Continued from Part 2 of 3 above!
When I reach the village of Chinchero, near Cusco, I'm dismayed to find that to even look around the non-Inca village, I must buy a tourist ticket. This is also expensive but does at least includes numerous sites and museums. Even so, my first reaction is to turn around and I start walking to the bike, but once I reach it I also reach the conclusion that if I don't buy a ticket, I won't be seeing anything. I know it's not really my thing, but I might kick myself if I don't see anything, but it's a lot of money. I sit on a bench to think about it long and hard.
Inside Chinchero is the village church, though this is Colonial Spanish from the early 1600s. Inside the church it is beautifully decorated, painted from bottom to top with green and reds and faces, and as well a hodgepodge of frescoes and mini-altars and the main altar filling the end with garish fake gold. As no photos are allowed inside I stare at the walls with concentration willing my brain to remember....but it's fairly useless.
This is taken from
http://www.marklauri.com
I also meet Sonya, a weaver finishing off a two month project, a table piece that she might sell for $300, though she says an exporter comes around the village collecting pieces every Sunday and so she'll sell this one to them. Sonya was a lovely woman, despite the heavy flow of tourists and my explaining I couldn't buy anything. I watch her as we chat, threading the needle through threads fixed for tension to a metal gate, twisting a piece of wood, sliding a collar of wool and twisting the threads to finish off the border, an intricate coloured eye of eight or so threads, itself taking two days.
Sonya's hands at work.
Inca stonework at Saksaywaman
Soon though, too soon, I am bored of Inca, bored of rocks and regretting buying the ticket a little, especially as my visa for Peru is running out. I visit many other sites included on the ticket, going through the motions because I've paid, and then the museums in Cusco which are poor as well, with more Spanish Catholic art than Inca artefacts. Still, the return to Cusco gives me a chance to go to the customs office in the hope of extending my vehicle permit, confirming only what I already know.
“So I have to leave the country?”
“Yes. It is the only way.”
"How long do I have to stay outside the country?"
"Ah. The law does not say this."
"And you can't just give me a new paper here? Because I can get a new visa for another 90 days here in Cusco."
"No, this is not possible. The law says that vehicle permits cannot be extended."
“Okay, but I don't have to have an extension, is it possible to have a new one?” though it seems my Spanish is a bit poor here, and to clarify I say, “and throw this one in the bin?”
“No, you must go to the border. The nearest point is.....”
Miles away. But at the very least, commendable behaviour of the official. So I camped overlooking Cusco, watching the planes come in and go out, and then set off towards Puno, Laguna Titicaca and the border.
Camp over Cusco
I feel sick. I actually feel a bit like an accidental arsonist might feel after burning down his best friend's house...with his kids in it, post hence, a man with a secret. A post coital rapist with a conscience, bit strong I know, but it's bad. Things are bad. "Rapist" is a word on my mind. Rules, too. I'm thinking about breaking rules. My rules. The horror! The horror! It's not that bad. But the stumps of teeth, the finger nails like a corpse's black and yellow and ridged and long, the rheumy eyes, the desperation. I can't possibly break the rule, I can't hand out money. No. Absolutely not. That would be bad, very bad, terrible, you know that! But she was poor. No, she was beyond poor...where are the charities now...? No, where are the neighbours! We don't need charities. But....I have fruit, I can give her that at least. But it's nothing, it won't help....But better than nothing....I make a u-turn and race back. Is she eating grass? I hand over the fruits I have and she cradles them lovingly in her arms. She speaks, I wonder what she is saying? I only stopped to take a photo of the house but then I saw her. Charities.
