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New Files W20 is on page 2, and these are on page 3 - W21, W22, W23, W24 and W25 (Quite a lot to look at as I have been ill so there’s a back log of images.)

There it stood, towering above us, it’s face stretching up into the clouds as it had done for the last three hundred million years or more. The river crashed passed our feet and onwards over rocks the size of houses that remained, sunken into the swollen riverbed, where they landed after falling from the mountain top. We leaned back as far as we could with hands on our heads to stop sunglasses from falling off, and there, one thousand metres  vertically above our heads at a height of 3040 metres was, what they call ‘The Old Mountain’, or to you and me, ‘MACHU PICCHU’ (more about this later but first….)

Boarding the Cessna light aircraft with the words, ‘You Gringo is my new co-pilot’ ringing in my ears was quite a good start to the day. Blondie had never flown in a small plane before but she took it all in her stride as we bounced down the run way with Pedro singing a song in my headphones about an Alpaca, a bottle of beer and a lonely night in the desert. The World famous Nazca Lines were quite a sight to see and can only really be appreciated from the air. Monkeys, Dogs, Hummingbirds, Spiders, Trees and Whales are all spread out and etched into the desert floor remaining as they have done for centuries upon centuries. The most interesting shape would be, the Astronaut carved into a hillside. Only really from a plane bouncing around the sky with a drunk pilot can you see and try to understand what this race of people were doing again 2000 years ago. Mulder and  Scully would definitely get a stiffy around these parts based upon what we saw. Why else would these people draw massive signs in the earth that can only be seen from the sky, er, like, 1700 years before Orville Wright and his trusty brother Willbur waddled off the side of a hill yelling ‘New York or Bust’ before promptly crashing into a cow 80 foot away.

We headed up to Cusco (The most spiritual and most respected city in Peru). The worst bus journey of our travels befell us as we climbed for almost 15 hours with the air con stuck at 27c. We chose a night bus and I can tell you I have never been so sick in my entire life, (or so I thought). 3500 metres above sea level is where AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) really kicks in. Think about one of your worst hangovers in your life and then factor in not being able to breathe. Add to that the fact that I came down with some sort of flu thing where all my joints are really painful. So we stopped and stayed in a Hostel Convent run by Nuns for a few days. No TV, hot water every second day and bread for breakfast. So lots of Coca Tea which eases the symptoms and Mountain Sickness tablets (Yes it’s from the same plant as cocaine so I’m told and makes your lips go numb, er, moving on)

As we got to Cusco we saw an horrific accident where either a bus or a lorry had quite literally dropped off the mountain and fallen hundreds of feet into a ravine. Nothing or no one could have survived as lots of locals stood around looking down into the ravine without any chance of getting down to help. A bit of a sobering wake up call for us after some 90 hours on buses so far, still, Nil Desperandum as they say in Boscombe.

Sunday 28th September wasn’t a great day for me as it was just 2 short years ago that my Mum passed away after a short battle with brain cancer so we decided to make a special day of it to go on a horseback ride up into the highlands of The Andes. Blondie had never ridden a horse before so was really quite nervous but it was fabulous. What a stunning day it was as we visited 4 different archeological ruins on a horse. My horse way Gay apparently so our guide told me as he chuckled away to himself merrily. He was singing a song about a ‘Gay Caballero’ whilst chuckling at me. I responded with the universally recognised ‘Bird’ whereupon he whacked the horses bum and off I went like a cross between John Wayne and Frank Spencer in the Grand National.

Just before we left there was an incredible phenomenon in the sky. Something very rare, called a ‘Moon Dog’. As you can see from the images this phenomenon is caused by ice crystals forming in the atmosphere at above 36,000 feet. The resulting sheet of air ice creates a solar halo thousands of metres wide. So funny to see 50 Japanese tourists all pointing to the sky like some John Travolta convention frozen in time.

Finally we moved on in a taxi because I just couldn’t do another bus. Quite cool when a 2 hour cab ride costs about £17, but we got our own personal chauffeur to take us around some ruins and drive us through the mountains, the photos in W24 speak for themselves and these are as they came off the camera!

Without going into too much detail, the AMS just wouldn’t go no matter what we did and I felt sicker and sicker everyday for about 12 days until we finally got to Aguas Calientes (under the mountain of Machu Picchu) and, well, to put this in a way as least ewwwwwy as possible, I ended up vomiting quite a lot of blood and promptly collapsing. Karen bless her heart swung immediately into emergency Florence Nightingale and Nurse Gladys Emmanuel mode and headed off into the night at 01.30am running through the tiny village to scramble a medical team to me in the hotel. It was hugely scary for her as I was barely conscious and was shaking with a high fever. Incredible to think that miles from civilization in the rain forest I ended up with not one but two Doctors and a nurse plus Karen working on me all night. The hotel room turned into a mini hospital with drip stands, bags of IV Fluids, IV Antibiotics, IV Narcotics and numerous heart monitors and spygnometers and things being shoved in my ears (not up the Gary Glitter thank god!)

In the middle of it all my blood pressure crashed and I think I gave them all a bit of a scare when my heart rate dropped a little below 50bpm and I looked liked I had stopped breathing by all accounts. 4 hours later and I was back in the land of the living after taking on board 4 litres of fluids through a drip. Apparently I was as weak as a kitten and 1.5 stone lighter than I was 12 days ago.(I now have a 32″ waist) Later I was told that I had picked up something that we call  ‘Michael Foelling Syndrome’ which apparently is a very nasty, sickness inducing and highly infectious parasite. The Doctors said it was called ‘South American Guardia’, something me and Simon Plummer now have in common, but hey at least I now have the start of a 6 pack at 38 years of age! I am glad to say that I am recovering slowly and drinking a special hydration fluid which tastes like flat, chalky, pink, milkshake…..mmmm nice.

