The Motorcycle Diaries // 22nd Mar 2005

Hi all

It's another reasonably big one, so here's a single sentence summary for the short of time/people who "have better things to do, thank you very much":

My week so far – moved on from La Paz to Peru and the ancient Inca city of Cuzco; there's a four day hike to Macchu Picchu on Saturday, and in the meantime I've been learning to ride motorcycles...

The first part of this letter really belonged in the last email, as it occurred in La Paz, but was omitted for reasons of which only my mother and myself are aware. Also, the email was getting a bit long, even for the author's tolerance to allow. The background is this: when I was first chatting up my Bolivian lass (Eliana), I told her I make a mean lasagne. I'm normally quite humble, but at home my lasagne is legendary, so I felt quite confident to brag about this matter. One thing led to another, and I was asked to cook a lasagne for the whole family...

– Lasagne –

We met early in the morning after Eliana's first uni class of the day at a lovely square in the centre of La Paz. Went to the market and bought a selection of ingredients - meat (I assume to be lamb, though you can't be sure), tomatoes, peppers, the lasagne itself, onions, garlic, tinned-and-mushed-up-tomatoes; basically everything you need for a good lasagne. Because food's incredibly cheap in the markets, you can't buy small amounts of anything, so even when I asked for just the one onion, the lady gave me three for the same price...we ended up with both of our rucksacks overflowing with fresh ingredients. At one point we were accosted by a man trying to sell us bleach that he claimed was either made by orphans, or benefited an orphan's home, or something (not sure what he was saying in Spanish - anyway, he had a genuinely laminated photocopied badge, so he must have been telling the truth).

After patronising the market, we caught a tiny, crowded flota (one of those little Nissan vans that some plumbers in the UK often have, the sort that I always find just so tempting to push over after a night on the town) for several miles out of the city and to her grandmother's boyfriend's house (who is the guy who I first started talking to La Luna pub - a very French-looking cool dude Argentinean blues harmonica-playing geezer - who thankfully introduced me to his girlfriend's granddaughter, Eliana, the name of the Bolivian chick-on-the-arm). This was halfway up one of the many hills on which La Paz is situated, in a Bolivian middle-class suburban housing estate. He's moving out pretty soon to go back to Argentina, so there was practically no furniture - one sofa, a table and chairs, and no oven - but the casa was cool enough, in a strictly minimalist way. I said hi to the family (who I thankfully already knew), and got to work cooking the first part of the meal in a saucepan on the tiny portable hob.

Since I met her, Eliana's been telling me about the dogs her grandmother's been breeding. I was dubious about whether they'd be nasty whining bulgy-eyed, maybe even pink-ribbon-bound Chihuahua-type-hounds, hounds that don't even qualify to be dogs; the sort you just want to drop kick into the next county or pulverise just to put out of their misery - but they turned out to be a flock of sweet little Columbian dogs of some sort - white, shorthaired and very sweet. A little like Rhodesian Ridgebacks. But without the colouring. Or the ridge. One of them has the name Pink Floyd - how could I not like it? They're being sold one by one down at the Plaza for US$100 each - a king's ransom in poverty-stricken Bolivia. Practically the whole time I was cooking on the saucepan, I was standing on one leg trying to keep the adorable little puppies from chewing the contents of the bin, and the bin itself, and the ingredients which I was planning to use. Not easy.

One of the other things that had been sold in order to move back to Argentina was the dish in which lasagne could be cooked. We set out across the housing estate to find a very stereotypical large fat South American housewife's house, pleaded for a couple of trays (the depth of which was about an inch, no way near enough for a decent lasagne) and headed back across to the bubbling sauce. I buttered up the tray, prepared the dish for cooking, then we carried a large, hot and threatening-dangerously-to-overflow tray across to the old housewife's house to use her oven. The oven itself was a pathetic affair, looking very sorry for itself and with the smallest and most ineffective flame from a (most likely leaky) rusting gas canister you've ever seen. I once heard a quote that getting a film made via the Hollywood process is like trying to cook a steak by having a procession of people walk into a room and breathe on it - this wasn't far off. I optimistically told the lady it would take an hour to be fully cooked, and we went back to the house.

