So this is the final stage of my holidays and soon I will be heading for home, but I think that first there a couple of myths that need getting out the way....About Rio....
And I don't think some people are going to like it....
My Rio experience started at the airport, at immigration. Now I don't know about you but I always find immigration officers slightly difficult, they look at you as though you shouldn't be there, that you are almost certainly a criminal on the run, or at best just a drug runner....In Rio airport they have developed this skill to the level of an art form. I will not say that the immigration officer actually threw my passport back at me, but she certainly slid it under the glass with sufficient force that it went straight past me and on to the floor.....Welcome to Rio!
I have booked a New Year package with Oswaldo at Gay Travel Brasil, I can't remember why, but I think it was because I wanted some information which I couldn't find, or maybe it was because I was having problems finding a hotel, whatever the reason, Oswaldo was very helpful and organised a New Year package for me which included a one day city tour and also transit to/from the airport, and at a price that was not a lot more than I was going to have to pay for a hotel which are extortionate prices in Rio at the best of times, let alone at New Year!
My hotel is the Merlin Copacabana Hotel in Avenida Princesa Isabela, (and the link that is there is to my review of it on TripAdvisor), which is really the very edge of Copacabana before you get to Leme. The hotel is literally only 5 minutes from the beach. I will say no more about the hotel here except that from New Year's Eve round until New Year's Day I had to use the lavatory in Reception because mine would not flush, and the shower was a joke...
So let's start with the tour, bearing in mind that I have been all over Peru on bus tours so have a bit of experience with them, all I can say is that this one suffered from a total lack of organisation. I was picked up late and then spent an hour on the bus as we picked up other people, we even went back past my own hotel nearly an hour after I had been picked up, finally we got to Sugar Loaf Mountain which luckily did not have much of a queue for the cable car, while we were standing in the queue the tour guide went to buy the tickets.
After spending nearly the entire day on the bus we had seen virtually nothing except the Cathedral which actually beats Coventry Cathedral hands down for ugliness, which I guess makes it a must see. We did stop outside a football stadium but I am not exactly sure why.
Eventually we arrive at the Corcovada funicular to go up to see Christ Redeemer, and are informed that we will have to wait until 8pm to get on the train up, by which time it will be dark. The alternatives are get a minibus which is going to cost BR$10 extra, or that they will put us on a tour the following morning. As I had only had 5 hours sleep I was happy to take the following day.(Getting a good nights sleep was a priority because the next day was, I was told going to be a late night and I probably wouldn't get any sleep at all, so that is one night of going out gone already).
That evening I head off to the Copacabana Beach, because you have to.....I spot a place where I can get a beer and maybe something to eat not far from the petrol station which graces the middle of the highway right next to the beach. I walk in and look around for a clean table, there aren't any. In fact all the table clothes are dirty and have obviously not been changed all day, but that apparently is normal because other people walk in and also sit at dirty tables.
I order a beer and unfortunately food too, before the beer even arrives two very plain prostitutes take up residence at the next table and start giving me the eye, I am lucky that I have a very wide field of vision so I can see what other people are doing without even looking a them directly. My beer arrives, but wait up, it is in an ice bucket and there are three beers not one...The inference is obvious. A few minutes later two more tarts arrive and sit down, one of them lights a cigarette even though it is a no smoking zone. At this stage I wish that I had not ordered food.
I will brazen it out. My food arrives, and the smoking tart leans over and asks me for a light, strange, 15 minutes ago she had a lighter of her own. I eat and get the waiter to open another bottle of beer, at which point one of the tarts leans over and starts to take the third beer from the bottle. A stupid move because I had a knife in my hand with which I gave her a sharp tap with the back edge of the blade.
In the morning I was collected at 8.15am, after one and a half hours on the bus, we drove back past my hotel again. We then headed for Sugar Loaf to drop some people off and headed for Corcovada again, arriving there we are told that the first train we can get it is at 5pm about 6 or 7 hours time. Again we are offered the option of a minibus at extra. Bored and annoyed I went and bought a packet of cigarettes which is the first time in over a month that I have smoked. Getting back to the station a Frenchman who is in the same tour asked if he could have a cigarette, his wife informed me that he hadn't smoked for five years.
Meanwhile the French have been talking to a Portuguese man who is from one of the cruise ships. He is sitting holding a wad of tickets, he had been there since early morning to buy them, and all the time people are arriving and getting off their coach and getting straight on the train, because their tour company had someone there early to buy the tickets. Where is our tour guide? In the queue waiting to buy tickets.
At this stage I threw in the towel and decided to drop the rest of the tour which goes nowhere, (the tour guide got the money back on the train tickets by the way although he didn't offer to give me mine back), and head for the Botanic Gardens which I have heard are excellent. I get myself a taxi and head there only to find that they are closing at 2pm because of New Year. In fact virtually everything was closed because of the New Year and after some questioning it seemed that most of the things I would like to see would not be open until Tuesday.
Moral: If you are doing this don't bother with a city tour, get up early, get a taxi to Sugar Loaf or Corcovada, and buy your own ticket.
I decide a coffee would go down nicely......In one of my guide books it says 'Do not expect to get a good cup of coffee because they export most of it', I can now edit that phrase to read 'Do no expect to get a cup of coffee.' Can you find a coffee shop? No you cannot. Around where I was staying you will have trouble finding somewhere to eat as well, unless you are prepared to go and have your evening meal at about 4pm, because there are so few restaurants that with both tourists and residents trying to eat at the same time there are long queues for anywhere decent.
Having said that the food is excellent, particularly in the 'buffet' type restaurants where you help yourself and then they weigh it and charge you by the 100grams, and the barbecue meats they serve are excellent. And the vegetarians are not forgotten as there are all sorts of things made with pulses, and same great salads too.
And here we can dispel another myth about Rio...Rio is expensive....Actually no it is not expensive. I am sure of course that you can find some horribly expensive restaurants if you try but using the buffet style restaurants as above you can get a good feed for less than €15...Beer runs out at less than €2 for a can and half a litre of Coke Zero about €1, for lunch you can pick up a couple of pies for about €2, if you can find one a decent cup of coffee and a cake will set you back €6 or so.
What can make Rio expensive is that you never see the change......Unless you carry small notes with you and then you can decide what the tip is going to be. I saw some Americans put down a BR$100 note for a restaurant bill of BR$70 and they never did get the change! Taxi drivers use the meter fitted but do the same thing so a BR$22 fare will cost you BR$30 if you don't have any change, and beware of the licensed tour operators that hang around your hotel, they are licensed and they will quote you a price of say BR$35, but expect to get asked for BR$50. Drinks in nightclubs can be expensive but that happens everywhere!!
So let's look at the beach itself....And I am only talking about Copacabana here, the postcards and the picture in magazines make it look like a long stretch of beautiful sand, right? Well no not really, in general it looks more like something left over from the First World War trenches that has since had a herd of elephants stampeding across it. There are big pits dug in it where presumably people have been burying their beer cans in it, and probably even more unsavoury things lower down and if it wasn't for the flood lights at night it would be easy to break a leg falling over on the holes and humps that are on it.
When it is occupied during the day (which was only for one afternoon while I was there because it was raining the rest of the time), it is a collection of haphazardly arranged faded red umbrellas and underneath them a collection of faded red haphazardly arranged people very few of whom accord with the imagined lissome, tanned, swaying-hipped figures that we are led to believe makes up the carioca population, and as for the men, please someone tell them that if you have a big fat belly do not roll up your T shirt to make a bra out of it.
And the city itself? Looks modern and clean doesn't it? Forget it....Most of Rio is a collection of nondescript high rise concrete buildings, generally very slightly tatty and needing a coat of paint separated by 4 and 8 lane highways. No I'm sorry, let me rephrase that...Most of Rio is a collection of 4 and 8 lane highways separated by a variety of nondescript high rise concrete buildings, generally very slightly tatty and needing a coat of paint. Around my hotel the ground floor of most of the buildings contained a collection of rather seedy looking shops and fast food outlets, although as you walk towards Ipanema they do get better.
Normally the process of 'urban renewal' involves the gradual replacement of buildings that have outlived their useful life, their replacements being modern buildings conforming to modern standards of design and aesthetics. As most of Rio was built within such a short space of time I am rather afraid that sooner or later they will have to knock the whole place down and start again.
But having said that there are areas which contain some fine examples of old colonial architecture much of which is being allowed to fall into decay to such an extent that it will soon be lost forever and such places could be the beginning of Rio's revival as a true tourist city.
Did I just suggest that it is not a tourist city? Let's get rid of another myth, almost by definition 'carioca' indicates friendliness and willingness to help, (look it up on Wikipedia if you like, and my guide book says the same somewhere), and yet compared to Peru, Chile, and even from my short time in Argentina, the people of Rio are the most unfriendly that I came across in South America. They are not actually rude, but unlike the Peruvians, for instance, they do not greet you with Good Morning, or Evening, or even Hi, in any language not even their own. In the four days in my hotel only one of the staff, the chambermaid, actually greeted me at all. People in Rio hardly ever smile either.
And yet this only seems to apply to people from Rio, I had the good fortune to end up sitting with people from other parts of Brazil and they were as friendly as any others that I met in South America and with the aid of my phrase book and their broken English we actually had a really good time!
As one Australian girl put it on the last morning I was there, when we were talking about Rio, 'It is not a place for tourists'. At the time I assumed she was talking about Lapa, but I realised afterwards that she was talking about Rio as a whole. The people of Rio it is said (!), know how to party, but I am afraid to say that the party is for them and not for anyone else.
