A mammoth undertaking

I really dislike this time of year. It’s not Christmas in itself that’s the problem, but rather the fact that it was just before Christmas in 2009 that Chris was first diagnosed, out of the blue, with cancer. We spent the entire Christmas and New Year period going from one hospital appointment to the next, getting worse news each time. Hence I strongly associate this time of year with acute misery. So rather than sitting at home on my own feeling depressed, or inflicting my moods on friends and family, I prefer to go away for Christmas and escape it completely.

Last Christmas I went to Cambodia, and that worked so well that in May I got back in touch with the same travel company that arranged it, Explore Tailormade, and asked them to start thinking about an itinerary for this Christmas. We settled on Peru, but not the standard tourist itinerary of Machu Picchu and Cuzco, because Chris and I went there for our tenth wedding anniversary, and I didn’t think I would cope too well with returning there. Instead, I asked for a fully tailor-made itinerary to the much less visited pre-Inca archaeological sites of Northern Peru – just me, not part of a group tour, but with a car, driver and English-speaking guide all to myself. I planned to pay for it using Christopher’s pension, and to take some of his ashes with me to scatter there.

It took several weeks of iterating and negotiating before I had an itinerary I was happy with, a duration that suited me and a price I could afford. I made it a very important precondition that I had a full day of site visits on Christmas Day itself – I really did not want to spend the day sitting by myself in a hotel room feeling miserable. But Peru is a very Catholic country (albeit in many ways in a thin veneer on top of continuing Inca and pre-Inca belief systems) so Christmas Day was a public holiday and almost everywhere was shut. I told Explore that I wanted a cast-iron guarantee that I wouldn’t be left to my own devices on Christmas Day, and that if they couldn’t provide it then the holiday was off. That concentrated their minds, and I think that the travel consultant I was dealing with found it quite interesting to craft a suitable itinerary. I also got her to take out all the visits to craft workshops, artisan potteries and traditional fishing villages that crept into the draft itinerary (i.e. thinly disguised retail opportunities!) to allow for more time actually looking at the archaeological sites.

I flew out to Lima via Madrid on 22nd December, spent a week in Lima, Chiclayo and Trujillo, and arrived back in the UK on Sunday. I had a good time, and was indeed kept very busy at the critical time, so all the planning paid off. I’m still so jet-lagged I don’t know what time-zone I’m in, but once I get my head straight I’ll start writing up an account of the trip, with accompanying photos.