In my hours queueing at bolivian border control I was sold everything. Firstly in a quasi-anglicised language where each word was entirely indistinguishable and then in a rush of relieved spanish when i let on that i might understand better if (invariably) hespoke an actually recognised language. From doornobs to saltedas - poor cousins of the BsAs empanadas... ´Much better than Bolivian ones´i was earnestly assured by which i presume he meant better than those being touted 15ft further along the bridge. I even saw a girl from a bartop in cusco being sold what appeared to be the contents of her own toiletry bag which was pretty thick considering the grime covered face vending Chelsea best.
The most over saturated market however, appeared to be te bicycle transit service. The Peruvian sideof the border heaved wih bikes pushing decorated trailers. The more upmarket ones had a bench seat built in whilst the shabbier ones encorporated llama feed adverts into the design of their decoration. That they were so ornately decorated might have been symptomatic of of their chronic underemployment, a combination of the need for peacock-like ttraction and too much time. On the otherhand it may have been because they enjoyed the sensation of disorientating pedestrians as streams of colour whirled past. The shabbiest of the bike proprietors approached me as i eventually left peruvian emigration, I could just about make out that he could not have been more than about 12 through the thick film of grime encrusting his features. His bike had broken several years before hand and had been disintegrating ever since but this failed to stop him attempting to solicit my custom. he offered a ride to copacabana (an hours drive over the the border) i couldnt contain myself and had to laugh. I spoke too soon, in copacabana on a pit stop i saw him arrive huffing and puffing, pick up a little girl (maybe he had secured the school transport service contract) and set off back toward th border moments later.
Bicycles have achieved two additional major advantages in South America, on top of the usual arguments - cheap, healthy, green - they are infinitely better equipped for emergencies seeing as the option to abandon ship is ever present and the more cautious biker might as well throw themselves in a ditch in preparation for oncoming traffic at the slightest hint of there being any (spotting is a task made easier on the antiplano especially when the exhaust fumes billow out in plumes for miles around). Secondly, a smoother ride as the agile biker is able to swerve potholes, (even when there appears to be rather more hole than road), swim across rivers, or utilise a moss covered footbridge if fortunate enough to find one.
Back to La Paz for take two I managed to act as tour guide of El Prado, San Francisco, avoid the massage palour and become a hostel expert in la paz, having stayed at Las Brisas, Wild Rover, Adventure Brew AND the the Point as well as seeing friends at Loki. I jumped on an unsuspecting Lizzie and Bells (even more unsuspecting friends of theirs) and dragged them off to a world famous (largely due to Rusty Youngs expose in Marching Powder) incarcaration unit where there are unique rules and regulations inside. Unfortunately, after a couple of false starts and a few messages in bedsheets we had a tantalising glimpse of the inside world before a distinctly unimpressed employee returned unamused from her loo break. party over.
Journeying is a sport in itself here - indeed i might suggest it be named the continental favourite past-time. Certainly bus drivers appear to think that screaming destinations aproximate to their own at passersby will entice them on board, as if they'll think, oh sod work, family and home i came out looking for a squash but what i really need is a 19hour bus journey, perhaps they're right I never asked a local if they'd taken a particularly long detour on their way to market on any of my buses. It is also however, a complete matter of chance if you happen to arrive in the right place at the end. Having arrived at El Alto international (state of the art in an ironic contrast to a hastily constructed city and the ariport of official capital sucre - where the main luxury is that the cleaners unblock the loos at semi-regular intervals) ridiculously early due to everything actually going smoothly i was greeted by the aparition of breakfast (i recommend the cinnamon rolls at Alexanders Coffee) in the form of the girls friend Theo who I'd met the previous night in the bar at Loki. We proceeded to be institutionally ripped off by a US$25 departure tax which constituted my single greatest purchase in Bolivia. At least we weren't forced into an inflated extranjeros rate.
Fog prevented our (exceptionally nice; TACA) plane to Lima from taking off and then 2 hours further before we recieved the all clear to discover we'd "lost an engine." careless behaviour really. Anyway, despite a 12minute window in which to disembark and find the flight to Bogota (helped by luggage handlers running alongside me) I made it. Arrival into Colombia was made considerably earier by a Colombian traveller from the plane who brought me supper (amazingly if you pay above average prices in south america you are rewarded with above average food and Colombian airspace it seemed was no exception), gave me his book (brilliant Mark Mann's The Gringo Trail), whisked me off to the DAS counter practically before the rest of the flight had left their seats. All the while telling me that I should look up Walter Seligman who ran an electronics store in Bogota.
