At the Copa, Copacabana

Copacabana, Bolivia is apparently the namesake of the beach in Brazil that is actually the subject of the famous song. So no, we're not at "that" Copacabana. It's just as well, we only know that one line anyway.

Lake Titicaca is the largest, deepest, highest lake in the world. It is often compared to Tahoe in the US and Victoria in Africa. From Puno, it was not a very impressive lake as that section is very marshy/reedy and lacks the dark blue of a deep alpine lake. [We skipped the super-commercial tours of the Uros floating islands nearby.] About an hour and a half south of Puno, the view markedly improves as the marshes disappear and the Cordillera Real shows up on the other side of the lake, giving it the classic "blue lake surrounded by snowy mountains" look we expected considering the comparisons to Tahoe (which we saw in April). From Copacabana, the Cordillera isn't really visible but you still get the super blue color of the lake, and you can see Isla del Sol, the largest island in the lake and an important Inca site--the sun was born here and Manco Capac is supposed to have either appeared or otherwise been empowered here as well. Frankly we think Tahoe is more beautiful, with the steep wooded hillsides and the snowy mountains completely encircling the lake. But Titicaca is still pretty impressive.

Bolivia is one hour ahead of Peru, thankfully, so the sunrise here is at a more reasonable 5:30am. We picked up the last, and apparently best, room at La Cupula. Our room has a nice lake view and a sun porch with a hammock. Our first full day in Copacabana we took a morning walk along the lake, getting about halfway to Peru before the "road" died into a sheep path (complete with sheep and even a few concerned-looking donkeys). We planned to take the day tour of Isla del Sol the next day. Boy that didn't happen. Friday night's dinner apparently came with something extra, and Aaron was very (very, very) ill that night, the next day, and the next day. Just in time, Hilary picked up the exact same bug (parasite, bacteria, who knows?) Sunday night. Well now it's Tuesday. We had planned to stay in town 3 days and see the island (the only real reason we're in this particular place), and so far it's been 6 days and no island. As soon as we're safe to travel, we're bailing and heading to La Paz. On the plus side, the food at the hotel restaurant seems to be safe, we think, the hotel itself is clean and the views are nice. On the other hand, the water here is the nastiest it's been in all of South America, so we're not entirely sure which of about a dozen different contamination sources might have gotten us twice. Ah well, the island looks nice from here.

Adios Peru

Our bus from Cusco to Puno was unsurprisingly but still depressingly overdue. Even the locals complained about how often we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers in random locations. We even had to change buses in Juliaca (a mere 45 km from Puno) since by then our bus was only half full and there was another half full bus at the terminal. Go bottom line! Upon arriving in Puno we were told that that particular company (San Luis) is notorious for being super slow. Well, now we know.

Puno sits on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We got there at night and pretty much lugged our bags up to our 5th floor room (quite a chore at 3800 m), got photos for Bolivian immigration, and snagged dinner in the restaurant next to the photo place (it was raining pretty hard). Dinner was actually great. We got a fixed menu that came with very good tomato soup, grilled alpaca, yummy apple pie, and a glass of chicha morada. We also got a rocoto relleno (stuffed hot pepper), which was on our list of "Peruvian food we should try" for quite some time. And we got some deliciously butter-and-cheese-covered ravioli with mushrooms. Everything was really tasty and rather cheap, and we knocked off the rest of our Peruvian food must-dos right before leaving the country (alpaca, rocoto, chicha morada). Too bad we only stayed one night, Puno seems like not a bad city.

In the morning we were not really awoken by some crazy parade drum & flute business, accompanied by fireworks, at 5:15am. I say not really awakened since sunrise in Puno is at 4:30am, and that did a pretty good job of getting us up (curtains in South America have so far been rather flimsy). We can only assume that this good morning ritual is commonplace in Puno. Perhaps it's good we only stayed one night. The crowd remained at the statue pretty much all morning, though the fireworks stopped around 6am. Drumming continued.

Our bus to Bolivia was in the morning (and we checked with the hotel staff that the company was not crap this time), so after a rather yummy breakfast we got our taxi and piled on the bus. Copacabana, Bolivia was only 3.5 or so hours away from Puno, and our bus was mercifully on time. The border crossing was quick, and the bus company actually provided instructions--a welcome addition compared to the Ecuador-Peru crossing. Unfortunately we are US citizens, and had to pay for a visa: $135 each. Good for 5 years though if we decide to come back! [Koreans, Russians, and South Africans are also subject to a visa fee; the rest of the world is free. Next time we travel, we need to be Canadian.]

And that was that, no more Peru. Somehow we spent as much in 15 days in Peru as we did in 35 days in Ecuador. Let's hope Bolivia lives up to its reputation of being inexpensive.

