Lake Titicaca, Incas, Cusco and the sacred Valley Peru

Family portrait standing above Cusco centre in the rain!

Over the course of the past 2 and a half years we have travelled to many places and met many friends.  We have learned numerous things and bumped into people several times.

Just when you think that you will not know anybody in a new country you release that you do in fact have friends there.  The past two weeks has led to several such encounters and again shows how small this world really is!!

After journeying through Bolivia's mountainous south we reached La Paz and then travelled on to the fabled Lake Titicaca.  The lake is the highest lake on the planet and is large, spanning the borders of both Bolivia and Peru.  On driving around the lake we passed several Bolivian villages that seemed to be in festival spirit.  We stopped at one and saw a group of older villagers dancing and drinking beer. We stopped got out and asked if there was any food for sell, only bread, but we were soon being encouraged to dance with the locals, which we obliged, a beer was put in my hand and my other hand was taken buy an elderly Bolivian lady! I then danced and turned like the way they did, it was fun! Afterwards I went to another group and repeated a similar dance, then the people started asking us to buy beer! The whole village was begging, they were all so drunk! It got a little overwhelming so we decided to leave! Exit stage left!

The plan was to go to Copacabana a name that most people associate with Brazil s Rio De Janeiro beach but in fact the name originates from the Bolivian town on the shores of Lake Titicaca, The story is  apparently that Brazilian fishermen where caught in a storm on the lake, survived thanks to the magic powers of the lake and then returned to Rio and named a local beach after the sacred lake! Other people believe that the lake was the site of Atlantis and it can be found somewhere under the waters.  The drive around the coast by Copacabana afforded wonderful views from cliff top perches and the blue colour was intense and beautiful. We had to cross the lake via a barge at one stage, which meant driving on a two car ferry which seemed very unstable, but brought us across without incident. The local food is mainly trout caught from the lake and after months of being in landlocked Paraguay and Bolivia fish was a welcome addition to our diet!

Kombi on the boat!

Lake Camp site

Copacabana is a small town and gives access to the island of the sun a sacred island with Inca trails and ruins.  We found the beach had a road that ran along it and away from the town, so we parked near an eco hostel and set up a fire on the beach to cook Trout that we bought from the market.  We were joined after a few days by another VW camper, in fact friends that we had met in Potosi Bolivia, it was great to spend some time as a collective group. One day we went to the island of Sun and decided to walk the Inca trail,which consists of 11km of mountainous trails at 4200m altitude.  Of course we had Lili with us and she was not in the mood to walk, which meant Daddy was her personal taxi service!! Most people will struggle with that walk at that altitude just carrying themselves along let alone a 4 year old, I was well and truly tired at the end of the day... The island has archaeological sites and wonderful terraces carved into the mountainside, plus fantastic views of the lake.  The island was and is considered very sacred by the Inca people.

Copacabana church

Copacabana view from Church on Mountain

Dad with beard!

Lake view

Copacabana is just 10km to the Peru border and passing into Peru I quickly felt a nice vibe and the roads where very well maintained although full of speed bumps going through villages, these speed bumps are mostly well marked although at night time can be a little hazardous. We drove almost directly to Cusco and found the school that we had arranged to volunteer at for a week.  The school was for children Lilis age and had a nice trampoline in the play area, so she had a great week playing with the kids and the toys, in the afternoons after our volunteer work was done we explored Cusco city centre and some of the archaeological sites. Inca wall construction is amazing and the way they fit the stones together is mind boggling.

Cusco centre

Inca walls above Cusco centre

The second week we left Cusco and volunteered at a lake close to Cusco and surrounded by Archaeological sites. We helped with the gardens and renting out boats to weekend tourists from Cusco. Our next stop was the sacred valley, which was the centre if the Inca culture. The valley is wide and has been cultivated for hundreds of years, it offers a temperate climate year round. The world famous Machu Picchu is found at one end the valley.

Our friends Arafat and his girlfriend Lucile whom we had met in Malaysia whilst volunteering at Arafats farm where based at a farm in the sacred valley, we were invited to stay with them by the host Michael. We also received news that our friend Nadeem from Sitges, Spain would also be arriving in Cusco, so we invited him to meet us in the sacred valley.

Boys at the salt mines!

Inca site at the lake

Nadeem and Sandrine at the salt mines

Peruvian girl at the lake

Salt mines 

We were interested to meet a shaman and take sacred plants like San Pedro and Ayahuasca, which are famous in this area. It turned out that Michael has been holding ceremonies for the past 9 years for ayahuasca and we were invited to join his next ceremony.  At the same time we also tracked down a shaman.  The ceremonies where both very different but involved taking the medicines and then experiencing things that varied from person to person, some people experienced voices and were able to ask questions and help improve themselves.  I in my experience of the two ceremonies have not had any such effects but may yet try again. Its nice to spend time with old friends in such a beautiful area with the area steeped in history... we have not yet made it to Machu Picchu, but will see what happens next!!

