Planes, Taxis, Chance Meetings, and No Vegatarianos

Here’s the first installment of the blog for the Wonderful 2008 Adventure to Peru. It’s also to let everyone know that we made it here in one piece, we didn’t crash somewhere on the way, we didn’t take to heart anyone’s advice on what to do, eat, or say while here, and yet were fine and well and having a blast. So without further ado...

Departure and Flights
Like most previous adventures, I was a ball of nervous energy the day before departure. I was a wreak at work, not really concentrating on anything other than the fact that in twenty-four hours I’d be in another country. A three hour drive through LA traffic brought me to dinner with relatives it turns out I haven’t seen in 24 years, so it’s no one I don’t remember them. But it was a nice little reunion, abet short due to Me and I needed to run and finish a few last minute errands. I crashed about 11 pm and slept surprisingly well until the alarm clock known as my sister kicked in out of bed at 5am the next morning. This was it, we were actually embarking.

Besides it being LAX, a Friday morning, and the tail end of summer, there really wasn’t that much of a line at the airport. An hour was plenty of time to get us through check in, security, and a leisurely walk to the gate. The first leg of our trip was relatively bland as far as adventures with Me and I go....no wackos sitting next to us, well at least not next to me. I had a few teachers traveling to Miami for a cruise to the Caribbean. I had a nice enough gentleman, who would have been an ideal seatmate if it weren’t for the fact that he was scared and therefore shaking the entire row with his quaking.

The real fun on the flights began when we boarded our plane in Miami. For this leg of the journey we were actually sitting together. A set of grandparents decided to sit behind us, which was fine until we realized that their entire extended family was on the plane with them as well...they were just in different locations. This still would have worked out fine if it weren’t for the fact that the children of this lovely couple had a child of their own, a young child. Every time the grandchild began to cry, his parents would calmly walk back to where the grandparents were (and by default us) and deposited the screaming child. So every twenty minutes or so of a five hour flight we got to have our ear drums blow out again and I got to get kicked in the back of the seat. It was fun.

When the meal finally showed up (since this was an international flight, it was not subjected to the new "pay for everything" law and was included in the cost of the ticket), Me decided to ask what the vegetarian option was because that tends to be the safest bet on a flight. This is how the conversation went:

Stewardess: "You want pasta with chicken or beef?"
Me: "What’s your vegetarian option?"
Stewardess: Scowl..."Pasta with chicken or beef!"
Me: Cowed..."Pasta with chicken please."

Apparently change and options were not something in this person’s vocabulary and for the rest of the flight we were afraid to ask her for anything less she glare at us again like we were some kind of bug under a microscope ready to be dissected.

Arrival and New Friends

Upon arrival in Lima we were grateful to be whisked through customs to the carousel to find that after some anxious minutes our bags had made the international flight with us and we wouldn’t be wearing the same thing for the next three weeks, and finally that we’d had the foresight to book a taxi from the hostel so that we didn’t have to wade through the chaos outside the terminal trying to find one.

Our taxi driver, Manuel, was very nice and after asking us if we spoke Spanish and getting a less than "Si, perfecto!" response, drove us through the chaos of merging cars, pedestrians with death wishes, lack of identifiable roads, stoplights and stop signs, to our hotel in Miraflores. It reminded me of Cairo, organized chaos.

We were staying the night at Kusillus Hostel which is Quechuan for Monkey (Me said Ketchup for Monkey?)in the more up scale touristy area of Miraflores. Miraflores is considered one of the safest areas; abet one of the most expensive. It’s were all the tourists like to stay because the nightlife is great, it’s safe, and it’s mostly very pretty. The buildings remind me of Europe, which is not too surprising considering that most of the architecture was influenced by the Spaniards when they invaded hundreds of years ago.

Jaime, checked us in with the introduction of; "No hablo ingles, German, French. Solo hablo Espanol! ¿Hablas Espanol?" So with the help of some fanciful charades and my crappy Spanish we managed to learn where to throw our bags, where there was a supermarket (shown to us on a map after we once again asked for a vegetarian restaurant and were laughed out before being told, "sure, go to the market, buy some vegetables and come back here and cook them"), and that the international food was two blocks up the main drag.

