i’m not in peru anymore. i haven’t been in peru for a year & a half.

but i want a space online to keep things that i like. so i’m moving here. for now.

this was our last day in lima. our flight left at 1:40am, so we had to leave for the airport by 10pm.

we woke up & mom wanted to get our stuff packed right after breakfast. i wanted to sleep some more. was still grumpy.

then we walked around miraflores so i could find the rest of the gifts that i wanted to buy. we found a little version of the indian market in miraflores called the artisan market & picked up some things. when i first got to lima, i was stoked on the cars honking & the people yelling & the constant haze & everything, but by day twelve i was craving quiet streets & quiet people & blue skies & food that wouldn’t make me sick.

so that afternoon, david took us to la rosa nautica, which is this SUPER nice restaurant right out on the pier in barranca. so gorgeous. when we walked in, david said hi to a man sitting nearby… turns out he’s the minister of finance & taxes in peru. huh. david knows everyone. ever.

our meal was SO GOOD. we had pisco sours & ceviche & then … a dish that i forget the name of, but it had beef & yellow potatoes & sauce & a fried egg on top. then david asked if i wanted desert. bad decision, it turned out later… so i ate about half of this lucuma tart. it was so good going down. delightful, really.

after dinner, david & my mom dropped me off at the hotel around 5pm so they could attend to some business or something? anyway, i started feeling sicky & like maybe i just ate too much… buuuut then i barfed… continuously… for five hours… until 20 minutes before we had to leave for the airport. i don’t know how my body did it, but it recovered in record time. still felt sicky until we got through customs & onto the plane, but at least i wasn’t blowing chunks anymore. so weird. & every time i thought about the lucuma, it made me vomit, which makes me think that the lucuma is what made me sick. mom thinks that i’m allergic. i don’t know.

the flight wasn’t that bad, standing in line to get through customs in peru was the worst part & that was just because we had to wait for so long… but nothing too crazy. long lines, loud people, me feeling barfy, the girl in line ahead of us crying because she was leaving her boyfriend in peru. sad. i took sleeping pills & passed out for the whole eight hour flight to LAX. flew into san diego, aunt cyd picked us up, my brother was leaving for the airport to fly back to memphis at the same time that we were coming home… we just missed each other.

so. maybe i’ll think more about this trip later & want to talk about it, but right now i just want to buy a new toothbrush (spilled facewash on mine on the flight home, HAH!), nap & then make macaroni & cheese for jen.

so glad to be home. sooo, so glad to be home.

i’m writing this now that i’m home. i was so over this trip by day eleven that i didn’t want to talk about it at all anymore.

so! day eleven. this was our last full day in lima. we went to the larco museum, lots of pottery, lots of erotic pottery, lots of “i’m so over museums” coming from me. it was pretty interesting & i’m sure if we’d gone there during our first or second day there, i would have been more stoked, but really, i was tired & grouchy & just wanted to sit down. i’m such a joy to be around when i’m grumpy.

from there, we caught a cab back to the hotel & david picked us up for chifa (peruvian chinese food). it was goooood! but tasted pretty much exactly like our chinese food here, but still really good! ate so much… so, so much. sweet & sour chicken, wonton soup, fried wontons, chicken chow mein, some little chicken dumplings, jasmin tea.

after that, we went to the indian market. i love the indian market. everything’s so cheap & perfect for souvenirs & gifts. they have real chincy stuff, but they also have really nice 100% alpaca stuff. so! that was fun.

by the time we finished there, though, i think i was super grumpy because i didn’t have time to get all the gifts i wanted & i dropped this little ceramic thing that i’d JUST bought & it broke & i had to buy a new one & i felt rushed. really, i was just so ready to go home.

we’re back in lima. i liked cusco & i love lima, but all of a sudden today i am so, so ready to go home. it’s all i can think about, really. sleeping in my own bed, drinking coffee in the morning, spending time with friends, reading at the beach, getting burritos, not worrying that every single thing i eat is going to make me sick… i miss all of that. intensely.

so. today we flew back to lima. david picked us up at the airport. we got a new room at the hotel. this one has a desk & a fridge & snacks. nice!

david picked us up in the afternoon to go to pachacamac, but we decided to stop to get sandwiches on the way. as we drove up to the sandwich shop there were police in riot gear EVERYWHERE on the street, david said it was because the prime minister was in town. then, while david was in the restaurant picking up our sandwiches, a huge mass of people came down the street, holding banners, yelling over a loudspeaker & chanting things in spanish that i didn’t understand. the cops stopped them a block away from us. we heard pops, david said later it was tear gas. so! welcome back to lima, here’s a communist protest.

after that, we went to pachacamac, which was a GIANT pre-incan city. it was almost entirely empty, so we drove & walked around & david told us all about the ruins. he’s a smart one, that david. it was super interesting & kind of nice to have it just be the three of us walking around the ruins.

later, mom & i went to get a drink at the orient express ($12 for two drinks is expensive even at home, but mom liked that the bartender played nat king cole for us so she tipped the shit out of him) & then i got an ice cream at a corner store.

