Enjoy:

I’m sitting in the emptiest airport I’ve ever experienced. I suspect they only operate a couple of flights a day from Tacna.  Consequently my only company appears to be a bored check-in attendant for a different airline and a barman who’s mopping the floor.

And I’ve finished all my books. I have little else to do except get the phone out, take advantage of the free Wi-Fi in Peruvian airports and get blogging.

So, let me tell you about how to get from Arica in Chile to Tacna in Peru.

The two cities are only some 40km apart, but transport between them isn’t what you might expect.

The simplest way is to get your hotel to order a taxi to your destination on the other side. They will deal with the crossing, but from Chile this can be expensive, running at around £35.  Similarly, in the opposite direction it’s perfectly possible to get ripped off, as I did last week when I arrived here.

You need two things…your passport and some local currency. In Arica you can take a taxi for £2 to the “Terminal Internacional” where you’ll expect buses but will actually see a huge number of USAnian cars.  You find a driver going to the border pay the station fee (200 pesos, 40p) and then go to an office to do some paperwork.  You then get shown to your collectivo.

These are always US cars of various vintage. I got a really seventies Crown Victoria driven by a brassy old lady whose hair waved in the wind out of the window.  The car contained 5 passengers…a handy one extra than a European or Eastern equivalent, hence more profit.  For her troubles you pay just 2000 pesos, about £3.

She took us to the border, made sure we were OK and left.  There, waiting, were other collectivos heading to Tacna. They all pass the airport, so no problem. You go through Chilean customs and then get driven the short distance to Peruvian customs, again in a USAnian car, albeit this time I got a more modern but nondescript GM thingy.  Cost here was 2500 pesos (they take Chilean money cheerfully.)

That’s it. For less than a tenner you can cross the border.  Don’t do like I did the other way last time and get ripped off by a driver taking you to the airport…you should spend more than about £5 to reach the border from the airport even by taxi as it isn’t far.  Ask first for the price.  Also check whether it’s all the way to Arica, or just to the border (say ‘aduana.’)

Cuzco by Night

Cuzco is one of those places – full of foreigners who got there and thought “hey… let’s stop a while longer” and then don’t leave for years. It’s vibrant, beautiful, friendly and prosperous. See it while it’s still relatively unspoilt.

If you like this shot, you may wish to check out my photoblog, which I’m now going to make a more serious part of my website, albeit with its own style specific to displaying large images.

Santa Catalina fountain with goldfish

The water looks dirty, but isn’t.  You can see the goldfish clearly enough after all.

A wall in a courtyard in Santa Catalina

The Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa is an astonishing city within a city.  In spite of the noise and bustle of the city outside, it manages to maintain a quiet calm.  The nuns who lived here (and a small number who still do) may have led an ascetic and simple life, but they also had a very beautiful place to live as well.  Fantastic light, colours and views.

A nun's cell in Santa Catalina

The colours here just knocked me out.  They say that mid-day isn’t a good time to take photos, especially in the tropics, but you can’t really go wrong when the subject matter is so good.

Not everyone takes their convents seriously

And today I thought, let’s do an image for their ancient monument new uses image competition.

And below is a link to a desktop version of the image, if you want it.

And on the side of one hill, near the lines, is this little fella – image modded a bit to improve contrast. Sadly can’t easily see that he’s actually waving. Maybe he knew something about the lines?

Oh, and in case you’re not a combination Star Wars/travel/geography/conspiracy geek – here’s the explanation, though it’s less interesting than working out for yourself the reasons behind the picture:

1: It’s the Nazca lines – an amazing place in the Atacama desert, in southern Peru. You can get a nutter in a light plane to make daredevil passes at ridiculous turn rates over the lines in order to get you the best views. It costs just $50 a person.
2: It’s the Millenium Falcon – Hans Solo’s space ship in Star Wars.
3: A surprising number of people think that the lines were put there as landing strips for aliens – and they do indeed look like desert runways. More likely is that the local population were into water worship and the lines relate to where water comes from. They obviously also had a fair amount of time on their hands whilst being pretty good at planning and geometry. Some of the lines would be difficult to set out with modern equipment.

Argh - looks like an alien!

Please note this is a reproduction of the webpage I originally created for this story. I just thought it’d be better included in my journal rather than off on its own. Easier to manage too. The extraction happened in March 2006. Since then, thanks to B3ta, Digg, StumbleUpon and others, well over 100,000 people have visited and read this story – which is astonishing really. So thank you all.  In the near future I’ll be re-writing this page to make it more thorough and give more information.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Help me find my dad – if you’ve just returned from a holiday in South America, consider taking a look at my page about my father. Does he look familiar to you? If so, drop me a line.

Maybe it’s a karma thing. I dunno. I changed my plans and decided to go to the Peruvian jungle at the last minute because I was tired of mountains and deserts. But I’d forgotten that one advantage of dry mountain terrain is the relative lack of insect life.

The jungle was great, but one day I made the mistake of wearing a thin t-shirt made from a ‘technical’ fibre – ie, cooling and comfortable in the humid heat of the jungle. Mosquitoes struggle to bite through thick cotton, but these fibres are just so easy for them. In one day with this shirt on I managed to acquire about fifty bites, mostly on my back. Interestingly, the locals, even without deet repellent, receive far fewer bites.

