I've noticed that my most popular blog
posts are the ones where unfortunate things happen to me. Well, here you
are. A post dedicated to the string of bad luck that followed me from
the moment I crossed the border into Peru and got stuck on a
mosquito- infested night bus that didn't move, to when I finally
tried to leave the country, and got fined 20 soles...
Now, Peru is a country of outstanding
natural beauty, wonderfully kind people and fascinating history.
It just didn't seem to much like me
being there and enjoying it.
After our incredible 10 days in the
Galapagos, we caught our flight back to Guayaquil and headed straight
to the bus terminal, hoping to just hop on the first bus that was
heading south and towards to Peru. Eventually we were headed to the
border, and after a few difficulties with the taxi driver taking
us to the wrong building to get our passports stamped, we arrived
into Peru in the little town of Tumbres.
Ah, Tumbres. Tumbres doesn't inspire. A
god forsaken border town with a dodgy reputation, we arrived in a
taxi at 10 o clock at night, with the Peruvian couple we were sharing
a taxi with much alarmed at the idea of letting us out of their sight, after we'd disclosed that we weren't sure where we were going. Keen
to head further south (much of the far north of Peru is desert and
beach resorts) the taxi driver, also concerned, ran off in search of
a bus for us. As we settled into a night bus which we had managed to
catch mere minutes before it was departing, we congratulated
ourselves on what good luck we were having. Oh, famous last words...
After about 5 minutes of driving our
bus came to a halt. Rapid Spanish ensued. We turned around, drove a
bit and then stopped again. A woman came round asking for each of the
passengers to give a few soles each. We didn't understand what was
happening. Eventually, after another half hour of waiting, the woman
returned our money to us. The bus began driving and I thought,
hurray, we are finally on our way. And then we stopped. And I looked
outside..... to see the very same bus terminal from where we had
started. We eventually found out that some fisherman had blocked the
only road heading south, because they were angry that they weren't
allowed to fish as many anchovies as they wanted. The money had been
a failed bribe..... We were told we'd go again in 2 hours.
4 hours passed and we were still in the
same place. “We're going at 8am!”. I thought to myself, well
that's okay, I can deal with another 3 hours. So, I settled into a
seat and went to sleep, waking a little while later to the
unmistakable and terrifying whine of mosquitoes. Now, I'm not good
with mosquitoes- in fact I'm allergic to the bites. In Croatia last
year I got bitten so many times my body wasn't sure how to cope so
decided the best thing to do was to make each bite swell to the size
of a small orange and give it to the sensation of fire. After making
a pharmacist shriek at the site of my overinflated arms, I was
swiftly directed to an emergency doctor who promptly gave me an
anti-histermine injection in my arse. So, all in all, I was not
thrilled to discover that we had inadvertently climbed aboard
Mosquito- Bus, and I could feel myself already beginning to itch....
a sensation that certainly did not appease when the driver walked around with
some kind of spray that he applied to the seats and I saw literally
clouds of mosquitoes emerging from the seats. For days
afterwards I had painful and swelled bites up the whole of the back
of my legs, my back and my arms from where they had bitten me
through the seat. And we hadn't move an inch! Eventually, when we
were still not moving at 10am, hunger and an ardent desire to get off
that awful bus and get a shower forced us to leave. We managed to get
our money back for the bus drive and promptly checked into the hotel
next door. The following day, a really kind man who owned a cafe we
had gone to , and who we had asked about trying to get round the
blockade, tracked as down to tell us that the blockade had lifted. At
this, we booked seats with Cruz del Sur, the most expensive and
luxurious bus company- about 3 times the price as the other company
but there was no way I was getting on another bus owned by them! And
this one had fully reclinable seats, wifi, dinner and breakfast
served and most importantly: no mosquitoes....
