Back From Peru!

My Mom and I got back yesterday from our whirlwind tour of some of the highlights of Peru. Overall, we had a fantastic adventure. Peru is a very interesting place...it isn't really set up for tourism yet, so it takes some work to get from place to place. It is the rainy season there, so our planes were delayed a few times for fog, etc. But, these things were erased by the unbelievable things that we saw once we made it to our destinations.
The first place we went was Lima, and we basically spent a few days just relaxing and touring around there. We took a day trip to a town called, "Pucusana", which is a fishing town. It was quite a site with all of the fishing boats and hustle of the harbor.


After that, we went to Arequipa. Arequipa was the place that reminded us that we were in a 3rd world country. The center of the city was very nice, but the moment you stepped out of the center, the entire "real" Arequipa consisted of huts with tin roofs, holes for windows, garbage everywhere, and dogs everywhere (most of the time in the garbage). The landscape was very beautiful, which was a stark contrast to how the people lived. When we left by car for the few hour drive to Culca Canyon, we were really reminded of where we are when we had to pull over and wait for some goats to pass by....

The drive to the canyon took us through very interesting landscape, where we saw a wild cousin of the camel, the Vicuna, which kind of looks like a camel/llama (but pretty small), we saw rabbits with long, curly tails, and oddest of all, Flamingos (at about 13,000 feet). The canyon is the second largest in the world, and is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. But because we were there for their summer, the canyon is totally green and is papered with terraces that the local indigenous people still farm. It was like going back in time. The people that live here wake up every morning and walk with their livestock to their family terraces and farm all day, only returning just before dark. Needless to say, there were llamas, goats, cows, donkeys, and sheep everywhere. They even had a donkey jail in the town for when a farmer finds someone elses donkey eating on their terrace...the owner has to pay to get the offending donkey out. Here are two pictures. The first is just one view of the canyon, the second is at a lookout point for Condors. It was very bizzaar to be above the clouds.


The next place we went (skipping all the traveling details), was Cusco. This is a much more bustling city than Arequipa. It is also strewn with Incan ruins, and beautiful architecture. We took a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes...the town closes to Maccu Picchu. The first day we went up to Maccu Picchu, it rained the whole time and eventually got so fogged in, we just threw in the towel. But we stayed at a great hotel there, so we had the opportunity to go back the next day and the weather was nearly perfect. Now, the climate of Aguas Calientes is completely different than the other places we were. We went from pretty arid terrain and snowy Andes to what really looked like a jungle. I guess where we were was kind of the "gateway" to the Amazon. It really looked like king kong was going to burst out at any moment. Giant, pointy green mountains, low clouds, thick jungle, and very rainy. The scenery was extremely mystical, and you could really picture the tribes climbing around these mountains.


After Cusco and Maccu Picchu, we went to Puno and Lake Titicaca. I have beautiful pictures of the lake that for some reason won't upload onto my computer...but I am still working on it....
So, that was a really brief summary of our trip. We had a fun time, managed to avoid eating Guinea Pig and Alpaca, and saw a lot of amazing scenery.

Luggage Tags

It just so happens that I am going to Peru tomorrow... kind of random, but it should be an awesome adventure. While packing, I attached a funny luggage tag to my bag. As I was filling out the piece of paper for the tag, it occurred to me that the luggage tag is the last type of identification that people aren't paranoid about. These days, we hide our personal information like no one is safe. Whether we're afraid they are going to steal our identities, or worried they'll show up at our front door, we live in fear of the "bad people". Rightfully so, because those things do happen. My friend had her identity stolen and it made a huge mess for her. This is why it baffles me that while we don't like giving a stranger our first name, we still feel ok about putting our name, address, phone number, and email address on a piece of paper for the world to see. Kind of like, "If you like what's in this bag, come to my house... it's a gold mine." In a way, I like it. I like that it is still as simple as a little name tag, like when we used to write our names on our pencil box at school, before cell phones, pagers, email addresses and answering machines. Some day, we'll probably be required to have a retina scan before we can take our luggage off the belt.
Anyway, just food for thought... and because I am slightly mistrusting of the bad people, I just put my name and number. They'll have to call me before they can stalk me.

I'm Onto You, Socks.

What you are looking at are my socks. Not just socks, but orphaned socks. No, I don't like white socks. When I was little, I never wore socks at all...as a result, my shoes smelled really, really bad. Eventually, I decided that wearing socks was acceptable, but only if they were colorful. So, there you have it. But I digress. What I want to know is, where the socks go exactly. When I was younger and my mother did my laundry, I always blamed her for the missing socks (sorry, Mom). I assumed that one of the socks would get mixed up with someone else's laundry and that the missing sock in question was probably in that pile of unmatched socks that accumulates in the laundry room. I never looked to prove or disprove this theory because the times that you think about socks are really limited to when you put them on, so I would forget. But now, I live alone. I do my own laundry, and my socks still disappear. I usually figure that one got washed before the other, or some other momentary excuse as I matched my socks because as I said, socks don't get a lot of time in our worlds. This is where I think they have found a loop hole. I have come to the conclusion that there must be a sock underground railroad and they are making their way to sock colonies underground that we have yet to discover. I think because we have such fleeting and temporary thoughts about socks that their cohorts distract us by silently saying, "look at me...I'm a matched pair. Don't worry about the missing sock in question, you need socks to wear, you're running late, and here we are." I just feel bad for the socks left behind. I mean, look at them. Did they lose the coin toss? how do they chose who goes and who stays? or are they coming back for these?
All I'm saying is, where the hell do the socks go?

2008...Really?

For some reason, I still feel like it is 1993. I may have been 11, but that year seems like a reasonable number. 2008 is totally unreasonable. It is science fiction, aliens and space ships weird. It is not supposed to be 2008. I feel like we aren't always on the brink of the future, but now actually in the future itself. All those movies with flying cars where you're like, "Wow. That's so weird. Thank goodness we don't live in that crazy time", only now, I think we do. AND I hate the way the years just keep ticking along. Pretty soon it will be 2030 and I will really be freaking out.
In between freaking out about the numbers in the year, I actually had a good New Year's Eve. I went to a bar downtown where we had a reserved table and I spent the moments before the countdown eating pizza, chocolate covered strawberries, and drinking champagne. Seeing that those are some of my favorite things, the night was a success, and we didn't even see vomiting 21 year olds on our walk home. Hurray!
I also took some pictures of the fireworks from my apartment window...and found time to torture Isabelle in the spirit of the new year.