Lickable Wallpaper

When our few days in the rainforest came to an end, we headed back to Quito to resume our search for a Galapagos trip that wouldn´t break us entirely. After two long days of traipsing around the many travel agencies of Quito´s Mariscal district (known as ´gringoland´) and a world of pain trying to withdraw money from as many ATM´s that would give us it, we had a five day cruise booked for the following week through the Happy Gringo travel agency (the first and last agency we went to – they were excellent and the cheapest we found). It was great to have it finally sorted. To make the most of the few days we had to spend on the mainland before heading off, we took a bus to Mindo, about three hours north of Quito.

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About three weeks ago, we started out on what has been a wonderful few weeks of wildlife watching. After two days of shopping around among the many tour companies in Quito (and making definite progress towards securing a boat trip in the Galapagos islands), we boarded a night bus to Lago Agrio near the border with south-east Columbia, and then continued for three hours by bus and two by boat to finally reach Samona Lodge in the Cuyabeno Reserve.

Samona Lodge is the real deal, it´s definitely not a place to go if you´re shy of snakes or spiders or any kind of creepy crawlies. We spent four wonderful days there and both agreed that it beat our previous jungle trip back in Borneo by a mile. By the end of the first day we had already seen much much more than we had anticipated – gangs of squirrel monkeys crossing the river jumping from tree to tree, a huge Anaconda about 6 meters long, sloths sleeping on branches along the river bank, huge vultures and loads of other birds.

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Ten hours and three buses after leaving Mancora in Peru we arrived in the city of Cuenca in southern Ecuador (Mancora-Tumbes-Machala-Cuenca), where we checked into Hostal Macondo tired and hungry. The border crossing and overall journey was pretty uneventful but it was great to see the landscape change after we crossed the border; from arid and dusty coastal Peru to the lush greenness of Ecuador. Like any good Irish cailin, I love a bit of green I do!

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We got some sad news from home a few days after arriving into Ecuador. My cousin Mary, who`d been sick for some time, was expected to live only a few days longer. She died the following day in the company of her family and friends.

Mary was one of the most generous, selfless people I´ve had the pleasure of knowing. Her bright smile rarely faded, no matter what she was going through, and she always put others before herself. One of the last times I saw her, in the Mater hospital a month or so before we left, I remember being moved about how excited she was for our plans of travelling and moving to the West, a place that she had spent a lot of time paddling in over the years. She thrived on seeing other people happy.

Mary enjoyed life to the full whenever she could. She was a long time kayaker and loved travelling – she´d been to Central America herself (drawn there by the whitewater rafting!) and had spent time trekking in the Himalayas. She enjoyed her skiing and continued to go on skiing holidays with her brothers and friends to soak up the atmosphere even when she didn´t have the strength to partake. In recent months, when she didn´t have the energy to read, she´d have my mum print out the latest stories from this blog and read them out to her (it was great to know that someone was reading it!).

It´s hard being away from home when something like this happens. It would have been nice to be home to see her off but Mary wouldn´t have wanted that. We decided to remember her in our own way and went rafting, something that she certainly would have approved of! It felt right.

We´ll miss you Mary, rest in peace.

The two weeks we spent in Peru after leaving Cusco were laid back, very relaxing and pretty uneventful. After treating ourselves to a fancy night bus to Lima (not as fancy as an Argentinian bus, but pretty good nonetheless), we arrived in the Peruvian capital and took a taxi to Miraflores. Lima has a reputation for being a city full of scam artists and thieves, but the area where we stayed was actually quite nice and had a great vibe on the streets for Halloween night. The Limians really put a big effort into Halloween, and the parks in Miraflores were full of kids in fancy dress and old people waltzing to a live band and choir. There was supposed to be a party in the Flying Dog hostel where we stayed, but the bar was empty when we went in so we went back to the common area and played cards with some of the other folks staying there (and learned how to play Whist from an Irish lad in the process). The next day was spent strolling around a fancy shopping center built into a cliff at the seafront and watching the paragliders trying to take off – paragliding is one of the big attractions in Lima but the wind wasn´t up to it when we were there. At one stage we were outside a cinema looking at the listings when what felt like a bomb going off sent everybody legging it in every direction – it turned out to be a small earthquake 43 kms away that registered 4.5 on the Richter scale, but apparently these are fairly common in Peru! Later in the evening, we stocked up on fancy goods in a place very like Donnybrook Fair and had our tea in the hostel. The Flying Dog was nice (and has a good DVD collection!) but very expensive at 75 soles a night for the two of us (nearly 20 euro!). The following day we took a bus to Trujillo, a small city eight hours north and headed straight to Huanchaco, a beach town about 20 minutes further.

