Where to?

We had seven days left on the continent, we had to go back to Lima at some point but would it be today? Already sick of the buses we could have quite easily stayed in Cusco just for pure comfort and ease. But that could have led to regrets, Peru has some of the best left points in the world, "surely we should sample them! ""But the waves are all way up North and we don't know how to get there or anything about where to stay", all we knew was a towns name, Pacasmayo. Some Aussie guys said it was good but being far from the backpacker circuit, the guidebooks had nothing on it. We were faced with this decision as we sat by the fountains in Cusco's grand plaza.

I can't remember how but something clicked and made us decide to leap into the unknown. We jumped in the nearest Taxi straight for the ticket office and sorted out our path to Pacasmayo. With the arrangements made we caught up with our friend Lena and had a relaxing day, then with little enthusiam we got on the evening bus for the overnight ride to Lima. Once the sun had come up the following day, we started having some serious second thoughts. Tired and wanting to relax, we still had another day and a half to travel and it all seemed not worth the hassle. The bus was driving through some suss looking towns and we hoped Pacasmayo wouldn't be similar.

Once in Lima things started to roll smoother, Anita found us a direct bus that meant we would avoid local transport and minivans, the weather got warmer as our 2nd bus ride took us up the coast, and before we knew it we were at the hostel talking about the waves with some Spanish guys. Pacasmayo was a treat, a surprisingly pretty town, no tourism influence and it hadn't changed, everything felt like the 1950's, a sleepy fishing village.

From town to the surf was a 5 minute ride in a Tuktuk, the landscape was pure dessert, it felt weird the first time.

This wagon was sick!Full of rust but it got us to the waves. Thats the street of our hostel, looks like a warzone but it felt pretty safe.

There was a promenade along the beach with a flash old hotel and restaurant. We thought it was maybe a bit above our shoestring budget, but no! We couldn't find anything expensive in Pacasmayo, they were giving food away! We had a few sunny arvos with beers and samosa type seafood fried things, yum.

Daily life in Pacasmayo

The wagon found us some good waves one day but overall it wasn't epic, needed more swell. Still I got one wave that made Pavones in Costa Rica seem like a beachbreak. My legs were jelly and I was laughing by the time it peeled off into deep water. That was until I saw how far I had to paddle back out.

"With creativity, anything is possible" the slogan of Inka Cola, Peru's favourite drink. It tastes toxic but as we have just spent 8 months surfing and wandering through Central and South America, it seems rather apt to finish with. We made some good friends in Pacasmayo and had that relax we were craving. We flew over the snowy Andes, the dense Jungles of the Amazon, some tropical island paradises in the Carribean, enjoyed a business class upgrade, toasted the Americas with some Champagne, and when we woke up we were above Europe.

Home Sweet Home

Back Lawn, Breakfast on the table - Home Sweet Home

Feeling in high spirits after a day hanging out at Machu Pichu, we rose early again, our train back to Ollantaytambo was leaving at 5.30am. Some confusion about where to board the train resulted in us running around in circles through dark, empty market places, and a maze of ramps and staircases. We made it aboard at the last minute and went back to sleep.

Awakening an hour or so later, we saw a huge snowy peak right by the train, the weather had obviously got colder overnight and as we arrived in Ollantaytambo there was an icy breeze that made us a bit more picky with our hostel selection. The last visit we were without hot water, so this time we would be checking all showers before booking in for the night!

We settled on a place called 'Home Sweet Home', and thats exactly what it turned out to be. We were a little uncertain on whether to stay longer, return to cusco, go to the coast, but Luis the young Peruvain owner and host soon made us feel right at Home and we settled in for a perfect few days. The sun drenched, back lawn surrounded by mountain views became the focal point of the stay. Each morning we would watch the lawn from the window of our room until about 8.37am, why? Because thats when the sun would rise clear of the mountains to the east and light the whole place up. Before then it was strictly shadow dominated, jacket, wool, beanie weather, yet the moment that sun was high enough we would run barefooted down the stairs and bask in the rays while Luis served an awesome breakfast. Fuel for the day.

Breakfast eaten it was adventure time, and just like our last visit we found more trails to follow. I can remember one warm afternoon by the big river, watching riverrafters cruise down the tame rapids, but the real highlight was the clearing we found another day.

