Across Andes by Frog

Photos: Lima Redux

7dayadventurer — Wed, 1 Oct 2014 00:11:00 GMT

A Last Languid Look at Lima: Indian Markets, Chifas and Catacombs

7dayadventurer — Wed, 1 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

The tour bus took us out in the direction of the city, but we had gone scarcely any distance at all, still in Miraflores, we come to our first stop and first highlight. Huaca Pucllana is Lima's most famous archaeological site, containing a large adobe and clay step pyramid at least 1,500 years old. It is in essence a pyramid but it is not triangular in shape. It looks to me like the apex of the pyramid has been flattened down over time. Compared to the Inca trail in Cusco I was comparatively underwhelmed by the site (although it was pointed out, it is much older than the Peruvian structure that is the cynosure of all tourists' eyes, Machu Picchu). Found out that the 'Pucliana' comes from a Quechuan term, "ritual games", a clue to one of its uses during the Wari Civilisation.

The tour group was your usual eclectic mix of different nationalities - Brits, Americans, Carribbeans, Romanians, Chinese, Spanish (surprise me!), and a few other unidentified nationals. Headed into Centro from there, passed something called a Chifa on the way, more of this transcultural phenomena later. We stopped at the main city squares, Plaza San Martin and at Plaza Des Armas (second time there) where I managed to get a good shot of the old man's eccentrically-decorated dog this time. Saw the display of highly-polished uniformed guards at the Government Palace, Peru's version of Buckingham Palace. I bought a city map from a street vendor in Plaza Mayor for 10 Sols (turned out to be so rudimentary as to be pretty useless). We started our walking tour of the city from the Plaza, going past Lima Cathedral and on to the Convento de San Francisco with its distinctive yellow facade, famous for its catacombs. The Church looked pretty dusty and faded from the outside, pigeons housing themselves on every ledge of the facade. Inside, or more precisely inside and downstairs, rather gruesomely, were the inhabitants of the catacombs, the skeletal remains of to 25,000 commoners. We were issued a prohibition against photographing the countless piles of Pol Pot-like skulls, a redundant warning for me as I had not the slightest notion of it. Coming out of the 'combs I managed to bang my head on the very low underground ceiling. The convent also houses a museum of religious art (The Last Supper with Peruvian banquet catering) and an attractive central garden.

Upon my return to Miraflores I got out at the start of Av Petit Thouars & wandered through the various native markets in the street. I was surprised to find them called "Indian Markets" as everyone in Peru seems to refer to the indigenous population as the 'community', Christopher Columbus' word doesn't appear to be in use. I had gone to the Miraflores tourist strip to get a souvenir of Amazonia. Whilst I was in that vast eastern jungle I had "ummed-and-ahhed" about getting an Amazonas shirt, coming close to buying a suitably inscribed sweater in the Posada shop but deciding that they were asking too much for it. So in the end, typically, I didn't buy anything there, now I was trying to make amends by finding a late memento of the place.

Whilst searching in vain for the Amazonas T-shirt I noticed they had "Cholo Potter" and "Cholisimpsons" T-shirts, so The idea came to me to see if I could find a Tintin T-shirt with a Peruvian motif as I had for equivalent Tintin's in Istanbul, Beijing & Tibet previously (I also knew there had been a comic book "Tintin & the Inca Prisoners"). I tried explaining the concept of Tintin to the stallholders ... small blonde boy with a kiss-curl and a dog, looks a bit like a juvenile Kevin Rudd, the boy, not the dog! They didn't have a clue about Tintin! I explained how globally famous Tintin was, one guy was interested in the marketing op and said he'd try to produce a "Tintin in Peru" T-shirt for next year. I didn't introduce the thorny subject of copyright, but I figure that he would have viewed that with as much concern as he probably gave to the Cholo Potter venture!

Headed from the market down to a small mall that seemed to specialise in computing equipment, I found a little empanada kiosk in the mall that had a good variety of these morsels. As a reminder of some sort of technological time warp I note that Peruvian shopkeepers (and even larger enterprises) still use carbon copies for receipts! The kiosk had a small seating area reserved for customers, which I observed being used by locals with no intention of buying anything. The shop staff apparently viewed this benignly and had no interest in chasing them off, exhibiting what I imagine to be characteristic Latino insouciance.

Back in the Antigua I gravitated to JJ's bar once more, this time steering well clear of the Pisco sours I tried a couple of the local craft brews in preference to the standard industrial cerveza, Cusquena. One, called Pilsner Callao, was OK but the strong-tasting Barbarian was too dark and bitter for my liking. JJ informed me that Barbarian was very popular at rugby restobars in Lima, which I can believe. This night the bar was more popular with the Aussie tourists and I exchanged a few stories of the Peruvian experience.

Afterwards I walked down Ca. Grau to a nearby Chifa (Peruvian/Chinese cuisine very popular in this country). The place was a cod-ordinary looking nosh house with food to match! My choice (very little in the way of choice really) was a rather pitiful-looking dish comprising rice with some strips of chicken engulfed by an omelette. I amused myself during the meal talking to the waiter who was actually Chinese (from Guangzhou) in my extremely modest Cantonese by referring to my whiteness self-deprecatingly as 'Gwei Lo' and 'Bak Gwei', to which he laughed, a little uncomfortably. The rest of the Chifa staff (all Peruvians) looked on bemused by our fragmented Sino-English conversation. One worker with a particularly blanco complexion tried to second-guess what we were saying in Cantonese but he was hilariously wide of the mark!

The next morning I walked down to the beach park (Playa Waikiki) to glimpse a look at the Ocean. Unfortunately a more or less permanent mist sitting about 100 metres offshore precludes any decent view of the Pacifico. The number of neatly-groomed dogs haring happily around the ocean parks tells me how popular a pet they are to Peruvians. On the way back I pass the Liverpool Restobar, a Beatles-themed shrine of remembrance for the fabled 'Fab Four' (still big in Lima?).

I'm back in Santiago later that afternoon, but my baggage is not on the carousel at the airport. When I enquire I find LAN has shipped in across to the departures for the following day without telling me. I make them fetch it back so I can get some stuff I need for the night and so I can be sure that by taking it myself to the check-in the next day that it will be on the same flight home as me (testimony to the degree of trust I would place in LAN after my experiences). The Holiday Inn airport hotel has me on Level 0, room 077! Never been below ground level before in a hotel (they should call it "the Coalminer's Suite"!)

I have the relative luxury of not having to get to the gate for the Sydney flight until midday. On the flight had an interesting talk to a Chilean/Italian wine salesman whose sells Chilean wine to the Chinese. He said the biggest drawback of his work was the unsophisticated approach of wealthy Chinese punters to wine, that they drink wine the same way they drink beer (ie, guzzle it straight down!), this necessitates a lot of drinking on the job by him as he has to match the alcohol consumption of his Chinese clients.

Photos: Watching the Flowers

7dayadventurer — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 22:10:00 GMT

Miraflores: Flowers, Grass and the Odd Gringo Tourist

7dayadventurer — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 21:51:00 GMT

The Hotel, Antigua Mirafores, has a kind of old colonial hacienda look to it, perhaps more accurately I might say, estancia, as its probably not big enough to be considered a hacienda. Old it is, but it is in good shape and looks like it's had a recent facelift. At the check-in desk I experience some more of the familiar communications problems that comes with trying to converse in Spanglish. The receptionist, who Anglicised herself to Tanya, seems to be saying that I am entitled to a complimentary aperitif upon arrival. After waiting for a short period, during which no such free drink materialises, I return to the front desk and query this. The woman at the desk (Tanya has disappeared out the back somewhere), explains to me that the complementary item refers to the fact that I have been given a larger room (larger than what I couldn't be sure?). Not certain how one confuses an aperitif with room space?

When I arrived in Lima the first time round, the Costa del Sol at Jorge Chávez didn't hesitate to offer me a complimentary Pisco sour. Nonetheless I decide to head for the bar anyway and encounter a warm welcome from the young Limanese bartender, this guy whose nombre was Juan José ('JJ' he proffers for guest convenience) turns out to be one super-laid back young dude. After conversing with to him for a short while I form a sneaking suspicion that possibly he is a struggling actor making ends meet behind the bar, such are is the exaggerated nature of his theatrical flourishes. Later on when I get accustomed to him, I think the hyper-talking JJ is just sort of high.

As I sip my obligatory Pisco sour JJ (or Jota-Jota) is only too happy to tell me all about his hopes and aspirations to leave the provincial confines of Peru and escape to the US where the opportunities to succeed are plentiful (or so he believes). The more we talk (I have nothing better to do: arriving in the mid afternoon after a long flight and taxi ride and feeling too tired to go downtown), the more aware I am that the effusive JJ is something of a devotee of ganja weed. This becomes quite apparent when he starts asking questions about my homeland and the conversation somehow gets round to the weed-friendly town of Nimbin - the marijuana capital of New South Wales, something that interests him greatly. I let JJ play around with my iPad for a bit. "What are you interested in JJ?", I randomly ask the question which of course when posed to my youthful interlocutor is a superfluous one. "I like weed", is his instant, matter-of-fact and singular reply accompanied by a dense smile forming on his face. Next moment JJ is googling weed on the Net.

Later on other guests gravitate toward the bar. Most of the guests staying at the Hotel Antigua appear to be Gringos, as the Latin Americans say. I get talking to a cashed-up elderly Florida retiree and his daughter (granddaughter?) who closely resembles a young Shane Gould. The Floridians are followed slightly later by Judy and Stephen, a friendly couple of vegetarians from New Jersey but now self-exiled to Las Vegas. I get on quite well with Judy and Stephen, and I find each of these Yanks amiable enough company, but I am struck by the strident tone of anti-Obamaism freely expressed by them! I guess that I shouldn't be too surprised given the widespread economic misfortunes plaguing America in recent times but they are not holding back on their condemnation of the Democrat President.

