Tilly Pitts Nasca Nightmare.

So after the news that 3 British tourists had died in a crash at the nasca Lines, the fact that we were travelling there one week later was never going to be great news for family back home.
Although it is strange that 3 British people dieing makes front page news in the UK but the 3 Peruvians that died in the same flight only made page 32 of the Sunday newspaper here.
So we got down to Ica where we were staying (see the previous blog) and we had an amazing day relaxing in the sun by the pool and then heading back to the beautiful oasis of Huacachina for drinks and food. After the Peruvian Police's attempts to turn this trip into another nightmare, the 30 degree temperature, sun, pool and desert oasis soon put all that behind us. Add to that the amazingly friendly staff at the Belle Sands Hotel and everything was back on track and we truely felt like we were on a summer holiday. We went to bed early, read for a while and then went to sleep for an early start to head down to the aforementioned Lines.
We had a quick breakfast and then headed back to the danger zone of the Peruvian roads. The journey down had been a chore due to PC Plod but this one was a different level of disaster thanks to the single carriageway, mountainous route and nowhere to bloody overtake lorries going at 30 miles per hour. It therefore took us 3 and a half hours to do a journey that should take about 2. Add to that the fact that we could not find the airport in Nasca (nothing is signposted in this country - not even speed bumps in the middle of major highways - yes you read that right speed bumps on roads that are an equivalent of the M1)and there was one very annoyed Mr Pitt sat in the front of the car.
We finally found the airport after Clare got out of the car to ask the poorest man in the world for directions. Not that these directions helped at all! Straight on and left was his answer to Clares much improved Spanish. We went straight and left and found ..........nothing. Clare then asked the second poorest person in the world the way - straight on and left he said. By this point we were not sure whether this was the answer to every question a tourist asks or whether they spoke a native Peruvian language and these were the only 2 words they knew in Spanish. Eventually straight on and RIGHT got us there. Well I say got us there- it got us to a place that was signposted airport, the fact that it looked like a field in the middle of a desert surrounded by a cobbled together wall would be a more accurate signpost. We looked at each other and it was clear that this is not a place that any kind of responsible parent would let their daughter go to. This is not the kind of place that any responsible adult would allow themselves to go to.
Imagine Heathrow airport built by people with no thumbs, no eyes, no co-ordination, no clue and no raw materials and you are still nowhere near what this place looks like. Needless to say - we turned around to go home again and stop off at the viewpoint in order to see the Worldfamous Lines from the safety of solid ground. But first we were all desperate for the toilet (well obviously Tilly wasnt but it was clear that she was desperate for a change by the smell that was now swirling around the hot and muggy car).
We looked for a place that would look clean enough to have an acceptable toilet and we kept looking and we kept looking; we passed 5 restaurants, 10 more restaurants, 53 more restauarnts and still each one looked like 4 sheets of cardboard held together by a plastic sheet thrown over the top. The food would have led to Peruivan Belly case number 6 for me and the toilets would not even be worth imagining. Finally we found a decent enough looking toilet at an Internationally recognised petrol station (safe enough surely).
On entrance to the toliet the smell was tangible, the number of flies made the room look dark even in the middle of the day and the walls, although brown in appearance had clearly once been painted white. The urinal was just about descernable at the back of the room as I clawed through the fly entrance curtain. I was desperate and there was no turning back now. As I was completing my much needed bodily function, I peered to the right and had I not already started my necessary deed, I would have run away as fast as I could.
In Peru, in the poorer areas, you are not meant to put toilet paper into the toilet but rather into the bin at the side of the toilet bowl. This bin is then emptied daily or hourly in the more up-market toiletries. However, This particular W.C. did not seem to think that daily emptying was needed, it also did not think that weekly empties were needed but rather a yearly waste collection would suffice. This had been the most sanitary appearing washroom in the whole of Nasca and now I was looking into a cubicle that resembled what Andy Dufrain has to crawl through at the end of Shawshank Redemption (apologies not for the graphic comments ((as I could never be graphic enough to re-produce this scene))but for the spoiler!). In England this place would have been shut down years ago, it would have had toxic health warnings - In Peru, it is the best of a bad bunch! After this unpleasant stop-off, what else could we do but go next door for chips!
Tilly was again centre of attention in the road side diner and yet another waitress went to pick up Tilly without asking. We could not really stop her as Tilly was alofted into the air before our eyes and the only saving grace was that she did ask before handing Tilly around the rest of the staff. The male manager seemed particularly taken by our smiling daughter as the waitresses took pictures of him holder this strange smiling giggling white baby.
Then came our trip to the viewpoint. I will have to stop calling it a viewpoint from this moment onwards as their is no VIEW and honestly no POINT to walking up the hill. You cannot see anything, you cannot make out what the lines are meant to be, you cannot see a monkey or humming bird or anything else the guidebook claims would be visble. You simply see a couple of big lines in what looks like the same desert you have been seeing for the last 6 hours of driving. The Nasca Lines may look spectacular from the air but you have to enter the airport of death first and other that this, the town is dirty, packed and poorly signposted and there is nowhere to eat or go to the loo.
Our journey home was the highlight of the Nasca trip as Ron's Rock VI blared out of the radio and 'We Built This City' could be heard echoing for miles around the baron desert wastelands of Peru.

