Peru October 2024
After years of experience travelling to exotic and far-flung places, I have come to the conclusion that I am not very good at the business. What’s more, I dislike flying and loathe airports. Still it doesn’t help matters if they keep changing the ground-rules. We hadn’t even started the second leg of a three-stage journey to Lima when we ran into problems. That is discounting the delays we underwent waiting for someone to carry out the pre-flight inspection at Gothenburg and for the bus to arrive to take us to the terminal at Heathrow. Not to mention that the boarding card we carried showed a time for check-in one hour earlier than the departures board showed in Terminal Five.
But that was just the start. When we tried to register our bags at one of the various computerised machines that nowadays try to pass for human beings, we were told to join a queue and when that didn’t work either, to ‘seek assistance’. This we did from a human being that was far along the way to qualifying as a machine. Clearly she’d graduated from the Aeroflot charm school with honours, since she had no time for synthetic smiles or social graces. Which we could have lived with if she’d known what she was doing.
By the time we had dropped our bags and passed through security, the rest of the group of was already on its third breakfast in the Not-Very-Important-Person lounge. So gobble-gobble-rush-to-gate. Needless to say the plane left late.
Still we were booked through and so were our bags, so we survived the caprices of Madrid airport and landed many hours later in Lima, and even later than that at our hotel. The traffic in the Peruvian capital made London look like a tootle in the country.
Next day we got down to the real business of birding with our warm and friendly pocket-sized guide. He was called Wilson for no very obvious reason. We drove out of the city and to a small fishing village where we got on a boat and toured the harbour with its pelicans, stunning Inca terns, sea lions and boobies (I kid you not). Very jolly.
But the beach birding that followed was a tad disappointing. Our guide was a little miffed to find that the area we had hoped to explore had been built on and was now a budding seaside resort. Still, these things happen so we headed off to a nearby marsh where most of the birds were obviously on holiday, then drove back towards the capital, through a gated community and onto a private beach where we watched the sun go down next to a pair of oystercatchers that eyed us resentfully.
After that, we flew up into the Andes and the old capital of Cuzco (altitude 3,400m). Before boarding the next bus, I had just time to smoke a fag, which brought on a bout of altitude sickness. Well, I did tell you. The seasoned traveller strikes again. Where there is a shortage of oxygen, the obvious thing to do is to reduce it even further. Way to go, old bean. And in fact the way we went was out of the sprawling city and to a much more manageable size of place called Urubamba, now also in the company of a local guide called Danny and a grizzled veteran driver called Guillermo.
Highlight of the next day was a visit (the first of a few) to a hummingbird station. God, what a lot of hummers, including one tiny bird that checked us out individually and face-to-face each time it landed on the rail we leaned on. There was even a resident ant-pitta (medium size bird with legs like stilts and an expression on its face that suggested it was having difficulty focusing). The owners put out worms for the bird, so it approached to within half a metre of us, no doubt just to make sure our bootlaces were not also juicy worms.
Then it was back to the hotel and more maté tea, made from coca leaves, which despite its reputation did little to relieve my affliction or give my adrenalin a welcome kick, but combined with duty-free whisky did at least guarantee me a good night’s sleep.
Which, it turned out, we needed, since the next day we were off to Machu Picchu. This was achieved by boarding a train at a place called Ollantaytambo. This means something in the local language, which like the people, is called Quechua. These are folk descended from the Incas, who wear brightly coloured clothing and ten-gallon hats, try to sell you things and obviously have a lot of time on their hands so they can pronounce their very long words.
On the train we were invited to drink Pisco sour (like whisky sour, only made with the Peruvian version of grappa), while we watched the conductors get dressed up to perform an Andean version of The Sound of Music. Meanwhile we looked out of the window at intervals to check out the scenery, the wacky torrent ducks and the occasional non-long-tailed quetzals.
Then we arrived at Aguas Calientes, our base for exploring Machu Picchu the next day.
Well, my expectations of the town had not been great. After all, the Inca monument was the go-to place for tourists visiting Peru. And I suppose it might have had some charm if there had been fewer tourists there. But it was seething. My impressions of ‘Hot Waters’ were not improved when we were obliged after checking in to a boutique hotel, to go with our guide to get tickets for our next-day visit to Machu Picchu itself. The queue extended all the way up the street.
Apparently, the government has sold the franchises to a number of ticket-touting firms that charge exorbitantly and make life as difficult as they can for those wishing to buy said tickets. When our turn finally came, we found out we were actually engaged in the process of obtaining pre-booking times, and were told to return at 9pm to complete the purchase – a time when any self-respecting birder would be safely tucked up in bed listening to bird-song lullabies.
