lima, quito, and the worst border crossing in south america

hey folks!

well, it was an eventful 22-hour bus trip to Lima! it should have been 20 hours, but there were manifestaciones (protests) again, so we had to wait for the police to clear the highway so that the bus could pass. when we did eventually pass, we were warned to close all the curtains on the bus because the protesters throw rocks at the passing buses. but no windows were broken, so it was all good.

a guy on our bus got stopped a few weeks earlier on the arequipa-cusco highway, and the bus couldn´t get through at all: so he ended up walking with his backpack for two days until he could find somewhere to catch another bus to cusco. he could have gone back to arequipa, but everyone told him he`d only have to walk two hours to catch another bus, and by the time he realised they were wrong there was no turning back!

(but if that had happened to us there´s no way we would have walked, because it would have been impossible for me. we would have gone back to Ica and waited a few days.)

anyway, Lima was lovely! we stayed in Miraflores, which is the upmarket area of Lima with all kinds of fancy shops and restaurants, shopping centres, cinemas... it looked so classy, and there were stores selling Reebok and Sketchers and Billabong and other such international brands... I actually had a little bit of culture shock for the first couple of days. honestly, even Santiago and Buenos Aires didn´t have the same ¨rich suburb¨ feel, and we´ve been in some pretty basic places for a while now!! I was really wierded out.

I enjoyed Lima though. we stayed there for a week, mainly so that I could see a decent doctor and my knee could have a chance to get better. it´s healed now, hurray! (amazing how fast it did get better after I found a decent doctor and a decent bandage!!) there´s still an ugly-looking scar, but that just ups my hardcore factor I reckon.

we went out one night in Barranco (another suburb of Lima) and met a group of students, originally from Arequipa, who were AWESOME. only the girl, Daniela (who was lovely), spoke English but our Spanish is at enough of a level now that we can have some very basic conversations, and other than that we just had a dance with them. it was a really fun night. I guess you never really have very in-depth conversations in bars anyway so the language barrier´s not such a big deal?

they all added us on facebook afterwards and left heaps of comments on our photos full of spanish slang, almost none of which I understand, which saddens me indeed!

also while we were in Lima, we were eating dinner in the hostel one night and watching over the shoulders of some Peruvians watching the news, and I was (bizarrely) understanding more Spanish than I usually do, and I realised they were talking about a murder : someone had killed someone else, and one of them seemed to be famous, and both were young men, and there was a lot of talk about an apartment? ¨this needs to be cleared up,¨ I thought, and asked the Peruvians to explain. apparently, a famous hairdresser - Marco Antonio - had been murdered a few days earlier by his boyfriend and a few accomplices for his money!! woaaahh crazy stuff. pretty big news in Peru!

anyway, our plan from Lima was to fly up to Bogotá, in Colombia, and head for the Carribean coast. that plan was completely scrapped after we basically spent all day with a travel agent trying to find an affordable way to do it! (the travel agent was lovely: she told us all about her baby son, and gave us a cookie that her mum made, and searched through a million flights for us.) it´s holiday time for Peruvians so flight costs are through the roof: and we just don´t have enough time left to make the cost worth it. plus, we had to buy a flight back to Buenos Aires as well, to get home. ouch!

so we went to Ecuador instead!

we took a 19-hour bus overnight to the northern border of Peru, which left us in Tumbes. from Tumbes, we had to somehow get across the border into ecuador. we´d been warned ahead of time that this border crossing is notorious for fake officials who try to steal your passport, rip-off taxi drivers, ¨money-changers¨ who give out fake US dollar notes, border officials who try to convince you that there is a fee for entry to ecuador (there isn´t), et cetera, and therefore has earned the title of ¨the worst border crossing in South America¨ (no mean feat)!

a note for Mum: nothing we read said the border crossing was actually dangerous. you´re just very likely to lose money over it!

