Rolo on Tour

Arriving in Bolivia I spent one day in Copacabana, situated on the bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. It appeared nice, but I wanted to move on, so the next day I continued my journey to La Paz. During that we had to cross the Lake:

There it goes

La Paz shows an interesting scenery. It is the highest capital in the world – lying at 3600 metres of altitude. And it is full of taxis and minibusses.
Also it is the starting point for a really thrilling adventure: Going down the so-called Death Road by mountainbike. This road leads from La Paz to Coroico and received its name as a consequence of various accidents occuring there. The road is very narrow for cars and falling off will result deadly. As a result of all those accidents the government has built a new paved road. The old road is now just used by mountainbikers and their escort vehicles.
So there we were going that road downhill for some hours and having great fun. I might want to add that for people knowing how to ride a bike the road is not that dangerous as for a bike there is always enough space.
The only bad news was that the majority of the pictures taken by the tour agency suck as the guy handling the camera did not seem to have the best clue of doing that.

Oh yes and regarding the title: Our bus driver seemed to have been suicidal and took the Death Road back up to La Paz (and not the paved road as all the other vehicles did). Our hearts froze when suddenly a car going down showed up in a turn. Well, it passed us and we arrived in La Paz unharmed but still it may have been a better idea to pick another agency for this trip, who knows how to take pictures and how to guarantee for more safety.

Some part of the death road

You’re doing it wrong!

Good to be small sometimes

The only showable group picture

Enough said

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What was missing in my discovery of Peru were two places, which many may consider its highlights: The ruins of Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. But first things first:

From Arequipa I went to Cuzco on another night bus. Unfortunately they had to repair it all night long (oh yeah) and so I arrived with quite a delay. Bad luck continued when there was no water in the hostel, so I had to walk 100 metres to another hostel to take a shower. Time to move places, but afterwards it was all fine. Cuzco has some nice places and nice bar areas for the night and its central square is kind of interesting, as you will be approached all the time by people trying to sell you massages, alpaca sweaters or paintings.

To get to Machu Picchu I took the budget version: A series of bus and taxi rides (involving travelling in the trunk for a while, which was not too bad actually, as we had to look backwards -> „Wow, did we just pass that turn??“) followed by a 2-hour-walk along the railway took us to the village below the ruins, Aguas Calientes. From there we walked up in the morning in heavy rain to the ruins. But it was all worth it as it is just a marvellous place up there. Walking around all day including climbing the Huayna Picchu (the mountain, which you usually see on the background of the typical Machu Picchu photo) we were lazy enough to take the bus down and the train (first train ride on this trip) back to Cuzco.

Travelling in the trunk: We had not as much space as it looks like here!

The rainy season affects many roads

Never forget Breakfast!

It’s not always sunny in Machu Picchu

On top of Huayna Picchu, the ruins being in the background

The city of Puno, which is situated next to Lage Titicaca on 3800 metres of altitude, was the last destination in Peru. From there I took part on some island trip. First we passed some floating islands, which are still inhabited by some indigenous people called the Uros:

What a nice lookout point

From there the boat took us to the islands of Amantani and Taquile, where you could have beautiful views of the Lake. All those islands get kind of touristy, but who can blame that as it is the only way for the people living there to make any money.

How do you build that?

Testing some functions on my camera

Someone wants to have a look, if there is a treasure hidden at that point in the lake?

You are beautiful

Having returned it was time to approach the border. Before I discovered that when I was entering Peru, the officials had only given me 30 days of visa. I was surprised by that as I have a right up to 183 days. Well I could not extend it and as I had stayed 41 days in Peru, I had to pay 1$/extra day and spend 1 extra hour at the border. Could have been worse, so all OK.

One last thing I want to share: On the way to the border, we passed a truck which had crashed. There were already lots of people surrounding it to watch the scene (not to help). But to my surprise the driver of my bus wanted to have a look as well, stopped the car and said „Ok guys, let’s all go watch the accident.“ Besides one guy who had to watch his little kid I was the only one who refused to take part in that activity. Voyeurs!

