Happy clappy land

Ok before we get to that, I wanted you to see the fab four (sorry I know it's a bit dark, but it was cloudy, what can you do!) - Louise, Fernando, myself and Rob. I met these guys by chance in the hostal of a slightly loco woman in Trujillo and it was a match made in heaven. We were all going the same way and travelled together for the next week and a half with lots of laughs and fun. Thanks guys for a brilliant time, I miss you all.

Ok, back to the plot. I got off the bus after a day and a half of travel in Vilcabamba, "famed" (well National Geographic wrote about it) as the valley in which everyone lives for ever...over 100. It is an exceptionally pretty setting with lush verdant valley, banana plantations and tropical plants set against high brown mountains. I took myself to the Madre Tierra hostal as recommended by some people I met in Lima. On arrival they put a fruit drink in my hand and soothed all my concerns away before showing me my room. I stepped gratefully into a very hot shower and then ambled down for lunch. Some time later I had a fantastic massage in the Spa, rose petals laid out on the floor to create a path, jacuzzi before hand, it was bliss.

Then dinner, I'd bumped into an American girl earlier and we ate together, she proved to be the flakiest person I've spoken to on this trip, so that was hard work. Then we were rounded up by the owner to watch 10 minutes of fire dancing, v.skilful but not totally my cup of tea (for any Americans reading, this means it's not something I'm interested in!). Then the owner told us all about the UFO sightings in the Vilcabamba and Loja area and how they are planning a landing but US agents are coming to the area to foil the whole thing....And so to bed, fortunately a good night's sleep with no extra terrestrial visitors to disturb me.

The next morning I wandered in town and it felt a bit surreal, it's not quite like being in South America! A lot of foreigners have moved into the area and it shows, somehow it felt more like a movie set than a real life South American town. I'm sure that's not fair and there are lots of people leading ordinary lives but there's something different about this place. Perhaps it's the place to go if you want the climate and the isolation but don't want the hassle of South America!

I caught up on Internet and email a bit and then wandered back to the hostal and decided that although people rave about the area, it wasn't for me and I'd go off to Cuenca, the next big city in the morning! Which is where I am now and will be for a couple of days before I go on to Quito, a week tomorrow I'll be on my way to the Galapagos....yippee!

Ecuador or bust

So Louise and I decided to go across the Peruvian/Ecuadorian border at a place called La Balsa. Our guidebooks both referred to it as a back route, with lots of changes of transport but spectacular scenery and given how far inland we were it seemed the quickest way to go.

After a good night's sleep on the floor of Rob and Fernando's room (Chachapoyas was full that night and we changed our plans at the last minute to stay another night) we set off "bright" and early at 6am. First leg in a private taxi for 3 hours to get us to the tarmac road at Bagua Grande. We went along a spectacular river valley where the rocks were folded and stressed in ways that showed how violent the formation of the landscape was here. And then we were in rice paddy fields and coffee country, with cows that looked like they'd come from India (same breed) and people strolling round in flipflops. Just like that out of the mountains and cloud forest and into lush farmland.

At Bagua Grande we got into a shared taxi for the one hour to Jaen, we had the privilege of only the two of us in the back, the standard is 4. The rest of the car was loaded as normal, 2 rather stout gentlemen in the front passenger seat and a campesino (country farmer) in the boot. At Jaen a motorbike rickshaw transferred us to a collectivo for the 3 hour journey to San Ignacio. We were the focus of much interest at the bus terminal as obviously gringos don't travel this way a lot. Still it seems fair, we stare at people and they stare at us! One brave idler asked questions and was keen to have my autograph, so I signed for him....I'm a star in Jaen!

We quickly left paved road behind us after Jaen and gradually climbed into the mountains again until we reached the surprisingly large town of San Ignacio. This time the motocycle rickshaw had to go up a steep hill and with two large gringos and very heavy bags it couldn't do it in first! So the driver pushed with one leg....

The final leg to the border, 1.5 hours in a shared taxi to La Balsa, it used to be a raft but now there is a bridge. However, the border was shut for lunch and siestas, which wasn't a problem because there was no transport on the Ecuadorian side until 5:30pm. Some very cursory form filling and we were through and to celebrate had rice and chicken for lunch (the very standard food everywhere).

