ICA

This past weekend we went to Ica, a small city about 4 hours south of Lima. Ica is known for their pisco production, which is what I guess could be called the "national drink." So we went and checked out some of the sites where they make pisco and other wines. We also went to Huacachina, a little town outside of Ica where they have a lagoon you can swim in well as sand-boarding and dune buggies to tool around in on the sand dunes. Here are some pics!

MÁS FOTOS!

Somewhere outside of Cusco.... reppin' my school!












Máncora sunset







La Plaza de Armas - Cusco











Caral

MÁNCORA

Last weekend my friend Melinda and I made the trek to Máncora, Perú. Now, when you buy the bus tickets they tell you that it is direct and has two meals and will take 16 hours. We arrived at the bus terminal via taxi and bought our tickets which were 70 soles each...aka $25 for a trip that would cost much more in the states and wouldn't include food.

Well, we boarded the bus which was full...the first floor is only 6 seat and they are full 180 degree beds and cost a lot more, so of course we had bought tickets to ride above in the regular seats that recline a little bit. We began our journey without problems at 6pm, well of course the bus schedule was running on peruvian time so it left at 6pm instead of 5:15pm like the tickets said. However, things quickly changed as we realized the air was going to be an issue. It would be smothering hot, hot hot hot to the point of perspiration, and immediately it would kick on and be 30 below and your sweat would freeze to your body thus making for a quite interesting experience. On top of this there was a woman behind us who took it upon herself to smoke her pipe as we made this 16 hours journey. She also snored something fierce.

As we struggled to sleep throughout the night Melinda discovered she really had to pee. Well, there is one bathroom on the bus on the first floor that is for peeing only. So, Melinda tells me she's going to go down to use this bathroom and I tell her, "Yeah, good luck with that." Melinda goes down and comes right back up to tell me that the door is locked and but she's not sure that there is actually anyone in the bathroom.

Well, I go down to investigate as Melinda struggles to avoid wetting herself. Now mind you that Melinda is having a hard time at this point, she's stressed out, tired, annoyed, and has to pee. Well I go down and the door won't open either so I give it quite the tug and it comes flying open towards me and I go flying into the wall which felt really good, you can just imagine.

Then, I go ahead and take a moment to relieve myself and so I enter the cubic foot that was the bathroom and close door behind me, latch the door and the light comes on...Then, I finish attempt to open the door and suddenly realize I can't and begin to panic as I think about how much I don't want to be stuck in this disgusting excuse of a bathroom. So I give it a full shoulder thrust and it goes flying open and I spill out onto the floor of the bathroom and fight my way back up the stairs and signal for Melinda to come down to use it...

Melinda comes down and doesn't want to have the door closed, instead she thinks it'd be a good idea for me to stand outside and hold the door shut as the bus tumbles through the "highway" that we were on. So I'm holding the door and a good jolt comes along and knocks me down and the door goes flying open and Melinda screams from the toilet and we both bust out laughing...this was at about 3 in the morning so we made a bit of a scene I do believe...Oh well.

Then as morning dawned on us, we had stopped and I woke up and asked the nice angsty teen across the what had happened and she told me that the bus had broken down and that we were going to get to wait in the middle of nowhere for a different bus to come.

Well I took advantage of this time to get off the bus and stretch my legs and found something that resembled a gas station and I asked if I could buy "recargas" for my cell phone, basically credit for my prepaid cell phone that I use here and the guy out front just laughed at me and replied with a, "No amigo, acá no." Well...a bus finally came and it was actually less comfortable than the first one so we enjoyed that for the last 4 hours of the trip. :)

We finally arrived after a whopping 19 hours on the bus!
I am tired of typing so I am going to just put up pictures now!

CUSCO / MACCU PICCHU

Disculpa la demora! No puedo creer que hace casi un mes que no he escrito nada!

