I started discovering Peru with some beach time in the North, in Mancora. I stayed there for a few days and met a Bernese co-national, Cuno. With him and others we went, among trying the local “ceviche” (white raw fish marinated in lemon and onions, delicious and ultra-fresh!) and chatting on the beach (I did go to the water but it was clearlz not at 30 degrees as in North Colombia), swim with turtles. Quite a weird experience because one can only swim in the perimeter delimitated by a floating barrier and must wait for the turltes to be attracted by the food served to them (not us, special turtle food of course). But it was impressive! I had never been touched by a turtle, nor carressed its shell and head, a really special and beautiful moment. These were a few days of heat, at the beach, relaxing. The idea was really to give my body a rest before beginning to discover Peru.

What’s clear is that Peru is big, and it seems to me that distances between one place and another are long to travel by bus. I frequently end up spending 10h or 15h sitting on a bus waiting for the next destination, often sleeping because I take night buses – it allows paying for the hostel as well as for the trip. I thus left for Chachapoyas with my new Swiss buddy, trip that among others made us change bus in a very Peruvian waiting room; we were the only white people around and we clearly made people as curious as they made us. A lot of fun!

The aim of Chachapoyas was to go visit Kuelap, a “Chacha” then Inca town on top of a mountain. Ruins way more impressive than the Lost City in Colombia! Spread out, with houses almost still standing and various types of buildings (ossuaries, sacred places, houses), surrounded by a mountainous landscaped and splendid sights, this archeological site was really worth the visit! I even spotted my first non-commercial lamas (not there in costume and just for tourists as, for instance, in Colombia or Ecuador), so cool. Roughly, the Chacha people lived in this sacred town that the Spaniards falsely identified as a fortified city, then were chased by the Incas (strong colonisers also, relatively violent as well), who were later kicked out by the Spaniards, which left it to be abandoned because they found it useless (didn’t care much for doors oriented towards the sun nor for tumbs full of proof that these people practiced surgery).

The day after was dedicated to another sort of visit: hike in the jungle, in the mountain, with a waterfall as a reward. Splendid!!! The sort of sight and place I was dreaming of coming to South America, I am spoiled, it’s perfect. We could come near the Gocta fall in two points, at the middle and then the lower part. There, people like saying that it’s the 3rd highest waterfall in the world, at about 700m (apparently it’d rather be the 16th). Gorgeous, with a wonderful panoramic track, I loved it! I walked with Cuno and Isabel, a great German met in Kuelap, which I was meant to meet again later.

The next experience was again a stark contrast, because I went all the way to the Amazonia! It took a lot of time, four to five days go and back for a four-day trek, but it was really different and quite exceptional actually. And the journey included 10h on a boat to go and 15h to come back, which was for me part of the Amazonian experience. I went with Gaëtan, a really cool Breton French met at the hostel in Chachapoyas and with whom we made France and the world a better place (in words) while passing from one minibus to the other, then we bought our hammocks for the boat journey and left for the adventure. We spent half the time on the boat roof, in the sun with two Irish musicians, half chilling in our hammocks among locals (the slow boat is the less touristy option, the fast one being more expensive). At noon, while we had packed a picknick, we discovered that our ticket actually included a lunch, that each goes collect by queuing next to the “kitchen”, with their own tupperware that they hadn’t failed to bring (we had to borrow one).

After one night in the village of Lagunas in the middle of a power break, we embarked our stuff and all the material prepared by our guide on a little wooden canoe and left, our bottoms still unharmed, on a river taking us to the Pacaya-Samiria park in the Amazonia. The excursion consisted of a journey along the water, on this piece of wood pulled by a paddle (and our guide’s arms, though we partook on the last day). Since there’s no motor, we don’t bother the animals too much, which is great because fauna observation is the aim of such a trek. We went from one cabin along the river to the other, then back on our steps (well, paddle strokes) after reaching the middle point of our expedition. Unfortunately we couldn’t spot any anacondas nor alligators (the night was too clear and the moon too bright when we tried to see them! On the other hand we heard some dive into the water, which makes the experience rather exciting). In spite of this it was absolutely great and I felt spoiled to be able to see so much in such a concentrated amount of time while I wasn’t doing anything for it – not even the effort of a hike.

