We arrived at the little port of Pagwe, on the banks of the Sepik, after a bouncy 4 hour ride in a minibus, broken only by a short stop at a local market for us to buy some fresh produce.  At the time, we couldn’t quite work out why we were being encouraged with such enthusiasm to treat ourselves to a (delicious, by the way) young coconut, though this later became clear (see “Tuna’n’Noodles” post for further detail).  Waiting for us at the dock were our dugout canoe – all 20 foot of it, hand carved some 50 or more years ago from an exceptionally hard wood which grows locally – plus our crew for the next few days – George, Chris and our guide, Josh.  Deck chairs having been ceremonially placed in the canoe for us (the crew sat in the bottom of the canoe, but obviously us tourists are special) and our luggage and food supplies loaded, we were off!

The basic program for our trip was: day one – stop at some local villages on the main river to check out the spirit houses (more of which later); day two – head down to Blackwater Lakes, a stunning area upstream from the river and at comparatively high altitude where the style of the villages – lots of stilts – is particularly attractive, as is the mountainous background; day three – head to Chambry Lakes, another scenic area where the fish are so plentiful that as the lakes dry up in summer, it’s just not physically possible to catch them all and the area becomes quite smelly; day four – return to Pagwe to connect back to Wewak early the next morning.

So basically, 4 days spent mainly sitting in a remarkable old dugout canoe, watching river life gliding by.  Amazing scenery.  Hundreds of water birds (ibises, fish eagles).  Scores of local people out fishing in their dugouts, all of whom wave at you as you go past – we felt like the Queen.  Then we’d pull into some village somewhere and see what there was to see – generally, a spirit house or men’s house containing the traditional village cultural things (and some carvings to buy – yeah!), maybe a health care centre or a waterfall.  Return to the canoe and pootle on a bit before coming to a rest in a local village where we’d stay the night. At night, mainly just some relaxing time with the locals (though we did go crocodile hunting the first night – more exciting than it sounds, the largest we saw was about 18 inches!!).  Unbelievably relaxing, and yet the trip, and in particular the way of life of the local people, gave us a huge amount to think about – we were certainly never bored.

The comedy part of our trip came from the organizational front – or rather lack of it.

We got our first hint of this as we rocked up to the village guesthouse on day one – only to be chased out again thirty seconds later.  The guesthouse had been badly overbooked (all guests of Seby…oops), with 21 people fighting over about 12 rooms / bedding piles.  Fortunately, we were rescued by Sara, Seby’s sister in law, who carted us off to her house and put us up for the night with only the tiniest of avaricious glances at our food supply box to provide an inkling of an explanation as to this unlooked for generosity.  Part of the deal we struck was that any food we didn’t eat would go to her (as would some of the other more random supplies we carried – 2 bottles of curry powder, a couple of boxes of Ziploc bags … anyone would think the supplies had been provided specifically to address certain village requirements rather than to feed us for 3 days).  Actually, whilst it got a bit grating, her continual exclamations as to how lucky we were felt pretty accurate as we chatted around the fire for a couple of hours, listening to the sounds of  our fellow tourists haggling over the last sleeping mat.

Our next hint came via a delegation, led by our guide, Josh, wanting to know what we planned to do over the next few days.  The itinerary, so carefully planned with Seby, hadn’t been communicated to him so he had no clue as to what he should be doing.

This, as it turned out, was exacerbated rather by the fact that Josh had never guided before.  He told us this on day 2 – James asked how long he’d guided before, to which the merry response was “But I’m not a guide!!” (sub voce: what the hell made you think that??).  50 miles from the nearest cell phone signal, we gulped, smiled and accepted it.

The break though came later that day – a clear understanding between us and Josh (a) that we knew that he knew that we knew that Seby had totally failed to make any kind of plans whatsoever for us and that as a result, we and Josh were sort of relying on being helped out by random friends and family of Josh and (b) that we didn’t mind a bit – we were having a fantastic time, a complete adventure, and Josh was an unbelievably good guide – he is the main tradesman used by his village when they run out of sago and have to trade with other more sago-rich villages downstream, so he knows the river, and most of the people on it, backwards.  After which, we all rubbed along together just fine and Josh noticeably relaxed – to the extent that he was then perfectly happy the next day to act as our supplier for banana homebrew, despite the severe consequences of being found out in that activity by Sara, a committed Seventh Day Adventist (and also someone who was clearly keen that we spend most of our time sleeping and thereby consuming only a minimal amount of our food supply!).

