Overnight, I’ve gone from one of the tallest people in town to one of the shortest. Or at least, on a par with the locals. That’s because Cusco is awash with tourists, as it surely has been ever since Machu Picchu was rediscovered. Towering Germans, athletic Americans, French and Italian girls walking around in legging shorts that seem at odds with the local custom of long dresses, heavy socks and boots.
I could go off on one of my usual rants about the vapidity of some of these tick-box trekkers. But I won’t. You’re bored of hearing it and I’m bored of repeating it. So I’ll focus on the other things I’ve seen. It is worth knowing, however, just how much the tourists seem to run this town.
Today is Easter Sunday, so I allowed myself a proper night’s sleep (my first in a while) and had breakfast at the hotel before going to the cathedral for prayers.
I have, at last, noticed the altitude. It’s not debilitating like I thought, but it is certainly a factor that cannot be ignored. Going to sleep last night was a drawn-out procedure, not because some of the Picchu junkies wouldn’t stop talking at the top of their voices, but because it felt like I was eternally short of breath. Every yawn and every deep breath felt incomplete. I guess that’s simply a factor of living at this kind of altitude – there’s simply less oxygen to go around.
By the morning, however, I was feeling much better, so I had all the energy I needed to go out and get my bearings.
Semana Santa came to an end this morning with the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection in the Catedral de Cusco. They had three Masses back to back and I caught the tail end of the second.
The cathedral was almost full to bursting, so I said my prayers in front of the shrine to Mary with a few of the local women. Unexpectedly, I felt something. Not for the first time, either. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it moved me.
I scoped out the HQ for the Amazon Wildlife company so that I would be able to find my way there easily tomorrow. There was a local man with a very violent nosebleed being attended to by two policemen outside. I hope that’s not a potential symptom of altitude sickness!
Speaking of which, as it was still fairly early, I decided to climb up to the old Inca fortress of Sacsayhuamán that sits on a hilltop above the city of Cusco. When I say climb, I mean it. The ascent is no joke. It’s supposed to be good practice for the Inca Trail, but as that’s not on my itinerary, it served as a beginning for the Waqrapukara and Inti Punku side quests I have planned.
Sacsayhuamán is a large Inca complex, parts of which can be found all around Cusco, since the Spanish took a leaf out of their former Moorish rulers’ book and cannibalised much of the fortress to build their churches and colonial houses and estates. The rocks that remain are mostly the largest and most cumbersome, retaining their masterful stonemasonry – each of them cut in just such a way as to slot together without need for mortar.
There’s no gold here – any that there might have been was stolen by the Spanish may hundreds of years ago – but it is still quite an impressive complex. It’s certainly more than ‘just a pile of stones’ as one English father remarked to his wife and son on their way up the hill…
I decided to throw any idea of self-consciousness to the wind on the way back down and spent about forty minutes or so hunting hummingbirds. The winding path up to Sacsayhuamán follows a Eucalyptus forest, which was uncommonly alive with birdsong (those poisonous trees are usually devoid of life). One particularly noisy resident is the beautifully named Sparkling Violetear, one of the many hummingbirds that can be found in the hills around Cusco. They’re notoriously hard to photograph, but patience is a virtue I have learned through this hobby, so after enduring the stares and multilingual remarks about the size of my camera by all the passers-by I was rewarded with a close encounter with one of the sparkling little gems.
I saw a giant hummingbird, the largest of its kind, on the way up, but it didn’t stick around for very long, so the violetears were my main success this morning. I’m going to a hummingbird sanctuary tomorrow, so I might well see a great deal more of them, but for now, I’m happy with what I saw and heard.
I found a spot in town for lunch that wasn’t crawling with tourists (in fact, it was almost entirely Peruvian in clientele, which is always a good sign). A huge bowl of caldo de cordero and a drink cost me a grand total of forty soles, which is a little less than £9. I’m going to miss how affordable this country is.
