Peru: Mummies, cooking and monasteries

Oh my, what's this? A post going up on time? Shock horror. For this you can probably blame the fact that I've spent a large part of the last week feeling ill, so I've had plenty of time lounging in the hostel to get all the posts back up to date.

Anyway, aside from the illness, here's how the last week has panned out.

Look - camels!

It's a good job I'd had an early night, because my bus from Puno to Arequipa turned up at 5:45am on Saturday morning. Fortunately, my paranoia about being on time for things meant I'd been awake since 5am and had time to down a couple of cups of tea before I had to leave.

As the first to be picked up, I then spent an hour sitting on the bus waiting for other people before we even left Puno. My mood was not great.

We had a very brief stop at Lagunillas. Well, the sign said it was Lagunillas...

That lake at the back is Lagunillas, I think. Supposedly it's good for birdwatching, but since we only stopped for 5 minutes and we were a pretty long way from the lake, I can't be sure. We did see some flamingoes at a smaller lake just down the road, but since the bus didn't stop there my photos are... pathetic, shall we say?

From Lagunillas we passed through some very cool landscapes and quite a few vicunas. More on these in a moment. Still, the bus didn't stop again until we made it to the turn off for Chivay. Here, we stopped for a snack and I must say that the sandwich was huge and delicious and the coca tea much appreciated.

Half the group then piled into a minibus going to Chivay while the few of us going on to Arequipa transferred to another bus. A Spanish family, two American girls and me. Hmm. Although we weren't scheduled to have any more stops, the driver pulled over five minutes down the road so we could take photos.

The volcano to the left is Misti, with another volcanic group to the right. On the flats in front of this is a group of animals. See them? Yeah? Little bit out of focus. The American girls next to me, on seeing said animals both went "oh, wow, camels!"

There are no camels in South America. These guys are vicunas and though they are part of the camel family along with llama, alpaca and guanaco, they are very much not camels. I pointed this out to the Yanks. They look nothing like camels. Even at that distance, I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion...

Anyhoos, vicunas photographed, we set off again for Arequipa, Peru's second largest city. It is by far the most western place I've seen in Peru and after trying to visit local businesses everywhere else, I ended up in Starbucks soon after I arrived. Mostly because I needed a large quantity of tea and the selection at the hostel was somewhat limited.

I may also have had a very nice chocolate muffin. Om nom nom.

And then I slept. A lot.

Do I really have to do something?

Sleep was rudely interrupted by the fact that I am staying in the hottest room ever and the sun decided to turn it into an oven at 7am. I figured I'd have a nice relaxed morning and then go into the city to explore.

It didn't happen. I read. I attempted to get the blog updated (and failed...). I wrote some stuff.

The afternoon came around and I really couldn't be bothered to move. Eventually I forced myself to go to the supermarket solely because otherwise it was dry pasta for tea and then came straight back and made another go at the blog. And failed again because the internet connection was shocking.

I did take some photos of the Plaza de Armas though. The big building is the cathedral and the mountain sticking up on the right is Misti, the volcano.

After four hours of arguing with the WiFi connection, I finally gave up on getting the blog up to date and settled for reading instead. Wasted day? Maybe.

Urgh. Lurgies.

Any thought of making up for the wasted day was somewhat scuppered by the fact that I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely atrocious and spent the morning feeling sorry for myself. I have no idea what triggered it, but it was highly unpleasant.

I did, however, manage to drag myself to the Museo Santuarios Andinos in the afternoon. This is run by one of the universities and is home to the mummy known as Juanita or the ice Maiden, found near the top of Ampata volcano. She is remarkably well preserved for a natural mummy and the museum also houses a whole array of artefacts found with her and the other mummies found on Ampata.

Unfortunately, Peru's weird aversion to photography in museums struck again and so there are no photos of these awesome things. Guh.

Museum fix appeased, I hauled myself back to the hostel, curled up and somehow managed to focus long enough to get one of the outstanding blog posts sorted. Well done, lurgified brain.

Lurgies persisted though and an early night was in order.

Schedule change

A good night's sleep seemed to do the trick and I woke up on Tuesday feeling much better. I was still feeling lazy though and decided I'd take it easy to make sure the lurgies were properly gone.

As a result, I spent the morning booking things for the fast approaching Chilean leg of my trip. Hostel in Santiago? Check. Hostel in San Pedro de Atacama? Nope. Apparently San Pedro books up further in advance than pretty much anywhere else I've been and as a result, I've had to shift my plans slightly. Instead of going from Santiago to the north and then working south, I'm going from Santiago to Chiloe to Puerto Montt (or at least that area) to Punta Arenas and then planning to fly back up to San Pedro towards the end of my stay.