We had a wonderful time on the river.  The mild chaos was oddly part of the charm – it never interfered with our pleasure and I think in most instances enhanced it.  Staying with Sara gave us a real perspective on modern life in the Sepik, that I don’t think we would otherwise have really understood.  And Josh, once he’d realized we weren’t going to explode on him, was an entertaining and informative guide to a part of the world he clearly loved.

Or maybe my hindsight is just coloured by realizing just how fortunate we really were – another group of Seby’s who we met in Wewak had spent 3 days eating peanut butter and crackers after Seby forgot to restock the boat with food.

Compared to which, our trip was LUXURY!

Easter Island.  The mere name is enough to make you tingle – the mystery of the ancient population that lived and died here, leaving only the enigmatic moai as their legacy.  It’s also a beast of a place to get to.  We had to go.

First impressions of this amazing place, it has to be said, weren’t great.  We flew there from Cusco just after the Inca Trail – one of those flights which is theoretically just fine (only one connection, in Lima), but in practice quite brutal – a 5pm flight from Cusco to Lima, then a seven hour layover in Lima airport before a 1am flight to Easter Island, landing at 6 in the morning.  Bear in mind that for the past few days we’d been going to bed same time between 7 and 8 at night – and the fact that the Lima airport lounge is lousy – and you’ll appreciate that we were a little on the tired and grumpy side when we landed.

Then hit Hurricane Dani.  Well, actually make that Damp Squall Dani.  The manager of the (otherwise lovely) guest house she was staying in, capable of turning the cheeriest soul despairing within a few short seconds.  “Welcome to the island.  You here for long?  Three days?  Oh.  There isn’t much to do here and it’s pretty wet right now…..” All this cheery chit chat whilst waiting for an hour for our fellow passengers just to enjoy the privilege of our 3 minute courtesy transfer to the guesthouse.  We got Dani’ed a few more times over the next few days – no, it was impossible to arrange a tour of the island (took us 10 minutes), no there were no good places to buy fresh produce (partially true, but we managed), etc, etc.  It actually affected our mood for the first half day we were there, until we realised what was happening, shrugged off our despondency and set off to explore!

And what better way to explore a mystical island full of ancient statues than by quad bike!  Sounds crazy, but actually all of the roads on one side of the island are dirt tracks and extremely difficult to navigate in a car, so a quad bike is actually a pretty solid way to get around.  Plus its FUN.  Other than when you get caught in one of the many heavy downpours that Easter Island suffers at this time of year – yep, we did, nope it didn’t bother us (that much), but that’s why we’re in full waterproofs in all the photos.

It rains a LOT there.   And the wind is also pretty crazy – think a visit to the blustery Scottish countryside in early spring and you’ve about got the measure of it. The unexpected advantage of which being the amazing rainbows we saw almost every day on the island, adding yet one more dimension of slight un-realism to the place.

First stop on the quad bike was Rono Kau crater, a crater lake covered in reeds whose crater rim also forms the edge of the island at that point.  Wildly scenic, it’s known as Witch’s Cauldron and looks just that way with the reeds simmering away on the giant circular surface. Then onto the Orongo Village, which is a partially restored old village, lived in by a tribe with a strong birdman culture.  It’s only once you’ve been on the island that the houses – hobbit like little places which don’t get much higher than about 2 foot – make sense.  Anything to escape the ever present wind.

Then finally the moment we’d been waiting for – our first glimpse of moai.  The first site we saw had a couple of broken down moai on the ground – very romantic and a great intro to the place (yes they really are that big!).  The next site, Ahu Akivi, was the money site – seven standing moai, all facing towards the sea (unusual – most of the moai faced inland as they faced towards the village they were erected to protect).  We got there just before sunset and enjoyed the place in near solitude for some time; it was magical.

The next day we went on a tour which took us to another couple of great sites – Ahu Tongariki, with 15 moai all near the coastline, and Rono Rakuru, the quarry were all the moai were created.  Rono Rakuru in particular was pretty flabbergasting – there are over 30 moai there, all still half buried in the earth (the theory is that the moai were built in advance of local big wigs’ deaths – but that the tribe then died out, or possibly ran out of trees to be able to roll the moai to their intended sites, before they could be erected).  It’s strangely like being in a tiki bar –  there’s so many moai and they’re all so well preserved that you half expect to tap one of them and find out its made of polystyrene. (They’re not.  I tried.  I hurt my fist).

