Playing catch-up - Brazil so far!

After posting the video the other day i felt that i ought to write at last a little something, especially considering that we haven't written all the time we've been in brazil! We're actually back in argentina, briefly, for now but that can come later.

Our Brazilian adventure began in Rio, where we arrive to find the city was actually a bit grey, a bit gutting having escaped from very grey Lima, expecting to find a very hot Rio, complete with sexy ladies in bikinis. On our first day, wandering toward the Cristo Redentor statue (that big jesus bloke), we were a bit disappointed to find that we couldn't even see the thing as the whole area was blanketed in cloud, so were forced to settle for a bit of a walk instead, alas bereft of half-naked beauties. The rest of our time in Rio was spent chilling on the beach and only the one instance of near death when i got a bit cocky in the big waves of the Atlantic and got smashed against the bottom a couple of times, hey ho, it happens.

We plucked up the courage to leave rio and headed for a small beach town called Arraial d'Ajuda, near to Porto Seguro (the point at which the Portuguese landed in Brazil) on an over night bus, which seemed to take a 2 hr detour to change a wheel and then do laps of a small car park. all a bit confusing when your half asleep.

There's not much to say about Arraial - it was beautiful, but apart from flo's spending at the fancy boutiques and some fancy dancing by the locals, there wasnt a lot going on but was a fantastic beachy town.

Next on to Salvador where, apparently there is a Church for every day of the year, flo and I werent enamoured with the town so quickly made our way,by rough boat journey, to Morro de Sao Paulo, a beautiful island where the taxis are in fact yellow wheelbarrows that help people take their bags along the sand streets. We ended up killing about a week in this tiny little place doing very little bar sitting on the beach and on the one day we decided to be adventurous and go for a walk we ended up stuck on the other side of the island and needing to hitch a ride in a tractor across the muddy streets in order to get home!

Back in Salvador after another even rougher journey which caused pretty much everyone bar me and Flo to be ill (impressed with flo who normally travels like a 5 yr old!). We spent a bit of time organising where to go next and then booked our flights to Iguasu falls!

More soon!

Nick x

A bit of filler from lazy nick and flo!

More will follow soon - sorry for being rubbish.

love to you all!

ps. yes, we're sorry its very dark too.

Iquitos, the jungle, and Lima... again!

Hello!

As per usual we have been a bit shit with the old blogging but have been having a great few weeks so here goes...

We got a flight from Lima to Iquitos (a town in northern Peru which can only be reached by air or boat it has no connecting roads, an amazing town considering this, anyway it is right on the amazon)which was surprisingly painless, when we arrived it was pissing it down which was a bit of a blow considering a guy at our hostel had told us how hot it was there, turns out he wasn´t yanking our chains it was bloody baking there, humidity levels were at 87% and it rained quite a bit but really really hot and as you would expect near the amazon it was filled with mosquito's! I think my skin naturally has insect honey as part of its constituent cells i get covered in bites instantly! and proved this on day one in Iquitos.

Our hostel (the hobo hideout) was pretty bloody weird with dead animals everywhere on the walls and a weird damp smell, nick and I got ushered into a tiny room with two beds on wooden slats and a fan that did fuck and all but it was so crazily cheap we couldn´t give a shite, and as per usual i was feeling really shitty.

We went in search of a company which would provide us with a jungle tour that was not too touristy and not too pricey. In the end we settled on a company which sounded pretty cool and next thing we knew we were on a boat for 4 hours taking us to our first stop in the jungle. We were introduced to our guide May (pronounced My) and I was a bit apprehensive as a) he spoke pretty ropey english and b) he looked about 12. On the plus side nick and I were the only ones with him, it was not a big tour group or anything like other companies it was a personal tour. We soon found out that May was a bit of a sweety, only 23 and the eldest of 8 kids coming from a small village in the jungle.

We took about 3 boats I think to get us to where were we going to be staying which were cool log cabin things right in the jungle on one of the rivers off the amazon. We immediately met a group of american girls who were doing a shorter tour than us but quite excitingly were taking part in a ritual called Huawaska where a sharman gives you some potion (basically a strong hallucinogenic) and you vom your guts out then supposedly see your spirit animal and have a great time (more on this later) we had lunch with these guys and then were whisked off by May to head into the jungle on a tour, turns out we did this every morning in different parts of the jungle and it was brilliant. We saw monkeys, huge spiders, medicinal plants all around us, dolphins, jaguar prints, alligators, parrots, and we went fishing twice and caught and ate pirannas (nasty fuckers they are too) Every day we were fed like royalty too and went on boat trips to see birds, monkeys, dolphins and alligators. We decided to do a 5 day 4 night tour and on our second and third nights we had to move camp as a larger party were heading our way, May took us to another part of the jungle where we stayed for these nights and he fed us by himself and chatted away to us, and may have sniffed my shoes a few times (long story, bit weird, he tried to crack on to me a few times whilst nick was asleep too which was pretty awkward.)

