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