Flowers cover everything

Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Ola Gringos! – as a Venezuelan parrot once said to us.

We passed through Belize – so laid back it’s hard to believe. The Cayes were beautiful and we got to swim with manatees which was a real treat, as well as tickling 3m nurse sharks and picking up 2m stingrays.

A lot of life in Belize is done sitting down. While sitting on the beach side trying to decode the wonderful Creole accents, we overheard this. ‘Hey man, you done drunk already?’ said to an old guy, who given the beer bottle in his hand, and the stagger, appeared to be so, despite it only being 10am. ‘Ah, no tengo no tango’ replied the old guy in mysterious Spanish. Everyone laughed. (‘Tengo’ = ‘I have’ in Spanish. The rest of the interpretation is up to you.) That’s how things happen in Belize.

Then we crossed the border in to Guatemala. Something about the police pickup truck that overtook us shortly afterward told us this was a different kind of place. Maybe it was the guy stood proudly on the back waving an automatic weapon.

Guatemala’s history has left its people with a fascinating way of looking at life. In a few short weeks we’ve tried to capture some of the basic rules (for next time you’re in town) – this is a joint journal.

1) Guatemalans are the most colourful people in the world. The women wear amazing blouses (‘huipiles’) with brightly coloured embroidery. In England you’d call it garish. Here its de rigour. You can tell where you are by the local fashion. In Nebaj its lots of green, with green headdresses with pom-poms on, and each pom-pom is green round the outside, but a different bright colour inside. In Zunil it’s red and jazzy – try to go for as many different patterns as possible.

In some places, such as San Pedro & San Pablo, Lago Atitlan, the men dress as snazzily as the women – in white trousers with red spots, bright stripy red and blue shirts and enormous cowboy hats. Sometimes they even wear a skirt (much the same as the women’s ones) over the top.

Even the buses here are the brightest imaginable – from their cheerfully stripy exteriors, to the stickers of cartoon characters (Tweety Bird, Taz) over the inside, to religious icons and messages declaring ‘Dios te ama’.

2) What’s in a name? We’ve been to Chichicastenango – pronounced ‘ChiChi’. We’ve been to Quetzaltenango – pronounced ‘ShayLa’. We’ve been to Panajachel – pronounced ‘GringoTenango’. Tonight we’re in Huehuetenango – pronounced ‘WayWay’. In WayWay the men wear red jackets with purple decorated sleeves, white trousers and small black hats. (There’s a rather snazzy boater and some very fine cuffs just 2 terminals away from where we sit!)

3) Guatemalans are never in a hurry. If the bus doesn’t go for another hour or two then they’ll just sit on the roadside and wait. If it begins to rain, everyone just waits in the doorway until it stops. Who needs a brolly!

4) Guatemalans are punctual if they want money. Arrange to meet your guide at 5:30am for a climb up a volcano (1500m climb in 3hrs, but mindblowing views of the surrounding volcanoes and lakes). You can sleep certain he’ll be there at precisely 5:28. Any other kind of timekeeping does not figure in Guatemalan thinking. If no money is involved – who knows. Guatemalans prefer cash up front – so could you pay now please.

5) Guatemalans have a tendency not to be telling you the truth the first time they tell you something. At bus stations there is never a bus to where you want to go when you first ask, but always turns out to be one if you ask the question a few times. If you ask the driver if he’s going direct to your destination, he always says ‘Si, directo’ but he is almost never actually going there, and you have to change.

One of these journeys the conductor of the first bus assured us our ticket would mean we didn’t have to pay on the next bus. This concept is so ridiculous we both laughed – imagine how the conversation with the next conductor would have gone. Probably:

Us – ‘I’ve got this ticket from the guy on the last bus, he says I don’t have to pay’.
Conductor – ‘What? Never heard of him. That’ll be Q3 please’.

When we did get on the next bus he took our Q3 but omitted to tell us the bus was only going half the way. As we get off to board the next bus we say ‘Q3 for only that?’ ‘Oh’ says the conductor and gives us half our money back. These things happen all the time here.

6) Guatemalans have an extremely elastic concept of price. Some examples from today alone:

Us: ‘Cuanta cuesta’
Hotdog boy ‘Q5’.
Us: ‘But the sign says Q4.50…’
HDB: ‘OK, Q4.50’.
Us’…with a free drink’.
HDB: ‘With a free drink’

Us: ‘Cuanta cuesta peliculas?’
Man in Kodak shop: ‘2×24 for Q49 or 1×36 for Q44’ (He even had printed signs up to confirm these prices).
Us: ‘Muy caro’
MiKS: ‘How about 2×36 for Q60?’

Us: ‘Cuanta es?’
Boy in coffee shop: ‘Q18’
Us: ‘Really? Cuanta cuesta cafe?
BiCS: ‘Q3’
Us: ‘Y pan?’
BiCS: ‘Q6’
Us: ‘So we owe you…’
BiCS: ‘Q12’

Its a bit wearing – but you get used to it.

7) Guatemalans rarely tell you something useful without being asked. Like when it’s your bus stop. Here you are on a bus bound for Guatemala city only you want to get off at the stop for Antigua. This is because Antigua is one of the most beautiful cities in Latin America and Guatemala City is not. And every tourist since the dawn of time has gone to Antigua. So the only gringos on the bus are bound to be getting off at the turning. But it doesn’t occur to anyone to tell you when that is.

