We crossed the Peru-Chile border easily. There´s a trick. If you walk across, you often get hassled and it always takes longer. If you are able to take a bus or shared taxi ACROSS the border, the driver goes with you and makes the process simple. The immigration officials generally don´t bother you because they know a vehicle is waiting for you and the driver has already filled out all the necessary paperwork. It´s worth it! And that´s what we did for this border.
So...we went from Peru to Arica, Chile. Arica is not too far from the border, a lovely little beach town. Had a big bay, and OK beach (still not as nice as San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua)! We felt like we had left Latin America and walked into Europe! This town was very upscale. Our very first 15 second impression was that Chile was cool! Then we looked for a hotel. Dinner. A glass of beer. Whoa! Chile was VERY expensive compared to the countries we had already visited. As you know, we are backpacking and taking buses so we have a budget. Chile was way OUT of the budget. But Stacy was meeting us in Santiago on the 16th, so we had to make our way down there. We picked a couple of places to see on the way and hoped for the best. After spending the next day in Arica, with Josue playing guitar and singing on the beach while I tried to get a nice tan (WITH sunblock, don´t worry) and read my book, we decided we´d better start moving south to make sure we got to Santiago on time. It was very far away.
We decided to take a night bus since it was 13 hours to Antofagasta, the next place we were going to check out because it was on the edge of the DRIEST desert in the world! South America has lots of the ¨biggest, driest, wettest, highest, deepest¨things and it seems like Chile has most of them. About five minutes before we were to get on the bus, Josue took a bathroom break and in an instant, I turned my head,and in that instant someone had stolen my backpack with my most precious things. I can´t believe I didn´t have my leg threaded through the backpack straps, as I always do when it is on the floor. I even think two people were working together and one made a noise or something to make me turn my head. Whatever, they were very professional because I didn´t hear or see a thing! I lost my brand new IPOD and speakers, my portable hard drive and card reader (Wolverine) on which I had all of my photos of the trip AND an entire backup to my laptop, my SONY camera recharger and computer cable connection, my journal of the trip, my notebook of all the information I need while I´m gone (all phone numbers, all of my account addresses in the U.S., bill information, everything you can think of), and tons of souvenirs I had bought for different friends. I was devastated! Thank goodness Josue reminded me that they are only things, and that we were still fine. We weren´t too happy with Chile at this moment.
The view from the bus on the way to Antofagasto went from dry, to drier, to driest. Sometimes it looked like we were traveling on the moon! Hundreds of miles of hills and mountains with nothing on them! Once we got there we looked in our book and realized that Antofagasto is not really where we wanted to go! So we hopped on another bus (five and a half hours) and went to Copiapo. Near Copiapo was a National Park (Tres Cruces) that sounded so intriguing we had to go. The next day we tried to make our way to the park, we took a bus as far as the highway turnoff, but there was no transportation! No buses or taxis or anything going in and out. We went back to Copiapo and visited Hertz Rent a Car to find out our options. We had to rent a 4 x 4 because of the road. Our adventure started then. We were promised views of the driest desert in the world, herds of vicuna (a cousin to alpacas and llamas), an exquisite turquoise lake in the middle of the desert, the highest active volcano in the world (6893 meters, or 22, 614 feet!), a flock of wild flamingos, and glorious desert mountains. And actually, except for the absence of the herds of vicuna, we experienced everything else and more. We started driving through the desert. There wasn´t a soul there! And imagine this desert scene…..not a blade of grass, not ANYTHING on the mountains for hundreds of miles. Not a bird, a bug, NOTHING. However, talk about a painted desert. Every time we went around a bend, the view became more and more dramatic. Higher mountains banded in colors of gold, green, purple, burgundy, orange! We kept driving and driving and driving…seeing no living creatures of any kind, including humans. At one point we came upon an immigration office because we were about 20 miles from the border with Argentina. It was a drive up border, but no one came out and we couldn´t get through the gate. We