Jeanette and Pat go to South America

If you are going to spend 4 days in a city with 11 million people, then Buenos Aires is not a bad place to go!

We have been told that Argentinian women are the most beautiful in the world. It is true, that with their dark skin, dark eyes, long hair and vacuum-packed jeans that the young ones are very attractive and sexy, but young people are attractive everywhere, and we will stick by our view that Australian kids still rank Number One!

Buenos Aires is very much a city that come awake after dark, so we adjusted our time clocks from our 4am - 6 am wakeups of the last three weeks, to staying up till between 2 and 3 am to take advantage of the lights!

We managed to pack a lot in to our four days, including a classic tango show at Cafe Tortoni (one of the "original" tango cafes in town), a couple of amazing steak dinners, ice-creams at Freddos and shopping in Florida Street for leather.

We went on a bit of a pilgrimage of Eva Peron, including a visit to the famed Pink Palace where she spoke (sang!!!) to the people, a visit to her grave in Recoleta (the most amazing cemetery that is more like a city than a cemetery), and a visit to the Eva Peron museum, which tells the story of her life and fight to get the vote for women (in 1947!) to open schools and hospitals across the nation, and generally to get a better deal for the working people. It is amazing that she died at only 33 yers of age.

Buenos Aires is broken up into separate "barrios" or districts, each of which has a very distinctive personality. From the working class suburbs of San Telmo and La Boca, where it is common to see people dancing tango in the street (with the standard hat out for donations of course), to the upmarket Recoleta and Palermo where we saw the famous professional dog walkers walking up to 15 dogs all together!

The weather here is very hot and humid. Unless you are used to the humidity you will probably find that a better time to visit this city is in autumn or spring. As we spent hours and hours walking every day, and the temperature was in the mid to high thirties, and very humid, we found our energy was sapped by the end of the day. Still, I guess Barcelona and Rome will be the opposite!

The best night we had was at a restaurant called Cabrera. Our friends Tris and Jasna who we met on our Galapagos cruise organised it all for us. We first went to their apartment in Recoleta, and up to the roof of their 20 story apartment block for a view of the city. Then a short taxi ride to Cabrera. It is an amazingly popular restaurant, and when we arrived at bout 9:20pm , our 9pm booking had been given away. Fortunately less that 100 metres away is their satellite restaurant, Cabrera North, the same food and atmosphere, just a few yards down the street.

We shared three enormous steak meals (sharing steaks is not uncommon here), which came served with a large array of accompaniments or tapenadas, including roast garlic, eggplant, mashed pumpkin, roasted carrots, potatoes and so on. We shared a very nice bottle of Argentinian Malbec, had some dessert and coffee and the entire bill came to about $Aus 50 per couple! A fantastic memory of Argentina!

Today we leave again for Barcelona. The good news is that we have been upgraded to business class for the entire trip. The bad news is that we didn`t know that to claim our tax-free refunds we needed to go through Customs BEFORE Immigration, and missed that. Now we cannot get back out to Customs, so guess we will not be able to claim our $22 refund. Pat also lost his Goretex hat in BA yesterday - no idea how, and at least we wonçt be needing it for the remainder of our journey.

Next stop Europe!

Our final day involved a 6am wakeup call, and a dinghy ride around some mangrove swamps. We think this was so that the cruise could be called an 8 day cruise, rather than a 7 day cruise!! Still it was a nice finish to the Galapagos. After getting off the boat at 8am on Tuesday, for a flight planned for 1015, we found out.....what a surprise....that our flight was delayed.

Baltra airport is not the most happening of places! It does have a few souvenir shops outside, which you can check out in about 5 minutes, then.....waiting, waiting......

Our flight finally left about 1130am, and we flew to Quito via Guayaquil. Once again it was about 4pm before we got to our hotel, so there was not too much left of the day. Enough time to copy our photos to DVD though (this was not as easy as it sounds, as the shop´s technology was too old to take big memory cards, but eventually we got it sorted.

We found a good pizza shop for dinner - after the excesses of 7 days acting like marine iguanas (basking in the sun and eating and not much else) we didn´t feel like a big meal.

Quito is an interesting place to spend a day. We had heard that pickpockets were rife (Mike and Suzanne had a camera picked on their day before flying to Galapagos) so were on the alert.

We headed off to the Old Town, which is very picturesque - cobbled streets and narrow bustling alleyways, with churches nearly as prevalent as marine iguanas in the Galapagos! Those Spanish conquistadors were really into big churches.

The Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus is lined with gold - very glittery! At the Iglesia and Convent de San Francisco there is a museum of art and sculpture and so on, so we visited that too. Then we walked to the Iglesia de la Basilica del Voto Nacional. We found out that you can climb to the Belfry for only 2 Dollars each so we climbed......and climbed.....and climbed..... First steps, then a spiral stairway, then a few ladders! I started to get vertigo, but we had got that far we had to keep going! The view was quite grand of the Quito town, and we were as high as the hill with the Virgin Mary on it. This is an excursion to be recommended. We also visited one of the Spanish gentleman´s houses, but I can´t remember the name.

We had read in a book that there is a nice mirador (lookout) of Guapulo (another valley we think, although we never did really work it out) a few kilometres away, so we decided to go. It was about a 2 hour walk or thereabouts, and we got to see some of the less touristy parts of Quito along the way. Another 2 hour walk got us back to our washing place (we had dropped off our washing first thing in the morning) then back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and back to......Quito airport.

Our flight was overnight, from Quito to Lima, and then a 3 hour wait before flying in to Buenos Aires and arriving about 7:30am the next morning. We were able to catch up on our email at Quito, and were happy to get emails from the kids that all was well at home! The highlight of this trip was probably watching Justine Henin-Hardenne beat Maria Sharapova in the semi-final of the Aussie Open - live from Lima VIP lounge!

After arriving at Baltra airport and paying our tax of $100US each we met our guide and the 11 other passengers that would be joining us for the next week.

We were a mixed lot, ranging in both age and nationality (and personality). There was Manfried and Traute, a retired couple from Hamburg, Germany, who had just finished a cruise of the Antarctic; Barb and Rosemary, also retired, from Atlanta Georgia (we have discovered that people from the US always give there town and state, rather than country when introducing themselves); Barb´s daughter Kristen and her friend Sarah, two primary school teachers currently living in Santiago Chile; Marcus, a young doctor from Sweden, Mike a (Canadian) pilot with Air Canada, and his wife Suzanne a wedding photographer; and Tris and Jasna, two Brits living in Buenos Aires. Our guide was Fausto, a delightful, upbeat, friendly Ecuadorian who has been a guide for about 15 years. We had five crew, Isaac our captain, Juan, first mate (and dinghy driver), Freddy the cook, Wilmer the steward and Manuel the engineer.

We headed off to our boat, and home for the next week. The M/Y (motor yacht) Samba was all we had imagined it would be, or better. There were 7 guest cabins, each with a decent toilet and shower (not those temperamental heads that we have been used to on boats we have chartered). The Samba is 40 years old, and "Tourist Superior" class - we decided that we didn´t require anything more than that. The airconditioning in the cabins was apparently a problem for some of the guests, but for us it was perfect.

Amazingly the Samba runs tours weekly from Tuesday to Tuesday without a break. We got on the boat at around 12 o´clock, only about 4 hours after the last guests had left. The crew also work for between 4 - 6 weeks before getting time off.

The Galapagos is a very controlled environment, so all our visits were together as a group. You aren´t allowed to go anywhere without your guide. While this is a little constrained, it is the only way they can preserve the unique environment while still allowing people to visit and enjoy the wildlife.

Every excursion starts with donning a life jacket and all 13 of us plus Fausto plus Juan, getting onto the dinghy for either a "wet" or "dry" landing. A wet landing just means getting off at the beach and wading in to shore, while a dry landing involves wearing your shoes and landing usually on rocks. Typically our visits were 2 - 3 hours, and we usually had something like 2 visits and a snorkel each day.

Most nights the boat motored to our next destination while we relaxed or slept. We were surprised at how big the Galapagos islands are - we motored for from 4 to 12 hours per day at 9 knots. We were also surprised by how barren the volcanic islands are, although this varied from island to island.

Our first highlight was our first landing, where we had to wait for the sealions to move before we could land, and we nearly stepped on the hundreds of marine iguanas who simply basked in the sun and totally ignored us. This was to become our daily experience. If you like lizards, Galapagos is the place to go. The sealions were all in families - and it is baby season, so there were many many inquisitive baby sealions who wanted to check us out (the bull of each family was always on the prowl though so we had to be careful).

Some of the animals we saw on land were giant tortoises, sealions, land and marine iguanas, blue'footed boobies, flamingos, Nasca boobies (and their babies), flightless cormorants, albatrosses (huge), crabs, fur seals, pelicans, penguins and gazillions of finches. Each day we would be introduced to different species, as many of them are unique to only one island, but the iguanas and sealions were ubiquitous.

