And.... Still in Peru

So, here is the news: The Peruvian fisherman are on strike and are blocking all the borders of northern Peru, so we are unable to go to Ecuador until this is resolved, most likely the day after tomorrow.
Until then, we are in the small city of Tumbes, which has a very interesting mix of Latin and Carribean culture. The streets are filled with little fruit stands and markets, and everything is so colourful with such a vibrant and tropical feel. You can buy freshly squeezed pineapple or orange juice on every corner. It is autumn here right now, but you would never know it: there are palm trees everywhere, with sunny skies and over 30° everyday. We spent all day at the beach, swimming, reading our Peruvian "Cosmo" magazine and eating the fruits we bought from the market. The beach is deserted because it is not summer, which is heaven for us. The ocean is really warm and the waves are high. Funnily enough, we did see some fisherman out today (I guess no one told them about the strike). It was amazing to watch them fish, they were standing up rowing these little rafts around and actually catching the fish by spearing them!

Tumbes is really beautiful and fun, but also really dangerous. This guy we know had his shoes stolen at knife point the other day in the middle of the day right down the street from where we are staying. Everyone tells us not to carry anyting valuable around with us and not to wear any jewelery. For this reason, we are unable to post photos on the blog, as we are only carrying a disposable camera with us (that Vanessa gave us in Toronto) to take the occasional picture. We are the only tourists, or even light skinned people, in the entire city, so we already stand out enough!

So, funny story. We wanted to get our laundry done yesterday, so we asked the man at our hotel where we could go. He suggested the place next door, so we went over to check it out. When we got there there was no one there, so we waited. Some guy who was passing by came in and said that he knew the guy who worked there: he was on his luch break and would be back later. So we came back a few hours later and.... still no one there. This time a lady came in off the street and said that she knew the guy: he had just stepped out for a few mnutes and would be back shortly. So we waited... Eventually the guy arrived. To be honest, he looked about 19 years old, and more like a drug dealer than someone running a laundry place. He told us he needed about 24 hours to do the laundry, which we thought sounded a bit long, but we agreed anyways. The next day, when we came to pick up the laundry, the guy wasn't there AGAIN, so we went into our hotel to shower, as we had just returned from the beach. To our surprize, the guy from the laundry place was sitting in the reception area with the monkeys that live there (they really seem like a combination of bat and monkey and scream so loud we can hear them from our room!) and the mentally ill kid that owns the monkeys. So we told him we needed our laundry and he walked next dor and finally gave us our clothes. The clothes didn't exactly smell mountain-fresh or anything, but they seemed clean enough!

We have found a really good Chinese restaurant that serves dinner, and we have obviously found a place with internet. (However, the keyboards are impossible to type on - every other key is busted- and the place smells like cat pee or something, and no wonder, we have seen many cats wandering around and even a monkey!). There is an election coming up in Peru and the streets sre absolutely littered with signs for all the candidates. Also, there are people riding through the streets in rickshaws screaming slogans through megaphones. We are wondering if we will be allowed to vote if we end up having to say here on account of the strike!

well, we will let you know of any news with the strike.

love,

Alice and Tova

Still In Peru

Hi,

First, we would like to start by thanking all our friends and family who have sent us emails and made comments on this site in the last few weeks. The fact that you are all laughing along with our entries and admiring our pictures means a lot to us. By the way, we took about forty or fifty pictures of Machu Pichu alone, so there is more to see when we get home.

For those of you who were interested, Machu Pichu was a city built by the Incans around the year 1500 A.D. It is hidden on top of a mountain deep in the Peruvian jungle. No one knows why it was built, but it was most likely constructed in this rather strange location in order to be closer to the gods. Everything in the city was constructed with the gods in mind, it was a very holy place. The city was then abandonned and forgotten long before the Spaniards came, and was only rediscovered about a hundred years ago. Today all we have are the stone ruins, but as you can see, they are incredible. We have to say that visiting Machu Pichu (and the back-breaking hike up the mountain we made to get to get to it) has been the most rewarding and unforgetable experience of this trip so far.

