Corny

I had a very strange bus journey last weekend. I started travelling at 8.30am Saturday morning, and finished at 5pm Sunday. As usual I didnt speak to anyone, but I think i did have a bit of a romance.

Before catching the second leg of the bus I settled down to a two course two dollar extravaganza in the bus journey. Now that I´ve discerned that the foggy feeling is salt not rohypnoll I dont mind eating it. The first course was a sort of plant broth with the usual floating potato and chunk of meat, and the second was fried chicken, chips and rice.

Very full I got on the new bus to find I was sitting next to a healthy looking Peruvian late teen. Healthy means robust like a piglet, strong and ready, before 20 years of fried chicken chips and rice twice a day cause back fat.

 As night fell and the lights were turned off we realised that the bus swinging from steep curve to curve on the mountain roads meant that we were going to get no comfort. We could only manage to stay still by unconsciously jamming out knees together. His was just like memory foam. Perfect. He also sweetly and wordlessly laid his blanket over me as well. I was a bit worried we were going to go a bit far at that point but I was cold so I took it.

I fell asleep and awoke to find my head was on something really soft. Oh gosh. Only a thicket of young black Peruvian hair could be that soft. I´d been sleeping cuddled onto his head. I´m worse than Joe Court!

But it was really comfy and he didn´t seem to mind so I kept with it and went back to sleep.

Then about six o´clock the light came in and as i saw his poor unlined oily face lying on my shoulder. I didnt want my fleece soaking THAT up! I managed to extract myself and concentrate on watching the six back to back films the bus showed that day. It is SO much better to watch romances than experience them.

Let me tell you I was glad when I saw how he ate his giant finger sucking sweetcorn snack later like a wolf. These youngsters have too much energy. 

Happy Christmas my sweets. I´m canoeing in Costa Rica, I hope. I set this post weeks ahead. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A cleansing experience

Somehow, under the influence of Paula´s proper traveller curiosity, we ended up in Bolivia for two days. We stayed one night in Copacabana, which was pouring with rain not rum or whatever it is meant to be in the song, and then got the boat to The Island of the Sun.

Once there we settled in a cafe shack to have a hot chocolate as it was still raining. Wrapped up in all our clothes, even our pajamas, we attracted quite a lot of attention, and soon we were chatting to the table next to us.

I asked them why they had come to South America and they said it was to take part in the medicine ceremony. By that i think they mean, ´to get hallucinogenic cactus drugs´, but tomato tomatooooo. They talked in rapturous tones for a long time about how it had changed their lives. They said it made them see how their life should be, recognise their true characters, and be at one with nature. Of course as well it makes you get a lot of diarrhea. Paula and I liked their stories but decided we could do all this for ourselves. Isn´t finding your true self what your gap yah is?

We got some egg sandwiches off the streetstall and decided to go for a hike of the coastline once the rain had cleared. We were high on the cliffs above the blue sea, and animals were popping out everywhere. Crossly, I kept pointing out at each fresh stray donkey or pig or chicken, that we WERE being at one with nature. There´s nature, there´s nature, and there it is again, as a sheep baaaed across out path. 

And then I had to run back from the hike as the egg sandwich off the street hit my delicate stomach. So I even got the cleansing finale.

You´ve got fish bone in your hair

Paula, one of the girls from my new gang, and I, have come to Arequipa, the famous white city of Peru. I can´t see any of the famous colonial architecture as we´re in Starbucks listening to Christmas songs whilst we drink eggnog lattes.

We had a bit too much local for lunch as nothing was open but a shack in which we managed to locate one sticky table amongst all the other bodies. Creepily there was also a baby crying from behind the wall with no door. Oh mystery solved, you crawl under like that.

We had the fried fish which turned out to be a lovely flat pink fish coated in thin batter. And yes I got it in my hair. Paula´s also had a fly in it, but she figured it was okay as it was also fried.

