We sit around, watching the changing scenery, talking to locals, walking around, taking photos, unpacking and repacking, mending our gear, sleeping, eating, passing time. The places we stop at are usually small clearings in the dense forest with a few huts strewn across the river bank, here everyone seems to know everyone else, some just send packages to town, others help unload cargo. It is a bit like travelling along the Amazon, except for the terrible cold, the locals feel it too, everywhere along the shore fires dot the skyline, with families huddled around them. After 26 hours Corumba appears on the horizon, to the right stretches Bolivia, to the left purple mountains loom in the morning glow, the sun appears for a moment and then we arrive.

The dark of early dawn still covers us when we see the light of a ship across the river, in panic we start packing our stuff together, running up and down as if it made a difference. Then at nine in the morning the port master finds us sitting on the river bank, staring at the ship and the deckhands who are talking cheerfully to locals suddenly appearing out of nowhere. When not talking, they are packing “stuff”, that is huge drums of gasoline, a tractor gearbox, food for the farmers and salt for the cattle. Life is not an easy one around here, at the farm where Elisio works the diesel generator consumes gallons of fuel by the hundreds, so every barrel has to be shipped up in two days, unloaded by hand, uploaded on a tractor and driven off to the farm. Slowly it is our turn, after all cargo has been organized it is time for the passengers to embark, we find a perfect spot on the upper deck, everyone is extremely excited, after all we have been sort of imprisoned for three days, and some of us were genuinely concerned about our possibilities of travelling on. The ferry finally departs amidst enthusiastic horn blows, but after a minute it turns back, there is shouting from the shore and amongst the trees far away a shadow of a wide-rimmed Pantanal hat appears, the owner leaning heavily in his rowing pole, hurrying along the narrow channel littered with water lilies. Another boat follows, laden with boxes, tanks, children and dogs. Another hour of waiting, we finally set sail around noon. The banks of the river are covered by lush rainforest, only occasionally dotted with houseboats, fishing huts and wading birds. Within an hour we are served steaming rice with meat. Three meals a day are included in the R$ 60 ticket, with the captain personally serving the food, a rare experience indeed these times when air travel prices soar while “food” served on flights is impossible to compare with this decent meal. Moreover, here we can take as many servings as we want. In warmer times we might hang our hammocks on the deck, but now we flee into our cabins and double bunks. The engine house is an experience in itself, a small room saturated with black oil, glistening steel tubes and unbearable noise. Along the passageways sheep are tied to the railing and people lean over in the wind, talking to each other. Most make their way upstairs, probably to have a look at the gringos on a cargo ferry in the middle of the Pantanal, a sight probably not many have seen.

After we heard from Elisio about the jaguar venturing into the building, our late night visitors caused some concern amongst us. But as it turned out, it was just a dog and some cats desperately trying to seek shelter from the storm that went overdrive by the morning, covering the sky with thick, grey clouds. At last the local chief explains us all about the ferry (This is more like real travelling: having to spend two days in one place only to find out about departure times). The Dez de Mayo sets sail from Corumba every Wednesday, the Á Vitória every Sunday. It takes two whole days to make it here, the farthest point upriver, Porto ze Viana. It starts back every Friday and Tuesday, and makes the same trip in one day. The weather deteriorates further, a cold and vicious wind sets in and we pull on all our clothes (guess how much that is on a Pantanal trip), raincoats and hats, shivering around the kitchen fire wrapped in our sleeping bags. Later that afternoon Elisio takes us over to the farm close by (where the old port master lives) so we can charge our laptop (to keep the blog updated, of course), we try several tractor batteries, but no sign of life in the machine. We return, cook some dinner, talk, wait, relax. Elisio leaves and returns with yet another battery, and using some wires and complex electro-technical knowledge, he finally gets some power into the old MSI Megabook. It still shuts down every ten minutes, but at least we learn to save our work more often. Just like in the old days, Windows 3.1, yeah. We make some dough and try baking pizza in the small oven, also some hot chocolate made from Peruvian cocoa.

