Screw's Spa

Sounds dodgy, I know, but don't go there - Screw is, in fact, character no.3 from our big trip (on this non-chronological blog at least) and the owner of a number of divinely relaxing sulphur pools that make up the eponymous Screw's spa. As Screw himself would remind you, no, it doesn't stink and no, it isn't dirty, it's yellow - it's sulphur remember? And also... it kind of isn't a spa - at least not in the hotel with white towels, incense sticks and pedicures kind of way. There are do-it-yourself mud scrub kits though if you are that way inclined.

In my case, after days, nay, weeks of walking, hiking, scrambling, a hot hot hot hot bath of therapeutic sulphur was all I needed. That followed by a slightly colder one, and then a slightly colder one and then a slightly colder one, until I went round all nine pools and started again giving my body shocks of joy.

As you can imagine, I highly recommend this activity to anyone who might find themselves on the island of Dominica. Especially, if the sun has just set and as you immerse yourself in the steaming water, you let the back of your head just touch the surface and open up your eyes only to see fireflies fleeting through the canopy of the rainforest up above in the starry sky... 

The best beach

That got your attention didn't it? It was in fact one of the aims of my big trip to find the perfect beach - you know the one I'm talking about. It's the one that comes to mind as soon as you say the word 'Caribbean'. And though you would think the perfect beach has some basic requirements, in discussing this with friends I actually found that it can vary quite a lot - do you fancy yours with waves or without? party town or quiet abandon? and will it be pink, white, golden or black sand for you?

I know it's a cliche but I'll just say it and get it over with - variety is the spice of life. And though I have my favourite beach from my big trip I don't know if it's the perfect beach...I guess what the perfect beach should be varies with people but also with moods. So when we finally found Batibou Beach in Dominica, it suited my mood perfectly. Sun would've been nice but the broody gray sky somehow worked on the abandoned expanse of grey sand on an early evening...

wake up and smell the coffee

I wish I could. Our lovely fresh smelling bag of colombian coffee was one of the few casualties of our trip - it has officially gone awol. My suspicion is it never made it past Dominica as we manically packed from one ferry to the other.

So all that remains is the memory. And of course the pictures. I have to say I was rather pleasantly surprised to see where at least some of our coffee comes from. It did not destroy my romantic idea of a tropical idyll with bananas everywhere.

We visited the local finca, on a walk from Salento, a small town in Colombia's enticingly called Zona Cafetera, which was a great place to spend a couple of days. For one, it was the only place in Colombia where we actually had good coffee (shocking I know, but insipid beans and UHT milk dont really do it for me). With the added bonus, of course, that we also tried the coffee on the farm where it's grown, picked, dried, roasted and brewed. Most of it only makes it to the drying stage and is then shipped off to big processing plants from where it's exported as generic Colombian arabica beans (with organic certification, Rainforest Alliance blessing and all). But the small finca we visited also kept some that was finished on the premises and their last small bag for the season was sold to us and we idiotically lost it somewhere...:( I think this deserves an ouf*!
*see What is to come entry below for an explanation

Secretly though the real reason I loved Salento is because it offered me a very sweet victory in the game of tejo. You can click for the wikipedia entry - what that doesn't describe though is the absolute joy and glory of actually hitting that little triangle of gunpowder that's sitting in the clay and causing a small explosion - TWICE in one night. I wouldn't normally gloat but the fact that my partner in crime and the people playing next to us failed to do this doubled my satisfaction and left me with a warm glow inside and a sense that perhaps, perhaps I'm not such a useless klutz after all...

for the love of diving

Ok so I will admit this is going to be a more of a polemical unashamed promotion of diving - and more specifically, all my friends get a diving certificate now so we can go on a liveaboard together - than a relaxed rambling friday afternoon sort of post.

No pictures of what I saw I'm afraid (yes, an underwater casing for my camera would be a great birthday present) but wouldn't you like to be transported away in a boat and plunge into the clear blue waters only to find a beach that is even more beautiful underwater than it is in that picture?