The lady...all because of a picture
I ride on and for the rest of the day wonder if I'm wrong and I
should give money to the people I meet. I'm always telling people they should help their neighbours, their communities, rather than work with charities. Are my neighbours therefore, the people I meet? But I also know that there are reasons why people are poor. And much of the time I don't really understand these problems, or the people they involve. I've gained the idea that charities are, generally speaking, not very good (apologies to my friend Tali and many people besides) and I spend all day wondering if my opinion is merely conjecture. Or, if perhaps with my knowledge, if there actually is any, I could actually help the charities to really help the people. But I probably can't. It's a big job. It's a tough job. What a job! And actually, I usually always decide that it is quite simply a case of overpopulation.
Then, at lunch I meet people living in the exact same environment, in clean clothes, riding motorcycles purchased with money from crops and cattle, happy people, off to a wedding, lovely shining happy people. I was invited to the wedding and was just on my way when another gent arrives and tells me that “Oh, no. That's a waste of a time, it's not until tonight.” So that I could hardly follow him, as essetially he'd just univited me.
So I pushed on towards Cusco, stopping in Lampa a lovely little village of red mud and large Gothic church that wreaked of pee. Then to lake Titicaca, a popular tourist spot for it's big (8372km2), high (3812m) and pretty deep (281m) making it one of the highest lakes in the world that you can float a big boat on. I saw no big boats, but I saw an awful lot of beautifully deep blue water, and as well on the Capachica Peninsula, the lovely hats of the Lachon peoples, hats that look like drying and curling up old pizzas with giant coloured baubles. The people wearing them though were equally unsavoury and unvaried in their response to me, laughing and mocking all the while, hysterically in my face. This treatment has actually been common outside the cities in Peru and, whilst I try and give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are not really being spiteful, but I just get annoyed, my doubts were small, tiny and shrinking all the while. Because of the recent treatment in Peru, I'd cut my hair, laundered, trimmed the beard and polished my boots – often the subject of mirth – but, to no effect. I often find that this treatment will vary from one village to the next, only several kilometres, so I always try to forget the past, and enter a new place with an open mind. But here it was incorrigible and that night my diary was deeply etched with scrawlings in block capitals, referring to the STUPID EFFING MONKEY LIKE GRINS and laughs that drove me to astonishing and a shaming amounts of anger.
I've been asking people why this is, including the monkeys, but they only laugh all the more. From others it seems simply that I'm white in place where there are perhaps no white people. I've been travelling quite a long while now but have never quite experienced this amount of ridicule, even in places deep in Africa where it was obvious that I was the first white person in at least a while to pass through, or one of very few to visit there. Here in Titicaca though, surely no excuses as it's a tourist hotspot.
My mood presented itself ahead by way of a thin hanging funeral veil of rain falling from a murderous black sky. These veils, a strange phenomenon, a little like slicing the taught underbelly of some huge grey beast that bleeds ink, sinking into the atmosphere as if in water, and yet never quite reaching the ground, diluted. The thin veil ahead appears razor-thin so that I'll pass straight through within seconds, and be safely into the sun clearly visible beyond. But, as the rain starts to hit this isn't the case, seconds turn to minutes, though I try desperately to keep going, to push through,
I saw the sun, I know it's there, just keep going! The smell of grass comes bursting out then, the sweetest most lovely smell, and then onions so powerful. But then nothing. Nothing but wet. Wet and cold. I realise that the blue sky I had glimpsed earlier has long gone and when finally I turn around it isn't one small curtain but a huge draping sheet that wraps me in its cold damp. Soaked through I search desperately for a camp spot, on and on I go trying every half-chance I see until eventually I find an old mine where I can tuck away, just out of sight. I race to get the tent up in an effort to keep it dry. Futile. May as well have put the tea on. Then, in the rain, take off all my clothes which I pile up into a sodden heap inside the porch and get in the tent. I'm shivering badly and rush to put on what dry clothes I have to get ready for a cold and thunderous night. As the hot tea boils, I pray that the morning will be sunny so that I can dry my riding gear, otherwise riding away at over 4000m is going to be frankly horrid.
And frankly horrid it is. Well, actually, when I wake, not too bad, cloudy and grey in preparation. I decide to get away early before there's any chance of the more common, afternoon rain.