The Pitts, policeman, pelicans and paracas

We finally made it to the end of the 10 week term and have been rewarded with 6 days off school. We kindly had a car lent to us by some friends from school and so headed off down south to search for sun.

The damp grey of Lima had soaked through to the marrow and we knew it would take a serious dose of sunning to get our bodies back to normal functioning speed.

We firstly however had to deal with my first experience of driving in this mad city. Lima, where the only rules of the road are that there are no rules. You can cut anybody up as long as you stick your hand out of the window, it seems that if you are female you are not allowed to drive without a phone attached to your ear, you are not allowed to check your wing mirrors - just go – and never ever think about checking your blind spot. On top of that, never use your indicators and in stead use your horn to let people know that you are about to veer into their lane, don’t worry about MOTs or emissions – as long as your car can go forward (however slowly) it is ok to drive and do not worry about how many men you have hanging out of the top of your lorry or out of the side of your bus – remember you can always fit more in there!

So with the rules of the road fully memorised we headed off. We started out at 5.30 in the morning to try and make the journey out of the city easier but the thing we forgot is that starting that early just makes you more obvious (especially with two very white people driving a car packed to the brim with Tilly’s stuff!). So we made it to an hour outside of Lima when the police called us over.

The police had set up a road block just outside the coastal resort of Asia and as far as we could tell – all they were there for was to make money! They pulled us over, saw we were tourists and then went through everything that they could possibly fine us for. We had our passports colour scanned, we had our driving licences, we had all the relevant car documents (thanks Jason), I had only had one beer the night before, we were driving well under the speed limit and so surely there was nothing they could fine us for – WRONG! Firstly they tried telling us that we only had a permit to drive in the city and we were outside of city limits (I pleaded ignorance and just spoke really quickly at him in English), he realised that this was a silly excuse and so rather than going for a more sensible way to fine us he said that we were to be fined for driving in the left hand land of a dual carriageway! I tried hard not to laugh, now knowing the police could make up any old excuse at all to fine you and so asked how much the fine was. Clare was conscious of me now communicating in Spanish when we were trying to plead ignorance and so gave me a quick poke in the ribs and the ignorance game continued. He pointed at a random fine in the booklet (400 dollars!!!!) even though the offence next to the fine did not match what he was saying we were now very clear that this was not an English type of pull over. We were not in control, there was no innocent until proven guilty and no ticket that we could then pay at the local police station. This man was like a Peruvian Judge Dredd – He was the law! I asked where we could pay the fine (knowing that tourists do not have to pay roadside offences as there is no way of tracking them down) he was well aware of this and said we had to pay now.
Whilst he was saying this, I snuck my wallet to Clare for her to remove as much money from it as possible (I think that is also what many husbands will say as their wives depart on yet another shopping trip!). But as we looked in, the smallest bill we had was a 100 soles (just over 30 dollars for those reading in England) and so this was going to have to be our bribe.
As I said, this was no English pull over and so bribery is always an option. I therefore slipped him the 100 under my licence. He looked at it, slipped it into his pocket and he handed back all of our documents. We were free to go.
The ignorance had not worked, Clare pleading “senor – bebita” had not worked, the fact that we had not done anything wrong had not worked and so money was the final option.
He then repeated my name another couple of times as if to scare me but actually I was just impressed the man could say Jonathan and then with a final reminder that we had to drive on the right hand side – we were off – free from the law and the seriously corrupt police that we had just passed. The only thing that made us feel better was that they were doing exactly the same to every car and I would imagine were earning more money than there pay packet gives them in a year.
Now I do not have a problem with people earning an honest living. There are millions of people in this country living in poverty, there are beggars, shoe shiners, sweet sellers, combi drivers, illegal DVD sellers, car parking men, watchy men, bodega owners, street performers, bag packers……. The list goes on and on. They are poor, poorer than an English person can even imagine (most ex-pats here just don’t think about it and just carry on enjoying their blissful, sheltered existence) but they all have one thing in common; THEY WORK HARD! This country thinks it is based on the rich people that live in their botoxed, bubble but it is actually supported by the poor people that work tirelessly and always with a smile on their faces and not due to plastic surgery gone wrong!. They are the real Peru, they are the foundations of what may eventually make this country powerful again but it could all be ruined by PC Pedro and his merry gang of thieves. The fact that tourists can get stopped and exploited will not exactly help the economy of this place. The tourist attractions I will rave about in this blog will not be enhanced by this behaviour and it will merely put people off coming here. It will make people think twice before they click on that Peruvian flight when they can go to the Niagra Falls, Uluru, Phuket for the same price and in the knowledge that they will not be exploited by crooked policemen.

