popping out for another walk 27th October - ........

Ben and I are about to set of tomorrow for a lost city in the jungle. Expected to take about 5 days, so i`ll be in touch when we get back.
O

Bogotá 22-26th October

I have been spending the last few days here in Bogotá, definitely the friendliest south American capital city i´ve been too and the most relaxed. I arrived on Wednesday and spent the day wandering around the old district of the city called la Candelaria. This is a network of old colonial streets and lanes, with the odd square dotted about. One of the squares near my hostel is the centre of emerald trading in Bogota, as well as numerous shops there a loads of esmerldos (emerald traders) in the square, looking rather shady in their all too shiny suits...
I took a trip into the northern part of the city on a fruitless search for an English language guide book to Columbia. The general feel of the city is very friendly, and the traffic is almost tame compared to normal South American standards.
The nest day I tried to go with a couple of guys from the hostel to the gold museum. It displays a lot of the gold that was plundered by the Spaniards from various ancient cities in Columbia. Unfortunately it was closed fro renovation, and the museum that a lot of the gold had been moved too was closed due the close proximity of a large demonstration. So instead of museums, we took a trip to cerro Montserrat reached by a cable ride ride high above the city. The view of the city is pretty stunning as the city is built almost up the sides of the mountains. Later on I took a trip to the police museum, which is actually part of the police headquarters. The police cadets have to spend some of their training being guides in the museum (I assume to help them learn their history), so I had my own personal guide Juan to take me round. It is full of interesting artifacts (well mainly guns etc), and has an exhibit detailing how they hunted down and killed Pablo Escobar, one of Columbia´s most notorious drug lords. They also have several walls full of mug shots of various drug cartel members, including a lot after they had been killed by the police!
Yesterday I went with a guy called Milo (from the hostel next door) to a town north of Bogotá called Zipaquirá. It is about 50km north of Bogotá and nearby is the worlds largest salt mountain. This mountain has been mined for several hundred years and is still working now. The most interesting part however is that a large part of the mine has been turned into religious shrines and also a huge underground cathedral. Again we had out own personal guide to take us around underground for about an hour, where we were almost completely alone. Most of the religious work has actually been constructed in the last 20 years and the showpiece is the huge cathedral. It occupies a cavern 75m long and 18m high, with huge supporting columns over 10m in diameter.
Today I visited the Botero Museum, which contains a large collection of both his work and other famous artists like Picasso and Monet. Botero is famous for painting everything fat, including copies of the Mona Lisa and the Sunflowers. Later on today I am going to head out to the airport to meet Ben. Quite exiting to have a family member coming out for a few weeks, tomorrow we are going to fly to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.
O

