Day 35 Hauripampa Celebrations after Morning Walk.

May 5^th, 2018

Sunny day, Cloud builds once more, thunderstorm in the mid-afternoon then dry

Well my host, Moises doesn't leave my side for the whole day. After breakfast, a beautiful breakfast of eggs, bread, some sort of wrapped in leaves food, coffee and herbal tea, we both go for a walk to the top of a nearby hill that has ruins that were built before the Incans came to Peru. Fabulous views of the valley and Moises wonderfully knows the names of the plants and what they are used for medicinally. Moises delights in telling me that the trail is an Incan trails, hundreds of years old.

There aren't many birds, well other than Rufous-collared Sparrows, which are everywhere. The occasional Sparkling Violetear and Giant Hummingbird on the hill slopes, the occasional Variable Hawk and American Kestrel circling overhead. Four passing White-collared Swifts are new for the Green Year list.

On returning to the village we go for a meal in a cafe in the village plaza, which is delicious; a big bowl of some sort of soup with pasta in it and then a plate of chicken and rice. All this is followed by some sort of tea that is supposed to aid digestion. Great.

Whilst in the cafe the brass band comes in. The village is celebrating something to do with the crucifixion at the moment and the brass band men, all in very smart suits and some with ties, come in for the same food with their instruments placed beside them. One musician, named Elvis, sees my camera and wanted a photo. No problem. Photo taken. I ask a trumpet player whether he could play any Louis Armstrong tune. He has never heard of Louis!

Anyway meal finished, off we go to the 'party' where there are three superb young people, Jonathan, Diego and Griselda (Gladys!), who are trying to sell their photographs of birds and scenes from the area. They give me one of a Peruvain Sierra Finch as a gift. Anyway we have some fun but with the band in the cafe there is no music. People are just standing around, waiting for band to arrive. I ask Jonathan, one of the young people, if he has any English Rock Music on his car stereo. Brilliant! U2 songs played loud with me showing the Peruvians how to dance to the music and trying to get them to sing the songs! Elevation!!!

I even go and get the lady selling ice creams to dance with me. She does! It was such a laugh! I am worried that some of the Peruvians filmed my dancing and singing. Viral material it isn't.

Anyway just as we could hear the band coming along the village streets playing their loud music, a thunderstorm arrived. Shelter!

After the storm, in the late afternoon and into the evening, the band are playing as people dance the local dance, well more like a shuffle really. With the ladies beautifully dressed with lacy tops, large flowing black skirts and very colourful shawls and the men in a suit and white shirt they kind of shuffle around each other in a charming, loving way. One of the men is very drunk and insists I dance with his tiny, laughing wife. So I shuffle around and we laugh together. On trying to just be one of the onlooking crowd, Jonathan sees me. He is standing their with his aunt. Next thing I know I am dancing with her and she is not one to dance quietly. Oh no, she is whooping and shouting for all to hear!

As if this wasn't enough for a shy, retiring birder to cope with, Elvis sees me and gives me his Euphonium to play. Now this was the instrument that I played for a short while when at school so I blow a few notes, trying to go along with the music. I am awful but people laugh and some rather drunk men come to give me beer for my performance. One man keeps saying that his name is Johnny and he keeps filling the glass with more beer for me to drink. It must go down in one of course. Then the tuba player insists I played his instrument. Gosh it is heavy but I have a go.

Now as if this isn't enough and boy was it fun, the real reason for everything is to cut down two tall fir trees decorated with balloons and decorative blankets, as part of the crucifixion celebration that they have here in the village every year. One of the dancing couples holds a twig from a fir tree and decides upon which other couple are to participate in the tree felling next. The chosen dancing couple are given the twig and they then have to drink a glass of beer each. Once the beer is drunk they are then given an axe and have so long to try to chop down the tree. After a few moments they have to stop and return the twig to the holders of the twig who pass it on to the next couple to have a go and so on. Well eventually the first tree comes down amongst the dancers and luckily missed them all. This was a big tree! In fact one dancer was killed last year by the tree falling on him but what the heck, this is Peru! Carry on regardless.