If you try and ask ‘Is this my stop, I want to go to…’ they may well answer so slowly that by the time they do the answer is basically, ‘Yes, that was your stop back there.’

8) Guatemalans carry a lot of things on their heads. Bowls of fruit. Bowls of tortilla dough. Baskets of chickens. Flowers. Grass. Firewood. Shopping bags.

If their local dress requires a long embroidered scarf (as many do) then they might just fold it in a square and put in on top of their head for convenience.

We’ve been here a relatively short time, yet we really feel we’ve learnt a lot about and from these people. They’re very willing to engage in conversation with us (though they never know where New Zealand is, and asked once ‘Does England speak the language of the Unite States?’). They are quite happy to be crammed in next to us on the bus. They never make you feel like you’re being stared at.

I don’t think we’ve laughed so much with anyone for a long time. It seems as though their history (mostly Civil War) has left them slightly odd about how to interact with other people, which can make life quite trying, yet underneath there is a level of openness and warmth you don’t find often.

An excerpt from Guatemalan life which sort of sums it up:

Last night we stayed in a cottage on a hillside by some hotsprings. It wasn’t really open for business, as a new owner was busy doing it up – we arrived at the same moment as the lorry delivering beds! But we persuaded them to let us stay. It was cold last night but they promised us supper and an open fire. At 7:30 – the appointed suppertime – we went to find them, but were told food would be at least another half an hour. Duly, eventually, the man appears – just was we
’re about to light our own fire. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come back soon and make you a big fire’ he says, and leaves. We figure we’ll light our fire anyway. An hour later he’s back. We show him the fire. ‘Oh, pequeno’ (small) he says. ‘I’ll make you a big one’. So he demolishes our fire and puts it out. Then he (rather implausibly) lights a piece of kindling with a lighter and starts piling on the wood. In approximately five minutes we have a roaring fire. We comment how well he’s done – given that some of the wood was wet. He denies that the wood is wet, despite the damp patch where it has been sitting in our room. But in fairness, his fire is blazing. He leaves. The wet wood in the fire spits huge sparks at us, but we daren’t go out to ask him to come and make us a smaller fire, and we daren’t let it go out since he has used all the kindling. So the fire eats all our supply of wood and by 11 we’ve run out.

All very Guatemalan.

All completely predictable.

And loveable.

Always a day away

Belize City, Belize

From staring up the Caribbean towards Trinidad a short flight brings us about face to stare back down it over Cuba. The jump from Venezuela to Mexico is an unusual move for us – quite aside from the international flight experience, the departure lounges and the mindblowing prices at Miami airport.

This year has been a series of small steps and I’ve been fascinated by the difference and variation between South American countries – differences that have grown over the last two hundred years as each country carves out its independence.

The divide between Peru and Ecuador is marked, but only five hundred years ago they were the twin capitals of the Inca empire. And the differences between Argentina and Brazil are enormous, but stem, to a significant extent, from quite recent history.

Here the tables turn. Mexico and Venezuela have never been the same place – their ancient history is completely distinct. They weren’t even part of the same landmass until very recently in geological terms, and their geography is different, as well as (and in part causing) very different indigenous societies. While the (Venezuelan) Pemon people lived simple village lives, harvesting termites and yucca, the (Mexican) Mayans built huge temples and cities.

Yet these countries seem drawn together by their recent history. So what strikes me here is similarity not difference. There’s a dose of the same Caribbean calm and there’s no sense of urgency at all. In Venezuela last week Marisa was trying to take a photo of a rather stylish looking bus as it drove past (an old US school number with some suped up modifications). The driver actually stopped and waited while we took the pic. Imagine that with a red London Routemaster on Oxford Street.

The perpetual call of manana is a joy and a nightmare. Waiting for anything can be truly painful. But when it arrives, somehow you can’t bring yourself to care.

There are other similarities. After the panpipe sounds of the West and the Calypso of Brazil, here we are firmly back in Salsa territory. They have salsa with everything. And it’s good.

And despite Venezuela’s reputation for rum and Mexico’s for tequila, these are beer drinking places. In large quantities. Though while Mexicans go the easy route with one litre bottles of Sol, Venezuelans have to rattle through cases of 250ml bottles of Polar for the desired effect. The end result is the same. Even the brand names seem drawn together in some yin and yang kind of way.

It’s a low down, kick back way to start a whole new continent. The people are so friendly (in both countries) that you’re tempted to just stop, settle down and grow some roots.

Today we are actually in Belize – separated from Mexico by only a fairly oblique bit of history. How strange then that it feels so completely different here – walking the streets is like a glimpse of a truly West Indian experience. Though the friendliness and the (very, very slow) pace are still with us – clearly some kind of regional trademark.

Must go – a man with a boat is due to take me to visit and island. After which I think I’ll have a Margarita if I can find anyone who can be bothered to mix it for me.

Looking down on creation

Puerto Colombia, Venezuela

A while since the last email. We’ve been in southern Venezuela, where the best fun is to be had off road – or up river – and cybercafes are rare.

