Day 129 – Hitting the wall

At about 6:54pm on Sunday 13 September, Rachel and I both agreed that we had hit the wall. Rachel had a bit of a cry. I looked out at the passing, desolate landscape and felt the same wave of sadness.

Travel is an amazing thing. In the four and a half months since we left Australia's golden shores, we've slowly lowered ourselves into a bubbling pot of new experiences. From the shiny and familiar starting line that was the USA, we now find ourselves in Bolivia.

When I lived in Japan, people used to talk about Culture Shock. The term refers to the psychological and physical side effects a person can experience when immersed in a significantly different cultural environment. It's serious stuff, it can make you sick. I've also heard it best described as; being adrift on an ocean of unfamiliarity.

I'd forgotten all about it until that moment on the train. Then it all came flooding back.
The place we are in now, Bolivia, is very different from home. Great, really great, but very different. Sometimes even something as simple as buying food requires special effort. At those times, I miss the simple things that I used to take for granted. A big weekend with friends. A quiet chat over a beer down the pub. A meat pie and sauce.

We caught the bus down from to Oruro on Sunday. The plan was to head to Tupiza on the overnight train. From there, we would head into the the National Park and the Salt Flats of Uyuni for four days.

Arriving in Oruro was like having eel-infested cold custard poured down your pants. Once a rich tin mining mecca, this is a town fallen on hard times. Dusty and desolate, the whole place reeks of misery. We wandered around, tried to be friendly. However, our “holas” were met only with blank stares, or hushed mutterings. People stared at us as we walked through markets. We stuck out like a marketing manager at a MENSA meeting.

We boarded our train at 6:30pm. It looked quaint from the outside, but smelled of old socks on the inside. A tour group of elderly Germans cacophonied into the carriage, wearing enough expedition gear to climb Everest. Then the videos started.

They were bad, terrible, evil videos. Morbidly uncool 1980s Latin American pop stars in bad clothes. They sung and danced with such effort, but looked and sounded like cats being shorn. Then the train conductor told us we weren't being fed until breakfast, eight hours away. Suddenly, we were both adrift in the ocean.

For a moment, it all got too much. The wall came shooting up in front of us. Unclimbable. Impenetrable. Looming.

We talked. We talked about that fateful day so many months ago we'd decided to commit to our adventure. We talked about why we were here, what we wanted to achieve. We talked about our comfort zones and why it was important to be outside of them. We talked about where we'd been and where we were going; today, tomorrow and in the years to come.

Soon, the sun set. We sunk into our chairs and slept, the clickedy-clack of the train providing the perfect sedative.

I think holidays are about having a good time, all the time. I don't believe traveling, life even, is the same. In order to appreciate the highs, there have to be downs. Sometimes, the deeper the better. Without this, surely any journey would be nothing more than a constantly joyless trudge across even ground. A mind-numbing trip across a featureless fugue plain.

As Kurt Kobain once alluded to, there is comfort in being sad. Sometimes it's healthy to feel that you are a long way from home, well outside your comfort zone and with nothing going right. Sometimes, it's important to be exposed to sorrow. It helps you appreciate the moments of sublime glee when Mr Happy decides ride his sunshine skateboard into your life and sprinkle rainbow dust in your eyes.

Twelve hours later, Rachel and I disembarked the train and emerged into the bright sunshine of Tupiza's small town square. Things looked different. People returned our greetings with a sunny “hola” and bright smiles.

Suddenly, the wall was nowhere to be seen.

Day 128 – La Paz, Bolivia

Just when you though Peru couldn't get any more farcical.

We arrived back from the Inca Trail full of joy and happiness. Sure, there had been a bit of unpleasantness when the topic of tips came up (an expectation vs reward issue), but we were on a high.

Before going on the Inca Trail, we'd bought our bus tickets to Bolivia. We were (easily) persuaded to go for a little luxury. Fully reclining seats and loads of legroom for a few extra Soles, the seemingly lovely Peruvian lady at Nuevo Continental/ CIAL bus company told us.

A week later. we turned up at the bus terminal a week later as required. We waited. The 10pm “standard” service left. We waited for our 10:20pm luxury service to be called.

At 10:10pm, we were herded into a taxi by the CIAL lady's' colleague. Our bus was apparently now leaving from another terminal. I smelled a rat, but kept my cool.

