Travelling

Once you leave the main Plaza of Cusco this town is crazy bustling..For some reason every few weeks people crowd into the banks in Peru..not sure why yet, but I like to imagine, as I´m walking alone through the throngs of people waiting excitedly to get in, that they are coming together to celebrate something amazing like...the legalization of gay marriage in Peru..it makes walking around way more interesting when the vendors yelling at you from across the street in Spanish are saying ¨Go gays! Viva la gay marriage!!¨ instead of-¨BUY my useless stuff! NOW¨

Cuzco

16 hours on a bus
no hot water at our hotel
but this town is pretty cool
and breakfast was awesome!
Hot chocolate, eggs, fresh oj and toast...yum
it´s the little things i guess

Sangalle, Fure, LLahuar, and BACK

The Colca Canyon once held a place of strategic importance to the Spanish Conquistadors when they arrived in Peru, but the region was forgotten and left to itself. When is was ´rediscovered´ it had remained so isolated that the clothing styles and ways of life hadn´t changed. The women continue to wear the long skirts and embroidered hats introduced by hte Spanish hundreds of years ago.
It took 3 hours to reach the town of Sangalle at the base of the Colca Canyon It is just a peice of land that juts out at the into the Cocla river and criss crossed with fresh springs bubbling from earth. Down here are several camps, none with electricity or hot water. The thatched roof and bamboo huts were built for the tourists, and consist of a flimsy door, dirt floors, and a bed. Because of hte logistics for getting supplies down there, the main meal at every camp is spaghetti. The town in uninhabitable in the summer wet season when it starts to rain and the boulders come loose and fall like pebbles down the canyonside.
Sangalle was hte fist town as we hiked a triangle up and around the Cocla. The next stop, Fure, was deeper into the Colca, in an offshoot called the Huarare. As we headed out of Sangalle at 6am, to cross the Colca River we found an unexpected guide, the little dog from El Paraiso who began to follow us as we trudged up the mountain trail. We stopped at the top to look at the spectacular view of the Canyon and figure out the trail, and ´Perrito´ never left our side for the remainder of the trip.
At a shortcut we ended up lost in one of the terraced fields and found fruit trees, herbs, vegetables, and cacti all flourishing there. Back on hte main trail, the canyon opened up into quiet towns of little mud brick houses, terraced fields, and tiny trails leading to them.
At the top of one mountain the trail began to lead us into the Hurare River canyon. The water here is fresh and clear, and filled with trout, fed by huge waterfall from the snow melt on top of the Andes. After hiking 5 hours uphill I was getting exhausted, and Perrito was too! Finally I couldn´t take it anymore..we´d been hiking for hours, I was tired, the road never ended, who knew where Fure was...Perrito kept lying down..we all dropped down in the shade, when an old Quechuan man and a woman dressed in the traditional layered skirts and holding her belongings in a colored wrap across her back, passed us and stopped...´Fure?´we said weakly...´Oh si...It´s about 10 minutes from here...How long have you been hiking?´ ´5 hours!´we claimed almost proudly...The woman smirked and hte man just looked at us in pity...It had taken them 3 hours...They were probably in their 50´s...
No matter, we turned hte corner, and there was Fure, sitting quietly in the shade of the mountain 600 meters above the Huarare river. The town has just one tiny dirt path running through, big enough for horses to pass. There are 18 families, 1 schoolhouse, no electricity, sewage or trash. At night the women light fire in brick ovens for dinner and the smell of sour herbs and smoke drifts through the cool air. Our room was in one of the typical mud huts. It had dirt floors, and a mattress lifted onto four wood stumps. Though dark, it was incredibly cozy and warm inside. For dinner we walked next door to the owners kitchen which opened into a small garden with herbs and flowers and Corinna made us typical regional fare for lunch, potatoes with pumpkin puree and rice,and I would throw down bits of food for Perrito under the table. The next day We hiked out to the end of hte canyon to see the waterfall and got ready for another 6 hours of hiking with Perrito loyally running at our heels.
Our final stop, Llahuar is at the base of the 3rd trail back up to Cabanconde, and owned by an older couple Claudio and Yola who have bulit one of hte nicest little camps we went to. There were flowers everywhere, hots springs at the base, Claudio went out to the Huarare and fished for trout for dinner every night. Yola, was an amazing cook and fried up the fish for dinner...it was heaven. We met a group of people who were just starting their journey and shared stories with them and htey madefriendswithPerrito who refused to stay outside of the dinner room. (´Perrito, OUT!,, ROOF ROOF, ´Perrritttoo!! not the cats!¨
The next day we woke up to Perrito barking at 5:30 as usual, but when we got up he had left with the other group of people! We were kind of relieved since we didn´t really know how he would get back home ot Sangalle....
Of course with every hike down, thereisa hike up...andourfinal hike was not just up..it was UP! I´ll put it in one word...HELL!
6 hours of rocks, sand, hot sun...and endless swtichbacks up up and up without a break.
We made it to Cabanconde dirty, hungry,and completely exhausted. Took showers andsatdownfora beer, whenwe suddenly heard music comingform the back of the hotel restaurant. I ran out to see a festival of women dressed in traditional dresses,all with bags of flowers and herbs dancing in circles to a brass band. A woman in an alpaca facemask cameto Brad andpulled him out, took a liking to his dancingskills and wouldn´t let him go! Ileft for 5 minutesto the bathroomand he disappeared. 10minutes later he comes back,his hair sticking out anda look ofshock onhisface. Í just shot gunned a glass of chicha!´ (The traditional corn spirit of Peru) He´d walked outsideto watch the dancing and a bunch of drunk farmers passed a glass of chica rightinto his hands and told him to chug it! We´d walked into the Baila de Machu--a festival to celebrate the planting of hte corn. The band played hte samemusic over and over again as thewomen danced around the town square and the men drankchcia until they could barelywalk anymore.
A great ending to an amazing experience