One of these bites didn’t heal quite right. A week or so after I’d noticed it would hurt quite a bit, like a needle being pushed into my back. I guessed it was a little infected. This was late February. After a week or so of this I went to my local clinic where the nurse had a good look. She’s travelled tropically herself and was impressively clued up. After enquiries she felt it was likely to be a bug inside me. There then followed a slightly confusing phase when nobody seemed available to help me out, but eventually, after a few visits, a doctor at the famous Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine offered to take a look. He couldn’t find anything at the time, or extract it, sadly, but the pain continued and the now bigger wound was starting to hurt for longer periods of time. This, apparently, is the botfly larvae moving around and snacking on my flesh. Eventually it was a friend (who is also a dentist, which helps) covered the wound with vaseline and watched carefully for some time through a loupe. It soon became obvious that a botfly spiracle was popping up for air every now and again.. Which meant this bad boy was inside me:

The larvae, if left alone, would live inside me for up to eight weeks and grow up to 25mm long before leaving in order to pupate into the adult fly. I believe the fly can then live for up to two weeks, purely on the stored energy from its larval stage – it can’t eat as an adult. The adult then has to mate, and the female with then capture a mosquito in order to lay its eggs on it. When the mosquito bites someone, the eggs fall off and the warmth of the host causes those eggs to hatch and in a very short time the little grub will burrow in and get snacking.

Nice!

My friend Geraldine is having a baby and has shared the video of its ultrasound. Not wanting to feel left out I thought I’d share my own little ‘baby’ video with the world! But also I felt this page may help people who get the same problem – there are other resources, but none struck me as that clear to the layman, and there are none with a video to show you what to expect.

Some information that I’ve been able to find – the scientific name is Dermatobia Hominis. It has a mouth with scraping hooks, a main body with rows of hooks to hold onto its host, and a spiracle through which it breathes. Symptoms are an enlarging lesion (spot!) that has a small pinhole in the centre for breathing – this hole will not heal as long as the bug is alive. Occasionally you’ll feel sharp stabbing pains, lasting up to half an hour, as it moves or eats. It won’t burrow especially deeply and is unlikely to cause any real damage even if left to mature.

Extraction – we’re currently trying to persuade it out by covering the wound in vaseline. This forces it closer to the surface as its spiracle searches out air, and it may even come out completely. See the video above. As this story progresses I’ll update this page. I also plan to add some links to resources. Watch this space!

OK – I just gave birth to a baby worm. I always said I wanted children, but… not sure if this is the way.

Removal of the botfly larvae:

It wasn’t easy. Squeezing didn’t seem to work, and is said to be almost impossible if the larvae is still alive. So we settled on trying to kill it or weaken it. However, although there are approaches that give you an almost instant kill, the method we used helps to encourage the fella to come closer to the surface.

We needed some kind of dressing that was flexible enough to go on the back and able to keep as much air out as possible. We settled on the lid from a tube of jaffa cakes, filled with vaseline, and thoroughly taped in to place. After a night’s sleep I could feel the wriggling in the morning. Eventually the lid slipped and I removed it completely to see a lot more of the larvae sticking out. Result! I covered it once more, and quickly went to see my friend who was then able to gently tweezer the tip up enough to get another pair of tweezers lower down and slowly extract the bug. Mechanical removal like this isn’t usually advised, but as the larvae was weakened by this point after a night of struggling for air it seemed to be ok. My only concern now is that it might have a twin! But the wound is healing well, which is a very good sign. There’s still some inflammation but it’s improved.

Here’s some pics of the little blighter. Someone could probably make a rather neat little animation. You can see the movement of his mouth parts as he wonders where the hell his meal’s just gone. The goo is just vaseline, by the way.

Pics and video of the little fella:

Click on the images for larger versions.

Linkage

Botfly Larvae in host video

It could have been worse though… but don’t look if you’re either sensitive or don’t like seeing people’s, erm, hidden bits…. http://sti.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/80/3/183.pdf - membership now required.

But you know, I’m feeling kind of lazy at the moment, so I’ll describe things in the way of a five year old. That might make for less typing:

The jungle was dead brill!!! There were big snakes and we caught piranhas except I didn’t coz I’m a vegetable and so don’t do fishing and we had bats and a python in the roof of the lodge. The toilets were dead stinky too and coz they don’t have proper plumbing like what we do in cities and everything the showers were cold which was horrible in the morning. I think I heard French people squealing about it. And there were these two nice English people and they were called James and Caroline and they gave me some of their wine and I got a bit tipsy!

I don’t like mosquitoes. They bit me. A lot. Little bastids. Oh sorry I’m not supposed to use words like that.

I was really really sad leaving South America. It’s so beautiful and nice and the people are great. I’ve got lots of new friends there and I think a little piece of my heart will always be with that continent, and with Peru most of all. I’ll be back.

