Lima

So after Cusco we went to Lima, the capital of Peru. It’s a huge city, and blanketed in fog for most of the year. If you wanted to make a zombie film you couldn’t pick a better location. There’s not a whole lot of nice things we can stay about our stay there – we stayed in our only really bad hostel* of the entire trip. The owner was like a less charming version of Norman Bates. As we were only staying for one night we were willing to put up with his creepiness, the strong paint fumes, the noise of the disco underneath our room and the general dinginess of the hostel. However at midnight a large cockroach arrived to say hello so we decided to head straight for the airport.

We originally planned to get the bus from Lima to Nazca, but due to poor weather this seemed like it would be a waste of time as flights over the Nazca lines were being cancelled. Instead we went straight to our next destination – Quito, in Ecuador.

Quito / Otovalo

Quito is another high mountainy city, and we really enjoyed our time there. We stayed in the best hostel of our trip and met a lot of nice people. The hostel had a rooftop terrace with beautiful views over the city (photos later) and all round good atmosphere so it made up for the horrible experience in Lima.

In Quito, among other things, we wandered around the gorgeous old town & visited another musical instruments museum. The museum was a pretty surreal experience – it was part of a huge complex containing multiple different museums. We seemed to be the only visitors there, so the museum was not properly lit up. Instead there were automatic lights which turned on when you approached** each exhibit, so we spent our time in small pools of light inside huge dark rooms.

While still based in Quito we visited the Otovalo market, the largest indigenous market in South America. It’s pretty big, and has stalls selling all manner of thingamajigs and watchamacallits. It’s definitely the place to be on a Saturday morning if you want a wide variety of whole roast pigs, travel pants, wooden spoons, televisions or other such items.

After Quito we headed over to Cotopaxi.

Cotopaxi

Cotopaxi is one of the worlds highest active volcanoes, and is only a couple of hours from Quito. The lodge we stayed in was self sufficient (no external electricity or phone lines) and had incredible views  – so it was a great place to relax for a few days.  The highlight here (aside from sitting by the fire in the evenings) was horse-riding and fishing.  The horses were pretty excitable – a gentle tap and they’d go straight from walking to galloping. Having never learned to horse ride it made for good fun. On our way back to the lodge we had to go on a bit of a detour due there being a large angry fighting bull on the road***.  The bull was new to the area and we were apparently the first to find out that it was able to jump the ditch which was supposed to keep it in. Go team!

Fishing was also good craic – the water in the rivers were very low, so the normal rod and reel approach was abandoned. Instead we fished with our hands – crouching over the banks and reaching under the overhangs to try and nab a trout. Our guide managed to catch a couple, but I failed miserably. I grabbed one but it slipped out of my hand – foolishly I only used one hand, when two was clearly required. It was good fun trying and way more active than normal fishing(photos later)

* It was also the only hostel we stayed in that offered teeth whitening on the premises…

** Sometimes you had to dance around the exhibits flailing your arms in order to get the light to come on

*** Apparently a few weeks before we arrived there had been a festival in the nearest village. The men of the village had few drinks and then got in to a ring full of bulls. According to our hosts someone would get hit every fifteen minutes or so, resulting in the rest of the participants trying to distract the bull from the man on the ground.