The Great South American Adventure

It´s been a while, but here is all the places I have been since Potosi.

So, after Potosi I went to Sucre, which is a pretty nice city. Went out to Joyride, a total gringo hang out, a couple of times. Had a shot drinking competition with the table of travellers next to ours and won a nacho eating competition by because a friend emptied my bowel of crumbs while no one was looking. I also went looking for 7 waterfalls with 2 guys called Anders and Nick and an english guy called Dan. We didn´t find it the first day we looked for it, partly due to my misinterpretation of spanish directions. So we just followed the river for a while, suppoing we would find the waterfalls, without drinking water, because why would you take srinking water to waterfalls. But it was the dry season so the river was low and full of algae, so we didn´t risk it and went thirsty, walking up a massive ridge, which was meant to be some kind of shortcut and to get better view of the area, and eventually giving up our search for the waterfalls and heading toward the closest settlement, where we were ill recieved by the local street dogs, given strange looks by locals, who probably weren´t expecting to see 3 blond foreigners and one 6´3¨ guy in boardies with towels, and unable to buy any water. So we settled for a few mandarines and caught the next mini bus back into town. The next day, with better instruction in english, we managed to find the waterfalls, which are on a seperate stream that joins the one we walked along, and had an awesome time rock climbing our way to the last (7th) waterfall, where there is a natural waterslide, which we enhanced by dambing upstream then unleashing a torrent of water to aid your ride down. Then we had to jump of the 6th waterfall into its pool to get down, because it would be too hard to climb down, so I threw my shirt and wallet down without any problems, but my beloved calculator watch, which I had just meanded with superglue specifivally bought for the job, caught the wind in the wrong direction and bounced off a rock into the pool, where it shall forever rest in peace.

In Sucre, I got in touch with Hutchi and decided to head north to La Paz with the intention of meating up with him further north. La Paz is a pretty cool city with lot´s of stuff to do, but the first time I was there I just chilled out and waited to hear from Hutch while he was coming down from Quito. When I did get on to him, we decided to meat up in Cusco, so I got on a bus the next day, and twelve hours later I was in Cusco, Peru.

I thought Hutchi and James were getting there the night after I did, so I just went to watever hostel I could find the evening I got there, then decided to look for another place the next morning before they arrived. But after I found a place then came back to the first, who should be in reception but my old friend Hutchi, James amd two Columbians they shared a cab with. A little surprised and unprepared, I told them, to the disappointment of the receptionist, I had found another place and off we went. Cusco is a bit of a party town, with all the gringos, and there are four bars with totes out the front handing out free entry (yay) and free drink cards (now we´re talking). So we had a pretty big night the first night, which was fun. I can´t really remeber too many details so it must have been good. The next day we sorted out how we were going to get to Machu Pichu and the next morning we were off. Unfortunately the Inca Trail hike was booked out till like september at that stge so we decided not to do one of the alternate hikes, which didn´t really compare because none of them go via any other ruins and they all arrive at Machu Pichu by train then bus (or you could walk along the rails then the road, awesome). So we decide to skip the stroll around the country side and take the train an bus anyway. On the way though, we went to some other Inca archeological sites, Morray and an Inca salt farm, which were cool (photos coming soon). Machu Pichuu itself was pretty awesome. We were actually there on the winter solstace, which is pretty cool, but I think all the cool stuff had already happened at sunrise. Me and James climbed up Waynapichu, which is the big hill in the background of most of the photos of Machu Pichuu, while Hutchi, who was feeling a bit under the wheather, slept like a baby. It was a pretty crazy climb, then we went like half way down the other side to the temple of the moon, then had to climb about 3/4 of the way back up before heading down to Machu Pichuu again. We were ruited so unfortunately we couldn´t be bothered to climb this other hill called Huchupichu on the way back, despite it sounding like hutchi. After the climb we saw the few last things we wanted to then got the bus back into Aguas Calientes, which means hot water. It is named such because there are ¨hot¨ springs, which we went to and decided would be better described as luke warm springs, but it was still nice to relax after the big day. We caught the train back to Ollantaytambo the next day then got a taxi back to Cusco. That´s enough word nourishment for now, more to come later.