Saturday, September 29, 2007

Ecuador by that group that was really popular back in the 90s

Hot and sticky. Bananas everywhere. Pedal pushers are back in! All right. So are wedge cork heels. Pity about my cargo pants not making a comeback but I was going to stick out anyway.

Have discovered that I have somehow put on four kilos. FOUR! Which is exactly the same amount that Ben has lost. Am really very uphappy with Ben because obviously this whole situation is his fault. I think he realises this so is leaving us tomorrow for a week to go and think about what he has done. Actually, don´t think I´m going to see him again before I leave. Think this is hurting him more than it´s hurting me.

Kruse and I will be heading up to Colombia. Not sure of which way. Will decide when we get to the bus station tomorrow. Because that´s the kind of travelers we are. Spur of the moment, you know.

Most amusing thing about Ecuador so far is that there seems to be some sort of election on, at least in the city we´re in, and they won´t sell alcohol. Kruse is not amused.

Whilst still in Lima, made a mad dash (only had 90 minutes) into the city centre to see the Inquisition museum and the catacombs. Both very good, and Monty Python jokes were kept to a minimum. I particularly enjoyed the mock people being tortured. I think I´ve just worked out where mannequins go to die.

Completely forgot. Bus up to the border of Peru and Ecuador - they fed us extremely well and got us to play Bingo. Great bus, just a pity my Spanish numbers need working on.

Might go and have a cold shower. And no, not because there´s three of us in a room so cannot leap upon Kruse, but because there´s no hot water. In this weather, that´s a good thing.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Minty fresh

Ooh, it´s been a messy and tiring few days. So tiring and messy that it deserves another ooooh. It´s hard to remember exactly what happened. There was live lady wrestling. Red wine milkshakes. Shaving with toothpaste. A 26-hour bus ride from Bolivia through to Peru. Panties for Kruse with the label ´Stripper´ and the offer of drugs whilst shopping at the supermarket . . . non-stop madness.

In La Paz, on a Sunday afternoon, families like to go to the wrestling. It´s advertised as lady wrestling, which is the reason the foreigners all go, but in reality it´s mostly men in costumes that range from the very amateur through to the rather excellent. Quite fancied the orange and silver outfit one of the guys in the final was wearing, actually.
There were three ladies wrestling. Two were in national costume. Bit weird, but very entertaining. The audience were all very into it, especially the kids, who obviously had yet to work out that it was all fake. Everyone, including the old ladies in the back row, was throwing fruit and empty plastic bottles at the competitors. We were in the front row and had people literally thrown at us a few times. Fake, but it looked a spot painful.

Went out for dinner our last night there and couldn´t translate something on the menu that had red wine listed as an ingredient, so we ordered it. Turned out to be a red wine milkshake. Of course! Rather alarmingly delicious. Red wine and frothy milk. So, so wrong, yet so magical.

Shaving with toothpaste wasn´t on the list of things to do in South America, but I got into the shower and realised that I didn´t have any soap, there wasn´t any soap in the shower and I hadn´t shaved for three weeks. I may have panicked. However, I got a nice, smooth shave and my skin smelled minty fresh for quite some time, so it wasn´t a bad experience at all.

Think have finally worked out what day I am leaving, and it´s two weeks away, so will fit in a whistlestop tour of Ecuador and hopefully at least one beach in Colombia. However, before then I have an 18-hour bus ride up to the border of Peru. These bus rides are beginning to seem perfectly reasonable - the 26 (actually 28) hour one we got off today wasn´t too bad. We watched about seven DVDs, slept a bit, ate a bit, admired the road and the suicidal driving a bit - yeah, heaps`o`fun. Kruse and I were lucky enough to be in the front seats, up the top of the bus. These are often known as the death seats because in a crash you don´t have much of a chance. However, they do give you a very good view of the road. Super fun when the driver decides to overtake on blind corners (national habit) and then oncoming traffic appears.

Now - time for dessert and then to demand Kruse models his new underwear for Ben and myself. The boxer shorts had odd sizings - along with your small, medium and large, you could also get single, double and master. Have yet to quite work out what this means.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

This might prove how well we all get along

About to do 26 hours on a bus to Lima.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

But would it kill you?

Have found 96% liquor. And fireworks. Might be a messy busride back to La Paz.

Kruse and Ben are hungover. I have a rash. It is just not my month.

And it appears that Ben might have been allowed some more time off so new plans need to be made. Still only about two weeks left here, though.