Cusco

Cusco is an interesting city. On the one hand, it's an old city and full of beautiful churches and many plazas. On the other, it's the base for exploring Machu Picchu. I don't know the numbers, but I'm going to throw out a pretty safe guess and say that Machu Picchu is the most visited tourist attraction in all of Peru. This makes Cusco a tourist town as well, full of shops and restaurants and the most aggressive hawkers we have encountered thus far in South America. Some will follow you into a building trying to sell you a hat, a painting, or a seat at their restaurant. Yikes.

The architecture of Arequipa was all about the white "sillar" stone. In Cusco they've got red stone for the churches and wooden balconies ringing the plazas. It's very pretty and much warmer than the stark white of Arequipa, however we find ourselves liking Arequipa better anyway. Arequipa also had the advantage of being less expensive and more laid back, despite being a larger city. Blame the Incas, I guess.

Not much to report for activities in Cusco itself. The rainy season is underway in this part of the country, so we've spent some time indoors. We did find the tastiest Indian food we've encountered in months, which was a pleasant change. Other fun food encounters included 3 versions of Cusquena: the normal lager, a red lager, and their dark "malta". Not bad. We also finally got a plate of Aji de Gallina, a typical Peruvian dish of chicken with yellow pepper (aji) sauce. Very good. We were able to resist the cuy in Cusco, despite the larger variety of preparations available here. [you can even get it on pizza.]

Tomorrow we retrace some of our trip into Cusco and head to Puno, the largest town on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Let's hope this time that no car accidents occur.

Machu Picchu

After lots of debate about whether or not to go--it's rather expensive--we decided to visit Machu Picchu. We got our tickets a few days ahead of time (luckily it's the slow season) at a travel agent in Arequipa. We aren't really equipped to do the walking trail, and taking the train is also a lot cheaper, so we got ourselves a one-day train/taxi/bus setup.

Friday night we took the bus from Arequipa to Cusco. The road starts at 2500 m in Arequipa, goes through a pass at around 4500 m before reaching Puno near Lake Titicaca, and then goes through another pass around 4300 m and down into Cusco at 3400 m. Quite a trip, supposed to take 10 hours. Unfortunately, there was a major car accident in that first pass. Traffic was totally stopped for many hours, and it was slow going for some hours after that. We were supposed to arrive in Cusco at 6am. At 11:30am we finally stopped for some food (dinner was around 9pm and we didn't get food after that) in Pukura. After that it was only 5 more hours until we got to Cusco, almost 11 hours late. There we found out that our train to Machu Picchu left earlier than we had bargained for and we were being picked up at 4:30am, just 12 hours from our arrival in the city after a 21 hour bus ride. Ugh! We got dinner, picked up snacks for the next day, and went to bed.

Our taxi to Ollantaytambo (try saying that five times) was right on time, and we got on our train at 6:10am. The tracks follow the river in a very steep valley, not quite paralleling the Inca Trail. We stopped a few times to let folks off who were taking the shorter versions of the trail. We reached Agua Caliente (aka Machu Picchu Pueblo) at the base of the mountains and got the scoop on our guided tour. We hung out in town a bit since our tour didn't start for a few hours, then took the bus up the mountain. The next five hours we spent in Machu Picchu, two with the guide and three just wandering around ourselves. Awesome! Here are some pictures:

We took the bus back down and had dinner in Agua Caliente before catching our train back to Ollantaytambo at 7pm. We arrived back in Cusco around 10:30pm. Long day! We're really glad we went to Machu Picchu, and after that we probably won't go looking for more ruins.

Arequipa

So far, Arequipa is our favorite Peruvian city. The architecture is gorgeous, the city is bright and clean, the food is great and we could see ourselves spending a lot of time here. Of course, it's a bit expensive here as well so we are leaving tonight and heading to Cusco.

We didn't do much exciting while in Arequipa. We did try Arequipena beer, which we think is better than Cusquena (it is drier but not boring like some of the national lagers/pils). We visited the museum where they have the "Ice Maiden" aka "Juanita", a frozen body found on one of the nearby nevadas (snow-capped mountains) which is about 500 years old. Lots of impressively preserved textiles and other artifacts accompany the "mummy". [It's not a real mummy since it wasn't prepped for preservation, it just happened to freeze well.] We spent a good amount of time simply wandering around the city, looking at the mountains, and appreciating the buildings. We also ate. The food here is quite good, and there are lots of places that make very good desserts. It's been hard to find cake in South America, but Arequipa has it. We also had lucuma cheesecake, since lucuma is the sort of thing we have to try while we are here. It's an odd fruit, kind of caramel-prune flavored. And, we finally got ourselves a cuy for lunch one day. Turns out cuy is mostly skin and bone, not sure why people eat them. The meat, such as it was, was greasy. We'll not be ordering one of those again, but it's good to have tried it at least once.