I finish a second Pisco sour by now, and then quite suddenly as I get ready to go out for a meal with Jude and Steve, the full potency of the Pisco hits me! I'm not sure what JJ put in it, whatever it is, I'm sure its a double, it packs a real wallop, no question about it! My head feels very fuzzy indeed, and I spend several minutes in the bar washroom splashing water on my face before I am anywhere near up to going downtown with the Vegans to eat. One of the tour guides warns me, the next day about the pitfalls of over-imbibing on Pisco (too late!!!).

Despite still feeling rather 'Piscolated' I stumble off to the "eat street" strip at Avenida Diagonal for a pizza meal with the Americans. Now, I'm not normally the quickest person at choosing from the menu but compared to these two I am positively express! The Nevadans appear to be on a very tightly-budgeted holiday and give the menu careful scrutiny. After ordering, I sit back, bemused, observing Judy and Stephen as they mull at great length over the menu, discuss the various permutations of mixing and matching different items, fire umpteen questions at the exceedingly patient waitress - the cost of various pizzas with or without certain variables, what combination of ingredients they can substitute for the carne ones that they don't eat, and how much of the substitute vegetable items they are allowed!

Finally they make a decision, and as we wait for the pizzas, I get another chapter of the Obama "No we won't!" refrain from the Lost Vegans. Stephen, who up to that point I think the more reserved of the two, lets fly with a very impassioned denunciation of Obama as "illegitimate", dredging up, much to my incredulity, the old conspiratorial theory "chestnut" that Barack is in fact (sic) foreign-born! Now, aside from the self-promoting Donald Trump and a hard core of Tea Party hacks, I didn't think anyone in America was still peddling that hoary old tale ... talk about Crank Yankers! But I guess, we are talking about America, so nothing really surprises. I certainly get a sense of the Right wing Republican backlash against Obama following the GFC from the sample of Americans I meet in Lima.

I get a sense that there's something kinda New Agey naturopathy (?) about Judy and Stephen, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Stephen with his free-flowing and greying locks certainly looks the part of the ageing hippy. Interestingly, Judy tells me she's a pop/rock music journalist which I find a tad incongruous, can't imagine her in Almost Famous! Based entirely on a non-scientific hunch, I make an assumption that she is some sort of a self-medicator.

After the meal we wander across the Diagonal to the Parque Kennedy Night Markets, Mercado de Pulgas (the local flea markets) to look for bargains. These are pretty thin on the ground however as Miraflores is a quite upmarket part of Lima and the stallholders are fairly resistant to haggling. The usual things are on offer - silver jewelry, bracelets, earrings, trinkets, beads, garments, toy and puppet llamas, and some assorted oddities such as old Peruvian coins and rusty pieces of metal whose purpose I can't fathom. The park should be called Parque El Gato, it is full of stray cats, everywhere we walk up and down the stalls there are cats underfoot! By now I have sobered up enough to make a rational decision to buy a really nice grey-blue alpaca scarf for a very reasonable 15 Nuevo Sols.

I breakfast with Stephen and Judy the next morning. Judy, confides that she is given to certain medical conditions and pulls out a multitude of different coloured pills and downs them them all with breakfast. I think I just found the empirical evidence for my earlier assumption.

Judy's mannerisms and eccentricities are beginning to look a bit like Yiddish theatricality, she displays a touch of the Bette Middler bordering on Woody Allenesque paranoia in her remonstrations about most things. Submitting her omelette to forensic scrutiny at the table, she loudly declares it devoid of cheese and defies the waitress to identify any dairy products within the egg. When the girl tries to point out visual evidence of cheese on the plate, Judy rebuffs the suggestion and insists that another, more cheesier omelette be brought from the kitchen! While Judy waits and continues to complain about the withholding of cheese, her partner Stephen is obviously not so picky as he quickly wolfs down the rejected omelette.

I am not too disappointed when 9 o'clock ticks over and I have to take my leave of this slightly annoying American pair. As I go upstairs to fetch my bag and camera for the Lima city tour, Judy's attention turns seamlessly from me to the newly-arrived replacement omelette.

Photos: Juliaca Route 3N Lima Redux

7dayadventurer — Fri, 8 Aug 2014 15:19:00 GMT

Fly by Night Juliaca, Hot Deals by Day

7dayadventurer — Fri, 8 Aug 2014 15:08:00 GMT

Insulated inside room 206, upstairs in Hotel El Promedio Anodino Casa, I didn't really hear much noise during the night. But by the time I came down for El desayuno I realised that the wrecking gang had been at it all night demolishing the building across the road. This day, I had the relative luxury of not having to make my transfer until around 9 o'clock, so I loitered over breakfast.

I was back down at pick up time, but had several minutes to kill as the driver hadn't arrived by 9. I joined the lineup of Hotel staff milling around the front door who were absolutely entranced by the spectacle of the demolition job which was tearing up the street under the guise of levelling the doomed building. Fortunately the glass front door was closed, saving everyone in the foyer from being overcome by a myriad of dust diseases. Dust abounded all over the street, which was semi-obstructed for traffic before the work started and now was totally impassable as rubble had piled up and been strewn across the street. The young hotel workers were revelling in the "Whelan the Wrecker" show on display, which was undoubtedly more fun than trying to placate surly guests or cleaning up after messy ones.

By this time my Puno driver had turned up, suddenly materialising from out of the cloud of dusty particles. After staring at the swirling man-made dust bowl at the front of the hotel I asked the girls at reception if there was a back way out of the building. They think I'm making a joke and laugh slightly nervously whilst shaking their heads. I follow the driver outside where his characteristically languid movements desert him and he hares off at great speed through the veil of dust to the taxi parked around the corner. After a momentary hesitation I too run, trying to cover my face so as not inhale any of the dust fibres floating uncontrolled in the air.

We drive out of Puno, I grab my last glimpse of Lago Titikaka and we wind our way up the hills north towards Juliaca. The same recurring features on the sides of the road that I had seen during the last 100km of the journey to Puno reappear. At random intervals, there is the presence of stray dogs on the side of the highway, kilometres from anything or anyone else, as if they had been mysteriously dropped there by some secret canine transit service. The driver tells me that people do occasionally stop and dump scraps of food for the highway for them, that's why they hang around in the middle of nowhere with the semblance of an expectant look on their faces.

The other discernible motif on Route 3S is the regular scattering of tiny tombstone-shaped markers on the highway. I assume that these were memorial markers rather than being actual burial places for the dead, but I don't really know for certain. If they are, I suppose the closest, analogous thing in Australia is the cross and flower markers on roads where fatalities have occurred.

The sign on the highway says Bienvenidos a Juliaca, Capital de la Integracion Andina, Ciudad de los Vientos. Juliaca, city of the wind? Wind, well that would help to explain all of the dust and dirt that flies around all over the main street! We pass the local technological university, the driver draws my attention to it. I remark how new and impressively modern it looks. He quickly tells me it is a state university only, whereas Puno (where he comes from) is a national university. He is indulging in a bit of rival city points-scoring, it seems to me.

I get the sense that my driver is not impressed by Puno's wealthier and bigger northern neighbour. The reality is that Juliaca is wealthier, albeit as a result of its ill-gotten gain. The city functions as a conduit for contraband, stolen petrol, etc smuggled into Peru via Bolivia. We drive into the airport precinct, my curiosity is aroused by a street name I chance to spot, Paseo New Zealandia, I wondered what the connection was?

Inca Manco Capác Aeropuerto reflects the recently acquired affluence of Juliaca. It is a snazzy new modern airport. The sleek control tower caught my eye, it looks like it was built by IKEA with its colourful plastic appearance. All around the airport you can see new Chinese-financed building projects underway, with signs such as the one advertising "LiuGong - Gigante de Asia".

Whilst inside the terminal I notice that the interior is not so grand as the exterior, amenities are fairly spartan really. I sit & watch the passing traffic. An adolescent comes into the departure lounge heading back to Lima. He is carrying the latest LCD Slimline television which he purchased in Juliaca at a, I'm sure, special price. People come to this mafia-controlled city from the capital & all other parts of Peru for the bargain deals. The ciudad's market in all types of stolen goods make it a super-attractive destination for financially-strapped Peruvians to do their significant purchases in.

As I went through the electronic barrier a three-piece Peruvian native band in front of me were putting their musical equipment through the x-ray belt, doing the body checks and passing through with all the other passengers. I assumed that they were travelling on to Lima, but once inside, they immediately set up their drums, flutes and other instruments and started playing in the lounge. They did their busking routine including ... yet again (groan!), that old Peruvian classic, El Condor Pasa (I make a mental note never to listen to Simon and Garfunkle again!) The plane arrives, the Indian buskers pass the hat round as passengers depart, and then they pack their set up and leave the airport. Performances at the Manco Capác Airport I gather are this band's regular gig!

Once on board, a conspicuous feature of Flight LA2096 was an absolute dearth of space in the overhead lockers. All available space was crammed full of wrapped parcels, bulky items in brand-named bags. This was another sign of Juliaca's role as the centre for cheap domestic goods, where ordinary Peruvians flock to this sales Mecca for ofertas that they feel are too good to refuse.

A pretty smooth, short flight and I was back at Jorge Chávez. By-passing the money-exchangers who had wanted to shortchange me the first time round, I found my transfer straight away. In the vehicle the driver had his wife and tiny child along for the ride. They were a pleasant couple and I shared some of my special Cusco dark chocolate with them. Although Miraflores looked quite close to the Airport on the map, it still seemed like a long trip in the car (traffic full-on as last time). As we get close to Miraflores, the calibre of houses and neighbourhoods went decidedly upmarket.

Photos: Puno Lago

7dayadventurer — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 04:42:00 GMT

The Floating Islands of Mother Earth: Uros, Puno

7dayadventurer — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:52:00 GMT

I was collected at the Casa Andina at 7am by yet another braces-wearing Peruvian guide to drive to the (inland) port. The port was quite close by, but as usual we had to go via umpteen other hotels to pick up the other passengers. When we eventually got to the Titicaca dock we were swarmed upon by a small battalion of lakeside Indian women trying to entice us to buy a bargain-priced hat or two from a broad assortment they were either carrying or wearing.