Another highlight was snorkelling. We went for one or two snorkels each day, and the first surprise is these equatorial waters are COLD! Apparently it is to do with the Humboldt current, and the coldness increases the diversity of the sealife. If anything there was more diversity of life under the water, and our snorkelling (despite the cold) was definitely a high point. Some days we snorkelled with sealions, others with turtles (watch your t-shirt or it might get nibbled), sharks (not great whites, but big enough to startle us), penguins (nowhere else in the world can you snorkel with penguins - its a bit cold in the Antarctic), stingrays (so graceful), and multitudes of different, multicoloured fish.

One day we were "whale watching" (tourist speak for motoring on the Samba) and we actually spotted a whale! It was an Orca and came very close to the boat - we are hoping that Suzanne´s photography skills captured the moment.

Our food on the Samba was tasty and plentiful. A big surprise was on the last night when we had a celebration cake. Coincidentally it was Pat´s birthday, which he admitted when Fausto was trying to find out who had the next birthday!!! Another great moment was crossing the equator (although the promised equator cocktail failed to materialise, and it was a little hard to spot the white line).

Mostly the Galapagos is not inhabited by humans, but there is one town - Puerto Aroya, with 17000 people, and a couple of small villages. We learnt the history of the inhabitants - some of whom have very colourful stories.

The week came to an end very quickly, and Tuesday rolled around again. We would highly recommend the Samba. It had a great itinerary (and we discovered that a number of the other boats don´t even go to the Western Islands for example) and it was a true tour of the Galapagos Islands.

Another 4:30 am rise. Our hotel in Cusco included breakfast, and breakfast was served from 4:30 - 1030 every day. This was also the case in Quito. We had to be at the airport at 6am, and still needed to pack.

Today was another typical airport day in South America, with a lot of waiting around airports and delayed flights. We flew Cusco - Lima then hung around for ages (thank God that Pat is a Gold Frequent Flyer with Qantas, so we are able to use the international VIP lounges) before finally getting on the Lima - Quito flight. We finally got to our hotel at about 4:15PM, and decided that a priority would be to see if we could get some laundry done, as we were joining our Galapagos cruise the next morning.

After walking around for a while, we met a nice local at a bookstore who told us he lived near a Lavanderia and would take us to it. It was only about 5 minutes walk. It was about 4:45, and the lavanderia girl, after a lot of discussion, told us she could get it all done by 6:30PM. The charge was per kg, and our washing cost US$2.40!! The hotel charged more than that for a hankerchief, and double for "express service"! This was without a doubt the best bargain of Ecuador!

Next morning was to be another 4:30 start, as we needed to meet the Galapagos travel agent at the airport at 6am to pick up our tickets for Baltra.

We got to the airport as planned, and after waiting around for a while, our travel agent arrived at around 6:30am and we got organised. More delays of an hour or two, and we were on our way to Galapagos.

We can´t finish our story of the Inca trail without telling you some of the natural remedies that Marisol told us.
Many times when she spotted a flower or herb along the way we would hear what it was used for: Stomach ailments, headaches, preventing colds and so on. But there were two tales which really will stay in our minds.

Jamie, our NZ companion, was a little worried that his hair was thinning. At 28, he thought this too young to be going bald. Marisol told him of the "guaranteed cure", with total sincerity.

Every night for a month, you must wash your hair in urine, leave it in overnight, then rinse it out in the morning. Marisol did warn that rinsing out the smell was almost impossible, but the effort would be worth it. Darryl initially offered to have his evening pee over Jamie´s head, but Marisol was not impressed! You see, it must be your own urine! Amidst much hilarity over dinner, we discussed the pros and cons of the solution, and Jamie considered that now would be as good a time as any to try it. His girlfriend was home in NZ, and Darryl was his travelling companion! Darryl was not looking forward to sharing his tent with Jamie! We haven´t yet heard how the treatment is going, and hope to hear from Jamie soon with news of a full head of hair!!

Marisol´s second therapy also involves urine. Apparently if you want to stay really healthy, you should drink a teaspoon of your own urine each morning and evening. This is because your urine contains your "information". This led to a discussion about studying for a maths test, and bottling (and labelling) the information for retrieval as required! When we get back to work and you see little vials of yellow liquid in our desk drawers, you will know that these are our Peru answer to "yellow stickit notes".

We had agreed with Marisol that we would like to be one of the first groups to arrive at the Sun Gate the next morning, even though we thought we might not get a classic sunrise due to the rain.

She woke us up at 3:50am and sure enough it was raining. We had breakfast, and got ready in the wet and dark. Our short walk to the "control station" was in the dark, and our nearly flat torches were not terribly useful. Next time we will buy LED headlamps which light up the path like daylight (and which Beate and Magnus had). The control station does not open till 5:30, and despite arriving at ten to 5 we were still about the third group there. It was raining and there is certainly no shelter, but we were excited nevertheless.

