Southern Peru

We went to the Gallapagos... of the poors ! Islas Ballestas are simply amazing !
Many birds and seagulls... pinguins... sealions... all this on the same island covered by guano. Every 7 years people come here to collect 6000 tons of this natural fertilizer. Last time was about 4 years ago, so you can figure out the smell around there !



There was still a "few" miles through the desert before our next stop in Arequipa. Beautiful colonial city with an amazing Plaza de Armas and a impressive monastery. The same evening we looked for a place to hide in the mountains and camped once again in our car surrounded by lamas at altitude 4300m. When we woke up it was freezing ; IN the car tempeature was 3C (around 35F?) !



Matthieu was a little bit sick because of the altitude but it got better going down towards Cusco, from where we organized our trip to the Machu Picchu.

Because you need to book the tour more than a month in advance we could not do the Inca Trail we had to find another way. The other option was to take a train from Cusco (there is no roads at all, not even a dirty bumpy one). If you plan to go there you need to know that from Cusco the cheapest alternative is $150 ($96 for the train, $12 for the bus from the train station to the Machu Picchu entrance and $40 for the Machu Picchu entrance itself). If you want to make some savings, you can take a bus to km82 and then walk (not quite allowed but some Peruvians do it) on the train rails until... km111.5 ! But if you want to do this round trip you need to wear VERY good shoes, as I can tell you that 20miles of big train track stones are very painful in Pumas'!



But no matter what it is really worth it ! You can look at our pictures but they won't show you half the magic of this site.



We finally left Peru on March 10, crossing the border just before they would close (we nearly got stuck between Peru and Bolivia ; luckily Bolivian officers re-opened immigration just for us)... See you in a few days !

Northern Peru

After the Ecuatorian border the road goes south between the Ocean and the Andeans, crossing the desert. Sometime people managed to take over the sand and cultivate rice and sugar cane thanks to some little rivers. It is crazy to see miles of sand and then suddendly an oasis with plenty of water (you need a lot to grow rice).



We continued our ruins visit in Chan Chan, pre-Inca civilisation who used the mud to build their temples.



We drove into Lima's trafic without really enjoying it... we are happy to be back into the nature and are planning a nice visit of a small Guano producer island tomorrow.



The sun is bright but it does not feel that warm... which is perfect for our nights!