Hiking Colca Canyon

I have a few minutes beforeour bus leavesfor Cusco, so here´s recap of last week´s amazing backpacking trip!

From Arequipa we took a 6 hour bus ride to the remote mountain town of Cabanaconde. Cabanaconde sits at the rim of hte Colca Canyon, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world and home to 9 or 10 remote Quechuan farming communities, connected to each other only by the narrow foot paths eatched across the rocky mountainsides. As our bus snaked up the dusty roads I could see in the distance, the crumbling rock had been leveraged into thousands of flat green terraced fields. In a place of extremes,losing just the topmost layer of soil can render a terrace completely unproductive, and these people have been practicing true sustainable farming techniques and maintaining crops in the most unbelievable conditions for not just hundreds , but thousands of years...pretty amazing
Most of the jobs in Cabanconde come from farming and tourism. It sits at the edge of the 3 main trails that lead to into the Colca. These people think nothing of climbing from the base of the canyon up 2000 meters to Cabanoconde every day to buy supplies, sell supplies, or lead tourists down. Distances here are all measured in time, and there is tourist time (let´s say, 5 hours to get to a particular town) and local time (2 hours to get to the same place!)
The next day we decided to check out hte trails leading around Cabanaconde, through the dirt roads, past the mud brick and thatched roof homes, the dry yards, donkeys, and horses, the bull fighting ring (a popular past time here) made of stacked rocks forming a wall and corrugated aluminum doors which are meant to hold the bulls (somehow),past dry grazing pastures to a vista where you can struly see hte vastnessof the Colca. Peering down...and down and down! we could see the first stop on what had suddenly turned into a serious backpacking trip!--The Oasis, also known as we could see the town of Sangalle, almost directly below Cabanaconde. It makes you dizzy to look so far down at this tiny green patch of trees and palms sitting in the shadowy brown and greys of the canyon.
We were so excited to see the canyon unfold before us, waterfalls and tiny terraced fields in the distance, sitting like jewels in the cascades of dry rock. 3 hours later we had locked up the luggage we didn´t need and were hiking down the first trail to Sangalle, the Oasis. The sun blazed against our heads as we treked down the zigzagging switchbacks, lined with boulders and flowering cacti. A few red faced tourists were puffing up the trail. It looked pretty painful with both the altitude and the mountain working against them. A few more had taken donkeys up and smiled at us sheepishly.
To be continued...with pictures!

Me llama Elianita. Y tu?

