First Week in Peru

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¡Hola a todos!

I apologize for not blogging sooner as promised, but I have either been insanely busy or in a tiny, beachy, internetless area of Peru, so this is my first real opportunity to write about my crazy adventures. It´s been an interesting few days, and I´ll do my best to give you the highlights without narrating my every breath. Here goes.

Pre-Peru

First off, I missed the memo--it seems that every gringo en route to Peru feels the need to dress exactly the same. So there I was, the only jean'clad chica surrounded by a sea of khaki and green lightweight jungle clothes and safari hats, chuckling at how indiscreet tourists can be.

The flight was wonderfully uneventful. I met a nice group of college kids on a mission trip to the Amazon to drill wells to alleviate some of the horrible flooding in the area, and other than a nice chat with them it was just bad movies (17 Again) and reading up on all the sites of Peru.

We got into Lima´s airport around 11 pm, and I was looking forward to meeting Juan´s mom Lucía, but I forgot to take into account the whole slower pace in Latin America thing. The customs and luggage pick-up took over two hours, and people were so antsy to get out of there that a nun literally pushed me over for a better spot in line. So much for loving your neighbors, right?

Lucía and her boyfriend Diego were kind enough to pick me up from the airport (the pobrecitos had to wait for me for what must have seemed like years) and I can´t even begin to explain how wonderful they are. They set me up in a beautiful room with everything I could possibly need and finally, around 2 am, it was lights out.

Day 1

I woke up early and met almost the whole family--Lucía, Diego, Selinda (la abuela), Micaela (Lucía´s 21-year-old daughter), Antonio (Selinda´s brother) Luz and Yuni (the maid and the nanny) and finally Diego and Rojo, the two perros of the house. We ate a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, juice and toast, and I stuffed myself as full as I could. Selinda looked pained and kept shaking her head. ¨¡Pero no comiste nada!¨she told me over and over again. (But you didn´t eat a thing!) I could see I was NOT going to be losing much weight on this trip as originally planned...

After breakfast, Micaela and I set out to Huaca Puccliana, ruins of the Lima culture strangely located in the middle of Miraflores. I have to say, it was odd to see this ancient Liman civilization surrounded by highrises and skyscrapers of the 20th and 21st century. Very surreal. Afterwards we hiked to the downtown Miraflores area, grabbed a bubble tea by the Parque Kennedy, went to a mini-museum of art and headed back home for a late lunch.

Selinda is the sweetest little abuelita on Earth. After eating a massive lunch (at which she again worried about how little I had eaten) we began to talk about all the fruits of Peru. When she found out I had never had a chirimoya (let alone HEARD of a chirimoya... Has ANYONE in the United States?) she immediately sent Luz out to the frutero. I tried to protest, saying I was going to be in Peru for a whole month, there was no need to go to so much trouble for me to try a fruit, but it was all in vain. Luz returned with a chirimoya and everyone watched me expectantly as I tried it. It was delicious, of course, kind of a milky, rich fruit, and I couldn´t help but feel touched by all the kindness and consideration this family had shown me.

After lunch, Kathe´s sister Ale came to pick me up from the Angulo house, and we drove to her place in Surco so I could get settled for the night. After a visit to the peluquería with her friend Luana we decided to make our own Pisco Sours, the national drink of Peru. If you haven´t ever tried a Pisco Sour, I highly recommend it. It´s a mix of pisco (a fermented grape drink), lemon juice, sugar and a little egg white. I know the egg white sounds creepy, but it gives a very cool froth to the top of the drink and makes it so rico. Give it a go.

Micaela and her two friends Pancho and Mauricio picked me up from Luana´s house and we went to a night viewing of the very cool water show in the Parque de la Reserva. Apparently the mayor of Lima spent a gazillion dollars on this park, and if you look at my pictures on facebook, you´ll see some of the very cool creations he made. There were pyramids of water, a water tunnel, a labyrinth of water errupting in different patterns for the kids to play in (the idea is to stay dry as you run from one section to another... I don´t think I saw anyone do this 100% successfully) as well as numerous other fountains and a huge Bellagio-like choreographed water show. They used lasers and projectors to make images and colors appears in the dancing water, and I was bien impresionada by the whole thing. A very cool park for Peruanos and gringos alike.