Woo.

I also managed to do some more blog updating. More woo.

And then I cooked potatoes for tea and one of them exploded in the pan... This was how thrilling this day got.

I am the god of hellfire...

Determined to make up for all this non-exploring in Arequipa, I'd booked a cooking experience the previous evening. First stop, a trip to San Carmilo market to see the huge range of fruits, veggies and meats on offer. I took far too many photos. Look, chickens with the heads still on.

Also, so much fruit. We got to try some of it, including a very tiny melon, passionfruit, sweet lemons and tiny orange berries that look like what I know as Chinese gooseberries. Very yummy.

Might have to be going back there... Anyway, with our trip to the market finished, we trooped into the open kitchen to start on the cooking lesson. For this session we were preparing causa and lomo saltado. First up, the causa, which is a layered "pie" made with mashed, spiced potatoes, a veg and chicken mayonnaise mix and avocado. Here is the group, hard at work.

And here is my finished creation, which I was pretty proud of, although I think my presentation needs a bit of work... not quite Masterchef standard.

Yes, it is decorated with ketchup and mayonnaise and yes, it was delicious. Next up, the main course - lomo saltado. Diced beef, onions, garlic, chili, tomatoes, fries... I've never had to peel a tomato that hasn't been in boiling water before. I don't plan on doing it again - faffy stuff.

Anyways, with all the ingredients prepped, it was time to cook. First, a demonstration from Monica so we knew what to do.

Because, yes, this does involve setting fire to the food. And yes, my brain might have been playing Fire by Arthur Brown on a loop when it was my turn to cook. Oh, and did I mention there's pisco in this dish?

Yummy.

Following our cooking and devouring, a few of our group stuck around to learn how to make pisco sours. Fairly straightforward - add lime/lemon juice to egg white. Shake until foamy. Add pisco, syrup and ice. Shake until ice is broken up. Pour into glass. Add bitters.

Drink.

Yup, that was a pretty good way to spend 4 hours - explore, cook, eat, drink. Nom.

Following that, I spent a nice, relaxed evening at the hostel, finally sorting out another blog post. Unfortunately, whatever lurgies have been afflicting me on and off for the past week, decided to make a return just as I wanted to sleep. Urgh.

It has WiFi?!

I woke on Thursday morning still not feeling quite right, but determined to do something with my day. The morning was spent arguing with the hostel's WiFi and trying to get some more stuff sorted out for Chile. So now I have flights and a hostel sorted out for San Pedro de Atacama - I'm giving myself a whole week there because there's a lot to see. Also, if the last week has been anything to go by, I need to give myself time to properly slow down before I get ill again.

Satisfied that there was nothing else urgently in need of booking, I made my way to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina. This is apparently one of Arequipa's top attractions and only a 20 minute walk from the hostel. I figured if I had another attack of the lurgies, I could get back to my nice cosy bed pretty quick.

Also, I've never been in a monastery before. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, especially as this is a still functioning monastery, not just a tourist attraction.

I definitely wasn't expecting brightly coloured walls. There's blue, orange and an almost-red. And it's beautiful.

I also wasn't expecting there to be WiFi. Which meant I had to do the stupid tourist thing and send a stupid selfie to Facebook proclaiming my surprise at the WiFi and the bright colours.

Yep. I'm so cool. The monastery was founded in 1579 and has survived through a fair few major earthquakes. Today the information says there are 21 nuns. I didn't see any at the monastery, but I have seen one or two around town - can't be sure they belong to Santa Catalina though. Many of the original cells are open, so you can see that the earlier nuns were from rich families. Not quite what you'd expect from an order that has poverty as one of its core values. This is the Profundis Room, where wakes were held.

There's also a great view over the monastery and city out towards the volcanoes that overlook Arequipa.

I spent a good couple of hours wandering round. It's a good job I had a map, because I can imagine that despite the semi-decent signage, it's pretty easy to get lost if you're not paying attention. The place is huge - very much a city within the city.

After that gloriously peaceful afternoon, I spent the evening fighting once again with the WiFi in an effort to get this post mostly finished and then had a bizarre meal of tomatoey mashed potato, cheese and tuna in an effort to use up the random assortment of food I had left. It was surprisingly delicious.

Adios, Peru

With Friday came my farewell to beautiful Peru. A very slow farewell that included more tomatoey mashed potato and a visit to Arequipa's enormous cathedral.

