The Far South

Another trip in bus (this time just 6 hours, daylight, and beautfil volcanic landscapes) to go Puno on the Titicaca bank.

It's probably the ugliest town I've ever seen! almost 90% of the houses (which are actually pretty big, like 3 or 4 floors) are unfinished and not even painted, so the whole town looks like a big construction site or a big township...
Luckily, there are many incredible places to see nearby on the lake...like the Capachica peninsula.
I've been there with Eva and Jordi (the catalans I met in colca), and Brice, a french guy I knew in Cusco, and whom I randomly met again in Puno.
We slept at a small hostal, built by a local quechua farmer an his wife, it was wonderful and so "authentic", we visited the villages nearby, semmed so far from the civilization, and the view from the lake and the islands were just amazing.

We even visited a small Uros island, made of reed. There are like 50 island near Puno which are now real tourist traps, but the one we saw was very far and people still "live" there, we can hardly understand how and why they stay on this sites...but they simply told us that they had nowhere else to go.

After Machu Picchu, I thought that it would we hard to find some place as interesting or exciting, but happily I was so wrong, because I think I really prefered seing these spots on the lake.

I spent two days (really enough) to visit Arequipa, the second largest city of Pery, in the South, at the feet of two huge volcanos (around 600m high).
It's a nice colonial town called the "ciudad blanca" because of the colour of the volcanic stone used for the building. The weather there is always awesome (nine month without almost a cloud...) which really suited me after the heavy rain in cusco, but make this town very dusty and contaminated.Here I met Orlandao, a Peruvian, who teachs french at the Alliance Francaise, and many other turist on my 3 days trek to the Colca Cañon.

It's located at 60 kms from Arequipa, and they say that it's the second deepest cañon in the world (the first one is also Peruvian. It's very touristic mainly because of a place called Cruz del Condor where we can effectively see these creatures from very close.
It was a nice walk, in a very desertic area (total contrast coming from Cusco)
THe most impressive being indeed, the kimd of "resort" at the bottom of the cañon, akind of oasis in the midlle of desrtical mountains, with swimming pools...yes so artificial but so great.
I met a catalan couple there, who came with me to the titicaca afterwards, and a nice french girl, Delphine. Finally I'm socializing !

The Inca trail is a 4 days trek between mountains and rainforest to access to the Macchu Picchu.
It's impossible to do it on your own and mandatory to book it many weeks before with an authorized travel agency from Cuzco.
Inconvenients : very touristic, nothing to do with an Indiana Jones adventures and obviously very expensive (500 US$)
Advantage : a whole team of porters and guides dedicated to carry your stuff, make the tent and food...yes a kind of luxury trek. Even like that it has nothing to do with an easy walk and it's quite challenging indeed, going up and down to 4200m, and unluckily in our case facing even strong tropical rains.
Yet it's an amazing experience with awesome landscapes, and the final part with the Macchu Picchu in sight makes you value even more the efforts to get there.

So I did it in a group of 14 people including of course many gringos, but also a french guy living in New Zealand with whom I shared the tent , other 2 Indian girls from NZ as well, very friendly, 2 Dutch girls (one of them got very sick and almost abandoned), nice people indeed and I had a good time with all of them.
I'm proud to say that I was always leading the path and actually surprised myself with my physical condition!
We has good weather on the first and easy day, a little rain on the second (the hardest one), and a complete deluge in the second half of the third day, and the first part in the mist...quite a shame since it wa the nicest part of the trek going down in the jungle on a very beautiful valley...so we were really afraid to arrive to Macchu Picchu and seing nothing (which actually happens very often, because this site is very close to the amazonian forest, and it can rain a lot or be very cloudy even in the dry season which was our case).
So what did we see ? take a look at the pics and....enjoy !

Today I'm in Arequipa, and finally have time to finish my post on my last days in Cusco region.
Well they were just great, visiting many Inca sites around, especially on the so-called sacred valley (of the Urubamba river) with the Inca sites of Pisac (I wouldn't recommend "climbing" up the 4 kms to the ruins from the village to my worst enemy) and Ollantaytambo (sorry for the names) on my own, using public transportation. And in itself it's an experience almost as impressive as the ruins themselves, (for instance seing and old indigen woman pissing in the street without even moving her dress as if nothing happened...) and so much more.
Anyway Cuzco and the surroundings are awesome, but were nearly insipid in comparison of the 4 days walking on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu....

