The AMAZON...Rurrenabaque and Pampas

Well, it had to happen at some point in our trip...we would need to venture into the Amazon jungle. Finally, in the last country that we are visiting, we have finally done it.

We flew from La Paz to Rurrenabaque to avoid the 22 hour bus ride over dangerous roads (its the rainy season and most roads are washed out or experiencing continual landslides) and though we paid substantially more, we don´t regret it at all. The flight was anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes in total, depending on the size of the plane. Our flight to Rurrenabaque was in a tiny plane that you couldn´t fully stand up in and there were strict baggage weight limits. To say the least, I was nervous. But obviously we survived.

Rurrenabaque is a small, quiet town flanking the Yacuma river, with not much going on besides hosting tourists looking for excursions into the jungle. We flew in a day before our 3 day, 2 night tour in Pampas National Park was supposed to start, so we had some time to explore. We didn´t know how exciting just exploring was going to be. Since Carnival was still going on (its like a 4 day solid thing leading up to Mardi Gras) kids were lining the streets with waterballoons and foam. This all would have been fun and good, except some of the ballons we soon realized were filled with dyed water or even blood (pig or sheep or something). We had only brough limited clothing for our 5 days away from La Paz, so suddenly a trip to the market became much more exciting than we cared for it to be. The final straw was when we saw some locals actually throwing rocks at each other. We spent most of our first day in Rurrenabaque in the comfortable hammocks at our hostel and cooking in the communal kitchen we had.

Pampas Tour, Day 1: The first day was a long travel day. We met at the travel office in Rurrenabaque, and after waiting more than an hour for another group member who flew in that morning, we started off on the bumpy, muddy, 3 hour drive to Santa Rosa. It would be just too convenient if everything went smoothly though, so of course we noticed that the Land Rover was making noises and the driver kept stopping to check the distributor cap under the hood. We stopped for about 20 minutes at one point to, I don´t know, wait for the moisture in it to dry out? (Jon should be writing this portion, I know poop about cars). Once that was ¨resolved¨ we thought we were home free, but no, we got a flat tire. We waited in the car in the pouring down rain for the driver to get out and fix it. Fifteen minutes later, we were good to go with the tire, but wait, the driver had left on the car headlights and the engine wouldn´t start! After much exasperated trying, we sat back, mosquitos buzzing around us, rain pounding on the car and our guide who was sitting shotgun started chuckling. Laughter erupted from the rest of us, what a hilariously shitty situation! It was resolved easily enough, after another several minutes of trying, the engine magically started and we were on our way again.

When we finally got to Santa Rosa, we had a late lunch and then loaded into the narrow wooden boat that would be our means of transport for the next three days. On our way to the lodging site, our guide took us through many different channels of the wetlands until I was thoroughly lost, but showed us some incredible wildlife. So many kinds of birds, from eagles, to hawks, to herons, to cormorants, to funky looking oversized turkeys with mohawks. We also saw our first camen, alligators, turtles and the famous pink dolphins of the Amazon! We also got really close up to black howler monkeys and yellow squirrel monkeys.

The lodging itself was extremely basic and was essentially a series of wooden, slippery boardwalks connecting dorm houses, bathrooms, kitchen and dining area and common room. Everything was stilted and we were about 4 or so feet above the murkey water. This was all fine, except for the fact that the narrow boardwalks didnt have railings (difficult squeezing two people past at the same time), were mostly wet with little traction, and had broken or missing planks along the way. And if the only threat was falling into some shallow, gross water below, that would have been fine too. But the guides and cooks continually fed alligators and caiman scraps from the kitchen. One alligator was named Pedro, and he was about 5-6 feet long, and rarely left his spot beneath the boardwalk at one of the main intersections of dining area-dormatories-common room. The annoying thing was that all the guides told new comers that Pedro was plastic (that´s how little he moved) and a few people were going to stick their foot down to touch the plastic alligator, and only didnt because someone else had noticed slight movements in Pedro´s eyes and overall position. Nothing said from the guides though, we had to figure this out on our own...doesn´t seem very responsible. There was also a caiman, this dude was about 8 to 10 feet in length, stationed beneath the walkway connecting the kitchen and dining room. Suddenly going to the bathroom in the middle of the night got 100X scarier.

But, we found out on the first night that the food was really good and, well, that makes everything better.

