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I’ve been in Peru little over a week now and I have one word to summarise. High!
I spent three days in Miraflores, Lima, which is really pretty and very western. There are big shopping malls, wide roads and nice places to eat. I even managed to find an english speaking hairdresser for my long-needed haircut. The rest of Lima is pretty nasty however.
Miraflores is clearly the affluent tourist area with well dressed people and police everywhere keeping the scum out. The rest of Lima consists of ghetto after ghetto in a city of nearly 10m. Despite the hostel owners warnings of a bus strike, it was easy to travel from Lima down to Pisco, Nasca and Arequipa by public bus – and very nice they are too. No Chicken buses crammed full of people like in Guatemala, these are all air-conditioned, with comfortable wide seats. I even took a night bus from Nasca to Arequipa, which saves on accommodation.
Pisco was damaged by an earthquake in 2007 so looks like a bomb has hit it. We nevertheless found a bar with a dart board and all night happy hour. Drinks are about £1.20 here – around 6 Soles for a beer, so although pretty cheap, its not quite the $2 for a litre of un-named spirits in Nicaragua. From Pisco, you can take a speed boat out to a small island which is home to millions of cormorants, thousands of penguins and hundreds of sealions. It was so good seeing these animals in thier natural habitat but the smell. Jesus!
Nasca was a bit of a surprise to me, as i’d never heard about the famous Nasca lines, which are quite a sight. To see them you have to go by little single engine plane, which was an expensive first for me at $60 (mind the departure tax of 20 soles too bastards). The lines were drawn into the ground by pre-inca civilisations which had no way of getting above them to marvel at their size. From the ground they look like nothing – some lines in the sand, but from the air they are enormous drawings of monkeys, spiders and a person with a big head!
After Nasca and Peru gets high. Arequipa is a beautiful colonial town with a large square and big cathedral buidling, as well as some cool views of the nearby volvano (can’t remember name). It’s about 2500m though, so things start to get tough. Breathing after pretty much every bit of exercise. Sleeping is a chore too. Long hours laying their with a pounding head. I took a trip to the Colca Canyon too which was breathtaking. On the way you pass over a mountain which is 4600, which although not as high as most of the days we were on Kilimanjaro, is still crazy high. Chivlay, the little town in the Colca valley, has some open air hot baths, which are great with a beer in the early evening when the sun is setting, the air is cold and water blisteringly hot.
Yesterday we arrived in Cusco to begin our climb of the Inca Trail and Maccu Piccu. Cusco is 3600m above sea level, but since i’ve been almost as high for the past 4 days i’m getting used to it now. That and copious helpings of coca leaves! Addam and Laura were in Cusco earlier this year and said it was awesome. I now know what they mean. Such a cool little city, where almost ever corner has an ornate church, the streets are cobbled and loads of houses are still made of the Incan carved stones with which they were originally built. We went for a meal at a charity restaurant last night who also own a homeless kids centre – paid for with proceeds from the restaurant. There does seem to be a good community atmosphere here which is good to see, although poverty is still ever present.
We have our briefing session with our guides and porters tonight – it really is like climbing Kilimanjaro again. I’ve got my thermals, rain poncho and hired a sleeping bag, which fortunately isn’t as disgusting as the one in Tanzania! No Jonny here though Jamba’ing away. The smell is maybe better but the banter isn’t quite the same!
I’m on the plane from San Jose, Costa Rica to Lima in Peru, 10km above a desert coastline which is presumably Equador. After my last post things changed fairly dramatically. Aoifer couldn’t cross the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border, despite having a photocopy of her old passport, a police report, a document from the Italian (EU) consulate in Granada, Nicaragua and a fax from the Irish embassy in Mexico. Paul and Aoifer therefore left us at the border not to be seen again which was an abrupt way to say goodbye to two great people. Then the following day we decided to leave the tour, despite there still being five days left, we headed off in search of sun rather than the mountainous cloud and rain.
That evening we arrived at the cloud forest town of Monteverde in Costa Rica which, despite being cold and wet, was still great fun. Since the rain of Roatan, we all longed for some sun, so entering the forest rain did little to lift our spirits. The next morning, however, the rain had stopped so we headed off for the canopy tour of the forest. The tour was on wire cables slung between trees in the forest, some were as long as 500m and just as high, with one – the superman – carrying you upside down giving you an incredible view of the forest. The canopy tour also included a tarzan swing which scared the shit out of me. You jump off a tower about 30m high attached only to a rope slung over a tree. After falling for what feels like ever (about half a second) the rope pulls taught and your swing freely through the air, like, er, Tarzan! After the excitement of the rope swing we decided we’d had enough of forest and headed into town to book a coach to our beach of choice – the headonistic Playa Tamarindo.
