Well, my friends, we have arrived.  Yippy skippers!  We've only been here 5 days, but Columbus has already welcomed us with open arms.  We’ve received several questions from you’s guys, so this post will be sort of a Q&A, okay?  But first, I should officially announce that after India, Sweetums (aka, Amy) has been the main writer of the posts you are reading.  I know this probably takes the fun out of guessing who’s writing what, but in order to spare Sweetpea from any responsibly, it had to be done.  Entonces, on with the answers to your questions!

YG: (you’s guys): What are your first impressions of Columbus?
S: (sweetums): It is beautiful!  It is very green with lots of tress and neat historic neighborhoods.  Even though the city is large, you’re able to get around pretty quickly.  The people have been very friendly, so friendly in fact, that we have to plan extra time for all our errands, because it’s not going to be a quick in-and-out transaction!  The weather has been great – about 89 with medium humidity.

YG: Do you have a place yet?
S: No, crazies!!  Rule #1: Never rent a place that you haven’t actually seen yet!  It may look awesome on craigslist, but then you get there and the whole block has boarded up houses, or none of the door frames have doors (but have hinges, like there used to be doors), or they forgot to mention that it has no appliances – that includes no stove.  Sadly, we saw all of these things at one time or another during our many years of moving and searching out new digs.  Here in Columbus, we’ve gone to a few showings so far and hope to find something fairly soon.  Stay tuned for that!  For now, we are officially living at the cheapest extended stay hotel we could find.  Fancy!  Entonces, on with the questions:

YG:   When does Rob start school?
S: Orientation is on August 6th!

YG: What exactly IS a buckeye?
S: The Ohio Buckeye is their state tree!  OSU’s mascot is Brutus Buckeye, who resembles a Buckeye nut.  We’re the nuts!  Go us!

YG:  Any more interesting or crazy things happen?
S: Well…the car battery died pretty quick once we arrived in town, which wasn’t so bad because at least it didn’t stall at a random rest stop in West Virginia!  We just had to spend a few hours looking through boxes in our storage unit to find the battery warranty – which we found!  Yea!   We also actually semi-enjoyed our time at the Ohio BMV (Bureau of Motor Vehicles) because it was the most diverse crowd we’ve seen (and we’ve been to lot of DMVs!).  There were several Korean young adults, a couple of middle eastern women, two darker-skinned guys speaking French, whites, blacks, hispanics, and a couple Polynesians.  It’s like people from every place we’ve lived all put together in one place!  Columbus is going to be awesome.

So, we are currently in Richmond, Virginia visiting some of our beloved relatives – having a blast and starting to get a little anxious to arrive in Columbus to start our next big adventure – medical school!  In the past two weeks, we’ve gone from Albuquerque to Oklahoma to Alabama to Virginia.  Of course, all of our adventures seem to be fraught with some sort of mishap and our cross-country expedition has been no exception.

Driving from ABQ to OKC was like driving into the flames of hell, well – for me (Amy) anyway.  We started the drive (happily full of coffee, tea, and breakfast burritos) only to find that I started feeling a bit ill.  Things started to get hotter and hotter and hotter.  By the time we finished the 9-hour drive and arrived in OKC, I had a smoldering temperature of 102.5 degrees.  Yay for being sick AGAIN!  I thought I was dying and really was worried that maybe my malaria wasn’t cured after all.  First stop in town?  Urgent care.  Luckily we found a place that was very efficient and we only waited about 15 minutes.  I looked absolutely horrible and the staff kept giving me that puppy dog face and saying, “oh, you poor thing.”  If puppy dog faces were medicine, I’d be cured.  Thankfully, I wasn’t having a malaria relapse, but a throat infection relapse (my 4th in the past ten months!).  I think someone cursed me in India.  Apparently, I haven’t been fully kicking the old infections and it keeps coming back every couple of months.  So, more antibiotics for me! 

Next, as a welcome-back present from the State of Virginia, we received a court summons after being caught in a police roadblock for an expired safety inspection on our vehicle.  We had only been in the state less than 24 hours – now that’s luck!  Fortunately, the officer had some compassion and said to send him our information once our cars are in good standing in Ohio (titled, inspected, and registered) and he’ll attend the court date for us to explain our situation to the judge.  Our court date is at the beginning of July, which means we are even MORE motivated to find a place in Columbus quickly – since you can’t register vehicles until you can prove residency.  If we don’t, we could have a warrant out for our arrest in the state of Virginia.  Awesome!!

