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South America » Peru » Lima » Lima » Miraflores
March 18th 2008
Published: April 2nd 2008
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After about a week in the Sacred Valley, our oxygen-starved bodies returned to Lima, the coast, sea-level, 0 feet! The oxygen filled air, however polluted, was abundant and never tasted so sweet. For whatever reason, we never realized the 8 million of people of Lima lived right on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. I guess that, on some level, we imagined that all of Peru was situated in the mountains and only indigenous cultures existed. Not true. While the majority of Lima can described as slums, the area of the city we visited was quite Westernized. Miraflores, the upscale neighborhood of Lima, sandwiched between the coast and the historical center, could have been any coastal city in the United States or elsewhere. Full of American restaurants, Las Vegas-style casinos and shopping malls, Miraflores was a Peru that we had no idea existed. The LarcoMar shopping center is the finest example of Western influence in Lima. This brand new open air mall has a has a cineplex, Cinnabon, Starbucks, KFC, and a Tony Roma´s sitting on a cliff over the Pacific Ocean. Come to think of it, almost every major city in South America has an area like Miraflores that would surprise a lot of Westerners. You ask yourself if you are getting an authentic experience by staying in the upscale neighborhoods of South America, and the answer is probably no. However, it seems that the wealthy neighborhoods are the only ones where the city bothers having a police presence and safety, so you really have little choice.

For a more authentic and historical taste of Lima, we headed downtown to the center to check out the Plaza de Armas. We took one of Lima´s many (MANY) mini-buses from our hostel to the historic center. It was an experience in its own right. There aren´t a whole lot of public city buses in Lima, so private companies flood the streets with large vans that can fit about 30 people. These, like city buses, have normal routes, but they are in absolutely no rush to complete them. Their only concern is fitting as many people on the buses as possible, so a trip that should take fifteen minutes takes an hour. It is hilarious watching hundreds of buses, who are all doing the same route, compete for the passengers who can only be reached on the far right lane by the
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Doesn´t it just scream Peru?
sidewalk. So while you have six lanes going one way, four are wide open while the two on the right are absolutely gridlocked with mini-buses. The mini-buses illustrate a bigger theme that we have seen throughout South America--too many businesses offering the same service. I don´t know what it is, lack of creativity, business sense, or resources, but some people down here have not really caught on. In Buenos Aires for example, literally every block has a Kodak photo store, a stationary store, and a pharmacy. In Ilha Grande, Brazil there are easily 20 sail boats offering the same tour to Lagoa Azul. In Cuzco, Peru, there are over 200 companies offering treks to Machu Picchu. What happens in all of these cases? Stationary stores are hopelessly empty, boats are half full, and trekking tours have more guides than they do customers, and no one really makes a money. Diversify, people!

Back to Lima. Lima´s historical center, and the area that surrounds it, makes it the most architecturally interesting city we have seen in South America. First off, Lima´s buildings are incredibly colorful, even if they have a nice layer of soot on them. It also has more huge
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That´s a lot of dead people...creepy monks.
churches, plazas, and palaces than you could imagine; a stunning example of colonial architecture. Lima´s Plaza de Armas is the center of it all. This beautiful plaza contains the presidential palace, and Lima´s principal cathedral. A few blocks away from the Plaza de Armas is the San Francisco Monastery, the most interesting church we have ever seen. Famous for its catacombs, San Francisco seems more like a museum with every large room very different than the one before. The convent was built in 1674. It is full of colorful mosaics, depressing but beautiful religious art, a world renowned library, and millions of bones. In colonial times, most people were not buried in cemeteries, but under churches in a network of catacombs. The amount of skulls and bones we saw under the church was staggering; if going to a cemetery does not make you think about death, seeing the bones of thousands of people definitely will.

That night, while checking our email we received pretty bad news. Our friend Cynthia´s apartment in Recoleta, the ritziest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, was broken into--and our brand new Mac laptop, with all of our photos stored on it, was stolen. Thinking it was safer to leave our computer in an apartment than ship it back or travel with it through Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, we left it with our friend Cynthia who would then fly it back to LA when she came home. Guess we were wrong. Fortunately we have back up CDs of most of our photos and friends that can fill in most of what´s missing (though sadly all that is left of our Chile pictures is on this travelblog and the photo quality is less than perfect). Although our computer, gifts for family, and jewelry were stolen, our friends had it even worse. Troy and Cynthia´s Macs were both stolen. Troy also had his iPod and camera stolen, though luckily he had his music and photos saved on an external hard drive. Cynthia, who had just backed up all her photos (she is an incredible photographer) on her external hard drive that day had hers stolen as well as two cameras (one of which was very valuable and dear to her). So as terrible as our loss was, theirs was worse. We handled the news very well, after freaking out for about 5 minutes, we calmed down and walked
1200+ yrs old Moche wall paintings1200+ yrs old Moche wall paintings1200+ yrs old Moche wall paintings

Inside the Temple of the Moon (Huaca de la Luna)
to the LarcoMar for dinner and a movie. We saw the Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men (we didn´t really get it) and chowed down on some comfort food at KFC and Burger King, how worldly of us.

