Architectural Arequipa

Another bloody night bus took us to the second largest city in Peru, named Arequipa. The city is also the hometown of our guide Kike so he was talking the place up big time. Our rooms weren´t ready at the hostel, as we arrived in Arequipa at about 8:30am so we headed in to town to scope out some local sights.

Arequipa is known as the "White City" due to the copious amounts of white volcanic rock used in the construction of the city´s buildings. It also doesn´t have lots of high buildings due to earthquakes, a bit like Napier really. A big difference is that Arequipa is surrounded by three big volcanoes, Picchu Picchu, Misti and Chanchani.

The first tourist site we hit was the museum dedicated to a Incan mummy found on one of the many volcanoes in the Arequipa region (in addition to the three named above). The scientist that found her body named her "Juanita". Unfortunately the lovely dessicated girl wasn´t on show between January and April, so we saw another mummy named "Serita". She was a rare Incan sacrifice (they weren´t really into it, unlike the central American Mayans) to most probably appease Inti (the Incan Sun God) following a big eruption or earthquake. The girl was raised for the express purpose and was probably about 14 or 15 at her death. She followed the shamans up the mountain where she got wasted on chicha, a local maize booze, and then a swift blow to the left temple finished the job. Afterwards the body was placed in a tomb on the mountain and a stone circle placed around the top to mark the grave. It was an honour for her as it meant she was close to the gods and could speak to them on behalf of her people. Incans didn´t practice human sacrifice as a matter of course, although there have been about a dozen of these mummies uncovered on the local volcanoes.

The afternoon in Arequipa was failry chilled out, and after an unfortunately big night on mojitos it meant that the trip to Colca Canyon the next day for our condor spotting excursion was unbearable. But that´s a story for another day.

The Plaza de Armas in the centre of Arequipa:

The front of the Cathedral which is only half finished - this is supposed to be the side entrance:

Pisco & Nazca

For those of you not familiar with South America (which is probably most of you) these two regions are known for their booze and crazy desert lines respectively. One wonders whether one influenced the other!

We spent a night just south of Pisco on the Paracas Peninsula. Pisco itself is a whole, but the region is famous for making a particular type of brandy wine. Its not all that great by itself, but mixed with egg white and lemon, it tastes okay as a Pisco Sour. Got a bottle but still haven´t touched it yet! From Paracas we took a boat out to the Ballestas Islands, which are a poor man´s Galapagos. The islands produce heaps of guano, which is exported around the globe for fertiliser. We saw lots of sealions, Humboldt penguins, and heaps boobies. Boobies are a type of seabird so don´t be rude! On the edge of the peninsula is a candelabra shaped picture carved into the rock, which no one really knows who created it, why they did, or how they did. Some scientists reckon it has some relation to the lines at Nazca (see below) but I don´t think the Nazcans knew what a candlelabra looked like.

After Pisco, we headed to Nazca to take in the world reknown Nazca Lines. For those who haven´t seen these they can be summed up as a whole heap of pictures carved into the desert. When I post some pictures, you´ll get a better idea. I didn´t think too much about who put them there, why they were there, how they got there, etc and just took them as they were. They were interesting to see from the air and another thing to tick off the South American list. Whether it´s strictly legal or not, I got to fly the plane for a few minutes, which can´t have been a bad thing cause we all made it back alive.

Following the flight over the lines we checked out a local necropolis which housed a whole heap of mummies from a pre-Nazca culture. Archeaologists have uncovered a number of undisturbed mummies that are housed in museum in Lima, but the ones on display in the tombs are mostly those that had been found on the surface as they had been disturbed by the ever present South American graverobber (although in this case not by the greedy Spanish conquistador variety). No photos of the tombed mummies in keeping with my respect for the dead theme, although I did get some snaps of the mummies in the nearby museum. It´s a thin line I know.

Now that I have ticked Pisco and Nazca off my list I don´t think I will need to come back to this part of the world. Nazca is even more of a dustbowl hole than that of Pisco, although the redeeming feature of Nazca was that the restaurant we went to for dinner did a delicious lomo saltado (in beef not yucky alpaca) which is a local speciality. It pretty much looks like beef in black sauce as you would cook Chinese style, with some peppers and onions thrown in for good measure.

Living It Up In Lima

Another night bus journey (with some obvious trepidation from the group) took us to Lima, the capital of Peru. I had heard from a number of sources, both written and oral, that Lima was particularly dodgy, but at no stage did I feel out of my depth or stalked by crims.

Our hostel was located in Barranco, which is a nice seaside suburb south of the centre of town. When I say seaside I mean on cliffs by the sea, but the view was nice nonetheless and there were plenty of sweet looking apartments that wouldn´t have looked out of place at the Viaduct in Auckland or Oriental Parade in Welly.

As per usual the day after a night bus is a bit of a write off for me and today there was no exception. After a nice nap Simon and I checked out the local neighbourhood and grabbed a bite to eat. The evening we spent at a restaurant in a seaside (read once again cliffside) mall with great views of the Pacific Ocean. Following dinner we headed to a bowling alley decked out in fluro and an alien theme. Good times and a few beverages helped to loosen up the bowling arm!

