Apologies if you were in any way tempted by the title to think this might be an indulgent look at our thrilling love story (long story short: we met, we did a lot of washing up together and now we’re married) but in classic Evie-writing-document-names style, it will do what it says on the tin. The hope is that this’ll be a brief account about each of the stops on our trip so far, with details to follow in subsequent posts; the fear is that it’ll turn into a rambling account of every museum and travel bug on our way and me left despairing about having become one of those classic gringos who writes a travel blog. I’ll try my best…
The first country on our tour was Peru, purely because Lima was the cheapest place to fly to (hence it also being our final stop to fly home #spoiler). A friend had warned me beforehand that we probably wouldn’t want to stay long in Lima, and although I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, it was the right recommendation to give. The city was packed full of people, pollution and noise, so was rather a full-on start for two groggy travellers. While there we watched some boxing, visited Chinatown and were unhappily subjected to the horrendously inefficient transport system, not the traditional start to a honeymoon…
Sublime to ridiculous, we found ourselves in Lunahuana (marked by red pin on map) – a tiny town just off the Gringo trail (the places all the westerners go on their Gap Yah travels) which had a couple of adventure sport options, and very little else at all. We did rafting, quad biking and ziplining (which was very brief, ask Edd the economist for a disgruntled, cost-per-minute analysis of the experience) and had a walk around but after about ten laps of the town in two days, it was clear there really wasn’t much else to find. Cue the next bus ride…
Nazca presented a much more pleasant atmosphere, somewhere between the clamour of Lima and the whisper of Lunahuana, made all the more exciting by the fact that we arrived at dusk to find ourselves in the middle of a city wide powercut. Presented with a candle in a glass Sprite bottle, we found a chicken shop with a generator and settled in. Nazca’s fame (and visitability) is centred on the Nazca lines, which we went out to visit in the early evening, then darkness came. And the bus back didn’t. Stay tuned to find out more about this particular venture… (spoiler: we lived)
Our first overnight bus ride (12 hours on probably the most luxurious bus I’ve ever been on) took us to Arequipa, known as “the white city” because a lot of the prominent, colonial buildings are built from a white volcanic stone called sillar. In accordance with our “if we like it, we’ll stay” policy, we stayed here over a week, during this time we had ample time to explore the city as well as taking two trips out to the Colca Canyon. The first time we went with an organised, trekking tour down into the valley and then went back out again on our own to a small town called Chivay (point D on map) which afforded us some peace, and a chance to spend all day at the local hot springs. Anyone who knows Edd will recognise this as a fairly ideal day for him. Back in Arequipa, we spent our first night apart with Edd venturing to climb El Misti, a volcano overlooking the city (5822m) while I spent a quiet day in a bakery (talk about conforming to stereotypes…)
While in the city, we visited a small church run by a family of missionaries (from England, though also from Peru) who were spuriously friends of a friend of a friend, which was a delightful taste of home and a welcome opportunity for Edd to be able to talk properly to someone other than me, as very few people here speak English unless they’re tour guides. They welcomed us into their church and we stayed for lunch, getting an inside view of Peru, from the education system to politics and history and lots in between and then returning to their house for a cup of tea (!) and a go on the zipline in their garden (!!)
Our final stop before crossing the Southern border of Peru was a town called Puno, commonly acknowledged as a place, much like Swindon, whose only asset is its transport links to other places, which is never the highest commendation. However, we had a pleasant few days wandering through the markets, doing laundry and visiting the islands of Lake Titicaca – a surreal experience full of colours, climbing and my first major run-in with (alleged) food poisoning. More to follow on these bizarre encounters later…
We crossed the border to Bolivia exactly one month after we’d got married (not by prior planning), and thus begins “The story so far Vol. 2”
E&E
Rings & Rucksacks 