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Toledo, Keiko, Castañeda, Ollanta, Kuczynski, Nique, Rodriguez, Belaunde, Reymer, Pintazo and Noriega. Who are these 11 people? No, it is not the peruvian national soccer team. (Of course you knew that as there is no Pizarro on the list.)
It’s the 11 candidates who want to become the next president of Peru. The first round of voting will be on the 10th of April. After this date the 2 candidates with the most votes will run in a second round for presidency.
Having travelled a lot through Peru I could not miss the ongoing election campaign and I want to point out in this entry some interesting aspects.

First note that in Peru you don’t have the right to vote, but the duty to do so. If you fail to do that you gotta pay a certain amount as a penalty. As a consequence for the campaign the candidates also try to win the people who don’t care. The best way to do that seems to be to flood the whole country with advertising. But they usually don’t do it with posters, instead they paint „XY (Insert preferred candidate here) presidente“ on all the houses. Or some rocks in the middle of nowhere. Note that as there are some illiterates in Peru, it is also important to put your symbol down there. Now the strategic choice of a symbol can be quite important: You want to have one which people can easily remember and recognize. Toledo has a T, Keiko a K, Ollanta an O and Kuczynski PPK (that are his initials). Only Castañeda wants to have it complicated and has chosen a sun.

Not surprisingly the candidates with the most advertising are favorited right now in the elections. Let’s look closer at the first 5 right now, the others don’t really play a role for the outcome.

The last presidents of Peru have been: Garcia -> Fujimori  -> Toledo -> Garcia . Fujimori is now in prison for crimes he committed during presidency. Interestingly enough his daughter Keiko has announced to get him out of prison, should she win the election. For me such an announcement would make somebody impossible to vote, but Peru seems to have a different opinion as she is on second place in the surveys right now.

The favorite right now is Alejandro Toledo who was president before. And he proposes the same things he did before and which he did not achieve: plenty of jobs, cheap products, new hospitals, new railroads. So why would it work this time?

Castañeda was the mayor of Lima before. I don’t really know what his goals are, but seeing his face on television a lot, he must have gotten a facial lifting for sure :-).

Ollanta is the nationalist candidate, who is very popular in the south of Peru. That is where he also does most of his advertising. He is a buddy of venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his political agenda reflects that.

Kuczynski is also known as the gringo, as he also got a US citizenship. He is the oldest candidate, but surprisingly his campaign is approaching the young people of Peru. Funny thing he actually wants to have a youth ministry. Not hard to guess whose votes he wants to get with that proposal.

So to put it simple, all candidates suck. But I guess it’s like that most of the time and you gotta choose the least evil.

The campaign itself is quite similar to Germany. The candidates tour around the country holding speeches everywhere. The way they do that though reminds me more of a rock concert. No wonder each candidate has his own song praising him. How do I know that? Well, there are for example cars driving around playing these songs super loud all day. Appears to me like brain washing. Well let’s see who does that best!

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How else would I title my last week, which I mostly spent in the desert?
First stop was the little beach town of Paracas in order to visit the Islas Ballestas. They are also called „Galapagos of the poor“ which I think is a great name marketing-wise.
Getting there you pass a thing called the candelabra, which is supposed to have its origin around 200 B.C. What its purpose was is still left to speculation.

Your theory?

Getting to the islands you are suddenly surrounded by lots of birds and sealions.

The big ones are males, the middle-sized one females and the small ones are babies

Occasionally you can also spot some penguins:

Discussing the way to Madagascar?

Next was the Oasis of Huacachina which is surrounded by sand dunes on all sides. What an astonishing view!

Huacachina

The place is also known for its Dunebuggy-/Sandboardingtours and I of course had to try that as well. The Sandboarding turned out to be sledding using a Skeleton technique. Once we stood up on a rather small dune but as nobody had snowboard experience those tries were not that successful to say the least.

The new sandboarding sensation from Germany

And here he is in action

Talking about the dunebuggy I felt quite insecure in it. It was like a rollercoaster ride but with a seatbelt that would fail any security test. Also the intention of the driver seemed to be to risk as much as possible without crashing. To our buggy nothing happened but another one was not that lucky. We saw it flip over during our tour and the next day it came to my notice that the driver of that buggy actually did not survive that accident…
The hostel I stayed in had a Wii gaming console and for the first time ever I got to play Guitar Hero. Kind of nice when you „play“ a guitar solo but it does not have much to do with playing guitar. I wonder how many 10 year old Jimi Hendrixs we would get if they could make a game where you actually had to do the same things as with a guitar.