I almost expected to be simultaneously mugged, shot and descended upon by sniffer dogs and banditos due to Colombia's reputation and parental angst. However, time kept passing and none of the aforementioned occured (*i did see the snifferdogs; they were all quite fat golden labs and were snoring, loudly). I left the airport, got a taxi and arrived in my hostel unscathed, i even dared to take a walk and nighttime swim in Cartagenas ocean a block from the hotel. It was an unexpected calm and therefore felt strange to realise that, despite the murder figures, general hysteria and economic dependence on cocaine (despite being a fast developing state, being richly endowed naturally benefitting from climate variation, the worlds largest coffee producer and also blessed(or cursed) with that other black gold oil, Colombian cocaine exports come to a greater value than all other individual endeavours. It was estimated by US homeland security that 60% of cocaine in the US is of Colombian origin) I had arrived in what I was to discover was one of the safest and certainly friendliest countries I had visited in South America. Perhaps these speculations were aided by another free meal ('my friend at the fruiteria').
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Sunday, 18 April 2010
ghostowns and breakdowns in bolivia
After more good food (granja heidi, ossobuco with a barley risotto and saffron sauce if you must know.... i was llama-ed out having had it stewed, minced, chopped, whole, sprinkled on yogurt you name it on the trek) i tried and failed to jump on a bus to cusco via the slight obstruction of numerous good friday parades which were jamming the streets to footfall, let alone the traffic. It did eventually leave a few hours after scheduled during which time i made friends with the tax kiosk man who got me a deal with my last pesos at the local wateringhole which made me equally popular in turn with a few of the other travellers. 19hours later having had our passports checked by 4 different authorities and gone through the least heavily guarded border yet on foot (bridge semi-complete with chicken wire) I was in La Paz where having dropped off my things at Las Brisas I headed onto Wild Rover (eventually). Here felix lay in wait with a whole bevy of travellers ranging from Eric the swedish rasta to tom, whom i´m fairly certain was a laid-off stock broker.
We failed to find `friendly, cheap and tasty` Yusefs but sated our falafel craving after a typical bolivian service wait (bare in mind we were the only customers) of an hour or so and wandered around the surrounding streets and through a rather subdued witches market and plaza murillo. It transpired that the combination of elections and easter had subdued south americas wild child into a sleeping puppy. traditionally drinking is banned on easter weekend and so elections (dry since parties used to ship in truckloads of free alcohol to bribe locals) are held to coincide with this atypical behavior. Having hidden the previous night, saturday, under the tables in silence at Rover nursing our drinks in the worlds highest irish run bar (because the lights were off didn´t seem to discount the possibility of the police asking to see the bar and turning the lights on in my opinion) we acquired a taste for illicit drinking and headed, brown bag in tow to a viewpoint in the park, which was also closed. On the upside we did find the worlds most dangerous ferris wheel and amused the locals with a display of dangerous driving by the light of the sparks flying off the top of our dodgems. Later continuing in the illicit vein we headed to one of La Paz´s many underground clubs where a labrinyth lies in wait of gringos behind a shutup shop front that is hauled up at the sound of approaching taxis (their locations are not so secret that every taxi driver doesn´t know their address) after a full 10minutes sleep I headed onto the airport past a disconcertingly mounted write-off, destination: Sucre.
Sucre was everything that La Paz wasn´t - affluent, bright white (hence the nickname) and old, colonial to be exact. We spent more time than necessary at Joyride the local tourist operator who appeared to have a monopoly on the entire town with a bar, restaurant, cinema and tour centre taking up pride of place by the main square opposite the cathedral. It wasnt all free beer though, on the first evening we watched El Mina del Diablo in preparation for Potosoi which was grim to say the least but achingly well done. (We met the protagonists sister who was also featured in the docudrama when we went to the mines, she informed us that Basilio still worked in the mines, along with his uncle and brother and then sold us some of the minerals found in the cerro rico, especially dihearteningly I later heard tales from Rosie*). The film was startling, contrasting not only the surprising simpilcity of the raw humility and pride of being a miner, and of the devout catholicism dabbling in the occult. Outside the mines, Christ reins supreme, each of the entrances to the sprawling warrenlike complex bears a cross surmounted on the entrance. But inside, in the depths of the mountain, they are isolated. Millions: Bolivians, first free then enslaved first by the conquistators and then their devil imageary; Black slaves, who on average survived less than a year, have died in the mines of the 'Mountain that Eats Men', killed by explosions, accidents, or failing that ravaged by silicosis that eats away the lungs and kills men in their thirties.
