Today was the big, depressing day: time to head home and back to real life. The driver met me at 6am and we headed back to the airport. If you're too scared to skydive or bungy jump or some other extreme sport, try riding in a taxi in Lima... it is exhilarating and frightening at the same time! We made it to the airport with no issues.

I spent most of my remaining Soles on gifts for friends and family before heading off to the security -- of course I barley had enough US currency to pay the $30 departure tax (the ATMs in the airport used a network that did not work with my Wells Fargo card, and you can only pay the tax in cash). I managed to find my stash of singles in my backpack and made my way to the departure lounge.

I normally don't fret too much about flight delays and such, but today I was a bit concerned there would be some deviations from the schedule. My connection window in Miami was short (100 minutes) and I had no prior experience with clearing customs, gathering luggage and checking back in at the Miami airport. Would it take a long time? Would the flight from Lima be delayed by weather or mechanical issues? The reason for my concern was that the connection from Miami to Atlanta was my only chance to get home that night... otherwise I would be stuck in Atlanta overnight.

Luckily, all went well and clearing customs could not have been faster. I had time to eat dinner before boarding my flight to Atlanta, and by 11 PM I was back in Denver. Of course, I didn't make it home for another hour, but finally I was sleeping in my own bed.

Tomorrow morning I pick up Fabi from my neighbors. I am looking forward to seeing my dog again.

My trip is winding down now, as I flew from Puerto Maldonado to Lima on LAN. The flight was uneventful and the hotel pickup was just as easy. I was met by my driver and we headed to central Lima where the Hotel Posada del Parque is located. I checked in and took a shower, as I had sweat through my clothes prior to boarding the plane.

I think I took a quick nap, then went out on a walk to find some dinner. I eventually ate in a small deli/snack shop/bar where I watched some Peruvian football (soccer) matches. I headed back to the hotel and went to bed. They don't call me Mr. Excitement for nothing!

My second day in the jungle started with a 6 am boat ride around the lake. Why so early? Any later than that, and the sun is sizzling hot. In fact, half-way through our boat trip it was nearly unbearably hot. We did spot the river otters again as they were fishing along the shore, as well as birds, caimans and several types of monkeys.





We made another hike through the jungle at midday and it was still extremely hot, even in the shade. I stopped taking photos at one point because the combination of sun screen, inspect repellent and sweat made it difficult to grasp the camera.


After a long siesta in the afternoon, we made another evening boat trip around the lake before dinner. Again, I somehow found the bar and took advantage of several beers (or did they take advantage of me?). Oscar made a presentation about how the cattle industry was so destructive on the forest: it takes 1 hectare (2.5 acres) to feed a single head of cattle, and many of the ranches in Brazil have over a million head of cattle... so 2.5 million acres of tress are cut down to provide grassland for those cattle -- at a single ranch!


I slept better on the second night, and it was a good thing as the next morning would be hectic as we rushed to get back to the airport for our departing flights. The fun hike into the jungle seemed a little longer as we headed back down to the river. My flight was at 11:30, so the timing was going to be pretty close, as we had to go back to the InkaNatura offices and get everyone's large suitcases before heading to the airport. Luckily, the office personnel had printed out our boarding passes online so all I had to do was check in my luggage and proceed through security before boarding my flight to Lima (via Cusco). It was so nice to be on the plane as it sat on the tarmac with the air conditioning on!

After the hot, sweaty fun of the internet cafe, I headed back to the hotel to wait for the bus from Sandoval Lake Lodge to pick me up. The bus dropped by and we departed for the boat terminal, which is really just a wooden stairway down to a small dock on the Tambopata river. The boats are motorized and hold about 25 people plus backpacks under a canopy.

We took off down the river until it joined the Madre de Dios, and continued on for about forty minutes. En route, we were served a box lunch that consisted of a tofu fried rice, wrapped in a large banana leaf. It was surprisingly tasty and filling.


Once we arrived at the dock for the access to the jungle park, we unloaded the boat and watched the porters run down the trail ahead of us with our luggage loaded on a rickshaw. We followed for a few hundred meters until we reached the ranger station, where we were required to sign in.




