actually, I don´t leave this beautiful city til tomorrow morning, and I still have one more spanish lesson, but I will hopefully be in Arica, Chile the next time I update this silly thing. I have been pretty lazy this whole week, aside from the 2-5 hours a day I have spent studying español–I have discovered that I really am not ready to be using my brain quite that much. But I´ve been to a few museums (history and contemporary art) and am over halfway through my book that I started on Tuesday. I meant to upload a photo of the view from my roof terrace, where I have been doing yoga and having my lessons, but I really have been lazy, so here´s a stock photo of the town:
I didn´t want to write anything yesterday, since I was a bit sad about BK flying home and was feeling pretty cranky. But I had my first spanish lesson with Umberto, a very nice guy who is a student at the Unversity here in Arequipa, and I have a couple of hours od lessons each day this week. I also switched hostels which made me feel a lot better. The last hostel was a bit of a party scene and was a 15min walk from town, but now I´m just a block from the Plaza de Armas. This place doesnt have the hammocks, pool table, ping pong and bar that the other hostel had, but there´s a beautiful rooftop terrace to gaze at the three volcanos, and it overlooks the monastary next door. There´s also more solo travelers at this hospedaje, and last night I had dinner with an Irish woman who is also studying spanish this week, and two guys from Canada & Australia who had each spent about a month in Bolivia.
I figure its also time to mention the food down here. Despite the fact that white rice is served with most dishes, its almost always undercooked and a tad crunchy. Until last night, when I finally had great fried rice. We all ordered chafa con pollo, not knowing what it was, but it turned out to be one of my better meals so far, and only cost $1! The other dish that has been consistiently good here in Peru is lomo saltado, a stir fry of beef, onion, tomato and french fries. Yes, papas fritas are omnipresent down here–but I have no complaints, since I am addicted to them. I´m planning to try cebiche for lunch today, but I let BK try the alpaca steak and cuy (guniea pig) on my behalf, and will continue to stick to the more mainstream forms of animal flesh. However, it is practially impossible to avoid wheat down here–I´m pretty good about not eating much bread in the states, but when its all there is for breakfast, the fresh pan is hard to avoid. Another odd experience–being served warm soda and chilled red wine. Makes me realize how much we take ice cubes for granted in the states!
We spent saturday & sunday on a nice little tour of Colca Valley and Colca Canyon, visiting the local hot springs and staying the night in the quaint little town of Chivay. Early sunday morning we went to Cruz del Condor, and saw at least five of the beautiful birds. This part of the canyon is only about 1,200 meters deep, but it goes 3 times as deep further down the road. The Andean Condors are a bit smaller than the California Condor in wingspan, but they can live up to 50 years. My new camera doesn´t zoom all that well, espically for moving objects, but these are some of the best photos we could get:
We were a little sketched out as our bus arrived in Puno on Tuesday night, just because it didn´t look like that interesting of a town, and our guide said there were only about four blocks that it would be safe for tourists to walk around. But we signed up for the full-day tour of Lake Titicaca for the next day, and it turned out to be an amazing trip. We got on the boat around 7:30am, and I was suprised to see green algae coating the water near the docks. It was so thick that plastic bottles were resting on top of it. We climbed over the hulls of 3 other boats before stepping down on to our boat, and cruised a half-hour out to the floating reed islands. These were totally amazing, and I´ll post pictures soon. We got to take a short ride in a reed boat, after a demonstration on how they build the islands.
Then it was 2.5 hours out to Taquile, a Quechua community on the middle of the lake that pre-dates the Incas. Our tour guide descibed (in both English & Spanish) what the different textiles meant (special hats for married men, etc.), and then they showed us some of their traditional dances. We lunch on the island (fresh trout) and then went to see the final day of their annual festival for the easter holiday. It was kind of like a Chinese new year celebration, with everyone on the island dressed up in costume, and four different brass/percussion bands playing.
