Sunday, 1 May, 2011. LAN flight from Lima to Santiago, 15:12

It’s a travel day, as we go from Cusco to Santiago, via Lima. We rose at 06:15, after a reasonable night’s sleep. I took another Imodium just before bed to ensure I didn’t repeat any of the problems of the previous night. Thankfully it seemed to work.

We had breakfast about 06:30, then returned to our room to brush teeth, seal up our bags, and head out. I had to use the loo urgently, but it was a fairly normal event. It did however hold us up a few minutes while our taxi was waiting outside the hotel. We checked out and were on our way by 07:10.

At Cusco airport, we had to check in, for which there was only a single counter open, with a queue of a dozen or so people. Nearby were self-check-in terminals, but no matter what I tried, frequent flyer number, booking confirmation code, passport number, nothing worked to access our booking. So we waited in the queue as it slowly trickled forwards. The two men in front of us got to the counter and took ages there. M. said they were changing their flights. Finally, they left and we checked in. We tried to go through security, but they wouldn’t let us until closer to our flight time. So M. got a cappuccino at a cafe while we waited. Then we went through and were on our way on another flight.

The flight to Lima was an eventless one and a half hours. The good thing was arriving and feeling the sea level air pressure and the soothing effect it had on our breathing and heart rates. At Lima, we emerged from the domestic arrivals area into the main terminal, and then went upstairs to the departures area to go to international departures. The first thing was a security check, which was pretty quick, then we had to clear immigration, which took significantly longer. There was a single queuing corral, but at the end it split up into four lines, supermarket checkout style. We chose the wrong line, because someone in front of us apparently had a problem and our line didn’t move at all for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, people who had been fifty people behind us in the original queue were passing through before us in one of the other sub-queues. Eventually we made it through, then browsed some shops on the far side. I tried asking in one shop that had CDs for Latin American covers of European pop songs. A guy told me he knew exactly what I meant, such things were very well known, but they didn’t have any!
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Saturday, 30 April, 2011. Mama Sara Hotel, no time recorded

We rose late and had breakfast and dropped off a load of laundry at the nearest lavanderia, before the final tour group meeting. Ale was there in the hotel lounge early, writing out cards with our tour number for us to fill out online feedback when we got home. Kim and Laura were there, and Pan and Jian, and Zaina and Zeeshan, and Olivia, and us. Andrew was apparently still sleeping after a late night out, and I don’t know where Lynne and Garry were, though we had seen Garry earlier while eating breakfast.

Ale collected our e-mail addresses in her diary, while I handed out my photo cards so the others could check out my photos from the trip. Then farewells were said and we handed over an envelope with collected tips – we were a little generous with ours as we thought Ale had done a great job and we’d enjoyed everything on the tour. Hugs were shared and officially we were no longer a tour group any more.
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Friday, 29 April, 2011. 15:51. PeruRail Explorer Suite from Machu Picchu to Ollantaytambo

At 04:15 my watch alarm went off. We like to double the wake-up alarms to be sure. We packed our bags and went down for breakfast just after 04:30, still with no wake-up phone call. The breakfast was still being prepared, so we sat for a few minutes until the guy motioned us to eat. There were sweetish breads, ham, cheese, butter, jam, and the guy came to take egg orders in Spanish. There was no cereal. We ordered fried eggs each and received one each, sunny-side down. M. had saved half her bread roll to have it on, but I’d eaten mine already.

Some others drifted down to eat, and we quickly learned that nobody had got their wake-up calls. We told Ale, and she raced upstairs to check on everyone, then had some heated Spanish with the reception lady, who appeared in her pyjamas. However, we still managed to assemble everyone by just a couple of minutes after 05:00. Jian was the last to join us, as he was in his room watching the royal wedding (Prince William and Kate Middleton) live on TV from England!

