OLO

As I read the news today, there has been strong earthquake in Peru. About 500 died, over 1500 casualties. It stroke mostly in cities Ica, Chincha and Pisco, where around 70% of houses are damaged.

From the emails I know, that my friends in Peru are fine. Lima has not suffered too much, but south from it was disastrous. If you're in Peru and reading, let me know how you are.

Today is 28 July, the most important day for all Peruvians. At least for those, who feel patriotic, and Peruvians, just as we, Poles, love their country. They can whine about the poverty, about their economy, government, el Presidente, but are still proud to be Peruvian. Proud of being ancestors of brave Incas.

Today is the day, when every Peruvian will put the flag on his house, meet up with some friend, drink some pisco and celebrate the independence. Celebrate, that exactly 186 years ago general San Martin declared independence from Spain.

The biggest adventure of my life so far has ended. I came back home from Peru. I traveled for around 27 hours, passed 6 time zones.

I'm experiencing a jet lag. It's 7 am, and I'm still awake. It would be just 1 am in Lima. Wikipedia says, that sometimes skipping sleep at all can help to recover fast. I will see. So far I haven't slept much in last two nights, because of flight and goodbye party on Wednesday- see previous posts (as soon as I get them updated).

Monday

Went to my old workplace. I wanted to see my boss to give him back the books for Spanish. And he told me about the Christmas dinner at reastaurant in the evening.
I didn't miss last chance to see my coworkers and say goodbye. Especially, that food was great (it was some oriental chinese-or-something restaurant). The amazing thing was, although I was sitting at Spanish speaking table, I was talking with people all time. In Spanish!

Tuesday

Trainee dinner.
My "last supper" with my friends in Lima. We were 12 foreigners, everybody prepared something from their country. I prepared ruskie pierogi. This was good idea, but next time I will know what to do to make them better. See some of the pictures here. And read more about on Szymon's blog.

Wednesday

Goodbye party.
That was my last party in Pipas. Last and unforgetable, with all my friends present. Most of them signed my shirt, that I got from Sandra (see below). Thank you all for being there!

This Tuesday was event that everybody in my company was waiting for. Demonstration of Unexos switch at Banco Continental.
The application, that I was working on was used for this demonstration – front-end was preparing the transaction data and sending it to the switch, on the other end few host applications were connecting to MySQL database and returning whatever you would need. At least in theory. But Murphy’s law are in effect, and sometimes something goes wrong.

Now it’s over. I must make documentation of the system. Also there is another program that I worked with, which bugs have to be fixed. And that would be all!

And then, if I finish that, I will have two weeks to travel around Peru.

Last weekend I was on a desert (see below). This time - complete change of climate. With Szymon (Pol) and Sandra (Mex) I went into the mountains, to Huaraz.

We left Lima on Friday. First we had some difficulties to find a bus company, that would take us to Huaraz, because they didn't have tickets anymore. Finally we found one quite comfortable bus going there. Interesting fact: just before boarding a bus everybody had to leave their fingerprints.
In the morning we arrived in Huaraz. The city is located 3100 m above sea level, around 420 km from Lima. After visiting tourists information we started looking for place where you can buy coca leaves. They say that chewing it helps fight with altitude sickness. We went to market where you can buy literary everything - from clothes to food (e.g. fruits, raw fish, meat, etc.). We also found leaves. Their taste is horrible, I don't know if it really helps. Maybe at least it doesn't get worse.

After we found a hotel, which costs only S/.10, first aim was Mirador. It's a hill from which you can see whole Huaraz and you should have great view to all Cordillera. Unfortunately that day was cloudy, and we couldn't see much (photo above).

Next point was village Marián. From this village you can get to Willcahuain. Willcahuan are ruins of pre-inca culture that used to live there almost 2 thousands years ago.
What you can see around is so much different from what I saw so far in Peru. It's like completely different country. People live their lives working on fields, breeding cows, sheeps, goats and llamas. They didn't stop their work, but only kids seemed surprised by the tourists. Asking for directions can be really tricky. Everybody was giving other information. Where are the ruins? "Straight ahead", "left", "right". How far away? "35 minutes." "4 hours", "Oh, very far".
It started to rain. Seems normal thing, but for me it was first rain since few months. In Lima never rains.
We reached the ruins. Until today I'm not sure if those were the right ruins. If so, then they are in perfect condition, surprisingly how it survived all those hundreds or thousands of years.

