Jura-sick Sucre

Still feeling the after effects of being vibrated down a mountain a few days before, we had a day to kill before our El Dorado night bus to Bolivia’s ‘official’ capital, Sucre. Rather than sit in a coffee shop and eat cake all day, we booked ourselves onto another Red Cap walking tour, this time of La Paz’s massive cemetery and a trip on the cable car up to El Alto – La Paz’s poorer sister city – to the huge Sunday market.

La Paz’s Cementerio General is a bit different to the graveyards we have back home. Death is seen much more as ‘the next step’ in life rather than the end of the road that it is in Western culture, so cemeteries are a combination of mourning and celebration, giving them a really unique atmosphere. We stopped just past the entrance amongst the towering graves for an explanation of a slightly more gruesome aspect of the strange amalgamation of Catholicism and local shamanic religious culture – the Ñatitas. A Ñatita (meaning – snub nose) is the skull of a deceased person which is kept in an altar in the home and serves as a guardian against bad things happening to you. Daily offerings are made to your Ñatita to keep them happy and to make sure good luck keeps coming your way. Offerings include booze, money, cigarettes, sweets, chocolate….all the good stuff basically. Then, on the 8^th November every year, people from La Paz bring their Ñatitas to the cemetery so that others can come and be blessed. The Ñatitas are dressed in hats and clothes, even sunglasses, and placed on altars around the cemetery before being surrounded by flowers and offerings, with people hoping that the Ñatita will make their wish come true or bless their family. Often the skulls are passed down from generation to generation and once a Ñatita is yours, it’s yours for life. If you don’t get along with it, or if it doesn’t get along with you, you are allowed to give it away but selling it is strictly forbidden. Oddly enough if you do want to acquire a Ñatita, paying a larger sum to your local coroner will secure you a Ñatita of higher social standing, a doctor or lawyer Ñatita for example. As you can imagine, the Catholic church doesn’t really approve of not burying these skulls but they tend to turn a blind eye in order to maintain a healthy relationship with the local indigenous communities.

The cemetery itself houses thousands of graves. Families purchase their own slot in the wall, with the higher slots being cheaper due to the need to climb a ladder to pay your respects. In general families will pay to keep the slot for around 2 years before allowing the payments to lapse, you get 2 months’ grace period before your family member is removed and cremated. It’s interesting to see the differences in the wealth of the families buying the graves, with fancy marble and glass fronted plots next to those filled in with cement and words crudely drawn into it; serving as a morbid reminder that no matter who we are in life, we all kick the bucket in the end my friend! Walking around the place you can sometimes see small pieces of paper attached to the graves, our guide informed us that these were eviction notices – some things never change. On a slightly more cheery note, the cemetery is also home to some cracking murals. We were told that there is an art contest every year and the winners are permitted to paint a mural in the cemetery. They’ve even started some on the roofs of the graves as well so that when you take the cable car over it, it looks a lot less grey. The contest recently opened up to foreigners so if you’ve always dreamed of having your art on show, surrounded by a whole bunch of skeletons then you know where to go!

Having had our fill of the macabre, our next stop was the El Alto market. Our guide warned us that pickpocketing is rife at this market, particularly of gringos. Some of their favourite tricks are to drop something, then when you stop to help them they steal your stuff, or someone will throw a fake baby at you and when you catch it, they take the opportunity to help themselves to anything in your pockets. For the most part, both Peru and Bolivia have been very safe, seemingly due to the fact that tourism now makes up such a large portion of their economy and if they get a reputation for being a bit dodgy then the lovely western currency won’t make its way to that part of the city. Rucksacks secured to our fronts and pockets emptied of anything other than snotty tissues, we took the red cable car up to El Alto. The market itself on a Sunday stretches to around 5 kilometres, making it allegedly the largest in the whole of South America. Selling everything from socks to car parts to cameras stolen from tourists down in La Paz and unfortunately some endangered animals as well. Luckily we didn’t delve too far in so we didn’t see any of the more upsetting things BUT, in a Katy first, I was the victim of a pickpocketing attempt! A chap dropped his hat in front of me and bent down to pick it up, preventing me from going forward, then before I knew it, a large woman in black was fiddling around in my pockets. I hope she enjoyed my snotty tissues. I quickly barged forward to re-join the rest of our tour group and excitedly explained to Dave that I had just been pickpocketed! Not that she managed to get anything. We were largely left alone to explore the market after that but it was definitely an experience. Opportunistic crime like that can largely be forgiven in my opinion, if you’re stupid enough to walk around with expensive gear within easy reach in one of the poorest countries in the world then really, it’s to be expected. Besides, give it a few days and you can pop back to the market to buy your stuff back. Apparently you can get some really good deals on technology stolen from gringos but we didn’t stick around long enough to find out. With the tour largely over, we parted ways with our guide and our group and headed back down to the relative safety of La Paz where we stopped at a little Mexican place for dinner before heading to the bus station to catch the long anticipated night bus.