Last time we left you in Cusco, a city in the Central-East of Peru. We are now in the small city of Tumbes, in the North-West of Peru, but how we got here is a story in itself. We left Cuzco on Monday night rather exhausted from our early mornings (another 5 am wake up call to catch the train back to Cusco). We got on the bus to Lima that night looking forward to reclining in our seats and getting a good night sleep (as it was an overnight bus). That was made pretty hard, both by the fact that our seats didn't recline, that we took the twistiest road possible and that there were a group of men behind us who assumed we didn't speak Spanish and continued to make degrading and immature comments about us the whole night. We were supposed to arrive into Lima around 10 in the morning. We had arranged to have lunch at our friend's house (she lives in Lima) and then catch our bus to Tumbes at 3 p.m. Well.... our bus didn't even arrive into the Lima bus terminal until 3 p.m. !!! We were rushing around trying to call the other bus company because their terminal was several blocks away (but nobody answered) and trying to get all our luggage together. We sped to the other bus terminal certain that our bus had already left and dreading the consequences. We arrived at 3:20......AND THE BUS WAS STILL THERE!!! We got on and left for Tumbes.

We got into Tumbes the next morning after a nice sleep. Tumbes was steaming hot (a nice change from the cooler, mountain climate of Cusco) and the beaches were beautiful. So, as we were unloading our bags from the bus, this taxi driver approached us and asked us if we wanted a ride. We gave him the name of the hotel we wanted to go to and he said it would be about one Sol, or 40 cents Canadian. We put all our stuff in the cab and drove off...but now there were two men in the car, not just the one. They started speaking to each other in rapid Spanish and then asked me to repeat the name of the hotel again. I did and then one of the guys said that that hotel wasn't in Tumbes, but the next town over, which seemed strange. Then they said they would take us to this other hotel that was a little far (10 soles), but on the beach. When we asked about the prices, they were vague. We got to this hotel (which was in the middle of nowhere) and found it was way to expensive. The guys also started telling us all about a fisherman's stike that was going to start the next day and which (they said) would block us from leaving Peru for a week. We started to get scared and freaked out by these two guys and told them to take us back to the city (by now we were out of the city). They got mad, but took us back anyways. Then they tried to take us to all these expensive hotels, but we kept telling them they were too expensive. When we finally got to a cheap place, the guys said it was now 20 soles EACH, which was crazy. They said that they had said from the begining (which they hadn't) that it was 10 soles EACH (not for both), and that now we had to pay double because they had to take us back into the town in the end. We argued with them for a long time about the price, but they wouldn't change it and were really starting to get mad. We just decided to pay the 6 dollars Canadian each and forget about it, but we were mad.

The hotel was ok....for what we are paying, which is about nothing, Canadian hahaha. But there are two small monkeys hanging around in the reception area... we are not kidding. And our room smells like pee.... We went to the bus station to see if the story about the strike is true. It is.... but we may be able to leave sooner than the guys had said. But we may be stuck in Peru for a few days.
We took this thing called a "moto" that everyone takes here, which is like a motorcycle with a little cart, kind of like a rickshaw, on the back. Very cute. We also took the local bus (more like a shitty van full of people) to the beach and spent the rest of the afternoon there. The beach was beautiful, but deserted and the water is so warm, like a bath. This city really reminds us of Cuba, the towns where the Cubans live, for those of you who have been to Cuba. We are trying to leave for Ecuador tomorrow evening, but if the strike blocks us, who knows....

We will keep you posted.

love

Alice and Tova

This little boy playing in our room

MACHU PICCHU!!!

Tova making her mark in Machu Picchu
Johnny, Chris and Karl (the 3 guys we met in Machu Picchu)

Alice on one of the huge incan stone walls
Welcome to Machupicchu
The treck up the Machupicchu mountain with our friends, the Californian guys

a Church in Cusco
An Incan ruin called Saquiwaman(A.K.A. Sexy Woman)
Cusco

Machu Pichu

The last few days have been pretty exciting. Saturday we went to visit several Incan archaeological sites around the city of Cuzco. That evening, we took a bus and a train up to the small village of Aguas Calientes, which is very close to the site of Machu Pichu. To save money (a lot of money), we avioded the purely tourist train that goes all the way from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes. Instead, we decided to do what our friend Felipe recommended and take a really cheap bus for the first part of the journey and get on the train once it was much closer to the village.

The bus was probably the worst we have been on in our time in Latin America. First, everybody but us on the bus was Peruvian. And everybody was treating this bus like it was a moving van. People seemed to be throwing everything they owned to the roof of the bus and even in the aisles, including broomsticks, huge packages of toilet paper, large boxes and even bags of bread! I even think I saw a kitchen sink.... Even though it was a two hour bus ride, people were standing in the aisles for the entire journey. Others were climbing the side of the bus and trying to come in through the windows to sell candies and drinks and there was some guy who stood at the front of the bus for the first fifteen minutes of the ride making a speech for some Peruvian communist reform, saying how we were all "brothers in the struggle". And then there wasTova and I....
Well, the train was certainly a lot more pleasant. We happened to sit beside a few young guys from California who were visiting Mach Pichu as well. We ended up sharing a hotel room with one of them to save money and even went to Machu Pichu with them the next day.

