A Todo el Mundo

Today we awoke with the purpose of going... dun dun dun dun! Paragliding!

But then we sat... and waited... and waited some more. And the lady did not come as promised. So, joy of joys, Kristy got to use the phone and call her in Spanish. Which, you may think, that´s not any different than speaking in person... but OH NO! it is way different because when you take away the hand motions, and facial expressions... all you have left is Chilean Spanish... which as they claimed today "is the worst Spanish in South America". Although by worse they technically mean best because they make it so terribly fun... leaving out random letters and words, and speaking incredibly fast.

ANYWAY

We talked to the babysitter... then to some random guy from down the hall or something... then finally the lady called us back... and 3 hours late, we headed up the hill. Then you just attach yourself to another guy (who actually knows what hes doing) and then run and jump off the cliff. Then you float around above the city, and mountains, and ocean until you land smoothly on the beach. Sweet ON.

In a couple hours we are taking a night sleeping bus to our last Chilean city... which is kind of good at this point because Chile is so gosh darn expensive.

Ciao (oh, and they say "ciao" lots here)
Kristy y Nate

Alas...it was time to leave Nazca and take the wonderful cold night bus up into the mountains to Arequipa, Peru.

And so: Arequipa
We slept in (recoverving from the bus) and did the usual wandering of the streets of the new city. We eventually found our way to the residence of Juanita, Kristy´s friend. We saw Juanita through the glass walls of her freezer, because you see Juanita is a frozen Incan mummy girl found up in mountain Ampato near Arequipa. Sooooooo that pretty much summarizes the first day in Arequipa.
And then sunday, election day in Peru. Elections here are...treated differently than elections in Canada. Election day means extra snacks sold on the street and tons people gathering in the main plaza to celebrate their candidate, and of course throw rocks and water bottles at the supporters of the other candidate. And...grab their flag and rip it to pieces while beating them on the ground. This is all before anybody even found out who had won.
Later, in the evening as we sat in the main square and the nice man selling coffee was pouring Kristy a cup the hundreds of Police stationed around the square started ushering people out...which was starting to turn into running. So...we quickly made our way past the grilled meat on a stick back to our Hotel. Fortunately our hotel was just down the street and we were back in our room in no time. AND THEN...we heard screaming outside so we opened our big windows and went out on our balcony over the street. Just in time to see a ton of people running down the street away from the plaza...and then the tear gas...bouncing around in the street right in front of our balcony. The tear gas didn´t really work though...they just tried to throw it back at the police...and it kind of just fizzled out.


Anyways, we figured out in the morning the problem was that the new President of Peru was not the one that was popular in Arequipa, or southern Peru in general. And then the president danced on TV, and kissed a dove like he always does. These things we saw at the bus station as we waited for our bus (not the bus that our ticket said, but a completely different company in another bus terminal). It left late, but all was well untill it broke down. In the middle of nowhere, in the Andes...and desert Andes...rocks...and garbage. So we sat around for an hour untill finally another bus came and we were on our way to Tacna, Peru near the Chilean border. We finally arrived in Tacna and took a colectivo (some random guy drives a bunch of people across the border in his car) into Chile. Might we add that we legally exited Peru AND legally entered Chile, all in the same day without any trouble.

So alas we arrived in Arica Chile. It is expensive here (as Chile tends to be) and all middle age women are extremely fancy and trendy, with their Gucci sunglasses and Louis Voutton handbags.

Tomorrow we head down more into Chile to Iquique.
Ciao
Cristina y Antonio