In the morning we wake enthusiastically, asking our co-inhabitants about ferry departure times, shops close by, possibilities, acting as normal tourists. But this is backcountry, no use hurrying, any given information is valid only during the time it is said. Elisio and Luigi speak slowly, thoughtfully, and they suggest we ask the local port authorities about departure times. We wait till noon, finally a half-blind, old and sympathetic man arrives glides up in a boat from the neighboring farm. At once we attack him: how do we get to Corumba? When does the ferry start? Do you have electricity on the farm? We can hardly decipher his accent; the ship leaves on Friday, plus-minus one day (since it is Wednesday this isn’t much help), straight to Corumba, and on his farm he only has tractor batteries. We borrow his boat (another impossible thing to do on tourist routes) and four of us disappear for half a day in the flooded forest stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction. We explore the area, wading knee-deep among the water lilies, walking along white-sand beaches, pushing the boat along narrow channels covered by foliage. The only life around is the river, the animals and us. Upon returning to our hammocks, we are offered freshly brewed coffee by Elisio, and listen to his part of the story. He arrived from Corumba two days before us, and has been waiting since for a tractor that should take him 45 miles inland into the middle of the wilderness, where he works on a farm as a general organizer of labor and logistics. He leaves his family at his home in Rio Verde for months at a time, depending on weather and water levels. He loves the Pantanal, whenever he can, he spends his free time as well on the floodplains. To prove this, he shows us his bird photos taken with a small compact camera. He tells us that a few months ago a jaguar actually came into the building at night, and they regularly see it swimming across the river. Last week he was here when they herded 600 cattle onto a ship to be ferried downriver. Elisio drones on, his stories mingle with the twilight and the sounds of bats and nighthawks and distant thunder and wind.

Anyone wonders, why the hell do we write so much about our negative experiences? The answer is simple: previously most of our readers asked for more practical information and facts about the places we visit. And they are right, who wants to read about how beautiful a country is when they are headed there anyway? So we try to give specifics, prices, names, ideas as well as negative stuff that might help future travelers avoid the usual swindles. Of course, we have to say that all the above is just based on our own experience, it is just an opinion, and in no way a conclusion or judgment on locals. The way Elio thinks is totally understandable if you look at it objectively, he has never in his life met any foreigner not yearning for a freshly made bed after a days’ dusty driving. Travelers, who want to prepare their own meals, who are disturbed by the noise of diesel generators and other drunk tourists, who don’t have 4600 Euros for a 2-week trip. The Pantanal for him is just a workplace, and honestly, who likes their workplace? As he confessed the first day, his big and only dream is to go to the States and earn a lot of money. He probably didn’t believe us in the beginning, we actually do want to go deep into the swamp (after all, this tour is about nature photography), and after he realized he won’t get any commission from hotels and restaurants on the way, neither the automatic tips he is used to, his eagerness evaporated. After all, earning only a few hundred R$ is not a viable option for a Pantanal tour guide. They are used to blank tourists from the States, Japan and Western Europe, who are grateful that the tour guide found them such a nice, clean hotel, a pizzeria with cold beer or just simply saved them from a jaguar by arriving before dark. And they actually believe that this is all extra service, and leave the guide a few hundred bucks worth of tips. No, we cannot hold Elio responsible for the way he handles his world. In fact, he is right. But that unfortunately does not help us at all. After breakfast we admire a huge hive of African bees humming just above our head, a wasp nest on another tree and the bats flying around in the abandoned house (casa abadonda). By noon we are back in Porto Joffre, sitting around in the sun, trying to pacify our depressed driver and eating hearty portions of deep-fried piranha. Finally we load one of the aluminum boats (the rim just 2 inches above water), and according to the deal, leave for the one-hour, R$ 75 trip to Porto Ze Viana, the closest stop of the Corumba ferry. The journey itself is great, the water and the jungle and the scenery is something special, once in a while we meet a chugging barge or speedboat carrying rich Brazilian anglers to the ultimate fishing spot. On this part of the river there is no regular transportation, so we need to reach Porto ze Viana, the last stop upriver for the Corumba ferry. After three hours we arrive, and the kind boatman tells us it will be R$ 250, guys, because he didn’t prepare for such a lot of luggage. We take it kind of naturally, give him some amount between R$ 75 and 250, and haul our stuff up the hill to the communal waiting hall. The building is fantastic. Imagine a gym hall, with mosquito-nets as walls and iron bars across the space for hammocks, a small kitchen and bathroom in the back, the lush Pantanal all around you. It’s hard to imagine people who stay in hotels and artificial ranches all the time while such places are labeled as dirty and uncomfortable. Yeah, there is no running water, the kitchen stove needs firewood and some mossies do make it through the net, but it’s for free. We can hardly believe it at first, suspecting some scam again, but the two locals inside assure us we won’t have to pay a dime, offer us coffee and ask about our trip. Real, undamaged Pantanerios. We fire up the stove for some coffee, sling our hammocks and by the time it turns dark at 6 pm, we are sound asleep.

