We arrived in Lima around 3:00 in the afternoon. As usual, we had a list of hostels from our Lonely Planet Guide and had the taxi driver take us there. To make a long story short, we ended up driving around for almost 3 hours to find a hotel. Everything on our list was full! Luckily our taxi driver was very knowledgeable about Lima and we learned a lot. But I have to say that we totally lucked out on our best place ever! We stayed in our own little apartment in the home of a lovely woman who spoke English. We each had our own bedroom with private bath for $10 each a night. There was a little kitchenette with refrigerator and microwave so we could make our breakfasts.
We quickly learned our way around on the buses. It saves so much money. The only problem is that I arrived in Lima pretty sick. It started a couple of towns back, but kept getting worse and worse until it was clear I had parasites. We went to a pharmacy where they gave me a treatment of medicine that said kills ¨every amoeba, parasite and worm¨ known to man. It also has a few weird side effects, which I won´t get into, so I wasn´t at my best at this time. This first couple of days we did our city walks and learned about the areas of Miraflores (where all the tourists go), Barranco (the Bohemian area) and Chorillos, the beach. All beautiful. Miraflores is very upscale. We walked, ate great Peruvian food like Cuy (guinea pig) and goat, with all their special sauces. The Peruvian food is fabulous and quite different than all the other countries so far. They have a special sauce called aji, which is a little different at each restaurant, but basically a yellow, green, or red sauce that is spicy and tasty. (Talia, Shanna, remember the Peruvian restaurant near our house in San Diego that had the good green sauce?) We also shopped in the artesano markets with all the indigenous crafts from all over Peru. The markets were overwhelming! Too much to see, to much to think about, too much to buy. I´m on a strict budget, so I didn´t get much.
On Saturday night Stacy and I were going to the airport to meet Josue, my next traveling companion. We were told that the taxi to the airport was $40 USD, so we quickly learned how to take the bus for 75 cents each. Of course the bus was an hour and a half ride, but oh well. We waited for Josue for a long while because his plane landed at 8:20 in the evening, but he didn´t come out of immigration until 9:30!!! We were a little worried. Even though we got back to the apartment around 11:00, we quickly ditched Josue´s things and went to a restaurant in Barranco that we had visited the day before. At night they have live music and the restaurant is located inside a refurbished train car. We got some typical Peruvian snacks and I told the waiter that Josue was a musician. After awhile, they invited him up to play and he experienced his first ¨show¨ in Peru! The people were happy with his Nicaraguan folkloric guitar playing and singing and he was happy on his first night in Peru!
The next day we all did another first….we went paragliding over the cliffs of the beaches of Lima! How exciting! I was always afraid to do it in La Jolla, California. For some reason I am much more fearless in Latin America. What a beautiful experience. We went tandem paragliding, in other words, an expert was sitting behind us. But now I know how it feels to be a bird. It was a gorgeous, cloudless warm day with a brisk wind. Perfect for this sport and what a great way to see the city!
Of course we are also dancing our way through South America and Lima was no exception. I just want to comment here that we went for dinner before dancing, and it may not be funny to you, but the waiter told us that they only had chicken. So I said, I want the leg. When our food came we started eating it and it was clearly not chicken, it was pork! So we asked the waiter what happened, we ordered chicken and he said, ¨No, you ordered a leg. And I brought you a leg.¨ It made no sense at all and we were laughing hysterically so we decided to eat the pork. We never really figured out what happened. The three of us went to one of the popular discos in the Marina area and had a blast dancing to our favorite Latin songs. Yes, even Stacy has some now! After all this time visiting me in Nicaragua and traveling with me, she recognizes some of the Salsa, reggaeton and bachata songs. She also dances very well to them!
The night before Stacy left, we had a beautiful dinner hosted by Stacy at a fancy restaurant in Lima (thank again Stacy!). We ate alpaca (wonderful!), rabbit, chicken and pork. We had oysters for an appetizer and a bread basket that would rival any five-star restaurant! And….we had six different types of Pisco sours (the national drink) with flavors like basil, chichi morada (purple corn), maracuya (a fruit we don´t have). All very exotic! Wonderful, one-of-a-kind experience!
On the day Stacy left, Josue and I took a bus to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. For those of you who may not know, there are huge shapes in the Peruvian desert around Nazca. They are very old, no one knows who did them or why. But given the time they were made… it was pretty impossible to make such large shapes with such accuracy. And…you can see nothing from the ground, you can only see them from the air. So you go in a tiny 6-seater plane. For those of you who know me, yes, I had to take medicine before going on this one! The lines are amazing….they were made by taking the dark rocks OFF the white sand below and forming a shape, which makes them all the more strange. In the book ¨Chariots of the Gods,¨(which I read years ago and vowed to see these lines one day in my life), his theory were they were signals to the ships (yes, spaceships) that landed there. Who knows? There is really no explanation.
