S. American Sorjourn 2013

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Our first touch on S. American soil has us at Jorge Chavez Lima airport (LIM) pretty darn early on the morning of the 4th of July (happy Independence Day Yanks) and, fortunately for us, we are greeted by our taxi driver holding out our name for the 1900 Backpackers Hostal, Garcilasos de la Vega (S.45 for the taxi, might have bargained to pay less but it was a prior arrangement we made through our hostal); we are situated near the Lima Museum of Art and close to the supermercado and the Sheraton Hotel which we use as location markers. (More on our choice of hostal later in the blog.)

Nosotros entrada para customs es muy facile y, no hay problemas con obtener nosotros visas, nada.

The better part of our first day has us tripping about El Centro Historica y la Plaza des Armes in Lima; we visit the Catedral Lima(don’t pay to see all they have to see at the building, just pagar para visitar the chapel area). We also see el convento Santo Domingo and, generally, we enjoy photographing the plaza and the surrounding old colonial buildings and las calles ahi.

The next day we spend visiting the ruins inside the city of Lima, called Huana Pacyllama, the adobe brick cultural centre, nice but not much in the way of structures you can actually identify. It is however an inexpensive experiment, compared to what we later spend for lunch.

We top off the day with lunch at what we understand to be one of the most chic restaurantes en Lima, called Astrid y Gaston, Cantuarias 175, Miraflores District 15074, Peru, [phone]. In our efforts to try to find it, discover that almost everyone in the neighbourhood knows of its existence and its location. We are welcomed by staff wearing what appears to us to be quite formal attire while we are wearing the usual casual and comfy travel clothes you see on most tourists everywhere; however, as expected, we are not deprived entry (Google el restaurante para ver sa reputacion, world ranked eatery. (Peruanos are very polite and culturally ritualistic about proper introductions with customers as well as la gente generalemente.)

We eat what can only be described as a gastronomic delight. I savour a common Peruano white fish over quinoa and potatoes with a local cerveza while friends enjoy easily equally delicious entrees. No dessert is ordered though we are nevertheless offered some free tasty morsels of about 4 various chocolate delights presented in the most unusual container. Individually, our bill is over S. 120-130, but no one is complaining. We are just going to have to spend the next day surviving on agua y pan.

After lunch, we somehow manage heavy-ladened loads al Museo Larco, which houses over 50,000 pre-Columbian ceramic glass pieces made by the Incas, Chimu and the Nazca but the highlights are the Moche portrait vessels in nicely lit cases; we also appreciated the Wari tribe textiles. Some of the thousands of extra ceramics are housed separately in glass cases but they are nonetheless available for viewing.

After a hard day of Lima tourism, all we manage for dinner are purcashes we make al supermercado, including a bottle of red wine, a couple of varieties of cheese and crackers, accompanied by a bit of chocolate. This food suffices this evening especially given our lunchtime indulgences.

The next day we return a la Plaza des Armes area where we make an interesting visit to see the catacoumbs in the Monestario de San Francisco. We enjoy a free tour with the entry fee. Later, we eat some lunch, I try the cuy y arroz and there is hardly any meat there -- I was supposed to comer con las manos. A friend enjoys cerbiche and another tries some pollo y papas. After eating, we are off to yet another catedral, however, this time it is the Catedral de Pisco Sour, the Peruano alcohol specialty. We only dare order the short glass for S.10 but that is not enough for the 3 of us so we share another 2 drinks between us. This catedral is beside a beautiful old hotel off the pedestrian walkway and near Plaza St. Martin.

Later, during the evening, we trip into Barranco to try to see el mar Pacifico, but also the wooden bridge popular among Peruanos on first dates. It is called Puentes de los Suspiros which overlooks an old stone stairway and a walkway to the beach. It’s dark at the beach but the walk is not too bad.

We still have time to find a cozy little place on the main drag, popular among the locals, young and old alike with piano music played para un viejo hombre, where I order tamal especiale con pollo y una cerveza.

We find out way home by way of the Lima metro, an above-ground light rail system. It is quite cheap but given the 3 of us, it might have been cheaper to take a taxi. It was still an interesting Lima experience.

