Letter From Lake Titicaca
December 2009
sewing on the Amazon – a manly endeavor
Olá!
News in Brief:
Hops since the last: Manaus, Brazil > Tabatinga/Leticia/Santa Rosa > Iquitos, Peru > Lima (for one night, in the airport – it counts!) > Cusco > Puno
Events of note:
Taking yet another riverboat further up the Amazon to the Triple Frontier (T/L/SR)
Chilling out in Iquitos and experiencing the strangest ex-pat situation I`ve yet encountered in SA
Inca Trail, Cusco
My email is dibridge@gmail.com always happy to hear from you!
I have a new set of photos, which are located here.
This month it`s a long one. Don`t really know how it happened, probably I`ve been in Cusco for too long. Also I`ve stepped up a notch in terms of professionalism – some pictures and stuff….
Finally, a map of my trip so far – enjoy! (dots denote cheating, ie flying)
News in Full:
The Triple Frontier
So, I`m in Puno, Perú which is bascially the gateway to Lake Titicaca – I`m not going to write about what`s gone on here because (as I`ve said) this is too long already. Any, enjoy! I`m off to go and show off my football skills against some Punians (?) I met in the pub last night. Hopefully I can improve on my 3000m goal scoring ability.
To follow on from where I left off… the all you can eat BBQ was incredible! There are pictures on Facebook (which you can check here). The general process is that you sit down and there`s a little flip-top sign, one side says “Si, Por Favor” the other says “No, Obrigado”. If you dare to flip over to “Si, Por Favor” you are completely inundated with around six waiters all offering meat from ribs to chicken hearts. And it doesn`t stop. After 5 mins we already had enough meat to keep us going for a week, or so. So we flipped the side over to its negative side – but it didn`t stop. Finally, we were more or less on our knees begging them to give us mercy. However, there was still one little waiter who was so keen for us to have rump steak he stood over us waiting for the sign to change. After a few minutes he gave up and slumped off to the kitchen.
The next day was taken with booking boat tickets for myself and my esteemed Belgian travel companian, G. After a good two hours I managed to find a pretty excellent price, no one else on the boat managed cheaper – some paid double. But enough talk of travel bargaining. In the evening we went out with my friend from the hostel, Hanani, who took us to this spot near the favelas for a few drinks – well we left at about 6.30am… We were due on the boat for 12pm the next day.
Now an old head at Amazonian riverboat travel I led the way to the port and we put up our hammocks in a prime position on the upper deck. Whilst on-board I met three other tourists, an English couple and an American with the quite incredible name: Tyler Youngblood (a name any rapper worth his salt would be jealous of).
The food this time around was incredible. We even had a seperate dining compartment. Unfortunately it was still mostly chicken, rice and beans which doesn`t bode well with the toilet situation as it is (with a shower above every bowl, forever dripping).
The voyage was enjoyable, with G taking every opportunity to chase all the local women on board – with moderate success. There really isn`t anything else to do onboard.
Long story short, we all got cabin fever around the sixth day and went a little crazy. We arrived in Tabitinga, Brazil at 3am in the morning and jumped into a pickup truck which drove us to a hotel in Leticia, Columbia – no exit stamp or visa required to move between the two cities, which are effectively one.
The next day we were fortunate to have Tyler among our numbers because he spoke Spanish fluently. Shameless whoring his Spanish we made a good deal with a local travel agent and booked a ticket on the rapid boat from Santa Rosa (Peruvian part of the Triple Frontier) to Iquitos for the next day. The boat was due to leave at 3.30am. Hmmm. We decided to stay up all night to wait for the boat. We were staying in hotel with a five bed room but it just didn`t seem rock n roll to go to sleep for those few hours.