I’ll also miss how handsome the people are. What a royal profile these Peruvians have! And to think that some people pay for a rhinoplasty to have their noses shrunk… What a travesty! I find it quite a fetching look, myself.
I’ve taken it easy today, otherwise I might burn out – it is a pretty full on adventure, and I’m conscious that I’m back to work the day after I return, so I need to fit in some time to rest during this holiday.
But that won’t stop me going out for supplies and another wander this evening. Maybe I’ll be able to find something new in the twilight! BB x
The time has come to leave Lima and the Pacific behind and make for the interior. I have enough sense not to go from 79m above sea level to 3.400m in one go, so I’m bound for Arequipa, the White City, which sits at a decent halfway house of 2.335m. That’s still a good thousand metres higher than Andorra la Vella, which is probably the closest I’ve ever come to sleeping at altitude, but it’ll have to do.
After spending ages writing up yesterday’s report, I sat back in the upstairs lounge area of Pariwana, finished off my (now rather crushed) Doritos and called an Uber. Whisked away by another speedy and efficient limeño, I said hasta la próxima to the city and its mighty Pacific shore – since I’ll be back, albeit briefly, at the end of my adventure.
Lima’s Jorge Chávez airport is a model of efficiency. Fine, so the USB charging ports don’t all work (I never did find one that was fully operational), but the security is slick and efficient and it has a lot of good places to eat offering real food, not just fast food junk (England, please learn from this). I’ve also been to shadier airports. Despite being in the heart of the run-down district of Callao – which is known for having a higher violent crime rate than the rest of the capital – I found it was perfectly safe to come and go.
From the air, Lima looks a lot better than it does from the street. You can really appreciate the might of the Atlantic swell as its parallel waves break upon the winding coastal cliffs that separate the city from the sea.
Herman Melville described the city as “Tearless Lima – the strangest, saddest city thou can’st see”. I suspect he was referring either to the lack of rain or, more likely, to the garúa, the dense costal fog that usually clouds Peru’s capital in a white veil. I saw the garúa on the night I arrived, and it lingered into my first morning, but the city has been basking under the South American sun for most of my stay, so tearless is not a word I will be using to describe Lima anymore.
I can’t remember whether I paid extra for a window seat on this flight, but I had one, and that was pretty special. Looking back, it would have been foolish to pay the ridiculous 90$ for the privilege of a window from Madrid to Bogotá, as almost all of the Caribbean and South American leg was under a dense cover of cloud. You win some, you lose some. All I lost was the possibility of a good sleep.
I was on the wrong side of the plane for the Nazca lines, though I think we would have been a bit too high up to see them anyway. What I got instead was an unrestricted view of the mountains below as they climbed and climbed and climbed, up into the clouds and even up and above them.
I could post some pictures of the mountains, but with my itinerary for the next week or so being largely mountain-oriented, I think I’ll spare you the overload. What is much easier to appreciate from the sky, however, is the incredible human geography of South America.
I’m no fan of cities – you know this – but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate their shape, their size and their strangeness – especially when they seem to blend into the very earth itself (something we don’t do nearly well enough in Northern Europe).
New World cities favour the grid system that, in Europe, is most famously found in Barcelona. It’s still alien to me and I find it quite fascinating to behold from the sky.
Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru after Lima, is also faithful to the grid system – even though the city is scored and cut through by canyons and rivers. Old Word architects would have worked around the landscape, twisting streets and warping estates to fit into the space, but here in the Americas, they just stuck to the plan, regardless of the complications.
Well – here we are in Arequipa, stage two of the Peruvian adventure. I think tonight’s Semana Santa celebration is a subdued one, so I will try to get some rest. It’s a 2.30am start tomorrow, so if I don’t get an early night, I’ll be more like the walking dead for Colca Canyon tomorrow.
