So, that’s it, 6 whole weeks gone and now I’m back. I even successfully powered through a whole night awake to make it through to a sensible British bed time. Take that jet lag.
Things are weird here. I forgot I had many possessions, I don’t always have to wear the same clothes and not every bed is a bunk bed. The tea tastes frigging amazing. Driving a car is the most luxurious thing in the world and using a laptop is way easier than using a phone.
Thanks a lot for reading all, I very nearly made 1000 hits (although probably nearly all of those are my mum checking 200 times a day!). Hope you enjoyed
Alex out.
A KETTLEEEEE!!! Not boiling water in a saucepan = luxury
The capital of Peru, Lima. Along the way we’ve heard so many bad things that we allowed just 2days here. Its not sooo bad but it’s not quite crazy enough to be interesting but not nice enough to be nice – (if that makes sense). It’s a little harsh but that pretty much does sum it up! It did have a bright pink hostel though!
So situation is a bit grim. Spirits are pretty low. What next? Duhhh, obviously time for tea!! Tea improves every difficult situation. Fact.
Over a nice warming cup of tea we decided to allow 3hrs for the cloud to pass. Not enough time to drown in the ridiculous rain, but enough to not regret staying longer.
Boredom level was near to maxing out. I resorted to creating slow motion water drop videos.
Mercifully though, the cloud did slowly start to disperse…
It proves that sometimes perseverance just isn’t enough. Patience is also required to win the day.
Time lapse of some of the walk up the mountain came out pretty well!
It really does deserve its status as one of the 7 wonders of the world.
The odds have been stacked up against us for this one. My lingering chest injection may slow us down, but there aint nothing stopping me walking up this damn mountain.
To make life easier, we used the travel agency in the hostel. Transport, tickets, accommodation and a guide all included. ‘Easier’ turned out to be the wrong word.
All was good to start with. The mini bus picked us up only 10minutes late (basically early in SA time). The inca rail train was absolutely top. Kind of like an old fashioned steam train carriage with lashings of wood and cream leather. Very very nice. We arrived in Agua Caliente (Machu Picchu town) with high spirits.
Unfortunately from there onwards things started to go a bit pear shaped. In true South American fashion nobody was there to pick us up. Not entirely unpredictable but still a tad frustrating. We waited with a German in a similar situation and made gentle mocking comments about Peruvian lateness to pass the time. After 45mins we went on search of a wifi enabled lunch to find the hostel ourselves. Thankfully it was only 5mins away from the restaurant we’d picked. Lucky us.
Hurdle number 2 now and this was a biggie. The guide was supposed to be buying us the Machu Picchu tickets and dropping them around to the hostel at 8pm. This would allow us to get up the mountain for the crack of dawn to get some jolly lovely sun rise/tourist free photos. By 9.30pm, however, we’d decided that perhaps he wasn’t running Peruvian time and that he probably wasn’t going to turn up. The agency wouldn’t answer the phone but we managed to catch another guide for another group who somehow knew where our guide was. He phoned his mate who then phoned his mate and then some chap, apparently our guide, turned up at the hostel. He explained that all the tickets had now been sold out. UNESCO allow 2500 people up per day and all the tickets for that day were gone. I can’t tell you how frustrated we felt.
BUT, where there is a will, there is always a way. If you queue up at 5am at a government building they can still sell you a ticket for the incorrect date but then stamp over the top the correct date. It’s dodgy, i don’t see how it can be legal but who cares. Our priorities were to make it up this mountain and this appeared to be the only way.
It worked!!!! Admittedly we were on the path up to Machu Picchu at 6am rather than 4am as we’d hoped- but we had a ticket!!! Great determination, so it seemed, had succeeded.
The walk up is fairly straight forward, perhaps the altitude adds a bit of spice but it’s not too bad. Then the rain came. We’re not talking about drizzle either. We’re talking proper monsoon, oh my goodness I’m drowning rain. We powered on up to meet our guide at the top who had promised us he’d be there in the morning. Do you think he was there? No of course he bloomin well wasn’t.
