chanman

At 4.30am, after some brief, violent stomach upsets at Lima airport, we were on a plane to Cusco and, looking out of the window at our first sighting of the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Andes, it felt for the first time that I was actually ‘travelling’. Growing up in the UK, the Andes are an absolute mile away, both in distance and in the imagination, and it carried a powerful mystique. I knew that the range contained the mighty Cerro Aconcagua (in Argentina), the highest mountain in the western hemisphere, thousands of kilometres to the south, and here I was flying right over its northern tip. With few clouds in the air, I could see just ice and snow below.

Despite the flight from Lima to Cusco being little more than an hour long, Cusco was a huge change in altitude. The city is more than 3,000m high and the thinness of the air had a noticeable effect on our breathing. It reminded me of going skiing; it was freezing cold in the shade, whilst the sun felt uncomfortably strong. We all packed into our hotel and I nearly fell backwards down the stairs on the way up to my room. My head felt really light and my legs suddenly had very little strength in them, certainly struggling to cope with a 16kg backpack. We had the rest of the day to do with as we pleased; our only task was to try and acclimatise to the altitude as fast as possible; we‟d be on the Inca Trail very soon.

Cusco is an ancient city and it predates the Spanish. It was once the capital of Peru and the seat of Inca power. It‟s a magical city full of spectacular Spanish architecture and Inca ruins. It‟s dominated by the Plaza de Armas, an enormous square in the centre of the city. From above, Cusco is a maze of terracotta rooftops, squares and high walls. It‟s one of the most unique cities I‟ve yet visited, easily up there with Florence and Venice, perhaps even more so, given its literal otherworldliness. From here, some of us wandered through the cobbled lanes around the plaza under impossibly blue skies, lazily popping our heads into artisan markets, posing for pictures next to goats and with people dressed in traditional clothes of woollen alpaca hats with the distinctively Peruvian extensions over the ears (a classic orange Peruvian hat was my first travelling buy).

Cusco’s main income is, undoubtedly, from the tourist industry. Visitors come here from all over the world to marvel at an incredibly well preserved Inca city and also to use it as a spring board to the Inca Trail. There are market stalls, cafes and ATMs in the main square; there‟s even a McDonalds in the corner of the Plaza de Armas, although to be fair, it‟s the most discreetly signposted Golden Arches I‟ve ever seen, with just a small, black McDonalds “M” on the front wall of the restaurant. Without debating the „ins‟ and „outs‟ of globalisation, it was completely incongruous with its ancient surroundings, even with all of us tourists and travellers milling around; apparently, there‟s even plans to put a Starbucks in the Plaza.

We were on a budget of less than 30 US dollars per day; that‟s for everything from accommodation to food to transport. The Rough Guide to South America leaned towards our travelling demographic (the budget traveller) and we lapped up its tips on saving money. One of the tips, though completely obvious, was music to my ears. I was already keen on eating in markets and street stalls and would have done so even if I was a „flashpacker‟ (a mild jibe used by backpackers at travellers who travelled in greater comfort than they did; people who didn‟t stay in dormitories, didn‟t eat cheaply etc. More often than not, they‟d have gadgets like smartphones, laptops etc. It‟s certainly not a bad way to travel and it‟s definitely something that I‟ll do in the future.) We were advised to enjoy cheap eats such as cerviche and empanadas, which are delicious snacks much like a Cornish pasty: small pastries filled with meats and vegetables, cheap and moreishly tasty parcels of food available nearly everywhere in Peru. Empanadas, along with sopa verduras (Andean vegetable soup), would become the staples of my diet; cheap, nutritious and, most importantly, delicious. Some people were concerned about the hygiene of these street foods, but you can‟t think about these things; you‟re going to contract travellers‟ diarrhoea at some point, best to get it over with early in your trip and try to build up some immunity. However, for all this traveller braggadocio, I did draw the line at one thing: cuy, a roasted guinea pig, which, as a member of the rodent family, is essentially a rat. I saw an example just sweating on a grill in the sunshine. It must have been teeming with bacteria and no amount of Imodium would have been enough!

