Copacabana to Cuzco (Bye Bye Bolivia)
24.9.09
1. Click here for related photos.
Leaving Bolivia was a bit of a nightmare. Neither of us were feeling well, especially Anita but neither of us felt right staying any longer in Copacabana.
We have loved Bolivia. In our short 6 weeks here we have come to love the “land of squandered opportunities” as I have grown to enjoy calling it. After our reading of non-fiction Bolivia books (referenced in the last blog) that read like good fiction books, you can't help but be amazed that the country is still functioning. Bolivia is only just now shedding what has really amounted to South Africa style apartheid for the last 450 odd years. And there are still many that are resisting the change. When you begin to see the world from a Bolivian perspective you really do need to wonder about the 'War on Drugs' and who really the villains are. I am personally struggling to see anything villainous about the cocaleros (Coca growers). Certainly there is a great deal of futility in destroying their crops. More is just grown elsewhere.
From our initial shock of being offered Coca Tea in Argentina we now recognise that Coca to the Andean people is like standard Tea to the British. The Coca leaf is neither a drug nor is it addictive. Its ability to alleviate the affects of altitude, regulate insulin and allow the Andean people to work harder on a smaller caloric intake seems to be well documented. Cocaine is a drug that requires some 1000kg of leaves plus a deadly cocktail of chemicals to create the cocaine paste. It requires western chemicals, and western money to create the supply chains and markets.
The Coca Museum in La Paz puts forward that the people of South America have been using Coca for centuries with no social problems occuring. The Bolivian perspective puts forward that the Cocaine problem is not a Market Supply problem but rather a Social and Market Demand problem for the richer nations. It is a perspective that certainly bears consideration when so many of these people are surviving well below the poverty line.
While we were in La Paz the government was advertising the need to register to be eligible to vote in the election in December. One struggles to imagine that Evo Morales won't be returned to power. The indigenous majority certainly seem to view him as THE man for the job.
It seems to me that they have someone now in power that is looking out for the best interests of Bolivia and Bolivians in general rather than a white elite that were only really interested in themselves and their families.
It is completely astounding when you realise what the Bolivian people have been able to achieve in the last decade. They have forced the government to nationalise an international privately run water company and ensure that their Gas reserves are (hopefully) not squandered for the good of the few.
But to say the future is rosy would be a stretch of the imagination. The distressing poverty we saw in the province of Uyuni vs the wealth in La Paz illustrates just how far Bolivia needs to go to equalise the situation. Roads, education, health services, employment. (Note: all the things that are required for rural Australia and the indigenous people there!)
And indeed the selfishness of the ruling elite of the past has actually created an opportunity. The country was so disorganised that although half its territory has been lost to its neighbours it has done little to develop what is left. Madidi and Kempff National Parks are prime examples of incredible biodiversity that has been and is being rapaciously destroyed in Brazil.
The inability to 'develop' may actually have created some breathing space for an enormous carbon sink in the form of massive tracts of rain forest. Time will tell whether the Kyoto agreement and international carbon trading will place sufficient value on these forests to allow them to stay standing.
Who knows what the future will bring to Bolivia. For us it was a wonderful place to visit. The food ranged from poisonous salmonella infested in the south through to a la carte in La Paz. The scenery ranged from desolation that could kill from lack of sustenance through to a landscape that could kill due to hyper competition. This country stretches from some of the highest and driest to the lowest and lushest; from the most sullen and closed of people to the most open and friendly. This is a country of contrast and it is one of the few I/we have on our list to return to. This is a country that touches you on the inside and one you can't ever forget. It is a country that deserves more attention from the world but then maybe the fact that it is so forbidden and forgotten is part of the attraction.
But all good things come to an end and so on we rolled the 8km to the border. It was a little overwhelming when we arrived as there was an annual festival at the border town of Khasani. The twin towns of Khasani and Yunguyo were packed to the gills with people. Fire crackers going off in the middle of the crowd, multiple bands playing and an overbearing announcer attempting to make himself heard over the din.
We got all the way into Peru and stood out in front of the Peruvian immigration office and realised that we had not officially left Bolivia. I drew the short straw and returned to Bolivia to get our exit stamps. The fellow didn't bat an eyelid that Anita wasn't there with her passport.
