August 15th - Leaving Lima

Wow, it's my last day in Peru. And, as always so much has happened since my last blog.

On Friday, I moved from Puno to Juliaca in the morning. The airport is there, and I figured it would make my Saturday morning flight easier, and also give me a chance to go up to Pukara, an important site nearby. The Pukara culture lived between 300bc and 200ad, and were the 'seed culture' for the Tiwanaku and Huari civilizations that came later, or so the theories say. They also have amazing stone carvings, and there was a very nice little museum in town which showed them off. The site was quite interesting, and there were hardly any people there which made for a very peaceful morning. I was hoping to run into a couple of people I met at the archaeology conference in Arequipa, but there was no sign of them, so I toured the site, then had lunch at what appeared to be the only restaurant in town. The set meal was a large dumpling of mooshed together sweet potato with some regular potato and a thin slice of cheese through the middle, batter fried and served with rice. Carbs? These people live on 'em. Anyway, it filled me up, and I grabbed another local bus back to town. I had meant to stop at a town between there and Juliaca, but the bus took the 'other' road, so we sailed right by and I ended up back at the busyard of Juliaca. I took a tricycle taxi back to my hotel, kind of a rickshaw type thing. It was fun. My hotel was nice but had no heat, and I spent a chilly night dreaming of the summertime weather waiting for me in California.

After flying to Lima on Saturday, I've spent the last few days seeing some friends from Acari, touring a few museums, doing a lot of window shopping, and checking out yet another archaeology site. Today, after visiting the site, we decided to take it easy and saw another movie at Larcomar - 'The Island'. We didn't even know what it was about, it was just the next movie starting which was in English, and that was good enough for us.

Tonight I'm meeting Annalisa for dinner - the others have all gone now - and then I have one last night in my cute, plant filled Lima hotel before heading to the airport tomorrow morning and catching my flight home.

It has been a truly amazing summer. I have had so many fantastic experiences, and honestly I'm feeling ready now to just be home and let things quiet down a bit before school starts up again on the 22nd.

I'll post again from the good ol' US of A. Until then, thanks for keeping me company this summer. See you soon!

Karen