Peru - Lima to Cusco

We arrived late in the evening in Lima, tired after travelling for a whole day. We were very excited to be in a new country. Lima was good, we spent most of our time eating because the city isn't very exciting, and there's not too much to do in the way of tourism and it is quite run down in parts. We stayed in a nice area of town called Miraflores, it was nice by Lima's standards and we wanted to stay somewhere safe cos Lima can be dangerous - we actually walked around quite a bit though during day and night and didn´t have any problems. We went down to the coast which was cool and discovered a great place to eat (Cafe Cafe) and ordered our first ceviche – this is a south american dish which consists of raw sea food marinated in lime. It's absolutely amazing.

We also ordered pisco sours – pisco is a Peruvian spirit and pisco sours are officially my new favourite cocktail, quite like margueritas. After a couple of those (happy ´hour´ lasts all day here) we bounced into a taxi and headed for the centre of town to the San Francisco monastry and the catacombs. The catacombs were cool, they had arranged all the bones and skulls into patterns, a little creepy actually, but worth seeing. We then went for a coffee which turned out to be the worst coffee ever (in many places here they give you a pot of concentrated 'coffee juice' which you add to water – just tastes of sweet hot water.

We then went to the famous statue of Mother of South America – apparently when the statue was commissioned by the Spanish they wanted a ring of flames over her head (llamas) in Spanish, however the Peruvian sculptor interpreted it incorrectly and she was given a llama on her head instead. Quite funny. The people are nice in Peru, they all look different from each other which is interesting - some look Indian, others Asian and others more like the Spanish - it´s a real mix.
In the evening, because the ceviche was so good the first time round we decided to eat it again and ended up in one of the best fish restaurants we've ever been to (Al fresco) – as you can probably tell, Lima was a bit of a drain on the backpacker budget. Lima was nice but in the end just a stopover for our next destination – Cusco.

After an emergency landing and a second stab at flying to Cusco - 30 mins into the journey we saw white snow-capped mountains ahead of us and about 10 minutes later we decended into Cusco, a mountain city about 3,500 metres high. Cusco literally takes your breath away... we have had to spend two days here to acclimatise to the altitude which is seriously draining, walking up a small hill can leave you gasping for breath and as Cusco is built up the sides of a valley there are quite a few hills to climb! The city is beautiful, with huge churches, little craft shops everywhere, people with llamas on the streets (baby llamas are soooo cute, just like lambs) and narrow cobbled streets. Cusco is the main 'gateway' to Machu Picchu so there are a lot of tourists here (American, French, German and English mainly) and about the same amount of people trying to sell you stuff on the streets. It gets very annoying when you have to say 'no gracias' to the persistant offers of a massage, tour, restaurant or photo with a llama.
The food here is really good, very international as there are so many tourists, but you can eat almost anything including certain Peruvian specialities such as 'cuy' which is guinea pig and alpaca if you want, and of course you can drink pisco nearly everywhere.

Since we've been here we've been organising ourselves for our trek to Machu Picchu, we've been to the local market to buy waterproofs and fleeces, visited local crafts stalls for hats and gloves and we've been resting to acclimatise to the altitude. Last night we ended up in a rock bar where the most awesome band ever were playing, it was such fun, they were playing hits from the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Beetles etc – was really cool. Al made friends with the lead guitarist and helped him mend his guitar so we're 'in there' with the cool kids in Cusco. Unfortunately our night out did nothing to help us acclimatise and this morning was a bit of a struggle.

I'm going to hand over to Al now who is writing on our trek over the next few days. I'm sure it'll epic! Hasta Luego.


Message from Al:

Dearest reader,our bags are packed, our alarm is set for 4:15 am and we are ready to engage in our next adventure into the unknown. We'll fall off the radar for the next 5 days as our journey takes us to altitudes of 4,500 meters, freezing temperatures of minus ten degrees and mosquito infested jungles. Until then, enjoy your warm beds, clean bathrooms and nice food and please spare a thought for us as we sleep amongst tarantulas, pee next to snakes and are forced to eat donkey sausages or grilled guinea pig dumplings. May the comforts of the first world be with you.

