Trujillo, Caraz, Lima and beyond

Peru has been living up to the high expectations which were set in Mancora. After another day of the sunshine city, we jumped on a night bus (and were highly entertained by Spanish Jackie Chan) and headed down to the arid desert of Trujillo. Here it is perpetually hot, getting a mere half an inch of rainfall in the average year, but gets a deluge of rain every 40 years or so called El Niño. The rain is apparently comparable to the flash floods Britain has been getting recently, or so said our guide, and it´s every bit as destructive. Nonetheless, the ruins of the ancient Chimu culture we checked out were being well conserved and were fascinating. We got to see the palace of Chan Chan on the first day, which is an enormous maze-like structure - we would have got very lost without our guide Michael (who originally came from Yardley, so we had a good bit of Brummie chat). From ceramics and textiles found there archeologists have been able to find out a lot about the culture and religion, including a gory penchant for human sacrifice. In the site of El Brujo, the remains of a Moche shrine which we visiting the following day, we were treated to some incredible wall art which depicted the ritual slaughter of teenage girls and slaves which was supposed to appease the rain gods to prevent the onset of El Niño. Apparently the Moche culture (which came after the Chimu) drugged their human offerings with psychedelic drugs so that they haemorraged, thus providing more blood, and hallucinated, thus being unable to distinguish between reality and their induced delirium. Great stuff!



The next day was less bloodthirsty. We got a day bus to a beautiful town called Caraz, which is set amongst the great black mountains of the Cordillera Negra and is a stone´s throw away from the Cordillera Blanca. The journey there was very scenic if longer than we expected. The driver fell off the roof while loading bags onto it, so we had to wait a bum-numbing extra 2 hours on top of a 7 hour journey while a co-driver was found. Still, I think he was alright (if a bit peaky) as he managed to drive us half way there (true hard-core Peruvian style). After an evening of Independence Day festivities in Caraz, the next day was spent trekking around an incredible mountain lake called Lago Paron. I have never seen any natural wonder so beautiful. The water of the lake was bright azure blue and crystal clear, and was set like a gem in the centre of looming snow topped mountains and dazzling white glaciers. The sky was cloudless and pure blue and the air was as fresh as a super fresh daisy. Thanks to a mate de coca (a Peruvian speciality tea meant to help with altitude sickness and made from cocaine leaves - yes, grandma, it´s legal here!) the first 2 hours of walking were a piece of cake. The following 2 hours, however, had us seeing spots, gasping for breath like asthmatic goldfish again and staggering around in state of perpetual bloodrush. It was fun - sort of! Unfortunately that night we had to leave Caraz on the night bus so that we could meet Matt and Pete in Lima. Not having accounted for the Independence Day holidays we couln´t get a bus-cama (sleeper bus) so had an ordeal of a journey on a tiny, freezing, packed, noisy, bumpy bus sat at the back right next to the vomit-inducingly-smelly toilets. It was foul. And there was no Jackie Chan.

Having arrived 2 hours early, woken the guys up at 5am, kipped on their floor and forgone breakfast in order to book bus tickets for the next few days, our one and only day in fog-filled Lima wasn´t the best. We did get to meet Hannah though, who accompanied us for the next leg of our travels, and we found ENGLISH TOFFEE! Real, pedigree, original English Toffee. Well, so the packet said. Anyway, in addition to the camera, credit card, deet and MARMITE the boys brought with them, this eased the pain of the day somewhat. We hotfooted it out of Lima that afternoon to get to Pisco, where we went on a boat trip to the Balletas Islands to see sea lions, penguins, various birds and a national park whose desert landscape was rather reminiscent of being on Mars. Not that we have actually been to Mars, you understand, but it was red, rocky and pretty cool. We entertained ourselves by taking ´space´pictures of us, climbing mountains, staging the death of Matt off a precarious looking cliff edge, and acquainted ourselves properly with Klaus, a lovely Austrian guy who shared a dorm with us and consequently made our group up to a numerous six. Pisco and Paracas, no matter how diverting, were no match for the following day´s activities. The six intrepid explorers journeyed yet further south, braving death by eating suspicious mystery chicken dishes, defying all laws and common sense by squeezing into just one taxi and risking developing nausea through drinking luminescent Inka Kola (it´s bright yellow, tastes like rotten irn-bru, is definitely not cola and was absolutely definitely not drunk by the Incas), and reached the town of Ica. In Ica we drank yet more Inca Kola, found some salty tasting Fanny jam (this is seriously it´s brand name, and it does taste salty), and happened upon some ´Traditional English Cola´ which was red and, again, tasted like off irn-bru. (Fact fans, Peru is the only place in the world where something sells better than Coca Cola, and it is Inca Kola. Makes you wonder. Another fact, in one square metre of Peru you can find more species of ant than in the whole of England...interesting stuff...) From Ica we went to Huacachina. And this is where it got very, very cool. Cooler than Mars (so to speak), cooler than the mountains of Caraz (in terms of fun-factor) but hotter than Brad Pitt eating vindaloo on a hot day (in temperature). Huacachina is an oasis in the middle of some superb desert sand dunes, and we went dune buggying, driving down vertical dune slopes in a pink and yellow dune buggy, and sand-boarding. It was an amazing experience...´supergeil´, as Klaus called it (he was pretty darned good at it, having done a lot of snowboarding in Austria, and with a pretty darned buff body to prove it) or ´awesome´, as we called it. Later Klaus and I climbed to the top of a dune to take pictures of the oasis before running barefooted down again and burying ourselves in the sand, just to make sure it had got into every conceivable crevice and orifice before jumping into the nearest sqimming pool. Awesome :-) !!!

Sadly our next stop in Nazca had a lot to live up to and failed to provide the highs of Huacachina, despite us being up in an airoplane as our main activity. We flew up in a teeeny 6 seater plane to see the Nazca lines, which are various designs etched into the desert floor thought to have been created by the Nazca people and only visible from the air. The lines might have been great, but I wouldn´t really know as I got horribly travel sick and hated every second of the 35 minute flight. I managed to get a couple of pictures of the monkey, condor and astronaut before losing all feeling in my limbs, but the rest of the lines I can only experience vicariously through postcards. A shame, and all in all it wasn´t worth the $50, but Pete, Matt and Klaus loved it. I, however, am NEVER going in a small plane EVER again. That night we got a horrifically hot night bus to Cusco, where we are now, and chilling out for a few days before hitting the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. Hannah has returned to her school, and we have a new adition to the group in the shape of Patrick, a German from Stuttgart. So for the next few days I´m going to soak up the sun by day, freeze by night, and immerse myself in Inca culture while proudly wearing my new alpaca sweater, hat and gloves.

Laters...xxx