionate sum of $25. Instead of leaping off things we made a wise decision in taking a trek around the surrounding hills before deciding to blow our daily budgets on some extremely tasty foods, Banos´s tourists having ensured that it is one of the few places in Ecuador where food transcends the merely bland.

Equestrian masters in Banos

Leaving Banos we continued South to Riobamba with hopes of catching a train (actually a bus retrofitted to fit rails) which descends the mountain el Nariz del Diablo (Devil´s Nose). This journey is famous in Ecuador as it involves a zigzagging descent to the bottom of the mountain via multiple track changes. Adding to this thrill we were also hoping to ride on the top of the carriage, so providing us both with spectacular views and a sketchy travel experience.

Arriving at Riobamba we were annoyed to find that the train no longer went from the city and we were instead informed we’d have to travel 2 hours further South to the town of Alausi to buy tickets. We were also told that rides on top of the train had been cancelled, probably related to the fact that two Japanese tourists had tragically died whilst riding the train in 2007. Grumbling away we travelled to Alausi anyway, arriving early evening and encountering a strange place, with the town dominated by mist and a huge statue of St Peter, strategically placed to look on the town as sternly as possible. Wondering up to Pete we were somewhat disconcerted to find huge numbers of gigantic moths and beatles skittering around the area, seemingly lured inexorably towards the giant halogen lights that gave him the P-dogg his religious glow. After I ran away from a giant moth (seriously, it was more like a vampire bat) we decided to eat some chinese food, I say Chinese food, what I actually mean is brown slop on top of overcooked noodles. This was Paul’s third experience of Chinese food in South America and this 9/11 of a meal was apparently par for the course. Moral: never eat Chinese food in South America.

The next morning we rose at ridiculous a clock in order to get a ticket for the day’s journey. Arising so early hour turned out to be a somewhat needless move, as the queues we were told to expect resolutely failed to manifest themselves. Easily procuring a ticket we chugged off at 10 o’clock and quickly found ourselves immersed in the spectacular mountain scenery which Ecuador seems excel at. Despite being attractive the journey was not quite as dangerous as we’d sort of hoped, with our retrofitted bus feeling disappointingly secure, despite all the tourists being asked a couple of times to get off in case it derailed. In partial recompense to this lack of excitement the historical narrative of the Ecuadorian railroads was pretty interesting, with us learning that the ‘devil`s nose’  being so titled due to the fact that hundreds of slaves and workers died in the railroad’s construction.

Chillin on the train track

Leaving Alausi we headed for our final destination in Ecuador, Cuenca. Once again our guidebook waxed lyrical about this city but thankfully this time the city deserved such plaudits in being an extremely agreeable and attractive colonial city, blessed with great restaurants, hostels and nightlife. It was also blessed with plenty of water balloon wielding mischief makers who prowled the balconies and streets due to the fact that carnival was in town. Carnival seemingly being an excuse for people to get other people as wet or dirty as possible and have the odd parade. Though the festivities are mainly reserved for the youth anyone can, and does, get involved, with us memorably encountering a spritely 70 odd year old man chasing after kids spraying their faces with foam (in a non paedophilic manner).

Cuenca Cathedral

Later on in the nighttime we also bumped into a couple of Americans who we’d met on the previous days train journey who were getting into the spirit by throwing water balloons indiscriminately at as many passing locals as possible. We hung around with these guys for the night getting into one hairy situation when one of them threw a water balloon into a fast moving car leading the driver to get out and berate us, eventually getting so worked up he tried to phone the police. Fleeing quickly from the scene we proceeded to get extremely drunk, waking up late on Sunday 14th, also known as Valentines day. Valentines day 2010 consisted of feeling hung over and discovering multicoloured foam stains akin to a leprechau’s jizz on all our clothing from the club we’d ended up at the night before. In the evening Paul became all wierdly chivalrous, buying me a Rose and a balloon bearing the message ‘Te Amo.’ He then forced me to take these items out for dinner with us in the evening, which I did (totally under duress) and we found ourselves eating the pre set Valentines menu in a rather nice restaurant. It wasn’t gay or anything.

