Peru

Picking up where I left off at Machu Picchu, we headed down into Aguas Calientes (trans. “hot waters”) by coach and by the time we got there it was torrenting down with rain. So much for exploration. We waited out the downpour in a pizza place and deliberated over whether to buy souvenier snaps from the tour guides. Ironically for a town named after hot waters, it was bitterly cold. One of those places where the sound of running water follows you wherever you go, the best thing about it was the huge trains that ran down the middle of street - big clanking hulks pulling huge passenger trains.

In a tour full of highlights, Christmas week of 2013 was nonetheless one of the greatest weeks of my life. I may have moaned, groaned, and got completely soaked, but it was worth it to see Machu Picchu in the sunshine.

Arequipa and Cusco -- the two cities that are the subject of this post -- are probably the two cities in Peru that are most amenable to travellers (though Lima certainly has a lot to offer too). For me they should have been punctuated with a trip to Colca canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I got really sick on the second day in Arequipa as my attempts at keeping my tummy bug at bay finally failed. (Even so, I didn't actually seek any proper medical help till the second day in Cusco, I was pretty boneheaded about it.)

Next up was a piecemeal section of the trip that took in a varied set of sights and helped us get to know the new passengers who joined in Lima. On the first day we took a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands, a nature reserve that is informally known as “the poor man’s galapagos”. Living there are penguins, sea birds, sea lions and seals. The speed boat out was a little wet and wild (and in fact the return trip was even wetter and wilder) so we all got soaked (twice) but the microclimate around the islands themselves was calm and warm, and we all got good value out of our cameras (if they still worked that is). We even saw a pelican get taken down by a sea-lion which was an interesting if not altogether pleasant display of nature red in tooth and claw. Also, who knew that guano was so valuable?!?

From Punta Sal we took a long driving down to Huanchaco, via a stop off at the Lord of Saipan museum. The lord of Saipan is a Moche mummy found dressed in all manner of gold and surrounded by artefacts and other sacrifices (including other humans and decapitated llamas). The tour took a while to get going (our guide was late) but the exhibition was so amazing (the pieces were painstakingly restored in Germany) that it was hugely enjoyable. The diorama at the end featuring moving animatronic waxworks of Moche people was extremely weird though.

After Cuenca we set off for the Peruvian border. One of the great advantages of having a UK passport in South America is that you don't need any visas. If you're Australian or Canadian it's a different story. Nevertheless we all got over the border with very little trouble (the third ever land border crossing of my life) apart from the bits where they seem to make you wait in a queue just for the sake of making you wait in a queue.

I'm a bit behind in my posts about the trip and this post interrupts the sequence of events somewhat, just because I've not felt that well and that has dominated my thoughts about what to write. Basically for a week or two I've had varying degrees of bellyache and it's not been fun. Instead of feeling the gratitude and excitement I've felt since being here, I've spent a lot of time wanting to curl up in the corner and just be... well... somewhere else.