Which probably isn’t the best advice when you’re looking for the largest carrion-eater on the planet. BB x
“Nobody speaks English in this fucking airport,” says the miserable Brit sitting behind me over the phone. “You’d think in one of the busiest airports in the word they might have someone who can speak English.”
With that kind of attitude, it’s hardly surprising that flights to the UK are sequestered away in Madrid’s cut-off Terminal 4S, together with all the other non-European destinations: Bogotá, San Juan, Dallas and Chicago…
I know I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to Spanish, but it always gives me a knot in my stomach when I hear one of my countrymen speaking like that, as though the rest of the world should simply kowtow to the supremacy of the English and their language. That mindset should have perished with the Empire, long ago, but sadly it’s all too common – and probably on the rise, with the number of students studying languages continuing to plummet in the UK.
For the record, English is absolutely everywhere in Barajas. Most of the signage is in English first and Spanish second. You’d have to try pretty hard to be genuinely cut off from the English language out here these days. Sometimes I think the Spaniards just enjoy playing the “no hablo inglés” card when they encounter a grumpy fellow like the man behind me. It keeps us on our toes – and it’s one way to get back at us for the slap in the face that was Brexit.
12.192 feet above the Atlantic, Southwest of Corvo & Flores. 11.55.
They dimmed the lights in the cabin about two hours ago, shortly after serving breakfast. Most of the passengers are wrapped up in their blankets and fast asleep. I don’t know how much I have slept in that time, but I’d wager it’s not much – more like wakeful dozing. I don’t usually go to bed before one or two in the morning, so despite the five AM start I’m probably operating on a good deal more sleep than usual. I moved my trip to Paracas to Wednesday, which should give me time to get a good night’s sleep and acclimatise once I reach Lima.
There’s a nice father and daughter from La Rioja sitting next to me, off to visit a relative in Guatemala. Since we’ve established friendly relations, hopefully they’ll let me take a photo out of the window when we pass over the Caribbean in a few hours’ time. I’ve got the aisle seat, which is fine for legroom, but bad luck for both sleep and views.
I haven’t got my head around the boarding procedure for Avianca. I was in Group F out of A-G, so I assumed I’d be one of the last on, but they let F-G on before D-E. Unremarkable, maybe, but I’m in Group D on the next flight, so I hope that doesn’t mean I’m right at the back of the line. I guess it depends on how the Colombians order their alphabet.
The folks up in business class are all tucked away in their cabins. I could never justify paying that much to fly – and probably fail to sleep anyway – but it must be pretty snug.
43.000 feet above the Caribbean Sea. 16.10.
The lights have come back. I wonder if that means they’re serving lunch? They’ve got Superman on the film listing, but my earphones are of the lightning port variety, so I can’t get them to work. I’ve spent a couple of hours catching clips from those watching films around me. By the way they’re all watching with the subtitles on, I can’t help but wonder if they’re all in the same boat.
We flew over the Caribbean about an hour ago. I saw one island among the clouds through the tinted windows of the cabin while waiting for the bathroom to become available, but I’m not sure which one. Nassau, perhaps? The route map on the tele screen only gives its capital as St. Maarten, but my knowledge of Caribbean geography isn’t exactly watertight. It’s a first taste of how unfamiliar the world around me is about to be.
The wind is starting to pick up. The reefs and atolls of Aruba have appeared on the horizon, the vanguard of a mighty continent. Beyond that lies Venezuela. The enormity of South America is about to open up beneath me.
Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado, Bogotá, Colombia. 12.28 (19.28 GMT+1).
¡Bienvenidos a Colombia! The weather forecast says thundery showers with a gentle breeze but the sun is shining brightly out there. I’m hoping that’s a sign of things to come.
