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Okay so strap yourself in for another thrilling episode of Mills and Boon meets Skarsky and Hutch! We are sorry but it is a monster entry this time as we have done so much and met so many people, but please do read it as it has been an incredible journey for us. And a very special welcome to all the new travel people from the 4×4 Bolivia 4 day survival expedition. Our story is at the bottom of the page.

Well I’m glad to say I’m well on the road to recovery although I still look as skinny as a whippet (a type racing dog fancied by people who live in the North of England) and not kiting for 2.5 months has left me with baggy clothes and shorts that keep falling down at really inopportune moments.

Since leaving Machu Picchu and continuing our travels south and onwards into Chile we have had some really funny experiences which we’ll share with you. We took a bus ride for about 6 hours and they played a video of early 1980’s MTV stuff, I was singing away to a bunch of confused looking Peruvians to the likes of Billy Idol “Dancing With Myself”, Kim Wilde “Checkered Love” and Laura Branigan “Gloria” oooh Gloria and (Tony Hughes you’ll love this…) A Flock Of Seagulls and Human League ‘Sound Of the Crowd’!!! Do you remember the haircuts we had? Not many people know I was in a headlining band with Tony, called ‘The Universal Language Of Love’ which we reformed into ‘Destiny’ after a bust up over a girl with unfeasibly big knockers. God Bless Sun-In. One thing that I suddenly realised that shocked me was that despite many, many drunken nights singing at the top of my Stella Artois addled lungs to Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen” that, in actual fact other than,’Woooah Come on Eileen yeah you know what I mean’ and ‘Ooooh rah oooh rah yayhhhh’ I do not actually know any of the words? For example it’s actually ‘Too-Rye-Ay’ and is a song about an old bloke. Ah what ever happened to Tenpole Tudor and Swords Of A Thousand Men (Youtube it if you are under 32 years of age).

Anyhoo, we headed out of Machu Picchu taking the Vistadome Train (a train with a glass roof) through the sacred valley and ended up back in Cusco where Karen and I shared a stunning bottle of ‘Petite Verdo’, bizarrely enough bottled not in France as we expected but from none other than, Peru. The food was some fresh Andean Mountain Trout, mmmmm and sitting next to a log fire. Due to the altitude and the fact that neither us drink much anymore, Blondie was a drunk as a badger within minutes and preceded to spend most of the night snoring like a chainsaw after performing her crocodile duvet death roll and nicking 90% of the Lama blankets. Cold butt cheeks I can tell you as the temperatures plunge at night to minus figures. Cusco is home to a factory of knock off North Face gear, so everyone is fully North Faced up. Even the street cleaners and homeless people are all snuggly wrapped up in the stuff. We bought 2 jackets that would cost close on £500 for the princely sum £7.20 each, bargain!! And micro fleeces which cost £125 each for, yes you’ve guessed it £4.50.

Another bus ride for 6 hours took us through the incredible heights of 5600 metres above sea level. To give you a clue that’s 15,128 feet or there abouts. To put that in real terms, stack 16 Eiffel Towers on top of each other or if you really want to stack 1061 London Double Decker Buses on top of each other (I can even tell you how long that would take to freefall)….er I guess I have too much time on my hands working stuff like that out on 6 hour bus rides. Well we ended up at Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the entire world. Apparently, the locals have heard the ‘Titi-ha-ha’ joke before and were not as amused as I was, chuckling away to myself like a school boy with his first copy of ‘Mega-Whazzo Jugs Monthly’ as Karen stood by looking apologetically at the now angry looking hotel reception women.

We took ourselves on a tour around an incredible 1862 British Gunboat ‘The Yavari’ that was made in Whippet Country (the north of England) and was then specifically chopped up into pieces of a maximum of 400lb and sent to Chile via Cape Horn, then thousands of km’s up to Arica in Chile. Then, get this, by donkey and Alpaca it took 6 years to carry all the bits and bobs through the Andes Mountains to the lake where she was rebuilt for the War between Peru and Bolivia in 1870. But by the time they had done so, yup, the war was over and she never had her guns fitted. She fell into ruins and turned her stern to the lake as if to say she wanted to sink. The photo is really quite sad. Until about 1980 when some posh English women who’s family owned the shipyards in which she was built, came to Peru and salvaged her. She’s now a stunner and one of the oldest serviceable metal seagoing vessels in the world. See the photo of me at the helm!! William - Was she from the Stephenson Yards? Michael Palin did a thing on her too as well interestingly.

