Nasca Lines

Nasca's a bit of a hole really. It's small and a bit grubby. The Incas found it to be a bit of a bore too, apparently, so amused themselves by drawing big pictures in the desert.

We splashed out on a flight over the Nasca lines because that's the best way to get a good view and see a large number of figures. They're really cool. I was surprised at how visible and distinct the figures are.

I guess the coolest thing about them is the mystery. Why are they there? What do they mean? I wouldn't dare speculate, but I like the idea of ancient aliens best. Georgio's show is incredibly reliable and factual. http://www.facebook.com/ancientalienstheseries

Arequipa

I am overwhelmed by how beautiful Arequipa is. I am tempted to say that it's indescribable, but that would make it a pretty short post.

The main reason that tourists visit Arequipa is because it's the so-called gateway to the Colca Canyon where you can see condors in flight (more below). But the city itself is worth the trip to South America. It's that good.

The central city is a triumph of Spanish colonial architecture. If I was Spanish, I'd buy myself a big trumpet and march around town singing 'yay us, look at our fancy buildings'. The main square is surrounded on three sides by beautiful covered archways supported by countless pillars. (That's not quite true - I could count them. The number is definitely finite, and is probably less than a hundred. I could probably count that high in Spanish if I had some thinking time. It would have been far more accurate to have written that the square was surrounded by a finite and eminently countable number of pillars. That's still quite impressive). On the fourth side - or is it the first side? - stands a magnificent cathedral built of a pale grey volcanic rock. It is such a grand building that it could easily be a palace or, um... something like a palace.

We went and had a wander inside the cathedral. It was undergoing some restoration, so wasn't presented at its best, but it was still mighty impressive. We were lucky enough to be there while the choir was practicing. It made the atmosphere almost, well, religious. It was pretty cool.

But I haven't even got to the best bit yet - the incredible Santa Catalina monastery. The monastery has been open to the public since the 1970s. It was founded in the 1500s and has had nuns living there continuously ever since. They have retreated to a small section of the complex to allow visitors into the rest.

The buildings have been restored and are in excellent condition. They form part of a massive two hectare complex of chapels, prayer rooms, courtyards, orchards/groves, kitchens, washrooms and sleeping chambers. We visited in the late evening when the whole monastery was lit solely by candles and gas lamps. It was absolutely spectacular. We loved it so much that we braved the $15 entrance fee a second time a couple of days later. Go there.

While in Arequipa, we also went to see the Colca Canyon and the condors. We took an overnight tour into the canyon, which allowed us the luxury of spying on the condors both in the early evening and the following morning. They're massive birds and look amazing in flight. We also saw llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and lots of other fancy animals. The scenery was amazing too. The canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, the surrounding mountains are beautiful, and the whole valley is filled with Incan and pre-Incan ruins and terraced hillsides.

The area is a complete blast. We loved it.

Off to Nasca next.

Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol

We finally managed to escape from Sucre by air. Major roads all across the West of Bolivia were blockaded by striking miners. Apparently they think they deserve more than $3 a day, or something.

We were quite impressed with the extreme nature of the industrial action. It's such a contrast to the appalling situation in Australia where you have to have permission to commence industrial action such as wearing a badge of support, or not checking your email for an hour. So weak and pathetic.

The miners also like to wear their helmets when on strike and when they are in negotiations over their pay and conditions. It is a great show of solidarity, although I should note that the reason for the strikes is the disparity between pay and conditions in government and private mines.

So the result for us was that we couldn't get to the Bolivian salt plains at Uyuni or get out again. Instead we decided to skip that part of our plan and hope that we have time to go back in November on our way home. Our backup plan was to fly to La Paz (in a 19 seat Metroliner), then either bus to Lake Titicaca if the roads were open, or fly to Cusco. Luckily the road was open because the miners decided to have a break from striking over the weekend.

Being back in La Paz was exciting because it meant we could have some different food - Indian, Thai and some kind of non-Asian weird satay noodles. While the food wasn't as delicious as we'd hoped, it made a welcome change from potatoes, pizza and pasta which were particularly prevalent in Sucre. (I'd found 'Pad Thai' on a menu in Sucre, but it came out as spaghetti with broccoli, flavoured with curry powder).

The bus trip to Lake Titicaca was really beautiful. There were great views to the mountains, lots of lovely farm animals, and for the last couple of hours we were beside the lake. The bus trip is also broken up by a short ferry ride across the Straits of Tiquina (photo).

The bus takes you to Copacabana on the shores of the lake. It's a beautiful spot, but very heavily touristed. We were lucky to be there in low season so didn't have to fight it out for accommodation or a seat in a restaurant.