Next, we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru and a great place! Very colonial, great food like stuffed peppers with meat inside and a tasty, spicy white cheese sauce over it, or potatoes with greek olives and another spicy sauce. Peru sure likes its sauces! The first day we did our walking tour (always what we do on our first day to get acquainted with the city, the architecture, the views, the streets, etc. )
The next day we looked at the guide book and decided to take a trip that was not in our plans….to the deepest canyon in the world! We took a five and a half hour bus ride to Cabanaconde, our departure point. In the bus we saw snow-capped mountains for the first time since our trip started. The highest one was around 18,000 feet high. Not bad…
Since we left at 5:30 in the morning, we hadn´t eaten anything so we went to a restaurant in the main square to fortify ourselves! We had a great meal of alpaca (now one of our favorite meats) in red wine sauce with fresh steamed vegetables and the great Cusquena beer! We started our trek after that and made our way down into the canyon. Where we walked was not the deepest point of 4800 meters (if it was, I wouldn´t be here telling this story as you will soon see…). We decided walk to the first indigenous village, Sangalle. Already we were happy to see the local people in their colorful clothing, with their babies strapped behind them in blankets. We descended into the canyon. The trail was a mix of sand, little rocks, big rocks and it was pretty slippery. I was wearing sneakers rather than hiking boots and only fell down four times, once falling on a rock that punched me pretty hard in the kidney area. I think the walk took around 5 hours to go down to the bottom of the canyon. We were rewarded for our hard work by spectacular views of mountains everywhere around us! We could look down into the valley and see a raging river curving around the rocks. As we got closer we could hear it. Of course I was so thrilled about this hike that I didn´t stop to think about the fact that the next morning I would have to walk back UP!!!
We were so tired when we arrived at the bottom that we headed for Oasis, a little conclave of bamboo huts and supposedly a restaurant that had Alpaca steaks and Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru. We were ready for that! But no, there were no Alpaca steaks or Pisco sours. Nor was there good service. Some young men and teenage boys were running the place and told us we couldn´t eat until 7:00, two and a half hours later. It had started raining, so we were getting cold and there was no way to dry off. But we waited…
As we waited, tourists from various countries started showing up at the dining table. There was no electricity at this place, but they didn´t start cooking until dark. All of us were tired and hungry and the only available dinner was spaghetti with ketchup for sauce and a vegetable soup in which we couldn´t identify a single vegetable! It tasted like water broth! As you can imagine we were disappointed with the meal, but we had a lively table discussion for two hours with people from Holland, Brazil, France, Sweden and then us, me from the U.S. and Josue from Nicaragua. THAT was great! Everyone decided to speak in English since everyone could understand some level of English. It was a very nice (if dark…we only had one candle) evening.
The next morning we got up bright and early to make our ascent up the mountain. Who was I kidding? Walk up that mountain? Maybe it would take me 10 hours? 15?
We could not walk it in the dark because the path was narrow and the drop over the edge of the trail was probably 2000 feet! We took a few hours and walked up almost half way. Josue was wonderful…no complaining, no nothing, reminding me to drink water and then…he saw an indigenous man coming down the trail with two mules and he said, ¨Hey, how much to rent your mules to take us the rest of the way up?¨ It was very reasonable, about $10, so we said, why not? Well, it sure took the strain off my heart..to a point. The mules liked to walk by the edge, not on the inside by the side of the mountain. There were moments when we both felt that the mule was going to walk right off the cliff. Sometimes I looked over my right shoulder and could just see DOWN a thousand or so feet. But we made it to the top and it clearly was ANOTHER adventure.
Waiting at the top were the two people from Holland we had been talking to the night before – Harald and Marike. We decided to walk back to town together and grab a meal of – yes you guessed it – alpaca steak in vino tinto. We had a nice meal then found out that the five and a half hour bus ride back to Arequipa was sold out for the next few days and the only way we could get back was to stand the whole way!!! Well, we weren´t the only ones doing that, the whole bus was packed with people standing! But this is where the idea of bus travel suits me so well….the Peruvian people who were sitting in their seats made room on the arms of their seats, pulled down their suitcases so we could sit on them in the aisle, and did everything they could to make our ride as comfortable as possible. Everyone communicated in his or her own way and we had many nice conversations with some very lovely people. By the end of the trip, we had created a little ¨bus community¨ and it seemed that we were all good friends. We even took a picture of everyone to remind us of this remarkable experience where we saw just how kind the Peruvian people are and how nice they were with us. These are the experiences that I always remember. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to travel the way I do…with the people of the country.
When we got back to Arequipa, we made plans to see Harald and Merike at 10:30 p.m. We met them at the Plaza de las Armas and went to a restaurant that had local food from Arequipa. Very tasty. Josue brought the guitar and played some nice songs for us. It is always great to listen to him play…he is also giving me guitar lessons! We had a nice time talking to our new friends and since they will be traveling for several weeks around Chile and Argentina, we exchanged emails and are in contact to see if we can meet again somewhere else. It´s terrific to make friends from other countries along the way.
The next day Josue and I were off to Chile…………. To view photos of this part of the trip, click here.
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