I can't transcribe today's telephone call to the UK Passport Office, as Sarah spoke to them; also because the phonecall took about 40 minutes. Here's the condensed version (from outside the phone booth):
Sarah : "Hi John, its me again. You sent an escalation form to Peterborough and no one replied. This is phonecall number five or so, the forms were received on 3rd April at 9.04am, what's going on? (tears at this point) We are very stressed and not sleeping. No, we had our passports stolen. No, that was in Chile, we are in Peru. No, we have emergency travel documentation. That's like an emergency passport. You can't just go wherever you like with it. No, you need visas to get into Argentina and the United States. No, the British Embassy in La Paz said they would take receipt of them when they were mailed out by you guys. (long pause) John, is there a supervisor or someone I can speak to?"
Here's Ashleigh!
Sarah : "(repeats the whole bloody story again). No, we don't have mobile phones. No, we don't have any phones, they were stolen. (to me : "She says that because of the Data Protection Act they can't email us any details, they have to contact us by phone" - surely thats a choice that we as the applicant should be able to make?) So why have Andrea and John been taking our email details and saying we would be contacted? No, I'm diabetic (edge of more tears), Im sick because I can't get the insulin I use at home here in South America" and so on for a bit.
Long and short, Ashleigh the manager spoke to her boss and then fired off an EMERGENCY email to Peterborough, explaining that (a) Sarah is diabetic (apparently this makes a difference), and (b) the phone number of our hostel and a note explaining that Peru is 6hrs behind the UK and that perhaps the person phoning ought to take that into consideration.
The system is bafflingly stupid. If its so important to speak over the phone, why isn't there a liaison officer for people overseas who don't have access to an inbound telephone? Then we could be given a number to phone, sent by email, and a code, and we would be able to call and speak to someone who vaguely understood what was going on. And why didn't ANYONE email to say "You need to contact customer services who will explain what's going on, as we aren't allowed to email you these details".
Sarah did well on the phone, I feel we are getting somewhere. She doesn't; she says she feels like she's up against more of a wall than ever. By this point it has started raining in Ollantaytambo, making this the first day since 28th December where the weather where we are is worse than the weather back home. Damn it.
At least our hostel is a massive step up from the last place. It doesn't smell of DAMP, for a start. Dante and Veronica run the place with their two kids and are a nice, helpful family. We move up to the room we had booked, now available after a good cleaning after the weekend, and now we have a balconette with a mountain view. Hopefully it's a little quieter than the ground floor spot we had, comfy but right beside the breakfast area.
Ollantaytambo is what is described as 'a living Inca village'. If it wasn't for the endless number of tourist mini-vans ploughing up and down the road to entrance to the tiered gardens, all the associated prucky shops and stalls catering for aforementioned tourists, and a screed of backpackers skulking around trying to get decent coffee, cheap beer and half-price cushion covers, then you might forget exactly what decade you were in.
That might be pushing it a bit, but basically this is a beautiful mountain village that manages to make a living from a bucketload of foreigners being swept into view every day, and somehow still keeps its character. In the nicest possible way, there's simply nothing to do here. You walk the cobbled streets, spot a ruin or two, have some lunch or dinner, walk the roads around the mountains, and by that time you better be tired: it gets dark about 5.15pm.
So we walk out of town along the Street of A Hundred Windows, along to Punka Punka ('Gate of Gates'), towards Choqana, but realise its a bit far, walk back, get barked at, take a different road, end up at the back end of the Plaza de Armas looking into the municipal market, yet again wondering how to eat prickly pears which I have just seen growing wild on cacti, before noticing the sun is now out and hot and I need a layer of suncream.
I'd love to fill in more details about all these architectural treasures, but truth be told I just don't know much about them. I'm sure to historians or archaeologists these sites are all links in a chain, helping them piece together Incan life. For someone who grew up in Carrickfergus, which has a hell of a lot of auld walls just stuck around the place, they can be a bit superfluous.
Ah, whitewashing. Wonderful.
