Kerri

(Very) unfortunately, we had to be up at 2:30am in the morning so we could get to the airport 2 hours before our 5:40am flight to Cusco. (Cheapest flight, worst departure time, don't recommend.) We didn't get much sleep that night, of course. Our drive to the airport was interesting since it was pitch black outside and we were essentially the only ones on the street. Big contrast to the crazy, bustling city of Lima during the daytime! Once at the airport, we first felt highly pissed off that we had to sit on the ground for 2.5 hours waiting for our flight to depart... but our feelings soon turned to delirium since we were running on no sleep. I don't remember what was so funny, most likely nothing at all... but we sure laughed a lot. I then stuffed my face with a ham and cheese croissant and a giant strawberry donut. Mmm mmm good. The flight to Cusco was only a little over an hour, but it was the scariest flight I think I've ever been on. I'm not sure if it's always so turbulent over that area of Peru, but if so, I'm not sure I have the guts to get on a plane again and fly there when it comes time to spend my last month there!! It seemed like almost the entire way our plane was shaking from side to side. Not fun. But the flight attendants (young and attractive, of course. We're in Peru, remember?) didn't even have a hint of worry on their faces and somehow managed to still serve us all drinks as the plane bounced around... WITHOUT SPILLING. Where do they learn these skills?

Arrival in Cusco... also not fun. We'd been warned that the second we got there, people would be trying to sell us things. Well, they were right, multiplied by 1000. We got off the plane and before we even got to the baggage area, our poor ears were bombarded with loud Andean music from a live band. At seven in the morning. We were not happy, not happy at all. We kept asking ourselves, ¨What the hell?¨and declaring to everyone that ¨This should be illegal!¨. We were so tired we could barely even think. I felt like I'd been hit by a train. But somehow we managed to get our bags, rent a cell phone for 10 bucks (what a steal! Unless we lose it), and haggle in our sleep with some taxi drivers for a cheaper fare to the city center. They all tried to tell us it'd be at least 25 soles (too much) to the center, but after sleepy arguing, we somehow got it down to 10. Our taxi driver had a travel agent escort, which we thought was odd. I made a point to ask them squarely why there were two of them, so they'd know that we knew it was weird (you know?)... but in the end the travel agent turned out to be super friendly and made sure we got a room at our hostal of choice, Osiris in the cute, hilly San Blas neighborhood.

Even though it was only 7:45am and we had the whole day to explore the town, well... we didn't. We passed out and didn't wake up again until 3:30 in the afternoon. We walked around our neighborhood a bit and decided after only a few hours that Cusco was our new favorite town. The San Blas neighborhood is in the hills above the main square. It is very artsy and laid back, there are countless wonderful cafes with delicious food and baked goods, and it´s incredibly cute because all the streets are so tiny a car can barely fit through and the streets and walls are all cobblestone. It's a great mix of Spanish and Inkan architecture. A lot of the building walls still have their original Inka stone foundations and it was pretty amazing to see the stones up close... you can't even fit a credit card between them because the fit of the huge, interlocking stones is so perfect. Cusco was once the capital of the Inka's from which they spread out and conquered lands to the north and south (all the way up past Ecuador and as far south as parts of Chile and Argentina!). The town is apparently designed in the shape of a puma, too. Another great fact that I just discovered online... I guess in 2006 Cusco was found to be the point on Earth with the highest ultraviolet light level. Isn't that nice?

We spent our first evening at the South American Explorers Club, conveniently located just down the street from us. (It's an informational club for travellers that hosts weekly events, too.) They were having an unlimited cocktail night. We were still pretty tired but figured we'd try it out anyway. It ended up just being mostly the club staff and a few of their friends... and sleepy party pooper Rachel and Kerri in the corner on the couch. We drank our first pisco sour (the national drink, made with pisco [grape brandy], egg white, and some other odd ingredients). It's supposed to be smoother than a margarita, but I can't say I liked it that much. We also had some great baked potatoes with yucky South American chunky cheese along with our alcohol. They all kept trying to serve us more drinks (in miniature cups), thinking it would wake us up, but our eyelids just kept getting heavier and heavier. We were highly entertained, however, by a 41 year old British man who we can only describe as being similar to a young British fraternity boy. He was the most hyper person I think I have ever met, perhaps because of all the whiskey he had been drinking. He was the DJ for the evening and everytime a song came on, he jumped up and smiled and yelled like it was the first time he'd ever heard music in his life. TLC´s ¨I'm Pretty¨came on at one point and he deemed it his most favorite song ever. We realized there was a problem when we found ourselves reading a magazine in the middle of the party... at that point we knew we had to say goodbye and just go to bed.

