Monday 30 May 2011

Bogota - Botero, Beer and Baddies

We arrived in Bogota late at night and caught a howling taxi through the empty streets of the city to our hostel, Casa Platypus, in the old centre of town, La Candeleria.

Once we had showered we walked outside to have a look around. The streets were completely deserted (it was a Monday night) but we came across a dark, narrow drinking den through a concrete door, filled with an interesting bunch of Colombians knocking back Aguila after Aguila – the cheapest beer in town. The room had blue walls, a guitar-shaped juke box, odd pieces of art and an old organ. Daggy cool.


Favourite drinking spot - blue walls, bench seats, odd mural, guitar shaped jukebox

Bogota is the third highest capital city in the world (after La Paz and Quito) and although the rest of Colombia is hot and tropical, Bogota is cold and wet. Miserable wet. We were told that it has been overcast and rainy every day for the past year, and our experience there was no different.

On our first day we decided to check out the old quarter – but about 5 minutes into our foray it started pouring. The city was bustling with people, and within about 2 minutes the streets and pathways became torrential streams of water. Everyone squeezed themselves into crevices and sheltered areas along the sides of the roads, and watched as brave people, or people who just had somewhere to be, took running leaps across the roads which had become rivers. So many wet feet.

After the downpour, we walked to Plaza Bolivar, the centre of the city, surrounded by important buildings – the usual suspects: a church or two, miscellaneous government buildings, the Supreme Court etc. In the centre was a statue of Simon Bolivar on a horse, completely covered in graffiti – political slogans and the like.

Rain in Plaza Bolivar

The Supreme Court was an ugly monster of a building. It was rebuilt in the late 90s after a siege in the 80’s in which a group called M-19 stormed the building and took all the Supreme Court judges as well as hundreds of others hostage. It was claimed that Pablo Escobar paid the group to burn files relating to pending extradition charges against him. After a stand off lasting weeks, the army was sent in. In the process, all of the judges and the staff of the Supreme Court were killed (wow) and the building was burnt to the ground. The burnt ruins remained sitting in the same position for the next 7 or so years as the violence continued in the city.

We stopped for a traditional Colombian snack at a famous sweet shop called La Puerta Falsa. We had a huge tamale and hot chocolate with cheese – you are actually supposed to dip the cheese in the milk – and it works pretty well!

Cheese and hot chocolate

In the evening, we went on what became a bit of a bar-hopping-expedition of La Candeleria:
  • We started with 2 for 1 mojitos at a little Thai place – serving the only vegetables we have eaten in weeks;
  • Moved onto a grungy little coffee shop serving hot aguadiente (a Colombian spirit – literally ‘firewater’) tea – I had one mixed with passionfruit – super strong;
  • Went to a blue-lit drinking hall filled with office workers knocking back huge piles of beers after work (you keep bottles at your table and they are counted when you leave); and
  • ended at our fave little tavern from the first night.


Picture in a bar

Happy

Other Bogota highlights:
  • Danger…? Umm… Lonely Planet says Bogota and is a safe place to travel and we felt pretty comfortable strolling around on our first couple of days. However, 2 things:
    • First, we met up with a friend for dinner who has been living in Bogota for a few months. He started out living in an apartment in the centre of La Candeleria but had since moved to a place in a different area. The reason why - in the course of a few weeks, the apartment security guard was kidnapped and murdered and another person was stabbed on the pavement outside the building. Fair enough.
Dinner with Jonathan at Wok
    • Second, we met an American writer, Mark, at breakfast one morning. He was from Chicago but had lived in Bogota in 1992 to 1993 when things were “unbelievably bad” (as he described). During that time, he had lived on the same street as we were staying and said that if you went walking down our street at night during that time, there was a pretty good chance (50-50) that you would get robbed or worse. While he admitted things had improved in leaps and bounds since then, he said that he had received multiple warnings from locals when walking around the area the night before that he should NOT be there. 
    • After receiving these 2 pieces of information within 12 hours, we were a little more cautious about our late night walkings.
  • Botero museum – free, and full of paintings and sculptures of rolley-polley people and things. Botero, who is still alive and painting, is a legend throughout Colombia. Prints and figurines of his plump people are available everywhere.

Botero Museum



Feeling a bit pale

Even the cake is fat
  • Birthday – sadly, we were feeling a little unwell for my birthday but still managed to have a beautiful dinner out in Zona Rosa – although we struggled to finish the bottle of wine.

  • Leon Ferrari exhibition – a political modern artist.


Leon Ferrari - cool, hangy thing ... meaning ?

