We will endorse nothing on this blog except Inca Kola!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone! Lots of love from Ana and Chas! Sorry about the lack of blogs but we have been really busy (by lax Chasanaski standards anyway) and have not had enough time to go into all we have been doing. This month in Peru has had us explore the capital city, the coastal desert region, the Southern Andes and the deepest canyon in the world, the capital of the Incan empire and a lost city followed up by Christmas in the Amzon jungle with the most exposed camping we have ever done.

Basically, there are lots of blogs coming out in a short period of time as we now have the time to do them. We know from our stats that this means that subsequent blogs often do not get read but please give them a once-over as we assure you that they will be worth a few minutes.

And then there were five

We began at the airport. Lima airport to be exact. At midnight. We, including Rachel, were waiting for Delia and James to arrive from their transamerican odyssey, from New York to LA. We had landed half an hour before them but ended up waiting about and hour and a half for them to clear customs and get their luggage. What an exciting way to start a blog in which lots of really cool stuff happens. Sorry. The author has no sense of climax.

Delia was Ana's maid of honour and James is her fiance. They had decided to do our month in Peru with us as tour guides. We were honoured but a little worried as Delia had never been overseas before and neither of them had ever visited a developing country; culture-shock was imminent. Or so we believed. Let us just state for the record that they did not even bat an eyelid at the dirt and pollution, the tiny cars whose chassis were dragging on the road filled with six people, the food, undrinkable water, toilets that cannot flush toilet paper... the list goes on. Delia and James took everything in their stride and appeared to have a wonderful time taking in the new weird and wonderful sights.

We had ten days before we had to be in Cusco to prepare for the Inca Trail and we had decided to leave it fairly open to give Rachel, Delia and James some choice in the matter. Ana and I had been to Peru last time we were in Latin America with Ana's parents and had done a great deal of the tourist stuff. So we were mainly planning on being tour guides to very enjoyable company. We finally decided on spending the weekend in Lima, going on to Nazca and ending in Arequipa.

An important topic: Toilets

I would like to start defining Peru by its toilets; I will start by saying this is a most unfair benchmark and also stating that Peru is not even in the same league as countries such as India or China (as per reports from Zac and Sof). However, Peru is a country that has been colonised just as long as Brazil or Argentina (or Australia for that matter) by people who use porcelain, seated toilets and use toilet paper. It is therefore a mystery to me that not one single toilet in the whole of Peru has pipes big enough to take toilet paper despite this always being a purpose. Hence every toilet in Peru has these wonderfully small bins (usually overflowing) with used bits of TP.

The funny thing is (funny for Chas that is) is that the pipes are often not big enough for their intended material either. Two of our group have had to be rescued in various houses or hostels by buckets of water and plungers. The first time this happened the poor flusher spent a long time dealing with the issue while the rest of the group cackled downstairs. I would like to report that I (Chas still) was not the flusher nor a cackler as I was having a nap at the time. Karma bit one particular cackler the very next day; we all thought that person was ill but they were just staring down the toilet bowl for a considerable amount of time.

Lima: Not the greatest city in the world

Lima is not a great city to be a tourist in. It is a great transport hub so you find yourself in and out of it a lot but really it is a large, dirty polluted city with not much going for it. Sorry limenos. That is not to say that the people who live there are no wonderful. Lima is sadly subject to a strange weather pattern, being sandwiched in a desert between the Pacific and the Andes, which means it only gets about two milimetres of rain a year if lucky. You have no idea how much dust can collect when it never rains or how little greenery grows without lots of attention or how ugly architecture is when flat roofs are the cheapest and easiest option.

So we decided to give Lima a weekend. We were staying with a wonderfully generous couple called Pedro and Emma who looked after Ana's mother during med school and have been great family friends since. From their house on the first day we sorted out our trip south and then headed to the colonial centre. This, in my opinion, is the only pretty part of Lima where the buildings have beautiful Spanish architecture, painted in traditional mustards, pale reds and pastel blues with incredibly ornate wooden moorish balconies overhanging the busy streets. The Plaza Mayor (formerly Plaza de Armas until someone must have realised that every main plaza in Peru is called the Plaza de Armas and maybe the capital should be slightly original) has lovely buildings on every side.

