November 1985

Friday 1st November 1985

at the last minute Alex came too, there is an International football match in Lima this weekend.

We are refused at the Hotel Europa, the major gringo crash pad in Lima, possibly because I was with Alex. Checked into a Hospidaje behind the cinema in Jiron Union, 30,000 the double.

Lovely letter from Keith at Poste Restante. He is enjoying his GP attachment.

Lima has the usual city pollution. The Plaza Independencia has the Palacio Gobierno and cathedral on it. Many old and dirty oil paintings in the cathedral. One of the Pizarro's is supposed to be on show in a glass coffin. I only found a small child sized coffin on show inside a glass coffin. Perhaps he wasn't very tall.

Saturday 2nd November 1985

I go off to the Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology, a long bus trip across the ciy with an unhelpful conductor. Alexo goes to the Peru v Chile football match. Peru loses and Alan Garcia , el Presidente, orders a new younger team.

Beautiful porticoed museum. Mostly ceramics from Moche, Nasca and Paracas. The Moche collection contains a remarkable series of figurines, like illustrations for a sex manual.

Meet Alexo's friend Gudrun later. She is teaching German in Lima. Eat in a popular fish restaurant, it is a bun fight, Alexo puts on a macho performance getting us a table.

Sunday 3rd November 1985

Eat in the market, excellent, lively, interesting. Bump into John, Alan and Sandy with a guy called Malcolm. Share a few beers. They enjoyed Banos, and have met a middle aged lawyer first generation Peruvian whose father was from Newcastle. He is an anglophile because of these roots and has been showing them Lima, feeding and clothing them. Alan & John travel very sparsely, one small holdall and just the clothes they stand up in, so the jumpers were very welcome.

On the way back to the Hospidaje stumble across a late night fiesta in the streets. Sandal wood incense, solemn marching as a heavy silver berth and effigy is carried on the shoulders of 24 men, slowly swaying and into a church.

Monday 4th November 1985

Buy some film in the market, 2 x 36 transparencies, 150,000. also a very reasonable anorak for 130,000. Heading up into the altiplano next. See Presidente Garcia leave his government palace in a fast well timed motor cavalcade. He has pronounced that the national football team must be revitalised with younger players. Read in the paper that a black market kidney in peru can be had for 1000$. Seems a bargain.

Catch a bus at lunchtime to Cusco. Say goodbye to Alexo. He seems to have suffered some cultural angst from his contact with gringoes over the years. Goodrun says he provided her with an interesting insight into Cusco's underworld, which is very under. After a few beers he could become disturbingly angry, Jekyll and Hyde, felt nervous sharing a room with him, but no harm done.

8 hour journey down the coastal desert road to Nazca. Some rather vulgar campesino ladies enliven the journey. Go through a one way unsurfaced rock tunnel, followed by sever switchbacks around which the lorries and buses have to crawl. Precipitous passing places.

Touts greet the bus. Check into Hotel Nazca, 20,000.

Tuesday 5th November 1985

some lines in the desert

Woken up by the Aerocondor tout at 8 because the light is good for seeing the lines. Eventually get airborne in a six seater Cessna at 10am all thoughts of the good light lost in the need to try and fill the plane. 20$. Have a good flight over the stoney plain of Nasca. Hundreds of lines and many geometric shapes, and scores of figures. The surface stones are light brown and by moving them aside the ancient nasca and later the Inca after them revealed the paler sand underneath. The desert sand is very soft so they don't make good runways for aliens! The so called astronaut is more likely an owl headed man, featured also on the ceramics, and is one of the earliest figures. One arm points up, the other down, the owl says come at night, look at the ground to interpret the sky. An owl can look forward and backwards, a helpful skill for prophecies. Some of the lines are 9km long. The figures vary from 4 - 300m in size and were made by scaling up from a drawing. Many of the lines point to solctice and equinox events on the horizon. Maybe the figures are constellations. Maria Reiche thinks the monkey is Ursa major, it is not often visible in Peru, only appearing in December to foretell the coming rains. The figures are impossible to make out on the ground, although claerly visible form the air. Maria Reiche only worked out their shape by surveying them from a step ladder in the 1950s. Must have been exciting discoveries.

