Come Peru, Ica

I´m sorry; I´ve been super bad about updating the blog since we´ve gotten to Peru! We were in Lima and I might explain that more later, but we had a really great time. Definitely the most beautiful city I´ve seen in Latin America so far.

We met up with Angie, a classmate from Grinnell who´s from Lima, and she showed us around her side of Lima. It was so great to see her and she gave us such a great tour. She took us to this outdoor mall built into ocean cliff, which was something that seemed like it belonged in Orange County but there´s probably no way in hell any company could afford to buy the property to build it. I´d never seen anything like it. I also finally tried lomo saltado, a typical Peruvian dish consisting of meat, tomatoes, potatoes and onions. We saw super cute botiques, the private school she attended, beautiful churches, her house. She also told us our (or at least my) most profound discovery on this trip: you can buy clothes in parts of Lima made by big clothing companies (Gap, Michael Corrs, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc.) for ridiculously cheap because the clothes are made in local factories. If any piece has some type of mistake, the clothing gets taken to one of these stores for locals to buy at super cheap prices. It´s like shopping at a thrift store, with boxes of clothes to sort through to find the gem in the sand dune (I hope that´s the phrase). So if you go to Lima and like to shop, you should find one of these stores!

We then took a 5 hour doubledecker Cruz del Sur bus from Lima to Ica , where we are now. (We´re following a path loosely called the "Gringo Trail," where travelers make a loop from Lima to Cuzco. This path breaks up the 24 hour bus ride between the two cities and enables us to explore more of Peru.) So thisbus was crazy, in a good way. They gave us a blanket, a pillow, dinner, and even provided a screened movie (Lady of the Lake), and a bus-wide game of bingo, which Shai and I did not win. They also offer bathroom assistance, particularly when one gets locked in their restrooms, which Shai discovered. The entire back of the bus heard Shai scream, "I´m locked in!" when she couldn´t figure out how to let herself out of the bus´s small bathroom. The attendant had to yell directions lound enough for Shai to hear her, which caught the attention of anyone who didn´t hear Shai´s initial pleas for help. It was hilarious. I crying from laughing so hard by the time Shai got back. Describing it, this situation really doesn´t seem that funny but trust me, it was great.

We just took a tour of a local bodega, or winery, and had some very sweet and very tasty wine. They produce pisco here, which is a type of hard alcohol used to make pisco sour, a Peruvian specialty. We´ll wander around Ica for an hour or two and then head to Huacachina to go sandboarding. At 8:30 pm we board another bus to get to Arequipa, a trip that will last 12 hours.