The next day we took a tour out to The Floating Uros Islands. These are essentially a group of reed islands that have been inhabited by a hardy bunch of people for centuries. What they did was to build a raft or reeds by matting them together and then rafting those reeds to another raft, and so on until you have wodge of them, them overlay even more reeds et voila, you have an island and then anchor it with big sticks and rotated it until you have the best view and the neighbour you want. The photos speak for themselves and I can tell you that for top notch photography it was like shooting fish in a barrel with frame after frame of awe inspiring and hugely memorable faces. The classic imagery was so easy to capture as photographs leapt from real life into my camera. (Jessssh who writes this stuff!!)  The other Pro Photographers who view my site will understand when they see the images. I loved it and the people were just so lovely and inviting to their homes.

The boat ride there was hysterical as our boat would only turn to the right. The young driver was fighting with the wheel and kept crashing about the cockpit as he fought in vain to make the boat go to the left. The teleflex steering would slip and he would bang into the window, whilst we merrily wandered and chugged around in a circle. As we entered the narrow channel to go to the islands it became obvious that we had a real problem. He worked out that if he throttled up and then backed off we would drift to the left again, so the next 20 minutes was spent going - Vroooom, drifty drifty drifty, Vroooom drifty, drifty, drifty. Until, and this was so funny, the engine stopped and we experienced the slowest boat crash in history. I guess I didn’t help too much by screaming really loudly in an American accent, ‘Oh My Gawd we are all going to die’ before we slowly drifted at about half a knot into the side of the reed beds. Eventually after seeing the islands and going around in circles a few times we finally broke down for good, sideward’s across the channel and had to get towed back to the harbour. The best £8.00 we have spent to far.

We met an incredible family of Canadians on the boat. There are 6 of them travelling around the world together aged 6 to 13 (3 girls and 1 boy plus Mum and Dad) The strap line on their website is something that has sat and lodged itself into the dark recesses of my mind and is so true of me and Karen. It reads, ‘The Further You Go - The Closer You Become’.

As we left the lake we were riding in a Tuk Tuk that we almost broke. With my weight and Blondie’s combined plus 19 kilos or my backpack and 17 kilos of hers plus our day packs and the driver, the poor clutch didn’t stand a chance and as we reached a hill on a one way street the queue formed behind of honking angry taxis. We both had to resort to a sort of hip thrust to help the thing make it up the hill. The poor Peruvian driver was like,’you break my taxi’. We said sorry and ran off after paying.

We moved onto a town called Puno where we had an interesting experience. There was an underground market with all these little concrete booths hosting a vast range of stalls selling anything from food to washing powder through to shoes and broom handles, then there was the meat market section with yellow chickens and various bits of dead stuff and fish all adding to the smell and the noise and heat. The smell was vivid with mixtures of blood, water, sweat, bleach and rotten vegetables. Add to this the sweet smell of the spices and fruits and you get the general picture. The main sound from the stairwell came from a wedding celebration that was taking place in the entrance hall. Think, an area the size of 30 foot by 20 foot underground carpark with people dancing to a 14 piece brass band all standing crammed into the stairwell belting out Latin American Samba and Rumba tunes overfilled by the guys giving it up big time on the drums with the horns hooting out the most toe tapping rhythms, it was so loud that your kidneys were vibrating but an incredible sound and sight to see. I offered a quick chorus of “Bam-Ba-La-Bamba” and a quick shuffty of Ricky Martin moves before being told to bugger off by a 12 year old who had a beard.

Ariquipa saw a staring face to face with a 500 year old mummy in a $2,000,000 freezer! Juanita was found after the snow thawed due to global warming and she rolled down a mountain where an American dude was like, ‘woah ice lady chick’ and promptly robbed all the graves and stuffed her in a museum after a quick tour of the good old US of A. Juanita was a 14 year old girl who was linked to a famous family, who sent her on a 600km walk through the Andes before she was clubbed to death as a sacrifice to The Gods of the Mountains. Now she rests in a museum surrounded by ice for all to see. I was quite upset as seeing her, but then I guess it’s there or rot on a mountain top.

