Arequipa and Canon del Colca

After enjoying the beautiful city of Arequipa underneath the volcano El Misti with its labyrinthious monastery and an old frozen Inca mummy from the Andes, we continued to a true outdoor adventure:

Canon del Colca was long believed to be the deepest Canyon on earth (now it´s on 2nd place).
Due to the height (3800m) hiking becomes quite exhausting, but believe you me when I say, you have never seen a mountain panorama like that!
Plus on the famous Cruz de Condor we were able to see the famous and majestic Peruvian Andean Condor drifting through the deep canyons.

Simply spectacular!

Atleee!

Atle, don`t you think we forgot about you!

It cannot be left unsaid, that this glorious Norwegian held a Anaconda, despite his life-long trauma with snakes! Way to go there, Atle!
Seriously, it was a pleasure meeting you, take care in the jungle.. and hey we´ll let you if we get news from the Japanese adventurer on the amazon!!
(note: we met a Japanese who wanted to go down the amazon on a 2x2m2 raft, expected duration 2 months.. craaaazyyy!!)

All the best, your Tarzans

Iquitos and the Amazon Jungle

Iquitos, the world`s largest city, that can only be accessed by ship or plane. This is the starting point for our 4 day amazon jungle trip.

"La selva" has many surprises and challenges for us. We are moving in a completely unknown environment, with billions of moskitoes, tropical heat and a air humidity of more than 85%.

Our camp was situated in the Pacaya-Samiria National Park, 300 km upstream the amazon from Iquitos.

Why don´t we let the pictures do the talking..

The so called tropical handshake.. including about 400 termites, who are an excellent moskito repellent, when mashed up and smeared on the skin.

These are Pepito, Pancho (our guide), Maxí y Marcos in a indigenous amazon village on the last day of our tour.

Among the many animals we saw and touched the most impressive one was the SLOTH, also known as the ghost animal (dt. faultier) considering its frightening claws and screams.

The "anaconda-accident"; while proudly holding an 2m long anaconda, this shameless animal was not friendly enought to spare marcos snake-poo (yellow).

Peru

After exhausting flights via Madrid and Caracas we finally reached the capital of Peru, Lima, a 12 million megahub, the second largest desert city on earth.

Welcomed by the local mayor we enjoyed a free pisco drink (really strong stuff!!) on Plaza de Armas. We are also attracting attention as tall white "gringos".

The three of us ontop of Museo de la Nacion (which is full of precolombian art and fotos of recent history including Sendero Luminoso, etc - fantastic) plus view of smoggy Lima.

The cliffs of Miraflores by night, a truly magnificent coastline.

After an one hour busride through the favelas we ended in the desert around Lima watching the Pachacamac ruins.

Let's get it on

Today months of planning finally reach an end. At 19:30 we will leave Vienna and fly to Madrid, where we will spend the night. Our hotel is pretty close to the airport, nontheless we are planning to go to Plaza Mayor to enjoy the atmosphere, have dinner and possibly some cervezitas :-D

On Saturday the next flight will take us over the ocean to Caracas, Venezuela, where we have a connection flight to our final destination, Lima. We will arrive there close to midnight; luckily our hostel provides a pick up service, so we are optimistic that we will successfully show up at the "casa de mochilero" ('mochilero' means backpacker). This hostel is located in the modern and pulsating district of Miraflores.

So...the tension keeps on rising! Next entry probably on Sunday (note the time zone difference in Lima: GMT -5)

Con saludos cordiales, maxphilmark