we´d planned to catch a bus with Cifa, who take you across the border on the same bus and leave you in a town about two hours from the border, in Ecuador. but the minute we got off the bus in Tumbes the bus company wouldn´t let us walk down the street to find Cifa´s office, claiming that we had to catch a taxi because it was dangerous to walk around town. I was very skeptical about this, thinking it was more likely that they were working with the taxi drivers, but what can you do in that situation? we had to reassess. (my Lonely Planet was once again useless, containing the wrong address for the Cifa office that had apparently moved years ago.)

anyway, another option presented itself. a girl Lion had been sitting next to on the bus, Anna (who spoke fluent Spanish), was on the verge of outstaying her Peruvian visa and needed to go over the border and re-enter the country to be given a new visa. so she had arranged with the bus company to take a taxi to the border: the taxi driver´s friend would help her with the visa formalities and then take her back to Tumbes. she suggested we come with her: once we´d been through the Peruvian immigration, the driver would take us onto the Ecuadorian immigration and help us find an onward bus to Quito. the price was reasonable, so I figured why not? with their help, the border crossing might work out a little easier.

this probably sounds incredibly dodgy to you, the casual reader (especially if you´re my Mum, or worse, Lion´s mum). Anna did assure us, however, that the taxi drivers frequently worked with Cruz del Sur, the bus company we´d come with from Lima (who are the best - and safest - bus company in Peru). I probably wouldn´t do it again (to be honest the decision was a little rushed), but it did all turn out okay. the taxi driver took us through as planned, and didn´t even rip us off! (incredible!)

Anna, translating from the driver, told us on the way that the border was reknowned for dodgy fake-officials asking to see your passports. so when Lion was accosted by a policeman demanding to see her passport for no apparent reason (he hadn´t asked anyone else) she was understandably reluctant to hand it over. he wasn´t impressed, and displayed his discontent by slamming his fist into his palm and yelling ¨RESPETO!¨ (¨respect me!¨) in the end she had to hand it over and hope for the best because he wouldn´t let her any further into the immigration office. turns out he was a real police officer (how were we supposed to know?!), and it all worked out okay.

then we had to walk over the border between Peru and Ecuador with all our bags and the taxi driver, which is probably the most threatened I´ve felt in South America because the border town was complete madness, with people everywhere.

we dropped our bags and bought a bus ticket at one of the dodgier-looking bus offices I have seen in South America, although apparently they are a major bus company in Ecuador. they were okay in the end, despite the flaking paint and bare concrete and rusting security barriers.

anyway, after dropping our bags we had to catch a different taxi to the Ecuadorian immigration office, about 5km away, to get our entry stamp. we had to pay one US dollar for the taxi and the smallest note I had was a 20, so I was glad our driver was still with us to make the grumbling Ecuadorian driver give us change rather than just taking the whole 20! the Ecuadorian immigration process went smoothly, except for one of the policemen asking me a lot of suspicious questions about our driver, who was still helping us out (reassuring?!)

then we took the taxi back to the border town (the driver left to pick up Anna and take her back to Tumbes - I hope everything worked out okay for her!), and waited there for two and a half hours until it was time to catch the bus. finding vegetarian food for lunch was almost impossible and we were starving, but in the end we went into the cleanest-looking café we could find, disregarded the meaty menu, and asked them to make us an omelette and a cheese sandwich. (I could have eaten meat, of course, but I have had more than enough food poisoning experiences on this trip!!) they looked at us rather oddly, but a very greasy omelette and a cheese sandwich we did, in fact, get (and quite cheaply too)!

the bus trip to quito was pretty fun until sunset. tropical climate wind blowing in through the windows, banana plantations, women in midriff tops and men in wifebeaters (the men were mostly middleaged and potbellied though, not that interesting).

