Backpacking

Sawwatdee crap, or hello to those who don’t speak Thai. We’re here in Thailand and having a great time.

Arriving in Bangkok after the home comforts of Oz and NZ could be likened to being hit in the face with a brick. It was a real shock. Bangkok is non-stop madness in full swing; millions of people, smog, traffic jams, honking horns, beggars next to Ferraris and monks next to millionaires. It’s the kind of place you want to get out of as soon as you arrive because of the total overload, but also a place that grows on you and when you return it doesn’t seem half as bad.

Within 30 minutes of the first day there we closely avoided two scams, first we got chatting to a man on the street who asked us if we needed any help with directions. He chatted to us, seemed very genuine and said we should get a tuk tuk as today was a special day and that the King of Thailand was discounting petrol for all drivers to encourage tourism and that we could get around for 40p to as many temples in the city as we wanted. It sounded interesting, but we wanted to get breakfast (food rules, ok) and decided to give it a miss. After breakfast a tout comes to chat to us, he tells us again “it’s a special day, get to the temples for 20 baht”, sounds good but no thanks, we’re ok for the moment. We go to another street and meet yet another man, he again seems very friendly and chats to us about Bangkok life, shows us a photo of his children and his pet dog Scrappy, what a nice man we think, little did we know he’d probably kidnapped the children and dog for a photo session. He said once again it was a special day and that today was the only day of the year when women are allowed into the Black Buddha Temple. We buckle and agree to take the tuk tuk to this one special temple and also ask him to take us to the main tourist information office so we can get some more information. He drops us off at what we think is the official tourism place, it’s full of farangs (foreign ATMs as I think we are known in Bangkok) and we sit down to ask for a price to get to the nearby island. After long negotiations as she attempts to plan our next 4 months schedule down to the day we finally convince her we just want one bus journey and she quotes us 1300 baht to get there, we had seen it for 250 baht on the street near ours so question this and she got angry and started shouting about how this is impossible and that we have obviously been looking at un-reputable companies, and that of course we must book with her right now or all the tickets in the whole of South East Asia will be booked up. We politely get up and leave much to her disgust and the driver, all full of smiles and chat, takes us to the black Buddha temple and we have a look around. After we get back in the tuk tuk and he starts his spiel, to get the 40p ride all day we have to stop off at various tailors and jewellers along the way. We said we didn’t want to and offered him more money just to take us where we wanted to go, but he was insistent. After some time debating he exploded and told us to get out of his tuk tuk and left us in the middle of nowhere. Charming. We spoke to another couple later and they went to these tailors etc and got hassled and were shouted at when they refused to buy anything so I’m glad we left then! So, my first impressions of Bangkok and of Thai people that day weren’t that good. The problem in Bangkok seems to be this, if you are nice to people then there’s a big chance that they’ll take you for a ride, but at the same time you don’t want to be rude to people and it would be nice to be able to chat to locals and find out stuff without being suspicious. Being in Bangkok seems to have a hardening effect on you within hours though and the thought of engaging in conversation with random “friendly” people doesn’t even occur to me now! Luckily we’ve found the countryside much more genuine and we can have good chats to people without them trying to extract our livers, make us a silk suit or sell us into slavery.

The city was stiflingly hot and we spent the afternoon in a local mall and watching a film in an ice cold cinema, not very cultural but we needed to escape the madness. Armed with the knowledge that my £20 budget would now buy me more than a beer and a sandwich (hurrah!) we went on a mini shopping spree. This is what I got for my budget, awesome!

The following day we visited one of the main temples in the city, Wat Pho. We were propositioned by several tuk tuk drivers with “I’ll take you for 20 baht, today is a special day sir”, but wisely decided to avoid them and get a ride with one who charged a normal price and actually took us where we wanted to go. The temple was amazing and massive, it dates back to the 16th century and houses a lazy Buddha (not sure that’s the official name) which is 15 metres high and 46 metres long. It was stunning to walk around and we made our way around admiring the spires, statues and buildings all adorned in diamonds and coloured glass. Compared to the Korean temples it was very Las Vegas and not at all down to earth, but both are appealing in their own different ways.

Afterward we visited an enormous market with far too many stalls, including rabbits in dresses and dogs in dungarees. This market is visited by 200,000 people a day and was way too hot so we escaped before we imploded on the spot.

