Condors are very, very big birds.

I saw very large birds today while standing at the lip of a very big hole in the ground. And also had both cúy and alpaca in the same meal. I had to pick out little tiny claws from the guinea pig, which is pretty good but insanely bony.

What else can I even talk about? Let's see. I'm in Arequipa waiting for our bus to leave. It's an overnighter, but it gives new meaning to the term. I'm going to make sure I have some pictures of it, but it's a double decker with seats that fold into beds or something. Some of the other buses I've taken here have had what I call 'ride attendants' to serve you as on a plane. Usually it's pretty comfortable even if the dvd skips like crazy from the road.

If only greyhound was like that...

I suppose I should mention that avocados here are huge, and delicious, and as ubiquitous as apples are in New England. They're everywhere, and cheap, and so very very good. Christian's going to be jealous of this. What else for food... there's the pisco sours, the local famous brandy stuff that I think is pretty good and Chip detests, and Inca Cola.

Ah Inca Cola... it's this crazy nuclear-yellow color and tastes like a fruity hybrid somewhere between bubblegum and rootbeer. And that's about the only way to describe it. It's the locally produced and favorite soft drink though and my goal is definately to bring some home. At the very least to prove how unnervingly yellow the stuff is. And if you think I didn't do a very good job of describing its taste then when I get back, YOU can taste it and then tell me. It almost defies description. It's so yellow it almost glows. The one tee-shirt I nabbed was an Inca Cola one, as I'm fond of the strange eldritch elixer. Expect to see it if I see you.

I'm very bored right now. I think I'll go play scrabble with the family or something. I've already finished a few books on this trip (thank god for the hostel book exchange) in down time and I'm going to probably finish another one on this trip. Let´s see, I finished 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', and moved on to a novel called 'Alas, Babylon' by Pat Frank. I wouldn't much recommend it, it was a quick read and follows the trials and tribulations of a group of people caught in central Florida in a basically all clear zone during and after nuclear war between the USSR and the States. It was written sometime after the Korean War and before the Vietnam War got underway, so a lot of the assumptions and talks center around that. If you like what if scenarios and Swiss Family Robinson type stuff then go for it. I'll say this for it, it killed some time.

After that I found a Philip K. Dick story 'Inter-galactic Pot Healer', which was welcome to say the least after 'Alas, Babylon'. Better writing, more interesting, and well, it's Dick so it was good. Look, it's been a long day (up at 5am to see the Condors) and my brain's not trying all that hard to provide you my very bored reader with proper and exciting exposition about things in the recent past. Short story is;

Canticle was pretty good.
Alas, Babylon was readable.
Pot Healer was a fun one.
My next book is the Bourne Supremacy.

For those of you scoffing at my next 'selection' let it be known that it won out over the likes of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', a plethora of Danielle Steele and lesser known romantic novelists, and the '2007 Visitors guide to New York City'. I think there was a Tom Clancy novel in there as well but I tend to glaze over those and move on without paying attention so I can't be sure. I think I made the right choice.

I can't think of things to write and yet we've done a lot here. We're approaching the 1,000 picture mark so you'll get to see a lot of Peru and Bolivia.

OH! I´ve been meaning to respond to the Comment left on one of my entries for a while but commenting from here hasn't been working so let me say something here.

Whoever it may be who blogged.

1. Emily is 8. She's in very good physical condition. I stopped her from hyper-ventilating because she was starting to panic. She was fine. We were just you know, really really freaking high up where it's difficult to breath when you're hiking up. The air was just very thin and she did a lot better than some of the adults on the Inca Trail. Try explaining to an eight year old how to control her breathing, really do it. I'd like to hear how you faired. Again. She was fine and it was once, and early on and she was more scared than anything.

We had the lightest packs possible. We had two changes of clothes (for three days), 2+ liters of water each (Emily did not carry anything on the trail, and we were required 2 liters minimum), a towel, and that's it. What are you talking about? It was long and arduous, but worth it at the end. We weren't sleeping in tents and we were in the cloud forest not the rainforest.

Anyways. Hi, who are you anyways? Do you have a name?

Home on Monday. Like 3 days to go now.