Friday, July 17, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Amazon
Trujillo is a town with lots of pretty buildings painted in bright colours, it is an attractive city but the grey skies that have been following me up the coast persist and make it a not so nice place to be. I came to town to see the Huaca pyramids and the pre-Inca ruins at Chan chan.
The Huaca pyramids are in the middle of a complex which like Tiahuanaco in Bolivia is barely at the start of it's excavation and reconstruction process. The larger of the two temples, the temple of the sun is filled with adobe bricks as every time a flood, earthquake or other natural disaster happened the people would simply fill in the old temple and build a new one on top. The second pyramid, the pyramid of the moon appears to be five temples built atop one another, it is in the middle of it's excavation process and as they remove more or the adobe bricks from within, it reveals more and more of the original painted surfaces beneath.
The fanged faces one can only conclude were painted as protecting spirits, they have uncovered the sacred rock where the high priestess made her human sacrifices, the cup of blood was then taken to the area where the God needed to be appeased and poured on the ground there by the high priest.
After that I went to another bunch of ruins called Chan chan which was a community, ruins here are dusty, dirty and run down before they have had a chance to be dug up, Peru is somewhat of an anticlimax on the whole wow factor.
Then I headed to a town called Chiclayo where the ruins of various tombs have been found, most famously those of the lords of Sipan. The tombs were found mostly in tact with vast amounts of gold and silver ornamentation, the gold and turquoise earrings are pretty impressive, there is also a lot of very creepy ornaments and some odd nose rings which are kind of mouth protectors of some sort. They say in another 400 years they may have unearthed all the tombs in this area, amazing but true, why the hills around here are not heaving with grave robbers I have no idea, maybe in another 100 years the place will be worth visiting.
.
Then it was another overnight bus from hell to get to Chachapoyas, The first day we trekked to Karija to see the sarcophagus, kind of cool but small, we also saw a rather groovy cave, "Caverna De Quiocta", stalagtites and mites many looked like melting faces or foetal position skeletons with the limestone columns dripping like candle wax oveer them, one exceptionally creepy one looked like a melting marshmellow baby. considering the place used to be used by the Chachapoyas as a cemetary adds to it's creep factor.
The next day I finally made it to Kuelap the reason I had come all the way to Chachapoyas, it is really cool, it is a large fortress built by the "cloud people" on top of a hill, if someone died during construction they just added their bones (bodies)to the construction process, the bones can be seen inside of the walls, it was seen as a kind of sacrifice to the gods. They had fridge's for food storage and a sacred circular temple (their houses were also circular) inside was a bottle shape originally used by the Chachapoyans as a sun dial so they knew the seasons, the harvest time, the fiesta time, the solstice, the equinox etc. Then by the Incas (after they conqured the site) to drop sacrifices to the sun god inside and finally by the Spanish (when they conquered) as a prison. The scenary on the way up to the heighs of Kurlap through terraced agricultural lands and smattered with tiny villages is stunning, the clouds wraith like wrapping there fingers around the hillsides all add to the atmosphere, the first really awesome ruins I've seen since I've been here.
Tarapoto was a nothing town that we really only saw the bus station on arrival and the collectivo station on departure the next day, we stayed at a very classy hotel opposite the bus station, when the clerk showed us our room he kindly surfed off the porn channel when showing us how the t.v. worked! Oh yeah all class here.
and on to Yurimaguas where again we stayed long enough to eat lunch, (cerviche again, too lemony for my tastes again) and the got ourselves on board a boat to Iquitos.
Three days up the Amazon on the boat was nice, I slept in a hammock on deck and with all the other passengers, it was fun. The food was average (bring your own dish and cutlery) I saw dolphins up and down the river and flocks of birds, all very beautiful but large panoramas of this sort are impossible to photograph with any sort of justice to the beauty of the actual scenary. It's at last hot, though very humid with lots of rainstorms, it makes for beautiful Amazon rainbows. (I just love using the word Amazon as a sort of prefix). There are a zillion little huts along the edge of the river made from sticks with thatched roofs, very cute. The boat pulled in regularly at little towns, whereupon they were flooded with people selling fruit and frozen jellies in plastic bags.