The German tourists from yesterday's Cusco coach were on the same Uros Islands trip as me. These upbeat Teutonic folk were certainly enjoying their Peru visit. I have noticed that Germans on holidays are able to escape the stereotypical dour visage that is generally associated with them.

We were shepherded on to one boat which I thought was going to be our boat for the trip, but before we could settle, the crew moved us across to another boat, and then, after an apparent another change of mind, guided over to a third boat where we were allowed to sit down. There was a bit of a delay in embarking, during which we were entertained by a pipe-playing musician in traditional garb. The piper banged out three tunes, the second instantly recognised as "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da", the first time I had ever heard a rendition of a Beatles standard played on a Latino pan pipe! When he finished he took the hat round, most of the punters on board were not particularly generous but I tipped him 10 soles (my small contribution to the cause of local struggling community performers).

Our Titicaca tour director was the same guy who had accompanied us on the bus trip. Not sure what to make of him, he was friendly, enthusiastic certainly, but his thick Peruvian accent was hard to fathom. So, his jokes spoken in Spanglish it seemed to me, were largely lost on me!

We got out onto Lago Titikaka which is 3812 metres above sea level and shared between Peru and Bolivia. It is amazing to reflect on the fact that this is an enormous inland 'sea', the highest navigable lake in the world, a hundred or so kilometres from the Pacific Ocean! On the outward journey I noticed that reeds were freely growing all along the northern shore of the lake.

The first island we visited in the Lake was Taquile where we leisurely wandered from one side of the island to the other, taking in the views, very tranquil, relaxed ambience. We passed the fields comprising the Islanders' collective agricultural system which basically hasn't changed since the 14th century. At the other side we met a family of colourfully and traditionally-attired weavers. We had a demonstration of their antiquated textile techniques, finished products of which were available to buy (I bought a floppy white hat with a colourful patterned band for 30 soles).

After Taquile we went to Llachon - Santa Maria, where a shaman prepared a Pachamanca meal for us on the beach. This is a traditional form of cooking using underground ovens (something very akin to a Māori hūngi). Part meal preparation and part religious ritual, the ceremony involved the shaman pouring wine onto the mound covering the food and waving branches and leaves over it. The purpose of this ritual was to make offerings to Pachamama/ Mother Earth (the Incas' creation myths have it that the people had their origins in the Lake!). Blessed or unblessed, the meal was delicious!

From Taquile we moved on the 'Floating Islands' of Uros, the highlight of the Titicaca trip. The Floating Islands were artificially constructed by the Uros people using bundled reeds from the totora plant mixed with mud to cut themselves off from the Incas and other aggressive neighbours. The community demonstrated how they expanded the tiny island by tying together extra reeds, soil and turf, and affixed to the sides of the island by rope.

The Uros, cutoff from the World in this way, survive by fishing (the Lake is stocked with Canadian trout and Argentinian kingfish) and by trading the goods and materials they produced for food from the surrounding larger islands. I couldn't help wondering about the kind of alternative, parallel life they lived, living freely for sure, but living in a very enclosed, claustrophobic world - to my eyes. Walking around the uneven reed floor of the island was a novel and strange experience.

Whilst on Uros we were given a boat ride around the lagoon in one of the Island's reed boats. I had used up all the money I had brought with me buying some cushion covers, so I experienced an uncomfortable moment when the reed boat pilot tried to hit me for a donation after we had returned from the ride. He looked quite put out when I intimated that I had zilch on me.

About 50 metres away from the island was a second, smaller artificial island, the story of its existence was a peculiar one. Four of the families on the original island fell out with the majority of the families and broke away from them, constructed a new floating island. The tourists in our group were a good bunch of people (mainly Americans and Costa Ricans), we exchanged lots of jokes, eg, do you need a passport to visit the breakaway reed island?

After returning to Puno I went for dinner in the town. Walking through the streets, just about every café and bar with a Peruvian band that I passed was playing that old favourite, 'El Condor Pasa'. I returned to the hotel after eating and souvenir-hunting to find that a bulldozer was busy decimating an old building directly across the road - as if the road wasn't already stuffed up enough!

Camino a Puño: The Pan-American Highway

7dayadventurer — Thu, 3 Jul 2014 10:11:00 GMT

The next morning I had my umpteenth cocoa tea in Unaytambo and scuttled out for another early start on the road. I was taxied across town to the Cusco depot of WonderPeru on the other side of Av de Sol. To my relief, given my recent experiences, they had my coach ticket for the trip. The <em>Camino a Puño </em> via the Pan-American Highway, was a distance of 386km, and WonderPeru advertised it as a 10 hour journey which seemed rather too long a time in a seated position for that distance.

The coach was a real quality bonus, to my surprise, it was absolutely first-class, very modern, all the conveniences and comforts. I scored a seat upstairs right at the front, prime viewing spot. Leaving Cusco on the road south on Route 3S (glossy tourist brochures call it "The Route of the Sun"), our first stop was St Peter's, a 16-17th century colonial church in Andahualillas. This Jesuit church interior was largely wooden in structure (pillars, roof, etc), laced with large amounts of ornate gold decorations on the walls and picture frames. The walls were also adorned with magnificent frescoes and murals. A floral ornament with gold flakes on the ceiling was a standout. The altar was also elaborately decorated in gold with an Incan sun and countless small mirrors. The coach guide made the statement that San Pedro's was viewed in Peru as the Americas' counterpart to Europe's Sistine Chapel. Impressive as the church certainly was, frankly I thought this was nonetheless drawing a long bow.

From Andahualillas we journeyed to Raqchi Parque Arqueológico in the San Pedro area. This was a preserved or restored Inca village comprising a bunch of rough-hewn adobe houses connected to each other. Next to the homes which resembled a clump of rubble cemented together, was the focal point of the Inca village, the colossal Temple of Wiracocha, or what remains of it. The facade stands 92 metres wide and over 25 metres high. This temple, also known as the Temple of the Supreme God of the Incas, comprised a series of pillars in the shape of massive I's and H's! Saw the usual grazing llamas in the village although I didn't see any of the earring-wearing llamas that were mentioned in the tour poster.

When the coach paused for lunch on the highway the guide encouraged us to try the muña tea which he claimed was far superior to cocoa tea in respect of the drink's medicinal potency. I did but it tasted not much different to the cocoa one, weak and a bit minty but pretty tasteless. After the sixth stop on the Pan American Highway for a digression I realised why the transportation company brochure stated it was a 10 hour marathon drive!

At the highest point of the camino, the 4335 m high La Raya, we paused to buy souvenirs from the highway stalls. I bought an attractive little fawn and white coloured bag adorned with cute llamas and images of Wiracocha for 30 soles. Going down from Abra La Raya, we next visited the Reyla native archaeological site (Pukará) some 3800 metres above sea level, which was a bit of a Trojan site (ie, not much to see!). Close to the site was the Museo Pukará, chock full of pre-Columbian sculptures.

Nearing our destination for the day's travel, Puno, we again diverted slightly to drive through the incredibly dusty and dirty streets of Juliaca. We encountered mad, anarchic traffic everywhere. The popular Peruvian three wheel motorised taxis seen in Cusco were even more omnipresent in downtown Juliaca with hundreds of them constantly darting in and out of the flow of vehicles on the 'main drag'. We got the rundown from our guide on Juliaca's main claim to (in)famy. Juliaca is a mafia-run town, with all manner of contraband and stolen goods on sale. People flock to Juliaca from all over Peru to pick up that 63cm flat screen TV they were after at a very special price!

Three-quarters of an hour after leaving Juliaca we reached the outskirts of the southern city of Puno and got our first (distant) glimpse of the northern edge of Lagos Titikaka. The tour party's relief at finally arriving at Puno after 10 and a half hours on the road turned to frustration when we were blocked from proceeding to the bus depot by a religious procession moving at glacial pace. It took 15 minutes for the ceremony marking the birth of some important local saint to pass the stalled convoy of vehicles trying to enter the city. We passed the time by twiddling our thumbs (although probably the modern version of this is to say that we amused ourselves with our portable electronic devices!), taking the occasional photo of the noisy cavalcade of clergymen and women - the noisiness was coming from the odd spectacle of nuns chanting homilies out of large megaphones. This was a curious sight with the nuns extolling Christian virtues to the masses through loud-speakers which made the event look very akin to a political rally.

From the bus depot in downtown Puno, taxis took the tourists from our coach to their individual hotels. Arriving at my particular hotel, Casa Andronikaka, the street at the front of it looked like a bit of a bomb site, the road was really bad, rough, broken up, pieces of loose rubble everywhere! Happily, the chaotic and decimated condition of the street outside was not replicated in the interior of the hotel which was, given its location, quite well presented.

Puno had a big selection of restaurants but after the all-day travel I decided the first night I'd have dinner in the hotel, carne bife, before heading down to the Centro part of Puno. Puno was lively, lots of tourist bars and eateries, souvenir shops, people walking up and down the strip. After a couple of hours of soaking up the atmosphere of Puno (OK but not really pulsating on the Cusco-scale!), I headed back up the road full of rocks to my hotel to rest up for the next day's Floating Islands trip.