After our Valentines escapades we left Cuenca the following morning bound for the Peruvian border and what was to be a pretty rubbish experience involving two knob heads which I’ll relate in a few days when I can be arsed. Bye for now.

Chau Colombia

The end of the last post saw us just having arrived in Medellin following a terrible coach ride in arctic temperatures and Paul being bedridden after catching some sort of horrible bug, probably from him eating  some unknown stick based meat in Cartegena. Unfortunately for Paul this wasn’t a 24 hour jobby and instead he spent virtually all of the duration of our stay in Medellin curled up in a foetal position in our dorm. This was a big shame as our hostal was really plush and Medellin a pretty cool city. Luckily for me I didn’t have to explore the city alone as a german medical student called Viola, who we met during the lost city trek, joined us and showed me around, Viola having visited Medellin before. Medellin itself is a rather curious beast with the centre featuring some fairly sketchy architecture and a lot of rotund sculptures courtesy of the Colombian artist Botero.

Medellin, famously, used to be the murder capital of the world whilst Escobar was still kicking around and although far safer today the city still has a dangerous edge. A fellow traveller told us that whilst we were touring the city’s art gallery there was a murder occured on an adjoining street, a rather unnerving reminder of Colombia’s troubled past. Despite hearing some horror stories for us Colombia generally felt safe, with the huge numbers of police and army everywhere ensuring that the ministry of tourism’s catchphrase of  ‘the only risk is wanting to stay’ can be read as being just about justified.

Representing with art.

On the third day of Medellin Paul felt a little better and was able to have a look round the city and somwhat bizarrely try on a wedding dress located in a dressing up room inside the city museum. I would like to say he looked beautiful but Paul is so hairy a little bit of sick almost escaped my mouth. The horrible visage didn’t stop plenty of Colombians cracking up and taking photos though, probably in order to scare thier kids or something by proving monsters are real.

Swings overlooking Salento

Leaving Medellin we travelled to the tiny town of Salento in the heart Colombia’s coffee growing region. The town is basically geared towards the weekend when Colombians travel to the town for a big market. Arriving on a Thursday as we did, however, the place was completely deserted apart from a number of feral dogs with massive teats who kept following us around. Despite offering Paul the princely sum of $10 he refused to suckle on the aforementioned teats, much to our disappointment. Whilst in Salento we toured a coffee farm which was surprisingly interesting, the farm not just growing coffee but a variety of fruits which made it seem like a veritable garden of eden. Whilst there we talked to a Dutch couple who showed us a picture of them meeting Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a bar in Cartegena. This was extremely annoying for us as it turned out that the bar was right next to our hostal and they were there when we were there. There goes probably my only chance to meet a nobel prize winner. (Incidentally I was also reading his book ‘Of love and other demons’ which was totally ace)

Ridin´the back of a Jeep in the freezing morning air.

Leaving coffee paradise we returned to the town and to a rather strange evenings entertainment as we played a traditional game which basically involved us throwing metal discs at gunpowder with the intention of making loud explostions happen. Good fun was had by all.

Leaving Salento having picked up another german, a nice guy called Tjark, we left for Cali, Colombia’s third largest city. The city is basically known for two main things, salsa and huge breasts, with Cali being known as the plastic surgery capital of the country. Going out on a Saturday night Viola became obsessed by pointing out all the pnematic breasts on show, which was entertaining but somewhat unnerving. Whilst in Cali we also visited the city’s well maintained zoo, with it scoring big entertainment points due to the fact that the baboons were having some pretty sordid monkey sex.

Tjark throwing metal for bangs.

From Cali we travelled to the small but perfectly formed city of Popayan where we rented bikes and discovered just how unfit we were. After 30km of mainly downhill biking which nevertheless left us depressingly exhausted we rewarded ourselves with an alleged local speciality; hot chocolate with chunks of melted cheese inside. Surprisingly it was sort of edible though it left me feeling dirty inside once the final molten piece of cheese slipped down my gullet. On the subject of food Colombian, and South American food so far, has been pretty mundane, with it mainly consisting of rice, chicken, beans and grizzly soups. Seriously, the cooking is about as heavy and creative as James Cordon. This is not a good thing. Thankfully we’ve discovered the secret to eating well in South America: not eating any South American food. Recently we’ve eaten pretty well, indulging in some fairly good Italian/Vietnemese/Mexican food.

