21:55. Tika Wasi Valley Hotel, Ollantaytambo.

It’s been another full day. it started at 08:00 as we rose for breakfast. M. had slept well, but I don’t think I got any real sleep at all again. I laid in bed all night thinking “fall asleep” and being unable to do so. I had some sort of half-awake dreams about Ale leading us to all sorts of weird places. It was probably my brain trying to sort out the events of the last few days and doing it despite me not yet being asleep.

Breakfast was as yesterday, except they replaced the watermelon with kiwifruit. After this, at 09:30, we assembled with the group for the day’s activities.

These began with a bus ride uphill from Cusco and over a pass into the next valley, where we stopped at the town of Pisaq. The scenery along the way was spectacular, and Ale stopped the bus a couple of times to let us stretch our legs and take photos of the Andean scenery. In Pisaq we stopped at a bakery, apparently run out the back of some guy’s home. He made traditional empanadas in a small wood-fired oven. There were four choices: traditional (spicy cheese, tomato, onion, and herbs), ham and cheese, cheese and basil, and sweet (banana, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg). I had a traditional and M. had a cheese and basil, which turned out to also have tomato in it. They were 2 soles each, and smallish and flat, not like empanadas I’ve seen elsewhere that are more stuffed and rounded. The flour was quinoa. They were okay, but nothing special.
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22:45

We rose at 08:00. I hadn’t slept at all, tossing and turning all night and simply unable to fall asleep. I felt extremely tired, but the headache had gone. A breakfast of cereal with yoghurt, bread roll with ham and cheese, a couple of small croissants, and fresh mango, watermelon, honeydew melon, and a small banana made me feel better.

The first order of business was getting some laundry done so we could have clean clothes again. There were several places in the street where our hotel was located with signs advertising laundry service. With no real means to pick from them, we decided semi-randomly to skip the one closest to our hotel and go to the next one we found. It was a small, dark hole-in-the-wall, in which sat a man at a computer, who never once looked away from the screen and at us. Instead, a boy about 8 years old assessed in a pidgin of Spanish and English what we were after, hung our laundry bag from a hook scale to determine the weight, wrote out a receipt, and gave us a time to come back and pick it up this afternoon. There were a few other bags of laundry in there, but we didn’t see any washing machines. When we walked back to the hotel we poked our nose in the other laundry place, and saw a woman in there standing in front of a row of three machines.

Then we readied ourselves for a day of exploring Inca ruins around Cusco, or “ancient Inca buildings” as Ale told us to refer to them, as the Inca descendents consider calling them “ruins” insulting. The group met at 09:30, with everyone present. Kim was looking a bit perkier, but still not 100%. Gary looked okay, and didn’t seem in any difficulty, but had been visited by a doctor and prescribed something. Phan looked a bit pale, but was cheerful and determined to have fun, despite still feeling a bit nauseous. Lyn seemed subdued and if not happy to follow Ale, at least doing so without comment.
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09:40. On the boat to Puerto Maldonado.

We got up at 06:50 for breakfast at 07:00. The only people who showed up were us, Lyn and Gary, and Phan, almost exactly the people who didn’t stay up in the bar last night. Breakfast was again fresh fruit, followed by eggs.

During the night, Kim had fallen ill with what Ale said was a stomach infection. She had her on electrolyte replacement and said she would take her to a doctor once we get to Cusco.

After breakfast, we packed for the trip again, throwing all our damp stuff into a laundry bag until we got to Cusco. A lot of our stuff has dirt on it from yesterday’s mud, including bits of my camera gear. Clean it all off later, I guess!

We were half an hour early for the boat, so M. looked at the shop in the lodge and bought a souvenir sleeveless T-shirt with monkeys on it, while I wandered the garden, taking some photos of the lodge. I managed to get some great shots of an owl butterfly – huge! Saay said one of the biggest in the jungle, with great eye spots on the wings. He said they eat nectar, fruit juice, and even lick from carcasses of animals for the salts.

Then it was on to the boat for the 50-minute ride upriver to Puerto Maldonado. Kim appeared, looking a bit pale, and nursing a large bottle of water, which she keeps sipping from. Hope she’ll be okay.

Next stop is the markets in Puerto Maldonado, and then on to the airport for the flight to Cusco.
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Sunday, 24 April, 2011. 09:15. In a hammock.

The lights go off at 22:30 so I have to finish off yesterday’s events now, during a rest break in today’s activities.