Just before 5:30 the staff arrived, and Marisol elbowed her way to the front of the guide queue. The starting flag was effectively dropped and we were off!!! Marisol had rather psyched us up the night before and there was no stopping us. One by one we overtook people in front, until we were quite near the front. I had not walked so fast ever I think, especially on slippery rocky trails (which amazingly seemed to feel totally firm with our serious determination). The very last part was about 60 steep steps, and I was really puffed, but there was no stopping me. Jamie and Darryl had been setting the pace, with Beate and me close behind, and Marisol at the back running interference from anyone trying to catch us! It was really very funny. We made it to the Sun Gate, and Marisol popped up behind us! Her first words were "48 minutes! Congratulations!".

We relaxed for a while at the Sun Gate, and after about 15 minutes the mist lifted and we got our first glimpses of Macchu Picchu (pronounced PICK-CHU, not PICHU, as Marisol told us many a time).

After a two hour guided tour of the city, Marisol left us to climb Wayna Picchu (a mountain above Macchu Picchu) and suggested we might like also to go to the Temple of the Moon. The climb up was a tough one hour, including wriggling through a tunnel with our backpacks in front of us. It was a fantastic view though and worth the effort. We headed off to "Temple of the Moon", not entirely sure where we were headed, and certainly not expecting the walk to be as tough as it was. It was a very steep descent almost as far as the Urubamba River, several hundred metres lower than Macchu Picchu. Then we had to climb back up to the town, to catch the bus to Aguas Callientes. Although only three and a half hours in total, it was probably the hardest walk we had done.

We caught the bus down, and enjoyed a pizza. We heard some rumours about problems with the train, and when we got to the train station we found out that a landslide had closed the trainline, and no trains had run all day. This caused some consternation, as we all had places to be. Pat and I were on a plane to Quito the next morning, and if we missed it we were going to miss our cruise.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were offered "standing places" on the train we had originally had reserved seats on. We took them, and Marisol
Oops will have to finish this later....about to miss a plane to Buenos Aires!!!

EDIT: Later on, now in Buenos Aires!!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were offered "standing places" on the train we had originally had reserved seats on. This train was running about 1 hour late. We took them, and Marisol arranged for us to get off at Ollantaytambo and provided a bus from there to Cusco which was supposed to save us an hour of time.

All was well, and the six of us got off at Ollantaytambo, and found our bus. Then we sat on the bus, and sat and sat, with no-one telling us anything. Finally after Pat making a lot of noise, we found out that we were waiting for "the Russians" (another group), who obviously did not make this train, so we were waiting for the next train to arrive before the bus would leave. As it was already late, and we had a 430am start the next morning, we all got slowly more agitated, but to no avail. We were about to hire ourselves two taxis for the hour and a half journey back to Cusco when finally the next train arrived, with said Russians, and better yet, with Marisol! Marisol had serious words with the bus driver, and we got started.

The bus had a little statue of Jesus that was connected to the brakes and lit up when the driver braked! I guess it was his way of praying that the brakes worked! Fortunately they did, which was just as well. We ended up back in Cusco a little before ten, and went straight to the shop to get our photos copied to CD, then home for a shower - after four days of walking this was very much enjoyed!!!!

The restaurants were all closed and in any case we were getting up at 430, so we flopped into bed, congratulating ourselves on conquering the Inca Trail!!

Today we woke with satisfaction knowing that we were in for an easier day.

Today we call Inca Steps day. Yes I know we had a lot of steps the day before, but today we were on original Inca Trail, and there were over 3000 steps down.

I was getting more confident on my downhill, even though it was still pretty slippery. Because we had some time up our sleeve, we were able to add on a little side trip to some Inca terraces which added about an hour to our walking for the day.

We had a late lunch at the third campsite (still raining but mostly light). We were very pleased with our wet weather purchases. They certainly earned their keep.

We went to another archeological site, and then had a couple of beers (at this campsite there was a bar). After dinner we had a farewell ceremony as our porters would be leaving us at 4:30 am the next morning.

The farewell ceremony was very moving and emotional. Each of the eight porters told us a little more about themselves and then we made a thankyou speech to them. They had been so amazing the whole time, and we were starting to get to know them. Chapulin was the head porter and also our cook. At 32, he had been a porter for 15 years. Freddie was the youngest, the "baby of the group" at 19, and Domingo was the cheeky one. Felipe (I think) was the oldest at 43. They all looked older than their years (except perhaps Freddie), as they have a very hard life. We would really like to see the companies provide better gear for the porters (boots and proper backpacks as a minimum).

