Iquitos, Amazonian city

Iquitos is probably the strangest city I have been too. With a population of 400,000, it is the largest city on Earth that cannot be reached by road. I was originally to go overland as far as possible, then take the three-day trip downriver, but in the end, events took over and I whimped out and bought a plane ticket. However, that was not exactly devoid of interest. Iquitos International Airport is the tiniest commercial airport I've been in. After getting off the 'plane, we walked to the Arrivals Hall, which was basically a room with a conveyor belt, and Customs and Immigration (not that I needed to use them, only having flown domestically from Lima) huts in the corner.
Arriving, as I did, at nearly 3am, the flight having been delayed by a couple of hours, the place seemed pretty dead. That was until I got outside, and was faced by an armada of taxi drivers all touting for service. Not being able to distinguish the differences between the level of service that each would offer me, I asked a nearby policeman to recommend one. He too, judging by his indifference, neither knew nor cared which one would drive me to my hostel in safety and comfort, so just picked the nearest one and marshalled him towards me. It turns out that the vast majority of vehicles in Iquitos are motorbikes, since everything that is not produced in the city or jungle has to be "imported" by river. If you want to get from A to B, you hire a mototaxi, that looks like a cross between a golf buggy and something out of The Prisoner, for those of you who remember the cult British TV series. The ride was entertaining for several reasons. Firstly, the surreality stakes were quite high. Secondly, he gave his friend a lift with me too, dropping him off at his own (broken down) mototaxi. Then things only got better when my driver extended his right leg in order to push his friend's vehicle. I thought this was just to get it started, but he pushed him a couple of miles, changing legs halfway!
Well, he got me to my hostel relatively inexpensively, and woke up the night receptionist for me, so that I didn't have to feel guilty doing it, and I slumped into a bed in the corner of the dorm in the Hobo Hideaway in downtown Iquitos.
Well, I suffered a rude awaking at about 6am, when the mototaxis started going past. I reached for my earplugs, and went back to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up, I resolved to find myself an Amazonian adventure trip, since I had nothing booked. Last night's mototaxi driver had already given me a recommendation, and I noticed a sign on my bedroom door suggesting a tour company. After having a flick through the Lonely Planet (and gasping at some of the prices), I decided to just head into town, grab some lunch, and just see what happens.
Most the people in Iquitos seem to either be a jungle guide, pretend to be a guide, or know a guide they can recommend when they see a gringo (i.e. person from N. America or the Old World), and it was a pleasant surprise when I was called over to a lovely restaurant by the river (not the Amazon, but one of its tributaries), sat down to a 2-course meal, with fresh juice thrown in, for 8 soles (about US$1.50). It turns out that my two new-found friends are also guides too, but are chilling out drinking a beer after several days in the jungle. They are much more easy-going, and less pushy than the others, and appear to take more of an interest in me, so, after sharing a post-lunch beer with them, I arrange to meet them in the Plaza de Armas later, having checked in the mean time that their operation is registered with the local tourist authority.
At the appointed hour, they show me to their office, which appears quite professional, and one of their staff who has himself sixteen years of guiding experience talks me through a proposed 6-day itinerary. The emphasis seems to very much on preserving a living rainforest, on conservation and on education, which definitely appeals to me. He described lots of exciting activities, including waking up at 5am to watch the sunrise over the Amazon.
And so I am going to be spending the next six days in the jungle, away from human distractions, and away from the Internet. No doubt I will have lots of photos to share with you on my return, to compensate for the lack of illustration of this post.

Lima: Days 1-3

The first week of my round-the-world trip was spent in Lima, the capital of Peru. Set half way up the country on the Pacific coast, the city was established by Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador of Peru, in 1535, to provide a port from which to control the area. For most of the duration of Spanish rule, Lima was one of the most important cities on the continent and today, a third of the population of Peru (which is incidentally much smaller than the pre-conquest population) live in the capital.

Now we've got the facts over with, time for my own experiences. My first two days were spent with my friend Lucy, whose presence in Peru acted as the initial catalyst for my decision to go. We enjoyed eploring the cafés and restaurants of Miraflores, the touristic heart of the city, where our hostel, one of the Flying Dog chain, was based. Situated in front of Parque Kennedy, the area was pleasantly green, and attracted children to the playground outside our window at all hours up to about midnight. Having just stepped off the 'plane from wintery Britain, the climate seemed hot and dusty to me at first, and I took my time in acclimatising myself to it.