Sorry- I feel that I have now ranted enough and am ready to continue with the Paracas tale (see the above blog)

Tilly Pitt and the Pizza Party

Just to keep people up to date with the adventures of Tilly Pitt in Peru - she is now gurgling mumbled nonsense regularly, putting anything and everything that she can grad straight into her mouth, grabbing random people's faces anytime they get too close and she is starting to eat food and what an eater she is! The All Great and Powerful Gina Ford warned that starting food could be a difficult job and finally she has been proven wrong. Tilly has taken to eating like her dad takes to ... well eating! She loves avacado, she loves peas, she loves carrots, she loves banana, she loves cabbage, she loves cauliflour- if it fits onto her incredibly colourful sppon then she is sure to open wide and let it in (Grandparents dont worry, although the blog is titled Tilly Pitt and the Pizza Party, it is just because of the photo - Not because we have started her on Pizza yet!)
Her swimming is also coming along nicely. She swam for 5 seconds yesterday. Well, when I say swam - Clare held her under teh water for 5 seconds. This ritual drowning then seems to be contragulated by the big 'gay'Peruvian swimming instructor. Now when I say gay - I mean big jovial and bubbly and in very much the old fashioned sense of the term. Even after a couple of months I have never seen this man stop singing, stop smiling or stop humming his version of childrens songs. He is the incredible smiling man and I am sure that he must get home and keep on singing to himself all day long.
This week also saw us venture to Bon Jovi but the excitement of that day will have to be saved for the next Blog!

Jonathan Pitt and the Incredibly Long Term

Phew! What a long and tiring term. 3 parents evenings in the last 3 weeks, a ten week term, 3 options evenings and multiple after school meetings on top all go to make me one officially knackered out teacher. The good news is that I still think that Tilly recognises me after I have hardly seen her over the past few weeks but then again I cant really tell as she just smiles at anyone and everyone anyway.
On their walk to the supermarket Tilly and Clare seem to have accumulated a group of random friends. The watchman on the corner is a regular (and he has to say hello as we pay him) but the others are a wonderful rag-tag group.
There is the old man at the bulding site who shouts at anyone making lude comments towards Clare, there is the lady with no teeth who takes a break from begging to shout out how 'Linda' (cute) Tilly is looking, there is the security guard from the fish restaurant that always stops to smile and talk to Tilly, there is the sweet store lady who runs over to say how smily Tilly is, there is the illegal DVD seller, the car parking man with the hunch back, the man who dresses like a woman and the Peruvian man that slurs his English as he asks us around for drinks becuase he has heard "English people love their beer". All these people get the same greeting - Tilly pulls off a huge smile and wiggles her legs incesantly. They love it and it all adds to the increasing group of people that stop Clare and Tilly on their travels around Lima.
The delay in writing the blog comes from the 3 month period without Internet and also the amount of work I am having to do in the Geography department. This week should see a turn around in the work (after I have finished my reports and coursework marking) and we finally have Internet thanks to the big dongle that we now have.
So chiao for now and hopefully the blogs will be back to becoming more regular again!