Most remarkable was of course that river dolphins (quite oddly formed, humped compared to the traditional image of dolphins) swam behind our boat and ahead for quite some time, several times! Well, it’s a bit like whale watching, one must be lucky to see one out of the water, what you mostly see is their back when they come out to breathe. But we did see one jump! (No picture, too quick) And it was impressive to hear them breathe when their back was out of the water, really like a human inspiration. Wonderful, really. Other mammals we were lucky enough to spot were a family of about a dozen otters, swimming with their heads out of the water and waddling to see who was imitating their scream (our guide), but also a sloth on a tree trunk, bleding so perfectly in its environment that we suspected several times that our guide had consumed something powerful enough to make branches come to life as animal hallucinations – but no, he was right, those were sloths.

And the monkeys! We spotted a big one just passing by, and tons of little ones running away as we approached, but the most notable was the red hurling monkey. In the morning, these noisy primates shout themselves hoarse by continuously roaring, so strong even that, from afar, you believe that the wind is shaking the tree tops. We saw one relatively closely (at monkey watching scale of course), and a whole family passing by high up our heads, the baby hanging on to his mum. As for birds, we weren’t disappointed either: eagles from close, parrots (some flew over us, others gave us a shouting concert), numerous herons (magnificent when taking off due to their wingspan), little toucans (stealing the eggs of the “imitator” black and yellow bird), woodpeckers, kingfishers, vultures, numerous volatiles with unknown names but pretty songs, it was a feathery and colorful festival! And finally we could see iguanas, piranhas, fish that our guide fished to feed us, bats, huge ants, many mosquitoes and other sinister humming insects, noisy frogs singing at night, and probably one or another wild beast that I forgot about because they were so many.

Incredible experience, way better than a stroll in a zoo – among other things, because the animals are in their natural habitat and their freedom isn’t hampered. Then, I must specify that you spend a lot of hours of observation just waiting to see something, seating on a floating piece of wood – our bottoms suffered a good deal. And we were also quite bored because our guide, though very kind and knowledgeable, was not only far from talkactive but also completely hermetic to humor. We were very happy to do this trek together, Gaëtan and I, and not just alone with him!

The journey back from Lagunas, alone because my French friend continued on the river heading to Iquitos and then Leticia, Colombia, was a quality sociological experience. It was a boat trip by night, everyone sleeping in their hammock. But just for the night to start it already meant that the boat had to arrive, first! The indicated hour was “9-10pm, get there at 8:30pm”… at 11:45pm my hammock was finally set and the boat was leaving the pier. Lessons of patience… (normally, in these situations, I read without caring about the time, but in this case I had finished the National Geographic found at the hostel) The night could begin, leaving aside the lights that switched on and off at times, the Christmas music somewhere around a corner, and the guy sleeping with his phone on his belly, turned on and playing music… all night long. Quite epic, especially since the boat was 5h late on arrival. Of course, nobody gets nervous, it’s part of the risks inherent to slow boat journeys. Again, I had to borrow a plastic box from someone and enjoy the very original chicken with rice that was generously served at noon. Having nothing to read nor signal to use my phone, I spent most of the journey observing how people make themselves busy or interact. One thing I absolutely noticed is that people are… discrete here.

It’s obvious, actually, given the distances I’ve crossed, but not necessarily intuitive for Europeans; there are marked cultural differences between Peruvians and Colombians. I only talk about people I’ve been in contact with, but I was already told about other striking features of, for instance, Bolivians, Chileans or Argentinians. It’s fun because after spending to great months in Colombia, free of misunderstanding issues, I found myself in Peru sometimes wondering if my Spanish was the problem. But no, several situations proved to me that there are gaps due to differences of perception that an open mind (or mine in particular) doesn’t manage to fill. Numerous times, and I can’t recall this happening in Colombia, I can’t make myself understood by the Peruvian I’m talking to, which in return I can’t really understand either – for reasons of content, not linguistic ones. The only way for me to explain these misunderstandings is that I have the impression that Peruvians (incorrect generalisation of course) are trying to interpret what I want in order to help me better, but so make up a new meaning to what I’m saying (for instance, instead of answering me how much time I need from A to B I’m asked whether I want to go to C instead, or if I feel like going by bus). Answering without answering, often to avoid admitting that they ignore the answer. It’s funny, but often also quite frustrating. And pretty crazy as well, I had experienced this only in Indonesia so far and I wasn’t expecting such cultural differences here – I had stupidly assumed that my general image of latino-american culture would correspond to reality, not knowing what else to expect.

