Lunahuaná (Día 1)

Okay, Lunahuaná Day 1, GO!



View from the hotel room



I got up early Saturday morning and got ready, ate breakfast, and left my house to meet everyone else.  I stopped at the store to buy some water and cereal bars for the weekend, but then by a little after 8 a.m. we were all on the bus and driving out of Lima.  I don't remember exactly what time we got to Lunahuaná, but the trip was around three hours.  We got to our hotel and checked in and we had a little bit of time to kill before we went rafting.  There was a playground right next to the hotel, so when you have time to kill and there's a playground right there, the decision of what to do is pretty easy!  Also, we were there for all of 20 minutes and I already had gotten like 5 bug bites.  Luckily, those were the only ones I got for the rest of the weekend, but they look bad.  I don't know what kind of bugs they were, but as soon as they bit you you bleed a little and there are welts without even scratching them.  It's quite strange.

Teeter-tottering!

Anyway, we then left to go rafting on the Cañete River.  It was fun!  It wasn't rough at all because we did the basic level rafting (I'm assuming 1 and/or 2 rapids), but it was still really fun!  And plus it was beautiful and hot out, so being around cool water was great.  At one point during our rafting journey we did get out and the guides let us jump into the current and float a little ways down the river.  It was nice, I did it twice. :)


 Once we were done with rafting, we took a combi (a small scale micro) back to the hotel to change.  We of course played cobrador on the way back which was hilarious!  We were all laughing SO hard.  A girl named Sarah was being the cobradora and I can definitely see that in her future.  It was awesome.  We were all being so loud and impersonating cobradores.  I'm pretty sure the driver thought we were crazy, but who cares.  I can tell you right now though, if I were dressing up for Halloween, I would definitely be a cobradora.  After playing micro with cobradores, vendors, and passengers, we got changed out of our wet clothes and then headed to lunch.  I, of course, had lomo saltado for the first meal, but don't worry, that's not what I had all weekend (although it was an option).  We then went to some ruins called Incahuasi.  Incahuasi was built in the 15th century and it's an Incan ruin (hence the name).  An interesting thing about these ruins is that there are cylindrical columns amongst the ruins, which was rare for the Incans.  Usually nothing was ever cylindrical in the Incan architecture. 

Walking up to the ruins

We took a little trip to the central square of Lunahuaná, too.  We checked out the church that was there and then we walked around looking at some of the things that the street vendors were selling.  Next stop was a bodega (winery), La Reyna de Lunahuaná.  Unfortunately, March is the grape/wine season so there wasn't a ton to see at the bodega, but we did get to try some wine and pisco.  We tried a white and red wine, which were both really sweet and then you won't believe what we tried next...we all tried the pisco that they had and it was 96 proof, which is the highest percentage that is made in Perú.  Also, the bottle is really cool because when you shake it it makes a tornado inside the bottle. :)  After that we went down the street to a place that makes honey.  We got to try three different kinds of honey, which were all good.

And then...with Halloween spirit, we went to La Casa Encantada (a house that is haunted).  Sorry, I didn't take any pictures here in fears that something might show up in the background.  I didn't want to take that chance.  Anyway, before we went into the house, the guide told us about it.  Apparently, the first couple that lived there heard noises all of the time and for some reason they became sick and got skinnier and skinnier and eventually had heart attacks.  There were also couples after them that that experienced similar things.  Apparently there are Incan burial grounds underneath the house and our guide said something about toxins that may have caused the families to get sick (it wasn't quite clear).  What was clear was that we were about to go into a house that had been abandoned for over 50 years at night!  Oh, also, there have been accounts of drivers that have passed by and the house has been on fire or even creepier accounts of drivers picking up people at the house only to realize later that noone is in the car.  So Tonisha and I held hands and walked into the house.  I'm actually freaked out talking about it right now.  Anyway, the house was actually really cool, but it was creepy.  There were so many rooms and only our guide had a flash light and as much as I didn't want to look into the dark rooms (because I was afraid of what I'd see), I couldn't help it.  Anyway, we didn't go to the basement because it was gated off, which I'm thankful for.

After the creepy experience, we ate dinner and I had picante camarón (spicy shrimp), which really wasn't spicy at all.  And come to find out, what are known as river shrimp in Perú are actually crawfish, so I ate crawfish for dinner. :)  It was pretty good, but I still prefer shrimp from the sea.  It was pretty funny because our guide was telling us about all the different types of shrimp dishes and he started to list them all off (Forrest Gump style).  It was hilarious!  I broke out into laughter!  After dinner we all went back to the hotel and Tonisha and I decided to be little kids again.  Finding Nemo in Spanish was on Disney Channel so we watched that while jumping on the beds. :)  At one point the jumping became a little dangerous, so we jumped for a little bit longer, but then we decided to stop.  A guy in our program, Ian, had his birthday today (Sunday).  So we celebrated last night at the hotel by cracking open some of the wine that people bought at the bodega.  It was fun.  We all just sat around and chatted for awhile.

So that's the end of Día 1.  It was really busy and really fun!!  I can't wait to tell you about Día 2 tomorrow!  Have a good Monday!  Rise and Shine! :)