Peru and Beyond- finding my way around South America

To pick up right where I left off last time, put yourself in the following situation:

After waiting four long and often frustrating days in the sweltering heat for a boat to leave, (not a drop of rain in sight the whole time), you find yourself standing at the wrong river port, which really is just old planks and a whole lot of mud. The rain is insane, the start of the wet season apparently. It is not hard to believe. You stand at this port with your massive backpacks and everything else hanging off you as well, completely drenched, your raincoats and plastic ponchos offering no protection. Some guys and other mototaxi drivers are hardly helpful, yelling out rather incoherant and impossible to understand spanish. Luckily Chris (more competant in his spanish speaking ) seems to have a slight idea what is happening and you are told to follow this guy. You think he will walk you to the other port, but you arrive at a little speed boat (very primitive speed boat I might add, dont go imagining something fancy). The driver assures you he will take you to your boat, Man de Norte. You scramble aboard and off you go. Very quickly you realise you are NOT going the right direction, instead you are heading straight out to the middle of the main river and heading the opposite way to your boat. Now what to do?

We hardly had a choice to do anything but just go with the flow…pardon the pun there. We were assured that this boat was much better than the other one (most importantly it was going to Iquitos today for sure as it had already left) and that they had cabins available. Of course we hardly trusted this information and we nervously awaited hearing there was no room on the boat after we had just clambered aboard. Luckily this did not happen and we soon found ourselves in the possession of two reasonable cabins. The bunk beds were larger than the others and we even had our own private toilet, shower and sink. LUXURY!!!

Completely soaked through, we spent that afternoon cleaning ourselves up and just laughing non-stop at how we ever managed to get on this boat. Chris called Marino, the captain of the other boat, telling him we had got on another boat. Just to prove to us hw unreliable these guys are, our dear friend Marino kindly informed us that the boat we were now on, Henry III, was not leaving today. “Mañana mañana” he tells us. Pity the boat was already far more upriver than his.

The days on the boat again pass both slowly and quickly at the same time. It is hot and humid, but only when the boat is stationary, otherwise there is always a fresh breeze fighting its way into our cabins. Unfortunatly, much to Camillas dismay, this also allowed the entrance of many a tropical insect. You cant have it all I suppose.

During the day we all lounged around, swaying in our hammocks we installed on the deck, eating breakfast lunch and dinner that is served to us by the ship Chef. Always chicken and always banana. Sweet or savoury, breakfast lunch or dinner. Instead of potatos like we always get in the Andes, it is BANANA. Wierdest thing I had? The saltiest chicked soup imaginable with a massive banana floating around in it. We also had an interesting breakfast of chicken, rice and cabbage, oh and of course banana. Not so good at 7 in the morning. We wrote in our diaries, read a few pages of the many books we had packed with us, chatted with the locals or simply slept. Somehow sleeping during the day made so much more sense for everyone.

The boat slowly moved up the river, stopping at numerous jungle villages, loading and unloading cargo and passengers. We sometimes wandered around these little towns but hardly got to enjoy them, as you never know exactly when the boat is going to leave again. A few rather funny moments of nearly missing the boat followed….

The days moulded into one big day of sleeping, eating and swinging in the hammocks. Night times brought a small amount of relief so there was hardly any point in going to sleep. We played lots of cards, had fun with $5 bottles of vodka (tropical hangovers not so fun) and discussing matters such as the European Union or Viking invasions or whatever else with our French buddies who were also making the trip up. These guys were quite possibly the best hippi cliche you could find… wandering their way around South America with no real plan, both with dreadlocks hanging long down their necks and of course smoked a large amount of weed. I daresay they had an even more chilled out experience than we did swinging on hammocks for 4 days.

As the days went by it became clear we needed to get off the boat soon as we were starting to get on each others nerves. There is only so far you can get away from others on a crowded boat in the middle of the amazon. We must have arrived in Iquitos early in the morning on our 5th(??) day as we woke up to find oursleves anchored in a large and busy harbour…. IQUITOS  and jungle here we come!!!