We’d heard many a horror story regarding Bolivia’s buses but for the most part, our experience overall has been a positive one. The night coaches for El Dorado are double decker and can probably fit around 30 people. We were elated to see that our bus was FULL CAMA. This means that the seat reclines all the way back to 180 degrees with a little foot rest that folds up, giving you about as close to an actual bed as you can get. We’d heard rumours of these mystical full cama buses but were firmly told that they didn’t actually exist and the companies that advertised them were just a way to get a bit more money out of the gringos. We had paid around £20 each for the privilege and let me tell you dear reader it was worth every penny. The only slight downside was just how hot the bus was. We’d been told Bolivian coach drivers like to crank up the AC so had prepared for a chilly night but it was SO warm that by the end of the 12 hour journey we were both feeling very groggy. BUT we had arrived in the beautiful capital of Sucre which could only mean one thing – DINOSAURS.

One of the unfortunate downsides of taking night buses is that you end up at your destination incredibly early in the morning and hotels often won’t allow you to check in until after midday. We’ve been incredibly lucky so far (in no small part I imagine due to it being the off season) that the hotels we’ve arrived at have all had our rooms ready when we arrived. El Olivo Viejo was no exception and even had the added bonus of a beautiful pussy cat and a big softy Labrador to welcome us. We were even more pleasantly surprised to find that we had been upgraded to the rooftop suite which included a kitchen and a cracking view over the brilliant white city buildings, as well as the surrounding mountains. After a shower and a nap, we decided to head out to a local ‘gastro-pub’ style restaurant for dinner before researching a walking tour of the city for the following day (as is tradition).

The following morning, bellies full of the hotel’s great breakfast and having bid hasta luego to our feline friend, we headed to Condor Café, a local non-profit co-op offering walking tours, Spanish lessons and a range of veggie dishes. We arrived just after 9am, ready for our 9:30 walking tour. Except there was no 9:30 walking tour. Unbeknownst to us, it had, since the last Trip Advisor review was listed, moved to 10am. Ho hum. We sat outside the café under the blue Sucre sky and Dave took the opportunity to go on a little trip to try and find some replacement sunglasses for the ones he snapped during his little brush with death down Death Road. Much to the frustration of both Dave and his eyes, we seemed to have found the only street in Sucre that didn’t have a little knock off sunglasses stand. He bravely soldiered on as the clock ticked to 10am and our walking tour finally began. A group of around 10 of us were led through the city by Alistair, whose English wasn’t fantastic but we muddled through. He first took us to a local weaving shop (oh goody another one…) featuring products made by the local indigenous communities around La Paz. Unlike Peru, the communities of Bolivia’s Altiplano use far more muted colours, owing I would imagine to the lack of diversity in its flora and therefore a lack of colours to be obtained from various plants in the region. Still, they were very interesting and had we had the room in our suitcases, probably would have brought a few bits home. Our next stop on the tour was the main square – Plaza 25 de Mayo – so named for the Chuquisaca (modern day Sucre) Revolution of 1809 which followed the fall of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, leading local residents to question the legitimacy of its rulers and to posit their independence. It’s often referred to as the first step in the Spanish American wars of independence, so that’s pretty cool! At the time of our stay in Sucre, Bolivia was commemorating (or perhaps commiserating?) its loss of the Pacific Ocean following the Pacific War with Chile in 1883. ‘El Die del Mar’ or The Day of the Sea is marked every year on the 23^rd March with parades through the streets with local military operations as well as local schools and marching bands. It’s an interesting story which others online are able to explain much better than myself but one interesting point is that in 2013, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, petitioning them for the return of the ocean. Sadly, or perhaps not, depending on your views on the whole matter, the petition was rejected. The Bolivians are a resilient people though and they are now planning a new legal challenge. Hopefully one day they will once again regain their access to the sea. Unfortunately with all this going on it meant we couldn’t hear a word Alistair was saying so we quickly moved on to a local chocolate shop – Para Ti.

