Cusco

Our next stop was Cusco, archeological hub of Peru and the springboard to Machu Picchu - a city interfused with Inca and colonial heritage, where camping gear is touted as often as massages and cocaine. 

We stayed in the eclectic Milhouse, sharing a dorm with a couple of women  who "don't wash until we smell ourselves" - luckily, For Tali's Sake, this didn't affect the bathroom cleanliness. Forsaking the ruins of the surrounding sacred valley, we passed our time in the hostel ballpit (a South American standard, along with rabid resident dogs). 

18 going on 4

Andrex puppy, ft rabies

Cusco is equally rambunctious at night. Along with Charlie Shaw (a friend from London), we were bundled into a "party bus" - an open top VW camper van - and hurtled around the city; our first taste of kidnapping? PB pulled up outside Temple, a club with as much class as N-Dubz's Tulisa, and where - as I learnt the hard way - the local men don't solely grind on gringo girls.

Party Bus, or How To Get Kidnapped

What is the gringo in Cusco?  They near outnumber the locals,  almost every shop is geared towards their needs, English has displaced the ancient Quechua language. And yet Cusco remains the city closest to its history (still celebrating Corpus Christi, see below), and the gringo a distinct creature. Trying to enter the cathedral (which took 100 years to build), I unsuccessfully reasoned "pero soy catolico" - gringo catholic is different from local. 

From Cusco we embarked upon a 4 day "jungle trek" to Machu Picchu (accounts follow), returning to meet our friends Milly, Ted and Paris before heading to Bolivia. 

Choc "museum"

Cocoa addiction

Corpus Christi was in full swing when we arrived back in the city: it used to be an Incan festival in which the mummified bodies of past Incas (sun king) were paraded and revered.

 Main cathedral during CC

Although the Spanish replaced the corpses with biblical figures, the festival maintains a link to the inca heritage, with fried guinea pigs abounding. 

With love

Arequipa

Arequipa was our base for several days - a white stone, colonial city where we ate like (bibbed, geriatric) kings, shopped amongst pig brains, and slept under the gaze of the overtowering El Misti volcano (and the gaze of Billy, a creepy gambling addict in the girls' dorm).

El Misti from bed

Bibendum

With our first view of the Andes, it wasn't hard to understand why the Incas revered the snow-capped mountains, even turning to human sacrifice when natural disasters occurred. Juanita is Arequipa's best-known celeb. But she dead - 500 years so. Her 14-year old body, sacrificed to the mountains, was preserved in ice, astonishingly so. Issy expected her to be still alive in an ice block (think Ice Age films). 

Local Hot Spots

Resembling Juanita, we arose at 3am one day to visit the Colca Canyon, the second-deepest canyon in the world at 3300m (twice the depth of the Grand Canyon). It is ridiculously epic, all the more so because of the Condors (wingspan 3.3m #whoinvitedthisguy?) that fly above it. I can only do justice to it through the medium of selfie:

On the precipice

Colca valley

The incas who populated and terraced the canyon were a weird bunch - they thought earthquakes were mountains getting it on, and deformed children's heads into a cone shape (causing the brain to pop through the top on occasion). Parenting - you're doing it wrong. 

Finally, we visited the Monasteria Santa Catalina, a citadel within the city. The nuns were originally from rich families, so it was their habit (pardon da pun) to go large - this changed, and so nowadays it's a meditative, mazelike place. On to cusco. 

With love

Huacachina

We rolled late into Huacachina, basing ourselves at the casa de bamboo. It was only in the morning we witnessed the surreality of Huacachina's setting - the town surrounds an oasis which is itself surrounded by huuuumungous sand dunes. Tali was a little unsettled by the sight - "wait, so are we close to Spain now?" Budding geographer Issy couldn't explain the formation, but did share what yellow she would use to colour in.

The oasis itself is grimy, resembling the dregs of an alpaca stew at the bottom of a sand bowl. "Only the locals swim in it" warned Beth, our host, explaining the large number of mutant limbs on show. 

Our favourite local was Javier, a bar owner who seemed to have an affection complex - to avoid his sweaty hugs/handshakes/kisses we spent the next couple of days detouring around the other side of the oasis. "I'm from Huaca-f#%king-china" he roared at one point, "where are you from?" My reply of "Kensing-f%#cking-ton" didn't quite have the same ring to it. 

In the late afternoon the air hums with the noise of dune buggy engines - we boarded one of the strange, beetle-like machines and skittered across the dunes. Diego, the driver, had something of a death wish, hurling us over the tops of dunes. I was nominated to try sandboarding first, and my abysmal effort shattered my esteem and my pelvis. 

Dune buggy danger selfie

Gollum's cousin

Before catching a night bus to Arequipa we relaxed in town, during which a crazy local (who'd recognised me as a fellow Indiana Jones type) proposed that I go with him on a trip 200km into the desert to "search for lost inca treasure". #brokeback

With love

Lima

Arrival in a country must be low-key, for you cannot hope to change the country and must instead accept that it is you who will be changed. A foil hat, garland and cluster of balloons ruined this possibility. The welcome party was a nice gesture by The Girls Who Call Themselves Bois (TGWCTB), but wearing the outfit probably maximised my chances of being kidnapped. A 9-year old kindly offered us a ride to the hostel. Welcome to South America. 

It's my party, I'll cry if I want to. 

After a Lie Down at Ekeko hostel, we set out to dinner at Maido, a restaurant whose name staff shout every time someone walks through the door. I joined in, and intend to repeat this in every restaurant from here until buenos aires. Lima has fantastic food and little else, reason enough for us to justify lunch at Astrid y Gaston (#world's14thbestrestaurant), where the waiter curiously said "why not" when I asked for the cuy (guinea pig). Why not?! It's a household pet, an oversized hamster. 