To the two Australian guys who wanted to know where they could buy cocaine, (do I REALLY look like a person that might know where to buy drugs in a foreign city?), I could have helped you out because it was pretty obvious, but I do hope you enjoyed the nightclub I suggested you try out.
And yes the fireworks were spectacular and lived well up to expectations and beyond but I suspect that many go to see them out of a feeling of obligation, I know it was raining but even I was wearing shorts, but what a shame that not so many people wear the traditional white like they used to.
Of course, 'The Girl From Ipanema' is now just about old enough to be a great grandmother and although she might not need a Zimmer frame, no amount of silicon, Botox, or surgery can hide the fact that she is not what she was.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Friday, 6 January 2012
Cruising Cape Horn, Through Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego...MV Stella Australis Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, Argentina.
For years I have been waiting for someone to take me on a cruise, but as it obviously was never going to happen I decided to take myself.
Now this is a cruise with a difference as it is only four days and starts from Punta Arenas in Chile and goes to Ushuaia in Argentina via the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn. It is really a cruise for those who want to take pictures of birds and other wildlife and to be honest I was expecting the boat to be an old tub that had been retired from service somewhere in the Antarctic, so it was a bit of a surprise to find that it had only been in service for a year.
Another surprise was that instead of a large cupboard as a single cabin, which is what I was expecting, I actually got a twin cabin all to myself.
Apart from seeing the penguins on Christmas Day I was not really interested in the wildlife that much. Wildlife is notoriously unreliable at appearing to order, (last year around Alice Springs I was promised wedge tailed eagles, kangaroos, and camels, when we finally did see a wedge tailed eagle it was feeding off a dead kangaroo at the side of the road, and I never did see a camel), and the thought of getting up at 6am just to get into an inflatable dinghy and go and look at birds was all a bit too much........
Embarking on Christmas Eve, we finally left Punta Arenas after going round in circles for hours because a bag had gone missing, and were treated to 'Christmas dinner' that evening.
Apparently it was beyond the collective imaginations of the Hotel Manager, the Maitre D, and the waiting staff to accept the fact that they might have a single passenger, with no affiliations to any other passenger, on board, so my first difficulty was actually in finding a table where I might sit down and eat. This situation lasted until Boxing Day breakfast time when I finally threw a whoopsy in the middle of the restaurant as I had been moved to no less than three different tables under the watchful eye of three different waiters, none of whom would let me sit at a table 'because it is laid for two people'!
As said vessel was only half full I really could not see what the problem was, I dread to think what it would have been like if the cruise had been full. But I digress....
Midnight on Christmas Eve was the Captain's 'cocktail party', so having hit the g and t's big time, it was hardly surprising that I didn't bother to get out of bed the next day, and even less surprising that I was going to get togged up in three layers of clothing, waterproofs, and a lifejacket to look at birds......I did recover enough by the afternoon to risk life and limb to go and look at the Magellan penguins, one of which as you can see from the photos was kind enough to pose for me about four feet away from the side of the dinghy.
I will give the crew their due, they are very safety conscious and go to great lengths to make sure you disembark and embark according to the rules. Most of the waiting staff etc. are Chilean so they are all very sociable and speak to you ten times a day, and the bar staff have the normal Chilean problem in that they do not have the faintest idea how much gin to put in a glass before they add the tonic. This results in you being given a gin in a half pint glass with three ice cubes and enough space left for about one tablespoon of tonic.
This beautiful nearly new ship the MV Stella Australis has three beautiful lounge areas where you can sit and watch the scenery go past in comfort, but strangely hardly anybody else used them but me......Where was everyone else? In their cabins I suppose.
If anybody was looking for me I was usually to be found in the Sky Lounge on the 4th deck either having a mid morning nap after breakfast, or an afternoon nap after lunch, fortunately like most cruises they have a team of experts on board who give lectures and as the English version of these took place in the Sky Lounge, there was usually a disturbance early in the evening which woke me up in time for dinner.
Actually I must say that the food was not terribly brilliant. Presentation was amazing, but they seemed to have only two flavours in the kitchen, meat or fish. If it didn't have either fish bouillon or meat bouillon on it but had sugar on it, then it was dessert, if it didn't have any bouillon or sugar then it was salad....And who in their right mind produces a menu with a seafood starter, followed by seafood soup, followed by fish main course? Fortunately someone had thought to have some lamb standing by as an emergency, except that they said it has rosemary sauce but it was mint, and although it tasted like lamb when you first bit into it, after that it just tasted like meat (again).
They had a selection of pastas and sauces one day for lunch, one of my favourites, except the bolognese sauce did not have any meat in it....
The lecturers were very good, not so much when talking about the birds and fishes, which are not my line, but when chatting about glaciers and the indigenous peoples, who no longer exist. And we also got to see that documentary about Shackleton getting stuck in the ice, but I missed a couple of bits of that because I nodded off......
There are other cruises around this area but they last for about two weeks and go from Buenos Aires around to Valparaiso, and the ships are too big to use the smaller channels so we had some extra treats that you wouldn't normally see on one of these.
So apart from watching the mountains, which are by turns majestic or brooding, depending on the light and the amount of cloud, we got to travel through the smaller channels and because the cruise is for naturalists (that is WITH an 'al' in the middle) and people interested in geology etc. then there is a shore trip to the spectacular Pia Glacier. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but if you look to the left you can just about see one of the inflatables heading towards it which should give you some idea of the sheer size of it.
After passing the Pia Glacier our route took us along the Beagle Channel through the part that is known as Glacier Alley....I haven't posted all the pictures here but Sniffer Nicholls, my old geography master would have been in his element with hanging glaciers and this glacier and that glacier....As you pass by them there is a French glacier, a German glacier, an Italian glacier, and a Dutch glacier. On board ship they have this interesting idea to serve food and drinks accordingly, so champagne and cheese for the French, beer and sausages for the German, Patagonian pizza and red wine for the Italian, and finally meatballs and beer for the Dutch. By the time we had passed them all everyone was quite well oiled....
But early night this night after looking with trepidation at the weather and lots of checking of weather forecasts as tomorrow we arrive at the destination I have been waiting for, Cape Horn itself.
As everyone knows Cape Horn is notorious for its bad weather, even during high summer such as it is no. Some 10,000 people are known to have lost their lives trying to navigate the route around the Cape, and sometimes with the winds and currents against them sailors have been known to take weeks to round Cape Horn, fortunately we have engines and not sails but nevertheless with uncertain weather even this ship cannot always make the trip.
Luck and the weather is with us, and at nightfall the clouds begin to clear and not only were we able to approach Cape Horn Island, but we are able to land also and climb the 140 steps to the Cape Horn monument, meet the light house keeper's wife, and visit the small chapel next door as well.....
A forbidding and mysterious place, where little grows on the peat bog topsoil except for a few hardy plants and sedges, and to the south the next piece of land is Antarctica. Under darkening skies we all seemed quite subdued and very slightly overawed as we walked the duckboard walk from point to point (you are not allowed to actually stand on the ground for fear that the environment might be damaged and anyway it is soaking wet), and then it began to pour with rain.
Returning to the ship for a late breakfast we were in for an extra ride, as weather conditions often mean that the ship has to return to the Beagle Channel by the route it came, but for us the sea remained calm enough for us to actually go round the Cape and take a different route back.
Only a few minutes later and the sea became rough and as we sat eating the ship got up a bit of a roll until very soon we were seeing nothing but sky one minute and nothing but sea the next.
Cape Horn was not ready to let us have it all our own way it seemed.
Now this is a cruise with a difference as it is only four days and starts from Punta Arenas in Chile and goes to Ushuaia in Argentina via the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn. It is really a cruise for those who want to take pictures of birds and other wildlife and to be honest I was expecting the boat to be an old tub that had been retired from service somewhere in the Antarctic, so it was a bit of a surprise to find that it had only been in service for a year.
Another surprise was that instead of a large cupboard as a single cabin, which is what I was expecting, I actually got a twin cabin all to myself.
Apart from seeing the penguins on Christmas Day I was not really interested in the wildlife that much. Wildlife is notoriously unreliable at appearing to order, (last year around Alice Springs I was promised wedge tailed eagles, kangaroos, and camels, when we finally did see a wedge tailed eagle it was feeding off a dead kangaroo at the side of the road, and I never did see a camel), and the thought of getting up at 6am just to get into an inflatable dinghy and go and look at birds was all a bit too much........
Embarking on Christmas Eve, we finally left Punta Arenas after going round in circles for hours because a bag had gone missing, and were treated to 'Christmas dinner' that evening.
Apparently it was beyond the collective imaginations of the Hotel Manager, the Maitre D, and the waiting staff to accept the fact that they might have a single passenger, with no affiliations to any other passenger, on board, so my first difficulty was actually in finding a table where I might sit down and eat. This situation lasted until Boxing Day breakfast time when I finally threw a whoopsy in the middle of the restaurant as I had been moved to no less than three different tables under the watchful eye of three different waiters, none of whom would let me sit at a table 'because it is laid for two people'!
As said vessel was only half full I really could not see what the problem was, I dread to think what it would have been like if the cruise had been full. But I digress....
Midnight on Christmas Eve was the Captain's 'cocktail party', so having hit the g and t's big time, it was hardly surprising that I didn't bother to get out of bed the next day, and even less surprising that I was going to get togged up in three layers of clothing, waterproofs, and a lifejacket to look at birds......I did recover enough by the afternoon to risk life and limb to go and look at the Magellan penguins, one of which as you can see from the photos was kind enough to pose for me about four feet away from the side of the dinghy.
