Antigua, Guatemala

After two flights and an hour long car ride with a one eyed taxi driver, I´m now in Antigua. My hostel wasn´t great but I am now checked into a nice hotel (with hot water- this is real luxury!) and tonight I meet my group with whom I shall spend the next month exploring Central America. First impressions of Guatemala are friendly people, charming colonial buildings and rustic ruins. Antigua is a UNESCO site and its not hard to see why. Almost every street has a crumbling, antiquated old building on it that would have been impressive in its heyday, but for some reason has been left to ruin and is now covered in jungle vines and butterflies. The rainy season means that ´weeds´ such as calla and stargazer lillies are blooming everywhere, and the jungle is lush, green and complete with hairy insects, which I shall try my hardest to avoid.

So far during my explorations, I have found a lovely bakery that sells bread rolls with pockets of ham and cheese baked inside, which I have eaten many of already! Food here is good...I think I shall like Central America very much!

Donde esta...Nazca Lines?

The Nazca lines are harder to see than I had anticipated. The desert is awash with lines: some are actual Nazca lines and some lines just made by cars, which adds confusion to what you are trying to see.

To assist with this, the pilot of the plane spent much of the flight gesticulating wildly at the desert whilst shouting in Spanish for me to understand what we were seeing. I saw all of the main lines listed on my sheet but was too slow on the uptake to take photos of every one. I also felt slightly sick- the plane was a tiny 4 seater and the pilot (bless him) really wanted me to see the lines, so kept flying round and round and round in a circular motion until I said, ´Si, si, aqui´ and nodded to make him fly straight!

My favourite design was the monkey, although my photo is quite faint. I also liked the spider, which was easier to see. The video I watched before the flight did not really explain why the lines are there although some theories suggest alignment with the stars, alignment to sources of water or just images of the animals in the surrounding area (although where the monkey fits in I don´t know, as the nearest monkeys are the other side of the Andes!). Whatever the lines are for, I can confirm that they are very mysterious and impressive indeed!

Seeing as this will be my last South American blog entry, here is the continent in numbers:

Decent chocolate bars eaten: 0
Bears: 1
Guinea pigs eaten: 1
Attempted muggings: 2
Overnight buses: 2
Countries visited: 2
Flights: 3

Favourite day: First seeing Machu Picchu over the sun gate, or dancing at Gran Poder carnival

Favourite meal: Grilled trout with papas fritas on Taquille Island

Nature Watch!

This blog is a bit more nature focused. In my last entry, I forgot to mention that I saw a bear on the inca trail...which is quite a big thing to forget! I´ve attached the photo but you may need to zoom in. It may not look like a bear, but its a cousin of the coati (I know this from when I lived at the zoo) and my guide confirmed that it is indeed a bear so I was very proud not only to see it but to correctly identify it as well. The keepers taught me well! It seems as though there are advantages to walking slow because bears like quiet!

Nazca flights are only going Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays due to a hijacking last week so to kill time until tomorrow, I went to Colca Canyon yesterday to see condors. They can only take off in the morning when the warm air rises through the canyon as they are very heavy. 1 x Hannah = 4 condors!

Tonight I take an overnight bus to Nazca, so keep your fingers crossed for clear skies tomorrow.

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

This week was mainly spent exploring inca ruins and hiking the famous inca trail. Some of you know that I was meant to do this with two dear friends some time ago so this was an emotional journey for me.

It all started on Wednesday night when we had to arrive at KM82, the inca trail starting point, at nightfall to avoid Peruvian road strike action. We camped overnight and Thursday dawned a beautiful morning and we were ready and raring to go. My group seemed to think of the Inca trail as a race, and so sprinted off, while I merrily sauntered along enjoying the scenery, occasionally being asked to walk faster by our gruff but knowledgeable guide, Wilbert. Wilbert and I got to know each other very well as I walked at the back and arrived at camp at least 2 hours after everyone else, every day. I walked most of the trail on my own because after dreaming of this place for so long, I wanted to really see everything and savour every moment. I think Wilbert appreciated this sentiment but also wanted his dinner, so we had to compromise.

Second day, Dead Woman´s Pass, was more challenging, but I kept my snail pace going and used the time to do McGuire contacts, which I thought was excellent multitasking and probably has never been done before. Using lots of deliberate dysfluency, I chatted to over 100 people on the trail and time passed quite quickly. The pass is a series of stone steps, varying in height, and was quite hard work, especially when the sun got higher in the sky and was ridiculously warm.

We were camping every night and I´m not sure that some of the girls in my group knew how thin canvas is, because they spent a lot of time saying unkind things about me, namely about how I speak. This week I have been quite mechanical, not disimilar to how I was when I first joined the McGuire programme, because I have been quite unwell and my speech tends to suffer so I thought it best to take it back to basics. There were numerous impressions of me and mimicry which I thought was needless and unkind but to be honest, if they have hiked through stunning scenery and beautiful wildlife and I am the most interesting thing they have to talk about, then maybe they should ask for a refund. It also made me remember all the lovely emails, cards and phone calls I received from family, friends and work colleagues and the support you all gave me when I first joined the programme. Your kindness really kept me going and remembering these things made me not worry too much about these girls.