The next days we spent wandering around town, snapping photos of every cute cobblestone street we passed and saying ¨no thanks¨to all the women and children (dressed in their traditional clothes with their most photogenic llamas and baby goats) who asked us to pay to take a photo of them. We went to the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, and snapped a billion more photos of the two churches and the plaza itself because it was all just so beautiful. We visited the Inka Museum, which thankfully included artifacts and information from all the pre-Inkan societies (who the Inkans conquered) as well as the Inkas. We later walked down Avenue del Sol to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo/ruins of Qorikancha (Temple of the Sun). Qorikancha was once one of the most important Inkan temples, dedicated to the Inkan sun god Inti, with floors and walls covered in sheets of gold and with a garden of golden statues. But when Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro came in the 1500s and conquered the Inkas he and his men took most of the gold with them. (At that point they had one of the last incas held hostage. Pizarro told him that if he surrendered the gold of Qorikancha, his life would be spared... but even after allowing the Spanish conquistadors to steal and melt down all the gold, Pizarro decapitated the inca anyway.) Qorikancha was later turned into a monestary of the Dominican order. Some of the stone ruins of Qorikancha are preserved within the monestary walls, giving the whole compound a really interesting dual history. In the 1950s a large earthquake destroyed most of Santo Domingo, but the Inka walls of Qorikancha withstood it all.

Our favorite restaurant was called Cafe Ritual Cultural... it served up some great banana pancakes and 3 course lunches that stuffed us silly. I'm not so sure they liked us so much, though. Everytime we tried to pay, something was wrong... either they thought we were giving them counterfeit 5 soles coins, or we gave them too big of bills and they couldn't make change and had to run across the street with our money and buy rice or something. It's annoying how the banks give out 50 and 100 soles bills, but most of the time people don't even have change for a 5 sol coin and ask you over and over if you´re suuuuure that you don`t have anything smaller. Same thing with Ecuador. Bah!

Anyway, we were going to go visit the Inka ruins at Sacsayhuamán (remember how to pronounce it with the catchy phrase ¨sexy woman¨), just a few kilometers north of our hostal (up a billion flights of stairs), but we decided we'd try to see the ruins when we come back to Cusco after our visit to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Plus we were still a bit worn out from not sleeping well the previous nights and didn't feel like that much exercise. Instead, we spent our last day buying our train tickets to Machu Picchu before we caught a local bus to the nearby town of Pisaq in the Sacred Valley.

Oh, one last thing. As we were walking back to our hostal one last time after breakfast on our last morning, we saw a GIANT dog the size of a horse prancing down the street ahead of us... with a tiny plastic bag in his mouth filled with biscuits. It was the funniest/cutest thing. The dog kept glancing back every so often to make sure his master was following him, and then once he was satisfied he'd turn around and continue on. I want a dog that does that! That's the crazy thing about Ecuador and Peru... nobody has leashes here, their dogs just are so loyal that they follow their owners wherever they go. I'm not sure I want a dog the size of a horse, though.

Bye for now, Cusco! I´ll be back in a few weeks...

Lima is a giant city of 8 million people. It has everything from shanty towns to really nice business/tourist districts that look almost like La Jolla. My pen pal Garrett, who has lived in Lima on and off for 5 months, was nice enough to scout out a really cool hostal for Rachel and I in a great area of town called Barranco. It's very artsy and safe, plus its right on the cliffs by the beach. Our hostal was in an old mansion and even though we had to stay in a dorm with 6 other people, it turned out to be one of the best hostals we´ve stayed at. It was really social and we met some really fun people there. For some reason it was mostly Americans and Australians.

We were picked up from the airport by a friendly guy with a car named Herby (don't ask me the name of the driver, we only asked for the car's name). But there was a slight problem... Herby looked like he had been through a war. Maybe even two. And he was still somehow chugging along. For some unknown reason, there were slash marks all over the interior of the car (did someone have a knife fight in there? Silly Peruvian boys) and a lot of the metal was exposed. We were a bit worried Herby would die on the way to our hostal, but somehow he made it to our destination... though we did stop and start about 20 times during the drive and our 35 minute ride was accompanied with the nice smell of fresh gasoline. I casually asked our taxi driver how old Herby was, and he said he was born in 1993. That's as old as my Volvo and it does NOT look like that. Hmm. Something fishy was going on. Anyway, back at the hostal later that evening, two girls from Canada arrived at around midnight. They told us about how their taxi driver's car had broken down on a cliff (on a curve), and they had to wait and hour while the driver and another male passenger pushed the car around so that the gas tank would be facing downhill so the car could start again. We asked if their car had a name. You guessed it... it was good old Herby.

