Great Peruvian friends
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Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Wrapping up Peru, Photos
Wrapping up Peru
The day we climbed down from Machu Picchu, we headed out to
make our way back to Cusco one last time. It was another round of harrowing
vans and buses, and the way back was way worse for some reason. We made it back
to Cusco, and stayed for a day before heading to Arequipa.
Arequipa is known as the white city because its buildings
are made from white volcanic stone. We decided to do a two day hike of Colca
Canyon which was a couple of hours away from Arequipa. We took at 3 am bus from
Arequipa to the Canyon, and started out hike.
“Slicing through the High Andes like a giant fissure for more
than 100km, Colca is the world's second deepest canyon, approximately 3,400m at its deepest point -- a shade
shallower that the nearby Cotahuasi Canyon and nearly twice as deep as the US'
Grand Canyon”
-taken from internet.
The first day of the hike consisted of going down one side of
the canyon all the way the floor to where there was an oasis that most people
stayed at over night. We wanted to do out trip in less days, so after getting
more water at the oasis, we hiked all the way back up the other side, missed
the turn-off to the trail we were supposed to take, and ended up hitching a
ride back down part of the mountain in a truck. It turned out the trail had
been taken out by a landslide.
We finally made it back down the canyon to a small hostel
where we stayed in a room for 3 dollars, and then started back up the other
side of the canyon the next morning. Three hours later we made it back into
town where we took a bus back to Arequipa.
For the rest of our time in Arequipa we toured a monastery,
ate traditional food (Christina ate alpaca steak), and wandered the city. We
took another night bus back to Lima, where we would have three days before
heading back to Costa Rica. We spent our time in Lima with friends that we had
met around Peru, and it was a really wonderful time…the calm before the storm.
We got to the airport in Lima three hours early, only to find
out that they were not going to let us onto the plane to go to Panama because
we didn’t have bus tickets to leave Panama. The reason we didn’t have tickets was
because the bus company told us we couldn’t buy tickets a month and half in
advance and that we could just buy them when we got back to Panama. Lies.
They didn’t have a phone number, we couldn’t buy them online,
and the other bus company’s website wasn’t working. We could be more tickets
from the airline and the cancel them, but that was going to include $100 of
fees, and we would have had to wander downtown Panama City at night looking for
their “cancelation office” which wasn’t in the airport.
Instead, I found Christina working furiously on her phone,
and I found out that she was making fake bus confirmation tickets that said we
were leaving Panama for Costa Rica. By that time, our plane was almost leaving,
so we sprinted to check-in, out fake tickets passed inspection, and then we
sprinted from one end of the airport all the way to the other to find out gate.
No one else even looked at our tickets, and we made it out of
the Panama Airport, and back to the bus station to buy our tickets to get back
into Costa Rica. Naturally, there were no tickets back to Costa Rica until the
next week. Same with the other company, but before we had a heart attack, we
found a bus that would drop us off at the border, and then we would have to
find another bus to San Jose.
Bus to Panama/Costa Rica Border (7 hours)> wait at border
(7 hours)>bus back to San Jose, Costa Rica (8 hours)> Bus to San Ramon
(1.5 hours)> HOME!!!
We made it, and then the next day had three hour advanced Spanish
class.
There is the conclusion of our Peru trip.
Machu Picchu Photos
Machu Picchu
We left Puno on a night bus, and headed back to Cusco for
the beginning of our journey to Machu Picchu. We arrived in Cusco at 5:00 am,
bought bread, banana, avocados, and smoothies. Our main staple. Earlier we had
decided that we didn’t want to pay the huge amount of money to take a train
from Cusco to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu town), and instead we were going to
take various forms public transportation to get there.
First we got on a combie (minivan filled with seats) towards the town of Urubamba, and then got
onto another combie toward Santa Maria. This was the part of the journey that
all the books said was suicide during the rainy season and had 100 dangerous
curves. It was not that bad.
We made it to Santa Maria, just as a van was leaving for Hydroelectrico.
This van was filled; there were people sitting on each other’s laps, kids
standing, and a man in the truck of the van. Also the driver was insane and we
had to take a back mountain road because a landslide had closed the main road.
We were dropped off in the pouring rain at the hydroelectric
station, where we started our two hour walk along the train tracks to Aguas
Calientes. This walk was actually really nice, flat, and later I found out that
we were walking right under Machu Picchu and other Incan ruins the whole time.
We stayed in a hostel, and then got up at 4:30 to start
hiking to Machu Picchu. We should have gotten up earlier when we realized how
many people had started before us. We hiked pretty hard to try and pass as many
people as we could, but when we got to Machu Picchu, we still had been beaten
in line by many of the people who took busses to the entrance instead of walking.
Our goal was to make it first to the entrance of Hauyna
Picchu (Hauyna Picchu is a mountain above Machu Picchu that is very small and
fills up with up with people really fast) We made it to the top first and were
able to enjoy a slightly cloudy view of the mountains, river, and jungle surrounding
Machu Picchu. It was a short lived victory as we were soon being asked to take
other hiker’s photos, and it got really loud very quickly.
We made our way down, and spent the day wandering around the
wonderful rocks of Machu Picchu.
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