As morning broke in Tabatinga, or Leticia, or Santa Rosa we headed down to the port after an emotional group farewell to G. We were charged R$ 20 for the privalege of a private boat across the river to Peru. When we arrived we dived into the strangest border control. At first we couldn`t see any sign of a border control. After about ten minutes of looking (at about 3am in the morning) we found a sign that seemed to indicated a stamping point – it was outside someone`s house. We hesitated for a couple of moments before knocking on the door. It was answered by an arm, there was no head or body I could discern, from which there rumbled “Passports”. We swiftly made a pile of our passports and they were grasped by the arm, the door was slammed in our faces. After about five minutes the door swung open once more and the same arm chucked, literally, our passports at us. Luckily I was standing in the way and I`m an awesome catch… but seriously they scattered on the floor it took us a while to find one of them, which we eventually found below a nearby bench. To the fast boat.
When I say fast boat I have to explain that this one takes 12 hours to get to Iquitos, and is almost completely the reverse of the slow boat down the Amazon. Getting into the boat is similar to stepping into a submarine, there`s a hatch with room enough to get through if you hunch on your knees and shelter your head from the low lying doorway. Anyway, we all got inside and it was more like an EasyJet flight, tin can and all. The seats themselves prop you up into the neck, or shoulder blades, of the person infront. We had the stamps, we were in the boat and ready to go.
The main theory behind staying up all night was that we could sleep on the boat all day. This was thawted somewhat. Firstly, by the seats which were painful, then at around 5.30am some bright spark flicked on the TVs to put us all through a Samuel L Jackson marathon. As with all American movies in SA the DVD was pirated and was described as the Samuel L Jackson collection. Now, I can take or leave Sam L but the first film they showed was a erotic thriller / black comedy, with Sam L making a cameo appearance at one point (that I noticed). The most interesting point came during a particularly intense “love scene” when the Peruvian border guards came onboard to check the foreigners` passport stamps. The two protagonists were making nice right above the head of the guard as I tried to explain, in my horrible Spanish (Tyler was sitting somewhere at the back of the boat), that I was a tourist and just wanted to go to Iquitos. Eventually the guard got bored and walked off. The movie continued.
Iquitos
We arrived in Iquitos at around 4pm, with light enough to find somewhere to stay and, more importantly, somewhere to eat. The four of us bagged a couple of rickshaws and set about tearing up Iquitos.
The city itself holds the title of “biggest city in the world unreachable by road” – boats and planes only. As such there are only a handful of cars and tons of rickshaws. The noise, day and night, is quite incredible.
For whatever reason we went with a hostel called Hobo Hideout, which was actually pretty decent considering the name. They gave us a cool room (well it was really a treehouse in the backgarden) which was two-storeys, one for the couple up top and one for me and tyler on the bottom. There were no windows, but you don`t really need them when its 30C during the day and not much less at night.
The other thing about this hostel was that there were animal skins absolutely everywhere, and so began our surreal descent into the gringo scene in Iquitos.
The next day we went out to visit an animal sanctuary and a local village. We met up with a couple of other travellers from the hostel (an Australian and an American stewardess, I think you can see where this is going) and headed out to find a local boatman to take us around. Another rickshaw ride ensued. This time, as there were six of us, we were packed in like sardines – three in each – which is very do-able in a rickshaw but not necessarily conducive to the horsepower. It took us about 25mins when it should have taken 10.
We arrived at yet another port and were soon inundated with swarms of “captains” all wanting us to get on their boats and let them show us around their part of the Amazon. We settled on the one captain who didn`t push us, he stood at the back looking very proud – although eventually he pushed through everyone else and, more or less, pulled us onto his boat. We had our tour guide.
The first stop at the animal santuary was great. The owner was an eccentric Austrian lady who has charged herself with rescuing the Peruvian Amazon. She enlightened us to the fact that the guy who owns Hobo Hideout, the hostel where we`re staying, is – unbelievably – the only person in the Amazon to have a license to hunt jaguar. No doubt a pretty lucrative side-business.