Curse of Cancun

21st September

Packed up in high spirits and headed to the bus station for a lift to the airport. We arrived and headed to check-in... so far so good... however once there we had a slight problem... the stupid woman at the Tulum travel agency who booked our tickets booked us onto the wrong flight – from Mexico city to Cancun!! Wanted to scream but remained calm. It's the curse I tells ya...the curse of Cancun! These tourist traps just won't let us leave! We had no choice but to bite the bullet and fork out an extra load of cash on a new flight. Painful. Due to these unforeseen circumstances we have now had to introduce a 'saving money' day – one a week for the next few weeks, where we try to not spend any money, in order to make up for the shortfall. The painful thing is that we had decided not to book the flight ourselves because we thought the travel company would do it cheaper :.-( Note to all – boycott Tulum travel agencies should you go there in future.

Pepe was happy to eventually leave Cancun.


The flight back was fairly uneventful and we found a bus to the nearest metro station (to save money rather than get an airport taxi). On the bus we agreed that we both felt 'at home' returning to Mexico city. We got off the bus and went into the metro, at that point a young guy we'd said hello to on the bus ran after us with Alex's wallet. It had fallen out of Al's pocket! Again.... the Cancun curse – will it follow us forever?! We were seriously happy that this guy had returned it obviously, really friendly guy – see what I mean about Mexican's being friendly? I think we were pretty lucky he noticed it. So we arrived in our hotel room and promptly tore up all Cancun bus and plane tickets we had, in order to rid ourselves of the curse. We are also staying in a lovely (cheap) hotel in the centre of town (Hotel Isabel) and it's right next to the main Cathedral, so hopefully that will ward off the curse.

Anyway, it's onwards and upwards at this point: tomorrow we fly to Houston and then get a connecting flight to Lima,Peru, where our next adventures begin. Until then adios amigos!!

Cancun

After Piste we caught the bus to a nearby town, Valladolid. We had a look around at the church and main square for an hour which was pretty and then headed to Cancun in order to catch our flight the next morning.

Our first impression of Cancun was: has this place been hit by a bomb? We decided that Cancun is the biggest dump we've ever visited in our lives, with half torn down buildings, empty shops and people trying to sell you stuff the whole time: “hotel hotel”, “Restaurant amigo, best food in town”, “jewelerey shop, come inside to kill your time.” It really gets on your nerves! We found the Mexican's market for some food, managing to avoid most of the touts and mariachis.

Cancun is much more expensive than the rest of Mexico. Al devised a method to work out whether a restaurant is cheap or expensive – if a bottle of beer costs M$15 then it is nice and cheap, if it goes up to M$20 then it is mid-range, M$23 is pretty pricey, and anything over M$25 is extortionate. Many places in Cancun priced their beer from M$25 – 30. After our lunch/dinner we decided to check out the beach area before dark. We jumped on the locals bus rode down to the 'zona hoteleria'. Basically Cancun has two parts – 'downtown' where we stayed, and 'zona hoteleria' which is across a wetlands area and occupies a strip of land on the coast, so it's actually quite far from the actual 'old' town. We were taken aback by how horrible and tacky it is down there. You cant even see the sea from the road for all the massive skyrise hotels, shops, bars and restaurants.

It's literally a concrete jungle, catering for Americans who want to go on holiday to mini-America. Everything is huge and fake and it's really horrible. It's also full of fat Americans with no taste.


We managed to find a small strip of public beach, sandwiched between two hotels and had a look at the beautiful turquoise sea for a few minutes with the handful of Mexican locals who were there.

We then jumped back on our bus with the Mexican workers who had finished their hotel shifts and headed back downtown. We both agreed that we will certainly not miss Cancun. It's basically for unimaginative people who don't want to leave their resorts unless it's on a private coach to Waterworld or to the giant Starbucks or giant TGI Friday's surrounding their hotel.

Chichen Itza

Got up early for a quick last dip in the sea and caught the 2nd class bus to a small town called Piste, next to the famous Chichen Itza ruins (has been called one of the new 7 wonders of the world). On arriving we found a small guest house and sent our clothes off to the local laundry lady. We then headed off to Chichen Itza to see what all the fuss was about. Chichen Itza is truly amazing – it is the most famous of the Mayan ruins and covers a huge amount of space, there is a central temple pyramid which is huge and there are ruins of a market, an observatory and other buildings. The only slight downside is that as it is not far from Cancun it has been heavily commercialised and shops and market stalls line the entrance and are spread throughout the grounds. Also they have closed off access to the highest monuments so you cannot climb to the top to see the views. This was quite disappointing since we had been able to do this at Monte Alban and Palenque. It was still very impressive though but you struggled to get a real sense of what it would have been like over a thousand years ago.

