Pissed in Pisco

Although I never did get drunk in Pisco, or even have one drink, I thought this was a good title. Let me explain. Yesterday was a chillaxed day. We left Lima via public bus and arived in the town of Pisco, which is actully named after the drink I told you about before. We walked around, ate pinaple, and didn´t really do all that much. Our energy had to be saved for today. But before I talk about that, let me say something about Peru politics.

There's an election coming up in early 2007 (I think). There are campaigns everywhere, and they're in your face. People are excited about it. Advertisments take up every (literally every) billboard, lamp post, or any public space. Or non-public. Candidate ads are hand painted on every available house, wall, cliff, grass hill, mountain, shanty-town, road, car, etc etc etc. No one here is apathetic. I guess that they realize how lucky they are here to be living in a democracy and they dont take advantage of it. We can learn something from them.

Anyway on to my day today. Today I did many things:
1. We woke up at 6 to take a speed boat out to these islands, to what they call here the ¨poor man´s Galapagos¨, and for good reason. I must have seen 20 species of exotic birds, including penguins, in numbers that much reach the hundreds of thousands. There were so many that the islands were covered and the sky could not be seen because it was too full of birds. There were also an incredible number of sea lions and they put on a nice show for us too.

2. We took a private bus to Nazca, but on the way stopped off at a desert oasis. Now this desert is a desert like we see in the holywood movies. There is nothing. Flat land, sand, maybe rock, nothing. Like Saskatchewan covered in sand. At the oasis there are massive dunes that go on for many miles. So we went dune buggying and sand boarding! It was great fun. The buggys were incredible, but i´ve never even been snow boarding before let alone sand, so i pretty much went down the massive hills on my stomach. Some people tore their pants, some got motion sickness and puked from the buggys, but rest assured I came out just fine, which is a good thing becasue I need my stamina for tomorrow...

3. The scenery on the way to Nazca was spectacular. There was flat desert, that went on for 2 hours of driving, without any living species in sight. And suddently there were mountains, also without any living thing in sight. The part that impressed me was that I could literally stand on the border of geographical regions. There was flat desert, and then there were mountains. Simple as that.

4. Again we stopped, this time at a local piscu distilery-vinyard. We bassically were shown how the drink was made, the work, energy and tradition that goes into it, and it was all cool. But the best part was the tasting. Mmm the tasting. We sampled all kinds. For those who don´t know piscu I think tasts most like tequilla but sweeter.

5. Saw my first Nazca Lines. I saw a tree and hands. The lines are an ancient mystery. They are designs marked in the earth thousands of years ago with unknown technology. There are many theories for this, including aliens becasue some of the designs resemble them. Tomorrow I will take a plane up to view these lines becasue it is the best and only way to see them. This is where my stamina comes in. I´m told the pilot turns the plane 90 degrees onto its side so we can get a good view. And he does this many times. I´ll let you know later how I turn out after that.

So that was my big day. And now I´m tired and going to bed. Good night.