Signing Off

We finally made it back to Shetland on Wednesday morning, to flat calm and bright sunshine. Every thing seems to have survived pretty well except the polytunnel which suffered more than a bit in the winter gales. Even that was repairable thanks to the sterling efforts of our neighbours. It's been patched up and the cover might just last the summer.

We promised a few more pictures before we signed off so here goes. This is a typical street scene in Buenos Aires - yes really! It's a pedestrian precinct and there are various sorts of street entertainers everywhere, including tango dancers like these ones.

This is the Plaza Mayor in Madrid last weekend.

And finally this is William, complete with a badge for each of the seven countries he's visited and a Peruvian hat, being re-introduced to Calum and Silvana in Edinburgh.

This blog is now officially complete. In due course we hope to upload a lot more pictures to a photo-sharing website - not sure which one yet - and you never know, we may do it all again some day!

Completing the Circle

After 3 days in Madrid re-acclimatising to Europe - Madrid was cool and cloudy with quite a bit of rain and a huge thunderstorm on Monday - we flew back to Edinburgh via Gatwick on Wednesday. Again it went like clockwork. The flights were on time and our luggage turned up on the carousel without a hitch. In the end we lost nothing on the whole trip, and only one flight (Qantas from South Africa to Australia) was significantly delayed. Every hotel and guest house we booked was expecting us and every airport greeter we were expecting was waiting for us. This world travel is a snip really! Perhaps we best get home to Shetland before our luck fails. We had been planning to get the Monday night ferry from Aberdeen to be home Tuesday morning, but Northlink are on refit schedule so there isn't one. We will be on the Tuesday ferry and home on Wednesday. In fact we nearly couldn't make that because it was almost fully booked when we called this morning.



Meantime we have been catching up with elderly relatives, daughters and grandchildren, all of whom seem to have survived OK without us, and especially young Theo Donaldson, Rona's second baby, who arrived on St. Valentine's Day, when we were in New Zealand. We'll post a few more pictures when we get home and have access to a proper computer.

Buenos Aires

After a 4 hour flight across the Andes from Lima, we had a long taxi ride into Buenos Aires, passing the famous Obelisco and arriving at our fairly central accommodation. We were initially a bit confused by the double currencies of Argentinian pesos and US dollars, and had what we thought was a quite expensive meal by Peru standards, but after a good sleep and some reflection we realised it was actually quite cheap.

Just a few thoughts about money in South America. Ecuador uses US dollars as their currency, credit cards are widely accepted and we had no trouble drawing cash from ATM´s, but cashing American Express Travellers Cheques took most of a morning. In Peru the local currency was the sol, but many prices were quoted in dollars. Peru Rail for example would not accept payment in any form other than cash dollars. Most ATM´s dispensed either dollars or sols. In Argentina the local currency is the peso but the symbol for it is "$". Some things like hotel rates are quoted in dollars but then it´s shown as "U$S". That was the reason for our first night confusion. Most annoying though was that many places, including restaurants and hotels, will not accept credit cards, or will surcharge massively if you want to use one. The ATM´s will only dispense pesos even if they say they offer a choice, and they are all subject to a daily limit of 300 pesos which is less than 50 pounds. Eventually we discovered a bank that could bypass this limit but we had to queue for over an hour to do it. None of this information matched what our guide books told us.

We took a couple of bus trips in and around Buenos Aires, the first being delayed due to mass demonstrations about the complaints of the farmers. It was quite interesting seeing the main square gearing up to the expected influx of demonstrators. The second day was a public holiday to remember the Malvinas ( Falkland Islands ) war. We thought we should just keep our heads down! Judging by the editorials in the local papers there are still some issues to be resolved.

We did a walking tour which was very different and much more informative than the bus tours, then followed this up with a visit to Eva Peron´s grave, the Evita Museum and of course the balcony where she made her speeches (and the other balcony where Madonna practised her speeches for the film ). Eva Peron and Madonna have a lot in common besides being actresses.

Buenos Aires is in many ways quite European and a lot different from Lima or Quito. Our walking tour guide quoted a well-known film director (whose name we have forgotten) as saying its citizens are Italians who speak Spanish, and think they are English living in France. We could certainly see all these elements, but there is another side to Buenos Aires. In the evening the smart areas of the town centre fill up with the cartoñeros. They are the hidden poor who come to rake through the garbage in the streets for anything of value, and leave a considerable mess in the streets. Most Argentinians seem not to even notice them. They live in the poorest neighbourhoods like La Boca, and the shanty town under the motorway flyover next to Buenos Aires´s smartest neighbourhood, Palermo, whose inhabitants shop at Armani and Gucci and employ people to walk their dogs for them. Local heroes, much celebrated in posters and T-shirts, include Evita (of course), Che Guevara and Maradona. We passed up the opportunity to buy a T-shirt showing Maradona scoring the famous "Hand of God" goal against England. After all we have a few English friends and family.