I will give the crew their due, they are very safety conscious and go to great lengths to make sure you disembark and embark according to the rules. Most of the waiting staff etc. are Chilean so they are all very sociable and speak to you ten times a day, and the bar staff have the normal Chilean problem in that they do not have the faintest idea how much gin to put in a glass before they add the tonic. This results in you being given a gin in a half pint glass with three ice cubes and enough space left for about one tablespoon of tonic.
This beautiful nearly new ship the MV Stella Australis has three beautiful lounge areas where you can sit and watch the scenery go past in comfort, but strangely hardly anybody else used them but me......Where was everyone else? In their cabins I suppose.
If anybody was looking for me I was usually to be found in the Sky Lounge on the 4th deck either having a mid morning nap after breakfast, or an afternoon nap after lunch, fortunately like most cruises they have a team of experts on board who give lectures and as the English version of these took place in the Sky Lounge, there was usually a disturbance early in the evening which woke me up in time for dinner.
Actually I must say that the food was not terribly brilliant. Presentation was amazing, but they seemed to have only two flavours in the kitchen, meat or fish. If it didn't have either fish bouillon or meat bouillon on it but had sugar on it, then it was dessert, if it didn't have any bouillon or sugar then it was salad....And who in their right mind produces a menu with a seafood starter, followed by seafood soup, followed by fish main course? Fortunately someone had thought to have some lamb standing by as an emergency, except that they said it has rosemary sauce but it was mint, and although it tasted like lamb when you first bit into it, after that it just tasted like meat (again).
They had a selection of pastas and sauces one day for lunch, one of my favourites, except the bolognese sauce did not have any meat in it....
The lecturers were very good, not so much when talking about the birds and fishes, which are not my line, but when chatting about glaciers and the indigenous peoples, who no longer exist. And we also got to see that documentary about Shackleton getting stuck in the ice, but I missed a couple of bits of that because I nodded off......
There are other cruises around this area but they last for about two weeks and go from Buenos Aires around to Valparaiso, and the ships are too big to use the smaller channels so we had some extra treats that you wouldn't normally see on one of these.
So apart from watching the mountains, which are by turns majestic or brooding, depending on the light and the amount of cloud, we got to travel through the smaller channels and because the cruise is for naturalists (that is WITH an 'al' in the middle) and people interested in geology etc. then there is a shore trip to the spectacular Pia Glacier. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but if you look to the left you can just about see one of the inflatables heading towards it which should give you some idea of the sheer size of it.
After passing the Pia Glacier our route took us along the Beagle Channel through the part that is known as Glacier Alley....I haven't posted all the pictures here but Sniffer Nicholls, my old geography master would have been in his element with hanging glaciers and this glacier and that glacier....As you pass by them there is a French glacier, a German glacier, an Italian glacier, and a Dutch glacier. On board ship they have this interesting idea to serve food and drinks accordingly, so champagne and cheese for the French, beer and sausages for the German, Patagonian pizza and red wine for the Italian, and finally meatballs and beer for the Dutch. By the time we had passed them all everyone was quite well oiled....
But early night this night after looking with trepidation at the weather and lots of checking of weather forecasts as tomorrow we arrive at the destination I have been waiting for, Cape Horn itself.
As everyone knows Cape Horn is notorious for its bad weather, even during high summer such as it is no. Some 10,000 people are known to have lost their lives trying to navigate the route around the Cape, and sometimes with the winds and currents against them sailors have been known to take weeks to round Cape Horn, fortunately we have engines and not sails but nevertheless with uncertain weather even this ship cannot always make the trip.
Luck and the weather is with us, and at nightfall the clouds begin to clear and not only were we able to approach Cape Horn Island, but we are able to land also and climb the 140 steps to the Cape Horn monument, meet the light house keeper's wife, and visit the small chapel next door as well.....
A forbidding and mysterious place, where little grows on the peat bog topsoil except for a few hardy plants and sedges, and to the south the next piece of land is Antarctica. Under darkening skies we all seemed quite subdued and very slightly overawed as we walked the duckboard walk from point to point (you are not allowed to actually stand on the ground for fear that the environment might be damaged and anyway it is soaking wet), and then it began to pour with rain.
Returning to the ship for a late breakfast we were in for an extra ride, as weather conditions often mean that the ship has to return to the Beagle Channel by the route it came, but for us the sea remained calm enough for us to actually go round the Cape and take a different route back.
Only a few minutes later and the sea became rough and as we sat eating the ship got up a bit of a roll until very soon we were seeing nothing but sky one minute and nothing but sea the next.
Cape Horn was not ready to let us have it all our own way it seemed.
Chile - Santiago, Where I Hoped to Have a Rest, and Punta Arenas, Where I Went to Catch The Cruise
Whereas in Peru my time was taken up with looking at things, mainly Inka ruins, and as there were some spare days between Peru and joining a cruise, Santiago was supposed to be a bit of a break when I could sleep late, and maybe, just maybe, go out at night.
I am staying Providencia, a leafy suburb a little away from the city centre, and oh how leafy it is. I am getting used to seeing street trees and trees in parks that have been allowed to reach maturity and serve their purpose, to provide shade during the hot summer days, rather than the ones you get in Greece that have been massacred annually by a Greek with a chain saw since the day they were planted.
Joy oh joy, there is a kettle in the room, and even a small cooker and a microwave, and the floor slopes downhill towards the window which you can open to its fullest extent, and the room is on the 14th floor so there is nothing to stop you jumping out if you want. There's a swimming pool and a gym too, so I went and had a look at them.
Chilean people are just as friendly as Peruvian people and according to a Norwegian that I was sitting next to in a nightclub at 4am, do not speak Spanish at all really....He told me he had lived in Spain for 20 years and he couldn't understand a word they were saying.
By all appearances Santiago is a lot safer then Lima is supposed to be, you see very few policeman on the streets and none of the barbed wire and electric fences atop the walls around houses and I had been told it was safer too.
After one walk into the city centre I decided it was time to learn to use the Metro....For less than a euro you can anywhere you want, although during rush hours the price goes up, but it is an experience taking the Metro at about 7pm, getting on to the train is difficult in itself, getting off is even harder because of the number of people that have got on after you and are now blocking the doorway.
Like many South American cities there are shades of the colonial past with some fine buildings, and little corners where old buildings remain, but much of the city has become high rise.
In Lima if you are wearing shorts and sandals you are almost certainly a tourist, but here in Santiago because of the much warmer climate such dress is de rigeur and you do not look out of place.
The central square is the place to be and here you will find artists plying their trade with varying degrees of success, a daily comedy show, and a couple of nice cafes where you can get food and really bad coffee, unless you go down the double expresso with milk route like I have been doing, and if you want to do a bit of shopping then this is the place for you to go girls. The place is riddled with so many shops and arcades that you can be here for weeks.
The national museum on the main square is fascinating, and although all the signs are in Spanish it is amazing how much you can pick up reading about such famous Chileans as Tomas Armstrong, Bernardo O'Higgins, and Benjamin McKenna. The museum goes up to the time of military rule which is fair enough I suppose, but is well organised and signed unlike the incredibly unfriendly, disorganised building they call the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
In Peru I was told to enjoy the food there while I could, because the food in Chile was not good, but within a stones throw of my hotel I found several very good restaurants, a couple of bars that pour huge gin and tonics, and several prostitutes.....They also have a lot more street cafes in Santiago than they seem to have in Peru, probably a result of the weather.
Bills are bit frightening when you get them though because they use the $ sign for Chilean Pesos, so you end up with a bill that says $10,500 for dinner, which works out at about €15, so prices here are about the same as in Peru. I don't know whether this is usual or not, but the restaurant I used, insisted on giving me another two glasses of wine every time I went there, even though there was only on glass on the bill.....
I did try to get on a one day wine tour while I was in Santiago, but as they are very popular you have to book them well in advance!
For a good view of Santiago you can take the funicular railway to the top of the Metropolitan Park, the day I did it I was treated to the life history of an American as he was telling it to a Chilean girl on the way up to the top. I gave her a pitying look as I got off a the top.....On the way up if you want you can get off the funicular and visit the zoo. When you get to the top there is a splendid view of a mobile phone mast......
The Central Station is marked on the tourist map, but I don't really know why, although it does have a fascinating roof line, but nearby is Quinta Normal set in extensive gardens which also contains the Railway Museum which was shut, the Natural History Museum, which was shut, and the Science Museum, by which time it was lunchtime. The best part of the gardens was also shut and had been for some time judging by the posters on the hoardings around it, and that was as close as I got to seeing an araucaria in its native country.
Quinta Normal must be one of the largest Metro stations in the world but for the life of me I cannot work out why.
In Cusco I got my laundry done in three hours and it cost me €6, in Santiago it took a day to get it collected and a day to get it back and it cost about €70 although they had ironed the handkerchiefs, I will know better next time and take it to the place round the corner from the hotel.
After two extreme hangovers when all I could smell the next day was juniper berries, and one near hangover when I got involved with a surprise 50th birthday party for someone I didn't even know, I left Santiago and flew to Punta Arenas, which is nearly as far as you can go in Chile without ending up in Antarctica.
I don't really know what to say about Punta Arenas except that here they only have the official Chilean power points that none of my adaptors or plugs will fit, not even the 'europlug' with flexible pins, not to be outdone by anything electrical I cut the plug off the end of one of my many power leads and pushed the bare wires into the socket and held them in place with matches borrowed from the hall porter.
A bit of a one horse town, on a Friday night the most popular place to eat was the pizza shop, although I found a place upstairs in a side road with a waitress with buck teeth and hairy legs, reminded me very much of a place in Beaufort Street in Perth many years ago. Excellent steak with no less than three fried eggs on top and about half a ton of chips.......It was here that I was introduced to a drink called 'Seaman's Shot', please don't even go there.......
