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......
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
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!
Friday, 23 December 2011
Peru - Lima and Miraflores, And Timo Gets a Shock
Ignoring my usual theory of booking holidays independently, I used a local travel agent in Peru,Gay Peru Travel in Miraflores, mainly because it is quite complex getting from place to place, and organising coach trips here and there. Up until my arrival I only had an outline itinerary, but I am meeting Jose from GPT and he is going to give me all the papers I need.....
So having arrived in Lima at lunchtime, and getting to my hotel, it seems an afternoon nap would be a good idea, and then go out in the evening.
Well no, not actually...I sleep through the alarm set for 6pm and wake up at 11.30pm to the sound of a car alarm playing in sequence, every police siren known to mankind including two that are popular on the planet Naboo.....
I turn over and go to sleep until 7am the following day, and then I go out exploring in Miraflores which has a couple of local museums, several parks, lots of people, and shops. Surprisingly the outdoor cafes which I am used to are in short supply, but I finally find a couple around the central park and also earmark one for dinner that evening.
Returning to my hotel, (which my travel agent does not recommend because he had a problem with them double booking rooms), I await with bated breath the arrival of my travel agent, Jose, who arrives promptly, half an hour late, with an envelope full of paperwork.
Now I don't know who said that computers were going to create a paperless office/society, whoever it was, was wrong. For a start I have vouchers for no less than 8 hotel bookings, and then there are the tickets for buses, and then the ticket for tours, and then the tickets for entry into various Inca sites, and at this stage I am pleased that I didn't try and do this lot myself! Jose assures me that everything is in order and that I will get picked up at airports and hotels all along the way. A few days later he gives me another piece of paper which he found on the floor of his car, after I had pointed out that I seemed to have a piece missing.
After he has gone I take a closer look at one of the air tickets (internal air travel is almost essential if you are going to fit all this in), and find I have a flight at 7.45am! I'm on holiday for chrissakes....
My tour proper starts on Sunday afternoon, when I change to a different hotel and go on a city tour of Lima, just me, a tour guide, and a driver, for three hours.....The tour guide says you can see Lima in a day or so....Try four or five if you are going to take your time, enjoy the atmosphere, visit museums, art galleries, the fountains in the gardens, and maybe try a bit of nightlife. Nonetheless she gives a good tour with the main areas of the city and around, she also takes me to a cafe which is renowned for its 'chicha', which is a drink made by boiling purple corn and flavoured with herbs and cinnamon. It is actually very pleasant an works well on a dry throat.
The Franciscan monastery gets a full tour including the catacombs which I could really do without. Outside is an armoured car containing a policeman and a lot of tear gas, just in case there is trouble in the main square outside the presidential palace!
Miraflores is important enough that ‘The Rough Guide to Peru’ actually gives it a listing all on its own, and for sure it is a nice place to wander around and there are some good stores that stay open until 10pm every night including Sundays. This is quite useful as far as I am concerned because the piece of duct tape that appeared on my suitcase sometime between checking in at Frankfurt airport and arriving in Lima, is, it seems, holding together a split in the case not just sticking down a loose piece of material as I thought. Prices in Peru are low generally and you can pick up many items here more cheaply than in Europe including cosmetics, designer clothing, and electronics.
As I repack my suitcase ready for the trip to Cusco, I cogitate over whether to take the Rough Guide with me or dump it....Sorry to say the days of the guide book are nearly over. With limits on baggage allowances falling in most places (although long haul you are still allowed 25kgs), can you really afford to pack nearly a kilo of paper, plus the two reading books I have with me as well, I am beginning to think that a Kindle is the way to go. Most places these days have web sites on the web, and the local tourist offices can usually provide you with a map with the main sites of interest.
It’s about time that someone produced a universal charger as well as I am carrying five different ones.
And now, dear reader, you are wondering what that strange picture is at the top.......The Peruvians are great drivers, provided they have a hooter on the vehicle they can go anywhere, it turns out that they have various different ways of hooting depending on the message they want to convey, for instance a taxi will come up behind you while you are walking, not to warn you of anything, but to announce his presence in case you want a cab. Similarly police have a variety of different ways of blowing their whistles depending on whether it is safe for you to cross the road, or not....
The picture at the top shows the possible routes that can be taken at a junction or a set of lights, so it is perfectly permissible to be in the left hand lane and turn right, cutting across all the other traffic on the way.....Imagine sitting in a taxi from the airport and not knowing this and wondering why there seems to be another car deliberately driving into the side of you........This probably explains why a lot of cars seem to have dents in them, I just hope the Greeks never get the same idea......
But now I have to leave Lima for a while, and after an early start, the first of many, I fly to Cusco.
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
The Arrival.....And A Bit About Safety.
Thirty six hours after leaving home, twenty seven hours on four different aircraft, and several movies later see me coming into land at Lima, Peru.
After flying over part of the Andes mountains the scenery below is not particularly welcoming. Everything is sort of coffee coloured, well to be honest it's adobe coloured, and that includes the obviously new cars parked in a compound near Lima airport. It is not difficult to make out similarities with Greece...Dust and more dust....
