nothing like heat stroke and altitude sickness to cheer you up!

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so yesterday i spent a lovely lazy day in huacachina, the desert oasis and perhaps it boardered over 35 degrees or more in the day. i passed the time walking around the oasis and talking to the locals. or rather being persued by the bracelet makers. antonio, ronny (aka pinky), his friend, and the strange lagoon dog sheppard julio cesar. all in all though they proved to make for some interesting conversations, plus i got an awesome deal on a ton of stuff and a few regalados. its kind of funny cause every peruvian immediately asks you to be his girl friend and have babies. i ask them if they talk that way to peruvian girls, i think not... but after a few embarassing rebutals (embarrasing for them, in spanish i might add), the rest of their friends snickered and the conversations moved on to other topics. julio cesar was a particularly interesting character, doing his backflips in the lagoon and hearding his 6 dogs up to the top of the dunes to pray to pachamama (mother earth). he was also a part time waiter in the restaurent tanya and i decided to drink wine all night in, and later we all played the drums together. well actually the wine was the night before, cause by yesterday evening i wasn´t feeling well. i did practice yoga and karate on the roof of my hostel, or rather the roof of the entire village since they join (as i did the day before). then i swam across the lagoon 3 times over. gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. anyways, i had to pack my things as i was taking the night bus to arequipa, and my heat stoke was fast setting in, as i munched on a chicken sandwhich (i always eat!) before grabbing my taxi. (PS: all my conversations are in spanish now). thank god for first class cruz del sur and air conditioning. probably the only reason i didn´t puke as the bus winded 12 hours towards arequipa, around the bends, back and forth, back and forth.... going so fast as if on rails... yucky...

so arequipa, tired, dizzy but ok. the temperature was maybe a cool 21 in the day. i met two lovely german girls and we split a taxi to my new hostel, home sweet home, as its called. i will spent tonight and tommorow night. one of the girls was terribly sick, probably heat stroke and stayed in the hostel, while gina and i decided to venture arequipa on our own, cameras tightly in hand. nice city. well it is in the centre when you look past the outer rubble. typically i love rubble, but lately i feel like puking. arequipa is fairly safe, and apart from every man honking at us, oddly enough in the market and streets i don´t feel different or like a tourist at all. gina and i think we blend in. hehehe. but seriously people don´t talk to us or look at us strangely at all. everyone is friendly and normal. eventhough we do appear to be the only tourists at any one place at any one point in time. lol. so as we began to walk i developed a massive headache but went to the pharmacia, and after the procedure of ordering the drug from one person, paying another, and then receiving it from another, i got 10 paracetomals for about 50 cents! efficiency at its peek! lol. as i walked i began to feel VERY tired, extremely out of breath. by the time i got to the market i feared i may pass out, luckuly i was not alone. i just started moving slower than my best taichi performance. it was a stuggle to breath and move at the same time. we continued all through the city at an unbelievably slow pace. then i stoped for some coca tea. felt a tiny bit better and clamboured back to the hostel. am still feeling shitty but a little better. need to grab some dinner now, hope gina will come cause these streets at night look MIGHTY sketchy. in the day, no es problema.

i´m skipping the deepest canyon in the world to just chill, as that would involve 12 hours of bus rides in just 2 days and an additional 1200 m of altitude. so i´ll stay here to rest and move to cusco day after tommorow.

chow

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Comments

[Olivia]

No way!
Omigod omigod, I am laughing my ass off right now because I met Julio Cesar in Huacachina too! (how do you forget a name like that, after all?) Why doesn't it surprise me that he chats up a new girl every day. Absolutely stellar!

[asdf]

Hahaha! Good ole Julio, or the 'Lord of the Desert' as he also likes to be called. That guy is unreal....if you're a girl he's chatted up, and u stay around for more than a week, he starts to get really scared. Then it gets funny!!!