Pampas Tour, Day 2: Our morning trip was to a small, muddy island, home to a herd of cattle to search for the rare Anaconda. This black and green snake lived up in trees and in logs, so our guide grabbed a stick and started poking around. After 30 or so minutes of searching, we didn´t find an anaconda, but we had seen a poisonous, white spider that caused paralysis, a fruit who´s dye is used for tattooing and a lot of cow poop. Technically, we had seen an anaconda slither across the road the day before on our way into Santa Rosa, but it was hardly a fleeting glance (and I might have been the only one besides the guide to see it). We did however, find a big yellow cobra back at camp when we returned for lunch.

The afternoon trip was a swim with the pink dolphins. It was nerve racking getting into the opaque, brown water that we knew contained anacondas, piranas, alligators and camen as well, but our guide assured us that as long as there were several pink dolphins around, they were the top predator and most others would stay away. The pink dolphins would come right up under you (which was a suprise since you couldn´t see your own hand under an inch of water) and investigate you. They were curious creatures, and so soft. Sometimes they would let you hold onto their tail, until they got bored and then they would flap a bunch of water in your face. The younger ones got a little bitey though, not breaking any skin but unpleasant enough coming from an invisible source beneath you in jungle waters. After being bit by sea lions in the Galapagos, I had had enough of these pissy water mammals and got back into the boat.

Our late afternoon adventure was to a solid patch of marshy land to watch the sunset. Overpriced beer and chocolate were sold here, but we resisted and just enjoyed being on solid land and seeing the pinks and oranges in the sky.

That evening, after dinner, we went out on our night excursion, armed with headlamps and flashlights. We spotted several camen with their glowing orange eyes in our light beams, and our guide even surprised us by pulling a baby one onto the boat. No one knew it was on the boat, and I was sitting in the back of the boat right in front of the guide. In the darkness, he rested something on my shoulder, and whne I reached for it, I found a slimy, moving tail! He wasn´t really supposed to touch the animals like that, but it was cool to see one up close. We also saw an owl that night and sat for a while with the boat motor off, listening to the symphony of frogs and watching the lighting storm on the horizon.

Pampas Tour, Day 3: Our last day out started with pirana fishing. We didn´t catch anything, but in all fairness, our guide said we wouldn´t. It is rainy season, and right now, the deepest parts of the main channels are about 9 meters, and they could get about 20cm deeper. In the dry season, the deepest parts of the main channels is at about 1 meter. So wildlife is a lot more consolidated in the dry season, and its easier to catch piranas. We were disappointed, but on our way back to camp, we did get to see some capibaras!

The rest of the day was spent packing up, motoring back to the mainland and driving back to Rurrenabaque. Back at our hostel in Rurrenabaque, we celebrated with a cold beer each and showered off 3 days of insect repellant and scum.

The next day we were supposed to fly back to La Paz at 2pm, but due to weather our flight was delayed until 6pm. We had time to explore the town (free of flying, blood-filled water balloons) and found some great little cafes and bakeries with cheap and tasty food. There was a French-owned bakery with chocolate filled crossants, sweet apple pastries, creamy mushroom pasteries and vegetarian quiches. There was also an Italian-owned pizza shop that sold delicious slices of thin crust pizza for 6Bs (less than a dollar). We enjoyed our chilled-out day away from mosquites before getting safely back to La Paz. We´ve spent one night at the Adventure Brew Hostel here, and in a few hours we will be on a 16 hour bus ride to Sucre!

La Paz and The Worlds Most Dangerous Road

La Paz has served us well the past week and a half as a homebase for all of our mountain biking and jungle excursions. To get to La Paz, we passed through El Alto, a high, dirty suburb of the main city. But then you get to the rim of the bowl the city is in and look down into the brick red, concave city. It is quite a sight! This city will get your heart racing with its busy streets and high elevation (3,800 meters) but we really enjoyed the hostel we stayed at. It is called the Adventure Brew Hostel, and for a mere $7 a night, you get an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast every morning and a free handle of one of their microbrews every night. Those perks aside, the hostel staff is friendly, the beds and bathrooms are clean, we have a communal kitchen available to us and a local market 10 minutes down the road.