Getting ready for another drubbing
Over the border in Bolivia the officials are friendly, but tell me that I have to spend a minimum of 24hrs in Bolivia. I don't really want to do this as that also means I have to import my bike, change money and sit and camp over the border. The stamps hover over the passport for an excruciating time though eventually they do give me the two seals I need, "as friends.” he says, adding “But, if you're not back here in one month, I'm coming to Peru to get you!" I wondered if their procrastinating was in an attempt to get me to pay a bribe, but as well I think that genuinely they just want me to visit their country. Back at the bike and the Bolivian customs official beckons me into his office. People who say "you can't judge a book..." well, you can for when I get inside the office and see the man, I know I'm in trouble. I wonder what my face says about me? His face tells me he is a bad person.
"Vehicle Papers."
"Oh no...I'm going to Peru."
"OK, Temporary [Bolivian] paper."
"No, I mean, I
came from Peru, I just needed the passport stamp....now I'm going back."
"But your motorcycle is on Bolivian soil."
Ah. Fiddle sticks indeed. I go to the window to look where my bike is, I know where it is, it's just there, it's in Bolivia, I know it, I rode it there, and wonder why I'm performing these theatrics, but at least it gives me time to think without looking at the bad face and to come up with a strategy.
"Umm...sorry." (nice strategy).
"Peruvian temporary vehicle permit."
"Well...I don't have it! I just gave it back, I've left the country after all."
"Then you have a problem. (yeah, it's you!) You should have left the bike in Peru and walked over."
"Wait, give me a second. I might have a receipt." When I go to the bike I find I do, by some fortitude have the old paper, but I'm still certain he is about to diddle me so when I go back into the office, I do so with renewed avowal.
"Sorry," I say, "I really didn't think it was a problem. I just, well I just rode without thinking. I didn't know. I wasn't thinking. Here." I hand him the paper, which he scans over before asking,
"How much did you pay?" He is of course referring to bribing the immigration officers. His voice is different now though, more human, his face too, and I realise I'm free.
"Nothing!" I say, snatching the paper from across the desk and with a wry smile add "
that would be corruption!"
(For those interested, in hindsight, it would be wiser to get your visa extended at the immigration offices all around Peru and only exit the bike at the border, thus negating any need to visit the Bolivian (or other) outpost. The bike can be renewed indefinitely, but Brits at least have only 183 days per year allowance in Peru.)
Less than two minutes at the Peruvian border and I'm away, now with a slight weight off my mind with regards time limits, though one weight added by way of the customs official, I fear he'll give me trouble when I return to enter Bolivia. But that thought soon vanishes along with the grey cloud, a new curtain raising, and I too, up and away from Titicaca lake towards Moquegua. Instantly my mood is quite different from that at the lake, a beautiful trail and few people to spoil it, like getting away from a really bad party full of people you don't like. Passing through fields of tall wind-cut rock fingers towering over the small thatch homes on my way to the fabulous salty lake, Loriscota. A brilliant trail, and a beautiful high lake is Loriscota, surrounded by distant volcanoes and inhabited by a multitude of bird-life, the big beaked flamingos a really special highlight.
Flamingoes at Laguna Loriscota
The great route continued from Moquegua. Dropping again in altitude through fantastic desert canyons, with little traffic and easy camping having only yapping foxes
for companions. This led to the colonial city of Arequipa, which has
its splendid backdrop of volcanoes Misti and Chachani. A nice but busy
– as always – city.
The road to Arequipa
Santa Marta church in Arequipa, Volcan Misti in the background
After the recent rains I'd experienced in Titicaca I was fearful of the arriving rainy season, especially with all of Bolivia yet to see at much the same latitudes as Peru. With this in mind I decide I must be quick on the final trails in Peru, only a one loop left now; but one that looks formidable on the map, taking me to Colca Canyon, Cotahuasi Canyon and the Valley of Volcanoes.
