Archive for October, 2007

10-21-2007

Peru

Hello, we flew from Iquitos to the capital of Peru, Lima. Here we stayed in a lovely area called Miraflores (thanks to Mrs Goodall´s advice!). After the heat of the jungle, Lima was freezing so we didn´t stay long.

We took a really posh bus (by accident) to Nasca. It had blankets and pillows, food and films. Although it was an unexpected treat, we´ve decided that we prefer travelling by the local buses. The trip to Nasca was quite sad. We passed through many of the towns, cities and villages that had been affected by the earthquake that happened a few months ago. We saw hundreds of families living in tents, working hard to clear up the mess. Most of the buildings have been ruined and there was piles of rubble everywhere. It was awful to see so many people without homes. However, a lot of help for the affected areas is being provided and life seems to be slowly getting back to normal.

We stopped in Nasca to fly over the Nasca lines. These are strange patterns and pictures drawn in the sand by the Inca people around 600BC. There is a lot of mystery surrounding them as they can only be seen from the air. When they were made, air travel hadn´t been invented so they are still one of the world´s many mysteries. The plane was tiny and I felt quite sick but it was worth it. We went to the Inca graves too and saw scary skeletons and mummies from the Inca time too. It was a bit spooky!

From Nasca, we travelled to Arequipa which is a lovely city with lots of beautiful white buildings (and a great market for buying fruit and vegetables).
We took a three day trek down into the Colca Canyon which is the second deepest canyon in the world. It was hard work as it was so hot but the canyon was beautiful. The people who live there don´t have jobs, they just farm the land and provide little clay huts for tourists to sleep in. There are no roads, just very steep paths so the locals travel on foot or by donkey. A journey to the nearest town takes over a day!
It was great fun learning about all the interesting plants and animals along the way. On our second day, we arrived at a lovely ´oasis´ with a freshwater pool. It was good to relax after 5 long hours of trekking.
Our final day began at 2.30am when we had to climb up 1,600m in three hours. It was cold and dark and my torch was rubbish so I didn´t really enjoy it until it started to get light. The Canyon looked utterly magnificent and it felt really good to finally reach the top.

We then travelled (by bus thankfully) to Condor Cross where we sat for two hours waiting for Condors to fly up out of the canyon. We saw about 8. Condors are endangered vultures, thier wingspan reaching 3 metres. The vultures on the Jungle Book are Condors. It was amazing to see them although I wished I´d had binoculars! After a brief visit to some thermal baths (to soothe our aching muscles) we returned to Arequipa.

We are now in Puno. The bus ride here was beautiful. We saw dozens of Vicuñas (almost extinct relatives of the Llama) and pink flamingos. We have been unable to do anything today as it is the Peru Census 2007. This means that they are counting everyone who is in the country and everyone has to stay inside until 7pm. Nothing is open so we´ve not really had a lot to do.

Tomorrow, we´re going to Lake Titicaca which borders Bolivia too. We´re staying on the Peruvian side for the moment and are hoping to spend a few days island hopping. Because we are high above sea level, it´s quite difficult to breathe here and I´ve had a bit of a headache. I’m slowly getting used to it.

Hope everyone has enjoyed half term (has it finished yet?) I look forward to hearing about it. Will be in touch soon, Miss Black xx

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10-16-2007

Park Yasuni and Peru

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10-10-2007

Alice and I have safely arrived in Peru. Our journey here was a bit more difficult than we´d expected but was still a lot of fun. We left Ecuador and entered Peru by the Rio Napo. However, we arrived in a tiny place called Pantoja only to discover that there was no boat heading to where we wanted for at least a week. We left Peru on the same day and went back to Ecuador (in a speedboat) where we met Juan Carlos, a jungle tour guide who asked us to do a river/rainforest tour ending up in Iquitos (which was where we were trying to get to). So, we´ve spent the last week with him and a french girl, Blondine, travelling around Ecuador´s largest national park (Park Yasuni) in a tiny little boat.

The highlights of the week have been…

Fishing for piranhas (and swimming with them)

Seeing dolphins and monkeys and other amazing rainforest creatures

Eating maggots and ants

Camping in the jungle

Going onto the water at night, looking for Caymen

Things I didn´t enjoy…

Being bitten by lots of horrible insects(one lived in my head for 4 days without me realising)

Sleeping in a hammock

Being caught in a horrendous tropical storm, in the dark, in our tiny boat (I really thought I wasn´t going to survive)

Not being able to wash!

We finally arrived in Iquitos today after a very long and difficult journey. The night of the storm, things were so bad that Juan Carlos had to navigate the boat to safety and we ended up having to ask a Peruvian family if we could spend the night in their little wooden home. They didn´t speak English as they were Quechua people, native to the rainforest. It was a very interesting experience as they´d never seen anyone like us before. Their reaction to our cameras and our diaries was astonishing. I felt like an animal in the zoo. They all just sat watching us. The entire family were extremely welcoming and looked after us well. The mum and dad had 14 children and they all slept together on the wooden floor of their one roomed house.

After many long hours travelling on various boats, we arrived. Already Peru feels very different to Ecuador. It´s strange being in a city again after life in the wilderness. Having said that, it´s a city on the banks of the Amazon river and still very basic. Iquitos is the largest city in the world which cannot be reached by road. We´ve had our fill of boat travel so after a few days of exploring the city, we´re going to fly south to Lima. We can only fly at night time because there are too many vultures on the runways during the day!

I´m running out of time on my computer but I´ll put some photos on in the next couple of days. Thankyou for the comments. They made me smile. Lots of love Miss Black xx p.s I am rubbish at dividing! p.p.s Good luck Mrs Prentice! x

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