Para-Ti is a Sucre run chocolate factory with several shops around the city. The cacao is sourced in the Bolivian jungle and processed to exceptionally high standards before being finished off by European trained chocolatiers – so it’s not bad I guess. We were allowed to sample one chocolate each as part of our tour, I went for coconut, Dave went for pistachio – yum. Vowing to come back at a later date, we moved on towards Parque Bolivar, so named for Simon Bolivar, largely credited with liberating vast swathes of South America. It’s a really pretty park with French influences, including a mini Eiffel tower in the centre, though this one is bright orange and doesn’t really do the original any justice. Each to their own I suppose. Following our jaunt around this pretty park, we were herded onto a bus where we headed up to one of the higher parts of the city where a lovely view, and some booze, awaited us. With our tour guide safely leading the way, we wandered into what at first glance just looked like someone’s back yard but it soon became apparent we were at one of Bolivia’s famous “Chicharias” where we got to sample some very strong Chicha. We took our seats in the corner but not before the local drunks welcomed us to Bolivia and tried and failed to chat up some of the women in our group. Chicha is a fermented corn drink that tastes, oddly enough, like scrumpy. It’s quite potent but we enjoyed our small glass before heading outside to play what we were told was a traditional Bolivian drinking game. The premise of the game is fairly simple. A metal frog around the size of a grapefruit sits atop a metal frame with a shelf on top containing various holes. You’re given a cup full of coins and the aim of the game is to throw the coins at the frog and the holes, with each awarding various points. If you manage to get a coin in the frog’s mouth then you win, otherwise the person with the most amount of points is the winner. I wasn’t very good. Dave was ok. The winner was a tiny blonde woman from the USA who I suspect has a long history of playing beer pong so we weren’t too disheartened. Our tour finished up at a fabulous view over the city, next to a lovely restaurant called Café Mirador which was beckoning us to stop and have a beer, so we did. After enjoying our meal and with the weather similar to a hot Mediterranean summer we decided to head back to the hotel, but not before a chap approached us and, for the 99999999999^th time this trip, asked us if we’d like to buy some weed, or some cocaine. He was very polite, apologising for disturbing us in the first place and spoke perfect English but unfortunately neither of these two criteria were sufficient for us to risk a stay in San Pedro prison, so we declined. Heading back to the apartment, we stopped briefly to buy some totally legitimate Rui Foo (I think they’re supposed to be Ray Bans?!) sunglasses for Dave, as well the necessary supplies to make ourselves nachos for dinner. The rest of our evening was spent drinking beer and catching up on Star Trek because that’s what you do when you travel half way around the world, right?

Sunday morning arrived and the beautiful weather continued. Sucre is a particularly radiant city in the sunshine, with the light bouncing off the pearlescent white colonial style buildings, highlighted against the clear blue sky. We headed down to the main square where a bus was waiting to take us to Tarabuco, a market town around 1h15m drive away from Sucre. Tarabuco is home to a large Sunday market where you can buy everything from the normal tourist rubbish to DVDs of Cholitas dancing, to shoes, to cows, and everything in between. We were greeted at what we were told is the only restaurant in town (read, the only gringo friendly restaurant in town) by a radiant woman named Katy (!) who was absolutely delighted to find out that we shared a name. She expressed her love of the English language before explaining everything we could have ever possibly wanted to know about Tarabuco and the market and how to say “no thanks, maybe later” in Quechua (which we have now forgotten). After wandering round the market and picking up a few souvenirs for some lucky people back home, we headed back to the restaurant where Katy greeted us once again and we sat down to enjoy a 3 course lunch for 40 Bobs (around £4.40). The meal was peppered with Katy apologising for the delay every time she brought out a dish, despite the fact that there was no delay. This woman was as mad as a box of frogs but quite possibly the nicest person in the whole of Bolivia, if not the entirety of South America. The restaurant was family run but she explained that she was an engineer, heavens knows what she was doing in this tiny little mountain town. After lunch we were treated to a display of local dances by some young girls from the town. They looked about as enthused as teenagers do when they have to do anything mildly inconvenient, but we gave them a few Bobs for the trouble. We bid farewell to our eccentric host and headed back to Sucre with our bellies full and our minds open and in the evening enjoyed some pasta and a few rounds of gin (that’s the card game not the drink) before bed. And that’s when the fun began…

The following 3 days I had the absolute pleasure of being entirely bed bound due to a delightful bought of travellers’ stomach. Fear not dear reader, I do not wish to relive the experience anymore than you want to read about it so I shall simply say that we did not get to see nearly as much of Sucre as we would have liked but that Nurse Dave was on top form as always. I’m sure I’ll get the chance to return the favour when we head to Asia.

