from Kola to Queue

After reading Alastair´s entry I thought Id better put my side of the adventure. Except I can´t - my head is still a mush from the altitude and Im constantly asking Alastair how to spell words like, well, ´constantly´.

Lesson no 1: Dont mix Salsa dancing with altitude.


Still its not so bad for me...

Alastair had succumbed to the Inca Cola Im afraid and is threatening not to come back unless he´s guaranteed a regular supply on his return - I suggested Methadone but her recons it wont be strong enough.

Lesson No 2: Think very carefully before drinking Inca Kola, there really is no way back.

I think the Guinea pig farm today (known locally as Queue)however finally sent up both over the edge. We´d seen one in Peru also but we had been spared the somewhat dubious pleasure of seeing them spit roasted (apparently a real delicacy in South America). Still apparently they are very nutritious and its made a major difference to the lives of the growers, giving them an independent living.

Lesson No 3: One person´s pet is another´s recommended daily protein allowance.

Otovalo is really nice and relaxed and surrounded by beautiful mountains - had to pass on the walk around the lake however as it was raining when we arrived (made me home sick!). Tomorrow we are visiting ecological agricultural projects which should be really interesting. Visiting Fernando, our development worker´s house was a great alternative, esp due to the fact that I was given the finest cup of tea since my arrival in South America.

Taking on average 300 pics a day at the moment so unless Alastair gets his Inca Cola we will subject you to a painful death by slide show.

Lesson No 4: Lessons, did some one mention lessons? I really cant remem...

Got to ask yourself the question, where are you now?

OK, what day is it today? Seems a while since I wrote (Alastair). So here´s a recap, relying on a memory warped by an experiment in the effects of severe and repeat altitude fluctuation. Well, the first thing is that if you want to be sure to get on your flight in Lima, wear smart clothes. The queue for check-in for our flight to Quito divided into two queues: a man at a little desk assigned people to the queues, apparently alternately. But as we stood unmoving in our queue, I perceived a subtle difference. The other queue was much shorter, and everyone in it was very well dressed. Our queue contained indigenous people, and people with backpacks (Graham) or dressed in jeans and t-shirts (me). In addition, the other queue led to a choice of four check-in desks; ours, to one check-in desk, occupied by a man having an increasingly vociferous argument with the check-in woman. Meanwhile the well-dressed people in the other queue sailed through...

Well, it turned out that the flight was overbooked, and those of us in the scumbag queue were the ones bumped off the flight. Still, they put us on a later flight, and eventually gave us vouchers for $200 worth of flights (if either of us happens to be in Latin America again during the next year) - after initially claiming that we weren´t entitled to any compensation... So everybody, dress smartly and don´t fly with LAN Peru!

Consequently we just had an hour at Quito airport before taking off again for Cuenca. Worryingly, the airline was called Icaro. That´s tempting fate a little, I thought...

Our day in Cusco was a typical 11 hour job, starting at 8am and finishing at 7pm. First was a project which works to change attitudes to sexist imagery in advertising and generally educate and empower women. We had an interesting chat in their office and then went outside to take pictures in front of a huge billboard in the middle of a dual carriageway. Then to another project, Fundacion Macan, who drove us out into the countryside to visit a farmer. First we stopped in a town called... called... oh never mind... where we had tortillas and Inca Kola (yes! you can buy Inca Kola in Ecuador too!) in a market place, surrounded by grimacing pigs being grilled whole on huge barbecues.

We then set off up a dirt track climbing up an impossibly steep hillside, where people have hewed terraces out of the slopes and grown gardens on marginal scrubland soil. We had to skitter down a path from the road for about 200 metres - oh my god! we have to go back up that path! in this heat! at this altitude! Consequently we spent a long time at the farm, Graham taking 43,000 pictures, me alternately interviewing the farmer - who was really cool and said ALL THE RIGHT THINGS - and staring vaguely off into the valley and the hills beyond. The family was growing a huge diversity of crops, a real organic agroecological biodiverse sustainable agriculture paradigm, which I guess is why we went there... But man, that was one hell of a climb back to the car.

From there we drove straight back to Cuenca and visited RedSIDAzuay, which is a network of HIV/AIDS organisations in the Azuay region. Graham got his first taker for a CIIR-supported microsite. I could have killed him because we were all ready to go then we had to stay for another 45 minutes while he talked through how the microsite works...

