On Top Of The World, Looking Over The Edge

Well okay, we weren´t quite on "top" of the world, but neither was Kate to be fair.

4,900 metres up mind, although it was on a bus, so does that count?

Today´s 3am start took us to Colca Canyon and a view of eight volcanoes.

We were supposed to see condors flying majestically on the thermals above their nests on the cliffs - that was the attraction - but in the end saw nowt.

Apparently, it was not hot enough. Hmmm... It was Peninsula Valdez and the orcas all over again, this time without even a chocolate biscuit-eating armadillo to soften the blow.

However, we did see some spectacular scenery as the sun rose and set over the canyon, and bumped into a Dragoman truck, which made my day a little more, as it brought back lots of happy memories (and we´re not even home yet) of the Pampas and Patagonia.

We chatted to lovely driver Julie from Preston, who will be revisiting our Santiago-Ushuaia route in a couple of months´ time, starting in Santiago on 24 November.

(I think that may be the Smiths´ start date but, if not, I´m told they will get Vicky.)

Yesterday we watched the Arequipa birthday parade, which was a bit of a big deal, where everyone turned out to march in local dress, with lots of international and regional floats and dancers helping the town celebrate in style.

Arequipa has a very nice town centre, but the outskirts resemble nothing so much as a cement pit and combined mining town crossed with a vast, half-built but already dilapidated building site. Hence, the town centre was a nice surprise. We took a walking tour and saw the sites.

Interesting Catholic nb: the Sacred Heart is replaced in these parts with a sort of ´sacred´ sun, so as to join the Incan and Catholic faiths together.

NB Sacred heart/sun

The Last Supper: main course is guinea pig, as shown! 

Incan Baroque

Our man Pascal. Another impeccably English-speaking European.

Lovely lady, lovely banana and strawberry juice.
The Mercado Esoterica also sells frog juice and animal foetuses, for medicinal purposes.

Cuzco tomorrow on the (Sunday) night bus - Macchu Pichu approaching...

Oh. I tried Cuy - it wasn´t great.

The Line, The Cross & The Curve

"No, not Lions, LINES!"
- John from Carlisle phones home.

Up in the air first thing for a fly around Nazca Valley to have a look at the Lines.

Parrots, spacemen, monkeys (there´s always a monkey), hummingbirds, whales, trees, hands and spiders are all there.

No-one knows why they´re there, or how, or what they signify, but we´ll pay a visit to the local planetarium later for a talk and maybe come away more enlightened.

Anyway, the ´lions´ were great and it was a nice, smooth, pre-breakfast experience in a very small plane. And I talked to my first Northerners in about five months. So, a good day.

See if you can spot any in the desert - they´re a bit sand-coloured though...

Dancing Down The Aisle Of A... Bus

"The days run away like wild horses over the hills."

They sure do. We´re counting the days more and more now, as New Zealand looms at the end of September.

We´re making rapid headway on long bus journeys night and day, to reach the more southerly Peruvian highlights of Nazca, Cuzco and Lake Titicaca, stopping briefly to smell the roses along the way.

Here´s a whistlestop of deepest, darkest Peru so far (click on the names for gallery links)...


PIURA

Grau's Monument 

Not the Tyne Bridge

Water tower thing

A nice little town with a Grau´s (Grey´s?) Monument, poor man´s Tyne bridge over a smelly river and huge water tower masquerading as some sort of urban sculpture, but a nice Neo-Classical cathedral and some cute churches.

Geordis here, Geordis there...

TRUJILLO

Ruined

Goddess

Smelly

The Birds

Fishing boats drying out

"If you don't stand up, you don't pay"

Piura to Trujillo via Chiclayo and we are travelling through the desert, which is very odd.

Trujillo is a pleasantly sprawling, working family town with loads of shops and restaurants.

We day-trip to the pyramids at Huacas De Sol y Luna, to Chan Chan to see the ruins, then to the beach at Huanchaco.

There are slightly-blue-footed boobies and pelicans to be stroked on the pier, while the waves apparently form the longest surf rollers in the world.

I didn´t get to hang ten, but did get down to my Ys for a paddle in the Pacific. Sorry ladies, no photos.

Authentic 2000-year old dog

HUARAZ & LAGUNA 69 at HUASCARAN

Miming for their new video

Main square

A trekker's Mecca, a climber´s Nirvana, we stayed at the 'proper' Andescamp hostel and did a day hike to Laguna 69 (passing Laguna 68 en route) at Huascaran.

A 6am three-hour bus ride took us to the national park, from where we set off on a 6-hour hike up to the Laguna at 4400 metres.

Smoke 40 Rothmans and drink a bottle of red wine to experience the altitude effect.

I was nacked after 500 yards and had a headache for two days after, but we made it up to the spectacular laguna, where it had just started snowing as we left.