In the afternoon I take a taxi tour of some local sites with 2 other gringoes for 30,000. We visit the ruins of an old Nazca village, later occupied by the Inca. Adobe remains on the edge of a flat valley, hot dry and dusty. Numerous pits had something to do with their ceramics. Some more lines criss crossing with a spiral, perhaps representing weaving. An underground aqueduct still in good condition helped water the desert. It is about 15' underground with regular access pits for maintenance. It filled a small reservoir. Some kids were bathing in one of the access holes. Cotton was being grown.

In the evening, back at the Hotel Turistica (15$ a night), Maria was wheeled out. She stays here now courtesy of the Peruvian government. She is rather stiff with Parkinsons and has to be assisted to her chair and propped up with pillows and a shawl. She talked into a microphone, switching fluently between several languages according to the nationality of her audience. She kept us informed for 45 minutes. Her book sales pay for the salaries of 3 motorcycle guards who try to stop ignorant people driving their cars over the lines. Her legs were rather fidgety and her stockings fell down.

At 11pm catch the luxury bus to Cusco, 540 kms, about 30 hours and 216,000.

Wednesday 6th November 1985

Arrive in Arequipa at 10am to change buses, but bus does not leave until 6pm. That explains why it is going to take 30 hours.

Have an unexpected but welcome day in beautiful Arequipa. Attractive town with huge snow capped volcano, Misti. Spent several lovely hours in the convent Santa Catalina. Founded in the 1500s and a closed order since then. At its peak there were over 400 nuns, now there are only a handful, and much of this beautifully preserved mediaeval miniature town within a town is open to the public. Dormitories, bathrooms, laundry, little bedsits, geraniums, narrow streets, muy bueno.

Get overnight bus, no longer luxury coach, and hereafter unsurfaced roads up into the Andes.

Thursday 7th November 1985

erratic sleep, stiff neck and headache. Still only half way to Cusco. It has been raining all night and the unsurfaced road is treacherous. The mud has formed a brown emulsion over the whole bus so we can no longer see out of the windows. Stop for lunch and a pee in a beautiful windswept valley. Grubby locals buried under great loads of fodder move about the fields. Expansive multilayered knee length colourful skirts, no knickers so one can have a wee without exposing ones bottom, embroidered blankets and bowler hats.

Arrive in Cusco mid afternoon, warm and sunny. Inca masonry visible getting off the bus. Hotel Suiza dorm 18,000 hot water and lovely glazed central patio. Bliss.

Friday 8th November 1985

Wake up to hear Jessica calling my name, she is in the bed next to mine. last met in Quito. She had a hair raising journey up from Nasca. The road was completely blocked by a fresh landslide. The had to climb past on foot and she slipped on the edge, but was caught by fellow traveller. The had to wait the other side of the landslide for the bus coming the other way.

Meet John and Maria, a married couple, and we shop for equipment to hire for the Inca Trail. John has just given up accounting, he worked for the International Monetary Fund, but found encouraging poor countries into greater debt was unsatisfying as a career. He met maria, a german australian in a lavatory in India. She is a final year medical student on her elective. They have been married a year and their relationship is still fundamentally scatological, as it inevitably becomes if you travel together in India. John stars at newcastle medical school this year, and Maria is about to start her house jobs.

Saturday 9th November 1985

Up at 5.30am to catch the train up the valley. The train climbs its way out of the Cusco bowl with a series of zig zags to gain height, through adobe and terracotta suburbs. Crosses on the top of the roofs to ward of earthquakes. After about 3 hours we are dropped of at Kilometer 88. Pay 105,00 for the start of the Inca Trail. Hot sunshine, the bright air crisped by the scent of eucalyptus. Change into shorts and get bitten by flies.

Leave the Urobamaba valley and turn right up the Cusichaca valley. At this junction we see some terracing and the steeply saved stone houses of pre Incan peoples. Site continuously occupied since these ancient times, unlike Macchu Picchu which was probably only occupied for 100 years. Several other hikers on the trail today. Chris and barbara in a yellow tent. Tom the 6'8" Dutchman, with Francesca the Italian fiancial advisor to a construction firm in Brazil.