oh, and a big shed with a painting of the world trade centre falling with ¨taliban here¨ painted on the side - i had noooo idea what that was about until Lion googled it and found out that it´s a rather famous (or infamous?) ¨Taliban-themed brothel¨. iiiiiiiinteresting?! here is a photo I stole from someone else´s blog (hobotraveler.com), because we went past too fast to get a snap:

kind of disturbing to come across after that monumental border crossing!!

come 5am, and after a night with no dinner (ugh), we were in Quito and taking a taxi to our hostel. the hostel is lovely, one of my favourites so far, and the staff are really friendly. we´ve booked a five-day tour into the Amazon with them (our reason for coming to Ecuador in the first place). we leave for that tonight, and I am excited!

we went out last night in Quito (in the old town, which is full of police all night on a weekend and is therefore quite safe, although we still took taxis everywhere rather than walking, to be on the safe side). once again we discovered the uselessness of Lonely Planet when their recommended pub was shut down some years ago, and nobody we asked had ever heard of it!

but we met a family on the street - one of whom, a man called Jose, had lived in Sydney for a year and spoke amazingly good English - whilst trying to ask the police for directions, and they showed us the way to the best part of the old town for nightlife. it was a pretty good night in the end, filled with Ecuadorian folk music (much better than Bolivian or Peruvian folk music which is way too panpipe-heavy), mulled wine, tango and salsa and a surprisingly helpful policeman who helped us catch a taxi home. ¨Ecuadorian police : a mixed bag?!¨

coming up next...... THE JUNGLE!!!

jungle trek: an aborted version, including the tale of how a guide is fired

hello folks!

so you have now learnt of caroline´s jungle trek experience, which was very exciting and enjoyable (if you have not read this yet go to the previous two entries). my experience was a little different, unfortunately!

so we bus´ed about four hours to the top of a mountain (about 4000 metres asl). the guide got the bikes off the top of the van and prepped them. we put on our helmets and wooly hats and jumpers and raincoats (for the cold wind) and gloves, and after a quick briefing off we scooted, or rather cycled. the van followed about 100 metres behind us.

we were on a fancy new bitumen road, heading down a mountain, keeping to the right as you`re supposed to on peruvian roads, and keeping away from the steep cliff-face to the left dropping off to a considerable fall were you to go over (no railings). to the right, there was a deep, steep-sided triangular, cement ditch to collect rainfall run-off and/or the frequent rockfalls.

i was daydreaming, scooting down with a smile on my face and thinking of a time i rented a bike in christchurch (i´d completely forgotten about that day). literally about three minutes into the ride i suddenly realised how close my bike wheel was to the ditch at the right. too late!! looking down, i saw the wheel drop slightly into the ditch; i tried to correct it back onto the road but the next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the bitumen a few metres in front of my bike, and a number of body parts hurt. (nothing was broken.)

thirty seconds later i was surrounded by people, and nothing hurt at all. in fact, i felt so good that I wanted to get back on my bike again! (luckily, nobody would let me.)

they helped me sit up, and i could see that my leggings had ripped off both my knees and i´d skinned the right one well good. there was a little blood on my left elbow, and quite a lot of bruising there and on my right knee (though I didn´t realise this til later). i´d ripped my left glove completely in half (though my hand was fine). i scratched my face, too, but not very badly.

one of the guys, John, who was a lovely wouldn´t-hurt-a-fly fellow from Scotland who was very kind to me in the coming days, suggested that he could take a photo of the wound on my knee. I think he was trying to cheer me up. unfortunately for him, i react to stress and pain by becoming a rather unpleasant human being, so i replied with an agressive, ¨NO I DON´T WANT A F***ING PHOTO! WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO, SHOW IT TO MY MOTHER?! I DON´T F***ING THINK SO!!¨ .... everyone laughed, kind of nervously. sorry John. if you ever read this, I apologise!

