Alright, time to go! Machu Picchu and Inca Trail here we come!

Sure enough we got picked up at 6:30am. This was to be the latest wake-up call in the coming four days! Yikes.

Machu Picchu is normally reached from Cusco by train, but the floods in January wiped out part of the train track, which hasn’t yet been fully repaired, so it’s necessary to drive some of the way. And clearly, the road was not built for mass traffic because there was about 30km of single-track roads which are big enough for only one car with the odd passing place here and there, kind of like England’s back-country roads. I thought “no doubt they’ll have some system for dealing with this”. Nope – the first 30km were okay by luck, but with 2km to go on the road we reached a standstill, with people out of their cars yelling at each other in Spanish and nobody being prepared to move.

So Livos (our tour guide) used his local connections to get one of the local families to allow us into their piece of land and we can prepare everything and set off from there. Hey, the Inca trail was about 42km, what’s an extra 2km! We saw this local family’s collection of guinea pigs, and it didn’t take us long to work out that they weren’t pets, but rather food!

There were lots of woman walking around the roads trying to sell items for the trip, like hats, walking poles, sunscreen, etc. They were very persistant, but I still didn’t buy a hat because I don’t like wearing hats. It was very hot and sunny today, so I thought maybe that was a bad idea.

The first day of the walk was not too steep, we saw a few Inca ruins, and the temperature was really pleasant, the sun was out in full force but because it was winter it wasn’t unbearably hot… well that was my opinion, other people thought it was too hot – unusual, normally I’m the one complaining about the heat.

Our guide Livos was very knowledgable, and he seemed to know everyone in the area that we came across on the walk and in all the little towns. Everyone had heard of him.

We walked about 6 hours today, and halfway through we stopped at a really nice little campsite where the porters had set up the tent and were cooking up some fish for lunch. I don’t eat fish, but they knew about this beforehand and they had separately made me some eggs. We couldn’t believe how sophisticated the meals were, and usually there were three courses for both lunch and dinner! It was amazing, and everything was very tasty. In fact, for most of us, there was just too much food. We wondered how they kept all the food fresh on a four day walk and cooked it all for 18 people on just two portable gas rings – incredible, they’ve clearly done this before more than once, we thought.

We left the porters behind at the lunch site, and continued walking. After a while, the porters zoom past with all the stuff, and set up camp further on, so by the time you get there, they’re all set up in a new place. This time when we arrived at the last campsite for the day, all the tents were set up, and dinner was underway. We only had a small light lighting the dinner tent, and once dinner was over, it was 7:30pm and dark, and since we’d walked so far and there was not a lot to do in the dark, most of us were asleep by 8. Well, we needed to, because the next two days were going to be 5:30am wakeups and the day after was going to be 3:00am!

I slept in a big jacket that I had bought the week before in Lima, and long pants in my sleeping bag. Other people complained about being cold but it wasn’t too bad once you got used to sleeping in lots of layers.

Day 2

Last night we were told that today would be 5 hours of going up steep steps. And that wasn’t wrong – wow. We climbed from 2,700 metres above sea level to 4,200 in 5 hours – it was TOUGH going. Because I had a cold, it didn’t help. Last week with a cold, I walked the 30 minutes from my Spanish school to my house and was exhausted, and that was flat land. This was a killer! When I said on Saturday “I won’t be the slowest one on the trip”, I guess I was wrong!

We naturally split into two groups today – four people (including Ian and Richard) went ahead, and I stayed behind with two other people and we went slower. It’s the only way I could have gone up five hours of steep steps – I would do 20-30 at a time, then stop and rest.

To make it worse, the weather wasn’t kind to us today. It started spitting when we woke up, and rained all day. Not heavy rain, but all day long. We bought some plastic ponchos from the locals for 5 soles each (£1.25) which helped a bit.

Our porters managed to keep most of our stuff dry – clearly another thing they’re skilled at. The stuff I carried in my own small pack stayed largely dry, but that’s because I’d put important stuff like money and passport inside three plastic bags. I was so glad that I brought two jackets – a warm one and a waterproof one. I didn’t bring two pairs of shoes because that would have made the porters carry too much, but shoes stayed dry enough with all the walking and enough changes of socks. I felt like I made a very good choice of what clothes to bring.

Our hard day (well, the day of the slow three of us) ended at 3:00pm in the final campsite. We were immediately given three courses for lunch, and then we had afternoon tea at 5:00pm, followed by dinner at 6:30pm which was another three courses. It was so much food!

Tonight was the coldest because we were up so high in the mountains. I had all my layers on including my warm jacket and some thermals. Everyone complained about being very cold at night, except me – I thought it was okay, but then I wore the most layers to bed by far. By this point it was starting to get uncomfortable sleeping at night – a sleeping bag and a tiny mat weren’t particularly comfortable. I would start lying on my side so I could sleep, but then once that got too painful I would wake up and then move to a different position. By the end of each night I had to lie on whichever part of my body wasn’t hurting – or was hurting the least.

