More Pinguinos

Isla Magdalena is located in the Strait of Magellan about 35 km and 90 minutes by boat from Punta Arenas. Eduardo booked us on a 9 am departure, returning at 3 pm. So we had about 90 minutes on the island itself. This colony is entirely used to being visited. That means these 45 cm high fellows are as curious sometimes as their human admirers. 

More pics after dinner :)

Visiting penguins: adventures in the Strait of Magellan

On Magdelana Island is "Los Pinguinos" Natural
Monument. There is an estimated population of
25,000-30,000 mating pairs of Magellan penguins
in this colony.

This is a still of the video. They make quite
the sound and it´s an amazing display to witness.

They dig out their "nests" where
they lay two eggs once a year.

In the sand nest.

Waddling to the sea.

Wind and sun rule Patagonia

How different. Dusk set in at about 10:45 pm here, in sharp contrast to the 6 or 6:30 pm in Bolivia and the 5 pm in Canada this time of year!

Note the different seasons in the sky!

Yum - veggie dinner!

Ahem, seafood appetizer for Inga :)

On the recommendation of Eduardo, our host at Hostal Independencia, we also found the perfect restaurant: La Marmita. Yes, we had to go to the end of the world to get an amazing vegetarian meal!

Inga´s meal consisted of a seafood appetizer (wonder if they came from the Atlantic or Pacific - after all they converge near here!) followed by a delicious lamb stew. YUM!

Pisco Sour a la Marmita!

With apologies to Peru, we had the best Pisco Sours ever right here in Punta Arenas, at La Marmita.

Our toasty room is right here.

View from our window.

 Back to our Hostal: Here are a couple of views of the camping area and our toasty room.

Windy it is here. Something to get used to.Actually, they call summer also "the windy season". Seems odd but it is true! Coming in the dark of winter means little snow. Coming in the midst of sunny summer means wind, sleet, hail, snow and balmy sun can happen all in one short moment.

Dogs rule here. Many roam freely through towns and cities.

Hi Jan! Is it windy?

Quechua people and their Inka

One thing we learned in Cuzco is that "Inka" is the title of a ruler; like Queen, Kaiser, Ceasar or Emporer. The people this Inka ruled were Quechua. Still to this day, many Quechua-speakers live in Peru, including in the more northern parts like around Huaraz.

Cusco - temple of the sun/convent in dramatic light.

Inga at one of the Inka sites near Cusco.

It´s amazing that with all the knowledge these people had, they did not develop a written language. Today, it is possible to learn Quechua in university - so you don´t have to be a native speaker learning it all at home from parents and grandparents. Its written language is based on Spanish, with a few more accents to denote the different sounds the language has.

Rock on rock - always in synch with what was there

Valle Sagrado. One of strategic Inka cities with 65,000 ha of terrasses.

Same site, new view.

Inga at Ollantaytambo.

Looking pleased. The building mid-mountain is a grainery

There were 14 Inkas (if I recall correctly). The Spanish could take over the empire so easily in part because it was in internal chaos: yes, the usual power struggles between the Inka´s off-spring.

View over the Cordillera from Chincero

Our team in Huaraz was Quechua. And the guides we had around Cusco were mesquites (mix of Spanish and indigenous).

:)

Peru Rail makes for a fun excursion

Valle Sagrado outside of Cusco.

Inga enjoying the ride to Aguas Calientes

We took the train from Cusco (actually Poroy Station about 25 minutes outside of Cusco) to Aguas Calientes which is the crazy tourist town at the foot of the mountains where Machu Picchu is located. The train takes about 4 hours and goes through some amazingly narrow valleys along the way. It also goes through parts of Valle Sagrado where the abundance of agricultural riches was evident.

KM 82. The beginning of the Inka Trail.

The Expedition train.

On the way there we took the Expedition train (which has great views out of windows on the roof, too) and on the way back the Vistadome. For a mere $12 more for the Vistadome train we got great andino food, surprising entertainment as soon as darkness set in, a fashion show (vicuña sweaters, anyone?) and a generally satisfying experience. I am glad we took the two different options  for a broader experience.