Oh, and I think I might also have ants in my pants.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Expanding my peeing abilities

We go to the salt flats of Bolivia. They are all white and shiny and salty. I like them. But to get there we had to take a 12-hour bus. WITH NO TOILET. Bus officially left at 7pm. However, it took about an hour for all the bags and so forth belonging to locals to be loaded on, so in the mean time, I went and peed in a dark street. Bus was very packed and the seats were not made for people with very long legs, making sleeping difficult. At one stage I was resting my legs on a bag in the aisle, only I quickly realised that it was actually a person´s bottom when they moved. Sleeping in the aisle looked a lot more comfy than sleeping in my seat. However, we eventually get to Uyuni and track down our tour company. We have a jeep with a guide, two aussies and an Israeli. Fortunately, they all turn out to be perfectly acceptable travelling companions. Just as well. I can be a right bitch when confronted with evil fellow passengers.

Day one involves the salt flats. Oooh, these are all shiny. I want one. Have added to the Christmas list. There´s an ísland´in the middle, covered in cacti. With a German girl in a bikini attempting to hug one. She hurt herself. I laughed. Get to that night´s accomodation. Is made of salt. Hardly surprising, really. We drink whisky. It is nice. Helps fight the cold.

Day two, we leave the salt flats. See many llama and alpaca and the other one that looks like that but is a little smaller. I pee behind some rocks. And later I do this again, but behind different rocks. And later still, behind the jeep. Am getting pretty good at peeing in the great outdoors. We spend a lot of time in the jeep, driving places. It´s mostly desert. Some rocks. Pink flamingos, not standing on one leg, like they are supposed to. Some alpaca and the rabbit squirrel thingy. Get to next lot of accomodation, which is basic. Very basic. However, I am not feeling at all well and think that perhaps I am getting whatever Ben had that made him smell bad a day or two before, so I retire to bed very early. Apparently we are also getting up at 3.30am, so sleep is no doubt a good idea.

Day three. We do not get up at 3.30am. All the drivers (there are several jeeploads of tourists around) have been boozing and apparently our driver needs more sleep. He also looks as though someone has punched him. And, what fun! Two of our tires have been let down in the night! Hilarious. Eventually get going and see some more stuff, like lakes and more flamingos. And jump in natural spring. This is all good, although goes swiftly downhill when Ben borrows my bikini for a fashion shoot.
Two real flat tires and more peeing behind rocks and boulders and we´re back in Uyuni, where there are no buses out of town until tomorrow. Llama pizza for dinner and I think I might go and wash myself. God knows I don´t smell so good. But, eye pox might finally be clearing up. Jolly good, what?

Monday, September 17, 2007

The ´real´ South America

You haven´t been to the real South America until you´ve seen local women with their brightly coloured outfits and bowler hats washing their clothes in a river. Or heard the Mission Impossible theme song done on pan pipes.

Today I also had my pockets felt up by an 18-month-year-old. I think she only wanted a coin to put in the jukebox and I was considering giving it to her older sister who had so charmingly counted to ten in English for me, but then they completely bypassed Julio Iglesias on the playlist so I decided against it.

We went out for a truly Bolivian meal of Indian curry. We are real travellers. Ran into the Irish from Machu Picchu. Glorious reunion once they´d gotten over being fibbed to by Ben about where he got his scar from. (Not from a stab wound in a gay bar from a jealous husband as they´d been informed.)

Dried llama foetuses for all

Am not sure how I´d get one through customs, but they´re the must have item from Bolivia, surely.

Ah, yes, we´re in Bolivia. Copacabana (the lesser known one) was awfully nice, very sunny and now Ben´s nose is even more scaly and peeling than it used to be. We took a boat out to the Island of the Sun and decided to walk from the south end to the north. As the island is only 9.5 kms, this sounded like a bit of a doddle. Stupid high altitude. Was utterly exhausted by sunset when I stumbled into the little village. I think we saw some ruins. Probably have some photos somewhere to inflict upon uninterested parties in the coming months. The next day we took a private boat to the little Island of the Moon. Nice. Small. Might have liked it more if my stupid eye infection hadn´t been fiddling with my vision, making things a little blurry. Took some more photos. Was quite firm with all the ladies trying to sell me trinkets.

Back to Copacobana and Ben and I bond with the small child that seemed to belong to the hostel. She wouldn´t tell us her name but was more than willing to engage in a rather strange game of cards. I was playing snap. Not entirely sure what she was playing but I´m pretty sure that we both thought we were winning. Was a beautiful day so out came the jandals and we sat on the lakefront and watched the swan pedal boats, meaning to get one ourselves the next day. (I suspect we were all thinking the same thing: swan pedal boat wars.) Beer was drunk, I sampled some more exceptionally bad red wine, we ate rather a lot and then Ben and Kruse decided to make their way through quite a bit of the cocktail list. I declined, thinking that I ought to let whatever drugs I´d been given this time for the eye have some sober time so that maybe they´d actually fix it. Consequently, I was woken at 1am by giggling men claiming that a 17-year-old boy had been giving Kruse the glad eye. Well, Ben claimed it was so and he never tells lies.

