Dogs in Sweaters

Hi there readers! Nothing too crazy going on here in Peru (besides National Grilled Chicken Day, which is Sunday). However, we did move apartments, which is pretty exciting! Before the move, we were in Miraflores – right along the water, walking distance from pretty much anything we needed, and exactly a three minute walk from our fellow interns. We moved to Surco, which is 20-30 minutes inland. It’s also very convenient since it’s right by the Embassy! Now, instead of getting on the shuttle at 6:30, arriving at the Embassy at 7, and sitting around for an hour before all the actual staff arrive, we can leave home at 7:30 and get there a bit before 8. This is amazing because it means getting more sleep, and also means that we don’t have to sit in traffic for an hour every day as we come home from work! Traffic in Lima is pretty terrible, and everyone feels some weird social pressure to honk their horns at least once every minute. This blog explains it better than I can.

Other than the move, the only really exciting thing that’s been happening is the fact that I keep awkwardly running into the Ambassador in the elevator! It’s always very uncomfortable, because he is a very big deal (he’s essentially representing the entire US government in Peru, which means that everyone calls him Sir and we have to stand up whenever he walks into a room, etc.), and I never have any small talk to make with him. When this happens many times in one week, it gets even worse. But, it’s awesome to have the opportunity to chat with him, even as I nervously fail at making professional but entertaining jokes and fidget with whatever I’m carrying around.

The exciting news is that we went to an OASIS last weekend! It’s easy to forget that Lima is in technically in a desert (although there are currently water shortages throughout the city, so that’s no fun), but we took a four hour drive south and found ourselves standing on a huge pile of sand!

Our first stop was a pisco vineyard, where we learned how pisco is made and got to try a bunch of different types! Pisco is a liquor made from grapes, mostly in Peru and Chile, and it’s used to make some delicious cocktails, like pisco sours (pisco, lemon juice, and simple syrup, topped with an egg white) and chilcanos (pisco, gingerale, and lime juice). You can apparently buy pisco some places in the States, so I highly recommend it to all you lovely people.

This is the pisco press - people have a dance party on the grapes to squeeze out the juice, then the wooden bar comes down to press out the rest of it. Then it goes through that little hole in the back into containers to ferment.

The pisco bar!

After the bar, we stopped by the museum in Ica, which didn’t look like much from outside but was really amazing once we went in! I recommend it to anyone who ends up in Ica in the near future. Plus, all the dogs in the area wear sweaters.

From the museum, we headed to Huacachina, the only natural oasis in all of the Americas!

First glimpse of the oasis.

The main attraction in Huacachina (besides just knowing you’re at an oasis!) is sand boarding/dune buggying around the desert. We all got strapped into our buggy and headed out onto the dunes – it was SO FUN! The desert was beautiful and the ride was just scary enough. Sand boarding, also, is amazing! The boards look like tiny little snowboards, and you can go down the dunes on your stomach, seated, or standing.

Interns in the desert

Sunset in the desert!

The next day, we woke up pretty early to head to Paracas, a port city where all the boats are named Pisco and there are approximately half a million birds (seriously). From the port, you can take a boat out to the Islas Ballestas, which are called the “Poor Man’s Galapagos” because they’re covered with animals but also quite cheap to visit. We saw penguins (!!!), cormorants, boobies (it’s a type of bird, calm down), and sea lions!

The first sea lions we saw - super lazy and adorable.

Angry (actually just hungry) birds.

1,000 boats named Pisco.

Just a tiny lil crab!

"I've got big spoon."

After a great weekend trip, we piled into the van to head back to Lima. Thanks for reading, readers, keep in touch!