Ballestas Island

Before heading to Lima we took a morning excursion to the Ballestas Islands. Lining up to start our excursion it was obviously a popular outing for locals and tourists alike as we waited for more than half an hour to board the speedboat that would take us from the wharf of the Beach the Chaco - Paracas to the Ballestas Islands. As we speed across the bay we slowed to an idle as we were entertained by schools of dolphins jumping through the waters. Almost close enough to touch they traveled along side the boat. Better than any trip to Sea World.

The Ballestas Islands consist of a group of three islands with narrow shorelines and cliffs that rise to flan areas that cover an area of 3.2 square kilometers. In the breeding season this is where birds build their nests with their own droppings. These droppings, the famous guano fertilizer, are harvested every 4-7 years. The boat trip to Ballestas Islands gave us the opportunity to see the birds, including flamingos, red-legged cormorants, Inca terns, bobbies, lots and lots of playful sea lions, and amusing Humboldt penguins. The islands were literally covered with sea lions, penguins and pelicans, which also resulted in an overwhelming smell of dropping that quickly over took the air around us.

Between the motion of the boat and the smell of the islands there was more than a few individuals hanging over the side of the boat. Fortunately Randy and I weren't affected.

Once we were back at Paracas it was time to head into town and catch the public bus to Lima. The bus station was a small building on the side of the road and we were told that once we boarded the bus to keep our possessions under our legs or in are arms. Placing items in the overhead bins was quite unsecure especially if we happened to fall asleep during the trip. Holding onto our possessions tightly we boarded the bus only to find it was much like the local greyhound here in Canada. I think we were on the milk route as the bus stopped at each little town where passengers patiently waited at the side of the road. Five hours later we arrived in the Lima, the capital city of Peru.

Needing to stretch our legs, Randy, James and I headed out to explore the neighbourhoods of Lima. An art fair was taking place in the central square and we leisurely strolled through the park. Finally is was a warm sunny day and it felt great to be outside without the need to wear a jacket, scarf and mitts.

For the first time in our travels the citizens of Peru appeared to dress like Canadians. Women wore what we would call normal work clothes, jeans and high heel shoes.

Several of us decided to take a guided tour to get the feel of the city. Boarding the Pacific Ocean, a sprawling desert city clings to the surrounding cliffs. We learned that the beauty of the city is often hidden behind a cover of fog. The tour revealed the culture of the city, with amazing architecture, museums and cathedrals. Unfortunately we were getting a bit tired of visiting historical sites and the tour seemed to go on way too long.

While four of us were off visiting the sites of Lima, Randy decided to permanently capture the memory of our time in Peru with a Tattoo. The Condor, Serpent and Puma represent the protectors of the Incas, and from this his tattoo was conceived. So imagine this. We don't speak Spanish well and the tattoo artist didn't speak English at all, but with the assistance of the Google translator a conversation was had and the tattoo drawn. Crazy when you think about it! In a country where we didn't drink the water, and where neither party could talk to each other with any amount of understanding, he chose to get a tattoo. But it did turn out amazing.

After an amazing, action backed, adventurous and even a bit overwhelming holiday we were ready to go home. Our only question....Where would we go next? The trip had exceeded all of our expectations!!

Sandboarding - What a Blast

From Nascu we travelled to the Oasis of Huacachina. We find ourselves surrounded by mountains of fine white sand. We jump into 8 man dune buggies and go for the ride of our lifes. Up and down the mountains of sand it feels like we are on a roller coaster. More than once I felt we were on the verge of tipping over, but our driver was an expert at keeping us safe while on the edge of our seats. Then at the top of a mountain he stops. We were given snowboards, told to lie down on the board holding on to the foot straps, and pushed over the side of the mountain. Being just a bit nervous I was the last to go, but just like a child wanted to go again! Back into the dune buggy we continued through the mountains of sand, holding onto our seats for dear life. We stopped three more times during the ride for another ride down the mountain on the sand board. At each stop the hill was higher than the previous. Remember to keep your mouth closed or like Gemma you will have a mouth filled with sand. Keep your legs up or like me you will turn sideways and produced the best whip out of the day. Thank goodness for the amazing resort at the Oasis where we all jumped into the shower to wash the sand off and then into the pool for a refreshing dip. I do think I had sand in my ears for at least two weeks after..lol.

