19/06/2004With only one full day left we have an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as we pack our rucksacks for the very last time and reflect on what we have achieved. A combination of good planning and good luck has got us to Rio from Asia, through Australasia and South America to Ipanema beach where we rented a lovely apartment for our last few days and took the time to philosophise on the last twelve months of our lives. Certainly, our attention has been brought to the aspects of our "normal" lives which we would like to change and improve. Other than giving us a really good idea of what the rest of the world is like, we return with renewed motivation and desire to succeed in the rest of our lives.
This part of Brazil is so lavish, it really fits the bill for the perfect destination to end our trip in. Other than a visit to the famous Christ on the hilltop and a guided tour into the favelas (slums) of Rio, we have spent this final week simply lying in the sun near Copacabana beach, sipping cocktails and feeling very lucky indeed to have fulfilled this dream which, on first conception, seemed so impossible that we´d laugh and crack jokes just thinking about it.
Naturally we are a little sad that it has to end the traveling lifestyle despite its downsides has some very attractive advantages....dining out twice a day, sleeping as much as we please and being "free" to do what we like on a daily basis are among the things we´ll look back on fondly:-) Not to mention that it will be odd to pay more than 40p for a bottle of beer, and to deal with electricity and gas bills again.
It has to be said that traveling the world for a year is quite a selfish thing to do and we´re a little concerned about re-integrating ourselves into our families and respective societies. Bear with us! We feel a few weeks of "surreality" coming on, as we begin to grasp the concept of "sharing and caring" again rather than fending for ourselves alone. Of course, we are delighted to be returning to some kind of stability and seeing our families, friends and cat again! We have a brand new start to look forward to....
We definitely recommend this type of experience to anyone who is up for it. Radically changing your life and pursuing one goal to succeed at "having fun and seeing the world" does have very positive effects on your life (in our opinion). It does wonders for experiencing interacting with different people as well as learning more about yourself.... As for the relationship with your chosen traveling companion? Well, we would confirm that "love doesn´t make the world go around, but it sure makes the ride worthwhile!".
Right then, on to bigger and better things! Watch this space for details of "RTW 2" when we conquer Africa, Eastern Europe, Central America and the Middle East....might not be for a while still, but dreams CAN come true, so don´t dismiss this one just yet. Anyway, we intend to write to you in a few weeks to let you know how we got on and maybe as a warning to our friends who are still traveling not to ever go home!? We will of course post up all our South American photos when we have them developed.
In the meantime, here some statistics about our trip that you may find interesting (excluding the first 3 months in Europe):
Number of countries visited: 14
Number of flights in total: 16.of which only ONE was delayed!!!
Number of cars rented: 3
Number of hours spent in a bus (South America only): 160 (felt like more!)
Longest amount of time without sleep: 60 hours
Rucksack weight at its worst: 28kgs each
Rolls of film taken: 55 (but there´s still tomorrow to go!)
Number of parcels sent home for safekeeping: 5
Number of friends or couples visited: 10
Number of postcards written: 65
Number of EXTRA luggage in kilos that we´re flying back with: 38
Number of days where it rained all day long: NONE! (o:
Number of skydives made: 2(plus 120 if we were to include the first three months).
Number of hotel keys we forgot to hand in on departure: 3 (doh!)
Number of books read: 2 (Chris), 30 (Emily)!
Pairs of glasses lost: 1 (Chris), 4 (Emily)
Number of times we got married: 1 (Chris and Emily) - see "India" updates for full story
Number of strangers we slept with: about 100! So much for the marriage.
There you go, that was our trip! We just wanted to write this update while we are still "on the road". Perhaps our perceptions will be different when we get home? We'll see....
Look forward to seeing you all very soon. Thanks for tuning in.
Over and out
Emily and Chris.
13/06/2004
Ever aware of how little time we now have left the Chris and Emily team are making a concerted effort to indulge and make the most of our remaining days. Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina has proved a perfect place to play! The city is ultimately civilised, fashionable, fun and due to the weak peso, very cheap. Dangerous combo...
Having resisted the opportunity to shop since Chiang Mai (and because we looked like complete "bums" in comparison to the extremely well-dressed locals), we decided to buy some new clothes. It turns out underneath our cool, hardened "we-only-need-two-pairs-of-trousers-for-an-entire-year" image we are complete shop-o-holics! Like something out of a daytime TV makeover show we looted the high street stores to dress ourselves head to foot. The country has an excellent cattle industry so there's very good quality leather everywhere. Style and taste are foremost in Argentineans' minds so there's very trendy "clobber" to choose from. As a result we have now tripled our luggage and are currently trying to work out how to get the bags to the bus station this afternoon. We are considering two taxis! We joke not. Even more shocking - we have discovered and confirmed that Emily is in fact a female! May not sound so surprising to you, but make-up, handbags and high heels have now made a sensational debut in her new look - watch out. She may soon begin to paint her nails or get a Brazilian!?
We have to admit though, it was really nice to get dressed up and wear nice clothes for a few days. We can't deny that our two pairs of travel-trousers each are getting pretty grubby and there are some unidentifiable stains which just won't go away. Chris has a big tear in his trousers and Emily has blue ink on one of her 4 shirts... We don't smell too good either!? We are currently referring to each other as Scummy 1 (E) and Scummy 2 (C) (a close second!).
As if the bags weren't already a problem to fit into the cab, we decided to weigh ourselves down a bit too. You see, there's a thing here called "Tenedor Libre" which means an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. In the UK and many other places "all you can eat" very often means that the food is fairly limited in choice and not fantastic quality. However, here in Argentina things are very different. For around three to five pounds you can have unlimited amounts of superb meat, fish veg and salad on a par with top restaurants at home. Needless to say, today's lunch was a bit of a marathon! We have chosen to interpret "all-you-can-eat" as an absolute must rather than just a suggestion or possibility. At the bottom of this update is a list of the food which we ate today. We decided to list it only at the end so as not to interrupt the flow of this otherwise compact update.
Argentina has recently experienced their currency collapse, virtually overnight the peso became worth only one third of its previous value. Sadly this economic disaster has made things hard for many locals but has opened up great possibilities to travelers like ourselves. It feels a little bit sour benefiting from a country's misfortune but we're sure we'll get over it, and at least we are bringing money into the country.
The indulgence has been fun but we'd have felt guilty not taking in some sights and getting a feel for the culture. With our very short two weeks here we only had time to take a side trip to see the Iguazu Falls in the North. After sitting on a bus for fifteen hours in relative comfort, (comparable to business class on some airlines), the scenery changed from temperate to sub-tropical forest. The falls, inside a national park are one of South America's highlights. Although not as tall as Niagara for example, they are spread out over quite some area and offer a spectacular variety of views. There's a thundering section where thousands of gallons of water plunge eighty metres every second into a bowl of spray and mist. There are picture-perfect scenes where the falls just spill over the square edge of an upper river, into the surrounding forest and beautiful rainbows formed by the mist below. Add to this a plethora of smaller cascades hidden in the alluring flora and fauna and you have a unique place to visit. In all there are 270 falls. Also, there are many animals to look out for in the wild: coaties (a cross between raccoons and badgers?!), toucans, vultures, lizards and hundreds of multi-coloured butterflies. Wow!
Back in Buenos Aires our culture-fill came from seeing a bit more of the city and meeting some damn nice locals. Turns out Emily's friend Sean Graham from Geneva now lives here. He kindly drove us around, showing us the things that we are supposed to see as tourists as well as the hip n' groovy places to shop and play. He's half English and has lived all over the world so helped us to get up to speed with the way things work here. And then he almost killed us with the best ice-cream we've ever eaten (tiramisu, banana split and mascarpone) although he was very blase about it all. Argentina apparently has the best ice-cream in the Southern hemisphere and he eats the stuff all the time. He's used to it, nothing special. We beg to differ!
The city has some very attractive continental architecture, errrmm as well as attractive people. We're not sure how they do it because we would look pretty rough if we partied as hard as they do! It's perfectly normal to start the evening at about 10:00pm, dance until 4:00am and then get up for work at 8:00!.... Late starts appear to be all the rage. We treated ourselves to a "cena-show" last night, which involves a nice intimate meal at a restaurant with Tango dancers prancing around a stage in among the tables. Dinner kicks off in a gorgeous restaurant at 10pm but the entertainment doesn't get going till about 11:30 when most Brits are tucked up in bed with some Horlicks! Wow, was it worth the wait! The Tango is stunningly sexy and the masters of it are incredibly skilled as well as acrobatic. They show complete commitment and involvement which is good, because some of the moves could go very wrong in the steps of the half-hearted. The dance is known and performed world-wide but this is the place to see it! Sometimes you are even lucky enough to see people performing it in the cobbled streets of the city in broad daylight just because they feel like it. And then something terrible happened: the dancers approached our tables and tried to get us to dance. We think not! The quickest excuse we could think of was to look a bit green and sick and hold our tummies while shaking our heads. This wasn't hard to do as by that point we'd necked two bottles of red, so the lovely dancers smiled politely and moved on. Close one!
Last Sunday we went to the Recoleta area and ventured quite by chance into the enormous cemetery there for Argentina's most elite and richest honorable members. Not a blade of grass to be seen - almost all of the tombs were made of marble and built into large cathedral-like chambers. They're mostly family graves and are all interlinked by paved stones and flash walkways. Really fancy! We saw Evita's grave too (Eva Peron) although her husband didn't quite make it into the cemetery, he's buried next door. Also of interest and in the same area was a hippie's market which other than selling funky jewelry and clothes was just a great place to people-watch. It's based around a small park and we just sat down and watched in awe as Buenos Aires did its "thing". This thing is hard to describe. We guess it's more a "feeling" than a thing, really. It involves street performers and acrobats, lots of musicians and also many dancers. Imagine living in a world where no one is self conscious and everybody just does what they feel like doing without caring what others might think?! In the middle of the park were a group of musicians playing, and then a whole bunch of people just dancing like mad. They couldn't help themselves, not a single person stood still! It was the coolest thing, everybody just getting jiggy and laughing and having a ball. Excellent! We hear that Brazil is very much like this everywhere, but we'll have to wait another few days to find out. Our last flight before heading home is to Rio, on the 15th.