Our big experience out of La Paz was mountain biking the World´s Most Dangerous Road, otherwise known as Death Road, because quite a few lethal bus and car accidents have happened there, and crazy mountain biking tourists have died as well. We booked our day trip the first evening we were in La Paz and the next morning we were putting along in second gear with a bunch of other backpackers up to La Cumbre pass at 4,670m. Due to large amounts of precipitation the night before, we started our descent in snow. The first part of the circuit was down paved roads. There were occasional cars going both diretions on this road, so we had to be careful, especially when there was a slow car coming up the road and other cars were trying to overtake them in our lane. We still got quite a bit of speed on that section of the road and it was a good warm up for the old dirt road we would be spending most of the day on. The scenery was also stunning, with snowy peaks and whispy clouds through the valley. Every once in a while, the guides would stop us, have us peer over a cliff and see the car or bus remains below. Usually at these accident spots, you could turn around and see crosses next to the road for the deceased.

After a quick snack break at the end of the paved road, we loaded up our bikes on the vans and drove 15 minutes to the start of the really dangerous, unpaved road. By now, it was much warmer since we were dropping significantly in elevation. We got amazing views of the green valley we were biking down. We flew down that mountain (Jon was usually at the front of the pack, I was front middle, not that we are competative or anything) underneath water falls, through puddles, around tight cliff bends. Usually you wouldn´t know how precarious the trail you just rode down was, until you stopped, turned around and saw the sheer drop off, some of them up to 600 meters. Jon and I were the only two people to get flat tires, but the guide in the back would quickly rectify it by switching us bikes, fixing the tire, and then switching bikes back at the next stop point. While we probably reached faster speeds on the paved part of the road, this rocky road was way more technical and fun, and the elevation change still prompted a rapid pace.

We ended our ride in the tiny town of Yolosa at 1200 meters...so thats 3470 meters of elevation change, or about 11,385 feet from start to finish. From snow covered mountain pass to humid jungle, we were now craving some freezing cold cervesa (which we bought), clean showers and the buffet lunch/dinner that we were promised. We didn´t return to La Paz until nightfall, but it was an awesome, exciting day, probably one of our favorite day trips of all South America!

Carnival was a major event happening in South America (and all around the world) while we were in La Paz. The streets were crazy with kids in costumes, everyone armed with foam cans or giant supersoaker guns, prompting rain slickers and plastic eye covers for most people wandering the streets. We spent a fair amount of time dodging friendly sprays from kids and got nailed a few times in the face and ears, but it was usually good fun with most of the Bolivians. There were however, some malicious Bolivians that would try and spray our faces or cameras and usually yell out something like ¨F***ing gringos.¨ Another bummer was that our friend Luke was carrying his iPhone at one point, and we got mobbed by a professional, middle aged, pickpocketing crew, resulting in his iPhone going missing in seconds and all of us wiping the foam out of our eyes and wondering what had happened.

Besides Death Road and Carnival festivities, La Paz has some amazing artisan markets with some of the cheapest prices you will see in South America. I now have my own partially alpaca wool sweater that I bought for about $13. We will spend more time getting gifts for family members here when we come back through. Another attraction is the San Pedro Prison, which lies in the middle of the city and is one square block of 3-story high, solid cement walls. Jon and I were particularly interested in this since we had read the book Marching Powder about a guy from London who got caught smuggling cocaine in Bolivia and spent almost 5 years there. Besides these attractions, La Paz has to offer good, diverse cuisine and some breath-taking miradors to hike to. Definitely a city worth a few days of exploration and shopping. And we will for sure be returning to have more of the Saya Ambar brew when we are coming back north in a few weeks.

Bolivia!!: Copacabana and Isla del Sol

From Puno it is a quick 2 hour bus ride to the Bolivian border. As busses were full we took a combi, otherwise known as a minivan that fits 15 plus people. Most border crossings are fairly simple: wait in line, answer a few questions or get a fatherly stare from over the glasses, stamp stamp amd then into the next line. The Bolivian border is no different. . . unless you're an American. We had to fill out a visa form, get photocopies of our passports (we paid for the copies), pull out $135 US each and the bills were inspected very carefully, a $20 bill with a slight tear was thrown back at us as if it were monopoly money, and our money was counted at least 4 times. All in all the border wasn't that bad but we felt a bit victimized solely for the fact that we were born in America.

Once on the other side we caught another combi to Copacabana. From here we would set out to explore the Sun island, or Isla del Sol. Copacabana has an interesting tradition where they 'bless' their vehicles by sprinkling confetti all over the car, deck it out with streamers, then douse the car in alcohol! The vehicles are now protected from harm by some patron saint, we saw this ceremony on our way out of town and I think the drivers were putting back as much as was poured on their cars, so the amount of 'protection' would seem limited.. Anyway Copacabana is a neat little town with a main drag filled with touristy stuff, tour operators, food and drink. We found a place to buy boat tickets to the island.

