Medellin - city with a reputation

   All I knew of Medellin before we arrived was that the Medellin Cartel and Pablo Escobar had controlled 80% of the cocaine heading out of Columbia until the early 1990s.  And that it had a good metro system.  After getting into our hostel we found that these two things pretty much sum up Medellin.

   We had taken an overnight bus so inevitably we lost 4 hours that morning to napping, after which we took the metro and the cable car for a view over the city and booked our "Pablo Escobar tour" for the following day.  When we checked in we thought our hostel was insanely cheap, but we´ve been getting some really good deals lately so have come to take it for granted that we´re blessed on the accommodation front.  When we returned to our hostel that evening the sun had set and we found out we were in the centre of the city´s red light district, surrounded by a wash of local character.  On our tour the next day we were driven through a dodgy area where our guide remarked on the seediness and drug usage, but it had nothing on our place.

   Actually the tour was really good.  Very informative and only a little macabre.  I found the guide a little bit distracting as she had clearly picked up a lot of her very clear English language from some unsavoury characters.  Also as Kizzy pointed out, "Her tits are a real distraction, she needs to wear a bra or a more supportive top."

   On our way out of Medellin we had a few hours to kill before boarding the night bus to Cartagena.  We had read in certain travel guide that bus fares in Columbia are not set and you should offer about 25% les than the asking price.  Kiz and I had been a bit wary of trying this up to that point, but in Medellin with a choice of about 8 buses to Cartagena and all of them much pricier than the routes heading south, we decided to give it a go.

   This is actually quite a challenging prospect.  The Columbian the accent is different from most of the rest of South America.  We had had enough trouble being understood on straightforward transactions so trying to hussle the bus companies took a bit of planning and extensive consultation of the phrase book.  We looked at the bus times and the different companies then came up with a negotiation strategy crafted to fit well with our basic Spanish.  We geared ourselves up and approached the counter, trying to see how much other people were paying as we waited in line.

   All of this came to naught.  When I suggested a lower figure to the cashier he looked bored and started serving the guy behind me, who must have been the only person in South America tall enough to see over my head.  Still, it was another cultural experience for us.

Cultural differences

   We stopped in Popayan on our way north through Columbia, taking a day to enjoy the repetitive streets of uniform white colonial architecture.  Not much really happened to us in Popayan other than to find that the locals are very friendly.  Only one example of many: a lady saw us from her window as we were wandering around at 9pm trying to find our hostel and insisted on coming out ot show us the way.

   Salento was another new experience for us.  It was a place filled with other backpackers but none the poorer for it.  We met several new friends including yet another person, Jake, with an East Sheen connection having been at A-level college with Kiz and coincidentally his mother lived in the same block of flats as Kizzy´s dad.  We were also fortunate to run into Ash, Rachel and Sophie again.  Having last seen them in Uyuni in Bolivia we were surprised when they turned up in our hostel in Salento.  Incidentally, girls, if you are reading this blog, we have your balsamic vinegar which you left behind and we´re staying in Casa Viena in Cartagena.  It´s in the lonely planet guidebook.  Drop me a quick email and maybe we can return it to you tomorrow.

   On one of the sunnier days we took a jeep to the Valle de Cocora afor a nice day walk with several other backpackers up to a hummingbird sanctuary.  Along with beautiful mountain scenery and futile attempts to capture (photograph, not cage) humingbirds in mid-hover, our highlight was the lady running the cafe.  With our broken spanish it took a bit of time to get the conversation going.  It wasn´t until we got up to leave that tings really got going.

   She questioned us about the cultural differences between Columbia and the UK.  "Why are you carryng the bags?" she asked Jake, "in Columbia, no man ever carries anything."  It turns out that in Columbia men do not carry bags, they don´t carry babies, they don´t do the cooking or the cleaning.  In fact they don´t do anything that has ever in any culture been considered "woman´s work" because: "they are afraid it will make them gay".

   Our charming and now very talkative host proceeded to praise the virtues of English men and their chivalrous carrying of bags, all the while setting forth the littany of failures of her husband´s sons.  They do nothing from what I can hear, the worst of them has left home and gone to Spain where "he has a car and a motorcycle but he never sends us any money!"  Mum, sorry but as I don´t yet have a car or a motorcycle (or for that matter a salary) it might be a while before you get any remittances.

A wasp eating a tarantula ... because who wouldn't be interested in that!

Tips for travelling in Ecuador

   I´ll be honest, Ecuador was not the most fascinating country we have been to.  We rushed through.  Maybe we didn´t give it enough of a chance.  We did however learn some valuable travel lessons.

Accommodation

1.  Avoid staying in rooms without windows.

   We had a very cheap room in Loja, but with no windows and aqua green walls it felt like we were in a psychiatric hospital.  This was compounded when our best attempts at conversational Spanish were met with blank looks and confusion, which was also more common in Ecuador.  After two days in the cell and linguistic isolation outside it the paranoia set in and we had our biggest barny of the trip.  In tru clichéd fashion I cannot remember what started it, so perhaps amnesia was also a symptom.