The Lonely Planet’s description of Playa Tamarindo really is scathing. They make it sound like hell on earth – like a US falaraki but 10 times seedier. Granted, there are lots of bars and North Americans sunning themselves, but the beach is a beautiful long stretch of white sand surrounded by forested hills and the town is little more than 2 dusty roads intersecting one another and lined with small hostels and guest houses. At this time of year too, the beach is all but deserted with a few beginner surfers falling into the gentle waves.
Niki, Sarah, Ray, Julia, Carla and I checked into the first hostel we found, the Coral Reef – right in the centre of the main strip for $6 a night and headed straight for the beach and warm waters of the Pacific. After a fairly hectic night of Costa Rican Football and free drinks for the ladies (which incidently happens in at least one bar every night!), I tried my hand at surfing and worked hard on turning my skin from a pasty white to a rosy shade of skin cancer (thanks Lonely Planet!)
After being bitten to shit by a variety of insects including sand flies, bed bugs, sea lice and the ever present Mosquito, we decided to switch hotels for the remaining days, to the 5* Chocolate hostel. Here, we hoped the air conditioned dorm, swimming pool and hot running water would help to keep spirits high and bites to a minimum. Unfortunately the Chocolate apartments weren’t so 5*. The pool was pretty rancid – full of dead flies and leaves, and the shower exploded on the first morning showering Julia in sparks as she stood under the water! Carla found a third hostel, the Black Sheep, which had a pool table as opposed to a pool, and was the best choice of the three.
Finally, yesterday I boarded the 2pm local bus to San Jose to begin this long Journey to South America. It was very sad waving goodbye to the people with which I’d spent the last 5 weeks, and who had become great friends. Travelling, I have found, brings such a vast range of emotions that sometimes its hard to know how to feel – excited at the new adventures ahead or sad at leaving a now familiar place and familar faces.
So in a few hours i’ll be in country number 14 – Peru. I can’t wait for the Inca Trail but first I have a few days alone to explore Lima and head down to Nazco, Arequipa and Cusco before hitting that famous mountain path.
I’m nearing the end of my time in Central America which i’m feeling quite sad about, as this has been such a great place to explore. Despite a few hiccups – breaking camera, damaging iphone and the copious amounts of rain, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have been fabulous. They are all such different, diverse and interesting countries. Mexico with its vast array of tacos and fried food, Belize with beautiful island paradises full of caribbean men who love cocaine and the Queen. Guatemala with its friendly traditionaly-dressed people crowded onto chicken buses careering around stunning volcanoes and mountain scenery. Honduras with its bland western high-heeled culture, Hurricanes and big guns. And finally, Nicaragua with its street dining wide boulevards and passport thieving hoteliers.
We are currently on the island of Ometepe in Nicaragua waiting for news on one of our group, an Irish girl Aoifer (hope I spelt that correctly), who as mentioned above had her passport taken in the most cruel of ways. If she’d been drunk and lost it or capsized a canoe (who would ever do such a stupid thing…!) and watched it sail down the river, one could be forgiven for thinking, bad luck, on we go, but to have a passport taken from a locked hotel room has made us all feel angry and upset for her – so much so that one of our group, Paul, has stayed behind to help her get a new one. The hotel claimed total ignorance, but obviously the finger must point at a hotel employee, as whoever took it clearly had access to a key. The situation at the moment is that, as the nearest Irish embassy is in Mexico, poor Aoifer will have to remain in Nicaragua until the passport is couriered in, which could take weeks. Tomorrow we are due to travel to our final Central American country Costa Rica, so it remains to be seen whether she can cross the border with the rest of the group.
So in 7 days i’ll be in the southern hemisphere once more, in Peru heading for Maccu Piccu. Despite the tour with Intrepid feeling a bit like big brother or first year of university at times, with heavy drinking and politics galore, I’ve made some great friends, and seen some fantastic things. The highlight perhaps has to be climbing an active volcano in Guatemala and toasting marshmallows on the molten lava. Lowlight (Camera incident aside) – our trip to Roatan in Honduras which promised so much diving, snorkeling and beach fun but delivered us the tail of a hurricane and 3 days of ridiculous rain.
Been a while since I updated, but I can explain…. I´ve just been having too much fun!
Sydney was simply awesome. Big thanks to Alex and Dorota who were fantastic hosts and showed me a really great time. My Sister is also in Sydney so it was like taking a brief break back home. After Sydney and a 14 hour flight to LA where I landed before I left (thanks International Date Line) I continued on to Mexico where I began an organised tour of Central America with Intrepid.