We're sad to leave Buenos Aires after some memorable time here. However, it's high on the list of places that we'd like to visit again. For now we are off to Mendoza and the wine region of the west.
We do appreciate the holiday offers that have been coming in though. You can all appreciate, we're sure, our need to maintain a healthy level of sight-seeing and new places to explore after this year. A good one from Zaz for Cornwall in August, and a rather exciting offer to the Yemen in September for Em's parents' 30th anniversary. Very nice! Keep those coming.
Hasta Luego!
Scummy 1 and Scummy 2
List of what we ate for lunch:
Waldorf salad
Other salads including eggs, cucumber, lettuce, watercress, tomatoes, carrots, aubergine, broccoli, brussel sprouts, coleslaw. - Steak with garlic sauce (E), onion and chilli sauce (C)
Smoked ham (jamon serrano)
Sweet and Sour Pork
Onion Rings
Calamari
Potato mash
Pumpkin mash
Cannelloni
Fried Cheese slabs
Spinach balls
Spring rolls
Sweet and Sour Chicken
Beef
Dough balls
Beans
....and for desert:
Chocolate roulade swiss roll
Tiramisu
Chocolate mousse
Grapes
Burp!
Our trip seems to go in phases from totally completely hectic to just kinda busy. At the moment, we're just getting over two weeks of totally completely hectic. There's no way that we can possibly begin to describe all that we've seen and done without you having to take a week off work to read it yourselves (and we wouldn't want to do that to you!) so here are the highlights:
You know all about our silver mine adventure already. That took us a while to get over! Every time we went to sleep at night we thought about those poor guys out there. Also, about 2 days after visiting the mines, Emily caught a nasty coughy chest infection thingy. Are the two related? We don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if they were. Anyway, other than the mines, we went to the mint museum in Potosi where silver coins were manufactured from the 16th to 19th century for Spain. The well preserved machinery is kept in this impressive fortress-like building which takes up a whole block and has metre-thick walls. Ironically, these days Bolivian money is made at a cost, mostly in Spain but also in Canada, France and Great Britain.
- After Potosi we made our way to "Sucre", the political capital although we thought that La Paz was a lot 'busier'. The highlight here was the Sunday Tarabuco market which as well as providing us with a nice weaving and some pretty trinkets, gave us access to the relaxed locals for some top-quality chats about their country. Notably, the son of a restaurant owner who sat down with us at our table and told us all about Bolivia as he sees it. He was surprisingly quite negative about it and kept making excuses for the "imperfections" of it, saying that it must be horrible to be tourists!? On the other hand, he would love to go to England as he has seen it on the television and looked at pictures on the Internet....London looks like heaven (!?) and he really wanted to meet some real British hooligans! Also - do Scotsmen really wear skirts!? Hmmm.
A few interesting facts then, straight from our buddy's mouth: Doctors and dentists in Bolivia do not need any qualifications to practice, so anyone can set up a surgery. We suspected that this might be the case when we saw some really derelict dirty buildings in back streets with graffiti and broken windows labeled "gynecologist" and "beautician". No thank you! One particular street-dentist advertised his surgery as being "better than the rest" because his has lights in it (!) and his drilling machine has a high-speed function. Don't want to know!... Despite this, Bolivian country-folk could not even afford to get medical help even if they wanted to (because an appointment costs 20 Bolivianos (2.5 US dollars) - an average day's wage) so what they do when they have tooth ache is get a friend to knock the offending tooth out with a farming tool and to bash the gum about enough to destroy the nerve for good. If they're suffering from a common ailment (diarrhoea, flu, headaches etc.) they go to the village's "witch-doctor", eat some llama fetuses and drink bats' urine, and then they usually die anyway. Sadly even basic medication (electrolyte and paracetamol) is not available to them. And we thought the NHS was bad, eh!?
But that's not all. Our mate claims that no hospitals in Bolivia are equipped (or qualified) to handle any operations more serious than tonsillitis and appendicitis, (although this doesn't stop many attempting them). Yikes! He said that the real problem lies in that the qualified people cannot get any jobs as none are available. A particular law University in Sucre pumps out 250 "qualified" law students every year, but what does a country like Bolivia do with 250 qualified lawyers? And that explains why our qualified law-student friend was working in his mother's restaurant, serving our table. How depressing. Anyway, back to the notes...
- Another Sucre highlight was getting rudely interrupted one quiet evening while we were checking emails. Out of nowhere a huge commotion erupted outside the cafe, and then horses galloped past, cheerleading girls with twirly sticks skipped past and a great big marching band started beating away at their drums. What the ****!? We thought that it was just another protest, (an easy assumption to make here as protests are a daily occurrence) but on closer inspection it turned out to be the rehearsal for Sucre's anniversary parade tomorrow. Brilliant! So we finished the night sipping wine on a first-floor balcony and enjoying the show. Everyone was really buzzed and the people just couldn't help dancing to the music in the streets. It was a really vibrant atmosphere which we were chuffed to be a part of.
- Our time in Bolivia finished off on a high with a brilliant 3-day tour to the famous Salt plains of Uyuni. (Uyuni is a desolate windswept town that grew up at a railway junction in the uninhabited expanses of the altiplano). First up though, a quick look at Uyuni's museum of deformed craniums and well-preserved mummies. We're still getting a kick out of grossing ourselves out with those! After that and a surprise concert by two excellent Bolivian bands who were just jamming in some hall, we turned up at "Colque Tours" ready to start our 4wd trek across the salt plains. However, it just so happens that the very morning we were meant to leave, 400 teachers were protesting at the local gas station and 6 of Colque's jeeps were surrounded and effectively stranded. Problem! So, like most South American solutions, Colque just worked with whatever they had. They took the number of people (21) and the number of jeeps available (3) and divided them equally, then added a driver in each, all our luggage, and we were set to go. Don't try this at home - you'll get squashed!
Thankfully, the scenery very quickly began to change and our interest in our surroundings kept our minds off the various body parts which we had lost blood-flow to. The Uyuni Salt flat is arguably the world's largest at 112,000 km (squared) and it grows every year with each rainfall. How to describe it? A big white carpet. Sounds pretty dull, we know, but really you'll have to take our word for it - it's an amazing sight. The salt glistens in the harsh sunlight, and just goes on and on as far as the eye can see. A bit like snow but hard and shinier, no trees, ski lifts or stretchers. Strangely, about an hour's drive into these flats (just past the hotel made entirely of salt) is a big island with hundreds of cacti on it. Isolated and beautiful, in the middle of nowhere, just like that! You drive up to it, park the jeep and climb to the top (50m) where you can then see "the ocean" of salt and enjoy the serene silence of the immense flats. It's very bizarre. The cacti only grow 1cm per year, so the 12m-tall ones we saw must have been some 1200 years old? That's older than our parents!!!
- Still on the Uyuni tour (day two) we got to see the altiplanic coloured lagoons which are jade-green, blue, white orange and red all mixed together. They're also home to 3 species of flamingoes which just fly around eating algae and look majestic for the tourists. Our second night was quite interesting, as unlike the first night we had "basic" accommodation. This means beds without springs in a mud hut with no running water and minimal food. Bear in mind that we were still over 4,000m (12,000ft) at this point and that at night it can get down to minus 20 degrees Celsius! We had cunningly packed a few bottles of booze to warm us up before going to bed. We could tell early on that it was going to be a long night! Especially for Chris whose stomach took violent offense to the minimal food and had him up and running about in his long johns and woolly socks between the mud hut with the beds in it and the mud hut with the hole-in-the-ground in it. Bad luck, mate. Brrrr!
- Day three began with interesting geothermal phenomenon, much like we saw at Rotorua in New Zealand. You know, the usual erupting geysers and boiling mud pools. Very nice. We even managed to de-thaw our toes in the 30-degree natural springs. They were very grateful. And then, after several hours of moonscape scenery, impressive rock formations and a monstrous volcano (Licancabur, which holds the world's highest non-navigable lake in its crater at 5,960m) we were dropped off at the border to get onto another bus to go to "sleepy groovy" San Pedro de Atacama (the world's driest desert) in Chile. At this point it is worth noting that it's a good job that our group on this tour was great, because our guide's performance was...let's say, "sub-optimal" (we are pretty sure he lost his job after the tour ended). The cheeky Emilio obviously had a chip on his shoulder because other than being rude and obnoxious, he failed to turn on our hot water so the first night our shower was cold, and then he told us to wake up 45 minutes earlier than necessary just for a laugh. Naughty! Of course, we had plenty of opportunities to get very close to the group over the three days. Not only because we had to sit on them to get in the jeep in the first place, but also because freezing your little socks off at minus twenty is an experience that you definitely want to share with the rest of people in your dorm all night long and as loudly as possible. Thank you Jon for your lovely choccie cookies and for a good time in the desert.
- The highlight in San Pedro has to be the "astronomical tour" we did one night. Basically, a crazy French astrologer packs you and some other victims into his truck around 9pm and then drives you out into the boonies where he lives in a flash mud hut (with a Jacuzzi - woof!) in the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing around except his impressive collection of state-of-the-art telescopes and a heck of a lot of stars. The complete lack of light pollution makes the viewing excellent. Here, after some hot cocoa (it's still minus 20 guys, we're freezing!), he begins to seriously pummel as many astronomical facts into our ignorant brains as possible, and any time we don't believe something he says, he proves it to us through the telescopes! Did you know that the moon has a rabbit in it? And that if you know where to look you can see Jupiter and its moons with your naked eye? Well, we were impressed!