However, the day didn´t come without cost! Simon and I were taking a few B&W photos of some of the antiques in our hotel when I tried to pull a golf club out of a golf bag with my camera still in my hand, and ther cord not around my wrist. Murphy´s Law dictates that my camera gets dropped, goes smashing to the floor, and the lens is well and truly buggered. So the next day the first port of call was to buy a replacement camera, and an expense I could have done without but hopefully insurance will cover it.

Post camera shopping, our guide Kike took us to a market in central Lima called Polves Azules (literally Blue Dust in Ingles). This place was stocked wityh heaps of electronic goods, DVDs, CDs, etc. We went to this one DVD store and bought a total of 160 DVDs for US$160. Great bargain. Some of my purchases were Blood Diamond, The Departed, 300 (which I then proceeded to go see at the cinema that night - I bought it cause it was cheap), Apocalypto, The Good Shepherd and The Last King of Scotland. Some of the girls bought all the series of Friends, and you could get the same for a whole raft of series (eg The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc). A great place and if ever I am back in Lima I will head along with much more space to spare in my backpack!

Out third day in Lima was spent sightseeing and doing the typical tourist thing. We stopped first at the Plaza de Armas to scope out the changing of the Presidential Palace guard. A nice building, with colourful soldiers (who had terrible marching!) in funny Napoleonic hats, but I couldn´t help thinking it´s a poor imitation of the one at Buckingham Palace. Also of fame in the Plaza is the Cathedral which houses the body of Francisco Pizarro, with his head in another coffin. He was the head honcho Conquistadore until he was murdered in Lima by the son of a rival he had executed. Fair enough I suppose.

After the Plaza we walked around the corner to the Monastery of San Francisco. This Franciscan monastery was built in the 16th century and it was wonderful wandering the cloisters and seeing the beautiful artwork adorning the ceilings. Beneath the monastery is catacombs that housed copious skeletons from those people who died in Lima up until the 18th century. Some of the bones are arrange in neat patterns, eg femurs spread out into a big circle. I didn´t feel right taking photos of people´s graves/bones so no pictures to satisy those of you with morbid curiousity. I really enjoyed the monastery as it fit in nicely with a favourite book of mine called The Name of the Rose, which in summary is a murder mystery novel set in a monastery in the 13th century.

In the afternoon Simon, Mitzi, and I took a taxi a long way out of downtown Lima (as suggested by Kike) to the Museo de Archeaolgica y Anthropoligica. This was a nifty museum that traced Peruvian history from Chavin de Huantar (about 1500 years pre JC) all the way through to contemporary Peru. The Chimbu and Moche (of Chan Chan and Temple of the Moon fame respectively) made an appearance. So too did my favourite period of Peruvian history, the Incas and the Conquest.

That evening after a really disgusting pizza, a further disappointment in Peruvian cuisine, we headed to an all you can drink bar to party it up for our last night in Lima. We all had a great time, and after some dancing with the local ladies (its quite hard to keep up the pace!) you can work up a bit of a sweat. No worries, out comes a big bucket of foam which procedes to dump constant foam on the dancefloor for about 30 minutes. Needless to say I was straight in to cool off!

Apart from the camera experience, I had an enjoyable time in Lima and I think it would be somewhere I would return to to check out a few things I never got around to doing.

Trip To Trujillo & Hanging In Huanchaco

We were all very sad to leave lovely Mancora, and it was made even worse by the fact that we were catching a night bus to Trujillo. The main benefit is that you can sleep for the majority of the trip and next thing you know you are at your destination. The main downer is that thieves are rampant as our group found out.

Two of our Aussie girls had stuff stolen from their daypacks (makes a change from the convict Aussies stealing stuff), namely a passport, a credit card, a camera and an MP3 player. Needless to say Merryn, who had her passport and credit card stolen, wasn't in a particularly good state after this and I think the rest of the group also felt pretty crappy over the whole incident. Simon found out once we got to Trujillo that his iPod had been knicked from his day pack too. Our guide, Kike, was very helpful over the thefts and police reports were the order of the day when we arrived in Trujillo. I was lucky as my bag was padlocked, but it made me feel pretty bad as I was sitting in the aisle seat next to Merryn when her stuff got nicked.

I didn't have such a great sleep on the bus so a early morning nap and a big rest day was on the cards for me after when arrived at out hotel in Huanchaco, which is a seaside town 15 minutes from Trujillo. The main attractions are the nearby Chan Chan ruins as well as the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

Chan Chan was built by the Chimu people who inhabited the area in the 11th/12th century (from memory). They were eventually conquered by the ubiquitous Incas. In fact Chan Chan is a series of different palaces, nine in total, built by the various Chimu rulers. We visited one particular palace named the Tschudi palace, named after the Swiss dude who discovered it. The ruins were quite interesting and were made out of this sand looking brick. The palace housed the ruler, had a major religious function (as there were heaps of temples), and also at the centre was the tomb of the ruler who had built the palace and he was buried along with two of his concubines. The concubines argued their case about how useful there were to the deceased king, and the two most useful were then drugged up and buried alive. Apparantly it was an honour for them, in my opinion I would have preferred to have been a useless concubine! All in all the ruins were quite impressive and it was interesting to learn about a culture other than the Incas for a change. The Chimu lived near the sea so thir big thing was sea life, especially pelicans and sea otters, and many of the patterns on their architecture were of fish and crab nets. Hopefully you can see some of this in the pictures below.