We did make use of the stalls though to buy a little Mexican who we have named Pepe. He is our new travelling companion – see photo.

Tourist Trap Tulum

The night bus to Tulum was an interesting one. At around midnight we were stopped and awoken by armed police at a check-point and told to get out of the bus. They made us stand around while they opened and searched one poor guy's suitcase. Then they let everyone back onto the bus and let us go. Al and I weren't too worried, but I'm sure there were some other backpackers on board who would have had reason to be afraid. Carrying any illegal substance in Mexico will land you in a prison. Mexican prison – don't really fancy that idea!

We arrived in Tulum full of the joys of spring and ready to hit the Carribean beaches. That is until we realised what Tulum is really like. Unlike the backpacker-friendly image we had in mind, Tulum town is 4km from the beach which is hidden by row upon row of beach-hut style hotels which certainly don't charge backpacker prices. There's also no way to get there other than taxi – taxi drivers in Tulum make a killing. We drove to a couple of places with unfriendly hotel staff and pretty shabby accommodation at high prices and in the end settled for a fairly nice place on the beach. Restaurant was bad though (didn't even have any guacacmole) and they even tried to charge me for a towel for my room! If anyone is thinking of going to Mexico then our advice is DON'T buy the Rough Guide travel book – it's terrible, and clearly written by someone who has never been to Mexico! Basically Tulum is an official tourist trap as you are literally trapped in the hotel you choose by the beach and miles away from the town and transport is a rip-off. We decided the thing to do was to hire some bicycles, which we did. That was a good move and we managed to explore some of the beaches nearby, however it was so hot and humid that we couldn't go too far and the mosquitoes in this area are deadly (poor Al has been badly bitten all over and is in a lot of pain, luckily for me the Mexican mosquitoes don't like me too much so I'm relatively unscathed.) We went to a public beach and caught a glimpse of the famous ruins on the cliff-side. After that we'd decide we'd seen enough and went into town to book our bus journey onwards and an internal flight from Cancun to Mexico city.

Palenque

We got up at 5.30am (!) for the much anticipated trip to Aguas Azul and Palenque. Palenque is the largest Mayan ruin in Mexico and was only discovered in 1972 in the jungle. The bus ride took hours and brought us from the mountains of St Cristobal to the jungle of Palenque. First stop was Aguas Azul (blue waters), a blue waterfall where you can swim in the clear blue waters – unfortunately as it is the rainy season it is more like Aguas Maron and much less inviting. The next waterfall Mina-Ha was awesome cos you could go behind it and as Al and I were especially prepared and efficient (Al's German side must have played a part in this) we had waterproof gear, hiking boots, bag covers – the lot, so we stayed nice and dry.

After 2 hours drive we reached Palenque and jumped eagerly out of the bus. I've been looking forward to Palenque for ages, it's set in the jungle and was only discovered recently because it was covered by plants and undergrowth. A whole civilisation was based here for hundreds of years and it's made up of pyramids which were either temples, houses or tombs. A local guide volunteered to take our group in both Spanish and English so off we went. He was a little old man and said that he had grown up near the site and had been studying it's history ever since it was discovered. He began by telling us to forget what we had read in the history books, because he could tell us the real story behind the temples. 'Ok great! we thought. He told us that many different civilisations had come to, and left their marks on the Mayans – the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, the Greeks, the south Asian countries... 'Ok...' we though, and agreed that it was highly unlikely that Cristopher Columbous was actually the first person to ever reach the Americas.

Things got a little more bizarre when he began to tell us that there was a sculpture of Tutenkahmun and Rameses II on the temples and began pointing out ancient Mayan engravings and drawings that were apparently Greek, Chinese or Asian in origin and even names that were Celtic in origin - hmmmm. He was even hinting at close encounters of the third kind. When someone asked him if he got his information from the internet he got a bit upset and said that 'www' stood for '666'... it was getting pretty bizarre by this point and Al and I realised that we had been listening to this gibberish for far too long and that we had to be back at the bus in 15 minutes and our 'guide' hadn't even shown us to the main temple and best site and view of Palenque. We arranged to meet him back at the entrance and ran up to the main temple literally running up these giant pyramid stairs. The view at the top was truly amazing and although we were rushing and out of breath it was still fantastic.

