Arequipa for a change...

September 12, 2006

Fleeing Cusco, we took an overnight bus to a larger, more cosmopolitan town called Arequipa in southern Peru. The busride began with a video celebration of US pop rock from the last 30 years - including such classics by Roxette, Phil Collins, Tracy Chapman, and John Lennon. Most tear-jerking was the classic Scorpions´arena rocker ´Winds of Change´... we wistfully whistled and shed some tears upon our exit from the 2 mile high city and its fecal stench (they REALLY need a pooper-scooper law, enough said). The video experience only grew richer as the evening wore on, and I mean WORE. The next bill of fare (accompanied by and overcooked chicken patty and some rice in a small cylindrical container) was 50 First Dates starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore - Spanish overdub with English subtitles translated from the Spanish! Where do we go from there? There´s only one place - Bollywood! (of course)

Picture yourself on a double decker bus, in a desert, with Hindi and Spanish subtitles. It´s 1:15 in the morning and all you want to do is sleep, instead we are delighting in the sounds of Bollywood´s greatest Hindi hits. Thankfully, at about 1:30, our neighbor began loudly screaming "Apaga" and frantically clawing and pounding on the window... Andrew wasn´t entirely sure how to translate it, but it either meant "shut it off" or "stop the bus", maybe both? In any case, by 1:45 AM, the only soothing sounds we had were the snores of our fellow passengers (prisoners) and the repetitive thumps as the bus careened around corners that we couldn´t see. HOpefully, the bumps weren´t puppies.

We arrived safely in Arequipa... a wonderful cosmopolitan commercial town with fewer tourists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arequipa

Off to stationary sleep.
LN-AF