No one wants to hear about my ridiculous mish-mash cooking, so let's have a look at the cathedral instead. The place is huge, stretching along one entire side of the Plaza de Armas. It has been rebuilt a couple of times due to fire and earthquakes.

It's home to this enormous, Belgian-made organ, the biggest in Peru.

And a pulpit made in France which features this excellent carving of a devil being squished by the power of God.

The tour also took me up to the bell tower, where I couldn't help but think of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and was most disappointed to find a distinct lack of gargoyles. The bells, though, are pretty cool.

Also, the view from the roof is awesome, with the Plaza de Armas on one side...

And volcanoes on the other - Chachani, Misti and Pichu Pichu, although Pichu Pichu has got missed off the right side of this shot...

Very pretty. And then a delicious chocolate muffin in Starbucks. I love that the default state for muffins here is to be served warm. Yum.

A few more hours killed in the hostel and then off to the airport with a taxi driver who meandered between lanes, picked fights with buses and generally had me wondering if I was even going to make it to the airport.

Fortunately, I did get there in one piece, only to find that my flight had been delayed by an hour and a half. Given that I only had 4 hours between connections at Lima, I had to try hard not to panic. The lady at the desk was pretty cool - she put me in the second row so I could get off the plane quick and put my luggage through as priority, although I wasn't convinced it would help.

With far more time to waste at the airport than anticipated, I took myself out for tea at a surprisingly well-priced airport restaurant, where I had salchitodo.

Yes, it is a pile of chips with sausage, fried chicken and an egg. Yes, it was delicious. Apparently it's a variant on salchipapas, which is a popular fast food consisting of just the fries and sausage. And, because I needed to relieve the stress building up, I washed it all down with a delicious hot chocolate that was mostly chocolate and not milk.

Oh, and I finally tried Inca Kola. It tastes somewhere in between dandelion & burdock and bubblegum. Bit too sweet.

Somewhat less anxious, I toddled on up to the gates (Arequipa has a grand total of 4, all squished together) to see whether there was any news of my flight. Nope. No ETA, nothing. Anxiety returned.

And then, to my complete disgust, a Peruvian Airlines plane appeared and it wasn't mine. And I'm looking at the people getting on the flight wondering why they couldn't be delayed another few minutes so all us poor buggers who've been waiting ages for our flight could have that plane instead. After all, both flights were going to Lima.

Irrational, yes, I know. At any rate, I ended up on the plane and in the air by 9:30, a full 2 hours after my scheduled departure and worrying about how the fricking hell I was going to make my flight to Santiago.

Despite it clearly not being time for sleep, I was knackered and thought I'd try to catch forty winks. Peruvian Airlines had other plans and came round with a snack and a drink. Appreciated, but maybe not right at that moment. And then I went back to worrying and trying to sleep.

We arrived at Lima just before 11pm. My next flight was due at 1am. And we parked at a remote stand, which meant not only did I have to do the usual waiting to get off the damn plane, I then had to get a bus to the terminal. A nice, crowded bus that played up on other anxieties not related to missing flights.

First positive of the night came when my bag was first off the carousel. Apparently my doubts about the priority tag were misplaced. It was, at this point, 11:20pm.

Fast walk to the check in desks, where to my utter confusion and horror there is an enormous line for Sky Airline and my brain starts going "notgoingtomakeit, whatdoIdo?" on repeat.

Until I realise that pretty much everyone else in the line is waiting for the same flight. OK... does that mean I can stop panicking now?

Apparently, yes. Check in goes smoothly and then it's off to security where something in my bag gets the staff worried and a very friendly security man takes everything out of my bag in search of it. My bag is jammed full. It takes a while. The "threat" turns out to be a whole load of loose foreign coinage which has spilled out of the little box I was keeping it in. I should probably do something about that...

Flew through immigration, where I acquired another passport stamp. The Peruvian ones are pink. I like them. They're happy.

At any rate, I finally made it to the gate an hour ahead of departure. Plenty of time for me to calm down my poor, overworked, overanxious brain. And so, onto the plane.

Where I had to turf an old woman out of my seat, which was great fun because I couldn't work out how to say "that's my seat" in Spanish and had to rely on pointing repeatedly at my seat number and my ticket, which didn't work and then the steward had to get involved because she couldn't get it into her head that she was in the wrong seat. Ugh.

And then the plane was delayed nearly 30 minutes, but by that point I really couldn't give a shit any more because I just wanted to sleep. Which I did. Somehow.


