Arequipa -- birthday celebration

Don-- So, yes. My 40th birthday arrived and the world did not stop turning. There was no great earthquake or disaster of any kind. In fact, people here in Arequipa hardly seemed to notice my birthday at all. Both Mau and I suffered from the double-walking "death rattle" pneumonia and the altitude-illness and were pretty miserable but we got out to see "Juanita" the mummy-girl sacrificed 500 years ago by the Inca and discovered on a volcano at 5000 meters, and went out for a birthday feast of pisco sour (the national drink, kid of a cousin to the margarita), ceviche, alpaca steaks, cuy (guinea pig), and chocolate cake. Oh yes, and plenty of Coca tea for the altitiude sickness.
We leave in the am on a 3 day trek through Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world, stay with the campesinos in small villages, visit hot springs, check out condor nests.

Viva Las Vegas or did you mean Paris Mau?

IMG_0673
Originally uploaded by maujb.

Here's Mau and some of her siblings in Vegas before the grand adventure. Hope you have fun and not too much diarrhea!

Adios Don

IMG_0665
Originally uploaded by maujb.

Lima-Miraflores

Mau: We are finally off on our year long adventure now. Arrived in Lima, Peru last night after 11 hours in a plane. Now we´re just wandering around Miraflores today. No mexican food here cuz we´re not in Mexico! ha ha ha. Okay so that´s not really true, there´s Mexican food along with tons of italian and chinese food here! People are real nice here even in a big city. We´ll be moving on from here Sunday.
Just wanted to thank Lia and Chris for they´re great hospitality before we departed. Also had a wonderful time in Vegas with my sisters and brother (never been there before either). There´s plenty of internet access around here but not much to say yet so I´ll be brief.
We´ll be keeping you posted on our new adventures as they happen.

Don-- Ok, Mau left out the part about us nearly missing our connection flight to Lima. We arrived in Atlanta on time and the flight to Lima was posted as running an hour late so we went off to forage for chinese food and stopped in a store for some snack when I heard "last boarding call for flight 563 for Lima, gates are closing". We ran our asses off through 14 gates and the door is closed, there was no staff any where. Mau screamed, I fainted, drawing the attention of the Delta staff from another gate and they let in the door and on to the plane. In the end, we ended up waiting another 40 minuted in the plane before taking off, but a dramatic beginning to the year adventure none-the-less.