And we're back....

well well, where do I begin?? I last left off on January 23, 2010.....

Jan 22- my last solo day in Lima. I may or may not have gone to see that movie about the toothfairy starring The Rock, but you can't prove it. I met a Peruvian English student who asked me why I wasn't fat if I was from the United States. I told him that it was my vodka diet, and that everyone else in the States is, indeed at least 600 pounds. I ate some ceviche that afternoon seeing as how I was headed for the mountains, and let's face it, eating ceviche in the Peruvian mountains isn't exactly one of the best ideas a person could ever have. I called mom and dad that night to assure them that I was alive and we had a wonderful chat, and then I headed to the bus station to make my way to Arequipa.

Jan 23- I woke up that morning on the bus to Arequipa to the wonderful 2009 flick "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." We also had the pleasure of playing Cruz Del Sur bingo, and the lady next to me won!! Sacanagem!! I was so close!! If Cath had been sitting there, we would have had a free bus ticket. Blast!! I really wanted that blue ribbon. Anywho, I arrived in Arequipa and just as we were pulling into town, I saw an Andean condor!! No joke!! It was really cool and really big. I spent the afternoon exlporing the town a bit. I had a nice lucuma, mango, and maracuya smoothie, which was quite delightful. I went to the Santuarios Andinos UCSM Museum to see Juanita the Ice Maiden, and that was pretty cool. She was found on top of the volcano Ampato, when the glaciers started to retreat back in 1995. She was an Incan sacrifice to the volcano gods and has been frozen in perfect condition for over 500 years. Really cool, you should read this link if you are bored. Another interesting fact about Arequipa is that they have an unnatural amount pigeons. This flock was about 8,000 times bigger than the one that was listening to reggaeton outside our hostel in Lima. That is a lot of pigeons. I headed to Cusco that night.

Jan 24- I arrived in Cusco extremely early that morning and it was FREEZING!!!!!! It was POURING down rain and I was soaked the instant I stepped outside. Little did I know at the time what was about to come. I ran to the nearest hostel in order to escape the weather, and then spent the rest of the day trying to track down Ashley via Internet and wandering around La Plaza de Armas. Around 4pm, there was a break in the weather, so I sat on a bench and started drawing the church, hoping Ashley would find me there. And she did!! Horray!! Reunited at last!! We went back to a coffee shop where 4 of her friends from her recent travels were waiting. They were all pretty cool, and we just kind of hung out there for a while to avoid the torrential downpours. That is about when I realized that the rains in Cusco were out of control. We went out in search of a hostel for the group, and it was raining sooo hard, I was a drowned rat. We were wading in water through the streets and I am fairly sure that 95% of the water was raw sewage, mostly because I saw raw sewage spewing out of the drains.... It was gross. And wet. And cold. 8 hours later, we found a suitable hostel for everyone, and I gathered up my stuff from the one I had taken shelter in earlier, and with the help of a rather persuasive Frenchman, was able to ditch that place and move in with the rest of htem. 98 more gallons of rain on my head and 6 feet of sewage later, we went to a restaurant where you sit on pillows on the floor and eat veggie food. We met a lot of other meditators there, and drank copious amounts of vino to celebrate our reunion. We also drew our top 7 favorite animals for everyone. Classic Ashley and Margaret. We had to shank the coke bottle full of wine that night because I had closed the lid too tight. Classic Margaret. And then it was so cold that night, we all slept in a real pile.

Jan 25- all my clothes were soaked in raw sewage, but luckily the hostel people had a laundry service, so happy day!! I had clean clothes in no time!! What a concept. They even had a drier. We mostly spent that day meandering around, and taking care of business. We walked up 484 steps to Quenqo to see some ruins, which was cool, although I did slip in mud. But we were pretty high up a mountain, so I think the chances of it having been mud and not mud mixed with sewage were pretty good. I tried to Skype mom and dad that night, but of course every computer I ever try to use has something wrong with it, so it didn't really work. Blast. We went back to the restaurant from the night before and shared some more good veggie food. We contemplated going out on the town, but the rain was relentless and we were soaked and cold again. So, we went to bed early and Ashley almost burned down the room with her sandalwood.

Jan 26- we ate a delicious breakfast with sauco jam and I saw a spider catch a fly and eat it right next to me. Apparently it wasn't satisfied with the sauco jam and it wanted some protein in its belly. Ashley got her passport that day!!! Whoohooo!! We walked around many markets, eating choclo con queso and popcorn. We got some rather snazzy Andean women leg warmers too. Warm and fashionable. The rain was still in full force, but we still hadn't heard much about the affects they were having on the campesinos at that point. Everyone went out to Indian food, but I didn't really feel all that good, so I went back home to sleep. Damn my post nasal drip and its direct correlation with the weather.