The rest of the hike to the lodge was about 3 km along a flat, but very very hot trail through the jungle. Our guide Oscar pointed out various trees we should not touch and other general warnings before we reached the flooded palm forest.





We boarded canoes and traversed the flooded palm forest until we emerged out onto Lake Sandoval. We skirted the edges of the lake for a while until Oscar spotted the most famous inhabitants of the lake, the giant river otters. Apparently, you have a 50-50 chance of seeing them as they are shy and tend to stay away from boats.

By the time we reached the lodge, all of us were exhausted. We were shown to our rooms, which were really quite nice and clean. Some people took showers but since we had an evening expedition planned to look for spiders and monkeys and such, I figured I would wait until just before dinner time to clean up.




The lodge only runs the electricity generators three times a day, but luckily the last power window of the day is the longest. We ate good, native foods and enjoyed the native fruits.. and the bar was a welcome sight! I went to bed about 9 pm but couldn't sleep too well: there were no windows in my room (only screens) and the combination of heat, humidity, sounds of the jungle critters and the mosquito netting never allowed me to fall into a deep slumber.

So most of the past two days have been traveling and acclimating time. I had a good dinner Saturday night and did some gift shopping, but mostly I walked around Cusco in the pleasant evening air. Sunday morning I headed for the airport and boarded my plane to Puerto Maldonado.

PM had such great promise: jungle town, different culture, different way of life. Unfortunately, the expectations failed to deliver. PM is just a nasty crossroads, where goods from Brasil must pass on their way to Cusco and Lima. Commerce and tourism are about the only thing PM has going for it, and the people reflect that. I have never had so many glaring looks the entire time I´ve been in Peru. It´s almost as though they resent me being here.

I am in the world´s slowest internet cafe at the moment, wasting time until the Lago Sandoval Lodge comes to pick me up for my jungle excusrsion. I´ve sweat through my shirt twice today (the official term is "ball-sweaty hot") so I am not really in the mood to wait 5 minutes for each web page to load. The heat, along with the craptacular accomodation of last night, have put me in a bad mood today. I´m trying, really I am, but I think the solo traveler crap is catching up with. Any of the bad things that have happened to me in the past two days would have been easy to laugh off if there was somebody else experiencing it with me, somebody to act as a sounding board, somebody to joke with.

I´ll post more details when I have more time, probably after I return home on Friday. Unless a monkey attacks me in the jungle and eats my brains. If that happens, I suppose I will see you in hell.

Today's posts and photo uploads are courtesy of the South American Explorers club (saexplorers.org). Their Cusco club house overlooks the city and has, among other things, free wi-fi for members. If you're headed to South America, the club is a great resource, if only for luggage storage, guide books, and access to the internet.

So far, today has been a lazy day. I missed breakfast and walked around a few shops -- bought some postcards. I will try to fill them out and send today.

I scoped out a couple of lavendarias because I am completely out of clean (or reasonably clean) clothes. Once I check into my hostal for tonight, I will drop off enough clothes to last the remainder of the trip.

I am playing with the idea of buying a small bag of some sort to bring back gifts. My biggest concerns are:

a) I don't really want to drag another piece of luggage for the rest of the trip. Granted, the rest of the trip will be a taxi to the airport, a flight to Puerto Maldonado, and a flight back to Lima.
b) Will I be charged extra for the second piece of checked luggage on the internal Peru flights? I know I will be charged for the international flight back to Miami and my Delta flights in the US.
c) It's Saturday, so shipping things via FedEx or DHL is not an option, as they're closed until Monday. Maybe I can carry around the bag until then and ship from PM or Lima?

I left Puno behind today on the InkaExpress bus. Normally, I would have taken the cheap locals' coach, but the InkaExpress office was three doors down from the hotel and I was ready to get out of town. The rate is expensive in comparison to my s/15 trip to Puno at US$30, but that included lunch and a tour of a few attractions along the way.

As we left Puno, the evidence of the strike was visible on the roads out of Puno, the edges of Juliaca, and a few other places along the highway: stone hedges had been toppled, and the rocks strewn across the roads; bottles and been smashed everywhere on the roads; garbage and debris had been set on fire as large bonfires, also blocking the roads. It was quite a sight... I have not heard of any injuries or deaths.

