Ok, back to Peru. I'm counting this as Day 1, although technically I guess it's Day 2 of my trip. Otherwise though, I get confused. So this is:
DAY 1 We finally woke up around 10:00 or so. Went downstairs for "breakfast" and met the rest of the Blister Sisters. Now, these are just a great group of ladies. This is the group that was on the trip: Anne (she's the "leader"), her husband Rudolph, her sister Ida (who came from Germany for the trip!), Toni, Classina, Kim, Jean, Maureen and her husband Ken, Carol, Carla and Kim. Great people.
That day we had a "tour" of Lima. Tour is in quotes, 'cause it wasn't much of a tour. Our guide spoke no English. Hmm, good idea! Sigh. So we did the best we could interpreting the guide books we had while driving around. We did see a lot. Drove past all the main squares, saw some stunning architecture, and then we went to this park, evidently called the Lovers Park. There was this huge statue of a couple making out. It was huge! We walked around the park, looking down at the ocean quite a ways below. The weather in Lima is grey and cloudy, like it was this day, for about 4 months. And people say Vancouver is depressing!
After looking down at the water for a while we headed back to the bus to drive down to the ocean. As we were walking along we saw this guy dressed up in a veil with balloons under his shirt. I had NO idea what was happening, but eventually we figured out that they were a group of college students and this was a hazing sort of thing. He had to get as many signatures from people seeing him dressed like this as possible. It was pretty damn funny. So we all signed his card. When we got back to the van, we saw other guys doing the same. Guess some things are the same all over the world...
We then drove a while to get down to the ocean, walked along it for a while, and then headed for lunch/dinner. We went to a place called Francisco's, which has won quite a number of awards. Some food magazine named it as one of the top 40 restaurants below Miami. Pretty impressive. And the food was AMAZING! My mom tried cerviche for the first time. She got one without shellfish (just fish) so that I could try it. Aww, what a great mom! It's vastly different from other cerviche I've had. These ones were all creamy, not at all like what I had in Belize or Mexico. This was a fancy restaurant, so of course the presentation was fabulous.
I forget what that orange thing was, but I remember that it was delicious. Wasn't mine though. I had swordfish with sauco sauce. Mmmm, I think it's made with blueberries...and something. It was fabulous. After lunch/dinner we went back to the hotel, and mom and I wandered around the main plaza. There was a wedding going on at the big cathedral, so mom had to go look. It was very fancy! What was hilarious though, is that there was another bride waiting in her carriage just behind the first group. I guess they do multiple weddings in one evening! Sheesh.
After wandering around for a while we went back to the hotel to try and sleep. We had to be up at 4:00 am to catch our flight to the Puno area. I thought we were going to drive, but that takes too long, so we were flying. I decided to take a bath while mom was packing. It was nice, got out, walked over to the bed, and was getting in when my mom asks me if it'd washed my feet in the tub. My feet were BLACK! Where my heel had rested on the sheet, there were black smears. EWWWWW!!!! The carpet was so dirty that walking across the room with warm damp feet picked up that much crap! Ick. I still try not to think about it too much.
So anyway, we were told it was a 45 minute flight to Juliaca (the closest airport to Puno), but it had to leave early in the morning otherwise it isn't safe to land at the altitude of where we were headed! NICE! I hate flying, and now they're telling me that we HAVE to fly early morning otherwise it's not safe! Oh well, I thought it was only 45 minutes so I wouldn't need to take a valium. Yea, I was mistaken. And for that story, you'll just have to come back tomorrow.
I've only included a couple pictures here, you know where to look for more pictures, right?
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