Our first lunch gave us the opportunity to introduce James, Delia and Rachel to the national softdrink: the institution of Inca Kola. This drink is so brightly, fluorescent yellow that it looks like fizzy, radioactive pee of a dehydrated person who bathes in toxic waste. And then there is the flavour, so gloriously artificial, so matching its appearance in mouthfeel... or should I say mouth smack. Chas describes it as the soft drink version of synthetic banana. Ana thinks it tastes like bubble gum. No particular flavour. Just bubble gum in general.

However, the two things we actually took in were the San Francisco Monastery and Museum and the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition. The San Francisco Church is a lovely building built out of a strange material including sugar cane with ornate wooden roofs dating from the colonial times. These roofs have no glue or nails, they hold themselves up with pressure and some took over 40 years to assemble. We were pretty agog at the workmanship and the committment as very these days takes 40 years to build. The church had some very impressive murals but the highlight were the catacombs. Like Paris, some boffin had decided to make a practical church function (its cemetery) into an aesthetic tourist attraction. We had a pleasant time wondering around gawking at the piles of bones and commenting on ossuaries of the rich and famous.

The museum of the Spanish Inquisition was something Ana and I had visited last time and I was keen to show our friends. The Spanish Inquisition found a great hold in Peru, far more than in any other Latin American Nation. The beautiful building that housed its tribunals, records and torture chambers were so amazing that once concluded the Congress acquired the building as the seat of government. We had a wonderful guide show us around, revealing the depth of the church's hypocrisy. One thing I had not remembered was it was actually Catholic kings and nobility that pressured the Pope of the time into sanctioning the Inquisitions.

The hypocrisies were that the Inquisition only had jurisdiction over professed Catholics (Jews had their land stolen unless they converted, then they were heralded as false Catholics and tortured, burned at the stake and then had their land taken) and committed tortures to extract confessions. The rules of the torture, as decided from the scriptures, were no killing, no drawing of blood and no mutilation. This meant that breaking every ligament, tendon, bone and muscle in the shoulders was acceptable, or the rack or simulated drowning using cloth in the throat. It may interest people to know that at the writing of this blog, the US Congress was debating whether simulated drowning of terrorist suspects could be described as torture or not. How far we have come.

At the Pena headbutting grandmas is a must and lack of ass shaking most disappointing

We headed back home to rest before taking in a pena. These are huge dance halls filled with different traditional bands and dancing troups and are extremely popular among limenos. The one we were attending, Las Brisas del Titicaca, was huge and rewardingly full of middle-aged Peruvians with nary a white face to be seen. In true Latin style, it started at 10 and went until 4 in the morning. The bands would play, (panpipes, charangos and all) while different dance troups would show their wares before there would a free dance for everyone to join in.

It was lots of fun but I have to say that the big difference between costa dances, sierra dances, selva dances and mestizo dances are the costumes. Peru's local dances all look like they could be mastered in five minutes (as will be proven by James and Rachel in Chivay; more anon in another blog) but just apply a flamboyant costume and give it some gusto and you have a show. Ana and I were disappointed that they did not have our favourite Peruvian dance: it is a mulatto dance and consists of a black woman wearing very little having a piece of white paper hanging out of her G-string over her bottom. The men have to try and light the piece of paper while she shakes her ass so furiously that she puts the fire out! It has come to my attention that the last few blogs have all contained some mention of ass shaking. While I will not deny a certain appreciation of ass wiggling, I promise I am not obsessed and do not seek it out. It just comes naturally our way.

We had some cocktails and snacks, but our travels and alcohol caught up with us and by 1am, we were almost asleep at the table. As we got up to get out taxi, I put my coat and did the most drunken thing I have ever done while being stone-cold sober. Our table was at the back of the room and raised to give us a view. I stepped backwards and, unfortunately, into space. This spectacular stack would not have been a problem had my head not had its fall broken by a grandmother's head on the table below. It was quite a blow and, while she was not at all happy, her family members just laughed it off drunkenly and tried to make me pay a beer compensation. I pleaded stupid foreigner and made a swift escape, impeded by devil dancers from the last show. What a way to end a Saturday night.