Photos: Wonder Peru

7dayadventurer — Wed, 2 Jul 2014 23:00:00 GMT

Photos: Machu Picchu

7dayadventurer — Wed, 28 May 2014 22:42:00 GMT

Machu Picchu: Maravilla and Inca Spirit in the Sky

7dayadventurer — Wed, 28 May 2014 22:21:00 GMT

The next day on my itinerary there was a trip scheduled to Peru's own home-grown contender for "8th Wonder of the World", Machu Picchu. The trip started badly (again), the driver arrived 10 minutes late. Then after getting away, we had got as far as the outskirts of the Municipalidad when as a matter of course I queried the driver to make sure he was in possession of my tickets for the rail journey and entrance to the Inca site. Incredibly he didn't have them! He thought I had them! He quickly phoned the tour organiser who indicated that the hotel receptionist was holding the tickets and had been supposed to have given them to me when we left. The driver sped back to Utaytambo nearly cleaning up half a dozen semi-comatose early morning strollers ambling insouciantly across the road on the way. Fortunately the errant but smiling receptionist was waiting outside in the road with the tickets, so the driver was able to curtly grab them and hare off once again without getting out of the vehicle.

My driver proceeded to drive like a maniac (or if you prefer - like your average Peruvian motorist!) to get me to the Ullantaytambo railway station where I was to pick up the PeruRail train to Machu Picchu. Passing through the ingreso I was on time for my scheduled train but unfortunately the PeruRail organisation setup at the station was a shambles. There were delays, trains were waiting on the track for a long time but we weren't allowed to board them. The train that I was told was my one came an hour later and duly went. To my surprise, although the station was packed with would-be boarders for Machu Picchu, each arriving train only contained two or three carriages! It was reassuring to reflect on the fact that PeruRail was functioning at the lofty standard of railways worldwide! I did have to admit however that the railway staff at PeruRail were extremely polite - if not particularly useful.

In frustration I forced my way onto the platform and into the queue for the next train. Although the journey number on my bolero de acceso (ticket) didn't correspond, I was allowed on to the train much to my relief. The train went to Aguas Calientes which is the rail terminus for MP. On the way, the scenery was really picturesque, a full, flowing river with the stunning postcard backdrop of the Andes mountains, which was just as well because the trip was a very long haul.

At Aguas Calientes the local Chimu reps with their yellow T-shirts were fortunately easy to spot in the tangled mass of humanity at the station gate. From there we were rushed off to the coaches which nonstop delivered thousands of visitors to the Machu Picchu site. The ride up the mountain was an adventurous one owing to the narrow, rough zig-zagging road and the propensity of the drivers to hurl their coaches blindly around curves in the road! At 2,430 metres above sea level Machu Picchu is high but considerably lower than Cusco and other locations in the Urubamba Valley.

Machu Picchu was an interesting experience, certainly unique, but somehow I felt underwhelmed by its 'grandeur'. I don't know why, possibly I was feeling blasé about the Inca monuments as a result of all of the native sites I had seen since arriving in Cusco. I didn't find it breathtakingly magnificent in an aesthetic sense when contrasted with Abu Simbel in Egypt. Machu Picchu's incomplete state seemed to me a bit of a mishmash of broken architecture.

I think that when viewed from a distance, Machu Picchu is infinitely more impressive. The sum of the whole, with its pattern of terraced fields and the ruins sitting on a ridge beneath the two peaks (Machu and Huanya) is a more spectacular sight compared to it's scattered individual parts up close. One thing there is no doubt about is that it does have atmosphere - in abundance. The clouds resting serenely on the twin peaks of a once impregnable fortress city, give it a tranquil and unearthly appearance from afar. Peaceful yes, but depopulated, never! Vast crowds throng all over Machu Picchu all year, climbing its inestimable number of steps and exploring every nook and crevice of it! Our guide showed us some of the more notable features, such as the Sun Temple and the sculpture known as the "Eyes of Pachamama" (two carved circles in the ground) and the Inyiwatana, a rock pillar with profound astronomical significance for the Incas. He also pointed out the line formed in the mountains that represents the hiking trail that leads to Machu Picchu. I observed countless modern-day Hiram Binghams embarking on two or four days hikes in the footsteps of that famous first trek to this archaeological magnet.

The great mystery of Machu Picchu is that its purpose for being remains uncertain. Archaeologists have not yet resolved whether it was built as a royal retreat or palace for the Emperor Pachacuti, or for religious purposes to honour its sacred landscape (the river that encircles most of it, Rio Urubamba, was thought by the Incas to be sacred) or for some other reason, such as defence.

MP's enormous pulling power brings tourism, but with it the threat of degradation to the precise and fragile site! The massive crush of tourists, roaming all over the site was a bit off-putting, and when the guide suggested an early departure to avoid the horrendous lines of visitors queuing up for the buses later in the afternoon, I was highly amenable to the idea. I walked back down to the entrance with the guide who alerted me to the gimmicky custom of visitors having their passports stamped with the Machu Picchu stamp (like it was a pretend visit to another country). Despite my scepticism about such things I went along with the charade and allowed the guide to stamp the book.

The queue was already lengthy but with a host of coaches backed up in the parking area there wasn't a long wait to get back to Aguas Calientes. Coming down from the mountain allowed passengers to appreciate how much of a 'hairy' ride it really was! Buses were whizzing past each other along a narrow ledge of a road, at times coming within a metre or so of the edge and the prospect of a disastrous drop to the bottom of the valley.

Getting back to the base camp of Aguas Calientes early I had a lot of time to waste before the departure time for my return train to Poroy. After a pizza lunch (quite cod-ordinary) and a much needed cerveza, I wandered through the many tourist shops and the main mercado and accidentally struck a better bargin than I had intended to with a native vendor on bulk place mats (verifying as if I needed to be reminded that I am much more successful when I don't try!).

Whilst in the markets I experienced that nil degree of separation sensation, running into a friend from Sydney, the organiser of a meetup group I am a member of. I did have advanced knowledge that she was travelling to Peru at the same time as me, but I hadn't expected to run in to her at the most most congested spot in Peru. Maddy, when I tapped her on the arm and she recognised me, became instantly quasi-hysterically excited in that slightly over-the-top way of hers. This seemed to spook her companion, her sister, who appeared momentarily taken aback by Maddy's uncharacteristically Icelandic lack of composure.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pottering around in the township of Aguas Calientes, a settlement that seems to exist solely to exploit the fame of Machu Picchu, its restaurants and goods shops there exclusively for the tourist trade.The inward trip on PeruRail to Poroy was even longer drawn out than the outward one had been in the morning (perhaps I was just tired but it seemed that way to me). Either way, it was a good three-and-a-half hours till the PeruRail 'Express' finally dawdled into the station. After my recent, unhappy experience of connections in Cusco I was relieved to see the Chimu driver there waiting for me at the exit. After spending half the day either in the train or waiting for it, I just wanted to get back to the Cusco hotel for a good night's rest before the prospect of even more travelling in the morning.

Photos: Rio Urumbamba

7dayadventurer — Fri, 16 May 2014 20:46:00 GMT

On the Sacred Inca Trail: Raiders of the Lost Inca World, Monotaxis and Eucalypti

7dayadventurer — Wed, 14 May 2014 21:02:00 GMT

This morning I was scheduled to go on the first part of the Sacred Inca Trail tour. I was collected early at my hostela by someone I would come to call Braces Guide # 1, she took me to my coach for the Inca Trail trip. We stopped on the way out of Cusco and took on more passengers. I had been noticing that all of the passengers on the coach seemed to be Spanish or Spanish speakers, but without actually realising that something was awry. Braces Guide # 1 then told me that I had to get off the coach because it was only for Spanish language tourists! (I had kind of already got that impression myself before her intervention). Another guide (sans braces) crammed me into a second coach. I was only settled in my seat for a moment when Braces Guide # 1 led me back to the original coach (which was still exclusively Spanish-speaking) where Braces Guide # 2 took charge and tried (unsuccessfully) to explain to me why I had ended up back in the first coach that a moment before I had been removed from! Not a great start to the SIT tour. I was the only Anglophone in a bus full of Español speakers, but at least the trip was underway.

The first stop on the Trail after we enter Urubamba Valley is the archaelogical site of Pisac, 3400 metres above sea level. Lots of old Incan ruins scattered amongst agricultural fields on the hillsides where corn and potato is farmed in layered rows. We hear from our guide that Peru has 100s of varieties of potatoes and 1000s of varieties of corn(that's a lot of corn!). The architecture in Pisac is pretty much decimated thanks to Pizarrio and his 16th century Conquistadors, although the Inca Citadel, perched high up on a hillside is still an impressive sight and offered good views of the valley. We noticed the Incan burial tombs built into a mountain adjacent to the Citadel (the rapacious Conquistadors had ransacked these in search of gold and other valuable metals). Going back down to our parked coach we had to pass through a full-on, hectic market selling the usual tourist merchandise and paraphernalia.

The road along the Inca Trail was shockingly bad considering that this was a primary tourist route, and there was an amazing amount of rubbish strewn all over it. There were reminders of Australia in the countryside as early 20th century Peruvians had planted countless eucalyptus trees, known for their fast growing quality, on the sides of the Trail. So far my stay in the Cusco area I hadn't experienced any side effects of the altitude but on the Sacred Trail journey I started to get a touch of the dreaded Cusco belly. I wasn't dizzy or light-hearted or suffering from a headache but I was feeling drained and weak from a bout of diarrhoea. The Spanish on the tour kept to themselves and didn't seem to have any English to speak off, fortunately the guide was quite competent in the language.

We stopped in the town of Urumbamba for lunch, after lunch and some rest I started to feel better. The lunch arrangements were really dumb. Although the tour group wasn't particular large (maybe 15 people tops), sections of the group decided to have lunch in different locations in the town, three different places. So, after we were collected in one restaurant, the bus drove across town to two separate places to pick up the others. What with delays in some of the Spaniards finishing their lunches and other hold-ups the time lunch took was stretched out for over half-an-hour compared to how long this would have taken if we were all in the same location. This didn't make any logical sense to me - particularly as ultimately we had to skip seeing one of the scheduled features later in the day! I queried this with Braces Guide #2 but he just said the individual Spanish travellers had opted beforehand to go to different restaurants. This just seemed ridiculous to me that one group travelling in the same coach on one day couldn't all have lunch in the one spot!

