OneWayTicket

Day 70: Alpaca curry and some travel fatigue

Take a look at the furry little fellow above with his good-luck garland. He's a baby alpaca. I had him for lunch.

Well, not him literally, but a bigger, tougher, less fortunate cousin, or brother, or whatever. I met this furball at a rest stop for lunch on another long, mountain road journey in the high Andes, this time on a bus service called -- what else -- the Inka Express, just under 400 km from Cusco to Puno, a grey city that is the base for Lake Titikaka, the highest navigable lake in the world. 

This is the start of something we've never done before: the guided tour. You know, herded into a bus with a guide, accosted by vendors when you get off, conversations with others on the bus -- good, bad and indifferent -- and, this is the worst, early morning starts. The waking up at 5:30 am in the cold and at high altitude has been rough on our bodies and minds.

At least the lunch was good, if not the best we´ve had in Peru. The alpaca curry was made with onion, pepper, salt. Pretty basic but tasty. Much like beef. With it came the biggest selection of vegetarian food we've seen: a palak (spinach) like vegetable, a white curry of unidentifiable veggies, potatoes shredded to look like noodles. Hearty and invigorating. Particularly so because I ignored the altitude and had a strong pisco sour, the local cocktail that has sustained me well.

The lunch halt itself was a tourist trap, like so many we've been herded into over the last two days. There were handicraft sellers, an Andean band equipped inevitably with pan pipes -- and playing incongruous tunes like the Beatles' Ob-la-di-ob-la-da, sigh -- and of course the garlanded baby alpacas. I've always wondered how those western tourists emerging with a shaky expression from Indian tour buses really feel. Now, I know.

The bus itself was very comfortable and even had a toilet on board. "For urination only," said our guide, an earnest young local whose English left the wife dazed and confused. Actually, I struggled too to understand him. Finally, I solved the problem by listening to his Spanish commentaries and translating them for the wife. My understanding of Spanish has grown remarkably over this month.  But it's always an effort trying to string together sentences in a new language and after doing this through the day I'm ready to switch to English, Hindi, Marathi, whatever.

As you can tell, we`re undergoing some travel fatigue. Homesickness is easy at altitude and within a guided tour. We've enjoyed the food and the people and the sights, but I am dying for some spicy kheema and the wife wants chapati and bharta. We've been waking up groggily the last three days wondering where we are. New Zealand? Costa Rica? Ah, Peru ... and we are headed today for Puno, right?

Breakfast is the same every day: scrambled eggs, local bread, cheese and papaya. The wife must make do with bread, cheese, fruit and yogurt.

The road to Puno shoves aside the homesickness (see photo, above). We are travelling on a high-altitude plain, snow-capped peaks above us, a rail line beside us. The plains are covered by brown grasslands, grazed by llama, alpaca, and some cows and sheep. There are lonely hamlets or sometimes just houses made of local mud bricks and tin roofs. We pull into towns now and then to see Inca ruins and of course peruse handicrafts. Each town has a little town square and a church.

(Photo, below: rest stop on the high plains)

(Photo, above: The loo keeper at a toilet outside an Inca ruin)

The toilets are indifferent, but at least they are there, usually run by locals. You can have a piss for 1 sol, or about Rs 20. The people -- their faces burnt and leathery by the strong mountain sun -- are noticeably poorer than anywhere we've been before, but yet we've never been harrassed.

Oh, here in the south of Peru, Bajaj autorickshaws have finally disappeared. Funny looking Honda autos reign supreme (see photo, below).

We pass through Juliaca, the biggest town in this region, and our air gateway back to Lima the day after. The buildings are made of brick but nothing is painted. Our guide mutters something about local taxes on finished buildings that persuades people to leave everything unfinished. Cycle rickshaws abound, though unlike ours the driver sits behind the passengers. We pass a petrol station called "Nueva Delhi", New Delhi. How did that happen?

The sky is darkening when Puno finally arrives, as unfinished looking as Juliaca. The same tax, mutters the guide again. The main occupations in this town of 120,000 people are contraband -- smuggling electronics and other stuff in and out of neighbouring Bolivia -- tourism (thanks to Lake Titikaka, whose banks we can now see), and driving cycle rickshaws. Our guide claims there are 40,000 rickshaws in town. We doubt it.

The streets are incredibly narrow, like so many Andean towns, but clean. And there are pavements so no one seems to be getting run over despite buses and taxis tearing down with blaring horns. The hotel pops up in the middle of one such street. As usual, it´s very clean and very comfortable. We shake off our fatigue and slip out for dinner. Trout from the lake, fried without spices and white rice. The wife has boiled veggies and rice.

We eat quickly -- well, not that quickly, since food usually comes only after about half an hour of the order -- and grab the usual bedtime tv: we watch Daffy duck speaking in Spanish, some Latino women wriggling their booty to some really good music and finally settle on the Warner channel, in English. CNN is there too, in English and Spanish. It seems the world is being flooded as we flit through the dry Andes. Tomorrow, Lake Titikaka. Before I stop, there was some concern from family about some slips I had on the Inca trail. I`m fine folks (see proof, below), only my camera was damaged.