Amazon to Andes. Beaches to Bananas

From Brazil to Peru

Stickering the Brazil-Peru border

Border money changers

Cow tuk-tuk in Peru

What a difference a border makes! As we hopped over from Brazil to Peru it was like stepping in to another world, we left Portuganglish behind and tried to remember our Spanish, even the wilds of Brazil’s Acre state were nothing compared to the chaos and vibrance of Peru, suddenly everyone was shouting and waving at the truck as we passed by, the surprise and genuine warmth of the smiles on people faces reminded us that gringos were definitely not a common sight in this Amazonian part of Peru. The new Oceanic Highway had allowed us to make this crossing, an incredible feat of engineering which links the Atlantic to the Pacific at one of the widest points in South America.  You can read more here.

Our destination was Puerto Maldonado, Peru’s gateway to the Amazon jungle. The lashing rain we’d had for the past few weeks had hit Peru too and we arrived in the city to find much of it underwater and we realised that this was NOT a normal rainy season.

We arrived in Puerto Maldonado to find much of it underwater!

Amphibious tuk-tuk

Sadly this put paid to our plans to head to a jungle lodge which had been completely inundated so we spent another night at our hotel with our lovely hosts. This gave us a chance to visit a local zoo to see some of the animals from the area, including a large number of boa constrictors which some of the group liked more than others!

All off on the jungle bus to explore Puerto Maldonado

Tee makes friends at the zoo

Donna

Odyssey's fearless crew - Emma & Si

Hannah doing a snake photoshoot

Maddie

Ellie finds her new pet - the Kinkajou (not pikachu)

Beautiful Ocelot

Sometimes the wildlife visits the town too - crowds "help" to extract a very nervous monkey from the phone wires in town

Before leaving Puerto Maldonado we had the fun task of extracting Ithaca from the fire-ant infested mud (again) the rain and mud was wearing a bit thin by this point!

Local ducks laugh in the face of the flooding (and our very stuck Ithaca)

Extracting Ithaca

Our lovely hosts in Puerto Maldonado

But all safely back on the road again we set off for a mammoth drive which would take us from The Amazon to The Andes and Cusco, ‘The navel of the world’ well as far as the Incas were concerned!
We were back on the Trans-Oceanic Highway, the Peruvian side was quite a feat of road construction and in excellent condition going from marshy jungle through unfeasibly steep passes to the soft sandy deserts beyond. This was brought home to us when we saw the landslides that had washed out big parts of the road, but of course being Peru they didn’t see any need to close it, which is a good thing really or we’d probably still be in Puerto Maldonado!

Open for business...

The change in scenery was huge, as soon as we started to climb the mountains the jungle vanished and was replaced by bleak, green moors and tiny stone houses, it was like stepping back in time seeing how people scratched out a living up here. We climbed and climbed up the hills, the air got thinner and we saw our first llamas, a sure sign we were in Inca territory, at the top of the pass we were not far off 5000m and most of the group felt the effects to one degree or another, from breathlessness to headaches that faded as we acclimatised. Most welcome though was the cold, after months of hot and humid we all had to dig around for our long sleeves and socks as the temperature dropped to 4 degrees.

Change in scenery

Llama farmers

Life at altitude

A loo stop turns into dressing up with the locals

High!

Llamas (or possibly alpacas)

Then, finally, we reached Cusco! 

Cusco - the Naval of the World...

Cusco is a wonderful city, dotted with amazing ruins and wonderful feats of stonemasonry, not to mention the indigenous people in their local dress selling weird and wonderful foods at the market, you could happily spend weeks in Cusco exploring the history, culture, food, architecture and shopping! (The latter was heavily explored by the whole group, Ithaca is now bursting at the seams with alpaca jumpers, hats, ponchos etc) Cusco is a feast for the eyes, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.

Pachacutec, Incan King who conquered vast swathes of South America to create the Inca Empire

Cuy (guinea pig) in Cusco

Hannah, AJ and Joanna at the Chocolate Museum

The shopping begins

Gringos in Cusco

Danielle can't resist the baby animals

Paddy's - the highest Irish Pub in the world

Cusco market

Fusion food

Maddie and Johnny quad biking in the Sacred Valley

Johnny

Ellie & Hannah make the most of being in the continent where chocolate came from, breakfast cake

 We also headed over to the Sacred Valley to visit a series of ‘Inca-redible’ ruins with our wonderful guide who brought the whole story to life. Peruvians are proud of their history and more than a little annoyed at the destruction brought by the Spanish in the 1500s. The Sacred Valley also offered more shopping opportunities at the brilliant markets we found along the way.

