The Highlands (El Altiplano)

La Puerta del Sol (Sun Gate) at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia.
Near Lake Titicaca at 3800m  above sea level is the highest navigable lake in the world.

After coming out of the Amazon jungle we were all nursing  insect bites , lots of insect bites.

Army, Navy, Police and Air Force.
At the Main Square in Puerto Maldonado.
Puerto Maldonado is the city centre of the province of Madre de Dios  in the Amazon part of Peru.

Every Sunday in the Main Square in Puerto Maldonado there is some kind of parade.
Here is some local school.

Whilst on the other side of town, near the mercado (markets) the boys are playing cards for keeps on the streets.
For some reason the locals pull their shirts up to stay cool.

This is the Continental bridge that has finally and only recently joined  the roads from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans.

For many years many presidents had tried to make the road link between Peru and Brasil but fail due to the geographical
challenges of the Amazon.  The locals believe that the new amazonian route between the two countries will bring progress  but
they also believe it will bring new access to more Amazon exploitation

The owner of this house advertises a painter (pintor).
I got two theories on this:
A. He is a really, really good painter and he is been working flat out for many, many years, or.
B. He is a really bad painter, completely broke maybe a drunk, lazy ass and bullshit artist.

Every afternoon the flag goes down.

Coming back to Cusco from the jungle on an overnighter bus wasn't fun so we thought we deserved a breakfast treat overlooking the Plaza de Armas.

This is the very famous 12 angled rock.

Besides the three good looking people in the street corner you can also see the mix of  Inca and Spanish architecture.
The locals like to say that the bases of the buildings have been made by the Incas and the top parts have been made
by the Incapables.

Madeline and I were't looking forwards going up hill.

Beautiful hand made rugs and table runners

the monkey

Hand made with alpaca, and natural colours.

This is the colonial bakery shop in Pisac where Madeline went to buy fresh bread every morning.
She always came back with a new story like, the bread ran out. The bread was so hot it burned a hole in the bag.
They were baking piglets. An old lady in the queue cut in front of me, how rude. I fed the guinea pigs. They were baking
guinea pigs. One of the guinea pigs has had babies.  A dog chased me until I gave him a bread roll and the best one of all was the morning after the Peruvian
independence day "I think the baker was drunk, he was grumpy and acting funny".

Movie night. Wow... we sure do know how to eat popcorn.

As we travelled around Peru we noticed the ladies in each region had their own type of hat they all used to wear that represented their village.

Had to do something on the 2hr trip to Yunguyu

Madeline buying our favourite lemon lollies for half the usual price..... off the tourist trail.

Fitting into the Puno known tricyclo (tricycle). Whilst Louise and I got the romantic spot we stuck Madeline in the boot..... and didn't she enjoy that!

Leaving Peru into Bolivia. We suspected that these guys were carrying goods across the border in dribs and drabs from the big trucks parked on the Peruvian side of the border because the trucks are not registered to enter Bolivia.

The three of us can fit on one of these whilst she was a full house.

The Tiahuanaco civilisation started as a small agricultural village about 1500 BC .
This is The Sun Gate. Also it's a calendar . And in combination they could determined the yearly moments of when to
start working the land' when to plant and when to harvest.

This statue is not in as good condition as the one below because they used granite instead of volcanic rock.

Ponce Stela in the sunken courtyard of the Tiahuanaco, Kalasasaya temple .
Notice the fine details on his boardies.

This was truly amazing, they called it the ear rock.  The inside was shaped like a human ear and projected sound fantastically.

Entrance to the Kalasasaya temple, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia.
This is where the currently president of Bolivia Evo Morales was sworn into power on two occasions.

Heads carved in stone in the semi-underground temple.

In the complex there are three main sections:
Top temple, in a pyramid form above ground for the celestial gods, like  the sun, moon, stars and birds like the condor.
Ground level temple, for the living god (the chief), the puma, corn, potato, mountains and others.
Underground temple for the dead, the water and the snake.

There are more than 150  stone carved heads around this semi-underground temple.
I believe they were war heroes, government chiefs, musos, priests, sport heroes even some reality TV stars. Maybe!
Once they started worshipping TV reality people, thats when their decadence started.
  

Madeline getting her revenge for not sitting in the front.

This was in Bolivia. These ladies were rushing from town to catch the collectivo's (mini van buses) back into town.

Waiting for a ride after the ruins. Madeline tried to lighten the mood.

A taxi rolled up and the ladies who had been rushing down the road ran up out and tried to take it off us. Luckily there was too many of them and we got it in the end.

Getting served take away Peruvian style. Fried chicken and fried peruvian corn.  Yum.

In a bag!
Yummy!

The Amazon, almost the last frontier.