The next day we spent in the historic old town, which was a surprisingly long drive from Barranco (I kept forgetting how huge Lima is). We checked out the catacombs in the Monestario San Francisco, which is still to this day a church of the Dominican order. The catacombs were the first public catacombs, intended for public burials and viewings. The benefactor, of course had a giant tomb all to himself, and everyone else had to pay as well to get the ¨good¨burial spots. Though they were buried 12 to a plot, stacked one on top of another, so I don't really know why they were so excited to be buried there in the first place. The rest of the monestary itself was really gorgeous... from the rooms with giant religious paintings in the Ruebens and Cusqeño styles to the beautiful tiled walls around the central garden (in the moorish style, from the Spanish influence), to the central garden itself. It was also really neat to see the different rooms used for washing and dressing, meetings, as well as the choir room. Their dressing room had drawers for everyone, carved very elaborately, and above each dresser was a saint or a martyr (with the way they were killed depicted graphically... stabbed, burned alive, hung, etc). One dresser was actually a secret door to the catacombs below. The library was the best of all... it had fun winding staircases going up to the second level, beautiful carvings on the walls and ceiling, and old books from the 16th century onwards. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures of anything

Lunchtime was next. We had a buffet lunch, served to us by French nuns! Supposedly for dinner they gather around and serenade guests with a rendition of Ave Maria, but we opted for the cheaper lunch menu, which was delicious. We even got to try chicha morada, a traditional Peruvian drink made from purple corn among a lot of other fruity ingredients. It was really good... and really purple.

We spent the rest of the day wandering a bit more around old town. A few boys catcalled us (they either hiss, whistle, or yell sweet nothings like ¨queen!¨ or ¨princess!¨) as we walked around, and we decided our new response was to make a really terrible, ugly face instead of just walking by and pretending we didn't notice. Or we laugh hysterically like hyenas. This either causes most guys to burst out laughing along with us, or they just shut up. It's fun.

Later we walked along the cliffs from Parque del Amor (Park of Love) in Miraflores and almost made it back to Barranco before we hit the end of the cliffs and had to take a taxi the rest of the way home. Parque del Amor has a giant statue of a couple making out in the middle of it and some neat tiled benches (kind of like in Gaudi park in Spain). Delfin, the famous Peruvian painter and sculptor, designed the park and its statue of love. I'm actually going to live at his house when I return to Lima (and maybe even meet him!) because my friend Garrett was nice enough to buy me two nights at Second Home (where Delfin lives) on the cliffs of Barranco (www.secondhomeperu.com).

That evening we sat around talking and drinking with all of our hostal mates. One girl named Jahan, from New York, told the most hilarious stories. She had us cracking up all evening. I particularly enjoyed her description of Cusco... ¨This was the first place I really felt like ´Wow, I´m in Peru, man!´ I mean, it was like New York City with all the great nightlife, but then I'd walk out of a club and there'd be a fucking llama standing outside the door!¨. (Now that we've been to Cusco, I can vouch for that odd sight, too!) The woman who worked at the hostal was also really young and fun and she organized a night out at a nearby club for all of us. A Peruvian guy started talking to me there, and even though it was a bit hard to understand his rapid Spanish in the loud club, I still managed to talk to him in half-Spanish for most of the evening, which was good practice.

One of our dorm mates was a guy who´s traveling the world for a year with the Watson scholarship... it's basically $25,000 of free money, and the only stipulation is that you don't come home until a year is up. He was using the money to study music in different South American countries and had some great stories to tell about his experiences so far. He even got to live with a Guatamalan pop star for a while... and had to look the other way when the singer would bring in his 25 different girlfriends. Our new friend was pretty hilarious, though I have to note that he had some, err... disgusting bathroom and eating habits, haha.

We wandered around the beach near Barranco later in the day. An chubby older man bicycling around a box of ice cream kept following us along the beach, thinking that if he waved to us just one more time we might cave in and decide we wanted ice cream. Then he changed tactics and started asking us where we were from. We ignored him and started walking back up the cliffs to our hostal... and waaay down below on the coastal highway we could still see him, just a tiny speck now, waving furiously at us. Haha. He just didn't know when to stop. We then went to Miraflores, a nice area of town just north of Barranco. We chatted with a man in the park (in Spanish!) about visiting Colca Canyon in the south (2x deeper than the Grand Canyon), got some ice cream and dinner (in that order, we really confused out waiter), went grocery shopping at an amazing grocery store (it had purple corn and biodegradeable bags, what more could one want?), and that was about the last of our adventures in Lima.

The ice cream here is terrible. It can´t compete with the delicious Magnum bars that Ecuador (and all of Europe) has. It´s quite unfortunate. Other than that, however, our first few days have been pretty interesting...

