First Impressions of Peru
In and Around Lima, Peru
Peru Coast – Paracas |
Lima is a loud and sooty city. We imagined that NYC may have been like this before the Clean Air Act and when it was still acceptable and expected to honk your car horn more often than not. Traffic lanes and stop signs are clearly only suggestions here. Cars jockey for position, honk, swerve, merge, and never appear to crash along the smoggy streets of Lima. Crossing the street is actually an art of stepping out in front of traffic at the most opportune time for there is no mercy to pedestrians attempting to cross the streets.
Oasis Sunset |
One of the highlights from Lima (other than hearing Homer Simpson and Duff Man dubbed in Spanish) was learning that Christ ate coy (guinea pig) at the Last Supper. It’s true. I’ve got a photo to prove it.
We left Lima to go rafting in a town called Lunahuana. Getting there took 3 buses that got progressively smaller and more crowded. The driver of the last bus insisted that he knew where we wanted to go and dropped us off at an agricultural rally. There were speakers, speeches, and lots of farmers cheering. Although there were free samples of pisco and wine at the rally, we really did prefer to go rafting in the town that we intended to go to. Once we got to where we originally intended we learned that their annual festival was that weekend and all the rooms in the small town were already rented. A rafting guide we met found us an extra bedroom in somebody’s house to rent. No matter how we thought about it, the rather well fed cockroaches that also rented out the extra bedroom with us could not be considered welcome guests in our minds.
While I was on the first leg of cockroach watch as Ashley attempted to sleep I tried to overcome my cockroach paranoia. How can I go camping in Alaska and willingly sleep (and soundly at that) in a tent that I may have just killed 100 blood sucking mosquitoes within but not feel comfortable sleeping in a room in which I have killed 5 cockroaches? No matter, I had to resign to the simple fact that cockroaches just flat creep us out. We were back on a bus before 6:30 the following morning.
Islas Ballestras |
Next we traveled in style in the front row of the upper deck of a bus headed to where we are now. The trip from the coastal desert to the high valleys of the Andes was amazing. The uphill climb was relentless, there was easily no flat or downhill spots on the road for the last two hours before the pass. Currently we are acclimatizing to the altitude here in town before heading out on an extended trek early next week. We are hoping to complete a 7 day hike through the mountains here.