Stunning Machu Pichu

We left Santiago were we had a great time looking forward to visit Cusco and Machu Pichu.

As soon as we arrived Cusco, we inmediately noticed a huge change with Santiago. This is a real touristic place: where there is tourism, there is money and where is money there is people who buy and where is people who buy there is the double who sell. Cusco is like a circus, there is always somebody trying to sell you something: but I have to say that they are polite.

Food and transport are very cheap in Peru but the tourist attractions are incredible expensive, just to give you an idea, we are having dinner for less than 10€, but to visit Machu Pichu we had to pay a train, a bus and the entrance: in total, around 180$.

To get to Macnu Pichu, we had to take a train that takes around 4 hours. It crosses the mountains and the landscapes are gorgeous.

Finally we arrived to Machu Pichu were we saw some of the most fascinating scenaries.

Machu Pichu is one of the most captivating places I have ever seen. We took around 200 pictures here, all of them amazing.

Taking a bad picture here is almost imposible and it should be prosecuted by law.

Isn't this litle llama cute?

The day was a bit cloudy, but in this case, it made it even more divine.

Machu Pichu means "old peak" and in front of it there is another one called Wainapichu meaning "young peak" that is posible to climb and see the view from the other side. Here I am a bit showing off doing an impersonation of Indiana Jones.

And just when we were getting back, the clouds started to climb up and we could see this marvelous ghost-like view of Machu Pichu.

Even though it wasn't particularly sunny, being at more than 2.500m was more enough to make me look like red like a gringo. Everybody talks to me in English first. Sometimes it is not that bad and I pretend I am Russian and nobody can hassle me anymore.

Here is a picture of Cusco. Despite all tourims, it is a truly beautiful city: clean and well preserved.

The height here is around 3.300 meters, and it takes a couple of days to get used to the lack of oxygen. It is posible to drick coca tea but it tastes horrible, so I stuck to coffee.

This is from on of the cofee restaurants in the main plaza.

We spent the last day visiting the Sacred Valley. I don't like organised tours where agencies charge you a premium just to carry you like a sheep and telling you what to do, when to do it, where to buy, etc.
So we did it using local buses, which was far more fun, cheap and adventorous.

We visited Chincheros, Ollantaytambo y Pisac.

We had a great time spending this day visting the Sacred Valley on our own.

Some of the temples were located at almost 4000m and after that I had a terrible headache and decided to have a few coca teas to reduce the altitude sickness.

I am not sure if it helped with the altitude sickness but I think I have developed x-ray vision as a side effect.

Tomorrow, Jose and I will take different routes: he will go back to Argentina and I will meet Zaidy in Trujillo. I think we will spend New Year's Eve in Mancora, drinking, dancing and swimming in the beach. See you next year.

Happy 2009 to Everyone!!

Crossing the Andes and Chilean hospitality

Hola a todos,

We finished the Argentinian tour in Mendoza, with one of the best beef diner so far. We didn't book a hotel this time and we took a night bus to cross through overwhelming Andes to get to Santiago de Chile.

I think a few achievments have been accomplished during this week.

As usual, we had a sleeping pill: I just had half of it. We were going to have an early morning next day and the prospect of a bad night is enough to keep you awake.

The plan was working beautifully for a few hours, until we reached the border in the middle of the night, the middle of the Andes, it was freezing and they kept us for more than an hour until they found an unclaimed package in the bus.

Now you understand why the ghost faces...

Once the passports were stamped and the bags reloaded, we continued building up miles, this time over Chilean roads. No need to say that the other half of the pill was wisely used.

Next morning we joined a visit to Sewell, a ghost city. It was once the biggest copper mine in the world. There was a big town around the mine, but now it is completely abandoned.

And for the rocks we saw, one could think that Superman was from Sewel.

First achievement: we saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time in the trip.
2nd: during last 7 days we slept in 7 differnt places, finally we stayed twice in the same place.
3rd: no more sleeping pills after 4 days.
4rd: no beef in the diet for a day.
Note: still outstanding to swimm in the Pacific, it was far to cold over there.

We visited Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, very touristic places. Although I think it is just for Chileans: there were lots of people but most of them from there.

There were lots of abbandoned dogs, it was a bit sad. This dog had the saddest look I have ever seen, it seemed human. He looked you in the eye as if he could read your thoughts.

Nex couple of pictures are from Valparaiso. It is a chaotic city built all over the hills up to the sea. It has an enigmatic appeal, houses are painted in vibrant colors and they use funiculars as lifts.

Funicular in Valparaiso

We spent Christmas with Milagros and her family. Milly is Zaidy's friend. And Zaidy(she will appear later on for sure :),is my friend and colleague.
We were overwhelmed by the hospitality of Milly, Gladys, Umberto and little Charlotte makes feel like at home. They help us with the accomodation, the reservations, and anything we needed.
By the way, the chicken with apple pure was delightful. We contribute(mainly Jose) with a Spanish omelette, which apparently they also liked.

Final picture, from the Cerro de San Cristobal, overlooking Santiago with Milly and Jose. That was a really hot day.

