The Countdown to Peru!!!

Hey everyone...it is around a month before we leave for Peru, and in anticipation we are writing the first of many entries into our travel blog. This will be our second time blogging while travelling. We also did this back in October 2008 when we backpacked Jordan and Egypt.


Our itinerary is action packed...we arrive in Lima on May 19, and take an internal flight to Cuzco, the heart of the mighty Inca empire. It is the undisputed archaeological capital of the Americas. It is also the continents oldest continuously inhabited city. It lies on the Andes at an altitude of 11,600 feet, which is one reason why we are staying in the town for 5 days. Try to acclimatize and avoid altitude sickness. The other reason is for the amount of stuff one can see and do in the Cuzco area, from day trips to the Sacred Valley, horseback riding on the high ledges of the Andes, checking out the many artist shops, river rafting the ice cold rivers of the mountains, exploring the many Inca ruins and of coarse drinking some coca tea or chewing some coca leaves, you know to help you with the altitude sickness. ;) Don't worry, the possession of coca leaves is legal in Peru!!


We are staying at the Hostal Rumi Punku, which has a monumental Inca stone doorway.


After 4 nights we will be taking an early train through the Andes Mountains to the town of Aquas Calientes, which is the starting point for the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu. We are giving ourselves 2 full days at Machu Picchu, just in case one day there are many clouds and/or fog. We are staying at Wiracocha Inn, right beside the mountain river.


After 1 night and 2 full days at Machu Picchu, we return to Cuzco for one night before taking another flight to Puerto Maldonado to head into the Amazon, where we will be staying for 3 days. We take a 2 hour boat ride up the Rio Tambopata to Posada Amazonas, which is a jungle lodge. We won't be able to blog from here, since there is no electricity, never mind computers. In the Amazon, we will mainly be hiking, boating and searching for animals. We are also visiting a Shaman. The land we will be staying on is part of the Ese'eje native community.


After the Amazon, we take another flight back to Lima, where we travel about 1 hour south of Lima to the town of San Bartolo for 3 full days of surfing on the Pacific Ocean. We will be staying at Penascal Surf Hotel.


Then we will call it a trip, and head back to Lima, for our flight back to Toronto...

So stay tuned, as we may blog a couple more time before we leave...

Follow our blog and follow our adventures through Peru!!


Check out our pics at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anetamark/

Back and sad :(

Well, we are back...and already missing the busy streets of Cairo. Going into this trip, I've been dreaming about Egypt for a long time....and thinking that I read so much about it, studied it a lot, planned it for years, that it would not live up to the hype, but it did much more than that. Egypt turned out to surprise and shock you when you least expected it. Leave the touristy areas, away from all the touts and scams, you witness the real Egypt, with friendly, welcoming and a proud people. Jordan also didn't disappoint, with such a variety of things to see and do for such a small country, it truly is a dream tourist spot.



There are so many things we will remember about this trip like horseback riding into Petra, camel trekking around the Ancient City, to Donkey trekking up the mountain to the Monastery. Weird and cool things like getting a $25 Iraq bill from a guy in Petra...the bill has Saddam Hussein on it still. From getting a mud body-wrap and face mask at the Dead Sea in Jordan, to visiting Wadi Rum desert and it's amazing mars-like views, and looking over the mountains to Saudi Arabia. And of coarse Egypt, from the extraordinary temples in Luxor, to the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens, to Cairo and it's crazy traffic, to Giza and the priceless pyramids, and to the lesser known pyramids in Dashur and Saqqara. Climbing inside the hot, muggy and claustrophobic chambers in the pyramids themselves. To the complete opposite and empty White Desert, where camping under a bright full moon with weird white formations all around us was one of our best experiences ever!


We tried to fit in as much as we could in 2 weeks, with still enough time to savour the moments and enjoy the country and its people.

Well, hope you all enjoyed this blog...and until our next adventure...see ya

For some of our pics...check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/anetamark/sets/
This is an on-going process, as we have over 4000 pics to go through...so keep checking, as new ones will be added daily.

