Happy Easter

March 23, 2008
Felices Pascuas, Happy Easter. I hope that you’re all well and wonderful, but will settle for well. The Internet access in my house seems to be taking Easter off, so I’m using the wireless at an upscale café about a 15 minute walk away. Plenty of contrasts here. I have another week in Arequipa and a review of my to-do list looks suspiciously like the one that I started with almost three months ago. Slow progress. I’m learning to wait for things here a bit more patiently as everything seems to take longer and it’s often a little more complex to accomplish seemingly simple tasks. I like the verb esperar, which means either to wait or to hope. The airlines have "la lista de espera" wait list or hope list, depending on one’s state of mind, when trying to get on a flight that’s already full.

I got back to Arequipa about midnight last night after 10 days in Ica for a week-long medical project, which all went pretty well. It’s a 12-hour drive mostly along the coast through an incredibly dry desert totally devoid of vegetation except for the punctuation of occasional river valleys irrigating olives, citrus, mango, grapes, cotton, etc. The road is squeezed between the Pacific and the mountains and as one winds and climbs up and down, there are some amazing views. I’m kind of getting into driving here. The rules of the road are the same as in the U.S., but with extremely creative ongoing interpretation. It’s a new balance of defensiveness and assertiveness. Lane markers, stop signs, yield signs are merely suggestions to be determined and negotiated by one’s size and speed. Definitely a more active experience, especially in the city. Ica is at the center of Peru’s wine country, and the grapes and mango were delightfully in season. Not exactly Napa or Tuscany, but they have a few decent wines if you look hard. I’ll bring a bottle in May.
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