Cusco

We arrived to Cusco after a 21 hour bus ride without our backpacks...We were not robbed but they were not on the bus...it quickly became obvious that we have forgotten them in Lima...we did not check them in as we thought but left them at the luggage deposit...our only hope was to ask the bus operator to send them to us the next day. So we did...

The happening has been a déjà vu for me - I have once very long time ago forgotten my backpack in a different country and boarded a bus without it :) - one would think that such things do not happen as you get older...

So we arrived to Cusco - a place where it is warm only when the sun shines. At night it is freezing cold...and honestly our room is by no means warm so instead of waiting to get used to freezing temperatures (as we were advised will happen) but decided to get ourselves a small heater...a week has passed but we still do not have it...we simply have not found one...but we got ourselves ponchos gloves and hats from beautiful alpaca wool.

I am still suffering from the fact that Cusco is located higher than the ski resorts I used to go snowboarding in Alps - 3400m above see level is probably higher than any peak in Alps we visited...and here we live at such altitude - going to toilet makes you gasp for air... The city has also a very lively nightlife with all sorts of nice bars including irish pubs and salsa clubs with live music...good for us as we will have to do some fundraising in them...

There are three schools with a little over 30 kids that we have to take care of - the districts they are located are not as scary as in Trujillo and the kids seemed a bit more disciplined...perhaps it is the weather :) So it is easier to deal with them...so far none has complained about my very basic Spanish - still I cannot help kids over 10 years as their textbooks are too complex for me...right now I am at the level of a preschool...

During the weekend we celebrated our first wedding anniversary and splurged on a nice hotel room and a nice local dinner. But what we enjoyed (almost) the most was a clean and hot shower. To remain on the constructive side we have an opportunity to develop house renovating skills if we want to make our new home somewhat cosy... The following day we chilled on the Plaza de Armas, Tomek enjoying the sun halfway leaning on Rita, when a policewoman with a deafening whistle blow appeared and straightened us not to disturb the local order. Rita has been already once cursed in Kiev by a babushka at an orthodox monastery so this was not so bad. Actually we have been already over 6 months on our honeymoon trip - the time flies...

By the way - the next day our backpacks arrived and nothing was missing despite of the horror stories we hear about pick pocketing and theft...luck is still with us...They must all have been trained in the famous Polish prewar pickpocketing school in Lvov as they are unbeatable in their skills.

Northern Coast of Peru

Besides our first baby-steps in volunteering in Trujillo, we had some free time to discover the wonders in the neighborhood. We began with a half our ride in a local “collectivo”, which is either a regular car or a minibus picking up passengers on a hypothetically pre-defined route. Though we never had the chance to figure out what the route is... The funny thing about these public transpot vehicles, that the number of people inside them and the speed they are cruising about is unlimited. Once there were 4 of us sitting in a regular car in the front seats and 5 in the rear :)

But coming back to our cultural discoveries, Chan Chan is a is the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the biggest adobe city in the world. Built in AD 1300 by the Chimu, it hosted an estimated 60 thousand inhabitants as the capital of the larger empire, until they were conquered by the Incas in 1471. The site would have been beyond comprehension without an English speaking guide, who explained us the functions of the different parts of the remaining citadel, which indeed had very distinguished symbolism and functionality. Unfortunately what we can see today is a fraction of the original leaving your imagination alone with the one and only mud color your eye can detect, melting the enormous structure into the equally mud colored scenery. But it is truly captivating, maybe because of its brutal simplicity.

Our next destinantion was the ceremonial and administrative centers of the Moche empire: Huaca de la Luna, the Temple of the Moon, which is 700 years older than Chan Chan. Actually the real attraction would be opposite, the Huaca del Sol, the Temple of the Sun, if it was not closed for visitors. It is still the largest single pre-Columbian structure in Peru, though one third has been washed away during the last one and a half millennia. It was built with an estimated 140 million adobe bricks, prepared and donated by the Moche people. Many of the bricks wear the unique sign of each household or worker who prepared them. The Huaca de la Luna, a good 500m across the desert is a pile of five temples built on top of each other, each new one completely covering the previous one.