The "peke peke" boat engine or as also known in Australia as the "putt putt" engine were the work horses of the
Amazon for many years. Their long propeller shafts are use to cross the shallows.
The base of these boats are made from a solid one piece tree trunk carved into shape.

What a ride! we nearly crashed twice in 15 minutes.

You eat one of these bananas and you are set for the whole day.

The locals taking their garbage out.  Have a look at the lady in the yellow top, I thought she was going to throw
the baby out.

We made it to the Amazon!
We had never been in the Amazon before but heard lots of stories about it, here we were about to make our own.
This small port town call Infierno (Hell) really lives up to it's name, it looked that rough that when driving through
it we did not dare taking any pictures. The town of Infierno it's well known for their powerful shamans of the dark side.
I was wondering why they called it Infierno?

We travel through the Tambopata river for five and a half hours to get to Baltimore.
Baltimore it's a community of several properties along the Tambopata river. The community was settled about 40 years ago
by pioneers that dare going into the Amazon in search of their own piece of land.

Such a long trip but it was all worth it.

All the trees looked the same to us but they were almost all different and most important they all had different
functions like timber wood, medicinal properties, animal habitat, or just an essential part of the local ecosystem.

And they told us that there were bigger trees further out.

The clear track was made by the leaf cutter ants.
They make their look alike highways in thick forest ground so that  they can transport  their  cut  product
fast and without any hassles, always during the night.

Parrots. Unlucky we had the sunlight against us.

We stood for half an hour and about 100m away from this natural clay licks waiting for the bird to come down, we could hear
them but they never came down.  Andres our guide said that there was probably a snake around.

Golden mantled tamarin monkey in the wild.

This was part of our morning trek to see the birds.

It was sooo hot and sticky.

Nice colours.

Breakfast was blended papaya juice, fruit salad with condensed milk on top, and deep fried banana chips (chifles) with scramble eggs.
Almost unbeatable. 

Local hand made fishing rods with steel leaders for pirañas protection

Getting worms for bait.

A long dream came true. I lost 2 others, they bend my hooks back.
All within 30 minutes of fishing. There is fish everywhere and the amount of species!  You just never know
what you going to get. And these are only shallow waters. And the bugs!!!
They reckon that there are 2000 fish species in the Amazon.
This is the Sabalo and they fight dirty so do the bugs out here.

El Gato.
This living in tourism hostel is owned and ran by the Ramirez family.
They looked after us at all times by always answering our questions, feeding us good local food  and most of all
always making sure we were comfortable and safe.

Capivara.
The biggest rodents in the world. The locals reckon you can eat them but they don't taste that nice.

There is always a bird on their back for cleaning, a symbiotic relationship. 

Nearly there skipper !

We visited "Camino Verde" Have you ever wondered where your carbon credits go when you pay a little extra for electricity?. We visited a farm where they use those funds and are attempting to make an Amazon seed bank. So far they have 300 species of trees and are also re-planting large areas cleared by loggers and illegal gold miners.  They are very dedicated and the whole farm was very impressive. Camino Verde means green path.

Achote seeds.  They are used by the locals for face painting, mosquito repellent, medicine and sun block.  All they have to do is grind the seeds and apply.

The walking tree.
Apparently in their search for sunlight these trees can walk up to 15 cm  a year.
They can achieve that by growing new legs or roots and shedding or breaking the ones behind.

Happy like pig in mud.

The wife and mother of 7 from the Ramirez  family. What a tough chick?
She just told her son to pull over the shore then she jumped out of the boat with a machete in one hand and a pair
of long rubber boots in the other, then disappeared into the thick forest and comes back with a bunch of bananas on her shoulder.
I don't know how old she was but her eldest son is 50 yrs old.

The girls swimming with pirañas. No kidding. They were there.

Sabalo stew.

Cayman spotting during the night.
We only saw small ones.

But this cane toad bastard was about 20 cm long.

Just about every meal comes with deep fried banana (chifle).
The Sabalo tomato stew was awesome.

No internet, TV, phone, or mobile phone coverage for 4 days.
If you want to make a phone call you had to go to a nearby property that had a satellite phone.

Swimming hole just next to the house.
They told us not to go under the water fall because of the strong under currents and also not to go
around the edges of the water fall cause the electric eels could zap us and knock us out......and then the pirañas will get us

The majority of the property still virgin forest. And thats how they wanted it.

  

One man fridge. The delegation of who gets to carry the fridge went down through the brothers ranks and the youngest one ended up carrying it down to the boat dock (150 mtrs).

Mosquito nets are the only way.

Another long trip back. It was supposed to be 3hrs but turned into 4.5hrs cause we run out of fuel and had to wait for a friendly neighbour to stop and syphon a couple of litres for us to make it to Infierno. Was starting to think that Infierno was the real hell.

Cayman bait. We waited but the Caymans never came.

This was the friendly neighbour who supplied us with the extra fuel.