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Lima, Peru
12° 3' S 77° 3' W
Jan 03, 2006 19:10
Distance 0km

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Other entries in Lima

if it werent for the rose bowl, we'd be outta here

Text written in: English

so were still hanging around Lima, Peru because we need to be in a large city to ensure the availibility of satellite tv for watching the rose bowl tomorrow. otherwise we would have left by now in order to get to Argentina which we are very much looking forward to. Chile is going to be skipped as it is too far out of the way and many people have made comments designating it as the lesser of favorite countries in South America. We will travel south after Lima to Juacachena to ride the sand dunes and then onto Puno in the south near Lake Titticaca for some relaxed living and prehaps a home stay with a local family. after that we will cross the border into Bolivia near La Paz to take a flight across that country and then walk across the border into Argentina and then figure it out from there. lots of movement but we'd like to spend an extended amount of time in Argentina and especially Buenos Aires.

Lima has not been without excitement though. yesterday began late in the morning with a breakfast of bread and jam. then david and i set off with 4 other guys from the hostel to explore downton Lima. after exiting the cab, we walked through a crowded market place and found a chicken shop to eat a better meal at. there wre pictures of an excited looking chicken i guess enticing people to come over and eat him. it wasnt him but the look and smell of the actual cooking chicken that got us over but his appearence didnt hurt. this image was nowhere near as hilarious as the picture we saw in Aguas Caliente, near machu picchu. there we saw a chicken restaurant with a sign containing a cartoon chicken sitting at a table with fork and knife poised to eat, yes you may have guessed it, a roasted chicken. the image's hilarity was not lost on us but what was lost was the chance to take a picture which we both passed up in favor of walking right past it. fools we are indeed.

so we ate chicken and walked through a marketplace. there wanst much to buy besides pants, shoes, and fake watches but i did manage to purchase another identical pair of sunglasses after i lost them at marcela's aunts house. the price started at 6 dollars but with the patented 'walk away' method, i was able to get them for 3. sa-wing batter. downtown wasnt much to look at except that there are a plethora of ancient, colonial looking buildings that reminded me of Paris. they had the grey stone exterior with columnbs and the blakc and gold metal fence surrounding it. we later found out that it was the Presidents residence that he only uses when he hosts huge parties that last too long nd he cant make it back to his mansion in the hills. great use of money and real estate if you ask me. we stopped in to a riverside cafe for a beer and along with the drink, they brought us some corn nuts. these aer very similar to the corn nuts from the states except these are more authentic in that they are roasted corn kernels with salt. delicious but make you need a drink like nemon needs a bath. after the midafternoon sup, we headed back to the hostel and decided on a late lunch. this place around the corner is known across the city for its seafood and espcially its ceviche. we sat with a small group and enjoyed it immensely. the ocean is literally a stones throw from our hostel since it sits up on the cliff overlooking the pacific so the seafood is really fresh. the ceviche consisted of fish, octopus, squid, scallops, shrimp, onions, possibly other ingredients i couldnt name and it was all drenched in lime sauce. very good.

after the meal we set off to meet up with davids moms aunt across town. david forgot the address but was able to remember the directions well enough so we made it there close to on time. she and her husband took us on a driving tour of the city which reminded me more and more of LA. her neighborhood and the neighborhood where davids mom grew up looked exactly like parts of West LA with narrow streets and small commercial centers bookending residential areas. this city has urban sprawl just like many other US cities and since Lima is built between an ocean and a mountain range, it is almost exactly like LA. its filled in all the way from one to the other and even has a {valley like area}, sorry, there aer no quotation marks on computer. the city is rather dirty and populated with people begging for money. this was a common occurance all over, not just in the crummy areas of town. after the tour, we went for chifa, the peruvian version of chinese food. it was a delicious buffet and of course, i ate too much. but what was hilariou was to see chinese people talk in spanish. it really felt like it was the states because the chinese restaurant looked like every other chinese restaurant ive ever seen but the waiters spoke spanish. pure comedy.

they dropped us off at our hostel and we thanked them profusely for their generosity. when we walked into the hostel, a mini-party was going on and we attempted to enjoy ourselves. david ended up getting into a philisophical discussion with an ignorant canadien and a 19 year old girl from Santa Monica. needlesstosay, david was towering over them in the matchup of wits. i was checking emails while listening to the conversation and I was getting frustrated just hearing the bullshit comng out of their mouths. i considered the night a wash and went to bed.

this morning i woke up early and we decided it was finally time to do some laundry. we walked around the neighborhood until we found a lavandaria and then returned to our hostel for our clothes. we set out again and soemhow decided that there was a closer one that david had seen yesterday. we followed his memory and proceeded to get completely lost. we walked around for over an hour and were totally assbackwards. we eventually admitted our predicament to ourselves and backtracked to our last known recognizable point. we were able to find the one david was talking about but it was closed. from there we walked to the first laundromat and turned in our laundry. i was laughing at the irony of the situation; we tried to go to the closer one but that took much longer than if we had just gone to the first one. we are fools.

we did work up an appetite though with all of our walking and we went to the ceviche place again. this time i added a filet of garlic fish to my mixed seafood meddley and now im resting with belly protruding and will soon be in a horizontal position. we are ready to be out of this place and i cant say i recommend Lima to anyone comin to peru. besides getting lost in some cool museums and eating some good food, the place doesnt have that much to offer that other smaller places in his country can do for a smaller price and lesser hassle. cant wait to get to the sand dunes and the lake and then to the meat country that is Argentina.