Well, I'm now in Santiago. I have a month planned for Chile, with the first week involving much exploration of the capital and then heading south to Chiloe.

Let's see if my Spanish improves...

Iceland: Waterfalls, volcanoes and rain

OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

Ahem. Anyway. In magical events this week, my Grand Tour which has been in the planning for the best part of 18 months (if not longer) has finally begun. I've spent the last few days in the beautiful city of Rekjavik. Well, actually, I've only really been in Reykjavik to sleep. Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to so far.

My trip started with the usual farting about with trains and then a lovely afternoon in London with Claire who gifted me this little chap

His name is Harold. He is now my mascot.

From London, I had to head to Gatwick to catch a flight the next day. All went well until I arrived in Reykjavik on Monday morning. See, EasyJet have these new-fangled bag drop machines so you don't even get to talk to someone when you dump your bag. All well and good, but when I arrived in Reykjavik my bag was nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half later, I thought, fuck it, I'm going to go and complain to the baggage people. Which took me past the oversized baggage area (which is just a dumping ground next to the carousels) and lo and behold, there was my bag. Fuming.

Aside from that, my first day in Reykjavik was lovely, if a little marred by sleep deprivation. I took a walk along the bay front.

And then, because I was still feeling a bit grouchy, I treated myself to fish and chips instead of cooking. Lovely little restaurant near the harbour provided me with ling, crispy potatoes and a mango flavoured dip. Different, but pretty good. Sorry, Grimsby!

The Golden Circle

My first real day in Iceland began much too early for my liking. Don't ask me why, but I clearly thought it was a great idea to book a tour that started at 7am when I'd had very little sleep and a very long day the day before.

That said, my trip to the Golden Circle was great fun. There were only 2 other people on the tour - everyone else was presumeably sensible enough to decide against such an early start - so we had the minibus to ourselves. Also, as I noticed at our first stop, setting off so early meant we got most of the sites to ourselves as well.

Said first stop was Fridheimar, a farm which grows tomatoes, mostly. I should maybe point out that I actually did the Golden Circle tour 18 months ago, so the idea of Icelanders growing tomatoes year round is no longer new to me, but it's interesting nonetheless. Also, a box of bees, which they get shipped from Holland every week to keep the tomatoes pollinated. Woo for bees.

From there, we headed to Gullfoss. I was especially looking forward to this because 18 months ago, the waterfall was mostly frozen over. Not so this time.

All of the pretties. There isn't much else to say about Gullfoss, so let's move on to the next stop, which was Geysir, the geyser from which all other geysers get their name. Geysir itself doesn't go off much any more, but its younger neighbour Strokkur does.

I should have quit while I was ahead with geyser photographs. Because just after I took that one, I decided to have another go. And the wind caught the plume just at the wrong moment. And poured it over me. Pretty sure I spent the rest of the day smelling of rotten eggs.

From there, we drove down to Thingvellir National Park, where Iceland's parliament, the Althingi, used to meet for about 700 years. Beautiful place.

Unfortunately, just after I took that photograph, I took this one.

And realised there was something seriously wrong with my camera, which after that shot just took pictures of funny coloured lines and splotches. This meant I spent much of the drive back to Reykjavik frantically trying to connect to the minibus WiFi to work out what was wrong and then had to traipse around the city to find a camera shop.

Which I did. And discovered that, as I feared, the camera was beyond help. So I bought a new one. At Icelandic prices, that's money I'd rather not have spent, but I can't be doing without a camera. Ugh.

My day was significantly improved by the lovely Icelandic chap who'd been in the camera shop at the same time and caught up with me as I was leaving. He gave me some suggestions for cool places to photograph, complete with directions and suggestions of the best times to be there to exploit Iceland's weird summer light. I'll say this - so far, I've found the Icelanders to be very friendly people.

South Shore Adventure

In the second of my early starts (although not as early as the day before) I headed off on another trip, this time to Iceland's beautiful south coast. Yet more hours stuck on a bus were more than made up for by the wonderful sights. Take Solheimajokull for a start.

It's a glacier. Coming off a volcano. Hence the black colour, I presume - from the ash? And then there's the tiny town of Vik and it's amazing black sand beach. I made the nistake of getting a bit too close to the sea and ended up with soggy boots. Fortunately said boots are waterproof so at least my feet were dry.

