See our Peru photos.
"Did you get robbed while in Arequipa?" our cab driver asked as he drove us to collect our bus to Chile.
"No," I replied.
"Oh that's good!" he said. "Lucky!"
We'd heard about Arequipa's reputation as a thief's paradise, but managed to avoid trouble for the few days we were there, despite a lady in the bakery telling us that our hotel was in a bad neighbourhood.
We'd spent the previous two days in the Colca Canyon, but had booked a lazy tour. I was recovering from illness, so didn't feel like a hardcore trek, with only a crumbly path preventing me from plummeting to my death in the world's deepest canyon. Plus we've been on the road for nine months; we're getting lazy; get used to it.
So, our tour didn't feature lots of walking, but it did include breaking down at 4,900 meters above sea level (lots of people were throwing up from oxygen deprivation while the driver tried to fix the bus), and a morning of condor spotting.
We crossed back into Chile yesterday (via the Tacna / Arica border) and it couldn't have been easier. The border officials were particularly slack:
Border guard: "Do you have any fruit in your bag?"
Me: "No."
Border guard: "Do you like drugs?"
Me: "Oh no! I don't like drugs!"
Border guard: "Good! Move along."
Tonight we take a 24-hour bus ride from Arica, Chile, to Argentina. After spending three months in the Andes, I'm sad to finally leave them. True, the air was so thin that we got knackered walking up a short hill, the bus rides were frightening and the food was dull (meat, chips and maybe a leaf of lettuce if you're lucky), but life at sea level seems so plain. The towns all look the same, the locals don't wear silly hats and there's not a llama in sight.
We had some issues with Peru - almost every tour we did was crap, Peruvians struggle to tell the truth, everyone tried to rip us off - but we still had a lot of fun and will never forget the stunning ruins of the Incas and their ancestors. One other thing I'll never forget about Peru is the sheer number of Peruvians who pee on the street. Wet arches adorn the sides of almost every building in Peru, and during Inti Raymi, when Cusco was packed with people, the streets literally flowed with urine.
Strolling through Cusco one afternoon, a Peruvian guy kindly redirected his stream of piss to let Amy and I pass, and later we spotted an old lady squatting in broad daylight on the side of the road. A yellow trickle danced from beneath her traditional-dress skirt and onto the cobble stones, before she straightened her bowler hat and returned to selling peanuts on the side of the road.
Next stop: Salta, Argentina. Expect us to be pretty fat on steaks by the time we get back to London.
July 09, 2005
Bloody great condor in the Colca Canyon"Did you get robbed while in Arequipa?" our cab driver asked as he drove us to collect our bus to Chile.
"No," I replied.
"Oh that's good!" he said. "Lucky!"
We'd heard about Arequipa's reputation as a thief's paradise, but managed to avoid trouble for the few days we were there, despite a lady in the bakery telling us that our hotel was in a bad neighbourhood.
We'd spent the previous two days in the Colca Canyon, but had booked a lazy tour. I was recovering from illness, so didn't feel like a hardcore trek, with only a crumbly path preventing me from plummeting to my death in the world's deepest canyon. Plus we've been on the road for nine months; we're getting lazy; get used to it.
So, our tour didn't feature lots of walking, but it did include breaking down at 4,900 meters above sea level (lots of people were throwing up from oxygen deprivation while the driver tried to fix the bus), and a morning of condor spotting.
We crossed back into Chile yesterday (via the Tacna / Arica border) and it couldn't have been easier. The border officials were particularly slack:
Border guard: "Do you have any fruit in your bag?"
Me: "No."
Border guard: "Do you like drugs?"
Me: "Oh no! I don't like drugs!"
Border guard: "Good! Move along."
Tonight we take a 24-hour bus ride from Arica, Chile, to Argentina. After spending three months in the Andes, I'm sad to finally leave them. True, the air was so thin that we got knackered walking up a short hill, the bus rides were frightening and the food was dull (meat, chips and maybe a leaf of lettuce if you're lucky), but life at sea level seems so plain. The towns all look the same, the locals don't wear silly hats and there's not a llama in sight.
We had some issues with Peru - almost every tour we did was crap, Peruvians struggle to tell the truth, everyone tried to rip us off - but we still had a lot of fun and will never forget the stunning ruins of the Incas and their ancestors. One other thing I'll never forget about Peru is the sheer number of Peruvians who pee on the street. Wet arches adorn the sides of almost every building in Peru, and during Inti Raymi, when Cusco was packed with people, the streets literally flowed with urine.
Strolling through Cusco one afternoon, a Peruvian guy kindly redirected his stream of piss to let Amy and I pass, and later we spotted an old lady squatting in broad daylight on the side of the road. A yellow trickle danced from beneath her traditional-dress skirt and onto the cobble stones, before she straightened her bowler hat and returned to selling peanuts on the side of the road.
Next stop: Salta, Argentina. Expect us to be pretty fat on steaks by the time we get back to London.