At the santuary itself we saw a jaguar, a tapia, lots of monkeys and hundreds of butterflies. During our visit a “saved” street monkey followed us around. The Austrian lady informed us that she was very jealous and every visit picked someone to protect then set about attacking anyone else who came within five feet. At this point the blonde-bombshell American stewardess decided she was going to be the one to get the monkey and so for the next hour of our visit we were attacked non-stop. In the end, it seems that by protect the Austrian lady really meant scratch, bite and generally maim the protectee. On the way out we met a nice doggy though….
The next stop was a local village. Just as we drew towards the shoreline the guide informed us – or Tyler in Spanish – that this tribe, The Boras, were very dangerous around five years ago but were now very receptive to tourists. It soon transpired why, as we arrived in their “welcome hut” to view some native dances and some crafts (mostly made of anacondas, jaguars or bits of tree – a field day for UK customs) for a princely fee of $5 a piece. I
t was difficult to buy the illusion, all these people in native dress so the next day Tyler and I went off on an “off-the-rails” trip into the jungle. We went to visit the village itself – and although along the way we were charged $0.30 for jumping in a lagoon – we were satisfied to find that these people didn`t actually walk around in the tourist dress all day, although there were a couple who had just come off their shift and were stubbornly half-dressed up. We ended the stroll into the jungle by arriving at the “welcome hut” once more. However, this time it was a different tribe – can`t remember, for the sake of argument the Rumbas – who were disappointed to find we`d shattered the illusion and even more so when we declined the hospitality of their “welcome hut”, The Boras had got their first. Talk about behind the scenes at the museum.
So, another few days in Iquitos revealed to us the true scope of the ex-pat scene. It seems the drama all centers around a dispute between a Texan of a 24hr American-style diner and an Englishman (located across the street), going by the name of Mad Mick, about the only golf-course in the Amazon (only 9 holes though).
We were sitting around in said Texan diner enjoying the all-day (and night) breakfast at around two in the afternoon on the “European-style veranda”. There were signs up in the place that declared the owner had the dubious title of ex-governer of tourism for Iquitos. I had noticed leaflets around the hostel advertising “the only golf course in the Amazon” so I decided to enquire of this knowledgable neuvo-Iquitan. I received the following response:
“That place has gone to shit! We used to own it but that crook Mad Mick has taken over and its gone to shit!” He paused to take a breath before continuing the tirade, “He´ll be in prison by February, him and his witch secretary!”
Taken slightly aback I hesitated a few moments before muttering, “so its not worth going to play, then?”
“Hell no!” and with that he turned on his heels and went back inside to the safety of his slice of Texas.
So with all the foreign residents at each others throats it made the next few days in Iquitos delightfully tense, because who can resist the temptation of a 24hr breakfast in such a heap as Iquitos?
I decided enough was enough and I left Iquitos to make my Inca Trail in Cusco (for the 15th November). Cheating by flying to Lima first, spending the night in the airport then going on to Cusco the next day (again by plane).
Inca Trail
I arrived in Cusco on a sunny day, I soon discovered this wasn`t the normal order of things.
At the airport I knocked the taxi down from 30 to 15 /S and I was on my way to Loki Hostel which Lonely Planet describes as “party central in Cusco”. Sounds like good preparation for the Inca Trail…
The hostel itself was like some kind of twisted university fraternity. The huge wooden paneled door is guarded by its own 24hr border control officer only allowing access if you have the appropriate orange wristband. I didn´t, and had to explain that I´d yet to be initiated in the ways of Loki. They let me in.
Once inside I was thrust under the wing of a British “yah” who took it upon herself to push me through to the reception, like a guard post, position to the side of the main entrance. And kicking and screaming they wrapped a Loki wristband around my left wrist.
I was taken before the main desk and 28 /S (a little steep by Perú standards) was demanded of me. I managed to choke out a request to knock down the price maybe a little but was met with a “How dare you?!” kind of stare. I reluctantly handed over the currency.
I was in, and I didn’t quite know how – or perhaps more importantly I didn´t know how to get out. They had a bar offering cook breakfasts until 1pm, then bar snacks til 6pm and finally dinner was on offer from 8pm onwards. But when would I see Cusco.
