Southern Peru

Before The Trip @ Normal Heights, United States, California

2007-04-30T17:45:00.000Z

I am leaving the safety of American America tomorrow. Tom is going to Peru, kids. I will have a brief 300 minute layover in San Salvador, where I'm sure after taking a red eye from the US I will try to sleep w/ a death grip on my belongings. 3 time zones and 13 hrs after leaving LAX I will arrive in Lima, Peru. I've practiced little to no Spanish, so I will be saying "no entiende" and "en Portugalia, erra cardialogo." There I will meet up with the one person in Peru who I know and that's when I can lean completely on someone else to get me around a Spanish speaking country. Oh, I've also got a sick guidebook which completes the set of crutches I will be using down there.

A little nerve-wracking, needless to say. I keep thinking that I'm missing one of the 200 things that I need to bring; as a result I have to keep reminding myself that Lima is not in the middle of nowhere, so I can probably buy any of the little things that I may forget.

Alright folks, enjoy the ride, talk to you in Peru!

San Salvador and Lima @ Lima, Peru

2007-05-03T13:33:00.000Z

Hola Amigos, made it safe and sound. It´s funny you can feel it when you cross the equator. Your head spins the other way, babies cry backwards (HHHAW, HHHAW...wait that just means they´re laughing), and the keyboards are reeally messed up. Ç¿Ñ why would anyone ever use those characters. Anyway, Lima is a bustling city of millions of people. They all honk their horns as if it´s instinct, too. Thoughts of a Limeño, ¨What, why the hell are we stopped? Red light, that doesn´t matter, let´s go.¨ Honk! Honk! The taxi drivers act like driving is some video game swerving through traffic. Nearly all of their cars have busted windshields and if one immediately agrees to a $2 ride, you can get it for $1.

The preferred operating system down here is Windows NT (circa 1996), so hopefully I will find a computer that I can use to post pictures soon. We ended up walking around the city looking for a bike shop that didn´t exist. Not to be deterred, we headed into central Lima to check out a town square (Plaza de Armas) that was built right around Pizarro´s conquest. None of the original buildings still exist, however. Lima even replaced a statue of Pizarro on horseback with a cherub encrusted water fountain because the horse´s arse was facing the cathedral. We´re heading south today towards an adventurous town called Arequipa. But that´s a long ride, so we´re gonna stop a quarter of the way down (4hrs) to do some hardcore sandboarding.

Huacachina and Arequipa @ Arequipa, Peru

2007-05-06T01:51:00.000Z

Getting out of Lima felt pretty good. Too much bustle. There´s this little tourist trap down the road called Huacachina. Population: 200. Stray dogs: 50. Dune Buggies: One for every tourist. The town is wrapped around this natural oasis, with sand dune mountains on all sides. Of course, the denizens managed to make it a business. And as tourists, we didn´t want to let our hosts down. After a lazy morning (the morning of the 4th) we found ourselves strapping into this 9 person buggy and ready for this crazy local, Antonio, to flip us around on the dunes. The desert coast of Peru is truly something to see for yourself. Leaving eyesight of the oasis, all we could see was sand (w/ the occasional glimpse of a town in the distance). Boarding on sand is fun, but can´t compare to the snow, sorry. Perhaps it was inferior equipment, though. We were renting $1.50 boards that required a fresh waxing every 100 yds or so. Long runs (not that I could complete any) were out of the question. Some folks, after finding the stand up routine slow or difficult, resorted to using their boards as sleds, barrelling headfirst to the bottom of these giant dunes and it looked like everyone of them should have died (no injuries accounted for, whew).

Next up was the night bus. For these really long rides, South America prefers to have you depart after dinner and arrive around breakfast. After fearing for my life a couple times, I suggest avoiding these whenever possible. The swerves these guys take and the passes that they maneuver, not to mention these guys can´t be alert, wracked my nerves whenever I wasn´t fitfully sleeping.

Anyway, we made it alive in Arequipa, the 2nd largest Peruvian town, and had today to explore. However, if you want outdoor adventure in this town you gotta travel far away. So that´s what we´re doing bright and early. This is all the time we´ll actually spend in the city. Blair and I discovered some great food here, which has proved difficult until today. Oddly, that was probably the highlight of the day. After passable food for the duration of the trip, it feels amazing to eat a flavorful, local meal.

River, you´ll love this: I dined on alpaca tonight, an Arequipeno cuisine. It was damn good. Alright, time to explore the canyons tomorrow.

Canyon Country @ Cabanaconde, Peru

2007-05-10T06:34:00.000Z

There are two canyons down here that have definite bragging rights. Cotahuasi is the deepest followed by Colca Canyon. We did Colca because it was 6 hrs closer to Arequipa. Let the fight begin...Colca Canyon vs. Grand Canyon. This translates to Clubber Lang vs. Rocky. For those who didn´t have the self respect to see the movie, Clubber rips Rocky to shreds. Hmm, I guess the analogy ends there. No rematch where Rocky wins.

Come to think of it Colca and Grand aren´t in the same weight class (in a good way). Colca may be twice as deep, but is totally different terrain. Colca doesn´t have the amazing stratification of rock layers; rather it´s covered in greenery up to suprising altitudes. There´s also no concept of rims here. The canyon runs east west just like the Grand Canyon, but it slopes from the very start with no defined rim.

The town most folks descend from is Cabanaconde (around 11,000 ft). We arrived there on a rickety bus, grabbed some food and water and dropped into the canyon. We hiked hard for a few hours and reached our first camp by dark. The tiny villages at the bottom are so quaint they´d make tough guys gag. So simple and quotidian, you envy how close they are to nature. The inhabitants are by large self sustaining, but we did see a few trekking to Cabanaconde to sell their goods. They were the kindest folk, always curious about your roots, and telling you about their roots as well. One man on the way back up was proud to live in his village of a handful of people. Home of cocao and mineral water, he said. The canyon is their home, and I can´t imagine a life where going to the store requires ascending thousands of meters. The coolest part is that we found out what we do in 3hrs of hard hiking (granted we have large packs and they don´t but anyways) they do in 1. At that point I guess I wouldn´t think too much of the difficulty of canyon life, but getting there would be a nightmare, unless you start training as a baby on your mother´s back.