viernes, 25 de mayo de 2007
Walking In The Footsteps Of History
Tomorrow morning I am getting up at five to begin the four day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Full report to follow next week.
miércoles, 23 de mayo de 2007
Anachronism
Week two of the Peru tourist circus, I mean Peru tour, has started with a visit to Puno on the shores of the mystical and mythical Lake Titcaca. The world´s highest navigable lake (whatever that means, exactly) sits on the border between Peru and Bolivia and holds several islands, including the incredible floating reed islands of Uros (pictured).
We began with a visit to Taquile Island and then on to Amantaní where we were due to spend the night with a local family. So far in Peru it has been hard to tell what is genuine and what is a show for the tourists but Amantaní is home to Quechua speaking families who have lived there all their lives and only visit the mainland once a year, so despite the fact that we were far from the only boat rocking up to the island last night, the people we met were just being themselves.
Laura (Canadian tour-mate) and I stayed with Justina and her six year old boy Jeme and although I forgot the Quechua words we had been taught on the boat, I did manage to communicate reasonably well in Spanish. We ate a delicious dinner in her very humble kitchen and then dressed up in local costume (including those damn woolly hats with earflaps and pompoms) and were escorted to a party in the village hall to dance our altitude sickness away until we could party no more. Which happened at around 9.15pm (it´s hard dancing at altitude, you know).
After a chilly night and early start we said goodbye and travelled to Uros to meet the people who make and live on these bizarre floating communities. Quite a different people from those on Amantaní, the Uros people are more friendly, speak Aymara instead of Quechua and seem a little more au-fait with modern life in the rest of the world.
Yes, they live in huts made from reeds, eat fish from the lake and mostly wear traditional clothes with their long hair in thick black plaits, but while we were being escorted round the islands in a sort of canoe catamaran (a ´canoe-maran´?) made from reeds, one of our oarswomen had to stop for a moment to answer her mobile phone.
She had a better one than I´ve got too.
Leaving Puno tomorrow (dependent on strikes) to head for Cusco where we have a couple of days to relax before starting the highlight of the trip - The Inca Trail!
We began with a visit to Taquile Island and then on to Amantaní where we were due to spend the night with a local family. So far in Peru it has been hard to tell what is genuine and what is a show for the tourists but Amantaní is home to Quechua speaking families who have lived there all their lives and only visit the mainland once a year, so despite the fact that we were far from the only boat rocking up to the island last night, the people we met were just being themselves.
Laura (Canadian tour-mate) and I stayed with Justina and her six year old boy Jeme and although I forgot the Quechua words we had been taught on the boat, I did manage to communicate reasonably well in Spanish. We ate a delicious dinner in her very humble kitchen and then dressed up in local costume (including those damn woolly hats with earflaps and pompoms) and were escorted to a party in the village hall to dance our altitude sickness away until we could party no more. Which happened at around 9.15pm (it´s hard dancing at altitude, you know).
After a chilly night and early start we said goodbye and travelled to Uros to meet the people who make and live on these bizarre floating communities. Quite a different people from those on Amantaní, the Uros people are more friendly, speak Aymara instead of Quechua and seem a little more au-fait with modern life in the rest of the world.
Yes, they live in huts made from reeds, eat fish from the lake and mostly wear traditional clothes with their long hair in thick black plaits, but while we were being escorted round the islands in a sort of canoe catamaran (a ´canoe-maran´?) made from reeds, one of our oarswomen had to stop for a moment to answer her mobile phone.
She had a better one than I´ve got too.
Leaving Puno tomorrow (dependent on strikes) to head for Cusco where we have a couple of days to relax before starting the highlight of the trip - The Inca Trail!
viernes, 18 de mayo de 2007
Hostal Takeover
After three months of hostal accommodation I have temporarily bade goodbye to roughing it while I am on my three week tour of Peru with Gap Adventures. It is costing a bleeding fortune as we are staying in nice hotels and have had our own private minibus and local guides, but they are definitely packing in the value in a way that I just wouldn´t manage if I was here on my own.
Since meeting the rest of my group in Lima, just three Canadian girls, Brenna, Laura and April and our guide Yessica, we bussed down to Pisco along the coast, took a tour of the Balletas Islands (thousands of birds, penguins & sea lions - see picture), went sandboarding in the Huacacuina Oasis in Ica, took a free tour of a Pisco factory (with lots of samples) and had our first glimpse of the Nasca lines at dusk, before arriving at a countryside hotel with a pool for the night.
