Leaving Peru for good.

 I knew that eventually the time would come when I had to turn my back on South America and return to the UK, but did not expect it to happen like this. I had been in Peru now for over a year, instead of the usual 6 months, lockdown and curfew regulations were still in place (and being largely ignored by large numbers of people, resulting in Peru having the highest mortality rates in the world (per 100,000 people).

When I first started my annual visits to Peru I rented a small apartment, and had used the same one for 6 of my 8 visits, and although it was "furnished" I had accumulated a lot of personal items over the years, especially things in the kitchen, as well as my motorbike - which was still in pieces with the mechanic! I needed to divest myself of all of these things, so started sorting out the things I needed/wanted to keep from those I would be giving away. I could have sold some of them, but decided that there were people who could benefit far more from receiving these items, than the monetary value I could receive. Some I would like to have kept, like my fishing tackle, but, apart, from the weight of these, I was pretty sure that my beach fishing days were over due to the lack of a shoulderblade on my dominant arm, so these were bundled up and given away.

Oli, the motorbike, was a problem. It still was not running, and the mechanic did not appear to have a clue how to rectify this, so in the end I gave it to Carmen's (my guardian angel) son. I had spent a lot of money on new parts during my current stay in Huanchaco - new fuel tank, new seat, loads of new engine parts - but felt I couldn't sell a non-runner that might never run again, so spoke to Carmen's son and he agreed to take on the project. As well as the bike, there were loads of extras like tools, crash helmet and the two bolt-on panniers. Ironically it took his mechanic only a few days to get Oli running again, but I was pleased it had gone to a new home.

I gave Carmen first choice on everything else, but did give a lot of things to Manuel and Valeria (including the fishing gear), who were the first friends I made in Peru, and who used to look after all my things when I went back to Brazil every year. It still left me with a lot of things and I was pleased that my ticket back to the UK included 2 pieces of checked luggage.

Throughout all this I was still having the wound on my shoulder dressed twice a day by Carmen, and as the flight date approached I realised that the wound would still be open by the time I left. Due to Peru being on the UK's "Red list" I needed to stay in a quarantine hotel for 10 days on arrival, and duly notified them I would need daily treatment on my shoulder, but for the flight itself (it was going to take around 24 hours until I was in the hotel) Carmen simply put extra padding on the wound, and taped it up to prevent any leaks.

The day of departure arrived, and it was quite an emotional affair. Carmen and her son took me to the airport, and the farewell was difficult, especially as we both knew it was probably going to be our last meeting. Trujillo to Lima was uneventful, but I had to collect my baggage there to check in for the next leg as it was a different airline. This was unusual as generally if you book a trip through one company (in this instance LATAM) your baggage is checked in until your final destination, but I collected my bags and joined the check-in queue. I had a couple of hours until the flight so was not too concerned, but soon realised that the Iberia check-in queue was not moving. It turned out that their system had crashed and they could not process any tickets!

After an hour in a static queue, and a long way from the desk, I started to get a bit worried, and there was still no sign of any activity. As boarding time approached we still were not moving, and I managed to get the attention of an airport worker who simply told me not to worry, and they were dealing with it. Departure time came and went, and the information board still showed boarding, but finally we started moving slowly. I eventually managed to check in 90 minutes after my flight should have departed, and as then rushed to immigration by a member of staff, and straight on to the plane, and we took off a few minutes later, almost 2 hours late.

I realised that the 2 hours I was supposed to have between flights in Madrid was probably also now going to be impossible, as, although I did not have to collect my baggage, I did have to find my way to the departure lounge for the Heathrow flight. I also had hotel quarantine transport booked based on that flight data, so was worried about the implications there, too. As it turned out I managed to get to the departure gate with minutes to spare, despite a slight delay while they checked all my Covid paperwork, and landed in London on schedule.

There was a special immigration "lane" for "Red list" passengers so I joined that and there were only a handful of passengers ahead of me, but only one immigration official on this queue, and he left his post when I reached the front of the queue and disappeared for 30 minutes! Eventually I asked another official what was happening, and he called someone to process me, and I was escorted to baggage reclaim by a "quarantine" official. Of course my baggage was not there, and in hindsight I should have seen this - there had been no time in Lima for my bags to get on the Madrid flight, and again in Madrid there would have been no time to get them on the Heathrow flight! I was taken to the reclaim desk, but, other than giving me a small pack with some toiletries and a t-shirt, the staff refused to process me as I was now "in quarantine"! They did give me a link to the claim section on their website.

