bonnie & clyde

So the rafting adventure was great! We were in the middle of a storm, which made it even more exciting as the river was a lot faster and higher!
We haven't been very lucky with the weather here, it has been raining every day, only in the afternoon but still...
We did the Quilotoa Loop, which is a trail you can follow between various indigenous towns in the mountains, driving through a beautiful landscape, with lagoons and volcanoes. But we couldn't see a lot of the landscape as it was always covered in clouds. As it rained every day, we decided to return earlier and go to Quito, the capital.
Quito is really beautiful, we stayed in the old town, which has a beautiful colonial architecture. The new town is a bit too touristy, only restaurants and bars. We went further north to Otavalo, which is a nice little town, with a huge indigenous market, divided into different plazas, one as an animal market, another as a Poncho market etc. We met some American friends from Bolivia there, cosy evening!
We wanted to get asap in Colombia, as we want to meet some friends in Bogota before the 5th of June. So we crossed another border!!!
You could clearly see that we were in Colombia, our bus had to pull over three times for police control, for security reasons. The people here are sooo friendly, everybody starts to talk to us and helps us in every possible way. They say we have to watch out, but that for the rest there is no problem in travelling here, so don't worry
The scenery is very nice, very green, high mountains, lots of banana trees and all kinds of colourful fruits. But... it is raining again, every afternoon... I guess we arrived in the rain season...
We are in Popayan right now, a nice colonial town, very white. We went to Silvia this morning, to another indigenous market, it is incredible to see how the indigenous people here maintain their habits and culture. Their way of dressing is beautiful, typical hats and skirts (even the men) and jewels and babies tied on their back.
You can feel the distance from Europe!

Trujillo is a nice little town, but not much to do, only to visit the nearby ruins, Chan Chan. We already saw quite a lot of ruins in Peru, but this one was different, as it was situated by the sea. It was a big palace built from sand, with nice images of fish and sea birds sculpted on the sandy walls. We went from there to Huanchaco, a little beach town nearby, but the weather was not that nice, so we went to eat some 'ceviche', the local fish dish, mmm
As you can see on the pictures in facebook the food here is not always that nice... but ceviche is great!
We drove further north by the coast, but the coastline is not as nice as we had expected. It is more a desert than beaches, and a kind of dirty, muddy desert. We arrived at Chiclayo, where we hoped to find a nice beach, but we only found an ugly fishermen's beach, so we went to eat ceviche again. We weren't very lucky with the beaches in Peru!
So we left Peru behind us and crossed the border with Ecuador!!!
You could immediately see the change in the landscape, a lot greaner, a lot more nature and banana treas, a really beautiful scenery! Ecuador is great, we are happy to see some green again and the people are very nice!
We first went to Loja, a nice city but quite dead at night. We nevertheless found a very good Mexican restaurant, it feels good to eat something else than rice, chicken and bananas! The next day we went to a natural park, but it turned out to be a little of a disappointment. We did not see any animals, and we were covered in mud up until our knees, and I had been so smart to wear sandals that day... So the hike was quite difficult, especially the descent. As we had just arrived in Ecuador, we did not realize that the weather has been really bad here for the last few weeks, it has been raining a lot, which is not normal for this time of year here. (they told us that afterwards)
We headed to Cuenca then, which is a beautiful city! Very nice buildings, cathedrals, churches and plazas, a lot of nice shops and a lively nightlife! The city is a bit more western, and so are the people. We visited a beautiful museum there, about the culture and history of Ecuador, it was really worth visiting!
At the moment we are in Baños, a litlle touristy Gringo town, but the scenery is great here! There is a huge volcano right next to this town, you can walk up to a certain hight, but not very far, as it is still active! 2006 saw the last big outburst, when all the towns nearby had to be evacuated, so fingers crossed...
They also have a lot of thermal baths here, with hot water from the volcano. We already went to two of these therms, the water is great, really hot, and it is in open air. It is really cheap but you have to accept the fact that you are stuffed in between tons of Ecuadorian people, which sometimes leads to funny discussions but is not very relaxing We will try again tomorrow, on a Monday it will be a lot more quiet, but only after our rafting adventure!

Together with our 2 French friends we met in beautiful Cuzco, we decided not to follow all the travel agencies who organise overpriced tours to Machu Picchu, but to make our own adventure...
The first day we already went halfway to the great ruins of Ollantaytambo, and on the way we stopped in some other impressive ruins in Chinchero. There we met some local students on the bus, who were studying tourism and wanted to practice being a guide, good for us, we got a free guided visit of the ruins! We were lucky that the local population was celebrating a religious event at the time, so we could observe their dances and local clothing.
We slept at Ollantaytambo, here we got a good tip from the woman at the hostal about how to pass the control in order to be able to walk to Machu Picchu ourselves. We got up at 4 in the morning, took a minibus up to km 82, where the driver dropped us after passing the checkpoint, where we could start our walk!
The woman at the hostal told us it was only 4 hours walking, so full of energy we took off! It was only after asking several other locals on our way, that we realised the walk would be a lot longer... we arrived at about 6 in the evening, making it an 11 hours walk! That explains why we did not meet a single tourist on our way... I don't have to tell you that we were exhausted when we arrived! Nevertheless, it was a really beautiful walk and we passed some impressive ruins. Actually, at some moments we could see the Inca Trail at the other side of the rails, so we felt as if we were doing our own (free) Inca Trail!
But we got up again at 4 the next day in order to be the first at Machu Picchu (which was a bit too optimistic, we weren't the only ones with that idea...) We hiked again for 1,5 hours, but this time climbing stairs, so we arrived, again, exhausted, but very excited at Machu Picchu!!! But the hiking was still not finished, because we had to climb another mountain in order to get the greatest view of Machu Picchu, which was actually the hardest climbing of all, it was sooo steep, some people did not make it to the top, but we did! It was gorgeous!!! See pictures at my facebook! The ruins are so big that we stayed there all day, the weather was great, we could see the snowed mountain tops at the back, and there weren't that many tourists as we had expected, so it was perfect!
We took the train back to Cuzco that same evening, and stayed there the following day, visiting some interesting museums about the Inca culture, we can't get enough of it!
In the evening, we took a night bus, 21 hours driving, and arrived broken at Lima. If you don't want to buy shoes, there is no reason to stop in Lima...
So tomorrow we are heading to Trujillo, the beach, mmm

Copacabana is a nice little town, but not that special. There are a lot of Gringo (tourist) bars and agency's to visit Isla del Sol. Which we went to visit for one day; it is really beautiful but we had expected a bit more maybe... nevertheless, it was a nice daytrip, we visited some ruins and did a walk through the whole Island. The next day we went to Puno, where there is not much to do or see, except for the Floating Islands, which is quite special! Everything is built of a kind of reed, the houses, the boats, upto the Island itself, which is attached with strings to some higher Islands surrounding it, so that it doesn't float away! There is a little school on one of the Islands, the people move by boats from Island to Island, the men go fishing during the day, we were just wondering how they wash...
At the moment we are at Cuzco, which is a gorgeous town, lots of things to do, but a bit too touristy! We visited some Inca ruins today, very interesting! We met our French friends from the jungle again, with whom we will go to Machu Picchu this week!