Hola todos,
Well, we made it safe and sound to Peru. Spent the first few days in Lima. Some parts of the city are horrendously dirty, others are quite lovely. Miraflores is the clean upscale section, and it's where Cara and I stayed for two nights.
Our first minor adventure occurred there. After playing touristas in the city for a few hours, we returned to the hostel to find an elderly Korean woman crying. The employees came running up to me asking if I could talk to her. I guess they figured since we both had epicanthic folds, we'd have an easier time communicating.
The lady's daughter was 4 hours missing and she wanted to call the police. At one point, there were eight people trying to calm her down. To make a long story short, the daughter sauntered in after we had endured the mother's hysterics for over an hour, whereupon she got the international scolding of "Why didn't you call?"
 Huaraz, Peru |
Yesterday, we took an infinitely long bus ride, and are now in the mountain town of Huaraz (3097m). It's beautiful here, with views of the Cordillera Blanca right in your face. The altitude hasn't caused too many problems; only a slightly effervescent always omnipresent headache, which I suspect will disappear soon.
A few more days of acclimatizing and we'll attempt a trek through the mountain range. I have yet to try the Andean speciality of guinea pig, but that is high on my list of things to try.
I'm wishing that I retained more from my high school Spanish classes. We're managing, but only so. The locals must think it very strange, in that we can only communicate in a single tense: the present. Vague memories of the preterite and present perfect haunt the halls of my mind, and the subjunctive is just a wild dream at this point.
Wishing for a babelfish,
/Alex