got out of the car and went inside the building where we found the two officials in the middle of a heated game of ping pong! In fact, when we walked in, they continued playing out that hand. They didn´t ask us any questions, just opened the gate. So much for complicated county crossings! We were getting tired because honestly, the road was made of sand so it was a bit slippery, the edges of the road had no guard rails and the drops were spectacular because as we drove we were climbing UP! As we drove, we passed the highest active volcano in the world…Ojos de Salado (Salt Eyes). On this day it was snow-capped, monstrous, wild and breathtaking! We kept driving along and were wondering if we were ever going to see the beautiful lake and thought maybe it had dried up since everything was so desolate with no hint of water anywhere. Suddenly we went over a hill and oh my god, we both said at the same time… ¨Vale la peina!¨ translated roughly as ¨worth the pain!¨ In front of us was a pure, turquoise lake surrounded by mountains of all shapes and sizes. We got out of the truck to take a look and suddenly those little headaches we were both getting and the inability to breath very easily made sense. We were at 4,345 meters (14,255 feet)! That´s the highest I´ve ever been! We were both a little dizzy…altitude sickness? Also, it was freezing!!!! We forgot about that. We had some warm clothes, but not all of them. Also, some menacing black clouds were coming our way and we immediately thought…snow storm…not good. So we took our photos, and tried going down to a lower level. Well, I wasn´t feeling wonderful at that moment and started getting very sleepy. It was dusk and we thought there would be a campground, but there wasn´t. So we were stuck there…to sleep in the truck! As the sun faded behind the mountains, the temperature dropped quickly. It seems funny to us now, but we were pretty stupid. We had two oranges, a half a bottle of water, not enough warm clothes and we were having trouble breathing. We tried sleeping a dozen ways, but nothing was working. It was obviously too dangerous to drive at night…we´d drive right off the edge of the cliffs! Even though we didn´t say anything…a fleeting thought hit both of us that we shared the next day…could we die up here? Anyway, the ending is happy. It didn´t snow, we managed through the night, we left at first sun. We took a different route through the park, saw a lake with flamingos, wild horses, birds, bugs and small shrubs. The trip was great!
After Copiapo we headed for Valpariso. Up until this time, we had not really encountered typical Chilean food or music or anything. In fact, it seemed to us that Chile did not have its own culture, but sort of borrowed everyone else´s. It is notable that Chile loves American jazz, classical music and oldies (60s and 70s). When we went out dancing in Copiapo, they had videos going all night of old, old songs. Some Beatles, Olivia Newton John, Commodores, Herman´s Hermits, that kind of stuff. VERY strange! We had to go into the dancing room to here some of our Latin salsa, meringue, and reggaeton favorites.
Valpariso. We loved it! To be honest, Chile is SUPER expensive (yes, more than Argentina!) and we had a hard time finding the essence of the country. But we think we found it in Valparaiso. It is the first city where we found authentic food, including pastel de choclo (a pie of corn bread with chicken and vegetables mixed through it) congrio (a mild fish), humitas (like a tamale) and avocado sandwiches. They LOVE avocado in Chile and put it with anything…chicken, beef, fish and even mash it all over hot dogs! Rather than using the usual Spanish word aguacate, Chileans call it palta! We have been often confused on menus by words we have never heard before. From country to country the Spanish changes. Sometimes the natives don´t understand us either!!! It´s all interesting. Valparaiso is a bustling city, perhaps a little worse for wear, but we felt its heart. One startling thing…the street dogs were all purebreds! We saw huskies, golden retrievers (one even tried to adopt Josue as his new owner, but how could we take him with us?), German and Belgian shepherds, shaggy dogs. You name it, we saw it. You may be thinking…oh someone must own them. But no, they were filthy and hanging around in packs. But they were apparently fed well enough because they looked great. We really wish we could have chosen a couple of them to keep. There are many parks in this city and we found one near the hotel that came alive at about 9 p.m. There we spent a couple of nights watching the people, eating wonderful beef and chorizo shish-ka-bobs and downing a couple of good Chilean beers. We had wine too, but we were really saving our wine palates for Argentina!
