Peru

 

Waiting at the Atlanta airport.

  

3am - Lima airport

 

6am - Arequipa airport; Tired, but we made it! And brrr, it's cold!  It's basically their winter time down there right now, so at night it's gets down to almost 50 degrees or so.

 

Some Cathedral in downtown Arequipa.  Back of church.  It was Saturday night and people were in there praying, so we didn't use a flash.

Front of church.

 

Zig Zag's - Celebrating Randy and Kat's 6th anniversary minus the kiddos.  Had alpaca, ostrich, and beef.  Best meat ever.

Front of the cathedral, different day.  There's a beautiful park/plaza right in front of it always packed with people.

 

Some Peruvian/Incan carving on a building.

 

Mt. Misti in the background.  Means "lord".  It's a volcano that erupted about 200 years ago.

 

Mt. Chachani - means "bride".  You can't really see it, but the Chile River runs through that valley, hence all the green landscape.  Chile actually means "cold".

 

This is the best picture we could get of all 3 of us.  Addie refused to look at the camera.  Mt. Chachani in the background.

 

By a fountain at another smaller park in Arequipa.

 

Taking a break.

 

An older gentleman playing violin in the park.

 

At an alpaca/llama farm.  The difference, you ask?  Alpacas have longer hair than the llama.  The alpaca's hair also tends to have a dreadlock look to it.

 

Alpacas

 

Buenos noches!  (That's Addie under there, by the way.)

 

At the food market.  We didn't take pictures of the meat section.  All I can say is that it smelled pretty bad.  Kat says that when she goes there, there is sometimes a guy that shouts out "Gringo!"  :)  I guess "we" are an uncommon site down there.

 

More of the market.  If you've been to markets in Mexico it's sort of similar to that.

 

Addie with her cousin Logan.  And with that blond hair Addie got lots of pictures taken of her by the locals.  Shouldn't it have been the other way around??  :)

 

Probably the driest golf course I've ever played on or seen.  They get about 1-inch of rain a year.  Joel and I had bloody noses almost the entire time down there.  It's definitely drier than say, Arizona.

 

A common site on the roads of Arequipa - traffic.  They have tons of these little taxis (Tico is the type of car - similar to a Chevy Aveo, I guess?).  Most cars are stick shift.  Lots of honking and cutting each other off.  You have to be an aggressive driver.  Worse than New York or Chicago by far.  Also, you'll notice the brick for the road.  Most of the time it's brick or rock.  Arequipa is an old city (roughly 400 years old).

 

Cousin Andrew doing homework after school.  He just turned 5 in April and already learning how to write in cursive.

 

El toro! (The bull!)  No, we do not abuse our child with a hairstyle like that.  She definitely woke up like that!  

 

The ceiling lights at a restaurant we went to on the last night we were there.  I loved the decor in there.  Very modern and hip.

 

Only a tourist would take pictures of their food.  This is an appetizer made up of calamari, shrimp, avocado, onions and mango.  Really good.

 

An interesting statue at a park in Lima....

 

You can sort of see the haze.  It's much more humid and smoggy in Lima than Arequipa, seeing that Lima is right off the Pacific Ocean.

 

Kind of blurry, these few pictures here were taken in the van we were riding in.

 

Another shot of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Waiting in the food court at the Lima airport.  LOTS of people.

 

They had a group playing traditional Peruvian music at the airport.  Addie thought it was pretty cool.