Most of our trip skirted Peru's week long national teacher strike. Later we heard horror stories where Macchu Picchu was closed for 2 days, trains didn't run and the Puno airport was closed along with other potential trip ruining events, but we were really lucky in that our few encounters with the strikers only gave us a couple of false starts early in the trip. It was sort of humorous - we headed to the small airport for our Nazca Lines plane ride but foggy weather diverted our plans back to a hotel and then to a Museum on the other side of town. When we got to the museum a cell phone call told our guide to take us back to the airport so we could avoid being stopped by the strike parade (they stop traffic and do no let any cross the long walking line). The strike was about the teachers protesting taking a national test to be qualified. (This should sound familiar with older Glynn County teachers when we were told we needed to take a test- remember Harriet's televised quote "Bring on the test" ) We got a variety of explanations from our guides but most of our guides said that the older teachers had not gone to any University and therefore were not good teachers and probably wouldn't pass the test. One of the guides said that only 10% of teachers had passed the first time they had taken it. Another guide said that some of the teachers had been riled up by local militant groups. We only saw very long lines of teachers walking on the road carrying signs (with armed police escorts) but there was evidence of more violent protesting. Rocks were thrown in the road, train tracks were removed (we saw guards stationed along one section of train track on the way back from Macchu Picchu) and airport lights broken.
