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January 16, 2008
my favorite things people said in peru
1 the first night we arrived, it was new year's eve, and we were driving through a crowded plaza in a crowded car-- me, rian, rian's brother, rian's mother, their cousin, and the cousin's girlfriend. a police officer tried to pull us over, but the cousin's girlfriend (who i later learned also works as a police officer, i think) let loose a torrent of spanish on him. "MI NOVIO" pointing to her boyfriend in the driver's seat, "MI FAMILIA," gesturing around at us, and a bunch of other things i didn't understand. i'm not sure why i liked it so much. i guess just the forcefulness with which she said it, the way she took charge of the situation. i loved it.
everyone who was in the car minus rian's mother:
2 after a few days in lima, we took a city tour on the mirabus. our seats were the very first row of seats on the top deck of the double decker bus, which was a little intimidating because there was just a big plastic window in front of us. but the bus took us to downtown lima and we saw some pretty buildings and we also got to go to circuito magico del agua, which is basically a park with a bunch of cool fountains (a really tall jet stream, a row of arches that you can walk under, a fountain & light show, concentric rings of jets that turn off and on for children to run around in, & more). no one drinks water in lima (we had to buy bottled water whenever we wanted it), but they'll wait in line and pay admission to see huge fountains of it. the tour guide on the bus was explaining about the park to us. she told us we could walk under the archway of fountains without getting wet unless someone touched the fountain. but who would touch the fountain? maybe "a children. a miskevous children." she had a cute spanish accent and i thought it was the most hilarious thing i've ever heard.
us walking under the fountain in question (we didn't get too wet):
some miskevous children about to get SOAKED in a few seconds when streams of water jet up from the circles of light:
one of the pretty buildings we saw on the tour:
3 rian would always get mad at himself because in conversation with people he would always say the wrong thing, even when he knew the right thing. when he first met the cousin's girlfriend referred to above, he said "me gusta" instead of "mucho gusto." i don't know if you're familiar with spanish, but one means "i like it" and the other means "a pleasure to meet you." his crowning achievement, however, was really one night in cuzco. we had eaten in a restaurant and as we were leaving he said, "buenos días" to our waiter. the waiter said "buenas noches" back. this prompts another tirade: "why can i never get it right!" then we take a taxi back to our hotel. as we get out of the taxi, rian says "muchas gracias! buenas tardes!" i laughed for about a thousand years.
us in the main square in cuzco where we had dinner (notice the lights on the mountain in the background.):
Posted by almeda at 5:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 14, 2008
animals we saw in peru:
1 dogs
2 cats
3 birds of all kinds [i don't know much about birds, but i think cormorants and penguins and sea gulls and maybe pelicans? and prolly a million more]
4 cows
5 horses
6 sea lions
7 dolphins
8 goats
9 sheep
10 pigs
11 llamas
12 alpacas
13 guinea pigs
14 chickens
15 ducks
16 i think that's it?
17 oh and donkeys
18 do insects count?
19 butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, cockroaches, flies, mosquitos, other gross bugs
also because of the season we also saw lots of baby animals. puppies, lambs, calves, everything.
most of the farm animals we saw when we visited cuzco and the surrounding areas. it kind of made me want to live on a farm. i can't lie. i love animals. i took like at least three or four stupid pictures of guinea pigs alone.
case in point:
what i didn't get any pictures of, unfortunately, was the cats. they were adorable and smaller and leaner than the cats here [especially a certain cat i know]. a herd of cats lived in a park by the hotel where we were staying in miraflores (in lima). at night they would run around, chasing each other up trees and through flower beds. once i saw a lady put bowls of something (milk, maybe?) under a tree for them. those cats have the sweet life.
on our trip to nazca, we spent a night in paracas and took a boat tour out to islands where all these sea lions and birds live.
the following picture represents about .0000001% of the birds we saw.
it smelled kind of rank. and there was guano everywhere. apparently they harvest tons of it every few years and sell it as fertilizer.
on the boat ride out to the islands we saw three or four sea lions swimming past our boat. when we reached the islands, there were beaches and beaches covered in them, including a "maternity beach" with lots of baby sea lions making baby sea lion sounds. mrah! mrah!
the two darker (wetter) sea lions in this picture were fighting not long before it was taken. rian captured a video of it, but i am too unmotivated to make that available to you. but it is hilarious, as is basically everything sea lions do. including but not limited to crawling over/on top of other sea lions who are not too happy about it, sunbathing, sitting with their heads in the air (if they're fat & male. the one in the picture is doing it, but he's not half as fat as some of the other ones we saw), looking back at us on the boat over their shoulders, and any sort of movement really. sea lions lol.
okay, okay. i wasn't going to put any more pictures of sea lions here but i just convinced myself.
the fighters
checking us out
donkeys aren't as exciting as sea lions, but we saw some of them too
there was a butterfly flying around on the top of machu picchu that i wanted to take a picture of, but my camera and i were too slow. i thought it would be sweet if i could capture it flying in front of huayna picchu (the mountain behind machu picchu in all the pictures), but it flew too fast/erratically, so i mostly ended up spinning in circles with my camera and looking like an idiot.
but when we came down the mountain to eat lunch and i had got my plate of food from the buffet, rian said, 'i got you a present,' and there was a butterfly on the windowsill by our table.
sadly, it was probably dying. it didn't seem to be able to fly and could barely walk. i wanted to take it outside after lunch so it could die outside instead of trapped in the restaurant, but of course i forgot. anyway, here it is:
and of course, since we were in the andes, we saw alpacas. and i may or may not have made an excessive amount of kissy faces at the alpaca in the following picture. well, i think it's an alpaca. our tour guide explained the difference between alpacas and llamas, but i'm still not entirely sure.
one phenomenon we experienced in peru was the free dog, as rian called them. basically there are dogs running around everywhere doing whatever they feel like doing. all kinds of dogs, too, big and little. and i would pet them and rian would yell at me not to get rabies. he is kind of a worrywart sometimes.
on our tour of a certain ruin whose name escapes me, this dog followed us up every terrace, every stair, everywhere we went on the tour. our tour guide would throw rocks for her and she would sit chewing on them as he told us some facts about the quechua people. apparently he even trained her to drag a stone across the ground with her front paws. this is how the incas moved all these rocks, he joked.
no, those aren't real animals. i tricked you! our bus had stopped in the plaza de armas in cuzco and this little hand with colorful animal finger puppets on each finger presses against the window, fingers wiggling. it was kind of hilarious and kind of heartbreaking at the same time. stefan (rian's brother) ended up buying a condor.
and i guess that about wraps it up for animals i saw in peru.
i saw a llama.
Posted by almeda at 1:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 13, 2008
11 days in peru is too much for one blog entry
so i will probably give you a lot of short posts about it.
starting with
things i learned in peru:
1 inca kola is delicious
Posted by almeda at 5:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
back in philly
safe and sound.
pictures/blogs forthcoming. [my flickr, if you can't wait.]
mit on thursday.
Posted by almeda at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2008
hola from peru!
omg i don{t know any spanish. but i am slowly slowly learning.
we are in lima and it is lovely. soon we{re going to nazca and cuzco and it will probably be fabulous.
feliz año nuevo!
Posted by almeda at 2:37 PM | Comments (0)