Desert Days

Another Saturday has come & gone, and of course it was anything but uneventful. This weekend Jose & I tackled the desert to get a little variety from our time up in the mountains. Our first pit stop was in Pisco, to see the grave of Sarah Helen- a little morbid I know.As the legend goes, Sarah Helen was a witch and a relative to the well-known vampire, Dracula. (I kid you not; I couldn’t make this blog up, even if I tried) She had ties to England and unfortunately died while out at sea. Though I’m sure the Brits have big hearts now, at the time they wouldn’t touch her, even if they were responsible. Apparently people are a little finicky when it comes to dead rotting bodies, how rude! She stayed on the ship for three months until some good hearted Peruvians decided they would take pity on her unfortunate circumstances & placed what was left of her in Pisco, Peru. The locals all know where her gravesite is and call her “the witch.” After the earthquake in 2007 they rebuilt her gravesite, which had been destroyed and erected a large white tomb. People from all over come and ask for different wishes to be granted, she’s become quite the socialite in the cemetery. The Peruvian cemetery is much different than a North American one. For starters, they have developed a kind of ‘grave-condo’ system where they place graves upon graves, about six stories tall and have the name and date, as well as a picture on the front of each tomb,

a real space saver for sure. In 2007 the earthquake left quite an impression on the cemetery and those buried there because many had broken through the surface with the pressure from the ground. If you ask me, they just wanted to take a quick peak and see what all the fuss was about.

After Pisco we jetted down to the local fish market,I can’t say I’ve ever been to one of those in past, and you know, I think I’m good after this visit. They had big fishies, little fishes, and some as big as my head and women working to separate the good bits from the bad bits. For lunch Jose tasted some of the fish, and I ‘chickened’ out and had a little shrimp. Our dishes both came with a jalapeno pepper, and of course acting before thinking both Jose & I tried just a tinsy bit of the pepper. Well you’d think I would eventually learn. This pepper was so hot our

noses were running, there were tears and I kind of wanted to cut my tongue of right then and there. Our waiter brought us some sugar to alleviate the pain, but we lived up to our gringo reputation and I think the staff got a little laugh.

You know, before I left on this adventure I thought we were going to have a leisurely Saturday afternoon, check out Pisco, have some lunch & head back. I’ve never been one to turn down a siesta- but this man I tell you has more energy than I do. He wanted to show me the Peruvian desert, and boy did I get an eye full. I think by the time we made it back to Chincha Baja I had sand in every whole in my head and the car definitely took home half of the sand in the desert. We had the oddest discovery while we somehow ended up off roading in the desert we found a flock of flamingoes! Bright pink flamingoes looking for shrimp! We got real close for some pictures; I had never seen them in a natural habitat before. They look a little different without all the bars and chains in front of

them like they have at the zoo, a little more majestic you could say! And of course, just seeing flamingoes was not enough for this trip; nope we were looking for a lagoon, in the middle of the desert. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Well I hadn’t, but all I could picture was the lagoon in Peter Pan- just maybe without the mermaids. After a few wrong turns, & some back tracking we followed some locals and found the mysterious mass of water. It was so blue & green; I would never have expected to find it hiding amongst a world of sand and dust. When we arrived there were a bunch of men just about to set offfor a night of fishing and we got to see them get ready and hit the water.

It was a long dusty road, but we made it back to Chincha Baja just as the sun went down that night and I got to see a little more of life here in Peru.