We have also visited a sea resort of sorts – Huanchaco – some 20 minutes by bus from Trujillo. It is a great place to relax though the beach is not exactly the nicest we have seen. The good thing about the place is that you can learn how to surf for almost next to nothing. Of course if you do not mind the cold Pacific Ocean. It would have been our next challenge…

We have also had the pleasure to witness the start of another project related to Bruce Peru – WindAid. Basically a wind power generator to be deployed on rental basis in areas where there is no electricity. We have seen it work next to the coast but it really does not need much wind…Since basically you can find generic manuals how to build one on the internet my next challenge once we stop our nomadic life will be building one for myself…Anyway a very inspiring project which I hope will fly big time.

More or less our exploration of the north of Peru ended there. We were proposed to take over the lead of a Bruce Peru center in Cusco. We still spent the weekend in Trujillo roaming around a bit as we have described above. It was a bit sad to leave our room where we kind of settled in already. We had a two day trip in front of us…We arrived to Lima without any hiccups, took a taxi to the next bus terminal from which we were to depart in the evening to Cusco. After checking-in the bags (or so we thought) we had some breakfast at the bus station (don’t think of the bus station as an usual filthy shack but imagine an airport terminal of sorts)…

Anyway during breakfast we made the final decision to make it to Pachacamac, a massive archeological site from AD 200. We took a taxi to the outskirts of Lima where we were supposed to catch a bus to Pachacamac. On the way the taxi driver gave us a local newspaper so that we could read it on the way (some kind of a perk I guess). There began the terror – on page 1 we see the bus of the company we were supposed to board in the evening, totally smashed after a frontal accident with another bus…On page two there is an article about again the bus of the same company being assaulted on the way to the south. Rita told me that 39 people were shot dead and robbed. I could not believe it since the story was on page two. After consulting the driver we figured out that people were alive but without their belongings and even clothing as the bus was stopped during the night and robbed.

Both accidents happened just a day before. It did not inspire us positively but in the evening we nevertheless boarded our bus to Cusco - a 16 hour trip which we thought would be as comfortable as the ride to Lima. The bus was indeed much more comfortable than an average long haul bus in Europe but still not as nice as we expected…We were a bit scared…but there we were – on the way to Cusco…

Trujillo

Now we are living in the desert - though Trujillo is advertised as the city of eternal spring. It never rains, except when the El Niño arrives. Therefore the landscape is quite a bit eerie; basically your eyes are deprived of green except for some palms on the main square. The good thing is that the temperature is very mild - around 18 degrees Celsius, though at the moment a bit chilly at nights.We have arrived on Saturday morning to our new, more long term destination. After our arrival we were taken to our apartment right in the centre of Trujillo, a pretty, colonial city of circa half a million inhabitants - most of which live in the slams around the city. The apartment is a huge five bedroom flat and at the time we moved in the whole place was for two of us only. After a couple of days two more flatmates moved in from the US. In the light of our plan to spend the coming minimum 3 months in Trujillo we have taken the weekend very easy, leaving plenty of time to discover the beauties of the neighbourhood. We looked around the centre and waited for our first ¨working week¨ at the organization we have chosen to volunteer with. Despite of the universal rule according to which Tomek is always right, he gave up finding our way in Trujillo on the first day. And despite of the other quite universal rule according to which women have sense for directions comparable to a parrot, Rita is quite able to navigate throughout the chess table streets of the centre. We have also learned the meaning of a new sign - most buildings have a green sign, one like the one on the right. Though I am still not sure that in case of an earthquake I would not rather want to run out of the building.The week started slowly. BrucePeru is a Peruvian Non Governmental Organization (NGO) with the mission to help children participate in the National Education. They approach parents, usually single mothers living in poor conditions and try convincing them to let their kids come to a one year school, instead of or besides making the kids work or beg. In the schools BrucePeru teaches them basic literacy and maths and supports them socially and emotionally to be able to succeed in the National Schools. As an induction we were to see various activities of the organization; the first day we spent at the celebrations of completion of first year of microfinance project that the organization is running in order to support women to develop enterprises to be able to finance their children’s schooling. We have not learned much there but it made us curious what is behind it. The next day more than compensated for the first one. In the morning we were taken to the local slums to the schools (each of us to a different one). First of all the slums are quite shocking as such. They are in the middle of a grey sand desert and you cannot see the end of them. There are no trees, no running water and we learned that we go there only in the mornings since later on it becomes dangerous to hang around there. The kids are also not the easiest to get their attention. Both of us in different schools got the ones that pose the most problems and it was quite a challenge even without the obvious language barrier we have. Tomek was told by his pupil that he is a bad professor due to the fact that his Spanish is almost non-existent, and asked whether he is a niño or a senior :) He figured that for now the only way to get closer to kids was to go play football with them...Rita got a mentally disabled girl in a wheelchair with 3 other little boys with behavioural challenges, one of which beat her with his little notebook whenever he got upset. By the end of the day both of us were quite stunned by what we experienced. The next day we went to different schools where Rita had her first admirer drawing hearts with arrows for her and easier kids to deal with...The thing that the schools have usually no floors and something that resembles a roof did not shock us on the second day...
On the fourth day we ´strolled´ around one of the slums with two Peruvian employees from our organization responsible for microfinance project, visiting the homes of the projects participants. We saw their new small businesses, houses, market and in general the local life that takes place there. Nobody there spoke English so Rita really had to do her best in Spanish, but amazingly she was able to make herself understood and translate most of the things. Some of the women set up little shops in the centre selling grocery, some make shoes, others silver jewellery or herbal products. It was great to see that some of the businesses where doing very well. Though the general atmosphere of the barrio was far from uplifting... quite an experience that you do not get as a tourist to Peru just like that...All in all the organization is doing a great job - we had our doubts before coming here and were quite sceptical but both the founders and the local staff are just great. It is quite remarkable how much effort they are putting into helping people and kids avoid a pretty sad future.

