Sao Paulo

Apologies for not updating the blog recently. Since arriving in Brazil last week, we’ve had limited access to internet.

When we touched down in Sao Paulo, it reminded us of being back in Dublin. Grey overcast skies, about 20 degrees C, and Marcel meeting us at the airport (Kadi’s old housemate from Dublin who has now moved back home to Brazil).

The first day or so in Sao Paulo was great, going to a few parties with local Brazilian people (including a Samba party), trying any of the fantastic local restaurants, and living it up in Marcel’s lovely apartment. But then Conor’s stomach decided not to cooperate anymore and he pretty much stayed in bed sick for the next 4 days trying various different drugs but to no avail.

We eventually left Sao Paulo a few days later than planned. Special thanks to Marcel and his mother Elza for looking after us so well in Sao Paulo.

It was nice to see another city that is not on the typical tourist’s checklist because you generally get a different experience from the other touristy places you might ordinarily visit (we probably would not have gone there except that we knew Marcel). For a start, we were meeting local Brazilians who speak the lingo and know the best places to go. You get to see some of the local hotspots that don’t even make it into the guidebooks (the place where Brazil declared its independence from Portugal, for example). Sao Paulo itself is not an insignificant city. It is very cosmopolitan! With its suburbs, it has a population of 20 million people...yes, 20 million people! With that brings a lot of poverty and crime, and on the night before we left, Marcel took us on a drive through some of the dodgier parts of the city (obviously not into the downright crazy places). It was an interesting sight, and not a place you’d like to walk along.

If you want to watch very good movies on the crime and drug-wars in Brazil, then download “The City of God (2002)” and “The Elite Squad (2007)”. They’re both in Portuguese so you’ll need to download appropriate subtitles aswell. They’re both set in Rio de Janeiro.....our next destination.

Leaving Peru

We’ve now said goodbye to Fenton and Angela and have started our journey to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We have to say that after 2 weeks in the country, we thoroughly enjoyed our time here. Peru really has a lot to offer such as ancient historical sites, numerous trekking opportunities, fantastic scenery, great food, jungle excursions, cosy little country towns, as well as some lovely people. There are also many adventure activities on offer in various places like white-water rafting, mountain-biking, sand boarding and bungee jumping which unfortunately we never got a chance to try. If anyone was considering a trip here, we would highly recommend it! We are sorry to leave Peru, but at the same time, looking forward to Brazil, and meeting Marcel (Kadi’s old housemate from Dublin).

The Nasca Lines

So about 2000 years ago these Nasca people decided to make big drawings into the sand in the desert. The lines were drawn by basically clearing stones out of the sand and they used these lines to form massive shapes or objects (such as a dog, a whale, a monkey, a spider, a tree, etc). These mysterious desert lines were known for quite some time, but it was only in the 1920’s, when commercial airliners began to fly overhead, that they noticed the lines actually formed different shapes and pictures. We took a 30 minute flight over them and got a great view of them (for all you skydivers, we flew in a Cessna 206 WITH SEATS AND A DOOR!)

Above is a photo of a large man drawn into a mountain (waving his hand saying "hello").

A monkey!

A spider in the sand (left), and (right) a bus shelter with a spider symbol recreated. These images are recreated all over the town.

Click on small photos to enlarge

By the way, in case you didn't know, you can click on small photos to enlarge them. (Only seems to work the small photos.)

Colca Canyon – The deepest* canyon in the world

We just spent 3 days with Fenton, hiking down into and then up out of Colca Canyon. It is apparently the deepest canyon in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon (but the canyon next door is deeper).

Before any hiking, we stopped off at a viewing point for Andean Condors, which are the largest flying birds in the world. They have a 3m wingspan, and are 1m in height when standing. Every morning, they catch thermals rising out of the canyon and use this to lift them out. Very impressive to watch them glide just a few metres over our heads....making a swoosh sound like a parachute as they pass by.

The hiking itself was easy enough when spread over 3 days (with just 3-4 hours per day). Great scenery as you’d expect. The cool thing about the canyon is the little villages down at the bottom. They have no roads down to them and the only way to get to them is by hiking (or by mule if you’re a loser).

On the picture below left, those white streaks in the opposite side of the valley are the little villages (with no roads down to them).

* As our guide explained: “Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the world....well, there’s one nearby that’s about 150m deeper, but Colca Canyon is more famous so it’s the deepest.” Go figure!

Machu Picchu

Apologies for lack of updates recently...we've been out of coverage a bit.

After the jungle, we returned to Cusco and met our friends from Ireland, Fenton and Angela, and together made our way up to Machu Picchu by train.

Machu Picchu is amazing. It is another of the New Seven Wonders of the World and is apparently South America’s number 1 tourist attraction. Basically, it is an abandoned ancient Inca city that is very well preserved (since it was never found by the Spanish). It is not just a ruin of one old castle/temple/building, it is a full proper city with all the streets, guesthouses, residential houses, temples, observatory, etc. Apart from a few fallen walls (and roofs) the city is practically entirely as it was when it was deserted over 500 years ago. It was only discovered relatively recently – in 1911. In terms of its size, it would only be a small town in today’s terms with only 500-750 people living there, but it was regarded as a city back in its day.

