First Days Back in Paradise

Hello everybody I'm back with some storytelling from my favorite country: Peru. On the plane ride over I was treated with a spectacular show of power in the night sky. An enormous thunderstorm hit as we were flying over Mexico and the clouds were painted with white and orange explosions of light. Although beautiful, staring out the window kept me from sleeping throughout the night. I arrived in Lima around 7am and was greeted by my older brother Gabriel at the airport exit.

We wanted to leave directly to my hometown of Piura ( a 15hr bus ride) but all the busses were scheduled to leave around 7pm. So my brother and I walked around until we found a nice hotel room where I could grab some sleep and shower up before our tremendous journey up north. Around 8 oclock that night (after a huge chicken dinner) my brother and I boarded a Flores bus and started what would be a slooooooooow drive up to Piura. After multiple movies (one of them being Les Intouchables, a wonderful french flick) and hours of sleep, we finally exited the bus around 11am in Piura. At this point I was bubbling with excitement at the idea of seeing my little sister and brother. A few hours later as I was napping after a hearty Peruvian lunch and was awoken by the delighted screeches of my little sister Alejandra Libertad.

 :) I was soooo happy to see her, and we spent the next hours playing all our old games and running around the house together. After a while it came time to pick up my little brother, Albert, from school. At first he walked slowly through the courtyard of his school but upon catching sight of my face amongst all the other parents, he dropped his backpack and broke into a sprint before throwing himself into my arms. Had I not been in a school around a bunch of people I woulda started crying like a baby, I was soooo pumped to see him.

I walked him back home and was greeted by my mother Julia who had just returned from work. Now I was officially reunited with my whole family from last year (besides my sister Patty who is in the south, I will visit her later this month). That night I took my brother to see Pacific Rim in 3d. WARNING if you dont like shaky movies where you feel like puking the whole time I would not recommend this roller-coaster of a movie. We went home satisfied with our choice and slept till this morning when we were awoken by the chaos of kids getting ready for school. Today was a relax day in which I took care of certain things : money from the bank and buying some things at the market. Id forgotten how much I love the vibe of the huge open-air markets where everything is disorganized. Hehe sorry for the novel of an entry but Im having a great time! Till next time, ciao y adios! Oh we also now have a dog Lucho that looks like a walking rug----

Life in the South

Hello there, have not been able to write in a while as these past weeks have been a real roller-coaster. To begin with, I have no internet anymore at my house, which makes the whole blogging thing hard. Around the 20^th of Febuary my family and I moved to a new house near Santa Isabel Parque, about two streets down from where we were before. My house is absolutely great and the park is so beautiful. We have been doing construction and touch-ups in the house for the past three weeks. As it is a 12-room house and there are eight of us in it at any given time, its lots of work.We will be living in the ottom half of the house (6 rooms) and renting the other 6 out. At 180 thousand dollars for 12 rooms I'd say that some good real-estate. As well I have come down with an extremely heavy fever and bronchitis. :( Around a week ago (when this was happening) my fever got really bad and I was forced to the hospital. I got all the medication and was all well but this week I've fallen back a bit. Been resting well and believe I've shooken most of it off so thats good :)Besides that school is going pretty well, I've met a good number of cool people there this year. I have also begun participating more in classes(especially art.) In other news my Peruvian grandmother surprised the family and showed up out of the blue two weeks ago. Shes great and has the benefit of being a cook, so there is never a lack of food now. She also speaks Quechua fluently, a language I'd be interested in learning. Also Semana Santa recently passed, this is an extremely important group of days in the Catholic calender, and consequently in the Peruvian culture. It was a wonderful time to be with the family and have the kids home to do things; unfortunately with the construction and my fever we didnt make it to the beach. And thats about it :) sadly the days are starting to count down, around 75-80 days left :( I will be uploading pictures soon once i figure out a new camera situation 

Biking El ChaChani

Upon return from Puno we did some better planning with Nick to fit our new budget and take in the factor that my camera had been robbed, so pictures were limited to an iPhone's lenses.  We decided to stay around Arequipa for a few days as it has some seriously beautiful things surrounding it.  First we decided to head to ChaChani (skirt in Quechua,) an extremely tall mountain resting at  6,905 m (19,997ft) we would go near the peak by car and later downhill bike back to our hotel.  We had a schedule mix-up and we wound up leaving biking with all our warm clothes still wet and drying.  We went up to a snowy mountain in shorts, t-shirts, and thin wind-breakers.  I was also extremely happy because once we reached near to the top it began snowing.  I really missed snow so it was good to see :)  We began riding down, took breaks when someone fell or broke a bike (ended up being a common thing for me.)  Halfway down and four bikes later, I was keeled over on the side of the trail throwing up from altitude sickness.  After a few coca leaves and some stream water we headed off again.  The bike ride ended up being one of the funnest things I have done in a really long time.  The trail was pretty intense with huge ditches and jumps (also the fact it was raining at times.)  At the end it changed to windy pavement and I had the time of my life bombing down nice pavement and ripping around the corners.  Near the end of the trail, we entered the slums surrounding the edges of the city; we were instructed to dodge the dogs that would attack us.  Extremely confused we kept going until very soon groups of German shepards, rottweiler's, and various other sketchy dogs began chasing us and barking.  It was actually pretty awesome we just pedaled very fast and kicked out our legs protectively at times.  We later rode through the city until we reached el Mirador.  All in all the biking was wonderful.             