Tilly The Swimmer and Tilly the Traveller Part 2

Another long gap between posts but again, I think, a rather valid excuse. This time it has been lack of Internet (still!!!!) and organising past papers and 3 fieldtrips at work. Time has just slipped away but hopefully I still have all the memories of Rio imprinted firmly in my brain to include in the blog.
First however, I must mention the exciting news of Tilly's first swimming session. We went on a mission to find a pool that she could swim in and heard on the Peruvian grapevine (about as reliable as the Peruvian wine in produces) that there was one near school. We therefore headed straight over to look for the swimming pool. It was nowehere to be seen, there was no smell of chlorine nearby - a smell to which I am well atuned from my lifetime spent in or next to a pool - and there was no building with slides jutting out of the side or any sort of pebble dash or corrugated iron effect (as sported by many a British council pool). We were just about to give up when a securitry guard on a segway scooted past (I think that is the correct term for what you do on a segway) and I asked him where the pool was (of course not forgetting to add the International sign language movement for swimming as I spoke to him in my Spanglish). He seemed to understand and he told us where to go. Minutes later when we still had not found a building that looked anything like a pool, said segwayman came scooting back and took us straight to it. We stood outside and yet still we did not believe it was a pool.
It seems a theme in Peru that the more extravagant the building and the more posh the facilities, the more boring it should look from outside. On the way to school, when people pop out of their securitry fences to get the paper or the bread delivery you can see into their little gated world and witness the wonders of within. The more dull the outside, the more their wonderous world tends to impress. And so this gave us some hope for the pool. The outside looked like 2 up, 2 down house and Clare, I looked at each other wondering how a pool would fit into a terraced house (I am sure some tax dodging British person has tried to put one in their living room though).
We walked in and soon found that the place was like Doctor Who's tardis, it expanded backwards and became huge as you wlaked in. Not only was there a pool, there was 2! and for the first time in 4 months, there was actually a warm room in Lima. This boded well for the pool being warm too and one finger strategically placed in the water told us that it was soon to be swim time for Tilly.
We bathing suited her up, bought a rediculously expensive swimming cap (it was the opposite of British bars "If you dont have a cap, you're not getting in!") for her and then Clare and Tilly got in. Tilly loved it, Clare loved it and the camp Peruivan instructor seemed to love evrything in the whole world. I have never seen a 40 year old man sing and smile as much as this man. He is a human baby song hummer and he can sing a Spanish nuresery rhyme more camply than any other man alive! Stil, Tilly likes him, she smiles and because of that we are able to get her head under the water and build her confidence. There was another baby boy in the pool with Tilly who was swimming under the water and doing great and Clare had to hold back my competitive streak from trying to compete with him. "He's 11 months old!" Clare had to tell me, as I was wanting to beat him and show what Tilly could do. So I think it may have been for the best that Tilly's first session was with her mum and that steady progress was trhe order of the day rather than the dunking session I would have possible dealt out (it may have stopped the camp singing though).