While it was hardly the easiest or most comfortable trip I have taken, the 9 days it took us to get to Iquitos were certainly memorable and full of many amazing experiences, something which the more conventional two hour flight could not have offered. Hola to the selva…. (jungle) and the many adventures that followed!

I´m finding it really hard to keep up with this blog. There is always something new happening and each day is filled with countless happy, exciting, riveting and sometimes sad and angry moments. I struggle enough to get my thoughts around all that I do see and experience, let alone even write about them in a coherant fashion interesting enough for you all. But I will try. So Iquitos. For those of you not really in the know, Iquitos is the largest city in the world that cannot be accessed by car. It is located in the north of Peru right on the Amazon river. If you keep following the river up you eventually end up in Brazil and the oceans beyond. Everything that is needed in Iquitos must be transported in by boat or by plane, most commonly boats are used. I dont even know exactly how we got the idea to go to Iquitos. The earliest I can recall is all sitting and having breakfast one hungover morning in Cusco, when I think Chris randomly asked if people wanted to go to Iquitos. Sidsil and Camilla (Denmark) would be finishing their placement at the right time, and I would have to organise 2 weeks off between my care and hospital work. After some negotiations with Projects Abroad this was arranged and I got my 2 weeks off.  The whole Iquitos trip is very much of the nature where it is the journey to get there that matters, (I´m, cringing at the cliche here but somehow it fits….) We really didn´t have a huge plan, and still dont, of what we were actually going to do once we arrived there. The first part of the adventure began on Friday the 2^nd of October. We spent the afternoon in Cusco with other volunteers as part of the PA social, including a salsa lesson.  We all had a rushed pizza and then hopped on a night bus to Lima at 8.30 that night. Busses are long, boring ordeals. Combining the impossibly narrow and winding roads of the Andes with my not so good track record of carsickness, it is not difficult to conclude that I hardly slept. I spent many an hour gazing out the window, watching as we wound through the Andes. The moon was bright, I believe it was or close to full moon. The mountains were illuminated, the white of the snow peaks almost glaring.  After tossing and turning all night, probably getting no more than an hour or two of sleep, the sun rose and we found ourselves still in the Andes, driving through countless sleepy little mountain towns. The hours passed slowly. We finally found our way out of the Andes and into the desert. So stark and harsh and very unforgiving. The sun burnt into the white yellow sand, mirroring off it in those mythical mirages so typical of those desert images.  We continued on through the desert and finally reached the coast. It was literally desert, some sanddunes and then a murky blue grey ocean. Really nothing spectacular. I couldn´t help however but let my mind linger on the thought that beyond this ocean most of those I love and care about are back home.

Arrived in Lima in the late afternoon. Lima is horrible. Loud, grey and dirty. So much pollution. There is no one one bus terminal in Lima, so it is impossible to shop around like you can in Cusco. Each company has their own terminal. We tramp through dirty dodgy streets looking for busses heading to Pucallpa, the last port accessible by car from which boats head up to Iquitos. Easily could have been mugged as we were that laden with all our packs and bags, really all we would have needed was a small tap to fall over. Luckily it didn´t, but apart from that we hardly had any luck.

We find out that tomorrow there is a national transport strike. No busses leave tomorrow, which is what we had planned to do, rest in Lima for a night and stretch our legs out (clubbing???) and such. The options? Another bus in 1.5 hours or wait till monday. We opted for the first option, we really needed to get on our way.