After giving each of the porters a hug and kiss, or handshake, goodbye, and them thanking us once again for our tips which help to feed their families, we went to bed. Unfortunately our tent was not very waterproof, and each morning we had woken with something wet. One morning it was my boots (which I managed to dry out enough). Tonight it was our sleeping bags which got wet, so we spent the night curled up so that we did not get too damp. Tomorrow was going to be another exciting day.

We started early with a good breakfast and commenced our walk about 7am. Marisol had estimated that we would take 4 - 5 hours to reach the top of Dead Woman´s Pass, based on our previous day´s efforts.

The first couple of hours were steady climbing, then we reached the major climbing part. The walk was mostly on paths rather than Inca steps. The last two hours were slow, but we just kept plodding on, and drank heaps of water and didn´t feel the need to stop. After three hours and 50 minutes we reached a very windy and cold peak of Dead Woman´s Pass (4200 metres) to the sounds of lots of clapping from the small group at the top of the hill, and Jamie telling us that we had another 45 minutes to go!

None of us had had any trouble with the altitude, even though Marisol assured us she was carrying oxygen just in case. We had all had very mild moments of dizziness and the suggestion of a headache, but it was almost nothing.

Unfortunately there was no view to look at, as the mist had closed in and it was raining lightly. We were still very happy to have arrived, and when Beate and Magnus arrived a few minutes later, we had a group photo.

Then came the real challenge. One and a half hours of slippery Inca steps, oddly spaced, at odd angles. Contrasting with the uphill walk, which we didn,t have much trouble with at all, and noone passed us on, we were passed a lot downhill, as I struggled with my poor balance and lack of confidence on the slippery steps. My knees sure felt it, but we got to our designated campsite (3500 metres) at about 1pm.

At lunch we had a group conference, and we decided that we would like to press on and knock some of the next day´s climbing (including the next pass at 3900 metres). I think it was an extra 6 km altogether, but a lot of up and downhill climbing.

About an hour from the finish we climbed to another ruin and got a history lesson from Marisol. It then started raining more, and the last hour was pretty cold and wet and would have been miserable were we not so pumped from the days´s achievements!

Our campsite was allocated late (because of our lastminute change of plans) so we had a pretty bad site. It was about 500 metres down a slippery muddy path to the toilets (which Pat refused to use in any case because they were so smelly). Toilets on the Inca trail were usually a hole in the ground in any case, and even with the rain we preferred to find ourselves a bush if possible! Cleaning teeth in the pouring rain out the back of the tent will be a memory that will remain for a long time!

Our campsite was at 3600 metres though, and Pat reckons we now qualify for the "mile high club".

We got picked up from our hotel at 6AM for the drive to KM 82 where we would begin our walk. The bus stopped at Ollantaytambo for a break at 8AM. Jeanette had started hydrating for the walk since waking up and had drunk around 1.5 litres of water which started to make its presence felt on the bumpy road around 7:30. A request for a stop was met with "we will be stopping in 15 minutes". 30 minutes later a very uncomfortable Jeanette raced to the nearest restaurant and got the best value she will ever get for 1 sole. ($0.40)

After losing a face off with a bulldozer on a one way road and after another hour we reached KM82 and got ready. We then had to wait for "Control" to allow us onto the trail. There are around 200 trekkers starting every morning plus Guides and Porters so it is very crowded. There were 24 groups the day we started and we were the last.

We were incredibly lucky to have an excellent Guide and a small group. Most groups seem to be 15 or 16 people. The group started off together and after 2 hours stopped for lunch. Surprise number 1 - the porters had setup the lunch tent with a two course meal that could have fed double our number. It was excellent and representative of all the meals we were to have. It is absolutely amazing what they achieve with a 2 burner gas stove and all ingredients and utensils being carried on their backs. Several times during the trip we all took photos of the meals.

The porters always run ahead and setup either lunch or a campsite. It is sad in this day and age that most of them wear sandals and carry loads wrapped in tarps whilst the tourists carry their fancy backpacks and are protected by Goretex. Despite this they were a very happy team and looked after us like we were royalty. They were friendly and despite the language barrier we got to know some of them a little bit.

After 3 more hours walk we reached our first campsite. It was set in a small plateau on top of a hill and we had the place to ourselves. We were sitting down admiring the view when I said "What would you pay to get a beer now?". Jamie answered "5 soles" - a local lady had just cruised by with a bucket full of beer and softdrink. The lady sussed us out and soon returned with a full bucket of beer.

After Tea at 5PM and dinner at 7:30 we retired for the night.

We arrived in Cusco on Monday the 9th and managed to get a lot done in the first evening we were there (Laundry, travel agency, photos dumped to CD, etc.). We stayed at the Hotel Picoaga which was excellent and well situated close to the centre of town.

