Lima, Peru, Wednesday, June 29, 2011
I love this place already, because the cauliflowers here are purple 🙂
On a more serious note, I got to Lima safe, but late, as another passenger had a bout of angina on the tarmac in Brazil
Tonight I’m feasting on 25p/kg watermelon and 4 types of potato. And everyone here speaks English.
Lima, Peru, Thursday, June 30, 2011
I take a 21 hour coach to Cuzco. It´s the most VIP one I’ve travelled in, by far. I feel fairly guilty looking out at all the slum people through my tinted windows.
I chat to a trio of USA girls, and fall asleep in the desert. I wake up in the biggest mountain range I´ve ever seen, and my first sight is a recently overturned coach in a ditch. From the same company.
I then spend the next four hours imagining my obituary;
“James ´Jimbo´Aldridge, 26, was killed in Peru when his bus slid off a cliff. Spinning end over end, the vehicle burst into flame before slamming into the valley floor at 800 miles an hour. Witnesses report ´There was a lot of screaming´. Perhaps James should have paid for flights, eh?”
Got there safe though 😛
Cuzco, Peru, Sunday, July 3, 2011
I set up camp in an Irish hostel and made new friends. I’ve taken to writing their names in a notebook so I don´t forget. My favourites are a German I’ve nicknamed Fritz. Fritz won a beer from of me when David Haye lost. And Emma from Leeds, who was very, very drunk, spent 10 mins explaining that her bus to Easter Island was really drawn out and expensive. I’ll bet it was 🙂
So today I’ve gotten hammered, got my face painted, witnessed a 24-shot Yagerbomb, sheared my own broken padlock off of my locker, visited ruins called ´Sacsaywayman´ and fought a cat for a bacon salad. In Peru, that´s a normal day.
Aguas Calientes, Sacred Valley, Peru, Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Due to an unfortunate set of coincidences involving a landslide, a 1911 American explorer, some low flying fireworks, brushing my teeth while drunk, 12 inches of snow and El Presidente of Peru, I am the first person to hike, bike and climb my way to the base of Macchu Picchu and not get to visit it. Good trip though.
Highlights include:
1/ Trying to find something familiar to settle my digestion, I order porridge for breakfast. It arrives comprised entirely of water, quinoa and avocado. Splendid.
2/ A 3300m downhill ride on a bike from sub-freezing mountains to a steamy jungle, in 3 hours.
3/ Reverse abseiling up an 80 degree rockface with a steel cable. And normal abseiling on the way back down.
Cusco, Peru, Tuesday, July 12, 2011
It´s been a slow week. Fuelled with Guinness, I had a cool night out with some friends in Cuzco, salsa dancing. I feel so bad the next morning though, I move hostels to get some rest. I´ve been to see the doc and got some antibiotics/anti-parasites from my belly and I lay up with chicken soup for the duration.
I get no sleep on the 24 hour coach ride back to Lima, and last night was kept awake by the World Snoring Champion in my dorm. At 3:45am, I resort to throwing pillows from the spare bunks at him out of desperation. It works, I get three hours blissful sleep ;-P. I´m meeting Intej and my host family today, I hope my Spanish is up to it.
A Gentleman's World 