Day 3

Of course, if you have 5 hours of uphill the day before, you need to have 5 hours of downhill to get back to the level where you were. It was definitely better than uphill, but it’s steps, not simply downhill. And they’re big steps!

The porters, though, managed to run at top speed down the stairs, with all the stuff that they had to carry. We wondered if they did it because they were made to, or because they’re freelancers they won’t get picked next time if they take too long to get to the camp.

No rain today though, woo! But… fog. The first two days we were spoiled with many absolutely stunning, breathtaking views. Today – nothing – you could barely see 50 metres in front of you, let alone the stunning mountain ranges and valleys. That was a bit disappointing. But what you could see though, is that some of the paths have been built on the side of cliffs – the edges of the paths dropped immediately down hundreds of metres below. Although this didn’t seem to stop the porters running! It stopped us from time to time though, and made us very careful. I wondered how many people had died on Machu Picchu, but I thought it was a bit out of place to ask.

Today was the only day where I needed to use the bathroom so bad that I couldn’t wait for a campsite, so had to go in the bush. Overall, I was quite happy, except for this one time I got away with using the toilets in the campsites every time which was great.

The sleep tonight was quite a bit warmer as we’d gone down quite a way. There was also a much more major campsite, with electricity, a small bar and restaurant, and hot showers. But it was in a very confined space, and our tents were set up with less than 50 centimetres between the door and a sheer drop. I hope nobody wanted to go sleepwalking. Here’s a photo out of the door of the tent:

Even though other campsites were nearby, and the closest one contained a large group of Canadians who were extremely drunk and loud, we all managed to get a good sleep.

Day 4

So, today is the big day that we get to see Machu Picchu! We had to wake up at 3am, so that the porters could get down to the train by 5am. The checkpoint to Machu Picchu doesn’t actually open until 5am, so after having breakfast and getting ready, it was 3:45am, and we had nearly 2 hours of waiting around. It wasn’t that cold though, luckily.

Apparently you used to be able to walk in the dark, then you could see the sun rise over Machu Picchu, but they stopped that because walking at night was too dangerous and there were too many accidents. So at 5:30, when the checkpoint opened, we walked on. The sun was just coming up by this point and it was another 90 minutes or so before we reached the Sun Gate – this is the first point where you can see Machu Picchu. Unfortunately though, we saw this:

Yes, we’d walked all this way and we couldn’t see anything because of all the fog! Some people were grumbling but hey, there was nothing we could do about it, so we just walked on. Thirty minutes later, we made it down to the tourist centre where all the people who don’t walk the Inca Trail arrive at by bus. It was still cloudy at this point, so we went and had some food in the cafetaria.

Thankfully, after two hours or so, the cloud did lift, and we were able to see Machu Picchu! Yay.

We got the guided tour by our Inca Trail tour guide, but if I’m honest I’d stopped listening by this point because he’d been talking so much over the last four days!

The views from here were just stunning. It was pretty much impossible to take photos that showed the sheer scale of everything. And Machu Picchu the city was built on really steep land, out of thousands and thousands of stones, we couldn’t work out where all these stones came from. The Incas must have been really fit, because these steps around the site were steep and there were many of them.

You just couldn’t get enough of the views – they were just incredible.

After we’d seen enough, we caught the bus down this very winding road down the mountain to the town of Aguas Calientes (“Hot Waters”). It was a real tourist town, but unusual because no cars were in the town (there were no roads) except for the buses to take you up the mountain; you had to arrive by train, or by the Inca Trail.

We had lunch at a restaurant and then spent a couple of hours in the nearby hot springs. Well, it was more the “lukewarm” springs but it was still a nice relief after walking for four days.

Then, on the way down to the train station, we were accosted by all the restaurant owners trying to get us to go into their restaurants. They all offered “happy hour” – four drinks for 15 soles (£3.50). This of course seemed far too good to be true, and we figured that they’d make up a whole lot of taxes, or they’d add a massive compulsory tip, or there’d be some other catch. But we did go into one place and order four drinks, and this is what we got:

We got two miniscule Pisco Sours and two small Mojitos – at least the Mojitos had a bit of alcohol in them. We thought the size of the drinks was funny, but we were a little annoyed because we wanted a full size proper drink by this point. But we paid our 15 soles and left.

We now had to get the train home. Well, the train part of the way, and then the bus the rest of the way down the evil one-way road that we got stuck on in the beginning. The train journey was beautiful, but we had again the same problems on the one way road with all these huge buses trying to get in and out at the same time. We were stuck for ages, and we had to pass on the narrowest of places with sheer drops into the river on one side. Plus it was night – that was scary, and I was glad when we were off that road.

Although once we were off the one way road, we were on the normal two-way road, but because the drive seemed to have no idea how to work the air-conditioning, the van all fogged up, and he could barely see a thing out the windscreen, which made the ride a bit frightning. I tried to sleep in the van the whole way, but wasn’t able to because it was so bumpy.

And, to make it worse, they were due to open the train on 1 July (tomorrow) ! If we had’ve been a day later, we could have caught the awesome train all the way to Cusco, which would have been luxurious, and saved us a few hours as well.

