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Barranco - Lima
Beautiful... from a distance. (Stinky!!) It could have been anywhere, it just happened to be Lima.
Sometimes you arrive at a big hostel at the perfect moment to catch a wave of pure madness, that is exactly what happened to me in Barranco, Lima.
I never, ever, intended to go to Lima. I chose to believe the overwhelming majority of information that I had come across which had made it sound dirty, dangerous and generally without appeal. My plan was always to skip straight through the city, if possible, and to see nothing more than was visible from the bus window.
This all changed when my twisted knee started seriously interfering with simple things like going up and down stairs and I decided that I needed to find a good doctor to take a look at it. I figured that my best bet was to stop off in the capital and see if one of the eight million inhabitants could tell me why my leg was acting funny.
One of the “big four” destinations for my trip was the demanding four-day trek of Santa Cruz in the Cordillera Blanca and - even though it was coming and going - the pain in my
No messing about
That one red eye says it all... leg had me worried that I wouldn´t be fit by the time I reached Huaraz (my next stop after Lima).
So, the plan was to
rest and recover from my rush up the coast while I organised an appointment with the doctor. Remembering that a couple of English guys on the bus out of La Paz had highly-recommended a hostel in the beach-side suburb of Barranco, I decided to check it out. They had mentioned that it was a very social place and, missing the “good old days” of Buenos Aires, I was ready to stop moving so fast and party for a while.
As I dumped my bags in the dormitory and adjusted to finally being back at a reasonable altitude, I met Matt. Straight off the plane from England, he was jet-lagged to the point of incoherence. We had a great rambling chat about his plans and my experiences to-date and then he disappeared off to Nazca.
I wandered about and introduced myself to a some veterans who had settled in to the place for a few weeks. (At that point I wondered how someone could get “stuck” in one place for so long…) It turned
Off to the soccer
The police didn´t even give us a second look. out that this particular hostel is actually staffed by travellers which encourages longer stays and is a great recipe for mischief.
Suddenly it was raining Swedish girls. Sharing a dorm with the two ringleaders, Emma and Mia, I was quickly introduced and we were all off to the hostel bar for a drink.
The traveller/staffmember/bartender running the show was Australian and mad as a cut snake. He seemed to be consuming more alcohol than was served over the bar and would periodically ring a little bell and get up on his stool to make an awful rhyming speech about anything that came to his attention.
During one of these speeches I volunteered that it was Emma´s 21st Birthday and that was the beginning of the end… Apparently a 21st Birthday is not as big an event in Sweden as it is in Australia but we were having none of that. There were enough Australians around to convince her that she would have to make this the biggest one yet and, to her credit, she didn´t let us down. Actually, she was like the Duracell Bunny, providing a great excuse for us to begin a party that didn´t seem
A gigantic game of Lumps In The Bed
Chris´watch is in there somewhere... to have any definite form. It just flowed on for days.
As more people arrived and added to the momentum, we just had more and more fun.
There was very little sleep to be had as the only chance for this was between 6am and 6pm and I always feel like I am “wasting” a day if I sleep during the sunny part. The veterans and party-stokers had it down to a fine art, completely disappearing during daylight hours and emerging again at dusk to fire everyone up.
With the hostel bar shutting down at midnight, it was off to the night life of Barranco for more drinks and some practice in the art of politely turning down persistent prostitutes. Inevitably a core group would press on to see the sunrise while the rest (me included) would slink off to bed to try and catch up on that elusive rest.
To escape this damaging cycle, a group of us tried to have a night off and headed to the soccer stadium to watch Lima University play Cusco. I was excited by the potential of my first South American soccer game as I had missed two Boca
Instant party
Another cocktail experiment between stool-speeches. Juniors* games either side of my visit to Buenos Aires.
(*This team has a mythical stature in South America. Maradona´s old club).
It wasn´t an amazing match but it was a great experience, almost as much fun to watch the crowd on “the hill” as the actual game. Chris, an fellow Australian tried to convince me to come with him into the brawling and drum-beating mayhem behind the goals but I declined. This decision was immediately justified when he quickly returned looking sheepish and without his watch. I had to admire his philosophical attitude, he refused to be angry at the loss, simply seeing it as the price of being adventurous.
Packing ourselves back into a badly overloaded mini-van (how very Peruvian) we returned to the hostel to find that we had not escaped another night at the bar - merely delayed it.
From nowhere (well, actually, from Nazca…) Matt popped up again and we were soon in fits of laughter for no particular reason. He is such an incorrigible force that most people saw us together and assumed that we were friends from home (
everyone that I meet over here thinks I am from England
due to my subtle accent).
Amongst all of this silliness I met some truly great people. It is amazing how close our friendships became over a short six days. Still talking via eMail, we all agree that it was beginning to feel like home and all ended way too soon. You could wander into any room at any time for a chat and a laugh. I now find myself missing people that I knew for less than a week but this feeling of loss is a small price to pay for the amazing time that we had together. Scattered back out across the globe as quickly as we came together, we are all looking fondly back on a crazy week in Lima.
Oh, and I finally made it to the doctor.
He twisted my leg this way and that and banged away at it but couldn´t cause any pain (very odd considering that I was occasionally unable to walk normally). The diagnosis was inflammation and I was given some tablets, gel and an elastic sports-brace to support the whole knee.
As my consultation wound up and I received my final instructions, I couldn´t bring myself to ask
him his professional opinion on my plan to immediately leave Lima to hike Peru´s highest mountain range. I could hear my Nan´s words: “Never ask a question if you can´t live with the answer” and I remained tight-lipped. I would ride my luck and see how it felt on arrival in Huaraz.
Somewhere along the line I had also managed to pick up the inevitable stomach aliens, so I made another visit to a different doctor who was just as enthusiastic about tablets. He first gave me some to combat the effect of those prescribed by his colleague (erm… OK) and then prescribed a batch of drugs so scary that I was worried that I would wake up as Keith Richards.
I had passed the hours in the waiting room listening to more Spanish lessons on my iPod and this worked out well as neither of these guys spoke English and both had a lot of instructions which I was able to understand with a bit of repetition and minimal miming. (Good thing too… no one likes a mime).
So, with my strapping, gel, tablets, a series of doctors bills and a long backward look at Barranco,
Matt and Mia
A hilarity sandwich I was off to Huaraz.
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anonymous
non-member comment
what is the name of that hostel?
Hi, I'm considering taking off on a world tour this fall or something, and I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the hostel you mentioned in this post. It sounds fantastic. lizbillybob@earthlink.net - Liz