Yet another bus ride for 6 hours took us to Tacna where we headed closer to the border with Chile. They take a ‘proof of life’ video of you before you get on the bus due to so many ‘incidents’. I amused the latest guy videoing me by delivering a fine rendition of none other than MC Hammer and giving it up big time to ‘Woah-wooah-wooah- yeah, CANT STOP THIS…HAMMERTIME’, finishing with a quick moon walk. We must say that all the travel is taking it’s toll though. It is quite tough when you see a sign post that says 2058 km to Santiago and you know that means about 35 hours more on buses. I don’t think that we realised that 65 days on the road would mean about 35 different hotels spread across 5 countries with about 120 towns and with countless bus journeys and so many memories, that it all crams into your head but that it starts to become a bit of a blur. Karen is very good at remembering all of the details but I am starting to forget things and confuse places. Add to this the fact that in Chile for some bizarre reason the don’t speak the same Spanish that they do in Peru? They just look blankly at me as I stare at the counter mumbling stuff like, ‘well that used to work in Peru’.

We had 2 scares that notched the security level back to Level 10 (our highest state of alert) The first one was when we were on a bus along a mountain road and as we came around a corner (bizarrely I had a dream about this a few days before), we came across another bus that had left the road and crashed onto its side over the edge. Casualties were strewn cross the road and cliff side as we glided helplessly passed watching people emerge from the wreckage being helped by medics and people from the first bus on scene, an eerie silence befell our bus as each person sat in deep thought over what might have been. Our bus slowed for the rest of our journey. Then the second one came as we got to the bus station for our ‘Taxi’ across the border to Chile. The ticket touts were the most aggressive that we have come across and makes you realise why there are big signs in English saying , ‘BE FREEKIN’ CAREFUL HERE’. As we pulled into the carpark a man ran alongside the taxi and yelled in through the window ‘CHILE CHILE CHILE’ at the top of his voice in an almost panicked manner. Before we had come to a stop the door on Karen’s side was pulled open and a group of 7 or 8 men all started yelling ‘CHILE, CHILE, CHILE’.

It was quite a tense moment until I heard Karen’s voice yell at them to go away. Then the fear rose in me and I reacted the best way that I could at the time which was to throw my back pack on the ground and to yell, ‘BUGGER OFF ALL OF YOU’ as loud as I could before waving my fists around at all 8 of them in true posh English Hugh Grant and Colin Firth style like a scene from Bridget Jones Diary. ‘Would you mind awfully f******g off before I blooming well punch one of you one the nose’. Seriously though, as we walked inside the terminal there were about 30 men all screaming at us CHILE CHILE CHILE. We wedged ourselves in a corner and kept each other calm as we were both shaking with adrenaline and, fear I guess until one of them realised we were looking like bunny rabbits in a car headlights and thankfully lead the others away, whilst I gave them all my best Paddington Bear ‘Hard Stares’.

Finally a taxi took us the 55kms out across the border and into Chile. We stayed at a surf hostel owned and run by a big wave tow-in surfer who has a photo of him riding possibly the biggest wave I have ever seen, I took a shot of it so keep an eye out for it.

Oh and this was so funny. At the bus stations they all have these small shops stacked to the roofs with everything you can imagine from crisps to sunscreens through to squeaky dog toys. Well I walked into one of these at a pretty grotty bus station to get a bottle of water in readiness for our next 7 hour bus ride. Well, when I walked in I was struck by this incredible sound that sounded just like someone jetwashing a car. A real ‘PHWASHHHHHHHHHH’ (make a jet-wash sound now as it will add to the whole ambience of what is to come)….well I stood there looking around and then, suddenly this old women’s face appears around the bottom of the counter and sort of panically says,’momentito por favour’ (a moment please), at which point I realise that she is peeing like a mountain gorilla into a bucket!! She must have been 85 if she was day! So I stood there rooted to the spot not knowing what to do. She then calmly stands up and hands me my drink as if nothing has happened. Thank god for Glaxo Smith Klein 90% alcohol handwash, ewwwy.

