NASCA, AREQUIPA, EARTHQUAKES AND STRIKES, OH MY!

NASCA


After staying only about 8 hours in Lima, I hopped another bus to Nasca, about a 7 hour bus ride from the capital. It was another overnight bus trip, one of 4 I had been on that week. It is always difficult to sleep well on overnight bus rides because the seats aren´t comfortable and the bus is always stopping to pick up and drop off passengers. But this time we had another, unexpected difficulty. At about 4am I was jerked awake when the bus drove off the highway and almost crashed. The bus came to a stop, and for another minute or so it continued to rock back and forth. Still half asleep, I wasn´t sure what was going on, and the first thing that passed through my mind was ¨crazy peruvian bus driver fell asleep at the wheel.¨ The bus set off again and I immediately fell asleep.


Later that day, while in Nasca I was reading the news at an internet cafe and something caught my eye. ¨Earthquake rattles southern Peru.¨ And I thought to myself...hmmm I´M in Southern Peru... I quickly realized that our little ordeal the night before was the result of that 6.0 earthquake. It hit pretty hard near Arequipa, and was felt all the way downt to the Chilean border.

So I arrive in Nasca, in the company of a Dutch girl that I met at the bus station in Lima. We both wanted to go in an airplane to see that Nasca lines, but after finding out that it cost $80 I decided that I would be content with taking a 3 soles ($1) bus ride to a lookout point where I would be able to see two of the figures. The Dutch girl decided to take the plane, and that´s the last we saw of each other. The lookout point was located in the middle of nowhere in the desert. Seriously it was just one long open road with desert on either side, mountains in the distance, and a small tower smack dab in the middle of it all. I was happy that I saved $79, because the 2 figures I saw were clear enough that I was satisfied.

I chilled out in Nasca for the rest of the day as I waited for my bus to Arequipa. I planned to take another overnight bus to Arequipa, but the following day all of south Peru was going to be striking against the government and they planned to close the highways at midnight. It´s about 8-9 hours from Nasca to Arequipa, so I got ont he 4pm bus, finally arriving in Arequipa at 1am.


AREQUIPA

This city is BEAUTIFUL. They call it the ¨white city¨because of the structure, everything made in stone and much of it being white. After Lima which has over 8 million people, Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, yet has less than 1 million inhabitants. It is very calm, and besides the cold winter nights, during the day the weather is amazing, probably somewhere between 70-80F.

Because I arrived at 1am and it had been 4 days since I slept in a bed, when I got to the hostel I completely crashed, and besides waking up briefly because of a slight aftershock in the middle of the night, I didn´t get out of bed until almost noon the next day. I was awoken by protesters banging on the doors and windows as they passed through the streets. Not wanting to miss such a cultural experience, I quickly headed to La Plaza de Armas and watched as hundreds of people marched around the plaza yelling and demanding a new president. They were protesting against the government because the cost of living has doubled in the past few years and wages haven´t gone up at all, yet the people in power seem to get richer and richer. I watched as fights broke out and fires were started. It was chaos. And like a good tourist, I enjoyed watching this while having lunch on a nearby balcony.

Arequipa is my ¨rest stop¨ if you will. I´ve already been here 2 nights and I plan to stay one more night before I head to Puno, a port on Lake Titicaca, tomorrow. From there I will take an overnight train to Cuzco and hopefully be able to make it to Machu Picchu. There have been protests and riots in Cuzco as well, with many of the streets closing, blocking the way to the sacred Inca ruins. Machu Picchu is my ultimate goal, so I have my fingers crossed....