My first views of Peru are that it is a singularly un-prepossessing sort of place, apart from a plethora of car dealerships on the way from the airport, my taxi passes through what is obviously not one of the classiest areas in town, but some things make me feel at home....Like buildings with the reinforcing iron sticking out of the top, the occasional pile of builders rubbish on the side of the road, the odd heap of rocks, the partly completed and now neglected municipal developments along the coast road.....
They say first impressions are the right ones, but in this case they are not quite right. Coming into Lima via Miraflores, which is one of the upmarket suburbs, from the seaside, (the sea is adobe coloured too, but that doesn't stop anyone swimming in it, or going surfing at 7am in the morning), things begin to change, and magically, green hits the eye.
The Peruvians do like their flowers, and here in the public parks, floral bedding that could outdo many a seaside town in the UK, is in full bloom. And there is grass, green grass, in the middle of the desert where they don't get rain only drizzle...And trees that haven't been pruned to death by City Hall.....
I find out later that they use 're-cycled' water for the flower beds and gardens, and what a sensible idea that is...Far more logical than using it to irrigate olive trees to produce olive oil that no one seems to want, judging by the prices paid to the growers.
And then there is the smell......I am used to the smell of poorly serviced scooters and cars spewing fumes into the atmosphere, and an all pervading smell of cigarette smoke, (you in the UK just get diesel fumes, but you are used to it so you do not notice), in Lima you get the smell of LPG as many cars run on it, overlaid with the occasional whiff of garlic.
And amazingly it is not as dusty as it looks! Even the building sites are continuously damped down with a hose and, as in Singapore, trucks leaving a building site are pressure washed, and idea that would go down quite well in Greece when you consider how many building sites there are. (It always amazes me that Greece, which has such a small population needs so many building sites....)
Arriving at my hotel I note the electrified fence along the top of the street wall, and the amazing array of spikes along the top of neighbouring walls along the street, and I begin to worry that what I have read about threats to personal safety may indeed be true.
Whether the threat to safety is real or perceived the Peruvian government are determined to do something about is and the police presence is high with officers on duty, in pairs, day and night. In addition the local municipality also has its own police force who control parking and such matters but they also carry guns.
God help the motorist who parks in the wrong place. In addition there are also private security guards stationed outside banks and offices, and many residential area and condos also have there own private security arrangements at the end of the street.
My hotel is no exception and we have a private guard at the end of the road who lives in a little wooden hut, except in the afternoon when the sun shines into it so he sits on a plastic chair and the shade and goes to sleep. At night he patrols the whole street and after the first night I decide that if he blows that sodding whistle at 1am one more time I will go down there and take the f**cking pea out of it......
The end result of this is that one certainly feels safer, although whether this feeling is real or perceived is another matter.....But there are a number of ways you can ensure your personal safety, or at least minimise your losses...
- Avoid looking like a tourist. In Lima for instance if you wear shorts and sandals you are immediately branded as a tourist.
- Look like you know where you are going. By all means use a map, but pre-plan your route before you leave your hotel and write the directions down on a piece of paper.
- Don't wear loads of jewellery or expensive watches, even if they are imitation. Use a pocket camera.
- Avoid carrying a bag, if you are not carrying one no one can snatch it.
- One of the times you are most vunerable, especially when you are on your own, is when you are taking a photograph, stand with you back to something even if it is only a lamp post, that way you cannot be taken by surprise from behind. (Ha, ha!)
- Only take enough money with you for your immediate needs, and split it up into different pockets. Someone holding you up relies on speed, they are not going to wait while you turn out all your pockets so you minimise your loss.
- At night stick to well lit and busier streets.
Here endeth the first lesson......
After flying over part of the Andes mountains the scenery below is not particularly welcoming. Everything is sort of coffee coloured, well to be honest it's adobe coloured, and that includes the obviously new cars parked in a compound near Lima airport. It is not difficult to make out similarities with Greece...Dust and more dust....
My first views of Peru are that it is a singularly un-prepossessing sort of place, apart from a plethora of car dealerships on the way from the airport, my taxi passes through what is obviously not one of the classiest areas in town, but some things make me feel at home....Like buildings with the reinforcing iron sticking out of the top, the occasional pile of builders rubbish on the side of the road, the odd heap of rocks, the partly completed and now neglected municipal developments along the coast road.....
They say first impressions are the right ones, but in this case they are not quite right. Coming into Lima via Miraflores, which is one of the upmarket suburbs, from the seaside, (the sea is adobe coloured too, but that doesn't stop anyone swimming in it, or going surfing at 7am in the morning), things begin to change, and magically, green hits the eye.
The Peruvians do like their flowers, and here in the public parks, floral bedding that could outdo many a seaside town in the UK, is in full bloom. And there is grass, green grass, in the middle of the desert where they don't get rain only drizzle...And trees that haven't been pruned to death by City Hall.....
I find out later that they use 're-cycled' water for the flower beds and gardens, and what a sensible idea that is...Far more logical than using it to irrigate olive trees to produce olive oil that no one seems to want, judging by the prices paid to the growers.