Next day was a slow day to potter round Hanga Roa, see a few more moai and relax a bit.  We got up pretty early to go buy some fresh food for dinner (the island has markets, but they are pretty ad hoc, running from the time the boats land with fish to the time that everything has been sold).  Stepping outside the front door we were followed by a vaguely collie like dog.  Which, as it turned out, had adopted us for the day.  We walked to town; the dog followed.   We went into the market; the dog waited outside patiently.  Ditto at the supermarket.  The dog curled up on James’ feet whilst we enjoyed our daily indulgence of coffee and ice cream, then walked happily home with us.  It strangely made this one of our nicest relaxed days of the trip so far.

We’ve 2 theories for the dog’s delight in us: (1) James’ magnetic personality; or (2) the presence throughout the day of the enormous spiky local fish which we’d bought early in the day.  I hear the local name is dogfood fish.  It was very tasty.

Lucy and I have a slightly unconventional approach to altitude acclimatization. From prior experience, I tend to feel altitude reasonably strongly much above, oh, 4,000m and we were keen not to let the sheer height of the Inca trail cause us any problems. As such, we took our acclimatization pretty seriously. There are the usual tricks to this: spend a good amount of time at altitude before any trek (a few days hiking around Arequipa sorted this out), don’t overexert yourself at first (three days crammed in an overloaded jeep in Bolivia – big tick), trek high sleep low etc.. To this, we added our own personal flavour: spend at least one night drinking red wine in bed while watching bad television (Puno), eat lots of ice cream (San Pedro de Atacama) and – critically – make sure to have at least one blow out meal at the best restaurant in town. Which brings us to Cuzco.

Cuzco is many things. It is the historical capital of the Inca Empire, so it is the place where the Spanish conquistadors felt most obliged to ponder the grand apex of Inca civilization, culture and engineering and CRUSH IT. Think large, flashy cathedrals full of gaudy Spanish imagery (Jesus was Spanish-looking? With a silly pointy beard? I thought so too) built literally on top of the original, still-visible foundations of the Inca Temple of the Sun. It is the main base for treks to Macchu Picchu, so it is ram packed full of tour shops, equipment shops and sleeping bag rental places. Finally, it is a major spot on the gringo trail, so it is full of pizzerias, pasta shops and latte bars (including a stealth Starbucks next to the Cathedral). And if you actually do the Inca trail, this pile of sleazy little luxury looks a LOT more attractive on the way back than on the way in.

So we continued our acclimatization. We stayed in a nice little ex-children’s home hotel (“institutional chic” – nicer than it sounds). We spent a couple of days gentle hiking in the sacred valley, passing through amazing ancient Inca sites and little villages full of markets, tiny back streets and – in Pisac – a charming local festival which consisted entirely of overweight drunk men in fancy dress riding round and round the main square on increasingly tired looking horses to the sound of two competing brass bands (nicer than it sounds).

We also hit “Limo” which is a truly world class yet reasonably priced restaurant overlooking the main square. Our waiter Francisco – the cheesiest, most charming cheeseball since the dawn of cheesy charming cheese – had seemingly laid on a religious icon procession for our personal viewing in the square below our balcony window and crammed us full of ceviche, rare meat, raw eggs and all the other food-poisoning-courting things one isn’t meant to eat when on the road. It was fabulous.

One impromptu Pisco tasting later (six brands, the answer is “Viejo Tonel Italia” if you can get it) we rolled back to our hotel. Incidentally, you have to hand it to Lucy, who, in ten minutes, in Peru, can smoothly change outfits (and mental gears) between hiking boots / fleeces and short sparkly skirts / Christian Louboutin sandals AND is capable of handling steep, shiny cobbles at night in spike heels. What a girl.

Ahhhh, Macchu Picchu. The very name resonates of the mystery of an ancient, long disappeared warrior tribe and general South American strangeness. It’s one of the main attractions on the entire South American continent and definitely one of the top must dos on our trip. I’d been there before as a young’un, following the ancient Inca Trail for 3 days before finally, in the misty pre dawn, staggering up through the Sun Gate and witnessing the clouds breaking – apparently just for me – to see Macchu Picchu unveil itself briefly in the glowing dawn light. It’s a memory I treasure and one that I wanted in some way to share with James – so off we pootled from Cusco to follow the exact same trail as I’d navigated so many years before.

