Sigh . . and some random photos

We're back in the land of excellent peanut butter, whole wheat bread, brown rice, kale, friends and family, easy communication, innate cultural and satirical understanding, easy humor . . .  home.  We've seen a few good friends so far (yay! more to come!), have had family phone conversations (without  the conversations freezing!), have been eating well and are thoroughly enjoying our time, looking forward to our full dance card of friends while we're here.  And we've not been paying attention to the stuff that's fully occupied our lives for the past 6 months -- making plans and reservations, updating, communicating.  Life's current is strong here, and we're happily floating down stream for awhile.

Our day of Paracas-Chicago travel was a 40 hour one -- bus from Paracas to Lima, flights Lima to Houston and Houston to Chicago, complicated by the United worldwide computer glitch.  The "day" underlined how much easier and more comfortable it is to travel in Peru (Ecuador, too) than in the US; TSA is a pain with its disorganization and inefficiencies, the planes and airport travel/transfers are more complicated here, and staff is less helpful, more stressed.  But we're here, safely, with all luggage intact - truly feels like a miracle.

Now that we're back in the states for 3 months or so, we're not sure how to approach the blog.  There were some outstanding places in Peru that didn't get shared because of sketchy internet, and because they required too much thought/time to do well, and some random stuff, too, that was entertaining.  Those will get posted as time allows over the next few months, but I don't expect this blog to be very active until we're out of the country again, likely in March.  Some of you have signed up for email notification of this blog, and that's probably the easiest way to know if anything's been posted, because we'll be intermittent for a while.  The email notification option just feeds a new entry to your email; nothing else. 

We've had a few people ask us to write reflectively, about personal adjustments, challenges (including what it's like to travel with a spouse so constantly joined at the hip), delights, observations on cultural stuff.  I can't decide if there's really value to putting that in this blog . . . any thoughts?  We'll see.
 
It's our plan to be in the Chicago area until early December, when we'll fly to Seattle to hang out with John.  Just before Christmas Ross and Gen will join us and we'll all drive to Ashland OR for Christmas with my sister.  After that Steve and I will settle in a furnished apartment in Portland for a couple of months, to check out the city fit and decompress.  Then we'll take off to Cambodia? Vietnam? Portugal? New Zealand? England?  Scotland? Wales?. . . not sure, but somewhere for more adventures. 

Here are a few random photos from Peru.

A truck full of egg-sized ball bearings.

This was actually posted on the Yavari, the B&B ship on Lake Titicaca.  With a woman captain.  Argh.

Views from our Puno hotel balcony. Hard times in Puno.

This, and the three photos below -- lines of "old people" waiting for their social security money.  They line up at the first of the month, and wait in hours-long lines to get their 200 soles, $80 for the month. 

 

Common sight anywhere in Ecuador or Peru, folks standing by a newspaper stand, reading newspapers they can't afford to buy, to get the news.  Probably 10 different editions available in most bigger cities. 

Typical Puno (Lake Titicaca area) lady, in a cotton skirt and the typical bowler hat.

Giant condor overlooking the city of Puno.

This sign in the bus station.  Don't get the ambulatory services part. 

School kids field tripping to see the arch, below.  Getting a nice talk from their teacher about local history. 

Colonial arch into the city of Puno.

National flower of Peru, the cantuta.  Hummingbirds love it. 

Heading back!

Another hurriedly done entry - sorry - the bad internet connections take their toll.

We're spending our last day in Peru with lunch overlooking the Pacific in the town of Paracas.  We'll hop on a bus for Lima (3 hours) this afternoon, then take a taxi to the airport where we'll board our plane for Houston at midnight, change around 6, and arrive Chicago around noon.  Can't believe our South American adventure is over! 

Our dear friends Ann and Ates are generously hosting us for the 2.5 weeks we'll be in the area, during which time we'll visit Evansville for a few days, our Thanksgiving will include Ross, and we'll get to see Steve's family while we're in town and they're gathered here, too.  Lots of catching up to do with friends, too.  Can't wait!

In Tambo Colorado, Inca ruins outside of Paracas.  We're in the Inca royalty bath.  The Inca and his mujere.

We still have South American stuff, that has gone unposted, and will likely follow through on those as time allows -- there's so much we haven't covered -- other ruins, lots of fantastic monasteries and convents, foods, street scenes . . . but perhaps we should be done.  We'll see.  It will be fantastic to have predictably good internet in our lives again.  Sigh.  That's been hard, in part for the uncertainty, but also because it's been our lifeline to communications with kids and friends, with investments, with Steve's fantasy football team, with life as we've known it in the states.  

Paracas National Reserve - birds! sea lions!

This is hurriedly being done, so forgive, please.  We're off to Paracas for our final night, after a visit to local wineries and factories.  I'm not sure we'll have decent internet again before we leave, so want to get these amazing birds out there before we depart.  Can't wait to be back in the states!