Jan 27- I woke up feeling much better, and there was a break in the rain that morning. Oh happy day. Ash and I left the hostel and accidentally met The Prophets of the Bible of Cannibus. They only wear white and they make vegetarian sandwiches and sell them in La Plaza de San Blas. They are from everywhere and nowhere. It was right after we met the prophets that we were informed about the devstation that the rains were causing in the campesinos. The flooding had reached the point of natural distaster and Cusco was declared to be in a state of emergency. People were dying and 1000s had lost their homes, their crops, their animals, everything. We went to La pLaza Mayor and ran into Guido, one of the guys from Ashleys meditation retreat. He was going to help lead a relief effort, and of course we wanted to help. So, we canceled our plans to go to Bolivia that night and jumped right in. We spent 8 hours that day collecting food, clothing, medicine, blankets, etc. and organzing it. Ashley and I kind of took over the shoe station, and organized all the pairs for the victems. We worked until about 10 or 11pm and even missed our salsa date for the sake of humanity.

Jan 28- We woke up at about 7am to go back and help. We found one of the Swedes that we met during the collection from the night before passed out in the pile of clothes.... he must have had a rough night after we left the shoe station.... We collected and sorted for about 3 hours, and then we were appointed by the officials to do medical reporting and environmental anaylisis in order to assess the immediate needs of the victems in the surrounding villages of the Sacred Valley. So, we hopped in a van with 2 Argentinians, a Spaniard, and 2 Peruvians, and made our way to Urubama, about an hour away. Wer visited about 5 communities between Urubamba and Ollantaytambo, and never in my life have I seen to much devastation with my own two eyes. It was horrible. Thousands of people were living in makeshift tents because their mud brick houses had just completely disintegrated in the floods. They had absolutely nothing. We distributed 1000s of gallons of water to these people, believe me, I had to count them, and they were so grateful, it felt good to help. I got many hugs. It is hard to put into words really. We ended up bringing many of the donations to the city center in Urubamba, for the people to distribute among themselves, and then we ended up back in Cusco around 7pm. During this time, we met Edgard, a University professor\archaeologist\guide\National Geographic photographer that was one of the people in charge of the relief oeffort. Grateful for our help, he offered us a place to stay and we gladly accepted. Our "A Team" went out for pizza and beer that night and had a good time relaxing after such a traumatizing day. Ash and I ended the night in bunk beds lined with alpaca and feather pillows. So nice.

Jan 29- The next day, Edgard made us lomo saltado, a traditional Peruvian meal, and gave us a Peruvian history lesson, which was extremely interesting. The relief effort was starting to dwindle after only such a short time because the government officials were trying to take control of something that the community ahd been running and everything fell apart. Needless to say, we did what we could, but short of buying our own helicopter and winning the lottery, without the community support of transportatoin and manpower, there was not much else we could do that day. Things were unraveling and it was frustrating because we wanted to do so much more. That night, Edgard and his nephew Yuri took us out salsa dancing. 76 cuba libres later, they went home while Ashley and I took on a Cusco discoteq by storm at about 4am. We accidently started a mosh pit and I was accused repeatedly of being Argentinian, Venezuelan, Chilean, Colombian, and Brasilian due to my hot Shakira latin dance moves. Note to self- starting moshpit at 3500 meters is hard on the lungs. There was a she wolf in my closet. I let it out so it could breathe. We went home at about 7am and Ashley honked the horn the entire way. Classic Ashley.

Jan 30- We decided to leave Cusco that night as there was nothing else the two of us could do to help the campesinos anymore. Frustrating, but cest la vie I guess. We spent the day hanging out with Edgard, and getting an inside tour of Cusco. Due to the fact that he knows everybody and is a rather repsected figure around town, we got into a bunch of places for free. We went to an underground museum and saw some Incan ruins and mummies, and saw a tradtional dance show which was pretty cool. We left that night for Puno. And had a few people waiting at the bus station in tuxedos to say bye to us. It was still raining.

Jan 31- We arrived in Puno at about 5am. We lucked out and found a cheap hostel that was really nice near the Plaza De Armas. There were drunk people on the street singing and dancing, so we knew we came to the right place. Carnival time has come. We took a nap, and then headed out. Every single person in town was wearing bright traditonal clohting and playing muscial instruments and dancing. It was crazy. Every street had a parade on it. We went to the futbol stadium and drank some beer and ate cotton candy while watching the dancing in the middle and Ashley sat on a tuna. Then wandered around and Ashley found a cheese grater. Classic Ashley. We got some papas fritas on the street and what they claimed was ketchup was clearly olive juice. Classic Peru. We made our way to get a view of the lake, and it was gorgeous. Lake Titkaka really is big. We headed back to the stadium and were let right in as the people at the door said, "Of course we remember you, you guys are the only two white people in this whole town...." So apparently we had arleady made our mark. The party didn't stop. Ever. Even when it started thundering and lightning at 10pm. We were tired from a long week of trauma and a long day of Brahma, so we hit the sack rather early.

Feb 1- We spent most of the day wandering around, exploring the town of Puno. We went to the Internet, which incidently just made us want to drink rum, so we went to the store and bought some. We then proceeded to drink in the square and watched more and more festivities. We went out to a pizza place that night and met some Californians. We played jenga well into the night.