I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t had the most exciting of weekends in Peru. Others had had their adventures and a big reason why they scheduled them so quickly after arriving is that they were only here for a very limited time frame. With me, I always told myself, you’re here for 9 weeks, no need to rush into any side trips to get some extra fun. Which is probably true. Except when everyone at your house goes off and does them and leaves you alone to think about all the fun they’re potentially having. That changed though! Today. Okay. Yesterday. Technically, yesterday. Now definitely yesterday. Who would have guessed that 12 hours have passed since I first starting writing this post. Not you, constant reader. But time is a flat circle.

Moving on from True Detective and back to the subject at hand, Kyle and I awoke at 3:54 in the morning to begin embarking on our adventure of the day. Did both of us shower? No. But I did. Because I value cleanliness and giving a positive scent experience to the strangers that are driving us to faraway places. Me being the social butterfly that I am obviously spent the entire morning talking up a storm to both the driver and the tour guide that was in charge of us for the day. That’s not actually true. I slept for about four hours straight. In my defense, it was dark outside. That defense will not apply later in the day though the sleeping continued. Upon arrival, we commenced to eat locally as us “locals” are apt to do. Or that we’re just gastronomically open enough to indulge ourselves in cuisine that’s off the beaten path. Actually, it’s not even off the beaten path. It just blends in so well with that path that you wouldn’t even know that it was somewhere a gringo could go to eat. Having to wait a few extra minutes just so they can get fresh fish from the fisherman in order to produce a nice breakfast sandwich. If I keep at this specificity level in regards to details, I’ll end up writing ten thousands words just to express twelve hours worth of activity. Okay, time to ramp it up. After the eating, we went to the port that had literally opened that day. We went on a two hour (allegedly) boat tour that entailed seeing tons of birds, tons of sea lions, and a few penguins. South American Penguins!!! PENGUINS! It doesn’t matter where they’re from. What matters is that they’re penguins. The other things were cool too, the sea lions were on point, the birds produced lots of poop but the penguins were penguins. Upon arrival back to the landlocked world of opportunity, we moved onto the desert. The real desert. Lima is a desert city but it’s not what you think of when you hear the term desert. This was the stereotypical desert. Giant sand dunes. Oases. [Insert other desert things here.] What makes anything better though? Off road adventures. Monster truck rallies. Dune buggies. The answer is all three. Especially with Peruvian drivers that don’t seem to understand what Slow down, or Oh stop sir, we may flip over, or Well it was nice living for this short time seem to mean. Actually it was awesome. It was like a rollercoaster without all the safety precautions. Which led to sand boarding. When people think of me, obviously the first thing they think about is a snowboarder. Or a surfer. Or someone who’s coordinated. Balanced. Graceful. If we had been required to stand on these boards, I might be singing a different tune. That we rode them like a skinnier boogie board, I managed to do much better just becoming one with the sand by the end of the hills. A tip for those who have any interest in doing it: Do not apply sunscreen directly beforehand. It’s basically a modern day tar and feathering. If I was to get into the logistics of that, that could be easily disproven but who has time for that? People are already saying these blogs are too long. From there we went to eat food. Ceviche. Cebiche. Depending on your spelling. Out of a martini glass. Nana Hank would be proud. Not really sure why I just started writing Ernest Hemingway length of sentences. More local food. More local experiences. More tasty food. More tasty experiences. Granted, all good things must come to an end. Our excursion ended. Five hours and we were back from our adventure back into our own little home. Does this ending feel rushed? It could. Dinner is going to be ready soon and I feel that I already dilly dallied enough in writing this so I’m trying to wrap it up. I forgot to mention the “baby making” (i.e. rape wine) and other experiences from the day. Damn. Well, I have to have conversation pieces. Ask me about these things, dear readers. Be involved. Or for all I know I’ll just randomly insert it into another blog piece. So it goes.