Hmmmm… the five year old’s style is lapsing. Still…

As for New York City. What a place. It’s not really the assault on the senses that I expected. In fact it feels almost exactly how I expected it to, only quieter, cleaner and more polite. Shockingly expensive, however, but I stayed at the Chelsea Lodge in West 20th Street which was an almost but not quite reasonable $99 for a room with a shared loo but your own shower and basin. But it was very clean and charming, and it seems that for New York I did very well, so I shouldn’t complain. I did try to stay at the Second Home New York, as I stayed at Second Home Lima for my last couple of nights and thought it was brilliant. And relatively affordable. Oh well, maybe next time.

But it’s an interesting one about accomodation when travelling in a group. Essentially you need to settle for the lowest common denominator, or it’s unfair. Either that or the wealthier need to subsidise the poorer, but that’s not necessarily a feasible option given pride and so on. And there’s also the desire to stay in areas that may not be as attractive to you, but it’s important to cede to the group so long as everyone gets a say now and then. I thought we all worked beautifully as a group, but I’ll admit blowing $75 a night on a hotel room was a luxury I really enjoyed :o)

And it was still cheap compared to NY!

And then… it was home.

That’s it. The end of the trip. Done.

But don’t despair too much, I’m going to add a little content about some of the places I went to, with proper researched stuff and everything. But without the pressure of time it could take a while! Watch this space…. And photos will be added soon.

Last night our request for two “GeenToneecs”, as listed on the menu, provoked an explosion of confusion with the staff at “Ellens House”, a bar round the corner from our hotel. After a few minutes two large glasses, with about 250ml of vodka arrived.

We pointed out the problem… that a G&T usually has gin in it. And tonic. The glasses were taken away, four bar staff held a conference, and they returned with… two glasses of vodka with a dash of sparkling mineral water. I took a gulp and my taste buds immediately caught fire. Another return… this prompted more confusion and they came back to say they were just nipping to the shops for a bottle of “agua tonica”. Ok… they were getting the idea. And then we got what I still think was vodka, with a dash of sparkling mineral water… and a dash of tonic. We gave up. Angelique had also failed to drink her “Baylez”… a cheap and eye watering version of Baileys.

Peruvian service is often like this. They do their best, bless ‘em, but sometimes they’re caught out by their own menus. They then utilise a Just In Time system, as popularised in Japanese factories. This means having stock arrive just in time for manufacture – so saving on inventory costs and storage space. But for restaurants that just means that your entrée may well arrive after your main course because some of the ingredients involved sending a member of staff to the market with a shopping list in his hand. Still, the food at these restaurants is often surprisingly tasty – just don’t arrive hungry….

Salty and meaty.
Egg based.
Dangerous.
Salty and fishy.
Scary.
Salty and vegetarian.
Touristic.

Lomo Saltado is one of the classic dishes – fried and salted beef, served in a big pile with gravy, vegetables and chips – all mixed together. There may be some salad on the side.
Dangerous food can be summed up as pretty much anything raw.
Scary is roasted guinea pig – poor little thing has it’s claws on show still and it just looks wrong. Heart kebabs are also a bit offputting.
Touristic is largely edible, but expensive. It revolves mostly around pizza and pasta, but it’s not bad.

There´s a surprising number of vegetarian restaurants and they vary in quality. There’s a chain called Govinda run by Hare Krishnas and although the food is ok (and salty) the service was slow and the atmosphere utterly non existent. We’ve resisted trying another branch. Other vegetarian restaurants, especially in Cusco, can be excellent.

Breakfasts are a barely understood concept. A fried egg, a couple of rolls of bread and some jam, along with juice and tea or coffee and that’s about it. Sometimes you need more to set you up for the day.

I won’t bore on about the history of this place, but instead I’ll say that it’s one of the most beautiful locations in the world. Vertiginous too – if you’re not keen on heights you won’t want to get too near the edges of the town. It gets worse if, like us, you decide to climb Huanay Picchu (I think that’s the name, I’m not checking notes right now) which is the peak you always see in front of Macchu Picchu in the pictures. For this you have to take a quite frankly dangerous path (especially if it´s been raining) up the side of a very steep mountain. Quite often all you can see is a one mile drop to the bottom of the valley. I clung on and did my best in spite of my well known fear of heights. In the end though I saw an alarming enough section to refuse to move any further and simply sat down and waited.

But even where we reached was well worth the effort. I´m soon going to be able to upload pictures to the gallery as I should have more time. First though I’m off to the Crovetto’s beach house for a few days of relaxation after the rest of the troupe disappear. Fiona and Renaud have already got back to Paris, with Soren and Kitt off to Denmark tonight and Angelique, Francois and Romana all flying out tomorrow. So the rest of my travels will be solo :o( The upside I suppose is that I´ll be able to insist on a vegetarian restaurant every night so nutrition might improve a little ;o)

I probably won´t be able to post again until next week… so don´t be too alarmed if it goes quiet!

I’ll say one more thing though – although I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this trip so far a little part of me is missing the home comforts – familiar food, no hawkers constantly trying to sell me things (I reached the point of muttering in English to one kid “Do I look like the kind of f*cking person who wants to buy a doll?” He didn’t understand.)