Now back to Rio for the second Part of Tilly The Traveller:
Day two started well. We went down to the buffet breakfast with mouths watering at the prospect of bacon, waffles, eggs, cheeses galore and a selection of meat that would make dewhursts proud. But then as we went to walk into the restaurant one of the Sheraton Nazi Clone workers asked us which room number we were. 1009, I replied. “I am sorry Sir, you are not on the list!” You could see a smile emerge on her face as she was also thinking – if you are not on the list, you are not coming in!. Clare and I looked at each other and knew there was a mistake “I know I have paid for the breakfast” I said. She paused. How can he be this confident if he is not wearing a suit? You could see she was thinking. “are you with Taca airlines the lady asked”. “Yes we are!” was Clare’s swift response and before you could say Eggs Benedict we were sat in a table eating the Breakfast of The Gods.
On returning to our room, we soon saw that our reservation did not include breakfast (an oversight on my behalf after the Despegar debacle of two weeks previous). So we were no longer set to enjoy the breakfast of the Gods, we were back to normal riff-raff but without breakfast. We were below riff-raff, we were outcasts from breakfast time, forced to wonder the streets in search of food and coffee. However I will take this opportunity to thank Taca airlines for inadvertently covering the cost of our 50 dollar breakfast and I hope that nobody from the airline reads my blog and realizes the mistake!
We did however have our day mapped out. We were going to go to the statue of Christ and we were then going to return and use the pool and relax in the sun reading our hugely educational books (Lee Child and Michael Connolly).
We went to the desk to ask how much the trip to Jesus was. $100 dollars plus the cost of the tram (another $80). On that news, we went to the in hotel travel agent to see how much their trip was – another 200 dollar trip. OK then we decided to break Roughguide Rule number one again and take the bus (5 dollars for all 3 of us). This time we made sure we travelled in Tilly’s awake time and allowed the Little Miss Tilly to actually get some sleep in the daytime. This therefore meant a hugely delayed start but no more screaming and no looks of condemnation from the locals or Jesus! We got to the base of Jesus’s mound at about 3.00 after much bus delay and the walk to Copacabana beach. Great, we will have time to get up, get back and then go and sit by the pool.
But then a coach arrived full of tourists, then another and then another. Each coach emptied its loads of suit wearing business men from every nation of the world. It looked as though the United Nations was having a convention on top of Jesus’s mound. From the experience at the Sheraton, we knew the situation was hopeless. People in suits are Kings in Rio and us wearing our tatty clothes (following the rough guides rules of not looking rich) therefore had no chance! We looked like poor people and were duely treated as such when we were told that there would be a 2 hour wait for a tram up to Jesus. We had again been trumped by the men in suits and a 2 hour wait was our only hope. How would we kill 2 hours. By breaking Roughguide rule number 3 is how – go for a walk! We walked around the streets of Concovado fitting in with our tatty clothes and with Tilly there to keep us safe. Again we were looked at by dubious looking youths but mainly just to see our baby in a babycar and for them to comment on how cute (Lindo) she looks.
Not knowing where we were heading, we saw a little café that sold beers for 3 reals (a dollar) and headed straight for it. 2 beers please! Then another 2 and then another 2 please. I was not sure what Clare was going to have, but I was sorted. I am sure Jesus would approve when we see him later! We also found that this place was a hidden gem of a restaurant and they made the best Fillet Mignon sandwiches ever known to man! So rather than being mugged and robbed by breaking rule 3, we were fed, beered up and all ready to meet Christ.
Now if you have seen the statue on TV, been her in person or even just seen our photos on Fickr, it is clear that this is a sight worth seeing. The statue is impressive in itself as it soars mejestically above the vast city below but the views of the city itself are what make this trip exceptional. Trip to Rio (a lot of dollars), tram ride to the top (40 dollars), view from the top at sunset - priceless.
The sheer number of tourist could not spoil the view and the experience, the half hour wait for a tram back down could not spoil it and even Tilly crying like an air raid siren on our way back down on the tram could even not spoil the day.

I would recommend the experience to anyone and it meant that day 2 ended with excitement, looking forward to the trip to Sugar Loaf mountain the next day.

Oh, one final point - on the bus ride home Clare turned to me and said "was that a dead person?". Not being used to being asked this kind of question I just looked at her a bit confused and tried to see what she had witnessed out of the window but could not see anything. "I think it was," she said, "It was a body lying on the road with a sheet over it and with only the legs sticking out" she then continued by saying. The experience was at the same time as the camera exchange men were sat in front of us and gave us a very clear idea of the realities that lie very close to the surface in this city. The gunshots from the shanty town near our hotel then added to the enlightenment and gave us a nice chorus to which we fell softly to sleep ...... and then bolted upright and awake again at the next gun shot!

