See-Ann and Marine's Peruvian Adventure

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Hola once again mi amigos.

Would you believe I am still in Cuzco? After getting used to the air up here I don't want to leave! It has been a fun week and a half since my last blog. I managed to meet Marnie okay at Cuzco airport - it was great to see her again. It was quite funny as we starting gassing away in the taxi from the airport to the hostel - after around 5 minutes poor Marnie started gasping for air - the high altitude in Cuzco makes non-stop gossiping very difficult!! We had loads to catch up on though and spent the rest of the afternoon having a good old natter.

We took it easy on the first day or so to give Marnie a chance to get used to the altitude and lack of air in the city. It really does take some getting used to. We met up with my friends John and Ruth who had travelled with me from Lima on Marnie's first night in Cuzco, along with a few friends of John and Ruth from Ireland. We started out drinking guinness and "vino tinto" in Paddy O'Flahertys Irish Pub (the highest Irish owned pub in the world if you believe the sign outside!) and ended up going for a pizza in this tiny little place near our hostel. Freshly baked pizza for 8 soles (just over a quid!). Marnie did very well to last out until 10 o'clock considering the time difference!

The next day was spent wandering around Cuzco and seeing a few sights. We also booked ourselves up on lots of trips, including a day trip to Machu Picchu for Marnie. As I had already gone up there once, I booked myself on yet another white water rafting trip instead! The tour office was having a lot of trouble with our names - they obviously hadn't come across a Sean and Marnie before. For all future trips in Cuzco, we would be referred to as See-Ann and Marine! We were warned to expect disruption on all our trips though as the teachers were currently on strike and there was talk of a national strike in support of them.

The first tour we went on was a city tour around Cuzco and a trip around four nearby Inca archaelogical sites. I had a pleasant suprise when we rocked up to the office for the start of the tour - who was waiting there but Hayden and Rachael - the couple I travelled from Santiago to Lima with! I hadn't seen them since a very drunken night in our Lima hostel where I talked for hours with Hayden about West Ham's dealings in the summer transfer market!

Our guide was a guy called Martin Martinez, which caused great merriment as one of Marnies' nicknames is Martin. I made sure I got a photo of "Martin" and Martin Martinez - that's almost three Martins for the price of one! The main cathedral in Cuzco's Plaza del Armes was awesome. I must admit to seeing a few cathedrals over the past ten or so months, and this one was one of the best. Gold and silver plated miniture temples everywhere, and the most orante wood carvings in the centre of the main cathedral. The Spanish built it soon after their arrival into Cuzco, but it has had to be rebuilt a number of times after earthquakes hit the city (most recently in 1950). The place itself was massive - it had a bit of a tardis effect going on - it looked pretty ordinary on the outside but opened up into this treasure chest of alters, statues, paintings and amazing architecture. Well worth a visit. Even Marnie, who wasn't keen on shelling out 16 soles to look around an old church, was very impressed!!!

We also had a look at Korichancha - the site of sacred Inca temple that was knocked down and ransacked by the Spaniards, before they built their own colonial church on top and around the ruins. There is still quite a bit of the original temple to see, and you can't help but be amazed at the Inca architecture. The huge bricks that make up the walls are seamlessly linked with no need for mortar, and they incline slightly inwards to help stabilise the walls during an earthquake. Those Incas were well ahead of their time I'm telling you! We visited four temples at the site - the temple of the sun, the temple of the moon, the temple of the stars, and the temple of the rainbow. All very impressive - they would have been more so in their original state - each room was lined with solid gold plate...until the Spaniards rocked up and stole it all.

We were then taken to the four Inca sites on the outskirts of Cusco - Saqsayhuaman (pronounced "Sexy Woman"!), Qenco (like the coffee), Pucapucara and Tambomachay. Saqsayhuaman was the most impressive, with lots of stone terracing and great views overlooking Cuzco. Unfortunately it was a bit of a tourist procession on the way down to visit the other sites - a dozen or so coaches were parked at each site, with bucket loads of tourists being taken around by guides in a myriad of different languages. There are also lots of people trying to sell you anything from a photograph with a llama or an alpaca wool poncho to a wooly condor finger puppet (okay - I did succumb in the end and bought a condor finger puppet!). By the time we got to the last ruin, a water fountain at Tambomachay, it was complete carnage, which loads of coach horns honking and lots of bemused tourists wandering around wondering what bus they needed to get back on! It was a good day out, but Marnie was relieved to get back in the warm at the end as it was bloody freezing and she had decided not to wear an extra fleece!! Hayden, Rachael, Marnie and I ended up having a few beers in Paddys afterwards and nice meal in a restaurant called the Witchs Garden. I introduced Marnie to pisco sours (the national drink of Peru!) - they went down very well but were bloody strong!

