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Published: September 23rd 2008
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The bain of my life
I wish this thing would just close... Woke up with a bit of a tequila hangover but just thankful i was sleeping in a nice bed with clean sheets. I missed breakfast (late again) but my room mate made it. Lois is having a change of career and is going into the army as a lawyer, and is very good at timekeeping it would seem. How different we are. We all had the morning to ourselves in Lima and would all meet up in the hotel at 2pm to get our private bus to Pisco. Everyone who knows me knows how bad I am at timekeeping so I found being on time rather stressful but I have no choice as i'm in a group!! I was ready to go at 1.50pm but then spent the next 15 mins sitting on my bloody rucksack trying to close the zippers. Peruvian time is clearly Claire time as the bus didn't leave until 2.30pm anyway. I can see this working in my favour...
Had a 3hr bus ride along the coast to Pisco which was pretty amazing. You go from seeing sand dunes and some of the best beaches in Peru, to lots of shanty towns and people who literally
have nothing and are trying their best to make a living. Wasn´t sure what to make of Pisco but was shocked to see the devastation from the earthquake. The reason they were rioting was because it was exactly a year to the day that an earthquake hit Pisco, and the government still hasn't given much money to redevelop. Apparently Pisco was the hardest town to be hit and since it's so small it was pretty devastating. No wonder they were pissed off- I would be one year on with no help. One side of the street would be completely flattened or with just a few walls left standing, and then you would have a bank with marble floors directly opposite. Can't see the logic there. Most people have various walls of their house missing and those that dídn´t were living in houses made of corrugated iron sheets and anything they can get their hands on. Felt quite bad when we turned up at our hotel which had hot water and a rooftop bar. There was nothing on either side of the hotel apart from rubble. Wasn´t sure why on earth we were there but it was to base ourselves for
Yummy
Interesting fish dish plus a vegetarians favourite the next day.
Since Pisco is famous for its Pisco Sours we had quite a few of them (they're delicious) and decided to tour the town, which actually took all of 5 mins as there was nothing really to see and it was mostly flat. We were all told not to take bags as it's really unsafe and muggings are rife. I'm not a fan of the moneybelt (it makes me look fat - how vain am I!!) so find I just shove stuff in my jeans, money in my cleavage, and most of my valuables in a portable travelsafe which is tied to my bed in the hotel. We headed back to the hotel for dinner and they clearly needed a translator for the menu or someone had a great sense of humour (see photos). Ate a great paella and headed to the roof to relax. Someone had been reading about "psychedelic tourism" in the Lonely Planet which is basically a weird hallucinogenic cactus plant which you eat in the mountains with a shamen. It puts you in a trance for a few days while you have inner cleansing. What a load of bollocks. Apparently you get to
see your evil self sitting next to you on the mountain. Can't think of anything worse so won't be doing that. It's legal aswell as it's a traditional healing. Hmm....
Was about to call it a night when Ruben asked if I wanted to see a local 'disco'. My new saying seems to be "yeah why not" at the moment, so we ventured out into the pisco streets and tried to find this place. That's easy when there are streetlamps, but they are few and far between so we were basically roaming the street in the dark and Ruben was now lost so we just listened for music. The streets got worse as we walked as there were mounds of earth in the middle of the road and lots of stagnant water in ditches with a doorframe to walk over if you wanted to get across the road. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I really wish I took photos to show you, but I didn't bring my camera out with me funnily enough. It was such a random night. I kept laughing to myself "if only my friends could see me now". Found a 'disco' but
couldn't get in as it was one-in-one-out. Unbelieveable. I stood out like a sore thumb with my blonde hair and white skin, but I didn't feel unsafe though. Found out it wasn't a club though but someone's house! Anyway, finally found another disco and after charging us the equivalent of a quid to get in (which is expensive for Peru but was hoping they would put it towards their building fund), we ventured into what can only be described as an old dance hall. It was like Strictly Come Dancing with tables on the outside and an empty dancefloor. The bar had blue fluroscent lightening and a projector screen even though the town has practically fallen down. So Ruben and I hit the dancefloor on our own with a bunch of old local people looking at us rather confused. I half expected them to hold up score cards for the dancing, which would have been low as my dancing still hasn't got better incase you were wondering! I can only try! It was only when i got back to the hotel that I realised that venturing into the middle of knowhere probably wasn't the safest thing to do but it
was bloody funny!!
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