I AM AN IDIOT! Officially. I showed up at the airport of Tacna to take my flight on to Argentina only to find out that the plane had left last night - shortly after midnight. Which is why it was the 17th already...duh. This sucks because not only am I stuck in this Peruvian town on the border with Chile where, according to my Lonely Planet there are the best hospitals and schools in Peru but not much else, but I will also have to devise an alternative plan to get to Rio. And I was just regaining my good mood.
 
The rest of the canyon trip was lovely - I saw more beautiful scenery and a lot of condors (a huge bird, which is also a big Inca symbol) cruising above the canyon. It was still very very touristic, about 50 people attempted to cram into the one 2 square meter viewpoint where the buses dropped us off so I ran away and went on a short hike on my own. I do not really understand why most people feel so much more secure in masses and do not even contemplate venturing a couple of steps farther from the prescribed places. It is not like the birds only fly over that one spot...then again, those people probably do not miss flights stupidly like I do. 
 
But they also do not get to hang out with the "locals" like I did in the village that we overnighted at. There was some big catholic fiesta (the one for the Virgin Mary that I already wrote about) and a nice older Peruvian man, who seemed to be some sort of local godfather chatted me up and introduced me to his son, admittedly trying to hook me up with him. To his credit, the son was pretty much the first Peruvian man that I have met who was above 160 cm, but I still had to pass. Instead, I made friends with a very sweet 17 year old girl, who even gave me an ugly little necklace as a memory gift (by the way, her grandmother also mentioned something about taking the girl with me to a better place after she has learnt to speak English...). In any event, these were very nice people, who were clearly relatively well-to-do and educated and just visiting the village for the fiesta: they were fun and they even protected me from the toothless, scary Peruvian man trying to grab me for a dance.
 
Ok, I will do some thinking now. Maybe I will have no choice but to go back to Lima and try to organize an exit strategy from there because the next flight to Argentina is on next Friday and I sure as hell will not stay here for a week.