Mi Viaje del Mundo

So that was Thursday. On Friday I was up at 6am for a 6.15 canoe trip, just Cliver and me, no engine noise, just the sound of Cliver paddling and the birds. We saw loads of birds, they’re all up early too, but I can’t remember now which ones we saw on what days, or the names of all of them. Lots of hawks (brown and black-collared), lots of caracara, which is a pretty big bird that eats carrion (saw loads of those in Patagonia too), a couple of Amazon kingfishers, red capped cardinal, crimson crested woodpecker (I think), lots of little waterbirds that looked a bit like moorhens but had lovely pale yellow undersides to their wings when they flew.

Got back in time for breakfast, and then at 9am we went out again, this time in a motorboat with Teema (a Finnish guy who doesn’t say much) and both our guides. We were going looking for the “hoatzin”, a prehistoric-looking bird. We started off heading into a lake, negotiating our way through very tight gaps between the trees and through the choking weeds. I was busy trying to take photos of the huge red-tailed dragonfly that was whizzing about in the bottom of the boat, and I vaguely heard one of the guides say something about bees. Next thing I knew we were heading backwards the way we came (not as easy to get through the gaps in the trees going backwards) with both guides and the boat driver all laughing hysterically. Turns out we’d got very close to the beehive and the bees had started to come out. Glad I’d been too busy with my dragonfly to know what was going on.

From there we went to another lake – again choked with weeds and reeds, and full of trees. It’s impossible to describe what it was like, other than to say it was like being in a scene from Jurassic Park. I wouldn’t have cared if we didn’t see any wildlife, it was just an amazing experience being in that landscape. As it happens, we did find a hoatzin – weird looking bird with big eyes and a feathered crest on his head. He does look kinda prehistoric. Apparently the babies have little hooks or claws on their shoulders, and when danger appears they deliberately fall into the water – they can swim and dive when they’re young – and then when the danger is gone they climb back up the trees with these hooks. The hooks disappear when they get older.

Alan, Isabel and Constance left after lunch, and two new people arrived – James and Leigh, both from Australia. Leigh is a biker with a straggly ginger beard and long hair tied back in a scruffy little ponytail. James is a younger guy.
We went out in the boat again at 3pm. Cliver is Leigh and James’s guide, so we all went out together. We saw a couple of crested green tree iguanas – pretty big ones, at least they seemed big to me. Also, another sloth, an ocelot sloth, same as last time – closer this time so I could actually see what it was and get some halfway decent pictures, and apparently it had a baby too, although I’m not sure if I saw the baby or not, it kinda all blended into one. We sat and watched it for about 10 minutes until it slowly crawled out of sight behind the branches. We also saw more monkeys - squirrel monkeys this time, and for once the delay on my camera worked to my advantage as I caught one of them in mid-leap from one tree to another.

We went out in the boat again after dinner – another clear night, the sky is beautiful. Can’t remember what we saw. This is pretty much the routine though – mostly boat trips because the water is quite high, out at 6.15am, back for breakfast, out again at 9am and back around 11 or 11.30, lunch at around 12.30 and then we get to relax until 3pm when we go out again until around 5ish. Dinner at 7pm, and then out again straight after dinner, until 9 or 9.30. It’s a pretty full and tiring schedule, but you have to make the most of the wildlife spotting opportunities.

Had a leisurely breakfast at the Dawn on the Amazon café, ciabatta toast, real marmalade and fried eggs over-easy. Delicious!!

My jungle guide, whose name is Cliver (yes there is an “r”, it is pronounced “cleaver”) picked me up for my jungle trip at about 9.45. The Muyuna jungle lodge is 140 kms from Iquitos, and it took about 3 hours in a speedboat to get there. It was lunchtime when we arrived, but there were only about 4 people there, three of whom were leaving after lunch. While I was eating, 3 more people turned up, back from their morning’s jungle activity - an English guy Alan and his French Canadian wife, Isabel, and another Canadian, Constance with a story about how they’d just been stuck in a lake, their boat trapped by all the weeds, while caiman were getting closer and rearing their heads out of the water. I was completely taken in – turns out though that, although they were stuck in the weeds, the bit about the caiman was a complete fabrication to wind up the other people (and whatever “newbie” might have arrived – i.e. me).

At 3pm, Cliver took me on a hike through the forest. I was all dressed up in my jungle gear – long sleeved shirt and long trousers tucked into my rental wellies, plus of course DEET insect repellent for the mossies. We walked for about 2 hours, I have to say though we didn’t see that much, but it’s early days. We did, towards the end see a couple of capuchin monkeys and a couple of dusky titi monkeys. Also a huge blue morpho butterfly, a beautiful iridescent blue colour and as big as my outstretched hand, and two jaguar paw prints in the mud, in two different places on the path. I also came close to losing my wellies in the mud a couple of times – they’re a little bit too big.
It was quite hot and really humid so I was glad to get back and take a shower - no hot showers here though, cold showers are gonna take a bit of getting used to. The lodge is really quite special – I have a wooden “bungalow” built on stilts, complete with my own veranda looking out onto the river, a hammock, and a boutique style bathroom – fully tiled with a round glass washbasin, and fancy stainless steel fittings (although nothing comes out of the hot tap of course).The ceiling of the whole bungalow is one big mosquito screen, and it looks straight up to a roof made of dried palm leaves. All the bungalows, together with the dining room, are connected together by wooden walkways about 6 feet above the ground, and the whole place was designed and built by the people who live in San Juan village about 10 minutes upstream, the same way as they build their village huts. I think it’s low water at the moment but in high water the bungalows would all be surrounded by water. There’s no electricity here, apart from a small generator for the kitchen, that also runs some power points in the dining room that we can use to charge camera batteries. At about 5pm they put kerosene lamps in all the bungalows and along the walkways – once it gets dark at about 6pm, that’s the only lighting, and it really isn’t much – I need my torch to find anything. It’s cool though, all part of the “jungle experience”.