People immediately run to grab the balloons and blankets amongst the branches as souvenirs and very young children climb onto the branches to bounce on them.

First tree down, I help to drag it off the dancing area for the dancing to continue and the next tree to be chopped down. Twigs, couples, beer and chopping, it takes about half an hour before the next one comes down too and luckily no one is killed this year!

By now it has started to rain again during all this but the dancing couples just have large umbrellas and carry on. The original wife and very drunk husband just cuddle underneath theirs and you could see how much they loved each other as they danced. He doesn't stop kissing her hands.

So with second tree down and rain falling heavily Moises and I go back to his hostel where he makes me coffee.

Now the villagers, dancing with the same band playing music, will carry a large, beautifully decorated crucifix on Wednesday next to the top of the hill Moises and I went up this morning. There the crucifix will stay until next year.

What a wonderful day with such happy, loving people. I love Peru!

Green Year list : 185 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.29 birds

Distance walked : 2.98 miles

elevation : up 713 feet, down 713 feet

altitude : 11,004 feet

Star Wars Day! Day 34 Getting to Hauripampa. May 4th 2018

May 4^th, 2018

Warm and very sunny, cloud builds until large thunderstorms are overhead and heavy rain falls.

I am awake at around three o'clock and I need the loo. I get out of bed and my bare feet stand in liquid. Someone has urinated in the corridor of the hostel and it has seeped into my room! I am not a happy bunny when the overnight receptionist says that nothing can be done about it.

I had intended to stay at the hostel another night and get some laundry done but the overnight disruption has made me feel like getting on and so I cycle the fifty miles to Hauripampa, a small village outside Juanza. The route took me down the most gorgeous gorge, mile after mile of twisting road that sloped down so that pedalling was at a minimum.

On rounding yet another bend I come across a village where hundreds of people are watching either a football match or some volleyball. I choose the former and sit with the locals cheering on the local team. Sharing my food and juice, I chat with them and celebrate when the match ends with the score 2 – 1 to the home side.

I try to find my overnight hostel, booked already online and a very helpful and chatty young Peruvian man helps me search the village. By asking locals we eventually find it, a beautiful high wall surrounded house. The proprietor, a lovely man named Moises, invites me in, saying he had been waiting for my arrival and shows me my room. Music is playing from a room next door, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. What a perfect welcome!

Moises wants me to go with him for a walk around the village and the local hills but a large thunderstorm stops that and instead I relax in my room. Well relax as well as I can with the thunderstorm directly overhead and there being an almost instantaneous bang of thunder when lightning flashes! Beethoven's Sixth would be appropriate.

Green Year list : 184 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.41 birds

Distance walked : 48.56 miles

elevation : up 3,883 feet, down 5,102 feet

altitude : 11,004 feet

Day 33 To La Oroya. May 3rd 2018

May 3rd, 2018

Cold, icy morning leading to a very sunny, warm day

I knew it had been cold in the night but how cold I am surprised at. Ice is covering my tent! Peaking through the opened flap I can see frost covered grass and little else. There is thick fog outside. I curl up deeper into my sleeping bag.

Emerging an hour later, the fog has gone and there is a deep blue sky and sunshine. I wonder of the sky is a deeper blue at this altitude than at sea level? Packed and pushing, the road takes me through beautiful green valleys. Road workers are busy once more improving the surface. A large vehicle sprays the surface with water and two immense vehicles with metal rollers flatten it out. They are all so friendly as I pass.

Mile after mile has me mostly pushing the bike uphill. Herd after herd of Alpaca and Llamma are seen and then Vicunias, the beautiful, fragile smaller specie of Llama dominate. The males alert the rest of the family of my presence and they watch alert, calling a strange warbling sound as I pass.

