Sao Paulo

I flew from Lima to Sao Paulo (a flight so ridiculously expensive that it cost nearly a quarter of my round the world ticket price) arriving at perky hour of 3.30 am. After 3 hours killing time in the arrivals hall, counting roof tiles, watching flies fight and trying to understand what was happening in the film on TV, I got the first bus downtown and headed to the first hotel I could find to sleep.

Sao Paulo is South America´s most populous city with a population ranging anywhere from 10 to 30 million, depending on who counted, where they went to count and if they were stabbed to death while counting. It is Brazil´s industry hub and has a reputation for violence. I found it to be a great place, full of life, brilliant restaurants, great bars and the best nightlife this side of Buenos Aires.

One night I got invited to a party in a young Japanese/Brazilian textile magnates house. It was in one of the swankiest areas of town, had a swimming pool, a chessboard carpet complete with 1 meter high, 20kg pieces in the hall, two grand pianos in the dining room, a room with just a [very well-stocked ] bar and some barstools in it, a kitchen the size of my old apartment with 4 fridges, a bathroom you could have gone curling in and this was only downstairs. I got back to my hotel at 6am, slinking past the Conceirge who just grinned at me the whole time.

Lima

Not much changed between Huacachina and Lima. Hostel with bar. Ended up DJing. Didn´t get out much. Didn´t see a single sight. Had a brilliant time.

Nazca / Huacachina

After the strenuous activities in and around Arequipa it was time to get down to sea level and get some preliminary R&R in before getting some extreme R&R in Brazil.

I first stopped at Nazca where I hopped off the bus from Arequipa and hopped on a tiny Cessna with two Austrian sisters to view the famous Nazca lines from above. I noticed the girls were a bit "chubby" (ahem) and I am not the lightest myself, but when our pilot (who looked like he was just out of school (and probably was)) looked slightly concerned towards the end of the runway I realised that the ladies should have maybe left out the last Apfelstrudel. We made it (obviously) with a couple of meters runway to spare. Our pilot looked relived, grinned and started pretending like he was in an interview for the Red Arrows display team, yawing and banking and doing whatever else planes do like a madman. "Look down to left you will see Hummingbird", he says. "Where?", I say. "There under the wing!", he says banking to the left as if we are avoiding an incoming Exocet missile. We get out half an hour later and I do a Pope, kissing the tarmac. The girls laughed, but I reckon the pilot was a bit miffed.

Huacachina was next, a couple of kms away from Ica. It is a small Oasis (complete with lake and palm trees) situated in the middle of some massive sand dunes. I immediately liked it as the place I stayed had a swimming pool with a bar beside it. Fuck canyons and 6000m mountains, this was more like it. I ended up DJing at the bar, getting free or half price booze and nearly breaking my neck on a sandboard. My original plans of staying for a day or two were upsized and 5 days later I staggered out of the place to make my way to Lima.

Colca Canyon

At the same time as I booked the ascent of Chachani I decided to book a 3 day trek through the Colca Canyon for the day after I was due to come back. It all seemed so easy, climb Chachani (one of the easiest etc...) come back mid afternoon. Have some food, get a good night´s sleep and then up the next morning to stroll through a nice canyon for a couple of days. Walk in the park.

I already knew that the Colca Canyon was (give or take a meter or two) the deepest canyon in the world, being nearly twice as deep as the "Grand" Canyon, but I expected us to drive to the bottom of it and just saunter along the bottom.

Wrong again.

Day 1: Up 6am. Drive for 6 hours then skid, slide, careen down one side of canyon. 5 hours.
Day 2: Up 5am. Small pancake for breakfast. Cross river at bottom of canyon. Ascend 3 hours in midday heat. Descend 2 hours.
Day 3: Up 3am. No breakfast. Climb, scamper, crawl, sweat, wheeze, curse, haul ass up one vertical kilometer up the other side of canyon. 4 hours.

I came back vowing that was the last excerting thing I was doing before christmas (and probably about 2 kilos lighter). Beautiful place though and when on the final day a pair of Condors flew by only about 10 meters away from us it was just magical.

As the comments book in the travel agency said (which everyone on the trek except me had read before the tour): "Tough but worth it".

Chachani

My climbing expedition comprised of 3 blokes from Dresden who seemed to have bought out the whole contents of the latest North Face catalogue and whose last holiday comprised flying to the Caucasus and climbing Mount Elbrus (the highest mountain in Europe). The other chap was from Glasgow and he had spent the best part of the last 4 months trekking around South America and climbing every mountain he could find.

I was worried.

