After a mammoth 1’500km drive I arrived just in time at the Lima airport to pick up Manuel, my friend who had shared a “steep” and quite funny career with me back in Switzerland. I was a bit surprised by the fact that he was more tanned than I was after a year of travelling, but, hell, working in Switzerland is relaxed as we know.
We went straight to Miraflores, the only safe part of the city of Lima, which ranks as No 1 among the uglier capitals in this world. Once again the parking of the hostel was filled with overlanders – cars of people who travel a continent or more. Manuel with his budget of 50 Euros per night and hotel was quite surprised that a) I suggested to sleep in the tent and that b) when he voted for staying in the hotel instead, the price was as little as 5 Euros per night. Realizing these savings we set off for the best restaurant in town and killed lobsters.

Early the next morning we left and drove up to 4750 meters above sea level. Doing this directly from Lima meant a height difference of about 4750 meters in one day without any acclimatisation. The scenery was breathtaking: we saw Lamas, colourfully clothed indigenous people (Inkas!!) and high mountains. Our jokes got worse and worse and meantime funnier and funnier. The lack of oxygen is a cool thing. On the way down we almost killed a drunken farmer on his bicycle who deemed it a good idea to measure his forces with a 3 tons Land-Cruiser at 80km/h. A full-stop saved his life and made me curse in my worst Swiss German.
We stayed in a beautiful small mountain city which is little know by tourists (that’s why I don’t mention the name – so it will stay like this) and decided that we would make it to Cusco on the next day. Wrong we were.
The up to now perfectly paved street left us and we cruised with an average of 30km/h through a very beautiful landscape. This time we had some “Mate de Coca” in our blood and the next couple of 4000+ meters passes could not impress us.
We drove through very small and very poor villages. In fact, these were the poorest people I have seen so far on my trip. With 25 years the hardly have any teeth left and live in more than modest dirt huts.
After cooking lunch in midst of some cactuses we decided to call it a day when the day-light said good-bye. To our astonishment (and to Manuel’s relieve) we once again found a very good hotel in a small town I can not recall the name. The only watering-whole in this mountain town was not much more than a bottle of rum and two chairs and these being taken we left for an early night.
On the next day we finally reached Cusco! What a beautiful town! We liked it a lot and stayed two days before we set of towards the famous Inca settlement Machu Picchu. We took the train and this was very good since I hardly could open my eyes. The party with some Swedish girls the night before had been too funny and prevented us from driving small mountain roads.
Sitting next to two very boring American tax consultants we had a great time making fun of them in Swiss German. However, even the best train ride ends and we found ourselves in the tourist-Mecca Aguas Calientes, the base camp for climbing up to Machu Picchu.
Time for lunch it was and Manuel, being the though one of us two in everything concerning food, ordered Guinea Pig. It honestly looked disgusting and the girls sitting on the table next to hours stopped talking - among them and with us. This evening we managed not to get drunk and jumped out of bed highly motivated at 4:30 AM on the very next morning. We were willing and able and left town in complete darkness in order to be the first ones to take the infamous picture of Machu Picchu with the high nose-like mountain in the background.

As soon as we had left the hotel, it started to rain. After 20 minutes we were soaked and I was worrying about my camera. We got twice checked by street robber like tourist controllers who jumped out of the dark (in fact, the tourist authorities are robbers – a ticket just to enter the Inca site costs 40 bucks, the train to Machu Picchu with breaks down occasionally or at least once per trip costs 80 bucks – and this in a country where the average salary is below 100 US-Dollars a month) and then we got overtaken by stupid tour buses, which I hated. Wet to our bones we finally made it and entered the Inca site. There we run as fast as we could in order to overtake the boring tourists who had come up in a warm and dry bus. We climbed up to the famous lookout from where the necessary tourist picture would be taken.
And we were the first ones! Unfortunately this did not help much since we could not see anything! Fog! Rain!
Disillusioned we made it back to Cusco where no more Swedish girls were to be seen and left for Lake Titicaca on the next morning.
The landscape was wonderful once again and I know already now that this is not the last time I am travelling through Peru.
We stayed in Puno, a small city at Lake Titicaca with only one industry: tourism.
We booked the tour to the floating islands and, well, it was like Disney-Land. They keep you on the islands longer than one would need only to sell their souvenirs. This whole society of boat people or whatever you want to call them does not have any reason of being other than tourists being nice enough to buy their slightly overpriced goods. I was happy once we were back on mainland and decided to surf the net while Manuel set off for another great tour towards some old Inca tombs, where he would spend more hours trying not to buy any hand-made and highly useful souvenirs. That evening we had fun with some waitresses in a bar called “Colors” and since we were in a happy mood we decided it would be about time to visit a disco. The taxi driver said that he knew the best one with very nice girls (not that we would have asked for) and brought us to a bar/brothel which would have honoured the movie “From Dusk Till Dawn”. We chatted with some rather unattractive ladies with big boobs and explained that we were far too poor to buy their services.
Together with two Canadian rugby players we left for Bolivia on the next day. The poor guys had to share the one back seat in the Cruiser and looked pretty miserable.
The border crossing was easy and the police officer who had asked for some “Cooperation, por favor, senor!” was happy enough when I handed him a cold beer instead of the dineros he wanted so much. After some more military and police officers asking for “regalos” or “cooperation” (this time I just said that I was sure to be among professionals and that we would not dare to bribe highly professional police and army men) we arrived in La Paz some hours later.Chaos pure. The city has its own charm but forget to navigate in the complicated system of one way streets. Again we had good fiestas and drank more of the super-tasty “Pisco Sours”. We had to, since on the next day we planed to set of for “The most dangerous road of the world”, leading to the Bolivian mountains.
Stay tuned!