things in peru

a) the cordillera blanca trek. the trek was good. it was beautiful, with snowy peaks amidst turquoise lakes, green and yellow valleys, and burros galore, who were cute. it was also long. and cold - so.very.cold. at times i found myself thinking that such beauty is wasted on such a cold habitat. but thats not the right perspective to take now, is it? really, it was fantastic. we camped in the most beautiful spots, ate nice meals, cooked by our guide, under the stars, and spoke only spanish with the others on our trek; a spaniard and a swiss girl and the guides, of course. along the trek we stopped in various spots: a turqoise lake, a stream, and a snowy peak (where it snowed as we ate, btw. i told you. cold.) we ate coca leaves and drank coca tea until ur faces were numb. we saw 2 dead cows. a good time.

on the way back i was happy because
a) i could shower again
b) i could not walk for a second and
c) 4 days of walking must be rewarded. and the surefire way to reward is with food at a nice over-budget restaurant. i knew what was coming, as ant and i had been planning it since the first step of our trek. i had exquisite lasagna that night, back in huaraz, along with a (gasp) salad. ant had steak, which was fantastic, and we each had beers. it was hard to pass up the steak, but ive been really into lasagna lately. dunno why. 65 soles - way over budget for us, but about 22 bucks in US.

so now anthony is saying he wants to do another trek: the colca canyon in arequipa, outr next stop. i dunno how i feel about it. on one hand, i need the exercise, and theres sure to be a culinary reward in it. on the other hand, i think i broke my foot. it just feels broken, i can tell. and im terrifically lazy. but, in the end, ill probably do it, for the food alone. i once volunteered at a soup kitchen just for the soup. i dont want to discuss what happened when i realized that there would be no soup.

b) lima. from huaraz we went to lima. i was dreading it because we had heard such dreadful things. we stayed in miaflores, the cop out, backpacker place to stay. miraflores was not billed as much to us, many a european have disdainfully referred to it as "an american style city. not worth going to." with a wave of the hand (when surveyed, most of these people had not visited an american city since they were 2, btw). well, perhaps. but after 8 weeks of traveling, we welcomed the sight of certain luxuries, like starbucks (oh, our vices and addictions. a damn shame. a damn, lovely, sweet shame. when we saw starbucks, i jumped up and down a few times before remembering myself. and then i promptly purchased a venti vanilla latte, thus blowing our budget for the month of september. see you soon, guys.) we sat around in cafes, bought sausage and cheese (cheddar! really!) from a gourmet supermarket, saw the film little man (not going to discuss that), and went to a museum, our first in years. the museaum turned out to be quite boring. the only reason we went was because, over the phone the night before, my father raved about a special room with pornographic incan ceramics. "yey", we thought, "penises!" but sadly, when we got there, we were forced to take a tour and were shown no such room. instead we looked at 5664663 shawls. anthony behaved terribly, although he did find a mini dingus on one of the embroidered incan figurines.

c) chincha: i guess we stopped there because we read that it was one of the few black neighorhoods in peru, plus they had this great afro peruvian music. we found neither black people nor good music, but we sat in a plaza and little kids did a stompy foot kinda dance and stared at us. that part was fun. we ate greasy chicken and left at dawn the next morning.

d) pisco: was good for what we went for, which was a tour of the isla balletsas. yes, these, too, are called the poor mans galapagos. this is due to the huge population of sea lions, boobies, pelicans, and penguins. a boat took us through and around these cool rock formations and we saw tons of all types of the above. of course, the best were the sea lions, but i really took to the penguins. i cant stop thinking they are all wearing tiny tuxedos, going to some benefit dinner. it makes it very interesting to watch them, thinking this way.
after this and a few pisco sours (a salmonela inducing drink made with pisco (grape brandy) lime, sugar, and egg white. tasty! strong!), we left pisco and headed for...

e) huacachina: which is right outside of ica. now this place is really cool. keep in mind that the central south coast of peru is choked by an impermeable fog for most of the year. 3 days of it makes you want to kill yourself. we were feeling kinda glum when we left pisco, and doubted we would ever see the sun again. but when we got here it was bright as could be. huacachina is literally an oasis in a desert. its a green pond surrounded by high, white sand dunes. the thing to do here is either take an expensive buggy tour, our rent a snowboard for a dollar and surf down. we did the latter this morning, and nearly killed ourselves flying down those damn dunes. tons of fun. i discovered that if you let out a blood curdling scream the whole way down it makes it more thrilling, and no one can hear you cuz your in the middle of the desert.
plus, our sunny hotel has a pool, complete with a bar and a lounging scene. there are all you can eat and drink BBQ,s. we wnet to one last night, and maniacally shoved meat and liquor down our throats, and then fell asleep at 9:30.

next stop: arequipa and the colca canyon.