Debrief and mountains

Nadeem with sacred pipe and shaman Tupaq

Bolivia, Uyuni, Potosi and many mountains.

Being on the road we do not have much internet access.  The drive so far has been pretty tranquil. We had an oil leak, fixed the steering, and had the breaks fixed after a tube for the brake fluid broke. The nights are cold at the moment as we are at altitude of between 3500 and 4100 m.

The mountains have been fantastic with stunning views and as we drive slowly and can stop whenever we want we have time to enjoy the scenery. The Andes have many colours and many of the mountains have many different colours in their strata layers.

The food on the road has been good with the majority of Bolivian food based around chicken! We have not been able to fill our gas bottle in Argentina or Bolivia so have a choice of raw food or restaurant food. Street food here is good and cheap, as we move to Peru next prices will go up, so hopefully we find a solution to our cooking needs.

Crossing the Bolivian Border was a long process with the computer not liking the fact a Paraguayan car was owned by a Brit, but we got there in the end, Police have been pretty easy on the road just doing normal checks.

We drove to Potosi which is the highest city in the world and immediately a girl came up to us and said she was part of the VW club and if we needed any help then give her a call.  Thanks Dani. From Potosi we take a bus to Uyuni salt lake and bought a two day tour ticket.  It was quite nice to not have to drive and just sit on a bus and admire the scenery and consider how long the journey would have taken in the kombi as some of the climbs were very steep and long.  With hindsight knowing now there was a problem with my brakes I am glad I did not do the journey either.

Uyuni salt lakes are really special and a must if you are in Bolivia.  During the day the salt being white is extremely reflective and quite blinding, at night time the temperature plummets and the landscape is more Arctic in feel, then the sun rises and the cycle starts again.

Our two day tour was more like a taxi ride across the salt to be dropped at the hotel then a taxi ride back to Uyuni via and island with huge cactuses. Our taxi on the way there blew a tyre have way across, which is the second time on our trip that it has happened, the other time in Australia.  This time changing the tyre was someone elses problem and he had a nice hard flat surface to do it on.  The night in the hotel I woke up to be sick and felt bad for a further 12 hours, I did manage to drag my sorry ass out of bed to see the sunrise but could not face the walk up to the summit of the volcano which was a shame.

Sun rise

The colours at sunset where amazing on the salt lake. Returning to Potosi we met Tuqui whom is the president of the vw club, we had a BBQ at his place with some other VW travellers that we had met at the Oja del Inca, a hot lake on top of a volcano.  Tuqui also took us to the Petrol Station and bought 40 litres of fuel for us at Bolivian prices. Bolivia has two prices a local price 3.6 Bolivinos and an international price 8.6 Bolivianos,  So getting a local to buy for you is a very worthwhile task. Usually I pay them 5 and they pocket the difference.

Next stop La Paz and Lake Tikitaka,

Chaco, Foz de Iguazu, El Cantaro, Aregua and leaving Paraguay, for a while!

 

Leo, Russ and Oscar in front of rocks with Pentagonal formation in Areagua

Its been a little while since the last entry in this blog... mainly due to a frustratingly slow internet connection in Paraguay where we were staying.

So what's

been happing and where have we been?

We have now officially passed the 2 year mark of constant travelling.  No idea how many KM/Miles we have covered but its 10 countries worth, which is not a big number but reflects the kind of travel that we have done, which is find a place and stay for a while then do a bit of travel and then stay again in another place for a while.  Constant travelling is tiresome and you never really feel satisfied. Spending a few weeks or longer feels much nicer.

We have finished the works on the van but changing the name of the ownership in Paraguay is a mess, with long delays and until we do change the name we cannot leave Paraguay borders with the van.  We have a few options, wait or sell the van and move on.  For the moment we have decided to travel in Brazil and see how things move. We never planned to drive the van in Brazil or visit the country, so its an extra!!  Learning a bit of Portuguese to help the travels.

Over the past 4 months we spent most of our time at a school in Aregua.  It rained so much that most of the time we spent wet! The school ( El Cantaro ) offers free classes to kids from the area.  We have been participating by helping with things like Bio construction, building pallet furniture and helping out in the gallery with painting of artwork.  Lili made great friends with the son of the owners and has been learning some Spanish.

Oscar(from photo at top) has a great story, we met him in Asuncion, he approached Sandrine after hearing her talk French.  He was adopted by a French family when he was five.  Originally born in Paraguay.  He has come here to learn about his country of birth.  He is learning Spanish, again, and searching for his roots. In the last month he has managed to track down his birth mum and has been reunited and met his 7 other brothers and sisters!! So cool!

