Ay, Caramba

The roads have been hard on poor la Tortuga, and the turbo is broken.

The little thing inside that spins is supposed to have .5mm of wiggle, and it has 4mm!! So we’re stuck in Cuzco for a few days at least (we hope not more) waiting for a part. It’s Sunday the 29 of April, and we’ve been here for…2 weeks already.

Luckily, we couldn’t be stuck in a nicer place. Quinta Lala is a haven. It has everything we need, is right in a wonderful city, and is chock full of friendly and interesting travelers. We’ve probably met more people here than we have on our entire trip. We’ve been having a great time exchanging stories, places to camp, road recipes, and drinking boxed red wine. Apparently in Chile, all the wines come in boxes as well as bottles, and the quality is the same. It probably has something to do with the roads, and the impossibility of transporting glass bottles intact on terrible dirt or gravel roads. We certainly appreciate it!!

Douglas has been making friends by fixing everyone’s trucks – so far he has fixed Colin and Liz’s Ford (twice – that’s Ford for you) and two Land Rovers. We’ll see who’s next.

In the meantime, we’re taking advantage of the time to organize our lives. We have 6 weeks of travel left, at which point we’ll ship the van from Buenos Aires (assuming we make it there!) to the east coast of the US, where we’ll pick up our dog, Saira (she decided she didn’t want to come on this trip – too much time in the car). The van will be 3 weeks in transit, and we plan to spend that time visiting friends in NC and Boston, then we’ll pack everything in the van and drive over to Vancouver, where we’ll settle.

In the meantime, here’s an update of where we’ve been this year, and how long it’s taken us:

USA, NC to Texas: 2000 miles in 4 days
Central America, Mexico to Panama: 4000 miles in 2 months
South America, Ecuador to Peru: 3000 miles in 1 month

So far we’ve traveled 9000 miles, and we think we have between 2500 and 3500 miles to go, depending on which way we go, and what the roads are like. We hear they're pretty bad in Bolivia, but quite good in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

And, yes, people actually say ‘Ay, caramba’ here. It’s my new favorite curse. I don’t know exactly what it means, but the taxi drivers say it whenever something goes wrong.

Altiplano and Sillustani Ruins

On our way back to Cuzco, we decided to stop at the Sillustani ruins near Puno. We turned off the main ‘highway’ onto a small road that wound its way through a bewitching altiplano landscape.



At one particularly beautiful adobe compound, we stopped to take pictures, and the friendly family living there waved us in to see more. The kids were all wearing multicolored hats, and one of the women was wearing my new favorite type of hat, a tiny brown bowler perched at an angle, with a little tassle.



They showed us around their home, composed of several small round adobe buildings surrounding a courtyard.



In the back was a small pen for guinea pigs, a local delicacy. In this picture you can just see that there is a small hutch at the back for them to hide in, with a hole as a doorway. One of the guinea pigs was too fat to fit through the doorway anymore – we figured he was going to be lunch!!



When they were done showing us around the rest of the house, they took us into the weaving room and showed us their wares. Of course. Everyone’s gotta make a living. We bought one weaving made of llama, rather than the usual alpaca. Llama fiber is usually used for ropes, and has a coarser texture. It was actually quite soft, though, and reminds me of raw silk in its combination of strength and suppleness. The undyed llama wool had a really lovely shading of colors from palest cream to warm brown. One of my favorite textiles. I wish I had a picture of it to include, but I forgot to take one before I sent it back to NC with Beulah – she generously offered to take some of our extraneous junk home so we could have room to move in the van again!

Finally, since we will be passing through this way again (if we ever get our car part and get to leave Cuzco), we took some family portraits, promising to print them and give them to the family on our way back through. They were quite amazed that they could see the picture immediately on the screen of our digital camera.



Next we headed over the Sillustani ruins, which are pre-incan funerary towers.



I also got this nice picture of a woman spinning by the side of the path:



And just before we got back to Cuzco we passed through a small town fill to the brim with Sunday marketgoers in all their finery. The hats are just splendid.

Lake Titicaca

After seeing Machu Picchu, we took a rest day and then headed south to the other main attraction in southern Peru, Lake Titicaca, home of the famous floating islands. The drive through the altiplano was stunning, with big snow-capped mountains on either side. We only made it as far as Pucara, unfortunately, and ended up staying in one of the eccentric “Turistic Hotels” that are so plentiful in Peru. We took off early the next morning for Puno, and arrived early in the day. We got Beulah settled into a hostel, and we found a parqueo run by a friendly family, then grabbed a taxi to see some of the small towns scattered along the southern shore of Lake Titicaca.

We went first to Chucuito, which is famous for its Temple of Fertility. As soon as the taxi pulled into the central square of the sleepy little town, two small kids approached and offered to be our guides. They of course had finger puppets on, hoping to make a sale. They were quite the young entrepreneurs, and even had a sales pitch worked up where they spoke in unison in sing-song voices. We were a little weirded out at the thought of having the Temple of Fertility explained to us by 5-year olds, but decided that they were old pros, and so we hired them.



The Temple is an old Inca site where women would come to make offerings of coca, hoping the gods would favor them with children. The central part of the temple, which no longer has a roof, is filled with carved stone phalluses, some as big as 4 feet! The older guide told us most of the story, then poked his business partner in the side to get her attention, and they ended by saying “and that concludes the story of the Temple of Fertility” in unison. They were pretty cute. When we paid them, we asked them who got to keep the money, and they said it all went straight to their mother, so we paid them with some chocolate, as well.



On our way back to Puno, we stopped at the tiny lakeside village of Chimu, where they are famous for making the reed boats. It must have been the wrong season or day, because we didn’t see any boat building, only reed-drying. Luckily, there was one small house that doubled as a museum and boat souvenir store, so we stopped. We first looked around the museum, where they had a spectacular collection of replicas of local birds and animals, and a large reed boat carrying the Inca King and his wife. It was pretty impressive, so we resolved to buy a small boat or two.