A small boat stuffed with 60 - 70 passengers putted its way out to the island, about an hour an a half from Copacabana. We got off the boat in Yumani, and were immediately accosted by a ticket lady who we had to pay 5 bolivianos to as a "tax" for being on the southern part of the island. There used to be a single fee tourists paid to visit the island but the money wasn't being properly distributed to the entire island, so as we walked in a big loop around the island we were supposed to pay at each "zone" change until you had a ticket from each zone. Anyway, we paid for the first zone and then headed up the Inca Stairs to the top of Yumani, passing the natural springs that were thought to represent the three codes or morals of the Andean People "ama sua, ama llulla, ama qhilla (don't ask me to pronounce it but they mean: do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy). Also Spaniards thought the springs might be the fountain of youth. At the top of the stairs we passed a plethora of hostels and pizzerias, even a few llamas!

We had decided previously that we wanted to spend the night on Isla del Sol so we chose to loop the island and find a hostel to lay our heads that night. As we were sin gia we went at our own pace, starting north from Yumani on the ridge trail. This path gave us fantastic views of the island and Lake Titicaca. We soon found ourselves at the Chincana ruins, a sacrificial table and a large rock that's said too look like a crouching puma when viewed from the southeast. A quick bit of history. The Aymara people called the island Titi'kaka which either means 'puma' 'rock' or 'piedra fundamental' (foundation stone). The Inca's believed that the first of their people, Manco Capác, was born here and also where the sun was born. Lots of cool legends and creation stories are centered around this island. We hiked around many of these significant features of the island without knowing we had just passed a sacred place, there weren't many informational signs for the do-it-yourselfers.

After checking out the ruins we headed south again walking on the east side of the island through a few small villages and taking in more sights. The entire island is covered in terraces, some historians say there have been people farming on Isla del Sol since about 2200 BC! Many of the terraces are still in use by the villagers, mainly growing potatoes. Crossing back over a few 'zonal checkpoints' we were back to Yumani by supper time. We stayed at Templo del Sol Hostal and found a pizza joint to fill our bellies. After dinner the night sky opened between clouds to show the Milky Way, a couple of planets and on the horizon the city glow from La Paz, our next destination.

Isla del Sol has a lot of history and it was cool to explore the island on our own. A few winks in Hostal Sonia, who we didn't particularly enjoy, and it was on a bus again to La Paz!

A view of windows in the maze like setup of Chincana ruins.

A friendly llama on our way up the Inca Stairs.

Our ridge path, heading north.

Jon on top of the crouching puma rock; I had no idea what I was climbing on! oops.

Puno: City of Festivities

Puno!

We arroved to this lakeside town at the very beginning of the Festival de la Virgen de la Candelaria (Candlemas). This festival is in celebration of the agricultural cycles, and the colorful cultures of the Quechua and Aymara people come from surrounding villages to dance and give blessings to Pachamama, Mother Earth. The streets filled with sound and a myriad of color and there seemed to be a celebration at all hours. We found out on one of our wandering walks that much of the music comes from impromptu "bands" that form on street corners. The more impressive shows came as geoups of dancers and drummers wound their way through the city streets.

Drummers kept a steady rythmic and earthy beat as flutes and pipes played a tune that when combined made your feet stomp to time. Dancers, men and women, danced in cadence to the drums and dresses floated, men jumped and twirled all while making their way up narrow, cobbled streets. We stayed a few days in Puno and were able to see at least some dancing each day. One of the processions we followed all the way up to the main square and church. While the procession and others continued to party outside the square the church was having mass!! Both areas were packed with people. We saw some dancers with scary masks that were made to look like the devil, giant curling horns and colorful hair and clothing. It was interesting to see the different styles of "celebration": dancing vs prayer, amazing colors vs pure white, raucous excitement vs devote silence.

We hung around the crowds soaking up the energy before going back to wander the streets, and eventually heading for bed.

