Argentinian Dance-Off

As expected the trip through northern Peru is much less exciting than the past two weeks simply because there is not much here and its a lot of bus-riding. But nevertheless we have some fun stuff to share.

We met a couple on the bus over the Ecuadorian/Peruvian border and have been traveling around with them the past 4-5 days as we make our way through the same route. They're great company, especially because they play cribbage and have english accents. In typical Laura Lively fashion, I completely chanegd the girl's name in my head and called her 'helen' instead of her real name 'alice' for the first two days and now it is stuck to the point that even her fiance and mike call her helen. So for all intents and purposes, their names are Helen and Dean.

The first two cities we have visited in Peru have been kind of lame because they are just border towns (Piura and Chiclayo), although Chiclayo had a great museum about the ruins of the temple of Sipan of the Moche tribe. It had some great artifacts, including vases used to educate the children about the lifecycle... so when a little boy asked his mom 'where did I come from?' he will be told to take a drink out of a vase with a woman with a crowning baby head coming out from between her legs. That's one way to teach 'em.

For the past 2 nights we've been in a great beach town called Huanchaco right outside Trujillo, Peru. Awesome hostel with great food, and besides our traveling companions there are some other fun travelers here (mostly surfers). Mike is actually getting surfing lessons with Dean right now, and Helen and I are about to go watch. I picture something less than gracefull, but I may be surprised.

Last night we hung out on the roof with a bunch of other travelers playing guitar until we heard loud drums and cheering at 2 a.m. So we all headed into the streets to see what was going on, only to find about 40 Argentinians chanting and dancing and singing at a nearby hostel. Apparently they are all here for an international dance competition tongight (which we are definitely going to now) and were just going crazy. So we of course decided to join in and immediately the argentinians swarmed us to show off their dance moves. At one point mike and I were goofing off and dancing like the idiots we usually dance like, and this enormous 6'5" argentinian tapped mike on the shoulder. When he had mike's full attention he proceeded to do a dance that could only be described as a crossbreed between the Fonz and Ricki Martin rubbing the booties of two invisible women. Then he looked at Mike with this huge, proud grin as if expecting utter amazement. We, of course, were genuinely amazed and gave him what he wanted, so everybody was happy. This set off a series of horrible but incredible dance-off moves while the open bar took its effect.

We have decided we LOVE Argentinians and are quite sad we wont be going there this trip. But it's on the list for next time.