y-es travel chapter: 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.