tomorrow we’re going to the larco museum, then to the indian market, then to dinner at … a fancy restaurant out on the pier overlooking the ocean. mom told me the name but i don’t remember. danitza, david’s daughter, might come to dinner. i’m super excited to meet her.

we went to machu picchu today. there’s too much to say about it… three hour train ride there, a quick bus ride up the side of the mountain, a few hours at machu picchu & back. it was gorgeous. i don’t really have the energy right now to figure out what i want to say about it, but i loved it. there are lots of pictures. lots.

we leave tomorrow to go back to lima. we have two half days & one full day left there. pretty sure i’m going to cry when we leave, but i’m getting excited to go home again.

we didn’t have to wake up until super late today since our city tour wasn’t leaving until 1pm, so we slept in & i think i got my first full eight hours sleep this trip. so nice! lots of dreams about bowling with my brother & heidi & ana & i planning a trip to disneyland… exciting stuff.

anyway, after we ate breakfast, we decided to try to get me some antibiotics, so we went down to the pharmacy & bought cipro. just asked for it & got it. no prescription. we also got medical advice from the 12 year old behind the counter, but thank god i knew which antibiotic i wanted, because he kept trying to give me some other non-prescription medication. fuck that, i want the good stuff.

we had time to kill before lunch & the tour, so we walked around the square & ended up in a little shop. mom bought a hand carved gourd with the history of peru & the incan people & i bought a little hand carved gourd with hummingbirds & flowers on it to hold my jewelry. i know i should have bought one with more important historical images or whatever carved in it, but the flowers were so pretty! & it opens up! holds things! the little guy that made them carved his name in the bottom & put a pair of earrings in the gourd for me. free! nice.

so. the tour. we started in the cathedral, which has “more alters than you can shake a stick at” says mom & they’re all covered in gold. my favorite was black jesus. he’s the patron of cusco. apparently sometime in the 1500s or 1600s, they had 1000+ earthquakes in one year, until they took black jesus out & paraded him around the square. after that, cusco was earthquake free for a good, long time. everyone in cusco loves black jesus. so we’ve got that in common.

from there, we went to qorikancha, which was entirely covered in gold until the spanish came in the 1500s & took the gold as a ransom for atalwapa (the last ruler of the incas), & then killed him anyway. i told mom that i wasn’t too excited about qorikancha, but she said she liked it because we got to see the inside of incan rooms & more of their architecture. so there’s her explaination. i still wasn’t super stoked.

after that, we went to saqsayhuaman (prounounced like a french person saying “sexy woman”), which was another set of incan temples. we’re seeing a lot of those. but i really liked saqsayhuaman. green everywhere (it’s the rainy season here) & giant temple ruins.

then we took the bus to q’engo, another temple ruin. but! this one was just a giant boulder that was cracked/cracking & the incans used it to their advantage & built an alter inside. the guide said that andean people still come to make sacrifices at the alter today. he also told us how the incans used to perform their human sacrifices: they’d drug the person with hallucinogens, then drop them off on the mountainside in the snow to die. a lot more benign than i’d expected. i imagined altars with the incans killing people & pulling out their hearts. not so!

finally, we went to the temple of the sun (tambomachay) but i wasn’t really listening to what the guide was saying about the place. all i heard was that the water that comes from the fountains is supposed to keep you eternally youthful if you wash your face with it. i turned to mom & said “let’s get on that shit.” & she just kind of stared at me & blinked. i think she was tired. it was a long walk up the hill & she’s had altitude sickness since we got here a couple days ago.

anyway, we rode back on the bus & ate at jack’s cafe. again. our third time eating there in two days. the prices are okay (about $5 per person for giant portions) & the food’s pretty alright (american bistro kind of stuff), but the main reason we keep coming back is that the food doesn’t look scary. we’ve both been sick non-stop since our third day in peru & we’re not about to venture out & try new places & make things worse. so, jack’s it is. from here until lima.

we’re going to machu picchu tomorrow, leaving at 6:30am & not getting back until 8:30pm. bus, train, bus, machu picchu, bus, train, bus. i am so excited i can’t sit still.

we took the sacred valley tour today… a tour bus came to pick us up in plaza de armas at the center of cusco & took us to pisac for their sunday market. mom bought three little carved wooden llamas (& got screwed on the price because she refuses to bargain with the vendors even though it’s expected), i bought a little green llama, and ugly blue fingerless gloves with white llamas on them. they’re hideous & they shed, but i love them. only $2!

we had lunch, then rode the bus to ollantaytambo, which is the ruins of three incan temples. it was aaaamazing. it’s up the side of a giant mountain & there are 200 steps to go up & then more temples at the top. we took the incan trail back down afterwards.

after that, we went to chinchero, which… i don’t remember the significance of chincero other than there was a giant field where the incans used to hold huge celebrations & festivals & there was a church & a massive market with people selling purses & dolls & blankets & every other thing that people are always selling here. we also got to watch indigenous ladies clean, spin, dye, and weave alpaca wool from start to finish… after that we drove the hour back to cusco & i was sick. again. whine, whine, whine.