We left Aguas Calientes on the 4:22pm train and got back to Cusco about 9:30pm. It was nice to be back in civilization. The hotel in Cusco where we stayed was the Royal Inka Hotel right in the centre of the city and it was really nice.

I’ve only included some of the photos here… there’s heaps more here: PHOTOS OF MACHU PICCHU ON FACEBOOK

I got up early and caught a taxi to Lima Airport for a flight to Cusco. When I got to Cusco I saw a desk in the arrivals hall for “Hotel Monestario” which was written down on my itinerary as the place where I was staying. They had no record of me, which got me a bit worried. Luckily the guy there spoke English. After many unsuccessful phone calls, I went outside the airport to find my booked airport transfer waiting outside – seems that I was staying in a hotel with the same name but in a different town about an hour away in Urubamba in the Sacred Valley – oops.

Here I met Raul who told me all about how the Inca Trail was going to go. I learned that the porters who accompany us on the trip are only allowed to take 4kg of my stuff on the trail so I wouldn’t be able to take all the stuff I was planning to. I also learned that there are 11 porters looking after 7 of us that are doing the walk! New Zealanders aren’t used to that sort of attention if you ask me.

The rest of the people doing the Inca Trail were out on a sightseeing tour that I couldn’t join because I arrived too late into Cusco, so I waited for them in the hotel. They eventually turned up and I got to meet them. There was me, Ian and Richard, and four others who were a generation older, including Ian’s Dad. “Great”, I thought, “at least I won’t be the slowest one on the trip”.

We had a nice dinner together at the hotel but got an early sleep because we were leaving the hotel at 6:30am the next day. By this point my sore throat was going away a bit but sinus pain was coming on.

My last two days in Lima have been very boring, I developed a bit of a sore throat yesterday and it’s gotten worse today, which makes me a bit sad… I’m supposed to be walking the 4 day Inca Trail starting Sunday and I definitely do not want to be sick for it. Oh well, whatever happens happens I guess.

Because of that, I’ve done absolutely nothing interesting the last two days except for my Spanish classes. I had an exam today which was terrifying although I ended up getting 93% which was awesome. There was a speaking element to the test and because I was so nervious I know that I didn’t do that well. Although the teacher gave me 20 out of 20 for speaking, but I think that’s because I was sitting there watchin her as she marked it! Paul said I underestimate myself, perhaps that’s true.

Also, because I was so nervous during the exam, I accidentally knocked over my cup of coffee and it went all over my exam and all over my pants. How embarrassing! Luckily I’d only completed one page of multi choice questions so I didn’t have to write out the entire exam again. Also, luckily by 4 hours later when it came time to do my goodbye speech, the coffee had mostly dried so it didn’t look like I’d just peed my pants.

I also formed a Limited Company online today – that’s right I’m now officially self-employed using the company name “g2 Technology Limited”… matches my domain name don’t you think? This is part of my plan to be a self-employed software developer contractor in London when I finish my travels.

Tomorrow I fly to Cuzco and will most likely be out of range of the internet until at least Friday 2 July. That day I’ll be meeting my sister in Los Angeles which will be AWESOME!

Bye for now!!

PS, thanks Alejandro, whoever you are, for letting us mooch off your unsecured wireless internet for two weeks.

Well I put up some photos finally! Here they are:

PHOTOS FROM LIMA ON FACEBOOK

Over the last week Peru has been hit by football fever even though they don’t have a team in the World Cup. There doesn’t seem to be any favourite amongst the people but Brazil and Argentina seem the most popular. I haven’t heard anyone say New Zealand yet!

Actually, just 35 minutes ago NZ was knocked out of the World Cup, but they drew all three of their games, so that makes us UNDEFEATED! Woo. Before the World Cup I was going to put a £10 bet on New Zealand to win the World Cup which would have made me £25,010 if they had won. Luckily I didn’t put that bet on, and I saved myself £10. In Lima that paid for my taxis around Miraflores (the part of Lima I’m staying in) all week!

I’m trying to think of what to write here, and I’m struggling because I’ve been just seeing interesting sights with classmates all week, and really the photos tell all. My friends Ian and Richard flew into Lima Tuesday, I met them at the airport on Tuesday night and we hung out in Miraflores all of Wednesday.

I took a taxi out to the airport on Tuesday at 9pm to meet Ian and Richard, I think that the taxi driver was trying to beat his personal best time for a ride to the airport, either that or he thought the 80km posted speed limit was the minimum rather than the maximum. He was a real friendly chap, talking to me the whole way in Spanish with me understanding about 25% of what he said, and him understanding probably about 25% of what I said back. But I did know that the whole conversation revolved around discussing which countries have the hottest girls. He thought Colombia. When he thought that I didn’t believe him, he did a handbrake turn into a very dodgy side street and took a detour past his favourite Colombian strip club so I could see it. Bonus.