The bus for the Ecuadorian road looked like it was from a zoo, open sides, bench seats and bright pictures. The road was incredibly rough and so it was slow progress. Gave us lots of time to discuss the presence of two cockerels on the bus and the over representation of cockerels in the chicken population (as generally demononstrated every morning between 4am and when you give in and get up). Cockerel fighting is legal and you see "coliseos de gallinos" in most towns round here.

Finally into Zumba around 7pm, the less glamorous side of travelling. The best we could do for a room was a hostel where we didn't wash in the bathroom because we'd have been less clean afterwards and the beds were damp!

We left town the next morning on the 5:30am bus, grateful to be gone and at 11:30am I got off in the hippy heaven that is Vilcabamba!

Culture Vulture (2)

Now don't skip! Read 1 first....

The night bus to Chacapoyas was hard work! The road was definitely not paved all the way which we all experienced through the bumps and we did a lot of going uphill round wiggly bends! We arrived at 5am in the morning and obviously the town was still asleep. We shouldered our packs (the last time mine was weighed it was 18kg!) and set off through the silent, whitewashed streets to find a hotel. We headed for the Plaza de Armas and all felt immediately that we liked this town, it just felt good. The Plaza de Armas (in Peru the main square is always the Plaza de Armas) was lovely, palm trees and a fountain in the middle. A teenager on a bike stopped to ask if we needed help and gave us directions to the hotel we were looking for.

At the Hotel Vieja the receptionist was all courtesy and friendlieness despite the silly hour and very soon Louise and I were in the nicest room either of us could remember for a while. Big, full of character and with two warm cosy beds. I was so overcome with pleasure that I put my head on the sheets and stroked them! Later when we'd all slept and showered we met up in the Plaza de Armas and were just discussing what to do when we were approached by Carlos. It was a masterpiece of salesmanship. He introduced himself in a quiet and professional way and outlined what he could offer in the way of trips to Kuelap (a major ruined city of the Chachapoyan culture). It was exactly what we were looking for and after some questions and a discussion over lunch we signed up. If only it was always that easy!

The next morning saw us up bright and early and off for our 4 day trip. It was fabulous, we walked in spectacular valleys, saw amazing monuments - including figures that look a bit like Easter Island figures, but are actually tombs high up in a cliff with mummies inside - slept in a secluded cabin in the Valle de Belen, in a house in a pueblito, went to a village fiesta (where we were the main attraction!), spent a day pretending to be cowboys and eventually ended up in Kuelap. We packed so much in that it felt like a week and we had a fantastic time. One of the interesting things is that as I have got further away from the standard tourist route the travellers I encounter are more varied and more interesting, as well as the 4 of us we had in the group: two Basques, Glenda and Josephba; a Swede, Eric; an Italian, PierLuigi; a Swiss, Sandro and our guides Janet and Carlos and cook Juana. It was a lovely polyglot gathering of people that mainly spoke in Spanish and a pleasure to travel with all of them.

Back to Chacapoyas and it was time for everyone to move on, Eric and Sandro into the Amazon, the Basques, Roberto, Fernando and PierLuigi to go home and Louise and I to make it over the border into Ecuador....but that's a story for another day!

Culture Vulture (1)

Hola all, seems an age since I last posted and lots has happened, for a start I'm now in Ecuador but more of that later.

I left Huaraz on a night bus to go to a city called Trujillo on the coast. I had rather hoped that it would be far enough up the coast to escape the grey fog that is a feature of the Peruvian coastal winter (something to do with the cold air from the sea, courtesy of the Humboldt current, hitting the coldish coast and ... not really sure, but basically you end up with grey mist all winter, possibly slightly more depressing than English winter drizzle but there's not a lot in it!). Anyway it wasn't sunmy, although it did clear sometimes in the afternoons.

Trujillo is famous for the fantastic archaeological sites in the area, apparently there are over 100k known sites in Peru and lots more as yet unrecorded! I was really keen to get a good guide here, one with lots of information and Lonely Planet came up trumps as it described a hostal run by a Peruana (Peruvian woman) and her English husband who are both guides. Casa de Clara was memorable - great chocolate cake - and despite sleeping in something that resembled a shed on the top floor of the house, comfortable.