Never mind. Wilson knew someone. He made a call and arranged for us to pick up tickets at 3pm instead. So off we ambled down the railway track listening for birds and oncoming locomotives. When we got back he rang through again. Now the time had changed to 7pm. So we had dinner, during the course of which he rang again to check and was told the time to get the tickets was in fact 9pm. But all was well. If he sent photos of each member of our small group, then he could go on his own to get the tickets. So it was perfectly OK if anyone wanted to go to bed. For example, my wife, Ani. Who did so, then came down to say she couldn’t open our safe. I went up to our room and tried and failed myself. Then went down to find someone to help, and returned with her to our room. By the time I got back to the group, the latest was that we would have to go down to claim our tickets in person. Wilson would use all his charm to explain that the missing sleepers were ill. But just in case, I should warn my own slumbering princess not to fall asleep just yet, just in case. Which was when I kind of lost my temper before sprinting up the stairs one more time.
So off we went, bestowing a smug smile on the even longer queue waiting for a pre-booking time for the following day – only to find that Wilson had not quite enough of the required charm. I ran back to the hotel to fetch Ani and returned to find that the others had gone past security, leaving only my niece Mary waiting outside. Fortunately our second guide, Danny, appeared just in time and blagged us past the guards, where yes dear friends, we joined a queue. And eventually got our tickets.
Well, excrement happens. The system was new and Wilson was a lovely human being. But there are limits. And there are times when it is just better to do what bureaucracy tells. Like come at 9pm. This was not an attractive idea. But it was a lot better one than trifling with our hopes and fears all day. When the issue was resolved, I made for the bar and ordered a large rum, on the basis this was usually the cheapest thing to buy in expensive tropical hotels. It wasn’t. It cost me $30.
In the upshot, Machu Picchu (Old Mountain) was breathtaking; its neighbour Way Picchu (Young Mountain), which was also (improbably) built on, was the same in spades. And the setting was out of this world. Danny, the local expert, lectured with considerable repetition, deviation (but absolutely no hesitation) throughout. But my mind flew away continually at a tangent, in an effort to take in what is effectively a monumental and organic sculpture.
After that, anything would have been an anti-climax. So we wandered down the river, saw some birds and were attacked by sand-flies. Or at least I was. Maybe because I have a habit of walking with my hands clasped behind my back, so I didn’t notice the little buggers, until I saw my fingers were bleeding. Over the next few days they swelled up so that I looked like I was in the early throes of elephantiasis.
So I wasn’t heartbroken when the time came for us to return from Hot Waters to the station with the very long name and then on to Cuzco. As instructed, we arrived at the small station in good time to find that most trains were delayed. This meant that the waiting room was ultra-packed. So when our train was announced (actually on time), it took us a while (ie 5 minutes) to work our way through the crowd. By which time the train had gone. We weren’t the only ones left behind. After half an hour of haggling, Wilson and Danny managed to get us on a later train.
The only upside of all this was that we transferred to a nearby bar where they sold excellent craft beer, rather than the usual bland Cusqueña (owned, not coincidentally by Anheuser Busch, who make the equally insipid Budweiser and have the cojones to call it beer).
We came back to the station at the recommended time and found we had been transferred to yet another train where the first class carriage would in earlier times have been classed as ‘steerage’. True, there was a bar in the next wagon. But there was also a singer there who fancied himself as Joe Cocker. Unfortunately no-one else could share the delusion. He rip-snorted his way through a stream of classic pop songs, presumably after having snorted some of the local produce. The only surprise was that he kept his clothes on throughout.
Finally we were dumped, hungry and tired at the Peruvian version of LlanfairPG station, where the first priority was to get some food in us. Then Guillermo drove us back to Cuzco, hampered only by the state of the road and the State police. (I think we must have been stopped by the police about 8 times during our drives through Peru.) We arrived at our hotel in the old capital some time after midnight. The barman was still up. He was pissed off at us for the remainder of our time there. Even when happy he looked like an undertaker.
The next morning we were treated to more rambling from Danny as we were shown round more Inca monuments in the area. When I say ‘we’ I mean the survivors of the day before, which amounted to half the group. I can’t remember the name of the first pile; the second, I recall sounded like ‘Sexy Woman’. Or maybe that was the translation. At all events, the main thing I took away from all this was that the Incas, or someone else (aliens?) had managed to move some pretty hefty masonry, filed and fitted it to perfection, placed it all into position, and quake-proofed the lot without the benefit of mortar. So aliens then.
