Oh the humidity!
From Cuzco we bussed north to Albencay, which as some people found out ewarly due to my prolific internet useage there is a bit of a nothing town charming enough for a few hours but when spending 28 hours between busses is really a bit to boring to hold my short childlike attention. The bus onewards to lima was worth the wait however, it was less an autobus and more a rectangular metal box of pure luxuary and cushion with wheels which ALSO happened to get us to our destination without the breakdowns we have come to expect. They gave us toothbrushes and wispered sweet encouraging nothing in our ear as we slept, which to be honest was both a little creepy and also confusing when it's in spanish but the thought was there. Lima, the home of the Lima bean (that might be a lie) is a grim and polluted place, the chinatown is fantastic as the cutures collided and gave off delicious restaraunts, much like two Galaxies colliding and giving off callidascopic flares would be a pleasant treat for anyone at a safe distance and lots of time on thier hands. The two highlights here were an old spanish inquisition bulding turned museum complete with wax figures showing exactly how the Catholic Church administered the idea of religious tolerance and it's very pointed views on Polygamy. I've always felt polygyamy would be torture enough to have to endure not the usual one but multiple nagging wives so perhaps having the Diegos tie your arms behind your back, hoist you up by your twisting wrists and repeatedly drop you 2 meters until your shoulders snap from the sudden regaining of rope tension would be a pleasant sabbatical. From the look on the wax model's face, I think not.
From there we got to see another tasty treat courtesy of the early Cat-licks, a cathedral of stunning woodcarved inguenuity with lovely Portugese tiling, below which was a series of catacombs which was kneedeep in bones of the very human sort. Upwards of 40,000 people's skeletons are stored down there, not in the higgeldy piggeldy two-of-everything way in which they lived their lives but all sorted into huge ceramic pits matching femurs to femurs, a well of radials, and a pile of skulls worthy of the throne of Khorne.
We also got our first (delayed) taste of the famous Argentinian (I know, it's delayed) meal of Parilla which is basicly an assorted meat platter woth as many animals as possible as you try to consume a representitive of each phylum in a single sitting. I'm fairly confident one of the meats was Guenea Pig. I named him Guinzy.
Taking our leave of Lima (but not before seeing Star Trek seeing as "all our friends" were talking about it online and we didn't want to be out of the loop (also- movie tickets five Soles, shop around, you can't beat that!) (Also, the bad dude uses what I like to call the Stallard Manouvre.. genius!)) we flew to a place in north-eastern Peru called Iquitos which is the largest city not reachable by road in the world. (Yep. I thought that was Hobart. haha.) We are at an elevation of some 100 meters, a bee's proverbial from the equator and surrounded on all sides by endless tracts of genuine Amazon Jungle. We havent seen It yet as the town has been keeping us amused, but tomorow we head out for four days upstream and then after that we are hithcing a ride on a ferry boat to the tri-border area of Peru, Columbia and Brazil. The river here fluctuates at much as 3 meters from season to season, so people build houses, shops, schools, discos, and everything else on large logs of Balsa instead of fixed fou8ndations. When the water rises, so do they. It takes some getting used to, we have to lean right back in our canoo to go under the powerlines, but even the housecats seem to have settled into the life aquatic. The humidity here is, quite frankly, beyond belief. At the moment we are fortunate enough to be in a mosquito free zone so I'm hanging around in shorts and a tshirt, but from tomorow morning onwards it's rolled down jeans and long sleeve t-shirts all the way.
From there we got to see another tasty treat courtesy of the early Cat-licks, a cathedral of stunning woodcarved inguenuity with lovely Portugese tiling, below which was a series of catacombs which was kneedeep in bones of the very human sort. Upwards of 40,000 people's skeletons are stored down there, not in the higgeldy piggeldy two-of-everything way in which they lived their lives but all sorted into huge ceramic pits matching femurs to femurs, a well of radials, and a pile of skulls worthy of the throne of Khorne.
We also got our first (delayed) taste of the famous Argentinian (I know, it's delayed) meal of Parilla which is basicly an assorted meat platter woth as many animals as possible as you try to consume a representitive of each phylum in a single sitting. I'm fairly confident one of the meats was Guenea Pig. I named him Guinzy.
Taking our leave of Lima (but not before seeing Star Trek seeing as "all our friends" were talking about it online and we didn't want to be out of the loop (also- movie tickets five Soles, shop around, you can't beat that!) (Also, the bad dude uses what I like to call the Stallard Manouvre.. genius!)) we flew to a place in north-eastern Peru called Iquitos which is the largest city not reachable by road in the world. (Yep. I thought that was Hobart. haha.) We are at an elevation of some 100 meters, a bee's proverbial from the equator and surrounded on all sides by endless tracts of genuine Amazon Jungle. We havent seen It yet as the town has been keeping us amused, but tomorow we head out for four days upstream and then after that we are hithcing a ride on a ferry boat to the tri-border area of Peru, Columbia and Brazil. The river here fluctuates at much as 3 meters from season to season, so people build houses, shops, schools, discos, and everything else on large logs of Balsa instead of fixed fou8ndations. When the water rises, so do they. It takes some getting used to, we have to lean right back in our canoo to go under the powerlines, but even the housecats seem to have settled into the life aquatic. The humidity here is, quite frankly, beyond belief. At the moment we are fortunate enough to be in a mosquito free zone so I'm hanging around in shorts and a tshirt, but from tomorow morning onwards it's rolled down jeans and long sleeve t-shirts all the way.