I talk I talk, let’s come to the point. I didn’t find in Peru the Colombian “warmth” or friendliness: nobody calls me “my life”, and people don’t tend as much to finish their interactions with “may you be fine” (I often feel a little too kind or polite because of this, or even a little awkward, as I got used to speaking like this). They are also more discrete, I feel, even though they automatically use the closer “tú” with strangers, whereas in Colombia it was always the more formal/distant “usted” that was the rule. By discrete I also mean that people don’t speak very loud, and I noticed this among other things on the boat, that’s the situation I hinted at earlier. Even though we were about a hundred people on my floor, calm and a certain quietness reigned during the entire journey, daytime hours included. Where we would have expected a happy mess, it was actually a very peaceful trip where people were not shouting at each other to cover others’ voices but calmly talked, not even children were noisy.

So quiet actually that when my hammock neighbour started asking me questions and telling me stories, I had to have him repeat several times before giving up and pretending I had understood, with a little laughter. Sure, he had a local Lagunas accent, which is strong and weird to me (sounds African without any reason, people aren’t black at all), but the issue was essentially an auditory one. In spite of the very calm environment, he spoke at such a low voice that even by getting closer I couldn’t hear him! I know that it’s at least a local particularity, if not national, because when our Amazonian guide would meet a colleague on another canoe they would whisper to each other even when twenty meters would separate their boats. As for Gaëtan and me, we would barely hear what the guide said when he’d talk to us, and we were way louder to talk to each other being side by side than those two at a distance!

This being said, to change an image that I find incorrect and that travellers coming to Colombia bring into the country from Peru: no, I don’t find Peruvians unfriendly. At almost each step of my travel in this country I met a Peruvian who wished to help me, share a bit of food or make me discover their country, often without me asking for anything previously. It’s possible that it’s a little more typical of Northern Peru, which is less touristy and where people are perhaps a little less bored, but I was in contact with several people from Lima and Cusco who were absolutely open and helpful. The difference lies rather in those who work in a tourism-related field, I find. I continuously felt like such people were trying to rip me off way more, to increase the prices way more because of my skin color and that they weren’t trying to be nicer than the bare minimum. Again, I’m not talking about all Peruvians at all.

Well well. Since I came back from Amazonia, I accumulated quite a lot of kilometers. I went down along the coast, to Trujillo, and there met Isabel again, my German friend from Chachapoyas. Together, we visited the Huacas Mochica, an ancient living and sacred place of the Mochica culture (about 800 years a.C, and before the Incas) located in the desert. The entire Peruvian coast is a desert actually, the contrast with the very green and generally mountaineous interior part of the country is pretty striking, especially after spending some days on the water in Amazonia! The construction was quite big and especially impressive because several walls still preserved their original colored illustrations, with painting of that time! The more I visit Peru, the more I realise that my little basis of school knowledge on the Inca culture really doesn’t allow me to grasp the complexity of what that country was for several centuries. I didn’t suspect there were that many peoples in Peru itself (there are quite a few)! Nice visit, nice moments together.

Then, we took the bus for Huaray, in the Andes, far from the desert coast. I absolutely wanted to go because it’s the starting point for the Santa Cruz trek, in the White Cordillera, of which I had heard a great deal. The region is also known for its lagunas and gletschers, but once again organisational considerations made me set priorities. That’s also why I opted for a three-day treak instead of several little ones: I wanted an intense and more radical experience! In a sense, I was served: we climbed up to 4750m and slept in tents between 3700m and 4200m. Might as well say it wasn’t hot! The hike itself was no great challenge, most of the time it was almost flat, even though we were “hiking up for 4h” on the second day, and only the last hour of ascension really required efforts. But what sights!!! The rocky, snow-capped mountains reminded me of Swiss landscapes, while the vegetation looked more like Scotland (the Isle of Skye). Everything was of course majestic, and the best was the pass at 4750m, a little over a small turquoise laguna, quite typical of the area where lagunas are like little jewels spotting the mountaineous landscape. Wonderful!