After the usual morning chores we are back on the dirt track, late in the afternoon we reach Porto Joffre, it is not really a town, only one super-exclusive hotel with an airport and private dock and a few fisherman shacks in the back. Porto Joffre is mostly known as the end of the Transpantaneíra. In the seventies, when this road was planned all the way south, no one believed that nature can be stronger than the technology of the 20th century. But the yearly flooding, construction difficulties and escalating expenses made the government change its’ mind, and they simply gave up. The road basically leads into the River Sao Lorenzo. We turn left towards the shacks on the river bank; Elio admits never in his life has he been this far along the Transpantaneíra, not bad for a professional tour guide. The locals are all chilling out on the street, smoking and sipping Brazilian tea. Called mate, it is consumed from a cup made from ox horn. They fill it with mate leaves, pour boiling water on it, and sip it with a special, filtered metal straw. A few sips, and the device is passed on. Elio talks to them for hours, finally makes his proposal. He leaves us here, tomorrow a local guy takes us to a port further down the river where we can continue our journey towards Corumba, while he returns with some locals to Cuiabá. We don’t really understand the whole situation, we paid four days in advance, and he wants to leave us here at the beginning of the third day? Of course, he has lots of good reasons. Joel Souza, the guy who got him this job, gets 600 from the 1000 R$ we paid (who has ever heard of such a commission?), so he has no profit on this trip, and of course no money left. Oh, and the best part: it is much better for us too, if he leaves us here, since the ferry to Corumba leaves tomorrow early, for weeks it will be the only one, etc, etc. Of course we don’t accept any of this, so he continues to persuade us with some emotional warfare including his children and hard life. But hey, we paid it all in advance, so we stick to our rights and finally he grudgingly takes us back along the Transpantaneíra to a small ruined house beside the road where we can pitch our tents. Poor guy is totally depressed, he keeps quiet all the way. Later we ask him if he could takes us for a night safari, as a compensation for the fourth day. Ruby eyes glow in the dark as caimans slip into the water, night-hawks (Podager nacunda) lap around the flashlight beam, frogs bawl all around and the water channels are dotted with white water lilies, blooming only at night time. On the way back we spot an ocelot (Felis pardalis), it looks almost like a mini jaguar. We don’t meet the big brother, but Elio makes us promise to keep the fire burning all night, because the onca (jaguar in Portuguese) is a very, very dangerous animal. Opposing to it’s African relative, we never read anything about a jaguar attacking humans in the Pantanal, but what the heck, one more tourist lure won’t hurt.

Pousada Rio Claro isn’t that original, late in the night a truck arrived and dozens of locals started hauling off bricks amidst terrible noise and shouting. Of course all this was forgotten once the owls living in the tree behind us started calling to each other, countering the sounds of howler monkeys and frogs from the nearby forest. The owners are friendly, they even let us sit in the dining room early in the morning. It is still dark when we follow Elio along a trail, shivering in the light morning breeze. We find our boat quietly waiting on the river, and start exploring the area. There aren’t as many animals, as along the road, but the experience is more natural, our guide eases the metal boat with a long pole along the banks, occasionally we make a short trip on foot trying to find the howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) screaming nearby, or take some pictures of the herons and egrets hiding in the thick foliage. We arrive back to our camp around midday, and manage to get some real close-ups of toucans (Pteroglossus castanotis), forest stork (Mycteria americana) and jabiru (Jabiru mycteria), after which we load our VW van and head back towards the red dirt track of the Transpantaneíra. After a time we don’t stop at every caiman, hawk or kingfisher, so late in the afternoon we turn off to the right after Puma Lodge and arrive shortly to the gates of Gloria Ranch. Elio tells us a story about Puma Lodge, a local Brazilian bloke married the daughter of a French bank owner, daddy bought the children a few thousand acres of land and built bungalows complete with swimming pool and restaurant right beside the road. According to Elio, every second client is dissatisfied with the service, of course who knows the truth, as locals will always fight each other over tourist money. Gloria Ranch is not an official accommodation, just a private farm where hundreds of tourist camp in the high season (again, according to Elio). He really wants us to stay, even though we agreed after the Rio Claro experience to go bush camping, away from civilization. The owner and his wife are really friendly, they advise us to go for a walk around the ranch in the radiance of the setting sun, horses and zebu cattle abound everywhere, a typical farm in the Pantanal. Our ice casket is loaded with meat, so we make a fire and start preparing dinner. Elio doesn’t like this arrangement, he constantly tries to persuade us to eat the food cooked by the owners. It is just impossible to explain, we stocked up on food to save money. Later he wants us to give our food to the owners, who will prepare it for us for free. What a camping experience, right? We start grilling the steaks, but realize that all of it is just saturated with salt, inedible. Before we can prepare it properly, Elio informs us that dinner is ready at the house, no charges. It seems like the typical tourist trap, and we are right, after dinner Elio tells us quietly, of course it is free, but if he were us, he would give 30 RS$ for the food. No comment. In the evening we watch an original Brazilian soap opera on TV, what an expedition!

