Stephen

As I write this I am sitting on a shaded sun-lounger just in front of the bridge of a boat called the Cruz Del Sur. To every horizon is water. The sounds are the wash of the boat and the hum of the engines, and I can feel a breeze that is gentle and cooling. In the distance are other boats, small and angular protrusions from the sea into the sky. Somewhere up ahead is Santa Cruz, still well out of sight, and to the north of that is Baltra. On Baltra tomorrow morning there will be a plane that will take us back to Quito. But for now there is this, the motion of the boat and the feeling of the wind and the sliver-streaked blues of the sea and the sky.

Yesterday evening I sat in this same place and watched the stars. The nights are not cold, but most of them have been cloudy. Last night though was crystalline and the stars were legion across the sky, like how they were from the desert. I wonder if we know the cost of bringing up our children in cities where we cannot see the stars. Certainly there is a toll paid in wonder.

Each of the days here has been wonderful, with ups and downs. Today we went snorkelling at Devil’s Crown, Corona el Diablo, a volcanic crater that is partially submerged, so from above the water all that can be seen is a circle of stones, a sort of distorted floating Newgrange. Beneath the water on one side there are white-tip sharks and sea turtles and a profusion of fish. We saw a shoal of yellow-tailed fish that must have been 500 strong. On the other side of the ring, oddly, there was much less life, and only in places did fish go about their daily business, poking among the rocks and occasionally fighting with each other.

Trying to get from the open sea into the inner water of the circle of rocks turned out to be more difficult than I expected, and all I managed to do was get myself caught in a strong current. That was an interesting experience. Looking under the water, I could see that by swimming with my flippers and my arms together, I could make a little forward progress. I tried swimming to either side, but I didn’t do it with enough commitment to actually get out of the current. I was never in any danger because I signalled the boat as soon as I saw what was happening, and they came and got me with the indulgent looks they save for the idiocies of the tourists, but I can see how people panic and tire. There was an edge of fear for me even though I was safe throughout; the inexorable force of the current is alien to the day to day land experience.

In the water I have now seen all that I could hope for here:  a shark turning and slinking through the deep rocks near the ocean floor; a Galapagos penguin that swam within two feet of me and then dived, showing me his hard-cornering and acceleration; a sea turtle, who at the time was far more interested in getting food from among the rocks than his fawning entourage of snorkelling tourists; and the school of fish today, which went on and on like an odd, well-attended underwater parade. It has been a great introduction to what lies beneath. The penguin is the motorbike of the underwater world, but the shark is the M3.

On occasion I have panicked and swallowed water, and then lifted my head and returned to my own world with relief. It requires courage indeed to be a scuba diver, and go so far into the hidden world that one hand can no longer be kept on the door. But I can see the attraction – the creatures below are enchanting.

The sunburn on my feet developed into angry blotchy red bands, and then those bands were rubbed by the flippers, and so now I am missing sizable amounts of skin on the top part of each foot. But I wouldn’t have missed today’s journey for the world.

This morning we were snorkelling off Floreana. There is a barrel of sorts near the beach where we landed – it’s mounted on poll and is about the size of a pickle barrel rather than a water barrel, and it’s part of a collection of heavily-signed flotsam and jetsam that has been placed there over the years so that the overall effect has a touch of the art installation about it. The purpose of the barrel is to collect postcards from tourists, so the idea is you go through the cards that are there and take any that you can realistically hand-deliver, and then you leave your own postcards for delivery by future tourists. Around the turn of the 19^th century ‘real’ post was delivered this way, and ships would stop by the barrel to pick things up and drop stuff off. It’s a lovely little tradition. We picked up one card addressed to people in Ballincollig, and left a few of our own. Flicking through the cards, there were quite a few that people addressed to their future selves, talking about travel and kids and other hopes, and noting that the card should be left there as one day the planned to come back and get it.

In the afternoon we landed again and went for a walk on the island. At the coast it is hot, but there are breezes and it is bearable. Inland, the wind drops to nothing and the intensity of the sun is palpable, a burning touch. The air feels hot to breathe. We walked only a few minutes , up a winding path through a hill, and came out on the other side of the island to a beach that I think may be the most beautiful place that I have ever been. Headlands reach out on other side of it, high and steep and covered in the white trees and bushes of the island. In between the sand is white and pure, and the water green and blue, the colours melding and turning together. Turtles swim in the water and lay their eggs on the beach. Dark volcanic rocks are scattered in clumps, lending weight to the overall composition. It was on one of these that I saw for a few minutes, and I could have sat there maybe forever.

The walk back through the heat was a notable counterpoint. The German settlers who came to Floreana way back, and whose families still own many of the local businesses, were famous for their toughness, and were given awards of recognition by the governments of both Ecuador and Germany. And they must have been hard earned and well deserved. Floreana is harsh and jagged and hot and hostile, the kind of place that makes you work for every single thing that you need. The heavenly beaches at the edges are misleading, atypical, like jewels in a blade.

A week has gone by far too quickly, a pre-created routine of walking and snorkelling and eating and sleeping. Each evening the guide, Hanzel, writes the activities for the following day on a whiteboard in the main lounge. Usually we start with breakfast at seven, though sometimes it’s at six. Then it’s either a dry landing or a wet landing, the former where there are steps or a jetty of some kind to get out, the latter where we come to ground on a beach and hop out into a foot or so of water. The trails on the islands are carefully defined, and it’s not allowed to wander off them; the ecosystem here is far too fragile to withstand the tourist hordes without careful  management and control. As we go, the guide tells us about the animals and birds and plants that we are seeing. If you stand near a baby sea lion, it often comes forward and sniffs your toes. You can walk up to the splendidly-named blue footed booby almost to the point of touching and it will not flinch. The tameness of the animals is just mind-altering, the evidence of a conception I would never have believed possible.

In the afternoon we usually go snorkelling, though sometimes the order of the walk and the swim are reversed. Lunch is at 12, dinner at 7. The food has been great, rice and pasta and meat, sometimes with soup, always with desert. And by 8pm, most people are yawning and stretching and starting to think about the slow wind-down towards bed. I can see why people go on cruises, and I will definitely go on one again.

A few days ago we stopped at San Cristobal island to drop off some of the passengers and pick up some more – tours overlap, and so not everyone finishes and starts at the same time. While we were there we went to the interpretive centre, and on a wall there was a graph that showed the number of tourists coming to the islands rising to its present level of about 140,000 per year. The graph does not look entirely unlike the Google stock price, starting from near zero and reaching very high. The government of Ecuador has been doing very well to manage the increases, and on almost all of the islands there is still a sense of remoteness, of something strange and alien, much different to the feeling I was complaining about at Maccu Picchu. I hope that it can sustained indefinitely.

There are interesting questions ahead, though. What level of tourism is too much? When do you shout ‘stop’? At what point is it better to say that the days of the cheap boats are over, and from now on they want to halve the number of tourists but double the money coming in? I think this latter option is doable, and it is the one I would pursue if it was my call, despite the fact that I would rule myself out of the trip I am now finishing. The Galapagos are so special and so incredible and unique that they must be protected, even if that means slanting access in an non-egalitarian way.

