A high lake, a bus journey and the center of the world

Once again, I find myself internetless.
I am currently near Cusco on the third interamerican scout Moot, aka. a scout camp where young adults from all over the Amaricas (and a few coutries outside the Americas) to not be leaders for once. It started last Friday.
Anyway, I'll tell you about it next week, when I get back.

What I want to tell you about today is what I did in the days after I left Lima and before the camp started.
First, a week ago on Sunday, we (aka. me and some other Finnish people going to Moot) flew from Lima to Juliaca, from where we took the taxi (which are ridiculously cheap here) to Puno, which is very close by there. Puno is on the coast of lake Titicaca. Titicaca is not only one of the biggest lakes in South America, it is also the highest lake in the world, in the middle of the Andes mountains. The surface of Titicaca is about 3800 meters above sea level. By which I mean a lot. So we went to Puno to see Titicaca.

Here's a photo of Puno, from the harbor.

On Monday we took a tourist tour boat out onto the lake. Our first stop was on the Uros islands, which are floating islands about a half an hour (in the boat we were in) out of Puno.
What's a floating island, you ask?
Well, in this case they were basically a two-meter-thick layer reed (which is an aquatic plant here) roots and stems tied together so they float, and form a kind of an island people can live on. I personally would probably call it a raft instead of an island, though, but they want to call it an island, so who am I to argue with people about what they live on.

The people there make pretty much everything there from the reeds, from the ground they stand on to the houses to the boats they use. They also eat a part of it. We also got to taste a little bit, and it tasted basically like nothing.

From Uros our way continued farther out onto the lake (which, for the record, is huge). We went to Taquili island, which was an actual island. There first we had to climb up to the main square.
"It's 3940 meters above sea level, so 140 meters above the lake surface," the guide told us. "The climb takes the locals about 15 minutes. But you're not from this altitude. You will have 30-40 minutes."
I would have been a little insulted if I hadn't completely believed he was right.
I almost made it to the top before completely breaking down and having to sit down and cry a bit and breath because there simply wasn't enough oxygen to keep going. But I did make it all the way up. It took me about the 40 minutes. Turns out I do not do well that high up.
And it was worth it. Not only was there lunch waiting at the top, the views were absolutely gorgeous. Also, the walk down was significantly easier.
Here's some pictures:

 This is from the hike up.

This is the main square. (You can clearly see that the colors are way more muted in this photo taken with my phone than in the photos taken with the proper camera.)

And this is the view from the main square.

One more thing I want to say about Puno: they clearly think it's ok to not have heating indoors, despite the fact that the temperature is about ten degrees during the day, zero during the night. It was very, very cold.

On Tuesday we moved on, taking a bus from Puno to Cusco. It took seven and a half hours through the mountains. It was good. It was nice and warm in the bus.
Here's some photos, taken through the bus window:

I spent the following two days in Cusco.

Cusco is definitely the best place I've been so far since leaving Finland. It's so nice. It's cold during the nights, but it's nice.

Here's the main square, which, like apparently literally all other main squares in Peru, is called Plaza de Armas.

Cusco, or Qosqo (literally meaning "the navel of the world", which is hilarious, if you've seen Emperor's New Groove), is a very old city. It used to be a big city already in the Incan times, which is when there were Inca palaces around the main square, where now is only churches and KFCs. (Ok, one KFC.)
Even though the Spanish (stupid Europeans) destroyed a lot of what the Incas had built here, some things are still left.

Like this wall. Which, if you ask me, is an unusually beautiful wall. It also holds one of the most famous tourist attractions in the city: a twelve-angled stone, as a part of the wall. Its shape is also used in the logo of the Moot I'm currently on. Why is a stone in a wall a tourist attraction, you ask? We took a walking tour around the center, and the guide told us it's because a local beer company liked the shaped, decided to use it in their logo, and was very good at marketing.
I don't know. I still think it's an unusually beautiful wall.
The guide also told us that the layout of the center is still the same as it used to be in the Incan times.

That's why it's filled with these tiny streets (also seen in the picture with the wall)

and staircases (since the city is in the middle of mountains and there's a lot of hills around here). The walkways are so small and pedestrian-friendly, because were built way before cars. So It's really nice to walk around. Unless a car happens to be wanting to use the same road as you are, because there are some cars driving these tiny one-car-wide roads too. Not much, but some.

And, well, the stairs are a pain, because even though Cusco is almost a half a kilometer lower than Puno, it's still almost 3,5 km above sea level, and about one flight of stairs will get you out of breath and your heart hammering. But they're really pretty, and better than having that steep a road. And I love how the center is for real great to walk around, and incredibly difficult for cars. That's how it should be.