Tova and I were pretty excited about seeing the sunrise at Machu Pichu, both for the incredible experience itsef, and also to aviod the tourist rush later in the day. So we convinced the guys to wake up with us at 5:30 a.m. so we could start the walk up the mountain. Machu Pichu is an Incan city that was build high up in the mountains, and we decided it would be fun to actually walk all the way up the mountain ourselves rather than take the bus. We had to walk two hours straight up a mountain filled with thick forest to get there, but it was definitely worth all the pain once we arrived at the top. Machu Pichu itself was absolutely incredible, something that we will never forget. We went on a two-hour tour, which was interesting and actually allowed us to understand exactly what we were seeing.

Later, we went to the hot baths, which were pretty much a disapointment and waste of 10 soles (the Peruvian currencey). They were just baths outside, an some weren't even warm! And it is really cheap for locals to go there, so there were a lot of families bathing, washing their bodies and hair, we suppose because they don't have showers at home. Some people were even naked!
We are leaving in a few hours for the northern Peruvian beaches!

Chau

Alice and Tova

La Paz to Cusco

Hey everyone,

We are currently in Cusco, an old city in eastern Peru. Tomorrow we are taking a train high into the Andes to the ancient Incan city of Machu Pichu. Those who haven't heard of it will recognize the pictures that we will (eventually) put on the site, as Machu Pichu is undoubtedly the most famous example of Incan ruins in the world. We are so excited to go!
Cusco is a goergeous city filled with narrow, cobble-stoned streets, local markets selling absolutely stunning jewelery and local crafts, and grand plazas lined with old churches and museums. Also, everything is on such an incline (the entire city is built in a valley) that the ten-minute walk home leaves us breathless!

Last time we left off at our arrival in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, but didn't really say much about it. Las Paz is honestly one of the most incredible cities we have ever seen. Just like Cusco, La Paz is located in a huge valley surrounded by mountains. Everything has such history to it and the city has a character like no other. We absolutely fell in love. Also, La Paz has a stong indigenous feel to it that is missing in all the other major Latin-American cities we have seen. Spanish is the main language, but if you walk the streets, you will hear people speaking many indigenous languages that date back to the Incans! Also, many of the women dress in traditional clothing: colourful, layered skirts, cloths tied over their shoulders to carry babies or belongings, and they all wear very distinctive hats and tie their hair in long braids that reach past their bums.
While we were in La Paz we hiked to the top of one of the peaks surrounding the city (where people live in places that could only really be described as shacks) and took in the incredible view. We also visited the old "Witchcraft Market", the gold-encrusted San Franciscan Church and the Museum of Bolivian Music (where we saw pipes bigger than us and guitars made out of Armadillo shells, with the hair intact!). While we were in La Paz we managed to find an amazing Japanese restaurant (very hard to find elsewhere in Bolivia!), but we mostly ate at local restuarants. It was the same kind of concept as the local restaurant we ate in in Chile: you go up to the counter and order the one dish they have for the day. You pay, and they give you a ticket. You sit down at a table and hand the ticket to the waiter and get served. We definately ate some interesting meals! Also, for a country of just over 8 million people, Bolivia appeared to us to have an absolutely massive military and police force. They were everywhere: directing traffic, and walking (or marching) through the streets (often to the beat of a band that marched along with them). It was definately somewhat of a mystery to us...

The bus from La Paz to Cusco was slightly more pleasant than the last one we took. At least this bus had a toilet! ( I didn't mention last time that the bus we took from Uyuni to La Paz had no toilet, despite the fact that is was an overnight, 11 hour busride! Once, in the middle of the night, when the bus made a stop at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, we deicded to get out and have a pee. We were about to go and use the washrooms that a sign was directing us too, but decided not to pay the fee that they usually charge and went, instead, by the side of the road. We ended up having to pull up our pants and run for the bus, because it took off after about a minute! We were surprized that no one else was left in the toilets.... but perhaps we were the only stupid foreigners on the bus who didn't realize that the bus only stops for a minute at a time!
But that is not to say that the bus from La Paz to Cusco was without its problems. First of all, they allow passengers to drink on the buses here, and this one guy in front of us was drinking the entire journey! He was completely trashed, and went to the toilet about 10 times! He also had some problem with his passport and held us up at the Peruvian border. Also, when we passed a Bolivian military checkpoint, we had to get out and walk through a passport check. As we were waiting on the other side, we realized that we were surrounded by bags and bags of live sheep, that had their legs all bound together and were dumped at the side of the road. At first we thought they were dead, but then some of them were blinking and making sounds. It was definately traumatic. ALSO, they didn't let us stop for food and only gave us one yogurt and a few crackers the entire ride (which lasted from 7:30 a.m. until 10 p.m.). We were starving when we arrived in Cusco!