The restaurant we went to for dinner the first night was pretty funny. The guy serving (and seemingly running the place) was probably about 14 or 15 and was a bit freaked out with having tourists in his restaurant (although they had an English version of their menu so it can't be that unusual for him). What freaked him out even more was me ordering a vegetarian pizza with no cheese. He was dumbfounded. He checked a couple of times, then when it was apparent that I hadn't made a mistake he said, roughly "dude, that's not a pizza". They made it for us anyway; it was ok.

We stayed in Copacabana for a couple of nights before getting on one of the regular boats to Isla del Sol, home of the predominant Inca creation myth and some Incan and pre-Incan ruins. The island was beautiful and generally fantastic.

The boat takes about 2 hours to get to the north end of the island where we were met by a local Spanish-speaking guide and some pigs that live on the beach. Although it was possible to guide ourselves up to the Incan/pre-Incan ruins, we're glad we went with the guide. He had a lot of knowledge and history that was fascinating. In particular, he told us about a submerged pre-Incan temple just off the coast between three tiny islands. I bet there's buried treasure there. And probably evidence of ancient aliens.

We had the option of walking the length of the island (about 8km) to catch the boat from the south end. Once we'd finished pondering the ruins, there were only two and a half hours until the boat was due to leave, so we just caught it back at the north port instead. And hiking at that altitude's not as awesome as it might sound (between 3800 and 4100m above sea level). I'm gasping for breath just tying my shoelaces.

We got back to Copacabana around 5:15 pm, then boarded our bus for Arequipa, Peru shortly afterwards. I'm on the bus now. You're up to date.

Dinosaur footprints

I went on a short one-day trek to visit some incredible dinosaur footprints yesterday. There are literally thousands of footprints of several different types of dinosaur clearly visible on a vertical rock wall.

The footprints were exposed when the local cement factory chopped a huge chunk out of a hillside. Based on the geology in the area, the experts reckon there are likely to be thousands more footprints hidden in layers underneath. It's quite amazing really.

To view the footprints (from about 70m or so away), you go to a dinosaur museum. The museum is a hilarious farce. There are lifesized fibreglass models of various dinosaurs in a little park. To add to the experience, the curators have added sound effects of dinosaurs calling. Our guide kindly noted that the sound effects and the skin colour of the dinos were not 'real'. I know I was surprised.

After seeing the dinosaur footprints, the rest of the day was spent trekking through rural hills, purportedly to see 7 waterfalls. Unfortunately it's the dry season, and only one waterfall actually had water flowing over it.

But the waterfalls were really just incidental to the fun of walking through tiny villages, greeting the local dogs, and enjoying the views. Great day - photos to follow later.

(Update 25/09 - uploading photos from our camera to flickr is an incredibly slow chore with the upload speeds around these parts... I'm most likely to add photos once I'm back in Aus, if our camera doesn't get stolen in between times. Instead I have uploaded this photo of a woman and a pig, taken just hours after seeing dinosaur footprints. Their footprints could be just as archaelogically significant in a few million years, and you're seeing them NOW).

While I remember, there are a couple of bits and pieces I wanted to blog the shit out of just for Kirsten and I to remember some amusing stuff when we look back...

A middle-aged Englishman gave us the best cringe-laugh we've had in months. We were in a chocolate shop (delicious) along with this bumbling Brit and his travelling companions. As he was leaving, he decided to ask where the local market was. Speaking to the local Spanish-speaking staff, he asked loudly in English, with a pronounced southern accent "Market? Market? Stalls? Vegetables?" I can't imagine anyone who would know the word 'stalls' after not understanding the word 'market'. One of his buddies saved him by pulling the word 'mercado' out of nowhere.

Another thing that amused me greatly was a recent protest in Sucre. It was apparently a protest against racism, which of course is an honourable cause. What I particularly enjoyed was the frequent explosions of sticks of dynamite and burning of tyres in the street to make the point.

They seem to love a good protest here - we actually saw two unrelated protests bump into each other at an intersection. The police had to direct protests as if they were traffic.

At the same time, the roads into and out of La Paz are blocked indefinitely by striking miners.

Sucre

We moved into the apartment we had rented, but the place was a bit of a disaster. It hadn't been cleaned and the hot water was busted. It could have been ok if the owners had fixed these problems. Unfortunately, when we told them that it was dirty and needed a good clean, the owner's brother-in-law turned up with a cloth and told us we could have just bought it ourselves from the supermarket. We only realised a couple of days later, when no cleaner had turned up, that the gifted cloth was the solution to the cleaning problem.

And then there was the hot water: after a couple of days of being told that we just weren't doing it right, we left. It was a big relief.

Since moving into a hostal a few doors down we've been to see some incredible, colourful and energetic street parades for the Festival of the Virgen de Guadalupe. The festival seems like it's been going on for almost two weeks, but apparently all the music, fireworks, dancing and costumes until today have just been practices.