There were a couple of other times I thought there was no way we could avoid a collision with another car, but at the last split second the taxi driver would swerve and open up a new lane of his own in the road. When we got to the airport, the police check the documents of taxis entering the airport to check they’re up to date. The policeman didn’t like the documents of my taxi driver for some reason, so we had to pull over into security for a few minutes, and then the driver was told to “drop off your passenger then return here” after getting his car documents taken off him. He took me to the terminal where I got out, paid the guy his £5 and I don’t know what happened to him after that. I hope he’s okay! I feel a bit sorry for all the taxi drivers here trying to make a living, there are so many of them it can’t be easy. Every time I walk out of my apartment, it’s almost guaranteed that within 15 seconds I will have a taxi tooting at me.

Ian and Richard got a hotel transfer to their hotel which wasn’t far from the airport, and I went with them. Richard paid the taxi driver with a $20USD note for a $9 fare, and was waiting for his change but it never came, which he wasn’t very happy about! On the way, Ian told me that he flies out to Macchu Picchu the next morning, and I kindly pointed out to him that no, you actually have two nights in Lima, not just one. Good old Ian That turned out to be a good thing, because his hotel let him stay another night, and it meant they could sleep in after a big flight and then we had a whole day in Lima together. I left Ian at his hotel and took a taxi back to Miraflores which I got for 25 soles (£6), not bad for 12:30am in a very questionable neighbourhood.

Ian and Richard took a taxi down to Miraflores from the airport, which was 30 soles (£7.50) for him, not a bad price for a couple of white guys who speak no spanish, since you have to negotiate the price before you get in the taxi (I’ve heard that people from the school paid 100 soles before and on the internet there are reports of people paying 200). I met up with them after my spanish class finished at 1pm and we visited a shopping centre and had lunch, then we walked around some parks. We took a walk down to the beach (and it’s a long way down from Miraflores which is on top of a massive cliff) where all the locals tried to get us to take surfing lessons. No way, Jose, the waves were so rough and that part of the beach was made of stones which were at such an angle into the water that it looked like if you fell of your board you would crack your head open. Although it was a perfect day for it, there were many waves, and Ian had arrived on the one day out of two weeks where the sun came out and stayed out. No wonder the ancient Incas worshipped the sun, because it hardly ever shows itself.

Instead we had a couple of cocktails at a fancy bar on a pier, and we were the only ones for a lot of the time in the bar, which was really relaxing and a great chance to catch up on the gossip.

After a while we went to an area of Miraflores known as Petit Thouars where they sell lots of Peruvian artifacts. Well, not just lots, but several blocks worth, each with several massive markets. Ian was very interested in paintings and rugs, but after he got a call from his Mum who was in another part of Peru, he decided not to buy anything because apparently it’s cheaper the further you get out of Lima and he’s going to Cusco tomorrow. There were such a lot of markets, but they were quite quiet because it was Wednesday afternoon, and most of the shops had the shop girls trying hard to get us to go into their shops. Again, because of the sheer amount of stuff for sale, and the quietness of the place, it was hard not to feel that it must be hard for these people to make a living. Although, who knows, perhaps there’s a 2,000% markup on everything.

I really liked the massive white rugs which were really amazingly soft, although I was a bit disturbed by the accompanying sign stating “100% baby alpaca”. I’m hoping they meant “100% baby alpaca fur”! I would have loved one for my house, if I owned one. Also some of the paintings and vases were nice. We then had dinner overlooking Parque Kennedy which was basic but tasty and then I hailed a taxi for Ian to take him home. I managed to negotiate a price of 20 soles for him and Richard, and I think that the driver understood where I wanted him to go (he had a map which wasn’t particularly clear). Hopefully Ian got back to his hotel alright, I haven’t heard from him since last night! Ian should be on a plane to Cusco right at this moment, where I will be joining him on Saturday and we will be doing the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu together along with Richard and Ian’s parents.

Spanish class this week is different, we had 5 in the class last week but this week 3 of them have gone, so it’s just me and Patrick. Patrick’s a nice guy but his confidence in speaking is much higher than mine, and he talks a lot, so it’s hard for me to get a word in, and when I do get a word I’m like “Me… parezco, ah, umm, I mean, parece, err, bien, hmm, ahh, gracias”. I feel a bit stupid at times, Patrick has clearly had a lot more practice talking even though I think I know more of the grammar. When it was just me and Claudia in a class in Costa Rica that was really cool because we were both at a similar level, but here there’s quite a mismatch.

I can’t honestly decide which I like better, Lima or Costa Rica. Costa Rica had cocktails on the beach, a wider range of students, more of a relaxed atmosphere because of the beach, and a better style of learning. Lima only has cocktails in nightclubs, the students are all the same age group and are either “boring couples” or guys who spend all the time trying to pick up girls and take them back to their apartments, and the city is noisy and not terribly relaxing. But on the plus side for Lima, the climate is nice even if it’s a bit grey, the school staff are friendlier here, there’s always something to see or do because it’s a city and my accommodation is much more comfortable, whereas Costa Rica I was simply too hot all the time. Hmm, no I think Costa Rica gets the win on this occasion, possibly swayed by the fact that it was such a culture shock when I first arrived and it was all so exciting and new, and such a different experience, whereas by the time I got to Lima everything was a bit “par for the course”.