The past 48 hours we choose not to remember. From bus to taxi, from far-flung bus terminals to city centers, flat tires, drunken drivers, in Santa Cruz we technically board a train moving at jogging pace, all our valuables tied under our clothing, arrival to Corumba, direct transfer to Campo Grande, finally arriving overnight to Cuiabá. But no time to rest, we have to prepare for the arrival of our group, so the morning goes by with shopping, car and guide rental and fighting fatigue in the tropical heat. Although Cuiabá is a huge city, organizing the first leg of our journey wasn’t easy. Lonely Planet, rapidly becoming the fact book of luxury-backpacking, writes less and less about stuff for real travelers and adventurers, and more about top-end restaurants with great pizzas and 50-a-night clean hotels with running hot water. And what good did it do to buy the 2004 edition online last year, when the 2008 edition was published early this year, with the whole Pantanal section re-written. So the surprises began, Pousada Ecoverde was closed for reconstruction, all prices quoted were at least double in reality (truth be told, the US dollar did go through some devaluation) and not one restaurant was open in town, OK, that was because of the national holiday Corpus Cristi. But as it turned out, all this was just the beginning. LP mentions two outfitters who can arrange tailored trips into the endless swamp (correctly called alluvial tropical floodplain), the Pantanal. Our deposits and contracts made last year were cancelled due to the insufficient number of participants, so the first on our list was Joel Souza, owner of Ecoverde Wildlife Safari Tours, recommended highly by Lonely Planet. We meet him near the airport, he actually helps us find the public bus headed for town, not an easy task with all those aggressive cabbies around. Not feeling threatened we admit our plans for the day, and he admits is technique of hunting tourists, he never asks them if he can help, he just gives some local advice to dazed backpackers who immediately confide in him. A good psychologist, no problem with that. Fluent in English, German and Spanish, Joel has no trouble explaining the possibilities. He no longer leads tours into the Pantanal, he rather arranges private guides “for free” to anyone who asks. The other LP favorite, Munir Nasir immediately finishes off the conversation when he learns there are only 4 people involved. But we won’t give up, so we start touring the city in search of a decent tour guide, but everyone just wants to sell us the usual 175 US$ per day package, no camping out, most of them swear it is highly illegal and dangerous. Yeah, whatever, it is all about money. At least Joel was straightforward, he told the truth, he won’t take tours any more but he can find us a guide. We walk back to his office, share a few (dozen) beers, and after the 15th call on his cell he finally smiles, he found the guide for us, a local guy who grew up in the Pantanal, knows all about the animals and fluent in English. The cost will be R$ 250 per day, everything (car, gas, guide) included. Not very cheap, but we are not in a situation to be choosy. Elio, our guide, is a kind, honest, quiet sort of guy, we pack in our stuff and head towards the airport. The flight of our group is late as usual, finally they arrive, we stop right away at a churrascaria, a local Brazilian speciality, it has a huge salad bar, the meat is grilled and fried and cooked on site, and everyone takes as much as they can eat as many times as they want. All this for R$ 15, that is fifteen Brazilian Reals, about 1,5 to the dollar. We buy some water, a few hammocks, and start off towards Poconé, the northern entrance of the Pantanal. If we haven’t mentioned it before, we plan to spend the next two-and-a-half weeks in the world’s biggest floodplain. The Pantanal, an area three times the size of Guatemala, shared by Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. A photo expedition was planned here last year, but participants showed up only for this years’ dates. In the evening we are already bumping along the world-famous Transpantaneíra, the canals near the road are full of capybaras, caimans and herons. Late in the night we arrive to Fazenda Rio Claro, where we have to pay R$ 20 per person for a shower and the right to pitch our tents in the mud behind the house.

