This is Peter and myself at our first hostel, "hostel de los ninos" literally "the hostel of the children". The facility is built into an old colonial villa of sorts and uses all of its profits to fund programmes around the city which help to feed and educate orphaned children. |  |
 | I can't remember exactly where in Cusco that this place was, but they had stupidly large amounts of gold artifacts built by the Spanish when they conquered the Incans. |
Demonstrations seemed to be quite commonplace. The riot police looked bored... as if they dealt with this sort of thing on a daily basis... they probably do! |  |
 | We went rafting down the Urubamba river and aside from getting really cold and wet we met some lovely people. |
There were two girls from the Netherlands and a girl from Lima (whose names escape me), a brazilian girl named Julia and a german girl named Elisa who we ended up hanging out with for the next couple of days. |  |
 | The whitewater was fun, but the rafting company was woefully unprepared and had some very poor equipment. In one rapid Elisa cut her hand open on a broken metal clip on the side of the raft. There was no medical kit on board, nobody (other than myself) with medical training, and to be honest, the clip should have either been removed or repaired before we started down the river. The company was called Eric's Adventures and they operate out of Cusco - they had nice staff, but be warned they have problems. After talking with a number of different guides in the area and hearing back from other people I would recommend the companies Mayuc and Instinct Rafting in Cusco and Cusipata Rafting in Arequipa. |
In spite of the poor planning on the part of the company, the people we rafted were fantastic. |  |
 | The day after rafting we hiked with Elisa and her Scottish roomate (Russ) out of Cusco and onto the hills nearby where the ruins of Sacsaywaman could be found. This is a view of the city from the hills. |
The ruins were very impressive and we really enjoyed them until the swarms of tour buses started arriving. |  |
 | More of the ruins. |
Pete climbing the stairs at Sacsaywaman. |  |
 | Russ, Elisa, and Pete. |
But then we went to go and see the mother of all ruins, Machu Pichu. |  |
 | We spent a bit of time in the main section of the ruins but set our sites on Huyana Pichu (the temple on the peak overlooking Machu Pichu). While we were wandering around Pete made friend with this llama. |
And then we started hiking. |  |
 | The trail got really steep towards the top and there were a few people who went into a panic from the vertigo. |
Very steep stairs. Those with Incan blood must have very little fear of heights. |  |
 | We didn't quite make it to the top, but we did get some phenomenal pictures of Machu Pichu from above. |
I suppose this is our victory photo with the temple high above behind us. |  |
 | This is Peter and his bowl of soup in Puno. Considering the vast number of bacterial bugs in the Peruvian water we felt that even though the soup came with the meal it was better left untouched. |
This is the central market of Puno. Not exactly in tip-top shape. Most of the roads in Puno looked like they belonged in a demilitarised zone. |  |
 | And then we tried to go to Bolivia, but militants on the border (sub-machine guns and all) haulted our bus and declared that nobody was going to cross the border until the government dealt with their grievances. I didn't feel real comfortable taking too many pictures of the guys with guns but I figured that if I didn't snap at least one photo nobody would believe the tale. So here is the only shot that I got of the guards around our bus from the window that actually came out. |
So we ended up taking a bus down to Arequipa. Along the way we passed through the "city" of Juliaca. The poverty was astonishing. |  |
 | Juliaca is the largest city in the Peruvian Titicaca area. Most of the city seemed unfinished. Buildings everywhere appeared to be crumbling and those that weren't seemed to be permanently under construction. |
The bus journey for many hours along a spectacular plateau. Sadly, the bus had no open windows, no air circulation, and a lot people with all sorts of bugs that my body had no immunity to. Anyhow, I ended up catching some sort of nasty viral bug the following day. It was horrible. |  |
 | I was ill for quite a while and we spent most of our days in the hostel solaris. This dog (Whykie)seemed to be the hostel's mascot and had the funny habit of looking over the edge of the roof garden down on the patio where we would eat our breakfast. |
Peter became fast friends with Whykie. |  |
 | When I was finally on the mend I started going out for food again (rather than surviving off of orange juice and bread) and we went to a fantastic restraunt called Ariquepay. We had been there on the first night in Arequipa (before I fell ill) and become fast friends with the Owners Marco and Gloria when I explained what I was allergic to. Gloria made me the most amazing chicken soup. |
This is us with Marco and Gloria. |  |
 | When I was finally back on my feet we went to some of the local attractions in Arequipa. Normally we would cram several little excursions into a single day, but considering my health we took things very easy. |
I really wanted to go trekking down to the bottom of the nearby Colca Canyon, but we had lost so much time and I had lost so much energy from being ill we had no choice but to take a standard tour to the area. It was not was a wanted but unfortunately it was the only option left available. The canyon with all of the Incan terraces was admittedly lovely, I just would have liked to have hiked into it. |  |
 | And we got to see the largest flying birds in the world, the Andean Condors. |
Then we went river rafting down the Rio Chilli, which I almost no pictures of. This is the river though. |  |
 | And after a fair bit of whitewater we wet riding up the canyon in front of the volcano that overlooks Arequipa called "El Misti". |
Pete and his horse. |  |
 | The sunsets over Arequipa were stunning. |
After nearly a week and a half in Arequipa we returned to Cusco where I prepared to fly back to the UK and Pete organised a visit to the Manu jungle reserve. We had a bit of spare time and made a visit to the Cusco Natural History Museum. This room was it... slightly smaller than where I work. |  |
 | They did have a few things on display that we could never show in our NHM. These babies in jars were really interesting and yes, perhaps a bit unsettling. |
And just before I flew off we visited this cathedral which was built upon an Incan temple which was built on top of pre-incan ruins. Remarkable the way civilization works. |  |