We moved out of our swanky tourist hostel in Arequipa for a less expensive hostal down the road, swapping our quiet 4th floor room and balcony overlooking the city with breakfast in the morning, for an equally great view, and a room that matches it´s rate (i.e. small). With a few extra bucks in our pockets we were able to grab a nice dinner on Saturday night, and head over to the sprawling sports club ´Club Internacional´ on Sunday for a day by the pool in the warm mountain sun.
Arequipa is sunny most of the year, and the wind blows down the mountains around noon clearing the air of deisel and pollution, making the mornings fresh and crisp. We were the only gringos at the club, which boasts several enormous soccer fields, a pool area, food stands, basketball courts, racquet balls courts..it´s fancy! We just sat by the pool, watching the families try to stay out of the glaring mountain sun, Peruvian kids playing the same pool games American ones do, listening to cheers erupting from the soccer field, men drinking beer after a tennis game.
Staying smack in the center of the ´area touristica´ of Arequipa, it´s is hard to get a real read on the poverty level of the city. It thrives off the tourists that pass through here on trekking tours and the majority of street kids and poor are driven off by the policia touristica (yes, really). The sports club is yet another retreat for those with expendable income.
When we got home we decided to sign up for a Spanish class that we´ve been dying to do. For not too much money you get one-on-one lessons with a native spanish instructor 4 hours a day for a week. We had just committed ourselves to one more week in the city, but, hey, it´s worth it to learn Spanish! We need some practice. I decided that we needed a room with a bathroom if we were going to stay for another week, so I put in a request with the front desk man, who had nothing available that day.
Then it came. Read no further if you don´t want to hear the gory details of travelling and eating in South America.
2 days after a particularly inexpensive lunch (Here you can get a menu Criollo which includes a starter, second course, and drinks - usually chicha, a sweet watery drink made from maiz- for between $1 and $4) We tried a $1 Menu Criollo, and exactly 2 days later i was running down the hallway stairs for the toilet at 3 in the morning.
No worries, just travellers diarhea, but having to run outside to the bathrom at night isn´t ideal. Our hostel guy told us the next day that he had a room for us with a bathroom, but with our first day of class starting at 3, we wouldn´t be back until 7:30pm. ´No worries´he tells us. We come back at 7:30, and the Pèruvian woman who works there, a small black haired woman with silver front teeth was manning reception. ´We are changing rooms tonght. Do you have the key?¨we ask. ´No theres nothing, you waited too long we had to rent it out,¨was her response.
I have diarhea, I´ve ben learning Spanish for 4 hours, and damnit I want a room with a bathroom. She´s been cleaning rooms all day, and is manning the front desk alone, and damnit...not only is our room taken, but she doesn´t really give a sh*.
I´m mad, and tired, so I sit in bed reading and vowing ot find another hostal the next day while B gets dinner. In the morng we both wake up late, B was hit by the travellers bug, and he´s just as interested in having our own bathroom as me. I walk downstairs right past the hostel guy who promised us a room, he stops me and asks what happened with the room...´´It was taken!´ No worries, he has a room up top with a bathroom , and he´ll give it to us for the same price as the other room. Now he´s talking.
So today is a new day. We had a great breakfast, got an awesome room, and in a few hours I´ll be heading off to Spanish lessons with Betty and Juliana.
Not too shabby a life down here.

Arequipa - Mountain Country

We´ve been travelling for about 1 week now...which is pretty shocking to me when I think about how much we´ve seen and done so far. When you backpack in a foreign country, figuring out where to eat, sleep and hang out are pretty much your full time job. It feels good to know it´s only been a week, and that I´m still months away from the ´real world´

We will be in Arequipa for a week.

After Punta Hermosa, we came back to Lima for a night, then left the next day for Arequipa, a desert city in the mountains, on the road to Cuzco. The bus trip was about 18 hours overnight, so we just slept most of the time (and saved money on a hotel). When you leave the coast and begin travelling east into the mountains the terrain is desolate, sand and orange rocks, like the surface of the moon. A few rivers run down through small canyons and there plants and animals spring to life. Whole communities live right next to the river, surrounded by nothing but the desert.

Arequipa is a busy city that lies at the base of 3 mountains, the Picchu Picchu, the Misti, and the Chura-something....all dusted with snow at the tops. The air is dry and crisp, and even though we are 7500 feet up in the middle of winter.. it´s hot!
The town itself is made up of old colonial buildings, with high walls and courtyards. A lot of tourists come through here to see the natural wonders that fill this region.

Most of the inhabitants are of Incan descent and there are a lot of Incan crafts and alpaca woven items for tourists to buy. One of the museums here holds the mummified body of an ancient Incan girl who died in the snow.

Typical food of the region includes roasted guinea pig, and alpaca chops!

B and I are really excited to get out of the city, because just beyond Arequipa is one of the deepest canyons in the world, hot springs, a canyon that is home to condors that spread 7 feet across, and rivers and valleys for hiking and biking, but we´ve decided to take a few days in Arequipa to take Spanish classes and relax before we start the journey.

To be continued....