Lion said by the time she reached the group again everyone told her, ¨yes she seems to be alright but i think she´s just a little pissed off about the whole thing.¨ hahaha. i know i shouldn´t be, but i´m vaguely proud of that. at least they didn´t say i was a crybaby!

the guide Frank turned up and held out some sort of dirty tissue that he proposed to place onto my right knee. I refused adamantly (at least my aggressive state was good for something)! this is when I found out that he did not have ANY kind of first aid kit. not so much as a bandaid! luckily, i had a few clean bandages and a little bottle of iodine in my own bag in the van, which i purchased in australia five months ago (at the time i felt vaguely like a hypochondriac but now i am very glad)!

nobody else in the group had brought a first aid kit (even though a number of them had one at their hostel back in Cusco) because they were told the guide would have one. in fact, out of all the tour groups we met on the way to macchu picchu in the coming days, all of them said that a) their guide told them he´d have a first aid kit and b) he didn´t. I will come back to this later.

anyway, I had to sit in the van the rest of the day watching everyone cycle down the hill. it looked like fun. we stayed in Santa María that night, by which point I established that I could not walk without the help of Lion´s walking stick. this state of affairs continued, despite my hopes, for the next two days, so in fact I did no trekking whatsoever. two colectivos (a kind of shared taxi), a train and a great deal of boring waiting later (thanks to John for lending me a book) I met the others in Aguas Calientes, and caught the offensively expensive 25-minute bus to Macchu Picchu.

Macchu Picchu, I´ve gotta say, was completely worth it. and my leg did feel well enough that day (sort of - i´m paying for it now) to do a 45-min hike to the Sun Gate, where you get a view from above. not quite as exciting as the ladder-mountain Lion climbed, but it probably felt like as much of an achievement!

anyway, there is more to this story. in Santa Teresa, where we were staying the second night, I attempted to find another bandage so I could change the one on my knee, but I couldn´t. all the tiny pharmacies or tiny medical clinic (with one nurse, and an assistant) had available was some coarse guaze that I knew would stick to the wound, so I figured I was better off leaving my bandage on. (if you recall, none of the guides had first aid kits.)

unfortunately my bandage stuck anyway, and I woke up on the morning of day three in considerable pain. my knee hurt so much I was worried that it was infected (it wasn´t, luckily, and still isn´t), but I learnt to my consternation that I was eight hours´ bumpy bus ride from Cusco and the bus wouldn´t leave til that arvo, so I had no choice but to risk the nurse in the tiny medical clinic. I didn´t trust her and she knew it, but to her credit she was very lovely and explained everything she was going to do.

the bandage was so badly adhered to the wound that it took her half an hour to remove it. (one of the more painful experiences of my life, and by this time I was DEFINITELY a crybaby.) she spoke no english, so the guide came with me to translate. he also had to translate, due to her curiousity, the meaning of the word ¨f***¨ that I was yelling periodically. sorry, nurse. well, I´m sure she´s heard worse in Spanish.

this cost me 45 soles, which is not that much money (about 20 australian dollars) but because the guide didn´t have a first aid kit (if he had, I would have been able to change the bandage myself, and also I felt the agency should learn that not taking a first aid kit is NOT okay) I decided when we got back that I wanted the agency to pay me back for it. we´d booked the tour through our hostel, and they agreed, so they gave the ol´ boss a bell.

the boss and the guide were supposed to turn up at the hostel in half an hour to discuss it. Lion and I had the feeling Frank, the guide, was going to get blamed, but I believed (and I still do) that it´s the agency´s responsibility to make sure the guide has all the right safety stuff. so we were planning to stress that belief; but they didn´t turn up. the manager of our hostel, after 45 minutes, gave us the money back himself and told us that the guide had admitted he didn´t have a first aid kit, and that because of that he was going to lose his job.