In preparation for our Gatz viewing I fruitlessly scoured the markets for a costume - panpipes and ponchos don't scream 20s New York. Speaking of screaming, many Peruvian shops sell terrifying multicolour balaclavas, no doubt making it hard to be taken seriously as a bandito. 

In the old part of town we saw the changing of the guard outside the charming government buildings, where the guard stand for hours in full uniform before popping off for a snickers. 

That evening we bussed to Ica, 5 hours south of Lima, and gateway to Huacachina. Peruvian buses are privatised, complete with instrumental music. Lord of the Rings was shown in Spanish, a sincerely bizarre affair - I struggled to sleep with Gollum's cries of "mi preciosaaaaa" ringing in my ears. 

With love

On again

Civilisation is not overrated. In the last 12 days that I have spent in the lap of luxury that is England, I have eaten no less than 46 pork pies, and consequently developed a belly. Some call it kwashiorkor.

Then why, I hear you ask, am I about to fly to South America? I'll be gone for 8 weeks, slumming it on steak and fine red wine, trekking through Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Bananas. This is a lie, but I'll say I'm doing it for you. Welcome back. 

With love

Ps. I'll be joining with three girls who curiously call themselves "the bois". I may link their equally unfunny blog at some point. 

Delhi

(Apologies for the delay - the frustrating breaking of my blog app has made it hard to get on here)

En route to the airport our parents' car broke down, and we stood in an irrigation ditch beside the motorway for 40 minutes, certain of a nasty death. Quite possibly the closest any of us had come to Indian living. Fortunately we made it to the airport, where emoshunal goodbyes abounded.

New Delhi is an odd city of countless roundabouts and wide streets - a stark contrast to the chaos of old Delhi, where the sky is barely visible for the wires dangling overhead. On our first morning we visited the Red Fort, whose name leaves few surprises - it really is (disappointingly) just a red group of buildings, housing sketchy museums. It's a sad shadow of what I'm sure was a fantastic former self - part of the entrance has been transformed into a Westfield-esque bazaar. Lissy's likening it to clapham common summed it up nicely.

Perhaps the saving grace was found outside the fort's walls - a man selling fake beards that were certainly not "100% nylon", and more likely made from the back hair of sweatshop workers. Pitying my lack of facial fauna, lissy bought me one, and as I put it I underwent a Jim-Carey-in-The-Mask-like transformation.

Convinced that bearded me was Lissy's grandpa, a cycle-rickshawer agreed to give us a tour of old Delhi: we choked on the chilli fumes of the spice market, entering a old haveli from whose roof we had great views of the chaos below and a papadam factory. The beard got a mixed reception - I would've been lynched if I hadn't removed it when our cyclist man got into a proper fist fight with a stranger. My dreams of being a united bearded brotherhood were swiftly shattered. We continued on through old Delhi, snaking through alleyways that were truly unique in character - character here meaning an indescribable smell and a constant throng of people and other animals. Dinner was at the amazing Spice Route, a restaurant that took 7 years to build.

We visited Gandhi's memorial museum at Birla house, tracing his footsteps to the spot where he died. Seeing his possessions was quite moving, and the place's peacefulness was pretty fitting. However, the "interactive museum" upstairs was genuinely, totally bonkers, designed only possibly for toddlers on crack.
We chilled out at Lodi Gardens (a haven for blokes holding hands 💘) before eating at the fantastic Grey Garden within the curious Hauz Khas village - a hub of bars/restaus reminiscent of a Mediterranean "strip".

The qutab minar looked decidedly like the tower of Sauron, towering 70m above its surrounding ruins and the goblin-like swarms of schoolchildren. City slickers, we cruised on the fantastic Delhi metro: it's probably nicer than the London version, except during rush hour, when it becomes a hub for bromancing - they just have to hug real close... We relaxed at Humayun's tomb - a squat, red taj - before rickshawing to the Lotus temple. Bizarre. A huge queue snaked into the extraordinary building, which is home to the kooky Baha'ii religion. Fearing brainwashing we rushed off for the last dinner of India.

And then it was the next morning and we were at the airport and India lay behind us - a most incredible country that we'd barely scratched the surface of, as "nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else". Until next time.

With love

Agra

En route to Agra we stopped at a roadside tourist trap complex: nothing of import to note, except that I managed to achieve my greatest haggling feat - reducing an elephant statue from 110,000rp to 55,000rp without saying a word. I think lissy and I, in our boredom, had driven the salesman to insanity by asking him endless "would you rather..." questions and challenging him to a duel with the weapons on sale.

And then we were in Agra, known best for its hotel manager massage service. Of course there is the Taj Mahal, but I can hardly begin to describe it, let alone make any witty comments. I think setting out intentions to avoid using cliches to describe the Taj is, in itself, now a cliche.

We visited it early in the morning to avoid the major crowds - despite feeling rotten my cool new hat enthused me. (see below). Just go and see it - despite the countless times I've seen it in photos etc it really can't disappoint. Unless you're lissy, who observed "it's smaller than I thought". It's hugely, painstakingly constructed, and all the more awesome looking from our hotel balcony in the evening #slummingit. As karma for our embarrassing lifestyle, we all fell fairly ill - my own illness perhaps due to my reunion with steak.

Shout out to the "mini taj" which preceded the big daddy by 15 years and which had been built for the queen's favourite hairdresser - don't get your hopes up Clive...

With love