Peru

What an adventure. Charissa and I stayed in Peru for 3 weeks. In that short time we saw so much of the country. Piura, Mancora, Ica, Paracas Islands, Arequipa, Colca Canyon, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and Lima. Yup, a good chunk of our time was spent riding the bus. The country doesn´t look nearly big enough on the map. :) We really had no idea how big Peru is. The drive from Lima to the north, near the border to Ecuador, was a good 15 hours. Your looking at another 15 hour bus ride to get from Lima south to Arequipa.... and Cuzco is further still.

Lima
To begin the journey we started in Lima. There we stayed with Charissa´s friends parents. Rene and Jorge. It was quite the time. They are quite well off for Peruvian standards. We had our own room with an on suite bathroom. (Wow, that was amazing. A hot shower.... a toilet that flushed... running water. We still couldn´t use the water to brush our teeth though. Peru is 3rd world so it was very important to use only bottled water.... funny because we´d started out so cautious in Costa Rica and then become so lax we almost forgot to be cautious again.) Our beds had pillows. (The whole time in Costa Rica we had slept without pillows. I´ve grown a new appreciation for a good pillow.) The one thing that was too much for me was: They had a maid and cook. I just couldn´t handle it. Someone cleaning up after me.... doing my dishes... cooking my food. Apparently, once you´re upper or middle class it is expected to have a maid. That idea is so hard for me to understand. I tried to help but that was a big no no. In the end I was at least allowed to help out with the laundry. We didn´t have too much time in Lima. We met up with a girl called Natalie, who gave us her tour of the city. She´s really into art, so she took us to a bunch of artistic places and we got to see some Lima Art... and fashion designers. (Very colourful.)

Driving
We thought the driving in Costa Rica was bad. It´s nothing compared with the way they drive in Peru. I have never felt so close to death in my life. If it wasn´t bad enough we got a ride home with Patty. Apparently she can´t drive standard. Skydiving was nothing compared to the fear factor we got driving with Patty. I was literally praying the whole way. She started by pulling a U-turn on a really busy road... almost a highway... I was in the back seat, perfect target for all the cars speeding towards us. Each time I thought I was dead but the cars managed to screech on the breaks and swerve to miss us. Patty managed to stall ever 2 minutes. Even when changing from 1st to 2nd gear. It was dark out. The roads in Lima are always under construction. As we were speeding along, cutting people off, honking our horn and doing the usual Lima driving tactics, I suddenly saw a huge mound of gravel ahead. The road had been dug up. I was gripping the door handle as tightly as I could. Patty raced on as though she didn´t see it.... I thought, surely she´d see it. The mound was right ahead of us.... we didn´t slow down.... I screamed. (Anyone who knows me knows I don´t usually scream... not even jumping out of a plane... but I screamed.) She slammed on the brakes at the last second and we skidded into the mound. Fortunately we were OK. Charissa and I looked at each other and we both sent a prayer of thanks up to God. She backed out and we made our way home. After dropping us off at Rene´s she drove off. A little while later we received a call to say she had crashed the car on her way home. Thank God we weren´t still in it.

Food
The food in Peru is absolutely amazing!! Maybe being used to rice and beans everyday also made us appreciate the verity more. We were served like queens. Every meal starts with soup. They sure know how to spice the soup. Following the soup you´ll have your main course. Typical dishes are Lobo Saltado (Potatoes, onion, peppers, steak all mixed up with spices), Ceviche (Fish with onion and lemon, you eat it cold... it´s almost like sushi fish.), Stuffed Peppers, Anticuchos (Cow Heart. When we ate the cow heart neither Charissa or I knew what it was. We both loved it...wow this is good, we said, what is it? Thankfully we found out what it was after we´d enjoyed it.), Alpaca (Once again we had no idea what we were eating till we were half way through. We´d just been petting the animals and then we ate one. You should have seen Charissa´s face when she found out what it was. It is the most delicious meat I´ve ever had. Really lean.), Chicken Feet, Guinea Pig (We are not sure if we ate it or not, in the buffet it was hard to tell but other´s were mentioning it), Corn, Potatoes (There are 4000 different kinds of potatoes in Peru. I think people only eat about 1000 types. The rest are wild.). To drink you´ll get Chicha Morada (A drink made from purple corn and spiced with cloves. They also serve Chicha jello for dessert. It´s pretty strange at first... Charissa couldn´t handle it. She kept switching her cup with mine once I´d finished. They kept filling up our cups... I must have drank 2 gallons of the stuff. Charissa owes me. haha), Cocktail de Garrabina (An alcoholic drink that looks like coffee. It´s actually strangely really good... but don´t ask what´s in it... just enjoy it. I´ll be making some for my family when I get home. hehe), Pisco Sour is another famous drink. We wrote down a bunch of recipes, that way we can cook Peruvian for our families when we get home.