After a couple of days in Bangkok we’d had enough and decided to escape for a paradise beach island to do some snorkelling, lying around on beaches and drinking cool beers whilst the sun beat down on us. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out like that. Koh Chang, or Elephant Island was being hit with the aftermath of the Philippines monsoon and it rained, and rained and rained a little more to make sure that we had noticed. We spent our days peeking out of beach hut, drinking with other travellers and playing cards, not very beach like activities but fun all the same.
So back we retreated from Rain Island to the insane asylum of Bangkok once again. We decided to go and visit a museum of forensics which sounded interesting. We dodged the persistent tuk tuk drivers and caught a bus as advised, it stopped near a bridge and the driver told us to get off. We had no idea where we were and attempted to ask a few people, who couldn’t speak any English. We knew it was near a railway station so tried making choo choo noises whilst moving our arms in the old fashioned locomotive train movement. As they have electric trains in Thailand this was totally lost on them and they directed us in any direction away from them discounting us as mentally ill. Maybe they pointed towards the nearest mental hospital, we will never know. We walked in the suggested direction for ages and didn’t see anything, we asked another man who looked worried and pointed back in the direction we had just come from and said in broken English to get the 146 bus. For confirmation we then attempted to ask another lady who pointed in another direction and told us to get the number 20 bus. We gave up after ages of wandering around and got a taxi, which drove us for 30 minutes to the right location over the other side of Bangkok! It’s good to be back in a country where even doing the simplest of things is a challenge! The museum was located inside a hospital and quite hard to find, but after making a few enquiries surrounded by old women in pushchairs and drips we found it. We entered and were greeted by a charming set of photos of people who had died in various horrendous ways, including light aeroplane crash, suicide by chopping off a hand (who does that?!), smashed bottle to the neck, shotgun, and many more, the finale was a man who had been blown up by a hand grenade. I say a man but I couldn’t be sure, there wasn’t all that much left. By this time I was feeling more than a little queasy but ventured around a corner to see photos of the tsunami victims and a real life toddler in a jar who had drowned (he didnt drown in the jar, he was just pickled in it). On seeing this I left before I puked on the floor and looked around the parasitology museum next door, which to be honest wasn’t much better. You should have seen the size of the testicle of a man infected with elephantitus, it was bigger than my torso. Christy joined me later and regaled tales of a small boy who had unintentionally cooked himself inside a clay pot. I decided not to ever join the fire brigade, police or do any job where I see dead people, and also not to play with grenades or ever put myself into a clay pot in an oven, even if it is the only hide and seek location available. Brutally aware of all the horrible ways we could die or be infected by parasites which would change our genitals into concrete we stepped out into the real world making sure to look left and right before crossing the road. We found out there was a ferry literally seconds away which took us back to opposite our hotel in under 5 minutes. It seems we really did take the scenic route on the way there!

We then left Bangkok and headed to Kanchanaburi, which is the home of the bridge over the river Kwai. It’s a nice town surrounded by mountains and lush green vegetation. We went to several war museums to read about the POW’s, the bridge and the railway and then went to see the bridge itself. Although it wasn’t the original bridge, which was bombed by the Americans months after it was built, it was still moving to see it and to think how much work and how many lives had been lost spanning the river.

The next day we hired a couple of mopeds and set off on a mini adventure to explore the surrounding countryside. We were both given helmets (one with fetching union jack design and mine like an American police man) which were about as effective as balancing a piece of cardboard on our heads and we set off. Thai people seem to think wearing helmets is an activity for the paranoid and looked at us with astonishment as we drove down the road looking a bit like retards. When they drove past us you could see the people in the back of trucks laughing out loud in amusements at our outrageous and unnecessary safety precautions (and of course the ridiculous designs on them!). Little did they know about the man at the forensics museum who had forfeited wearing his helmet and consequently died when he was hit by a duck on the head (ok, I made that bit up but these things are possible and our cardboard helmets were a neccessary precaution).

