The Longest Day

Cusco, Peru

It's been some time (and some distance!) since my last post, so lots to catch up on.

My Australian sojourn came to a good end with a few days in Sydney (see first, stock picture - view of opera house and bridge - and second, more unusual view of bridge; and no, my camera wasn't acting up - the first one was taken on Thursday which was gray and showery, the second on Friday which was probably the most glorious day weatherwise of my whole stay in Australia) . I seem to have an ever improving relationship with the city. On my first visit there, in 1995, I actually didn't like it very much. It didn't help that I was there at the beginning of September (i.e., end of winter) and it was chilly, gray and drizzly. I also didn't know anyone there. My second visit, in 2001, was in early November, and I must say the city definitely looks much better in the sunshine! I also was able to contact some friends of friends who gave me more of an insider's view of the place. This time, I had the advantage of familiarity - there's a level of comfort in coming back to a place you kind of know. Also, I was able to meet with a friend (or rather cousin) of a friend, who introduced me to some neighborhoods I hadn't been to before, and get together with old friends from London whom I hadn't seen in many years, who most graciously invited me over to their house and treated me to a genuine Australian barbecue. I had time to do some museuming (not something I've been doing much of on this trip) as well as some good shopping. All that being said, I really had to stop and think a bit when one of my friends asked me if I preferred Sydney or Melbourne. There was an article in one of the Australian papers making the argument that Sydney had kind of lost its way, resting on its laurels a bit while Melbourne was the place that really was doing everything right (and Brisbane was the up and coming place). I must say there are certain things about Melbourne that are more appealing (the restaurant scene for one thing, and the sense that the CBD really is a more happening place), but you can't deny Sydney has a magnificent setting and the opportunity for a great lifestyle, especially if you like the outdoors and the water. I think if I absolutely had to choose one over the other, I'd pick Melbourne, but not without some real regrets.

I had some real regrets leaving Australia, but also real excitement at heading to South America which is somewhere I really haven't travelled much. I'm not quite sure why that is - it's a place that's always interested me (most of you won't know this, but in university (or college for you Americans!), I studied quite a bit of Latin American history and politics). I managed to survive the almost interminable (12+ hour) flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires, which has the unusual distinction of arriving before it leaves (departure at 11 am, arrival at 10 am the same day). The nature of the flight and the time change meant that for me, December 12 was 38 hours long (too bad it wasn't my birthday - would have allowed for very extended celebrations!).

I decided the only way to fight the jet lag was to get out and do something, so I arranged to do an afternoon tour of Buenos Aires. This also had the advantage of giving me an overview of the city so that when I go back there this weekend, I have a good idea of what I want to see and do. The tour involved driving around a number of neighborhoods, but also getting out and walking in four principal areas. The first was the main square of the city, Plaza de Mayo. The pink building in picture number three (which is actually called The Pink House, or La Casa Rosa to give it its Spanish name) is the presidential palace, which overlooks the square. For you Evita fans, the balcony in the middle is the one she used to come out on to address the people (though I'm given to understand that Madonna used the covered balcony to the right in the film). We next went to an area called San Telmo, which is where the rich people used to live before an outbreak of yellow fever in 1871 drove them to the northern part of the city, allowing successive waves of immigrants to move in and take over the abandonned houses. These days the neighborhood hosts a number of antique shops and a well-known Sunday antiques market (which I intend to check out next week!). The third neighborhood we visited is La Boca, which was another area that immigrants settled. It was (and largely remains) very much a poor neighborhood. Its attraction for tourists is an area of houses originally built by immigrants from whatever materials they could find, including corrogated tin strips. A number of those houses have been well preserved and are painted in bright and cheerful colors (see picture number 4), though I don't think anyone would call them luxurious. For anyone who follows football (soccer, that is), the neighborhood is also home to one of the best known Argentinian teams, Boca Juniors. An interesting (and to me amusing) fact is that the team's colors (blue and gold) were selected in an unusual way - various groups of supporters couldn't agree on what the colors should be, so the decision was made to go down to the river (La Boca, meaning mouth, refers to the mouth of a tributary of the River Plate) and use the colors of the flag of the first ship that passed. Apparently the first one that came along was a Swedish ship (I know, seems odd to me too that a Swedish ship would be in Argentina, but that's the story), and the rest is history. The last stop was a neighborhood called Recoleta, which has a lovely park but seems to be best known for its cemetery, which is where Eva Peron is buried. Another interesting story there - apparently at some point during Argentina's political turmoil in the 1950s, her body went missing. It ended up in Italy, and wasn't brought back until Juan Peron became president again in 1973. His third wife arranged for a crypt to be built for the Duarte family (Eva Peron's family, that is) and for her and other family members to be buried there. Needless to say, it's become a bit of a shrine, and overshadows the rest of the cemetery, which has some magnificent monuments. I finished my brief first visit to Buenos Aires in classic fashion - by eating a steak for dinner. I was in a very casual, neighborhood-y place near my hotel, but the steak was fantastic. I can't wait to go back and try one of the really well known places!

In case you're finding this a bit long, don't worry. The rest of my catch-up will be short(er) and sweet. That's because there isn't much to talk about re my couple of days and Lima, and also because it's getting quite late and I need to be up quite early tomorrow. First, Lima. I stayed in an area near the ocean, called Miraflores, rather than downtown. It's a lovely area, with a number of parks and clearly quite wealthy. Its main advantage as far as I was concerned, though, was that it was walking distance to the so-called Indian markets, which are a number of complexes of stalls selling local arts and crafts. I will confess to having done a bit of shopping, though not as much as I might have (have to carry it all with me after all!). I planned to do a bit of sightseeing in central Lima, but the travel must have caught up with me because I simply couldn't raise the energy to do so. All things considered, if there's a place to miss out on sightseeing, Lima is probably the right one to choose. The sad truth is that for all it's a very historic city, and was the center of Spanish colonial administration, there isn't actually all that much to see. Partially that's because the city (indeed much of the country) is rather seismically active and suffers regular serious earthquakes which destroy buildings (though the Incas were awfully good at building earthquake resistant structures; sadly they weren't conquistador resistant), and partially because there doesn't seem to have been much effort devoted over the years to restoring or maintaining the old buildings. So, instead I wandered over to the next neighborhood from Miraflores, called Barranco, which has a very good reputation as an artistic center and a wonderful place to visit and escape the hustle and bustle of the rest of Lima. There was one section that was full of charming houses and thankfully traffic free (I'm afraid I find that the whole of Lima smells of exhaust fumes), but overall, it didn't seem to merit the rave reviews I saw and heard. Maybe I just didn't wander far enough.

However, I have now left Lima behind and am in the clear (thin) air of Cusco, up in the mountains (around 3300 meters/11,300 feet). I had a tour of the city and surrounds today, including the cathedral and some Inca ruins (including Inca ruins that were incorporated into a Dominican monestary). It's a lovely city, and I hope to have a bit more time to wander around before I leave. And in case you're wondering, that last picture is a bit of a trick. It's not actually in the cathedral, which is absolutely dripping with gold and silver - really quite magnificent, but which doesn't allow photos. Rather, it's the chapel in the hotel where I'm staying, which is called Hotel Monestario as it was, in fact, a monestary in an earlier life. It's really a magnificent place, and they've managed to really retain the feel of the monestary even while changing it into a luxury hotel.

Well, time for me to go and enjoy some of the comforts of this hotel (not least of all the bed!) as tomorrow it's off very early to Machu Picchu. As many of you know, that is a place I have been wanting to visit for a long time, so I'm quite excited. I'll try very hard to give you a report on it in just a couple of days, rather than the long wait you had to endure this time!