From Lima with Love

Ok so my bad. In my last post I said I would post the next day and I didn't. For like two weeks. Forgive me. In return for your forgiveness I offer words and pictures. I'm going to start with my adventures in Lima and work my way up to now with subsequent posts.

The pictures I posted most recently all came from the exciting remainder of time in Lima. In fac there are more that I will post here. I visited the down town of Lima, went to this super old ruin in the middle of the city called Huaca Pucllana, went out with friends from my hostel and school, and attempted to go climbing just outside the city. At the same time I was still taking spanish classes and cooking classes and a couple of salsa classes at my school after choosing to extend them for another week.

Salsa

Learning to cook and getting to eat traditional Peruvian food was really cool. Here is a picture of my friend Lukas cooking during the class. Can you tell he is tall?

At the school over the two weeks I was there I also attended this extra class called 'The Social and Economic Reality of Peru'. It was supposed to only be a one week thing but all the students asked so many questions that it spilled over to the next week. One thing that did hit home for me is the fact that Peru really does have everything, natural resources, tourism, young population. But they are not reaching their potential and are just now recovering from the crazy level of terrorism that was occuring in the late 80's and 90's. Also, corruption is so rampant that now the public desire is not for a lack of corruption in government, but instead for an acceptable level of corruption (maybe just less than the last group in office). At first I found this laffable and very different from home, but then I realized that the American reality is not much different in that respect. If you asked me if I truly thought the majority of our politicians were in some way abusing our system or breaking laws, I would have to say yes, as I think many people would. And I mean this in a full on illegal way, not like a, 'the democrats are going against the constitution and ruining our country' kind of way. It's interesting to be able to step back and really compare our system to others that in my mind I had deemed less stable or 'bad'.

Anyways, while I was in Lima, the guy who killed that American girl in Aruba and got away with it killed a Peruvian girl he picked up at a big poker tournament right down the street from my school. He got caught and I don't think he will make it through prison alive, if he can even get there. The general vibe is that the people want blood. My friend Lukas, who is from Germany, has Peruvian cousins and one of them sat at the same Poker table as this serial killer. Crazy. Also crazy is that this American woman who came to Peru to help one of the many leftist terrorist organizations in the 90's got out a jail while I was in Lima. She is very well off and smart, went to MIT in fact, and her Dad put her up in an apartment on the ocean right in Miraflores. As a result, every tenant of the building moved. That is the depth of pain this country has experienced at the hands of the terrosits groups.

One of my goals for my time in Lima was to go to the city center and check out the Plaza de Armas and the Parque de la Reserva. Getting to the Plaza ended up being a two day ordeal. The first day, I looked up the plaza on google maps and asked the guy at the front of the hostel to confirm the location, but he said it was somewhere completely different. I got kinda miffed becuase he was so adamant and a littel short with me, so when I left it was partially with the intention of proving this kid wrong. I felt like I could find my way to anywhere even if I got a little lost, especially with a map. I mean the internet is never wrong. Ever. Except this time. The kid was right. Arriving at the supposed location of the plaza and finding nothing really struck me and reminded me that technology is not as infallible as I'd like to think. It's sort of 1984ish. Google, arbiter of the internet (at least for me), gave me information and I believed it whole heartedly. Someday Google will tell us the Holocaust was a hoax and we will believe it becuase we trust the technology. Obviously this is an extreme example but I am trying to convey the depth to which that experience stuck in my mental brain-goo.

Darn. Off story again. Where was I? So I got to the the wrong place and decided to go to the right place. I got on a bus. I got off the bus at what I assumed had to be the Parque de la Reserva. Turns out I had already passed the Parque de la Reszerva, which was closed for maintanence for the entirety of my stay. The place I had arrived at was in fact the Parque de la Exposicion, where the picture of the crazy cube thing was taken. It was so cool I jut brushed off the other park and the plaza for another day. This is the power of traveling without a strict schedule. It is the places you don't expect to see that impact you the most. The unexpected experience. Granted, it is probably easier to have these when you are alone and half expecting to get completely lost all the time. I spent a wonderful afternoon/evening just cruising around the park and got to see a political protest. As far as I understand it these protests are really popular and integral to the political climate in Peru, but are not very effective. Wait till I talk about the ones in Arequipa. On the way home, I had the best street food I've ever had, a papa rellena (stuffed potato). Solid day.