Marnies trip to Machu Pìcchu was deferred until Friday as a result of the national strike. Nobody could go anywhere in Cusco - there was no transport. It was a bit weird walking around the streets and not having to look out for speeding cars on the road. There was hardly any traffic as the roads into town had all been blocked by the strikers. Poor Rachael and Hayden were meant to be on a tour to the Sacred Valley, but their coach had got 30 minutes out of town and had to turn back because the roads out had been blocked by huge rocks and stones. Marnie and I decided to take it easy and went for a nice breakfast in what soon turned into our favourite restaurant in Cuzco, a place called Jacks. After a strict South American diet of bread rolls and jam, washed down with instant coffee for the past month or so, breakfast at Jacks seemed like Nirvana. Muesli with fruit, nuts and honey; porridge with apple compote; french cinnamon toast with fruit and cream; and a full monty fry up if you felt really healthy! I think over the past week in Cuzco, Marn and I have worked our way through the full menu in Jacks!! During our first breakfast in there, we met a nice guy from New Zealand called Henry. He was a photographer originally from Christchurch but now working in New York. I don't think you can get two more opposite cities!

That night we went out with Hayden and Rach, and Henry too, for a bit of a session. We started out with a two for one happy hour in Paddys Bar, before going for a bite to eat in a very glitzy restaurant called The Fallen Angel. The decor was seriously OTT, with leopard skin chairs, a fishtank that doubled up as a dining table, lots of risque wall decorations and hanging chandeliers! All very kitsch! Marnie and Hayden were sitting on a double bed complete with tiger print cushions at our dinner table! The food was great though, with the boys on sirloin steaks and the girls on vegetable pasta. The cocktails went down well too, and by the time we left, we were all in the mood for a big night out! By this stage of the night, Marnie and Rach had found out that Henry used to be a male model for Prada in his younger days. Lots of questions followed regarding the modelling industry and what it was like to be hanging around with all those famous models - Henry answered all our annoying questions in good humour! I told him that Hayden and I knew exactly how he felt - we had been modelling our midriffs for Calvin Klein pants for years and we knew what hard work it was!!! More drinks in Nortons bar, and a few cheeky games of pool, and then we went off to Mama Africas, the main nightclub to go to in Cuzco. It was absolutely chocka in the club - and I must admit, looking around I felt all of my 37 years! Lots of very young girls, half of which looked like they were on some illegal substance! I felt like a dad who had just turned up in the car to pick up his daughter up!!! The music was a bit iffy too - bad house music was by followed S Club 7 and The Pussycat Dolls - definitely not my cup of coca tea! It was a great night though and we all enjoyed the atmosphere. I definitely think Henry makes a good wingman in a nightclub situation - that ex-Prada model look certainly attracts the girls!!

The next day Marnie and I went on a tour of The Sacred Valley - basically a variety of Inca ruins on the way to the start of the Inca Trek and Machu Picchu. Luckily the strike was over and the roads were open again. And who should be our guide for this trip? You guessed it - the lovely Martin Martinez again! The first stop was the market town of Pisac, where Marnie and I went into serious tourist mode wandering around the various stalls. It was a lovely little village with a real vibrant atmosphere. Marnie got a very nice ring for 33 soles (reduced from 45 soles after some great haggling by Doogs), and I got an Inca chess set for 15 soles (reduced from 30 soles...just call me Lovejoy), and a brass Inca Statue for 25 sloes (reduced from 50 soles - I am the haggle meister!). Joking aside, haggling is part and parcel of buying anything in this part of the world, and asking for a lower price with a smile on your face normally meets with a smile back. I don't think the locals will let you buy anything in Peru without getting you to haggle for it first!

After the market we visited the ruins at Pisac. They were very impressive - obviously not quite up to Machu Picchu standards in terms of size or scale, but still very well preserved. Again you can only gawp at the Inca architecture and the ambition of building such a site on top of a massive hill. The quarry where they made the bricks was miles away in another valley - the effort involved in getting the hundreds of thousands of bricks required up to that site is just incredible to think about.

After lunch and a very cheesy live pan pipe band at Urubamba (if I hear "El Condor Pasa" or "The Lambarda" one more time think I'll scream!), we went off to visit Pikillacta, another old Inca town. This place actually had whole streets still intact, and it was fascinating to see how dead straight the roads were built, almost in a grid like system. Finally we visited a place called Tipon, the site of 13 Inca terraces stretching back over a big hill, complete with an irrigation system that channeled water to all corners of the ruins. It was another amazing piece of engineering that appeared well advanced for the time it was built (around 600 years ago). By the end of the day, Marnie and I were all "Inca-ruined out" - it had been good to see so many amazing sites, but after two Inca ruin tours, we felt we had seen enough ruins for a while!

