Time for the annual book review post, which has grown longer and longer since I started in 2012! For another year running I met my annual target – “at least one more book than last year” – by reading 42 books (a great number) in total. This was definitely made a little easier by having extra free time in December. For 2018 I also instituted an extra rule of alternating between male and female authors after noticing that last year’s bookshelf was pretty imbalanced in favour of men.
Since 2019 is going to be such a transitional year – with all of our travelling and moving back to London – I have decided to take a break from my reading rules and targets. I’m still planning to read – a lot! – but I’ll just see what comes naturally, and maybe go back to normal in 2020. And without further ado, here’s my 2018 bookshelf:
Fiction
I started the year with Americanah, which left me a little flat. People have been surprised by this, especially given how much I enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun, and it’s not that I have any particular critique of the novel. It was well-written and enjoyable to read but just didn’t leave me with much afterwards. I then moved on to my traditional annual book recommendation from Todd, which this year was The Virgin Suicides. This was an unsettling read, clearly written in a different era, and the collective ‘us’ narrating the book is deliberately creepy. I have to say, I was never into the fetishisation of suicide which sometimes exists among teenagers, and structuring the book around the suicides of five sisters struck me as more totally horrific than maybe it does to a younger audience. Sticking with recommendations: I did enjoy Nina is Not OK, which came via Tash and felt very true to life.
The Power was excellent, centred around the very raw and mostly unspoken question: just how much of the modern relationship between men and women is based on the underlying awareness of physical strength? It reminded me a little of Exit West in that it uses a spark of sci-fi/fantasy to probe a big social question, but does so a lot more successfully. In a similar vein, I was excited to enter Margaret Atwood’s dystopian (and highly developed) world of Oryx and Crake and am looking forward to the rest of the series.
Let’s talk about Tess of the D’Urbervilles, because Tess’s life is really depressing… a shining example of when to just pack up and move to America. It’s impossible not to feel deeply for Tess and the unfairness of her life, and the force of fate which pushes her relentlessly from bad to worse to even worse, even though there are plenty of moments where things are – maddeningly – almost-but-not-quite rescued. The book also paints a vivid picture of English rural life – although, of course, I don’t feel the same sadness about its passing that Hardy does.
When it comes to Ishiguro I can’t stop myself working through his back catalogue, even when it means reading something as frustrating as The Unconsoled. It’s a dream world – that’s all you need to know. The kind of nightmare where space and time is all warped and you keep taking on new missions without ever completing anything. In comparison, I enjoyed reading Purity a lot more but it is also the weakest Franzen book so far, especially once it starts dragging in the second half with the memoir section. Also, can we please institute a complete ban on fictional characters in novels who are authors?
In contrast, Lethal White was so, so good and my favourite of the Cormoran Strike series so far. The novel was satisfyingly long, giving me more time with Strike and Robin after a far too prolonged absence, and the ending was less of a headtwist than usual… not that I saw it coming, but I felt that everything fitted together better plot-wise than the predecessors in the series. More please, JK Rowling, and soon!
I was a little disappointed that American classic A Wrinkle In Time is not actually a time-travel story (more of a space-travel story!) but it was cool as a piece of children’s fiction with a strong protagonist. The explicitly Christian message (and some overly obvious Cold War rhetoric) can be a little off-putting, and it is funny that the big bad is called IT, which now sounds more dreary than sinister. Sticking with the American sci-fi theme, The Golden Apples of the Sun – the third and final anthology by Ray Bradbury in the beautiful collection gifted to me by Katie a few years ago – was another amazing collection of short stories. Almost all of the stories manage to convey a complete, vividly-imaged world in just a handful of pages. The other short story collection I read this year was The Ladies of Grace Adieu, Susanna Clarke’s brief return to the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I enjoyed these fairy tales, but I’m also up for a full-throated sequel.
I’m not really sure how I feel about My Brilliant Friend, which has been extensively recommended. The central characters were certainly interesting and I will keep reading the series to follow their lives, but I wasn’t nearly as gripped as many reviews suggested I should be. Similarly, Paul Auster’s ‘New York Triology’ (City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room) are the kind of unsettling and frustrating postmodern books which are good to read occasionally, but I really don’t love, and I’m worried that the Amazon and/or Goodreads algorithm is going to start sending me more.
