Peru
Inca Trail:
(Front: Me, Jim, James, Paul, Chris, Donogh, Andea, Alina;
Back: Dan, Pippa, Lisa, Siobhan.)
This is us at the start of the trail, filled with hope and excitement.
The basic composition of the group, apart from us, was thus:
- The Australian contingent: James (bit of a comedian) and the Porter/MacDonald brothers, Paul and Chris (strange facial hair). Pretty easy-going trio.
- The Irish: Donogh (good man), Lisa (good girl though ate nothing for 4 days), Siobhan and Alina (also sweet, didn´t stop talking for 4 days).
- Londoners: Pippa and Andea (not lesbians).
- The Mancunian: Dan (decent guy).
Before starting the trek I was feeling a little jaded and losing some of the passion for new experiences that´s pretty essential if you´re going to keep moving for a year, or however long. It was just after new year though (we started the trek on the 3rd January) and, as well as suffering from a severely disrupted stomach, 3 days of partying had left me feeling erm... emotionally and mentally vulnerable. Whatever the causes, my dystopia was gone after 4 days of hiking in the sun and the rain, pack on back and poles in hands (though my stomach still refused to retain anything for longer than 10 mins).
As to the trek itself, christ I could rabbit on but I won´t. In brief, we climbed up Inca steps and pottered about at ruins along the way. The food was excellent (always good news when you´re going to see it twice) and group spirit was mostly fine. Most sections of the trail turned into a race - Paul (formerly with the Australian Special Forces) commanded the uphill sections and Siobhan (nimble like a mountain goat) was master of the downhill. We piled along for 3 days through the clouds and the rain still somehow getting sunburned. Our group wasn´t alone - at any given time there are up to 500 people walking the trail. For every tourist there is a porter and they are superhuman - it´s quite disconcerting to be halfway up a hill, leaning heavily on poles, panting and sweaty, and then to see some a cluster of 50 year olds wearing flip flops and carrying 25 kilos each come jogging past laughing and chatting. But they do have massive lungs. They have a race every year and the winner of 2005 completed the trail in 3hrs 45mins (pretty good considering it took us 3 and a half days).
Anyway, we all arrived happy at Machu Pichu. It was pretty stunning. Like everyone else, I´ve seen photos so I wasn´t expecting to be overly impressed but once you get there it´s quite dramatic. Probably it´s the location more than anything else as it´s perched on top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle and the trail that you follow is pretty awesome in terms of the scenery and history. Have to wonder what posessed them to build it there - strange place for a holiday home. But according to our guide, Machu Pichu is just one of hundreds of cities on a route that runs all the way from north Columbia to south Peru. Most of these cities remain undiscovered. It makes me want to go and look for them. Anyway, got there and wondered around for a few hours and returned home shattered. That´s about it.
This is the whittled down version excluding more than half the album but still, many many photos of the Inca trail here -
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.aqgavpje&x=1&y=-d373ia
Cusco:
We arrived in Cusco on the 29th December and, apart from 4 days away on the Inca trail, stayed until the 9th Jan. Once the former capital of the Inca civilisation, Cusco is now a gringo hot-spot - the centre of the city is a concentration of travel/tour agencies, shoe-shine boys, pickpockets, beggars, bars, restaurants and night-clubs. With a fair few hostels thrown in for good measure. You can´t walk for 30 yards without being approached by at least one of each of the following:
- A small boy who insists he can shine your flip flops,
- A small girl who wants to sell you a finger puppet of Santa or SpongeBobSquarePants,
- A slightly bigger boy who tries to sell you very old and tatty postcards of naked ladies then giggles and follows you round calling you a motherf****r when you refuse to buy them (admittedly this was usually the same kid),
- A travel agent with a special offer,
- A representative of a nearby restaurant with a special offer,
- A representative of a nearby cinema with a special offer (special offer always related to cocaine rather than Harry Potter or Narnia).
During our time there, while dodging the characters listed above, we enjoyed a diet of Mexican food, Cusqueña beer and whisky. We made new friends late at night in the Irish pub and lost them later in sweaty discos. I don´t remember any names. New year is a blur but we were with the Dutch and Red (from Potosi) for part of the night before drifting off our separate ways.
Charming Cusco can be seen in a few photos here...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.3g1oo7ii&x=1&y=ylmcg3
Arequipa:
We moved on to Arequipa - Peru´s second city (this is contentious as a city in the north called Trujilla also claims the title), full of lovely old colonial buildings and at lower altitude than Cusco so with a more clement climate. The Irish from the Inca trail had moved on there also and reserved us a room in a hostel. Bording the bus to take us there we found Red two rows back, so upon arrival we all ended up at the same digs. The bus journey was hell - kids crying, adults snoring oblivious to the din, sub-zero temperatures and a 4 hour long Bollywood movie called "The Joker". Maybe this film has some merit but played at full volume through cracking and tinny speakers until 2 in the morning when all you want it do is sleep because you have to get off the bus at 6am...
We spent some time in Arequipa with the Irish, wondering around, visiting museums and dining. All good fun. We spent some time wondering around with Red, or without, doing pretty much the same. Red seemed to suffer a little from over-enthusiastic attempts to live like the locals. He spent much of his time either bed-bound after eating the cheapest food the city had to offer or busy ingratiating himself into the company of a local chica that he´d met. He became disenchanted with the chase after the second date on which she took him for a tour of the city followed by a traditional supper. "There´s nothing like watching a pretty girl tuck into fried guinea pigs head...". I really liked Arequipa.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.cjgxpn62&x=1&y=-7bymj9
Lima:
Then to Lima. We got there on a Thursday all churned up and spat out after another bus journey from hell. I´m beginning to lose faith in the busses here - once they seemed great but we are constantly thwarted by them recently. Again we were let down by the noise levels and the entertainment schedule. Noise levels rose unacceptably high both during the entertainment and later as the two gits next to us talked late into the night and from early in the morning. I shot them a few dirty looks but failed to make my anger fully felt. There´s something intimidating about overly effeminate men who talk loudly and giggle a foreign language at 4.30am. However, I won´t be so reserved in future. The entertainment was a combination of bingo and karaoke. The hostess called the bingo and if you got a line then the reward was the opportunity to sing! Can you imagine? That went on until about half eleven I could have cried.
