Well its coming towards the end of my Peruvian adventure, I’ve been in this country a week shy of six months and i leave in a month but from now until the end i dont really travel, just stay in Lima and work a bit because of how skint i am. Its been a really wonderful trip, more than i had ever hoped for, and I’m already planning next years- top of Colombia down to the bottom of Argentina, 3 months if anyones interested… Anyway, i thought that to mark the 6 month thing and the end of the adventure as such (Lima is too metropolitan, despite the armed gangs, armed taxi drivers and armed policemen, to be considered an adventure) I would write down my best and worst moments, experiences and ‘things’ here.
Best food: Lomo saltado (”jumped beef”) hands down. Bits of beef and tomato and onion and potato fried up in a pan and served with rice and dripping with gravy. Totally scrumptious, definite winner. Second place goes to pescado sudado (literally “sweaty fish”), which is roughly the same concept but with fish.
Best Drink: Chicha morada. Purple maize juice seasoned with spices and cloves, you can buy it anywhere for 7p a cup and its like non-alcoholic mulled wine.
Worst Taxi Driver: The chap who, three weeks and no Spanish into my stay here, tried a conversation with me in a taxi back to Huanchaco at around 4am after 6 hours in La Barra, Trujillos biggest and cheapest nightclub. I didn’t understand him, and I was drunk, but due to the high gringo-robbery rate on that route was trying to be civil. He took this as his cue and started getting very very agitated and emotional on the subject of his wife I think. Scared the bejesus out of me so I just shut up and plied him with cigarettes.
Worst Taxi Ride: The one where the driver fell asleep, the taxi swerved up the verge and nearly flipped. José Luis dragged him out of the taxi and slapped him silly for three or four minutes then pushed him back in and made him drive us the rest of the way for free.
Worst journey: Six people in a collectivo from Piura to Mancora. A collectivo is a Cadillac which sits and waits until it has a full complement (between 6 and 8 ) then drives very very fast to wherever its going with loud music on. This particular one had a guy in bandages in the front sitting next to his girlfriend. He groaned once in a while, prompting her to let out a stream of expletives at the driver in an attempt to make him drive more smoothly, which is plainly not possible on Peruvian roads. In the back was a fat woman who took up her seat and half of mine, a couple who were joined at the lips, and me with the flu and coughing like an asthmatic seal. The coughing made the fat woman push me away from her, into the kissy couple, who presumably thought I was a little strange and pushed me right back. Now picture all that with a background of crazy salsa and merengue. Happy days.
Best Journey: Tarapoto to Yurimaguas in a 4×4 which was carrying milk (and us lot). The road runs through pristine virgin forest and incredible mountains, and it has been made by dynamiting out the face of a cliff, but not laying down a surface or anything, so it’s a bit terrifying. Add to that the 500ft-plus drops with big trees at the bottom, and a driver who looks about 15 and drives like a nutter, and you have all the ingredients for an adventure. I have never been so scared in all my life, but at the same time it was beyond amazing.
Best and Worst Pet: Both go to that bloody monkey. Moises bought it for Marina as a present, and it proceeded to drive us crazy by peeing on all of us, but got away with it because it was so cute. It hated me though, which was fine. Still peed on me though.
Best Wave: the right hander on the Boqueron in Huanchaco, only three seconds and it eats you alive after (I have scars) but it is just so worth it for that tiny moment where you have the whole face ahead of you and you are just running away from the white water and hoping the form will hold…
Worst Wave: Tied between the 3m one that washing-machined me just before Christmas, and Marcora, which is small and crap.
Best Booze: Peruvian? Cusqueña Negra. Its like sweet Guiness, but before you say ‘yuk’, try it. Its surprisingly palatable.
Other beer? The pint of IPA I had in the Cross Keys in Cusco. It didnt taste right because the altitude flattens it, but it was a pint, served in a pint glass, and it cost 1 pound 50, a pound less than the UK even though it had been shipped halfway round the globe.
Best Bar: Tribu in Huanchaco, Definitely. Luis is the best bartender and possibly the only Peruvian who has heard of Louis Theroux. He is also a demon at chess.
Best Nightclub: Noa Noa in Iquitos. That place is a shock to the system. Iquitos, having no road links to the outside world, is a bit rural. There are only a handful of buildings that rise over 3 storeys tall, and people wander down the streets clutching their pet monkeys/lizards/deer. Yet in this weird timewarp some genius built Noa Noa, a three-tier nightclub with lazers, light rings that raise and lower, foam and smoke machines, and (this in a place with 35º heat and 90% humidity all day every day is a godsend) aircon.
Worst Place: Mancora. What a dump. But somehow for everyone else its “the” place to go.
Most Beautiful Place: Tarapoto. Eating mangoes off the trees in a little paradise, a town nestled in the lap of a huge range of mountains all covered with Selva Alta, the mountain rainforests. A wonderful place and one I would recommend to anyone any time.