Like any hardly seasoned diver I will bore/fascinate you with a list of the weird and wonderful creatures that we encountered underwater: from eerie barracudas to sluggish spongy (pink!) sea cucumbers, fluorescent tube coral, tiny little seahorses dancing on our fingers, and stalwart crabs staring through the cracks. Of course even after just 15 dives, the list is endless already, and while on my first dive I mainly focused on a mantra of 'I can breathe I can breathe I can breathe' and 'tick that fish off, and that one and that one...', I soon came to realise that the most special sight was the scenery. Despite the beauty of the marine life in Guadeloupe, St Lucia and Dominica (despite even the champagne like bubbles tickling your body in Dominica) the coral wonders of Playa Ancon in Trinidad (Cuba) were not to be repeated to such majesty on any of our other dives and if you get your certificate, I'll dive in with you and show you what I mean :)

more other worldly

While I'm on the subject I couldn't resist a tribute to Jungle Bay, Dominica. In fact, who can resist the appeal of staying in a house on stilts in the jungle? Funnily enough, we loved it so much that this happened twice on our travels, once at Refugio Amazonas, in the Amazon Basin and then at the above-pictured Jungle Bay.

The stay in Dominica was pure bliss, made all the more satisfying by the fact that we managed to snatch their last room for the Easter weekend. There were two things that I loved the most - the smell of cardamommy spa-like goodness on entering our room (it turned to be the eponymous jungle bay) and watching the water run through the wooden slats in our semi-outdoor shower.

Ok, as I think about it a bit more the swinging hammock on the balcony also comes to mind, and the massive, sprawling, gnarling tree trunk on the path to breakfast that made me feel like Thumbelina. A feeling confirmed even after coffee, as I scrambled to the wild Atlantic beach through the 'pebbles' in the picture below.

But all in all it's that sense of the other worldly that got me once again, that sense of I can't believe I'm here and how lucky I am to be here.

the other worldly

is this why we travel? or, let me not generalise or project my own preference for the other worldly and allow me to rephrase: is this why I travel? and by 'this', I mean this picture above, of the Maucarquipa rock formations at Salinas y Aguada Blanca National Reserve in Arequipa, Peru.

Nice though they may be, no, I did not spend 12 hours on a plane and a subsequent 16 on a bus just to see these rocks. I'm not talking about the rocks per se but rather that idea of the exotic, the other, which confirms that the pain and travelling time has indeed transported you to a place where things are a little different, where you are now a little different.

It's the picture I look at and predictably sigh, can't believe I was there once...

...followed by a quick afterthought of - where to next? ;)

Señor César

Character No. 2 on our trip. 

We met Señor César at his self-named restaurant in Lima, a small neighbourhood joint specialising in causas. A causa is a wonderful architectural potato salad - a tower of delight with colourful fillings of mayo-ey goodness in between beds of yummy mushy potato (as pictured above). 


Señor César has seen one or two tourists in his time and knows a lonely planet follower when he sees one (or in our case, two), particularly since his restaurant is, in tourist terms at least, in the middle of nowhere. So as soon as he spotted us he came over to our table to with an enormous smile and an appetite for chit chat. 


The usual questions followed - how are you, how did you find us, where are you from? To which he got a rather unusual answer - Cyprus. This was in fact a conversation that was to be repeated almost daily on our travels and with few exceptions, it tends to include an enthusiastic 'I've never met anyone from Cyprus before', and also usually a rather perplexed 'Where is Cyprus???!?' if not 'What is Cyprus?'. 


In this instance such was Señor César's enthusiasm that he proceeded to sit with us, take off his belt buckle (no worries - only to show us that it bore his signature, as he designed it himself, having lived in Switzerland as a bespoke designer of ladies' skiing accessories on the slopes of St. Moritz), and graciously propose a toast to the first Cypriots in his restaurant. This was followed by a stern warning for all wannabe pisco connoisseurs: 'You shouldn't down a shot of pisco; you should kiss it slowly!' - Señor César. 