Anyway. They will be problems for a new day. For now, land has appeared dead ahead on the horizon, a faint shadow, and I have to pack and get ready for the morning, and then it will be almost time for dinner. It’s sad leaving here, and I felt a sharp pull on the beach today, wondering if I would ever be back. But new adventures await.

It’s the evening of our fourth day in the Galapagos as I write this. Time has twisted and slowed, and the last few days have presented the extraordinary as everyday. The islands are a wonderful place, a world that I would never have believed could exist. The animals have never learned to fear humans, and we have discovered again and again what that means.

But to go backwards first: Ecuador greeted us with something of a punch to the mouth when my wallet was stolen. We were staying in a nice hostel run by a woman with a Japanese name, and she advised us to get the bus into the centre of the city so we could make the most of our one evening there. We thought that was a great idea. When it pulled it up, it was a lot more packed than I was expecting, but I thought nothing of it. I kept a good eye on my rucksack, which had my camera in it, and then at some point I put my hand in my pocket and my wallet was gone.

It was an unfortunate collision between the opportunity of the pickpocket and the stupidity of myself. I had far more money than I needed – a few hundred dollars, originally brought in case of emergency – and I had both my bank cards, plus my driver’s licence. Oddly enough I had taken out some euro cash and other things from it just before we left the hostel, but alas I didn’t go far enough. Lesson learned, expensively.

That particular disappearing act meant that our evening in Quito was spent on the phone to Bank of Ireland and MasterCard. The latter offered a cash advance, which I took them up on, and that meant we had to find a Western Union that was open late to collect it. We did so with the help of the hostel owner, who got us a local taxi to drive us over and wait. When we got there, we found armed guards outside, and they would only let in one person at a time, so Katie had to wait outside. Interesting.

We were picked up very early the next morning for the Galapagos – the taxi was outside at 5.15am. On the way, I realised the flight was at 6.20am and had an internal few minutes of panic, given my conservative tendency to be very early for flights. But we made it no problem. Our first view of the islands was from the air, a small one not much more than a small rocky uprising from the water. The airport on Baltra was tiny and well-run, much of it built out of wood. There is no luggage carrousel, so your bags are brought into a holding area on a trailer and then a sniffer dog gives them the once over. I am not clear if the dog was looking for alien flora or fauna or something more narcotic.

We had some difficulty finding our tour guide but hooked up eventually, learning somewhat to our surprise that we were on a GAP tour. We had seen the GAP group in Machu Picchu, and were not entirely enthused, though in the event it has worked out wonderfully. More people were to come but their flight was delayed, so we were taken on a bus from the airport to where you cross the small channel that separates Baltra from Santa Cruz, and from there we were driven south in a 4X4 all the way to the other side of the island, which took about 45 minutes. The final stage was a small boat which I think is called a Zodiac to the main boat where we are staying.

We were shown to our cabin, about a third of which is taken up by bunk beds, a third is the ensuite bathroom, and a third is floorspace, two shelves and a small wardrobe. There are two portholes that don’t open, rectangular in shape, slightly longer and narrower than an A4 sheet. The air conditioning was not working, and was in fact pushing out hot air. I pointed that out, and they told me that there was an engineer working on it at that very moment. I asked several more times during the day when it would be fixed, and each time they told me it was almost done.

To finish the air conditioning story, then, before going on with the rest: when we got back from our day out, we learned in short order that the air conditioning was not fixed, would not be fixed for a few days, and there were no other cabins for us to move to. No apology followed.

A few years ago in Greece I lost my temper in public in a hotel. I thought at the time I was rather explosive, and felt bad about it later. This time, to understate the matter, I comprehensively eclipsed that. I threw all my toys out of the pram and then I cried until I made myself sick, to stretch the phrase. I told them it was unacceptable, amateur, unprofessional, unbelievable, unfair, ridiculous, misleading, cowboy-ish and unacceptable again. There were many synonyms for essentially the same thing. I told them I was not going on the trip we had paid so much money for if they could not even get the damn air conditioning right. They said I was welcome to leave.

That drove me into further paroxysms as I couldn’t believe they were not even trying to make the situation better. There was colourful language. There were raised voices. It ended with me storming into the cabin, roaring that I would never deal with GAP again, and slamming the door. Then I needed to open it again to find the light switch. I closed it gently the second time.

I was very upset. I suppose, in retrospect, the frustration of missing out on the MP hike and then being relieved of such a significant sum in Quito in such a stupid manner boiled up. The room was stiflingly hot. In the end we did not leave the boat, and I tried to sleep in the cabin. I now understand what people mean when they say heat is ‘oppressive’. The noise of the engine was close and loud, and the heat was heavy and thick, and eventually I gave it up and brought my duvet and pillow to the main salon, which was successfully air conditioned, and slept on a couch. Katie had sensibly been there a few hours by the time I arrived.

The next day the rage was tempered by guilt. The guy on the receiving end of my tirade was the guide, and from the point of view of the GAP machine he is just a middle man, a position I have often been in myself. I apologised to him for getting angry, and he said that I was completely right. This, somehow, made me feel worse, like I had kicked a puppy. Several other cabins were also without AC, but over the course of the day they were all magically fixed when they replaced the newly-installed pump with the old, failing pump. So we only had one night on the couches.

On the third day, they wheeled out ‘the manager’ from GAP, and he apologised in a reasonably effective way. The long and the short of it is that we have had a free bar for a few days, and tomorrow we are being moved to ‘a cabin upstairs’. I am entirely unclear what this means, but I assume they are bigger and may have windows and other such luxurious applications of science. I said thanks, we shook hands, and that was that.

Anyway. Returning our eyes to the prize, there can be few things more surreal than walking through a field not unlike a field in Sligo, and finding that it is populated by several giant tortoises who are not remotely interested in your presence. And they are quite giant – you could comfortably sit on top of one, if such a thing was not forbidden by the rules. They are roughly the size of a coffee table, though wider and higher. If you get too close, they get annoyed and pull their heads back into their shells and make an angry pneumatic sound. When you back off, they come back out again and resume what appears to be their favourite activity of eating grass, though it should be noted they are also rather fond of making new tortoises, and I have pictures to show that. They remind me forcibly of dinosaurs, and they seem temporally incongruous, as though either you or they or both have wandered entirely off the timeline. It’s amazing.

And there are loads of them. We saw them in the highlands of Santa Cruz, going back along the same road we had come from the airport. No-one is quite sure how many there are, as they are not all tagged and as the guide noted helpfully ‘they move around’. But there are certainly several thousand on Santa Cruz alone. A tortoise, incidentally, remains mostly on land. A sea turtle remains mostly in the sea, and a terrapin lives in rivers. They are all essentially the same species though, and in Spanish the generic word is tortuga with the medium appended, i.e. you have a land tortuga, a sea tortuga and a river tortuga.