Máncora 16th-21st of October

Well I slowed down a lot in the last week, which is good really. I´ve pretty much had my fill of long distance buses now. I arrived in Mancora in the north of Peru last Thursday morning. It is a small beach town strung along the panamaricana. The main attraction is of course the beautiful beaches lying both north and south from the town, the warm water and year round sunshine. I was met of the bus by Jo (before she had to dash of to get to her voluntary work), a much better experience, than the usual stumble of a bus into an unknown town with unknown people. I happened to arrive on the same day as national awareness day for children with physical and mental disabilities, and as Jo and Mickey are working in a school for children with special needs, they were all taking part in a march through the middle of town in the morning. Later in the afternoon I went out to the school, as they were having a party both to celebrate the day and also it was the 6th birthday of the school. This meant lots of dancing (in which Jo and Micky were dragged up for pretty much every dance), a talent show done by the kids and cake!Later in the afternoon we took one of our many trips to the local beach. There are literally hundreds of pelicans fishing the waters near the beach, so when you are surfing you sometimes get within only a few feet of them which is actually a little scary (Pelicans are really big!).The next day the 3 of us went for a surf lesson with a guy called Robbie. He is a Peruvian/American ex pro surfer, who has decided to spend his retirement in Manocora, running a surf shop/school. He drove us out to a quite nearby beach, where we spent a few hours getting thoroughly knacked paddling around and attempting to catch some surf. Great fun though. Afterwards we went for lunch with Robbie and a local restaurant, where we could try all the local fish specialities. The most famous is a dish called Cerviche, which is basically raw fish and lime. Nice enough, but something i think i´ll only try once.....In the evening we met up with other Volunteers (from the states), who are also working in Mancora. Went out to experience a little bit of Mancora`s night life, but we were so tired from surfing we only lasted till about 1am.Saturday was a fairly lazy day. Starting on the beach for a few hours and then in the afternoon we took a trip out to some nearby hot springs. This involves hiring one of the moto taxis to drive the 30 mins out there, wait for an hour or so then drive back. Instead of taxis in Mancora, they have these moto taxis, which are very similar to the Tuk Tuks they have in Thailand. Its basically the front half of a motorbike, strapped onto a cart with seats and roof. Very unstable, especially when driven by drivers who seem to have an average age of about 12! anyway, we made it out there safely and had a nice time relaxing in the (supposedly mineral enriched) water. It is pretty much a muddy hole in the ground, but you can make face packs from the mud (supposedly good for the skin).On Sunday we took a wander south, beyond the fishing wharf to a very pretty palm lined beach. This is where all the posh hotels are, but fortunately they are mainly well disguised in the trees, so don`t spoil the view too much. Generally just lazed about, went swimming, built sand castles before heading back to Mancora at sunset.On Monday morning, Jo and Micky had school again. So I just went for another wander along the beach, this time in the less scenic northern direction. In the afternoon I went with Jo and Micky for the afternoon classes at the school. They seemed to only really have 1 hour of proper classes though, and then spent 2 hours doing sports outside. Very hot and tiring work, chasing them around. I think it was maybe their day for sports though.Come Tuesday morning it was time for me to get back on the road again, very sad to leave really, but they will be reunions again in December. First i took a bus to Tumbes on the Ecuadorian border, then changed to an international bus to Guayaquil. Going this way, is much safer than taking taxis and colectivos across the border as this one in particular has a pretty bad reputation. Once I had safely made it to Ecuadorian customs, i amazing bumped into those 3 Australians again! just to prove that it was indeed a dodgy border crossing, they informed me their taxi driver had driven them down an alley and charged them a ´special border tax´! they are heading to Columbia too, so maybe we`ll meet yet another time!I arrived in Guayaquil in the early evening and headed straight over to the airport. My flight o Bogota was a 6am, so i just set up camp in a secluded corner and tried to get a least a little bit of sleep, although they insisted on playing music out through the tannoy all night.So I have arrived safely here in Bogota, and will be here until Saturday when Ben arrives and we will head to the Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.
O