Iquitos is full of very well heeled tourists, who fly in and out to do expensive Amazon tours. There are buildings and bandstands designed by Eiffel and very strange looking crumbling tiled buildings.
Our first attempt to get to Belen (an area of Iquitos the largest city in the world accessible only by air or river) was a complete disaster, we tumbled from our guest house all pink and freshly scrubbed, jumped on the bus that said Belen and ended up at the warfs at the opposite end of town, (the driver took us back to Belen for free). We wandered around the market looking for the local wharfs, and a policeman came and stopped us with the chilling words "come to the station, we want to talk to you", and muttering further something about how the boss would "Explain things to us." hmmmmm, having heard about how dodgy the police in south America are we declined to enter the station and scampered quickly in the opposite direction. We then caught a taxi to the "wharfs" The guy dropped us at this dodgy looking rubbish filled alley way, the three girls of the party looked at each other and I heard Dr Seuss in my head "You wont go down any not so good street." Yes I thought to myself, that's a not so good street if ever I saw one. So we walked back to town.
The next morning we had Bec and I had upped our bloke ratio and lowered our chick ratio and we tried again. This was a much more successful attempt, as we wandered around the market a helpful chap volunteered to be our guide, we hoped in a boat and cruised around the floating markets and houses on stilts of Belen, it's quite dry here at the moment and the dirt and grub factor is high, I would say if you have seen the floating markets and houses on stilts in Laos, forget it here.
Our guide took us on to the butterfly sanctuary, I wanted to see some of the guys responsible for the tornados and rainstorms in the rest of the world. Again unimpressive, if you have seen butterfly sanctuaries in Australia or Asia don't come to this one for the butterflies! Do come for the other attractions though, the owner has taken to adopting wildlife confiscated by border police at the airport here and illegal animal traders etc. As soon as we got to the sanctuary more or less a white painted Capuchin monkey decided he liked me and jumped on my shoulder, the feeling was not really mutual and he eventually left me alone! Then there were bright red faced monkeys running up and down and chattering their teeth at us, a Jaguar (called Pedro something) who is gorgeous, a Tapir called Lewis, a manatae a couple of very loud silky howler monkeys, several macaws and the highlight two sloths one of who is a three month old baby (rescued from smugglers at the airport) She is gorgeous and I got to hold her, unfortunately I didn't get a photo as the room was dark but sloth have seriously moved up my favourite animal chart, so cute, such long padded feet with loooong claws at the bottom. Anyway.
Tomorrow I start a five day boat trip up the Amazon, expect radio silence!
The Huaca pyramids are in the middle of a complex which like Tiahuanaco in Bolivia is barely at the start of it's excavation and reconstruction process. The larger of the two temples, the temple of the sun is filled with adobe bricks as every time a flood, earthquake or other natural disaster happened the people would simply fill in the old temple and build a new one on top. The second pyramid, the pyramid of the moon appears to be five temples built atop one another, it is in the middle of it's excavation process and as they remove more or the adobe bricks from within, it reveals more and more of the original painted surfaces beneath.
The fanged faces one can only conclude were painted as protecting spirits, they have uncovered the sacred rock where the high priestess made her human sacrifices, the cup of blood was then taken to the area where the God needed to be appeased and poured on the ground there by the high priest.
After that I went to another bunch of ruins called Chan chan which was a community, ruins here are dusty, dirty and run down before they have had a chance to be dug up, Peru is somewhat of an anticlimax on the whole wow factor.
Then I headed to a town called Chiclayo where the ruins of various tombs have been found, most famously those of the lords of Sipan. The tombs were found mostly in tact with vast amounts of gold and silver ornamentation, the gold and turquoise earrings are pretty impressive, there is also a lot of very creepy ornaments and some odd nose rings which are kind of mouth protectors of some sort. They say in another 400 years they may have unearthed all the tombs in this area, amazing but true, why the hills around here are not heaving with grave robbers I have no idea, maybe in another 100 years the place will be worth visiting.
.