 

The wine we bought ... by the bottle.

... and drank during the 4-hour trip.

A traditional performance, surely by one of the attendants...

And these 2 provided the fashion show!

Quite the jokster outfit!

Attending to beauty needs

Using a 5-hour layover, Inga gets a manicure at Lima airport

Trekking and the mountain / desert dryness has been hard on hands and feet. We both got a manicure-pedicure in La Paz (great deal!). While waiting at the Lima airport for our next flight yesterday we both got a manicure - and Jan also went for a foot massage!


My hands look better now than they ever do at home. I think I like this manicure thing - except I paid like $10 for them here ... Jan says they are a little pricier back home :(

Machu Picchu photos

This post includes pics by both Jan and Inga. Machu Picchu and other sites in the Valle Sagrado and around Cusco, the Inka empire capital, were well worth the visit.

We are here.  The fog lifted eventually.

The famous view later in the day.

Rant alert: But after 4 days, I was done with the constant hussle that restaurants, massage parlours, tour operators, craft market vendors at ever single historic site subject tourists to. I mean I really am not going to buy all this stuff - at every single stop - or eat every 5 minutes! Yikes.

Note angle of wall. That´s earthquake-proof!

Yeah

Rant over.

Back to amazing experiences and views of an empire that, however shortlived it was, left some indelible evidence of its greatness.

The 2-hour tour we took (in Spanish :) was excellent. The guide kept it fresh and he was still excited about his subject which made it a great experience.

Ruins: 3 windows - Pachamama (Mother Earth). Fog. Inga. Nice.

These people used mountains and temples as sun clocks, to understand their world and dry and wet season. They were amazing farmers, creating terrasses with micro-climates to genetically engineer some important crops at higher altitudes.

Lovely how the clouds wafted up and over.

Terrasses and a quarry overlook the mountains and valley.

Having fun in the ruins.

Temple of the Sun. Just not on this day.

Salar de Uyuni - trip of a lifetime?

We´ve been seeing and experiencing all kinds of amazing landscapes on this trip. One we were intrigued to explore was Salar de Uyuni. So we took the only viable option: a 3 day, 2 night 4x4 trip plus an overnight bus there and back from La Paz, making for 4 nights in total. The Salar is a bleak desert that is not reasonably accessible any other way.

If you think about this trip, here are some things you might consider:

Our fine travel companions from Norway at Laguna Verde.

All 4x4 share a similar route along a bit of infrastructure.

