Whales!!!!!!!!

After a tip off from our friend Nick, we've headed to Puerto Lopez in Ecuador. It's quite a small town on the coast, but it promises to have a lovely beach nearby, and is also in the migration path of humpback whales, which hang around here from June to August apparently. We're travelling with our friends Kathryn and Sophie again (who we met a few months ago) which is really nice, we´re all enjoying being at the sea side!



So we got ourselves on a tour to the Isla de la Plata, which according to the guide book is like the poor man´s Galapagos (and we are indeed poor men). It has lots of weird looking birds on it that sit in the middle of the path and look indignantly at you.We also went snorkelling, where there are lots of cool brightly coloured fish just like in Finding Nemo!



By far the best bit though was the trip there (well apart from the fact that I got massively sea sick) where we found a group of about three whales. One of them in particular seemed to really like the attention, and just kept on jumping almost fully out of the water fairly close to us. It was so amazing! I was sooo excited! They are just so beautiful and we were so lucky to see them the way we did. A bit later we saw a couple more just flicking their tails in the air again and again. I don´t know why they put on such a show, but I´m so glad they did!





So anyway, the whales were incredible, and I´m quite sad to be leaving the beach, but never mind! We´re going to have plenty more beach time in Central America. We´re off to Quito now for around a week before flying to Costa Rica, where I can finally concentrate on my tan!

Machu Picchu

We´re back in Cusco now after a few days doing an alternative inka trail. The real inca trail was a bit too pricey for us and also needs to be booked around 4 months in advance so there was no chance of doing that! Instead we opted for a 5 day trek called the Salkantay trek which leads to the town just below Machu Picchu. It´s a bit tougher than the inka trail as it goes up a bit higher (up to 4650m) and is a bit more in the mountains - circling Mount Salkantay which is one of the biggest in the area (6271m).



We nearly did the trek on our own but in the end opted for the guided option where mules can take your bags, food is cooked for you, and you´re told where to go (useful as we couldn´t get hold of a map) etc. In the end I think we chose a rather too cheap option as our guides were pretty crap, couldn´t even get into machu picchu on the last day as their licence had expired apparently! but everything else was fine and a lot easier than carrying our stuff everywhere!



The area is amazingly beautiful, the trek took us through some spectacular mountains, through some cloud forests and through the amazing mountains surrounding machu picchu (we walked around the base of the machu picchu mountain before acsending it on the final day).



Machu Picchu really does live up to its incredibly high expectations. It is an amazing ruin which is suprisingly intact and well built. It´s situation is also incredible, right at the top of a very steep mountain in the middle of nowhere! Anyway we´re having a few days to relax as i think we´ve only slept in past 6 twice in the last 2 weeks!

Huayna Potosi

One of the things I've always wanted to do is to climb a 6000m mountain. Huayna Potosi (6088m) in Bolivia is supposed to be the most accessible 6000m peak in the world as well as being one of the easiest so we thought we'd give it a go.

We signed ourselves on to a 3 day trip to the mountain with a guide we'd been recommended. First thing the next morning, we got driven to base camp which is about 2 hours from La Paz. Base camp consists of quite a nice refugio at 4750m. After some lunch we went to the glacier at the foot of the mountain to do some ice climbing and practice moving around on snow and ice. We both really enjoyed the climbing though it was pretty tiring at that altitude!



The 2nd day of the trip was pretty easy. Just a 3 hour walk up to high camp (a very small and basic rufugio) at 5130m. We spent the rest of the day chilling out and acclimatising there. We had planned to go out and play in the snow practising self arrest (ie stopping yourself sliding down he snow if you fall) but the guide said it was too windy to go out there. It was pretty cold at high camp so we went to sleep really early ready for an early start the next morning.



We got up at 1am and after a bit of faffing and waiting for the wind to die down we set off at 2:30. The first part of the climb wasn't too hard. Fairly steep snow but just a long snow plod really. We had to walk fairly slowly because as soon as we put too much energy into our steps we were out of breath and once that happens you can't get your breath back till you stop. It quite quickly got harder, becoming steeper and we were constantly almost out of breath and neither of us were feeling great - due to the food in La Paz and the lack of a toilet at high camp. After a while we came to the first bit of actual climbing. It was only a steep slope but too steep to walk up so required using only the front points of the crampons and the pick of our ice axe. The hardest thing was that the wind was very very strong on that section and blowing spindrift everywhere making it very hard to see what was going on. After that section we continued on for a few hours on tiring but non serious terrain - our guide Juan keeping us away from any crevasses.





Things got hard again once we got above 5800m. The air was noticably thinner making our pace very slow, also everything feels heavy at this altitude, especially our feet! This was just before the sun started coming up and it was also really really cold (the moisture from my breath kept freezing my the buff over my mouth). The exercise wasn't warming us up much because we were out of breath before we could get warm. Juan was kind and gave Becky his down jacket but I just had to shiver. The terrain got a lot harder too but by this point the sun was starting to come up and everything was looking very beautiful. We had to do a fair bit more climbing and edging along very narrow ridges but despite being incredibly knackered this section was the most fun. We reached the top at about 7:30 and once there we had a little sit down and then back along the hard section until we had a longer rest in a safer flatter section. The way down was much easier and only took a few hours. By 3 in the afternoon we were back in La Paz and able to have some much needed rest at a much more sensible altitude of 3800m.