The book which really rubbed me up the wrong way, however, was London Fields. I had enjoyed Time’s Arrow so picked this up as my next Martin Amis novel. It is, supposedly, regarded as his “strongest”. But it’s a car crash. Yes, it is well-written, but the good writing is just directed at being snide and cynical for no real purpose. It’s also endlessly racist and misogynistic. At this point I can imagine Amis popping out to complain that I’m being unfair because it’s the narrator character who is racist and misogynistic, not him. No dice. All the vitriol does nothing other than to furnish a vague and confused “state of society” critique for the “end of the millennium” [sic] which had already dated very badly by the end of the actual millennium since the book was written in 1989, anticipates literally nothing of the 1990s and anachronistically chucks in threats of a nuclear war between the Cold War superpowers.
OK, assuming I’ve persuaded you not to read that, what should you read instead? Kindred (a time-travel story from 1979 about a black American woman who finds herself back in a nineteenth century slave plantation) is powerful and very brutal. The Queue is both Orwellian and Kafkaesque, but set in a modern day Middle Eastern bureaucracy which is clearly Egypt. And I want to put in a good word for HG Well’s The Invisible Man, which is a short, fun classic of sci-fi about (unsurprisingly) a man who manages to turn himself invisible. Unfortunately, he turns out to be the worst, most petulant guy imaginable so the opportunity for superhero stunts is entirely wasted.
Finally, a few words for the authors who always make it onto this list. I planned to read Asimov’s classic Foundation years ago but decided to methodologically work through his interlinked Robot and Empire series first. This year I finally got there and while the underlying premise is slightly bonkers, I am reassured to have many books left in the series to enjoy. And I have almost caught up with Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series! The sixth instalment, The Hanging Tree, felt a little rushed at the end but did move the overarching plot along significantly and entering this world is always a treat.
Non-Fiction
A couple of my favourite non-fiction books this year have been recommendations from Vox’s The Weeds podcast, starting with Dreamland. It tells the intertwined story of the rise of opioid prescribing in the United States (most notably OxyContin) and, simultaneously, the revolutionary ‘customer-centric’ approach of the Mexican heroin trade, for example through salaried dealers who have no incentive to dilute the product. The result has been an opioid epidemic of devastating proportions. An excellent read – perhaps the only thing missing is a deeper examination of the origins of the physical pain driving the initial prescriptions in the first place.
Similarly, Ghettoside told a simple but effective story about murder in the most violent areas of LA. While many people are familiar with police violence in black communities, the other side of the same coin is chronic under-policing where it really matters. Clearance rates for murder are shockingly low, and we know from research that consistency of punishment is much more important for reducing crime than the harshness of the penalty. The homicide detectives in the book have low status even within the LAPD, but justice can’t be done without them. All in all, along with the powerful stories of wasted lives, the book is a good rebuke to the idea that only preventative policing is valuable.
I also really enjoyed Crashed by Adam Tooze – although that’s unsurprising, since I always enjoy his work. This book runs through the decade following the 2008 financial crisis, and the most memorable theme is the poor preparation and reactions of European institutions in general and Angela Merkel in particular. I think perceptions of Merkel are rose-tinted in a world of Trump and Brexit, and she may be personally sympathetic, but it’s still amazing to contrast Europe with the US Federal Reserve. The consequences (most obviously in Greece) have been dire.
I read A Spy Among Friends – about the notorious spy Kim Philby – after being inspired by a John le Carré novel a few years ago. It’s really just totally crazy that the guy running anti-Soviet intelligence for Britain was a Soviet spy the whole time. Astonishing. Sticking with a Soviet theme, How Not to Network a Nation is an interesting story about the aborted creation of a Soviet internet to manage the economy. It reminded me of an Asimov short story about globalised central planning by computer. At the same time, this is very much one of those academic books to which someone has given a snappy title and slapped a nice cover on. I could have done without the repetitive pondering.
The Guns of August is a classic of popular history, but I was expecting something more political. Instead, most of the book is taken up by the military history of the first months of the First World War, and the events which quickly led to a stalemate with no decisive victory for either side. Interesting, but not really the focus I wanted. On the other hand, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was absorbing and a really emotional read. Obviously you feel really badly for Anne’s mother, who is treated pretty harshly by her daughter, but I don’t think that makes Anne ‘unlikable’ as opposed to a teenager who was robbed of the time to grow up. The worst part is getting to D-Day: she is so excited that the invasion has begun, while the reader is just counting down the months until August when the family are discovered and the diary stops.
