Condors in flight.

Our latest stops on the tour have been Chivay & Racqui.  Chivay is near Colca Canyon, it's a small town with some local markets and hot springs as well as the amazing Condors flying about the canyon.

We got up early and spent an hour bumping around on the truck to get to the lookout where the Condors usually are.  We saw a heap of them flying around and landing quite close to us which was pretty cool.  The canyon is a sight in itself; huge towering mountains and terraced valleys as far as the eye can see.  After the canyon we went to some nearby hot springs.  These were much nicer than in Banos; hot hot water and few people; but still in a big complex of pools.

Condors at Colca Canyon

After Chivay we had a leisurely 12hr bus trip to Racqui where we went off in little groups to stay with the locals.  We were taken in, fed & clothed and shown a traditional ceremony giving thanks to Pachamama who is like the earth goddess.  It was great fun.  We got to wear big frumpy skirts, bright jackets, this crazy hat that didn't want to stay on my head and a blanket on my back to put my baby in.  We then danced with the locals in a big circle.  There were some real cute kids running about and Anne, one of my roomies on the tour, had this mad dancer swinging her about so much her snazzy new outfit was nearly falling off. 

Dressed to impress in the local Peruvian outfits.

Now we are in Cusco and preparing ourselves for the big trek up to Macchu Picchu.  We did some training to get used to the altitude which involved ripping it up on the dance floor in a Cusco club called Mama Africa til 6 in the morning, followed by a day of tramping about the town looking for hiking poles and new socks, then carbo loading in the evening at a local restaurant.  We are well prepared - bring it on!

Flapping about

The winner of my little comp was 'Anonymous' for 'These ain't hotsprings'.  I thought anonymous was maybe Krichelle, but she usually signs in and spells devil with a 'b', so my second guess is Nic.  Tell me if I'm wrong.

So I've now arrived in Peru and after a couple of days in Lima have begun the Lima-Cuzco Intrepid tour which has been great so far.  We've got a bit of a mixed bunch, but fun people, our 11hr day on the truck went pretty quickly.  Our designated event manager, Laurence & Sharon his 2IC made us a quiz, I know know at least three different versions of 'shithead' and on our lunch stop we made friends with some local school kids and talked them into helping us flap our dishes dry - anyone who's done an overland trip before knows about the flapping.

Huacachina was our first stop.  It was ace.  We arrived at this little oasis out in the Peruvian desert where we climbed aboard the sand buggies and took off into the desert.  The sand dunes are huge and steep.  The buggies go pretty damn quick and between your screams and giggles you're wondering how much can these things take before they roll.  When you stop it's like being somewhere where there is a rollercoaster nearby; you keep hearing these screams in the distance.

When we stop it was not just to admire the sensational view of giant sand dunes in all directions, but for sandboarding down what looked like the hugest ones they could find.  I'm quite happy to admit that I was feeling nervous wees when looking down.  But then you're on your way; it's really fast, with the wind in your hair and the sand in your eyes, mouth, nose, ears, then you hit the bottom and and jut-jut-jut-jutter over the hard sand.  It was fantastic.  The sandboarding award went to Janet though, who came off, got back on and then came down the slope in an absolute avalanche of sand.  She has an awesome purple hand so show for it.

That night we camped in the desert.  A toasty camp fire, great bbq dinner, full moon, loads of stars and just us and our sleeping bags with a few pisco & colas.  Pisco & colas taste like rum & coke, so a few of those down the hatch and night sand boarding seemed like a great idea.  Ok, so the sand dune wasn't quite as big as the ones in the day - we did have to walk up these ones - but it was a pretty cool thing to do anyway.

Huacachina desert at night

Our next big stop was Naza, for the Nazca lines.  Half a dozen of us went in the little 8-seater plane for the fly-over.  I've never been in a little plane before and it was fun, but I was feeling more than a little queasy by the time it was over.  And it was over pretty quick; we saw alot of the Nazca lines, but it was 'quick look left', 'oh it's gone', still amazing to see though.

On the way out of Nazca we stopped at the Chauchilla cemetary.  Our local guide Juan was one of those funny fellows who still loves cracking the same old jokes and thinks he's funny.  He was good value and the tour of the cemetery was pretty cool.  Lots of old tombs from a previous civilisation just sitting open in the desert - mummies, well preserved for a 1000 years, just laying there amongst the rubble.

These ain't hot springs

I thought Banos was Spanish for toilet, so I was like 'hmm doesn't sound like a nice place, why would you call a place Toilet?' (ha, says me who spent a year living in Inaloo).  So it turns out I was a little mistaken and Banos means bathroom not toilet and is named such because of the hot springs in the area.