A quick dinner for a couple of Soles and then back on a bus. This time we were on the economica bus. No beds, TV or luxury. They even sold us a seat that didnt existed. Luckily we found another seat and we took over the entire back row except for a little peruvian guy who basically stayed curled up in his corner the whole time. We were all rather squished except for long legs Chris who got the aisle seat. He soon learnt to wear a seatbelt to avoid getting flung down the bus at every bump. (The back seats of the bus seem to accentuate every bump we encounter, which unfortunatly due to the roads occurs very frequently!!) This bus trip wen back out of Lima and up in the mountains again, through which we went on tiny curvey roads through the whole night. I could hardly sleep and at one point was rather ill. The night eased into the early morning hours and looking out the window provided much more entertainment. We were now once again going through dry highland plains, but slowly the landscape changed to much lusher jungle. We stopped in plenty little jungle towns, people came on the bus trying to sell all sorts of trpoical delights, or more like sickness in many different forms. Icecreams, bananas, many unknown stuff wrapped away in palm leaves….. the list goes on.

The people were different in these towns to anything I had seen before in Peru. Different features, body types and skin colour. Also incredibly noticable was the clothing. Singlets, short shorts, mini skirts, so much exposed skin so different to conservative lifestyles of the quechuan people of the Andes. Different climate of course contributes to this a lot but it seemed like there was a little more to it than just that. Jungle culture is very different to what we have grown so used to up here in the Andes. The bus trip all up was much more fun, minus the insane amount of bruising our tailbones had all endured, I think mainly because we were just a little bit closer to that goal that Iquitos was becoming.

We finally arrived in Pucallpa again in the late afternoon and were surprised to find it more like a city, harldy the little romantic jungle village I had envisaged. Pucallpa could be classed as the city of mototaxis. They quite literally swarm around the entire city, the roads full of their buzz. The drivers all drive around in a hectic manner trying to secure any lone or lost looking or simply standing still person on the streets. We get into two motos, our gear far two much to squish into one, and ask to get taken to a hostel we had picked out. Of course we got taken to all sorts of other hostels (everyone is connected here in a business sense…. brothers, uncles, nephews… the mototaxi driver will take you to his families hotel, they will take you to their restaurant, find you their friend the jungle guide…. it happens very quickly before you even realise what is happening.) We finally got to the hostel we wanted to, an ok little place with beds and a fan, even a TV and a swimming pool. The pool alas was rather slimy, but better than nothing in the sweltering humidity were were yet to get used to.

The next morning we went to the ports to find a boat. Totally naieve we had thought to get on one that evening, maybe tuesday morning. We soon learnt how impossible this was. Nothing runs to any set time or plan. The boats simply leave when they are full or when the captain decides to go. Manaña Manaña (tomorrow tomorrow) is something we heard for quite a few days. 4 nights to be precise. This was incredibly frustrating, but then at the same time it hardly seemed like a problem at the time. Up here in the jungle there is an interesting relationship to time. It goes incredibly slow in one sense, lounging around all day in front of fans, a hammock positioned near a window in the hope of catching a rare and stray breeze, maybe even just on a chair outside the casa, peeling fruit or having a moment or two of sleep. Yet in another sense the days went really fast. No guilt is felt when you realise a whole day just passed without actually achieving anything at all, except for maybe eating late breakfast/early lunch and eventually dinner. One day passes, another night passes, and yet another day… but somehow it just feels like one big dreamy haze of jungle humidity. It is very difficult to explain this sensation.

We decided to stop this pattern and actually see the area. We went on a boat tour around a lagoon, went to a zoo and saw lots of funky jungle animals… visited a little jungle town of the loca Shipbo people (again a town of such timelessness) named San Fransico, went for a swim with the locals and then went home as the sun was setting in the most cliched way possible. Splashes of red pink orange and yellow reflect off the perfectly still amazonian waters. Lightening and thunder threatens to disturb this tranquility in the distance, but for the moment we are allowed through untouched.

Later that night, together with a little English speaking Peruvian we picked up (named Elmer but somehow the name Elmo always came to mind) Chris and I decided to participate in an ancient shamanic ritual. An interesting and eye opening experience, still hard to get my thoughts around what happened that night and the impact it possibly had on us. A bizarre experience but certainly one worth having.

