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Supposedly its not smog
I call BS... In Lima they told us it was haze.May 29 - At last check, we left our heros after having completed their hike to Machu Picchu. After a full and wonderful nights sleep in a real bed, we awoke and headed to the airport for Lima. Upon arriving and walking up the jet way, a horrible stench filled our nostrils. It smelled as if someone had used the jetway as a toilet more than a few times. We found our luggage, haggled for a taxi, and walked outside. The first thing that hit us was that same horrible smell. It was a combination of urine and dead fish. Welcome to Lima. Sitting in the taxi I literally had to keep my sweater up to my nose for fear of gagging at the smell. After driving about 15 minutes towards the city center the smell finally dissipated. The other lovely surprise was the low hanging smog that seemed to surround the city. We were told it wasn't smog, but just haze and low clouds, but I still think otherwise. Apparently that is what the city looks like 10 month out of the year and it never rains. So fish and smog...lovely combo...you couldn't pay me enough to move to Lima.
We made it to our hotel safely and decided to play it low key since we were still worn out from the hike. The hotel provided a shuttle to a really nice mall in a suburb called Miraflores. I liken it to Leawood, but this mall was on a cliff overlooking the ocean...minor difference. We caught a 7pm showing of Angels and Demons. The movie was great except for the first 15 minutes where the characters were speaking French that would normally be subtitled in English but was showing up instead in Spanish. Stu needs to brush up on his translation skills.
May 30 - Today we had booked a Lima city tour. We'd heard from Jason and crew that they loved Lima and the city tour was great. I think we were in a different city. We spent about 1.5 hours on a bus driving around the city learning about the different suburbs, hearing how the smog wasn't smog but actually haze/clouds, and learned about how what looked to be a mound of dirt was really an ancient pre-Inca temple/ruin made out of mud bricks. It was so important the city thought it would be okay to
Stu's Dream Car
Lima Police issue vehicle slice a strip halfway through it to put in a road instead of making people drive the 1 mile around the ruin. We finally got off downtown at a museum to look at some ancient gold pieces. We went to the main square where the most beautiful cathedral in Peru is, but did not go in it? Then we walked to the San Francisco church where we were allowed to go into the catacombs built below the church which housed 25,000 skeletons of the people buried down there. That was actually pretty cool, but no photos allowed. All in all it was a pretty weak city tour. That evening we headed back to Miraflores (aka Leawood) and enjoyed some beverages at an outdoor cafe and did a little shopping. We met a couple we had hiked with (Mark and Ashley) at a really nice restaurant Astrid Y Gaston recommended by Stu's sister when she had been there. It was really nice but unfortunately my order of the Lamb and Rabbit did not come quite as I expected and I could only eat a portion of the meal. Apparently I didn't read that part of the description where it said there
San Francisco Church
Catacombs and 25K dead bodies underneath was actually no meat and was just served the delicacy "fat" off the animals. Everyone else fared better than I.
May 31 - We were ready to get the heck out of dodge. Lima 1, Stu and Patty 0. I would probably not recommend that anyone plan an extensive vacation to Lima. Today we flew to Buenos Aires to meet back up with the rest of the crew - Jason, Megan, Kim, Carrie. We arrived late in the evening and immediately headed out to dinner. We ate at a steakhouse around the corner from our hotel since Argentina is known for their great/cheap beef. The meal was average partly because our order didn't come across quite as planned. Jason's rare steak came out medium rare, Stu's medium came out medium well, my lamb was a little tough.
June 1 - We awoke to plans of a city tour. Our guide picked us up at 9:30am. We were quite excited to see the bustling city under the shining sun that was nonexistant in Lima. We drove around for a couple hours while our guide pointed out many museums, a lovely old theater, shopping malls, parks and churches. We finally
Alfred Hitchcock-esque
It was like being on the set of the Birds. Darcy Davenport would not have liked being there. exited the bus at a cemetary where we visited the gravesite of Eva Peron (aka Madonna). The cemetary was made up of individual Mausoleums that were quite elaborate. The families would place the coffins of the most recently deceased on an alter inside the structure for family members to visit. Those who had died earlier would have their coffins placed in the small basement area below. The structures would very ornate and quite beautiful to see. Promptly our guide returned us to our hotel at noon leaving us all looking at each other thinking "that was the shortest, crappiest city tour I've ever been on". I think the mound of dirt we saw in Lima actually rivaled this tour. That night we arranged to go see a famous Tango show at
Gala Tango . The place provided dinner beforehand which included all you could drink wine. This may have been grapejuice because after 5 or 6 glasses I'd wager any of us could have driven home just fine. The dancing was wonderful and included a guy who twirled balls...maybe you had to be there. I think Stu and Jason enjoyed the show up until the last song which was of course Don't Cry
Eva Perone's Grave
The movie was better. for Me Argentina. Apparently this was a little too cliched for their taste.
June 2 - Today we headed to Uruguay. The country is located across a 160 mile wide river and took us an hour to cross. I would not recommend swimming in this river since it was the color of chocolate milk and looked like it supported no marine life. Our trip to Colonia, Uruguay started with lunch and then was followed by a city tour. The lunch was a cold buffet that was worse than average and after our second helping (why we had seconds God only knows) the waitress successfully translated that a hot dish was also included. Most of us ordered spaghetti or ravioli. It appeared, we ate, we should have stopped at the cold buffet. After lunch we were picked up by our guide. She showed us around the small, quaint town on foot. Too bad her English sucked or we might have actually learned something about the place. Two hours of jokes about the 1777 that we didn't get and we were set loose on the town. The day would have been a complete waste except for the great tip from Kristin
Pretty Mausoleum
I have a feeling I won't be buried this elaborately McLain to rent a golf cart to tool around the town. Who knew that Thrifty had golf cart rentals? At $15/hr this was well worth the fun we had roaring down the streets and migrating from bar to bar for our mini pub crawl. We returned by boat and arrived back in BA around 9pm. We immediately headed to find a place to dine for our last night of vacation. We scouted out 3 options and finally settled on a place called The Happening.
It was superb and we finally found a steak to rival what is served up in KC. Stu ordered a filet that was the size of his hand and about 5 inches thick. It was cooked to perfection and tasted even better. All for $15. All 6 of us ordered steaks and left full and satisfied.
June 3 - We had a lazy last morning of vacation. After breakfast we packed up our belongings and split up for the last half of the day. Jason, Stu, and I wandered around the city trying to find a shot glass souvenir for Jason while the girls went shopping. We follow a map pretty well and the only
incident occured when Stu attempted to settle under a HUGE tree with the map to find out where we were. At that point both Jason and I felt a little unsafe as there was graffiti in the park, it was kind of dark under the tree...oh and there was a man living in the tree which we only noticed when his little head popped up and gave us a dirty look. Thank god Stu did not wander any closer to the tree trunk or the little dwarf man may have grabbed him and pulled him into the tree to live with him and his black garbage bags.
At 5:30pm we were picked up from the hotel and driven to the airport (4 hours early mind you). 4 hours at the duty free shop is not that exciting. Stu got a chair massage while the rest of us played cards. We then boarded our 10 hour overnight flight home and arrived saftely back in KC at 9:30 in the morning, just in time for Patty to head in to the office.
We're still recovering and attempting to catch up on sleep and laundry. We missed everyone and hoped you
Stu took this pic while I was asleep
I can't figure out for the life of me why he thought this was interesting. enjoyed reading about our adventures.
Lastly, a big thanks to Dave who mowed our yard and watched over our house while we were gone. Note to friends...finding a lawn care guy on Craig's list may not be as reliable as you might think.
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