When there was just a couple of minutes to go before we had to go back to the minibus we heard a massive clap of thunder and the heavens opened for our first Mexican tropical storm. We ran into the pyramid for shelter but being 3000 years old there were obviously a couple of holes in the roof and we got soaked anyway. We decided we should get down and into the forrest but navigating down a 60 meter pyramid with polished stone steps is pretty impossible, I actually slipped on my first step down and could have been one of the final sacrifices to the gods had I not regained my balance and clung to Al for dear life.

After thanking the loco tour guide and making a mental note to read up on the real history behind Palenque in my spare time, we jumped in the van and sped off to the nearby town to catch our night bus to Tulum.

A few notes before I depart – it's rainy season here (yes, well-timed vix and al) so each day has ended with a huge downpour and thunder and lightening – all very exciting the first couple of times, but a real pain when it comes to not running out of dry clothes. I also wanted to make everyone aware of my current health status – Mexico is a great place to come instead of joining WeightWatchers or the like – unfortunately I have succumbed to Mexi-belly (or the 'Moctezuma's Curse') and have been surviving on bread, tortillas and cheese and nachos and guacamole for the last couple of days.

I am also happy to report that my Spanish is still improving. Since I have spent most of the last few days in buses I have a firm grasp of Spanish/Mexican road signs and the meanings of some vital words for drivers – Velocidad, la carreterra, topo, larges distancia – to name but a few.

St Cristobal de las casas

After a 12 hour overnight bus journey complete with eye masks and ear plugs we arrived in St Cristobal de las Casas – a mountain-top town in the region of Chiapas. The bus took us up some windy mountain roads until we were above the clouds, it was amazing and as soon as we got out of the bus we enjoyed the fresh mountain air. St Cristobal is a really beautiful, it's an old colonial town with a huge yellow cathedral small streets, white houses with coloured window sills and doorways, and red roofs. The central square has a big yellow church in the centre and a little market. It's quite close to Guatemala.
Al is enjoying this town and says he wants to live here. It's really sunny but there is cold mountain air and unlike Puerto Escondido it's less muggy.

The 15th was independence day and there was a huge procession and party in the main square complete with mariachi bands on a stage, singers, dancers – very very loud. The square was packed with people from the town, luckily they were all smaller than Al and I so we had a good view wherever we stood. The band was singing typical Mexican songs which you hear constantly over here and they had little kids up on stage dancing which was very cute, they even dedicated one of their songs to the gringos at which point everyone turned around and looked at us... even though we're not officially gringos! After a couple of tequillas Al and I bought a Mexican moustache which the locals loved.

The next day we woke to go on a tour we had booked to a waterfall and the Montebello Lakes.

The first waterfall was very picturesque, we saw some big spiders on the leaves and the lakes were a beautiful aqua marine blue. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to swim in them (you get what you pay for with these tours). Our rather unfriendly guide (we figured he had a hangover from the festivities the night before) sussed me and Al out as tourists who look like they want to buy lots of pottery from local villages so he stopped the bus on the way back for a complimentary “tip from the driver” stop at what was probably the most boring market ever, each stall selling the same ceramics as the one beside it. Fair enough the local women made these themselves and maybe if I had a house I would have considered it, but ceramics and backpacks don't go, and for that reason Al and I jumped ship for a few minutes to explore the local village and stumbled upon a local fiesta, bought some churros and were happy, unlike our guide who made no commission.

Mexico - Mexico city, Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido

Hola de Mexico! Land of tacos and sombreros.

We landed in Mexico late on Monday evening and immediately went about finding some tacos for supper. We found a small taceria (place that makes tacos, they're everywhere here) and had a cheap but cheerful Mexican dinner for about £2 each. We'd heard dozens of scare stories about Mexico city but we actually found it to be quite a great place: good cheap food, busy, lively – the people here know how to have fun.

...'Scuse me while i just take another sip of my Margarita... Al and I are actually on the beach in Puerto Escondido... but we'll get to that in a bit.


