Class Warfare

We have now arrived in Cuzco and begun our volunteer placement at a preschool for 3- 5 year olds. Upon arrival Chris and I were separated and he was turned over to the five year olds. I was ushered into a roomful of three year olds. 'Muñeca!' they all shouted while launching a full scale assault on my legs. I later looked this up. Muñeca means 'doll'. Apparently this is complimentary but also a little weird- are Peruvian toddlers supposed to use the terminology of 1940s gangsters? Later several kids ripped the head of a doll during playtime. I tried not to think of this as an omen.

We have quickly settled into a routine that is part open warfare and part diplomatic counteroffensive. God, children are artful and sly. My role as a classrom assistant is as yet murkily defined and has incorporated a range of activities. Toothbrushing en masse has proved challenging, as the kids, while perfectly capable of performing this task themselves, either use the brushes to perform a number of quite serious physical assaults on each other, play dumb, spit water at you or, most worryingly, decide to scour the inside of the urinals with their brushes. Snack time has also been a revelation. I remember distinctly from my own childhood that snack used to be either malt loaf or chopped up apple- foods that have a minimal destructive potential. Here in Peru all snacks are designed for maximum havoc. Knucklebone soup, granola with throwing yoghurt, and t-bone steaks have all made an appearance. They may as well ask the three year olds to roll their own sushi. The basic aim of snack from my perspective is to avoid the pinpoint airstrikes of Orlando, who is highly adept at flicking gunge with a spoon, while simultaneously trying to force feed Hayley, who refuses to eat a mouthful unless you pinch her nose shut first (I'm exagerrating. Probably.) After an hour of this you hose yourself down and herd the little monsters into the playground where they try to kill each other. Fortunately they have only 15 minutes to accomplish this. Playtime is actually the worst bit of the day because you are compelled to take sides in any number of tiny-people wars. And occassionally something serious happens. Playtime makes me feel old. When I was a kid people smashed each other up and some whiny child would invariably fetch the teacher. The teacher would ask who started the fight and then would offer a banal platitude and walk away. Normally you would recommence fighting at once. Now I am the teacher but I have no moral authority to stop fights at all. I catch myself repeating all the phrases I hated most from my own teachers- 'go and play with someone else', 'it doesn't matter' and (what a derelinction of duty) 'thank you for the information'. I'd just uttered this last one with a sense of profound weariness and self loathing when a child arrived with a new and vexing problem.

'Teacher, Oscar Fernando has just done a poo.'

Now this threw me. I looked over at Oscar Fernando who was squatting over by the bins with a look of concentration on his face. What exactly had I been informed of? Has Oscar Fernando shat his pants? Has he done a poo in a quiet corner of the playground (he looked the type). Or was I merely being invited to share the news that a child had perfectly properly conducted his business in the correct location at an indeterminate time prior to this revelation and to give my approval on the matter? I mulled this over for a few seconds and then took the coward's way out 'Thank you for the information', I said- 'but I think you need to tell the REAL teacher'.

You have to draw the line somewhere.

I never found out the outcome. Oscar Fernando was taken away and quizzed but he returned later for 'listening hour' in which we listened to an oboe concerto by Tellemann and played invisible instruments. This is designed to be soothing, along with some calisthenics we do afterwards, but by the time it comes to drawing time the kids are whacking each other with chairs or eating crayons regardless.

Exhausted after work we hang out in our house, which has twenty volunteers in it and where, through the delights of beer and shots, we behave at least as badly as the three year olds. Life is full of difficult decisions these days. 'Shall we go and dance on a bar and neck rum'? someone asks. Thank you for the information, but I think you need to ask a REAL grown up.

Pootling in Puno

Nearing the end of this stage of travelling and we are like wind up toys that are gradually slowing down. Or possibly we are being given a snapshot of what life will be like after retirement. Either way we have become masters of just pottering around. Puno lends itself to this, being an agreeable size to walk around and with nowhere decent to sit and drink cocktails. So we headed first to the docks to allow the boat captains to practise their English sales pitches and then we went to visit a triumphal arch to a little known Peruvian general. (I know he is little known because Peruvians name all their streets after generals and this guy hasn't featured once, unlike our old friend General Bolognesi). Later we sat in the town square and read until a cloud arrived. Having decided to leave the two-room Coca museum for when we were really desperate, we went and looked at a free manga exhibition by the local art college. I liked the one with a boy biting the head off a duck entitled 'Never underestimate the creative power of a young genius'. Well, quite.

