I thought trekking in the Andes would be tough, and so it was. 

But everything is relative. 

Upon my return from Peru, I learned of  a rather more extreme adventure embarked upon by my uncle Christopher (my late father’s brother) and his son, my cousin Angus.

Apparently, in March and April of this year, they went dog-sledding across artic Alaska for three weeks, camping out in the wilderness in temperatures up to minus 35 degrees.

Not for charity.  Just for the hell of it.

Only Uncle Christopher didn’t quite make it.  After two days of his Arctic trek, he got severe frostbite on both hands and spent the next seven to eight weeks being treated.

As he rather glibly put it, “It could have been worse – I only lost bits of three fingers.”

Angus continued the trip for three weeks and took many wonderful pictures, like the example above.  You can see the others, as well as some amazing video footage, on his blog of the trip.

Here’s the link.

So, that’s it then.

La Paz-Lima, Lima-Madrid, Madrid-Heathrow.  And the last wee hop up to Edinburgh.

Oh, and not forgetting the car drive home.

Thirty six and a half hours of solid schlepping.  Incorporating a plethora of check in desks, an interrogation of passport controls, a perspiration of customs checks (well, you never know, some wag might have slipped a handful of coca leaves into our luggage), an indigestion of airline meals, a snooze of in-flight movies and whatever the collective noun is for mile-high drinking.

I know – an intoxication.

It’s nice to be back home in the bosom of one’s family. 

On the other hand, travel is a blast.

Kilimanjaro anyone?

It was just the price we thought out of the ordinary.  See if you agree.

First course – a help yourself, all you can eat salad bar.

Second course – soup. My command of  the Spanish language is such that I can’t help you with the name of the dish, but there was definitely some lamb in there, as well as assorted vegetables, cream, chilli, garlic, olive oil, turmeric and other good stuff. 

Looked and tasted home made and jolly toothsome too.

Course three – linguini bolognese. Nothing more to add, other than it was fresh and there was plenty of it.

Finally, the dessert – trifle.

Total for four courses, £1.96 a head.

Coffee was included, but wine was extra.  My large glass of Argentinian Malbec Reserve came in at 80p.

They always get you on the drinks.

Lima unfortunately has a bad rep, which is a bit unfair.

We were very cautious about grabbing a cab after stories of strangle muggings but walking around Miraflores and Barranco was fine. Miraflores and Barranco are the “Posh” neighbourhoods and despite the nicer houses having an 8 foot electrified fence outside them, felt pretty safe. They are also situated along the cliff top coast line which gives an impressive view for a capital city.

Security in our hostel was one metal perimeter gate and one internal wooden door. We thought this gave an unfair impression about security.

It was strange to be amongst ultra modern buildings and civilisation after setting off from a place where locals still live in mud brick houses and roads are not paved!

Amost every building was covered with great graffiti.

In Peru you don’t need to read up on the politics, you just need to read the graffiti on every wall to know what´s going on!

Fraser

There is, reportedly, an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.

Similarly, there are 3,000 varieties of potato in Peru. 1,500 of which are in common every day use.

This, apparently, wasn‘t enough choice for our Peruvian porters. So they went out into the jungle and dug up some wild potatoes for our dinner (see above).

Once peeled and roasted, they looked a bit like giant, thick-cut chips.  

And tasted even better.

We asked what they were called, expecting perhaps a botanical name, or, at the very least, an epithet of Quechuan origin.

“Jungle potatoes,” came the reply.

 Ask a silly question.

Death road team talk tactics on the edge

Pete persuaded me to do another weird thing: cycle down the World’s most Dangerous Road (WMDR).

The 60 km stretch of road, most of which has been blasted into the side of sheer cliff face, was named WMDR in 1995 after a whopping 26 vehicles whizzed off the edge into oblivion within one year.

As you may imagine, I wasn’t actually that keen on doing this bike ride… but as this road is the only way to arrive in a lovely town in the sub tropical jungle we all wanted to visit, I let Helen and Pete wheedle me into it.

The day before leaving we were asking the tour company for info about what to wear etc and I thought I would cut to the chase.

“How many tourists have died on this trip?” I asked. I nearly fainted when she coolly replied, “Just 27 … but none with our company. “

Left to right: Pete, Helen, Fraser, Houdini (the guide)

We started at 4700m where the air was icy and thin. To cap it all, it was misty as hell.The first 8 miles were tarmacked road which would have been a dream to whiz down had my fingers and feet not gone numb with cold and started to throb. The scenery here was cloud filled valleys and snowy mountains and it was hard to believe what the guide was telling us: that in the space of 4 or 5 hours we would descend over 3500m into the humid rainforest.It was when the tarmac ran out that you could see why it was also called “death road”. A look over the edge revealed drops of over 300m into the forest below.

Large parts of the road aren’t even wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass, and as it gets steeper and bumpier, it gets narrower and the blind bends come faster. There isn’t enough money to erect barriers and all that stands between you and the edge are regular clusters of makeshift crosses reminding you that one skid on the slippery, stony track and one of them could be yours.

Red plastic flags mark the spots where recent accidents have happened and if you look from the other side of the valley you can see where vehicles have slid down through the greenery. For the most part I was too pre-occupied at steering my juddering bike around the potholes and stones to notice the drop too much which was probably a good thing. The rule is that downward traffic must stick to “the outside left edge” whilst those going up can hug the middle. Despite being told this I couldn’t help but veer over to the middle at every opportunity!