Next day I joined the cruise!!!!
I am staying Providencia, a leafy suburb a little away from the city centre, and oh how leafy it is. I am getting used to seeing street trees and trees in parks that have been allowed to reach maturity and serve their purpose, to provide shade during the hot summer days, rather than the ones you get in Greece that have been massacred annually by a Greek with a chain saw since the day they were planted.
Joy oh joy, there is a kettle in the room, and even a small cooker and a microwave, and the floor slopes downhill towards the window which you can open to its fullest extent, and the room is on the 14th floor so there is nothing to stop you jumping out if you want. There's a swimming pool and a gym too, so I went and had a look at them.
Chilean people are just as friendly as Peruvian people and according to a Norwegian that I was sitting next to in a nightclub at 4am, do not speak Spanish at all really....He told me he had lived in Spain for 20 years and he couldn't understand a word they were saying.
By all appearances Santiago is a lot safer then Lima is supposed to be, you see very few policeman on the streets and none of the barbed wire and electric fences atop the walls around houses and I had been told it was safer too.
After one walk into the city centre I decided it was time to learn to use the Metro....For less than a euro you can anywhere you want, although during rush hours the price goes up, but it is an experience taking the Metro at about 7pm, getting on to the train is difficult in itself, getting off is even harder because of the number of people that have got on after you and are now blocking the doorway.
Like many South American cities there are shades of the colonial past with some fine buildings, and little corners where old buildings remain, but much of the city has become high rise.
In Lima if you are wearing shorts and sandals you are almost certainly a tourist, but here in Santiago because of the much warmer climate such dress is de rigeur and you do not look out of place.
The central square is the place to be and here you will find artists plying their trade with varying degrees of success, a daily comedy show, and a couple of nice cafes where you can get food and really bad coffee, unless you go down the double expresso with milk route like I have been doing, and if you want to do a bit of shopping then this is the place for you to go girls. The place is riddled with so many shops and arcades that you can be here for weeks.
The national museum on the main square is fascinating, and although all the signs are in Spanish it is amazing how much you can pick up reading about such famous Chileans as Tomas Armstrong, Bernardo O'Higgins, and Benjamin McKenna. The museum goes up to the time of military rule which is fair enough I suppose, but is well organised and signed unlike the incredibly unfriendly, disorganised building they call the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
In Peru I was told to enjoy the food there while I could, because the food in Chile was not good, but within a stones throw of my hotel I found several very good restaurants, a couple of bars that pour huge gin and tonics, and several prostitutes.....They also have a lot more street cafes in Santiago than they seem to have in Peru, probably a result of the weather.
Bills are bit frightening when you get them though because they use the $ sign for Chilean Pesos, so you end up with a bill that says $10,500 for dinner, which works out at about €15, so prices here are about the same as in Peru. I don't know whether this is usual or not, but the restaurant I used, insisted on giving me another two glasses of wine every time I went there, even though there was only on glass on the bill.....
I did try to get on a one day wine tour while I was in Santiago, but as they are very popular you have to book them well in advance!
For a good view of Santiago you can take the funicular railway to the top of the Metropolitan Park, the day I did it I was treated to the life history of an American as he was telling it to a Chilean girl on the way up to the top. I gave her a pitying look as I got off a the top.....On the way up if you want you can get off the funicular and visit the zoo. When you get to the top there is a splendid view of a mobile phone mast......
The Central Station is marked on the tourist map, but I don't really know why, although it does have a fascinating roof line, but nearby is Quinta Normal set in extensive gardens which also contains the Railway Museum which was shut, the Natural History Museum, which was shut, and the Science Museum, by which time it was lunchtime. The best part of the gardens was also shut and had been for some time judging by the posters on the hoardings around it, and that was as close as I got to seeing an araucaria in its native country.
Quinta Normal must be one of the largest Metro stations in the world but for the life of me I cannot work out why.
In Cusco I got my laundry done in three hours and it cost me €6, in Santiago it took a day to get it collected and a day to get it back and it cost about €70 although they had ironed the handkerchiefs, I will know better next time and take it to the place round the corner from the hotel.
After two extreme hangovers when all I could smell the next day was juniper berries, and one near hangover when I got involved with a surprise 50th birthday party for someone I didn't even know, I left Santiago and flew to Punta Arenas, which is nearly as far as you can go in Chile without ending up in Antarctica.
I don't really know what to say about Punta Arenas except that here they only have the official Chilean power points that none of my adaptors or plugs will fit, not even the 'europlug' with flexible pins, not to be outdone by anything electrical I cut the plug off the end of one of my many power leads and pushed the bare wires into the socket and held them in place with matches borrowed from the hall porter.
A bit of a one horse town, on a Friday night the most popular place to eat was the pizza shop, although I found a place upstairs in a side road with a waitress with buck teeth and hairy legs, reminded me very much of a place in Beaufort Street in Perth many years ago. Excellent steak with no less than three fried eggs on top and about half a ton of chips.......It was here that I was introduced to a drink called 'Seaman's Shot', please don't even go there.......
Next day I joined the cruise!!!!
Peru - The Food, The Drinks, The Prices, The People....And Fibre Optic Networks
Just a few more words about Peru before we leave for Chile...
The people in Peru are wonderful! They are polite and even in the hotels if they see you ten times in one day they always speak. In Lima they seem to be almost quite formal a lot of the time. And they are helpful too, rarely do you have to pick up your suitcase as somebody will usually get to it first! They also have a great sense of humour and smile a lot! They are also quite happy to chat on to you even though you do not understand a word of what they are saying, for those who are linguistically challenged, such as myself, in many places you will find that they do understand English, but a phrase book and learning a few words particularly the numbers and general greetings will be very helpful and make you more popular.
As for food, this is sometimes a problem for visitors to a country but really the food in Peru is some of the best you will get anywhere. OK so they eat guinea pig, I just could not bring myself to do that because I used to keep them as pets! But let's look at everything else....Lomo Saltado is one of their 'national dishes', and is absolutely delicious, steak, which is something I rarely eat, they manage to cook 'well done' without it being tough, and the chicken tastes like chicken, and again they have their own ways of cooking it!
For a main course you can expect to pay between about €10 to €15, in a reasonable class of restaurant such as Cafe de la Paz in Miraflores. Or in El Parquetito which is nearby, about the same, except that here they make an amazing chicken, avocado, and mayonnaise sandwich for lunchtime!
In Cusco food tends to be a little more expensive, probably because it is a big tourist centre, one particular restaurant springs to mind here, which is the Inka Grill on the Plaza de Armes, mainly because it has the most amazing dessert menu which includes bread and butter pudding!
Two further restaurants in Cusco, away from the main square are Baco in Calle Ruinas, where the chef refuses to cook the lamb chops anything other than rare, and The Fallen Angel, which has old enamel bath tubs with goldfish in them with glass tops for tables.
If you really must there is fast food such as the dreaded MacDonalds or KFC, and in Miraflores there is a street that is marked on the map as 'Pizza Street' so you can guess what they sell there.
The guide books have dire warnings about not eating salads and avoiding all 'uncooked' foods, and also about buying food from street vendors, but I think that this going a bit too far, particularly if the food is barbecued. And if you are going to avoid 'uncooked food' then this means you are not going to be able to enjoy the vast range of fruits and fruit juices that are normally available as part of breakfast, and are frequently offered as desserts at other meals. During my stay in Peru, no matter which hotel I was in, the fruit juices offered for breakfast were freshly prepared and at Heliconia Lodge in the jungle there was not a sign of orange juice at all!
Most hotels seem to include breakfast as standard, this is usually fresh fruit, fresh juices, cereals, breads, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, cold meats, and cheeses.
The coffee is often not terribly good generally. I found that the best way to get a good cup of coffee was to order a double espresso and then put milk in it, similarly if you are English then you might not find the tea to your taste so best take your own tea bags!
During my stay I was using 'tourist class' hotels, so about 3* I guess. This is not because I am a cheapskate, but because you meet friendlier people in such hotels, and because these hotels tend to be locally owned rather than the big 'chain hotels' who want only to repatriate the profits to their own country of origin. In general you will find that even these hotels are more expensive than in Greece, it is difficult to find a room for less than about €70 per night, although you can find hostel accommodation for about half this price, and you do not even get a kettle in the room. So for those who complain that Greece is expensive then I suggest they stop complaining or go somewhere else!
In Peru the national drink is Pisco, which is distilled from grapes and is 'sort of like brandy', usually served as a Pisco Sour which is made from pisco, lemon juice, and raw egg white shaken together. For those of you worried about food poisoning then of course you will realise that raw egg is one of the best ways of getting it, however the combination of alcohol and the acid from the lemon is a sure fire way of killing any bacteria along with most of your taste buds. As you would expect I found the Pisco Sour absolutely undrinkable because I cannot stand lemon, unless it is diluted with gin, however the Pisco Sour is a certain way to get a hangover quite cheaply. Bottled beer made locally will set you back about €2 for a small bottle, and about €3 for an imported type like 'Sol'. Peruvian wine by the glass is a similar amount, they make an excellent Merlot.
So where do the fibre optic networks come in to all this?
Many would consider that Peru and South America in general, are 'third world', throughout Peru, Internet access is usually free and very fast, even quite small villages will often have a 'WiFi' point stuck on top of a building somewhere, I only make a point of this because as the phone lines are generally above ground you can see and be amazed by the fibre optic network in Peru and all around South America, while we in Greece and many other European countries are still waiting, waiting, waiting........