We rode about 75km to a place called hellfire pass, which was where the POW’s had to dig out a pass by hand through the rock, it was meant to one of the worst places along the death railway and hundreds of people had died there due to maltreatment from the Korean and Japanese guards. We walked along its length and it definitely had an atmosphere about it, and it was not too hard to begin to imagine what it must have been like. One of the surprises I got was that many of the POW’s described the area as beautiful and vowed they would come back later on after the war ended, I thought that they would have hated the area but it seems that many did not even though their time there was terrible. I was also shocked to see how many Asian workers died on the railway, far far more Asian than Western workers died (around 90,000 I think) and none of their details were recorded so their families never knew where they were buried or what had happened to them. After this moving site, we rode on to a waterfall and then had a drive around the countryside where I was rewarded with the amusing site of Christy wobbling down the road looking petrified with a one eyed dog nipping at her heals, whilst Thai children looked on smiling and laughing at how odd us Whiteys are.

The next day we took the death railway train along a section of its route which whizzed through the Thai countryside filled with paddy fields, cows, egrets and herons, climaxing at a rickety old bridge which creaked dangerously as we passed over it. We stopped in a small town for lunch where I unsuccessfully tried to persuade a shop keeper to let her songbird free from its stupidly small cage (I got as far as “No speaky English”, but at the same time she seemed to have no problem saying she wanted 5000 baht to let the bird free, talk about selective English knowledge!). I love birds but I’m not paying £100 for her to set it free and go out and catch another one the next day so it had to stay captive

After our time in Kanchanaburi we set off to Khao Yai National Park, which claims to be the 5th best national park in the world, and is a UNESCO protected area and home to tigers (although at last count there was only 7 which is not an encouraging sign in over 2000km of park), elephants, bears and gibbons. I wanted to arrange a personal guide rather than a tour and we did so after much bartering. To get a knowledgeable guide who also speaks English is no easy task! Our guide was a man called Djib who had such immense enthusiasm for all things living he would have made pre-stingray Steve Irwin look like an unmotivated slouch. After a couple of minutes driving down the road he skidded to a halt, jumped out of the car and started screaming at a car coming the other way. We thought we were on for a tiger spotting or maybe an elephant wrestling with a bear with an eagle on its back, but in fact he had spotted a beetle on the road and wanted to save it. Djib was, in my limited knowledge, what I would call a real Buddhist and a genuinely nice person and it was great to chat to him about his views on life. We visited a bat cave at sunset and saw 3,000,000 bats leave for a night of hunting, which was fantastic to see but hard to photograph. As the bats left the cave they were swooped down upon by kestrels’ and barn owls who grabbed the odd one for dinner. The next day we set off for a full day’s photography bright and early and we weren’t disappointed. Our first spotting was an Asian elephant, we crept through the woods and saw its trunk metres away, before it moved on further into the undergrowth and we couldn’t see it anymore. A good start to the day. Luckily we were given leech socks as they were attacking in mass as soon as we got out of the jeep, one managed to get into Christy’s trousers and sucked blood from her bum, which she wasn’t that amused with. We then walked back into the jungle to find some white handed gibbons, we located them after a while and spent an hour or so watching them swing around whilst trying to throw poo and wee at us. As they were so high up my lens couldn’t really get any decent shots but I have a few for memory at least. We continued on seeing pig tailed macaques, muntjak deer, sambar deer, a monitor lizard swimming in a river and a beautiful white lipped pit viper resting on a branch. We finished the day by walking up into some woods at the top of a mountain, we stood in the twilight and thousands of bats (the same bats from our cave the day before) poured through the forest skimming our heads by millimetres, a great experience.

After a few days of our park experience we headed back down on a night bus to an island called Koh Lanta, which is down the South of Thailand. We spent a couple of days relaxing and basking in the sun, which was a nice change after our Ko Chang experience!

Next up is Phuket where I will be hopefully getting some good photos of the vegetarian festival, where the locals pierce themselves through the face with various sharp objects, walk up razor ladders and step on hot coals. Mental stuff!

I hope you’re all well, apologies that this blog has once again turned into a bit of a novel (again)!!!

We have just got back from a trek to Machu Picchu and we’re now recovered after all the walking, we had an amazing time and it was one of the best things I have done since we’ve started travelling. So I can remember it all when I’m an old man and have trouble remembering even my name I’m going to write a mini novel about it all, you can just look at the photos to get the gist….

Day 1: Mollepata – Soraypampa. 18km. 700 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We started off bright and early and caught a bus from Cuzco to Mollepata at 4am. We met the other people we would be trekking with, 6 Americans, 2 Brazilians, 2 guides and us and got acquainted over some coca leaf tea and breakfast before we set off.

The trail at the start was fairly easy and lulled us into a false sense of security; this was going to be a breeze. We wandered through rolling hills and dusty paths up to a big hill where we had our lunch and relaxed before setting off again.

