Arequipa is a gentle city, with an air of calm and serenity.  We had driven there from Puno as part of a bus tour that took us past some distant flamingos and an overnight stay in a spa town, Chivay, perched on a dusty plateau.  We ambled around the main square ‘ fresh and green despite the empty nature of the outlying streets.  We played a game of pool on an incredibly lopsided table in an unmanned Irish pub and watched a local football match in a spaceship like stadium with half a roof – though that half was handy when the rain briefly made an appearance.

The main point of this diversion however was the Canon de Colca, a staggeringly vast canyon cut through the volcanic rock..  Over 3000m deep, it is the second largest land based chasm in the world, to its shorter neighbour in Peru.  It´s twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, though the top line is variable and the highest point is measured from the top of overhanging mountains.  We weren´t quite along the top but still high enough.  We set off along the trail, scorching our way into the distance until the hands of time dragged us back for the bus on to Arequipa.

We had a day in town, mostly spent exploring an old nunnery built in the 1500´s and full of nooks and crannies.  For the first 300 years it had been a relative den of iniquity, founded and funded by a rich European, the nuns were given to organising musical festivities and generally living it up until the Pope sent a stern old Dominican to scare the women back to Europe.   Women who had been servants and slaves to the nuns stayed on to be nuns themselves.  We had a lunch from a menu featuring Sandwiches of the Saints, but afterwards Tom didn´t seem to have noted the Dominican edict when he strode up to the counter and enquired in an expectant tone ´Donde la cervezañ?  After a startled waiter had attempted to fathom the question wild gestures eventually led him to the relief of the servicios instead.

Having got as far as Arequipa, and with the bus back to Cuzco going back the way we had come, via Puno, we instead marched on up the coast to Nazca and a double dose of night buses.  MOre on that next time, I´m off to jump off a cliff.  (Attached to a parachute.)

We have arrived here in Puno on the shores ofLake Titicaca straight from an overnight pause in Lima (more on that later) and so the heady heights has taken its toll on the first few days.  Nothing dramatic but a lot of yawning and deep breathing.   Initially it was pretty tiring to walk very far, or go up a flight of stairs.  

It all started in an altogether more fervid fashion a sour crack of dawn flight to Amsterdam was delayed by an hour due to fog – precisely the same amount of time we thought we had to get our connecting flight.  A cross terminal run with undone sholeaces brought us to a backlog queue and our moods were furthere hoisted by an unexpected upgrade to business class. Tom Kirby (for it is he) qas quickly into his stride, grinning like a loon, pressing all the buttons and grabbing champagne with his free hand.

Our arrival in Lima continued on the upward spiral, with the hotel´s annual cocktail party in fujll swing.  Our first experience of Peru was thus bizarre dancing routines attempting to convey international çtravel ‘ a man with a gold bow tie, crisp suit and aflat cap did a dance with a suticase.  Couples shimmied up and down to a fake bedroom and men in waistocoats dangled curious little fusion food bites and enought pisco to fell a horse.  We didn´t even get to use the free drink vouchers we were given on arrival.

Edit – this blog was put on hold after the arrivalof la familia Dawson, in high spirits after their months zigzagginmg across teh Andes and Amazon.

To return ot our first few days, now writing from the Southern town of Arequipa, our stay in Puno continued the one off theme with th eannual parade featuring dancers in elaborate cosutmes swinging through the streets accompanied by drummers and related clamour.  The front dancers would sway one way an dthen the other, yet manage to stay in a straight line.  The one off nature was somewhat disrupted by subsequent parading past the restaurant we were eating in with Charles and the whanau a few days later.

Our princiapal expedition in Puno has been to the floating Uros islands ‘ made of reeds, they were a good fifty metres square, and about 2 metres thick.  Originally conceived to remove their creators from the reaches fo rht ewarmongering Huari and Inca, they now host a number of traditional families, tourism magnets and eco bases.  The island we visited even had a solar panel. 

We also tookoff to see a fertility temple  ‘ related pictures will be obvious – and a ruined temple nearby.  Despite Some urging and a map drawn by the innovative Tom  the taxi driver couldn{t find it, and so we took a diversion up a random hill instead.

The trip has got off to a great start, with the grim forecasts being thoroughly vaporised by a sun of daunting ferocity ‘ as some slight scorch marks testify.  Temperatures in Puno were supposed to be between 13 and 2 degrees but it doesn{t feel as if it{s got below 18.

Around people stand in a mixture of bemusement and smug superiority as the sticky pink flotsam is rounded up by the overweight man in a day-glo jacket. Nothing to see here folks.

At the turnstile a greasy haired man is looking anxious and studying his stock, while in the circus tent the animals are getting restless. And down at the back office, surrounded by paper balls and picked out by a bare light swinging from side to side, the balding pate and saggy face of the top man is flush and edgy.

Uncertainty is shimmering amongst those outside, but for just a minute the audience has seen a chink in the seedy sound and light show.  For just a moment the loincloth has swung loose, and the henpecked face of the puppet master peers out, ghastly and leering.  But in the heady of fug the puppets are coming loose.