- We spent a good three days in San Pedro trying to nurse poor Chris back to health after Uyuni, but it just wasn't working, and we began to suspect giardia as he had all the symptoms... This quickly wiped our star-struck smiles off our faces and we decided that the best thing to do would be to leave slightly earlier than planned and head back to Santiago where we could get adequate medical care. Back into the bus for yet another 14 hour ride...and that was precisely when Chris miraculously recovered from his near-fatal disease (you know what it's like when men are ill!). So we arrived back in Santiago and aborted Operation Ospital because Chris was suddenly healthy as ever and simply wouldn't go there. Not impressed!
And that just about wraps up the rest of Bolivia. It really was an interesting country to visit despite the things about it that we didn't like so much. For example - why are Bolivians so rude to tourists? It wasn't just us, it was all the gringos. Seriously, there was a notable difference in the way we were treated between Bolivia and Peru or Chile. In Uyuni one night, we walked into a restaurant and were seated and given the menu. After just enough time to each choose exactly what we wanted (salad starters, pasta for Ems and a saucy Andean Potato dish for C) a waiter came up to us and told us to leave because it was too cold and the restaurant was going to close down for the night!?? We also witnessed a mad woman in a tour agency yelling her poncho off at two tourists in our group for not listening to her (one had been translating what she was saying to her partner) and countless times we were lied to, misinformed, blanked out or just simply slated. They hate us! And here's some more weird stuff:
- In La Paz - the Shoeshine boys all wear balaclavas and gloves and look really menacing. They're very intimidating as you can only see their eyes, and they all look like they've just robbed a bank. Why!?
- Most market stalls are manned by tiny children. If you absolutely have to buy a beer, or a packet of Always (Ems, not C!), a 5-yr old kid has to hand it to you? Cringe!
- Cars at night drive around without their lights on even though we know their lights work because they use them (along with the horn) to flash us with when we are crossing the street.
- There is a lot of corruption and you have to be very careful getting taxis, particularly in the big cities. The biggest danger is in the white ones...all other coloured taxis are considered safe!
- Women and men "sell" the use of their mobile phones, as it's cheaper to make mobile-to-mobile calls than it is phone booth-to-mobile calls. This means that they handcuff their phones to their own wrists and "stand by" with their arm in the air when a caller uses their phone to make a private call!
So there you have it. Bolivia is a strange old place! But despite all of these things, we've had a very exciting few weeks. We can't deny that very much like Peru, Bolivia has had some of the most picturesque landscapes in South America. Those views of the altiplano lakes are breathtaking. We often wish that we could whisk all of you over for the day so that you can see it for yourselves! We've taken over 50 rolls of film and don't believe that any of you will have the patience to sit through that many photos with us, not even the really passionate ones of you, or the family members who have to pretend to love us that much! (o: Also, the freshly-squeezed orange juice from street stalls is to die for, and we can't get over how cool it is that everybody wears traditional dress, not just to impress the tourists but just because that's what they wear. Imagine all of England in top-hat and tails, or all of Switzerland in Lederhosen, dirndl and Alphorns. Neat!
On to Argentina then. Read the next update to find out how we've managed to shop the rest of our savings away (um..err..that money was meant to get us somewhere to live on our return. Oops!) and double our weight in those "all-you-can-eat" places which frankly serve the best beef we've ever eaten in our lives (um..err..we've just put back on the 5kgs we lost in Asia. Oops!).
Till next time on the web
Emily and Chris 24/05/2004Disclaimer: The following update describes scenes of a disturbing nature. Everything we are about to write is correct and accurate at the time of publishing and much as we wish it weren't - it is! If you think you're up for it, read on. If you want to have pleasant dreams tonight, just close your browser and get on with whatever you were doing before your curiosity got the better of you!
Okay, so the last update was about our trip over from Peru to Bolivia and how fascinating and stimulating Bolivia was, right? Well, after La Paz, we decided to go even higher up and got on a bus for 12 hours to Potosi - the world's highest city at a dizzying 4,100m above sea level. Why Potosi? Because of its famous silver mines for which it has at times been cursed, blessed, rich and depressed. The city was founded in 1545 and the discovery of silver mines in the nearby "Cerro Rico" proved so rich that Potosi quickly grew into Latin America's largest and wealthiest city. But in order to satisfy the greedy demands of the those in power, millions of indigenous people and imported African slaves were put to work in the mines as slaves in appalling conditions. In the early 19th century, silver production began to flag and Potosi's luck took a turn for the worse. These days it is a continuing demand for tin which keeps the city alive although small-scale silver extraction still takes place. Sadly, the working conditions within the mines have not changed much with time. The International markets dictate the price of metals exported, in turn, this restricts how much miners earn and so they continue to work in appalling conditions for very little.
To our surprise, it is actually possible to go down into one of the active mines on a three hour tour to see what it's all about. Easy, right? Read on...
The first giveaway that this trip might be slightly less tame than our other fancy, protected tourist attraction tours was the long disclaimer which we had to sign declaring that we were aware that as an "active mine", we were getting ourselves into pretty "unstable" territory that may at any time be blown up or collapse. Hmmmm...doesn't exactly pump you full of confidence, does it? But we signed it anyway, and turned up ready and waiting at 8am for the trip of a lifetime.
Our first stop was at our guide's house to change into our mining outfits: overtrousers, a jacket, wellie boots, a helmet and a headlamp with a big battery strapped to our belts. We were only allowed to bring small daybags with us, and were advised to bring a lot of water. So far, so good.
Our second stop however was at the "Miners' market" where 120 shops supply 6,000 miners with ALL the equipment they need "in there" - from wheelbarrows, spades and gloves to nitroglycerine dynamite sticks (50 US cents each), detonators, fuses, ammonium nitrate and (importantly) alcohol, cigarettes and coca leaves. Oh and ofcourse lots and lots of coca leaves. A worrying combination! You know how, at home, they don't sell alcohol at Petrol stations, well, such sensible product division is not present in Bolivia!.... The idea was to get the miners gifts to give to them on our journey. They earn between 2.5 and 7 US dollars per day depending on the quality of the ore that they find, and 0 US dollars if there are no minerals at all. So you see, they're really quite appreciative of our gifts. Our group even scored a "completo" (the complete kit for the mother of all explosions) for a bargain 2.25 US dollars for our guide to blow up in a demonstration at the end of the day. No joke!
We got back in the bus with our mining gifts (mostly soft drinks and coca leaves) and headed to Stop number 3 - the processing plant, so that we could see what happens to the ore between being extracted and being ready for export as silver, zinc, tin or lead. The process is primitive! The ore is basically pulverised in big crushing drums in which chemicals are added, having been distributed 'evenly' by plastic cups going round and round on a rotating wheel!
Finally - to stop number 4, the great climb up (by bus) to the single mountain "Cerro Rico" (rich mountain) which has 120 active mines in it (manned by 6,000 men as previously mentioned). There are no maps of the various tunnels having been dug inside (each mine has 4-9 levels in it) and no one group has much idea of what the other 119 groups are up to. Hence the waiver!? It was all beginning to make sense to us....but we were too far now to turn back and our only choice was to bravely venture into the heart of this mountain which might at any point collapse and kill us. Sounds dramatic, we know - but this was a real danger and one that we were aware of throughout the next (longest) three hours of our lives...
After becoming accustomed to the darkness and the narrowness of the tunnel (comparable to the Vien Moch tunnels we saw in Vietnam), the first thing that struck us was the overpowering caustic smell which in no time at all had completely dried out the back of our throats and caused an intense burning sensation in our lungs which was to last us until a good couple hours after we had exited the mines. The second thing which caught our attention was a deep rumbling sound getting closer to us which turned out to be a 2-tonne trolley being "ridden" like a bobsleigh by 4 miners (like in Indian Jones) who used their feet to brake and tried not to derail although this happens all the time. The said "tunnels" are naturally too small and narrow to accomodate for our group of 7 plus the guide plus the trolley and four miners, and the trolley gets right of way - so we then had to either leg it up the dark tunnel to find a suitable alcove to shelter in, or alternatively we had to plaster ourselves up against the wall and pray that THIS one wouldn't derail... Our guide told us that 'light signals' were used to ensure our safety and to avoid collisions, but we were not convinced. As if this weren't enough to keep our fragile minds busy - we were simultaneously trying to dodge the large pipes which stretched across the 1m ceiling, carrying either (leaking) compressed air or live electricity.
The further down you go into the mine, the narrower and steeper the tunnels become until you are literally writhing on the muddy floor to get through a hole which will only accomodate you without your little rucksack. Back away claustrophobes - this adventure is NOT for you! Actually, neither of us has ever suffered from claustrophobia but we were both verging on minor panic attacks at various times during this trip (we hope that people who know us are aware that this feeling would not be enduced easily). Bear in mind that we were already at a significant 4,100 metres, and also that we were about 1km deep into the heart of a great big mountain, so even on a good day - breathing would have been a challenge. Now add to that the caustic gases, a haze of airbourne dust and the stifling 40-degree temperature and you might just imagine what it was like....
On we went, further and further until we stopped in the first chamber which houses the statue of the devil (who the miners believe own the mountain) although they refer to him as "El Tio" (the uncle) because "he is more like family to them". Indeed, the devil and "pachamama" (mother earth) together are responsible for the welfare of these miners, and all of them strongly believe in keeping up good relations with both. This means that before every drink, a few drops of alcohol are spilt on the floor as an offering, as are coca leaves and cigarettes. However - the miners also believe that the purer the alcohol they drink is, the purer the silver will be that El Tio rewards them with. Therefore, they drink 96% alcohol as if it were water, and our guide made us try some. It tastes as bad as it smells. We don't recommend it, it's vile.
