Sunday 14 December

Sunday 14 December

Down the coast from Lima

Breakfast was corn pancake and maple syrup, and we headed off through the suburbs of Lima. Lima was a surprisingly large city - about the population of London - with quite a lot of sprawl along the roads. We were in a 19 seater bus - generous as there were only five in the group - with two drivers, Luis and... Jesus!

Shortly we came to the old ruined site of Pachacamac, which was an ancient Inca settlement at the end of the road inland. Built on a hill, it was constructed from sand bricks - no danger of rain to wash it away. (Only about 10 mm of rain falls around Lima each year.) It was quite difficult to understand all the context, but there were some impressive buildings, such as the old temple. The location was impressive, looking out over a couple of islands in the Pacific.

We headed south for about an hour or so, and stopped at the town of Pucasana, a small fishing harbour. We were taken out for a boat ride to look at the birds and sea lions - Inca Terns were looking impressive, but the highlight was the Peruvian Pelican, which the driver attracted with some old fish to feed them. The atmosphere in the harbour was great, looking at the fishing boats and tuktuks going about their business. We had lunch in restaurant by the harbour - delicious ceviche and fried seafood, served with large grains of sweetcorn and sweet potato wedges, and washed down with non-alcoholic sweetcorn drink (chicha).

We drove south for several hours, with sand dunes on the left and the Pacific on the right - some nice beaches but very much underdeveloped except for little strips of beach restaurants with identical signs identifying their owners. In a few places by rivers we saw cultivated fields, one or two of quinoa, but more sweetcorn and squash, and lots of asparagus. As we got towards Pisco, there were vineyards with grapes ready to be harvested. We stopped briefly in a town where people ate huge portions of chicken, seafood and rice through picture windows while I made faces at them, and popped into a large supermarket for essential supplies for the group - cough sweets and cold beer.

Our stop for the night was Paracas. We stayed in a beautiful new hotel with a very long pool (too cold for me to swim in though) - it felt still quite empty but felt very luxurious.

For dinner we went out to a strip of restaurants on the beach. I had a great plate of octopus fried in garlic (really delicious) with rice, and we enjoyed a bottle of red wine. Not at all bad - the basic one was a little acid though. One of our group overordered and had a huge bowl of soup with a whole crab, so we had his ceviche. A drummer came and gave us a show, and a guitarist a less successful rendition of Yesterday. Three men were drinking at the next table and as they (and I) got more drunk and confident, I went over and chatted with them. In which we discussed how I look German and how we were great friends. One of them even showed me his tattoo on his upper arm - a swastika - but I didn't manage to work out why. A great evening, but I thought pisco sour was a bit overrated...

13 December - 36 hours in Lima

The night we travelled to Lima, Heathrow airspace had been closed

After a gentle lie-in, we took breakfast in the hotel. I had tamales, Peruvian cornmeal pasties with chicken and olives inside - a bit like polenta, and really strong, dark coffee mixed with hot milk and a sachet of stevia to sweeten it. The hotel had a nice feel to it, with old gadgets, scales, irons, dotted around, and a pleasant lounge and bar with old chairs and large bottles of pisco brandy infused with various fruits. We won't taste pisco until we get to Cusco after the Inca Trail, on our group leader's recommendation.

Our group leader is called Wilbert, an unusual name... He speaks Spanish, but clearly - people on the coast speak the traditional sort of garbled Spanish which is difficult to follow. He also speaks Quechua and Japanese!

We took a walk around the pleasant area of Miraflores, with pretty old houses and interesting looking restaurants. In the ocean we could see a few people surfing, but otherwise the coast had a quiet feel to it. We popped into a shopping mall on the side of the cliffs, and sat in Parque 7 de Junio, surrounded by happily sleeping cats.

Our guide for the afternoon was Enrique, given to interesting factoids about Peru (the oldest vineyards in South America! 850 species of potato!). He took us to the city centre, and we looked at the Plaza Mayor, and met four girls who shyly practised their English (and asked us to write their names in our book) and had photos taken with Nina, the blond woman in our group. We walked past the old Desamparados station, which I had seen on TV when I was a child  but which was closed in the 1980s when the daily train service into the Andes finished.