At five in the morning we realize painfully that nothing is direct despite all the promises (yeah, Lonely Planet got this one smack right), we have to disembark in Puno, and wait three hours for the connection. Buying the “not-direct” bus ticket would have cost us 15+20 soles to La Paz, with the same buses anyway. But our trials haven’t ended yet, after Puno the bus makes a two-hour detour towards Copacabana, where lots of our fellow travelers get off, and spend some time sorting out the luggage. At the Bolivian border we have to switch buses yet again. The border crossing is a super-serious affair, unlike anywhere in Central America, we have to leave our backpacks on the bus (they will be taken over the border some other way), and start walking around the site, visiting at least eight offices en route: passport-checking, stamping, stamp-checking, immigration, another stamp-checking, next immigration, customs and finally an independent checkpoint where all they asked was “Todo bien?” and waved us on. Apart from fighting against unemployment, there seems little logic in the system of checkpoints and papers, bored men in their sweaty uniforms sitting in fly-infested rooms nonchalantly filing immigration forms and custom declarations, if you mix up your passport number with your partners birth date no one will notice. Customs is pretty strict too, with an Interpol (!) guy separately checking our documents, and the local police strip-searching anyone under 30 or with a lock of Rasta hair. The political pressure from the North is present at all times. A present and clear danger.
The road winds along the famous shore of Lake Titicaca, snow-covered peaks loom in the background, the water is cobalt blue and the vegetation is shriveled to a yellowish-brown mass. All around hoses made from red clay abound, the fields are speckled with donkeys, sheep and cattle, the women wear colorful, multi-layered clothes and round hats, their children run around barefoot. La Paz is a breathtaking sight, imagine a huge, dry valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains up to 20.000 ft in altitude, all but filled to the brim with half-finished brick hoses of the same design. It is no surprise that our bus stops finally smack in the middle of the tourist district, touts and cabdrivers converge on the unsuspecting groups of foreigners; quietly slipping away we have no time for anything, after tomorrow we have to be in Brazil.

We decide to distance ourselves a bit from the crowd, so we move down a bit to another valley. Minute houses hide under the rocky, barren peaks, typical of the region. The walls of the houses and animal shelters are built from stones or dried bricks cut straight from the pasture. The roof is thatch, the smoke finds its way out the windows, rye is cultivated in the backyard, guinea-pigs rule the porch and the alpaca herds are guarded by heavy, woolly dogs resembling Caucasian Shepherds. We greet the family from behind the stone fence, but the children flee and the valley stays silent. Not many visitors around here. Finally an old, paper-skinned man comes out meekly, and we ask him if we can pitch our tents near his fence. He nods silently and smiles, probably didn’t understand our Spanish. We heartily say thanks, he keeps on nodding and smiling, and limps back to his house. It is subzero again the whole night, the lamas huddle together close to the house, their frosty wool glowing in the moonlight while the valleys finely echo the sounds of a fiesta not far away. What a totally different world…

We are up early, the sun has barely painted the highest mountains pink when we join the spiraling file of Peruvians, and by 10 am we reach Mawayani. Since no other food is available, the lama stew topped with boiled potatoes sounds just like our choice for breakfast. The buses leave every ten minutes, packed with returning pilgrims, we fold ourselves onto one and soon we are in Cuzco. We visit the main market, where a bowl of super-fresh ceviche (fresh seafood or fish with vegetables, vinegar and spices, a national dish here as well) costs near nothing. Inside a music shop we are tempted to try every Peruvian music instrument we can lay our hands on, and later we stumble upon the Plaza de las Armas, where a microbus stops in front of a flashy pizzeria, two security guards with shotguns jump out, and the German tourist group is ushered to the safety of the restaurant serving European cuisine. Not having much reason to stay, we head for La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. Since we are in a hurry, we buy the 120 sol tickets for the “direct” shuttle.