Throughout the day we were accosted by a tiny old peasant lady trying to sell us those hats, who kept appearing on the street corners like something out of Labyrinth. Actually she sat down next to us first in the park... 'You look like you need a hat', she said to Chris, in Spanish. As he was wearing his norky, floppy brimmed gringo hat at the time this fact was indisputable. I surpressed a smirk. Chris demurred. 'Your girlfriend might also like a hat', she continued. I wasn't wearing a hat but if I ever need one of those hats I can buy one from Glastonbury. We declined. She persisted. 'Where are you headed next?'
'Cuzco'.
'Cuzco! it's FREEZING there. You definitely both need a hat'.

Top marks for effort but we really didn't need the hats. Later we felt guilty. This is a country that doesn't really have a welfare state and as the evening got colder I started to imagine the old lady at home alone eating bean soup with one bean in. Besides, she was wonderful, with a lovely crinkly face like a walnut and four teeth that stuck out in different directions, so we agreed we'd find her in the morning and buy a hat. (we did, and she tried to upsell me another one 'for my sister or maybe a cousin'. The woman was incorrigible)

Of course the point of being in Puno was to go to Lake Titicaca and in particular the Floating Islands. Chris and I have so far enlivened our sightseeing trips with two private games: one, to decide what we would burgle from museums as gifts for people at home (so far I have decided to redistribute the extravagantly carved collection of solid gold fake moustaches favoured by the Lord of Sipan to all my relatives, although I am saving the silver nose hair clippers for a really special occasion). The second is to decide how we would 'improve' sites of interest in the manner of Disneyworld. Colca Canyon, for example, is crying out for some manner of cable car and would be brilliant for fireworks shows. The reason I mention this is because I don't think Disney could improve on the Floating Islands Tour experience. This is not to say I didn't enjoy it. We went out in a boat and the people waved, we met the chief of the island. We went into their houses. We ate some of the reeds (of which the islands are made) and saw their tame flamingo. We also discovered the houses have had solar panels since 90s, so the islanders can watch TV. We found out that if there is a social dispute on the floating islands the chief chops off the part of the island with the miscreants on it and they float away. All good stuff. I think there's an element of snobbery about having an authentic islands experience. Over 70% of the islands economy is based on tourism so I don't think there really is an unspoilt islands experience left any more. Later on Isla Taquile we saw a man in a Chelsea shirt. Everyone else was in traditional dress, but I'll bet that when the tour boats go home everyone on the island gets changed back into their Chelsea shirt. Which is depressing, but only insofar as it's Chelsea shirts.

So, Lake Titicaca is really very big and covered in tourists and smells a little bit like wee in the bay area, but it's still a damn fine day out even if you can't get off the islands without buying a bracelet and they charge you a fortune for a grilled trout and you have to tip a local who has murdered El Passa Condor in three different languages. Would it have been nicer in a reed canoe, circa 1950? Possibly, but if it was still 1950 I couldn't blog about it.

Canyon Deep, Canyon Too HIgh

It’s hard to overstate quite how spectacular the Colca Canyon is when you first look down into it. You squint down into the depths and seea little ribbon of water which you know is the river that made this enormous thing. You spin your head round like an owl trying to take in the whole view at once. The vastness and the quiet, and the light bouncing off the canyon walls, make you walk around with your mouth open like a gasping fish. Incidentally, you’re already gasping like a fish because for some reason, you’ve caught altitude sickness off your boyfriend even though you were fine on Cotopaxi, which is a bit of a drag. But the view is certainly worth it.

Of course, it’s (literally) all downhill from here. The first few hours walking were just wonderful, although being terrible at heights makes the experience just a little bit stressful. There are some serious big plummets (like, a kilometre) into Colca Canyon and the ground is rocky and sort of slides out from under you. Chris had to coax me over several tough bits with biscuits. But after three hours we reached the bottom and- joy of joys!- a swimming pool, an oasis with mango trees, and a bar. We had a rest and some snacks and a refreshing dip and I uttereds the foolish words ´I am having a brilliant time’.

Clever types will have spotted the big downside of climbing into a canyon and that is, of course, that you have to do it the wrong way round. Three hours of picking your way over rocks downhill while trying not to become a giant splat is quite tough going, especially in the heat. But of course you have to go back up again before you can have the beer and alpaca steak you promised yourself. Still, we had six hours of light left and the book said it took four so no worries.

