That's Interesting…

The next 4 days are going to be crazy. We just checked out of our hotel, and are set to board a 10 pm bus to Nazca to charter a very small and scary plane. We arrive at 6 in the morning (our overnight hotel is named “bus”).
After our plane ride to see the famous Nazca lines, we take a 6 hour bus to Paracas, taxi to our Pisco hotel. We will probably get in about 11 pm.
The next day, we see the Ballestas Islands, then another 6 hour bus ride to Lima.
We get a hotel, sleep over, see Lima the next day, then fly out at 11 pm.
At 6 am, we hit Houston, play fun Customs games, then get back to Provo at 1 pm Thursday.

So, whirlwind tour to end, eh? Here we go!

We got up early, took care of some computer stuff, had breakfast, packed, and headed out to see the city. And shockingly…there was a parade. This country is obsessed with parades and festivals. We have seen at least one in every city we have been in. This one was a military parade along with a lot civil organizations and scouts all around the central plaza. BTW, you should all know that we both expressed disappointment that the US army does not do proper military parades showing off its tanks, missiles, soldiers and such. The problem is that there is no good parade-friendly plaza like here. So David and I decided to move to North Korea where brother Kim is sure to accommodate us several times a day against the backdrop of starving millions. Never mind moving to the UK, North Korea it is.
The guidebooks warned that the Peruvian personal space is much smaller than what we consider comfortable but we did not experience that until today…when I was sitting on a bench on the plaza watching the parade and a greasy middle-aged man sat down right next to me – and I mean right next to me. A page out of the BOM would not fit. I waited exactly two seconds, not wanting to cause an international incident, before I was gone faster than my money at Costco. Brrrrrr.
Our next adventure was a local museum that houses the frozen mummy Juanita, discovered in 1995. She is the best human Inca sacrifice ever found because at over 6000 meters above sea level she was kept always frozen. David who has been faithfully taken pictures in every museum where photography is prohibited, got caught this time and was escorted by the security guard outside. They made him delete his pictures. Of course never having encountered a species like my honey, they did not realize that he had another camera and was also recording the audio of the presentation on the iPhone. There no words. I can’t decide if I should be proud or livid.
After that adventure we just strolled through the city and bought a bus tour. Yes, I know, (how touristy can we get) but it actually turned out to be an awesome choice because we went to parts of the city we would never get to. We got a spectacular view of the three volcanoes looming over the city–only two of which are inactive. The third one is due for an explosion (it erupts about every 500 years, and, surprise, last time was for the Conquistadores). Arequipa’s population is over a million, BTW.
Arequipa is also much more developed than Cusco, though there are apparently slums in the north part of the city.