Ready for the canyon take two...

Another lovely sunny warm day in Arequipa! Too bad someone stole Andy´s prescription sunglasses while we were at the internet cafe yesterday. So now after a few futile attempts at retrieving them and a morning of trying on sad looking hats, Andy is now the proud owner of a pair of clip-on sunglasses! He propably won´t let you know but he is over whelmingly excited about them.

So yesterday I left off telling you all about the delicious street food and cheap fixed priced meals that are big enough to share. What I didn´t have enough time to mention was that at one of those delicious meals of chicken foot soup or deep fried mystery meat we both got a stomach bug.  This wouldn´t be so bad except for the aformentioned toilet situation in our hostel and the fact that we had an 11 hour bus ride that evening with little or no facilities and certainly no water to flush or wash hands. Since we needed to be out of our hostel by 11am we spent a good part of the day sitting in the basement of another bus terminal that had pay toilets. Pretty awesome stuff I am sure you guys are jealous.

The reason we were not sitting in our own bus terminal is because the hole in wall place we bought our tickets didn´t have a terminal, there wasn´t even enough room for us, our bags and the six other people inside.  Now we were warned about buying the cheapest tickets we could find for a variety of reasons. We didn´t care the tickets were cheap and we managed to purchase them using no english. Our bus was to leave at 6:30 but with no where to go we were sitting on the curb by 4:50pm eating more street food outside of the 'office' we bought our tickets from. I don´t know if we were just lucky or what but the bus going to Arequipa showed up at 5 loaded us and some other people on in the most haphazard way and left. We were upgraded along with anyone else that shoved forward into the sleeper section of the bus. The company only has a morning bus and an evening bus so to this day I am not quite sure what would have happened if we had shown up at 6:15 like we were supposed to. For the rest of the night the bus stopped at different crowded locations in the desert towns and let people off or on. At each stop people just held their tickets up outside of the bus in a crowd and yelled to the guy letting peole on. Whoever fit either in the stairwell or in a seat got on. Also, people selling things got on like candy, food, sodas, olive oil, and nuts.  I bought a fresh bag of black olives with the pits still in them that were delicious.

We arrived in Arequipa while it was still dark at 4:30am. Driving into the city and out of the desert mountains was amazing.  Arequipa is a massive spralling city whose bulidings are almost never over two or three stories. The city is spread out for miles and miles in every direction and lit mostly by street lamps. We sat in the bus terminal nursing our unhappy bellies with tea and bread and waited for it to be light outside before we decided to find the center of town.

 

Arequipa is a city surrounded by mountains and a volcano, and is by far the nicest city we have been too. There is still a serious lack of trash cans and vehicle emmission standards are lacking, plus we saw a guy throwing a bag of trash into an already polluted river but beyond all that people seem to have a better standard of living here. Also, since we have been in Arequipa we have not had any electricty blackouts like we had in Ica on our last day. No electricity in a desert city makes eating anywhere more questionable. Some woman in the town center had us come check out her hostel and it seemed nice enough and it was cheap so we stayed there for 5 days and cleaned our laundry bucket style.

We also met some great guys from Lima who taught us how to make delicious Pisco sours with egg whites, limes, sugar syrup and a blender.  They were in this city filming the miner convention that was happening last week. On last saturday the 17th we found a new hostel closer to the plaza for the same price that has more people and a computer and free wifi.  We have seen so many mummies, so many old textiles, pottery, and artifacts that I think we are all museumed out for a little while. We have been walking every where and visiting every market we can find. 

The shop keepers have been wonderful and very helpful. One sweet little old man yesterday walked us around the block to the store that he knew had the cooking fuel we were looking for but did not know the name to.  Come to think of it a couple of older little men have come over to Andy to say hi and shake his hand and ask him where he is from.  This city has been great but it has been almost 11 days now and it is time for a change of scenery. I think we will both be relieved to get into the canyon, sleep in our tent and breath some fresh air. I still want to tell you all about the chifa restraunts that aren´t really chinese food, the wild dogs and so much more that that will have to wait for later! Our spanish is getting better little by little so don´t worry about us and our packs are much lighter after parting with so many nice things (like my hammock) so we will be able to defend ourselves from mountain lions and the such. We will write back in about two weeks. Much love!

Two and a half weeks in and still alive!

My apologies for not having contacted everyone earlier, for not calling and for not posting anything. But we have an hour before the bus leaves for cotahuasi canyon so here we go.  My impressions so far have been wonderful, this country or what we have seen of it has had its fair share of earthquakes which continues to transform each city we have visited.  Everywhere we go they are rebuilding. I cannot not blame the crumbling store fronts, the churches, the houses of almost every street that are in need of repair.  It seems as though everytime these areas reach a state grandeur a terremoto rumbles and washes these beautiful buildings into a crumbly mess.  These restoration efforts must be tiring yet they continue to rebuild and restock and turn these buildings into museums full of artifacts of mummies, pottery, textiles, books, and religious artifacts of the catholic spaniards. And so I will try and tell you all a little more about our trip.