A large lagoon greets me over one summit and on it there are a pair of Silvery Grebes. The occasional Thick-billed Miner scurries from off the road into the grass. The occasional raptor flies over; Black-breasted Buzzard eagle, Variable Hawk and American Kestrel. There is the occasional flock of Andean Geese. Another lagoon has White-tufted Grebes on it. Not masses of birds but enough to keep one looking.

Lunchtime and the unusual apparition of a smart-looking brand new bus stop shelter is well timed. I sit and munch and watch a hairy caterpillar attempt to climb one if it's walls. Dusty lorries pass and the expansive views of limestone layered hills, angled away from the perpendicular, and green grasslands are beautiful. It is a lovely day.

A long descent on a descent road, there are thousands of sheep corralled into a large barb wire surrounded field. The lack of vegetation in this makes one aware of how sheep over graze an area. The sheep look grey and skinny and all are searching for the merest morsel. On the other side of the road is a field with no sheep. The contrast is marked.

The road bends and ends with a junction onto a busy, expansive road of pure, smooth tarmac. I turn right and the next twenty two miles almost requires no pedalling. The road descends steeply through a stunningly beautiful gorge of white rocks and green grasslands. The road is a toll road but I am waved through the toll gate. No fee for me. There is a railway line all the way down the valley but no trains. How wonderful it would be to explore Peru by train.

The cliffs have layer upon layer of limestone angled to the sky, bent and eroded layers exposed to show earth works, millions of years of sediment now compacted and thousands of feet above any sea.

As the Sun disappears behind the hills I reach the city of La Oroya, a busy, noisy city with a huge factory complex at the south end of it that has an immense chimney belching out some disgusting stuff. I find a hostel. It has been a long day. After a walk around a few streets to get some food I sit on my bed with the intention of relaxing and eating. That doesn't happen. I fall asleep.

Green Year list : 184 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.58 birds

Distance walked : 36.40 miles

elevation : up 2,221 feet, down 3,381 feet

altitude : 12,500 feet

Day 32 Moving on. A Day Heading East

May 2^nd, 2018

Hot and sunny

The tent is icy in the morning and I am grateful that I haven't camped on top of any cow pats. There are plenty around me and as I pitched the tent in the dark it would have been easy to hit one. A local farmer comes over and chats for a while before asking me to take his photograph. He does a strange pose and then walks off after instructing me to close the barbed wire gate on my way off his field.

I stop in the village to buy some drink and food. Yogurt, juice and a strange sort of thick set blancmange that is delicious make my breakfast, which I eat whilst sitting on a stanchion by a large steel girder bridge over a fast flowing river. A young bull is stuck with it's head caught in some square meshed fencing. There is no way that I am going anywhere near it, especially after last week's close encounter with his Dad! Leaving it to it's fate I am glad to see that it has managed to get free when I am about a mile away.

The road is dusty and dry and steep as it goes higher and higher. The rock formations to my left, a cliff of a soft, eroded conglomerate reminds me of Meteora in Greece. There the rock has made very tall stacks upon the top of many are monasteries. These used to be only accessible by being brought up in a basket tied to a very long rope but nowadays, as they want the tourist trade, there are steep pathways and steps. My daughter, Rebecca and I visited some of them back in 2011. Inside the churches there are fabulous frescoes depicting the death of saints, strange motivated men who wanted to be killed in order to show their love of God. Imagine a way of being killed and it is probably depicted there. Boiled alive? No problem. Chopped into tiny pieces from the feet up? It's there. Arrows in the chest, 180! Of course it's there. 101 ways of killing a man, all depicted graphically and colourfully.

Andean Tinamous walk across the road in front of me. Andean Flickers sit on rocks and watch me carefully as I pass. One group of them numbers eight, the largest flock of a woodpecker species I have ever seen. I do remember seeing five Green Woodpeckers on one dead gorse bush near Lyndhurst, New Forest many years ago when I was hitch-hiking and walking in the area when I was twenty two years old. Strange how bird memories stick with you.

