![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/wood-fired-pizza.jpg\" "\\"wood")
<\/a>SEVEN DAYS LATER<\/p>\n
We are still in lovely Puno. \u00a0And its date night again! \u00a0We have now eaten at our favorite vegetarian restaurant 3 times (https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/lovinghutperu?fref=ts), tried a few different woodfired pizza restaurants and found a favorite bar, 12 stories above the city with a great view of Lake Titicaca and where there is no bartender so we have to make our own drinks. \u00a0Never seen anyone else there, either. \u00a0Its like our own private bar, a well stocked bar too. \u00a0 You can see Ryan’s photos of it on Facebook – I will try to get him to post some here, too.<\/p>\n The phone is not here yet – it is supposed to be here tomorrow.<\/p>\n The Moroccan cell phone was left at a phone unlocking place and they flashed it but could not unlock it so they gave us a white phone. \u00a0It is not in\u00a0Arabic – but it does have the previous owners texts, alarms, music and such on it, we were awakened at 5am by salsa music.<\/p>\n Another Saturday market, Sylvie left her bolsita (teeny bag) on the combi and then dropped her wallet and insisted she had been pickpocketed. \u00a0She keeps a sol in her pocket incase she has to travel by combi back home. \u00a0We have bought ALL the hats. \u00a0 Puno is a smallish city and I think we have become rather well-known here. \u00a0There are other non-Peruvian people here, we sometimes see tourists but none have children and most just pass through (must have Frommer’s). \u00a0We however, live at the Grifo Salsedo by the sheep and have 6 white children, three of which are blonde-ish and the girls get their hair touched all the time. \u00a0And we buy all the hats, the white family with all the kids that lives near the sheep by the gas station who buys all the hats. \u00a0Also tourists do not take combis, only taxis. \u00a0Combi travel is the preferred way to go – fast, cheap and unpredictable. \u00a0So much of Peru we used to find so interesting (llama fetuses, drums of sodium cyanide used as seats, the many layers of cholita clothes, Chifa, warm soda) has become so everyday that we don’t even notice.<\/p>\n We took the little kids to Snoopy’s where the restaurant is painted lime green and there is a trampoline and a loud TV featuring Peruvian variety shows with women in bikinis, a lot of hot dancing and a dwarf. \u00a0We ordered salchipapas, a tradtional South American delicacy we have sampled in every country however this time, it was exceptional. \u00a0Just look at that presentation! \u00a0Artful, appetizing and less than $2.<\/p>\n There is not much to do anymore so we have settled into a regular routine of school, work and daily market trips. \u00a0We are bringing home very unique potatoes to plant and seeds for strange heirloom plants that seem like they would grow well in Alaska as they grow here in the Andes at 12,000+ feet.<\/p>\n DHL has opened a case and dedicated a Research Team to our cell phone. \u00a0It appears that there may be (surprise!) corruption at the DHL office. \u00a0DHL doesn’t like that. \u00a0We had assistance in the process by the Peruvian government so it was all clearly DHL’s issues. \u00a0The DHL woman who was assigned to our phone spammed us, Peruvian Customs and the Ministry of Communications. \u00a0We were required to pay $31USD for no apparent reason to DHL. \u00a0That was Thursday. \u00a0They gave us 9 minutes to get to the bank and deposit the $31 in DHL’s bank account before the code they gave us expired. The code expired because 9 minutes is not enough time, plus they gave it to us an hour after it had expired. \u00a0We called back, got another code, tried again but it took 11 minutes. \u00a0Tried again. \u00a0We were inline at the bank, things are just slow in Peru, took more than nine minutes to type in all the numbers. \u00a0We tried 5 times and then DHL gave us a code and did not authorize it so we had to come back the next morning at 8am – then it worked. \u00a0DHL asked us to scan and fax and email the\u00a0receipt\u00a0to them, which we did right away. \u00a0The phone should have been here that afternoon (Thursday) but instead it now will take 5 days to travel to Puno, a one hour plane ride away. \u00a0The funny thing is that the Peruvian government was helping us and they reported DHL. \u00a0We could not figure out the DHL woman’s emails, we thought our Spanish translation was off but it turns out that the DHL woman made no sense at all to fluent Spanish speakers as well and that irritated the Peruvian government folks.<\/p>\n Hopefully the phone will be here tomorrow and we will depart Puno. \u00a0The question now is Bolivia or no Bolivia? \u00a0Bolivia is expensive to get into ($1200 in visa fees) and they have water restrictions and (the worst part) we have to beg for gas. \u00a0A lot of gas. \u00a0The decision is Ryan’s to make and he needs to make it by Tuesday morning. \u00a0The phone will require a day of work to unlock it and such so Tuesday morning is the tentative departure date. \u00a0We will all miss Puno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we first began planning our trip in Fairbanks last winter, we thought about spending a month or three weeks in La Paz. \u00a0Instead, we spent considerable time in Puno and we have all very much enjoyed living here. Mark, Sylvie, Annie, Max & I went to Del Buho for pizza and Jen, Jack &… Continue reading Puno, Peru — the last days<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peru","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1811,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions\/1811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>