June 13, 2010:
This morning we walked up and down the streets of Miraflores for about 1.5 hours searching for a bike rental place to ride around the city for the day. Unfortunately, it’s Sunday and nothing is open. It’s a ghost town, but, thankfully, it was the nicest day that we’ve had in a long time: the sky was as clear as it could be and it was warm. Walking down towards Larcomar we stumbled upon on street that did, in fact, have bike rentals open except they were closing in an hour. As we were walking and discussing how Lima/Miraflores is getting old and expressing our excitement for Cuzco and Machu Picchu, the couple walking in front of us overheard our conversation.
They were both in their late-20s or early-30s and had just spent the past week in Cuzco. They advised us that while they were there, the farmers in Cuzco were holding strikes because since after the terrible storms and landslides that happened earlier this year, flooding their fields and farms, the Peruvian government hasn’t been giving them much or any funding to help rebuild. So with this, farmers are blocking off the roads and railroad tracks that lead up to Machu Picchu as retaliation to hurt Peru’s tourism economy. They were kept in their hotel the entire day because people were throwing rocks at taxicabs and tour buses. Unfortunately, there is another three-day strike planned from the 17th-19th, the first three days that we will be in Cuzco.
Since we had no luck with bikes Mike, Matt, Lauren, Cristina and I decided to go paragliding down by the coast over the Pacific Ocean. Thought it was only for about fifteen minutes, it was so awesome to be high above the beautiful ocean and along the steep green coasts; to be flying over all of the parks and hotels/apartments (which all had hot-tubs on their roofs).
Tonight we also went to a comedy club called Satchmo that is two blocks over form our hotel where the owner invited us to attend for free (aside from the $10 drink minimum, which most of us only pay $5 for). We went to the show at 8pm that ended up being basically an “adult-humored puppet show” called Choppets. I was expecting something totally different than what it was. All the actors were just wearing black and had giant Muppet puppets on their hands, not hiding themselves at all. Very high voices, for two hours. Can I have them back, please?
Tuesday we’re going to the Nazca Lines, which is super awesome! We’re leaving at 6am since it’s about a five-hour bus ride both ways and is going to be a whole day thing. I’m going to be really upset if I can’t go to Machu Picchu! Hopefully everything will go well this weekend.
-GT
