It's been one of those days

I woke up this morning, that was my first mistake. I don't know where the weekend disappeared to, it took me a few moments to work out that it was Monday and another couple of moments to realise how crap that fact was. But I dutifully rolled out of bed and opened my curtain so I could see the glorious sunshine that we had been having ever since I got back from Peru. It had disappeared, the sky was as grey as an elephant's backside and the typical British drizzle had returned.

It was one of those mornings when I should have rushed through everything to get out the door as quick as possible, but couldn't be bothered, so ended up running for the bus through the rain. I made it, just.

The bus journey took forever, yet we still managed to get in ridiculously early. Both Biology and Physics dragged but fortunately I got sent out of maths for being a genius, whoop :). Other than that its been a long and tiring day. I'm not even looking forward to going home thanks to the huge pile of homework I couldn't be bothered doing at the weekend.

On the bright side the sun is starting to shine, and tomorrow's new day, I just wish it would be here already.

Weather to Fly

I got back from Peru last Friday, the journey was long and tiring and lasted near enough 24 hours but there was just a short while, on the plane, that was incredible.

It was getting late Peruvian time, and early English time, so the cabin lights were turned down and most people were asleep. We'd been told to close the window blinds so that we didn't get woken up by the sunrise, but I kept looking out every now and then to check what I could see.

I'd been trying to sleep for a few hours, while listening to Elbow on my iPod, but had had no luck so far. It must hav been about 2am when I glanced out the window to see a deep red moon rising over the cloudy horizon and the stars in the sky shining away. The moon continued to rise, and spin, as we raced Northwards over the Atlantic and I saw a shooting star out the corner of my eye at one point. With the darkness and almost silence on the plane it felt majestic.

Anyway I made it home without hassle and I'd loved the last few days in Peru. I'm back into routine at college with exams looming and, well, I miss Peru. But that's life, and life goes on.

Strike

Not the ten-pin bowling kind either.
There's not a lot to do when all transport stops, so here I am stuck in the hotel, with only the internet for my entertainment.
It could be a long day.

Sol y Luna

Yesterday was tiring, today was exhausting.

Yesterday morning my sister, Katrina, decided that she wanted to go see Los Salineras (the salt-mines) as well, and only wanted me to come with her since she was meeting her friends (in our family parents and friends aren't generally allowed to mix). So once again I set off down the road then up the hillside.

Unfortunately yesterday was a hell of a lot warmer than the day before, I'd been sat outside with the laptop for five minutes and the keyboard got too hot to touch, so the walk was even more torturous than before. We eventually made it to the top of the Salineras, with sweat not quite dripping off us, and stocked up on water before making our way down again. On the way we bumped into my sister friends. They seemed nice but we couldn't stay and chat for long as we had to get to Calca for lunch with my sister's host family.

Lunch was an interesting experience. My sister's host brother, who was a little older than me, spoke good English but refused to talk in anything but Spanish in front of my sister, for some obscure reason, so my sister was stuck translating for my mum while me and my dad attempted to make conversation with our bad Spanish.

After lunch we went for another walk up another hill. It had cooled off by now and my sister was certain that it was going to pour down any minute now, but we proceeded upwards nevertheless. All that happened was a brief shower that had unusually big raindrops. I spent most the walking keeping track of a game of football taking place on one of the many, many pitches in Calca and the view from the top of the hill was definately worth the effort even if it wasn't in the same league as some of the sights we've seen.

We got a bus home in the dark and I was almost falling asleep. The moonlight here is so much brighter than at home, it's incredible, and the constellations above are strange but majestic.

I woke up this morning, not feeling all that refreshed, and wishing that I didn't have to be out of bed quite so early. After breakfast we caught an other bus, this one to Pisac. Well most of us did. My sister had stayed the night in Calca and was supposed to meet us on the way and my mother, well she forgot the tickets for the ruins and had to go back to get them.

So there we were me, my dad and my brother sat on the bus. Naturally Calca came and went with no sign of Katrina, so we proceeded to Pisac alone. On arrival we found the market, that's apparently famous in this part of Peru. My brother objected to it as yet another tourist trap and my dad was slightly tentative and possibly getting lost. I however loved it.