Lima initially seemed a bit grotty. We´d originally intended to stop at a couple of places on the way to see oases and Nasca lines and dolphins lions tigers and bears oh my and stuff but ended up coming straight here because it´ll work out cheaper and it´s been an expensive month with the Inca trail and buying a flight to Buenos Aires. Also, couldn´t escape the feeling that I was grinding to a bit of a halt and my energy for endless packing and unpacking of bag and checking in and out of hotels, on and off of busses, was waning. So at the expense of potentially life-changing monuments of Peru in dramatic landscapes with exotic people we came to smoggy Lima to chill out in a dark and dirty hostel with similarly discombobulated people.
On the first day we found a vegetarian Indian restaurant run by Hare Krishnas where the menu of the day is a pound and it´s 3 delicious courses. When I say found what I actually mean is that the guide book suggested and we walked to. Then I found a barber who butchered my hair (it´s never been so short - my face feels compromised by the defecit so I have reinstigated a beard). Then in the evening we went to an Irish bar where they were having an Iron Maiden tribute night so it was empty and we drank in there until we were slurring our words, confusing each other, and the band were threatening to make an appearance despite the lack of crowds. Found more beer elsewhere and I remember arm-wrestling an enormous Peruvian man (losing) before heading back to the hostel to sleep it off.
Lima is on the coast and there is much talk of surfing and beachlife. So we walked along the waterfront on Saturday from our safe hostel suburb of Miraflores to the equally pleasant Barranco. There were lots of surfers and on the beach we saw many people flapping around eating, sun-bathing, fighting (until then, for me, the image of a musclebound hardman kicking sand in the face of a puny adversary to impress his girlfriend had just been a myth so it was interesting to see that confirmed). The familiar visual chaos was offset by the stench of sewage, I kid you not it reeks down there. And the water that the kids were delightedly running in and out of, jumping waves and screeching fun was green and viscous. People walked out of the sea with it sliding unnaturally slowly down their skin and trailing behind them in gloopy puddles that refused to disperse into the sand. We concurred that it might be better to head a bit down the coast or just wait until we get to Rio for beach life.
Saturday night also got a bit messy as we declared our party funds depleted and decided to cook at home and have a bottle of wine. The meal was great (pasta, tomato sauce) and the bottle of wine turned into three before we met another English fellow and moved onto beer and Pisco sour (that´s the local poison). Ended up in the same bar where the arm wrestle had previously occurred, discussing Gordon Brown´s lack of social aplomb and predicting the unstopable rise ofthe Conservative party to success at the next election. Before headingback to the hostel to sleep it off.
One day the Dutch arrived from the North. So we hung out with them and went to a couple of museums downtown and for lunch in Chinatown. This was more the kind of 'adventure' that I was expecting from Lima - I hadn´t foreseen myself sitting around in a plush suburb getting drunk and sleeping all day. We piled into a cab and went straight to the cathedral for a guided tour. I understand that doesn´t sound very adventurous but things picked up later. The most famous saint in Peru is Santa Rosa who was revered and later canonized for her unswerving devotion to the Lord (naturally). This she expressed through what she termed "punishments" and what we today would call psychotic, ascetic massochism. Basically, she loved God and she loved pain.
After looking at about 700 freizes, all of which involved Santa Rosa bleeding - Santa Rosa and crowns of thorns, Santa Rosa and self-flagellation etc - we decided to walk to Chinatown to find food. I led the way and we got a bit lost - not in the best area of town. In fact, we´d been told not to walk around there at all and to take a taxi from place to place. But we were thinking, 4 of us, 3 of us big guys, bring it on. I didn´t notice the gang of youths stalking us, I was kind of oblivious as I had my head in the guide book scrutinising the map, which in hindsight probably signalled to them that we´d make fine victims. Jim had seen them earlier but you get a lot of people giving you hostile looks over here so he´d ignored them. Then, as we trudged back towards busier streets, from behind us we heard Anna scream. We swivelled round to see two of them wrestling with her and her bag. As we legged it at them they dispersed. Anna was fine, not really even shaken, they hadn´t molested her and they hadn´t made off with anything. Actually, they hadn´t made off at all and were standing about 10 metres away scowling at us looking ready for pitched battle but I think that´s just the way that they looked because all reports are that violence is a rarity here. We had a bit of a stand-off for a minute or so with them skulking round us pulling faces and us not sure how to deal with the unfamiliar situation then we wondered off feeling a little perplexed to continue the search for a chinese buffet. Spent an hour in the afternoon in the museum of the Spanish inquisition so it was a torturous day all round really.
Since then there have been more museums and I´ve spent a fair bit of time writing this. After 7 days, I quite like Lima and the suburb of Miraflores and if it wasn´t for the climate it would be a pleasant place for hanging around and relaxing. But it´s 30 degrees and muggy right now - there´s little relief from the heat even at night and despite thick banks of fog rolling in from the sea each afternoon. Makes me want to sleep and I´ve been sleeping loads. That could also be related to the food - it´s easy to feast here, we fell into eating a mixture of local and international cuisines, a bit of home cooking, plenty of fish. It´s been good.
A few photos from Lima here:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.6qp2nikq&x=1&y=dxz3uw
posted by Gavin at 10:50 PM
