South America in Technicolour

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Peru, Peru, Peru ....

South America is unquestionably the land of superlatives. It appears that around evey metaphorical corner is the world´s highest lake, volcano, deepest canyon, wonder of the world etc. Mick met me at the airport in Lima at the start of September and from the momement I landed I was delighted to be here. Even fog-ridden Lima entranced me. The colours, the sounds and the feel of Lima was different to anything I have ever seen, but at the same time, unlike India, it felt comforting and homely. The latin American beat coming from every shop, the laid back attitudes of the people, old battered cars and brightly painted buildings made me want to never leave.

Cusco
We flew to Lima from Cusco two days later, firstly having discovered that we had been bumped off our original flight to an earlier flight, which we had now missed. We subsequently discovered this is quite common in South America. After ´polite´ discussions with the air stewardess, we were reinstated to our original flight and she got lots of gratitude, thus saving face all round. Upon our arrival in Cusco airport we were met by the, soon to be ubiquitous, poncho clad pan pipe players. Top of the pan-pipe pops is Él Condor Pasa. Yip, you do know it. Made famous by Simon and Garfunkel, it is hard not to sing ´I´d rather be a sparrow than a snail ....´ when you hear the opening chords. Other perennial favourites, I have since disovered, include the Lambada and Guantanamera.
For our first two nights in Cusco we stayed in Javier´s really friendly hostel, which scored lots of points for service, but would probably fail an electrical safety inspection. Random wires dangled perilously close to the shower head. After Javier´s we travelled to Machu Picchu on a really, really fancy train and stayed the night up there. Machu Picchu was amazing and definitely deserved its recent accolades! A lot of theories abound as to its purpose and how it came to be preserved but according to the guide those theories change every couple of years with a new discovery. For example, it was thought at some point to be a female only city, but this was discounted when new DNA tests proved some of the bodies were male and some of the females had been pregnant. The village was (re)discovered by an English guy, Hiram Bingham, in the early part of the 20th century and a lot of it has been restored since then. While it was an amazing site, I couldn´t help getting the feeling that in a couple of years time this could be Bunratty. All the buildings were missing were thatched roofs and as for the proliferation of those tooting panpipes around the town, I had visions of evening banquets being held there pretty soon !! To be fair, the authorities have been making moves to protect the Inca city. The well travelled Inca route is now limited to 500 people at any given time and while entrance is currently unlimited to Machu Picchu, there are plans afoot to limit the numbers of daily visitors aswell.
When we came back to Cusco, we stayed a night in a really fancy hotel, which scored high on electrical safety but scored low on service. The hotel had been our starting point when we got the train to Machu Picchu. We arrived there from Javier´s hostel by taxi on the morning of our departure and then discovered, when we were handed two small bags, that we were limited in the amount we could bring up on the train. This posed a slight problem as we had planned to bring our big rucksacks with all of our belongings up the mountain. Our difficulties were compounded when it became clear that we were expected to repack our bags in the lobby / bar area in full view of our fellow travellers. Not only were we not happy bunnies at having to do this, but we were also two unhappy bunnies without a tootbrush between us when we got to Machu Picchu.
On our way back from Machu Picchu we travelled through the Sacred Valley and it was there we saw for the first time, South America´s ingenious answer to billboards. Large advertisements for politicans, schools or in some cases for goods were burnt into the mountain brush. In Cusco I discovered that there was a big difference between Indian and South American attitudes to photographs. I had heard guidebooks talking about needing to request permission to take photographs of indigenous people and how in some cultures taking someone´s photograph is akin to stealing their soul. Well, there could be no fear of that in Cusco. Stealing is not permitted. If you want someone¨s picture or ¨soul¨you have to pay for it. Kids wearing traditional dress and sporting little lamas abound on the streest of Cusco, hiring out their image for 1 or 2 sols a go.
While in Cusco we witnessed several marching bands parading around the town. On the Sunday before we left there was a large parade, involving speeches and a military presence. In the evening time this was followed up by a religious parade. I can only imagine it was similar to religious parades in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. I asked a shopkeeper what festival it was but he just shrugged his shoulders, explaining this was one of many and that you couldn´t keep count. He said he thought it was something to do with the Virgin and her being a protectress. It seems in South America that the Virgin´s popularity is only outdone by her son. Everywhere you go, Jesus is looking. I´ve been in a couple of places where there are signs on the counter of the shops or the doors, asking people to respect that Jesus is the ´main man´and not to introduce any other ´propaganda´. The signs are a little like the signs in the ´foot and mouth´crisis - attempts to prevent a potentially lethal outbreak, in this case of another religion. Anyway, on this particular evening in Machu Picchu, the Virgin was carried by eight strong men, wearing sombre black suits and hats, atop a platform. They marched in time to slow steady funeral music played by the marching band. For the part of the parade that we witnessed they periodically stopped at custom built scaffolds. The statute was placed in the scaffold and then removed. When she was removed the men bid a hasty retreat (forwards!) and various fireworks on the scaffold were set alight. The locals, aware of what was to come, were well out of sight and reach when they went off. We weren´t so lucky for the first one and our hearing took a little bit of time to recover. We had grown considerably wiser for the second, but some poor punter had left his car closely enough so that his alarm went off.
Before we went to Machu Picchu we had planned a jungle trip to Manu, but plans changed when a member of the trip got sick. When we got back from Machu Picchu the travel agent explained there was a change of plan but, like any good salesperson, told us the change benefited us because we now got an extra day in the jungle. Upon closer examination of the itinerary it became clear that the ´extra day´was a 10 hour bus trip, in substitute for our original flight out of the jungle. On top of this, the changed itinerary meant we would have had to leave our fancy hotel at 6.30 in the morning. We declined.

