Making it to Peru, Lima disaster.

It has been a rough few days. But we have made it to Cuzco. Where to begin...

Well, the 12 hour bus ride from Quito to the border town Huaquillas took 14 hours, and when we arrived in that SHITTY town we found the worst organized border crossing we´ve encountered ever. To get stamped out of Peru, you had to catch a cab from the bus terminal 4KM back to the immigration, which the bus PASSED but didn´t stop at, forcing everyone to take a cab. The guy told us 4 dollars to drive us there and to the Peru side. We agreed, and went and got stamped out, then he was driving us back and stopped in the middle of the road. He´s like "Oh I can´t go any further, this is Peru now". Okay fine whatever we said, so then we got out and were looking for the Peru immigration office. We asked someone, they´re like "Oh, it´s 3KM ahead." EVERY other border crossing has been walkable, except for one or two where we took a bicycle cart out of laziness. This was ridiculous. So we got a little Took Took (little motorcycle cart taxis that were all over guatemala, and a little bit here) for a dollar to this totally unlabled non descript building. We NEVER would have found it without a taxi. They´re just forcing you into it, jerks.

Anyways. So we managed that, and this was about 730 or so. We were hoping for an 8 oclock bus or a 9 oclock bus since it was 17 hours to Lima and we had to be at the airport by 440 or 500 at the latest. No deal. Earliest bus was at 11AM. And it took 16-18, which means 19. Only in this case it meant 20. Tuesday on the bus all day was rather unexciting, we ate corn on the cob and stopped at a shitty cafeteria
place and managed to get quite a bit of sleep with the help of some rum...only 6AM ruined all of that. At 6 in the "$/(%" morning, this dude gets on and is talking EXTREMELY LOUD in Spanish about some shit, some dude just trying to get money for this and this and that and that. He woke us both up and Anton was freaking out and I was trying to calm him down by telling him he´d stop soon. Like 15 minutes later he was just begging the guy "Get off the bus!! It´s 6 in the morning!! GET OFF THE BUS" so then the guy was like trying to get money and still yelling so Anton tried to hand him a wrapper of some sort while I told him we´d been on this bus for TWENTY HOURS and he WOKE ME UP and could he please be LESS LOUD and the guy said something
else to the people and then TWO people through soda bottles (one empty, one half full) and hit Anton in the head. After a life of being super tall being hit on the head is like his least favorite thing, so he freaked out and stood up and was yelling and I was trying to restrain him and not laugh because he was a bit tipsy still from the rum and all the people in the back (and whoever through the waterbottles) just froze and looked so uncomfortable and just stared at their feet. It was so ridiculous, they were terrified of him. Not that I wouldn´t be, but yeah. Very very ridiculous and frustrating. The guy FINALLY got off the bus after like a half hour. I couldn´t believe it. Try that in America. Try getting on a bus from Portland to Arizona at 6AM after the people have been cramped and miserable for 20 hours and yelling shit and collecting donations. You´d be thrown out the door within 2 minutes. Or shot. Sweet sweet US, almost makes me miss you.

Anyways, so we get to Peru at about 700 and take a bus to the airport so we can figure out our tickets and we find out that our flight has been delayed till 1030 so we can still get on. "Great!" we say, maybe pissing off the maybe was maybe wasn´t preacher won´t curse our day. No deal. After telling us we could get on and us celebrating she was like "oh, wait, I only have 1 seat. We switched from a 150 passanger plane to a 120 passanger plane. Sorry." That would have been much better to hear before feeling overwhelming relief and celebrating, afterwards it was just another blow. Sigghh... And you can´t talk to people here like you can in the States. She said the tickets were non refundable, and I was like, "Well isn´t it the airlines fault that we can´t get on since we are here before the plane left and there are no seats? I mean, if we´d found out the flight was delayed by calling or
something and didn´t show up till now what would happen?" And she flips out and starts being like "You are VERY late, this is not my fault, I´m just trying to HELP" and getting all bitchy and I was like "GEEZ calm down, I wasn´t saying it´s YOUR fault, it just seems like a weird policy" and then Anton sent me away because I was making things worse because 38 hours en route and 30 minutes of being preached to in Spanish at 6AM makes me a bit of a bitch, I´m afraid. So anyways, the girl was very helpful in the end and I was definitely wrong in how I talked to her, but you can get away with that shit in the states. We would have got a refund no problem considering the reason the plane was delayed was because they had to switch planes so if we had been there on time we STILL might not have been able to fly. Whatever though.

