El Misti and our First Alpaca Sighting!

Our arrival in Arequipa was extremely late and full of lostness at 1 in the morning. Somehow we found a hostel that was open and we quickly got to sleep.

The next morning we looked online for a church and drove around to find it only to discover that church websites in South America almost never match with actual buildings. So we didn't find a church and instead stopped at a mall to get a couple things. Kind of the same thing right?

As we drove around Arequipa we realized the city was surrounded by several volcanoes, the most impressive of which was El Misti. Its massive 5822 meters loomed above the city and created an

incredible skyline along with the other volcanos nearby.

We also found out that morning that our spanish was not as good as we hoped. Or the girl working at Dunkin Donuts also didn't speak spanish. One of the two.

We thought ordering something familiar would be a nice treat so Sami, Tyler and I decided to stop there and get some coffee and donuts for everyone. Now usually even if you don't speak the language, pointing at an item on a menu and saying 'cuatro, por favor' would work. I've worked at restaurants and served people who only spoke french, spanish, or Chinese. Somehow we communicated and they got what they wanted. But this girl was not loving it!

Ordering donuts was fine, but somehow asking for 'cuatros cafe con leche y azucar' was not getting through and 10-15 minutes later we were still trying to get our stuff. Then somehow milk was misunderstood for whipped cream, which costs extra, and apparently takes 5 years to do.

Anyways, we left with some assortment of coffee and donuts for everyone and we were pretty happy with that!

We didn't spend much time in Arequipa as our goal was to make it to Chivay, at the far east side of the Colca Canyon. Our drive there was absolutely beautiful and as we passed over the high 4800m+ pass we all felt the effects of altitude. But that didn't stop Sami was freaking out at the

first llama and alpaca sightings! You'd think she'd just won a million dollars with her outrageous enthusiasm for alpacas!

At the second pack llamas we found, we all jumped out to see how close we could get. Llamas are pretty big and quick animals, so it wasn't as close as we hoped. So we waited for another opportunity.

Further down the road we came across several alpacas so we jumped out again in hopes they'd be more friendly. But after only a few quick steps we were all pretty winded and out of breath as we hadn't acclimatized to the 4000m+ elevation. And the alpacas didn't come to us.

A little further, as we rounded a corner and began going downhill, a herd of 100s of llamas and alpacas came into view and before anyone else saw them I simply yelled and yelled until they all saw them as well and began yelling with the same enthusiasm! While the excited yelling was partially in jest on most of our parts, Sami really was on cloud 9!

After a couple hours Chivay and the Colca Canyon came into view. Apparently at its deepest, the Colca Canyon is actually deeper than the Grand Canyon with a maximum depth of 3400 meters- that's nearly twice the depth of the Grand Canyon! Albeit it is less than half the length. Craziest part is that it's not even the deepest canyon in the world, or even Peru! Further north the Cotahausi Canyon is slightly deeper.

Needless to say, it was a pretty incredible sight to see with monstrous mountains on either side and a deep gorge cut out below. Chivay was a tiny little traditional Peruvia town at the east end of the canyon with only a few thousand people. It felt like a step back in time what with the men and women dressed as they always have. Colourful outfits and dresses paired with big bowl hats and long raided hair worn by the women gave the town an extremely old-fashioned feel.

We quickly found a hostel and all took some time to relax and get over the slight altitude sickness symptoms. Chivay sits about 3700m above sea level so we made sure to not overexert ourselves. Which meant walking extremely slowly and definitely not talking while walking.

After a short time we to the little night market where you could buy skewers of alpaca meat for only 1 sole! While Dad, Tyler and I jumped all over that, Sami sat back shocked appalled. We made sure to let her know how good it was. Instead she got homemade churros, which we also had along with our alpaca.

That night we went to a Peruvian dinner show along with a tonne of other people. All you had to pay was the food, which was decently priced. But

then the hats came around for the obligatory tips for the waiters, the singers, the dancers, etc. Man I hate obligatory tips.

The dancing was pretty fun and the music was really fast-paced a lot of fun. Obviously we were asked to join in the dancing and with our best 'I'm-grumpy Star-face' we said no, stopping to smile only afterwards.

After the dinner we went back to the hostel to sleep early as we planned on waking up around 530 AM to drive up the Colca Canyon and see the 12 foot condors flying through the canyon!

Turned off the highway trying to find some food in a small town but this is all we could find.

I guess our spanish isn't good enough to order normal sized drinks! Oops.