To help bond with our fellow Inca Trail travellers, we of course went for a few beers. That afternoon, we watched the sun go down over the Plaza de Armas, with its massive cathedral to our right, from the balcony of a building at least 500 years old, with an ice-cold longneck bottle of one of the most famous Peruvian beers, Cusquena. It doesn‟t taste that great; a little bit like a Budweiser (a bland American lager), but it was absolutely perfect in that setting. I‟ll remember that afternoon for a long time as a fine, beautiful moment as one of many to come.

We went back to the hotel for another meeting with Jose; this time he was noticeably warmer and a bond began to grow between him and our group of thirteen. That night, we went, as a group, to a restaurant and enjoyed an average pizza with increasingly good company; the group was diverse, cultured, friendly and keen to see a bit of the world: I knew that this was going to be a great trip.

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

PERU IS ON THE west coast of South America with Ecuador and Columbia to the north, Chile to the south, Bolivia to the south-east, and Brazil to the east. To its west is the Pacific Ocean. It’s a huge country with 29m people and it’s diverse, both geographically and ethnically. Geographically because Peru has flats near the coastline, the sierra highlands in the Andes itself, and jungle in the Peruvian section of the Amazon rainforest. Demographically, the largest of the ethnic groups (at around 45%) are people of Amerindian descent, followed by the Mestizo (at 37%) (Mestizo refers to the people of mixed ancestry of the Amerindians and European settlers), then people of European descent (at 15%), with Japanese, black, Chinese and other peoples (at 3% in total). Amerindian refers broadly to the peoples who inhabited the Americas before Columbus arrived in 1492; a group that was and is still incredibly diverse. Where did they come from? Their origins are still contentious with many believing the New World migration theory which suggests that mass migration took place over a previous land bridge where the Bering Strait now is between Russia and Alaska. In Peru, the major Amerindian peoples are the Aymara and the Quechuan.

Founded in 1535 by the Conquistadors as Le Ciudad de los Reyes (“The City of the Kings”), today, Lima is one of the biggest cities on the South American continent. Any hint of a culture shock upon landing in Lima was drowned out by an overwhelming excitement at being in a completely new country on a completely new continent. Our driver had no English and we had no Spanish but no matter; soon we were speeding towards the hotel (where we were to meet the rest of our tour group) with the mighty Pacific Ocean to our right. Despite not having had much sleep during the 20 or so hour flight from London, we were keen to see as much of the new city as possible; we dumped our bags and headed straight out to the surrounding district of Miraflores for some pastels and some delicious local beer (Barena). In a bar near our hotel, we puffed on fat Cuban cigars, listened to salsa music and toasted the beginning of our journey. The bar‟s owner, Marcello, was a brilliant ambassador for his country. Marcello loved cigars because they were adored by his heroes: Churchill, JFK and Che Guevara, whose portraits held places of honour behind the bar. He was a real lothario and proudly showed us pictures of his many conquests and regaled us with bawdy stories about his colourful love life. “Hey! You like cigars?! I like you! You like girls?! I like girls! Here are my girls! Look at this photo…she‟s much more beautiful in real life…she is beautiful!” His recruitment policy was to bring women from abroad to work in his bar whispering to us that the most beautiful and most loyal barstaff were Cuban women (perhaps for the benefit of his Cuban barmaid, who was pretending not to listen) and that, whilst both were very pretty, the main difference between Peruvian and Cuban women was that Peruvians have large boobs whilst Cubans had large rears; we promised to look out for this. He later introduced us to his sharp-suited aging father whom he maintained taught him everything he knew about women.