The scam became clear about 30 mins later. After being taken to the edge of town, our taxi driver flagged down the first bus that came our way. We were unceremoniously dumped on board. No fully reclining seats. No luxury service. To add insult to injury, it was the 10pm standard service we had been talked out of paying less for.

Wow. Peruvian company in blatant lies shocker (Once again; CIAL/ Neuvo Continental – take heed dear readers). Who would have thought.

I mention this story to give you some context as to how we could have been so happy to find ourselves in the capital city of Bolivia, La Paz. I introduce it to give you some insight into the chalk-and-cheese contrast between the place we were leaving, and our destination.

La Paz is a strange city. Everything about it is odd. Firstly, it's located at considerable altitude, between 3600m and 4100m. I say between, because the second strange thing about La Paz is that it is built inside a huge natural bowl in the earth. The whole place looks like it should be on Mars.

Now in Sydney (or most other cities for that matter), you tend to pay more for a view. Not so in La Paz. The higher up the side of the crater, the poorer the community tends to be. Therefore, sitting in the bottom of the whole city are the richer areas and the city centre. Whilst clinging for dear life upon the barren crater walls are all manner of ramshackle homes and businesses.

Possibly as a result of the bowl it sits in, the city is very polluted, fueled in no small way by the hordes of smoke-belching buses and minivans that race up and down the tiny, colonial streets. Crossing the road is an exercise in split-second timing.La Paz has a manic pace about it. People are absolutely everywhere. Suits on mobiles mix with little old ladies in traditional costumes. Street stalls stand next to swanky restaurants. It's like someone bought a build-your-own city kit and simply poured it onto a table. It's fabulous.

From the moment we arrived, we were engulfed in a wave of friendliness that, after the trials of Peru, was like being coated in natural yoghurt. Everyone is happy to chat. They don't want anything, they are just happy to talk. Phil, the bar manager at the Adventure Brew Hostel where we stayed, took us under his wing from Day 1. He told us where to go, what to see and introduced us along the way to all manner of denizens of this fine city.

Within the space of 9 days in Bolivia's finest, we'd seen the best her nightlife has to offer. We ate great meals at great restaurants. We checked out the weird and weirder still at the Witches Market (Llama foetus anyone?). I played futsal against the hostel's security guards team at altitude (which, for the record, hurts like hell). And then, on the Friday, we rode the World's Most Dangerous Road.

I won't go into the details of what the World's Most Dangerous Road is exactly – I'll leave that to the very capable people at B-Side, with whom we rode. I'll simply say this. The experience of racing downhill for 63km on that road, on the back of a $2,500 mountain bike, is awesome. Do it.

I'd recommend La Paz to anyone who asks. However, I was happy to leave. It's a crazy, unique, buzzy, brilliant city, but it's not a place to relax. Anyone can simply blend in, do your thing and go about your business undisturbed. However, one thing La Paz doesn't offer a high standard of living. It takes ages to go places; get things done. The pollution and altitude make you feel like you are constantly slightly fluey. Simply, life in La Paz isn't easy.

But here's the icing on the cake. The cherry on top that brought home for me why we enjoyed being in La Paz so very much. Why we both reckon Bolivia and Bolivians rock.

Upon going to the bus station to buy our ticket to head south, we asked the lady behind the counter about the bus we'd be traveling on. Her response?

“It's comfortable enough, but the toilets won't work. They never work”

And you know what? Once the truth be told, we didn't really mind.


La Paz photos can be sampled here

Day 115 – The Inca Trail and Machu Pichu

It's a bit hard to know what to write about the Inca Trail. It feels a bit like writing about Lindsey Lohan's sex life; everyone seems to know quite a bit already.

In the interests of avoiding the same old, cliched trustafarian travelogue descriptions (“Machu Pichu is a spiritual experience blah blah blah”), I'll get to the point.

It was harder than I thought. Day 1 of the trail is a gentle toddle along a river before a slightly more challenging hour and a half uphill. Nothing too taxing. Then comes Day 2.

Day 2, quite frankly, is a bitch. It's the bastard son of a swift kick in the nuts and finding poo in your sundae. Rachel and I had make the decision to carry our own equipment, rather than give it to the porters (more on them later). Whilst I don't regret it in hindsight, at the time it did not seem like a great decision.