Right before the border we stopped randomly. We thought it was the border, but it turned out it was just a dinner stop. But the only place to eat dinner was a tiny stand on the side of the road serving beans, rice, and chicken on a stick. Rachel opted for the safe beans and rice and I got the chicken on a stick with some mayo... deeeelicious! Finally got to the border, which was straddling a river, where we saw a rainbow, a goat with a tumor in its udders, and a tiny monkey. It was pretty laid back and easy to get across, just a bunch of stamps and back on the bus we went.

The rest of our bus ride from the border to Piura was fairly uneventful. It was just extremely hot. We were drenched in sweat for 3 hours. The moon was full and beautiful and that´s all we could see for miles.

When we got to Piura in the evening on our first day in Peru, we couldn´t see much since it was almost 10pm. All we noticed was that the taxis here are really cheap, midget sized Daewoos that seem like they are about to fall apart. Somehow our taxi fit 4 travelers and 4 giant bags on the way to our hotel (we traveled with a Canadian couple we met on the bus). Magic. We went to get some pizza down the street for an extra late dinner with the Canadians. During the meal, we tried Inca Cola, which is the Peruvian soda of choice. It's neon yellow and has an aftertaste like bubble gum. Odd, yet somehow it tastes pretty bueno. We had a little problem after dinner when we tried to pay in US dollars and the owner wouldn't accept our 5's because they were too old looking, but it worked out in the end.

The hostal we stayed at was a bit weird. There were a lot of shirtless men who liked to walk by our room at 8am repeating Rachel´s name over and over in high pitched voices.

The next morning, Rachel aquired a Peruvian boyfriend. A woman told us we could get some small change from a mysterious black door across the street, so we took her word for it and walked over to the door and Rachel asked through a hole in the door... the guy inside said he couldn't make change for us but told us about some casas de cambio a few streets over. We thanked him and then sat down for a bit in front of our hotel to look at our map real quick. A few minutes later a woman ran across the street and handed us a piece of paper. It turned out to be a hand-drawn map of the location of the casas de cambio from the guy across the street. But best of all, it included his name, phone number, and the words ¨OK. Baby.¨ Yay Rachel. Classic.

We then decided to go to Colán for the day, which is a beach town an hour and a half away from Piura. After a bus ride through the desert (the north of Peru is all dirt and shrubbery... and HOT) we found ourselves in the wild wild west, aka the port town of Paita. This town is ridiculous. I don't think I saw a single plant in the entire town, it was just dirt, more dirt, mountains of dirt, shacks, buses, and tuk tuks. (It was a big surprise to see the tuk tuks here as soon as we crossed the border! I had no idea they were popular outside of Asia.) A nice policeman showed us where to find a colectivo taxi that would take us the rest of the way to Colán. There were 5 of us in the taxi, ready to go, but the taxi driver was adamant about fitting in one more person. Rachel ended up in the front seat sitting above the stick shift next to a Peruvian man with a load of brooms. She made a joke about how it was so squished up front and her new friend assured her that it would be fine because she was ¨thin, just like Barbie!¨.

Colán, the supposed resort for the jet set of Peru, turned out to be completely deserted except for Rachel and I. We were the only people there other than the actual residents, dogs, and crabs. We somehow always seem to find the most deserted towns and hostals. And again, the town was all dirt. At least it had some interesting dirt cliffs to mix things up a bit. We stayed at a hospedaje, or a family home with some rooms to rent out, right on the water, literally. There was no beach, just the water up to our back porch. The owner was a bit scatter brained, ADD, super friendly, and confusing. Half of the time we didn't understand what he was telling us even when he spoke in English, and the other half of the time he was repeating himself. Our room was in the back of the house and we had a nice ocean breeze blowing through. Or so we thought. Antonio (I think that's his name) tried to sell us on the room based on just that, yet the nice breeze mysteriously disappeared at night and it was the most hot, uncomfortable, and restless sleep I think I've had on this trip so far. To top it off, I was eaten alive by mosquitos on every appendage of my body, including all over my face! Who do those mosquitos think they are? Speaking of mosquitos, we discovered a bit too late that the northern coast has malaria. Yet everyone there assured us that ¨los animales¨were harmless and we'd be fine. I guess we'll see soon enough!