The next day was nice and relaxing. We met up again with Hayden and Rachael and wandered around a few of the museums in Cusco. One was particularly bizarre, with lots of ceramics, pots, coins and wood carvings. The pieces themselves were fairly non-descript, but the descriptions that accompanyed them were absolutely hilarious. The guy who was writing about the pots must have swallowed
a dictionary! You had some old Inca pot made of clay with a few drawings on it, and the narrative next to it went something like "you cannot help but gaze in awe at the plasticity of the piece, and the cadence of the sculptor...you are also drawn to the playfulness of the feminine form"! I've photographed one of the pieces with the actual blurb that goes with it so you can have a giggle yourself!

The following day was a bit stressful for poor Marnie. Her day trip to Machu Picchu started with missing the train after our tour company hadn’t contacted us about the fact it was leaving 15 minutes early. They said they had contacted our hotel the night before to let us know, but there was no-one there called Marine...surprise, surprise! She had to jump in a taxi from Cuzco and race the train to the next station - she only just made it! Then when she just to Agua Calientes station she had no guide to pick her up - luckily a local woman took pity on her and walked her to the tour office she needed to be at. She had a great time at Machu Picchu of course, but the train back to Cusco afterwards was painfully slow - after getting on board around 5pm she didn’t get get back to the hostel until nearly 10pm. She wasn’t best pleased - especially as we had to wake up at 5am the next day for our trip to the Manu rainforest!!

While Marnie was clambering around Machu Picchu I decided to get another fix on white water rafting. It was only grade 2 to 3 but it was brilliant to be rafting in the Andes, and the views were beautiful. I had a great crowd of Irish girls doing it with me - and one of them, Tara, a school teacher, was very good at barking out orders when we hit any rapids! I was, of course at the front of the boat again, and got absolutely drenched in the icy glacial water as we careered down the river. I am seriously addicted to rafting!!

We got off to a bad start on our four day trip into the Manu rainforest - after getting up at 5am for a 5.30am pick up, our bus didn’t rock up until 7am. That’s an hour and a half extra we could have had in bed!! The Peruvian way of dealing with unhappy gringos is just to shrug their shoulders and say “Sorry!” - and our guide was true to form! After around 2 hours in a seriously uncomfortable bus which no shock absorbtion (every time we went over a pot hole in the road my head hit the roof!), we got to a police check point. After around 10 minutes heated discussion between the bus driver and the policeman, it transpired that our driver only had a photocopied licence and we were not being allowed to go any further. Another two hour wait then in the middle of nowhere while our guide radioed back to his bosses (no mobile phone signals here) in a desperate attempt to sort out our safe passage into the jungle and avoid a four hour round trip back to Cuzco for a proper driving licence! During our long wait we had a chance to meet the other four people in our group - a nice couple from Oxford called Dan and Sue, a cool guy from Hawaai called Aaron (who reminded me of someone from the Hair Bear Bunch!) and Ollie - a very laid back bloke from near Basingstoke, who after studying marketing at university and hating it, is going back to study Egyptian archaelogy! Talk about a career change!!Eventually we were allowed to continue (me and Marnie were convinced money must have changed hands) - and after stopping to look at some pre-Inca tombs at Ninamarca, we finally made it to our jungle lodge around 4pm.

First thing we did on our arrival was to take a ten minute walk through the jungle to an observation post to watch the bizarre mating ritual of a bird native only to the Manu rainforest - the Cock of the Rock (no sniggering please!). It was a funny sight watching these weird looking parrot-type birds with bright red heads and black bodies strut around squawking away trying to impress the females. We were a little bit too far away to get really good photos unfortunately, but it was fun watching them through binoculors.

The lodge in San Pedro was in a lovely tranquil spot in the middle of the jungle. Our guide, Claus told us there was only electricity between 6pm and 9pm, so any showers had to be taken at night! The most memorable thing from our first night in the jungle was the number of moths that were fluttering around the lamps at the lodge - some of them were bloody giants! One flew past my nose that was the size of a sparrow! Marnie was most concerned about spiders in our room, and a thorough investigation had to be carried out before we could go to bed!! We also had mosquito nets to stop any nasty bugs biting us in the night - I must admit I did get up in the middle of the night for a pee and forget my net was there...I got in a terrible tangle!

