Vacation Highlights

A lot has happened these last few weeks, as I have traveling all over the country. First, it was for Holy Week, and then my wonderful sister came to visit me, which finally gave me my excuse to visit Cusco and Arequipa. I don’t exactly want to rehash everything, so instead just give you the juicy highlights. Enjoy.

Huamanga, Ayacucho

Favorite Food: Puca Picante is a peanut-type stew put over potatoes. It’s a specialty of Ayacucho. Another favorite was Ponche, which was a cinnamon-type drink. 

Favorite Artisan Craft: Ayacucho has such amazing crafts! I loved the stitch work, and am really regretting not getting a purse. 

Favorite Activity: Seeing all the religious activities, like visiting all the churches at night, receiving holy water, seeing all the beautiful alfombra, rugs made out of colorful sawdust, and of course the processions around the plaza. Ayacucho is the capital of holy week celebration in Peru, and they certainly live up to that name. It was definitely an Easter to remember. 

Least Favorite Activity: The bus ride was not fun. 10 hours of twisty-windy roads while all you have to cover up is your fleece vest. 

Funny Story: We went on a day trip to visit some archaeological sites and a famous monument. The thing was, we didn’t have a guide so didn’t exactly know the significance of the famous monument or the archaeological site. So instead, we ate food, shopped for crafts, and picked tunas, cacti fruit, which we learned left invisible needles in your hands for hours. 

Least Expected thing to happen: The day after Good Friday, when they had a very somber funeral procession in the plaza of Jesus’s body, the next day was chaos in the form of early morning drinking, bull running, and people building human towers. Peace Corps, of course, accepted this challenge, and managed to build the tallest human tower—4 stories baby!

Cusco/Machu Picchu:

Favorite Food: There is so much to choose from, it’s hard to make a choice. But I would have to say it is a tie between this cute bakery right up the road from our hostel that sold croissants, mini-pies, and pastries of exotic fruits AND this Fusion restaurant we went to for lunch that mixed Peruvian food with cuisines, such as Thai, Italian, Greek, etc. I had gnocci for the first time in 16 months. Amazing. 

Favorite Artisan Craft: We pretty much got swarmed by people selling us crafts in the plaza and basically anywhere we went. But my favorite was these long wrap-around bracelets with beads sown on them. I’ve been around Peru enough to know when something is unique or not, and this was definitely unique. Plus, we were the first customers of this lady, and she was so gracious for that. Another side not about artisans in Cusco: many of them know English, which I was very much impressed with. 

Favorite Activity: Machu Picchu, of course. And specifically the hike up Wayna Picchu, the mountain that is the back drop to Machu Picchu. We had to be the first 400 people into the park to be able to get there, but the view was amazing and it was a fun bonding activity that I will never forget.

Least Favorite Activity: Wayna Picchu. While this was my favorite, it was also my least favorite for the grueling hike that it was. Thank goodness we didn’t know what we were getting into when we committed to this, but it’s basically a 2,000 ft. climb on steps that you need a wire cable to help pull yourself up, they are so high. Then once you get to the top, yes the view is amazing, but I forgot that I’m deathly afraid of heights. Since we went in the morning, the clouds covered everything, but of course, once we made it to the tippy top, the clouds disappeared and we realized just how high we really were. So the only problem was how to get down. At one point, I was on my butt going down and tears in my eyes because just in front of me was absolutely nothing preventing me from meeting my maker early.  Thank goodness, Mari started singing to help us all out. 

Funny Story: We decided to use local transport in getting to the train station in Ollantaytambo, so we had a few extra hours to spare when we got there. There were ruins there, but not wanting to spend money, we decided to go find this Incan bridge that wasn’t too far away. Some men told us to go through the fields instead of the road, so we took their advice and off we went. We managed to finally find the river, but it was 500 ft. below us. So as we were trying to find our way down, we met some bulls in our path that were very curious as to what we were doing so close. I jumped down to this road below, Mari quickly followed as the bull looks down at us. Barbara decided to go a different route, when the bull decided to follow her. Eventually we escaped unharmed, but with a little extra adrenaline in our systems. 

Least Expected thing to happen: Getting to Aguas Calientes and getting told that we have to wake up in 5 hours in order to get a good spot in line. At s/150 a night at our hostel, it’s the most expensive one I’ve stayed at for the last amount of time. 

Arequipa

Favorite Food: Again, so much to choose from, but I would have to choose Cappricios for their delicious sandwiches and salads. Highly recommended. 

Favorite Artisan Craft: In Arequipa, it was the chocolates. Our first stop was La Iberica, the chocolate company there and we indulged in some dark chocolate, marzipan, and chocolate covered pecans. I could have bought out the whole store if I wanted. 

Favorite Activity: Normally I’m not a big fan of tours, but the main church on the plaza recently started giving tours, so what the heck. The church, first of all, in ginormous. It spans a full city block and has an organ so big that it once took 5 people to play it at once. We also got to go on the roof to see the beautiful view of the city with the volcano Misti in the background.

Least Favorite Activity: While it was interesting to get to see the Colca Canyon, I’m not sure I would have done a 1-day tour, since we were in the car for half the day. 

Funny Story: This goes along with the above statement. We decided to go see the Colca Canyon, which is the 2^nd largest canyon in the world and is known for its condors.  To get there, it is 3 hours away and if you want to really see it, obviously you will need more than just one day. But that’s all we got, so we went with it. Turns out, we had to get up once again in the wee hours of the morning, but not at 3:30 am, but at 2:30 am. Thank goodness we were picked up by our bus, but were the first to be picked up, so we then spent the first hour of our journey going hostal to hostal looking for people. And we finally ended up in this sketchy part of town, which we all thought the driver must be lost or something, but no, he was trying to find the one last guy. Turns out he was just wondering to the streets randomly with all of his belongings. We thought it was a joke, but no, this man, who we thought was a bum, boarded our tour bus. And that was the beginning of our day. 

Least Expected thing to happen: As we were leaving the main church on the plaza, this man was shouting obscenities at us. I’m usually equipped to just ignore them, but Barbara decided to provoke him a bit by yelling at him back. So what does he do? He comes over to us, starts shouting at us, and pours his soda at Barbara while he shoves his crotch towards my way. Having lived in Peru for almost a year and a half, I’m just surprised this hasn’t happened sooner.