Why do they have a dance called sauce?

Well hello again to our several readers! I’m sorry that we haven’t been keeping you up to date with our adventures more frequently, but we’ve just been too busy this week! Actually, that’s a lie, we’ve mainly been lounging around.

About 3 weeks ago, probably still suffering the slight mental impairment that comes with Altitude sickness and certainly under the influence of some form of liquid intoxicant, we decided it would be a good idea to book ourselves onto the Salkantay trek, a 5 day, 45-mile trek through the mountains peaking at 4,580 meters, with the final day bringing us to Machu Picchu. The decision to commit ourselves to this trek came about whilst we were still at Pisco and Soul, trying to work out the most cost-effective way to visit the Incan Citadel. As Peru’s premier tourist attraction and owing to its remote location, visiting Machu Picchu is very expensive. Furthermore, in order to help preserve the ruins, access to Machu Picchu is limited and there are only so many tourist entries allowed each day, serving only to hike the price even higher.

Trying to find a 1- or 2-day trip for a reasonable price was a minefield; Cusco is absolutely jam packed with tour operators attempting to cash in on the lucrative tourist trade, and whilst many of them will offer a great service, there are plenty of rogue traders out there. Reading online, you can get some great deals, if you’re lucky, but many of these businesses have review pages riddled with horror stories of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere or tour buses not turning up or not having the right tickets for the right days etc.

1-day round trips from reputable tour operators out of Cusco are expensive, starting from about £200 each. These also give you only a short time at Machu Picchu itself; the bulk of the time being taken up by the bus ride to Ollantaytambo (probably with another driver with a death wish; since our experience in Moray and Maras, we’ve concluded that tourist minivan drivers are the Peruvian equivalent of BMW drivers), the train to Aguas Calientes, and then another bus ride to Machu Picchu.

2-day trips are equally costly. Going with one of these we were looking at the best part of £600 for both of us. We looked at doing it off our own backs; using a local bus to get to Ollantaytambo, buying our own train tickets, booking ourselves in to a hostel near Machu Picchu and then hiking to the top of the mountain (skipping the short bus ride to the top which, alone, is £15 each. If there’s one thing the Peruvians know how to do, it’s exploit a captive market). However, mainly due to the cost of train ticket (see previous brackets) this worked out more expensive that going with a tour operator.

A half-day spent trawling the internet and getting ever more frustrated and exasperated, we decided to go to the other extreme. If we’re doing Machu Picchu, we’re doing it properly! Hence doing the Salkantay trek, costing about £800 for both of us after applying an early season offer. As this includes 5 days food and 4 nights accommodation, per day it works out at a much better price. I don’t know why I’m justifying this to you, we’re doing it now and you can’t stop us! Or maybe I’m still trying to sell myself on the idea…

All we had to do now was kill some time; during the height of the rainy season in February the trek doesn’t run, starting again for the new season in March. Knowing we were going somewhat over budget with our Salkantay expenditure, we booked ourselves an AirBnB with a small kitchen, allowing us to self-cater for the 11 nights to take us through from checking out of Intro hostel to the start of the trek on March 1^st. The AirBnB we found is a lovely little roof-top flat near the city centre, with views of the mountains to the north and west and the tower of Santo Domingo church peeking up over the rooftops from a few blocks away. The large balcony has a covered area with sofas, table and chairs, kitchen sink, cooker and a very plush washing machine which sings a happy tune to itself when it’s finished a load. The large bedroom with one of the comfiest beds we’ve ever encountered joins off the side wall and the bathroom off the backwall, thus creating the only real downside with this flat; when you want to visit the loo in the middle of the night you have to go outside. Brrrrrr. Still, of all the places we’ve stayed in Peru so far, this has hands-down been our favourite.

So, for the last week or so we’ve been spending a lot of time here, relaxing on the balcony, listening to the music from the salsa classes below (and wondering why they have a style of dance called ‘sauce’), reading, playing cards, befriending the local wildlife (we have a regular visitor, a small bird that Katy has named Paco, who eats all our crumbs), being bemused by the Peruvians obsession with setting off fireworks in the middle of the day, enjoying the sun and then quickly ducking under the cover of the corrugated roof as soon as a storm rolls in. We’ve averaged about a storm a day for the last week, they roll in quickly off the mountains and can come from any direction. 10 minutes after wind, rain and flashes of lighting, it’s straight back to glorious sunshine again. The rapidly changing and unpredictable weather makes us feel right at home (As if to engage in a game of one-upmanship though, as I’m writing this a hail storm has rolled in).

Our only two major excursions in the last week have been a trip to Cusco Park on the hillside near Sacsayhuaman, and to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary out on the road to Pisac. Cusco Park is a kind of outdoor museum, with farm animals, a straw hut for demonstrating traditional textile production, a short bridge constructed in the Inca style with grass rope, an aquarium, a series of small buildings with various pre and post-Hispanic artefacts and a separate series of buildings with dioramas of the Inca ruins from the surrounding area. Our guide around the site was a young Peruvian man who didn’t speak a word of English. He came running over to us within about 5 minutes of our entering and, without checking that we spoke Spanish, promptly led us around starting with the huts full of dioramas. Owing to the language barrier we didn’t catch his name, but he was the spitting image of Pedro Sanchez from Napoleon Dynamite, so for the purpose of this blog he will now be referred to as Pedro. Vote for Pedro!

