colchisikms

On August 3rd we decided to do a tour through Cusco’s Sacred Valley. This area included first stopping at a town called Pisac to see its infamous market as well as an Incan citadel called Inca Pisac. These ruins consisted of numerous military (defense), religious, and agricultural stone structures as well as agricultural terraces. The…

Eager to have some downtime to catch up on work and even more to explore Cusco and its surroundings, Colin and I decided to rent an apartment for 2 months just a 10 minute cab ride from the main square. This would be our home base until the beginning of September. A couple of the…

The 15th of July was one of the main days of a festival I really wanted to attend called the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen. This festival takes place every year in a town a few hours away from Cusco called Paucartambo. I had arranged the day before with a tour agency to go…

Our tour company, Peru Treks, had told us to come to Cusco two days early to acclimatize to the altitude and to pay, of course. Coming from the altiplano of Bolivia meant we were as acclimatized as we were going to get, and so we felt as ready as we were going to be for…

The trip from La Paz to our final city Copacabana was a nice trip whilst the daylight hours lasted. We even got to see Lake Titicaca, which is one of the highest lakes in the world at 3812 meters above sea level. Once the sun went down, for some reason, the driver started driving like…

On the 30th June we boldly headed off to a small town in Northern Bolivia called Rurrenabaque (or Rurre for short – pronounced roo-ray). Rurre is a capital of a municipality but with just 8000 or so residents. It is located on the Beni river which lends it’s name to the entire Amazon region of…

I decided to take a (quite long) daytrip from La Paz to Oruro. I left before 7:00 am in the morning because I knew it would take 4 hours to get to Oruro. Because of the construction on the road between the two cities it took more than 5 hours – a very long and…

On June 24th we entered La Paz (which seemed to take forever) around nearly midnight. We ended up settling for the nearest hotel to the bus station, pretty cheap ($130 Bolivianos) but pretty far away from the main ‘action’ of La Paz called Tambo de Oro. The next morning we headed out with a ton…

June 21st is the Aymara New Year, which I decided to attend. The Aymara are one of the 38 ethnic groups that make up Bolivia, and the current president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is said to be part Aymara himself. The Aymara people make up more than 25% of Bolivia’s population, and in more recent…

Bolivia’s fourth largest city was a move back up towards the high Andes for us after spending so long in the Eastern lowlands around Santa Cruz. At 2558 meters above sea level, Cochabamba was also known as The Garden City due to its year-round clement weather. We were on a bit of a deadline to…