It was now Thursday and, despite not feeling 100%, I was determined to go and see these flipping dinosaurs if it killed me. Cretaceous Park is situated next to a working quarry around 5km outside Sucre’s town centre. It is home to some delightfully derpy life size models of the dinosaurs that inhabited the region many many moons ago as well as its star attraction, the world’s largest fossilised remains of dinosaur footprints. Over 5000 individual footprints from at least 8 species can be seen in the 1500m long cliff. It’s really something that needs to be seen to be believed. At 110m high it stands imposing over the rest of the park. With our entrance ticket we also had the opportunity to get up close and personal with these footprints. Sadly a few years ago a large section was lost due to water damage and the park is now seeking funding to cover the entire section with a protective layer of plastic. They’re nearly there so hopefully they can prevent any more of these amazing footprints from being lost. Being a huge dinosaur nerd, a gift to the gift shop was inevitable and I was heartbroken to find that the only t-shirts on offer were child sized (I can’t think why!). So after acquiring a new deck of playing cards, we headed back to Sucre where we finally ventured to the local Para-Ti chocolate shop and acquired some goodies for when my stomach settled down a bit. We then headed back to the hotel for our final night of luxury before our journey to Uyuni and slumming it in the salt flats for 3 days, but that’s another story for another time….

Buses, birthdays, Basil Fawlty

When one decides to a visit a foreign country, there are certain aspects that you know won’t be the same as back home. The food is different, the culture is different, the tea is different, and if you really fancy a Dairy Milk at 2am you can’t just pop to Sainsbury’s. These are all things for which you feel perfectly prepared. After all, if it wasn’t such a different way of life, there would be no point in going to experience it. Up until this point, this attitude has served us well. We’ve tried alpaca which is delicious and very low in fat and cholesterol, we’ve embraced coca tea as part of our daily routine, we’ve tuned into the Peruvian mindset and felt our shoulders descend from somewhere up in the stratosphere back to a more stress-free position. Inevitably however, Murphy’s Law will kick in at some point and you will find yourself very much wishing you were tucked up in your jimjams with a nice cup of Yorkshire Tea and a Custard Cream watching Call the Midwife (fear not dear reader, the fact that I am writing this now is testament to us having survived what it is to come!)

Having had a jolly good time on our Sacred Valley tour the previous day, we decided to visit some more of Cusco’s ancient offerings with the same tour company. This time we were headed to the ruins of Moray (oh yes, more experimental agricultural terraces!) and the salt mines at Maras. We were told to be ready by 8:20 and were looking forward to a bit of a lie in given that the day before, we were the first to be picked up. The same woman greeted us as she had done the day before and warmly welcomed us with a big smile as she ticked our names off her list. She told us the bus was running a bit late so we stood around and chatted with her for a while. We talked about where we were from and what Peruvian food we’d tried. It was raining for which she apologised and we said it was fine and that it rains in England all the time. When we say this to Peruvian people they seem to take it quite literally but I suppose that comes from the fact that they only have two seasons here. Oh well, at least if they ever make it to the UK they might be pleasantly surprised to see that big yellow hot thing in the sky, I forget its name. The bus ended up being about 40 minutes late but we didn’t mind too much, if the previous day was anything to go by we’d be off out having a lovely time in no time at all.

(EDIT: before going any further, I just wanted to say that after writing this blog post, we contacted our tour company and have since been offered a full refund. 10/10 customer service. Anyway, back to the story…)

As we boarded the bus we found that it was full. There were no seats. This isn’t like a city bus where standing isn’t a problem, it’s essentially my old Argos van converted into a minibus, standing is not an option. Dave was quickly directed to sit in the front next to the tour guide and the driver and the guide told a woman and her 6/7 year old daughter to move up so I could sit next to them, placing the girl on her lap. Not exactly the height of comfort but it was a short drive and we were determined to remain positive! Not long to go until the fabulous sites and tours commence. And so off we went.