El Dorado reminds me a lot of Dallas International, in that almost everybody here seems to be going somewhere else. The queue for passport control to leave the airport was barely in the double figures while the line for connecting flights stretched on down half the hallway. I was sorely tempted to strike out and explore Bogotá, but for once in my life I’ve erred on the side of caution. For one thing, I’m tired, and I’d definitely need my wits about me out there. For another, I haven’t planned this leg of the journey at all, so I really would be going it blind. Most importantly, my next flight boards at 4pm, so while I have around four hours to wait, that’s not really enough to risk a potentially unsafe pitstop on Colombian soil.
Some other time, Colombia. Let’s not derail this South American adventure before it’s even started.
The airport WiFi in Bogotá leaves much to be desired. It’s not free like Madrid, and after only a couple of prompts my phone won’t even take me to the airport website anymore, so I’ve resorted to data – I needed to get online to finalise my pick-up from Lima tonight. The hostel are sending a car for me. I’m normally averse to that sort of thing, but I’d rather play it safe in a place I don’t know.
At least to start with.
Puerta A6, Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado, Bogotá, Colombia. 14.20.
Still a couple of hours to go until my connecting flight departs for Lima. When I’m done writing I’ll decamp to a charging station to give my phone some extra juice – I’ll need it to contact my driver once I land.
I’ll do some reading to while away the time. I’ve brought a book with me but it’s a bit florid. I find myself skipping entire pages just to advance the plot. I bought it years ago because the setup sounded exactly like my cup of tea (19th century intercultural romance set in a distant corner of the British Empire) but it’s a bit of a slow burn. It’s been a while since a book really grabbed me. I ought to make that my mission out here. I’ve downloaded the audiobook of Michelle Paver’s latest, Rainforest, if not for the valid thematic link to this adventure then because her books always strike gold.
Some observations of Colombia, you ask? Hm. It seems to be a land of strange trees and clouded mountains; of sleepy travellers and softly-spoken staff; of real coffee, fake boobs and handsome aquiline noses. A place where people haven’t forgotten the joy of having children. Where Dallas was a concrete desert, Bogotá at least has the decency to keep their largest transit hub a tree-lined haven. I bought some travel-sized toothpaste and a couple of snacks and the bill came back in Colombian pesos, though the till used the dollar symbol. Thank heavens my bank statement gave the true cost in pounds, or I might have just paid 45.000$ for a 22ml tube of ColgateTriple Action…
There’s not that much to see on the wildlife front from the departures lounge. I clocked a couple of foreign-looking swallows flitting about outside and I’m almost certain I saw the silhouettes of three black vultures wheeling about over the residential district to the east, but other than that, the only obvious denizens of the runway are the cattle egrets that seem to follow the groundskeepers about like stray dogs. I’ll just have to wait a little longer for the party to really begin.
Somewhere over the Cordillera de Sumapaz, Colombia. 18.27.
A lonely light twinkles in the darkening world below: a single, blinking star in a forest as dark as the night. It is the only sign of civilisation for miles around. And then the light, the forest and all the earth beneath it are swallowed up by the clouds. The sprawl of Bogotá is a distant memory.
I paid 20$ for less than ten minutes’ worth of a view from the window, but I consider it money well spent. Like that first waterfall I saw in Ethiopia as we came down out of the clouds all those years ago, it is a sight I will not forget. The last homely house in Colombia. The Rivendell of the Rainforest.
A few stragglers from Madrid have made it onto the plane. The stately Peruvian gentleman with the cane who was the first onto the plane at both Madrid and Bogotá. A barmy looking gentleman in a puffer jacket and a wide-brimmed hat festooned with badges and his wife with the wine-red hair. No sign of the white man with the dreadlocks down to his waist – I suspect he has gone into Bogotá in search of an ayahuasca shaman. I suppose we all have our reasons for traveling this far. On reflection, are mine any less barmy?
A family of three were late and so the plane was held up by about twenty minutes. In that time I managed to finish Romesh Gunesekera’s Prisoners of Paradise (I don’t like leaving a job half done). It picked up in the second half, but I found myself skipping pages again toward the end. I wasn’t sure whether it was trying to be a Malabar Pride and Prejudice or a gritty historical account of colonial prejudice. Either way, I found the heroine jarring.