Later on that first day we went to see a lava tube, a tunnel that formed during an eruption from the volcano on Santa Cruz about 100,000 years ago. If I am understanding things correctly, the volcanoes around these parts tend to not explode with violence in the model of Vesuvius et al, but rather gently burp a very large amount of magma out of the ground which then flows downhill. In this flow, the upper part is cooled by the air and solidifies, but the lower part keeps on flowing. And because of its 1000C temperature, it melts the ground beneath it. The combined effect is that a tunnel is formed – the roof is created by the solidifying upper magma, and the lower flow scours a channel in the rock of the ground, and then flows out of the way leaving empty space behind. The tunnel we walked in was maybe five metres high, but we have since seen many smaller examples of lava tubes, some only a few centimetres high. (In a rather classic case of learning something once and then coming across it again shortly after, I read about lava tubes in a children’s book by Isabelle Allende on the plane to Ecuador, unaware that I was about to see them for myself.)

After the giant tortoises, we began to meet more of the islands’ inhabitants on the following days, and all of them have the same attitude to humans. Sea lions loll on the beach and you could walk over and touch them. If you sit on a rock near a baby sea lion and keep your hand still and at their level, they often wander over and sniff your fingers to check you out. Birds resting in the low bushes of some of the islands don’t fly away as you approach, but calmly let you take their picture. There are land and sea iguanas, and I have been within two feet of them and they have not moved. On the boat, a type of bird called a frigate tends to rest on the upper rigging, level with the upper deck, and you can pause in your walks around the boat to regard them at your leisure. They regard you back. There cannot be another place like this on earth, or if there is it is a secret, a place known only to a few.

I asked the guide about it, about how it could be so, and he said that it was simply that humans had not been coming here long enough for the animals and birds to learn to be afraid, and so they are just not afraid. I find that hard to believe, I have to admit, but whatever the cause this is a place where the animals inherited the earth, and we are just passengers through it, respectful of their primacy.

On the second day we went snorkelling, which was an entirely new experience for me. There wasn’t much in the way of official instruction, but one of the guys on the tour was kind enough to show me how to spit in the goggles to stop them from fogging up and what to do if you got a mouthful of water. And off we went.  The first day there wasn’t a huge amount to see, and I was very nervous about being in such deep water, but the second day was beautiful. I floated along peacefully at the surface – I haven’t yet got the courage to dive down and then blow the water out of the snorkel upon resurfacing – and watched the fish dash here and there, nudging at things in the rocks below. Schools of fish passed me by. There were towering rocks marking the edge of the cove and for the first time I got to see what such rocks look like beneath the surface, and the see the continuity with the earth. A Galapagos penguin came and swam near me, passing within a few feet, and I followed him as far as I could. On land he looks cute and sort of inept, but in water he has the agility and power of a jet fighter. And at the end of the afternoon, just as we were heading back for the shore, I was alone in the water – the nearest person probably 30m away – and I saw a shark. Not the people-eating kind, or so I have been assured, but a shark nonetheless, passing close to the ocean floor, timeless and powerful.

When you have your face down in the water, the only sounds are of liquid sloshing and your breathing, and it is a world entirely to yourself. Lifting your head to look around and hear what is happening is like crashing back into this world, jarring and unwelcome. To stop the poor gringos from finding a way to drown themselves, the guys from the boat tip around in the two zodiacs, and if you get into trouble you just hold up your hand and they come over and make sure all is well. The flippers give you such buoyancy though that it’s very easy to stay afloat and adjust your mask or whatever you need to do, but it’s nice to have them as a backup. As well as that, they’re expert at spotting things, so what happens is that every now and then they yell ‘Shark!’ and point, and everyone hammers over to where they’ve spotted it to try and get a glimpse. The first time I heard them call it out, I thought it meant get the hell out of the water rather than go over and have a look.

It is very compelling to slide back into that world and be entirely with yourself and the water, and I can see why people move on to scuba diving. It’s a spiritual experience, both in the sense that for periods of time you are entirely alone with your thoughts, and because you are floating only partially in the world below, unable to join it fully. I think I’m hooked.

The last few days have passed in a routine where we get up early, have breakfast, go to one of the islands and walk around among the animals, come back to the boat for lunch, and travel to another island for snorkelling and swimming. The days have blended together, merged to form one blissful elongated period of discovery and newness. Not that everything has been quite perfect. Despite my very best efforts and much application and reapplication of sunscreen, I have been badly burned on the backs of my legs, which happened on the second day of snorkelling. It’s painful to walk or sit or move. I am on my bunk as I write this, the upper one, and I have to have my pillow under my legs just to be able to sit. From now on I will use a wetsuit, which offers sun protection as well as additional buoyancy. Also, my sore throat has returned, and after hesitating for a day or so I am now taking the antibiotics that I bought in Peru. I feel fine again, but clearly I have not shifted the dose. And finally, I have contrived to lose the sunglasses I bought just before I came here, Ray Ban Aviators, of not dissimilar value to the contents of my wallet. I and others spent much time and effort trying to track them down, and I retraced my steps over and over, but to no avail. I cannot quite understand it, but yet again I am left with no recourse other than these things happen. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit upset by that too. Oh and actually, if I am putting my complaints together, I  cut my toe on a rough part of the floor in the cabin, which bled more than I would have expected for a relatively shallow wound.

But overall, it has been a time of magic here, a journey through a magic kingdom. Several people who had been here told me this was the best thing they had ever done, and I can see why. It is almost indescribable how different the animals’ behaviour is to what you would expect, a sort of Eden idyll. The most mediocre photographer gets to feel like they could grace National Geographic. And we have four more days of it to come.

We were up in the opening moments of the day yet again to be picked up for our tour. ‘Morning’ here seems to count as 6am, rather than the more noon-ish hour I am accustomed to. The ever-helpful chaps in the hotel made us an early breakfast before it was even officially being served, and kept our rucksacks for us so we could take off with small backpacks. The bus came approximately on time, and off we went.

I haven’t done very much of the guided tour kind of tourism, and I don’t think I have ever done it in a place where you didn’t have to just to be there, like Libya, so I was curious to see how it would all go. We had initially looked into making our way to the canyon using standard public transport, but that seemed like it would be more trouble than it would be worth, hence the tour bus.

The guide said we were to call him Peter, and he kept up a steady patter in both Spanish in English. The other people on the bus were a varied crew – some very-early-twenties Brazillian girls, a Polish couple who had been to lots of places and climbed several significant mountains, and who we got on with very welll, an American chap called Karl who may well be reading this, a German couple in their 50s, of which the wife got very sick from altitude, a Swiss couple who didn’t say too much. Overall it had the makings of a decent Agatha Christie story.

Our destination for the first day was a town called Chivay, roughly 130km outside of Arequipa, but over roads of very varying quality. We made lots of stops along the way, and saw vicunas, llamas and alpacas. We were able to get close enough to get some great pictures, as none of them were that far off the road. Signs warn of their presence like deer in Phoenix Park. I have a patchy record at telling the three apart, but Katie has it down. For some of the stops we had the particularly volcano-looking volcano called Misti in the background, and it felt we were very far away from anything familiar.

The journey didn’t feel long. We stopped for a buffet lunch in a roadside place on the way, in which I tested several mystery meats, and reached Chivay in the afternoon. There was the opportunity for a short hike, which we turned down (I am still, annoyingly, a bit weak), but we took up the chance to go to hot springs just outside the town.

