Celtic Warriors - Chapter One
Jungle Life
Hola del Peru!!
Sitting here in the jungle town of lquitos, on the banks of the Amazon in North West Peru. The temperature here is 41 degrees, and the humidity is over 80%, so I'm enjoying sitting in a little internet cafe under a fan for the first tiIDe in days, while we wait for our plane back to Lima! I've left Mick drinking a well earned beer on the balcony of the Casa de Ferrio, or Iron House, across the street, built by Eiffel, along with his tower, for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1886. It was bought afterwards by a Peruvian rubber magnate (Iquitos was the world's rubber capital at the time!) who though it was pretty cool and shipped it here, where it looks just a little incongruous in the main square of a jungle town. Pity he didn't buy the tower instead, we'd have had a better view, and been a little further from the horrendous mosquitoes and the similarly inescapable whining moto-rickshaws which infest the town. It feels like a different planet to where we were just a week ago, - around this time I was drinking a cappuccino with mis padres on the boardwalk! It's amazing how far away you ccan get, in every sense, in a short time!!
Well, if a good start really is half the battle, some of you will know that by this time last week I had already half the battle well and truly lost!
As I sipped my cappuccino I was congratulating myself on being more prepared than ever before, -rucksack packed more than 4 hours before the flight! Lulled into a false sense of security, I even persuaded Mick to leave his backpack and tickets with me while he took his turn with Mothers Who Lunch. With plenty of time to spare I bade my farewell to 186, and made my exit, laden with backpacks, shoulder bags, tickets, passport, money, and (my undoing) the rubbish bag, with a last minute find, a tub of yoghurt which I felt would be a little too lively by October, perched on top. Well, the key wouldn't turn in the lock, and in the ensuing struggle, the yoghurt made a last minute attempt to escape, cascading down over the assorted baggage and me. Back in, wiped security pouch clean, and came out the door to clean the rucksacks. Click. F*CK. It took me 4 seconds to realise that while I was outside the door with all the baggage, sadly my keys, phone, passport, money and tickets were all safely INSIDE the door. There was only one thing to do, but sadly it took significantly more than 4 seconds to do it! 30 minutes later, with the help of two burly neighbours, and more double-footed drop-kicks than a Bruce Lee movie, the corridor was covered in splinters and quarter of the door lay on the hall floor. Arran Quay residents take comfort, they're great doors!! With 45 minutes to take off and Drumcondra shut down as the GAA match ended, it was, alas, another Dara special!! A quick phonecall left Kathy, a little dazed, holding a large piece of door and a spare set of keys as I bolted for the car!! Shall we simply say that the trip to the airport was not strictly legal…
On the positive side, last to arrive, we were upgraded to first class, so, once back on speaking terms, we cruised to Madrid, and as we savoured our four course meal washed down with rather a lot of vino blanco, Mick gazed benevolently at our few fellow yuppies and idly wondered 'What on earth did all these have to smash to get here??'
We arrived in Lima on Sunday after an horrendously long 11.5 hour flight from Madrid. It's a spectacular approach. Wondering why we were still at 39,000 feet with 10 minutes to landing, suddenly the clouds broke, and we realised we were, of course, skirting over the top of the Andes. As they fell away below, the plane almost divebombed down into the airport. We expected a city choked with anarchic traffic, clouds of exhaust fumes, suicidal collectivo drivers and horns blaring, but either Dublin has really got worse over the years, or because Monday was the feast day of Santa Rosa de Lima everyone was at home or out celebrating, but anyhow, we found the city-very pleasant. We stayed in the upmarket cliff-side suburb of Barranco, but spent Monday wandering around the old city in Lima Centro, where we were treated to a procession of army and police and marching bands in honour of st Rose herself. It being the day that was in it, we headed off to the church where she and St Martin de Porres are 'buried' to pay our respects, to find that in fact both are actually in golden caskets built into a side altar, with convenient glass windows through which their skulls can keep an eye on the faithful. Lovely. There are little doors in front of the windows which I presume they can close if they feel like a little privacy, but they were both in social humour when we stopped by. Ah well, it WAS her birthday, after all.