Then it was another overnight bus from hell to get to Chachapoyas, The first day we trekked to Karija to see the sarcophagus, kind of cool but small, we also saw a rather groovy cave, "Caverna De Quiocta", stalagtites and mites many looked like melting faces or foetal position skeletons with the limestone columns dripping like candle wax oveer them, one exceptionally creepy one looked like a melting marshmellow baby. considering the place used to be used by the Chachapoyas as a cemetary adds to it's creep factor.
The next day I finally made it to Kuelap the reason I had come all the way to Chachapoyas, it is really cool, it is a large fortress built by the "cloud people" on top of a hill, if someone died during construction they just added their bones (bodies)to the construction process, the bones can be seen inside of the walls, it was seen as a kind of sacrifice to the gods. They had fridge's for food storage and a sacred circular temple (their houses were also circular) inside was a bottle shape originally used by the Chachapoyans as a sun dial so they knew the seasons, the harvest time, the fiesta time, the solstice, the equinox etc. Then by the Incas (after they conqured the site) to drop sacrifices to the sun god inside and finally by the Spanish (when they conquered) as a prison. The scenary on the way up to the heighs of Kurlap through terraced agricultural lands and smattered with tiny villages is stunning, the clouds wraith like wrapping there fingers around the hillsides all add to the atmosphere, the first really awesome ruins I've seen since I've been here.
Tarapoto was a nothing town that we really only saw the bus station on arrival and the collectivo station on departure the next day, we stayed at a very classy hotel opposite the bus station, when the clerk showed us our room he kindly surfed off the porn channel when showing us how the t.v. worked! Oh yeah all class here.
and on to Yurimaguas where again we stayed long enough to eat lunch, (cerviche again, too lemony for my tastes again) and the got ourselves on board a boat to Iquitos.
Three days up the Amazon on the boat was nice, I slept in a hammock on deck and with all the other passengers, it was fun. The food was average (bring your own dish and cutlery) I saw dolphins up and down the river and flocks of birds, all very beautiful but large panoramas of this sort are impossible to photograph with any sort of justice to the beauty of the actual scenary. It's at last hot, though very humid with lots of rainstorms, it makes for beautiful Amazon rainbows. (I just love using the word Amazon as a sort of prefix). There are a zillion little huts along the edge of the river made from sticks with thatched roofs, very cute. The boat pulled in regularly at little towns, whereupon they were flooded with people selling fruit and frozen jellies in plastic bags.
Iquitos is full of very well heeled tourists, who fly in and out to do expensive Amazon tours. There are buildings and bandstands designed by Eiffel and very strange looking crumbling tiled buildings.
Our first attempt to get to Belen (an area of Iquitos the largest city in the world accessible only by air or river) was a complete disaster, we tumbled from our guest house all pink and freshly scrubbed, jumped on the bus that said Belen and ended up at the warfs at the opposite end of town, (the driver took us back to Belen for free). We wandered around the market looking for the local wharfs, and a policeman came and stopped us with the chilling words "come to the station, we want to talk to you", and muttering further something about how the boss would "Explain things to us." hmmmmm, having heard about how dodgy the police in south America are we declined to enter the station and scampered quickly in the opposite direction. We then caught a taxi to the "wharfs" The guy dropped us at this dodgy looking rubbish filled alley way, the three girls of the party looked at each other and I heard Dr Seuss in my head "You wont go down any not so good street." Yes I thought to myself, that's a not so good street if ever I saw one. So we walked back to town.
The next morning we had Bec and I had upped our bloke ratio and lowered our chick ratio and we tried again. This was a much more successful attempt, as we wandered around the market a helpful chap volunteered to be our guide, we hoped in a boat and cruised around the floating markets and houses on stilts of Belen, it's quite dry here at the moment and the dirt and grub factor is high, I would say if you have seen the floating markets and houses on stilts in Laos, forget it here.
