Chau Peru!

I've not been in the best frame of mind to enjoy Buenos Aires. In fact I've had a bit of a nightmare. Maybe it's because I lost my lucky coca seed when I put my hiking trousers in the wash...

Just before I (eventually) left the airport after my flight from Lima, I decided I'd better get some money out. That's when I discovered I'd lost my Barclays debit card. I think it's those stupid ATMs in Peru that only give you back your card after you've recieved your money - I must have forgotten to collect my card. I got to my hotel at about 5.30 (my flight landed at 1.30!!) knackered and worried. Hotel Splendid, the departure point for my GAP tour through southern Patagonia, is not too splendid, but the price list said $120 for a single! At that point I couldn't face looking for a cheaper alternative and having to move out the next day, so I just accepted it. I dumped my stuff and headed off out again to find a phone place and an ATM to get some money out with my emergency credit card. I needed dollars for the local payment for my GAP tour, and some Argentinian pesos to keep me going. I tried 2 big banks and my credit card did not work. I went to a locutorio to use the net and the phone; my card was rejected by PayPal and I couldn't get through to Barclays to cancel the card, the bank of my credit card, or my parents to give me a hand. The particularly unhelpful man in the locutorio refused to accept that it was a problem with his phones and insisted that the lines in England were not working. Aaaah! I owed GAP $300 tomorrow, the hotel $120 for the night, and money to keep me solvent, but I had only about $100 to my name. I was all alone in a huge new city and couldn't get in touch with anyone at home. Plus I'd had an average of about 4 hours sleep a night for over a week now. I was pretty stressed out.

I'm just about sorted nearly 24 hours later. It turns out that the stupid man was wrong, it WAS his phones that were shitty, because another locutorio worked fine and I got through to England. It took 2 attempts to activate my credit card, and I've still not been able to get dollars, but at least I can get money. And I've been able to use my card to pay for my next hostel over the internet. Plus I've now realised that the $ sign here actually means pesos, which are worth a third of a US dollar. So my room actually costs $40. Not cheap (especially considering the naff breakfast of fatty croisants, stale coffee and disgustingly sugary "orange juice") but a lot better than I'd thought.

So, Buenos Aires. It's called the Paris of South America, and it certainly feels more like Europe than a part of the South America I'm used to. Leaving the airport on the bus felt much like leaving Manchester airport, but for the Spanish roadsigns and driving on the right. The motorways are big and modern with loads of interchanges and junctions (and functioning traffic lights that drivers actually obey), and there were green fields and big green trees, and coming into the city there are what appear to be 1960s and 1970s high rise flats and offices. The centre is full of banks, posh clothes and shoe shops, western-style restaurants and bars, and lots of pedestrianised plazas with statue centrepieces. There are even functioning pelican crossings! But what's most significant in producing the European feel? The rain. Oh yes. It's pissing it down and very grey. Just like London. So my first purchase with my newly acquired pesos was a much-needed umbrella.

The European feel is quite nice though. Argentina, since it's recent economic crash whenever it was, is still really cheap, so you can get European food, clothes and shoes at South American prices. And there are lots of really interesting little shops and cafés I'm looking forward to exploring. Also, I am small again. After feeling like a pasty blonde giant (and a bit more powerful for it) amongst the tiny native Americans, I am once more a normal looking girl in a city of (generally) European looking people.

I am sad to leave Peru. I could have spent my remaining four months just exploring more of it. Plus I only had a few hours with Hels, who was in Cuzco on my last day to start her Inca trail with GAP. We got to catch up over a wander round the town and some lunch. Very nice, but way too brief! And I definitely could have spent another week at least in and around Cuzco. It's full of gringos (I ran into a bunch of students from my Quito language school there, and one of the i-to-i girls from Lima) but it's such a cool place. Three days and nights were nowhere near enough; I could spend those just wandering round the markets buying souvenir stuff. At least I now have a lovely cosy Alpaca jumper to keep me warm down in Patagonia. And a pair of gloves, and a hat, and a new bag to hold my Lonely Planet... Bargaining in Africa was good training, I got some good deals. The city itself is quite small, but full of character thanks to its narrow cobbled streets, red-tiled roofs and impressive central plazas in which stand the historic and beautiful cathedrals and churches. There are some great cafes and restaurants - not least a place called "Fallen Angel". It's tables are bath-tubs filled with water and real fishes topped with a pane of glass, it's full of funky modern art (including a few paintings that would seem to confirm it's reputation as gay-friendly), and there are no Ladies and Gents loos but rather two cubicles decorated as "heaven" and "hell" respectively, you can choose which one to use depending on "how you feel". The nightlife is pretty good too, with clubs playing everything from 1980s ballads to salsa, reggaeton (yay) and western dance music. There are a lot of drugs about though... and, amongst pretty much every nationality imaginable, a LOT of Israeli blokes using their free post-military-service air tickets.

And then there was the Inca trail. How to summarise that week?! It was certainly very touristy. Being in a large group (16) of gringos makes touristiness unavoidable, but there were also about 100 other groups of gringos doing the same thing a few paces ahead and behind us. But it was definitely definitely worth it. First of all we had our Sacred Valley tour. That was pretty neat. There are so many fascinating Inca sites in the area that you could spend a week just discovering more of those. After trying out our first Inca steps in the ruins, we visited the "Inca Bar", where we tried our hands at a very bizarre bar game called frogs (in which you attempt to throw large metal coins into the mouth of a frog), saw a room full of guinea pigs being fattened up, and sampled some Andean chicha (beer fermented from maize). It's definitely an acquired taste. Although the pink version, "sweetened" with strawberries, was a little less sour.

