This is Jackie Roe's account of her 'Andean Odyssey' holiday run by Noble Caledonia. Jackie travelled as a full fare paying passenger.
A journey through Argentina, Chile and Peru and Ecuador touched every one of my senses. The light, the colours, the food and the sights left me with an overwhelming impression that South America is a continent containing many wonderful secrets for tourists to discover - even the ubiquitous postcard was not always available in some places. Coupled with all this, the countries we visited were very inexpensive by our standards and the scenery, flora and fauna, and colonial buildings often quite stunning.
We arrived in Buenos Aires for two nights. Travelling in from the airport, I was struck by a city full of bright pink blossom on the kapok trees, purple flowers on the jacaranda trees and pampas grasses. Dogs featured prominently in this city – there are areas fenced off in some parks to serve as dog ‘creches’ where they can be left and minded for some hours! Other dogs were to be seen being being walked by one handler with up to 20 on the branching leash, although we were told the ‘legal’ limit was eight! Other notable memories were of Argentinian beef and the tango. We experienced both together on a night out to a tango show. We learned that beef in Argentina has its reputation for superb quality and tenderness because the cattle are bred mainly on the flat plains of the pampas with no opportunity to develop muscles and thereby chewiness! The tango show demonstrated the dance in 1910 and then how much more sensuous it had become over the subsequent decades.
Next day we flew south-west across Argentina to northern Patagonia, an area with no formal government and no precise boundaries comprising one quarter of the land mass of Argentina and Chile but with only 3% of the population! We stayed two nights in a hotel on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi in the National Park of that name very near to San Carlos de Bariloche in the foothills of the Andes (about 3,500 ft) in the Argentinian Lake District. The view of the lakes and mountains from the aircraft was a taste of what was to come - the next day we explored further by minibus (for our select group of five plus tour manager) and then by chairlift to a viewpoint at Cerro Campanario. I thought the panorama there, bathed in sunshine, was the most inspiring of the many that I have seen in the world. The sun shone on mountains, lakes and islands in all directions. This was the first of the many well kept secrets to be revealed to us in S.America. Later that day we took the bus into the town of Bariloche, a winter ski resort and frequented by many Brazilians - I searched in vain for a postcard!
Moving on our minibus took us over the nearby border into Chile through the Puyehue National Park in the Chilean Lake District, which my guide book had rightly referred to as having ‘astounding’ scenery. The rain forest produced lush vegetation including wild lupins and fuschias, both in flower, as were the ulmo trees, all indigenous to Chile. We enjoyed a sunlit view of the snow-capped volcano Osorno on the far side of Lake Llanquihue, the largest of the 65 lakes in this Lake District. Stopping briefly in Frutillar and Puerto Varas, lakeside resorts to which large numbers of Germans emigrated in the 1850’s, at the instigation of the Chilean government, we finally arrived in the port of Puerto Montt on the coast of Chile. This port is said to be the fastest growing city in southern Chile mainly due to the salmon aquaculture. It was here we embarked on our French ship, Le Diamant. The French cuisine was excellent and it was a friendly ship - the entente cordiale prevailed, most of the time! The ship could take 226 passengers but there were only 25 French on board plus our tiny group so there was an excellent staff to passenger ratio! The next day we had our first wet and murky day which meant that unfortunately we could not see the lovely scenery around this port - notably when we set sail in the afternoon through the channel between the mainland and Chiloe Island.
After a day at sea we docked in Valparaiso, Chile’s second largest city and the port for Santiago, the capital. Another 30 (Swiss) passengers boarded here so the ship was now 25% full for the rest of our trip. The murky weather continued in Valparaiso which again spoilt the undoubted views of this port which is built on the side of a steep hill and which is known as the Pearl of the Pacific. However inland the skies were clear as we took a tour through the Casablanca valley, full of vineyards, to a hacienda for a fascinating display of riding skills by the local huasos.
More relaxation at sea for a couple of days before docking in Iquique, a resort town on the edge of the Atacama Desert. This turned out to be another well kept secret – a town with some beautiful buildings around the centre, due to wealth created by the discovery of minerals (saltpetre) in the mid 19th century. We drove inland through the desert to the deserted (a very apt word!) ‘ghost’ nitrate towns abandoned in 1960 when business completely dropped off due to the development of synthetic nitrates.
Our next port was Arica (both Iquique and Arica used to be in Peru before the War of the Pacific) so we were getting quite near to the Equator by now. However Arica, known as the City of Eternal Spring, was pleasantly warm and very dry. We were told it last rained there in 1997 (for 12 minutes!). The cold Humboldt current running along the west coast of S. America coupled with the Andes keeping the rain to the east result in a very equable climate. Arica, another town with some lovely buildings from its wealthy past, is now promoting itself as a tourist resort. The 19th century San Marco cathedral is built of iron and was designed by a certain Monsieur Eiffel. It had replaced an earlier cathedral destroyed in an earthquake. Earth tremors of a greater or lesser magnitude are very common and we were told Arica experiences 460 tremors per week. Most are barely noticeable but do register on the Richter scale. Going inland through the Atacama desert brought us to the pre-Colombian geoglyphs – stone etchings depicting aspects of nature on the hillsides. We saw these from the Azapa valley, a fertile oasis where various crops grew including olives and mangoes. From there we went on to the San Miguel de Azapa Archaeological and Anthropological Museum containing the remains of the Chinhorro mummies, the oldest on Earth, dating from 6,000-8,000 BC (makes the Egyptian ones seem young!) – so another well kept secret (at least from me!).