The amazon and the rivers that we stayed on look beautiful it is really really hard to explain how amazing they look at all times of the day and the noise was unbearable it is so hard to sleep because the frogs, insects,monkeys and birds are constantly making noise, but it was amazing. On our first trip fishing it began to piss it down (the heaviest rain i have ever been in, also the hottest) we took shelter in the jungle and monkeys began to climb down from their trees and one actually climbed onto nick and hugged him half looking for food but desperate for affection and shelter! really amazing. We also went in search of tarantulas on one night, not pleasant i can tell you, and one night we heard May making quite a bit of noise in the kitchen area, we went to see what it was and he had a spider on his Machete (which was used everyday as we made our way through the deep jungle, no walking paths for us!) this spider was not only deadly but could jump 5 meters... great eh! anyway he killed it and then seconds later gleefully said "Flor flor flor look what I have" and thrust a spade in my face, on which was the biggest cockroach i have ever seen, i sat with my legs above the ground the hole night because of that!

I was bitten to shit our days there, I mean bitten to shit too, I remember one night I was getting ready for bed and turned round to face nick and he had a really pained expression on his face and was wincing at me, he looked like he never wanted to come in contact with me again, my arse was literally purple and all down my legs were becoming purple and just a solid mass of bites. I recon I had over 200 bites on me, seriously!

Back to the American girls. The night of the ceremony nick and I began to hear chanting from their room and then there was silence and the lights went out, the chanting continued and then the horror commenced, we had been told that you were sick once and then the hallucinations began, these guys were throwing up for about 5 hours straight and one girl was dry retching all night and they all looked terrible in the morning, poor nick had been awake through it all, thanks to the wonder of ear plugs i slept through everything. Two of them did see their spirit animals, a peacock and a deer as it happens but they all said the experience was horrific and they would never do it again, every time they asked for air or water the shaman just blew smoke (cigarette not mystic stuff) in their faces and told them to be quiet! I recon he was just having a laugh with a group of American girls I think the dose he gave was a little big and it doesn´t sound like the other ceremonies some of our friends have done in South America with a shaman, i´m not even sure he was one!

The tour really was amazing though we saw such amazing things and the amazon is so beautiful it begs belief covered in lilly pads and pink and grey dolphins everywhere it really was a shame to head back to Iquitos on our last day. We said goodbye to May and then made our way back to our hostel where we were upgraded and had an amazing room in a wooden raised bungalow thing, very cool. We then made our way back to Lima the following day.

We have now been in Lima for what feels like forever! Because we are a bit stupid we are having money problems again so have been stuck here for about 5 days when i am fit to burst with excitement about Rio. Anyway we decided to not stay in the same hostel as before but instead go to a different part of town to the Lima version of the hostel we stayed at in Cusco. It is a really nice hostel and we have met some lovely lovely lovely people here and as a result have been drunk as skunks almost every night, but there is really nothing to do in Lima, after the hillarity and excitement of the erotic pot museum and eating our way through the cafes and drinking our way through the bars, we are pretty bored. We have also heard loads of stories about Lima and how unsafe it is for tourists, we haven´t met anybody who has had any trouble what so ever. Yesterday however Nick and I were walking home after a bit of a wander and I was wrestling nick and had him in a headlock (we are pretty romantic sometimes ) when a police man and his partner in their patrol car pulled over, got out and shouted something at us. I thought i was in trouble for breaching the peace or something but he just told us that the area we were walking in (2 minutes from our hostel) was unsafe and that we should never be out later than 5 in the evening, nice eh! any way we have had no problems, we have a lovely hostel and we are heading to Rio tomorrow night!!!!!!! yey!

Oh and I didn´t get an interview for the Newsround job, bit gutted. LEEEEEEEEEZZZZZO!

much love

flossie

xxxxxxxxxx

Sky, sand and shitty weather

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from all that was going on in Cuzco for the small town of Nazca famous for being the home of the Nazca Lines, a collection of enormous images on the surface of the desert area. These images are only really recognisable from the air and so have confused experts as to their intended use and also as to how exactly the Nazcans of around 2000 yrs ago actually managed to make them!