The next day after breakfast we set off on a 30km downhill mountain bike ride through the jungle. I was a bit worried about Marnie being up for it, but she took to bombing downhill on a rocky bumpy road like a duck to water! Suprising, yours truly was the first to take a tumble when my pedal clipped a large rock on the road and I went one way while my bike went another! Nothing injured luckily expect my pride. We all whizzed down past a few remote local villages - the views down into the jungle below were amazing. It was a real adrenelin rush speeding along the rocky track. Can you guess who was first past the post when we got to our lunch stop at Pilcopata? That’s right - the female Lance Armstrong herself....Miss M Kay! I reckon she’s been practising riding mountain bikes for months, and just hadn’t mentioned it to me!!!

After lunch, we were off into adventure mode again - this time some white water rafting down the Kosñipata river. It was gentle grade two stuff, but it was the first time Marnie had attempted it - and she was slightly apprehensive. She need not have worried - she was a natural!! It was nice as there were only around 2 or 3 rapids - the rest was a nice scenic meander down the river. Marnie said that she could see how I found it so addictive! We have to try and find another white water rafting trip now for before she goes home!

After an hour or so of rafting, we changed vessels for a motor boat trip to Erica Lodge - our home for the next two nights. It was much bigger than where we were the previous night, but had lovely views over the river. We went out for a nightwalk in the jungle that evening, and saw some very strange looking beetles that lit up in the dark, and some "walking" palm trees - they delevop new roots that "walk" the tree to where there is more light for their leaves! All very Day of the Triffids!

The following day we went off into the jungle again - this time to try our hand at zip-wiring over the rain forest canopy. I had tried this out earlier in my trip when I visited the Gibbon Experience in Laos, and I was looking forward to doing my Tarzan impersonation again! Once we were harnessed up we flew around 4 different zip wires, some 50 metres above the ground - you definitely felt a bit safer once your safety wire was attached to the platform of the tree you landed on!! Marnie loved it too, and was soon jumping out of trees like a seasoned zip-wiring pro! It was all over far too quickly, but there was a fun end to the trip when we had to abseil down from a platform in a tree some 30 metres above the ground. Spiderman eat your heart out!!

We went off in the afternoon to visit a small lake and do some bird watching. Marnie and I are certainly not “twitchers” (or whatever it is you call bird-watchers nowadays!), but it was interesting seeing some very unusual birds, including a green toucan and something that resembled an big chicken called a keskadee - it didn’t squawk - it just panted like an asthmatic!! Claus tried to take all of us out on the lake with a very dodgy looking raft made out of borselwood - it definitely wasn’t designed for seven gringos, and after I got on second to last, the thing lopped to one side and nearly sank completely! An emergency evacuation was required, and we only just got off the thing without it capsizing. Plan B was to take us out in two separate trips with just three of us on the raft with Claus punting - this worked much better! It was great to see birds like herons and egrets so close up on the raft - I came away feeling like Bill Oddie!!!

That evening I was on spider clearance duty as Jo found a giant hairy monster on her towel when her other half Dan was still in the shower. The shriek she gave out could be heard deep into the jungle! A quick shake of the towel over the balcony and the beast was vanquished, but that didn’t stop Marnie being extra cautious that night and double checking the inside of her walking boots for tarantulas!

The next day was another early start as we had to return back to Cuzco. A 5.00am wake up call, followed by a quick bit of breakfast before jumping back on the motor boat for a one and a half hour boat trip to the nearest village. We all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the bus waiting at the village to drive us back to civilization was not the original bone-shaker we arrived in, but something slightly more modern and comfortable!

We finally made it back to Cuzco around 6pm - tired but happy after a fun few days in the Peruvian rainforest. Next stop for Marnie and I is a place called Arequipa for a trip to the Colca Canyon and some serious condor watching, followed by a stay at Lake Titicaca, before heading off to La Paz in Bolivia. It’s all go!!

Until the next time

Doogs

Ps - there now follows a message from my travel companion….!!

Hola, amigos. Greetings from Peru! I´m having a grand old time, with the possible exception of dodgy buses, dodgy breakfasts (more jam and bread, anyone?!) and one too many 5am starts. Cusco was a great little place to spend some time, Machu Picchu was amazing (when I finally got there - curse those strikes in Peru) and I survived 4 days in the jungle. Go, me! More adventures await and I have a very good tour guide courtesy of Doogan Tours.... not to mention a good drinking partner (more Pisco sours, please!). Anyway, I think you´ve done well to get this far in Doogan´s blog, so I´ll sign off here. Adios, amigos! Marnie xo

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[Angela]

Where's your hair gone?