In the afternoon we set of again, now a bit sleepy from lunch and the mornings walking and we walked, walked, walked and walked some more. Slowly but surely we approached the snow capped peak of Salkantay. We arrived at our camp after 7 hours of walking, with aching feet, feeling very tired and had dinner before we fell exhausted into freezing tents at 8pm. It was one of the longest and coldest nights ever and I didn’t get hardly any sleep, at about 3am I even managed to break the zip on my rental sleeping bag and spent the rest of the night swearing at the bag and the cold and the tent and pretty much everything.

Day 2: Soraypampa – Challway. 20km. 1050 metres ascent, 1700 metres descent.

We all got up in the pitch black at 4am and stumbled around in the freezing cold to get breakfast.

We were all cheered up no end when one of the American girls asked in all seriousness whether llamas laid eggs. Brilliant. We informed her that they did and also had feathers and exchanged stories about how we had either not slept or slept very little and we sang happy birthday to Christy. We all seemed to be in a very good mood despite our lack of sleep and we set off for what we knew would be the most gruelling day of the trek. We started off walking along a valley next to an icy river and as our campsite disappeared behind us we saw the massive Salkantay Mountain looming ahead. We worked our way up a steep series of switch backs up the mountain which was hard work but well worth the view from the top when we finally got there.

We had a bit of a group celebration before realising we were actually only about half way up to the pass and that most of the climb was still ahead. On we plodded, walk walk walk walk walk.

We continued heading upwards stopping off at a nice frozen lake, played with a calf and then headed towards the top of the pass. At last we reached the top of the pass and had amazing views of the mountains surrounding it and the valleys leading from it. We stopped for a bit to take in the view, rest, drink some birthday rum and undertake a spot of mountain rock golf.

We set off down the other side of the pass into a mist filled valley. It was good to see a change of scenery from the icy top to more green with birds singing and packhorses charging by in the mist.

By the time we got to have lunch we had been walking for 6 hours and we were exhausted and settled down to a nice siesta before setting off again.

After lunch the scenery changed rapidly again as we descended into a mist topped jungle valley with a river flowing down the middle.

As we walked on slowly with tired feet horsemen and porters with massive backpacks came running past making us feel very unfit.

After 3 more hours walking we reached our next campsite which was perfectly placed in the jungle near a river. We played cards, had dinner and our chef brought Christy out a birthday cake which we had somehow magically cooked oon a gas stove. We then sat around a camp site telling stories, one of our guides who didn’t speak much English decided to tell a story with the help of a translator. Unfortunately it didn’t make any sense as it was about a woman who changed into a puppy, a man who went for a wee with a girl tied to his leg and Dracula, either way it was quite entertaining in a weird sort of way. After we settled tired down and slept perfectly for the night.

Day 3: Challway – P. Sahuayaco. 14km. 0 metres ascent (yay), 1020 metres descent.

We woke up early refreshed and ready for another days trekking. We set off first through open hills and then went into the jungle again on dusty paths high up winding around high above the river below.

We continued through the jungle stopping at a beautiful waterfall, met some locals and after for a game of football, gringos against Peruvians. We lost after we scored in our own net and kicked the ball into a fast moving river.

We finished walking early at 1pm and celebrated by going to some hot springs to soak our legs. In the evening we all got together for dinner and celebrated with some wine and rum. We were in a tiny village but our guide told us about a nightclub there, I didn’t know whether to believe him because he liked winding people up but he persisted saying it did exist. A few of us went to investigate and were surprised to see it did exist. Based in the main room of the bottom of a small two storied house and decorated with a stripper’s pole and a wolf skin on the wall, it was quite possibly the weirdest nightclub ever. It was owned by an old lady who promptly fell asleep on a chair at the bar when we arrived and left her 10 year old relatives to run the bar. An interesting mix of Dr Dre and traditional Peruvian was being played and we stayed for a few hours taking advantage of the constant happy hour rums. After we went back and slept perfectly again. Tent sleeping was getting easier by the day.

Day 4: P. Sahuayaco – Aguas Calientes. 14km. 80 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We woke up covered in ant and mosquito bites, in our drunken state we had forgotten to put any repellent on and had made a great meal for the local wildlife. We got up and went for breakfast only to be provided with entertainment like none before. Across the road from where we were eating there was an open sided metal shed. A live cow was lead in, it was stabbed in the head, had its throat cut and the drama unfolded something like this...