In Lima we rode these awesome little camas around the city.  They look like a mix between a bus and a van.  They slow down at intersections and the money collector yells out the destinations of the cama from an accordion door. The destinations are also painted on the side. Each company has its own colors and routes, so you must pick where you want to go and which company you want to ride with. We stayed with a red, orange and yellow cama that would bring us to the plaza or to the shopping areas. I hope to get a picture of these buses later. The same bus system exists here in Arequipa but we have been walking a lot to strengthen our legs for the canyon and havn´t used them.

The bus trip from Lima to Ica was one of the more surreal experiences I´ve had.  It was a mix between being excited about a trip, amazed at the starwars like landscape we were driving through, and being astonished and almost in disbelief at the complete poverty that thousands of people surrounding Lima must live in.  I almost couldn´t belive that the shacks, cardboard or tin that we were passing were houses except that there was no other explanation for what those areas were.  It puts the lack of recycling or trash maintence in these cities into perspective, there are clearly other things to worry about.  After driving though the desert all afternoon we arrived in Ica after nightfall.  It was an awesome flat little desert city where horn honking takes a whole new level.  The taxis and other vehicles honk at intersections, at people they find attactive, at each other, and at people they think might need a ride. They honk when other cars are honking, they honk when they are tired of waiting behind another vehicle and they honk when they see a pedistrian passing in the middle of the street as if to warn them they are coming. It goes all night this honking and I think it is the most fantastic thing ever, it makes walking down the street humorous.  I don´t think I can imagine all the reasons they honk all I know is that it doesn´t stop not even in Arequipa.

Once in Ica we rented a little room for a night, we also rented from the same place when we got back from the oasis.  It was a dive hostal at best but the rooms were private and they had a TV with which we could watch spanish speaking Simpsons.  I know Andy mentioned the toilets but it is another level to understand that not only the public toilets you pay for lack seats but the hostal you spent the night in lacks a seat for any morning ritual that might deem a seat necessary. To top it off, if you manage to get anything done without a seat all paper used must go into a waste bin and not in the toilet. Amazing and kind of humiliating at first but one gets used to it after awhile.  We also have gotten better at picking places that give us seats although the paper situation does not change anywhere.

We began eating the street food in Ica and it was delicious. You can get street pineapple slices, fresh squeezed orange juice, street breakfast sandwiches with egg, chicken or french fries, roasted nuts, tamales, street rolls, and more. These tasty little street snacks cost roughly 30 cents American and can be found all day.  We also got into the fixed price meals that can cost from 3 to 8 soles and come with a pear juice drink, homemade soup either chicken noodle or beef veg soup and a plate of deliciousness like fried fish with rice and veg salad or chicken with fried potatoes or a mixed beef dish with vegetables and potatoes and rice. I think we are going to start taking pictures of these yummy dishes that we usually share and come out to about a dollar or two american.  It also came to our attention after the Pisco and wine tour that beer is way more expensive then any of the food and way less inspired then the mircobrews in the US.

It has come to my attention that we will probably not make the bus tonight so Andy and I are going to go get some dinner and then finish up our posts later and take the bus tomorrow to the canyon. I love you all and hope everything is going well!

Stuck in Arequipa

17 days, and 830 km, with a trail of shed belongings reaching back to Lima, we´ve found ourselves in Arequipa peru, a beautiful colonial city that we´ve been exploring for the last 8 days.

We flew into Lima on the 3rd, and after a scant 2 days we left the hectic and dirty and city to relax in the desert oasis of Huacachina (which to our surprise, was also quite dirty). The night before our arrival we stayed at a cheap hostel in nearby Ica. I got my first taste of just how different our cultures can be that night when we sniffed out a dive bar near the plaza de Armas in Ica. When we ordered our beers we were given two glasses... A regular sized one, and one that was slightly smaller. Something about the smaller glass didn't feel right to me, but I cracked a joke about the dumb gringo drinking out of an ash tray and poured my beer into it anyway.

After downing half my beer, the serving girl came up and took it away from me, plopping down another regular sized glass in its place. I looked around and realized that every other table in the bar was sharing a single glass... They would top it off with their beer, drink down to the last sip, then dump the dregs into the smaller cup before passing the big glass on. Turns out I was drinking out of the swill cup. Chevere!