Despite this being the sole reason for our visit to this area, Flo was still a bit reluctant to get her travel-sick-seven-yr-old alike self to sign up for one of the flights which would take us over the lines in a small 6 seater aircraft, but after only a small amount of abuse she relented and we were signed up to go the following day.

After an early breakfast (very light in flo´s case for fear of seeing it again) we jumped into the back of a minibus and headed for the tiny airport on the outskirts of town where we were sat in front of an informative (read boring) documentary from the mid eighties, which basically the lines still remained a bit mystery but in no way was this going to stop a large group of social misfits from spending a lot of time conjecturing wildly.

After watching this, and then sitting patiently whilst another group watched it again, and waiting whilst others who arrived at the same time as us were lead off to their flight, we were too called over to the tarmac, where after a brief welcome we were loaded into the small plane. Flo managed to get the front seat next to the pilot (making her co-pilot? shit thats a scary thought), thankfully not in the back since i reckon she would probably have yommed up the back of whoever was sat in front of her since it was pretty cramped for those who actually ended up there. Anyway, we were soon airborne, and without yommage, and heading for the first of the lines.
The lines themselves were harder to spot than we had been lead to believe! But with a bit of squinting and the pilot rocking the plane from side to side so that everyone got a look i think we managed to spot all of them! Following the route above (on the back of our 'certificates' for having done the flight - flo's is going on her wall next to the one she got for completing the fish trail in hull, a prestigious award if ever there was one) I was able to take photos of where the lines 'should' have been, and even though at our first look at the photos that id taken we wrote them off as being a big pile of shit, if you look at the larger versions you can actually see the lines - hurray! Seeing the lines, when we actually could (the monkey was particularly elusive), was pretty cool and to top it all off flo only felt 'slightly' ill when we were returning to the airport and wasnt sick at all!

That was about it for Nazca so the same day we made arrangements to escape and make our way towards the city of Ica and from there a short 10 minute taxi ride to the tiny town of Huacachina, a small group of mainly hotels and restaurants surrounding a small oasis lake surrounded by enormous sand dunes.

Huacachina was an amazing place but we didnt really get up to much, I went sandboarding, and although i didnt take out the camera for fear of breaking it, i did get a photo taken by and Israeli girl but i havent seen her since. I'm sure she'll treasure the photo and the magical times we spent together. I'm pretty sure that had i taken my camera i would have looked something like this in the photos:

We spent a lot of time enjoying the weather in Huacachina, but one trip we did take was a wine and pisco tour of the area, our first stop was a Pisco distillery, where they make the drink which is an icon of South America. The spirit here tasted fine but on our second stop to a vineyard we tasted what i think was the worst wine i have ever had the misfortune to taste. I could have done better myself! Peruvian wine= BAD. Our last stop however introduced us to the delights of Tejas. We went to a small shop attached to the factory which makes the small chocolatey treats then sends them all over Peru and the rest of the world.

After we dragged ourselves away from the sun of Huacachina it was on to the oppressive greyness of Lima, where we found ourselves slowed down somewhat by the childlike fragility of my travel companion. Illness (like hunger in the shreddies adverts i like to think although maybe not with a spoon) struck. So our time in Miraflores was punctuated by spells in bed for miss page, but we did make it to the sex pots - yay.

Then, off to the Jungle...

Machu Picchu

This is a joint blog from me and flo (me in blue and flo in purple!) Photos to follow when uploaded!

Yesterday we caught the train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes (aka Machu Picchu Village) at 7 in the morning - ouch! We got here at about midday and quickly found that this was actually a bigger place than we had thought with a load of restaurants and hotels - really geared up to the tourists!

We went about trying to meet up with Lars and Courtie but failed, we watched a huge procession in the street and some interesting dancing (jesus based atire was fetching) and then found ourselves a hostel and settled in. We went out for amazing food last night at a place run by a frenchy and bought our tickets for the bus to machu picchu and got san early night ready for the ten to 5 alarm!

Yeah, that hurt in the morning, but we made it to the bus waiting area well in time for the first bus at half 5 leaving for Machu Picchu. The bus ride up was full and pretty unspectacular given that it was dark and all! I'm sure it would have been more impressive by daylight. Anyway we arrived at the top of the hill and through the ticket office and up to the highest point of Machu Picchu to see the spectacular view of.... fuck all. The whole site was blanketed by clouds.