Ica
One of our first trips, in Peru, was to Ica. It´s a town in the middle of the desert. Once outside of Lima we saw how truly poor the rest of Peru is. I´ve never seen such poverty. Costa Rica was 3rd world, but in Peru you see so many people who truly have nothing. The houses are made out of whatever the locals can find. Scrap metal or cardboard. Almost no one can afford a car so there are tons of putt-putt taxis. (A motor bike with a backseat for two, sort of a rickshaw. They are so much fun to ride on.... but you get so dusty and breath in so much exhaust.) Ica is surrounded by dunes, as far as the eye can see. There is one big oasis. It was like we were in the middle of the Sahara. In the night you freeze but during the day it´s boiling hot. Our hostel was really nice. We met a bunch of other backpackers. But I was kind of going crazy being in the lap of luxury while just beyond the fence people were living in really really poor circumstances. All the backpackers spent the days sitting next to the pool chatting, drinking beer, or going on tours. I must admit I´m pretty turned off the back packer world. It seems to me the most of them have this loosey goosey life style. So few morals or boundaries. They live loose with no thought to the consequences. They don´t believe in God and pretty much figure they can make up what is right and wrong. I am so sick of backpacker romances. You´ll do one bus ride and by the end of it there will be a bunch of bus ride couples. Of course they don´t ever stick with one person. Anyway, I better not rant. I was just feeling like I didn´t want to come to a country and hang out with backpackers. I wanted to hang out with the locals. Charissa and I decided to go down the road for a walk. We saw a group of little boys playing soccer. Ohhh... I was dying to join in. They were like... venga... come and play... what a blast. Playing on concrete and sand is quite a trick but these boys had skills. After soccer they wanted to hear all about Canada. I was so happy to have spent the afternoon away from the backpackers. Later that day I was drinking my tea when I heard someone say: Hola. I looked around to see who was talking to me... but I was all alone. A few minutes later I heard it again. Someone was definitely speaking in Spanish to me. Finally I looked up into the nearby tree. There on the branch was a huge parrot chatting away in Spanish. It was so funny. Ica is famous for Sandboarding. It´s like snowboarding on the sand. Just up my alley. I was so stoked to try. Charissa and I got to rip around the dunes in Sand Buggies and then whenever we got to a huge dune we´d strap on the boards and carve down the slope. What a thrill. It was pretty easy for us because we can snowboard, but our poor companions had such a hard time. They were tumbling down the slope head over heals eating sand all the way. I got a good laugh. In the end they just wanted to take pictures of us riding. One evening Charissa and I walked up to the top of a huge dune. We couldn´t help but sing at the top of our lungs: How Great is our God! What a view. With the setting sun, all the dunes looked red. Beautiful. When we got back Charissa and I met two Christian Girls from Switzerland. They had brought song books with them... we were dying to sing some worship together. We made friends with some of the locals who had guitars and drums. They let me use a guitar and we got to sing together into the night. So much fun. It was really cool because we got a chance to talk to them about who we were singing of. The next morning we met another group of Christians who´d been traveling all around to rural parts of Peru sharing the gospel. It was really cool to hear their stories of how God opened up doors for them. We had a little devotional time together right there at the foot of the dunes.

Paracas
The Paracas Islands are off the cost of Peru. I was super keen to take a boat ride out to them because you can actually see PENGUINS!!! Back in Canada I taught so many little kids in my class about Penguins, now I actually have seen them. Humboldt Penguins. We also saw Albatross, Sea Lions, Boobie Birds, Inca Birds, Dolphins, and lots of other animals. I was definitely most excited to see Penguins.

Mancora
30 hours busing north we got to a beachy town called Mancora. It´s right on the Pacific coast. A surfer hot spot. The waves were ginormous. Natalie, the friend we´d made in Lima, came with us on the trip. We all agreed to try find a cheap hostel. 10 Soles a night is what we paid. That was a little too cheap. We had no running water, the toilet seat broke after the first person sat on it.... but worse than that.... bugs of all sorts and sizes could crawl right in. Lizards too. In the morning my whole back was covered in bites. It looked like I had terrible backache. The guy next door to us smoked weed all night... and during the day. He seemed to be offering us a joint constantly. Mancora was a total party town... all night long you could hear the music going. Apparently I was pretty tired because I managed to sleep through the sounds of the partiers and the smell of our weed smoking neighbour. In the morning I headed straight for the beach and rented a surf board. The guy only had short boards. (It´s definitely a better idea to use a long board when you´re a beginner, but I didn´t care.) Charissa and Natalie wanted to chat on the beach, but I couldn´t resist a surfing opportunity. The waves were so intimidating. Paddling out was pretty hard. In the end it helped to walk up the beach and grab the rip current out and then just ride the waves back in. I was a little nervous about using the current but there were lots of other surfers so I just tried to stick with the pack. One of my first waves was so scary. I felt like I was an ant on the beach getting crushed by a tsunami. haha, Not quite but it was pretty scary. I just knew I had to cling to my board for dear life and ride that wave in body board style. There was no way I´d try stand up with a wave that size. It sent me rocketing forward... for a while I was just under the foam. Finally I came out in front.... Wowzy. Eventually I got the hang of catching the smaller waves and just diving under the monsters. The short board felt like a banana peal under my feet compared with the longboard. You needed the momentum to keep the board above water. I didn´t manage to do much turning but at least I was able to stand up and ride the waves in.

