Day 110: Last Tango in Buenos Aires

This final epistle is being written on the way to the airport in Buenos Aires so it may only get sent after we are safely back on Australian soil. Sixteen weeks seems like a long time, but it really has flown by. And we somehow managed to survive the experience without killing ourselves or each other - bonus!

In our last week on the continent, we headed north-west from Buenos Aires, first to Cordoba, then further north to Salta.

Cordoba used to be the capital city of Argentina until it was moved to Buenos Aires some time ago. Now, it is a bit of a university city. We liked the feel of the place - friendly people, nice weather, and lots of sleepy little towns nearby. We visited one called Jesus Maria which has an old Jesuit mission where they used to grow and sell wine to raise funds for their university in Cordoba after the Catholic church cut off funding. David was very impressed with their water engineering capabilities, as always.

Salta was another long bus ride north. It is even more relaxed, less built up, and contained a cool museum with another frozen ice maiden - a 16-year old girl sacrificed on the top of a volcano about 600 years ago. She has been amazingly well preserved by the freezing conditions. As David said, her skin looked better than ours.

After Salta, we headed back to Buenos Aires via another 19-hour bus. We have calculated that on this trip we have done 15 overnight busses, as well as several other long day busses, meaning that of our 16 weeks in South America, about three were spent in transit between one point
and another.

Anyway, after a short day in BA (our fourth visit, for those keeping score) we jumped on a ferry and added our final country to the list.

Uruguy is a one-hour boat ride from Buenos Aires. We went to a sleepy little town called Colonia. It was passed between the Spanish and Portugues several times, then claimed by Brazil for several years, before finally Uruguy became an independant country and things settled down a bit. There is little Portuguese left in the language, but there are some old buildings around the place, mixed in with some Spanish and more modern architecture. Definitely worth visiting if you have a spare day in BA.

On the ferry we met a British woman who has been studying Tango for three years in BA. She gave us some tips for seeing some good local dancing, so the next night we headed out at about 1am to Salon Canning for a milonga. This is essentially a public dance hall, tango style, with a large square dance floor in the centre of the room, and tables crowded around the sides. Through the night, the floor is filled with couples, generally looking somber and pensive (this is tango, after all), punctuated by several great performances by individual professional couples.

Having been warned in no uncertain terms by our British friend to stay off the dance floor under all circumstances, even if approached by attractive young women (an event which unfortunately did not come to pass), we instead decided to have a lesson instead. The next evening we headed to the National Academy of Tango and got a three-hour lesson for 15 Argentine Pesos (about AU$6). when we arrived, there were about 7 guys and two girls. Que pasa?

Anyway, our teacher was a pro, and managed to teach us a few steps without resorting to any single-gender partners (a couple of extra ladies arrived late, and the guys got to take breaks). As to the quality of the dancing I will not comment, but not too many toes were stood on.

Today, we return to Australia, flying over Antarctica on the way. It has been a pleasure having you all on board, and we hope you have enjoyed the ride. We certainly did. Until the next epic journey, we will bid you adeu.

Hasta luego,

Los Davides

Day 102: The end of the world

We are down to one week and change left on The Trip. The last week was spent in Patagonia, in the southernmost part of South America.

Getting there from Buenos Aieres is either a 50+ bus ride or a 2 hour plane ride. Given the time remaining to us, we took the latter option (we even got to earn frequent flyer points!).

The first stop was El Calafate. Apparently, the calafate plant has a berry which was used to seal between the planks of wooden boats, back in the day. Now, the town serves as a transport hub for the area, as well as providing access to the spectacular Perito Moreno glacier.

The glacier is a massive sheet of moving blue-tinged ice, about 5km wide at the base, 32km long, and ranging from 40m to 60m high (about 20 stories!), all of which is moving downhill at a rate of 2m per day. The whole time we were there we could hear loud cracking noises, sometimes accompanied by a chunk of ice falling away from the edge of the glacier, into the surrounding lake. The best were at the beginning and end of our stay, when two house-sized blocks ripped themselves off into a slow, melty death, much to the delight of everyone in attendance.

The next day we headed up north a little to El Chalten, home of the Fitz Roy, a unique-looking peak which was not conquered until a decade after Everest. Being the avid mountain climbers we are, we decided not to attempt the summit this time. We did, however, do a couple of less
techical hikes.

Note: Contrary to the impression you may have gotten based on the number of treks we have done on this trip (at least 6 at last count), we are not actally big fans of the activity. However, if you come to South America they pretty much come with the territory. If on the other hand you do like hiking, go and book your tickets now!