As for comfort, this trek was probably one of the biggest challenges I had to face since the beginning of my travel. Temperatures depend on the altitude, and our tents were after all quite rudimentary (our guides would cover them up with plastic wraps to protect us from the rain…), the mattresses were thing and hard and the sleeping bags far from optimal. Short nights along with very simple food! Donkeys were transporting all the material, from food to tents including the gas necessary to cook, it was practical but a little special. And this way the bread would dry up and veggies were not many. Since our guide’s explanations were often unclear and his answers vague, and since we actually also sort of had to improvise our departure, with Isabel and another girl, the latter ended up telling us an anecdote that happened to a friend.

She was waiting for a bus that wasn’t arriving, and she asked an old man who was around whether the bus would pass. His answer: “In Peru, everything is possible, nothing is certain”. We immediately made this quote the slogan to our Santa Cruz trek! These three days were however a very, very cool experience, and, as is often the case, the people with whom it’s been shared were a big part of how you feel about it in general. Isabel, of course, Gerardo the Mexican, two Bretons and a couple of Spanish physiotherapists, Pablo and Patricia, who have been wandering for quite some time, a lot of people who make you travel a lot. At the end of my travel I’ll have visited more countries that those whose borders I’ll have crossed, because all the stories, discussions about politics, history or their country’s landscapes will have made me discover so much, I love it. And I love all the different life stories, to always and again face my own choices and question them all.

After Huaraz and its snowy peaks at the center of the country, I said goodbye to Isabel, going home for Christmas, and I left for a long bus journey of about two days taking me to Cusco, passing through Lima without stopping to taste its continentally famous gastronomy. It was my last Peruvian destination, and I expected to get the maximum out of it: a 5-day trek finishing in Machu Picchu (to pronounce “matchoo pikchoo”, meaning Old Mountain in Quechua, name that doesn’t date back to Inca times). No Sacred Valley, no Rainbow Mountain, no visit to Arequipa at the foot of its volcano nor to the Manu national park in the Amazonia. No time. Perhaps I’ll come back once. I could get to know Cusco, the Inca city, El Cusco in Spanish or Qosqo in Quechua, meaning “the belly button of the world”. Many of its streets and homes in the center were built from Inca homes, Cusco being at the time the capital of their empire. One can recognise the Inca architecture to its huge stones perfectly piled up, to its thick walls with antisismic  diagonal inclination. The town itself is pretty charming, a little colonial and colorful, full of history and stories, I like it a lot.

For the trek we had to leave early in the morning for a few hours on the road, then the hike begun, the Salkantay trail, of the mountain with the same name. The first two days were absolutely gorgeous. Pure mountain, with on top of that the ascension of a hill leading to one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve been given to see in my life! The pass was also quite an experience, because I walked for about 2h without stopping to climb from 4150m to 4600m, a nice challenge. As during most of my travel, we were pretty lucky with the weather because, despite the rainy season, it didn’t really rain on us but we could enjoy splendid cloudy landscapes. As for comfort, nothing like the previous trek! Our tents were set up in village-like campsites each time, protected by real roofs, and our meals were cooked by a professional, with the 17:00 popcorn and a real little feast on the last day (with, among others, fresh ceviche and guacamole). Didn’t really feel like adventure in the wild! The impression hold during days 3 and 4, that are organised to incentivise tourists to pay for additional activities (natural hot springs one day, ziplining the other): the hikes are flat in uninteresting landscapes. But it’s not so bad, we were still spending the day together with the crew of the trek and we had fun. And then came the last day, that of the most-expected and magical Machu Picchu!

The day before we slept in a hotel in the cute little village of Aguas Calientes, reached by walking along the train rails, only vehicle that arrives there (and the trip is worth about 80$! which explains why we walked). The night wasn’t long because you have to wake up at 3.30am and leave at 4am to get early enough in front of the door at the foot of the mountain. Many of those who climb up to the sacred city by foot come line up early enough to try and get to the Inca ruins first and enjoy a tourist-free view! The bottom door opens at 5am and that at the top at 6am, which is roughly when the first buses bring the tourists who don’t walk up. The aim is to race against these buses and others hikers to be first in the line of the top door. That’s what we did, and I personally needed 38 minutes of fight against myself, sweat and effort at each step of the 500m going up to not stop for a break. About a dozens guys still made it up before me, but I’m quite satisfied about this performance I could never have imagined several years ago.