The people in Peru are wonderful! They are polite and even in the hotels if they see you ten times in one day they always speak. In Lima they seem to be almost quite formal a lot of the time. And they are helpful too, rarely do you have to pick up your suitcase as somebody will usually get to it first! They also have a great sense of humour and smile a lot! They are also quite happy to chat on to you even though you do not understand a word of what they are saying, for those who are linguistically challenged, such as myself, in many places you will find that they do understand English, but a phrase book and learning a few words particularly the numbers and general greetings will be very helpful and make you more popular.
As for food, this is sometimes a problem for visitors to a country but really the food in Peru is some of the best you will get anywhere. OK so they eat guinea pig, I just could not bring myself to do that because I used to keep them as pets! But let's look at everything else....Lomo Saltado is one of their 'national dishes', and is absolutely delicious, steak, which is something I rarely eat, they manage to cook 'well done' without it being tough, and the chicken tastes like chicken, and again they have their own ways of cooking it!
For a main course you can expect to pay between about €10 to €15, in a reasonable class of restaurant such as Cafe de la Paz in Miraflores. Or in El Parquetito which is nearby, about the same, except that here they make an amazing chicken, avocado, and mayonnaise sandwich for lunchtime!
In Cusco food tends to be a little more expensive, probably because it is a big tourist centre, one particular restaurant springs to mind here, which is the Inka Grill on the Plaza de Armes, mainly because it has the most amazing dessert menu which includes bread and butter pudding!
Two further restaurants in Cusco, away from the main square are Baco in Calle Ruinas, where the chef refuses to cook the lamb chops anything other than rare, and The Fallen Angel, which has old enamel bath tubs with goldfish in them with glass tops for tables.
If you really must there is fast food such as the dreaded MacDonalds or KFC, and in Miraflores there is a street that is marked on the map as 'Pizza Street' so you can guess what they sell there.
The guide books have dire warnings about not eating salads and avoiding all 'uncooked' foods, and also about buying food from street vendors, but I think that this going a bit too far, particularly if the food is barbecued. And if you are going to avoid 'uncooked food' then this means you are not going to be able to enjoy the vast range of fruits and fruit juices that are normally available as part of breakfast, and are frequently offered as desserts at other meals. During my stay in Peru, no matter which hotel I was in, the fruit juices offered for breakfast were freshly prepared and at Heliconia Lodge in the jungle there was not a sign of orange juice at all!
Most hotels seem to include breakfast as standard, this is usually fresh fruit, fresh juices, cereals, breads, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, cold meats, and cheeses.
The coffee is often not terribly good generally. I found that the best way to get a good cup of coffee was to order a double espresso and then put milk in it, similarly if you are English then you might not find the tea to your taste so best take your own tea bags!
During my stay I was using 'tourist class' hotels, so about 3* I guess. This is not because I am a cheapskate, but because you meet friendlier people in such hotels, and because these hotels tend to be locally owned rather than the big 'chain hotels' who want only to repatriate the profits to their own country of origin. In general you will find that even these hotels are more expensive than in Greece, it is difficult to find a room for less than about €70 per night, although you can find hostel accommodation for about half this price, and you do not even get a kettle in the room. So for those who complain that Greece is expensive then I suggest they stop complaining or go somewhere else!
In Peru the national drink is Pisco, which is distilled from grapes and is 'sort of like brandy', usually served as a Pisco Sour which is made from pisco, lemon juice, and raw egg white shaken together. For those of you worried about food poisoning then of course you will realise that raw egg is one of the best ways of getting it, however the combination of alcohol and the acid from the lemon is a sure fire way of killing any bacteria along with most of your taste buds. As you would expect I found the Pisco Sour absolutely undrinkable because I cannot stand lemon, unless it is diluted with gin, however the Pisco Sour is a certain way to get a hangover quite cheaply. Bottled beer made locally will set you back about €2 for a small bottle, and about €3 for an imported type like 'Sol'. Peruvian wine by the glass is a similar amount, they make an excellent Merlot.
So where do the fibre optic networks come in to all this?
Many would consider that Peru and South America in general, are 'third world', throughout Peru, Internet access is usually free and very fast, even quite small villages will often have a 'WiFi' point stuck on top of a building somewhere, I only make a point of this because as the phone lines are generally above ground you can see and be amazed by the fibre optic network in Peru and all around South America, while we in Greece and many other European countries are still waiting, waiting, waiting........
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Peru - The Amazon Jungle, I Get To Wear A Pink Plastic Poncho and Try The Local Alcohol......
I finally found out why I had to get a flight to Iquitos at 7.45am, because the transfer launch to my hotel in the jungle only leaves Iquitos in the morning and if I arrive any later then I miss it and have to pay for a private hire boat to get me there!
As it happens my flight was delayed by two hours anyway, I wish I had known I could have had another two hours sleep!
Arriving in Iquitos eventually I am treated to a hair raising ride from the airport to the port where there is no transfer boat because while they are waiting for me they have taken other guests out on a little cruise....With visions of being dumped on the river side in a floating restaurant surrounded by a mass of humanity which appears to mainly live its life up on stilts, I sit and wait.....
I have left my big suitcase in Lima as I am only here for a three nights, I think the tour guide was thankful for that as he helps me on to something that looks as though it was used in the filming of The African Queen.....And I wonder whether we will get to where we are going and why the outboard motor is wrapped up with clingfilm.
As we cruise down the Amazon the first thing I notice is the sheer size of the river. We are following one bank of the river and although you can see the other side, it is little more than a line of green. Later when we reach the hotel the river appears much narrower, but that opposite bank is actually a large island in the middle. Some of the islands in the Amazon are large enough that they have lagoons in the middle of them especially when the water is higher during the rainy season as it is now. It is quite amazing how much vegetation there is floating in the river and a couple of time quite large trees went floating past along with complete patches of grasses where the banks of the river get washed away.
Arriving after about an hour at the ‘hotel’ we disembark and a small army of porters arrive to carry our suitcases, this temporary ‘party’ will be together for the next three days, although we are joined on the last day by four Australians.
Little did I realise what delights are in store.....The hotel is more of a lodge, no windows just mosquito net, no electricity except for an hour in the morning and from 6pm til 10pm., no phones, no mobiles (except for a weak signal half way down the jetty steps), and so no Internet! Fresh water is provided from the river and filtered and purified on site, and how strange to see a septic tank high above the ground which it has to be other wise it would fill up with river water during rainy season!
Immediately we are hustled into lunch (there is NOTHING nearby so all meals are provided), were the waiter/barman, Limber, fusses around us making sure we get enough to eat. Every meals has fresh fruit and fresh juice it, an no orange juice, but every other imaginable fruit!
The hotel parrot, Pedro, comes in to see the new visitors and find out what is for lunch. He never flies anywhere only walks and climbs, possibly he is too fat as a result of having too much ham at breakfast......
Apart from the sounds of nature there is no noise at this place, and somehow even if you hear someone talking it seems as though they are at a distance as the surrounding jungle seems to absorb noise. Already I am beginning to like it here....
No peace for the wicked, we are bundled back into a canoe and taken off to see the pink dolphins. Wildlife is very unpredictable and I didnt’ expect to see any but we did, from a distance....And after that we go fishing while our guide tells us more about the river and the jungle.
Returning to the hotel there is time to relax...And I like it here, after the hectic pace of Cusco, Puno, and Lima, it is peaceful...So peaceful.
Dinner is at 8.00pm and if you are not there they come looking for you, but then Limber knows where you are because he is behind the bar making pisco sours, and you are on the other side of it drinking them! A couple more drinks and bring the diary up to date, sit on the river bank and listen to the night noises and then the gennie goes off and it is time for bed!
There is an early morning walking tour at 6am, I think the guide went on his own as it 6.15am he is sitting there all by himself, I wave to him and go back to bed!
Later that morning we take the jungle walk and this is rainforest and it is wet underfoot so they give us all wellington boots. It is supposed to be two hours but turns into three because Victor, the short Peruvian with a big machete, can see that we are enjoying ourselves. Two of the Peruvians (I have christened the female half of the duo, Norma, she has a chest like Nurse Diesel), keep disappearing into the shrubbery. I think they are in love but possibly not with each other. The two other Peruvians, mother and daughter from Cusco, have lots of questions. Victor, the guide, thinks he is Percy Edwards and keep making animal and bird noises supposedly to attract them in our direction. While he is pointing out one monkey in a tree in front of us, there are three right behind us watching us.
Next year my garden will look like this, a not too dense slightly overgrown jungle shrubbery!
Not so many flowers as I had hoped, but lots of types of Heliconia which is where the lodge gets its name, lots of huge butterflies but they are all supersonic powered and fly about at such a speed that you never get a picture of them.
Lunch is more fresh fruit and juice, and really whatever you want but you have to order it at breakfast time, and you order dinner at lunchtime.
And I still haven’t told you the reason for the pink plastic poncho.....It is pouring with rain of course, but then you would have realised that. My attire is jungle dress, wellies, camo shorts, t shirt, and the reason I really look so odd is because there is a life jacket under the poncho.
We are visiting a local booze factory where they make the local firewater from fermented sugar cane, the pictures are of the press to get the juice out, the thing up on a stand is a canoe where they ferment the juice, and I am standing next to the still....George Kassevetis would love it!!!! And they only ferment the juice for 24 hours before they distill it, would that raki only took that long.
The large bowl affair is where they put the juice from the cane of they are just going to boil it up to make syrup. It doesn’t get used much!