And then there is the smell......I am used to the smell of poorly serviced scooters and cars spewing fumes into the atmosphere, and an all pervading smell of cigarette smoke, (you in the UK just get diesel fumes, but you are used to it so you do not notice), in Lima you get the smell of LPG as many cars run on it, overlaid with the occasional whiff of garlic.
And amazingly it is not as dusty as it looks! Even the building sites are continuously damped down with a hose and, as in Singapore, trucks leaving a building site are pressure washed, and idea that would go down quite well in Greece when you consider how many building sites there are. (It always amazes me that Greece, which has such a small population needs so many building sites....)
Arriving at my hotel I note the electrified fence along the top of the street wall, and the amazing array of spikes along the top of neighbouring walls along the street, and I begin to worry that what I have read about threats to personal safety may indeed be true.
Whether the threat to safety is real or perceived the Peruvian government are determined to do something about is and the police presence is high with officers on duty, in pairs, day and night. In addition the local municipality also has its own police force who control parking and such matters but they also carry guns.
God help the motorist who parks in the wrong place. In addition there are also private security guards stationed outside banks and offices, and many residential area and condos also have there own private security arrangements at the end of the street.
My hotel is no exception and we have a private guard at the end of the road who lives in a little wooden hut, except in the afternoon when the sun shines into it so he sits on a plastic chair and the shade and goes to sleep. At night he patrols the whole street and after the first night I decide that if he blows that sodding whistle at 1am one more time I will go down there and take the f**cking pea out of it......
The end result of this is that one certainly feels safer, although whether this feeling is real or perceived is another matter.....But there are a number of ways you can ensure your personal safety, or at least minimise your losses...
- Avoid looking like a tourist. In Lima for instance if you wear shorts and sandals you are immediately branded as a tourist.
- Look like you know where you are going. By all means use a map, but pre-plan your route before you leave your hotel and write the directions down on a piece of paper.
- Don't wear loads of jewellery or expensive watches, even if they are imitation. Use a pocket camera.
- Avoid carrying a bag, if you are not carrying one no one can snatch it.
- One of the times you are most vunerable, especially when you are on your own, is when you are taking a photograph, stand with you back to something even if it is only a lamp post, that way you cannot be taken by surprise from behind. (Ha, ha!)
- Only take enough money with you for your immediate needs, and split it up into different pockets. Someone holding you up relies on speed, they are not going to wait while you turn out all your pockets so you minimise your loss.
- At night stick to well lit and busier streets.
Here endeth the first lesson......
Begin At The Beginning......
To coin a well known phrase, let's begin at the beginning, and then go on to the end and then stop.....
So how come I am in South America?
It all started earlier this year when I was reading an article about temples in Japan being open to the public so they could enjoy the autumn colours of the Acer trees......
The article was an extract from a book of travel articles called, collectively, 100 Journeys For The Spirit, which, as I just happened to be ordering from Amazon anyway, I thought it might be nice to have. You too can own this very interesting book, in fact I have put a link to the left so you can order it from Amazon too.....And if you do then I get 10% commission.
Well I have to pay for my holiday somehow.....
Anyway the book duly arrived and in it is an article about Machu Picchu, which I had vaguely heard of, but more importantly it re-awoke my interest in South America and like you do I started looking at Japan and ended up looking at South America instead.
No, I thought, the air fares will be much too expensive, but hey, a flight from Frankfurt to Lima, Peru and back again is only €700, and if
I book it now (April 2011), I will have time to save up and sort out the rest of the details later......But then again I have heard how wonderful it is in Rio at New Year, and then there was that bit I read about cruises down the Patagonian fjords...And then they make wine in South America too...
Which is why you find me now, sitting at a cafe on Av. 11 September, Santiago, Chile, looged on to the free WiFi from Macdonalds just across the road, writing this.
So how come I am in South America?
It all started earlier this year when I was reading an article about temples in Japan being open to the public so they could enjoy the autumn colours of the Acer trees......
The article was an extract from a book of travel articles called, collectively, 100 Journeys For The Spirit, which, as I just happened to be ordering from Amazon anyway, I thought it might be nice to have. You too can own this very interesting book, in fact I have put a link to the left so you can order it from Amazon too.....And if you do then I get 10% commission.
Well I have to pay for my holiday somehow.....
Anyway the book duly arrived and in it is an article about Machu Picchu, which I had vaguely heard of, but more importantly it re-awoke my interest in South America and like you do I started looking at Japan and ended up looking at South America instead.
No, I thought, the air fares will be much too expensive, but hey, a flight from Frankfurt to Lima, Peru and back again is only €700, and if
I book it now (April 2011), I will have time to save up and sort out the rest of the details later......But then again I have heard how wonderful it is in Rio at New Year, and then there was that bit I read about cruises down the Patagonian fjords...And then they make wine in South America too...
Which is why you find me now, sitting at a cafe on Av. 11 September, Santiago, Chile, looged on to the free WiFi from Macdonalds just across the road, writing this.
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