Nazca

We drove for quite a while before coming close to

Nazca and stopping at a small lookout tower to see some of the Nazca Lines up close. The Nazca Lines, for anyone who hasn't heard of them, are these 'carvings' in the groundstone in the desert region of Peru. Many of which are hundreds of meters long and extremely intricate, creating various animals and shape. Some of the pictures are of hummingbirds, an 'astronaut', monkey, and various shapes. What makes them incredible is that scientists really don't know how they were made so perfectly when they are onnly visible from the air and the Nazca's made them hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

We arrived in Nazca on Halloween and had a hilarous time watching all the little kids run up and down the street in costumes. The streets were extremely crowded and it felt more like a festival for everyone rather than just the kids. After finding our hostel, we left our bags to join in the festivities and walk around the town to find food from street vendors. First find was a handful of hard boiled quail eggs for 1 Sole (40 cents)! Instead of kids chanting 'trick or treat' they would simply chant 'Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!'. Real creative kids.

The next morning we organized a tour with Paracas for a flight tour of the Nazca Lines since that's one of the only ways to be able to see them. We did quite a bit of research since we'd heard several years ago there was very lax safety standards with the airplanes which caused a couple planes per year to crash. As we found out later, Paracas was a great and affordable company to work with. After negotiating the prices and times, we were shuttled to the airport where we found out that all 6 of us couldn't actually go in the same plane! The one they had couldn't be weighted properly or something and they offered separate planes for kids and parents. My parents ended up opting out admitting they were ok with not seeing the lines, and Milessa, Sami, Tyler and I all jumped in a 4-seater. The take-off was bumpy and it felt like a giant hand was grabbing the

plane and shaking it around the whole time, or like it was a small boat in rough waters. Luckily the flight was only 30 minutes as we were all feeling a little motion sickness after a short time! However it was worth it (I thought; Sami, Tyler and Milessa might tell a different story as the sickness hit them a little more) as we were able to see these incredible carvings 100s of years old! The drawings were incredibly precise with circles being perfectly round and straight lines (some 100s and 100s of meters long) being straight as an arrow. Hummingbirds, monkeys, owls, spirals, condors and other animals were etched all over the ground with our pilots masterfully swooping around for us to get the best view of each 2500 feet above. Still nobody really knows how they created them so precisely and inevitably this has led to aid in the countless theories of extra-terrestrials helping the Nazca's (and Incas with their architecture!) design the artwork. My inner Mulder and love of X-files can't help but make me 'Want to Believe!

After the flight we all emerged from the place a little woozy; Sami about as white as the clouds we flew around and Tyler clutching his nearly-used barf-bag tightly. Nothing some Coca-cola and cocoa leaf candies couldn't fix! Afterwards we left Nazca to head further south towards Arequipa. The roads ran along cliffs alongside the coast, and eventually through some extremely tight and scary cliff sides that make BC's wildest look like the prairies. At one point as I drove with Tyler in the passenger seat, we all looked out the right side of the vehicle down the cliff with the car only feet from the edge. Tyler says calmly, at first, 'wow that's pretty scary," before realizing what was really beside us (or not beside us, as the case may be) and notes his fear in escalating fashion: "ok that's actually really scary. Like REALLY scary. Wow I'm scared! THAT IS REALLY SCARY I'M REALLY AFRAID RIGHT NOW!" All in complete seriousness as Sami and I were cracking up. Another classic quote from my 13 year old brother. And he had many is this short 2 weeks together!

Saw this while we were driving on our way to Nazca

Doing the Dunes

The next morning we were able to actually see the incredible sand dunes completely surrounding Haucachina all hundreds of feet high. In the middle of the town was a little water lagoon, like something out of a movie! We wandered around trying to find tour agencies that could give Dune Buggy rides in the dunes combined with sandboarding. After a quick breakfast there, we went with a driver we'd read about in Lonely Planet who was apparently one the better (craziest and somehow 'safest'... years ago a few people died due to buggys rolling and crashing... not our driver though) drivers. So we all headed

out for our 2 hour tour of the dunes and what unbelievable fun it was! The 6 of us hadn't screamed like that since... maybe ever as our driver ripped up and down the dunes and sand flying in our faces, scaring the crap out of all of us. Somehow mom and Sami ended up in the front, which made it even more hilarious for the rest of us. Pictures and words really can't begin to describe the experience, so check out a couple videos on Youtube searching the following: Haucachina, dune buggy, sand dunes. While we were more looking forward to sandboarding, the dune buggy ride was definitely the highlight. Sandboarding was pretty tough actually, but a lot of fun. Just very tiring as you hike back up the

sand dune to ride again! With sand in our mouths, noses, dreads, and everywhere else, we walked around the city before heading back to Ica for lunch. Once again, ordering was difficult, and we ended up with more delicious food than the 6 of us could finish. Afterwards, one of the employees was extremely excited to meet us, practise English, and take a bunch of photos with us as though we were celebrities! It made quite the show, but was hilarious.

