Peru-Cusco

Some impressions of Peru, the Sacred Valley and Cusco (meaning the navel of the world, and that's what it feels like).The only problem is that Cusco is at 3300m, which means that us lowlanders have to drink lots of coca tea and water to feel slightly normal as the height really takes it out on your head, your legs and your breathing...feeling 30 years older within one day. Maybe goat's milk helps...

UuumhhMachu Picchu

So, we finally made it to THE Machu Picchu, the Inca ruines that were never discovered by the Spanish conquerors and thus not destroyed by them. Not only the ruins but simply its amazing setting take your breath away, almost on top of the mountain Machu Picchu (mountain of all), with each hillside dropping straight down into the valley at a degree that makes you want to hold onto the wall when looking down.

Now, it is known that it is a spiritual place, every single stone, temple, wall has been placed in a way that each corner faces north, south, east and west, or often to the sun as it rises on the 21st June, or to pray to the Gods of thunder, lighting or the sun.

You obviously FEEL the spirituality of the place, almost hear it, so much that when you come round the Sun Temple, there are about 100 tourists sitting with crossed legs, bare feet, hummmming away while praying to...well who? Everything was eerily quiet on that platform until we realized that the GURU herself was present, bottle blond, vegetarian and clearly very HAPPY as she was sharing her thoughts on POSITIVE ENNNERRRGY with her followers through some sophisticated earphones. Stuart only made one comment: Upps, I wonder if they can feel my negative vibes...' When they suddenly started singing some Inca songs, we quickly disappeared. Cool to see the place, but we didn't really want to experience the energy of the bloodthirsty Incas or their Gods face to face...
PS: We saw the spirituralists again at the train station and they didn´t seem too full of positive energy when they were told they couldn´t board their train. We didn´t laugh-HONEST!

Lima-The most secure break-in in the world

We arrived in Lima- in the new beepbeep city. Not beep as in the Santiago's sophisticated BIP card that you use for all public transport, but as in beeeeepbeeep-get out of my way, I am coming, in the middle of the street and you tuktuks better get away.Welcome back.

We stayed in Lima for a 3 days in a hostel voted the most secure hostel inthe world by hotelworld.com users. We had two CCTV cameras outside our hostel as well as our room, a metal cupboard for padlocking, an electric gate and door for entering the hostel and electric wire up and around the building for a little extra security. This did put us in a slightly nervous state of mind when venturing out of our secure compound, however, we ended up really enjoying Lima and had some great seafood and saw some really interesting Inca sites and colonial buildings. As well as beautiful walk along the cliffs.

However, when we were getting ready to leave ´The World´s most secure hostel´we couldn´t unlock our combination padlock. We tried for 20 minutes when I said we would have to miss our 6 am flight (as our passports etc were inside) when Martine had the better idea of breaking into the locker. She quickly calculated the price of new air tickets compared to the price of a new locker. So, and with remarkable ease, I bent the door back on the metal locker without even disturbing the things sitting on top and retrieved our things. The whole thing was obviously caught on CCTV, just incase someone really wanted to break in.We left 30 dollars for the owner, who emailed us later to say we are welcome back, and caught our plane on time.

Please give us your thoughts if you think it´s still sounds like ´The World´s most secure hostel´if a primary school teacher can break into a locker without waking anyone or disturbing the furniture.

Santiago - and sweet revenge

We spent 11 days in Santiago which is quite long compared to most people that stayed in our eco-hostel. But, we really enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere (in the hostel) and managed to find quite a few treasures dotted around the city-such as craft markets, funky restaurants and a really good vineyard.
However, the real highlights came from our 3 visits to hospital. The first was to get my tooth fixed at the very posh and private German clinic where we had a wonderful lunch. The second was to the local hospital for Yellow Fever injections, which was a little different with wires hanging from the ceiling etc (but very clean). But the third visit was the real highlight. We returned to the German hospital (mainly for the lunch as well as a check up for Martine). Finding that no receptionist nor nurse spoke a single word of English or German, Martine prepared for the visit in advance by writing all about her Thrombosis in Spanish, using a dictionary and our super 'Instant Spanish in 6 weeks book' so as not to have any confusion with the doctor. So Martine asked the doctor if he spoke English (a little), German (No), French(no) and thus gave him the notes she had written. He was not impressed, flicked out his pen (black ink) and spent the next few minutes correcting Martine´s spelling while she went red from the toes up and I rolled about my seat laughing (Martine had earlier corrected me at breakfast for not conjugating my verbs correctly when trying to speak Luxembourgish). Once he had finished he said in perfect English "So, now tell me what´s your problem in English."
Needless to say there weren´t any problems after all and Martine is fit and healthy. And I have a had very easy time making lots of mistakes in Luxembourgish without being corrected once. Revenge is sweet!

