2 MAY 2003 (Blog reconstructed from handwritten notebook)
BOOK STARTS HERE
Gary kindly drove us to Cardiff Airport at 03:30 where we got a Fokker 70 to Amsterdam. On arrival a smartly dressed woman handed her son a light bag from the overhead locker and told him she would get the heavy one down, 'the bag with the body in it'. Noticing my amusement she staggered me with 'it is true'. So began one of our greatest trips, the very first of many in Latin America to capitalise on an increasing knowledge of Spanish, which itself began on finding the evening course for Italian was full. KLM took us to Lima via a short stop in the Caribbean island of Bon Aire.
Got Peruvian Soles from the ATM, this method of financing was becoming our norm abroad as well as at home. We had booked a couple of nights and a were being met by a driver sure signs we were getting older - though still back packing for a few more years. Our driver waited for another passenger who turned out to be be a Pamela Johnson who was working for her university as a bird researcher in the NW Highlands. He took us to Hospedaje Jose Luis a guest house in Miraflores which amazed us by being like the rest of the street being fortresses behind high locked iron railings. Welcome to LIMA, watch your money and look out for rogue taxi drivers! But a green courtyard behind the railings full of colourful birds gave a softer inside tinge.
3 May
Outflanked the travel agent who invaded after breakfast in search of custom by way of advanced bookings but wisely stayed in control and went in search of the Quilca Street bus station by taxi which I bargained down from 7 to 5, he was pleasantly surprised to get 5USD having been bargaining only in local currency. (Guide books often use USD because it is more stable than local currency, but independent travel actual transactions are almost entirely paid for in local currencies.)
We lunched for 6Soles on our way back to Plaza San Martin. The waiter, still animated, told us we had just missed three robbers armed with knifes in the street outside. It made us tense again for we were carrying (wearing) absolutely everything of value in two money belts containing, cards, travellors cheques and ID details, US dollars, plus my new neck wallet with passports, a card and more dollars. It concentrated the mind and challenged the basis on which we had so far traveled and realised many valuables were safer left in hotel rooms locked in the stainless steel net I had recently bought to protect my rucksack. More recently that haven has switched to locked wheelie bags.
That afternoon was spent in the Museo de la Nacion learning the history of the country from the artifacts of the Stone Age 3000BC, through to the Moche period in 1000BC and its beautiful pottery through to the short lived INCA period from 1400AD which was ended by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1600s. The finest pottery dates from the earliest period but written records start after the Spanish invasion. This visit was so successful that it set the trend for future travel, start and continue to get to know the full context of a new country with visits to good museums. Leaving the museo we stopped in the artisans market and bandstand outside and discovered chucharones with honey, the Peruvian equivalent of the Spanish churros and hot chocolate.
Found an ATM near our hotel and began to realise how widely available they were becoming, and finding out that post could only be posted inside Post Offices, eventually it went into a giant lions mouth in Trujillo. We had been told to catch the bus at the Javier Prado bus station which dealt only with the top of the range Imperial line of Cruz del Sur. We were off to Trujillo at 13:00 on the upper deck of a very superior bus, the lower deck was full of seats which converted to fully reclining when desired.
Off we went along the Pacific coast road amazed at the poverty levels of the stone-dry dirty sand coloured townships backed by rocky mountains weathered into pillars often in the cream, red and orange colours reminiscent of Alum Bay, seemingly with no toilets or even means of support except for occasional garages with large ramps to maintain lorries and buses, the only forms of transport besides rickshaws. More pleasantly surprising were the occasional plantations of asparagus, we had not then associated such hot dry country with this plant though writing 12 years later it is now a familiar supplier of asparagus to UK supermarkets, and plantations of fruit trees in occasional very green oasis. Long legged vultures , sea surf, mist rolling in and out.
The bus emptied a good deal at Chimbote well after the red sunset. Soon after on standing up after reaching Trujillo we started to speak to the girl opposite. Lisett turned out to be a Columbian from Bogata who had just completed university studies including two years in Westminster University London and was now working Peru for her own government to study ways of increasing exports more directly to retailers in Peru. She too was looking for a hotel and would help us find one in the dark, which she did by talking to one of the crowd of taxi drivers which greeted the bus. The pleasant driver took us all to the Alameda del Peligrino, previously the Pullman, in the pedestrian area of Pizarro Street where we had a fine large room which she had bargained down for 100soles including breakfast. She had fluent English from living on Kensington High Street, near Olympia, but had socialised mostly with other Spanish speaker and now lived in the San Isidro region of Lima.