Lima

Lima is a huge city, spread over a large area on the Pacific coast. We stayed in Miraflores which is a pretty upmarket area south of the centre. On Saturday we walked down to the sea, visited a very posh shopping mall, then returned via the central square, the Ovalo, where it was party time with lots of people doing the tango.

At night we went to a restaurant recommended by our hotel, which had a fantastic floor show of Peruvian dancing, not to mention some pretty good Peruvian food served buffet-style. The camera battery ran out before the end but this should give you the idea.

On Sunday we took a taxi uptown to the Museu de la Nacion, but it was closed for renovations, so we diverted to another museum. In the afternoon we walked to another archaeological site just a couple of blocks from our hotel. This one was apparently a burial site for one of the pre-Inca cultures. It`s a huge structure built entirely of adobe or mud-bricks. According to the guide it never rains in Lima, so that`s why mud bricks survive so well!

Of course there had to be one final visit to the markets near the Ovalo. We are just coming to the end of five days in Buenos Aires now. It`s on to Madrid and the last leg tonight.

And Now With Pictures!

Finally we found a computer that lets us upload some pictures. First this is us boarding the train from Puno to Cusco.

This is a view of Cusco looking down towards the main square, the Plaza de Arma.

And here is William (yes he´s still with us) trying out a carved Inca seat. Note the smart Peruvian hat!

Finally for now this is Machu Picchu with llamas grazing among the ruins, and Huayna Picchu towering over it.

There are many more pictures on the other camera but one of our memory cards was declared faulty by a camera shop here in Buenos Aires, and we are reluctant to risk the card in the main camera until we get home.

On to Machu Picchu

We left you by the shores of Lake Titicaca. Next day it was on to Cusco on the Andean Explorer, one of the highest train journeys in the world. The La Raya pass is over 4000 metres or about 14000 feet. We were gasping for breath at the stop. For once on a train we were travelling first class. That´s because there is only one class on that train, and it includes a meal, a free drink, and a Peruvian folk group singing and dancing in the observation car and all down the aisles. Sadly we can´t show you pictures yet because we are in Buenos Aires now and the local internet cafes don´t allow us to put in a CD. We´ll just have to save that for later.

Cusco is a beautiful historic town. It was the Inca capital, and the Spanish capital at first until Lima took over. It´s not as high as Lake Titicaca so the altitude was bothering us less. However it seemed to be bothering other people a lot more. We heard a few tales of illness and there always seemed to be a doctor being called to our hotel. This seems as good a point as any to say that the Terra Andina Hotel in Cusco was the best and friendliest hotel we have seen in South America, and none of them have been bad.

We had a couple of days to explore Cusco and the nearby Inca sites at Sacsayhuaman (it´s pronounced "sexy woman" as the guides all tell you) and Pisac. Our guide at Sacsayhuaman gave us a lot of insight into the Inca civilisation, which helped a lot when it came to our visits to Pisac and Machu Picchu.

What can we say about Machu Picchu? It really is the most dramatic and amazing place. We had most of two days there, with a thunderstorm rolling around the first day - lots of thunder and lightning but thankfully not much rain - and a misty start on the second day turning to warm sunshine and perfect views. The normal way of getting to Machu Picchu from the railway stop at Aguas Caliente is by bus up a steep winding unmade road that seems to go on forever. There is a path up but not many people use it. On the second day we decided to walk back down and were rewarded by seeing some amazing butterflies, flowers and birds. In Aguas Caliente we stayed in a sort of tree house at the Rupa Wasi Eco-lodge (sounds very grand but it wasn´t really). The food however was absolutely top class.

On Saturday morning we took a taxi from our hotel to Cusco airport at 8.30 a.m. and by 9.30 we were already in the air on the way to Lima - we were shifted to an earlier flight which was already boarding. Then we had a couple of days in Lima, or to be exact in the rather posh Lima suburb of Miraflores, where we visited an impressive pre-Inca burial site right in the heart of the town, before flying on to Buenos Aires.