You might be thinking, ¨Surely, that´s the end of your adventures for one day,¨but it´s not. After the park I met up with Ale and Luana at Sargento in Barranco, this cool barrio of Lima great for bar hopping and entertainment. This particular bar is famous for its 80´s, 90´s feel, so we danced the night away to American music and drank gigantic bottles of Cristal beer. Besides this really weird guy named Mauricio who apparently worked for the Deadlist Catch boat crew in Alaska, was about the size of a bear, looked like he hadn´t showered in weeks, kept walking up to strangers and asking them for beer like a mendigo and then creepily asked me for my phone number, the night was a lot of fun. We got home around 4 am, and I was agotada. (Beat.)

Day 2

Oh my god did I sleep in. I woke up around 11:30 and didn´t feel guilty for a second after the insane day I´d had the day before. When I finally did wake up I ate lunch with Kathe and her dad Pepe and headed back over to the Angulo house for a bit of shopping. Micaela and I went over to the Mercado del Indios (the Indian market) where they have a million traditional Peruvian things for sale--anything made from alpaca, clothes, jewelry, instruments, toys--and all for a very cheap (and negotiable) price.

After that, Micaela and I headed over to LarcoMar, a cool little shopping strip right by the ocean, where we walked around, went to a little museum all about the Caral society in Peru, and ate dinner in a little restaurant called DisFruta. We then headed over to a cool little club called ¨Jazz Zone¨where Ale had a concert with some peers from her music program. It was a very fun show with lots of classic jazz numbers and plenty of Cuzqueña, another Peruvian beer.

The concert ended around 10:30 and it was discoteca time. Micaela got dressed to the nines (I tried, but it´s a little hard to get super sexy when all you have in your suitcase are backpacking clothes) and we went out with her boyfriend Derik to his primo´s house. Around midnight we all headed over to Larcomar to the discoteca and danced our hearts out until almost 6 am. The place was ridiculously packed--check facebook for a video of the dance floor.

So we´re driving home from the discoteca at six am and Derik gets pulled over by a cop. Micaela and I were both sleeping at first, so I woke up and was incredibly confused. I heard the policeman threatening Derik, though, and I suddenly got very worried. Even though Derik had barely had anything to drink, the policeman accused him of driving drunk and threatened to take away his license and his car. Derik got back into the car, asked Micaela and I for money and actually had to bribe the Peruvian police officers to let us go home in peace. When he got back into the car, he turned to me and said, ¨Welcome to Peru.¨

Day 3

After getting in at 6 am the night before, I wasn´t moving too quickly bright and early in the morning. I got up in time for a leisurely lunch with the family before heading over to a few museums in downtown Lima. First Micaela and I went to the Museo de la Inquisición where they have a very interesting/creepy tour of where and how the Spanish inquisitors tried, sentenced and tortured those they believed were heretics or sinners. After that we went to San Francisco to see the huge library and famous catacombs, where more than 25,000 people were burried. We had to climb down into a complicated series of tunnels, and we were totally surrounded by different types of bones stacked on top of millions of other bones. It was a weird but very cool experience.

It was getting dark, but Micaela and I decided to go to the Plaza de Armas, which is the main plaza in downtown Lima, where we saw about a million armed policemen with shields, guns, and tanks, and then we walked along a very cool boulevard with vendors selling all sorts of ¨delicacies.¨For example, you could try anticuchos, which is like a shishkebob of cow heart or cuy, which is cooked guinea pig. I steered clear of those and instead opted for a chica, a purple corn drink that was surprisingly delicious.

Mauricio (Micaela´s friend who accompanied us to the Parque de la Reserva, not the weird, smelly guy from Sargento) had called Micaela while we were walking through the plaza to request our help in a photo shoot, so we went over to a semi-abandoned bar to pose for him. (Not naked, don´t freak out Aaron.) It was pretty fun, actually... I felt like I was on America´s Next Top Model, trying to communicate with my eyes, lol.