5 May 2003
The taxi driver booked the evening before was waiting at 9am to take us to Chan Chan (once perhaps 200,000 people). An excellent guide took round the eighth of nine palaces. Each king built his own palace with official areas, kitchens and food storage, sacrificial areas, burial grounds and artesian wells, constructed of Adobe Brick a composite of sand and wood, each identified with the makes symbol . Tapered trapezoidal walls were built with vertical separation every 2 or 3 metres to withstand earthquakes. A young American with excellent Spanish with excellent knowledge about Peruvian civilisations asked to share our guide slowed her response to give us time to follow and he used Spanish only when he could not get a precise reply to his questions in English.
It was a huge walled town with a single entrance gate through which others entered to pay taxes and for social occasions. Sea motive decorations of waves, fish, fish nets, seals and pelicans, plus vital symbols of condors, jaguars, sun and moon. The driver, paid 10s per hour including waiting time, took us to the small focused museum of Chan Chan on the way back then dropped us for our first of many visits to the Plaza de Armas where an impressive statue celebrated independence from the Spanish in 1820.
The square was surrounded on all four sides by wonderful colonial buildings. After lunch at the Chinese Chiva Chav restaurant of chicken in tamarind sauce and chili with vegetables and rice we returned to the hotel where Lisette was lunching and spoke long with her.
We had great advice from a couple who described themselves as our Edinburgh- German friends, he lectured there and they were on their second visit to Peru and having previously been only south of Lima as normal had heard about and studied in advance the fantastic far older civilisations of the north. They convinced to go to Chiclayo to stay at the Inca hotel and to contact a young guide Jose Jimenez, told us of the BC history of TUCUME and sketched out the route they had followed inland over night to Chachapoyas and then back over the Andes to Cajamarca. We had been intending to direct to Cajamarca from Trujillo and would without their intervention have almost certainly missed what proved to be the highlight of the trip. A FINE EXAMPLE OF THE BENEFITS OF INDEPENDENT TRAVEL WITHOUT PRE-BOOKING OR A FIXED ROUTE. At Chan Chan we had been told that Cactus Juice had been used as glue to bind adobe but they thought this was almost certainly wrong for colouring and contouring was still so evident there. It had been used initially in restoration work at Huaca de la Luna to clean the stone but was organic and encouraged the growth of fungi which destroyed the colouring and contouring.
6 May the same taxi driver took us to the sacred sites of Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol where there had been extensive excavation to reveal the structure and the fine colouring of earlier levels. The levels each lasted about 100 years when the previous one was enclosed and sealed within a new slightly more extensive level. The period was said to mark dynasty change but a recent BBC4 program about Tucume suggested similar breaks there were caused by climatic disasters linked to the El Nino effect, which affects the rainfall in coastal and inland mountainous regions in inverse ways.
A young archaeologist guided us round and with the 50 year old German couple I have already mentioned who both worked at Edinburgh University, he as geneticist she as tutor. Part was covered from the elements and Little Owls perched on the roof, the cleaning was being done very carefully with scalpel, paintbrush and distilled water. A huge rubble mountain appeared above Huaca de la Luna not yet investigated. There had been sacrificial rites annually including drinking of human blood by a priest. Several groups were excavating a surrounding village of 1000 plus houses, currently French and from the University of Trujillo though the original work had been done by the University of LA.
We met Lissette for an excellent lunch at Romano in the backroom for 7 or 10s, the latter including desert and a gaseosa drink. She had had a successful day the local officials having provided her with a list of the way particular goods were distributed, information which she had expected to have to dig out retailer by retailer. She had also been making inquiries about Peruvian food and came back with the preferred restaurant Mochicha and some favourites, Parihuela a fish soup, Cabrito Goat, Cuy Guineapig, Misto Maricos seafood starter, Yucca sort of potatoes with stringy structure. We tried of course but were not impressed by the guineapig.
7 May, the best day yet feeling totally relaxed and in control and slightly less tongue tied in Spanish. We had started out with the intention of catching our first collectivo to the local beach resort of Huanchaco, but found three sides of the Plaza de Armas full of students split into school groups in immaculate uniform, each led by a student holding a flag - the 4th side being reserved for police dignitaries. They were, I think, celebrating an entente between them dating back to 1891 with a ceremony in which flags of Peru, Trujillo and the Region were raised on the main flagpole.
