Who said the holy family had to be blonde and blue eyed?

Hola travellers and happy holidays! So here I am relaxing at the laguna in the desert in Huacachina Peru. At an internet cafe listening to Ricky Martin, who was preceded by Wham. Nice here, but apparently the lake is now polluted enough that folks don´t go in it, and the hotel has no water in their pool. Doin the dune buggy ride in the sand dunes today and then the plan is to head off to Lima.....although one of the few hotels in Pisco that is open has written me to confirm that they do actually have tours running to the islands on Christmas...hmm. Maybe I will do that now. Crap, I hate it when new options come up and then I have to turn around and make another decision again! Damn! Think I need a bit of city time though. Anyway, stay tuned for how that turned out.

So, let´s see where we last left off....I had just arrived in Arequipa and totally admit that I really just vegged out there for an entire week in front of cable tv! I did fun things like visit the Santa Catalina monestary, which is almost 500 years old, huge, and painted in all variety of colors. Pretty cool and nice relaxing way to ditch the old Peruvian guy that was trying to get me to meet him for drinks. Not that he wasn´t interesting the first hour I spend talking to him in Spanish, but basically I had run out of vocabulary and also know enough now that to accept that invitation......well, more on that later.

What else...I hung about at the city park and in the Plaza de Armas, again fending off a variety of men and restaurant touts. I admit that is probably about it..did have an amazing salad in Arequipa though, and fresh salad is pretty hard to come by down in these parts for whatever reason.

Then I decided I should go and see the Colca Canyon, which is almost the deepest in the world--outpaced only by the Cotohausi, which is deeper by about 160 meters but another 5 hours away from Arequipa, and the 6 hour ride to Colca was long enough! The Colca canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, if you can wrap your mind around that. Anyway, I decided in my infinite wisdom and apparently since all the sun in the desert here is melting my brain, to do a mountain bike ride down into the canyon, followed by 4 days of trekking. In the desert. In summer. With no one other than the guide.

It was good fun, but really hard work for me, as the descent into the canyon is almost 5,000 feet from where we started. And then we had to climb that back out. Apparently regular mortals can do the climb out in 3 hours, but I was on the 5 hour plan. Oh well, I made it and the guide was really proud of me that I didn´t cheese out and hire a donkey. I admit that was mostly because I didn´t have the 40 soles required to do it!

The mountain biking was fun, but really hard for one who hasn´t been on a bike in more than 10 years. It was also somewhat vertical in places, the dirt path was full of rocks, and after 4 hours of squeezing the brakes where my hands finally felt like they were going to never open again, I had to hike 2 hours uphill to the lodging for the night! Then we had to hike down about 300 feet and back up in the dark in order to go to the hot springs that were down near the river. After that I had about 8 hours of walking each day up and down in the sun, but the views were amazing.

I did try my first Pisco Sour, the national drink of Peru. The guide left me with the restaurant/hostal owner guy (or someone) and he showed me how to make it and then we had some. Unfortunatly (as I have discovered here in SA) if you are a woman travelling alone, the assumption is that of course I want some guy to come home with me. So I kindly let this guy know I was not interested, and he wouldn´t let it go, so I faked that I was throwing up to get rid of him. Then he kept coming by room every 15 minutes to see if I was better and ready to carry on. He then eased the window open an inch and kept coming back and looking in. Thankfully he couldn´t see me because it was dark, but I must say it was creepy.

The word on the street is that to Latin guys, no means yes. So I have to figure out what the story is on that and then find out what exactly does mean no. Those with any input into this situation can feel free to sound off and send me some tips!

And I did actually see some condors! Mostly I saw them from the bottom of the canyon and so not close up. We waited at the lookout for almost 2 hours to see them and they never came. We boarded the bus, took off for Arequipa, and then one did decide to grace us with her presence. The picture is pretty shitty and not close up, but it was an awesome view! They have a 3 foot wingspan.

Well, better run for now. I would say so I could run off to have lunch, but the truth is I have budgeted just enough money here where I can afford one meal today, and think it is going to be dinner.

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Arequipa%20and%20Colca%20Canyon/?start=0

Happy holidays, and in our next installment, we will discuss the observed differences in south american dogs as all countries apparently are not created equal in this regard.