adios

Tilly (Machilda) Pitt in Rio: Part One

The evening flight to Rio meant that we had a day of killing time and trying to find somewhere that would change dollars into Argentinian Pesos (we soon found nowhere would). Clare had been spening days getting everything packed to perfection and realising that packing for a baby is a bloody hard job to do. Bottles- check, nappies- check, travel cot- check, dummy for the flight- check, water for formula milk- check, more bloody expensive formula milk- check....... the list goes on and on. Then she also packed for me (shirts- check, jeans- check, pants - check, socks- check, all done).and we were ready to go. A Taxi was flagged down outside our house, fair was agreed in my slowly improving Spanish and off we went in the normal Peruvian style (horn blaring, lane switching and at break neck speed). The flight was easy enough, Tilly slept when she could and, unlike British Airports, common sense prevails. We were given an extra seat for Tilly to sleep on, we were allowed to bring our own water onto the plane to make up the milk (rather than having to pre-book milk with Boots and taste any water to prove that it is not a chemicl bomb ingedient ((although surely a suicide bomber would happily drink chemicals to get them on the plane!!))and we also were put into a priority line for check-in making everything easier for everyone (especially a very stressed out dad). Normally, I am an image of calmness for travelling. I do not get rattled by the process, I am calm and know that getting stressed out (like most people at airports) does no good for anyone. However, now I have an extra little one to think about - I was the exact opposite. I became one of those stressed out travellers (I even made a woman from Taca airlines cry in Rio by shouting at her!). I do not know what has happened to me. I have turned into a typical middle aged British Traveller - may even start wearing comfy trousers to travel in soon and start wearing those socks to stop your veins popping mid-flight. I think it is one step away from ordering those sunglasses in the Sunday Mirror - The ones that fit over your normal glasses. Who knows, next week I may be ordering the plates with pictures of the queen on them to display on the walls of our house (I apologise to Peruvian readers who will have no idea what I am talking about at this point).
So we got to Rio having read the guide book from cover to cover over the course of the flight. There would surely be nothing about Rio that we would not know (including the 20 page section on how dangerous it is and how you are most likely to get mugged and robbed- NICE!). So after reading the book, Clare had joined me in a state of worry and stress and the holiday was off to a lovely relaxed start. Landing at the airport we were instantly scanning the building for people likely to mug us. We whispered to each other when people looked dodgy and acted like sectret agents trying to avoid being followed by slowing our walking speed, pretending to read our books and pointing at things in the distance to pretend we weren't pointing out a strange looking character. The Rio episode of Ross Kemp on gangs soon came flooding back into our memories and suddenly the city of our dreams was becoming a slightly different reality. However, we we quickly began breaking the Rules of the Roughguide as saving money seemed more sensible that keeping safe!?! Roughguide Rule number one - Use taxis as buses can be dangerous. So of course we heard the taxi quote and got straight into the queue for the bus. 40 minutres later and we were in Ipanema (1 hour and 30 minutes after that we were back in Ipanema and on a different bus as the first one did not go to the part of Ipanema we needed and instead took a detour through Rochina). Now anybody reading this that I taught Geography to should have heard of Rochina. It is the world's largest Shanty Town. 200,000 people packed tighly onto the hills of the mountains and home to two of the most dangerous gangs in Rio (and therefore the world). We however took our 4 month old daughter on a bus through it but came out safe and able to tell the tale. It seems that the key to the robbers and muggers is that they go for anyone looking lost, looking rich and not in a family group. Roughguide Rule number 2 - do not look wealthy. Therefore Clare did not wear her engagement ring and we did not take any clothes that had labels or names on them but none of this was the main reason we were safe. The main reason was Miss Tilly herself. 2 mean looking men got onto one bus and looked a little angry that we were blocking the back seats. You could see their heads thinking 'how can we look extra mean if we are not on the back seats'. But then they saw Tilly in her pushchair (or baby car as the Brazilians called it) and they both smiled. I felt the stress level subside slightly and I began to not think about the $1000 camera that I had in my bag. I needn't have worried too long as the men proceeded to show each other even more expensive cameras that they had clearly swiped off tourists over the course of the day. But rather than ask for ours, they instead smiled at Tilly and even helped us off the bus at our stop. Tilly to the Rescue.
The first bus journey eventually got us to our hotel and what a hotel it was. It had its own beach, 3 swimming pools, a view overlooking Leblon and Ipanema beaches and staff that were hugely helpful any time day and night. Oh, I should have added that they were hugely helpful any time day or night as long as you were wearing a suit!!! This hotel was amazing but the staff were so preoccupied with the people with huge money that the regular people were treated like scum on the bottom of their PRADA shoes. I may be exagerating slightly but when they saw that our room was not a Junior suite and only had 2 queen sized beds, they instantly knew that we were to be considered general riff-raff.
Despite having travelled all night. We knew we had to make the most of our first day so we soon walked into Ipanema, sat next to the beach and had our first Coco Verde (Coconots that the servers slice open for you and stick a straw in). I felt my stresses of end of term, airports and gangbang attacks start to subdue for the first time as we looked our over the clear blue Atlantic Ocean and felt the sun's rays hit our overly white bodies. It felt like we had never seen sun before as Clare had come straight from an English winter to the ever fogged up Lima. Rio's 26 degree winter was a million miles from the gloom of Peru's capital.
After this, we followed the Rough Guide's advice and got a taxi to Santa Teresa to ride the ancient tram system into the centre of the city. The tram was incredible, the views were amazing but then Tilly decided she didn't like it and started to scream and then scream and scream and scream and scream some more. The stress levels went up again, people were looking and there was nothing we could do. We were stuck on a tram now running through a dodgy part of Rio and we could not get off for another 10 minutes when we were due to reach the centre. It felt as though the eyes of Rio were all looking at us. You could hear tutts of dissaproval from everywhere. Who would bring a baby on a tram? we presumed they were saying in Portugese. I could have sworn at one point the statue of Christ himself even changed position to look down on us and tutt. But still she screamed. She had not slept properly and we were now paying the consequences. We could see the end, the station, the platform, safety. We prayed for it to come closer but we had to stop for another tram going the other way. NOOOOOOO! Still Tilly screamed and everyone looked away from the strange white people with the little baby. Finally the tram rolled to a stop and so did Tilly's crying. She had just been testing us. She was now fine, happy and laughing at her friends in the cot (the bright coloured toys that she seems to like more that her mum and dad!). But the best news was that it was over. Looking at the photos now, the tram ride and the views were amazing but during the trip all we could think about was getting off and getting Tilly calm.
We also had the added stress of just how much the taxi had been to get there (The Rough Guide said taxis were cheap but clearly the RoughGuide author was a very wealthy person) and so Rule number one was quickly thrown out of the window and buses were the new order of the day. Why pay 40 dollars when 3 dollars will do? and so we got a bus (all the buses also had disabled access so no more getting tilly out of her babycar and more importantly, no more screaming!!!!).
The bus was great, Tilly kept us safe and everybody we met was helpful, friendly and loved Miss Tilly. People smiled as we got on, men stopped to help us onto the bus, people picked up things we dropped as we struggled with the babycar and the people of Rio, rather than being violent and dangerous shone through as kind and thoughful folk.
We put Tilly to bed early that night to avoid a repetition of any crying outbursts and we read our books to help bring our first day to a nice relaxing close.

