vacaciones

arequipa was a really fun town, the architecture reminded me of europe. we arrived there around 9:30 p.m. after taking a 6 hour bus ride from puno. i was sad to leave puno..the seats on the bus were super comfortable so we weren´t complaining. the taxi driver at the station showed us to this really cute balcony hostel, which is great and all and precious with its balconies overlooking the city UNTIL you realize that you´re right on an intersection that doesn´t have lights or stop signs = horns constantly honking ALL night. ridiculous.

our great friend sally came to Arequipa to hang out with us. we got a quick bite to eat at a restaurant that made their pizzas with plastic-looking cheese. we visited the Santa Catalina monestary. huge! it took us 2 hours walking briskly through the whole thing. after we went to see Juanita, the Incan Ice Daughter or whatever they called her. basically some guys found this girl who had been sacrificed and buried by the Incas to worship the gods, but she was so high up that she was frozen in a block of ice which in turn preserved her body for 500 years. she still had skin... and her clothes were all on display next to her body which sat in a freezing cold box. it´s a really sad story but cool that at one point in time she was sacrificed and buried and now we could look at her.

saturday we were picked up around 2:30 a.m. for our tour around the Colca Canyon. it was a little rough in the bus because you couldn´t lean the seats back and there wasn´t a lot of room in from of the seats. i had that sick-tired feeling all day. we stopped a couple of times to take pictures, but everyone really just wanted to see condors. amazing birds wth wingspans up to 12 feet. we arrived at the lookout point and it took a while but we finally saw 5 or 6. we got home that day around 5 p.m. About an hour later we were at the bus station trying to find a bus to the beach. we got to Mollendo, the peruvian version of Panama city beach during spring break, around 10p.m.

this morning we got up around 9 and had breakfast and then made our way to the beach. the ocean is beautiful and it was about 100 degrees. the sun is so intense here that i had to re-apply sunscreen 30 spf about every hour. the only down side to this day was that we are the only white people here LITERALLY and we got stared at all day. that and the fact that we were all wearing our underwear because no one brought bathingsuits. i swear they look like bathingsuits though. the staring doesn´t really bother me. i know it´s not because they think i´m attractive it´s just that they don´t get a lot of white people around here and i think there´s a reputation about us here that makes them think we´d like to get whistled at and called names (one guy today called us "carne" meaning meat...seriously guys?) it´s so obvious it´s funny and by this point in the trip it just makes me laugh.

the countdown continues... i can´t believe i´ll celebrate my birthday here...23 feels old and is my least favorite odd number. 5 more days till i´m home...