Colca Canyon
After another 30 hours in the bus we made it to Arequipa. From there we jumped in another bus and made our way to the Colca Canyon. It´s the deepest Canyon in the world. On the drive up we started to feel the high elevation. The thing everyone does to prevent altitude sickness is chewing coca leaves. (Leaves from the cocaine plant) First you let them soak in your saliva and then you chew them in one cheek till your mouth feels numb. The leaves make you feel a little full and light headed. We noticed that if we even walked just a little bit we were huffing and puffing. On the drive up the bus suddenly began to smoke like crazy. Something was wrong with the engine. I was afraid it´d catch fire or explode. The driver pulled over and everyone piled out of the bus. There we were, freezing cold, on the edge of the road, in the middle of nowhere... with a broken bus. In the end the driver managed to fix whatever was wrong and we were back on our way. The drive was beautiful. There are 3 volcanoes that rise up out of the flat platau. One, called Misty, is still active. We heard all kinds of Inca legends. The used to make human sacrifices to appease the trembling ground. Because it´s so cold, the ground freezes and even preserved some of the bodies. The famous one is the body of a frozen girl called ´the Juanita girl´... we froze so much that night in our hostel I was afraid I´d become the ´wanita´ girl. There are so many earth quakes in the area. You can see huge fault lines that just rip through the middle of a town. We also saw lots of wild life along the way. Llama´s, Rabbit (not our kind of rabbit, they have almost a tail shaped like that of a cows), and of course Condors. All along the way we saw people in the traditional dress of Peru. You can buy all kinds of hand spun hoodies, gloves, tuques. Our first night in the Hostel Charissa felt so sick from the elevation. She thought she was dying. I was feeling fine...except for the fact we really hadn´t packed anything warm. I was too cold to sleep. We did a short trek in the canyon the next day and then after seeing the condors we headed back to Arequipa.

