We have covered a lot of ground over the past week or so, so we will try to give a quick update of where we have been.
We went to Arequipa from Cuzco. The second biggest city in Peru, Arequipa surprised us by being a pleasant city, beautiful architecture, friendly people, not too much to do, which was pleasant after being in busy Cuzco. The city is near a volcanoe and much of the colonial architecture is built with volcanic rock, making for a nice effect as it sparkles a bit in the sunlight.
From Arequipa we visited Lima. The capital city on the coast in the middle of Peru, it is a giant sprawling capital with your typical capital things, traffic, polution, high prices. We created our own walking tour seeing some of the sites, strolled down the beach where the locals were busy sunbathing and surfing and went out for a nice dinner of anticuchos (I will spare my vegetarian friends of the translation for this food).
We are now, and have been for about 3 days, in Chiclayo. A coastal town in the north it is a pleasant place, small city where very few gringos seem to visit. These places are our favorite because locals want to interact and are as interested in us as we are in them and makes for more opportunities for convewrsation. The city has some fantastic markets, one of which had our favorite department, the witchdoctor and herbalist department. We perused the skunk skins, animal horns, aromatic herbs and strange elixers for a bit. The coast is a short bus ride away and has a nice beach with surprisingly cold water. Currents are a strange thing as you would expect a nice warm beach in a town so close to the equator. This region is also home to multiple people groups who predate the Incas and so we have visited some of the most fantastic museums and ruins from ancient pyramids.
Tomorrow we are going to attempt to head into Ecuador. We are not sure about our timing as we may have to change busses in a couple or more places, so we may or may not be spending our final night in Peru.
We continue to have no luck in setting up our sustainable agriculture volunteer opportunities and are getting a bit frustrated, but are trying to sit back and enjoy the unique experiences we are having and be patient in waiting for someone to respond to our emails or to learn about some other experience.
A note of excitement, having descended back to sea level into a nice tropical equatorial environment we have entered the land of fruits we have never heard of. So we are making a habit of ordering juices without knowing even what color to expect. So far they have all been delicious and we expect there will be hundreds of others left to try. With one of our goals upon return being to eat as locally as possible, we are trying to soak up the unique fruits and the bananas and pineapples as well. (We have decided that those curved yellow things we eat do not actually qualify as bananas after eating a few of the real things that ripen on the tree here)
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6 comments:
Sounds like you've covered a lot of territory! I'm interested in knowing about the strange food you were talking about........go ahead and gross me out!! Tricia
Great update!
Have you heard any of the locals opinion about our new president?
We have heard only really positive comments from people regarding Obama. Both from locals and from other backpackers from Europe, Canada and Australia.
I think people in Latin America are rightfully frustrated with the degradation they have received from their big powerful neighbor to the north from the nastiness of the ´Red Scare´politics of the 50´s and 60´s that led to the puppet politicians and the USA backed military coups ousting democratically elected leaders and replacing them with dictators to the Reagan sponsoring similar policies and Clinton and Bushes using similar albeit less violent tactics to promote a supposed anti drug/pro free trade that a majority see as being nothing more than rich gringos scratching the backs of rich Latin Americans with the poor and the environment/natural resources suffering the side effects. So from what we gather, people here seem to really hope and want to believe that Obama´s experiences are going to lead him to treat Latin America with more dignity and many seem hopeful that the "theater of the stupid" that is relations between US/Cuba/Venezuela/Bolivia will somehow become a bit more adult and will lead to some actual progress as a result of those relationships.
I (Adam) think this is probably entirely overly optomistic, but we can hope.
Mom, the anticuchos are beef heart. I guess since the heart is just a muscle, it is somewhat normal, but the fact that it is a heart has a psychological effect. I also had Guinea pig for dinner the other night. It was a lot of work for very little meat. I thought it tasted like really tough, chewey chicken. The owner of the restaurant was kind enough to compare it to dog before I ate it.
We are now in the jungle and have noticed frog on the menu already, so we have a feeling this week will be full of new, strange foods.
I would enjoy eating a variety of different fruits but you can have the strange meats. You are a brave pair! Janice
Mmm.. I tried anticucho down there. It's pretty tasty. Mondonguito is another specialty you should try :) the rule is - eat first, ask what it is later!
Catherine P.
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