Spent the last few days in Arequipa, Peru, a city that gets over 300 days of sun a year. The weather has been compliant with the trend, it has been absolutely beautiful every day. The first day here we went white water rafting in the Río Chili, which is a flow of melted ice cap from the city´s guardian Volcano Misti which sits just a few miles outside of town. The second day we headed out to the outskirts of town, where there is a nice outlook over Arequipa and Misti. The plan after that was to head to a small neighboring village that had built several public pools that were fed by the river water. However, the taxi driver refused to take us due to a large amount of demostrations and protests that were going on. We had already been caught in a couple such demostrations in the main plaza in Arequipa. (I don´t know how a group of people that filled the street for an entire block snuck up on us, but they came out of 
nowhere and we were suddenly surrounded.) In compromise, we ended up at a public ¨olympic pool¨ which was half filled with water. I happened to get a Peruvian admirer while at the pool... a ten year old Peruano boy who chatted me up in Spanish and checked to see that I was watching every time he did a running dive into the pool. Eventually he took my picture and settled for watching me from afar.Arequipa is at an elevation of 7800 feet, and at a latitude of about 
15 degrees. My brief time spent outside in the sun has gotten me looking a bit like the peruvian flag myself, awkward tan (read: burn) lines abound.
15 degrees. My brief time spent outside in the sun has gotten me looking a bit like the peruvian flag myself, awkward tan (read: burn) lines abound.Today is Sterling´s last day with me. At 6 tonight we are both heading off by bus, but he will be returning to Lima (and then home to Iowa, where wind chills have been reaching -50F, ouch). I will be heading to Puno, Peru which is a shore town of Lake Titicaca. From there, I will cross into Bolivia, where the 10 day weather forcast calls for highs of 50F and rain nearly every day (except the day that it might snow). La Paz is at an elevation of 3,640 m. Oh, altitude...always ruining my summer fun.
5 comments:
Those protests remind me of what we ran into in Nepal last October when we were on our way to go white water rafting. I hope you are having a great time - kind of hard to tell between the sickness & troubles. Anyway, I wish I was there, it sounds like fun, so I will assume you are having a blast. Love you, Tu hermana.
It appears that you have only gone 50% native. "Arequipa is at an elevation of 7800 feet", "La Paz is at an elevation of 3,640 m". I'm so confused.
So what are the protests about? I can't read the signs since I don't speak or read Spanish!! Still 300 days of sunshine a year sound pretty good to us Michiganders in January. Love you.
So looks like everyone else in the family left a comment...my turn! Your hair looks great! Protests...who needs em when you have STYylllzzzz baby. Yeayah. Miss you sister. Love you lots!
hey. im memorizing all the latin america capitals and countries right now for spanish 101. yeahhh 101. im slackin haha. thought of you(not about hte slacking, the latin america). also it sounds like your having a lot of fun out there which i am jealous of. intense getting caught in pretests though. def lots of life experience though. elevation can be hell, i remember when i went to colorado to winterpark. elevation there is like around 8000 feet. it must suck with the variations in the elevation your doing. hope u start getting used to it. and continue to have fun. seeee ya bud.
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