Jody writes:
See our 'Moche' photos.
After three months spent in the Andes, we finally flew down to sea level again on Wednesday. Landing in Lima, we immediately caught a bus North to Chiclayo. There are a lot less tourists up north and Peruvians have been staring at us since we arrived.
They stare at us in the street and they stare at us in restaurants. A guy even staged an 11-hour stare-a-thon on our bus journey from Lima, without blinking. Girls and kids find it a novelty and sometimes shout "hello!" at us in the street. Some guys just stare at us as if they're trying to work out how much money is in our pockets.
We've enjoyed a few frantic days of sightseeing, visiting various pre-Inca sites of the Moche and Chimu period (which was roughly from the birth of Christ to 1470). We had to shell out a small fortune for a private tour of the sites, due to the lack of tourists in Chiclayo (the 30 or so people who had booked into our hotel prior to us were Peruvian).
Our guide stumbled through a musuem tour, with little knowledge of what he was talking about and even less knowldege of the English language. At the end of the tour, we sat in a room with a load of kids who were on a school daytrip. After a short wait, a member of museum staff clambered out of a cupboard in his full Moche King gear. 10 minutes of stomping about and chanting culminated in him asking our guide, in Spanish: "Do they speak espanol?"
"A little, I think," our guide replied.
"Well get them to have their photo taken with me so they can give me some money," the Moche King said, setting a fine example to the kids on how to deal with tourists: fleece them for all the cash they have.
We flatly refused to have our photo taken in front of 30 school children, especially when our guide tried to persuade us to wear silly, fake gold headsets. I gave the King one Peruvian Sol anyway - fake gold armour can't come cheap after all.
We arrived in Trujillo yesterday, which is where we'd originally planned to volunteer, before we learnt that the organisation we were going to work for was corrupt. We're glad that we volunteered in Sucre instead. The Peruvian coast appears to be shrouded in a constant fog and the towns have a depressing feeling about them. We also volunteered last week for a few days while in Ollantaytambo, working in a restaurant that served free food to 130 kids each day. It involved lots of chopping veg.
Peruvian food update: I tried ceviche (raw fish) and didn't die. I can't say that I liked the texture, but I'm more likely to eat it again before going back for more roast guinea pig.
We head to Lima in a couple of days, then continue to work our way south to Nazca and Arequipa, before reaching Argentina. I hope everyone back home in London is ok after the blitz. Thanks for contacting us, to those who did.
For older entries, see the archives at the top right-hand side of this page.
Cheeky Moche potAfter three months spent in the Andes, we finally flew down to sea level again on Wednesday. Landing in Lima, we immediately caught a bus North to Chiclayo. There are a lot less tourists up north and Peruvians have been staring at us since we arrived.
They stare at us in the street and they stare at us in restaurants. A guy even staged an 11-hour stare-a-thon on our bus journey from Lima, without blinking. Girls and kids find it a novelty and sometimes shout "hello!" at us in the street. Some guys just stare at us as if they're trying to work out how much money is in our pockets.
We've enjoyed a few frantic days of sightseeing, visiting various pre-Inca sites of the Moche and Chimu period (which was roughly from the birth of Christ to 1470). We had to shell out a small fortune for a private tour of the sites, due to the lack of tourists in Chiclayo (the 30 or so people who had booked into our hotel prior to us were Peruvian).
Our guide stumbled through a musuem tour, with little knowledge of what he was talking about and even less knowldege of the English language. At the end of the tour, we sat in a room with a load of kids who were on a school daytrip. After a short wait, a member of museum staff clambered out of a cupboard in his full Moche King gear. 10 minutes of stomping about and chanting culminated in him asking our guide, in Spanish: "Do they speak espanol?"
"A little, I think," our guide replied.
"Well get them to have their photo taken with me so they can give me some money," the Moche King said, setting a fine example to the kids on how to deal with tourists: fleece them for all the cash they have.
We flatly refused to have our photo taken in front of 30 school children, especially when our guide tried to persuade us to wear silly, fake gold headsets. I gave the King one Peruvian Sol anyway - fake gold armour can't come cheap after all.
We arrived in Trujillo yesterday, which is where we'd originally planned to volunteer, before we learnt that the organisation we were going to work for was corrupt. We're glad that we volunteered in Sucre instead. The Peruvian coast appears to be shrouded in a constant fog and the towns have a depressing feeling about them. We also volunteered last week for a few days while in Ollantaytambo, working in a restaurant that served free food to 130 kids each day. It involved lots of chopping veg.
Peruvian food update: I tried ceviche (raw fish) and didn't die. I can't say that I liked the texture, but I'm more likely to eat it again before going back for more roast guinea pig.
We head to Lima in a couple of days, then continue to work our way south to Nazca and Arequipa, before reaching Argentina. I hope everyone back home in London is ok after the blitz. Thanks for contacting us, to those who did.
