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Published: August 18th 2009
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Taxi, Lima
This one is in pretty good order! Crazy Taxi
In a previous blog I commented on the ´abstract´ driving style of the Cambodians. After our visit to Lima, I realise this is nothing... Take the 8 million inhabitants, a complete lack of road rules and introduce them to the motor car. What you have is chaos. Driving is clearly a contact sport here, you only have to look at a local taxi to realise this; cracked windscreens, missing bumpers, smashed lights, scrapes, dents even missing doors! The driving approach is as follows: the horn is an effective means to alert someone to your presence, but far more effective is to just crash into them. Taking a cab in Lima is an adrenelin sport in itself, you find yourself holding on for dear life as the driver pulls out of a junction, they dont wait for a gap they just pull out. You can take your bungee jumping and sky diving, come take a cab in Lima and see how long your underware remains clean.
One of the reasons the driving is so bad is that anyone is allowed to run a taxi in Lima, no tests, no licences, no nothing, just a banged up old car
Public Transport?, Lima
We never did work out how the buses worked... and a sticker in the windscreen saying ´TAXI´, this means two things: 1) Most taxi drivers have no idea where they are going, this, coupled with the fact that we (the tourist) also have no idea and do not speak spanish makes getting to places very interesting. 2) There are literally millions of taxis, you never have to wait for one. As soon as you step out of a hotel, bar, shop, restaurant you literally fall into one. Either that or you are run over by one. I´ll take the first option. Crazy taxis.
Public transport Lima style
We spent 4 days in Lima just trying to figure out the public transport system. What we discovered in the end is that there is no system. What you have is buses and minibuses of various sizes, painted an array of bright colours a bit like football strips, with random city names written on the sides none of which bears any resemblence to where the bus is actually going. We asked our friendly hostal owner Qui Qui if he could explain it to us, but he simply replied, "I have been living in Lima for over 5 years and
Loving the ancient Inca Kola
Apparently the Incas were even more ahead of there time than we first thought. I have no idea how the public transport works!"
We did use the bus twice and to be fair it got us pretty-much where we wanted, although I feel this was probably more luck than judgement.
Catching our breath in Huaraz
From Lima we travelled to Huaraz, 3100m up in the Andes in an area known as the Cordillera Blanca. We spent a few days catching our breath and acclimatising to the alltitude. In preperation for the Santa Cruz trek (see next blog) we went on a short acclimatisation walk into the local hills and villages around Huaraz. We got a good taste of rural Peruvian life; tradionally dressed women washing clothes in the streams; all kinds of animals roaming the streets including dogs, pigs, chickens, cows and donkeys; mud bricks lying out in the sun to dry. Everybody seemed friendly and greeted us with "buenos tardes", even the stray dogs didn´t bite us. I tried to get a photo of an authentic Peruvian woman going about her rural life bringing the cattle down the hill, this was a mistake. Now I´m not quite sure if it is some kind of Peruvian greeting or ancient tradition
Ceviche
Take some raw fish/seafood, marinate in lime and chilli = ceviche but she hurled a rock at me. It wasn´t a small rock either, about the size of a tennis ball! There really is nothing like getting down with the locals.
After a few hours walk we made it up to the ancient Wilcawain ruins, which were closed. We took a different route back which offered good views over Huaraz and the local mountains....
The food
For some reason I wasn´t expecting much from the Peruvian cuisine. But, from what I have tried so far I have been dead impressed. I have made a new friend in Huaraz, the pie lady. The fresh pies at midday are amazing, not quite sure whats in them, some veg, chicken and a boiled egg maybee but tasty gorgeous and at only 1 sol (20p) a pop, I just can´t get enough. Also, in Huaraz there is a coffee shop that sells lemon merangue pie almost on a par with Grannies - unbelievable.
The Peruvians are masters of the double carbs, i.e carbs with carbs, potato with potato, potato with rice, potato with spaghetthi, spaghetti with rice, etc. One of the famous dishes, Lomo Saltado, is a beef stew with
chips in, served with rice - beautiful. I haven´t tried Cuy (guinea pig) yet. I feel its something I should do while I´m here, but I just can´t get the images of Snoopy and Jazz (our childhood pet guinea pigs) out of my head.
Other taste sensations include ceveche - raw fish/seafood marinated in lime juice and chillis and of course Inca Cola. Forget the famous archealogical sights, what the Incas really did for Peru was Inca Cola.
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