In the end, our physical success wasn’t rewarded because the fog was covering all of the site when we finally entered, and when it dispersed our guide, having already begun his commented tour, really didn’t feel like interrupting it, mostly interested by the idea of finishing his job and leaving (which I considered as a great incompetence and a certain lack of empathy from someone whose work is tourism). But it doesn’t matter, we still remained speechless in front of the beauty of the sites, rendered mystical by the mist and then bathed in the sun later in the morning, in the middle of peaks that seemed to be imposing natural protectors. A warning however: the Machu Picchu is a sporty site! Goes up and down in all directions, and for those who don’t pay a fortune in bus and train to go back but have a traveller’s budget and walk you better don’t stop, because between the guided tour and the time to “wander” on your own there’s about 5h on the spot before having to head back. It was enough, but without break.

We walked around the site quite a lot, and also to a “Sun Door” with view over the whole city from up high. We took the inevitable picture in front of the iconic view of that unique place, played a bit with the lamas, and laughed at how tired we were, then we had to go. Between the hike down and the walk along the train rails we had another 3h and then we were finally “rewarded” with a minibus rid back to Cusco that lasted nothing less than… 6h. Let’s just say that the state of our feet and minds once arrived weren’t the freshest! I calculated that this 5th day of trek has corresponded to about 10h of walking without stop, starting at 4am, for a total of about 90km in 5 days. Thinking that I found the two previous days a little too calm, one might say I had enough! But man was it worth it. The hike had started with a dozens strangers, it ended up with new friends, card games, long discussions, photography, laughters and unforgettable moments with, among others, Adnan the French, Preston the American, Adriano the Brazilian, Christina the German and the Irish-Australian couple of Will and Nic. We even met again the day after for a little Christmas pub crawl, each of us with a christmacy item, an apparently Irish tradition with rules to follow and more laughters.

Since I spent the 24th and 25th of December on a bus, I consider that the Slakantay trek was my end-of-year present to myself, and that I was on Machu Picchu and in Cusco with friends for Christmas. That’s how my (almost) month in Peru ended. In the sweat, happiness and good mood in a wonderful place. I left the happy crew doing its crawl to get my stuff back at the hostel and take my bus to Bolivia, and I again spent two days on a bus, destination: Santa Cruz east of Bolivia, where Emanuele was arriving on 26 December! From Cusco I reached La Paz (highest capital in the world, at 3660m) going by Lake Titicaca (highest navigable lake in the world, at 3800m), then took a connection for Santa Cruz. Again, I found myself to be the only white on the bus, it’s really cool! I’m happy not to travel by plane and miss these places and moments of pure authenticity. My favorite moment was when I had bought my take-away lunch in La Paz and, mango juice in a plastic bag (with a straw) in the hand, I could get on my bus 3h earlier than bought online because the guy at the counter, who had to stamp my ticket, had offered me to take another one. I thought that I really love South America, its flexibility, its fruit juices!

Obviously, during such a long travel you often find yourself thinking that you’re really lucky, realising how beautiful a place or moment is, feeling to be almost high for how much you’re enjoying a landscape. Surprisingly, one of the strongest of those moments of “full awareness” hit me on a minibus ride: I was lying on the back seats, the sun was shining through the window along which the road dust was falling, we had just put our legs in the freezing water of the river after long hours of hike down in the jungle, and I was just perfectly happy, in spite of the music playing too loud and the apathy of my trek companions. It was a perfect moment, among a collection of unforgettable moments, and I could only tell myself that I wish such a (paradoxically) simple but strong happiness to everyone I love. I don’t say that you need a ticket over the ocean to be happy, because this moment looked very much like the sensations I felt with the scouts at the time, but I’m pretty convinced that nature is a powerful factor for happiness, it can anchor us in the moment (carpe diem) and activate in us the capacity of observation of its simple but majestic beauty, reminding us our place in this world and to what point life is precious. Modern life tends to remove us to much from it compared to how much I am sure that we need. If you can, don’t forget to offer yourself errands in the nature, of any sort!