The next day we tried out another cultural experience, the floating reed islands of the Uru People. A boat motored us out to The island that is most set up for tourism, the island itself is about 80-100ft in diameter. We had the "President" of the island explained how the islands were built. Islands have a foundation of the totora root mass/blocks and then totora reeds are stacked top of the blocks in crisscrossing fashion to about 2m in height or thickness. The islands are continually decomposing and new reeds are layered on top. The Uros use the totora reed for everything, houses, boats, islands. It was hinted at us from other travelers that the island we went too wasn't really live on anymore, it was more a show for the tourists, it was still interesting! Our tour was going to take us to another island but on our way there our boat had some issues, apparently one of the blades of the propeller snapped off.. so we waited about 2 hours, stranded until a rescue boat came out to save us. At least it wasn't raining!!

We head for the Bolivian border next..

Arequipa: Peru´s second largest city, and Colca Canyon: World´s Deepest Canyon!

We left the desert to find a canyon. We arrived in Arequipa, found a taxi to take us to Arequipay Backpackers, and within ten minutes of arriving at our hostel we had found a group of travelers headed to the Colca Canyon! As we arrived in the morning we had plenty of time to research our trek, which we wanted to do without a guide. We also gather snacks and food, and explore a bit of Arequipa, the White City. Arequipa would be an awesome place to come learn spanish, as its cheap and there are ample teachers.

Colca Canyon is said to be the world´s deepest canyon at 4160m (13,650ft, you could almost fit Rainier upsidedown in the canyon). As a comparison, the Grand Canyon´s depth is 1800m. I don´t know how they measure depth of canyons but Colca Canyon was a pretty impressive sight. Our trek was to take between two and three easy days of hiking (down, along, and back up) From Arequipa a bus ride takes 5-8 hours, over a 5000m sometimes snowy pass. Our luck would not allow us to get a direct bus so we bussed to Chivay (half way point) and arrived about 9am. As we just missed the 9am bus that would rumble on to Cabanaconde (another 35 miles and 2.5 hours) we had to wait in an Irish Pub we found on the main square of Chivay. Apparently it is the highest Irish pub!? Our 11:30 bus soon arrived at the station and I had to strong arm a few pushy Peruvians out of my way so I could grab Kasey and I a seat. Nearly 2 hours of spectacular views passed by our windows as we bounced and grinded our way along the canyon ¨rim¨ as the river cut a deeper gash in the valley floor.

We hopped off the bus at Cabanaconde and found our way to Pachamama hostel, a place where we knew we could get some up to date info on our trek. With another cartoon drawing of the valley we set off to find the trail head, about 30 minutes walk back towards Chivay. At the lookout/trail head we were able to see nearly our entire path, it looked pretty easy except for the 1000m down and up that we would have to do! Our first destination was San Juan, about 2.5 hours downhill. We took a load off at Roy´s place and his wife cooked up some dinner (soup, alpaca and rice, mint/coca tea) for us before we laid down our heads.

The next morning we were up early to eat some grub, (pancakes from Roy´s wife), pay the bill (S/.23 each for 2 meals and a bed), and head towards Sangalle the Oasis. The trail was cake except for loosing one of our party for most of it due to a bathroom run. We hiked through some small villages, and gazed up at the columns of basalt and landslides that have been slowly eroding over the years. At the Oasis we decided to have a relaxed day and not head back up to Cabanaconde (a three hour climb up to the top) and instead read, chatted and took in the scenery. Pablo´s place turned out to be a black hole for a number of items including a $400 rain jacket and sunglasses that our group of 8 ¨relenquished¨ to the canyon spirits. We paid about the same here for accomidation and meals, aside from what was misplaced...

Two of our group woke early to fly up the mountain and bus back to Arequipa as they needed to get back for a night bus to Cusco. The rest of us took our time getting ready and then we flew up the switchbacks, I always like going up rather than down. Half way up we were lucky enough to spot 4 Condors; these birds are massive, and ugly! At the top we trodded towards Pachamama to find some PIZZA! Strangely enough we ran into two different couples that we had met previously on our trip, a couple of dutch and a few kiwis, so cool!! Ping pong was played in the street before we headed in for some woodfire pizza (the best we have had since getting to South America) We also had to try some Pisco sours. It was awesome running into Katy and Baz (kiwi´s) again and they shared their Bolivian itinerary with us and some must do´s.

Our bus ride back to Arequipa was bumpy and sleepy, but we felt good about our time in the canyon. The only downside was that we ¨had¨ to pay the S/.70 ($28US) entrance fee to the canyon, which never got verified by any official type person. But the views and the sights were at least worth the sore legs :)

The White City has been fun and we wish we could hang out here longer. But, we are off to Puno tomorrow, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Then heading in to Bolivia shortly after Puno and maybe some festivals!!!