Time and again, one finds the narrative of the enemies to lovers trope in romance fiction.
Yuck.
I don’t think I’ve ever understood why romance that evolves out of people being fickle and mean to each other is so highly prized. Maybe it’s a condition peculiar to Western women. Give me the sincere and generous passion of the Latin any day.
I suspect that’s why I put The Far Pavilions on such a pedestal – it manages to stage a believable passionate romance that is neither coy nor mawkish. It’s certainly proved a very tough act to follow.
Hostal Pariwana, Miraflores, Lima, Peru. 21.36.
Te estamos vigilando.
Lima. The scenery has shifted dramatically. Between Jorge Chávez International Airport and downtown Lima sits Callao, a sprawling conurbation which must be crossed to enter the city, If you needed reminding that Peru isn’t all high-end tourist offerings after weeks of preparation and booking in advance, Callao provides an immediate antidote.
Enormous posters line the edge of the runway, advertising Ayacucho, Amazonas and Machu Picchu in brash, gaudy colours; across the street, row upon row of squat houses in varying states of completion, and all of them very much lived in. Wide dusty streets with pitfalls and potholes. Fried chicken shops every minute or so. Election posters promising a safer Callao, plastered in duplicate over every flat surface. Police tape – peligro, no pasar. Dollar stores everywhere – a mere talon of the claw of the American overlord. Graffiti on the walls: el mundo apesta (the world stinks).
And then, suddenly, Callao falls away and there it is. The Ocean. The mighty Pacific. I saw it from the plane, but this is something else. It’s too dark to appreciate it in all of its majesty, but I had a hint of its bounty by the sheer number of fishing ships out in the bay. They looked more like an armada readying for war.
Miraflores feels like a completely different city. Callao felt like the South America I’ve been reading about in history books. Miraflores is more like the one you find in Nat Geo Traveller or a copy of Lonely Planet. American twenty-somethings discussing the TSA, pipe dreams of owning their own airplanes and the relationships that other travellers have struck up along the way.
It’s ten past eleven here in Lima, but it’s ten past six in Madrid. Give or take a couple of hours’ sleep on the plane from Bogotá, I have been awake for almost twenty five hours. I had better turn in or tomorrow really will be a washout! BB x
With Chile now a very real possibility this summer, it’s time to bury the heartbreak hatchet with the Americas and accept the fact that I’m ridiculously excited about crossing the Atlantic again. Somehow, between the red hair and the po’ boys, I missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime to linger in the New World and enjoy all the sights and sounds of a place I’d never seen before. Instead, I beat a hasty retreat home to nurse my wounded pride. This time I have my priorities straight: I’m going out there for me.
There is so much to look forward to this year: from a brief pitstop in Madrid and Colombia’s El Dorado Airport to my first ever encounter with the Pacific Ocean on the grey shores of tearless Lima; the guano colonies of Paracas and the altiplano around Arequipe; the cloud forests of the Sacred Valley and the pristine jungles of the Amazon; and then, after a brief return to reality, the snow-capped mountains of Santiago de Chile, the starlit expanse of the Atacama Desert and the desolate shores of Tierra del Fuego; and at the end of it all, a wedding in Athens and the quiet of Lake Kerkini. If the world is going to hell in a handcart, I’m going to see it all before it’s gone.
My only real wild encounters during my last trip to the Americas – if you don’t count a brief glimpse of a bald eagle from the train – were in the Louisiana bayou, where I chartered a boat and captain to take me up the Pearl River of Slidell’s Honey Island Swamp (which you can read about here). During my six days in the States, I saw only a handful of American birds, and most of them were on my Bayou side-quest: cardinals, chickadees and blue jays around the visitor centre (commonplace to most Americans but brand new to me), wood ducks and whistling ducks in the forest and spoonbills and anhingas along the river. The alligators, on the other hand, were everywhere. You could hardly miss them. I also saw a family of scruffy-looking racoons, rounding out the American classic collection. Short of a white-tailed deer or two, I think I ticked off most of the North American beginner’s collection.