Next day my strength failed me rather on what was advertised as the dino DOWNhill but turned out to have several km in several places of uphill mountain biking - before hurtling back down on the other side past sights including a vast slab of mountain pockmarked by the footprints of dinosaurs who´d traipsed through a drying lava flow a few million years before there; bizarre, especially since half of this mountain had collapsed despite the footprints gaining some notoriety the month before. To be honest much of the time I was keeping occupied by focussing on the road and so often the sights passed in a green, blue or strawcoloured haze, I did however, notice the eagles circling over a cottage in the valley and the local boys tearing up a football pitch whilst girls in traditional dress attempted to cheerlead.
At the end, well, slightly past, this being Bolivia they neglected to be very forcoming on where to stop, i was revelling in my own bloodfree existence when a llama fell of a cliff behind me after a brief, but fatal, skermish involving a jugoboy, oncoming lorry, out of control taxi and a nearly flattened me. I have no idea how the llama (max capacity 35kg, camel-like tendency to try to grind your bones to dust given have the chance and a distinct pattern for cliffside suicides emerging - perhaps these explains the ubiquity of all that llama meat) has managed to survive thousands of years.
Once we´d managed to coax the taxi back to enough of a semblance of life to arrive in Potosoi we suited up and fell down a few mineshafts before distributing the bags of cocaleafs, cigarettes, 96% alcohol and banana catalyst to the miners, and crackers to the women and children guarding the entrance. The whole package cost 20Bs each - and yet was more than they could hope to buy themselves in weeks. All this after a quick masterclass in the art of explosives, I thought Adem was ripe for a home office enquiry having been photographed shoving sticks of dynamite into bags of ammonium nitrate and then fleeing the unexpectedly deafening explosion that followed and appeared to pass straight through you. There were several dodgy moments (the tunnel that smelt so strongly of gas we had to reroute and then the explosions nearby unaware of the tourists now passing perilously close but mostly Salvador, one of the children of no more than 10 who had been begging outside being discovered helping his uncle mine. I had asked him on the outside if he worked in the mine and he had replied that he helped in the medical centre on site but it was definately him pickaxing 400m down), these I imagine pale somewhat with what the miners face routinely.
Onto Uyuni which was much more civilised than expected and easily sold the best conitos and casa negras for 50centavos. It also hosted some distinctly strange Bolivian cuisine including llama products best not bandied about on the internet. However a gem emerged in the form of a true Italian pizzeria for a taste of home before 4 days away from civilisation, but with a cook! The last of the sleeping bags battened down we piled into the 4WD caravan awaiting us and were swiftly guided through rusting trains, salt processing networks, a last market and then km-upon-km of salt 200-500m deep and stretching as far as the world cares to show you at any one point. Rising eerily from this hexagonal network of blinding white were desert ´islands´ which appear to float above its surface, their cacti oddly silhouted against the salt. All very surreal but there are the obligatory photos to show on my return to prove its existence.
After day one we stayed in a particularly bleak village in a hotel made entirely (floor, walls, beds, decorations, thankfully not pillows) of salt, it was nice actually and stunning when the sun eventually rose the next morning over the salt flats.
Having driven all day through deserts and lakes and scaled a few boulders we arrived in the national park on the southern border very cold, not helped by the large holes in most window panes, annoyingly the 3 sockets for charging in the entire guesthouse had just 3 hours of power a day, i did manage to fight my way through to gain one although it did mean guarding it until the urge to sleep ahead of our 4am wakeup call eventually got the better of me, had some interesting kitchen talk though and can now make pancakes with 2 ingredients. 5am the next morning and we were on the way, tired, cold and hungry to the geyers. However my car never reached the geyers since we broke down at 5.15, some emergency repairs later we limped a further mile and then unpopped my sleeping back and the alpaca presents (just think your presents saved my toes!) and huddled 4 across the seat waiting with baited breath (it only froze the windows otherwise) for rescue. Whilst pretending it wasnt happening I listened to an interesting extract of Nial Fergusons the ascent of money about the spanish obsession with all things shiny with a detailed account of plunder at you guessed it; Potosoi.