Silliest Thing I Did: We rented motorcycles in Tarapoto and went off for the day out along a mud road by a river, heading into the jungle. It was great, eating mangoes and freaking out at the HUGE spiders and ants, but then as we were heading back Carlos (with his girlfriend on the back) and I started to race a bit. I was winning, then he pulled even, then there was a huge puddle. We collided trying to dodge it and all three of us were sent flying, and the bikes too. Kayleigh got off with no wounds, I had a huge burn on my leg and a large cut round the base of my knee, and Carlos landed on one of his knees and at last update it still wasn’t working quite right.
Least Homesickness: Christmas day. I was missing my family like hell (never saw that one coming) so I phoned home and found them all in the throes of a massive argument. As the phone went from person to person and I heard each person’s tears/anger/indifference, my homesickness slowly faded away and by the end of the call I was glad I was spending Christmas the other side of the world in the company of people I didn’t know and with a pair of socks and a tube of Pringles as my only presents.
Most Homesickness: On the boat between Yurimaguas and Iquitos, leaving a town called Nauta. As the clock struck midnight to mark my 19th birthday, I opened my only birthday card (sent to me by Hannah months before and left unopened), then walked to the back of the boat. There, by way of celebration, under the millions of stars (there is nothing like a clear jungle night for star spotting) and with the port lights of Nauta fading away up-river, I sang happy birthday to myself and treated myself to a pee off the back of the boat (strictly forbidden but the toilets downstairs were horrible). I’ve never felt so alone, but as a place and a way to spend a birthday that one beats all.
Funniest Moment: On the Huanchaco pier in the moonlight. Me and Mathilde were both walking wounded after a bottle of rum between the pair of us, and Tom (cheese tits) turned up with Chuskini, the coolest dog in Huanchaco. So as we sat and giggled, Tom seized Chusko and slow-waltzed round the pier holding his paws. This was funny to watch, but what was a lot funnier was the group of Peruvians who Tom hadn’t spotted further up the pier, who were absolutely wetting themselves at these crazy gringos.
Most Surreal Moment: That same night. It was during Ley Seca (the dry law). This is a funny concept- Peruvians are not allowed to drink for two days before any election. In theory it means they wont drunk-vote and end up with a rabbit or a cactus or something as the mayor just because it looked the funniest choice. In practice what it means is that everyone stores up heaps of booze and gets more ratted than usual. So we were getting into the spirit (post Tom’s dog-waltz) and looking for a party. As we walked down the beach we saw a fire so we headed over. We sat down, and as we got used to the light, we realised we were at a gathering of men dressed as women. Hmmm. Turned out to be great drinking company, too.
Best Party: It was either Mathilde’s birthday, held in the Cancha Naranja, a bloke called Nacho’s walled-in jungle, with good music, good booze and good company, or it was the Christmas feast that Anita at My Friend laid on for pretty much every backpacker in Huanchaco, where all of us, most of whom like me were on their first Christmas away from home, got together and ate turkey and drunk rum and spoke English to forget the homesickness. And it worked.
Strangest Backpacker: It could be Neill, the Aussie, who had a donkey called Sid and a parasite in his liver which he called Sheila, or it could be the French guy from Mancora who was a certified nymphomaniac, or maybe the New Zealander who just got called “cage fighter” because that’s what he did for a living back home, or Jerry, the American who thought that with proper doses of mescaline he could transcend dimensions and is convinced his dad has already managed it, or Malcolm, the guy from Florida who is in his late 70’s and with shaky health, but when asked “do you have any children?” still replies “not yet”, or it could be that scary German who screamed at everybody for ages because the police gave him a dog then took it back (“ZEY LIE! ZEY LIE!), or maybe the other German who was possibly a paedophile and definitely made his living buying emeralds from rebel villages in Colombia and selling them to expensive shops in Lima, or maybe Tom, who just got called Cheese Tits, or Stefan, who works as a baker and carpenter, has a stalker, got called Walrus by everyone and had come all the way to Peru to meet a girl he met on the internet, or Tristan, who lost his bag in Mexico and only got it back yesterday, after nearly three months in S. America without it, or maybe it could be all of them.
Best Friend: Too many. Mathilde, Lolo, Tom, Kayleigh, Ellen, Stefan, Luis, blonde Tom and beardy Tom, Maeve, Karina, Emma, Andy, Annie, Gabriella, Baptiste, Melissa, and everyone else who I’ve forgotten the names of, thankyou all.
Amazon Sunset
This is on the way to Piura, the biggest palm trees i have ever seen. also pretty much the only palm trees I’ve seen.
The colours came out disappointingly muted due to the lighting, but you get the idea.
These two pictures are from the bus, between Chulucanas and Piura on the way back to Mancora. my journey from piura to Mancora was completed in a collectivo due to time constraints. collectivos are uncomfortable and cost more than buses, but are faster. this particular trip was the one from hell. i wont bore you with the entire account, but i will just leave it as:
