News and Notes from the Last Few Days

Kyle and I took it easy for a few days, poking around the city and going out for beers at night. The evenings have been relaxing; mostly we´ve been walking around, sitting in mellow bars, drinking beers and discussing how Insurgent Matt is the B.A. Baracus of the Insurgency (distinctive hair, burly build, ¨I ain´t getting on no plane, Hannibal!¨), family stuff, politics, Peru, Spanish. However, the days were not as relaxing. Horrible traffic, sickening fumes, and the noise led to me insisting that we head out on our first trip. Instead of flying, we decided to do what we said we´d never do just days ago- rent a car and drive in Peru and over 1000 kilometers to Arequipa.

So it was me, Kyle, a Toto CD, and a Fiat Fire (terrible name for a car, by the way. I guess they decided against calling it the Fiat Spontaneous Explosion. It reminds me of this company that makes a bike seat called the Stinger. The Stinger? Really? Why not the Assmangler? But I digress) we named Helpy Junior. Good ol´Helpy Junior. What a car. Solid as a cheap, Italian rock. We somehow made it through Lima and to the PanAmerican Highway, which, in Peru, runs the length of the Pacific coast. It´s full of pretty incredible juxtapositions. You have the desert, barren as can be, barely supporting some of the poorest communities. But just a few hundred yards away, there are beautiful beaches and extremely ostentatious beach houses for wealthyfolk. At points, you´re right at sea level, but you can look to your left and see the Andean foothills, which eventually you climb into.

Kyle drove the whole way, earning from me the nickname ¨Beef Ankles¨, or ¨B´Fankles¨for short. I´m not going to go into a lot of detail on the drive down since Kyle did. But it was a pretty brutal drive that I didn´t nap through nearly as much as I worried I would.

Arequipa is a beautiful little city in the desert, with 3 mountains as big or bigger than Mt. Rainier looming above. Much of the city is made of a whitish stone that formed from volcanic activity. It´s not so bustly as Lima, but it still has a lot of things to do and see. We will climb on some mountains, go see some canyons that are many hundreds of feet deeper than the Grand Canyon, and I´ll probly head to Puno to see Lake Titicaca.