Day two in Peru and we're sitting on a bus heading from Lima to Nazca. After wandering the city for several hours, we got tired of not breathing and decided to heed the advice we'd been given about what to do in Lima- vacate as quickly as possible. In our one night there we did manage to check out the main square, Plaza de Armas, which was lovely and lined with old colonial buildings, including the presidential palace, several colorful plaster cows, reminiscent of the "Toronto Moose", and a large stage with dancers doing their best rendition of Michael Jackson's Thriller moves. We had dinner in a cute little "house" run by French nuns who came out and serenaded us with a religious hymn mid-meal which was simultaneously beautiful and bizarre. And we've learned how to cross the street- wait for a break in the traffic and run. So far our general impression of Limans is that they have a fondness for unnecessary horn-honking and a great love of chicken- fried, roasted or otherwise.

We booked our bus tickets out this morning and specifically requested the "Nazca bus directo". While it's true that after years of dormancy, we're both finding our Spanish to be a little rusty, I still thought the meaning of the word "directo" seemed to be a fairly straight forward translation: the interpretation of this word however, is a little less obvious. As we travel south along the Pan American Highway, sandwiched between the foothills of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, we've now stopped no less than seven times in our first hour and a half, have the movie Desperado blaring uncomfortably loudly in poorly dubbed Spansih and…ooops makes that eight stops…

So in case you didn't think it was bad enough having to watch Spanish actors, doing a remake of a Spanish movie in English, dubbed back into Spanish, blasting at top volume, we got to see it twice! Yes, that's right, thanks to running an hour and a half behind schedule, there was in fact time to squeeze in one more viewing. How lucky can two gringos be! I know you're all jealous- mucho Antonio Banderas!

But we're here and we're exhausted and I've been talked into boarding my first Cesna in the morning! A man named Luis and a shot of Pisco and I'm committing to things I may soon regret. Best of luck to Dair in dealing with me; Xanax, my old friend, it looks like you'll be seeing me through yet another flight.

And on that happy note, finally off to sleep. More soon lovelies…