By the way thanks to Petra there are two new photos of us in the London set on Flickr (photo1 & photo2). This is how many things one needs for one year of travelling - each of us carrying around 15kg´s on our backs :))

Book Review 2

Three months have passed so it is time to give you a glimpse of our readings. I guess during the next three months we will not be reading that much - more watching movies as we have bought a set of Cannes Award winning movies (since 1946 I believe), and collections of Almodovar and Bergman movies.

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Shosha

If you would like to learn about Jewish customs in the pre-WWII Poland this book will give you an atmosphere so strong that sometimes you beleive you feel the smell of food cooked on the streets, which by name are still there but without all this milieu. I liked that the author spared the description of the horror Jews went through in Poland, and rather tells about social life, love and culture - making these suffocating times so much easier to embrace and even to like. And of course you learn again something new about the ways love works.

Herman Hesse: Siddharta

Our edition contained not only the novel, but a Hesse biography with an interpretation of the novel. A fully educating piece. The novel itself was just the perfect synthesis for our SE Aian trip, especially the Buddhist part - as you cannot escape the obvious connotations. Though I think just like most of Hesse´s novels it is a must read at certain age and not any other time, when the message becomes unimportant. If you are ready for some relatively staightforward teaching about how to lead a good life, go for it but do not be disappointed if you find, that there is no universal recipe for enlightment :)

Jose Saramago: The Siege of Lisbon

Another book which makes a city breath alive on the pages, especially if you have been to Lisbon prior to being guided around the contemporary and at the same time medieval streets in the novel. Besides the academic theme around the theory of history - wheter history as such exist at all and what history is after all - it is a manicured love story. This book did not shake the way I see life, but made it cosy and so much comfortable. It makes you want to go to Lisbon and rumble down the streets with a map and this book in your hand, drink coffee and eat pastry in those wonderful brasilleries. Oh, and it will give you an entirely new experience of reading dialogues: you will have to use your imagination to find out who is talking and where is the end of the sentence. Do not give up after the preface, it is worth the try :)

Graham Green: The Quiet American

I wonder why I have not read anything from Graham Green till now. He is just genious. Not only because it is great to read a book about the country you are travelling to, but because his writing is such as Leonard Cohen's songs: they are boiled down to simplicity and tell more by silences than with words. It is a not especially unique story told in a very special way about those inevitabely peculiar years when French lost grip in Vietnam but the Americans did not mess around yet too seriously. And as ususal it is principally a love story plus a friendship, a lot of Saigon folklor with the tension of politics.

Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
It is a book everyone should read. It teaches you about the Afghan culture, which is partially lost, partially hidden for most people who listen only to the news about this unfortunate country. Besides it is a heartbreaking, wonderful story, written in a beautiful fashion, teaching you so much about human nature as ten other books together cannot. There is the finest sensitivity paired with such brutality you would not want to see on film and twists and turns making it not only wonderful but exciting, too. And most of all, you really have to give up thinking about right and wrong, just dive into the ocean of man-made complexity and try surviving it with a full heart.

Yann Martel: Life of Pi
I had this book in my hand so many times contemplating whether I should read it or not that it became an engagement I could not escape. The book finally landed on me as a result of a book exchange from our Australian fellows travelling with us in Myanmar and I finished it almost in one shot on one of our never ending bus rides. It is a refresing peace of work especially for those interested more in the method of teaching literature than enjoying it, though I have to admit, it is a very exciting and unique story. It teaches you a great deal about animals and you become almost a zoo expert by the end of the book - though do not try training tigers how to jump through circles based on the instructions, even if you tend to believe it as a true story :) Besides to Pondicherry zoo my favorite part was the way the three big religions (Hinduism, Islam and Christianity) entered Pi´s life and how he introduced them through his perception, accepting all three of them simultaneously. If you are ready to test your concentration skills and ability to understand the debth of text, try answering the list of questions at the end of the book. It really does show how much blackout we have while reading.

Gregory David Roberts: Shantaram
This is a totally unbelievable autobiographical book written by a guy who used to lead an insane life. It shows Bombay in the 80´ties with its slums and local mafia. There will be soon a Hollywood movie staring Johnny Depp. At the beginning of the book I was totally incaptivated by it but with time I did develop certain distance to the guy as his values or the way he acted on them were inconsistent at best. Below his not so short biography:

* Marriage break-up, loss of daughter in custody dispute, beginning of heroin addiction, 1976
* Armed robberies with toy pistol to support heroin habit, end year 1977
* Capture and imprisonment, 1978; Escape from Maximum Security Pentridge prison, 1980
* Escape from custody (twice) in New Zealand, end 1981
* Arrive in India, beginning 1982
* Six months in remote Maharashtrian village, learn to speak Marathi language
* Live in Bombay slum, establish and operate free clinic for slum dwellers
* Imprisoned in India for 4 months
* Recruited by Bombay mafia, training in currency crime, gold smuggling, passports
* Gunrunning operation to unit of mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan
* Wounded in action, evacuated to Pakistan, recover and return to Bombay
* Appointed controller mafia forgery unit, write short stories, published in popular series
* Passport smuggler to Nigeria, Zaire, Iraq, Iran, Mauritius, Sri Lanka
* Establish casting agency for foreign extras in Bollywood movies, act in movies
* Arrive in Germany, work as singer, establish rock band, receive recording contract
* Manhunt by European police, escape custody in Italy & Switzerland, escape to India
* Act in Bollywood movies & TV dramas, establish travel agency in Bombay
* Passport smuggling to Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Nigeria, Zaire, Mauritius, etc.
* Break with Bombay mafia council, freelance drug smuggling missions to Europe
* Teach myself to read & write German, win concessions, extradited to Australia, end 1991
* 2 years solitary confinement, 4 years mainstream prison in Australia, begin novel, 1991-97
* Develop philosophical and cosmoogical model, "Resolution Theory"
* Released from prison, begin novel 1997, end parole 2002
* Sell rights Shantaram, in USA (St. Martin’s Press) & UK (TimeWarner Books UK)
* Publish Australian edition of novel, Shantaram, August, 2003
* Sell movie rights to Johnny Depp, Brad Grey, Graham King, Warner Brothers, October 2004

Lima

We are suddenly on the Southern hemisphere hanging upside-down - at least compared to our usual Northern hemisphere experience and instead of being ahead of Greenwich time we are lagging behind. All these changes to digest within the frame of 2 and a half weeks during which we have been to six countries on three different continents. It has distorted our sense of time and space in general. While we were used to moving 600km in 12 hours on a bus, crossing thousands of kilometres by plane introduced a bit more of confusion. Especially that the local conditions varied tremendously. Comparing Yangon to Bangkok is one thing, and comparing Yangon to London where we landed one day later is yet another.