When we went downstairs, some of the boatmakers came out of their boatmaking room/living room to answer our questions, and to ask questions of their own about where we are from, what it’s like, etc. It turned out that one of the boatmakers was also a boat racer, who regularly takes part in (and wins!) the annual reed boat race on October 22.

The next day we took a guided tour out to the floating islands. The boat was typical for here, and only had one speed. When they wanted to start or stop it, the captain would leave the wheel and head to the back of the boat, lift a wooden cover on a hatch, and fiddle with the engine. Typical, yes. Safe, maybe not.

We arrived on the floating islands to see a veritable army of locals ready to greet us and sell us things. Our tour group sat in a semicircle to listen to the story of the floating islands, and to taste totora, the reed used to build both the boats and the islands. How multipurpose can you get?



Totora is extremely rich in fluoride; here is a picture of Douglas and Beulah getting a full day's worth of fluoride in one bite:



The folks who built the Uros Islands speak Aymara, a different language from most of the indigenous people in Peru, who speak Quechua. They are originally from the Amazon Basin, if I’m remembering correctly. They were persecuted by other nations in the area, and began living on floating islands to evade conflict with their neighbours.
The islands are built by first cutting free a big mat of entwined totora roots from the edge of the lake. This mat floats to the top, and successive layers of totora reeds are laid on top. Every so often (depending on the season, as often as once a week) new reeds are laid down. After 20 years or so, the islands are so thick that they touch the bottom and have to be abandoned because of danger of flooding in the rainy season.

The boats are built out of totora reeds, as well. Originally they were made of pure totora reeds, and would only last for 3 months. Nowadays, though, the builders incorporate layers of plastic bottles, and the boats last for 2.5 years.



Overall, the visit to the islands was a bit of a mixed bag, and we have debated a fair amount about what to make of it. On the one hand, it was incredibly touristy, almost Disneyfied. Each island was essentially a floating souvenir shop, and we felt not just that these folks’ lives were impacted by the tourist trade, but that their lives were shaped by and for the tourist trade and almost nothing else. They were like a living museum exhibit.





On the other hand, they have found a way to preserve their unique way of life. Their community seemed fairly intact, and we didn’t get the impression that many families were split up because the husband (and maybe the kids, too) had left to work in a big city. They also seemed to be doing fairly well. The proceeds from the tourist visits are shared among the community, and have been used to build a big school, and to provide amenities like solar panels and international telephones on the island. In that respect, at least, the development was positive – the money is really going back to the community, and is being used productively.



Still, I don’t know if I would want to live in Disneyland, even if there were solar panels and good schools.

Enough seriousness - here is a video of a trici-taxi ride we took on our way to eat delicious cake in Puno. And a photo of the trici-taxis, which are quite common, and very fast!!

Machu Picchu

This amazing archeological site is often the highlight of many folks' trip to South America, and we are no different. Yes they bludgeon you as a tourist with a ‘special’ $73 US train ride and $12 bus ride and $40 entrance fee, BUT, the moment the sun rises above the site, producing a magical double rainbow behind the caretakers hut that all becomes irrelevant.

We started the journey on the 7am train from Cuzco and four hours later arrived in Aguas Calientes. Many paint a dismal picture of this town but I went in thinking of it like a ski resort and found it charming. The food and lodging was actually reasonably priced. We even had a magnificent 3 course meal at Indio Feliz, carefully prepared by a French chef and served by his attentive wife. All for $12. And of course we had to go back again for another round of the amazing desert.

In order to see sun rise, and avoid the crowds, we caught the 5:30am bus. We hired a guide, Ernesto, whom I wouldn’t recommend, and began the tour by climbing to the caretakers hut. This is where the Inca trail enters the site and from where the classic MP photos are taken. From there we descended to the main entrance, more wonderful rock work. I could go on and on for hours, but the pictures in the MP album may be more useful.



After the tour, my Mum headed back to Aguas Calientes and Kim and I climbed the narrow stairs to Wayna Pichu, the astronomers hang out high above the city. This was very well worth the hour hike and the clouds cleared just long enough for us to snap a couple photos of MP below.



Some of the coolest things about MP: Built around 1400 it was basically a university. The terraces were used to experiment with crops facing different directions and encompass multiple microclimates as they climb the slopes.



The water works are amazing! Channels carved into the rock with 16 water falls. The first water fall is ceremonial and the next 15 are for getting clean drinking water.



The round carved stones used to tie the roofs on and hold the doors closed.



The incorporation of the natural stone outcroppings into the buildings.



When we arrived in the morning it was drizzling rain and we feared the weather may not cooperate for us. But just as the sun rose the clouds parted a bit presenting us with a rainbow and a mystical Machu Picchu. The weather held all day with some light drizzle from time to time. We couldn’t have asked for better weather or a more wonderful day.



The train ride home was pleasant. I especially enjoyed the zigzag rail as you enter Cuzco. To overcome the steep climb out of the city, the train tracks zigzag, with an operator jumping out and switching the track at every zag, very similar to the Nariz del Diablo in Ecuador.

Pisac Market and Ruins

Once we had looked around Cuzco a little bit, we decided to head to Pisac for its famous Sunday market. There are also some Inca ruins nearby (there are ruins everywhere in this area – a 5 minute walk from our campground there are some small, unmarked ruins). The market was the usual mixture of touristy crafts and everyday things for the locals, and we very much enjoyed looking around at everything. Beulah and Douglas tried out some choclo, which is local corn with HUGE kernels, very tasty:





We decided to pass on the local remedy for joint and muscle pain, though:



After we had had a good look around the market, and sat in the shade to drink some coffee, we decided to take a short taxi ride to the Pisac ruins. The site was divided into two major parts, the agricultural part, and the ceremonial part. There were numerous curved terraces for growing crops in the agricultural section.