The south of this country provided an abrupt change of scenery – more reminiscent of Africa than America. I’m not sure this is really due to their ancient coexistence as part of Gondwanaland, probably just a trick of the light, and the red coloured earth and the rock and the heat and the flowering trees. Either way, a lovely thing to look at.

It’s a landscape famous for ‘tepuis’ – remnants from an ancient plateau ‘older than life itself’ as someone explained it to me. This is the land that inspired ‘The Lost World’ – and we went up the site itself, a tepui called Roraima.

A mean walk, climbing up 1600m in one day on a path encouragingly called simply ‘The Ramp’.

On the top its a weird place, full of half evolved things that seem to have got lost in time. A frog that can’t jump, many carnivorous plants, and plenty of (we love them) bromeliads.

The view off the edge – clouds swirling over the Guyanan rainforest – was tremendous, with the cliffs of the neighbouring mountains soaring in front of us.

Of course, like good South Americans, the Venezuelans don’t call it Guyana, they call it ‘Zona en Reclamation’ – and they’ve climbed up Roraima with a bag of concrete to erect a monument stating this nice and clearly for all us wandering tourists to admire. But then it wouldn’t be a South American border without a South American border dispute.

The almost prehistoric nature of the place left me plenty of time to ponder the layers of more recent history that have followed, and the landscapes that they have left, so much of which we’ve trailed through in the last few months. It was a moment to return to the source.

We met up with my parents and shared a week in the Gran Sabana, on what my brother has described as a ‘Waterfall safari’. The rivers wind around the green landscape over beds of amazing rock – in one place a river of jasper, in others littered with quartz crystals. It’s a jeweller’s paradise, and unsurprisingly there are lots of gold mines here. Whereas California has evolved beyond the 1849 goldrush to become the place that stands for (amongst other things) Hollywood, the Beach Boys and Tales of the City, southern Venezuela still feels like a gold rush place, with dodgy little towns full of dodgy looking sorts trading in gold and gems.

Finally we visited Angel Falls, and flying back today (the falls are not accessibly by road) we admired the view from the window of oxbow lakes as the rivers snake the countryside. And how ancient dried river beds still cultivate lines of trees, themselves snaking to the horizon in a kind of crazy paisley.

Walking back to happiness

The trek was our 14th in South America – a fact which we’re quite proud of, though in print it looks a bit scary. We’ve been able to walk through parts of 6 different countries here, and we spent our last few nights under canvas remembering some of them.

It meant this trek had a lot to live up to, it didn’t disappoint.

I think walking in the peace and beauty of the mountains will perhaps be our single strongest memory of this continent – it has so many tranquil places to offer.

Fittingly, both of our pairs of walking shoes collapsed over the final few days and we limped home. We’ve traded them in for marginally more trendy trainers – don’t anticipate as much hard living for a while.

Bye bye love

We’re heading to the Caribbean coast tonight. Tomorrow we will stick our feet in the sea and know we have reached the end of this part of the trip. We’ll be very sorry to say goodbye. It’s been such a wonderful place.

We’ve carried on asking ourselves ‘but where are all the bad bits’ but the answers (apart from Lima) aren’t forthcoming. The shear diversity of places, people and experiences have been fantastic.

When we speak again it will be with Tequila in our veins.

Shine on you crazy diamond (part 2)

Manaus, Brazil

Sitting in Manaus its a bit odd, and a bit abrupt, looking back over the three weeks we have spent on the Amazon. A trip which seemed so intimidating at its beginning seems so straightforward in hindsight. And while we worried if we’d get here quickly enough, there’s a part of me that wishes it wasn’t over so soon.

The final leg was a second multi-day cruise, which proved that like everything else (except The Godfather), the sequel isn’t as good as the original – though it was a mighty pleasant experience none the less.

It was strange as our boat rounded the corner and the unremarkable, but none the less urban, skyline of Manaus was finally in front of us, to realise how small our boat suddenly seemed surrounded by ocean going ships. Yet only a few days before, in Tabatinga on the Peruvian border, it had seemed so big. It’s hard to believe now that this trip began in a canoe.

Manaus is the final link in an odd chain. Iquitos in Peru was a decidedly peculiar place – with its thrum of motorbikes but absence of cars, with its seaside atmosphere overlooking the river and jungle, and most of all with its sprawling shanty stretched out over an area that floods each year as the river rises. A huge number of people live in floating houses, complete with floating shops and floating toilets.

Then at the three way border you wander unchecked between Peru, Brazil and Columbia – never quite sure what language to speak or which currency to use. Never quite sure why these places exist in the first place.

But at Manaus it all seems to make sense at last – the weirdness has become prosaic. The floating petrol stations seem perfectly logical, and it’s no surprise to see lifejackets for sale in all the hardware stores.

It’s somehow fitting to be back in Brazil soon before we leave South America. There’s a sense of closure. And the fact that we can’t remember how much things cost, how the buses work etc. serves to remind us that its a long time since we set off from Rio, not as we might otherwise delude ourselves, merely yesterday.