Anyway, the first day we did a 6-hour warmup trek to Lago Torre (Tower Lake). Once we got there, we both agreed that the view from the lookout a hour-and-a-half earlier was actually much better. But Dave took the opportunity to strip down to his boxers and a t-shirt and attempt to ride an undersized iceberg anyway, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

The next day we set out for Lago de los Tres (Lake of the Three. Three what or who, we never established). This one was about 8 hours, but much harder, mostly due to the long, steep hill you have to climb at the end. It jumps up 400m over about 2km, which kind of sucks after doing the same height over the previous 6km. Not to mention the intermittent rain and strong, gusty wind. Ah, hiking - gotta love it.

Anyway, we finally made it to the top, to discover that, as suspected, Fitz Roy was covered in cloud. Shortly after, we further discovered that the clouds were in fact full of snow, which they then proceeded to release upon us. Still, snow is better than rain, so in many ways this was an improvement anyway.

We headed back to El Calafate the next day, and from there did an 18-hour tour of the Torres del Paine national park, in neighbouring Chile. This park really deserved more time than that, particularly if you are a hiker, but: a) we didn't have time, and b) we are not hikers. Instead, we spent about 12 hours on the bus, 4 hours in the park, and 2 hours in the Argentine and Chilean border control offices. Still, it was worth the trip, particularly for Dave Cohen, who got to see over 30 condors - his favourite bird - in one spot!

The next day we flew into Ushuaia. Famous mostly for being at the bottom end of the world, it also serves as a departure point for travellers heading towards the real bottom of the world - Antarctica. We had a quick check to see if any cheap last-minute tickets were on the go, which there were, but only if you consider US$4,000 to be cheap. Unfortunately, it wouldn't quite fit into our budget this time...

Instead, we caught a shorter (and much more economical) boat ride down the Beagle Channel, spotting some interesting landscapes and animals, including cormorants, sea lions and penguines. Those little guys might waddle around on land, but they're pretty zippy under water.

We rounded out our Ushaia visit with yet another hike (only a couple of hours this time), a visit to the Maritime Museum, and attending a local church service. Fun!

The next day we caught a plane back to Buenos Aires, then a bus straight out of town to Cordoba, in the central north of Argentina. We are here until tomorrow, then head to Salta (probably).

In any case, that about wraps it up for this round. Only one or two more to go, I'm afraid.

Hasta luego!

Los Davides

Day 93, Part 2: Las playas, los carnavales, y las cataratas

(Note: due to an accidental button-push, this update is now in two parts.)

The remainder of our stay in Salvador mainly consisted of various periods of trying and failing to stay awake until catching our flight to Rio de Janeiro later that morning.

Rio was our third, and best carnaval experience. This may have been aided by the fact that we were able to hang out with some friends who could take us around to the good places. Not to mention that they had also arranged accommodation for our three nights in town, a fact we were now extremely grateful for.

After crashing out for a couple of hours, we headed out to a bloco, Rio-style. As in Salvador, it was a big truck with speakers and a live band, but this one was open to whoever wanted to go, and had a much better vibe.

The next day, we attempted to visit the 30-metre tall statue of Jesus, but getting tickets for the train to the top of the hill that day turned out to be impossible, so we headed to the 'Sugarloaf', a big chunk of rock sticking out of the coastline with a great view of the city.

After seeing some of the famous Samba Parade on TV, we decided to see if we could get in the next night to see it live. Eventually we found somewhere which had some available. Tickets go for up to AU $700 each, or much more than that if you get a private box, but we snagged some in the public section for a fraction of that.

The Samba Parade is actually a competition between 12 different samba schools. Over two nights each school dances their way down a 1.5km strip, lined by grandstands. Each school takes up to an hour and a half each, and has thousands of people, so each night starts at about 9pm and finishes at around 6am. Most people pay to join in, and mostly wear large, colourful costumes, shuffling down the strip, and paying a few hundred dollars each to buy their costumes. The various blocks of costumed performers are punctuated by huge floats with more skilled performers. And the whole time, the unique song for each school is being sung on a loop by the tireless musicians, and occasionally by the crowd.

We ended up bailing during the second-last school, at around 3am, and made it home by about 4. All in all, a fun night out.

Over the next couple of days we saw bit more of Rio, and finally made it to see Jesus (which is a pretty impressive statue). On the 25th, we finally got in a swim at Copacobana, said goodbye to our friends, and headed to the airport. Our destination:

Word 3: Las cataratas
Definition: The waterfalls

The Iguasu Falls are located at the corner of three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The former two have the views of the falls, no doubt much to the chagrin of Paraguay. It worked out well for us, since for some reason Australians require a visa to get into Paraguay, and we didn't have one.