2 hours later and the sun was melting the ice encrusted windows nicely - enough to see the rest of our entourage reappear and vaguely to recollect being rebundled and car-ed before a massively needed pick me up at base camp (wed used all the fresh hot water in attempting to restart the engine, this did not work, it froze) breakfasting on those aforementioned pancakes.
*Apparently the filmakers, Europeans who went on to win the sundance festival from Basilio Vargas´ miserable existance renumerated him with a thirty puond cheque, which cannot be cashed since the lower limit is $50. To take matters to an ultimately desparate level, the villagers reguse to believe this and instead have ostracised Basilios family believing them to be secretly hiding the promised monies. It was a litte sickening to hear.
We failed to find `friendly, cheap and tasty` Yusefs but sated our falafel craving after a typical bolivian service wait (bare in mind we were the only customers) of an hour or so and wandered around the surrounding streets and through a rather subdued witches market and plaza murillo. It transpired that the combination of elections and easter had subdued south americas wild child into a sleeping puppy. traditionally drinking is banned on easter weekend and so elections (dry since parties used to ship in truckloads of free alcohol to bribe locals) are held to coincide with this atypical behavior. Having hidden the previous night, saturday, under the tables in silence at Rover nursing our drinks in the worlds highest irish run bar (because the lights were off didn´t seem to discount the possibility of the police asking to see the bar and turning the lights on in my opinion) we acquired a taste for illicit drinking and headed, brown bag in tow to a viewpoint in the park, which was also closed. On the upside we did find the worlds most dangerous ferris wheel and amused the locals with a display of dangerous driving by the light of the sparks flying off the top of our dodgems. Later continuing in the illicit vein we headed to one of La Paz´s many underground clubs where a labrinyth lies in wait of gringos behind a shutup shop front that is hauled up at the sound of approaching taxis (their locations are not so secret that every taxi driver doesn´t know their address) after a full 10minutes sleep I headed onto the airport past a disconcertingly mounted write-off, destination: Sucre.
Sucre was everything that La Paz wasn´t - affluent, bright white (hence the nickname) and old, colonial to be exact. We spent more time than necessary at Joyride the local tourist operator who appeared to have a monopoly on the entire town with a bar, restaurant, cinema and tour centre taking up pride of place by the main square opposite the cathedral. It wasnt all free beer though, on the first evening we watched El Mina del Diablo in preparation for Potosoi which was grim to say the least but achingly well done. (We met the protagonists sister who was also featured in the docudrama when we went to the mines, she informed us that Basilio still worked in the mines, along with his uncle and brother and then sold us some of the minerals found in the cerro rico, especially dihearteningly I later heard tales from Rosie*). The film was startling, contrasting not only the surprising simpilcity of the raw humility and pride of being a miner, and of the devout catholicism dabbling in the occult. Outside the mines, Christ reins supreme, each of the entrances to the sprawling warrenlike complex bears a cross surmounted on the entrance. But inside, in the depths of the mountain, they are isolated. Millions: Bolivians, first free then enslaved first by the conquistators and then their devil imageary; Black slaves, who on average survived less than a year, have died in the mines of the 'Mountain that Eats Men', killed by explosions, accidents, or failing that ravaged by silicosis that eats away the lungs and kills men in their thirties.
Next day my strength failed me rather on what was advertised as the dino DOWNhill but turned out to have several km in several places of uphill mountain biking - before hurtling back down on the other side past sights including a vast slab of mountain pockmarked by the footprints of dinosaurs who´d traipsed through a drying lava flow a few million years before there; bizarre, especially since half of this mountain had collapsed despite the footprints gaining some notoriety the month before. To be honest much of the time I was keeping occupied by focussing on the road and so often the sights passed in a green, blue or strawcoloured haze, I did however, notice the eagles circling over a cottage in the valley and the local boys tearing up a football pitch whilst girls in traditional dress attempted to cheerlead.
At the end, well, slightly past, this being Bolivia they neglected to be very forcoming on where to stop, i was revelling in my own bloodfree existence when a llama fell of a cliff behind me after a brief, but fatal, skermish involving a jugoboy, oncoming lorry, out of control taxi and a nearly flattened me. I have no idea how the llama (max capacity 35kg, camel-like tendency to try to grind your bones to dust given have the chance and a distinct pattern for cliffside suicides emerging - perhaps these explains the ubiquity of all that llama meat) has managed to survive thousands of years.
