Colombia - Oh My! 6 August - 21 August

If you are to believe everything that you see in the movies or read in the news then Colombia is ravaged by the FARCS or Guerillas, everyone is a Cocaine trafficer and tourists are kidnapped weekly....by the dozen. Thank Googleness it isn´t at all like that. In fact we found Colombia to be beautiful and peaceful with friendly people whose only crime is that they speak rubbish Spanish!

We did decide to play on the side of caution to start with though and were only taking day buses and staying in non Guerilla type places (funnily enough big hairy monkeys with bananas and big hairy men with bazookas both like hanging out in the jungle). Our first ride into Colombia took us through spectacular green mountains, deep rivers, far off forests and the smells of coffee. We journeyed to Popoyan that day a beautiful Colonial town with whitewashed walls, clock towers, green parks and the sounds of Afro beats every..... Oh did we mention how excited we were to see black people again? It was like coming home for a mini break, unfortunately nobody responds to ¨Sawubona¨. We only stayed in Popoyan for a day but managed to walk the place flat and suck in some old Spanish style culture and architecture.

Next up was a rather long ride to the Capital Bogota which was suprisingly cold compared to the rest of the countries normal hot and humid nature. The people also looked different, better dressed, like a New York meets Melville chic´ and much paler than their country and coastal cuzzies. Our Hostel was great too (Platypus) with German (ponounced Herman) the owner being full of helpful hints and free beers, it was also good to cook again and not be subjected to heaps of rice and potatos! We didnt really do much in Bogota but it was a great base to sort out our next steps including the ball ache of getting the transient visa for the States which we would have to go to Costa Rica for an interview for....sigh....$131 per person!

Our hearts where panging for the beach though and they would get their wish soon as we headed for Taganga near Santa Marta. A small fishing village with more scuba operators than stray dogs and more hammocks than scuba operators. Our Hostel overlooked the beach and the caribean tunes floated up to us on the heat waves emanating off the beach. Our little white bodies took a little shock from the sun (gringo alert) but it was great to be too hot rather than too cold for the first time in a long time and nothing beats a cold beer and a fresh fish next to the beach!

Having done some walkies round the town we signed up to do our Scuba course with Calipso Scuba away from town in the nature reserve of Tayrona. This meant that we got some pretty exclusive treatment, our OWN dive instructor, classes on the beach, our OWN beach, our OWN chef and a choice of hammocks right on the beach to sleep in! Paradise regained!

We did 6 dives in total over 3 days here while working on our tans, snorkeling and dozing in the hammocks inbetween. Its a hard life but we knew what we signed up for when we left!

So after having enjoyed some we time (cause we dont see each other enough already) we headed to ¨South Americas most beautiful and romantic city¨ according to the Daily Planet ...Lonely Planet. Cartagena is really beautiful if you stick to the old town, its been restored to a high level of splendor that pulls in the cruise boats and American camera snappers in their droves. Still its really pretty! We also like Getsemani the area that we were staying in which also has beautiful old buildings, but without the refurbishment and with some rum stained hobos and dirty barefoot kids playing ball. Our real mission in Cartagena however was to find passage on a sailboat to Panama through the San Blas islands, we thought it would be hard to find someone to go with, but we ended up having choices to make and settled on Captain Frederico whose boat was called something strange in Portugese that meant ¨Dirty sexual attitude¨, how could we go wrong?!?

But we had a few days to kill before then so we went to a Mud Volcano outside of town where you bob around clumsily covered from tip to toe in mud before washing it off in the lagoon below. Tons of good ¨clean¨ fun. Hilarious moments of note, which have to be the fatties trying to get out the volcano and their pants falling down behind them....ok that almost happened to us too but its funnier with them.

We would then spend our days just hanging around Cartagena till the boat was ready to rock and sail with some lucky days in the park watching 50 or more kites in the sky on the National Kite day and some not so lucky days when it rained when we went to the beach.

Fun off the topic extra..Our favorite Spanish class is the Taxi ride where the first question the taxi driver normally asks after ¨where are you going?¨ is ¨where are you from?¨ , however in Colombia many of them found it hard to believe and funny too that we were from Africa and yet we were White...they all seem to know that we have the World Cup 2010 though.

Next time, San Blas Islands and Panama City.

Racing through Ecuador 28 July - 5 August

The mavrix usually answer to no man, no appointments, no schedule, no problem! Unfortunately the United States embassy seems to have a problem with this...sigh.This meant that rather than going and traveling at our usually leisurely pace where every day is a holiday we found ourselves having to speed things up quite significantly and sacrifice Ecuador to the Travel gods. We ended up spending a total of just 9 days running through this great little country...sniff...and what we saw was beautiful, plus the weather was spectacular and coming from 8 days trekking in freezing cold in Peru this was very welcome.

