Last week in Peru

Following our jungle adventures we returned to Ollanta for Olive’s last week at school. We decided to stay in a Homestay with Pancho and Balbina’s lovely family. 

They welcomed us in and fed us three times a day for a week. We got to try lots of different foods like arroz con cubana, quinoa soup and calde de gallina. It was great chatting to them and trying to understand Peru a bit better. 

We had quite a lazy few days, enjoying the last bits of Ollanta - a tasty juice in the market:

We all set off to walk to some ruins but got distracted by a game of football, with the worst playground ever behind it. 

Olive and Boo have had fun all week playing with two other kids who are part of Pancho’s family. It’s been great seeing Boo’s face light up as he crawls around with another one year old. 

Olive prepared a cute one pager which she presented at school. 

And that’s pretty much it for Peru. Now we start a slow trek home with a couple of nights in Lima and a couple in Cancun before our flight home. I hope the tacos are as good as I remember!

Jungle time Part 2

Having warmed ourselves up, we took a boat half an hour up the massive Rio Madre de Dios to Green Diamond Ecolodge. The river is so wide, really impressive, lined with massive trees as far as you can see. 

Our room in the lodge overlooked the river. There was nothing nearby, really stuck in the middle of nowhere. We ate the food they gave us three times a day, drank coffee, played a lot of games and just lapped up the peace and quiet. 

We did a night walk with our guide Brian. He was ace at spotting loads of stuff. Highlights being the white banana spider whose bite will kill you in an hour, a scorpion and the chicken and pink lipped tarantulas. 

There was a reporter from Lima doing a piece for a Chinese channel which entertained us during our stay. We watched him recording different bits and interviewing the guys in the lodge and sending up drones to take aerial footage. 

We ended with my favourite tour - Lake Sandoval in Tambopato National Reserve. We trekked through the forest for 4km seeing massive trees, tarantulas and squirrel monkeys. Then we took a canoe into the middle of a massive lake and enjoyed watching giant otters hunting for fish. The scenery was stunning with solid rainforest all the way round. We also saw kingfishers, ibis, caimans and red macaws. We watched the sunset and finished walking the 4km back through the jungle in the pitch black, ducking for the bats and listening to the night time jungle noises. So much fun. 

We headed back to town to take our night bus home. We went to the local zoo which was a little sorry for itself. The enclosures were too small and it was a bit sad seeing the animals couped up when we had just seen them in such glorious open spaces. Olive did enjoy feeding the monkeys lettuce though. 

We also went up the lookout tower to see the view across town as the sun set. You can see the jungle stretching into the distance all round, shrouded in mist in places. 

After another sleepless coach trip we had a day to enjoy Cusco, enjoying raclette, the best pastries we’ve had in Peru and a tasting platter before heading back to Ollanta for our last week in Peru. 

Although not all of us struggled to sleep on the coach!

Jungle time Part 1

When we were planning Peru I really fancied heading to the jungle. I didn’t think it would happen but then we got Olive started in school in Ollanta and found out there was a weeks vacation in the middle. So off we went this week to the Amazon. Literally - wow. 

We book-ended the trip with a stopover in Cusco both sides. In the first weekend we bought clothes and toys for Olive and ate loads of lovely food - great chinese at Kion, local lomo saltado in the same place we had before and lots of crepes! We also looked round a museum about making clothes. 

For the long journey from Cusco to the jungle, we treated ourselves to the posh bus with fully reclining seats to take us the 10 hours overnight to Puerto Maldonado. I still slept rubbish. It rained torrentially most of the journey with loads of lightening and water dripping through the coach roof onto our heads. 

We split our time in Puerto between a great ecolodge on the edge of town called Wasai and a proper ecolodge in the jungle. Wasai was lovely, it felt jungly looking out of our room over the river but we could still walk into the central Plaza del Armas for dinner and provisions. 

We took advantage of being in town to book tours directly from the agencies which were half the cost. We took a night tour to see the caiman alligators which was fun. We even managed to feed some bananas to howler monkeys as it was getting dark. No photos as it was dark!

The next day we visited Lake Hayamama to fish for pirhana. Although I think fishing for piranha should be super easy, I caught none, zero, nada, zip! Selina got 2 and, yup, Olive even got one!! I think I had dodgy bait. 

Next stop an ecolodge in the jungle proper…

Home cooking and more ruins

We bumped into the lady who was so kind to us as we walked onto her farm and she was really friendly again and offered to show us how to cook local ricota rellenas (stuffed peppers - which was my favourite Mexican dish). So we went to her house and spent a happy afternoon drinking cusquenas and cooking. It was an adventure. Like lots of homes here, there are so many different animals roaming around the place - chickens, ducks, dogs, cats and lots of Cuy scampering around awaiting their day of reckoning. It was so much fun. Thanks Sonia. 

Later in the week we dragged ourselves up the steep Pinkuylluna ruins that we have been looking across too during our stay. The free ones not the expensive ones the other side! 

We went into Olive’s school on the last day of term to hear about their projects. We heard about the stars and they had made a 3D map of town that was cool. 

Then we went back to Urubamba so Olive could have a play in a great play park there (why doesn’t Ollanta even have a swing?!) and then super dinner in Tierra. 

Weird hotel

To break things up we spent a weekend in an odd hotel between Ollanta and Urubamba. It was a wellness hotel with a hospital clinic attached. The lift had two doors, one side opening to hotel room doors, the other to hospital wards! We never did quite suss our the place! It was really quiet with hardly anyone staying. The chap running the place was lovely but had no idea how to use a sauna or hot tub which was the main thing we went for. We have not seen either for months which might explain why they weren’t great. The sauna was a bit chilly and they filled the jacuzzi up for us on request but it took ages to fill so we got too cold to use it properly! 

The attached restaurant, Ucho, had only been open a week and was amazing. I had the best steak I’ve ever had. Olive’s soup was pretty good too. 

We headed into Urubamba as well where Selina had her best ever chocolate soufflé in Monkey Cafe. We had a look round and relaxed in their Plaza del Armas.