The next morning, we jumped on a bus into the city centre. We had no idea of how to get there but no matter; a small, battered minivan screeched to a halt next to us and a young guy literally pulled both of us on. “Where you go?” “Er, the centre, er, el centro?” “Si, si, centro!” That was lucky then! Buses here are impressively aggressive; one person drives, another person touts for business, which entails pulling people on board! It‟s a race and a competition for the bus staff because if they don‟t get the next customer, because they weren‟t forceful enough to impose their destination on them, then the bus behind will pounce on the missed business opportunity.

Lima, in the squintingly bright summer sun, looked dusty and still under construction; the roads into the centre were slightly potholed and the pollution was visible as a thin haze which hung over the streets. We strolled around the narrow streets hunting for interesting snacks and took every opportunity to whip out our little phrasebooks to practise even the most rudimentary of Latin American Spanish. The centre itself, with its colonialist architecture, was charmingly impressive but it had an unmistakable air of decline. It‟s hard from this to see how Lima won its moniker, “The City of the Kings”.

That evening, we met the rest of our tour group in the hotel, who would all turn out to be really great guys: Hadley, Fiona, Judy, Kelvin, Priscilla, Nus, Miral, Emma, Alexis, Rich, John and Rhodine. Here, we also met our guide, Jose Arnaut. Our first impressions of him weren‟t overwhelmingly positive; he seemed stern and schoolmasterish. “We will meet in the lobby at 3.15am; do not be late. Do not leave anything here. Get an early night. I see you tomorrow.” Jose was a Peruvian Amerindian, one of the Quechan people; he was about 5 feet 6, with a solid, well-fed belly. Before leaving, he gave us our first taste of the Peruvian national drink, the famous pisco sour cocktail. It‟s Peruvian rum mixed with lime juice and a whisked-up egg white served in a short glass and doesn‟t look that appealing. However, in the spirit of trying everything whilst travelling, I downed it; it was pretty tasty and like drinking citrusy foam.

After the meeting, Grant and I were joined at the bar next door by two guys from our group: Rhodine Agetzis, a photographer from Melbourne, and Jay Miyagi, a tattoo artist from LA. Unfortunately, it turned out that Jay wasn‟t on our tour (though he‟d come with us to Cusco); he was on the abbreviated trip to Machu Picchu by train, then he was off to the Peruvian jungle. Here, we wolfed down the Peruvian national dish cerviche: sliced raw fish marinated in a citrus (normally limes) juice and finely chopped chilli; it‟s effectively semi-cured fish. If prepared well, the taste is somewhere between sashimi and Swedish fish dishes such as herrings cured in dill, vinegar and sugar. The fish in cerviche is sliced slightly more thickly than it is with sashimi. It‟s absolutely delicious but that particular dish would prove to be a mistake as we would discover the next morning! Mistake isn‟t really the right word though as I‟d decided that along with the spirit of trying everything, I wouldn‟t worry about contracting food poisoning; instead, I‟d just carry some Imodium around with me. People kept telling me that Imodium isn‟t particularly good for you (and they‟re probably right) but it‟s a small trade-off when you‟re halfway around the world and possibly never to revisit: you really might never see this type of food again; so don‟t worry about the consequences – just eat it!

“As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.”

The Epic of Gilgamesh

THEY SAY ALL GREAT IDEAS happen when at the pub. Don’t believe me? Ask Van Gogh where he was when he decided on some irreversible cosmetic surgery. It’s a little-known fact that Columbus set off for the East Indies in the wrong direction as a result of a dare after knocking back a couple of bottles of rose with tumblers of port to chase whilst in an Algarve finca. I‟m convinced that Hitler decided to open up a second front with the Soviet Union whilst in a Berchtesgaden tavern with a couple of steins of Bavarian froth in his hands. So, following in that fine age-old tradition of great idea generation, in that glorious month of March 2008, we were on a roll! I was having a few beers with Grant in The Prince of Wales in Putney; the weekend before, with our friend Dave, we‟d already decided to cycle from Land‟s End to London for a jolly and, that afternoon, we hit on an even bigger and even better idea. We‟d managed to get our usual spot in the green chesterfields in the corner with the weekend newspapers. The threads of conversation were already tracing familiar ground. Outside were dark clouds and passersby in scarves and beanies. Then it began to rain hard. It was quite possibly the pints of London Pride and Guinness talking, but we paused, shook our heads, grinned, clashed our glasses and committed to action that been threatened for a while now, “Fuck this! Let’s go travelling!”

