Day 6: Arizona Guy and Llamas

The alarm goes off at 2am. Carrie tries to turn off a book for a good minute. We´re groggy and not too excited to get out of bed. Sitting in the waiting room, the hostel guy tries to talk to us, but we just don´t get it. Then a guy we met the day before is still awake from the night before (who does that?! oh...) and also engages us in conversation. He walks away alive, surprisingly.

The bus arrives after a half hour of worrying, and we are stuck with seats that don´t recline. Lame. I can´t sleep immediately, so I watch out the window as we leave Arequipa and climb into the mountains towards Colca Canyon. Not much to say. It was very dark.

The trip takes a good 3 hours or so, and we disembark in Chivay, pay the fee to go through (S/ 35 for non-nationals and get breakfast of tea (we fail at drinking the mate de coca and get headaches later in the day) and bread. Talked to some of the others on the tour--an adorable older Chilean couple quite obviously in love and a quiet older man from Colombia.

We got back on the bus to head up to the Condor viewing spot where we could see all of Colca Canyon. The ride was bumpy, and the driver had his window open so dust spread into the rest of the bus. Our bodies were coated in it. Gross. The guide spoke in Spanish and then in English for our benefit all during the time we were driving. Very impressive.

At the viewpoint we had an hour to explore and take the same pictures of mountains over and over. We did so, and wandered through the different viewing levels on the hill. Unsure where our bus was about an hour later, we sat down with an American couple on our bus. The woman was quiet, and the man seemed unhappy--he said they were from Arizona. He expressed dislike for the entire Peruvian country, responding to "but don´t you like the people" with "yeah, when they´re not trying to kill me", referring to lax traffic rules in general (and he didn´t even go to Lima, where it was the worst). When asked if he liked the food, he mentioned a spot he found in Arequipa that "actually had chai". Said Puno was boring because the boats are slow and the floating islands are just a big expanse of grass; "you can see all of it when you land," he said disparagingly. His wife sat in silence the entire time he was ranting. Geez.

After getting on the bus, we had two more stops at scenic viewpoints, where we could take more pictures of the mountains, and sometimes see locals selling things (no one bought stuff). Then it was time for lunch in Chivay, where we went ahead and paid for the buffet (it was called the Lust Lunch) and got cuy and fried plantains. Carrie tried cuy in a stew so she wouldn´t have to see the entire thing, but then the people sitting across from us ordered an entire crucified cuy. It was kind of disturbing. They offered some to her.

The next day we would find out that the buffet had been a horrible idea, but for the time being we paid S/ 20 each for a meh lunch, and walked to a church, knowing we would have enough time to get back by 1pm. Of course, we couldn´t make it that far, and so we saw a baby lamb, and headed back to catch the bus, which ended up not being there. Carrie kind of freaked out (low-key) while I bought water and apparently was "not concerned enough". After a few minutes of waiting where it had been, we followed where another larger bus was going, and returned to the square to find the bus waiting outside the church.

I got ice cream from a vendor, and we hopped back on the bus for another two stops at viewpoints, one being all the way at the top of a mountain; most definitely the highest point we´d been, for it was freezing and the air was very thin. There were piles of rocks and though the guide had explained what they were, we had been asleep and had no idea. Left the bus, felt the cold, climbed back on and shivered. At the last stop, we saw a tiny bunny/chinchilla thingie that I woke up Carrie to see. She was much happier when I woke her to see llamas and alpacas grazing. One of them stared at us in the bus.

Before driving the two hours back, we stop at a small rest stop for bathroom use. Carrie remains in the bus and overhears Arizona Man grumbling. His wife asks him quietly, "are you upset about the tour?" He begins bitching about the guide telling us the difference between alpaca and llamas and how it was like telling someone the difference between sheep and goats. Then he said, "I mean, we can do this in the States so if you want to do this in the States we can just do that". The tour guide was in the bus. I still can´t quite tell the difference between llamas and alpacas.

The rest of the ride back was bumpy for a good hour, and I hit my head on the window 3 times while trying to sleep. When we got back, I showered and Carrie napped. We decided to get a light meal at a touristy place--"upstairs, yes, upstairs?"--jugo, coke, and sandwiches. Food wasn´t all that great. We people-watched out the window, and then went to bed early, completely exhausted.

Day 3: Catacombs and Crack

That night was worse than the one before, as we had become gradually more well-rested and thus more sensitive to the very loud street noise outside. Oh big cities.

We woke up fairly late, around 9am, and asked the hostel guy for help booking our bus tickets to Arequipa for the following day. Turns out he was working on his birthday. When we left the hostel, I told him "Feliz Navidad". Clearly, I need to work on my Spanish.

At a small café for breakfast, I had the misfortune of getting that Zombie "in your head" song stuck in my head. For a long long time. And now it´s stuck in yours. We hopped a minibus al centro and from there walked to the Church and Convent of San Francisco to see the catacombs.

We went on the English tour, which was a poor idea, as the tour guide was simply reciting memorized phrases (such as "watch your step" to mean "proceed into this room"). On the tour with us were a few high school football players and their coach/Spanish teacher, who said they had raised money to build a house for a family near Lima. The guys were kind of douchebags, making fun of the guide and generally being stupid boys.

Carrie was appalled by poor condition of the artwork and lack of restoration, and I asked the guide (in Spanish) about the lack of air conditioning to preserve the artifacts and paintings. He said it´s too expensive and there´s no funding for it. It´s very very sad, as every single museum/cathedral for the rest of the day was the same.

