I love this pic...

The Inca Trail

At the top of ´Dead Woman´s Pass, the highest point of the Classic trail

Sunset on Day 2

The alternative view of Machu Picchu on Day 3

View from Wina Picchu

On the day that the Boks hammered the English at Twickenham, we headed from Cusco to kilometre 82 to start the famous ´Classic´ Inca trail, four days in total and three nights camping en route in the surrounding mountains.

For the majority of the people in our group the Inca trail was the major attraction that drew them to South America. For us, it was and it wasn´t, but what I can say is that it exceeded our expectations by some distance. I think I was expecting an incredibly touristy, over crowded, paved walk to a site that maybe wasn´t as impressive in real life as it was in photos. I was partially right, it is quite crowded but not uncomfortably crowded, except for maybe Machu Picchu itself. There were plenty of ocassions when I was on my own, immersed in my own thoughts, admiring the scenery with no one around me for some distance, and to me that is the essence of hiking.

One thing that I´m sure everyone will say after completing the Inca trail is that the Porters are LEGENDS. All we had to carry was our day packs on our backs. Thats it. The Porters on avg carry 20kg of luggage each (ranging from tents, pots, pans, matresses, our duffel bags) on their backs whilst quickly jogging ahead of the group to set up various tents and have the next meal ready and prepared upon our arrival. Incredible. And the food was amazing.

The biggest highlight of our trip along the Inca trail was on day three, when our guide took us on a massive éxpeditional´ detour of the trail itself to view some ruins that have only recently been unearthed. Then to the top of a mountain pass that overlooked Machu Picchu itself. The views were spectacular and it was great to see such an incredible site from an equally unique perspective.

We arrived through the sun gate early on the 4th day to one of the most amazing views I´ve ever seen. Thanks to a massive storm the night before the weather was perfect, brilliant blue skies and not a breathe of wind. It was surreal and thoroughly rewarding after having hiked for three days to see it. I can´t imagine what it would be like just to get a train there and not do the trail but it certainly wouldn´t be the same.

Brad, I hiked up Wina Picchu, as you recommended. I have never done anything so scary in my whole life! Wina Picchu (Huayna Picchu) is the ´Sugar-loaf´ shaped mountain that stands tall behind the ruins and really is the symbol of Machu Picchu itself. What perhaps didn´t help, was that on the way up it appeared that someone had fallen off the mountain, as there was a rescue in operation, a rope hanging over the edge amongst some very worried looking people. That and the fact that we had to rush up there because we had to get our bus and train back to Cusco in a few hours time, conspired to make me a shiverring wreck by the time I reached the top, and even then I didn´t go to the very top. Nevertheless it was a great experience and the views were more than worth it.

Cusco - The Inca capital

Cathedral in Plaza des Armas

Plaza des Armas from an overlooking mountain

This girl followed us halfway down the mountain, resulting in this pic!

Homestay on Amantani

The view from ´our´ balcony

The view from ´Pacha Tata´ towards Taquile island

Shy ´Mama´

Part of our time around Lake Titicaca and Puno involved a one night homestay with a local family on the island of Amantani, 38km into the massive lake. We were quite keen for this but in the end it was slightly disappointing. I think a lot depends on the family you stay with and whilst our family were perfectly friendly, unfortuantely our ´mama´was slightly reserved and neither of us felt particularly at home in her company. I think what may be the case, is that many new families have signed up for this ´homestay´ deal and see dollar signs before the cultural experience. Fair enough.

Nonetheless we had a really good time over the 24 hours on the island. I befriended a really cool donkey, lasted about 3 minutes of a football match against a rival tour company (due to being 4100m above sea level) and we both enjoyed a fantastic sunset atop mount ´Pacha Tata´ or ´father earth´. At about 19h00 that evening, after a tasty dinner, we were dressed up in traditional clothes and attended a fun dance in the local hall with all the other people and their ´mamas´. Again though, this was great, BUT our mama didn´t seem too interested and by the time the evening abruptly came to an end, she didn´t seemed to pleased when I cracked open another beer, which I eventually had to abandon to avoid any unhappiness.

Without doubt, and I won´t go into too much detail here, probably the funniest moment of the entire trip happened at about 2am that morning when both Robyn and I woke up in desperate need of the loo (no. 1) and we had to use the supplied bedpan. I doubt any of you have used a bedpan recently, but it is a heck of a lot more difficult than you would imagine, especially when you start getting the giggles and it´s almost filled to the brim!

The floating reed Islands of Uros on Lake Titicaca

Colourful La Paz

One of the many street markets

Outside the most notorious prison in the world, San Pedro, chatting to the only other South African we´ve met the whole trip, a former inmate (trafficking) from Jhb

La Paz´s buses are too cool for school

The main square in central La Paz, Plaza de San Francisco (I think)

The World´s Most Dangerous Road

Starting up above the clouds...