And there were ceremonial baths where pilgrims could purify themselves before entering the ceremonial section.



The site was sprawling, and involved a lot of climbing along narrow winding paths that hugged the steep cliffsides.

Cuzco and Sacsayhuayman

So we arrived in Cuzco the day before Beulah was due to arrive and settled into the wonderful campground of Quinta Lala. It’s run by a Dutch couple, Gonna and Helmie, and is just perfect. It has everything an overlander needs, including lots of other overlanders to talk to!! And, my favorite, just about every morning a herd of alpacas comes in to graze the lawn.



Beulah arrived the next day, quite early in the morning. We picked her up at the airport, then got her settled into the one small room at Quinta Lala (usually reserved for campers rained out of their tents).

We went first to Sacsayhuayman (it sounds a little like sexy woman), the Inca ruins that are right next door to our camp spot. They are built on a ridge that overlooks the city of Cuzco, and the stones used in the construction are absolutely gargantuan. It was our first sight of the famous Inca stonework, and it was truly impressive. The largest stone weighs more than 350 tons, and some of the join work defies the imagination – one stone can have as many as 30 angles! These gargantuan stones fit together perfectly, with not even enough room to slide a piece of paper between them.



The Incas were engineers, all right. Their constructions were remarkably earthquake-proof, as well, and have survived a number of large earthquakes that leveled most other nearby buildings. All of the walls have a slight angle, between 8 and 14 degrees, that makes them more stable. They are also built on a foundation of small, round stones, so that when the earthquake hits, the walls can shift on their rolling foundations without collapsing. Amazing.



We had a guide to explain the site to us, and we really enjoyed hearing the extra information. Otherwise it would have just been another beautiful pile of rocks. We wouldn’t have known that Cuzco is built in the shape of a puma, and that Sacsayhuayman is the puma’s head, since it was the ceremonial site. Nor would we have known that the Incas carved their stones with meteorites, and slid them into place on huge leaves of aloe, which then served to help glue the stones together.

The name Saxsayhuaman means satisfied falcon. The site was renamed when the Spaniards slaughtered hundreds of Incas here, and their bodies were left out for the falcons to eat.

After dragging poor Beulah around this pile of rocks (she had come up to 3300m from sea level, and was feeling the altitude) we decided to take a turn around Cuzco and see what we could see. The city is absolutely gorgeous. Tiny river stone streets wind their way in between lovely colonial buildings, some of them with remnants of Inca stonework at the base. The buildings off the central square have elaborately carved wooden balconies. And mountains ring the city, giving you a sense of distance and space whenever you look up from the lovely architecture. Here is a picture of the narrow streets:



It is, of course, VERY touristy, and every time you step into the square you are swarmed by folks trying to sell you finger puppets, postcards, or dinner in their restaurant. Beside the expensive restaurants are stores that sell jewelry and fine alpaca sweaters for hundreds and thousands of U$. But somehow it’s still a nice city.

Another tactic often used to part tourists from their dollars is to dress up in traditional garb, pose with a well-brushed llama or alpaca, and ask for money for taking photos. We took some funny pictures of these two boys with their llamas.



And as we were walking down a central street, looking for coffee and cake, an indigenous woman in full regalia stuffed a baby goat into my arms, and then demanded money for a photo. The goat of course started to poop, and I nearly dropped it. But we got a photo anyhow, and Douglas helped me pick the little balls of goat poop off my clothes afterwards.



After some cake, to revive us, we headed over to a local craft cooperative called the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cuzco. Here they try to preserve the weavers’ art by selling really fine woven goods for fair trade prices, and encouraging children in villages to learn spinning, dyeing, and weaving from their grandparents. In the center of the store, surrounded by the beautiful and varied types of weaving produced by different village traditions, were four weavers using backstrap looms. All the thread is hand-dyed with natural materials, hand-spun with drop spindles, and then woven into intricate patterns. It was incredible to watch – the amount of time needed to produce a single row of weaving was impressive. Here is a video of a weaver at work:



And I can't close this blog entry without mentioning that sweet sweet Beulah brought us the porta potti we've been looking for in every city since Antigua. We are both pleased as punch. Here is a picture of Douglas testing it out:

Lake Titicaca

A quick note. We´ve been having a great time with Douglas´ mom. We spent some time in Cuzco, ate some delicious food, shopped for crafts, visited Machu Picchu, and are now in Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Tomorrow morning we´re planning to take a boat out to see the famous floating islands.

We also posted a LOT of videos these past days. Check out the video link. Some are from as far back as Nicaragua!

more soon...

Cuzco!!

Just a quick note - we are in Cuzco and it it glorious. And we have uploaded our 'favorites' set of photos, for those who can't stand to look at all the rest. I'm going to try and put a few photos into the blog text in the next few days, too - we have wifi here, which we haven't seen since Quito!

Peruvian Altiplano

After a relaxing couple of days in Huacachina, that included a wine/pisco tour in Ica that was perfectly spectacular, we piled into the van (with many new repairs - thank god I married MacGyver) and headed for Nasca. We stopped at an observation tower beside the Panamerican and had a look at three of the figures: the tree, the hands, and the frog. This part of the Peruvian desert is made up of very pale sand covered in small dark rocks, and the figures were made (by aliens, of course!) by moving the dark rocks. The most popular theory about the purpose of the figures is that they are a calendar system. The folks who constructed them also built a complicated underground irrigation system, parts of which are still in use today.

A landmark moment of our trip occurred in Nasca - we left the Panamerican highway. We´ve spent much of our trip driving on this road (of highly variable quality), and we were a little sad to leave it. Partly because it was easy to find and follow, for the most part. And partly because it means that the ´go south, south, south´ leg of our trip is over. We only have 4 countries to go! Some day in the not-too-distant future we will have to find jobs and return to something resembling a normal life. How strange.

