The first day

There ain't no sun getting anywhere near me!

This is where we stopped for lunch on the first day. After a punishing hike uphill for what seemed like 3 hours, but was probably one, we walked over a bump and discovered this scene.....mountains,a small pond, a table, already laid, bowls to wash our hands in and the lunch already waiting for us. Hot soup and then quite an amazing dish with trout stuffed with herbs....I still have no idea how these chefs managed to make such delicious food, so quickly, in the wilderness, incredible! It was so surreal though, I said at the time that it felt like we were in Alice in Wonderland, sat at the mad-hatters tea party.

The very beginning of the Salkantay Trek

This is the bus that took us from Cusco to Sorraybamba where we started the trek. This was the first in a series of three 'death-buses' that we would take as part of the trek. An old bus travelling on steep mountain passes that are the same width as the bus and made up of dust and rabble. The driver, seemingly oblivious to the dangerous road conditions, drives like he's on the M6.....very life affirming.

The very beginning of the walking....I'm smiling...that's becasue I don't realise that I have to climb up the big bugger behind me.
It's so incredibly beautiful out there. I've never been anywhere so humbling because the scale of it is beyond comprehension. I thought Snowdonia was big. It's a molehill!
This was not just a picture postcard place, this landscape, all the ay along the trek was so immense and so striking that it hits some kind of emotion, maybe awe or maybe something to do with mortality, I don't know, but it was much more than nice to look at.

The Sacred Valley

In my first week in Cusco I did a tour of the sacred valley. This is an area in the county of Cusco, connecting four or five different towns with winding roads, breathtaking views and traditional Quechua life right carrying on right under your nose.

These photos was taken by an old chapel in a place called Chincherro.







I was a bit sneaky taking the picture on the right...bnut I like it.











Views that make your jaw drop open, like standing in a postcard but ...bigger!



Very posed, but I still like it....traditional Quechua dress





Traditional Quechua house with cuy (guinea pigs) inside and our guide who spent the whole day defending Peru and the inca empire against the LIES of our guidebooks! Scary wee man!



Proof that I was there.....my brain needs this evidence otherwise I don't believe it

Back at the ranch

This is a picture of our 'conejo'/rabbit at 'home'. I live with Rita and Tomek and Alanna in a part of a hostel. Our bit is self-contained and separated by a locked door to which we all have a key....we also have a doorbell... very important. It's basic but homely....and also covered in a lot of rabbit poop a lot of the time.

I have my own room at the moment and I've put my things away....joy! It's amazing how much pleasure I take from putting things away and cleaning myself these days. Since trekking and camping for 5 days and living in cramped hostel rooms for 3 weeks, I treasure such things as drawers, hot showers, toilets with seats, chairs to sit on.....lifes little luxuries!

The rabbit is called Chaplin. We haven't bonded yet, but he's coming around.

In the background of the picture you can see a rack with plastic cups in. Each day we pack a bag for the three schools we have. In each is a sandwich for each child (lovingly made by us at stupid o'clock in the morning) plus a bottle of wierd-looking hot breakfast drink they have here which is made with corn and is very....bitty) and the plastic cups. Every day when we get back the volunteers (just me after tuesday) wash the cups etc, ready for the next day.

Cusco

Cusco is a really beautiful city. It is drowning in shops and markets selling identical products for tourists alongside an infinate number of trekking agencies (literally hundreds), gringo restaraunts and throngs of people trying to sell you something, anything. However, despite this monotony, the city still has character in abundance. Many of the walls in the streets are half the original inca walls, the streets are narrow and cobbled and the it has a distincitve sensiblity; a laid back chaos of sorts. There are many Quechua people who come to the city to sell thair produce at the local markets so the inhabitants are always diverse and very colourful. There are markets everywhere that sprawl into the streets and the 'stalls' are always manned by women. Not women as we know them, but hardy-looking women who have fifty years of hard graft written in the lines on their face. They are always short and round with woolly knee-socks and knee-length citcle skirts, twenty jumpers and cardigans and an amazingly colourful tapestry to carry 'things' in. My new friendn Alanna has recently intruduced me to the game, 'guess what's in the sack'....because these women carry enormous loads wrapped up in colourful fabric on their backs, tied around their chests and you can never tell what's in there....sometimes they move and then you know it' s a small child, or many cuy (guinea pigs).

My first week in Cusco

I stayed at Loki Hostel in Cusco and the first day I arrived there at 7am, very disorrientated after a flight at 5 and getting up at 2 when the couple next door had very noisy sex for the third time that week! The staff were verhy friendly and after locating a free bed for me they showed me the communal areas....this view was my first introduction to Cusco, absolutely breathtaking!