Now that I’m out of the country, I inevitably start assessing the outcome. I really liked Peru and its variety of pre-Inca ruins and people. I loved, in a few bus rides, passing from the flattest desert to Andine mountains or Amazonian jungle. It’s true that, with time, I tell myself that, in Europe too, if you take the bus for almost a whole day you’ll drastically change the landscape surrounding you. But it’s also my luck and the beauty of this travel to have time to do it. I saw quite a lot of the North, even if there are several more things I’d have wanted to see, and I simply had to be selective for the South. But it doesn’t matter, I’m slowly adjusting my approach to traveling. The aim isn’t to end up frustrated because I coulnd’t properly get to know each country I’ve seen… I know that, in order to properly see a country, you’d need at least two to three months. I offered myself this pleasure at the beginning, but since I really wanna see very different things in several countries, I now simply try to collect the most beautiful moments possible. I see that having spent a month in Peru has given me a good general idea, but I haven’t created any affective link with it, nor do I know much about its history or politics, and I also didn’t have enough time to really meet people from here.

But I did notice that, here as well, there is always a sticker to remind you that Jesus loves you. And people have weird false teeth: as if the tooth, face on, was framed by a golden string. And I’d say that Peru does deserve a little paragraph on food. So. Let’s first assume that the basis of food in South America is rice + chicken + potatoes, that’s what you find in simple and cheap restaurants or along the road. And very, very few vegetables. Sometimes, instead of the potatoes, you’ll get yuca (tapioca) or some camote (sweet potatoe). Along the coast you’ll be served fish, in Colombia there’s almost always fried plantain (big banana with little taste) or a cabbage salad with a slice of tomato. Around rivers you’ll find trout (most frequently fried). In Peru, however, you can find a somewhat larger variety. Lomo saltado is sautéd beef with onions and vegetables, there’s fried fish, the cuy is fried guinea pig (not tasted), or they also serve alpaca steaks of pizza (no time to taste). There’s the unmissable and delicious ceviche (raw fish marinated in onion and lemon), of international fame. And I even noticed that you can find flan all the way to the markets, and even milk rice with cinnamon! Well, Peru is well equipped culinarily speaking and it’ll please the greedy ones, even though the variety of fruit suggested for juices is more reduced than in Colmbia. I was told that Bolivia is terrible when it comes to food, I get my stomach ready…!

I still mean to finish this article with some ethno-historical aspects. First of all, I realise the extent of my ignorance when I understood that the Inca were contemporary to our Middle Ages and not, how I thought, to Egyptian pharaoes (for this it’s apparently rather the Mayas, I take note). Which means that the Machu Picchu is not even as old as Roman Empire buildings! The Inca civilisation started around 1200 close to Cusco and then spread along the Pacific ocean and the Cordillera of the Andes, from the South of the current Colombia all the way to Argetnina and Chile, through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The Inca empire was governed by the Sapa Inca, the supreme leader, and had the feature to integrate the populations it conquered by allowing them to preserve their cultural identity (language, religion). The Spanish arrived in 1534 and it was the Incas’ turn to be conquered, in a war that lasted several years.

A century later, the Inca population, decimated, had dropped from 12-15 mio to about 600’000 members. It’s in 1821 that the country got its independence from the Spanish kingdom, liberated as Colombia by Simon Bolivar. However, as my Salkantay trek guide made clear, the country was actually free only in 1969 when the system favoring (Spanish) landowners was finally abolished. That gives you the beginning of an idea… I don’t know much more and already had to check a few infos on Wikipedia so I won’t make it any longer. Nevertheless, I find it interesting to know that a great amount (a majority, I believe) of Peruvians (and Bolivians!) still speak Quechua, even as a mothertongue, and that there are apparently still 42 indigenous languages across the country. My Salkantay guide even said that he considers himself Inca, and Peruvian history is apparently marked by a long resistance of the Incas (not only military but also cultural). For me, who saw the Inca as a millenary, long-disappeared civilisation, it was a most informative intellectual shock!

For more pictures of North Peru (Máncora, Kuélap, Gocta), click here (no time to upload more…)

Reading of the moment: Los Ríos Profundos (The Deep Rivers) by José María Arguedas (Peruvian)