Day 2 sees you trudge your way (very) slowly up from about 3100m altitude to 4200m. Then, once you reach the top, you look down and realise that you have to walk down another 700m along some of the most rocky and uneven path I've ever seen.

Then, after lunch, it's up the other side of another mountain of giddying heights before yet another bone shattering descent to camp for an early night in bed.

After that, Day 3, whilst having a rather charming 1km vertical descent down the worlds' longest staircase, is a bit of a walk in the park. Whilst, Day 4 is little more than an early-morning stroll up a mountain to the final location that this whole bloody walk in the countryside is about.

In all honesty, it's not a physically taxing proposition. The two middle-aged Australian gents who we shared a group with were, by their own admission, not fitness nuts. They completed it in good time. It's tough, but at the end of the day it's one of those things that. if you get it in your mind you're going to do, you will end up doing.

The other thing that keeps you going is the porters.

When a good part of your day is spent standing to one side on the track, to let men carrying half their bodyweight in camping equipment run ahead of you to set up camp, it's kind of hard to claim the trail is in the “too hard” basket.

The porters are supermen. Their ability to lug gear up inclines most of us would struggle unladen is astounding. I genuinely felt embarrassed walking into camp two hours behind them and having them clap us. Amazing.

So, as you can imagine, when we arrived at the Sun Gate to Machu Pichu on the morning of Day 4, we were well rested, well fed and well educated on the Inca Empire. And we were greeted by....cloud.

Luckily, it didn't last long. We dropped down a few hundred meters to lay eyes on the picture postcard view the world knows. Beautifully set against the mountains in the background and teeming with people.

I still find it strange to this day that despite walking four days to arrive at the crown in the jewel of Peru's grand historical past, people on tour buses were allowed to enter the site a good hour before us. Call me a meritocrat, but it seems topsy-turvy.

So, what's it like? Well, it's beautiful. A lot of effort has gone into restoring the site, and it shows. Sure, it's an incredibly touristy place, complete with $5 cans of Coke. However, standing on the edge of the highest temple looking down into the valley below is a giddy feeling, and you can't take that away.

But, you know what? It's not the site itself that amazes. Sure, the brickwork is good, but to my layman eyes it doesn't look any more impressive than European castles of the same era, The societal structure and agricultural achievements seem amazing, but then again, think of India or China.

What really blew me away about Machu Pichu and the Incas was; where they built their empire. This is a land of impossibly high mountains, deep crevice-like valleys and inclines so steep it makes you wonder if you'd ever stop falling. This is a landscape that most civilizations would not even consider exploring. The Incas made this their domain and built an empire, which at it's height, had more people in it than the whole of Europe.

The thing is; I think the only reason I came to appreciate it is because we walked four days to get there. We experienced first hand how hard it must have been to travel between cities. How hard it must have been to transport food and raw materials (remembering the Incas did not have horses). We saw other sites along the way, each with their own exacting purpose and character. It all provided essential parts to a story that only became complete at the grand finale.

Sat there on the top of Old Mountain, watching the throngs pour off their buses, I came to this conclusion. For all the beauty of Machu Pichu, it's the walk along the Inca Trail itself that was most worthwhile.



You can have a squizz at all the Inca Trail photos by clicking here

Stevie Aird is coming to town!

Ladies and gentlemen; citizens of Buenos Aires.

It is my great pleasure to announce the imminent arrival of Mr Stephen Aird to your fine, fair and previously untainted city.

Stephen is a man who needs little introduction. As you will be no doubt be aware, He is a legend in his own lifetime. He is a man of awesome stature in numerous fields, including erotic fiction, naked all-in Turkish wrestling and, of course, horse husbandry. The fact that He is so modest in refusing to talk about these, or His collection of Swedish penis pumps, merely adds to his allure. Men want to be Him, women want to be with Him.

In little over a week, He will be here, in this very country. However, the very concept of Stephen Aird should not be taken lightly. Prepare for the best, prepare for the worst.

I make no apologies in saying; this could get messy. This is a man who thinks nothing of dousing Himself in honey and throwing Himself to the lesbians. This is a man who can go out at night wearing a pink t-shirt and novelty oversize sunglasses and still turn up for work next day morning with His head held high. If He were a mammoth, they would not be extinct.

