CTRL ALTitude DELightful

So I bust through the border to Peru Tacna which is basically a border town and as I am a ‘gringo’ it took me a lot longer to pass through immigration with all the questions being fired at me in startlingly fast Spanish to which I responded as best I could. I could see the line building up and the patience of the locals getting shorter but I got through in the end with the X-ray machine operator asleep at his desk. Tacna is just a border town with nothing to really see or do it reminded me of a multiplayer map from ‘Call Of Duty (COD)’ all broken houses dust and narrow alleys where the enemy can pounce so I got a bus out straight away.

I journeyed by bus to Arequipa which was a only a 6 hour journey which compared to the previous 29 hour trip was a breath of fresh air its just a shame that all the films are in Spanish but there are some films which cross simple things like language barriers where you still can understand the moral to the film or the hero’s struggle such as ‘The Karate Kid’ and ‘Rambo III’.



Arequipa is a very pretty city with narrow cobbled streets lined with 17th Century churches and classic European architecture but once you get two or three blocks away from the main square the city goes downhill in a big way and you get the ‘COD’ influence again with litter floating in the gutter, street fights, street vendors and shady looking characters galore.






I used Arequipa as a jumping off point to visit the Colca Canyon which is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at 4,160 m. However, the canyon's walls are not as vertical as those of the Grand Canyon. The Colca Valley is a colorful Andean valley with towns founded in Spanish Colonial times and formerly inhabited by the Collaguas and the Cabanas. The local people still maintain ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces. Tim however did not have an especially good first day here due to the copious amounts of alcohol consumed the night before, 4 hours sleep and suffocating altitude with him being sick at almost every photo point or village.

I opened a can of ‘Man The Fuck Up’ and soldered through and got to see the alpaca which is a South American camel where one decided that the hair on my legs looked like grass thus he had some elevenses, so how do you know that you have really hairy legs? When an Alpaca eats them! I am ashamed to say that I actually ate alpaca that lunch and dinner but like the cow or sheep they are used for meat and fur so I didn’t feel too bad. Alpaca meat tasted like a tougher version of beef not chicken. Cuy (Guinee Pig) however did taste like chicken and looked like a kid left his guinee pig in a house fire, as you can imagine the cuy was not too filling as they don’t have much meat on them but it’s a national dish so I am glad I have tried it but never again as Rolf Harris would have my guts for garters.







The canyon is home to the Andean Condor, a species that has seen worldwide effort to preserve it. The condors can be seen at fairly close range as they fly through the canyon walls and are an increasingly popular attraction. 'Cruz del Condor' is a popular tourist stop to view the condors, the pass where condors soar gracefully on the rising thermals occurring as the air warms. The condors are best seen in the early morning and we got there at 09:00 where we got to see numerous but none at really close range. At this point the canyon floor is 3,960 ft (1,200 m) below the rim of the canyon.



Altitude sickness may be a real problem as most of Peru is thousands of meters above sea level to put it in perspective the height of the highest point is not far off the height that I skydived from. To combat the effects of this Peruvians chew coca leaves which taste very bitter and make your mouth go numb. The coca leaf is the main ingredient in the class A drug cocaine. Arequipa is around 2500m above sea level and the altitude sickness is apparent with headaches and dry mouth practically all day. At this point I am still trying to pick up more spanish with the aide of some illegaly downloaded software but its hard going, I was going to pay for some clases but feel that it may be a waste of money as my brain is being too stuborn.


So with a few days to kill I decided to book a trek up 5800 meters high Volcano Misti and immediately I regretted this decision as it was the hardest trek that I have ever attempted and I couldn’t even complete it! To start they give you all the stuff you will need, tent, matt, winter jacket, winter leggings, you need your lunch and most importantly your water and this trek is not like the 4 day Inca where you hire porters to take it up for you this is 20kg on your back lugging it from 2500 meters to 4800 at base camp and after 30 minutes that 20kg felt like carrying an extra man. The route was littered with obstacles such as fine gravel or sand that slips away from your footing making it like climbing an escalator and the pure difficulty of the trek going up rocks and vertical ledges. The last 500 meters were by far the worst it was 10-20 steps then a 3 minute break whilst watching some Peruvians being sick but eventually after 7 hours of climbing (with 20kg) I made it to base camp where I had decided there is no way I was going to make the next 1000 meters to the summit because at this time my legs were like that of a new born giraffe. 4500 above sea level everything was challenging like moving 2 foot to get my bag became a 5 minute internal debate regarding did I really need it? I felt like vomiting and I had the worst headache known to man whilst staying at base camp. If I did decide to go for the summit it would mean me getting up at 01:00 (No sleep due to altitude) for breakfast and then trekking 4 hours to the summit and if it was just 4 hours I may have gone for it but like everything our guide said you had to times by 2.5 so it took the other people 9 hours to get the extra 1000 meters to the top. Our guide did this a lot he would say 10 minutes to break then 20 minutes later it would be another 10 minutes so in the end I got quite annoyed with him our whole group agreed we would rather know if its another 2 hours.

So while the others spent another 9 hours getting to the summit I tried to recover at base camp and got some sleep around 3 hours then it was time to descend the volcano which took only a few hours as we could go down the volcanic sand basically with the knee joint taking massive punishment whilst sliding down then when we got to a level area and found I could not walk the best way to describe is I was walking like Kryton from Red Dwarf. Lucky for me I hired two walking sticks and in the end they became more stable and reliable than my actual legs.

