First REAL day in Peru!

Thursday 21 Feb, 2008

Finally at the hostel “El Tambo” in room #305. The local time is 3:00am! (midnight SeaTime) Whoa! I just took a shower and got confused at first... C=caliente; F=frio. Our luggage took forever at the airport... Chris got the “red light” but Gloria and I zoomed through. We met with Claudia and her dad (kisses on the cheek!) and drove through the MAZE of Lima... probably 20-30 minutes to our hotel.
Git it Girl!!

3:09 am local


Wow, what a crazy day! We're finally back at the hostel, and my feet are very tired. We got up about 9am and had breakfast here. We met up with Claudia and Sixto (her father) and we were headed off to our big tour of Lima! The roads and traffic here are very interesting!! Pedestrians walk whenever they want. There are vendors selling anything ALL over the city, including the roads! Things on the road like stop signs and the “dashes” between lanes are more like suggestions than rules! The roads seem to intersect in all sorts of odd ways. People turn across multiple lanes of traffic! Oh yes, and everyone honks if they get anywhere near (even if by slowing) another car, pedestrians, or whatever. Sixto was driving us around all day (what a trooper!) and I was getting a bit of motion sickness due to the crazy manner in which it's necessary to drive here!! Our first stop was Pachacamac... ruins located on the outskirts of Lima. On the way we passed an island where the Presidente has a house. The adult entrance price for Pachacamac was S/. 5.60. The ruins were very interesting. Claudia said all the rocks were original and they were very colorful! I even found a rock with my initials engraved!! The big structure on the hill overlooked the ocean and was probably like a “defensive lookout” structure. Oh! and before we got started I used their bathroom... NO T.P!!! (just like Mike said!) It also seems they don't flush it cause every stall has little cans with what appeared to be used T.P! So... I guess we're not supposed to flush the paper?!  We saw another structure at Pachacamac which was made especially for women. Any man who tried to enter was killed and so was his family and neighborhood! *whoa!* Even the male guards were castrated!
After all that we headed to the beach in the Costa Verde area of Lima. We had a FABULOUS buffet lunch at Rustica. All the food was delicious and exotic, and I tried a lot of it!! They have over 100 dishes to choose from, and they come from countries such as Spain, Italy, of course Peru, China, Argentina, and Japan. The cost of the buffet is S/. 49.00 including beverages.

drink: chicha morada, tastes like sweet berry tea... but it's made from purple corn!
coffee pronounced like “chanchamayo” from Peruvian jungle! YUM! <---this coffee is DELICIOUS!!
Note: I'm not sure if all the food was labeled properly... I wrote what was on the card next to the serving dish. :) [thank you Yadi for the corrections!]

When we were sufficiently stuffed, we decided to walk around the beach for a while and take photos. The waves were HUGE! Many kids were digging large holes or burying themselves. Food vendors were all over the place! There were a lot of people and the weather was nice (28 degrees celcius = 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and humid. I only brought one tank top and I was sweating most of the day! Oh, and in many places in the city I saw stray dogs! After the beach we headed to an area called Barranco where we saw a beautiful church, saw a few musicians, took some cute group photos and saw another view of the beach. One interesting thing about Lima is the architecture! It's very random! There's some Spanish influences, then there's completely run-down places, and some structures are painted in vibrant colors! Most of the doors, whether commercial or residential, had barred-gate style doors like in San Francisco. Most businesses have someone standing directly in the door to meet (or whatever else) the customers. I saw a lot of guards/police in all areas of the city... keeping things orderly. I even saw one on a “tower!” After the Barranco area, we headed to a place called Circuito MĂĄgico del Agua of the Parque de la Reserva. [If I remember correctly, I think the cost to get in was only S/. 4] On the way here we saw the very colorful sunset! The park has 13 fountains, all with different themes, types of shooting water, music and/or lighting. I think we only saw 6 of the fountains, but they were still really cool! The “fuente laberinto del ensueño” is a circular fountain where anyone could get in and enjoy the randomness of all the jets of water! It was fun to watch all the screaming kids! Another very spectacular fountain was the “fuente de la fantasia” which had ALL kinds of criss-crossing jets, integrated music and video, lazers and goodies! The park was very packed with people and the “security” people kept getting upset with Chris that he had a tripod. Something about “no professional equipment.” It was very nice and after this we headed to dinner at Pardo's where we had pollo y fritas. It was all very good and moist and delicious. After our tummies were full we ran across the street to the market for some water and fruit. Our last stop of the evening was the Plaza de Armas. This “park” with a fountain in the middle was surrounded on all sides by beautiful buildings! One was a church. Another was a military complex with armed guards. I don't know what the other buildings were... but they were certainly gorgeous! Our evening wouldn't be complete without the stress of finding out that all Cusco transportation is on STRIKE?!?! After a few hours of debates, phone calls, checking Internet and figuring out Plan B... we finally got a flight to Cuzco a few hours later than the original. As I like to say... things always work themselves out! Time for bed!! :-}

2:18am local

Note: On this day alone, I shot 436 photos!! No wonder it took me so long to go through and pick out the good ones! ;)