I will admit it to you, fellow citizens; I invited Him. Further, I admit to you; He is my friend. I like His style! Yes, it will probably end it tears. There may be some casualties. Hell, it may even be worse than we could possibly imagine. However, bear this is mind.

One day in the distant future, when your hair is grey and your eyes are dim. When Spurs have won the Premiership, England have won the world cup and Scotland have qualified. When cricket is no more and Ricky Ponting is just a distant, slightly horrid memory. When your children's children sit at your knees and beg you to tell them a story, you will smile and quietly tell them where you were when Stephen Aird came to Buenos Aires.

God save us all.

Day 111 - Lima, Huacachina and Cash Cow (Cusco), Peru

I like Peru. It's a beautiful place. However, in the spirit of not sugar-coating my words; it's a large proportion of the locals I'm having problem with.

We arrived in Lima the evening of the 10 August. A couple of nights staying near the airport to organise things, and we headed to the chic coastal suburb of Miraflores. It was there the trouble slowly began.

Peru seems to be rather packed in August. Trying to find a double room in Miraflores was a bit like trying to find an adult female with a good word to say about Posh Spice. However, we managed to find one which came slightly recommended.

Alas, on arriving at the pre-booked hotel, we were told that despite accepting our deposit, they were full. We were to be transferred to a completely different building on the other side of town. Which happened to be someone's house. Complete with very, very smelly dog. And despite being $10 cheaper, we were expected to pay the same rate (which obviously wasn't ever going to happen).

Still, you make best of a situation. Lima is a modern, mildly chic and very large city which doesn't really look too different to any other similarly-sized city on the planet. It does however have some top places to eat.

Rach and I made a decision to treat ourselves to a fancy meal. We'd been given a recommendation from Ian's (see LA entry) cousin, Karen. She gave one special piece of advice; don't have more than two Pisco Sours.

So, the wife and I donned our fanciest livery and made our way to La Mar Cebicheria for a long, boozy lunch. We started with a Pisco Sour at the bar each. A warm buzz enveloped the both of us. We were led to our table.

With the help of our waiter, beautiful examples of Peruvian fare were soon being consumed. Yummy. A bottle of white wine soon disappeared. Rachel, enjoying her first taste of the high life in three months, ordered another. More food turned up. The wine did one. The restaurant began to take on a fuzzy quality.

By the end of the meal, it would be an understatement to say we were in good form.

“Another Pisco Sour to round things off?” suggested Rachel.

“Why the hell not”, agreed Stewart.

“Ummm, I theenk eeet would be dangeroos to have otra cocktail, senora”, proferred our waiter.

We considered his advice, weighed up the pros and cons. We compromised with a Pisco Sour for Stu, and a Pisco Sweet for Rachel.

In the end he was right. The rest of the afternoon was spent snoozing it all off back at the “hotel”. I'm glad to report that although Rachel had the hangover from hell next day and swore off Pisco Sours for life (which lasted about 48 hours), I was right as rain.

Ironically, the drunken ride back from the restaurant was the only time in Lima a taxi driver didn't try to rip us off.

Nice as Lima was, I believe it's best not to hang around in big cities too long. They tend to all be rather similar (with some notable exceptions), and they drain your finances faster than an 18 year old mistress. Rachel recommended we visit a “desert oasis” 5 hours south, called Huacachina.

We bid goodbye to the “hotel” staff and made our way to the bus station. There we discovered that civil strife in Pisco meant buses were only going halfway to where we needed to be. Still, it's better to be on the way to somewhere than standing still. So, we boarded a bus anyway in the hope the situation would improve en route. Luckily it did, we carried on straight through and arrived well after dark.

In the morning, we saw first-hand why Huacahina is so recommended. I've never been anywhere like it. It's about ten minutes drive from the town of Ica, has a population of around 115 and is surrounded on two sides by 300ft tall sand dunes - and on all the sides by desert.

Now, I'm not talking mild, scrubby, pseudo-desert either. I'm talking Laurence-of-Arabia, Bedouin traders, sands of the Nile, cartoon bloke-in-a-loin-cloth-crawling-along-for-days desert. In other words; Proper desert.

We ate lunch at a different restaurant that the taxi driver had recommended the night before, and discovered that it was about 50% cheaper and 100 times better. Then we booked onto a dune buggy ride with a man called Chupon.