We found that Ecuador has an amazing intercity bus service, basically anywhere you want to go within roughly 17 hours you can just arrive at the terminal and you will be sure to be on a bus in less than 10 minutes, we got quite used to boarding buses on the move (try that with 15kgs plus of luggage!). We traveled through the citys of:

Cuenca - a beautiful town that has been made a Unesco World Heritage site with amazing coffee that the Vixen indulged in while the M sipped chilled Cervezas in the cafe. Oh and we would be remise not to mention the AMAZING Banana split ice cream that we gorged ourselves on....sore tummy but a happy one :-)

Aulusi - Home to the "World Renouned" Nariz del Diablo (we also hadnt heard of it) where you ride on the top of the roof of a classic train through the switchbacks in the mountains surrounding the town. Not actually scarey at all ...yawn... Mavrix need real excitement!

Banos - Home to more Hot Springs and a still erupting Volcano (thats more like it). Unfortunately the Volcano is unclimbable for obvious reasons so we just got the one sighting and then had to head out again.

Tena - This river rafting and kayaking Mecca was a super chilled jungle and river town where we took a rest from the traveling for a day. In this time we met a guy wearing a snake in his head, around his neck and down his pants. He proceeded to hand these over to the Mavrix much to our fright and delight. We had to stop him though after he attempted to put a snake down the M's pants which he thought was hilarious. So after handing back the snake hat (the snake was enjoying tonguing the M's eye lid) we followed Gabrielle the Snake man back to his "office" come "house" infested with more snakes and spiders and signed up for 2 days of jungle trekking and a day of rafting. Sweet! We ended up having a good time swinging from Tarzan vines, swimming in Waterfalls, eating Coco Fruit (the stuff they make chocolate from) and much more! Then finally we ended it off with a days rafting in the sun...pity our boat was a little pap but all was good. That night we jumped in another bus and headed for the Capital City.

Quito - The Old town here in Quito is also quite spectacular but the Mavs felt it lost some of its magic due to the size of Quito like a giant resting his big toe inches above a flower.

While it might sound like Ecuador doesn't have much to offer what must be remembered is that we ran through it without taking time to smell the roses under the giants foot. The scenery we saw in the many hours of bus rides was enough to convince us that Ecuador is an ecological beauty... oh well maybe next time.

Huaraz - Mavrix get high on hiking 11 July

Having missed out on the Inca Trail due to vast amounts of gas from the M and having done a little too much city slicking the Mavrix were craving some outdoor adventure. What better place than the Andes we thought and what better town than Huaraz we were told. Now Huaraz the city is quite an eye sore really, partly the fault of an earthquake in the 70s and partly the fault of a lack of architectural prowess from the Peruvians, it is however the staging point for assualts on the worlds second highest mountain range after the Himilayas holding some 22 peaks over 6000m, multicoloured glacier lakes, high altitude trails and some scenery worth kissing the ground and saying thank you-thank you-thank you that I´m here. Just what the travel doctor ordered!

We left Lima on an overnight bus through the mountains which caused a swaying motion that almost dislodged some dinners and made for hard fought sleep. After an early bleary eyed arrival in another new place the Mavs went about the usual scouting for things to do, how to do them and who to do them with. This involves a simple system really, meet a fellow traveler over coffee and squeeze them dry for info, walk from agency to agency telling them all that you can get it cheaper next door and then finally sign up with someone just because they look like a nice guy!

We discovered that there are a bunch of hikes that you can do in the Huaraz region from simple day hikes to 2 week epics or even real mountaineering expeditions up peaks as high as 6800m. We decided to do the scenic but hard Huahuash (pronounced White wash) trek based upon the recommendation of a German girl who had done 4 weeks just in Huaraz and convinced us this was the only course of action worth exploring (in retrospect we are very glad we listened!)

So having met a nice guy who had a nice price for the trek (Oh he also thew in a days free climbing...free is good!) we got picked up in a private car early one morning and drove off to the Cordiella Huayhuash with our guide Miguel and a great American lady called Lori who would become a great friend in the course of the trek. After burdening the donkey team with our bags, tents and food (we brought alot of warm clothes - we would need ALL of them) we walked off into the distance and deep into the mountains.


Day 1: 4.5 hour drive to Pocpa at 3475m then walked to Matacancha 4 hours flat, camped at 4150m with a view of Rondoy (5870m). This was a decent but quiet day with the highlight being how warm the kitchen tent got and how cold our tents got! We would learn that ice on the tent was normal.

Day 2: We walked some hard passes over Cacanan punta at 4700m (thats 600m higher than we started) down to Mitococha Valley seeing our first snow capped mountains in Rondoy chico 5500m and Jirishanca Chico at 5446m and Jirishanca at 6094m (Killimajaro is only 5995m). Then another 2 hours over Punta Carhuac at 4650m follwed by walking straight into a 30min snow storm before reaching one of the most beautiful camp sites ever in Camp Carhuacocha. We walked a total of 7h30 hours that day and Coca Tea (an Andean brew made from the same leaf you make Cocaine) became our best friend! Dont worry this is totaly legal and acts just like mild coffee.