The first day, we visited the Brazilian side. For the most part, this turned out to be less impressive than we had expected, but it was still pretty. Snr. Cohen decided to take a hellicopter ride at the end of the day, and enjoyed himself thoroughly - his fist one ever, apparently. At the end of the day, we skipped over the border into Argentina, and just like that our time in Brazil was over. It was a little bit odd to be back in a Spanish-speaking country again, and we are still working on excorcising the smattering of Portuguese we picked up From our vocabulary.

The Argentinian side of the Falls turned out to be much more impressive. First we visited the Gargatua del Diablo (Throat of the Devil), which has a huge amount of water flowing over it. Next was the Circuito Superior (Upper Circuit), which goes over the top of the smaller, but longer string of falls, then the Circuito Inferior (Lower Circuit), which provided views from the bottom of the falls.

At the river, we hopped on a speedboat, which took us for a short tour of the falls, and then right under on of the biggest - twice! It was a blast! Hopefully the video will make it onto YouTube for general consumpion at some point.

That night we hopped on an overnight bus to Buenos Aires. We caught a tango show last night, which was fun. Andrew headed off to back to the States tonight, and tomorrow Los Dos Davides are back on their own, flying down to Patagonia, in the southernmost part of the continent. It is going to be a bit chilly, we fear...

Well, now it is time for dinner, so for now, hasta luego!

Los Davides (plus one)

Day 93, Part 1: Las playas, los carnivales, y las cataratas

Well, the end of our epic journey is rapidly approaching. In a little over two weeks, we will be back in Buenos Aires hopping aboard a flight back to Sydney. Time flies...

Anyway, today's update has a short Spanish lesson.

Word 1: Las playas
Definition: The beaches

In the last update, we were in Jericoacoara, awaiting the impending arrival of my brother Andrew (from Australia, via New Zealand, LA, Atlanta, Recife and Fortaleza - urg...). We managed to meet him successfully, and we've been travelling together since then. In fact, he is about to jump on a plane back to the States, joining a cruise ship to Mexico for his class reunion. Don't you wish you were in his class?

Anyway, we chilled out successfully in Jeri for another couple of days, managing to squeeze in a couple of swims and a game of soccer on the beach with some of the locals (our team won, believe it or not). Once we had fully relaxed, it was time to jump back on a long bus
ride, this time heading for...

Word 2: Los carnivales
Definition: The carnivals

Our first carnaval experience was in a town called Olinda, just north of the larger city of Recife, in north-eastern Brazil. Olinda has a nice historical centre, and a very friendly carnival. We were there for three days leading up to the official start of carnaval, and each night the vibe of the town was getting more and more excited. There were several street parades, and one in particular with a group about 20 drummers, 20 percussionists, and 20 dancers, all of whom happened to be female (this fact did not effect our bias whatsoever). And each night there was a free concert, mostly made up of musicians in their 50's (or later). Apparently the good Carnival music has been around for a while...

Next, we pulled what we now refer to as 'The Salvador Stunt'. We were going to be in Salvador for the first official night of Carnaval, but we didn't have any accommodation booked, partly because it was expensive, and partly because we had a couple of contacts who we hoped would hook us up. This didn't end up working out, so we decided to revert to our uni days and attempt an all-nighter.

Unfortunately, it turned out that we didn't really like the Salvador style of Carnaval, which seems to consist of rock bands perched on top of big trucks which are about 80% loud-speaker, all at 110% volume. These 'blocos' move around a loop, followed by people who have paid up to AU$1,000 for the priviledge of owning a brightly coloured t-shirt (the same as their fellow bloco members), surrounded by a large rope around the truck and the followers, and watched by people on ground-level (known as 'popcorn') and others perched high in balconies in the surrounding buildings.

After a couple of hours of being popcorn, we decided to cut our losses and worked on killing time in other creative ways. Our primary strategy was 24-hour fast-food restaurants. First, we hit Subway, but discovered that the special Carnaval prices were too much for us. On the way out, we bumped into a guy who was offering massages for 1 Real (about AU$0.67) per minute. We weren't really interested in a massage, but still had about 12 hours to kill, so we chatted with him for about an hour or so, after which we felt kind of obligated to actually pay for his time. A really good ten-minute massage each later, we were feeling relaxed and refreshed, and ready for the next stage of the plan: McDonalds.

We arrived, made the obligatory bathroom stop, and ordered a meal. Three hours later, we were running out of conversation points and started noticing that there were less and less people in the restaurant. It turns out that contrary to our earlier impression from a Portuguese-speaking attendant, the main restaurant was in fact NOT open for 24 hours.