Sacred Valley

Lou at Pisac

Pisac

Ollantaytambo

Triona marvels at the Inca stonework

Ollantaytambo - the face in the stone

Ken

Group in Chinchero

Shopping in Chinchero

Maddie went shopping

With our purchases back at the hotel in Cusco

Poncho time

Cusco is nestled in the middle of the Andes so much like our trip in we had an epic journey out again over to the Pacific coast. We went from green moors and dramatic canyons...

Leaving Cusco

Green and pleasant

...over winding steep road...

A "toddler let loose with a crayon" road

...through snow...

Crossing the high plains in the snow

All this adventure is tiring!

AJ gets comfy

Eventually we reached a little bushcamp in the dark as we desperately tried to get the group below 4000m so we didn’t wake up frozen. In the dark it was hard to appreciate the camp but by morning we saw the surrounding hills and tiny villages and realised it was a pretty decent bush camp!

It gets cold up at altitude!

Bushcamp morning

Then we finally started dropping and the change in scenery was probably the most dramatic yet. From damp, cold and green up in the hills to this...

We were heading to the sand dunes of Huacachina but en route we stopped to get a sneak preview of something we would get to experience as we headed back South in a couple of months: The Nazca Lines. They are a series of drawings and geometric shapes out in the desert made by no one knows who and for no conceivable purpose as the people would have had no way of seeing them. We stopped at a view tower to see a tiny corner of them and many people decided they’d love to get a better view on the way back down by plane, they are amazing, mysterious and beautiful things.

A sneak peak at our journey south in Nazca

Extreme selfie

Then to Huacachina, a little rough and tumble oasis in the sand famous on the gringo trail for its sandboarding and sand buggies. We were heading to spend the night out in the vast dunes but not before the mad Peruvian buggy drivers took us out a breakneck speed across the slopes, eliciting more than a few screams from most of the group. By the time we stopped we were giggling like idiots but there was no time to rest as we were all handed a snowboard and told to throw ourselves headfirst down the dunes. We did, it was brilliant!

Team Sandboarding - shortly before AJ on the right slid down the side of the sand dune!

Triona & Kelly

Sandboarding

Ellie takes the plunge

Buggy

Glenn shows us how it's done

Hardcore Extreme Sports Team

Then the drivers put together a wonderful BBQ for us out on the sand gave us free access to the 5 gallon tub of pisco sour (Peru’s local drink) and a great night was had by all before falling asleep under the stars on the soft warm sand.

Sunset on the dunes

Wayne shoots another timelapse

Pisco in the sand

Waking up on the dunes

After a brief roller coaster ride back down on the buggies with the surreal sight of a pack of dogs chasing the buggies across the sand we set off towards Peru’s modern capital Lima. It was a big birthday for Kelly, and Tee and Le had managed to find wonderful chocolate cakes so we stopped at the exotic location of a fuel station in the outskirts of Lima to eat cake and wish Kelly a happy birthday. Also it was to be the last time the whole group were together as Ken had decided to fulfill his life dream and head off to go on a boat on the Amazon.

Le organises Kelly's amazing birthday cake enroute to Lima

Then on to Lima, built by the Spanish as their main port during Colonial times it lacks the history of Cusco, not helped by the constant earthquakes that don’t allow any buildings to get all that old. Lima is often derided by people as not being as interesting as the rest of Peru, however Lima is still a South American city, and by default that makes it a fun place to visit by any standard! Some of the group headed off to The San Francisco Monastery one of the few old buildings left, and their remarkable catacombs stuffed with human bones. On the other end of the scale some headed to the fountain park to see the remarkably tacky but ridiculously amazing water, light and music show. Lima won many people over.

Valentines in Lima

Shanty towns outside Lima

An important birthday spent on the road for Kelly

Bones at the San Francisco Monastery

At the fountain park

Leaving Lima we said goodbye to Ken and a last minute addition of Steve who would rejoin us in Colombia.