We got to go into the catacombs, which were totally awesome. Don´t think we were allowed to take pictures. I especially liked the bones arranged in designs and in very deep piles.

Next, we took a taxi to el Museo Arqueologico in Pueblo Libre, a little far away from downtown. The old driver took us through el barrio and it took at least 20 minutes to get there. There we saw tons of things, ancient artifacts, etc. However, we were far too hungry to be too interested, so we walked quickly through the rest of it and took a more expensive taxi back to the Plaza de Armas. Carrie said it was due to supply and demand. I was just kind of annoyed about it.

So we found a tiny restaurant that served three course meals for S/ 5.50 and just blind ordered. The food was fantastic, but we ran out of time to eat it (along with the two different juices we ordered--Carrie got papaya, I got luchino, which is strawberry banana, I think). We ran to catch a tour bus that we had decided to take so we would feel more comfortable being shameless tourists. However, the time on the pamphlet we had was 10 minutes too late and we missed it.

So we got tickets for the next bus, 75 minutes later, and sat down in la Plaza to wait. Carrie used her Czech-- "I´m sorry, I can´t understand. Ice cream."--to get rid of three guys who tried to talk to us.

At 6:15, we got in line for the tour bus and were told that our ticket was for the 7:30 tour. The woman at the desk had written down the wrong time. We went to bitch at her in broken Spanish and in English, but she said it was full. Bullshit, I think, as the last one hadn´t been full either. Thankfully we got a refund (all S/ 16) and it was still light enough to take a minibus back to Miraflores.

The minibus was an experience, as it took at least an hour through bad traffic to reach Miraflores. At least four different people got on to beg or play music for money. Interesting system. Ambulances had difficulty making it through the traffic.

We got off the bus and went to get a pork sandwich at a stand in the park. Carrie fed an adorable cat that was watching us, so it kept trying to get the sandwich. Was annoying. But adorable. Ran to the other sandwich place for guanabana juice (it´s totally laced with crack) and walked back to the hostel.

As we were checking email, an American started talking to me and then to Carrie (switching off computer). He was from some American state (the people we meet blur together after a while) and told me he´d been in Lima for 7 weeks doing consulting work. Carrie, having missed some of the conversation, asked the same questions and received strange responses. When she asked him how long he´d been in Peru he answered, "I mean, look" gesturing to the many string bracelets on his wrists. This became a running joke.

Once we were safely upstairs, we concurred that he was kind of attractive but too weird. Very very weird.

Total catcalls: 40

Budget for two people: 3 meals, 2 buses, 2 taxis, 2 museums = $33
Peru is awsome.

Day 2: Juice and Catcalls

Had set our alarm for 7:30am, woke up reluctantly at 8am.

We had decided we would walk downtown rather than taking a bus. The street by the hostel was Arequipa St, and would take us all the way downtown (directly north), so directions would be fairly easy. We had some tea y pan, and set out on our way.

Traffic is completely insane in Lima, so the most difficulty we had was crossing the streets every block. We also got a lot of catcalls, honking, and greetings in English. It got old really fast.

An hour and a half later, we found Q street (Quilca, but Carrie had forgotten the name--typical) and Plaza San Martín. Tired and dehydrated, we walked around the outskirts of the Plaza and found a tiny hole in the wall place where we could get water and some food (couldn´t buy it earlier because no one would take big bills for a S/ .80 water. Carrie got some coffee, and then I tried to ask for some papaya (as we saw a platter sitting in a cooler) in Spanish. I, sucking at Spanish, didn´t recognize the word "jugo" and just nodded. We ended up getting papaya juice, which is pretty much just liquified papaya. I got an egg sandwich, which was just fantastic. We had to bother her to change S/ 50 for the meal, but we thanked her profusely. We walked to the Plaza de Armas, saw the changing of the guard (complete with a marching band) and went into the cathedral. I enjoyed the crypt most with its baby coffins and skulls, but it was a very beautiful cathedral, excepting the tomb of Francisco Pizarro. Carrie enjoyed the nativity scene with blinking lights.

We wandered down some random street and across the river, then turned back and got empanadas (weren´t warm, sadly) and water and called gringos. A bus to return to Miraflores took 30 minutes and cost around S/ 3. We walked back to the Parque del Amor, and saw Japanese tourists and people taking wedding photos. Showered back at the hostel before meeting up with Amaru in front of another cathedral. Took a bus to Barranca, where it was quiet and not very touristy. It was nice getting a tour from a "local". Walked down to beach and had "getting hit on in Lima" summed up by a group of less than reputable teenage boys.

Our feet hurt so much, but we walked all the way back to Miraflores along the beach, and I tried to explain the obseity-cancer link to Amaru in Spanglish. Carrie made fun of me when no one understood a word I was saying. We saw a pelican and the sunset, and terrifying cliffs beside the road that houses and buildings were built on. Terrifying.

Back in Miraflores we went to the best sandwich play on earth, and had fantastic juice. We sat and talked with Amaru for about an hour or so, and eventually left when the creepy white guy staring at us wouldn´t go away. The breeze had also gotten quite cold. We walked with Amaru to the supermarket and argued over the size of water bottles. Heard the song "Girls just wanna have fun" over the intercom and laughed.

We said goodbye to Amaru, and gave him our email addresses. Went to buy tweezers at the pharmacy (it had become a very necessary purchase).