Going from stall to stall bargaining for the best price on gifts for my friends at home. I don't know how many times I was told that "is real Alpaca wool" in a way that implied I was asking too cheap but I managaed to get cheaper prices than my sister, who had eventually arrived, despite her having the advantage of being able to speak Spanish. My mum and dad were fairly hopeless at bartering, and my brother still refused to accept the fact that he is actually a tourist despite what he may imagine and wouldn't indulge in such activities.

After yet another delicious lunch we caught a taxi up to the ruins. On arrival a girl of 7 or 8 took a break from selling bracelets and asked me for some popcorn, which I was holding in my hand. When I said she could have some she tried to take the whole bag off me. I quickly explained "un poco, un poco," and she took a small handful. I scarpered before she could tell all her friends who she'd got it off.

The ruins were fantastic. Situated up a decent sized hill, which would probably be called a mountain in England, I couldn't help but wonder how the Incas had managed to get the stone up there without so much as a wheel. It was incredible, and it only got better.

We climbed on upwards past set after set of incomplete stone buildings, many still half-buried, until we reached the top of the ridge. We walked, scrambled and climbed along, until we reached the end. And there we found yet another breath-taking view. This one was in a league of it's own though. Down beneath us lay a valley filled with towns and fields. The drop must have been atleast 1000 metres and me and my brother were sat on the edge loving every second of it.

My mum turned out to be not so keen on heights and so had hurried on. It was some time before my brother noticed pointed this out to me but eventually we began to make our way down the hill. It took us over an hour of passing more incredible ruins and stunning view points before we reached Pisac again. I was exhausted by the end of it. That clearly wasn't the route the American tourists took, there was one narrow cave that was a squeeze for us. (I should say by American Tourist I don't mean your average American rather the ones who get noticed for being very stereotypically large with more money than sense.)

It's been a thoroughly exhausting 2 days so my spelling and punctuation is a bit off you know why, but it's been exhillarating at the same time. I'm falling in love with Peru and going home on Thursday is looking all too soon.

Los ninos (Peru part 3)

Ok so yesterday I went out for a huge walk. Well 2 and a half hours, maybe not exactly huge but when you're almost 3000 metres above sea level and can't walk up the gentlest of hills without running out of breath it felt like an acheivement.

The path we took led us down a track with Peruvian houses on either side, I got to see some aspects of Peruvian life that are hidden to most tourists.

The first unusual thing was a kids, no older than 2 or 3, sitting on the front of a motorbike while his big brother rode along the track. Now I've heard people talk about kids saying they could ride as soon as they could walk but a) I've never taken it to be quite that literal, and b) I've never heard it when they were talking about a motorbike.

But on we went past the farm animals that were tied to trees and fences all over the place, and one group of Peruvian teenagers hanging around (Not tied to anything), one of the girls in the group was so checking me out :-P. Eventually after about an hour of walking along a fairly flat footpath we reached the bridge that led across the river and up to the salt-mines.

My brother, whose currently quite ill, decided he didn't feel up to it and turned back with my Dad. Me and my mum marched onwards. Soon after the bridge the path began to wind upwards, both of us soon ran out of breath. My mum told me to go on and she'd catch up, so I walked on by myself.

After maybe half an hour of a fairly steep climb I reached the top and the view was spectacular. Hundreds of pits, each a few metres across, dug into the hillside, with a stream running far below. There wasn't another person within sight. It was breath-taking. I sat there for maybe 10 minutes before I decided it was time to turn back.

It was an amazing climax to another fantastic day in Peru. I can't wait to see what today brings.

¿Donde estamos? (Peru part 2)

I realised that in my eagerness to get to bed last night I forgot to mention where the title came from.

My favourite description of Inca Kola so far is "It tastes like butterflies and rainbows and childhood memories." Basically it's a drink made by the one and only Coca-Cola company (who also sell most the water in Peru) that tastes vaguely like Irn-Bru but is fluorescent yellow. Delicious.

