Peru Pain

Celebrating the end of a long trip with a return to the Gran Hotel Bolivar, home of the best pisco sours in Peru. I’m also enjoying the “Pistons” hoodie — it was a tough choice between that and a bright green Stanford T-shirt.

Neron’s 15 minutos of fame.

This was the funniest thing I saw in Peru — even better than when the woman fell down the stairs in the bus and knocked herself out by falling into the bathroom and hitting her head on the toilet.

You knew this caption was coming, right?

I wouldn’t have made a good Inca.

The terracing was pretty impressive at all of the Incan ruins. And yes, I didn’t know what terracing was until the Kates told me.

It’s even more impressive in person.

We met up with Kate’s friend Kate (heretofore referred to as Other Kate) in Cuzco. After spending a day or so bumming around the markets and letting Other Kate introduce us to various Peruvian street food (no stomach problems yet!) we began our journey to Machu Picchu. Whereas most of our previous travel had been almost exclusively on “Royal Class” gringo buses, getting to Machu Picchu required a variety of transport. Suffice it to say that we became much more intimately acquainted with the Peruvian people.

We’d seen several Inca ruins on our trip previously, but Machu Picchu was in a completely different ballpark. The most notable characteristic is its size — even though it’s probably the biggest tourist attraction in the Americas, it was still fairly easy to find completely empty sections of the ruins.

We spent a full day exploring the ruins, hiking various nearby paths, etc. However, that wasn’t enough walking for some of us. So, we decided to walk back from Machu Picchu to our hotel instead of taking the bus. It was a nice night, and we could spend the 20 soles ($6) bus fare on dinner.

An hour and a half (and several rolled ankles) later, we decided that walking another several miles in the dark wasn’t such a good idea. And so begins the story of my first hitchhiking experience… Luckily, there isn’t too much to tell. Kate flagged down a truck, we rode in the bed for a few miles, arrived in town safely, and ate a mildly satisfying dinner at a tourist trap.

In any case, we made it back to Cuzco in one piece, ate more street food today, and are flying to Lima early tomorrow morning. After one more night in Lima, we’re taking a redeye back home to the USA (pronounced ooh-sa in Peru, btw).

That’s it for today. Enjoy the pictures (and in some cases, captions).

I realized that I didn’t post any street photos yet — this picture from Puno is a good example of the general chaos.

Kate and her friend Kate hiking at some Incan ruins in Pisac. Sucks that the sky is blown out…

Pretty impressive ruins — given that we saw them before Machu Picchu.

My favorite Peruvian dish. Beef stir-fried with onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc and served with rice and french fries.

These kids were working the tips…

The rightmost kid is single (you can tell from his hat).  Have at it, ladies!

Peruvian magic dust? Nah, that comes from the coca leaf..

Natives of the Floating Islands on Lake Titicaca use boats made from reeds to get around (unless tourists aren’t watching, in which case they use regular rowboats).

So, I finally braved the Peruvian computers once again to upload some pictures. Sorry they’re not too exciting — the next ones should be better.

Our boat trip to Isla Taquile on Lake Titicaca (pronounced Titi-haha by the natives) was pretty awesome. We saw some man-made floating islands, hiked a bit (we’re over the soroche, thank you very much), and took a lot of pictures. The most notable part of Isla Taquile were the floppy hats that the people wear — different colors to indicate different marital status. If only it were that easy at home…

On a more somber note, those of you following the Peruvian news may have seen that there was a horrible bus crash yesterday where 13 people died and 40 were injured (at least according to my bad Spanish). The crash was on the same route we took — we passed by soon after it happened. I don’t have anything profound to say about it, but just want to let everyone know that we’re safe and sound.
In any case, we’re off to Cuzco tomorrow to visit Machu Picchu, etc. Adios!

Looks like it’s about time to turn around and head home.

This view is why Kate wanted to keep on walking.

This is the volcano outside of Arequipa called El Misti. And no, I haven’t gained that much weight from my guinea pig and llama diet — it’s just the money belt.

Highlights included a painting of Jesus eating a guinea pig (cuy) at the Last Supper.

Here’s the monastery (sp?) in Arequipa.

.. is not a Peruvian delicacy. In fact, it’s the Spanish word for altitude sickness, which hit both Kate and I pretty hard on our hiking trip. It’s probably my fault for not taking altitude medication preemptively, but I’ve never had problems before. Guess 3700m is about my limit…

In any case, we recovered a bit after sleeping for 13 hours the first day. We did about half of the hike that we planned on, which all in all was pretty impressive given that the kilometer to projectile vomit ratio was about 2 : 1. Quoth Kate: “I’m gonna ralph again.. but it’s so beautiful here! Let’s just go another 20 minutes…”

I’ll upload the pictures as soon as I get them off my camera — unfortunately it’s not as easy to find someone to copy pictures to a CD as I would like. At least I finally learned how to make the request in Spanish…

The bus ride to and from Chivay was only slightly more pleasant than soroche. The road was unpaved and extremely bumpy, and to top it all off we were subjected to hours and hours of Chicas Mañaneras Peruvian folk music videos. On the plus side, I learned how to say “Turn that shit off!” in Spanish.

