Peru.... I cant figure it out

It's been a while I know, I am sorry for the delay, but travelling through Peru has got me all confused and a bit bothered. I can't work it out at all. I don't know whether I love the place or cant stand it.

After we left the SOS children's village in Chiclayo (one of the things I really love about Peru) it was south again (as ever) and stopped at Chimbote, a really odd place with as much imagination as a small house brick. Dull and dirty, but oddly enough a great little harbour with an advent garde hotel right out of the twenties which made up for things a little. Now, the only real things of interest in the harbour were hundreds and hundreds of fishing smacks and a half sunken ship, not half a ship that had sunk, but a full ship that had half sunk. It really intrigued me but I wasn't able to find any more about it.

Already Peru was throwing curve balls at us. Stepping back a few hours on our way to Chimbote we had met up with some other over landers (the 'in name' for idiots who decide to give up everything and travel on motorbikes in foreign parts). These guys, man and wife, where travelling on a couple of Yamaha 600's and we had a coffee together in one of the old run down road side cafés. They told us they had been stopped by the Peruvian police for going the wrong way around a roundabout, we had done exactly the same thing at the same roundabout due to confusing markings some 20 minutes after them but had not been stopped. They told us how the police had threatened to impound their bikes unless they paid a big bribe. This bribe was reduced to exactly the amount in the Netherland's couple's wallets after some negotiation and an unsuccessful trip to the cash point.

Now all this would be academic to you blog reader but for the fact that the very next day we got caught in the evil Peruvian police corruption net. Having gone through a town and overtaken a lorry (after being waved on by the driver) Mr corrupt bastard policemen in his beat up Toyota lit the blues and twos, and flagged us down, so we pulled over. Bent cop 1 (we will call him bad greasy git cop number one for the sake of shortness) jumped out of the beat up car and proceeded to yell at me for speeding and overtaking. Bent cop number 2 (lets call him good greasy git cop number two) sat in the car smiling at us. I took my lid off and try to understand bad greasy git cop number one, but he wouldn't slow down and was in my view very aggressive.

Looking puzzled and trying to apologise for any unintentional behaviour, good greasy git cop number two beckoned me over to the passenger seat window. He, in greasy git cop English, asked me all sorts of nice questions about my job and England, his hand always resting on his revolver. In the mean time bad greasy git cop number one had distracted Sandra by showing gruesome pictures of high speed traffic accidents. Good greasy git cop number two then told me if I did not pay him some money the bike would be taken away. Now I wish I could tell you I was in control and took the moral high ground but I was genuinely scared and wanted this all over as quickly as possible. I opened my wallet (big mistake) and offered some solice. He basically took everything from the wallet. Fortunately it was the muggers wallet with limited cash in it but it was still more than the fine itself. Sandra tried to take a picture of them but they were ahead of the game and we could not get one.

Now this experience shook me and it had a real negative impact upon my views of this country. I was shaken and disturbed by it all and very upset with my inability to cope with this better. I was upset with Peru and did not like this one bit.

Anyway we went onto Nasca the home of the famous Nasca doodles in the sand. Wholly ticked off with Peru, these lines had to be good to impress me. Unfortunately they did nothing of the sort.

Can you see them...... no, nor could we.

Shot taken twenty seconds prior to us chucking up in the aircraft

The trip in the aircraft was nice enough but frankly the experience left me cold. I was begging to become a grumpy old man in Peru. Things did get better the next day as we went on a super low key tour of the ancient Nasca irrigation system and things started to look up. Rather than doodling odd shapes in the sand some accent Nascans actually spent their time doing useful stuff like providing the town with fresh clean water. Theses engineers build a series of canals with an ingenious way of adding oxygen to the water using spherical wells. Fantastic stuff which cheered me up no end.

From Nasca it was a two day ride across the Andes to Cusco, Now I will try and tell you about this mountain range but I don't have the words. Fantastic roads through some of the greatest scenery you could ever see. Climbing to over 15,000 feet you can actually feel how thin the air is, The Shed struggles too, never higher than third gear.

We stooped a lot to add or remove clothes.

This part of Peru is wonderful. However , the Andes had not finished with us yet and would strike an almost critical blow to us, but that's another story.

We reached Cusco, a much larger town then we expected, to find and make our way to the historical centre. We immediately became celebrities, well the bike did. People wanting their picture with it and the local cop (a nice one) commandeering a passer by and ordering him to take his picture with the shed. We where approached by a chap who had promises of cheap hotels and, oddly enough, he was spot on and found us a good hotel at a good rate. He later sorted out a tour to Mahcu Pichu at a not so good rate as it turns out. We had to be up at 5 the next morning to be picked up at the hotel to get a taxi and then a bus and then a train to get another bus to get us to Mahcu Pichu. What a place this is. The surroundings are breathtaking and it's history and it's survival are an incredible story, even though the recent Peruvian government's have messed this place up since the seventies, it remains, as it should, one of the new seven new wonders of the world.

I like this place very much.

However the whole trip to Machu Pichu started to unravel as we tried to return back to Cusco. We were told our train was at three and our tickets would be at a local restaurant, they weren't. After several not so polite phone calls we received faxed copies of two train tickets for 6 pm which only took us half way to Cusco some 100 Km short. This as you can imagine did nothing for my view of the Peruvian way of conducting business. To cut a long story short, we found ourselves 100Km away from the hotel at 8:30 at night in a town we hadn't even of heard of . The only thing we could do was get a taxi. The average Peruvian taxies are only cars in the academic term of the word. They must have been new once but many many years ago. This one banged and clattered. The driver was trying to keep himself awake and he also asked us for petrol money on the way. I was not happy about any of this. We did make it back and in one piece. The next morning I was at the tour agent demanding money back and at the end managed to get the taxi fare back and a free night paid for in our hotel. This cheered me up a bit.

Can you see now why Peru has its ups and downs. One moment I love it, the next something is ticking me off about the place or maybe it's just me.

From Cusco we set off to Puno. I liked this place and we had arranged a boat trip to the reed islands and Tequile island. This all day trip took us to see the remarkable people who live their lives on a floating bed of reeds. They showed how they fished and build the islands (constantly renewed). Sandra got dressed up in a traditional outfit and all in all it was a real pleasure to visit with them.

I think its the dress that does it for me.

It was then onto Tequile island over two hours away by boat. The island has steep sides and at this altitude was frankly difficult to climb up. We stayed a few hours, not to much to do or see, and returned to Puno by 5 o'clock. This altitude has caused both Sandra and I problems. For instance our hotel room was on the third floor with no elevator Just climbing the stairs had us gasping for breath and we needed to stop more than once.

Anyway we decided we would leave early the next morning and head back south toward the Chilean border. We would take route 3 the most direct route. This was to be a critical and almost catastrophic error.