Finally, it was out to La Candelaria with Lucía, Diego and a few friends of Lucía´s to see danzas típicas from Peru. The show was a ton of fun--we got to see the traditional costumes, music and dances of regions like Arequipa, Puno, Cuzco and Lima as well as some international dances. Another interesting part was when they forced all the foreigners to climb up on stage for what I thought was going to be a very simple flag holding thing, but once they had us all on stage they forced us to dance a traditional dance from our country as well. The Italians, Romanians, Irish, Cuban and Colombians all had very cool dances, and the Americans, meaning me and two fat guys, had to dance to Michael Jackson and the YMCA! Very funny. Finally, the flamboyantly gay MC called Lucía up onto the stage to sing a song, which I recorded and will put up on facebook. She has such a beautiful voice and wonderful stage presence! It was wonderful to be able to see her talent live. 😊

Day 4

Travel day to Pisco-Paracas!

Day 5

The plan for the day was to go to the Islas Ballestas right off the coast to see all the wildlife, but the sea was too high and too dangerous for us to set out, so we had to go with plan B. I ended up renting a mountain bike and going to the Reserva Nacional with four awesome Belgian guys, and I´m so glad I did. We literally biked the entire day in total desert, climbing up and down sand dunes for hours until we reached a beautiful beach. Once at the beach, we rested, swam (me in my undies because I didn´t pack a swimsuit--don´t freak out Aaron it was just like a swimsuit) and chatted, taking in the beautiful cliffs and varied colors of the sea. The unexpected happened just after that, of course... My bike was acting up so I traded with one of the Belgians named Antoine, and not five minutes later the chain broke. We bagged the chain and Antoine took to running up the sand dunes and racing down, relying solely on velocity to take him where he needed to go. (Truth be told, he ended up going much faster than the rest of us that way!) We biked/pulled Antoine behind us as he held onto our backpacks for a few more hours before finding a tiny pueblito called Lagunillas, where we ate a delicious lunch and drank a few Cuzqueñas before heading home. We made it back just before it got pitch black (fortunately) and I could barely sit down. After a long shower, we went out to eat and drink beers, chatting with the locals and a few other French tourists before retiring for the night.

Day 6

Today was not a particularly good day. I had planned on leaving for Huacachine to sandboard down the huge dunes in the desert oasis, but it turns out there´s a ¨paro¨in all of Peru, meaning campesinos (people from the country) and ciudadanos (people from the city) all go out and block all the major highways so it´s impossible to get anywhere. I ended up being kind of bored this morning, since the Islas Ballestas tours were cancelled yet again (the sea is still too high and dangerous) and I already saw the park, and I eventually decided to go see Pisco, the neighboring city, to get a taste of life over there. Unfortunately, it was not quite the trip I had anticipated, as there was a major earthquake in 2007 (an 8 on the Richter scale) and it pretty much destroyed the entire place. That´s not all--they still haven´t gotten around to rebuilding or cleaning up the rubble! I spent the day just walking by piles of cement, hearing stories about how beautiful Pisco used to be. I walked past the cemetary, too, and the earthquake had destroyed numerous tombs, so there were actually human remains scattered all over the place and open graves that hadn´t been covered. It was awful. I also took a tuc-tuc (which is like a tiny little golf cart) to the pier, which I quickly saw was also all destroyed by the earthquake, and our tuc-tuc driver told us that his wife had been killed in the earthquake trying to save their daughter. He kept playing ridiculously sad, romantic songs. Oh my god depressing. I´ve spent the last hour or so checking email and typing this update, and I´m hoping tomorrow will be better. The plan is to (hopefully) see the Islas Ballestas and then (hopefully) leave for Huacachina if I can pass the paros. I´ll write soon with updates to let you know how it goes.

Sending everyone a beso grandote de Peru! XOXO

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Comments

[Roger Gilbert]

Wow I miss Peru!
Wow we were going to live in Miraflores and Susan was going to be the Director of the English dept. for a University, then the earthquake happened, as you know, in 2007, so we never went! Have fun, and drink some pisco sours for me! Roger