We decide to go to La Paz the next day, on a local bus (no toilet). Kruse, for the first time ever, I think, is hungover enough to need to throw up. So he does. Out the window. In his defence, it was a very bumpy road. I think we have truly impressed upon the locals how important the need is for tourism.

Got to La Paz yesterday. It has public toilets all over the place and for that reason alone will always have a special place in my heart. It also has a witches market, with the dried llama foetuses and all manner of bits and pieces. And still more of the woolly llama hats with earflaps. And the world´s BIGGEST avocados. Had one for breakfast. I like Bolivia.

We´ve just realised that we´re running out of time as Kruse and Ben´s plans for world domination, as well other things, meant they were going to be either on a boat looking at blue boobies or in the jungle at about the same time that the world cup was on, so there´s been a reshuffle of plans. Sadly this means we will probably not be getting to the Nascar lines, damn it, and getting though the salt flats and back to Lima in time for them to fly to Ecuador is going to be squashy. I shall be abandoning them in about ten days, to go and rampage it up in Florida. As I just earned Ben´s disgust by buying white chocolate, I don´t think that I shall be missed. (I bought it on purpose, so he wouldn´t eat it.)

And the best part of today was getting a new watch. It´s a Barbie watch and cost about $1.40. Have high hopes that this watch will last longer than the last cheap watch (24 hours).

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Completely forgot the shower

In our little hostel room with three single beds we are lucky enough to have an attached bathroom we don´t have to share. Except, there´s what seems to be a crawl space at about shoulder height in the shower. Except, it´s not just a crawl space, it´s a short tunnel through to the shower of someone else. Kruse and Ben have been waiting with cameras but no luck so far, despite me actually being in the shower this morning whilst the other person was using theirs.

Of course, we haven´t bothered to complain about this.

Am allergic to South America

Following the wild success of the bladder infection and sad bottom, I now have an eye infection. My right eye now looks perpetually shifty. However, following another two trips to different pharmacists, am now sure all the drugs I have will make it all better.

We caught a tour bus down to Puno, on Lake Titicaca. Tour was okay, except for the very early start and the discovery that we should have had three tickets and not just one with three seat numbers on it. Some cross talk and one very loud swear word by Benjamin and we were allowed on the bus. Just as well. We then had to wait HOURS for the free buffet lunch and were reduced to eating all the bad gummi sweets we´d bought the day before. Have decided that I am not overly fond of tour guides because their voices inevitably make me sleepy.

But, the floating island made entirely of reeds on Lake Titicaca was very uber nifty. I want one. Have added it to the long list of things I want for Christmas. Amazing what you can do with reeds, when given a chance. Can even eat them! Tasted rather like boring old cucumber, but full of calcium, you know.

Leaving for the Bolivian side of the lake tomorrow, in order to visit the island of the sun. Look it up on wikipedia. Saves me having to say anything about it.

Think I might go and take some drugs to make my eye look less shifty. Am curious to see what body part goes wrong next. Will take bets.

Monday, September 10, 2007

I can´t dance with you, you vote for National

And with those words, Ben makes himself very popular with other Kiwis.

But I´m getting ahead of myself. It´s been a long week. There was some walking, some drinking, vast amounts of legal drugs, some grumpiness, not enough sleep and some possibly not so good international relations.

So, once I´d recovered from the vomitting that follows a night of boozing, we had a quiet night and then prepared to spend the next day getting ready for the Inca Trail. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ordering something with mushrooms in it for breakfast. I´m not allergic to mushrooms, merely intolerant. Extremely intolerant. Which is a pity, because I rather like them. Anyway, spent quite a lot of my day in the bathroom, admiring the decor and reminding myself to buy more toilet paper at the first opportunity. In the end, at about 8pm, I made Kruse go out and get me some stuff to make my bottom behave. Would have gone myself but feared an incident of horrific proportions.

Spent most of night floating back and forth from the bathroom to the bedroom. At about midnight I realised that I might also have a bladder infection. FUN! Too late to go to the chemist so instead I drink two litres of water and debate with myself and the bathroom wall as to the wisdom of getting up at 4.50am to do the Inca Trail, where I don´t think they have any chemists. Will Kruse be cross with me and the US$400 I will be throwing away if I do not go?

