After heading back from Galapagos, Nick came to meet me in Quito! We headed straight for the coast, to a place called Montinita, which is known for its surf and parties. The town was unusually quiet after the easter long weekend so we were a little dissapointed with the nightlife, and there weren{t many other travellers around to meet. We did take a surf lesson one day, and then practiced our skills some more other days, had many fresh pina coladas and ceviche on the beach, and checked out a 24 hour club one night. It turned out it was ladies night which meant that I payed for cover and all my drinks were free... sweet! After a night of dancing we decided to spend one more day on the beach and then head to Peru.
We arrived in Mancora at 3am (oops) and decided that it would be best to grab a hostel. Went for the closest cheapest one, and then in the morning headed for Loki, which is the best hostel I have stayed in so far! It looks more like a resort, with a poos, volleyball, big bar, and beach access. We only planned on staying here for a few days, but after our first night of drinking and hanging out by the poos, we decided we better stay longer. My friends Jay and Nathan who I met in Uruguay had both landed jobs bartending here.. which meand dangerously strong drinks and a convieneniently small bar tab! Plus we all got to hang out again, which was great! So.. we spent days at the beach and pool, playing volleyball and other ridiculous drinking activities that the Loki staff came up with. Some of the highlights include an award winning performance of Backstreets Back at Kareoke night, Coming in dead last at Loki Olympics (I think the iraqi team was definitely on steroids), Doing reasonably well in the poker tournament, and almost winning beer pong (by almost winning, I mean we weren{t close at all, but we did kill our first opponents). We met another Canadian couple from Edmonton, who we spent lots of time with by the pool and by the bar! After a full week (we had to stay for the pirate party) we decided to head to the mountains so our livers could recover.
Unfortuneately en-route to Huarez I got really sick and had to spend a day and a half in bed in Trujillo before I was well enough to even get on a bus. Thanks to lots of Antibiotics I recovered in time to do some hiking the day after we arrived in Huarez. We hiked up to Lago 69 (4600m).. and I was definitely suffering from a combination of altitude and not eating for 3 days. The hike was worth it.. the lake and glaciers were beautiful! I really enjoyed Huarez.. I wich we could have spent more time here.. we met lots of great people at our hostel and the city is really beautiful, but we are in a rush to see some other places before our treck in Cusco!
From Huarez we headed right to Huacachina.. back to the heat! Here we went out in dunebuggies to the desert to go sandboarding. The dunebuggy ride was awesome (a little scary at times, but I am still alive).. more like a rollercoaster over and around the huge sand dunes than anything else.. and sandboarding swas lots of fun as well.. definitely different than snowboarding though. The best part was flying down the dunes on your belly.
The next morning we went to Islas Ballestras (they call them poor mans galapagos). You can{t get off the boat and walk around, but we saw lots of penguins, more sea lions, boobies, and tons of other birds. We also saw the candelabra.. which might be one of the nasca lines (there is some debate about this).. it may also be a pirate marking, but it{s still pretty cool!
After this we headed straight away to Puno (almost missed our bus transfer). Puno is freezing cold, aand there isn{t much to see in the town, but toorrow we are heading to the Uros islands for two days. The islands are made of reeds, and maintained by the people that live on them, and we should get to do some fishing and other things with the locals!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Arequipa to Lima and Onward
Oops again, it´s been a while since I´ve found the time to update my blog.. so this is going to be going back in time a bit but I´ll do my best to remember!
First the bus trip from Arequipa to Ica, which turned into Lima. At this point I was still travelling with Sandro and Eva, and Eva and I had just gotten back from our Colca Canyon Trek.. which was amazing! We did it in two days, and stayed at a hostel that was like paradise.. with cute little huts. Unfortuneately a mouse decided to share my bed with me after it crawled across my face (I thought it was a really large spider, so I was actually relieved to find out that it was a mouse). After the mouse woke me up by walking on my face, it decided to crawl right under the covers with me! We had a little fight, which mostly involved me jumping around on my bed and shaking my blankets around, but the mouse won and I ended up switching beds. That morning I awoke to a scoprion right next to me head on the wall.. so needless to say I wasn´t that sad to leave paradise! The 4:30 am wake up call was a little bit of a shock to the system, especially after little sleep the night before, but by 7:00am we had hiked over 1000 vertical meters to the top of the Canyon.