After finally getting away from Urumbamba it was a long haul to get to Ollantaytambo. On the way we passed numerous monotaxis, the tiny three-wheel contraptions (my favourite mono was the blue Batman vehicles) which are the standard form of public transport in many parts of Southern Peru. Ollantaytambo, although totally overshadowed by the more famous Machu Picchu, is very impressive in its own right. As well as being a vast Inca temple overlooking the three important Incan valleys, Ollantaytambo was used to house enormous quantities of stores in the sides of its mountains. We climbed to the top of the Terraces of Pumatallis which was the Incans' route to their storehouses and granaries. Standing at the top of the Terraces afforded a panoramic view of the pueblo below and the surrounding valleys. Ascending Pumatallis, surrounded by hundreds of Spanish tourists admiring the Inca structure, I was very conscious of the irony of the moment - these modern Spaniards were in awe of a monumental structure which their Spanish conquistador ancestors had contemptuously vandalised and destroyed five centuries before. In an odd sense these tourists, rambling all over Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu and other ruins, are following their Iberian ancestors as modern raiders of a lost Inca world.

On the return route to Cusco the tour stopped at the Indian markets at Chinchero which is high up on the cold, windswept plains (3760m ASL). The local community women, decked out in traditional native attire, gave a demonstration of wool dyeing. The process was quite labour-intensive but interesting nonetheless. And their outfits were very colourful. The severity of the cold prompted me to buy a beanie from the Indian Market. By this time, about 5 in the afternoon, we were due to head back to the city hotels. I realised on checking my day itinerary that the site we had missed out on (because of the dragged out lunch fiasco) was called Boleto Turistico Del Cusco Parcial Valle Sagrado Para Turista Extranjero at Moray. I don't know what exactly it was (no one talked about it) but the picture on the ticket suggested a kind of amphitheatre resembling terraced crop circles. I wasn't impressed that we missed it but on alighting I still gave Braces Guide # 2 a small tip for his efforts (unlike virtually all of the Spanish tourists who were distinctly stingy!).

Finding myself in Plaza Del Armas once again, I look round for dinner options. I had tried the llama, Peruvian-style pescado (in Lima and in Cusco), the bife de lomo, empanadas in each city of the tour, but I was yet to sample the cuy (roasted guinea pig). I checked it out in one or restaurants but I must admit that it didn't look all that inviting to me, so I decided to pass on the pig and wait until I get to Lima and try it there. One of the problems with guinea pig that puts some people off eating it is when it is presented on the dining table as the full animal, teeth and all parts, not so enticing for extranjeros like me. In the end I opt for something pretty safe and conservative, a beans and mince dish at a downmarket Cuzco diner.

Photos: Cuzco

7dayadventurer — Mon, 5 May 2014 12:58:00 GMT

Cusco on High: Footprints of Inka culture and Colonial dominance

7dayadventurer — Mon, 5 May 2014 12:37:00 GMT

Despite the baggage stuff-up I still got to Puerto Maldonado Airport way early (why do tour operators always insist on getting you there Über-early?). The good news was that I didn't have to hang around the minimally-equipped outpost of an airport for long. At the check-in I found out there was a seat available on an earlier Cusco flight. It was a one hour flight to Cusco, time enough for LAN to outdo all their previous stellar catering efforts by generously providing passengers with a lolly (a single lolly) by way of a flight snack! Chimu were unaware of my flight switch and as I didn't have a phone number for the Cusco office, the reality of getting to Cusco Airport an hour and twenty minutes early was that I would have to wait round for the transfer driver who would front up only at the scheduled time of my original flight. Waiting around all that time was an uncomfortable experience because I arrived at the airport inadequately dressed (t-shirt and shorts). It had been very hot in the Amazonia airport but the elevated Cusco was a good 15 degrees cooler than Maldonado and very chilly indeed.

I hovered round the airport entrance, poking my head outside periodically to see if I could spot the Chimu sign. Every time I did I would be pestered by a small battalion of persistent taxi drivers touting for a fare. The hotel transfer drivers were lined up 20 metres away from the entrada behind a partition. It was hard to read some of the signs, many of the drivers were too distracted or bored to hold up their signs properly. One of the driver's name signs I noticed did no favours for an arriving passenger trying to spot him, he had scrawled the name in yellow highlighter against the white background of the sheet of paper! I passed the time chatting with a fellow Australian tourist, a young blond girl who was also waiting for her delayed pick-up, but somewhat more good-natured and patiently than I was. As it transpired my driver turned up 15 minutes after my scheduled flight.

My Cusco hotel, the Unaytambo, a building in the classic Americas colonial mould, was set splendidly on the site of an ancient Inca palace. The first thing I noticed was the footpath in the lane outside my lodge. It was made of very ancient-looking large, flat stoned in the centre, with a parallel strip on the outside comprising small round stones cemented together. This type of uneven walking surface, which I found replicated all over the Cusco town centre, was very easy to trip over. If that didn't get you, you had to also watch out for the very large unsymmetrical steps on the steeper streets.

Just across the road from the Unaytambo is the Incan Qorikancha (Temple of the Sun) which the Spanish 'respected' during La Conquista by building the Santo Domingo Cathedral over the top of it! After getting my vouchers and itinerary from my local Chimu contact, I went downtown to Historico Centro, explored the main drag, Avenida El Sol, and had a typical Peruvian meal in a drab and threadbare shack of a shop. Nothing aesthetic about the joint but you could have dos cursos (two courses) for eight sols. For the primero I chose a tortilla of sorts and pescado frito (heavily-salted fish) for the segunda, which was more quantity than quality. The unglamorous side of Cusco dining for sure, but it was a good, authentic experience.

Given that Cusco is 3,300 metres above sea level I had been forewarned about the risk of soroche (altitude sickness) and was advised to take the coca plant as an antidote, either by chewing the leaves or in tea. At the hotel I decided on the coca de mate (the coca tea method) and started drinking it night and morning. It was not immensely palatable but tolerable none the less because it had a fairly neutral taste. Once you got used to it, it tasted a bit like very weak green tea.

The next day I went on an organised Cusco city walking tour. My guide was a very personable mestizo local named Walter who took me first to Qorikancha, or what is left of the temple. Walter pointed out examples of Inca stonework, the outstanding feature of which is the perfect trapezoid form used by Incan architects on doorways and windows. The walking tour next took in the central Plaza Del Armas, El Catedral and Chapel. El Catedral's main interest to me was that the building took nearly 100 years to finish. Having seen numerous houses of religion in these very Catholic countries my interest in visiting them was starting to wane, the more I saw of them the more I was reminded of a tour guide in Spain's description of old city tours as being an exercise in looking at ABC's (ie, Another Bloody Church!). I found out later that an operator conducts free walking tours of Cusco daily from Plaza Regocijo. The same group, FWTPeru, also do pub crawls of the ciudad. This very English trait doesn't surprise given the large number of pubs and bar in the city (including as everywhere in the world an Irish pub or two).

Out on the street there is a real buzz, it's a constantly happening sort of city, tourists roving from shop to shop (many, many shops!), checking out the bars and cafés and museums. From Plaza Del Armas we headed down Tupac Amaru to San Pedro Mercado, the biggest markets in Cusco. At this market locals and visitors can purchase a vast array of produce, including dried potato, grains and spices, flowers, seaweed, quail eggs, and even more exotic items such as pickled snakes, frog soup, horrendous-looking donkey snouts and Amazonian tree sap remedies. The high visibility of slaughtered animal carcasses in the markets is not for the faint-hearted.

On the way back to Unaytambo, I spotted my first llama and got Walter to pose with it and its native camelid-herder. Before we parted Walter suggested a few museums that I could follow up by foot, viz the Museo Inka, the Pisco Museum and the Chocomuseum. The Incan Museum, contained in a grand colonial mansion, once you got past the Indian doormen in traditional Inca attire, had lots of interesting features including wooden drinking vessels, colonial paintings and murals, goldwork items, native artefacts and weapons, elongated skulls and mummies (unfortunately no photos were allowed and staff strictly enforced this rule). In the museum courtyard there were demonstrations of textile weaving. Despite the museum name there were also non-Incan exhibits on display, mainly relating to the Spanish Conquista era. The other two suggestions of Walter turned out to be faux museums! Both were museums in name only, in reality inside they were shops not even trying to effect the appearance of a museum! I did buy some Peruvian dark chocolate from the so-called Chocomuseum which did taste differently good.

That evening I returned to Plaza Del Armas to eat and decided on a restaurant opposite the Plaza that looked OK called Paititi. Decided to be a bit gastronomically adventurous and try the llama which was tender and tasted a little like lamb. As I purchased a mains dish the restaurant threw in a complimentary drink. What else? The perennial regional favourite aperitif, the Pisco Sour. When leaving, I was amused by the restaurant symbol sign on the entrance, thinking maybe the place should be renamed El Tenedor Dos, "The Two Forks"! How could they get something so blatantly obvious completely wrong!?!

Photos: Amazonia West

7dayadventurer — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 11:05:00 GMT

Peru: How far are we actually from the Amazon?

7dayadventurer — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:57:00 GMT

Lima la parte uno

The following day I had another early morning flight to the third country on my itinerary, Peru. Having prepared my bags, etc, the previous night, I set the wakeup time for 4:30 which would allow me enough time to shower and such and meet the 5am pickup time (once again having to forfeit breakfast). As soon I roused myself and start to get ready, the phone rang, it was reception, the transfer driver was already here, 30 minutes early! I told reception he had to wait. Either he or the local Chimu reps had got it wrong again! When I came down, just after 5, I could see that the Argentinian taxi driver was fuming, you could cut his seething anger with a gaucho knife. I reiterated what I had told reception, he was at fault coming half-an-hour early. This seem to propel him into an even bigger rage, responding with belligerence and rudeness. Once we were in the taxi, the intemperate oaf proceeded to drive like a coke-fuelled maniac at breakneck speed to the airport (fortunately there was very few cars of the freeway at that time). It was a very frosty trip with both of us seriously pissed off at that stage. I was glad to get to the airport in one piece. At least I didn't have to deliberate over whether to give this turkey a gratificación for his service(?).