That was just day one.
Since then we have taken a private morning flight over the Nasca lines (incredible), been on a tour of a pre-Inca cemetery, been to a traditional ceramic factory and visited the Santa Catalina convent in Arequipa. I could go on!
Strangely, I do slightly miss the unique hostal experience of strangers snoring all night or rustling plastic bags at 4am, or having to queue for the shower but I can´t deny it´s fun to be enjoying a bit of luxury. I may as well make the most of it, as in one week we arrive in Cuzco and begin the Inca Trail which will mean three nights in a tent at high altitude! Room service!!!
Since meeting the rest of my group in Lima, just three Canadian girls, Brenna, Laura and April and our guide Yessica, we bussed down to Pisco along the coast, took a tour of the Balletas Islands (thousands of birds, penguins & sea lions - see picture), went sandboarding in the Huacacuina Oasis in Ica, took a free tour of a Pisco factory (with lots of samples) and had our first glimpse of the Nasca lines at dusk, before arriving at a countryside hotel with a pool for the night.
That was just day one.
Since then we have taken a private morning flight over the Nasca lines (incredible), been on a tour of a pre-Inca cemetery, been to a traditional ceramic factory and visited the Santa Catalina convent in Arequipa. I could go on!
Strangely, I do slightly miss the unique hostal experience of strangers snoring all night or rustling plastic bags at 4am, or having to queue for the shower but I can´t deny it´s fun to be enjoying a bit of luxury. I may as well make the most of it, as in one week we arrive in Cuzco and begin the Inca Trail which will mean three nights in a tent at high altitude! Room service!!!
lunes, 14 de mayo de 2007
Getting Personal
Here I am in Lima, Peru, having arrived a whole day early for my Absolute Peru tour which starts tonight at 7.30pm. I checked in to my hotel room yesterday afternoon and enjoyed the luxury of complete privacy, the opportunity not to padlock all my stuff away, to take as long as I wanted in the shower and to walk around naked without worrying that anyone might come in.
This will be my last opportunity for the next three weeks, as I will be sharing a room with one of my tour mates, who I meet tonight. Lucky them.
It´s a strange reality of the kind of trip I am doing that it is impossible to conceal the less attractive parts of yourself as you are forced to be so close with other people, both physically and emotionally.
If you have a stomach upset, people know. If you have period pains, people know. If you have a spot or a cold, people know. If you wake up in a foul mood you can´t shut yourself off as there is nowhere to go. People just know.
This has been particularly true as I´ve been travelling with Jon and Richard. I realised that I spent a month with them, and Jon and I were pretty much together 24 hours a day. At first this was hard as, well, normally not only would I be making a special effort with someone I had only known a short time and wanted to impress, but I wouldn´t be able to trust them with myself so quickly. That kind of reserve has been impossible and I have had to let my barriers down and let him see the real me.
And you know the funny thing? He hasn´t seem phased in the slightest. And once I realised that, well, everything just got a little easier and I got a little happier with the reality of who I am. I´m sure on my Peru tour I will have moments when normally I´d hide myself way, but maybe this time I will just forgive myself and find that it´s not as important as I thought.
This will be my last opportunity for the next three weeks, as I will be sharing a room with one of my tour mates, who I meet tonight. Lucky them.
It´s a strange reality of the kind of trip I am doing that it is impossible to conceal the less attractive parts of yourself as you are forced to be so close with other people, both physically and emotionally.
If you have a stomach upset, people know. If you have period pains, people know. If you have a spot or a cold, people know. If you wake up in a foul mood you can´t shut yourself off as there is nowhere to go. People just know.
This has been particularly true as I´ve been travelling with Jon and Richard. I realised that I spent a month with them, and Jon and I were pretty much together 24 hours a day. At first this was hard as, well, normally not only would I be making a special effort with someone I had only known a short time and wanted to impress, but I wouldn´t be able to trust them with myself so quickly. That kind of reserve has been impossible and I have had to let my barriers down and let him see the real me.
And you know the funny thing? He hasn´t seem phased in the slightest. And once I realised that, well, everything just got a little easier and I got a little happier with the reality of who I am. I´m sure on my Peru tour I will have moments when normally I´d hide myself way, but maybe this time I will just forgive myself and find that it´s not as important as I thought.
sábado, 12 de mayo de 2007
Sparks In The Salt
Well, another week, another country. This morning I arrived solo in Peru, after a quick visit to Bolivia on a tour of the world´s largest salt flat. After almost three months spent in the relative comfort of Argentina and Chile, I thought it was time to experience a different side of South America. I couldn´t have asked for a more dramatic shift.
