Lima, Foxtrot, Bravo

Here's a tip for the aspiring traveller: Don't eat raw fish ceviche from a beachfront restaurant when you've booked an 11 hour bus ride. Fortunately we broke open Chris's travelling pharmacy and ate every medicated item we could find, and somehow we held it together until Lima but it was touch and go there for a while. On reflection we probably should have worked this out hypothetically but I suppose this is how you learn and Chris now has good reason to avoid fish forever.

My expectations for Lima were low. The books in general are not kind to Lima. Apparently Herman Melville called it 'the saddest, strangest city on earth' which seems very harsh when you take Hull and Bognor Regis into consideration. All the guidebooks we read heavily implied that we would be murdered, kidnapped and otherwise inconvenienced more or less upon arrival. No traveller we had met to date had had a good word to say about the place, including 'Unbelievable' Oscar who gave us a long list of don'ts for our visit. 'I live in Lima now, but I lived in Toronto for 20 years'. 'Really? What's Lima like? 'Well... I really miss Toronto'.

So I'm going to break the mould and go on the record here: I liked Lima a lot. We went on a free walking tour with an engaging Australian guy called Timmy who provided us with some thoughtful insight into the place. True, it had some odd bits. A man tried to sell me drugs at 10am. There is a pavement full of old men with typewriters and kitchen scales in which to weight your household gold (huh?) Elvis is alive and well and selling rock cakes from a tupperware container near the Plaza San Martin, where, incidentally, there is a statue of the Virgin Mary with a llama on her head. (For the record, I didn't buy those drugs. This is all true)

But Lima also had an impressive array of historic buildings in the colonial style, some nice looking restaurants, a couple of great churches and what looked like several convivial drinking establishments which I was whisked past. The hostels are cheap and friendly. The gringofied area, Miraflores, is cleaner and safer than its corresponding sector in Quito. We had a nice meal and then checked out some impressively creepy catacombs under a church. Lima also has an array of cool stories from its past that are well worth a read, from the conquest of the Incas to the more recent civil war. Apparently during the cvil war in the 80s and 90s the Maoist group Shining Path surrounded the city, cut the electricity supply, surrounded the town and then lit up the Cerro San Cristobal hillside with a giant hammer and sickle in burning torches. Pretty cool stunt in a scary as hell kind of way, no? Anyway, the long and short is, there was some good stuff here and I think it's time Lima got a bit of good press for a change.

Heading south we have spent a few days in some dusty desert towns lying in hammocks, drinking beers and playing frisbee in swimming pools. It might sound weird but I think we both needed a holiday from travelling. We have answered to the best of our ability all questions put to us by the locals on the subject of the monarchy in general and the Royal Wedding in particular, which got live coverage even in the desert town- population 200- we were in for it. Hope you all enjoyed the bank holiday back home. We're now heading towards Arequipa where we intend to immerse ourselves in culture and tip the contents of our rucksacks into a long overdue washing machine.

The only other news to report is that for a few days I had a mysterious bump growing from the left side of my forehead and for a while it seemed I was growing a horn in the manner of Venger from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (look it up). I am pleased to report that it seems to be subsiding but if anyone wishes to send ice creams or get well gifts these can now be mailed c/o the British Embassy in Lima.