Of course, this time things were different. Last time I went, a guide was a suggestion rather than the now strictly regimented requirement, you could walk at will and camp wherever you liked. The trail was a little bit anarchic, wild and beautiful, but be-studded with the tiny pink jewels of other people’s toilet paper. The route is now strictly controlled, with a choice of 2 campsites available each night, typically with one placed about 2 hours before the next to allow some choice in walking distance. There are also only 500 people allowed to hike the trail each day – which eases crowding but in no way supplies the solitary experience you might think.

We had a lovely and small group to hike with – just four of us in total (an unexpected blessing of having booked really rather later than we should have done!) and fortunately all pretty well matched in terms of hiking speed. Our companions were Carlyne, a French civil engineer (James was in heaven talking tech-y bridge tunnel talk), Miriam, a German teacher and Brecht expert currently resident in Brazil, and our guide Roger, descended from the Incas (as he reminded us several times a day). Add to this seven porters and a cook (yep, I know, we were sounding pretty hardcore up to then weren’t we!!) and our little ensemble was ready to face the worst that the trail could throw at us!

The trail is actually rather wonderfully set up in terms of its route: `

• Day 1 starts with an ENORMOUS breakfast in Ollantaybambo. Calories obviously don’t count given the amount of walking you’ll be doing over the next few days but still I think James walked / waddled out of there a stone heavier. Then a few checkpoints (actually we were turned back at the checkpoint for some still rather unknown reason – the only thing we do know is that it was NOT Roger’s fault. Got sorted out eventually but not before we were all pretty fearful and rummaging in our pockets for bribes). The you set off after a nice little photo of the Inca trail sign, for a day of nice easy ambling along flat-ish surfaces, passing by the occasional village where you can buy such essentials as soft drinks and (I kid you not) ice cream….because obviously those seven porters aren’t carrying enough gear for you
• Day 2 is brutal – an early rise, fortifying maize porridge breakfast, then a vertical climb of about 800 metres over Dead Woman’s Pass (named for the shape of the mountain rather than the difficulty of the pass – or that’s what they say) followed by a descent, a further ascent of 500 metres to a second pass whose name no one can ever remember before finally descending, bone weary, to your campsite. Where you fall upon your dinner like a starving man. Or at least you do unless, like James, the day has so absolutely and whole heartedly broken you that you retire hurt to bed at about 6.45, having consumed only a few dozen little fried cheesy wontons (you get fed a lot on the trail – these were supposed to be a light pre dinner snack). I was rather delighted by this turn of events – in the whole of the seven years together, despite many attempts to break my James, I’ve always ultimately failed. Who knew it could be so easy?….Turns out all you need is a theoretical 11 hours hiking (we did it in 8 – smug smile) at altitude (max of about 4,200 metres). Now where can I find that kind of experience near London……
• Then just as you start feeling a bit fed up with this whole Inca Trail lark, comes day 3 – more climbing (and LOTS of Inca stairs – see photos) but relatively gentle and interspersed every couple of hours with amazing, isolated Inca sites looming out of the mist. These were some of our favourite Inca sites that we saw – the last one in particular, where we sat practically on our own in the middle of an ancient terraced site to watch the sunset, will stand out in our memory. Rocking up to your campsite there is a bit of facing off about whether or not anyone is going to go for a cold (glacially fed) shower before all eventually agreeing that smelling ain’t that bad. Pre dinner the cook provides you with a cake (of course) to congratulate the group on managing to stumble gasping up the trail that the porters (and cook) run up carrying 25 kilos of equipment for your comfort, on average 3 to 4 times a month. Hmmmm. Still, great cake (how do they do that on a propane stove???)