Our last day in Lima, we lose una amiga que puede hablar español muy bien, more than enough to get us around, so the next morning we really struggle to find a microbus near our hostal to las ruinas Pachacamac, about 32 km southeast of the city. We have no luck even finding the paradero (whereabouts) por el autobus after more than 1 hour, looking and asking for help, so we decide to take a taxi and pay through the nose this day. After all, we are in Lima and, well, queremos ver las ruinas, no? Even taking a taxi turns into a big deal. We have, poquito poquito espanol, to try to explain what we want and where we want to go. Finally, after some time, we somehow manage to engage a driver who says, he knows the place, but we are rightly skeptical.

We do get to the ruinas and explain to our driver we need him to wait/esperar as it is Sunday and few buses are running much less any free taxis running about the ruins; we don’t want to be stranded and nosotros vamas a regresar would be close to sunset.

The site is not unlike Huana Pacyllama, pre-Columbian adobe stone palace, piramids. Las ruinas are nothing like the ruins as Machu Picchu of course, but still it was enjoyable (yet, I would not recommend this to others unless it could be made affordable, or more importantly, inexpensive).

Unfortunately, the time spent in Lima has been during the cold and overcast days of winter, hardly ever if at all seeing any sun. We are satisfied with our time here. Later, we learn from others that Cuzco is colder still and hearing this, we wonder what more we will need in the way of heavy Canadian-style outerwear or fleece and the like.

(1900 Backpackers has relatively poor security and during our stay there was a robbery. A local walked right past the locked front entry while we were leaving, despite CCTV, and stole over $300, 3-4 cameras and a few cell phones. The dorm rooms had no lock and the robber must have known what to do and where to go to maximize his efforts. He cut the locks on the lockers and rifled through backpacks all in minutes as he was in and out very quickly when one of the backpackers noticed a cut lock. We tourists staying in hostals need to be sure our rooms have locks and there is sound security. Ideally, all entrants should have to pass right by the person at the desk even after getting past the locked door. The hostal had a camera at the front door and at reception, but someone would have had to have been at his/her desk to question the robber's entry.)

We arrive Cuzco mid-afternoon via TACA airlines and make our way to the Samay Wasi accommodation after being greeted by our hostal for a free pick-up; we slog a bit to get our gear to the taxi but also to the hostal as they are up a steep step incline and drivers are wary about taking our fare. Finally, we get picked up and check-in.

The first afternoon we did little more than trip to the Plaza des Armas to see the square and have some dinner in a second floor restaurante overlooking the plaza, still enjoying watching the sights and la gente. Cuzco is a warren of narrow roads and even more narrow side walks on the side on steep hills. Gringo alley is NW off the plaza because of the number of hostals, restaurantes, tour offices and other tourist services. Av. del Sol is the major business throughfare but it is traffic laden with vehicles. Beside the hulking catedral on the plaza is calle Triunfo, going steeply uphill to neighbourhood San Blas, the eclectic artistic barrio.

Dinner the first evening for me is sopa quinoa y something like papas rellenas; y mi sobrina takes the tasty, smooth version, creme de la sopa quinao.

For the better part of the next day, we try to see a few of the more ruinas importantes. We manage to find a taxi driver in the plaza for S. 60 and we visit Sacsayhuaman, the best of the Cuzco area sites, as well as Q’enqo, Pucapucara y Tambomachay. Unfortunately for us and all other tourists, we can’t just pay to see what we want, we need to purchase an expensive boleto touristico for the princely sum of S.130! I don’t really want to see much more on the list of 12 or more entitlements, however, we will try to make use of it our last day before moving into another hostel/hotel as part of our gAdventure Machu Picchu trek.

We are concerned about the cold nights, having to tent for a few days and not having sufficient clothing to cope with the weather. I also worry about the difficulty of the trekking but don’t tell anyone.

Our day 3 in Cuzco is relatively more laid back than others as we have little more we “need to do”. We try to make use of our bolito turistico but to no avail as our visit to both the Museo Cuzco and the Cuzco Catedral (boleto religioso) require tickets to be purchased separately, admittedly though, not for much more soles at each venues. Between stops, we spend time basking en el sol Cusqueño a la cafe Starbucks, overlooking la plaza and we eat an early dinner al restaurante cerca de nosotros (I chose to try alpaca here for the first time -- very tender and tasty with an asparagus sauce and rice).

We call it an early evening again in order to pack our gear for our move to gAdventure’s Hotel Prisma for the Machu Picchu trek.

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Photos

Pachacamac Lima Peru
Yo a Ruinas Pachacamac

Cuzco, Peru
Plaza des Armes

Cuzco Peru
View from My Hostal Samsay Wasi