Huaraz Has Altitude

And now for some inner dialogue....right, how high are we? 3300 metres. Ok lets go for a walk. Screw this acclimatising crack. Did your nose bleed today? Mine had hard blood in it. Anyway lets do this thing. How are we getting there. Taxi fine.......here we are now, at the start. Up the hill? Fine. Man I´ve only walked for a minute and I´m bolloxed. What the hell is that bull doing? He´s doing it to another bull! It´s ok the local woman is hitting him now. ¿Tiene caramillo? Man these kids know how to milk a backpacker. I thought they were speaking Quechua. (Local language of indigienous people). Which path Hugo? Oh the one that goes up, what a surprise. Snow capped rugged peaks look damn fine. This ridge is cool, little ant people down below and jagged rocks all around. That old woman is gaining on me. She´s like a mountain goat, and she´s passing me, not sucking in air or sweating, I must look like a monster to her. And she´s carrying a stack of firewood. Getting headaches now and my hands have turned purple and swollen. Weird shit. Oh we´ve reached the carpark. How far? 2km up? No thanks I´m done. I´m going to roll downhill instead........
......leaving Huaraz was easy. The climate is excellent during the day and freezing at night. I needed stability. After saying adios to Hugo, Gen, Stacey and David, I set out to Lima on a stunning bus ride. The bus zig zagged down from 3300metres to sea level in a little under 8 hours. From frosted mountains through wide open pasture valleys a light shade of green. The descent went through basalt rock formations and ramshackle settlements hugging the road. Mountains changed from green to brown as the desert took hold of the landscape. The only bit of green was stuck to a river meandering below. A long oasis snake which accompanied the bus to the sea. Then it became apparent how lonely this green snake was. It is completely surrounded by the desert. The only colours apart from green and brown were the drying vegetables in the sun bringing out vivid reds, yellows and greens. Day trips are sometimes better.........
Lima welcomed me with neon signs and concrete.
Adios

The Warrior Duck and Other Tales

......the battle of the sand was a legendary battle which took place in the town of Mancora, Peru. Mancora is set on the Pacific surrounded by a vast desert with sandy mountains hemming it in along the coast. It was in this sleepy seaside hamlet the great war of the sand was enacted between a small but powerful Irish army and an equally small but weak Dutch one. The Irish in victorious celebration had to be reminded after a night on the rum and coke what had happened on the beachy battleground. Mancora, not much to do but its hot, sandy and full of cheap rum......
Night buses are a pain in the arse, literally. They are made even worse when people open the windoiws in the middle of the night to cool down. These people should just take of a jacket instead of freezing my balls off. It was after one such trip I found myself in Trujillo. A functional town with a serene central park. The skies where grey so we (2 Dutch, 2 Quebecuers) fled to Huanchaco. The sky was grey there too. But we stayed, wraqpped up in our winter clothes. This is the site of two ancient sites. Chan Chan and Huaca del Sol y de la Luna. Both spectacular and in the desert. Bald dogs roam the sites and angry unofficial guides try to scam money off you but it is worth it just to see the fantastic murals at Huaca de la Luna. In a word it is stunning. I know where South Park got its inspiration from.......
And in this temple they found the warrior Duck. If my Spanish is worth a damn I believe the duck was the spiritual animal of a great warrior of the Moche people. And since they recorded everything through pottery and murals, they have found warrior duck vases in the temples. Looks like Duck Dodgers, seriously.
¿How many people can you fit in a taxi in Peru?
8
¿How many people can you fit into a small Hiace van in Peru?
23
This is how comfortable it is travelling here people.
Good bye
Up the Dubs.