After we left Nasca, we turned east, and drove straight up, it seemed, into the Peruvian altiplano. Peru has already showed us a spectacular variety of landscapes, and the altiplano was something new again. We ascended from sea level to about 14,000 feet, or 4400m, and then drove straight across flat green plains dotted with shining lakes. Diaphanous white clouds streaked the sky about 3 inches above our heads. And all the alpacas that I´ve been waiting to see, wondering where they were - were in the altiplano!! Huge herds of them. So many. And don´t worry, we took lots of pictures.

Speaking of pictures, we just uploaded about 200 new ones for Peru. We´re doing our best to edit them ruthlessly. For those folks who can´t stomach looking at that many photos, who see the number and just turn away - we´re working on a trip favorites folder that is only about 100 so far. Soon we´ll figure out how to upload those, too, and then you can look without fear.

Two real incidents of note in the altiplano. First, I bought 2 pounds of alpaca wool, straight from the alpaca. Before I say more, I´ve been looking for this stuff since we hit Ecuador, and haven´t been able to find any. I have been asking in every wool shop (and there are many - this is a continent of knitters) where I could buy pure alpaca wool. No one had any, saying it was too expensive. Today, we stopped in a small village, and a woman approached us with a beautiful crocheted hat (we bought this too). I thought she might have an idea where I could get my hands on some wool. Sure enough, she had an entire llama´s worth of wool in her back room (lying next to a skinned animal carcass, apparently waiting to be butchered and eaten). She brought it out, stuffed it into a bag, and charged me $5 for 2 pounds of pure, caramel-colored, soft-as-a-kitten alpaca wool. I can´t believe my luck. Now I just have to get the mud and sticks out of it, and figure out how to card and spin it. Hm. Should be easy.



Second, as we were driving along at 50kph (an amazing thing in and of itself, but the road from Nasca to Cuzco is wonderful, contrary to all reports), we saw a tarantula the size of a dinner plate in the middle of the road. We both said ¨whoa! did you see that??¨ and turned the van around for a better look. But by the time we got back to where we´d seen it, it was gone. Wow. A spider big enough to notice it when you´re driving by at 50kph!!!

And tomorrow we´re off to Cuzco...

Ica and Huacachina

After waiting for a couple of hours, this is Peru after all, our bus finally took us back to Pisco. We ate a weird fruit called Tuna – looks like a big fig, but BRIGHT red inside with little seeds. Not a new favorite but worth eating the whole thing. Then we drove a couple hours through desert interspersed with vineyards to Ica. We stopped at a spot reputed to have yummy Pisco Sours. We decided one wouldn’t be enough to give it a fair evaluation, so we had several. Wondered around town a bit and then drove to Huacachina. Now this is a real oasis. I mean like in the movies. The pond’s murky water is reputed to be therapeutic, we’re going to take their word on that. And the dunes surrounding it are huge! In between there’s a narrow string of houses, restaurants, and hotels. Upon entering town we asked a guy on the street if there was someplace to camp, he, being Peruvian, jumped in the back of the van and took us to a wonderful spot, Bananas. Armanda and her boyfriend Antonio run a pool/bar/camping spot that also does boogie rides into the dunes. I’d been looking forward to sand boarding – a great opportunity to get sand into every nook and cranny- so we took a couple from Armanda and hiked into the dunes. Wow, the sand is super fine and super hard work but very fun. A few runs and we decided to just drink the beer I’d brought and enjoy the surreal scenery around us.

We got back to the van and collapsed into bed at 7 sans dinner. This prompted some comments about how much we sleep from Armanda. The next day we lounged around. I fixed the radiator fan that had a bad ground and blew a fuse. I also replaced the passenger side headlight only to discover that the dove that flew into the van yesterday morning shattered the drivers side one. We made a plan to go out into the dunes with Antonio in his boogie. Try saying that with a straight face.

Just before sunset we headed out in the sand buggy with beer, sand boards and cameras. Ah, V8 power made the sand boarding a LOT easier. And what a ride, dropping off dune edges and catching lots of air. Antonio was a great driver and we were never out of control – after all he’s been doing this for 10 years. He would lower his Oakleys just as we got to a fun part, and afterwards turn around with a huge grin and ask if we had fun.

Paracas and Pisco

Pulling off the panamerican highway we headed into Pisco. This is a pretty grungy town and after asking several people it turns out the best Pisco is had in Ica. We did however book our boat trip to Islas Ballestas. These islands are billed as the poor mans Galapagos and, being poor, and therefore not having gone to the Galapagos, we were excited about them. We then continued through town, past the fish meal factories and arrived at Paracas National park. Somehow we were on the wrong road and a bit of fast and exciting driving across the sand got us to the right one. This made Kim smile. We paid our 10 soles and headed towards the Atenas campsite. More driving on the sand – go Tortuga go! - and we found about 30 others camped here as well. This would be the first we see of actual campers in Latin America. The were all Peruvian sail boarders enjoying the fast wind. A very wonderful sunset and sleep ensued.

Waking up at 5am proved difficult. At quarter to six I happened to open my eyes and see the tranquil alarm clock that Kim had turned off 45 minutes ago. A fast race to get ready to make the 7am departure of the bus got us coffee’d and out of camp in 15 minutes. As we got onto the road and up to about 50mph we were alerted that we had been remiss in properly latching the roof as it popped up with quite a sound – much like a sail filling. This is something that we had both pontificated about, what if… well, it was quite dull really, we stopped (spilling coffee) and depopped the top, again, and hurried on.

Now this is Latin America, so the 7am bus didn’t actually get to the travel agency until 7:45. Then we waited for another hour at the dock for the boat. This was a bit of a zoo as many tourists lined up willy nilly for their boat. A quick boat ride got us to the Candelabra, a weird sand thing reminiscent of the Nazca lines. Then we headed towards the main course – las Islas.

These Islands were white in the distance and I reckoned it was all the bird poop. There was actually a war – The Guano War- fought over these islands. Before petrochemicals the guano was used as fertilizer and quite valuable. As we got closer the number of birds was astounding. I didn’t see any blue footed boobies – I’d been excited about seeing boobies all week – but there were countless other varieties.