The church on the main square of the White City.

Crossing the Altiplano.

A view of the canyon near the beginning of our trek.

Sangalle, the oasis below, with our trail leading back to Cabanaconde zigzagging to the left.

Six of the eight at the top of the canyon: Estéban, Natasha, Desi, Dave, Kase and me.

Huacachina: The Oasis

From Lima we took a 5 hour bus ride down the coast and ended up in a dusty, hot town called Ica. A short five minute tuktuk ride brought us to a neat little Oasis nestled in the middle of giant sand dunes, the backpacker trap called Huacachina.

There are many restaurants, shops and hostels that surround the oasis and all are overpriced just for the gringo backpacker. The oasis itself is quite dirty looking, but lots of people still swim in it. I dipped my foot in and didn´t notice a difference between the afternoon air temperature and the murky water, so decided against jumping in.

We arrived too late in the day to book a dune buggy and sand boarding tour, so Jon and I celebrated the halfway point in our trip by eating out at one of the gringo restaurants and stuffed ourselves with some nachos and brownies at Desert Nights. Very healthy. The next morning we definitely hiked back in to Ica to shop at the supermarket so that we could provide our own meals from then on in Huacachina. Our hostel didn´t have a kitchen, but no matter, we just whipped out our stove and leftover gas from the Santa Cruz trek and cooked up oatmeal, soups and pastas in our room, taking care to always keep a window open while cooking and block the view of the burning stove from the hostel workers as they swept down the halls.

The first of the two big things we wanted to in Huacachina was the combined dune buggy and sand-boarding tour. We took off from our hostel at 4pm to avoid the heat of the day, loaded up in a 10 person dune buggy and cruised around on the dunes. Our driver was a bit slow and not as crazy as the other drivers, which annoyed Jon and I, as other buggies flew past us. Finally, one girl said ´mas rapido´ and he kicked it into gear for a bit. Over the course of a couple hours, the dune buggy would drive us around and then drop us off at the top of big sand dunes and we would each get a sand board to go down the hill on. We tried different styles, like sledding on our bellies and strapping in like a snowboarder. Both were fun, but what really made the difference was the board. Most of them were pretty shitty and beat up on the bottom and consequently stuck to sand. We were each given a chunk of a candle to use to wax the bottom of our boards between runs, but that didnt really help. Still, we had a fun time and especially enjoyed being out on the dunes as the sun set. Later that night, Jon and I bought a beer and hiked up to the top of the highest dune behind our hostel in the moonlight. From the top, we could see all of Ica and down into Huacachina. It was very peaceful up top and reminded Jon and I of evening hikes up Badger Mountain back in Richland. Running back down the steep dune was probably the best part.

The next day we had signed up for a pisco tour around Ica. Jon and I jumped into a dumpy car with our private driver and made our first stop at Bodega Vista Alegre. To get to the Bodega, we drove through some pretty slummy parts of town and arrived at a massive cement wall with big wooden doors. They opened and inside stretched a tree-lined road surrounded by dusty vineyards leading up to a big, tidy building. Jon and I got to try their white wine, red wine (a Malbec Cab-Sauv), dessert wine and pisco before getting a tour of the facilities and information on the wine and pisco making process. For those of you who don´t know what pisco is, it is a clear liquor that tastes similar to vodka and is made from fermented and distilled grape juice. However, while there are about 300 different varietals of grapes in Peru, only 8 of them can be used to make pisco. The volume of grape juice needed to the amount of pisco produced is about 4 to 1. Pisco is used in the famous Peruvian cocktail drink Pisco Sours, which consist of pisco, sugar, lime juice, egg white and cinnamon.