Day 4 is the Big Day, where you get up early and hike for an hour or so up to the Sun Gate (from where you get your first view of Macchu Picchu), then another hour takes you to Macchu Picchu itself. The way it used to work is that you got up an hour before dawn, legged it (I vividly remember running, gasping with pain) up to the Sun Gate then watched dawn from there (and recovered!!) before ambling down to Macchu Picchu to get there an hour or two before the day trippers arrived. Now it’s all gone a bit bonkers. You get up at 3.30 to stand in a queue for an hour and a half, then you’re allowed to set off. Everyone pegs it along at great haste to the Sun Gate, but the time at which you are allowed to set off is too late to see the dawn anyway and also too late to allow you to arrive in Macchu Picchu before the day trippers. Which unfortunately left a little of a sour note about Macchu Picchu; majestic as it is, arriving at the site after 3 days in the comparative wilderness, it felt almost obscenely crowded. Still, our guide gave us a great tour – modern theory suggests Macchu Picchu may have been a university / retreat for the wise men of the Incas which was deserted when the Spanish came and the residents were forced to re-join their community in Ollantaybambo. This feels right to me – Macchu Picchu as Hogwarts if you will. Which is pretty fitting given the magic that the place still possesses….even with the crowds.

There will come a time in my life when I will unilaterally declare that I am too old, too cranky, too fat and too rich to take overnight buses. Fortunately (or unfortunately in the case of the rich bit) I am not quite there yet.

We are continuing our Greatest Hits tour of South America – we have stood on the edge of precipices at dawn while giant condors soar just feet over our heads, we have contemplated vicuna shawls in Arequipa, we have hiked twelve hundred vertical meters up and down the Colca Canyon to swim in a hot spring (brrrr!) and I have braved the hairdressers of Nazca (OK, and we have also flown low over the Nazca lines). Next stop is the Atacama desert and the high salt plains of Bolivia, but to get there we have to stretch hundreds of miles south across Chile to San Pedro de Atacama via the charming terminus of Calama, and this means taking the overnight bus. Now, we like to think of ourselves as being pretty hardy travelers, based on our tightly-budgeted gap year experiences, oh … 15 years ago, but in reality we are trying to ration the level of INTREPID on this trip:

• Not at all intrepid: being met at airports by hotel shuttles, hotels with chocolates on pillows (or pillow menus, or chandeliers in the showers – see Miami), guided tours, airport lounges
• Slightly more INTREPID: hiking without maps, tight-standing-room-only buses full of locals in traditional dress (and preferably full of chickens), navigating by the sun, hostel rooms with loos down the hall, altitude sickness and – to a certain extent – overnight buses

Which brings us to the night bus from Arica to Calama. Foreigners aren’t allowed to buy Chilean tickets from abroad, so we arrive in Arica (Northern Chile – keep up!) with our fingers and toes thoroughly crossed that there would actually be tickets to San Pedro de Atacama. Of course there aren’t, so we mill around the bus terminal avoiding the imaginary pickpockets, making friends with the local stray dogs (I must have trodden in a prime steak or something) and debating the best way South. Chilean bus services are actually pretty impressive, and so when we end up on a bus in the right direction we are pretty happy. We turn our two (reserved, but only reasonably proximate) seats into two adjacent seats by the time-honoured tactic of sitting next to each other, ostentatiously pretending to fall asleep hand in hand and being gringos. Result.

Lucy – INTREPID in Calama at 7am

The bus winds its way South across the desert for eleven hours along a variety of paved and unpaved roads. The lights go out soon after we leave and the locals fall asleep soon after, leaving the smattering of gringos peering out between the curtains at the unlit verges and trying to guess what scenery we are passing in the dark. A movie plays – not badly-dubbed martial arts like the day bus to Cabanaconde, but an uplifting tale involving butch firefighters and the power of Jesus in mending broken marriages (no, really). Lucy and I eventually fall asleep with our bottles of water on our laps, which hiss whenever opened as we gain altitude during the night. The air blowers go on and off, dispersing a subliminal underaroma of pee from the loo at the back of the bus. The rattle of the luggage racks and the hum of the engine are nothing compared with the night passages in the Galapagos, and we (well, I) soon fall fast asleep. A rude awakening at half past three: everyone onto the road to have our bags x-rayed for contraband, then back on board for a further four hours of snoozing before we arrive ahead of schedule in Calama. Chocolate chip cookies and plastic coffee in a chilly bus station for breakfast, and then we find our way onto the 8am connecting bus to San Pedro, looking forward to being horizontal, to stashing our slightly clammy money belts and to the probability of a warm shower.

Us wide awake on the connecting bus the morning after

You never know, we might actually get used to this.