We left to walk down the hill to the bus stop for the buses to Machu Picchu. We joined a queue in the pre-dawn darkness, which already contained several hundred people ahead of us. Buses were lined up along the street and more kept arriving and turning around to join the back of the queue of buses. The street was barely wide enough for them to do a three-point turn without falling into the adjacent river, and the footpath barely existed, so the buses blinked their lights to get queuing people out of the way as they turned.

As we waited, the street light nearest us blew. All the others up and down the street were still on. This let us see the stars, with Scorpius setting over the mountain to the west that hid Machu Picchu far above. The thin crescent moon rose slowly over another mountain to the east, horns pointing upwards as it preceded the sun. Vendors with baskets of water, snacks, and even promising hot coffee scouted up and down the queue looking for customers. We saw some of the royal wedding on TVs in cafes by the street.

The first bus left at 05:30 and people filed on to them one at a time, each bus leaving as it filled up. More buses kept coming and even though we were 400 or 500 people back in the queue, there was no danger of the buses running out before we got on one. Eventually we’d worked our way down and climbed aboard a bus, Ale showing the ticket inspector tickets for all of us.
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It’s been a long time since I last typed up a day of this travel diary. But I haven’t forgotten it!

Thursday, 28 April, 2011. 09:25

We are resting in our room after breakfast. We got up at 07:00, but M. was tired and after a shower climbed back into bed, while I wrote up some of yesterday’s diary. A short time later, the power went out, so I laid down and closed my eyes too. We intended to go to breakfast at 08:00, to have time to meet the group at 08:30 for an optional walking tour of Ollantaytambo. But when the lights came back on and we looked at the time it was 08:17 already. We dressed and went to the breakfast room, where some of the group were already waiting with Ale, while some others were finishing breakfast. I told Ale we wouldn’t be coming for the walk as we were running a bit late.

Breakfast was some sticky cereal like the one at Cusco, strawberry yoghurt, flat bread rolls, and eggs cooked for us. That done, we came back to our room again for a bit more rest before checking out the Inca remains here in town.

15:22. Hotel Plaza Andina, Aguas Calientes

We have arrived in the town of Aguas Calientes after our PeruRail train trip from Ollantaytambo down the Urabamba River.

Back in Ollantaytambo, we went out to get M. a cup of coffee. We went back to a place we’d tried after dinner last night, Hearts Cafe, although then they had turned off the coffee machine for the night. M. got a cappuccino, and for the first time on the trip it had chocolate on top instead of cinnamon. On the way we ran into Ale in the square and she asked if we’d climbed the mountain to the Inca remains looming over the town on the mountainside, or visited the Inca religious centre at the other end of town. We hadn’t done either, but were planning to visit them later. However Ale suggested climbing the mountain, saying Andrew and Zaina and Zeeshan were doing it, and the views from the buildings above were spectacular.

So first we went back to the hotel to get my camera bag, and ditch my jacket because I hadn’t realised how hot it was. We walked to the square and down a narrow laneway between buildings to the starting point of the climb. The way was steep and rocky, and M. didn’t like the look of it, so she waited at the bottom while I climbed up. I had to pause to catch my breath several times. Not far up I noticed Andean pipe music drifting down the mountain. It turned out to be a guy playing in a shady spot next to the path. He asked, in Spanish, if I had water, then switched to good English when I said I didn’t speak Spanish. I gave him a sip from my water bottle. He said he liked to play there because of the acoustics of the music bouncing off the mountainside. He gave me an encouraging farewell as I continued up past him.
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Wednesday, 27 April, 2011. 21:55. Tika Wasi Valley Hotel, Ollantaytambo.

It’s been another full day. it started at 08:00 as we rose for breakfast. M. had slept well, but I don’t think I got any real sleep at all again. I laid in bed all night thinking “fall asleep” and being unable to do so. I had some sort of half-awake dreams about Ale leading us to all sorts of weird places. It was probably my brain trying to sort out the events of the last few days and doing it despite me not yet being asleep.

