The End of the Beginning

This morning Cosmo and I breathe a heavy ambiguous sigh of relief (a testament to the fact that we've made it through South America without a scratch or scar to remember it by) and sadness (a painful realisation that we are now coming to the end of the first part of our trip on this beautiful continent). It's been wonderful and, apart from the relatively minor hiccup of missing out on the "life-changing" experience of Macchu Picchu, we feel completely satisfied with everything we've done. Having said that, while our thirst for the continent has been quenched temporarily, I have no doubt that we'll both be coming back for more very soon.

The past week has been dedicated entirely to the discovery of Peru, which has been much less challenging than Inca Trail travel agencies would have you believe. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Peru offers so much more than Macchu Picchu. While I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a good thing we missed out on the country's most popular tourist destination, it has given us a chance to look beyond the foreground and experience other parts of the country.

Lima is a hard city to capture in writing. Neither of us has fallen in love with it (and I have yet to meet somebody who has) but it does have its own charm, characterised less by monuments and beautiful buildings, and more by the buzz of its streets. The city is huge (geographically and size-wise) and the thing you notice immediately is that nobody stands still for longer than ten seconds. Taxis are everywhere, and if you linger then a conductor of a"collectivo" (the love child of a taxi and bus) will be ushering you inside before you can say "pisco sour". The organised chaos of the whole place makes the whole place feel somehow alive. In fact, I think Boris should organise a collective sobatical for everyone at TFL to spend a few weeks here - the idea of waiting ten minutes for a bus would be unintelligible to a resident of Lima.

So, after two days wallowing in the wake of Buenos Aires (we both missed it terribly), we found a morsel of energy and got on a bus to a place called Chiclayo, which acts as a launching pad for tourists wanting to see the historic monuments and museums in the surrounding area. For 30 soles (about six pounds fifty) we got a full day being carted around in a mini-van with a guide, hearing all about the different civilisations that had populated the area since 2000BC. While most of it was umm-ing and ahh-ing (the guide only spoke Spanish), some of it was fascinating. We spent about an hour climbing one of the old Mochica pyramids which dominate the skyline for miles.

After coming back to Lima we seemed to return back to a sort of stupour. We've seen various sites in the city (including a very boistrous museum about Peruvian military history in the setting of the capital's old fort - Cosmo and I got a bit too excited playing with the guns and got left behind by the group several times before a soldier ushered us forward). The hostel we're staying at is beautiful - a lovely little villa in Lima's "most pleasant" (apparently) district.

While we're both very sad to be leaving South America, we're also hungry to keep moving. We'll be in Mexico tonight and our actual plans are still in the making (really the only way to travel). We're staying with a family friend of Cosmo's, and we're very excited about being looked after by a local. While it's great meeting travellers and we're far from bored with our company so far, it'll be nice not having to begin every conversation with the universal travelling lines: "Where are you from?"; "How long have you been travelling for?"; "Where have you been?" etc.

Now I must leave and start packing so we don't miss our flight this afternoon. We fly at 2.30 to Panama and get a connection a few hours later to Mexico City. Loads of love to everyone from both of us.

Toodles. xxx