The Flight to Lima was largely uneventful. Coming out of the Arrivals, I checked the cambio rates as I had no Peruvian sols but was still holding a surplus of Australian dollars. They were offering around 2.70 to the US dollar, which was not bad, but only 1.50 to the Aussie dollar. Considering that Australia was 1.05 or 1.06 to the US$ at the time, this was a rip-off of a deal. I put my Australian dollars away & withdrew sols from the Airport ATM instead. As I was leaving for Amazonia the next morning, The tour agent had booked me in to the nearest hotel 50 metres from the Arrivals gate, Costa Del Sol. This was the first modern hotel I had encountered on the tour! I had a complementary pisco sour at the bar. Notwithstanding my initial reservations I was starting to warm to this quintessentially South American drink. As it was still only mid-afternoon I decided to head into the city. Tossing up whether to go back to Jorge Chávez to get a Green Taxi or the convenience of booking one there at the hotel reception, I went for the convenience (and an extra 15 sols). Despite the reception guy saying it would there in a moment, 15 minutes of moments passed & still no sign of the cab! I walked out into the airport street and hailed one straight away. The drowsy old codger with a rundown taxi charged me 45 sols and then proceeded to drive like someone possessed, zigzagging between cars all the way into the centro. I hadn't been prepared for such an unnervingly hairy ride from such a senior driver. But, based on my later cab experiences in the Peruvian capital, such dangerously wayward motoring is the norm for everyone.

Lima, at least the part I saw on my first day, was very grimy, dirty and faded. There were some grand colonial buildings in the city, but all of them aside from those in Plaza San Martin, were in dire need of a clean and a fresh paint job. There appeared to be hardly any gardens or green areas to speak of in the central region. Of course there was the obligatory protest against the authorities going on in the Plaza with lots of noise and music with everyone characteristically enjoying themselves! In the limited amount of exploring I did, the one street that raised a little bit of interest on my part was Jr Pierola in the downtown area. This curious street was composed largely of small, 'backyard' printing presses, stretching one after another for blocks. I had thought it strange at the time that there could be a need for this many printing shops in Lima. I didn’t find out until much later that Lima was the counterfeit banknote capital of the world! it now made more sense. Unaware of the back story, I had been thinking only in terms of legitimate, domestic demand!

I walked down to the end of the street full of old technology printing businesses onto the main link road where I saw, not for the last time in Peru, an odd kind of religious ceremony. Outside of this big church, there was this line of about 20 priests standing outside the church entrance. They were all wearing a distinctive rope knot around their necks (I later dubbed them “the Order of the White Knotted Rope”). Watching the spectacle for several minutes I got the impression that I was observing some kind of phenomenon of celebrity priests. Clusters of people were standing in the street outside the cathedral (all with the devotional Catholic parishioner look about them) craning their necks and earnestly trying to get a glimpse of the “sacerdotal heavyweights”. And the priests themselves seemed to relish being the centre of attention, lapping up all the unconditional adoration like the strutting peacocks they seemed to be. Central to this spectacle was the priest in purple (rather than the standard black) who arrived late, making a rather grand entrance with quite a theatrical flourish (I didn’t actually notice if his white knotted rope was larger than the others). So, picture the scene, a cabal of monk celebrities being lavishly feted by the pious crowd, to a noisy backdrop of roving street vendors, women and girls, shrilly trying to peddle a range of religious icons, relics & souvenirs to the faithful. I felt the need to move on quickly.

I tried to hail a taxi to take me back to the airport hotel but every single driver I stopped on the main avenue, shook their heads vigorously and sped off when I disclosed my intended destination. This left me perplexed, I couldn’t work out why were they disinterested in my fare, passing up a chance to rip off another gullible tourist. I walked back in the direction of the church to try a different street for cabs. I passed a very brightly-lit up shop selling something called San Jose turrones. These were rectangular slabs of biscuit topped with multi-coloured lollies in a gooey base, despite being very unappetising-looking, they were very popular with the local customers. Curious, I googled them later, the manufacturers themselves don’t describe these turrones as food or biscuits, but as “edible products of Peruvian traditional custom!” Back home, I consulted a work colleague who comes from Peru on the turrones, his opinion was that the most distinctive aspect of these delicacies was their rock-like hardness. Looks like I saved my teeth some wear and tear there.

I asked a young Peruvian couple also trying to hail a cab why the taxis wouldn’t take me. The guy informed me that many of the city taxi drivers did not have a permit to enter the airport. He managed to engage a taxi whose driver had the permit and was prepared to take me. This was very considerate of him, but then, when I was getting into the cab, the young fellow, astoundingly, paid the fare for me (which he had negotiated at 40 sols). My protests at such generosity were deflected by the Good Samaritan. It was all I could do to slip a 20 sol note, I had in my pocket into his reluctant hands. I must say that I was quite blown away by the kindness of this stranger!

Twenty minutes later, I was having serious misgivings about having got in this particular taxi. We’d gone about 3-4km when suddenly a traffic policewoman pulls our taxi over. She speaks curtly to the driver (who is already looking quite contrite and sorry for himself) and then she starts writing a ticket. I hadn't been paying much attention so I was not certain of his misdemeanour, but I suspect he had run a red light. After the policewoman had issued the ticket and moved away to catch some other unalert transgressors, the driver remained sitting there in the cab, crestfallen, motionless for several minutes, reading the infringement notice, then placing it on the dashboard, picking it up again, re-reading it, reading it in minute detail as if not believing the words contained on it. Seemingly stunned by his misfortune, he appeared to have completely forgotten about me in the back, the passenger!

Finally, he snaps out of his torpor and slowly put the notice in the glove box, and having regained some composure, restarted the engine and drove on. Our route to the airport, circuitously down various dark backstreets, was very different to the one taken by the ageing speedhog who had brought me into town, and it took a tortuously long time to return to the airport. Finally, outside of what looked like the entrance to the airport, he came to a halt, pointed vaguely in the direction of some amorphous building in the mid distance. I was a bit dubious at about exactly where I was. The driver’s motives for abandoning me in no man’s land were not hard to fathom. I figured that he was trying to recoup some of his losses (the ticket still dominating his thinking), by not entering the aeropuerto precinct he was saving money on the permit usage. Whatever! I was still a good seven to eight minutes walking from the hotel but I didn’t care. After the ordeal of the long, long journey I was glad just to get out of the taxi.

The next morning I was woken up at 6am by what sounded like a Tijuana brass band playing in an unrestrained fashion. Forty metres from my hotel window a collection of musicians were loudly welcoming a returning local Lima football team. When I got to the airport to catch my flight to the next destination, Puerto Maldonado, I found there were huge queues at the domestic airline check-in, and LAN had one line only open. After 15 minutes in the queue, the line had hardly moved, so I switched to the next line (also LAN) which had only a handful of passengers in it. After some time in this line, a LAN staff person came up and ejected me from the line, because apparently this was for ‘special’ check-ins. I remonstrated loudly with the staff, saying that LAN should have more than one lane open to cope with the overflow of passengers, but they would not budge, so I found myself relegated to the end of a now much longer queue. After three-quarters of an hour and little progress, it was pretty apparent that I would miss my flight. And I would have done so, had not a savvy American traveller I was talking with alerted LAN to my plight. The LAN staff person OK’d me to go straight to the departures gate carting my luggage with me. The sudden spike in passenger numbers at the airport was down to the school holidayers starting their trips, which underlined just how inept LAN was in planning for this annual occurrence.

The plane flew first to Cusco for a stopover before going on to the Amazonia region. The Cusco trip turned into a wild salsa party, courtesy of the Latinos on board raucously singing, bumping and grinding their hips to the cabin music most of the way. Even some of the LAN cabin staff were getting into the action, turning up the volume on the music and dancing enthusiastically to the rhythm. I for one was relieved when most of these out-of-control Peruvian 20-somethings danced their way off the plane when it landed at Cusco! On the onward trip to Maldonado, the normal and more subdued in-flight entertainment replaced the passenger-generated entertainment.

We were collected by a bus at the less than impressive Puerto Maldonaldo Aeropuerto. The posada lodgers gathering together in the bus were a very mixed group, nationality-wise. I had a nice conversation with two friendly American guys on the bus (not the typical loud, boastful type). On the advice of Lizbeth (our guide) to travel light, we unloaded all of the baggage not needed for the three-day trip to Amazonia in a secure storage holding (at least I was hoping it would be secure). At the river (Rio Tambopata), we took the long boat trip to the resorts (the bus group were going to three different lodges), fortunately ours’ was the closest.

As we chugged down the Tambopata, I enquired “Are we in Amazonia yet?” Lizbeth replied in the affirmative, so, suppressing my instinctive reflex to say “If that's so, where is the Amazon River then?”, I instead asked “Is this a tributary of the Amazon?” Lizbeth ‘s halting response was that it was a tributary of another river which was a tributary of the Amazon. A tributary of a tributary? Someone else asked the obvious question, “How far are we from the Amazon River itself?” The guide in a hesitant sort of way replied it was 4,000 kilometres away! The other questioner was incredulous and thought she meant 400 kilometres, and corrected her, which under pressure she eventually agreed to in an appeasing gesture. I checked later, it was 4,000km away! Not to mention several tributaries of tributaries away … through eastern Peru, across Bolivia and of course deep into Brazil. All of my tour group were caught off-guard by this revelation! Before coming to Peru we had thought along these lines: the itinerary says we were going to the Amazonas region of Peru, given we know that the Amazon River itself flows through part of Peru, ergo we will actually be on the Amazon River! Not so apparently! (I discovered later that the Peruvian part of Rio Amazon flows much farther north in the area around Iquitos).

