Ketchup with the lingo!

---

We start the day with a talk from Max about our tour to come and learn a few interesting snippets. For instance Peru has departments rather than counties and we will be visiting five of them, Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Puno and Cusco. There are three main regions: the coast of the Pacific Ocean where it´s pretty much desert and a bit of arable land where crops are grown and includes Lima, hence sixty percent of the population live here but the region only takes up 10 percent of the the land. Moving to the Andes region where the highlands have snow capped mountains and glaciers with 30 percent of the land area but only 30 percent of the population living there and finally the Amazon rain forest which takes up sixty percent of the land area but only has 10 percent of the population living there!

The languages spoken in Peru are Spanish and Ketchua and most people are bilingual in these if they are from the Andes region. There is also Amara spoken in the south.

We eventually head off on a whistle stop coach tour of Lima with the lovely Nila, our guide. We stop off first at the Parque Amores where every year there is a seriously contested kissing competition for the longest kiss. This lovely little park has a huge statue of a kissing couple to put you in the mood if you want to join in. Also every year on valentines day you can get married here for free and hundreds of couples have a mass wedding! By the way the record for kissing non stop - with strict judging of techniques - is 1 hour fourty five minutes. Give me a hot guy and I´d do that easy 😉

We also see an ancient, pre Incan, mound made of adobe mud bricks (didn´t catch the name). Apparently you can see finger prints in the bricks of both adults and children who made them by hand. The complex is huge and has survived well over the centuries as the mud bricks are more earthquake proof than more modern building techniques. At one point local kids used to ride their bikes all over the mound and played footie on top of it until the authorities realised its importance and fenced it off!! It´s called Wacca in the Ketchua language.

Amongst the interesting things Nila told us about Lima was the fact that there is no underground for the 9 million people living in Lima to get around the huge city so instead there are 200,000 buses - all privately owned. Each has a driver and a persuader to try and get you to use his bus over his rivals.

We stopped off at the famous main square in Lima with it´s yellow painted, very grand buildings, the Cathedral and the Presidential palace. We saw vultures flying about and lots of very worried looking pigeons! It was nice to spend some time wandering around the square watching people go by, smooching couples, oldies reading the newspaper and sleeping, and of course lots of tourists. I had a look inside the cathedral and listened to some oddly modern organ music alla John Rutter style while people were waiting for a service to start. A huge queue of school teenage type kids were waiting to give confession. Forgive me father for I have had lustful thoughts about my hot teacher - AGAIN!! We also saw riot police waiting for something to kick off. As the presidential elections are looming there are frequent demos going on in the square which is just outside the presidential palace. They had full riot gear and apparently water canons are in readiness too.

Just off the square is another church, San Fransisco which pre dates the cathedral. It has catacombs beneath it used to bury twenty five thousand people. Unfortunately they got a bit over ambitious with the burials and the whole church collapsed into the catacombs and had to be rebuilt!

We returned to the coach and set off out of Lima passing the shanty district that seemed to stretch for miles. These shanty districts vary from those with virtually no facilities to those with electricity, water, but also schools, universities, shops and even their own mayor. As we got further from the centre of Lima you could see the sandy hills that surround the district. Amazing that people have managed to conquer such inhospitable land.

We were travelling to our next overnight stop at Paracus but on the way we visited the ancient archaeological site of Pachacamac in the Loreen valley. This is another religious, pilgrimage site pre dating the Inca period that held huge importance over a period of one and a half thousand year period. Our guide Jack told us that Pacha means earth and camac means centre from the Ketcha language. The site is basically a series of adobe mud and piscara stone pyramids only three of which have been excavated. The peoples of the time would travel to the site to make offerings to the earth god . People would come from as far as the Amazon region, and they knew this because a mumified monkey was found at the site (so not making it up for once!) We also found out that in the mammaconas only women were allowed to live and they were considered the chosen ones. They were either alloted to be concubines, wise women or teacher OR sacrificial offerings who were slaughtered at the age of 33 on the solstice to ensure that good weather returned! Think I know which I´d prefer to be. The Incas, when they arrived decided to respect the beliefs of the local people, more to keep the peace and not cause unrest. They built a new sun temple to worship and pilgrims were still able to come to the site. However when the Spanish finally arrived they trashed the beliefs in one fell swoop. One guy entered the tombs, smelled the stink from the rotting sacrificial offerings and then came face to face with the gruesome looking wooden totem pole. He immediately claimed it was the devil incarnate and hacked it down. The locals expected their god to bring earth quakes to punish such treachorous behaviour but of course none came, so thousands of years of customs and beliefs were dashed just like that!

And so we carry on with our journey along the Pan American highway. Mile after mile of desert sand dunes and hills, dotted with the odd habitation. We noticed that all the housing and buildings are unfinished with wires sticking up out of the roofs and unplastered walls. It turns out that any finshed building is taxed so they all pretend to be still building to avoid this. It makes for a very tatty look and is a real shame. Apparently some of the houses are amazingly well looked after inside but have to have piles of rubble outside to keep up the unfinished illusion!

The further we went along the coast the more cultivated the land became with orange groves, fields of maize and masses and masses of cotton with their lovely yellow flowers and some puffing out their little fluffy cotton buds already. Max tells us the cotton is all harvested by hand.

We also travelled through the town of Pisco of the drink Pisco Sour fame. We are going to be visiting a wine come Pisco place for tastings tomorrow so really looking forward to that mmmmmm.

I realise I haven´t introduced my fellow travellers properly yet. Well there´s my roomie Marnie, who I´ve already mentioned and her two friends from way back Shona and Eric. I´m not the only veggie and me and Nisha are being ´freaks´together. There´s also Simon, Kate, couple Eddie and Stef, friends Kim and Suzanne who seem to have done a LOT of travelling together and last but not least Kathryn and Lao.

Eventually we arrive at our next hotel, this time with lovely balconies overlooking the sea. We settle into our rooms then head straight for the bar and neck down some local beers which have 100 percent on the labels weeeeeeee! Before enjoying an evening at a local resaurant getting to know each other and listening to Eddies bad Irish jokes (he´s allowed - he´s Irish!). Looks like its going to be another great trip.

Tomorrow is the Ballestos island boat trip and Pisco tasting so really looking forward to a great day.

Good night xxx

I saw my first exotic looking bird at Pachacamac, a red cardinal. Beautiful. More to come I hope.

---