One of the beautiful buildings surrounding Plaza 25 de Mayo, Sucre
Hi Alex here, taking over again to tell you about our stop in Sucre.
Sucre is the official capital of Bolivia, although the Government is based in La Paz and it is the much larger of the two. Sucre is a lovely city though, a small university town with lots of old colonial architecture and beautiful countryside all around.
From La Paz we’d decided to catch a plane to Sucre, this was a 35 minute flight as opposed to a 12 hour bus and only cost us £50 so not too difficult a decision! We arrived to a much more temperate climate and a lower, more manageable altitude. We were met by Jorge, the owner of the place we’d be staying in for the next few nights. We found the room through Esmee, whose friend had stayed with a friend of Jorge’s previously. Don Jorge’s Rooftop Rooms has a big roof terrace with a great view over the city and had space for all five of us.
It’s been a month since our last post thanks to having very little internet or time while on the road. We have however been writing as we travel so we have loads to publish. We’re currently sitting in Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world while we await our Antarctica trip! We have 7 days so we’ll be using some of that time to publish a couple more posts and get more ready behind the scenes!
Anyway we left the story a month ago on a bus from Copacabana (the original one) in Bolivia to the city of La Paz. After a long but fairly comfortable journey we wound down the mountain towards the centre of the highest de facto capital city in the world!
View from the cable cars, La Paz
On arrival by bus in La Paz, the biggest city in Bolivia, we walked to our hostel. Luckily it was only 5 minutes away in an area described as less than salubrious. Bus stations and the areas around them can often be a little sketchy and since we were arriving at 10:30pm I had a look at my map before we got off the bus and memorised the route. My efforts paid off as 5 minutes later we rounded a corner and found our hostel. We need not have worried as the area actually seemed to be fairly pleasant! We’d booked the Dutch girls into the main hostel where only dorms were available and ourselves into the hostel’s B&B 30 seconds up the road. Since both places were effectively part of the same hostel we could all use the facilities of both with the exception of breakfast. The hostel was called Adventure Brew and they owned their own microbrewery, one of the perks of the hostel was a free beer every night so, despite the late hour, we headed straight to get our beers from the bar. Within 10 minutes in the bar we’d struck up conversation with an Aussie, a couple of Brits and a rather strange guy from Denmark. All seemed to be travelling nearly indefinitely, and most had spent over a month in La Paz but had not done much more than we were planning to in a few short days. We ended up staying up until the bar closed, chatting and playing table tennis/table football.
This is a slightly difficult post to write because Peru is the first country that we visited on this trip where we had been before. As a result we had some preconceptions and naturally having had an amazing honeymoon there nearly 4 years earlier the country had something to live up to. On top of this as luck would have it one or other of us was ill for more than half of the time that we were in Peru which took a little bit of the shine off it, and didn’t let us enjoy everything quite as fully as we’d have liked. Finally, since we’d seen the top sights of Peru before we tried to skip some of them and go to places where we hadn’t previously been.
With all that said you can probably guess where this is going, so please bear the above in mind when you read the following thoughts. Continue reading “Thoughts on Peru”
Bright and early on the Monday morning in Cusco we packed up and headed for the train station. Since I normally get travel sick on long distance buses and Chris doesn’t particularly like them either, we decided to go for a much more interesting option of a train from Cusco to Lake Titicaca. The train took 10.5 hours, a few more hours than the bus and was much more expensive, but it was a great way to spend a day travelling.
The train stopped at the highest point of our journey
We arrived at the station and passed our bags to the porter, aware that ours were the only backpacks being loaded amongst the smart suitcases. We went for a drink in the waiting room and realised we were probably the youngest passengers by about 30 years too! The other passengers were mainly made up of an older tour group from Tazmania with their Chilean guide, and we had a nice chat with a few of them.
We boarded the train and, as it pulled off we went to explore. The seating carriages were very plush, old fashioned with armchairs and proper tables with little lamps and tablecloths. We had a four person table to ourselves. The toilets were also very smart, more like a nice hotel than a train. Then there was a large bar carriage with windows curving up so you could see out of the roof too. The back end of the train was open air so you could lean out and watch the world passing by.
We arrived in Cusco by plane with our Dutch friends and the five of us shared a taxi to the ‘Oki Doki’ hostel, one that Jacqueline had found. We had no reservation, but luckily they had a nice double room for us with a balcony. The hostel was pretty basic and we had a shared bathroom, but the showers were excellent and there were plenty of them. Once we’d all freshened up we went out to find some food. We’d been recommended a vegan restaurant called Green Point. It was a bit of a trek to the other side of the town but we found the place and were shown to a table outside. It was a little cold and the outdoor heater was not working even after the staff fiddled with it for a while and sent out for a new gas canister for us! Eventually our starters arrived and we knew immediately that we’d made the right choice. The starters were an interesting twist on Indian (Samosas), Japanese (sushi) and Italian (bruschetta), all done in a way that wasn’t merely a poor interpretation of the originals. I had a vegan version of Lomo Saltado, a famous Peruvian beef stew, that contained Seitan instead of beef. I have no doubt that it wouldn’t match up to the original, but it was delicious and the only way I’d ever be experiencing this dish. Anyway if you are a long time reader of this blog you’ll probably be aware that I can go on about food somewhat sooo…. moving on.