As the harlot pushed me around the various features of the establishment, explaining the eating arrangements. We returned to the reception where she began explaining the situation with the lockers, and I found my voice once again.
“Is there anywhere good to eat in Cusco?” She looked puzzled, “in the town?”
“Oh,” she replied, wide eyed and open mouthed. “Well, oh,” still in shock she moved over the reception table and looked through the drawers. “We might have a map here somewhere, I suppose.”
Finally she pulled out a tattered piece of A4 with squiggles all over it, that I guessed to be the roads. “Here you go!” She exclaimed with a triumphant grin. I snatched the map and flew out the door.
People get stuck there. I hesitate to say they deal in a type of white slavery, but they try to prevent you from leaving by swapping work in the bar for free food and accomodation. All this would be fine, except for the minimum working period of five weeks. Although, living in a Student Union has its benefits I don´t think it serves anyone over the age of 25, with ambitions of picking up any local culture, any good.
I left Loki after a couple of nights, set up for the beginning of my Inka Trail.
For one reason, or another, I didn´t manage to make it to the welcome meeting at 6pm the evening before (and didn´t quite make it to the hotel before 6am). When I arrived it transpired I was sharing a hotel room for the first couple of nights with a Finnish guy called Jamo, he was a paedeatrician.
We set off in the morning for the Sacred Valley and, again, for one reason or anther I wasn´t in great shape to take in the views and the tourist towns. We arrived at the hotel in Yanahuanca, gateway to the Inca Trail at around 4pm and I slunk into a dreamless sleep.
The next day we began the hike. I had my passport stamped with the Inca Trail entrance stamp (which I´m sure isnt compulsory, but I like novelty – so why not?) and we were on our way.
The first day was easy, we finished at about 1pm and made camp. Our guide, who was called Percy, claimed that every week they held a gringo v locals football game. And who were we to disappoint.
In the end, after more than a little huffing and puffing we finished won 1 lost 1 drew 1. I scored what will most probably be my greatest goal ever at 3,000m – a spectacular half-volley from a cross delivered from the right, behind me. I resisted the temptation of the bycicle kick.
The second day was tough, we had to reach “Dead Woman´s Pass” which is about 4,200m. Even more huffing and puffing, but we all made it.
The third saw us at the gateway to Machu Pichu. We needed to wake up the next day at 4am to queue (!) for the 2 hour final sprint to the great site.
After being thwarted by some strategic (but deeply unBritish, they were Americans of course, queuing technique) from a nother group we were second in the queue.
And… at 5am we were off!
Early on we were passed by about five people, one of them wearing flip-flops, but we soon caught them up as the altitude sickness took hold and we were the second group to reach the Sun Gate – where you can see the postcard image of Machu Pichu. Unfortunately we couldn´t see anything for the morning fog and after 30 mins we began the descent to the site itself.
Still more fog until around 10am when, miraculously, the sun came out and we could actually see stuff.
We were all pretty exhausted at the end of the trail so we chose to get a sandwich before checking out Machu Pichu properly. We spent another hour and a half checking out the city (and avoiding the droves of German tourists who had arrived on the morning buses) before going down to the valley town of Aguas Caliente and started the drinking.
All in all a pretty successful trip.
Gringo Glossary
Lonely Planet = Popular guidebook beloved of backpackers
Obrigado = Thank you in Portuguese
R$ = Reals, Brazilian currency approx. $1 to R$1.7
Rickshaw = Crude form of transportation made up of a butchered motorbike and a similarly butchered carriage attached to the back
/S = Nuevo Soles (New Suns), Perúvian currency approx. $1 to 2.9 /S
Welcome Hut = Local method of extorting money from unsuspecting (stupid) tourists
also I noticed a glaring error in last weeks glossary, of course Hammock is “Rede” (pronounced Heje) in Portuguese, not Hije or whatever I wrote.
