Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Peruvian taxi drivers have much nicer vehicles than their Panamanian cousins, but you´d never know it. Clearly the horn should be used more than the steering wheel, unless on a three lane carriageway in which case random acts of wheel turning are derigeur, but my they have some extra tricks up their sleeves. And they are wearing sleeves, because gosh we´ve found a bit of a temperature change - this blog is being typed in a wooly hat no less.
Before anyone jumps too far clear of the jealously bandwagon however, the sun is beaming over the Andes and we´re breathing in as much fresh air as we can, high above Cusco in the heart of the Inca empire. Partly to cleanse our respiratory tracts after Lima, but more to get as much oxygen down our chops as possible - we´re at altitude and we know all about it. Not that a pattern of walking very slowly and napping after each meal strikes us as an issue you understand.
Anyway, back to where we left off last time. We headed for Panama City airport (if you don´t have to go there, don´t) and left the tropical heat behind, touching down in Lima, Peru a few hours later, before going hunting for my birthday din dins. A group thank you for all the messages - I will reply individually eventually, honest. I´m sure it will please most that the 19th wasn´t spent on a hot beach, but we did find the requisite cold beer, so all was well.
As for Lima, most people skip through as quick as they can. And on paper I´ll agree it doesn´t add up - it´s firmly in the tropics but rarely gets warm, partly as a result of the smog that hangs over the city for 8 months of the year and the beach is completely unsafe for swimming. Just crossed it off your to-do list? Fair enough, but if you do need to kill some time there, it´s really not that bad. In fact being in a proper city (8 million people) was quite novel - we even went to this new fangled contraption called a ´cinema´... cuturally worthy? absolutely not. A home comfort that we didn´t even realise we missed? Definitely and at less than 2 quid a head, we´re not about to apologise.
We did however squeeze some more high brow activities in. The National Museum, itself a very cool building, had an incredibly well done photo diary of the civil war that raged from 1980-2000. The events documented were of course tragic and our solemn walk around the exhibit respected and reflected that. Me trying to translate the background information using my dodgy Spanish perhaps failed on the former though.
We also checked out the changing of the guard at the palace. This was curious on a number of levels. Firstly that the (small) crowd apparently needed to be monitored by, quite literally given the armoured vehicle / tank, an army of riot police. This also included snipers on the roof and some well used riot shields and semi-automatic weapons. Now in the context of even hostel security guards being equiped with handguns, this is perhaps a measured response, but we couldn´t help but feel the 50 or so pensioners and bemused office workers did not represent a commeasurate threat. Anyway, the red and purple adorned guards cracked on with a renactment of the ministry of silly walks sketch well enough, but the same couldn´t be said of the accompanying band. It wasn´t so much that they looked bored, it was more how they acted it - just joining in with the songs they liked and even then only if they weren´t preoccupied; scratching their arse for example. The Queen wouldn´t ruddy stand for that sort of behaviour.
Checking out monastries and old Spanish Inquisition houses was far more productive, although it does make you appreciate the resources needed to restore those sort of locations. As ever, reminds you you´re pretty lucky.
Anyway, Lima ticked off, we flew into Cusco. That verb also covers the airport taxi journey; pavements are perfectly acceptable substitutes for roads, especially when the council have had the nerve to install speed bumps. And since then we´ve largely slept, eaten carbs and not much else - as I say the alititude (3400m) hits you from sea level. But all that changes tomorrow, we´re walking the Inca trail up to Macchu Picchu. So another 4 days without a shower, but it does seem like it´s going to be worth it, although I´ll let Claire be the ultimate judge of that. On the bright side, operation mega beard now looks like quite a shrewd piece of planning.
On that happy note we´ll leave you. We´ll write again soon when hopefully we´ll have not only more photos, but a connection that can handle uploading them. In the meantime, I´m off to feed the alpaca so he can run fast enough to send this.
- comments