Hello from down low! Yesterday I could\u2019ve said \u2018hi from up high,\u2019 but I wasn\u2019t thinking about rhyming then.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re about 11,680 feet lower in elevation than we were in Putre this morning. We were actually higher at the vizcacha place than at Putre, but I don\u2019t know how high that was.<\/p>\n
At the vizcacha place, our first animal was not a vizcacha or a bird: it was a mouse. A dead mouse, to be exact. A dead mouse hanging from a fox\u2019s mouth, to be totally honest. That was pretty exciting (even though Dad thought it was part of a vizcacha). We followed it with Dad\u2019s camera for a while, but then it disappeared. Dad intended on taking a dip in the hot springs, but he decided there was no good way to dry off. Meanwhile, Mom saw foxes on the hill where we saw the three yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFoxes, Ethan! Give me the camera and binoculars,\u201d she exclaimed breathlessly.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, they\u2019re not foxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, they\u2019re red\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are vicu\u00f1as.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can blame it on her age. Well, you could technically blame it on anything: the hill was rather far off, and red blobs moving around could mean just about anything.<\/p>\n
We finished the loop, seeing more vicu\u00f1as and vizcachas and vertebrae but no more zorros<\/i>.<\/p>\n
We got back to the hotel at 11, just in time to collect our luggage for the ride down to Arica, which claims to be the driest city in the world. On the way, we stopped at a museum and looked at mummified bodies. The air is dry enough here to preserve the bodies almost perfectly.<\/p>\n
After chilling a bit in the hostel, we left for supper at a place called T&T. But we should have guessed that it would be closed (what with our luck at Jalapeno). So we wandered around for a while. Finally, leaning against a lamppost, Ethan pointed our attention towards the man with the skeleton puppets.<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t they cool?\u201d he cried. The man was making the puppets\u2019 mouths open and close when the \u201cmusic\u201d in the background produced a human voice, and both were \u201cplaying\u201d instruments (guitar and drum). At the end of each song, of course, the man walked around with a purple felt hat, asking for money.<\/p>\n
Ciao!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello from down low! Yesterday I could\u2019ve said \u2018hi from up high,\u2019 but I wasn\u2019t thinking about rhyming then. We\u2019re about 11,680 feet lower in elevation than we were in Putre this morning. We were actually higher at the vizcacha … Continue reading