Anyway today brought more clouds and rain. Although when the sun did shine it was boiling hot. I don't think I've ever been that hot and then that cold in a single day without there being a fire present. That's a surprisingly complex sentence to translate into Spanish as I proved today while talking to 3 travellers, two from Lima and one from Italy, who were touring the country separately but together for the day.

I also got talking to a girl who, although I was sure she was a couple of years younger, turned out to be my age. She lived in Argentina but had been born in Holland and went to an American school so spoke good, American English. She, like me, had ditched the parents and started off ahead down the 500 odd steps back to the boat. We talked for a while and she gave me her full name so I could track her down on facebook. We parted ways after our abandoned families eventually made it down the steps and she slept or read most of the long boat journey back.

I probably at this point should explain what the majority of my day consisted off. Most of my time was spent transversing waves that were big enough to soak the windscreen on the boat and wake most the passengers but although they made reading more of a challenge they didn't manage to stop me plowing my way through Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The rather annoying tour guide whose English I understood little better than his Spanish almost did though but he shut up after 20 minutes or so when it became clear that only one or two out of the 28 on the boat were paying any attention.

We were on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the World. I have no idea what is defined as navigable, but I do know it's beautiful, with the clear blue water shimmering under the Peruvian sunshine and mountains surrounding the lake. I still can't get over how everyday here something I see stuns me completely. Anyway while on the lake we visited some local communities that lived on the island of Takile (with the 500 odd steps) and on some man-made floating islands.

Now when I first heard man-made floating islands I assumed plastic blocks with planks of wood covering the surface, but in fact these islands pre-dated the Incan Empire. Built by a tribe trying to escape enslavement by the marauding Incas, these islands were built out of reeds and some variety of floating root. Unfortunately as with most "native" tourist attractions they had been tainted by the tourism trade but there was definately still a traditional charm about the islands, that had to be constantly built up as the reeds rotted, and it was an interesting experience.

We took a brief trip, despite the rain, on what was supposedly a traditional reed boat, which I doubted considering the blue tarpauling was showing through were the reeds wore thin. We got another sheet of blue plastic to cover our heads but unfortunately it wasn't large enough to cover everybody sat on the boat so us brave Brits (my family) endured the rain that we were so used to until everyone had bunched up sufficiently for us to squeeze under.

However the taint of tourism was most obvious when, as we were leaving the island, they sang first "twinkle, twinkle little star" followed by "alouette, bonje alouette" for the English and French tourists respectively. My brother did not approve and continued to make comments about the way that tourists visited different cultures out of interest but by doing so turned all the wonderful cultures into the same old tourist trap and so removed the whole reason that tourists visit. I couldn't help but agree with him.

Following this was the trip to Takile, which included a lunch of either trout or omelette, I like neither fish nor eggs but decided that the trout was the lesser of 2 evils as altitude sickness had reminded me of why I dislike eggs (they actually taste like sick to me) and was rather pleased when on eating the trout I could detect only the faintest taste of fish.

The boat ride back to the mainland was much smoother than the one on the way out and the clouds had disappeared while we were on Takile so I sat on the roof of the boat enjoying the view and the sunshine, possibly even tanning slightly despite my mother deciding to slap factor 50 suncream on any bare bit of skin. 2 and a half hours later we were back 0n dry land.

We went out for tea at a pizza restaurant around the corner that played an acoustic mix CD repeatably while we waited, for longer than expected, for our food. I didn't mind the wait though and the food was delicious when it came. My main complaint was with the music. The acoustic cover of bleeding love was barely bearable and Don't Stop Me Now was clearly never meant to be played acoustically and bordered on depressing. Even this though seems reasonable compared to the music played constantly through the speakers in the hotel lobby, all on panpipes, and contains not only House of the Rising Sun but also a ridiculous version of Hotel California. Panpipes and The Eagles were never meant to be mixed.

While I´m complaining I thought I'd mention the Peruvian keyboards, where it is nearly impossible to work out the combination of buttons you have to press to achieve an @ sign, and I appear to have acquired some form of insect bite or sting on my arm that is becoming quite irritating.