Our guide took us on to the butterfly sanctuary, I wanted to see some of the guys responsible for the tornados and rainstorms in the rest of the world. Again unimpressive, if you have seen butterfly sanctuaries in Australia or Asia don't come to this one for the butterflies! Do come for the other attractions though, the owner has taken to adopting wildlife confiscated by border police at the airport here and illegal animal traders etc. As soon as we got to the sanctuary more or less a white painted Capuchin monkey decided he liked me and jumped on my shoulder, the feeling was not really mutual and he eventually left me alone! Then there were bright red faced monkeys running up and down and chattering their teeth at us, a Jaguar (called Pedro something) who is gorgeous, a Tapir called Lewis, a manatae a couple of very loud silky howler monkeys, several macaws and the highlight two sloths one of who is a three month old baby (rescued from smugglers at the airport) She is gorgeous and I got to hold her, unfortunately I didn't get a photo as the room was dark but sloth have seriously moved up my favourite animal chart, so cute, such long padded feet with loooong claws at the bottom. Anyway.
Tomorrow I start a five day boat trip up the Amazon, expect radio silence!
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Peru!!!
Here is a letter I started a little while ago and finished today.
Well as you may have picked up by now all roads in Bolivia lead to La Paz!
After two nights at the tranquill lake titicaca I had to go back to La Paz as the biggest fiesta in their calendar year was on, and this year it coincides with Bolivia's bicentennary so as you can imagine it was huge!!!
The fiesta started at about 6:30 in the morning and went till after midnight, their were drunk people in the streets all day, the parade was endless, ladies in traditional Bolivian gear swirling their petticoats and shaking their tambourines, men in weird tiered wedding cake outfits with masks of the "Gran Poder" a chap who apparently smoked a pipe, young girls in decidedly unBolivian mini skirts and high boots marching and men in Jesters outfits with bells leaping down the streets every fourth or so group was a slick bunch of men in suits playing "the" song that the whole parade kept time to.
There were diablos (devil masks) accompanied by beautiful blue winged angels, their were Campesinos in traditional gear with fake babies or flowers in their cloth shoulder bags. There were real jesters in scary masks, men in cattle outfits and black slaves. There were girls in Inka indian mini dresses, men in leopard skins and feathery head dresses everywhere, seriously there must be a lot of very cold birds (of the avian kind) in Bolivia right now! My camera has never quite recovered from Uyuni so the photos I took just don't show the magnetude or the outfits but I hope they caught something of the spectacle.
Anyway needless to say it was massive and I spent most of the day up in "cementario" where the parade started watching the behind the scenes happenings and dancing into the crazy wee hours of the morning and avoiding kissing strange drunk Latin american men (eeeeeeew).
While on the subject I should tell you about Bolivian "fashion" for ladies it consists of a bowler hat, too small for your head and set at a jaunty angle, a blouse with a (preferably glittery) shawl over your shoulders, a long heavily pleated skirt also shimmery with a zillion lacey petticoats underneath and low flat slip on shoes also shimmery if possible. it's, erm.... interesting. For men fashion is trilby hat and suit, much nicer in fact quite stylish if only the men were better looking it would all be good.
Also did you know Bolivia has a Navy!!!? Useful for a landlocked country I'm sure, what optimists!!!
Isle del sol was great. it's unbelievably pretty, the walk along the centre of the island is so worth doing. I saw the rocks from which the Inca creation myths spawned. Isle del so is the Father of the male line and Isle del luna the female line. It's absolutely freezing at night and burning hot during the day but really pretty. The Inca ruins in the north have a very nice temple with a sacred well still working, infact Inca plumbing is still very much intact in most ruins and fairly impressive.
They also, certainly knew where to put their temples in order to maximise impact.
Back in Copacanana I saw cars being blessed, one day by a fellow wearing frian monk robes!!! Another day by several fellows in more traditional Bolivian campesino colours, the cars are washed and wreathed in flowers, the guys who do the blessings are carrying smouldering incense, opening bottles of champagne and beer, water and other fluids are sprinkled via flower head over the engines and cars in general, much fun is had by all.
Headed to Puno, so excited to get to Peru, Puno though is a grey town and I do not recommend it as an entry point to Peru, it's some what anticlimatic. The floating islands of Uros are pretty and worth seeing, the island of Taquile has a lot of arches and people selling tourist tat.
Arequipa is the next town I stopped at, it's still quite grey and a whole lot bigger than I expected, it has some beautiful buildings, the cathedral is very impressive, it has the usual baroque altars and a massive organ but it is not over done (by South American standards).