No, I haven’t read Democracy in America yet. Yes, it’s on my list. As a warm up, I read Tocqueville’s The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution instead. His writing (at least in this translation) is very fresh and easy to read, and the key point is worth repeating: “it is not always going from bad to worse that leads to revolution… the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform… every abuse that is eliminated seems only to reveal the others that remain”. (Admittedly the logic for rulers of bad governments is not great.) Equally, his passage on the feudal nobility – who once possessed greater privileges, and yet were less unpopular because they provided services in return – has interesting implications for government today.
Tara Westover’s Educated (yes, the book on every reading list) was not quite the memoir I expected. Based on her interview on the Talking Politics podcast I was anticipating an upbringing which was extremely cut-off from the rest of the world… but not necessarily one which is so straightforwardly violent and abusive.
Finally, I really loved The Prodigal Tongue, a book about American and British English which grew out of Lynne Murphy’s awesome Separated by a Common Language blog. It’s so nice to read a non-alarmist, well-informed and evidence-based exploration of English in two countries by someone who obviously loves language. Better than 95% of anything else you will read on the topic.
As we waited for the bus home last night at 1am on Christmas morning, we got chatting to a woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina who has lived in Santiago for many years. She was pleased to hear that we really liked the city as apparently many foreign visitors find it “boring” compared to the party town of Buenos Aires. Well, maybe this just shows that we’re boring people (after all, we were catching the bus home rather than out) but Santiago definitely suits us. As Randi pointed out, it is harder to blog about a free-roaming city break compared to a series of tours with set destinations. So apologies (but not really) if this post unduly focuses on transport, but that is the first way that Santiago captured our hearts.
I knew it was a good omen when the guy sat behind us on the bus into town had the Doctor Who theme set as his ringtone.
Let’s start with the Metro! Ah, you know you’re in a proper grown-up city when there’s a real metro system. The Santiago Metro is fast and frequent, with a train arriving every few minutes, and we loved it and used it a lot to get around.
This is closely followed by Randi’s discovery that one of the major roads in the city is closed to all car traffic between 9am-2pm every Sunday for pedestrians, skaters and cyclists (#CompartamosLasVías). This is the icing on the cake for what is already a very walkable and pleasant city centre, and with the cars banished you can actually hear the sound of the River Mapocho flowing by. In the interests of balance, I should say that the River Mapocho is one of the brownest rivers I’ve ever seen. I hoped it might have been mud, but Francisco denies this.
Other than admire the transport infrastructure, on our first day we walked up the summit of San Cristóbal Hill – at which there is a statue of the Virgin Mary and great views of the city below – and then teleférico-ed down again. The next day we took another walking tour, of which one of the highlights was standing in the Plaza de Armas playing the “legal or not” guessing game for issues such as abortion and gay marriage. (Tour guides are young and liberal and they know their audience.)
That night we met up with Francisco for a tour of his old local neighbourhood and favourite restaurant. What he didn’t know was that we would see him again the very next day for his surprise homecoming party in the Parque Padre Hurtado. A word about this park. It is very nice inside, but for some reason they have decided to charge an entrance fee of 500 pesos, which means that most of the entrances are locked shut and you have to walk all around the park to get in. Amusingly, it’s another 500 pesos if you want to bring your dog in with you.
On Francisco’s recommendation, we also visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights which covers the period of dictatorship in Chile. Although it is largely about those who were tortured, killed and ‘disappeared’ during the rule of the military junta, one of the most striking exhibitions for me was about the 1988 referendum which (narrowly) ended Pinochet’s rule. It’s just so odd, because half of the exhibition looks like any normal election campaign (TV spots, badges, slogans) but alongside are the stories of the parallel vote-counting operation mounted by the opposition and the CIA reports on Pinochet’s preparations for violence if it looked like he was losing. Still, despite everything, it is incredible that the dictatorship ended and democracy was restored through this vote.
We were very honoured to be invited by Francisco and Carolina to join their family for Christmas, which in Chile (as in lots of places) really means ‘Christmas Eve’. (Yes, this means that children wake up on 24th December and have to wait all the way until midnight for Santa to bring their presents, which seems like it would require incredible patience.) At Francisco’s uncle’s house in the suburbs we took our seats in the garden and feasted on a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey, potatoes and ceviche, while asking all the questions about Chilean society which you can’t quite go into on a walking tour. For example, the rather long-winded and euphemistic English phrase “trying for a baby” is known here as being “in campaign”, which has slightly disturbingly violent connotations but I admire for being much snappier.