But considering that those are my major complaints everything here is wonderful. I only hope that I don't miss it too much when I eventually have to drag myself home and back to a world of college and exams.

I plan to find another computer during the next week but for now it's adios y buenas noches.

Inca Kola

It actually rained today, for a good ten minutes, it was the first time since I left my house in a frantic rush just five days ago. Unfortunately I wasn't outside at the time to appreciate it but ten minutes was more than enough to remind me of all the advantages of being in Peru.

I can´t believe how much I've seen over the last five days, from the enormous canyons to the baby llamas it's all amazing.

Let me start at the beginning, last Thursday 3 something AM. We left the house for the second time that morning in a mad rush after we'd had to turn back 20 minutes into the journey when my Dad realised he'd forgotten his coat (and I realised I'd forgotten mine). I had to answer my Dad's phone half-way to the airport when the company we were leaving our car with asked to ask where we were. Amazingly after several years of having a mobile phone my father seems to lack to ability to receive a call.

After that was sorted it all ran quite smoothly. Our plane was slightly delayed which made for an interesting transfer in Amsterdam but we, and our luggage, safely made the next flight. I probably should say at this point that "we" refers to me, both my parents, and at this moment in time only one of my siblings, my older brother Jamie, as my sister was already in Peru and had been for several months.

After arriving in Lima however many hours later we got a taxi to our hotel. It was only five minutes away but even so the journey was terrifying. Our hotel was situated on the outskirts of Lima in what I considered a fairly run-down area but by Lima's standards was half decent. As it was still daylight we went for a walk round the block, I felt incredibly conspicuous having white skin and we seemed to attract a few looks and even a series of friendly greetings of one particularly drunk looking group of girls.

The rest of the night past uneventfully, all of us going to sleep early since Peruvian time is 6 hours behind GMT. The next morning we flew onto Arequippa where my sister, Katrina, met us
at the hotel. Arequippa is stunning. It's known as the white city as nearly all the buildings are made out of white volcanic rock, and they basically glow in the sunlight. On arrival there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it remained that way for most of the following days.

We visited the sites, managed to avoid being pickpocketed at the market and I ate my first, and quite possibly my last, Alpaca steak (Alpaca's are basically llama's but more useful for wool and meat). After a few days we hired a driver who drove us to a town, which I can't remember the name of, but the location was... I don't have the word's to describe it. Just thinking of the canyon it lay next to blows my mind. There aren't enough superlatives in the dictionary to describe quite how awe-inspiring this place was.

Even suffering from altitude sickness as I was the day we arrived, my body didn't seem to agree that being over 4000 metres above sea level was a good idea, I still managed to admire the incredible beauty of the scenery, and after many cups of Coca tea (made from the same leaves as cocaine) I was feeling more able to appreciate it fully.

After driving along the edge of it on the way to the town, we went horse-riding the next day. It'd been a few years since I'd last ridden a horse and the 2 hour ride was, well, interesting. I was impressed by my horses ability to climb a dried up river bed that I would have struggled with, let alone with someone on my back. But we trotted and cantered along admiring the scenery and although I ached by the end it was a lot of fun.

The following day we drove back along the canyon, the road seemed even bumpier, especially to my brother who had succumbed to a mysterious illness, before heading to Puno. We saw Condors, some of the largest birds in the world, and wild flamingoes, some of the strangest, on the way so my Dad (a keen birdwatcher) was very content.

Arrival in Puno was interesting. We drove around for a while searching for our hotel and at one point the police decided it was time to pull our driver over, for what reason I do not know as a) I don't speak Spanish and b) I had my iPod in. But I watched him hand over several documents before sending us on our way. Whatever the offence had been our driver felt it necessary to indicate using hand signals until out of sight of the policeman who had, helpfully, given us directions.

Eventually we found the hotel where I am sat now typing this. I tried to keep it as short as possible (and failed apparently) but even after just 5 days there are enough stories to keep me going for hours. So well done if you got this far and thanks for reading. I imagine I will have tales of the rest of my time here up as soon as I get access to another computer but for now farewell.