Marmalade Sandwiches

OK I know I said i wouldn't be blogging for a while but having found a computer with a fast connection I decided to take advantage. We spent the most part of last week in Cuenca, southern Ecuador. Go at once is my recommendation. It is a beautiful place with lots of characters (by which I mean churches and history as well as bars). We spent the first day taking pictures of everything and generally enjoing the feeling of being able to walk around without fear of being mugged as Cuenca has a far more relaxed vibe than Quito. We stopped off at the Panama Hat museum- Cuenca being the centre of the hat trade- although it was really just a glorified shop with a couple of women sitting around with very old Singer sewing machines a bit like that scene from the Three Amigos. The shop people couldn't have lost interest fast enough when they realised that we were only there to confirm Chris's suspicion that he really doesn't look good in panama hats, and we left empty handed. We had a delightful night with our friends from Poland, Natasza and Joanna, and were sad to see them go as it felt our last link had been broken. The next day Chris was ill, actually properly ill rather than self inflictedly. I spent the morning mopping his fevered brow and playing clock patience quietly in the corner of the room but despite my best Florence Nightingale ministrations he refused to get well and entertain me and instead began feebly asking me to pass him objects. At this point I decided he/we needed a complete rest and so took myself off to the Wunderbar to watch Chelsea get knocked out of the Champions League which as we all know is the cure for everything. Several beers later I came back, having been consoled by an Ecuadorean octagenarian for the Michael Jackson statue at Craven Cottage, and Chris was promptly sick and felt better. This was fortunate as the next few days were all bus trips- the first to Loja. Nice town with many thoughtful touches including the Latin names on all the trees in the main square but a parlous lack of bars blighted the town considerably. Peculiarly everyone on the street in the evening was a man in a pair. This set me thinking- did everyone have just one friend? Was this a rule in Loja? Was there an unusually high prevalence of non-identical male twins? Was this the gay capital of Ecuador? I dismissed this last due to the absence of convivial drinking spots. In a half hour search we only found one bar and that appeared to be having a lock in. I hammered on the door until my knuckles bled but they refused to open up. Fortunately we did find somewhere at last for me to have my 'last beer in Ecuador'. As Chris points out, there is always an excuse for everthing. The 8 hour trip over the border took nearly ten hours. The initial hold up was at the border control. The man called Chris into the office which almost caused me to have a heart attack as I envisaged us being thrown in the slammer, but it transpired that the chap was finishing his shift and wanted to catch our bus into town, so was dawdling to get it to wait. Later we were stopped for an inordinate amount of time by some friendly policeman who had a problem with the bus driver's licence, but did keep waving at me through the window to reassure me. Northern Peru is hot and flat, a world away from the Andean highlands we had come from. As in Ecuador, but more so, every flat surface and all the rocks are covered in election graffitti. In Peru it seems you have to write a number down to decide who you want, a bit like ordering a Chinese take away. I leave it up to you to decide whether this would enliven British local government elections. 'I'd like Mayor number 6 and a portion of egg fried rice please'. We could hand out prawn crackers in the polling booths. But I digress. Piura, where we are currently, has very little to recommend it besides not being a bus. It sort of loomed out of some scrubby desert that looked like a sandpit with a load of birds buried head-down in it, and it is full of those tuk-tuk rickshaws and noise and chaos. It feels a bit like Delhi, if you've ever been there. But we have cable TV, we've seen the world's most unconvincing transvestite, and the don't serve rice with everything. If we can avoid physically melting before we reach Trujillo, Peru does seem to have its own unique charm. Chris has started to eat marmalade sandwiches and is already the owner of a stupid hat, so we should fit in nicely...

In Transit

Bad news- we have now left Quito. After three amazing months we are now heading to the Peruvian border to avoid a week's stay in the visa office. We're not going very fast as my backpack is full of children I have stolen from the markets. Well actually not, but full of tins of tuna and something else inexplicably heavy and invisible. I've had a good look at all my possessions and am compiling a list of things to throw out of the bus window en route as otherwise we will never make it to Cuzco in a month. Chris and I managed to successfully navigate our way to Riobamba without incident and from here we are off to Cuenca. Apparently it is very beautiful and historic but the most exciting thing from my perspective is a report from our friend Eva Wunderbar that they don't have stray dogs roaming the streets in packs there. Post- Cuenca we head south, hopefully stopping at a town called Zamora along the way so that I can take a bunch of posed photos with the Fulham mascot Billy the Badger, in honour of the great man himself. (If you don't get this reference, shame on you). So in about four weeks, assuming that we haven't got very lost, I will update from the dizzy heights of Cuzco. In the meantime, go and make a cup of tea or have a glass of wine and I'll be right back xxx P.S Apparently if you're very lucky you can get your feet licked for free by strangers in a certain park in Lima. I'll keep you posted...

In hot water...

