Cuzco by Night

Cuzco is one of those places - full of foreigners who got there and thought “hey… let’s stop a while longer” and then don’t leave for years. It’s vibrant, beautiful, friendly and prosperous. See it while it’s still relatively unspoilt.

If you like this shot, you may wish to check out my photoblog, which I’m now going to make a more serious part of my website, albeit with its own style specific to displaying large images.

The water looks dirty, but isn’t.  You can see the goldfish clearly enough after all.

The Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa is an astonishing city within a city.  In spite of the noise and bustle of the city outside, it manages to maintain a quiet calm.  The nuns who lived here (and a small number who still do) may have led an ascetic and simple life, but they also had a very beautiful place to live as well.  Fantastic light, colours and views.

The colours here just knocked me out.  They say that mid-day isn’t a good time to take photos, especially in the tropics, but you can’t really go wrong when the subject matter is so good.

And today I thought, let’s do an image for their ancient monument new uses image competition.

And below is a link to a desktop version of the image, if you want it.

And on the side of one hill, near the lines, is this little fella - image modded a bit to improve contrast. Sadly can’t easily see that he’s actually waving. Maybe he knew something about the lines?

Oh, and in case you’re not a combination Star Wars/travel/geography/conspiracy geek - here’s the explanation, though it’s less interesting than working out for yourself the reasons behind the picture:

1: It’s the Nazca lines - an amazing place in the Atacama desert, in southern Peru. You can get a nutter in a light plane to make daredevil passes at ridiculous turn rates over the lines in order to get you the best views. It costs just $50 a person.
2: It’s the Millenium Falcon - Hans Solo’s space ship in Star Wars.
3: A surprising number of people think that the lines were put there as landing strips for aliens - and they do indeed look like desert runways. More likely is that the local population were into water worship and the lines relate to where water comes from. They obviously also had a fair amount of time on their hands whilst being pretty good at planning and geometry. Some of the lines would be difficult to set out with modern equipment.

Argh - looks like an alien!

Please note this is a reproduction of the webpage I originally created for this story. I just thought it’d be better included in my journal rather than off on its own. Easier to manage too. The extraction happened in March 2006. Since then, thanks to B3ta, Digg, StumbleUpon and others, well over 100,000 people have visited and read this story - which is astonishing really. So thank you all.  In the near future I’ll be re-writing this page to make it more thorough and give more information.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Maybe it’s a karma thing. I dunno. I changed my plans and decided to go to the Peruvian jungle at the last minute because I was tired of mountains and deserts. But I’d forgotten that one advantage of dry mountain terrain is the relative lack of insect life.

The jungle was great, but one day I made the mistake of wearing a thin t-shirt made from a ‘technical’ fibre - ie, cooling and comfortable in the humid heat of the jungle. Mosquitoes struggle to bite through thick cotton, but these fibres are just so easy for them. In one day with this shirt on I managed to acquire about fifty bites, mostly on my back. Interestingly, the locals, even without deet repellent, receive far fewer bites.

One of these bites didn’t heal quite right. A week or so after I’d noticed it would hurt quite a bit, like a needle being pushed into my back. I guessed it was a little infected. This was late February. After a week or so of this I went to my local clinic where the nurse had a good look. She’s travelled tropically herself and was impressively clued up. After enquiries she felt it was likely to be a bug inside me. There then followed a slightly confusing phase when nobody seemed available to help me out, but eventually, after a few visits, a doctor at the famous Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine offered to take a look. He couldn’t find anything at the time, or extract it, sadly, but the pain continued and the now bigger wound was starting to hurt for longer periods of time. This, apparently, is the botfly larvae moving around and snacking on my flesh. Eventually it was a friend (who is also a dentist, which helps) covered the wound with vaseline and watched carefully for some time through a loupe. It soon became obvious that a botfly spiracle was popping up for air every now and again.. Which meant this bad boy was inside me:

The larvae, if left alone, would live inside me for up to eight weeks and grow up to 25mm long before leaving in order to pupate into the adult fly. I believe the fly can then live for up to two weeks, purely on the stored energy from its larval stage - it can’t eat as an adult. The adult then has to mate, and the female with then capture a mosquito in order to lay its eggs on it. When the mosquito bites someone, the eggs fall off and the warmth of the host causes those eggs to hatch and in a very short time the little grub will burrow in and get snacking.

Nice!

My friend Geraldine is having a baby and has shared the video of its ultrasound. Not wanting to feel left out I thought I’d share my own little ‘baby’ video with the world! But also I felt this page may help people who get the same problem - there are other resources, but none struck me as that clear to the layman, and there are none with a video to show you what to expect.