At the end a few girls plucked up the courage to try out their English on us, we were soon surrounded by a crowd first girls and then the boys followed, given their hesitant English I was soon trying my Spanish. Flor invited us to her 15th birthday party which would be held at our hotel in a few days time. As the crowd got bigger we were warned of the risk of theft by some dodgy looking boys who had joined the throng so we dispersed.
In the plaza were photographers with very old fashioned camera techniques so we had our portraits taken, he was completely hooded by black light proof sheets as he peered through the lens and focused and took a shot directly onto photographic paper, no film in the modern sense. The print was a negative which was first developed then fixed by dipping the paper into bowls of chemicals all the time protected from light ingress by the same black sheet. Finally it was pinned on a board in front of the camera, surrounded by a negative motif of Trujillo and the combination again photographed directly onto photographic paper to get a true positive photograph.
(I seem to remember that dad's large earlier cameras photographed directly onto glass photographic plates which were then enlarged, developed and fixed into positive prints in our small darkroom at home.) He was a very keen early photographer who made a little extra money from his skill and regularly entered Wallace Heaton magazine's competition with some success.
That afternoon we went to Huanchaco by collectivo a fantastic port with a large now little used port with a train line now notable only for piles of caballitos de tortora little sea going one man fishing canoes made of reeds. The surf was really fierce inland and the boats were paddled head on directly through perhaps four lines of breaking surf and eventually reached the much calmer water outside. I later remember trying to swim through surf in the Pacific in similar manner to the calm water and got dumped and frightened by its power, before admitting defeat. I lunched on Parihuela, the recommended fish stew with lots of maricos which was spiced with chilli, finishing with a fine red shelled crab.
In the evening we dined again at the fine Pizza house on Pizza Siciliana accompanied by a huge jug of fresh lime lemonade - which soon became our regular the antidote to the sun dried days. Then onto Romana by 9:30 for an evening of Peruvian music played by two guitarists with rhythm supplied by a drummer sitting and tapping on his Cajon, simply but effectively a sort of loudspeaker like box.
The restaurant owner joined in singing with one other soon drawing all ten tables into song, but the star turn was Roderigo from Cajamarca, overweight from booze and food but with a non-stop smile and wonderful actions from sexy Chica (a shy girl) to a bull fighter with a fine tenor voice and tremendous personality. I left the room to return a little later with a camera and in no time we were an important part of the audience, playing Blue Moon and a song about the failings of the Spanish Armada for our benefit. The guitarists moved onto Latin American rhythms and risque songs with a Georges Brassens feel, then we had a good talk with them at the end.
Just two German from Edinburgh, a small party of young American students, a Columbian business woman and us would seem to be the only tourists in town. All these historic attractions plus great entertainment - what a shame!
8 May 'Zona segura en caso de sismo' this sign appears near each indoors pillar and 'No usar en caso sismo o inciendo' against each lift serves as a reminder of the need for vigilance in the case of earthquake. On the other side of the street a woman sits at her small desk selling Presion Arterial to a regular supply of customers. Girls passed with their long black scrunched into a clip. The Spanish descendants are pure white whilst the native indien stock are quite dark but the majority have intermarried and are coffee coloured.
Casa de la Enancipacion, now owned and run by Banco Continental had a fine collection of modern art, but you needed to surrender your passport to gain entrance. Most paintings were large typically 1.5 x 1.3 metres at prices between 200 and 1000s. We liked several by Giron and Flores.
9 May Road transport still blocked across the country by a transport lorry drivers blockade, it seems to be without end so having learned from Lissette that you could book a flight without paying till you confirmed we took such a precaution.
In the morning we went to Museo Cassinelli which had an impressive collection of pottery. The very old, frail, almost blind, owner let us into the underground dungeon protected by two locked massive iron gates. He was clearly worried about theft, but thereafter detecting genuine interest and willingness to learn was very helpful, though nervous enough eventually to ask me to stop photographing. The collection was wide ranging with some styles reminiscent of Eygptian and Etruscan, faces of various people, Mongolian, Chines, and Negro slaves, different birds, animals and fruits, much of Peruvian Moche style possibly bought from robbers of graves, and demonstrating disabilities for instance Siamese twins and elephantiasis.