We pulled over to the mooring for the Posada Amazonas and walked up the track a short distance to the rainforest lodge. After a welcome session in the restaurant/bar, my group settled into our rooms which were hobbled together with wood, bamboo, palm fronds, adobe mud and clay, nonetheless the rooms appeared solid enough. They were not however soundproof as all rooms were open at the top, nor were they secure as the verandahs were windowless, opening out to a view of the close-by jungle. Needless to say guests at the lodge would have been foolhardy not to use the room safety deposit boxes.

My room had a grand, four-poster bed with a (essential) mosquito net, reminding me of the room I had once stayed in at Livingstone in Zambia alongside the Zambesi River. The hammock in the corner seemed an over the top "Jungle Jim" cliche (and it didn't come with a mosquito net!). In the afternoon we did an exploratory walk thorough the Amazonas jungle, climbing up a 37 metre-high scaffolding canopy tower to get a view of the native birdlife. Unfortunately, we didn't see much of anything of the avian family. Lizbeth, our guide, claimed she got a glimpse of a toucan in the canopy from about 500 metres away but I couldn't see for sure that it was a toucan!

The meal in the Posada that night comprised a set menu and was excellent. Variety was provided with a good rotation of dishes each night, and breakfast and lunch were of a similar quality. Not so ideal was the electricity supply, a couple of times each day the lodge turned on the generator for an hour to allow guests to recharge their batteries, phones and cameras. The problem with this was that the generator's availability tended to coincide with our boat excursions, so this made it difficult to keep our devices charged up. The electricity also was cut off each night at 9pm, usually ensuring an early night for most. Still, we were deep in the jungle and should have expected to forego the usual urban conveniences and rough it to some extent to give the experience more of an authentic flavour.

The next day we pulled on the black wellies supplied by the lodge (most of the trails were permanently muddy in the tropical wild) and crossed the Rio Tambopata by boat to an oxbow lake called Tres Chimbadas, where we circled round the lake in a catamaran. We were on the lookout for caiman and hoatzin (could find any) and giant river otters, which we did see. I asked why we didn't see any pirañas in the lake. Lizbeth reckoned it was because the otters love to hunt them. We moved to a different part of the river where Lizbeth supplied us with wooden branches fashioned into primitive fishing rods. This time pirañas were plentiful and quite a number were caught by the group, mainly by a Gippsland farmer's wife (none by me!). The pirañas were surprisingly small (given their fearsome reputation), but any feelings of complacency we might have had were dismissed when Lizbeth demonstrated the razor-sharpness of their teeth in effortlessly cutting through a leaf! I was reminded of this several weeks after the trip when I heard a report of how a host of pirañas had attacked swimmers at a beach in Argentina.

After lunch we went to a nearby Collpa (salted soils) on the river bank. These are clay licks where neotropic birds ingest the clay from the side of the river bank. Lizbeth had forewarned us that macaws might not be present at the parrot clay licks and we may only see parrots and parakeets, but we were in luck as scarlet macaws were there on mass. From a elevated screen cover constructed next to the clay lick we were able to observe the normally shy macaws feeding on the clay. Without the cover we wouldn't have been to get that close to the timid but spectacular red, yellow and blue macaws.

Later we did a short boat ride downriver to the Infierno native community's ethnobotanical centre (Centro Ñape). We were escorted around the 'medicinal' garden by an Indian medicine-man who showed us the plants that were used by the community for treating different ailments and conditions. At the end of the tour the shaman invited us to sample some of the concoctions which he claimed could treat everything from cancer to diabetics to arthritis to impotence! No one else was game but I tried a couple of the fawn to darkish brownish-coloured drinks which had a taste somewhere between sour whiskey and cough medicine. I didn't notice any benefits but fortunately I didn't experience any adverse after-effects either.

At night after dinner we did a hike in the dark and the rain looking for jungle organisms which are more nocturnal in their activity. The night patrol turned out to be a bit of a meaningless wander as we only managed to glimpse the occasional frog, a few unexciting insects and one well-camouflaged monkey in the trees. In the morning the Amazonia adventure at an end, I said goodbye to Lizbeth who implored me to give a very good report on the tour evaluation sheet. Her earnest entreaties were of such a magnitude, as if a life or death outcome rested on my favourable response, so I was only too happy to oblige her request. In my jungle room each night when retiring, I had gone to obsessively lengths to ensure that the moissie net covered my body 100 per cent, so intent was I to try to escape the dreaded bite of the Amazonian mosquito. But just as I was leaving, they had finally got a piece of me, causing my skin to become increasingly sensitive and itchy as the day wore on.

After a 45 minute boat ride and a final photo or two of the Tambopata, we returned to the port and the Maldonado storage depot. After the bus was unloaded, I discovered that my baggage from the lodge had not been brought back. I had been a bit apprehensive that they might have missed my bag because my room was at the far end of the lodge. Indeed I had actually gone back just prior to departure time to make sure that it was still not outside the room. It had been taken so I was (deceptively) reassured. The depot staff were all relaxed about it when I reported it missing (typical Latino insouciance) and the supervisor told me not to be concerned, "no te preocupes señor", on the next bus no problem. Frustrated, I was left to cool my heels, thinking that I should not have trusted the inept fuckers and instead carried the bag myself. I was less than amused to find out that the porters had placed my bag with another group of bags in error. Fortunately I was running early for the flight back to Cusco, so the lodge's cockup wasn't costly.

Puerto Maldonado Aeropuerto was about as threadbare and lacking infrastructure as any airport I could imagine in South America, befitting I guess a remote jungle outpost! There was no air con and not much in the way of snacks or refreshments in the cafe. There was very few seats in the terminal and woefully few in the Departures area. This was not a place you want to get stuck in for a long time, the boredom factor would probably kick in pretty swiftly.

Interestingly, the electronic detector at the baggage point seemed to be activated only by footwear! Waiting in the Departures lounge I looked round for something to distract me and find it in the shape of an odd sign on the wall. The notice lists a number of points, including a warning to passengers of their potential criminal liability in the event of flights being delayed by wild birds coming in contact with the aircraft (not sure how this could be attributed to a passenger?!?), something about passengers ingesting drugs and then being apprehended, and then later it turns out that they didn't actually ingest any drugs and so are allowed to stay on the flight after all (I've no idea what this means!!!), and a statement indicating the possibility of a bomb being discovered at the airport or on board (no mention of what procedure would follow the discovery - just that there could be a bomb and folks you should know this!). El bizarro! I sighed heavily and was just happy to see the LAN jet appear on the tarmac soon afterwards.

Photos: Argent Tres BA II

7dayadventurer — Fri, 6 Dec 2013 19:08:00 GMT

The Eye of La Tigre and Portenos Night Life

7dayadventurer — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:47:00 GMT

Argentina: La Parte Tres

At breakfast the next morning an Argentinian guest at the hotel strikes up a conversation with me addressing me initially in Spanish, until he, a little embarrassed, realises his error. Quite a few of the locals seem to think I'm a Latino, until I open my mouth that is! Having inadvertently broken the ice we converse whilst choosing consumables from the buffet selection. He mentions to me that the Argie president (simply known as 'Cristina' to the masses) was in the process of having an operation on her brain (I was aware of this, it being the main topic running on the BA news). He said it with such gravitas seeming to infer great respect, but then he applied the sting in the tail, adding in a deadpan tone betrayed only by a trailing chuckle, "Perhaps they will find nothing there!" I ask him if he knew Hugo Porta, curious if El Puma has a profile here in soccer-obsessed Argentina. Yes he does, not so much because he was an international rugby star for the Argentine team, but because he was the Government's sports minister under the Menem regime.

The breakfast news runs yet another story about La Desaparecidos. A woman is being interviewed on television about her sister who is one of the young Argentinians who was suddenly and mysteriously seen to disappear from society. In South America this is code for 'abducted' by the authorities or the military and probably murdered for alleged left-wing activity (defined as subversive activity). The television 'interview' comprises the distraught sibling, wailing and sobbing incoherently, pleading for the return of her lost sister. What was extraordinary about this spectacle, was that, despite the woman being largely incomprehensible and reduced to a rambling, emotional mess, the coverage uncomfortably persists, letting the story run live on and on for over half an hour on prime-time TV without cutting it! On Australian or UK TV they would never permit something as indulgent and as loose and unstructured as this to happen, but I understand why it is accepted here. The plight of 'the disappeared' is THE emotional issue for South Americans, the raw wound for ordinary people which remains unhealed. The lingering issue of La Desaparecidos is the continuing, unaccounted for exemplar of justice denied for so many citizens in Chile and Argentina in particular.

Having ticked the previous day's city tour off my list of things to do, it was now time to take the excursion to Tigre. The "Eye of the Tiger" tour, as it is called, is a standard part of all Buenos Aires tour packages. Tigre is a town at the mouth of the delta region of the Paraná River some 30 km north of BA and close to the Uruguay border. ‘Tigre’ is a bit of a misnomer, as it was thus named by the early settlers because of the presence of jaguars (not tigers as you might presume) in the region during the pioneering years. The delta comprises many branches (5000-plus waterways in all) linking thousands of tiny islands. We set out from Tigre on a river cat cruiser down one of the main tributary rivers of the Paraná, Rio San Antonio). Our guide for the Tigre tour was a very personable, gentle young guy called Jeremy (Jeremias) who looked like an Argentinian Ferris Bueller. Jeremy was very informative and accommodating, and spoke excellent English, albeit with some delightful idiosyncrasies which betrayed his non-English speaking background, for example, he referred to Canberra as a 'planified' city (a real gem!), I didn't try to correct him, after all the meaning was clear, and the idea of the insular hinterland of Canberra being described as 'planified' sounded spot on! Jeremy mentioned that geoscientific experts have predicted that the Tigre islands which under tectonic force, are ever so slowly moving south, will eventually collide with the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires!