We returned over to the old lady's house an hour later to find the lasagne nicely lukewarming itself. After a lifetime more, we returned and I carried by this time a scorching hot metal tray full of burning lasagne halfway across the housing estate, with stray dogs taking more than a little interest in the food and fingertips singing nicely through the thin tea towels I was holding the tray with. We settled down to dinner and everyone oohed and aahed over possibly the blandest lasagne that has ever been graced by my culinary skills. The reason for the blandness - we only had mozzarella, which leads to microwave-meal quality. Still, lasagne (in fact anything which isn't potato-based) is really uncommon and exotic in Bolivia, so it was a big novelty for all involved, and delicious even for me after a series of Bolivian potato-rice-and-cheap-meat-based meals.

The next few time we went out, all of Eliana's friends had heard (and asked me) about the lasagne - obviously something like this is big news in the La Paz social scene...

In exchange for the lasagne, Eliana gave me the most beautiful self-made necklace, which makes me look like a real hippy, particularly with the open shirts, suntan and general grubbiness/long hair. And I've taken to not shaving for days, so I'm constantly sharing aesthetic appeal with homeless bums. Still, it seems to be working a charm with the South American girls...

– Cuzco –

The journey to the ancient Inca city was relatively painless. I left La Paz on Saturday at 8am, and no less than four bus rides and fourteen hours later, I was at my current location. The bus rides generally were OK, although regretfully the longest journey of the day was spent sat next to the most excruciatingly dull (and not to mention dense) Irishman I'd ever met. Having been in Bolivia for only just over a week, I can't think how many funny things have happened to me. His best anecdote about his whole time was about how he got a slightly cheaper taxi from the airport to his hotel by not going to the first driver he saw, just like it say to in the guidebook (with genuine surprise: "You know those guidebooks are full of useful information!?").

Late that night, I checked into a cheap yet surprisingly nice hotel not five minutes from the main square, where they were unfortunately out of dormitory and single rooms, so I had to settle for a luxurious (though still not heated) double at a fraction of the normal price. The sacrifices you have to make...

My first couple of days in Cuzco were been spent taking it nice and easy, as I was knackered from the travelling. I visited the hugely disappointing museum of religious art, admittedly at the time to escape the nasty heavy hailing-rain, but I'd read about it in the old Lonely Planet guide and it sounded marginally interesting. I'm interested in things where people have devoted a large portion of their life to religion like that – not being religious myself, I just can't understand the psyche. Visiting that gallery made me realise that just because a painting's several hundred years old, it isn't necessarily any good – no, the proportion's all wrong there, nobody has a triangular nose like that...if I was God, Jesus or particularly the Virgin Mary who was badly painted more than her fair share of times, I would be immensely insulted to be represented in canvas form so badly.

Yesterday we had a big cause for celebration for everyone here. It was the Monday before Easter. As I walked into the city first thing in the morning (alright, not quite first thing), there were preparations taking place. Police lined every street, there was a small mass going on in the cathedral, and there were two TV crews setting up in the main square. Anticipating rain thanks to the ominous grey clouds hovering eerily close by, street vendors were flogging plastic ponchos like they were going out of fashion. I was approached several times with the proposition of wearing a glorified bin bag for 'un sol, señor'. Despite already being quite content wearing my waterproof jacket.