But things start badly when I reach Lluta. I shouldn't have reached Lluta. But I have and must consider the fact that in taking the wrong trail to Colca Canyon, I've just lost another day . It's a long way to return, too long, but anyway the trail is stunningly stark and wild, the few people friendly, asking me to “take a photito!” and too, I can still reach Colca from the end of this trail.
I spend a lot of the ride trying to read the landscape in accordance with the map, trying to ascertain if the tall mountain that is to my right is the one that should be on my left. If it is, then I
am on the right trail and the map is wrong! The rest of the time I spend looking at large birds of prey, proud grey eagles and then up above, a condor. I see the condor swoop down and land to nestle in a hollow of grass. I get off the bike and go skulking over, camera fixed and ready. When I get to the lip, within 5-10m, the condor takes flight and with it my motor-functions. I stand there agape as it KAW KAW KAW KAW!s loudly away, spreading it's huge wings and dropping off into the valley. No photos then....but 'ere's an eagle who came screaming torpedo like past my tent one morning having spotted a tasty mouse 3000m below in the canyon....perhaps.
Heeerre, mousy, mousy, mousy....
I stop for fuel in Chivay, a small town nestled at the head of Colca Canyon from where I hope to back-track essentially, but on the correct trail, over Colca Canyon.
“It's that way.” says the pump attendant.
His face and pouting mouth seem to be pointing awfully close to where I've just come from....
"What....that one just there?"
"Si."
"That one I just came from?"
"Uhh, si."
"That goes to Lluta?"
"Si."
"And Pedregal?"
"Si."
And so I come to realise that I have just passed the second deepest canyon in the whole wide world and hardly noticed....oops. Still the trail was no hardship and the condor was good and I have Cotahuasi to come, which is the deepest canyon in the whole wide world! It's taken much longer than expected to arrive, and I'm still worried about time, especially having seemingly wasted a large portion of it in some invisible canyon. But, in the morning I decide that “I'll go, but must go really quick...no reading!”
Fool.
Time limits are the travellers curse...ask Mr.Magregor.
So I raced off, if one can call it that, for the trail is steep and Rodney is running very poorly, worse even than normal. Any sort of uphill gradient means 1st gear and flat roads are 2nd or, if I can get a little bit of a downhill spurt, 3rd. Tedious. I never remember feeling this frustrated on Rudolf.
As is common in Peru, almost any dirt trail is breathtaking and here it is the wide-open spaces amongst the mountains that amaze, riding along arrow-straight roads through the wide-open plains where graze wild horses and fluffy plump lamas.
Sppppaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
These wide-open spaces give the impression that the very end of a cloud is attainable, like a rainbow whose end you can see in a similar open space. And these grey clouds are regrouping, building, moving in and tightening their grip. A tiny archway sits on the horizon, not a rainbow, but a doorway leading clearly out from under and beyond this brewing storm, to heaven, to sunshine. I push Rodney as hard as I can, downhill now, transfixed on this archway and praying that the trail
will lead me there, and not steer me off towards the misery. The road turns one way....but then, thank God veers back again...then another...but gratefully again returning me to put the arch within sight once more! But then, the horror! the horror! as the road turns ninety-degrees, pointing me straight towards the misery. I've tried my best to ignore it and now, staring it in the face, it looks seven shades darker, a horrid face, ugly, worse than any pizza-hat wearers, worse than the grinning monkeys, worse than the customs official...oh but I'd pay a bribe now! I know what's to come, the sky so black now, so black, blacker than a black man's big black bumhole and I fear, I fear. I fear the bumhole.
Almost crying now, but then, then, a blurry vision, a mirage? I see something, and then I hit it, a deep swinging berm that flicks me fast around and away...back towards the arch! And now, look! Look! I can see the whole trail ahead, running straight and true, all the way up to the horizon and through my gateway...a bit of Frank Sinatra seems appropriate and I sing, "Heaven,
I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak!"