We will be up in Machu Pichu now for a few days, but we will probably write another entry once we reach the beaches of northern Peru. Don't get too jealous!

love

Alice and Tova

In Uyuni
Alice licking salt
The flood in Uyuni

Flamingos
Our shack in the middle of the Bolivian wilderness
The Stone Tree

Our breakfast at the Bolivian border
Climbing in the caves
How were travelling

Sunset on the sand dunes
Our British friends, Clare and Anna
LLAMA

Valley of the Moon
Alice and Carlos, our Chilean....43 year old friend
The desert in Chile

Door to nowhere in La Paz

Bolivian military marching outside our hostel

City view of La Paz
In La Paz (Bolivia)
In Uyuni (Bolivia)

Surfin in the USA

A baby Llama of 3 weeks

Truck in Salt flats
Its snow? no, it's ice? no, it's.............SALT???
Salt Flats

The Valley of Rocks
Our bed time!

The Bolivian border

At our hostel in Chile

Taken on our bus from Salta (northern Argentina) to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile
In Chile

Chile and Bolivia

Please bear with us as this is a long, but very interesting blog entry.

We left Salta early Thursday morning on a bus that took us to a small town in the middle of the Chilean desert called San Pedro de Atacama. This bus was much better than the last, with the exception of the inedible lunch of tough meat and fake mashed potatoes they served us (without anything to drink!). On the bus we met two girls from England, Clare and Anna, who are doing a trip around the world. We got along really well and decided to share a room at the hostel to save money.
The town of San Pedro de Atacama is like something out of an old western movie: dusty, unpaved streets lined with tiny houses, surrounded only by desert and mountains on either side. Unfortunately, we ran into some major money problems... the ATM wouldn't accept our bank cards and the money exchange wouldn't accept any Argentinian or American bills with slight imperfections, which made almost all the money we did have useless!! We had almost no money and needed to survive for a few days in this town AND get a bus out of there! We ended up eating at a very cheap local restaurant we found that was very popular with the Chilean workers (believe me, we got some strange looks). It was the kind of place where you go up to a man who standing in a kitchen and ask what he has to eat. He says his one dish and you say how many of it you want and sit down. Also, we made friends with this guy Carlos who worked at our hostel, and he cooked us some amazing food.
We went on an excursion to the "Valley of the Moon" one afternoon, which was incredible. We climbed over sand dunes and through caves, saw snow-capped mountains, incredible rock formations (which the locals claim all look like the Virgin Maria praying, holding a baby etc.... we weren't so convinced). Finally, we watched the sunset from the top of the Valley of the moon, which was absolutely breathtaking.
That night our money problems only got worse, as we discovered that neither of our credit cards worked in the machine at the hostel, so we had to spend every last peso we had just to pay our bill. We had managed to find a bus to Bolivia that would let us pay with a credit card, but we were scared about venturing off into Bolivia without ANY money... but what could we do?