Onwards we pushed catching bus after bus and cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway. The route we have chosen means that we see less and less travellers from Europe and in some places we are often the only Western faces, if that makes sense. We headed back into the Andes again from the coast climbing steadily back to 2440m, luckily we seem to have adjusted really quickly to the altitude, which was great as we were about to venture into the high Atacama desert peaking at a little over 6000m. To describe this place is difficult. It is a rugged as it is barren. If you think of the surface of the moon outside the window of the bus with vast emptiness and nothing apart from desert stretching off into the horizon with not so much as a bird or even a random dog. Nothing, nothing at all for mile after mile. Don’t think sandy desert, don’t think Sir Lawrence Of Arabia or the like (he died on a moped near Wareham, Dorset by the way!) The desert here is dirty grey/brown with rock like sand that is solid. Rolling down a sand dune here would tear you to shreds. Add to this a fine layer of grey dust that was spewed thousands of metres into the atmosphere when a volcano cracked one off and covered most of Peru/Chile/Bolivia with the stuff. Where the wind blows, the dust flows.

Okay so finally, hello to all our new travel buddies from all over the world. As this entry is already almost full I will write about this properly on the next one. But, from San Pedro Atacama we took a 4×4 trek high into the Chilean mountains and across the border into Bolivia. Each 4×4 took 6 people plus a driver with a vast range of nationalities from British (Hi Banana), Dutch (Hi Rick & Lisalotta), Belge (Hi Inga), Australian (Hi Carol), German (Mark & your lovely girlfriend), Canadian’s, Americans and a bunch of hysterically funny Frenchies (Hi to you all, Axel (You are the best funny bloke ever) , Quentin, Pascoline and the possy of other chicks).

We trekked high into the Bolivian Mountains facing daily temperatures touching on the high 30’s and nights of crashing temperature down to -10c, so they said. We had ice on the inside of our trucks in the mornings and the drivers had to get up at 2am, 3am and 4am to keep the vehicles from freezing over. In 4 days and 3 nights we covered a total of 500 kms of totally off road desert. We saw sights that left us speechless, we ate Llama and we believe we ate Flamingo! We joked about it, but I know the bone structure of chickens and what we were eating was a different shape all together. Still it tasted like chicken though. We stayed in very basic, 6 to a room hostels and even had a night in a hotel in the desert made of only salt! We ventured into the Salar Da Uyuni salt flats where we visited Fish Island, (Simon Plummer I have such a respect for you after seeing what terrain you coped with on your tour). We visited the train graveyard and countless lakes on the most incredible beauty and bathed in thermal holes in the ground.

Okay, so there is loads to tell about this but I will write about it on the next entry in a few days.

Finally, I would personally like to thank the following ladies for making an old man very very happy indeed by notching up an all time top 10 fantasy. (Jo, Inga, Pascoline and Carole) Yes, ladies and gentlemen I would like to inform you all, that I, Christopher Skone-Roberts, aged 38 and 3/4 slept with, 5 women in one night in the same room!!! Wahoooo, not even Mark Evans could manage that. The fact that only Karen was in my bed does not detract from the fact that there were still 4 other women in my room! Okay they were all dressed in Polar expedition gear and most had been wearing the same clothes for 3 days and had not showered for 2 but 5 is still 5. Okay Okay, yes I bottled it and when boobies were whopped out, I looked at the floor and went red and started mumbling about going out and feeding the Llamas.

Thank you all for your patience as I know this has been a long entry. The images in W27 are amongst some of my best work yet and are so incredible that they transcend photography and border on becoming art. Some of the images of the mountains have appeared as paintings which, as a photographer is about as close to the Holy Grail of photography as you can get. (AS PER BELOW)

Happy travels to all and back again next week. Oh and just to let you know Karen had a really nasty fall getting out of the shower.She’s okay but as bruised as anything. She landed outside the bathroom with her back across the steps. She was so lucky to not break her ribs, wrist and probably neck. Yes, there were lots of tears on both parts as I thought she’d broken her neck at one point. The risks of foreign travel I guess. She’s okay just very sore and shocked.

Hugs

Chris and Blondie xxx

Categories: LBS News