For what we saw in Chile, it seems like a very developed country although prices were low. There are some details, like the way people drive in the city, the bus stops or even motorbike riders wearing helmets which you can't see in other countries.

We had a great time in Chile, but the best memory is the friendship with Milly. I hope you come soon to Europe to visit us.

Salta, a jewel in the Andes

Che boludos, como va?
We left the lively and noisy Buenos Aires and headed to Salta, which is in the North East of Argentina. The city is in the middle of the Andes and one immediately notice the different accent, different ethnicity, food, etc. We also noticed that there were lots of teenagers either with kids or pregnant.

We decided to rent a car instead of joining an organized tour, there was no need for a guide and having a car gave us lots of freedom which in a place like Salta is priceless.



The first day we drove South visiting Los Valles Calchaquies y la Quebrada de las Conchas. The colours of the rocks are surreal.


The peace of this place was a perfect change of subject in the trip. In some places we didn’t see any human being in miles.















Next day we slept in a modest hotel in Tilcara and visited el Cerro de los 7 colores(no need for explanation) and the Great Salt Lake where we found so far one of the most dramatic landscapes. I have so many pictures to choose.


This is the 7 colors peak in Purmamarca.

Some of the places allowed very litle mistakes while driving...

We loved the fact that Salta region is still not a developed tourist attraction, although new hotels, spas, etc are being developed. Probably it will lose part of its identity in a few years.

Finally we got back to Salta and took the Teleferico to the top of the “cerro” and caught this

amazing column of light hovering over the city at dusk.


And as if the camera decided it couldn’t take a better picture anymore, it jumped from the tripod, fell two meters to committ suicide.

My brother still thinks it was just a gust of wind. I prefer the first version it is more romantic. Anyway, luckily it was my brother’s camera.



Next destination was Cordoba and because we couldn’t find any reasonable flight we chose to travel by bus. Buses in Argentina are great; the seats are like business class.

The bus left late in the evening and the idea was to sleep all the way. The driver tortured us with 4 different videos of My hips don’t lie of Shakira and continued with all her discography.

It was time to accept the offer of some sleeping pills my brother brought from Spain. I have never tried them before. Apparently a doctor gave them to him, and they are used in mental hospitals to keep the inmates calm. I have to say that they did their job perfectly and we slept like babies for the whole 8 hours.




We were disappointed with Cordoba. There was nothing interesting there, although I enjoyed a lot a street chess game with some local masters. I opened with the Queen's gambit, which always causes confusion and even though the crowd were teasing me I managed to secure a victory with a beautiful check mate.


The very same day we were supposed to depart to Mendoza. This time in a suite bus, we were quite excited to see what it was like. We had the tickets and everything but we forgot to change the time zone from Salta and missed it. There were no more buses and we had to get back to the hostel we had rent. It was very hot and noisy and I decided to have half of one of those magic sleeping pills.
We managed to get the last two seats in bus for next day. It was Friday and everybody was travelling for the weekend and holidays. This time the bus driver entertained us with some kind of weird sci fi movie in French: Good bless the sleeping pills. I tried a different brand this time, I am scared to become addicted.

As soon as we arrived we went to the agency were we booked the rafting in the Mendoza river. It was advertised as class III-IV, and it was a fun experience.



We visited Mendoza in the evening, it seems like wealthy city. They produce a lot of wine in this region. We don’t have much time, after losing one day in Cordoba, so we took a bus the same night to cross the Andes and reach Santiago de Chile.

I am looking forward to see the contrast between the two countries and change the diet, I had eaten meat every single day since I have been in Argentina.

Phoney money and "La Bombonera"

Hi again and thanks for all the comments,

We finally spent the last couple of days in Buenos Aires before heading for the Nort West and the more traditional part of the country.

As normally we start the day having brunch in a pizza place,

Ugi's one of the best places to have pizza in Buenos Aires. In the menu there is only one type of food and 3 kinds of drinks: pizza margarita, water, pepsi and beer. That's how all places should be, once you master one thing, why trying something else!! I can think in many places back in London where they should have only one thing in the menu :)

We rented again a bicycle and cycle the rest of the town. As any other latin city, on weekends everything is closed and the traffic is very light.

We cycled for more than 30KM around town and saw almost everything: monuments, a polo match, the Recoleta cementery, and many more things...

This is the cementery of Recoleta where all the VIP's are burried. It is like a mini city, where each family tried to show they were richier than the neighbours. Anyway, it is really beautiful.

Even Evita is burried there.

I like that Argentinians have dinner late, like in any other healthy country. So we had dinner late, obviusly meat and went out until almost at 6 in the morning. As expected, nothing much to report during the next day, just that hung overs in the South Emisphere are as bad as in the North one.

Phoney bills!! And very bad ones!! When we were going to pay for an ice cream, the assistant told us that the bills were fake.

We have now two 10 fake bills. It is not much money, each of them less than 3 Euros. Anyway, it hurts, even more when we saw how bad they are. I don't know if you can appreciate it in the picture but the two on the bottom are the fake ones. The watermark is just a while layer on top and they look like as done with a normal color printer. We don't know who gave them to us and we haven't decided what to do with them yet Should we pass them or be good boys and destroy them? Any suggestions?