But South America… now, that will be a different ball game entirely.
I included Patagonia on my wish list years ago, but I never thought I’d actually end up going there someday. Now that it’s real, I can’t shake it from my head. There are so many things I want to see and do, and I haven’t even begun to learn them all properly.
So I thought I’d write a list – nothing obsessive, mind, just something to look back on when I return. My itinerary for Peru is nearly finished, and my plans for Chile will have to wait until I have a clearer idea of what lies ahead (and what I will actually be doing out there). For now, at least, I can indulge in a little harmless wish-listing – starting with the essentials…
Andean Condor– the only one that I’m really pinning my hopes on (my itinerary will accommodate multiple attempts)
Black, Turkey or King Vultures – in case it wasn’t obvious, I’ve got a real soft spot for vultures!
Hummingbirds – I’m not fussed about the species, I just fancy seeing the sunbirds’ transatlantic cousins!
Pumas – it’ll have to wait for my Patagonian adventure, but it would beat even the wolves of Poland
Jaguars – I’m not expecting to see them in Manu, but it would be incredible if I did
Pelicans – in my head, a line of pelicans flying over the water is the image of the Pacific I’m after
Guanacos – llamas are great and all, but nothing beats seeing their wild cousins
Howler monkeys – something tells me I may regret putting these muditos on the list
Giant otters – regular otters are rare enough, so maybe the Amazon will provide!
Capybaras – because my Year 7 & 8 students are counting on me to bring them photos
Rheas – another gem I don’t expect to see, but one that I will have to come back for!
Sloths – something that won’t disappear into the jungle in the blink of an eye, maybe?
Anacondas – to see just how large they truly are
Hoatzin – surely the most bizarre bird of the Americas!
Penguins – Humboldt, Magellanic or King, depending on the country
Tinamous – because their names are simply wonderful on the ear
Tapirs – the closest I’ll get to megafauna on this adventure
Boobies – not going all the way to the Americas just for the boobies this time, but they’d be a nice reward!
Macaws – the symbol of the Amazon, right?
Cacti – fine, this one’s no animal, but it’s definitely American enough to warrant a spot on this list
There’s a blackbird singing outside. They’re getting earlier and earlier as the year turns. I, too, should turn in. BB x
I’ve done it again. I’ve signed myself up for another mad adventure. As whim decisions go, this one is definitely up there with swapping jobs for a change of scene and flying to the States for a third date.
There wasn’t even much of a build-up to it. I had a relatively quiet weekend not on duty. On Saturday morning I taught a couple of sixth form lessons, marked some speaking exams and wound down with a little Arkham City. By Sunday night I had a one-way ticket to Lima for the absurdly low price of £250. I still need to think about the return journey, but that’s a tomorrow problem.
Why now? Simply put I’ve been hankering for a proper adventure for a while now. Social media will do that to you, I suppose, though I’d be more inclined to believe that my full-on, six-days-a-week job played a larger role.
And why Peru? Well, there’s any number of reasons. The fact that it’s a Spanish-speaking country is the main one, and the crazy bargain price I snagged is another (seriously, I’ve never found flights that cheap and I’ve been looking on and off for years) – and then, of course, there’s the wildlife, probably the most understated incentive behind any of my adventures.
I’ve been considering India, Japan and South Africa for the best part of ten years, but each has its own complications. India requires all of the jabs, Japan is expensive both to get to and to get around (never mind the language barrier), and South Africa – or at least the parts I want to see – is downright dangerous.
There’s also the fact that I always feel I have to justify my holidays. As a Spanish teacher, exploring South America can only add to the sum of what I can pass on to the students under my aegis.