I am a Jungleman

In the midst of it all we were lucky to spend more than a week on Lago Zacambu (its near the 3 way border, though technically in Peru) exploring the jungle. A beautiful place. The water level is high right now and we were able to paddle our canoes in and out of the forest. Above us the monkeys in the trees chattered away. Below us the dolphins swam – regularly popping up to give us a display.

We all have a preconception of the jungle. But we hadn’t prepared ourselves for the tranquillity. It was a mellow place to be. I hadn’t thought the pace of life could get any slower, but it did.

I was fascinated to be told stories the indigenous people tell of the dolphins. These revolve around the basic premise that dolphins are the men of the river – either taking human form on occasion (apparently mostly to turn up at local parties and get drunk) or living way up river in a great dolphin city that, supposedly, local fishermen have visited (and been imprisoned for murder if they’ve previously harmed a dolphin).

In essence, what the stories seem to say is that the dolphins are intelligent creatures who deserve our recognition and respect. Isn’t it odd that modern man has taken so long to come back to the same conclusions?

I wondered too (you can only think this if you are floating very very slowly) at the butterflies swimming across the river. You don’t see many, but you see quite a few. And the rivers are wide so it must take a substantial amount of a butterfly’s life energy to do this. Why do they bother? Its not as though there are more flowers on the other side, it couldn’t look any greener.

But I guess any species that is going to survive has to spread. A species of butterfly that didn’t cross rivers would disappear. So it must be in their genes. But it’s still not clear what’s in it for the individual. I find it reassuring to think that inquisitiveness is so deeply inbuilt in us.

Picture yourself on a boat on a river

Iquitos, Peru

There’s a sense of quiet relief and a hint of smug in us today. Last night we arrived in Iquitos after travelling overland from Quito down the Rio Napo. Its not a well travelled path by tourists – to the best of my knowledge only 5 people, including ourselves, will have come down here in the last few weeks. When I asked a crew member on our boat if they see many gringos he replied only ‘de vez a vez’ – from time to time. Lonely Planet hardly mentions the region at all.

We wanted to come this way to continue the overland experience, and although a few marginally more travelled routes exist over the Andes and down the rivers in Peru, the journey beginning further north in Ecuador suited our route better and captured our imaginations more.

But there aren’t exactly many tourist facilities, or much transport.

We left Quito by bus and crossed the Andes for the last time – a 4100m pass and much beautiful scenery. We tried not to cry as we said our farewells – good friends, I hope we will see you again.

By morning we were in the ugly oil town of Coca. From there we reached the border in a motorised canoe – taking 11 hours. Nuevo Rocafuerte, the Ecuadorian border town, is a strange place. It has wide paved streets but not a single car. From there we took another boat the hour’s journey over the border into Peru. Although the Peruvian border town, Pantoja, has a military presence there’s no immigration post there, we haven’t been able to regularise our paperwork for a further 6 days until this morning.

In Pantoja we got stuck. This was an important moment. Without spending a day in a tiny village, miles from nowhere, with no idea when the next boat may come along, you would have no concept at all what living there is like.

There’s a community of about 300 in Pantoja. During the day people amble around. The pace is slow. These are settler communities – all established in the last 40 years, and (I suspect) funded and supported by the Peruvian government in a bit of nationalist, expansionist verve. One of the reasons the area is so untravelled is that the two countries only agreed the border and stopped fighting over territory in 1998.

You can’t help marvelling at these true pioneers – carving their future out of the bush. They are hardy, self reliant people. You can’t help also being dismayed by some of the implications, the amount of trash that ends off in the river, and the forests cleared. One guy explained the technique for catching turtles, and it didn’t sound enormously sustainable to me – they simply wait until they come up the beaches to lay their eggs, and then grab them before they can return to the water.

Pantoja has a single spring, with a communal bathhouse by the river. We took our showers there (clothed of course – Peruvians are pretty prudish).

There’s a shop and outside every night they light a fire and cook supper to which anyone is invited. For a couple of soles (30p) you can eat a plate of chicken rice and plantain, just don’t worry too much about the hygiene standards.

We had been told, but we were learning to be sceptical about the quality of information here, that a boat would be sailing the following day, and we would need to rise early to travel 5 more hours downstream to reach it. So we slung our hammocks up in the trees outside someone’s house, and stayed there.

In the morning a dozen locals joined us in another canoe – terrifyingly loaded low – and we left at dawn. The presence of so many others was a good omen – but the look of delight when the boat was waiting for us as promised showed that the local people here can take nothing for granted.

The trip on the ‘Victor’ was sublime and hideous in turns, as we loaded up with more and more stuff.

Take a space which seems full with 30 people in it. Then double the number of people, then double it again. Then leave to simmer in the 30+ heat for days. Every day hammocks would appear where previously there was none. By the end the journey to the (single) toilet involved crawling on your hands and knees on the floor below sleeping bodies.

The stops were frequent – the 5 muscley crew hands loading anything that wanted to be transported, day and night. The captain seemed fairly informal, often simply driving the boat firmly into the bank – so we stopped with a bump – when we needed to pick people up. We didn’t see a jetty all week – everyone had to scramble in and out over the muddy banks. The cook wore a permanent scowl, but the unbelievably camp deckhand and the resident icepop seller – a rural equivalent of the ice cream van (and hugely popular) kept everything light-hearted.