Abandoned Tuktuk

Walking uphill and deeper into the valley alongside a narrow yet surging stream we came across a small patch of grass, nestled among gum trees. The only sound was the gushing of the water, the perfect spot to chill out, read, sleep, or write. We ended up going there a few times, usually with a good supply of homebaked cookies and brownies from 'Hearts Cafe'. On our last visit, we had a really cool experience, the kind that always seemed to happen to us in Ollantaytambo. Anita was sleeping by the riverbank, I was facedown in a book, when I felt eyes staring at me from close range. I turn around and 5 or 6 kids from the nearby village are just staring at us silently. A few words later and we were all good friends. They were down at the river to wash clothes, wash their hair, and cook a big pot of soup for lunch. I gathered it was a regular thing for them and they were surprised and stoked to find us hanging out in their little spot! The oldest kid was a girl aged 10 but man could she handle things, washing the boys hair, one eye on the soup, the other eye on her families clothes she was washing, and in between collecting sticks to keep the fire going. I think getting the sticks was meant to be the boys job but they were more concerned with showing me all the trout in the river! They just kept yelling 'TRUCHA' 'TRUCHA'! We had a great time for a couple of hours with them, once their lunch was ready they insisted we eat first and they set us up with a table cloth on some flat rocks. We insisted they eat with us, and we had a little feast together. A nice memory to end our stay in Ollantaytambo with.

Sleeping, pre- invasion by the kids

Anita helping out with the hair washing.

Aside from the locals, there are some foreigners living in town and doing good things. The cafe on the plaza 'Hearts Cafe' besides making amazing food, uses their proceeds for various causes in the area, setting up schools, helping with health issues and much more. Check out http://www.heartscafe.org/ if you want to help out in some way. Anita overheard the owner had some staffing issues one night so she offered to put her waitress skills to use and ended up doing so. A good way to give back to the town. The good thing about the organisation is seeing how efficient people can be when they come together for a good cause. It seemed like lots of foreigners who had got so much from the local area on their holidays had then gone home and thought of ways too helpout. One guy had built the website for free, another guy from a New York advertising firm had made up some amazing posters and ads, and everytime we went to the cafe we would see Doctors and other people chatting with Sonia the founder, offering their services free of charge. Sonia was amazing her self, a 76 year old British women, who decided after travelling to Peru that she would go back, learn Spanish and open the cafe. That was more than a year ago now and things are looking good, and Sonia's around every day, smiling and doing all she can to help both her customers and the town's people. Good Stuff.

On that high note we made our way back to the comparitively frantic pace of Cusco to catch up with an old friend and to decide what to do with our remaining week in Peru.

The Feast

Machu Pichu Expedition

Noone really goes to Peru without making the pilgrimage to Machu Pichu. We tried to have as few preconceptions as possible about the place, the main thing for us was to just spend time up there and try and feel what it would have been like back in the day. This meant we couldn't take the bus up like most people do, no. After our train pulled in to it's final stop, Aguas Calientes, we found a place to crash, ate dinner, and set the alarm for 4.15am the following day. We would be walking at 4.30am, we had decided we needed to earn our trip to Machu Pichu, and that meant 2 hours walking. What we didn't factor in was that it would be dark, pitch black until 5.20am, that our torch would have flat batteries, or that the walk would be near impossible at first because we couldn't see. To make matters worse, the walk was bloody hard, yep we were earning it alright!

We found two techniques that worked, one was to wait for serious trekkers to walk past, the kind that wore flashlights on their heads, and then follow them closely. The other techique was to try and get away from everyone elses lights so your eyes could get accustomed to the darkness. Slowly but steadily we made our ascent!

On arrival at the top we found a bit of a zoo, cafes, buses, and a big queue, think disneyland. We were glad for the walk, it defnitely made it seem more real. Once inside, there were crowds of people and lens's were pointing everywhere, yet the sites magical energy was immediately apparent. It was easy enough to find a space to yourself and feel free to contemplate the lost city. For me the site was more special than the actual ruins, the landscape was amazing. Cliffs dropping off to oblivion on all sides, tropical plantations barely visible on the valley floors below.

Ill let the pictures tell the storey...

L. Aguas Calientes the 'basecamp' for our Machu Pichu expedition. R. Man at work on the ruins, not a bad office!

The light filtered through the valley into this blue colour, beautiful.

The terrain was more tropical, the train from Ollan dropped our altitude some 1000m I think.

L. Light show from under the ruins. R. Soaking up the view


One last look

The Sacred Valley

Ollantaytambo was one of those places we just knew we would fall in love with. A little town, sitting as if in the palm of a giant's hand, huge cliffs towering above, the peaks often hidden by clouds. Little more than a sleepy town square, a few restaurants, and a small local community living in mud brick houses - but so much to explore. Unmarked walking trails could be found in every direction, some led to ancient ruins, some followed the river, others led us past wild flowers and trickling streams, all of them took us into deep silence and just being there filled us with energy and inspiration.

