singinwhale

Choquequirao (Sometimes also written as Choquekiraw) is an Inka city ruin that was discovered in the 80s. Since a couple of years they have been clearing the ruins of the jungle that overtook the ruins when it was abandoned. It is believed that almost 2000 people lived there in its glory days. I did a guided tour with only a small group of 2 other people plus the guide. The other 2 were a couple from London in their 30s. ...

Lead-up to Inti Raimi When I arrived in Cusco it was the beginning of the lead-up to Inti Raimi (Quechua Inti: Sun, Raimi: Festival), the festival of the sun around the solstice. Even before the festival on the 24th of June, every day there is marches and celebration in the town square of Cusco where the different departments and institutions of Cusco present themselves and their tradition. Sadly I had to leave Cusco just before the solstice but I would have loved to see the actual show at saksay huaman. ...

On the way to Arequipa Christelle and I wondered if there were any interesting sites along the way that we could visit. On the map we found the Reserva Nacional de Salinas y Aguadas Blancas. So we took a detour through there. It was mostly a high altitude desert but with great panoramas and lots of alpacas and vicunas. At one point we got out and walked around a bit but there was not much interesting stuff to be found. ...

From La Paz I drove north to Copacabana to take a boat to Isla del Sol which is supposedly where the first Inka king was born. I did not make it there the same day so I stayed for the night on the shores of lake Titicaca. It was a bit overcast but you could see the high (>6000m) mountains of the Andes in the distance. The next day I had to take a barge over the bay to get to Copacabana. Anyone taking this way to Peru also has to go via the barges. On both shores there is a huge amount of ferries waiting for passengers so the bandwidth on the bay is very high and there is no waiting lines. ...

Before arriving to La Paz I had to stay another night somewhere. I found a nice mountain pass with a small maintenance road to an antenna tower. It was a little windy but in the slipstream of the car I was able to cook some dinner without the wind blowing out the gas stove. El Alto On my way to La Paz I had to go through El Alto. El Alto has a larger population than La Paz itself. While La Paz is in the valley, El Alto is on the plane around the valleys edges and is much more of a sprawl than La Paz. The quality of the buildings is also significantly lower. From La Paz there is multiple cable car lines going up to El Alto. ...

The drive from Sucre to La Paz takes 9 hours (even though it is a fairly well maintained toll road). It is a beautiful ride but after 5 hours I started looking for a place to sleep for the night. On the iOverlander App I found an entry for a camping spot that seemed good and on OpenStreetMaps there was a road that went there. I found the entrance to the road and it did go for some 500m to an old graveyard but sadly it seemed like the map was outdated after that for there were fences crossing the section where the road should have been and behind the fence there was already plenty of grass. So the map must have been outdated for some 10 years already. This was not the first time OSM had been wrong though so I was not entirely surprised. So I turned around and wanted to look for a new place but the way back went in a right turn around the graveyard and in my turn and with only my headlights to go by I must have missed the ditch that was there. In any case, I ended up plowing my car more or less straight into said ditch. ...

Potosi On our way to Sucre, Bismarck and I drove through Potosi - a mining town where his brother lived. Bismarck told me that Potosi used to be the richest town in the world and bigger than London in its heyday. That was because there was an insane amount of silver deposits in the mountains and still to this day the silver mine is active. From Potosi they shipped the silver down the river and over the Atlantic back to Spain which is the reason that Argentina, the “Rio Plata” and “La Plata” are named after the precious metal. We only went to town to get an ice cream however and then we were back on our way to Sucre. ...

I went on a 3 day guided tour of the salt flats and the surrounding area. Our tour guide, Bismarck, was a pretty chill dude and the other visitors on the tour, 3 Irish and 1 Russian folks, were also pretty chill. We got along quite well. There was a lot of driving happening between stops so we took turns playing music on the bluetooth. I spent a lot of time reading books and got through 2 books on this tour alone. ...

After Humahuaca it wasn’t far to to the Bolivian border anymore. I was already in the altiplano at over 4000 meters and I wouldn’t get below 3000 meters until I went to Sucre later. Along the way I saw huge herds of alpacas and llamas that were grazing on the huge planes. ...

On my way to Humahuaca there was a police checkpoint. I had not noticed that one of my headlights had failed and so the police officer wanted to give me a fine. Or rather, he said that technically he would be supposed to give me a fine *wink* *wink*. After my parking ticket situation I really was not into getting another ticket so I went with the suggestion and gave him US$20. ...