See Gap Adventures Peru Panorama. Of the 253 photos, it’s difficult to pick just a handful. In any case this trip has to be the best you could choose – Incas, Rainforest and every schoolboys favourite: Lake Titicaca. Just one tip though; do everything slowly at altitude.
A Saturday spent getting to Lima
So a 01:30 meet isn’t such a bad idea, unless the coach company brings the wrong size coach, we get to Heathrow at 03:45 waiting for check-in to open and there are no cafes open. Ah well. The leg room to AMS on KLM is great, so they must be ok, but we realise on long-haul it’s back to knees to chest. There are no decent movies, but the selection is huge, and 13hrs later we are delighted to land in Lima. Even the flight attendant can’t hide his joy as he declare “crew – seats for landing”. Lima airport was standard fare, not shabby as could have been imagine, but leaving the airport and driving through a fast darkening, crowded, mad traffic we see the ramshackle nature sink in. The roads are bumpy and nothing seems well maintained. In true tax avoidance style none of the buildings are finished. Driving along the coast road we get a view on the Pacific Ocean through the mire. There is the obligatory illuminated cross, but nothing else shines out. We arrive at our hotel in Miraflores “see the flowers”, and it is clear this is more affluent, with the hotel having a quaint Spanish colonial style to it. We meet at 7 to go out to eat, meeting our guides Emilio & Manuel. In our room we find the TV is showing Nadal at Wimbledon and Spain vs Aus on hockey, so it is civilised here 🙂
Where else in the world do you think the Riot Police would wave back at you as you drove past & even smile for photographs?
No one smokes cigarettes in Peru, until of course you go where the ‘westerners’ are.
Of course you know where the dye comes from, but when you see someone squash a tiny white Cochineal beetle, which lives on the Prickly Pear plant, and it’s bright crimson, it really is quite an eye opener.
The women in the provinces really do wear Charlie Chaplin hats
The children going to school are smartly dressed in uniform, yet they live in mud brick houses. A well-built mud brick house can last for 50-60 years, and said bricks are merely mud & straw dried out for 2 weeks in the sun.
Remarkably, a Coca Leaf poultice relieves the muscle pain from a twisted ankle. Coca Leaves are grown only in Peru, it seems they are arrive in Columbia where they are processed in labs to become cocaine. So, Coca will always be grown in Peru.
A guinea-pig or Coy, presented as a delicacy, looks more like road-kill than anything else, but I guess if that’s what you like then there you go. Those cute Alpacas taste nice – just like beef, but with no cholesterol.
They can spot tourists a mile away. They’re the ones not wrapped up for the Peruvian winter even though the weather is a pleasant 16 degrees. Taxi drivers know what tourists look like too. Every time a taxi drive past it toots, hoping you need a lift somewhere.
Petrol is sold by the American gallon and apparently matches US prices. The octane is below anything we have too.
There’s no Marmite in Peru for Paddington to spread on his sandwiches.
The comparatively well-to-do suburb of Lima where we stayed, Miraflores, has security guards on every other corner & all the apartment blocks have electric fences.
We were told that 1.5million visitors come to Peru every year. Maybe not surprising in itself, but last year when we went to Castleton in the Peak District we saw a sign that said Castleton has 1.6 million visitors a year. If that’s roughly 4000 a day, that must work out at 5000+ people a day when it’s busy. Could Castleton be stretching the truth?
The 500 people allowed every day on the Inca Trail include porters & guides. So given that every has roughly one and a half porters each, that’s only 200 trekkers a day.
The Inca Trail is closed in February for maintenance and tidying.