The Beach

Brad has been wanting to surf Peruvian lefts for months now, and the other night he found a surf hostel--the call them surf camps- in a little beach town 45 minutes south of Lima called Punta Hermosa. We took two combes (little Peruvian street buses) out of Lima and onto the Pan American Highway that cuts down the south coast of Peru through the sand and desert. These buses are small, but we managed to squeeze into one, backpacks and all while it weaved in and out of traffic. Every stop the door opererator slams open the bus door yelling the names of his stops and rounding up customers before jumping back in just as the bus peels out. The towns that line hte highway are bussling and active. There are settlements everywhere, a testament to the crazy growth this area has seen in the last decade or two. There are towns perched precariously at the top of sand dunes, and others perched precariously at the bottom...The houses are simple brick sqaures with windows, and in every commercial area there is a building supplies store, where you can buy the walls of your house already built.
We soon begin to leave the bussle with the bus driver joking that we´ve already passed Punta Hermosa and so we´ll have to go to the other Punta Hermosa. We´re dropped off in the middle of a dusty town where we grab a moto taxi telling him to just take us to Caballero beach. We have a a vague idea the hsotel is near there but want to look around just in case. He drops us in the middle of a dead town and the only hostel in sight is closed. I start ¨expressing¨ to Brad that he should listen to me when i say I want to stop to figure out where we´re going before we pay to go there. We´re walking aorund aimlessly when we see 2 women walking. One turns out to be Brazilian, with a house next door to the hostel and she walks us there, winding through little beach homes and dirt roads telling us about her family. She leaves us at the entrance telling us that she lives riiight around the corner.
I´ll skip the hostel part...Surfers everywhere are pretty much the same, so when i say I was at a surf camp, you can imagine there was reggae, guys in beanies, weed, and not a single girl except for the cook. Brad got some surfing in, I enjoyed an awesome sunset, and we met an American and Brazilian who were both super nice and willing to go out with b to catch some waves.
To my friends reading this who were with me in Brazil, I´ll say, the other guys at the hostel were very ¨jui-jitsu-y¨
We´re back in Lima today, not sure if we want to continue down the coast or head right into the mountains.

To be continued.....

Gringita mistakes

We went to the store to get some sandwich supplies in an effort to save some cash. In Peru, they sell a looot of jamon (ham) and they also sell other sandwich meats and just call them jamon too. We ordered turkey , leaning over across the deli meats ¨pavooo por favor¨and he picks up ´jamon de pavo´ ¨no no, no jamon!¨we point to the big turkey in the glass in front of us...¨un kilo?¨ we look at each other neither of us really sure how much a kilo is, but it seems okay. So he starts slicing, and slicing, and soon there´s a looot of turkey so we yell over for him to stop. A half a kilo and we´ve got enough lunch meat to last a week. We grab the rest of our items, bread, fruit, lettuce then go to the check out. bread- 10 cents, fruit 2 bucks, lettuce, 50 cents, turkey-11 bucks...!?!!!!!!!!! wait..too late, we´re checked out and paying up before we can even figure out how to say stop!
gringita lesson learned.

¿Como se dise? ¡Yo soy en Lima!..

Last night I fell asleep in about 30 seconds...
We'd just eaten at an amazing restaurant recommended by our hostel gal, home to the most famed chef in Lima....and niether of us have any clue what we were eating. I'll call mine, chicken kebob a la amazing sauce, and I'll call brad's Chicken and potatos a la gravy. Our waiter was more than patient

with our horrible Spanish, and even took us over to the kitchen to show us what his favorite platos ''para piqar'' were.
Of course, we were exhausted...The kind of exhausted you can only be after you've been on a red-eye for 10 hours, in the emergency exit row where the floor space is wide...and the seats don't go down! ..who knew....Then finally got off after a total of 4 hours of interrupted sleep, bargained for a cab, and then held onto your boyfriend for dear life as our driver navigated the masses of trucks and cars all trying to get wherever they were going as fast as humanly possible.

But we made it..Hostel Malka, a non-descript home in on of the lesser known nieghborhoods, with a lovely yard in the back, a climbing wall, and a bunch of drunk 20 year olds yacking in the bathroom. ...oh hostels..the possiblities!...
Many have recommended we not stay in Lima too long, and I think we agree, although I feel like it could be a reallly fun place if you knew someone...so I may come back one day. Today we will start planning our next mo

nth in Peru...Some surfing, beaches, then Cuzco and Machu Picchu...
Pictures will come...as soon as I take some...