I pause here for a moment dear reader to explain that driving in Peru and driving in the UK are two entirely different skills. In Peru, your horn is to be used more often than it is not, for example, to beep at tourists to notify them that your taxi is available, to beep at other cars for not pulling away 0.00001 seconds after the traffic light turns green, to beep at someone you know, to beep at someone you don’t know, to beep at people not crossing the road quickly enough, to beep at people crossing the road too quickly…. I think you catch my drift. Another difference is their seemingly cavalier attitude towards things like stop signs, warning signs, speed limits or indeed anything else that tells our Peruvian cousins that they MUST or SHOULD do something. Their healthy disdain for authority reaches as far as driving and is something one embraces early on. We thought we’d finally sussed it and that the mildly overeager driving style of our minibus driver the previous day was to be expected. Har har we chortled, that was a bit hairy but we never felt unsafe.

Our driver on the second day however seemed to have been bearing a grudge that Formula 1 hasn’t really taken off in Peru in the same way that it has in other countries and saw fit to take this out on poor unsuspecting tourists. Eek. As a child, my family and I often went skiing so I’m quite used to mountain road driving, with its sharp turns and sheer drops. I’ve also seen my fair share of broken barriers and buses half hanging off the side of the mountain, to know that roads like this are not to be messed with. Our driver seemingly had other ideas and was determined to drive as fast around these tights corners as possible, leaving us helpless tourists clinging on for dear life and desperately hoping nothing was coming the other way, as he once again took the racing line around a blind hairpin bend. I couldn’t even bury my head into Dave’s shoulder because he was up the front, presumably a lot more terrified than I was because he could see exactly how fast the driver was going and see when he answered his mobile phone as we were bombing along as well. We stopped briefly at another one of the “this is how we make alpaca stuff” workshops which was in English this time so that was at least one positive. There was also a nice kitten that we said hello to and also, rather morbidly, under the stove/fire they were keeping guinea pigs. There were even baby ones. I thought I might be able to try guinea pig while I’m here but memories of my pet Rodney from when I was a child came flooding back and now I’m not so sure. I’ll probably do what I did with Alpaca and get Dave to order it and then try a little bit, pretending it’s chicken. After trying and failing to take a picture of a hummingbird we jumped back onto the Terrifying Transport™ and on we went, hiding our eyes and praying to the flying spaghetti monster. We arrived at Moray in one piece and were quickly ferried off the bus by Eddie our tour guide. Eddie didn’t really speak very much English. His descriptions and explanations were a lot longer in Spanish than they were in English and because he did the Spanish bit first, we were left with very little time to explore. He seemed very eager to get us round Moray as quickly as possible and kept repeating “take a picture then back to the bus!”. Poor Eddie, we felt a bit sorry for him. Why they’d decided to put someone who didn’t really speak much English onto an English tour is beyond me but there we go. After our whistle stop tour around Moray (which, by the way, is actually quite impressive, I learned more from the Wikipedia article than I did from our tour though…), we were herded back into the Abominable Autobus™ and on to our next stop.

With promises from our tour guide of chocolate at our next destination, it was almost enough to forget about the awful driving. Who am I kidding, no it wasn’t, it was bloody awful. And our next stop really wasn’t much better. We exited the Terrifying Train™(ok I’m running out of these now…) to find that we’d been shipped to a tourist trap in the middle of nowhere. There were at least 10 other coaches full of people crammed inside this shop which sold everything from snacks to coffee to the generic tourist crap you can buy anywhere in Cusco for ¼ of the price. We had some tiny morsels of chocolate thrown at us (which to be fair, were quite nice), at which point Dave and I looked at each other and decided the best course of action was to spend absolutely no money here and go and stand outside, at least then we would get to spend some actual time together. Alas, this was short lived and we were once again herded back onto the Awful Automobile™. Dear reader, I am not a good flyer. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I get very nervous at the prospect of being on a plane. However, during our journey down into the Maras salt mines, I can honestly say that I would rather have been on a plane or indeed anywhere else at that point in time. I once again feared for my life as we descended. At least we’ll be on the inside on the way back up I thought. The salt mines are found down inside a quarry like valley and have been there since before the Incas. In and of themselves they were quite impressive. They’re all the same depth and are fed by one salt stream via a series of aqueducts down the hillside. They’re then plugged to stop the water flowing in and left to let the water evaporate. Each pit is owned by one family and there are a series of small shops at the top before you walk down selling salt from the mines, as well as the usual tourist toot to which we have become accustomed. We were given more time at the Salineras than we needed to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather have spent more time going round Moray but it wasn’t too long before we were once again herded back on to the bus, making our way back to Cusco.