Puno

Instead we went to Lake Titticaca, the highest lake in the world, famous for floating islands, made from reeds. We took the train from Cusco to Puno, which was quite pleasant, except that Mick started to suffer a little more from the altitude as we ascended. We had lots of jokes about him about to expire from altitude (ok, maybe I had a couple more jokes than he did) to while away the hours. We arrived in Puno in the evening and the first thing I noticed was the cold. The Lonely Planet tells you that you pay extra for heating in your hotel so that should have been a bit of a clue! I went to bed wearing about three pairs of socks, two woolly jumpers and thermal leggings. That just about staved off the cold. Meanwhile Mick was getting progressively worse because of the altitude and we decided we would have to leave first thing in the morning. We had a look at the guidebook to see where we could go because we had planned to stay in Puno for a couple of days and visit the islands on the lake. As altitude was the issue we couldn´t go south to Bolivia, as it gets even higher there. We had just arrived from the north so we weren´t going back. The only possible option was a town towards the coast that we hadn´t heard much about before - Arequipa. It looked ok in the book and it didn´t appear to be high season so we booked the bus. Then we went to book accomodation. I tried five hotels / hostels, the last of which had the high commendation that if you can´t get anywhere else try here. Even that was booked out. I managed to discern, with my pidgin understanding of Spanish, that there was a miner´s conference on in the town causing the accomodation logjam. The next morning Mick was feeling a little better so, given the accomodation crisis in Arequipa we decided to stay an extra night in Puno and explore the reed islands. Puno, itself, is not much to write home about so we were looking forward to seeing the islands. Uros, the collective name given to the islands, is easily accessible by boats that leave from Puno in the morning. For the first couple of kilometres from Puno to Uros, the lake is covered in a thick green slime, that looks distinctly unhealthy. Because of the altitude and the water, the sun was really, really hot. The islands themselves definitely had a themepark feel to them, with the same medley of goods on sale at each of them. We arrived back in Puno in the afternoon and, buoyed by the fact Mick had not collapsed, thought about going to some islands further out the next day. However, as the evening progressed, he began to feel worse so we reverted to ´Plan Arequipa´. We contacted a travel agent, who located a hotel for us and took a bus from Puno to Arequipa the following morning and were glad we had done so, when all joking aside, he nearly fainted when we stopped at a higher altitude on our journey to Arequipa. Given he is still suffering from blisters on his feet which his doctor has told him are caused by his cells being starved of oxygen, we have decided we are going to Amsterdam next year.