The Paracas National Reserve is huge (139,000 square miles), encompassing tropical dessert (an extension of the Atacama desert in northern Chile), and with 2/3 of its area comprised of ocean and coastal habitat.  We boated out to the Ballestas Islands (aka Guano islands, as they're literally covered in what was once quite profitable bird poop).  The area has hundreds of thousands of sea birds -- mostly three varieties of cormorants (neotropic, red footed, Guanay), Peruvian pelicans, Peruvian boobies, Inca terns and Humboldt penguins -- and thousands of sea lions.  Then we drove around in the desert area, vast expanses of nothing but sand.  The area gets 20 mm of rain a year, almost always in the form of mist.  We caught the rain.  Not an inconvenience. 

The jelly fish near the shore were gorgeous, and the size of manhole covers.

But hard to photograph in the morning sun. 

Waiting cormorants and pelicans.

This candelabra (barely visible in the mist, and in the photo) is like the famous Nazca lines (which we didn't see).  It's on one of the Ballestas Islands.

Rock island, littered and by birds  -- a mix of birds and their droppings; the ones that show up whitest are the Peruvian boobies..

 

Humboldt penguins, by the thousands.

Beautiful rocks and water, covered with birds -- see the ruffle along the top -- a Pelican ruffle.

Lucky to wee this red footed cormorant, much rarer than the other two. 

Peruvian pelicans of various ages.

Such beautiful beak coloring.

More and more and more Peruvian pelicans. Sigh.  Healthy population.  Sea lions on the rocks below the pelicans. 

 

Inca terns -- so beautiful.

 And thousands of sea lions.  Big, little, mostly sleeping, resting, hanging out -- although there were probably many more in the water that we didn't see.  There was an hours' old baby and mom, blood still apparent, delineating their relationship through sound (to make theirs recognizable voices.)

A little one, not the newborn.

Sea lions like to play, and our guide told us this one was taking seaweed up to play with (they don't eat it, nor sleep on it.)

Sleeping, odd position.

Pair playing in the water.  Turkey vulture, likely waiting for a dead sea lion baby or its placenta. 

Don't know how this sea lion got up there, but resting.

They still farm guano from here, once every seven years, so as not to seriously disturb the residents.  This pier is for their use, but mostly used by the birds. 

The famous headless Peruvian booby. 

On our lunch stop, a relatively tamed or hungry pelican. 

 

Our lunch stop, an area that had been wiped out by the tsunami of 2007, recovering . . . and delicious!

The Reserve, 140K square miles of this, nothingness.  Fascinating. 

Pisco, the town

Warning:  blogger's weirding out again, so here's a funky version of my Pisco entry.  Sorry.

In 2007 there was an earthquake of 8.0 magnitude near here, which seriously rocked this part of Peru, leveling 85% of the buildings in Pisco, killing 520 in the area, and generating a tsunami that trashed much of its neighboring seaside town of Paracas, among others.  We'd read that Pisco was on its way back, and in need of tourist dollars, and I wanted to spend time with the birds and beasts of the nearby Paracas National Reserve, so we decided to stay here for the last 5 days of our trip, hoping to organize and chill before heading out of Lima on the 15th.  Not so sure we made the best decision, but here we are. 

The bougainvilleas are gorgeous  here,everywhere, eternal bloomers, as someone here called them.

The courtyard of our hostel, bougainvilleas on the right. 

Apparently there's been lots of corruption around the money intended for earthquake cleanup and relief (shocking!), and not so much delivered here, but they're trying.  The cathedral was broken beyond repair, so they built a new church with designs from a group in Naperville (ok, kidding).  There's clearly lots of work to do.

Crunched, cracked dome, now home to the pigeons.

New church.

Another broken steeple in the area.

Typical sight walking around town.  Lots of cleaning up to do still.

View from the hostel's rooftop.  Rubble, cracks apparent.

As I write, there's a music festival going on, with very very impressive loud speakers that deliver the visceral bass thump way too effectively, it's over a block away and has been going on all day, yesterday too.  Clearly someone's invested in some fine audio equipment.  The festival group lets anyone sing, which is nice, I guess, although somewhat painful/funny.  Hope it's only a two day festival. 

One of the sponsors for the music festival, KR cola (note Steve on the left); the bottle had some morning trouble.

And more of the recovering city.

Afternoon siesta.

They have lots of casinos in Pisco, here's Gothika, tee hee, and slots, lots of smoking goes on inside the casinos.  Feels like Reno. 

Typical dirt road, in the middle of the dusty town. 

And some oddities.

One of the local orange juice guys.  The ribbons are thin strips of peel that come off the orange in preparation for effective squeezing.  Smells so good, walking by -- and tastes so good, too.  They reuse the glasses after rinsing them out.

This sign had us pretty confused.  Jesus, NO se va?  Turns out this was for a political campaign.  Jesus' competitor put these signs up all over town.  The first person we asked suggested it was an anti-Catholic rant.  No, not here.

We've eaten fairly well in Pisco, which is right near the Pacific ocean, and have been entertained by the Spanglish more here than usual.  A few shots of the menu and our orders.

#186, roast kid.  : )  Baby goat.  Tacu Tacu to follow.

#514, I have no idea. 

Steve's tacu tacu (the log like thing in the front, of beans and rice),  with lamb and yucca.  $10  Delicious.

 

My fresh fish and lots of fresh, al dente veges, yum, $15; ceviche from the day before, $16. 

A dessert board.  Had to try the Urubambino (? no English spoken here) - was custardy with guava topping, pretty nice, below. $3.  Fancy.