An arty take on architectural plans


  • Explorations of Zona Rosa – the rich area of town, complete with some very cool shopping centres.
  • More explorations of La Candeleria.


Police escort for kids on excursion

La Candeleria 

La Candeleria

  • Woops - after 4 days we went to catch what we thought was a 8 hour bus to Medellin . However, the highway to Medellin was closed due to bad flooding and landslides. It was a 14 hour journey on back streets.

Grey excited for the '9' hour bus trip ...

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Confirmed: Lima is cool

We returned to Lima on a 22 hour bus at the end of our stint in Peru. Thanks to my dodgy-plane-ticket-booking skills, we had 4 (instead of 2) days to blow before our flight to Colombia.

Highlights:
  • Moustache creativity;
First it was wide...

...and then it got skinnier
  • Sitting in traffic in dodgy cabs with no floors - actually really funny - Limenos are amazingly proficient users of the car horn;
 
Grey started using a seatbelt for the first time in 6 months
  • The sun in Lima is always covered by smog - not so much a highlight, but I won a bet with Grey because he was convinced that it was moon (?!);
 
  • Exploring the Mercado Central, a slightly rundown, unsafe building (we kept our eyes on the fire exits) filled with everything you can possibly think of;
 
Market kitten

Mariscos
Baby goats
  • Explorations of Chinatown, including yum-cha Peruvian style and poker machines;
 
It took soooo long to order this, Spa-nese = impossible


  • Funny night out in the Barranco area where a cute, quaint little old man with a polaroid camera laughed endlessly at the failure of my face to develop ANY colour in his picture;

In a cute drinking den with polaroid man
Laughing at my face


  • Cocktails at Chili's - my dream come true after watching The Office (slight let down in retrospect);
 
Margarita 'Presidente'
  • Souvenir shopping - we're getting to the end and there is room in our bags;
 
We bought this huge 3 panelled oil painting for about $130

  • The seaside of Miraflores and other Miraflores wanderings;
Wall art

  • Mini-poker;

  • Jockey Club Shopping Centre - ridiculously classy, huge shopping centre, completely out of place in a city where the average person makes just $350 US a month;
  • Pinkberry;
Heaven on Earth, again

Sunday 22 May 2011

Macchu Picchu (BIG TICK)

We arrived at Macchu Picchu early (around 6am) to find the entire site shrouded in fog and pretty much invisible. We hired a lovely guide outside the park entrance who showed us around the area for 2 hours for about $20AUD, and whom Grey constantly questioned, following his readings of Hugh Thompson, John Hemming and Hiram Biggam. His name was Rhider and he spoke Spanish, Quechuan, English, French and German. Amazing.

When the fog cleared, it was a great site. At the risk of sounding uncultured, I really liked seeing the llamas, which were brought up to the top of the mountain to keep the grass short! It was also interesting to see that a huge proportion of the site remains covered in jungle – unusual for a site of such status… Rhider said that although Macchu Picchu makes a lot from ticket sales etc, the money is collected by the federal, rather than the district, government. Therefore, all of the proceeds get pilfered away in Lima before they can be reinvested in the site itself. 

It was obvious from listening to Rhider and the many tour groups who walked past us that Macchu Picchu is self-promoted as a highly spiritual place, however it was actually just a winter holiday resort one of the Inca Emperors which fell into disuse after his death. 

Also interesting is the fact that there is a stone quarry up the top of the mountain! Convenient!

I bought a cool Macchu Picchu hat

Ta-dahh... our first (non) glimpse of the site

A ceremonial area in the town where the mummies of young girls were found

An unexplained, mysterious wall protuberance 

Part of a temple wall subsiding into soft ground

Crop terraces, we counted 48 in this area

Terraces with llama

Hours later when the fog cleared we finally got a shot


Aguas Caliente – THE WORST

Aguas Caliente (hot water) is a town located at the base of the mountain upon which Macchu Picchu is perched. The town’s entire reason for being is to make as much cash as it can out of tourists passing through on their way to and from Macchu Picchu. It is my most hated place in South America. Avoid it at all costs.