I can honestly say that the best part of the tour was when we got off the bus at the end. We went and sat on some steps near the square where we had been dropped off and reflected upon how it could be possible that we were still in one piece. We think what had happened was that we’d been lumped in with another tour group, hence the lack of speaking English and the lack of any semblance of non-terrifying driving. Upon further research this seems to be quite common but it was such a diversion from the day before that it didn’t really seem fair. After our adrenaline levels had returned to normal, off we went to find some lunch, stumbling upon a tiny little café which promised sandwiches and a drink for 10 soles – wonderful. A bumbling old Peruvian chap (think Basil Fawlty but shorter and darker skinned) came out and took our orders and we were served two tuna sandwiches as well as a glass of Chicha Morada for me and a “cappuccino” (with almond?!) for Davelar. Chicha Morada is a soft drink made from purple corn which I have absolutely fallen in love with. It’s sweet and tastes nothing like anything we have back in the UK. We should have saved ourselves some money and just bought loads of that instead of fearing for our lives for half the day but you live and you learn. It was only a matter of time before something went a little bit pear-shaped and as we’ve both managed to avoid the dreaded Traveller’s Stomach so far, I suppose it was only fair that we shoulder some of the poor tourist experiences. Ho hum. It wasn’t quite how we expected to spend our 6 year anniversary but it’s certainly made for a good story and besides, tomorrow was my birthday!

Having realised a little while ago that we would be spending my birthday in Cusco, I already knew that I wanted to go and stuff my face with chocolate and then go for a curry. So that’s exactly what we did. After a lovely lie in we once again trundled off to Jack’s Café for a MAHUSIVE veggie breakfast and Dave had the banana pancakes. Jack’s is overpriced compared to a lot of the Peruvian family run restaurants, where you can get a full meal for 10 soles, but by English prices it’s cheap as chips and when it gives you a little taste of home, it’s worth every penny. Breakfast consumed and with our chocolate making workshop not until 1:30, we headed back to the hostel for a quick video call with my parents. Dave had also secreted away some cards from the parents and Grandma which was really lovely and made me a bit homesick. The promise of impending chocolate however soon made everything better again. The ChocoMuseo is a chain of chocolate museums/shops/workshops that spans across South America and is doing very well for itself. Not only can you buy handmade chocolate and various silly trinkets but you can also take various workshop, which is exactly what we did! Our ‘guide’ Jeremy was a 23 year old Venezuelan refugee who had moved to Cusco 2 years prior, seemingly having seen which way the wind was blowing and getting out while he could. He told us his family was still there, apart from his sister who lives in Madrid and who he is desperate to go and join. In the meantime however, he works at the ChocoMuseo, showing tourists how chocolate is made, pretending to slice their wrists in order to show the traditional Mayan way of making hot chocolate (no, he really did do this to Dave, I was terrified) and putting up with two silly Brits making stupid jokes and making a big old mess. It was such a laugh and we had such a good time, they even brought me out a little brownie with a candle in it and sang happy birthday! Leaving with our bags full of chocolate, we slipped a healthy tip to Jeremy and shook his hand, wishing him all the best. It was quite a strange contrast as we’re obviously here just to have a good time and it’s easy to forget just how lucky we are to be here, experiencing all of this, and that really a bit of a dodgy bus driver is nothing compared to having to flee your home country.

After popping back to the hostel for a nap, off we ventured to Korma Sutra – Cusco’s highest rated curry house. We weren’t really sure what to expect, what with it being Peru, and India being quite literally on the other side of the world from here (actually, it’s somewhere in Vietnam which we’ve just decided we definitely have to go to). It definitely wasn’t quite up to UK standards but it was a damn sight closer to curry than we were expecting to find in this part of the world and it was still really yummy. A little tipsy and with the raining pitter pattering away, we wandered back to our little hostel with a few extra beers and settled in to catch up on Hell’s Kitchen. A jolly lovely birthday if I do say so myself. The events of the previous day were already starting to seem a little bit funny, and with the promise of moving into an AirBnb all to ourselves on the following Monday, the path forward seemed a lot brighter.