Viscachas y biscochos

Kamisakari!*

Despues quatro dias de classes sabemos la diferencia entre el (se) llama y la llama. Y es todo que necesitamos en America del Sur.

Because we received a lot of concerned emails about this story being in Spanish, we decided to write most of it in English ;)

Spanish classes & Pisco
We learned so much in our Spanish classes that our Colca-guide told us that our Spanish was better than his (Erno thought he only said this because he wanted a good tip). Anyway the Spanish classes ended with a thanksgiving/Peruvian-alcohol-mixing-night, where one of the dishes was hutspot, because 50% of the students was Dutch. The Peruvian alcohol, Pisco, is also the national alcohol of Chili - in Peru they say the Chileans stole it. We'll post it when we get a Chilean to comment on this.

Puno & Disneyland
Because the Natural History museum of Cusco was still closed after trying several times (because of strikes, congresses and other excuses) and because we couldn't find a tour to NP Manu (another strike and too few tourists), we moved on to lake Titicaca.
The lake is famous for the local people who live on floating islands (and it is the highest navigable lake in the world at 4000m) so we did a tour to see them. It felt like disneyworld (people in colourful dresses jumping up and down waving to your boat - in our minds we heared 'it's a small world after all' ;)), but it was interesting to see how they construct and maintain their little islands.

Mountainbiking & a canyon
After Puno we went to Arequipa (see smuggling & border crossing) and because we were (finally!) at a normal altitude (2300m) we decided to practice cycling again. But we didn't feel as strong as we expected after three weeks of high-altitude training (or maybe Peruvian flat is just too much uphill compared to Holland...)
And of course we visited the number one highlight, the Colca Canyon. We did a three day trekking which was very nice, but tough because of the heat and our early starts (3am, 6am and 4.30am!). The canyon was impressive (and dry!) but we realised once again that the Alpes are very beautiful. And from now on we won't do any tours which start before 6am ;) For animals; see the pictures.

Smuggling & border crossing
Right now we're in Chile after a very smooth border crossing. Traveling inside Peru was a little less smooth... One of our fellow bus passengers tried to smuggle a truckload of (probably Bolivian) alcohol from Puno to Arequipa. Somehow the police found out and they confiscated the alcohol, which took them about 15 minutes unloading all of it. Of course the bus drivers were involved, because there's no way a passenger can bring this much alcohol into the bus unnoticed. An insight into Peruvian life...

Surfing & being stuck
Currently we are in Arica, relaxing one day more than the initial plan, because the bus to San Pedro de Atacama was fully booked due to a national holiday. We're spending our time wisely by waking up late, checking out the local Condor (an ugly vulture), watching sea lions in the port, doing research for the rest of our trip and surfing a bit :)

Viscachas y biscochos... Pan comido
And now for the people who are interested in Spanish, we learned some new sayings:
-Piece of cake = pedazo de biscocho (which is an exact translation, but Erno thought it was pedazo de viscacha, which means 'piece of the local rabbit')
-piece of cake 2 = pan comido (which means eaten bread - they use this in areas where they don't have cake)

Manana we will leave for San Pedro to see some real desert, hasta la proxima!

Erno y Luz

* this is the hello for the lake titicaca people. For us it translated as 'welcome to Disney world'

Ps: and we have a quiz: what uncommon place did we visit and why?
a) the local IKEA
b) the post office
c) the garbage belt
d) a primary school
e) the sea museum
The price is still to be decided ;)