tremors

we were enjoying the first tv we´ve seen in over a month in our hostal in arequipa last night (not only do we have a tv, but we have a tv with cable) and about halfway in to the cheesy american horror movie we were watching on cinemax, chris said ¨do you feel that? my bed is moving.¨ thinking he was teasing me after my admission that i´m a wuss when it comes to horror movies, i laughed. and then i felt my bed move. we sat still for about half a minute and felt our beds shaking slightly. ¨earthquake. cool,¨ we said and went back to watching the movie. arequipa has its share of earthquakes, some big, some small, and so we assumed this was normal. a couple hours later at an internet cafe we learned it was not normal and not really cool. there was a 7.9 earthquake off the coast near picso, south of lima. the woman running the cafe got a call about it and quickly switched over the tv to the news. as we were watching live coverage from lima, we saw a live aftershock. as i watch the news and as i read more about it, i´m very glad we decided to spend the remainder of the trip in arequipa and not on the coast as we had considered...

peru is large and after leaving ollantaytambo, we decided not to cover too much ground in our last week here. sunday we travelled to puno, a city on lake titicaca. on monday we headed out onto to the lake to visit the floating reed island of uros qhantati where we were to meet victor and cristina who are a part of toursim cooperative on the small island that is part of the network of communities that are working to manage tourism that klever is a part of: (http://www.chaskiventura.com/cuscoperu-es/c1-5-isla-titicaca-flotante.html).

the uros islands are almost beyond explanation. they are small anchored islands built with layers and layers of reeds on which a small number of families live and welcome tourists with handicrafts and a brief and unique experience. you have to arrange a visit to the island of qhantati in advance. the boats don´t stop there, so they don´t have people showing up on their doorstep at all hours of the day. we settled into the reeds and interviewed victor and cristina with the help of a woman named andrea from seattle that we fortunately met on the boat on the way over who spoke fluent spanish and who fortunately agreed to be our translator. cristina makes the best trucha (trout, which they raise in a small pool in the center of the small island) in all of peru and we ate an amazing meal of it, quinoa, and fruit salad before victor and cristina kindly rowed us back to shore so we could catch our evening bus to arequipa.

we arrived in arequipa to find out it was the beginning of the annual celebration of the founding of the city. on tuesday during the day, the streets were filled with marching bands and parades. after visiting the large and beautiful monastary of santa catalina (http://www.santacatalina.org.pe), we stopped to watch a parade. a man came down from one of the floats to offer us some chicha, which provided a great distraction as we were attacked from behind with confetti and colored powder and pulled into the parade to dance with our hair and faces now pink and purple. as soon as the sunset, the street were filled with revelers who celebrated until dawn. at about 9am the next morning, the only person on the street was a garbage man pushing a cart filled with empty wine bottles.

arequipa is an amazing city and a great place to spend the last few days of our trip. chris went this morning to climb the nearby mountain chanchani and he is very excited to be stapping some crampons to his boots and climbing to the snowy 6000 meter peak. in the meantime, i´m happily going to be exercising my sorely under-used city legs and exploring the streets of arequipa. tommorrow we will celebrate our last night in peru. saturday morning we fly back to lima, conduct one last quick interview for the film and then catch our plane back the states.