A Break in the Avoidance of Quakes

As Tony mentioned, we had a narrow escape from Cuzco prior to the strikes and protests that have left some tourists semi-stranded. Having signed up with the U.S. State Department to receive email alerts, I saw the following in my inbox:

September-October Strikes & Elections in Cusco

The U.S. Embassy wishes to alert U.S. citizens residing and traveling in and around Cusco, Peru of possible travel difficulties due to strikes and political demonstrations in the weeks prior to the upcoming October 3 municipal elections. The Peru Rail tourism train between Cusco and Machu Picchu will be closed Tuesday September 21 and Wednesday 22 due to transportation strikes. Travelers should be aware of possible impediments or delays to their travel in this region, particularly in the lead up to the October 3 elections, and remain flexible in their plans.

It would have been nice to get this earlier than 8:47am on Sept. 21, when Tony and I already had reached the airport, but probably the U.S. Embassy doesn't get much more notice of these things than the rest of us.

However, once we reached Lima, we had a different kind of disruption: on our first night, around 3am, we woke up due to an earthquake tremor. It wasn't particularly noteworthy -- a mere 5.9 even at its epicenter 110 miles away from Lima -- and I wouldn't mention it except it ended my pattern of earthquake avoidance on this trip.

Consider: an earthquake shook central Canada just a few days before we crossed the northern border. A tremor passed through the D.C. area the day before I arrived for a friend's wedding in Northern Virginia. Both were extremely unusual for the areas in which they occurred.

As we'll be passing through several more earthquake-prone areas after Peru, hopefully all future tremors will be as negligible as the one we felt in Lima. I woke up, but quickly fell asleep again, and in the morning vaguely thought I'd had a dream about an earthquake, until the owner of the hostel asked me if I'd felt it.