South America 2015

Well, this was a fun day. After finally departing Starbucks towards our hostel me and Iryna decided that it would be a good idea to ask local car rental agency if they had decent offers available for the day. Renting a cheap car would be the same price as taking taxis if we wanted to visit the nearby archeological sites. We agreed on renting a cheap Toyota Yaris, the guy made a couple of calls and told us that he could not arrange the Yaris, but would give us a 4x4 pickup for the same price if it was ok to us.

The car arrived soon, and I didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day. There is something extremely pleasing in 2800 kilograms, big engine, real four-wheel drive and big mud tires. Not to mention the 10cm black steel rollcage and bumbers.

Naturally our plans just changed a bit from seeing the archeological sites to finding the steepest dirt road up to the highest mountain nearby. Offroading up the steep hill on the muddy road that was just wide enough for the car with a kilometer deep cliff on the roadside was extremely fun, too bad I didn't remember to take the video camera with us. On the top there was a nice mountain lake at over four kilometers altitude.

Before the mountain climbing we visited one archeological site, Saqsaywaman near Cusco. The site is an Inca fortress built on a hill overlooking the city, unfortunately mostly destroyed by Spanish invaders. Nowadays the main reasons to visit the site are the view over the city and the remaining Inca constructions: Huge stones which are precisely cut to fit together, so tight that even a piece of paper cannot be put in between the stones.

We also finally made a decision what we are going to do: Machu Picchu is not worth of eight hours of bus travel both ways, hours of walking and just visiting the site for three hours, not even mentioning the high cost. There are dozen of nice Inca sites nearby Cusco, so we will just stay here and travel through them in the next days by car.

During our today's journey we visited a restaurant a bit outside the city for a quick snack. The quick snack turned out to be an excellent four-course menu with some local drinks etc in a fancy restaurant. The most funny part was the price: 9 euros.

The bus really was a luxury one, like aircraft business class with wide leather seats and even WiFi worked, although I had to restart the WiFi box a couple of times as it lost the 3G connection and didn't reconnect without restart. Thanks to Peruvians for using default admin passwords on their routers, IT guys can fix their internet by themself. :P

We arrived to Cusco at five in the morning, and "surprisingly" there was not much anything open in the city to get a cup of coffee. Our hostel check-in would be around midday, so we had to find something to do before that. Starbucks saved us today, it was already open at seven and now we have been molesting their electricity with dozens of devices and drinking considerable amounts of coffee.

When we arrived to the bus station a couple of travel agency guys were already approaching us at five in the morning, selling their tours to Machu Picchu. Seems like the prices now in the low season are actually decent, so far we have got it down to 95 dollars for two days trip including accommodation and are still going to check some options. So, Machu Picchu might now be back in the program, as the price is more decent. Normally only the entrance ticket would be around 70 dollars, train ticket 50 dollars for foreigners and so on, but the local agencies get them way cheaper and should be able to go to 80 dollars for the entire trip.

Cusco itself looks like a beautiful city. It once was the capital of Peru, and still considered as one of the most beautiful cities of the country. Guess we will be sightseeing the city a bit today, in addition to the nearby Sacred Valley.

The restaurant for lunch was a bit disappointing, the food was not that good and service was extremely slow. The dinner restaurant was totally different story, as it happened to be number one in the city on Tripadvisor ratings. Excellent alpaca hamburger and nobody else complained about their portions either. Now we are all totally stuffed. :)

The trip to Sillustani was pretty much fine, but nothing special. It was an archeological site with a couple of Inca burial towers and really nice views over the nearby lake. I got second sweater for less than 10 euros, and everybody got to pet alpacas.

Now in the restaurant waiting for bus departure, and then towards Cusco. Most of us are feeling like skipping Machu Picchu, as it would cost almost 200 US dollars in total to visit, the prices for everything are horribly expensive and tourists are just related like walking ATMs.. The other Inca site sounds much better, even if it requires two days of hiking and a night in a tent.

Arrived to Puno, Peru. The border crossing was way more civilized and faster here than from Brazil to Bolivia in the small village of San Matias.

After arriving we shopped our bus tickets to Cusco for next night. The bus will be a comfortable night bus with full flat seats and wifi access, so our trip to Cusco shouldn't be very hard. The bus departs at 10pm and arrives to Cusco at five in the morning.

Today our program will in addition to city walking consist of Sillustan, an ancient Inca necropolis. But first some food, I have an alpaca steak and stuffed avocado coming..