That evening we arrived back in Arequipa with a couple of hours to spare before getting on a bus to go to Ica (for Sandboarding). We were hoping for a shower, but the water wasn{t working in the hostel, so we couldnt even wash our hands, let alone take a shower... So, still dirty from a 2 day hike we headed to the bus station and managed to get tickets overnight to Ica. When we woke up in the morning we discovered that we were stuck along with hundreds of other busses and trucks, and had been since around 12am that night. No one knew for sure what was going on, but at least we were stopped close to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere so we could buy some water and food. I don{t think the town had really seen tourists before, since many people were taking pictures of Eva and I and our white skin and blonde hair (most of the women wanted their daughters to pose with us.. this is probably the closest I will ever get to being a celebrity!) Since we were in the middle of the desert it was ridiculously hot, and not too much shelter to be found. After many hours of waiting around everyone started running for their buses (chaos), but after we got on and sat for a while this turned out to be a false alarm, so everybody back out. We decided to get some food to kill time, only to find out that every place we checked had run out of food.. finally we found a place that had some chicken and rice left, but no place for us to sit, so we sat on the road and ate our delicious meals. Still looking for something to do, we found the only place with shelter from the sun (beside the gas pumps at the gas station), bought a few bottles of rum and some Inka Cola, and started drinking. This may have been a bad choice because about half an hour later the town ran out of water completely so we could no longer use any bathrooms, and the desert does not provide much shelter for these kind of things.
After about 18 hours of being stuck in this town everyone started running for their buses again, so we followed suit, and this time we acte}ually started going! After about 20 minutes we found out that this was again a false alarm, and the highway was still closed. So this time we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no water, on the edge of a cliff by the ocean. great! Luckily we started moving after a few more hours. We came to a town where we decided to stop, and everyone on the bus pooled their money to buy the most fried chicken and french fries I have ever seen. Then we get locked in the bus for a while, loose a few people, and then the two drivers of our bus proceed to get in a fistfight, which the police have to break up! After another few hours, apparantly the bus drivers make up (??) But based on the way they were driving they were still very angry. Anyways after all of this I didn{t make it sandboarding because I ran out of time, so sadly I said goodbye to Sandro and Eva, and continued on to Lima.
After a short much needed break from buses in Lima I caught the 28 hour bus to Ecuador, and then flew to Quito to meet my parents! It was great to stay in a nice hotel with comfy beds and reliable hot water, and Quite is a neat city with lots of Culture.
We went mountain biking through the Andes to some hotsprings, and spent a few days exploring Quito, experiencing protests monitored by police men in riot gear with tanks, and sp,e tradiditonal easter food.
From Quito we headed to the Galapagos, to board out 8 day cruise around the islands.
Galapagos was amazing!! We saw giant tortoises, blue footed boobies, giant iguanas, penguins, and sea lions that come right up to you on the beach and play with you when you{re snorkelling. We also snorkeled with sharks (white tipped reef sharks, black tipped reef }sharks, a galapagos shark, and a hammerhead) and turtles... soo cool! Some other amazing animals were flamingoes, albatross, and crazy birds with giant red pouches mating. The food was amazing, and the wildlife was unreal.. I would recommend Galapagos to anyone!