Anyway after our six day visit to Buenos Aires we boarded a plane to Lima. For some reason we imagined that it will be a short 1,5 hours maximum type of intra European flight. It was strange though that we got pillows and blankets, we were informed about a coming film and dinner to be served - all in such a short time… We burst out laughing seeing the astonishment on each others face when it was announced that the flight will be 4 hours 40 minutes and it would add another 2 hours time difference to our Central European time (summing up to 7 hours).

Managing your expectations is always the best way to make yourself happy, and anyway, during our trip so far we learned that a new place is always unpredictable. First of all we have sometimes ignored some advice (vide crossing the boarder to Nepal where a general strike took place) or taken it a bit too seriously (vide Myanmar where we have landed with our backpacks full of dry noodle soups in case we had nothing to eat). Based on the information we gathered about Lima we had nightmares how awfully dangerous, polluted and ugly it will be, so we planned as short a visit as possible in the possibly safest barrio.

As we had enough of adventures during the last couple of weeks we decided to book a hotel in advance and pre-order a taxi. When we landed in the modern Lima airport (it is tricky to judge a country by the airport you land in as i.e. Myanmar has also a very modern airport but the rest does not live up to it), found our taxi driver, took local money from ATM, locked the taxi doors from inside as advised, prayed to God to arrive without being robbed and set off on the road...The road led us through a district full of huge shopping malls with all imaginable global brands what already made us wonder how can it be so dangerous if you seem to have all the big companies doing business here ?!

Most of the scary stuff proved to be some illusionary tales by people who never went out of their safe countries...and somehow made it to Peru without being anywhere else...Obviously it might not be the safest country on the planet but it is far from being ultra dangerous, or after the land of Buddha and Hindu Gods we had a very fast acclimatization in Buenos Aires, where after the first shock we safely survived several pick-pocketing attempts and a double attempt to be cheated by our hotel receptionist J ...

We arrived safely and stayed in a nice hostel in Miraflores and the next day went sightseeing...The main square was beautiful and the whole centre was full of extraordinary Catholic churches (in Asia we had an overdose of Buddha temples and here it seems we are going to be cured by an overdose of Catholic ones). As usual we have also seen anti-governmental demonstrations. It seems wherever we go we end up in a place of unrest. Argentina was the same not to mention any of the South East Asian countries we have visited. We ended the day in a very nice cafe sipping Coca de Mate tee and preparing for our bus ride to Trujillo where we are to stay for longer. The bus we took was as luxurious as the premium business class on Thai Air with fully reclining seats, a DVD and bus assistant serving food and drinks. Our luggage was collected at a check-in desk 30 minutes prior to departure, our fingerprints taken and lastly we had to cross a metal detector. So much about the scary Lima... We enjoyed ourselves in Lima as if we arrived home. Our low expectations surely helped, or our survival instinct, since this country will serve as our home for some time now J

Buenos Aires

After a 14 hour flight from Frankfurt we arrived in Buenos Aires airport very much excited about arriving so far away from our home lands. From Thailand you can always make it overland to Europe - with South America there is an ocean to cross.

Buenos Aires international airport felt a bit like landing in Moscow at the Sheremietievo airport, or perhaps arraiving to Warsaw to the main railway station - anybody who has been to those places will know what I mean. Usually it does not bode well.

Anyway we decided to take the local bus to the hotel we booked through the internet - all went well since people in the capital of Argentina are extremely helpful. A guy on the bus helped us change to the metro line (95 years old metro line that does feel like it WOULD be 95 years old). It definitely feels that no special attention has been paid to keeping it in good shape. It is however a highly atmospheric ride hardly comparable to anything in Europe (except perhaps the old metro line in Budapest which is much better taken care of).