The only remaing thing to do in Buenos Aires was, as mentioned in the previous post, the Boca Juniors match in the "Bombonera" stadium. We couldn't get tickets in advance, so the only chance was to go there on they same day and buy them to the re-sellers.

We went to the stadium and when we got there most of the people were already inside. We got wrong the time of the match but we didn't know that. We couldn't get any tickets but when we were leaving a guy told us he had tickets to platea. They were even cheap!!! Something smelt weird, so we didn't want to pay until we managed to cross the barriers. We crossed the barriers!!, so we paid. But we were in the "barra brava", the most dangerous place to be in a football stadium in the world. We were advised not to go there under no circumstances, not to wear watch, no cameras, no money, etc. But it was to late...we were already there.

In that zone, there are no seats, no police, it is under a ceiling and there are lots of people standing up, most of them with no sirt. So we decided to take the sirts off trying to keep a low profile. The game was already in the second half. We couldn't almost see anything and after 15 minutes and when the rival team scored, we decided it was better to leave in case a war started after the match. We managed to survive and take that picture.

All the Boca area, and the surroundings of the stadium are very scary, there is this kind of silence and all the buildings are semi destroyed. It makes you feel very uneasy. Specially when the local people advise you not to go there.

Hasta pronto

First days in Capital Federal

The IB6845 flight departed from Madrid to Buenos Aires with more than 2 hours delay, waiting for connections from other flights. I think they just tried to save money and cancel the next flight.

Anyway, I shared emergency seat during the more than 10.000 KM with a very bad girl and a very lovely lady. The bad girl is part of a beautiful, fun and sad book by Vargas Llosa full of funny peruvian expresions. And the lovely lady is an Argentinan who migrated to Israel when they lost all their business during the "corralito". She told me how they are getting lots of money and support by Israel as long as they stay there, now she is working as a nany as she called it. She told me about her life and how she was comming to visit one of his sons who is a bit depressed. I wanted to take her a picture to remember her, but I thought it wasn't appropriate. I just waited to check she got her luggage and wished her all the luck. I hope everything goes fine Elena.

Due to the delay I couldn't have dinner with my brother and try the famous Argentinian meats. I promised I would take revenge the next day.

This is the appartment. The view is not great, but the area is ok and very convinient, near the "subte" which costs less than 25 p compared with the 4 pounds tube.

First day was a bit cloudy in the morning and we went for a walk to the famous obelisk that can be see from everywhere. Then we did a city tour cycling. I have becomed a fan of cycling tours from now on and on Saturday we will do another one. It is a great option.

...I still don't know how I didn't fall off the bike when I took this picture of my bro, seriously I was riding in front.

Some parts of the city are very similar to London, like canary warf. Other parts look like Madrid. In many ways is very European.

This is the Boca Juniors stadium. The last match of the tournament is on Sunday and they are on top with the same points of other two teams. There are no more tickets for sale, we'll have to go to re-sellers. Boca is the team of the working class. They used to wear the same colors as their rival team River Plate. They had a match to decide who should wear the red and white colors and River won. Boca was very sad and decided they would use the colors of the next boat who arrived the river. It was a Swedish boat and since then red and white is forbidden even in the Coca-Cola ads.

Finally I got my deserved meat feast. We went to a Rodizio where we could have 18 different cuts of meat. I think I have almost tried them all, as you can see.

After a couple of days we decided to do something different and took a ferry to Uruguay and visit a small city, Colonia. It looks relaxing and quite. It was worth it to get out of the noise for a change. And the icecreams are delicious here.

San Telmo is the bohemian part of the city with live music. Here we enjoyed a few caipirinhas and a local music.

This is all for now, there are many more things to do here. I hope we had time.

By the way, coffee is excellent. See you soon

Ten hours to go...

The idea for this trip is an old one. In fact the original plan was far more ambitious, not only in terms of the number days, but this is another story. Anyway, the fact is that I am going from tomorrow December the 9th till January 21st which I hope it would be great.

Normally, I wouldn't plan much in a trip like this, but I would like to meet some friends along the journey, and I have to warn them in advance. So, this is the initial "Master Plan"
I am planing to meet Jose, my younger brother in Buenos Aires to travel around the North and West of Argentina.

Then, we will cross the Andes by bus and meet the new friend Milagros in Santiago de Chile. After a few days in Chile, we will head for the magic Machu Pichu in Peru and later join Miss Zaidy and spend New Year's Eve in a Peruvian beach, maybe going to the jungle, what are you planning Z?

From there I will go to Venezuela to get a deserved relax in Isla Margarita, Los Roques and Salto del Angel. This is how it looks in a map:


... yes it looks a bit scary. Far too many flights, but the distances are huge and the time precious.

Well, I think that is all for now, I only have to make the check list. Passport: checked, yellow fever jab: checked, blog for stupid situations:obviously checked,...out of the office email message: checked... I think that's all I need.

I won't take a laptop with me but I will update it the blog regularly. I am sure there are internet cafes everywhere, even in the middle of the jungle.

See you in Buenos Aires