Not that its boring, its not, and I can easily imagine spending a week or so here, pottering around and looking at things, getting out of breath every so often walking too hard too fast up a hill, and revelling in the tranquility of the place. This is a much more attractive prospect that some English pub in Benedorm and a crap beach to go with it. Still, we end up in a little restaurant on the Plaza de Armas, eating lunch, watching Real Madrid thrashing Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Stunning stuff. The same cannot be said for the lunch. Sarah is happy to have found somewhere with decent internet; one solid failing of Hospedaje Inti Killa.
As the afternoon begins to wane, we set out to climb up a bit of Pinkuylluna. Whilst the famed Fortress on the opposing mountain requires the boleto turistico to get in, Pinkuylluna is free, a steep and ragged path up the side of the mountain to a ludicrous ruined barracks and temple with epic views. Sarah makes it up to the first ruin, a small granary, but her vertigo is unforgiving. I press on, first to the barracks, which look more like the abandoned eaves of a church, and finally up to the pinnacle, overseen by a giant rock which (depending on your medication) looks like a giant face: an 'Apu', or God Protector, according to the Inca, this one names 'Tunupa'. That's your cultural information for this evening. Like all Incan things, you wonder just how long it took to make it, and who really thought it was worth the bother in the first place. The path is more a series of steps, big rocks, set into the earth and following the curve of the mountain. It doesn't seem as dangerous as it looks. The barracks are large and eerie, and some French folk are lingering. Another ten minutes, heart pounding, I get to the top. There's a beardy guy taking photos and a man in a black jacket in the lotus position, absorbing the rays as the sun drops. Lovely, but its getting dark. I carefully wind my way back down, collecting Sarah, and finally back out onto Calle Lares Kikllu. The sun has dipped behind the mountains and the yellow glow is starting to fade.
It's 8.30pm now. Emails sent, blog written, a low-key end to the day. Sarah is tucked up in bed keeping warm, and tomorrow will see us tackle the Fortress ruins, provided it doesn't bloody rain.
Oh my, there are some Germans in the room beside us and they are being happy and noisy. This cannot end well. It sounds like they're old... and in the shower together.
Sarah : "Hi John, its me again. You sent an escalation form to Peterborough and no one replied. This is phonecall number five or so, the forms were received on 3rd April at 9.04am, what's going on? (tears at this point) We are very stressed and not sleeping. No, we had our passports stolen. No, that was in Chile, we are in Peru. No, we have emergency travel documentation. That's like an emergency passport. You can't just go wherever you like with it. No, you need visas to get into Argentina and the United States. No, the British Embassy in La Paz said they would take receipt of them when they were mailed out by you guys. (long pause) John, is there a supervisor or someone I can speak to?"
Here's Ashleigh!
Sarah : "(repeats the whole bloody story again). No, we don't have mobile phones. No, we don't have any phones, they were stolen. (to me : "She says that because of the Data Protection Act they can't email us any details, they have to contact us by phone" - surely thats a choice that we as the applicant should be able to make?) So why have Andrea and John been taking our email details and saying we would be contacted? No, I'm diabetic (edge of more tears), Im sick because I can't get the insulin I use at home here in South America" and so on for a bit.
Long and short, Ashleigh the manager spoke to her boss and then fired off an EMERGENCY email to Peterborough, explaining that (a) Sarah is diabetic (apparently this makes a difference), and (b) the phone number of our hostel and a note explaining that Peru is 6hrs behind the UK and that perhaps the person phoning ought to take that into consideration.
The system is bafflingly stupid. If its so important to speak over the phone, why isn't there a liaison officer for people overseas who don't have access to an inbound telephone? Then we could be given a number to phone, sent by email, and a code, and we would be able to call and speak to someone who vaguely understood what was going on. And why didn't ANYONE email to say "You need to contact customer services who will explain what's going on, as we aren't allowed to email you these details".
Sarah did well on the phone, I feel we are getting somewhere. She doesn't; she says she feels like she's up against more of a wall than ever. By this point it has started raining in Ollantaytambo, making this the first day since 28th December where the weather where we are is worse than the weather back home. Damn it.