Finally we visited the San Francisco Church and Monastery. The church had very ornate but dark art, and was enlivened by preparations for a wedding (with an immaculately dressed lady talking at top of her voice on her mobile). The Monastery was built in 1620 and we admired the ornate tiling and carving, a fantastic old library with great natural light (not great for the books) - a couple of large books were on display, the courtyard with fruit trees, and huge catacombs with mostly femur bones and skulls.

In the evening we sat outside with the group and I enjoyed beefsteak and tried my first beef heart (texture a bit like liver, but tasted otherwise of strong beef). And after some detailed bill calculations with the waiter, and leaving the others to go to the Irish bar (without any Irish beer, apparently...) we fell into bed.

Sleepless in Siam

Well, the planned good sleep didn't happen - I lay in bed for six or seven hours before dropping off... :-( So when the alarm went off at 9 I didn't feel very sociable. We went and had a fusion breakfast in the hotel restaurant (highlight was apple and beetroot juice) and then I forced myself out.

We went on the Skytrain to Jim Thompson's house - Mr Thompson was an art and silk collector who built his own style of house - western style - in three or four old Thai buildings near the canal, so as we listened to the guide she was drowned out by the boats clugging past. It was a beautiful house, cool and relaxed, with a lovely cafe overlooking a fish pool where we stopped at the end for a coconut juice (oh all right, I had a Coke Zero). The charming and softly spoken guide entertained us with games like hunt the chamber pot and explained how the house was arranged very differently to Thai houses, like having separate rooms for a lounge and dining room, and a hall to welcome visitors who parked in the now souvenir shop.

Back to the hotel for a rest in the heat of the afternoon. As I was feeling very unadventurous, we headed out for dinner to a huge shopping mall, where we had a great fusion Japanese dish (sashimi in a Thai salad), and then a more standard tempura set. The food court - doing great business - was set next to a gourmet supermarket where we nibbled at a few samples for dessert and marvelled at the range of sauces and vinegars.

We relaxed in the evening playing the Yaniv game, a fun card game were you have to get rid of as many cards as possible.   Bangkok has been a great introduction and I can see why it's such a popular destination: now looking forward to getting on and seeing Burma tomorrow.

One night in Bangkok (actually two...)

The flight to Bangkok was one of the best long haul flights I've taken - I slept all the way from Ukraine to Pakistan. Very friendly cabin crew, although actually I've no idea what they were saying so loudly and enthusiastically. Bangkok airport was crowded but it was reasonably fast to get out of immigration, with various people giving me winsome smiles...

I'd been put off public transport to the city by descriptions on the Internet, but we ended up taking the stopping train and metro to our hotel. It was absolutely fine, and fast, and cheap (altogether 51 baht each (about £1)). I chose our hotel, the Grand Millennium, as it was close to metro and Skytrain services - a high quality hotel at a reduced price, perhaps a bit corporate, but very welcoming and friendly.

We walked to a nearby shopping centre after dusk and bought an overview map of Bangkok, then wandered onto the Skytrain platform, and took the train to the Victory Monument station. Very easy to travel on, quite crowded, so not much to see out of the window. The monument itself was ok, nothing really special, but formed the centre piece to a roundabout with traffic going in all directions - a bit more sedate than other countries in the region.

For dinner we went to a restaurant near the hotel - Baan Khanitha, easy to find if you don't take a short cut through massage alley - they must catch a cold! - and in a fit of enthusiasm ordered 7 or 8 plates of Thai food. It was almost all delicious, a real banquet, from the condiments that you put into a folded leaf and snacked as a starter, to the chicken soup, which really was sweet and sour, spicy and refreshing all at once. Rather expensive, and with lots of Japanese tourists, but not at all bad for a real introduction to Thai cuisine. Some of the flavours exist back home, but the range of ingredients was much better this evening.

10.30 now, tired, but I guess no chance of sleeping for some time. But alarm set for 9!

Photo: Sion enjoying the starters at dinner: shrimp balls on sugar cane skewers, and raw shrimps with chilli and garlic (also raw...)