After 5 miles hot walk through the alpine scenery we reach the small muddy village of Wayllabamba. Here we turn up a side valley along the Llullucha river. This leads up to the first high pass at 13,776'. We camp for the night a few hours before the pass, just above the tree line amongst some bogs and mountain cattle. Exhausted. That evening my pulse stays a thready 120bpm. Tom's pulse was a strong steady 60. At this height even walking slowly makes me breathless. Collect some wood. Eat spinach pie form the hare Krishna restaurant in Cusco. Heat up some soup, sing some songs and have a smoke.

first camp

slow climb to the first pass

Sunday 10th November 1985

Chris, Jessica and Barbara

half way up the other side of the valley is a small ovoid Inca lodge commanding stunning views. Brew some coca tea. Have been chewing foul coca leaves on the way to help with the altitude. A mouth full of dry leaves and ash is quite emetic, but soon the saliva runs and the mouth goes numb. The path is paved with rough stones.

Climb the second pass at 13,120 feet.

The clouds clear for a dramatic view down the valley ahead. Bright green lake half way down. Follow the trail along the side of a steep grassy mountain to dramatic sight of the Sayajmarca ruins on a precipitous bluff at the junction of two valleys. From here you can see 3 Inca roads, one up each valley. Aqueducts, houses and small terraces are perched on a narrow site. We all camp on the little triangle of land at the tip of the site as the views are magisterial. Soup and noodles. The trial is clearly visible ahead, a white line curving along the side of the mountains. They seemed to prefer to keep high up and avoid the valley bottoms. Jessica is most inspired by it all. She is an inspired and romantic traveller, on her way home for Christmas after 5 years of fascinating adventures.

Monday 11th November 1985

The trail is now well paved, often wide enough for two to pass, although we barely meet another soul. Laid with a hard white stone, and beautiful views as the trail clings to the edge of the mountain, at one point the trial negotiates a cleft in the rock where the Incas have carved a staircase.

We make it up to the third pass. Tom and Francesca have gone ahead. Chris and Barbara are resting back at Sayajmarca slowed down by a dose of Atahualpa's Revenge. Cloudy at the pass, but while we eat our oranges the clouds part like a curtain and there, a mile below us, is the swirling Urubamba river. The valley is much narrower now, than further upstream where we started the trail.

The stunning scenery continues as we gently descend to the ruins of Phuyupatamarka at the head of another steep valley, about 3.75 miles form the pass. Many terraces turn the steep slopes into productive land, and a chain of baths still with running water. The ruins are being cleared by a team of workmen who spend 3 weeks up here and then one off back in their village. Lovely curvy stone walls, flights of steps and precipitous views. Lunch.

Long flight of steps out of the ruins onto recently uncovered Inca trail and first opened to trekkers this summer, and the best bit of the trail, often 6 feet wide. Two tambos, or small lodges, a tunnel, carved spiral steps, a real Inca highway.

Trail stops suddenly, as if blasted away, at a row of electricity pylons, and we have a steep muddy descent to a hostal in the middle of no where, a white elephant built by the tourist board, already seems to be cracking up. The caretaker, Rosa, and her child, sells us a beer and we slip past to the ruins of Winya Wayna where we camp illegally and in splendid isolation. We fetch water for soup from the base of 150' waterfall.

Tuesday 12th November

Its 2am on the Inca Trail, we are camped illegally in some ruins, and it has been raying since we went to bed at dusk. All that rain has been trapped by the Inca walls that surround us and the tent is starting to float - we are awash! Rescue clothes and sleeping bags and tramp soaked back to the hostel under plastic ponchoes and in our underwear. Rosa the caretaker thinks it is hilarious and we sleep on the dining room floor.

Spend a restful day around the hostal and surrounding ruins. There is a grand series of 10 baths, and some houses clustered at the bottom. There is a little windowed courtyard right on the edge, a small ledge can be sat on, feet dangling of a 200m drop to the forest below. Sit and dream of incas past.

Torta and chips at the hostel cooked with great care by Rosa over a primus stove. Then an hours exploration along the side of the mountain through the forest along deteriorating side trail, in places the path has plunged into the void and mossy logs bridge the gap.

In the afternoon we approach the Gate of the Sun that marks the entrance to Macchu Picchu. There are only the 4 of us here and we approach separately at 15 minute intervals to get the first glimpse with the added drama of solo discovery. Its a bit special. Behind the main site, which now has some people wandering about from the posh hotel nearby, rises the jagged peak of Waynu Picchu, the lassoe hook on the saddle of Macchu Picchu, and around which at its foot the mighty Urubamba roars. It is spectacular. We retreat with out exploring further than the view from the trail entrance and camp again. Use ponchoes as aded rain shields over the tents. Enjoy last packet of soup. Rains all night but secure and dry in tent.