Then we came around to a cay that was making a very unusual sound. The sea was quite big and obscured our view until we got closer. Hundreds and hundreds of sea lions! Here is a video:

The were all around us, frolicking in the waves, lounging on the rocks, and making weird sea lion sounds. This was fabo! We watched them for a while and then pressed on looking for the very shy Humbolt Penguins. Just before we were to head back we spotted two funny looking birds. Penguins! They posed for a few pictures and then wobbled down into the ocean. This made our day. Penguins. Sea Lions. I was still distraught about the boobies so Kim showed me hers.

Dali

Overall, Peru has been a real trip. I started out hating it – the crooked money changers, the menacing cops who stopped us 85 times a day to point out that we don’t have a front license plate, the desolate high desert, the overall air of poverty and desperation. Then we drove through some of the most surreally beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen, and met an unbelievably warm welcome from the mountain villagers. I started to like it. The mountain cops, too, were better – they wanted to know where we were from and if everything was going OK on our trip, what we had for lunch. We came back down from the mountains into the bleak desert where people live in plastic bag shacks outside of town in the sprawling dump and hail you, hoping you’ll dump your garbage near them so they can have first pick. The shacks shaded into the shanties of Lima, and while we were distracted by the blare of horns and the so-Catholic-they’re-suicidal taxi drivers, we drove into a zone of pure opulence, of Porsche SUVs and picture-perfect beach houses. When you’re nice to street vendors or waitresses here, they blink and then grin at you like you’re the first.

I cant say enough how nice the people are here. The owners of all the parqueos we’ve stayed in have been the nicest people we’ve met on our trip. After parking for lunch in Ica, we paid our pittance to the parqueo owner, and on the way out he ran out with three mangoes for us. Huh? This is classic Peruvian.


We get tossed from one extreme to the other, both in terms of landscape and people, and I can’t regain my equilibrium. I feel ike we’re traveling through a Salvador Dali painting, and nothing is what I expect it to be. Every time we turn a corner the rules are different. Somewhere back near the border, I think the highway folded and we slid into a different dimension. I’m writing this entry from a tiny desert oasis, which contributes to the surreal atmosphere – I didn’t know landscapes like this existed outside of the movies. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in this country, where the majority of people seem to be struggling for food and shelter, and a few live like the upper crust of North America.

And we’re only halfway through Peru…

Lima

The next day’s driving was a stretch we’d been dreading, but it was also our last long stretch before we got to stop and relax in Ica/Pisco/Nasca. We hopped onto the big fast toll highway through Lima. North of Lima, everything is bleak desert, houses are tiny shacks in the desert, and the people appear to have *nothing*. Lima itself is a megalopolis of 8 million. It holds almost a third of Peru’s population, and has spawned endless ‘pueblos jovenes’, or young towns on its edges that are mostly collections of shacks. And when I say ‘shack’, I really mean shack. Most of them look barely big enough to lie down in, maybe 6’ by 6’. The nicer ones are made of adobe bricks, and have a flat sheet of something on top, held down by a neat row of small rocks, so the roof won’t fly off. Some of them, however, are made of the reed mats we use for a rug in the van, hung over a frame of bamboo poles – little better than a tent. I’ve even seen a single mat rolled into a tube and pegged down, so the owner can presumably sleep in the middle.

We passed through Lima without too much trouble – the highway was fast and straight, and mostly bypassed town traffic (though not entirely – see the crazy video of Lima traffic, which is pretty standard for Latin American cities – thank god Douglas is a mountain biker and good at avoiding obstacles). Here is a short video of Lima traffic. Note the fluidity of the 'lanes':



Lima spat us out into a landscape entirely different from what we’d seen to the north. Beach resort followed fancy beach resort, interspersed with gated communities of fancy beach houses. Porsche SUVs, 30 sole ($10) lunches on the beach, and a grocery store the likes of which we haven’t seen since America were a shock to our sensibilities, having passed through days’ worth of shack communities. We stopped at the grocery store to see what they had, and stocked up on olive oil, tabasco sauce, and Lindt chocolate, all the while feeling shocked by the luxury and excess.

Back to the Coast

The drive to Yungay was absolutely gorgeous, again, but in a totally different way. We traveled through high green Andean peaks, and then descended all the way to sea level. The road was really windy and misty, and offered spectacular views at every turn. The driving we’ve done the past few days, from Santa on the coast, to Yuramarca, down past Huaraz, then over to Barranca on the coast, is one of the most beautiful stretches we’ve driven the whole trip. Highly, highly recommended. Once we had descended from the heights, we spent a while driving through a green valley with dry Mars-like mountains on either side. The valley was like the green arm of the mountains reaching down to the coast, and was heavily cultivated. We saw trucks full of apples, roadside stands overflowing with fruit, and chiles laid out to dry, as far as the eye could see.

We stopped at a parqueo in Huacho, north of Lima. The family who run it were incredibly friendly (which is turning out to be the rule in Peru). They wanted to talk all night about our trip, thought the van was the best thing since sliced bread, and actually clapped their hands when they found out this was our honeymoon. In the morning, we decided to give them our blue folding chairs (we’re traveling too fast to use them – we’ve pulled them out all of twice), since we thought they could use them to sit at the beach, or in their parqueo. They *loved* them, and promptly disappeared into their little house to find something to give us in return. They came out with 3 eggs fresh from their hens, tinted green and varying greatly in size, and a loaf of sweet bread special for Semana Santa (it’s delicious). They also gave us their phone number and said we should call them if any little thing came up, they would do what they could to help us out. We are constantly surprised and overwhelmed at how friendly people here are.

Hostal Blanco

The next day we drove through the Canon del Pato to Huaraz, and the pictures speak for themselves here. It was a gorgeous road that goes through 35 tunnels in just a few kilometers. After the canyon it’s paved, and goes through lots of green small towns that remind us of Ecuador.