Anyone remember that filling I didn't have before I came away? I foolishly mentioned it to Susanna, the UBECI social worker, while we were discussing public health provision in Ecuador. Thus before I could think of a fast enough avoidance tactic, I had a date with an unknown Ecuadorean dentist. I tried to rationalise this as a fascinating cultural experience or at the very least some useful padding forthis blog but I can't say I was looking forward to it much. Chris was punishing me for years of dental neglect by looking grave and refusing to offer an opinion as I vacillated between joy at the bargainous price I was quoted (ten quid for a white filling) and a nagging fear that I didn't know enough spanish to explain that I didn't want every tooth extracted with pliers. Señor Dentist turned out to be a big, stern looking bear of a man in his sixties, who keeps his dentist chair in his office which looks like it might be a spare bedroom, and sterilises his instruments in some sort of pressure cooker. Without further preamble he prised my mouth open and stuck his head inside. Clearly my mouth was more interesting than I had given it credit for as he then invited the dental nurse, Susanna the social worker, Chris and I believe some of the neighbours in to have a look at my horrible tooth. Hmmm, urgh, argh everyone said in a grave tone, including Chris which I thought a trifle unfair in the circumstances as he then retreated into the waiting room when the drill was produced. "You need 108 fillings" beamed the dentist (I may have mistranslated the number in my shock). "How many would you like me to do today?" At this point Chris came back to advise me not to have 108 fillings in one sitting. So I settled for the one I was absolutely sure I needed, just in case the dentist turned into a plier wielding maniac. Then the drilling started. Well, it wasn't awful. There was an awkward moment when my mouth filled with water (having never had a filling I had no idea what was happening with the little water running thingy they use) and, suspecting inaccurately that I was undergoing some kind of waterboarding, I flailed wildly, coughed, spat water all over myself and the dentist and then tried to escape, hitting my head on the lamp in the process. Fortunately Señor Dentista seemed to find this funny. Having strapped me back in the job was completed with no further mishap, although he did try to tell a funny joke about pliers at one point. I tensed my jaw ever so slightly to remind him that his fingers were between my teeth, and I think he took the hint. I'm still not entirely sure that he didn't use polyfilla, but Chris tells me whatever work has been done is not visible. And the dentist did give me a hug for being brave, which definitely didn't happen on the NHS last time. At the other end of the pain pleasure spectrum this week we also went for a relaxing day trip to the Papallacta Thermal Baths (heated by volcanoes I am led to believe). It was all rather posh and swanky, with nine hot pools and three cold plunge pools, and we had the place practically to ourselves. This was my first time in a hot spring and it was marvellous. Apparently the waters are used to restore neuro-vegetative equilibrium, whatever that may be, but all I know is that I was almost comatose with relaxation by the end of it, although I was slightly worried throughout that the mineral salts might be dissolving my new filling. I was half envisaging (and hoping) for the water around me to turn a murky black colour as the toxins leached out of me, but sadly this did not happen- another myth cruelly debunked. After a few hours in a hot bath I had shrivelled into a raisin (for my body is made up almost entirely of toxins which were all now in the pool) so we got out and went and restored my neuro-alcoholic equilibrium witha refreshing beer. Finally, I should note for the record that I am once again attempting to give up smoking. Chris has dobbed me into the house family and now every time they ask him why we aren't married he tells them how many cigarettes I've had in a day and they all tell me off. In this manner he neatly circumvents the moral quandary by cheating. Clearly I cannot sit idly by and allow him to outfox me with impunity and desperate times call for desperate measures. Fortunately my body is now a temple so it will be EASY...

A Small matter

One of the unsung pleasures of travelling is that it provides so many ample opportunities to pause and reflect. I am finding that bus journeys in particular allow me to switch off from the daily chaos of life and really take time to think deeply about things. One thought in particular has been exercising me for the last few days and in the hope of exorcising it I share it with you now.

Ecuadorean dogs have evolved into a wide variety of species of diminuitive stature, ranging in size from a chicken wing to a proton. What links them is that an overhwhelming number of them are dressed in T-shirts. But- and here's the thing- when it rains, they all put hats on. Obviously the dogs do not make the decision to put on hats; this would be ridiculous. So the owners of the dogs must bring the hats with them in their pockets. (I almost said handbags there, but then remembered that a startling number of these dog owners are men. Men with mullets. I digress.) There are no weather reports or predictions in Ecuador. None. They simply do not bother. So, do the dog owners carry the dog-hats with them at all times in case of a shower, or do they, unlike the meteorologists, divine that it is going to rain while they are out. And if the latter, then why choose that time to take your shaved poodle for a walk in the first place? Indeed, why shave your poodle in the first place if you are then going to put it in clothes and a hat? And while we're at it, lady, why is your mouse sized dog wearing wellington boots and a mackintosh but you don't have an umbrella and your child is wearing a plastic carrier bag on its head to stay dry? I fear that I shall be forced to leave these questions unanswered forever, although if anyone has any salient literature on the matter please send it c/o the British Embassy in Quito.
Which leads me to another and more profound question. I know at least three people are reading this blog. WHERE ARE MY GODDAMNED JAFFA CAKES?

xxxxx

A Day in the Life...

This week saw the end of Carnaval, a four day city-wide food fight wasting perfectly good pancake ingredients. Chris and I were comprehensively soaked by our host family for two days and by perfect strangers armed with bubblegum flavoured shaving foam for another, and found the experience both enjoyable and exhausting.