We sat and waited for about an hour for the clouds to clear in which time we amused ourselves with patience (the card game - well we staged a photo of it anyway). Suddenly the clouds began to clear and all around us were amazing views (may not have made it to full amazing status yet but at least were getting there!)! having the attention span of a 5 year old and being a bit of a history geek (flo is playing the history geek card here but when i was lurking to hear what the guides of other groups were saying she was moaning to move on! child.) (That would be the whole attention span thing already mentioned not a lack of interest per say in my little Incary friends) I was very excited by the huge historical playground and just wanted to run around like a big kid. We walked through living areas, temples, prisons, sacred rocks and work shops, and eventually headed for what we thought was the temple of the moon, but in fact turned out just to be an amazingly steep walk with an amazing view. (The sacred rock was an interesting one as some people took it´s sacred and healing powers very seriously and Nick took the piss a little to loudly) (Yet justifiably so!)

We did a good amount of sitting at the top of the hill and it was amazing to see the whole site slowly appear from behind the clouds as the photos will show. And there are lots of photos. We finally decided that it was about time we scrambled down from the top of the hill and check out the rest of the area, actually getting to hear about some of the items from the guides that others had paid for (chumps).

We spent about 5 hours at the site in the end before heading back to Aquas Calientes. The site really didn´t disappoint (as the video will show). To be honest the pictures should really speak for themselves so I think I am going to leave it at that. I know I know no blog for ages and then 3 at ones, we treat you so well! xxx

Arequipa, Cusco and alcoholic dazes.

Ok this is going to be a pleasantly brief one as we have been decidedly lazy for about two weeks, never the less here goes.

We arrived in Arequipa (where there is a huge canyon, which we didn´t go to, genius!) We found our hostel which turned out to be really really lovely, hammocks no less, and settled ourselves in and met some very sweet Brits, one of whom we met two nights ago whilst very very drunk. Arequipa has a beautiful square which is surrounded by shops and cafes and that sort of thing without being quite so touristy as Cusco. We went out for a meal to an amazing Mexican place with some guys from our hostel and here began our beautiful relationship with Lars and Courtland (a Norwegian who went to university in Sunderland of course so speaks with a fantastic English accent, and a yank) who i thought were both Israeli... they weren´t ... true story! Ok to be honest that is about it, we did lots of wandering, I bought lots of useless tat, we ate really well, drank really well, and lazed about in hammocks on the roof terrace, not bad!

We had been told that the road to Cusco is unsafe to take at night from Arequipa, so we did it. We took a brand of bus that was recommended to us and were amazed when we got on as it looked like a plane twas amazing. Arriving in Cusco we got to our hostel and again were pleasantly surprised, our hostel is massive, has a huge tv room and bar, and everyone is aged between 20=30 and up for having a really good time which is what we both needed after the relative quietness of most of Bolivia and the early stages of Peru. As soon as we arrived at the hostel Lars and Courtie arrived, which was cool and we got chatting to others in our dorm. That night we went out and Nick wasn´t feeling that great so I felt it my duty to drink for the both of us... I felt terrible the next day and Nick and I sat around in the hostel garden eating the practically all day breakfast provided, with occasional moans from me. Next night was a full moon night and apparently this is a huge deal here. Every bar/ club/ and hostel had some kind of event on and our hostel had a DJ and stupid offers on drinks, we drank a reasonable amount here before heading out for the night and here nick and I along with Lars got for want of a better expression , shit faced, Nick also managed to get lost twice and find our friend Mike from our hostel in Arequipa who is a bit of a sweety. Some Peruvians have an interesting way of dancing to say the least and the guys make so much effort and look so camp it is brilliant!!Great night again felt a bit rough the next day but totally worth it, we got back to the hostel that night at about 5 and Lars and Courtie had to get a train to where I am now, the next morning at 7! miraculously they did it.

This morning we work up at quarter to 6 and caught to train to Aquas Caliente, a small town right next to Macchu Picchu, I am now writing from the town. Tomorrow we get up stupidly early to go to Machu Pichu, very exciting, might go to some hot springs this afternoon and try not to faint this time. Then we are heading back to Cusco and will probably stay there a while as we like it! despite our dorm mates having interesting sleeping habits which I won´t go in to now.

Told you I would keep it short, this from the girl who had to halve her dissertation length.

Lake Titicaca - ha ha, that sounds like breasts

After a few epic blogs this should be a quicky!

