Greetings sports fans!

We find ourselves back in Lima for two days until Marc & I split for different adventures in separate parts of Peru. Yes, this dynamic duo will cease to double team the Peruvians..

We are back from Huarez and the Cordillera Blanca Mountains. This is the rainy season in Peru but somehow Marc & I imagined we would be exempt from bad weather. We weren’t. We stayed at a lodge much like the previous one with no electricity but the lodge was nestled beneath the largest mountain in Peru, Huascaran, at 22,000.’ You don’t go to this lodge for the amenities, you go for the view. In the span of three days, I saw this giant twice, for a few minutes each, due to it being overcast and rainy and that I don’t ever get out of bed in the morning.

It was usually sunny in the morning which was just plain trickery. We headed out to hike anyway. The first day we hiked into a mountain valley to see the second largest mountain, Hondoi, at 20,700’ which was stunning. Lots of blue glacier and tons of snow. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The second day we hiked up a massive mountain ridge with the idea that we would have a mind-blowing view of Huascaran. This is a great idea in theory, but allow me to paint the picture: Marc & I wheezed and panted, dragging ourselves up this ridge (stopping every few steps to recover or just sit down for a break so really this took hours) We got ¾ of the way up the ridge and then clouds came and surrounded us so that we could see only 50’ in front of us. Luckily then the rain came. We just sat down and ate an orange and rode it out. Only we didn’t ride it out. We called it & walked back down the ridge. I believe then we just drank heavily for the remainder of the day.

Yesterday we went to the “Smithsonian” of Lima, Peru, “The Museum Nacional,” only to find it completely closed due to renovation until 2009. We were very disappointed, to say the least. We went to a second museum, the Larco Museum, which housed “one of the largest ceramic collections to be found anywhere, a selection of gold & silver pieces, feathered textiles, and pre-columbian erotic pots..” (I copied that description out of the book because it’s far more eloquent than me saying we saw a bunch of perverted pots and some gold earrings.)

Our spanish is coming along nicely. We like to call it “caveman Spanish.” Marc does this thing where he walks up to someone with his nose buried in the Spanish phrasebook and starts to make this guttural noise, “Aaaaahhahahahahahah……” or “Oououoooooooooooo” as his segway, his “lead in” if you will.. It just plain scares people. He’s working on it.
While at the previous lodge we made friends with Tito & Luna. They are two young locals who cook for the lodge. They are saints. I say this because they were so patient as they rode through our caveman Spanish (we say things like, “Me like drink. You like drink?”) We sat at the counter as they cooked, and we had happy hour each night with them. It was a very special way to while away the hours during cold, rainy evenings again by candlelight.

So on Saturday Marc heads to Ariquipa, Peru to volunteer in an orphanage or community center, he waits to hear. Personally I hope he ends up in the orphanage, due to the fact that every child we’ve encountered in this country is enamored by Marc. (I picture him with three laughing children hanging off each arm.)
I head to Cusco, Peru, to volunteer in a public health clinic. I’m so excited for this, I’m sure I’ll have stories to share..

I’ll close with the llama. One day I paid .33 cents to be kissed by a cape wearing llama. This is the truth. I thought this wonderful Peruvian woman in the city square just wanted her llama to kiss me. Perhaps she thought I needed a kiss, a pick me up, if you will. Whatever, I let her Llama kiss me. Then she wanted money! She was a heckler, too, let me tell you.

Love to each of you!
Jessi