After Valpariso we took a bus to Santiago, the capital, where we spent only one day looking for electronic equipment that might help me use my SONY camera again. We figured Santiago was big enough to possibly help us out. And it did! Josue found a portable hard drive-card reader and unbelievably, we found a camera recharger (not a SONY product!) that worked with my particular SONY camera. And it was very cheap! Suddenly I was in business again and that is why I´m behind in my blogs and photos, but now I can put them up again. So stand by for Argentina….
We were also in Santiago to meet Stacy. You remember her… my first travel companion, well, she´s BAAACK! Just couldn´t keep away from the crazy fun we´re having! She had no idea what our plans were going to be when she landed at the airport that night, but she knew it would be great! After spending the entire day in downtown Santiago (just a typical big city, really, all the U.S. products, restaurants and amenities) and cheating by having a fabulous sushi lunch (I´m a big sushi fan and have been craving it the whole trip), Josue and I went to the airport. Stacy arrived at 8 pm and was surprised to learn that three hours later the three of us were hopping on an overnight bus, passing one of the highest mountains in the western hemisphere (Aconcagua 6962 meters), and making our way the next morning to Mendoza, the wine making center of Argentina! Here we go…. Click here to view the photos from Chile.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Peru Part 2 Lima, Nasca, and Arequipa
We arrived in Lima around 3:00 in the afternoon. As usual, we had a list of hostels from our Lonely Planet Guide and had the taxi driver take us there. To make a long story short, we ended up driving around for almost 3 hours to find a hotel. Everything on our list was full! Luckily our taxi driver was very knowledgeable about Lima and we learned a lot. But I have to say that we totally lucked out on our best place ever! We stayed in our own little apartment in the home of a lovely woman who spoke English. We each had our own bedroom with private bath for $10 each a night. There was a little kitchenette with refrigerator and microwave so we could make our breakfasts.
We quickly learned our way around on the buses. It saves so much money. The only problem is that I arrived in Lima pretty sick. It started a couple of towns back, but kept getting worse and worse until it was clear I had parasites. We went to a pharmacy where they gave me a treatment of medicine that said kills ¨every amoeba, parasite and worm¨ known to man. It also has a few weird side effects, which I won´t get into, so I wasn´t at my best at this time. This first couple of days we did our city walks and learned about the areas of Miraflores (where all the tourists go), Barranco (the Bohemian area) and Chorillos, the beach. All beautiful. Miraflores is very upscale. We walked, ate great Peruvian food like Cuy (guinea pig) and goat, with all their special sauces. The Peruvian food is fabulous and quite different than all the other countries so far. They have a special sauce called aji, which is a little different at each restaurant, but basically a yellow, green, or red sauce that is spicy and tasty. (Talia, Shanna, remember the Peruvian restaurant near our house in San Diego that had the good green sauce?) We also shopped in the artesano markets with all the indigenous crafts from all over Peru. The markets were overwhelming! Too much to see, to much to think about, too much to buy. I´m on a strict budget, so I didn´t get much.
On Saturday night Stacy and I were going to the airport to meet Josue, my next traveling companion. We were told that the taxi to the airport was $40 USD, so we quickly learned how to take the bus for 75 cents each. Of course the bus was an hour and a half ride, but oh well. We waited for Josue for a long while because his plane landed at 8:20 in the evening, but he didn´t come out of immigration until 9:30!!! We were a little worried. Even though we got back to the apartment around 11:00, we quickly ditched Josue´s things and went to a restaurant in Barranco that we had visited the day before. At night they have live music and the restaurant is located inside a refurbished train car. We got some typical Peruvian snacks and I told the waiter that Josue was a musician. After awhile, they invited him up to play and he experienced his first ¨show¨ in Peru! The people were happy with his Nicaraguan folkloric guitar playing and singing and he was happy on his first night in Peru!
The next day we all did another first….we went paragliding over the cliffs of the beaches of Lima! How exciting! I was always afraid to do it in La Jolla, California. For some reason I am much more fearless in Latin America. What a beautiful experience. We went tandem paragliding, in other words, an expert was sitting behind us. But now I know how it feels to be a bird. It was a gorgeous, cloudless warm day with a brisk wind. Perfect for this sport and what a great way to see the city!