Arequipa
Arequipa was a beautiful city which is decidely underated by the guidebooks. To us, it looked particularly beautiful, given it was not somewhere we had planned to go. We thought about moving up the coast but we had heard that the Nazca lines were overrated and because the towns of Pisco and Ica had been destroyed by the recent earthquake, we stayed put until it was time to go back to Lima. The town of Arequipa is exactly how I would have pictured a typical South American town to be. In the centre, as (it seems!) with all Peruvian towns is the Plaza de Armas - translated as the Square of Arms. We asked why all towns have a Plaza de Armas, we were told it was because, historically, whatever faction held the Plaza de Armas, controlled the town. Arequipa´s Plaza de Armas is a pretty square, framed by palm trees and overlooked by imposing colonial buildings with large balconies. We stayed at a family run hotel. An old building, the hotel had the happy confluence of electrical safety and good service. While I can´t wax lyrical about the electrical safety, not knowing much about, I can definitely say we could not have been treated more hospitably by the family who ran it. The only slight annoyance we had in the five days we stayed there was, on the first night, enthusiastic miners returning at all hours of the night and ringing the bell that resounded throughout the whole courtyard and hotel. While in Arequipa we visited Santa Catalina, a convent in the town, which is more like a little town of its own. Full of bright blue and ochre walls, it was a great place to spend a couple of hours. Apparently when it was first built the nuns were mostly from wealthy families for whom the word ´vocation´ did not enter their lexicon. Their joining of the convent, more to do with the proection of family wealth, was reflected in the carrying-ons of the convent. By all accounts they had a blast, the thick convent walls and grilles no impediments to a flourishing social life. Musicians and men were frequently entertained and their jolly time continued until an overly zealous bishop instigated a ferocious mother superior, sending home major troublemakers and dampening the gaiety and enthusiasm for convent life previously held by its inhabitants.

On each of the days we were in Arequipa, the square hosted a demonstration of some sorts. They were all good natured marches and could, aside from the banners, have been mistaken for parades and celebrations. The participants of the marches varied - one day it was old men and women in traditional dress, marching for pensions. Another, it was a group of women marching for women´s rights.

While traditional dress in Peru varies from region to region, for women it generally consists of a bright coloured skirt over leggings, wool cardigan or jumper and to top it all off, a bowler hat over long plaits. It is most commonly seen in the Sierra (i.e., mountain regions) and the hat identifies where the woman comes from. It was funny to travel through farming regions and to see women in the fields wearing bowler hats. We flew from Arequipa to Lima because we had heard that a section of the Pan American highway had been destroyed in the earthquake. We spent the next couple of days in Lima doing very little and Mick flew out on the 21st September. His flight was in the evening and I took an overnight bus from Lima to Huaraz.

Huarazand the Cordillera Blanca
The week before Mick left I was unsure where I was going, whether I would go back to Chile and travel down through Argentina or whether I would go to Iquitos, a jungle gateway in Peru. In the end I decided to go to the mountains. The security on the overnight bus was like getting a flight, my fingerprints were taken and they video´ed´ everyone getting on the bus. Overnight buses in Peru can be really plush, you can get a seat that reclines fully, a little like the seats on a first class flight. I awoke at one stage thinking we were at a stop but it turned out we had reached Huaraz. During the day I took a walk around Huaraz, which does not seem to have a lot to offer to the living, but is eminently equipped to cater for the dead. On one street of the town, funeraria (funeral homes) lined the road peddling their wares. A little like the travel agents around the corner, the funeraria had large signs advertising far flung towns where they could bury your loved one. Casket after casket of various materials catering for all pockets were piled high.

I stayed at a place recommended by Lonely Planet, the Way Inn, which was in the middle of closing down. They had a sister lodge, a half hours drive from the town, which was also recommended so I decided to go there the next day. That evening I met a woman called Roshi, originally from Iran (or Irang as all the Peruvians said!) and we ended up travelling together for the next two weeks. The Lonely Planet had been enthusiastic about the owners of the hostels, saying they were really friendly. I met one of the owners in the morning. I think Attilla the Hun with a tootache would have been friendlier. I made a couple of brief attempts to make conversation but I couldn´t match her steely determination not to utter a word, not to mention a friendly one. She, fortunately, was only staying up there one night. Otherwise, I think I would have taken the taxi straight back down again. The other owner was away in Iquitos for two months and as a result the place was manned by volunteers, headed by a grumpy, reluctant New Zealander. While it was a great place to hike a lot of guests left after a night or two.

