Sunday, November 05, 2006
Peru, Chile and on through Argentina
New Friends, Old Friends
My last stop in Peru, before heading into the north of Chile, was Arequipa, one of the more beautiful cities in Peru, which was in the throws of a religious festival, like most of Peru, but included a Mr South America show...lots of guys with make up and tight t-shirts preening themselves on a make shift stage in the main square - really can't say what the supposed relevance was. From here I embarked on a trek to the Colca Canyon. Apparently, although this is occasionally disputed, it was recently verified as the world's deepest canyon. All I know is I had very achy legs afterwards. The canyon is also famed for its condors which occasionally swoop down and pluck tourists from the miradors...OK that bit's a lie, but there are a lot of condors. The accompanying photo is a reconstruction of a real event, no birds were hurt during the making of this picture.
I have been extremely fortunate on all the tours and treks I've taken part in on my trip to have had some of the most excellent companions. This trip was no exception, consisting of a gang of Dutch people, that once again proved to me that the Dutch are amongst the nicest people you could hope to meet; an Australian armed with more film trivia than any one person should have a license to carry; a couple of cool Americans with eco-credentials you don't mess with; two very lovely Brits, Laura, who became my drinking buddy, while we left her friend, Belinda, to languish in bed with altitude sickness; and Ralph Wiggum, from the Simpsons.
OK, that's probably desperately cruel and unnecessary, but here's the quiz:
Which one is responsible for which statement, Ralph or my canyon companion?
1) And, when the doctor said I didn't have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.
2) Maybe you've got amoebas. I got amoebas once. Sometimes I still have them.
Once we had descended and ascended the canyon over a couple of days, (spending the night in an isolated village where I asked useless questions like "what do you make out of the furs of the guinea pigs you eat?" and sampled snake juice - a bit like meaty vodka), we stayed in another little village in the arse end of nowhere. While everyone else took themselves to bed with fatigue or altitude sickness, Laura and I found a great little bar, where we could put the world to rights whilst letting one of the Paccha Mama's greatest gifts numb our achy limbs. The bar had mud brick walls, candles for lighting, a fire and of course beer. But, it wouldn't have been out of place in North London's more fashionable night spots, and it's given me the inspiration for a fabulous scheme for my return...
All I need is venture capitalist with more money than sense (think that's a possible definition any way), and the world can be ready for "Adobe"...hear me out. A bar restaurant specialising in beers, wines, cocktails and food from all over South America. In the morning we can open up as a juice bar and serve various breakfasts, from stale bread and gluey jam (a bit of a staple in the North) to fried fish and yucca for those with an appetite; lunch will be the classic "almuerzo", a set menu of soup, main course, pud and juice, dependent on the previous nights left overs to afford a budget price; dinner has a wider menu to suit either the adventurous or or more pedestrian tastes. Set it up in a painfully trendy area and even non-meal times will do a rip roaring trade with music execs and advertising creative teams pretentiously sharing mate or a pot of coca tea, whilst musing over how they will exploit their next unsuspecting target market. I can only see a couple of supply issues standing in the way: HM Customs may not run with the coca imports, but I reckon I could get away with substituting bay-leaves in Lemsip, and the animal rights may not go a bundle on me farming guinea pigs for the pot, but if you cut the feet, wings and head off poussin and run them through a mangle the punters will get a better tasting meal and wont know the difference. As long as I make sure the fruitarian-macrobiotic-wheat-intolerant-vegetarians are covered off with a few options, I think it's got legs... Who's in??
We celebrated our return to Arequipa with dinner and drinks, enough so that I managed to get lumbered with giving my Aretha (Say A Little Prayer) to a thankfully all but empty karaoke bar. Once again Laura and I found ourselves the only participants with any back bone and finished the night with a line of pisco sours, leaving in the wee small hours with loose plans to meet in Santiago at some point in December. And I hope we do, as without a doubt Laura is up there with Matt, Tone and Poe, Carrie and Katharina (star billing reserved for Norwegian Chris, obviously) at the top of a list of the very many fabulous people I have met as I have been trundling round this bit of the world.