To be continued....I hear PERU calling!!!!

Coming soon in 2009!!

Avoiding the dripping air conditioners in Cairo!!

Today we just took it easy and relaxed. I did walk to the Cairo Museum, about 15 minutes from our hotel.

Crossing the street at the main circle intersection was challenging and funny, as there are no crosswalks, and you have to cross about 12 lanes in total to get to the other side. Of coarse I used my Frogger skills like George Costanza, and made it across no problems! :)

I wanted to re-visit the museum, because they have a store which has many reproductions of famous Egyptian sculptures and artifacts. I found the replica of the Rosetta Stone, which is probably the most important find in Egyptology. Discovered in 1799, the stele has writings in hieroglyphics and ancient Greek. This enabled archaeologists to decipher the hieroglyphics, and translate them.

Walking in downtown Cairo is funny, as there are tons of air conditioners hanging from every building, so you have to avoid the dripping water, which occurs every few steps. Pretty funny stuff!! It's like a game, and the locals know exactly how to avoid each drop as if an art form.

Cairo is nicknamed "The City of A Thousand Minarets", but it should be the City of a million dripping air conditioners.

We are now just waiting an hour or so, until we leave for the airport. SUCKS!!! :(

See you at home!!

Almost the end...

Well today we did downtown Cairo, and went to the museum, souk and a few mosques.

The Cairo Museum is really wicked...it is so cluttered with Egyptian artifacts and history, that it is almost bursting with objects. Apparently, they are building a new state-of-the-art museum near the pyramids in Giza, which will replace this older one.

Some cool things we saw, were the Royal Mummies, which are in their own private room, with special entrance fees to get in. Mummies are always cool to see!!!

Also, half of the entire second floor is dedicated to the treasures found in King Tut's tomb!! The room where you can see the Death Mask was busy, I mean really busy...with people pushing themselves just to get a closer glimpse, as if the mask is going anywhere!

We then went to the famous Khan El Khalili souk, where you can buy anything and everything, and is one of the oldest in the world, and dates back to the 1300's. We walked around, and I finally found the Death Mask I wanted to buy...we bargained hard for it.. ;)
Aneta of coarse, was looking at jewellery, and bought herself a nice silver bracelet. She really bargained hard, and at the end, the guy called her Ali Baba!!!

To end the day, we went to visit 3 of the biggest and oldest mosques in the city...the architecture was really amazing, with wicked arches and stone work.

We also took a nice long walk in downtown Cairo, looking for this store that sells Egyptian alcohol (to add to Aneta's collection of coarse), just to find out the store was closed, which to begin with wasn't really easy to find. :(

We have to make the walk again tomorrow, and crossing the street is a challenge...Cairo is famous for it's traffic, and everybody makes their own rules, but somehow it works.

Now we are relaxing at our hotel....and think we might call it a day...maybe some dinner first...

Tomorrow, we really have nothing planned, I may walk to the museum early in the morning, and look around some stores, but other than that and the alcohol, I think we will just take it easy for the first time this trip.

Later

It really is White!!!!

Just came back from 2 days, 1 night camping in the White Desert...and yes, it really is white.
We left yesterday morning around 7 am, and took us around 6 hours to get there.
We did stop at a Bedouin camp half way there, for some lunch and tea...Aneta really liked it there.

There are many spots we stopped before reaching our final destination. The desert here changes so many times, from pure sand, to sand and rock, to the Black Desert and finally the White Desert.

We did stop at some larges dunes for some sandboarding...it is much harder than snowboarding or wakeboarding, as it is very hard to turn and manoeuvre...plus it's a real beotch to climb back up the dune, in the heat and with the hot sand. After a bunch of times of going down, it got really hard getting back up the dune, as each step you took, your foot went deep into the soft sand, about 2 feet deep!!

We finally got to the White Desert about 1 hour or so before sunset. We took many pics around all these weird white formations. The sunset was amazing...
We set up camp, between all these formations, in an area that was protected from wind and was flat.