Map Update 15th October

Click on the image to get it full size

A brief visit to southern Peru 8th-14th of October

Last Tuesday I took a rather uncomfortable night bus to Arica on the Peruvian border, arriving there at about 7 the next morning. From there the easiest way to cross the border is to take a taxi (in this case a huge white Cadillac) across the border to Tacna in Peru. I shared this ride with 4 Austrian girls, who were also heading to Arequipa. We didn`t arrive in Arequipa until late afternoon, so I didn`t really have much time to see much there. I did manage to visit Juanita the ice princess though. Basically back in Inca times, they believed that the surrounding Volcanoes were in fact gods. These gods were capable of huge amounts of destruction if they were displeased, therefore the Incas appeased them by the means of human sacrifice. These were inevitably children, who would have to sometimes walk for over a month to reach the Volcano. They would then climb o he top (no mean feat), then they would drink Chicha to get drunk. Then finally they would basically get hit over the head with a big stick! before being buried on top of the mountain. In the mid nineties they found several preserved corpses up in the mountains, the most well preserved being Juanita. They keep her in a big transparent freezer, quite interesting stuff.The next day I set off of on a 3 day trek into the Colca Canyon (one of the words deepest, even deeper than the grand canyon in fact). several hours north of Arequipa. I was part of a group of 6 (Belgian, Swiss, Dutch, Canadian & Spanish), and our guide. The first day we descended into the canyon, starting at 3300m. It is incredibly steep descending, but the views are pretty incredible. Three are several villages scattered around the canyon, clinging to the steep sides. The only access to the canyon is by foot, so absolutely everything has to be brought in and out by mule, up and down an almost vertical 1200m wall. A lot of the villages still operate at subsistence level, still not using money but instead bartering for goods from other villages. The first night we stayed in a home stay in Cosñirhua (2600m). We actually ate Alpaca, but the lady of the house was actually preparing the local delicacy of` ´guinea pig´ while we were there. There were several running around in the house, and she just picked u the fattest couple and killed and de furred them right there!Next day we walked further down the canyon the the oasis at the bottom (2100m). On the way we visted a tiny museum displaying the Colca way of life. One of the best exhibits was a money container made from llama scrotum. Someone has thoughtfully put a swimming pool there, so it was very refreshing to be able to take a dip. We rested for several hours before starting the ascent out of the canyon later in the afternoon. 1200m of grueling climbing in the afternoon heat, very rewarding to reach the top though.The next day was meant to be spend making our way back to Arequipa. However we found out in the morning that a landslide had blocked the road and we might not be able to make it back out! fortunately they managed to clear it by lunchtime, meaning I could still make it back to take my night bus to Ica.However before I got my bus, i went back to my hostel to pick up some things I had left there. Here I managed to have another coincidental encounter with some guys I had met several weeks earlier. The evening before I took the boat from Puerto Natales, 3 Ozy guys turned up at my hostel and we ended up going out for some food together. Somehow we ended to end up in the same place a month later, once again I was about to leave the same evening so we just about had time to share another meal together.I arrived in Ica the following morning (Sunday), from which I took a short taxi out into the dessert to the small oasis ton of Huacachina. Now this is the most stereotypical dessert you are likely to find. The own is surrounded by huge sand dunes, starting literally at the back door of the hostel. The oasis has a palm tree flanked lagoon, adding to the effect. Unfortunately the Day I arrived I had to spend the whole day in bed sick. Although I never actually was sick, I felt to awful to really do anything. It was either the food I had the night before, or the fact that in the previous seven nights I had taken 3 night buses, trekked in and out of a canyon and slept in a different place every night. It has just been a bit of a manic jump to cross from Patagonia up to Peru, fro now on I am slowing down a bit though.Fortunately I woke up on Monday feeling much better. In the morning I went to a place called Paracas (near Pisco, famous for the alcoholic drink and being destroyed by an earthquake last year), from there I took a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands. They are a nature reserve with thousands of birds, Penguins and sea lions. You can get incredibly close on the small boats, and to be honest I was pretty surprised nobody on the boat got shat on by the circling birds. Apparently every few years people come out to collect the guano from the islands. It can be up to 1.5-2m deep! a lot of shit to shovel, but also the best natural fertiliser in the world.I got back to Haucachina about lunchtime. I climbed one of the local sand dunes, before taking a dun buggy trip in the afternoon. This involved haring around the sand dunes for a few hours in the buggy, being dropped of at the top of various dunes with sand boards and then picked up at the bottom. A pretty fun way to spend the afternoon really. I arrived in Lima early this afternoon. I´m not really planning on doing anything here. It is really a means to an end as tomorrow I will take a bus north to Mancora to meet Jo and Micky.
O