The next day was a 6.45am departure, a flight to Guayaquil, from which we were met by Fred, a 50-something Canadian with some fairly unreconstructed views about Ecuador and the development process. We had to cram into the back of a Daewoo Matiz with all our luggage (if you don´t know, that´s a f$&**ng small car) and the driver tried to take off while Graham was still climbing in the door. We went to a town called Pedro Carbo, sat in Fred´s office drinking coffee, went to a corn growing agricultural collective for 5 minutes, to a school for 10 minutes, then hit the road again in the midget car. Here is how to become disassociated from your surroundings: wake up excessively early having slept badly due to maniacs driving at high speed up and down the road outside your hotel window all night, or setting off firecrackers, or ringing church bells; get on an aeroplane; get into an extremely small car, and drive at speed for two hours through a sweltering coastal wasteland, with a slight break for coffee, corn and school; this last bit guided by a, how shall I say, interesting individual...

We were dropped, praising the Lard for our safe arrival, in Jipijapa - pronounced Hippy Happa - from where reality slowly started to coalesce again. Our hosts, Rocio the cooperante (development worker) and various counterparts, principally a man called Paulo who spoke good English, took us to a restaurant where Graham and I were treated to a speciality local fish. It was delicious, except with almost my last mouthful I swallowed something gristly - a bone perhaps? From that point on until the following morning, by which time I had forgotten about it, I was convinced that a bone was lodged in my throat, and that one or more of the following would eventuate: a) emergency tracheotomy performed by coffee farmer with blunt agricultural instrument; b) embarrassing misunderstandings culminating in doctor, at vast expense, telling me it was all in my imagination; c) death by choking and asphyxiation in small hotel room at 4am, miles from family and friends (well, except for Graham, in the room next door).

Anyway, it turned out to be (d): all in my mind.

Well, we visited a coffee farm (did you guess that?), saw coffee being processed and dried and roasted and ground and brewed, drank huge amounts of strong black coffee, and buzzing like smackheads drove to a port town called Manta, where Graham went out clubbing and I slunk off to my room with my fishbone... just too (a) tired or (b) old or (c) boring or (d) all of these to bother...

Next morning, up early again for another 8am flight - fantastico! power cut, no water to wash with, and no breakfast, and an airport full of people in yellow shirts. Ecuador was playing a world cup qualifier against Uruguay later in the day, needing only one point to qualify for the World Cup finals. People were travelling to Quito for the game. In fact the whole country was consumed with the match. When we finally got to Quito, and had some breakfast, and washed, and went out for a wander in the Centro Historico, 75% of the population - male, female, young, old, respectable, insane - were wearing yellow football shirts. At the appointed hour, we went to Luis (the CIIR country representative) house to watch the game. His house is great - about half an hour´s drive from Quito, big garden, three-storey house like a fairy tale cake. At half time Graham and I whipped Luis and his 12-year-old son Ernesto 4-3 in a hard-fought two-a-side match in the garden, which left myself and Graham gasping for air and Luis on the verge of a coronary...

Today (Sunday, I think) we got a lie-in! Didn´t have to leave the hotel until 10am. We went with Luis and a development worker from Chile called Bernadita to see... well... to see guinea pigs being roasted on spits. Fortunately both of us are vegetarians. Everybody else had to eat a quarter of a roasted guinea pig (complete with leg and curled claw)... Then we drove to Otavalo through a thunderstorm and met with another cooperante, Fernando, from Colombia, who invited us to his house for hot chocolate and arepas (a Colombian maize tortilla). So all in all it was a pretty laid back day - despite the death grimaces of skewered guinea pigs - nothing too demanding, nice people... And of course a chance to stand astride the equator, one foot in the north, one foot in the south...

So that´s it. If you have any further questions, please email Graham.

Dazed and Confused of Quito

Greetings from Quito where the altitude is high and the air is thin - yes we are both suffering from our second dose of altitude - or was it the salsa dancing last night im not sure! Anyhow in a bit of a daze so please ignore any typos.

Visited an amazing farm in the rain forest yesterday, a family growing coffee and with the help of our development worker Rotia are not only growing it, but roasting grinding and selling it to the local market. After looking round the farm half the community turned up to welcome us and of course provide us with copious cups of coffee - you cant get much fresher than that!