We took a walk around the dirt road our hospedaje was on. Well, more like we walked 100 feet in one direction, saw an endless sea of more dirt road, one empty, lifeless restaurant after another, and it was hot... and then we turned back. That was the extent of our exploration of the town, minus our mad dash along the shoreline to view the backsides of all the deserted beach houses and see some funny looking crabs. I slept, Rachel read a bit, and we had some lunch at our place... delicious delicious fish. I inhaled mine. Dinner was more fish. We chose to eat at one of the 20 deserted restaurants on our street and were served by a cute abuelita (tiny little grandma). We ended up chatting with her in Spanish after our meal for a good 20 minutes or so. She was hard to understand sometimes because she was missing most of her teeth, but we were pretty proud of ourselves for being able to talk to her for so long. We played with her son's dog and her cats for a while but after I screamed after seeing a giant grasshopper, they ran away (oops). And so we went home, too.

The next morning the woman running the place assured us that we could just go outside on the dirt road and wait for a camioneta that would pass by ¨right now¨and take us back to Paita so we could catch our bus home. We waited outside in the hot, hot sun for a while. No sign of life, much less a camioneta. Some random woman with a bucket from across the street came over to us, sat down, and asked, ¨Why aren`t you getting on a camioneta? They are right there in the street going past us.¨Well, they weren´t, and she apparently a bit loco. She left, and finally a few minutes later we heard some manic honking coming towards us in the street. It was our camioneta, coming to save the day! It honked a good 20 times more before it realized we wanted to hitch a ride. We hoped into the old white van and soon we were cruising the streets of Colán honking at every human being. Occasionally the driver whistled at the ladies. After we'd squeezed in some more people and were at maximum capacity, we headed up the cliffs toward Paita.

Our bus ride back to Piura proved to be quite entertaining. It included a salesman who spoke for about 40 minutes on the dangers of intestinal worms in children and he even had some great, extra large, color photos of worms ´n kids to show us to illustrate his point. After his speech, he tried to sell us some natural laxatives so that we could clean our intestines out the recommended 4x per year. A few people actually bought the packets. After he was satisfied that he had sold enough, he launched into another spiel about a vitamin powder that you can sprinkle in and on anything you eat... nobody ended up buying that one.

We unfortunately had to go to the airport asap once we got back to Piura because here in South America they give your flights away if you don't show up 2 hours before your departing flight (this goes for local flights). We hailed a cab on the street and ended up having a lovely chat with our taxi driver about how beautiful we were. It was actually really fun to speak with him in Spanish, and he was impressed with our ability to actually understand him since he said most tourists have no idea what's going on. But as we got closer to the airport, he suddenly asked us if all the girls in the US were beautiful. This turned into him telling us how ugly every single Peruvian girl was, and that compared to them we were ¨reinas¨(queens). I asked why, since I think there are a lot of beautiful Peruvian women. He said it was because of our faces. I guess he`ll be moving to the United States soon...

Once at the airport, we realized that we were super early... the lights weren`t even on in the building! There were two guards who were nice enough to turn on the lights and fans for us. Then we just sat around for 2 and a half hours. I had a grilled cheese sandwich when the restaurant finally opened. That was about it. Our flight to Lima was pretty smooth and we got there in about an hour and 10 minutes... not too shabby. San Diego-Berkeley style. But even better, the plane was the most modern one I'd ever been in, the snacks were delicious and choclately, and all of the flight attendants were young attractive males. Haha. More on Lima next time!

I need to access the internet more often, otherwise I will forget everything we did. Eek. Okay, going back a week or so ago to our stop in Saraguro...

We took the world's fastest hike in Saraguro before we caught our bus home. We happened to stumble across the tourist office in town on our walk around the streets and the nice woman in the office managed to convince us it was a good idea to take a hike to a nearby waterfall. (¨How long are you staying here? Oh, not even for one night? Why? There are some nice things to do around here...¨said with a sad puppy dog face.) She called a camioneta who whisked us away to the waterfall, well, after he got lost and asked for directions. The ¨walk¨to the waterfall, called Baños del Inka, turned out to be an incredibly steep, muddy hike. The waterfall at top is used once a year, I believe in June, for ceremonial baths. Our driver said he´d be back for us in 40 minutes. Somehow we made it there and back just in time to meet him as he was pulling back up. Perfect timing. The hike was beautiful, if not a bit hot and muddy. There were some gorgeous views of the valley below and all the little houses and farms.