After the visit to the still we go further along the river to ‘the bar’, where we meet the maker.It is obviously a popular place because there are well trodden tracks coming into it from various directions. Here you can buy and try...I try but don’t buy, for a start it would never get back to Crete, but my favourite is the medicinal one which has tree bark and plants in it. After a glass of the four varieties he makes I am sailing and don’t need to get a boat because I can walk on water, a feat which I attempt when I go to get back in the boat, with considerable amount of failure.
Sometimes things happen when you are on holiday, sometimes they are unexpected, and in this case I fell in love...With the jungle. And everyone noticed!
Tomorrow is last morning here and I really do not want to go...But first we visit a local village called Palmera. I don’t know whether the people here mind being a tourist attraction, I guess they probably don’t as it brings in some much needed cash apart from the handouts they get from various charities. But here they have electricity, when they have fuel for the generator, and they have a solar powered satellite phone which means that fewer people die of curable illnesses, they have fresh fish from the river, fresh fruit and vegetables from the jungle, and these days fresh, clean water too, something which we take for granted.
And the children learn two languages, their own and Spanish.
A bit of commercialism comes to the fore as we taken to a ‘typical’ native hut and get to do a typical native dance if we want....And have a go with a blowpipe, oh yes, and get to buy some of the native crafts...Or make a donation! But it is worth it.
Later The African Queen leaves for Iquitos and this means the end of my stay in Peru.
Eighteen busy days of folklore, mystery, mythology, history, and far too much food, I really need another two weeks but Chile calls......
And there are photos here
As it happens my flight was delayed by two hours anyway, I wish I had known I could have had another two hours sleep!
Arriving in Iquitos eventually I am treated to a hair raising ride from the airport to the port where there is no transfer boat because while they are waiting for me they have taken other guests out on a little cruise....With visions of being dumped on the river side in a floating restaurant surrounded by a mass of humanity which appears to mainly live its life up on stilts, I sit and wait.....
I have left my big suitcase in Lima as I am only here for a three nights, I think the tour guide was thankful for that as he helps me on to something that looks as though it was used in the filming of The African Queen.....And I wonder whether we will get to where we are going and why the outboard motor is wrapped up with clingfilm.
As we cruise down the Amazon the first thing I notice is the sheer size of the river. We are following one bank of the river and although you can see the other side, it is little more than a line of green. Later when we reach the hotel the river appears much narrower, but that opposite bank is actually a large island in the middle. Some of the islands in the Amazon are large enough that they have lagoons in the middle of them especially when the water is higher during the rainy season as it is now. It is quite amazing how much vegetation there is floating in the river and a couple of time quite large trees went floating past along with complete patches of grasses where the banks of the river get washed away.
Arriving after about an hour at the ‘hotel’ we disembark and a small army of porters arrive to carry our suitcases, this temporary ‘party’ will be together for the next three days, although we are joined on the last day by four Australians.
Little did I realise what delights are in store.....The hotel is more of a lodge, no windows just mosquito net, no electricity except for an hour in the morning and from 6pm til 10pm., no phones, no mobiles (except for a weak signal half way down the jetty steps), and so no Internet! Fresh water is provided from the river and filtered and purified on site, and how strange to see a septic tank high above the ground which it has to be other wise it would fill up with river water during rainy season!
Immediately we are hustled into lunch (there is NOTHING nearby so all meals are provided), were the waiter/barman, Limber, fusses around us making sure we get enough to eat. Every meals has fresh fruit and fresh juice it, an no orange juice, but every other imaginable fruit!
The hotel parrot, Pedro, comes in to see the new visitors and find out what is for lunch. He never flies anywhere only walks and climbs, possibly he is too fat as a result of having too much ham at breakfast......
Apart from the sounds of nature there is no noise at this place, and somehow even if you hear someone talking it seems as though they are at a distance as the surrounding jungle seems to absorb noise. Already I am beginning to like it here....
No peace for the wicked, we are bundled back into a canoe and taken off to see the pink dolphins. Wildlife is very unpredictable and I didnt’ expect to see any but we did, from a distance....And after that we go fishing while our guide tells us more about the river and the jungle.
Returning to the hotel there is time to relax...And I like it here, after the hectic pace of Cusco, Puno, and Lima, it is peaceful...So peaceful.
Dinner is at 8.00pm and if you are not there they come looking for you, but then Limber knows where you are because he is behind the bar making pisco sours, and you are on the other side of it drinking them! A couple more drinks and bring the diary up to date, sit on the river bank and listen to the night noises and then the gennie goes off and it is time for bed!
There is an early morning walking tour at 6am, I think the guide went on his own as it 6.15am he is sitting there all by himself, I wave to him and go back to bed!
Later that morning we take the jungle walk and this is rainforest and it is wet underfoot so they give us all wellington boots. It is supposed to be two hours but turns into three because Victor, the short Peruvian with a big machete, can see that we are enjoying ourselves. Two of the Peruvians (I have christened the female half of the duo, Norma, she has a chest like Nurse Diesel), keep disappearing into the shrubbery. I think they are in love but possibly not with each other. The two other Peruvians, mother and daughter from Cusco, have lots of questions. Victor, the guide, thinks he is Percy Edwards and keep making animal and bird noises supposedly to attract them in our direction. While he is pointing out one monkey in a tree in front of us, there are three right behind us watching us.
Next year my garden will look like this, a not too dense slightly overgrown jungle shrubbery!
Not so many flowers as I had hoped, but lots of types of Heliconia which is where the lodge gets its name, lots of huge butterflies but they are all supersonic powered and fly about at such a speed that you never get a picture of them.
Lunch is more fresh fruit and juice, and really whatever you want but you have to order it at breakfast time, and you order dinner at lunchtime.
And I still haven’t told you the reason for the pink plastic poncho.....It is pouring with rain of course, but then you would have realised that. My attire is jungle dress, wellies, camo shorts, t shirt, and the reason I really look so odd is because there is a life jacket under the poncho.
We are visiting a local booze factory where they make the local firewater from fermented sugar cane, the pictures are of the press to get the juice out, the thing up on a stand is a canoe where they ferment the juice, and I am standing next to the still....George Kassevetis would love it!!!! And they only ferment the juice for 24 hours before they distill it, would that raki only took that long.
The large bowl affair is where they put the juice from the cane of they are just going to boil it up to make syrup. It doesn’t get used much!
After the visit to the still we go further along the river to ‘the bar’, where we meet the maker.It is obviously a popular place because there are well trodden tracks coming into it from various directions. Here you can buy and try...I try but don’t buy, for a start it would never get back to Crete, but my favourite is the medicinal one which has tree bark and plants in it. After a glass of the four varieties he makes I am sailing and don’t need to get a boat because I can walk on water, a feat which I attempt when I go to get back in the boat, with considerable amount of failure.
Sometimes things happen when you are on holiday, sometimes they are unexpected, and in this case I fell in love...With the jungle. And everyone noticed!
Tomorrow is last morning here and I really do not want to go...But first we visit a local village called Palmera. I don’t know whether the people here mind being a tourist attraction, I guess they probably don’t as it brings in some much needed cash apart from the handouts they get from various charities. But here they have electricity, when they have fuel for the generator, and they have a solar powered satellite phone which means that fewer people die of curable illnesses, they have fresh fish from the river, fresh fruit and vegetables from the jungle, and these days fresh, clean water too, something which we take for granted.
And the children learn two languages, their own and Spanish.
A bit of commercialism comes to the fore as we taken to a ‘typical’ native hut and get to do a typical native dance if we want....And have a go with a blowpipe, oh yes, and get to buy some of the native crafts...Or make a donation! But it is worth it.
Later The African Queen leaves for Iquitos and this means the end of my stay in Peru.
Eighteen busy days of folklore, mystery, mythology, history, and far too much food, I really need another two weeks but Chile calls......
And there are photos here
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Peru - In Around Cusco, I Take a Look at Jewellery, And Complain About The Touts!
The flight from Lima to Cusco takes about an hour, and all of a sudden I feel young again, the aircraft is a Bae146, I haven’t flown on one of those for years, but Star Peru love them and they are ideal for short haul flights. They make a big thing at the gate about carry-on luggage and they announce that if you have carry-on luggage weighing more than 5kgs, then you must check it in....Nobody takes the slightest bit of notice.
During the flight I have time to ponder on the fact that airlines, even budget ones like Star Peru, on other continents manage to provide you with a drink, and in this case, a packed snack as well, included in the price, whereas in Europe you get nothing except your seat, perhaps the European budget flights are not quite the good deal that we think they are.
Cusco is an old Inka city, or it was until the Spanish invaded it and various other Inka cities, mainly it seems to loot the gold and silver, which the Inkas used for decoration and not as a means of indicating wealth.
Cusco is also about 3,500 metres above sea level.
Those of you who are of advanced years will remember the hassle when the Olympics were held in Mexico, and how all the athletes had to go there early to acclimatise to the altitude. Well Cusco is the same, and going up that far in such a short space of time causes a problem for many visitors who get ‘altitude sickness’. Some people get it, some people do not, and there are no specific reasons why some do and some don’t. Guess who got it? Of course, yours truly!
The reception to my hotel is at the top of 39 steps, the only time I made it to the top in one go was when I arrived.
You cannot say that the altitude causes you to be breathless, because that is only part of it, it is more a feeling that you are suffocating and are trying to draw a breath and cannot as if someone has stuck a pillow over your face. The headache is unbelievable, and I developed another problem which was really painful flatulence because the air inside is at a higher pressure than the air outside!
Fortunately in Peru, nobody lets you a carry your own suitcase, and all the hotels give you a cup of coca tea to relieve the effects of the change in altitude, although some maintain this is not a good idea as it is a diuretic and the increased respiration rate at alititude also causes dehydration. None the less it does act as a pick-you-up. Some people are affected so badly they need oxygen and it is not unusual to see someone walking around with a small oxygen cylinder slung over their shoulder!
