Casma y Tortugas !!

     Saturday I failed to rise on time for Colegio (where nothing was done, because it's Saturday, and usually that means we fart around and watch a movie and go eat afterwards and then play volleyball. And next time I'm supposed to bring my violin-- OH and nobody was there on Friday when I went looking for the musical group, so I just meditated) so instead, I went with Jhoselyn and our friend Helen to Casma, which is a cute little towny type place "of eternal sol" about 45minutes away from Chimbote. I thought we were just going to the beach, which is about 20min away, but Casma was just another 20 so we went there and ate a super expensive lunch at some little farmy type thing. It was a super quiet little town and I really liked it. I wish we had more time to explore it but we only got there around 12:30 and yeah. Then we went and explored a super fancy (Peru standards) hotel with a swimming pool (that we weren't allowed to swim in), a guinea pig pen (lunchtime..) and nice courtyard type things. There was bamboo and a bunch of other cool plants growing too.

      Then we saw a sign that said only 3 soles for a ride to Tortugas beach, so we hopped into a crowded hippie van with a bunch of others just in time and off we went. It was suuuper hot. The beach was awesome! I wish we'd stayed longer so I could have gone swimming hehe and we had the whole beach to ourselves other than some creepy old fishermen (maybe I wouldn't have gone swimming anyways...:P) I found a bit of Peruvian beach glass and saw a super awesome Pelican. I dunno why but Pelicans are sooo freaking cool! Not sure why I capitalized Pelicans three times... Hahahahaha but just after we arrived, Andre called Jhoselyn and said he had free tickets for us for the professional soccer match at the stadium in Chimbote! It was 3:30 and the game was going to start at 4pm, so we raaaaan to the road and asked for a car to Chimbote. BUT apparently the only cars went back the OPPOSITE DIRECTION to Casma. So we spent our last 9 soles for a 20min trip back to Casma. I had 10 centimetos left for the 6soles trip to Chimbote, Helen had 2 soles, and Jhoselyn had 5soles. Crap! We definitely hadn't known the food was going to be so expensive. What idiots we were though hahahaha anyways.
       We hopped into another van on our way to Chimbote (thank god you don't have to pay ahead) and were frantically whispering in the back to try and figure out how we were going to pay. We had our 12soles bottle of wine from lunch that we hadn't drank, but didn't think the driver would accept it in a water bottle... so Jhoselyn called Fran on her Nextel and we were going to ask her to bring the rest of our trip fee to Plaza Mejor to pay the cabbie, but while we were talking to her the battery died! So then she borrowed someone else's Nextel battery and called Helen's mom, who graciously brought us the extra 11 or whatever soles needed to pay the poor driver, who hadn't known until we asked him to stop at Plaza Mejor. Hoof! Close call.

        By then it was 4:35 and Jhoselyn and I raaaaced to her house to grab my bank card, raaaaced to the bank to take out money (Andre had to sell the tickets and couldn't leave his seat to give them to us at halftime) and then raaaaaced to the Stadium for the second half of the soccer game between San Martin and Jose Galvez. It was awesome!!! We bought some super cheap Cristal jerseys (the good lookin guys we saw in el centro) and laughed pretty hard because they weren't playing and are apparently the crappiest team of Peru! Hahahaha that's what you get. Anyways. Raced around trying to find the correct entrance but they were all closed! So we ran to the stairs and Jhoselyn sweet talked the guard into letting us up and into the PRIVATE, CLUB MEMBERSHIP, YEAR ROUND PASSES ONLY SUITES!! Awesome. Instead of concrete bleachers we got real seats and the best birds' eye view of the stadium, next to the guys that were filming the game. Man I love how spanish futbol game announcers scream hahaha! It was cool. The stadium is HUUUGE. I think all of Whitehorse could fit inside nice and snug. More. And there were tons of people walking around selling various delicious goodies and hot foods and cold drinks and everything. We sat down about 3 minutes before the start of the second half, still an empate, 0-0. We didn't end up getting to sit with Andre, Fummer, Tonio y Fercho though because they didn't get the awesome seats (which we were supposed to have to pay waaaay more for, but only paid 20 soles, the cheapest price hehe)

       Afterwards they were jealous kept pestering us because they wanted to know how we got such good seats :P It was a super good game, soccer is soo much better live! It ended up 0-0 though and I didn't catch why there wasn't overtime or a shoot out or anything. After the game the reporters rushed onto the field to interview the players, and the security guards shielded the referees as they were walked out, to protect them from angry fans and audience members! Then a creepy old guy who took a picture for us was telling me how beautiful I am and wanted me to take boxing lessons with him and stuff. Yeeaaa no. Getting kinda sick of old people hitting on me. And people in general! Hahaha but the older guys are the worst. Eew. And then another guy outside the stadium wanted a picture with Jhoselyn and I (in our Cristal jerseys) because he thought we were models or representatives of the team or something. Well that's what Jhoselyn thought. I think it's because he thought we were retards for wearing Cristal jerseys! Hahahaha anyways. Awesome :D