Some information that I’ve been able to find - the scientific name is Dermatobia Hominis. It has a mouth with scraping hooks, a main body with rows of hooks to hold onto its host, and a spiracle through which it breathes. Symptoms are an enlarging lesion (spot!) that has a small pinhole in the centre for breathing - this hole will not heal as long as the bug is alive. Occasionally you’ll feel sharp stabbing pains, lasting up to half an hour, as it moves or eats. It won’t burrow especially deeply and is unlikely to cause any real damage even if left to mature.

Extraction - we’re currently trying to persuade it out by covering the wound in vaseline. This forces it closer to the surface as its spiracle searches out air, and it may even come out completely. See the video above. As this story progresses I’ll update this page. I also plan to add some links to resources. Watch this space!

OK - I just gave birth to a baby worm. I always said I wanted children, but… not sure if this is the way.

Removal of the botfly larvae:

It wasn’t easy. Squeezing didn’t seem to work, and is said to be almost impossible if the larvae is still alive. So we settled on trying to kill it or weaken it. However, although there are approaches that give you an almost instant kill, the method we used helps to encourage the fella to come closer to the surface.

We needed some kind of dressing that was flexible enough to go on the back and able to keep as much air out as possible. We settled on the lid from a tube of jaffa cakes, filled with vaseline, and thoroughly taped in to place. After a night’s sleep I could feel the wriggling in the morning. Eventually the lid slipped and I removed it completely to see a lot more of the larvae sticking out. Result! I covered it once more, and quickly went to see my friend who was then able to gently tweezer the tip up enough to get another pair of tweezers lower down and slowly extract the bug. Mechanical removal like this isn’t usually advised, but as the larvae was weakened by this point after a night of struggling for air it seemed to be ok. My only concern now is that it might have a twin! But the wound is healing well, which is a very good sign. There’s still some inflammation but it’s improved.

Here’s some pics of the little blighter. Someone could probably make a rather neat little animation. You can see the movement of his mouth parts as he wonders where the hell his meal’s just gone. The goo is just vaseline, by the way.

Pics and video of the little fella:

Click on the images for larger versions.

Botfly Larvae in host video

It could have been worse though… but don’t look if you’re either sensitive or don’t like seeing people’s, erm, hidden bits…. http://sti.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/80/3/183.pdf
- membership now required.

But you know, I’m feeling kind of lazy at the moment, so I’ll describe things in the way of a five year old. That might make for less typing:

The jungle was dead brill!!! There were big snakes and we caught piranhas except I didn’t coz I’m a vegetable and so don’t do fishing and we had bats and a python in the roof of the lodge. The toilets were dead stinky too and coz they don’t have proper plumbing like what we do in cities and everything the showers were cold which was horrible in the morning. I think I heard French people squealing about it. And there were these two nice English people and they were called James and Caroline and they gave me some of their wine and I got a bit tipsy!

I don’t like mosquitoes. They bit me. A lot. Little bastids. Oh sorry I’m not supposed to use words like that.

I was really really sad leaving South America. It’s so beautiful and nice and the people are great. I’ve got lots of new friends there and I think a little piece of my heart will always be with that continent, and with Peru most of all. I’ll be back.

Hmmmm… the five year old’s style is lapsing. Still…

As for New York City. What a place. It’s not really the assault on the senses that I expected. In fact it feels almost exactly how I expected it to, only quieter, cleaner and more polite. Shockingly expensive, however, but I stayed at the Chelsea Lodge in West 20th Street which was an almost but not quite reasonable $99 for a room with a shared loo but your own shower and basin. But it was very clean and charming, and it seems that for New York I did very well, so I shouldn’t complain. I did try to stay at the Second Home New York, as I stayed at Second Home Lima for my last couple of nights and thought it was brilliant. And relatively affordable. Oh well, maybe next time.

But it’s an interesting one about accomodation when travelling in a group. Essentially you need to settle for the lowest common denominator, or it’s unfair. Either that or the wealthier need to subsidise the poorer, but that’s not necessarily a feasible option given pride and so on. And there’s also the desire to stay in areas that may not be as attractive to you, but it’s important to cede to the group so long as everyone gets a say now and then. I thought we all worked beautifully as a group, but I’ll admit blowing $75 a night on a hotel room was a luxury I really enjoyed :o)

And it was still cheap compared to NY!

And then… it was home.

That’s it. The end of the trip. Done.

But don’t despair too much, I’m going to add a little content about some of the places I went to, with proper researched stuff and everything. But without the pressure of time it could take a while! Watch this space…. And photos will be added soon.

Last night our request for two “GeenToneecs”, as listed on the menu, provoked an explosion of confusion with the staff at “Ellens House”, a bar round the corner from our hotel. After a few minutes two large glasses, with about 250ml of vodka arrived.