Once we´d managed to coax the taxi back to enough of a semblance of life to arrive in Potosoi we suited up and fell down a few mineshafts before distributing the bags of cocaleafs, cigarettes, 96% alcohol and banana catalyst to the miners, and crackers to the women and children guarding the entrance. The whole package cost 20Bs each - and yet was more than they could hope to buy themselves in weeks. All this after a quick masterclass in the art of explosives, I thought Adem was ripe for a home office enquiry having been photographed shoving sticks of dynamite into bags of ammonium nitrate and then fleeing the unexpectedly deafening explosion that followed and appeared to pass straight through you. There were several dodgy moments (the tunnel that smelt so strongly of gas we had to reroute and then the explosions nearby unaware of the tourists now passing perilously close but mostly Salvador, one of the children of no more than 10 who had been begging outside being discovered helping his uncle mine. I had asked him on the outside if he worked in the mine and he had replied that he helped in the medical centre on site but it was definately him pickaxing 400m down), these I imagine pale somewhat with what the miners face routinely.
Onto Uyuni which was much more civilised than expected and easily sold the best conitos and casa negras for 50centavos. It also hosted some distinctly strange Bolivian cuisine including llama products best not bandied about on the internet. However a gem emerged in the form of a true Italian pizzeria for a taste of home before 4 days away from civilisation, but with a cook! The last of the sleeping bags battened down we piled into the 4WD caravan awaiting us and were swiftly guided through rusting trains, salt processing networks, a last market and then km-upon-km of salt 200-500m deep and stretching as far as the world cares to show you at any one point. Rising eerily from this hexagonal network of blinding white were desert ´islands´ which appear to float above its surface, their cacti oddly silhouted against the salt. All very surreal but there are the obligatory photos to show on my return to prove its existence.
After day one we stayed in a particularly bleak village in a hotel made entirely (floor, walls, beds, decorations, thankfully not pillows) of salt, it was nice actually and stunning when the sun eventually rose the next morning over the salt flats.
Having driven all day through deserts and lakes and scaled a few boulders we arrived in the national park on the southern border very cold, not helped by the large holes in most window panes, annoyingly the 3 sockets for charging in the entire guesthouse had just 3 hours of power a day, i did manage to fight my way through to gain one although it did mean guarding it until the urge to sleep ahead of our 4am wakeup call eventually got the better of me, had some interesting kitchen talk though and can now make pancakes with 2 ingredients. 5am the next morning and we were on the way, tired, cold and hungry to the geyers. However my car never reached the geyers since we broke down at 5.15, some emergency repairs later we limped a further mile and then unpopped my sleeping back and the alpaca presents (just think your presents saved my toes!) and huddled 4 across the seat waiting with baited breath (it only froze the windows otherwise) for rescue. Whilst pretending it wasnt happening I listened to an interesting extract of Nial Fergusons the ascent of money about the spanish obsession with all things shiny with a detailed account of plunder at you guessed it; Potosoi.
2 hours later and the sun was melting the ice encrusted windows nicely - enough to see the rest of our entourage reappear and vaguely to recollect being rebundled and car-ed before a massively needed pick me up at base camp (wed used all the fresh hot water in attempting to restart the engine, this did not work, it froze) breakfasting on those aforementioned pancakes.
*Apparently the filmakers, Europeans who went on to win the sundance festival from Basilio Vargas´ miserable existance renumerated him with a thirty puond cheque, which cannot be cashed since the lower limit is $50. To take matters to an ultimately desparate level, the villagers reguse to believe this and instead have ostracised Basilios family believing them to be secretly hiding the promised monies. It was a litte sickening to hear.
Monday, 12 April 2010
a rendevous with jesus
ok a little behind on the updates so i will try to remember the hilarities without the rambling. After a large stockup at los perros with the additional company of Rosie and Sam, a rendevous with Jesus to sort out the details for the trek and a dash around the aptly named proceduras, procuring trekking poles, boots, socks and the odd fake north face appendage in between palm sunday mass and dances in the plaza d´armas we were ready.
