A week in the big city
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006Well, here I am after spending a week in Lima, Peru. It’s so good to be here! Once I got off the plane and into a taxi to my hostel at 12:30am, huge waves of nostalgia set in. Like I had been here before. The heat, the sounds of the honking cars, the crazy drivers, the smell of a third world capital city, the adrenaline of getting off the plane, all too familiar. I was quite happy to be here. Still am.
I’ve had an excellent week here, done a bit of everything really, beach, museums, discos, nothing in particular, it’s great. The hostel manager, Frances, is great! He likes to drive us around, tells us all the good places to go for whatever we want to do. The other day he crammed 5 of us in the back and 3 into the front of his 4 door BMW and drove us around town. We got pulled over… for speeding no less!! $55 ticket for him but they didn’t say anything about the amount of passengers he was carrying. Until we got pulled over again 20 mins later after we dropped 2 guys off at the airport. This time we had 3 in the front and 3 in the back. Apparently 4 in the back is more legal than 3 in the front. Anyways, I got to witness my first bit of latino corruption. 10 soles to the cop got us free, which is about $3.50.
February is Carnaval month and they celebrate it here with water balloons and squirt guns. Mostly the kids get you while you’re walking down the street or if you have your car window open. Not really a huge bummer if you get hit cause usually you’re sweating anyhow so a bit of a shower is a good thing. As long as the camera is safe. Another interesting thing I learned here is that they steal the powerlines in the night and sell the copper to different companies. I imagine companies who make power lines??? Crazy.
Thursday I’m heading to a little surf town on the north coast near Ecuador called Mancora for a week or so in a hammock. Only 14 hours on a bus!
Love you and Miss you!!
lunchladysue