With no excursions planned and a corresponding lack of anecdotes I have decided to provide a brief run-down of an average day as it's not all picnics and volcanoes here.

7.30am Alarm goes off. Generally ignored.

8am (ish) breakfast. Usually this is bread, cheese, juice and a banana. Has also consisted of cake, pasta and leftover popcorn. Juice ranges from the infrequent piña (delicious) to the extremely frequent tomate del arbol, a small, bitter fruit native to south america. It produces mud flavoured juice.

8.30am walk to work. Lasts about 20 minutes unless we have to make a detour around a dog in the street. Dogs are unpredictable here and some of our co-volunteers have the teethmarks to prove it.

9am congregate in office to collect other volunteers. Catch bus to the market for the day. On bus, fend off advances of travelling salespeople peddling crisps, chocolate, fruit, ice cream, eye drops, brooms, clothespegs, superglue, CDs of romantic music, cookbooks, keyrings, empañadas, and an ointment that apparently cures "infirmities of the back, knees and hip joints, inflamed sinuses and bedwetting". Powerful stuff that.

10am-ish. Arrive at market. Catch market children with nets (kidding!) and escort them to our designated space. Open bag with books and puzzles in. Observe with consternation that the book entitled Yo Mama is a Llama is in the bag for the third week running, along with the morally suspect Barbie book and the one about the spoiled badger that won't go to bed. Decide to play football instead.

10.05am. Football has been abandoned due to boredom or one child kneeing another in the goolies and causing a scene. Back to the book mat. Fight with other volunteers for possession of Sesame Street Alphabet book from which letter H has disappeared. Attempt to do Shape puzzle. Fail to do Shape puzzle. Lose temper. Ask other adult volunteers to assist with Shape puzzle. Group effort fails after half an hour. Three year old child takes Shape puzzle while making tutting sound and effortlessly completes it in under five seconds. Look abashed and turn attention to Disney Princess puzzle. Fail to locate piece with Ariel's head on. Lose temper again. Back to the football.

10.30am singing time! Unfortunately not too clear on the words. Make loud, exaggerated fish-mouths and roughly correct noises. There is a song about a little worm, one about hungry chicks, and another which invites you to mimic kitchen utensils. The kids roar along happily. A trans-atlantic argument breaks out about whether the correct name is 'Incy-Wincy Spider´or 'Itsy-Bitsy Spider'.

11am Activity Time. This can go very well or very badly, largely depending on the number of children under the age of five. Activities have included making cards for Women's Day, learning the names of geometric shapes, drawing your family, a puppet show about strangers, cutting nails and combing. The kids are generally compliant although there is always at least one who tries to eat the crayons or stick them in their nose or ear.

12noon. Line up the kids and give them a sticker for being good. Sometimes we give them small gifts too. We sing the song about relojito, the little watch, and then we take the kids back to their parents. This can take a while as sometimes the kids don't want to leave, and sometimes they take you the scenic route home just for the fun of it.

We then have lunch. Sometimes we bring lunch from home but we usually supplement it with chips or rice. In the afternoon we run another market, usually with a mix of new kids and kids form the morning. In the afternoon we normally play running around games which are designed to wear out the kids or kill the unfit volunteers, either result will do. Games include tiburones (sharks) a variant on bulldog, duck-duck-goose and any number of throw and catch games, and generally last until a small child is knocked flying or until the volunteers give up and retreat to the shade of a tree. Then we sing some more.

4pm- 5pm. Hometime. Leaving some of the kids is quite difficult as they tend to attach themselves around the ankles or demand 'vueltas' (being swung in the air). Giving vueltas is a dangerous undertaking because before you know it there are 25 kids in a line all waiting to be swung and the small matter of your shoulder joints popping from their sockets doesn't deter them.

The evenings were previously spent watching the BBC entertainment channel and by this we mean back-to-back Top Gear. However, in a disaster of biblical proportions this channel appears to have been wiped from the house TV and replaced by yet another channel devoted to cheap Venezuelan soap operas. So Chris is currently spending his evenings howling and beating his head against the walls. I've become properly addicted to a reality TV weight loss show that the family has christened 'The Fat Beast Show'. And thus the weeks roll by...

Climb every Mountain...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Chris is a sleek, gazelle-like creature with excellent teeth, who eats a balanced diet and engages in wholesome pursuits. It is likewise maintained that I am a beer- swilling, chain smoking couch potato. The question, then, was this: who would win a race up a volcano between the athletic hare and the alcoholic tortoise?