The smell, the noise and the heat were intense. When we stopped we couldn’t for a moment forget how many pigs were penned in the lower deck. Pity the passengers who boarded so late they had to sling their hammocks up down there.

Life doesn’t throw you many opportunities like this one – heaven and hell all rolled in to one. The sensations will be burnt very very deep in my memory.

After 4 nights, we were definitely ready to move on. The strange city of Iquitos is our respite. There aren’t many cars here – the noise of motorbikes and rickshaws turn every conversation into a shout. There’s a promenade in town like you’d find at the seaside, only the view over the balustrade is of the widest river you can imagine – with reeds growing in the middle and jungle on the far shore.

Tomorrow we head east – a fast boat this time, luxury. When we set out here we wanted to see two things, the river life of settlers, and the primary jungle of the indigenous people. We’ve immersed ourselves in the first, lets see if we can find the second.

Who-oa we’re half way there

Quito, Ecuador

After about 15,000km of bus travel, on Friday, while negotiating a beautiful set of hairpins round a dramatic river gorge, we finally passed over the equator back to the north. Both staring as much at the screen of the GPS as we were at the view, it was quite an exciting moment.

The cunning amongst you have already spotted we set off south at the start of southern summer. Now that its over, its time to get north and follow the sun. Did someone mention Spring?

As Marisa has said, it’s been wonderful to follow the route and see so many amazing places. Lets hope the second half of the journey can match it. But first, this afternoon, we set off to where Lonely Planet fear to tread – who knows quite what to expect on the rivers. It may be a while before we reach email again!

The last few weeks in Ecuador have been fascinating and great fun. It’s an intriguing little (by local standards) place. The warmest friendliest people we think we’ve yet met – but at the same time less deeply resonant of a distinct national culture.

You’d think, as a small place, that Ecuador would feel more consistent than sprawling Peru or Argentina, yet if anything it manages to be more disparate – the difference between the beautifully dressed market town people of the north, in their ponchos and jewellery, and the city dwellers of the south, sporting Tommy Hillfiger jeans and baseball caps, has been hard to compute.

Its a country rich in things to do – we could only begin to sample the options – horseriding, traintop riding, hiking, biking, bathing, shopping. Yet hanging out here seems less mesmerising than Bolivia. Ecuador is a lovely place – but hard to understand.

One thing that is easy to understand here is the beauty. The word pretty is defined by Ecuador – from the endless banana plantations of the coast to the rippling mountains and insane volcanoes (our volcano watching trip got us good view of a lot of billowing smoke, but only in our imaginations and our dreams did we actually see red hot lava!). We both hope the descent to the jungle will live up to the same standards. In Ecuador, we can be confident that it will.

Ring my bell

Banos, Ecuador

When we left England, as well as a lot of plans for South America, we had dreams of three major trips off the continent. Having explored Antarctica and Easter Island, this week we were lucky enough to reach the last of them – the Galapagos.

It’s a place that’s on everyone’s wish list – who wouldn’t want to see the giant tortoises?

For me, it has always been somewhere I’ve wanted to go, without really knowing very much about it. The reality is more intriguing than I’d realised.

The Galapagos islands are a strange blend of raw rational science combined with the intensely wonderful world we live and experience – both sacred and profane. I’ve never been a Kansas style creationist, but the reality of the Galapagos brings evolution into clear view. The islands are geologically young and have never been connected to any other landmass. Every species there has arrived by chance migration. But the islands offer a variety of radically different environments, and consequently each species has evolved into unique variants, subspecies or species on different islands. There are, for example, (or were before whalers made 3 of them extinct), 14 species of giant tortoise in Galapagos, each adapted to its environment – for example, the ones with food sources higher off the ground have developed ‘saddleback’ shells to give them greater reach. Seeing examples of all the species, the process of evolution seems very clear.

And yet the origin of the islands themselves seems more than rational science can explain. Galapagos is a ‘hot spot’ where volcanic activity below the earth’s crust has created a series of islands in the middle of the ocean. That these islands are situated almost exactly where the cold Humbolt and warm El Nino ocean currents meet seems almost too good to be true. It means they have an unusual climate combination – cold enough for penguins yet hot enough for marine reptiles. It also means that a few miles north or south the climate changes dramatically – leading to 14 different environmental zones in such a small space.

That man didn’t discover them, and ruin them, thousands of years ago, simply adds to the wonder.

And the evolutionary process throws up as many wonders as it does logical developments. The 3 species of Booby (birds) in Galapagos have evolved logically different nesting grounds and feeding grounds. But no logic can explain why one species has blue feet and another red feet.

You’re left reinforced in both worldly and unworldly beliefs – a bit confusing really.

I was intrigued by the tortoises and iguanas. Here are species that have remained fundamentally the same for hundreds of millions of years. Their digestive systems for example are ‘primitive’ and tortoises get outcompeted by introduced goats because mammals can make much more from much less. Yet these living dinosaurs have woken up in an evolutionary sense – evolving into so many different species in less than 5 million years of Galapagos history. The iguanas have evolved not only different sizes and colours, but also taken to the water to become the first marine iguanas in the world. They are simultaneously Ancient and Modern (but then, aren’t we all).