When Alan, Isabel and Constance got back from their afternoon’s boat trip, they had another story to tell – this time they were attacked by a swarm of angry bees. Didn’t know whether to believe them or not, they’d already cried wolf this morning. But it turns out this story was 100% true. A beehive had dropped from a tree branch into the water, and their boat driver hadn’t seen it and had driven straight into it, splitting it open. Then their boat’s engine had cut out (they do that quite often they get clogged up with all the weeds) and he couldn’t get it started again. The bees all swarmed up, covering the boat driver from head to toe, apparently he was terrified, unsurprisingly. He was only 16. He ended up jumping into the water to get them off him. And they were all over Alan too – one flew into his ear and started biting inside. Apparently the guide said they don’t sting, they only bite – painful but not dangerous. The guide had to extricate the bee from Alan’s ear with a sharp stick. Isabel and Constance had straight way got their ponchos out and just sat curled up underneath them until it was all over. Scary stuff – Alan said that for about 15 or 20 seconds, until the guide told them they don’t sting, it was complete and utter terror in the boat. Yeesh, hope I don’t have any nasty experiences like that.

After dinner we all went on a boat trip – me and my guide plus Alan, Isabel, Constance and their guide. The guides had a powerful searchlight because it was dark by then. We saw a sloth, although to be honest it just looked like a beige blob under a tree branch to me. We also found several really cute tree frogs – the first was tiny, about as big as the end of my finger and bright yellow, the second was a bit bigger, mottled yellow and brown, and jumped onto my sleeve where it sat quite happily for a couple of minutes before taking a trip onto my backpack on the floor of the boat, and the third was quite big, relatively speaking, probably about the size of a golf ball. The sky was really clear, full of stars that were also reflected in the water,and there were loads of fireflies in the reeds - it was quite beautiful. We could see the Milky Way too.

We got back about 8.30, and all went straight to bed – to be honest you can’t do much else once it’s dark. It was amazing hearing all the sounds of the forest as I lay in bed though.

My first full day in Iquitos I just spent generally wandering. It’s right on the river – not the Amazon itself but a tributary that feeds into the Amazon. It’s not a bad place, but it’s very noisy because of all the tuk-tuks (that here are called “motokars”). Seems there is no limit to the styles and variations of tuk-tuk design in the world.
Apparently I need wellie boots for the Amazon, so I’ve rented a pair from “Mad Mick’s Trading Post”. Mad Mick it turns out is a Brummie who’s been living here for 12 years (for anyone who doesn’t know, a Brummie comes from Birmingham, England). Also bought a very fetching plastic poncho!!

For lunch I found a very pleasant café called Dawn on the Amazon, with comfy armchairs outside under a California-style awning, overlooking the boardwalk and the river. It’s owned by another ex-pat, this time an American called Bill, and it seems that the Dawn on the Amazon is the meeting place for all the ex-pats in Iquitos (and there are a fair few). Mad Mick turned up later. The food is delicious here, as are the smoothies, and the waiters and waitresses are lovely, especially Marina, she asks all the customer’s names and she remembers them and greets them by name when they come back. I sat here for quite a while at lunchtime, enjoying the sunshine, people-watching, and sheltering under the awning from the sudden and heavy downpour that seems to be a regular occurrence here – well, it is the rainforest. Came back here for dinner too.

Next day I’d organised a tour in the morning with a local guide called Danny. My guide book said to visit the area of Puerto Belen, which is at the far end of Iquitos and is basically a shanty town of wooden houses. Some are on stilts and others float on balsa logs, so that when the river level rises and falls, as it does considerably during the year, the houses rise and fall too. My hostel though told me it wasn’t safe to go there on my own, so they arranged the guide for me. The start of Puerto Belen is the market, which seems to go on forever, it’s probably the biggest local market I’ve been to on my travels – the dirtiest too, although maybe that’s not a fair observation as the rain here makes everything so muddy. When we got to the start of the market, Danny told me to take my watch off and put it away out of sight. He took his off too – and told me not to get my camera out. All a bit of a worry, I was certainly on my guard. When we got to the end of the market, we took a ride in a longtail boat out on the river and around the floating houses. I was allowed to take my camera out there, but I had to put it away again before we got too close to land.

After that we took a tuk-tuk to the other end of Iquitos, and then another boat ride to visit a local indigenous tribe, called the Yahua Indians. I know it’s all a bit put on for the tourists, but it was interesting to be greeted by one of the village elders wearing a grass skirt and a feather headdress, anointing my face with an orange paint made from plants and giving me a little welcome speech in their Yahua language. Then we went into one of their big teepee-like huts made of dried palm leaves and they did a little dance for me – which basically involved holding hands in pairs and running round in a circle – not the most intricate dance I’ve ever seen. After that I got to wear a feather headdress and attempt to use one of their 6-foot long blowpipes – which I was very bad at, although I did hit the edge of the target on about my fifth attempt (the tribesman who showed me how to do it hit the middle of the target every time).

This morning I had an early flight to Iquitos, gateway to the Peruvian Amazon. The flight was at 7.30am, taxi was booked for 6am and I was up at 5am. Got on the plane with no problems, 90 minutes or so later we’re almost there, and the pilot says we have a technical problem with the aircraft, and that, coupled with increasingly bad weather in Iquitos means he’s decided we’re going back to Lima. So, more than 3 hours after we took off, we’re right back where we started. And I have a day to spend in Lima airport, cos they’ve put me on a later flight at 4pm. Thrilling!! Still, at least, fingers crossed I’ll make it to Iquitos today – was thinking I might have to stay in Lima tonight.
Eventually got to Iquitos at about 7pm, and it’s raining – hard. I suppose that’s to be expected, it is the rainforest after all.

Went out to find somewhere to eat and had probably the worst dining experience of my travels so far (or maybe that was the guinea pig). The place I picked looked quite nice – simple, but clean and there were locals eating there, always a good sign. So I go in and sit down and the waitress comes to take my order. The conversation goes something like this …

I’ll have the cream of tomato soup please.
We only have asparagus or mushroom.
Ok I’ll have the mushroom soup please. And the vegetarian lasagne.
We don’t have that, only traditional or chicken lasagne.
Ok, I’ll have the traditional lasagne please. And an orange juice.
We only have papaya or mixed fruit.
What’s in the mixed fruit?
Umm, a mixture of different fruits.
(Thinks – if they only have papaya, what else could be in the mixed fruit juice?)
Ok, I’ll have the mixed fruit juice then please.

