the chicken district
people are supposed to spend a few days in cuzco doing very little to acclimatise to the altitude. the enforced nature of this malingering does not distract, however, from what a pleasant, albeit slightly breathless, place cuzco is to loiter doing very little in general. having got off the bus at 5am we stumbled our way into the first hotel which presented itself to us thinking that we would check out the next day butsoon discovered that we had actually been remarkably fortunate. the hotel is very comfortable but about a five minute walk from where the main tourist drag is, in the unfashionable south of the city in an area referred to by cab drivers as the chicken district because of the roast chicken shops which are so prevalent as to be almost alarming (even for a man who likes chicken). the upshot of the location is that we get a lovely room for a price that would get us two dorm beds five minutes away and moreover we are surrounded by a cuzco that we would never have bothered to see had we been shacked up in gringo alley. there are few things i like more than milling around random areas with no discernible points of interest just watching the world go by, and we are located perfectly to do just that.
as far as the picture postcard cuzco goes it is a very pretty little place, all green plazas and quaint buildings. it´s fair to say though that the spanish did a strong job on this ostensible capital of inca culture, generally razing all the old sites to the ground and building over them (with nothing but churches; would a bingo hall have hurt?) as such, you get the impression when in the middle of town of being in a european city, all redbrick churches and alpine looking houses. the incan history is totally subsumed into the tales that surround the (relatively) new structures, fleetingly supported by the occasional glimpse of an inca wall.
despite this (and to be fair we´ll be getting our fair share of inca shortly at pisac and then macchu pichu) i really like cuzco, a great place to while away a few days bustling through markets, reading vargas llosa in the sunshine and watching the world go by. off to have some chicken now, it would be rude not to!
towards the andes
the overnight journey to arequipa was actually quite painless, with comfy reclining seats just about compensating for the slightly alarming roads lazily winding into the highlands. we arrived and checked into an absolutely gorgeous little posada, an old colonial mansion complete with ankle licking daschund and owner who looked like she wouldn´t be out of place serving coffee to conquistadors. peering over the ariels and the sweaty peruvian builders who crowded into the view from our little balcony were the snowcapped peak of chanchan and the more barren el misti. these two andean edifices are a running visual motif which impose themselves on views all over the city, peaking out from behind churches, super markets and crumbling old buildings at every turn.
although i´d heard middling reports of arequipa i really liked this city, spreading out from the central plaza with the hustle and bustle of 21st century reality spreading amongst the regal old buildings of a few hundred years ago. we spent a morning going through a huge monastery previously filled with what, by all accounts, were relatively saucy nuns (the best kind some might say). we went in expecting cramped little cells and desolate barren granite but were in fact confronted with a tranquil, colourful city within a city complete with a church unsurprisingly providing spectacular mountain views, fountains, elegant cloisters and an organist practicing tocatta and fugue with atmosphere enhancing proficiency. arequipa was chaotic enough to be interesting but set with enough unexpected open spaces to provide moments of serenity.
as such, we really enjoyed our all too brief time in the city, one of those glorious places which you recommend without fully being able to articulate why. after another overnight bus we are now in cuzco where we will potter around for a few days acclimatising to altitude before heading up to macchu picchu. expect photos with us resplendent in silly hats and beards (me not vicki) shortly.
sand, sand everywhere
huacachina is a pretty desert oasis, a shock of green water ambitiously described as a lagoon surrounded by vaunting brilliantly yellow sand dunes themselves emerging unexpectedly from the grimy brown hues of southern peru. the settlement is awash with building sites as various operators realise the opportunity that the dunes offer to bored travellers keen for a quick adrenaline hit amongst the more sedate colonial and inca trails. everyone has sandboards for hire and dune buggy tours to sell.
having arrived from lima the most pleasant surprise was the clear blue skies which we had both feared we would not see until we were finishing off our three months in rio. the sandboarding itself, for people who have never snowboarded, looked fraught with hazard. this was an opinion which appeared to be shared by various people who, filled with bravado and a rented board strapped to their back, traipsed up steep dunes for 45 minutes before peering down the sheer slopes and realising that maybe the sandboarding lark was trickier than the $1 rental might have suggested before half running back down to a more forgiving precipice. i had a crack this morning though i must admit i was considerably more proficient sitting on a board then standing (an option which i effectively precluded myself from by being barefoot as always). fun enough but i couldn´t help but feel that the reward of the short, mildly exhilarating, slide down was far outweighed by the sweaty effort of battling the fine shifting sands to gain a bit of a potential energy. the option favoured by many of our fellow travellers was to get on a dune buggy tour and rip around the dunes being taken up to various drop off points for an hour but that really didn´t apppeal, partly because the idea of being strapped in and surrounded by testosterone fuelled jock yanks seemed hellish at best, but also moreover because i had grown to resent the constant angry growls of the buggies ruining the otherwise peaceful ambience on the dunes. all in all therfore although huacachina is nice enough, in the absence of any desire to party hard or ability to properly ride the dunes we are going to keep going on to arequipa.
a general point which has become tangible as we slip back into the groove of travelling is that the effect of the global economic crunch has bled down to backwater peru. on my previous travels people have bitten my hand off for the harder currencies. this time around however people, amazingly, are wrinkling their nose at the greenback and asking for soles instead. i´m sure there are some profound globalisation related generalisations that can be drawn from this but an afternoon lazing in the sun has rendered me happy to leave it merely as an observation, albeit on reading back not that interesting a one.
lima let die
i´ve never had the pleasure of flying iberia before but had not imagined that it would be more early 90s aeroflot than 21st century singapore airlines. from the slightly creaking plane complete with mustard interior to the surly overly made up hostesses to the plastic chicken nestled amongst semi frozen peas, the whole 11 hour flight to lima bought oh so repressed memories of ten hour struggles from moscow to calcutta (albeit without the yelping hanoi bound dogs) tumbling back. the other thing which was noticeable was the nature of my fellow passengers. i had been living under the impression that piling onto planes laden down with multiple pieces of oversized hand luggage was a subcontinental anomaly peculiar to indians taking home the obligatory annual supplies of quality street and marks and spencers biscuits. who would have thought that it is the brits, with our regulation size carry ons and civilized after-you approach to overhead luggage racks, that are clearly the minority.
having said that the flight, complete with the loving spanish lady in front of me´s seat jammed back into my chin for ten and a half hours of it, was not actually that painful and vicki and i arrived in lima feeling ready for the next three months. i´ve heard numerous reports of lima, exclusively negative, but i thought i would at least give it a bit of a try. as it turns out however nothing in the few hours last night we spent wandering around could convince me that my initial hunch, that this was somewhere to be passed through rather than savoured, was wrong. we´ve only wandered around miraflores, the ostensibly arty, and definitely backpackery, district but the honking horns (piped directly into our room) and mcdonalds have left me a little cold. i´ve always had a view that some cities have an innate personality that draws you in regardless of what there is to see or do and lima hasn´t shown that side of itself to me at all. as such we are going to head out today to huacachina to stock up on sand and sore limbs for the next few weeks as we no doubt embarrass ourselves with what i confidently predict will be shoddy attempts at sandboarding.