We took a slightly unconventional route to Bolivia. We decided to take a three day tour in a car that allows you to experience the diverse natural wonders of Bolivia. It was honestly one of the most amazing, but also one of the strangest experiences of our lives.
We were in a small van driven by a Bolivian couple who spoke no English. Also in the car was Tova and I, the English girls and a young couple from Germany. There were no seatbelts, all out luggage was tied to the roof and we headed for the Bolivia border. On the way to the border, the driver pulled over at the side of the road to pick up some Bolivian migrant workers who were making their way home. We ended up chatting with one guy who sat down beside us, who told us that he hadn't spoken to his family in over six months and he was going home to surprize them. He was sure they thought he was dead.
Finally we arrived at the Bolivian border where we had breakfast outside (despite the fact that it was incredibly windy and absolutely freezing cold) and switched cars. In fact, it was so cold that I (Alice) wouldn't get out of the car to eat, which had consequences a few hours later. We drove to the Andean National Reserve, where we saw some amazing lakes coloured white and green and absolutely filled with flamingos. However, we were extremely high up in the mountains, which can be very dangerous for your health. Everyone had a special tea at breakfast made out of leaves that prevent serious altitude sickness, but I (Alice) hadn't had any because it was too cold outside. When I got out of the car to see to lakes, I fainted. Tova describes it as: I walked up to her and was just looking at her, but my eyes were blank and my lips and hands were blue. Then I just fell. I guess it was quite scary, but I blacked out and can't remember it at all. I went back into the car and chewed on the leaves from the tea, which made me a lot better.
Next, we went to these wonderful hot springs where we bathed in the steaming hot water before eating lunch out the back of the car. The Bolivians were washing their entire bodies and hair in the hot springs, which should have given us warning about the kind of accomodation we would be given that night...
After lunch we drove really high up into the mountains until there was snow on the ground and it was well below zero. Then it started to hail and the car's engine died and wouldn't start for about fifteen minutes, and we were absolutely freezing, especially because they had had all the windows open to stop the windsheild from fogging up. We were all pretty scared and the Bolivian woman was praying, but the man managed to get the car started we made it out alive. We were actually up there to watch the geysers, which are giant cracks in the mountain where steam from the earth's core rises out. They were pretty incredible. Oh, and there were no roads in this park, just tracks in the dirt to follow, which made it the bumpiest ride of our life! Also, the Bolivians had about four tapes of this local pop music that they kept playing over and over again. By the end of the day, we knew all the words to all the songs and were singing along... I still can't get them out of my head!
That night our accomodation was in the park itself, essentially a lodge with no heating, no showers, no toilet paper or toilet seats and almost no electicity. We were all in one room (we think the Bolivians slept in the car) with one tiny lightbulb, which wad no switch. We were beyond freezing: we were all wearing every piece of cothing we had and were still cold! They served us dinner at 7:30 and then made us go to bed just after 8 p.m., and what could we do anyways in the dark? Also, we had to be up at dawn the next morning. Oh, and we got no drink with dinner once again and when we asked, they said to wait till the morning.
The next day was filled with more lakes, mountains, and a breathtaking valleys of rocks. In the afternoon we arrived in Uyuni, the town in Bolivia where we stayed the night. Uyuni was really small, but the women were all dressed in colourful traditional cothing and carried the babies around in cloths on their backs. It started to pour and eventually half the town was flooded, but we made it to the bus station (well, a room with a 17 year-old girl and a screaming baby selling bus tickets) to buy our ticket to La Paz, the Bolivian capital, for the next evening. We couldn't believe how cheap the bus was: $9US fr an 11 hour bus ride! We couldn't actually buy our own bus tickets because the banks were closed and we still didn't have any money, so the English girls lent us some cash. The next morning we set out for the final part of our three day tour, which was the trip to see the salt flats just outside the city. Essentially this is a natural area hundreds of kilometers long filled with salt. You can drive through the salt (which kind of looks like snow), walk on it, its amazing, but the pictures speak for themselves! Oh, and we were finally able to take money out of the bank: what a relief!!
That ended our tour and we left that night on the bus to La Paz. This bus was so bumpy (because it was night and there are no roads or street lights) that at times, we LITERALLY hit the ceiling. There were tons of people lying in the aisles and babies crying as well, which made it virtually impossible to sleep, despite the fact that this was an overnight bus.
So now we are in La Paz. Until next time....

love

Alice and Tova

Just A Quickie

Hey,

This is just a quick entry to make the two pictures that we just added make some sense! Last night we sent to the movies. They were playing two movies at the only movie theatre in town: "Memoirs of a Geisha" and the "Dick and Jane" movie (I can't remember the exact title in English). So we went into the theatre 15 mintues before the movie started to buy our tickets and maybe get some popcorn. We walked in and there were two older men standing in the lobbly looking at us like we were crazy. We asked them if we could buy a ticket and they said to come back in 15 minutes. So we came back in 15 minutes and they said we needed to wait for two more people to come to the movie because we were the only people who wanted to see it, and they need a minimum of four people to show the movie. So they told us to wait five minutes to see if anyone showed up. Luckily one other girl arrived and they, rather reluctantly, showed the movie. First of all, there was no popcorn or snacks of any kind, and the ticket was less about $1.50 Canadian. The theatre was totally ghetto, the seats were made out of wood, and some were totally broken, and there was no air conditioning, but this really noisy fan that blew air around. And there were no trailers before the movie.

After the movie we went out to dinner at a restaurant we found that had a local band playing traditional music. The band was really good, and the funnist part was, when the singer asked the different tables where they were from, the only people not from Argentina were us, and the table next to us who were from.... Canada!!! How crazy is that?!?!

love,

Alice and Tova

A show in a restaurant in Salta
The movie theatre in Salta....ghetto!