After nearly 2 months of lone travelling it was so nice to have everything done for me. On some days in South Asia and India, it felt like a full time job just going from A to B. Find bus station, work out right bus, buy ticket, work out where stop is, find train station, dodge pesky touts, visit 5 hotels to find they are all full or too expensive, find food, make effort to talk to someone. pfff. Now – I can be truly lazy – my forte! All hotels and transport are sourced for me and I have a guide, Milton, who helps organise and sort disasters. Accommodation and transport is very basic – dorms, cheap hotels and public bus – so its like travelling alone but just without the stress of organising it. By far the most pleasureable bit though are the guys i´m with…
It´s a bit like being in a reality TV show. There are 16 of us – 3 guys and 13 girls! (tip for you single guys out there – always more girls than boys on these trips apparently – often no boys at all…!) There are people from all over the world. The two other guys are a Kiwi and an Australian-born Canadian with a British Passport(?) (He´s white Mr Griffin so is that OK?) The girls consist of an English girl, an Irish girl, a Scottish girl, an Austrian, a German, a 50-something couple from Belgium, a couple of other Aussies, two Kiwi´s (neither of which live in New Zealand), an awesome how do I say it – Australian-MILF we call mum and two of the naughtiest 20yo Australian liabilities i´ve ever met.
There are already contrasts, politics and cliques within the group – just like you get on Big Brother. It happened so quickly and without anyone trying or meaning it. I guess naturally us three boys have stuck together as ´the lads´. We´ve formed a little group along with the two liabilities and the Austrian, as we´re all pretty outgoing and enjoy of a beverage or 10. We´ve already got into so much trouble. The liabilities went off with a group of Belizian men on a boat and disappeared until about 10pm one evening sparking panic, then proceeded to get shitfaced and hurl ´pommy´abuse at me all night. By the end of the night, we were sprwaled across a jetty singing ¨I shagged Matilda´at the tops of our voices, waking the locals up and pissing off the Belgium Couple.
If you´ve ever seen that TV show Ladette to Lady, where the tear-away Australian girls come to England to learn manners, well you´ve just met Niki and Sarah. Last night we nearly got attacked in the street in San Iguacio, Belize as the girls were stealing local guys hats off their heads – most of which found it less than amusing and decided to follow us menacingly around town. The hotel owners had to resuce us with a local bouncer and escort us home!
Putting the behaving-badly-in-a-reality-TV-show-with-raucus-Australians-who-annoy-everybody aside, I have actually taken the time to enjoy the Central American sights and have seen some awesome things. We stayed in Playa del Carmen and Tulum in Mexico where there is a beautiful beach and intesting Mayan ruins. We then moved on to Belize to Caye Caulker where I had my first taste of diving. Caye Caulker is a tiny island off the coast of Belize surrounded by a barrier reef which offers unbelievable diving with all kinds of corals and sea creatures. We saw Nurse sharks, Loggerhead Turtles and Stingray to name but a few.
We´ve also been to San Iguacio in the hills of Belize which offers some awesome caving and river canoeing. Unfortunately, disaster struck with the canoeing plans. Thinking we were driving to the river, I brought along my Nikon D80 DSLR and iphone intending to leave them in the car. When we walked to the river and straight onto the canoe, the tour guy gave me a waterproof bag to stick my stuff in. Rather than take it back to the hotel I just hopped in and we rowed up stream gently. All was fine until we encountered a set of rapids. Paul and I rowed furiously but we just couldn´t get over them. After 3 attempts on the right bank, centre and left bank of the river, we got stuck between a rock and a branch of a tree. Trying to get ourselves un-stuck, we stupidly used the branches to pull oursleves up over the rapids. As the movement of the water was perpendicular to the tree, holding this caused the boat to veer with the water and flip us out.
The camera and phone went under the water in the rapids and the clip holding the bag tight came loose, filling the bag with water. I tried desperately to keep the bag in the air, but treading water in fast moving rapids holding a camera bag above my head was no easy feet and by the time I got the the bank everything was soaked through.
My first thought was turn it all off, leave it to dry and hopefully it´ll be ok, however the iphone wouldn´t turn off. Everytime it powered down with the little rotating timer, the apple sign would appear again and it would power back up. When I got back to the hotel, the phone was displaying the message ´does not recognise input device´ over and over again until it finally exhausted the battery. This morning I tried the camera to find a blank display and a foggy grey image in the view finder. Dead.