What is impressive about Machu Picchu is that it is nestled up high in the Andes, on top of very steep mountainside, with absolutely terrific views in all directions. The site includes another peak (on top of the mountain) called Wayna Picchu which involved a 1 hour hike up very steep steps. When we made this hike, we were rewarded by even more fantastic views – definitely the highlight of the visit. It was especially a privilege to climb Wayna Picchu as only the first 400 people in are allowed to climb it. Considering that there are 3,000 to 5,000 visitors a day, this involved us queuing for the bus from 5am and even then we were 345 on the list. To celebrate conquering Wayna Picchu, we played a game of “extreme frisbee” on the rocks at the very top.

Into the Jungle

We just spent 4 days in the Amazon Rainforest at an “ecolodge” called the Explorer’s Inn in the Tambopata National Reserve. Even though the place was fairly remote (it was about 3 hours by boat up a river into the jungle) and had practically no electricity, we were impressed with the high level of food and service available. On one night, we went camping a further 3 hours up river and there were 4 members of staff serving just us two (one boat driver, one guide, one chef and another support guy). As well as our own tent (which they erected for us) they had effectively built a separate kitchen and dining room tent (with proper table and chairs) as well as put candles throughout....all just for us. Very unreal.


It was all good but very hot and sticky. Humidity was apparently close to 100%. Don’t know what that means but it’s the maximum (when we came back, we had to wash ALL our clothes...even the ones we didn’t wear, because they were all damp).


When we weren’t being served and looked after, we spent the remaining time either on hikes with our guide, or relaxing. During the 4 days, we got to see a good amount of wild animals.

No sooner had we stepped off the boat on arrival, than we saw monkeys in the tree above us. We saw a number more over the next few days and Kadi even got to feed one. As well as monkeys, we saw....

Snakes! A tarantula! Loads of Macaws (like a big parrot). Caimans (a type of crocodile). Capibaras (giant guinea pigs). Toucan (the bird from the old Guinness ads). A herd of jungle pigs (sorry no photo). “Stinky bird”. Giant sea otters. Turtles. Loads of big colourful butterflies. Plenty of big insects and frogs. Jungle turkey and chicken. We never saw any Piranhas although they were lurking in a nearby lake that we took a boat ride on.

This part of the planet is very diversified and as well as varied animals, birds and insects, there are also a huge number of interesting plants around. The bark of one tree smelled like garlic, and another smelled like menthol (it was actually a menthol tree). Some of the plants are used as natural remedies (to treat snake bites for example) and we tasted some leaves that had the effect of numbing our mouths like a dentist injection....good for tooth aches apparently. We also saw some glow-in-the-dark fungus (real cool)!

Oh....and hi to the 3 Canadians: Jason, Bill and Paul. It was nice meeting you guys and sorry we couldn't spend more time with you.

Overall, it was a great experience. Love the jungle :)

Into the Southern Hemisphere!

So we’ve now left Jamaica and the Northern Hemisphere and entered Peru and the Southern Hemisphere. It was quite a long night with our journey broken up into 3 flights. The first stop was into Panama City. Although it was dark and we never got to see the Panama Canal, from the plane we did see the lights of a LOAD of ships out in the water waiting their turn to go through the canal. Quite impressive.

When we finally arrived in Lima (our second stop), Conor naturally rushed off to check the most important thing....does the water in the toilet swirl the other way down here? Well, we can disappointingly conclude from our experiments to date that NO, it doesn’t! It still seems to go counter clockwise – the same as we observed from up north. Perhaps it is more to do with the toilet design than the coriolis effect from the spinning of the Earth. We’ll keep observing...

On a side note, there were plenty of people in the airport wearing face masks, presumably as some protection against the swine flu. We thought it was quite funny to cough sickly whenever these people passed by :)

Our final flight brought us to Cusco, and our initial impressions were...wow, this is a bit chilly! Having spent the last few weeks in the tropical sunshine of Jamaica, Cuba and Mexico, it was a while since we needed long sleeves or socks! But Cusco is actually 11,oooft / 3,500m up in the mountains (one of the highest cities on the planet). This means that the nights and mornings can be fairly cold, but during the day when the sun is up, it is actually quite hot. We also noticed fairly quickly the effects of the thinner air up here. You can feel quite breathless and a bit dizzy at times from only mildly strenuous tasks. Apparently takes a day or two to adjust.

Our reasons for coming to Cusco, are to visit the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu and also to visit the Amazon rainforest. So tomorrow, we’ll set off for a 4 day excursion into the Amazon jungle (this inevitably means we’ll be out of contact until next Monday/Tuesday). We’ll update you on how we get on when we come back. We also plan to meet our friend from Ireland, Fenton, here next week, so looking forward to that.

Oh yeah....and for those who may not know, they actually eat guinea pigs here in Peru, and we got a glimpse of our first specimen on a roadside stall near our hostel....

North East Jamaica

We rented a car with Ena and spent a few days up on the North East corner of the island in a sleepy little fishing village called Port Antonio. We didn’t spend much time there but managed to squeeze in swimming in two waterfalls and a rafting trip down 8 miles of the Rio Grande River. While the rafting started out nice and sunny, it’s getting into the wet season here in Jamaica so we soon found ourselves in a torrential downpour, sheltering under banana trees at the side of the river! They also have a beautiful lagoon (known as the "World Famous Blue Lagoon") where several movies have been shot....apparently.

Some photos....(click to enlarge)