Lima to Cusco

The hippy bus set off early from Lima. When I say early I mean it too, 5.30 packed and ready to go. To a normal person, this means shower and pack your bag the night before and set the alarm for 5.25am. For a German room mate, this means set the alarm for 4.30 to enable you to repack, reorder your pants and socks given the slightly different itinerary being planned. BlueLagos managed to negotiate a 15 minute delay in the alarm, so I had the pleasure of a 4.45 alarm call before heading off to breakfast.

Lima is a typical Capital City in many respects. Hustling or overcrowded depending on your viewpoint. I like the hussle and edge of a city, whilst recognising the advantages of life on the road / in the bush too. The city is the only place for decent shopping, laundry and changing money etc so I am expecting a weekly night somewhere worth staying, with the odd bush camp and rural venues the rest of the time. The beauty of overlanding is you can get to these remote places very easily.
From Lima, we had three nights bushcamping, one in a desert, one just camping in a resort garden and the last one, on a beach. All three offered the chance to relax, talk some shit, build a bonfire and maybe just laugh a little at the posh girls worrying about the state of their finger nails.

The posher older girls are making an effort though one confided to me today she’d much sooner be at a 5* hotel. Done a few 5* nights when I worked in the corporate and would take a bushcamp any day. Just you, the fire, the desert and the stars. There’s something beautiful in that experience that all the money and all the best restaurants in the world don’t come close too.

Ok, so the first proper place we visit are some Islands off the coast, called the Islas Ballestas. These are referred to as the “poor man’s Galapagos” and at $40 a trip, certainly a lot cheaper than the well visited later. As well as seeing seals, penguins, sealions, pelicans and cormorants, we get to witness first hand my favourite thing, a demonstration of the ingenuity and entrepreneurship that is found throughout the world. I am not referring to the $40 a tourist boatmen, the restaurateur who fed us or the stall holder selling bits n bobs to the tourists, no the Islas Ballestas is home to the business of bird shit trading!

Every 8 years, when sufficient bird shit has accumulated on the rocks of the Islands, a small team of workers go for 3 months and do nothing else other than “harvest” the bird shit which is then bagged up and sold to European and Australian farmers. The shit gets to a depth of 1m and someone worked out this would be economical to pay workers to scrape it, bag it and to then ship it to a willing market of farmers looking for alternative fertilisers. I could wax lyrical again about the ingenuity of people but I think it speaks for itself.

The downside of all the birdshit is the pungent smell and it was pretty strong. As ever, the “pretty girls” turned their noses up, but no more than that to be fair. I also did my usual “where’s the harpoon?” when we saw some sea life, though without the usual gasps of disgust your average American dolphin or whale watched displays.
So after the beauty of the wildlife came some culture / history and we were lucky to see an archeological site containing the remains of old “mummies” in a burial site from before Inca times. The burial grounds we toured had people buried in clothes, hair still in tact, still preserved due to the very dry climate in these parts.

The second mummy – named an Ice Maiden, was preserved by Ice, after she was sacrificed by the Incas at a Volcano, presumably to stop the Volcano from erupting. During the tour the guide explained how the dead bodies could be said to be men or women, firstly from hips, secondly from the clothing and lastly from the jaws. With tears in my eyes, I enquired whether the jaws were simply more worn down on the women, thus undoing all the good work I'd done on the hippy bus establishing my “modern man” credentials in one foul swoop.

The nightlife in Peru was sampled by yours truly in Arequipa which promised a nightlife "not for the light hearted". Some of the group were going out for dinner but I felt it silly to not sample such an opportunity. Either way, I stumbled on a rocking club that was playing all sorts of music. I caught up with the two young lads from Aus and NZ and got them down there, after the guidebook recommended spots had been fairly disappointing. Anyhow, I got them down there, had some girls dancing, some beers down our necks, but as they say, you can lead a horse to water…. I left them for 1 minute, popping into the toilet to return to a scenario of “Nick, if we don’t leave now, it’s kicking off in a minute.” It seemed one of the Peruvians had taken exception to one of the Antipodeans moves and Latin Machismo was to rear it’s head. We opted to leave sharpish, a wise move that saved us from a kicking later on no doubt.

Arequipa is a beautiful place with lots of stunning colonial buildings, but all is not lost though for those worrying about me, as demonstrated when we arrived at some colonial building on a bus tour, and we spotted some quad bikes. Tough call, but 20 mins on a quad beats another historic building and we span around for a little.

Interesting fact of the day for those that don’t know, altitude causes a few things, shortness of breath, dizziness etc. but the funniest one is an excess of wind. I only found out this morning and I swear my German roomie has been putting the smells in the room all down to me!

Peru footie shirt purchased and I soon hope to have the name Cubillas on the back. If you need to ask, then you are either too young, not into your footie, or need to spend more time with Scots developing your ability to take the mick, indeed I am really looking forward to wearing it the next time Scotland play.

Last post (Especially for Brandon if he is reading) - I finally managed to upset a yank, well a Canadian, but close enough. "Arsehole" was her comment, though not in front of me, rather, just loud enough so I could hear it. "Got something to say then please say it to my face, like I am doing you now, you stupid cow" was my brief response. Nothing more said, but rather funny nonetheless. Can't be arsed to go into all the details but am not sad she is leaving us in Cusco. But if you are ever on an Air Canada flight and you see a gobby, ignorant, opinionated, 40 something stewardess moaning about an "Arsehole brit" in South America, be sure to send my regards :-)