Of course we are also dancing our way through South America and Lima was no exception. I just want to comment here that we went for dinner before dancing, and it may not be funny to you, but the waiter told us that they only had chicken. So I said, I want the leg. When our food came we started eating it and it was clearly not chicken, it was pork! So we asked the waiter what happened, we ordered chicken and he said, ¨No, you ordered a leg. And I brought you a leg.¨ It made no sense at all and we were laughing hysterically so we decided to eat the pork. We never really figured out what happened. The three of us went to one of the popular discos in the Marina area and had a blast dancing to our favorite Latin songs. Yes, even Stacy has some now! After all this time visiting me in Nicaragua and traveling with me, she recognizes some of the Salsa, reggaeton and bachata songs. She also dances very well to them!
The night before Stacy left, we had a beautiful dinner hosted by Stacy at a fancy restaurant in Lima (thank again Stacy!). We ate alpaca (wonderful!), rabbit, chicken and pork. We had oysters for an appetizer and a bread basket that would rival any five-star restaurant! And….we had six different types of Pisco sours (the national drink) with flavors like basil, chichi morada (purple corn), maracuya (a fruit we don´t have). All very exotic! Wonderful, one-of-a-kind experience!
On the day Stacy left, Josue and I took a bus to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. For those of you who may not know, there are huge shapes in the Peruvian desert around Nazca. They are very old, no one knows who did them or why. But given the time they were made… it was pretty impossible to make such large shapes with such accuracy. And…you can see nothing from the ground, you can only see them from the air. So you go in a tiny 6-seater plane. For those of you who know me, yes, I had to take medicine before going on this one! The lines are amazing….they were made by taking the dark rocks OFF the white sand below and forming a shape, which makes them all the more strange. In the book ¨Chariots of the Gods,¨(which I read years ago and vowed to see these lines one day in my life), his theory were they were signals to the ships (yes, spaceships) that landed there. Who knows? There is really no explanation.
Next, we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru and a great place! Very colonial, great food like stuffed peppers with meat inside and a tasty, spicy white cheese sauce over it, or potatoes with greek olives and another spicy sauce. Peru sure likes its sauces! The first day we did our walking tour (always what we do on our first day to get acquainted with the city, the architecture, the views, the streets, etc. )
The next day we looked at the guide book and decided to take a trip that was not in our plans….to the deepest canyon in the world! We took a five and a half hour bus ride to Cabanaconde, our departure point. In the bus we saw snow-capped mountains for the first time since our trip started. The highest one was around 18,000 feet high. Not bad…
Since we left at 5:30 in the morning, we hadn´t eaten anything so we went to a restaurant in the main square to fortify ourselves! We had a great meal of alpaca (now one of our favorite meats) in red wine sauce with fresh steamed vegetables and the great Cusquena beer! We started our trek after that and made our way down into the canyon. Where we walked was not the deepest point of 4800 meters (if it was, I wouldn´t be here telling this story as you will soon see…). We decided walk to the first indigenous village, Sangalle. Already we were happy to see the local people in their colorful clothing, with their babies strapped behind them in blankets. We descended into the canyon. The trail was a mix of sand, little rocks, big rocks and it was pretty slippery. I was wearing sneakers rather than hiking boots and only fell down four times, once falling on a rock that punched me pretty hard in the kidney area. I think the walk took around 5 hours to go down to the bottom of the canyon. We were rewarded for our hard work by spectacular views of mountains everywhere around us! We could look down into the valley and see a raging river curving around the rocks. As we got closer we could hear it. Of course I was so thrilled about this hike that I didn´t stop to think about the fact that the next morning I would have to walk back UP!!!
We were so tired when we arrived at the bottom that we headed for Oasis, a little conclave of bamboo huts and supposedly a restaurant that had Alpaca steaks and Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru. We were ready for that! But no, there were no Alpaca steaks or Pisco sours. Nor was there good service. Some young men and teenage boys were running the place and told us we couldn´t eat until 7:00, two and a half hours later. It had started raining, so we were getting cold and there was no way to dry off. But we waited…
As we waited, tourists from various countries started showing up at the dining table. There was no electricity at this place, but they didn´t start cooking until dark. All of us were tired and hungry and the only available dinner was spaghetti with ketchup for sauce and a vegetable soup in which we couldn´t identify a single vegetable! It tasted like water broth! As you can imagine we were disappointed with the meal, but we had a lively table discussion for two hours with people from Holland, Brazil, France, Sweden and then us, me from the U.S. and Josue from Nicaragua. THAT was great! Everyone decided to speak in English since everyone could understand some level of English. It was a very nice (if dark…we only had one candle) evening.