Viña and a dash north 3rd-7th of October

(the first pic are the switch backs coming over to Chile from Argentina)
I had a very enjoyable couple of days in Viña del Mar, enjoying the excellent hospitality of Claudio and his family (thanks again Claudio if you read this). On Friday evening we went for a drive down the coast to neighbouring Valparaiso. This is a big port city, which is basically Santiago's gateway to the ocean. Before the days of Panama this (like Punta Arenas) was a very important port for pacific trading. It sites on the hills right next to the shore, meaning that ones you are a few hundred metres back from the docks everything is on a hill. This means all the houses are literally built on top of each other and they is a very handy system of late 19th early 20th century elevators to take you up the hills. These are pretty much all funicular systems, in old wooden trains travelling between wooden lift houses at either end. All quite rickety, but a novel way of getting up and down a hill. On Saturday I wandered along the beach near Claudio´s house. Things are definitely starting to warm up now as I get further north with people even swimming in the sea. In the afternoon I went with Claudio and his wife Loreto for another visit to Valparaiso and a small drive along the coast. As well as wandering around the very picturesque barrios we visited visited the house of Pablo Naruda (one of Chile´s most famous poets), which had the most incredible views out over the city from his living room, bedroom and study. Later on we also rode another slightly more unique elevator, which involved walking about 100yards through a tunnel, before taking a lift straight up into a tower high above the houses below.Sunday was another day of long travel as I start my dash north to Peru. I had to endure another 24hy us ride up to a place called Calama, before changing bus to head over to San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis at the north end of the Atacama dessert (officially the driest place on earth). I am quite definitely in a completely different world than I was a few weeks ago now. gone are the glaciers and fjords, replaced scorched dry landscapes, with volcanoes and sand dunes. I arrived at about 10 on Monday morning, and in the afternoon I went to a place called death valley and another called valley de la lunar. The first should actually have been called mars valley (but due to a translating error it ended up at death), due to its mars like landscape. In the valley de la luna, it was possible to climb a giant sand dune to watch the sun go down over the dessert. Very pleasant although as soon as the sun disappears here it starts to get very cold (San Pedro is at 2400m altitude).Later on in the evening I went on a star gazing tour with a French astronomer called Allan. He came over to Chile quite a few years ago and set up a small astronomical research station here in San Pedro about 5 years ago. He is incredibly enthusiastic about the stars and getting very exited about an asteroid that was going to crash in the Sudan that night (unfortunately on the other side of the world so we couldn´t see it). He had a number of telescopes set up so we could look at things like the surface of the moon, being able to make out the craters and mountains very clearly (a lot better than my photo in fact). Also we could see Jupiter and one of its moons, various nebulae and even another galaxy!I didn´t gt to bed till half 12, which wasn´t very good for getting up at 3.45 to go on a trip to El Tatio Geysers. This are a couple of hours drive up in the mountains near Bolivia, and are most active before dawn hence the early start. However they are at about 4600m in altitude (the highest geyser field in the world), meaning that before dawn the temperature is -15 degrees! not great for standing outside in. Pretty spectacular though and we got to ave geyser hard boiled eggs for breakfast which was quite novel. Later on we went to some not quite warm enough to be good hot springs, still a dip was nice enough as long as you kept moving. On he way back to San Pedro we stopped in a village where we could by bbq llama, which I have to say is pretty tasty. I had a nice siesta this afternoon as I´m getting an overnight bus to Arica tonight, so tomorrow I will be in Peru!
O

