First, a couple of follow-ups from my previous message.
1. Some
reading from CNN on the volcano in Baños
2. I am not sure who started this rumor, but to settle this once and for all - at no point in Colombia did I throw an elbow that made the salsa instructor bleed.
Now to Peru:
Thanks to my 3 new best friends, Cipro, Amoxicilian, and Celebrex, my rapidly aging body is barely hanging on through grueling weeks 10 and 11 of travel.
Since my flight from Colombia to Peru was cancelled, I arrived at 1am Thursday morning instead of 11am Wednesday morning. So I scrambled to find a hostel in Lim, then tried to catch up on lost time by taking a 7am bus to Huacachina, a 'desert oasis' town. I went sandboarding (like in Namibia) and took this crazy dune buggie tour where I swear our driver was trying to kill us flying up and down over the desert dunes. A lot of fun though, and I am still picking sand out of my ears.
The next morning I headed to the little town of Nazca and took a flight (on a tiny 4 person plane) over the famous Nazca lines. Sort of like the Stonehenge of S. America, the lines are designs of monkeys, condors, other animals, and random shapes out in the middle of the desert. No one knows why they are there or who did it. The lines were really cool but flying in a tiny plane dipping and flying sideways to give everyone the best views may have been the best part.
After Nazca, I took a night bus to Arequipa. After a few awkward minutes in the morning deciding if I should exchange phone numbers with the Peruvian guy who I spent 9 hours intertwined with in the tiny adjoining seats, I headed into town. After 3 nights of 4 hours of sleep and then a night bus, I was done. Arequipa is called the white city because there are so many white limestone buildings but for me it was the city of sleep. I managed to see a few cool museums (including a really good one that had an Incan ice mummy nicknamed Juanita), a massive convent that was really cool, and a few churches and plazas. But I slept 20 out of the 30 hours I was there - I guess I am not as young as I once was.
After Arequipa, I headed to Cusco for another week of spanish school. School was good, but Cusco was as fun a little city as I can imagine. The town is pretty touristy, but it's gorgeous with tons of colonial spanish buildings built over and alongside the walls and palaces of the ancient Incan capital. All of this meshes surprisingly smoothly with modern soccer fields, shops, restaurants, and bars full of gringos. It´s pretty international also, and in Cusco I had the best Indian, French, and Australian (breakfast) food I´ve had in a long time. I also met a great group of people at school and spent more time than I thought possible singing and dancing to Shakira. And I got practice for my return to dorm life, but hopefully there will be more hot water in Stanford´s dorms than these in Cusco.
After Cusco, I spent 2 days at Machu Picchu that were absolutely incredible. Many people say how great it is, but I will add my praise también. First, I spent Saturday afternoon hiking 2 hours roundtrip to the Sun Gate for an overview of the site and the amazing views of the area. Then, late in the day, after most of the tourists left, I finagled a private guided tour of all the ruins. Really fascinating. I was so impressed that on day 2 I decided to walk the 8km uphill from town to make it to the ruins for sunrise. Any place that can make me(!) wake up at 5am one day then 4am the next day has to be pretty powerful. But waking up in the dark, putting on my headlamp, and walking on my leg and a half (my knee has still not recovered from the triathlon in May) up Incan stairs for an hour and a half was really amazing. Then I got to the top covered in sweat, and was actually the first one in Machu Picchu, which was even more amazing. And, since I had seen the ruins the day before, I rushed/hobbled immediately up the mountain behind the ruins, Huanya Picchu, and then on an extended trail around that mountain for the next 4 hours (actually I was extremely fast up to the top but got passed by literally hundreds of people going down). By noon, after an estimated 5,000 stairs and 8 hours of hiking, I was exhausted, but it was definitely worth it.
I´m in Lima now with another 8 hour layover. In addition to Lima's pretty decent old town and waterfront areas, I had a nice little adventure in a taxi today. In my cab from the airport, we stalled out in the middle of the road in rush hour traffic. I sat for a second, then said I would get out. The guy said there was no problem and started to push the car. I said, yes there was a problem, and wanted to get out. He convinced me to stay and said that a gas station was only 2 blocks away. So I sat, and he pushed the car to the gas station. Then he asked for the fare so he could pay for the gas. I paid him, he used the money to buy 0.75 gallons of gas, and we continued on our merry way.
Well, it´s time for me to sign off. This internet cafe has had 'Dust in the Wind' on repeat since I sat down (no lie).