A sad goodbye to Ken

Then headed North!

We travelled through kilometres of desert with hot, dusty little towns.

Desert driving

Hannah

Desert towns

Before camping up near the town of Casma in the desert hills for out first campfire dinner in a long time (it’s been too hot for a fire since Northern Argentina!)

Bushcamp near Casma

Frisbee at bushcamp

Johnny and Maddie use their machetes to crack Brazil nuts, a little piece of the jungle in the desert

In the morning we popped down the road to visit the Sechin ruins, recently discovered they tell the story of a race of warriors who lived in the area 3000 years ago. We visited their temple which was decorated with pictures of brutal killings and body parts to frighten their enemies, our guide delighted in telling us about all the disembodied heads and limbs.

At Sechin ruins

Body buried in the foetal position at Sechin Ruins

Bloodthirsty Sechin drawings

Head totem

Then heading North again we finally reached the Pacific! From Rio back in January we had crossed from one ocean to another.

We reach the Pacific!

We stopped at a little beach camp near the town of Pimentel, a cross between a festival and a hippy commune, it was a lovely little place, helped by the welcome sushi its kind owners made for us!

Beach camp

Then North again following the mighty Pacific along stopping in Lambayeque for a visit to the fantastic Royal Tombs of Sipan museum, a collection of artifacts found in the area from pre-inca peoples) or for a trip to the brilliant market to stock up on food for the evening.

The brilliant Royal Tombs of Sipan museum

Our stop for the night was Mancora, the beach resort town and surfers paradise. We would be visiting this area again in more depth on our way South, we were pushing North to get to the Caribbean in time for Carnival so were moving pretty rapidly, but we did get the chance to check out the beach and the famous Mancora nightlife.

Mancora fishermen

Mancora sunset

Sunrise at Mancora camp

The next day we left Peru behind for a little while and headed to our next destination: Ecuador! Another border another massive change in scenery, from deserts and sand to... well, bananas, millions of them.

Bananas

More bananas

Ecuador produces more bananas than anywhere in the world, if you’re eating a banana while you read this chances are it’s from Ecuador! They are all different shapes and sizes, it’s banana heaven!
But it soon changed as we headed back up in to the Andes (it’s all highs and lows this overlanding lark!) for a night in the town of Riobamba after a very slow winding drive through the hills and another late night arrival (well, another dark arrival, but this close to the equator we are always fighting 6pm sunsets!)

The next day we passed a big milestone, a first for most of the group, we crossed the Equator!

Ecuador equator

We celebrated our crossing in to the Northern Hemisphere with a cheeky beer on the truck and pushed on through to Otovalo.

Much like Cusco, Otovalo is a cradle of indigenous culture, it is famous for its markets and we managed to time our arrival with the biggest and best Saturday markets. Our camp was just outside town in the little village of Peguche, set up and hand built by a Dutch lady and her Ecuadorian husband it’s a little haven of peace and perfect corners for secluded camping. We were the first group of foreigners to stay and everyone loved it, especially its pizza oven, which cook group, led by Wayne and Danielle made full use of, repeating their fantastic Ushuaia pizzas by popular request. We also raised a glass of bubbly to the Odyssey owners Pete and Kirsten the night before their wedding day over in South Africa.

Beautiful camp

A wedding toast to Pete & Kirsten

Otovalo pizzas in the pizza oven

The next day was market day and time to spend some more dollars on lovely things from hammocks to ponchos to jumpers to fabrics with stops to try the wonderful Ecuadorian food on the way.

Otovalo markets

Banana split with cheese

Preparing the pork...

Whittling, building a new cricket set to replace the one that fell apart in a dog-based incident back in Argentina

That evening we had a group meal at the camp’s lovely restaurant of traditional foods while the village children danced and sung for us, it was a great evening thoroughly enjoyed by all!

Dinner at our campsite

Hot spiced Otovalo mulled goodness

It was a flying visit to Ecuador that gave us a taste of what we would see on the way South, but we were all thoroughly smitten with the Andean people, their food, their handicrafts, their kindness and culture and all very much looking forward to coming back after our next destination: Colourful Colombia!