On another note, in retrospect I think we would have paid someone $100 to figure out the most stress-free way to move two vehicles and a motorcycle from NM to Ohio and organize it for us, because the way it has unfolded has given Rob a few more gray “wisdom hairs” on his beard.  Trying to add a tow hitch and after-market tow light wiring on a vehicle and renting a motorcycle trailer seems straight forward, but after trying to track down equipment in NM, then have it not show up and then have them try to get it to Virginia, it was a nightmare.  When we finally found one of the parts we needed, the man on the phone told us to pick it up at their “Princess Anne Road” location in Virginia Beach.  No problem!  Actually, yes, it was a bit of a problem because we had forgotten that Princess Anne is one of the longest roads in Virginia Beach and pretty much takes you to North Carolina.   As we faithfully followed the GPS, we found ourselves out in the countryside, driving past strawberry fields in Pungo and ending up about 15 minutes from the North Carolina border.  Well, that was a scenic way to get some car parts!

At this point, things seem to be coming together.  We got the tow hitch and electrical equipment installed.  Got the trailer rented and hooked up.  Got the motorcycle from my uncle’s house.  Got loaded and started heading to Richmond and then, we hear a loud pop and see some debris break off into the wind behind us.  Hmm.  Wonder what that was….  It ended up being the tread from one of the trailer tires, which was quickly separating and about to explode.  We made an emergency roadside stop on I-64.  Of course, we were halfway between exits, were unable to drive above 10 mph on the shredding tire, had empty bellies, and it was 88 degrees.  Rather than risk pulling onto the freeway and driving at 10 mph, we decided to wait for help.  It took about 2 hours for the thing to get fixed, so we got to spend a decent amount of time hanging out on the highway shoulder.  But on the positive side, my handy dandy P-style got another starring role in a roadside pee stop.  Yes, everyone, I peed on the side of I-64, with cars rushing by at 70 mph.  I might have looked like a man, but I’ve never felt like such a superwoman!

Now, we’re off to Roanoke, Virginia tomorrow and should arrive in Columbus early this week.  After we get a place to live, new driver’s licenses, and some Ohio State Buckeye gear, we’ll have to find out what exactly a buckeye is.  Get ready Ohio, here we come!!

Great Expedition Facts

Miles traveled so far: 2,153
States driven through: 9 (NM, TX, OK, AR, TN, MS, AL , KY, VA)
Books listened to:
“Stories I Only Tell My Friends” by Rob Lowe
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by JK Rowling

Roadtrip fights: 1  (incident occurred at an organic food store in Memphis, TN)

After Machu Picchu, we were fulfilled and ready to head home.  Our international journeys were officially complete.  As always, it’s crazy how fast time goes by.  It seems like just yesterday we were taking the initial plunge to travel and were deciding where to go.  Now, almost a year later, we have been to The Netherlands, India, Guatemala, and Peru.  I almost can’t believe it myself!  We’ve gained so much - learned new things, opened our hearts, and changed our perspectives. 

For anyone considering travel, I whole-heartedly encourage you to do so.  There are few things in our life that have challenged us so completely, made us define who we are and what we believe, and come to terms with all those unanswered questions we’ve left tucked away deep inside of ourselves.  We’ve struggled with the large questions for so long – “What am I doing with my life?”, “What’s my purpose?”, “I feel like I can do something really great, but what is it?”.  Travel of course is not a magic fix-all, answer-all, but being in a new place and seeing how other people in this world live, you are forced to come face-to-face with your ideals, your beliefs, your feelings, and your desires in life.  It’s an illuminating experience.  For the first time, you aren’t hiding anything.  You meet yourself.  And it is rewarding and uplifting beyond words.

At the present moment we are back in The States, spending quality time with our New Mexican friends and family.  We just finished a month personal retreat at a friend’s cabin in Kingston, NM.  We were able to relax, reflect on the past year and all our experiences, and prepare ourselves a little for what the future holds for us.

We are happy to be in NM for our nephew’s 6th birthday party and our niece’s graduation from high school.  At the end of May, we start our journey to Columbus - Rob and Amy Expedition of 2012!  This travel blog will now be our “life” blog and I will be updating it weekly, so check back often and subscribe using the RSS feed button to receive automatic notices of new posts!  Thank you again everyone for your support during this past year!!  Abrazos grandes a ustedes!!  (Bigs hugs to you all!)

