Cuentas sobre America Latina
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 21:35:15 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: South America Report 8 - the final one.
So, what ultimamente happened was like... we took the bus from Puno (Lago Titicaca) to Cuzco (near Machu Picchu) which took only 8 hours instead of 14 for this road has been recently asphalted (which in Peru does not mean it was in good condition!) Am happy about that, because 14 hours travelling by night would be ok in a nice bus on a nice road, but in Peru you have to go by daylight if you don't want to take chances that your bus will be stopped by armed guys and robbed, which seems to be quite common in that country.
Unfortunately Cuzco itself is a town where most inhabitants have a only-get-dollars-from-the-stupid-tourists attitude. Lots of idiots actually seem to love this place (for its many beautiful israeli travellers and the possibilities to f.... (sorry!) them, for the western-europe-like discos, bars and restaurants of any kind. We (the 2 austrians and me) actually did not think much good of this place - for exactly the same reasons. Cuzco is not Peru. Unfortunately it is about the only convenient gateway to Machu Picchu and for this also lots of these bleeding "Studiosus-Reisen" tourists (groups of teachers, families with nasty kiddies, and groups of Rheinl�nder-like people (loud, drinking heaps, loving South American landscapes but hating and laughing about its people)) travel to this place and ruin the peruvian culture and prices. It ends up that if you walk through the streets of Cuzco, you end up finding yourself talking english to waiters in restaurants - of whose many simply refuse to use their native tongue. I tried to buy train tickets for the tourist train to Cuzco (the government prohibited the use of local trains for tourists just to suck them out), asked in spanish, got a reply in english. Replied in spanish and this bastard again responed in english.
Only as I lied and told them that he'd either speak German or Castellano to me for I would not know English we ended up talking in Spanish. Well first I thought, might be that my Spanish is not too good.... but fortunately I met some Basques (and was travelling with them for sometime) who only speak Spanish and told me 1) that my spanish was "bastante bien" 2) that they had encountered the same problems at the train station. The peope refused to talk castellano even to native spanish-speakers. So, where are we? If that continent is Latin America, certainly the town of Cuzco is not a part of it!
Well, but Cuzco has at least one good: Fantastic landscapes around with lots of Inca and Pre-Inca ruins walkable in six hours hillup. Of course you can also take the tourist bus,......
Well, Peru also is about twice as expensive as Bolivia. So you actually end up spending about $25-$30 here if you want to live on the same standards as I did in Bolivia.
So, I do not know if I already told that I planned to do this "Camino Inka" - a 4 day treck from Cuzco to Machu Picchu over the old Inca path. Well, ther Peruvian government now prohibited tourists going on their own and by this prohibited many of the local tour operators to go. So there remain only a few, which results in high prices (minimum of $170 incl. all for a good operator, $130 of a mean one) and a waitinglist of normally two days even at the end of high season.
So I decided not to waste my money but to skip this and joined a swiss couple (travelling for one year!!!) by train to Aguas Calientes (a town nearby) stay overnight and go up to MP in two hours the next morning at 6 am when there are less tourists and return the next day to Cuzco. So I did. Think it was the better option! Well... MP itself is fantastic! You really can imagine the old Inkas walking through the streets of the complex.... As more tourists came up (imagine what the f.... government of this country did: They sold Machu Picchu to a foreign company! Well, now there is a road going up - and about bussses every 10 minutes. But this is not that bad. What really bad is, is the following: The built a hotel complex directly next to the great ruins of Machu Picchu. You can believe me, this is not April 1st. They actually build a 5-star hotel - a night costs about $250 and it is mostly fully booked by that idiots I wrote about earlier. And - guess what - this hotel has a beautiful red-shining roof, what means, when you climb up Huaynapicchu (its top on 2700m is about 300m above Machu Picchu, you almost do not recognize the ruins but at least you clearly see this big hotel shining up to you.... well if you ask me, all of them - the government that sold MP, the company that built this hotel and all tourists that visit this hotel - are pure bastards, not worth living. They only tend to destroy anything they can!))
Well, cuzz I wanted to save time and was pretty annoyed by Peru, I decided to go up to Lima by plane instead of a 40 hour busride on a pretty bad road, which is said to be dangerous because of lots of armed robberies.
At first I also was annoyed by Lima and wished I had an earlier flight. The weather here in wintertime (which is march to octobre) is warm (about 20 degrees) but hazy all day long. You never see the sun. Smog, dirty old buildings heaps of people in the center. And in Miraflores - the rich part near the sea - es como Santiago de Chile. Skyscrapers, modern buildings, lots of traffic, too. Western restaurants. Expensive. Rich people: You even see about 3 BMW and Mercedes per hour here. Normally there are none. The most common cars here are japanese ones. Maybe it's because of Fujimori or maybe because they are less expensive than Opel, VW, Ford,.... Well I talked to some cab-drivers. Sounds pretty bad what they told me: Most of them have to work for 16 hours per dey. 7 days a week. Just to earn about S/35 per day (35 Soles = about 10 US$) which definitively is not enough for a life in a town where an acceptable hotel room costs at least S/20 and food in a nice reataurant S/10 and a beer S/8. Ok, there are actually restaurants offering set lunches for S/3.5 but the choice is pretty low..... So, now you can imagine that - relatively seen - these guys driving a Mercedes in Peru would own a carpark of more than 5 Rolls Royce in a western country...
Guess what the government of Peru does: They throw the waste of Lima into the sea to gain territory!!!! So even in summertime you are not supposed to go for a swim!
Well but I do not only want to speak bad of Peru. I finally came to fall in love with Lima - which is said to be one of the most dangerous and ugly places of Peru--bullshit! - The Lime�os and especially Lima�as are nice, lovely and happy people. It is the place for you if you happen to look for a chica latina! Also if you "just" like to talk to locals and mix up with them, go out. Enjoy. It is a grat place. Dangerous? I don't know. Many people even get robbed in "secure" places, maybe it is because of their stupidity? Like tourists that visit La Paz prison with money, passport and expensive camera. Or like people that line up in a queue with their camera in a daypack which is tied to their back and happens to be opened and emptied by razorblade artists. Fortunately you encounter idiots all over the world, so the local criminals can rob them and keep off the normal travellers.
So, I never - not even a second - felt unsafe in all of Lima. Even in the old center, near the mercado and other places. Even when walking with a backpack.... Also now there is one good thing the government initiated: Heaps of police in the touristy places are present, though there are not so many tourists in Lima.
So, what I am trying to tell is that not all lime�os are bad. En contrario: Only some of them are - like also in Europe, where we do have criminals, but the others appear to be lots more lovely people than most of us Europeans!
Well, as you guess, I really enjoyed my last days in Lima and flew back on Tuesday 20:05 (hora peruviana) - thank god - not via the EEUU which had closed its airspace that time, but via Madrid which did not have any troubles except of the fact that spanish customs are equipped very old-fashioned (worse than in South America!) and also very lazy guys. So I actually arrived in Munich Wednesday night and suppose I will stay being sad for some time that I am back in this country - having left back so many friends and family in Peru and Bolivia.
So, that's it for this time :-)
Thinking about next journeys soon.....
Have fun and keep in touch.... all of you!
bye, Oliver.