A fossil of an ammonite beside the road grabs my attention. I am over 10,000 feet above sea level and this died deep beneath an ocean hundreds of millions of years ago. I muse about how if the land rose a centimetre a year then it would be higher than Everest within a million years.

On reaching the highest point of the road the views are stupendous. From here I can see for miles and miles. I can see massive snow-capped mountains in all directions and an uncountable number of mountain peaks. A motorcyclist passes and on the back is a dead sheep.

Descending once more I reach a small village. Asking whether they have a hostel, I am invited to join a small group of villages for a meal of potatoes, corn and a lump of some sort of gristly meat. With hot herbal tea as well I sit and chat with the various village members; two young men, three old and almost toothless women and an old man who speaks some English. He tells me that he lived in the US many years ago, in Ohio. The offer of money for the food is refused and I say goodbye to the group. There is no hostel and after a few miles of pushing the bike uphill once more, I find a flat area of grass that is too perfect for camping to refuse. Once more it is dark by the time I have erected my tent.

Green Year list : 184 birds average new birds to list per day : 5.75 birds

Distance walked, pushed and cycled : 16.14 miles

elevation : up 1,511 feet, down 1,172 feet

altitude : 14,500 feet

Day 31 Away from Marcapomaconcha. Losses and Gains 1st May 2018

May 1^st, 2018

Cloudy morning, light in my face breeze, showers with hail briefly in afternoon, sunny intervals.

Goodbye to Hose, Lee and family after breakfast, a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and Manuel the cuddly toy pig for their toddler will lighten my load. I had wanted to keep Manuel until Salvacion and give him as a prize to one of the wonderful children of Chaskawasi-Manu but he has a small split after the 'accident' the other day back at Huanza and therefore I worry that the damage to him will increase if he stays on the bike.

Elba, the kind shop lady, who helped me on my arrival in the village the other night, is walking with two friends and handshakes and cheek to cheek kisses are embarrassing but nice. There is a bank of soil on the hill opposite the laundry buildings and it is full of large hole. Two holes have attendant Andean Flickers and another one sits on a rock by the road and is totally unperturbed by my passing.

After the brief push uphill from the village edge, the dirt road is all downhill to the next road junction. I stop to watch a juvenile Mountain Caracara fly over and land nearby. On looking more closely I count twenty one Caracara in the area. I wonder what attracts them here.

Turning left, north, onto the next road I cycle downhill. What a thrill to be actually cycling again but really with it being nearly all downhill this is really 'just falling in style!' Around a few bends and on a flat river plain stretching away into the distance are a number of good-sized lagoons and on them Chilean Flamingos.

I stop to count them. Fifty three. There are also lots of Puna Ibis, Andean Coot, a few Giant Coot, Speckles Ducks, Moorhen, eighteen Andean Geese and four Black-crowned Night Herons.

Continuing down the valley there are flocks of Puna Ibis, one flock contains an almost completely white bird, a partial albino, yet Passerines are few. An Andean Negrtio on the bog, a few White-winged and Cream-bellied Cincloides with the occasional Peruvian Sierra finch, Plain-coloured Seedeater and Bright-rumped Yellow Finch.

Past an old checkpoint with attendant barking dogs and hanging meat over the doorway, there are two fence posts with dessicated carcases of young dogs. How bizarre. Another thing to ponder.

The valley stretches out into a wide, grass-covered plain with large enclosures with various domestic herds. Once more every bit of the landscape, excepting the mountain rocky peaks, are over grazed and the landscape takes on the appearance of The Pennines or mid-Wales. There is even a limestone-layered hillside that looks like Malham Tarn and Ingleborough. 

Within the paddocks are herds of cattle. Outside are herds of cattle, sheep and the animals that prove I am in Peru not taking a road over Wensleydale, Llamas. Such fabulous animals, the males are huge and their movement is camel-like. 