There is a rumour that eventaully Cusco will get an international airport which will go a long way to relieving this problem for those that it affects as most aircraft are pressurised to around 2,500 metres so visitors will only have to acclimatise to an extra 100 metres or so.
Included in my trip is a ‘city tour’ which includes not just the city of Cusco but some of the nearby Inka sites, it is a ‘one ticket’ does all event, so for about €40 you can get into 16 different sites including three of the museums which you have to do on your own. At least this tour starts at a reasonable time, 1.30pm!
And what a mixed bunch we are on the bus, sorry, coach. We have Canadians (including a Eskimo, or Inuit or whatever the word is these days), Australians, US Americans, and as you find later we are all doing different tours on different days (hence the reason it is so complicated!), and there are lone travellers like me, and decrepit old fossils who are not at all like me, but it does go to prove that you don’t need to be super fit to do these tours, you just need to have a bit of stamina and enjoy going to bed at 9pm so you can be up at 5am!
Of course, my main interest is the Inka masonry of which there is quite a lot in Cusco, I find it fascinating just to touch it and think that the people who did this did not have iron tools because in spite of the fact that the Inkas were a recent civilisation, up until the middle of the 16th Century, they were still only in the bronze age which Europe had left years before.
The interior of the cathedral in the main square is stunning to say the least, so much gold and silver, and the figure of Christ on the cross is black.....But we quickly move on to Qorikancha, which is now the Convent of Santo Domingo built atop the older Inka walls. As the story goes there was gold everywhere in the original Inka temple which the Spanish kindly removed before plastering the walls. Now, however the plaster has been removed and you are able to see the typical Inka masonry which indicates that this was a building of high importance, there are no signs that the Spanish are going to offer to put the gold back.
Very quickly we are back on the bus for our next stop out of Cusco, which is Saqsayhuaman, which is a huge site worthy of at least half a day, we get half an hour, and the photo call is at an impossible angle to show up the main feature of the site which is the zig-zag wall. Later on the way back into the city there is an ideal photo stop to get a really good view of Saqsayhuaman, but we don’t stop.
There are also two further stops at Chacan, where you battle your way uphill for about 20 minutes to take a picture of three ‘fountains’ before you walk back down again, myself and tha Canadian Eskimo 9who can only walk with the aid of a three legged walking stick), arrive in time to walk back down again. While I make a trip to the toilet in the car park they move the coach so I cannot find it again. And finally we stop again at Q’engo where there are caves....I don’t do caves so I give that a miss and walk on to where they have parked the coach.
In Cusco itself there are a plethora of restaurants surrounding the main square which is dominated by a statue of Pachacuteq, the Inka emporer/king/warrior. I think when they made the mould for him they did a load of copies as the same statue appears all over the place. He has a quite distinctive ‘Inka nose’ which is still in evidence in many of the population even today.
The restaurants around the square are mainly upstairs with ordinary shops below, with the exception of MacDonalds which is on street level plus a couple of other s such as the Inka Grill. Regrettably they have touts out at street level so you often get accosted several times to go into the same restaurant. This along with the girls who keep asking if you want a massage makes this area not quite as pleasant as it could be. The record for offers of massage between my hotel and the main square was 22, and it’s only a ten minute walk.
Everywhere you go around here the gift shops are offering jewellery and locally made clothing some of which is described as baby alpaca wool but which is actually a mixture of baby alpaca and acrylic.
I have my doubts about some of the jewellery too, many of the designs are identical to those I used to sell in Koutouloufari some four years ago and they came from the Far East. Much of the silver is unmarked, and some items are 'Peruvian silver’ rather than silver from Peru. When I push the point with one of the salesmen about the turquoise and lapis used it turns out it comes from Chile not Peru at all. Caveat emptor!
With a free day in Cusco (Jose who booked my tours for me informs me on the itinerary that I can go white water rafting, bungee jumping, or horse riding if I want), I am going to use it to visit the museum and art galleries, except I am not because they are all closed.
I organise my laundry instead, visit the local mobile phone operator to see if they can tell me why neither of my phones work, and try to organise the vast quantity of photos that I seem to have taken.
And tonight I have a dinner date so I will try and look my best......
During the flight I have time to ponder on the fact that airlines, even budget ones like Star Peru, on other continents manage to provide you with a drink, and in this case, a packed snack as well, included in the price, whereas in Europe you get nothing except your seat, perhaps the European budget flights are not quite the good deal that we think they are.
Cusco is an old Inka city, or it was until the Spanish invaded it and various other Inka cities, mainly it seems to loot the gold and silver, which the Inkas used for decoration and not as a means of indicating wealth.
Cusco is also about 3,500 metres above sea level.
Those of you who are of advanced years will remember the hassle when the Olympics were held in Mexico, and how all the athletes had to go there early to acclimatise to the altitude. Well Cusco is the same, and going up that far in such a short space of time causes a problem for many visitors who get ‘altitude sickness’. Some people get it, some people do not, and there are no specific reasons why some do and some don’t. Guess who got it? Of course, yours truly!
The reception to my hotel is at the top of 39 steps, the only time I made it to the top in one go was when I arrived.
You cannot say that the altitude causes you to be breathless, because that is only part of it, it is more a feeling that you are suffocating and are trying to draw a breath and cannot as if someone has stuck a pillow over your face. The headache is unbelievable, and I developed another problem which was really painful flatulence because the air inside is at a higher pressure than the air outside!
Fortunately in Peru, nobody lets you a carry your own suitcase, and all the hotels give you a cup of coca tea to relieve the effects of the change in altitude, although some maintain this is not a good idea as it is a diuretic and the increased respiration rate at alititude also causes dehydration. None the less it does act as a pick-you-up. Some people are affected so badly they need oxygen and it is not unusual to see someone walking around with a small oxygen cylinder slung over their shoulder!
There is a rumour that eventaully Cusco will get an international airport which will go a long way to relieving this problem for those that it affects as most aircraft are pressurised to around 2,500 metres so visitors will only have to acclimatise to an extra 100 metres or so.
Included in my trip is a ‘city tour’ which includes not just the city of Cusco but some of the nearby Inka sites, it is a ‘one ticket’ does all event, so for about €40 you can get into 16 different sites including three of the museums which you have to do on your own. At least this tour starts at a reasonable time, 1.30pm!
And what a mixed bunch we are on the bus, sorry, coach. We have Canadians (including a Eskimo, or Inuit or whatever the word is these days), Australians, US Americans, and as you find later we are all doing different tours on different days (hence the reason it is so complicated!), and there are lone travellers like me, and decrepit old fossils who are not at all like me, but it does go to prove that you don’t need to be super fit to do these tours, you just need to have a bit of stamina and enjoy going to bed at 9pm so you can be up at 5am!
Of course, my main interest is the Inka masonry of which there is quite a lot in Cusco, I find it fascinating just to touch it and think that the people who did this did not have iron tools because in spite of the fact that the Inkas were a recent civilisation, up until the middle of the 16th Century, they were still only in the bronze age which Europe had left years before.
The interior of the cathedral in the main square is stunning to say the least, so much gold and silver, and the figure of Christ on the cross is black.....But we quickly move on to Qorikancha, which is now the Convent of Santo Domingo built atop the older Inka walls. As the story goes there was gold everywhere in the original Inka temple which the Spanish kindly removed before plastering the walls. Now, however the plaster has been removed and you are able to see the typical Inka masonry which indicates that this was a building of high importance, there are no signs that the Spanish are going to offer to put the gold back.
Very quickly we are back on the bus for our next stop out of Cusco, which is Saqsayhuaman, which is a huge site worthy of at least half a day, we get half an hour, and the photo call is at an impossible angle to show up the main feature of the site which is the zig-zag wall. Later on the way back into the city there is an ideal photo stop to get a really good view of Saqsayhuaman, but we don’t stop.
There are also two further stops at Chacan, where you battle your way uphill for about 20 minutes to take a picture of three ‘fountains’ before you walk back down again, myself and tha Canadian Eskimo 9who can only walk with the aid of a three legged walking stick), arrive in time to walk back down again. While I make a trip to the toilet in the car park they move the coach so I cannot find it again. And finally we stop again at Q’engo where there are caves....I don’t do caves so I give that a miss and walk on to where they have parked the coach.
In Cusco itself there are a plethora of restaurants surrounding the main square which is dominated by a statue of Pachacuteq, the Inka emporer/king/warrior. I think when they made the mould for him they did a load of copies as the same statue appears all over the place. He has a quite distinctive ‘Inka nose’ which is still in evidence in many of the population even today.
The restaurants around the square are mainly upstairs with ordinary shops below, with the exception of MacDonalds which is on street level plus a couple of other s such as the Inka Grill. Regrettably they have touts out at street level so you often get accosted several times to go into the same restaurant. This along with the girls who keep asking if you want a massage makes this area not quite as pleasant as it could be. The record for offers of massage between my hotel and the main square was 22, and it’s only a ten minute walk.
Everywhere you go around here the gift shops are offering jewellery and locally made clothing some of which is described as baby alpaca wool but which is actually a mixture of baby alpaca and acrylic.
I have my doubts about some of the jewellery too, many of the designs are identical to those I used to sell in Koutouloufari some four years ago and they came from the Far East. Much of the silver is unmarked, and some items are 'Peruvian silver’ rather than silver from Peru. When I push the point with one of the salesmen about the turquoise and lapis used it turns out it comes from Chile not Peru at all. Caveat emptor!