The first few hours of the Inca trail only confirmed my fears that it would be way too touristy and far less beautiful than Huaraz. We left our bus in a field that served as a bus park for the countless other tourists doing the same thing, and walked down to the checkpoint, where we were given our mass-printed tickets and glossy leaflets about the trek, in return for registering ourselves with our passports. We set off, with our crew of 22 porters carrying all our stuff, along a highway of people lined with electricity pylons and cables and peppered with stalls selling soft drinks and snacks what felt like every 200m. I was pretty disappointed.

Fortunately things improved as we walked further. I'm very glad I bought a replacement camera in Cuzco before we left. Even if it is a naff Kodak EasyShare. We left the main electricity route and entered more beautiful and rugged valleys and mountains. Our crazy guide Ali made sure that we were the slowest group by stopping every 10 minutes for a 20 minute break, so we soon lost the majority of the other hikers. Although lacking the towering snowy peaks of the Cordillera Blanca, the Inca trail is undoubtedly beautiful. The views from the high passes were spectacular, and the steep jungle-covered valleys and wide winding rivers in the cloud forest on the climb down to Machu Picchu are just incredible. Best of all, the Inca trail is far more than just the route to Machu Picchu, for there are countless Inca sites along the way that are impressive themselves. Unfortunately, after three days of beautiful weather (and nicely dry paths), the day we arrived to Machu Picchu was very very cloudy. We got to the Sun Gate, from where can be enjoyed the beautiful first views of the ruined city, to see...clouds. We waited for two hours but it never really cleared up. Nevertheless, even without nice blue skies as a backdrop, Machu Picchu is very impressive. It's setting is what makes it so special - nestled between steep mountains and surrounded (covered, until the excavation) by dense jungle, it's amazing it was discovered at all. Four of us decided to climb Huayna Picchu mountain, which overlooks Machu Picchu. It's even steeper than the Inca trail and scarily so on the way down. We got to the top and saw...nothing, again. Although the picture of us sat on a rock against a perfectly white background is kind of amusing.

The trail was pretty tough, more so than I'd expected. I had no problems with the altitude, except feeling a little light headed after getting off the plane in Cuzco at 3,600m. (Though that was probably the result of lack of sleep after getting up at 3.30am following 4 nights in tents and buses.) But the path is very steep, both up and down. The ascent to Dead Woman's Pass (so called not because it claimed the life of some unlucky gringa, but because the shape of the mountains resembles a woman lying on her back, apparently) is comprised of steep, unrelentless rocky steps. Fortunately we had lots of stops to regroup and catch our breath. But the way down was even steeper - especially the section of stairs nicknamed the "Gringo-killer steps". We all bought a bag of coca leaves to help us along - as well as a a black blob of stuff that apparently is the ash of burnt jungle vegetables which. Aly showed us how to roll 3 coca leaves up with a bit of the ash, which when chewed with the coca brings out the chemicals that do the magic. It certainly makes your mouth numb. The porters seemed to like it though, they always had a lump in each cheek. (And a pint of chicha in their hands at every stop.) I got sick of the taste after a while and gave up. I didn't feel any different chewing it. My rucksack still honks of coca, however. I'd better make sure I air it properly before coming back to blighty since it's treated as a drug outside of South America.

My group was really good fun. I was the only solo traveller, the others were with friends, spouses or family, so it was a little lonely at times. But not really. It was a very international group - there were two Norwegian girls, two Swedish blonde girls, three Danish blondes, an Australian blonde who turned 21 on the day we got to Machu Picchu (!!) and her parents, and an English couple on their honeymoon, as well as the three comedy Irish guys. Our guide was very entertaining and made sure the group gelled really well. (Even if he did take it a bit far by trying it on with the girls when we hit the Cuzco clubs on the final night.) We had singing sessions and joke sessions. Turns out our Englishman, Scottishman, and Irishman jokes are rivalled by Norwegian, Swede and Dane jokes. The food was unbelievably good. Everyday we were served sit-down multi-course breakfast, lunch and dinner at a long table duly decked out in an Andean tablecloth and adorned with 18 serviettes folded differently each day. This is as well as daily snacks and tea and biscuits on our return to camp in the afternoon. On the final night our "international waiter" (still trying to figure that one out, he only spoke Spanish and Quechua...maybe it was the serviettes) brought out a beautifully decorated cake dedicated to los Chulyos, which are the Andean woolen hats with earflaps, and which was the name of our group. I do feel that the porters/cooks/general slaves are rather exploited. They do all this amazing cooking, and put up our tents before we return and take them down in the mornings, as well as lug all our stuff up the mountains about twice as fast as we do with a fraction of the weight on our backs. One porter we passed was 72!

So with good memories and new friends (some of them now Facebook friends; it's practically global...) I came down with a bump to Argentina. I'd love to go back to Peru. But there's so much more of this continent to see, I have to move on. Tonight I meet my new group for my Patagonia tour, and we fly down into the southern tip of Chile tomorrow morning. Very much looking forward to it. We should get to see seals, penguins and maybe condors, not to mention the glaciers and snowy mountains of southern Patagonia. I'm missing the mountains already.