I am way behind on my blogging. I haven`t written since my 3:30am border crossing from Ecuador into Peru. Waking in Peru to the expansive and unexpected desert landscape was surprising after the lush green mountains and valleys of Ecuador. Even more surprising was the amount of trash burning or buried beneath the sand. When the bus rolled past a populated area, the homes were in various states of construction or destruction, and it was hard to tell whether this was a result of poverty or possible earthquakes, or both. (I later learned that taxes are not collected on buildings in construction so many are left unfinished, which could account for some of this).
Busses in Peru are harder to navigate than busses elsewhere. Most cities do not have a central terminal where you can walk down the aisle and judge prices and bus quality. Busses here are mostly located in different places so you need a taxi between them and are then taken to which ever one the taxi driver has buddies at. Busses are also more secure, or they at least have more security. On the first bus I took in Peru from the border town of Piura to Chiclayo, a beach town where I expected to spend Christmas, they passed the wand over you as you entered the bus, then walked down the aisles with a camcorder and video-taped everyone´s faces after they were seated. I didn`t end up staying in Chiclayo because it sounded like all accomodation would be booked up since the beach is a popular destination on the holiday and it didn`t look so nice anyway, so I moved on to Trujillo, a town with a small colonial center but not much else to offer.
I spent the night in Trujillo in overpriced accommodation and then boarded a bus to Lima. This bus was more expensive than anywhere else I had seen in South America and I wasn`t sure why. In addition to waving you with a wand and videotaping you, they also fingerprinted everyone before boarding which I didn`t like at all. I wasn`t sure whether to be comforted by all this extra security or freaked out. Once on the bus I received service unlike any bus I had been on yet. A stewardess type lady came around and offered beverage service and then came around with a hot meal that I couldn`t eat, but I picked around the meat for the untainted mashed potatoes and enjoyed a traditional dish of Peru, Papas a la Huancaina, boiled potatoes with a mild chili sauce, a sliced hardboiled egg, and a black olive, and avoided the nasty gelatinous dessert. Before arriving in Lima I was served some crackers and tea. very strange. I arrived in Lima and got a dorm bed at the hostel Mike had reserved space at for the following night.
I spent the next day anticipating Mike`s arrival and exploring (but not too much) the neighborhood our hostel was in and showering. I picked up Mike at the airport in Lima and then spent the next few days traversing Peru`s capital, the 17th most populous city in the world. We scoped out vegetarian restaurants that all seemed to be closed, saw the one of the oldest barrios in the city on the way to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, and reluctantly inhaled all the burning smog the city had to offer. The only other time my throat felt raw like that was after I had smoked too many cigarettes in a single night. It´s sad that such a reaction can come simply by breathing air. In addition to horrible air pollution, there is also noise pollution. People use their horns like they are part of a symphony.
From Lima we traveled to Nazca, home of the Nazca lines, giant geoglyphs that stretch more than 50 miles. The lines feature shapes of several different animals and geometric shapes and are thought to have been made somewhere between 200BC and700AD. No one can say definitively why there are there. Some researchers think they represent the spirtual journeys of shamans, enhanced by the hallucinagenic San Pedro cactus. Other believe it was a form of calendar, a plea to the gods for water, irregation plans, or a means of communication with extraterrestial life forms.
Mike had a crash course in the way things work (or often don`t work) in South America as we waited six hours to board our plane over the lines (the entire trip was sold to us as taking about 2 hours start to finish). Eventually we packed into a small 4 person plane (5 if you squeeze a person next the pilot in the cockpit, which we did). After our plane was lifted into the air by a single propeller and our first bit of turbulance jostled us and threw my stomach for a loop I had a momentary feeling of panic and was afraid we´d made a horrible mistake and might not make it safely back to ground. Fortunately the only thing that went wrong was Mike getting a little nauseous during the ride, which is to be expected when you take Dramamine 6 hours before departure because you had no idea that they would give you the runaround for so long. I maintained my composure well enough to be able to take pictures of all the lines that Mike might have missed. They were pretty unusual and I have no idea why they are there...maybe it really is the work of aliens.
We moved on from Nazca across more desert until we arrived in Cusco where we planned to station ourselves to ring in the New Year.
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