Speaking of Katharina, one of a triumvirate of Swiss guys that NC and I crossed the Salar with and met up with throughout Bolivia - which helped me to concluded that the Swiss are also amongst the nicest people in the world you could hope to meet - she put me up for the night in Santiago, where I sought refuge from a very cloudy north Chile. I'm sure you wont be surprised to know that pisco sours featured heavily in the evening. Santiago was the first city I rolled up in on this trip and a place I love, although I think I've realised why many people don't like it all that much. It's modern - if you arrive from else where in LatAm it must just feel very European, and if you make it your first stop it just doesn't feel like what you might feel South America should do: very little in the way of historical buildings, not a gaucho to be seen, no jungle, no blokes with blow-pipes etc. I had also forgotten how impenetrable the accent here is. Katharina says they swallow their words, but they wolf them down, biting off the ends, and peppering their language with a vocabulary all their own.
I then crossed over the Andes to another of my favourite cities Mendoza to wander around in the sunshine for a couple of days, before heading for the chilly southern spring. I left with perfect timing, as the heavens opened and must have delivered more than the average 200mm of annual rainfall Mendoza receives each year, filling the ancient canal-like drains and flooding the town's roads.
If you're planning on visiting Mendoza, stay at the Lao Hostal, (Rioja 771). Started by Mike and Celeste (a Anglo-Argentine couple), a year ago, it's got a great location between bus station, micro-centre and nightlife, clean, with chilled areas if that's what you crave, not to mention great communal areas including a mini swimming pool, and an attention seeking dog. And they can help arrange tours and all that sort of stuff, as well as occasionally throwing booze on the table and stakes on the BBQ, for a small contribution to the collective. The best place I've stayed in Mendoza...and I've stayed in a few.
Right now I find myself in waiting for a connecting bus in a non-descript town of Cipolletti, not far from Neuquen. Around the town the flat landscape stretches out for miles and the water-foul are flying in huge flocks south, and sometimes you have pinch yourself to remember just where you are. But this place seems like the sort of town most teenagers would hope to escape as soon as possible, hence the bus station is plastered with posters asking for information about a 16 year old girl who has gone missing. I just hope for her sake she's safe, working behind a bar or cleaning rooms in Bariloche or Buenos Aires, and not in a hole in the ground or enslaved, in one way or another, like too many other children find themselves in South America.
Vegetable rights and peace, OK.
My last stop in Peru, before heading into the north of Chile, was Arequipa, one of the more beautiful cities in Peru, which was in the throws of a religious festival, like most of Peru, but included a Mr South America show...lots of guys with make up and tight t-shirts preening themselves on a make shift stage in the main square - really can't say what the supposed relevance was. From here I embarked on a trek to the Colca Canyon. Apparently, although this is occasionally disputed, it was recently verified as the world's deepest canyon. All I know is I had very achy legs afterwards. The canyon is also famed for its condors which occasionally swoop down and pluck tourists from the miradors...OK that bit's a lie, but there are a lot of condors. The accompanying photo is a reconstruction of a real event, no birds were hurt during the making of this picture.
I have been extremely fortunate on all the tours and treks I've taken part in on my trip to have had some of the most excellent companions. This trip was no exception, consisting of a gang of Dutch people, that once again proved to me that the Dutch are amongst the nicest people you could hope to meet; an Australian armed with more film trivia than any one person should have a license to carry; a couple of cool Americans with eco-credentials you don't mess with; two very lovely Brits, Laura, who became my drinking buddy, while we left her friend, Belinda, to languish in bed with altitude sickness; and Ralph Wiggum, from the Simpsons.OK, that's probably desperately cruel and unnecessary, but here's the quiz:
Which one is responsible for which statement, Ralph or my canyon companion?
1) And, when the doctor said I didn't have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.
2) Maybe you've got amoebas. I got amoebas once. Sometimes I still have them.
Once we had descended and ascended the canyon over a couple of days, (spending the night in an isolated village where I asked useless questions like "what do you make out of the furs of the guinea pigs you eat?" and sampled snake juice - a bit like meaty vodka), we stayed in another little village in the arse end of nowhere. While everyone else took themselves to bed with fatigue or altitude sickness, Laura and I found a great little bar, where we could put the world to rights whilst letting one of the Paccha Mama's greatest gifts numb our achy limbs. The bar had mud brick walls, candles for lighting, a fire and of course beer. But, it wouldn't have been out of place in North London's more fashionable night spots, and it's given me the inspiration for a fabulous scheme for my return...