  

Museo Larco

I couldn't resist a post on Museo Larco, Lima. Admittedly, partly because I really wanted to post one of the myriad of pictures I took there (there is already one of my lunch below - see Malabar). The one above was taken in the museum's storerooms which are open to the public. The experience of walking around thousands upon thousands of Moche ceramic portraits stacked up in glass cases was beautifully mystical and somewhat daunting (partly because of the staring eyes but mainly due to the unedifying prospect of being responsible for breaking thousands of ancient pieces).

The main galleries are calmer and more sparse, with a few key exhibits telling the story of pre-Columbian cultures, strikingly displayed.

It proved to be one of the most memorable afternoons of the trip and one of my favourite museums in the world.

Cuba libre?

It's not unusual that I keep hearing the question 'and how was your trip?', 'how was Peru?' etc but somehow the question 'and how was Cuba?' seems more loaded. Perhaps it's because of my own mixed feelings about the place that I project this tension. Perhaps it rubs off from the country's own inherent contradictions or Cubanos' own hesitation about their country. As our taxi driver told us (you learn everything from taxi drivers): 'Cubans have everything everyone else wants - a beautiful country, sun, beaches, music but Cubans don't have happiness'.

Sure, this is coloured by personal experience. In my eyes now it's like I'm viewing Cuba through rose-tinted glasses - I have forgotten my petty gripes as a tourist. £10 an hour for internet (and you need about that long for gmail to load), the food (more on that later), the constant drone of jineteros 'where you from my frien'?'. But then Cubans can't access internet (I should say are not allowed to but they do), have to queue for food vouchers and can't even be harrassed as tourists as they can't leave the country without permission and special invitation.

But I have fallen in love with the chaos and laid back sikkimetzidiko* attitude, which is probably a result of this Cuba libre and too many Cuba libres.

*another borrowed concept from Cypriot parlance - in other words 'who cares' or in spanish something akin to 'no vale la pena'

Besides who can fail to love the colour, the music, the dilapidated grandeur that is Havana Vieja...

Post mortem

It is now June. Do not worry - I'm not about to post a paragraph on the passage of time, though it's worth admitting that I started writing this with the sentence 'It is now May' (never mind - only a few days behind in my head).

So I am back and so is this blog. I could write a paragraph lamenting the end of the trip or the technical difficulties of blogging without internet but instead of moaning I will attempt to (more graciously) and metaphorically put pen to paper and write up all the blogs that have been brewing in my head for weeks now. I now also have the advantage of visual aids as I don't have to rely on the upload speed of - think something very very very very slow - to share my pictures.

aaah...dont you just love technology ;)

Escuela cusqueña

As previously posted, I thought I might write about many things at the start of this blog but religious art wasn't one of them. In fact, even two days ago, as I was lonely planeting Cusco on the long and boring bus ride from Puno, I resolutely sneered at the idea of visiting the Museo del Arte Religioso, dismissing it as boring and altogether too churchy for my liking. I ticked the modern art museum instead.

But as things stand in this temple of tourism that is Cusco, if you do happen to do one or two churchy things here, like visit the impressive cathedral or the quirky church of San Blas, (which features a skull at the top of its pulpit), it pays to get a boleto religioso, which also grants you access to the religious art museum in the Archbishop's palace.

The building itself is very impressive but what is most fascinating is the blend of cultures and influences. The ceilings and doors are familiarly Arabic. The paintings are adorned in gold leaf embroidery, with saints towering in triangular formations like the Andean mountain gods that their shape alludes to. Snippets of Inka culture creep into the icons, such as coca leaves and farming tools. The colours are peaceful, cheerful even, and quite unlike the sombre Byzantine palette that (unknowingly) I have got so used to. I am mesmerised.