I doubt they were joking. after I reported them to the hostel they had to do something drastic, otherwise the hostel would have stopped referring their guests to them and they would have lost a lot of work.

the manager of the hostel claimed that the agency gave all their guides first aid kits, and that they just don´t take them on the treks. I don´t believe this at all. there must periodically be accidents: and none of the guides had kits! surely some of them would be responsible enough to take them. and if it is, as they claimed, a sackable offense not to take them, surely they´re not all idiots? but I will never know, I suppose. I feel a little bad for Frank. but the manager claimed he´d find another job with a different agency, so I suppose he´ll be okay.

perhaps I got the message across to the agency about the first aid kits, even if they did choose a scapegoat first. I hope so.

anyway my knee: is very slowly getting better. after five days there´s still a lot of skin missing and I have to use Lion´s stick to walk, so I`ve been told I have to keep it immobilised and elevated for a while. BORING. we`re about to take a 20-hour bus to Lima, so that will be a bit of forced immobilisation at least! I still haven´t been able to find a decent bandage and I had to go through the rip-off of a stuck bandage procedure twice more (not as bad as the first time luckily). I´m hoping to find something decent in Lima.

okay I´m hungry and this is a great deal for you all to read so time to finish! can´t wait for my knee to get better so I can regale you all with more adventures. make sure you read Lion´s posts as well, her stories of that hike are hardcore. LATER, robocop xxx

A Magical Journey: Dia Tres

Hello! Apparently my parents want me to finish writing about the Inca Jungle trek so I guess I will have to. Incidentally you will note that my experience of the Inca Jungle trek was quite different to Ro's. Long story.

Well. After the monkey shenanigan it seemed like nothing would ever be exciting again but I was incorrect. That night over dinner (spaghetti Napolitana for the vegetarians, much like the spaghetti Napolitana we had eaten for lunch that day in fact) our guide Frank told us that we had two options for DAY THREE. The typical trek involved walking for a couple of hours along a road to the hydroelectric station, then another couple of hours along a train line to Aguas Calientes, the small town that acts as a base for all tourists to Macchu Picchu. Our other option was to take a collectivo (small painful bus) to the hydroelectric station before hiking along the train line and arriving at Aguas Calientes around 2 or 3pm. We could then spend the next couple of hours climbing up and down a mountain called Mt. Putucusi in Aguas Calientes to get our first glimpse of Macchu Picchu at sunset, from an angle most people don't get to see.

This was clearly a more enticing option. As we sat on the collectivo it was evident we weren't missing too much. It was dry and dusty and not overly jungly and if you don't think "jungly" is a word then I suggest you consult the Scrabble dictionary where you will find it along with "junglier" and "jungliest." The walk along the railroad was nice, though. A lot junglier, though not the jungliest place we saw.

Eeeeeeeeeentonces we got to Aguas Calientes and dumped our backpacks in the hostel and got READY TO RUMBLE. I try not to swear in this blog since my mum once told me she read it to my nana but just imagine I am about to swear now. HOLY SNOOT it was a tough climb. It was really really tough. It started out with some steep stairs. Okay, we thought, this is not so bad. We are tough and can handle it. There were only four of us by that stage, excluding our guide, and we had been powering along the railroad like nobody's business, so we thought we were pretty intense.

One thing about Mt. Putucusi (this means "Happy Mountain" in Quechua, a fact that I find simultaneously pleasing and untruthful) that nobody told me is that the path includes seven vertical ladders with steep gaps between the thick wooden rungs. They also failed to inform me that apparently over seventy-five percent of people who begin the climb decide to turn back once they hit the first of the ladders. Actually I am glad I didn't know this. I assumed I was just being a big pansy. It wasn't the scariness of the ladders that scared me, you understand, but my general unfitness. I haven't been jogging in South America, you know. So once I was halfway up the first of the ladders I thought to myself "Holy snoot, this is probably going to kill me, but I am going to have to continue because it will hold everyone up if I slow down." The longest of the ladders is over 100 feet.

I recommend you click here to see a picture of the nasty thing.