Today I went to the Monastry of Santa Catalina, it's massive, a city within a city, it's painted blue and terracota, it's full of beautiful flower filled courtyards and at night it is lit up by candles, open fires and lamplight. The old rooms of the nuns are all on display, their courtyards, kitchens, cloisters, bathrooms, and a sizable art gallery and the rooms of the beatified Sister Ana, it's really worth the ridiculous entrance fee. It is peaceful and serene, wandering around this pretty haven you can imagine how it would have felt to live in this isolated world and how appealing that could be, away from the chaos of the ordinary world, protected by the vows and veils of faith.
The art is mostly 17th and 18th century, almost all of it is bad but the odd piece that is good is arresting due to it's lack of compettion. there is a beautiful rendition of the virgin and child, there is a startling crucifiction piece where the eyes of Christ actually address the onlooker as he alone looks directly out of the frame at you as he stumbles with his cross, hair pulled and jabbed at by the wooden staves of the Roman guard, it's almost pornographic in the nature of it's directness. There are two panels depicting God creating the world in seven days, without irony it displays a nippless Eve and a genital hidden Adam before they realise their nakedness. hmmmm, well I guess the point perhaps is lost in translation. All in all if you come to Arequipa check it out.
Cabanaconde the little town from where I started my Colca canyon trek is really cute and in the throws of a massive fiesta (another one). Streets full of cowboys and dancing people accompanied by the standard dodgy marching bands, at night the sky was lit up by fountains of sparks which showered over and out of the extremely dodgy bamboo towers that had been constructed to hold them, dodgy home made rockets and catherine wheels, two guys simply drove up in their car with the boot packed with explosives and built these things. Colca canyon was a beautiful two day hike, the last day of which is a solid uphill slog for two or three hours, the bus trip back was stunning past numerous look outs and with majestic condors gliding effortlessly on the wind currents.
Here in Peru as in Bolivia the guys have installed car horns that wolf whistle instead of honking, and every time a pretty girl (or in fact any girl) passes them in the streets the car horns all whistle, it's weird and slightly off putting.
Great things about Peru include that there are street side stalls that sell one of my favourite deserts, yes indeed you can buy creamed rice with a kind of sticky plum sauce everywhere, it's heaven in a styrofoam dish!
The favourite snack here is corn nuts and puffed corn which can be purchased on every street corner, you can also buy snacks which often taste like slightly sweetened puffed air. The dish of choice available cheaply and everywhere is a massive plate of "chinese" fried rice known here as Chifa, boring but filling!
The roads to Cuzco are closed at the moment, there is much protesting in the streets and road blocks, the same is true of the roads into the Amazon so we bought a ticket to Nazca and ended up in Lima, the bus conductor lady neglected to tell us where to get off. Ahhh the joys of a foreign language. Lima was a big grey city but the hostal we stayed in was amazing a whirling wooden staircase, huge imitation famous paintings, mirrors and statues (Michelangelos David being a particular favourite), they also had four pet turtles that wandered about at will and a furry part persian cat. Still I was glad to get out of there after a few days, and headed to Huaraz.
Huaraz is set in an absolutely stunning location surrounded by magnificent mountains, the town itself is small and sweet, the first place in Peru I can say without reservation that I like, the hills around here are called the Cordillera Blanca and they are a chain of amazing snow capped peaks. Today is the day Michael Jackson died, it was evocative of the death of Princess Diana Spencer for me as in again I walked into a hotel room in a foreign country and flicked on the t.v. to see it all unfolding on the BBC and CNN et al, it enhances the foreign-ness of death to confront it in such circumstances.
Since I have been here I have discovered some disturbing animals one we have dubbed the lleep (as that's the noise you make when you see one) or sometimes called a shama it's a cross between a sheep (or alpaca) and a llama, basically it looks like a sheep with a long neck!
Just got back from a four day trek in the Cordillera blanca, truly beautiful but cold as, snow capped mountains, stunning aqua lakes and creaking glaciers, loads of beautiful weird frozen flowers and plants that seem as stunned by the daily frost as I am. Every night we ate and ran for our sleeping bags as the winds rushing down the glaciers froze the mucus on the end of my nose. I am awfully glad to be back in a warm hostel it's crazy but beautiful out there. The trip back was plagued by strikes and punctured tires as we had to pass through protests and were trapped in a town called Caraz for 8 hours or so, it was o.k as the town had great Cerviche, which I am learning to love and I even tried beer flavoured ice cream for desert. Weird.