After dinner we gathered around the tree for Secret Santa. You think you know how Secret Santa works, right? Well, Francisco’s family have added a terrifying twist that if you can’t guess who your present came from in two guesses, your present is confiscated and held in ‘penitentiary’ until the end when you might be allowed to tango for its release. This is all accompanied by a lot of chanting in Spanish, which is all the more frightening if you don’t really understand what’s being said. Fortunately Randi and I were given strong hints about the identities of our gifters, along with incredibly generous (and useful!) travel-related gifts themselves.
It was really lovely to be allowed to gatecrash a family Christmas here, even if it winds up making Christmas Day itself feel more like Boxing Day. Tomorrow morning we leave Santiago and fly further south down this excessively long country, but we have really enjoyed our stay here, especially since we’ve had our own place for six nights with our own little balcony to sit, read, eat, drink and blog in the sun.
Feliz Navidad!
A brief post from Valparaíso, where we’ve been staying for a few days and which is about two hours by bus from the capital Santiago. An important port until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the touristy bits of Valparaíso are now purpose-built for Instagram, with artistic murals adorning walls and walls of colourful buildings in the hills which rise up over the sea.
The ‘offbeat’ walking tour we chose, from Tours 4 Tips, was led by the best guide we’ve had on our travels so far. It started with am unplanned and bracing introduction to the non-tourist side of the city as we all felt the residue of the tear gas used by the police yesterday against striking port workers. The strikers’ key demand is to include temporary workers in collective bargaining agreements, and last night this escalated into a violent confrontation. We saw some evidence of damage and broken windows, but it was obviously impossible to tell whether tear gas was really necessary and if we should be calling this a ‘riot’ or not (as our guide did). Suffice to say, walking around the hilly areas felt totally safe, but down by the port area it stung in the throat.
We also saw the former prison on Cerro Cárcel (now a cultural centre) where political prisoners, among others, were held and tortured during the Pinochet dictatorship. (And, side note, our guide pronounced the ‘t’ in Pinochet so I am now going to follow suit.) Altogether, the walk was a reminder of the different sides of Chile – past and present – as well as a perfect way to see a beautiful and bohemian city.
On a random note: in one of the supermarkets here I found Waitrose strawberry jam, which was a little baffling. Of course I bought one anyway.
Since I last wrote, we enjoyed our final night in Puno – I particularly enjoyed the children’s choir bedecked in Santa hats and the pizza place playing the video of Moldova’s 2017 Eurovision performance – before boarding a bus to Tacna, which is right by the border with Chile. The weirdest part of this bus journey was the surprise entrance of competing bread sellers in the middle of the night… and I could have sworn that one of them was trying to flog a bag of potatoes too.
In Tacna, it was a short taxi hop to the international bus station and then a collectivo (shared cab) across the border to Arica in Chile. I was pretty impressed by the efficiency of the collectivo operation, which runs at a standard tariff and includes a driver to hustle the group through both the Peruvian exit controls and then Chilean immigration controls. These officials sit in the same building, with their backs to each other, at opposite sets of windows. I am really curious what happens if you pass the first but then fail the second.
Ah, Arica. We didn’t choose to spend a day here – it was an artefact of bus timetables, and we suspect that’s the case for most travellers. There’s nothing hugely wrong with it – and indeed I had an excellent breakfast (with a decent cup of tea!) – but we were very happy to be leaving at the end of the day. The real masterstroke (all credit to Randi) was paying for a cheap hostel room so we wouldn’t have to drag our stuff around in the sun. The secondary and surprising masterstoke was that after the hostel owner quoted us a price which we couldn’t yet pay (as we didn’t have any Chilean pesos) she was content simply to take the rest of our Peruvian soles instead.
The overnight bus from Arica to San Pedro de Atacama (operated by Turbus) was my most solid night of sleep on a bus so far, other than our unexpected 3am stop where we were all briefly chucked off so we could take our bags through “customs”. (Customs? We’re still in Chile, guys!) This was on top of having our passports taken away when we first boarded so they could be presented to a police checkout later. The bus company were very good (and reassuring) about the process and everything was duly returned, but it did smack a little of police-statism to have so many internal controls.