I was a tad disappointed with the seemingly nonexistent fun and games, so continued going about my ordinary new-city-orientation-business of ambling directionlessly around the city in order to get my bearings for hours on end. I went to a shoe shop where the lady literally fell over in excitement on the highly polished floor at being asked to find a boot in size 8. That's right – my beloved CAT boots that have lasted so long, seen so much and smelt so bad are finally on their way out. It will be a sad day to say goodbye to these babies. I was thrilled to find a shop which sold the latest model of the boots I have now. Although the shop wasn't particularly well sticked. When they only had two sizes too big in a style I wasn't particularly keen on, I decided to skip the 'muchas discountes' I was offered of a whopping two dollars off and leave footwear purchase to another day. My boots should at least be able to make Macchu Picchu. Maybe even the rest of South America.

I still haven't entirely got used to the currency here. Brazil, easy – four to the pound; Bolivia – fourteen (and your average meal costs less than that). But here it's something like five point five sols to one British pound. Or is that dollars? I still don't know. Everyone I ask tells me something different. Either way, I think the lengthy phone call I made home cost a little more than I thought, and by the time I emerged from the little wooden booth, it was dark and the streets were packed with loads of people eagerly waiting to see the Pre-Easter procession of school children with banners, priests with nasty plastic ponchos, discordantly singing nuns, soldiers on guard, a load more people who were probably religious in some way, and a large Jesus-on-a-cross on a big wooden base being carried by about twenty grumpy, fat, suited men, making their way through the streets. I'd seen the initial procession with exactly the same people and Jesus earlier in the afternoon when the crowds were small, but it was a little more exciting when you couldn't move for crowds. And what's more, Jesus' little red lights had been switched on.

Needless to say, I reeled off the photos of the craziness that ensued. The central square, about the same size as Trafalgar Square, was literally a sea of people, identifiable only by the large fountain emerging from the middle and the large churches surrounding it. While I was there, somebody managed to open and have a good old feel around in my bag, only to leave the two battered books and diary alone. Once I realised what was going on, I managed to look my would-be-thief in the eye, but it didn't seem to affect him too much.

Although the event sounds spectacular, nothing much happened. All these people had turned out to merely catch a glimpse of the Jesus figure making his way slowly round the streets. At one point, seemingly randomly, four fire engines set their sirens off simultaneously. The highlight was when the Jesus figure finally reached the cathedral. Then he was slowly carried inside. After which it was all over. The crowds dispersed as quietly as they had come. And bizarrely, that evening the bars were pretty much empty.

So, in Cuzco with four days before I depart on the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. What to do? There are so many ruins, museums, and other culturally important things to do, it's hard to know where to start...

This morning I had my first motorbike lesson. Peru isn't internationally revered for its safety standards, but the company I chose provide the bikes, safety gear, fuel and insurance. And what's more, lessons are a fraction of the extortionate UK rate. I've been wanting to get a bike since Adrian took me on his Yamaha a couple of years ago, and riding Giles' ridiculously fast through the London streets only served to further that desire. The idea is to master the technical stuff here, then top up the dull highway code elements back at home, pass my bike test and buy a cheap but cool bike of some sort. My daily dose of culture came from ripping through/past a couple of archaeological sites on a snarling Honda motorbike.

In the three hours of today's lesson, I managed pretty much to get to grips with the whole starting/stopping/not falling off thing. Although our little 250cc bike was somewhat overburdened with both me and my pillion passenger (I insisted on starting on a small bike so as not to kill myself too quickly), I still managed to drive the beauty along miles and miles of windy, mountainous Andean roads. I doubt I could have picked a better place to learn – the scenery was simply stunning, passing through countryside, villages and ancient ruins. We even did a large off-road section, whizzing downhill, forging streams and being chased by dogs. Then came the motocross track...

By the end of the lesson the rain had frozen me rigid, but the experience of riding a bike is just so cool it was worth it. The guys at the shop reckon I'm now competent enough to rent a bike independently to explore by myself or join them on a day-or-two's worth of (expensive) expedition to some ancient ruins. Might be a nice, if slightly pricey way to dispose of my time.

Well, that's my life up to now. I'm off to a café to read a book and watach people in the main square.

Ollie