Neither Katie or I had ever been to hot springs before, and there was much amusement among the others at our reactions. I didn’t know quite what to expect – I had kind of thought it might be a natural pool like a small lake you could swim in. Instead, it’s a complex with a series of swimming pools, except that instead of a normal temperature the water in each one is around 40C, and all of the heating comes from underground geothermal energy. So it provides the curious effect that something that is usually reasonably precious even in the western world – hot water – is abundant and used in unusual quantities. It was a very strange feeling to slide into the warm-hot water of the outdoor pool and duck under the surface, and I can entirely see what the Romans were up to when they made that such a part of day to day life for the upper classes. It was lovely to sit and soak for an hour and splash about and look up at the surrounding mountains and feel the heat on every part of your body.

That evening we went for dinner in a place where there was much tourist-friendly dancing and music, probably the Chivay equivalent of the Oliver St John Gogarty in Temple Bar. I was happy enough to get away from it, though we had good dinnertime conversation with the others. The next morning was another very early start – 5am this time.

Colca Canyon is an enourmous hole in the ground, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. However, it looks less like a hole and more like a valley, as there is not a defined rim to it. But it’s a place of spectacular beauty – terraced mountains and the river and rugged cliffs all mingle together on a massive scale. We were headed to a place where condors ride the hot air rising from the canyon below, and therefore are quite close to the tourists watching from the canyon edge.

However. We stopped several times on the way to the viewing point, at places that I was not entirely convinced were worth stopping for, listening to explanations that did not entirely make sense to me, and by the time we got to the viewing point one condor was in place, hanging in the air, being snapped by all the assembled tourists. By the time we were out of the bus, he was gone. We waited another hour and a half or so, but never saw another one that close.

I will admit that I was not amused. Given that we were up so early we could have been in great time to see any condors that presented themselves, even though this is not the season for them to appear, it seemed we wasted a lot of time. I dearly wished that we had our own transport. And that feeling was magnified by the fact that bus after bus after bus was rolling up the same road to the same tourist stops. And at each stop were women and girls (hardly any men, for whatever reason) dressed in traditional garb trying to sell you the same thing you had seen at the last stop.

I felt very sorry for them. And it was the same at every town we came to. We made several stops, maybe four in total, and in each place the routine was the same. The bus pulled up beside all the other buses, and everyone got out. The people in the traditional dress descended and tried to sell you whatever it was they were selling, or get you to take a picture with them, or to pet their baby llama (which is bigger than you would expect) or whatever. After a short time another bus would pull up, and the locals would move on to that one.

Each town was built on much the same plan – a square, a few streets, a church – thanks to the Spanish, who thought that having everyone living all over the place was a bit difficult to manage, and so pulled them together into a limited number of villages. (Fourteen, I think.) It was impossible from our position to even see an outline of what local life might be like there now.

On the last stop or two I didn’t even want to get out, but did anyway. I was very glad to be on the road back to Arequipa, and spent the few hours dozing and reading in my seat in the very back corner of the bus. Both Katie and I essentially read a full book over the course of the trip. Mine was the late Michael Crichton’s last, and possibly his most forgettable, called Pirate Latitudes. I left it with one of the guys in the hotel who had been so helpful to us, and he seemed pleased to get it.

We got back into Arequipa about 4pm, rested for a bit, and then went out for a walk around. There was much more local life there than we had seen on the tour. Sitting on the benches in the park are old men with typewriters, and for a fee they will type up a letter for you. And also in the main square we saw a preacher-type person roaring what I can only assume was fire and brimstone at the people who stayed to watch and anyone who happened to pass within 20 yards or so. And we saw a formal and official ceremony where they took down the flags from the flagpoles in the square, which included quite a lot of people and soldiers and a complex folding choreography, like you see with the American flag when they move it around in an official capacity.

It was actually really nice to be back and I began to regret my earlier misgivings about the city. We went out for dinner in a moderately cheap and somewhat cheerful place, and then were back in the hotel early.

The following day, which is now yesterday, we were out reaonably early. We went to see the Museum of Arequipa, which was dominated by naval things and was clearly meant for boys rather than girls, and then to a religious museum run by Franciscans. This turned out to be a hidden gem of sorts. We were shown around by a young woman who spoke moderate English, and who unlocked all the doors from a large set of keys. I got the feeling they don’t get too many visitors. She showed us a small library which contained maybe a thousand volumes of varying ages, and a room where they keep the clothes which they use to dress the statue in the main church. There was a central sun-filled cloister, and the end of the tour was a gallery of Cusco Scool masterpieces which seem to be falling away to nothing. One of them was an image of the devil and some rather miserable punter that I can still see very clearly in my mind. Insects are included. Eesh.

We went for lunch in the same somewhat-cheerful place as before, and ran into Karl from our tour group. So after we had eaten the three of us set off to see if we could find a bridge built by Gustave Eiffel, of the tower fame. We had a map and knew where it was and decided to walk, and it was a very nice stroll through parts of the city that we might otherwise not have seen. And which made me glad it was daylight. Anyway, we got to a point where we could see the bridge in the distance, but couldn’t seem to get any closer. Karl spoke some Spanish and he asked people how to get there, and they said we had to go quite a long way back and around.

Near where we were was a bridge that was finished in the sense it provided a solid platform over the river, but unfinished in that there was no road leading from the other side. And it was still a few feet above the road surface level on the side we were on. Anyway. We hopped up on it and walked over to the other side with the aim of taking pictures of the Eiffel bridge and going back when three dogs appears from the bushes, running towards us and barking in a not-very-friendly manner.

Katie saw them first and called out. I looked up, and didn’t move. Karl did the most useful thing – he ran forward and picked up two large rocks from a pile at the end of the bridge.

The dogs heard the sound of the stones moving against each other and stopped immediately, well out of range. They must be used to what that means. We backed off slowly, and they disappeared back into the bushes, and we congratulated ourselves on our escape. Well done Karl.

We walked back into the centre and went to an old colonial house called Casa de Moral, which was nice – very high ceilings, wooden floors, old furniture. You could go up on the roof and get a great view of the volcanoes in the distance and the rooves of the town. I noted that if there was to be an earhtquake or an erruption during our visist, that would have been the moment for it. But neither presented itself. So we went back into town and had a look at the main cathedral, which was vast but somehow underwhelming, and then said our goodbyes to Karl. Katie and I had something to eat and headed back to the hotel, then went from there to get the night bus back to Cusco.

It’s now 4.30pm on Jan 18 as I write this in a very nice hostel in Cusco, not far from one of the squares where we ate last time we were here. Thunder is rumbling and crashing outside. This is the third time we have come back to Cusco, as things have turned out. We were very tired getting off the bus and so slept here for a while, then went out and had a look around the shops. I got an Alpaca scarf in preparation for the Antarctic, though that is a while away yet. I also went to a pharmacy and got another round of antibiotics, should I need them; they are freely available here, and I had the old perscription to make it easy anyway. I got painkillers too while I was there. Load up on drugs and write your blog, as it were.