The volcano in question, Cotopaxi, is Ecuador's second highest point, topping out at somewhere around the 5,800m mark. Our ascent would take us to the highest point reachable without specialist mountaineering equipment, the refuge at 4810m. We parked up at around 4000m to start the challenge. Only fools climb entire volcanoes. The effects can be perfectly replicated by climbing, at the hottest point of the day, a shorter, steeper section of volcano which has been covered to a depth of a foot with a sort of moondust/quicksand and then blizzarded upon.

I had a theory, formulated from that Red Nose Day clip of Chris Moyles up Kilimanjaro, and my own loose grasp of human biology, that smokers actually have an advanatage in the low oxygen environments at high altitude. Something vague about being used to having no oxygen because of all the benzene from the cigarettes. That and the proliferation of new red, oxygen bearing blood cells that I was manufacturing at altitude. (Still obsessed with blood after the Twilight saga, alas, alas). In any case I was feeling sprightly and buoyant and Chris was looking a little peaky so I fancied my chances of at least keeping pace for a change.

After a few minutes of uphill struggle it became apparent that Action Mounsher really was having a hard time with the thinning air. Being the nice, caring kind of girlfriend that I am I decided to wait for him to catch up so that I could conduct some thinly veiled gloating designed as scientific enquiry.

"Does it really, really hurt"? This with a furrowed forehead denoting deep concern.
Yes, it really does actually.
"Does it feel like you have swum too far underwater in the swimming pool?"
Sort of.
"Does it feel like you are being too tightly hugged by a large animal say a bear or perhaps an anaconda?"
A little.
"Does it feel like your chest cavity is being squeezed past all endurance by a large vice and that your lungs are but moments from bursting forth through your chest and splattering on the mountainside?"
Similar, apparently. And does it really help to be interrogated in this exasperatingly cheerful manner while you are gasping like a landed fish and tottering up a 70 degree slope? It would seem not. Tiring of the torture and experimenting with my newly found hi-tech lungs I bounded up into the snowline and ate a muffin smugly. It may seem an obvious point when you're 5km up in the air and sitting in a snow drift but it is rather cold up that volcano. So after politely inspecting the inside of the refuge (serious mountaineers with ropes on, lots of light coloured wood in the manner of a sauna) we decided to head back down again. There was apparently a glacier under the snow somewhere, but we reasoned that looking for ice under ice was not what we had left England in January for. And besides, one of our party was wearing trainers, no one had any gloves and the two supposedly fittest members were about to drop dead from asphyxia. So down again we bounded and eventually, after some quite wicked dust surfing we fetched up back in the oxygenated zone and everyone cheered up a little.
' I feel AMAAAAAZING!' I trilled, to subtly stress the point that I was brave and intrepid and everyone else was a girly weed. Fortunately my companions were too well- mannered to push me into the ravine.

And so to Laguna Quilotoa. This is a huge sulphurous lake in the crater of a long-dormant volcano. The original plan had been to hike around the perimeter (about 8 hours) but as we crawled along in Carnaval holiday traffic we revised this. Plan B was to descend into the crater, dabble our toes in the water, eat a picnic and then climb back up to the crater lip. We were at lower altitude but still high enough, I reasoned, for me to complete the double over my hapless boy and make the ascent in record time.

Foiled! At low altitudes Chris suffered none of the ill effects of the previous climb and was looking ominously swift. Worse, I had compounded my arrogance by stuffing myself with cold salami and olives and consequently could barely haul myself into a standing position. Yet I still believe I could have given him a run for his money were it not for the mules. Bastard, bastard mules. The local indigenas hire out horses to take you back up the crater for the princely sum of $8. We had confidently scoffed at the idea on the way down but after a few hundred steps another pair of the buggers came trotting past. More uphill agony was punctuated every ten minutes by the arrival of another pair of delicious tempting mules - with the price remaining resolutely fixed at $8- and as the afternoon wore on I began to hallucinate mules with ice creams, mules with beer dispensers, mules with helicopter rotor blades and in-flight meals. Chris was pulverising me with pace and, to my everlasting shame, providing support and company as I staggered along cursing him, the crater, lunch, the mules, other climbers and my own foolishness. We climbed forever, for weeks it seemed, and not even once I had collapsed at the top (searching feverishly for a cigarette) did he mention my previous smugness. May angels bring him gifts and sweet things. The deciding fixture will take place on Macchu Picchu in July.

I wonder if you can ride llamas?