The first of many buffets and the non-Lima part of Lima

To thank Pedro and Emma, we had offered to take them and their daughter Rebecca to their favourite restaurant: El Bolivariano. This was a huge buffet lunch where we had access to so many national dishes a delicacies such as chicha (a drink made of purple, yes purple, corn), articuchos (skewers of beef heart), ceviche (raw fish cooked by the acid of lemon juice served with chilli and coriander), papa a la huancaina and so much more. Oh, and I am forgetting the national cockail/appertiser, the Pisco Sour! I foolishly mentioned that the Chileans claimed to have invented Pisco, the grape spirit, and got a good glaring from the Peruvians at the table.

We did not have the energy to check out Miraflores, the city's hip beach district, and so headed that night to the Cicuito Magico de Agua, the wonderfully named Magic Circuit of Water. This is a park in the middle of Lima dedicated to fountains; there about nineteen different fountains. The mandatory 80m geyser which obligingly sprayed all the onlookers when the wind changed, another that performed to music and lights played on it, some small ones that visitors can control, others that have challenges such as get to the middle, a romantic tunnel, rainbows, etc.

Rebecca had recommended it to us and it was wonderful; it felt like we had left Lima as there was grass, cool mist, no dirt, no traffic could be heard, no touts allowed in. It was different, relaxed and controlled. Sometimes I feel as if the English have infected Australia and the US (and themselves of course) with an anal control freak virus that does not allow to feel comfortable when slightly out of control. I am currently listening to the most annoying American girl talking to her mum about how terrible Cusco is because the cheap manicure she bought in a street market was not what she wanted. Buggar off! Go back to America and get a bloody manicure there and appreciate the fact that you are in the centre of the Incan Empire you daft waste of oxygen! Then she started talking about this great café called Jack's which served 'good American food'... why the hell did you leave lady? To make my life worse by having to listen to your whining. Sorry, she has been bugging me and I had to get that tangent off my chest. I know I am being unfair and she may have had culture shock so I went to talk to her and she has been in South America for six months. No forgiveness.

She reminded me of an American couple we met in a tango bar in San Telmo with the Icelandic girls. The conversation went like this:

American couple: Where are you from?
Ana and Icelandic girls: Australia and Iceland.
AC: Oh, we've never been to Australia. And where did you girls say you were from?
IG: Iceland.
AC: Where?
IG: Iceland.
AC: No, which country?
IG: Iceland.
AC: Oh... (still not quite convinced that these girls knew which country they were from). We are from America.
A&IC: Oh, really (the girls feign surprise)?
AC: From Washington.

Pause while Ana and Icelandic girls try to stop talking to the American couple and watch the tango

AC: DC.

Anyway, back to the magic fountain park. The park was divided by an avenue which you crossed via a tunnel. This tunnel is an ode to the greatness of Lima municipality; their ability to create the biggest fountain park in the world (out of how many?) and their ability to build great roads. This made us chuckle as every road in Lima other than the ones dislayed in that tunnel was filled with potholes (how come when it never rains?) and the ones they had built went straight through land previously housing slums. This made me wonder whether the budget for this glorious road included the housing for the slum-dwellers. Somehow I think not.

Anyway, it was very happily that we got back home, ready to make a big road trip to southern Peru, taking in the wonders of Nacan and Incan culture as well as seeing some natural wonders such as the deepest canyon in the world: the Colca Canyon. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Love you all.
Ana and Chas

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Photos

Our first lunch
And the first taste of Inca Kola, the drink that must be seen and tasted to be believed

The summit of the Fountain Park
80 m according to the Guiness book of records

The fountain of fun
The idea was to get to the middle without getting wet. Possible but unlikely. Chas did not make it

The tunnel of the unexpected
The tunnel was beautiful but shot small unexpected sprays at peaceful visitors