All cleaned and refreshed it was time to travel to Pisco. A small port town that shares its name with the white grape brandy produced in the area. Pisco Sour is the national drink of Peru. A tour of the rustic winery renown for it's award winning Pisco Sours ending with a tasting presentation. While all the flavours were tasty we choose not to purchase any today.

We would end our day in Paracas, a gorgeous little coastal town. Sailboats, and yachts of all sizes anchored along the shore line. A great night for dinner at an outside restaurant.

Visiting Nasca

Getting off the night bus we boarded a van that would take us to our resort. First we past rows of wooden shelters, which are home to hundreds of squatter's moving to the city. No running water, sewer system or electricity, just square wooden boxes with a door and if they were lucky a window. Again we were faced with the reality of true poverty. Just past the squatters were fields and fields of cacti. Someone should farm these we thought and a few minutes later learned they do.

Using the word resort was a bit of an overstatement, but it did have a pool and for one of the first times on the adventure it was actually warm enough to shed our coats. Before we would relax Randy and I joined the tour of the Pre-Inka desert cemetery, with 1500 year old mummies, bones and pottery on the desert floor. Twenty grave sites open for the tourists to see the burial traditions of the Pre-Inkas. It is so unfortunate that the grave robbers of years gone by destroyed so much of the sacred lands.

Back into town for a well deserved lunch. Randy being braved decided to try beef heart. I stole a small bite but was really enjoying my hamburger. Then back to the resort for an afternoon of relaxation beside the pool. The first time on the entire trip where we just took time to relax and soak up the sunshine.

Dinner tonight was a traditional pig roast, with all the entire dinner being cooked under ground. Not an entire pig like we have seen in other countries, but the same concept for cooking the food. Interestingly enough the potatoes and vegetables were loose in the ground and the meet was wrapped in banana leaves. Dinner began with a ceremonial digging up of the food. They needed a volunteer to shovel the first scoop of sand of the buried food and Randy was chosen as the father of the Gods to do the honors. Dinner was good, not great just good. Unfortunately for Randy he still had a stomach bug from the previous days and food was just not his friend.

Tomorrow we would travel to the Nascu lines. One of the world's greatest archaeological mysteries. You have to option to fly over the area in a small plane to get a view of the entire mysterious lines crossing the desert or simply climb a tall ladder to a small lookout to get a feel of the patterns. We chose the lookout option. The lines consist of depictions of birds, insect and animals etched into the ground. The only way to truly recognize the patterns is from the air. Who , why and how the patterns were drawn continues to be a mystery to archaeologists today. It was cool to see.

Hot Springs and Condors

We would spend all day Tuesday on the bus travelling to the Colca Canyon. The deepest canyon in the world. Our journey began with a drive through the Inka abd pre-Inka terracing. We had several stops along the way and were able to see vicunes, alpacas and llamas roaming wild in the national reserves. Randy was suffering from either a bad case of food poisoning or stomach flu, so tried to sleep through the entire trip. Seven hours later we arrived at a small hamlet called San Antonio. A quaint little village that is definitely working to capitalize on tourism as Gap had several groups staying there for the night. Several of us took a hike around the village and found ourselves climbing up the short hill to the peak of the mountain for a look at the the entire valley. You would think we should be tired of hiking uphill but it seems if there is a path to walk it is always uphill and yes we decided to take a look.

Hidden away in the valley is a great hot springs, so after our hike we got back in the bus and headed for the hot springs. It felt so good climbing into the hot (less hot than Radium) springs for a relaxing soak. Even though Randy was still feeling ill he decided to come to the springs with the group, but it was right back to bed upon our return to the hotel. The next morning he was feeling better as we were up at 5am and headed to see the Condors.

Condors are the second largest birds in the world and part of the vulture family. We arrived at Cruz Del Condor at about 8:15, where we would sit on the side of the mountain hoping to see Condors fly by. Neil indicated there was an 80-90% chance we would see the birds this time of year. When we arrived there was probably over 200 tourists at the site waiting to see the great birds. Fortunately there was one bird perched on the side of the cliff. At first we wondered if it was real, but within a few minutes saw it move. Several minutes later we saw another Condor fly directly overhead. They are huge yet extremely graceful birds. Then the bird that had been perched on the side of the cliff took flight and we were again amazed by the grace of the Condor. An hour later with no further sightings it was time for us to board the bus for the long drive back to Arequipa. Neil promised us a barbeque dinner on the rooftop patio of the Hotel Solar that night. I never had so much meat in one sitting as we did that night. Chicken and sausage as the appetizer and steak for the entree. It was all excellent.

Thursday was a free day to explore Arequipa. We slept in until 11am, packed our bags for storage and headed out to explore the city. For some reason the bakery was calling us and we started the day with a cheese bun and an eclair. As we wondered the streets we encounter the Junior Achievement trade fair. How cool to see the young adults selling the same sorts of crafts that we see at the Calgary Junior Achievement fairs. From here we headed to the museum displaying "Juanita" the virgin sacrifice mummy that was found in almost perfect condition having been frozen for more than 500 years. Then back to the central square where a gentleman asked if he might speak with me to practise his English. For the next half hour he asked me questions and told me about himself. He was a teacher of mechanics and had been studying English for 2 months. Only 2 months and he was able to carry on a very good conversation. It made me question why I couldn't do the same in Spanish, since I have registered for at least 3 Spanish courses in the last 4 years, I guess the issue is I registered not necessarily finished. I am bound and determined to try again when I get home. Anyways while we are sitting in the park it appears we may witness another demonstration. We learned that the miners were holding a meeting in the square, although to me it looked like a protest of sorts. While it appeared peaceful and no fighting broke out there were policeman everywhere holding their shields. This does start to seem like a reoccurring situation..lol. Shortly there after the group dispersed so we decided to head back to the hotel to relax. Pizza for supper and then we would be boarding the night bus to take us to Nascu.

The bus left the station at 9pm and we would arrive in Nascu at 6am. The seats were very comfortable. Lots of room and we even had a stewardess that served drinks, a late night snack and buns for breakfast. Pretty impressive.

Views of the Inka Trail

MachuPichu to Arequipa

After a short rest, it was time to go back into Machu Pichu and explore the amazing ruins for a few hours. Pictures and words will never do it justice. It truly is a remarkable site!!

After exploring the ruins we headed into town for lunch with our original tour group and to catch the train back to Ollantaytambo, where we would then transfer to a bus for the ride back to Cusco. I have to admit I don't remember much of the train ride as I slept almost the entire way back to Cusco. I was extremely proud of myself for completing the entire trek at a reasonable pace. Not the fastest but by far not the slowest in our group even though I was probably the oldest. While it was hard and intense I felt reasonable good throughout the entire journey, but I was now very tired.

We questioned whether we would go out for supper with the group that night in Cusco or just stay in the hotel and get some sleep. In the end we decided to go, since we were going to get the opportunity to try Guinea Pig. A Peruvian speciality. It was quite tasty, but had very little meat on the bones. You would have to work hard to be get filled up eating one of those little creatures. It looked like our group was preparing for a night out on the town, as only four of us had done the Inka Trail but I was starting to fad quickly. So Randy and I excused ourselves and head back to the hotel for a good night's sleep. Probably a very good thing as we later learned our mates had partied until 3:30 in the morning and were feeling a bit rough.

We however were feeling bright and rested the next morning and headed out to continue exploring for our last morning in Cusco. One of the services offered in Cusco is massages. Young girls on street corners approach tourist offering 1 hour massages for 30 Solez or $10. Today that sounded perfect. What better way to spend an hour before heading back to our hotel. All the stress and tension removed from our bodies we were feeling relaxed and ready for the next leg in our journey.