It was amazing to see coffee, cocoa and bananas growing for the first time - very beautiful setting. As we were leaving we were presented with two bags of coffee each (note to CIIR staff - well bring you some in!).

This morning was a bit more challenging - there had been a power cut at our hotel which meant there was no water either - thank heavens for Alastair´s wet wipes! Fortunately the flight to Quito was a short one and Lewis (our country rep here) was there to meet us at the airport and take us to our hotel.

Looking forward to coming home now as it seems like we have been away a long time now - usual day consists of getting up at 6 and being on the road for 10 hours then to a hotel in time to download the pics to the laptop and charge the camera batteries for the next day.

See you all soon.

A very dazed and confused Graham

hay algunas fotos

Interflora, Peruvian style, in the Huaral valley north of Lima.



These people fight corruption in Peru: the Proetica team in Lima.



Alastair in San Jeronimo, a district of Cusco; the badge pinned to his jacket means he is expected to pay for next year´s annual fiesta of the patron saint of San Jeronimo...



Guinea pig, anyone? Apparently delicious, if you like that sort of thing. This lady has 200 of them, a growing small business.



Men from the local communities doing a faena, or shared work, repairing the road on the way to Auyarate, high in the hills above Cusco.



A woman shepherding her flock along the road.



Alex, a boy at the kindergarten in Auyarate, takes a closer look at Graham´s nose. Ay caramba!



Lunch time at the kindergarten: soup from a huge saucepan, cooked up on an open fire by the mother of one of the kids, and eaten any which way, including standing up.



Graham (es el hombre) with the CIIR/ICD team in Lima: Dina the boss on the right, and Cecilia (far left) and Marianella.

back to school

(Alastair writes...) I thought we had to get up early but there was no problem about the wake-up call, some other hotel guests kindly arranged to have a conversation outside my door at 4.30am. Muchas gracias senores! We had a 7am start in order to get up into the hills and go to school. We were going with Susanne (CIIR development worker) to visit a school in the village of Auyarate, way up in the hills beyond Cusco. Susanne works with Pukllasunchis, which means ´Let´s play´in Quechua. Pukllasunchis promotes intercultural bilingual education, which in ordinary words means schools teach in both Quechua and Spanish, and that they learn about indigenous culture and history, not just the colonial version.

We were squeezed into the back of a double-cab four by four, driven by Ramiro, who found our own names hilarious and unpronounceable. We bounced up this dirt track into the breathtaking Andean highlands, and were soon looking down on plunging valleys and up to snaking ridges, all of it covered with a patchwork of yellow grass, brown earth and grey stone. We levelled out on a sort of upland plateau with nothing on it at all apart from the road cutting through it. Apparently there had once been a plan to build a prison here: far from everything, bleak and uninhabitable, the perfect place for rehabilitation... On the far side of the plateau we started descending again, through fields hoed for planting and past mixed herds of sheep, pigs and cows being driven along the road by women in colourful skirts, tights, jumpers and hats. Here was civilisation, and a school.

It´s a primary and secondary school and we were introduced to the teachers by Susanne. It took a few minutes for me to realise that the reason I couldn´t understand a word of what she was saying was that she was talking in Quechua. So that´s only six or seven languages she´s fluent in... We then went into a couple of the classrooms where the children looked at us with a mixture of curiosity and indifference, as if they have awkward gringos visiting them every day. They sang (or more accurately, shouted) songs in Quechua for us, and in return I taught them to say ´Hello, how are you?´in English, and explained that I had two children in England (hi you two! I miss you), and that drinking tea at 4pm was culturally very important for the English. I trust this information will stand them in good stead in their future lives.

Then we went to visit the kindergarten, where we hung around for a couple of hours while nothing much happened, and Susanne observed a class and gave some feedback to the teacher. I say nothing much happened: we just watched the kids, who played or sat in the playground area, and queued up for their free mid-morning cup of gruel (or milk), and waited for their class to start... They were incredibly placid and self-sufficient, an attitude they apparently need to develop at an early stage. Susanne told us that by the age of 6 most children know how to light a fire and cook their own food... The kids again seemed uninterested in us, although by the time Graham had taken his 300th photo of them they lightened up a bit, and took turns pulling on his nose and striking poses for the camera.