We had lunch in a really lovely restaraunt nearby, recommendedin the guidebook but not recommended nearly highly enough. This evening we are going to go and have a look at a pre-Columbian art musuem, which is open late.

Tomorrow morning we fly to Lima, and then from there to Quito, so it is goodbye to Peru. The day after, we have a very early flight to the Galapagos Islands, and from there turtles and beaches and birds await.

(Publishing on Jan 18 for Jan 14)

The night bus from Cusco proved to be very much like a business-class flight that taxied all the way to its destination without ever getting around to taking off. There were big leather seats that reclined a long way back but not quite to level, a small pillow and a blanket to help you sleep, airline-type food and a removable table to eat it off, safety announcements about the exits and what to do in the event of a fire, small TV screens showing a movie and a free headphones to plug in at your seat if you wanted to hear it. If you closed the curtains, the only thing that gave away the fact you were cruising at zero feet rather than 35,000 was the roughness of the road.

I had an unexpected burst of motion sickness early on, which almost never happens to me, and I think was caused by the bright screens on the dark bus. So I lay back and fell asleep about nine, and then was awake and asleep intermittently throughout the night. I happened to be watching as we passed through a still and silent Juliaca in the small hours, and again as we came into Arequipa, passing through the outer rings of the city until we got to the airfield-sized bus station not far from the city centre.

The guidebooks, the internet and various people we spoke to all warned us about taking taxis in Arequipa – apparently, the bad guys steal the good guys’ taxis, drive around until they find a tourist, pick them up in the legitimate cab, and then carry out nefarious acts such as getting them to withdrawn money from an ATM to their maximum limit. So when a middle-aged chap offered us a taxi in the bus station I stepped forward and blearily peered at the ID he was wearing like a short-sighted chemist examining a prescription. Not, of course, that I have the faintest idea what a legitimate Arequipa taxi driver ID looks like. But the act made me feel better.

He drove us straight to the hotel without any problems, and then insisted on getting out and knocking on the door and ensuring we got inside before driving away. That freaked me out slightly, but I ignored it. The hotel was very nice – cheap and friendly, and they were able to take care of us even at that ungodly hour. We slept for a while and then went back out for a look around.

Arequipa is known as the White City, either because of the number of central buildings built out of a white rock called sillar, which looks very like limestone, or because back in the day mostly white people used to live there. I am leaning towards the first explanation, though I have heard both with equal weight. There is a central square surrounded by a colonnade, and narrow, pleasant streets that radiate from it in straight lines. There are areas to shop, and there is a Radioshack, which I have enjoyed poking around. There are lots of nice places to eat, and in the evening streets there can be a pleasant atmosphere. Earlier today, we passed by the park when hundreds of families were flooding out after some unknown event, and the atmosphere was like that after a friendly game of football.

And yet, there is something here that bothers me. The consistency of the taxi advice is odd; I am guessing something bad of that nature must have happened several times to propagate the warning to such a degree. I´ve even seen it up on signs in tourist restaurants. The door to the hotel we are staying in is always locked; you have to ring a bell to be admitted even during the day, and before opening they check who you are through a little grill. On every ground-level window or door around the city centre there are either bars or a pull-down metal covering, and the consistency of the installation is almost total – I have not yet seen an unprotected entrance.

And then the edges of the city are a different planet entirely. No white-citybuildings here, but rather half-finished houses that may not have water or electricity, re-bar poking up from the walls towards the sky, lean-to shacks forming temporary housing, dogs nosing through piles of rubbish, people sitting around in groups idly.

Is this perceived danger all in my head? It may well be. Lima may in fact be far more dangerous, just with the danger further beneath the surface. AND it’s certainly hardly a coincidence that of the three towns we’ve got to know, there have been multiple policeman stationed anywhere tourists are likely to congregate. But there is something about Arequipa specifically that unnerves me. If I am doing you a great disservice, oh people of the city, please accept my apologies and let me know, should by some chance you read this.

During our first day in Arequipa, we saw the main museum and a massive convent. The central exhibit of the musuem is Juanita, the frozen body of a young girl from the Inca period that was discovered by a German archaeologist called Johan Reinhard in 1995. She wasn´t actually there when we visited, as they were working on the preservation of the body elsewhere, but there was more than enough to illustrate the story.

Reinhard had carried out multiple high-altitude excursions in search of archaeological finds throughout his career, and so was climbing a volcano called Ampato to see what he might find. Another nearby volcano was errupting at that time – an erruption lasting for a period of weeks, rather than an action-movie-style few minutes – and that changed the temperature enough in the region that the permanent snow at the top of Ampato retreated somewhat.

So Johann and the chaps went up for a look around, and we can safely assume they were rather taken aback to discover a 500-year-old mummy lying out partially exposed. She had fallen from a higher point due to the thaw, and was surrounded by various articles and bits and pieces that had been buried with her. The name Juanita comes from the feminine diminutive for Johann, by the way, so she is named after her finder. Further digging in the area resulted in more bodies, all of them children aged around 11 – 14, and one of them was on display in the museum when we were there instead of Juanita herself.

As best as I can understand it, the Incas worshipped the mountains as gods and believed they were alive. When there was an erruption, that meant the gods were angry, and a big erruption could have a devestating impact on the people in a wide surrounding area. Around 450 years ago, at the time Juanita was killed, there were a series of erruptions, and therefore the Incas had to take steps to appease the gods. They did that by sacrificing children.

How it went down was that a child would be chosen somewhere in the empire, and then brough to the mountains. It was a great honour, as they would become like the gods themselves, and indeed Juanita was probably royalty. She travelled from Cusco, a journey which would have taken a few months. Accompanied by the priests, she was then taken up the mountain. Both she and the priests drank a particularly strong form of local beer, plus took substances derived from hallucinogenic plants. Then she was killed. An analysis done in Johns Hopkins of her remains showed it was a hard blow over her right eye that ended her life. Then the priests buried her and completed the ceremony, and hoped that the erruptions would stop. Juanita went off to be with the gods.

Tough days indeed.

Anyway, aside from the museum and Juanita, we also went to see the monastery of Santa Catalina. It covers a huge space, taking up an entire large city block, and was only partially opened to the public in 1970 to raise money to get running water and electricity. Some nuns still live there today.

In the early days of the monastery you could pay to get in, and the more you paid the nicer your digs. So we saw some sets of rooms for one nun that had a piano and other instruments, a small room for a servant (which would be a poor nun), large kitchens for cooking, a room for entertaining, and so on. It certainly didn’t fit with any image I had of a severe convent comtemplating the glory of God.

The space itself is beautiful, the architecture solid and timeless. There are cloisters and courtyards littered with flowers, catching the strong sun, and works of art frescoed onto the walls for the contemplation of the faithful. It’s a fine place to spend a few hours.

Tomorrow we are leaving Arequipa on an organised two-day tour to see Colca Canyon and the surrounding towns, which we are able to book at very short notice through the super-helpful people in the hotel. More here after that.

It’s Thursday afternoon as I write this, though I had to use a calendar to check that. It’s very easy to lose track of days when they are measured by activity and number rather than routine. We have been in South America for a week and a day.