Breakfast was as yesterday, except they replaced the watermelon with kiwifruit. After this, at 09:30, we assembled with the group for the day’s activities.

These began with a bus ride uphill from Cusco and over a pass into the next valley, where we stopped at the town of Pisaq. The scenery along the way was spectacular, and Ale stopped the bus a couple of times to let us stretch our legs and take photos of the Andean scenery. In Pisaq we stopped at a bakery, apparently run out the back of some guy’s home. He made traditional empanadas in a small wood-fired oven. There were four choices: traditional (spicy cheese, tomato, onion, and herbs), ham and cheese, cheese and basil, and sweet (banana, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg). I had a traditional and M. had a cheese and basil, which turned out to also have tomato in it. They were 2 soles each, and smallish and flat, not like empanadas I’ve seen elsewhere that are more stuffed and rounded. The flour was quinoa. They were okay, but nothing special.
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Tuesday, 26 April, 2011. 22:45

We rose at 08:00. I hadn’t slept at all, tossing and turning all night and simply unable to fall asleep. I felt extremely tired, but the headache had gone. A breakfast of cereal with yoghurt, bread roll with ham and cheese, a couple of small croissants, and fresh mango, watermelon, honeydew melon, and a small banana made me feel better.

The first order of business was getting some laundry done so we could have clean clothes again. There were several places in the street where our hotel was located with signs advertising laundry service. With no real means to pick from them, we decided semi-randomly to skip the one closest to our hotel and go to the next one we found. It was a small, dark hole-in-the-wall, in which sat a man at a computer, who never once looked away from the screen and at us. Instead, a boy about 8 years old assessed in a pidgin of Spanish and English what we were after, hung our laundry bag from a hook scale to determine the weight, wrote out a receipt, and gave us a time to come back and pick it up this afternoon. There were a few other bags of laundry in there, but we didn’t see any washing machines. When we walked back to the hotel we poked our nose in the other laundry place, and saw a woman in there standing in front of a row of three machines.

Then we readied ourselves for a day of exploring Inca ruins around Cusco, or “ancient Inca buildings” as Ale told us to refer to them, as the Inca descendents consider calling them “ruins” insulting. The group met at 09:30, with everyone present. Kim was looking a bit perkier, but still not 100%. Gary looked okay, and didn’t seem in any difficulty, but had been visited by a doctor and prescribed something. Phan looked a bit pale, but was cheerful and determined to have fun, despite still feeling a bit nauseous. Lyn seemed subdued and if not happy to follow Ale, at least doing so without comment.
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Monday, 25 April, 2011. 09:40. On the boat to Puerto Maldonado.

We got up at 06:50 for breakfast at 07:00. The only people who showed up were us, Lyn and Gary, and Phan, almost exactly the people who didn’t stay up in the bar last night. Breakfast was again fresh fruit, followed by eggs.

During the night, Kim had fallen ill with what Ale said was a stomach infection. She had her on electrolyte replacement and said she would take her to a doctor once we get to Cusco.

After breakfast, we packed for the trip again, throwing all our damp stuff into a laundry bag until we got to Cusco. A lot of our stuff has dirt on it from yesterday’s mud, including bits of my camera gear. Clean it all off later, I guess!

We were half an hour early for the boat, so M. looked at the shop in the lodge and bought a souvenir sleeveless T-shirt with monkeys on it, while I wandered the garden, taking some photos of the lodge. I managed to get some great shots of an owl butterfly – huge! Saay said one of the biggest in the jungle, with great eye spots on the wings. He said they eat nectar, fruit juice, and even lick from carcasses of animals for the salts.

Then it was on to the boat for the 50-minute ride upriver to Puerto Maldonado. Kim appeared, looking a bit pale, and nursing a large bottle of water, which she keeps sipping from. Hope she’ll be okay.

Next stop is the markets in Puerto Maldonado, and then on to the airport for the flight to Cusco.
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Sunday, 24 April, 2011. 09:15. In a hammock.

The lights go off at 22:30 so I have to finish off yesterday’s events now, during a rest break in today’s activities.

After our walk yesterday afternoon, we gathered after dark at 19:00 for a ride in the covered boat a little upriver to see if we could spot any caimans. Their eyes glow red when illuminated in the dark. The boat began by going straight across the river to the far bank, where Saay picked out a caiman pretty quickly. It was tricky to see in the spotlit darkness, but we got a decent close look at its head for a minute or so before it dived under the water. It was small compared to a crocodile, and Saay said they fled from humans rather than attacked. We then combed the bank towards Puerto Maldonado for about half an hour, spotting nothing but native fishermen – out hunting giant catfish according to Saay. There was wood smoke drifting over the river from the cooking fires of the villagers. The moon was in the last quarter, so didn’t rise until later, and the sky was a huge velvet curtain over the jungle, spangled with stars. We could see the Big Dipper low on the northern horizon, Orion over Puerto Maldonado to the west, and the Southern Cross, Centuarus, and the swathe of the Milky Way to the south. It was gorgeous.

We crossed to the southern bank of the river to head back to the lodge, but still had no luck spotting any more caimans. Apparently they are flighty creatures, difficult to spot sometimes. We didn’t see a single other one and Saay even directed the boat operator to take us a bit past the pier in an attempt to spot one at the last minute, but no luck.

Back in the lodge we had dinner, which began with a pumpkin soup, followed by a tandoori beef skewer with green beans and fried potato cubes. Then dessert of pears in a chocolate sauce with flaked brazil nuts. All yummy. Saay then told us about the next day’s activities, after which we went to bed early because we were to be woken at 05:00 for an early morning walk in the jungle.
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Saturday, 23 April, 2011. 10:17

We are on our flight from Lima to Puerto Maldonado, with a stop in Cusco on the way. We got up at 05:50 to get the breakfast Ale had said would be arranged for us at 06:00. But there was nobody else there and only bread rolls and a jug of orange juice there – no fruit or cereal or yoghurt. We had some bread rolls with our malaria tablets, and a guy came out to put plates of ham and cheese out – he looked surprised to see us there. We went to pack our bags and be downstairs by 06:45 for our bus to the airport with the others, except for Lyn and Gary, Zaina and Zeeshan, who were booked on a later flight and so got to sleep in. Our bonus for getting to Puerto Maldonado before them is a short trip to a local market before we meet up with them before our boat trip to the jungle lodge.

At the airport, I asked Ale if my sandals would be okay for the jungle, or if I needed closed shoes. She said the sandals were perfect, which was good because I wasn’t keen on wearing the newly bought tight shoes.

18:10. Corto Maltes jungle lodge.

We are having a rest after our first introduction to the Amazon jungle!
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Friday, 22 April, 2011. 11:49. Lima.

We’re having a short break after a morning spent walking down to the Larcomar Entertainment Centre at the west end of Avenue Jose Larcos – the opposite direction to the way we went yesterday. This is a large complex of shops, cinemas, video game arcades, restaurants, and other amusements on the cliff top overlooking the rocky beach and ocean far below. We took some photos of the mist on the sea, then browsed the shops for a while. Later the mist cleared enough to barely make out the horizon and a stretch of coast to the south appeared, curbing around to an imposing headland with an enormous hill of exposed rock and dirt on it. The hill dwarfed the houses which clung to its lower flanks. The really amazing thing was how bare it was, with not a single bit of vegetation visible on it.

After spending an hour or two there, we walked the few blocks back to our hotel. The plan is to go soon to get a simple lunch of bread, salad, and fruit from the supermarket, then pick up our laundry and wait for the beginning of the tour meeting at 14:00.

For breakfast today we began with our first malaria tablet, since we head into the Amazon jungle tomorrow. We washed it down with cereal, yoghurt, bread, and fruit.
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