Lima: The City of Grey

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So I apologize now for my delayed updates...adventuring has impeded my blogging opportunities. In order to catch up I am quoting some of Sim´s blog so you know what we did--the pictures really speak for themselves...

We arrived in Lima at around noon on Saturday the 10th. We tried to call our couch surfing host but didn´t have much success (realized later that we wrote the number down wrong). We decided to wait in the lounge and watched some of the world cup game. In the end, we decided to go to a hostel because we were frustrated with waiting and wanted to be independent. We hopped in a taxi and checked into the Friends House hostel in Miraflores (the nicest neighborhood in Lima).

We walked around Miraflores for the afternoon. It is a really nice place, filled with awesome restaurants and shops. There was a market in the middle of Parque Kennedy and we bought alpaca hats and gloves. It is pretty cold here so Sim is going to have to do some shopping for warm clothing. We checked out some of the restaurants and Sim was basically drooling over all of the Peruvian food. Apparently Peruvian food is some of the best in South America and Lima has the best restaurants in Peru so...she want to stop at every restaurant to eat! I never knew her appetite was so outrageous.

In the evening we met up with Sebastian, a coach surfer from Lima who said he would like meet up with us for a drink. We went to a little cafe to have drink with a friend of his, Miki, where Sim had the famous Peruvian drink Pisco Sour which is Pisco (liquor made from grapes), sour mix, and fluffy egg white on top. I just wanted to warm up with some hot Milo, but the waiter heard ¨vino caliente¨, so I had malted wine instead. Sebastian paid for our drinks which was really nice of him! Sebastian is 27 and works for an insurance company. He travels a lot around South America for business trips so he gave us a lot of advice. We then all went to another bar to have some more drinks. We were not planning on staying out very late as we were both tired, but the bar was a lot of fun and before we even noticed the time it was midnight. Sebastian bought us Chilcanos which is made with pisco, lemons juice and ginger ale. Miki also ordered some sushi to share with us... Peruvian sushi is actually really yummy! Again, the guys paid for everything so we were loving it and the time passed very quickly! They are both really nice guys! Of course the night continued and we went to another club called Bangi in the Centro Comercial Larcomar. The club was awesome and we split a bottle of Champagne! We left the club at around 5am and crawled into bed at around 6am..the night was unexpectedly epic!

We had made a plan with Sebastian to watch the world cup final between Spain and the Netherlands at his house and order food. So after we woke up at around noon on Sunday, we got ready to go to his house. Sebastian picked us up and we went to his gorgeous house in Miraflores. He is still staying with his parents because he travels so much and is rarely in Lima. He shared a ton of info with us about where to go in Peru as he has been to most places we are thinking about going.

The game came on and we parked ourselves in front of the TV. Originally we were going to watch the game in the center of the city in a huge main plaza but we would have had to stand for the entire game. It would have been fun to be in the plaza with hundreds of other screaming people but being snuggled up on the couch with take-out food was much more appealing considering our lack of energy. Sebastian ordered some Chifa for us. We have seen a ton of Chinese food restaurants but I have been , which is Peruvian chinese food. We were skeptical about whether it would be very good as there are not many Chinese people around. Apparently there is a large Chinese population in Lima so the Chinese food is relatively good. The food was similar to Chinese take out in the US but the noodles and rice were a bit different. Tasty, but nothing to scream about.
The final was good but it got a little frustrating because there were a ton of penalties and there were no goals until 2nd overtime. I was convinced it was going to go to penalty kicks but finally Spain scored a goal.

After the game, Mariya and I walked back to the hostel and stopped in a cafe on the way. We had a cappuccino and split a passion fruit cake. It was nice to have something warm and just chat. In the evening, we took it easy and caught up with business online.

On Monday, we woke up later than we would have liked and got ready to check out of the hostel. Sebastian´s sister told us about a deal via Lan to fly from Santiago to Bogotà so we spent most of the early afternoon trying to organize our tickets since we came across some difficulties paying for the tickets online but eventually confirmed the tickets by phone. But it´s official, we will be flying out of Santiago, Chile on August 24th. Now all that means is that we have to stay on track and make it to Chile by then. So far we have done really well about keeping a good pace but its a shame that we don´t have more time. We have both started to accumulate lists of places we want to come back to see. In a perfect world we would be able to do it all but now we will know the best countries and regions to come back to. Sim and I are already scheming a trip to Brazil for the 2014 world cup...4 years should be enough to learn Portuguese 😊. Maybe then I can come back to some of the places on my list.

We then head to the historic center of Lima with our bags and dropped our stuff off at the bus station so we could walk into the center to check out some of the sights. Lima is a huge city as well and is always dark and cloudy because of all of the pollution. The gray skies were very noticeable in the center. The buildings in the center were still very pretty and very colonial. We went to the main plaza called la Plaza de Armas (most cities we have been to have had a plaza de armas, classically the main plazas). The plaza was huge with a nice park in the middle.

We then quickly headed over to the church of San Francisco since it was closing at 5:30. We just made it and got a chance to go in the church and then hop on a tour. Parts of the church had been destroyed during an earthquake in the 1700s. During this earthquake only 20 houses remained standing in Lima. During the tour we got a chance to see the choir room in the cathedral. The chairs were incredibly ornate and there was a big stand in the front where large choir books could be seen by the entire choir. We then went into the library which is apparently one of the most important libraries in Lima. It has a large collection of antique and modern books as well as the large choir books used. We walked around the old monastery a bit before heading into the catacombs. The catacombs were the best part! I have never seen anything like it. These catacombs are located underneath the church and were the first cemetery in Lima. Close to 25,000 people are said to have been buried there, with people from all classes. There are 3 levels and we got to take a tour around the 1st level. The catacombs had small doorways and archs with a very creepy feeling about them. We saw graves that were designed to fit 10 bodies stacked on top of each other. The graves we saw had collections of bones in them. Interestingly, only long bones can be found because all other bones have disintegrated. When archaeologists and anthropologists explored the catacombs they cataloged all the bones and rearranged them for aesthetic purposes. The foundation of the catacombs was really interesting too because it is said to be anti-seismic. The use of sand stone and mortar allowed the structure of the catacombs to remain in tact during all the the earthquakes. There are also wells in the catacombs that apparently help to buffer the seismic waves. Really cool to see! Unfortunately picture taking was not allowed, but I couldn´t resist taking some sneaky shots to show you.

Afterwards we headed back to the bus terminal to catch our 7:30pm bus Ica for our next adventure...

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