From the beautiful beach of Mancora to the good-byes in Chiclayo, back to Lima for one night and then onto Cusco and here- Ollantaytambo, a village in the Sacred Valley. And now I finally feel like I'm backpacking again.
After a couple of more days in Mancora Sharon and I had had enough of lounging around the beach. We had a cool last day of finding oysters in the rocks when the tide went out and then eating an oyster ceviche for dinner. Pretty good shit.
In Chiclayo I had a mini 3 song set with the harmonica player, Sebastian, and the house band at La Taberna. I was kinda of sorry to be leaving at the end of the day. The band is pretty good and has potential and there's a lot of oportunity to gig. I played three weekends in a row and that rarely happens in Toronto! I guess it just takes time to get settled into a new city. I said my goodbyes to my collegues at the school, had a final ceviche dinner and one last excessive amount of beer with José, and then packed my stuff and left my apartment. A bit sad, but definitely time to leave.
And Lima... I still hate that city. We met a nutbar on the street who had lived in Montreal for 6 years and wanted to help me 'fight' the bus company that's resposible for all my shit being stolen. So we spent the afternoon at the Roggero offices and 'Wild Javier' raised hell. It was actually pretty fun watching this guy in action even though the bus company isn't going to give me any sort of compensation. (Not that I was expecting any, I just wanted to rattle some cages) Sharon and I met Cesar and Mary for yet another good bye dinner finished off with some espresso-whiskeys and a pitcher of beer in an English pub. It was a good night but I was still glad to be leaving Lima.
After 20 hours on a bus we arrived in Cusco and that's when i started to feel like i was travelling instead of visiting places around where I live. The mountains always give me a high and when we came across a brewery next to a restaurant called 'El Hogán' we couldn't resist intensifying the good feelings. For three months I've had nothing but the mass produced beer which would be considered 'lawnmower beer' in Canada because it's the watery, bubbly kind of beer that you pound back on a Sunday afternoon after mowing the lawn. So this micro brewed beer was a God-send. From there we did a gringo pub crawl to the Irish pub and then the English pub in the main square (beautiful square, by the way). I guess it was the altitude and lack of food because after only 4 drinks the two of us were completely ripped and made elegant disgraces of ourselves, our families, and our country. It was a helluva good time. Almost worth the 3 days of suffering that is only ending now.
And now we're close to Macchu Picchu. The trail is closed beacuse it's the rainy season and the 'Royal Route' is a $150 rip off so we're doing it ourselves. So far it's been amazing. This town, Ollantaytambo, is a little village in the Andes surrounded by mountains with Incan ruins and terraces along the mountain faces. The village has been re-constucuted to look like an Incan village with walled in alleys between the houses and running water diverted from the river flowing next to the foot paths. Yesterday there was a celebration for Carnival in the main square. A tree, decorated with balloons and buckets (yes, buckets!), was chopped down with an axe by 20 drunken local women aged 20-60. They were dressed in tradtional clothes and they danced around the tree singing and holding hands while a couple would take a few swings at the tree. In the end it was a tourist, who looked like an Australian rugby player, who took the axe and made quick work of the tree. Lots of cheering, water fighting and a night of dancing in the square. I love this town.
The down side of travelling, traveller's sickness, has been wreaking havoc on our bowels and brains for the past few days. Both of us are taking medication that will either cure us or block the problem until after Macchu Picchu which we're going to tomorrow!
Hi everybody, well my name is Daniel and I'm from Chiclayo - Peru, I study foreign languages so we made a group to help the tourist to get addresses and show them all the beautiful places in here, by the way the tourists could help us to practice our English, well so write to me soon if you are coming to Chiclayo, the people in are very friendly so come here... bye for now and write to me to Latinboydaniel@yahoo.com ok? .. bye for now
your New Peruvian friend
Daniel ;)
Posted by: Daniel | May 16, 2005 at 06:51 PM
travel sicness??? more like the technicolour dream shit for konke... but all is good now. With meds made it only a serious sick night and day. Really enjoyed macchu picchu, absolutely stunning and the company of Hoban was a plus! I use our new peruvian bus names.When leaving Chiclayo the bus office chick misunderstood our complex western names and thought J was hoban konke (hw spelled out or last namestogether for her and she thought it was one person)... so I´ve adopted konke ... It´s been awesome and I´m sad it´s over so soon.
King Konke
Posted by: konke | February 26, 2005 at 05:34 PM
that's awesome. just make sure you get to macchu picchu early (first bus) and hike straight to the top of huayna picchu for an hour alone at what is arguably the most beautiful place on earth.
Posted by: ed-velvet | February 21, 2005 at 02:21 AM