I was clenching my fingers so tightly around the brakes that after the first 2 hours I could hardly brake any more. Pete and his daughter Helen whizzed passed me a couple of time apparently oblivious to the drop, that was until Helen decided to scare the whatsit out of us by falling off her bike at top speed and slithering to a stop just inches from the edge!!!

As the scenery got greener and lusher the further down we got, the sun got hotter and the excitement built when we spotted the town of Coroico perched high in the hills – the Promised Land. Finally after 5 hours of fist clenching we reached the bottom. We crawled onto the bus for the last few miles up to Coroico. I have decided that hurtling down bumpy dirt tracks with blind bends and sheer drops next to me is what life is all about!!

You really should try it!!!

Fraser

Muddy, but unbowed

Bolivia is a weird place, a place where after a while the out of the ordinary is taken for granted.

Its capital, La Paz is situated at over 4000m so planes almost have to ascend to land here!

Whilst being architecturally quite dull, it has an impressive setting. Our first view of the city was from a vast slum called “El Alto” on top of the rim of a huge kind of canyon in which the city covers the floor of and climbs up the sides. As with all of Bolivia so far it oozes colourful street life and South American character. Many Bolivians live below the poverty line which can be hard to take in, and it has minimal western influence compared to Peru and Ecuador.

Shops are simple and all seem to sell the same few things – so most of La Paz seems like one giant street market. You can buy absolutely anything on the street, from a grotesque dried llama foetus (for warding off evil spirits) to knocked-off black-market designer clothes.

The local Witches Market

The city is alive with constant hustle and bustle as the chola’s (Indian women who moved from the rural areas to work market stalls) rush around everywhere carrying things between market stalls, and minibuses choke the streets. These take the place of cars in a normal city and each one has a boy hanging out the door shouting a babble of incomprehensible place names. Sometimes there are so many boys shouting at once the street just becomes a mass of place names.

At 11pm stallholders pack their entire stalls up into a man-sized sack and put them on their backs, another 14 hour day over.

Fraser

Typical La Paz street

Looks can be deceptive.  The beige-coloured, bland-looking item above is Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) porridge.

Back home, particularly in Scotland, Quinoa is, to be honest, the sort of food beloved of beard wearing hippy types who frequent those faddy health food shops most of us can’t afford to shop in.

Over here, it’s a staple and they make a thousand and one things with it, including the rather splendid Quinoa porridge we are served every morning on the trek.

Maybe it’s the oxygen starved air up here. Or our trek-enhanced appetites. Or perhaps we’ve just gone native.

Whatever. This stuff is amazing. Dare I say it, even better than the oat variety?

And for that I fully expect to be escorted in chains from the aeroplane as soon as it taxis to a halt at Edinburgh airport.

The place the sun calls home, living up to its name

Next we caught a slow wooden boat to Isla Del Sol – 1½ hours across the Lake. According to the Inca´s and pre Inca civilizations this island is the birthplace of the sun and of their civilization.

It’s easy to see why they thought it was mystical. The atmosphere is so thin up here that the sun shines with an amazing brilliance onto the lake. The waters are so calm and clear and in the distance you can see a the Cordillera Real`s white mountain tops. The island is small and covered in walking trails, Inca staircases, terraces and ruins. Although the main town is a bit touristy, once out of there the tiny villages consist of mud brick huts, llamas, donkeys and campesinos working the land.

Feels a million miles away from civilization.

And is.

Fraser

Even after what seemed like a hundred hours on the bus, Lake Titicaca was spectacular. At 4000m, it’s the world’s highest navigable body of water and so enormous it seems like the ocean except that it sits so spookily still and in the sun the surface looks like gem coloured glass.

The surrounding hills are all covered with agricultural terraces, many from Inca times and their brown barren looks make the lake stick out all the more. When the bus stopped and a man got on collecting “sanctuary tax” for entering Copacabana, I didn’t begrudge it – mind you it was the equivalent of 7p! (Later we discovered that this tax is just a scam.)

This Copacabana couldn’t be more different to the famous Rio city of the same name. It’s a colourful little town full of Indian faces right on the edge of the lake in between two hills. There are market stalls lining almost every street and a quite out of place looking white-domed Cathedral.

Here in the highlands around the Lake (it’s over 4000m) the only inhabitants are Bolivia’s Aymara Indigenous people – campesinos similar to those who inhabit the highlands of Peru.

The difference here is that there are almost no “metizos” (people of mixed Spanish and Indian decent) or Latino’s (Spanish decent) and so the atmosphere is completely different to Peruvian towns where there are many Latino faces amongst the Indian ones.

Although Copa is quite touristy and has a couple of big hotels, it still has the feel of an indigenous town quite untouched by modern life. Campesina’s trudge around with their loads on their backs or sit behind mountains of different types of nuts, pasta, corn or gadgets on the endless market stalls. Some just sit on the pavement with a couple of piles of pathetic looking vegetables.

The Aymara women’s dress is different to Peruvian Indians: they wear layers and layers of voluminous knee length skirts and underskirts with a jumper, and a shawl. Quite frankly this outfit makes the women appear huge – although I am sure not all of them are (check out their skinny legs).  They all wear their hair in two long plaits on top of which is balanced a dark coloured bowler hat. They also have the same rectangle of brightly coloured material slung over their backs in which they carry everything from Coca leaves to babies.

After asking the way to the fruit and veg market about 50 times on our first day, it became clear that Spanish was a second language to these people – they still speak the Indigenous language – Quechua.

Fraser