It needs to be remembered that there was no written history in Peru before the Spanish conquest but the Moche pottery records dating back to BC are fabulous in recording every aspect of life from people to mythical gods like Decapitator, animals deformities even copulation and sodomy.
That evening we said goodbye to Lissette who was flying back to Lima who said she wanted to meet and take us out for a meal at the end of our holiday. She also gave us contact details for a small hotel Hostal Buena Vista, Avenue Grimaldo del Solar in Miraflores that they used for business associates.
A return evening visit to Romano for another night of music which burst into life when a dark skinned Indien with great presence and sense of fun walked in with his Andean flute, played straight like a recorder but blowing over the hole like a flute, got such a fine sound from this simple instrument. He asked our nationality then played the Beatles tune Yesterday as a solo, no-one else in the audience or the other instrumentalists appeared to know this number. He sang as well and gave around five numbers before sitting down and shuck our hands before leaving, but soon came back with the owner having presumably received some play for his impromptu performance. The owner, himself a singer, is obviously keen to promote music and people turn up on spec to perform any night of the week.
10 May we took our passports to La Casa Urquianga to gain entrance and see the first Peruvian banknotes issued in 1826 just after Independence, displayed together with coins, commemorative medals, wooden furniture, a marble bath, table and pictures from the era. We were taken around by a guide with excellent English who would not accept a tip saying 'it is not necessary'. Next to a craft shop where Joan would have liked to buy a wall tile when we learnt the strike had been called off for 24 hours and decided to buy a ticket out to Chicklayo that evening on Linea line, then back to the hotel where we learned we had an invitation to Flor's party but on discussing with the receptionist decided we needed to move that evening in case in case in the announced strike window.
That evening we had a comfortable ride with toilet on the Linea company bus to Chicklayo. There was slightly more leg room than on Cruz del Sur - so Linea too is a good standard.
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BOOK STARTS HERE
Gary kindly drove us to Cardiff Airport at 03:30 where we got a Fokker 70 to Amsterdam. On arrival a smartly dressed woman handed her son a light bag from the overhead locker and told him she would get the heavy one down, 'the bag with the body in it'. Noticing my amusement she staggered me with 'it is true'. So began one of our greatest trips, the very first of many in Latin America to capitalise on an increasing knowledge of Spanish, which itself began on finding the evening course for Italian was full. KLM took us to Lima via a short stop in the Caribbean island of Bon Aire.
Got Peruvian Soles from the ATM, this method of financing was becoming our norm abroad as well as at home. We had booked a couple of nights and a were being met by a driver sure signs we were getting older - though still back packing for a few more years. Our driver waited for another passenger who turned out to be be a Pamela Johnson who was working for her university as a bird researcher in the NW Highlands. He took us to Hospedaje Jose Luis a guest house in Miraflores which amazed us by being like the rest of the street being fortresses behind high locked iron railings. Welcome to LIMA, watch your money and look out for rogue taxi drivers! But a green courtyard behind the railings full of colourful birds gave a softer inside tinge.
3 May
Outflanked the travel agent who invaded after breakfast in search of custom by way of advanced bookings but wisely stayed in control and went in search of the Quilca Street bus station by taxi which I bargained down from 7 to 5, he was pleasantly surprised to get 5USD having been bargaining only in local currency. (Guide books often use USD because it is more stable than local currency, but independent travel actual transactions are almost entirely paid for in local currencies.)
We lunched for 6Soles on our way back to Plaza San Martin. The waiter, still animated, told us we had just missed three robbers armed with knifes in the street outside. It made us tense again for we were carrying (wearing) absolutely everything of value in two money belts containing, cards, travellors cheques and ID details, US dollars, plus my new neck wallet with passports, a card and more dollars. It concentrated the mind and challenged the basis on which we had so far traveled and realised many valuables were safer left in hotel rooms locked in the stainless steel net I had recently bought to protect my rucksack. More recently that haven has switched to locked wheelie bags.
That afternoon was spent in the Museo de la Nacion learning the history of the country from the artifacts of the Stone Age 3000BC, through to the Moche period in 1000BC and its beautiful pottery through to the short lived INCA period from 1400AD which was ended by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1600s. The finest pottery dates from the earliest period but written records start after the Spanish invasion. This visit was so successful that it set the trend for future travel, start and continue to get to know the full context of a new country with visits to good museums. Leaving the museo we stopped in the artisans market and bandstand outside and discovered chucharones with honey, the Peruvian equivalent of the Spanish churros and hot chocolate.
