Cusco, Perú

I´m ready to go home. I start out this blog entry saying this not because this hasn´t been one of the most amazing experiences of my life (if not the best) but because I am truly exhausted and BROKE! These past four days with Seeno and Meghan have been great and we have done a million different things. The last time I wrote, I was expecting them to arrive in Lima that afternoon. I went to the airport to pick them up with Oscar (the stop and drop hostel´s owner) and was pretty excited to see familiar faces in Peru. As we drove back to the hostel, we talked a bit about the flight and all the typical stuff people talk about when you pick them up from an airport. Anyway, once we got to the hostel and they left their things, we went out to dinner and had an AMAZING, and I mean amazing dinner. We ordered ceviche, lomo saltado, churrasco, langostinos al ajillo, I mean FOOOOOOOD!! After dinner and catching up, I took them to a bar called Tayta where they tried their first Pisco Sour. We listened to music, smoked, chatted and drank until it was time to get back to the hostel. We tried to go to sleep once we got there but the streets were packed that night (Saturday) and the sounds of honks, drunk women and club music from the street kept us from falling asleep. Eventually, we did sleep and woke up early to go visit the center of Lima. I have to say, Lima has one of the most beautiful Plaza de Armas that I have seen in Latin America. We walked around different areas of Lima and saw colonial architecture before we went back to Miraflores (where the hostel is) so we could leave to swim with sea lions. We were so excited! Our tour left at 2P.M. from the piers of El Callao and once the boat left, it truly felt like an adventure. We had met Claude from Montreal and pretty much hung out with him during our sea lion rendezvous. Once we got to Palomino island, and we smelled the wonderful guano (bird droppings) and heard the howling of the sea lions, Seeno and Meghan backed out. I was shocked that they wouldn´t dive in to swim with these amazing animals after we had come so far to see them. Anyway, I put on my wet suit and jumped in with Claude and swam directly toward them. Honestly I was scared. If you would have seen the males up close with their teeth and the loud howling you would have been scared too, however, I had to do it and at least once in my life, feel like I was on the Discovery Channel. Literally 15 minutes after I had jumped in the water (by the way, the water was FREEZING because of the humboldt current), I saw Seeno and Meghan ready to jump in with their wet suits on. I guess they wanted to make sure that the sea lions wouldn´t eat my head off before they took the chance of swimming with them. Well, these creatures are amazing! Once we were all together in the water, they slowly came closer. It was almost like a game of Chess. If we moved a little closer, then they came a little closer. They were just as afraid of us as we were of them but we were not allowed to go on shore. They are territorial animals and were barking because they were warning us that that was their rock and we should stay back. Freaky!! Anyway, at one point, sea lions were just popping from under water in front of our faces probably from 1 to 2 feet away. Their nostrils would open up as if they were smelling us. It was an amazing experience. Once we were on our way back from the sea lion extravaganza, we were so exhausted we fell asleep on the boat. The same feeling continued throughout the evening and all we did was have dinner with Claude in our hostel´s neighborhood and go to bed. The next day, we woke up fairly early to get ready to make a 4 hour bus trip to Ica. Ica is a town south of Lima that has an oasis about 3 km away called The Huacachina Oasis. After we had breakfast in Lima and bought a few things at the supermarket, we were on our way to Huacachina and its famed oasis. WOW! That is all I can say. Once you are there and see this massive desert around this small pool of water, you can´t even begin to comprehend the beauty of it all. The desert seems neverending. We climbed up a dune when we had just arrived (after Seeno decided to swim in the oasis) to see the sunset over the desert. Sadly, we missed the sun over the dunes but we also ran out of breath. Climbing sand dunes is a WORKOUT! We sat overlooking the oasis for a bit before we went to dinner and called it a night pretty early. It was fun, having beers in front of the oasis but there wasn´t much to do in Huacachina at night. The next day, we woke up early to take the dune buggy/sand surfing tour in the desert. That was one of the most amazing things I had ever done (I sound just like I did talking about sea lions). When you see these sand dunes and how high they are and realize that you have to surf all the way down, you literally shit your pants. I must say though, the feeling is AMAZING!! You slide down the mountain so incredibly fast and you pretty much can´t brake because the sand is so hot that you have to let yourself go. It was really cool and I have videos of it to show some of you later once I get home. After we did that, and our tour was over (by the way, Meghan flipped like a truck on a highway doing one of these stunts and chose to only do 2 ¨surfs¨) we headed back to the hostel to shower (we had sand in every hole in our bodies I´m not kidding) and check out so we could leave and spend the afternoon in Nazca. We were cheated by this guy in paying 90 soles for the three of us (my fault) and that made me a bit pissed later on but I got over it. We took the 2 hour bus to Nazca by 1P.M. and made it there early enough to go to a desert watchtower and see some of the lines. We saw the hands and the tree and from an observatory saw many geometric figures sprawled over the desert floor. No one knows who drew these lines and for what purpose but some people say it was either an ancient calendar with some figures representing times of the year, others say they are drawings for the gods and yet others say the gods are aliens and they did these drawings themselves. It´s a bit creepy but all in all, good to have been able to see these fabled lines of Nazca. We decided at dinner that we would take the 8P.M. 14 hour bus to Cusco and stay there until the 29th when everyone leaves Peru. All of us agreed and exchanged the tickets we had bought for Puno for tickets to Cusco (Puno is on Lake Titicaca). Lord Jesus saviour of the perfumes of the mist! It was the bus ride from hell. To climb the Andes from the flat Nazca desert all the way to Cusco for 14 hours making sharp turns throughout the night and having each one of us ready to puke and simply die was an experience in itself. It was crazy but well worth it. We all managed to sleep a bit and got to Cusco at around 10A.M. Once here in Cusco, we found our hostel (The Point Cusco) and left our things. This is exactly where I´m at right now. Seeno and Meghan went to walk around and check the town out as I stayed behind and updated my blog. I hope you enjoyed it and the next one will be Cusco, my friends Yoel and Jamie that arrive on the 26th and the amazing Machu Picchu. Stay tuned!! Lots of love!