Perusing Peru (Trujillo, Peru)

Hi all. Here we are a hundred years later, or say perhaps, a mere 2 weeks, and you´re all exceptionally out of date on the goings on of Dara in Peru. Let me enlighten you.

The last of my days in Arequipa I spent reunited with my long lost Irish friends Marc and Tracy. Actually, they´re weren´t really lost and it wasn´t for long - they were in Cuzco meeting their friend from home. Our reunion meant I got ditch out on my annoying Austrian roommate and spend a great couple of days skipping around town with people I actually like, watching soccer, eating fruit salads and the world´s best cheese empanadas at the market, and observing local chaos from a comfy seat on the ground (carefully situated on concrete and most definitely not on the forbidden grass, which is the fast track to South American authority reprimanding) in the central plaza. We even took a field trip to the mall for movie watching. We saw Poseidon, which I believe I saw when it was called Titanic, but which we loved anyway simply for providing 90 minutes of mindless English entertainment and popcorn. An incredible Incan Ice Princess lives in a glass freezer in Arequipa so I got to visit her as well, which was nothing short of facsinating. She was a child sacrifice made and left at such high altitude until her discovery that she still has all her organs and skin and fingernails and the rest. Pretty rad.

From Arequipa I nightbussed to Cuzco. The bus company filmed all the passengers with a video camera during boarding and again while seated. I know it was not for an exciting re-cap DVD to take home and re-live the thrill and I don´t know what the hell kind of purpose it served. In Cuzco I survived a very dark early morning solo taxi ride, which is always a rush in itself given what you hear about taxi safety around here, and checked myself into a hostel to await the arrival of Team Peru. I slept until I heard a familiar voice outside inquiring as to my whereabouts. Horray! Nicole (rapidly re-named Llama Sue)! And Nicole´s Peace Corps cousin Kristin (who insanely randomly happens to be good friends with a cousin of mine), and Kristin´s Peruvian boyfriend Carlos, and Kristin´s Portland friend Sarah. Initially apprehensive about the transition from solo traveler to crew of 5, I was impressed with the overall ease and smoothness of a solid 2 weeks of mass movement, decision-making, etc.

We did a little bit of cruising around colonial Cuzco and logistical organization of permits and passports before heading off to Machu Picchu. Though I had always wanted to hike the 4 day Inca Trail, the Team overall opted for the 2 day trek and I went with it. The experience was, while shorter, completely incredible. The hike was challenging and beautiful and at the end of the first day we arrived at the famed Sun Gate, overlooking the miraculousness of Machu Picchu in spectacular late afternoon light. Not a memory that will likely fade quickly. We decended into the valley below and spent the night in the tiny town of Aguas Calientes. At 5 am we got up and returned for our formal entrance into the ruins of Machu Picchu. Our guide, lovely Roberto, gave us an excellent and informative tour of the ruins and good archeological, anthropological, and religious explainations which helped to comprehend the history and enormity of this lost city in the mountains. After our tour we climbed the painfully steep (particularly at high altitude building on yesterday´s lactic acid), mildly frightening trail/stairs/ladders to Wayna Picchu, a the peak that overlooks Machu Picchu that you see in the background of all the postcard pictures. The views were unreal. My vocabulary of an 8 year old in no way does justice to this experience or the place itself so I don´t want to waste your time trying to describe it. Just go.

A tired train return to Cuzco and a bus the next day got us to arctic Puno, on the Peruvian shores of Lake Titicaca. We did a touristy as hell tour of the floating islands, some fascinating tiny islands constructed from super impressive reeds you can eat but that also conveniently make boats and islands to support whole villages of people, guinea pig farms and all. Then we flew to Lima. In Lima it was Kristin´s birthday so we visited a huge grocery store called Wong with all kinds of western luxuries and I earned the nickname Llama Betty whipping up box brownies at the home of a generous and uber-eccentric friend of Kristin´s who let us have free reign while she was away. Her friends the Tunas, a fraternity of much younger men in tights came by and played us some music which was weird, I mean very nice. Then we took a night bus to Cajamarca, a fairly untouristed city in the central highlands where Kristin is based. We visited her home in the campo, took walks and runs in town, watched the final matches of the World Cup, rode the local teeter-totter, obviously, took late night advantage of the cable TV in our hotel room (I hate Tom Cruise too, but don´t even try to tell me you´d turn off Top Gun if it just happened to be starting while you were getting ready for bed), and I launched poor Nicole on an interiminable and fruitless search of Northern Peru for a quality cheese empanada, a search that sadly continues unrealized as I type. We also went to the bus station to purchase tickets out of town and served as a complete spectacle to no less than 4 bored women sitting behind the desk staring with great amusement at the dumb gringas. Just trying to give something back to the country for keeping me entertained all this time I guess - doing what we can.

From Caja we journeyed North and West to Mancora, a fairly rustic (if you don´t count internet and ATMS - I guess I just mean big resort-free) beach town right up close to the Equadorian border. It wasn´t quite superlative as beaches ago, but there was ocean and sun, a blender, and many a hammock so I wasn´t about to complain. I liked it. We kicked off our first afternoon with a tropical cocktail (the tequila shots started as a joke, reality wasn´t supposed to take over quite so drastically or repetitively) and had an eventful evening making a much bigger spectacle of ourselves than during at the Cajamarcan bus station ticket counter. We eventually left part of the Team, shall we say, ´napping´, at bar tables and in nearby sand. The next couple of days were spent running and reading and swimming (in the permanent wake of the stolen pack disaster, I don´t exactly have a legitimate swimsuit, but with help and borrowing from Llama Sue, I made due) and unfortunately being all too well remembered by the staff of Papa Moe´s Milk Bar.

Yesterday night, at that exact venue, under a moonless sky amidst a town-wide power outage, Team Peru said their goodbyes. Nicole and I left Kristin, Carlos, and Sarah, and hopped into front row panoramic upstairs overnight bus seats to Trujillo. Today we checked out an overcast fishing town called Huanchaco and wandered the streets and pretty plazas of Trujillo before trying to watch Superman to kill a couple of hours until our overnight bus (back to back nightbusses people, we needed a movie break) to Lima. Being a loser I made assumptions and neglected to ask if Superman was in English. It wasn´t. After a good half hour of hanging out in an empty theatre with tables, taking weird videos and pictures, eating snacks, and amusing ourselves in wait, the film started, we realized we were in Peru and that Superman is a family film, if you will, and in Spanish and that Nicole doesn´t actually speak Spanish, not even broken Spanish like mine, and we left. The lady at the counter kindly took pity on the dumb American girls and refunded our whopping 7 soles admission. Then we trekked over to the local internet cafe and here I sit.

You´re caught up. That´s it. Tomorrow morning I´ll be in Lima and Sunday night on a plane to Houston. Then one to Cancun. Then to Belize. Next week I´ll be mermaiding about Caribbean reefs with Amanda Hart on the very last leg of the Great Adventure. If anyone has a job for me upon return, as much as I hate to admit it, I´m searching. Good Lord. Love to all. xoxo d.