Found an ATM near our hotel and began to realise how widely available they were becoming, and finding out that post could only be posted inside Post Offices, eventually it went into a giant lions mouth in Trujillo. We had been told to catch the bus at the Javier Prado bus station which dealt only with the top of the range Imperial line of Cruz del Sur. We were off to Trujillo at 13:00 on the upper deck of a very superior bus, the lower deck was full of seats which converted to fully reclining when desired.
 |
| TRUJILLO Plaza de Armas |
 |
| LISSETTE and JOAN |
5 May 2003
The taxi driver booked the evening before was waiting at 9am to take us to Chan Chan (once perhaps 200,000 people). An excellent guide took round the eighth of nine palaces. Each king built his own palace with official areas, kitchens and food storage, sacrificial areas, burial grounds and artesian wells, constructed of Adobe Brick a composite of sand and wood, each identified with the makes symbol . Tapered trapezoidal walls were built with vertical separation every 2 or 3 metres to withstand earthquakes. A young American with excellent Spanish with excellent knowledge about Peruvian civilisations asked to share our guide slowed her response to give us time to follow and he used Spanish only when he could not get a precise reply to his questions in English.
 |
| CHAN CHAN |
 |
| TRUJILLO Statue celebrating Independence in 1820 |
We had great advice from a couple who described themselves as our Edinburgh- German friends, he lectured there and they were on their second visit to Peru and having previously been only south of Lima as normal had heard about and studied in advance the fantastic far older civilisations of the north. They convinced to go to Chiclayo to stay at the Inca hotel and to contact a young guide Jose Jimenez, told us of the BC history of TUCUME and sketched out the route they had followed inland over night to Chachapoyas and then back over the Andes to Cajamarca. We had been intending to direct to Cajamarca from Trujillo and would without their intervention have almost certainly missed what proved to be the highlight of the trip. A FINE EXAMPLE OF THE BENEFITS OF INDEPENDENT TRAVEL WITHOUT PRE-BOOKING OR A FIXED ROUTE. At Chan Chan we had been told that Cactus Juice had been used as glue to bind adobe but they thought this was almost certainly wrong for colouring and contouring was still so evident there. It had been used initially in restoration work at Huaca de la Luna to clean the stone but was organic and encouraged the growth of fungi which destroyed the colouring and contouring.
6 May the same taxi driver took us to the sacred sites of Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol where there had been extensive excavation to reveal the structure and the fine colouring of earlier levels. The levels each lasted about 100 years when the previous one was enclosed and sealed within a new slightly more extensive level. The period was said to mark dynasty change but a recent BBC4 program about Tucume suggested similar breaks there were caused by climatic disasters linked to the El Nino effect, which affects the rainfall in coastal and inland mountainous regions in inverse ways.
 |
| Huaca del Sol |
 |
| Huaca de la Luna, two stages of earlier decoration revealed |
We met Lissette for an excellent lunch at Romano in the backroom for 7 or 10s, the latter including desert and a gaseosa drink. She had had a successful day the local officials having provided her with a list of the way particular goods were distributed, information which she had expected to have to dig out retailer by retailer. She had also been making inquiries about Peruvian food and came back with the preferred restaurant Mochicha and some favourites, Parihuela a fish soup, Cabrito Goat, Cuy Guineapig, Misto Maricos seafood starter, Yucca sort of potatoes with stringy structure. We tried of course but were not impressed by the guineapig.
7 May, the best day yet feeling totally relaxed and in control and slightly less tongue tied in Spanish. We had started out with the intention of catching our first collectivo to the local beach resort of Huanchaco, but found three sides of the Plaza de Armas full of students split into school groups in immaculate uniform, each led by a student holding a flag - the 4th side being reserved for police dignitaries. They were, I think, celebrating an entente between them dating back to 1891 with a ceremony in which flags of Peru, Trujillo and the Region were raised on the main flagpole.
 |
| TRUJILLO Detente between Students and Police |
In the plaza were photographers with very old fashioned camera techniques so we had our portraits taken, he was completely hooded by black light proof sheets as he peered through the lens and focused and took a shot directly onto photographic paper, no film in the modern sense. The print was a negative which was first developed then fixed by dipping the paper into bowls of chemicals all the time protected from light ingress by the same black sheet. Finally it was pinned on a board in front of the camera, surrounded by a negative motif of Trujillo and the combination again photographed directly onto photographic paper to get a true positive photograph.
 |
| Joan and friends being photographed old style |
(I seem to remember that dad's large earlier cameras photographed directly onto glass photographic plates which were then enlarged, developed and fixed into positive prints in our small darkroom at home.) He was a very keen early photographer who made a little extra money from his skill and regularly entered Wallace Heaton magazine's competition with some success.