We were leaving Cusco at noon to fly to Arequipa. When we arrived at the airport there was a huge line-up to get into the airport never mind up to the appropriate ticket counter. We had exactly 1 hour to catch our plane and it was apparent that we would be lucky to get into the airport in an hour. We didn't panic because if we missed the plane it would be up to Neil to figure out plan B, but I have to say Neil did look a bit stressed. It turned out there was several school trips returning home and the small airport simply could not handle the volume of people. So the plane waited for all of us to get checked in before taking off. Two short hours later we were in Arequipa, the 2nd largest city in Peru.

We booked into the Hotel Solar and had 2 hours to explore until we were scheduled to meet for supper. The hotel has a great rooftop patio on the second floor but it was a little cold and windy to sit out there, so we headed to the central square for an initial look at the city. Much bigger and more metropolitan than Cusco, Arequipa has a totally different aura about it. Even though the building are similar from the outside it seems to have a stronger business, professional air about it, Back to the hotel to meet the group for dinner. Yes it does feel like our days revolve around meal times. We had a great dinner with live music provided by a mariachi band. In so many ways Peru reminds me of Mexico. Obviously the Spanish influence in both countries. Not to be wandering the streets after dark, it was back to our hotel for another early night.

The Amazing Trek

I had gone to bed with a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt and a fleece on top, and a pair to lululemon pants on the bottom. Half way thru the night I woke up with cold legs. Shot I will never get back to sleep now. I must of slept off and on because before long the porters were delivering coca tea for our 5 am wake up call. It was time to start Day 2.

Day 2 started with a steep climb consisting mostly of stairs for the first hour and then a short rest before commencing the very steep climb up to Dead Woman's Pass. We would climb for 2 1/2 hours taking rest breaks on a very regular bases. Thank goodness for the porters. The rule of the pass was you always need to make way for the porters so anytime one caught up to us we took a small break to let them pass. Even the porters needed to take a break once in a while so we found ourselves being passed by the same ones a few times throughout the morning. Our climb would see us, gaining an elevation of 1200 meters at the top of the pass, to a high of 4270m. Could we blame the elevation for how tired we were or how difficult the climb was? Regardless, upon reaching the top we felt on top of the World. Here we sat for a rest as we congratulated our hiking mates for reaching the summit.

By this time the 9 of us had divided into 3 groups. The 2 brothers, Robert and Daniel and Holly, all from England made up the fast group. Randy, Ryan (a young man from Calgary) and myself the middle group and Laurie (Toronto), Jonathon (England)and Purval(Calgary) in the slow group. At the top of the pass we would all wait until the entire team arrived before making the journey back down the mountain. We had been about 10 minutes behind the fast group and together we waited for another hour for the final members of our team to arrive at the top. What an amazing view as we looked out over the valley and across at the surrounding mountains. This had been the hardest hike of my life and the sense of accomplishment was overwhelming. We had another 2 hours ahead of us before we would rest for lunch and stop for the day. Now you would think that trekking downhill would be way easier than uphill and from the cardio and breathing perspective it was. However from a technical perspective it was just as hard and sometimes harder. You have to carefully watch every step to make sure you don't slip and fall. The decline was as steep as the climb to the top was and my neck was getting sore as I concentrated on where to place each foot. I certainly spent less time admiring the scenery than on the way up. Thank goodness for the walking poles!!

At about 2:30 we stopped for lunch and that would also be our camping spot for the evening. Demas said we needed to rest from our hard journey before starting day 3. So most of us took a well earned nap before tea. Today we got fried cheese with our tea, and it was devoured in no time flat with a request for more. Again the porters continued to amaze us. To keep us entertained between Tea and supper we played several hands of UNO. Everyone got into the game and we enjoyed lots of laughs and friendly competition. The treat with tonight's supper was a camp baked spice cake including icing. Feed, watered and exhausted it was 7:30pm and dark. Time for bed as tomorrow would again start at 5 am. Tonight I was going to ensure I wasn't cold and so I dresses in long johns and track pants. Low and behold in the middle of the night I was to warm and had to take my fleece off. Too Cold, too hot, maybe tomorrow I would get it right.