For lack of a better place to go, and encouraged by the rain now falling outside, we decided to see how long we could stay inside before we were kicked out by an irate staff member. Our strategy involved not leaving our seats, and avoiding eye contact with all employees. The drive-through stayed open, so several staff stuck around, and so did we. At about 2am, the manager started removing the tables from the room, often having to snap them off the rusted bolts that were holding them onto the floor.

This seemed like a somewhat odd thing to be doing, but we stuck around anyway, until we were sitting at pretty much the only table still standing.

Deciding that our options were fairly limited at this point, we finally gave up our table to the wrecking crew. The staff turned out to me pretty friendly, and the manager even gave us a quick samba lesson (conclusion: Brazilians are good, we suck), and we moved on - back to Subway.

Day 77: Jungles, rivers and beaches

Well, it's been a while since the last update, and as some of you may have notice, it was actually sent 5 days late anyway. It was written on my iPhone, but we didn't get access to send it until after the jungle tour.

In any case, there is a lot of ground to cover, so brace yourselves.I'll try to keep it brief.

After São Paulo, we headed to the city of Manaus, capital of the Amazonias province. As with all the cities in Brazil so far, we were surprised by the size of the place. We were expecting a smallish city, but it would probably be at least as big as Brisbane, and most likely with two or three times as many people.

The next morning, we set out into the Amazon jungle for a 5-day tour/4-night tour. Our guide's name was Tarzan. Yes, that was really his name. He lived up to it too - just a little bit crazy, but in a good way.

The river was our main conduit, and we spent a lot of time in little boats going from one place to the next. We spent two nights in a 'jungle lodge' (i.e. an actual bed, a roof over our heads and a shower!) and two out in the jungle, on hammocks under big sheets of black plastic. In between, we saw alligators, sloths, pirrhana, monkeys, jungle cats, poisonous frogs, venomous snakes, pink dolphins, tarantulas and lots and lots of bugs.

On the first two nights we were with a British couple, and for the last two we were on our own - a private tour! We managed to get completely drenched while stuck in the boat on the way to the first night in the jungle, and it took another couple of days to dry out fully. The next night, the British couple headed back, and we went deeper into the jungle. We even caught our own dinner - pirhhana.

After the tour, we jumped on a boat to the coast, to a city named Belém. The 4-day journey was very relaxed - there was pretty much nothing to do other than chill out, read books, and play dominoes with the locals. The busiest we got was when stopping in a town called Santarem. We were going to be in port for about 6 hours, so we caught a bus out of town to a beach on the Amazon river. After a 45 minute bus ride, we finally made it. It turned out to be a small island made of sand, about 50 metres out into the river, complete with thatched-roof huts, umbrellas and kayaks. We got there by a short boat ride, and we just chilled out for an hour or so. We left ourselves about 2 and a half hours to get back. This turned out to be only just suffient. The bus we were catching was about an hour late, and we got back into town with about 5 minutes to spare. After catching a taxi that then got lost, we finally made it back with about 1 minute to spare, and discovered that the boat would not be leaving until two hours later.

After arriving in Belém, we caught a plane to São Luis, then a bus to the town of Barreirinhas, near the national park of Lençóis Maranhenses. This park contains some unique sand dunes, which have lagoons of fresh water. You can even swim in them, and get nibbled by small fish. Fun!

From there we headed to a beach called Jericoacoara.The journey took a day and a half, and included two jeep rides, two busses and another jeep ride along the beach. Despite the fact that the last jeep had a leak in the fuel line and the new fuel tank was a big container in the front passenger seat, we made it safely to Jeri and are now chilling out as much as possible.

This afternoon we should be meeting my brother Andrew, who will be with us for the next couple of weeks. It will be good for both of us to have some news from home and someone else to tell all our old jokes to.

Anyway, for now, hasta luego amigos!

Los Davides

Day 62: Adiós Perú, ola Brasil!

Since this edition is being written on my iPhone while waiting for our flight to Manaus, in the Amazonia region of Brazil, there are three immediate consequences:

1. I can't check exactly where the last place we wrote from was,
2. There won't be any pretty photos on this edition, and
3. This one may be a lot shorter than usual.

No promises however...

I believe we were in Arequipa, Chile's second largest city, behind Lima, and home to the frozen Incan mummy named Juanita. She was found at the top of a volcano in 1996, and died around 500 years ago at the age of about 11 or 12. The one-hour tour is highly recommended if you are ever in town.

From there we headed to Nazca, home of the famous Nazca Lines. These are giant outlines of animals, such as the monkey, whale, humming bird, and spider, as well as geometric shapes, including triangles, trapezoids and rectangles. They were created somewhere around 500AD, and are only visible from the sky, leadomg to mich speculation about why they were created, ranging from religion to aliens. They were rediscovered in the late 1930's when commercial flights began in the area.