Manage about two hours sleep and decide that I really ought to go and to hell with the havoc the sad bottom etc. might play with my dignity on the trail. Things look up, however, as once we are picked up at 5.20am and travel for two hours with all the other people on our tour, we get to a village with a pharmacy. Much rejoycing, and as Kruse and Ben mark the start of the trail with shandies for breakfast, I march into the pharmacy, clutch my nether regions and announce ´have infection´. They give me drugs. More drugs, on top of the ones I have for my bottom. No shandies for breakfast for Penelope.

It is at breakfast that Ben notices the startling resemblance the three young English folk on our tour have to Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Why would three young magicians do the Inca Trail? Harry doesn´t have his scar but as we have a black vivid felt pen with us, we think we can remedy the situation.

So, anyway, we, like, totally, do some walking for four days. It is all good and very much worth the vast sums of cash we paid. Am all for three course meals on a tramp. Very good tour company. Inca Trail is only 43 kms. PIFFLE. Could do it in my sleep. Of course, huff and puff my way for most of the uphill (second day walk for uphill for 12 kms, and go up to 4200 metres above sea level, almost 1100 metres in a few hours) and dance like a gazelle for the downhill. A gazelle with fecked knees, but a gazelle, nontheless. Kruse impressed the many people on the trail by doing the last two hours holding a six-pack he´d bought off the ladies who dot the Inca Trail with little stalls selling liquid.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It was all fancy and with ruins and porters only wearing sandals whilst carrying 25 kgs, and westerners like myself wearing tramping boots, outfitted entirely in Kathmandu and labouring under a pathetic six kilos. The porters would wake us with a cup of tea at 5am each morning. Ben got to share a tent with Harry Potter. Machu Picchu was pretty darn fancy, although quickly full of tourists. Kruse was told off for flying the NZ flag. Is tapu. Felt superior to all the lazy folk who had just turned up on a bus for the day. They have no idea.

We make friends with the Irish. Do not make friends with the Americans. Well, I sort of did. Kruse and Ben definitely did not endear themselves to two ladies. The Germans were quite fantastically German. The English were English. The French Canadians had good accents. I don´t think anyone will be forgetting the alcoholic Kiwis anytime soon. Kruse and Ben get the guide well and truly drunk at lunch on the last day as we wait for the train to get back to Cusco.

So, now back in Cusco wondering how the hell we can get out of this town, as it keeps sucking all our money. Checked bank balance and it is very sad, indeed. So many gringos here, which is hardly surprising, really, given that it´s the biggest tourist attraction in Peru. (Kruse adds ´if not South America´). Have gone to Irish bar and English bar, to watch rugby, and one may as well be anywhere but South America. Have high hopes for leaving for Bolivia tomorrow. However, there´s a good chance we´ll still be here tomorrow night. If only we still had Harry Potter, we could borrow his broomstick and fly away.

Am fairly positive that I had a great deal more to say about the Inca Trail but cannot remember any of it. All can really say, is that it really is rather fancy, hard on the knees and that I´d do it again but with a plastic poncho as well as a rain coat so that if it rained again, I could cover my sleeping mat. A wet sleeping mat is not so much fun. ´Spose I could have asked Harry Potter to magically dry it but think he is not supposed to use magic outside of school.

Irish man was really Ben Allan in disguise. Uncanny resemblance.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Hungover

Have learnt my lesson. Don´t chase pisco sour with red wine. Was very unwell yesterday. And I went home far earlier than Ben and Kruse and was still more unwell than either of them. They both stumbled in after dawn, separately. Ben went back out to look for Kruse, who came in about 20 minutes later having found himself on a hilltop with no idea of how he came to be there. He muttered something about going to look for Ben and then fell asleep.

They indulged in hungover shopping and I threw up. Great day.

Getting picked up at 5.20am tomorrow to do the Inca Trail. Am going to be fecked.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Buses. Police. Not enough sleep.

So, it turns out that altitude sickness is not a load of bollocks. Who would have thought? Am going to attempt to cure it with the well-known remedy of cheap red wine and ´cola real´, instead of the coca tea recommended by the guide book and everyone you ask.

We´ve finally made it up to Cusco in Peru, in preparation for killing our unfit selves on the Inca Trail in a few days. We´re ´acclimatising´ but having only arrived here at 5.15am this morning, we´re really just sleeping and lolling about and trying not to huff and puff when we go out for walks. Stupid high alititude.