After paying our respects to El Tio (coca offerings, nasty evil alcohol and cigarettes) we moved on to a second chamber where 2 miners were shovelling ore into big (medieval) rubber baskets which were then winched up to the 1st floor on a pulley system which was referred to as an 'elevator'. This was one of 450 baskets to be filled and pullied up that day, as for with every few minutes that passed, yet another 2-tonne trolley would come crashing through the chamber and unload more ore to be shovelled into the baskets. Our sharing guide handed us each a spade and told us to have a go...but we think he was just showing off: For every 5 spades the miners filled and dumped, we could barely fill one, and after only 2 or 3 minutes we were all panting and out of breath, unable to continue. Sadly "quitting" is not a choice which our miner-friends have, for "time is money". That is why, two or three times per week they pull a "dobla" (double-shift) which means that they work for 24 hours straight with at most a 4 hour break. But, that's not all! While 'on shift', the miners do not eat. They can't. It is so hot and they are sweating so much that they don't have the physical energy to digest food. If they tried to eat, they would either vomit or suffer from diarrhoea. So instead, they chew vast amounts of coca leaves for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Indeed, each miner without fail has a hamster-pouch full of the stuff in one cheek which he chews for about 4 hours before spitting out and replacing. That is the only form of 'nutrition' which they receive (other than liquids/alcohol) while working although as you may have read from our previous 'coca' information - it actually works in their favour as a stimulant for their stamina and endurance.
The final chamber we visited was on the lowest level of this particular mine (about 100m deep into the earth) and is comparable only to Hell! Here, the miners were boring out (by hand) 6 dynamite-shaped cavities to be blown up later that day. Our own guide (having been a miner himself for 5 years) knew the team quite well. They were ex-colleagues, and we all poured ourselves into the tiniest of holes, crawling on our hands and knees and cramped ourselves into an asphyxiating cavity for a "chat" to get to know them better! By this point we were wondering why on earth we had paid for this tour... honestly, we're up for different adventures and we like a challenge, but THIS one really takes the biscuit and is an experience we can safely say that we never want to have again.... Anyway, so the "team leader" was a 39-year-old father of 6. Most miners have up to 12 children (the more miners in the family, the more money, right?). His eldest son (21 years) was working alongside him and had been in the mines since the tender age of 13. Some of them start as young as 8... About 50% of the miners eventually suffer from infectious respiratory disorders like silicosis and tuberculosis. If these don't kill them, there's a whole host of other nasties that will: mental illness, physical impediments and digestive infections. In fact, the life expectancy of a Potosi miner is exactly 10 years from the day he first enters the mines. Any man over 40 is considered old. We'll think about that next time we're having a "bad day" at work.
Finally, when we just couldn't take any more and were really struggling to breathe, our guide escorted us coughing and spluttering out to the safety of the outdoors.... Just to finish off our nerves we still had our "completo" to detonate. The guide set up the fuse and placed our little dynamite stick inside a bag of ammonium nitrate and then casually walked into a small field about 50m away. He yelled out "careful!" to any wandering passer-byers or dogs and then the bloody thing let rip! The blast of the explosion shocked us all so much that not one person from our group managed to get a photo despite the fact that we were all poised and ready.
Well, that's what we did the other today. Needless to say that we will never again take silver, lead, zinc or tin for for granted. Bit by bit our trip has thrown things at us to challenge us and teach us to appreciate "life as we know it". After this excursion we will add "the right to breathe clean air" to our long list of things to be grateful for.
Thanks for reading!
Emily and Chris.
21/05/2004Satisfied with our recent hike we made our way back to Cusco from "aguas calientes", the town near Machu Picchu. We took the train, which has got to be the safest way through the mountains, right? Wrong! The train de-railed! No injuries, we hardly felt anything apart from the train grinding to a halt, just a reminder that we are in the developing world... They sorted it out within reason and we ended up making it back to Cusco by bus.
From Cusco we travelled South (and up) to the city of Puno on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at about 3,800m. The altitude is significant here because the light is so good (making the reflection brilliant) that the lake appears luminescent. Some locals found the lake so attractive that they decided to live on it. A few hundred years ago the indigenous people of the region, the Uros, wanted to escape the control of the expanding Inca empire and so they built floating islands out of reeds. They built their houses on these reed platforms and created a new way of life. They caught fish in the Lake which they traded for other goods at Puno port. Although the Uros did inter-marry with the mainlanders, this way of life has been maintained until today. We visited an island to learn how they create these giant floating reed structures. They really are like small islands (50m x 20m), although the "residents" have to build a new one every twenty-five years because by that point the reeds are so waterlogged that there is a serious risk of drowning! Walking on them is a bit like treading on a water-bed but they have managed to construct fully-functional houses, some with electrical appliances through excellent use of Solar panels (which Frog would have loved).
Puno was our last stop in Peru after an excellent few weeks there. Our next intented destination was Copacabana in Bolivia, although how we were to get there posed some tricky questions. During our time in Peru there had been lots of protesting by farmers, which was not worrying in itself because protesting is a way of life here and everything we had seen thus far had been peaceful. We were actually pleased to see well-organised protests showing that there is at least free speech in the country, something not present everywhere else we have been. They were protesting predominantly against the law that prevents the growing of Coca, the plant from which Cocaine is derived. Coca erradication programs have been encouraged/enforced by countries like the US. In our opinion the problem lies with the insatiable desire of these consumer countries for the drug. Erradication programs which involve using chemicals to destroy the Coca that also destroy other crops are surely not the way forward?.... So we do have some sympathy for the farmers who also grow the leaf for legitimate purposes (purposes which are safe and traditional, such as that lovely coca tea that Emily has grown quite a liking to!). However, the protests had turned ugly in the town of Ilave which is on the 'highway' between Puno and Copacabana. The farmers had been blocking this highway for weeks causing serious disruption. They also decided to shoot the town mayor dead! A little worrying!? So we were faced with whether we should try to pass through this trouble spot. Were we taking too much risk considering it? Should we drastically re-think our plans? Would tourists be targeted?.... With much deliberation and an equal amount of advice from the locals, we decided that the worst that might happen would be being sent back to Puno.... Thankfully, we passed through the town without event. We saw just a few boulders that were scattered on the roadside, clearly used as blocades a couple of days earlier.... oh and we also saw a recently demolished bridge!
So, on to Bolivia and the lakeside retreat of Copacabana. It was immediately obvious on arrival that, as stated in the guide book, the country's population is the most indigenous in the region at 50% pure Amerindian blood. The facial features are distinct and the traditional dress is charming. The ladies are particularly well presented, typically with large layered dresses to fit their "well-built" frames, long dark plaited hair (which merges into one plait at the bottom if they're married but remains as two separate ones if they're single) and topped with a bowler-like hat from one of the 120 varieties available (milliners are not out of work here!). This is great to see because, unlike in alot of Peru, they dress like this for style and tradition rather than to attract tourists' cameras.
Another distinct feature of Bolivia is the altitude. The Spanish invaders called the region "Alto Peru", Alto meaning "upper" and we can see why, most of the inhabited areas (on the west side) range between 3,000 to 4,000m. There's just no oxygen up here! Fortunately, we've gradually "gone up in the world" literally (certainly not figuratively), so apart from being a bit out of breath when walking around town and being dizzy most of the time (coca tea, anyone!?) we have not suffered too badly.
Politics here? Well, they've had 188 changes of government in their 167 years as a republic so you could say things have been a "little unsettled"! It's still pretty turbulent and nobody seems to like the government. Everywhere we go there is a protest of some kind and there appears to be no shortage of people on soap-boxes. Although it causes us disruption because roads are blocked and people are on strike, we are again pleased to see that people have free speech and quite enjoy being surprised on a daily basis by the 'latest' protest which sometimes comes complete with a marching band and community standing-ovation.
Compounding peoples' discontent, Bolivia has also lost just about every conflict it has been in! It has sustained chronic land loss over the last few hundred years, most notably the loss of access to the Pacific as Chile grew north to exploit the rich nitrate resources. Although this land was lost over one hundred years ago, Bolivians are still bitter towards the Chileans. Having said that, they may now have an opportunity to get their own back because some natural gas resources have recently been discovered here. Bolivia will want to export this but in order to do so they need access to the sea. There's no way they will want to route pipes through Chile and it looks like Peru will get the contract to help them export it. Two fingers to Chile!
Coca growing is also a big issue here, as we learnt on a visit to the Coca museum in La Paz. There's a lot of Cocaine production in the jungle, several thousand units producing the drug to be sold at ten times the price of production and shipment to developed countries. It is the largest export and a lot of money is made, but certainly not by the farmers growing or processing it. Coca erradication programs like that which we described in Peru are also in force here. However, it's a hard call to say whether this is the "right" course of action because although 90% of Coca goes towards the production of Cocaine, the leaf is part of Bolivian tradition, culture and heritage. Drinking Coca tea and chewing the leaf are a part of everyday life. How do you maintain this tradition and remove the illegal drug problem?
Other than a get-yer-southamerican-textiles-in-this-great-market shopping spree, the Coca museum turned out to be the most interesting thing in La Paz, the defacto capital. Did you know that the Coca Cola (parent) company still has the right to produce 500Kg of Cocaine annually? Presumably for medical use?... And that Coca Cola still uses Coca for flavouring? And that the US accounts for only 5% of the world's population but uses 50% of the world's cocaine?.... Shocking!
We guess that these points we have noticed abut Bolivia may sound a bit difficult and that you may wonder why we're here at all when we could be spending our time on Brazilian beaches? On the contrary, these things make the place a stimulating experience! There are real issues here. The people are alive and opinionated. This is real life with an "in-ya-face" style. We love it!
Chris and Ems
18/05/2004
Would you believe that even though we've had an entire year off we are running short of time? There's just so much to see and we have so many "must do's" that it's sometimes a bit tricky to fit them all into the time that we have left.... Hiking The Inca Trail to the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu (Peru) has however been one of our goals from the outset. We were so committed to this that we dedicated ten of our precious days left to it.