Jon, Richard and I started the tour from San Pedro de Attacama, a dusty little desert town cum tourist mecca in northern Chile. By law you have to transfer to a Bolivian tour company on the border so it was at the immigration point in the desert that we first saw our homes for the next four days: battered 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers bearing stickers saying things like "I Heart Bolivia" and a decidedly worrying amount of stratches and dents.
We raced off across the desert in search of our first pitstop, the Laguna Blanca. There are no roads here, just the tracks left by the previous day´s vehicles and you just have to trust your driver´s judgement in finding the smoothest way. Which isn´t very, and every bone is rattled.
We took in five or six lakes, an active volcano, hot springs and some terrifying geysers as well as the famous Arbol de Piedra (rock shaped like a tree, woohoo) over two days, staying one night in a stone barn in middle of the desert at an altitude of 4,600 metres. It was officially the longest night of my life, due to a combination of altitude sickness, freezing cold and the large gang of Israelis partying and throwing up outside our room until the wee hours. When the alarm went off at 7am, my first words were, "Thank god!"
The second night was more enjoyable. We reached the salt hotel on the edge of the flats just before sunset. It was little better equipped, but was warmer and did at least have hot water. Jon and I also discovered that running your hand or arms against the sheets generated a massive amount of sparks in the dark. Static electricity in the sheets or something to do with the salt beds? I have no idea, but it kept us entertained for a good 15 minutes.
The following morning it was up at 5am to drive to the Isla de Pescadores to watch the sunrise over the salt. As we entered the plain (no roads here either), our driver Leo turned off the lights so we were driving in the dark. Scary until we realised that we were shooting across 12,000 square kilometres of nothing but smooth, flat salt. We watched the sunrise across the endless white expanse from an island covered in 10ft cacti and crunched our way through the salt like ice.
We finished the tour, exhausted, in the tiny Bolivian town of Uyuni, where I left Jon and Richard to travel back through the desert by myself (with the driver, obviously) and make my way up to Peru. I have made it to Tacna, just over the border and have yet another overnight bus to catch tonight to finally arrive in Lima where I will want a shower and a bed more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.
Jon, Richard and I started the tour from San Pedro de Attacama, a dusty little desert town cum tourist mecca in northern Chile. By law you have to transfer to a Bolivian tour company on the border so it was at the immigration point in the desert that we first saw our homes for the next four days: battered 4x4 Toyota Landcruisers bearing stickers saying things like "I Heart Bolivia" and a decidedly worrying amount of stratches and dents.
We raced off across the desert in search of our first pitstop, the Laguna Blanca. There are no roads here, just the tracks left by the previous day´s vehicles and you just have to trust your driver´s judgement in finding the smoothest way. Which isn´t very, and every bone is rattled.
We took in five or six lakes, an active volcano, hot springs and some terrifying geysers as well as the famous Arbol de Piedra (rock shaped like a tree, woohoo) over two days, staying one night in a stone barn in middle of the desert at an altitude of 4,600 metres. It was officially the longest night of my life, due to a combination of altitude sickness, freezing cold and the large gang of Israelis partying and throwing up outside our room until the wee hours. When the alarm went off at 7am, my first words were, "Thank god!"
The second night was more enjoyable. We reached the salt hotel on the edge of the flats just before sunset. It was little better equipped, but was warmer and did at least have hot water. Jon and I also discovered that running your hand or arms against the sheets generated a massive amount of sparks in the dark. Static electricity in the sheets or something to do with the salt beds? I have no idea, but it kept us entertained for a good 15 minutes.
The following morning it was up at 5am to drive to the Isla de Pescadores to watch the sunrise over the salt. As we entered the plain (no roads here either), our driver Leo turned off the lights so we were driving in the dark. Scary until we realised that we were shooting across 12,000 square kilometres of nothing but smooth, flat salt. We watched the sunrise across the endless white expanse from an island covered in 10ft cacti and crunched our way through the salt like ice.
We finished the tour, exhausted, in the tiny Bolivian town of Uyuni, where I left Jon and Richard to travel back through the desert by myself (with the driver, obviously) and make my way up to Peru. I have made it to Tacna, just over the border and have yet another overnight bus to catch tonight to finally arrive in Lima where I will want a shower and a bed more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.
miércoles, 2 de mayo de 2007
Going Loco In Valparaiso
It´s easy for a South American virgin like myself to fall into the trap of thinking that, because they share a language, so much geography and such a looong border with each other, Chile must be quite a lot like Argentina.