Archway to Heaven, though seen from the good end.
From the pleasant village of Andagua, the road drops down and down, into the black, black hell of the Valley of the Volcanoes. Surrounded both high and low by volcanoes, winding and twisting down and down, between and amongst towering piles and ridges of cool black and rusty brown lava. Vast, vast quantities in a vast expanse and, popping up amongst the detritus, some of the eighty tall cones of dead volcanoes.
Valley of the Volcanoes
But then time was pressing, and it presses now too as I sit at the computer! For this blog is epic in proportions....and I hope in trials, trails and tribulations....ride on, write on, ride on! And I'm running out of energy, my mind is a dull block, no words, no poetry there, need fuel, some of those biscuits perhaps....but then, not now, not here, but there, in the valley, with the volcanoes, I needed petrol....the tank was again dry, and only 305km (60mpg!). Luckily the dirty dregs in the stove's fuel-bottle are just enough to get me back to Andagua, where I buy two gallons from the village shop for $16.00, and not the small kind.
The steep pass that leads rising away from Andagua
Rodney JUST made it....and what a view.
"What you know it?" I ask.
"Yes, of course! The Queen, the pound, Manchester, London, the wars with France."
"No with Germany."
"Don't you know history?"
"Yeah, well, some of it...France were our friends!"
"NO! Come on! Nelson...?"
"Ohhh yeah, him. Who was the other fellow?"
"When the Spanish came, you English were here too."
"Really?"
"Pirates! You bought the Pound with you too, very strong! A very strong country!"
"I'm related to Blackbeard you know."
"Then Germans and the Russians!"
"What, pirates?!"
"NOOOO! In the World War."
"Ohhh, I'm following...."
"Hitler! Terrible! He wanted to take over the world."
"Almost managed to as well...you could argue he was brilliant."
"Oh no, terrible man, killing the Jews...."
At this point the old man goes off into a little bit of a monologue that I struggle to follow. He spoke loudly and with much animation, so that passers by appeared to think that
I was Hitler getting a good telling off for my rather hideous behaviour!
"So, how long to Cotahuasi?" I ask, when eventually the opportunity presents itself.
"Oooh, about seven hours."
"Plus a bit more for the canyon I think."
"Hour an a half to...(a town I didn't recognise)"
"Okay, great, thanks! Too far I think, I'm bit worried about the rain."
"Oh, it won't rain today."
"Well, I assume it never rains here."
"Gets a bit windy sometimes."
"Anyway, I must go! Long way to go! Nice talking with you."
"You won't forget me, will you?"
"Doubt it, hard to find anyone with something to say. Until later."
"Hope it goes well!"
And so I turned back to Arequipa, leaving Cotahuasi Canyon for another day, another trip, another lifetime.
Riding the bulldust back to Arequipa
Who knows what came before? Or what will come later? Here and then gone. Though never really there at all. Time is unkind. This way. Or that way. Unkind is time. Those grains of wisdom slipping down, through the narrow space, until the last grain drops...but where are they? Even the hour glass lies. Bottomless. The black hole of our time. Leaving nothing behind.
I'd like to leave something behind, I think to myself as I sit looking at these rocks, maybe just a grain or two. I wonder who sat here before me, in this scorched field of boulders? I try to picture them, three of them, children with chocolate skin and eyes like black-holes. They wear woven loin clothes decorated colourfully with the same animals that they are carving into the rock, these rocks, condors, eagles, fish, pumas, camels and snakes....people too; shepherds and hunters and sad crying dancers, the moon and the sun.
The sun is pure searing heat, penetrating all corners, leaving no shade and no plants either, cream and white hot rock. I hop from rock to rock, hundreds of them, thousands maybe, brushing away sand to reveal more petroglyphs, what a place! Down below, the river runs on and on, next to a road that is not mine.
I wonder what I will leave.
The very brilliant Toro Muerto
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)...it is actually just a really nice route regardless of it's deadly fame!
)
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