Michael White, Clara's husband, is a great and enthusiastic guide. He's lived in Peru for 15 years or so, doing various things and it was a joy to be shown round by him. In the morning we visited the Temples of the Sun and Moon, which are Moche temples built over hundreds of years as they were refurbished and redecorated. We walked round one of the temples which was substantially damaged by the Spanish conquistadors when they washed away a lot of it to loot tons of gold and silver contained within the structure. It's made of adobe brick so water destroys it, which is posing interesting challenges for the archaeologists in protecting what they uncover from El Niño. It is an amazing structure and even more breathtaking is the art on the walls of the temple which is gradually being uncovered, and in combination with the ceramics that this culture produced, it is enabling archaeologists to understand more about this culture. From our point of view it was very blood thirsty with human sacrifice - as a prisoner, the good news was that you were going to participate in a very important ceremony and have a portrait made of you in ceramic....the bad news was that you were going to be executed! If you're interested in seeing some photos, this site has them and more information: http://www.huacas.com/index.html

In the afternoon, we went to Chan Chan, an enormous site from the Chimu civilization, after the Moche and then conquered by the Incas. It is basically an enormous area on the outskirts of the city of melted adobe palace. There are 9 palaces/compounds from different periods and we looked round one. It was vast and complicated. Once it was highly decorated but it was hard to imagine how people lived there. They've only found one wooden post which would support a roof and from that have decided that some key areas had roofs but most of it didn't. It is a very dry area - 0.6mm rain per year (or it could be 6mm I forget now but very little) - so I suppose it's possible to live with no roof, just difficult for us to imagine.

The other great thing about my time in Trujillo was meeting up with some like minded people who were travelling the same way as me. They were Rob (Roberto in Spanish), Louise (Louisa) and Fernando, the first two from London and Fernando from Nasca in Peru. After 5 minutes of meeting in the hostal we'd "clicked" and I spent the next week and a half travelling with them, which was constantly funny and pleasurable. Amazing how many "in jokes" you can develop in that time.

We moved onto Chiclayo the day after all the sites and the day after that went to a world class museum in Lambeyeque nearby. This the Lord of Sipan museum, which is effectively Peru's Tutankamum. It is just amazing, we spent half a day going round it. The Lord of Sipan was a Moche leader whose tomb was found undamaged in 1987. The most incredible objects in gold, turquoise, coral, silver and other materials have been found and are well displayed in the museum. In the same funerary monument they have found other high status burials and have established that some of the figures depicted on ceramics are not mythological as anticipated but were real (they can match the pictures of headresses and costume to those found in graves).

Although this is such an important museum it is not that visited by gringos (foreigners). That became obvious when a visiting school group of teenagers asked if they could their photo taken with us (after a lot of giggling and whispering!). It's a shame that everyone heads off South, because this deserves to be on the standard tourist route.

We left Chiclayo the same night (this was a speedy bit of travelling as Rob is a teacher and so had limited time in Peru) to go inland to Chacapoyas....more in the next post.

Plodding round the Cordillera Blanca

I have just come back from 3 and a bit days walking in the Cordillera Blanca and at the risk of sounding "over the top" I think it is the most beautiful landscape that I have ever walked in.

The direction we did it in, you walk up one valley for the equivalent of two days (day 1 is a half day and you cross a pass midway through day 3). The lake in the picture is part of Day 2's walk, which is just incredible. As you go up the valley different peaks come into view, snow capped and looking like implausible icing sugar confections. Because the Andes are geologically young they are very steep and jagged and I think that gives them some of their allure. Day after day of bright blue sky might do it as well.


The peak here is called Alpamayo (apologies to anyone who can spell it correctly). It was voted the second most beautiful peak in the world last year by Mountain magazine! Goodness knows what the criteria are in a mountain beauty contest! This is its unphotogenic side but I still think it looks pretty incredible. From this vantage point we could see three different snow clad peaks. Alpamayo is over 6,000m tall, which in this part of the world is not unusual! (There are no mountains in Europe over 5,700m and a good way to make a Peruvian laugh is to explain that at 1600m Ben Nevis is the UK's highest "mountain").

Not sure what our altitude was when we started walking but campsite 1 was 3,790m, campsite 2 was 4,250 and on day 3 we went over the Punta Union pass at 4,750m and were pleased to be camping at 3,700 again! The second night was very cold, we were all in bed by about 7:30pm because it was the warmest place to be! Night 3 we made it to 9pm....

