Bolivia - La Paz & The Death Road

La Paz is the highest capital in the world (3,660m above sea level according to Wikipedia). The high altitude is really noticeable just doing simple things like wandering around the city – its very easy to get out of breath. La Paz is a bustling city full of people and traffic but it is cheap-as-chips, has some interesting sites (like dead llama foetuses in the witches market), great hostels and restaurants serving international food (such as a British Indian restaurant!) making a welcome break from usual South American dinners of rice, meat and salads!!

A must-do on the gringo trail of Bolivia is to spend a day mountain biking down the Yungas Road... otherwise known as... El Camino de la Muerte (The Death Road)!! The majority of the road is a gravel track hugging the mountains with an unprotected sheer drop on one side of the road into the valley below. Hundreds of people used to die each year travelling the road hence the name. More recently a safer tarmacked relief road has been built which means the majority of the Death Road users are tourists getting their adrenaline fix on a mountain bike!

The route is 64km of downhill riding mostly on gravel track, descending 3600m in altitude. The main challenge is to keep away from the sheer drop which isn't too hard as long as you can ride a bike and don't go too crazy!! Unfortunately the morning I was due to do it I wasn't feeling well at all. I felt sick and also had diarrhoea. The trip to the British Indian curry house might have been a factor but also the early morning long and bumpy minibus ride compounded things. By the time we got to the start I was feeling really ill and I needed a quick exit from the minibus and a dash into the bushes to vomit. This was the start of a long day cycling sections of the road with many visits to the bush to vomit, and then when possible visits to some of the worst toilets in the world to relief myself from the other end of my body !! I managed to spend the entire day on two wheels without falling off the edge or wimping out and getting on the support minibus. I did get some enjoyment from the beautiful scenery and thrill of the ride but having spent the whole day puking and shitting this was definitely a low point of my trip.

During my stay in La Paz a group of us from the hostel went to see the Cholitas Wrestling event. This is basically a show for tourists where women in traditional costume fight masked opponents and occasionally the biased referee joins in the fight. It was entertaining for the first 30 mins or so!

Bolivia - Copacabana & Lake Titicaca

My first border crossing by bus was drama free. After gaining two more stamps in my passport and then a 100m sprint to catchup with the bus (which had already rolled across the border and out of sight) and I was into Bolivia.

First stop was Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The town at the time was in festival mode, celebrating Bolivian independence day which meant chaos - people and market stalls everywhere. Unfortunately for me and my travelling pals this meant a very limited number of available beds for the night, and an evening of walking around to almost every hostel and cheap hotel in the town before managing to get something that (a)wasn't akin to a prison cell, and (b)didn't blow the travel budget.

Neglecting to heed the warning in the guide books about there being no ATMs in the town, I found that on this occasion the guide books were right - there were no ATMs in the town. I had just crossed the border from Peru so I didn't have any local currency and therefore had to pool my remaining peruvian soles and some emergency US dollars to afford the cost of my bed, a day trip to Isla del Sol and most importantly my bus ticket to La Paz where i could get some cash! The trip to Isla del Sol and Lake Titicaca were beautiful, helped by a lovely day of blue skies and sun, I just wish i'd had enough money to stay overnight to have been able to see the much hyped sunsets / sunrises.

Peru - Puno & Uros Floating Islands

Last stop in Peru was Puno, a town on the shores of Lake Titicaca and close to the border with Bolivia. From Puno we took a half day tour to see the Uros and their floating islands on Lake Titicaca. The Uros are a pre-incan people who settled on the lake to avoid more powerful communities like the Incas.

The trip to the islands didn't get off to the best of starts. The boat pulled out of the harbour so swiftly that one of the boat crew promptly fell off the back of the boat into the lake and spent 5 minutes thrashing around before a group of people managed to haul him onto the pier.

When we reached the islands we were welcomed by the Uros, dressed in their colourful traditional clothes who gave us a demonstration showing how the islands were constructed out of the local reeds. From here on it became a bit of a tourist trap, with the persuasive locals ushering us to the market stalls. We then had a ride on a traditional boat with a few of the local kids singing us songs in different languages before arriving at another island and more market stalls.

Peru - Arequipa & Colca Canyons

During the Salkantay trek I'd met a fellow brit called Steve who was heading the same way as me after Cusco. A new travelling buddy!! We headed from Cusco to Arequipa together on a night bus. Arequipa is the base for trips to the Colca Canyon. At 4160m the canyon is more than twice as deep as the grand canyon in the USA (although its walls arent as vertical). We went on a 2 day trekking tour of the canyon which basically was a long trek down to the bottom of the canyon and then the following day a long trek back up again. On the drive there we got the opportunity to stop and watch condors soaring on the thermals above the canyon - they were HUGE!! It took a few hours to trek down to the bottom of the canyon where we stayed at 'The Oasis' - a very small settlement that has half-a-dozen hostels, each with their own spa pool. With no electricity we ate dinner by candlelight and afterwards we were soon in bed as it got very cold after sunset. Next morning we started the hike up the wall of the canyon at 5:30am in the dark, before the suns heat would have made it a lot harder. It was another tough climb taking us 2.5hrs to ascend the 6K zig-zag path, rising 1100m in altitude.

On the journey back we were chatting away when i heard a thump and one of the girls on the bus yelped. I looked out the back window and saw a horseman looking at his helpless dog (well i assume it was his dog) who was trying to stand but his back legs weren't working. Our minibus had just run over the dog. Our driver hadn't made any attempt to swerve to miss the dog, nor did he seem at all affected afterwards and just drove on. It made me feel sick but I guess people in this part of the world don't have the same affinity to dogs to what I am used to back home.