White water rafting

Yesterday Martine pursuaded me to go white water rafting here in Pucon, which turned out to be great fun, if a little bit scary at times. It was 5 degrees in and out of the water and raining, but as I fell into the river before I even got in the boat, it was clear that staying warm and dry would never have been an option anyway. The most difficult grade of water to raft on has a grade of 6 and we had grade 5 (perhaps to match the temperature). However, the the cold was the least of my problems (this is the part where you should start feeling sorry for me and saying Martine is so cruel for making me go rafting) as I now need dental work on my front tooth after my paddle struck me in the mouth. As you can see from the picture there is a gigantic chip missing and now somewhere at the bottom of a river. (For maximum effect this story should be read with the sound of a violin playing in the background)

Hot hot hot

Here in Pucon we're staying in a wee wooden hut that even has a TV and a private bathroom, but no heating. We have a gas heater that we have to share with 2 other huts, so we take turns...We dared to mention the cold to the landlady in the morning and were quickly confronted with reality. 'Central heating is only to be found in very expensive hotels in Santiago for example, where apparently they even heat AND open the window at the same time. Here, we can only heat with gas, which we used to have in abundance until three years ago, when Bolivia wanted not only access to the sea over Chilean land but also a big chunk of land itself. The Chilean people said NO, so Boliva turned off its gas supply. Chile then got gas via Argentina, but then Bolivia threatened to cut its supply to Argentina too. So now we only have a bit of gas from Patagonia, and wood to heat. That's why almost every day a house burns down. It is difficult to heat, no Chilean household has heating all the time, you just have to put on an extra jumper.'

Upon that, Stu and I just felt like spoilt brats from Europe and assured her that we love a nice cup of tea anyway... Just as well they put up a volcano here which gives 40 degree hot water to the best outdoor swimming pool we have ever seen...We spent the day in Pucon's hotsprings Los Pozones.

Pucon

We have arrived in Pucon, Chile, a quaint little town that features a volcano as its breathtaking backdrop. We were tempted to climb the volcano and have a look in as it's bubbling away, but then some people said that they didn't get to look at much lava but just got lots of toxic gases in the face and had to wear gasmasks (an item that seems to have a history in Chile...). This obviously put us off, not that is was for the 5 hours walking up a steep hill in ice and snow... So we went for a nice little horseride instead.

Cuppa

Not to forget our latest dearest investment: a flask! Not only does it mean you can survive on mushroom cuppa/ Quick soup each day for 10 days, but you can have a cup of tea wherever and whenever you want. Fantastic invention!

Investigations

Extracts of the phonebooks of Argentina and Chile tell you more than you expect about its population: Regnier, Regenwetter,Rothschild, Ruffles, Rovlocic: immigrants from so many countries, it seems they got more than their fair share after each war or conflict. The famous cemetery in Punta Arrena (C) has big Scottish sections (Alastair MacDonald, born in Inverness, died in Punta Arenas...) as well as German sections. Unlike your first thought, most of these are settlers that came at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century, fleeing the problematic economic situation in some parts of Europe and coming after the land that was full of gold and oil, or so they were told.This is all so much more interesting when you relate it to Stu and me and our deep fascination for imports by these settlers: we have spent quite some time investigating the quality of the traditions and how they survived: eating chocolate and cheese fondue brought in by Swiss settlers in Bariloche, sausage and Speck'von Fach' imported by the Germans. The best so far, however, has been the Salmon that you can buy for 2 Euros per kilo at the market, not imported by anyone, but fiercly garded by the biggest sea lions ever seen. Be warned, if you buy their bit, they will come after you along the pavement.