Arriving in Lima, Peru, we flew on to Cusco, the historic capital of the sun-worshipping Inca empire, for two nights in order to visit Macchu Pichu. Cusco is 11,500 ft and altitude sickness struck down about 10% of the 30 people from our ship, me included. Fortunately the ship’s doctor prescribed some magic and I was able to do the trip to Macchu Pichu the next day – this had seemed completely out of the question the previous evening! We got the 6 am train for the journey of 44 miles which took 3.3/4 hrs – very slow due to the steep gradients, MP being, thankfully, some 3,000 ft lower than Cusco. The houses in Cusco often have no electricity so are built to face the sun – in 2006 Cusco was apparently found to have the highest UV level on Earth. The journey was spectacular with wonderful views of the high Andes and the 20,000 ft. snow-capped volcano ‘Salkantay’, the second highest in Peru. Due to cloud forest, the countryside was covered with lush vegetation, various shades of green, pampas grass and wild flowers, all contrasting with the red/pink soil. The cloud forest spawned a variety of trees even at this high altitude (unlike other mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Rockies where the tree line ends between 6 and 7,000 ft). There was plenty of local colour with the locals farming alongside the track, the women wearing the traditional Peruvian trilby-style hat and long black plaits. We viewed the 14-15th century Inca MP ruins in perfect, sunny conditions. They were re-discovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American archaeologist, since when they have grown in such popularity that they are visited by 700,000 tourists each year, 2,000 of these sometimes visit on one day in the high season.
The next day I explored the delightful main squares and alleyways of Cusco, sitting on park benches every few minutes in view of a total lack of energy caused by the altitude! This produced numerous opportunities for locals to join me on the seat in order to try and sell me something – I co-operated for a short time but then it became irrtitating and I was forced to continuously move on to another seat (feeling a trifle guilty as they were doubtless very poor but there is a limit to how much I can carry home!).
Back to the ship and on to Salverry in order to visit the town of Trujillo, yet another ‘city of eternal spring’ where it seldom rains although it did so briefly whilst we were there! Trujillo aspires to be a World Heritage Site on account of its attractive colonial buildings in its centre, painted in brilliant colours, and nearby Moche temples. Even the sparse traffic was colourful – nearly all bright yellow taxis. We drove to the archaeological sites (lst-8th century AD) of the Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun built within adobe brick pyramids and went inside the latter, only excavated 16 years ago
Our next stop should have been Pimental to visit the Moche tombs museum near Sipan, the treasures of which were discovered intact less than 20 years ago – in fact the Peruvian archaeologist who had found them had boarded our ship in Lima in order to lecture and whet our appetites about this excavation. However we were all sadly denied this opportunity as the sea swell was too dangerous to allow us to land by the necessary tender.
So onwards to Ecuador. As we passed over the Equator, traditional nautical ceremonies took place in the company of King Poseidon and his court and the ship’s captain. The ship’s doctor (my hero in Cusco) was ceremoniously tossed into the ship’s swimming pool, and we all drank champagne!
The following day we disembarked in Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador where it was very hot and humid in complete contrast to the barren coasts of northern Chile and Peru (the cold Humboldt current having moved away from the coast). We drove for 6 hours through tropical fruit-growing areas (papayas, bananas, tobacco, palm trees etc) and rain forest, then temperate rain forest and finally cloud forest as we climbed higher to the capital, Quito, at 9,350 ft. This was the first city to be named a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1978 on account of its beautiful colonial buildings in the old town and its setting surrounded by a rim of volcanos, Cotopaxi and Pichincha among them. Near Quito we crossed the Equator again, from north to south this time. The well-known clockwise v anticlockwise vortex of the two hemispheres was demonstrated by our local guide taking my necklace and letting it dangle in each hemisphere – it duly responded by gently spinning in the north in an anti-clockwise direction and clockwise in the south. I succumbed to a photo of myself with one foot in each hemisphere! The guide then demonstrated how one’s physical strength just evaporates when standing on the precise line of the equator due to the Earth’s magnetism, another well kept secret as far as I was concerned.
Quito is where this memorable tour came to an end, leaving only a flight back via Guaquivil and Madrid to London. Odyssey complete, it left me time on the flight to reflect on some very pertinent family history.
From Chile to Ecuador I was following in the footsteps of my grandfather, Rev John Roe, who was chaplain to Santiago for three years from 1873. I never knew him as he died when my father was four, but his letters printed in the South American Missionary Society magazine at that time reveal that not too much has changed – the Catholic Church still predominates and is widely supported with 80- 90% church attendance (which would have disappointed him as he promoted Protestantism most forcibly!), poverty prevails, although doubtless much less than over 130 years ago, earth tremors still shake these countries (but fortunately we did not experience major tremors as he had done on arrival in Valparaiso in July 1873). He referred to the Andean scenery in Chile as “bold and grand in the extreme.... no language can describe the sublimity of the scenery”. On our train journey from Cusco in Peru I could identify with the train journey he had made in July 1876 from Lima (where he stopped on his return home by ship from Chile) up through the Andes on the La Oroya railroad to over 10,000 ft; “some of the grades were very steep, and in many places the line went up in a zig-zag manner, tunnelling every now and then”. Fortunately airline travel spared us his experience of having to descend in a handcar on the railway line in the middle of the night in order to catch his steamship out of Callao, the port for Lima!!
Jackie Roe, April 2007.