Suddenly it was time to leave. We went a different route, on through the village, past the school kids walking home. Several chased us and jumped on the back of the truck, then grinned and shouted through the cab window as we bounced alongside various vertical precipices, until we dropped them at a village several miles down the road. Normally of course they wouldn´t get a lift. That would be quite a walk to do two times a day...

Back in Cusco we went to a carpentry workshop, and watched some young men making chairs. The guy in charge was introduced as, I thought, Lenny. Turns out his real name is Lenin. The workshop was pretty cool too, even if we were flagging at the end of a long day on a long and winding and bumpy road...

And that was yesterday. Today we came back to Lima, early morning flight of course, then a couple of meetings to keep us occupied. One was with a CIIR partner organisation PROSA, an organisation formed and run by and for people living with HIV and AIDS. It has the atmosphere of an organisation run by an extended family - an inspiring story, nice people. They apologised for the walls, which were painted a overwhelming red. They said they thought they would like it but when they came in after the painters had been, they realised they couldn´t stand to look at those walls every day. It looked OK to me - well, maybe it was a bit red...

Tomorrow is another country. Peru has been way cool - one week is barely enough to get our feet wet, it´s been great and I´d love to come back, drink some more Inca Kola, see some more places, not be in a rush... But tomorrow is Wednesday, so that must mean Ecuador. I wonder if they speak Spanish there?

The valley of the South

Today we were the guests of Guaman Poma an amazingly dynamic organisation. We visited projects from irrigation schemes to local produce market regeneration with architectural restoration, women´s groups and a tiny guinea pig farm in between - yes guinea pigs (a real delicacy in Peru apparently!). The link is Guaman Poma´s skills, expertise and enthusiasm in developing solutions to the City´s problems.

We met with community leaders in the 5 districts that have grouped together to regenerate the valley to the south of Cusco. What was refreshing was that almost the first thing the community representatives talked about was their commitment to the environment and their concerns for the impact of climate change. Working with Guaman Poma they also see community involvement as central to everything they do in developing long term sustainable projects.

We are miles behind them in the UK with our out dated focus on economic regeneration above all other - we have much to learn.

Graham

Altitude is a funny thing. Of course, in my case I (Alastair) was so convinced I was going to suffer soroche that I started experiencing the symptoms before we´d even left the airport at Lima. Someone warned me that we should walk slowly once we got to Cusco, as if walking on the moon. I tried to imitate Neil Armstrong because it did actually feel like I was struggling through an alien atmosphere. Every step in Cusco may have been one small step for mankind, but it was a giant leap for me.

I was still a little spaced out with the altitude on the first morning, at the leader training workshop (see Graham´s blog), when I had to introduce us to a room full of people. I said, in impeccable Spanish: ´Let´s go! of London. I am editor of the publishings and Graham is the Internet.´ It´s a good job these situations bring out the best in my language skills.

Today was a full on day. We were given a whirlwind tour of the projects of Guaman Poma, an organisation that does social development work. First was a meeting with various mayors of the municipalities of the districts of the south Cusco valley. It just so happened that it was the last day of the San Jeronimo annual festival outside. We were taken to the church to see the statue of San Jeronimo the patron saint. Outside brass bands were playing dance tunes and the plaza smelled strongly of piss. Must have been some party the night before.

Then we went to visit a women´s organisation, then a market (where everything was on sale, especially the sort of offcuts from animals that are usually left by the mafia in people´s beds), then to the river where a bridge is being built and the river cleaned up, then to an irrigation project where we stood in a field, then to a restaurant where we met the leader of a marketing group, then we went and stood in a shed full of guinea pigs (a great delicacy in Peru, fortunately all we had to do was to look at them. One of them had evil red eyes). I think that was everything, before lunch. After lunch it started to rain and we went to see these restoration projects in old houses in the historic centre. We were taken inside several houses that Guaman Poma is helping to restore while people are still living in them. It was quite an eye opener to see how people live in these ramshackle old properties that they cannot afford to do up. Originally these houses would have been lived in by one family but now all the grown-up children and families have parcelled off parts of the house to live in, and you have maybe five or eight families living in a house originally intended for one, with no real sanitation facilities. The guy who showed us round, Jose, was very enthusiastic, showing us all sorts of architectural features - this door is from the sixteenth century, this wood used for the flooring is from a tree that no longer grows in the Cusco valley, this house would fall down if it was not for this metal pin in the wall here, just above the stove on the dirt floor of the kitchen three floors up, where the chicken lives, that´s the chicken that we just passed on the stairs, watch out because the archaelogists have dug a hole in that corner to see what the foundations are like, that´s an original Inca stone and those are some original Inca bones, these wall paintings found under the original plaster were probably painted by the first Spanish colonists because they show animals not indigenous to Peru, like dogs. These painted flowers were the 17th century equivalent of wallpaper. And look at this toilet that is shared by four families!

