Aftershocks

There were smaller aftershocks today. As before, I am fortunate to be far from the epicenter and I didn't feel them at all. Everyone is stunned by the earthquake and worried about their family members in Lima. Since about a third of the population of Peru lives in Lima it seems like every household has at least one family member there. The epicenter and most of the damage are farther south in the department of Ica, a coastal desert area not nearly as populated as the capital. As I understand it they suffered the most damage a loss of life. This is the department where the city of Pisco is located as well as the Nazca Lines, those huge piles of earth created by pre-Incan peoples in the shapes of a humming bird, a monkey and other figures. There are 5 volunteers living in the department and I understand that all of them were away at a training in Lima at the time of the earthquake and they're waiting to return until Peace Corps feels assured of their safety.

If you follow that red line, which is the Pan American Highway, I live 15 hours north of Lima. So it is quite a distance. So much that I can't get both Piura and Ica on the same map :)

For some reason I'm having trouble accessing Internet news sites. Only the New York Times seems to work. Our Internet connection has been really awful since the earthquake. I'm not sure if it's just the traffic or what. So if anything exciting happens that isn't in the Times let me know.

I'm also exploring smugmug.com. It's sort of like snapfish.com but you have to pay. The quality of the photos is supposed to be much better. I do think that snapfish is pretty sorry as far as quality goes, but I'm not sure if smugmug is worth the $40 a year. I definitely want to back up my pictures to an online site and be able to print them easily. Any thoughts on this? Experience?