So get your laughs out now – yes, there is a lake in Peru named Titicaca.  The third grader in me giggles with embarrassment – you said titi and caca!!  Ha ha!  But in seriousness, this is one of the most ancient and sacred lakes in the world.  We stayed in the main city by the lake shores called Puno.  This city is a bit like San Francisco.  The landscape is very mountainous, so all the houses are built along the mountainsides with steep roads connecting the residential areas to the main “downtown” of the city.  To our surprise, our little canyon workout didn’t really do much to help us climb these vertical streets any easier.  The main problem was the altitude, which was about 12,400 feet above sea level.  We were out of breath just walking a couple of feet.  We felt like such fatties.

In this region the main drink is Coca tea, which is just water and coca leaves, and helps your body adjust to the altitude and prevent altitude sickness.  Coca leaves are actually what they make cocaine out of.  Of course it takes about 200 kg of leaves to make 1 kg of cocaine, so a couple cups of tea was harmless, although I kept freaking out to Rob saying, “Great, now I’ve done drugs!  I’ve done cocaine!!”  I didn’t really, but I tend to be a bit dramatic at times.  Oh, and a little fact – Coca Cola used to be made out of coca leaves, that’s how it got the name!

We had plans to go visit a bunch of the little islands around the lake, but ended up having something come up with our family back in the States and we felt like we needed to be there.  The traveling has been amazing, but at this point in our journey we were starting to get a bit run down (mostly because of all the sicknesses!) and were already feeling ready to head back “home.”

So we decided to change our plans and head back early.  However, we absolutely HAD to visit Machu Picchu before we left Peru.  We were able to cancel our Machu Picchu trek and made last minute arrangements to head to Cuzco, the base camp city to Machu Picchu and then make the trip ourselves to the mountain city.

In Cusco our time was short, but we did meet this couple from Canada at our hostel, and we out on St. Patrick’s day with them which was a blast.  One of the best parts of travel are all the amazing people you meet from all over the world!

The day after we arrived in Cusco, we started the trek up to Machu Picchu.  It consists of several combi rides (collective taxis) that took most of the day, then a three hour hike to Aguas Calientes, the closest city to Machu Picchu.  The next day, we paid a ridiculous amount to take a bus up to the actual sight, since we were toasted from all the traveling/walking the day before.  But all the effort was totally worth it.

There is this spot at that looks over the ruins of Machu Picchu and it will make anyone speechless.  Here you are at 7,970 feet, surrounded by towering mountains and floating clouds, looking upon a city built on a mountain peak in the middle of the sky.  The city is just there, like something had set it on top of the mountain.  All the sides surrounding the city are straight drop-offs.  How this location was chosen, how this city was built, and how people survived up here is unfathomable.  This place is so mysterious, like many ancient places in Peru, where there are more questions than answers.  One just has to stand in awe in the face of unbelievable earthly creations and feel the shivers run down your spine.  Beautiful, incredible, unbelievable.  How blessed we are to have been in that place and experienced it’s magic.

Colca Canyon is a little jot from Arequipa and claims to be the deepest canyon in the world.  Being a native of the American Southwest and having just recently visited The Grand Canyon, I laughed at this statement.  Oh, Peruvians, you’re so funny with your, “Mine is biggest!” claims.  But, apparently there are many ways in which you can measure things like canyons, mountains, and volcanos.  So considering that the top of Colca Canyon is at 13,650 feet, I now believe it is the deepest.  The landscape and view were beautiful, with a “quaint” feel compared to the rolling majesty of the The Grand Canyon. 

We decided to be adventurous (and also prepare for the trek to Machu Picchu) by doing a 3 day, 2 night trek in and out of the heart of the canyon.  Our group was a good size for trekking: me and Rob, two British teenagers, a German guy and Spanish guy around our age, plus our guide.  She was a cute little thing of only 20 years old that spoke pretty decent English and was very patient with the slower trekking pace of two group members…who will remain nameless. 