We finally arrived in Yungay, the turn off to the Cordillera Blanca and Huascaran National Park, where we intended to spend the night. At the gate however we were told that it would be $25 each to spend the night in the park. This was for the month pass. No amount of explaining that we only wanted one night would suffice. Oh well, we headed up to Laguna Llaganuco for a hike anyway. Driving into the glacial valley was amazing, the walls went straight up until they disappeared into the clouds. Every now and then we caught glimpses of the snow covered peaks that surrounded us. Although the Cordillera Blanca is only 20km wide and 180km long, there are 50 peaks over 5700m. For reference, North America only has three and Europe has none of this height. We were at the base of Peru’s highest mountain, Nevado Huascaran, at 6768m.

We were also amazed at the masses of Peruvians from Lima. Hordes of tourist, with only a sprinkling of gringos.

Descending back to Yungay we saw a green land rover with roof racks coming around the corner. Being an overlander down here is pretty exciting, and we get excited to meet others. “It’s the germans it’s the germans” we said. Stopping next to us I opened my window and asked “Toby?” We had been told about them and their green land rover by Collin and Liz, the brits we met in Huanchaco. We had a quick chat and exchanged contact information as it was sleeting.

I’ve often wondered how it happens that places like Bates Motel stay in business. Well, much as in the movie, it was raining, we couldn’t find a decent place to park the van, and then we saw a tiny, faded sign saying “Hostal Blanco” past the windscreen wipers. Walking up the dark muddy track I found Norman. Well, actually his name was Victor – but he was weird. He ran down to open the creaky iron gate and ran ahead of the van looking much like Gollam in his gate. This is when the back of the van started loosing traction and in an instant the back right wheel dropped two feet into the corn field. Stuck. Getting out and inspecting the situation I realized that we may have been the first guests here in years and the better part of the road track had been taken over by the corn field.

Kim got very excited that we would finally get to use the HighLift. I’d explained to her the intricacies of this marvel of engineering, how it can lift, pull, pry, and knock teeth right out. I was very pleased to have married a woman that gets excited about these sorts of things. After getting rigged up we began slowly extricating the van, my biggest concern being that the front wheel would slide off and that the van would promptly roll over. Pablo manned the HighLift, his wife barked instructions to all four of us, and Victor ran around apologizing and pushing. An hour later the next adventure ensued. The “hot” shower.

In the cold highlands our solar shower never warms up, and after a long day in the rain we thought a hot shower would be nice. As I was cleaning mud off the chains and highlift, Kim came out asking if I could try and make the shower hot. Being covered in mud we decided to ask Norman. He confessed that the breaker sometimes needs to be fiddled with – with very dry hands – he said several times, making me wonder about past guests demise. Some fiddling later and the lights dimmed a LOT as the water started coming out warm. This was one of those South American shower heads that have wires (often bare) running into it and a heating element inside. (I suspect Underwriters Laboratories would treat it like a bomb.) Just as Kim got wet, pop, all the lights went out. I looked outside to see if her shower had darkened the whole town, but it seemed to just be our area. Well, so much for the warm shower!

The beds were in about as good repair as the shower so we retired to the van for an excellent night sleep in the cool mountain air of Yungay.

Peruvian cops

These guys deserve their own special blog entry. We’ve been stopped more times in Peru than the entire rest of our trip. Outside of every little town, next to every highway toll station, and in a few other random places are a few cops standing outside their SUV, or sometimes motorcycle, watching everyone go by and stopping whoever they feel like. We’ve been warned again and again about corrupt Peruvian cops, especially south of Lima.We’ve been told they love to stop foreigners and make them pay for some imaginary infraction. Sometimes they will ask for your documents and then refuse to give them back until you pay them. We’ve taken precautions against that strategy (thanks for the idea, Colin and Liz) and photocopied every document they could conceivably ask for, stapled the pages together, and put it in the glove compartment. When they stop us and ask for documents, they get the pack of photocopies and not our originals. This seems to work, and when we get asked for the originals, we tell them they’re in the car somewhere, which seems to satisfy them.

So far we haven’t encountered any cops asking for bribes. We’ve mostly met two kinds of cops. One set are *very* friendly and curious about our trip, ask us questions about where we’re from, whether everything has been OK in Peru, tell us to take much care on our onward journey. This set sometimes asks us weird random questions, too, like how many gallons of gas it took us to get here, and what we had for lunch (that’s my favorite so far). The other set are not so friendly, and hint that we have broken some Peruvian laws. They always ask us where our front license plate is, and we explain to them that in NC we only have one on the back, it’s normal. One cop kept insisting that we needed to have another one, so we asked him where we should get it. He said “The US”, and we said, well, we’re not going back to get one, and anyway, they wouldn’t give us another one, because they just don’t issue front license plates. He kept insisting that we should find a way to get one, and we finally gave up the conversation as fruitless. Then he wanted to see our international insurance papers, and complained that they were in English. Well, duh, they were issued by a company in Florida. Anyhow, he eventually let us go without doing anything more than annoying the heck out of us.

We’ve been stopped so many times, that we’ve developed some strategies to avoid it. If we see a police point coming up, we snug right up to whatever car is in front of us, or if it’s a 4-lane, whatever is beside us, hoping they don’t notice us. It works sometimes. Other times when they are flagging us down, we pretend we thought they were just waving ‘hello’ at us, and wave back and keep driving. This also works, surprisingly. They haven’t hopped into their cars and chased us, yet, anyway!!

