from Salta to Huaraz in Peru

Welcome back, lets try to up date a bit our story.

From Salta we left for small village called Purmamarca - half way from Salta and the boarder with Bolivia. It is known from the mountain of 7 colors which is amazing indeed. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white - which makes already 8 for me . But all of them had whole bunch of different shadows which makes it even more colorful. Really amazing place, check out pics when will upload them :) 

Later on we crossed the border with Bolivia (after visiting Argentinian hospital because Zosia dropped 2,25 liters of coke on her feet thus it hurtled her quite a bit, but all is good).
In Bolivia - 3 day trip in Salar de Uyuni which is salt desert. Really incredible to see so much of salt all around you, sleep in entire hostel made of salt with beds, chairs, everything as well. If your food is not salty enough - just pick some from the table and you´re fine :) 

On this trip we saw sand desert, stone desert, salt desert (6m of salt underneath you), lagunas with flamingos, laguna colorada (blue, white and red water), green laguna, geysers, active volcano, lamas, nandu, aquas termales. Almost all you can imagine. AMAZING!!!!! The only thing which we missed was caves.

After Salar de Uyuni - quick peak to La Paz - great city although architecture is horrible. But it’s great more considering it’s surroundings and people. It’s  settled on 3400m altitude and is all surrounded by mountains and in the background you can see Andes.

From La Paz we left for Copacabana (second time in this trip ;) by the Titicaca lake. There we spent 3 awesome and lazy days on Isla del Sol . We had our private beach (camped there for free), bonfire, short walk to Inca temple, sleeping, doing some constructions as ancient people and knitting. Generally - resting right in the middle of the trip, right in the middle of huuuuuuge lake of around 58 000 km2 of area.

After that - in Puno  met my friend finally and now second half of the trip starts. Went on an floating islands where native Indians live. Well, now it is so much commercialized, but at least they used to live like that. All is built of kind of cane - an island, boats, hoses, they use it for fire and even they eat one part of it as a remedy for cold.

After Puno – quick jump to Cuzco which was the bas for Machu Picchu hike. One of world’s miracles…. Sweeet! So…. We took the train (horribly expensive) to Aquas calientes where slept one night. From there, 5am (which means 4am we woke up, huh – proud of ourselves) we started hiking all the way up to Machu Picchu. On the way I started taking pictures as my goodbye pics since I was pretty sure I will die on that way. It is actually a jungle all around you – thus very wet and quite warm – and you go non stop by stairs…. Actually, I’m pretty sure we have beaten our life records of walking up the number of stairs. We have been walking up and down – seriously non stop – for 9h.

We’ve hit Machu Picchu entrance as one of the first and we’ve got the stamp which lets you to enter Wayna Picchu which is a mountain on the side of ancient city (only 400 people is allowed per day). From there is the most beautiful view of the entire complex. But that mean about 45min more of hiking. But it was definitely WORTH IT!!!!!! Such an amazing view!!!!!! Can’t describe it.

From there, stupid me and Zosia, as we were missing caves in our trip so far, wanted to see one which was supposed to be close. But after that, we told Stefan that if, by any chance, we will ever wanna  see any other cave – he is allowed to kick us and remind of that hike… It was horrible and what’s more irritating the cave wasn’t impressive. Anyways, after that somehow we managed to get back to Cuzco, about 1am and go to sleep. It was sooooooo sweet after 20h of activity.

In Cuzco we had quite lazy day, visited amazing church Iglesia de la Compaña – said to be most beautiful church in Peru. But main altar and the siode one as well, where really so amazing and so detailed. It is from baroque epoc and really impressive. Of course all in gold. From Cuzco - 20h of horrible journey to Lima. The road was very narrow and very very very curly which means we couldn’t sleep properly on a bus since we have been moving from left to right all around the  seat hitting all possible things around us. Anyways, we made it and there in Lima one night we just cooked and had some rest and went to sleep. Second day quite slept in… well, it happens and after that me and Zosia went for a bit to the city center, walked around,wrote some postcards but did not send them since on Sundays post office happened to be closed. Surprising, ey? ;) later on quick dinner, church and get on the bus again! This time the bus was awesome, comfy, road straight and smooth and we’ve got blankets even! Sweet!

As a result of that journey we arrived to Huaraz which is a capital of Peruvian trekking, settled on 3100m of altitude with beautiful view of Cordiliera Blanca…. Such a nice place to chill out in the sun. Great!!!!

Tomorrow, depending on Zosia’s feeling since she is not well, we’ll go for 2-3 day trek to Cordiliera Blanca.

Btw. we have been getting some food for that trip as a result of we ended up buying 45 buns for breakfasts. Well, what can I say... hihihi, funny times!