For conservation reasons the numbers allowed to walk the trail are restricted which meant that we had to wait six days before even starting the trek. This was not such a bad thing because it gave us time to explore the beautiful city of Cusco as well as its surroundings, and time to acclimatise to the altitude, a dizzying 3,326m above sea level. Cusco was the capital of the successful but short-lived Inca empire. From there they controlled land stretching North, East and West covering what is now Peru and Ecuador and South into what is now Bolivia and Chile. The city was rebuilt by the Spanish invaders but still retains some attractive Inca features, most notably its plan form shape of a Puma, one of three sacred animals to the Inca culture (the other two are the condor and snake). What was it with South American civilisations and their desire to make things visible from the air? There were no planes back then! The narrow Inca streets are also very attractive and make walking around like navigating an intriguing maze of history and quaintness.
Cusco occupies a valley surrounded by some stunning mountains, we hiked up these to get a good view of the city and visit some ruins. From these heights you can see the valley of terracotta roofs, unspoilt by huge roads or ugly advertisement signposts. You can also see the centrepiece of the city, a very attractive Plaza De Armas with accompanying cathedral. The Inca ruins are sadly not so well preserved. Would you believe that up until the 1970's Cusquenians were still allowed to remove the blocks from these monuments-to-an-ancient-civilisation and use them to build their own houses!? Indeed, you can see a lot of the houses do have Inca stone blocks as their foundations. It looks very nice, but that's not the point, they'd look a lot better on top of the hill where they belong. Having said that, generally we have to credit the locals for granting unequalled respect to their indigenous people's culture, it is unrivalled anywhere else in the world! What's with this invasion business?.... Ok, ok we'll stop there - back to what we saw at the ruins! The Incas were clearly very skilled stone masons because the accuracy with which the stones are fitted together with no cement is incredible. Enormous bits of granite carved into perfect angular shapes creates an excellent visual aestheticism as well as a formidable wall which can withstand great earthquakes.
Hiking up to several of these ruins provided some good training for the Inca Trail as just "plain" walking at this altitude can leave you out of breath. So, feeling ready for it we met our guide and group that we would be spending the next four days with. We were lucky, we had a guide who spoke good English and 3 friendly co-tourists, an Australian couple and an English lady. The first day is really only half a day's walking because the transfer to the start of the trail takes 3 hours. So by lunch time we were raring to go. The route starts at the famous "Km 82" where two original Inca trails lead to the great Machu Picchu 45 kilometres away.
Day one starts 1,000m lower than Cusco so we were happily acclimatised but it was still fairly tough going with our backpacks loaded for the fours days. Really glad that we spent a while in Decathlon choosing good packs, they really paid off. The path took us through fairly arid hills, cacti lining either side and we had a great view of a 6000m snow-capped peak, Mt Veronica. Not long after setting out we stopped for our first meal and had a taste of what we were to expect from the catering department, a team of four porters/chefs. Wow they were good! We were grateful we had paid (nearly) "top dollar" for them to look after us because they did a great job. We heard rumours that some of the cheaper companies skimp on food and the tourists go hungry. Nightmare! For every meal we had, the team set up a tent with table and chairs and plied us with excellent food. We even got masses of popcorn and fried wontons at 'teatime'. Groovy! (And we thought the trail would be hard. Pah!) So with full bellies we waddled the rest of day one to our campsite where again we were fed very well, which was quite unfortunate because our campsite only had one hole-in-the-ground toilet without a door for privacy. Ugh! We love making new friends and all, but we didn't really want to get THAT close, you know!?
Day two started early for us, not because we had to get walking very early but because of the "commotions" in the tent. Just for a change it was Chris' turn to be ill, although in fact it was Emily who really suffered. The tents provided by the tour company were very good, they didn't leak at all, no holes to be seen. Shame! We would have been appreciative of a little more ventilation that particular night! Methane poisoning was a distinct possibility!.... It was unfortunate that this particular night gave us little sleep because Day Two was the hardest walking. We made the decision to get porters to carry our bags for half the day because we were both pretty fragile with not much sleep and one of us still "puckering up".
Day Two took us over the highest pass at 4,200m and gave us some spectacular views of the valley we had just walked, despite nearly killing us. They don't nickname this the "Inca TRIAL" for no reason! The going was tough but our group set a good pace and kept us moving in the right direction. It's amazing how your heart rate picks up when there is low oxygen. The symptoms of altitude sickness are mostly headaches and queasiness along with stomach cramps if you're really unlucky. To counteract these, a local remedy of chewing Coca leaves is recommended. Yes, Coca is the leaf you get cocaine from but it's not the same thing in its natural state (honest mum). Chris decided that the introduction of any herbal products to his bowels would be bad for his constitution but the other four members of the group formed the "Coca Club" and chewed their way up the mountain! They munched the leaves with a catalyst to release a stimulant that keeps you moving, settles your stomach, relieves hunger, makes you immune to pain and cures all manor of ailments. You lose weight, get along with your in-laws and make more money at work! In fact, in South America Coca leaves are the remedy to everything. Chewing also makes your mouth go numb, makes you dribble and fills your teeth with bits of green leaf. Lovely! Chris observed these things and tried to point them out to the Coca Club but by then they were "at a higher altitude"!
We consider ourselves fairly fit, we've been walking everywhere we have been in the world. However, we were put in our place fairly quickly by the porters! They have to be some of the fittest people in the world. They hike (run) the trail in at least half the time we do, but loaded with our bags, camping equipment, gas cylinders and cooking gear with only sandals on their feet. Our guide even told us about a 220lb guy and his equally well-built wife who could not hack "the trial" so the porters had to carry them too on stretchers! In fact, every few years, all the porters race each other to do the trail as fast as they can. Bear in mind that it took us 3-and-a-bit days (walking an average of 8 hours each day) to cover 45kms......the best porters do it in 4 HOURS! Cripes! Maybe we're not that fit after all? Can't be!
Proud of our own self-achievement we reached the top of the pass, an extremely satisfying feeling after a steep 1,400m climb! From there we could see the fairly arid valley we had just walked up and on the other side the cloud forest that awaited us. These parts of the mountains showed us some beauty we had not seen before. The peaks in the Andes can be very steep, covered in vegetation and have clouds rolling around them which give them a very mysterious and magical feel. We have seen plenty of the Alps before, they are beautiful but the Andes are "just different" in a spectacular way!
With the hardest part of the trek completed, we enjoyed another excellent meal and a good night's sleep preparing us well for day three. This was actually the most fun to walk because Chris was feeling a lot better and although there were some tough hills to climb, the altitude was slightly lower so the going was easier. We walked through some cloud forest and saw some 'minor' Inca ruins. The path condition notably improved with some fairly well paved sections that have remained intact for over five hundred years. Hummingbirds hovered around us and wild orchids could be seen alongside the trail. Arriving late at camp three we had an equally good third night in the tents with some beers and wine helping us sleep. Bla bla bla...everything was beautiful and gorgeous, but the highlight HAD to be our first shower in 3 days! Emily was most encouraging and supportive (despite the hefty dollar fee!) and in fact refused to let Chris anywhere near her unless he showered profusely. Pew!
Day four started very early (4 am) because we wanted to make it to the Sun Gate overlooking Machu Picchu for sunrise.... and wow was it worth it! The sun came up behind us illuminating the valley that the ruins sit in. The yellow stone turned to gold as the sun illuminated the ancient Inca city and contrasted the deep green vegetation surrounding it. A few wispy clouds rolled around adding to the atmosphere. It's a beautiful sight and easily amongst the best views we have encountered in the last 10 months(and we've seen a couple)! What must it have been like to discover this place buried in the forest?
When our jaws finally returned to the normal position we hiked the last few hundred metres down into the ruins. By walking the trail we had arrived nice and early before the tourist buses from Cusco so we were keen to look around. Our guide gave us an excellent tour showing us the impressive stonework, some lovely temples and even aqueducts still running through the city. The Incas were skilled builders, the walls are perfectly knitted stone and they clearly had a good grasp of physics even designing for resistance against earthquakes. The authorities have kept Peru's greatest asset well, there's no litter, no recent graffiti, no smoking or eating and they are doing a good job of restoring some buildings that have collapsed. To round off our visit and completely finish off our sore thighs we climbed the adjacent peak Huayna Picchu (another 400m) to get the "best view" on the city. And it was. Spectacular!
Our group agreed that walking the trail was the best way to see this beautiful place. The build-up made it even more special. No radios or phones to get you out of trouble, no doctors or help at hand if you're hurt (mmmm but those coca leaves work a treat!). It's just you against the world. Great! If you visit we highly recommend it. The trail is challenging in many places but just one of those things you should do before you die...
It seems like a bit of an anti-climax to write so much and build up the great ruins for 4 days, only to then say they were "spectacular", but honestly - if we told you any more than that, you wouldn't believe us. You really do have to be there to see it for yourself. The picture below does not do it justice. Sorry!
We're satisfied though, so that's all that matters, eh!? (o:
Chris and Emily 02/05/2004
¡ Hola, buenos dias ! Don't underestimate the power of greetings. Here in Peru they are very important, and it's expected that you greet anyone you speak to properly before asking them anything or beginning a conversation. Peru is full of other features which we are also getting used to including the huge difference in landscape and climate between its three main regions: the coast, the highlands (Andes) and the jungle. Anything can happen here - including the sewers being cleaned so that for a whole day the water supply is turned off in a city and NO water is available for cooking (so restaurants serve pizzas only - shame!) and the toilets don't flush... Enough said! There's more: The hotel we're staying at currently has a very creative approach to electrical wiring. In fact, if someone rings the doorbell from outside, the receptionist shuffles over to a dangling mangled set of wires and short-circuits them with his thumb and index finger to open the door, triggering a few sparks and sometimes (to the waiting guest's amusement) getting a minor shock himself. Oh, and also - our bedroom light comes on if we slam the door! Hmmm...
