May
15th,
2018
VERY
hot and sunny, no cloud. Sweltering!
Out
by seven thirty, I walk the bike through the village and watch as
teachers and green uniformed track suited children make their way to
school. The siren sounds and late children run to get there. Soon
after a short downhill section of thinly tarmacked, potholed road and
having gone around a bend, the village is behind me. Ahead is a day
of more slow cycling and even slower pushing as the road once more
follows the river and ascends where sections of major erosion is
taking place.
After
a couple of miles the road climbs via a double u-bend and on one bend
there are a group of people selling avocados, oranges, something
small and green that look like plum tomato shaped avocados and bags
of what look like miniature cooked crab apples. I buy half a dozen of
the strangely shaped miniature avocados and a bag of the apples. Try
anything once. The family all love the characters on the bike and are
as friendly as I have found Peruvian people to be.
A
few miles further I stop by a house with three generations of a
family outside the doorway. I stop because I have heard a parrot. I
look all around, much to the amusement of the family members,
Grandmother - Victoria, Mother - Arabella, Daughter - Joanna and
brother, Daniel, but cannot see the bird. Then I spot him on the
balcony chewing away at some corn that is spread out up there to dry.
A Scarlet-faced Parakeet looks down at me and looks so small when so
close. Daniel loves the bike and the women love my companions. I
explain that they are for some children who live in the Manu National
Park and name Gloria, Mariella, Diego and Junior as recipients.
Arabella suggests a photograph and Joanna gets out an Iphone. Daniel
climbs onto my saddle.
Another
encounter with a family occurs when a motorbike stops as I am pushing
the bike up a steep incline. Mum, Dad and sandwiched between the two
on the bike, a toddler daughter, ask me to give the small one one of
the toys. I go into overdrive about how they are for some children in
The Manu and give them some money instead. How I wish I could give
every child a toy! I wonder if I could ask people to do as I have
done when I return to Britain. It would be quite simple. Buy cuddly
toys from charity shops in one's town. Pack for a holiday. Weigh your
luggage and take the weight up to the maximum allowed by your flight
airline. Give the toys away on meeting a family. Simple.
In
the past I have taken the usual pens, pencils, arts and crafts
materials, colouring books, including the incredible ones that you
can get nowadays but how much better I feel to give a large cuddly
toy. I know my own children placed great store in their chosen cuddly
toy. My daughter Rebecca had a large Bambi from Disneyland Paris. My
youngest step daughter would never go to bed when young without her
rather tatty, small grey seal. Sarah would cling to it as she went to
sleep. Take a cuddly on your next holiday and give it away.
I
stop at a roadside restaurant for breakfast which is taken on a back
terrace surrounded by orange and mango trees. The friendly
proprietor, who tells me on asking that his name is Doctor Hermano
Juan . . . . a list of names speedily spoken and undecipherable by
me, takes my order and a plate piled high with chips, rice and a stew
containing peppers, green beans and small bits of some sort of meat
arrives with a large cup of black coffee and a tin of condensed milk.
Perfect. Whilst I am eating there is a strange chirping in a nearby
bush and out comes a Squirrel Monkey! It is a family pet and free to
roam around the orchard.
Small
birds are at a premium as I proceed along the road. There just aren't
any, not even Rufous-collared Sparrows. There are a fair number of
Scrub Blackbirds, their calls and whistles accompany me most of the
way but of the small passerines, well a couple of Black Phoebes by
the river, a Bright-rumped Yellow Finch on a cliff and a ***********
in some bushes close to a couple of Black-backed Grosbeaks. A few
American Kestrels I see too but what there are lots of now is
parakeets. Every so often I hear groups chattering away and stop to
try to see them in the dense foliage of avocado or mango trees. It
isn't easy. It is amazing how the green of the leaves hides the green
of the parakeets. After yesterday;s abysmal photographs of flying
parakeets, I am pleased to get some today that show red on the wings,
Scarlet-faced Parakeets and others that don't, Mitred
Parakeets.
The flocks seem to be around the dozen mark but two flocks are larger
with around fifty birds together. One such flock is high in trees
with willow type leaes. Another flock is flying high, noisily
disappearing over a towering ridge.