I wish I took more photos when Ian was here, but it’s okay, when we go our separate ways from Macchu Picchu Ian and I have about 8 or 9 hours to hang out in Lima before we leave Peru.

Well my first week out of two in Lima is almost over already, time goes so much faster here because unlike Sámara which was a small beach town, this is a huge city with so much to do, in addition, the school here seems a lot more like a small close family unlike Samara where the staff were there during the day but went their separate ways at night. I’ve been happy with how things have gone so far, I thought perhaps that because it was the city that students would be more a bit more snobby or a bit more like they would want to do their own thing, but it hasn’t been like that at all, everyone’s really friendly and we always are going out somewhere together. That doesn’t leave much time for updating my blog!

On Tuesday, after sleeping almost all of Monday, I was feeling a bit better. I went out with Paul (my housemate) and a student called Jenny to a bar to watch one of the world cup matches and have lunch. It’s world cup fever here at the moment of course. In the afternoon I went with some of the students to a museum which housed a lot of Inca ceramics and gold and silver pieces which was really interesting, I took photos of this and other things that happened in the week and will put them on facebook hopefully this weekend.

Even though I slept all of Monday, I still was feeling tired Tuesday so I went to bed early again. Paul and Vicky (my other housemate) were trying to get me to go out to a Salsa club but that sounded a bit scary because it combines dancing and clubs, two things I don’t particularly like much! Oh yes, it turned out that my other housemate is Vicky, not Yolanda, I got two of the names of the girls at school mixed up.

Wednesday I hung out with Paul again, we explored the area and did our homework and both slept a bit in the afternoon, because we both went to karaoke that night along with 8 or 9 others. I really didn’t think I would end up singing anything, but I did, after two beers, three pisco sours and two “multiple orgasms” I was singing Y M C A extremely loud into the microphone, along with Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera”. I was awesome, of course. There’s photos of that night too but I’m too scared to go through them just yet. Paul sung Rollin’ by Limp Biskit which was absolutely hilarious and together we sung I Want It That Way by Backstreet Boys.

Today (Thursday) after class I bought a Peruvian sim-card, because they were only 15 soles (£3.50) so I thought why not. Although I haven’t the faintest idea how to top it up or what the woman says to me in Spanish when I dial a number or what it costs to do anything. Oh well. Later on we went to a market in the centre of Peru and I bought some clothes, I bought a jacket, two t-shirts, some trackpants and two dvds for a grand total of 193 soles (£47). The DVDs were 4 soles (£1) each because they were copies, the kind of dvds you see being sold in East London on the street, however here, they’re sold in shops as copies (there’s masses of them, catalogued and everything), and nobody seems to care. Salespeople weren’t pushy in the markets at first, but after I started to buy things, the more bags I was holding, the pushier the salespeople seemed to be.

Up until today we haven’t ventured too far from the school and our house, which are both in Miraflores which is the nicest part of Lima and the main tourist area. The centre of Lima was interesting, it didn’t feel too unsafe but we were told to keep our bags in front of us, keep nothing in our back pockets and check that the change we receive is not counterfeit. At every intersection there are people trying to sell you things but they’re not pushy. The taxi ride to the market was a bit scary, none of the taxis have seatbelts, nobody respects the lanes and we seem to drive straight through intersections with nothing more than a toot to signify “coming through”!

The actual spanish classes have been going okay, Wednesday and Thursday we just spent most of the 4 hour classes chatting, and not doing any actual formal learning. Just chatting is still a good way to practice Spanish but it’s not personally how I would prefer to learn because you can chat on the street and in shops if you want to just chat. Plus we were talking about topics that don’t interest me in the slightest, like university funding from the government, politics, and terrorists. Also, we’re right next door to some place that plays the world cup games at full volume, and that coupled with the car alarms, everyone coughing and sneezing, constant tooting of the traffic and general city noise, makes it very hard to concentrate. I have to say that I definitely preferred the way of learning in Costa Rica, even though I prefer the frendliness of the Lima school.

As I said, photos will come in the weekend or sometime soon!

So I did manage to catch my last flight from Miami to Peru, this flight left 20 minutes late and I’m sure it was because it was waiting for all the connecting flight passengers, but that suited me fine. This was an overnight flight but I didn’t get any sleep because I’d slept enough on the last three legs.

I arrived at 4:45am but still the airport was chaotic with people trying to offer their taxi services. Luckily I’d prebooked my taxi and he was there waiting with a card with my name on it. We drove what seemed like forever, I’m telling you for the £13 I paid you’d never get anywhere near that far in a taxi in London. At 5am most of the traffic lights in the city were flashing orange, not that they seem to serve any purpose other than decoration anyway, because it seems here that at an intersection, the person who has right of way is the person who sounds their horn the longest. Even at 5am the buses on the road were standing room only.

I got dropped off at one of the hundreds of thousands of buildings in a dark street somewhere, but the taxi driver helped me locate the security guard for the building who gave me the keys to my apartment and told me it was on the eighth floor. Although not before the taxi driver reminded me that I didn’t give him a propina (a tip) – whoops.