When I returned to Peru Anita got us officially into Peru. The Peruvian immigration didn’t bat an eyelid that I wasn’t in their office. She even managed to get us a visa for 120 days. (That gives us more flexibility with regards to which route we take to get to Ecuador. )
With our money changed we were ready to roll on. It would have been nice to stay but we felt quite exposed with so many people and our gear hanging there for inspection and extraction. Unfortunately due to the festival, we had to travel another 15km to find a shop open selling some scraps of food for lunch. The whole area was closed down in every little village as everyone was back at the fiesta at the border!
Tough start AND we weren't feeling well but we ultimately found a shop open with some decent supplies. Anita even gave the shop owner’s boy a spinning top she had received as a gift back on our first night in TilTil, Chile! The father was very intrigued by our trip.
We managed 40km in total and deflated like a couple of sagging balloons. We had waved to a nice lady watching us go by and immediately U-turned and asked her if we could camp on her property. She obliged us and soon we had her, her father and a couple of local boys watching us set up our 'house'. They found our gear, tent and bikes fascinating. They pointed to everything and said 'Muy especiallemente'. It was rather hilarious actually but we managed to keep a straight face. It was one of those special moments in cycle touring and travelling that you keep forever. Anita especially loved when she offered the two boys a ride on our bikes, their faces lighting up like a couple of beacons.
I improved dramatically with a good night's sleep but Anita went backwards and we only managed another 50km the next day before pulling the pin. We negotiated a camp spot at a local church. We only had one visitor but he was very friendly and welcoming. It is amazing how accepting the Andean people are. There we were camped on the Church grounds and no one was bothered that we were there!
We met Leo and Annette on our third day. They are a Dutch couple finishing their Alaska to Ushuaia trip. They had had done Alaska to Mexico previously and were now on the second leg. They were very nice and had ridden with Max (previous blog) in the north of Peru. Anita was still not well but we managed to limp our way to Puno with an unscheduled stop at a bus stop. Anita succumbed to a very nasty light sensitive migraine type of headache. We covered her up and kept the gawkers away.
Amazingly in the last 15-20km we FINALLY had a tail wind. We have had nasty head winds and cross winds for most of our time on the Altiplano. This tail wind couldn't have arrived at a better time. We gratefully accepted the gift and found ourselves at Hostal Uros named for the floating islands of the same name. Fortunately the beds weren’t made of Totora reeds. The room was tiny but we had a Wi-Fi connection in the room. Wow, joy of joys. It was hard to leave the hotel once I found this out.
Despite numerous warnings from many travelers about how bad Puno was, we actually enjoyed our stay there. Don't get me wrong, it isn't much of a place for a holiday and we consciously avoided Lake Titicaca from Puno. That said, after some of the absolute holes we have visited in 4.5 months on the road, Puno was definitely not at the bottom of the list! :-)
We had heard too many horror stories about over toured Uros and other Peruvian Titicaca islands that we decided to avoid them altogether. All the reports of being shuffled from place to place put us off completely. We didn't want to taint our Isla Del Sol experience. So we rested, ate, shopped at the Mercado, and maximised the internet access FROM the room.
I had a great experience at the Mercado (like a farmer’s market) where I actually had a decent and amusing conversation with some of the women working there. It gets difficult to explain how to say my name at times but everyone seems to know Stuart Little. I always say “pero yo soy mas grande (but I’m more large) but these cheeky ladies asked where my tail was. I, of course, said that I keep it tucked in my pants.
They also reminded me that the road between Puno and Juliaca was very dangerous and that two Argentine brothers were cycling it a few months back when one was killed. This is the same stretch that cycle tourists Bauer and Berri advised us not to ride as one of their friends had been killed. And indeed, Leo and Annette had actually seen a dead pedestrian along this section earlier the same week when the rode it themselves.
And so it was with a great deal of trepidation we set out on the 'death road' from Puno. I don't think Bolivia's 'death road' has killed this many people in the last 6 months! It was quite scary at first but in the end we were fine. At the sign of any vehicle we skedaddled and cowered in the ditch. We were always at least 1 m from the death machines. But it wasn’t so bad really, and we had started very early – by 730am – a record for us.
We just finished the 20km of nasty road when we met up with Susan and Martin, another Dutch couple riding from Alaska. Except these two had just completed just over 24,000km in just over 12 months. They were very humble about their achievement and said they simply tried to do 80km per day with little rest days. They didn’t ever stay long in one place. Holy Dooley, I suppose we don’t ride that much less per day on average but we do tend to stay in one place for a week(s) at a time! We shared tips for the road ahead and warned them of the immediate dangers. Our next 20km to Juliaca was freshly paved and super safe with a nice shoulder. We were going to make it unscathed.