Fortunately the entire room bar 2 were rising early for their various treks too so i ran a breakfast racket for the bargain price of 2 soles each for scrambled eggs, tomato salad and garlic spinach. yum.
We piled in the bus joined by the unfortunate Ryan, who had presumably not envisaged trekking with 5 teenage girls and set off for the heights of Lares. Once there we had an undeserved bathe in the hot springs and were treated to the first of quite a few meals, not to slack we never once deviated from our 3 courses despite the kitchen consisting of a gas stove and a hole in the ground.
trekking started and i think we all trudged in silence for the first few hours to hide our breathlesness! Filipe our guide however was pleased with our progress and we made it to camp (eventually as it had been set up on the wrong side of a river) early enough for a full high tea before supper an abortive walk in the direction of the waterfalls but leading througha rock field and a bog and an impromptu market from some of the local village girls.
day 2 was a little harder. We had to pass over the huanytucko juan pass which at nearly 5000m was a struggle. However, we felt very spritely afterwards hurtling down the valley to lunch by a lake when it promptly decided to bucket it down. We were in fact very early to lunch so we huddled from the wind and rain, periodically pulling out the stools from the mud in our very flimsy canvas cover for a few hours during which time I experienced the early onset of hypothermia and only emerged from the perching foetal position (advanced yoga i´m told) to imbibe green bean energy and hot soup. After lunch however I couldn´t really put one foot infront of the other with much confidence and as a result I set off teeth chattering in the direction of the horse caravans ahead. This was not the right way and only about 20mins later when i regained a little feeling in my body and some of my mental processes did i realise my solitary status, ahhh. Having stopped to take stock of the situation I caught a glimpse of a lurid pink wafting up towards the top of the mountainside, brilliant this marshmallowesque figure was Sam in the, by this stage, obligatory rain poncho. Unfortunately, I was at the bottom of the valley so started a vertical ascent upwards, the cliffs weren´t so much the obstacle, my main enemy was the soddon ground which combined with the incline sent me sliding back down the mountain several times. On the last of these muddy occasions I slid straight into salvation, our guide.
By contrast after a much better nights sleep and dry clothing in the morning day three´s downhill route was pips and after a good lunch in Ollantytambo and (another) coffee from incabucks we said goodbye to Felipe and the rest of the guides and caught our train to Agas Calientes eagerly anticipating those hot showers and a guide at the other end. Unfortunately neither appeared. Worse our escort never transpired at the station in a town that was pedestrianised so we had no way of knowing where our hotel was. Armed however, with the knowledge that the town was small and a couple of people pointing us in the direction of the Sol Plaza we set out in the rain on a hostalhunt. We failed. Having walked to the extremity of the town we never found said hostal, on finding some friendly shopkeepers still about they called the main tourist offices and confirmed that there was no such abode. ah, especially since Sab and Rosie had disappeared in search of an internet cafe to look it up. Fortunately (or perhaps testiment to our having scoured the town and asked everyone where the elusive sol plaza was) we managed to bump into our guide who showed us to the hotel on the other side of town and eventually provided a booking for our included supper at a pizzeria, with no cheese. Solace was not to be found in our bathrooms either as hot water failed to arrive despite a dripping wet, semi-naked eleanor making a reappearence at reception until the plumber arrived.
4am, we awoke to the combined roar of the river and the rain. Despite making it to the bus station we soon arrived back outside the hotel as the road wasn´t pasable so the buses were leaving approximately 50m from our door. I managed to chance upon breakfast though which was very satisfactory. Machu Picchu in the rain and fog was not terribly exciting, I felt rather sorry for the poor guide who´d suffered our wrath the night before and now had to drag us through a sea of coloured ponchos. It was depressing enough that when we went in search of coffee pre-Wayna Picchu climb at 10am the route to the canteen was blocked by the number of people attempting an early exodus. Wayna Picchu it transpired was closed since after only 44 people had ascended, one had already fallen and deaths dont tend to look very good on reopening days. Mine at least was almost certainly avoided by its premature closure. The weather however, decided to change and Sam, Sab and I (occasionally accompianed by a rather sunnier Ryan in his new role as photographer) were treated to the full beauty of the inca ruins. Complete with ceremonial llamas, quite literally being pushed off terracettes (sadly llamas were hurt in the process) by the paps surrounding the mayor, susan sarandon (¿quite?, but she did wave up at me and sab after sabrina accidentally punching me in the mouth sent us into hysterics) and traditionally dressed children, we listened in on the BBC world services coverage been recorded below us before setting off to the inca bridge, where Sam attempted a stunt somersault over the edge of the path, fortuantely metres past the cliff and before the forested cliff where she would almost certainly have come to rather more harm. Eventually we returned to a near deserted Machu Picchu and retrieved Rosie and Eleanor from the redecorators at the cafe before making our way back to the train station where a fortunate walk along the platform from ryan resulted in our not missing our (very expensive) trainride back, where we even managed to scab a brownie of the poor american woman that sabrinas coke launched itself at!
