May
26th,
2018
Sunny
in the morning and hot. Less Cloud in the afternoon than recently so
warmer. Windless
Today
my football team attempt to get back into the Premiership after being
away in the Championship for two years. They are playing Fulham in
the Play off Final at Wembley, kick off 5:00 p.m. In the UK, 11.00
a.m. Here in Peru. I am in place in an internet shop, sitting behind
console number six, my lucky number, by 10:30. Here's hoping.
England
are playing cricket against Pakistan at Lords, London and when I find
the match on the BBC cricket webpage I find that they are doing
disastrously bad. I set up a webpage so that I can keep tracks on
both and start finding maps of the route that I need to take in the
month of June. From Here, Uripa, I hope to be at Abancayo by the
month's end and then aim to push on to Machu Picchu and Cusco. I have
an aim to be at Paucartambo, the village ear to the beginning of The
Manu National Park by the first of July. That is the plan. Using
Mapometer I collate all the maps showing the routes, distances,
elevations and altitudes.
I
turn back to the cricket and the football in turn, being
superstitious that if I leave a map unfinished then that will be bad
for them both! Ridiculous, just like when I used to wear a claret
sock on my left foot and a blue sock on my right when I attended
Villa matches in the 1970s. If ever I forgot to do so, and luckily I
had two pairs, then my superstitious nature would be convinced that
the Villa would lose.
I
should have worn the socks today for the match ended up with Villa
losing 1 – 0 to ten men. Fulham had a player sent off with twenty
minutes to go. Another season in the second division, I mean The
Championship for the Villa so I will be watching them there when I
return in October.
Meanwhile
the cricket has improved. England's batsmen, Josh Butler and debutant
spinner, twenty year old Bess, have put up some spirited resistance
and we haven't lost another wicket. I love cricket. It can look
really dire, defeat looms and then two players stick around and
things brighten up. Will this match take on Headingly 1982
proportions?
With
mixed emotions I head off for the Eucalyptus forests to bird the
afternoon away. Taking a different route to yesterday, I head off up
a hill where a narrow path follows a water courseway. Birds are as
few as yesterday and after a couple of miles of struggling because of
the state of my feet, blistered and cut, I turn and take a different
route back to the village. No new birds for the Green Year list and
no photographs taken of any either. I do list them with the intention
of placing the record on eBird when I can.
Back
in the town, I search the market for shoes. There are half a dozen
stores that have a good number of shoes, in fact they are shoe stores
but the largest they can come up with is size 42, size 7 in the UK.
As my present shoes are 44 and still way too small for me, I will
have to cut away the front leather on the boots I bought in Ayacucho
a week ago. The stall owner and I have a laugh at my Ugly Sister
attempts at getting the trainers she thinks will fit onto my
landowners. My usual size is UK 11! Another stall owner says that I
won't be able to get any my size except in Lima. Oh great! How stupid
of me not to foresee this problem occurring.
Having
managed to find the right size spanner for the brake block nuts and
bolts this morning, I spend the last hour of lovely sunshine changing
three blocks and making sure everything else is tightened up as well.
I also have bought some antibiotic cream and plasters for my feet and
spend some time cutting nails as far back as I can and cleaning all
problem areas. I remember meeting a rather strange man last year when
I was at Chaskawasi-Manu in The Manu, the charity that I am
supporting this year together with Birdlife International. Well, this
man, I forget his name, insisted on showing me where he had cut off
one of his own toes because of getting an infection! He used
novocaine and a pair of scissors, as you do. Anyway, I have a long
way to walk and push tomorrow, over eighteen miles of up a steep road
and I want my feet to be as pain free as possible and I want to keep
all of my toes thank you. Some may be a bit twisted due to previous
accidents but they are mine. My leather boots now look like sandals
at the front as I have cut off the leather that rubs against my toes
and I don't care if wearing socks with sandals is not in fashion. My
feet come first, socks and sandals it is. It was frustrating this
afternoon to look at the superb mountain peaks and think that in the
past I would have walked up there. Memories of doing so at Mount
Parnassus and Mount Olympus in 2011 in Greece, Gavarnie, Col de
Portelet, Infierno and Cauterets on the French side of The Pyrenees
in 1990 and 2009 and various high hills around Cusco and Pisac here
in Peru last year. The right shoes and no problem.
Green
Year list : 202 birds average new birds to list per day : 3.61
birds
altitude
: 10,535 feet
Day's
bird list :
Rufous-collared
Sparrow 17
Chiguanca
Thrush 5
Black-backed
Grosbeak 3
Blue
& Yellow Tanager 1
Cinereous
Conebill 6
Yellow-billed
Tit Tyrant 4
Hooded
Siskin 3
Band-tailed
Seedeater 4
Golden-billed
Saltator 4
Spot-winged
Pigeon 1
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