Paracas, Peru

I made it...I am officially on vacation!

I think it definitely hit in the airport yesterday morning. I was the only gringa there for a while and got to talk to all the salvadoreños, and we had a wonderful time in the terminal awaiting the plane. Then the trip into El Salvador was absolutely breathtaking. The volcanic chain over which we flew was beautiful, everything was emerald green with recent rains and the volcanic lakes I saw were huge. As I sat in a cafe enjoying a grilled chicken salad in the San Salvador airport, I was watching Japanese anime on TV. I couldn't hear the dubbed cartoons in Spanish due to all the airport noise, but with Spanish all around me I was sitting there reading the Japanese characters on the TV...one of those times when my worlds just kind of collided...and in El Salvador, of all places on Earth.

The flight to Costa Rica was only an hour, and the flight to Lima seemed endless. But I finally arrived, and I got some dinner and got down to Paracas, a small fishing village on the coast about 3 hours south of Lima on the Panamericana Sur highway. Today I took it easy. I went to the beach--private beach but definitely not a pretty beach--took pictures of heron and pelicans and wrote and journaled and did some sudoku and watched fishing boats going out to gather their catch and sat by myself...not that there was anyone else there anyway. It was wonderful. I have just had lunch and am going to take it easy, go over to the malecón for a while, where artesanias are also sold and have a look around.

And I will try to check in tomorrow afternoon from the city of Ica! Hasta entonces...