The herd has animals of all ages and colour combinations of brown, white and buff.

One anclosure of cows has around one hundred and fifty Andean Geese behind them and they make a spectacular sight and sound as they take off together with dozens of Puna Ibis.

There are also large groups of horses. Six horses are being taken along the road by two men with three dogs. An old-style lifestyle it may seem but perfect for this environment. The one horseman has large bags either side of the horse and they slowly progress along the road.

Now I am a tad nervous of passing cows nowadays for the obvious reason. Once battered twice shy! So when a herd of cattle approach me along the road I carefully stand to one side and watch carefully as they pass. They too seem nervous of me and the odd cow stands for a while before running to get past. I am ready to get over the barbed wire fence if any come closer than the other side of the road.

On one bend in the road there is a small pool with seven Chilean Flamingos. I stop to look closer and a herd of cows come down the road but won't go any further with me being there. This time I do climb over the fence and go to the other end of the road to where they are and persuade them to move along. Luckily they do. Returning to the pool and my bike I scan the pool and am delighted, no I am totally surprised to find a Solitary Sandpiper! I had given no thought on this being available in the High Andes as a bird for the trip, thinking that this beautiful wader would be in North America by now. A bonus bird I feel that heightens moral.

There are lots of pools in the area and checking them brings two Lesser yellowlegs to go with the other Yank. There are also flocks of Puna Ibis, a common bird in this habitat. Andean Negritos seem to like the marshy edges as well for there are a few of them.

The road splits once more and my way takes me along long stretches that zig zag and gain height. On one bend three Puna Snipe dash out of the roadside ditch, calling as they, very much snipe-like, fly low and disappear into the grass clumps and marsh ground nearby. I try for half an hour or so to photograph and video them with very limited success. Their call is very like that of the European Common Snipe and the markings on mantle and wings likewise, with mantle stripes and wingbars. About fifteen show themselves in their usual low projectile fashion.

The hill climb completed, there follows a very long, mile after mile slow descent in rain and hail. A pale phase Variable Hawk sitting on a fence post stops me. A shelter of a very basic sort helps me dry out for a while and the rain stops within half an hour.

The descent continues on dirt track roads and another pale phase Variable Hawk flies low in the valley below.

Around a corner there is a junction where large lorries carrying mud and pebbles have been joining the road. Here starts some serious road works and the way is bumpy and wet, with mud clinging to the wheels. I am stopped on one stretch as a lorry dumps it's load and a, what I would call in Britain a JCB, flattens it all out ready for two steamrollers, much larger than the ones I remember from my childhood with two large tyres at one end and the metal roller at the other, to finish the job.

After being let through the road is extremely bumpy along long descending stretches that have yet to be done. I am stopped again though by more of the same sort of vehicles but the mud this time is far wetter than before. No chance to cycle here, once let through I have to push.

Once free again, the road goes down to a river and ascends the other side where I find a confusing junction. My map tells me to go right so I do. Two miles later I come across another, larger river and find myself unable to get across because it is a three foot deep ford! 

I contemplate fording it for about ten seconds with memories of the disaster of when I did so in February of 2015 in Devon. The ford on that occasion was flooded and my decision to try to cross, instead of returning and taking the ten mile diversion, ended up up with me waist deep in freezing water clinging onto the bike. Not this time thanks.

I look down and think of how my panniers would cope if I did try to cross. Panniers. One is missing. Front left. As I walk and cycle the two miles back to the junction I try to think what was in it. I suddenly panic and think that it is the one with my passport and wallet in it! I get off and quickly look inside the one that is still there. Thankfully my passport and wallet are in the one I still have. Now that would have been a disaster. So what is in the one I have lost. I work it out as I get nearer to the last junction I had seen it. Socks, not too bad to lose. Toiletries, well I can get them at the next village. A t-shirt, bugger, I liked that one and the bicycle pump. Now losing that could be a problem obviously yet I have faith in my Schwalbe Marathon tyres.