Peru - Cusco & Machu Picchu

The journey from Nasca to Cusco was a long one, about 16 hours in total and up and down across the Andes. It was my first night bus adventure and went without dramas. I stayed at Pariwana Hostel in Cusco which gets a special plug because it was one of the best hostels i have stayed in during my south american adventure. It had everything a traveller like me would want as well as little extras like power sockets in each locker so you can charge your camera or phone securely!

Cusco is the base for trips to Machu Picchu. The floods earlier in the year had closed the area for 3 months and because of that the actual 'Inca Trail' was booked up for months. I therefore booked myself on one of the alternatives called the Salkantay Trek, along with a few other travelling pals i'd made in the hostel. The Salkantay Trek is longer and harder than the actual inca trail, significantly cheaper and far less touristy (although you don't get to walk the actual inca trail obviously). Salkantay is a quechua word (quechua being the language used by the incas) meaning "Savage Mountain" - a 6271m peak capped with a glacier which you hike near the base of during the trek.

The trek was amazing and varied. It was 5 day trek with the final day spent at Machu Picchu. Each day there was different scenery as the trek took us up into the mountains to the base of Salkantay, and then down into the valleys to be surrounded cloudforest. It was freezing at night so I got used to wearing the same clothes during the day and then at night too in my sleeping bag. On the 4th night we stayed in a hostel in Agua Calientes where we had the luxury of a hot shower.

The next day and the ascent to the Machu Picchu entrance was to be very surreal. Only the first 400 people at the entrance get a stamp allowing the bearer to climb Waynu Pichu, one of the peaks looking down onto the ruins. There are buses that shuttle people up to the entrance but they normally arrive after the first people who have made the journey by foot... so we opted to do the latter. We left the hostel at 4am and got to the bridge at the bottom of the valley about 10 minutes later....only to find a large queue of people already ahead of us. The bridge was opened at 4:45am by which time a huge number of people were behind us. The race had begun!! It was pitched black still but the area was illuminated by a hundred or so head torches. To begin with people were running, dashing to make overtaking maneuvers, pushing others etc. Soon after everyone settled into more of an orderly procession as it became an exhausting climb (especially after a tough 4 day trek!!). The climb was about a 45min non-stop ascent on steep stone steps. All the time in the back of my head I had the images of buses starting their ascent on the road and it spurred me on. Eventually I made the top to find i was in the first 100. I was tired, covered in sweat but very happy to have my Waynu Pichu stamp !!

Machu Picchu was very magical... made even more so by the four days of trekking to get there. I felt we'd earnt it! We watched the sun rise over the ruins and then spent the rest of the day wandering around seeing the site and also just relaxing while taking the view in. The Waynu Picchu peak was an adventure in itself with narrow inca steps stuck to the side of cliff faces and a long climb to the top. At the top we were rewarded with spectacular views of the ruins and the surrounding valleys.

Peru - Lima, Pisco, Huacachina & Nazca

It was very hard to finally leave Medellin and say goodbye to Dani and family, with no concrete plan as to when I was going to see them again. I had been very spoilt by her and her family who had really looked after me while I had been staying in Medellin. I could easily have stayed there for the rest of the year but I had a dream at the beginning of the year to travel to all corners of South America and I was determined to see fulfill this dream.

The first week in Peru was a low period for me. It felt strange to be solo again after so many fun times in Colombia. I felt sad and pretty antisocial as I boarded the plane from Colombian soil. This low feeling persisted for a few days. Lima wasn't that exciting... another huge capital, another Plaza de Armas, some interesting colonial architecture, more attractive looking churches... but not a huge amount to excite me!

After Lima I headed south to Pisco. Pisco turned out to be a dump!! There was a major earthquake in 2007 which destroyed 80% of the homes and killed hundreds of people. Three years later and they are still recovering from it. The reason for travelling to Pisco was to take a trip to the Islas Ballestas which are a collection of islands alternatively named 'Poor mans Galapagos'! As I skipped on the real Galapagos Islands this sounded a must do. The morning of the tour the mist had enveloped the coast and therefore I had to wait around at the harbour in the cold for 3 hours until the boat was eventually allowed to leave. The wait was justified. Just 10 minutes into the boat journey, we spotted a pod of dolphins surfacing near the boat. The skies were filled with birds racing us to the islands. At the islands we saw sea lions, cormorants, penguins, pelicans and rather amusingly named blue-footed boobies!!

Next stop was Huacachina for a night. Huacachina is a typical Oasis town built around a lake in the middle of the desert surrounded by huge sand dunes. I met Jerre getting off the bus who stuck out as the only other gringo on the bus. Jerre is a young dutch chap who ended up being my travelling buddy for the next few days. In Huacachina we shunned the opportunities to do sandboarding (snowboarding ...but with sand!!) as a tour and in the end just hired a board and trekked up the biggest sand dune we can see. It was good fun but such hard work climbing the dune that in the afternoon we went out into the dunes, this time by dune buggy which was like a roller-coaster ride.

After Haucachina, Jerre and I headed further south to Nazca, famous for its Nazca Lines. The best way to see the lines is from the air. Unfortunately on the day we were due to take the flight over the lines, again the weather was determined to disrupt our plans. A sandstorm had whipped up in the desert and eventually became enough to close the airport. I got as far as having a photo taken by the plane and then getting in and putting my belt on with the plane running, before we were told we'd have to head back into the airport. At 11am in the morning and with tickets for a late night bus much later that day, we decided to stick out a wait in the airport and hoping for a change of fortunes with the weather. Unfortunately that change didn't come so after 6 hours of waiting in a tiny airport, it was announced there would be no flights until the next day!! So I went to Nazca (the town itself is not a very nice place) and didn't get to see the lines! Oh well!