Update #3... Arequipa!

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Well, when I last left you I was enjoying the oasis life in Huacachina, lounging by the sand dunes and drinking a little too much rum. Due to said revelry, God decided I was having entirely too much fun and decided it was time for a good old fashioned smiting... And smite he did. I was horribly sick for about four days, and I actually thought around day three that I might have to go to the hospital. At the risk of venturing into TMI territory, let´s just say that I couldn´t keep anything down and was pretty much living in the bathroom. As if that wasn´t bad enough, another Old Testiment lightning rod hit me and I came down with a cold on top of it all. Needless to say, I wasn´t a happy camper. I tried to power through and be a trooper, so I continued to go out and do my touristy dance, but let´s just say that I wasn´t in it 100%. Fortunately, I just happened to be traveling for a few days with this amazing guy named Alejandro who, in spite of knowing me for a few short hours, tried his best to take care of me. I mean, I do love flying solo abroad, but when something goes wrong, it certainly is nice to have someone looking out for you and actually caring if you live or die. He fed me a get well soon cocktail of drugs every day and really helped me through that nasty spell!

I´ve decided to give up on the Day 1, Day 2 sort of blog. I can´t even keep track of which day I´m on anymore, so I´m going to go with a quick rundown instead of a day-by-day play-by-play. And if you have a problem with that, tough.

I believe my last blog was on my final night in Huacachina; bright and early the next morning Alejandro (who I will henceforth refer to as Alex because, well, it´s shorter) and I set out for Nasca to see the world-famous and mysterious Nasca lines. We arrived around 11, were instantly accosted by a hoard of "travel agents," aka total creeps using the names of real agencies to rip off gringos, and eventually found an only semi-shady guy (far better than the rest, sadly) for our tour. He took us back to a hostel that he claimed to be "recommended" by Lonely Planet... It does, in fact, APPEAR in Lonely Planet, but I´m not 100% sure about the highly recommended bit. The hostel was a scream: it´s run by a group of young Peruvians who spend all of their managerial energy getting high. One of the employees was actually referred to as "chinito" (little china man... I know it´s hugely un-PC but this stuff flies in Latin America) because he was literally incapable of opening his eyes beyond a tiny pink sliver. As we were only spending a few hours in Nasca (everyone had warned me against staying too long as there is little to see besides the Nasca lines) we booked a tour with the only seemingly responsible employee to go to the Casa Museo Maria Reiche, the mirador (look-out point) and the mirador natural. The museum was very interesting--Maria Reiche was a German mathematician who dedicated her life to studying the Nasca lines. Her house is literally steps away from the figures, she would clean the figures daily, take detailed notes and make tons of maps to document all the lines. Apparently, the figure called "Las Manos," or "The Hands," only has nine fingers, and Maria Reiche had tragically lost a finger in her youth and felt a sort of instant bond with the figures on that account. (Side note: Alex actually said to our tour guide, jokingly, I hope, "She probably lost it while cooking," which was definitely a smack-worthy moment. And smack I did.) We toured her living quarters, looked at her maps and saw a Nasca mummy before moving on to the mirador. The mirador is a rickety metal spire that overlooks a few of the figures, so we climbed up and got to see the hands, the tree, and the lizard. Sadly, the people of Peru decided one of their national treasures was not really that valuable and constructed a highway right through that figure, so it´s practically demolished at this point. Very sad. The natural mirador was also very beautiful; we couldn´t see any actual figures from there, but we were able to observe the sacred triangles built by the Nasca people that extended for miles and miles. Apparently, there were only certain acceptable ways to enter the figures through these triangle shapes, and seeing how far they stretched was truly impresionante.

I should mention before moving on that Alex and I also took a trip over to the Museo Didactico Antonini, a wonderful little museum rich in information about the Nasca people, their lifestyles, and the lines. Favorite part of the museum experience: I was photographing four or five skulls on display (see facebook for the actual pic) and my camera creepily decided to do facial recognition on the skulls, and when I took the picture, it seriously told me that "one or more subjects may have closed their eyes" in the picture. It was horrifying and hilarious.

After our busy day of lineage, Alex and I met up with Fernando, a Mexican student on vacation in Peru, and hiked around the streets of Nasca a bit, buying dinner from a street vendor and instantly regretting THAT decision. After about an hour of chatting and watching terrifyingly violent Thai movies at the hostel (the high guys were really into them) we caught an overnight bus to Arequipa. (The high hostel employees almost made us miss the bus, as they arranged a taxi to pick us up at ten. I should also mention that our bus LEFT at ten.) Luckily, we made it by the skin of our teeth, tossed our luggage underneath the bus and climbed aboard.