After
midday the temperature gets unbearable and I am grateful when a
French man from Arles invites me into his restaurant for a drink. He
introduces me to his Peruvian wife, his mother in law and two
Peruvian builders who are helping him build a soon to be impressive
hotel next door to the restaurant. For an hour we chat, well we do
after I finish my diatribe about how I hate bull fighting in Arles
and argue back his 'but it is tradition' argument. Terribly I forget
their names but for an hour or so we talk about Peruvian politics and
how the business is going to grow, especially as lots of cycling
tourists pass this way in July and August. The Frenchman takes me
around to look at the hotel being built. All the walls are up and all
they need are windows and plastering, floors covered and ensuites
completed and it will be ready to open. Together we go onto the roof
and admire the view. The land was a wedding present from the wife's
father. They invite me to camp in their orchard but there is no
mobile signal and definitely no internet. I decline because Aston
Villa are playing the second leg of the play off match against
Middlesborough. If Villa can hold onto their 1 – 0 lead from the
first leg then they will be going to Wembley for the final. I say my
au revoirs, adios and start for the village of Mayocc.
On
eraching the village about ten minutes later, a pair of ladies are
sitting outside a shop selling avocados. I stop and ask whether there
is a hostel in the village and immediately one of them, an old lady
dressed completely in black, takes me across the road to her hostel,
not that you could tell it was one. Through the door with the biek,
the downstairs rooms are demarcated by large curtains and upstairs
there are three rooms with doors. The rest of the hostl is being
built and the workers are hammering and sawing away. The lady tells
me that they will be gone by the evening and she shows me a room.
Twenty soles is expensive for what I find but I won't quibble. I am
not the bartering sort. These people do not have a lot of money and
what is the difference between fifteen or twenty soles? About a
pound. I always find it disgusting when a tourist boasts about how
they bartered down a product to the sellers lowest price. Arrogant
greed overtakes generous compassion.
I
get out my mobile and find the Aston Villa text feed on the match.
Fifty one minutes gone and 0 – 0. Come on Villa. The next forty
miutes are spent trying to relax as Villa go close again and agin and
the goalkeeper makes great saves. I need to keep going back and forth
on my mobile to get the updates and the whole process is agonisingly
slow. I take videos of myself giving a commentary to stay calm. I
desperately want the Villa to win, get to Wembley, beat Fulham in the
final and get back into the Premiership. I may not love present day
football with league position dependent on how much money is spent
and nothing else but I do love Villa. A whole childhood spent going
to every home game.
Into
injury time, five minutes, Middlesborough have a free kick on the
edge of the penalty area after the Villa goalkeeper handled the ball
outside the box. Stuart Downing is on the ball, an ex-Villa player.
He shoots and it hits the top of the bar and is over. So are
Middlesborough. The full time whistle and Villa are at Wembley. I
turn the video off on my camera after a moment of ecstatic screaming!
Opposite
my half built hostel, which I find out has no running water, there is
a shop and in it at the back I find an old big box computer. For one
Sole I can access the internet. Turning it on a photograoh of the
Selfridge's building in Birmingham, my birthplace, comes up just as
it did in Salvacion in the Manu the first time I did the same there
in 2014. I email my Mum and dad celebrating the Villa win and email
my daughter too. I Facebook the same to friends.
By
now the Sun is going down behind some hills to the west and I walk
down through orchards to the river. I see only two small birds, a
green and white hummingbird specie and a Bran-coloured
Flycatcher.
New birds may be coming at less than my desired average of three but
at least they are still coming. Just wait until I reach The Manu!
Down
by the river Montaro there is a Shrek and Donkey like bridge over the
water, not over a mass of molten larva. I notice that all dusty
footprints are down the centre of each plank and I walk the same. The
long suspension bridge shakes as I proceed across. On the other side
there is a bush with thirteen Scrub Blackbirds gathered to roost for
the night Also four White-tipped Doves are feeding near some dense
bushes. Otherwise once more there are no birds so I turn back for the
village. Along the path back through the orchards, a young, stocky
Peruvian and his four year old or thereabouts son are taking a
wheelbarrow full of large logs up to the village. The Dad is wearing
a Chelsea Football Club top and his son has a Chelsea badge sown onto
his trousers. The young boy's jumper is fabulously knitted with rural
scenes of animals and flowers, trees and birds.
Green
Year list : 195 birds average new birds to list per day : 4.33
birds
Distance
walked : 21.82 miles
elevation
: up 3,954 feet, down 4,746 feet
altitude
: 7,250 feet
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