Sand everywhere!

Don't Drive Here!

The next morning we all woke up and had a

breakfast together, with Tyler getting super excited we had finally arrived! Apparently he didn't remember waking up and saying hi to us for a couple minutes.

We spent some time planning out our route, and how the six of would get around Peru; whether by bus or by renting a van. We decided that because there was so many of us it made sense to rent a van so dad and I spent a couple hours visiting several rental car places to find a van, which we did. It ended up being a 12 passenger van- perfect for the 6 of us on a road trip!

Afterwards we wandered around the city and headed down to the 'beach'. While it was a beach, there was no, it was simply small and medium rocks, so not the most comfortable to walk on. Nonetheless, we rented a couple surfboards and boogie boards and headed out on the water. Tyler had never been in the ocean before so he was super excited to try it out, Sami had never surfed before, and Milessa and I were excited to try out

what we'd learned earlier.

Unfortunately, we had a really hard time getting going, but it was sure fun to boogie board and be in the ocean with Milessa, Sami and Tyler!

We had also switched hotels earlier in the day, and helped mom and dad become accustomed to our never-more-than-2-nights-in-1-place policy. I'm sure everybody that saw the 6 of us walking down the street with 6 backpacks had a good laugh!

Later that night we wandered to a big open park area and bought some local food while struggling through the process with broken Spanish words. We ended up with something called Salchipapa

(fries, egg, cheese, hot dog, rice sometimes), a plate of chicken with sauce and quinoa, and beef with rice and some sort of sauce.

The park we walked through afterwards also had a extremely weird number of cats all over, it kind of creeped us out.

The next morning we picked up the van and somehow dad avoided countless accidents along the hectic roads (Lima was once featured on Don't Drive Here). Actually, after leavin and driving around the block to turn around, we almost got in an accident 30 seconds after getting the van- right in front of the rental agency! Embarrassing. After, we miraculously found our way to the south of the city. Not before getting lost and finding a beautiful cliffside shop and waterfront. We spent a little while there enjoying the great view and climbing

around the rocks before leaving for south.

We made a minor wrong turn, again, and after a while found our way back to the highway and continued. We continued driving for several hours and a couple hundred kilometers all the way Haucachina, a tiny little town surrounding an oasis in the middle of huge sand dunes. Somehow, since we were so late arriving, all 6 of us all slept in 1 dorm room for 6 people! What a great bonding experience!

So many tennis courts in Lima!

Family Gathering

Upon arriving at the Fort Lauderdale port, we

started talking to a girl from the North-Eastern states who had been visiting with a British guy we'd talked with several times on the ship. Turns out they were a cruise romance, only met 5 days ago, and were starting to see each other! We thought that was pretty hilarious. So as our ship was late, we had to rush over to the Fort Lauderdale airport where we were meeting up with my sister! We then found a hotel for the night and made our way there, realizing how much we appreciated the silence of the cruise as the highways in Fort Lauderdale just seemed overwhelmingly loud. The next day we went to a athletic outlet store to buy new hiking boots and rain jackets since we hadn't replaced our stolen ones yet. Luckily the outlet store was better priced than back home! We than went to the airport, fortunately early, and were reminded that we were not allowed to board the plane unless we had proof of onward travel! So we found a website that allowed us to buy cheap bus tickets from northern Peru to Ecuador. It then only cost $3 to buy insurance so we could cancel without penalty

:) totally tricked them! We then boarded our 5+ hour flight to Lima! Finding a taxi was only somewhat hectic, and luckily there was mainly English speakers at the airport, as we had only been learning Spanish for about a week at this point. When we made it to the hotel in Miraflores, Lima, my parents and brother had already fallen asleep! So we woke them up and visited for a couple hours until well after midnight! Tyler never really fully woke up. Apparently they'd walked for about 6 hours that day in very hot and direct sunlight, and hadn't quite adapted to the drastic change in weather that Winnipeg had! We were so excited to be with them and couldn't wait to start our 2 week adventure with all 6 of us!