I was then taken to a waiting area for quarantine transport, by this stage I was stressed out, tired, and aching all over. Suddenly a customs officer appeared alongside me and wanted to check all my hand luggage!! She was very interested in my blood sugar reading log - I suppose all the lists of numbers (in a plain notebook) looked suspicious, and then was further intrigued by my collection of sim cards (I had Peru, Brazil and an old UK one, too!), but finally was satisfied I was not carrying anything. About 30 minutes later I was on the bus - the only passenger in a 40-seater bus - heading for my hotel, and was processed there before being shown my room. I asked about getting the dressing changed as it was now well over 24 hours old, but they knew nothing about this, and did not know what to do, but suggested I call reception and ask for assistance.

To be continued ...

Social distancing - I have been doing it most of my life!

Much is being made of "social distancing" at the moment due to the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic - maintaining a safe distance between people to try and avoid the transmission of the disease. This is, in some cases, also combined with "self-isolation" where a suspected infected person, but showing no symptoms requiring hospitalisation, or someone suspected of being infected (returning form abroad, or from contact with an infected person) keeps themselves isolated even from their own families within the same building.
The government regulations vary a lot from country to country, from trusting the public to do the right thing (yeah, that is working in the UK!), to more draconian measures such as I am under in Peru - we have a daily curfew between 16.00 and 04.00, as well as Sunday, and the rest of the week, unless working in "essential" services (particular the food chain) you are only allowed out, and only one member of the household at a time, for food shopping, and medical needs, and we have to wear face masks in public. So no long walks, no drives in the countryside (you need a permit to use a vehicle, provided to "essential" drivers by the local authority), and not even outings for exercise. They even, for a short time, had "gender" days, where men were allowed out (for the essential things above) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and women on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - so effectively limiting our "available" out-of-the-house hours to 33 a week (the curfew then ended at 05.00)! Most people are accepting these as absolutely necessary to curtail the spread of the virus, though the police and army are still arresting around 300 a day in our Province for breaking the curfew, and so far in 5 weeks have arrested about 16,000!
All over the world we are reading stories about how people are coping, or not, under lockdown, and what you should do to cope - and many of these are coming from the countries with the least strict rules. In my case it has been pretty much life as usual! OK, I cannot go for my usual long daily walk along the seafront here, primarily for exercise, but I manage a slightly shortened version en route to the market or the shops 5-6 days a week. My usual routine - pre-lockdown - would have included rides on my motorbike, Oli, once or twice a week along the coast to deserted fishing spots, or longer rides, solo, to nearby towns in the Andes, or even journeys lasting a few days to further locations, again solo, and staying in single accommodation (as opposed to sharing a dorm room as many travellers do, for company as much as cost) - as well as trips to the supermarkets in Trujillo, 10 km away. But most of the time I spent alone, but not lonely - never lonely!
While in Brazil (for the other 6 months of the year) my routine was very similar, though I do have a garden surrounding my house, and live in a much more beautiful area, being in a National Park, so my bike trips tended to be shorter, and my walks less frequent (steep hill from my house into town!).
You see the pattern here? Solo/alone - both through choice - I have kept my social distance almost all my life, and so now when it is enforced it is not an issue. I was a very shy child, so much so that my parents worried about it - only telling me about this when I was in my late teens - and though I did have friends, I always (and this was repeated throughout my life, even as an adult) had a limited circle of close friends, rather than loads of acquaintances around me. In social situations I sat to one side, aloof and silent, though in later life I over-compensated by become garrulous, talking too much to fill the embarrassing gaps in conversations. Dating was a non-starter as such a shy person, and living in a small town in Mozambique during my "formative" years, where social conventions were very restrictive as well, meant I never really had a proper girlfriend during my teenage years.
We moved a lot when I was young - to Angola, and later Mozambique, and boarding school in what was Rhodesia - then as an adult I started working in Beira, Mozambique, after one year moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, then a year later to Durban, where I stayed for 3 years. This meant that I never had "life-long" friends, always moving on and leaving people behind, years before social media meant we could keep in touch, so maybe I developed a mechanism where being on my own was the norm, and the safest place to be. After I returned to the UK at 25 I then spent the next 30 years in Norfolk, within a 10 mile radius, but initially working with my family, and then married, I did not socialise that much - certainly not alone. In 19 years of marriage not once did I go out on my own for a night out, partly due to the fact that much of the time I worked night shifts, but also because family life was what was most important to me.
Since my divorce, apart from a few years when my daughter lived with me, I have lived alone - so that is for the past 15 years - and it has never bothered me. I am very independent, and, I think, very capable of managing alone, and do not feel any need to have other people around me. I would like to see my daughter more often (she is in t he UK and I am currently in Peru!), but thanks to social media we can easily keep in touch, and can chat using Skype if we feel the need. On the whole, though, I do not feel any driving need for social interaction, and, in fact, will actively try and avoid social contact on occasion. If I was not under lockdown conditions right now I would probably not do things very differently - I would go for rides on my bike, and longer walks along the seafront, but I would still be practising social distancing, and keeping myself to myself!