We spent some time watching Blue Footed Boobies courting. They long ago abandoned the necessity to nest – lack of predators means they simply lay eggs on the ground. Yet courting males present females with small sticks, and to accept the stick is to accept the male. It’s as though this is a cultural relic of a bygone time. Left me wondering why we spend so much time denying that animals experience the world in the same way we do.

All in all, a very gripping experience.

And to add to that, we got to swim with sealions so tame you can play with them. I watched Marisa dancing with them in the water for ages. We also got to swim with penguins, a turtle, sharks and stingrays. I won’t go on – the list could be much much longer.

And we had a jolly boat to stay on all week. It was lovely to leave my bag unpacked for so many days, lovely not to catch a bus to anywhere. I got very accustomed to the ringing of the mealtime bell. I’m finding without it that I feel hungry at precisely 7am and 12 noon – meal times. (Though I don’t yet salivate to the sound of any ringing bell – so it hasn’t got too pavlovian).

But we’re back on the mainland and back on the trail. Rode the ‘Devils nose’ railway this morning. A ‘must do’ stop on the backpacker circuit – 200 gringos crammed precariously on the roof of a train for 6 hours as it struggles down the steepest hillside known to engineering. Great fun, if a bit odd.

In Baños (Ecuador) tonight. The nearby volcano Tungurahua is active at the moment and we hope for a (not too close) view – it was certainly smoking profusely today.

6 foot 4 and full of muscles

Guayaquil, Ecuador

It’s been a while since we had access to email. Our last 2 stops have both proved problematic. Chachapoyas in Northern Peru had intermittent power, and Vilcabamba in Southern Ecuador had dodgy phone lines! There’s a lot to catch up on now.

Peru left us both perplexed. It simply continually refuses to fit your expectations. We went hiking near Huaraz and it was like suddenly being back in Patagonia – the mountains were vast, the glaciers enormous and the weather wild (we had 2 days of glorious sun, and one of snow!) We were both really proud of ourselves for succeeding, without a guide and carrying all our own stuff, to climb from 3500m to 4750m and over a mountains pass that makes those down south seem tame. We have exorcised the ghosts of our first, failed, mountain pass from last October.

How strange that this should happen in Peru – except that Peru seems capable of anything.

So many cultures – with stone cities, mud cities and, at Sipan the most mind blowing museum of ancient burials you could imagine. Makes Tutankhamen seem a little restrained.

And its such an enormous place – we got the delight again of unending night bus journeys. Somehow, I’d always assumed Paddington came from a small place.

Peru has it all by South American standards – desert, mountains, jungle. If you were only to visit one place on the continent, this would be it. But you could be here months and not have got the half of it.

Hey little sister, what have you done

We spend a lot of time on buses. It’s just what we do – the penance for this vast overland viaje. They vary enormously, from things in Argentina that remind you of Concorde – food, drinks, near flat beds, hostesses in short skirts. To the opposite extreme – sitting on the handbrake in southern Peru was a bit of a low point for me.

The buses have got a lot less classy as we’ve headed north. The rules have begun to change. Rule 1 – it always leaves at least 30 minutes late. Rule 2 – if there’s no set departure time it leaves 30 minutes after you’ve completely given up hope. Rule 3 – the likelihood of arriving on time is inversely proportional to the number of chickens on the roof.

And the timetables leave you perplexed. Why do the only 2 buses each day to travel the 4 hours to El Chalten in Argentina leave at 6am (surely too early) and 6pm (surely too late)? And why does the only bus to Kuelap in northern Peru leave at 4am? Despite coming away travelling with an aspiration to laze around, I consider it a lie-in now if I don’t have to be somewhere by 7am.

Last week, after a minor collision involving our bus driver careering around on both sides of the road until eventually he hit someone, we had a great view of bus behaviour. The driver proceeded to argue the toss – despite the clear evidence of lots of bits of broken bus and car on the OTHER carriageway.

And the whole bus got up and down to gawk. South Americans have no concept of personal space and happily trampled over all our feet as they pushed open the doors and peered through the curtains. And the nosiest? The pushiest? The trampliest? A nun. Now what does that tell you?

Cut the midrange

Since we set out a favourite refrain has been ‘where are all the bad bits?’ South America seems surprisingly lacking in this respect. Until now, we’ve heaped all our venom on poor, unattractive, unlovable Puerto Montt in Chile. When anything’s remotely bad we say – ‘well its not as bad as Puerto Montt’. Cruel really – the place is merely a dump, not an eyesore.

Now, I’m delighted to say we have found an eyesore. The coastal region of Peru, around Lima, is the most squalid thing we’ve seen for ages.

The driest most depressing desert is here. And a jolly dirty place it is too – poor mother nature without even enough water to wash herself.

We’re reduced to vague comparisons. ‘Is this worse than Jakarta?’

If you get the chance to go, don’t.

I’ve been thinking about you.

A general all round congratulations to everyone. You seem to have all got new jobs, houses, babies, marriages of late – so many emails keep coming in, sometimes we have to sit over coffee and have a roundup to remind ourselves just how different live is going to be by the time we get home.

Those of you with no news to tell, come on! There’s still time.

