We loved Lima!

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Greetings from Cuzco! Today is day 4 here in Peru and it's been a whirlwind since our arrival on Thursday. We were expecting to be greeted at the airport by the hostel taxi driver Enrique, but for whatever reason he stood us up, so we spent some time wandering around figuring out what we were going to do. Which was fine, especially because it made me wander past someone who looked super familiar. Now knowing that I have a (bad?) habit of always saying, "That person really reminds me of (fill in the blank)," I figured it was just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. But after just staring at him for a few long seconds, I finally said, "Rodrigo?" The supposed Rodrigo answered, "¿Sí" and gave me a look like maybe he knew me too, and once I explained who I was, happy hugs and surprised expressions followed for maybe 15 minutes. It was Rodrigo that I know from Nogales, the singer for Santo Remedio, the group young Jorge used to play in. Jorge still plays with him sometimes, in fact he was also supposed to travel to Lima for the concert they were putting on, but at the last minute couldn't. How odd was all that? Needless to say, it made a large crazy Lima feel a little bit smaller.

We got a taxi to our hostel (great suggestion, Jason!) where we stayed until yesterday. It was in an awesome Bohemian type neighborhood and our hostel had a great view of the Pacific Ocean from just across the street. We met several fun and interesting backpackers, but for the most part, we were pretty low key while there, as we had a lot we wanted to do each day. Friday morning took public transportation down to El Centro and spent several hours walking through the colonial streets, enjoying the plazas, and trying not to inhale too much exhaust from all the zooming cars. We visited the San Francisco Monastery where we were able to see where monks lived for many many years (and still live) and most impressively, we toured the catacombs underneath the structure which served as a public burial for 300 years. 15,000 bodies were buried there and those bones weren't particularly catagorized until the 50s. The tour was both impressive and slightly creepy. So was our visit to the Museum of the Inquisition. We toured the building that was used to prosecute and persecute those who strayed from the Spanish's belief of faith, meaning they were practicing something other than Catholicism. Various torture methods were used, many of which were displayed with the helpful use of wax "victims."

Not all our events centered around the disturbing though. When we left El Centro, we decided to stop in Miraflores, which we've read translates as "look at all the pretty flowers." And there were many to look at. We arrived in the most prosperous suburbia area on the coast around sunset, so we had so much fun playing around with our new cameras and shooting everything possible, especially those pretty flowers. We strolled down the malecón and stumbled upon Parque del Amor (Park of Love), where we quickly realized that making out was THE thing to do there at sunset. Since we weren't doing that, we continued our love affairs with our cameras and it's fun feature of pulling out one color from a scene, leaving the rest in black and white. Yes, we are nerds. With identical cameras. A lovely dinner in a restaurant jutting out from one of the rocks/ledges in Miraflores ended up day of exploration. The only other eventful thing was riding home in a taxi with a cage that surrounded the driver. I think it was as much for his protection as it was for ours, so we all felt safe.

Yesterday morning we hung around the hostel with a new friend for awhile before heading to the airport to catch our flight to Cuzco. We had originally planned to take the various buses to Cuzco, which would've taken us 25 hours or so and taken us over the Andes, but decided to splurge and fly instead. It was a good decision. We did, however, travel from sea level to 11,000 ft. in one hour, so most of yesterday was spent making sure we weren't going to pass out. Last night we both felt a little off, but today I think we're doing better. We will spend the day today exploring this charming town, a place we fell in love with immediately. VERY different from Lima and I'm glad we saw Lima first.

We're having a fantastic, seamless trip so far! Our goal was to eat our way through these countries and we've done a pretty good job of that so far, but last night we set a strict budget of $5/day for food, which should be pretty easy to keep. Crazy, huh?

Hope all is well!!!! It's a lot cooler here, so guess I didn't escape the cold Kansas weather after all. And oh....I continue to be the only person from Kansas that most people have ever met.

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Comments

[anonymous]

Crazy about the Santo Remedio run in!!!! Glad you're having fun!!! Sounds like everything's pretty interesting...does it feel really different from Mexico? Wish I were there!! Cuidenses!! Te mando un abrazote de Georgia!!

[Kristine]

I'm so excited for you, but a little jealous. Keep blogging :).