And The Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day

My poor, neglected blog.

I don´t know why I´ve been so lazy on the blog the last week or so. Maybe it´s been a generally blah week, and nothing has moved me to the point of writing.

Nazca was a big blah for me. The town itself is just a big nothing - it´s only "thing" is the Nazca Lines. (If you are not sure what those are, click here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines) The lines are spread out across the desert, and the popular (and probably best) way to see them is from the air, so there are a bazillion tourist agencies that line up these short plane rides over the desert.

The airplane ride itself was more interesting to me than the lines. I don´t think I´ve even been in a really small plane before, so it was a bit terrifying for me. Not to mention, our guide in the Colca Canyon had warned us about how dangerous these planes are. Old planes! People dying all the time!

But, every other tourist in Nazca seemed okay with it, so I hoped for the best, climbed on into the six-person plane, and off we went! The pilot made me extremely nervous. He would take his hands off the steering wheel and turn his whole body around to talk to us. EYES ON THE ROAD! I wanted to say. He´d point out the various things below us - monkeys, hummingbirds, whales, etc. - and make circles around them a few times, making certain we all got a glimpse.

While the lines were impressive on some levels, I´m not quite buying into it all yet. I have a seriously hard time believing that these lines (which are really just rocks and dirt) have survived all this time. Don´t you think the Nazca people just might touch them up every now and then to keep the tourism industry going? Everything I´ve seen so far in terms of old ruins - temples, villages, etc. - has been at least partially reconstructed, so why would it be any different with these lines?

Maybe I was unimpressed because my previous knowledge of these lines had something to do with alien encounters, so when I found out that aliens had not, in fact, created these things, I said, BORING.

I´ve been in the grand city of Lima since Wednesday, and I still can´t say exactly how I feel about it. Usually, when I visit a new city, I am immediately struck with a sense of the place - something of its character or personality. But for whatever reason, Lima has not struck me in any specific way. After two days here, I realized I could not verbalize how I felt about the city, after someone asked me. "I have no idea," I wanted to say. "It´s just kinda Blah." Or put on my best American Valley Girl accent and said, "Ugh. Whatevs. Your city has, like, zero personality."

Maybe it´s not that the city has zero personality - it has too many personalities to keep up with. It has no idea who it is. It has the historic and beautiful town center, full of pale yellow cathedrals and pigeons and guards in blue and maroon uniforms. It has the modern suburb of Miraflores, full of cinemas and shopping centers and Starbucks and sushi restaurants. It has pre-Inca mounds, that rise out of the earth right in the middle of the city, a ever-present reminder of the past. It has gorgeous, out of my dreams, colonial mansions - everywhere! I want one! A different kind of past. It has skyscrapers. Bank buildings. KPMG logos. It has people - about 34 million of them (and that´s more than TWICE as many as in the 70s!). It has growth! And, of course, it has poverty. The nice part of the city - the part all the nice tourist folks get to see - is in stark contrast to the neighborhoods surrounding. Dirt roads, mud brick homes without windows.

How is this all one city?

So I´ve felt out of sorts here. Not sure what to make of it all. Wandering through a huge shopping complex the other day, I couldn´t hardly believe I was in the same country as poor Puno. The people themselves could not salut the same flag, could they? They are having such different experiences of the same country! One´s drinking Starbucks and working at KPMG, while the other just got electricity a year ago! I suppose it´s the same in the US, isn´t it?

And one last blah thing about Lima, for my Blah blog post. This weather! Every single morning, I wake to white-gray skies, totally cloud covered. Usually, by around 2 PM, the sun has managed to break through, leaving the afternoon sunny with blue skies. But ugh! What a way to spend HALF of your day...every day!

Onto the Central Sierras this afternoon. Going to make a few stops in Huancayo and Ayacucho before heading onto Cusco on Friday. Will be in touch, I promise! Much love.