Nazca also has an interesting cemetery nearby, dating back about 1,000 years. It contains dozens of mummified remains in underground crypts. The area has been scavenged repeatedly by tomb raiders (not Lara Croft though, apparently), and as a result there are bone fragments and bits of clothing scattered around the landscape. There are a few tombs which were relatively undamaged however, and they contain well preserved mummies of adults, who often still had 2-metre long ponytails, and infants, several of which had a 'false head' because their real one had been removed in a sacrifice.

There was also another place nearby with an aqueduct system, and deep circular holes down to the water. You can ask Dave 'Water Engineer' Cohen for more details if you are interested.

After Nazca, we headed for Lima, where we would be catching our flight into Brazil. After arriving by bus at about 6am, we managed to track down a dodgy hotel to dump our belongings in, and headed out.

It was a pretty cruisy day all up, starting with a tour of the catacombs beneath the San Francisco church (containing bones from over 20,000 people), followed by a visit to the national library (Snr. Cohen wanted to research the Inca, and then took a nap), the Museo de la Nacion (lots of pottery and artwork), and finally sushi with a friend we met in Cuzco and eight of her acquaintances.

The next day, we headed to the ariport for the 5-hour flight to São Paulo, Brazil. We were met at the airport by a friend named Mariana, and her friend Rafael, who had generously offered to give us a ride to our hotel. This ended up taking a while, since we hadn't booked ahead and the first place we tried didn't have any space. We ended up in a 16-person dorm room, in which we actually got a decent night's sleep, contrary to our initial expectations.

The next day, we hunted down a hotel room, then headed to a local museum/garden area. The museum was closed, but the gardens were quite pretty anyway. As we were about to leave, it started raining and it got heavy quickly. We initially took refuge under a tree, but this soon proved inadequate for the task, so we ran to the awning of the museum. Once it lightened up a bit, we headed home, fairly thoroughly soaked. A good day out!

The next day, we met up with Marcos, who we had met in Brisbane about a year earlier when he was there studying English. It turned out that his brother lived on the same block as our hotel, so we dropped in there first. He turned our to be a former restaurant critic, and pointed us towards a place that had traditional Brazilian food from the north. It consisted of beans, rice and lots of meat, and was pretty darn good.

After lunch, we visited my favourite museum so far: the Museo do Futebol. No prizes for translation. It talked about some of the history of the game in Brazil, the stars of the game, great goals, and more. Afterwards, Marcos and I managed to forget to pick up our ID cards, and didn't realise until the museum was closed..

The next day, we headed back to the museum and successfully retrieved our posessions, then headed into Sé, which is the city centre. São Paulo has a great subway system, by the way, although we were warned that 7am is a bad time to try catching it (peak hour).

While wondering around in Sé, we came across a curious sight - a white leather couch with a cardbord cut-out of a peroxide blonde 60-year-old woman, and a TV camera pointing at it. Investigation revealed that they were recording short messages from people which would be played later on TV. Anyone who is in Brazil, look for us on STB at 7 or 8pm on February 9, on 'Sofa de Hebe'.

Today, we head for the Amazon jungle, and will be out of contact for somewhere between 5 and 10 days. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the hundreds of photos that we have finally gotten around to uploading. They are still about three weeks behind, but we're catching up. You can find them all here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitmeizer

Hasta la proxima vez,

Los Davides

Day 54: Machu Picchu

Warning: This is a very long email, and may cause eyestrain or boredom in some people. For those with less stamina, skip to the end and enjoy the pretty pictures.

For those of you keeping track, we are now officially at the halfway mark of the trip. In the last edition, we were stuck in La Paz after an unfortunate encounter with a local canine. We ended up being in La Paz for 5 days, and I got jabbed 4 times. The Travel Doc says that should be about 2 more than I needed, but better safe than sorry I guess.

In the meantime, Snr. Cohen managed to contract a nasty stomach bug which laid him low for a day or so. This made our prospective 4-day trek to Machu Picchu along the Inca Trail a bit tricky for two reasons:

1. We weren't sure if David would be up to the task physically, and
2. We were supposed to be in Cuzco, Peru, two days before, and the best we were going to be able to do was arriving at about 8pm the evening before.

We gave the tour company a call to see what our options were. Changing the date wasn't going to happen, but he said it should be fine if we could pay the night before and then meet the group the next morning at about 6am.