The next morning we got up bright and early to make our ascent up the mountain. Who was I kidding? Walk up that mountain? Maybe it would take me 10 hours? 15?
We could not walk it in the dark because the path was narrow and the drop over the edge of the trail was probably 2000 feet! We took a few hours and walked up almost half way. Josue was wonderful…no complaining, no nothing, reminding me to drink water and then…he saw an indigenous man coming down the trail with two mules and he said, ¨Hey, how much to rent your mules to take us the rest of the way up?¨ It was very reasonable, about $10, so we said, why not? Well, it sure took the strain off my heart..to a point. The mules liked to walk by the edge, not on the inside by the side of the mountain. There were moments when we both felt that the mule was going to walk right off the cliff. Sometimes I looked over my right shoulder and could just see DOWN a thousand or so feet. But we made it to the top and it clearly was ANOTHER adventure.
Waiting at the top were the two people from Holland we had been talking to the night before – Harald and Marike. We decided to walk back to town together and grab a meal of – yes you guessed it – alpaca steak in vino tinto. We had a nice meal then found out that the five and a half hour bus ride back to Arequipa was sold out for the next few days and the only way we could get back was to stand the whole way!!! Well, we weren´t the only ones doing that, the whole bus was packed with people standing! But this is where the idea of bus travel suits me so well….the Peruvian people who were sitting in their seats made room on the arms of their seats, pulled down their suitcases so we could sit on them in the aisle, and did everything they could to make our ride as comfortable as possible. Everyone communicated in his or her own way and we had many nice conversations with some very lovely people. By the end of the trip, we had created a little ¨bus community¨ and it seemed that we were all good friends. We even took a picture of everyone to remind us of this remarkable experience where we saw just how kind the Peruvian people are and how nice they were with us. These are the experiences that I always remember. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to travel the way I do…with the people of the country.
When we got back to Arequipa, we made plans to see Harald and Merike at 10:30 p.m. We met them at the Plaza de las Armas and went to a restaurant that had local food from Arequipa. Very tasty. Josue brought the guitar and played some nice songs for us. It is always great to listen to him play…he is also giving me guitar lessons! We had a nice time talking to our new friends and since they will be traveling for several weeks around Chile and Argentina, we exchanged emails and are in contact to see if we can meet again somewhere else. It´s terrific to make friends from other countries along the way.
The next day Josue and I were off to Chile…………. To view photos of this part of the trip, click here.
We quickly learned our way around on the buses. It saves so much money. The only problem is that I arrived in Lima pretty sick. It started a couple of towns back, but kept getting worse and worse until it was clear I had parasites. We went to a pharmacy where they gave me a treatment of medicine that said kills ¨every amoeba, parasite and worm¨ known to man. It also has a few weird side effects, which I won´t get into, so I wasn´t at my best at this time. This first couple of days we did our city walks and learned about the areas of Miraflores (where all the tourists go), Barranco (the Bohemian area) and Chorillos, the beach. All beautiful. Miraflores is very upscale. We walked, ate great Peruvian food like Cuy (guinea pig) and goat, with all their special sauces. The Peruvian food is fabulous and quite different than all the other countries so far. They have a special sauce called aji, which is a little different at each restaurant, but basically a yellow, green, or red sauce that is spicy and tasty. (Talia, Shanna, remember the Peruvian restaurant near our house in San Diego that had the good green sauce?) We also shopped in the artesano markets with all the indigenous crafts from all over Peru. The markets were overwhelming! Too much to see, to much to think about, too much to buy. I´m on a strict budget, so I didn´t get much.