This was the view from my bedroom window.
The view was by far the bext thing about my room. I was in a dorm with about 10 other people, which seemed fine to start with, but then the stinky-ass boys came who couldn't handle their beer, made the room smell of a delightful combination of stale, beer, sweat and bad breath. To top it off one guy, whilst I was gathering my things for the day, sprinted out of bed, grabbed the bin and vomited into it whilst simulaneously blocking the doorway....mmmm, nice! He then had the decency to put the bin back where it was and climb back in to bed. Lovely.

Signora Venero y Vicky

I met Vicky on the plane from Bogota to Lima. I´d spent the whole day crying and bless her cottons, even though all I wanted to do was go to sleep, her cheerful chatter was just what I needed. She was so kind to me and after all of 5 minutes of conversation offered to show me the city and help me get to my hostel.

Yesterday, I went to her house for dinner. Her mother was very sweet and prepared for us a tradtional Peruvian meal....thank goodness it wasn´t guinea pig!

They live in the North of Lima in a subusrb called los olivos. Vicky is a physical therapist and her brother is a lawyer for their equivalent of trading standards. They both live at home and their home is lovely, but for two professionals, their lifestyle would be very different in England. These are the middle classes here...their clothes are nice, their food is good and they live in a relatively safe area, but their house is not to the standard of a council house in England. It´s a different world.

I explained to Vicky´s brother the welfare system in England as part of trying to explain my job. When I got to JSA he was dumbfounded.

It was really nice to go to a home in Lima and be with a family. I was supposed to go to a party that night with Vicky, but in the end I decided not to as it´s not really safe to travel back to my hostel a night.

La plaza de Armas or Plaza Meyor

This is the main square in central Lima and when it is lit up at night is the saving grace of the city. It´s really beautiful.

My Tuesday friends

On Tuesday I went for breakfast in the hostel. Unfortunately its set up like a restaurant and you have to pay so you can´t jsut go and sit at someoné table and strat cahtting to them. I sat ona tabel next to these girls who were talking very quietly but after some excessive leaning I gleaned that they were speaking English and asked them if I could join them. They were college friends from NY and Boston. From left to right they were called Stephanie, Maggie and Diana. Stephanie and Diana were the two I met at breakfasta dn they asked if I wasnted to go with them to see a craft market in a nearby town. I lept at the opportunity of company and spent the day with them. Aside from a disturbing taxi driver who belonged to an obscure religious cult and a ´dessert´ made form corn flour and sugar (the consistency of unwhisked eggwhite), the day was nothing to write home about. It was lovely to have company though and later we met up with Maggie. I sort of gate crashed a bit of a college reunion, but that was nothing, later in the week I crashed a honeymoon! I have no shame.

The girls had to leave early the next morning, which is the way it goes here.

Lima

This has been my little home for the last week in Lima. My hostel is a very peculiar place. It´s a very enchanting building and my room is nice and has plenty of room to swing a cat...and my own bathroom, which is more useful than the cat thing.

Aside from the creepy reception guy and the ice-queen who mans the front desk during the day, the main problem with this place is that it´s so hard to meet poeple here. I cornered a man in the restaurant next door who I´d given directions to the laundry (so he was obliged to talk to me) and he´s also travelling alone and has found the same problem here. People are travelling in couples or small groups and don´t seem willing to talk to others.

The city is crazy...it´s loud, very loud. People are always beeping their horns, at the same time, for a long time. It´s totally pointless and deafeningwhen you´re in the main plaza or main roads. It´s very polluted and they haven´t got unleaded yet so yiou feel the need for a hankie over your mouth most of the time. It´s manic in a way that is alien to an english person. If I go into a shop in England and they come up to me and show me their merchandise and tell me about their offers I think they´re being pushy and I´ll probably leave becasue it makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Here it´s like you don´t even go in the shop, they stand outside shouting things at you, and street sellers come up to you and follow you with their things and try and get you to buy from them. Kids begging, people selling anything form phone cards to sweets to fluffy toys with red lit-up eyes (?)...it´s incessant and coupled with the beeping, a bit too much for little old me.
It´s also a bit dangersou here. I met a local on the plane, a very sweet girl called Vicky. I went to her house for dinner yesterday, which was lovely and her brother who is a well-built 26yr old said he doesn´t go to central Lima becasue its too dangerous. I guess I thought it wouldn´t be such a big deal because I thought I´d be with people. As it is I´ve spent a couple of days in the company of others, but people are always just passing through so I´ve spent alot of my time here alone....it´s really not safe for a lone white woman to walk in certain areas of the city at any time and not really anywhere at night. I knew that there were dangers here when I researched my trip, but it´s so different in reality.....the feeling of being unsafe or at risk...no me lo gusta (I don´t like it).
Everyone speaks Spanish here and no English so that´s been great for improving my Spanish in a hurry. I´m proud of myself that I´ve managed to make myself understood, I do struggle to understand most of the time, but I´m getting better.
One week was way too long to spendhere and I´m so glad that I´m going to Cusco tomorrow. I think It´s goign to be so much better there. I can´t wait to do the inca trail and my volunteering....then I have big decisions to make.

The Guggenheim