Well, well, well, I am quite behind and am going to try to make up for it.  Pardon the lapse, but with everything that happened, I just could not summon the energy to really put my heart into my blog, but watch out, I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaacck!

To continue in some semblance of order, after the Pisco Sour tasting and meeting my new friends Olenka, Glenda and Karina, we had a long bus ride back to Lima, and during the ride, Karina came up to where the tour guide was sitting and started asking her about the next day’s excursion.  She really wanted to go on the river rafting excursion, but Olenka and Glenda had other plans, so Karina decided why not ask me, and I’m so glad she did!  We had a simply great time and got to know each other a little.  She is a teacher and passionate about her work and it was so refreshing listening to her talk about her plans and goals.

After the exhausting bus ride on Saturday, there I was, back again at the bus pickup on Sunday morning, but thankfully this time we left at 7:00 instead of 6:00.   It takes about an hour to get out of Lima and its outskirts, but finally we were on the open road.  The scenery is fascinating to me, as it’s so different than anything I’ve ever seen.  Imagine mountains (or maybe these are foothills) that have no green on them, but look like great hulks of sand and rock.  Beautiful in their own way, but a reminder of what a harsh environment the desert is.  Then picture, on the other side of the road, green areas where all kinds of crops are grown.  I’ve heard different figures and am not going to try to verify this (if any of you want to do it that would be great) at this moment, but Peru has something like 3,000 to 4,000 varieties of potato.  They’re a very big deal here, and quite delicious.

Oh, I have to break in here and tell you about my favorite fruit.  It’s called Lucuma, with the stress on the first syllable.  (I want you to be able to pronounce it when you come to Peru.)  It is absolutely the most delicious fruit I’ve ever had in my life, and makes a wonderful drink.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand.   Interesting scenery, and we stopped for a midmorning break at a beautiful oasis.  I’ve shared some of these pictures on Facebook already, so forgive the duplications.

 

No time for a snack, but a fresh fruit drink was a necessity.  And someone on Facebook asked me what the green tree directly in the middle of the background was and I said I thought it was a cellphone tower.  NOT!!!  It is some kind of tropical evergreen.

 

Back on the bus for a couple of hours, and our next stop was Cielo Azul.  Well, I certainly thought that was the name of it, but when I Googled it to verify the spelling, I couldn’t find it.  Also, my friend Giovanna corrected me today about the name of the town, but I’m not sure what she said the name of it was.  Anyway, it was a beautiful little spot on the beach, and whatever the name really is, it means “Blue Sky”.

Back on the bus again!  All this walking had me pretty tired out, and we hadn’t even gotten to the main part of the day.  So ride, ride, ride, uphill, downhill, switchback curves, crazy passing other drivers, other drivers crazily passing us, and we arrived at our lunch destination, I think, but lunch was not to happen until we tasted a few varieties of pisco sours.  Here I am before the pisco sours.

You really don’t need to see the after pictures.    So tour, tour, tour, drink, drink, drink, and I began to wonder if we would ever get to the main attraction, which for me was the river rafting.

A few miles later, we arrived at my first big challenge of the day, which was the suspension bridge.  Now, if you know me, you know that I have developed a little bit of a phobia about crossing bridges, and don’t even THINK about a suspension bridge.  However, when you’re in Peru on a grand adventure, you don’t get to wimp out.  I do think that perhaps I broke a few bones in the bus driver’s hand, but he was very kind to escort me both ways.

So here’s the only activity of the day that I really did not participate in.  The next thing waiting over this bridge was a long hike up 40 stair landings (I have no idea how many stairs) to a pueblo and I had the foresight to realize that there was no way I’d make it up there without a couple of sherpas, and as far as I know, there aren’t any in Peru.  There were some horses, but I was pretty sure there was no way I could get into a saddle, so I found a spot to sit and people watch.  A little girl and I amused each other for quite a while, and again, I wondered if I’d ever get on that river.  Little did I know that those hardy enough to hike up those stairs were having yet another pisco sour tasting.  Let me tell you, though, I didn’t even care that I missed it when I saw some of them coming back, gasping for breath, red in the face and looking like heart attacks waiting to happen; I spent that time heartily congratulating myself on my good sense.  Believe me when I say that there wasn’t a speck of shade on that hike.

My patience paid off, and at last, at last!  The River!  Quite a good ride and by far the best part of the day, not only because the river was full of rapids, but the water was deliciously cool. I do have to say, though, that my luck held out – if there is a rock in a river and I’m on it, it will find me.  Well, the rock was there, and we did not quite make it over.  Stuck in the middle of the river.

I think they may have had trouble there before, as there was a “spotter” waiting.  He and our guide finally managed to work the boat free of the rocks, but not without me wondering just what in hades would happen if neither of them managed to get back in the boat and we had to fend for ourselves.  I stayed remarkably calm, for me, and in fact was assuring one of the obviously scared girls that everything was just fine; nothing to worry about here.  Yeah, right.  Those tour guides were looking none too confident about getting us out of our predicament, but they finally did, and we all breathed huge sighs of relief and earned some bragging rights.

A few more rapids were in store, and at the takeout point we were not just wet, we were soaking wet.  Did I say wet?  I mean we were like drowned rats.  Thank heavens I kept my mouth shut most of the way (I know that’s hard to imagine), or I think I probably would have been pretty sick from the water.

Oh, I just thought of one more thing I didn’t participate in.  After we went to the bus and got our dry clothing, we were taken to the back door of the rafting company and shown where the changing rooms were.  I took one look at the stairs, which protruded out about four inches from the building, were about three inches deep, no stair rail, really steep and a bunch of big rocks at the bottom to greet a falling me, and said no way.  I was shown into a “room” between the stairs and the customers and workers and told I could change there.  Hilarious!  When I was younger there was no way in hell I would have changed in there.  Now, however, I did not even care that I was stripping naked, no towel to dry off with and trying to pull dry clothes up while trying not to fall on the slippery wet floor.  You know that feeling when you’re trying to pull up a wet swimming suit and it keeps getting stuck on your skin?  Yeah.  Anyway, it did not even bother me in the least that at least four men traipsed through there while I was changing.  What a hoot.

It was again a very quiet ride home on the bus.  Next came Monday, the day all my stuff was stolen, but it will not be mentioned again.

I can’t wait to tell you about the next great time, which has to do with chocolate.  Lots of chocolate.