No Cuy for Me!
hello and greetings from peru! cuy, in case you are wondering, is guinea pig (rhymes with gee), the national dish of peru (as well as ecuador and bolivia). although the guidebooks note that the squeamish can order it served without head or paws, david and i have been reluctant to even go that far (and, according to native peruvians, it does not taste like chicken!) - we did, however, find the cuy cages where the nice nuns at the santa catalina monestary raise their guinea pigs for food - we resisted the temptation to set the little guys free & instead got some good pictures - incidentally, they´re called cuy because that´s the sound they make - great.
in other news, we almost took a slight detour on the first day of vacation when the miami dade police and the dea took a great deal of interest in the inside of david´s hiking boots (we knew he should´ve gotten new ones before we left!). apparently, they tested positive for an explosive substance THREE times - needless to say that led to LOTS of questions (good thing we had a little time before our lima flight) and, ultimately, the removal of our bags from the plane. they put them in a line-up on the tarmac with other people´s bags and the nice drug doggies sniffed them. fortunately, the beef jerky we´ve brought along for our trek didn´t entice them and we got on the plane safely a whopping three minutes before departure. we suspect that the miracle gro potting soil that i used to plant my window boxes the night before had fertilizer in it & the dust from my clothes somehow got onto/into david´s boots. oooops.
we were in and out of lima quickly but did manage to take a swing thru one of the plazas & check out some cool inkan textiles and artifacts at one of the museums.
then we headed to arequipa which was wonderful - low key and pretty and, the best part, no shining path in sight :) there is a monestary in arequipa that is amazing - painted in beautiful bright colors, flowers everywhere - really cool - we spent about two or three hours just wandering around. we also got to go visit juanita, the inkan mummy girl found on a nearby mountain a few years back. one of her friends was also there, in an adjacent freezer/tomb thing at 20 below zero. they were very very cool.
by far the highlight of arequipa had to be our visit with the condors at colca canyon. since it´s a five hour drive each way, most people do the trip in two days. not us - no siree, we were up at 2am (this is vacation, right?) and asleep in the back of a van in our sleeping bags until about 5 when we arrived in the first town for breakfast. a few hours later, we were at colca canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world (and undiscovered to the outside world until about 30 years ago). at first, it didn´t seem like the condors (the world´s largest flighted bird with a wingspan of 3 meters) were going to come out and play and then there they were - first one, then two - eventually, we counted at least 12. it was absolutely amazing - they were soaring over our heads, landing nearby on a rock outcropping - it was like nature´s air show- and all with the backdrop of this incredibly deep deep! ravine - we were totally enthralled, to the tune of probably 80 pictures! fortunately, david´s got a digital camera, so we were able to delete a lot of them!
yesterday we flew here to cusco - we have been very fortunate to have beautiful weather the whole trip so far and cusco is no exception. we´ve spent the last day and a half wandering around the city (and introducing david to the wonderful world of susie shopping for textiles...) and will leave for our trek tomorrow (we´ll be getting up at 4:30 am for that one - vacation, right??) for four days up the inka trail to machu picchu.
will write more upon our return. i hope you´re all well!
ss