Ten minutes later, a different waitress brings my lasagne. I stare at it for a moment and the waitress says “traditional lasagne”. I say “Yes I know, but where’s my mushroom soup?”

Frantic conversation between the two waitresses, and the first comes and says (I think – bear in mind this is all in Spanish) “your soup is coming”. I say “but the lasagne will go cold”. It will be very quick” she says. I’m thinking, doesn’t really matter how quick it comes, the lasagne will still go cold while I eat the soup.

The soup turns up and the waitress walks away. I call after her, umm, I need some cutlery. She points at the spoon that admittedly I do have. I pick up the spoon and gesticulate that I can’t eat lasagne with a spoon. She brings a knife and fork and walks away again. I call after her “And my drink?” Five minutes later my mixed fruit juice turns up – not really a juice, more a smoothie, but I’ll let that one slide.

I start to eat the soup – can’t eat more than a few mouthfuls, it tastes more like garlic soup than mushroom. I eat the lasagne, OK I’ve had worse and I eat most of it, but it’s a bit too salty for me to finish it. And surprise surprise, it isn’t exactly hot either.

I then spend about twenty minutes trying to attract the attention of one of the three waitresses who all are rushing around like headless chickens, even though the place is less than half full, and getting more than a little fed-up. They haven’t even cleared my table, I still have a plate of almost untouched garlic/mushroom soup and the remains of my lasagne in front of me. Eventually manage to ask for a coffee and the bill – she’s on her way to another table, so I’m sure she won’t remember.

To her credit, she does remember the coffee (but not the bill), although it’s another ten minutes later, and she takes away my soup but not the lasagne or my empty glass. She does ask if the soup was ok, and I honestly say “I didn’t like it”. I struggle for the Spanish for “too much garlic” and settle on “muy aji”. “Picante?? (hot??)” she says, looking puzzled. No, no, no – no picante, oh it’s not important. Make a mental note to look up “garlic” later, which I do. Damn, “aji” = chilli pepper, garlic = “ajo”.

Coffee here is DIY - they bring you a cup of hot water and a jar of cheap coffee powder. Not the first time I’ve encountered this on my travels, but it’s certainly not the best coffee I’ve ever had.

I drink my coffee and wait for the bill. It doesn’t come. Another ten minutes and I give up and go to the bar to pay. At least it wasn’t expensive. Won’t be coming back here again.

Hadn’t got anything planned for today (Friday), There were plenty of day trips I could have gone on – the Sacred Valley, white water rafting, the rainforest – but I decided I was just going to take it easy and explore Cusco some more. It’s such a beautiful city, I wanted to do it justice. Plus, the trip to Aguas Calientes and back had been tiring, long hours in a minibus, and I didn’t really want to spend more long hours in a minibus.

So I just wandered, not exactly aimlessly, I checked the map and my guidebook at regular intervals and made it to various churches, plazas and other “places of interest”. And of course, lots of craft shops, and I kept going back to the same art shops, hanging my nose over the same few paintings. Expect I will buy one, just can’t decide which.
The indigenous people in this area are Quechua rather than Aymara. The women though are I think still known as Cholas, and they wear similar clothes – different hats though, here they wear a sort of trilby instead of a bowler, and some of the really old women wear a tall hat that tapers slightly – a bit like the chap on the Quaker Oats box, but white with a black band, instead of all black.

There are also women, and some children too, who are dressed in really quite ornate heavily embroidered clothes with sort of flat hats, who are dressed solely for the tourists. They are usually carrying a tiny lamb under their arm or leading a llama or alpaca around on a rope, and are posing for photos for money. I did take one picture of one such lady, but to be honest I don’t really want such contrived pictures, even if they are in full traditionall costume.

On Saturday morning the main post office was open – it had been closed up until now because of Santa Semana (Easter week), so I cadged a cardboard box from a minimarket and sorted out some stuff to send back home. My backpack is getting way too full and heavy. I had to get it taped up first, there is a desk there just for that, and my gosh did they tape it up. They wrapped it mummy-style in clear tape, all the way around, and then the other way all the way around, and then I had to write my address on a sheet of A4 and they taped over the whole of that. I think every square inch of the box was covered in a couple of layers of tape. I’m gonna need a hacksaw to get into it when I get home.

Saturday afternoon I had arranged to go on a half-day tour, taking in the cathedral, the Qoricancha Inca temple inside the city, and some Inca sites a couple of miles outside the city. The woman I booked through had come to my hotel, taken my 25 soles (that’s Peruvian money, nothing to do with shoes) and told me to be in front of the cathedral at 1.30pm. She said that she would be there. I didn’t think at the time (duh!!) but she didn’t take my name, give me a receipt or tell me her name or the name of the tour company.

So I got there nice and early, about 1.15pm. There is quite a big paved area in front of the cathedral but it was pretty empty and I didn’t see her there. I was pretty sure I’d recognise her. More people started arriving, and tour buses too, parking in front of the cathedral. 1.30pm came and went, and still no sign of the woman who’d taken my money. Tour buses filled up and drove off, and I was getting a bit hacked off by now, sat on the steps in front of the cathedral in the blazing heat, not even knowing what to say if I went to ask one of the guys with the tour buses “Umm, I’ve booked a city tour, don’t know who with though, is it you?”.

At ten to two, I was just about to give up and go back to my hotel to complain and get my money back (the tour agent woman had originally been called for me by the hotel, so they knew who she was), when a young guy with a clipboard came and asked me if I was staying at the Casa de Campo – which I was. Apparently they were on the phone to “the woman” and had been looking for me, but of course didn’t know who I was, only where I was staying. I’ve no idea why the woman wasn’t there when she said she would be, it was cr*p organisation. But anyway, I’d found my tour, or rather they’d found me.

So anyway, we had a very interesting walking tour first of the cathedral and Qoricancha Inca temple. The guide spoke good English and really knew his stuff about history of Cusco, it was really interesting. He explained how the Incas did their beautiful stonework. Apparently they shaped the stones to fit together perfectly using hematite (a very hard stone), first cutting the blocks by making rows of small holes into which they put dry sticks, which when they got wet, expanded and broke the stone blocks along the lines of holes, like the perforations of a stamp. Then they smoothed and polished them using river sand inside llama leather. The Qoricancha temple took a century to build. Every inch of it was originally covered in gold and silver leaf, and when the Spanish arrived, they stripped all of the gold and silver within 3 months, and either used it to decorate their own cathedral and churches or shipped it back to Spain.

