Things I Didn´t Know about Peru

While I am waiting to go out and spend some afternoon time in Lima, I thought I´d sit down and write a few surprises I´ve encountered during my trip. Yáll are probably smarter than me and knew all this, but oh well.

1) Spanish is the SECOND language spoken by most of the people outside the big cities. In Cuzco, for example, Quechua is the native tongue--though everyone does speak Spanish.

2) In Peru, people don´t flush toilet paper down the toilet. Even used toilet paper is put in a little basket by the toilet. This is true in homes and restaurants and such, but also hotels.

3) Americans use the word Inca incorrectly. Inca is the ruler of the Quechua people. So when we talk about Inca ruins, what we really mean is ruins the Quechua people built for their Inca.

4) There is still a lot of resentment toward the spanish in Peru--especially in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley towns. While the Quechua are now almost all Catholic, they resent what the Dominicans did to their native culture.

5) One US dollar is 3.2 soles in Peru. A beer is 8 soles. A Big Mac is 4.5 soles. A real steal because of the strength of our dollar. But food and flowers are two things that are cheap even for the native people in Peru. We were looking at elaborate flower arrangements in church--ones that would have cost upwards of $75 or $100 in the US. These same flowers cost about $10 in Peru.

6) All hotels in Lima, Cuzco, and the Sacred Valley seem to have outlets that support US electronics. I brought an adaptor with me, but didn´t need it.

7) Potatoes and Lima beans are indigenous to Peru. There are over 200 kinds of potatoes--black, blue, yellow, red. And the Georgia staple, the Lima Bean, came from Peru. (Yeah, the name should have given it away long ago to me)

8) Ecalyptus trees are native to Peru. I´m not sure why that surprises me, but it does. Oh, and there´s no real tree line in the Andean mountains. Mountains as high as 13, 14, and 15,000 feet never ever get snow. The snow line starts around 18,000 feet.

That´s it for now. If I bored you, sorry.