Mostly harmless…or: alpaca is bad for your teeth
Ouch. Stupid tooth…but more of that later.
First, let me tell you of the last few days.
The day before yesterday we took the bus to Ica. A nice town. Got some chicken at Roky, or Norky, or whatever, slept at the Hotel Austria after organizing the next day. The nice guy that owns the hotel, a guy from Carinthia who spent the last 30 years in Ica, but was in Cuba and Machu Picchu before that, helped us. On the way, two movies: Radio (sucked), the Conspiracy (kinda nice, gotta check the accuracy).
Well, the next day we went to Guacachina, the American oasis, as people here like to call it.
The nymph that gave the oasis its name Somebody saw her naked so they both turned into palm trees. Go figure.
After that, the nice driver took us for a two-hour ride which was kind of scary, because we passed a crashed bus that was the main character in an accident that killed 15 people that night, as we later found out. We only knew of 7 dead people when we passed it. Lots of crosses and small shrines indicating where even more people had died on the road.
A nice desert landscape, nonetheless.
Finally arriving at Nasca, we had to wait for our flight, so we went to change some Euros, which didn’t really turn out well because of the low rates. We also saw a parrot called “Lorenzo” sitting in a tree.
Unfortunately, we went to get some lunch. Yes, unfortunately. Because the flight over the Nasca lines…let’s say, undid the lunch for at least my father, and caused me to be sick for about two hours after it ended. It was nice though, but very very turbulent, as even the pilot admitted. I got to sit in front. And he was flying eights all over the place…*burp*
We went back…got to see “In her shoes” and “Lyrics by”, and were tortured by andinian versions of hits like “Chiquitita”, “My heart will go on” and “El condor pasa”. Ouch.
Well, back in Lima we went to “Brisas del Titicaca” with Beto, Blanca, Victor, Sonia and two of their friends. The show was great, even though we all were tired, we all danced quite a lot. We got to bed at about 4, and had to get up at 8.
The Marinera, a famous dance imitating a (chicken?) romance
Today we said goodbye to the family, and took the flight to Arequipa. We saw nice, snowy mountains.
Snowy mountain, not Misti, though
We were picked up by our guide, went to the hotel and took our dirty clothes to the laundry. Then we went to see a museum with some Oetzi girl called “Juanita”, a 14 year old girl they found when a volcano melted a glacier. She had been sacrificed by the Incas to calm an active volcano. Sadly, they would not let us take pictures.
We also went to the cathedral and saw gargoyles and saint Barbie…
A virgin Mary resembling a very well known doll
We are in luck: fiestas patrias in Lima, and the local saint fiestas here in Arequipa 😀
We bought some more alpaca wool and went to get some food…alpaca ribs, leg, cebiche, rocoto relleno, beer, pisco sour. We also got to go to the roof of the restaurant.
The view from the roof of the restaurant
The problem, however, was, that while eating alpaca ribs, the animal took its inevitable revenge: The plastic tooth cover that I had since I was 14 (they said it would last about 2 years) finally got loose. I will spare you the picture. However, I can tell you that this is very annoying since I won’t be able to fix it until I’m back in Austria, and it will cost a small fortune.
Maybe I will get it as a Christmas present. We’ll see.
We’re all very tired, so we’ll go to buy some water and then go catch some Zs.