I knew that I was staying with two other students from the school, but of course they weren’t up at 5:30am, and the lift doors actually open right into the lounge, which was a bit unnerving. I wasn’t actually escorted to my apartment by the security guard so I wasn’t even sure it was the right one! There were clearly people living here so it felt a bit like I was walking around in some random Peruvian family’s house at 5:30 in the morning. There were three rooms labeled 1, 2 and 3, and 2 and 3 were both closed while the door to 1 was open, so I went in there. The room was absolutely massive, for those that knew me in Auckland my room was about the same size as the entire apartment I had when I lived in Howe St in Freeman’s Bay. This room even had its own bathroom, whereas I’m sure my papers said that I’d be sharing a bathroom. After my tiny room in Costa Rica this felt like luxury. I was convinced that I was in the wrong place. But I put my things down and went to sleep for an hour.

After an hour of sleeping I woke up at 7am and had a shower, there was still nobody around in the house so I was a bit worried about leaving my things in this room, but I did, and I walked to the school. This took about half an hour, and it didn’t feel particularly unsafe, but I was sure to hold onto my backpack the whole time. Luckily I had printed off a map last week so I knew exactly where to go, otherwise I’m not sure how I would have coped! Although crossing roads is going to take some getting used to – in London I thought I was the master at crossing roads, even in Italy I thought I was getting good, but here, it’s madness! Madness I say!

The schoole was ECELA Lima. I took a written test in Spanish to determine my level, which I think I knew about half of. Then I had a chat with the co-ordinater who said that my grammar was good but he would like to see me talk faster because there aren’t too many mistakes with what I am saying. I think the level they put me in (“Intermediate B1″) corresponds roughly with the level that I left off at in Costa Rica, so that was good. My class has five people in it, there’s me, a girl from Bristol, two guys from the US and one guy from Switzerland.

You get two breaks in the four hour class here totalling 30 minutes, unlike in Samara where we only got one break of 20 minutes, and here they give you basic sandwiches for free as well as coffee which doesn’t look like it’s been sitting out for hours. After our first class the new people got together for a lunch (also free) and we met the five staff at the school who introduced themselves to the group and we had to introduce ourselves back. By this time the effects of flying were starting to show and I’m sure that I made absolutely no sense whatsoever. There were five of us starting today, and by chance at this meeting I met the other two people that I share a house with, one of them was Paul from Brighton who is a complete beginner in Spanish and the other is a girl who actually works at the school as the Events Co-ordinator – I’m pretty sure her name is Yolanda.

Some people are staying with a local family, but it seems that sharing an apartment with other students (like what I’m doing this time) is more common. I feel more relaxed here, because I’m more independent as I don’t have to fit around the timetable of a host family. That way, when my friend Ian comes over to Lima next week we can hang out together. Although I have to cook my own food, and I’m starting to get very hungry! I haven’t even worked out where the supermarket is yet. But there’s no bugs or creepy crawlies to be seen… yet… yay!!!

I got home from the school at about 2pm, and went straight to sleep. I woke up the next morning at 4:30am. Oh well, I knew that was going to happen!

Unfortunately I have to endure this day twice, as you do when you fly east across the date line from New Zealand or Australia to Los Angeles. I say endure because I have 27 hours of flying to get from Auckland to Lima, Peru as well as 12 hours of waiting around in airports, and all 39 hours take place on the same day because of the date change.

I was originally supposed to fly Qantas from Auckland -> Los Angeles, and American Airlines from Los Angeles -> Lima, but because Qantas are useless they re-routed my first flight via Sydney, and because of the volcanic ash back in April my second flight with AA was re-routed via Miami, so now my flight goes Auckland -> Sydney -> Los Angeles -> Miami -> Lima.

Auckland -> Sydney (3 hours) was great because each person had about 6 seats to themselves, although it left at 6:15am which meant I had to leave my Mum’s house at 3:00am so that I had time to return my rental car and get to the airport.

Sydney -> LA (13 hours) I don’t know how I got any sleep at all because I’d foolishly selected a seat near where they put all the screaming infants. Also the movies / tv on demand broke about 2 hours into the flight and they couldn’t get it going again, which made the flight tough going – that’s going to give Qantas 2 points less out of 10 when it comes time for me to do my online evaluation of them! In LA I had 8 hours until my next flight so I found a quiet part of the airport where there weren’t too many people around and I lay back on the chairs and drifted in and out of sleep while clutching all the time at my bag so nobody took it.

LA -> Miami (5 hours) I’m writing this blog entry right now during the Los Angeles -> Miami flight. Out of all the flights I’ve taken in the last two months, this is the first one that’s been late, and of course this is the only flight where I have a tight connection. In Miami I have 70 minutes to make my connecting flight to Lima and we took off from Los Angeles exactly 69 minutes late, therefore by my calculations I have exactly 60 seconds to catch my flight to Lima. Needless to say it’s not looking good. Plus in the seat directly in front of me there is a screaming child, and it’s the type of screaming that’s so intense that she’s choking on her own spit or something because she’s screaming so hard. When she’s not screaming, she’s poking feet, hands, seatbelts, toys, and anything else she can get her hands on through the back of her seat and they’re all poking my legs.