I didn't spend much time in Banos, went for a wander about the town and visited one of the hot springs.  I'm always disappointed when I go to hot springs.  I'm all excited, then I get there and it's like 'oh, it's a heated pool'.  I don't care where the water's come from, it's still just a heated pool.  I imagine hot springs to be hot water bubbling up amongst rocky pools, or steaming lakes interspersed between mountainous regions.  Not, sitting in a small concrete pool with 100 Ecudorians who can't swim and are kicking water in your face as they dog paddle past in their blow-up swim rings.

Banos 'hot springs'

Around Banos there are a lot of cool things to do; hiking, mountain biking, canyoning, etc.  But I didn't have time for this stuff.  I misjudged how far it was from Quito to Lima so am on a bit of a mission to get there.  Pity, I wanted to do the fun stuff in Banos, check out Rio Bamba and the Devil's Nose train ride, and spend a few days in Cuenca.  Who would have thunk it, six whole months and I keep running out of time :(

Ok, so I was lacking imagation today and have no title for this post.  So comment with your ideas for a title and the winner will receive a free beverage of their choice next time I see them.  Wow, I can't wait to see the ideas rolling in!

Number 2's with a view

I've now gone fron the depths of the Amazon jungle to the high mountain ranges of Ecudor  via a 2 hr canoe ride, 2 hr bus ride, an overnight bus and finally a 2 hr trip in the back of a ute with a half-drunk yankee.  Totally worth it.  The weather has been fine and views of Volcan Cotopaxi amazing.  Especially when you can see it from everywhere in the hostel, ie: from the window when your lounging by the fire, getting out of bed, in the shower, the jacuzzi and the special number 2's toilet.

That's right.  There's a special composting toilet just for number two's and it's high up on the hill and looks out over the mountains.  Pretty cool.

The ride to Cotopaxi.

The view from the dorm window

This hostel (The Secret Garden, Cotopaxi) is definately up there as one of the best hostels in the world.  And it's not even because you can always get decent hot water!  Did I already mention the jacuzzi?  The manager Carolina is a crack up and makes a mean mulled wine.  The meals were also fantastic and I liked the whole 'everyone sits down to dinner together' thing, it was nice.  And then there were the activities, I did the climb to the waterfalls, the Cotopaxi refuge, biked down from Cotopaxi and the hike to the Pasachoa summit.  The altitude was killing me, but ah well - harden up Kelly.  The views from both mountains are just amazing.  I wish I'd had enough time for the Cotopaxi summit.  There was also a horse riding excursion, but horses don't really float my boat so I gave that one a miss. 
So 5 days there and apparently I'm part of the furniture and all the eucayplts and dairy cows make me feel right at home.  I would have been happy to stay another week - I never did make it to the trout farm, and there's a rodeo on on the weekend.  But I have a tour to meet in Lima - so onward and upward!  ... or is is downward as I'm heading south?

Hey Dad, check out the portable dairy.

Girls & Guides

So we did spot the elusive pink dolphins, but they're a little different to your average ocean dwelling dolphins.  They're quite shy and hard to spot in the black waters of the rivers and lagoons here.  They have no dorsal fin either so you can't really spot them until they surface, and they really don't surface much.  So when we did spot them we couldn't get to close because we weren't sure where they'd pop up next.  We paddled around after them for a while.  Claudia & I would have been happy to chase them around all day trying to get just one decent photo, but it wasn't to be :(

The best I could do :( sneaky dolphins.

The guides on these tours in Ecudor have been really good, except when they think it's a good idea to carry a tarantula around your small canoe.  I'd prefer a caiman any day and was pretty close to jumping in when the guide on the other canoe started dropping this huge-arse spider all over everyone.  They're usually local to the area, really well informed and seem to love their jobs.  However, they seem to have some pretty crazy schedules; things like 22 days on, 5 days off or 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off; sounds just crazy to me.

Back in Lago Agrio, after the jungle tour and waiting for the night bus, Dagma (a friend from the tour) & I were accosted by some young Spanish girls in need of some poor sucker for their english homework.  Dagma kindly offered my services.  So the three girls wanted to interview me, asking questions about where I'm from and what I've been doing in Lago Agrio in english.  And they wanted to video it - I told them not a good idea as I hadn't done my hair (for at least a week) - but they were not to be dissuaded.  So now there are these poor Ecudorian students watching a video of me and thinking they're learning English when they're really just getting some bad Australian :(

The shamen and the monkey

Today we did a village tour.  A local woman named Olga took us through the process of bread making.  First we went out to their yard and dug up what looks like a big sweet potato.  Then it was grated into a big trough.  Followed by being put onto a big weaved mat which has a loop at the top to hang it and a loop at the bottom to put a stick through so you can twist the mat up and squeeze all the water out.  Then put through a seive to make it flour-like.  The squeezed potato is put onto a big hotplate, and Olga used the bottom of a round bowl to compress the flour.  Then she waited a minute and flipped the whole lot.  Another minute and it was ready!  A hot flatbread made with nothing but a bit potato.  And it tasted good, we had jam and tuna and ate a whole lot of it. (Note; the jam and tuna were eaten seperately except for one crazy bastard)

Potato bread

While watching the bread making the village monkey came to play.  He was a baby woolley monkey and when you touched him he felt just like a lamb.  He was pretty funny, jumping all over everyones heads, stealing peoples bread and trying to eat one girls earring. 