That afternoon we went to Huanchaco by collectivo a fantastic port with a large now little used port with a train line now notable only for piles of caballitos de tortora little sea going one man fishing canoes made of reeds. The surf was really fierce inland and the boats were paddled head on directly through perhaps four lines of breaking surf and eventually reached the much calmer water outside. I later remember trying to swim through surf in the Pacific in similar manner to the calm water and got dumped and frightened by its power, before admitting defeat. I lunched on Parihuela, the recommended fish stew with lots of maricos which was spiced with chilli, finishing with a fine red shelled crab.
 |
| CABALLITOS at HUANCHACO |
 |
| Nightly entertainment in ROMA restaurant |
The restaurant owner joined in singing with one other soon drawing all ten tables into song, but the star turn was Roderigo from Cajamarca, overweight from booze and food but with a non-stop smile and wonderful actions from sexy Chica (a shy girl) to a bull fighter with a fine tenor voice and tremendous personality. I left the room to return a little later with a camera and in no time we were an important part of the audience, playing Blue Moon and a song about the failings of the Spanish Armada for our benefit. The guitarists moved onto Latin American rhythms and risque songs with a Georges Brassens feel, then we had a good talk with them at the end.
Just two German from Edinburgh, a small party of young American students, a Columbian business woman and us would seem to be the only tourists in town. All these historic attractions plus great entertainment - what a shame!
8 May 'Zona segura en caso de sismo' this sign appears near each indoors pillar and 'No usar en caso sismo o inciendo' against each lift serves as a reminder of the need for vigilance in the case of earthquake. On the other side of the street a woman sits at her small desk selling Presion Arterial to a regular supply of customers. Girls passed with their long black scrunched into a clip. The Spanish descendants are pure white whilst the native indien stock are quite dark but the majority have intermarried and are coffee coloured.
Casa de la Enancipacion, now owned and run by Banco Continental had a fine collection of modern art, but you needed to surrender your passport to gain entrance. Most paintings were large typically 1.5 x 1.3 metres at prices between 200 and 1000s. We liked several by Giron and Flores.
9 May Road transport still blocked across the country by a transport lorry drivers blockade, it seems to be without end so having learned from Lissette that you could book a flight without paying till you confirmed we took such a precaution.
 |
| Museo Cassinelli, Moche Pottery |
 |
| Museo Cassinelli |
That evening we said goodbye to Lissette who was flying back to Lima who said she wanted to meet and take us out for a meal at the end of our holiday. She also gave us contact details for a small hotel Hostal Buena Vista, Avenue Grimaldo del Solar in Miraflores that they used for business associates.
A return evening visit to Romano for another night of music which burst into life when a dark skinned Indien with great presence and sense of fun walked in with his Andean flute, played straight like a recorder but blowing over the hole like a flute, got such a fine sound from this simple instrument. He asked our nationality then played the Beatles tune Yesterday as a solo, no-one else in the audience or the other instrumentalists appeared to know this number. He sang as well and gave around five numbers before sitting down and shuck our hands before leaving, but soon came back with the owner having presumably received some play for his impromptu performance. The owner, himself a singer, is obviously keen to promote music and people turn up on spec to perform any night of the week.
10 May we took our passports to La Casa Urquianga to gain entrance and see the first Peruvian banknotes issued in 1826 just after Independence, displayed together with coins, commemorative medals, wooden furniture, a marble bath, table and pictures from the era. We were taken around by a guide with excellent English who would not accept a tip saying 'it is not necessary'. Next to a craft shop where Joan would have liked to buy a wall tile when we learnt the strike had been called off for 24 hours and decided to buy a ticket out to Chicklayo that evening on Linea line, then back to the hotel where we learned we had an invitation to Flor's party but on discussing with the receptionist decided we needed to move that evening in case in case in the announced strike window.
That evening we had a comfortable ride with toilet on the Linea company bus to Chicklayo. There was slightly more leg room than on Cruz del Sur - so Linea too is a good standard.
