Not so city slickers...

Turns out there will be no photo´s posted on the previous post because they are all on the memory card of the camera that is now in the hands of a La Pazian pickpocket.
MotherF*****!!!

Tara and I arrived in La Paz last night, and hated it before we even descended fully into it.
South American cities are the pits.

We had a shocker of a night at the HI hostel we stayed at - family brawls and loud mouths till 4am - but luckily we had already decided to get the hell out of dodge.
And dodge it was...
Not an hour after sorting out our next few days in the Yungas, my camera was nicked right out of my bag.
I´m more pissed off with myself than anything else. Why did I not listen to people and wear my daypack like a dork on my front?

Two things on the plus side.
1:
The woman at the tourist police office was an absolute sweetheart, and filled out my report in no time flat - leaving me enough time to print a claim form, and have this bitch before catching our bus out of here.
2:
Thank the dear Lord above, I had copied my memory card onto DVD just a few days ago.

Now just to see if the DVD actually contains anything...

Copaca-crappa

I had all sorts of hopes for Copacabana, and wasn´t really disappointed on our first day there. The main drag is a little touristy, but colourful and friendly, and we were so happy about the cheap prices after Peru.

Then I went on the tourist trail the next day.
I had a map, which was a little vague to start off with, but I think managed to find the place where the ¨Baño del Inca¨/ ¨Garden of the Inca¨(my map mentioned it as both) should have been. I couldn´t find the ruins. There were no signs. Nothing.
Not to mention the fact that the entire road there was strewn with litter. So I walked the 5km´s back into town a little disappointed, but pleased with the views.

When I got back, I decided to walk up to the ¨Calvario¨, a church at the top of the hill next to town. I was feeling very light headed, but made it up. It was ... dirty. The whole way up, and the other way down, was full of litter and rubbish.
The only thing that made it worthwhile was the views. I managed to get myself alone on a rock to watch the sun set over Lake Titicaca.

Then I got sick that evening. Heavily and violently ill. I guess that is clouding my views of the place, but I am trying to be objective.

I have to say that I don´t like Copacabana. The minute you leave the tourist centre, you enter a real dirty shithole of a town. I´m not sure what the big fuss is about this place. The hostels and restaurants are all more than a little run down. The people are friendly enough, but don´t seem overly keen on pleasing tourists. It seems the town has had it´s heyday and is running purely on that old reputation.

Then again, it is incredibly cheap.
I guess you get what you pay for.

I will let Tara post about her experience the next day at the Isla del Sol - I was in bed all day trying to keep anything down.
I will also post some pictures of the spectacular views over the lake, later.

an update ... the leg

so about three weeks ago, i took a tumble in ecuador.
not even on cotopaxi, nope, i didnt even get that far.


i hobbled around for a little while. talked to a chiropractor in huacachina and took some ibuprofen but it didnt seem to get any better - just the bruising went down.

these shots are about 5-6 day intervals.

finally when we got to puno, i went to a doctor, and then to the hospital (as there was supposed to be a doctor who speaks english there.
he prescribed more ibuprofen, but also antibiotics as he thinks the huge bump is an infection .... and more rest.

so we bailed to copacabana and i sat in the sun for a while and now on my ass in an internet cafe telling you all about it.

Poo - no ? ...... Si !

firstly a little inside joke in the title there. we have noticed that our guides in peru speak pretty good english but have developed a really really annoying habit of finishing each sentence with no? as in - the Inca split the stones with wood and water no ?

the plan for Puno was terrific.

The Puno Plan turned out to be pants.
we booked a hostel online. it looked gorgeous. on the shores of Lake Titicaca and supposedly 20 minutes walk from Puno.
turns out ... Hotel La Glorieta not so gorgeous and actually 25km from Puno.

so we turned it into an adventure.
we jumped in a minivan and headed back to town for 2.60 soles (instead of the 25.00 soles we paid for the taxi to get out there) and we decided that if we couldnt get the bus to Copacabana that night, then we were going to find the best damn hotel in Puno and live it up.