I‟d never been travelling; of course I‟d been abroad but never extended travelling. After school, I went straight to university and, since graduating, either been at work or at law school; travelling had just never appealed to me before. I knew loads of people who’d been before. Rebecca, my adventurous younger sister, had travelled solo through Nepal and India some years before; aptly, she was actually in Brazil at the time. Grant had been travelling before with his ex-girlfriend about four years previously through Australia, New Zealand and Mexico. Before, I‟d always mocked the idea of backpackers and travellers as indulgent, dreadlocked, tie-dyed, bead-wearing, hippy slackers. Now, though, something was different; it had become a yearning. Suddenly, it was all I could think about. I was looking at maps, reading travel articles and perusing brochures. It felt like the exactly right time to be going; we were 28 years old, we‟d been in London for several years, we were approaching the end of the tenancy on our flat and our flatmates at the time were each embarking on new stages in their lives. Johan was soon to be a father and Dave was most likely moving out with his girlfriend. We, however, were in a rut and needed a change. As a Londoner, it’s incredibly easy to get drawn into a London-centric view of the world; before you realise it, you see all of life through the prism of young middle-class London. Like most of our peers; we worked in similar jobs, we rented a flat in London, we holidayed perhaps twice a year, went out at the weekends drinking with our friends, month after month and year after year. No doubt, it‟s a cliché, but I had a growing feeling that there had to be more.

Call us amateurish but we’re not really the type to plan down to the minutiae of anything. We had broad considerations: Money? We mentally added together our deposit, monthly savings and, arriving short, we would live at our respective family’s houses for a couple of months to save on rent. When? We couldn‟t go before our lease ended in September 2008, so the timeframe was no shorter than six months and we‟d probably leave in around December. Where? We decided on an incredible value round-the-world ticket and picked out South America and Australia as places to visit, just on a gut feeling. I also wanted to see South-East Asia; however, the region didn‟t really appeal to Grant so we loosely agreed to part company after Australia.

We devoured bookshop travel sections and, slowly, planned out a broad route. For South America, the timeframe was around two months. Our plan was to do as much of it overland as possible and we cobbled together a rough list of things that we wanted to see: Machu Picchu, definitely, Rio de Janeiro, Iguazu Falls and Buenos Aires. Peru would be our entry point into South America and Buenos Aires would be our exit. All we knew was that, after Machu Picchu, we‟d take buses cross-country from Cusco to Rio to Iguazu Falls to Buenos Aires. It looked to be a very long way but the books seemed to suggest that it was possible.

We booked our tickets in September 2008 and Adrian, our agent, was more excited about the proposed trip than we were. A monstrous hit to our credit cards later and our round-the-world flights and a Machu Picchu tour were booked for early December 2008. We jogged up Kensington High Street like giggling schoolgirls; there was no turning back now. The last two months couldn’t have passed more slowly; we bought things we’d need (such as trekking boots and first aid kits); we got the requisite vaccinations (from rabies to hepatitis A to typhoid to yellow fever); we made our mental farewells to our London lives; and we tried to get as fit as possible before we flew to Peru. We knew that exercise was going to be almost non-existent during our travels and that we were going to be eating and drinking like omnivorous gluttons; we definitely didn‟t want to come back as fat gits.

The weekend before our flight, we had a farewell party at The Goat pub in Clapham for friends and family. There was a strong turn-out; it got pretty drunken and, amid much backslapping, hugs and handshakes, I realised that I was going to be away for eight or so months and that I would miss Christmas at home for the first time.

