Sunday was election day for the Peruvians, and voting in Peru is mandatory. Also, they know who the winner is by 4 o'clock, which gives them a narrow window to get out and vote. The two candidates are Keiko Fujimori and PPK (PedroPablo Kcynsky), and while I only know Peruvian politics through word of mouth from teachers at school or my host family it seems that I would vote PPK. Keiko is the daughter of now imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori and she has been accused of trying to buy votes from the poor community with the embezzled money that her father is currently in jail for. Her last name still holds good standing with a lot of Peruvians due to her fathers hand in ending the crippling terrorism here in the 80's/90's. PPK has been labeled as a gringo (he is the son of Polish immigrants and spent a lot of time in America as a World Bank economist) and plans to sells oil rights to foreign businesses to try and reap profit through taxes. Thats my best analysis anyways. PPK ended up winning by 0.5%, which I would assume calls for a recount, but we will see.
While the Peruvians were hitting the polls, we were headed to Lunahuana for some river rafting and other activities. The rafting was fun, and reminded me much of the river in western Mass we went on at Camp Fuller. Afterwards was a quick ATV ride and then lunch. I had fried trout that was presumably caught in the river. The sun was beating down hard, and it is tough to think about this as Peruvian winter. We had a quick walking tour through the town, we couldn't visit the church because it was their polling center, and finally had a wine tasting at a vineyard. Before heading back to Lima we stopped at a rope bridge with a picturesque view of the river and mountains and sampled some locally made honey. Its crazy to think this is the end of week three, time has been going pretty fast and we are about to begin our last week here in Lima.
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