I finally managed to upload more pics, and tomorrow I'll put the ones from Machu Picchu.

despues de 21h de bus (al lado de una joven Israeli que acababa de terminar su servicio militar de 5 años, y que viajaba solo en albergues donde se quedaban otros Isaraelis, lo he visto, es como una secta, flipante), ya estoy en la antigua capital Inca.
Me gusta mucho, hay un monton de excursiones por hacer antes de empezar el Camino Inca hacia el Machu Pichu el sabado, y Victor, un cuzqueño buena onda me ayudó para bien conocer la ciudad.
Estoy todavia con el jetlag (me despierto a las 3 de la madrugada), se nota bastante la altura (estamos a 3300m, y cualquier subida de escalones me deja sin aliento, a pesar de las infusiones de coca).
Me cuesta tambien renunciar a mi confort, no sé cuanto tiempo mas voy a aguantar estos albergues baratos, sin a casi sin agua caliente, y el couchsurfing no es tan facil aqui. Confieso también que empiezo a sentirme bastante solo...pero bueno la excursion al Macchu Pichu es con un grupo y espero poder concer a mas gente por ahi.
Tengo muy complicado subir fotos desde un cibercafé pero lo inentaré mas tarde.

Ultima noche en Lima esta vez en un hostal de mochileros como dios manda, y la verdad que esta bien, internet gratis, muchos otros servicios que no voy a aprovechar ya que mañana me voy a Cuzco.
Anoche salimos por el barrio de Barranco, y esta zona mola mucho, muchos bares y restaurantes muy chulos, vista al Pacifico (de hecho recordé que ya hacia 10 años que no lo habia visto), una buena borrachera a base de cocteles diversos con Pisco....y hoy fuimos a comer en Panchita un excelente restaurante. Dicen que Lima es la capital gastronomica de Sudamerica, no sé hasta que punto es cierto, pero francamente comi muy bien aqui.

En resumen de Lima, solo vale realmente la pena Barranco y la comida, bueno algo es algo, asi que dos dias ya esta bien.

Despues de 12h de vuelos y con 7h de jetlag aqui estoy por fin en Sudamerica.
De Lima no os voy a contar mucho, sino que me recuerda un monton al DF pero en mas feo todavia, es invierno, el cielo es gris y muy bajo, y por la noche hace bastante frio.
Pero por lo demas llevo ya desde varias horas una sonrisa tonta en la cara que no se me quita !
Cono dije Lima me recuerda mucho al DF, y habia olvidado cuanto lo echaba de menos (no el DF especialmente, sino el hecho de sentirne otra vez en este continente)! la gente que habla de Ud o Uds, que te llaman "joven" o "caballero", esas mezclas de olores, de colores, este caos lleno de vida, estas caras de mestizos a la vez buenos y algo tristes o resignados, esta comida tan rica (vale diferente de la mexicana pero muy sabrosa tb)...y siempre la gente super amable y que se interesa por ti.
Lo cierto es que aqui no hay mucho que ver tampoco, solo disfrutar de la vida urbana, cosa que haré saliendo esta noche con mi hosped JuanJo y amigos suyos.
Y el lunes me piro a Cuzco (20h de bus, toma).
Aqui no os voy a poner fotos, lo que venga luego será bastante mas impactante.
Y para los que ya echan de menos mi voz aqui les va mi movil: 0051 990 228 667

Here we are, yes I know starting from London doesn´t sound so exotic, be patient !
Still since I´m now relaxing in Madrid before the real start on Thursday, I´m taking a moment to prepare a small resume about my British experience...

I liked :
1/ Really impressive parks : clean, green, beautiful and peaceful
2/ The museums are free, and I enjoyed partucilarly the Saatchi Gallery (I usually don´t like modern art, but this one was awesome)
3/ the weather...mostly sunny and not even a rain drop in 4 days !
4/ yes some english "clichés" are still there...such as the buses and phone boxes, the "look right" written on the road when you are to cross the street, and the pubs...
5/ Public transportation : on time, clean, safe and efficient
6/ by far the most cosmopolitan town I´ve ever seen, one good point is that you can eat very diverse food everywhere, so stay away from the shitty fish and chips and stews...
7/ I´ve to admit that the most of time Londoners behave really like gentlemen...polite, smiling, and easy to talk to
8/ Nando´s perfect hospitality, another example of how great couchsurfing is


I didn´t like:
1/Prices : another cliché but imposible to avoid it...20€ to enter a cathedral or 8€ to use the tube during the day....so shocking !
2/ the city size....far too big for me
3/ cosmopolitanism limits....I´ve never seen so many ghosts in Burqa, even one entering a Gucci store ! I did´nt know that Burqa became so fashionable and trendy
4/ the Thame´s banks. If in Paris the Seine´s banks are one of the nicest part of the city, in London it´s just the contrary
5/ the typical british pale and pinky skin....yes if they´re fat, they litterally look like ...
6/ more generally the "Ilive one of the most famous and influent capitals" way of live....which means, no money = nobody


to finish a few pics...