Although he gave us the entire tour in Spanish, we were, more often than not, able to follow the gist of what Pedro was saying. In no small part because a lot of what he was saying was stuff that we already knew: Cusco is shaped like a Puma, the Inca’s built EAT’s, they developed over 2/3/4000 varieties of potatoes (depending on who you ask) and corn, the cabinet full of money, coca leaves and bottles of alcohol are offerings to Pachamama. You know, the usual. #justIncanthings. Pedro concluded our tour with a climb to their adventure play area where we had the opportunity to go zip-lining between the trees. We didn’t partake.

It being the off-season, the park was very quiet and the small workshops around the site where presumably there would be demonstrations of wool dying and weaving were mostly unstaffed, but even so, we got the best part of 2 hours out of it and understood at least some f the things we were told. It’s a pleasant site with a lot of potential to be a really good tourist attraction and at £10 for both of us including a tip for Pedro, it was worth our while.

Our other adventure took us to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary, about a 25-minute drive north of Cusco. The only way to reach Cochahuasi was to take a tour on one of the many open-top tourist buses that Katy swore from the moment she saw them that she would most definitely not be getting on. Alas, this was the only way to do it, and it turned out to be a rather pleasant way to see the city. The tour guide, a cheerful and animated guy called Peter met us in the main square before rounding up a load of other tourists for the trip and walking us up to our bus. After a 30 minute pootle around Cusco enjoying the view from the top deck, the bus took us up past Sacsayhuaman and out along the road to Cochahuasi. Peter gave us a running commentary of the sites we were seeing, stringing together the sites with a little history of the city. Of the 20 or so people on the tour, we were the only non-Spanish speakers, but to his credit, Peter spoke great English, never skipped anything, and always ensured we were as well informed as everyone else on the tour. The driving was also very good. Well, it wasn’t terrifying anyway.

Arriving at Cochahuasi our group was split in 2 with Peter taking the Spanish speakers, and a member of the Sanctuary staff, Melissa, taking Katy and I for essentially a private tour of the sanctuary. The site isn’t huge, but the enclosures are suitably large for the animals they keep, and they aren’t overcrowded. All the animals at the site are rescues and some of them come with really tragic stories of cruelty and neglect, such as a Puma that was rescued from a nightclub in Lima where it was used as entertainment, and an aviary full of macaws rescued from smugglers trying to ship them to Europe out of Lima Airport. Where possible, the animals are released back in to the wild, but some are sadly too conditioned to captivity or permanently injured to be released.

In total there’s probably around 80 or so animals on site, ranging from Llamas, Alpacas and Vicunas to Condors, Pumas and Spectacled bears (yes, that’s the bear that Paddington is). Melissa was very knowledgeable, and she walked us around the site for about 40 minutes. The staff are clearly very caring, and the animals are well kept and cared for. Perhaps the most impressive part of the site is the large Condor enclosure which stretches from the opposite cliff face up to the near-end of the site by the road, with the visitor path straight through the middle of the enclosure. Having these huge birds swoop overhead as the staff feed them is an unforgettable experience. It’s just a shame the site is overall quite small, simply for no other reason that that more space would allow them to care for more animals, you can’t help but think that they are forced to turn animals in need away for lack of space.

Just as we finished our tour and got back on the bus the heavens opened, leading me to discover another thing in Peru that wasn’t designed with people taller than 5 foot 6 in mind, as the whole tour group squeezed itself onto the lower deck on the bus. On the return leg of our tour we stopped at a small hut overlooking Cusco where we were given traditional blessings by a Shaman. This allowed Peter to show off another of his talents as he translated from Quechua to Spanish and English on the fly. The Shaman was from a very remote community in Northern Peru largely uninfluenced by the outside world and still very committed to the Quechua religion, folklore and way of life. Whilst this was very much a show put on for the tourist, it was a charming if brief insight in to the ancient customs of this part of the world.

Our final stop was another trip to Cristo Blanco, perhaps serving to underline the fact that we really had done everything Cusco has to offer now. We finished up back in Cusco about 45 minutes later that scheduled, for which Peter was unnecessarily apologetic. All in all, this was a very enjoyable day and, as the trip had cost us just £12.50 for both of us, one of the best values for money days we’d had!

We have ventured out a few times other than that however, mainly whenever I started to get a bit of cabin-fever, we made another trek up to Cristo Blanco to get some practice in before our hike, this time choosing the longer, but considerably less steep, route up via Sacsayhuaman. We had a tasty meal at a vegetarian restaurant with the most disinterested server we’ve ever encountered. We’ve also made numerous trips to the local bakery which does absolutely fantastic pastries and seems to be permanently frequented by every French tourist in Cusco, and we went for an excursion to the market to buy essentials for the trek. For our final proper night in Cusco we went to an Indian Buffet restaurant around the corner from the main square. Sitting on the balcony overlooking Avenida El Sol and enjoying a beer, the incessant beeping of the traffic and the incomprehensible whistles and glow-stick assisted gesticulations of the traffic police, we decided that we had thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cusco.

Salkantay Trek next, so we’re going to be off the grid for a few days, we’ll be sure to do another update as soon as possible afterwards though, so watch this space.

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.