I thought the venue was definitely okay as Sabrina the Teenage Witch was playing on the tiny tv in the corner.

 

Orange you´re glad I´m safe

I´m now staying at a pretty hammock and palm strewn hostel on the beach, in the North of Peru. It´s called Trujillo, if you want to follow me on the map like my Grampa does.
I´m enjoying writing on the balcony watching hummingbirds in the orange blooms which creep over the side. Same colour as my hot orange Chanel lipstick. As descriptive as my writing gets i´m afraid.

Talking of orange, I just spied an older couple with matching badly dyed orange hair, and completely Cadbury´s purple clothes. I hope I never get that relaxed.

I can also see a girl eating something called Megatrig cereal out of a cup that i just saw her wash in outside dirty tap water. Maybe later she´ll be sicking up the chalk orange yoghurt I saw her drown it in.

I´m having a really nice week actually despite these eyesores. After my Lima trauma I met this very sweet girl in my hostel who had come to Peru for a week holiday. I decided to take her in hand so we came together here. I told her she might get yellow fever in other places. She´s quite naive so I like to pretend we´re Cher and Thai from Clueless. She looks quite like her so I can pretend to myself that Brittany Murphy is not really dead.

We´ve also met four other lone girls in our hostel so now we have a gang!

The future is bright, if not that orange, please.

Fried

After a lovely relax in Easter Island I meant to continue with three weeks at an eco lodge. After stocking up on toilet paper and ebooks (I didnt actually want to talk to anyone else who would go to an eco lodge), I set off from Lima.

I made it first to the scary out of town bus terminal and my taxi driver helped me get on with all the locals and their chickens. Twenty minutes of dusty scenery later we seemed to be off and away, out of Lima city into the reams of rickety suburbs.

SUDDENLY, the bus ground to a halt and the driver came to motion me to get off. I followed him outside, completely bemused, whilst he unloaded my bag onto the street. There was a little bus office right there so I hoped I was just changing busses, although not sure quite why. Maybe the chickens wanted another seat.

You´ll be very proud of me as once inside the bus office, I managed not to cry for at least thirty minutes. I sat down and a bus staff man called Hector sat beside me and proceeded to question me in Spanish for that same amount of time. Sometimes I understood the question, sometimes not. I definitely did not understand what I was doing there.

Then a police lady turned up and wanted to know what Hector was doing with me. I was glad I know the Spanish for "its too dangerouus, be careful, be careful, and alone is bad, and where is your mother, your father, your sister, your friends?" as that´s what she repeated over and over. She then got her English speaking daughter to ring the bus office to tell me the same in English.

But when is my bus coming? Never apparently. Through my sobs I managed to convey after nearly two hours of waiting very confused, that I would go back to Lima. Danger lady was very pleased about this and like a mother hen sternly took me by the elbow and said she´d take me somewhere safe.

After twenty minutes of Spanish scolding whilst walking we arrived at a shopping mall she deemed safe enough for me to get a taxi from. She popped me in one and rapped my knuckles for having the window open. Bye bye Mother hen.

Talking of chickens, that´s all i´ve eaten here in Peru. Fried chicken, chips and rice seems to be their national dish. Now i´m safe back at the hostel I´m hoping the fat will clog up my tear ducts and i can stop crying.

Scone, sc scone scone scone

I went to the inca ruins today with the nice girls I met, and one very strange boy.

The ruins were really interesting. A large ruined city built only out of mud, but with really intricate patterned walls of fish, pelicans, and the moon, which they worshipped. There was also the tomb of the King to see. When he died they sacrificed his 90 wives so he could take them with him to the afterlife. Well, only his principal wife was ritually sacrificed. The other 89 were only poisoned.
I do hope Hugh Hefner doesnt hear about this. Those bunnies haven't got long now!

I thought the ruins were quite tranquil, until this boy started telling me about seeing some other ruins on the Orkney Islands. I shall recount it to you.