Tilly The Traveller

Firstly, I must apologise for how long it has been since my last blog entry. Three weeks of illness and then end of term Markham Madness led to no chance to write anything. Add to that the fact that the Internet at home stopped working, along with the laptop, my ipod and the XBOX and it has all been a bit of a technological nightmare. The ipode now sounds like a 1989 walkman complete with whirring tape effect and at times it even sounds like the tape is getting jammed. Only with an ipod you can't take out the tape and wind it back in with your finger - you are just stuck with a music player that won't play music.
With the cost of replacing electronic devices and of the ongoing $200 a month immunisation plan that is still going on - we decided to keep our holiday cheap and just go to Rio de Janeiro and Iguazu falls!!
We booked the holiday around one month ago and were amazed at how easy it was. An amazing website called Despegar.com was our route of booking and we would like you to remember that name as we will tell you now - NEVER USE IT!!! They confirmed our 5 day stay in Rio, they confirmed our flights to Rio and Iguazu and they confirmed our hotel in Iguazu. It was all simple and the emails were sent within the day. Wwe were sorted. Our stressful end to the term would all be worth it as now we were off to a place that we had only previously dreamed of going to. However, they then rang to ask for a deposit via telephone. Wierd, I thought, why would they want a deposit when I paid in full. I was at work and so said I would call back. I did call back and it took me 4 tries and 1 hour 30 to speak to anyone. They then said that they would call back in one hour. I waited, and waited and waited and nobody called back. Then, the next day everything was cancelled. So we tried again and this time went to their offices to pay.
'you cant pay at the offices, its an Internet company' we were told. So instead of taking our money in cash and in person - they sent us back to trying to pay by phone and then the next day they again cancelled all of our reservations.
By this time it was less than a week to go and so we booked our flights through a travel agent and then booked hotels through the ever reliable and decidedly non South American Expedia. So finally we were booked (it now cost A LOT more money but we were going and it was time for the holiday of a lifetime).
We would depart for Rio within 6 days and we would go to Iguazu falls and visit Argentina and Paraguay. All in all it would mean that Tilly The Traveller would have been in 6 countries within 4 months of her life!
Due to the Internet not working the full holiday undates will come in bit by bit but feel free to look at the Flickr photos in the meantime.
Chiao for now.