Chilled

Since today was my last complete day in Huacachina, I decided to not spend the entire day relaxing by the pool, and to make the most of it by getting in some more sandboarding. The last sandboarding day in Huacachina was wicked, and I've been itching to do some more. So I hired a board for a few hours, in the middle of the day, and went up and down the massive dune on the western side of the oasis (behind our hostel, Casa de Arena). Unlike on Wednesday, I actually managed to get down standing up — and with just a hint of style (but not too much, mind you) — rather than head-first, and flat on my stomach.

When we finished our hiking for the day — this being our second day in the Cañon del Colca — we arrived at a little tourist retreat at the bottom of the canyon, called "the oasis". The place claims to have "hot thermal baths": but sadly, it doesn't quite live up to this claim; the palm-encircled pools in this place aren't much more than a chilly 23°C or so. However, it's still a beautiful place, and a great location for relaxing and getting some serenity before hiking like mad, back out of the canyon.

Since Chris still ain't feeling 100%, and since we haven't got too much of an urgent hurry (we have about 7 visa-free days, out of 30, left in Bolivia), we just relaxed and hung out in Uyuni today, and we'll start a salt flats tour tomorrow. Uyuni's actually quite a pleasant place to chill for a day; although "chill" is definitely what you do there, since it's so daym cold!

As I discovered at Parque Cretácico this morning, there really isn't much to do in Sucre. For some reason, absolutely nothing — not cafés, not general stores, not pharmacies — seems to be open before about 4pm. It's a totally lazy and useless place. There's nothing at all to do in town, during the day. Nothing, that is, except hang out at the Joyride Café, the No. 1 gringo haunt in town, and the only place that actually is open when you need it to be. That's how we ended up spending breakfast, lunch, dinner, and most of the time in between in Sucre, sitting in the Joyride Café. Nice place: but Sucre could certainly use a few more places to eat and, well, do something.

We had a fun little session of handicraft-making this afternoon, at our campsite in the jungle. Our guide, Orlando, helped us to fashion some rings, and to create some traditional (looking) necklaces. All we really did was a bit of sanding — the rest was already done for us, or was done after we finished sanding — but it made us feel like intelligent artisans nonetheless. And we got to keep the handicrafts.

As well as hunting anacondas, another activity that people really look forward to on their pampas trips is piranha fishing. And this morning, that's exactly what we did! Straight after breakfast, we grabbed some meaty bait and some hooked reels, jumped in our boat, and set off to hunt some man-eating fish. Surprisingly, they're very small, and very hard to catch. Piranha fishing may not sound like a relaxing way to spend one's morning; but it's actually no less chilled than any other type of fishing. Plenty of waiting; and now and then, a little bit of catching.

Once we were done with the morning's jungle tour and lunch, this afternoon we returned from our trek, to the farm near Pilcopata, via river raft. The rapids were supposedly "class II"; but compared to my three-day Apurímac rafting trip last week, they were a class-zero romantic pleasure-ride. Barely a splash the whole way along — little more than a light current to keep us going, really. But a good bit of fun, nonetheless.

After yesterday's visit to the ruins of Pisac and Ollantaytambo in the Valle Sagrado (north of Cusco), today Jesus and I continued this weekend's ruin-seeking crusade, by heading south of Cusco, to the town and the Incan ruins of Tipón. Although I was still recovering from yesterday's lethal buffet lunch, I was well enough today to make it to these ruins, and to appreciate the ingenious work that the Incas carried out here, hundreds of years ago.

I've been very slack in my time so far in Cusco, because after 4 weeks here, I still haven't visited the Valle Sagrado ("Sacred Valley") at all. Lying about an hour north of Cusco (by public bus), and consisting of three principal towns — Pisac, Urubamba, and Ollantaytambo — it's one of the main tourist attractions in the area. This morning, I was planning to visit Pisac (and to continue on to Urubamba) on my own; but at the last minute, I ended up going with Jesus. We didn't quite make it up to the Inca Citadel, but we did have a colourful and relaxed morning at the markets.

I just realised that in the past week, I've seen more movies (most in English) than in any other week so far on my trip! The reason: the Flying Dog has a big TV, 50 cable channels, and a stash of DVDs; and we've been watching at least one movie a night, and sometimes more in the daytime, the whole time we've been here.