Lima

I´ve made it to Peru! After staying up all night on Friday and having an excellent send off with my way awesome friends Renata, Ygor and Jackie, I got into a LAN Peru plane bleary eyed and slept until we landed in Lima.

In customs, I ran into Judith, a German girl I met in Uruguay. In high school she studied in Colorado and she blows me away by being more American than I am - she quotes Borat a lot and is a trip - we had an amazing time at this seaside buffet the first day there, spending a good 4 or 5 hours and eating a good 6 or 7 plates of food. She has now joined our Wunderteam (thus completely solidifying the European girl to Yankee boy majority) and will rock out with us across Peru.

Yesterday upon arriving I found out it was Día de Pisco, so I had a happy reunion with pisco sours (this time, Peruvian style - the original, even though Chile claims pisco sours as their own, just like the Pacific...ohh!).
Late last night I had a happy reunion with Lena, who now is not sick anymore (she had her wisdom tooth taken out in Honduras which had to have been an adventure) and now has rasta braids care of our Caribbean friends. We´re currently staying in the posh Miraflores barrio where they sell beautiful art and artesanry on the street and I bought a sweet Inka Cola t-shirt for 3 dollars. Today Lena and Judith and I went to the Plaza de Armas and saw a long long parade of conjuntos with drums and Andean flutes and ridiculously cool costumes. Tonight Alex flew in from Switzerland and boy are her arms tired.

Tomorrow we will reunite in the morning and then head south through Pisco (the town that is, although us going through a giant pisco sour is an interesting mental image...but I digress), on to Arequipa, from there over to Cusco, take a train to Machu Picchu, get to Puno / Lake Titicaca, etc. If they let me into Bolivia and I have time I´ll try to go see Mamá Salinas and no matter what I´ll get to Santiago, Chile for a few days to see Marci. Then back to Sweet Home Buenos Aires.