Well, after a mere fortnight spent in the longest country in the world (and a good chunk of that on a boat), I hang my head and humbly apologise to the Chilean people for my foolishness.
Much of Argentina has a feeling of a work in progress, with many towns resembling campsites, and the culture similarly feels new.
From what I have seen so far, Chile is firmly established, developed, ingrained and refined and feels much older. I have just spent a few days with Richard and Jon (yes, I´m back on the You Only Live Twice Tour) in the coastal town of Valparaiso, a couple of hours drive from Santiago, and have been totally absorbed by its fascinating architecture, people, culture and well, just its Chileanness.
The city rests on the side several very step hills, necessitating an assortment of rickety little elevator cars dotted around to assist the less able-bodied citizens around the town. The buildings are crammed together higgledy-piggledy, built almost on top of one another, many teetering dangerously on the brink of sheer drops and sometimes held up by tree roots or wooden struts. They are all different styles, different materials (in one street you could have wood, brick, stone and corrugated steel) and painted in wild colours, designs and often fantastic art or graffiti.
You don´t need to plan much and can spend your days simply walking around admiring the vivacity that created such an organized mess. On one of our wanderings, slightly aggravated after having my camera deftly removed from my bag by one of Valparaiso´s less friendly inhabitants, we walked into a tiny, grimy bar for a much needed beer.
The other punters were all aging inebriates, sitting in well-worn spots for their daily dose of red wine. Now, Richard speaks pretty good Spanish. This comes in extremely handy in a negotiation with a hostel manager or a waiter, but it does mean that you can sometimes make unexpected new friends. At the next table was a sixty-something white-haired man with very few teeth, well into his second jug of merlot at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. He introduced himself as Tony Sombrero, ex-circus clown and father of 20 kids from five different wives, and offered to show us a few of his skills. The jukebox came on and suddenly he was dancing around the bar with a paper cone balanced expertly on his nose and the rest of the bar clapping along.
The barman looked deeply unimpressed, but we rewarded old Tony with another jug of red and he was so pleased he offered to make me wife number six. I have now been christened La Reina de la Inglaterra and kissed three times by a Chilean clown. Now THAT wouldn´t have happened in Argentina.
Well, after a mere fortnight spent in the longest country in the world (and a good chunk of that on a boat), I hang my head and humbly apologise to the Chilean people for my foolishness.
Much of Argentina has a feeling of a work in progress, with many towns resembling campsites, and the culture similarly feels new.
From what I have seen so far, Chile is firmly established, developed, ingrained and refined and feels much older. I have just spent a few days with Richard and Jon (yes, I´m back on the You Only Live Twice Tour) in the coastal town of Valparaiso, a couple of hours drive from Santiago, and have been totally absorbed by its fascinating architecture, people, culture and well, just its Chileanness.
The city rests on the side several very step hills, necessitating an assortment of rickety little elevator cars dotted around to assist the less able-bodied citizens around the town. The buildings are crammed together higgledy-piggledy, built almost on top of one another, many teetering dangerously on the brink of sheer drops and sometimes held up by tree roots or wooden struts. They are all different styles, different materials (in one street you could have wood, brick, stone and corrugated steel) and painted in wild colours, designs and often fantastic art or graffiti.
You don´t need to plan much and can spend your days simply walking around admiring the vivacity that created such an organized mess. On one of our wanderings, slightly aggravated after having my camera deftly removed from my bag by one of Valparaiso´s less friendly inhabitants, we walked into a tiny, grimy bar for a much needed beer.
The other punters were all aging inebriates, sitting in well-worn spots for their daily dose of red wine. Now, Richard speaks pretty good Spanish. This comes in extremely handy in a negotiation with a hostel manager or a waiter, but it does mean that you can sometimes make unexpected new friends. At the next table was a sixty-something white-haired man with very few teeth, well into his second jug of merlot at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. He introduced himself as Tony Sombrero, ex-circus clown and father of 20 kids from five different wives, and offered to show us a few of his skills. The jukebox came on and suddenly he was dancing around the bar with a paper cone balanced expertly on his nose and the rest of the bar clapping along.
The barman looked deeply unimpressed, but we rewarded old Tony with another jug of red and he was so pleased he offered to make me wife number six. I have now been christened La Reina de la Inglaterra and kissed three times by a Chilean clown. Now THAT wouldn´t have happened in Argentina.
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