Surprise! Extra time in Lima, Peru! January 12-13, 2008

Well, right before we left our hotel for the airport to go to Lima, we found out our connection from Lima to Iquitos was cancelled and that we would have to wait in the Lima airport from 6pm until 5am. Ugh. Although Lima is a city of 10 MILLION people (out of 20 million in Peru total), the airport was not so exciting as far as distracting oneselves for 11 hours. We checked our bags for Iquitos and started figuring out what to do.

I asked around in the airport to find out where were safe areas to go in Lima and we stepped out into the night and got into a taxi. By this time, my Spanish is pretty functional and my comprehension is quite good. We told him we had some time before our flight and wanted to see some of the city. Oh, and a typical Peruvian dinner would be good too. So, off we went, again trusting the fate of our next few hours to a taxi driver.

He turned out to be quite the talkative fellow, and decided to give us a tour of the city, explaining as we went and even slowing down at times so we could take non-blurry pictures. I found it harder to understand him in Peruvian Spanish than the Central American Spanish, but I understood enough to translate for Jeremy and get the idea of where we were and what we were looking at.

First he took us to a GREAT restaurant. Something about Brujas (witches) whose name I don´t remember. But the food was amazing and certainly better than we would get at the food court at the airport. We were pretty happy to share a bottle of wine too, with the long night ahead of us! He came back for us an hour and a half later and continued our tour of the city. We ended up in the cab with him for about 4 hours and got back to the airport around midnight! Yay! Only 5 more hours to drink caffeine and try and stay awake to get on our flight!

We saw the Plaza de Armas (which apparently they have in all Peruvian cities) where the Presidential palace and other government buildings were; we saw a couple getting married there in full regalia (see photo above); we saw a church that had catacombs underneath it with apparently piles and piles of bones of slaves (not sure whose bones, that was as much as I understood about that part of his running commentary); we saw a building that used to be the house of the lover of the King but now was a museum, we saw countless HUGE casinos, discos, bars and restaurants. We kind of wanted to get out and have him come get us later, but it doesn´t feel like the safest of places for gringos with backpacks to be walking around at night, so we didn´t stop. There was even a Hotel that was named the Dolphin Hotel, because they had dolphins in residence and a full dolphin show there! The city is just huge. Kind of like Vegas times 100. They had another called New York that had a rather large replica of the Statue of Liberty on top of it. Another factor emphasizing the point that almost everything in Lima is built to much more massive scaling compared to what we're used to. The buildings were just massive. Even the McDonalds we saw was 2x or 3x any McD's we've ever seen in the US. The place is also very westernized, with many recognizable name brands everywhere we looked. Not even just the Wendy's/KFC/Burger Kings, but companies like Sherwin Williams. Globalization in full effect.

He also took us to more seedy areas of town where he told us not to stick the camera out the window to take pictures, and pointed out prostitutes and drug dealers. At one point we even got pulled over by a police car who promptly told the driver to get us out of that area! Well that´s what the driver told me anyway. Who knows. That was about when we decided it was a sign that it was time to go back to the airport.

And the traffic laws there! What traffic laws? We passed between cars in between lanes, even when there weren´t other cars around he drove in the middle of the two lanes and through red lights. Reminded me of Cairo! We turned left from the right lane, we turned left behind another car waiting its turn to go left. All in all a pretty interesting few hours and glimpse of the immense nightlife of Lima on a Saturday nite! Not to mention a welcome respite from waiting in the airport!

Everywhere we saw lovers! Every public place we went to had benches with people making out, snuggling, talking while holding hands, and in one case a moment of lovers drama; the woman was crying and the young man looked so sad. We had a few places pointed out to us that were hotspots where couples would go and "park". One was near a cliff infamous for people who had lost love and leapt to their death. We also had a really cool bridge pointed out to us that was infamous for the same thing. But again, love was everywhere we looked!

All around the city there was such amazing contrast! The parks and plazas were filled with trees and bushes covered with decorative xmas tree style lighting. Then, not too many blocks away, we would see an old woman burning a pile of trash on the median between the streets. The driver explained this was a common, but illegal practice of the many poor in Lima. We also saw small buildings where the driver said up to 50 families might live, basically stacked on top of each other. It was a beautiful, amazing, and somewhat crushing drive through the metropolis of Lima. It was also interesting to see some of the police vehicles were basically Armored Personnel Carriers built to survive the hit of an RPG, with tiny little slats for the driver and occupants to peer out of. Again, both making us feel safer, and kind of more wary than expected.

It was definitely a city we wished we had more time to explore and hope to someday return to.

Meanwhile, back here in Iquitos (one of the departure points for exploring the majestic and huge Amazon River - over 3200 miles from here to the Atlantic!), since we have been sitting here for a while on these computers, we´ll just have to wait and write about the Amazon tomorrow. It was amazing though. Hopefully we can even find someone to put our pictures on CD or somehow get them on the internet in the next few days. Maybe in Sao Paolo if not here.

But since I mentioned it in the El Salvador post, it seems that this close to Carnival, there is a rather bothersome practice of roving motorcycles (and there are A LOT of motorcycles and motocars here (essentially a motorcycle with a bench for a backseat, kind of like a tuk-tuk for those of you who have been to Thailand)) pelting tourists with water balloons as they walk in the street. Oh, goodie. We got hit first on the bus coming back into town from our Amazon adventure - 3 times with open windows. Then when we walked around to find this internet cafe, we were soaked twice more, despite our attempts to hide behind locals and any cover we could find, even ducking into doorways of sympathetic local people. Jeremy did better than I did at avoiding them. But we´re dry now and hoping to make it across the street to the restaurant we found by walking through the middle of the Plaza de Armas of Iquitos. It´s a lively, wide public square so if we walk in the middle, we should be ok. I mean, what´s the longest possible range of a hand thrown water balloon anyway, right? :)