Cusco is a tourist town and many people seem to be very poor. There are street hawkers everywhere and you have to be very careful with your stuff.

The next day we went on a bus tour to the Sacred Valley. We were a bit disappointed with this tour because it was more aimed at taking you to shops and markets rather than the Inca sights. Nevertheless it was an interesting day. The two highlights were the Inca sight at Ollayantambo and the hour that we spent walking through Urumbumba by ourselves whilst the rest of the tour ate at various restaurants. One poor guy was sick all the way home so we were glad we skipped lunch. We had an excellent steak dinner that was very inexpensive.

On Wednesday we packed for the Inca trail in the morning and then went for a walk through the centre of Cusco and watched a demonstration in front of the Palace of Justice (we think to do with the upcoming elections). In the afternoon we took a "City Tour" with a different company as we did not want the same guide again. Unfortunately we got a clone.

The "City Tour" includes the Cathedral and several Inca sights but it is run in a bizarre fashion. Every company in Cusco offers a city tour that leaves at 2PM and goes to 6PM. You cannot do it at any other time. They also go in the same order so you are constantly in a crowd. It appears to be setup like this for the convenience of the street hawkers outside each site - we couldn´t get a better rationale from anyone. The tour was well worth doing and there is certainly a lot to Inca history and culture. However, in our opinion it is being hyped too much and some of the stuff the guide was talking about wasn´t that believeable.

After the mandatory visit to an Alpaca factory we got back to Cusco just in time for our pre-trail briefing. There we met Marisol our guide for the next 4 days and our 4 travelling companions who would eventually bond into "Team Marisol". Jamie and Darryl come from New Zealand and Magnus and Beate come from Norway. They ranged in age from 25 to 29 so we were the oldies by a fair bit. Initial impressions were good and they proved to be correct. Marisol (23 going on 30) explained what we would be doing over the next 4 days and answered all our questions (we had prepared a list).

After the briefing we decided to have chinese food as it is normally very safe food to eat and we felt like it. Unfortunately, we didn´t twig that there were no chinese in the chinese restaurant. Jeanette spotted that the beef was off but by that time I had eaten a bit. I was a little sick during the night and a bit slow in the morning but nothing major. A lucky escape I think.

Bright and early (4:30 AM rise) the next morning our Inca Trail adventure began.

We got back from our four day hike late last night, and got up this morning at 4:30 to catch our flight to Quito via Lima. We are currently in the lounge at Lima airport, but have to catch a plane shortly.
The brief summary is.... fantastic! We didn´t have any real problems with the altitude, and all the walking up the stairs at work over the last two months must have paid some dividends. We had a fair amount of rain, but fortunately very little while we were walking.
We have an overnight stop tonight in Quito and fly out to Galapagos first thing (another 4:30am start) tomorrow morning.
Its hard to believe our holiday is almost half over!
More on the Inca as soon as we have a couple of hours and access to Internet.

After the total relaxation of Patagonia, we had to say goodbye. Yesterday we had a minivan ride starting at 630am to Punta Arenas of 7 hours - the first 120km or so to Puerto Natales is all still unpaved.

Then an airport stay of 3 hours, where we tried again to report our stolen luggage. They told us we must make the report in Santiago. We flew to Santiago via Puerto Montt, all up 4 hours or so of flying. The luggage office was closed and they told us we must make the report in Lima.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel - very nice and a really good price with corporate discount. This morning at 610am we got a taxi back to the airport and flew here to Lima. We went to report our stolen luggage. You guessed it - they said we must make a report in Santiago! We dug in at this stage, and have filled in a piece of paper which has been faxed to Santiago.

We are about to leave now to go to Cuzco. We have both experimented with the altitude medicine we got from the Travel Doctor, and we don´t think it agrees with either of us - we´ll let you know how we get on with altitude sickness if any.

About to start Part 2 of our adventures - the Inca Trail!

The next morning once again times were changed, but at 9am we met our guide for the next two days, Laura, and our driver Luis.

Laura is a most amazing girl. She is an astrophysicist from Tenerife who has travelled the world. She fell in love with the park, and then afterwards fell in love with a man from the park. She spoke perfect English and although this is her first season working in the park, she is an encyclopaedia of flora, fauna, geology, history, glaciers, explorers, and truly adores everything that she spoke of. For two days it was just us and her, and it was a most amazing experience.

On the first day we took a walk on the eastern side of the park to Laguna Verde. The original plan was for the walk to be one way for four hours, with a two hour drive home, but we decided to walk to a lake about three hours in, then walk back for a shorter drive. We learned so much that day about all the unique flora of the park, and had a magnificent view from the first hill we climbed (about 500 metres fairly steep) over the whole park.