So we were told to come back the next morning and we could hopefully fly out then.

AND SO BEGAN THE DAY OF MYSTERIES.

We went to a hostel listed in lonely planet that seemed nice, but it was full, but the same people owned another hostel a mile or so away and took us there and it was a really non descript building with no sigh that was really nicely furnished, was more a 3 bedroom apartment than a hostel, though they didn´t have towels so we had to use tshirts, but that happens) and then we were off to explore Lima. I promptly broke my sunglasses. They were $4, so that´s okay. It was a sign of things to come. We walked a couple miles into the main square and literally the day before Anton had been blabbing and talking about how funny it would be to put a clown nose on me and then take me to dinner and when ordering drinks be like "I´ll have a beer...one for the clown too." and I have NO idea where it came from but we laughed and forgot...and then while walking down the streets of Lima there is a peddler guy selling CLOWN NOSES. It was the most ridiculous coincidence. So we bought it and I wore it around and we went and ate some chicken wings and chicken nugget thingys and garlic bread and Anton ate cow hearts and he got to say to the waitress, "oh, and can you get some salt for the clown?" But it was in Spanish and it was, "O, puede traer alguno sal para el buffon?" It was very funny.

Then we went and drank way too much. Unreasonable amounts even for us. I think the joy of finally getting off the bus carried us away...plus the Pisco (the Peru liquor, 45% and not hard to take shots of) was flowing like water. We were in a bar connected to a hostel, and it had tapas so we had some mushrooms stuffed with cheese and something else (it´s fuzzy now) and a cheese/salami/green olive plate that was tasty. While there I broke this little orange glassish ring I´d bought in Antigua. Broken thing number 3. I guess it was okay though because it was due to me laughing so hard I hit the counter and it shattered, so it was broke in merryment. We met a very fabulous gay Peruvian dress designer that spoke good English and yelled with him for awhile. He had quite the crush on Anton, it was very funny. Gay guys LOVE HIM. Gay guys and older women, that´s his decreed market.

Anyways so at some point we made a really old man draw our pictures (which we managed to not lose, score 1) and we think we took a taxi back from the bar because of a mysterious photo where we appear to be in a car but neither of us know for sure, and also unknown is how we knew where the hostel was because when we had to return later (more on that soon) we had no idea and had to go back to the sister hostel to this one to get directions. ANYWAYS.

While being extremely blacked out at our hostel (the hypothesis is we were trying to take a shower because I was naked, which I only know because I ended up with blood on my stomach and lower) I took a fucking nasty fall and split my chin open. I barely remember this. Anton remembers it slightly better, but not really. We managed to get dressed and out the door, and I just remember crying and he thrust 50 soles at the cab driver and told him to FUCKING GET THERE and the guy was like running red lights and driving on sidewalks and other insanity. I vaguely remember being there but I don´t remember the shot they gave me to numb me, I remember a little bit better the 3 stitches I recieved. The visit cost 27 dollars. Then I blacked out again.

Antons memory is a little better at this point and I guess we had to go to the FIRST original hostel because it actually had a name and taxi drivers knew it instead of the signless pseudo apartment we were staying in and get directions to OUR hostel but considering we couldn´t find it this time I can´t imagine we found it the first time so we might have gone to the first hostel TWICE and demanded directions. That is mystery 1.

Somewhere during this night we lost our clown nose. Mystery 2. Also mysterious, there was a entertainment center in the living room that the (foolish) owners had left three bottles of liquor in, Anton got into the rum, but to do so you had to open 2 little glass doors. Come the morning, one was missing without a trace. Mystery 3. And the blood from my wound disappeared at some point (there was nobody else staying there, so did we clean it up? Who knows.) Mystery 4. And the bathroom door was locked from the inside when we awoke that morning. Mystery 5. Also mysterious is what we did for a good 3 hours between blacking out at the bar and me splitting my chin. Did we stay there? Did we go somewhere else? Mystery 6.