I think Jose could have spent all evening and night and half the next day showing us the houses that he is helping restore, but by then it was dark and cold and we had been on the road with Guaman Poma for 10 hours, so it was time to go back to the hotel and watch some football on telly. There are more than 70 channels on the TV in the hotel and it seems it is always possible to find a football match on at least one of them.

After that we went out for a meal. We did that typical vegetarian tourist thing of pounding round the streets in search of various vegetarian restaurants we had been told about, but which didn´t appear actually to exist. Ended up in a nice cafe patronised solely by gringos, but with a collection of magazines to peruse. One caught my eye, called Viajeros. I thought perhaps this might be a lifestyle magazine for people of my generation, and might have some useful tips to follow. It turned out instead to be about historic artefacts and other old stuff. There was too an article about a man who has set up a cycling lodge in the hills near Lima, in a place he discovered after knocking a young boy off his bike. Or at least that´s what I think happened, because the English version was a parallel translation done apparently by Babel Fish on a bad connection. However, there was an inspirational ending, which I intend to take to heart tonight when I finally make it to bed...

The dream of eternal rest became a reality cooed as we were by the river whisperings and the chiguancos and the torcaza´s purring.

Good night.

Air Heads

Well we arrived in Cusco yesterday, we'd been warned what the altitude would be like but it´s another thing to experience it. At around 3,500m the air is thin and suddenly you know what it feels like to be be very old indeed - all we can do is simply crawl along through airport arrivals.

Fortunately Susanne and Carmen are there to meet us and we greatfully give up all thoughts of chivalry as they insist on carrying all our luggage to the taxi. Taxis here are tiny, Peruvian equivalents of Austin Metros only half the size and its suprising there is enough room in them to carry all our baggage.

We take Liz from head office´s advice and.. rest all evening, drinking lots of water and cocoa tea, with neither of us having the strength to venture out of the hotel all night. Altitude is a bit like a bad hang over, except you haven´t had the fun.

Today we visited an advocacy training project for community leaders. As part of the day they act out a senario where a guy has to use all his negotiation skills to ask out a girl who has taken his eye whilst also getting the approval of the father and appeasing the ex-boyfriend! Its clear that they are having great fun as they are having hysterics for most of the time. There is a serious side though as they learn about conflict and power relationships and how to achieve meaningful change. They all go away much more effective negotiators.

Speaking of which Id better go and negotiate my way home through all the street hawks.

Please write us some comments on our trials.

Graham

fog, wi-fi and Inca Kola

This morning we visited our first project in Peru. However, that was not the first thing that happened today. The first thing was I woke at 2am convinced it was actually 8am and time to get up, which of course it was, in England... When it finally got light and I looked out the window it was raining - well, a sort of hard drizzle permanently suspended in the air. So that dispels another myth, that it never rains in Lima...

We set off in the rain, Edwin driving, Carlos from CEPES which is the organisation in charge of the project, myself, Graham, and Marianella from the CIIR office here in Lima. Drove through a bleak industrial landscape north of the city with huge refineries whose sole purpose appeared to be to pollute the already devastated landscape, a sort of dirty grey desert crawling with half-built houses and crude shacks. It seems impossible that people can live in this desparate environment. Maybe it was the effect of the fog which lay over everything like a dirty white blanket, suffocating all the hope out of the place. But these ramshackle homes are built on crumbling hillsides or, quite simply, on desert. No water, no vegetation, nothing, just sand and dirt. How can people live here? Apparently these are places that people just come back to to sleep, then over time - maybe over a whole generation - they maybe get electricity, a bit of permanence, a community. People come to Lima, they have to live somewhere, so they build their homes on this blasted landscape that God forgot, pinned there by poverty and fog for nine months of the year, and searing heat for the other three months.