I went to Cusco with my group last weekend and it was incredible!!! We flew into Cusco from Lima on Thursday morning, we landed in Cusco around noon. The altitude in Cusco is NUTS. To give you an idea....Denver, the mile-high city is about 5,000 ft. up and Cusco is 10,860 ft. So, when we landed we went straight to the hotel to sleep and get adjusted to the altitude, because if not they say that a lot of people get really sick right away and can't enjoy any of their trip. In addition to sleep we also drank a lot of coco tea with the coco leaves in them which is supposed to help a lot with altitude sickness.



That first night was a little rough for me, I got there and had had a cold before leaving so when we arrived my sinuses weren't happy with me and I got a pretty decent headache but slept for 12 hours that night and was feeling a lot better Friday morning when we spent the whole day visiting ruins that are just right around the city.











Friday night we took a train from Cusco up to Aguas Calientes, it is about a two-hour train ride. From there we spent the night in a REALLY nice hotel, but of course we checked in at about 10pm and woke up at 4:30am to go up to Maccu Picchu so we didn't get to enjoy much of it! Anyways, we woke up at 4:30am on Saturday morning had a quick breakfast in the hotel and me and two friends headed for the bus stop...Others from my group chose to HIKE up the mountain to Maccu Picchu. Now...I want you to remember we are already at about 10,000 ft. and my fat butt wasn't about to hike up MORE! NO WAY! CRAZY! Because, to hike up it's a good hour and a half or two hours and that's if you really move it and don't dilly-dally. Well, some fools from my group did that and me and my two friends hopped on the bus at about 6am and on the way up the mountain we saw a couple of them walking! Hahahaha, so that made my day! We zoomed on by them in our big nice fancy bus and they were sucking air big time! I really can't imagine going up the mountain on foot! Well, we arrived at the top of the mountain at 6:20am or so and we were IN THE CLOUDS. It was incredible! And as the morning progressed we could see more and more of the ruins but because it's so high up the clouds are constantly moving through and at times you can see the ruins and at times you can't! Sooooo amazing, than we eventually went down into the ruins where you can walk through parts of them. It was so so cool.














We came down from the mountain around noon I think, so after almost 6 amazing hours in Maccu Picchu. We went back down to Aguas Calientes, ate lunch and went to the baños termales, which are basically natural hot water springs!! It was fun! It's something that I probably wouldn't do normally but you're not in the Andes Mountains everyday so I did it! The water was clear...but still sort of green/yellow...and I'm not convinced it did much for my skin, etc. like some claim it does but whatever, nonetheless we had a great time! I don't have pictures of that yet because I didn't take my camera down there for obvious reasons but a couple people have shots of it that I will try to snag!

Then, on Saturday night we discovered some nightlife in Cusco after returning from Aguas Calientes on train. We first had an AMAZING dinner at a super nice restaurant! I ate ALPACA!!! And even tried some CUY!! Now, please try not to vomit all over your screen when I tell you what cuy is... guinea pig... yes, like the pet. It is a common and popular dish in Peru, and especially in Cusco!

Then, we found a couple of discotecas to dance it up in! We had a lot of fun and then on Sunday morning we had the morning free to explore the city of Cusco which is incredible, I really wish we would have had more time there! I would love to go to some museums and walk through the Cathedrals but oh well! I saw as much as I could and then we flew back to Lima early afternoon!

That's everything in a nutshell, enjoy the pics!


This shot are from a llama/alpaca/vicuña farm we went to!!! (Please note: YES. I am rocking a fanny pack in some of these pics, they are coming back in style thank you very much, they are all the rage in Europe and South America.)

Un fin de semana en Chancay

This weekend I went with some friends to Chancay, it's a small town about an hour and a half north of Lima, also on the coast. We left Saturday morning around ten, arrived and checked into our hostal which was really nice and cheap, I think we paid 20 soles for a double (less than $4 per person) then we had lunch. We had some really good seafood. There was a lot of squid, calamari, and shrimp, it was quite tasty. In order to get around in the smaller towns in Peru (generally anything not in Lima they call "provincias") you can take mototaxis which are basically motorcycles or dirt bikes that have been modified to have three wheels.