Day 3: We were warned about this day for good reason. Really hard long hike of 8.5 hours seeing Carhuachocha which simply means Green lake in Quecha (4138m) then up to to Huayhuash camp at 4395m and where we camped under Yerupaja Chico 6121m and Yerupaja 6634m (second highest mountain in Peru) and Siula 6344m we also had to pass over Punta Carnicero at 4800m which was our biggest yet! We discovered that night that while we had been drinking our Coca tea another group of Israelis also on the trail had been taking Cocaine every night and drinking it up! WOW! This hike is hard enough already without doing that to your bodies which they would soon find out. The guides had to send horses out for 5 of them as it was getting dark an they werent even close to camp!
Day 4: Huayhuash camp to Viconga Camp 4453m for an easy 3.5 hours trekking over Punta Shuelo at 4785m seeing Viconga Lake and then ending our day with a relaxing soak in the hot springs which the Israelis decided was a great palce for a party so out came the beers and bongs...soon after we also came out and went back to camp, damn Israelis!


Day 5: This was to prove to be the hardest day so its probably just as well that 5 Israelis took another route and went home that day via bus, they just couldnt hack it anymore....we wonder why? We left Viconga camp and would end with Huanacpatay Camp (4350m) but first had to tackle Cuyoc Punta (5000m) where we saw an ice cream looking mountain called Cuyoc 5550m, we called it Dairy Maid then did a very steep down for 1.5 hours to 4450m then back up the super slippery slopes of San Antonio to the most magnificient view point ever at 5100m to see Carnicero 5960m, Siula 6344m(This is the mountain from ¨Touching the Void¨), Sarapo 6127m, Siula Chico, Yerupaja 6344m and then back down the slippery sand to the valley and then back again for the camera that we forgot on the field in the middle of nowhere. It was a fantastic day with awe inspiring views that I dont think many have been privilidged to the see the like of.


Day 6: Today we would hike to the dumbest camp site ever.... ok maybe we are the dumb ones, we walked right past it and had to hang around until our guide came and found us, fair enough though it was a beautiful camp site and the guide made us popcorn to make up for it. It was on this night that it became apparent that Victoria was going to win the long series of cards we had been playing with Lori every night in the tent and thereby get a free dinner paid for by the other 2 suckers.


Day 7: Huataq Camp to Jahuacocha 4200m with a start at 7h30 and arrived at 14h30 and did 2 passes, first pass Punta Tapush 4750m and then Cashapampa 4500m Valley up to second pass Guacha Punta 4847m. This second pass was special cause the mavs became donkey drivers for an hour pushing donkeys up hill and making ¨shish¨noises. We also saw 4 condors on the way down and a bunch of mountains already mentioned. That afternoon at our final campsite we drank beer and marvelled at the view, we tried to organise Trucha (Trout) without luck but the Israelis butchered 3 sheep for dinner, one of which died on the route that day after being exhuasted over the passes then hig tied to a horse before chocking on its own vomit. We thought it was super cruel too!

Day 8: Our last day of trekking was a downhill afair going from Jahuacocha camp to Llamac Village for our private car with a mere 5 hours of walking.

Overall we walked 120km and reached heights of 5100m physically but mentally much higher!


This has definitely been the highlight of our trip so far and is a place that we both feel we could go back to, who knows maybe we go tackle one of the 6000m+ bastards....

Paracas and Lima quickie ' 7 July

We had heard about the "Poor Mans Gallapagoskipped it. Funnily Colca Canyon is the place in South America you have the greatest chance of seeing Condors, this according to one of our guides, is because every day s" in Paracas and since we are poor men we decided to head there, we had originally wanted to go to the Colca Canyon to do some hiking but since M's tummy was still grumbling we they throw a donkey into the canyon for the Condors and they get so fat gorging themselves they cant take off or at least fly quite low....but dont worry our guide said, they only thow old ones....you gotta love South America!

They say you get what you pay for and the Poor Mans Galapagos stands up to its name, its like buying a Gold Folex it is always an hour slow and the little diamonds got unstuck in the first week but then what do you expect at the price.... Paracas's only redeming feature was that we got to see something very much like the NASCA lines, a giant Candelabra etching into the sand that has stood there for hundreds of years through rain and wind unchanged for the Gods to look down upon. The sea lions, pelicans and penguins were also cool but the smell of Guana (bird pooh) was not as nice.

Also due to a transport strike we were stuck in this ugly little town for another day with nothing to do but play cards and drink with other stuck Gringos (this part was actually quite fun).

The next day we bused out to Lima, Perus capital city and an unremarkable place we'd been told. We found it to be a city a lot like Joburg, clean and pretty in places with some scattering of dirt, grit and grime, it felt like home and we liked it.

We also liked the mall that looks out over a cliff onto the ocean and the all you can eat sushi (Vix ate all she could and more!). That night we sampled the local night life with Gussy and Ben a gal and guy we had reunited with from Villa Tunari Bolivia days. At 3am in the morning when the Red room styled club was closing a local "Limian" invited us back to his house, at first apprehensive we followed and ended up having a great time with him and his friends playing guitar and singing along with a bottle of whiskey till the sun came up! Why we paid for accomodation we arent sure but at least the bags got a good nights sleep!

Next the grand vistas of Huaraz the spectacular....