On Saturday night Stacy and I were going to the airport to meet Josue, my next traveling companion. We were told that the taxi to the airport was $40 USD, so we quickly learned how to take the bus for 75 cents each. Of course the bus was an hour and a half ride, but oh well. We waited for Josue for a long while because his plane landed at 8:20 in the evening, but he didn´t come out of immigration until 9:30!!! We were a little worried. Even though we got back to the apartment around 11:00, we quickly ditched Josue´s things and went to a restaurant in Barranco that we had visited the day before. At night they have live music and the restaurant is located inside a refurbished train car. We got some typical Peruvian snacks and I told the waiter that Josue was a musician. After awhile, they invited him up to play and he experienced his first ¨show¨ in Peru! The people were happy with his Nicaraguan folkloric guitar playing and singing and he was happy on his first night in Peru!
The next day we all did another first….we went paragliding over the cliffs of the beaches of Lima! How exciting! I was always afraid to do it in La Jolla, California. For some reason I am much more fearless in Latin America. What a beautiful experience. We went tandem paragliding, in other words, an expert was sitting behind us. But now I know how it feels to be a bird. It was a gorgeous, cloudless warm day with a brisk wind. Perfect for this sport and what a great way to see the city!
Of course we are also dancing our way through South America and Lima was no exception. I just want to comment here that we went for dinner before dancing, and it may not be funny to you, but the waiter told us that they only had chicken. So I said, I want the leg. When our food came we started eating it and it was clearly not chicken, it was pork! So we asked the waiter what happened, we ordered chicken and he said, ¨No, you ordered a leg. And I brought you a leg.¨ It made no sense at all and we were laughing hysterically so we decided to eat the pork. We never really figured out what happened. The three of us went to one of the popular discos in the Marina area and had a blast dancing to our favorite Latin songs. Yes, even Stacy has some now! After all this time visiting me in Nicaragua and traveling with me, she recognizes some of the Salsa, reggaeton and bachata songs. She also dances very well to them!
The night before Stacy left, we had a beautiful dinner hosted by Stacy at a fancy restaurant in Lima (thank again Stacy!). We ate alpaca (wonderful!), rabbit, chicken and pork. We had oysters for an appetizer and a bread basket that would rival any five-star restaurant! And….we had six different types of Pisco sours (the national drink) with flavors like basil, chichi morada (purple corn), maracuya (a fruit we don´t have). All very exotic! Wonderful, one-of-a-kind experience!
On the day Stacy left, Josue and I took a bus to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. For those of you who may not know, there are huge shapes in the Peruvian desert around Nazca. They are very old, no one knows who did them or why. But given the time they were made… it was pretty impossible to make such large shapes with such accuracy. And…you can see nothing from the ground, you can only see them from the air. So you go in a tiny 6-seater plane. For those of you who know me, yes, I had to take medicine before going on this one! The lines are amazing….they were made by taking the dark rocks OFF the white sand below and forming a shape, which makes them all the more strange. In the book ¨Chariots of the Gods,¨(which I read years ago and vowed to see these lines one day in my life), his theory were they were signals to the ships (yes, spaceships) that landed there. Who knows? There is really no explanation.
Next, we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru and a great place! Very colonial, great food like stuffed peppers with meat inside and a tasty, spicy white cheese sauce over it, or potatoes with greek olives and another spicy sauce. Peru sure likes its sauces! The first day we did our walking tour (always what we do on our first day to get acquainted with the city, the architecture, the views, the streets, etc. )
The next day we looked at the guide book and decided to take a trip that was not in our plans….to the deepest canyon in the world! We took a five and a half hour bus ride to Cabanaconde, our departure point. In the bus we saw snow-capped mountains for the first time since our trip started. The highest one was around 18,000 feet high. Not bad…
Since we left at 5:30 in the morning, we hadn´t eaten anything so we went to a restaurant in the main square to fortify ourselves! We had a great meal of alpaca (now one of our favorite meats) in red wine sauce with fresh steamed vegetables and the great Cusquena beer! We started our trek after that and made our way down into the canyon. Where we walked was not the deepest point of 4800 meters (if it was, I wouldn´t be here telling this story as you will soon see…). We decided walk to the first indigenous village, Sangalle. Already we were happy to see the local people in their colorful clothing, with their babies strapped behind them in blankets. We descended into the canyon. The trail was a mix of sand, little rocks, big rocks and it was pretty slippery. I was wearing sneakers rather than hiking boots and only fell down four times, once falling on a rock that punched me pretty hard in the kidney area. I think the walk took around 5 hours to go down to the bottom of the canyon. We were rewarded for our hard work by spectacular views of mountains everywhere around us! We could look down into the valley and see a raging river curving around the rocks. As we got closer we could hear it. Of course I was so thrilled about this hike that I didn´t stop to think about the fact that the next morning I would have to walk back UP!!!