Lumps of salty cheese in hot chocolate.

Just before leaving Popayan we tried to visit a mexican restaurant around the corner from our excellent hostal. Unfortunately this restaurant had stopped serving but happily for us a Colombian family sensed our plight, taking pity on us by whisking us half way across town to another mexican restaurant which was incredibly good, providing us with one of our best meals for the pitiful sum of $3.

Saying goodbye to Viola and Tjark, who were travelling back north, we continued southwards towards the Colombian/Ecuadorian border, spending a night in the nondescript town of Pasto. Travelling to the border the next day Paul had a little bit of a problem with his entrance visa, this problem thankfully ‘disappeared’ with the application of a $20 bribe and one smiling Ecuadorian official. From the border we bussed to a town called Otavalo which is famous across South America for its Saturday market, with it being the largest on the continent. Unfortunately for us we arrived on a Thursday and so this market was present in a largely scaled back form. Paul did, however, purchase some luminous orange trousers which when worn in conjunction with his numerous bracelets make him look borderline hippy. This is worrying for me as I dislike hippies but I can’t abandon Paul as I am still reliant on his Spanish. If he grows dreads it may, however, be too much for me and I’ll be forced to abandon him to his economically parasitical existence.

King of the hill in the Zona Cafaterra

Sketchy death bridge

From Otavalo we returned to Quito, a seemingly simple trip made into total faff by the presence of a 15,000 strong band of conference attendees stealing virtually all the beds in the city. After an hour or so of fruitless traipsing around we finally got lucky, finding a hotel in the old town which we dropped our bags in before immediately leaving to get as drunk as possible with Paul`s Ecuadorian buddies.  So, 5 weeks into our trip and we’re back where we started doing the same thing again. Pro travel.

Colombia: Carribean Coast

Ok, I hoped to update this blog roughly weekly but my noble aim has already failed as badly as an ITV sitcom. The reason for this lax approach has been that Paul and I have been mad busy hitting up the Carribean coast in Colombia, with the need to blog being subsumed to the need to consume as much alcohol as possible . Thankfully, I now have a couple of hours free to write, due to the fact we´re currently waiting on a night bus to whisk us away from the colonial paradise of Cartegena and towards the ex-stomping ground of Pablo Escobar, Medellin.

Bay view in Taganga

Turning the clock back two weeks to our previous blogpost and Santa Marta. The city itself was nothing special, consisting as it did of a reasonable beach overrun by middle class colombians holidaying, the city did, however, feature the most homoerotic statue we´d ever seen, so that I suppose that was kind of a bonus. Spending a couple of nights we subsequently left for the ex-fishing village of Taganga located a few miles up the coast. A few years a go this village was apparently unpaved and a relaxed haven inhabited mainly by dazed hippies doing poi and generally buggering about. Today Taganga has become a permanent feature on the backpackers circuit, with pricks like us descending like the locusts we are. This has meant the village has developed into somewhat of a traveller haven with fishing boats being outnumbered by dive schools and hostels crowding out homes.

Jungle fringed beaches of Parque Nacional Tayrona

Thankfully Paul and I crave a bit of the inauthentic and we had a pretty awesome time there, basing ourselves in the least professional hostel and hanging out with Aussies (the good sort). In between the hectic schedule of sleeping/reading/drinking on beach/hammocks/bars we took a few trips. The first was to Tayrona, a national park whose entrance sign makes the  syntaxically challenged claim of: ’welcome to the paradise.’

This claim is easy to understand, with the park featuring some stunning beaches fringed by aesthetically pleasing jungle. Yet for us Tayrona actually proved to be a bit of a faff. The journey there was meant to take 45 minutes but actually became a 2.30 hour marathon due to the fact we were being driven around by the most inept person in the world. Seriously, this guy made Jedward look like motherfuckin shaft. It took us almost an hour to leave the tiny confines of Taganga, with one particularly low point involving the driving reversing 50m up the road due to the fact the way was blocked by a sleeping dog. This is not a joke.