On the last night I was there, there was frantic knocking on the door from, it turned out, the cleaner´s five year old son. He, his mother, brother and the other volunteers lived in a house, a little distance from the main lodge. He said four men had broken into the house and had taken his mother. A posse went down to the house and she was nowhere to be seen. Her four year old was there but all he could say was that the men had horns and had taken his mother. A couple of us went back to the main lodge and a little while later, the rest came back with the cleaner and her two sons. She was, unsurprisingly, in a really distressed state. Two men and a woman had broken in with fake guns, demanding she hand over the keys to the safe. She, in turn, had threatened them with a kitchen knife, which unfortunately they used on her. She had cuts in a couple of places on her body and they had knocked her head around aswell. When they heard people approaching they had kept her at knifepoint in the toilet while one by one, they got away. I was glad I was leaving the next morning. Myself and Roshi were sharing a dorm with two guys, Christophe and Kristof! From Belgium, the two guys were great craic and promised us they would be of little use if the men came back. Christophe suggested we wake Kristof if they returned and Kristof suggested we wake Christophe. They were pretty true to their word when I got up to go to the loo in the middle of the night and saw two people in the alleyway. I let out a gasp / scream. It turned out it was a couple who were staying at the lodge that I didn´t recognise, but not one of my three roommates so much as rolled over in their sleep.

Trujillo and Chiclayo
We spent another night in Huaraz and from there went to a little town outside Trujillo called Huanchaco. Trujillo was named by Francisco Pizarro after his hometown. By all accounts Pizarro was a gowager who was not particularly well regarded in Spain. Apparently he and his merry men were successful conquistadores, not because of their military and political abilities, but rather because the Inca had just carried out their own ´conquistading´. As a result Pizarro managed to rally the support of the subdued telling them they would help them against the Incas. Given the speed with which the natives were subject to Spanish rule and to the pandemic caused by the whiteman´s disease, hindsight might suggest that they would have been better off with the Incas.

Huanchaco to Trujillo is a 20 minute ride in a collectivo. Collectivos are minibuses that are common all over Peru and Ecuador. A conductor hangs out of the van door as it moves up and down its route, repeatedly calling out the collectivo´s destination. They are really handy and you can stop them anywhere along their way. The conductor has the job of soliciting passengers until the bus is completely squashed with bodies and beyond. As you disembark, he practically pushes you down, with shoults of ´bajo, bajo´, get off, get off! The Sunday we arrived in Huanchaco was the first time either myself or Roshi had been on a collectivo. There was a German couple on the bus who also seemed to be 'first timers'. At one point the couple began shouting excitedly. We initially thought their cries were cries of exuberance but the word "psicopath" began to emerge out of the confusion. They were desperately trying to get the driver to slow down. In the driver´s defence I would say he was definitely not a ´psychopath´and I wouldn´t even had said he was a ´loco´driver. Two minutes later, their objective unfulfilled, the Germans got off and hailed a taxi. The collectivo and its driver, entirely unperturbed, zoomed its way into Trujillo!

From Trujillo we went to Chiclayo, another coastal town, which has a really big market. The market was amazing! Shopping districts in Peru are organised along similar products, so all of the vegetable shops are in one area and all of the shoe shops are in another. The market in Trujillo was no exception. In one corner of the market we found the 'brujos' section. Brujo means witch, or its female equivalent. It was amazing to see. Tacky incense and commerically packaged potions promising cures for all ailments adorned the shelves, along with slightly more authentic looking herbs and plants. We were finally enticed into a store by a guy telling us he was a 'chaman' / shaman, originally from Huancabamba. When we went to Huancabamba we discovered he was a fake.