DSC0000440

Wednesday 13th November 1985

Having camped the night before at the Gate of the Sun we are up with the sun, 5.30am. to enter Macchu Picchu several hours before anyone else. At dawn we approached through the mist with swirling views of the ruins as we descend gently along the ancient approach road. We pass the funeral stone apon which they may have prepared and dried the dead. A massive double door jam, and into the ancient town. This ceremonial route is bypassed by the modern approach up the agricultural terraces.

The stonework is so skilful, plastic, fluid, beautiful, of nature. Identify Temple of the Sun with its sundial broken by the spanish, Princess's Palace, main temple, jail house and torture niches and rocky condor. Most of these descriptions are modern fantasy labels I suspect. They mould their stonework, carved fixtures and fittings sometimes in the natural rock sometimes in quarried stone, almost seamless, exploiting natural features where ever possible.

25,000 for a bowl of soup at the ugly luxury hotel next to the ruins, which has spoilt the view from Inktu Pinku.

The others go down to Aqua Calientes for a restorative hot bath. I return to the ruins with an American called Stephen to climb Waynu Picchu. A precipitous little stone trail leads up through the miniature terraces and small platforms. At the top the sun is hot, and we see a tantalising small trail down the north face, we know that way leads to the temple of the Moon. Off limits and irresistible. Ignoring the Peligrosa and No Passe signs we descend the sheer rocky face following tiny carved steps.

At one point where the steps have been carved into the rock face the entire slab has separated and slipped, making the steps an unsettling angle. It is very lush and rocky, small terraces, even here. After some time we reckon we have missed the temple in the undergrowth and decide to push on to the valley below.

Suddenly we find it. A cave, carved, and added to, the rock tidied up by the neatness and precision of the inca. Wall niches and double jams speak of ceremonial grandeur. Spoilt by charcoal graffiti. Finding the cave means we are about half way down to the Urubamba. Scout around for further trail, and realise we will have to return the way we came and it is getting late in the day. Still this will mean we can sign ourselves out properly at the site entrance and get our backpacks back.

Chew on bamboo shoots, like raw runner beans, and drink from epiphytic bromeliads. My legs are wobbly with exhaustion which adds to the vertiginous effects of the steep trail. As we crest the peak the ruins of Macchu Picchu are completely empty. As we climb down from Waynu Picchu we feast on wild strawberries growing on the little terraces. Suddenly an armed guard in uniform starts blowing a whistle and we have to leave the strawberries and eat humble pie and look stupid. The register has already been put to away for the day, unchecked.

Descend by a rocky muddy path in the pouring rain to the valley bottom, a long way, and then along the railway for 2km to Aqua Calientes, having missed the last train. Curious place Aquas Calientes. The single track railway line to Cuzco is the high street, along which cheap restaurants and hostels cluster. We check into dorm at Hostal Machu Picchu, 15000 a night eat like pigs and sleep like we are dead. Phew.

Thursday 14th November 1985

Catch the 8.15 train in the morning from Aquas Calientes to Cuzco, 29,000 S 1st Class. Unnecessary extra as the train was virtually empty, because of a landslide further up the line and the trains can't get through. A little later we run into trouble and one set of wheels jumps off the track and are derailed. A guard takes off his shoes and shins up a telegraph pole, connects a phone, and tells the controller. Meanwhile rocks are placed under the train wheels and the train is reversed back onto the tracks. The whole business is very slick, takes about 20 minutes. Well rehearsed.

Guard warning train derailed

The bottom rung on my hired rucksack has broken off. Someone on the train advises me the local name for araldite is Soldimix. I help him get the English right on a song he is translating.

Meet the gang at Hotel Suiza. Take back all the hired gear, no hassle about the broken backpack. Total expenses for the Inca Trail about 40 US$. Very few people on the trail.

Friday 15th November 1985

Day of rest after the Inca Trail trek. Maria does some shopping. Its time she returned to northern Peru to finish her elective at a little hospital where her brother works. Jessica meets a famous artist who promises to sketch her portrait this evening! Oh Yeah.

Listen to jazz and Rock at the Kamikaze Club. Jessica and yankee Stephen leave for Bolivia tomorrow. English Stephen John and maria leave for Lima tomorrow.