One thing we did do was watch some movies. We were able to find Harry Potter 7, part 2, for S/.3.5 (about $1.30) after unsuccessfully finding one that was only dubbed in Spanish. Now we've seen it! Our hostal also had a kitchen available for use, so we cooked dinner for the first time since arriving in Quito 6 weeks ago.

We also did a little shopping, which is hard to avoid near downtown (as are the moneychangers; every other stall will change dollars and euros to soles). After several hours visiting many stores, and then going back to the stores, and going back again, we picked up an alpaca blanket. Very soft and fluffy.

Thoughts on Peru vs. Ecuador

Although there was a football match last night that mostly stopped the town (we think Ecuador won, it was 1-0 in the 80th minute), this is more about our impressions on the countries as a whole.

First of all, Peru is expensive. If you look at some guidebooks, they'll tell you that Peru and Ecuador will cost you about the same, and Bolivia too. How far from the truth that is. Food in Peru is costing us about $15/day more than Ecuador. Hotels in Peru are only slightly more expensive, but rarely include breakfast. In Ecuador it was hard to find a place that didn't include breakfast. [Having to buy breakfast accounts for almost half the $15.] Taxis cost at least double in Peru, and buses are more like 4 times as expensive. We got from Cuenca to Loja in Ecuador (5 hour ride) for less than it cost us to get from the airport to our hotel in Lima, and for about half the cost of the bus from Paracas to Ica (1.5 hours). We'll be arriving in Bolivia sooner than anticipated; the word on the street is that it's very, very cheap.

The food in Peru has been tastier than Ecuador. The local food is more interesting (Ecuadorian food was a little bland), and the Peruvian take on foreign food is better too. I guess you get what you pay for?

Internet in Peru has been spotty or non-existent. Even in Lima it was touch-and-go. Phone calls are also more expensive in Peru.

The small Peruvian towns are more ramshackle than the small Ecuadorian towns. The big cities (Lima, Arequipa vs. Quito, Cuenca) are fairly similar.

Taxis in Peru are apparently rather dangerous. In Ecuador you just walked outside, stuck your arm out, and caught a cab. In Peru that is a no-no, and you arrange for a taxi through your hotel. I guess some taxis (that you might pick up off the street) will hold you or your luggage hostage if you don't pay extravagant fees.

Lots of Peruanos speak at least some English, and many speak a little French and/or German too. People will automatically start speaking English to us. We know we look like gringos! Although it's probably a polite gesture (as is our trying to speak Spanish), it ruins the experience a little when folks stop speaking Spanish. On the other hand, it is nice when our vocabulary fails us to sprinkle in a few English words and be perfectly understood.

On a related note, there is a bit of an accent in Peru. We mostly noticed it in Lima, but it crops up every now and then. Some people drop some consonants from some words, usually an "s". It's inconsistently applied, which makes it harder to get used to. It tends to trip us up occasionally. For example, "gracias" becomes "gracia". That's not so bad. But "mismo" becomes "mimo" and missing letters in the middle of the word are tricky. 60 and 70 become almost indistinguishable if spoken quickly: seenta vs. setenta. The accents in Ecuador were easier to deal with since it was mostly just the added "j" sound to the "ll" when in the mountains and everyone used it.

Touring the Peruvian Atacama Desert

The Atacama Desert is, by most accounts, the driest in the world. After visiting deserts in the US, we can definitely say that Peru is not joking. Death Valley was comparatively the Garden of Eden. We spent several days in the southern Peruvian section of the desert, and will visit the Chilean portion later in the trip.

Lima is basically in the desert too, but we didn't really notice it as much in such a big city. As soon as you leave, however, things start to look bleak (stark? might be a better word). Our first stop was Paracas, a little village just outside a national park of the same name. Paracas is just south of Pisco, purportedly the source of both pisco the liquor and the pisco sour. More on pisco later... We arrived not long before sunset, got our room, and ate dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the marina. Half the boats were fishing boats, the other half tour boats for taking folks to the islands just offshore. Dinner included several rounds of both pisco sours and maracuya sours (same thing but with the addition of maracuya juice--yellow passion fruit). The pisco sour is, of course, the national drink and we're all about getting to know the local food culture. Sacrifices.