Although spending a day at colorful Qoyllurrit’y has a strong effect on even the toughest traveler, staying there all through the ten days is probably a spiritual experience only for ethnography professionals or Quechua priests. The 24/7, monotone, slightly under toned melodies, the continuous explosion of fireworks and the impossible crowd is still OK, but the conflict between consumerism and nature is a different story. Of course, there is no waste-disposal system available; everyone throws everything in the direction they happen to face. The public toilets (a hole in the ground with some plastic-wrapped poles around it) are fed into the crystal-clean stream running from the glacier, while a few meters downstream housewives wash their laundry. Carcasses of animals recently slaughtered lie scattered around the tents while every rock crevice is filled with used sanitary paper. In the case of over 10.000 persons this means a serious threat to the water system and the environment, an issue no one seems to address. And on top of all this, there is the recent addition: the “foreigners’ corner”, a cordoned area complete with armchairs, showers and security guards, where every second tent has a diesel generator running and blond teens order their hamburgers from the private cook. However, this is how the world works, in a few years tourist agencies will be advertising 220 US$ packages to one of the most authentic festivals in Peru. The original culture won’t have a chance.

Our dancing friends take us to another mayordomo, and he explains us what he knows about the event. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous tribes of the Andes saw Jesus with a lamb in the valleys, and also on the cross. The sightings were verified by Spanish priests as well, and everyone talked about a holy light, Qoyllurrit’y in Kechua (their local language), meaning: snow star, the glitter of snow. A regular pilgrimage was organized, with the official name: Señor de Qoyllurrit’y. Originally young people wanting to become a shaman climbed the glacier late in the night, spent the night there and in the morning cut chunks of ice from it and took them back to camp. These ice blocks, shining yellow in the early morning sun, represented the holy “starlight”. Before all this, during the Inca Empire this place was probably used for human sacrifices. The pilgrimage grew in popularity after the sixties, it was when the customs took their final form, and only in the recent years have foreigners as tourists actually made it here. Nowadays in information age it doesn’t take decades for the travelling community to discover a new destination, amongst the tens of thousands of participants we met quite a few foreign visitors, and a crew from some private television and the BBC as well. But back to the festival. The traditional participants are the dancers, with names like Chunchos, Q´apaq Qollas, Japos or Pabluchas. The ukukus are a separate category, they are the representatives of civil security, maintaining order with whistles, whips and shouting, and will actually give a few whiplashes to anyone misbehaved, but he haven’t seen anything like that, only some friendly whipping of each others’ feet.

The schedule changes little during the day, the whole valley is ringed by colorful processions moving at a slow pace, each has it’s own band, usually a big drum and some brass and a flute made from an aluminum water pipe, the melody never changes, throbbing, lively, shrill pentatonic notes jumping around in the crisp mountain air, by the second day it becomes a bit boring. The big crowd is always around the chapel, inside lies an imprint of the body of Christ. Typically Latin American: a colorful mixture of customs, the original religion and local culture. Something like a painting in one of Cuzco’s cathedrals depicting the Last Supper, the table heavily loaded with food and drinks, with a whole roasted guinea-pig lying in the middle, four charred legs pointed to the sky. The success of Catholicism was always based on the flexibility they used to mould original beliefs with present dogmas. The jaguar-figure dancing around paintings of St. Peter, the lama sacrifice made before a wooden cross (a chicken in Maya culture), the integration of the names of ancient gods into local superstitions, all this acted as a booster on the number of believers. As a result came the stronger influence in politics and power. But alas, this was not even a very original idea. From the ancient Greeks through the Romans to the Mongol Empire, success always depended on the “escape routes” the losers were allowed to use to keep elements or even foundations of their original religion.

We didn’t sleep much; notwithstanding our weariness the tramping music of the valley wakes up early. At one in the morning the first group of pilgrims set off towards the glacier, we join another group a few hours later. Although the difference in altitude is only a few hundred feet, it takes us two hours of strained walking to get to the ice river. From here it is another hour through ice and rock hard snow to the peak, towering 20.000 feet above the surrounding mountains. The horizon to the East is rules by the huge mass of Apu Ausangate, the rays of the sun paint the sky a light lilac color. Stiff, aching and fighting nausea we make our way down. No responsible mountain guide would start out on this trip without crampons, ice pick and rope, but the locals do it in their traditional robes, with impossible head ornaments and jewelry. Back at the bottom of the glacier the ukukus and the masked dancers organize a sled race, followed by a huge snowball fight, out here everyone is a bit more relaxed. On the way back we meet a group from San Salvador called Virgen del Rosario. Their long, red dresses and huge feathered hats look spectacular as they dance on downwards. They invite us to their fiesta in October, and assure us that it is much bigger and more original than this one. In the valley later we meet one of the mayordomos, and have a great chat about European communism, Cuban socialism and international leftist ideas. He gets real excited about the subject, as it turns out he lives near Lake Titicaca, right over the Bolivian border, where everyone knows about Evo Morales dating Venezuelan Hugo Chavez. We choose our words carefully, rewarded by a kind invitation to a bowl of chiché (a fermented drink made from corn beer and several plants) and some sort of dried cheese. He suggests we take pictures of the different dresses of certain tribes at the fiesta. He goes out and returns with some families, and we start making pictures. Not much later a group of foreign tourists see us, and demand where we bought the permit to do this. We tell them with glee that we bought the last one. Meanwhile the mayordomo and the organizing leaves, everybody just wants to have a look at their own photos and show it to everyone in the valley. We give up, and join the crowd watching the manly games of the ukukus: the nominee has to run before a wall of whip-toting colleagues, trying not to fall.