So that is that. No more photos, music or phone calls. I´m now in Guatemala which is beautiful but poor as f·$k, so I doubt there will be a camera shop to buy even a cheap digital cam. On the one hand I do feel like an IDIOT for taking such an array of expensive technology on a canoe, but on the other I really didn´t expect to flip it and hoped the waterproof bag really would be waterproof. I´m not gonna let it get me down but it is very frustrating. Central America is beautiful – there is so much to see and so many great photo opportunities.
Well Ce La Vie. Gonna go enjoy the late afternoon sun. Clocks go back for you guys in England tomorrow. Ha. Start of winter. At least I can be thankful for the beautiful central american sun even if I can´t capture it on film.
I arrived in Sydney at 6am on Tuesday morning after a long drawn out flight from Indonesia. Bali’s Denpasar International airport, like much of Indonesia and South Asia in general, is a disorganised chaotic excuse for an airport. I’ve decided at the end of the trip to finish my travel blog with some ’superlatives’ awards such as ‘best food’, ‘cleanest beach’ etc. It will take a lot to remove Denpasar airport from the top of the ‘worst airport’ category that’s for sure.
Upon arrival you are greated with a Starbucks, Mcdonalds and several other eateries at the front of the terminal building. As soon as you enter the building you have to go through security – so you can forget checking in and then finding somewhere to relax before the flight. I passed my bags through the x-ray machine, walked through the metal detector and relised no-one was actually watching the screens – or me passing through the beeping doorway (left belt on). I picked up my bags and walked to the back of the huge queue for the check-in windows for our 300 seater plane to Sydney. After a few minutes I noticed that everyone had a ’security passed’ sticker on their bags, so I left the queue and trundled back to the security desks. By now there was a guy at the x-ray machine, so I asked him for a sticker. He just slapped one on. I wouldn’t mind placing a bet that the next plane flown into a large building by a terrorist organisation originates in Indonesia.
I re-joined the queue for check-in where I stood for the next hour. When I was two or three from the desk, an airport official came up to me with a piece of cotton. She wipes it over the straps of my backpack and places it in a pot with a few others. Then she sticks a second label on saying ’security cleared’. How she could possibly detect explosives/drugs or whatever from that pathetic swab, and how she will even know its my bag if explosives/drugs or whatever are detected is anyone’s guess.
Finally, I reached the desk where the check-in lady asked me for my ticket. When I explained to her I was on a ticketless round-the-world flight and had only a reference number, she looked at me like I’d just told her i’d raped her 6 year old daughter. She angrily tapped at her computer before asking me for another form of ID (other than my passport). I offered her my UK driving licence, but this wasn’t good enough. I offered her a credit card, which she studied closely, before once more tapping loudly on the keyboard. Terrorists take note – bombs allowed, e-tickets not.
While this was going on, A guy siddled up by behind me with 3 children looking anxiously at the check-in woman. I moved aside while he explained that the boy he was with had been given the wrong boarding pass and had been refused from passport control. He explained the boy wasn’t his child, and that his mum had already gone through passport control and wasn’t allowed back out. The check-in lady asked repeatedly for the boy’s Mum’s passport, which the fella obviously didn’t have. After about the 5th repetiton, the check-in lady said she couldn’t re-issue the pass without the mum, before turning to flag a supervisor. The Aussie fella and I looked at each other with a weary ‘UNBELIEVABLE’ look. I made a point of stating loudly they were totally inept, but I don’t think she understood. She re-issued the boarding pass to the boy then carried on faffing around with my 3 forms of ID.
With my bag checked I made my way up the stairs to the ‘rape’ area. In the ‘rape’ area, tourists are charged a 150,000 Rupiah airport service charge to get out of the country (~£10). This is on top of the $25 entry fee to the country rape charge i’d already paid. I didn’t have any Rupiah left, and the guy didn’t take Sterling or US Dollars, so I had to go back down the escalators of the ‘rape’ area to the exchange booths which offer the most scandelous rates to change money. Once I’d paid my exit fee, I arrived at Passport control where other toursist were busy being raped some more – 200,000 Rupiah (~£14) for every day overstayed on your visa (don’t do it!) Finally, I reached the gate of my aircraft. Hungry, tired and frustrated. There were a few newsagents selling crisps for 25,000 Rupiah (~£2) and ~100 seats in the waiting area (for a jumbo jet of passengers). My final piece of disappointment was the big sign saying ‘free internet’. Woohoo I thought, until I used it to find the ‘page cannot be displayed’ message on the screen.
India and Indonesia have the same first 4 letters of their names, but this is not the only similarity. They are both full of corrupt, money grabbing, hastling, inept f$%kers! Hello Sydney, and Hello Civilisation. Pfffew!
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