We hiked for about 4-5 hours each day either straight up or straight down and camped for the night at some pretty sweet little cabin setups.  The second night, our accommodations were right at the base of the river with a large grassy area for soccer and a natural-water pool.  It was awesome!  (spiders and scorpions aside – hey, it’s the wilderness!).  The treks were pretty challenging for us, but lots of fun.  I kept shouting, “I love trekking!!  Me siento viva!!” (I feel alive)  Rob just stared at me with vexation.  For me, and Rob claims for him as well, is was so fun because I really got to challenge myself and it is an amazing feeling when you look up a cliff that you’re supposed to climb and think to yourself, “Oh, hell no!” but then find yourself making that final push at the end to arrive at the top.  Of course the rest of the group was waiting and erupted with wild applause.  “Thank you, thank you, friends!  I’ve finally arrived!”

On the bus back to Arequipa we met a really cool young entrepreneur from California that had recently sold his online business for a nice sum and was doing some traveling for awhile to relax, reflex, explore, and re-evaluate.  We hope to visit him sometime in the near future!  We also stopped at a hot springs and an alpaca farm on the way back.

The trip was a great success!  Fun, invigorating, plus we could still walk (albeit with much pain and soreness).  Rob’s highlight from the trip was trying fresh, local alpaca meat, and I am thrilled to announce that I did not fall, not even once!!  Yes! (fist pump)

Arequipa is a one of the most popular cities in Peru and it became our home for a little while – about a week and half, which is a substantial about of time when living on the road.  Arequipa brought us several new adventures:

1 – DELISH restaurants and dessert spots.  This little café had, quite possibly, thee BEST carrot cake I’ve ever had in my entire life.  Ever.  We also sampled several different types of crepes at this cool restaurant called Crepisimo; went to bars with a wide variety of strange and interesting mixed drinks (If ever in Peru, never, I mean NEVER order the “Machu Picchu”.  It’s absolutely horrible); and tried the famous “adobo” which is a traditional Peruvian meal of slow-cooked pork in a chili-type sauce (that’s the best description I can muster).  It is only served on Sundays and is the thing all the locals talk about.  Rob said it was pretty good.  I ended up eating a loma saltado meal which is pretty much stir-fry chicken served on a bed of french fries.  Ah, I love traveling!  Speaking of adobo…

2 – So this guy (named Carlos, dressed in professional soccer gear, aged in mid 40s) at the adobo place was sitting in a booth across from us, noticed us whities and struck up a conversation.  It was awesome to try out our Spanish with a local!!  He spoke some English and we spoke some Spanish - communication was rough, but somewhat understandable, which led to us understanding that: he was a lawyer, on business from Lima in Arequipa, a member of a Lawyer Country Club, was going to play soccer post-adobo, and wanted us to join.  Here’s one of those situations you encounter while traveling that makes you test your instincts.  Everyone tells you to never go anywhere with a stranger, but this guy seemed so legit and friendly.  Rob and I tried to have the silent conversation that couples have w/o saying anything to figure out what to do.  It went something like: Eyebrow raise = “What do you think?”, Slight shoulder shrug = “I don’t know, you?”, Pursed lip pulled to one side = “Hm.”, Weak smile = “I guess we could go??”

In the end, we decided to trust the guy, and hit the club with him.  Of course, I have never played soccer and Rob hasn’t played since he was 10, but hey, we could figure it out, right?  Right.  We left the eatery with him, while the main waitress flagged me down and in Spanish said to please be careful, watch my stuff, and come back to the restaurant (to make sure we were okay).  One of the lessons we’ve learned in travel is to have faith.  People will take care of you!

So we got in a cab with Carlos, and his girlfriend Marilu joined us.  They were speaking quite fast, and we were trying our best to understand.  We were a bit on edge, but just decided to go with them.  Sure enough, the cab dropped us off at the lawyer Country Club where we got to hang out as special guests and Rob revisited his youth playing some pretty awesome soccer (in Teva sandels, mind you!).  All was well and we had a great time with our new friends.  See, sometimes you just have to have faith in people.

3 – Colca Canyon, which shall be my next blog topic….read on my friends!

The town of Nazca is really only known for one thing - the famous Nazca Lines.  Never heard of it?  We didn’t either until Amy read, “Fingerprints of the Gods” and few years ago.  If you’re interested in a brief overview, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines.