As per my very brief update last night, we are back in Cuzco. We got in via train and bus around 8pm last night, were asleep less than two hours later, and stayed that way until mid morning today. Ever since we have been pleasantly engaged in not very much. We’ve decided that our next destination is Arequipa, ten hours by road to the south, and we are going there by overnight bus tonight, pulling out of Cusco at 8.30pm. (We couldn’t stretch the budget to flying, as tickets were pretty expensive, but we did splash out on the nice reclining seats on the bus.) We went to the station to buy tickets, then came back and had coffee and read for ages in a cafe near the hotel that had internet access, where I had something to eat but Katie wasn’t hungry. Tables are now turned, and as I type this Katie is having lunch and engrossed in one of the ladies’ magazines that they have here in Jack’s Cafe. I can’t possibly compete with that, and so am writing this.

I really enjoyed our unexpected stay in Ollantaytambo, even though I was sick. Because we had only packed for the trail, we didn’t have much stuff, and had no books at all. There were a few magazines about motorbikes in the hotel in English which I read, and so for this brief moment I know a VFR from a Brutale. Katie read a LAN Chile in-flight magazine, and enjoyed it so much she took notes from it. (Seriously.) Going out to eat was a slow-moving experience both because we had literally nothing else to do, and because the pace of service was much slower than at home. Walking across the street to the internet cafe and ‘going online’ in an active sense certainly creates more of a feeling of activity than taking my phone from my pocket.

We even got an idea of how the local people lived because we saw them over the course of a few days, whereas most tourists are just passing through. A lovely woman with a little shop on the main square offered laundry services among other things, and so we were there a few times, and while waiting for her we played with the dog and the kids that were there. It was lovely and very unexpected, and makes me deeply wish I could speak Spanish. It also makes me wonder about the nature of travel, but I’m not quite ready to write about that one yet.

And then there was Maccu Picchu, the jewel of South American tourism.

There was no-one to be seen in the Overlook as we left; the night guy was probably asleep somewhere, or maybe sharpening his axe. I managed to figure out the locks on the main door in the semi-dark and it opened with a screech. (We had paid the night before, and indeed had been promised a wake-up call that never came.) We walked the short distance to the train station, and by the time the world popped into brightness we were on the train and heading back up the Sacred Valley.

The train stays with the path of the river, rather than trying to get over any of the passes, but the views are still spectacular. I’m inclined to envision a ‘mountain range’ as an almost two-dimensional row of mountains, and once you’re over one, you’re over the range. But when you’ve passed mountain after mountain after mountain, it starts to feel as if you are in a whole country of mountains. I’ve been fortunate enough in my short but colourful life (as Billy Connolly says) to see the Himalayas and the Rockies up close before seeing the Andes, and the thing that strikes me each time is that these places are nothing like the places that are not mountains. It’s like Feynman’s point that he can’t describe magnetism in terms of something else you understand, because it’s not like anything else you understand. It’s very hard to capture in words or pictures the feeling of standing there and looking to every visible horizon and seeing nothing but mountains and valleys and gorges and rockfalls, the signs of a distant ice-age whose power, to have left such a landscape, must have been beyond apocalyptic. It’s not surprising that the mountains made it into the old pantheon, along with the sun and the moon and the sea.

Once we got Machu Picchu, we came to the somewhat dispiriting understanding that Machu Picchu train station is not the same as Machu Picchu the world-famous archaeological site, which is in fact a fifteen-dollar-US bus-ride further on up the hill. And this was after paying 40-odd USD for the train ticket.

It was actually pretty hard to figure out what to do from the station, as there are no signs and the crowd disperses through a small closed-in market of many alleys, rather like the gas from a gunshot through a silencer . I have often found though that standing in the middle of a public place and looking confused but hopeful leads to a solution. And so it proved; a charming man who turned out to be from Bolivia wished me good day in Spanish, to which I replied in kind, and then he asked me in perfect English if I needed any help.

Luis, it turned out, was on business in Peru for a while and had decided to bring his wife, his brother, his brother’s wife and their kids out for a holiday. He had also secured the services of a guide. I had the feeling money was not a particularly impactful constraint. He told us he was going to the bus station and we could follow him and his party, which we gratefully did, and he even insisted on waiting with everyone while we bought our tickets, and saw us safely to the bus. As luck would have it I ended up sitting beside him on the bus up to the site, and he told me about tourist attractions in his native Bolivia (the underground salt cathedral sounds amazing) and about his work, and I told him about Ireland and Google. The next time I see someone looking lost in Dublin, I am going to take them out to dinner in his honour.

One we got to MP proper, we were hardly in the gate when we randomly bumped into our trekking party, and there was much hand-shaking and delight. It was very nice to see them again. Saul showed us around the site, and we got a good sense of its size and complexity. Only 700 to 1,000 people lived there, apparently, mostly priests and farmers.

The five Australians were in various stages of disrepair from the trek – one of the young guys had twisted his ankle painfully on the final approach, and so was hobbling around on two walking sticks, and the couple were definitely feeling the strain. So once Saul’s tour was over, they all headed off, and we said goodbye once again. Katie and I stayed another hour or so, climbing up to the highest point of the site and looking out over the ruins and terraces and getting significantly rained on.

And being at MP was… good. Like so many other places, its popularity is not so much an Achilles heel as body-sized Achilles target. As a location, it is beyond wonderful. The clouds open and close like three-dimensional curtains over the mountainscape, changing the light from moment to moment so no two photographs are quite the same. The paths wind among the original Inca walls and buildings, the grass terraces cut into the mountainsides look as if all they need are a knowing hand and they will start producing potatoes and maize and everything else just as they did before. MP is like a capsule, as though it was an intentional recording for posterity of what this civilisation was like before it fell to those from across the seas, telling us of their strength and their education and their power.

MP’s failing is its crowds. For every rock, there is a tourist and a North Face logo. The Inca trail disgorges 500 people a day (controlled to that number) on the site, and the buses up from the train station release many more. The most popular paths are crowded. You need to queue to get up the stairs in places. It’s almost impossible to take a photograph that doesn’t have a large group of people in it. A sandwich in the cafe outside costs more than its equivalent in Dublin or Paris or London.

Somewhere in the mind-twisting rainforest of Peru, I am sure, there are ruins that are something like MP, but not nearly as spectacular. They are overgrown and crumbling and dangerous in places, and no-one ever goes there because it’s so hard to tell what it was once like, and the Spanish pilfered it into oblivion nearly 500 years ago anyway. And to get there is a multi-day hike through hot and raw jungle that requires a level of toughness and fitness that keeps myself and my train-riding, doctor-visiting ilk safely locked out. That is the place where I would like to go. I like to think that in an alternative universe, a fitter, more Indiana-Jones derived version of myself is standing there now, scratched and bitten and sweating, listening to the never-silent noises of the jungle, shaking hands with the guide, and thinking what a thing it is to see something so rare.