Having not found it on reaching the junction I consider whether I had really seen it there. Maybe it had fallen off on that very long, bumpy descent. The thought of walking all the way back up there didn't thrill me. Also it is by now only an hour before dark. I decide that it is gone and walk the five kilometres to the next village. No hostel here so I camp in a field having tried to get to the next village, Santa Barbara, before dark but not making it. Setting the tent up in the dark is fun.

Green Year list : 184 birds

average new birds to list per day : 5.94 birds

Distance cycled : 33.78 miles

elevation : up 1.862 feet, down 2,994 feet

altitude : 13,356 feet

30th April, 2018. Last day of the First Month of BIKING BIRDER IV

April 30^th, 2018

Early morning fog due to low cloud and rain gave way to a glorious sunny day. Two thunder storms passed in the afternoon but I was between them and only had half an hour of hail and rain.

Breakfast on the last day of the first month of The Biking Birder Adventure IV – Peru, almost the same as yesterday, an addition of fried bananas, all for the same price. Hose, Elizabeth, Carmen and Lee, I thank you. The same lads as yesterday are here and they have plates of potatoes and rice.

Outside, ready for a long walk to some mountains to the north, Doug, the very friendly dog won't stop following me and even introduces me to another friendly dog. It is only when I have pretended to be angry a couple of hundred yards outside the village that I get them to STAY! I feel like Karl from the Pixar film, Up. Doug in the film and the dog with me now, is very similar. I wonder if this Doug will speak Spanish?

The weather is beautiful and the surrounding mountains are bathed in sunlight, accentuating each different rock form, shape and colour. South of Cusco is the famous Rainbow Mountain made of stripes of many coloured rock. They have smaller versions here with reds, creams and shades of grey.

A farmer is stretching barbed wire and nailing it to posts. I offer him various food items that I don't want to carry when I continue on my way tomorrow, packets of water crackers and biscuits. The farmer, Hernando, gratefully receives them. I am grateful for him to take them and that he understands my need to reduce the weight on my bike.

I follow the road that circumnavigates the lake to the north and find a large rock to stop and sit for a while. The view is incredible and amazing to think that just a couple of hours ago one could hardly see any distance at all due to the rain and fog. The sunshine has brought out more flies, luckily not biting ones and eight Andean Swallows are hawking around feeding on them. One swallow lands nearby luckily.

Walking about a mile further up the road, breaking off to climb the steep grassy slope, on reaching the top of a long ridge there is a view of yet another large lake called Laguna Runtacocha. It isn't as big as Marcopomacocha's main lake but still impressive as it is surrounded by high mountains on three sides giving a magnificent view in the sunshine. An hour or so later I am searching the boggy pools and streams at the far end of the lake, looking for my target bird of the day, the famed Diademed Sandpiper. Every small, shallow pool is searched, every small stream is likewise but no trace of the sandpiper, not even any footprints. There are half a dozen White-winged Cinclides and a couple of Taczanowski's Ground-Tyrants, which are new for the adventure.

Via a short cliff scramble to get around to another area similar to this, with meandering, bubbling streams, small pools and boggy, mossy areas and despite another careful search, no luck with the sandpiper. At the far end there is a small waterfall, I love the word cascade, and I carefully climb up the sandy slope that has some tufted grass. On reaching the top there is yet another lake, quite small so I guess I am now in a corrie. For those of you reading this in the UK this is the best sort of corrie! Stunningly beautiful with high cliffs of the mountains that rise to peaks thousands of feet above, giving it a feeling of wonderful and favourite site I have been fortunate enough to visit a few times in the Pyrenees in France, La Cirque de Gavarnie. There is even a waterfall here, not Europe's highest cascade as at Gavarnie yet impressive enough. On one side of the corrie the slope is yet more of the sandy habitat with tall grasses set about in thick, two foot high tufts. A bird flies out and quickly disappears again, a bird with a widely rounded, rufous tail, small in size and obviously a canestero of some kind. It gives very short views as it runs between grassy clumps. A very frustrating bird to try and get a decent view of, especially as it means climbing the slope where every step is breath-taking, literally at this altitude. The bird reminds me of Dupont's Larks on the sierra's of Belchite in Spain, similar jizz with the speedy spurts between the grass that is available in both habitats. The tail is the give away, a warm, rufous colour and so I scribble Streak-backed Canestero in my notes.