We were so tired when we arrived at the bottom that we headed for Oasis, a little conclave of bamboo huts and supposedly a restaurant that had Alpaca steaks and Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru. We were ready for that! But no, there were no Alpaca steaks or Pisco sours. Nor was there good service. Some young men and teenage boys were running the place and told us we couldn´t eat until 7:00, two and a half hours later. It had started raining, so we were getting cold and there was no way to dry off. But we waited…
As we waited, tourists from various countries started showing up at the dining table. There was no electricity at this place, but they didn´t start cooking until dark. All of us were tired and hungry and the only available dinner was spaghetti with ketchup for sauce and a vegetable soup in which we couldn´t identify a single vegetable! It tasted like water broth! As you can imagine we were disappointed with the meal, but we had a lively table discussion for two hours with people from Holland, Brazil, France, Sweden and then us, me from the U.S. and Josue from Nicaragua. THAT was great! Everyone decided to speak in English since everyone could understand some level of English. It was a very nice (if dark…we only had one candle) evening.
The next morning we got up bright and early to make our ascent up the mountain. Who was I kidding? Walk up that mountain? Maybe it would take me 10 hours? 15?
We could not walk it in the dark because the path was narrow and the drop over the edge of the trail was probably 2000 feet! We took a few hours and walked up almost half way. Josue was wonderful…no complaining, no nothing, reminding me to drink water and then…he saw an indigenous man coming down the trail with two mules and he said, ¨Hey, how much to rent your mules to take us the rest of the way up?¨ It was very reasonable, about $10, so we said, why not? Well, it sure took the strain off my heart..to a point. The mules liked to walk by the edge, not on the inside by the side of the mountain. There were moments when we both felt that the mule was going to walk right off the cliff. Sometimes I looked over my right shoulder and could just see DOWN a thousand or so feet. But we made it to the top and it clearly was ANOTHER adventure.
Waiting at the top were the two people from Holland we had been talking to the night before – Harald and Marike. We decided to walk back to town together and grab a meal of – yes you guessed it – alpaca steak in vino tinto. We had a nice meal then found out that the five and a half hour bus ride back to Arequipa was sold out for the next few days and the only way we could get back was to stand the whole way!!! Well, we weren´t the only ones doing that, the whole bus was packed with people standing! But this is where the idea of bus travel suits me so well….the Peruvian people who were sitting in their seats made room on the arms of their seats, pulled down their suitcases so we could sit on them in the aisle, and did everything they could to make our ride as comfortable as possible. Everyone communicated in his or her own way and we had many nice conversations with some very lovely people. By the end of the trip, we had created a little ¨bus community¨ and it seemed that we were all good friends. We even took a picture of everyone to remind us of this remarkable experience where we saw just how kind the Peruvian people are and how nice they were with us. These are the experiences that I always remember. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to travel the way I do…with the people of the country.
When we got back to Arequipa, we made plans to see Harald and Merike at 10:30 p.m. We met them at the Plaza de las Armas and went to a restaurant that had local food from Arequipa. Very tasty. Josue brought the guitar and played some nice songs for us. It is always great to listen to him play…he is also giving me guitar lessons! We had a nice time talking to our new friends and since they will be traveling for several weeks around Chile and Argentina, we exchanged emails and are in contact to see if we can meet again somewhere else. It´s terrific to make friends from other countries along the way.
The next day Josue and I were off to Chile…………. To view photos of this part of the trip, click here.
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