From Huacachina I went to the city of Nazca in order to take a flight over the Nazca lines. Those are a set of geoglyphs in the desert whose purpose is still unclear. But apparently the price had nearly doubled within the last year, the reason being enforced security regulations after some accidents which occured previously. Considering the experience in Huacachina I had I guess its the right thing to do but anyway I decided to save myself the money. Having relaxed a bit of the various journeys the last days I continued to Arequipa. Lastly some advice: Don´t visit Nazca on sundays. Apparently there is a power failure nearly every sunday.

Arequipa turned out to be one of those cities where you cannot do too much when churches don´t interest you. But interestingly the garbage truck drives around using the ringtone I had on my mobile phone. I wonder how they can bear hearing that the whole day as I would turn crazy at some point I guess.
Arequipa is a good starting point for visiting the Colca Canyon, which is said to be the second deepest canyon in the world (And no, the deepest one is not the Grand Canyon but another one pretty nearby the Colca called Cotahuasi Canyon.). It turned out to be a day of mainly bus rides with a 4 hour-intermezzo at the Canyon waiting for Condors to show up.

El Condor pasa

A way to use waiting time:

Inka-Jenga or as we say in Germany „Einen Steinmenschen bauen“ 😉

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Fully recovered from the Trek near Huaraz I took a nightbus to Lima. Very comfortable but I just cannot sleep in a bus :-(.

In Lima in the very center of Miraflores (the „new center“) I stumbled upon a street where every night lots of people are playing chess. Arriving there I got instantly challengend to a game for 5 Soles (about 1,80$).  After 4 months of not playing I was a bit rusty and therefore a little slow but still the evening ended with me being 20 Soles up :-). The next day went less fortunate but luckily the stakes were only 0.50 Soles a game.

For my dear chess friends here a little fragment:

Me being white with 2 seconds versus 14 seconds left playing Rg5+ and being quite happy him actually stalemating me. Justice!

In Lima I decided spontaneously to book a ticket to spend some days in the Amazon rainforest. For that I needed to fly first to the largest city in the world, which cannot be reached by road: Iquitos.

View from the main boulevard in Iquitos

Iquitos has a pretty interesting history especially involving its role as a centre for the rubber industry at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Too bad for the city that synthetic rubber was discovered!
The day I arrived (with 3 hours of delay) I got shown some parts of the centre. In the artesanial shops around there you can buy really different stuff than in the rest of Peru: Piranhas, butterflies, anaconda skin and lots of jungle medicine. Some impressions:

Somebody wants a souvenir?

Time to go to the jungle: To get to the reserve lodge I was staying I went on a 8,5 hours boat ride. The boat was full of locals and also transported lots of packages to the little communities living along the Amazon. Interesting to see that they mainly carried salt,spaghetti and Inka Cola (the national soft drink in Peru which tastes a lot like gummi bears). The journey was quite amazing, especially the last part sitting on the roof of the boat.

The captain sitting on the roof

And here the backside of the boat

As it turned out I was the only guest at the lodge I was staying at that time. So I had all the possible attention. The first morning we walked for about 6 hours to look for animals in the jungle. Well, I imagined it a lot easier than it was. Most of the time you are just attacked by tons of mosquitos and don’t see anything else. Well my guide Moises was certainly very talented to spot the animals, but as he cannot perform miracles, most of them were very small frogs or ants or some type of little birds. He also taught me to drink water from some type of liane, but you gotta be careful as other types are poisonous.
Deciding that the mosquitos are just too annoying all the other trips were done by canoe. There Moises spotted lots of other animals: sloths, tucans, monkeys and lots of birds. In those occasions a really good camera would be nice as with my digital one you would just see a tree and not the animal sitting in it.
Furthermore we got some glances of river dolphins living in the Amazon river.

One day we went Piranha fishing. Having no experience in fishing at all I needed some tries, but I finally got one (see picture). We had them accompanying our dinner, but they were really small and there was barely any meat on them. But still I guess it is better to eat a piranha than the other way around.

A cute little frog

Gotcha!

My guide Moises

Time for a lunch break

Returning to Lima was really strange. You woke up in the jungle and end up going to bed in the heart of a metropolis. Traveling can be very odd sometimes.

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