Viaje-Puno

Our bus ride from Arequipa to Puno was around 8 hours of absolute horrible driving.  We first arrive in Juliaca, a city around 45 minutes away from Puno.  We ate some food there and got on a chombi to Puno.  When we got there we spent a good while searching for our hotel in the pouring rain.  It rains so hard there that the streets literally become rivers.  That night we went with some of Gabriel's friends to the club and had a pretty wild night coming back home around 4 or 5 am.  The next day we went to the lake Titicaca which was absolutely beautiful (unfortunately my camera got stolen the next day and the pictures aren't here.)  We were there for quite a while and returned in the afternoon to buy our tickets for seats at the festival the next day.  After running some errands to the bus empresa we sent the girls home and hit the bar.  For quite a while we played dice at the bar with huge vases full of rum&coke.  We met some girls and hit the club, we partied super hard: whiskey getting fed to me upside down on a bar, and dancing for 7 hours.  The details of the rest of the night are rather obscure ;) but all in all it was an extremely crazy night.  The next day we woke up rather early (impressively so) and went to the street where our seats were waiting for us.  For the next six hours we watched La Festival Virgen de la Candelaria, it was an absolutely beautiful festival.  People of all ages danced through the street in some of the most well done costumes I have ever seen.  Everyone present was having an apparently endless supply of beer, and other various liquors.  There were many women drinking straight scotch when they were around 80 some odd years old.  Although I have yet to learn exactly what the festival is celebrating, since noone is able to provide a good answer, the best I learned yet was this: "The festival has two main phases. The first is El Dia Pincipal y Su Ritios in which a procession carries the statue of the Virgen around the city, and dancers in lavish costumes from all walks of life join the parade. The dancers, by group, pause in front of the cathedral to be blessed with holy water, after which they are cooled with water thrown from nearby houses."     From then on we continued to dance and party in the street until we finally loaded back into the bus, exhausted from the four days behind us.  All in all Puno was an amazing city with wonderful scenery and amazing people, the truly live up to the name of the  Folkloric Capital of Peru.

 

Viaje-Arequipa

We arrived in Arequipa around 1 on Tuesday and were  taken to the hotel by my brothers friend Carlos.  There we were given extremely cheap rooms as my brother knows the owner.  The hotel  where we are staying at is very nice and in a cute part of the center.  The first day we walked around, got lunch, and checked out all the local stores.  We returned to the hotel and made the reservations for our tour to the Colca the next day.  That night around 9 we went out with my brother and his four girlfriends to do some leisure drinking.  We ended up coming around 230 back to the hostel and left for the Colca around 3am.  It was a horrible idea to get there so late as we were extremely tired for our hike.  We arrived at Chivay, the start-off point for the Colca hike, around 5 hours later.  We began hiking around 9 and ended up at the cabins around 7 hours later.  In total the first day we hiked 15 kilometers and descended over one kilometer in elevation.  We had dinner around 7 and fell asleep moments later, waking up around 430 in the morning to begin the final ascent.  We did a straight one kilometer ascent to the top, I finished the climb in around an hour and a half, pretty record time for me since it was 9 kilometers.  We stayed some time in Cabanaconde having breakfast and then began the seven hour drive back to Arequipa, which turned out to be nine hours since the streets were destroyed from mud slides the night before.  We arrived back around 6pm the most tired ever.  Overall the Colca was the most beautiful place I have ever been.  I've officially now been to the deepest canyon in the world.    

 
     
 
 

Mi Viaje Familiar- Day 1 Piura - LIma

On sunday around 4pm we got on a bus in Piura and arrived in Lima some 26 hours later.  Lima has truly an enormous size and would never be properly visited in a day (we're returning there on 16.)  There we bought the tickets and met up with my friend Nick and his brother, they will be joining us on our trip around the south of Peru.  We had a nice day walking around the city, notably this beautiful park placed atop of cliffs looking upon the ocean.  The day was rather foggy but it seemed to fit in nice with the cold gray beach, and the tall buildings.  Around the park there were extremely nice gardens, and workout areas, as well, stairs were available to access the beach.  Another thing that came to interest were the paragliding rides that were given off the cliff.  Later we continued walking until we found a nice buffet style place to eat.  Following lunch, we hopped on a public bus and made our way across town to the Plaza de Armas,the centre.  We walked around for a while snapping photos of the monuments.  We then returned back to the bus station and began the long ride (18hr) to the city of Arequipa. Land of the Colca.