Just when I thought we were going back to the hotel, Danny took us to the local cathedral – a quick half-hour tour, he claimed. An hour later I was still standing only due to a supreme effort of willpower, with our guide shouting incoherences into one ear, and a Quechua choir bellowing into the other. If the intention was to give an idea and warning of the hell-fires that await me, then it succeeded in its aim. We were then rewarded with lunch in a very good local restaurant. I chose the most expensive item on the menu – which turned out to be guinea pig. Way to go, Paul.
Happily most of the rest of the holiday was devoted to what we (or I, at least) had really come for – birding the Manu Road. The coastal plain had been nothing more than deforested desert. The western slopes of the Andes were populated and heavily cultivated. The eastern side was another proposition. It was the half of the country that was protected – cloud forest descending to rain forest before hitting the Amazonian lowlands.
But before we could get there we had to travel through the sprawl of Cuzco, stopping only to bird a lake on the outskirts. From there we went up then down and stopped for lunch at a town called Paucartambo. The lunch was OK. The town was great. It was populated chiefly by Quechua of a particularly civil frame of mind. Smiling ‘Buenos diases’ all round, and nobody touting for custom. The buildings were tidy colonial adobe on each side of a river bridged in two places – once by a beautiful 17th century stone bridge, the second time by a more modern construction dedicated with a plaque to a Swede called Sven Ericsson! Turns out he had been instrumental in creating or sponsoring the Manu Road, or more likely, turning it into something more than a mule track.
The road itself remains the only means of connecting the western plain with the Amazonian lowlands and runs along the edge of the national park through what they call a buffer zone. Manu National Park itself was off limits and as far as could be judged, inviolate. From the moment we descended from the highest pass (ca 4000m) to our first lodge, we saw no signs of habitation. Which was jolly nice for us, if not for those that had lived there before they were chucked off the land to create the park.
We tried not to let this distasteful knowledge put us off the fantastic scenery (endless panoramas of forested mountain slopes) and the wealth of bird and insect life along the way. Passing through clouds, we birded the road along the way to our first lodge – a biological station called Wayquecha (‘young brother’) at over 3000 metres, which proved to be much better than we had expected or deserved. The cabins were spacious and clean; there was electricity when you most needed it and wifi throughout the day. What’s more the staff were friendly and the food good. It was to be our base for the next two nights.
Having surfeited on lovely birds, rice and Cusqueña (actually the wheat version has some taste), we headed down to our final stop along the road – Cock of the Rock Lodge (2500 metres), famous for its proximity to a lek or courting area for the eponymous forest bird. On arrival our hearts sank. I mean someone at home or in Peru could have warned us that there was no electricity at all in the cabins, a feature aggravated by the fact that we arrived at dusk. True, there were solar-powered bedside lamps, but we needed to dig out our torches to find them. Then we had to carry the lamps with us to find and use the bathroom.
Luckily, the poor first impression was soon dispelled by the friendly staff, including a shy young guy who trebled as kitchen porter, waiter and handyman (he fixed our non-functioning toilet). And the food was great again. Even for fish-veggies like ourselves.
Here we spent four nights and days, exploring the road up and down to an elevation of about 500 metres, or where real tropical birds kick in (or should it be fly in?). The town was a dump but a functioning bridge, alongside an abandoned one, across the Madre del Dios River led us under soaring macaws (silhouetted against the sky, but what the heck) into rain forest and a couple more hummingbird stations. Which is when it began to rain. But who cared? The hummers didn’t, neither did the pet toucan that pecked and pinched my arms to cadge a cigarette from me.
Best of all was the rufous-crested coquette, a button-sized punk hummer with an outrageous ginger quiff. Poor chap spent more time fleeing persecution from the larger hummers than actually feeding, but I guess he got something out of it in any case.
One of the highlights of the trip was to come the next day when we trotted up the road from the lodge and down a trail to a rickety shelter where we had a view of trees falling along the bank to the mountain stream. We were not alone. For this was the famous lek for Cock of the Rock. This is a member of the cotinga family, which meant it should be a little larger than a pigeon and have a fleck of colour, which just might be visible from a distance. But the Cock obviously hadn’t read the brief. This was as big as a large hen (hence the name), was bright orange for the most part, and looked as if it was auditioning for the latest animal-inspired Disney cartoon feature. And acted like it. There must have been dozens of them, though only about twenty were visible to us. The sound they made started with a disapproving cluck and ended with a croak like a frog with a cold and was accompanied with a bow, then a swift hop about-face.
