Perù in velocità

The trip started in the best possible way at 4 in the morning. Vivi and I have to take a flight from Milan MPX to Amsterdam, where we'll have the connection to Lima. In Amsterdam we board an MD11 KLM named Audrey Hepburn. 10 hours of ocean crossing a bit strange (I don't know how we end up in Ireland to go to South America), pampered and cosseted by the strapping Dutch stewards (really remarkable). We find ourselves catapulted without even knowing it to Bonaire, an island of the Netherlands Antilles, for a technical stop. However beautiful the island was in that little hour under the palms, I've lost forever any desire for the Caribbean because of the beastly humidity. I was suffocating…. Here we are ready for the last leg of 5 hours flying over the Amazon and finally we land in Lima.

Here we are arrived in the capital, wrapped all year round in the garua, a "nice" little mist that for 365 days a year doesn't let the sun through. That's why the Limeños or Limioti, or whatever the hell they're called, are always depressed. The city is very beautiful, always at risk of earthquakes, with surfers who dare to challenge the Pacific waves in the middle of winter. It's of typical Spanish stamp, with many churches and interesting squares.

Here we are arrived in the middle of the Andes at about 3,400 metres. On the plane, despite the advice not to drink fizzy drinks because of the soroche – better known as altitude sickness – I let myself be tempted by Inka Cola. The drink is lime-coloured, but it doesn't taste of lemon, it tastes of Big Babol!!! It's quite disgusting, but I think that if I'd drunk it as a child I would have liked it a lot. Altitude sickness doesn't affect either me or Vivi, so in top form we set off to discover this marvellous city full of craft markets, a beautiful square that gives you the shivers, especially by night, and Nordic tourists cooler than I'd ever seen. You know the classic sporty types all trekking-backpack on their shoulders, muscle in the right place and red cheeks from mountain tanning??? I've said it all.

Despite the initial fears the cuisine turned out to be fabulous. For drinks, Mate de coca at all hours of the day, Pisco sour every evening. To eat, quinoa and choclo soup, potatoes never ending, even the famous Viagra potato (try it to believe it), papa rellena, amazing meat, trout from Macchu Picchu.

From Cusco you take the legendary train of the Andes which after an endless zig-zag (I swear I'd never seen a little train zig-zag back and forth because it doesn't have enough space to climb from 3,400 to 3,900 m) arrives at Macchu Picchu. Fantastic, needless to say. It suddenly opens up on the horizon, after you've walked among the trees. It leaves you open-mouthed.

Always stopping in Cusco, which is extraordinary, we also go to visit the Sacred Valley of the Incas and the salt flats of Maras. Beyond the ruins, the most incredible thing is the landscape. We're very high up and there are endless high plateaus with stupendous colours. Fields of cultivated cereals, eucalyptus trees…back home at these altitudes there's only rock.!!! On top of that the peaks towering over us have slightly snowy tips, because being near the Equator, despite it being winter, the snows are not perennial

We are in Puno, a truly horrendous city, which is the starting point for excursions on Lake Titicaca. I've dreamed of Lake Titicaca my whole life and here we are. The lake itself isn't bad because it's enormous and seems like a sea, but there's nothing. The famous floating islands of the natives are a rip-off. It seems that these Uros natives are extinct and every day they come to the floating islands only for the tourist. How sad. It all seems fake, even though at one time they must have been very beautiful. The Island of Taquile instead puts me in difficulty for the first time since we arrived. We're at 4,000 m and we have to climb the island for 1 hour under the sun (alternative 550 steps) to reach the village. Breath is really scarce, it's as if I were running the NY marathon and were almost at the end.

This is the real problem of altitude, it always seems that the movements you make are tripled…in short, an excellent gym. After eating, another 3 hours of navigation await us to return to Puno. Our captain decides he's cooler than the others and wants to leave the other boats behind. He pushes the tub we're travelling on to the max. Halfway through the trip there's a smell of burning. The boat's carpet is catching fire, but he hasn't noticed. We point it out to him, so he takes a bucket with lake water and throws it on the fire. When we're close to the pier the engine that has been working like crazy gives out.!!!! Once again the "holy water" of the lake (which always with the bucket also served as the toilet flush) saves us. The guy wets a cloth and puts it on the engine, which barely restarts to tackle the last metres and bring us safely to shore.