We got back to town just after the 5:30 bus was about to leave. The incredibly bored man working the Viajeros bus office told us that the bus was a bit late so we could still probably make it. Then a few minutes later he changed his mind and told us it wasn't coming and we'd have to take the next bus at 6:45. So we went to the store to buy some snacks, only to glance back down the street after a few minutes and discover that there was a bus in front of the office! We ran down the street, pushing down any locals in our way (maybe not) and made it just in time. We had a lovely (scary) 2 hour ride to Loja from there. I happened to sit next to a strapping young lad of 19 who was singing along to Aventura (Puerto Rican pop band that sings in bachata style) songs blasting through the bus´ speakers. To make conversation, I asked him what he was singing and that turned into a long conversation in Spanish lasting for the rest of the bus ride. I got to practice my Spanish, but since the music was loud and the bus ride bumpy, I had to ask him ¨Que?¨more times than I want to admit. However, he understood me overall and it was nice to get to practice my Español! (Warning!... you don't want to know this Mom and Dad, so cover your eyes for these last few sentences): The bus was a bit bumpy towards the end and was lurching a bit from side to side, so I casually asked the kid if there were a lot of bus accidents. He said yes. I asked if there were a lot of deaths. He said yes. Then he made a motion with his hands indicating a bus tumbling over a cliff. That made Rachel and I feel real great. Luckily we made it to Loja without incident, but we were really glad to get off the bus!

Unfortunately, Loja wasn´t as amazing as our guidebooks suggested it was. The descriptions in both of our books painted a picture of a picturesque town in a valley surrounded by green mountains (which it was). The books also said it was super clean and cute and had won numerous awards for its trash and recycling programs. Let me tell you a secret... Loja's not that clean. The streets had a lot of construction with dirt flying around, there was trash on the streets and by the river, and just a lot of cars and exhaust. We were a bit disappointed and started to miss Cuenca at this point. Not to mention that when we ventured out after 8pm to go find some dinner on our first night, everything was closed and the city had turned into a ghost town. Where the people had disappeared to, I really couldn't say. Bedtime at 8pm? Playing cards? No sé. We managed to find a nice Mexican restaurant, however, and had some trusty burritos (they were good here). Y guacamole! Wahoo! We soon discovered that we were the last customers, though, and the poor owner was waiting for us to finish our meal so he could close up.

Later that night we met a lone traveler from Portugal who was hitch hiking throughout Latin America. Rachel was tired at this point and read a bit before goin to sleep, but I decided to go out and try to find some signs of life in Loja (a bar) with my new friend Miguel. After walking through some deserted streets and stepping in some yellow paint on the street (I guess they didn't think to put a warning sign out since nobody goes out after 8pm anyway), we found a tiny hole in the wall place with a few people called ¨El Viejo Minero¨(the old mine) and talked a bit in there for a while. My new friend had grilled cheese and fruit juice. What a crazy guy. I learned a lot of odd facts about Portugal that night, such as the fact that the entire university system is huge on hazing its incoming freshmen as a giant group, from the first two weeks up until the entire year long. Plus the freshmen are forced to wear the graduation robes to differentiate them from the older students at the same time they´re made to do all sorts of silly things.

The next day Rachel and I walked to Parque Japiro, a ¨15 minute walk¨from the edge of the city center. It turned out to be a bit longer walk and it involved walking a main road with cars belching fumes into our faces the entire time. Once we arrived at the park, it turned out to be quite odd... it had everything from a skate park, a pool, and a basketball court... to a playground including a replica of St. Basil´s Cathedral in Moscow complete with slides (wee!)... to ducks, miniature horses, llamas, and OSTRICHES. Hmm...

That night we went to our favorite mine and managed to make friends with the Ecuadorian bartender and a Swiss German volunteer who speaks fluent Spanish and made me jealous. Again, it was great to have the chance to practice our Spanish and the guys were both very nice. The bartender enjoyed Rachel very much, I think he could have cared less about me. Perhaps it was because I started to fall asleep while he was talking to her later on in the evening? They spent most of the time trying to convince us why we should stay in Loja one more night so we could see the musical performance the next night (playing hits by U2 and all our favorite 90s bands), but we had to refuse... Vilcambaba was next on our list! The guys told us that it was filled to the brim with tourists, but it turned out to be anything but...

When we arrived the next morning, Vilcambaba turned out to be a tiny little town in the junction of 5 valleys... with NO tourists but us! Interesting. We got some curious stares as we took a tour of the tiny 10 street town. Just like in Loja, I was the only blonde one there. On our way back from the river, we stopped to buy some water at a mini market and somehow ended up caught in a conversation with an old, drunk New Zealand man who told us he was trying to teach his daughter and her friends about the dangers of talking to strangers. Then he proceeded to ask us to go on an overnight trip on horse to his cabin in the mountains with his Swedish and British friends, and then to come to his house ¨just down the street¨so he could cure our colds with ¨something¨. After asking him 5 times he finally let on that that something was a bitter tea, but we politely refused... and refused again. We walked away with him muttering ¨I didn´t frighten you guys, did I?¨. Turns out that this guy is written about in our guidebook, as he runs a famous horse rental place and apparently has great tours in the mountains. I am not quite sure what to think about that. Ironically, as we were trying to avoid him, we discovered that his tour shop was right across the street from our hostal. Oops.

