Our arrival in Latin America was a harsh wake up call from ´everyone must be able to speak English´ la la land! In fact no one spoke English and even if you pronounce the word slightly different in your Gringo accent, they don´t have a clue what the hell you are on about! In Santiago, numbers were our strong point. Being able only to count to 5 at a push, the notion of hundreds and thousands was as foreign to us as the existance of other countries to Americans! The last staw came when our accomodation cost in the thousands and not hundreds as we had presumed, throwing our budget into turmoil and launching us into a full on Spanish language attack. The fact that the language in our Spanish book from Spain was completely different to South American Spanish only dawned on us a while later!
Armed with the ability to get a bus, a room with hot water and the all important food variations in Spanish from Spain, we departed Santiago after 4 confusing days and headed north to Iqueque. After 24 hours through the worlds driest and most boring dessert on a very good bus, we were greeted by a random town nesstled where dessert meets sea. 2 Days were spent visiting random llama populations in beach enclosures and practising our Spanish. I can´t explain how proud we were when we managed a complete sentence that the locals could actually understand, only to have our self confidence shattered when they blasted us with a tyrade of Spanish spoken faster than Shaun can finish a packet of biscuits and we were left looking completely dazed and confused and sorry we ever asked them which way the bus station was!!
In a hurry to make our way to Peru and our expensive date with Macchu Picchu, we hot footed it out of Chile (sorry to be leaving the very friendly though not always comprehending Chileanos). After a brief stop in the southern one horse town of Tacna where we got lost in translation with two young local lads over tea and bread, we made our way further north to the town of Arequipa with it´s buildings of white stone and monasteric history. Totally taken by the ambience and general slow pace of this town, we were in no hurry to go anywhere, apart from a brief sortie to Colca Canyon to oogle the Peruvian condors soaring on the thermal currents and almost missing our bus back to town due to our bad Spanish again!!
Eventually we dragged ourselves away and launched to Cusco - playground of the Incas and departure point for Macchu Picchu. We had one day to laugh at our huffing and puffing walking 5meters at altitude before we launched on our 5 day 64km hike over the Salcantay mountains to Macchu Pichu. We were innitially super dissappointed at having to do the long awaited trip with 2 Americans from Colorado (Shaun more so at having to spend 5 days with girls!!) but these girls were actually really cool and being from Colorado (they claim it as being a state independant of the US), completely out-doorsy, and ended up having a blast! The best part being able to chew coca leaves legally to our hearts content (you actually have to chew 2 bags worth of the stuff for it to have the same effect as a line of the white powder and try as we did, 2 bags was just way too much!!!) It did take away thrist and hunger, altitude sickness and make our egos the size of the mountains we were climbing!!
Eventually after 4 days of climbing through some spectacular scenery, with blisters the size of bolders on every part of our feet, and still picking the coca leaves out of our teeth, we made the trip to Machu Picchu at 5am in the morning! The sight that greeted us after qeueing with every tourist and their camera to get in was truly spectacular and well worth the cost of a new pair of feet! We spent the entire day and when the time came to leave, we all kept looking back just in case we had missed something! A bottle of rum and a 4hr train ride back to Cusco later, we all passed out hoping to not wake up for at least 2 days!!
Unfortunately, we woke up sooner rather than later and soon had to set off for Puno and Lake Titicaca (the highest navigatable lake on earth - or so they claim). We were so exhausted that we didn´t wake up when the bus stopped at 5am in the morning and only woke up an hour later with the bus and station completely desserted. We eventually recovered our bags from a grumpy bus driver who crapped on us for not waking up in time and set off to explore yet another place!
From here we did a 2 day trip to the floating islands of the Uros and spent the night with a local family who felt the need to dress us all up in their local trends dominating their fashion pages since 1512 and getting us all to dance like idiots to their number one local band. It was fun but we were certainly glad not to be residents of the islands of Lake Titicaca!! We also befriended yet another Pomm from Newcastle who was really cool and thankfully joined us on our travells for the next 10 days through the thouroughly dodgy Bolivia.