After our walk yesterday afternoon, we gathered after dark at 19:00 for a ride in the covered boat a little upriver to see if we could spot any caimans. Their eyes glow red when illuminated in the dark. The boat began by going straight across the river to the far bank, where Saay picked out a caiman pretty quickly. It was tricky to see in the spotlit darkness, but we got a decent close look at its head for a minute or so before it dived under the water. It was small compared to a crocodile, and Saay said they fled from humans rather than attacked. We then combed the bank towards Puerto Maldonado for about half an hour, spotting nothing but native fishermen – out hunting giant catfish according to Saay. There was wood smoke drifting over the river from the cooking fires of the villagers. The moon was in the last quarter, so didn’t rise until later, and the sky was a huge velvet curtain over the jungle, spangled with stars. We could see the Big Dipper low on the northern horizon, Orion over Puerto Maldonado to the west, and the Southern Cross, Centuarus, and the swathe of the Milky Way to the south. It was gorgeous.

We crossed to the southern bank of the river to head back to the lodge, but still had no luck spotting any more caimans. Apparently they are flighty creatures, difficult to spot sometimes. We didn’t see a single other one and Saay even directed the boat operator to take us a bit past the pier in an attempt to spot one at the last minute, but no luck.

Back in the lodge we had dinner, which began with a pumpkin soup, followed by a tandoori beef skewer with green beans and fried potato cubes. Then dessert of pears in a chocolate sauce with flaked brazil nuts. All yummy. Saay then told us about the next day’s activities, after which we went to bed early because we were to be woken at 05:00 for an early morning walk in the jungle.
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Saturday, 23 April, 2011. 10:17

We are on our flight from Lima to Puerto Maldonado, with a stop in Cusco on the way. We got up at 05:50 to get the breakfast Ale had said would be arranged for us at 06:00. But there was nobody else there and only bread rolls and a jug of orange juice there – no fruit or cereal or yoghurt. We had some bread rolls with our malaria tablets, and a guy came out to put plates of ham and cheese out – he looked surprised to see us there. We went to pack our bags and be downstairs by 06:45 for our bus to the airport with the others, except for Lyn and Gary, Zaina and Zeeshan, who were booked on a later flight and so got to sleep in. Our bonus for getting to Puerto Maldonado before them is a short trip to a local market before we meet up with them before our boat trip to the jungle lodge.

At the airport, I asked Ale if my sandals would be okay for the jungle, or if I needed closed shoes. She said the sandals were perfect, which was good because I wasn’t keen on wearing the newly bought tight shoes.

18:10. Corto Maltes jungle lodge.

We are having a rest after our first introduction to the Amazon jungle!
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Friday, 22 April, 2011. 11:49. Lima.

We’re having a short break after a morning spent walking down to the Larcomar Entertainment Centre at the west end of Avenue Jose Larcos – the opposite direction to the way we went yesterday. This is a large complex of shops, cinemas, video game arcades, restaurants, and other amusements on the cliff top overlooking the rocky beach and ocean far below. We took some photos of the mist on the sea, then browsed the shops for a while. Later the mist cleared enough to barely make out the horizon and a stretch of coast to the south appeared, curbing around to an imposing headland with an enormous hill of exposed rock and dirt on it. The hill dwarfed the houses which clung to its lower flanks. The really amazing thing was how bare it was, with not a single bit of vegetation visible on it.

After spending an hour or two there, we walked the few blocks back to our hotel. The plan is to go soon to get a simple lunch of bread, salad, and fruit from the supermarket, then pick up our laundry and wait for the beginning of the tour meeting at 14:00.

For breakfast today we began with our first malaria tablet, since we head into the Amazon jungle tomorrow. We washed it down with cereal, yoghurt, bread, and fruit.
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Thursday, 21 April, 2011. 09:20. Lima.

Well, we’ve had our bad news for today. We have put our dirty clothes together ready to be washed by the hotel laundry service, only to be told that today and tomorrow are holidays (being Holy Thursday and Good Friday), and the earliest they will do it is Saturday – the day we leave Lima!

20:23

We’ve had an interesting day exploring Lima on our own before our tour starts tomorrow. We began by trying to get our laundry done by the hotel and failing, so we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It was a simple continental style affair, with bread, ham, cheese, and fruit, although a bit of asking about an empty spot on the buffet labelled “cereal” produced two bowls of corn flakes. It also turned out you could order eggs for extra cost, but we didn’t bother. M. liked the peach yoghurt on the corn flakes.

After eating, we grabbed our laundry form the room and went to go for a walk to see if we could find an open laundry. I’d seen three of them within a few blocks of our hotel yesterday, so knew we’d find some – the only question was whether they’d be open and able to do our wash before closing for Good Friday. By amazing good fortune, we ran into a guy from Intrepid who was looking for us in the hotel lobby. His name was Edwin and he had information for us about tomorrow’s tour, which would be led by a woman named Alejandrina. He also said he was here to help us with anything else we needed and said, “I see you have laundry!” I explained the hotel wasn’t accepting it today because of the Easter holidays and he said there were a couple of laundries nearby that were good and inexpensive, and gave us directions.
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Wednesday, 20 April, 2011. 17:57. Hotel Leon de Oro, Lima, Peru.