Now that we no longer had to worry about a new $1200 computer, we could finally start enjoying our trip (kidding). From Lima, we headed north on the Pan-American Highway to Trujillo. The Pan-American highway is pretty crazy. With the exception of a 54 mile section of the Darien Gap in Panama, this highway runs from Ushuaia, Argentina (the southernmost city in the world) to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. At 29,800 miles, it is the longest road in the world. The section of the highway between Lima and Trujillo was really interesting. It was almost completely along the coast, on a cliff hundreds of feet above the Pacific Ocean.

Trujillo itself was not that interesting. While their wasn´t anything wrong with the city, there was nothing about it that was particularly noteworthy or beautiful. It did have a nice Plaza de Armas, as most Latin American cities do. Trujillo is a good example of life in Central and Northern
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The Peruvian Hairless Dog is a breed of dog with its origins in Peruvian pre-Inca cultures, like the Moches and Chan-Chan.
Peru. The people are not desperately poor, not very wealthy either, probably middle-class by Peruvian standards. They probably have electricity, relatively clean running water, enough food, and TV. The people in this area just seemed kind of bored. Not mean, but not very friendly either, not very many smiles. It did not seem like there was a whole lot to look forward to; a lot of people just sitting in their porches staring out at not very much. Also, it didn´t seem like there were a ton of jobs. If you were an adult age male, you were probably a taxi driver. There can not be enough people in Trujillo to fill up the number of cabs they have driving around. Another depressing feature of this area of Peru was the amount of unfinished building projects. In a city of nearly one million people, no where close to half of the buildings were completely built.

The main reason we stopped in Trujillo was to visit two ruin sites in the area. Though the Incas may get all the glory, there are actually two older civilizations who enjoyed greater longevity and had prettier artwork (in our humble opinion). First we
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Rainbow temple of Chan Chan
visited the pyramids of the Moche, whose civilization flourished from 100 AD to 800 AD. Our first thoughts were, unfairly, ¨this is what you guys call a pyramid? Sheesh, you guys were waaay behind the Egyptians.¨ But we were impressed by their colorful wall mosaics depicting hunting, fishing, fighting and sacrifice, each print uniquely hand-painted (not replicated). And also, it´s not fair to blame them for the lumpy shape of their pyramids, since the weather and the Spanish did tremendous amounts of damage. We also visited Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas covering roughly 20 sq. km, built by the Chimú, descendants of the Moche people. They estimate that 30,000 people lived in the city from 850 AD through around 1470 AD, until they were conquered by the Incas. The vastness of the area was pretty impressive, and they also had some pretty intricate art carved into the walls. Pretty cool. Also adding to the effect were the large number of Peruvian hairless dogs roaming about the area, whose origins are supposedly go back to pre-Incan times. They look kind of like chihuahuas, only some are pretty big and also, they´re hairless.

Those ruins ruined us.
Chan ChanChan ChanChan Chan

The largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest adobe city in the world
As interesting as they were, I think that we have our ruin quota fulfilled for the rest of this journey. From Trujillo, we made our way up the coast en route to Ecuador. We stopped in two relaxing beach towns, Huanchaco and Mancora. Peru, whose coastline is probably about the length of the West Coast of the United States, has similar beaches. They have nice sand, slightly cold water, and are fairly desert-like, unlike the tropical beaches of Brazil or Central America. The reed fishing boats in Huanchaco called Caballitos de Totora were very cool. They have been used for hundreds of years and local fisherman still use them to slice through the crashing waves. We stayed at Laguna Camp in Mancora, little huts right on the beach, very cool. Not a whole lot going on in Huanchaco or Mancora, very quiet and the towns just looked like they were kinda thrown together overnight. Not a whole lot of culture, and since we´d already done the beach thing in Brazil (and, actually, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay) we found ourselves to be what we once would have thought unthinkable--bored by the beach.

It is safe to say that this leg
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Reed fishing boats used for centuries in Huanchaco
of our trip was probably the least stimulating and interesting so far. It was not terrible, its just difficult to follow Machu Picchu. From Mancora we would cross into Ecuador. We hope Ecuador proves more exciting. We really have no idea what to expect. I mean, what does anybody really know about Ecuador, outside of it being on the Equator and possessing the Galapagos Islands? The fact that we have no idea what to expect is the most exciting part.


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Hammock timeHammock time
Hammock time

Relaxing at Laguna Camp in Mancora
Sarah loves her cevicheSarah loves her ceviche
Sarah loves her ceviche

The national dish of Peru: fresh, raw seafood marinated in lime juice, onion and cilantro. Mmmmm.
Tank outside Palacio del GobiernoTank outside Palacio del Gobierno
Tank outside Palacio del Gobierno

They don´t mess around in Lima
Red Carpet TreatmentRed Carpet Treatment
Red Carpet Treatment

Palacio del Gobierno
1st South American Starbucks sighting1st South American Starbucks sighting
1st South American Starbucks sighting

It´s a surreal experience being inside, you forget where you are (we went inside to check it out, but swear we didn´t order, even though the java chip frappuccino was calling).


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