The hotel was rather noisy at night, being the location of one of the town's all-night bars. The party eventually stopped at 6am. Ugh. Not long after, we were headed to the boats. Our sardine-packed boat took us past "The Candelabra" geoglyph carved into the rocks some 2300 years ago. They told us it was probably a cactus and not a candelabra, but apparently the name stuck. After that we headed to the Islas Ballestas, which are part of the Paracas park. Here were thousands of birds of several species, including some very cool Inca terns, Peruvian boobies (no blue feet unfortunately), Humboldt penguins, and a few kinds of cormorants we hadn't seen before. Also on the islands were lots and lots of guano. And the smell. Some poor souls were tasked with harvesting the guano for use as fertilizer. The guide said an area of the island is harvested every 8 years and in that time 70 cm of guano is deposited. Holy crap! On the way back to shore, our boat had some mechanical difficulties. Much engine fiddling ensued, and whatever it was was resolved.

After arriving back on shore, late, we had a few minutes to get ready before heading to the land portion of Paracas park. We got stuffed into a van and drove the 15 minutes to the park (we're not very used to organized tours in our travels). After some time at the brand new visitor center, we visited various spots in the park. The landscape was stark and beautiful, with the desert going right up to the ocean. We stopped at a tiny fishing village located in the park for a late lunch of ceviche and soup. Mmmm, fresh fish. They brought out a platter of the "fish of the day" covered with 6 kinds of fin fish, shrimp, and scallops. Very fresh.

Not too long after getting back, we caught our bus to Ica, the next large-ish town moving south down the coast. Ica had a pretty big earthquake a few weeks ago, but we didn't see much in the way of damage. We didn't actually stay in Ica, but in Huacachina--the oasis town 5 km away. The hotel we were slated to stay in was hosting a disco that night, so we moved to their sister hotel down the road. Still loud, but a lot quieter. Huacachina is surrounded by huge dunes (HUGE.... like 20 stories tall huge) and centered on a rather green lake. Again, stark and beautiful landscape but distinctly desert.

In the morning we headed out to visit some local wineries. The first one was a big producer with a ton of land and buildings and equipment going back to the late 1500s. The wine was not bad, but the pisco was pretty harsh. We got a bottle of Brut (sparkler) for the reasonable price of S/.21. (That's about $8.) Our next stop was a smaller producer specializing in Peruvian-style wine. [We were told that the larger producers made wine to fit international tastes, while Peruvians like the sweeter wines produced in the local style.] The Peruvian desert is hot, as you might imagine, so the wines are naturally strong (16%) and wind up being a bit cooked in the heat. This is remedied by blending with juice, if we understood correctly, to bring the alcohol down a bit and the sweetness up. Local grapes are also a bit sour, so the sweetness covers that too. The wines had a little nutty character, which some of the guide books say is like sherry but really it's totally different. Not bad at all, though not really our style. The pisco at the second place was significantly better as well.

The most striking part of the tours was how much agriculture was in the desert. And remember, this is the driest desert in the world. It doesn't rain. Some pretty crazy irrigation was in place, however: wells, diverting the river when it runs once a year to flood the fields, and continued use of aqueducts bringing water from the mountains. The aqueducts were built at least 1000 years ago. Crazy. In addition to grapes, we passed fields of corn and cotton.

After the short trip back to Ica from Huacachina, we took yet another bus to Nazca (aka Nasca). We wound up with a very nice hotel not far from the very busy and beautiful central square. In the morning we took a ride to the local airport for our trip to see the Nazca lines. We had to wait for about 3 hours, however, before a plane was available to take us. That was not in the brochure. Ah well, we got in our tiny plane with just the pilots and two other tourists. We flew over the lines for about half an hour. The pictorial lines were fairly small in size, but the geometric ones sometimes extended further than we could see. Quite impressive. You could also see tire tracks in the desert and significant damage of the lines all along the Panamericana highway.  That was a little sad to see. (In the pictures you can see some triangles & straight lines, a monkey, and a hummingbird.)

After getting back to Nazca, we hid from the sun for a few hours (the desert is really hot) and then walked to the outskirts of town to see the museum. What a cool museum! Inside were details about the various excavations in the area and tons of artifacts. Pottery, statuary, woven bowls, etc. Most impressive were the textiles, both for the beautiful designs and the fact that they had survived ~1500-2000 years in such good condition. Also included in the exhibits were some trophy heads that were apparently used as ritual offerings. There were replicas of the tombs found in the area, and perhaps the coolest part of all was the actual Nazca aqueduct they had out back, still flowing with water (too bad we forgot our camera...).

We hung out at our hotel until 9pm, then headed to the terminal for our overnight bus to Arequipa. As usual, it was late (it originated in Lima). The bus was dark and quiet, but unfortunately the winding mountain roads and the general craziness of Peruvian bus drivers (more insane than their Ecuadorian counterparts, we think) made it impossible to sleep. Our first stop in Arequipa was our hotel, and a nap.