I'd love to do another trek in this area, but the longer ones include more passes (one a day) and longer days, so I think a spell of getting properly fit might be in order before trying it!

On the final day we had a very short walk to catch a collectivo (a private minibus that works a particular route and takes as many people as it can find) which then drove up to a pass over 4,800m and down the other side. The driver must have had racing blood because he seemed determined to get down as fast as possible which made for an exciting descent!

We changed collectivos in Yungay, a town with a sad history. In 1966 the old town was destroyed by an alluvio - something to do with an earthquake causing a nearby lake to burst its banks - practically the entire population died. The new town is in a slightly different location but despite its beauty this is a very unstable area, most of the towns in the valley have suffered at some time.

Our new collectivo didn't go as fast but made up for it by stuffing people in, when real seats ran out small stools were deployed in the tiny aisle and one lady's barrels were used to sit passengers on. Potential passengers who attempted to point out that the bus was full were quickly persuaded that there was space for them too!

We arrived back in Huaraz at about 5pm and I gratefully made for the shower in my hostal and attempted to remove all the dust from myself, the water ran brown for a while. I leave Huaraz today though I'll be sorry to leave the mountains. Down to the coast for a few days and then into Ecuador.

Drains vs Machu Picchu

One thing that I've noticed as I've moved into different areas of Peru is that the guides to non Inca archaeological sites can't resist telling you how the civilization they are telling you about is:
a) very important
b) better than the Incas because....

So far on this trip I've been to various Inca sites in and around Cusco, to the main Wari site near Ayacucho (around 800 AD to 1100 AD) and to Chavin (2000 BC).

Sadly the Wari site is not that excavated yet as it hasn't attracted much foreign money for archaeology and so although it's possible to see that it covered a big area, the actual ruins are a bit dull! Lots of rocks in a desert rocky area...you need a really good imagination or a really good guide to help you see what's there and on the day I went both were lacking!

Now I have to say in my uninformed and biased opinion that Chavin is incredibly impressive because it is so old. What remains is a cut off pyramid and a square in front of it. The guide was very keen that we should understand what good engineers they were and made us look down various holes at the drainage system that kept the whole area dry during the rainy season (the archaeologists are trying to make it work again, no luck so far) and peer through ventilation ducts inside the pyramid which got the air to circulate. At the site you can go into four galleries (corridors with rooms off them) which means going down steps and inside the pyramid where you can look at the stone roof above your head and contemplate the fact that 3,000 year old engineering is keeping the other two floors from coming down on you. But I beg to differ with the guide's suggestion that the Incas didn't know how to do stone roofs and therefore were not as good as the Chavin civilization! They built buildings in a totally different style and the materials they used were appropriate for them! Attached is a picture of a Chavin sculpture, afraid I couldn't turn it round for some reason!



So I'm not turning into an Inca apologist because I'm sure they weren't the "best" culture in Peru, just the last and the most famous (probably because they were immediately pre Conquest) but I have to say that I like their style and I particularly like their fascination with mountains and their propensity for building in incredibly difficult places with great views (who went out to find the sites I wonder and how did he decide where the next one should be?).

So if you're ever in Peru of course you should go and see Machu Picchu and the other famous Inca sites, they're incredible, but find time for some other cultures as well, you won't be disappointed.

Peruvian Music

You're out there thinking pan pipes aren't you?

Well I guess it's the obvious first thought but not for me now. Peruvian music is a very odd mix indeed. You do hear local music of the pan pipe variety and it can be very good or really awful, not often average! I do now twitch if I hear the opening of El Condor Paso, Guantanamera or La Bamba, all particular favourites of tourist "entertaining" musicians. Another version of local music is something I don't know the name of but it sounds very similar (to me) to Chinese music, quite high, thin and a bit tortured at times! This can be popular on buses. From Cusco to Andahuaylas (9 hours) they played it non stop.

As you might expect the clubs and shops are fond of Latin American pop, "Gasolina" is currently playing throughout the continent. You hear some Salsa and Merengue as well but the unexpected favourite is 80's British pop! You'll be in a club they'll have just played "Te Amo" or something similar about love and the next track on will be "Come on Eileen". You think I'm kidding, I'm not and I have witnesses! On the bus from Ayacucho to Lima the musical soundtrack was early to mid 80's "classics" all remixed to the same drum machine beat. I think I might be scarred for life!

