April | 2015 | See It Do It Live It

The Stunning Salkantay Trek

We had decided to do the five day Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu. Salkantay is a quechua word meaning ‘Savage Mountain’ and this beautiful trek takes you up to snowy mountains and down through tropical rainforest. The trek peaks at 6271 m above sea level (Ben Nevis is 1344 m) and isn’t for the faint hearted. We were going to be camping outdoors every night and were all slightly worried about how cold it was going to be. We were to be joined by two others and joked about the…read more

Cambridge South Does Peru

I was left to my own devices for one night in Cuzco before the hockey girls turned up to join me for a two week adventure. Before Graham left he had given me a crash course in Spanish numbers to avoid me getting scammed. I threw myself into it and managed to order food, drinks and to buy postage stamps. I even understood how much the bill was. Progress! The next morning I got up early and waited for Cath, Diane and Lou to arrive. I tried tracking their flight…read more

Cusco – we came, we saw, we ate!

With only a few days left of Graham’s world wide adventure, we decided to spend the final week in Cuzco. The original name of the city was Qusqu, but the Spanish couldn’t pronounce it and changed it to Cuzco. This apparently changed the meaning from naval (i.e. centre of the Incan world) to stray dogs. In more recent times, a governor changed the name to Cusco, which doesn’t really mean anything as he didn’t want his city to be named after the dogs! I hadn’t been feeling well for most…read more

The Amazing Amazon

When in Rome…you do whatever the Romans do. When in South America, you visit the Amazon. Nine countries share the Amazon rainforest, and 13% of it is in Peru. We flew to Puerto Maldonado where we were met by our guide Esau. We were then taken to a boat which would carry us towards our lodge, on the banks of Lake Sandoval. While on the boat, Esau told us a bit about himself. We were incredibly lucky to have a guide with excellent English who also absolutely loves wildlife and…read more

Islands that float

From La Paz, we travelled over the border into Peru and stopped at the town of Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We were lucky to make it at all in fact due to Graham’s phone changing to Peruvian time while we were waiting on a connecting bus on the Bolivian side of the border. The main attraction in Puno are the floating islands in Lake Titicaca. The closest ones to the city are the Uros islands, of which there are 42, inhabited by the Uru people. The islands…read more

Cable cars and llama foetuses

Posted by Kylie in Bolivia, South America

Over the past few months we have realised that we don’t particularly enjoy spending time in big cities (with a few exceptions) and that exploring in the countryside is much more enjoyable. However, we really enjoyed the few days we spent in La Paz. It is an interesting city, full of busy, winding streets. We spent time exploring the markets and souvenir shopping. We also wondered around the Witches Market. A particular highlight here are the abundant llama foetuses. These are built buy superstitious Bolivians who bury them under the…read more

Coroico

Coroico is the town situated at the bottom of Death Road. In order to delay the inevitable return journey, we decided to stay down there for a few days. I say ‘down’, but Coroico is still at 1600 metres above sea level making it higher that Ben Nevis (1344 m.a.s.l.). Coroico is a nice little Bolivian town in a beautiful valley, and usually has warm weather. It was definitely warm while we were there, but it did rain quite a bit. We stayed at El Cafetal, a French owned lodge…read more

Death Road

There are varying statistics about the Death Road. What they all agree on is that it is very dangerous. In its heyday, an average of 26 vehicles dropped off the edge every year. In 1995, the Inter-American Development Bank declared this road as the most dangerous in the world. In 2009 the Bolivians finally realised that owning this deadly ‘road’ wasn’t a great claim to fame and built a new, safer route. These days, the Death Road (or North Yungas Road as it is really called) is mainly used by…read more

Getting High in Bolivia

Update: Check out the video at the bottom of this post! One of the things that I have been most excited about in South America is visiting the Bolivian salt flats. Simon, Graham and I booked onto a four day jeep tour and were joined by Jamie, an ecologist from North Carolina. Before I tell you about one of the most incredible trips we have taken so far, here is some information in case any of you want to do it in the future. I would highly suggest starting your…read more