Then we got on the bus and drove up to the Sacsayhuaman Inca ruins above the city. Another example of the incredible stonework of the Incas. Some of the stones weigh over 100 tons, and one weighs 360 tons. It’s not known exactly how the Incas moved the stones from the quarry site over 2 kilometres away, although the most likely explanation is they did it using wooden rollers. We didn’t spend as long there as I would have liked, but it was raining by then so that didn’t help. Then three other smaller Inca ruins – Qenko, where there is a natural cave – all Incas when they died were mummified, and this cave is one place where the mummies were put. I’d seen some of the mummies in the Inca museum in Cusco. And also Tambo Machay, an Inca ritual cleansing site with three fountains coming from a natural spring within the hillside, and Puca Pucara, a checkpoint for the Incas to keep control of people entering the city who might be a bit disgruntled with their rule (not really sure how that worked).
And our final stop was at a small factory where they make alpaca garments – basically just a big factory shop, and an opportunity for them to try and sell us stuff, although they did explain to us how to tell the real stuff from the knock-offs in the shops in town, i.e. what they will tell us is 100% alpaca but is really synthetic or only 20% alpaca. Ok so I’ve already bought 2 sweaters, on eof which I know was an alpaca/wool mixture, but the other I was told was 100% alpaca. Not sure now. They also showed us what vicuna feels like – it’s the softest and most expensive of all, a sweater made of this will cost US$1500.

All in all though, an interesting tour, and I did get to see some Inca stonework which made up just a tiny bit for not getting to Machu Picchu. Apparently, another interesting little nugget the guide told us – the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, 40 kilometres that takes 3-5 days – each year they hold a marathon for the local porters, and they do it in 3 hours 45 minutes.

Saturday evening, I didn’t know what to have for dinner. I was really fed-up of the same old menus in the restaurants – alpaca steak in whatever way you want it, pasta, pizza, etc. I managed to find a Chinese restaurant and had sweet and sour chicken and fried rice, which actually wasn’t all that bad. Made a very pleasant change.
Sunday morning I spent frantically going backwards and forwards between art shops, trying to decide which painting to buy. Narrowed it down to five, had virtually decided on one but emailed pics of all of them them to mum & dad to get a second opinion, and they liked a different one best. Admittedly it was very striking, but it was the wrong colours for my living room. I ended up buying both, I figure I can find another place for it. Jeez, I’m dangerous with a credit card.

Anyway, in the afternoon, I flew to Lima, checked into a hostel near the airport cos I have an early flight out tomorrow. Needed to go and eat, and also needed an ATM, and they told me at the hostel that there was a shopping mall 7 blocks away with restaurants and banks. So off I trotted – the blocks are bigger here than I’m used to, what I thought would take 10 minutes actually took nearer to 30. And the shopping mall was actually just a big Tesco-style “sells everything from dog food to flat screen TVs” supermarket. It did have ATMs, but the “restaurants” were just three fast-food bars in a small food court. I ended up having Chinese again. Not the best I’ve ever had but it served a purpose.

This morning I got my first look at Cusco in full daylight. It’s a beautiful city, a maze of cobbled streets and narrow alleyways, whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs, Spanish colonial buildings built on top of Inca walls five centuries old, a lovely church on almost every corner and surrounded by forested hills.

I had to change hotels today because the one I’d booked into when I first arrived didn’t have a room available for my whole stay, so I’d found one in a quiet area of the town called San Blas. The description said ten minutes walk from the Plaza de Armas, which is where my current hostel was, so I decided to walk it – with my backpack. Big mistake!! It was mostly uphill, quite steep uphill and definitely longer than 10 minutes, more like half an hour, and my backpack was HEAVY!! By the time I got there I was knackered. Still, I made it. Had to crash out for a while though. On balance I’m glad I moved here – although it’s a bit of a hike from the centre, it is quieter and the hotel is nicer, it has a rooftop terrace and garden and a café with panoramic windows, all of which have amazing views over the whole city.

Once I’d recovered I just did some exploring. In the late afternoon and into the evening it rained quite heavily so I spent a while standing under the covered walkways around the Plaza watching the rain, along with a lot of other people, and drinking coffee in a little café - watching the rain.

There are lots of handicraft shops here – and shops selling paintings. Can see myself buying another painting before I leave.

Ok so the plan was to spend my birthday at the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu. I bought my train ticket to Aguas Calientes, the little town just below Machu Picchu, in Novermber last year, for March 28th, day before my birthday, and intended to spend a couple of days there to make sure I had plenty of time to absorb everything.
But then, there I was in Guatemala at the end of January, absentmindedly checking out what was happening back in Blighty on the BBC news website, only to find there had been huge flash floods and landslides in that area, the railway had been partly washed away, thousands of people had been airlifted out by helicopter and Machu Picchu was closed for the foreseeable.

I waited and hoped and kept everything crossed, emailing the train company at regular intervals, and eventually heard that the trains would start running again on March 29th. So I bought another ticket for March 30th (hopefully will get a refund for the original one), returning the next day, March 31st. Not so much time at Machu Picchu but at least I’d get there.

What I didn’t realise when I bought the train ticket though is that Machu Picchu, the citadel itself, wouldn’t re-open to the public until April 1st.

I wondered whether to bother going at all, but decided I would – the train journey through the Sacred Valley was supposed to be beautiful, and you never know, maybe the authorities would change their minds and open it early. So I turned up at the train station at 5.30am, ready for the first part of the journey. They’ve only managed to get the rail track open for the last 17 miles, so the first (and longest) part is by minibus. That part, I have to say, wasn’t a great deal of fun. It was dark, the roads were twisty, the minibus was cramped and I could barely keep my eyes open. But the last part, by train, with big panoramic windows, was pretty spectacular. I can understand though why it’s taken 2 months just to get that part open again. There are landslides all along the track, which at times is clinging to the side of the mountain by its eyebrows – you look through the window one side and all you can see is bare earth inches away from the window, and then you look through the window the other side and it’s bare earth down to the river, maybe 30 feet below, and you can’t see the edge of the ground because it’s actually underneath the train. And the river is ferocious even now, God knows what it was like at the time of the flash floods. It’s chock-full of huge rocks under the surface, and the water is boiling. I don’t know if it’s always been like that or if it’s worse since the landslides.