We deposited our stuff and set out to get some grub and see a little bit of the area. Two blocks later, we realized that "international food" meant American Fast food. Not really what we had in mind. I can just see everyone at home going "you flew halfway across the world for McDonald’s?" Just so you know, we didn’t eat at any of those places. We ended up walking around for a bit until we stumbled upon a small hole in the wall Mexican place (we thought it was Peruvian until we were later informed that it was Mexican food). Nonetheless, we had these really good chicken tacos that were wrapped in a soft doughy shell with some green unknown sauce dumped all over it. Yummy.

While eating, Em’s magic "everyone talk to me" skill kicked in and a girl at the table next to us decided to talk to us. She was with a few of her friends and five minutes later we had found out that she was born in Peru, but raised in New York and that her friends were Peruvian and didn’t speak English, but still interested in trying to communicate. Then the conversation moved onto what type of music do you like so we know which club we’re all going to? No asking, just the assumption that we were now all the best of friends and were going to go party together. Hey why not?

It looked like bedtime was now pushed back. So our new friends, Olivia (the American Peruvian), Anna, and two other girls whose names I don’t remember, set out for the clubs. The first club was crowded, smoky, and dumped within two minutes. Our new friends debated for a bit and then decided that were we going to Downtown, a local gay bar. Downtown, confiscated our cameras and Em’s granola bar (the cameras were later returned, the granola bar though wasn’t to Em’s dismay), collected 15 nueve sols a person and allowed us entrance into its smoky depths. The bar apparently can get kinda crazy with people stripping and lap dancing and such. The craziest that we saw were transvestites dancing above us through a clear glass ceiling.

We left the bar around 2:30 in the morning with the promise to meet our new friends again the next day for a personalized tour of Lima and its highlights. Determined to get some sleep, we headed back to the hostel where we felt like thieves sneaking back into the shared room cause everyone else was already asleep and we didn’t want to wake them up.

The First Day...Lima

Too bad our bunkmates didn’t feel the same need to be so quiet. There was one guy that was sick and consistently moving and getting up to go the bathroom, a couple that got up around 6 am and made enough noise to wake everyone else up, and then I guess that I was just excited cause by 8 am I couldn’t stay asleep any longer. I decided to check out the showers and realized that it was a good thing I still remembered how to take a military shower, quick and as little contact with the frigid water as possible, not to mention that the water came out about an inch from the wall. It was an adventure, but at least I didn’t smell like an ashtray anymore (too many people with cancer sticks walking around).

While I was erasing the grime of the previous night, Em was befriending one of our other bunkmates. Anna (whom I later renamed Anna II so as not to confuse her with Anna I from the previous night) was a Mexican national that was vacationing in Peru for two weeks that gladly jumped at the chance to hang out with some fellow travelers and explore the city. Seeing as she was fluent in Spanish, we quickly abused this newly formed friendship and used her to translate with our hostel employees so that we could book a bus to Trujillo for that night, figure out how much we owed the hostel, and to all around understand what people were saying to us. I was practicing my Spanish too, so most of the time I had Anna II talk to me in Spanish and then switch when I gave her blank stares (I did manage to understand the gist of most things though).

As per our agreement from the previous night Em, Anna II, and I jumped into a cab and headed to "My House Hostel" to meet up with Olivia and Anna I. Twenty minutes, several repetitions around the block, one false attempt to enter a man’s house, and a phone call later, we’d found the place and were waking our new compatriots up. After some splashing of water on the face by the newly awoken and some introductions between the unknown people, we all set off for Ricardo’s internet cafe to say hi to one of the other girls from last night and then head downtown to the heart of Lima.

This is where is becomes really nice to have a bunch of people that really understand and speak Spanish fluently. Our new friends bargained all the cab rides and made sure that we all got where we were supposed to without being over charged.

First stop on our personal tour was Jirón de la Union, a big shopping street that is know for having everything in terms of goods, as well as pickpockets and bag slashers. The good thing though, is that if your camera or other item is stolen on Jirón de la Union you can probably find it again five minutes later on the black market that is a few blocks away.

We were traversing this street looking for an elusive local restaurant that served great cerviche, a raw seafood dish with lemon and onions. It took a couple of trips back and forwards, as well as asking a dozen or so locals, but we finally found where we were headed. Our fellow travelers ordered and we ate and it was all excellent, except for the Jungle food which was some sort of really really bland corn ball that no one but the girl that was born in Iquistos liked.

After lunch we set off for Plaza Mayor and the San Francisco Church. Plaza Major contains the main parliamentary type buildings, including the Peruvian equivalent of "The White House." While the square was beautiful and contained great examples of Spanish influenced Peruvian architecture, the Church called.

