Finally on the move

So I realise its been quite a few weeks since I left Cochabamba and set off to meet Andrew in Cuzco and its been a hectic couple of weeks hence the lack of communication but have found myself a quick moment to sit down and write a line while I now find myself in Argentina.
Let me give you a run down of the highlights, getting to Cuzco was very standard, I was just super excited to meet my friend Andrew and get the travelling underway. As per usual after meeting at the hostel and saying a quick g´day it was off to the bar and waking up with quite the hangover the next morning and I thought to myself ¨so it begins¨. The hike that we did in Cuzco was definately the highlight, not the famous Inca trail but another called the Lares trek and it was incredible. I´d like to tell you all how tough we had it and how I really had to dig my heals in but the truth of the matter was that because its not high season we were the only 2 in the group. This means that we had 1 cook and his assistant, a horse guide and his assistant, our guide (legend) and 4 mules, tough life I know. The food was amazing and so were these guys, they all live in villages around 5000mts above sea level so these mountains were little babies to them. We would leave the camp and be overtaken by them around 1hr later and we would arrive to the next camp with everything set up waiting for us.

To our credit we did climb from 2900mts to 4750mts, I´d like to tell you it was easy but Andrew may just tell you otherwise, poor boy kept a close eye on me and gently told me on a few occasions that perhaps I should stop and rest as I looked like I was going to fall off the mountain. The problem was that my mind felt fine but I was having so much trouble moving my legs up the mountain and the size of the steps I needed to take seemed much smaller on the edge of the track . Never fear, once we reached the top I was fine and practically ran down like a mountain goat (only a slight exagaration) and by the 3rd day we were at hot springs to make everything ok again.

Day 4 and we were up at the crack of dawn (4am) to ensure an early bus to Machu Pichu to ensure a chance of climbing Huanapichu once we got there. Machu Pichu was just like walking into a postcard, beautiful in every respect. We had tickets to climb Huanapichu at 10am and finally were on our way by around 1045am, its supposed to take around 1hr each way and is completely vertical, every step is a step up. Now about 10minutes into the climb Andrew turned around and asked how I was doing, standard reply was I´m fine. But in this case he was like ¨really, because you look like death and I´m going to take a picture to show you¨. Now it took another 5minutes for my body to realise that acutally enough is enough and I did in fact want to vomit everywhere but by this stage I had just fought for myself not to be taken down the mountain (my theory is this is the problem with growing up with brothers, hate, hate to be outdone by a boy) so it was onwards and upwards. The other problem is that I´ve been in Cochabamba soley sleeping and eating for the last 3 months so my poor body just didn´t know how to handle all this physical activity, luckily this only lasted until we returned to Cuzco that night and a nice cold beer seemed to help with the problem ;)

Then it was off to La Paz with an unintended stop in Puno as the bus had made a stop for over an hour to fix something which meant we had missed the border crossing. Neither Andrew or I were happy campers but after quite a few late nights we embraced the forced rest and were tucked in bed very early that night. Next day it was off to La Paz with an afternoon stop in Copacapana where we took a boat out for a quick trip to see Isla del Sol and the floating islands.

La Paz was another couple of nights of fun and days of venturing around the city and this was where we had the pleasure of catching up with Anthony. Now you always hope that when you introduce friends that they are going to get along. I wasn´t worried about these two with good reason, to call them the terrible two would be being kind, but equalled alot of fun!! So the 3 of us packed our bags and decided to head to Salar de Uyuni together and do a 3-day trip across the Salt Flats and desert.

It was as gorgeous as everyone had said it was going to be, gorgeous lagoons with pink flamigos, incredible blue skies contrasting against the red mountains and bubbling hot springs for us to indulge in before breakfast on our final day was simply perfect. So it was a quick trip through Bolivia which was fine by me as I´ll be heading back north when Ange arrives and the boys were hanging to get to what they call a more civilised country so once the trip ended it was off to Argentina!

So from what we had heard the buses and the roads in Argentina were worlds above what we had become used to in Bolivia and Peru and luckily people weren´t lying. To my amusement there was even Bus Bingo on the first overnight bus we took. We made a 1 night stopover in Salta which was beautiful but we were keen to get to Mendoza and try our hand at these amazing red wines and steaks that we had heard so much about. And I figure that if I could learn to drink red wine anywhere it was going to be somewhere that had fabulous red wine. And before any serious wine lovers get upset I do realise that Australia has some fabulous reds too! We spent a few days looking around the town and spent a day touring the wineries on bikes, glorious weather and incredible scenery were actually more fabulous than the red wine in my books.

So after a few days of winding down it was onto another 20hr bus ride to head for the city of Buenos Aires to meet some friends we had met along the way and enjoy the nightlife. Dont get me wrong we took time out to enjoy other things aswell. We made it to a football match between the 2 most popular teams River Plates and Boca Juniors. We had a group of 7 of us that wanted to make sure we sat together on the bus and when we were on the way there one of our guides asked us if we wanted to sit in really good seats as they had 8 separate tickets in a good section.....um what a question of course we did. It was right under the away supporters 6 rows from the front and the guide we went with who might I just add was ripped as they come wore his tattoo on his arm as his jersey.

Never fear we had all bought jerseys to wear so we didn´t stand out especially in the section we were sitting in. It was an absolute hoot, especially at the end of the game when the away supporters started throwing down chair seats and we all got kept in the stadium until they had all left, I´m talking at least an hour after the match had ended. Afterall there was only 4000 of them and who knows exactly how many 10,000s of home supporter there were. We also got to see the prodigy play at a concert, only concert I´ve been to without alcohol but once it started I could see why.

Buenos Aires was a gorgeous city but I was glad to get out of there. It was there that I said goodbye to Andrew and have continued on my journey with Anthony. At present we are having a little bit of R & R in the Lakes District, it is beautiful here but we are waiting for the weather to improve a little before we can head a little further south. I´m very very glad that I brought thermals with me, they are not overrated in this area.

Main plaza in Cuzco

Crossing Lake Titicaca.....one boat for the bus and another for the people....on the way back from Peru we got to do this at 10pm at night with no lights on the boat....yep you can imagine how much fun that was!

So until next time....