To set the scene, think of traveling out to the middle of the desert where it is VERY dry and hot…pretty much Arizona.  Here were there is virtually no rainfall, an ancient civilization felt compelled to draw geoglyphs in the sand.  There are hundreds of figures, but about 10 are the most obvious and well-known: the whale, spider, hummingbird, fish, monkey, and a human figure called "the astronaut" because of the appearance of boot-like shoes and a rounded head.  As with the candelabra we saw Pisco, no one knows exactly when or why they were created or what the symbols mean.  There are many theories, all fun to consider.  Everyone likes a good mystery!  Some say it is a detailed water map, others say they are religious symbols or astronomical representations, and others...aliens!

We splurged (we seem to be doing that a lot!) and booked ourselves two tickets on a small aircraft to get a birds-eye view of the lines.  This is really the only way to see them.  It was a quick trip, but definitely worth it.  Again, we have never seen anything like this.  Check out the pics below, I posted the ones that are the easiest to make out.

After visiting The Lines, we had another day in Nazca, so we decided to visit a museum.  This one was pretty uninteresting at first (although, it would have been an anthropologist’s dream!), since it was pretty much a museum explaining a series of archeological digs – a bit on the dry side – until, we entered the part of where they displayed all their findings.  This museum had pottery from 2000 years ago.  Some of the pottery had representations of people of different ethnicities.  This was shocking.  Haven’t we heard that these people had no contact with other societies, especially before the Spanish came, yet here in this pottery are not just brown faces, but black, tan, and white faces too.  There are also several pieces depicting what is clearly a man of Asian descent, with Asian features and a thin, long mustache.  This means that either they had contact with these people or knew about them somehow.  We kinda didn't know what to think.  Our minds were blown.  There is so much we don't know about what happened in the past!  The mystery deepens!

So, a little apology my friends.  Blogging while traveling is difficult business, so just as in India, we are way behind on blog posts.  However, I will continue to post them and hope you'll still enjoy reading them knowing that we are safely back in The States.  Oh yea, we're back in The States.  We're in Las Cruces right now visiting friends and family.  This weekend we'll be heading to a cabin in NM for a little retreat before we go back to reality and head to Columbus.  I intend to get this blog caught up to present time, and keep it updated as we continue our adventures.  Thank you for your patience!  With that said, here's the latest blog post - Enjoy!

Our next stop after Pisco – ICA!  Which we pretty much waived hello to and then headed straight for Huacachina, a tourist haven nestled between sand dunes about 40 miles across and 300 feet high (that’s our guess, which could be wildly inaccurate, but just visualize sands dunes as far as the eye can see!).  This city’s biggest tourist thing is four-wheeling through the dunes and sandboarding down the slopes.  Amy about peed her pants just thinking of it (she’s not the most adventurous gal), but she got over herself and one fine evening we decided to check it out.  Our description wouldn’t possibly capture this experience.  It was SO fun and quite the adrenaline rush.  Some of the drivers are crazy!!  Ours, thankfully, was just the right amount of crazy to make the experience fun, but not scary.  And the sand-boarding was pretty awesome, which is saying a lot since Amy strongly dislikes anything related to snowboards (bad experience at Killington, Vermont one year), but the dunes where so high that most amateurs couldn’t actually go down standing up.  We all went down on our bellies.  FUN!!  Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of this, since we didn’t want to ruin our camera with sand.

At this point in our Peruvian adventure, we started to discover a little pattern with flying objects and Amy’s right eyeball.  Apparently, her eyelashes appear to be a runway for flies, gnats, and other flying things to park on.  At least once a day, she had some little guy fly directly at her eye.  A couple of times, she closed her eye quickly and caught them in her eyelashes.  This is not fun, folks!  Of course Rob started laughing everytime this would happen, because it’s like all these flies went and told their friends about Amy.  As you can expect, she started wearing sunglasses a lot more.

The day after sandboarding, we did a little wine tour to some nearby wineries.  Southern Peru is known for its fine grape-growing climate and making the countries best wines and Pisco (a brandy liquor).  Our verdict: Peru, drop the wine, stick to the Pisco!