Now we’re at Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake (3800m). The altitude is treating us a bit better this time, but my extremities are still a bit tingly. Oh, what I go through for you, Peru Pain.

Tomorrow we’re going to take a boat trip to one of the islands. It should be awesome. Ciao.

One thing I have to say is that the Internet is much better in the land of Amazon.com than it is in the Peruvian Amazon.  The connections are all really slow here (hence the tiny flickr photos), the keyboards are sticky, and I have to install Firefox on every one I use because I can’t stand to use a browser without tabs.  Sometimes there isn’t even any Internet at all — we tried to go to a place called ¨Speedy Internet¨yesterday, only to find out that they only had computer games.

The bus terminal Internet is fairly good, however.  We’re taking a bus into Peruvian canyon country to go hiking for a day.  It seems like it may be a fairly rustic experience — we just saw a sheep get loaded onto a bus.  I think it will be a nice break from the big city, though.  Arequipa is packed with taxis that honk every time they see a gringo, and street vendors are constantly trying to sell us stuff.

Gotta run now.

P.S. Any Wordpress users know how to make the blog stop censoring words like er0tic or g1rl?

That’s it for today. I hear the blog was boring without pictures. Hope it’s better now.

We’re taking an overnight bus to Arequipa in a few hours. Hasta luego…

Or so I thought… to put on a long-sleeve shirt under a lifejacket. We’re on our way to the Poor Man’s Galapagos after a 3 hour delay on the beach.

Apparently a major industry in Peru is feeding pelicans and then begging for tips.

At the beach in Paracas. Anyone else think the in green looks like the widow from Grizzly Man?

See Dracula anywhere?

Most dogs don’t seem to have owners, but some actually seem to be (relatively) well cared for.

In Peru dogs walk on the roof. And they talk…

of the er0tic variety. Peru has such a rich history…

We went to the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Arqueologia y Historia del Peru.

Wait for it…

This is what nice houses look like in Lima. We snuck through a gate into the rich neighborhood.

Today we went to an archeological museum in Lima and then took the rich white people bus to a small town called Pisco.  Our hotel seems nice (has foosball and lots of annoying Australians) and is right across the street from a cemetery.

Our first voyage out of the hotel was to said cemetery.  There we made our first true Peruvian friend — an 11 year old boy named Anderson (or something like that) who worked at the cemetery watering the graves.  We could actually understand his Spanish much better than we understand taxi drivers, etc.  Of course, that didn’t have much correlation for understanding what the hell he was talking about. 

Anderson kept on pointing to his teeth and saying a word I couldn’t understand (Kate thought he wanted fruit).  After we looked puzzled for a while, he starting talking about Dracula and saying that he could show us his grave.  We were already a bit doubtful, but he said not to tiene miedo – he’d show us George Bush’s grave too.

Despite our better judgment, we followed Anderson into the bowels of the cemetery, where we found a group of Peruvians gathered around a shrine, leaving flowers, etc.  After waiting our turn to pay our respects to president and vampire alike, it turned out that the grave belonged to one Sara Heller, Englishwoman.  Who was she?  Neither Anderson or Google have much to say on the topic.

My apologies to those of you who were expecting a more thrilling conclusion to this story.  So were we.

On that note, I think I’ve done enough writing for tonight — Peruvian keyboards tend towards the disgustingly sticky.  Tomorrow we’re taking a trip to the “Poor Man’s Galapagos” (Islas Ballestas) and need to wake up early.

Word.

Except for the Peruvian stamp museum! 

And the food comes pretty close…  I had a gut-busting lunch of ceviche (raw fish cured in lemon juice) and lomo saltado (fried beef with onions and peppers served with rice) for less than $2.  Bananas cost $0.04 each, and 8 pizza rolls and a gigantic bag of oranges (dinner) are each $1 at the grocery store.  Given those prices, it´s pretty amazing that we haven´t had any stomach problems yet.  Lucky too — bathrooms seem to have either toilet paper or toilet seats, but not both..

Lima isn´t really a nice city, but it´s fun to walk around the streets and practice speaking Spanish to the locals.  I still get a deer-in-the-headlights look whenever anyone talks to me unexpectedly, but other than that I´ve been managing to get by.

Gotta run now — it´s pisco sour time!

P.S. I got an awesome new blue watch that blinks a lot and displays seconds using an abacus.  ¡Viva el Peru!

Got in last night.

Our hotel is fairly nice.  The beds are pretty short though.  I practically need to sleep diagonally.  Better than Norway where I had to stand on my tiptoes to use the urinal.

Time is running out in the Ciber Cafe.  Hasta luego… 

Good news: I found a Spanish <-> English dictionary, enabling me to remember fine Spanish words like the one for watch.

Bad news: I can’t find my goddamn watch!!

Hello all, and welcome to Peru Pain. In just a little under six hours I’ll be headed to the airport to embark on a two-and-a-half week odyssey through Peru.

Following in the footsteps of Norway Pain, I’m going to try to keep a journal of general happenings and going-ons.

I better start packing if I’m going to get any sleep tonight… Hasta Peru!