totally tentative, totally flexible itinerary
DAY ONE: arrive in Lima at the butt crack of dawn. Find Adina dead asleep hunched over her luggage in the terminal. Scare the shit out of her when Wade wakes her up. Find a hostel, walk around with jaws dropped in city center. See pretty buildings, churches, museums.
DAY TWO-FOUR: leave Lima going south. This way we can return to Lima after Machu Picchu and do "civilized" things like shop and eat at tables. Possible things to stop on our way down: Chilca, where they have a mineral-rich lagoon; Pisco-Paracas, where they have a lovely national reserve park and you can take a boat out to Islas Ballestas and see wild animals and guano, yes guano aka bird shit, which is one of their NATIONAL EXPORTS; Ica, where there is a cool city and neat museums that showcase "scarily well-preserved mummies of everything from children to a small macaw, trepanned skulls and shrunken trophy heads, enormous wigs and tresses of hair, plus a fascinating scientific display on what can be discovered from examining the skeletal remains" HOW FUCKING AWESOME; Huacachina, which is that lagoon oasis in the middle of sand dunes where you can sand-board; Nazca, where there are those cool lines etched in the ground that you can see from an airplane (or from
here); Sacaco, a beach made with crushed shells and fossilized crocodile teeth.
DAY FIVE-SIX: Hit Arequipa, the white colonial city at the base of the Andes. From here we can do a one-two day long mini-trek to go to Canon del Coca, the deep deep canyon. On this trek there are other cool things, like the condor watch, thermal hot springs, snow-capped volcanos.
DAY SEVEN-EIGHT: Lake Titicaca and area, plus travel time. Acclimation to high altitude. This country is huge, man.
DAY NINE: Cuzco, the ancient colonial and Inca city. Acclimation to high altitude.
DAY TEN-FOURTEEN: Inca trail and Maccu Picchu. Shit, we have run out of time. My plane leaves any second. Fly back to Lima. Maybe we could spend less time on the south coast. FYI it takes 16 hours by bus to go from Lima to Arequipa.
Alternatively, we can start in Lima and go immediately to Cuzco (a 30 hour bus ride, barf), do the Inca Trail first, and then meander from the southern tip back up the coast and fly back to Lima from Arequipa. Hmm. I will think about this. Although the prospect of going to a mummy museum is AWESOME, I think it would be neater to spend more time in the Andes. They are the fucking Andes, after all.
(7/24/05)
Operation Train for Peru
wow, I am addicted to this exercise thing.
Yesterday, after many, many strenuous hours sitting on my couch and not leaving the apartment, I actually got this incredible urge to get up and MOVE. And so I hauled my ass to the gym (*gasp* no one is more surprised than I), where I still have two more months of membership before it runs out and UCLA takes over. I started off on the treadmill, and after my mile of running (alternating 3.7 with 5.4, 5.6, and 5.8), I realized that I was going to have to be in great shape to be able to hike Machu Picchu at altitude without troubles. So I stayed on that machine for another fifteen minutes, at a moderate pace (3.7) but at a steep incline (6.0). At this point, the sweat was literally dripping down my face and neck. I got my heart rate down, did a sprint for a minute (6.4), and walked the remainder of the two miles. Then I stretched. And then I did the bike for ten more minutes. Why? Because ironically, MY BODY WAS ASKING FOR IT.
I had that high that you get after you've been working yourself for about twenty minutes, but not working yourself so hard that you want to just lay on the floor and die. It was that feeling that I pushed myself this far, why not keep pushing? (This feeling is probably cousins with the feeling you get when you eat three brownies, and then think, "Why not three more?")
As an incentive to continue my fitness regime, I took out Augusten Burrows' "Magical Thinking" on CD from BevHillsLib, so that I would have something to listen to while running.
Miraculously, today I made it to the gym again and did the same workout BUT ADDED FIVE MINUTES OF INTENSE SIT-UPS. Am I insane, or what? (ComPLETEly insane, when you consider that in January, when I initiated my membership, I would meander around the gym trying out every machine for about sixteen seconds, at which point I would become bored and switch. My gym visits back in the day lasted a whole eleven minutes.)
I imagine that after a month of this craziness I will have the lithe, muscular body of a go-go dancer, the body I had in high school, but better and with boobs. As I sit at my desk typing, my stomach and sides are already aching tremendously. But it will be totally worth it, because guess what? I'm gonna bag me a Peruvian boyfriend.
(7/28/05)
new Peru itinerary
everything is dependent upon whether or not I can change my tickets to stay a week longer. I have been crossing my fingers for 2 weeks now, and I will continue to cross them until I arrive in Lima, go to the Aeromexico office in the airport, and make the switcheroo.
Sept 1 arrive, change plane ticket, taxi to hostel, sleep, Wade come, museums, post office (I am not kidding about the post office. Apparently it is really cool. It gets its own paragraph in Lonely Planet, my bible. Plus if I want postcards to reach the States while I am still gone, I have to send them the second we arrive.)
Sept 2 Pisco/Paracas and wild animals
Sept 3 Ica/Huacachina, sand boarding
Sept 4 Nazca, night bus to Arequipa (do we need to go to Nazca?)
Sept 5 Arequipa, monastary, frozen ice princess, churches, Canon del Colca trek
Sept 6 Canon del Colca, bus to Puno
Sept 7 Lake Titicaca, islands, sleep over on islands?
Sept 8 bus to Cuzco
Sept 9 trek?
Sept 10 trek?
Sept 11 trek?
Sept 12 trek?
Sept 13 trek?
Sept 14 (If no ticket, plane to Lima in morning. If new ticket, stay in Cuzco another day)
Sept 15 Lima? north coast? go slower up above?
Sept 16
Sept 17
Sept 18
Sept 19
Sept 20
Sept 21
(8/23/05)
I can't help that I have Baltic blood
I applied fake-tanner today and plan to do a second coat on Tuesday. That way, I will be TAN TAN TAN and my Peru pics will look like normal vacation pictures in reverse: starts out really kissed by the sun, ends up pasty.
(8/27/05)
I no speaking espanish
Inspired by
Nathan's experiences in Peru, today, in my head, I figured out what I would do if my Visa card got stuck in the ATM. Since I only know six words in Spanish, my imaginary encounter with the Peruvian banker was quite a feat. It went like this:
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me: Pardon? No hablo Espanol. Uno mimento?
banker: Looks up at the dumb American girl
me: Me gusta dinero. Dinero automati --
(here I ouline the square shape of the ATM screen). Yo --
(mime walking up to it, sticking my card in, pressing numbers.)banker:
Blank, indescernable gazeme: Yo quiera mucho dinero. Sol. [That's the name of the Peruvian money.]
(mime pressing buttons. Stand there, as if waiting for my money. Tilt head ever so slightly, as if still waiting for my money but slightly confused as to where it is.) Donde dinero? Donde? No dinero! Yo --
(point to self, then mime looking at my watch and tapping it, then glaring at ATM screen) Donde dinero??? No dinero!
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I hope you realize that only half of the "Spanish" words I used are real. In order to get the real gist of my daydream, you have to imagine me using big, swooping, exaggerated hand movements. Wide enough that Wade, standing to my left (again, IN MY HEAD), has to take a few steps back to avoid being hit. Thanks, American Sign Language, for teaching me to visually set up a scene using just my hands and body.
I realize now I am the biggest dork, not because I don't know Spanish, but because I had THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION in my mind.