When we finally did arrive we were confronted by a huge trek to get to our campsite, only to find on arrival that it was sold out due to the amount of holidaying Colombians (the fuckers). We were also ripped off for food and drink, with our first meal being accompanied with a dead fly. After a bit of a marathon trek with all our stuff we finally managed to find somewhere to stay, paying $3 dollars for a mangy hammock. This was to prove a mistake as the lack of mosquito net led to us being eaten to the point where Paul´s feet and my hands looked like the plague had returned in a heavily localised form. To cap matters we also managed to spend a night talking to the most annoying Englishman in Colombia, a conspiracy theorist whose intelligence seemed to know no start.

Returning from ‘the paradise’ we decided to sign up for a trek to the ‘lost city,’ a settlement built by the Tayronas and only recently discovered by treasure hunters in the 1970s. Adding to the excitement was the somewhat checkered history of the trek itself; in 2003 a group of tourists were kidnapped by narco terrorists precipitating the current situation where soldiers are dotted around the city and surrounding jungle.

Atop the Ciudad Perdida

Due to depart we were somewhat underwhelmed to find our tour group consisted of around 25 people, instead of the maximum of 14 the travel agent promised. Happily, our initial scepticism was soon displaced as it turned out that everyone on the trek was really lovely. The trek itself was pretty awesome taking 3 days of fairly hard walking, mostly up, to reach the site and 2 days to return. The jungle itself was spectacular and an added bonus was everytime you felt knackered a stunning waterfall would somehow turn up precipitously for people to cool off and swim in. The trip was also spiced up by a visit to a cocaine factory and the occasional encoutner with the Kogi, an indigenous tribe who inhabit the area. Unnvervingly Kogi children had a tendency to suddenly appear out of the darkness at night, skitting around the campsite like ghostly apparitions.

Reaching the city itself was also brilliant, finally coming into view following a pretty punishing climb of 1200 steps in 30+ degree heat and 80% humidity. I was amongst the first to arrive and encountering the city was a pretty overwhelming experience, with the central plateau of the site offering panoramic views of the jungle, with the sense of awe heightened by the sense of isolation of being so far from anywhere. I spent much of the afternoon gazing on this view whilst listening to Four Tet and Dirty Projectors and serendipitously reading about the concept of the sublime in Alain de Botton’s ace book, ‘The art of travel.’

High points in the Lost City

Leaving the city the return journey was pretty fun as it involved running down lots of steep slopes, in my case listening to loud breaks music, like a running version of F Zero-X (paul’s comparison). Returning dirty but happy to Taganga we consquently spent the next couple of days chilling with a variety of people we had met whilst on the lost city, with Paul also doing his PADI (diving) qualification. As this took him 3 days I left him to for the last day and hitched a ride on the back of a pick up truck with 3 people from the trek towards Colombia’s fourth largest and least interesting city Baranquilla. We didn´t stay for long and instead hopped on a bus towards the beautiful port city of Cartegena, a city which has the distinction of having been bombarded by that arch lad himself, Francis Drake.

That’s pretty much it and I now am going to rejoin paul in the bus centre, unfortunately he is feeling pretty shitty (literally) and I´m praying he doesn’t burst during the 13 hour journey to Medellin. Wish me luck.

Update: Well we got to Medellin in a coach whose temperature was set to artic levels, bloody max aircon. The journey was also not aided by a crying baby and the loud showing of a pirated Spanish copy of Avatar. Making matters worse is that Paul has got come down with something, probably from the stodgy food here, meaning he has been bed ridden all day. Sucks. Seriously the food here is lethal, most people we’ve hung out with have been sick at some point, indeed this is Paul’s third time since I got here 3 weeks a go. For some reason, despite eating exactly the same food, I’ve felt all good, though I’m sure my time will come.