We have arrived in Peru for a couple of days in Lima before joining our next Intrepid tour. We were up and packed by 05:30, and then at Guayaquil Airport by about 06:00. The first thing we encountered was a gadget staffed by two men which they were using to encase people’s luggage in great reams of plastic wrap. A lady tried to push us towards it, and at first we thought it was some sort of security requirement. But the guy said it cost US$10 a bag, and it seemed to be optional, so we started to walk away towards the check-in desks. The woman urged us in Spanish again, this time miming rainfall, and we realised that the plastic was meant to protect bags from the rain that was pouring down outside. Given the chance that our bags might be exposed to that while in the care of the airline, we paid our $20 and had the bags encased in plastic. It was a good thing too, because when we collected them, the handles (the only exposed bit) were soaked, and I saw some obviously water-damaged bags on the baggage claim carousel in Lima.

The flight was only 1.5 hours, and we had our breakfast on board – just a sandwich – but we also had some chocolate that M. bought last night while we were waiting for our hotel pick-up. On landing in Lima, we passed through immigration and customs quickly and were met outside by a helpful woman from Intrepid, who led us to a four-wheel drive driven by a woman called Alice to take us to the Hotel Leon de Oro. The Intrepid woman (we didn’t catch her name) warned us to only carry enough cash for what we needed when walking around Lima.
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Isla San Cristóbal to Guayaquil. Tuesday, 19 April, 2011

This morning was an early start, after another cruise during the night to the island of San Cristóbal. We assembled at 06:00 on the top sun deck of the boat for a view of the approaching Léon Dormido (also known as Kicker Rock) – a volcanic lava cone now exposed as a bare chunk of rock jutting from the sea several hundred metres off the shore of the main island. The aim here was to do a couple of circuits of the rock to observe the nesting and courtship display of frigatebirds.

The rock is split by a narrow channel of water, otherwise presenting a steeply sloping profile that gives it its Spanish name of “sleeping lion”. There are only a few alcoves where a sea lion can haul out of the water, and these were populated by dozing beasts. We also saw lots of blue-footed boobies nesting or streaking the rock with guano. But the major attractions here were the magnificent frigatebirds, which nest on the rock. As the boat did a circuit, we could see several nests with birds on them, and as we watched the males inflated their large red throat sacs in their spectacular courtship display. They were necessarily one or two hundred metres away, but we got good views through binoculars or telephoto camera lenses.

The boat circled the rock twice, allowing us plenty of time to see the various birds. We also spotted a Pacific green sea turtle in the water at the base of the rock, watching it surface to breathe a few times before it disappeared again. Having completed our circuits of the rock, the boat set out for the small town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the capital of the Galapagos province of Ecuador, on the southwest coast of San Cristóbal.
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Isla Española: Punta Suárez to Gardner Bay. Monday, 18 April, 2011.

Overnight the boat sailed for Española Island, in the far south-eastern corner of the archipelago and the oldest of all the Galapagos Islands. We began our day with breakfast, which included fried eggs and small cake-like objects made of plantain, with a haloumi-like cheese inside them.

The first expedition of the day was an excursion to Punta Suarez, on the western end of the island. On the beach at the landing site here we saw many specimens of the distinctively bright coloured Española variety of the marine iguana, with large patches of bright red on their flanks. Again there were also plenty of blue-footed boobies and bright red crabs, though only a few sea lions. The day was again warm and muggy, with chaotic looking clouds that threatened either rain or bright sunshine at any time.

The first new bird we saw on our trek was a Galapagos hawk, sitting on a small rock outcrop poking out of the vegetation. It seemed completely unconcerned with us. We also saw brown pelicans, preening on rocks or flying around. And while watching from the beach we saw several boobies diving into the water to catch fish. They circled around about 10 metres above the water, spotting fish below with their keen eyes. Then suddenly one would break from horizontal flight and dive headlong straight into the water like a bullet, pulling its wings in at the last second before impact. The bird would surface a few seconds later, presumably with a fish in its beak.

William had warned us this morning to take insect repellent, but there seemed little need for it yet. As we set out on a walk across the island, another tour group appeared at the end of the loop walk we were about to take. Their leader warned us to make sure we had plenty of insect repellent, as there were loads of mosquitoes on the walk. Undaunted, we set off, crossing the scrub-covered lava rock of the island, and were soon set on by clouds of the mosquitoes. Our repellent, being 80% DEET, was the most effective of any used by the people in our group. While some others were swatting mosquitoes and busily applying more repellent, we walked through unaffected.
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