The day before our trek started we headed to the bus station for an 8:30am departure. David was feeling much better by this point, which was most welcome. We had been promised a good bathroom and comfortable seats for the 12 hour trip. Both items turned out to be somewhat underwhelming. For example, here is a checklist of basic features expected for an on-board bathroom:

1. A seat. Present.
2. The ability to flush. Missing.
3. Water to wash hands. Missing.
4. Soap. Missing.
5. A door that closes. Present.
6. A door that locks. Missing.

Two out six is pretty low actually - most will get at least 3 or 4. Very rarely do you get all 6 points.

Anyway, other than the driver nearly leaving about 10 people, including David and myself, at a police check point near the Bolivia/Peru border, the bus journey completed successfully and we arrived in Cuzco at about 8pm. The next task was securing our tour for the next morning.

We had collected about 6 phone numbers for the the company, but all of them failed to connect for various reasons, except for one for a hotel which had a loose connection to the company. They said they could help us get in touch with the company, so we headed in that direction. While we were looking for the hotel, we came across the tour company office, which was still open. Yay! We sorted out the details, found some food (I had alpaca, not bad, and has zero cholesterol) and hit the sack.

Day 1: The Easy Part

The next morning we got up before dawn and headed to the meeting point. At first we thought we might be in a group of 18 people, but thankfully it turned out to be a group of 9 - ourselves, two Kiwis (including the girl we met on the bus from Uyuni a few weeks earlier, and then again on Isla del Sol a little later), two other Aussies, a British couple, and a guy from Ireland. It turned out to be a great group and we all got along really well for the whole trip.

The first day was a light one. We caught a 2-hour bus ride to 'Kilometre 83', checked in with park officials (and got a nice stamp in our passports), and started hiking. Five minutes in, the only sign of civilization is the train line which tracks down the valley towards Machu Picchu. After about an hour, we encountered our first major Inca ruins. It served as an administration point between two valleys, one which leads directly to Machu Picchu (the easy way), the other which leads to the 'spiritual' (a.k.a. much harder) Inca trail to Machu Picchu. After admiring the site from a distance for a few minutes, we continued down the 'spiritual' trail.

Lunch (along with all of our meals on this trek) turned out to be very impressive. Tents had been set up (which was handy, since it started raining just as we got there), and we were served a 3-course meal, along with some local mint tea. After lunch we walked for another 2 hours or so and reached our campsite for the night. I attempted to play soccer with some of the porters, but got in too late and barely touched the ball. No dogs in sight this time, thankfully.

Day 2: The Hard Part

The next day is the hardest of the four. We start at an elevation of 3,000m and peak at 4,200m, then descend another 600m to the campsite. But we took it fairly slowly, and everyone in the group made it without too many problems, other than a couple of altitude headaches.

The first section of the day is through rain forest conditions. There were trees everywhere, lots of greenery and pretty bubbling creeks. This helped to take the mind off the fact that we were going uphill the entire way, often with steps of varying height to navigate. We reached our lunch location, which was at about 3,750m and had a nice long break. One of the highlights for me was the drink they served, which was made from black corn, water and a fair bit of sugar. Very tasty.

After lunch, the environment changed again, to a more stark landscape. We were simply climbing upwards on a fairly sparsely vegetated mountainside.

The highest point is called 'Dead Woman's Pass', allegedly because from a  distance it looks somewhat like the face and chest of a woman lying down. The pass itself is the 'throat' of the woman, and right next to it is one of the 'nipples', as David called it. And of course, David had to climb to the top of it.

There was a path leading upwards which apparently took about 10 minutes to traverse, and the guide gave us the go-ahead, so five of us set out. The closer we got to the top, the steeper it was getting. We got to a tighter corner with not much grass to hang on to, and one of the five decided to bail. The rest of us continued on and got to the top, at which point David revealed he is terrified of heights, and might take a while getting down.

Having experienced Dave attempting to descend from heights before (In San Pedro, for those keeping track), I decided to go first. The tight corner proved to be a little tricky, and a little damp, but I took my time and made it fairly easily. Theo, the guy right behind me made it down too, but in the meantime it had become apparent to our guide that Snr. Cohen would be needing some assistance. As Theo and I cleared the tricky part, our guide and two porters ran up the mountain past us to help David. Soon, one had each leg, and the guide had somehow gotten around behind them and had his upper body. In a few minutes they had him down safely, but not before he managed to attach a large amount of mud to the seat of his pants. The other porters had enjoyed the entertainment thoroughly, and we got some very amusing photos of the whole affair.

With everyone back on track, we started the 600m descent to our campsite for the night. Another good meal later, we hit the sack early for another 5:40am wake up.