On the way down, we passed Peruvian blokes going up with toddlers on their shoulders!

Trujillo was also where I lost my second jacket - my beloved UniQlo puffa - in the local cemetery. Fate must have dealt a hand, as I picked up a nice new "North Face" shell jacket for only twenty quid at the market, which was a perfect replacement for the Laguna trek.

LIMA

A big city, but smoggy and overcrowded. We are only here to connect for Nazca. The bit we stayed at and saw was Miraflores, where they clearly love a casino.

Evidence of what, I can only imagine. Food for thought for Dave and Sharad, mind.

The beach front is a bit Copacabana-lite - way too built up with tacky hotels and casinos and the most massive, brand new, designer shopping complex (replete with brand-new-moneyed designer shoppers) built into the sea front. (Imagine the MetroCentre UNDER the Spanish City).

The neglected but prettier pier.

Rather tacky, but the beach front was nicer with lots of microlites over the cliffs and urban art on the promenade.

Weird to think only a few hours away from this sophisticated urbanity there are people living in shacks in a deserted wasteland. Suppose you could say the same about Newcastle and Sunderland.

We are on the Nazca bus this afternoon, flying over the Lines tomorrow morning.

Told you we were moving fast...

Please Look After This Pair. thank you

Well, we made it into Peru, eventually.

We'd had to jump straight off our first short bus trip from Vilcabamba to the Loja terminal, as I had misplaced my passport. I hadn't. It was in my rucksack, in the hold.

We arrived at Loja with two hours to spare before our 1pm bus journey over the border to Piura (better safe than sorry).

At ten to one, we were blithely informed there had never been a 1pm bus to Piura, and were issued with tickets for the 11pm service instead.

Ten interminable hours later, we boarded the 11pm bus, only for the engine to imediately catch fire. A slightly more dilapidated replacement arrived and we set off an hour and twenty minutes later...

At 6am, after a somewhat fraught hour's worth of border check-out-check-in (surrounded by what, in the dark, I took to be marauding school children, but who turned out to be local women) we finally rolled into Peru, and were in our lovely hotel San Jose by 9am. Phew!

Fingers crossed that's our bad luck done for a while.

(Sorry if this post is boring. You'd be surprised how many people's blogs are all like this.)

Dreamin' Eagles

Vilcabamba is our last stop in Ecuador before breaking for the Peruvian border via Macara.


It's a beautiful small town, with a picturesque square in a valley surrounded by hills full of streams, trees and trails.


It's also home to a legion of US expats, retirees, hippies, spiritual types, conspiracy theory nutters and ex-servicemen, keen to find a quieter life away from the pace of the mothership, and a bigger bang for their buck.


We talk to Charlie, owner of Charlito's restaurant. A gentle 63 year old family man, bald, bespectacled and goateed, he chats politely about the state of the nation before offering us a full resume of his drug-taking history, involving various psychedelic experiences, which he thoroughly recommends.

Behind him, two broken noses - one with full screaming eagle/stars 'n' stripes forearm tattoo - discuss the merits of the large burritos on their plates, while polishing off two very large drinks. The most broken-nosed gives me a conspiratorial nod and a wink.

A slim Russian and his loud, dreadlocked amiga ride off on their mopeds, chased up the street by their little dog Laika.

A tall Australian swans by, nursing a very large goblet of white wine, and wishes us all a good evening.

Such is expat life in Vilcabamba. They're all slightly crazy, yet likeable and enigmatic. So it goes.


I am trying to hard to say "Buenos dias" to all the Ecuadorians I pass, speak my best Spanish, shop in their shops and eat in their restaurants, not be thought of as an expat, in spite of my Yankees baseball cap.


There is so much building work going on, so many apartments going up, so many 'English' tour guides and alternative therapies being touted. It's supposedly good for the economy, providing work for the 'locals', but it must also be alienating to them, pushing and pricing them out of their own town.


It's reminiscent of Cornwall's grockles and emmets today, the gentrification of London, the Welsh second home boom of the '80s (remember "Come home to a real fire - buy a second home in Wales" on Not The Nine O'Clock News?) and of course the notorious expat Brits in Benidorm.


Groups of grey-haired Kens and Barbies clustered together on the verandah of the Soul Flower café won't endear themselves to, or build bridges toward, an otherwise friendly country like Ecuador.

And so it is on this thoughtful note we are leaving yet another country in which we have had fabulous times, seen incredible things, met many, many excellent people of all stripes and persuasions, and we will miss it.


If anything poignant can be said of a country which is blessed with something of everything - bustling town and laid-back country, rugged coast line, sandy beaches, humid jungles, snowy mountains and an almost unfair amount of wildlife, it is possibly that Ecuador doesn't have a USP, unlike sexy Brazil, proud Colombia, outlaw Argentina. It just has it all.


If you want to experience a tasting menu for South America, come to Ecuador.