I remember thinking at the time (December 2008) that it was a truly unbelievable moment to be going on a prolonged world trip; it felt like a time of enormous upheaval and of change. Just a few months earlier, in September 2008, the world had been looking at the very serious possibility of the worst financial crash since 1929 and at the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Lehman Brothers, one of the world‟s oldest and most venerable investment banks, had stunned the world by going bust in September; an event that shook the world’s markets. American Insurance Group, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world, had been bailed out by the US Federal Reserve the next day. Global equity markets had plunged; the contagion spreading to assets previously believed to be uncorrelated. Banking share prices across Europe and the United States were in free-fall and everyone wondered, on a daily basis, which bank would be next to fall. Almost all lending had stopped. Britain had led the G20 in taking the unprecedented step of the state recapitalising undercapitalised banks. Household names like the Royal Bank of Scotland needed huge state aid. Unprecedented and untested action was being taken in respect of huge, unforeseen events that threatened to shake the world. Amid the carnage, unthought-of and previously unthinkable questions were being asked of the world order: questions as to the accepted view that unfettered free-markets knew best; questions as to the justness of bankers (historically paid huge bonuses) now being forced to go cap-in-hand to the state to shore up their battered banks; questions as to whether the western economic, and indeed political, model really was superior. Concurrently, the world did seem to be changing: surplus-rich, non-Western nations, such as in the Middle-East and in the Far-East, were buying up the debt that Western countries needed to finance their huge bail-out and buying up large amounts of equity in undercapitalised Western banks. People began asking in serious forums whether modern capitalism was really the ideal model. Recession-hit citizens began questioning their goals and values in life. Economic free market dogma was being seriously questioned. The role of the state in society was being redefined. Amid all this uncertainty, however, there was some optimism too; perhaps most typified by the fact that America was witnessing momentous and epoch-changing history in the making having just elected its first black President who, presciently in tune with the zeitgeist, had campaigned primarily on a platform of change. It was against this backdrop of seismic shift all around me, and all around the world, that I began my trip.

I worked right up until the day before we flew out. I cleared my desk and then went to the Red Lion pub in St James’s Square with friends from work. I hadn‟t actually packed yet and my plane was due to leave at 7.35am the next morning. At midnight, four pints down, I sat packing my backpack (a quality hand-me-down 65 litre navy blue toploader) with my mum, performing for the first time a chore that would be repeated on countless occasions; a chore that would never, ever become enjoyable. In it went everything I guessed I’d need, including some fantastic presents that my sister had given me, the value of which wouldn’t become clear until way down the road; really simple items such as a torch designed to be worn around your head (leaving your hands free) were a god-send on myriad occasions, as were a minuscule quick-dry towel, a diary, and a tiny alarm clock.

Gavin, Grant’s eldest brother, kindly took us to Heathrow; he arrived at my house at the deeply uncivilised hour of 4am. Despite not sleeping for more than about one hour, I remember a conversation of pure speed gibberish! We were just too excited; we‟d waited six long months for this and, here we were, just hours from a new and unknown country and the beginning of an adventure. At the drop-off point, I heaved that 15kg backpack onto my shoulders for the first time and did the classic backpacker thing of putting my smaller rucksack on my chest. With all this kit, backpackers stick out like sore thumbs and are incredibly immobile; I felt like a sitting duck. At 5.30am, just two hours from our flight taking off, the check-in desk told Grant that his name wasn‟t on the flight passenger list; not what you want to hear! Despite having confirmed the flight the previous evening, inexplicably, he wasn‟t going anywhere. Would I have gone ahead without him? Probably…Yes, of course! We eventually boarded the plane to Peru via a brief transfer in Madrid. On the flight from Madrid, we drank lots of complementary wine, and got chatting to some tipsy Lima locals who regaled us with colourful stories of Callao, one of the supposedly rougher parts of Lima. They were extremely proud of their country and seemed pleased that we were visiting it; a very positive sign of things to come. It was another nine hours westwards over the Atlantic before we touched down in Lima and I couldn’t wait!