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We´d decided that we were too lazy to do the five day Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu that we´d been considering before, especially given the miserable weather (it had been cold and rainy around Cusco and the Sacred Valley area since we´d arrived and snowing up on the trail we were considering) so we booked two nights accommodation in Aguas Calientes, the town at the foot of the ruins, and took the train.

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Our bus from Puno to Cusco left at 8.30am and by 1pm we were sitting outside it in a place called Sicuani (two hours south of Cusco) playing cards and waiting, along with hundreds of other tourists and locals. We were stuck behind a long line of buses and motorcycles which were all prevented from moving by a blockade which consisted of about thirty young men, armed with stones in their hands, apparently ready to take aim at anyone who tried to get past them. The idea of being held up by a road block was exciting for about five minutes but as time went on, it just became very boring.

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While we were in San Pedro de Atacama, we decided that we had enough of being inland and wanted to boot it on up to the coast. A big part of our motivation for this trip had been to improve our surfing somewhere nice and warm and we were both itching to get diving again. So we decided to skip Bolivia, leg it up to Cusco in Peru, see Machu Picchu and then fly on up to the beaches of North Peru, continuing slowly up to Ecuador. We had relaxed plenty in Chile and Argentina so we felt well-rested and in the mood for a bit of speed travelling again. Funny what happens to the best made plans… just when we decided to speed things up, fate intervened.

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Well he had a name, but it didn´t matter, because he wouldn´t listen to it when I was shouting it at him to stop. There´s something about me and horses, they don´t ever seem to listen to me, it´s as if they know before I even get on them that I´m going to be a blowover!

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Our main reason for going to Salta in the first place was because of a recommendation from Mark and Eimear who we met on the Stray bus in New Zealand. They wanted to do some horse riding in Argentina so they spent a day and a night out in the Sayta Ranch, a Gaucho station about 40km south of Sayta. The promise of horses that were easy to ride, meals of as much steak as you could eat and a never ending supply of local wine sounded perfect and a month after hearing about it, we´d arrived at the ranch hoping that we hadn´t built it up too much and wouldn´t be disappointed – we weren´t!

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Argentina has been an absolute highlight of our trip so far, and Salta was a real highlight of Argentina. We spent a busy and wonderful five days here in the northwest of the country, close to the borders with Bolivia and Chile. During that time we did two excellent days trips outside of the city (in the wider Salta province and a bit of Jujuy), spent one day in the city itself and spent two fantastic days on a local ranch doing some horse riding and a lot of eating and drinking.

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For about 8 quid extra each we decided to travel the 24 hours from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu in style; on a ‘cama’ bus. ‘Cama’ means bed and for all our bus journeys up to that point we had taken the ‘semi-cama’ option – basically a bus with seats that recline half way. But for this trip we went all out and what a treat it was: Spacious leather seats that turn into fully horizontal beds, personal tv screens for movies and first class food, drinks and service. When it was time for dinner, our trolly dolly drinks server began by offering us a pre-dinner aperitif and canape, which was then followed by a really good three course hot meal with wine, followed by champagne and shortbread biscuits. After watching a really good movie ´Mad Money’ (rent it!), we settled down for the night and when we awoke, a rather fancy breakfast was served. We almost didn´t want to arrive!

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At the edge of Buenos Aires´most affluent neighbourhood, just beyond the Gucci and Armani shops, there´s an exclusive gated community full of Argentina´s rich and famous. Cemetaria de Recoleta is literally “uno Ciudad de los Muertos”, a city of the dead where each porch-like masoleum contains the coffins of multiple generations of well-to-do families, clearly visible through their glass panelled windows and doors. The only living residents of this place are a group of feral cats who have made Recoleta their home, often choosing the dark, dilapadated masoleums to eat, play and sleep in. In some of these crypts, the windows have no glass and the door lie ajar, you could literally touch one of the gothic, dusty caskets if the thought hijacked your mind. Even when visited on a bright, sunny day, Recoleta is a foreboding and creepy place.

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I wasn’t feeling the best for much of our week in Buenos Aires (just a bad cold but it really knocked me out) but still we managed to have a great time. Buenos Aires is a wonderful city, full of history and character and really big and spread out -it takes a good few days to get around to all the different areas, but the transport is good and easy to use. There’s lots of dramatic old European-style architecture; some large old buildings had front-facing iron balconies, which reminded me of New Orleans. In many ways it’s like being in a misplaced European city but with an added edginess which makes it quite different from being in Paris or Berlin. The Argentinians have had a bad time of it in lots of ways and often take to the streets to voice their concerns. We saw four or five street protests during our week there, and we regularly saw police riot vans and barricades waiting to be deployed. Also, like the other cities we’ve visited in South America so far, there’s quite a bit of really good graffiti art & murals adorning the walls as you wander around the city.

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