Day 3: Inca Sites

This was the last major trekking day of the trip. It was also one of the more interesting with regards to Inca sites. After about an hour of walking we arrived at our first site. It was a circular building with an internal wall and three rooms. They believe it was a rest house for the 'Chasquis', or messengers of the Incas. From this point on, we would also be travelling on the original Inca trail. Much of the old trail had been destroyed, both by the Incas themselves when the Spanish were invading, and by the environment.

The next site was an actual town, perched on a jutting outcrop of a mountain. Much to David's interest, they had build an aqueduct from a lake a few kilometres away, and had channels running throughout the town, with access points in various parts of the town.

Just as we finished at this site, it started raining. We had been extremely fortunate with the weather up to this point, since we were in the middle of the rainy season. Now, however, it decided to bucket. Ponchos, rain coats and any other protective materials that could be found were donned, and we legged it for the lunch site. Soon enough, the rain cleared again, and we were treated to views of mist rising through the mountains as we continued on our way to the next site.

The next location was another town, which sprawled down a steep mountain side. And it was at this point that we got our first view of Machu Picchu mountain. When we arrived, the whole valley was filled with fog. A few minutes later, it suddenly cleared, and down below us was the back side of Machu Picchu. We couldn't see the city itself from here, but we could see a large set of terraces on the neighbouring mountain.

The terraces turned out to be much larger than they looked from our previous vantage point. Another couple of hours walk brought us to them, and the walls of each level turned out to be about 2 metres tall. So far, they have uncovered about 200 terraces at this location, and many more are still hidden by the surrounding jungle. They were only discovered in 1985, when a bush fire ran through the area and revealed the Inca walls hidden beneath.

From here it was a pretty short walk downhill to our camp site, where our guide had one more surprise for us - one last location, about 5 minutes walk from our tents. Again, it had terraces, but also several buildings and a temple. Most of us wondered around for about 15 minutes. Snr. Cohen stayed for about an hour and a half, which again prompted a search party from the guides once it got dark. He had a ball however, and made it back safely yet again.

In the mean time, I had started feeling some ill effects from lunch. By the time dinner was being served, I was feeling pretty lousy. Some heavy-hitting medication and a couple of interesting bathroom trips later, I was feeling a bit better, but we were all wondering how I would go the next day.

Day 4: Machu Picchu

After a surprisingly restful night´s sleep, we all woke up at about 4am to make the last dash to Machu Picchu. The goal was to get to the ´Sun Gate´ before sunrise. I was feeling about 200% better, and by 5am we were lined up at the entrance to the last leg of the trek. We managed to get 3rd place in line, and about half-an-hour later the gates opened.

David has been waiting to get to Machu Picchu for about 19 years. As such, he and the Kiwi girl we met way back decided to race to the gate. They took off at a run. The rest of us set a good pace behind them and were overtaking people most of the way. After about 40 minutes, we finally arrived at a long, steep stairway. We scrambled to the top, only to discover that this was not the sun gate. It did, however, provide our first glimpse of the sun over the mountains to the east. Continuing on for another 5 minutes, we finally made it to the real sun gate. And with it, our first view of Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is a pretty impressive site, even from the distance we were still at. We had another 15 minutes to kill before the sun actually got high enough to illuminate the city itself, so we took some time to catch our breath and enjoy the view. Behind Machu Picchu (which means, literally, Old Mountain) was Waynapicchu (which means Young Mountain). Only 400 people are allowed to climb it every day, but we unfortunately missed out on tickets. Instead, we spend the day exploring. Our guide took us around some of the main sites, and then at about 10:30, we went our separate ways. Some were returning to Cuzco the same day via the train, others staying overnight in the nearby town of Aguascalientes. We stayed until about 4:30 and covered a large chunk of the site, including the main temple, several tombs and a crazy bridge the Incas built against a 500m high cliff.

We made it back to Cuzco that night. Since then, we visited several other Inca and pre-Inca ruins, returned to Puno on Lake Titikaca and visited the floating islands (made entirely of reeds) and finally arrived here in Arequipa, en route to Nazca and Lima in the next couple of days. All were interesting in their own right, but this edition has already gone way over time, so we will leave it there for now, for which I´m sure you are all grateful.

So until next time, hasta luego,

Los Davides

Day 42: Sports, Dumbo, Atlantis and Canines

It's been a whole 10 days since the last update, and I know you're all impatient for the next installation. Well, the wait is over.

Currently, we have returned to La Paz for an unexpected medical intervention after an encounter with some local wildlife. More on that later, however.

On New Years Day, our hosts Oscar and Eli had organised a basketball/soccer match with some of the locals from their church. This worked out perfectly, since Snr. Cohen loves basketball and I love soccer. The altitude and sprinkling rain on the outdoor court added to the challenge, but it was all good fun.