We made another friend who liked digging holes and crying a lot.
So now we’re soaked, exhausted and guideless but we have found our way through in to Machu Picchu to the famous view:
Great.
We tried to make fun of the situation but to be honest, the grim reality of the situation was quite literally washing over us. There was a pretty good chance we weren’t going to see a thing.
They don’t half like a good party in SA. Particularly like this dance
Rebel rebel
We got pretty lucky with the concert in the main plaza and then even luckier with these seats which the super nice hotel mistakenly took us for guests. Shame most was ruddy awful music, the locals seemed to enjoy it though
Yesterday I finally admitted defeat and went to the SOS doctor surgery. Check the leaflet baby!! Specialised labs!!!! Wooohooo!!! So while I waited in my comfort room (which a stray dog walked into and nobody seemed bothered btw) it turns out the reason I’d felt so rubbishy and had started to struggle to breath was bronchitis. I’m antibioticed up now with various extra tablets for good measure. The road to recovery will hopefully be rosy
Hole-free pavement, complete set of drain covers, buildings that aren’t falling down, loads of other tourists and even Tarmac roads!!! Tourist hot spots are usually my nemesis but this place is pretty cool- not just a gateway to Machu Picchu but a worthy place to visit in itself. Even the plentiful tourist shops are actually quite interesting. I get the feeling if my mum and sister were here a cattle prod would be required to leave the shop.
It’s a good job I find this place cosy as well. We’re here for one reason and one reason only. To climb Machu Picchu. Trouble is walking up mountains is tough. Walking up mountains at high altitude is unbelievably tough. Walking up a mountain at high altitude with a nasty cold and the Devils cough (which has clung to me since Bolivia like chewing gum to an old school desk) is possibly silly to attempt (although not enough to stop me). But then, riding into the equation once again is more wonderful, glorious food poisoning. Yep that’s right, food poisoning round 2. Also, this time, not just me ,oh no. Shahd as well. That’s more time than would be ideal staring up at the porcelain goddess. This means Machu Picchu is probably going to be a train half way there job and rainbow mountain isn’t looking possible. ☹️
Never mind, while we await full recovery we did a city bus tour. This ended up with possibly the most amusing photo of this trip. We listened to the elderly man who was the last something or other in Peru who blew smoke in my face for good luck (really helped my cough), then had a photo with him and a child was thrusted towards me to hold:
Peruvian official: ‘You!’ *pauses to look me in the eye* ‘Go over there!’
Me: *Gingerly walk over to 3 other Peruvian officials by a table*
Peruvian official 1: ‘Passporte!’
Me: *Tries a bit of British charm and smile as I hand over pasport*
Peruvian official 2: *in broken english* ‘Why are you here!?’
I can now see my bag about 8m away and even from there I can tell it’s been opened.
Me: ‘I’m here as a tourist, I plan to walk up Machu Picchu’
Peruvian official 1: *who had been inspecting the stamps in my passport* ‘You’re Irish yes!?’
Me: ‘No I’m English’
Peruvian official 1: *points over to Shahd (who by the way is having a nice friendly conversation with her official)* ‘She’s Irish yes!?’
Me: ‘No she’s English’
Peruvian official 1: ‘she’s your girlfriend?’
Me: ‘no she’s a friend’
Peruvian official 1: ‘and she’s from Ireland!?’
Me: ‘no she’s from England’ *I found this slightly amusing because Shahd most certainly doesn’t look Irish. South American maybe. Irish, no.*
Peruvian official 3: *who had just finished searching through my day bag snaps on a pair of rubber gloves*
Me: Any slight smirk on my face about the Irish obsession has now been wiped off my face.
Peruvian offical 1: ‘What is your job?’
Me: ‘IT’ *then I act out typing on a keyboard as I see the confused look on his face*
Surprisingly, they send me on my merry way only to call me back yet again. Ask me a couple more questions, triple check that I’m not Irish. Then once again I’m on my merry way and feeling very relieved.
Not the easiest entry into a country. Thank god I’m not an American. Any country they go into their life is made a misery.