Puno is not exactly the pearl of Peru, more like an ugly border city.. But well, good enough to spend a day and Sillustan should be nice.

There is not much to do in Copacabana itself. Most people come here only to visit the nearby Isla del Sol, an island with a lot of Inca period and even older ruins. Incas believed that the sun god was born on the island.

We spent the morning trying to shop some clothes in the local market and just walking around the small city, and in the afternoon took a boat to Isla del Sol. The island visit was quite brief, as the afternoon boats returned soon back to Copacabana. We just climbed to top of the island, visited one Inca ruin, temple of the sun and traveled back to Copacabana.

The local food specialty is trucha, a creoli trout fished from lake Titicaca. That had naturally to be tried. I would vote it as one of the best fishes I have ever eaten, even a fish-hater like me was happy eating trucha for both lunch and dinner.

Tomorrow we should again continue our journey, this time crossing the border to Peru. First a morning bus to Puno, visiting an Inca site nearby and then continuing with a night bus to Cusco. Still considering if we should visit the tourist-crowded Macchu Picchu or an another, even better Inca site which just has one problem.. There are no roads and it's two days of hiking to get there. :)

Arrived to city of Copacabana, right next to Lake Titicaca and the border of Peru. The bus to here arrived on schedule in four hours which was probably the first time on this trip..

The bus trip was otherwise uneventful, except crossing the lake an hour before Copacabana. Everyone unloaded from the bus and crossed the lake on a small boat, while the bus was taken to the other side by an ugly ferry which looked like it would sink at any moment. Well, the engine of the small boat was not in any better shape.. :)

Now it's raining heavily in here, as we just arrived our hotel. The hotel seems to be nice, good rooms for 25€ per double room. Internet connection is really slow mobile connection though, so no photo uploads today probably.

After arriving to La Paz we met up with the boys who also had taken night bus from Sucre and arrived at the same time as us. They had been a bit more lucky, Timo complained his legs were burning in the bus due to the close proximity of heater. We were still blue from being deeply frozen..

We bought our bus tickets to Copacabana, the city on Peru border on the coast of lake Titicaca. The bus would depart at 16:30, so we had the day to spend in La Paz. The same company happened to be selling a day tour to the highest ski resort (which was not active at the moment as it's summer) and nearby Moon Valley. That was decided to be a good way to spend the day, so we just ate some quick breakfast at the bus station and hopped on the tour bus.

The bus climbed narrow sand roads up the mountain in clouds, all the way to 5200 meters. The top of the mountain was at 5400 meters and the rest of the way would have to be walked. I was looking at the hill like "how can that take 20 minutes, it's a five minute run" but after taking the first twenty steps I understood why. The air is really thin up there, and no exercise can be done without getting totally out of breath if not used to the altitude. Well, slowly most of us progressed to the top. I myself only walked almost to the top and then back down and again back almost to the top, due to Iryna dropping her iPad.. :)

After the tour we just had some llama steak in the city and now are taking the bus.. Which surprisingly is a crappy small bus again. Llama was good, by the way. I expected much worse, but the steak was really juicy and good.

La Paz reached.. And it is cold. 7C now, at night even colder and there was no heating on the bus.

Salar de Uyuni visited. Difficult to say anything about that, it's just a huge (over 150 kilometers) plain field of salt. Beautiful in it's own way, just vast emptiness. In the places where there is water on the salt the water reflects sky like a mirror.

Worst effects of altitude sickness are starting to wear off, no much headache anymore, everyone is just tired. Sitting in a local pub, having hamburgers and waiting for our night bus to La Paz.

We were thinking of taking bus tickets from a decent company with new WiFi-equipped buses, but they were fully booked for today and tomorrow. Now we have four times cheaper tickets, and I can guess how to bus will look like.. Lovely for a 11 hour ride. :)

Seems like the altitude is actually starting to affect us, now we all have all the usual symptoms of altitude sickness. Headache, feeling like flu or hangover, feeling weak.. The altitude sickness is supposed to usually start 8-10 hours after ascending to high altitude, and this four kilometers is actually considered as "very high altitude".

Before arriving here I didn't take altitude sickness that seriously, maybe did not realize that Uyuni is actually this high. Well, a new experience at least. The effect should wear off in a day or two, so probably in the evening we are already feeling better. Lake Titicaca will also be at almost four kilometers, so we will be staying up here for a while.