Today I head for Trujillo (again look north on your map).
Love N.J.
Well as you may have picked up by now all roads in Bolivia lead to La Paz!
After two nights at the tranquill lake titicaca I had to go back to La Paz as the biggest fiesta in their calendar year was on, and this year it coincides with Bolivia's bicentennary so as you can imagine it was huge!!!
The fiesta started at about 6:30 in the morning and went till after midnight, their were drunk people in the streets all day, the parade was endless, ladies in traditional Bolivian gear swirling their petticoats and shaking their tambourines, men in weird tiered wedding cake outfits with masks of the "Gran Poder" a chap who apparently smoked a pipe, young girls in decidedly unBolivian mini skirts and high boots marching and men in Jesters outfits with bells leaping down the streets every fourth or so group was a slick bunch of men in suits playing "the" song that the whole parade kept time to.
There were diablos (devil masks) accompanied by beautiful blue winged angels, their were Campesinos in traditional gear with fake babies or flowers in their cloth shoulder bags. There were real jesters in scary masks, men in cattle outfits and black slaves. There were girls in Inka indian mini dresses, men in leopard skins and feathery head dresses everywhere, seriously there must be a lot of very cold birds (of the avian kind) in Bolivia right now! My camera has never quite recovered from Uyuni so the photos I took just don't show the magnetude or the outfits but I hope they caught something of the spectacle.
Anyway needless to say it was massive and I spent most of the day up in "cementario" where the parade started watching the behind the scenes happenings and dancing into the crazy wee hours of the morning and avoiding kissing strange drunk Latin american men (eeeeeeew).
While on the subject I should tell you about Bolivian "fashion" for ladies it consists of a bowler hat, too small for your head and set at a jaunty angle, a blouse with a (preferably glittery) shawl over your shoulders, a long heavily pleated skirt also shimmery with a zillion lacey petticoats underneath and low flat slip on shoes also shimmery if possible. it's, erm.... interesting. For men fashion is trilby hat and suit, much nicer in fact quite stylish if only the men were better looking it would all be good.
Also did you know Bolivia has a Navy!!!? Useful for a landlocked country I'm sure, what optimists!!!
Isle del sol was great. it's unbelievably pretty, the walk along the centre of the island is so worth doing. I saw the rocks from which the Inca creation myths spawned. Isle del so is the Father of the male line and Isle del luna the female line. It's absolutely freezing at night and burning hot during the day but really pretty. The Inca ruins in the north have a very nice temple with a sacred well still working, infact Inca plumbing is still very much intact in most ruins and fairly impressive.
They also, certainly knew where to put their temples in order to maximise impact.
Back in Copacanana I saw cars being blessed, one day by a fellow wearing frian monk robes!!! Another day by several fellows in more traditional Bolivian campesino colours, the cars are washed and wreathed in flowers, the guys who do the blessings are carrying smouldering incense, opening bottles of champagne and beer, water and other fluids are sprinkled via flower head over the engines and cars in general, much fun is had by all.
Headed to Puno, so excited to get to Peru, Puno though is a grey town and I do not recommend it as an entry point to Peru, it's some what anticlimatic. The floating islands of Uros are pretty and worth seeing, the island of Taquile has a lot of arches and people selling tourist tat.
Arequipa is the next town I stopped at, it's still quite grey and a whole lot bigger than I expected, it has some beautiful buildings, the cathedral is very impressive, it has the usual baroque altars and a massive organ but it is not over done (by South American standards).
Today I went to the Monastry of Santa Catalina, it's massive, a city within a city, it's painted blue and terracota, it's full of beautiful flower filled courtyards and at night it is lit up by candles, open fires and lamplight. The old rooms of the nuns are all on display, their courtyards, kitchens, cloisters, bathrooms, and a sizable art gallery and the rooms of the beatified Sister Ana, it's really worth the ridiculous entrance fee. It is peaceful and serene, wandering around this pretty haven you can imagine how it would have felt to live in this isolated world and how appealing that could be, away from the chaos of the ordinary world, protected by the vows and veils of faith.