Chancay has a castle that was built in the 1820s and is one of the main attractions so we hit that up and took the tour. I will get some pictures but up soon! The castle sits on the beach and has really nice views. Then, for the evening we found some pizza and pollo a la brasa (fried/bbq chicken) for dinner and went to one of the discotecas that was close to our hostal. However, we got there too early and no one was there...So we waited and finally people started showing up, but no one was dancing! NO ONE! Then, we decided to brave the dance floor and I think we successfully showed them how it's done. We danced salsa, merengue, and of course reggaeton...

Then Sunday morning we got up and went to this awkward eco-turisty place and ended up not going in we just looked from the outside...Anyway, the better part of Sunday was getting to and from...we took a taxi with this really old guy and he was driving with two fingers so we inquired about that and he responded saying that it was really no big deal, he'd been driving for 30 years and has never had a license. Then, my friend was concerned about the lack of tail lights so we inquired (of course once we were already well on our way) and he responded saying "Why? What for?" Hahaha, so then he tells us all about how he's driven from Ecuador all through Peru and to Chile, and how he likes Peruvian food the most, but when it comes to women, he likes Chilean women.



Then, on the taxi ride back, the driver stopped and we watched him siphon gas out of a semi on the side of the road and go and mix it with something and come back and put it in our taxi! Hahaha, it was crazy. Then, he dropped us off on the side of the road where we didn't want to be and we had to walk and find another taxi to take us the rest of the way back to the hostal, but the third taxista wasn't nearly as fun as the first two.

Then Sunday was the huge parade and fireworks for Independence Day. It is actually the 28th of July but there was a swine flu warning so they couldn't hold the parade. Well anyway we decided to brave the crowd, and I mean CROWD...a ridiculous amount of people, I have never been so touched groped hot and bothered every in my whole life! And yelled at! Muévate! It was crazy crazy and one friend got his camera pick-pocketed and another got her phone stolen right out of her hand hahaha, the thieves get shameless, if you have something out and it's in grabbing distance it'll be gone. So that part wasn't too fun, but we enjoyed ourselves and had a good time nonetheless.

clases, familia, SALSA

I have been keeping busy as I am getting used to my routine. I have class Mondays and Wednesdays from 4-6pm and 6-9pm and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-10:30am. And NOTHING on Fridays which is so nice, also it'll be handy when I want to travel and can leave after my class Thursday and not have to return until Monday morning.

Classes are going well, my poli sci class is probably the hardest just because (obviously) it is in Spanish and the readings are so dense to begin with that sometimes it takes a while to wade through it all. I am really enjoying my anthropology class, the professor is great and very lively which makes the 3 hours pass relatively painlessly.

I have really enjoyed getting to meet my host family. In the house it is just my host mom Anita and I, and her older brother also lives in the house but I don't see much of him, he leaves early in the morning and comes home late. But, Anita and I eat most of our meals together and she's always got funny stories and things to share. Also she has four grown kids. Her oldest son lives in La Paz, Bolivia and the next oldest son lives in Lima and has two daughters. Then, about 10 years later she had two more, her third son lives in the jungle now (although when I say jungle I just mean regionally, not actually IN the jungle) and works in tourism. Then her fourth is her daughter who also lives in Lima, about 20 mins from us. The younger two kids are a bit older than me, I think the daughter is late 20s but she loves to dance, I think we will go out dancing some night...

Which brings me to my next point! I had my first salsa class and it was SPICY!! I had a blast, I can't wait to go back, it's so much fun and great exercise too! There are some great salsa clubs around that I would love to hit up once I feel ready to reveal my salsa side to the world...

I think that is all for now!

más fotos

These pics are from el Museo de la Inquisición y del Congreso.
We went when we had some time to kill in el Centro de Lima.



































These pics are all shots from the ruins at Pachacamac.