Juliaca had a nice plaza and we saw our first South American wedding. True to style in the Andes, the bride and groom jumped into a beautified Micro/mini-van along with 20 other people. We thought we could see her face pressed against the glass window as the vehicle pulled away but we were certain for once that no sheep were tied to the roof! Nothing else about Juliaca was remotely pleasant except that it made Puno look like a nice holiday destination.
We were greeted by many on our way through as well as 'propina-ed'. One unpleasant aspect of Peru is that they seem to teach many people to ask gringo's for a propina (a tip). We get this from toddlers through to crusty old fellows. Fortunately no one has (yet) robbed us upon our decline of the offer to tip them for no services rendered.
We kept rolling until we cracked 80km. Amazing how far you can go when both are healthy and the wind isn't so aggressive. We stopped at a farm on the Rio Santa Rosa where we asked the two sisters that owned the place if we could camp there for the night. As we pitched our tent we unanimously voted the location our #1 camp spot in South America to date. There was a beautiful river to bathe in, there was soft grass to support our bed, the air was warm, the sun was still shining, and best of all there were Flamingos. (Incidentally, flamingos are Anita’s favorite bird and if you are familiar with the length of her legs then this news probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise.)
We were just settling in when the sisters dropped by for a visit. There was some initial confusion “puedo (or peudes?) sacar su (or mi?) fotografia? But it soon became clear that they did indeed want to take OUR photograph. But when you think about it, two gringos turn up onto your campo (farm), ask to camp next to the river, they pull out a tent from their bicycles, rave about how “maravilla” (amazing) the place is, and they tell you they have ridden from Santiago de Chile. I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised. Celia pulled out her Nokia 6120 and took a couple of photos. They obliged us with their photo and then they went to the nearby “clothes-bush”, packed up their clothes into a wheelbarrow and herded their 200 cordero’s (sheep) up the hill to the house for the night.
The next morning I went Flamingo hunting. They are pretty shy creatures so I had to just about crawl through the tall grass to get close. I managed a few shots before they wisened up and started to stroll to the other side of the river and out of range. We got another nice early start and rolled onto Pucara the pottery heartland of Peru. Pucara wasn’t much chop for lunch – our meal had the distinct aroma of Samonella. I went hungry and left most of my food untouched but the town was nice. There was an excellent old stone church with some massive Pucara Pottery cows in the Plaza. You see smaller versions of the Pucara Bovine throughout Peru. It is some sort of good luck charm for your building or house. Seems a bit more tasteful than the llama foetuses that Bolivians bury at their front doorstep but the Andean Peruvians probably still do that too...
Our next goal was to get to Ayaviri where there were supposed to be some hot springs. We found them but were loath to try them out. The photo of the outdoor pool and its green water looks unpleasant enough. We have to leave the hot tub/springs to your imagination: black with a brown foam all over them. We enjoyed our stay there regardless as we had a nice picnic table with shade and four bags of our new favorite corn chips (Los Cuates) made in Lima and not from Frito Lay. We rolled on out of Ayaviri now looking for a nice spot to stop for the night. Unfortunately we asked two different people and were rejected both times on our request to stay the night, in our own innocuous “tienda de campana” (tent). We suspect that they thought we were asking to stay in their house so agreed that a photograph of our tent is necessary for future explanation. We suspect that some have never heard of a tent, or at least can’t recognise “tienda de campana” in an Australia/Canadian accent. Our desperation increased with the rate at which the sun accelerated towards to the horizon. Anita, the magician, pulled a spot in a hollow near a creek from thin air. It was significantly better than the option I had proposed which was sleeping right next to a sloping railway easement. As it turned out the industrial trains ran through the night so we made the right choice.
We settled into the tent, made dinner and waited for the sky to go black to give us sufficient cover for an undisturbed sleep. The distant sound of dogs barking slowly gave way to silence but we agreed to wake at 530am to ensure we weren’t greeted by a pack of them advising us of our trespassing. We awoke just before the alarm and just before the barking started. With the barking always sounding a bit closer we packed our things. It was with a big sigh of relief that we finally got the tent stuffed away and loaded onto the bike. We were significantly better prepared to face the challenges of a pack of dogs with our bike loaded. Of course, as we crept onto the highway and looked back there was a nary dog to be seen. But it was a record start of 650am.
Santa Rosa and breakfast here we come. Nearly 30km later we rolled up to Leon from Belgium (www.goffinets.be/kapsud ). He was overjoyed to meet us. We exchanged information, photos and he recorded us on his camcorder for his documentary. He would have chatted all morning but Anita was on the edge of a medical emergency with 30km under her belt and no breakfast. So I whisked her away up the hill to Santa Rosa where 7 fried eggs, fresh bread and the obligatory Te de Coca awaited us.