First the bus trip from Arequipa to Ica, which turned into Lima. At this point I was still travelling with Sandro and Eva, and Eva and I had just gotten back from our Colca Canyon Trek.. which was amazing! We did it in two days, and stayed at a hostel that was like paradise.. with cute little huts. Unfortuneately a mouse decided to share my bed with me after it crawled across my face (I thought it was a really large spider, so I was actually relieved to find out that it was a mouse). After the mouse woke me up by walking on my face, it decided to crawl right under the covers with me! We had a little fight, which mostly involved me jumping around on my bed and shaking my blankets around, but the mouse won and I ended up switching beds. That morning I awoke to a scoprion right next to me head on the wall.. so needless to say I wasn´t that sad to leave paradise! The 4:30 am wake up call was a little bit of a shock to the system, especially after little sleep the night before, but by 7:00am we had hiked over 1000 vertical meters to the top of the Canyon.
That evening we arrived back in Arequipa with a couple of hours to spare before getting on a bus to go to Ica (for Sandboarding). We were hoping for a shower, but the water wasn{t working in the hostel, so we couldnt even wash our hands, let alone take a shower... So, still dirty from a 2 day hike we headed to the bus station and managed to get tickets overnight to Ica. When we woke up in the morning we discovered that we were stuck along with hundreds of other busses and trucks, and had been since around 12am that night. No one knew for sure what was going on, but at least we were stopped close to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere so we could buy some water and food. I don{t think the town had really seen tourists before, since many people were taking pictures of Eva and I and our white skin and blonde hair (most of the women wanted their daughters to pose with us.. this is probably the closest I will ever get to being a celebrity!) Since we were in the middle of the desert it was ridiculously hot, and not too much shelter to be found. After many hours of waiting around everyone started running for their buses (chaos), but after we got on and sat for a while this turned out to be a false alarm, so everybody back out. We decided to get some food to kill time, only to find out that every place we checked had run out of food.. finally we found a place that had some chicken and rice left, but no place for us to sit, so we sat on the road and ate our delicious meals. Still looking for something to do, we found the only place with shelter from the sun (beside the gas pumps at the gas station), bought a few bottles of rum and some Inka Cola, and started drinking. This may have been a bad choice because about half an hour later the town ran out of water completely so we could no longer use any bathrooms, and the desert does not provide much shelter for these kind of things.
After about 18 hours of being stuck in this town everyone started running for their buses again, so we followed suit, and this time we acte}ually started going! After about 20 minutes we found out that this was again a false alarm, and the highway was still closed. So this time we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no water, on the edge of a cliff by the ocean. great! Luckily we started moving after a few more hours. We came to a town where we decided to stop, and everyone on the bus pooled their money to buy the most fried chicken and french fries I have ever seen. Then we get locked in the bus for a while, loose a few people, and then the two drivers of our bus proceed to get in a fistfight, which the police have to break up! After another few hours, apparantly the bus drivers make up (??) But based on the way they were driving they were still very angry. Anyways after all of this I didn{t make it sandboarding because I ran out of time, so sadly I said goodbye to Sandro and Eva, and continued on to Lima.
After a short much needed break from buses in Lima I caught the 28 hour bus to Ecuador, and then flew to Quito to meet my parents! It was great to stay in a nice hotel with comfy beds and reliable hot water, and Quite is a neat city with lots of Culture.
We went mountain biking through the Andes to some hotsprings, and spent a few days exploring Quito, experiencing protests monitored by police men in riot gear with tanks, and sp,e tradiditonal easter food.
From Quito we headed to the Galapagos, to board out 8 day cruise around the islands.
Galapagos was amazing!! We saw giant tortoises, blue footed boobies, giant iguanas, penguins, and sea lions that come right up to you on the beach and play with you when you{re snorkelling. We also snorkeled with sharks (white tipped reef sharks, black tipped reef }sharks, a galapagos shark, and a hammerhead) and turtles... soo cool! Some other amazing animals were flamingoes, albatross, and crazy birds with giant red pouches mating. The food was amazing, and the wildlife was unreal.. I would recommend Galapagos to anyone!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)