A zig and zag though Argentina, 26th Sept - 3rd October

I only spent 1 night in San Martin, the next day heading south again, to Bariloche. I had always planned to go there, but also I knew that I could meet up with Robbie and Paul, two Irish guys I had met on the boat. I arrived quite late in the evening on Friday, so there as little t do apart from have a ´quiet drink´ with R&P and also another couple of Irish guys in the hostel. Things didnt end up quite so quite and I woke up feeling a little worse for wear on Saturday...Bariloche is a very scenic town in the Argentine lake district sitting on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi and also backing on to the parque national Nahuel Huapi (Argentina´s first national park). This means pretty great views across lakes to snow caped mountains etc. On Saturday I rented a mountain bike and spent a very pleasant afternoon cycling around ´el circito chico´, on road to Llao llao wets of Bariloche. Quite a hilly route, but there were lots of places to stop and various detours to little lakes and beaches. Also the best part was about 30 mins from home there was a cervizeria (micro brewery), so it was very nice t stop and enjoy a decent beer in the sunshine. On Sunday I took an organised tour (very little public transport unfortunately) into the national park. It involved several little treks to scenic waterfalls and the ´black glacier´. It is black because all of the mountains around Bariloche are Volcanoes, and this glacier easily picks up the black ash, therefore giving it its colour. I´m sure if i hadn´t already been in southern Patagonia this would have been quite impressive, but to be honest once you´ve seen ones like glacier Grey/Francais/Perito Moreno, its pretty hard to beat.On Monday I didn{t do anything too exiting apart from walk to a viewpoint just outside of town. In the evening I took an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn over on the Atlantic coast. It ended up being a very comfortable ride as I splashed out and went ´coche cama´ class, which meant a nice big individual seat and wine with dinner etc.I arrived in Puerto Madryn at about 7 in the morning and managed to get myself into a hostel and onto a tour of the Valdes Peninsular by half past 8. The sea around Puerto Madryn and the the Valdes Peninsular itself are completely packed with wildlife, and it this time of year it is particularly amazing. This is because the Southern Right Whale migrates here in the spring to mate and give birth. There are literally hundreds of them and they come right up to the shore, so you can stand on the beach and be literally a few metres away from these huge whales! From the peninsular I took a boat out into the gulf for whale watching. You end up just floating around for a while, but in the end we ended up seeing quite a lot and they even came right up and swan next to and under the boat. In the afternoon we carried on round the peninsular visiting both sea elephant and Magellanic penguin colonies (as well as spotting an Amadillo). The penguins have nly recently formed their colony and for some reason decided to make it right next to the road so you could literally walk to within a few feet of the penguins. On Wednesday it was time to take my longest bus so far, 24hours to Mendoza (with only semi-cama seats left..!). I managed to get a seat at the front on the top deck which made the ride a little more interesting. The view as you approach Mendoza is pretty amazing. The flat plains stretch for miles in front of you, then green mountains rise above the horizon, capped with clouds, then above them protrude the Andes proper with their huge snow capped peaks, stretching 1000m above the clouds. Once in Mendoza I set of to try and find the hostel I had stayed in when I was there last year. It is run by a really nice guy called Raul and his family, which consists of an undetermined number of children of various ages. I knew roughly where it was, but how I actually found it was that I saw his 1942 jeep parked outside (very unique!). He is a paragliding fanatic and uses the jeep to get around the mountains near Mendoza. Unfortunately when I asked his daughter if they had any space, she said they were full. I said that was a shame, as i had really enjoyed staying there a year earlier, at which point Raul emerged from the hostel and announced that he could make space in his room! so I ended up sharing a room with Raul and two of his sons. It was really nice to be welcomed into his home like that. In the afternoon I went tandem paragliding with Raul and his son Christian came too. Christian is really into acrobatic stuff so spent a lot of the time doing all sorts of crazy loops and twirls. Raul and I however had a rather more sedate time (apart from an aborted takeoff...), gliding above the ridge overlooking Mendoza. We even managed to share a thermal with 4 eagles, soaring to several hundred metres above the ridge. We stayed up for maybe 40-50 mins, and it was a perfect sunny day, so a very good remedy to my 24hr bus.This morning I took the bus across the Andes to Viña del Mar (near Santiago). However I had the most amazing coincidence when I was on my way to the bus in Mendoza bus station. As I was walking I looked across to a bench where a guy was sitting with a load of bags. I didn´t quite recognise him straight away as he didn´t have a beard, but then I realised it was Xavi one of the Spaniards I had met while trekking in the Torres del Paine. We managed to have a brief 5 minute reunion, before I had to get my bus. Pretty amazing we met each other as neither of us originally planned to come to Mendoza, also as it is several thousand miles from the Torres and 3 weeks since I last saw him.The bus ride over to Chile is pretty amazing. The mountains are incredible and once you cross into Chile the road descends very quickly with about 20 switch backs. From to top you can see all the lorries zig zagging their way down the mountain. So now i´m in Viña del Mar where I am kindly being put up for a couple of nights by Claudio Sacks and his wife. Very nice to be back in a home again after leaving Ushuaia 4 weeks ago.
O