After leaving Ecuador we were feeling a little down, having said goodbye to travelling friends and to a country we’d really enjoyed over seven weeks (several more than we originally intended to spend!). I suppose we were hoping for an amazing time in Peru to help transition – this initially wasn’t quite to be, as Chris mentioned previously we both managed to pick up a bug. Thank goodness for Chris’s hotel points and a few nights of luxury to recover in.
Enjoying good food in Lima
We did manage to get out and enjoy some of the culinary delights of Lima in the few days we spent recovering there. This was one of the things we remembered well from our honeymoon in Peru, just how fantastic and varied the food is (and especially in Lima). We drank Pisco Sours (somehow the combination of Pisco brandy with egg white and lime juice is just amazing), and some tasty artesanal beer, plus we ate at a really inventive and modern tapas-style restaurant called Manifesto, and we found an entirely veggie pizzeria where you could choose a mix of tasty toppings to share.
We never really knew what to expect from Ecuador. Before arrival we knew that Ecuador is a small country that grows coffee and cocoa, we also knew it was neither the richest or poorest in South America and that the President was a somewhat radical character (sheltering Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for one). Other than this we knew little about the place so we arrived pretty much without preconceptions.
Thanks to our Spanish course we spent seven weeks in Ecuador in the end, far longer than we’ll spend anywhere else. Also thanks to the Spanish course we were able to live with some of the locals and really get a little more under the skin than we’ll be able to do anywhere else.
After our ride on the Devil’s Nose train, we’d decided to make the journey straight to Baños on the same day since there was nothing else to see in Alausi. We’d also eaten at the only restaurant with any hope of vegetarian food, so our only option for dinner was being the only people at the no. 1 restaurant (of 4) on TripAdvisor yet again. After the train we headed straight back to our hotel, collected our bags and jumped onto the first bus to Riobamba, the nearest city to Baños along the Pan-American highway. We were headed for the small town of Baños, an hour further east of the main highway, but Riobamba was as far as we could get on a direct bus from Alausi.
The view down to Baños
The bus wound its way north and soon enough we were arriving in the Riobamba bus terminal. The bus next to ours was heading to Baños, but we needed to buy tickets before boarding so we headed into the terminal to buy them. The counter was easy enough to find so we queued up an ask for two tickets. The response from the woman behind the counter was “no hay boletos” (there are no tickets). Since it was late in the afternoon this was a little worrying so we had a quick look around for other bus companies going to Baños (there were none) and looked at other options including taking a bus up to Ambato and then a more frequent bus to Baños. Luckily someone who was behind us in the queue had noticed our confusion and came over to tell us that there was actually a bus at 5pm to Baños so just to double check we queued up again and asked for tickets to Baños. This time same lady that we’d spoken to not five minutes before asked for $4 and gave us two tickets. We could only assume that since the previous bus had now left she was allowed to sell tickets for the later bus, and had neglected to explain this to us the first time around! Mostly just relieved to have tickets we sat down to wait.
We landed back in Guayaquil from the Galapagos and headed straight for the nearby bus station. We were heading to the small colonial city of Cuenca, back on the edge of the Andes. We had a 4 hour bus ride ahead of us so wanted to get going as soon as possible. The bus station was a huge confusing building, part bus station and part busy shopping mall. After staggering around in circles with our giant bags we found an information desk and were directed to the right bus ticket booth. I asked when the next bus left and was told 5pm, this was in about 3 minutes time but they still sold us the tickets and called the bus conductor to wait for us, what service! So after more running through the station/mall we were on a bus only about 45 minutes after landing!
We had comfy seats and the journey didn’t feel too long, we arrived at about 9.30pm and got a taxi to our hostel. We’ve been booking one place ahead at the moment, especially when arriving late at night it’s nice to know you have a room waiting for you. The hostel, La Cigale (French for Cicada, and it seemed to attract mostly French tourists!), was above a restaurant/bar and so once checked in we just had to walk downstairs for a nice evening meal and beers. We messaged Stephanie, a friend from the travelling classroom who was doing her final week of Spanish lessons in Cuenca, and arranged to meet the next day.
One of the two things about this trip that we (well mostly I) decided were non-negotiable was the Galapagos islands off the coast of Ecuador. We knew that we’d get a better deal if we looked at the last minute so we left it until about a fortnight before we wanted to depart. During our Manta week we discovered that the Spanish school did some last minute deals, but when we asked for quotes it turned out that although they had good deals they were more at the budget end of the spectrum with dates that didn’t really suit us. Fearing that we’d left it too late we frantically starting searching on the internet and realised that, although there wasn’t a lot available, there were still a few options with good dates, itineraries and discounts.