Huancabamba
That night we took a bus from Chiclayo to Huancabamba. Huancabamba is, apparently, where all the Peruvians go for their 'healing' and is choc a bloc with brujos, shamans and curanderos (healers). Given its distance from Chiclayo and the difficulties in getting there, it is not on the gringo trail. We, however, having determined we were intrepid explorers who wanted to see the real Peru, decided to brave the journey. The bus that we took was a far cry from the plush tourist buses that we had hitherto travelled on. We got the last two seats at the very back of the bus. The 11 hour bus journey was an experience. The two seats at the other side of the back of the bus were occupied by a mother, her two children and their grandmother. The space between our seats was occupied by a young man and his loud radio. The little girl, who it turned out was three, kept looking at me. I smiled at her grandmother and asked her what the girl's name was. Angela - pronounced Angle a. And her brother, was he her twin? Yes, he was. And his name - Angelo! I decided that for this moment alone, the journey along an unsurfaced road in a bus lacking any semblance of suspension, was well worth it. The night was long and when we arrived in Huancabamba without having booked any accomodation we were knackered. Fortunately our taxi driver managed to wake up the local hotel folk to provide us with some shelter. We spent the rest of the day trying to recover from our adventourous ride.

Our first day in Huancabamba we asked a couple of the locals about shaman. Unanimously they said to go to Juan Garcia Mendez and warned us not to be sidetracked by taxi drivers who received a cut from other shaman for everyone they managed to divert. The next afternoon we found ourselves in exactly that situation. We had met a couple from Norway who decided to come with us and as we boarded his bus, the taxi driver started. He could take us to Don Juan but he was no good. There were much better shaman that he could take us to see. We resisted, but he was undeterred. When all other passengers had got off he asked us again if we wanted to see another shaman who coincidentally lived at the place we were now at. We said no again and he asked us if we were sure because the guy we wanted to see lived in a place about ten miles back along the road we had come! When we finally arrived at the ´chaman´s´house, the shaman was roused from his sleep to come and meet us. It was six in the evening. The shaman looked slightly pickled. To be fair to him it would be hard not to look pickled on a nightly diet of San Pedro, of staying up all night and then travelling to the lakes three hours away by mule at the break of day, a cold dip and a further three hours return by mule followed by a couple of hours sleep and for it all to start again with, perhaps, a different cast.

His ´mesa´(ceremony) started at 10.00 o´clock. While we waited for the mesa to begin we witnessed cottage industry at its best. Every possible need would be met. A poncho? One could be hired for 3 sols, around a dollar. If you happen to give 5, don¨t worry, your change will be well looked after. A cup of tea? 1 sol. If you happen to give 5, don¨t worry .... Donkeys for the trip to the lake? A bed to sleep in until the mesa starts? Don´t worry´, no extra charge for bedbugs. I declined the bed, preferring to sit on the grass instead, where I was nearly sure there were no bedbugs.

The couple from Norway had met a French guy who was complaining about the Shamans in Huancabamba and that their ceremonies were full of people who wanted to be healed and that there wasn´t enough kick in the hallucenogens. San Pedro is a cactus and is the plant of choice for shamans in the Huancabamba area. Ayahuasca is the plant of choice in Iquitos where the Norweigan couple had spent a lot of time. To be fair, I could see what the French guy meant, when the only hallucinations I had were of a warm bed and warm food following my slug of San Pedro. We had planned to do the lake trip in the morning, having organised donkeys and all, but by the time a cold grey dawn had broken on what seemed like an endless night I just wanted a warm shower and bed, so we decided to give it a skip. The townsfolk had also advised us to go to the Shaman in the morning and go the lakes first, before going to the mesa. Their advice certainly made sense in the morning when the time came to mount those mules!

We spent the next night recovering in Huancabamba and the following day took a much more civilised bus to Piura, only 8 hours away! However, I was sad to see there was no Angleo or Anglea on the bus.
That evening Roshi and I parted, she for the beach at Mancora and then onto Iquitos, me for the sunnier climes (or so I had hoped!) to Ecuador.

Tune in next week for eggs in Ecuador and wine tasting in Chile.

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