Where we got on the train, there were workmen working to repair a part of the retaining wall that had just collapsed and fallen into the river below. They were pulling big rocks 20 or 30 feet up the river bank by just tying a rope around it and pulling with brute force – not even using a simple pulley system. And they were gutting logs using a handsaw and mixing cement by hand. At that rate I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes years to get the entire railway running again.

A tour guide in Cusco had said that the buses from Aguas Calientes to the Machu Picchu entrance were running, so I was hopeful that I’d at least get as far as the entrance and be able to see Machu Picchu from the outside. But at my hostel when I got to Aguas Calientes, they said that nope, the buses weren’t running, Machu Picchu definitely wasn’t open until April 1st, and the only way to get anywhere near it was a very steep 2-3 hour climb from where I’d be able to see it from a distance. No way were my legs or lungs up for that, so I resigned myself to being one of the select few people to go to Aguas Calientes and not see Machu Picchu.

We arrived in Aguas Calientes at about 10am, and it was like a ghost town, there was absolutely nothing open. The craft market stalls were almost all still covered over with tarpaulins, there were no restaurants open, I managed to find one tiny café to get some breakfast. I ended up just having a sleep in the afternoon to recover from my 5am start, there really was nothing else to do. There weren’t even any other tourists around – there had been a few in the minibus/train, but they had all disappeared when we arrived – probably to the posh hotels. The most activity was from local people “springcleaning”, getting ready for the re-opening, they were even washing the streets with what smelled like bleach.

Aguas Calientes is a pretty scruffy little place, it’s a higgledy piggledy collection of mainly hostels and restaurants made of concrete and corrugated iron. But it’s in an absolutely stunning location in the Urubamba Valley, huge dark green forested mountains loom above it, their tops shrouded in cloud.

I found one (literally only one, and I looked everwhere) restaurant open for dinner in the evening, attached to one of the fancier hotels in the village. The waiter told me that the local people, after they had been airlifted out, when they returned they had to walk back into Aguas Calientes along the train tracks, the 17 miles from where the road ends, because they couldn’t afford the train fare. He himself had walked in on Saturday, and he said it was really hard. That explained all the people I had seen standing by the side of the rail tracks as the train went past this morning.
Next morning it was raining pretty heavily and the clouds had come right down, almost into the village, so I stayed in my room trying to catch up with my blog a bit. The rain stopped at around 11-ish so I went for a walk. There were a lot more tourists around, that had arrived on the early train this morning – because of course they would be staying overnight and would be able to go to Machu Picchu tomorrow. Have to admit it was quite hard seeing all these happy smiling people walking around, knowing that I had no choice but to get the train back to Cusco that afternoon. I had even, as a last-ditch effort, gone to the train station in Aguas Calientes yesterday to see if they had any tickets left so I could delay my return to Cusco until tomorrow, but nope, all sold out.

My train left at about 4pm – it brought another shedload of tourists in with it. And we passed another full train on the way down. And then, in the minibus back to Cusco, our one single solitary minibus taking the people who left Aguas Calientes today, we passed a road train of eight full minbuses heading the other way. That’s a lot of people arriving in Aguas Calientes today. Later read that Susan Sarandon was one of them.

The journey back to Cusco today was long, tiring and uncomfortable. I didn’t get back to my the hostel until about 8.30, and I’d been at Aguas Calientes station at 3pm. All in all it was a disappointing couple of days. Never mind, there’s always next year – I keep telling myself. Although in truth I’m not sure if I’ll pass this way again. Perhaps I’ll wait until the entire railway is up and running again – that minibus really isn’t much fun.

Anyway, onwards and upwards – still got the Amazon and the Galapagos to look forward to.

Today was my birthday. I was supposed to have spent it on Machu Picchu, bought my ticket months ago, but the flash floods and landslides 2 months ago put paid to that. Still hopefully I will be there tomorrow instead.
So today I took the Andean Explorer train trip across the altiplano from Puno to Cusco. It wasn’t cheap and I could have taken the bus instead for a lot less money, or even flown for less than the train, but I decided to treat myself to a bit of luxury as it was my birthday.

The journey was about 10 and a half hours, leaving Puno at 8am. It was a long time, still it was much better than being on a bus for 7 hours, at least we could get up and walk around. And the train was relatively luxurious, we had proper comfy armchairs and tables with damask tablecloths and a table lamp and a little vase with a fresh flower in it. And we got served a three-course lunch with wine by waiters in smart gold-brocaded uniforms. Lunch was beautifully presented, and quite tasty, but I could have done with two or three times the quantity. I was still hungry afterwards, and they didn’t serve afternoon tea until 5pm, by which time I was starving, and it was only a few mouthfuls anyway – a could of tiny sandwiches and a tiny vol-au-vent type thing.

The scenery though, particularly in the latter part of the journey, through the valleys, was beautiful. And the highest point that we reached on the altiplano was 4,319 metres – there was a big sign that said so.

We arrived in Cusco later than expected, at about 7pm, I was tired, hungry and fed-up. And the taxi driver told me that there was a big procession in the Plaza de Armas because it was the start of Semana Santa (Easter week) and the roads were closed so he couldn’t take me all the way to my hostel – which meant walking with my heavy backpack, and I didn’t know exactly where the hostel was. Terrific!! A little boy offered to take me there for one Nuevo sol (about 20p), which I was very grateful for. Good job he did, I don’t think I would have ever made it on my own. The Plaza de Armas was absolutely packed, think Trafalgar Square on New Years Eve, and I had to force my way through with my big backpack on my back and my little daypack on my front, trying not to lose sight of the little boy – although he was very good, he kept turning round to check I was still there, and even held my hand a couple of times to make sure I didn’t lose him.

Finally got to my hostel to find there was nobody on reception and the glass office door was locked. I was pretty pissed-off by then so I hammered on it hard and somebody appeared from upstairs. I checked in, went for something to eat – the quickest I could find, which ended up being a set meal of tomato soup, trout and chips, bread and Fanta, for 10 soles (£2), had a shower and was in bed by 10pm ready for my 5am start. Well, that was my birthday, that was!!

