AlternateRoute

I am sitting in a musty little room in our hotel. We were dropped here after a wild ride from the airport through some very depressing suburbs. Many of the building appeared fortified and several of the factories had what seemed to be guard towers on the top of their walls. The city seems much poorer than Santiago, it is very polluted and many of the taxi-bus vehicles are falling apart. The horn works in all of them though.
Our hotel is on a quiet (that is a relative term) back street but has a big iron grill door at the front which is opened by reception. Again it is a first impression, but it doesn’t seem to be a safe or inviting town. Sue says she doesn’t think I am a good traveller and I think she may be right. We were meant to meet our tour guide today for a pre tour meeting but we are the only two on the tour at this stage. We have been given instructions on how to get to the Amazon Jungle and after we are finished there, we will meet our tour guide in Cusco, (4 days into the tour). We must leave soon and go see the changing of the guards at 1200 at the end of the street.

The changing of the guards was a classic exhibition of pomp and ceremony. The military band stood just inside the iron barred fence, facing the palace and played various tunes, one of which was probably the National anthem and one which started the same way of the Rocky theme. The guards marched in a way where one knee was lifted high while the next step saw the leg kicked above the head. At one point they played “el condor pasa” and condors were released from the tower and circled the palace. Very impressive. I am wishing now that I had read a little more on the history and politics of the country before visiting.Everywhere you walk in town there are police, however it doesn’t make me feel safe, it makes it feel like a police state.
We need $US600 cash as a local payment to our guide , but we didn’t want to carry too much cash so we bought $US dollar travellers cheques with us. To change $USD travellers cheques into actual $USD involves an 11% commission. This is clearly a rip-off.
Between the two of us, we had enough USD to cover this trips local payment, but not the Galapagos trip. Hopefully since the currency of Ecuador is USD the commission will not be as high. (Or maybe we have to go to American Express to cash them without commission.)
Anyway, the first bank we went to didn’t cash travellers cheques. At the second bank we waited 20 minutes to be serve and then they wouldn’t cash them without our passports. (The advise at the hotel said to keep your passport in the safe and carry a photocopy for identification. So much for that advice.)
We returned to the hotel, got our passports and returned to the bank, jumping the queue to be served by the previous teller. The guides suggestion for the trip is $USD30 a day. This works out to be about 110 Sols. At 1 Sol per empanada and 3 Sols for a coke that works out to be a lot of spending money. (By the way, a Big Mac is S4.50 but I’m not sure what it costs for a Big Mac in the US so I can’t work out if the official exchange rate is close to the BMI Big Mac Index) or not).
So with a pocket full of Sols and our money worries over we returned to the hotel for a rest. “Day 1″ of the tour is almost over.

2200 - I am writing this by torch light as the hotel had a blackout about 3 hours ago. I was just about to plug a charger into the wall when the lights went out. Another 10 seconds and I would have thought it was my fault. The emergency lighting on our floor wasn’t working. Of the two sets of lights, one wasn’t set to “On” and the other was broken. The blackout is effecting the whole block with 2 of the 3 circuits down. By the grace of God, the bar connected to the hotel is on the operational circuit.

We had a meal a few Cervezas and met with fellow travellers (same company, different trip). As we have to get up at 0600 we decided to go to bed now. Without the assistance of a ceiling fan it may get very warm. We shall see.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 2226 and is filed under South America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.