Our arrival to Peru came as quite a shock, because we didn't expect it to be as different to Chile as it actually is. They do after all, share a border and we thought that there wouldn't be a significant difference between the two countries. We were wrong! In fact in our first few days we had scary flashbacks and thought we were back in India by mistake. Yikes! Peru is years behind Chile in terms of development. All the facilities are private initiatives as there seem to be few public services. There isn't ONE main bus terminal, there are 10 - one for each bus company which runs buses around the country, and the same goes for tourist information and booking tours. We discovered quite by surprise that the kindest and most helpful citizens in Peru are the security guards who supervise the shops and banks (there is a serious lack of policemen here). Unlike in Europe, they are very approachable and willing to be helpful - we even got one nice guard to pack up our shopping from the supermarket. Groovy! Indeed, "security" is an issue (in Lima particularly) and all the properties in and around Lima (shops included) are surrounded by tall metallic bars. When you buy a bottle of water there, it's handed to you through the metal bars! Slightly disconcerting. Also, we are very aware of the risk of earthquakes. We hadn't really given it much thought, but most buildings have "Safe areas in case of Seismic activity" and as we flew over the Andes we saw many gaping fault lines, so it must be true!
This all took us quite a while to get used to, and our first few days were spent holding hands tightly and bravely walking the streets of Lima trying not to get mugged. Many locals are kind to point out that we need to watch our stuff ALL the time and that no one can be trusted. Gracias! We were not sure which areas were safe and which were not and to be honest were a bit overwhelmed by the unfriendliness and general difficulties we had to do simple things. Booking a bus to get out of Lima is not just a quick phone call to National Express, pay with your card and off you trot - oh no! It's a little more like: 1. Read the "Getting around" section in Lonely Planet to find out how to get to town from our hotel because we don't know where we are. Discover that there are over 200 local buses (none of which are marked) and that the taxis are all un-metered and unregistered. There is no metro, tram or other means of transport. Problemo! 2. Discuss limited options and settle for asking our hotel receptionist what a taxi fare SHOULD cost to the bus station. Bus station? Which bus station? We don't have one bus station, we have 10... (Problemo!?) "Oh, ok. That's nice. Could you kindly tell us which bus station to go to, to get a bus to Pisco". "Si si Señorita. It's this one (on map). Will cost 3 Nuevos Soles by taxi". Good, we have progress. 3. Hail down a cab and fight like mad to pay the right price. Fail miserably and pay almost double instead. Damn! 4. Get to desired bus station. Wait patiently in cue 20 minutes (they don't have any change. At all. Not even a dollar!? Problemo!) Finally get to front of cue and are told that this bus station does not go to Pisco. Problemo! Well, you get the point. Soon enough it's lunch time, we haven't seen or done anything cultural at all and we stiill don't know where to go or who to ask to get the right info or pay the right price. Oh, and we still don't know how to get out of Lima although our determination to do so FAST has increased tenfold!
All of these tasks take place in Spanish as no one speaks English, and although Emily is doing her very best, she's finding the dialect a little challenging! It is well known that all Spanish-speaking countries in South America (that's most of them!) try hard to create their own version of the language so that the OTHER south american countries won't understand them. This, as you can imagine is not a constructive approach for Emily who is trying to communicate in a language she has not used for about 10 years! (So far she's told one insistent waitress "no thank you, we don't want to come into your restaurant, we've already been eaten!" and she also told a waiter than he was "very sexy" rather than saying "the food was nice" as she had intended. Hey! It was an innocent mistake! Nobody's perfect...)
So we made it through Lima and then went to Pisco (a pretty fishing village) without further ado. However, the first place we went to of real interest was Nasca, famous for its giant "geoglyphs" which cover large areas of the desert with animal, plant or geometric shapes and are thought to be over 2,000 years old (pre-Inca). The only way to see them is from the air, and any excuse to get up in the skies is fine by us, so day one consisted of a 35-minute flight over the "Pampa" (plateau that they're found on) in a teeny tiny Cessna for 4 people at a very low 500 feet. (And no, we weren't tempted. But only just!)
It's pretty fascinating stuff really, because there are literally hundreds of theories about how and why they were made, but nobody knows the truth. The theories range from possible to very creative: they are of complex astronomical significance and were dug out by the Nasca culture with spondylus shells (may have been used as a calendar) OR they're a complex "map" to guide farmers to scarce water sources in the mountains. They were made to communicate with aliens and assist them when landing on earth, but then again, they may have been made by Maria Reiche, the woman who spent 50 years of her life researching and studying them in great detail and she made them with a broom because she was a witch and wanted attention! Well, we can't say that we know the truth, but we can certainly state that if Maria Reiche DID make them, she would have needed many minions, because 50 years is not long enough to single-handedly make that many shapes and lines over such a wide area!
After the lines, we went to a Nasca cemetery which still contains original mummies and historical artifacts (ceramics, human and llama hair, instruments). Sounds a bit morbid, but these mummies and artifacts with them are really well preserved and teach us a lot about the ancient Nascans. They have skin, teeth and hair and some even still have trophy heads beside them. These are skulls of their defeated enemy which they strung to their belts and wore as a warning to others that they were powerful and not to get on the wrong side of them! All the trophy heads have a thorn through their eyes and mouths to close them up so that their souls are unable to escape their bodies and move on to the afterlife - the worst form of punishment for the Nascan culture!
We noticed that some of the mummies have deformed heads which grow upwards like aliens'. The reason being that at the time, deforming heads was a common way of differentiating between social classes or status so that as soon as babies were born two planks of wood would be tied around their skulls and strapped tightly causing enough pressure for the growing cranium to develop upwards rather than outwards. Inevitably the pressure on the brain caused so much pain that primitive operations were performed (a hole was literally drilled into the skull) and in 40% of the cases, the patient survived. This can clearly be seen in the remaining mummies. Incredible! Of course when archeologists discovered these deformed skulls the "scientists" favoring the paranormal explanation for the Nascan lines used it as further evidence for their theory. However, we think this tells us more about mid-20th century man than it does the ancient Nascans;-)
So how come these bodies are so well preserved, you ask? Well, when they were buried the internal organs were removed and replaced with a mix of cotton, salt, mud grass and chilli. Unlike the Egyptians, the organs were not preserved but due to the creative "filling" - the skin, bones and hair remain in very good condition. Also, in Nasca, the weather is the same all year round. There are no seasons. It's hot and the sky is blue all day long, all year long. So the bodies have not been affected by moisture or varying temperatures. In fact, it only rains for 20 minutes per year (!) but don't worry (the guide told us), it doesn't all rain at once. Usually that 20 minutes of rain is spread over 3 or 4 days... Phew! Actually, joking aside, it did actually cross our minds that heavy rain WOULD be a serious problem here because the houses are mostly made of adobe (mud bricks) and most of them have very little in the way of solid roofing (mostly all mud or straw or nothing at all). We took advantage of the great Nascan weather to do half a day of mountain biking. The tour company drove us and the bikes up the base of the Andes to about 2000m and then we hopped on the bicycles and cycled back down again, seeing mines and Inca ruins on the way.
After a pleasant and relaxing time in Nasca (our hotel had a pool and we topped up our tans doing nothing for 2 days!) we went to Arequipa - the second largest city after Lima. This is where all the things about Lima which we found difficult on arrival were turned around, as despite its size, Arequipa is very well organised and user-friendly. It's well developed in many places and this perhaps encouraged us to lower our guard a bit. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake.... We know we said that there were hardly any cops in Peru, but it just so happens that on our first day in Arequipa as our curious ways led us further and further away from the centre, we ran into a bit of difficulty. We had located the local market - the real life of the city where the locals are dressed traditionally and shouting at each other and selling fruit. The colours and excitement are engaging but it stinks of fish and raw meat! Sounds a bit gross, but it's a view on the imperfections of real life in Peru. These bits of our travels are where we really get to see what living here is like, and are valuable to us. It's not organised, we didn't pay for it, and anything could happen. We were very excited with our find and Chris proudly got his camera out to record our little discovery when two policemen stopped us in our tracks and gave us a stern warning that we were in a very dangerous place and what were we thinking? Emily innocently said that we really liked the market (and smiled) but it was clear that the coppers felt strongly about this and we wasted no time in putting the camera away and hurrying off along our way back to the safety of the main plaza with all the touts, hotels and other tourists. We felt like two children getting told off at school, but their words of warning may well have saved us our posessions or more?
After getting orientated and settled we headed for the museum of "Juanita, the ice maiden". At the risk of boring you with yet more South American history, we will explain briefly: the Incas were dedocated believers in "Pachamama" (mother earth) and felt strongly about making offerings to mother earth in return for good health and prosperity. In 1996, a frozen 12-year old girl was found on the top of Mount Ampato (volcano, 6,900m high) perfectly preserved (the best conserved mummy in the western hemisphere) including the offerings that were buried with her: her clothes, textiles, ceramics, coca leaves, ornaments, gold figurines etc. After much testing, it was discovered that she was herself an offering to the Gods from the Incas about 550 years ago, and because she was frozen solid, she comes complete with frozen blood and all her internal organs except for her eyes. The scientists can even tell what she ate up to two weeks before her death (mostly vegetables), and after some DNA testing they're even trying to find some living relatives. She has proved to be a priceless window on to the culture and even the microbiology of life in these parts 550 years ago. Fascinating stuff!.... So, this museum shows all of the objects that she was buried with and in the very last room, conserved at -20 degrees Celsius and at 100% humidity (as she was found) is Juanita herself. Well, that's what's meant to happen at any rate - naturally, when we visited the museum Juanita was temporarily excused for blood tests at the local University! Bit of a shame, but another mummy with a similar history but slightly less well preserved was on display instead and we were still very impressed! We have to say, the quality of museums in Peru is very high. We have visited several museums in this country so far and we are really struck by the high amount of interesting and relevant displays. Whoever thought that museums were fun!?