Woolley monkey

After baking and playing with the monkey we went to visit the shamen.  It was one moment where I wished I could understand Spanish.  He was telling the story of how he became a shamen and was happened the first time he drank the hallucinagenic drink they drink.  I could understand bits and pieces, but he was having such a good time telling the story and had such a great smile - you know when you read about someones eyes twinkling, he really had that.  After talking to us he did some cleansing rituals on volunteers.  For Anna he waved some leaves around her and hummed away while he did.  For a couple of the guys he slapped them for five minutes with stinging nettles which made all their backs blister up, gee it was funny and the old shamen was having a great time.

Oh stinging nettles are fun.

Spiders, piranhas and bees, oh my!

Our first forest walk was good fun.  We stomped around the jungle in our gumboots and Jairo showed us lots of things we could eat, use as medicine and smoke.  Then we had to walk through a swamp where the mud was thick and the water higher than our gumboots in places.  I hate to admit it, but I was acting like a bit of a girl about falling in, but in my defense you all know I'm all up for getting a little wet and dirty. I was just concerned about my shocking sense of balance and my camera.

So just as we were getting towards the end of our trek something flew into my ear!  I absolutely flipped out and began turning in circles like a dog chasing it's tail trying to get it out.  I didn't realise I was in a swarm of small bees and they all started getting stuck in my hair!  So I was trying to shake them out of my hair when something started biting my legs.  I was now standing in a bloody ants nest!  So there I was standing in the forest with ants in my pants and slapping at my legs while two guys picked bees from my hair like a couple of monkeys picking for lice. 

At least the afternoon was a little more successful. We went piranha fishing and I caught the biggest one!  He had parasites though so we couldn't eat him and had to throw him back.  Piranha fishing was fun.  We had 1 1/2 metre long poles with about a metre and half of line attached.  We put some meat on the hooks and threw the line in, then we slapped at the water with our rods to make noise to attract the fish.  Within seconds we were getting bites, however it took a little longer before we actually got one in the boat.  Once we did Jairo showed us how you can use a piranha like a pair of hedge clippers which was pretty cool.

< doh, awesome piranha video should be here >

After the fishing we did a night hike to look for tarantulas and bugs.  There were some cool orb weavers out making webs, we threw a bug to one and watched him kill and wrap it up.  Jairo found a big skinny legged spider the size of your hand and one of the girls let him put it on her head!  It ran all over her face and she just stood there calmly while I was trying not to freak out!  We also a cicada the length of your hand and we found way too many huge tarantulas which the sight of made me want to vomit.

Wooley monkeys, stinky turkeys

This week I am out in the wilds of the Amazon jungle.  It was an adventure getting here; overnight bus from Quito, then another 2 hour bus, followed by a 2 hour canoe ride in the rain.  The accommodation is small huts on the river, built on stilts and connected by small wooden platforms.  There is no power, so it's dinner by candlelight, but the showers are warm - for a minute at least :(  It reminds me of when Stilly and I went to Kinabatangan River in Borneo.  Except here we get to go Piranha fishing!

The first day was pretty good.  We saw caiman crocodiles, wooley monkeys, stinky turkeys and sloths in the wild.  The sloths are much more fun in the sanctuary; in the wild they are just a big ball of hair in a tree.  The stinky turkey is a funny looking bird with a mo-hawk. The reason it's called stinky is because when you cut them open they reek because of some bacteria in one of their stomachs. That's right.  One of their stomachs.  Like cows and sloths, stinky turkeys have four stomachs.

We also went to a large lagoon where our guide Jairo informed us that the caimans, electric eels, piranhas and all other nasties like to hang out by the riverbanks so it was perfectly safe to swim.  I'm not exactly sure this is 100% true, but the water was warm so I jumped in anyway.

After our swim we went looking for caimans.  We found one pretty quick and boy was he a big one!  I, for some reason, thought caimans only grew to a metre or so, this guy was at least two metres and when the guide fed him and I got to see his big crocodile smile, he looked even bigger.  Still, it hasn't been enough to put our group off swimming.

I like the nightime here.  You can hear the forest animals.  The beds are clean and comfortable, the nights are cool enough that you can cuddle up in a blanket.  This may be a false sense of security but, with the mosquito net down and the ambience created by a single candle, I feel like I'm in a cocoon, all cosy and safe from all those nasty nighttime bugs, cockroaches and arachnids.

Caiman crocodile

Wooley monkey

Stinky turkey