Speaking of which, our hostel was one of the best we´ve stayed at so far. The rooms were great and they all were situated around a central garden. Breakfast was included and there was a restaurant with awesome Mexican food (finally!). The cooks also made some delicious homemade oatmeal chocolate cookies and orange chocolate cake. Mmm mmm. Plus, there was a TV room where we spent a good deal of time watching our favorite trashy TV show, The Girls Next Door... though here it´s called ¨The Girls of the Playboy Mansion¨(said in a very thick Spanish accent).

On our last day we went on a ridiculous hike in the Rumi Wilco reserve (part of a hostal with the same name). We felt like bushwhackers yet again even though we were on marked paths that even had little tags hanging from the plants with their names on them. I don't think the trails had been walked or cleared in a while. It was all fun and games, though, until I walked into a spider web. I screamed, Rachel screamed, and I ran away down the path. Rachel made fun of me. It was my turn to laugh hysterically when just 10 minutes later she walked into a spider web and this time the spider was actually on her. She screamed and ran away, trying to get the spider off. I think we scared the living daylights out of the poor thing. Granted, it was kind of creepy looking because it looked like a black crab.
On the way back to town after our adventure in the jungle, we came across the saddest dog I think I've ever seen. I am not sure what was wrong with it, but it seemed to be asking us for help and kept hoping up to both of us, clearly in some kind of pain. Something was wrong with its hips/back legs and it seemed to be squatting as it hopped along (it couldn't even walk normally). We had to leave it because we didn't know what else to do... I don't really want to think about it anymore, but I hope it's okay...

That night there was live music at our hostel. Turned out to be live folk music... played by French Canadians and some hippies. All the middle aged, hippy tourists came out of the woodwork that night and were there watching the show. An old hippy who looked a bit like Jesus got a bit drunk and started demanding that the musicians play ¨Yellow Rose of Texas¨every five minutes. Then he tried to dance with all the women but he didn´t succeed in wooing anyone, probably because he was a drunk Jesus. I sat and had milk and cookies, Rachel ate her cake, and everyone else got drunk. They played a few popular songs, but always reverted back to good old folk. We finally had enough of it and went to watch some more trash tv.... only to discover that Dexter had arrived in Ecuador, so we watched a few episodes of that and scared ourselves silly. When we finally went to bed, we heard a noise on our roof that sounded like a rodent gnawing on wood and were so scared after watching Dexter that we didn't fall asleep for quite some time. Eek.

The next morning we woke up early and started to make our way to Peru... this involved busing back to Loja, only to get on another bus to go back south again to cross the border at Macará in the jungle and then end in Piura, Peru. More on Peru next time!

Rachel and I have been sick for a few days now and so our visits to Cuenca, Saraguro and now Loja haven´t been too exciting. Nonetheless, we still managed to have some adventures and funny stories...

We got facials in Baños at a slightly overpriced place on our last morning. Then we took a short hike through the city with our giant backpacks in the hot sun as we tried to find the bus station. We finally got there and discovered that we couldn´t take a direct bus to Cuenca like we´d thought! We had to take a 2 hour bus ride to Riobamba, then catch another 6 hour bus to Cuenca from there. However, once we got to Riobamba, we found out that we´d missed the bus to Cuenca by 20 minutes. Grr. Rather than waiting around to take a night bus, we just found a hotel and spent the night in Riobamba and decided to take the 5:30am bus the next morning. Not the most interesting town. Our guidebook said it was cute, but it wasn´t. Plus it decided to start pouring rain as soon as we got there. We ate dinner at a place called Club Valentin or something, which was kind of like a 50s diner but with a lot of drunk, screaming Ecuadorian teenagers. They were literally screaming the lyrics to songs at the top of their lungs. It was great background music to our dinner. We watched some terrible TV for a while before we went to bed. You haven´t seen bad TV until you´ve visited Ecuador. They continuously play cheesy soap operas, amateur lip synching and dance videos, and cooking shows that feature techno dance breaks and a scary looking muppet.

The next morning we woke up dark and early at 4:45am so we could catch our bus. When we arrived, we discovered we were the only white people there and our bus was entirely filled with indigenous people carrying large sacks filled with food and things to sell at the market. They looked at us like we were aliens. We tried to sleep on our 6 hour journey, but since Rachel was on the asile for the first part of the trip, she had to deal with random women sleeping on top of her. They seem to have different standards here about personal space. I once had a woman leaning on my head on another bus trip, and I tried to jab my sunglasses (which were on my head) up into her arm a few times so she´d realize that she was leaning on me... but she didn´t even flinch. During the bus ride, we stopped at an unknown town for a food break, though nobody told us it was break time and we only figured it out once the bus driver jumped out of the bus and everyone else gradually started filing out and disappearing. We asked a kind woman carrying a puppy if it was our break and she said yes. (I think I mentioned this before, but everyone here carries puppies around in their hands. You don´t need a leash. You just carry your dog like a baby, whether you are taking a stroll in the park, eating lunch, or riding on a bus.) Rachel stopped outside of the bus to blow her nose and I took a really great picture of an indigenous man sticking his head out of the bus window, gawking at her as she blew into the tissue. We tourists are very exciting to watch.