The Big Prinz

Went on a 2 day horse trek this week – this equestrian lark is becoming a habit. My horse – called Prinz – was a very feisty fella and we raced up the mountains in anything from a walk to a gallop. Even Marisa said she was impressed. I may be an old dog, but I think I’m learning something. Watch out Wyoming.

Over the borderline

We left Peru a few days ago, and now we’re in Ecuador. Tomorrow we fly to the Galapagos. So far Ecuador is proving as unreadable as Peru. Yesterday vast mountains covered in Bromeliads and Orchids. Today, more bananas than you can comprehend.

With such sporadic internet access, apologies for the lack of personal messages – hope to be online for longer in a week or so.

More soon…

These mist covered mountains

Nazca, Peru

It’s been very rewarding over the last two months to make the Andean Altiplano our home. Having spent so long wondering at the geographic marvels of the south its lovely to immerse ourselves in the cultural marvels of ancient America.

Not that there is no geography here. Peru, and to a lesser extent Bolivia, have proved to be the steepest places I think I’ve ever been to. The concept of ‘a short walk’ here is liable to involve changes of several hundred metres in altitude. We’re still ruing the decision to walk from Potosi bus station to the town centre – a choice that nearly killed us. Inca warriors must have had mighty thighs. Some of the Inca sites we’ve seen recently manage to spread several hundred metres up from one building to the next.

But the cultural side is phenomenal. As Marisa has said, there’s an enormous preponderance of hats in this part of the world (but we’re being quite restrained, we’ve only bought 2 each in the last month!). In southern Bolivia its Bowler hats, worn by all the women. I wish I had a picture of a 1960s London Suit to show them – they’d find a man in a bowler most amusing.

Dress is really regional here – as we moved north the bowlers got gradually taller – resembling deformed Fedoras after a while. Where we are now they have changed even more – crisp white (though regularly a bit grubby) stovepipes are the order of the day. But always (without fail) worn over a long pair of plaits.

And Peru in particular appears to have thriving costumery too. We’re seen women in wonderful scarves, and men in smart waistcoats. On one island the men wear different hats to indicate their marital status – and they do their own knitting. The sight of men knitting in the street is surprisingly difficult to get used to.

The traditional Inca attire seems to involve women wearing a wooden contraption a bit like a fruit bowl on their heads – which they find very useful for keeping small things in. And the men wear straw boaters with woolly red hats underneath. It certainly makes the marketplace colourful.

It’s been really nice to try and fall off the gringo trail a little. We spent a night staying with a family and shared dinner in their smoky unlit kitchen, and while it was all thoroughly above board and touristy – organised through a tour agency – it still gave the opportunity to admire their home, their crops and livestock and to discuss in our best Spanish what it is like to live there.

I also thoroughly enjoyed getting into conversation with a Bolivian teacher and asking a few questions about how things work here – the school system seems remarkable like my memories of African ones. Compounded by the depressing fact here as there that you still see a lot of little kids wandering the streets or working as shoeshines when they should be playing Star Wars in a playground somewhere (or whatever children do these days).

We were walking up a path the other day and fell in to step with a man, his son and their livestock (2 donkeys, 3 goats, 2 sheep and a dog). He asked us where we were from and we replied. England always meets with a bit of a nod, New Zealand normally with a puzzled look. Then he asked me another question, and I had to get him to repeat it several times before I believed my Spanish. ‘How far is your village?’ he said. I tried to keep a straight face as I replied, but aside from being a little funny it was completely wonderful: we were no longer gringo tourists, but just fellow travellers. We walked with him for over an hour until we reach his village, and then went our separate ways. He had been digging salt in local salt pans and was off to sell the produce of his labour.

We finally made it to Machu Picchu last week – I won’t bore you with waffle, but it really was fabulous, few places could live up to their reputation with such panache. We had a great guide and learnt an enormous amount about Inca history and culture.

You can’t help having the same kind of reaction to Inca engineering as you would to Roman stuff. For example we visited a set of ‘banos’ where they harnessed a set of springs to direct the water in perfect symmetry over their agricultural terraces. The centrepiece was a series of waterfalls, the lowest of which flowed across a wide but perfectly level stone – like an Inca version of Chatsworth!

I’m left wondering what comparisons we’d have made if the Inca had had a written language.

And the modern culture is just as strong. As I write a funeral procession is passing the door of the internet cafe – a big brass band playing and a procession of people completely stopping the traffic.

Bolivia and Peru (and I imagine Ecuador) are most intriguing. You could get quite lost here.

Oh no it’s the pigs!

Sometimes it’s important not to forget where you are. A couple of days ago, as lunchtime approached, we were walking through a village. Locals were washing carrots and onions in the drains – its harvest time. Everywhere the livestock was in the streets – including a lot of pigs. We commented how you never see pork on the menu.

Passed a little restaurant and saw the blackboard outside – a meat (it had to be a meat, as it was going to be served ‘al horno’) that we didn’t recognise. ‘Not beef, lamb or chicken’ says I ‘must be pork!’

Once we’d placed our order wee waited for our plates, and when they arrived were greeted by the sight of two whole guinea pigs. As reluctant carnivores at the best of times, we were a little taken aback, particularly since they still had their heads and feet – and on closer inspection their kidneys too.

Marisa sent hers back (wise girl).