The days in Pucallpa continued to pass until Thursday morning, when we awoke to realise it was rather late (as per usual) and apparently the boat we had arranged was planning on leaving in 30 minutes. Oops. Looked outside the window and saw that finally the weather had broken, instead of water simply hanging in the air creating that sickly humidity, we had a rather monsoonal downpour. Perfect for walking across town with all our gear to get to our boat. I shall let this chapter come to a close here as it is quite enough for one blog post already. Next up is the adventure of getting on our boat and the 4 days that followed, up the Rio Ucayli and the grande Rio Amazonas.

Hope you are all well, and leave me a comment here if you read this, or have anything to add. I´d love to see who I am actually writing to!

Much Love, G xxxx

We woke up the next morning at a disgusting hour and decided to take the early bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu itself. Walking up was also an option, but seeing as we had walked the day before and were planning a rather serious hike up Waynu Pichu as well, we decided to be slightly lazy and touristy and bus it up. We thought we would get there nice and early to beat the crowds, but alas even at 5.15am there was a massive line. First bus was way out of the question, the 30th bus was much more realistic. At this point I realised that perhaps we were a little naive. Everyone in this town was there to see Machu Picchu, how could it not be completely crowded???

We arrived at the top at about 6am, and again had to wait in a massive line to be allowed through the gates. As we lined up, we were asked if we wanted to climb Waynu Picchu, the rather prominent mountain just behind Machu Picchu that can be seen in just about every postcard or photo. We of course said yes and recieved our tickets for that as well. The number on the tickets? 397. The number of people allowed to climb every day? 400. It really was our lucky day, and I dont even want to think how angry I would have been if we had missed out.

We found a guide, a lovely little peruvian lady who could only speak spanish (thank you Mireia for doing a mighty lot of translating that day) and we set up the steps to actually see Machu Picchu. It was amazing. There is no other way to really explain it. On top of a mountain surrounded by many other jungle clad mountains tipped with clouds, the most majestic buildings, now ruins, have been carved into the mountain. Houses, temples, schools, churches, terraces for agriculture or simply to provide stability, have all been moulded into the mountain, or sometimes the mountain has been changed rather dramatically to fit what was needed. To think that the Incas built this with such primitive tools and no machinary is almost impossible to do.

After many a hundred photo happily snapped away, soooo many group shots at every different angle, we finished our tour and went to climb Waynu Pichu, the rather fierce looking mountain behind Machu Picchu. A rather vertical climb up was well worth the view that met us at the top. Perched atop some boulders which marked the summit, we look out at the mountains and valleys stretched before us… Not to mention the possiblilty of seeing Machu Picchu in all its splendour stretched out across its peak. The ruins, like most inca ruins, have a particular shape. Ollyantytambo for example was built in the shape of a Llama. Machu Picchu is built to the shape of a condor. With a little imagination you can see this majestic bird resting on the mountain.

 We climbed back down, thoroughly exhausted, physically from the climb but also mentally from all that we had seen. We had been to Machu Picchu. It hardly felt real. We spent the afternoon walking down the mountain back to Aguas Caliente where we were getting the tourist train (oh the shame) back to Ollyantytambo. This was a rather gentle stroll down, following both the road and a path occasionally which was mainly steps. Down is always better than up!

Dinner in Aguas Caliente was an average affair, however it was here that I discovered just how much I had been savaged by Mozzies over the weekend. Oh the pain and the itch! The others hardly got attacked, so I like to think I have rather sweet blood. Man it itched, and continued to do so for quite a few days. After a boring train trip we finally arrived back into Calca by taxi to be greeted by flooding rains and NO electricity. Convenient as I had just lost my torch somewhere on Machu Picchu or surroundings. Dirty and wet we went home and fell into our beds. The idea of dealing with everything in the morning was very attractive.