On our first whole day, we caught a taxi into Lima Centro to see the historic heart of the city. The taxi ride was fairly typical of my experience of Peruvian driving. The ambition of most Peruvian taxi drivers appears to occupy that space of road that is either uncomfortably close to the vehicle in front, or happens to coincide with the same space of road that another driver has his eye on. How this usually manifests itself is overtaking without indication and on either side to gain a small lead on the car in front. If a car in front happens to be travelling slower than oneself, applying the brakes seems to be a last resort. Far better just to drive closer to the offending vehicle so that its driver knows you wish them to travel faster, or just go round it, using the "nature abhors a vacuum" school of thought. Of course, liberal use of the horn and gesticulations improves communication between drivers. Suffice it to say that a taxi ride in Peru is never boring.

We asked to be dropped outside the cathedral in the Plaza Mayor, the city's central square and focal point. (In the centre of the Plaza once stood an equestrian statue of Pizarro, which was apparently later moved into a relatively obscure corner of the square by the city authorities at the request of the clergy, who considered the orientation of the horse offensive, since its rear end faced the cathedral). The highlight of our day was undoubtedly the guided tour around the 16th-century San Fransisco Monastery. Apart from the beautifully crafted materials used in its construction, many of which had been imported from Spain, and the impressive library containing thousands of antique books, the monastery also boasted catacombs in which were openly stored the remains of members of the monastic order throughout the centuries. (The catacombs, however, didn't benefit from the systematic storage methods employed during the relocation of the remains of Paris's dead into its catacombs in the 18th century - a sight worth seeing!)

The next day, we checked out the Museo Larco, named after the archeologist who discovered a large portion of its contents, and from whose private collection its exhibits were drawn. The museum is well laid-out, and puts pottery from the different geographical areas of Peru over the ages into context. There were two noteworthy differences between the Larco and any other pottery museum. Firstly, in most museums, you only get to see the proportion of the collection which is currently on display, with no idea about what might be stored away out of sight. Here, on the other hand, I had just finished going round the galleries, thinking to myself, "wow! this stuff must be really rare," when I went into the store room and saw rooms of glass cases from floor to ceiling with thousands of similar examples. The other reason to visit the Museo Larco is its collection of erotic pottery. This provides the studnet of anthopology with a fascinating insight into the sexuality of pre-Columbian Peruvians, and provided me and Lucy with a giggle or two.

Photos (from top to bottom): View from Flying Dog Hostel over Parque Kennedy; Central fountain in Plaza Mayor; San Francisco Church. For more photos, check out my page on Flickr.com

Wandering around the world

My decision to travel around the world was, on the one hand, a rather impulsive one. After a conversation with my brother Phil (currently expatria in the Land Down Under), and an e-mail to my best friends from college, Lucy, who was on a medical placement in Peru, I decided it would be fun to meet her out in Lima (albeit only for a few days), rather than wait until her return to the UK. So from there, came a sketchy plan to spend three months in South America, which, in the space of less than a week, evolved into a RTW trip taking in South America for 3 months, 4 weeks in New Zealand, five-and-a-half months in Australia (principally to see my family, and to earn money to actually pay for the trip!), then taking 6 weeks to return via South East Asia. Since I set off on 20 January 2007, the more astute amongst you will notice that I am scheduled to be back in time for Christmas.

So all this is rather exciting and sudden. But is it? I have been thinking about a big adventure (a “gap year”, if you will), involving travel to far-flung places for a while; I think if I had to pin it down, I would say that my horizons were first opened to this possibility about a year ago when I was studying in Paris, and I met people (Belgians, mostly!) who had experienced much more exciting adventures than the orchestra tours I have been on to such places as Barcelona, Stockholm and St. Petersburg, beautiful as they are.

The time-line of events went something along the lines of the realisation that I had to stop doing what I was doing and go somewhere else occurring on a Wednesday, the realisation that I would have to hand my notice in at work on the Thursday, and actually doing it on the Friday. (That was a very liberating experience!) Meanwhile, I had told my family and work colleagues – that was the point at which I was committed to this crazy plan! Then I visited the travel agent’s the following week, and bought the ticket three weeks before I flew. I bought most of my kit (probably most of which I won’t use more than once, if at all) in the last week before departure, and actually packed the night I left. That was after going to the work Annual Party, which I rather egotistically took to be my leaving do. Not bad, a formal dinner, followed by an 8-piece band at the Portsmouth Guildhall just for an office boy who’d only been there 4½ months!

As most of you have probably guessed by now, I am writing this retrospectively, after several weeks of travel. I would like to apologise to those of you who may be reading this who felt that it would have been curteous of me to let you know I was going before I set off. You are, of course, right. I only managed to catch up with a handful of the people whom I had intended to see, call, or e-mail, and I can only offer in mitigation the fact that the weeks before my departure were rather stressful, and somewhat frenetic! To anyone considering embarking upon a similar project, I’d say “go for it!”. There are problems with trying to do everything at the last minute, and it’s not for everyone (particularly if you have a heart condition!), but I don’t have any regrets.

I will send more news when I have a chance. In the meantime, love and best wishes to all my kin. See you in a year!