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Published: January 4th 2011
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Plaza de Armas at night
Our dinner spot in the plaza. Well it was a long travel day on Sunday and our flight leaving Vancouver was a bit delayed. We thought that we might have a tough time making our connection in Houston, so we asked the flight attendant what time she thought we would land and if we would make our second flight. She said no way, you will never make it. We figured she was lying or just confused, so we got off the plane and ran through the terminal like idiots, got to our gate and discovered that not only was our time change off by an hour (we thought it was an hour later than it was), but our flight was delated by 2.5 hours. So Amy and I rush up to the gate 5 mins before we thought it was leaving, breathlessly asked the guy there if we were too late and he looked at us like complete idiots and said it was delayed until 6:30 p.m. (3.5 hours from now) Well we looked pretty silly.
In any case, we had time for a nap and for Amy to teach me the basics of knitting before we were whisked onto the plane and towards Lima. Our
Miraflores
Looking down from the top of the beach cliffs at the beach in Miraflores. flight got in at 2:30 a.m., luckily we got through customs quickly with no problems, since my Spanish was definitely not good enough to talk us through without a passport. we got a car to the hostel I had booked before we left.
After passing out pretty much as soon as our bedroom door was shut, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at noon on Monday. In our defense there was not much sleep had by either of us Friday or Saturday nights and I pretty much cannot sleep on planes. We went to this really amazing restaurant in Central Lima and had some lunch then we wandered around, had our first, second and third Pisco Sours at a bar, then went back to the hostel for another nap. We got up around 8:30 p.m. and went to the grocery store, got some basic food supplies for a cheap dinner and breakfast then basically went to bed again after having an al fresco dinner in Plaza de Armas.
This morning we grabbed a taxi down to a suburb of Lima (at least I think it is a suburb, but it could be a neighbourhood of greater
Amy on the beach in Miraflores
And no she is not naked, just my amazing camera angle! Lima, not sure exactly), found a hostel then hit the beach. We both proceeded to get sunburned (me much worse than Amy), and then found an amazingly delicious and cheap vegetarian restaurant called Govindas. Highly recommend it!
My observations thus far:
1. I am so glad my hair is now brunette, I am getting a lot of attention already for being "leche" (milk) and for being a foot taller than most men, but I think the blonde hair would have put things over the edge.
2. Drivers here are crazy, but in all honesty, everything is pretty safe, most cars slow down at intersections no matter what colour the light is, if anyone elses car gets close they honk their horms like crazy, so of course nobody follows any street lines. So it is actually more sane than most streets I saw in Thailand (I would not want to go anywhere near the wheel of a car down here myself though!).
3. My spanish is horrible, BUT luckily I am learning fast because there is no other option. Not being able to communicate with locals and to be able to ask prices or ingredients or directions
Me on the beach!
This is an action shot of the sunburn happening! is tough and makes for a challenging first couple of days. But thankfully a lot of words sound the same as French, so sometimes if I dont know the Spanish word I say it in french and they generally get the idea.
So we will likely be here for a day or two then heading South down the coast to Paracas where I am hoping to get a dive in at this amazing marine park and where we will enjoy some more hot weather and beaches!
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Auntie G
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Glad you're both safe!
Thanks for the update Jode...you're a good traveller! It must be nice to feel some warm sunshine on you...might start snowing any minute as I write this. Stay safe girls...luv ya, Auntie