Peru First Stops: Lima and Ayacucho

As part of my summer vacation before law school, I'm spending about 2 months wandering through South America. On June 18th, I kicked off my trip in Lima, Peru. I spent the next couple of days getting acclimated to Peru by remembering how to speak spanish, heading to museums, cathedrals, catacombs, eating ceviche and watching world cup soccer in the Plaza de Armas.

I met a group of people in my hostel in Lima who were interested in a wilderness trek near Machu Picchu. We decided on the Solkantay trek (coming soon to a blog post near you) in Cusco. My new friend A.J. and I decided to make a stop in Ayacucho on the way. Ayacucho is a town of about 150,000 people about halfway between Lima and Cusco. Ayacucho's claim to fame is its multitude of cathedrals, semana santa (holy week) celebration and history as a hotbed of the Shining Path terrorist movement in the 1980's and 1990's. These days, the town is quiet and relatively untouched by tourism.

A.J. and I were the subject of many interested looks from the local population. It turns out that our obvious outsider look would pay off in an unexpected fashion. On the morning of our first day in town, we were stopped on the street by a school teacher from an all girls elementary school near our hotel. We had a semi-confused conversation in Spanish in which we were invited to a concert the girls would be putting on the next afternoon of all English music. As it turns out, we were actually being invited to be judges in an English singing and dancing contest amongst nearly 300 students.

After awarding first prize to a group of 1st grade students who put on a thrilling rendition of Justin Beiber's "Baby" (complete with dance routine), A.J. and I hopped on a bus to Cusco to begin our Andean adventures.