We left Rapa Nui last Tuesday and since then have spent three nights on buses and one and a half nights in beds. We are tired and possibly a little scratchy. But it´s all super! No, really! I love trying to sleep on buses. Such an adventure.
We made our way up the coast of Chile, stopping in a small town after one 14-hour bus ride, because it was supposed to have a superb national park. I´m sure it does, only it was closed. Basically all desert, beach and gorgeous white sand. Sadly, small town had little else to offer and lunatic local wouldn´t leave us alone - insisted on kissing my hand with dribbly lips. Ben and Kruse laughed. Hate Ben and Kruse.
At lunch see locals drinking beer and fanta. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, we give it a go. Might be an acquired taste but I rather like it. Suspect, however, that once I get to UK, might not. You know how things taste better in the country you try them in and just taste horrible when you try them back at home. Had this with ouzo in Greece.
In a botanical side note, however, saw some rather interesting plants that looked just like piles of horse poo. In fact, I thought they were, until regularity of piles suggested unbelievably huge roaming herd or perhaps plants instead. Ben suggested bags of onions, which they also looked a great deal like.

So, another bus up to the border, another 14 hours of fun. Get to Arrica and immediately get taxi across border and customs to Peru. This is supposed to take an hour. My unreliable and generally disliked bladder thought it could handle this. Might have been able to, if wasn´t for extremely long queue to get out of Chile. And although there were toilets, you had to pay (normal practise) and we´d given the last of our Chilean money to the taxi man who allowed us to be two hundred pesos short anyway. So I ignored my bladder (so difficult, it´s an attention seeker), waited in line for 45 minutes, had my thumb prints taken and then we got to do it all again at the Peruvian border. But, what a delightful surprise! Took about three minutes and they had FREE toilets. Love Peru.

Got to Tacna, pounced on by very enthusiastic touts who can get us anything we want. Buses, lunch, drugs . . . kind woman at a nearby table told us not trust them. I liked the cut of her very blue eyeliner and decided to listen to her. So we trot off by ourselves and get a bus to Arequipa. Five hours. No toilet. Curses. Spend the half hour before bus goes visiting toilets at bus station in an effort to be as empty as possible.
Bus is full. And not just of people. Tacna is a border town with duty free. Consequently, people have bought up large and bus is full of stuff. When we finally drive off, there are still bags left on the ground. The moment we get going, old lady next to be pushes a pink puffy jacket on to me. Am confused - is she giving it to me? Man behind me explains that we´re going to go through police checks and like most of the people on the bus, old lady is over quota (on pink puffy jackets?) so she wants me to take it through for her. Due to reading too many guide books I am wary of carrying anything for anyone in case item is full of drugs. Surreptitiously feel jacket - feels okay but I don´t like it. She also pushes a handbag on to Kruse. Am now curious to know what the quota is on handbags.
Get to first police check. I don´t like police checks, but our packs are ignored. Instead, for about 30 minutes, all the carefully packed boxes and huge bags are taken out and unpacked and pored over by the police. I take this opportunity to use the police loos.
Five hours and another two police checks later we are in Arequipa. I like this town. It´s warm, with a stunning plaza and there are beds, not a bus seat. Eat guinea pig and alpaca. Yum. I do like Peru.

Bored yet? Tough.

Take a three hour bus trip (no toilet, again) to Chivay where there is a huge canyon. Get a hostel and prepare for horrible task of getting up at 3.30am in order to catch bus (90 minutes, no toilet) to get to canyon. However, early hour is all worth it as watch sun come up on fecking HUGE canyon. Watch hummingbirds. Want pet hummingbird. Admire depth of canyon. Get cold. See native wildlife - small furry creature that looks like a cross between Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin. Want a pet one. Wonder where the hell the condors that canyon is reknowned for are. They finally turn up - and are pretty fancy. Want a pet condor. Except would probably eat pet hummingbird and pet furry native creature. By this time, heaps of tourists have turned up and are oohing and aahing over condors. They really are large. And complete show ponies, showing off for the cameras. Think they are just curious about strange mass of people. Suspect that if we all hid and just left a small child out in open, chance to get excellent closeup of condor would happen. Doubt anyone is going to let me try this out with their child. Nobody trusts a gringo.

Take bus back to Arequipa and get bus to Cusco. Horrible ten minutes when realise that it´s 8.30pm and we can´t find our bus and our luggage is on it. Aha! We are at wrong platform and realise this just in time and run, run like three tired, lazy white folk. Have ten-hour trip and fail to sleep. Am ever so pleased to see Cusco.

In an utterly fascinating side note: keep seeing people who resemble other people. Ben was furious to see a Spanish Christopher Lloyd. I´ve seen the Korean version of an ex-boyfriend (although, this was on a DVD) and there have been others but I´m too altitude-sickened to remember any of them.