The rest of the trail was amazing and climbing the sun gate for sun rise yesterday morning, then racing down to watch the first ray of sun break over Waynu Picchu was an experience I´ll never forget. I also did lots more contacts at Machu Picchu and really enjoyed talking to other visitors and hearing their experiences about the trail.

Next stop, Nazca

At the Copa, Copacabana...

I have really clocked up some miles these past few days. Upon leaving La Paz, I took a bus to Copacabana, but sadly could not find Lola, Tony or Rico, which was sad! Copacabana was a pretty seaside town on the Peruvian border, which took me to my first overland border crossing. I´m not sure what I expected, but two shacks 300m apart on each countries´ side was probably not it! 3 more stamps in my passport, and I am now in Peru.

I did a homestay on Amantani island, a colony in the middle of Lake Titicaca (the largest lake above 2000m in the world). They have a very interesting system of finding a partner- men wear hats and women wear bobbles on their shawls which signify married, living with someone, single and looking, or single and not looking. Such a simple system! I definitely think we should adopt this in England. People speak Quechua on Amantani, and hello is ´Allallanchu´. This was the only word I picked up but my family owned the village shop and so spoke English.

After visiting Amantani, I stopped at the Uros islands, floating reed islands in another part of the lake. The people there add new reeds every 2 weeks to stop the island disappearing into the lake, and they have a surprisingly advanced way of life. I saw two TV´s with cable hooked up, so they aren´t completely cut off from the world.

I´m now in Cusco for a rest, which hasnt really ended up being a rest, as June is the month of ´inti raymi´- another huge festival. Everyday so far I have seen a procession through the main streets which has led to a really jovial atmosphere. I definately like Cusco, it is my favourite city so far!

Salt Flats, Bolivian Desert and Breakfast excitement!

These past few days have been amazing. I went on a tour to Salar De Uyuni, the Bolivian Salt flats, which were simply stunning. The tour included a trip to ´cactus island´. This is basically an island covered in cactus in the middle of the salt plains. I´m pretty sure that the Spice Girls´video ¨Say You´ll Be There¨was filmed on the Salt Flats as it looked remarkably similar but someone will need to google this for me.

After Cactus island, we had some fun with photography on the salt flats. See the photos for a better explanation than I could give!

We stayed in a salt hotel on the first night, which was really interesting. Everything was made of salt, as you would expect, but it wasnt as cold as I was anticipating. The floor was very crunchy, and there was only electricity for 1 hour per day. Despite this, the food was amazing.

Day 2 brought more magnificent scenery, this time in the shape of desert and mountain ranges. We saw lots of llamas and I ate one at lunch, which was delicious, albeit slightly salty. It´s not disimilar to bacon.

We stayed overnight in a desert shelter, and this was the beginning of my problems- we were at 5300m and the air was very thin. When you combine this with deep costal breathing and speaking slightly too fast - Ok, I will admit it- you have a lightheaded situation! I fainted at breakfast on a poor girl, who definately did not need a 5ft10 monster falling on her at 5am. Thankfully there was a lovely Danish nurse there who was more than happy to slap my face and bring me back to consciousness. I feel fine now and this was a timely reminder to slow my speech back down.

A nightbus brought me back to La Paz on Sunday evening and I am making plans to cross the Peruvian border tomorrow. Bolivia was excellent, well worth visiting and I am looking forward to my next country and adventure!

Mining in Potosi

These past few days have been spent mainly travelling to new towns and exploring. I am in Potosi right now, a colinial mining town. Yesterday I visited the silver mine and had a tour, which included lighting dynamite and scrabbling behing a boulder to hear the explosion. I also met a few miners, one of whom was only 14 years old. Men work in the mines from 12 years old, and shadow their fathers until they are experienced enough to work alone. Women do not work in the mine, as the ´Pacha Mama´who is the goddess of the mine, gets jealous!

After the mine visit, the hostel owner told me about ´Corpus Christi´which is happening today in Potosi. To celebrate, the local people go out the night before (last night) and eat sweet pastries which apparently represent the body of christ. I was just happy to eat the pastries as they were delicious! Whilst wandering around the market, my trousers suddenly felt very wet. My friend checked and someone had poured strawberry milkshake all down the back of my legs. A local woman was trying to ´help´ me clean the milkshake off, but this is a well known scam (spilling something on a tourist, helping them to clean it off whist robbing them in the confusion) so my friend and I ran back to the hostel, as fast as the altitude would let us! Thankfully, I never walk around with anything other than the equivalent of a few pounds in cash but still, crisis averted!

I am about to leave for Uyuni at 1pm (its 12.23pm) so that´s enough for now but I will post photos over the weekend when I am back in La Paz. The internet is cripplingly slow here and uploading photos would probably shut the system down.