This, everybody is the hairless Peruvian dog. Butt ugly at first sight, butt ugly always.... Especially this one, found in Trujillo, northern Peru. I don´t know why it´s got some hair on it´s head, other then to speculate that it is an old bastard.
I´ve been told that because these dogs are hairless, they absorb heat well. And that Peruvians use them as a hugging toy, believing that it would help with relieving stomach pain and in keeping warm!
But I just wiki this and apparently it is a myth.
This is Inca Kola, the biggest selling soft drink in Peru. Bigger then, believe it or not - Coca-Cola! Yes it´s true, every local you speak to will tell you so.
The colour is yellow (nice urine colour), and the taste is very bubble gummy. A bit of an acquired taste I say, but it does go down well with a meal. And it is a nice refreshing alternative to the Coke monster. To find out more visit their website (in Spanish)!
Incidentally, did you know Coca-Cola still purchase 115 tons of coca leaf from Peru and 105 tons of coca leaf from Bolivia yearly. However it is only used for the flavouring ingredient as part of the Coke formula. I found this interesting information out from the Coca Museum back in La Paz, Bolivia. :)
Here you have stage one of preparing the San Pedro cactus. We had to cut them up to pieces, remove the sharp thorns on the bark, before separating the bark from the flesh. You can see James and Laird hard at work here, and you can see there are a lot more to do in the big pot below.
Stage two, after boiling the San Pedro cactus for 1 1/2 days, we remove the bark and seperate the soft flesh beneath. Afterwards we had to chop it all up to ensure that it is nice and gooey. Here you see Laird not having the patience for the next stage and wanting his mouthfull NOW. :b
And here you have Peter pouring the final product into our mugs for consumption. This final stage took about 2 days to prepare, as boiling up the bark to soften and release it´s chemical was one long process. I can tell you drinking the juice of the cactus is a mission. I have never tasted anything worst... except deep fried cockroach! :b
I took this picture of Alex, the owner at "The Away Inn Lodge" as he was about to drink his San Pedro. He seem like he was in a trance, or saying a silent prayer before drinking. It was hilarious watching his reaction afterwards, as like I said before, this green goo is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted!
And this is me, lying down outside of the lodge. I must have been in the same position for 2 hours, waiting for the San Pedro effects to kick in, recording the feelings on my journal, and to prevent myself from throwing up. I had my shades on, my Sigor Ros playing on the iPod, and my tiger balm handy to sniff on whenever I felt like chugging!
I spent the last 4 days staying at the best guesthouse so far in my trip. The place was call "The Way Inn Lodge", and it is located 3,700 metres high, nearest town is Huaraz to the East. The lodge is set in a magnificent location. It is owned by an Englishman name Alex, whom hires a bunch of locals and foreigners to work for him.
When I was there, the manager was a 25 year old kiwi name Peter. And there was also a German, an Aussie and an American working. Up on the lodge you pay 28 sols (approx $8.50USD) for a dorm bed in a "cave", basically a room built into a rock with a very comfy bed, and breakfast.
I spent my days reading in the hammock, hiking up the mountains, bouldering on the many big rocks around the guesthouse, climbing on the artificial wall and on our last day. We tried something very cool call the San Pedro cactus. San Pedro cactus is an interesting hallucinogenic drug. It comes from the bark of this particular cactus, and is sold legally around town. Apparently the shamans in Peru uses it to induce their patients into a trance. But the group of us did it yesterday for fun and to discover it´s potent effect. Prior to consuming this we spent 2 nights preparing the plant, starting off with chopping up the bark, peeling the flesh from the bark, then boiling the bark for 24 hours, before separating more flesh from the bark, and re-boiling the lot for another 12 hours.
It was finally prepared yesterday afternoon, the substances remain from it is a nasty looking smelly sticky greenish goo. And man can I say this is the most disgusting thing I have ever tried in my life! Just sipping the goo made me want to throw up. And after drinking the content I had to lie down for 2 hours, listening to music and sniffing my tiger balm to stop me from wanting to throw up. Some other guest did threw up, but we were told the effects would be weaker. Within an hour the hallucination started. It came on pretty strong and I was seeing all kind´s of pictures with my eyes.
The colours were vivid, everything was rich with texture and swivelling in my head, kind of like looking at a magic eye. Other effects were talking nonsense and laughing at the tinniest thing. So as expected, everybody had a grand time! :) Peter and Alex were out on the field throwing javelins at each other and doing all sort of kong fu moves. An Alaskan couple checked out the hot sauna, whilst Laird and I went hiking around the bush for the beautiful scenery. I also tried noting down the experience into my journal, on an hourly basis. But I only manage to get up to the third hour before needing to stop, as by then I was having trouble trying to write in a straight line, the letters and the page were all jumping out at me! Heheheh it was all very funny indeed.
