...beside the seaside

This travelling lark can really take it out of you.
To those sitting behind their desks at work, I appreciate, that last sentence might sound a little ungrateful.
But there´s no doubting that life on the road can leave you needing a little break every once in a while - a holiday within a holiday, if you like.
Our slow march along the Inca Trail had taken its toll.
The One With The Common Sense was flattened by a stomach upset for two days. Meanwhile, at some point I must have slipped a disc because my sciatica flared up - making even sitting down uncomfortable.
(Ironically, I suspect I did it carrying two full rucksacks up the hostel stairs when the walk was all over.)
Spending 30 hours on buses during two days wasn´t the best cure but we really felt like it was time to head for the beach.
So, we´ve spent a few days doing what normal people do on holiday; lazing about on the sand, sipping cocktails during improbably long happy hours, eating good seafood and bobbing about in the sea.
Huanchaco in northern Peru was the perfect little town to relax, with its friendly atmosphere, pier to stroll along and glorious sunsets.
It also enabled us to do a bit of surfing for the first time on our trip, which was great.
It´s also been nice to eat some fish for a change. Often here it´s served raw in ceviche, a delicious spicy sauce with vinegar, yucca and onions.
It has certainly made a change from inadvertently ordering offal. After being told that something on a cheap Cusco menu al dia was cow´s meat, I received something green and rubbery that I can only guess was lung.
The soup contained something that tasted chicken-ish but looked like valves of some sort, while on another occasion The One With The Common Sense managed to be served cockerel´s neck stew when she´d been expecting meat wrapped in a banana leaf.
(No prizes for guessing who had to eat that)

I´m getting used to being laughed at in the street.
People´s reactions to us have been getting more varied the further north we´ve come.
There seem to be fewer of the huge gangs of bearded Israelis now that we´ve left the Andes and so my unruly facial fluff is obviously something of a novelty.
Aside from the looks of friendly amusement, I´ve been both called a werewolf and howled at. A man also yelled "Osama" at me in the street. Bin Laden must be turning in his grave.
Meanwhile, the One With The Common Sense gets attention of a very different kind.
On a night out in Huanchaco, we ended up in the sort of terrible disco that only exists in seaside towns.
After being dragged onto a podium by two of the local girls (where her booty sadly lacked the necessary proportions to match their enormous gyrations), the One With The Common Sense spent the night being pestered to dance by 18-year-old Peruvians.
On the one occasion she accepted, the guy backed her into a corner and started questioning her about our relationship.
He seemed disugusted that she should be hanging around with me. But then, having looked in the mirror this morning, I can´t say I blame him.

Some tour guides are real experts, others´ enthusiasm brings history to life, while many just have an easy manner to make a pleasant day... Others are just plain barmy.
That was definitely the case when we visited the 1,200-year-old remains of the city of Chan Chan, near Trujillo.
The One With The Common Sense and I had already bickered about whether to hire someone to explain the significance of the biggest pre-Colombian archeological remains in South America.
Other Peruvian sites had been lacking in information to really get to grips with what you´re looking at.
And as my knowledge of the Chimu kingdom - which was eventually absorbed into the Inca empire in the 1400s - was based on a few paragraphs from my guide book, I felt the extra cost was worth it.
Of course, I was wrong.
For a start our guide, named Clara - which perhaps should have sounded a warning - had no eyebrows. Instead, under a mop of wild, frizzy hair, she had two arches of what appeared to be black marker describing a look of permanent surprise on her face.
Her ample belly had forced her flies open, while she marched about with her jacket over her head.
Rather than telling us about life in Chan Chan, she instead compared (in Spanglish, rather than the English we paid extra for) the wall carvings to just about every other early civilisation across the globe - implying some unexplained link.
Her catchphrase was "I saw". She had seemingly been around to see the walls were adorned with (and unplundered of) precious stones and metals and the markets full of fine goods.
Meanwhile, all her explanations were to do with time and space - four pillars with three recesses for the seven days of the week, 12 alcoves for the months of the year, four doors for the seasons.
No matter that there would be four more pillars on the other side of the room, or another 12 alcoves on the opposite wall.
I suppose it was nothing if not entertaining, particularly when she demonstrated the acoustics by facing the wall and bellowing "thank you for visiting my city" as we listened, baffled, from across the way.
The site itself had some equally crummy features. Some of the restorations were frankly quite slapdash, with the recreations of animal designs particularly poor.
I don´t know why they felt the need to recreate the past because the place was fascinating enough as it was.
Built to withstand earthquakes, some original construction remained after tremors destroyed the replicas.
Rising out of the desert, its walls provided shelter from both the shearing sun and the sands whipped up by high winds.
It must have been quite something in its day and it´s a shame that modern practices threaten to spoil it.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition..."
And few expect the museum of the inquisition to be closed, least of all us.
However, that was what we found as we sought to kill time in the Peruvian capital, Lima, on the way to the coast.
Despite this setback - the museum had promised a view of all sorts of gruesome instruments of torture - we spent a pleasant few hours soaking up Lima´s atmosphere, largely from a bench in the Plaza Mayor.
The most impressive thing for me was the number of vultures occupying the square. I counted 18 around the cathedral at one point, with a couple jostling for position atop the Holy Mary´s head.
Our people-watching was disrupted at one point by an aggressive beggar, who started banging a shoe on our bench when we refused to cough up any cash.
I wasn´t too worried about him getting violent but was quite concerned that his trousers might fall down in the effort.
He was already revealing more than I was comfortable with as he clutched his tiny waistband in his hand and I had my leg cocked ready to imitate a Leighton Baines penalty kick at his crotch should he release his hold.
Thankfully, a cathedral security guard came to chase him away.
It got us thinking how lucky we´d been to avoid any trouble thus far.
However, we had a reminder that night of the perils of strange, far-away places, when a supermarket security guard warned us off wandering too far up one road as we searched for somewhere to grab a bite.
Mugging territory, apparently.
Best to keep on our guards.