After the Tumbres disaster we headed to
Huaraz, an adventure sports town in the Andes where we hoped to do
some trekking. The town itself is pretty ugly, but we were lucky
enough to be able to couchsurf in a small village a short collectivo
ride outside the town. It was really beautiful- we lived with a local
family in a small little farm right at the foot of the mountains,
with not a tourist in sight. For the grand sum of 5 soles (about £1),
our host's mother cooked us an amazing traditional Peruvian breakfast
and dinner every day, and we were free to explore the beautiful
landscape. It was both of our first experiences of high altitude,
sleeping at 3400m every night, and so to prepare ourselves for the
trek we wanted to do we did a hike up to a beautiful lagoon that was
at 4800m. It was the strangest experience. What should have been a
relatively easy hike at sea level suddenly felt impossible! After
walking a few steps we were exhausted and had to rest, and what
looked like a small hill took an age to climb- our brain couldn't
figure out what was happening, and we'd never felt so unfit and light
headed!
 |
| At Lagoona Chrup! |
 |
| Exhausted climbing up..... |
 |
Our amazing couchsurf hosts, cooking for us on a
woodburning stove in the middle of the Peruvian Andes! |
Oh, except, of course every good thing
must be outweighed on the karma scale! At the top, I dropped my
shockproof freezeproof waterproof indestructible camera to discover
it is not quite so indestructible.... Despite its claims to be
shockproof to 2m, maybe it hit a rock at the wrong point, in any case
the screen broke so I could still take pictures- I just couldn't see
what I was taking a picture of. Great timing considering Machu Picchu
was coming up....
So, what was the next misfortune? Oh
yes, the clothes debarcle. The morning of the start of our 4 day
hike, me and PK piled all of our belongings into a collectivo, as the
plan was to leave our bags at the agency and push straight towards
Lima the evening we got back from the hike. Collectivos in Peru are a
chaotic affair, with women in huge skirts and bowler hats continually
hauling off and on huge bags of potatoes, coca leaves,
children....... Anyway, it wasn't a good place for two gringos to be
with huge backpacks and assorted other bags for the hike. I suppose
it's not surprising really that when we clambered off at our stop one
of my bags was missing. And I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't
a bag with anything valuable in it. But, it was a bag with all
of the clothes I needed for the hike, including annoying little
things like knickers and socks. The money I'd spent on Spanish
lessons felt extremely well spent as we were able to explain the problem and one of the bower hatted
ladies declared that she knows the woman who has it. PK and the collectivo
driver go running off down the street armed with a name and a phone
number and I'm left with our multitude of bags, stranded at the side
of the street and acutely aware that we were already 20 minutes late
for meeting at the agency for the trek. To my delight, my Spanish was
understandable and I managed to borrow a passerby's mobile phone to
call the agency, the number of which through some lucky accident was
on the receipt that I happened to still have. They were sympathetic
and drove round to pick us up and 5 minutes later PK returns with.... no
bag. Apparently the woman wasn't at her house, but the collectivo
driver would try again in the afternoon. I'm not sure whether she
stole them or whether they had just got caught up with everything else,
but I half expected to see them on the market for sale. In any case,
there was some last minute shopping to be done before the trek where
I managed to replace the essentials, but I still missed the beautiful
purple trousers I'd bought in Quito.....
Anyhoo, the Santa Cruz trek itself was
a welcome respite from my bad luck! It was absolutely stunning, and
we were fairly well acclimatised now so didn't suffer from any
symptoms of altitude sickness. The weather was good, we camped in
unspoilt places at the base of the snowcapped Andes , and came across
bright little turquoise lagoons around every corner.
 |
Spot the difference!
Montana Artesenraju- reputedly the mountain
used as the basis for the Paramount Pictures logo! |
After the trek, we tried somewhat
fruitlessly to fix my camera and to get my clothes back, but to no
avail.... On to Lima!