EDIT: I just wanted to add in two things.
The first is that Laura taught us the term ¨onion stop¨ which means remove a layer of clothing! With the highly changeable weather in the park, the fact that you are climbing sometimes, and other times walking in forest glades, we had a lot of ¨onion stops¨.

The second is the common names of some of the flora in the park were just beautiful. My favourite was a yellow flower shaped just like a clog, which was called ¨shoes of the virgin¨. It was a beautiful flower and a beautiful name. Another was a thimble, and there were golden buttons everywhere!

We then drove to Hosteria Grey and walked on the beach and touched icebergs and saw the Glacier Grey from a ¨mirador¨ (lookout).

ON the following day we started about 8am, and drove to Lake Pehoe where we caught a catamaran across a very windy lake. We walked to Glacier Grey about 11km (not too difficult and very beautiful), and then caught a different boat to cruise in front of the Grey Glacier. We drank a Pisco Sour on the boat, complete with glacial ice (a special drink of the region, and warms you up very well). On this day we experienced true Patagonian winds, and sometimes felt as though we were about to become condors and fly off the hills we were on!

Overall Patagonia was fantastic. It is very unspoilt, and hopefully will remain that way. As Laura says, it is a unique place in the world, and it will be hard to beat.

Things started going really well today.

We were picked up at 530am by Guide Carlos and driver in the most clapped-out van you could imagine. Zero suspension, and we mean zero. There were two other couples with us - Marta and Xavier from Spain, and Chiann and Lebna from NYC. We drove for about 90 minutes over dreadful roads to the start of the walk, but it was all worth it with the view that we had of the Paine mountains and the Towers on the way. We also saw many Guanacos and native hares.

Our walk was 9 km each way. We arrived after about 3 hours 50 minutes at 11am. We were very lucky as shortly after that it became cloudy, and I don´t think the rest of the walkers that day would have had a very good view at all. It was a fantastic walk, fairly steep at the beginning, and the last hour was climbing up boulders. You can´t see the view at the top until the second you arrive, and it literally takes your breath away! We had lunch at the top, and contemplated the descent. It turned out to be relatively easy.

Mostly I had managed to make my toilet stops fairly discreetly in the bush. Other than one time when I realised that the other side of the bush was open to the traffic, and so for a few moments I became the tourist attraction for a group of Germans coming the other way. Carlos obviously did not realise that I had been making my own toilet stops - on the way home in the van when we stopped at some toilets, he asked me if I needed to go. I said no, and the look on his face when he said ¨Are you SURE?¨ had to be seen to be believed. I think I will go down in his history as the girl who could drink 3 litres of water and didn´t need a wee for 12 hours!

What a fantastic day! Dinner at the Hosteria was simple family fare and just the right end to the day.

Today was yet another travelling day, to the Torres del Paine National Park. What a long way from anywhere this place is, but that is one of its attractions as you will hear.

Our day started early. We arrived at the Puerto Natales pier and climbed aboard a ferry to travel for four hours or so to the Balmaceda and Serrano glaciers. It was our first true glimpse of the effects of global warming on the planet. The Balmaceda Glacier is receding every year. Fifteen years ago it met the lake - now it is at least 50 metres back.

The scenery was magnificent, and we got our first glimpses of the Condor (the largest birds on the planet) and also saw some sea lion families.

After a short walk to the Serrano glacier (and some beautiful icebergs) we had lunch, and then spent two hours on a zodiac travelling up the Rio Serrano. Then we were hustled out of that zodiac at the waterfall, clambered up and down a hill, and into another zodiac which took us to our Hosteria.

Magically our two bags had arrived by car (Whew!) when we arrived.

Hosteria Tyndall is fairly small. There are no phones other than at the main desk. There is no internet, mobile coverage or other signs of the 21st century, and everyone, staff and tourists alike, seemed very relaxed. It was going to be a great few days.

Our pre-planned package included three days of guided day walks in the park.In true South American style, the promised phone call from the ¨tour guide¨ did not come....

Don´t worry! (a favourite saying of the South Americans - it often means, go away and stop troubling me). At 930PM we received a call from Punta Arenas, saying a guide would be coming at 5am the next morning! So we decided to call it an early night ready for the start. At 1030pm the guide came to the door and knocked. I hopped up, and answered the door with a towel wrapped around me - I guess we got to know each other a bit! Change of plan - we would be picked up at 530am the next morning. Well, I was not so sure that waking me up to give me another half hours sleep in the morning was so good, but what the heck - we were on holidays!!

