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.