We started to climb up a range of hills and the fog got so dense you could literally see nothing. I thought I had perhaps passed into another dimension, a sort of purgatory where I believed I was alive but in fact there was no evidence of life, indeed there was a possibility that the entire planet had ceased to exist, or that we had been sucked into some sort of white hole. I had the sensation of ascending then descending, and then suddenly I could see a sign. I believe it said something like "Welcome to Huaral. Mosquitoes, no thank you."

Here, fortunately, there were signs of life. Green stuff growing in fields. People! We drove into the town of Huaral, to a house where we were met by Jaime Torres, the CIIR development worker. Jaime is a young Colombian who gave up a prestigious job in Bogota to come to a rural community to teach farmers to use computers. If that sounds stupid, it´s not. It´s really amazing. There are 13,000 farms in the district and they all rely on water distributed through a complex system of irrigation channels. The water is controlled by the local irrigation council, which needs to know how much water to send where, and when. The irrigation council has to apply to the government to get the water, so it needs to know how much water it needs, and when. The farmers need to know which crops to plant and when, so that they can get the best prices, and be sure they will have enough water for the crops to grow. Just thinking about it makes my brain hurt, but Jaime´s brain not only understands it, he´s devised a database system to collate all the information, and a wireless internet system to make it accessible to the farmers and the irrigation council. I can´t begin here to describe how it works because I fear that this will need a wisdom and understanding beyond my simple powers right now (it being late at night when I am writing this) - which is not to say that the system is not a thing of clarity and perfection. All I can say right now is that Jaime and Carlos and colleagues have expanded the frontiers of technical knowledge, faced problems head on, solved them creatively, and created a beautiful sustainable system that provides a simple, workable solution to a problem faced by an entire district of farms. It´s kind of like one of those enlarged pictures of snowflakes: it´s complex, simple and beautiful, all at one time. I was very impressed.

Then we went to lunch and drank Inca Kola, which for those who don´t know it is yellow, and tastes of bubble gum. According to Jaime it´s addictive, after you have tried it a few times you cannot face a meal without that yellow nectar. He drank several gallons of it.


After lunch we visited one of the internet telecentres where the farmers get to use the computers. It was in a small room in a small village. I saw some small boys sitting beside a roadside stall selling flowers, and suggested to Graham that here was a photo opportunity. Then I thought we should maybe buy some flowers. Of course the boys weren´t selling the flowers, they were just hanging around waiting for some passing gringo to come and take their picture. There hadn´t been a stupid Englishman along for years, suddenly there were two! Some people just can´t believe their luck. So one of the boys went off and got the flower lady, and (since at that moment I had only a 100 dollar note in my pocket) Marianella bought flowers for everybody she could think of, and then some other people as well. They were extremely nice flowers. They grow in the desert, fields and fields of them where some people, their heads in a fog, may see only the white mist of hopelessness. But these flowers are bright, they are yellow and orange and pink and red and yellow.

around the world in 12 hours

In Madrid airport. Everything going swimmingly so far. At the café in the airport I practise my Spanish. Un bocadillo con queso, dos zumo de naranjas y dos té con leche, por favor. The reply? Twelve euros, thank you. Must have English stamped on my forehead. The main cultural difference so far appears to be the preponderance of smallish, rotund, middle aged men eating baguettes stuffed with half a dead cow, or pig. However, at the café there was a bocadillo vegetal on offer. It looked like it had Heinz Sandwich Spread in it. Anyway, it’s kind of dull here in transit land. Only 12 hours to go! If there are no more entries in this blog it will be because I’ve got deep vein thrombosis in my fingers.

Later… Now we’re on the plane. The man behind was putting his case in the overhead locker. It wouldn’t quite fit. His partner suggested he turned it the other way. It worked. He said: Perfecto! As I was passing, I couldn’t help echo him. Perfecto! It’s such a nice word. He looked at me as if I had insulted him. I smiled and patted him on the arm. Now he has to spend the entire journey with a weirdo in the seat in front, and I have to worry about offending the man behind me. Again.

Well, this entry is a work deflection activity. I’ve got the laptop out to finish off editing some articles for Interact. Interact is CIIR’s magazine. If you have no idea what it is, have a look on CIIR’s website, www.ciir.org. You will find that Interact is expertly edited.

The steward has just come past with some Spanish newspapers. This enabled me to say to her, in Spanish, one world and one country, please. (The newspapers are called El Mundo and El Pais.) It’s a nice thought: one world and one country. It’ll never catch on, though.