We spent one very full day in Mexico city, seeing museums, being cerenaded to by marriachis and doing the touristy thing in the main square (equiv of houses of parliament and westminster cathderal).
One thing we noticed immediately was the altitude which, as Mexico city is around 1,600 metres high, it can be quite difficult walking around. Since walking didn't suit us we decided to master the metro system... with 20 million people living in Mexico city we drew the conclusion that half of them spent their days on the metro – 'how can it get more crowded than London in rush-hour?' you might think... try getting onto the most crowded London train, multiply it by two and add in a couple of guys' crotches pressed against you... nice! Mexicans are very small compared to me and Al and we have a certain advantage of being the tallest people in the Metro carriage. However when they want to get out of a carriage you'd better move or else you'll be rugby tackled by a torrent of small people and literally swept out of the carriage – as happened to me. Gringo error number 1.

...Scuse me while I tuck into my fresh fish platter with Al...

As much as we liked Mexico city we decided that there was another world out there that needed to be explored. So we jumped onto the coach to Oaxaca. 6 hours south of Mexico city it is an old colonial town with a huge cathedral
bright coloured houses and really friendly, indigenous people (from the Zapotec and Aztec tribes). We spent a couple of days here, visiting Monte Alban:


2000 year old ruins of pyramids built by the Zapotecs which was amazing – apart from being accosted by local sales people selling 'hand made' Zapotec crafts.

Oaxaca is also famous for Mezcal – a local type of tequilla, of which Al and I have enjoyed quite a few times now.

Also local chocolate is amazing. On our first night we decided to 'go cheap' with the accommodation and ended up staying in a bit of hovel with stains on the wall, we were too disgusted to go bare feet on the floor so had to wear flipflops and at night we slept in our respective sleeping bag liners, too scared to move in case we touched the wall. We've since decided that three years of slave-working in London for this trip should entitle us to slightly cleaner accommodation and so have upgraded since then.

We happened across a local fiesta in Oaxaca which was awesome – a marching band, people dressed in local costumes, two giant dancing dolls, handheld fireworks and locals coming up to us feeding us homemade Mezcal. We need more of those in the UK.
We took an overnight bus to Puerto Escondido – Mexico's top surfing state. This place is awesome, the people are so friendly, the seafood is amazing and the beaches stretch for miles. The waves are HUGE – swimming in the sea is a little scary as you just see these massive breakers bearing down on you. But it's fun. We arrived at 7am yesterday and found a hotel, we then went looking for breakfast but instead accepted a tour off a fisherman to some of the nearby beaches – we hadn't eaten since lunch the day before but we thought 'why not?' So in we got. Our guide took us out to sea to view the local turtles which are abundant. The first two we saw were mating... I felt a little rude for interrupting, but they didn't seem to mind us taking photos of them. We sped off to find our next turtle... suddenly the guy driving our boat just jumped into the sea!! We were obviously a little alarmed by this, until we realised that he had a string attached to him. He swam back to the boat and reeled in a huge turtle and lifted it into the boat.

It was pretty awesome, Al took a fancy to it and has been talking about it ever since...it's name is Turbo by the way... courtesy of Al...



He's called that cos Al released him back into the ocean and he swam away in a flash - he obviously didn't like us as much as we liked him! We then got dropped off on a tiny beach where a local restauranteur ran out to great our boat. He took us to his small beachside restaurant (he raked the sand in front of the deck chairs which was so sweet) where he offered us freshly caught fish – we immediately said yes of course. He set about cooking it and we had the best lunch ever (maybe because we hadn't had breakfast and were starving, but fish and chips have never tasted so good!)



The Pacific Ocean is like swimming in a bath – it's amazing!
We saw three sting rays in the sea next to us and then we headed for our cerveza (beer) and fish lunch. The boat took us back to P.Escondido and we have since spent our time here strolling on the beach, swimming,
looking at the surf shops (but not buying cos we're poor travellers), eating fish and watching the local fishermen bring in their catches.
The people we have seen here are poor and do what they can to make a living, but everyone we have met is so unbelievably friendly – as those who were with me in Croatia last week will certainly agree it couldn't get worse than that in terms of friendliness, but here they are the opposite – so proud of their work and so friendly and music is a big part of their lives – they are very musical and noisy – it's great. Those who were with me will also recognise the saying 'The Adriatic officially sucks!' Well i'm happy to announce that 'The Pacific officially rocks!'


Tonight we head off to San Cristabel de las Casas – a hilltop city in Chiapas in the jungle.
Can't wait. And tomorrow is Mexican Independence Day, one of the biggest fiestas in the country, should be great.

Until then amigos, adios. x

p.s. for those of you who are interested, my Spanish is sloooowly improving, but thankfully I have Al here to help me as otherwise i'd be really stuck!