After Chan Chan a short taxi ride to the other side of Trujillo brought us to the Temples of the Sun and Moon. These were built by the Moche people who predated the Chimu by about four centuries. Due to financial constraints of the project, only the Temple of the Moon has been excavated and conserved and it is this temple that we had the tour of. The temple is in fact about five different temples built on top of each other. Each temple was presided over by three priests, and once the last priest died a new temple was built over the top. The priests were all buried in the temple that they presided over. The result of this is that the whole ruin looks like a step pyramid. The Moche were big into their human sacrifice and at the temple many captured male prisoners were executed and their blood sprinkled over the land to increase fertility. Oh yeah, the priests also had a little sip too. I can see why they were into their fertility rituals because the land around here is pretty dry and barren. I much preferred these ruins as they had been preserved in their original condition as opposed to Chan Chan which was being restored. Check out the nice artwork below, unfortunately my camera battery died so I never got a photo of the Temple of the Moon, but there is a picture of the Temple of the Sun for your viewing pleasure.

Magical Mancora

From the moment our guide had told us that Mancora was right on the beach and was a top spot in Peru, we had been expecting Heaven on Earth. We weren´t disappointed. We arrived at night so we couldn´t get a good view of the place first up, but it was warm, our hotel was right on the beach, and we could hear the tide lapping the beach.

After a dirty and sweaty trip across from Peru it was straight into the togs and a late night swim to cool down. We were all fairly exhausted from the day of travelling so everyone hit the sack fairly early in anticipation of the day to come.

The morning dawned bright and beautiful, and once I had donned my still wet togs I strolled down to the beach for an early morning dip. The sand was golden and beautiful, the sun was pouring its heat down on the Earth, and the sea looked warm and inviting - plus there were a number of lovely bikini clad women floating around. Like I said, Heaven on Earth!

Our hotel conveniently located by the beach...

A beverage on the beach anyone?

Where the bloody hell are ya?

So began two days of absolute laziness. I spent the whole time moving between the sea, my spot in the shade, the hotel restaurant, and various bouts of beach cricket. We managed to buy a tennis ball in Cuenca and using various bits of driftwood we fashioned some stumps and a bat. No matter where they go in the world, Anglo-Saxons still manage to get in some cricket. Great stuff!

Not much else to report about our activities in Mancora as it was pretty chilled out. When I post photos you´ll get a better idea of the place. It was a great few days of R&R and everyone was pretty sad to get on the night bus to Trujillo.

¡Hola Tortuga!

¡Hola Simon!

Passing Into Peru

Following a heavy evening spent in Cuenca, it was a tough start to the day on the journey to Peru. We had a five hour bus ride in down to the border town of Huaquillas in southern Ecuador. Needless to say I spent most of the way sleeping and trying to recover from the previous evening. The experience of crossing from Ecuador to Peru wasn´t one I would like to repeat very often. The border was dusty, dodgy, dirty and downright sweltering. Heaps of vendors and other undesirables kept hanging around us trying to persuade us to use their transport service or buy worthless stuff from them. It was probably the most unsafe I have ever felt throughout my South American adventure, but the group managed to get through it unscathed. It was sad to leave Ecaudor behind but nice to get into another country and add another stamp to my passport. So after the border formalities we headed a few hours further south to a beach resort called Mancora for a few days of sun, surf, and sifting about.

Colonial Cuenca

Following Baños, we packed our bags and headed on a 5 hour bus ride to Cuenca in the south of Ecuador. The city is known for its beautiful architecture and it did not disappoint. It looked just how I expected a Spanish city would look like, and as always, there was a spacious Plaza de Armas (or main square) in the centre of town. We arrived reasonably late in the day so not much was achieved apart from having some dinner at a sports bar (think Sports Cafe in Wellington) and an early night to rest up from our travels.

The only full day in Cuenca was used exploring the city and checking out the architecture. The people here seemed a bit more European looking than those in Quito, and so a number of the women also matched the architectural beauty of the city!

The group had a reasonable night on the booze, and for those of you familiar with the barmaids at Rosie O´Gradys, they had them in Cuenca too - except they are called Jirafas (or giraffes in English) for obvious reasons. As per usual the beers were followed by a couple of Baileys for good measure! All in all a great evening of group bonding was had and needless to say the bus ride the following day (including the infamous Ecuador-Peru border crossing) was a little tough, but that´s a story for another day.

One interesting point about Cuenca is that a number of locals still wash their clothes in the river and lay them out on the riverbank to dry. I didn´t trust this method so I decided to take my laudry to a lavanderia instead. Who knows, they probably use the river anyway and some of the clothes below are probably mine.