It was a full moon which made it incredibly bright at night.
I am not joking when I say my ears were hurting for the first hour at night from the silence...it is something to really experience first hand. Never before have I not heard anything like this. There was no wind, no birds or animals, just nothing but silence. It was one of those experiences, which made you think about how our ears are so accustomed to the noises of cities and urban areas, that when there is no noise at all, it feels weird. The thing is, even in forest up north in Canada, you will always have some type of noise, like birds, animals, trees moving in the wind....here, in the desert, there was nothing....

We ate dinner, and drank tea, while sitting around the campfire on Bedouin mats and sharing stories.

The temperature during the day must have been around 30, and right when at sunset, the temp dropped. It was still comfortable, until the morning when we woke up...it was freezing!!! We had to wear toques!!!



We also stopped at the local village called Bawiti at the Bahariya Oasis. We sat and relaxed while eating dates with the local Bedouin.

On the drive back today, after stopping in the middle of the desert for washroom break and lunch, we heard a loud pop...flat tire... our guide quickly changed the tire, and we were off again. He usually carries 2 or 3 spares, as this is a common occurrence with the abuse of driving up and down dunes, over rocks, etc.

Right now we are relaxing at our hotel in Cairo...technically only 2 more days to go :(

Tomorrow the souk, museum and some mosques!!!

The call to prayer will wake us up early tomorrow.



Talk to you guys tomorrow...and remember today's lesson, never lift rocks in the desert, you may get a surprise viper or cobra attack and never shake peoples left hand in the desert!! ;)

Sphinx and camels

Today we woke up early again, and went to the Giza Plateau, to visit the famous pyramids and the Sphinx. Since Aneta already went into the Red Pyramid yesterday, she decided to skip it today. I still went into the Great Pyramid, and the tunnel is long and really small, and first goes up to a anti-chamber, which is now closed, and then goes up again, where you can barely make it, in a tunnel less than 1 metre tall, and less than 1 metre width. It opens up at the Queen Chamber, where you are still not allowed to go in. Then it climbs once more, with a narrow tunnel, into the King's Chamber. The walls are cut so perfectly and precise. It is also very hot, and the air is very bad in the chamber.

After I got out, we went for a camel ride around the pyramids...it was pretty cool, as the camels have really colourful wool saddles. You will see pics when we get back.

After this, we went to see the Sphinx...again, words can't describe it...



This was my dream as a small kid, watching Indiana Jones when I was 6 years old, and falling in love with archeology....this whole trip so far, has not disappointed.

Tomorrow morning we will leave really early, for the Western Desert of Egypt...visiting places such as Bahariya Oasis, the White and Black Desert and some hot and cold springs along the way. We will be camping in the middle of the desert, about 6 hours from Cairo...apparently, the stars are the brightest you will ever see, as the closet city of artificial lights are Cairo, and there is nothing in between.

So obviously, we will have no Internet or computer, so we will not post most likely until really late Tuesday night or Wednesday....we are now about to go to another hotel in downtown Cairo, called the Osiris Hotel....

Sphinx you later!!!!

A little too fancy for our taste...

So we arrived in Cairo last night, and went straight to our hotel. We didn't have time to go anywhere else, so we just ate at the hotel. Even though it's at a 5 star hotel, dinner last night tasted like a mediocre Caribbean resort. Today we got take out at a local Egyptian place, and the food was a lot better.

We woke up early in the morning, and went to 3 main areas. Firstly, we went to Dashur, to see the Bent and Red Pyramids. We went inside the Red Pyramid...it was so tight and small, and very hot and stuffy inside, but worth it. The whole area is near a military restricted zone, so there are some areas that are off limits. We did meet some Egyptian soldiers, that were trying to sell us camel rides.

We then went to Memphis, which is the ancient Egyptian capital. The Nile Valley in this area is very lush, with many farms growing everything from cabbage to dates...

The last place we visited was Saqqara, where the first pyramid was built... the Step Pyramid.

Tonight we will smoke some sheesha and tomorrow off to Giza!!