Vik was the furthest point of the trip from Reykjavik, so from there we headed back the way we came, stopping first at Reynisfjara, also a black sand beach. It also has these wonderful basalt columns - a bit like the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

While we were at the beach a lovely Canadian lady collared me after overhearing me mention going to Canada and proceeded to give me some suggestions on where to visit. Apparently I am capable of having conversations with strangers!

Then on to the little village of Skogar and its folk museum. Very interesting and I would have liked to have spent a bit more time there. Lots of information about traditional life in Iceland, including these funky two-thumbed mittens the fishermen used to wear.

They have two thumbs because their hands would get warm rowing and they could just flip them round to the cool side. Or something like that... Or maybe the thumbs wore out quick? It was something to do with rowing at any rate.

They also had a tub of bezoars, so if anyone gets poisoned, Skogar is the place to go.

Then just around the corner is beautiful Skogarfoss. It's a single drop waterfall and I couldn't resist the temptation to get as close as possible without getting soaked.

Which was going great until the wind changed and all the spray came in my direction. Oops. But hey, it was an experience.

I also got a bit drippy at the next stop, which was another waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. This one was especially cool, because you can actually walk behind the waterfall. Unfortunately, behind the waterfall is also spray-central, but at least this time I was wearing my waterproof. Clever me.

And from there, home. Well, back to the hostel.

Wonders of Snaefellsnes

Day three proper in Iceland dawned horribly early again. Fortunately, the tour I took turned out to be another minibus one with a lovely guide up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. First stop proper was at Ytri Tunga where we attempted to do some seal-spotting. Unfortunately, the rain had set in and there were no seals to be found, although we did get divebombed by a couple of angry arctic terns.

Then the tiny settlement, if you can call it that, of Budir where there's a lava field and a pretty old church. And more rain, if you must know.

With the rain showing no sign of letting up, we hurried off to our next stop at Arnarstapi where we took a walk along the cliff top to admire the basalt formations. And get rained on some more. And shrieked at by more terns. I will admit that at this point my attempts to stay positive were beginning to falter.

Oh, and there's a troll on the hill.

Fortunately for my flagging morale, the next stop was lunch. I've been trying not to buy meals in Iceland because it's so very expensive, but at this point I didn't give a damn any more, so treated myself (ha) to a bowl of mushroom soup which came to 1500 krona. In case you're wondering, that's bloody expensive for a bowl of soup.

However, the soup was delicious and came with lovely fresh bread and really, it was just what I needed. That and a chat with the Irish chap on the tour who later kept me updated with the England-Wales Euro score. Nice chap.

After lunch, the stops became shorter - quick little photo stops along the north coast of the peninsula. The first of these was inside a volcano. Well... a pseudo-volcano.

You have to admit, it does look quite... volcano-ish. And it did form because of all the volcanism. And sod it, I just want to say I've been inside a volcano. So there.

Then we stopped at another lovely black sand beach, complete with surrounding lava field at Djupalonssandur. I had a bit of a moment on the beach when I realised the bits of old wreck lying about on the sand were from a Grimsby trawler. If anyone knows anything about a trawler called Epine, can you let me know?

And then I fell asleep and we stopped at Kirkjufell, which is a funny pointy mountain. My new camera, which had been behaving up until this point, decided it didn't like the light conditions so I've only got a couple of sort-of-decent photos from here.

From there, a quick stop to use the facilities at Grundafjordur and another at a place I couldn't pronounce (and can't even guess at) to see some more basalt columns. As Xavier, our guide, liked to keep pointing out - "this is not in the programme."

And then home. I think I might have fallen asleep again. During the drop offs, Xavier informed me that my hostel appears to own the last Big Mac sold in Iceland before MacDonalds pulled out. I'll have to see if I can find it.

In Cod We Trust

Or so went the saying at the Maritime Museum when I visited earlier today. They have an exhibition on at the moment about the cod wars, which my hometown was rather involved in. So I got to playing the game of "how many references to Grimsby can I find?"

Turns out to be quite a few. Overall, a great little exhibition, if understandably Iceland-biased. I spent the hour after that watching a great documentary about fishing in Iceland in the late 1800s, and then enjoyed the rest of the museum. Some funky little bits.

Basically, I've had a great start to my trip, even with the few little mishaps. Aside from yesterday, the weather's been great too, which I wasn't expecting. And, importantly, I've managed to have conversations with people. They might have been short and mostly someone else instigated them, but I don't care.

Tomorrow I have yet another early start because I've got to catch a bus up to Akureyri on the north coast where I'll be staying for the next few days before heading back to Reykjavik on Tuesday in time to catch my flight to Canada on Thursday.

So far, so good.