From La Paz we caught a bus to the town of Copacabana as flo said (and were a bit weirded out by being told to get off our bus and then watching it floating away over the lake!). This is NOT the Copacabana in Brazil (which was apparently named after this town) nor the brain-rapingly horrific Barry Manilow song.

This was meant to be a short stop over in order to allow us to see the beautiful Isla del Sol however on arrival all went wrong. We soon realised that this was a town completely lacking a cash machine. Now this would not normally be a problem since in situations like this there is always at least one bank or suchlike ready and willing to give a cash advance on a credit card which would have been great had:

a) i not maxed out my credit card
and
b) flo not been travelling on her debit card - not good enough for the lovely folks at Prodem FFP.

So there we were, at about 7pm in a new town with literally no money (we had wisely delayed getting out money when we could have in La Paz until we got to our next stop). So it was about 7pm and we were getting hungry and yet with no way of securing any foodage. It shames me to say it but we resorted to begging - I found myself knocking on the door of the owner of our hotel (feeling very small especially since the hotel we were staying in was only costing us 10Bolivianos per person per night which is about £1.20 for the 2 of us) asking him to borrow some money to eat until we sorted out our finances the following day. Despite my offers of leaving my iPod as collateral he was having none of it and was quite happy to hand over 100Bs - more than we were likely to need for the evening!

The following day we realised that we were going to need some help and so bit the bullet and called home. Dad, who for those of you who dont know is currently disabled by a torn cruciate ligament (or so i believe) was amazing (thanks dad!) and drove down to town and hobbled both to his bank and my bank to sort out our financial woes.

Alas despite all his hard work we were undone by the ineptitude of the people at the Halifax (fucking Howard) and unfortunately were forced to make the trip back to La Paz (a 3.5hr bus journey) for the sole purpose of finding a cash point. While we were waiting for the bus to leave Copacabana there was a pretty horrific smell emanating from the old cholita sat in front of us but whilst we were gasping for air out of the small bus window we spotted flo's coursemate Jack and his girlfriend Claire, out on a brief stint in Peru and Bolivia! Whilst doing anything then was pretty impossible, we did manage to go out for a meal with them on our return to Copacabana 7hrs later!

With money came the ability to actually do the things that we had come here to do, namely visit the Isla del Sol, an island off the coast and a site of significance for the indigenous people as being the birthplace of both the sun and the moon! We made our way out on the boat (flo travels like a 7 year old, so this was guaranteed to be good!) We spent the night on the island and in the morning we began the walk across it and whilst we didnt really feel the significance afforded to some of the sacred rocks (looked just like rocks to us!) the scenery was staggering.



After we'd done this we had pretty much exhausted Copacabana and so moved on to Peru and the town of Puno!

At the bus station we heard someone touting the hostel that we'd planned on going to anyway and thinking that this could be our route to a free taxi ride we decided to show some interest. Somehow in the mix he managed to persuade us that this hostel (the one that he had been advertising) was too expensive and so had us sold on a different one instead, not really sure how this happened, but we found ourselves being ferried to this new hotel, and then subjected to a long and very persistent sales pitch from the same man who quickly moved from hotel tout to travel agent within seconds!

We eventually got away from him and into the safety of our room where we could decide what it was that WE wanted to do before getting back to him with our decision to do a 1 day tour and not the 2 day one he was pushing for (we´d heard scary things about having to dress up in traditional dress!)


So the following day we had an early start and were ferried to the port where we were put onto a boat headed for the reed islands of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca. These are a large group of artificial floating island manufactured by their inhabitants out of the enormous reeds native to the lake. We were greeted very warmly (more to do with our touristy cash than anything i think, maybe too cynically) but the islands themselves were very impressive and all squishy underfoot! Flo got a bit happy taking photos of all the kids in their brightly coloured clothes, and a bit too happy stalking one particular innocent little girl around the island which you will see if you check my flickr! After a brief talk about the people and their islands we were allowed to wander and see if we wanted to buy any of their wares (all of which completely authentically made on the islands and in no way available in the rest of peru, its just a coincidence that they have similar stuff)

After this we moved on to the next island Taquile which was, well, an island. Yes, it was pretty, and yes, the men did wear silly hats (always a highlight) but after the novelty of the reed islands and the 3hr boat trip it was a bit of a let down really!


So that was about it for Lake Titicaca and on to Arequipa (a journey we booked ourselves and NOT through our new stalker) !