1. 8 to 10 hours on the bus from La Paz to Uyuni one way. More than half this time is on unpaved roads.  Basically, you gotta be OK with a rough ride. The bus drivers seemed very confident in their skill and vehicles: they motored through anything at roughly the same speed. Note: There is a train that is more comfortable.
2. Do you want Salar de Uyuni only? There is a one day 4x4 excursion you can take, instead of the 3 days. The 3 day trip has 1 day on the Salar and then heads into the mountains to explore lagunas, flamingos and volcanic landscapes.
3. If you go for the 1 day only, then you likely will spend a night or two in Uyuni. Uyuni is rustic, but then again, if you visit the countryside in Bolivia rustic is your thing, right!?
4. Your 4x4 will break down. It´s best to be confident in your driver´s ability to handle such breakdowns. Ours changed tires 2x and then handled the running out of gas situation. Our travel companions were pretty relaxed about this sort of thing, but depending on the tourist´s expectations and driver´s competence that could be really stressful. After all, you are in what you might think of as the "middle of absolutely nowhere" - which is why you came here (but that can be easily forgotten, when things get rough).
5. If the itinerary changes, is that always bad? Well, in our case it was good. The place we stayed at the first night was awesome and brand new. But really, we were supposed to be in a whole different town about 2 hours away that night. Again, the driver (a competent 21-year-old), made it so and it worked out very fine.
6. Chances are you will get sick ... OK: in our sample of 6 people, 2 got very sick (major gastro) and 2 had some lesser gastro trouble and 2 stayed healthy. Again, if Bolivia is your thing, you will be prepared to deal with such sickness, but from what I observed a landcruiser with a driver and cook and 6 tourists is a pretty tight spot to feel sick. 
7. You are booking 3 days in a 4x4. The only stops are for taking pictures, 10 or 20 minutes at a time. Lunch is longer, of course. It´s a ton of landcruiser time. Make sure you are ready for that mentally and physically. Note: the people in the back row are in a tight spot, with no leg room to speak of. So, if your group has large or tall people in it, be aware of the potential for discomfort on that count, too (At least, most people I saw taking this trip were pretty fit looking, adventure type travellers.)
8. You will get up early, one day it was 4:30 am to leave at 5, so we could make it back to Uyuni by about 6 pm. A long day of driving for everyone. One reason for this is to make the transfer to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile for the border-crossers. Pretty surreal to see the seeming randomness of 4x4s and busses meeting in the high sierra at 10 am or so to exchange people.
9. You will be hot, you will be cold. The desert dust could get a bit much; actually that´s why windows get rolled up and no air conditioning is used ... which is why you will get hot.
10. While the Salar is at about 3,600 m, the high point of the 3 day trip is actually at 4,800 m. You´ll spend 2 days between about 4,200 and 4,800 m. Even if you are well acclimatized this can be a challenge due to the extreme aridity here. 4,500 m in Peru´s Cordillera Blanca felt way easier than 4,500 m in this place! So, drink even more water than usual on this trip to at least try to stay hydrated. Of course, this is really hard to do when you are the one with the gastro issues...

Volcanic rock formations are cool ...

And we did see quite a few of them.

Geysers are interesting, even at 6 am.

The $64,000 question is whether given the lived experience of the 3 days, 4 nights would we do this one all over?

My thought is probably not. But then again, I am not sure we would have gone all that way for just a day trip either. And I am happy to have seen these landscapes, especially the Salar.

I wish they could develop the area for hiking. It´d be stunning. However, given the harsh and high mountain environment that seems like a very long shot. In part because there seemed to be very few natural water sources left in the area (really, it is bone dry!), so that human habitation is very sparse and only exists on the edges of the Salar.

26 hours in transit ...

Jan and I have just arrived in Punta Arenas in the Chilean part of Patagonia.

We flew from Cusco to Lima, from Lima to Santiago via Antofagasta, from Santiago to Punta Arenas via Puerto Montt. Not exactly a short routing, but we made it safe (and nearly sound - those colds suck) to the most southern city in the world. (Ushuaia is apparently just a "town", so it claims to be "the most southern town in the world" - still the "most southern post office" goes to Puerto Williams across the Beagle Channel ... in any case this is the end of the world as we know it.)
.
Now, we will relax a little, post some stuff from the last week or so, go see some penguins and hopefuly find really tasty food. Jan´s been having some trouble as vegetarianism isn´t so common in Bolivia and Peru. The typical dishes overflow with meat of various sorts - which is perfectly fine with me :)

We spent the night at Santiago´s international airport. Amazingly, while Wi-Fi is everywhere there was no place for internet access via a rented computer! And you couldn´t get your nails done either. But 3 sunglass-stores were open all night. Go figure.

We played cards, drank beer (Inga) and wine (Jan), and watched Santa´s elves who were busy decorating this huge Christmas tree. The airport stays open all night, which was convenient given the layover from 2:30 am to 9:45 am.

More Salar de Uyuni impressions :)

Some of our loyal readers have been wanting more pics of us. Well, here are a few - mostly of Jan since Iamposting this -  from the Salar trip last week.



Jan and our shadow friends from
Norway at Laguna Colorada. Yes,
it´s red.



Some of the funky views we smiled
about.The foreground is the Salt flats.

 


OK. That´s actually Johnny, our driver
through Salar and Lagunas. Relaxing
and having some fun on the Pampa
Colorada as we await help and gas.We broke down about 25 minutes
from Uyuni, our end point.



Flamingos proved inspirational :)

Ah, Jan likes these pink flamingos a lot.