It was quite shocking and put me off my breakfast a bit (not enough to stop me eating it, thankfully it wasn’t beef) but it was a brutal education and thankfully the cow playing along splendidly and died fairly quickly, after twitching a lot and banging its head on the floor a few times. I think it’s good to see what happens to the animals which we eat so it was a good experience in some ways. We tried to decide whether it was better to be a intensively farmed cow killed with a bolt gun, but who would have to live in a shed all its life, or to be a free range Peruvian cow who lived outside happily all its life but got killed by being stabbed in the head. We decided the Peruvian cow’s way would probably win, although being a cow in India would be better.

We set off walking later in the day and regretted lying in because sun was beating down. We were now out of the jungle and we trekked along dusty roads alongside a river.

We walked until we reached out lunch spot and enjoyed eating in the shade. After lunch we continued on briefly entering the jungle to see an Inca sacrificial stone where llamas were sacrificed for the gods. Christy and Ben reconstructed what this would have been like, to great effect.

After we walked along a railway line for at least 1000 hours before finally and very happily reaching the gringo filled town of Aguas Calientes, tired and very smelly, where we had a hotel with hot water and a comfy bed waiting. We had a final meal together and then went to bed early, ready for Machu Picchu the next day.

Day 5: P. Aguas Calientes – Machu Picchu. 14km. 800 metres ascent, 0 metres descent.

We woke up at 3:45am to start the 2km trek to Machu Picchu, it sounded very easy but was in fact 2km of almost vertical steps up to the site, which was even harder in the pitch black. We stumbled and panted up the steps until we finally reached the site in time to see a beautiful sunrise over Machu Picchu, it made all the trekking even more worth it as the tour groups didn’t get into the site until about 11 so missed half of the fun. The view as you walk into the site is amazing and it was much bigger and more impressive than I thought it would be.

I decided to climb the mountain next to Machu Picchu to get a better view, from the top Machu Picchu looked tiny but I got a good view of the sadistically winding route up we had slogged up in the morning.

After that climb Christy and I fell asleep in a meadow for a bit then wandered around some more.

After spending the day hanging out with llamas we caught a train and then bus back to Cuzco where we fell asleep for the next few days.

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All in all it was an awesome trek and I hope we can get some more trekking done in the rest of the countries we go to. I am going into the rainforest tomorrow for the next month, apparently there is a satellite internet connection when there is no rain (not sure how often that is in the rainforest mind) so with any luck I might be able to add photos of me wrestling jaguars and racing on anacondas.

After the detective work we decided that we needed a rest and went to live up in a lodge in the mountains.

The lodge was right up in the hills and surrounded by small villages, you could see the locals, dressed in their traditional clothes walking around ushering cattle, donkeys and occasionally pigs (on leads!) around.

It was a great place to relax, the scenery was amazing and their 2 little dogs were good company too!

The first day we went for a trek up a valley, at the opening of the valley there was a gate and on the other side 6 mean looking bulls and a friendly donkey that looked like he wanted to get away from the nasty bulls. We debated entering the arena but decided against getting mauled and instead crawled over a dry stone wall and walked up the valley on the wrong side of the river. After a while we realised a path would be better and decided to cross back into bull country. The river was quite fast and there was no bridge so we had to cross Indiana Jones style, across a thin fallen tree. I got across but Christy ended up ripping her trousers open exposing her bum for all the locals to see. We walked up the valley for a few hours but the weather started to turn. We turned back but not wanting to expose ourselves anymore to the locals we decided to leave crossing the river and risk the bulls by returning that way. The bulls turned out to be not that bad which gave us confidence and when we saw the friendly donkey we didn’t hesitate in walking straight up to it to make friends. Unfortunately the donkey seemed to have issues and wouldn’t leave us alone, it seemed to fall in instant love with us, maybe it was Christy’s exposed buttock that excited it or maybe it was just lonely with all those bulls. Either way it kept following us at way too close quarters nudging us and bucking. All I could think about was a you tube video I had watched where a man got raped by a donkey when he was going for a pee in a field - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRm8okHhapU&feature=related - so I told Christy about it which turned out not to be the best calming idea considering the donkey did look as though it might turn romantic on us. It got to the point where Christy was standing on a rock above me begging me to hold the donkey back, I was trying to hold the donkey back with a small twig and every time I prodded at it, it bucked a bit more, but didn’t back off. I was left wondering how I could hold back the beast from ravishing both of us and wondering why I was held accountable for calming the animal, after all a degree in ecology doesn’t cover how to stop donkey attack. I didn’t want us to get into the newspapers again, especially not for being sexually abused by a donkey in the Andes and in Monty Python style I could see no other option but to run away. Run away we did into the bushes and luckily the donkey didn’t follow us, but we had to walk all the way back clambering over trees which took longer.