Even better, the start of an opportunity for real change has actually been taken hold of, with parliament rediscovering some sturm and drang so long lost it seemed extinct rather than in hibernation.

Like all revolutions it’ll only be any good if it lasts.  The distortion in the media is of greater worry to me than the phone hacking, and if the promised commission has enough teeth to actually take down those that are beyond the pale (you know who I’m looking at) then we might actually get somewhere. So many ifs.

The Arab spring has rolled into a tetchy impasse, but there is a small chance this could be the beginning of the end of a different type of tyrant in the UK.  If, though.  All sorts of articles about at the moment, but as this one points out – the bankers largely got away, the MP’s expenses slipped into the background, why not this too?

If we want to see a future where people can speak their mind – speeches like this by Kumar Sangakkara – then we need a press that’s responsible as well as free.

And I had mentioned Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News.  If you’ve not read it yet, read it now.

The passage in Rotten Boroughs covered the case of a teenager, sufficiently agitated by the lack of activity in his town in Cheshire, who subsequently ran for office in the local council, and won with the notion of building a skate park.  His gesture and enthusiasm were annulled within a week, reportedly by a campaign against the range of links covered on his facebook page, which might ‘cause offence’.  The Eye concluded that a combination of establishment bitterness and lazy journalism was to blame, but I thought there was also something bigger at play.

What strikes me is that there is a dehumanisation of politicians and famous people.  It’s almost as if we expect them to behave in a perfect way – as defined by the spectator.  The false outrage and moral finger wagging that occurs when someone has an affair is risibly hypocritical and fundamentally destructive.

It’s also pretty dispiriting, and while the line has to be drawn at criminal activity there is often a reluctance to acknowledge human flaws.  When a politician changes a decision, it is a ‘humiliating u-turn’, when they makes mistakes they are derided, even if they admit to it, and when have affairs they are bathed in moral spittle.

This wouldn’t be much of a problem if it didn’t change the way that politicians behave – and all the noise and fury over injunctions is only there because there’s an unwillingness to accept people are flawed.  The reaction in France, for example, to the stories about Dominique Strauss – Kahn has been mixed – not so much on the guilt or otherwise but a shift from a shrug as default response to philandering sleaze.

And if you take it away from sex and look to serious policy – you could look at the ‘war on drugs’, say, or immigration for example, or prostitution, where politicians delicately trot around the hectoring tone of the Daily Mail.  An article in the Graun highlights the former, Richard Branson joining the fold.

And surely this fundamentally reduces the ability of the government to pull through genuinely transformative and positive policy making?

One of them said ‘Man does little by instruction, much by passion and most by habit.’ As a prognostication it’s not up to much but as a truism it’s pretty spot on I reckon.  It reflects one of the elements I have been trying to address over the long years – the removal of over – analysis from decision making.

It may sound fairly rudimentary, but I think there is a great deal of importance to being able to operate effectively by making instinctive decisions.  The lack of that ability sows doubt into everything you do – because it’s a contagious mindset that undermines confidence by calling into question your capability at any point.  The mindset in itself becomes a habit – exacerbated both by the instances of grim mentality and the question of the disabilities.

Habit doesn’t mean operating like an automaton, but it does mean you don’t have to stop and evaluate the pros and cons every time you choose your lunch., slowing everything down.  Eventually you seize up with the exhaustion of trying to work out what you can and can’t do, should and shouldn’t.  Everything becomes a calculation.

So, part of my thinking is to make my passions my habit – and do those things regularly without thinking too much about them…

And the second? ‘You will be in line for a promotion’.  Now that’s more like a prediction!

But I’ve had enough of excuses.  Refuelled by family in New Zealand on a diet of kumara and misty mountains, I am going to be posting more regularly now – aiming for once a week to begin with.

And while I have backstories to divulge when my head is screwed in the right direction I thought I’d start with something I saw more recently – or only a week old – an article in the Grauniad caught my attention (some things don’t change).  This one was on a concept called SlutWalk – a protest related in the association of blame applied to women in relation to rape who are deemed to dress in a way which attracts attention.

I’m not used to agreeing with Julie Bindel, who can veer towards the mendacious, but I think she’s right when she says that the way that women dress is not the problem, the way men respond to that is.

While sexual imagery and objectification are sensitive areas I think the degree to which the picture is unbalanced is reflected in the one sided nature of modern ‘dating’ (presuming ‘courtship’ is largely redundant), as it is still most often the male who has to make the opening gamble if anything’s going to happen.

If you have a situation where it is perceived that the males are making the choice, then I think that extrapolates to women being the ones who are more associated with passive sexual imagery.

If that’s part of the problem, how do you go about changing that?  Aside from my default answer of education, presumably if women felt that they were choosers too (and not just saying yes or no) then you’d begin to redirect the behavioural patterns that knocked things off kilter subsequently.

Thoughts on a postcard?

As you might’ve imagined, I’ve been agog over the last few weeks as Ben Ali and then Mubarak were eased out of their armchair thrones by vast throngs of their disenchanted countrymen.