This morning I got a bus to Puno in Peru. About 15 minutes after leaving Copacabana we had to cross the Bolivian – Peruvian border. It’s only the third land border I’ve crossed, the others I’ve flown across, but it’s the first one where I’ve had to walk across the border. I got off the bus, had my passport stamped to say I was leaving Bolivia, walked under a big arch (which I assume was technically the border) and down the road about a hundred yards, had my passport stamped again and got a Peruvian visa, changed my remaining Bolivian money into Peruvian soles and got back on the bus.

Puno is also on the edge of Lake Titicaca, as the lake straddles both Bolivia and Peru. I arrived at about lunchtime, and was accosted by a man in a taxi selling 3 hour trips to the Uros floating islands. I had originally planned stay in Puno a couple of days and to take a 2-day overnight trip to visit those islands, and to stay overnight in a homestay on Taquile, a fixed island inhabited by Aymara people. But I had managed at the last minute to get a train ticket from Cusco to Aguas Calientes (the town just below Machu Picchu) for March 30th, which meant I had to get to Cusco on the 29th, the very next day. So I took him up on his offer, figuring it was better than nothing.

I was supposed to be picked up at 3.30, the minibus turned up at 3.45 and took us (me and two other people) to the harbour, where we got into a taxi to drive for about another minute (go figure!!) and then walked about 400 yards to the end of the boat pier, got on the boat and went absolutely nowhere for best part of an hour. Eventually a couple of big groups arrived and we departed at just after 5pm. No idea why we had to be picked up so early!!
Anyway, the trip was interesting, if a little shorter than I expected. The Uros floating islands are made of reeds, with a base of floating reed roots about 1.5 metres thick, and then a layer of reeds strewn across the top, about another 1.5 metres thick. It feels really weird to walk on, bouncy and squishy. There are about 2000 people living on the islands in total, and the one we visited had four families living on it. The guide explained to us how the islands are made, with a couple of the local men giving a demonstration too, making a miniature island. We only had about half an hour in total on this island, then we got to go on a quick boat trip to another island in a traditional reed boat. By that time though it was almost dark and it had started raining so we only stayed there about 10 minutes. All in all it was interesting, I’m glad I got to visit the islands, but the length of the trip was disappointing – I would have like to spend longer there.

Today I went on a full day boat trip to visit the Isla del Sol, the largest island in Lake Titicaca, and one of two very sacred places (the other being Isla de la Luna). We made two stops, the first at the north of the island where there is a small museum and the start of a trail that goes first to some archaeological sites and then carries on, for those that are fit and able, across the top of the island to the south part, where the boat picks them up again later. I only walked to the archaeological sites and back again, which in itself took about 2 hours because I ambled along taking photos, and also because the way there was all uphill. I’d decided not to do the whole walk across the island because I thought it would probably take me longer than the 4 hours they said it would take and I didn’t want to miss the boat back to Copacabana. In hindsight though I probably could have done it.

This morning I got a bus from La Paz to Copacabana, a small town right on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is huge, about 8,500 sq. kms, 15 times the size of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and slightly bigger than Lake Tahoe in the US. Not sure how it compares to the Canadian Great Lakes. It’s also the world’s highest navigable lake at over 4000m above sea level. When the sun is shining, it’s the most beautiful deep blue colour.

For most of the journey we had the lake on our left side, which was a bit puzzling because Copacabana is on the other side of the lake. But after a couple of hours on the bus, it all made sense – we had to cross the lake at a very narrow point where it is only 600 metres wide. Interesting – we all had to get off the bus and cross in little motor boats, while our bus crossed on its own little one-bus-sized ferry which was just a floating platform. It was very odd seeing these buses and cars floating across the lake.

For some reason we had to show our passports on the other side before we could get back on the bus. No idea why, we were still in Bolivia.

When we arrived in Copacabana, I went for a walk along the beach to explore and to get some lunch. This is the Copacabana that the beach in Rio de Janeiro is named after. It’s very different to the one in Rio – no scantily clad bodies baking in the sun here.

As I walked along the beach, there was a little girl crying. I walked over to her and said “Que pasa?”. I’ve no idea what she said in reply, but anyway she stopped crying – I guess having a strange foreign grown-up talking to her must have surprised her into forgetting why she was crying. Anyway I sat down beside her and the little boy she was with and had a little chat with them. Well, I say chat, they were very shy and their voices were so quiet I couldn’t really hear or understand anything they said. But from fingers and nods, I managed to get that they were brother and sister, and 5 and 4 years old respectively. They were very cute – I took a couple of pics, and as a very pleasant change, they didn’t ask me for money for them. In fact, strangely, they were holding large wads of what looked like real Bolivianos (Bolivian money).

For lunch I went into one of the many beach cafes and ordered trout in tomato sauce. Second time I’ve made that mistake – expecting a nice home-made tomato sauce, and it comes plastered in ketchup.
And after lunch I explored the town a bit more – lots more handicraft shops and stalls, and a very large and ornate cathedral, inside which is the Virgen de Copacabana, the most important and revered religious icon in the whole of Bolivia.

We landed at La Paz at about 10.30 am – the airport is at about 4000m, on the edge of the altiplano. I got a taxi to the city and straight away I could feel that Bolivia is very different to Chile and Argentina. Within a few minutes of leaving the airport I had seen several women in the traditional garb of the indigenous Aymara people – voluminous skirts, little bowler hats and brightly coloured stripy woven cloths slung across their backs, that they use for carrying everything from shopping to babies. They wear their hair in two thick plaits and they seem to balance their bowler hats on top of their heads rather than wear them, they seem too small. Some of them wear straw hats with ribbons, bows or flowers, a la Ermintrude from Magic Roundabout, instead of the bowler hats, and I even saw one or two with baseball caps atop their plaits. Some of them also have big tassels tied to the end of their plaits, sometimes two or three on each plait, or even a row of them attached to both plaits. The Aymara women are known as Cholas. This is one of the things I like about travelling – the culture and the indigenous people, it’s probably the main reason I didn’t enjoy Argentina and Chile as much, they seem too Westernised. I’m sure they do have plenty of traditional culture, but I didn’t really see any of it in the places I went to.

