Peru

Fokker Over the Nazca Lines
We´re in Lima, Peru for the second time this year. Last time we stopped at the port of Lima, Callao--this time we´re in the city proper. The city is huge. It´s a metropolis of 47 different districts, each with a mayor, and then there´s a mayor for the whole city of 9 million souls!

The Hummingbird
Early this morning we flew to Ica, Peru, in the desert, in order to see the Nazca Lines. My the Lines are fascinating. Not only did we see the animals like the spider, monkey, parrot, dog, hummingbird, and flamingo, we also saw the shapes of the tree, hands, trapezoids and triangles, and of course the astronaut. I´ll post some pictures when I get home. We heard theories about why they are there and how they were made, but no one really knows why or how!
The Spider

While in Ica we went to a museum where we learned more about the people who pre-dated the Inca. We viewed mummies from many centuries ago as well as pots, weavings, quipu, and carvings from the many different desert cultures. Most interesting.

Bird

Tomorrow we board the MS Aqua Marina for a week on the Amazon River. We´ve been warned about heat, humid and bugs, so I think we are more or less ready for the adventure. The downside---we have to get up at 1 AM in order to board the plane to Iquitos on time. We´ve been told that we want to get on the river early in order to avoid some of the heat. I wonder how hot it is going to be.

More later. If there is wifi in the jungle, I´ll try to post.

Two Collections

Whenever I travel, I look for 2 things: flowers and license plates.

I added 3 license plates to my collection! Did you know that the British Virgin Islands has at least 4 different colors of plates? They all look the same except for the background color. I wonder why? Of the 3 places we visited, the US Virgins had the prettiest plate (in my humble opinion).

My other collection is flowers. I wish I had the time and inclination to identify all the beautiful blooms I've captured. In the end, it does not really matter. The flowers just speak for themselves.

Caribbean Hello

We're in the sunny Caribbean. What a gorgeous place. East coast folks go here...west coast folks go to Hawaii. We've spent a lot of time in Hawaii, but after this trip, we might need to come down here an explore a bit more.



We're on the NCL Dawn. It's a working cruise for us. This time I'm lecturing instead of Chet. He's the go-fer and all around helper--an important role as so many things can go wrong. On our 2nd lecture we had an LCD projector that did not project reds. This is not good when you are asking folks to look at color photography. After changing the projector once and the cable twice, we finally got the reds to work! That's what the go-fer does. (As an aside, last month we were on a sister-ship, the NCL Star. The Dawn seems to be much nicer than the Star. Better food, better service, more friendly staff/crew. It makes you wonder what makes one ship "work" so much better than another? If you have a choice, pick the Dawn right now!)



I don't know what island I like the best: Dominican Republic is rural; Tortula, British Virgin Islands is more urban and St. Tomas in the US Virgin Islands looks like home with a tropical tilt. All are wonderful. The water is exquisitely clear. The beaches are beautiful. It's hard to talk without using superlatives. We'll be back.




More later