Lili in her boots!

Aregua Church

Aregua Lake

Party night at the school!

Bio Construction, mixing the mud sand and straw!

Gustavo in the kiln before we lit it!

Pallet bench I made! Leo, Fernando and Cilvia

We drove the van over to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and onto Foz de Iguzu in Brazil and visited the magnificent waterfalls on both Brazilian side and Argentinian.  Both sides are great and offer slightly different things. Ciudad del Este is in Paraguay and is a massive shopping centre.  It offers Brazilians and Argentinians the chance to buy goods at discount prices due to lower taxes, there is almost no border control.

At the falls

The Iguazu falls (Brazil)

Paraguay has an area named the Chaco, which contains 60% of the land mass but very few people, there are many birds and animals that you do not find in other places on the planet.  There is one tarmacked road that runs from Asuncion over to Filidelfia and then a dirt road continues to Bolivia.  Unless you have a 4x4 car you  are unlikely to make it to Bolivia.  We drove to Filidelfia and were lucky with the weather and able to drive some dirt roads in the Kombi without to much problem, one night it did rain and the next days the roads that had been good and hard were now rivers of mud!!

Loads of raptors in the Chaco

Terns with great bills!

Palo Boracho (means drunk tree)

Same tree close up.

Chaco morning

Chaco sunset

Sandrine wanted to make contact with one of the indigenous groups, whilst in the Chaco, to make some jewellery from Palo Santo wood.  The experience of being in the village was a little like being back in India.  We arrived in the kombi got out and within 5 minutes the whole village had come out to meet us we were surrounded by kids and ladies in brightly coloured skirts. They were really curios to know who we were and what we wanted, smiles all around.

On our trip we have now all had two days in hospital.  I had two nights in Bangalore with a severe migraine caused by an unknown virus, Sandrine two nights with Dengue Fever in Thailand and now Lili 2 nights in Paraguay with a Black Widow Spider bite.  We were sleeping in the Kombi in  a very rural area and suddenly Lili woke up from her bed and started crying and complaining of stomach pain and difficulty breathing. Sandrine made me drive the 1 hour drive in the middle of the night across rough terrain to the nearest hospital, I was convinced it was indigestion and so not well pleased but Sandrine pressed the issue.  The doctor did not know what it was, so called a surgeon who arrived looking as bleary eyed as I felt, he said she should be kept in the hospital and tests done in morning... the tests were done and they still had no idea what was wrong with her... on the second night she had pain in her legs... suddenly the penny drops for one of the doctors and says symptoms fit black widow spider bite... Lili was fine within 36 hours of first pain and jumping around like nothing had happened!!  She is a strong girl!!

I never found the spider, but I took this picture of a snake which crossed behind me about three hours before Lili was bitten.  I believe it to be an Argentine Coral, which is poisoness but non aggressive.

Paraguay has two languages spoken by most people, Spanish and Gurani, however the Indigenous have other languages as well.  Paraguayan Spanish is quite different from Spanish spoken in Spain, both in accent and word usage.  For me its sounds like Spanish spoken with a west country British accent. Lots of Arrrs also you have to be careful with sentences using certain words, donde puedo cojer un taxi, in Spain means where can I catch a taxi, but in Paraguay Cojer means Fuck! Where can I fuck a taxi!! You have to use Tomar, take!! The locals love laughing at Spanish people caught in their "trap".

Waterfall in national park

Leo and Roxane our travel companions to a national park.

After taking the decision to check out Brazil we took a bus to Conception in the north of Paraguay and then a boat up the river to  the Brazilian port of Porto Murtinho. The boat ( named Aquidaban ) leaves Conception once a week at 11 am Tuesday and costs 100,000 Guarenies per person ($20) (2015 July) If you get lucky you pay another 100,000, and get a cabin which sleeps 4, we got lucky!  No cabin means you get a hammock which hangs in the middle of the gangway with everyone walking past you all day and night. (30,000 Guaranies) If you have nothing you fins a space on the floor or a seat and don't pay extra.  The boat goes up the river to its destination Bahia Negra which is on the border with Bolivia.  It arrives on Friday, stops unloads and turns around to go back to Conception on Sunday... Some people do this every week bringing goods from the city up to the various rural isolated communities served only by this river boat service.  We got off after just 30 hours,quite enough with Lili on a small boat! For anybody reading this wondering about accommodation in Conception, there's a good choice and cheap.  Porto Murtinho we arrived at 10 pm and chose the first place we found after crossing the river from the free trade island which is still part of Paraguay and where the boat stops and onto Brazilian territory.

Lili between the four beds in cabin.. spacious!

Sunset from the boat!

So for now we are in Brazil, learning Portuguese, unsure of where we will be tomorrow.... Thanks for reading!