The funnest part of Aguas Caliente was leaving it! We caught a minibus with  12 Inca Trail guides on their way home after 4 days of trekking and stopped for beers and bathrooms 4 times on the 3 hour journey

These are just some of the reasons why I hate it:
  • Despite sitting in a beautiful, green valley, the town is dirty and ugly. Not a moment of thought has been put into the design of the town and every building looks rundown and ramshackle;
  • The town exists soley to capture the tourist dollar – therefore, every single person in the town who is not a tourist is desperate to extract money from you. You cannot take one step without people pushing pamphlets for restaurants, massages and internet cafes into your face. It is stifling;
  • The town has a souvenir store which is approximately the size of the entire town. You have to walk through it with you bags to get into or exit the town. There is no escaping it!
  • Everything is the town is shockingly overpriced – for example, the only way to get up to Macchu Picchu (apart from walking) is a 20 minute bus ride up the bends of a steep cliff.  The cost of the short bus trip is approximately the same as an overnight bus elsewhere in the country;
  • We stayed at a little hotel in the town. When we checked in the receptionist promised that the hotel had hot water. When we went to have showers and found this to be false we were told by the receptionist that the entire town was out of hot water… odd! When we asked the hotel next door if they had hot water and they replied “yes” we returned to our hotel to move out with our things. Miraculously the receptionist immediately fixed the hot water. Rude;

Hell On Earth
  • Internet in internet cafes doesn’t work – but you have to pay for the privilege of coming to this realisation yourself;
  • Our hotel charged us for holding our bags for a few hours after check out time – even our little backpack  - approximately doubling our room cost;
  • The only way in and out of town is a run down old train – and it costs 2 times more than an average hotel room in the country for a 1 hour ride;
  • All of the food and drinks in restaurants are overpriced and really bad;
  • There is a special town “tax” added to each bill (shop/restaurant/drink) – the percentage depends upon what the writer feels like, but it varies between 5 and 15%.
So happy to be leaving! With bus driver Pevy

    Ollantaytambo – small village, big ruins

    ‘Ollanta’ (Oyantah) is a small town in the Sacred Valley. It was the site of a famous battle between the Incas and the Spanish, after the Emperor Manco Inca and his forces were defeated at Sacsahuaman. What makes this battle different however, is that the Incas won the battle of Ollantaytambo, one of the only military victories they could muster against the superior Spanish troops (who were known throughout Europe as the fiercest warriors).

    The town itself is one of the best remaining examples of Inca town planning, as most of the original buildings are intact in the four or so roads which delineate the town centre. What strikes you as you walk through the streets, is that despite being an almost unspoilt relic to Incan history, all the original Inca houses alleys and canals remain fully functioning, with the local inhabitants living and working in houses built for Inca emperors, princes and concubines.

    But the most impressive and striking aspect of Ollanta is the steep terraces come fortress towering above the town on the slopes of the valley wall. The sites’ main purpose was a religious one, but is easy to imagine the dread the Spanish forces would have felt, arriving in the valley and seeing the steep terraces filled with native fighters and recruited archers from the jungle tribes.

    On our first day we walked around the sprawling ruins, which offered up great views of the mountains surrounding the valley as well as a great view down the Urubumba valley towards Aguas Calientes.

    Looking out over The Sacred Valley from terraces at Ollanta


    Ollanta

    Overlooking the town

      We spent the second day hiring a taxi to take us around some of the surrounding sites. We drove through the town of Urubumba and to the salt mines of Maras. The winding roads were pretty scary, especially for Mish – particularly given the condition of our taxi, which was pretty good for Peru, but would in no way, shape or form pass a green slip examination in Oz.

      The actual salt mines were not bad, set against steep hills and again looking out through a small fold onto the valley below.


      Salt mine in the hills near Ollanta


      We also visited the Inca site of Moray, which are huge depressions in the earth, which the Incas’ lined with terraces. It has been shown that the temperature changes dramatically between each level of terracing, and it is thought that this area was used as a kind of laboratory, where the Incas would develop new species of corn, coca and potatoes - you could say it is one of the first genetic engineering laboratories.

      Terraces at Moray

      We mostly ate at one restaurant in Ollanta, which was very nice, Paku Rumy. Most of the restaurants in Ollanta are pretty empty, as the only people who seem to come here are on day trips from Cuzco to see the ruins.

      Other highlights of Ollanta:
      • Seeing local children playing in the canals which run through the streets;
      • (Perhaps disturbingly, given the above point) Seeing a recently slaughtered pig, being gutted and cleaned in the canal which run behind our hostel – this answered my question about whether you could drink the water in the canals...;
      Circle of life
      • Some guy fell off his motorbike on the road to Moray, so we had to help pull the bike back up the hill;

      Motorbike overboard

      • Eating my first Anticuchos, thinly sliced beef on skewers;
      • Crazy festival in the town on our last day;
      • Eating at Hearts CafĂ©, decent food with proceeds going towards charitable initiatives in the Sacred Valley.