Four seasons in one day

Puno, Peru

When we planned this trip, part of the thrill was the thought of stringing the whole thing together – overland from one place to another being so much more intriguing than just flying.

Last week we got to experience the whole thing in one go.

We hiked over the edge of the Bolivian Cordillera Real starting at 4800m altitude and finishing at 1200m. It was quite incredible – from bare rock at the top of the mountains we descended into first grassland then trees and cloud forest and finally down into rampant vegetation at the edge of the Amazon basin.

It really brings home the shape of this continent – the Andes and the Amazon between them define all its major features.

In the process we went from Urban and relatively developed La Paz through tiny (one family) Aymara villages several days from the nearest road. Again the contrast was remarkable – and sums up South America brilliantly.

So Bolivia has proved a reflective point within the trip – time to look back as well as forwards.

STOP THE WAR

One thing I really puzzled over when I lived in Zimbabwe was the confused attitude to Cannabis. It is of course illegal there, yet widespread, and everyone turns a blind eye – even the police smoke it. I’ve always thought since that Western attitudes seem really hypocritical – exporting our own cultural standards as though they are universal norms, to places where Cannabis is the historic drug of the culture.

But I’ve found in South America a far more malign version of this behaviour.

A brief history of coca: It has been part of Andean society for thousands of years, forming an integral part of celebrations and religious ceremony. To understand what it might mean here, try to imagine weddings without wine, or indeed communion.

90+% of rural Bolivians chew coca.

When Europeans arrived the Catholic church deemed it ‘diabolical’ – as they did with most parts of indigenous culture. But this stance was reversed when they found it to be very useful in giving indigenous people the energy to live lives down the silver mines that were to make Spain so rich. 8,000,000 people died in those mines.

As coca became known to the outside world it gained popularity elsewhere – most famously as an ingredient in Coca Cola – which (coincidentally?) rose to prominence during prohibition.

But during the 20th century Western countries criminalised cocaine, and eventually coca was condemned in the 1961 Geneva Convention of the UN – cited as causing the ‘mental slowness’ responsible for Andean poverty. The UN proposes the eradication of coca for the good of mankind.

(To me, the exploitation of all the Andes natural resources by Europeans strikes me as a far likelier cause of Andean poverty).

The result is an eradication programme imposed on countries like Colombia and Bolivia, with stark results.

Unwilling governments are bought with aid, so that Colombia is the 3rd biggest recipient of US aid after Israel and Egypt (what a shameful list!). In the process the concept of aid is debased.

Local culture is corrupted – someone recently tried to explain to me the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ coca to justify local consumption of ‘good’ coca. ‘Good’ coca apparently reduces hunger, makes you indifferent to discomfort and enables you to function for long periods of time. (Very useful for a forced labour miner!) ‘Bad’ coca… is used by narcos. But it’s all the same thing.

Human rights are undermined. In 1988 Bolivia passed draconian drugs laws to meet the conditions of a 1987 agreement with the USA. Drugs suspects can be held for long periods without trial. Now 80% of Bolivia’s prison population is not convicted of anything. This would not be accepted in a Western country.

In the end countries are destabilised – it would be wrong to blame Colombia’s disintegration as a state on coca, (for that, read a history of the appalling La Violencia – as depressing as human history gets). But the constant source of illicit income has sustained Colombia’s woe. And Bolivia, where 30% of the population are estimated to work in coca production, takes slow steps in the same direction.

And finally, it reinforces terrible perceptions of cultural imperialism. However well George Bush’s exhortations against coca, or Tony Blair’s against Afghan opium (cited as justification for war) are received at home, the ensuing eradication programmes are as well appreciated and understood on the ground as if the Saudis started napalming French vineyards.

Whatever we conclude for our own cultures, the West would do well not to export our ‘problems’ (and they are fundamentally our problems, 50% of cocaine consumption is in the US, and most of the rest in Europe). Nor should we use our wealth to impose our culture on others.

Apart from being ineffective (cocaine production and consumption is increasing), it does massive harm.

Of course, it’s worth noting that the UN doesn’t completely prohibit cocaine production. 30 countries – the ‘legal cocaine club’ – can produce specific quotas. The UK can produce 365kg a year (a kilo a day!). Even New Zealand can produce 17kg. The USA can produce over a tonne. Neither Bolivia nor Peru is in the legal cocaine club.

And wherever you go in Bolivia, you can, of course, buy Coca Cola – trading on the name and the heritage, long after all the coca is gone.}

Next time your government proposes tackling a problem ‘at source’ – be it drugs or immigration – ponder the consequences.

Alex Bicknell Ha Ha Ha.

Its important to be able to laugh at your own misfortune, and more pleasant to laugh at those of others. On that basis, I’d like to share with you my experience last week when some particularly vile insects subjected my ankles to over 150 bites. My ankles ballooned in size and I spent a day in bed, with swollen ankles, feeling drowsy with antihistamine and rather sorry for myself. Still, it’s probably the nearest experience I’ll ever have to being pregnant. Girls – my sympathies!

Ever onward

Reached Peru today. Puno is wrapped in Candlemas – an amazing festival. Crazy costumes and bands throng the streets day and night, rain or shine. More soon…