We pointed out the problem… that a G&T usually has gin in it. And tonic. The glasses were taken away, four bar staff held a conference, and they returned with… two glasses of vodka with a dash of sparkling mineral water. I took a gulp and my taste buds immediately caught fire. Another return… this prompted more confusion and they came back to say they were just nipping to the shops for a bottle of “agua tonica”. Ok… they were getting the idea. And then we got what I still think was vodka, with a dash of sparkling mineral water… and a dash of tonic. We gave up. Angelique had also failed to drink her “Baylez”… a cheap and eye watering version of Baileys.

Peruvian service is often like this. They do their best, bless ‘em, but sometimes they’re caught out by their own menus. They then utilise a Just In Time system, as popularised in Japanese factories. This means having stock arrive just in time for manufacture - so saving on inventory costs and storage space. But for restaurants that just means that your entrée may well arrive after your main course because some of the ingredients involved sending a member of staff to the market with a shopping list in his hand. Still, the food at these restaurants is often surprisingly tasty - just don’t arrive hungry….

Salty and meaty.
Egg based.
Dangerous.
Salty and fishy.
Scary.
Salty and vegetarian.
Touristic.

Lomo Saltado is one of the classic dishes - fried and salted beef, served in a big pile with gravy, vegetables and chips - all mixed together. There may be some salad on the side.
Dangerous food can be summed up as pretty much anything raw.
Scary is roasted guinea pig - poor little thing has it’s claws on show still and it just looks wrong. Heart kebabs are also a bit offputting.
Touristic is largely edible, but expensive. It revolves mostly around pizza and pasta, but it’s not bad.

There´s a surprising number of vegetarian restaurants and they vary in quality. There’s a chain called Govinda run by Hare Krishnas and although the food is ok (and salty) the service was slow and the atmosphere utterly non existent. We’ve resisted trying another branch. Other vegetarian restaurants, especially in Cusco, can be excellent.

Breakfasts are a barely understood concept. A fried egg, a couple of rolls of bread and some jam, along with juice and tea or coffee and that’s about it. Sometimes you need more to set you up for the day.

I won’t bore on about the history of this place, but instead I’ll say that it’s one of the most beautiful locations in the world. Vertiginous too - if you’re not keen on heights you won’t want to get too near the edges of the town. It gets worse if, like us, you decide to climb Huanay Picchu (I think that’s the name, I’m not checking notes right now) which is the peak you always see in front of Macchu Picchu in the pictures. For this you have to take a quite frankly dangerous path (especially if it´s been raining) up the side of a very steep mountain. Quite often all you can see is a one mile drop to the bottom of the valley. I clung on and did my best in spite of my well known fear of heights. In the end though I saw an alarming enough section to refuse to move any further and simply sat down and waited.

But even where we reached was well worth the effort. I´m soon going to be able to upload pictures to the gallery as I should have more time. First though I’m off to the Crovetto’s beach house for a few days of relaxation after the rest of the troupe disappear. Fiona and Renaud have already got back to Paris, with Soren and Kitt off to Denmark tonight and Angelique, Francois and Romana all flying out tomorrow. So the rest of my travels will be solo :o( The upside I suppose is that I´ll be able to insist on a vegetarian restaurant every night so nutrition might improve a little ;o)

I probably won´t be able to post again until next week… so don´t be too alarmed if it goes quiet!

I’ll say one more thing though - although I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this trip so far a little part of me is missing the home comforts - familiar food, no hawkers constantly trying to sell me things (I reached the point of muttering in English to one kid “Do I look like the kind of f*cking person who wants to buy a doll?” He didn’t understand.)

But they get on a knackered bus, driven by a coca leaf chewing driver for 12hrs at a stretch, along the most dangerous roads in the world, without a second thought. I´m pretty certain more travellers die in road accidents than any other way out here. Our driver for Chiway (Chivay) from Arequipa was, I´m sure, Fangio´s long lost and suspiciously young twin brother. But we got home quicker than anyone else so there´s always an upside.

In a week I´ll be saying goodbye to the rest of the group and striking out alone. Can´t say I´m looking forward to that moment, but it´ll also be nice to set my own pace and explore some more awkward places. Or just lounge for a week or two at a beach resort in Chile I´ve heard of. We’ll see….

Tomorrow is another day of Cusco - quite the most beautiful town I´ve seen. Full of a mix of colonial and Inca architecture, though the colonials pretty much finished off the Incan work. The day after is Macchu Pichu, or Machu Picchu - I can never remember the right spelling. It´s famously amazing, and we hoped to trek to it but the bad weather we´ve experienced here has, at times, turned the streets into rivers. Not good up a mountain so we´ll wimp out and take the train.