Some of the costumes are incredible. Kirsten reckons Lady Gaga must have got the ideas for her stage costumes from the Bolivian festival outfits. They are bright, sparkly, silky and extravagant. The dancing's pretty cool too; beyond description. I'm a much better spectator than I would be a participant.

I've read that there's another festival next weekend, so we'll have to dust off the camera for that. We're lucky to be here at such an exciting time of year. The attached photo is the only one I've been able to download so far - working on dialup speeds and losing patience!

La Paz, Sucre and fuked policemen

We had read and heard a lot of bad things about La Paz, so I guess we were always likely to be pleasantly surprised. I'd been totally paranoid about getting pickpocketed or having my bag slashed. I walked around the whole time wearing my big jacket with my money in an internal pocket and my bag strapped to my chest like a baby, despite it being uncomfortably warm. Unsurprisingly, we didn't have any problems and I felt like I was a disgrace to carefree backpacker culture.

We didn't do any sightseeing, but in  the short time we were in La Paz, we managed to visit Namas Té vegetarian restaurant twice. Vegan items are marked on the menu. Yay food. We'll probably go back for the delicious jugs of fresh juice next time we're passing through. Yummo. The food was ok, but not worthy of more than a few words: tacos, guacamole, chips, rissoles.

We pottered around for the day after checking out of our hotel. We were booked on an overnight bus to Sucre, so had time to waste until 7pm. We kept it low key - just wandered around, had coffee and food, then back to the hotel lobby to collect our bags and steal their WiFi.

The bus was quite modern and had fully reclining comfy seats (for anyone up to about 1.75m). They are a relatively necessary luxury for a 13 hour overnight trip. Even more necessary when 13 hours becomes 17 hours due to roadworks blocking the road for 4 hours from midnight. The bus just stopped, turned off the engine, and the driver said nothing. Ever. We only found out what was going on by overhearing key words from other passengers, like 'puta', 'cuatros horas' and 'blockiera'.

We got to Sucre around 1130am and went looking for a taxi. A helpful sign told us the maximum agreed fare to city addresses. It also warned us to beware of 'fuked policemen' who might ask for our passports in an attempt to steal them or our money. That would have been fuked for sure.

As a result of the bus delay, the woman who had been waiting to let us into our apartment wasn't there. This was inconvenient. We had a couple of phone numbers for her, but no phone to call from. We found a nearby hostel where the dude only spoke Spanish (how dare he?) and asked to use the phone. He was really helpful and tried the numbers we had. No answer.

We also had a number for a guy in the US who owns the place, but weren't going to ask the dude to call a US number out of charity, especially when we were unable to adequately explain why we were trying to make these calls. We decided to book into the hostel for the night. The dude showed us a double room with an ash tray in it. I told him we wanted non-smoking, so he showed us a twin room with an identical ash tray. We took it.

I tried to call the guy in the US from the hostel room, but international calling was blocked. So I went to the computer in the lobby to email him a revised plan. The internet was so slow it wouldn't load my hotmail account. Eventually I remembered that he had a web form to contact him with enquiries about the apartment. Thankfully it worked and he called me at the hostel to sort out access. Bit of a trial though.

We've just booked in for two weeks of Spanish lessons commencing Monday. Looking forward to being able to communicate a bit better and sit in one place while we get used to S. America.

Sleptomaniac -> Santiago -> La Paz

As anticipated, we had a trying last few days in Melbourne as we got ourselves organised to go. It was all very tiring. I managed to get an acid burn on my arm (from oven cleaner), a cut on my head (from banging it on a garage door), and a badly bruised elbow (from a washing machine incident).

We had some late nights and early starts for a wee while, stealing a few hours of sleep wherever we could. Then tried again to get some sleep on the flight to Santiago. I managed about an hour because the guy next to me seemed to think he had paid for a quarter of my seat too. No personal space. And he was smelly.

We arrived in Santiago a bit wasted. We got to our hotel about 1130am, then slept from 130pm until 630am the next morning. Stole almost a whole day of sleep.

Well rested, we headed straight for the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal to a big statue of the Virgin Mary. Unfortunately the funicular was undergoing repairs, so we had to walk up. The path up goes all the way around the hill, then zigzags up the side. And it's a long walk - 5km or so uphill. Most of that time the Virgin was out of sight - Kirsten reckoned she was playing hard to get.

The view from the top was smoggy and generally pants. But the walk was good.

The next morning we headed back to the airport to get our flight to La Paz. The drive from La Paz Airport down to the city was pretty amazing. This is a photo of the view that doesn't do it justice.

We head to Sucre tomorrow on the overnight bus. Looking forward to some Spanish lessons there.