Greetings, friends! This week’s newsletter comes to you from Piura in northern Peru, our final stop before crossing over into Ecuador tomorrow night. I’ll be sad to leave this country – I’ve loved the wild and varied scenery, the crazy amount of stuff to see and do, and the food, especially. I’ll tell you what I won’t miss though, and that’s Peruvian wine. I just poured myself a big glass of white… allegedly it’s Sauvignon Blanc but it tastes like bubblegum – disgusting. Dave is using it to cook our risotto, too, so wish me luck.
As a Substack writer (ie, the platform I use to write this newsletter) I receive unsolicited emails every week with tips about how to improve my writing and expand my audience. I tend to ignore these, because I’m egotistical and I already get paid to write for a living, but also because the “tips” are obviously pretty generalised and aimed at a very broad audience of writers. However, I did skim through today’s edition and it had some pretty harsh stats for me.
For example, and I quote: “Only 16 percent [of newsletter subscribers] read word-for-word…many crave the coveted zero inbox and desperately want to delete your newsletter” (ha!). Whether reading on mobile or desktop, Substack says readers “have a surface-level reading experience that will prevent them from remembering, analyzing, drawing comparisons about, or feeling empathy as a result of your post”!
I promise I’m laughing and not crying… and Substack suggests this is all good news because ultimately it means writers can care less about what they’re writing. I’m not sure about that logic, but what I did learn is that it’s possible to record an audio version of these posts – and that ultimately does make it more accessible and easier to digest for busy, unempathetic readers (lol).
This is all a long way of explaining that you can listen to this week’s newsletter in my own dulcet tones, should you wish to, by clicking the play button at the top of the post. It’ll also be something to remember me by if we get shot or kidnapped at the Ecuadorian border tomorrow night.
One of the questions friends have asked me since coming on this trip, is how did I physically go about packing my bags? And how did I plan what to take with me on a trip so long and varied in its nature?
I have been thinking about these things this week as we prepare for our next visitor: Dave’s mum, Ann – and with her, hopefully, a couple of bits and pieces I ordered online from Boots and the like. Here in travel land, our backpacks are our worlds – or rather our entire worlds should be able to fit into our backpacks. The weight and bulk of my bag fluctuates from place to place, depending on how big a bottle of suncream / shampoo / contact lense solution I’m carrying, but I’ve also bought the odd souvenir and items of clothing along the way.
When we left Madrid in October my larger bag weighed in at around 14kg, but this week when checking in for a bus journey, I learned it’s since swollen to 15.8kg – even after sending some unneeded things back with my parents in March. I don’t know what’s normal, but I felt mildly embarrassed about the 15.8kg until the woman behind me (another backpacker, possibly British or Canadian) weighed in at almost 19kg for a similar-sized bag.
This thread is starting to sound dangerously like weight shaming, but the point is, every gram counts when you’ve got to lug it around in the heat, and while I think I’ve gotten stronger since the start of our trip and can carry my pack for longer distances, I’m trying to be disciplined in getting rid of something for everything new I take on. It doesn’t often happen.
There are plenty of helpful lists of packing suggestions online for those thinking about planning a longer trip of their own. I am sure I skimmed some of them at some point, but if I’m honest the departure from London and packing up the flat was a time of such chaos and sleep deprivation that the things I ended up with in my bag didn’t necessarily correspond to what I needed most. You can read my previous confessional on all that here. Next time, I will absolutely commit to not leaving my packing until two days before my flight. But then again, I’m pretty sure I said all this the first time around.
Now, after seven and a half months on the road, I can confidently say my bag contains the things I need and find useful, and very little extra on top of that.
The backpack itself is Eurohike and almost 18 years old. I got it ahead of a trip to Indonesia in 2007 when I was 17 and remember barely being able to walk when wearing it, which was an error because there was plenty of walking involved. These days there are plenty of better bags available made with newer, lighter materials, but mine still functions well and I like it for its ability to completely unzip like a suitcase. It has two sections, one large top section for clothes and a smaller bottom section where I put heavier or messy things like my trainers, flip flops and poncho.
My clothes are organised into packing cubes, a very smart birthday gift from my friend Charlotte, and I think of her often when I’m rushing around stuffing t-shirts away on travel days. They are a genius invention and I don’t know why I haven’t used them even for shorter trips before. It means that items can be organised into categories, or at least that if I need something from the bottom of my backpack I don’t have to upend everything and make a mess in the process. I use the two smallest cubes for socks, underwear, and a couple of thin silk tops that roll up very neatly. A medium-sized cube contains my bulkier toiletries and medical supplies like painkillers, seasickness pills, plasters and so on.