The Puno Plan strikes again ... the best hotel we could find was the same price as the hostel.
this was the view .......

but .. we had more adventures to come.

we had about 200 soles between us to spend - so we decided to try and find the best restaurant in Puno and blow the god damn lot.

Well .... the best restaurant in Puno is the same price as any restaurant in Cusco.
But Nell finally got her cuy (guinea pig)

and we had some wonderful Chilean red .. and dessert .. and tea.

and then we got the hell out the very next morning and now we are maxing and relaxing (doctors orders but more on that in a later post) in Copacabana, Bolivia.

Rugby, what rugby?

Just a small little nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya to all those non South Africans out there

Oh what the hell...

Sacred stuff

Where have the IWM been for the last week?

So we´re in Cusco and we have to do the Inca sites in the Sacred Valley. There are a lot of sites to chooses from, not least of which is Machu Picchu.
Research in town taught us that it is cheapest, though not cheap by any means, to go it alone. Tours are too expensive and limiting.

So we bought a return train ticket from Ollantaytambo, the first of the sites we would do, to Aguas Caliente, Machu Picchu town.

We also bought the ¨Boleto Touristico del Cusco¨, a ticket that allowed us entry into sites in and around Cusco and the Sacred Valley. A good deal at 70 Soles and it is valid for 10 days.

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Ollantaytambo

This was the first of the Inca sites we did and we were suitably impressed. We didn´t get a guide, mainly because we were to cheap to, but it was interesting and amazing none the less.

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Machu Picchu

We caught the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes that night and pretty much went straight to bed.

The next morning we were up at 04h45 and managed to catch the second bus up to Machu Picchu.Our first site of Machu Picchu took our breath away and we didn´t get it back until 12 hours later when we left.It was amazing, astounding and absolutely picture perfect.

There were a lot of stairs to climb...

I walked up to Inti-Punku (Sun Gate) in the hopes of getting a wider view of the site, and was not disappointed.

I also walked to the Inca Bridge.

I personally think that Machu Picchu would not be nearly as great if it were set in any other place.

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Pisaq

We went to Pisaq, by bus, the day after our recovery day from Machu Picchu. It is a large site, and we diceided that this time we wuld get ourselves a guide to tell us more about what these ruins were all about. Our guide, Ciro, was well educated about the Inca´s and quite a spiritual man. His english was great and he was very interesting.

Our guide seemed to prefer the not-so-travelled route.

And made us do silly things like chanting into the ¨niches¨. Tara wasn´t quite tall enough for the High Priest one´s though...

Ciro, the guide, followed us all the way back to Cusco and almost to our hostel before telling us that he would be happy to guide us around the ruins near Cusco for free. I think the 20 Soles we gave him may have been too much. We agreed to meet him on the Cathdral steps at the same time that we were meeting Amy and Jason.

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Around Cusco

What we thought was going to be a leisurely 2 to 4 hour downhill stroll around the ruins near Cusco, turned out to be a 7 hour hike, uphill and downhill. This was not so great for Amy and Jason, who had just finished the Inco Trail the day before...

But we had a great time. Ciro was, once again, a great guide and took us to a lot of places that were not on the map, or included in our ¨Boleto touristico del Cusco¨tickets.

We visited all the sites on the ticket and more: Saqsayhuaman, Qenqo, Puca Pucara, Tambomachay, the temple of the moon, the temple of the monkey and some interesting and fun tunnels, some of which lead all the way to the Santo Domingo church in Cusco.

Ciro was also prone to taking the more interesting routes, rather than the beaten track.

We saw some pretty strange things on the way...

And there were lots of stairs, again.

Saqsayhuaman was the last site we did and we were all pretty tired and hungry by then, but it was worth it, for the site and the view of Cusco.

This one is an in-joke for the four of us. It could be labled: The Llama Sp....its.