Inca Kola: A Traveller's Tale of Peru

Published in 1990, with the travel therefore assumed to happen in the year or so prior, this book describes the author's fourth trip to Peru, and the first of his three accompanying friends. Whether Matthew Parris' previous experiences were a help to his friends is hard to say, but they experienced a lot in their time in Peru.

Matthew Parris is a bit of an enigma, have read this book. I really struggled to gauge his age, and that of his friends - although is is clear Ian is significantly younger that the other three. In an internet search, it shows he was born in 1949, making him some 20 years older than I might have thought. It is not so much that he comes across as juvenile in this book, but travelling the way he does, I would have expected him to be in his 20s, perhaps 30s, not around 40. The body shattering truck trip near the end of the book alone would have been bad enough for me at any age, but near impossible by 40!
It is mentioned in the book, but my google search provided more accuracy around Parris' time as a member of parliament (1979-1986), then left politics to pursue a career in journalism and television, largely politically orientated.

The form of this book is relatively short chapters, each covering an event, or a journey. They are linear, and for the most part Parris travels with his friends, although as they depart for Bolivia one becomes ill, and another stays behind to assist him; he doesn't visit Machu Picchu with his friends, but carries on up the train line (have already visited on an earlier trip); and towards the end Parris takes a solo truck journey rather than a trip into the jungle.

While there is nothing in the book that suggests more danger than your average backpacker encounters in Peru, there is a slightly dark and ominous undertone to the writing. I would hesitate to suggest and exaggeration, and the writing style is actually good, but it does tend to err on the pessimistic view rather than the optimistic view. Perhaps where others pick out a sunset view, Parris picks out dead dogs and piles of rubbish on the streets. To be fair, I visited Lima and the description was very fair - the parts I saw were decidedly grim, and maybe Parris is just calling it as he sees it. There are also some short interludes into his previous trips in Peru, and elsewhere, but these are typically paragraphs long, and are topical in context.

There is plenty of humour in this book - albeit fairly dry British humour, so it may not appeal to all. The places visited are for the most part common tourist fodder, but they do make an effort to get to a few out of the way places.

P33

There must be a shortage in rubber or of the foreign exchange to but it, for tread on tyres was something you almost never saw, and few journeys were completed without at least one puncture. Nobody seemed to travel with out spare wheels and the means to change them. Extra wheels were available at places like this - a tin shack by the road. The problem was that there seemed very little to distinguish the tyres put on from the tyres taken off.Mich came out of the soup-shack and was surprised to see a detached wheel lying against Divine Light's side with great chunks of rubber missing from the tyre-walls and shafts from its steel ribbing sticking out sideways like spikes on Boadicea's chariot. He was even more surprised to see them putting the wheel on.

There was only water to drink. All our resolutions about boiling water, or putting Mick's little chlorine tablets into it, crumbled. After all, had we not already eaten the potatoes, drunk the soup out of chipped metal bowls, and used knives which must have been washed under the alley stand-pipe?Besides, it felt healthy here (well, it felt cold, anyway). Ian, still untroubled by diarrhoea, gulped his water thirstily. The others followed suit.We exchanged glances, though. And this was the last time that any of us seriously considered the possibility of insulating ourselves from Peruvian bacteria. Like many decisions, it did not seem very important at the time: only later. But, really, we had no choice.