By the time we got back the rain had stopped and we were greeted home with a nice rainbow and a cup of tea from the owner who assured us that donkeys do not rape humans.

The next day we decided to trek the other valley, we got about a mile into the walk, I fell into a mini river and we got eyed up by what looked like a rabid dog and that was enough to crush whatever small motivation we had for exercise and we decided that drinking wine would be a better idea. So we went back to the lodge, brought a litre of wine and spent an excellent afternoon sitting at the edge of a beautiful canyon drinking wine, eating pies and photographing the hummingbirds, not a rapist donkey or rabid dog in sight.

We stayed at the way inn for a few days and then travelled to Nazca where we are now. Earlier today we took a flight in a tiny 6 seater plane over the famous Nazca lines. I remember reading about the Nazca lines when I was little and it was fascinating to see them, and to wonder about how and why they got there. The plane banked full right and left so that everyone got a good view and by the time we landed everyone was a bit green but glad they had seen the lines and not thrown up in the plane. Tomorrow we’re off to check out a cemetery in the desert which sounds awesome, more bones!

We’ve said adios to Mexico and we’re now in Peru. I’m sitting in our room looking out over the most stunning mountains, which make up part of the Andes range.

It seems that all around where we are staying at the moment is beautiful; one of the mountains near where we are staying is in Paramount Pictures logo you see at the start of their films, another one was voted to be the most beautiful mountain in the world and the film ‘touching the void’ was filmed here (possibly the oddest name for a film and most likely to be ripped off to make a gay porn movie, but nevertheless a very good film anyway).

On arriving in Peru we spent a few days in central Lima and we were surprised at how cold it was, there was a blanket of fog over the city the whole time which blocked out the sun, but to be honest after the scorching Mexican weather it was a nice change to be able to wear a jumper and not drip sweat everywhere. It turns out that on the coastal areas it is winter and therefore cold, but in inland areas it is summer, so we now we are in Huaraz we have nice blue skies and sunny weather again.

We were a bit suspicious of Lima, after hearing stories of it not being that nice, but we were pleasantly surprised as it had a fair bit to offer and seemed fairly safe and the people seemed much friendlier than those in Mexico. We visited the main monastery on the first day and went on a tour around it and into its catacombs, which housed the bones of 25,000 people all laid out right in front of us on display. They had separated them out so one room would have hundreds of skulls and the next femurs etc, inside a well they had even made a pretty spiral display out of several hundred bones which although aesthetically pleasing I wondered what the owners would think if they knew that hundreds of years after their death they would be made into a bone kaleidoscope.

Either way we gawped on whilst the guide lady tried to whisk us along to distract us with the equally fascinating sculptures of Jesus, it didn’t work. Lima seemed to have an excess of skulls, our rather grand hotel had 3 skulls in a box in reception, if you look closely at the photo you can also see a child’s (or midgets) foot in the front of the box, nice!

Everything is really cheap here which is definitely a bonus, you can buy a three course meal with a drink for £1.20 (we actually saw a set meal today in Huaraz for 60p!), it’s edible and pretty good stuff – yesterday I munched on a guinea pig which was good, it tasted a bit like chicken, but more picky as it was mostly bone. I am working my way through pets as food sources, watch out kitties! Anyway, just as importantly I can buy a big bottle of beer for 40p too which is definitely a good thing