The cruise went past a number of distinctive buildings on the foreshore, none more impressive than the Tigre Art Museum with its large classical columns, extended upper deck and classy marble staircase. The waterfront along the Paraná contained a number of 19th century mansions, where the upper classes engaged in leisurely activities. There wasn’t a lot of passing traffic on the river as we cruised on it, mostly single scullers doing their rowing practice, with the occasional pilot boat and water taxi. The sight of moored houseboats and smaller ‘family’ boats were very common on the river, given the isolation of delta dwellers maritime vessels are just about obligatory. Other sights that we pass further up the river include a casino, an amusement park and old shipbuilding yards.

Another distinctive feature of Tigre and common to the entire length of the delta’s waterways is the presence of heavily-laden, wooden provisions boats. More than anything else in the region. these moored boats illustrate the isolated nature of the delta region. With no supermarkets or even shops around, the 3500 or so Tigrean locals rely on these “floating stores”. The supply boats, laden with household goods, cruise from dock-shed to dock-shed, from property to property, enabling the rivers' residents to stock up their weekly shopping needs. Right along the lower delta there is an interesting array of riverfront houses (all dwellings on the river are numberless but are identified by their own distinguishing names), as well as holiday and camping grounds providing a weekend escape for the Portenos, and heavily wooden parklands, the delta was a traditional source of osier wood used for construction in the capital (the Osier is a willow found in wet habitats). The number of homes on the Paraná raised up on stilts was testimony to the threat of flooding, an on-going reality.

The river itself was alluvial, exhibiting a muddy brown colour which gave the impression of being brackish, which Jeremy assured us was more to do with the particular sediments in the water rather than any indicator of pollution. The river cat looped round in a circuit past the weird spectacle of Museo Sarmiento, a small house totally encapsulated in a large, transparent glass enclosure, which reminded me of the imposing glass cathedral in Peter Carey’s ‘Oscar and Lucinda’. From Sarmiento we headed back into the open channel at River Plat, docking again at Tigre Delta Station. I tipped the rivercat captain 60 pesos because he got us back in one piece. The delta excursion was an interesting diversion but not really a riveting tour, and it certainly didn’t live up to the tour provider’s brochure description of the Delta del Paraná experience as a “sensation that cannot be transmitted,” and even more obliquely, “(containing) tiny details that enclose big emotions.” The tour visited the nearby city of San Isidro, which is the stronghold of rugby union in Argentina, stopping off at Puerto de Frutos to visit the dock markets where other members of our tour, comprising mainly Mexican car dealers and their spouses, clicked into bartering mode for a hectic 25 minutes of shopping! Puerto de Frutos, despite the name, seems to be a emporium for bargain domestic goods with a few tourist shops thrown in. The fruit vending side of the markets was nowhere to be seen.

Later, we took a tour of the Villa Ocampo also in San Isidro, the former home of a famous Argentinian woman writer and publisher, now owned and administered by UNESCO. The childless Victoria Ocampo, to avoid the Villa being acquired after her death by the right wing, militaristic Argentinian government of the Seventies, signed it over to UNESCO. Villa Ocampo is a magnificent mansion, quite eclectic stylistically, with various, many French and British, influences evident. During Ocampo’s time, it was a meeting place for many famous intellectuals and writers (Camus, Lorca, Le Corbusier, Tagore, Malraux, Borges, Graham Greene, etc), today it is a cultural centre, a venue for music and the arts. Inside, the rooms are very grand, stylishly decorated with a room devoted to the literature and magazine work (SUR) of Ocampo. As we were visiting, workers were setting up the drawing room for a jazz recital. The gardens (Centro del Paisaje) are extensive (the property is 10,500 square metres in size) and a particular delight, a reflection of the great passion Victoria Ocampo had for gardening, and for the Villa in its entirety. From Villa Ocampo, we connected up with the Av de Liberador (named in honour of the ubiquitous General San Martin whose statutes line the Avenue), the main thoroughfare passing right through the city. At the Tigre tour’s end, after getting some advice from Jeremy on what to see, I set out on foot to explore more of Buenos Aires. Being in the metro central I went first to the nearby Av 9th de Julio, reputed by Argentinians to be the widest avenue in the world. It is very, very wide, but it depends on how you look at it! Within parts of the Avenue I counted what I might call five distinct streets, the two inner ones being restricted to metrobus transport.

On coming to South America, and venturing out into the busy pedestrian zones, I soon realised that here, the practice is that you walk on the right of the footpath (a reverse of the 'down under' custom). This makes sense, you drive on the right side and you walk on the right, so wherever I walked, I tried to be conscious of this ‘rule’. What I found though, is that the locals in the various cities do not consistently adhere to this rule. Some pedestrians automatically just veer straight across to the left side when it is closer to the shops. Accordingly, I soon adopted the approach of walking in the middle of footpaths to be flexible enough to hop either to the left or right as the occasion required.

After traversing 9th de Julio I headed for the Parques district where the Zoo and Museo Evita is. Despite having an electronic assistant (my iPad maps), but because of my poor sense of direction, I managed to get hopelessly lost, and ended up backtracking to Microcentro, where I started from. Trying again, this time using a different route, I did get eventually to the Zoo and close by, the Museo Evita. I passed on the Zoo as it was too close to the closing time & headed for the museum. It had a very elegant interior with a classy staircase, but it wasn’t a very propitious entrance for me, the first thing the girl at the ticket booth mentioned to me was the toilets weren’t ‘available’. I wondered, is this code for ‘not working’? - or for “we only say we have customer toilets on the brochure to get more tourist brownie points”? Either way, after walking halfway across BA, I thought ‘great!’ Museo Evita was a good insight into Argentina’s most famous woman. On display were carefully assembled items from Evita’s childhood, her theatre and movie careers, and of course, given that Evita was a fashionista for millones of Argentinian women, her dresses and outfits (lots of them!). And, very stylish they were. A curious exhibit included in the display was Evita’s kitchen, complete with fake slabs of meat on the griller. The once powerful husband, Juan Peron, does not get much of a look-in, a single bust and one of his military uniforms encapsulates his total representation at the museum. After the museum, I did some more sightseeing around the Palermo district, before heading back in the direction of the hotel. I noticed the widespread habit of naming streets in Buenos Aires after Argentinian generals, they’re everywhere, Avenida General Paz, Avenida General Alvear, Calle General Balcarce, Avenida Díaz Vélez, and of course, Calle General San Martin. There is even the practice of naming streets after cruisers named after generals (the outstanding example of this, geared toward achieving maximum propagandistic effect, is the General Belgrano). Walking down General Las Heras I passed a street named Coronel Diaz, and concluded that they must have run out of notable generals to honour! Something else occurred to me whilst strolling around the city, there were very few priests to be seen on the streets. I had come across maybe one member of the clergy in my time in the Argentine, which seemed strange in the capital of such a staunchly Catholic country. Whimsically I pondered, were priests becoming the new <em>desaparecidos</em>? I stopped off in Av Las Heras for dinner, picking a restaurant that was reasonably busy but not crowded. I had pizza again and a pisco sour (I did not like this South America specialty when I first tried it but by now I was warming to it). I declined the sweet on offer, dulce de leche (I had tried it earlier at the hotel - way too caramelisingly syrupy for me!), but washed the meal down with what is becoming a custom, a bottle of Qualmes.

Walking around Buenos Aires at night you experience a different side to the city. All sorts of things come out of the woodwork after dark. I didn't have to stray far from my Centro hotel to find the dodgiest parts of BA. Walking down Calle Florida from Lavalle I soon came across the illegal money changers all shouting out "Cambio, cambio" at the passing punters. Usually these street touts quote very good exchange rates for USD, but this can be a risky venture with a fair chance of you ending up lumbered with counterfeit notes. Florida is an area to exercise caution, I was warned that flashing a wad of cash could be an invitation to robbery around here. Along Florida you will also find callow youths on every corner or cross-section handing out their tiny squares of paper advertising either some special pizza deal or certain massage parlour services which may with or without the additional “happy ending”!

Wander a bit further along to Av Corboda, close to Av 9th de Julio, and you’ll soon find the spot where the local streetwalkers ply their trade. It was after 11.30 when I passed a girl standing in the shadow of a door of a closed business who canvassed her 'recreational' services so softly and in such a low-key manner that I virtually didn’t notice her! My second encounter, which followed minutes later contained no such ambiguity. I was waiting at the lights to cross the road, when one overweight, overenthusiastic woman, in a very forwardly way, bounced up to me grabbing my arm and proceeded to try to entice me to accompany her to a nearby hotel for “a little drink and maybe some massage later, eh?” Caught somewhat off-guard by her directness, I fumbled around for several seconds eventually managing to utter some excuse and slipped out of her grasp and up the street. Later I learnt that the 'sting' involved enticing the target back to the hotel to fork out for overpriced drinks, before a taxi to a telos (quaintly described by Portenos as "love hotels"). A lot of the night action seemed to centre around Avenida Cordoba and Noveno Julio, where you can experience both the subtle and the not-so subtle approach of the street-stalking girls.

I don’t know why but this seems to happen to me on a regular basis when I head overseas. Perhaps it's because of my preference for exploring new cities on foot and often late at night. When I do venture out in places I am visiting for the first time I often find that without either knowing where I am or any dubious intention on my part, I end up in the heart of the local red light district! I was similarly accosted by overzealous working girls when I innocently stumbled onto Canton Road in Hong Kong and Ronda Litoral in Barcelona. To avoid more encounters with late night shift workers on Av de Cordoba, I head off in the opposite direction. Needing to make another early start in the morning for the next leg of my trip, I decide to call it a night and return to my Not-so Gran Hotel. I take a circuitous route down Lavalle, noticing that despite it being past midnight the restaurants are all full of people who, revived by a late afternoon siesta, are now tucking avariciously into supersize portions of pizza, parrillada and bondiola. Everywhere Portenos demonstrating the Buenos Aires obsession with late night non-vegetarian dining!.