Alex's travel blog

La Paz, Bolivia

So I finally made it to Peru on Monday 27th February. On the drive to the hostal I caught my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, which was nice. I had a day of admin in Lima. I didn't like it much there: probably partly because I was stressed by all the jobs I had to do, partly because it was a new country and I'd left my comfort zone...but mainly because Lima is so damned big and busy. The highlight of the day was having a local speciality, Cerviche, which is marinated raw chunks of fish. It was absolutely delicious. Also, I was eating at an expensive touristy restaurant, so I got it served in some sort of sea-shell, which was a bonus. I knew it reminded me of something I'd eaten before...then I remembered: the raw fish we'd had at the hotel in Norway!

All the people here seemed very friendly. Later in the day, a random guy struck up a conversation with me. When I told him I was English he said "England: Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United ..." which is quite a common response here. We talked for a while and he invited me for a drink. My first thought was that this was some sort of dodgy scam...but (as I'd read in my gap year book) you shouldn't be so cautious that you miss out on unique experiences. So we had a beer in a cafè by the square (well, I bought one and he drank some of mine). After we left, he asked me for money "for his children". I hesitantly asked "how much?" He said 5 Soles and I sort of bargained it down to 2 (I can't believe I was actually asking him if it was alright to give 2!) What else could I do? If he really was genuine and friendly, how could I refuse giving an amount which is so little for me? I didn't think much of it...then a horrible thought hit me. Two Soles for half an hour's work is actually quite a reasonable salary. He'd probably gone straight off to do the same thing again with someone else. This really depressed me, and made me feel very negative about the Peruvian people: were any of them genuinely friendly?

The next day I took a bus to Nazca, which is about 8 hours down the coast. I enjoyed going through the desert landscape: it was like nothing I'd seen before. I had plenty of time to appreciate it becuase our bus broke down and we were stuck there for about 3 hours...I suppose it had to happen some time. I'm almost certain that I took my fleece onto the replacement bus...but when I looked for it on the luggage rack later in the journey, it had gone. This was the last straw: I now agreed with a German guy I'd talked to in Ecuador who'd been to Peru: "the people are...well...really shit". From then on, I adopted the attitude that anything that wasn't nailed down, no matter how small, would get taken.

The next day I had a flight over the Nazca lines. It was absolutely incredible. These are the huge lines and animal shapes drawn in the desert. I found it amazing that people from so long ago had left a legacy on such a huge scale. Later in the day, a girl in a shop told me I spoke good Spanish, which was bizzare.

I took a night bus to Cuzco. Now, until that point I'd never managed ANY proper sleep on any sort of transport, despite many horrible hours trying. But I had high hopes for this journey: it was quite a luxury bus. Unfortunately it got SO COLD! I did, however, get 5 or 10 minutes of proper sleep - another traveller milestone passed.

Cuzco is fantastic...apart from the people trying to sell you stuff on the street - I'd had it before, but here it reached a new level. And I didn't sense any friendlyness from them...it was as if they thought the tourists should feel obliged to give them money. When you said "no gracias" they often replied with "Why?" And they address you as "my friend"...it may sound right when translated to Spanish, but it really irritated me. At one point a guy hassled me for ages - he wouldn't take no gracias for an answer - and I went into a restaurant. An hour or so later I left the restaurant...a few seconds out of the door he appeared again - said he'd been waiting for me the whole time. Annoying. So, yeah, apart from that, Cuzco is absolutely beautiful. There's Inca walls everywhere with their incredible exact mortarless stonework. A lot of newer buildings are built using the Inca walls as their base. There's been several earthquakes which destroyed the newer buildings, but left the Inca walls intact. On one day I took a bus out, then walked back to Cuzco taking in 4 Inca ruins on the way. That was a really good day. The last of the ruins was Sacsayhuaman: here's a photo:

Wow! The Inca's had wanted to build Cuzco in the shape of a Puma (fairly adventurous) and this zig-zagging wall was the puma's teeth. The next day I took a trip to another Inca ruin, Pisac. This was also amazing: whereas nowadays we only build stuff in easy places, such as the bottom of valleys, the Incas had colonised this whole stretch along the top of some mountains. They'd covered it in terraces, temples and other buildings.

I paid 2 Soles for this following photo, so I'm going to get my money's worth from it!