The next morning we hiked out of Ica into the tall dunes surrounding the city. We spent the day taking in the area... Met an awesome Hungarian girl named Katalina (who would become our partner in crime for the duration of our stay), and then marched into the dunes to pitch a tent in one of the coolest spots we´ve ever camped.


We woke up the next morning covered with sand, and decided it would be a fantastic idea to check into a hostel down near the lagoon for the next couple days. We stayed at an amazingly relaxing (and cheap) hostel with hammocks, banana trees, and a pool that also organized dune buggy tours into the desert. We ended up bunking with Kat, and went on a tour of a winery/pisco distillery that night, led by a smooth talker named Tony, and a Bolivian named either Donkey or Llama depending on how drunk he got. It was a blast, although llama spent most of the night trying to sit on my lap... Still scratching my head over that one.

Over the next couple days we were introduced to the delicious peruvian dish lomo saltado (beef strips sauteed with spices, red onions, tomatoes, and french fries), took a surprisingly thrilling dune buggy ride deep into the desert, practiced our espanol with a waiter who was trying to learn english, and came to terms with the fact that most public toilets in Peru lack both a seat, and paper. We capped our Huacachina experience with one more night camping in the dunes before heading back to Ica where we would catch a 13 hour bus ride to Arequipa, our next destination.

(check back in soon for Casey´s writeup of our time spent in Arequipa...Food poisoning, mixing pisco sours with our peruvian roommates, watching the locals throw trash in the river, airing of grievances, etc!)

Bags are packed, counting down the minutes.

Hola, friends and family! It's hard to believe that in a little over 2 days Casey and I will be stepping off the plane in Peru to begin our epic journey through scorching deserts, thick jungles, soaring peaks, and mysterious ruins. We are very excited to be sharing our experiences with all of you, and we're looking forward to posting pictures and stories of the interesting places and people we will see over the next few months.

This trip has been in the works for a while now, but even with all the planning, español learning, and research we've done it didn't hit home for me until 2 days ago when we sat down, split up the gear, and packed/weighed our bags for the first time. All of of sudden the trip went from this far off, distant thing to "Holy shit...This is really happening!"

Buried Under a Mountain of Stuff

All Packed Up!

Around 11:00pm saturday we'll be landing in Lima, Peru. The plan is to spend the night there and take a taxi into the city the following morning. We'll spend a day or 2 there, then hop a bus South to Ica, a town noted for its excellent wine, and Pisco (a distilled spirit made from freshly fermented grape juice). 5 miles outside the town is the desert oasis of Huacachina where we will spend some time camping and exploring the huge sand dunes.

The desert Oasis of Huacachina

source: http://www.wackyarchives.com/offbeat/oasis-in-the-middle-of-nowhere.html

From Huacachina we'll walk back to Ica and hop a bus to Arequipa, known as "The White City" for it's spanish colonial buildings constructed from brilliant white volcanic stone (sillar, for the geologists out there). The city is surrounded by 3 volcanos, and is a gateway to many hikes and treks.

After Arequipa we'll take a 15 hour bus ride to the small town of Cotahuasi, which is built at the entrance to the remote Cotahuasi Canyon...The deepest in the world (twice as deep as the grand canyon). Scattered throughout the canyon are small villages, some only accessible by walking the ancient Inca roads, many without running water or electricity. We are hoping to spend at least a week going from village to village, staying with families, or camping wherever we can find a flat enough spot for a tent.

Cotahuasi Canyon

source: http://geology.com/records/deepest-canyon.shtml

The photos and stories I've seen from this area are breathtaking, and I'm really excited for our first taste of off the beaten path Peru. Hopefully all this spanish we've been practicing has paid off, because there is likely to be very few people here who understand english.

Next stop on the list is Cuzco, which we will use as a base to tour the Sacred Valley of the Inca (a region with many ruined Inca cities, and terraces), Choquequirao (built by an Inca king as an answer to his predecessors Machu Picchu, only accessible by hiking in), and the Salkantay Trek ... A 4 day trek over high peaks, and dense forests which ends at the fabled Incan spiritual site of Machu Picchu. From there we will take a bus to the Peruvian port city of Puno... Gateway to lake Titicaca.

Moray, Sacred Valley of the Inca

source: http://www.peruagency.com/maras-moray-information-en.html

This is where our itinerary ends. My lovely wife catered to my need to have some sort of plan to get us started (it's genetic, I'm lookin at you Dad), but after this our travels will be dictated by what we can dig out of the guidebook, and more importantly: what we hear from locals and other travelers. I can't wait to see what strange places we end up in over the next year, and I'm very excited to have many of you following along with us. See you in a Year!

Andy

Also, check out our Flickr page where we will be hosting/storing all of our pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyycasey/