Archive for February, 2010

So, after a most wonderful lunch at a place called Punto Azul here in Miraflores, I have decided that I should try and eat Ceviche every day between now and the day I leave Peru. I’d heard of it before coming here but never eaten it, when I was in Cusco last year I was too busy eating English Breakfasts. I won’t be making that mistake again. Ceviche is Peruvian dish of fish and seafood marinated in lime and lemon juice and served with a chili sauce (the wikipedia article gives more details – I particularly like the phrase “endless door” in the first paragrph.) . Now, I’m not the biggest hot food or fish fan in the world but after weeks of chicken and rice, I’m loving it.

On a side note we found out today that Ecuador no longer lets Colombians in. Laura rang the Ecuador Embassy and they confirmed this. She told them that she had Argentinian residency (which is a plus point) but was told that having been to Colombia recently would count against her and the official advice was that she would have to see how she got on with the Immigration Officer at the border. They couldn’t promise anymore than that. Brilliant.

After all this time in South America it’s easy to become a little complacent in your expectations and you take a lot things in your stride. For example yesterday I saw a man crouched next to to a very wide and busy road having a poo in broad daylight. Didn’t bat an eyelid.

However a few days ago something happened that shocked even me. We were on the bus from Pucallpa to Huánuco, driving through some very beautiful scenery, mountains, gorges and rushing rivers. We were sat in the front row of the bus and as with most buses here there is a partition seperating the passengers from the driver so you can’t actually see out the front.

So it was a but of a shock when the door opened and a man dressed in unmarked fatigues carrying a very large shotgun appeared. The gun was slung nonchantly by his side as he made his way up the bus, the barrel knocking against people’s legs as he went.

Once he got to the middle of the bus he launched into a well-rehearsed spiel about how dangerous the road was, with lots of cars being stopped and the owners robbed (day and night), and his group of happy mercenaries were working with the police to make it safer. Except they weren’t getting paid, so if we could spare some loose change he would greatly appreciate it! And I won’t shoot you! OK, do he didn’t say that last bit but I can’t have been the only to think it.

So he collected his money and got off the bus, leaving us to the mercy of the bandits I was now imaging lining the road lying in wait for us.

About 4 hours later, just when I’d forgotten about the risks posed by these bandits, another man got on, carrying a very similarly sized shotgun and gave us the same speech. I spent the rest of the journey very unhappily clutching my valuables.

An interesting sidenote is that Laura told me this is how the Paramilitary groups in Colombia got started in the 1950′s – locals arming themselves to protect the rural population against bandits. Then they progressed to protecting small landowners rights and then it kinda went downhill from there..

Talk about contrasts. Last week we’d just got off the boat from Hell and now we’re spending our days strolling along seaside clifftops past penthouse apartment blocks, watching the surfers below.

This is Lima. The centre is old and attractive and most definitely South America, but the area of Miraflores could easily be mistaken for California. Everything sparkles, the sun shines, the Pacific glistens. Another world indeed.

At 2am last Tuesday morning, the good ship Henry 3 arrived finally at the port of Pucallpa more than 100 hours after leaving Iquitos. This was not the happy moment I was expecting. It had taken nearly 4 days for me to be truly sick of the boat, the river, the food, my fellow passengers, the parrots, everything. I had reached rock bottom, I needed out. So you can imagine my despair when the boat actually docked and nothing actually happened. Nobody got off. No stream of vendors pushed their way on board screaming “Hay gaseosas! Hay panes!”. No procession of motortaxis arrived to spirit the happy passengers away. Nothing. Not a thing.

As noted before a bus is not an option to get of Iquitos, it’s plane or boat, so we thought we’d give the boat a try. We went to the dock Friday morning to pay for the cabin which was basic but clean, went shopping for supplies, got our rucksacks and at around 4:30 in the afternoon settled in, ready for the ride about an hour before it was due to leave.

4 hours later we finally set off, chugged 100 metres down the river, pulled up at another dock where a guy wearing a hard hat got on, got off and then we sat there for an hour. Eventually we set off again, only to return to the spot we’d started from where we sat for another hour. At this point we went to bed, before we’d even left.

I look back on the 4 and a bit days and honestly am unable to tell you how we passed the time. The boat had 4 decks, the bottom on with cargo and some hammocks. The 2nd one, a big open space FULL of hammocks. 3rd one up was open with hammocks and 10 cabins (one of them ours). 4th one was basically the roof with a little cockpit for the captain. That’s it. No bar, no TV lounge, no Observation lounge, in fact no seats of any kind.

The scenery was nice in a “I’m in the Jungle” kind of way, but it didn’t change (except for the sunsets, which were spectacular). The Amazon basin is flat, a bit like the Norfolk Broads but bigger and with trees and piranhas.

I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, but I’m glad I did it, but I’m not gonna say I enjoyed it. The food consisted of chicken, platano, rice and beans for every single meal (including breakfast, served at 6:50 sharp every morning) and most of ours ended up feeding the fishies. It was just that little bit too “authentic”  to be truly enjoyable.

So, by the time we arrived, I really had had it. It felt like my entire life had been spent sweating on board this floating tin can. Luckily fate and an innovative mototaxi driver came to rescue, he came on board and asked if we needed a lift. Oh boy did we! So off we trotted, and in 15 minutes (which admittedly we both spent terrified of being stopped and robbed) we were safely tucked up in an air-conditioned room, back in civilisation again.

I haven’t had chance to look at this properly, but it looks wonderful – Google have teamed up with Russian Railways to allow you to travel the Trans-Siberian railway.

When I have my proper computer back I’ll take a more detailed look, so let me know what you think of it…

We’ve spent nearly 3 weeks all told in the Amazon region, half in Colombia and half in Peru. I have lots of notes and photos that will one day find themselves onto the blog, but at the moment by and large I’m limited to public internet access or my iPod when there is wifi (which is not very often at the moment), so you’ll have to bear with me.

Overall however it’s been quite an experience, it’s so goddamn big and remote and didn’t really go anywhere off the beaten track but even so.

The river itself is mind-boggingly huge, on the bits we saw it was a good half a mile across, and this is 2,500 miles from the Atlantic. It just dominates everything.

They don’t call it the rainforest for nothing. It sounds like a train coming – it’s perfectly dry and simply overcast and all of a sudden you hear a noise like a strong wind coming. It gets louder and louder, the sky turns instantly darker and within 20 seconds the sky is filled with raindrops the size of pebbles. The downpour continues for 5 minutes then it stops. Just like that. For 10 minutes the water drips from the leaves, giving the impression that it is actually still raining. Then it’s over. For a split second there is complete silence, then the noise of falling water is once again replaced by the squawking of birds and the croaking of frogs.

Spent 10 hours of yesterday bouncing (that’s on a boat not a spacehopper) up the river Amazon to get to Iquitos in Peru, a town of 370,000 people, that has the honour of being the largest city in the world only accessible by boat or air.

It’s a chaotic sort of place, the streets full of motorbikes and mototaxis (tuk-tuks) which make any sort of crossing the road into an interesting challenge, although getting a lift anywhere is easy.

As to getting away, well, we’re limited to air or boat – the plane costs a fortune so boat it is. We’ve been asking around today and it looks like the Henry II is our baby which leaves for Pucallpa on Friday, arriving there 4 days later. We’re going posh and are going to get a “cabin” which is a metal box with bunk beds, but at least we’ll be able to lock it, something you can’t do with the alternative which is stringing up a hammock and holding tightly onto your things for 4 days…

A quick update from Leticia – got back here last night from a few days in Puerto Narino, which is 70km up the Amazon towards Peru. Tomorrow we’re getting a fast boat from Santa Rosa (an island across the river in Peru) to Iquitos (also in Peru). To buy the ticket we had to go by taxi to Tabatinga (in Brasil) and then back to Leticia airport (in Colombia) to get our exit stamps in the passports. Before getting on the boat we have to go to Peru to get our entry stamps otherwise we’re not allowed back into Colombia and will have to go to Brasil.

All clear?

But on a less bureaucratic note, this really is an incredible region – the jungle is all around and it’s very simple to take little excursions away from the town to get a taste of what the jungle really is like. There is life everywhere, lots of it creepy and crawly, but the air is buzzing with birds and the rivers are full of fish. And pink river dolphins, we even got to see a few…

More detailed accounts will follow when I have a little more time, but now I have to dash to Peru, or maybe Brasil. I’m not sure.