The Incan stonework is something to admire - close fitting stones, without cement, lock together and have survived many earthquakes. The foundations of many colonial buildings are Incan and you can still see the fine work. You literally can´t slide a cigarette paper between the stones. How they did it so well is a bit of a mystery. It´s a shame that the Conquistadors destroyed the indiginous culture so thoroughly. Had they not been quite so obsessed by shiny things Europe´s effect on South America would still be dramatic - we brought with us diseases as well as war, and this combination elicited one of the great holocausts in history, killing perhaps up to 90% of the native people according to some sources. But whichever way you look at it, we weren´t a positive factor here.

Arriving High at Arequipa

We took what could only be described as a mobile sauna masquerading as a long-distance bus. We travelled from Nazca to Arequipa like this - sweltering on a bus that had very late. So after a long night of this ten hour ride along bumpy, twisty roads, we arrived at our first high altitude destination - the city of Arequipa.

It’s a classic, colonial city, and after Pisco and Paracas, and a lot of Lima’s less smart districts it came across as a clean and vibrant city. There are parts which are dangerous but as was the case on all of this journey - we never saw anything especially worrying to people who live in cities like Liverpool and Paris. Sadly the sky was quite cloudy so we never got a good view of the massive volcanoes like Misti and Chachani. This was a shame as they provide a stunning backdrop.

One of the highlights of Arequipa has to be the Monastario de Santa Catalina de Siena - actually a nunnery, it occupies a whole block of the city centre and was closed to outsiders for 400 years. Inside the architecture reminds you of cities in the south of Spain - colourful, fresh and simple. You can spend a happy afternoon exploring all the rooms, kitchens and chapels - seeing how life was lived here by the nuns for hundreds of years. A small number of nuns (around 20-30 it would seem) still live within the walls, but hidden away from the tourists.

The Colca Canyon and Condor Watching

From here we travelled to Chiway (Chivay) to see the Colca Canyon. This journey, although easier today than ever, is still rather gruelling - taking hours, half of it on unsealed roads and crossing a mountain pass at 4900mt. You soon start to feel the altitude and some members of the group suffered a little - Kitt in particular becoming ill enough to warrant a visit to the hospital. Once at Chiway you feel like you’ve arrived at a frontier town - the roads are mostly dirt, there are just a few cars and horses around, and the men and women look rugged.

At one point on the route we stopped at a café for some mate de coca (coca tea) and a break from the bus. Here a few kids were hanging around outside. I went to take a picture of one sweet girl (pictured above) and she promptly held her hand out and demanded “un sol!” I guess the money’s handy, though I hope that to earn this the children aren’t missing out on schooling.

Because of the tourist traffic through Chiway, we found that the food and facilities weren’t so bad for somewhere so remote. Ok, our showers were… shall we say rustic, but the rooms were clean and adequate and service friendly. The mobile phone didn’t work, but there were two internet cafés for those who’d like to recreate what the internet was like before broadband came along - the connection was sloooow. But it did work so I was happily in touch.

In the evening we ate pizza and danced away with a local group. I’ve got vivid memories of being grabbed by one of the local girls for the traditional dance and I could tell I had little chance of refusing. As I put my hand on her waist I realised that she was pure muscle. They build girls for strength up in the mountains. One of the dances they did was slightly bizarre, however, and appeared to revolve around domestic violence. Couldn’t quite follow that one.
Drank lots of pisco sour too. Hmmmmm….

The next morning we were dragged out at some ungodly hour. I’m not quite sure what time now, perhaps 5:30am, in order to wind our way up the Colca Canyon towards the spot where we hoped to watch condors soaring.

And lo - it was good. A little touristy - all the villages which mostly are sleepy and restful wake up for the visitors, putting on traditional dances and the like in order to raise precious pennies which help educate the kids and restore churches. I actually feel that compared to similar towns in Chile they’re not doing quite so well here. There are plenty of tourists, but not a huge economy generated by them so far as I can see. But they’re definitely doing better than they otherwise might….

As time passed we eventually arrived at the point where we might see some condors. And… nothing… it wasn’t the season. Most would be at the Islas Balestas, it seemed, feeding on the placentas of newly born seals. Damn… we’d just been there! Didn’t see condors or placentas though.

Disheartened we started to amble a little, look at the tourist tat, and consider heading back to the bus when we heard an “ooooh” from other tourists. As one, hundreds of tourists headed straight to the main groups and looked out. And there she was… one solitary condor! Then another… and another! As we stood at the top of the terrifying canyon (the deepest in the world) we watched as the condors arrived. They really are magnificent birds to watch as they soar effortlessly between the walls of the canyon in search of carrion. And they’re huge… so when they pass closely you get a sense of their grace… and ugliness. Man! When you get close they’re ugly… but from more than about 100ft they’re beautiful. Like some girls I’ve met, I suppose.

After another day in Arequipa our next stop would be Puno and Lake Titicaca - the highest navigable lake in the world.