Friday 21 September 2012

Peru, the land of incas and great food

Crossed the border on a 28 bus ride to get to Lima, met with vanessa and ghalia and headed to cusco for our machu pichu trek. the trek was great it was 5 days through mountains valleys and rivers, getting to machu pichu on the final day. it was a really special 30th birthday up there. The site itself is very big with a number of different areas to visit, usually at altittude you dont drink but our tour guide was a nuts peruvian "freddy" that got us smashed every night of the trek, so trekking was tough especially last day to machu , we had a group of 11, great people that we enjoyed some special moments with. they even baked me a cake in the middle of the mountains on my birthday morning. after we jumped on planes and got to mancora for a cpl of weeks of binging on the beach, mancora is a crazy surf town with lots of gringos who wanna get wasted, spent some time there then went to a quite beach 20 mins away spent a cpl of days there with the gf just relaxing ,. got a kick ass room on a cliff with a private pool for $20 a night :) cant go wrong there. Peru has been really a revelation, the food is extremely insane, on the coast we ate ceviche every day, and honsetly in the past 3 weeks here i hadnt had a bad meal, not one. then they left :( and i moved on to Huaraz which is a town in the base of the biggest mountain range after the himalayas "cordillera blanca". i met a british guy there who wanted to also do the santa cruz trek on his own without a tour agency so we rented a stove, some equipment, and food for 4 days and headed in. it was beautiful, lots of green lakes on the bottom of snow capped mountains, sandy valleys, ridges, woooow, if this isnt heaven what is ? it was kind of hectic carrying your big pack and walking with a load of 12-15 kgs for 5-8 hour days. but was well worth it, got some rain and hail too and wondered what the hell was i doing but when you see those views you know why. arrived from trek and packed my stuff from hostal and jumped on another 26 hr bus to the south of peru, arequipa, where i will trek in the worlds deepest canyon in a cpl of days, for now just taking it easy. next week bolivia.