Our guide Frank scampered up there like he did it on a weekly basis, which of course he did. We took probably an hour and a half to get up there as a group, which actually wasn't too bad, although it didn't feel brilliant after seeing Frank rocket up like a sherpa. The vertical wooden ladders stopped after about 45 minutes, but the climb along the Inca trail (not the Inca Trail(tm), but one of many Inca trails) was still steep and vicious with huge crumbly steps and loose rocks. We were simultaneously discouraged and encouraged by passing about ten people from another tour group, the only other people we saw on the mountain, who each invariably told us we were "almost there" and it was "worth it" and a splendid view of Macchu Picchu was "just around the corner" and gave us wildly different estimates of the time required to make the summit (two minutes; fifteen minutes; eight minutes). But when we got there... ahhh. We really had been almost there, and now we were there. And it was worth it.

It actually made my eyes water a little, the combination of exhaustion and thrill. From where we stood we couldn't see a single tourist. Just beautiful expansive terraces sprawled across the side of the mountain, and Huayna Picchu, the mountain that you see in every picture of the ruins. We were so excited to have made it that we were jumping around and whooping and high fiving and just exhaling with pleasure at the sight. I felt like an Inca.

On that note I'm going to leave off for now. I'd like to write more but I have places to be. Tonight we get on a bus to Lima, a real twenty-four hour mare. ("Mare" is a really ridiculous phrase we learnt from Rosie and Anna, our English parters-in-crime from Bariloche and beyond. It means "nightmare" and I don't really know why I just decided to use it.) We're indulging in Cama mode, though, because we've trod much of the terrain before and it's hideous. Cama mode means your seat goes back really far and is nice and wide and sometimes made of leather. They often give you wine and whiskey before bed. Probably not in Peru though. You can also get Semi-cama, which is tolerable, and Classico, which means it goes back just a tiny smidgen and is probably a bit like being in hell. Semi-cama is standard. In Cama mode they show Slumdog Millionaire and in Classico they show films that are written by, directed by and starring Nicholas Cage. In Semi-cama it can go either way.

(When we were fledglings, we took the 32-hour trip on deadly boring Ruta 40 from El Chalten to Bariloche in CLASSICO mode. We had no idea what we were missing out on. It wasn't even that bad a trip, but you wouldn't believe how much mileage we've got out of this story. Whenever anyone tells us about their nightmare bus trips we can crap all over them.)

So I suppose I will finish this tale of wonder later. I'm more likely to remember if you pester me so if you want to hear how it ends then shoot me an email.

Love love love
Lion

A Magical Journey: Dia Uno y Dos

I am officially an intense person!

That is correct. Last night I successfully completed the Inca Jungle trek. Which isn't necessarily the most intense trek in its own right, but we supplemented it a bit to make it more intense.

The first day was MOUNTAIN BIKING. I am not really a mountain biking sort of person, to be honest, but I was still pretty excited. We took a long and winding road up a mountain; definitely the naked version, there was no soothing Spector effect at work. That's a Beatles reference for all you non-fans. What I am trying to say is that it was a very uncomfortable and bumpy bus journey that made me quite nauseous. So I was quite relieved when we started biking.

We started out on the road. It was all downhill and the road was lovely and smooth but it was kind of spooky, because there were rather a lot of hairpin bends and such. I ride my bike in Perth quite a lot but generally I do not have the opportunity of falling off a cliff so this was a bit more frightening. Later we found out that a girl died on one of these bikes in February. She was hit by a truck coming around a corner. I don't think she was with our company though. The road was beautiful, anyway. It was freezing at first, with cold cold winds coming from the mountains, but after an hour of riding you could feel the first hot breaths from the jungle rising up to the road. So it was kind of odd, alternating between going "Ooh that's a bit chilly" and "Ahhh well now that is just lovely".