However, the real highlight of Arequipa was a 2-day tour we went on to visit the Colca valley (165km north of Arequipa) . This is famous for its extensive terracing on the steep slopes of the canyon which were built by ethnic groups between the ninth and fourteenth centuries AD and are still used today. The canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Colorado and may even be the deepest canyon in the world... and with the surrounding Andean peaks and snow-capped volcanoes this was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places we visited. As well as being beautiful the canyon is a perfect habitat for the Andean Condor, the highlight of our excursion. On first arrival at the viewing site to see this giant vulture there were just a few sizeable hawks swooping around the rocks around us, impressive but not what we had come for. We were a bit nervous because sometimes the Condors don't come. However, our luck was in and a guide spotted one in the distance of the canyon. Several minutes later we were treated to our first fly-by! This was truly special as the enormous creature with a wingspan of around three metres glided past us not flapping at all, just using the thermals rising out of the canyon and tilting it's tail feather like a rudder in the airwaves it was master of. Stunning! Later a few of its friends came to play too and we were treated to an even more spectacular aerial display only metres away. We can't really describe what it's like to sit on a big rock with a 1200m straight drop to the river below and have 5 or 6 giant Condors fly above your head gracefully. You'll just have to imagine it yourselves!
Interestingly, the first stop on our tour was to a shop just outside of Arequipa where we were told to buy coca leaves, cookies and sweets! What?! COCA? Like, what cocaine is made of!? You're kidding - no way! But who were we to disobey, right? Obediently we handed over our dollar note and walked out with our little stash. It turns out that at 4,900m we were very grateful for these purchases...coca is a very effective reliever for altitude sickness! Now we just need to convince the British authorities that Canterbury is very high and we feel ill - and we've got a little business set up!? Despite this, we noticed that there are many anti-drug campaigns on the streets of Peru and our latest shocking statistic is that 90% of coca production is used for narcotics. That's bad.
The tour also gave us an opportunity to learn about the Peruvian ways of life and to taste some interesting food including Alpaca meat (Alpacas are like llamas) and a funky bitter fruit which grows on cacti. We were also invited to a Peruvian restaurant for an evening of traditional music and dance. Stupidly, we thought that WE would be doing the eating and THEY would be doing the dancing. However, as soon as the music started Emily (despite her convincing attempt to be blind, deaf and very dumb) was pulled onto the dance floor by a Peruvian dancer and forced to jiggle her asparagus soup and Alpaca steak up and down...and almost up again! She didn't look quite as stupid as Chris belly-dancing in the Lebanese restaurant in Delhi but it was a close call... Grrr! We think locals do this for their own amusement although WE'RE the ones paying for the entertainment! Surely that's wrong and immoral?
Finally, to heal Emily's wounded pride we thought we'd treated ourselves to a little flight for fun, and rather than getting a 12-hour bus ride on bumpy roads, we took a half-hour flight to Cusco. No upgrade to business class this time though. Shame! Nice views all the same. We have just signed up to take part in the Gringo's holy grail ("gringo" means "foreigner") - the 4-day Inca trail to the mighty Machu Picchu. We are told that it's incredibly difficult and very challenging, so thought we should write to you all now in case we don't make it! (o: We have to wait nearly a week to do it, as there are so few spaces and the demand is high. Never mind, the wait should give us enough time to acclimatise to the altitude and come to terms with hiking at 4,000m. When we catch our breaths we'll write to you on our return to let you know all about it!
Apologies if this write up is too lengthy or factual - we are just so pleased to be stimulated by Peru's immense cultural wealth and diversity that we feel the need to record every detail just in case we forget! We're sometimes not sure how the update reads? After several relatively comfy months in OZ, New Zealand and even Chile, it feels great to be challenged again and to have to think on our feet.
¡ Hasta Luego !
Emily and Chris
17/04/2004Arriving in Chile has been a change in mode compared to the last few months in Oz and New Zealand. It is back to backpacks, hunting for the best guesthouse, working out what all the food is (very important) and speaking the local lingo. From stepping off the flight we were expecting things to be comparable to Asia with personal security issues and being hassled in the arrivals lounge. It turns out that this country IS pretty developed, in the city at least. We were only propositioned by a couple of taxi drivers and we have not been robbed yet (ok early days still)! Unfortunately this also means that prices are not that cheap but we are getting along fine.
Emily is doing a sterling job fronting the communications department of the team. However, she has her work cut out because the accent here is very difficult to understand. Chileans slur their Spanish and occasional run out of steam and end their words half way through!? Her situation might be compared to an Englishman trying to discuss philosophy with an intoxicated Glaswegian (no offense intended to Glaswegians or any other incomprehensible members of the English speaking world.... no no seriously we are joking and would love to visit Glasgow - any offers?). Meanwhile Chris has proved to be an apt baggage handler! He is still trying really hard to learn French on rainy days, as well as to speak English properly! Surely that’s enough?!
The food here has proved a pleasant surprise! We were expecting just a lot of carbohydrates like potatoes, the major South American contribution to world cuisine, but in fact there is a wide variety of dishes to choose from in lots of "diner" style cafes. Both deep-water fish and shellfish are plentiful and affordable. Beef is very popular too given our close proximity to Argentina, and all the portions are enormous and weighing us down nicely. Shame. We were hoping to come back emaciated for extra sympathy!
Whilst eating out we’ve encountered another South American (?) theme, this has to be the easiest place in the world to get a job in Marketing. Why? Because almost every single advert we are bombarded with has been created using one very simple method: 1. Take photograph of product being sold e.g. Engine Oil, Booze, Software, Bread, Excursions to Patagonia 2. Take photograph of buxom model in teeny weeny bikini, preferably on a sunny beach with vacant look on her face 3. Super-impose photo of product on to waif female image and circulate. It can not fail!;-)
It’s interesting as a lot of these observations and impressions come very early on in our visit to a country. We’ve found that after a while we become used to them and they are no longer so obvious. (At least, Chris assures Emily that this is the case regarding the semi-naked women surrounding us...she’s not convinced!?).This is in fact one of the attractions to traveling and we look forward to moving on to a new country for this stimuli.... Santiago was certainly a pleasant place to arrive into. Although it’s very busy, the pace is very comfortable. There is a vibrant student population, lots of artistic influence and young love every where you look. Quite literally, on every available piece of grass there’s a couple doing very non-British things in public:-) This came as a shock to us, after 3 months in Asia where the only public displays of affection are among family members and same-sex peers. Naturally, and as with all things on this trip, we have taken things in our stride and become re-accustomed to the local ways! With a beautiful backdrop of snow-capped mountains we strolled around the city taking in sights of old colonial buildings and looking around markets. We also spent some time in the Pre-Columbian museum boning up on our history of this region. Like most places we’ve visited South America has been ransacked by Europeans, this time (mostly) the Spanish. Unfortunately a lot of the precious gold artifacts from the ancient indigenous civilization was melted to be sent home to Spain, but we saw a few pieces of cultural and religious significance in this museum. The most sophisticated of these civilizations were the Inca, whose reign stretched from northern Ecuador to central Chile. However, their empire was short lived and eventually defeated by the Spanish.
Well, that was enough culture to make our brains hurt so we got on a bus and headed South for some adventure. The buses here are a great way to travel, comfortable, affordable, reliable and even on time! We were heading for Pucon, slap bang in the middle of The Lake District. As we drove up to the town the sun was setting and the main attraction of the area was clear from the bus window, a snow-dressed smoking volcano! It looked absolutely stunning in the pink light, if a little intimidating. Arriving late, we sought out a good place to stay and found Hospedaje Irma. The evening was cold and it was very welcoming to feel the warmth from the log-fueled Arga (Range) and to meet with some very good company also sleeping at this Home-stay. The proprietor, Irma, was a lady in her mid sixties with thousands of children and was the kind of lady who liked to play surrogate mother to all her guests making us all feel at home. You want to spoil us, Irma? Umm.....errr...alright then. If you must!
With lodgings settled we sought our entertainment. The primary activity available was to climb the Volcano which is just short of 3000m high so you do need a guide and ice/snow climbing equipment. Having researched all the companies offering the trip we arrived early the next morning ready to climb the mountain with our chosen guides. It was a beautiful day, perfect for the excursion. Sadly, it turned out there was a shortage of guides, the company says because of an "accident" but we know the problem is also known as "overbooking". Ten people had to step down and we volunteered because they offered us a free white water rafting trip later that day. We could always do the volcano the next day....
So back to bed for a few hours and we were up again to go rafting. We love traveling in less regulated countries because their attitude to risk is a lot more practical than the more paranoid risk-averse approach at home (mainly we mean the UK). They said to us "do you want small rapids or do you want big rapids?". Well, we’re not going to pick the namby pamby little ones are we? Of couse we took the big ones:-) We later learned that white water rapids are graded on a scale from 1-6 and the ones we were going to tackle were rated 4-5! Not so clever now, were we!?! A casual safety brief followed in Spanish to mostly a non-Spanish-speaking audience. The general idea being that if you hadn’t understood the vague life-saving instructions, then "make up your own as we go along"! So with fair-to-middley hesitation we hopped aboard our inflatable rafts. Fortunately the guide in the boat with us was a lot more helpful and gave good instructions how to paddle as a team to negotiate the raging river ahead. It was a blast! You can see the pictures to the right. Note the respective facial expressions when faced with imminent danger - Row 1 on the right and Row 3 on the right! (Emily swears that she was just blinking. Of course she didn’t permanently have her eyes shut - that would be silly!)