2.  Cable TV should not influence your choice of hostel

   ... unless you really like CSI, CSI:NY, CSI:Miami, CSI:SVU, Criminal Minds ... etc.

Transit

3.   On the bus avoid the front two rows on the top floor

   These are the seats of death.  Most bus accidents seem to involve rear-ending a semi-trailer and inevitably the front seats at the top end up inside the trailer.

4.   Also avoid the second row from the back

   These are the seats of the bloody thieving sods.  Travelling from Baños to Quito in these seats we found out that someone had taken advantage of the privacy of the back row of seats behind us to get on their tummy, crawl under our seats.  After braving the air quality around my hiking boots the little sod slashed our bag and made off with some trophie: our laptop and Kizzy´s kindle with all the Twilight books downloaded.    If we´d sat at the back this would not have been possible.  If we´d sat further forward someone would have seen him and stepped on his head.  I hope.

5.   Take a nun with you on border crossings

   Leaving Ecuador we got chatting with a sister on her way to visit family in Columbia and shared a taxi across the frontier.  We had speedy service and paid a fifth of the price for the taxi.  It seems that invoking religion never hurts if you think you might be being ripped off.  The phrase "God is watching" has been reportedly used to good effect in this part of the world.

Comfort and safety

6.   If you have the option of hiring gumboots, you probably need them.

   There is a reason they are there.

7.   Showering tips

   "24-hour hot water" means there will probably be hot water at some point in a 24-hour period.  It will probably rely on a mess of dangerous wiring coming out of the shower head.  This is normal.  Our only cause to panic so far was when the shower started sparking and smoking at our hotel in Alausi. 

   As to the travel.  In Peru: Lima is a nice enough capital city with a beautifully sited shopping centre built into the seaward cliffs.  Huanchaco is a nice enough beach town with reasonable surf and great for seafood.  Over the border to Ecuador and Cuenca is beautiful.  Baños has lovely scenery and a fantastic waterfall in the Devil´s cauldron, easily accessible by a 20km bike ride.  Between these two gems is a place called Alausi where you would only ever go to for the experience of the Devil´s Nose train ride with its "hair-raising series of switchbacks".  It´s pricey and not worth staying in Alausi for.  Quito would have been nice but we were a bit traumatised by the theft.  They have really helpful police though: we dealt with a very nice chap called Marco.  The Mitad del Mundo was kitsch and tacky but had the obligatory photo ops on the equator. 

Here are some pictures from along the way ...

How bus travel is for Kizzy with her little legs

How bus travel is for me with my big bones

Why spend £280 when you can spend £60?

   Arequipa was quite possibly the most photogenic city we have been to in our trip and we took full advantage of the sunshine and the Santa Catalina convent during our two days in town.  We also spent a good chunk of time trying to work out which three-day trip to take to the Colca Canyon.  The main question plaguing us was, why spend £280 when you can spend £60?

   The range of options was staggering and they all seemed to offer the same thing.  We ended up with the cheapest tour going and prayed that our bus would turn up the next morning at our designated pick-up time of 3:30am.

   We had not had much luck with buses in Arequipa.  We took a unwanted tour of the seedier suburbs when trying to get into town from the bus station owing to a breakdown in communication between myself and the conductor (the person hanging out the side door of the minivan converted to take 15 passengers).  Our mistake was compounded when Kizzy was assured by the man next to her that this bus was going into the centre of town.  I think neither of them wanted to disappoint us so they told us what we wanted to hear.  

   At 3:30am on the dot a minibus with a loud and frenetic music system pulled up outside our hostel.  Kizzy was dubious.  I was simply glad there was a bus.  At 125 Peruvian new soles per person (about £30) for a three day/2 night guided tour with accommodation and meals I was half expecting the whole thing to be a scam.

   3 hours later, our views on this were converging.  We can now explain why you might pay 3 ½ times the price for this tour:

1. On one tour you leave at 7 in the morning in a comfy bus.  On the other tour you leave at 3:30am in a rattling bus driven by three overgrown children who like to demonstrate their prowess by speeding past overturned lorries on icy roads and driving through mountain tunnels with no lights.    
2. On one tour you have reputedly the best guide in Arequipa making you comfortable for every step of the way.  On the other tour your driver speaks to you once when you board the bus, “you need to vomit you tell me and I stop quick”. 
3. On both tours you get breakfast in Chivay on day one.  One of these breakfasts involves banana juice topped up with boiling water (why? to avoid food poisoning), stale bread and some syrup masquerading as jam.  We have no idea what was in the other breakfast but I bet it was marvellous.

