To travel is to seemingly cram more experiences, good, bad and downright weird, into 24 hours than you would in your everyday life. Sometimes those unexpected, almost bizarre, moments decide that they will congregate in a concentrated time period.  Let me explain what I mean. What I am about to describe all occurred between 6 a.m. on 6th Sept and 6 a.m. on the 7th Sept. 2017.

At 6 a.m. on the 6th September I handed over my prized bucket list ticket and entered into Machu Picchu, the famous lost city of the Incas. I spent the next six hours in a state of total mesmerisation, soaking up the atmosphere, the history, the mystical aura of the site. I listened to our guide, Juan Carlos, waxing lyrical about the origins, the demise and the rediscovery of the ancient man made wonder. In my mind I went back to a time when messages had to be relayed, not by Whatsapp, but by men legging it up and down the mountains. To a time when the calendar was determined by planting and harvesting of potatoes and bartering knew nothing of cash machines to come. I marvelled at the temples of the sun and the condor and at the terraced hillsides, where grazing llamas looked up occasionally for a tourist photo. And then, just as soon as I’d arrived, it was time to say goodbye to my Salkantay trek family and head back down the mountains to Cusco. A hairpin bendy bus hop, a beautiful train ride and a minibus through the sacred valley, until dusk saw me arrive back at Millhouse hostel, where it had all begun five days previously. One more short ride, by taxi, transported me to my hotel for the night, Fawlty Towers. Well it wasn’t really, but I think I would have preferred that fictional Torquay hotel to Julia’s Hotel in Cusco.  “Why’s that?” I hear you ask.

Julia’s hotel does have one thing going for it: it is situated close to the airport, which is a bonus when your flight leaves at 7 a.m.  That, I’m afraid, is all it had going for it. It took me just twelve hours to go from the dizzy heights of Machu Picchu to the nauseating depths of Julia’s Hotel.  It was all just a bit shoddy, a bit haphazard. Examples? Ok. The card machine didn’t work. The photocopier didn’t work, so I had to give the hotel a copy of my passport from my stash. There was still rubbish from the previous guest in the bin. If you’ve ever travelled in Peru and I talk about the small pedal bin next to the toilet, you will know exactly what I mean. I am unphased by such minor trivialities and I sorted out my rucksack ready for the morning. It was then that I decided to pop out for something to eat. Stay tuned.

The advantage of being close to an airport is the disadvantage of being in the middle of nowhere. As soon as I stepped out into the dusk I realised that this was one of those occasions when you will be glad to get back into the safety of the hotel. A sinister snake of danger slithered through the twilight, accompanied by the orchestral howls of the packs of stray dogs, luckily occupied, as they scavenged through the piles of refuse along the street. Finding nowhere to eat, I ventured further from safety, past street vendors peddling food poisoning in the guise of half cooked chicken portions on sticks. A man with one eye stopped and winked at me with his good eye, a grin stretching from ear to ear. I hastily entered a polleria, sat down and reflected on the suspect clientele. The man with one eye followed me in, repeated his wink, while I avoided eye contact. The television blared out a replay of Peru’s victory over Ecuador the previous evening. Bingo. A point of contact. I talked with enthusiasm about the shouting on the street in Aguas Calientes the night before and the excitement of that second goal, the sending off, the joy of holding out till the final whistle.  After eating the chicken, I truthfully declared it to be the finest I had tasted in Peru. I was one of them. I stayed one of them by refusing to show disgust when I unearthed a whole chicken foot at the bottom of my caldo (soup) I have no idea what, or even who, the other digits had belonged to. Maybe it was the little finger of someone to whom the one eyed man had taken a dislike. Once I had got the clientele on board, the challenge was to get from polleria to hotel unscathed, which I did with no further incident, apart from being looked up and down by all and sundry.

On reaching the hotel I arranged with the receptionist that I would come down at 4 a.m., have breakfast, and then go in a taxi to the airport at 4.15. It was a pleasant surprise that they would do that. Maybe this wasn’t Fawlty Towers or Farty Towels after all. My faith had been restored.  Read on…Alarm goes off at 3.30. Narrator gets ready and heads off, rucksack laden towards reception. Hot steaming coffee and fresh bread rolls await. Wrong. The whole reception area was in total darkness and I had to use the torch on my phone to find a light. I expected to see the guy asleep behind the desk but he was nowhere to be seen. The only solution would be to forgo breakast, try and find a number for a taxi, or head out onto those dark, barren streets again to look for one.  It was at this point that I noticed a huge glaring spanner in the works. Or rather a huge, glaring padlock. The hotel was locked by padlock from the inside. I was basically trapped. If I phoned a taxi I wouldn’t be able to get to it. It was thinking caps time. I presumed the receptionist must be somewhere in the building asleep but didn’t know where. In the end the solution came. I phoned the hotel from inside it. Nothing. I phoned again. And again. And again. Eventually, over five minutes later a voice from above me uttered a plethora of sleepy apologies and within ten minutes I was on my way to the airport, armed with a hastily assembled stale ham sandwich, a cardboard muesli bar and an over-sweetened carton of unfresh orange juice.  Read on…

All was going well at the airport. I printed my boarding pass at one of the machines, took my place in the check in queue and was one of the first to be served. As I said, all was going well. Then a man who I had taken for an Avianca employee, showed me his badge, told me to come with him and led me to room at the far side of the airport. Myself and my luggage were to be searched for drugs. I cast my mind back to the last time I was in Peru when I had been taken from a bus between Lima and Trujillo and roughed up in an attempt to make me pay bribes or confess to drug smuggling. I had refused to pay anything as I was innocent, but didn’t relish another roughing over.  Two guys went through my luggage with a tooth comb, questioning me on my drugs stash- anti-malarials, anti-diarrhoea, anti-constipation, ibuprofen etc etc. They clearly thought I was going to build a bomb with my anti bacterial handwash and insect repellent. When I saw the blue rubber gloves come out I winced involuntarily but fortunately they only went inside my bags and not inside me. After about ten minutes my once neatly packed luggage was in total disarray but I was a free man. Still untrusting, I watched my bag every step of the way, half expecting them to try and plant something on me, but they didn’t.  As I walked towards the security scanners I looked at my watch. 6 a.m. exactly twenty four hours since I had arrived at Machu Picchu. A lot can happen in twenty four hours when you are travelling, from the most sublime of moments to the most downright piss-you-off moments but hey…that’s travel. 24 hours in weirdom.