Hauri to Yanahuanca

Very very shortly after posting my last blog (10 minutes) I saw a group of gringoes/ white people strolling through the town. Never to miss an oppertunity, I went right over and started chatting. It turned out they were an American family of missionarys living in Peru for a couple of years, and they had also for that week, other missionary friends staying with them. With out a blink they invited me to a game of basketball and netball they were just heading to, not before they had offered to wash my clothes and drop my bad off at their house.... The game of basketball turned in to a week with the 5 of them and their 5 frinds, doing sight seeing, teaching at a local school, playing many many games and chatting wonderfully (in English), cooking and baking and just being as entertained and cared for as I could possibly be! Even when I spent the night being sick... Refreshed to my soul and loaded with yummy food they kindly dropped my at Hauchis, to start on the Inca Trail propper!

This is my 10th day since leaving the Bredbenner family and I have crossed an amazing amount of valleys and rivers and towns and people and experiences allready. I have spent 3 nights with local familys (and of course being fed their wonderful food), had milk straight from cow 3 times, been asked for money by a man with a gun, been asked for money by a man wiht out a gun, had my hand shaken and had beautiful smiles more times than I can count. I have met with extrodinary kindness at every turn, and everything seems to be working out beutifully.

Right now I am an hours walk or so from Yanhuanca at a school where they invited me in to use their brand new second hand computer sweet and internet... And was also given food here... Food is very graciously and easly given.

About ah hour back I crossed a pass (4500m exact) where I had views to the north and south for AT LEAST 200km in each direction. Those are my favourite moments on the trail. I just LOVE topping out on a hill or a pass or rounding a bend, for me they are magical and aweinspiring and breath taking. I alwasy take the last few steps to the top with anticipation, where the new view inevitable pops in to sight, and I can say goodbye and many thanks to valley I have just walked through, from one area and set of experiences to another welcome unknown one. Often i can trace my trail for the next few hours untill I loose it round a bend, the two rows of stones that mark the Carmino De La Inca, what remains of the cobbled and steped 1000km + route.

Another little point to wonder over is that every bit of water i cross, every lake or river or stream is flowing just 6,500 km East to the mouth of the Amazon, how can water possible run down hill for that long? That is a 1:1625 average gradient... wow, beat that river Dart.

As for where my thoughts lie, they are still very scattered, I am more in the moment and enjoying whats around (like sunrise this morning wiht a heavy frost and light low fog, next to a peaceful river on my own was breathtaking as the orange glow crept down the hill to my tent) but I am still dreaming of England, Devon, walking there, being with family and frinds, but it isnt taking me away too much from the now.

I am trying to obtain the WWOOF list for Peru at the moment incase there is somwhere near I could rest at for a week, but otherwise I head to Cerro De Pasco! Love for now x

Cordillera Blanca and South

I washed yesterday! mmmmm
So I started my hike last Monday from Colcabamba to do the classic Santa Cruz trek that goes east through the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range 8 hours north of Lima, it passes up a long vally in to incredible 6000m snow capped mountains. The scenery is mindblowing and all the mountains are so ragged and aggressive. The track topped out at a 4800m pass which I got up 3 or 4 steps at a time, and my completion of the pass coincided with the a Mexin group of mountaineers/ trekkers, who I fell in with that evening and were a great relief to my solitude, feeding me and generally being good comany (english speaking at least).

So being on my own in a country I barely speak the language of is presenting its own set of emotional challanges, I am finding my thoughs endlessly returning to the things I miss, friends, family and home comforts. The last few days have been better though, and I hope I continue to move more towards the moment.

My route over the next 10 days seems sparsly populated, but beyond that the route goes through alot more larger towns. It will be intereasting to see how it goes with very little outside contact, and then in to a more built up area, I wonder which I will prefer...

All the towns/ hamlets I pass through are built with hand-made adobe bricks, and are either bare, painted white, blue or have political slogans in white, red and blue (allways) concerning mining, local voting or loving the earth. I would love to know who paints all these on as they are very uniform in apperance and message.

Well I am thinking of eveyone who reads this (too much for my liking!) and I think the test will be the next 10 days. x

Peru - primera dias

Expectations - out of the window with the first sight of land (from the plane), thinking:
"no, this is just the industrial fishing area, surely the rest can't be this desolate and parched and poor looking"
wrong. totally wrong.

Cacti, crubmeling buildings and abusive sentient advertising grow well. Not much else. Compassion, respect, timetables - gone. Maybe it's obvieous to 'them' that the far, far gone van (on a tilt) hurteling towards us with a bloke shouting something incomprihensible at us, is in fact a bus that is going to Miraflores. Maybe oneday I will understand, but I doubt it.