At least, that’s how I intend to justify gallivanting off to the land of the Incas for three weeks.
I read an article today about the fitness frenzy afflicting my generation (the millennials). Apparently we spend more on the gym, supplements and sportswear than we do on other social activities. I’m definitely not in that demographic, but I can believe that claim.
I’ve seen the shift before my very eyes in the time I’ve worked in boarding. I don’t remember the gym being much of a feature when I was at school, or protein powder, or supplements, or any of that nonsense. Omega 3 fish oil, maybe, but none of this “cut” and “bulk” insanity. These days it’s everywhere. The Underground train was full of garish posters selling the stuff two weeks ago, alongside a rosy ad for a fertility clinic. From PTs to PBs, designer shorts to designer bottles and all the weird chemistry-set-sounding stuff people ingest – and none of it cheap – fitness seems to have become the new luxury product on the market.
Perhaps that’s an inevitable outcome of a world where our work and most of our lives is so very (and depressingly) sedentary. I do worry about them, though. About how self-centred the world is becoming. About the mental health behind the physical wall.
I’m in no position to judge, of course. If I harbour any cynicism for this trend, it’s largely because I’m well aware I’m on the outside looking in. Fitness is clearly a social activity, and here I am writing my thoughts on the matter from the quiet of my living room, surrounded by the thousand or so books I’ve managed to accrue while most of my contemporaries have been out making friends and finding lovers – or pumping iron. Instead, I’ve been building a library. It’s what my great-grandfather Mateo always wanted. Would he have wanted it for me though, I wonder?
Honestly, I think I’ve been into a gym three times in my life, but since two of them were duty supervision shifts for work, I’m not sure they count. All I know about the gym is that a very dear friend of mine went into one years ago and never came back. It might be a poor excuse, but it’s a pretty major reason for my lifelong wariness of those places.
No. As usual, I’m fighting the current. Contrary to the rest of my generation, I’m prioritising my time, when and while I still have it, on the equally self-centred task of traveling solo, to learn as much about the world as I can. One day, if I should be so lucky, there may a family in my life, and while I would trade away all the things that I do for even one day of that traditional idyll, I am conscious that I would miss my freedom.
So I’m taking a punt and getting out of the country for a bit – and this time, to somewhere other than Spain (though admittedly I am spending the weekend prior in Madrid, as it brought the flight costs down by a couple of hundred).
I’m not really a planner, but this will definitely require a fair amount of it. Peru may be Spanish-speaking, but it definitely isn’t Spain – it’s a little over two and a half times the size. I don’t intend to do Machu Picchu – like Petra, I fear the wonder of that vista from the Puerta del Sol has long been scourged by a horde of milenio photographers – so I will be seeking out some of the country’s other gems. It’s a work in progress, but for now, I’m thinking of:
The Nazca lines (from the air)
The Mummies of Chauchilla
Hummingbirds (wherever they may be!)
Semana Santa in Cusco
The Palomino islands (penguins, pelicans and sea lions)
Apurímac Canyon (to find an Andean condor or two)
Parque Nacional del Manu (for monkeys, mainly, but also to see the Amazon Rainforest on the other side of the Andes)
Taquile and the floating islands of the boatmen of Uros, Lake Titicaca (partly because it’s come up in the same IB Language B past paper for seven years, but also because I read about them when I was seven and they fascinated me)
Sacsayhuaman (Inca ruins that aren’t always in the cover of Wanderlust magazine – and one of the best place names in the Americas, period)
If time allows, possibly a mad jaunt over the border to La Paz and the Salar de Uyuni, the vast salt flats on the edge of the Atacama Desert that comprise the world’s largest natural sky-mirror
…and all of that within three weeks. I don’t much care for package tours, so I’m going to map out my own itinerary over the next month or so.
Catch me later when I’ve done a bit more reading. I’ll be less preachy and more teachy then, I hope. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 