By the way, we received some advice from our work colleague Liz about travelling with Iberia. First of all, she said don’t bother going to check in at Heathrow at 5.30am (the scheduled time) because Iberia never bother to come to the check in desks before 6.00. We arrived at 5.30 and the desks were in full flow, queues of people already checked in. Next tip: Iberia overbooks so make sure you get on the plane in Madrid, don’t assume you will have a seat! We were at the back of the queue, so some slight anxiety, but again, no problem. Iberia will starve you, she said, so take your own sandwiches. Hot meal within half an hour of take-off… But then the afternoon/evening stretched out, in that timeless intercontinental airplane zone where you’re knackered and bloated and don’t care what time it is, you just want to get to where you’re going… But around evening meal time, we thought, maybe Liz’s advice is coming good! Because we started to get peckish, and no sign of any more food. Suddenly, there was a stampede for the stewards’ section of the plane, and people started coming back down the aisle clutching sandwiches. Graham went and scored us some vegetarian sandwiches: coleslaw and white air bread. You weren’t sure if you were actually eating or chewing on a cloud, but it was better than nothing. Then… a couple of hours later… another meal! This whole episode casts a shadow on all the advice we had from Liz. What was the other thing she said? Oh yes, when you get to Cusco run up and down some stairs, because it helps you acclimatise to the altitude.

So, in the middle of the night – although incredibly it was still light outside the plane! How does that one work? – we finally arrived in Lima. Outside the window, barren brown crumpled hills, then a flatland of brick houses, all apparently unfinished. At least, none of them had roofs; seemingly they were all works in progress. Liz told us it never really rains in Lima. Perhaps that’s why… Lima international airport is incredibly swish. In fact I think the airport was only finished minutes before our arrival, and opened in our honour. Makes Heathrow look like the third world slum that it is…

Met by Edwin, the CIIR driver, who took us out to the car. I was expecting hordes of urchins grabbing at my sleeve but it was all very orderly, although in the car next to us in the car park – with a sticker on the door saying ‘Taxi Good’ – a youth stared expressionlessly at us, before opening his door and pouring a bottle of water over his head. True! Apparently he was styling his hair, set for a big night at the airport car park, perhaps.

Lima is just big and sprawling, feels despite all the neon signs to be cold and grim. Well, maybe jetlag and global disorientation didn’t help. Lots of minibuses and people walking. Minutes until first man spotted urinating against a tree: one. Minutes until first traffic impasse at junction: two. Minutes until first McDonalds, Blockbuster Video and Plastic Surgery Clinic: three. Minutes until first old lady in wheelchair selling sweets at traffic lights: four.

Edwin drove us to the CIIR office cum flat. Our names are on the doors of two of the bedrooms, which will be useful if either of us gets up in the night for a pee and forgets who we are. Dina, the CIIR country representative for Peru, arrived shortly after and ran through our itinerary, which starts at 8.00am tomorrow. Graham wore the glazed expression of a man who can’t work out why his body tells him it’s 2 in the morning and everyone is behaving like it’s 8 at night. Or at least I think he did. I couldn’t really tell because I was asleep under the table. Bring on tomorrow! Or is it today already?

One week to go and Alastair is pretending to work hard... Actually is working hard. Work doesn't stop just because we're going on a trip. There's plenty to finish so we can depart with our minds and consciences clear and open to new experiences: intercontinental jet lag, coca tea, inca cola, altitude sickness, culture shock, language breakdown. Hay pulgas en mis calzones! Someone told me that's Spanish for 'I'm itching to get there...' I'm very grateful for their help with my Spanish lessons. Graham is still trying to work out how to say: 'Hello, I am not American!' His mullet haircut should help. I believe George Bush has declared war on mullets.

So what's this trip all about? Graham and I are members of CIIR's communications team. We're going to visit CIIR projects in Peru and Ecuador, meet people, interview them, take pictures, and use the words and pictures for fabulously interesting stories in future CIIR publications. I'm looking forward to it because the last time I was in Latin America, in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's so-called discovery of the Americas, the indigenous peoples of Ecuador rose in protest at 500 years of oppression, blocking roads with burning tyres, and leaving me somewhat inconveniently stuck in Riobamba for a week. Let's hope this doesn't happen again, otherwise it will begin to seem personal...

So I'm looking forward to see what this trip brings. Bring it on!