Our next stop was a more pisco-oriented facility. We had a private guide named Victor who seemed to have already had a bit of pisco that day. He was a riot and taught Jon and I a lot about the big pisco festival in Ica the beginning of March. Their grape harvesting time down here is in March, so this festival was all about the grape crushing. Young, pretty girls compete to be a queen for the festival and stomp on the grapes with their barefeet. There is also a lot of drinking. The pisco distilling process at this place was less sophistocated than the previous one, and actually used the same clay pots that the Inca people used to make pisco. Victor said that it was the Incans that first made pisco, and the name pisco is a bastardized version of Quechua name for the drink. We drank some shots of pisco with Victor after our tour, who seemed happy to pour us as much pisco as we liked, and when I asked him to join us, he was quick to grab himself a shot glass. Surprisingly we didn´t buy any pisco on our tour, but we did buy some special made pecan-caramel chocolates, since the pecans themselves came from the trees we had walked under on our tour. We also bought some lucuma marmalade. Lucuma is an orange fruit, indiginous to Peru and Chile, and had a taste similar to sweet potatoes, not too sweet, but good flavor.

Those two excursions wrapped up our must-dos in Huacachina, so we were on the next twelve hour night bus out of Ica on to Arequipa for some trekking in the Colca Canyon!

A traditional jug to hold the grape juice and let it ferment.

Huacachina, oasis in a sea of sand dunes.

The buggy playground.

Sorry state of our boards.

Kasey about to rip that pow...er, sand.

Lima: a taste of the first world in the third world

Finally, the much anticipated capitol and largest city of Peru...Lima. In April, we will fly out of Lima to come home, so this stay was somewhat fleeting since we know we have to return, but we crammed a lot in.

We stayed in the Miraflores district of Lima. It is modern, rich and expensive. Lima is right on the coast and the waterfront area (which was only a block and a half from our hostel, The Family Backpackers Hostel)has cliffs that drop into the sea and some sandy beaches below filled with surfers and people sun tanning. The waterfront was completely developed with parks and paths and malls perched on the cliff rims. You would honestly think you were in some fancy city in southern California, with people actually WORKING OUT, you know, going on runs and doing push ups and crunches on the grass in the shade, it was incredible. As you walk into the heart of Miraflores, you are reminded of New York City, with tall building, parks, plazas, all kinds of restaurants and shopping malls. This is where all of the rich Peruvians live. It also makes Miraflores extremely safe: even well past dark families and kids are out in the parks eating Pinkberry frozen yogurt and walking to cinemas and restaurants. The grocery store closest to our hostel was a South American version of a Whole Foods. Jon and I saw food that we hadnt seen since being back home in the PNW, and most of the food prices were not made for a backpacker budget. Basically, if you want to travel to South America but not actually visit South America, come to Miraflores in Lima.

We spent our first day in Lima exploring all of Miraflores. We walked all along the coast and through the center of the city, most of the time completely stunned at the fresh and modern world we were in. We splurged on a good ole American pizza (from Pizza Hut, not our favorite choice from home, but within our budget here in S.A.) and I got a chai tea from Starbucks while Jon got a tasty oreo milkshake (Boomers shakes from Bham are still better, but my chai tasted like home!).

Day two in Lima was spent in Central Lima. Not quite as modern and safe as Miraflores (or so the books say, we never had a problem), the central part of Lima still had some great parks and plazas and is only a short bus ride away from Miraflores. We visited Plaza San Martin, which is centered by statue with a funny story behind it. The statue is of Madre Patricia and due to a misunderstanding, she had a llama on her head instead of a flaming crown. The bronze headpiece was made in Spain, and the spanish word for flame and the spanish word for llama are both llama. Whoops.

The main Plaza del Armas had La Catedral de Lima and Palacio de Gobierno, the presidents home. We got to see the changing of the guards at Placio de Gobierno, which was extremely long and drawn out but interesting. We also visited the Museo de la Inquisicion, which was the only museum with free entry, and got to see torture chambers in the basement of the building used by the Spanish Inquisition from 1570 to 1820 and torture methods depicted by life-size wax figures.

We also went to El Estadio Futbol Club, which is basically a restaurant bar completely decked out in soccer paraphernalia. Scarves were hung on the ceilings, posters and photographs on the wall and even life-size statues of greats like Ronaldo and Pele sitting at some of the tables. Jon and I ordered the cheapest jarra of cerveza and watched a soccer match on one of the many flat screened TVs in the joint. If only it could have been a Sounders game...

There is still a bit more to explore of Lima, but we will do that when we return before we fly home. It is a bit pricey though,so we moved on quickly to the oasis in the sand dunes...Huacachina.

Clay tennis courts amid skyscrapers along the coast

One of many parks and green spaces

Sunset from the LarcoMar where Kasey had a Starbucks

Statue in the center of Plaza San Martin, if you look closely the lady on the right has a llama atop her head, picture quality may be allow a closer look..