woke up after just a few hours sleep to get ready to leave for cusco. had to repack my suitcase into a smaller one for this little side trip because of weight & size restrictions on domestic flights. either that or mom just wanted to make life difficult for me. not sure which.

so we flew into cusco, i slept the whole way & decided when i woke up that i’m not going to eat again until we get home because everything’s making me sick.

cusco is adorable. all green hills & cobble stone streets, people in traditional dress & kids carrying baby llamas around in slings. this is what people think of when they think of peru. we walked down to the main square & were approached every few seconds to buy little finger puppets or paintings of the city or hand-sewn dolls. we ended up leaving not too long after we got to the square because it was just too much. kids were swarming around us like bees on honey (stink on shit?) & we felt sick from the altitude. or the food. or the altitude and the food.

we stopped to pick up “soda v” crackers (like sweet saltines) & a soda to settle our stomachs & we’ve been napping all afternoon.

there’s no wireless internet at the hotel, just an old shared computer downstairs, so i’m writing these updates in word & then i’ll upload them once i get back to lima. i want to remember everything & i know i’ll forget little deteails if i don’t write them down every day.

i’m not entirely sure how i feel about cusco yet. i didn’t get the rush that i did driving into lima, but feeling constantly nauseated might be coloring my view of the city & it’s only been half a day. i’ve heard so many great things about this place, everyone can’t be wrong. tomorrow we’re taking the sacred valley tour & going to the market for souvenirs. maybe tomorrow i’ll fall in love with cusco the way that i fell in love with lima.

after the church of san francisco, we walked down the block to the museum of the inquisition. mom almost got hit by a bus crossing the street to get there. she kept looking at the traffic lights instead of the oncoming traffic. drivers in lima don’t care about traffic lights.

the inquisition museum wasn’t as great as we thought it’d be. they only had a spanish tour guide & we’re idiot americans, so we just followed along, not knowing what she was saying & taking pictures with the mannequins instead.

after the tour, we walked down a few blocks through downtown to the cathedral & took a cab back to the hotel from there. we played good cop-bad cop with the cab driver to try to get the fare down. i argued for 15 soles, mom was okay with 20. it turned out that it didn’t matter because there’s no way we could get a 25 minute cab ride like that back home for $5 or $6.

after we ate lunch, david came to pick us up so we could sit in on a lecture on psychoanalysis that he was giving for post-grad students at the feminist university. i ended up dozing off over & over because the classroom was so warm & dark & i didn’t understand a word he was saying, so it kind of lulled me to sleep. i felt horrible.

from there, david said we were going to get ice cream & coffee at “the four seasons.” i thought we were going to the four seasons hotel & was kind of disappointed… we can go to the four seasons at home. turns out it was a little corner restaurant with seats lined up around a high bar, looking over the grill where all of the food is cooked. they had all kinds of fresh juice, ice cream sundaes, hamburgers & hot sandwiches. i had a banana split. they put papaya on the bottom. they put papaya in everything. so good.

that night, david took us to a traditional peruvian dance show. there were dancers & different dances from every part of peru, huge costumes, loud music, limenos dancing in between performances. it was loud & insane & so much fun. david pulled me out on the dancefloor, i stumbled through it. latin dancing is like nothing i’m used to. he pulled my mom out on the dancefloor after that. i’ve never seen my mom dance before. adorable. we left around 2am, but david said that the performances would keep going until 3 or 4am. limenos don’t fuck around.

i’m in the lima airport right now, waiting for our flight to cusco & using their free internet for the next 19 minutes until my laptop runs out of battery. 

yesterday was the busiest day we’ve had so far in peru. we woke up early & david picked us up to go to universidad nacional mayor de san marcos. he went to school there & taught psychology there until they started having a lot of problems with the shining path in the 80s & 90s. he had a threat on his classroom at one point, says mom, & students suspected of being terrorists were pulled out of class & disappeared constantly. it’s crazy that david lived through that time there.

anyway, he took us around the university, showed us all of the different faculty buildings, bought me a UNMSM pin & shirt (i wanted a size medium, he told me repeatedly that i’m a large, “nooo, no i think you’re a large. yes, i am sure you are large. large, i think you should get that. large is better, no?” NO.)

after that, he dropped us off in downtown lima so that we could go see the iglesia de san francisco & the museum of the inquisition. before he left us, he told my mom to take off her necklace & watch, had us zip up our purses, told us to hold onto our wallets & not to take out our cameras at any point. so reassuring, that david…

the church was gorgeous. GORGEOUS! frescas everywhere, carved wood walls, mosaic tiled floors… it dates back to the 1500s & apparently, there are 70,000 people buried there. we got to walk through the catacombs (which reminds me of the one summer that i watched days of our lives, when stephano had marlena trapped in a cage in the catacombs of paris, remember that? no? whatever.) lots of bones & skulls. everywhere. one giant hole was filled 15 meters high with skulls..

okay, time to board the plane. not sure if there’ll be internet in cusco, but i’m crossing my fingers…