Miami -> Lima (5.5 hours) Since the majority of this flight is actually tomorrow I’ll tell you how this goes tomorrow if it doesn’t leave without me, which it almost certainly will.

Aagh, I just realised that all my previous “day numbers” were out by 1, because I did day 10 twice. I’ll go and renumber them all if I remember.

After sleeping all through my Qantas flight I arrived in Auckland feeling not too bad considering that I’d just had a 12 hour flight. As the only person in New Zealand who knew I was coming, Mum was waiting for me at the airport and we took some photos. I’m not going to link directly to all the photos that I took while I was in New Zealand here on this blog but you can see them all in THIS FACEBOOK ALBUM.

In New Zealand I did what I always do when I go, I spent all my time visiting friends and family. This time I only had two and a half weeks so the visiting had to be very brief. I always wish it could be longer when I visit but it never is – the first time I visited New Zealand after moving to the UK I was there for 6 weeks and that was only just long enough. Although at least this time when the time was up, I didn’t have to go back to work, I get to continue my travels.

Actually, towards the end of my time in New Zealand, my old work (UBS) emailed and asked if I wanted to go back there for a while as a contractor to finish a couple of things off, and you know what I’ll probably do it because they pay contractors more money and it means that I don’t have to find a job immediately after getting back. Plus, I think quitting a job and them asking to take you back looks really good on your CV!

Anyway, I don’t plan to write a lot here because the photos I took really tell enough of the story and show where I went and who I visited. I hope you’ll forgive me! They say pictures say a thousand words, don’t they.

22 May – Saturday
This morning I got up at 5.30am because I needed to leave the house at 6.15am bus to Nicoya to get to the airport. I’d told this to my host family last night and therefore they needed to get up in the morning to see me up. Well 6.10am rolled around and nobody was up, so I had to wake everyone up. They told me that my host father was driving to Nicoya and he could take me there at 7am. Perhaps they’d told me this last night and I didn’t understand at the time? It wouldn’t be the first time!

Anyway I was relieved because I didn’t have to carry 25 or 30kg of luggage a mile and a half to the bus stop. That was a massive relief. I was dropped off by my host father and his friend at the bus stop in Nicoya where I had to catch a bus to Liberia Airport to catch my flight out. The airport was 80km from Nicoya and the city of Liberia was 10km past the airport.

I did my best to ask the ticket guy for a ticket to the airport, and he gave me a ticket on the 8am bus. After looking on the board which said that the 8am bus was “directo”, I asked the ticket guy “are you sure that this bus stops at the airport?” to which he nodded. Sure enough, the bus never stopped at the airport at all, it went direct to the city of Liberia.

Lovely, I thought. It’s not who I am to give up and take a taxi to the airport, I’m far too cheap for that and anyway I still had 5 hours before my flight. So in Liberia’s bus station I looked around for a bus to the airport, and bought a ticket at one of the ticket windows. The woman said that I had to line up at the first line for a bus to the airport. Once I lined up there, the officer told me that it was the second line I needed for the airport. Oh god, here we go again I thought. I asked again at the ticket window where I was supposed to line up and was told something that I didn’t understand a word of. I eventually got on a bus that said “playa something-or-rather” and hoped that I would at least be dropped off somewhere where I could at least see planes flying overhead.

It all turned out to be a blessing in disguise because if I caught an airport bus from Nicoya I would have had to walk a mile or so, but by inadvertently going to Liberia first and getting an airport bus from there I ended up on a bus that dropped me right at the terminal.

At Liberia airport I had to pay my $26 USD departure tax (really, they still have that!!!) and then I sat waiting for my plane to Dallas, Texas. Quite an uneventful flight, it was very full, unlike my flight to Liberia last month which was almost empty. I had two hours to wait before my flight to Los Angeles.

23 May – Sunday
By the time I got to LA, and waited over an hour for my bag to appear on the baggage claim, it was midnight. My next flight out wasn’t until 11pm, which meant I had 23 hours to fill in. Rather than simply sleep the entire time in a hotel (I’d rather sleep during my next flight instead), I thought I’d get out and explore a bit. So I went and hired a rental car; by this time it was 12:30am.

“You know”, I thought, “I always wanted to visit Mexico”. So I headed in that general direction. After two hours of driving, it was 2:30am, and I was starting to swerve accidentally between lanes, so time to pull over and have a rest I thought. I set the GPS for the nearest Denny’s carpark where I knew it might be semi-safe to sleep for a while since all Denny’s are open 24 hours.

Four and a bit hours went by and it was now 7am. I didn’t get robbed while I slept in the car which was awesome. And thanks to the folks at Denny’s in Escondido for letting me use their bathroom in the morning. Oh wait, they didn’t see me sneak in there and use it, did they!