The two larger cubes contain clothes. And here is where I am the least disciplined. My packing currently consists of: Three pairs of trousers (leggings, jogging bottoms, lighter “going out” trousers); three pairs of shorts (two cotton and one denim pair that I’m thinking of subbing out). I have one thin jumper, one sweatshirt, and one thermal top; two dresses (one I’ve barely worn), two colourful shirts (good for both keeping the sun off and for jazzing up an outfit) and a beloved black linen jumpsuit (second-hand Warehouse, spotted in every evening meal photo). I have two bikinis, both in desperate need of replacement, and a frankly silly number of t-shirts of differing stages of wear and tear.
Then, tucked down the sides of my bag are the other bits and pieces: a head torch, my epilator, a deck of cards, travel scrabble (Dave and I have an eight-year-old scoreboard but I’m currently winning 4-0 on this trip) and my yoga paws, a gift from Dave’s mum, which are like little grippy gloves for my hands and feet in lieu of a proper mat. I have inherited terrible genes and doing pilates and stretches whenever I can and have the space to helps to relieve back and neck pain between all the long bus rides.
Dave carries the odd piece of cooking equipment – spray oil, herbs, hot sauce – as well as an old Sprite bottle filled with leftover laundry powder. Of the things he has packed which he says he’s found most useful: his kindle e-reader (same) and portable charger/ power bank. The least used items have included his laptop (but he says this will change once he launches into devastating action and begins writing his novel), as well as face washes and other toiletries (men are gross).
Once my backpack is on my back, my smaller day bag (25 litres, purchased the day before my flight in a panic from TkMaxx) goes on my front with the crucial stuff: laptop, chargers, passports, sunglasses and specs. My smug eye mask has also been essential – for bus snoozing, but also for regular bed sleeping in hotels, hostels and apartments. I had no idea so few people in the big wide world bothered with proper blackout blinds or even curtains. I’m now on my second one because they’re cheap and not the best quality, but I like the fact they give your eyeballs space to move around.
Then to complete the bag lady look, there’s my big straw hat (purchased in Argentina) and often a tote bag with other stuff I need to hand like water and warm clothes for the bus. I love my Uniqlo Ultra Light Down Parka, which is nice and warm for those high altitude nights but packs away into a tiny little bag the rest of the time. On travel days, I always wear my trusty North Face walking shoes, which I got for an absolute steal at a sample sale in Hoxton four years ago. And there you have it, the gringo travel look is complete.
Probably the best packing advice I could give for a trip like this is not to pack anything you care about too deeply. Every item of clothing I brought with me from home is disposable in the sense that I could lose it or damage it and not cry about it. The most precious thing I have with me is my MacBook Air – and I did tear my hair out a little when trying to decide whether or not to take it – but it makes life so much easier for doing work.
A couple of things I’ve ended up buying since being out here: jogging bottoms and a hideous pair of loose green “bus trousers” – because I learned that leggings are really not that comfortable after all, especially on long journeys and in the heat.
A basic, oversized sweatshirt – because at times at high altitude it’s been a lot colder than I thought it would be, and I needed something comfortable that I wouldn’t worry about.
Additional toiletries (toner, vitamin C serum, more) – I thought I could slim down my skincare regime and become a moisturise-and-go kind of girl. I couldn’t.
When Zlata and Greg came out to visit, I got them to bring us a pack of Yorkshire tea bags after too many months of deprivation. These have probably become our most treasured possession.
Things that are surprisingly difficult to get hold of in South America include electric toothbrush heads, Dave’s vaping juices, and swim wear. Brazil is the only country where we’ve seen bikinis-a-plenty on sale, but… well. My Spanish teacher recommended that I told shop assistants I was looking to purchase something for my grandmother, but having seen women of all ages flaunting their G-strings in Rio, I’m not sure that would have helped.
Last week began with a day trip out to Laguna Paron, an obscenely beautiful glacial lake up in the Cordillera Blanca Andean mountain range. It’s almost three hours by car out of Huaraz, a fair old distance, but the tour operator we booked with broke up the journey with a breakfast stop on the way out, so not too bad. The “restaurant” really was just someone’s front garden in the hills, but the egg and avocado sandwich I had was so tasty, I’m still thinking about it now. On the way back we stopped at the same place again for lunch (no doubt the family who run the place are relatives of the bus driver or something) and then a quick break to get ice cream further on in the cute little town of Caraz.
As I mentioned last week, the plan to go out to this lake was a last-minute one after the hike up to Laguna Churup the previous day absolutely broke us. The peaks in that region are no joke. If you’re not some kind of pro-athlete, there’s not a huge amount of choice in terms of alternative activities to hiking around the Huaraz region, but Laguna Paron looked like a good solution: the bus takes you pretty much all of the way up there, albeit up a very bumpy mountain pass, and then you have the option to stroll around the lake, hike up to a viewpoint, and even go kayaking out on the lake.