I wonder if it will be the same in Ecuador?

¿Do you know the way to Lima?

Apologies a theme of cheesy song titles seems to be appearing! I left Ayacucho yesterday after the usual bus chaos. There seems to be some sort of unwritten rule which says that although all the seats on long distance buses are allocated and although there is a limit on how much luggage people can bring, there will be a great deal of pushing and shoving to get everything loaded. Also all the people going on the bus will stand outside it until the bus driver starts to edge forward as if he is leaving, at which point all the people will try and get on the bus at the same time jamming the doorway and shouting at each other. It's very entertaining to watch when you've arrived early for your bus and are peacefully waiting for it! Gives you something to do...

I´m now in Lima, which is wearing its winter time cloud cover, yesterday was a bit broken but today is very gray. However, I was surprised yesterday to be really pleased to be getting here. Most people when asked say, oh Lima, it's horrid and scary and gray and previously I would have agreed.

Sadly there's not much that the city can do about the gray bit as that's just winter time weather, but most tourists come in the winter because it's dry in the Andes where the major tourist attractions are. I think the horrid and scary judgements are probably a bit harsh. Most people come to Lima first, get picked up at the airport, experience some extremely hairy taxi driving, go through some very poor sections of Lima at night and it's their first experience of Peru. They decide that it looks dangerous and there's little attractive about it. After a couple of months here, it doesn't feel so different to the rest of the country just a big city and we're all more careful in big cities (seen the signs telling you to watch out for pickpockets in Piccadilly Circus?) At this point in my travels it's quite nice to be somewhere you can go to the cinema and hang out if you want to.

My hostal is entertaining called "Flying Dog Backpackers". I have no idea why. It's scruffy but clean and run by laid back, cool guys who are really helpful. It's also incredibly well located in the centre of Miraflores, which is a very nice part of Lima. So time out in the big smoke is proving more pleasing than I expected, but I'm looking forward to getting back to the mountains next week.

A long and winding road

Why think of a good title, when you can pinch one off someone else?

Last Sunday at 5:30am I was at the bus station in Cusco to get my stuff loaded on to the bus for Ayacucho. It was the beginning of a marathon bus journey, 22 hours to be precise! Now the distance from Cusco to Ayacucho as the crow flies is not actually that far but there are several reasons why it takes so long:

1) The bus is not that fast when it's running and during the early part of the journey it stopped twice - they managed to run out of petrol 20m from the gas station they wanted to fill up at, which resulted in lots of running about with buckets of fuel and hoses; the second time I don't know what the reason was but when they took the cover of the engine off inside the bus the whole thing filled with smoke! That took about 30 minutes to fix

2) The road is only tarmaced for the first four hours and once it gets dark the bus driver only has his headlights to follow the quite narrow, "afirmada" road.

3) The Andes are very tall, steep mountains and so the road spends a lot of time zig zagging up the mountain only to zig zap down the other side into a new valley, and repeat.... a lot

The plus side of all this is that you get lots of time to talk to your neighbour ( I was lucky I had two during the journey, one was an economist and one a lawyer, both working with rural populations, so we had interesting conversations. My Spanish was slightly pushed by the economist when I was trying to explain the role of the Queen in the British parliamentary system and how it works given we don't have a written constitution! I hope I haven't completely confused him).

You also get to look at the spectacular landscape and see country life going on. Basically it seems that the further you get from the towns the poorer it is, I guess because people can't sell things at market easily. The lawyer said that the land is fertile and v.good for producing potatoes but that transporting them to market is very difficult for people. And realistically I don't seem how you could farm this sort of land in the commercially intensive way that is normal in more developed countries, I have a nasty feeling you'd lose all the top soil.

The last half of the journey was in the dark (because we're reasonably close to the Equator the sun rises and sets at around 6) and bizarrely I found it easy to sleep all night and wake up when we got to Ayacucho. Why can't I do that on planes?

However probably my abiding memory of that journey will be 22 hours of a music form that seems very close to Chinese. To my unappreciative ears it sounded whiney and piercing! Fortunately it wasn't on very loud, but it was on the entire time.....

Tomorrow another bus journey, but this time just the 8 hours from Ayacucho to Cusco.