The trip lasted till night time, and I must say the sun set yesterday was one of the most impressive I have seen. The colours on the skies kept changing colours, the snow cap peaks grew pink, and the city lights in the valley below lit up like a dancing with lights seen from shore. We started a fire and basically chatted until the effects went off. In the end he trip lasted almost 10 hours. What an amazing experience it all was!
I am in Lima now, the capital of Peru. I spent yesterday walking the central, and covered only a little bit of it. Lima is one big spread out city. You need a bus or taxi just to get anywhere.
It is also constantly covered under a thick sea fog between May and November, therefore giving it a real grey and drab look. However Lima is also one happening place, with a population of 7 million there are people everywhere, young and old, shouting their warez, shopping, hanging out, enjoying their weekend...
The highlight for me (as in most cities) was the central market. I love wondering through looking at the shoppers and seeing the warez for sale, especially fresh produce like fruits, veges, meat and seafood. And the lovely seafood!!! Lima is a coastal city like Auckland, so the seafood are very fresh and very cheap. My mouth was watering as I walked outta there...
And guess what was next to the central market? Lima´s massive China town! Yes they call it Bario China here. And the entrance comes complete with a big arch. Donated by the Chinese government back in 1997. According to my guide book back in the 1800´s around 200,000 Chinese from Canton and Fujian province migrated to Lima, and currently there are around 1 million Chinese decedents living in Lima. Incredible aye? So walking through China town I can hear Cantonese being spoken everywhere, and see yummy Chinese food on the windows of the restaurants, such as roast duck, BBQ pork, pastries of every kind and dim sums!
Yes hot yummy dim sum! Within minutes I found myself seated inside "Salon Capon", the biggest and fanciest looking Chinese restaurant in town. Inside they had more waiters then lunchers. And I sat down to order my dim sum. I ate Siew Mai, Har Kao and Chechong-fun. The Har Kao was a real delight, the prawn inside was both huge and super fresh!
Wow! I haven´t had yum char since... KK in Elleslie over 10 weeks ago! So this was pure bliss... I ended up in the restaurant for 2 hours, reading my book, drinking endless cups of tea and eating my 3 dishes. hahahahahah!
I visited Ica the other day, one of the places effected by the massive earthquake 2 weeks ago. Ica seem normal to me, with only slight visible damage such as a crack wall here and there.
But the following day I went through Pisco, on my way north to Lima. And the first thing that I encounter were a bunch of kids sticking up a big long wooden stick with half a plastic bottle cut out to collect donations from the passengers. The scene in the city was devastating. Big 4 stories houses crumbled to the floor, debris everywhere, bridge damaged, cracks on road surface and power pylons fallen.
However I can see that people are trying to get their lives back in order. The electricity is up, water is running, public transport are moving about, people have been organize into work groups, collecting debris into one pile, lots of building being repaired and lots more colourful tents sitting outside their properties.
On my bus I was seated beside a man from Pisco, who left with his family to Ica after the earthquake. He show me photos of Pisco on his PDA of the destruction, and as we flick through them a photo of his dead mum was shown. I was pretty shock, as this guy who seem quite relax and happy to talk to me and show me the photos seem to have not just got over the destruction of his house, but also the death of his mother. I guess people here just want to move on and rebuild their lives.
I visited the Chauchilla Cemetery whilst in Nazca. This cemetery was looted by grave robbers of it's treasures, leaving the mummies to hang about. As you can see in the photo the mummies are all place in a fetal position in a shallow grave. There are also fragments of bones, human hair and broken pieces of pottery to around. The mummies have been dated back to 1000 AD!
The whole area is pretty desolated, as the landscape is desert like, with high sand dunes and very little vegetation. How the grave robbers found this site is a mystery to me. It all look a bit morbid to our little group (2 English, 2 Dutch and me) of backpackers.
That´s me and my pilot straight after my fourth barf. Yup, that brown stuff in the plastic bag was all me! And I am proud to say that I am the only one out of six to have done this. I felt sorry for my co-passengers but I can explain!
I just got out of a 9 hours overnight bus ride this morning with little sleep, and ate breakfast just before boarding the flight at 8am. It was one of those things, I plan to do the flight tomorrow morning but got a great deal at the hostel (40USD instead of 55USD) so I jumped and suffered the consequences! :o)
Look closely at this picture and you will see the drawing of a monkey with a long curling tail. The second drawing shows a humming bird facing upwards.
This is the famous Nazca lines which I flew over this morning on a little Cessna 6 seater plane. We saw a number of drawings including a whale, triangles, trapezoid, astronaut, a pair of hands, dog, monkey, condor, tree, spider, humming bird, Alcatraz and parrot.
All these patterns can only be seen from above, and yet they were made by Pre Inca Nazca culture between 300 BC and 700 AD. Amazing huh?
Apparently scientist are still studying the drawings and coming to their own conclusion. We saw a video which portrays the lines as a way in appeasing the Gods to rain on the region, as Nazca is an arid, dry and desolated area full of sand dunes. In fact, the highest sand dune in the world is here, sitting at 2078 metres!