At least our hostel is a massive step up from the last place. It doesn't smell of DAMP, for a start. Dante and Veronica run the place with their two kids and are a nice, helpful family. We move up to the room we had booked, now available after a good cleaning after the weekend, and now we have a balconette with a mountain view. Hopefully it's a little quieter than the ground floor spot we had, comfy but right beside the breakfast area.
Ollantaytambo is what is described as 'a living Inca village'. If it wasn't for the endless number of tourist mini-vans ploughing up and down the road to entrance to the tiered gardens, all the associated prucky shops and stalls catering for aforementioned tourists, and a screed of backpackers skulking around trying to get decent coffee, cheap beer and half-price cushion covers, then you might forget exactly what decade you were in.
That might be pushing it a bit, but basically this is a beautiful mountain village that manages to make a living from a bucketload of foreigners being swept into view every day, and somehow still keeps its character. In the nicest possible way, there's simply nothing to do here. You walk the cobbled streets, spot a ruin or two, have some lunch or dinner, walk the roads around the mountains, and by that time you better be tired: it gets dark about 5.15pm.
So we walk out of town along the Street of A Hundred Windows, along to Punka Punka ('Gate of Gates'), towards Choqana, but realise its a bit far, walk back, get barked at, take a different road, end up at the back end of the Plaza de Armas looking into the municipal market, yet again wondering how to eat prickly pears which I have just seen growing wild on cacti, before noticing the sun is now out and hot and I need a layer of suncream.
I'd love to fill in more details about all these architectural treasures, but truth be told I just don't know much about them. I'm sure to historians or archaeologists these sites are all links in a chain, helping them piece together Incan life. For someone who grew up in Carrickfergus, which has a hell of a lot of auld walls just stuck around the place, they can be a bit superfluous.
Ah, whitewashing. Wonderful.
Not that its boring, its not, and I can easily imagine spending a week or so here, pottering around and looking at things, getting out of breath every so often walking too hard too fast up a hill, and revelling in the tranquility of the place. This is a much more attractive prospect that some English pub in Benedorm and a crap beach to go with it. Still, we end up in a little restaurant on the Plaza de Armas, eating lunch, watching Real Madrid thrashing Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Stunning stuff. The same cannot be said for the lunch. Sarah is happy to have found somewhere with decent internet; one solid failing of Hospedaje Inti Killa.
As the afternoon begins to wane, we set out to climb up a bit of Pinkuylluna. Whilst the famed Fortress on the opposing mountain requires the boleto turistico to get in, Pinkuylluna is free, a steep and ragged path up the side of the mountain to a ludicrous ruined barracks and temple with epic views. Sarah makes it up to the first ruin, a small granary, but her vertigo is unforgiving. I press on, first to the barracks, which look more like the abandoned eaves of a church, and finally up to the pinnacle, overseen by a giant rock which (depending on your medication) looks like a giant face: an 'Apu', or God Protector, according to the Inca, this one names 'Tunupa'. That's your cultural information for this evening. Like all Incan things, you wonder just how long it took to make it, and who really thought it was worth the bother in the first place. The path is more a series of steps, big rocks, set into the earth and following the curve of the mountain. It doesn't seem as dangerous as it looks. The barracks are large and eerie, and some French folk are lingering. Another ten minutes, heart pounding, I get to the top. There's a beardy guy taking photos and a man in a black jacket in the lotus position, absorbing the rays as the sun drops. Lovely, but its getting dark. I carefully wind my way back down, collecting Sarah, and finally back out onto Calle Lares Kikllu. The sun has dipped behind the mountains and the yellow glow is starting to fade.
It's 8.30pm now. Emails sent, blog written, a low-key end to the day. Sarah is tucked up in bed keeping warm, and tomorrow will see us tackle the Fortress ruins, provided it doesn't bloody rain.
Oh my, there are some Germans in the room beside us and they are being happy and noisy. This cannot end well. It sounds like they're old... and in the shower together.
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