Anyway. Back in real life, the clouds closed in rather comprehensively and Katie and I left MP behind and headed back in the bus to the town of MP below. On the short journey I was sitting beside a Peruvian guide who was chatting (or more accurately, chatting up) an American lady on his tour. It was a fascinating conversation to overhear, partly because of the fact that the woman seemed to have nothing whatsoever to offer that was not related to her work, and partly for the interesting facts the guide kept dropping whenever things were getting a bit slow. The contrast between the two of them was severe. Anyway, from the guide’s side of the conversation I learned that there are five-star tours of the Inca Trail where six porters are assigned for each guest, there are shower-tents at each campsite, and oxygen is available for anyone who needs it at any point. There are also zero-star tours where if you want to eat, you have to bring it yourself. And it is also possible to do the whole trail in a day – starting at daybreak, you just keep up a steady 2mph for 13 hours, and there you are.

Once in the town we almost immediately ran into Saul again, who took us to where the three lads were eating, and we were united for the third time. We had a decent lunch and then played a card-game which I last played as a drinking game in India. I had forgotten most of the rules but that did not stop me from winning two out of the three games we played in a definitive triumph of luck over ability. Katie proved good enough at it that I must remember not to play against her for money. Then we said goodbye for one final time, and Katie and I got the train back to Ollantaytambo.

We had originally been booked on a late train, but changed to an earlier one which was more expensive. It was, I think, the first-class train, and everyone on it seemed to be the type of person you would expect to see on such a conveyance, but it still seemed less comfortable to me than the train we had come in on. It included, however, some entertainment – first a dance from a masked chap in local dress, who frightened the life out of Katie by poking his head around the corner of her seat, and then a ‘fashion show’ from the people who a few minutes before had been serving the tea and coffee, where they marched up and down the aisle wearing the latest Alpaca styles. It was all very strange.

From Ollantaytambo we got a bus back to Cusco for the equivalen of about E1.50. While waiting for it to take off we saw Saul yet again through the window, and he got on to say hello and goodbye. You seriously cannot shake that lad. The journey was slow and seemed long over the mountains, and we arrived in Cusco late. And the rest you know.

Back in Cusco. Network patchy, rain heavy, hotel noisy. Sleep required but likely interrupted. Feeling much better. More soon.

I´m writing this from an Internet cafe in Ollantaytambo, which the eagle-eyed among you will note is not Machu Picchu, where we are supposed to be. Katie is on another computer to my left. The reason for our location is that I unfortunately managed to get quite sick. The short version is that I am now taking antibiotics and feeling much better. The long version follows.

As I noted in my last post, I was not feeling entirely well on the day before our planned trip to MP, and that night I didn´t get much sleep. The best that can be said about it is that I have never been kept awake by such a range of noises in a single night before – people ringing on the doorbell, banging on the door, music playing, people talking, a TV blaring. We had to be ready for collection at 6am, and in the morning I felt much worse. The timing was awful. I really wanted to go. I really felt I couldn´t. I couldn´t even eat anything.

Every instinct said to let it go and go back to bed, but then the bus pulled up with the other people on it, and I got something of a rush of blood to the head. I told the tour guide I was sick but that I wanted to give it a go, and would I be able to go back if I just couldn´t make it? He said I would. So I hopped on with Katie, and more or less instantly fell asleep.

It was about a three-hour drive to Ollantaytambo (where I am now writing this), the last stop to buy stuff before the hike. We bought walking sticks and I got a sun hat that makes me look even more ridiculous than usual, if such a thing is possible, but does offer splendid protection. From there we went another hour or so to the beginning of the trail.

At that point it became clear to me just how much we would have to carry – our backpacks, as previously noted, but also a bedroll and a sleeping bag. The combination was heavy. And it was pretty hot. And I was feeling consistently worse. But we struck off anyway.

The trail opens with a sharp-ish incline for a while, then levels out. It winds its way directly up the Sacred Valley, and the landscape is dreamlike, imaginary. Wafts and tufts and bands of cloud hover over the mountains, and the green hillsides interlock into the distance. It was beautiful, alien to anything I had seen before.

Alas, though, I was not enjoying it much. We got to the place we were to have lunch, and it turned out we had quite a long wait there. I made sure every inch of skin was covered with clothing, lay down on the grass, put my new sun-hat over my face, and went to sleep. They woke me up to eat (which was a three-course extravaganza, unexpectedly) and I went back to sleep again after that. I was tempted to turn back, but decided to give it one more shot.

Back at the entrance to the trail, the lead guide had not been able to come through with us due to an issue with his ticket, and he had to sort it out at that end, sending us off with the junior guide instead. That meant we were three hours at lunch waiting for the lead guide to re-join us. That in turn meant we were a little tight on time to get to the campsite before nightfall, and therefore we moved at quite a pace.

Even at the time I wondered about how honest I would be on this blog about what that was like, but I may as well just be blunt: it was misery. The last few miles were almost all uphill, and even though the slopes were slight with only the occasional steep part I found it very difficult. I was covered in sweat – the back of my t-shirt under the rucksack was as though someone had tipped a bucket of water over it. The straps of the backpack were digging painfully into my shoulders. Every now and again I thought of the heavy SLR camera inside and fantasised about throwing it off the mountain.

The last few hundred yards were the worst. I was miserable with the sickness and very, very tired. It was consistently uphill. I fell further and further behind the group. I knew at that point I had no hope whatsoever of doing another day. The first day is the `easy` day, compared with the climb of the second day. When we finally got to the campsite I just threw off the backpack (camera be damned) and stood there and leaned on the stick. One of the porters saw I was not in the best of states and showed me how to unroll the bedroll to sleep on. I lay down gratefully. It had all the comfort benefit of spreading a table-cloth on the ground and then sleeping on that. But I slept anyway.

Through all of this Katie was fine, and thankfully not feeling any hint of my dose. Apart from the two of us there were five Australians on the tour, all of who were lovely – three brothers in their early 20s, and an older couple with grown-up children. All of them found it pretty do-able, and I have no doubt Katie could have made it all the way to the top relatively easily. The others were very nice to me when they saw I was pretty far under the weather, and the Australian man even gave me some antibiotics to ´get a head start on the thing´ as he put it.

I slept in the tent for a few hours until dinner was ready. I went out to try and eat it, but was hardly even able to sit up. I went back to lie down again. Katie brought me over some of the soup. Despite buying a torch specifically to bring to South America, I had forgotten to bring it for the trail, which is the only time I am likely to need it. So I sat in the dark and tried to eat the soup and shivered from the fever and I felt, I must admit, very sorry for myself indeed. Katie brought me a sock (clean, I assume) drenched in cold water for my forehead after dinner, and that helped get my temperature down.

That night was one of the longest I remember. I was shivering pretty badly – I must have had a significant temperature – and I could´t get comfortable on the thin mattress. I passed the night spending a while on my left shoulder, a while on my right, then front and back , and speculating on what types of diseases I might have managed to pick up. Ebola was high on my list of contenders. It´s as sick as I have been since I had swine flu.

In the morning, I confirmed with the guide I would have to go back. Katie was to come too. In retrospect it was a pity that she didn´t go on, and she would have loved to, but we were afraid that I would actually end up significantly ill or in hospital. Towering above us was Dead Woman´s Pass, the most difficult part of the trail. When I looked up it I knew I had no chance, but I think when Katie saw it, she saw a challenge missed. We will have to come back and take care of that unfinished business.