The pilgrims on our bus throw sweets, plastic dolls and matchbox cars out the window, to be picked up by screaming, undernourished children in dirty clothes. The typical Latin-American “ladino – indígena” difference is strong here too, the rich city dwellers of mixed indigenous and European descent “help” the poor folks in the name of religion. The lollipops break into thousands of fragments on the roadside, and the children fight each other to collect as much as possible. The houses up here are built from adobe, and rice, wheat and chick-pea are grown on the ancient Inca strips in the mountainside. The only tree around surprisingly is the eucalyptus, introduced not so long ago. In Mawayani the traffic jam is incredible, horses, trucks, pedestrians, everybody moving at once in a big cloud of dust, while we make our way up the mountain behind walls of relentless hawkers. The altitude is tough, we are 13.000 feet ASL and even the smallest gradient costs us way too much breath and muscle power. Surprisingly, there are as many people coming down the mountain than going up, no rules exist, most people arrive only for a day. The official poster informs us that the festivity lasts from May 14 – 24, but nothing else. After four hours of heavy climbing and dodging Calvary stations, tent camps, vendors and sleeping pilgrims we arrive. The valley is stocked to the brim with tents, tarps, people and animals. Soothsaying parrots and monkeys, counterfeit dollar bills, open-air restaurants and shops abound everywhere, it takes us another hour to make to Chinaq’ara on the far side. After erecting our tent beside a friendly family we just sit around, wheeze and watch the scenery. We are well above 15000 feet, the air cuts like glass, the sun burns our exposed skin. Fireworks go off on a regular basis, the bang echoing between the valley walls as if trying to escape. Dozens of bands play their version (mostly a bit false) of Peruvian folklore, and the crowd continues to surge from beneath into the valley, some dancing, some singing, praying; with bags tied around their backs containing blankets, food or a painting of a saint from back home. We buy some fried alpaca ribs with potatoes (who knew that potato comes originally from Peru, and up to this day there are at least 4000 varieties cultivated in the country?) and go for a short sleep. The majority of the locals are too poor to buy a tent, they build a two-feet-high half-circle from stones, cover it with blue plastic and climb under it in small groups. But most of them don’t even sleep, instead keep chewing at coca leaves while dancing and singing all night. There is no day and no night, street lamps shine 24 hours and the music and dancing just keeps going.

According to locals, no entrance fee whatsoever is needed for the festival, anyone who wants to visit should take a cab (2 Sol) to Coliseo Cevrado, where lines of buses wait to take the thousands of pilgrims to village Mawayani for a meager 15 Soles. The trip takes 3 hours. It is worth noting, that the 2004 Lonely Planet Peru contains a lot of misinformation about the event. The station is called Coliseo Cerrado, the date is in June, the area is Ausangate, the first village Tinqui and the packs are hauled up the mountain on mules. The truth is different: the station is called Coliseo Cevrado, the date is different every year, the name of the mountain is Chinaq, the last village is a half-hour bus drive from Tinqui and there were no mules around. That is, if they haven’t lied to us in biology classes and mules can have offspring. These are horses all right, so anyone who wrote the guide book must have been either very careless or has never visited the pilgrimage. Unfortunately many tourist agencies in Cuzco base their information on LP, and even so, only two out of eight could give any information about the event, and even they knew only about Coliseo Cevrado, and nothing more. Of course, on the internet there are some companies offering packages to visit Qoyllurrit’y, but for an unbelievable price considering the actual expenses.