In the afternoon we sated David's thirst for all things water-related by checking out the local hydro-electric station, and then proceeded to the giant statue of Jesus (3 metres bigger than the one in Rio de Janiero, apparently).

After a good night's sleep we got up early and caught the 7 hour bus to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia. The first time you see the city proper, it is quite breathtaking. The road approaches from the 'altiplana', or 'high plane', which is quite flat. The road suddenly starts decending, the houses disappear, and you can see the city of La Paz pouring down the valley below you.

Once you get off the bus, the city is a mix of dirty, busy streets, crazy drivers and occasional parks, churches and tree-lined avenues. On our first night, we discovered Dumbo's, a restaurant which has appropriated the famous Disney character and provides decent meals, below average service and excellent icecream.

An hour-and-a-half out of La Paz is an ancient ruined temple in the town of Tiwanaku, named after the civillization which built it, situated near Lake Titikaka. The Tiwanaku empire apparently existed for about 3,000 years, from about 1,500 BC to 1,500 AD. The temples were build around 700 AD, subsequently abandoned prior to the Incas discovering it, and then pillaged by the invading Spanish soon after. The ruins themselves are largely unexcavated, with only a small portion of the main temple having been revealed from under a big layer of dirt. Still, there are some interesting monoliths (big statues) and an extensive network of channels which moved water all over the site. Very interesting, and well worth a visit.

After a couple more days in La Paz, which included museums, chilling out, booking tickets to Brazil and the occasional protest march (of which there is one going on outside right now, complete with flares), we headed off to the town of Copacobana (in Bolivia, not Brazil). On the way there, we had to all get off our bus while it crossed a section of the lake on a small ferry, and we did the same in a small flotilla of little boats. Thankfully, our bus made it safely to the other side, along with our backpacks contained within.

Lake Titikaka itself is huge - much bigger than we had expected. Nearby is the island called Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun. It is the traditional birthplace of the Incan sun god, named Inti. It contains a few small ruins (including the supposed house, wardrobe and fountain of Inti) and some spectacular views. We arrived at the northern end of the island, visited a few of the sites, and then headed down the spine of the island towards our accommodation on the southern end. We followed the 'Path of the Incas' (everything seems to include the word 'Inca').

We had reserved a room at a hostel, but upon checking it out it didn't pass the Cohen Approval Test (a primary component of which is bed length - South American beds are not really designed for 1.91m tall Australians). We returned to a nice place we had seen on the way in (after climbing back up a very steep hill) and bunked down for the night.

Some of the locals were playing soccer, so I joined in. I managed to hold my own for the most part, albiet frequently running out of breath due to the altitude. About half-an-hour in, I noticed a small dog appear nearby. I ignored it and headed towards the ball coming at me and then discovered that it had attempted to attach itself to my shin with its teeth.

At this point I decided to retire from the game. An examination of my leg revealed that its attempt had been pretty minor, possibly assisted by my jeans getting in the way. However, it did manage to break the skin, so the next morning we headed back to Copacobana in search of a rabies vaccine. Any doctors on the list will be pleased to know that I had had a full set of 3 vaccinations prior to leaving Australia, and the bite was cleaned according to Travel Doctor standards.

Upon getting back to Copacobana the next day, we set out in search of the local hospital. It was situtated at the top of a hill, of course. Once gaining entrance, I was attended by three young female doctors. At the same time. Apparently not much happens medically in Copacobana. They were very friendly, but after looking at the bite, they all agreed that it wasn't serious and would be fine. There were no rabies vaccines in town anyway, unfortunately. They did arrange for a nurse to clean the bite and dress it, but we decided we wanted a vaccine anyway. Unfortunately, the only place nearby that definitely had the vaccine was La Paz, so instead of heading towards Peru, we returned here.

This morning we found the 'Centro Pilato', which is the main immunisation centre for the country (apparently even people from Brazil come here, mostly because of the cost). A friendly guard ushered us in (possibly jumping the large queue outside, although I'm not sure if that is typical for rabies bites anyway), and a bit later a friendly doctor/nurse (hard to tell in this country) attended me, got the down-low, and gave me the first of three shots. Amazingly, there was no charge!

So, we are stuck in La Paz for another two or three days, while I get my additional boosters. I'm not too concerned about the possiblity of rabies, even without the booster shots, but better safe than sorry, as they say. We should be able to get back on track by Monday or Tuesday, hopefully via the floating islands of Titikaka. After that is the 4-day treck to Machu Pichu, which should be both challenging and awesome.

In the meantime, this has been an even-longer-than-usual post, so it's time to let you get back to reality while we say hasta luego!

Los Davides