Cuenca is a very cute, old town in the southern sierras. We stayed in the city center, which basically looks the same as Quito´s ¨centro historico¨but minus the pollution and crime. The streets in Cuenca are all cobblestone, there are a bunch of beautiful churches and pretty parks/main squares, the buildings all have cute, flower covered balconies, and there is a gorgeous river on the border of the old town and new town with green tree- and flower-covered banks. Of course the rain followed us to Cuenca as well, but at least it only seemed to rain in the evenings for an hour or so and then it stopped. During our two days here, we visited the Banco Central museum, which is supposedly the best in Cuenca (almost all other cities have their own Banco Central museum). It had sections on paintings, ethanography (about the indigenous communities here), money, and there was also an archeological park behind the museum with some ruins, rescued birds, and a garden re-created in the Inka style with corn, yucca, and other typical plants they cultivated. We also visited the Cathedral in the main square, which kind of looks like Notre Dame from the front, but it is more of a tan color and has two blue tiled domes in back. The inside was very open and simple. We noticed a cartoon on the wall of the church and moved closer to get a good look... and realized that it was an anti-abortion cartoon. It basically said ¨Mama, I am not a tumor! I am your baby boy!¨and then had a bunch of cartoon depictions of really bloody, exaggerated abortions and a baby saying ¨Don´t kill me!¨. In one picture, a baby was getting his head chopped off with a machete with blood was spurting all over. I can understand that the Catholic church is anti-abortion, but this cartoon was a bit too weird to be placed inside on the walls of the church. As we stared at it, an Ecuadorian man came up to us and said, ¨Yeah, it´s a little odd, isn´t it!¨. The abortion cartoon turned into a random conversation starter and we made a new friend.

On our last day in Cuenca, we wanted to send home a package of odds and ends to make our bags a bit lighter. We went to the post office at around 9am with all of our things only to discover that the woman who sold the envelopes wasn´t in yet. Yes, here in Ecuador the post offices never have any envelopes, stamps, boxes, etc... you have to buy them from a different store, usually located nearby. While we waited for the woman to arrive so we could buy an envelope, we asked where we might find a box. We were told to ask the security guard, who for some reason was the keeper of boxes as well. He went into a tiny closet where I saw about 4 old boxes piled up, and selected one for us. We then asked for some cardboard pieces to protect some paintings we had, and once the guard finally understood what we were asking for, he had to search the entire post office before he was able to find 3 pieces for us. By this point, the envelope woman had arrived. I got an envelope and then asked if there was a marker lying around that I could borrow to write my address with. The security guard said I had to walk upstairs and find the secretary´s office and see if she had one. She had the only marker in the post office, apparently. The whole post office is incredibly inefficient and we were there forever trying to mail our stuff even though we were the only people there for most of the time! I still can´t figure out why the security guard was in charge of the boxes, or why they don´t sell boxes in the first place or have more markers. I asked the security guard if most Ecuadorians come to the post office with their own boxes, and he said no. Which confuses me even more... where do they buy their boxes then? Do they use one of the security guard´s 3 boxes? Do they just not send packages? Things here in Ecuador are quite curious.

Anyway, onto our next bus trip! They are oh so fun. After our interesting morning at the post office, we caught a bus to Loja, about 6 hours further south. This was our first really nice bus (inside), though that had nothing to do with the type of driver we got... he was still a bit loco like all the others. We decided we´d had enough of the bus after 4 hours and an unexpected wait while they rebuilt the road or something and our bus driver decided not to tell us anything about what was going on and he just hopped out for a while. So we stopped in Saraguro, a small town where the indigenous community still dresses in their traditional black clothing and brightly colored jewelry. The indigenous community here is descended from the Incas who were forced to move into Ecuador centuries ago. We ate lunch at a restaurant near the main square and the waitress didn´t really understand anything we were saying and took about 20 minutes to realize we were asking for the bill. During our lunch, a cute little 2 year old girl decided it was amusing to stare at us through the window, so we started making faces at her and taking pictures of her and she really enjoyed seeing us act surprised or scared to see her pop up in the window and especially liked seeing herself on the camera!

Hm, must go now, but more to come about Saraguro and Loja later...