¿Peudo hablar Inglese?
- More or less
Where are my bags?
- Probabily in Miami
Oh. So when will they get here?
- In next 24hour maybe

All I can say is I owe alot to the people who are hosting me, Alan and Nati, who offered to pick me up at the airport at 4.30am, then actually did at 11.30 when my delayed flight got in. They have taken me to a local restaurant and Nati took the afternoon out to take me around down town and show me the Plazas and only buildings that dont look like they should be demolished, "oh, the president lives there..."

Then (seriously and urgently)
- Ricky - walk, just walk!
Whats up Nati, you look scared?
- You here that whistle? It means we are going to get robbed, its a group communicating. Walk quick...

So we walked, 'but wheres my bloody knife?!', oh yeh, in Miami...

Miraflores is slightly kinder, but there is still the delapadated house crouching between the new office blocks, and one street away the same crazy trafic and confusion and alienation. God, I really must look as bountyful and white as those dumb tourists.

I can't wait to get out of here - just give me my own hill to walk on. x

USA - Pacific North West

Walking has now pretty much ceased in hope that my Abductor Digiti Minimi stops hurting. I strained it (or something with an equally stupid name) in my foot shortly after getting here whilst checking out my new walking boots. So I am being as cautious as possible and looking in to insurance cover to get some treatment from a heinously expensive podiatrist (although those prices are normal - it is the US..). I am really hoping that this will not impact on South America - as it is possibly one of the worst muscles I could pull given the hiking plans.

Other than that frustration, it is glorious to be able to spent time with Nika at long last. I have just had the privilege of meeting Nika's parents over the weekend and I was given a water tour of the locality by Rodger (Nika's dad) on his 'Vessel Assist' boat, as well as having a barbecue, eating out, seeing a film, reading and doing lots of nothing in between. We enjoyed a couple days of sun as the north west still seems to be dragging its self out of the winter greyness.

I am slowly collecting the last bits of equipment that I need for South America, making use of sales and the internet to regularly find items at half the price - until post and packaging is added - then I might as well just go to the shop and get it full price.

The house Nika lives in is full of the outdoor type, who just this weekend competed in a 7 leg, 100 mile, multi sport relay race starting on a mountain with skiing and ending at the sea with kayaking. So I am glad that I bought my climbing gear as we have been a number of times already, and Nika and I will be heading out to the east of the Cascade mountains to spend a few days camping in a unique landscape called 'channeled scab land' - characterised by the rectangular cross section valleys - created by periodic cataclysmic flooding over the last 2 million years.... hmm, lets see if it is as cool as it sounds.

For the nest 10 days I will be on the back burner as Nika finished papers, reads books and revises for finals, so there will be plenty of time to do a bit more ambling. x

Start of the Americas (But still in England)

On Monday I briefly reveled in the ability to plunge my hand in to a cold fridge and pull out a decadent bag of pre-grated motzerella. Then munch on a carefully selected un-moldy couple of handfuls. This I know will not be happening too often in the next couple of years. Rather it's going to be: counting pennys; going for the option thats cheaper than the 'cheap' option, being resigned to the fact that the vegetarian dish may very well contain meat, and everything is in a language I don't understand (also intermittently applicable to the USA, I expect).

So starts what I have been planning for the last 8 months. Initiated by a friend met traveling in New Zealand with "Lets cycle a tandem bike across Argentina". "OK" I said! And now, though the inevitable process of change, I'm going to spend 5 weeks int he US with my girlfriend (Nika), 3 months walking in Peru on my own, 3 moths wwoofing and hiking with Nika in Chile, and then another 3 months doing something somewhere in South America.

I do have a flight after that back in to the US, but after being stuck in immigration for 2 hours and being quizzed about my: itinerary; monetary situation; what illegal narcotics I take; and just quite who is this person you say is your 'girlfriend' but actually barely know, I am seriously re-considering under what pretense they will let me back in to the States, for a longer time, with less money, and with an even vaguer agenda....

I have been here in the Pacific North West a couple of days now, and I feel very welcomed, the house that Nika flats in is awesome, the other people are all outdoorsey and up for adventures, so I have already been rock climbing and had a barbecue and a big pot luck dinner and wandered around a farmers market, and slept lots (it didn't help that I was awake 22hours the day I flew in).

I'm just off for a walk now, smugly leaving Nika to do her geography assignment at uni (no, I am not jealous). x