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG! I finally got to climb, after a massive 2 months absence I am back!!!! And today, me and my guide German (pronounced "Herman"), checked out a local canyon at a district name Calambucos, about 20 minutes away from Arequipa.
At first sight the canyon looks amazing, it is high and steep, at up to 80 metres from the ground up. But we approach it from above, so we found a lower spot and had to abseil (aka rappelling) 60 metres to touch the bottom. We did this over three stages which was pretty thrilling.
But disaster struck as soon as I made my first abseil (and waving to the camera for the above photo!). My bloody daisy chain broke!!!!!!! It was hook to my bina and to the belay rope, and I still had 15 metres to go so it was a very tense moment. I manage to get down ok after literally lowering myself down the rope! On the second photo you can see German abseiling down the steep face.
But we recovered, and carry on with our climb once we reach the valley below. I only did 2 climbs today, the first climb was called "Cho Cho Loco" which literally mean "Crazy Cho", somebody´s name I guess! It is a 6A climb and is 25 metres. There were enough holds for me so it wasn´t too bad, but the granite wall was slippery as hell so I had to be very careful with my feet. The second climb was a goodie! It is call "La Calavera", and German mumble something about it name after a human skull. Yicks! It is a 6 climb and is 50 metres high, therefore it is a multi pitch climb. THIS IS MY VERY FIRST MULTI PITCH CLIMB AND I WAS EXCITED AS HELL!!!! For those who don´t know what that is, it means you climb up halfway, gather your ropes and continue with the rest of the climb whilst your partner belays you from the halfway point.
I didn´t fall off once, but then again German did the lead since I need to learn how to belay from above. But man oh man, the second disaster struck after we got to the top. We could not get back down!!!! German only had a 50 metres rope and it wasn´t touching the ground like we wanted. So we had to climb up the canyon and find an alternative route down. It was one of the shittiest walk I had to do as I was wearing my climbing shoes, by the time we got back down (it took just as long to go down as to go up!) my toes were all blistered and bloodied from the shoes.
Never mind, it was a good day for me. I really enjoy getting outside and practising my hobby! And as we were so high up, the view from above was fantastic! The last photo shows the perfect cone shape volcano Mount Misti (5822 metres) in the background. Followed by our canyon in the middle and yours truly posing with way too much sun block and Snickers chocolate stain in my teeth, along with German.
On a side note, German is only the second person I know who was born on the same day, month and year as me!!! The difference is he is married with 10 kids... :p
I´ve seen many claims in my travels, it usually goes something like we got the biggest cave, the tallest tower, the biggest city, the longest river, the highest lake, and the deepest canyon. I am in Arequipa now, a beautiful town surrounded by 5000-6000 metres mountains and volcanoes, some of them snow capped. Anyway on Sunday I went to visit the Colca Canyon, 160km northwest of Arequipa and touted as the deepest canyon in the world.
I was a little sceptical by that claim as I have visited other canyons which claim to be the deepest (Kali Gandaki Gorge in Nepal and the Tiger Leaping Gorge in China springs to mind). So before visiting it I did a quick Wiki for answers. And guess what? The deepest canyon in the world is located in Tibet, known as the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, followed by the Kali Gandaki Gorge in second place!
Still, I was pretty impress by Colca Canyon, as it has snow cap peaks above, and pre-inca steeped terraces down below. All in all the height from top to bottom is at 3,269 metres. And you can see all of it standing on the edge!
The other amazing thing to watch at the Colca Canyon are the Andean Condors, which soars up during the morning following the rising warm air. These amazingly birds with their massive wingspan flew so close to us as they follow the thermals that I reckon they are checking the visitors out as much as us looking on in awe.
This is a serve at a restaurant with the sign "Mariscos" outside, pretty much meaning seafood. Any kind of seafood! I have been dying for decent seafood after being in high altitude for so long.
For this dish I was served prawn, fish, octopus, squid and shellfish. It was massive, delicious and cost all of 5USD!!! Yummy!
Only complain I have is the bland salad side and why does everything comes with fries?
Guinea pig (aka "cuy" in Spanish), roasted and found on the streets of Urubamba.
I visited the main Cathedral in Cuzco today, and saw a painting of the last supper, with the main dish being the "cuy"!
How fuckin cool is this combi? It´s been converted, and sits on the rails in Aguas Caliente, the town of Machu Picchu. And this baby truely works! I saw it move and it´s flash lights going off whilst in town.
I POO ON THE RUINS! :b
In terms of my rip of or fair call comments. I feel it the 40USD entrance fee is fair enough. But to get there you must take the train, and that is where I feel we foreigners are being ripped. The actual train journey from Cuzco to Machu Picchu would have cost over 120USD! A local would only pay 5USD for that same journey.
So I tried to lower the cost by catching 2 local buses to the nearest town to Machu Picchu, a town call Ollantaytambo. This town is only 40 km away from Machu Picchu, but I still had to pay 77USD for the return ticket. It hurts when you are trying to live on a shoe-string budget like me. :(