So then, after having set off from Puno on Tuesday night, we finally arrived at San Pedro de Atacama on Thursday morning. Situated in the middle of a desert, San Pedro is completely geared around tourists but also has a calm and relaxed vibe. It felt very chilled-out as everyone strolled down the sandy streets of the town centre, and many of the tourists seemed to be from Chile itself. After walking to our AirBnb from the bus station – and being shepherded the whole way by two dogs – we did what everyone comes here to do and booked a bunch of tours and excursions for the rest of our stay.
One of the most popular trips is to the Bolivian salt flats (Salar de Uyuni). But Bolivia’s visa costs for Randi’s American passport were onerous, and neither of us wanted another overnight trip at that point anyway. So instead we opted for three half-day trips, all of which (and here my mum would be very proud) involved getting into bodies of water.
Some added excitement was thrown into the mix when we discovered later that our tourist agency was extremely badly reviewed online. Would the buses turn up? Would they turn up and then throw us off a cliff? We worked up some backup plans but in the end everything ran (relatively) smoothly, and so now I present our three waterworlds of San Pedro de Atacama…
Tour 1: Thermal Baths
Our first trip was to the Termas Banos de Puritama, an oasis of warm pools and waterfalls in the middle of a desert valley. Aside from getting a little sunburnt we had a very relaxing morning here, testing out each of the seven pools in turn. The water was pleasantly warm but not piping hot as in some other hot springs, making it easy to stay for as long as time permitted.
Tour 2: Salt Lagoons
Now this was a totally new – and very cool – experience for me. The Lagunas Baltinache are a series of very salty lagoons, a couple of which are open for swimming. Or, if you prefer, just plain floating… because with so much salt, you are completely buoyant and it is nigh on impossible to sink. I had heard about this phenomenon in the Dead Sea but never felt anything like it before, and it’s a weird feeling to realise that you can just completely stop paddling and relax in the water. This was my favourite trip we did while we were here.
On the way back we had our obligatory vehicle incident when one of the tyres popped and was subsequently chewed up by the unpaved desert road. Cue us waiting in the desert for a while for the type to be swapped out.
One other disadvantage of these afternoon tours is that you are held hostage to watch the sunset, and out here the sun sets very very slowly…
Tour 3: Significantly Colder Salt Lagoons, Plus Some Jumping
In a slight faux pas, we didn’t realise that Laguna Cejar was also salty and buoyant, so the next tour repeated the same “look, I’m floating!” trick, albeit this time in much chillier water thanks to the overcast sky. But later we moved on to the Ojos del Salar (i.e. the pools you’re allowed to jump into) which I did after watching some other people go first. Finally, we drove to the beautiful Laguna Tebinquiche for another sunset 😉
Bonus Tour: Stargazing!
San Pedro de Atacama is also known for its astronomy tours, and even though the only available slot was between midnight and 2am one night we decided we couldn’t miss it. And I’m so glad we did, because it was incredible. I have never been able to see the constellations of Orion and his dog so clearly before, even though – being the Southern Hemisphere and all – they were upside down. After looking at the night sky (and shooting stars!) with our naked eyes we were given warming cups of hot chocolate while five telescopes were readied. Through these we saw a variety of objects: stars, clusters of stars, binary systems, nebulae, Mars… although, and I’m sorry to be very parochial here, the best of the lot was the incredible beauty of our own moon and its cratered surface.
I was very impressed with our guides (one of whom answered my question about planets orbiting binary star systems with the latest research) and overall the night was awe inspiring in the real and true sense of the world. It’s funny how you do think about our place in the universe just by seeing a little bit more of it.
Finally – aside from all of the rushing around on tours, one low-key but equally lovely part of our stop here was the evening where we made dinner and got chatting in Spanish to a Chilean couple staying at our AirBnb. OK, admittedly it was mostly Randi doing the talking but I understood the gist at most points, and it was the first proper in-depth conversation we’ve had with strangers while travelling. For the record, this couple declared that while Chileans are pretty emotionally reserved (“like the British”) we should watch out for Argentinians who are much more emotional. I will bear this in mind for later…
After Lima, our next stop was Arequipa via a short flight. (Airport fast food related side-note: the doughnuts from Dunkin’ Donuts in Peru are actually delicious. I’m unclear why the same can’t be true in the US.) Arequipa is frequently described by guides as Peru’s prettiest city, and although I’m not quite sure I agree (Cusco takes some beating) it is true that the main square was almost serenely calm and relaxed on Friday evening.