And apparently nowadays the historic center of Cusco is a Unesco world heritage site, so no one can decide to make the center more car-friendly. It will forever stay as it is.

Probably not forever. Things generally don't last forever.

 Despite the fact that climbing hills is heavy, we climbed some way up a hill (mountain?) right next to the center, just to get an amazing view of the city. It was definitely worth it. Especially since this spot is almost in the north-western end of the city, so you can see almost all of Cusco from there. The older part is at the front here, you can actually see Plaza de Armas almost at the front if you look at the picture big enough, and the newer parts stretch on to the left and back.

So yeah, I really like Cusco (despite the fact that according to the walking tour guide half of the half a million people living here live off of tourism, which means there are a lot of tourists here). I have another four full days here after the camp before I fly back to Finland. I'm looking forwards to it.

~matu

Lima: pottery, gold, and alcohol fountains

I don't even know where to start.
There's so many things.
Which are the important things?
If I just put up a bunch of pictures, are you going to be satisfied with that?
No, seriously.
Ok. This is where I'll start.
Lima is a very big city. Well, the main city area isn't actually that big, but there are about 11 million people living here. I thought I wouldn't like it. I never liked Manaus, and that's only 2 million people, and in general, bigger cities are more unpleasant. I mean, I'm not a huge fan on Helsinki, and that's only got 600 000 people. But I was wrong. I somehow like it here in a way I never liked it in Manaus. I don't know what it is. I think maybe a part of it is that I'm simply looking at the city completely differently: Manaus was a place I lived. Lima is a place where I spend a few days. The flaws of a place only become apparent when you see them every day, for a longer period of time. Or maybe it's because Lima seems to be a lot better suited for walking and biking than Manaus is. I'm not saying it's great. I'm just saying it's a lot better. Because Manaus is impossible to get around. Lima at least has descent-width side walks and bike paths exist in places, also in the center.
And as long as you stick to the main bus route, the buses are really good, if packed with people. There's one bus route in Lima, the metropolitan, that has maybe ten lines running the same route but stopping on a bit different stations. They run every few minutes, stop on all the stations and have their own lanes that no one else is allowed to drive on, so they don't get stuck in the traffic. It's basically like a subway, only without the tunnel and the tracks. And it works really great, if you have the time to wait for a bus you can actually fit on, because like I said, they're packed with people. I never got a seat on those buses. But somehow the buses being packed didn't bother me.
In the same way the chaotic traffic didn't bother me. Because even though there one that one un-chaotic and reliable and clear bus route, the rest of the traffic is chaotic. I think. Maybe. I don't really notice it. It was worse in Manaus, anyway. Or maybe I've simply gotten used to chaotic traffic in the last half a year.
So yeah, I was wrong. I quite like Lima. I wouldn't want to live here, but it's not nearly as bad as I expected, from a South-American city this size. And honestly, I think if I had to spend a longer period of time here I'd get bored with it.
Oh, one more thing about the traffic: there's way more honking here than in Manaus. All the time. Everyone. I don't get it. If you're stuck in traffic and no one's moving anywhere, the honking's not going to help, guys. What do you think, that the people ahead of you are just sitting there to annoy you? No. If they had the space to go somewhere, they would go. Telling then you are just as annoyed as they are isn't going to make anyone get anywhere any faster. So just stop already, ok? At least in Manaus the people just sat quietly and resigned in the traffic jams.

I also thought I would freeze here, because not only am I always cold, I've been in the tropical rainforest getting my body accustomed to a 30-degree temperature for a half a year. A more than ten degree drop aught to make me freeze. But no. I'm good. Just put on a jacket, if it's windy. One day the sun actually shone for a moment, and I had to take my long sleeves off. Most of the locals are wearing thicker clothes than I am.
(By the way, what in the world am I doing here in 17 degrees Celsius while there's like 26 degrees in Finland!? I'm the one who's supposed to be in the tropics. I'm like 12 degrees south from the equator. Finland is 65 degrees north. Stupid ocean current, bringing all the cold from the Antarctic to here.)
The weather isn't great in general here this time of the year. During my first four days, the sun shone for literally maybe an hour. It's cloudy. All the time. It's not raining. No, never raining. Just cloudy. Exactly the kind of weather that would be perfect, if it also was ten degrees warmer.
But somehow, I also don't mind that. Like I said in my last post from Brasil, I've missed being warm when it's cold. And this is the perfect almost-cold to not actually be cold.