So we arrived in our hotel - it was the worst we have ever been to in our lives - it was kind of disgusting especially that we were paying 20 USD instead of the usual 5 USD which we paid in South East Asia for our hotels. For the price one would expect some kind of decency in the offer. This place was so bad that we decided to check in (it was already midnight when we arrived) and at once go out to eat to think of a strategy for the next days. The street in front of our hotel did not look much better - there was something in the air telling us that we might get into trouble any minute. So not too stretch our luck we went it to McDonald’s. The first one during our whole trip this year. Kind of safe bet at midnight. Obviously we decided to look for an alternative place to spend the next nights…

Since for the first time during our trip we arrived to a city without a guidebook, the next day we bought ourselves a TimeOut magazine…below the description of the street we have managed to book our hotel (Lavalle street) “It is every claustrophobe’s sweat-soaked nightmare…the mother lode of the mayhem is called Florida, the only completely pedestrian street in BA…However, amid the human statues, money changers you can still find traces of its refined past. Lavalle on the other hand makes Florida look chic and classy. It’s packed with blockbuster and B-movie cinemas, advertising hoardings and enough neon to power a nuclear sub”

As you can imagine when we arrived to such place the only thing in our mind was - why was my brother saying that Buenos Aires is so nice? Have we arrived to a different place? TimeOut quickly made it clear to us that we have managed to choose the worst place in Buenos Aires (perhaps apart from Boca district)…

From there on things started picking up. We have managed to find a very nice hostel and decided to enrol for a four day Spanish language crash course combined with induction to Buenos Aires…a very good choice…

We have also managed to find the charm of Buenos Aires - beautiful districts like San Telmo with its weekend markets, Palermo with its bohemian atmosphere and beautiful parks and plaza’s…and everywhere Tango and great places to eat or chill…after 6 months of rice diet, I have decided to change to jamon and Argentinian beef. …

All in all there is no question that Buenos Aires is a great city - where is perhaps a bit too much of pick pocketing and general feeling of insecurity but otherwise it lives up to its expectation…We have just managed to choose another place with demonstrations against the government and street fights with the police. :)

London

We were so eager to arrive to London that our last 10 days in South East Asia were somehow difficult for us. It was tough on us mentally - we knew that so many things we were used to having while living in Europe are waiting for us there. I was waiting for a wide choice of chocolate which is more or less not available at all (except for Snickers and a couple of others wannabe chocolate types), all kinds of diary products especially cheeses, and weather which will hover around 20 degrees as opposed to 40 Celsius. I am by no means a food freak - neither a shopping freak but I like the idea of having a choice. In fact to fulfil my desires it is enough to see that I have a choice - I do not even feel then a need to buy things anymore. It was enough that once I had a chocolate, some cheese, a döner in Frankfurt (while already on the way to South America) to be mentally prepared for not having these choices for another six months.

Anyway London was wonderful in all aspects; we were staying at Rita’s cousin’s place at Gipsy Hill. She and her boyfriend made us feel very much at home at their beautiful flat. Gipsy Hill is a very quiet neighbourhood where we tried to recover from our extensive travelling.

We both have been to London quite a few times but it is one of those places for me which every time feels like I would be visiting it for the first time. We did not intend to move around London too much this time but just recharge before moving on; nevertheless we managed to experience quite a few nice things; we went to see painting exhibition of Cy Twombly at Tate Modern which did not impress me at all. There is quite much hype about his works but I can admire him only for one thing - with this kind of art to create such hype…There is no visit possible to London without ending up in Camden Town and of course some nice English pubs where Rita could enjoy the jacked potato and fish & chips she has been craving for. We have also visited the famous Banksy graffiti exhibition near the Waterloo tube station. We have found there Pope Benedict XVI posing in Marlin Monroe dress and Madonna kissing Britney Spears - though we are not sure whether any of them was done by Banksy.

On our last day we enjoyed the hospitality of our Indian friend from our yoga vacation in the Trivandrum Ashram in India. Our visit began with the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) Temple in North West London, a contemporary masterpiece of Hindu architecture; its carved white marble with the lace-like windows letting the sun shine through makes your jaw drop when entering the temple’s interior. It is truly the most wonderful Hindu temple we saw out casting the ones in India. First time in our lives we were invited for a dinner to an Indian home, where we had a wonderful evening with our friend’s son and his wonderful wife overwhelming with their hospitality and of course delicious Indian food.

The one week in London passed very fast giving us a fast recovery we badly needed including a full laundry in a real washing machine, muesli and foamy thick coffee in the morning with endless excellent discussions, good smelling bed, a bathtub and washing teeth with tap water first time in 6 months. And of course a gorgeous hair make for Rita by her kuzynka. See for yourself.