Moving on to nicer things, W21 file shows a day spent in Cusco when it was National Tourism Day. I was in my element sitting in the front row of the crowd with my 400mm Canon lens. Faces, Faces, Faces and the textures, lines and ages of people screaming at the camera lens, an absolute pleasure to shoot these people. File W24 produced some incredible sunsets with clouds and skies that made you feel as though they were made of candy floss and cotton. Er, I hope I don’t sound like I’m going to start chanting or hugging trees again. Well in the Sacred Valley of the Gods it was difficult to not get a bit carried away.

I wish that I could tell you what the people that we keep meeting along our travels are like and how interesting the conversations are but there is so much to tell. A couple of examples are, we met a lovely and very interesting lady from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean who is a Commercial Psychologist who when she isn’t working, travels the world. She is an ex Pro Hanglider who stopped after having an horrific crash. Chatting to her about it, I got to ask this question, ‘How high were you when you realised that you were going to crash for certain and what went through your mind?’ The answer was quite incredible…….’I was about 300 metres up when I knew that I was going to crash into a field full of cows, and I did, and I survived, but I broke both of my knees after I crashed when the kite flipped over onto its back and dropped me onto the ground!’ Add to this countless interesting stories of boats, crashing 4×4’s and landing on hand brakes, and we meet people like this almost every day. Interesting people, very interesting. Also we meet cool people like super yacht captains and people who race across the Atlantic for a living! And bizarrely, a property developer bloke from Bournemouth of all places (our home town).

The award for ultimate stupidity and, annoyance for want of a better word goes to, (Pash will be happy with this) yes you’ve guessed it, The Good ‘Ol US of A. Let me give you an example quickly of crass, death defying stupidity. Whilst walking around Machu Picchu (think one of the most spiritual and incredible sites in the entire world) this middle class, white American family of all ages were leaping on and off rocks and running up slopes marked ‘PLEASE KEEP OFF’ whilst yelling at each other in a whiny American accent. One of the thicko’s who I named Cleatus had his top off which was just not the sort of thing that you do at a place like this. He was about 35 years old. The guides were blowing whistles and waving at them but they just waved back. I pointed out politely that there were quite serious fines for behaving disrespectfully on the site. Cleatus looked at me with his 20 stone Mother and troop of thickos and asked what I thought he should do. ‘Well’ I said, ‘perhaps start by putting your shirt back on and not swinging around the site like a f******g monkey!’. But this is the best bit, about 15 minutes later, Doofus and Delilah, his brothers dragged their knuckles along the ground towards me and said this, ‘We are really sorry but we just don’t know how to act at places like this!’ I stared at both of them, then the whole family troop of monkeys and said, ‘Do you ever go to Church? Well act like that here you disrespectful idiots’. Never mind God Bless America, more like God Help American.

But finally, let me tell you about MACHU PICCHU. Sitting at 3040 metres above sea level and 1000 metres straight up from the valley floor has to be one of the most incredible and spiritual places that we/I have ever been to. Stunning. Tear inducingly beautiful  with breath taking views at every turn. Clouds drift passed you and leave you slightly breathless as the sun then comes from behind them and warms your face. When you look at what they achieved all these hundreds of years ago it makes you stop. An engineering feat that would be almost impossible to achieve even in today’s world. Inca terracing thousands of feet up, carved into a mountain top that has stood the test of time with incredible ease. Lama’s and Alpaca’s stroll passed with nonchalant ease as you struggle to breathe and climb yet another flight of granite stairs. Someone tells you that the transit van sized granite 40 tonne block that you are resting on came from, not this mountain, but the one 3 mountains away! In fact most of the granite came from the other mountains.

The second day that we went up there was train strike so the normal 2500 visitors per day was reduced to under 500. So, by the time we ventured up (I was still quite weak so it was gone 2pm), well there were no more than 100 people on the entire site, and then it rained. By the end of the rain there were maybe 40 people left. Yes we had Machu Picchu almost to ourselves. There is a part of the site called Wayna Pichu (the big green pointy thing  in the back ground of most of the classic photos of Machu Picchu) well only 400 people are allowed to climb it each day, sadly we didn’t think of this until it was too late, but by shear change and thanks to my Spanglish and bumbling Englishman, the guy on the security gate pointed at the infrequently climbed Hupua Picchu saying ‘Ariba - Up’. We scrambled up the sides of this peak even using ropes to climb one section.

I could rave on for hours about this but I will close this story with what we saw when we got to the top. The clouds lifted briefly and there in the valley hundreds of feet below us, next to Wayna Picchu, was the start of a rainbow. As it grew and formed in shape the light from behind it started to push through and shine against the side of another mountain. Brilliantly bright sunshine burst through the clouds (remember that we are standing in the clouds) and then it happened, the rainbow arced into the sky and over the mountain. The brilliance of the light and the vibrancy of the colours of the rainbow coupled with the incredible vista and the greens of the mountainside tumbling into the ravines thousands of feet below, the greys and whites of the clouds drifting passed, the distant sound of the swollen river crashing through the valley floor, the slow pitter patter of rain drops hitting our jackets and then the utter silence of our surroundings, just me, me and Karen and the feeling that you just don’t get any closer to the Gods than this, or the feeling that my mum was there with us.

Enjoy the photos, I know there are lots this time. Remember Page 2 and Page3.

And I must say a very special thank you to one of my very best friends William Stephenson for being, well, for just being William and always being there for us when we need him - thank you.

Love Chris and Karen x

Categories: LBS News