My guide book says that La Paz is in a spectacular setting, but as the taxi drove away from the airport towards the city, I had to disagree, thinking Rio de Janeiro is way more spectacular. Then we rounded a bend on the switchback road and I saw what the guidebook meant – La Paz is in a huge steep-sided bowl with ramshackle little redbrick houses built all the way up the sides, and the snow-capped Andes in the distance. Although I have to say I still think Rio tops it – it has the sea, the sun and the rainforest as well as the mountains.

The taxi driver didn’t know where my hotel was, he had to keep stopping to ask other taxi drivers and it took over an hour to get there. Then he wanted more money because of that and because he’d had to go to a call centre to make a phonecall to the hotel – I didn’t see why I should pay more because he couldn’t find the hotel but I did give him a bit extra just to get rid of him.

The Cholas are little rotund women, it’s hard to know whether it’s their actual body shape or their huge voluminous skirts. They like little round bowling balls with feet and a head and they seem to waddle rather than walk. Once again there are loads of photos I would love to take, but don’t because it seems intrusive. It’s very frustrating. What I need is a secret spy camera attached to my lapel. I tried to take one sneaky little pic with my camera down by my side as a Chola walked towards me, but damn, the flash went off and as she walked past I heard her mutter something that ended in “ … pagarme”, i.e. “… pay me”. I carried on walking and pretended I didn’t hear – the camera only got part of her leg.

Spent the afternoon exploring the centre of La Paz and visiting the few small museums. I’m really feeling the altitude here. The city is below the altiplano but it’s still at about 3300 metres, and it’s pretty hilly here - some of the streets are quite steep and I’m finding I’m having to walk very slowly everywhere. Even walking on the flat I’m breathing really hard, and walking uphill even slightly is a killer. I popped into a quaint little coffee shop, filld with antiques and with the walls papered with old photographs and pencil drawings, and had a pot of mate de coca (coca tea) to see if that would help. Don’t know if it did – I suspect that coca only really helps if you chew the leaves the way the locals do, and then probably long term rather than once or twice.

I found a nice little restaurant for dinner, with the walls covered in huge murals of Inca scenes, and I had grilled alpaca steak. Not bad, tastes a bit like veal.

The next day, first of all I went to the Museo de Coca, which tells you everything you need to know about coca. Of course it’s the raw material from which cocaine is produced in modern times, but it has been used in its raw state by the indigenous Bolivian people for 5000 years without any harm to them. The museum had a little coffee shop which apparently sold everything from coca cheesecake to coca ice-cream, but unfortunately it wasn’t open, so I didn’t get to try any of it.

The rest of the day I spent exploring the Mercado de Hechiceria (the Witches Market), which is largely a handicraft market, but also there are little shops and stalls that sell everything from religious amulets and talismans to little boxes of spells to dried llama foetuses (yes really, I took pics as proof). One shop I went in had rows and rows of little boxes about the size of cigarette packets, containing things like Flying Powder and Powder against Witchcraft. I bought myself a traditional Bolivian woolly hat made of alpaca wool, and after a text message conversation, bought three more for Mum, Dad and little bro. I also bought a bright orange wooden guanaco (the llama-like animal) for my living room back home.

Getting a bit more used to the altitude today, it’s not quite so hard to walk up the hilly streets.

I had made the quite tough decision to cut out the three day trip from San Pedro to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the biggest salt flat in the world, I didn’t have time to do that and still be sure I could get to Cusco in time to visit Machu Picchu. But I still wanted to go to Bolivia, at least for a few days, and it seemed the only way to do that would be to go back to Calama and fly from there back to Santiago and then from Santiago to La Paz.

So I was up early again for a minibus to Calama at 6.30am. The flights were not until the next day, but I had booked the minibus before I booked the flights because I wanted to get out of San Pedro straight away - I felt a bit trapped there. So I had to stay a night in Calama, and I had had problems the night before trying to find a hotel. The only one I could find where I could make an instant booking online was a posh one that was way over my budget. But I decided for one night I could splash out. It made a very pleasant change, having a room with two huge kingsize beds, big fluffy towels, Egyptian cotton sheets, a coffee machine and a flat screen TV, to the accommodation I’d been staying in lately. From the hostel in Puerto Natales to the ferry to the hostel in San Pedro, I hadn’t even had a towel, I’d been using my “emergency sarong/towel” for the past 11 days.

Anyway, I went for a walk to explore Calama – not much here, it’s not a tourist town at all, just a small shopping town. I fancied a change form the usual fare, so I went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner – that was interesting, reading a Chinese menu in Spanish. I worked out “shapsuy” and “chaumin” without too much of a problem, but drew a complete blank at some of the other stuff on the menu.

Next day I didn’t leave the hotel at all until it was time to go to the airport for my 7.30pm flight. I had arranged a late check-out, so I spent the day sorting out some of my photos – of which I now have thousands.

I landed at Santiago airport at about 10pm, and as my flight to La Paz was at 6am next morning, I’d decided not to bother booking a hotel – the ones close to the airport were ridiculously expensive, and the others were in the centre of Santiago - I’d barely get there and get to bed before it would be time to get up again. So I had decided to spend the night in the airport. I did mange to get inside the terminal this time, which was a relief, I hadn’t been keen on a night in the marquee on the tarmac. The lower level of the terminal building was a bit like a building site, almost everywhere was partitioned off, and there were electricians working even though it was late at night. There was a glass-walled room, I don’t know what it was exactly, some kind of waiting room maybe, but there was a pile of suitcases in the middle of it that had been built up to probably about 20 or 30 metres high. I took a picture because I couldn’t quite believe my eyes – I’ve no idea how they managed to do it, firstly to get the suitcases up that high, and secondly to get them balanced so it didn’t all topple over. There were people sitting around the room and in theory it could have been quite dangerous if anything was to fall off.

The upper level seemed pretty normal, apart from lots of big holes in the ceiling where the tiles had either fallen off or been taken down for engineers to get to the aircon system – I had read that most of the damage was to the aircon.