The morning of Day 3 we woke up to an amazing view of the clouds covering the mountains. This is what they must mean when they talk about the cloud forests. Day 2 was supposed to have been the toughest and then some short inclines at the beginning of Day 3 before starting our long trek down. So how could it be that we continued to climb upward all morning? While not quite as steep as Day 2, I was still finding breathing a bit of a challenge. Surely we would reach today's summit soon. As we walked along the path, the clouds continued to cover the valley and left us with a bit of an erie feeling. Literally we were walking with our heads in the clouds. Finally we reached the lunch spot, but none too soon for me as my stomach decided it didn't want to play nice anymore and was rebelling. I skipped lunch today, afraid to put anything else into my stomach and eventually it settled down.

Lunch finished, we started the trek downward with 3000 stairs. Now I am not sure there are actually 3000 stair as it felt like a lot more and I certainly wasn't going to count them. For the next 2- 3 hours we carefully climbed down the mountain. Our descent would see us drop 1000 meters in elevation. Slowly and carefully we enjoyed the view as we made our way to the next set of ruins that would overlook our campsite for Night 3. The ruins never seize to amaze me. How the Inkas built the fortresses, leveled the tresses for crops,and built the retaining walls,etc. without the use of bulldozers, or any mechanical equipment is hard to imagine. We are not sure that any of the pictures will ever do it justice.

We still had another 200 meters to descend before reaching our final resting place for the evening. But surprising enough our legs still felt strong and we weren't sporting any aches or pains. Just a strong desire to be done for the day. Apparently we were intruding on the paths of a few local llamas who blocked our final path into camp. Was it safe to pass, should we try and shoe them away? In the end we carefully walked around, stopping to take a quick picture, with no harm done to anyone or animal. Another fun adventure! Today we finished hiking at about 4:30. It had been another very long day. Time for tea and popcorn then a few more hands of UNO, while we waited for dinner.

Tonight our campsite was on the side of a terrace with little space between the tent door and the edge of the ledge. One step the wrong way and you may find yourself falling. Just enough space for a person to walk by on their way to their tent or the bathroom.

It was much warmer tonight, as we were at a lower elevation so I wasn't worried about being cold. Demas sent us to bed right after supper as we needed to get up at
4am on day 4. So to bed we went and I was ready for a good night sleep. Somewhere around 2am it started to rain and again panic set in. The trails would be treacherous in the rain, as the rocks would be so very slippery. Plus it would be darn right miserable hiking in the pouring rain. Again not sleeping I prayed the rain would stop before morning. Fortunately the rain stopped before we had to get up. So why were we up at 4am , when it was still dark and we couldn't pass through the last checkpoint until 5:30? Our porters had to pack up all the tents and supplies and be down to the train station to catch the 5am train. How they managed I will never know, since it meant they needed to be running down the trail at full speed in the dark.

We on the other hand headed to the checkpoint in the pitch dark with our headlamps on and then waited for 45 minutes for the gates to open. Once through the last checkpoint we headed upwards to the Sun Gate, hoping that the clouds would burn off before we arrived so that we could see Machu Pichu from above. Yes, I did say we were heading upward again. I thought the last day was supposed to be a short descent into Machu Pichu, so why were we climbing upward again? Climbing upward was always a combination of uphill inclines and lots of steps made from large rocks. Finally after about a hour of climbing we reached the Sun Gate, but unfortunately it was still cloudy. Oh well at least we could stop and catch our breathe before the final descent into Machu Pichu. Fifteen minute later we started to pass people climbing up to the Sun Gate from the other side. We were almost there. Then we saw Neil our Gap Adventure tour guide waiting to greet us. We had arrived! One of the 7 great wonders of the world opened up before us. The view was amazing!! Our passports would now be stamped entered and and exited the trail. Four days of intense hiking and three nights camping in the Andies, we conquered and survived the trek through the Inka trail. The emotion was overwhelming and tears ran down my face as we past through the exit gates of Machu Pichu. It was 7am in the morning, we were emotional, exhausted and for some reason very hungry. The ham and cheese sandwich we were handed when we left camp that morning was now very appealing. Randy and Ryan wanted a beer, Laurie and I a coke as we devoured our sandwiches in celebration of are arrival.