(Peru/Colombia)...It very much looks as though this year's holiday plans will be to go to South American. I like it there very much. Two small settlements in South America I enjoyed tremendously. The first is in Peru and is called Lampa. I went there as I made what is not the world’s worst travel mistake, but still one that incapacitated me somewhat: Flying directly from the sea level of Lima to the approximate height of 13,000 feet of Juliaca, an hour by bus from Lake Titicaca. Breathing was a problem, and a slight headache did not leave me for all my first day there.
The flight was on Aero Continente, via Arequipa, and I swear the craft was equipped with car sea belts. The other passengers all appeared to be the stoic Andean of cliché, all bowler hats and a lack of emotion. Walking down the steps at Juliaca’s Aeropuerto Internacional Inca Manco Cápac, named after the founder of the Incan dynasty and with the longest runway, apparently, in Peru (probably something to do with the thin air), llamas nudged up. I wanted to visit one of the islands in Lake Titicaca, but I was told there were 600 steps from the boat dock to the island’s village, and that was too much, I felt.
So, I went back to Juliaca and then took a bus to Lampa, named the La Ciudad Rosa, the rose-coloured city. The rickety bus left when full, and the tarmac ran out after one kilometer. Dust storms turned out to be buses coming in the opposite direction; two buses had broken down. Lampa appeared thin and wide on the horizon between a range of dun-coloured hills. Nothing looked red. A central square featured a dry garden, a church and a shop selling stationery, while narrow streets went off in all directions, one leading to a barbershop with no door but only a window for entry. Looking for a bus back to Juliaca, I saw only buses going to a festival. It was full of school children and parents, and the roofs were cluttered with furniture, cooking utensils and boxes of food.
I found out that the festival was in a place called Tucini. I asked where it was and received shrugs. Enough people seemed eager for me to go, so in I went. My bus rattled along a road that I did not see when I entered the town, and we slowly drove over rivulets and up hills. After 40 minutes, we reached Tucini, high on the Altiplano. It consists only of a large stone barn and some livestock pens, and a thin river between two steep slopes on which sat hundreds and hundreds of Incan people, those same bowler hats and stern gazes. It was wonderful. I took photos and smelled the smells of cooking.
Young children were the first to smile. I could not speak Spanish in 1998, so my conversation was returned in smiles, but I felt — hopefully not arrogantly — that I was somewhere where Westerners had not trod. I have since looked for Tucini, and the name was written down for me on a piece of paper, on several maps and have not found it. The second town is in Colombia and called Villa de Leyva. It remains little known due to Colombia’s sad recent history (improving now, though), but if this nation was less dangerous to travel in, it would be on every single itinerary. It is the perfect colonial town, with the country's largest square, and enough wealthy Bogatanos to keep things interesting and well kept.
The square’s only feature is a small fountain in the middle, while around its edges are two- and three-storey houses and a church past which children automatically cross themselves, even when running. I stayed in a cottage I rented about a kilometre along another dusty lane. The cottage overlooked rolling farmland and the occasional cow, as well as a house called La Casa del Alemán, the House of the German. I could not find out why, but my active imagination decided it was because it had to have been a former residence of Carlos Lehder, a ruthless member of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cartel, who was of German origin.
Supposedly, the grander of Villa de Leyva’s homes were owned by narcoterrorists, but they had long gone, replaced by the richer residents of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, 150 kilometres to the southwest.
The only odd episode I saw there was on the way in, at around 9 p.m., when an army unit stopped me. Before they had time to talk, a car in the distance stopped, turned its lights off and started reversing at speed. The soldiers, all very young, instantly forgot about me and sped off in pursuit. I went to hear Mass one morning for the novelty value, and when it had finished — the hidden, chanting, singing nuns proved magnificently atmospheric — a line of horses were railed outside for rent. I am not a horseman, but I took one to see a site called El Infiernito, which contains a series of monoliths shaped like phalluses. The ticket collector seemed very surprised to see a visitor.