We rode like that for a couple of hours but then it was time for some hella intense biking! The scenery changed from alpine to JUNGLE and the road switched from asphault to bumpy old rocks that jolted you around like nobody's business. I was kind of spooked, but actually I found it much less scary than the road section. Reason being that there were no longer the huge drops from the side of the road, and the hairpin bends lessened just a little. Also the cars had to go slower. So after clutching the brakes desperately for the first two hour, I finally CUT LOOSE. Man, was I awesome! Barrelling all over the shop like a ROCKET with my cycling gloves making me look like someone incredibly tough.

We stayed at hostels the whole time, which was sort of nice and sort of disappointing. Tents are more intense.

Okay! I hope you are not too intensed-out because it is time for me to tell you about DAY TWO. This was the first day of hiking! Actually it was a pretty chill day. We hiked along a road for a bit. Then we hiked up a hill, which was sweaty work in the hot ol' jungle but fairly manageable, and then we hiked downhill. There is not much else I can tell you about the hiking so instead I will tell you about the CASA DEL MONKEYS.

We stopped at a great little hut high in the jungle for a rest and to buy snacks, if you wanted. It had been a steep old climb up until there so we were happy for the rest and were reclining on the ground with another tour group when we saw an odd creature come galumphing up to us, looking exactly like a cross between a beaver and a wombat. He leapt onto a wooden stump and seized hold of a waterbottle full of purple liquid in his little paws. Then he stood on his hind legs and poured it into his little buck-toothed mouth. I still have no idea what type of animal he was.

I noticed that the other tour group was looking at something and wandered over and there was a MONKEY! He was tied to a tree on a sort of bungee cord, so that he could scrabble up the wall and fling himself between trees. He didn't really show much interest in the tourists, but there was a cute American girl patting him when he came close and feeding him banana and asking people to take pictures of her with the monkey and I watched her primate progress with jealousy. But then a sweet little kitten came up to me and sat in my lap so I happily patted it and didn't mind too much about the monkey.

Then the tour group got bored and wandered away to lie in the hammocks, so I wandered down to watch the monkey in action. He flung himself about the trees for a bit and scrabbled for food. Then he started glancing at me with those big funny disconcertingly human eyes, then flung himself about a bit more. Then he crawled onto a rock near me. Cautiously I stretched out my arm a little closer to him. I thought he would probably try to bite me, but I had my rabies shots and besides he was the family's monkey and I have incredible reflexes (not really though). Instead of biting me, though, he grabbed my arm and wrapped his arms around it, like he was hugging it, and pressed his face to it gently, almost like he was kissing it.

I was kind of ecstatic and sat there a while longer, watching him wander off and jump around some more. After a while the señora who lived at the house came up to him and removed the bungee cord, so the monkey was free to move around where he liked. At first I had thought the cord was so he couldn't escape and run away, but actually I think it was just so he didn't crawl though the tourist's bags and steal things (I saw him trying this). The monkey came straight up to me, hugged my arm again and then crawled into my lap. He then stayed there for the next ten minutes, sometimes scrabbling for food and sometimes flopping relaxedly. Ohhhhh he was so great! He let me scratch and pat him and he was so sweet and soft and small I thought I was in love.

Our tour guide Frank called us all together and told us it was time to move on, and by that stage the monkey (Marty I believe he was called. Or perhaps Ma-Ti, like in Captain Planet) hopped his way out of my lap. The señora picked him up and picked up one of his paws to make him wave goodbye to me. "Ciao, Señorita!" she said. "Ciao, amigo!" I said to the monkey, and reached out an arm to wave. But he grabbed it and hugged it again and then climbed on my shoulder and nuzzled into my neck. Everyone laughed indulgently and the woman went to gently remove him and he curled his tail around my arm to make it harder for her to pull him off. Unfortunately she eventually succeeded and we were at last to be parted. But I guess that what I am trying to say is: Mark, it is over between us. I am sorry. But I have met someone else.

More details of the journey to Macchu Picchu coming soon! Unless I get lazy and can't be bothered! Quite possible.

Love love love
Lion