"I bought some scones and then set out to see these ruins, which are the oldest houses in Europe. But after a long walk my friend and I couldnt see them so we decided to sit down on a hill to eat our scones. So we sat down and we were eating our scones when we noticed everyone else we see is pointing at us. We thought maybe they wanted some scones.. But then we realised we were eating our scones whilst sitting on top of the ruins! It had looked such a nice place to eat the scones, that we hadn't noticed the ruins.'

And then all I could think about was how much I wanted a scone. I even made up a song.

'I like it when they're out the oven hot hot hot,
I like it when the dough rises, da na da na
That scone sco scone scone scone!'

But obs to the tune of Sisqo in my head. 

Don´t be cuy

When I was in Lima I went out for a lovely dinner with my Uncle after some sunny sightseeing. The restaurant had put us in the back with the other non Spanish speaking people, and families with children. This was probably warranted as I nearly cried when my dinner arrived. This was worse animal cruelty than the time my Dad left my two oldest guinea pigs out in the sun in the garden and they died. 
I tried to eat it with a knife and fork but it was a bit impossible as the skin was so crispy. The waitor saw me struggling and advised me to eat each quarter by picking up a leg. Like a guinea pig lollypop. Mmmmm. It was like ham.

Beef with the Spanish

When I arrived in Easter Island I felt a little confused. It was so different to what had come before.
Firstly, I was sad without Robin, and the Ukranian guy next to me on the plane didn´t manage to cheer me up with his contraband bottle of brandy. I´m sure that´s more than 100ml. And it´s 2am.

Then the island itself was very tropical. White sands, palm trees, cockroaches scuttling beneath my feet. Chile sure does have everything. Oh, whoops, don´t mention Chile. My tour guide showed me his scars from being stabbed in four vital organs by a Chilean in a racist attack. Ooh show me again. Don´t put your top back on. Really? Did you nearly die? Show me again. I´m ever so empathetic.

Anyway, the most confusing thing here is that hardly anyone speaks English. This is completely new to me, but don´t worry, I found some Americans on a tour today to have a good whinge about it with. Whoever heard of a hostel owner who didn´t know what "half day horse riding tour of the island with lunch" was in English?

But most strange was when Laetitia and I (French girl from my hostel who says she doesn´t speak English but DOES), were tucking into our hostel pasta last night. The Italian guy next to us was about to aim his knife and fork into a full enormous beef tomato in its own dish. It was shining proudly and whole. Out of its own dish. I couldn´t take my eyes off it. Who eats like that? I eventually had to apologise for staring too long.


What a relief then to have a wonderful sightseeing day, followed by dinner with tour acquaintances, and the welcome refrain of, "Isn´t anyone else going to have another beer??" Now where have I heard that before?

Incan Sacrifice

We were up the mountain overlooking Machu Piccu today, positioning each other for the perfect scenic shot, when we heard a scream below.
I grudgingly put down the camera and followed Robin down the narrow steps.
A woman had fallen through the handrails down the side of the mountain! Oh dear. That looks nasty.
Luckily at the moment two strapping young men walked past us, so we volunteered them to form a human chain down the mountain to the victim. Robin helped by connecting them to the handrail, and I did my bit by exchanging worried eyes with the distressed husband. Girls´eye expressions are just as good as SOS.

"We" managed to drag the woman back up the mountain, and after everyone had had a good sit down, apart from the strapping young men obs who never sit down, we moved on our way.

Robin and I were hardly two Inca ruins away from the scene of the accident when we heard an almighty clap of thunder. Oh my gosh. That is totally the God of the Mountain expressing anger with us denying it the sacrifice. We should have just left her to dangle there like an early Incan virgin.

I cant be certain but I think the displeasure followed us, resulting in me getting three mosquito bites at the hot springs, and the waitress at breakfast giving us scrambled eggs not fried. Even after we repeatedly requested fried. A sign that the mountain God also didnt get what he had ordered, I presume..