The final climb to the pass Abra La Raya and the border of Cuzco province awaited us. The air chilled down and the headwind pumped up. It was a long 35km slog to the top but as we arrived the sun came out, and the wind dropped. We had a break, admiring the vendors selling their wares before dropping the 15km or so to “Aguas Calientes” (not the Aguas Calientes known as Machu Picchu Pueblo). It was brilliant. Excellent hot springs. Super hot, too hot in fact. There was a cafe AND they let us camp there for the night. A swim, a camp, and a swim the next day all for 3 Soles ($1.20 AUD) each. Now THAT fits the budget. We met Mutt there also. We always seem to attract the littlest hobo dog. Despite us being unfriendly to him he seemed to know we liked him and he followed us around the whole complex all day and down the road the next day. I was just starting to imagine Mutt riding on the back of Bob all the way to Quito when I shook myself awake. Fortunately it was all downhill so we soon lost the poor bugger and avoided having to figure out how to deal with an uncomfortable adoption (by him of us).
It seemed like the further downhill we went the stronger the wind got until it became unbearable at the Raqchi ruins. It was a nice little spot but strange. All this “normal” Peru around us and we roll into a courtyard full of souvenir vendors and 6 tourist buses. It was amusing to me that there was a nice church there. The Catholic faith, we are coming to see, was most proficient at establishing places of Christian faith on the ruins of the Incas. We probably would have ridden right past them but I was irritated with the wind. We found some respite for an hour and then gambled that the wind had died. It had not. We struggled onto Combapata where we found our hostal with a courtyard that protected us from the wind. We cooked dinner, sent out our BlackBerry Blog broadcast and went to sleep to the sounds of the trucking business next door.
Three things seem to get us going early: the fear of dogs, the fear of the wind and the thought of arriving into a decent town with great food, accommodation and showers! We had well over 100km to go to get to Cuzco but it was to create just the right ingredients for an epic day. We rolled out at 6:39am (again before 7 am – this is becoming pleasantly habitual. You would be so proud of us Max) and rolled down the hill. Anita smashed along with an average of 20km/h for the first 50km. We slowed as we began more climbing near Urcos and our half way point. We had a good chat to Margrit and Pius (www.joergersvelotour.ch) of Switzerland. They have been on the road since 2007 when they crossed Europe, Asia and now South America. Anita was having another emergency situation with regards to food so we didn’t get to chat so long with them.
With a belly full of chicken, chips, chocolate milk, and Inca Kola we were ready to have a crack at Cuzco. We weren’t long out of Urcos when we met Damien and Marco. Damien, an Argentine, has been on the road for 27 months from Alaska and Marco (from Montreal) was joining him for the Cuzco-La Paz leg. Damien is raising awareness for homeless/disadvantaged kids and has spent a great deal of his time over the last 27 months with them (www.jamerboi.com.ar is his site). Sounds like an amazing thing he is doing. They were both full of energy and left us full of beans ready to conquer Cuzco.
We ran out of steam just after our record breaking 100km and limped our way slowly up hill into Cuzco. Incredibly, we stopped for directions only half a block from our destination (Hostal Esterilleta). It seems to be a favored stop for most cycle tourists in Cuzco. Franciso (the owner) is brilliant. He runs a super cheap, very clean, very safe hostal including breakfast WITH eggs just a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas. At 15 Soles (~$6 AUD) each per night we don’t feel hampered by our budget to rush away from this fabulous city.
We are now at the navel of the Incan empire. The centre of where it all really ramped up from the early 1400’s. Amazing that the “empire” really only lasted about 100 years but their foundations and stone work are likely stand the test of time for many more centuries to come.
Most people come to Cuzco for Machu Picchu but it is certainly a town that deserves a great deal of time in and of itself. We have already been here a week with some side trips to Pisaq, Urubamba, and Ollantaytambo (by bus). Today (Fri Sept 25) we head off to do our own Inca Trail to Machu Picchu via Cachora, Choquequirao, Yamana, Santa Teresa and finally Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu Pueblo.
Regards,
Stuart and Anita
Posted byStuart Kane at 8:47 PM
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We have been travelling across Bolivia with you!.
And we insist: you are very good writers and must to publish a book of your travel in Sidney.
Regards.
Diana and Gustavo.
From Rosario, Argentina.