I was most gobsmacked at the speed and at the scale – after 30 odd years of repression, that each individual in that collective mass had to make that decision to step outside their safe zone, when up to this point the implications tended to be beating, detention, torture…   Yet so many chose to take that step.  It must’ve been exhilarating to have been there, on the Friday when Mubarak resigned.

I liked one of the attendant quotes – ‘the people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of the people.’

And it seems, alas, that the fear that despotic governments are feeling is tickling the fight muscle rather than the flee – in every country afflicted in the region – Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen – violence has been the first response.  Now Gaddafi has taken it to a new level, 42 years of paranoia isn’t going to go easily.

But we said that about the others, too.  And yet it always strikes me as so straightforward – if you kill, repress, and generally ravage people they will respond negatively.  If you do it on a large scale, over a long period of time, their response is going to be proportionate.  Isn’t it obvious?

It’s not just despots who do it mind you – see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for example. And the media did strike a sour note, through the last days of the revolution of Tahrir Square they kept on about peace treaties with Israel,  when what was important was this moment, for the Egyptians.  Let everybody else worry about tomorrow.

Ah.  Israel.  If anyone might know what the response to persecution can be, you would have thought they’d have a pretty good idea.  But what do they do?  Sure, they are worried about Hamas and disgruntled Palestinians.  But why are they worried? Because they are disgruntled.  And why is this?  Israel only has itself to blame.

And yet, amidst all the hue and cry over their illegal settlements, the US  once again vetoed a critical resolution.  And this is what I struggle to get my head around.  Why is it that the US continues to support Israel, even when it is quite clearly intransigent?  The only vague answer I have is arms.

Not as many guns would be sold if there was peace..

At the time gibbering was entirely appropriate though, given the scale and sophistication of the things I’ve seen.  The range of things the ancient Egyptians put together it startling enough, but the size and complexity of them is mind boggling.

Those who have craned their necks at the pyramids will know what I mean, those who have not done should get their act together.  But the pyramids are merely the most gargantuan of the Egyptian relics – the massive temple at Karnak contains 1300 years of history, the Valley of the Kings more ornate tombs than you can see in a week, and the staggering design of Abu Simbel, where the entrances were so aligned that the sun would pierce the back wall and light up the face of Ramses II on the day of his coronation and birthday.

And this is what they were doing four or five thousand years ago.  It makes Stonehenge and Scara Brae seem pretty piecemeal by compariosn, and indeed a lot of current architecture, most of which is merely functional.  In a couple of thousand years, what will we have to remember this time with?  Flat pack office skyscrapers, ostentatious hotels and plastic bags will be our remnants.  Who reckons we should gauge a likeness of the Queen into the Highlands?  I’m surprised the modern day despots of the world haven’t gone in for more of this kind of thing.

Even so, my memories of this break will be fuller than slack – jawed monument gazing.  Travelling around with a diverse bunch of strangers meant that I couldn’t sit in my egg and peer out at the world through the cracks.  Making breaking out necessary was part of the reason I had booked this kind of holiday, and as the week progressed I felt a bit less dormant, more roused, wind occasionally catching the hair and sending a shiver of life flickering through the veins.

Amidst the tumutl of memories, some things stand out – the blaring beat started by one of the camel leaders as we turned around, part walking, part swimming, part dancing he swayed in sync into the morning sun, the precision seemed to kick start what had begun slumberingly.

Sitting beside the gentle Nile, the boat captain and his mate splayed themselves comfortably beside a shisha pipe, and the warmth and laughter merged with rich scent and the setting sun, ebuillence shimmering, early evening light making everything seem so easy.

And finally, on the day we went to the Valley of the Kings the crowds were hot and steady as we crawled around, uphill and underground.  Making a paid side trip to the tomb of Ramses VI,  the place was nigh on empty and alone in the corridor the vastness of the place stuck in my mind.  Away from the red faced tourists there was time to gaze at the still bright colour and endless hieroglyphs, brilliant blue vultures arching overhead.

It’s a cheap cliche, but in the tombs of the dead it was good to feel alive again.  Back in the office now, vaguely wondering what happened to the Egyptians, but it’s standing me in good stead.

May add some photos in due course.

That said, my current brightness of mind has been somewhat more robust than expected, ‘cheefulness keeps breaking through’ as my father likes to say.

On returning I tend to find there is a need to just crank open the channel again, initially at least what comes forth is the old sewage, blethering and fatuous.  Bear with me, stoking the damp coals.

And here, with the headlights of muzzled cars flashing ornate patterns on the ceiling, the pace feels quick but light, old father time padding softly but briskly across the smeared paving.  Vaguely hurried, but direction hazy, things skitter on despite my occasional bouts of hankering.

Insignficance runs through the core, mind flaying at the quicksilver passing of days, pickled silly.   Work and time seems merely functional and therefore unsatisfactory.  Momentum occasionally whips through in bionic form, marching the limbs and marshalling the mouth.

Still the mind occasionally floats the thought bubble, but with less energy.  Energy being the answer, how to get it the question.  Visage flits from angst at functional industry, to glimmers of satisfaction, to the hard surfaces of the sea and the stars and an endless horizon to drill calm into the agitated default setting.

In the meantime, I shift uncomfortably in edgy, silent dreams.