And a disclaimer: Liz somehow forgot to bring her makeup and it's not easy to find decent products in Perú. Thus all of the photos of her from this trip are 100% makeup-free.
We left Sea-Tac with a crazy journey ahead of us. We don't typically try to book flights with 2 stopovers, nor do we usually plan for vacations that involve 9 individual flights and 9 separate airports. This day was to be a long, long day of flights. From Sea-Tac, we went to LAX, to DFW, and finally on to Lima.
After exiting the plane and passing through immigration and customs, we were retrieved out of the airport by Erick and his uncle. Erick is a young man that Liz taught while she was in Lima, he and his mother, Carmen, are members who live in the Pueblo Libre area of Lima now. They loaded our bags into their van and off we went.
While it was late at night, I was wide awake and happy to be back in South America for the first time in 13 years. While Peru is different from Argentina, there were still many aspects of it that seemed familiar to me. We passed through several boulevards and neighborhoods, from the sketchy Callao where the airport is located, to the more well-to-do Pueblo Libre. While it was late at night, there was still busy traffic at times.
We both felt a little overwhelmed at first with our immediate immersion back into Spanish and struggled to understand what Erick and his uncle were saying, but by the end of our 2nd full day in Perú we were adjusted and feeling pretty confident in our language abilities.
We got to the apartment where Erick and his mom live, and got settled in. We eventually got to sleep, but I didn't get to sleep in as late as I would have liked. The reason? Car horns, which are noisy and frequent during the daytime on the streets of Lima. Most of them turned out to be taxis looking for customers.
Carmen, in spite of not feeling well, prepared us a delicious breakfast of fried plantains, ham and fresh cheese with a distinct lemon flavor to it, and fresh bread. She had just returned from their hometown of Tarapoto and had brought the cheese back with her. It was delicious (and probably our best breakfast on the whole trip). We then went to Erick's bank to exchange our money, and sat in a MoviStar place for far too long in order to get a chip so we could get service on Liz's phone. That consumed most of our morning.
In the afternoon, we hopped on a micro bus to get to the downtown area. We got food first - we stopped at a restaurant that our guide book recommended. The restaurant did not disappoint. I got pescado a la plancha and Liz got sancochado (basically beef, corn, potato and other things cooked together in a pot). We both got passionfruit juice, too. It was really good.
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| Mark enjoyed an alfajor! |
We then went on a walking tour of central Lima. Our first stop was Plaza San Martin, which features an equestrian statue in the center (with a smaller statue of a woman with a llama on her head). We then strolled up the pedestrian street Jiron de la Union. We eventually arrived at Lima's Plaza de Armas. Virtually every city in Peru has a central square called Plaza de Armas, and is usually the beating heart of every city. The cathedral is often located there, as it was in this case, and so we went inside for a self-guided tour. The cathedral was ornate and lovely, and of course a little morbid with its catacombs. It also contains the remains of Francisco Pizarro.
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| Plaza de Armas |
Walking further north, we saw huge crowds around a different church, the Basilica of San Francisco. People were in a long line to get in, most of them carrying flowers. Turns out, this was the first day of the Fiestas Patronales, a large Catholic celebration in this area.
We walked further north to the park at La Muralla, where we enjoyed looking at the colorful houses on the distant hills and relaxing for a few moments.
Since the catacombs weren't morbid enough, we next went to the Inquisition Museum, where we learned all about various forms of torture. The tour guide was interesting; he said everything with a straight face and no emotion as he described in excruciating detail the torture methods of the past. We were sure to pose with a few of the displays of how they inflicted pain upon the heretics, after the tour guide left us. We also went through Lima's central market, which was interesting, but we didn't stay too long because the smell was a big too pungent for us. Having only been in Peru for a day, we weren't quite ready for the smell of meats at questionable levels of cleanliness.
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| Sanitary! |
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| Lima's Chinatown |
We hopped on a micro bus to get back to Erick and Carmen's apartment. These buses, by the way, are crazy: They pack as many people as they can into them, and they compete with each other. Micros will dodge in and out of traffic and cut each other off in an effort to get customers. Somehow, we managed to get in and out, but I don't really remember how. When you want to get off, you have to shout "Baja! Baja!" to make sure they don't leave until you can get out. They're sure inexpensive, though. The most we ever paid for a ride was about fifty cents.
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| Aboard a packed micro |
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| Micros from the outside |
Our final stop for the day was to visit Amalia and her daughter, Lucía, whom Liz taught while on her mission. They are still strong in the church which is such a wonderful thing to see. Unfortunately we forgot to take a photo with them. :( Something very surprising we discovered is that Amalia's ex-husband, whom Liz also taught with her companion Hermana Morales (the divorce process began while they were teaching them), also got baptized. It's amazing to see what can happen with the seeds that you plant as a missionary.
The rest of the night we basically just hung out with Erick, and Liz finally was able to get her phone to work with the Peruvian chip she had purchased earlier that day after several frustrating calls to Sprint.
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| Selfie with Erick. Unfortunately we also forgot to get a photo with Carmen.. We're really bad at remembering to take photos. |
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