Another thing I've noticed about Lima is that there are a lot of parks. Or squares. Which lead me to wonder about the difference between a park and a square, and I came to the conclusion that it must be defined by the proportion of ground covered by grass instead of stone. All stone is a square. All grass is a park. There's a line somewhere there. I'm not sure where it goes, though.
Anyway, here's some photos of some parks/squares for you:

 (I don't even remember where this one is from....)

This is Plaza San Martin. It's the one that initially got me to wonder whether this particular one is a park or a square, because it has quite a lot of grass for a square, but I also feel like there's a lot of stone for a park. GoogleMaps calls it a park, though.

This is Plaza de Armas, which is the main square of Lima. Also the name of the main square of Iquitos. I don't know. Maybe all the main squares here are called Plaza de Armas?

In one park I found this fake tree. I have no idea what it was there for. (It happened to be during the one our of sunshine I mentioned earlier.)

Ok, enough about parks.
What else did I do in Lima...?
I went to some museums. I woke up my first morning here and thought "so, I know nothing about what to do here". So I simply googled if there is a natural history museum here, because natural history museums are always great, and a city this size aught to have one.
It does. So I went there. It was a very small natural history museum, though. Way smaller than even the one in Helsinki. At least that one has two floors. But I did see some cool things.

 Like this huge fish.

And a t-rex with horns. (It's not a t-rex with horns. It's a Carnotaurus sastrei, apparently.)

And a hairy armadillo.

 And a cat whose face basically says "dude, what?"

And an enormous whale skull. These whales don't exist any more, though. I think. All the texts were in Spanish. Either way, the lower jaw is as long as I'm tall.

On other days, I went to a couple of museums that display the pottery and gold of the indigenous peoples of Peru. Here's some fotos from those:

I don't know about you, but I would not want to own a bottle like this. (Yes, it's a bottle.)

This blanket is apparently 2000-3000 years old. It was used to in a burial. Burying a body in a desert. Which is apparently how it's still at all intact. Because it's hard to decay in a desert

This thing has a body of a child inside it. Apparently this is how at least one of the peoples in this area buried their dead: in a fetal position within a lot of leyers of clothes. This a fake head.

This got the music from Dreamworks' The Road to El Dorado playing in my head for days.

 In case someone lost their nose.

During these museum visits I learned that it is very, very annoying to try to take photos of a something behind a glass.
I also learned that Pachamama means Mother Earth, which I suppose means that Pacha means earth. I'm assuming mama is the part that refers to mom. So that was interesting. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go watch Emperor's New Groove.)

On the topic of museums, after some of the people from Finland going to Moot with me got to Lima, we went on a monastery/church tour in the city center, which also included going to see some catacombs underneath the church. There were a lot of cool things in the monastery. The catacombs were also cool, though a little tight and low-ceilinged and underground for my liking. Though still definitely worth it. And I would love nothing more than to share some pictures with you from there, but taking photos was not allowed. Apparently too many people were using flash despite being told not to use flash and that was damaging the old paintings on the walls, so they banned taking fotos completely. Or something. So I have no fotos. Sorry!

On the same day that we went there, it turned out, was national pisco day, or somehing. Pisco is this local alcoholic drink that is made of grapes but can't really be called wine. Or maybe it can, but it's not what I think of when I think of wine. I did a walking tour around the center that ended up at this store that gave out free pisco tastings, and it turns out that it's actually pretty good. This coming from a person who in general doesn't like the taste of alcoholic drinks. (Yes, I don't like wines or beers. I don't understand why anyone would drink them. They cost a lot, taste terrible, and make normally great people a pain in the ass to hang around.) The fact that I like pisco (sour, is the type of pisco we tasted) basically just means that it has enough sugar to combat the bad taste of 18% alcohol. But it's definitely not the kind of drink to actually drink. It's the kind of drink to taste. I think it's sold in shots here in the restaurants.
Anyway. National pisco day. Meant that the city filled the fountain (in the foto) on the main square with pisco instead of water. And then they gave people free drinks of pisco from the fountain. So... yeah. Apparently that's a thing. We thought of getting a drink from there too, but the line was long and we were hungry so we just went to find a place to eat instead.

We also went and walked the seaside route. Basically, if you've seen one photo from Lima, it's some version of this one:

Probably one with a lot less fog and clouds and a lot more sun. But right now it's winter, so the sun never shines.
Anyway, there's this walkparkway there that stretches for kilometers along the cliff by the shore, and we walked a good stretch of it, just to see the ocean. We didn't go down to the ocean, though, because we couldn't quite figure out how to get down there, and partly because once we did figure it out, it didn't seem worth the trouble going all the way down and across the highway right on the shore and then all the way back. But I can still tell you exactly how the water was: very cold.
Despite that, there were surfers.