Landing the Mother Ship

The past few days we have been driving on extremely good, fast PanAm highway through the flat coastal desert, and we decided we needed a change of pace. We also wanted to see the famous Huasacaran National Park, with lots of high peaks, and drive along the Canon del Pato road (so named because it looks like a duck from the air). So we headed inland from Santa. The road immediately got smaller, but was still paved until we had gone some ways inland. We drove through lots of small villages where every single building was made of adobe. Then, suddenly, the road turned to a dirt track, and that’s when the landscape got really beautiful. We felt like we were driving through a Martian landscape – everything was dry, rocky, and red. The road often dropped off precipitously, and sometimes the road had fallen away completely and been re-routed, probably by a bus driver. There were lots of fresh piles of rubble where there had been a tiny landslide, and lots of the trucks had heavy duty grates on top to protect passengers from landslides. We didn’t dally!
The road was really slow, though, and it took us about 9 hours to get from Huanchaco to Yuramarca – check what a small distance that is on the map and imagine our speed. In one of the villages nearing Yuramarca, we were hailed by two women and asked if we could give one of them a ride onwards. We generally don’t mind picking up women hitchhikers, and they looked like they’ve been waiting for a ride for a while. Veronica turned out to be a health worker, an obstetrician, who works in the district, traveling from village to village. Some of the villages only have foot paths leading to them, so she spends a lot of time walking around getting from place to place. Her job demands that she be multitalented – fit enough to hike all over, multilingual, since many people in the area speak Quechua or Aymara rather than Spanish (though that is changing, sadly kids aren’t learning their native language, only Spanish), and good at diagnosing non-obstetric problems, since the area has no doctor, and she has to decide when a case is serious enough to send the person out of the district for more care. What a job!! She was very interesting to talk to. She said that family size in the area used to be 8 or 9 kids, but that 3 or 4 is more the norm now. Apparently many men are still too macho to permit their wives to use birth control, but many take it on the sly anyway. Veronica had also traveled a lot around Peru, more than most people we’ve talked to on our trip. She studied in Lima, and after finishing at college took some time to tour around and get to know her country.

We dropped her off at the health facility in Yuramarca, and she advised us to camp in the Plaza de Armas, saying it was very friendly and safe. It was already an hour after dark, and we hate traveling after dark, so we decided to take her advice. She even offered to guide us through town to find it, which was much appreciated. Yet another super-friendly Peruvian.

As we drove towards the center of town, we heard shouts of ‘gringo’, the first sign that this would be an interesting night. Once we stopped, the crowd started to gather – boys under 10 crowding close and pushing each other closer, girls and their parents a little further away up on a platform for looking out over the hills (or down into the vans of passing tourists), and teenage boys walking by, pretending not to be interested. When we popped the top, some people stepped back and gasped in surprise, never having seen anything like us before. After about 10 minutes, the bravest of the boys had come close enough to start asking questions, and they continued until our dinner was ready, at which point they magically dispersed without having to be asked. Every Latin American we’ve met recognizes that eating is sacred, and no one will ever bother you if you’re trying to eat. After we’d finished eating, they came back, of course, and they never stopped drawing graffiti in the mud on the sides of the car, or peeking in the windows. We finally had to say ‘We want to sleep, please go away’ and shut the door!! We felt like we’d landed the mother ship on an alien planet, and were being besieged by curious natives!

We had a great night’s sleep, and when we opened up in the morning we heard a young girl running down the street shouting ‘They’ve opened it, they’ve opened it!!” and waving her arms. The questions started again. 8) We met the mayor’s assistant, talked a little about the political and economic situation in the village, and then were handed a piece of leaf from a lime tree that was covered with fungus. Apparently about 5 years ago “the plague”, as they call it, started showing up on all of their lime, orange, and mango trees. The fungus covers the leaves, slows photosynthesis, and prevents production of all but the littlest, stunted fruits. One of the village’s main sources of income is its fruit production, so this is a serious problem. The ag extension folks from the local university have come up to see about the problem, but have done nothing but spray chemicals on the plants. This works for a while, but the fungus comes right back. They also really want a solution that doesn’t involve chemical sprays, if at all possible, since they’re concerned about side effects.

I think the fungus is probably a sooty mold, which doesn’t actually penetrate the plant, but lives on the surface feeding on aphid honeydew. So if you can control the insects, you can get rid of the fungus, too. Does anyone out there know of a good way to get rid of aphids? I have the mayor’s assistant’s e-mail, and have promised to send her any information I can gather on how to get rid of “the plague.”

Huanchaco

We made our way down to a little seaside town called Huanchaco, near Trujillo. A small, sleepy little beach town with a pier and a stock of fishing boats made out of reeds. We found a nice hotel to camp in, called The Garden. They let us park on their lawn next to the pool and use the *hot* shower in one of their rooms. We were tired after our long haul through northern coastal Peru, so we decided to take a weekend day and sleep late, cook eggs for breakfast, and generally chill out. We also needed to plan the next phase of our trip really well, because Beulah is coming to meet us in Cuzco! She said over e-mail that she’s feeling restless, so we suggested she come and meet us for a week or so. She wanted to see Machu Picchu, so she’s meeting us in Cuzco for 10 days and we’re going to tour the ruins and then drive down to Lake Titicaca to look at the floating islands.
The hotel turned out to be one of those gathering places for travelers going overland through South America, too. A truck and camper pulled up, with Texas plates but a lot of British flag stickers. Colin and Liz are from just north of London and have been traveling for 2 years already (!!) and will keep traveling for another 9 months, so they can get all the way to Tierra del Fuego. They’ve already driven through Africa, done a bit of volunteer work in Asia, and then bought their truck/camper in Texas and drove it here. They were really nice to chat to, and we went out for sun downer beer and dinner. Too bad they’re traveling so much slower than we are, it would have been fun to travel with them for a bit.
They had just driven through Colombia, and had some very interesting things to say about it – that it was their favorite Latin American country so far! We steered clear of Colombia on the advice of lots of people who know what they’re talking about, but it sounds like there has been some rapid change for the better in Colombia. They spent 6 weeks driving around and said they felt very safe. They said that their impression was that the security situation had changed a lot in a very short space of time, and that the Columbians they met were enjoying their new freedom to drive around all over the place without fear. They said that everyone was amazed to see tourists, and wherever they went they attracted a lot of attention from friendly people who were curious about their trip. They got asked to join family barbecues a few times, and were always greeted really warmly. They also said that they were in a few places that hadn't seen tourists in 18 years!!!!!!! So if anyone out there is thinking of taking a vacation in Colombia, now might be the right time to do it.