...many of the drops are over 1km straight down

Remarkably, trucks still use this road. I have a superb video clip of these trucks negotiating a hair-pin bend about 3cm wider than the width of the trucks themselves

Looking fierce in our gear

AKA - Death Road. I´m not sure which was scarier, cycling down this ridiculously dangerous road or the trip back to La Paz in the van, up what I would rate as the second most dangerous road in the world. The driver was a complete maniac, over-taking on blind rises, taking photos and changing cds while repeatedly veering perilously close to the edge of the cliff, over 1000m straight down. I had to restrain myself from throttling him when we finally got back, but in the end I was just too happy to say that I had survived the worlds two most dangerous roads.

Train graveyard

Yet again, Robyn got some epic pics of this place, an old train graveyard that we visited on the way back from the Salar de Uyuni. The town of Uyuni, home to the salt flats, plays an important role as a transport hub for transporting, you guessed it, salt and other minerals to other cities in Bolivia as well as neighbouring countries Chile and Peru, and these are some of their old trains. We went there to watch the sunset but it turned out that the moon rising was far more impressive.

The Salar de Uyuni

Without a shadow of a doubt, Bolivia has the most incredible natural scenery I have ever seen anywhere. The drive up to Uyuni from Potosi was an interesting one. For the three days that we've driven trough Bolivia so far, only about 300m of road has been tarred. The roads are HORRENDOUS. Not just bumpy and unmanageable in a big truck, but most of them winding and twisting around colossal mountains that are everywhere. It's an adrenalin rush just sitting in the back. These roads make Chapmans peak or the Transkei look like the N1 from Beaufort-West to Laingsburg.

Anyway, the scenery en route to Uyuni was spectacular. All you could do was stare out the window in awe. Bugger trying to read. It was like driving through an exhibition of the best landscape artist of all time. Gigantic mountains in the distance framed by the most dramatic blue skies littered with cumulo-nimbus and whispy higher clouds, sparse plateaus, dried bushes and scrubs dotting the red landscape, cacti everywhere like armies of scarecrows, llama's - the works. Tolkien would've loved this place.

So Uyuni was the next stop, famous for those Salt flats that everyone knows about. The biggest in the world, they cover an area of 12,000 square kilometres! And 30,000 years B.C. the salt flat was once a sea-bed to a sea that stretched all the way up to Lake Titicaca in the north. Incredible, and once again I'm lost for words as to how beautiful it is and how humbling it is to have the privilege to view something so amazing. To give you some idea of the size of the flat, we drove 74km into the centre of the salt flat to a place called 'fish island'(because from afar, with the mirage, it looks like a fish). Fair enough. Fish island is famous for it's giant cacti's that grow as tall as 8m. The tallest one ever being 12m high. What is also mind-boggling is that they grow 1cm a year, so that particular cactus was 1200 yrs old!

The least enjoyable part(for me) about visiting this incredible place was the importance placed on getting those infamous 'perspective shots' that everybody has a good laugh at. Pah! Well we managed to get a few on Robyn's camera but the pics here are from my camera so these will have to suffice for the time being. I'm just not convinced by these photo's, they seem to detract from the point of visitng the place in the first place. Okay so it's quite fun but not as fun as seeing the flats themselves.

The people of Potosi

I wanted to call this post 'The people of Potosi' because Robyn took a number of really nice photos of some of the local people here but Robyn's pics haven't been uploaded yet so we'll just have to settle for mine, which don't include many pics of the array of colourful people here.

Potosi was one of the first opportunities for us to view a town close-up and really experience it. This is why we travel after all isn't it? Not to swing from a zipline, or raft down a river - to be exposed to other cultures. To the untrained eye this town is not pretty, sitting at 4100m above sea-level and offically the world's highest inhabited city, it is incredibly dusty and dirty, but if you're prepared to look a little closer there is a lot more to it than its harsh exterior.

Potosi was once the greatest silver-mining city in the world, but those days are long gone now and the massive, conically shaped Cerro Rico mountain that looms over the city bears testiment to that, it's slopes irreparably scarred by the miners who've plundered it and moved on. Nowadays it's a relatively poor city, only making money on the export of minerals here and there and tourism.

As luck would have it, while we were there the President of Bolivia was doing his rounds and there were parades all over the show and the town was seemingly in a state of celebration. Great for Potosians(?)but kak for tourists, as most of the sights were closed for a few days and every now and then you'd turn down a street only to be greeted by a bunch of locals marching towards you beating drums, blowing flutes and generally clattering anything together to make a sound.

We pretty much walked all over the town and explored the many different alley-ways and streets which ooze character. Paint peeling off semi-collapsed walls, stray dogs all over the show, traditional Aymara women and street peddlars jostling to sell you a bangle, Potosi's own hi-ace buses doing their best to run you over at every opportunity, when not trying to suffocate you with carbon-monoxide poisening from their exhausts. All at 4100m above sea-level, so high that even getting up and going to the toilet at night will have you stopping halfway there to catch your breath! Awesome!