We looked around various museums over the next few days and wandered around the city which was great. On the second day we decided to be brave and go and get a haircut as both of our hair was getting a bit wild. After all, compared to Korea, what could go wrong?! We found a hairdressers just off the main street and went in, they said the price was 20 soles which is about £4 which didn’t seem too bad. Christy got a bloke who could speak good English cutting hers and I sat waiting for him to finish before he cut mine. Unfortunately, he called over a giant ape of a man who I presumed was the security guard and asked him to cut mine. He looked like he would be happier working in an abattoir or beating small children to death rather than styling hair but I decided to give him a fair chance, after all the other option was to turn him down and offend a man who could kill me in 10 seconds flat. I showed him what I wanted and he set off on the longest hair cut I have ever had, or wish to ever have again. I think maybe he actually did work in an abattoir and had wandered off the street because he seemed to have no idea how to cut hair, first he buffed up my hair up into some kind of square shape, a bit like Bart Simpsons, and then he proceeded to cut my hair with a cut throat razor (yes a cut throat razor, I have no idea what was going on there), twisting small clumps of it and hacking off the top section. Naturally this took some time and left my hair uneven all over, nearly balding in the centre with longer bits around the edge like a wild maverick monk who doesn’t like to do things by the book. With his creative juices in full swing no one could stop him and he curled the front of my hair with curlers and poured some kind of perm fluid over the curlers. By this point I had already given up all hope and had mentally decided that it would be better, safer and more amusing, to let him do his worst and I could just shave it all off afterwards. After one and a half hours he had finished and he revealed his masterpiece, which would have been welcomed into the Tate modern on account of it being a load of crap. Short in the middle, long at the sides with a permed front, just what I wanted. Poor Christy had her hair massacred too and we sat looking a bit dazed at each other, at last we had found a worst haircut than you could get in Korea, this was the holy grail of shit hairdressers. Then Dr Abbattoir brings out a bill and declares that Christy owes 50 soles and I owe 70 soles. Apparently as Christy’s hairdresser had combed her hair that cost an extra £6 and the perm, which I had never asked for and combing was an extra £10 for me. We refused, gave them the 20 soles we agreed on and then ran away as fast as we could before Cut Throat Razor man chopped us up and put us into a pie. So, we experienced our first Peruvian gringo rip off initiation, and survived with nothing more than bad hair, which all considered isn’t too bad.

After Lima we caught the bus up to where we are now. We were dreading the buses as we had been told lots about the crazy driving, but once again we were really surprised as it was the best bus journey ever. The seats went all the way back to almost horizontal position, we got a meal, internet access, films and a blanket, along with a bus driver who didn’t go over the speed limits or go crazy around corners, all that for £10 for a 8 hour bus journey. Peru keeps getting better!

More exciting than buses and hairdressers combined, we have booked a trek starting tomorrow, the main trek around here is the Santa Cruz route, but apparently its full of gringos so we have opted for an alternate route which takes us past lakes, over snow topped mountains and through small villages, and apparently it’s really quiet so we won’t have to hike with a million other people. The trek is for 4 days, about 65km and the highest point is around 5000 metres (the highest mountain in the UK is Ben Nevis at 1344 metres, we're touching the heavens here!). We are going with another couple and we have a guide, porters and a cook. The company organising it are hiring us tents and equipment so I don’t have to worry about bringing anything apart from the real essentials for trekking; a bottle of rum, a pair of pants, a camera and a novelty hat with a propeller on the top to ward off evil spirits and jaguars. I’m really looking forward to it and it will be great to get out there for a few days and explore where no man has ever explored before. Wish us luck, adios!

I got this idea from Mr Ed, a fellow ex-teacher from Korea, who is also travelling at the moment. When we leave each country I am going to do a top trumps card with my ratings of the country, when we get back we can have a giant game of top trumps. In the words of Mr Ed "admittedly, ratings will be totally biased, grossly opinionated, highly unreasearched and hugely generalised (e.g. I'll be basing the friendliness of entire nations on a scale of 1 to 10!) but Top Trumps are well wicked." So, here goes for Mexico:

MEXICO
Natural Beauty ----------- 7 (nice jungles and beautiful beaches)
People --------------------- 4 (met a few great Mexicans and ex pats, but generally, where were the smiles?!)
Sights/Activities ---------- 7 (lots of activities but quite expensive and very touristy)
Food ----------------------- 4 (some was delicious but often we felt a bit cheated)
Cost ----------------------- 6 (not expensive but not cheap)
Shopping ------------------ 6 (lots of hassling, but good souvenirs)
Architecture -------------- 10 (awesome temples and colonial cities)
Transport ----------------- 7 (Good buses but quite expensive)
Price of beer ----------- c.90p

Overall Impression ------ 7

Finally, here are some final Mexico photos from Mexico Zoo which I took on the last day. Adios!