Yesterday the trip took a bit too long, early in the morning we started off from San Pedro la Laguna on the infamous chicken bus towards the capital. Transferring in San José, Costa Rica, we noted the airport is way cleaner and more modern than many European airports we know, everything is flitter-glitter, the shops offer products you see only in Austrian souvenir malls and the prices of the restaurants we dared not convert into Euros. After killing some time by gaping at the shop windows, we departed into the blue sky above the country, and in a few hours the flat Pacific coast of Peru spilled out under us. Here they spell it: Perú. After the quality kitsch atmosphere of Costa Rica we expected something small and dusty. But no way, there is glass and chrome everywhere, free WiFi and non-smoking signs (South America, vow!) everywhere around the airport in Lima. The air outside is stuffy, hot and humid. The well-know travelling trance clouds our minds while we buy the bus tickets towards Cuzco, and in no time we are catching our breath at altitudes exceeding 10.000 feet. On first sight Cuzco is not too pretty; the outskirts could be anywhere in North Africa or Central Asia were it not for clean and sharp Spanish words bouncing in the air everywhere. A quick money change (the currency here is called the Nuevo Sol), and we walk outside to the bus station at the entrance amidst heaps of taxiamigo shouts. Half a Sol takes us to the San Pedro station in town, where we start looking for some locals we contacted on the internet (LP Thorntree, williamtrek) but there is no one around at the agreed time, and they haven’t answered to any of our recent emails. Well, our first lesson on promises made in Peru. The locals are all preparing for one of the largest festivals around, the Qoyllurrit’y event. We eventually find accommodation near the San Pedro church at Hospedaje El Paraíso (if you want to pay budget then steer clear of anything suggested in Lonely Planet) for a whopping 5 Sol per person (decent rooms, hot water, kind staff) and take off to the city. Now, we will probably get a serious e-stoning for this opinion, but downtown Cuzco is absolutely nothing special. We could well be in Madrid centre or pedestrian Seville right now, there are clean, cobblestoned streets everywhere lined by huge, earth-red churches and cathedrals, and one can hardly move in the crowd flowing on the streets of the main square, also mocked as Gringo town. Touts and aggressive agents abound everywhere; the waiters of the restaurant practically block your path and shove huge menus in your hand disregarding your backpack and polite “No, gracias”. Everywhere the password is Machu Pichu, Inca Trail and adventure travel, it is so grossly unoriginal that we are even more confirmed in our decision not to visit these sites at all. Bad luck, we were born too late in the century…
Fleeing from Gringo town, we make our way towards the Central Market, where we eat a complete menu (hot soup, great guinea-pig mains, drinks and dessert) for 2 Sols. As most travelers in Peru find out after some time, the guinea-pig is a big favorite, but not in the pet way, rather as a traditional culinary delight reaching back to Inca times, tasting much like rabbit. On the market real Peru shows a bit from Herself, whole donkey heads, alpaca intestines and coca leaves abound, together with great fresh licuados and inexpensive snacks. On the dark streets away from the touristic bustle the locals are friendlier than most places in Central America, they start a conversation in almost any situation, or simply walk up to you and ask where you came from, welcome to Peru. Most of them just stop us for a warning, this part of the city is unsafe, we should watch out for our belongings. We buy some vegetables, fruits, dry bread, and a bit surprisingly, realize that no one wants to short-change or cheat us. If we round up the amount and want to leave half a Sol at the stall, they will shout or send some child running after us with the change, and they always measure a bit more on the scales. Gracious and honest people, we feel so good. Outside Gringo town no one wants to sell us anything with force, they ask us politely once and then carry on. After dark we decide to end our stroll and head back to our Hospedaje, where we shiver under double blankets the whole night

Soon we will be making our way towards Peru, where we plan on visiting a somewhat unknown festival up in the mountains. After that we move over to Bolivia and Brazil for a small nature photography expedition. Rainy season arrived to Guatemala, so here is a few left out from previous posts.

After a year of blogging only in Hungarian, the pressure was just too great, so we finally gave in and developed the framework for an English translation. We have no editors, so the grammar sucks, but hopefully it is still better than using translation software. We have been travelling since last year May, after Europe we flew to Cuba, where we spent two months hitchhiking, bush-camping and generally being anti-system. After Cuba came Mexico, but the prices and tourism didn’t match our taste so we moved to Guatemala, where we have been hanging out since end of last year. We will try to translate previous posts as well, but for the time being the English version will only be available after May 15, although you can still check out the photography from before. Enjoy, all comments welcome:

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