Today was a day of travel and some new challenges in our game of Race Around the World.

We had a pretty good 6 hour public bus trip. The longest part was going through emigration and immigration between Argentina and Chile, taking about 2 hours all up. (note to selves - travelling in groups creates its own time delays).

Our ¨World Expeditions¨ tour was supposed to include 2 days in Argentina and 5 days in Chile, but there was no-one to meet us at the bus. Not a major drama, but a little irritating. After getting a taxi to our hotel, we set about finding Turismo Viente Sur, the local company for World Exp. It took us an hour walking around the streets to find them, as the address we had turned out to be an internet cafe that had never heard of TVS. Eventually we got an address (White Pages doesn´t seem to exist here either) from a local, and found them. They had not heard of us! Fabulous.

Luckily the manager there, Eric, got organised, and tracked us down using the Punta Arenas office, and after a couple of hours we had an itinerary and the essential Vouchers. We managed to buy more chargers and adapters that we would need. Puerto Natales is more like Batemans Bay, with more regular stores to purchase electrical items from.

EDIT: Forgot to mention we had one more ¨challenge¨, regarding money. We arrived in Puerto Natales about 5PM, and were leaving first thing in the morning. We were told we would need Chilean Pesos (which actually turned out to be mostly untrue, but that´s another story), so we decided to find an ATM. First challenge was that the ATM was secured and you needed your ATM card to get into the secure room. Ours did not work, so we waited until someone would let us in. Then trying to read the menu in Spanish was a bit tricky, and finally our St George card did not work. Fortunately we had thought to travel with a backup Commonwealth card and that did work (but it took us a while to think of it!) We would finally discover that our St George card worked fine in Peru - its still a mystery why not in Patagonia!

We had a really good seafood dinner with views of the lake, and decided that these challenges were just all part of the game!

After arriving in El Calafate and discovering that our 5 day ¨comprehensively organised¨ tour was not, we found the Eurotour office (the local version of World Expeditions) and got organised.

The day started well with a phone call from LAN saying our luggage was on the plane to El Calafate and would arrive at 1PM. We organised with Eurotour that they would pick up the bags from the airport, and headed off for a day tour to the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Perito Moreno was everything we had hoped for. Vast, awe-inspiring, large pieces of the glacier crashing into the lake below. We went on a boat trip to get closer to the glacier, and learned that the boat used to go closer, but after 32 people died between 1968 and 1988 they realised that they should stay a bit further away.

At 5 o´clock ish we arrived to our hotel, but no bags in sight. Moderate panic, but the plane had been delayed, and after chasing up, reminding Eurotour that they were helping us, the bags at last arrived. YAY!

Pat was keen to charge the batteries after all the photos from the day, so we unlocked our bags (which had been locked with secure locks) to find....... battery chargers, camera, phone chargerrs, electricity adapters, cables and so on...in fact everything electronic...had been stolen from our luggage! Not happy!

Travel Unassistance provided by the insurance company told us all sorts of rubbish, and told us that the airline would need to write a letter to say that they agreed that items were stolen! As it had come through Qantas, LAN, Aerolineas Argentinas, that would be an interesting debate!

We did manage to buy some adapters (our Spanish words were increasing to Cargador, adaptador) and so on, which was challenging enough on New Year´s Day in El Calafate (think Jindabyne without the lake).

We went to bed with whisky and chocolate feeling a little despondent, but determined not to let it beat us!

Our first few days, it seemed to us we had landed in a game of Race Around the World, with challenges set us every day, but things have gradually improved! We are currently in Lima airport waiting for our connection to Cuzco, and are going to give you some news of what we have been doing over the past few days.

We will do it in a few posts. Unfortunately we can´t transfer any pictures (you´ll hear why shortly.)

Our flight was pretty good with nearly everything going to plan.

The only problem was that while we were relaxing in Qantas Club, our luggage was apparently having a few too many vinos in Luggage Club, and missed the flight from Sydney, so we had a night in Buenos Aires and then have flown to El Calafate without anything other than our toothbrushes.
As it is New Years Day (or maybe just South America), we have had great difficulty getting any information, and are justhoping that our luggage arrives tomorrow so that we can travel on to Puerto Natales. In the meantime we have bought some nice touristy Tshirts and some nice Argentinian underwear so that we have finally been able to get on some clean clothes! Apart from that, all is well. We are going on the Glacier tour tomorrow, and hoping for good weather (no wet weather gear of course). I have discovered that I CAN actually survive without makeup for more than 48 hours. The view crossing the Andes when flying from Santiago to BA was spectacular! Felice ana nuovo, and chow for now!