The writing was on the wall after twenty minutes when I had a panic attack. This is not usual for me, and was kind of inconvenient, as breathing is generally required for climbing and suddenly I couldn’t do it. Eventually it subsided but the tone for the next few hours was set. Generally I walked for five minutes and then rested for six. I pleaded with Chris to let me lie down in a nice warm patch of dust and die. (Because of course it would take more than this to cure me of chronic melodrama). I had a plan all figured out. I would sleep the night in a cave I had found, having made a fire with twigs. Then I would ambush an early morning hiker, steal their breakfast, and go back down to the nice oasis and live there forever.

Of course it didn’t end that way. Just as I really was starting to get frightened that we would run out of water and actually get stuck, a boy with a mule arrived. The cost was as much as our hostel room but at that point I would have paid anything and Chris, who had bravely forced me onwards for the last three hours, decided that enough was enough and let me get on it.

The mule I named Barry. The guide boy was called Gilda (Or something. I had stopped listening. I was crying into the mule’s neck with relief). We set off at breakneck speed up the canyon with Chris still on foot. Once I stopped crying I realised two things. One, being on a swaying mule is really bad if you don’t like heights. Two, I have no idea how to ride a mule. Barry was a good mule, but he didn’t like stepping on stones so he sort of tiptoed along the edge of the ravine for an hour while I clung to his saddle blanket and didn’t look down.

Next day we went to Cruz del Condor in a bus with all the other tourists. We saw a condor and some lizards, and browsed some stalls looking at striped trousers. We had alpaca for dinner. Woman, know your limits.

Space Doodles

In every book on visiting South America, you get a lit of must- sees, and one of these is the Nazca lines. We had discussed our views on this before we left England and had concluded that we weren’t really that interested in spending two weeks budget to get in a tinny little plane to look at glorified crop circles from the air and then, as a bonus, to see what they looked like at high speed as the plane plummeted into the desert. Besides, we’d already seen the Nazca lines. It is impossible not to see them on every poster, fridge magnet, bus ticket and T-shirt from Lima to... Mars, probably. This quickly set us apart from every other gringo in town, who hung about in little groups wearing those awful striped trousers favoured by foreigners in Peru, lamenting that due to the recent tightening up in safety protocols it was now twice as expensive to get on a plane. They invited me to share their dismay but I couldn’t really see how not being in a plane crash was a negative point. Anyway, we found a mirador from which you can see two of the doodles, the hands and a tree, and a bit of a lizard. They were fine, as lines in the sand go, but I was happy enough with the postcard and the souvenir rock I had bought. Besides, our insurance policy doesn’t cover attempted suicide at inflated prices. We stayed for a couple of days until a bearded weirdo starting talking to me about giant spacecraft mining the rings of Saturn and offering to show me pictures. This is generally my cue to get out of anywhere.

Next stop Arequipa. This styles itself as Peru’s most sophisticated city. It is Peru’s second largest, although this is comfortably under a million people. It is also the self proclaimed White City, on account of having built with white volcanic rocks from the nearby El Misti volcano. My inner geek spent two days muttering ‘I will not let the White City fall’ in the voice of Aragorn. Ironic really, as its been flattened by earthquakes pretty regularly, including a big one in 2002. I learnt this on the roof of the cathedral, where I also attempted to quietly clang the city bell, but the tour guide obviously thought I looked the type and wouldn’t turn away for long enough. He was, however, quite impressed with my identification of the pelican motif on the church mostrance, which goes to show my history A level wasn’t a complete waste of time.

As hard as I looked, I couldn’t really sense the aforementioned sophistication. Our hostel probably didn’t help. The guidebook promised us a relaxing roof terrace with hammocks but had clearly changed hands since the book was published. The result is a cross between a 1970s hospital ward and the inside of a biscuit tin, with odd chunks missing from the walls and tisues blowing down empty corridors. The dueña looked frankly shocked to see us, but the room had cable TV so we stayed.

Arequipa is the jump off point for tours into the Colca canyon, the world’s second deepest (the deepest one, Cotohausi is next door, and 163 metres deeper). We decided to skip the package tour and make our own way there. We’re getting quite good at this now and the journey to Cabanaconde passed without incident although it was too dark to see anything of the view. Chris spent the best part of the journey with a little old man sitting on his lap as the bus was very crowded but I decided to wink at such infidelity. Next stop: Into the canyon.