So we said our goodbyes and everyone else set off up the trail, and Katie and I headed back down. One of the porters, with a name something like Vincenzo pronounced with a B instead of a V, was to guide us. He carried an _enormous_ bag also, full of stuff they wouldn´t need for camping when we weren´t there, and also containing my backback, so I had only myself to carry, as it were. His bag was probably about 1.5 metres top to bottom, so it went well over his head. I had a chance to lift it later on, and I could just about do that. I don´t think I could have got it up on my back and taken a step with it. We saw Vincenzo changing his t-shirt at one point, and he was built like the proverbial little brick house.

I can hardly conceive of how someone can be that strong. Lots of the porters carry that much, and they move up the trail much faster than the tourists. The Incas used to run up and down, I read a while back, and I thought that was unlikely at the time. But Vincenzo and his ilk could run up and down all day if they weren´t so loaded down.

The walk back down for me was mostly fine with one agonising climb in the middle. On the previous day it had been a long downhill run from the ruins of Inca towers to the level of the river in the valley below. On the way back, it was very, very tough for me to get up there. There were sighs. There was colourful language (muttered). There were repeated promises never to go near another mountain as long as I lived. It didn´t help that Vincenzo wandered up there with his massive burden as though out for a Fifth-Avenue shopping stroll. But we got there. The last hour or so meant passing seveal groups getting started on the trail going the ´right´way, and seeing the amused glances of the porters as we passed them. Sick and all as I felt, there was stench of failure about the whole thing, no doubt.

Vincenzo came with us all the way to Ollantaytambo, taking us on the local bus. I was still feeling very rough, and rested my head on my backpack for much of the time. The radio was playing mostly English songs. At some point the fact that I was close to a bed and to sleep came home to me with a wave of relief, and at that moment the song happened to be the German version of 99 Red Balloons. I will always associate that song with that bus.

Once we got to the town Vincenzo showed us where to go to a doctor. It was a large medical facility, pretty clean, with lots of people waiting around. No-one spoke more than a few words of English. A doctor saw us both in a small area partially closed off with metal filing cabinets and a curtain, but still open enough to let anyone curious have a look in. He took our blood pressure (we wanted to get Katie checked out too), and I pointed to the various bits of my body which were malfunctioning, which felt like most of them. He then took us back outside and we paid 20 soles to a woman behind a counter, which was a rather unexpected stage in the process to do that, and were then sent upstairs to another doctor who did a more thorough examination. He pronounced Katie to be fine, but me to have inflamation in the tonsil areas (I don´t have any tonsils) and a fever, though my chest was clear. There were much nodding a smiling and pointing to get all of that across.

We went back downstairs again and the first doctor gave us the necessary pills for my prescription out of a large metal press – antibiotics for the infection, and paracetamol for the random headaches that come with it. Three soles for the lot, roughly E0.75. At each stage in the process we skipped the queue, which I felt bad about, as some people seemed to have been waiting a while. The end result was we were in and out pretty quickly.

From there Vincenzo took us to the station to buy train tickets to MP for the 12th, which is now tomorrow, so that we might be able to see it even if we couldn´t hike it. Then we said goodbye to him and handed over a solid tip, and Katie and I went off to find a hotel. Given that I at least would be spending a lot of time there, we went for a pretty nice and relatively expensive place in the centre of the town. How I had been dreaming of a bed with clean sheets, and what a pleasant feeling it was to finally lie down in comfort. I think, though, we are the only people staying in the entire place. For the Stephen King fans among you, I have taken to calling it the Overlook.

I am feeling much better today, though I am still not able to each much. We had breakfast in a little cafe on the square, and then went for a wander around the town. It´s touristy in the centre and local at the edges, with a few Inca sites within easy reach, though they are up too many steps for me to take on at the moment. Lot of cops are scattered here and there; probably good for business to keep the tourists safe.

There are open streams of water running in channels beside many of the streets, and I am not quite clear if that´s the main source of water or not. In the spirit of science we followed one of them back to its source, and found that it comes from a stream that flows out of the rainforest proper. We were on our own at the end of a long alley with high walls on either side at that point, and though it feels safe here we didn´t linger long.

That brings us pretty much up to date. I will admit that being in the tent on the mountain and shaking with fever, knowing that another miserable walk was ahead of me before I could get to a doctor and rest, was not one of the most pleasant experiences of my life. Even though it was definitely in one of the most amazing locations. But I guess the whole point of travel is to experience things out of the ordinary, and not all of those things will be good.

Tomorrow we´ll be at the train station at 5.30am. The train takes two hours to get up there, and then we have the whole day at MP. Tomorrow evening we´ll go back to Cusco, and we´re in the process of working out what to do from there.

Stay safe out there, and talk soon.

Aaaaaannnnd we’re back.

My three loyal readers may recall that I had a blog when I was in India a few years ago, but that it fell into disuse when I got home. Now I find once again that a few months abroad has provided the incentive to write publicly, so my highs and lows will be here for you to examine at your leisure. Posting will be constrained primarily by internet connectivity and my patience for the rather word-hostile keyboard on the Asus netbook I bought for the trip.

The title of this blog comes from a book by Gore Vidal which I have not read, but it is a phrase I have always admired. Quite a long time ago I had a blog of that name at this domain, but through carelessness I let the domain expire and it was acquired by someone else. However the charming ‘other’ Stephen Flanagan was kind enough to give the domain back to me; if you are reading, thank you once again for your generosity.

Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Amsterdam with Katie, and from there on Wednesday morning we take the long flight to Lima in Peru. And after that it’s Machu Picchu, the Galapagos, Easter Island, the Antarctic, several weeks of unplanned wanderings, and then home. In three months I will hit quite a few of the items on the things-I’ve-always-wanted-to-do list, and I think I have found a decent balance between time and depth.

It’s strange now to sit and write this on the night before departure. For as along as I can remember I’ve wanted to travel, to see places I had never known were worth seeing, to learn the hidden things that all the reading in the world can’t teach you. Somehow, though, the stream of years has taken me in a different direction, through engineering, journalism, Google, and always there was something more compelling than time off, something delaying the wandering I have yearned for. Until now. And yet at this moment, I can’t even tell you what it is that I am hoping to get from any of this, what I am trying to achieve. It just seems _right_ in a very fundamental way, like when you try and solve a puzzle for a while and then suddenly all the steps to the solution become clear.

Everyone else is heading back to work tomorrow, Christmas over for another year even though the trees and the lights are resisting the inevitable for  few more days. It still doesn’t seem quite real to me that I won’t be going back too, that I won’t be at my desk in Gordon House as usual tomorrow, swapping stories of Christmas and sizing up another year and another quarter. I’m in a strange middle ground between nervous and excited and uncomfortable, where all three seem to be balancing each other out and leaving only a slightly worried sense of anticipation.

Anyway, here’s to it. There’s only one way to know how all of this is going to go down.

Let the word ring out from this time and this place.