By the time we got to Colca Canyon at about 8am, Kizzy was grumpy that she´d not got a wink of sleep with all the potholes.  I was grateful.  Our driver showed much more concentration when he had the potholes to contend with.  It was around breakfast time that we realized everyone else in Chivay was doing pretty much the same tour as us … except they all had guides.  Even the guys driving our bus weren´t too sure what we were doing there.  “Don´t worry,” they assured us, “someone will know you when we get to the canyon”.  Kizzy looked at me with dread.  We´ve had experience with these type of assurances before.  “We are not getting off this bus until there is someone here who knows us!” she hissed at me. 

   Of all the amazing things, there was someone waiting for us at Cruz del Condor.  Our guide, Angel had come from Arequipa with the three others in our trekking party and he was amazing.  Kizzy and I, and Jannick, Sarah and Jen were immensely fortunate to have such a wonderful guide.  Funny and knowledgeable and really easy going.  We had a fantastic trip and it turns out that the extra £220 we could have paid would only really have gained us 5 hours less excitement (trepidation) and a stonking breakfast on the first morning. 

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

   We were up at four on the final day of our Inca trail trip, our anticipation for Machu Picchu undampened despite the unrelenting rain and the 4am start.  We were treated to our (not at all) light breakfast before joining the cue of trekkers waiting for the final section of trail to open.  All the while remembering Jason in our prayers for his thoughtful and immensely practical gift of sturdy rain ponchos.

   For the first time in four days the rain and cloud were persistent, enclosing the paths and obscuring what I imagine were spectacular views.  Our day brightened when we reached the Sun Gate.  Not that it fulfilled its promise of spectacular first views of Machu Picchu.  No, the Incas would be subject to the consumer protection act if Peru had one.  Both the Sun Gate and the mountain city were in solid white cloud.  As it happened we met up with Jim, who had started the hike with us on day one, before being struck down by a diarrhoea bug on the second morning and being consigned to a nauseating horseback return and three days convalescing in Ollantaytambo.

   Once again a whole group, we proceeded down the trail, the occasional teasing glimpse of Inca architecture enticing us through the cloud.  We arrived in Machu Pichu with the cloud lifting.  Only a little bit but enough to give an atmospheric overview of the site as it began to fill with the day-trippers.  Our guides led us to the prime look-out spot with the postcard views for our photos and we duly obliged, snapping away happily.

   Kiz and I had discussed our photographic differences on numerous occasions throughout the trip.  Kizzy likes to have the photos but finds the process distressing.  In her mind, insisting on “just one more” qualifies as harassment.  Somewhere between the third and fourth photo of the day her co-operation deteriorates and it’s all gone by the fifth. 

I on the other hand, like photos.  I like taking them and I like to be in them.  It is a legacy of the Wendy Gardiner upbringing.  Two weeks after she switched from 35mm film to digital, the local photo shop closed down.  She didn’t just take a lot of photos of us growing up, she was pretty bloody particular about them too.  We used to have Japanese exchange students at our school and after two weeks at our place mum would have them smiling in photos.  This was a big deal.  I was subjected to 20 years of psychological conditioning to co-operate with the person with the camera. 

I only mention all of this to give some context.  To explain why when Jim pointed the camera at Kizzy and me to take the classic Machu Picchu shot and said “take a step to the right”, I did so without hesitation.  And promptly stepped straight off the side of the lookout ledge. 

I dropped like a stone, straight out of shot.  Bloody Jim got such a scare he didn’t even take the photo.  He didn’t grow up with Wendy Gardiner.

On the Inca Trail

   We spent two days in Cusco gearing up for the Inca Trail and getting over my attack of gastro.  Our good intentions for trips to the sites of the Sacred Valley melted away as I focussed on returning to solid foods.   This ambition culminated in a pizza the night before we set out.  A highlight as much for its maker’s theatre in slicing it with a massive meat cleaver as for the taste.

   The next three days were a beautiful parade of mountains, trails, ruins and oh such amazing food.  Both of us – the vegetarian and the carnivore – ate so well that we put on weight with our walking.  We ate the best food we’ve had since leaving London, and possibly for a good deal of time before that.  In hostels further south we have been accustomed to a breakfast of dry bread and jam.  On the Inca Trail our guide apologised for the light breakfast on the final day: fruit juce, tea, coffee, bread, jam, butter, pancakes, fruit and caramel sauce. 

   We could see that the porters were immense beings despite their small stature.  Carrying up to 25kg, they were up before us, set off behind us, finished ahead of us and went to bed after tucking us in.  Any thought I had ever given to running a marathon was sent scurrying off in shame when I heard the record time set for the Inca Trail by a porter in a race a few years back.  Unhampered by his rucksack he covered 42km of trail up and down hills of 1,900m at an altitude entirely above 2,800m in 3 hours and 45 minutes.

   We completed the trail in a more modest time, somewhere around the 19 hour mark over the course of 4 days.  We carried out a sizeable load of over 450 photos and you will find some of them here.