We now have to go to Arequipa. You get there by plane with a flight to remember. The flight on the schedule is 35 min. We leave 1 hour late and so the pilot "has to make up for it". The guy takes off, rises just a few hundred metres from the ground (being already at 4,000 m he doesn't need to lift much), makes a beastly turn or swerve around the cone of a volcano always at ground level and announces that we're landing (??? where, panic…I only see mountains and canyons caused by the earthquake). Evidently he finds a gap (the airport runway) and lands, total journey from runway to runway 10 minutes, never happened with a big commercial plane.!!!! We arrive in Arequipa, a city with 3 active volcanoes that truly deserves it, with a square even more beautiful than the one in Cusco, lots of beautiful churches, a convent/citadel (that of Santa Catalina) that is worth the trip to Peru.

I'm open-mouthed. I recommend eating in the evening on the terraces overlooking the main square. Very romantic and inspiring. Watch out for the spicy stuffed peppers though!

On a pre-war coach we have to make the transfer from Arequipa to Nasca along the very famous Pan-American Highway, thousands of km that cross the whole continent from south to north. It seems that 2 years ago an earthquake offshore caused a tsunami with 40 m waves that swept this whole road!!! So it's the "travel safe and informed" kind of thing. But this is only the beginning. We are in the hands of Jorge, the driver who falls in love with Vivi at first sight I imagined the Pan-American Highway was a motorway, instead it's a very narrow road, one lane each way without side barriers, overlooking the angry ocean, but truly overlooking. One hairpin bend after another, many of them "U"-shaped, others marked with the yellow sign "curva muy peligrosa". The whole thing takes place at night. It begins in thick fog.

Jorge seems to have taken driving lessons in England because he inexplicably drives on the left, overtakes on both sides going off the road and decides to beat the 10-hour crossing record because despite the sign indicating 50 KMH he goes at about 90. Luckily the traffic is light. For fear he'll fall asleep Vivi sits next to him…bad idea, instead of watching the road he starts looking at her and nearly kills us. Luckily he doesn't hear our screams because he's closed in the cabin. The road is all ups and downs, silence falls, those who had decided to sleep during the 10 hours of travel wake up and, petrified, don't take their eyes off the road. I decide not to stay near the window anymore, but in the aisle, because Jorge does beastly near-misses with the trucks passing in the other direction and I fear that sooner or later they'll slice my legs off.

On the road it's full of graves….I romantically thought they were graves of surfers or sea wolves who couldn't stay away from the splendid and untouched ocean beaches. My travel companions shoot down my idea by telling me they are former tourists who travelled with Jorge. Hysteria rages. There's a stop in an inhabited village (the only sign of life we found in 10 hours). It's like the hotel in "The Shining", so you can imagine the effect of the stop, instead of recharging us… As if that weren't enough, after the fog a very strong sandstorm began and Jorge started accelerating, despite the descent, piles of sand everywhere and sand against the coach brought by the wind.!!!! Enough to get his licence revoked, but apparently he does that road 4 times a month…so we're lucky!!!

Once you've survived the Panamericana with Jorge, flying over the Nasca lines is child's play. By now the legends about the tiny planes that occasionally crash because of the fog don't scare us anymore. In fact, even though we're told not to eat breakfast to avoid throwing up (because the effect is like a roller coaster), we don't care and we fuel up nicely. Lucky for us, after a week of no flights due to fog, the day we're supposed to fly the visibility is excellent. There are 4 of us on the plane. Our pilot's name is Gino. The adventure begins. Every seat is equipped with a vomit bag and once the flight is over I'll understand why (I'll also understand why we weren't supposed to eat). The flight is breathtaking, I only miss the whale because it's the first figure and my eye still doesn't understand where and what to look at (it's not that easy). The centrifugal effect kicks in.

For every figure Gino does a 360° spin first to the right and then to the left to allow you to see all the figures from both sides of the window…..basically the effect is like an orange being squeezed to make juice. Vivi feels awful, she can barely see 1 figure, her stomach is in knots, her head is exploding and she gets off pissed off and unsatisfied. I on the other hand get off all excited and start spouting all my theories about the Lines. So forget the aliens, this is the work of man!!! (Except for one figure that to me is clearly a fake because it has nothing to do with the others.)