Chupon had been recommended to us by a guy called Jon Green at Huacachina.com. Jon had assured us that Chupon was the craziest dune buggy driver in town, and would give us a ride to remember. He wasn't bloody wrong.

Chupon treated us to a journey into the sandy wastes that can only be described as a freestyle rollercoaster ride. We hurtled down giant dunes and up the other side, occasionally leaving the ground as we came over the crest, before hurtling down again at what seemed like near-vertical angles. Occasionally, we took a moments' breather to sand-board down the very same giant dunes on our bellies, achieving break-neck speeds. In a phrase; it were brilliant.

A couple of days of sunbathing and it was time to head to Cusco. We boarded an overnight bus (which turned up quite late), ate our now-cold food and headed to Cusco, arriving only five hours late. And this was supposed to be the most-punctual service in the country.

Upon arriving, we resisted the obligatory attempt by a taxi driver to rip us off, before settling into our hostel which, despite advertising to the contrary, had no consistently-hot water.

Heading into town, we soon discovered why Cusco is so popular. It's beautiful. However, it also has a major PR problem.

Imagine meeting the girl of your dreams. She's beautiful. Tall. She has a face that simply sparkles and she makes you feel at home. However, imagine you lean in close and suddenly realise that her hair is infested with lice. Well, that's Cusco/ Cash Cow.

The simple fact as far as I can see, is the vast majority of people in Cusco are interested in one thing; your money. They wish to separate you from it. To do so, they will promise the earth. Paint shiny, sparkling pictures about what you will experience. Make you feel like you are in the Abode of the Gods and the world is your lobster.

Of course, once said money and you are separated, you'll soon discover that it was all a pack of lies. That the very same people have no intention of doing anything but the very minimum. That they will cut any corners possible – for example, turning off hotel electricity to save money (“Perdon. No funciona ahora. Talvez, manana?”) – in order to maximise profit.

It's been exhausting, to be honest. Its not a situation I particularly enjoy; not being able to trust people. But, the simple observable facts from my perspective suggest that outright lying, in morality terms, is widely accepted here.

For example; I'd love to tell you about the magnificent jungle tour we went on to El Manu for four days. I'd love to tell you that it was well organised, professionally run and we saw all the wildlife we were told we would see. I'd love to tell you it was all it was promised to be. But I can't.

The reality is; that the tour Manu Adventures (steer clear – you have been warned) sold us had to be postponed for a day because the bus that turned up to collect us two and half hours late wasn't fit for human habitation, let alone a 12 hour trip into the jungle. That it wasn't a maximum of 8 people, as we'd been told, but instead 23. That the lodges we stayed in were dirty and smelly and generally in a state of serious disrepair. That although the owners said the hot water and electricity had only been out-of service for two days, other guests established that it had been far longer. That we didn't see anything except for a bunch of birds (which our guide seemed to love more than anyone). That at one point he tried to convince us that the oinking sound coming from the nesting cormorants 30 metres up a tree was, in fact, wild pigs.

Then, upon arriving back in Cusco, I discovered that an employee at an Internet cafe we had used, had decided to use our Skype account to phone her friends in Uruguay. By the time we managed to speak to the Tourist Police, the very same girls' boss had doctored the shops' time logs, and lied outright to the police to cover the crime.

Which brings me back to my opening line. Peru is a beautiful place, very different from Central America. I should be, by rights, gushing about the place and recommending it to all and sundry.

But I'm not. And I have to be honest why. I'm not because it's too tiring having to deal with the shit that so many of the locals insist upon dishing out. The taxi drivers trying to rip you off. The street peddlars following you up the street with a guilt trip, trying to sell you all sorts of crap so “I can eet my deener”. The dual pricing. The pickpockets constantly scoping you out as you walk the street. The massage girls who simply won't take no for an answer. The shoddy tour companies. The constant lies.

I don't want to end on a down note, so I won't. So far, we have been lucky with altitude sickness, although I've had my share of “food acclimatisation”. We've yet again met some great people, and been lucky enough to meet up with Vicky and Lee (see Utila) again. We are still having a lot of fun and enjoying the new experiences every day brings. We head to the Inca Trail on Saturday. Life's not all bad.

If only someone could make some of the people here understand the damage they are doing to themselves, and to beautiful Peru.

Photos from Lima, Huacachina and El Manu are here.

Whatever you do, steer cleer of Manu Adventures