We actually spent only about 8 hours in
Lima, waiting for our evening bus to Cuzco. PK was heading back to
Peru in a couple of months to meet his brother and do the Inca Trail,
so would be coming back to a lot of the places then. In the nature of
compromise, I agreed to skip out a few places like Nazca and Arequipa
and push on to Bolivia as quickly as we could with one exception- he
had to wait while I went to
see Machu Picchu! (I didn't think my friends and family would accept
me back if they found out I had spent 7 months in South America and
not been!) And so, as we were both not a fan of big cities, we spent
as little time in Lima as possible. We got a taxi straight from the
bus station to Miraflores area which is the strangest place I think
I've ever been, right amidst the poverty and pollution of Lima is a
little mini America, complete with Starbucks, McDonalds, and 'tourist
police' who work to make sure only tourists or rich Peruvians hang
around the 'Parque Kennedy' which has free wifi...... Completely
bizarre and of course unjust- I was glad to leave.
The
bus from Lima to Cusco was 6 hours of comfort followed by 20 hours of
nauseating mountain bends. Two night buses in a row spat us into
Cuzco in a rather bedraggled state, and we staggered to find a hostel
that had been recommended to us. The official Inca
Trail gets booked up at least 6 months in advance, and costs upwards
of $600. My couchsurfing host in Miami urged me to just do an
alternative trek at a mere $200, and that could be booked the day
before. This suited my budget, and my preference for flexibility, so
I booked onto the Salkantay Trek upon arrival and was off to trek to
Machu Picchu! Perhaps not along the Inca
Trail, but there thousands of trails the Inca used, and
so thousands of Inca trails, it's
just there´s one that the government decides to publicise.
 |
| Views on the way... |
Anyway, the trek
was nice, but nowhere near as beautiful as the Santa Cruz trek, and
it was disappointing to stay in established campsites rather than as
really part of the nature. But it was nice, we climbed 2000m and
descended again by 2000m in 2 days, which was tough for a lot of
people (some were so tired they had to be carried by horse) but it meant that we walked through very different landscapes and ecosystems
each day. And we had a fantastic guide who told us all about the
local plants and Inca culture. The penultimate day we arrived to
Aguas Calientes, which is probably the most disgusting town I have
ever been to. Built purely for tourists, it has overpriced
restaurants and souvenir shops lining the streets and nothing in the
way of character or charm. At 4am the next morning we set out to hike
up to Machu Picchu itself (or, for the weak, take the bus....) It was
pouring with rain. I arrived to the site soaked in rain and sweat, to
see absolutely nothing due to the thick cloud and mist. Before the
trek I was estatic to be able to get the very last ticket to climb
the Huanapicchu mountain. In defiance, I did, and was rewarded for my
efforts with a blanket of white fog. It was a terrible day. The mist
cleared at odd intervals at which point everybody sprang to pose
before the site and try and take as many photos as they could before
it covered it again. Disenchated by the weather and the crowds and
crowds of tourists I headed back to the town to meet PK in a coffee
shop and finally get warm.
Surely my bad luck couldn't get any worse? Oh but of course. For some inexplicable reason I was the only member of my group who wasn't handed a train ticket back to Cuzco. My guide assured me that it would be faxed to my accommodation, and not to worry. Of course, when I descended from Maccu Piccu and went back to the hotel, they said they didn't have a fax machine. Cue several hours of desperately trying to get through to the agency I had booked my tour through, truly terrible phone lines, and incomprehensible spanish. After a lot of trouble and lot of trips around time, I eventually managed to get my ticket. By some incredible coincindence, I was also allocated a seat directly next to PK on the train. Spooky.
After all of this, we decided to get on a bus to Bolivia as soon as we could......
But Peru wasn't
done with me yet! On the border to Bolivia I discovered that the
little piece of paper that they give you when you enter a country had
somehow disappeared from my passport. I never even realised that this
piece of paper was important, but for some reason it is, and they want
to have it before they give you the exit stamp and let you leave.
Frustrated, tired, fed up, I eventually managed to pay 20 soles
(about £5) to get a new form to leave the country....
Hello Bolivia, at last!! Peru- you may have beaten me this time- but I
will be back....
 |
| My view from the top of the Waynapicchu mountain...... yayyyyy |