Next is the four day Inca trek which I am not looking forward to.

Below are some pictures from Misti

Hey Gringo

3 flights 4 countries 10 beers 1 wine and all in 24 hours and I still got to my destination 1 hour after the time I set off, the beauty of travelling East to West going past the International Date Line, obviously the other way you lose a day but this would not be new experience to me as there have been many a day lost on this trip its called the ‘International Alcohol Line’ when you cross it you lose that night and generally the next day!

So I finally touched down in Santiago de Chile where I embarked on 15 hours worth of sleep, considering I had not slept in a 48 hour period and was on the boarder of hallucinations I feel that it was well earned. When I awoke I got to see the travellers in my hostel and instantly felt out of place like a white person in a Busta Rhymes video, they all had long hair and/or amazing moustaches and they all spoke fluent Spanish. Immediately I knew that I needed to learn Spanish, ordering a Pizza was an ordeal that took 10 minutes too long and still I got the wrong slice, so far I have got away with ‘Del Boy’ Spanish or ‘Pecknish’.

Pecknish is where you accentuate all body and hand gestures whilst speaking really slowly and adding about 50 decibels to voice volume –

“Hola Senor CAN I G E T A P I Z Z Z Z Z A A A” (hands making round shape then using fingers in sprinkling motion to signify toppings) “por favour”!!!!!!

‘Hello sir can I get a pizza please’

To be fair to myself Chileans are motor mouths when it comes to Spanish I often think they forget to breath, they are like the Australian’s of the Spanish speaking world they shorten every word so that it often becomes unrecognisable to the rest of the Spanish world.

Santiago is just a big ass busy city that is contained in a big bowl that is surrounded by the Andes mountain range, most people fly in and get out and that is pretty much what I did, there is not much to see here, all I did was climb a mountain for a lookout around the city and the rest of the time I hung out on my own in the hostel.





So far I have been quite lonely in South America and this is not good for the raging homesickness, the bouts are becoming more intense and more frequent like a woman in labour’s contractions and I’m about 7 centimetres dilated, so without further ado I am heading north to Peru to meet Tim Fish. You may remember Tim from earlier blogs as he was the guy on Fraiser Island (Australia) where the Dingo savagely attacked him whilst he was sleeping which turned out to be someone’s wet sleeping bag touching his toes (not the wet nose of a Dingo).



Before I continue there is an honouree mention for Chris Pearson and Nick Bray who I have now seen in 2 continents and 3 countries, albeit in Fiji and Chile we were just passing ships in the night, hopefully I will get to see these lads again somewhere in South America once more but if not we can always chalk up 4 countries when we get back to England, well unless Chris moves to France.



The bus to Peru started with a 28 hour bus ride to Arica which rests on the border, my wants from the bus ride were not much and if they were put in an advert it would go something like this:

WANTED: Single attractive Latina female 20-29,
medium level of English, low inhibitions,
fondness for English accent


As I suspected no one on the bus could speak English but least no Indians so a silver lining to every cloud? You get the people who travel Aus and NZ and claim to be travellers but this to me is real travelling where even the simplest tasks become a stressful situation, such as stopping in a service station and trying to buy a snack/meal, where the hell do I queue up? Why do they have tickets? What food do they sell? It was a mess and I cant ask anyone for help, I can feel my blood pressure rising and I have to start breathing techniques, at one point I thought Richard O’Brian from the Crystal Maze was going to pop up and tell me I only had 10 seconds left then whisk me to the ‘How do you find the toilet’ zone. So if you suffer from low blood pressure get your doctor to prescribe you a visit to South America or alternatively buy a flat pack IKEA wardrobe.

The scenery throughout the bus trip was like the conversation - spectacularly boring, just plain desert and wasteland which makes me consider coming back into Chile and exploring more, the south is more pretty but it is very similar to New Zealand and in price.

I got to Arica the most Northern part of Chile after a very long 29 hours around 16:00 so after a quick wash I got into a collectivo and ventured into town. After a meal at a recommended restaurant where again no one could speak English (mental note to kick Hally Burton’s ass for telling me everyone speaks English) a very attractive Chilean girl sits on the table adjacent to me, so thinking she cannot understand English I mumble something to myself along the lines of ‘WOW you are amazing looking’. At this point I leave and about half block away using my highly acute spy skills I notice she is following me and the Jack Bauer in me thinks ‘pickpocket no way is she Wesley Sniping me’ so I pretend to stop and read the map to impede the potential attack and to my surprise she speaks amazing English asking me if she can help. Two minutes later she is asking me out for drinks telling me my accent is wonderful, obviously I accept instantly where she shows me around Arica. The owner of the hostel now introduces me to other guests as ‘The Latin Lover’. The hostel is very warm and welcoming, I have a 5 bed dorm to myself, there is a three bed bunk with no ladder and looks like its been welded together by a child with a Fisher Price welding kit! I’ve since extended my stay in Arica not because of the bonita senorita who by chance I’m meeting again but because this place is rich in history and culture.



Visa Hunters© - A girl who is looking for a way out of her country, like a gold digger but less about money more about geography! Just a random thought!

So this was Chile for me not much to show but Peru will be much more productive as I embark to Colca Canyon to see Condors, trek volcanoes, party in Cusco, tolerate Lima, endure altitude sickness and then the knockout punch of hikes the 4 day Inca trek to Matchu Pitchu.


HIGH FIVE!