There were hens somewhere down the bottom. But none of them seemed impressed enough to fall for the show. No matter. The males seemed quite happy enough to strut their stuff in front of their pals. And we were more than happy to watch them do it. In fact, it was difficult to refrain from laughing. So we didn’t. Which was poor reward for such an effort on their part.
Our own reward (other than the joy of watching the birds) came in the evening when the worst-kept secret in the world was revealed. Mary, my favourite niece (one and only actually) and one of my all-time favourite people celebrated her birthday. The guides had been informed so we all got a slice of chocolate cake (delivered from Cuzco) and a glass or two of wine. Yee-ha!
Then back up to Wayquecha, since we were returning the way we came. And the beautiful birds kept coming, most notably the incredibly various and colourful tanagers.
After dinner we went owling from the lodge. This time the main man was Guillermo, the driver, who was not only a dab hand behind the wheel but also pretty smart at finding birds and identifying them, if only in Spanish. We lucked out with the owl but had our closest encounter with the Peruvian police. We were as usual birding the road and had just climbed over a crash barrier when three cars with flashing lights screeched to a halt beside us to disgorge a unit of heavily armed and kevlared cops. We wondered why and hoped jaywalking wasn’t a capital offence here. After running their torches over all of us and grilling our guides, they eventually moved on.
We’d already been stopped a couple of times on the road at checkpoints where the sleepy police had given us a cursory once over before waving us on. Apparently they were on the lookout for anyone transporting more than a modest amount of coca leaves over the mountain. These were grown lower down in the valley and was on sale everywhere so I guess ‘more than a modest amount’ meant a truckload which could be assumed to be on its way to a refinery to be processed into something with more of a hit.
But these guys were of a different order. They looked like they belonged to some kind of crack federal squad. And they weren’t in the least friendly. Our guides tried to persuade us that the drug smugglers were so cunning they could disguise themselves as ornithologists.
Oh well.
I still hadn’t tried the stuff, except in the tea. I wondered whether if you stuck a ball of the leaves in your mouth and left them there like lip snuff, they might have a little more of a kick to them. Seems this is what the Quechua do. I got my chance when we stopped in lovely Paucartambo again on our way back. A market was going in the hall and overflowed onto the street. So I bought a miniscule quantity from a local lady. All I got for my pains was a dizzy head, a nauseous stomach and flatulence. I spat the goo out at the next stop.
We got back to the same hotel in Cuzco and were tagged by the same waiter that had disapproved of our late arrival from Machu Picchu. Then we headed out for the last Inca treat, the Temple of the Sun, which for reasons best known to itself was now located in a convent. Happily the grim reaper had clocked off by dinner, so we could enjoy our meal in tranquillity.
Then came the day I’d been dreading – that of our return. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go home. It was just that the process promised to be a test of endurance. We had to fly Cuzco to Lima, collect our bags, check in again, fly on to Madrid, change planes and then go on to Heathrow. Three flights in a row. It sounded like a recipe for disaster for those that courted disaster. Like yours truly.
It went much etter than expected. Cuzco airport was a relaxed and friendly variation on the theme (and exception to the rule). Latam airlines even called for the over-60s (but not their underage carers) to board first, to the chagrin of those in first class. Lima couldn’t match that, but it at least allowed us to check in with real living flesh rather than machines. Iberia airlines on the Madrid leg was a waste of space, but got us to Madrid, and then (unfortunately) back to London too.
There we shed the rest of the survivors of the tour and took a cab to the overnight airport hotel, where I went for a long longed-for smoke outside and saw on a passing red double-decker an ad for ‘Paddington in Peru’.
As we took the final flight back to Sweden, we were looking forward to getting home to a new bathroom. But were frustrated on both counts. Most of the check-in baggage hadn’t been loaded in London due to a belt fault. So we had to present our luggage tags and arrange for delivery. The only problem was of course, that our veteran voyager had lost his. Still the guy at the counter smiled understandingly, even if the queue behind sounded restless. They promised to phone me. And eventually we got back home. To find that our bathroom was still out of action: there had been a delay in the delivery of the tiles. And to discover that my phone was on its last legs: the charger was in the missing bag.
So it goes, as the late great Kurt Vonnegut was prone to commenting.
Nonetheless, our bags arrived the next day. Our bathroom is still waiting.
But what the hell! Despite the blips, it was a great trip. My body behaved, the food was better than acceptable, and I’d never seen so many beautiful birds within such a short space of time.
And to cap it all, Machu Picchu was wonderful and I look forward to never setting foot in it again.
Usual acknowledgements to wikicommons. Thanks.
Letters from Sweden 