Perhaps I should not pre-judge so easily.

Malabar

Ever since I started reading the extraordinarily lavish and complimentary descriptions of Peruvian cuisine and the gastro scene in Lima in the lonely planet (ie on my 12 hour flight here) I got a bee in my bonnet and wanted to try one of the city's celebrated restaurants.

Unfortunately there s one thing I don't like about Limeños' food habits and that's that they generally skip dinner. So getting last minute dinner reservations at the few restaurants that are actually open for dinner can be quite a challenge. My perseverance paid off and my broken Spanish to my astonishment got us a table at one of Lima's most experimental joints: Malabar.

We started with cocktails that were subject to multiple tastings by the ever discerning barman. They were worth the wait. As was the scallop ceviche in cucumber broth - how can cucumber taste so interesting? Cono's corn tamales was like the distant posh cousin of a mexican appetiser, while dessert woke me up with an explosion of passion fruit ice cream hidden underneath a dark chocolate shell that melted away as the waiter poured hot caramel sauce infused with pisco (the local liquor of choice). And the damage? £30 a head.

This is why I've been obsessing about the worthiness of food calories to be consumed. With so many exquisite choices (and I suddenly find myself using that word a lot in the context of food) where should one eat in such limited time?

Postscript: You must be wondering how chocolate or ceviche ended up looking like that. The amazing duck above was actually consumed at the lovely Museo Larco in Lima. Unfortunately I failed to capture the food at Malabar. I blame the taste explosion.

Mr Jernando

After rejecting a taxi for the benefit of a cheaper fare, we saved ourselves 3 soles (60p) but also had the good fortune of meeting who is to be surely remembered as the first memorable character of our trip - Mr Jernando, the taxi driver. In a 15 minute ride across Lima he took it upon himself to teach us the ins and outs of the city's main thoroughfares and traffic patterns. Fiercely proud of his city and eager to inform and educate the hapless tourist he extracted out of us every last inch of Spanish we could utter. He even managed to communicate to us that he was once a ministerial chauffeur (part of his 28-year stint as a taxi driver); prior to that he was a technician on a Peruvian submarine.

We didn't appreciate at the time what a rare character he'd be, for although taxi drivers and people generally have been very friendly, noone has put in so much effort to make conversation with us and make us feel welcome as the enthusiastic Mr Jernando.

the hiss of flip flops on a dusty floor

we have arrived in lima. after a surprisingly comfortable 12-hour flight (no we were not bumped up to business but we can sleep like babies anywhere), we arrived to the smell of the pacific ocean. to me it also smelled like fried fish but i think thats because in my mind the two smells are inextricably linked together (and also stem from somewhere in larnaca)

the illusion of exoticism is still there but we will see how long it lasts. our fantastic breakfast tea turned out to be canela y clovo! cono thought it might ve been more like a hundred-year old inca blend not a teabag.

What is to come

You should expect to read a lot on food and language (two of my obsessions), interesting characters we meet (possibly fatses), my fears (la cucaracha better remain just a popular song!), music and all sorts of things I can’t even think of right now (my imagination is probably clouded from some months of grey skies). Inevitably this will all be mixed in with excitement (read exclamations and smileys :)) and lots of oufous*.

*Apologies to English-speaking readers – this is a very useful exclamation in the Cypriot dialect (not to be confused with the somewhat less satisfactory Greek ‘ouf’). It expresses boredom, fatigue, the straw that broke the camel’s back and probably jetlag. If you inhale and then sharply exhale an ‘ou’, ending with a firm ‘f’ as your teeth touch your lower lip, you will see what I mean.

the beginning

This is the story of a big trip that started in our heads at some point in time (possibly in childhood). It was googled and lonely planeted in the grey winter of 2010/11.

It starts on 26^th February 2011 (London – Lima).

We don’t quite know what happens next but we’ll keep you posted.

- elena

- cono