Cuzco and the Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu
15 hours later, again on the bus, we were in Cuzco. Charissa and I swore we never wanted to see a bus again. (But we soon had to eat our words, after the intense trek we were about to do we definitely had second thoughts about riding in a bus.) We arrived in Cuzco at 5:30am and booked into a hostel. The first thing I wanted to do was find out if I could go bungee jumping. We´d heard other backpackers talking about the Cuzco Bungee Jump. Sure enough, you could do it in Cuzco and it was really cheap. I was so excited. I´ve always wanted to go bungee jumping, since I was a little girl. The drop was 122 meters, one of the highest in the world. I asked the guy who strapped me in how to make it more intense. He said jump off backwards, so I did. What a fall. It was great..... except for the yank it gave my ankles. ;) We had one day to get acclimatized before our trek. It would be so cold. We had to rent jackets or else we would have died. (What a pair we made... we were trekking in one day but my ankle was hurting and Charissa was feeling sick from the food we bought from street vendors. Not smart... but we still haven´t learned our lesson.) At 2:30am we left for the base camp of Salkantay. The ride up was with two of the Peruvian Cooks on our trek. The road was on a cliff edge with rocks and creeks and mud all the way. We bottomed out so many times I was sure we´d leave the gas tank behind.... or punch a hole in the bottom and start leaking all the way up the hill. Finally we made it to the camp. From there you could only continue on foot or with a mule train. The sun was just beginning to rise over the distant peak. We had a to make it over the pass that day. A full day of hiking to be down in the valley before night fall. We´ve both hiked a lot back home, but this was a lot harder with the altitude. We were so out of breath and dizzy. Along the way we passed other trekker's who were so tired they needed to rest. Some times we´d be the ones who were needing a break. One poor girl had salmonella from the food she´d eaten. The fastest way to get to help would be at least a day on the back of a mule. We felt so bad for her. We made friends with another girl from Vancouver called Julie, who was doing the trek with a broken ankle. She was even passing people. Strong guys were put to shame. It was so hard. We seemed to just hike up and up without being able to see the top. The trail was really steep and on the edge of a cliff. We felt like dying on the first day. The trek ends up at the base of Machu Picchu. A lot of people do the Inca trail instead.... but the Salkantay is more spectacular, and more difficult. The trek literally took my breath away. :) It was so beautiful. I just felt like my soul wanted to cry out.... what an awesome God we have. He´s not at all boring. Look at this spectacular creation. I really want to know Him more.... and make Him known. We climbed up to glaciers. It was a beautiful moment when we were at the top... from here it would be mostly down hill into the jungle. As it got more and more jungly... we got more and more bugs. Mosquitos everywhere. Some peoples legs were so covered in bites they were just swollen to the max. The views were spectacular... but unfortunately because the trail was so steep and on the cliff edge you had to stay focused on your footing most of the time. We were breathing in the dust kicked up from those in front and by the time we made it to our lunch stop our nostrils were so full of it we could have filled 100 tissues with black dust. Our guide Henrike was hilarious. So unorganized. We were all starving by the time the meal came... and when it did the portions were so small the poor guys always left the table hungry. Our first camping spot was pretty cool. We were in tents, on the edge of a cliff, on a farm, in the middle of the jungle. The best part was the bathroom. It was dark out... we climbed up this hill to the little structure that was supposed to be a bathroom. It had 3 tarpped walls and one side was open. You had to balance on two rickety boards over a dark hole. While I was concentrating on my balance a bat flew in and bonked me on the head. It's wings flapped around in my face before it flew back out... I couldn´t believe it. What a surprise. If that doesn´t sound like enough of a thrill... the next morning we found out that the W.C. was on the edge of a sheer cliff. In the dark we wouldn´t have been able to tell. Had we stepped out and gone to the right instead of the left we´d have surely dropped to our death. For 5 days we hiked.... and hiked... sometimes through little towns, mostly on cliff edge. There were many crazy ways to cross rivers. One bridge was like fear factor. All the boards were rotten... half of them were missing... you had to hop from one rotten board to another. Other places you had little pulleys and a basket hanging from a cable. You could use the pulley to haul yourself across. In one of our camping spots we were next to a small town. Right next to our camp they were slaughtering a cow... the sound of saws cutting through the bones filled the air... along with the swarms of flies. It was actually pretty interesting. Our tent was in a field... that night I looked up at the starry sky. Beautiful. The sky is totally different... none of our constellations. Some of the stars are so big they must be planets. We got to go to a natural hot spring...you just had to jump in a local bus to get to them. That was hilarious. The bus was already so small, made for people with shorter legs than me for sure.... they never seem to think it´s full. We had people sitting on each other, on the floor, standing (Hunched because the roof is so low)... and still, the bus driver rides like he´s in a race car. We were on cliff edge. I was sure we only had 3 wheels on the road most of the time. On our final day of trekking we were supposed to take a train the last leg. Our guide decided to pocket the money and make us walk along the tracks for a good 3 hours. It was so dangerous... when a train would come you had to press yourself against the cliff to stay out of it´s way. When we arrived at the base of Machu Picchu we´d never been so happy to see civilization... sort of. Of course our Hostel was the furthest up the hill... and our room was on the third floor. We didn´t ever want to see another step again. The trek was over. We are both so glad we did it. Such an accomplishment. We crashed on our hard beds... and slept for a few short hours. The next morning we were up at 4:00am to catch the sunrise in Machu Picchu. We wanted to climb Waynapicchu... well,we weren´t keen on another hour of steep steps... but we´d come this far so up we went. When we got to the top... Machu Picchu was totally in the fog. The others in our group were getting so upset. We just hiked 5 days for this? I said the only thing we could do was pray the clouds would lift. Charissa and I prayed... no joke. The thick fog started rising so fast... we went from not being able to see anything to having the perfect sunny view of Machu Picchu. It was spectacular. What a construction... on the top of a mountain. Wow! Our guide was supposed to supply our bus tickets and train tickets back... once again he didn´t have them. Charissa and I were not thrilled with the idea of another crazy walk. Time to think of a solution. Two hungry guys were complaining they didn´t have any food and the food at the gift shop was way over priced. We had brought sandwiches up with us because we figured that would be the case. Taking advantage of their situation we traded them our sandwiches for their bus tickets. We weren´t even hungry. =) Fortunately our guide did get us the train tickets at the last minute. He had obviously just written down what he thought our names were... my ticket said AniLa Soderok and Charissa was like Brian Chariss. At least no one looked at them. haha

I could write a ton more about Peru... feels like I left so much out.... but this is really long and I´m sure it´s not half as interesting to read as it was to write about. The things I missed you´ll just have to ask me to tell you about. Over all Peru was such an adventure!