Around the small lake to the waterfall, I sadly find a dead mouse. I wonder how the small thing died. Back down to the larger lakeside and after lunch of a couple of roast banana sandwiches and mandarins it is time to make my way back to the village. Thunder clouds are brewing to the south west and are heading this way.

Roast banana, more memories of times past, a song sung at Rock festivals in the Seventies. My memory tells of an almost never ending roast banana song which went like this :

And he would peddle, peddle, peddle

Fake Marijuana.

He would peddle, peddle, peddle

Some roast banana

He would make a lot of bread,

Impersonate a FED,

Roll a joint, roll a joint,

Get smashed right off his head

So he would peddle, peddle, peddle

A little further, until the man got caught.

So they came in a van

He said, “I'm the wrong man!”

And so he'd peddle, peddle, peddle.

One more time!

And everyone did. Thousands of hippy-styled people, including myself with Afghan coat, massed necklaces of various fruit pips (!) around my neck dangling to my waist, a 'Kiss-me-Quick' hat from Blackpool bedecked with dozens of enamel badges of my favourite Rock Music groups, elasticated denim jeans that were skin tight and almost impossible to get in and out of with holes and patches giving more names of Rock groups giving me a Max Wall legs appearance and long, dark brown hair that reached down my back that was occasionally plaited into a hundred strands with beads. I wasn't alone in 1976 with such a look. “Everyone wears a uniform,” as Frank Zappa used to say.

I changed the words to the 'Peddle, peddle, peddle' song during my UK Biking Birder adventures to be about The Biking Birder. The lyrics to that song and many other bird related tunes are available in my book. The link to buy it is on the right of this page! 400 wonderful pages for £10 . . . what amazing value. Inspirational!!!

Walking back along the lake side hail and rain fall but not too bad. I can see that the village is being really hit by the thunderstorm and the sky that way is dark and threatening. Thunder echoes around the valley. By the time I get back to the road the sun is back out and the rest of the day is once more beautiful sunshine, the sky having those lovely white fluffy Cumulus clouds.

In the evening, in the hotel restaurant, the lads from the morning, who have spent the day forking the nearby village football pitch and removing stones from it, play their version of Pool – Snooker on the large table with an sexagenarian from Britain. Fabulous fun and we sit together for dinner. My dinner consists of rice, potatoes, vegetable stew and a beautiful, orange-fleshed trout caught that day from the lake. I share half of it with the lads.

Hose is busy around the corner chopping and sawing up a whole skinned sheep! The four lady cooks are in the kitchen and Junior, one of the lads, takes photographs of everyone. Wonderful people.

So the first of the six month adventure comes to an end. From Lima to Marcopomacocha, from sea level to 15,000 feet, there have been a couple of unfortunate events but the overall impression has been of one of incredibly friendly people, magnificent landscapes, fabulous birds and birding and the sort of difficult physical challenge that I love and all is Green about the adventure. The power for a mobile and a small laptop, the carbon used to cook the very occasional warm meal and a light bulb. Not much of a carbon footprint, I think I will call this Green Birding!

Green Year list : 180 birds average new birds to list per day : 6.00 birds

Distance walked : 6.70 miles

elevation : up 1,040 feet, down 1,040 feet

altitude : 14,521 feet