Quito

Following a surpringly easy 26 hour journey, helped by a sleeping pill and Steigg Larsson’s ridiculously entertaining book ‘The Girl who played with Fire’ (srsly this book makes Harry Potter read like a washing machine manual) I (Francis) arrived in Quito on New years eve. Grabbing a taxi at the airport I went to meet Paul at our hostel. My initial sense of euphoria at arriving without any untoward incidents  was somewhat tempered by meeting Paul. This is not due to the fact he is a douche or anything (this factor is merey incidental) but because he was feeling totally shitty, within an hour he was vomiting due to picking up jungle AIDS or some shit whilst volunteering in the Amazon. To make matters worse he was also sporting a beard which made him look like the love child of Brian Blessed and an ugly wolf. This is not how I imagined the noughties (apologies for bullshit word) would end for me.

Paul somehow managed to raise the energy to head out and show me around Quito, where he had spent around 6 weeks living and learning Spanish. Happily, these weeks were well spent and Paul is pretty damn compentant at the language now, this is good for us as left to my  own devices I would be travelling for 4 months ordering nothing but beer accompanied by unspecified meat.

New years in Quito is somewhat strange, from reading our guidebook we were expecting something pretty special. What we got were lots of men dressed as women crying and attempting to stop cars in order to demand money. Apparently this is not normal for Ecuador but is instead related to them being married to the ending year and are consequently becoming widows. This was not however readily apparent and I thought that Ecuador was a nation inhabited by destitute transvestites.

Accompanying this was a bizarre parade, but Paul was in the process of throwing up, somewhat spoiling the vibe,  so we headed back to the hostel for serious nap time. Heading out at about 10.30pm, the sort of time you´d expect to see some serious multi coloured vomit occuring in the UK, we were surprised to find the streets almost empty. We later found out that Ecuadorian´s tend to New years  with their families, doing wholesome things as opposed to drinking so much you cry (or is that just me?). This meant that the streets were pretty empty save for the odd burning effigy (a reference to the death of the old year) and a number of gringos vainly attempting to find ‘the party.’ This scene was somewhat unsettling being erily reminscent of the apolcalypse or something like 28 days later but with white people replacing the zombies. It was actually lucky there wasn´t too much going on, by midnight Paul`s face was looking like he´d been repeatedly kicked in the balls, (you had to look closely though – his thick mane made illness detection sketchy at best.) Due to this we had a pretty early night, hoping that all would be well for 2010.

Luckily it was and we spent the next 6 days hitting up Quito. Highlights included the botanic gardens, where we pretended to eat dead butterflies and dared each other to put our wangs in the carniverous flowers (UK reprazent). We also went up a mad high cable car to 4100m above sea level to get some shit hot views over the city and the andes. We spent a couple of days in the company of some of Paul´s Ecuadorian ladies, despite looking like a bear he sure knows how to charm. He has a lot of them. They were all really lovely and seemed genuinly sad to see him leave – there were even tears.

View over Quito from 4100mts.

Whilst the lady population of Quito was lamenting the loss of a homeless man I was also lucky enough to be given a tour round the city by my cousin´s new wife´s family, who were incredibly generous. What particularly impressed was the Iglesia Compania de Jesus, a Jesuit church which my cousin recently married in. Located amidst the colonial splendour of old town it was unlike any church I´d seen in featuring enough gold to put Bangkok`s buddhist temples to shame and as much geometric patterning as the blue mosque in Istanbul. Stunning.

Leaving on the 7th we flew at the ungodly time of 6am to Colombia, where we are now, to a beach resort by the Carribean sea called Santa Marta where temperatures seem to be a steady 33 degrees. Anyway, I’m off back to my dorm room which includes the much desired feature of a blocked up toilet. The smell is so bad that if Dante were alive today he´d have to rewrite Inferno in order to incorprate the nasel Hiroshima that is our bathroom. Will try and write again in a week or so. Chau.

Lads introduce

So, here we are, Paul and Francis sitting in our hostel in Colombia attempting to write a blog. Hopefully this is not due to a sense of vanity or narcissm on our part, but instead due to us wanting to record our trip so we don’t forget what has happened incase we have a coke induced fit of amnesia in the near future. Most of all, we don´t want to get all deep, talking about ‘finding ourselves in the jungle’ but instead intend to follow the rule of Seinfeld´s producers: ‘No hugging, no learning’