After coming back we wanted to go to banos termales, but it was already closed. So we went to eat some Peruvian food, which was cuy, chicharon and trucha frita.

Day two.

When Szymon said in the morning, that he wants to go to the mountains, to Pastoruri which is over 5000 meters high, I didn't believe that we would all go there. But one hour later we were sitting in the bus that took us for the trip.
Along the way were many stops, first to drink mate de coca, then to see and try natural mineral water (with lot of iron in it) - Aguas Gasificadas, see some interesting plants called Puya Raymondi...
Finally we reached Pastoruri. From there we needed to walk around 2 km to the glacier.
This trip was very "commercialized". On every step you met people offering you something, from chocolates to pictures with lamas.
At this altitude you could feel lack of oxygen. I saw people who were not able to walk and were carried down on the shoulders. To go up, take pictures and go back it took around two hours. Then we went back the same road down. Some food in tourist's restaurant, and then back to Huaraz. Later that day we still went for while to a bar to dance some salsa, and then to bus terminal to go back to Lima.

I arrived in Lima at 6.30 Monday morning. Went back home, had shower, 1 our of sleep and then to work.

Early in the morning, at 7 a.m. we went thru deserted streets of Pisco to the center to take a trip to Paracas. Whole day trip costs only S./40.

Huacachina is an oasis in the middle of the desert. The lake is surrounded by hotels and restaurants. We checked in to Casa de arena hotel (S./15 per night).

The biggest attraction of Huacachina is sandboarding. Of course we had to try it for ourselves.
On Sunday morning we went to rent boards (S./5 per day), and after that we went to the dunes to slide. We've picked the worst moment of the day to do that. We went up exactly at noon. It was hot as hell, sand getting everywhere, in your shoes, under your shirt, into your eyes. Maybe for those, who tried snowboarding before it would be easy, but for me it was first time to do any of them.
I must say, that it's great fun, but the heat was unbearable. After this the only thing I was thinking of, was to go under the shower to wash the sand off, and then to jump into swimming pool.

Around 7 pm it was the time to go back. First by taxi to Ica, where we stopped to have a dinner, and then by bus back to Lima.

Under this link you can see picture gallery with all pictures from our trip.

Have a nice day, folks!

Today, I woke up suddenly around 5:50 a.m. I woke up, because I felt the ground shaking, as if a really huge truck was passing by. Fast I realized, that this was just an earthquake.
News say, that epicenter was some 200 km from Lima, around 90 km from the coast. Magnitude was 6.4 in Richter scale. So far no casualties were reported and loses are minimal.

Lima is a city with around 8 millions of inhabitants. So the traffic is not easy here.

Starting with general impression of the traffic – it´s not a complete madness, but still close to it. Besides, probably many cars don’t use unleaded petrol, so they pollute the air horribly.

Buses:
There are few kinds of them – combis (very small buses for around 10 persons, which means, that there could be also 15 or 20 people inside) and micros (small or a bit bigger buses). Those buses are old and don’t look reliable.

In each bus, besides the driver, there is another man at the door. He, or sometimes she, collects the money (1 sol for longer route, 50 centimos for short one[1]). Besides his/her job is to look for potential passengers, shouting out the names of the streets, etc.

The buses go literally every few seconds, they have set routes, and sometimes two or more of the same “line” are going even right one after another. In this case the drivers fight over passengers by racing to the next person on the sidewalk.


Another way of travelling around the city are taxis. They don’t have taximeters, so you need to negotiate the price with your driver prior to getting in. Which sometimes causes a jam if a cab stops for too long to discuss a price with a person on a sidewalk.

Not only cars are serving as taxis. There are also so called mototaxis, which are made of three-wheeled electric motorcycles. You don’t find them everywhere, only closer to the city centre. I wouldn’t dare to get into such thing.

Pedestrian crossings (a.k.a. zebras).
No such thing. Almost. Only on very busy junctions. But normally you have to cross the street in any place convenient. Just watch for the cars, so you don’t get run over by one. So each time I go to work during morning rush hours, it can turn to life-thrilling experience.

This is a picture of my desk, with the computer I'm working at, and one of my colleagues. I'm supposed to have english Windows installed. Maybe soon.

My first days in company are all about learning - learning about company's business, their main products, how does it work, what will I do, etc., etc., etc. In another words - induction, induction, indu... (Somehow reminds me similar situation I was few months ago - if you know what I mean)
Besides that constantly meeting new people, that I work with.