During the walk we stumbled upon a mall built basically underground in to the cliffside. It had a separate bathroom just for kids.

We ended out walk in Miraflores, which is a really touristy area in Lima, with all the restaurants and a huge area with only souvenir shops. We mostly just passed the center of Miraflores (we did stop for a short while to get some souvenirs), and headed to see these ruins of a 1500-year-old temple that were close by. This photo is taken from atop the biggest structure. All of it was built out of mudbricks, which makes it pretty incredible that the thing was still there 1500 years later. The fact that it does really shows how little it rains in Lima.

They also had some lamas and alpacas at the temple ruins.

So what's my final take on Lima?
It doesn't feel like an 11-million-person city. Except at 7 pm on a Saturday evening, apparently.
I liked it more than I thought I would.
Most of the time I'm not cold, even though I feel like I should be. Also, I love that I can use a thick blanket again.
I like Brazilian food a lot more than I like Peruvian food. I didn't eat much at all while I was in Iquitos, but now I've been eating out somewhere every day, because it's cheap enough to eat here that I haven't bothered cooking at the hostel. They eat a lot of (is an understatement) chicken here, which sounds great, except that they often use some combination of spices that I don't really like.
Fun fact: this is how they sell the raw chicken here:

And that's apparently what I'm ending with.
Oh well, you can't always win.

~matu

Iquitos

I was in Iquitos last week.
Which you probably know, if you're reading this. But if you don't, then hi! You must be new.
I needed about ten minutes in Iquitos to figure out I liked it a lot more than Manaus. The thing I noticed that fast was that there are no cars in Iquitos.
Well, there are very, very few cars in Iquitos. Only a handful. There are, however, a lot of motokars. In case you don't know what a motokar is, here's a picture with a bunch of them (in general, this post will be just a lot of pictures):

So basically they're just from half motorcycle (or possibly moped? I'm not actually familiar with the vocabulary describing things with two wheels and a motor), back half a seat that can apparently fit up to six people if three of them are small kids.
What I liked about the city being dominated by them and not by cars is that they take up way less space than a car, so the roads can be smaller, and that they're slower than cars, which made it a lot nicer to walk among them. And if you didn't want to walk, it generally costs only a few soles to get around the city with a mototaxi. Because that's what most of those motokars are. They're taxis. So most people don't even need to own one of these. They just take the mototaxi when they need to go anywhere.
I did learn quite fast, though, that they, too, have their downsides. Like the fact that they're noisier than cars. And since it's an open carriage, you hear all that noise all the time. And that unless you're driving on a very good road, you will get dust into your eyes and mouth.
But still. It was a nice change from the traffic jams of Manaus.

Anyway. I was in Iquitos for five full days. On the first one I caught a stomach bug that dad diagnosed as cholera after I had complained to him about it for three days. So that was not great. However, it only kept me laying down in bed fighting nausea for one day, so I did have some time to do other things as well.
So what did I do?
Well, I just walked around the city. Because that's what you do in a new city.

I went actually a couple of times to the Belen street market, which I didn't like very much, and of which this is definitely not a great picture. But it's the only one I have, because it was not the kind of place I felt comfortable walking around with my camera out, even if Iquitos is generally a safe city.
There are a lot of people in a small space, a lot of vendors selling everything from fruits to some kind of cigars, and the area is huge. Or maybe it was only a few blocks, I don't know, it felt huge to me, because the crowd went on a little too long if you ask me. There was also the muddy ground and smoke in the air (in some places, at least) because people were selling meals with grilled fish and chicken. There were also people selling raw chicken, the meat just spread on the table, yes, without even any packaging, which I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced is very hygienic in that heat (or anywhere else), even if you do have a fly swatter to shoo away the flies when they sit on your chicken.
So yeah. Not a huge fan. But other people at the hostel I was staying at seemed to be. And I do still think it's worth it to go see it, if you ever happen to be in Iquitos.

I also walked around in the actual center, the Belen market was a little off to the side.

 Here's Plaza de Armas, the main square of Iquitos.

And some wall-paintings.

And an old boat, stranded on land.

One day, I was half-lost making my way back from the Belen market, and I stumbled upon this other square, too. It somehow spoke to me, and I ended up sitting there for quite a while, on the bench you can see on the left there, just watching the kids there chase pigeons. One time one of the little boys somehow managed to scare all the pigeons into flight at once, and he looked so happy, just laughing an running among the flying birds. One of the even smaller girls smiled widely too, watching the birds fly around, safely from behind her dad's leg.

