Mike is here!

Mike got in yesterday morning! He was pretty tired all day though because he had a pretty terrible flight path (about 30 hours of travel total!). There was a festival in the centro yesterday so we stopped by for a little while. Lots of school aged kids were dressed up in traditional Peruvian clothing and dancing in processions in the streets. We also went to the market in search of moneylenders. We found a few but none of them were very interested in talking to us. We also ran into someone from a small bank. It appears that some banks have seen the need for smaller daily- collected loans for people in the marketplace and are sending agents to collect repayments daily. Its very interesting that banks are seeing the demand for these loans and are taking strides to fill this gap.

There is a huge nationwide strike today and tomorrow, which I believe to be against the export of domestically produced oil to other countries (though I'm not entirely sure). Absolutely everything is closed down. No cars or buses are allowed to be on the streets and most stores are closed. People are marching around making bonfires and blowing whistles. We were going to try to utilize these 2 free days then the weekend (so 4 days total) to take a trekking adventure to Machu Picchu. Unfortunately, however, the tourist agency called us late last night telling us that one of the towns we were going to pass through in the jungle also decided to strike, so we have to postpone our adventure. Hopefully we'll still get to do something fun, and obviously we'll still be visiting Machu Picchu this weekend!