Our first stop was the small village of Pukara, where archeologists had excavated pottery and sculptures from a local pyramid. The town was pretty nondescript other than the museum and large church. Pukara is also the village where all of the good-luck bull sculptures that adorn most of the roofs in the Cusco and Puno departments are made. There was (coincidentally?) several vendors' stands set up next to the bus parking area.

We stopped briefly at La Raya pass in the Andes, which is about 4xxx meters above sea level. It was mostly a photo opportunity (several snow-capped, glacier-laden mountains were nearby)... but again many vendors had stands set up at this rest area... I was starting to sense a theme to our tour stops. Many, many other buses stopped at the same spot.

We drove a bit further to the city of Secauni, where we ate lunch at a local buffet restaurant (Las Tunas?). The food was good but we had to walk by even more vendors selling their identical handicrafts.

We stopped later at Raqchi, which was my favorite stop of the day. Raqchi is an Inka temple that was not destroyed by the Spaniards, and much of the center wall structure, housing areas, and granaries are still standing. Check out the photo stream on flickr once I have them uploaded. Once more, we were forced to pass through a maze of craft stalls to get back to the bus.

Our last stop before Cusco was in a small village called Andauaylillas, where a very large and ornate cathedral stands. The church is nicknamed the "Sistine chapel of Peru" for its ornate frescos on the walls and ceilings. The large alter, clad in 24K gold, is amazing. No photos are allowed (to force visitors to buy postcards and books to support the restoration fund), but I will see if I can Google up some photos once I return home.

Now we had returned to Cusco, and my real adventure was just beginning. Although I had called the hostal and made a reservation for the evening (I already had a reservation for Saturday night), when I arrived at the hostal they were full. The receptionist called around to all of the nearby hostals but had no luck. I flipped through the Lonely Planet guide and suggested he call the Hostal Loretto, which I had noticed last week when I was in Cusco. They had one room left and I took it. The room was small (think "closet") but had a clean shower, clean bed and I was set for the night. Whew!

The strike is apparently over, and I will be taking the InkaExpress bus back to Cusco this morning. I got up early to use the hotel's internet kiosk, and thought I would post a bit about last night's dinner adventure.

I went to a place called Pizzaria del Buho. I know, why have pizza in Peru when there are native dishes to explore? I just felt like pizza, ok? Get off my back.

The restaurant was busy and the service was made even slower by the live sextet performing Andean music for the patrons, but I didn't care as I got a seat at the last available table and a large cerveza. Some girls came in and started to leave when they saw there were no open tables, but I offered to share my table with them and they accepted.

The girls turned out to be from Russia, Moscow specifically. I have encountered many Russians on this trip, but they have all been extremely nice. The girls and I ate some pizza and had a few beers, where we communicated through broken English and Spanish. They even attempted to teach me some Russian words: pizza, beer, water, breasts (don't ask), and I think they even tried to teach me the phrase for "Would you like to go back to my place?"... but quite frankly the only phrase I remember saying over and over was "tres cervezas mas, por favor!" Needless to say, the night was long and fun-filled.

^* As far as I can remember, I slept alone last night... so the title of this entry is not the bit of double entendre that you may have first suspected.

I went out to dinner last night about 7 PM and was happy to see that the city had sprung back to life. All of the shops that were closed during the day were now open, including the banks. I had some dinner on Calle Lima and saw buses! and minibuses! and private taxis! I was encouraged that the strike was only going to be one day as many had suggested.

This morning, however, the city was silent again. No buses and no taxis were on the streets -- only garbage that had spilled over the rubush bins. The strike was still on. I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and headed back out to sit in the plaza for a while. There is literally nothing to do in Puno during the strike. No businesses are open and there is nowhere to go, as there is no transportation available. One cannot even pay a private citizen to drive them somewhere in a private car, as no petrol stations are open and the roads out of the city are blockaded by strikers. Fun fun fun.

It does appear the strike will end tonight, as I was able to purchase a bus ticket back to Cusco for tomorrow morning. This officially means that I will not be going to Bolivia on this trip, and that does disappoint me a bit. This turn of events does, however, give me a reason to return to this part of the world at some time in the future.

My plans for the remainder of the day include a walk around the town again, and dinner. Very exciting, no?