Arequipa Report:

Arequipa, the solar oven of Peru.  Surrounded by three giant barren volcanoes that reflect the light and keep the air stagnant, making sure Arequipa just soaks up all it’s smoggy aroma.  Everything is slowly turning to smogged jerky.  Much like Lima the streets are mostly clogged with taxis without passengers.  It seems to be a pastime of the city to purchase a “taxi” decal, stick it on your car, and then slowly drive through the streets mindlessly honking at other empty taxi’s.  Like the sinusoidal oscillations of predator and prey populations, we arrived at the peak population of predatory taxis, and with an absence of riders their population is sure to decline in the coming months.  

We are here for 2 weeks of Language school.  The daily lessons are going well, though they take up a large portion of the the day in terms of time and energy.  The volcanoes leering over our shoulders all day long provide a good sense of urgency.  I read an article describing Mt. Misti (the closest of the three behemoths) as Peru’s most dangerous volcano.  It claimed that it has certainly “woken up.”

I found this extremely alarming because waking up in Arequipa is a fairly shocking and violent experience.  Somewhere around five in the morning the sun peeks it’s head over the horizon, timidly at first, as if it had discovered an unknown Tupperware container of food in the fridge and isn’t altogether confident that the contents of the Tupperware won’t contain a new super virus.  However, after this sly little initial investigation, the food must have been determined to be very safe, and very enticing, because its just gangbusters from then on out.  The valley explodes with light like the finally of a Hong Kong Fireworks display except during the height of the day.  

The big trucks and the dogs are the first to stir.  The dogs, hungry for food and other dogs, the trucks gesturing with loud grunts of their diesel engines punctuated by shrill, unexpectedly high pitched honks from their horns.  It’s like a street fight full of Mike Tysons running unknown errands, flexing, and ruining it all by opening their mouths.  

The cacophony of light and sound popcorns my consciousness into reality.  Despite the assault from the visual and auditory senses, it is a dire sense of dehydration that pulls the fire alarm and forces me out of bed.  

I drink water like I’m gasping for breath.

Then I feel the pain in my nose.  I have no idea what’s going on in there but it must be some sort of civil war.  I’m blowing out what seem to be the equivalent of body parts… unsure whether I might actually need them to exist.  My face is that of horror every time I peek at what i have managed to extract.  
Interesting Aside:  The dogs in the states don’t have their balls, but the love to chase balls in the park.  In Peru all the dogs have their balls and they could care less about balls or parks.