Our last day in this area, we headed into town (Ica) to visit a museum that our Lonely Planet raved about.  We like museums; we’re totally those people.  This museum was pretty quaint, but totally blew our minds.  The museum was robbed back in 2004 where some of the most ancient weavings were stolen.  We learned that, sadly, ancient art robbery is quite a booming profession.  Despite this, their collection is still pretty impressive.  It is mostly of the Paracas and Nazca civilizations, which is pre-Incan, we’re talking 500 B.C.E.!  The most striking thing was the last room of the museum which houses several full mummies, skulls, and even a mummified macaw (complete with feathers!).  The bodies were preserved so well, that some of them still had skin and hair.  The skulls were also mind-blowing.  Did you know that these ancient people were obsessed with perfecting their appearance just like we are today?  We like to shave ourselves, dye our hair, have plastic surgery, etc.; they liked to shape people's heads.  They thought that head shape was the most beautiful and distinguished thing.  The upper classes of this society practiced head deformation, where they wrapped the head and used contraptions to shape the head from the time of birth.  The most common shape was elongated (think coneheads, but flat on top).  We were truly speechless.  We’ve never seen anything quite like it.  We felt like we literally had stepped back in time with all these bodies.  We weren’t able to take pictures, but we’ve posted a picture from the web to give you the idea of what we saw.

So, at this point, we were really beginning to get a glimpse of ancient Peru.  Now for some REAL mysteries…the Nazca Lines!

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Our time in Peru is spent traveling what is known as “The Gringo Trail.”  Pretty much, you start out in Lima, work your way around the south, then start heading north until you end up in Cusco (Machu Picchu area).  So like good little Gringos, we headed from Lima down to Pisco/Paracas.  Here we got our first taste of just how hot southern Peru can get.  HOT!  Paracas is a beach town with its major attraction being the Ballestas Islands, a protected wildlife reserve.  Tourists can ride out in a motor boat around the island, which we totally did.  On the way to the islands, we got a little “Nazca Lines” preview with “The Candelabra” which is a giant geoglyph (figure) etched on the side of a hill.  Specialists don’t know what is figure really represents or any details other than it was strategically placed here where there is virtually no rainfall, so the figure has remained intact all these years.  Nearby pottery has dated to 200 B.C.E. (the time of the Paracas people) - Pretty incredible!  Once we got to the reserve, there were thousands of birds, penguins, sea lions, BABY sea lions, gigantic jelly fish…it was awesome.  A perfect way to spend one of our days.

We didn’t spend too much time in Paracas, since it was a pretty small town and completely flooded with tourists.  Our hotel and the main hangin’ spot was in Pisco (about 10 minutes away by cab).  This town is pretty local, with much fewer tourists running amuk.  Our hotel was super cozy, and we really thought we could stay there for a long time, except that is was friggin’ hot and we were pretty ready to move on.

We did have an interesting adventure one day out to a neighboring town called El Carmen.  There was an Afro-Peruvian festival called Negro Verano, supposedly one of the best festivals in all of Peru.  After researching it online, checking our “trusty” Lonely Planet, and asking around, we thought we had figured out the location and timing and headed out on several local style van-buses out into the middle of nowhere.  We arrived around 2:00 pm to find that the festival only started at 8:00 pm, which was inconvenient for us, since the shuttle buses stopped running at 7:00 pm to get back into town.  The town was incredibly tiny and filled with true gringo vagabonds.  They littered the streets with that unshowered, “I had a REALLY tough night” sort of look about them.  After asking around, we realized pretty quickly that we had timed things horribly and were going to miss the festival altogether.  The only thing open was a tourist office, I mean, a small room in a guy’s house where he had a few pieces of clay llama art for sale and some newspaper clippings pinned to the walls.  He was wearing only pants.  Rightfully so, since it was a billion degrees.  We tried to communicate with him in Spanish, and started getting somewhere when Amy asked him to explain the town history to us very, very slowly.  He was a good sport.  You can only imagine speaking word-for-word, taking about 30 seconds to say one sentence.  But, it was successful and we got the gist.  Back in the day, Africans were brought all over the world by Europeans and the Spanish were no exception.  They brought thousands of African people to South America, including Peru, and made them slave laborers.  This town of El Carmen has a high Afro-Peruvian population, hence the annual festival.  It would have been pretty sweet to see the festival, but again, no such luck.  Instead, Amy asked if this nice man would play something “traditional” for us, and the man took out his fiddle and began to play and sing.  His little grand-daughter promptly ran in and started singing and dancing.  These are the best experiences!

So, we made it back to Pisco, spent the evening in the Plaza de Armas (all towns have this – it’s like a central park) and watched some local kids breakdance.  Not quite what we had planned, but quite enjoyable none-the-less!  Plus, Amy loves watching break-dancers!!  (Please, folks, allow them to hang out in your parks.  They liven up the atmosphere and it gives the young kids a place to hang!)