Holiday from a Holiday

We had been really looking forward to this

portion of our travels for some time! After our honeymoon we figured we might never go on another cruise again. However when we were looking to book flights from Europe to Peru, Milessa found a trans-Atlantic cruise with Royal Caribbean International for almost the same price as flights! So we decided that 14 days with as much as food as we could eat and crossing the ocean by boat sounded more fun than 15 hours flying and only 2 plane meals :) Boarding was hectic and took a couple house, as the Rotterdam Port had never housed a ship of this size. It was actually the largest ship in the world, the Oasis of the Seas, at about 1200 feet long, with a capacity of 6100 guests and 2500 crew. That's the reason the deals were so good, the ship was too big to fill for a trans-Atlatic cruise. If anyone reading has any questions for finding really good cruise deals,

shoot me an email! People in Rotterdam were really excited about the ship and apparently it was a big deal for it to have been ported there. Tens of thousands of people lined the shore for miles waving as the cruise went down the river. And apparently over 200 000 people were there when it arrived at port 2 weeks earlier. So all of Regina was excited to see this ship cruise up the canal to the port. The ship is truly extravagant, with fancier restaraunts, bars, theatres, casinos, lounges, and main venues than I could have imagined. When you first walk on you have no idea you're on a ship. The main promenade feels more like a small street in New York complete with pizzerias, bars, shops, tile flooring, a 1930s vehicle strictly for photo opportunities, a 'floating bar' that started on floor 5 and rose 2 floors above the floor finishing on floor 8, and even street lights. The next floor above floor 5, floor 8, was a giant park complete with trees, plants and the

whole shabang. Walking paths, cafes and shops all around the sides. You might have thought you were actually at a park back home. The Silk Dining Room, where we had dinners, was a million times fancier than anything else we'll ever eat at. And it, along with all other food (except a few specialty restaraunts) was included. So that means I was able to have 3 shrimp cocktails, salmon and a steak every night if I'd wanted. It was a little bizarre to say the least. On the ship there was countless planned activities going on every day- 2 entire pages of activities were handed out every day so you knew the schedule. From Spanish classes, to literally dozens of kinds of dance classes, bingo, free skating time on the actually skating rink, trivias, lectures, learning workshops, shows, musicals, etc. It was crazy. We went to a couple Spanish classes, one Tango class (so scary), a couple basketball tournaments, a volleyball tournament, and I'm not sure what else. We also got so much frozen yogurt everyday. There were also 2 43-foot climbing walls with several possible paths to the top at varying degrees of difficulty, so we tried to that everyday as well. We'd been wanting to rock climb for years but just hadn't in Regina so that was one of our

favourite parts. Somehow between the rock climbing, running track, exercise/weight room, ping pong tables, basketball court, mini golf course, the many restaraunts, and Milessa putting dreadlocks in my hair, we were never bored. And then there was all of the people we got to meet. You'd think with 5000 guests onboard you'd never see the same person more than 2-3 times but you'd be wrong. We would see the same people multiple times per day all over the place! At breakfast, on the sports deck, at a public washroom, lunch, cafe, the theatre... it was weird. At first we were a little overwhelmed as we didn't really fit the cruise demographic. Rich and retired. And my looking like a hobo made it even worse- luckily when I was with Milessa I looked a little more presentable. And the cruise just seemed to have this sense of entitlement permeating everrywhere, from many of the guests. So after a while the mindset of 'I'm better than everyone' and 'I deserve everything I want' and not treating the crew members was a little frustrating. But we did quite a few really down to earth people and we really enjoyed that. One older retired couple started talking to us after watching me play baskeetball for a while and pretty soon we found out he had been a preacher in a Southern Baptist Church for 30 years down in Georgia and was now retired. They invited us to have dinner with that night and it was so great to meet people with so much in common and such a deep love for God. Then a couple days later we met with them for a little church service on Sunday. They were extremely encouraging to visit with so much times! Then there was so many of the crew we got to know! Many from The

Philippines, India and Jamaica that we got to know. As well as several from Peru, South-Eastern Europe like Croatia and Romania. One guy from Mauritia, a little island off the coast of Madagascar. We felt like we had much more in

common with the crew than any of the guests and it was really cool getting to know them in the various restaraunts and sports deck. Lots of the Jamaicans and Indians liked that I had dreads so it made getting to know them even easier. We made 2 stops at shore in the 13 days at sea. One in Southampton, England and one in Vigo, Spain. In Southampton we just stayed in the port area and did some shopping to replace some of our stolen clothes and didn't bother going up to London or The Stonehenge, which were excursion options since they were quite a bit of money to do. Then in Vigo we spent a lot of time walking around the city and going to a couple historic points and nice lookouts of the surrounding area. Really, nothing too special at those places except for our near royal sendoff from the Vigo port! Literally thousands of people were all over the shoreline and hanging out of the windows with flags and whistling and blowing horns. Then they had about a 40 person bagpipe/drumming band complete with dancers playing music for over half an hour before our departure. Then the next 8 days we spent having fun on-board the ship before landing in Fort Lauderdale!