The art is mostly 17th and 18th century, almost all of it is bad but the odd piece that is good is arresting due to it's lack of compettion. there is a beautiful rendition of the virgin and child, there is a startling crucifiction piece where the eyes of Christ actually address the onlooker as he alone looks directly out of the frame at you as he stumbles with his cross, hair pulled and jabbed at by the wooden staves of the Roman guard, it's almost pornographic in the nature of it's directness. There are two panels depicting God creating the world in seven days, without irony it displays a nippless Eve and a genital hidden Adam before they realise their nakedness. hmmmm, well I guess the point perhaps is lost in translation. All in all if you come to Arequipa check it out.
Cabanaconde the little town from where I started my Colca canyon trek is really cute and in the throws of a massive fiesta (another one). Streets full of cowboys and dancing people accompanied by the standard dodgy marching bands, at night the sky was lit up by fountains of sparks which showered over and out of the extremely dodgy bamboo towers that had been constructed to hold them, dodgy home made rockets and catherine wheels, two guys simply drove up in their car with the boot packed with explosives and built these things. Colca canyon was a beautiful two day hike, the last day of which is a solid uphill slog for two or three hours, the bus trip back was stunning past numerous look outs and with majestic condors gliding effortlessly on the wind currents.
Here in Peru as in Bolivia the guys have installed car horns that wolf whistle instead of honking, and every time a pretty girl (or in fact any girl) passes them in the streets the car horns all whistle, it's weird and slightly off putting.
Great things about Peru include that there are street side stalls that sell one of my favourite deserts, yes indeed you can buy creamed rice with a kind of sticky plum sauce everywhere, it's heaven in a styrofoam dish!
The favourite snack here is corn nuts and puffed corn which can be purchased on every street corner, you can also buy snacks which often taste like slightly sweetened puffed air. The dish of choice available cheaply and everywhere is a massive plate of "chinese" fried rice known here as Chifa, boring but filling!
The roads to Cuzco are closed at the moment, there is much protesting in the streets and road blocks, the same is true of the roads into the Amazon so we bought a ticket to Nazca and ended up in Lima, the bus conductor lady neglected to tell us where to get off. Ahhh the joys of a foreign language. Lima was a big grey city but the hostal we stayed in was amazing a whirling wooden staircase, huge imitation famous paintings, mirrors and statues (Michelangelos David being a particular favourite), they also had four pet turtles that wandered about at will and a furry part persian cat. Still I was glad to get out of there after a few days, and headed to Huaraz.
Huaraz is set in an absolutely stunning location surrounded by magnificent mountains, the town itself is small and sweet, the first place in Peru I can say without reservation that I like, the hills around here are called the Cordillera Blanca and they are a chain of amazing snow capped peaks. Today is the day Michael Jackson died, it was evocative of the death of Princess Diana Spencer for me as in again I walked into a hotel room in a foreign country and flicked on the t.v. to see it all unfolding on the BBC and CNN et al, it enhances the foreign-ness of death to confront it in such circumstances.
Since I have been here I have discovered some disturbing animals one we have dubbed the lleep (as that's the noise you make when you see one) or sometimes called a shama it's a cross between a sheep (or alpaca) and a llama, basically it looks like a sheep with a long neck!
Just got back from a four day trek in the Cordillera blanca, truly beautiful but cold as, snow capped mountains, stunning aqua lakes and creaking glaciers, loads of beautiful weird frozen flowers and plants that seem as stunned by the daily frost as I am. Every night we ate and ran for our sleeping bags as the winds rushing down the glaciers froze the mucus on the end of my nose. I am awfully glad to be back in a warm hostel it's crazy but beautiful out there. The trip back was plagued by strikes and punctured tires as we had to pass through protests and were trapped in a town called Caraz for 8 hours or so, it was o.k as the town had great Cerviche, which I am learning to love and I even tried beer flavoured ice cream for desert. Weird.
Today I head for Trujillo (again look north on your map).
Love N.J.
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