With a free day in Cusco (Jose who booked my tours for me informs me on the itinerary that I can go white water rafting, bungee jumping, or horse riding if I want), I am going to use it to visit the museum and art galleries, except I am not because they are all closed.
I organise my laundry instead, visit the local mobile phone operator to see if they can tell me why neither of my phones work, and try to organise the vast quantity of photos that I seem to have taken.
And tonight I have a dinner date so I will try and look my best......
Peru - The Sacred Valley of The Inkas, and Lessons in Economics...
There were two Germans, a Pole, two Americans, two Australians, a Peruvian, a Dutchman, an Englishman, and a one year old baby on this bus in Peru......
I know it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there really were.....And just for a change the tour is leaving at a respectable time, like 8.10am from my hotel. Except that it is 8.10am Peruvian time which experience showed was actually always 10 minutes late.
Our tour guide for the day speaks Qechua as a first language and is, fiercely proud of his Inka heritage, coming as he does from the Sacred Valley. Much like many Cretans are proud of theirs.
As we battle our way out of Cusco he gives a little more information about Peru....It has a population of just under 30 million, unemployment is 20% (which is good because it used to be 37%), but there is a trade off because this means that they have an inflation rate of less than 1%, governments have consistently tried to achieve the Holy Grail of low unemployment and low inflation but unfortunately economic theory says this is never going to happen.
Peru’s main industry is mining, gold, silver, copper, and oil. Less than 4% of foreign income is from tourism, they were hoping for more this year and next but they are wise enough to understand that world recession has reduced these expectations. Peru is one of the few countries in the world with an expanding economy with a growth rate of around 7% per annum. And Lima is the fourth biggest city in South America, by economy.
Our guide makes a ‘big thing’ out of the fact that the Peruvian government has invested heavily in infrastructure, something that became more evident later.
Meanwhile on the bus we are all getting to know each other. The Americans are from Chicago, one of the Germans is a woman travelling on her own and she is from Munich, the other German is married to the Polish woman and they have their one year old son with them. I manage to impress her with a few words of Polish dragged up from the back of beyond. The Australians are from Brisbane, the Peruvian girl is from Lima but she now lives in Sofia with the Dutchman.......
We arrive at the beginning of the Sacred Valley where a couple of Peruvian women are waiting to have their photos taken, you have to pay them of course. I manage to get some free shots from a distance.
Back on the bus we make a group decision that we are not too fussed about the market at Pisac. As our guide points out this used to be the one of the biggest traditional markets in Peru, but now many of the traders come from Cusco and Lima just to be there and fleece the tourists. We do stop there for a while though as our guide wants to take us to the bakery where he says they make the best empanadas in Peru, I take this to mean that the baker is probably his cousin or some other relation. In the gold/silver shop in the baker’s yard, the girl from Munich buys a very nice necklace price marked at US$420, she finally get it for US$210, which is about what it is worth. There is an archaeological site at Pisac too but we are not going to that one.
Ever onwards and upwards we continue to Ollantaytambo which is where our guide comes from. He goes into orgasm mode as he points out the ‘Inka channels’ which still exist in the town, carrying water down from the mountains since Inka times. To get to the Inka site you have to fight your way through a market selling an array of souvenirs and over-priced bottles of water. Well there’s a surprise.
Inside the site there are 247 steps to get to the top, I am taking it very slowly with lots of rests on the way, the Australians over take me but later I pass them as they have collpased in the a heap at about the 200 mark. So what if I do arrive 20 minutes behind everyone else?
At the top, in the Temple of the Sun, the guide is explaining that the Inka empire was actually quite short lived from about 1100 to 1550AD and that they would have scarcely had time to develop the technology to build their famous earthquake-proof walls and no doubt they borrowed the technology from another race. Like everything there is a lot of conjecture because the Inkas didn’t have a written language but it seems fairly certain that Machu Picchu was the place where all there technology and history was based in verbal form and the desertion of Machu Picchu resulted in the loss of all their knowledge.
I am now suffering from Inka overload!
To give you some idea of how this tour system works in Peru, not all of us paid the same tour operator for the day, so we split into four different parties at lunchtime as we are all eating in different places depending on where our individual operator paid for us to go!
The drive through the Sacred Valley is fascinating in itself, a rich farming area using terracing and methods hundreds of years old. In several places ploughing was taking place using an oxen drawn plough and in the course of the day we only saw one tractor! Indeed in several places the women were ploughing by hand, which I thought was quite a good idea as it gives them something to do, and it became clear that the traditional dress worn by many is not just for festivals, celebrations, and for having your picture taken by tourists, but even in this modern age is worn as ordinary daily wear.
We finished our one day tour at a ‘co-op’ run by some local women where they give demonstrations of the processes for preparing sheep and alpaca wool for spinning, dyeing, and weaving. This was actually opposite one of the Inka sites we were supposed to be visiting so we got some good pictures of the site without actually visiting it! To be brutally honest I cannot even remember the name of the place, but the demonstration of weaving and so on was interesting enough especially when you consider that they still use vegetable dyes. Of course you are expected to buy something or at least make a donation, which is fair enough.
And tomorrow is an early start as I have the train ride to Machu Picchu, one of the highlights of my trip!
I know it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there really were.....And just for a change the tour is leaving at a respectable time, like 8.10am from my hotel. Except that it is 8.10am Peruvian time which experience showed was actually always 10 minutes late.
Our tour guide for the day speaks Qechua as a first language and is, fiercely proud of his Inka heritage, coming as he does from the Sacred Valley. Much like many Cretans are proud of theirs.
As we battle our way out of Cusco he gives a little more information about Peru....It has a population of just under 30 million, unemployment is 20% (which is good because it used to be 37%), but there is a trade off because this means that they have an inflation rate of less than 1%, governments have consistently tried to achieve the Holy Grail of low unemployment and low inflation but unfortunately economic theory says this is never going to happen.
Peru’s main industry is mining, gold, silver, copper, and oil. Less than 4% of foreign income is from tourism, they were hoping for more this year and next but they are wise enough to understand that world recession has reduced these expectations. Peru is one of the few countries in the world with an expanding economy with a growth rate of around 7% per annum. And Lima is the fourth biggest city in South America, by economy.
Our guide makes a ‘big thing’ out of the fact that the Peruvian government has invested heavily in infrastructure, something that became more evident later.
Meanwhile on the bus we are all getting to know each other. The Americans are from Chicago, one of the Germans is a woman travelling on her own and she is from Munich, the other German is married to the Polish woman and they have their one year old son with them. I manage to impress her with a few words of Polish dragged up from the back of beyond. The Australians are from Brisbane, the Peruvian girl is from Lima but she now lives in Sofia with the Dutchman.......
We arrive at the beginning of the Sacred Valley where a couple of Peruvian women are waiting to have their photos taken, you have to pay them of course. I manage to get some free shots from a distance.
Back on the bus we make a group decision that we are not too fussed about the market at Pisac. As our guide points out this used to be the one of the biggest traditional markets in Peru, but now many of the traders come from Cusco and Lima just to be there and fleece the tourists. We do stop there for a while though as our guide wants to take us to the bakery where he says they make the best empanadas in Peru, I take this to mean that the baker is probably his cousin or some other relation. In the gold/silver shop in the baker’s yard, the girl from Munich buys a very nice necklace price marked at US$420, she finally get it for US$210, which is about what it is worth. There is an archaeological site at Pisac too but we are not going to that one.
Ever onwards and upwards we continue to Ollantaytambo which is where our guide comes from. He goes into orgasm mode as he points out the ‘Inka channels’ which still exist in the town, carrying water down from the mountains since Inka times. To get to the Inka site you have to fight your way through a market selling an array of souvenirs and over-priced bottles of water. Well there’s a surprise.
Inside the site there are 247 steps to get to the top, I am taking it very slowly with lots of rests on the way, the Australians over take me but later I pass them as they have collpased in the a heap at about the 200 mark. So what if I do arrive 20 minutes behind everyone else?
At the top, in the Temple of the Sun, the guide is explaining that the Inka empire was actually quite short lived from about 1100 to 1550AD and that they would have scarcely had time to develop the technology to build their famous earthquake-proof walls and no doubt they borrowed the technology from another race. Like everything there is a lot of conjecture because the Inkas didn’t have a written language but it seems fairly certain that Machu Picchu was the place where all there technology and history was based in verbal form and the desertion of Machu Picchu resulted in the loss of all their knowledge.
I am now suffering from Inka overload!
To give you some idea of how this tour system works in Peru, not all of us paid the same tour operator for the day, so we split into four different parties at lunchtime as we are all eating in different places depending on where our individual operator paid for us to go!
The drive through the Sacred Valley is fascinating in itself, a rich farming area using terracing and methods hundreds of years old. In several places ploughing was taking place using an oxen drawn plough and in the course of the day we only saw one tractor! Indeed in several places the women were ploughing by hand, which I thought was quite a good idea as it gives them something to do, and it became clear that the traditional dress worn by many is not just for festivals, celebrations, and for having your picture taken by tourists, but even in this modern age is worn as ordinary daily wear.
We finished our one day tour at a ‘co-op’ run by some local women where they give demonstrations of the processes for preparing sheep and alpaca wool for spinning, dyeing, and weaving. This was actually opposite one of the Inka sites we were supposed to be visiting so we got some good pictures of the site without actually visiting it! To be brutally honest I cannot even remember the name of the place, but the demonstration of weaving and so on was interesting enough especially when you consider that they still use vegetable dyes. Of course you are expected to buy something or at least make a donation, which is fair enough.
And tomorrow is an early start as I have the train ride to Machu Picchu, one of the highlights of my trip!
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