Still the guides maintained that it was one of the easiest 6000m peaks in the world to climb. I later realised that this was like saying the leopard is one of the least ferocious of the big cat family or that the London marathon is one of the easiest marathons in the world...

We drove up towards the mountain, which is visible from all over Arequipa. Got out of the 4x4, put our Rucksacks on and climbed 4 hours to base camp @ 5400m (which incidentally is higher than Everest base camp... So there). Put up some tents, cooked some food and it was beddie byes at 6pm. I am still travelling with my FBK (Full Body Kleenex) Sleeping bag, so I was wearing practically every garment in my possession. Even 2 pairs of socks and a pair of gloves on my feet.

Our Peruvian wake up call was just after 12 (AM not PM), chocolate soup with dried peaches for brekkie, we donned our crampons and ice axes and it was up and at ´em. I will spare you the gory details but we spent hours traversing ice fields, scampering up rocks and generally battling with the fact that above 5000m oxygen is generally quite hard to find. I could manage about 4 steps before having to stop for a second or two to regain my breath. At 6am, just around sunrise we ascended the last steep saddle and saw the cross on the summit. We all collapsed around it and gasped for breath.

Quite proud to be honest. Probably the most physically exerting thing I have ever done.

Arequipa

Down from the altiplano to this lovely, sub-tropical town which is surrounded by three towering peaks. One of them (Chachani) is even one of the 150 tallest mountain in the world at 6057m (19,870 ft to you old folks).

I begin climbing it tomorrow morning. Talk to you when I get down ;)

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Fotograficos

Bolivia
(If you can hold your hand still enough over an image, you will even get a description.)
But you knew that already...

Cusco / Sacred Valley / Machu Picchu

After the "hardships" of Bolivia, Cusco seemed to be paradise on earth - clean, paved(!) streets. Shops selling everything you could possibly need (or not for that matter). A huge choice of restaurants (with menus in 4 languages). Irish pubs. What more could you ask for? The veneer started to strip after about 10 minutes walking around, as everyone was touting something. "Restaurrrrant Miiister?¨, "Internnnnet??", "Free drinksss senor???", "Postcard????", "Shoeshine?????", "Bus ticket Sir??????", "Taaxxxii???????¨. Not to mention being offered about every drug under the sun. Yes, Cusco is Ibiza 2 miles up in the sky, except it is lacking pot-bellied Germans wearing socks & sandles and English lager louts wearing Man Utd. football shirts with a facial colour to match. But then again there was enough multi-coloured Gore-Tex floating about to give you a headache.

OK, so you are in Cusco for one main reason - Machu Picchu (another one of Peru´s attempts at making Dyslexics* never visit the country. You would think having a place called Titicaca would be enough for one country...). So the next day it was off down by bus into the Sacred Valley to Urubamba and then to Ollantaytambo (it just gets better...) before getting the train to Aguas Calientes (the village at the foot of M.P.). The valley is absolutely stunning, snow capped peaks all around with Inca ruins strewn along the hillsides. The ruins at Ollantaytambo are especially impressive. The Incas were incredible stone masons, they did better with stone hammers than most of your current day builders could ever do.

Aguas Calientes is the biggest tourist trap this side of Disneyland, the only reason for its existence being the proximity to M.P. Food is about three times the price of other places in Peru and a beer nearly costs 2 Euros!! Bloody `ell. Even the train ride from Cusco to A.C. costs 56 dollars return (3 hr journey). Now, considering you can go from La Paz to Lima (1200 km, 24 hours) for about 10 bucks, you will see that PeruRail are laughing all the way to the banco. Even the 20 minute frigging bus ride up to Machu from Aguas costs 5 dollars! Entry to Machu itself is 20 dollars, but thanks to the lovely girl in STA Travel Frankfurt, I got in with my student card for a measly 10 dollars. Ain't it grand being a mature student??

Once I had got over the fact that I had spent well over a 100 dollars to get there, it was time to have a look round Machu. It was amazing, sure. Great, but I suppose the whole hype of having seen it 200 times on TV and in every second National Geographic, diminished the effect slightly. The buildings are truly impressive, but I think the most wonderful thing about the place is the setting, which no photo will ever do justice to. Machu is literally built on a tiny plateau and on both sides of a steep ridge, but all around are towering mountains, covered in lush jungle. I trekked around for half a day, even climbing Huayna Picchu, the mountain which looms behind Machu. Suffering heat-stroke, sun-stroke, dehydration, altitude sickness and touristophobia I climbed into the 5 dollar bus back down and made my way back to Cusco for a beer ("Wannaaa Beeeer Senor?").

* Did you hear about the Insomniac, agnostic, dyslexic?
He stayed awake all night wondering if there was a Dog...