There was also this old, old locomotive in the square, and some statued of people looking fancy. I later learned that there had been a total of four trains in Iquitos, but now there were none, so maybe this is from one of those. I'm not sure where from where and to where the trains went, because it was explained to me in Spanish so I didn't understand much, so I suppose that will remain a mystery.

Also by the square there was Radio La Kalle, which I just found amusing. I have no idea if Kalle means something in Spanish, though, but it is a common Finnish name.

There aren't many museums in Iquitos, but I managed to go to two. One about native people of the area, and one about the history of Iquitos (which is where I learned about the trains).
First the indigenous museum.

They had some miniheads with lipstrings.

And some skulls of monkeys and I think that one in the bottom row is a jaguar, and some sort of deer-like creatures are maybe the ones with the horns? I don't actually know. I just took a picture because skulls are cool.

 And then they had this guy, who was not at all creepy.

 And a picture of a unicorn bird. Also other animals. But a unicorn bird.

And then there were a big bunch of ceremonial headdresses and ankle and wrist thingies. This is just one example. I haven't figured out how this is used, though. Some of them were a lot smaller, and they looked like they're simply tied at the back of the neck and then it'll stay on your head with the feathers up, but is way, way too big to be tied around someone's head. So I don't know.

And then there were some... vases? These aren't vases. What are these? In any language? Anyway, I swear someone I know has one that looks an awful lot like the one on the right, and if it's not our parents then is some close relative of ours, and I'm a little confused, because those can't be easy to take from Peru to Finland. A ceramic mug or plate is still ok, but that's a lot bigger than a mug.

Ok. This was obviously not everything they had at the museum, but a bit of it. Now to the Iquitos history museum. I didn't understand very much there, because there was this over-eager doorman who wanted to show me around, and he explained everything in Spanish, so yeah. Also the texts were all in Spanish (in the native people museum had everything in English too, which was nice), which wouldn't have been an enormous problem, if I had given enough time. I speak enough Portuguese now to understand the main bits of written Spanish. But the doorman kept wanting to show me the next thing, so I never had the time to read the texts. I think he may have been bored. There was no one else in the museum when I got there.
Anyway.

 There was this statue of a native boy.

And these drums that were used to communicate over long distances.

And this thing, that I think looks like the whole Jesus born in a stable thing that's all over the place close to Christmas, except it also looks like there's some native people there, so that doesn't make any sense

 And a map of how Iquitos has expanded in the last hundred years.

And a Jesus.

And then there were a couple of chest-and-head statues (that probably has an actual name) of some dudes that I think had something to do with some revolutions they had in Iquitos, I'm not sure. And either way, the statues were boring-looking. So I'm moving on.

What I did manage to do aside from a couple of museums was a couple of animal rescue centers. There were a couple more of those around Iquitos, I think, but I only made it to two. Basically they take in animals that are found being kept as pets or in a market being sold illegally or just found motherless in the wild. They try to get them better and then release back to the wild, but for example ex-pets have often been around humans their whole life and wouldn't know how to be out there, so they're given a safe home instead.
One of those places was also a butterfly farm, where they make sure that the eggs laid actually make it to adulthood. And then they release half of those butterflies, and keep the other half to produce the next generation of eggs. Because apparently not that many of the eggs of butterflies make it to adulthood in the wild, and quite a lot of them to make it to adulthood there.
So here's some pictures of animals.

 Some butterflies, obviously.

 And some caterpillars.

 And then here's the challenge: find the caterpillars.

 And some marmosets drinking milk.

 And a toucan.

 And a jaguar.

And a tapir that I swear was about as big as the jaguar. Also my camera apparently hated it, because I have various pictures and all of them have the focus on the metal web instead of the tapir.

And some parrots, finally some parrots! I've been in the rain forest for months, and this was the first time I've seen parrots properly.

And some bigger monkeys. For the record, in these two fotos, we are the ones in the cage. The monkeys and parrots are the ones outside the cage.

I also saw some ocelots.

And otters. There are apparently two species of otters in the Amazon. One is huge, and one is small. This is the smaller one.

And some sloths.

And baby-manatees. I didn't even know they had manatees in the Amazon until I got to Manaus. But they do.

So that was my few days in Iquitos.
I flew to Lima yesterday morning. What I will say now is that I was sure I would freeze the moment I stepped off the plane, because I've been in the tropical, warm, lowland rain forest for months, on top of always being cold in general. But no. It wasn't nearly as cold as I feared. I put on some long pants and some long sleeves and was fine. Until the sun set. That'e when I froze.
But the beds have thick blankets, so maybe that'll be enough. I don't know, because it's actually still yesterday evening as I'm writing this. I hope it will be enough. Ive missed thick blankets.

I'll tell you more about Lima next week.

~matu