I went to a nearby IHOP where in true American style I ordered chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. I wish I took my camera in because I got given the biggest stack of pancakes I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I mean, this was big even by American standards. Wow, I am breathless just thinking about it. I ate 7 pancakes and there must have been at least 4 more I didn’t eat, all for only $5 USD.

Anyway, I continued driving south. It was Sunday at 7:30am and the roads were almost deserted, so I had 8 lanes all to myself.

Eventually I arrived at a small Californian town called Tecate. Well, it wasn’t really a town, more of a gateway village to a town in Mexico of the same name. I parked my car in a very “homemade” Mom & Pop parking lot and walked across the deserted border into Mexico.

I was suprised how casual the border crossing was. In fact, I’m sure that if I didn’t voluntarily follow the signs to immigration, I could have just wandered into Mexico totally unannounced. But I did the right thing and followed the signs through a very scary and slightly derelict building.

The Mexican border official didn’t trust me at all and spoke nearly no English. “Why are you here? Where are you going?” I got asked. I felt I needed to put my Spanish that I learned in Costa Rica to the test. As soon as I started speaking in Spanish the official’s attitude totally changed and he started talking about football and the weather, and then stamped my passport and let me right in. Woo, another stamp in my passport.

I’d heard scary things about Tijuana which is the main border crossing into Mexico near San Diego – things like everyone there tries to sell you stuff, or rob you, or both, and I heard it takes on average an hour or two to cross each way. This border crossing at Tecate was very quiet, I went straight through with no time taken at all, and the town clearly was not a tourist town as I felt like I was the only tourist there. Nobody tried to sell me anything, or rob me, or seemed the slightest bit interested in what I was doing. It was nice actually, even a little boring.

I saw the Tecate brewery, I saw a little market where I bought a watch for 130 pesos, I saw some very terrified looking cookies in the supermarket and I saw the town square. I also bought a newspaper. Thrilling stuff!

After spending a couple of hours walking around the town I wandered back to the United States. Once again, it seemed very casual, there was only this one sign to direct you where to go and if I didn’t follow the sign it seemed like I could have just meandered through the open gate into the USA unnoticed. Although no doubt I would have been taken out by hidden snipers or something.

The US border guy did not like the fact I had been in Mexico for only a couple of hours.
“What were you doing in Mexico?” he asked.
“Just looking around” I said.
“Why only for two hours?” he asked.
I told him I just wanted another stamp in my passport.
“Why did you come out here and not Tijuana?”
“Tijuana scares me.”
“What were you doing in the United States?”
“I have a 23 hour stopover between flights.”
“Didn’t you want to tour LA instead?”
“I’ve seen LA before, I love LA.”
“So you came all the way out here?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out to Tecate?”
“I got a rental car from the airport.”
“Show me the keys.”
I showed him the keys.
“Give me your jacket.”
I gave him my jacket, and he looked through all the pockets.
“So what are you doing here now?”
“I’ve got a flight out at 11pm tonight.” I said, and showed him my itinerary.

At that point he ran out of questions, and he seemed unable to prove that I’d gone to Mexico simply to buy or sell drugs (which seemed to be what he was trying to do) so he let me through.

At that point I still had 10 or so hours until my flight out. So I went here:

I wasn’t allowed to take any photos in the Casino. I spent $150 in total and came out with $140, and spent about 4 hours in there. I thought $10 for 4 hours’ entertainment wasn’t too bad. My first $100 went at the blackjack table, and that lasted 3 hours and a bit, but eventually I lost it all there. So I spent another $50 on roulette, and on my very last $4 a lucky spin won me $140, so I thought that would be a good time to get out of there.

I left in plenty of time to get back to LAX, just in case Sunday afternoon heralded a lot of traffic on the I-5. It didn’t, and I arrived back at LAX with a ton of time before a flight to New Zealand. This gave me even more time to admire the horrible place that is Los Angeles International Airport.

24 May – Monday
I’d decided to go to New Zealand a couple of weeks ago, because basically I decided that 10 weeks of Spanish in a row would overheat my brain and there’s a slight possibility that it would explode. The only people I told were my sister who’s in England and my Mum so that someone would be there to pick me up from the airport.

Monday didn’t even exist for me because I skipped it crossing the International Date Line in a westerly direction. Even if it had’ve existed, I would have slept right through it, because I was so incredibly tired. The instant that Qantas turned out the lights on the flight, I fell asleep. I stayed asleep the entire flight, only waking up when they turned the lights on 9 hours later for breakfast (and one other time simply to use the bathroom).

In the row of three airplane seats the middle one was empty, and in the aisle seat was a woman from Colombia who lives in New Zealand. She was great to talk to and would have been great to practice Spanish with, if I didn’t sleep the entire way.

My blog entries may take a back seat for a bit, as in New Zealand I’m planning to do little else except visit old friends and family and simply do very little. On June 13 I fly to Peru to continue my Spanish learning and to visit Macchu Picchu.

Here’s some photos from Samara that my friend Claudia took. A couple of them are here, but click here to see all of them on facebook.

More photos here