Needless to say Thursday was horrendous. Even Anton didn´t feel good. He had a headache and I was a disaster and yeah....needless to say we didn´t wake up at 300 in the morning to Antons lightly beeping watch. We slept till like the afternoon.

And when I say disaster I mean disaster on the grandest of scales. I dare say I felt worse this day then in Cartagena when my vomiting was so loud the maid came to check on me. I was too nauseous to drink anything (without promptly puking) but SO dizzy and weak and miserable because I was SO fucking dehydrated and plus I slammed my jaw sooooo hard the whole thing is sore as shit (though it´s improved slightly today) so yesterday I could barely open my mouth and I was just stuffed full of Tramadol.

I have to say though, Lima was the PERFECT place for this to happen. It can´t be ignored that this is the FIRST place where we´ve seen fucking Jello and Pudding cups at little shops. It was dream food for injured me. So after eating pudding and jello and managing to drink some powerade I was feeling more or less human again so we went and got some sushi. It was very tasty, I mainly had a couple pieces of tuna that could kinda melt in my mouth and then stuck to bowls of miso soup and cups of hot green tea...it was a good cure.

We layed around last night and read our books and went to sleep pretty early and SUCCESSFULLY woke up at 300 in the morning (actually it was 251, a terrible hour to wake up at. If you´re still awake, that´s cool, it´s not like 5 o´clock which is bad no matter if you´re still up or waking up, but yeah, anyways) we hailed a cab and asked him how much it would be. "40 soles," he says. It´s like 3 soles for 1
dollar, so that was ABSURD. We were like no way and started to walk away and he yelled after us "20! 20 soles!" And Anton was like "15" and the guy started grumbling so we were like fine, 20. He drives us to the airport and when we get out Anton goes to pay him with a 50. He gives him back 10. Anton´s like, um, what? And the guys like 40! 40 soles! And so Anton grabs the money back and tells him he can have 20 or nothing, and the guys like 40 40 40! So we just walk away and left him with a few choice words so the guy follows us into the airport pestering Anton but (very amusing) not going NEAR me, like dramatically. Anton was in front and I was in second, and no matter how much slower I walked the guy wouldn´t pass me because he´d have to get closer than like 10 feet and he was terrified. Women may have less rights in these countries but you DO NOT F with somebody elses girlfriend, which is nice for me. Whistle maybe, but beyond that not even the slightest touch or angry word is ever directed to me.

Anyways, so we get to the counter and the guy walks up and tells the guy at the ticket booth that we didn´t pay. We explain that the guy is trying to rip us off by doubling the agreed upon fair, and the counter guy calls over security. (luckily EVERYONE at the airport speaks english, or nearly everyone). They saunter over and within a minute or so it´s obvious that they are completely on our side (I mean even if we were lying, are they going to piss off the rich tourists or the poor taxi driver!?) and PLUS they knew themselves that 40 soles was a RIDICULOUS fair for the airport, we even got them to admit that 20 was a bit of a rip off. But the guy would not back down, and this back and forth went on the whole 15 or 20 minutes we were at the ticket counter, half dealing with the tickets and half dealing with
the crazy taxi driver. About halfway through he was like okay, 20, so then Anton was like, okay Good! And then instantly he was back at 40,and then he went down to 30 and Anton told the guards to tell him that he was getting 20 or nothing, his pick. So AT LAST the guy took the 20 and grumbled off. What a piece of shit! The guards were very nice though, they just laughed and such.

The flight was uneventful (and late, as per usual, even though it was the first flight of the day), and we arrived here and split a taxi with two Israelis into town. It´s a cool city, there looks like there lots of cool buildings and such. We haven´t done much exploring yet, we napped for 5 hours or so and are now here trying to figure out Machu Picchu and such. I´m just glad that we have a few days off till
the 2 day bus ride to Iguasa Falls.

Oh, and if you are reading this Donovan don´t tell mom and dad about my injury, it will just worry them. I´ll tell them upon my return.