Anita giving Sapo a go

On our first night we bought a bottle of red wine and sat up on the roof of our accommodation, just in awe of the place, especially the silence. We played a few games of Sapo, a Peruvian game where you try and throw gold coins in the frogs mouth (see photo). Then a loud crack shattered the peace and echoed round the valley walls, sounding something like a fighter jet from Starwars. It turned out to be some kind of fireworks, there was a festival in the town and parades and music would be going on all night. We followed the noise into the town for dinner and ended up spending the night dancing and drinking with the locals in the square. Anita managed to find a dance partner who made up for his old age with energy, while she was getting twirled all around the plaza, I found a nice possie by a massive log they were burning to keep everyone warm (fricken freezing at night) and stupidly froze my hands off grasping ice cold litre bottles of beer. The festival seemed to be a never ending one, so we got use to seeing parades and costumes everyday for the next week. We spent our days wandering off down random trails, just to see what we would find....

Festivities in the Plaza

Every town has to have a Bull ring! Ollantaytambo was no exception, this ring is pretty small though and with stonewalls instead of fences, you wouldn't want to drink too much before jumping into the fray!

One of our walks took us to a high rock wall, I climbed to the top and this is what was over the other side. I think the crop is used to die a lot of the clothing.

One day, walking through town we met a young boy called David, he was struggling with a bag of this stuff on his back. He jumped at Anita's offer to help and next thing we were walking towards his house, the green stuff was for his goats. After 10 minutes he told us his house was close, but his idea of close was slightly differnt to ours. He wasn't overly eager to carry the goat food again, it was almost as big as he was. He was a good little tour guide though and he showed us a few of the best walks to do. The best thing about Ollantaytambo was little interactions like this, the local people were without exception, warm, open and happy despite overwhelming poverty. It made us realise how much comfort we are accustomed to in the developed world, but also that the comfort isn't totally necessary for happiness. We saw lots of smiles.

Three interesting days in 'Ollan' wasn't enough. We took the train to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to Machu Pichu, but for sure we would be spending more quality time at Ollantaytambo on our way back.

Lets Get High!

As our plane circled over Lima, our immediate impression was 'It's grey'. A thick sea-mist and a dry, dirty landscape was defnitely a shock after months of tropical green foliage. After a taxi ride through the city we arrived in a much nicer seaside neighbourhood called Barranco. Our internal homing devices led us to the clifftops to check the waves, what greeted us was another shock, freezing lines of swell were rolling in from the south, not at all appealing, and with polluted waters and sea lions in the lineups we were happy to put surfing out of our minds and head for the mountains.

The bus ride from Lima to our next destination Cusco, was a nightmare. We thought we were stylin as we booked into Kama (bed) Class for the 20 hour journey. Unfortunately it wasn't a comfortable journey for a few reasons, firstly the toilets had a 'number 1 only rule' and that combined with the horrendous food they served and a sudden rise in altitude around 10pm meant it would be a long night! It was a relief to wake the next morning to beautiful mountains, and clear blue skys. We arrived at our hotel and they greeted us with a cup of coca tea, made from the same plant that coacaine comes from and good for altitude sickness, sweet.

The courtyard at Nino's Hotel was sun drenched and they served us the best breakfast of the whole trip! If you go to Cusco stay there, all the proceeds go to an awesome cause, local orphanages and schools for the kids with no money.

We took a walk up the hill one day and found this fulla. We had a bit of a Jam Session in front of the Jesus Christ Statue.

I was looking a bit feral and decided yto shave my head, the guy reckoned I should have a 'cutthroat' style shave as well, a good experience but defnitley a oncer, going against the grain just doesn' need to be done, blood was spilt!

Hot Mulled wine got us through many a cold, cold night in Cusco!

Now we've seen some good scams on our trip. There was the Guatemalan 'taxi' to the hotsprings, $8 for us gringos, yet only 8 onions for the locals that jumped our ride, there was the girl crying, all alone in a mexican square, she was selling sweets but had lost all her profits and her boss was gonna be pissed off! So we gave her some coins. A few nights later who do we see crying in the dark corner of the square again? But see that photo above, the nice women with the Alpacas, they take the scamming cake! We spot them way up the street and take a photo from a distance, they call us over and and seem genuinely cool which eases our 'they will want $' thoughts. However a dorky tourist shot or 2 later and they tell us their set fee. At about 5 times the minimum hourly rate, and enough to buy a few meals at a restaurant, they must have been making a killing. They killed the photo for us too, one minute we had an intrepid travel photo 'cool native girls and alapacas' the next we had 'a cheesy tourist scam photo'. Oh well, hopefully the moneys going to good use!

Cusco was fun, all you need to do is wander the streets and you'll be entertained for days. We were ready for some trekkin, and headed for the sacred valley and a town called Ollantaytambo, a step closer to Machu Pichu.