Fortunately the entire room bar 2 were rising early for their various treks too so i ran a breakfast racket for the bargain price of 2 soles each for scrambled eggs, tomato salad and garlic spinach. yum.
We piled in the bus joined by the unfortunate Ryan, who had presumably not envisaged trekking with 5 teenage girls and set off for the heights of Lares. Once there we had an undeserved bathe in the hot springs and were treated to the first of quite a few meals, not to slack we never once deviated from our 3 courses despite the kitchen consisting of a gas stove and a hole in the ground.
trekking started and i think we all trudged in silence for the first few hours to hide our breathlesness! Filipe our guide however was pleased with our progress and we made it to camp (eventually as it had been set up on the wrong side of a river) early enough for a full high tea before supper an abortive walk in the direction of the waterfalls but leading througha rock field and a bog and an impromptu market from some of the local village girls.
day 2 was a little harder. We had to pass over the huanytucko juan pass which at nearly 5000m was a struggle. However, we felt very spritely afterwards hurtling down the valley to lunch by a lake when it promptly decided to bucket it down. We were in fact very early to lunch so we huddled from the wind and rain, periodically pulling out the stools from the mud in our very flimsy canvas cover for a few hours during which time I experienced the early onset of hypothermia and only emerged from the perching foetal position (advanced yoga i´m told) to imbibe green bean energy and hot soup. After lunch however I couldn´t really put one foot infront of the other with much confidence and as a result I set off teeth chattering in the direction of the horse caravans ahead. This was not the right way and only about 20mins later when i regained a little feeling in my body and some of my mental processes did i realise my solitary status, ahhh. Having stopped to take stock of the situation I caught a glimpse of a lurid pink wafting up towards the top of the mountainside, brilliant this marshmallowesque figure was Sam in the, by this stage, obligatory rain poncho. Unfortunately, I was at the bottom of the valley so started a vertical ascent upwards, the cliffs weren´t so much the obstacle, my main enemy was the soddon ground which combined with the incline sent me sliding back down the mountain several times. On the last of these muddy occasions I slid straight into salvation, our guide.
By contrast after a much better nights sleep and dry clothing in the morning day three´s downhill route was pips and after a good lunch in Ollantytambo and (another) coffee from incabucks we said goodbye to Felipe and the rest of the guides and caught our train to Agas Calientes eagerly anticipating those hot showers and a guide at the other end. Unfortunately neither appeared. Worse our escort never transpired at the station in a town that was pedestrianised so we had no way of knowing where our hotel was. Armed however, with the knowledge that the town was small and a couple of people pointing us in the direction of the Sol Plaza we set out in the rain on a hostalhunt. We failed. Having walked to the extremity of the town we never found said hostal, on finding some friendly shopkeepers still about they called the main tourist offices and confirmed that there was no such abode. ah, especially since Sab and Rosie had disappeared in search of an internet cafe to look it up. Fortunately (or perhaps testiment to our having scoured the town and asked everyone where the elusive sol plaza was) we managed to bump into our guide who showed us to the hotel on the other side of town and eventually provided a booking for our included supper at a pizzeria, with no cheese. Solace was not to be found in our bathrooms either as hot water failed to arrive despite a dripping wet, semi-naked eleanor making a reappearence at reception until the plumber arrived.