Yikes!

Of course there's the odd mugger, poor driving technique, and dirty money changers; but one danger that has been very obvious to me, and is rarely discussed, is how amazingly geophysically active our route is. I mean you can take a 20 minute hike and be standing in front of lava, every building has earthquake areas, the guide book says of every town "not leveled by earthquake since ..", and then there's the smoldering volcanoes. We spent several days in Banos, Ecuador at the foot of this smoldering giant. A true testament to how sick I was is that some AP reporter in a far off town took the only photo I have of Tungurahua. On one of my recovery walks we watched it shoot off about half this high, asking a local if we should start running, they non-chalantly said, naw, nothing to worry about...
Yikes

Taken a couple days after we left:


And here's an interesting link. Needless to say the 'glacier covered stratovolcano' no longer had a glacier on it. We also had to wait a couple hours for them to clear a mud/lava flow off the road!
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1502-08=

Follow our route:

Lambayeque

Well, Peru is seeming a little better. We spent the night in Lambayeque, a little town just north of Chiclayo, and near the site of the famous Tomb of the Señor of Sipan. We found a great little parqueo owned by a friendly family who not only let us spend the night in our car, but wanted to hear about our trip, and even gave us a ceramic donkey as a reminder of their parqueo. Their son, Royal, is about 10, and he and his gang of friends, Marco and David, had endless questions for us. Douglas gave them balloons and instructions on how to make annoying noises with them, and we had a rubber-band war. This morning we found the right kind of workshop to press out the old bushings and press in and spot weld the new ones, so we are all set. We might go and see the town´s other museum before we take off.

Swindled

Rat bastards. We tried to buy gas today with one of the bigger bills we got from our money changer at the border (nothing different from usual - we always change money at the border with seemingly random guys who wave stacks of bills under our noses), and we were told it was counterfeit!! On closer inspection, it was clearly counterfeit - they´d given us some real, small bills, and we could see the difference. The fake stuff is printed on paper, and some of the numbers were of shoddy quality, and it didn´t have the fancy color-shifting metallic ink in some places. It did have a plastic strip in the middle, and a watermark, and generally appeared genuine. But wasn´t. We got scammed for about $60, and we´re a full day´s drive from the border, so there´s no going back and trying to find the scammers. Rat bastards.

I was really mad, and still can´t curse roundly in Spanish. I tried to get the gas station attendant to teach me some cusswords, but he was too nice and polite. He was to embarrassed to swear. He mumbled a word or two when I insisted, but I would guess they´re equivalent to ´darn´ and ´gosh´. O well. Live and learn.

Bleak

This will just be a hasty bulletin from the road. North coastal Peru is a bleak desert, and the sun is scorching. There are as many goats as people. We are feeling sad not to be in Ecuador any more. Bright spots: the border was very chill, especially in comparison to Central America, and the plantain chips are fried more, and therefore tastier.

Tonight we are in Piura, in one of the few parqueos that does not double as a chicken run.

Three hours later. We were kicked out of our previous parqueo by a smug, rude attendant. He wouldn´t hear of us staying inside the car for the night like we usually do. We drove in circles and circles around the city, looking for another parqueo that would take us. We tried lots of parking lots, and they kept saying they were full, even though they appeared to be almost empty. We thought we´d been blackballed by the Parqueos of Piura because we hadn´t paid the rude guy for the short time we´d stayed. We were imagining armies of small, speedy minions dashing around town telling parqueo owners "not the white van." We eventually found a parqueo that would take us. Guess which one it is?? Lucky us, it´s the one with lots of chickens. Even luckier, we´re right next to them.

The traffic here is nutty, too. In other cities, either the streets or the avenues had the right of way. Not here. If you want to cross a stream of traffic, you just edge out into it and hope that everyone´s going slow enough to stop before they hit you.

Crab Stacking

We are like mountain gnomes, or hermits - whenever we have to come down from our hills, we don´t like it. it´s HOT at the coast. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of bananas. And the oddest thing. People are selling small purple crabs by the dozen, and they are stacked into perfect cubes. I mean perfect. It seems geometrically impossible. The crabs are, well, crab-shaped. How can they be stacked into cubes? It defies the imagination.
We made it to Guayaquil by driving through Parque Nacional de las Cajas. Misty mountains, small terraced lakes, glittering streams running down green valleys. IT looked like we thought the Andes would look (complete with llamas). It was glorious.

About midafternoon, we got to Guayaquil and got our parts. There´s really no story to this, and that in itself is a story. It all went according to plan. Are we still in Latin America?

After that, we drove some more. It was a day of driving. Of picking cacao by the roadside, and later trying jugo de cacao at a yogurt stand. It tasted like a banana raspberry puree, sweet at first, and then it whacks the back of your tongue with tanginess. Mostly, it was a hot, hot day.

At the end of it, we arrived at Tengual, a little town about 2 hours north of the Peruvian border. When we drove in, a guy in the town square on his mobile loudspeaker (these are common - either bike or car-powered, they let someone drive around town and tell everyone AT VOLUME about Jesus, a party, Jesus, ice cream, or Jesus) asked us what we wanted, were we lost, did we need to go to Guayaquil - all over the loudspeaker, from across the square!! I don´t think out-ot-towners come here often. He gave us directions to the hotel over the loudspeaker, too, even though we were now stopped 2 feet in front of him. He likes his microphone, I guess.

We should have known this didn´t bode well for our night´s sleep. Motorbikes. No mufflers. I think the whole town drove circles around us all night.