We didn’t spend long in Arequipa, but two of my favourite moments were:
- Randi taking a quick look inside the church (I had to stay outside as I was wearing shorts) and then immediately being barricaded by two giant sets of closing doors signalling the start of mass. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to see her again, but luckily she found a side exit.
- Having breakfast with football on in the background, and hearing the incredibly excited “GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL” from the commentator after someone scored. I felt like I had scored bingo on Latin American stereotypes right there.
The next afternoon, we set off for Puno and boarded the first of our long distance buses during this trip, after first admiring the very fulsome nativity scene in the Cruz del Sur waiting lounge.
For the bus itself, there’s really two ways to look at things. On the one hand, it was easily the most luxurious bus journey I have ever taken. We were in the VIP section (it’s really not that much more expensive) which had full reclining seats, giving us plenty of room and comfort to lie back, relax and catch up on some podcasts, Dynasties and Would I Lie To You. On the other hand, it’s still a 6-hour bus ride, so I wasn’t sad when it was over and we finally arrived in Puno.
But we need to pause on Puno for a moment, because the next morning we embarked on an overnight tour of Lake Titicaca, the Uros Floating Islands and the islands of Amantani and Taquile. My least favourite part of these tourist tours are the “meet the native people” sections. This was especially problematic on the Uros floating islands, which are very very small, so the whole place is completely enveloped by us tourists taking photos… except these are real people and real people’s homes, so it feels artificial and intrusive. That said, these tiny islands on the lake are undeniably cool – and weird – to walk around on.
The best part of the tour was our hike on Amantani island up to the peaks of Pachatata and Pachamama, both of which hold the remains of ancient temples and astronomical sites. Prior to this hike our tour group had been divvied up between several host families on the island (which felt a little like getting picked for teams in PE) and had been fed lunch, and as I looked around the table I decided we might be in some sort of reality show preparing for the next elimination round. Well, I didn’t want to be eliminated next, so I grimaced through my initial pain at the steep, high-altitude climb (Peruvians don’t seem to believe in switchbacks) and was rewarded by amazing views of the sunset at the top.
By this point, we were both totally exhausted, and neither feeling 100% in either head or stomach. (Actually, if it hadn’t been for Randi’s miraculous Spanish in the pharmacy that morning, I would have been feeling a lot worse.) So we both opted-out of the “dress up in traditional clothes and go to a disco in the village hall” event, feeling only a tiny bit smug the next morning when we learnt that none of the locals had turned up and the whole thing had been cancelled.
Our final stop was Taquile Island, before heading back over the lake to Puno in the world’s slowest boat. Taquile was certainly beautiful (proof below) although I was increasingly sceptical of the various lifestyle factors which our guide kept claiming resulted in the locals living to “95 to 100 years old”. If that’s the case, they certainly are doing well to manage their demographic pyramid. We also learnt about their somewhat rigid uniform system (e.g. one colour hat for the married men, another for the unmarried men) and I wished I spoke the local language so I could check how well this actually worked out in practice. There are always rebels in life, even on Taquile.
Once we got back to Puno I was incredibly happy to have a hot shower, collapse and cook the pasta and tuna which I’d been carrying around since Lima. (We got told off for trying to use the kitchen in our AirBnb there, and didn’t want our supermarket run to go to waste!) Randi was originally a little bit suspicious of the accommodation I had booked, for minor reasons like (a) no-one else seemed to be staying there, (b) we had to change rooms because they couldn’t find a key to our original room and (c) the bed slats started to fall out of the bed if we both sat on it. But this was more than made up for by our amazing host and our scenic dinner.
Here’s an embarrassing story: I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain and thunder. But I checked my weather app and it didn’t seem to be either raining or thunderstorming, so I was really freaked out for a moment before Randi stuck her head out of the window and confirmed that it was actually raining. Millennials are the worst.
Having not died from perfectly ordinary rain, this morning we bought our next set of bus tickets for tonight’s journey to Tacna and then walked to Puno’s (pretty and very green) main square before settling down in the corner of a wonderful café to swap photos and write our blogs. Even Lima feels like a long time ago now, and it’s good to have a quiet day of recuperation (and WiFi 😉 ) before the next leg.
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
