Monday, 28 May 2018

Day 56 Uripa


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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