The Valley of Longevity is a Sordid Place

....whoa Vilcabamba, set at 1500 metres, lush green in a deathly quiet valley, wall like mountains keeping the wind at bay, people sleepily going about their lives in a tranquil bliss. Or so it would seem. The beauty of this place is only matched by the strangeness and in some cases down right evilness of its inhabitants. There is a price for serenity.......
..."ok so lets go get these things." Yes it was an innocent response to the question of whether or not I would like a snake juice from the bar. I consider myself a veteran of reptilian shorts since my days in 'Nam drinking snake whiskey. Eight shots where ordered for the group. Too many names to put down here. The local cowboy brought them out, a horriffic smell tickled at my stomach, inviting my hamburgeusa back up. I held it at bay. The glasses were big for a shot. About one and a half the norm. For show we sat on the novelty saddle seats. "Uno, dos, tres." The violent taste rushed up my nose and down to my stomach. It stayed there. And five minutes later I am reliably informed I was pissed. So to was Hugo, a Canadian cohort but not his wife Gen, who prodded us into stupidity for the night. I don´t remember much after that, except waking up, still pissed and finding Hugo asleep in a hammock, with contented gaze.......
MEET THE RESIDENTS OF VILCABAMBA
Gavin, rough as sand paper Kiwi owner of a local horse riding operation. Annoyed about recent killing of a neighbour who was 5 months pregnant by a policemans son. The police will not prosecute, and son has disappeared into the jungle. Writing a book on the town.
Pieter, dreadlocked German owner of hostel in the woods. Mostly stoned. Has to help the police to hunt down robbers in the mountains because the police don´t want to. Fountain of knowledge regarding the area and its people.
***(For legal reasons) owner of Las Ruinas Quineras, recently released from jail after one year. Different sources say he either assulted, raped, beat up or murdered someone. Nothing sure. Hostel is very odd, atmosphere really bad.
Drunken Irishman, me.
Goodnight and Good luck

Set them all on Fire

.....giant bamboo floats wobbled on top of men in the main plaza in Cuenca. Each had numerous novelty windmills attached and they seemed to be a fire hazard waiting to happen, adorned with papier mache and highly flammable bunting. I thought nothing of them, and turned down past the new cathedral where a huge sweet market had assembeled in less than an hour. Women roared out the different flavours and tried jabbing the sweets into my mouth. Then I noticed something, wasps, thousands of them, covering the sweets. I hate wasps but this market went the length of the street. And being there with a fellow traveller, Nadine I didn´t want to appear to be the whimpy man, so casually I ran down the street only stopping to suck in air to scream out. I hid amongst about 20 fusball tables that also had mysteriously appeared.
On regaining my composure we wandered back to the main square were fireworks had begun exploding and the remnants of the fireworks rained down on peoples heads. But they were mere light wood, unlikely to hurt. And then the reason for the bamboo floats became apparent. They were huge firework staging points. People gathered around the floats, eager to be entertained. The fireworks started and smiles washed there little faces. The tower leaned and screamers began pointing into the crowd, smiles sullied with terror now as rockets crashed into the crowd and they panicked for a split second. Then the danced as large blobs of fire rained down on them. A true testament to Latin American health and safety....
....stuck in _Cuenca for 6 days due to road closures can make you go crazy, and it did.Sitting in the Panama Hat shop, while rain pummelled down for the fourth successive day a super hero was born. Casual Man. I saw him there I swear.
.....Got out of there in a rush to Vilcabamba. Valley of Longevity. Interestiung place with a seedy underbelly. You got to wait for that though.
Adios

Damn the Divils Nose

.......active man keith, for four days in Baños I hiked, biked and talked. Then a darkness came. A movement inside that was unmistakable. A bubble and push through my intestines which could only mean one thing. A night on the pot, begging for mercy, or even a respite from an an evil adversary. I won, beating it in one day. Then it was time to say goodbye to the mountains, volcanoes and waterfalls that make Baños beautiful.......
......Riobamba is ugly. The only reason to visit this town is a train ride known as La nariz De Diablo. So arriving a day early made sence, to ensure a place on the train shaped Satins snot. Riobambas grey streets greeted me. Full of teenagers drinking beer outside off-licenses because there are no bars in the town. I hid in my hotel room with my cable TV and waited until the morning to buy my ticket. a grey sun rose(seriously) and bustling in the street woke me early. it was market day. Something to keep me occupied. I went to the train station and asked what time the office opened at. A orange blazered guy told me 3. So I returned there at 3 after a morning trapsing around fish markets. I found a queue. I got in line. It took ten minutes to get to the front. I asked for a ticket. The response knocked me out. Full. No more. it was 3.05pm. The orange clad man came over. Bus to Aloisi? I asked him what time the office opened. He said two. I roared at him, my anger uncontrollable. Riobamba really has nothing there. I told him to place his bus up his arse(my Spanish is improving) and took it out on the grey tarmac of Riobamba.........Then I headed to Cuenca.