Before reaching Paracas, we stop at an oasis in the middle of nowhere. We've seen everything on this trip, forest, mountains, high plateaus, arid desert, lakes, rivers and ocean, endless wild beaches, salt flats, animals of every kind, but desert with Sahara-style dunes and oases who would have expected that??? Peru has this too, and Peruvians snowboard on the beautiful dunes and swim in the oasis. Truly enchanting.

After the stop, we've got another 300 km of Panamericana with Jorge, but in daylight with good weather it almost seems like a piece of cake. Except maybe when he stops on the edge of a ravine to show us the view and when he tackles the only tunnel on the road, carved into the rock and one-way. First come first served, that is, whoever gets there first goes through!!! Nerve-wracking because you can't even see from the other side. You have to trust fate. Here we are in Paracas... Long live the beach, finally sun, sea and shells…I found some splendid and enormous ones. Majestic seabirds and wind, lots of wind which I adore!!! Vivi dives in with her swimsuit on, but gives up after a little while. Only the English women hold out. It's hot like a nice Spring day, in short. A bit of well-deserved rest....

Today we've planned a trip to the Ballestas Islands which are the little sisters of the Galapagos (equally worthwhile without going so far away). Alas the day is gloomy (for the first time in 2 weeks). The harbor master doesn't give the go-ahead to set sail. I'm desperate, I don't want to ruin the last trip I've dreamed about for so long. I can't not see the seals (which I adore) and the famous Candelabra carved into the rock. I go to the boat captain, give him sweet eyes, tell him I came specially etc. etc. and I force him to start the engine. We set off in a little boat that almost gets swept away by the waves (you know the power of Pacific waves??) and slammed against the rocks. But it's worth it. The Candelabra (my totem) is fantastic and the seals are hilarious, the islands majestic, the sea stormy. It's a bit cold, but I don't care at all.

The trip lasts half a morning, unfortunately with rough seas you can't do much.

Another 300 km to return to Lima, with Jorge giving Vivi the wine "el perfecto amor". The return to civilization (9 million inhabitants) after 15 days of nothing and peace is traumatic and the garua takes over even for us, who are caught by sudden homesickness and can't wait to leave. If you want to kill yourself, move to Lima!!! We console ourselves with shopping, which isn't the best, nothing compared to the super colorful stalls of the Pisac market

The time of departure has arrived. At the airport we have to go 4 hours early because the airlines overbook and even if you have your ticket and have confirmed you risk not leaving. 4 full hours of queuing, check-in with the usual luggage that weighs more than it should after all the purchases and then off we go.

Here we are again in the arms of the KLM crew. We land in Bonaire to refuel. We sit under the palm trees waiting to take off again when all hell breaks loose and we're told that "due to a technical problem" we'll be leaving 1 hour late….I go to investigate the technical problem because I'm very sensitive when I travel by plane.

Apparently it seems that the lower cargo door of the plane opened during landing (although a fellow countryman swears he understood that the brakes don't work….but at this hour given the location and the size of the island and the plane we'd be soaking in the water, don't you think???).

Vivi and I hope they don't find the spare part so we can get a free night in a Caribbean Resort….unfortunately, they only offer us a drink under the palm trees.

In reality, they're tinkering in the baggage compartment (and so maybe I understood correctly), but the most worrying thing is that they're remounting the rudder!!!! What will the truth be???

We board after hours and hours and take off with a bit of apprehension, both because it seems the problem was serious (in the sense that the plane was technically no longer able to fly), and because we know that 10 hours of pure ocean await us, so…if something happens, the nearest stopover is….Amsterdam!!!

We arrive miraculously in Amsterdam after a series of pretty heavy turbulences and discover the truth about the technical problem. Basically we flew for 10 hours over the ocean, in the middle of a storm with duct tape (or whatever it was) brown on the rudder!!!! So on landing in Bonaire the rudder had come off (or had been uncovered, who knows), but luckily we already had our wheels on the tarmac….