Our day rafting worked out really well but it turned out that the next day’s weather was really bad meaning that the volcano trip could not go. We got up at 6am with lunch packed only to be turned away with the trip postponed until the following morning. Sadly this happed three further mornings in a row. To relieve "cabin fever" we hired some bikes and cycled out of town (45 kms!) to get very wet in the rain but had some fun. This situation also gave us a good point of conversation with some other people staying in our Home-stay who were also waiting to do the same thing. It’s funny how you get talking to people, of several interesting people we met in Pucon we met a Vietnamese lady who told us all about her life before and after leaving Vietnam in 1980 as a "boat-person" refugee. Fleeing persecution because she was half Chinese it was fascinating for us to hear a human account of the troubles we learned about whilst traveling through that region. We were literally blown away by her nonchalant accounts of bombs flying over her head every night and how she ran for shelter at all hours with her family. "It’s something you get used to", she said, "it happens every day. It’s just the way things were. You accept them". Oh, right. Silly us for making such a big deal!
Finally the weather broke and the Volcano trip was on! To our relief the weather was just as nice if not better than the first day we’d tried to go. We were fitted for Ice boots and crampons as well as several layers of thermal clothing. We took a bus to the foot of the mountain and then a ski lift over the first layer of very loose volcanic mud. Don’t worry, the ski lift wasn’t cheating as we still had at least four hours’ hard climb to follow. In fact we should get extra points for getting on the death-trap in the first place! You know how the Ski lifts in Europe slow down before you get on them? Well, these don’t do that! Oh, and no safety bar either!.... Well, the ride passed without event and we were soon trudging up the mountain (cursing the good weather after all. Man, it was hard work!).
With crampons and an Ice Axe (Emily refers to this as a "power tool") we zig-zagged ("smashed") our way up through Ice and snow. Due to the recent bad weather, it had been snowing at this altitude and we were treated to quite a bit of fresh powder. After a couple of hours, the going got tough and a few people dropped out, it was fairly challenging but we carried on. At around the four hour mark we reached the top (2,847m) to get a magnificent view of the smoking crater! We were upwind of the crater meaning that most of the smoke disappeared away from us but some curled back our way. It was pretty noxious with a caustic smell but amazing to watch geology in action. From this vantage point we could see the whole Lake region as well as two other volcanoes in fairly close proximity. Amazing scenery!.... So we ate our lunch on top of this smoking volcano, as you do, and considered how fortunate we have been to do so many things like this. So after pondering this thought for a while we made our way back down. This turned out to be a fun activity in itself as we were able to slide down some of the slopes on our bums, using Ice Axes as brakes!
After a bit more walking and enjoying the scenery we left Pucon for Valdivia, the most attractive town in Chile, which is where we are now. There’s no one defining feature but it’s just a pleasant place to hang out. There are lots of good shops, restaurants and an excellent fish market where we saw every type of fish imaginable and some enormous fur seals in the river estuary behind feeding on the fish guts thrown away - a strange sight in the middle of town. We’ve also indulged in some local specialties, wool knitted jumpers because it is a little bit chilly:-)
On Tuesday we’re flying to Lima to being touring Peru and Bolivia. Great! Till next time, take care.
C and E
08/04/2004
Well, hello again. Boy have we changed our lifestyle since we wrote to you last! But first - here´s what we did over our last few weeks in New Zealand: After Lake Taupo we drove a couple of hours further north again to Rotorua - the famous geothermal hotspot of the Northern island. We began our two-day visit by finding a brilliant campsite in Waikite Valley - built around some hot springs which ran right through it. A 5-minute walk to the source revealed steam rising from a boiling lake which bubbled and boiled at well over 100 degrees celsius, just like that in the middle of a field! Steaming water literally roared from the ground and at the campsite we were constantly surrounded by steam and bubbling pools. Our evening `swim` was in a 40-degree natural hotpool. Very nice!
We also spent a day in "Thermal Wonderland", which as its name suggests is literally a theme park of incredible natural phenomenon. It is home to the Lady Knox geyser which promptly erupts at 10.15am daily but is "kick started" by a ranger dumping 300ml of soap powder into its mouth! The detergent lowers the surface tension of the water so that it can begin to boil over, and soon after, a 45 minute explosion begins. For those who are interested, the `soap trick`was discovered when some prisoners were doing their laundry and found that their Y-fronts shot 15-30 metres into the air! We were a bit perturbed that the eruption was not entirely natural, but the ranger assured us that the geyser naturally erupts on a 20-30 hour cycle, so he wasn´t really doing that much harm, just making sure it could let off some steam! We also saw some incredible mineral lakes ranging in colour from purple and blue to yellow and green. Most bizarre! The best bit was the boiling mud pools which Chris successfully stopped Emily from going to play in. They were great big belchy, gurgly farty pools of stinky mud and boy did they look like fun...
As well as these amazing natural geothermal wonders, Rotorua is the heartland of New Zealand's Maori culture. The Te Arawa people of Rotorua were New Zealand's first visitor guides, leading the way to the natural wonders that have been part of their home for more than 600 years. Their welcoming tradition was carried on from generation to generation - and we found it expressed with true energy when we went to "Whakarewarewa". This is one of Rotorua's most active thermal areas and is home to the Pohutu geyser famed throughout the world for her playing, erupting about 20 times a day. It is also home to the Tuhourangi/Ngati Wahiao people who settled there after the Tarawera eruption (1886) destroyed their homes at Te Wairoa. Its full name: 'Te Whakarewarewatanga O Te Ope Taua A Wahiao' really means "The uprising of the warriors (war party) of Wahiao". (Wahiao, being a Warrior Chief of the Tuhourangi Tribe). Our guide quite enjoyed trying to get us to say this in Maori! As well as laughing at our efforts, he took us on an excellent tour of this living village and described the unique lifestyle of his people as they use the geothermal conditions to their advantage (to cook and bathe in). We attended a performance which through song and dance described the history and legends of the Maori people and although it was quite a long visit, we left feeling much more `aware` of this crucial aspect of New Zealand culture. The door to visitors shuts at 5pm, and after that, this tribe are left in peace to go about their daily rituals and ways of life. This includes cooking their meals in earth ovens (a covered hole in the ground where steam builds up like in a pressure cooker and a full chicken can be cooked in 45 minutes flat!) and doing their laundry in the hot bubbling pools as well as bathing and using the naturally hot springs its therapeutic healing powers.
We found Rotorua quite touristy, but couldn´t think of any other way to experience these amazing things and are really pleased we went. We also stopped the car every now and then by a river for a quick "thermal dip" of our own. England should really consider setting up a geothermal wonderland of its own - it would really cheer up those cold winter days!
Our final bit of excitement in Rotorua was a quick visit to the windtunnel there. For those who don´t know, a "windtunnel" is a vertical column of air generated by an enormous engine underneath which in effect simulates skydiving quite nicely as you just `fall`in to the wind flow and are lifted up by the air stream until you float on a cushion of air. We had been to the indoor windtunnel in Florida twice already, but Rotorua´s tunnel is outside you see, so we had to do that as well! We were very pleased to get a "body-flyers" half-price discount, as skydivers are so used to the flying position that we don´t need training in the tunnel and the instructors don`t really need to look after us the way they would with non-skydivers. There again you see, we were actually SAVING them valuable instructing time. (That´s how we´ve justified the expense to ourselves anyway!)
We drove out of Rotorua with two stupidly happy faces and zoomed on up to Omokoroa (near Tauranga) where good friends from Geneva, Denise and Greg welcomed us with open arms. This is where our lifestyle began to take a turn for the better...after 4 weeks of camping, just having a roof over our heads felt like a luxury, but this wasn´t just any roof - it came complete with a big soft double bed, a TV with Sky, hot showers, roast dinners, plenty of wine and even two little kittens. How lucky was that!?! Not to mention D + G`s generosity when they offered us the keys to their "batch" (beach house) in the Coromandel peninsula for three days. Umm..err...shall we?....shan`t we?....oh, ok then! So we moseyed on up to yet another splendid beach in a beautiful location and stayed in their comfortable beach hut eating seafood and going on some great walks to "Cathedral Cove" (where the rock formation has created a stunning cathedral-like cove) and "Hot water beach" (where you dig up some sand by a hot spring and lie in your own personal hot tub on the beach and let the cooler sea waves lick over your body).
After these blissful few days we drove back to Omokoroa and went on a fishing frenzy as Greg just HAD to take us out on his new power boat. We have to just paint the picture for you here, as this power boat has every single gadget imaginable. It has a Sonar which not only tells you how deep or shallow the water is, but which also "beeps" when there are fish around so you know when to start fishing (!). It also has two very handy switches which raise and lower the anchor at the front and engine at the back. That way, Denise can pour the wine and make cheese crackers while Greg sits at the Captain´s seat and pushes lots of switches without lifting more than just the one finger! We were most surprised that we had it in us to enjoy fishing. We didn´t think that we were patient enough, but to our great surprise it was a real buzz! We think New Zealand fish are a lot feistier than European fish for as soon as Denise´s rod was in, she would get bites instantly. In fact, if within 2 minutes of fishing she hadn´t caught anything she would begin to wonder where they were!? There were only three rods though, so Greg became the Master Baiter. Chris tried his hand at this too, when it was Greg´s turn to fish!
We fished and fished until we could fish no more (Emily caught all the big ones!) and then we came home and ate our big Red Snappers with a slice of lemon and a sprinkle of pepper. Nice! When we were all fished out, G+D borrowed some skis invited us for a water-ski! Chris had done this twice before and picked it up pretty fast, but Emily wasn´t so hot and the skis were too big anyway. Her first attempts were more like a bumpy butt-bouncing ride across the ocean with a free colonic irrigation. Very graceful indeed! But thankfully, after another good night`s sleep in those lovely beds, she woke up fresh and more d | | | |