Barranco Notes

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Thur. morning, just finished a great breakfast at Safe In Lima. After the last blog came back to the hostal and relaxed a bit. As always, started with my cold the follows me when I first head out on travels. The little guy showed up a day early, usually, he arrives about day 5, and it was day 4 when he arrived. However, I am fighting him back with some zinc stuff and he´s not able to get through the defence of zinc, yea zinc.
Gerson arrives from Iquitos today, we were going to leave Lima for Tarapoto on 2/15/08, but are going to Star Peru Air and change our departure date to 2/17/08 to allow more time in Lima. Mike, thank Bill H. for the additional time to travel, if it wasn´t for him, I´d have to keep some type of a time frame on my travels , gee Mike is there a sales meeting this week? Also the additional time in Lima allows more time for checking out Centro, and all the cool history associated with the Centro area. Today am heading to the Mercados Indios in Miraflores. A hugh market with crafts from all over Peru. They say prices are good. This will give me a starting point for price´s as I travel. Safe In Lima Hostal is alowing me to leave some of my stuff here while we head out to Tarapoto, Yurimaguas, Iquitos, etc. I think I may have time to make it to the Columbian/Brazil boarders in the next few weeks while in Iquitos, but who knows how long I´ll be staying in Gerson´s village organizing the travel biz.

Observations: Have not had the feeling of the hairs on the back of neck stand up because things didn´t feel quite right. Have walked all times of day and night and felt comfortable; People very friendly and open. Found a little tienda close to Safe In Lima with a back room that locals gather in at the end of the day for cervasa and good talk, at least I think it´s good talk, my espanol is not at top of the ladder for speaking or understanding; streets are very clean, unlike plces in Central America or Thailand; hardly any stray dogs roaming (and I qualify that last observation with fact that Barranco is a bit upscale).
Well, that´s it for now, it´s 9:15am and I need to take a few minutes laying in the sun (JJ eat your heart out) and reading a book before heading to Mercado Indios for SHOPPING or at least looking. Cheers, Ralph

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