4am, we awoke to the combined roar of the river and the rain. Despite making it to the bus station we soon arrived back outside the hotel as the road wasn´t pasable so the buses were leaving approximately 50m from our door. I managed to chance upon breakfast though which was very satisfactory. Machu Picchu in the rain and fog was not terribly exciting, I felt rather sorry for the poor guide who´d suffered our wrath the night before and now had to drag us through a sea of coloured ponchos. It was depressing enough that when we went in search of coffee pre-Wayna Picchu climb at 10am the route to the canteen was blocked by the number of people attempting an early exodus. Wayna Picchu it transpired was closed since after only 44 people had ascended, one had already fallen and deaths dont tend to look very good on reopening days. Mine at least was almost certainly avoided by its premature closure. The weather however, decided to change and Sam, Sab and I (occasionally accompianed by a rather sunnier Ryan in his new role as photographer) were treated to the full beauty of the inca ruins. Complete with ceremonial llamas, quite literally being pushed off terracettes (sadly llamas were hurt in the process) by the paps surrounding the mayor, susan sarandon (¿quite?, but she did wave up at me and sab after sabrina accidentally punching me in the mouth sent us into hysterics) and traditionally dressed children, we listened in on the BBC world services coverage been recorded below us before setting off to the inca bridge, where Sam attempted a stunt somersault over the edge of the path, fortuantely metres past the cliff and before the forested cliff where she would almost certainly have come to rather more harm. Eventually we returned to a near deserted Machu Picchu and retrieved Rosie and Eleanor from the redecorators at the cafe before making our way back to the train station where a fortunate walk along the platform from ryan resulted in our not missing our (very expensive) trainride back, where we even managed to scab a brownie of the poor american woman that sabrinas coke launched itself at!
Friday, 2 April 2010
a peruvian perambulation
so i left BsAs in a slight rush having arrived 4 hours late and decided on a long picnic in the park, leaving a whopping 35minutes to pack up. I succeeded in getting to the airport over an hour preflight (if not 2.5) but unfortunately had also accidentally stolen the keys to the sanchez elias and had to entrust them to the taxi driver to return which, thankfully, he did. on arrival in Lima i managed to get a taxi colectivo with a family of 7 crammed in the back to my hostel which was palatious if far out for $20 soles. bargain.
Quick run around the nearby ruins, the catacombs, cathedral and into chinatown and i was off again to Huacachina to lose my footing, repeatedly, sandboarding in this oasis town. I would upload some pictures of my bombing down these massive dunes but unfortunately i also managed to lose my camera in the rush to the bus station. easily biggest loss thus far, even if it is a 4x6 vaguely phone shaped piece of black plastic. I miss its presence in my pocket! To really grind the salt into the gaping wound i´d sacrificed 3 hours of prime sunbathing time to upload them to CD pre-dune buggy&boarding. Not to worry unduly i chatted up a friendly enough israeli whose now working at Loki here in cusco so will raid her photos!
Quick run around the nearby ruins, the catacombs, cathedral and into chinatown and i was off again to Huacachina to lose my footing, repeatedly, sandboarding in this oasis town. I would upload some pictures of my bombing down these massive dunes but unfortunately i also managed to lose my camera in the rush to the bus station. easily biggest loss thus far, even if it is a 4x6 vaguely phone shaped piece of black plastic. I miss its presence in my pocket! To really grind the salt into the gaping wound i´d sacrificed 3 hours of prime sunbathing time to upload them to CD pre-dune buggy&boarding. Not to worry unduly i chatted up a friendly enough israeli whose now working at Loki here in cusco so will raid her photos!
In Cusco I was pounced upon by a sickly Eleanor at the absurdly nice Parriwana hostel after a brief spell in the computer room (recognised by the trademark hairflick and shoes i´m told). Whilst a reunion with Sabrina took a little longer as she´d managed to hitchhike her way across to Colca into the arms of Chescie who I sadly missed (riduculously late bus...). Chicken soup, a pisco sour or two and a few of our 9 room-mates and sleep didn´t alude us for long! Next day having herded still sicky eleanor around largely closed churches we fortunately chanced upon Los Perros (which i recommend to anyone) and stayed in its cosy embrace with all the chifa and alpaca meatballs you could possibly desire for far too long, not aided by the book exchange!
Crack of dawn, chomping down my veggie omlette on toast whilst tying up the shoe laces and running down the stairs to the distinctly unimpressed tour guide for our sacred valley tour, we were unprepared for a long days ruin running. Taking in the ruins at Moray, Ollantytambo (waylaid in Inkabucks), Chincherro (beautiful painted church) and Pisaq (late after our sprint to the sun temple) in addition to trigo soup and a milanesa at the truckers stop in Urubamba we really maxed it out getting back to nursing duties around 8pm in the evening.
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