All I need is venture capitalist with more money than sense (think that's a possible definition any way), and the world can be ready for "Adobe"...hear me out. A bar restaurant specialising in beers, wines, cocktails and food from all over South America. In the morning we can open up as a juice bar and serve various breakfasts, from stale bread and gluey jam (a bit of a staple in the North) to fried fish and yucca for those with an appetite; lunch will be the classic "almuerzo", a set menu of soup, main course, pud and juice, dependent on the previous nights left overs to afford a budget price; dinner has a wider menu to suit either the adventurous or or more pedestrian tastes. Set it up in a painfully trendy area and even non-meal times will do a rip roaring trade with music execs and advertising creative teams pretentiously sharing mate or a pot of coca tea, whilst musing over how they will exploit their next unsuspecting target market. I can only see a couple of supply issues standing in the way: HM Customs may not run with the coca imports, but I reckon I could get away with substituting bay-leaves in Lemsip, and the animal rights may not go a bundle on me farming guinea pigs for the pot, but if you cut the feet, wings and head off poussin and run them through a mangle the punters will get a better tasting meal and wont know the difference. As long as I make sure the fruitarian-macrobiotic-wheat-intolerant-vegetarians are covered off with a few options, I think it's got legs... Who's in??We celebrated our return to Arequipa with dinner and drinks, enough so that I managed to get lumbered with giving my Aretha (Say A Little Prayer) to a thankfully all but empty karaoke bar. Once again Laura and I found ourselves the only participants with any back bone and finished the night with a line of pisco sours, leaving in the wee small hours with loose plans to meet in Santiago at some point in December. And I hope we do, as without a doubt Laura is up there with Matt, Tone and Poe, Carrie and Katharina (star billing reserved for Norwegian Chris, obviously) at the top of a list of the very many fabulous people I have met as I have been trundling round this bit of the world.
Speaking of Katharina, one of a triumvirate of Swiss guys that NC and I crossed the Salar with and met up with throughout Bolivia - which helped me to concluded that the Swiss are also amongst the nicest people in the world you could hope to meet - she put me up for the night in Santiago, where I sought refuge from a very cloudy north Chile. I'm sure you wont be surprised to know that pisco sours featured heavily in the evening. Santiago was the first city I rolled up in on this trip and a place I love, although I think I've realised why many people don't like it all that much. It's modern - if you arrive from else where in LatAm it must just feel very European, and if you make it your first stop it just doesn't feel like what you might feel South America should do: very little in the way of historical buildings, not a gaucho to be seen, no jungle, no blokes with blow-pipes etc. I had also forgotten how impenetrable the accent here is. Katharina says they swallow their words, but they wolf them down, biting off the ends, and peppering their language with a vocabulary all their own.
I then crossed over the Andes to another of my favourite cities Mendoza to wander around in the sunshine for a couple of days, before heading for the chilly southern spring. I left with perfect timing, as the heavens opened and must have delivered more than the average 200mm of annual rainfall Mendoza receives each year, filling the ancient canal-like drains and flooding the town's roads.
If you're planning on visiting Mendoza, stay at the Lao Hostal, (Rioja 771). Started by Mike and Celeste (a Anglo-Argentine couple), a year ago, it's got a great location between bus station, micro-centre and nightlife, clean, with chilled areas if that's what you crave, not to mention great communal areas including a mini swimming pool, and an attention seeking dog. And they can help arrange tours and all that sort of stuff, as well as occasionally throwing booze on the table and stakes on the BBQ, for a small contribution to the collective. The best place I've stayed in Mendoza...and I've stayed in a few.
Right now I find myself in waiting for a connecting bus in a non-descript town of Cipolletti, not far from Neuquen. Around the town the flat landscape stretches out for miles and the water-foul are flying in huge flocks south, and sometimes you have pinch yourself to remember just where you are. But this place seems like the sort of town most teenagers would hope to escape as soon as possible, hence the bus station is plastered with posters asking for information about a 16 year old girl who has gone missing. I just hope for her sake she's safe, working behind a bar or cleaning rooms in Bariloche or Buenos Aires, and not in a hole in the ground or enslaved, in one way or another, like too many other children find themselves in South America.
Vegetable rights and peace, OK.
# posted by Barney @ 9:19 am 