To book the tour, Dave and I did our usual thing of looking online for good reviews, then heading over to a couple of the agencies’ offices in town after dinner. Except the staff were weird about it, offering us alternative day trips and eventually telling us that Laguna Paron was closed. I wasn’t sure if this was true or if they actually wanted to fill out a less popular trip to see what sounded like a rather sad looking receding glacier elsewhere. So we plodded on, trying different agencies, until some helpful people at MontBlanc Tours said they had a group scheduled to go in the morning, no problem.
There was the small issue of the fact the region was technically closed, he added, because there had been some “internal dispute” among the community – something about wanting to charge higher entrance fees maybe, and better provisions from the government. In short, it sounded like the local people who manage the lake (ie, keep it clean and monitor the footfall in a park ranger kind of way) were on strike. “But just don’t tell anyone where you’re going and it’ll be fine,” he said.
I reasoned with myself that the people who make a living from taking visitors up there (the guy with the kayaks, the guy on the gate taking our five sole entrance fees) would be glad for our custom regardless. And the guy was right in that it was fine… if you looked past the fact that the road had been blown up at the entrance to the lake. I say blown up, there’s a chance it collapsed because of an earthquake or natural erosion. All I’m saying is the organisers were suspiciously quiet about the fact we’d have to clamber across a waterfall and make the last part of our journey on foot.
It’s hard to describe just how alarming this waterfall crossing would be to any health and safety regulator outside of Latin America – and the photos I have don’t do justice to the sheer drop we could have been washed down into – but as ever, we were brave and survived to holiday another day.
And the scenery around the lake was so worth it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been anywhere quite so beautiful before – and yes, the water really is that blue. A fun fact is that the diamond-shaped snowy peaks behind the lake supposedly inspired the Paramount Pictures logo (!). I didn’t make it all the way up to the top of the viewpoint because have I mentioned I’m not very good at heights? And the path was not so much a path but a series of precariously-balanced rocks that looked like they could at any moment meet the same end as that road across the waterfall. Of course the Brazilian and Peruvian tourists there with us hopped across this death sentence without breaking a sweat, as did Dave. I was there mostly for kayaking across that incredible, milky blue lake, which was glorious.
We left Huaraz for Trujillo, a coastal town in the north with yet more ancient ruins to potter around. I liked Trujillo a lot – it felt quite classy, and also has two universities which is always a good precursor for cool bars and cheap food. A highlight was Café Museo, a beautiful bar clad out in old wood and French artwork that could trick you into thinking you were somewhere posh and expensive in Europe. It was beneath the Museo del Juguete Antiguo (toy museum) which Dave visited alone while I did a bit of work at the apartment. It sounded weird.
Our archaeological explorations this week took place at Chan Chan, an ancient Chimu city, and separately, Huaca de la Luna, part of a city built by the Moche people more than 1,500 years ago. Both sites are vast, pre-Inca, and relatively recently discovered, but the main attraction is an multi-layered temple built with more than 140 million clay bricks at Huaca de la Luna. Everything was preserved under layers of desert sand for centuries thanks to the fact it never rains. A very straight-faced archaeology PhD student took us round on a tour of the temple for a couple of soles, along with a French family, and it had the vibe of a place that had only been discovered last week, though work began uncovering it back in the late 1990s. We didn’t see a single other tourist.
Moving on to Chiclayo, I happened to read that this town was home to Hector Solis’ flagship restaurant, Fiesta, so we grabbed a table for Sunday lunch. Solis is Peru’s most famous chef and often credited for putting bringing Peruvian food on the map for global cuisine – apparently he’s the reason why restaurants like Ceviche and Andina exist in London. Actually, the ceviche we had for a starter wasn’t the best, but an enormous dorada dish and bottle of Chilean white wine went down very well. Let’s hope Chile exports plenty of its bottles up to Ecuador.
Travel bits and tips from this week
We started the week in Huaraz at Casa Doris and took a slightly dodgy day trip out to Laguna Paron. I got quite moody with the tour operators after they messed us around over pick-up times, but the place itself was very beautiful.
On Tuesday we took a very long bus up to Trujillo where we loved Café Museo, a beautiful bar clad out in old wood and French artwork beneath the Museo del Juguete Antiguo…
… an historic toy museum started by a somewhat eccentric local artist Gerardo Chávez in the early 00’s. Dave enjoyed a solo visit to the toy museum while I did a bit of work and admin back at the apartment.
The best mexican food of the trip was had in Trujillo too – sitting on the kerb, demolishing an enormous burrito from the Rincón del Taco food stand. So good.
We had a drink and some delicious beef hearts overlooking Huanchaco beach, 15 minutes’ cab ride away from the main town.
From Trujillo we continued up the coast to Chiclayo, another almost-beach town with an impressive oversized cathedral and excellent restaurants.
The fates aligned and we treated ourselves to a very indulgent lunch at Fiesta, Hector Solis’ flagship restaurant. He’s the OG for Peruvian cuisine going global.
And here we are in our final stop of Peru, Piura. Until next month that is, when we cut back down on our way on to Bolivia. Time for bubblegum risotto.