The night in the airport wasn’t too bad. The cafeteria stayed open all night, so I had a supply of coffee, and my laptop to keep me busy. There were only a handful of people in the airport, all the flight information screens were turned off, it was quite strange. I have to admit I was glad when I boarded the plane and we left the ground though. For the last hour or so I had been sitting in one of the standard-issue departure lounge chairs instead of the café, and I felt the chair shaking, just a tiny bit, every few minutes. The first time I felt it, my heart started beating faster but nobody else seemed to be bothered by it so I figured it wasn’t the start of another earthquake. I still don’t know what it was, there weren’t any planes taking off so it can’t have been that making things vibrate. But yes, a big relief to be off the ground.

This morning I was up at 3.30am, for a 4am pickup to go to the El Tatio geyser field. Jeez, I must be mad.
It was really cold at that time of the morning, and the bus was a rickety old thing. I was almost the last one to be picked up, so I ended up right at the back in the corner where there was hardly any legroom, the seat only reclined slightly and I had a metal lever sticking into my leg. Terrific!!

It took a couple of hours to get to El Tatio, which was at even higher altitude, over 4000m, and when we got off the bus it was absolutely freezing – literally several degrees below freezing. The geyser field was I suppose quite interesting, and it was certainly big, but having been to Rotorua in New Zealand twice, I wasn’t really that impressed. There were really only two vents that I would think of as geysers, where boiling water was gushing upwards to a height of several metres. The rest were just either venting steam or were little pools of boiling bubbling water.

When I booked yesterday, the guy in the travel agency spoke pretty good English to me. He said that he was Chilean but had lived in France for 25 years, so he spoke English with a French accent. He said he was going to be the guide for the tour today, and I kinda assumed that he would give his commentary in both Spanish and English. But no he didn’t, just Spanish – and some of it in French because there was a group of French students on the bus. And my Spanish isn’t good enough to understand, so after a while I pretty much switched off listening to him. I had moved to the front of the bus (thank God, more space) just behind a Swiss girl who also didn’t understand much of the Spanish commentary (also she did speak French) and occasionally he would come and explain a little bit in English. One time he told her in French and asked her to translate into English for me. Hmm, don’t think I’ll be booking any more tours with him.

Anyway, from the geyser field we carried on across the altiplano until we got to a tiny indigenous village called Machuca in the middle of the desert. It was just a cluster of little adobe buildings, and it didn’t seem like many people actually lived there, the only people we saw were three or four who were cooking kebabs and deep-fried cheese empanadas for us tourists to buy, and one other old lady with a little shop selling knitted stuff, again for sale to the tourists. Cost me 1000 Chilean pesos to take a photo of her, which I thought was a bit steep, but I suppose tourism is their livelihood now and they have to make their money where they can, and in the grand scheme of things it was only about £1.50.

From there we carried on to a river canyon where we had to do some hiking to see a cactus that was 10 metres tall – hiking mixed with scrambling / rock-climbing. The guide hadn’t told me (indeed I don’t think he told many of us when we booked) exactly what was involved in getting to see this cactus. I found it pretty difficult at times. At one point I was crossing a near vertical stretch of rock, negotiating it with just finger- and toe-holds, admittedly only about a foot above the water, which itself was only probably 6 inches or so deep, and I managed to drop my water bottle in the water. I couldn’t do anything about it, I was stuck. Luckily one of the girls behind me was a bit more agile than me, and managed to bend down and get it without going headfirst into the river.

And then we had to cross the river – which involved jumping halfway across to get to a narrow log that spanned the other half. Of course when I landed on the log, it moved and I ended up with wet feet. So from then on I was scrambling with wet shoes which made me even more nervous on the tricky bits. I have to admit though, it was beautiful there, quite spectacular. The canyon walls were lined with huge cactuses, and the floor was full of huge elephant grass bushes, it was very green and lush, a complete contrast to the desert all around it. And the 10 metre tall cactus was amazing – the guide said it was a thousand years old, and I read somewhere that they only grow 1cm per year, so that would be about right.

The last stop was another river canyon where there was a spot that we could swim. This place was easier to get to, although it still involved a 10 minute hike down into the canyon. And again it was really pretty there. We were all expecting the water to be freezing cold, so we jumped in quick, but it was surprisingly warm. And the water flowed into the first pool and then the second lower one with some force, it gave a good back massage.

Getting changed afterwards was interesting though – obviously no changing rooms, it was a case of finding a semi-private spot between the bushes. In my case I didn’t realise the leaves of the bushes I chose had sharp serrated edges and when I came out I had little cuts on my feet, fingers and arms.

Today I slept in until about 10am, and when I did get up, I had a headache. I did my best to ignore it but it didn’t go away and I thought it was probably from dehydration, I hadn’t eaten or drunk much yesterday from all the travelling. I walked into the town to have a proper look around. It’s an interesting quaint little place, dirt roads and single storey buildings made of adobe. There’s a pretty little square with huge pepper trees and a lovely white-painted church, also made of adobe with an adobe roof too.

I went to one of the many tourist agencies and booked a trip to Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) leaving at 4pm – it’s in the evening because you wait to see the sunset. Still had a headache so I went to get some lunch, but that didn’t help. Still trying to ignore the headache, I carried on wandering round San Pedro and I was feeling a bit strange, kinda lightheaded, which I thought might be also the effects of the sun, which was really strange, so I was trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. That also didn’t help. I popped into an internet café to check my email, and while I was paying I started to feel sick and had to sit back down. The guy in the café asked me if I had been at altitude before, and I realised that I was probably feeling the effects of the altitude – San Pedro is at about 2400m. He told me where I could buy some coca leaves/sweets, and after a few minutes I was feeling a bit better so I toddled off to get some – the sweets, not the leaves, wasn’t too keen on the idea of chewing a mouthful of leaves, even if they would make me feel better. I ate a couple of them, they didn’t taste too bad, toffees with a very faint bitter taste. Don’t know if they actually did any good.

I went back to the hostel for a lie-down, and after a bit of thought decided to go back into town and cancel my Valle de la Luna tour. It would have involved several hours on a bus in the heat and a fair bit of hiking up sand dunes, and with my sensible head on I figured it was probably a good idea to just rest up for the rest of the day. Didn’t get my money back on the tour though. Instead I booked a tour to El Tatio geysers for tomorrow.