We had shopped around a bit for bus tickets, and most companies were charging 70-90 soles (equivalent to about 23-30 dollars) for the trip to Arequipa, but the high guys sold us a ticket for 55 soles. (Poor life decision.) We were excited about the great price, but when we boarded the bus we saw WHY it was just 55 soles. The whole bus reeked of smoke, the windows were broken, the bathroom was just indescribably awful, and the fans, when running, were at about 130 decibels. Given the grossness of the bus and the grossness of my body, it was an unpleasant experience, but we arrived in Arequipa in the morning alive and (more or less) well, ready to continue our adventures.

Arequipa is about 7,500 feet above sea level, and we felt it upon arrival. Alex felt a little drunk, I had a headache, and both of our legs felt like they weighed five hundred pounds. After a good deal of arguing, I forced Alex to take a soroche (altitude sickness) pill, we flagged down a taxi and arrived at our hostel.

We´re staying at a little place called The Point, which is kind of a cool chill pad full of youngsters eager to party. (They have computers, a "hot tub" that is more like a tepid tub, pool tables, foosball tables, ping pong tables and a bar, so if you had no interest in being a tourist, there´s really no need to ever leave.) We got to the hostel around 7 am, instantly ran into Fernando, showered and then all three of us headed out to explore bright and early in the morning.

Our first stop was La Compañía, a beautiful church in barroque style in the heart of Arequipa right by the beautiful Plaza de Armas. We got a brief tour of the courtyards and the architecture, took a few photos, and headed over to the Catedral, the central church in the Plaza, admiring how much more interesting churches are in Latin America than in the US. After that we ate lunch at a little restaurant with a lovely view of the mountains; I ordered pizza and wine, pretty standard, but Fernando decided to order cuy, fried guinea pig. It was horrifying. It came fully intact, with little deep fried eyes and deep fried teeth staring back at you as he picked through the meat. I know, I know, cultural differences, I shouldn´t be grossed out, but I just kept thinking of Amy Barrow´s pet guinea pigs and feeling nauseous.

We also checked out the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, an old monastery that´s literally a city within a city. It took us several hours to get through the entire thing, and it was just a photographer´s dream. (Again, check facebook.) Apparently, the monastery used to be a rather debaucherous place, where the nuns would not quite live that chaste life one might expect, but the pope came in and put a stop to all that nonsense and now it´s a certifiable nunnery. We also visited the Casa Moral, the most beautiful house in Arequipa, for a quick tour of the architecture and art. The most interesting thing in my opinion was the blend of indigenous and Spanish cultures. The indigenous artists would often secretly rebel with symbols (e.g. the moon, sign of fertility), disguised signatures, and varied skin colors (e.g. a white face with darker indigenous-looking hands) in their art. Finally, we went to see Juanita the ice princess, a beautiful 12-year-old Incan girl sacrificed to the mountain gods at the top of Ampato. The Incans would walk for months to the top of the huge mountain to practice the sacred ceremony, sacrificing the most beautiful girls from the upper-class and leaving their bodies in the fetal position on the mountain. Juanita has been frozen for over five hundred years and was only discovered with the melting ice atop the mountain: her body rolled down the mountain and unexpecting volcano-explorers discovered her.

For the past two days´, I´ve been in the Cañon del Colca, the second deepest canyon in the world, to do a two-day, intensive trek. I booked with an Australian guy in my hostel named James, thinking it would be nice to have a friend on the trip, but instantly regretted the decision. He is the most narcissistic, egotistical, negative and whiny man you´ve ever met in your life. I should have known when I met him and the first thing he did was complain about how much he hated South America that a two-day trip would be a bad idea, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, a huge mistake. He was simply INSUFFERABLE the entire hike, complaining about the United States, South America, and anything and everything else that came up in conversation. He also liked to spend his time arguing with the tour guides and insulting Americans. I´m not the most patriotic person in the world, and I certainly agree that there are certain US stereotypes that can hold true, but to make sweeping generalizations about ALL Americans having been to American once in your life was too much. He spent an entire lunch bitching about Americans, and it got to the point that I stopped talking and walking with him entirely. It was much more enjoyable a solas.

Besides the horrible company, the hike was incredible. We spent about 6-7 hours hiking on day 1, arriving at a tiny town called La Oasis at the bottom of the canyon where we spent the night in tiny shacks without electricity, trying to avoid horses, dogs and rivers with our tiny candles in the middle of the night. We woke up around 5 am on day 2 and began our three-hour ascent, which proved incredibly difficult... Given the altitude and the steepness of the mountain, I was barely able to feel my legs halfway through the trek. I kept strong and powered through, and in the end I was rewarded with a nice trip to the baños termales, the natural hot springs in the canyon. We just returned about an hour ago, and I´m meeting up for dinner with a few nice guys from the trip. I´ll post more in a few days with more adventures! The next stop is Puno, where I´ll be visiting the islands of Lake Titicaca and freezing my buns off. Hasta pronto!

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