June 9th - Lima (otra vez)

Hello everyone,

I've been having a great time since last I wrote. I had dinner last night on a busy dining street in Miraflores, right next to Parque Kennedy (yes, for some reason there is a big park here named for JFK). The street is a lot of fun. It's for pedestrians only, and the waiting staff stands in the middle of the street with menus, trying to persuade all the passers by to choose their restaurant instead of the 30 or so other options. Once you choose a restaurant, it's actually really fun to watch the people walk by. I found myself a good spot with a view of the 'parade', and ate and watched and read my novel (The Strange Case of the Dog at Midnight - which I've now finished and would highly recommend). Anyway, it was a fun evening. After a little while, one of the other waiters stopped by and shyly asked me where I was from and if I happened to know the english word for 'alcachofa'. I told him it meant artichoke, and he happily ran off and got a piece of paper so he could write it down for future reference. It felt nice to be helpful.

I had a great night's sleep, and woke up to another vaguely warm shower. The Lima hotel that I'm using has these crazy electric water heaters attached to the shower heads. I don't think they're actually dangerous (I know many travelers who've survived!), but if you reach your hand too high while rinsing off, you get a lovely little tingle. Well, anyway, I got clean and didn't completely freeze while doing so, and got off for my day.

Breakfast is included at the hostal, and I had my Nescafe and canned OJ and flat rolls with butter and jam, and chatted with a girl from Cajamarca about all the great places in Peru. Then I was off to see one of the local archaeological sites. It's called Huaca Pucllana, and is in walking distance from my hotel. Somehow I never knew it was there before. It's from the Lima culture, which is pre-Inca (and also pre-Wari for anyone who's counting), and is a large adobe pyramid, made of bricks which are all made by hand and stacked on their sides, for seismic reasons. The guide was included and was good. The tour was in Spanish and I held my own, which was nice. It turns out that he was trained in Archaeology in Trujillo (where I worked last summer), so it was interesting to chat with him about the sites there and how they are different from this one.

After the Huaca, I had an amazingly inexpensive lunch, and the yummiest ice cream flavor ever - lucuma! I tell you, if you've never had it, you need to try it when you can. I love it. It is a fruit flavor, and is as common here as strawberry, and tastes like a mix of maple syrup and peaches and raisins (yes, raisins), and it's orange in color. Yum, scrum.

Then, for my afternoon activity, I decided to go to the Museo de Oro (Gold Museum). It's a big deal on the tourist route here, but I haven't been there before, so I decided it was time. It was interesting, but actually, I've seen better examples of everything they had in other museums around the country. I guess I'm getting spoiled. There were some amazing pieces though. Imagine an entire shirt covered in little circles of gold that dangel and sparkle in the sun, worn by a man with solid gold earings the size of drink coasters, and a huge gold headdress and a gold disk suspended between his nostrils. Makes a bit of an impression, doesn't it?

As it turned out, I had daylight to burn after the museum, so I went to another tourist mecca, Larcomar. It's a high-end shopping center (think Pier 39 in SF without quite so much hoopla). I had a double espresso (god bless the italians) while watching the crazy surfers and people gliding from those narrow arc shaped parachutes (what do you call that), which was a nice break. Then I wandered a bit and did something really odd for being here in Peru - I bought a movie ticket and watched Star Wars Episode 3. It was in English with Spanish subtitles, which incidently were a lot of fun. It's really weird to see that Yoda talks backwards in Spanish too - for example, 'terminado he'. If you read Spanish it's funny. I bought popcorn for less than a buck, and had a really nice time.

Now I am on my way to dinner, probably to the same area but a different restaurant.

Hope you all are well.

Ciao,

Karen