Another thing I noticed while in Lima is that the American influence is everywhere. In Peru there are KFCs, Payless shoe stores, Starbucks and even Dunkin' Donuts. A lot of the words in commericals and on products are in english. The Spanish word for sunset, at least in Lima, is 'el sunset'. Sleeper colonialism. Forget about the army, send in the advertising agencies and we'll control a country with our consumer culture. Even here where the majority of people are dark skinned and have native physical features, the idolized woman is tall, blond and fair. I 'knew' this was our role in the world before I came to Peru, but now I understand better the extent to which a people might feel invaded everytime they turn on the TV screen. Obviously there is more to the issue than that, but it was interesting to observe my culture in a more foreign place than Europe.

The day after my failed attempt to make it to the plaza, I went to Huaca Pucllana, which is a ruin of a temple used by the Lima culture. The ruins themselves are not that interesting looking, pretty much like a giant hill becuase so much has broken down. The story, however, is pretty sweet. This culture existed even before the Incas, and way back then, thousands and thousands years ago, they developed sweet building technology that allowed them to cope with the frequent earthquakes. All of their walls were built with little mud bricks, which they called books, spaced apart slightly. The gaps allowed the structure to vibrate without breaking. Sorry I don't have a picture, I chose the Spanish speaking tour to practice my listening and my efforts were focused on translation at that point. It's just nuts becuase the 'giant hill' isn't just a hill; the whole thing was man made, and it took over two hundred years to make. I know there are lots of sites like this throughout the world, but going to this one hit the concept home. Here is a man-made site that is not only ages and ages older than my country, than my identity, but also required almost the life of my country to build. I feel like we have so much history, so much in fact it's hard to keep it all straight. Hell, most people in America don't even know what the war of 1812 was. And we're what, 250ish years old? To think about what has occurred since the Lima people were around and now. Mind blowing. The ruins were also where I saw the really crazy dogs from the last post. My climber friend in Lima has one as well but his is pure bred and lacks the crazy tufts of red hair that make it look like some sort of mutant crime fighting dog.

The next day I finally made it to the Plaza with my friend Ally. It was really cool, espcially at night.

The downtown was way more crowded than in Miraflores where I lived and studied. After the Plaza de Armas we worked our way back home through Plaza de San Martín. This is where my general lack of luck or common sense or both necessitated that, when I took my camera out of my jacket pocket, I should also drop the 100 soles bill I had hidden there. It took three minutes to realize what had happened and in that time it was gone. It was approximately 35 bucks so I treated it as a charitable gift and went on. What else is there to do? It was pretty funny though, in a sad sad kind of way.

Now for the rock climbing in Lima. For this we have to flash back becuase I actually went the weekend before. The moutains where I went butted up against the city, and I believe they are the major reason that during the winter Lima gets a crazy fog and overcast skies. On this particular day, the fog was all over the mountains and it was eerie wandering around just trying to find the darn valley with the boulders. Based on stories I had heard that hills outside of the cities could be dangerous, I clutched my pocket knife for protection. I'm not sure how much good it would have done but I felt prepared. Fear and apprehension melted away, however, the minute I crested the ridge and saw the boulders. For nonclimbers, there are few things that get you worked up more than finding climbing. I half ran/half fell down the hill side to the first one. Unfortunately every boulder was soaked by the fog and I climbed one very easy route after semi-drying it and excepting that I was going to get muddy. I filmed it of course. Filming yourself rock climibng is weird becuase you have to put up with feeling conceited if you really want to document the climbing in some way. Win some lose some. Over all, the day was a good experience and I always get a kick when I feel like I've gone out and done something on my own.

The rest of my time in Lima I really just spent enjoying the city with my new friends. Eating, drinking and just walking around. My last day there I finally went down to the ocean, which afforded me this sweet view of the city on the cliffs.


The beach was all smooth dark stones and there was this moss on the rocks that was so green it was practically glowing.

This wasn't the sort of beach where you go to play volleyball and check out people in their swim suits. I was the only person there and I liked it like that. It sort of made you feel alone in a good way. And oddly enough I hadn't smelled the sea from up in the city and it's always nice to smell that every once in a while. Afterwards, In a classic case of poor planning, I allowed my friends to convince me to go out the night before I had to be at the bus station at 5:30 in the morning. After having fun, I stayed up until 3 packing my stuff. I am not usually put in a foul mood by lack of sleep, but the napping and occasional movement required to get me to my next destination of Ica left me staring out at the beautiful oasis of Huacachina with squinty eyes and a slight chip on my shoulder. This chip would be mercilessly ripped from my shoulder as I busted butt on the side of giant sand dune while attempting to sand board, but more on that later.