The main reason for wanting to go to San Francisco Church was because the tour goes down into catacombs and tombs. There are said to be 7,000 people buried beneath this church, but the real number is closer to 17,000. While walking among these ancient dead, I couldn’t help but wonder whose job it was to sort the bones of all the bodies into piles to place in different locations. Instead of a crypt full of complete, or mostly complete, skeletal remains, there were pits of long bones, shelves of pubic bones, rows of skulls, and a few art pieces of skulls surrounded by long bones. Seriously, was that the new monk on the totem pole’s job, or was it reserved for the older, more seasoned monks? Yes, I do realize how insane I sound for wondering this.

On the tour we were told that we couldn’t take pictures, which basically meant, take pictures but don’t get caught taking pictures. So we lagged behind for most of the tour and would snap a quick shot or two when the tour guide had their back turned. Other people on the tour clued into this mischief and quickly followed suit...because what trip to a crypt is ever complete without a few shots of human bones...yes, I know I’m going to the hell I don’t believe in.

After our tour of the underground graveyards, our little party had worked up an appetite and so we headed over to the market place looking for sweets and hot chocolate (I thought that I might be able to get spicy hot coco here, but apparently that does not exist in Peru :(). We did end up trying though: Arroz con leche, which is basically rice pudding and we added lychee sauce; dolce con leche flavored chocolate; and this drink that tasted like watered down Jaeger, cinnamon, and some unidentifiable something or other.

Stomachs no longer grumbling, we toured a few of the local markets and Anna I presented me with the Peruvian equivalent of an "Evil eye," which is the opposite of what it sounds like, it actually protects you from evil. She saw all of the other things clipped to my bag and decided that I needed this as well. That was really sweet of her. Em was going to buy everyone worry dolls, which take all the worries of a person so that they aren’t burdened with them, but them realized that she was actually bargaining for something else, namely ugly pins. Using great resolve, we didn’t end up purchasing any trinkets yet; those will have to wait till the end of the trip.

We hailed another cab and headed back to Miraflores. Oriana had bought little witches that are for every horoscope and gave one to each of us. Turned out that four of the five people were Cancers, so we each took a witch and ignored the fortune. This left us with seven extra fortunes and witches, so Em decided that we should hand them out to random people and see what happened. The first few people looked at us like we were crazy, one boy came back and said that he wasn’t a Virgo, and a small mob of girls flanked the smallest member of our group, Anna I, all trying to vie for the remaining two witches. It was all highly entertaining.

One finally cab ride and we were back at out hostel. We said goodbye to our new friends and set out to catch our bus to Trujillo where part two of this journey begins.

Random Tidbits I Couldn’t Figure Out Where to Add In

Whoever said that you should never take pictures of soldiers and police, never visited on a national holiday when everyone was in a good mood. Not only did the soldiers not mind us snapping a few pictures of them in full uniform, but they actually wanted us to take photos with them. So now I have a few nice shots of me with a couple of Peruvian soldiers and some of smiling tank fighters. Taken at Plaza Major in Lima.

First saw these in Miraflores, but have since seen them everywhere:

The weirdest thing that I’ve seen so far I think would have to be the walking change machines. There are people whose job it is to walk around with wads of cash on their persons and basically exchange money for you. If I were a crook looking for a quick score, I think that I’d be targeting these brightly colored citizens. But that’s just me.

General Impression:

As I drive through these different cities and parts of the worlds, I can’t help but inevitably start to compare them to one another. All developing countries have similar qualities to them, just as all developed and thriving countries have similar qualities to them. I see the large advertisements for Banks, Coca Cola, etc... that flash neon and instantly feel like I’m in one of many different countries. The same goes for the chaotic driving that seems to be orchestrated by an unseen power and the built up main cities interspersed with the shanty towns of the outlying regions. All developing countries seem to have these items as staples.

One other thing that I’ve found to be consistent, is that, even if the people don’t speak your language, they have no money, and their lives revolve around selling phones/candy/newspapers on a street corner, they’re all incredibly nice if you make a little effort to talk to them in their language (or at least mime what you want to say). It gives me a little pause as an American when I think that those of us with more fortunate lives can’t be bothered to interact with each other for two minutes, if we’re not already acquainted. Life’s too short to be rude.

And on that note, I’ll end this chapter of my novella and head out to find some grub.